The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I

by Thomas Stearns Eliot, Christopher Ricks

  [Poem I 63–64, 336–37 · Textual History II 394]

  [III] 235 the time is now propitious: Remy de Gourmont, of the water spider: “Ensuite, au moment propice, il crève · · · profite de la surprise causée par son entrée brusque” [at a propitious moment he breaks through · · · and profits by the surprise of his sudden entry], Physique de l’amour: essai sur l’instinct sexuel ch. XIII “Le méchanisme de l’amour”. This translation by Pound, as The Natural Philosophy of Love, was published by Boni & Liveright in 1922.

  [III] 235–39 he guesses · · · she is bored and tired · · · he assaults at once: “The Chocolate Soldier assaults | The tired Sphinx of the physical. | What answer? We cannot discern”, Goldfish I 10–11.

  [III] 238, 242 unreproved if undesired · · · And makes a welcome of indifference: “Indifferent if derided”, Fourth Caprice in Montparnasse 12.

  [III] 240 Exploring hands: Donne: “Licence my roaving hands, and let them go, | Before, behind, between, above, below. | O my America! my new-found-land”, Elegy XIX: To His Mistress Going to Bed 25–27. (See Sleeping Together 9–13: “below · · · beneath · · · between · · · my hand”.)

  [III] 241 His vanity requires no response: “But Tarr’s vanity was impatient”, Tarr ch. I in Egoist June 1917 (followed by an advertisement for Prufrock and Other Observations).

  [III] 243 I Tiresias have foresuffered all: Swinburne: “And fiery foresight with foresuffering bought”, Tiresias XXXIII (Schmidt).

  [III] 244 Enacted: to Hayward, [22 Sept] 1942, of “re-enactment” (Little Gidding II 85): “I want to preserve the association of ‘enact’—to take the part of oneself on a stage for oneself as the audience” (see headnote to Little Gidding, 2. COMPOSITION).

  [III] 245 I who have sat by Thebes below the wall: Dryden, Oedipus: A Tragedy I i, TIRESIAS: “Where are we?” | MANTO: “Under covert of a wall; | The most frequented once, and noisy part | Of Thebes”; quoted by Mark Van Doren, John Dryden (1920) 133 (see note to [II] 98–104).

  [III] 246 walked among the lowest of the dead: having rescued his men from Circe (see note to Circe’s Palace), Odysseus visits Hades to consult Tiresias (Odyssey XI).

  [III] 250 Hardly aware: to Herbert Read, 18 Jan 1927, of Henry James: “he seems not wholly conscious. There is something bigger there, of which he is hardly aware, than ‘civilisation’ its ‘complexities’. In some ways he seems to me, as a conscious person, a child.”

  [III] 251 Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass: Poe: “a vague and half-formed conception of the meaning of Dupin flitted over my mind”, The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

  411 may pass: deleting “may”, Pound commented “make up yr. mind you Tiresias if you know know damm well or else you dont.” See note to WLComposite 326–28 for Pound’s “dam per’apsez”.

  [III] 252, 255 “Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.” · · · She smoothes her hair: “When the bridegroom smoothed his hair | There was blood upon the bed · · · (Io Hymen, Hymenæe)”, Ode (“Tired. | Subterrene”) 9–10, 13. “She smooths the hair of the grass”, Rhapsody on a Windy Night 54 variant (with “The bed is open”, 76). Fowler: “smooth is recommended in preference to smoothe, but the latter still exists”.

  [Poem I 64, 337 · Textual History II 394–95]

  [III] 253 When lovely woman stoops to folly and: TSE’s Notes refer to Goldsmith: “When lovely woman stoops to folly, | And finds too late that men betray, | What charm can sooth her melancholy, | What art can wash her guilt away?” The Vicar of Wakefield ch. XXIV. The novel was set for TSE’s second-year class at school (Smith Academy yearbook, 1900–01).

  [III] 253–56 lovely woman stoops · · · gramophone: Howells: “Wherever the pianoforte penetrates, lovely woman lifts her fingers from the needle, the broom-handle, and the washboard”, Lexington (in Longman’s 1882).

  [III] 254 Paces about her room again, alone: “She stands at evening in the room alone”, On a Portrait 4.

  [III] 254–55 Paces about her room · · · smoothes her hair: “I see her moving | With loosened hair about her chamber”, Paysage Triste 10–11.

