by T. S. Eliot
ton, and from 1910 to 1918 he sat for East Northhants. He resigned from the
Liberal Party in 1918 and contested South Tottenham as a Labour candidate,
but was defeated. Already a prolific author of books and pamphlets on eco-
nomic questions, he turned to journalism in his remaining years, and on
occasion published collections of his poetry, such as The Immortal Purpose
and Other Poems (London: R. Cobden-Sanderson, 1924) and Sonnets of Life
(London: R. Cobden-Sanderson, 1932). Where he published his review of
The Duchess of Malfi has not been identified; for Robert Wilson Lynd, whom
he cites, see n. 21 to this essay, 233.
7. Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson (1853–1937), who was sixty-eight at the time
Eliot was writing, was a noted Shakespearian actor who played Hamlet many
times both in London and New York. Some years he did little else, as in
1913 when he played Hamlet first at the Theatre Royal (Drury Lane, London),
then for the opening of the new Shubert Theatre (44th Street, New York),
and finally for a film version of Hamlet. Sir Henry Irving (1838–1905) was
the most famous actor of the late Victorian stage. He played Shylock in
The Merchant of Venice for the first time in 1879, resolving to play him not as the traditional grotesque common at the time, but as a man of dignity, proud
and contemptuous but not evil incarnate. The play was a sensation, running
for seven months. Irving repeated the role many times in the years ahead;
in one ten-year span, 1893–1902, he revived the play six times. He became
the first actor to be knighted, in 1895.
8. Sir Frank Benson (1858–1938) was a Shakespearian actor noted for his
performances of Hamlet, Coriolanus, Richard II, Lear, and Petruchio.
9. Romance was a play by Edward Brewster Sheldon (1886–1946), which
opened in New York in 1913 and became a big hit, so much so that it became
virtually synonymous with the notion of a hit play. A young man who is
planning to marry receives a cautionary tale from his bishop, based on the
sad story of the bishop’s own early romance. Its London production, starring
Doris Keane, had more than one thousand performances, and in late 1920
the play was made into a Hollywood film, directed by Charles Withey and
starring Doris Keane and Basil Sydney. Peg o’ My Heart: A Comedy of Youth
was a romantic comedy by J. Hartly Manners (1870–1928). It opened on
Broadway in 1912 and in London in 1914. It dramatizes the story of Peg,
a poor, young Irish girl from New York who learns that she has inherited
a fortune; she must leave for London, where she will be introduced into
society by her aunt, and her life is about to be turned upside down (but
in a good way, of course). It proved extremely popular, the longest-running
n o t e s t o e l i o t ’ s p r o s e , p a g e s 16 8 – 16 9
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Broadway play in history when it closed, and it was still being revived in
the 1950s.
10. The poet and critic Arthur Symons (1865–1945) and the novelist and essayist
Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) were only two of many writers of the 1890s
who wrote about music hall. Symons’s essay “A Spanish Music Hall” (1892)
is reprinted in his Cities and Sea-Coasts and Islands (London: W. Collins,
1918), 145–157. Beerbohm wrote several essays: “The Blight on Music Hall”
(1899), “Demos’s Mirror” (1900), “At the Music Hall” (1901), “The Older
and Better Music Hall” (1903), and “Idolum Aularum” (1906), all collected
in Around Theatres, 2 vols. (London: W. Heinemann, 1924).
11. Marie Lloyd was born in Hoxton, then a working-class area just north of
the City (or financial district) in the heart of London, far from Manchester
or Lancashire (see London Letter, March 1921, n. 26, 208–209). For Nellie
Wallace, see “The Romantic Englishman,” n. 10, 213. She had a Scottish,
not a Lancashire, accent.
12. For Little Tich, see London Letter, March 1921, n. 26, 208–209; for George
Robey, see “The Romantic Englishman,” n. 10, 213.
