by T. S. Eliot
But BUT BUT
BUT the Cat himself knows, and will never confess.
When you notice a Cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same;
His mind is engaged in intense contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his NAME.
Not his everyday name,
Not his personal name,
But just his ineffable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.
Now that’s what my friend, the Man in White Spats,
Has asked me to tell you, about names of Cats.
I don’t know myself, so I will not endorse it,
For what’s true in Yorks may be falsehood in Dorset.
[Poem II 5 · Textual History II 625]
He may be quite right and he may be quite wrong,
But for what it is worth, I will pass it along.
For passing the time it may be an expedient,
He remains, as do I, your obliged and obedient
Servant, now and in years to come.
Your afexnate
Uncle Tom
Title Naming: “the meaning of a name always goes beyond and binds together the contexts in which it has been used”, The Validity of Artificial Distinctions (1914).
1 The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter: “The choice of bowl is a serious matter”, How to Prepare a Salad (1936).
2 holiday games: Washington Irving: “in Greenwich Park I was witness to the old holiday games of running down hill; and kissing in the ring”, Buckthorne in Tales of a Traveller.
4 three different names: Roman names had three parts, the prænomen, from a limited traditional range; nomen, common to members of a clan; and cognomen, a nickname, physical description or occupation, often with an element of humour. To Frank Morley [7 Feb 1940], on the birth of his daughter: “You know that a daughter should have three different names: one of which must be the name of a Saint. Viz. Sophia Theresa Read. I have looked into the matter and find that if she was born yesterday the Saint is Titus: that does not seem helpful.” On niceties of naming, see note to the title The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
6 Augustus: this name is not in the version of the poem sent to Tom Faber (above); nor is it the full name of Gus the Theatre Cat (“His name, as I ought to have told you before, | Is really Asparagus”, 2–3).
11 Admetus, Electra, Demeter: respectively, one of the Argonauts; daughter of Agamemnon; earth-mother goddess. For TSE explaining Greek to a goddaughter, see headnote to Old Deuteronomy.
18 Quaxo, or Coricopat: perhaps related to Paxo (the spiced stuffing) and coriander. (“co co rico”, The Waste Land V 392.)
19 Bombalurina: perhaps bombastic + ballerina. TSE enjoyed compound words. Having mistyped “operations on winder front” in a letter to John Hayward, 12 Apr 1943, he added a note: “wider and windier”. Jellylorum: see letter to Tom Faber, 20 Jan 1931, quoted in headnote, 8. APROPOS OF PRACTICAL CATS by Valerie Eliot.
28 the thought, of the thought, of the thought: Joyce: “Thought is the thought of thought”, Ulysses episode II (Nestor). For Nietzsche’s “an appearance of appearance”, see note to Oh little voices of the throats of men 15, 21–22.
29 ineffable effable: Longfellow: “These effable and ineffable impressions of the mysterious world”, The Divine Tragedy (1871) II ii. ineffable: “Towards the unconscious, the ineffable, the absolute”, Afternoon 9. To John Hayward, 21 July 1942, on Robert Nichols: “He sent me a copy of his Selected Poems. What one thinks about them is not only ineffable but unthinkable: but I managed to write him a letter about them.”
29–31 ineffable · · · Name: the Hebrew divine name too sacred to be spoken, commonly represented as “Jehovah”; see OED. Joyce: “the Name Ineffable, in heaven hight, K. H.”, Ulysses episode IX (Scylla and Charybdis), with, in the same paragraph, “The life esoteric is not for ordinary person. O.P. must work off bad karma first.” K.H. = Kristos Hiesos (Christ Jesus). O.P. = ordinary person (as opposed to Old Possum).
[Poem II 5 · Textual History II 625]
The Old Gumbie Cat
To Tom Faber, 28 Dec 1931: “NOW I must tell you about my Cat. You Remember that we had a black & white Jellicle Cat that lived with us? Well, it got to staying out Nights and trying to be a Big Bravo Cat and it took to visiting Neighbours and then it began to complain of the Food and saying it didn’t like Dried Haddock & Kippers and why wasn’t there more Game even when there was no Game in Season, so finally it went to live somewhere else. So then I advertised for Another Cat to come and Board with us, and now we have a Beautiful Cat which is going to be a Good Old Gumbie Cat in Time.”