  [III] 255 with automatic hand: (i) William James: “automatic hand-movements, twitching, etc., had occurred, but having no familiarity with automatic phenomena, Mr. P. thought they were mere ‘nervousness,’ and discouraged them”, A Case of Automatic Drawing in Popular Science Monthly Jan 1904. Bradley: “What are called (by a metaphor, and no more than a metaphor) ‘automatic’ acts may be produced by compulsion · · · may the deed still be ‘automatic’, in the sense of not proceeding from the conscious will?” Ethical Studies Essay I. And (ii) OED “automatic” 2a: “Applied esp. to machinery and its movements, which produce results otherwise done by hand”. Popular Science Monthly May 1920: “An automatic hand of metal reaches down into the ground and clutches the beets”. Symons 111 (on Laforgue): “He thinks intensely about life, seeing what is automatic, pathetically ludicrous in it, almost as one might who has no part in the comedy.” TSE: “the hand · · · automatic”, Rhapsody on a Windy Night 38. the gramophone: “when every musical instrument has been replaced by 100 gramophones”, Marie Lloyd (1923), on “dying from pure boredom” (“She is bored and tired” [III] 236). The original printing of the poem in the Dial has “gramaphones”, the spelling also in The Superior Landlord (see headnote to Sweeney Agonistes, 6. THE SUPERIOR LANDLORD) and in TSE to Allen Tate, 1 July 1946. OED “gramophone”: “app. formed by inversion of phonogram. The spelling grammo- (not the inventor’s) is an attempt to make the word look more like a correct formation”, with 1888: “His [Edison’s] original phonograph has received important modifications .. in .. Mr. Berliner’s gramophone.” Fowler: “A bad formation; but incurable, & established.”

  416 ^ 417 gramophone. | | “This music · · · upon the waters”] in the surviving typescript, TSE left a nine-line lacuna (perhaps with music in mind), but the gap was reduced in the printed poem to a single line space.

  [III] 257 “This music crept by me upon the waters”: TSE’s Notes refer to The Tempest I ii: “This music crept by me upon the waters, | Allaying both their fury and my passion | With its sweet air.”

  [Poem I 64, 337–38 · Textual History II 395]

  [III] 258 the Strand · · · Queen Victoria Street: Hayward: “London, past and present, is invoked. The Strand, now a street of shops and offices linking the City to the West End, was formerly, as its name suggests, a thoroughfare skirting the foreshore of the Thames. Along its length were situated the great houses of Elizabeth’s noblemen. The Earl of Leicester lived at Durham House in 1566 and Queen Elizabeth dined with him there (cf. line 279 et seq.). Leicester afterwards occupied Essex House and rebuilt it. Queen Victoria Street, a thoroughfare opened up during the 19th century (1863–72), connects the City with the Victoria Embankment at Blackfriars Bridge. Its office buildings (including that of The Times newspaper) are mainly occupied by firms of engineers, wholesalers, and by similar leading mercantile and commercial companies.”

  420–21 traced against the night | Of Michael Paternoster Royal: WLFacs notes: “This Wren church by Upper Thames Street was one of those listed in the Proposed Demolition of Nineteen London Churches (see TSE’s Note to [III] 264). He visited them all while working in the City.” As a young tourist in London, TSE had been asked about the sights and named St. Helen’s, St. Stephen, St. Bartholomew the Great, St. Sepulchre and St. Etheldreda (to Eleanor Hinkley, 26 Apr [1911]). St. Michael Paternoster Royal might appear in silhouette against the Tower of London from Queen Victoria Street or nearby.

  [III] 259 O City city: neither the capitalisation nor the punctuation within the phrase is that of Baudelaire (see note to [I] 60). The City of London, with its upper-case “C”, is the financial centre of the city that is London. TSE corrected “city” to “City” in the phrase “I am extremely busy at my vocation in the City” on the carbon of a letter to Johan Mortensen, 28 Jan 1924. Matthew 23: 37: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and
stonest them which are sent unto thee.” TSE to his Swedish translator Erik Mesterton, 20 Jan 1932: “I do not seem to remember any antecedent for ‘City, City’ in the Old Testament but of Our Lord’s prophecy over Jerusalem. There is of course the reference given to Baudelaire.”

  [III] 259–63 O City city · · · whining of a mandoline · · · fishmen: “the City · · · the City · · · the bankers blowing into their keys. And already in the streets a man sang alone · · · the dock-works and princes paid in currency of fish”, Anabasis IV i, v, x.