13. For Ethel Levey, see London Letter, March 1921, n. 26, 208–209.
14. For Lane, Hale, and Graves, see “The Romantic Englishman,” n. 10, 213–214.
15. The title of Baudelaire’s famous essay is “De l’essence du rire, et générale-
ment du comique dans les arts plastiques” (On the essence of laughter, and
more generally, on the comic element in the plastic arts). It was published in
two separate versions in periodicals in 1855 and 1857, then revised lightly for
its appearance within a book, Baudelaire’s Curiosités esthétiques (Paris: Michel Lévy frères, 1868). It is now contained in his Oeuvres complètes, ed. Claude Pichois, vol. 2 (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1976), 525–543, here 538.
The ellipsis is Eliot’s, and signals the omission of nine sentences from Bau-
delaire’s original text. The sentences cited by Eliot can be translated: “To
find something of ferocious and very-ferocious comedy, one has to cross the
Channel and visit the foggy realms of spleen. . . . The distinctive mark of this
kind of comedy is its violence.” In his sentence introducing the quotation
from Baudelaire, Eliot notes in French that Baudelaire’s essay “is much bet-
ter than that of Bergson,” referring to the French philosopher Henri Bergson
(1859–1951), whose book Le Rire, or Laughter, was published in 1900. Baudelaire, it should also be noted, wrote two essays on caricature, the subject
of Eliot’s next paragraph: “Quelques caricaturistes français” (Some French
caricaturists) and “Quelques caricaturistes étrangers” (Some foreign carica-
turists). The second one treats Hogarth and Cruikshank, who are also men-
tioned by Eliot. See Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, 544–574.
16. Henry Mayo Bateman (1887–1970) was born in New South Wales, but in
1889 his family returned to England. He studied at the Westminster School
of art and the Goldsmith’s Institute. His first cartoons appeared in the Royal
Magazine and the Tatler. He began contributing to Punch magazine in 1906.
He joined the army on the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, but fell
ill and was discharged a year later. His cartoons appeared in an ever greater
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n o t e s t o e l i o t ’ s p r o s e , p a g e s 16 9 – 17 0
variety of periodicals, and he published many books. His exhibition at the
Leicester Galleries took place 1–28 February 1921, timed to coincide with his
publication of a volume entitled A Book of Drawings, with a preface by G. K.
Chesterton (London: Methuen, 1921), which contains the works shown in
the exhibition.
17. Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827) is one of the most celebrated of all En-
glish illustrators. He entered the School of the Royal Academy in London
in 1772, visited Paris in 1774, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1775, and
won a silver medal in 1777. Under French influence, he developed a delicate
style combined with coarse subject matter. His work was very popular, but
Rowlandson was an inveterate gambler and repeatedly had money troubles.
George Cruikshank (1792–1878) was a British illustrator, by some
considered the best that Britain has produced. From 1805 to 1820 he was a
maker of s
atirical prints and caricatures, many of them bawdy. But his career
began to change as he became an illustrator for books, his best-known works
being his illustrations for Dickens’s early novels.
18. Wyndham Lewis’s exhibition “Portraits and Tyros” ran 9–30 April at the
Leicester Galleries. The tyros were a race of imaginary caricature creatures,
and Lewis included five oils of them in the show. William Hogarth (1697–
1764) is for many the best English painter and printmaker. His most famous
sets of prints are: A Harlot’s Progress, A Rake’s Progress, Marriage à la Mode,
Beer Street and Gin Lane, The Four Times of Day, and Four Prints of an Election.
19. The Athenaeum was an established weekly periodical which had begun pub-
lication in 1830. It was read largely by academics and consisted mainly of
book reviews. Under the ownership of the Labour politician Arthur Green-
wood, it had fallen on hard times, and in 1919 it was bought by Arthur
Rowntree, a member of the famous Rowntree candy-making family in York.
