by T. S. Eliot
4. BROADCASTS
Nearly two years before publication in book form, five of the Practical Cats were broadcast by the BBC at Christmas (“Regional: Saturday, 25th December, 1937: 2.30–2.45 p.m”). Radio Times 17 Dec: “Practical Cats. For some time past Mr. Eliot has been amusing and instructing the offspring of some of his friends in verse on the subject of cats. These poems are not of the kind that have been usually associated with his name, and they have not yet been published. With his permission, some of them have been arranged into a programme, and they will be read by Geoffrey Tandy.” (TSE to Hamilton Marr of the BBC, 6 Dec: “I wish this fee of 10 guineas to be added to the payment to Mr. Geoffrey Tandy for reading the poems, and not to be sent to me.”) TSE may have been reluctant to read these poems himself, although he had often broadcast on the BBC (see Michael Coyle’s T. S. Eliot’s Radio Broadcasts, 1929–63: A Chronological Checklist in T. S. Eliot and Our Turning World, ed. Jewel Spears Brooker, 2001). Asked to select from Vaughan, Herbert and Crashaw for broadcasting, TSE wrote to George Barnes, 14 Aug 1936: “The difficulty of suiting the poems to the time is the greatest, because another reader might read one or another poem, or all the poems, more quickly or more slowly than I should read them myself. I know from experience that a considerable variation in the matter of time is possible. The B.B.C. people ought to know by now what my voice is like, and I have been given to understand that they do not like it. In any case I am not going to undergo another voice test.”
[Poems II 1–35 · Textual History II 621–41]
The broadcast was a great success. Tandy to TSE, 23 Jan 1938: “I hope you’ve been properly informed of the repeat performance of Practical Cats on Saturday next.” TSE to Ezra Pound, 28 Jan: “you bein a radio fan must keep your ear open for Ole Possum’s Popular Lectures on Cats in the Childrens Hour.” To Henry Eliot, 17 Feb: “There is to be a broadcast of some more Cats, London Regional on April 7th at 9.30 p.m. Greenwich time, for anybody who has a radio set that will take it” (this too was a repeat).
On 25 June 1938 a 20-minute programme of Cats Mostly Practical was broadcast by Tandy (for Bret Harte, The Heathen Chinee and Other Poems Mostly Humorous, see note to Of the Awefull Battle of the Pekes and the Pollicles 25–26). Radio Times 17 June: “On Christmas Day and at the end of April and May were broadcast selections from a series of poems on cats which T. S. Eliot has written for the amusement and instruction of his friends’ children. These poems proved such excellent broadcasting material and were so well received that another selection is to be broadcast of poems of a kind not usually associated with the name of their author. They have not yet been published.” A third broadcast of Pollicles and Jellicles: Tales of Cats and Dogs in Verse followed on 7 Oct 1939. (To Ian Cox, 18 Feb: “your new programme might have the original title of Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats, as you have put both of them in. How does that strike you?”) Radio Times 29 Sept 1939: “Before Christmas Day 1937, when the first selection was broadcast, nobody would have associated a set of cheery, yet at the same time profound, verses on the subjects of dogs and cats with the name of T. S. Eliot. Nevertheless the author of The Waste Land has written such verses, originally for the amusement of his friends’ children. The great war between the Pollicle Dogs and the Jellicle Cats is a hilarious epic, and makes ideal broadcasting from the lips of Geoffrey Tandy, whom T. S. Eliot selected to read these poems in the past.”
Although they are secretarial copies, Tandy’s scripts represent the form of the poems as first made public (see Textual History). The earliest batch has before the poems a page of scribbled notes (possibly in TSE’s hand):
1. Now to begin with it’s very important to understand about The Naming of Cats.
2. Most cats are practical, which is why we have chosen this title; but you might [omission] to know first what it means for a cat to be practical.
3. Some cats are more practical than others, and they are practical in different ways. Now I’m going to tell you about three kinds of cat.
The first is the Bravo Cat; and I’ll tell you the history of one Bravo Cat, who[se] name was Growltiger [poems].
[Poems II 1–35 · Textual History II 621–41]
5. PUBLICATION
With a covering letter signed “Faithfully yours, O. Possum” (King’s), TSE submitted his typescript to Faber & Faber on 18 Apr 1938.