  [III] 260 public bar: OED quotes L. Golding: “The Public Bar, nothing like so grand as the Saloon Bar, nothing like so cosy as the Private Bar”, Magnolia St. (1932). Lower Thames Street: Hayward: “Billingsgate Market, the central fishmarket of London, lies between the street and the river Thames, close to London Bridge. The mandoline would be played by one of the ‘buskers’ who entertain inside or outside London’s public-houses.” Baedeker 124: “LOWER THAMES street runs eastward from London Bridge to the Custom House and the Tower. Chaucer, the ‘father of English poetry’, is said to have lived here in 1379–85. Close to the bridge, on the right, stands the handsome church of St. Magnus the Martyr (open 12–2), with cupola and a low spire, built by Wren in 1676” (TSE: “coupole”, [III] 202). TSE marked the last sentence in his Baedeker.

  [Poem I 64, 338 · Textual History II 395–96]

  [III] 261 pleasant whining of a mandoline: “the windings of the violins”, Portrait of a Lady I 29. “the pleasant violin | At Marm Brown’s joint”, WLComposite 523–24. “Gramophone (husky plaintive whine)”, ms story for Vivien Eliot (beginning “Fanny lying in bed late”), c. 1924–25 (U. Maryland). To Sydney Schiff [4? Nov 1921] from Margate: “I sketch the people, after a fashion, and practise scales on the mandoline.” The instrument had been bought by Vivien. The first two decades of the century saw a craze for the mandoline, and “The Mandolin Club” is often photographed in the Smith Academy yearbook during TSE’s time there. mandoline: pronounced mandoleen in TSE’s recordings (despite OED’s mandolin). TSE rhymes it with “seen” in Ode to a Roman Coot (Noctes Binanianæ).

  [III] 261–77 mandoline · · · The river sweats · · · Weialala leia: Kipling: “the new-raised tropic city sweats · · · Hya! Heeya! Heeya! Hullah! Haul!” in The Song of the Banjo 38–45, after invoking “the London Lights”. For Kipling’s poem, see note to Portrait of a Lady I 15–19.

  [III] 262 a clatter and a chatter from within: Tennyson: “Clamour and rumble, and ringing and clatter · · · And then to hear a dead man chatter”, Maud II [v] 251–57 (see note to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 74 ^ 75 [1–2]). Emily Brontë: “I distinguished a chatter of tongues, and a clatter of culinary utensils, deep within”, Wuthering Heights ch. 1 (Harmon 1976a).

  [III] 262–63 a clatter and a chatter · · · Where fishmen lounge at noon: Henry James on Venetian fishermen: “At Burano and Chioggia they sit mending their nets, or lounge at the street corners, where conversation is always high-pitched, or clamour”, Venice in Italian Hours. TSE: “From New Brunswick to Florida to-day lounge the coasters · · · the mackerell fleet slants out to the banks”, Gentlemen and Seamen (1909). On Kipling: “I have heard from the lips of Gloucester longshoremen that Captains Courageous is quite incorrect, the product of three weeks lounging about the wharves”, The Defects of Kipling (1909). By contrast TSE approved James B. Connolly’s accounts: “They are true narratives: most of them can—or could a few years ago—be learnt by word of mouth from the men between trips, as they lounged at the corner of Main Street and Duncan Street in Gloucester”, Fishermen of the Banks (1928). Baedeker 124: “Billingsgate · · · the chief fish-market of London, the bad language used at which has become proverbial.” Mark Rogers: “Fish is almost the only commodity sold in the Lane [Love Lane], and the savour of it cannot be kept even out of the church itself”, Down Thames Street (1921) 127. Wren’s windows on the north side were reduced to small lights in 1782 to exclude the noise from the cobbled street and the fishmen’s chatter. The market opened at 5 a.m., so the fishmen’s work was finished by midday, perhaps explaining “A fishman asleep on his panniers” (1801), cit. OED “fish” 7. fishmen: OED “fishman” (b): “a fish hawker”. The erroneous “fishermen” has repeatedly crept into TSE’s text. It appeared in Penguin 2nd and 3rd impressions (1951, 1952) and again in the 1954 Faber edition derived from Penguin (spotted by J. M. Blackwood, whose letter of 8 Sept 1954 is annotated by TSE “Noted passed to printer”. In John Hayward’s copy of the 1954 ed., TSE marked the mistake as “a bad coquille” ( = misprint / oyster shell, Fr.); later impressions were corrected. The error reappeared in 1974 (later corrected). at noon: “empty naves, to receive the solitary visitor at noon from the dust and tumult of Lombard Street”, London Letter in Dial June 1921. See next note.