Rowntree hired John Middleton Murry (1889–1957) to be editor at the
princely salary of £800 per year; Murry o¤ered Eliot the job of assistant
editor at £500 per year, but he declined, and the position was given first to
J. W. N. Sullivan, then to Aldous Huxley. Contributors were generously paid,
but Murry was discerning in selecting them. Among those published in
the Athenaeum were Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Clive Bell, Leonard Woolf,
Bertrand Russell, Walter de la Mare, Julian Huxley, Kathryn Mansfield,
E. M. Forster, and Lytton Strachey. The journal opposed the Georgian poets
and looked down on J. C. Squire and his publication, the London Mercury.
Despite Murry’s genuine editorial achievement, the journal failed to attract
many new subscribers and in early 1921 was sold to the Nation, which was
rechristened the Nation and Athenaeum, under which title it continued until 1931. On the London Mercury, see London Letter, March 1921, n. 16, 206;
on the Times Literary Supplement, see “Andrew Marvell,” n. 1, 216.
20. Arthur Clutton-Brock (1868–1924) was a literary critic, reviewer, and author.
He advocated a wooly version of Christian socialism. He wrote more than
thirty books, with such titles as The Ultimate Belief (London: Constable,
n o t e s t o e l i o t ’ s p r o s e , p a g e s 17 0 – 17 1
2 3 3
1916), Essays on Art (London: Methuen, 1919), Essays on Books (London: Methuen, 1920), and Immortality: An Essay in Discovery, Co-ordinating
Scientific, Psychical, and Biblical Research (London: Macmillan, 1922).
21. Robert Wilson Lynd (1879–1949), the son of a Presbyterian minister, was
born in Belfast. He became a successful reviewer, critic, and author, and was
a lifelong supporter of Irish republicanism. From 1912 on he was literary
editor at the Daily News (see n. 4 to this essay). From 1918 he wrote a weekly feature for the New Statesman under the pseudonym “YY.” Eliot reviewed
his book Old and New Masters (London: F. Unwin, 1919) somewhat harshly
(see “Criticism in England,” Athenaeum 4650 [13 June 1919]: 456–457), and
Lynd, in turn, reviewed The Sacred Wood very harshly (see London Letter,
March 1921, n. 18, 216). Eliot informed his mother about the harsh review:
“Robert Lynd’s article in the Nation has no importance, except that three
columns of such violent abuse may be a good advertisement. He is an utter
nonentity; his own literary criticism is wholly worthless; I reviewed one
of his books in the Athenaeum two years ago, none too favourably, and I do
not imagine that he has forgotten the fact” ( LOTSE, 433). Eliot commented
adversely on Lynd again in his London Letter, July 1921; see 183. On J. C.
Squire and Edmund Gosse see London Letter, March 1921, nn. 16, 206 and
7, 204, respectively. Sir Sidney Colvin (1845–1927) was a prominent critic
of art and literature who wrote more than fifty books.
22. On the revival of criticism, see London Letter, March 1921, n. 25, 208.
23. On the activities which marked the tercentenary of Marvell’s birth, see
“Andrew Marvell,” n. 2, 216. The centenary of Keats’s death was marked by
the announcement of a public subscription to buy the house in Hampstead
where he had lived. (See “John Keats: Centenary of His Death,” Times,
22 February 1921, 13, col. 4.)
24. The City of London is the name for London’s financial district (see Fig. 9).
25. Christopher Wren (1632–1723) is often considered the greatest British archi-
tect. He is most famous, of course, for St. Paul’s in London. But in the after-
math of the Great Fire of 1666, Wren designed and built some fifty churches
in the city. Many of these were destroyed in subsequent years, and the ques-
tion of preserving those that remained was becoming urgent by the early
twentieth century. The church of All Hallows on the Wall is located at 83,
London Wall, a street that runs east-west and forms a northern boundary
to the City; see Fig. 9. (Until 1945 the street’s western terminus was at its
intersection with Moorgate, a north-south street, but after that it was ex-
tended westward.) All Hallows, built between 1765 and 1767, was designed
by George Dance the younger (1741–1825). It has a fine plaster ceiling with
blue and gold decorations, and parts of the medieval London wall, which
gave the street its name, can be seen in its churchyard. St. Michael Pater-
noster Royal (see Fig. 16) is located on College Street, near Southwark
Bridge (see Fig. 9). The church, first mentioned in 1219, was rebuilt in
1409 at the expense of Dick Whittington, a legendary London mayor. It
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n o t e s t o e l i o t ’ s p r o s e , p a g e s 17 1 – 17 2
burned down in the Great Fire of 1666 and was rebuilt by Christopher Wren
between 1689 and 1694, with a tower dating from 1713; it was the last of
Wren’s City churches.