OLD POSSUM’S BOOK OF
PRACTICAL CATS
with pixtures supplied by
The Man in White Spats
consists of the first 11 poems in the book, along with “early drafts of two poems, & unpublished material, including Old Possum’s Letter to the Publishers and his parodies of readers’ reports ascribed to members of the firm of Faber & Faber Ltd.” (King’s). In Book Committee meetings, Anne Ridler reported, “Though he might appear not to listen he was well aware of the foibles of his colleagues both senior and junior, and when he proffered his Practical Cats to the Committee, produced with it a series of mock reports on the script, parodying the style of each member. Mine, I recall, was scathing in tone and peppered with parentheses” (Working for T. S. Eliot 9). The submission letter is addressed as though from the Swinburne and Watts-Dunton household:
The Pines,
Putney, S.W.15.
18th April, 1938.
Messrs. Faber & Faber,
Publishers,
24 Russell Square, W.C.1.
Dear Sirs,
I enclose herewith stamps for the return of the enclosed poems. The publishers to whom I have previously offered them all tell me that the only firm which publishes poetry is Faber & Faber. Is this true? If so, I shall take your rejection as final.
I must explain that these poems are meant to be illustrated; and that, if you should look upon them with a not unfavourable eye, my friend the Man in White Spats is prepared to sumbit specimen illustrations. If you should consider the poems worthy of publication, or alternatively if you should wish to publish them, and should approve of the speciment illustrations, then I suggest a royalty of 10% and an advance on royalty of £25 to be paid not to me but to my friend the Man in White Spats.
I enclose some opinions on the enclosed poems.
Faithfully yours,
O. Possum
(The letter has “Ack.” (Acknowledged) added at the head, and “not enclosed P. S.” pencilled against “stamps”. “P. S.” was probably a secretary. “P. E. S.” below?)
Report on PRACTICAL CATS.
I have had this manuscript for six weeks and haven’t had a minute in which to look at them, so I bring them back.
R. de la M.
(Richard de la Mare was one of the founding directors of Faber. TSE has underlined “them” with “query ‘it’? A. B.”, as though by the meticulous Anne Bradby, later Ridler.)
[Poems II 1–35 · Textual History II 621–41]
Report on PRACTICAL CATS.
These poems are apparently the product of some member of the would-be Chelsea intelligentsia of the Blue Cockatoo variety. Personally, I find them pretentious, and cannot recommend publication. They might sell. I think they should be read through carefully with a view to the possibility of libel, that is, if you think seriously of publishing them. In view of the attitude of Colonel James Moriarty on a previous occasion, and the likelihood of legal proceedings, I think that one of these poems should be omitted. That is, if you decide to publish them. Personally, I think that the author should be seen and encouraged to offer us his next book, on the understanding that we might publish this book subsequently if his next book proved a success. I think a second opinion is needed. Would Mr. Morley look at this ms.?
A. P.
(Alan Pringle was best known as Lawrence Durrell’s editor. The Blue Cockatoo Restaurant, Cheyne Walk, was popular with artists. For Conan Doyle’s Moriarty and legal proceedings, see headnote to Macavity: The Mystery Cat.)
Report on PRACTICAL CATS.
Mrs. Crawley was delighted with the first two or three that she read, but after a
time she found that she couldn’t get on with them. So I started at the other end and very much enjoyed the two or three that I read, but when I had worked back to about the middle I found my attention wandering. Since then I have spoken to Minchell and rung up Sampson Low and been on the telephone to Blackie’s, and everybody agrees that the market for Cats is pretty dead. If we could get the author to do a book on Herrings, I believe I could interest the trade in Hull, Grimsby and Lossiemouth.
[Unsigned]
(For W. J. Crawley, the sales manager who ran the children’s list, see headnote to For W. J. Crawley in “Other Verses”. Sampson Low had published The English Catalogue of Books since 1835, and also published children’s books such as the Rupert Bear series. Blackie’s also published many children’s books.)
Report on PRACTICAL CATS.
This book purports to be a systematic account of the varieties of Cat. It begins by an explanation (which seems to me out of place) of how to name a Cat. Thence it proceeds to give descriptions, in a facetious vein, or so I believe the author believes it to be (for the humour is rather forced, and at times, it seems to me, misplaced) of several kinds of Cat. One might complain at this point that the description of Cats is by no means exhaustive: nevertheless the author at the end appears to be under the impression that he has described every kind of Cat. As for the poems themselves (I should explain at this point that they are written in verse) they exhibit every kind of catachresis and clevelandism; they abound in marinisms and gongorisms; they exhibit every wire-drawn perversity that human ingenuity can distort into the most tortured diabolism.