  [Poem I 64, 338 · Textual History II 396]

  [III] 264 Magnus Martyr: TSE’s Notes: “one of the finest among Wren’s interiors”. Hayward: “Saint Magnus the Martyr. One of the finest of the City churches, built by Sir Christopher Wren (1676) to replace the earlier church, destroyed in the Great Fire of London (1666). Its interior is notable for the beauty of the slender Ionic columns which divide the nave from the side aisles.” St. Magnus stands on the north bank of the Thames, where old London Bridge met Lower Thames Street. Churches have stood beside the bridge since before the Norman Conquest, but the exact location has changed with that of the bridge (as TSE perhaps suggested in his pencil draft: “walls | Of Magnus Martyr stood, stand, hold”). The present church was built under Wren’s direction. A fire in 1633 destroyed more than forty houses on the bridge but did not reach the church. A bequest of 1640 provided for an annual “Fire Sermon”, originally to give thanks for the sparing of the church, and although this tradition is not thought to have continued into the 20th century, a painted board still records the bequest (transcript: David Boddy, N&Q Dec 2008).

  Charlotte Eliot on her visit to London in 1921 with TSE’s brother: “Henry, reading Oliver Twist, came across the account of the meeting of Nancy with Mr. Brownlow and Rose Maylie on London Bridge [ch. XLVI], and determined to identify the spot · · · Close to the foot of the steps leading down to the water from the Bridge, is the Church of St. Magnus. It is small but exquisite, having some beautiful Grinling Gibbons carving on the altar piece and doors. There is a memorial tablet to Miles Coverdale, translator of the Bible and at one time Rector of the church. While we were in the church the Rector entered and made his devotions · · · He told us that Saint Magnus was one of the 19 churches selected for demolition, but he thought it would be spared, as it was used on week days by men employed on the waterfront”, Reminiscences of a Trip to London (1924). Under the heading “The True Church and the Nineteen Churches”, TSE had discussed the threat in his London Letter June 1921:

  While the poetry lovers have been subscribing to purchase for the nation the Keats house in Hampstead as a museum, the Church of England has apparently persisted in its design to sell for demolition nineteen religious edifices in the City of London. Probably few American visitors, and certainly few natives, ever inspect these disconsolate fanes; but they give to the business quarter of London a beauty which its hideous banks and commercial houses have not quite defaced. Some are by Christopher Wren himself, others by his school; the least precious redeems some vulgar street, like the plain little church of All Hallows at the end of London Wall. Some, like St Michael Paternoster Royal, are of great beauty. As the prosperity of London has increased, the City Churches have fallen into desuetude; for their destruction the lack of congregation is the ecclesiastical excuse, and the need of money the ecclesiastical reason. The fact that the erection of these churches was apparently paid for out of a public coal tax and their decoration probably by the parishioners, does not seem to invalidate the right of the True Church to bring them to the ground. To one who, like the present writer, passes his days in this City of London (quand’io sentii chiavar l’uscio di sotto) the loss of these towers, t
o meet the eye down a grimy lane, and of these empty naves, to receive the solitary visitor at noon from the dust and tumult of Lombard Street, will be irreparable and unforgotten.

  [Poem I 64, 338 · Textual History II 396]

  (For the quotation from Dante, see note to [V] 411–14.)

  The London County Council report considered St. Magnus “one of the most beautiful of all Wren’s works” and concluded: “This is certainly one of the churches which should not be demolished without specially good reasons and after a very full consideration.” TSE to Richard Aldington [3? Oct 1921]: “I should love to write a book on Wren, or at least on the églises assassinées of London.” (Proust’s En mémoire des églises assassinées appeared in Pastiches et Mélanges, 1919.) For Wren and the river, see note to [III] 275–76.

  During 1922, the tower of St. Magnus was briefly more visible from London Bridge, between the demolition of one building that had obscured it and the erection of another (etching, The Times 3 Apr). TSE deplored “renewed rumours of the design to destroy the City Churches” in A Commentary in Criterion Oct 1926: “Since the first attempt was made, several years ago, the church of St. Magnus Martyr has been concealed, on the side from which its beauty was most conspicuous, by a large industrial structure (not ill-favoured in itself) which reduces the church to the proportions and importance of a museum piece.”