26. Eliot quotes from Dante, Inferno XXXIII, 46, a passage which can be translated as “When I heard the door down below being nailed up.” It is spoken
by Ugolino di Guelfo di Gherardesca, as he recounts how he was locked up
in a tower, together with his two sons and two nephews, whom he cannibal-
ized before dying of starvation himself. The same passage is echoed in The
Waste Land, 413–414. Lombard Street houses the home oªce or headquar-
ters of Lloyds Bank, where Eliot worked from 1917 to 1925.
27. Eliot is referring to London County Council, Proposed Demolition of Nineteen City Churches (London: London County Council, 1920). The pamphlet
consisted of a report, dated 12 October 1920, that was co-written by G. Top-
ham Forrest, the architect to the London County Council, and James Bird,
the council’s clerk. The report urged the council to reject a proposal first
advanced by the Church of England on 14 April 1920 that nineteen churches
within the City be demolished, with only the towers of seven to be left stand-
ing. “The architect strongly urges that steps should be taken which will se-
cure the retention of most of the churches now threatened with destruction.
These constitute, in his opinion, some of the most interesting monuments
of the City of London, and their architectural beauty and historical asso
cia-
tions render them worthy of preservation.” Apart from its general recom-
mendation to preserve the nineteen churches, the thirty-two-page pamphlet
chronicled the history and the architectural merits of each church, accompa-
nied by twenty-four photographs of them (for three of these, see Figs. 6, 12,
and 16).
John Dryden
1. First published in the Times Literary Supplement, no. 1012 (9 June 1921): 361–362. On that journal see “Andrew Marvell,” n. 1, 216. It is unclear precisely when the essay was written. But we do know that Eliot finished writing
another essay, “The Metaphysical Poets,” on 16 September 1921, and that
it appeared in the TLS on 20 October, more than a month later. If a similar production schedule governed “John Dryden,” then it was written by early
May 1921.
2. John Dryden (1631–1700) was an English poet, dramatist, and essayist—the
leading writer of his age. He received a classical education at Westminster
School and Trinity College, Cambridge, then moved to London to commence
his career as a professional playwright. His attempts to create heroic tragedy
were admired during his lifetime but have fared poorly since, and only his
one comedy, Marriage à-la-Mode (1672), has lived on. Dryden had a gift for
satire, and “Mac Flecknoe,” his satire on the contemporary poet Thomas
Shadwell, is still highly regarded. Absalom and Achitophel, a marvelous poem, is so insistently topical that it attracts few readers today. Dryden’s prefaces
n o t e s t o e l i o t ’ s p r o s e , p a g e 17 3
2 3 5
are considered the beginning of modern English criticism, but they too are
very little read. The change in taste brought about by Romanticism sent
Dryden’s reputation into a steep decline, and though it was partially rescued
by Eliot and his admirers in the mid-twentieth century, it has never really
recovered.
3. John Oldham (1653–1683) was the author of Satires Upon the Jesuits but is remembered today because of Dryden’s elegy “To the Memory of Mr. Oldham.”
For John Denham, see “Prose and Verse,” n. 3, 222; for Edmund Waller, see
“Andrew Marvell,” n. 13, 218.
4. Edward Phillips (1630–1696) was the nephew and pupil of John Milton; he
wrote a Satyr Against Hypocrites (1680) but was chiefly engaged in such hack-work compilations as a Chronicle of the Kings of England (1674) and Theatrum poetarum, or A Compleat Collection of the Poets (1675). Charles Churchill (1731–