A. B.
(OED “catachresis”: “Improper use of words; application of a term to a thing which it does not properly denote; abuse or perversion of a trope or metaphor”. “Clevelandism” is not in OED, but in her historical novel They Were Defeated (1932), Rose Macaulay wrote: “you don’t manage the conceited, metaphysical style well · · · when you try and Clevelandise, not only Cleveland but young Cowley leave you a mile behind”. For TSE to Bradby on his intention to “do something in the style of Cleveland or Benlowes, only better”, see headnote to East Coker, 4. AFTER PUBLICATION. OED “Marinism”: “The affected style of writing characteristic of the Italian poet Giovanni Battista Marini (d. 1625)”. “Gongorism”: “An affected type of diction and style introduced into Spanish literature in the 16th century by the poet Gongora y Argote”.)
[Poems II 1–35 · Textual History II 621–41]
Report on PRACTICAL CATS.
Here’s a book that F. & F. ought to publish, Frank: I think I could get Heinemann’s to do it, but it’s much more F. & F. stuff. O. P. is the real surrealist poet we have been waiting for; he’s going to knock Gascoyne and Barker stiff; and what’s more, he needs the money. If F. & F. don’t see the point, I despair of modern society. There are enough complexes in this book to keep all of Freud’s disciples busy for a generation. Ludo and Thomas send you their love. Yrs.
H. R.
(Herbert Read to the Faber director Frank V. Morley. As an editor as well as a writer, Read had influence with publishers including Heinemann. TSE to Morley, [6 Jan] 1943: “Herbert and I control the poetry market between us.” Ludo was Read’s second wife, Margaret Ludwig, and Thomas was their first child. In 1936, Read had been involved in the International Surrealist Exhibition and edited the Faber volume Surrealism. His experiment The Green Child was read in 1935 for Faber by TSE, who wrote that he was attempting a “Sykes Davies surrealists or whimsical vein which doesnt suit him”. David Gascoyne and Hugh Sykes Davies were surrealist poets. Gascoyne’s translation of André Breton’s What is Surrealism? was published by Faber (1936). George Barker joined the firm’s poetry list with Poems (1935), which was followed by Calamiterror (1937) and many other volumes. For TSE’s parody of a surrealist poem, see A Proclamation, written in 1937.)
A further report is set differently on the page from those preceding and may not be by TSE (see below):
Report on PRACTICAL CATS.
I take it that the author is as much of an authority on Cats as he claims to be. If that is so, the Committee has to consider whether what I see in the poems is really there or not; and if it is there, whether anyone else will want to read them. That I think is antecedently improbable. What the poems convey to me is the sense of a particular Cat in a particular place at a particular time; and here I must warn the Committee against approaching these Cats from the standpoint of Thomas Gray, Old Mother Tabbyskins, or the callow polyps of the Faber Book of Animal Verse. Nor is it to use my report as an excuse for avoiding a second opinion.
(This is stamped “21 Apr 1938”, with “Came with no covering letter -- ? Miss Stoneman, G.M.R.” and “? T.S.E., P.E.S.” at head and, in TSE’s hand, “? perhaps F.V.M.” at foot. Gray’s Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes was published in 1748. Mother Tabbyskins, a moral tale, in Child-World by Menella Bute Smedley and Elizabeth Anna Hart (1869). There was no Faber Book of Animal Verse. Miss Stoneman was a Faber secretary.)
[Poems II 1–35 · Textual History II 621–41]
6. WITH AND WITHOUT ILLUSTRATIONS
Obtaining illustrations for Practical Cats caused delays. The day after John Hayward sent a letter containing a light-hearted drawing, TSE wrote to him, 29 Jan 1937: “Ere. I didn’t know you was such a accomplished Illustrater. Maybe you are the appointed Illustrater for my Popular Lectures on Cats. Wd. you care to submit a few speccimim illustrations? In combitition with Mr. F. V. Morley, who thinks he can do it.” Along with the two pencil and ink drawings by TSE which appeared on the jacket of 1939, King’s has thirteen cartoonish drawings by Hayward (selections shown in Granta May 1978 and Quarto June 1981). However, TSE and Faber tried to commission illustrations from Ralph Hodgson, who let them down (see John Harding, Dreaming of Babylon: The Life and Times of Ralph Hodgson, 2008, 154–58). TSE discussed the matter during Hodgson’s visit to Britain in 1938, and a letter from TSE of 13 Sept 1938 is illustrated with a large cat drawing. In 1932 the Hodgsons named a puppy “Pickwick”, and in Feb 1939 TSE sent the Fabers and the Hodgsons a mock exam paper entitled “Pickwick Paper (Advanced)”, on which the final question was: “(To be attempted only by Mr. Ralph Hodgson) Having in mind the four cats in the wheelbarrow, what are you doing about the Depicting of Cats?” TSE to Mrs Muller, 9 Feb 1939: “The canon of Practical Cats has now been fixed and there are only a few slight textual emendations to be made. What is awaited is an illustrator. My friend Mr. Ralph Hodgson, the poet, is supposed to be engaged in preparing designs to submit; but as he is 4000 miles away, and I have no control over him, there is no knowing whether anything will come of it.” On 8 Apr 1939, TSE sent a telegram to Hodgson in Madison, Wisconsin: “EASTER GREETINGS FROM POSSUM STOP URGENT NEED INTERIM REPORT CATS YOUR FINANCIAL INTEREST AND MINE”. On 5 May, Hodgson wrote to Geoffrey Faber: “I haven’t made a start on Possum’s Cats for many reasons: The chief being that we haven’t found a suitable house to settle down in yet · · · I believe I have a good enough eye for cats to justify my undertaking this work—but not in my inner consciousness: therefore I must have cats about me to study and proper conscience for their wellbeing · · · I trust all this isn’t as tedious to read as it is unpleasant to write, for I regard it as a high honour to be asked to illustrate the Possum’s Immortal Cats, but after all the fun of doing it—or attempting it—is the thing, and that is possible only with my feet up on the mantel piece, as the saying is.” Faber replied on 2 June: “Clearly you won’t be able to collect the necessary models in time to illustrate the first edition, which we have now decided to do without illustrations this autumn. May we announce it as ‘With illustrations missing by Ralph Hodgson’? Perhaps an illustrated edition might follow later.”
The first edition, published 5 Oct 1939, had no illustrations except drawings by TSE on the jacket. The front panel shows a bearded Old Possum, in bowler hat and stiff collar, leaning over a wall against which stands a ladder, up which a procession of
cats is scrambling. (On the jacket of the copy TSE presented to Enid and Geoffrey Faber, he wrote at the foot of the ladder: “O.P. pinxit”. See headnote to INVITATION TO ALL POLLICLE DOGS & JELLICLE CATS. For a bearded TSE in 1937, see note to Ash-Wednesday I unadopted title.) The rear panel shows Old Possum roller-skating with the Man in White Spats (who wears morning dress and a top hat). “Unillustrated” reprints continued as a cheaper alternative to those with pictures.
1939 jacket material:
It is more than three years since we announced a book of children’s verses by Mr. Eliot under the title of Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats.
We have sometimes been accused, by members of the public who have complained that this book was not obtainable through their booksellers, of having invented it out of our own heads. This accusation is baseless. Many of the poems have been in private circulation for some years; and their privileged recipients (of ages varying between six and twelve) have exerted the strongest possible pressure upon the author in favour of more general publication.
[Poems II 1–35 · Textual History II 621–41]
In resisting this pressure Mr. Eliot is believed to have been fortified by a growing desire for the company of cats, and a growing perception that it would be impolite to wrap them up with dogs. The cat poems, however, are now numerous enough to make a book by themselves.
TSE to Geoffrey Faber, 27 July 1939: “I am sorry that you took my comments on the cat blurb quite so seriously. No objection to the blurb as a whole: but you will perhaps understand the author’s apprehensions. It is harder to judge of a blurb about one’s own book than it is even about one’s own blurbs: going through my own depressed me, but I couldn’t think of any improvements. I was so anxious that the Cats should flourish, if at all, on their own merits, and not as a TSE curio, that I would have asked that it be published anonymously had I thought that fair to the publishers; it is intended for a NEW public, but I am afraid cannot dispense with the old one.”