To Alison Tandy, 10 Nov 1936 (after Growltiger’s Last Stand): “The last Cat I wrote about, was such a Boastful Brutal Beastly Bloody Bad Pirate, that you may think that I am a kittenthrope, or Hater of Cats; but such is not the Case. On the contrary. So I hasten to tell you about another Kind of Cat, to my knowledge, that is wholly admirable. It is THE OLD GUMBIE CAT [poem] So now! nobody can say that I am UNAPPRECIATIVE of Cats.”
2 Her coat is of the tabby kind: Gray: “Demurest of the tabby kind”, Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat 4. TSE to William Force Stead, 3 Dec 1937: “I have read your essay on Two Poets and Two Cats with enjoyment. I am afraid however that in its present form it is either too light or too heavy for The Criterion. As a general essay comparing the life of Christopher Smart with that of Thomas Gray, it is informative but more suitable for such a review as English. What I like, and what is quite new, is the comparison of Smart’s admirable cat poem with that of Gray. You say that the poem of Smart is still unpublished and unknown: it would be very jolly for The Criterion to have an essay on this poem, including large chunks of the text (for I take it that the whole poem is much too long to publish in this way), and comparing it with Gray’s ‘Selima’. But with all deference, it seems to me that you praise Gray’s poem much too highly. It has always seemed to me a piece of very prim and frigid wit, and the fact that it was not his own cat, but Horace Walpole’s, is no excuse. It would be a bad poem, I think, if it were about a china cat, but about a real cat it is unforgivable. Smart has real feeling for cats, and Gray has none. Anyway, you may or may not feel inclined to make a different paper of it.” Stead had discovered the manuscript of Smart’s Jubilate Agno and published it in 1939 as Rejoice in the Lamb. TSE on Smart: “His poem about cats is to all other poems about cats what the Iliad is to all other poems on war”, Walt Whitman and Modern Poetry (1944). For many a cat, see Five-Finger Exercises. TSE several times quotes Kipling, “What Mirza Murad Ali Beg’s book is to all other books · · ·”; see note to the title V. Lines for Cuscuscaraway and Mirza Murad Ali Beg.
[Poem II 6–7 · Textual History II 625]
7 variant fambly: jokey spelling frequent in TSE’s letters to the Tandys. To Bonamy Dobrée, 31 Dec 1935: “Frank Flint · · · says I pronounce it fambly, but that is just a gesture of superiority.” Joyce: “Any brollies or gumboots in the fambly?” Ulysses episode XIV (The Oxen of the Sun).
8, 27, 38 the basement · · · the window-sill · · · households (8 has variant tucks up her skirts · · · the kitchen): “basement kitchens · · · housemaids · · · muddy skirts”, Morning at the Window 1, 3, 7.
10 behaviour’s not good · · · manners not nice: TSE associated the Unitarianism that he rejected with the nice: “those who are born and bred to be nice people will always prefer to behave nicely, and those who are not will behave otherwise in any case: and this is surely a form of predestination”, The “Pensées” of Pascal (1931).
12 tatting: lace knitting.
38 well-ordered households: Edward Irving: “this is the ordinance of God’s providence, that blessings many and precious should attend upon dutiful and well-ordered households”, The Last Days (1828) 528; the locution became common among Victorians.
Growltiger’s Last Stand
To Bonamy Dobrée, 21 Nov 1936,
offering poems for his daughter: “Would Georgina whom God preserve be interested in my two latest poems or not? I mean Growltiger’s Last Stand (picaresque) and The Old Gumbie Cat (domestic) or not?” (There is no evidence that Georgina was sent the poems.) The use of rhyming fourteeners for this naval verse resembles The Fall of Admiral Barry, in TSE’s letters to Pound 30 Aug and 22 Oct 1922 (see note to 21–22, and For below a voice did answer, sweet in its youthful tone in “Improper Rhymes”).
Title Growltiger’s Last Stand: Custer’s Last Stand, at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, June 1876, was the most prominent action of the Great Sioux War.
Unadopted epigraph “He was no better than a Pirate”:—Sir John Simon, replying to a Question in the House during the Debate on the Growltiger Incident: Eva March Tappan imagined Queen Elizabeth addressing Sir John Hawkins: “‘They tell me you are no better than a pirate,’ she said, bluntly”, In the Days of Queen Elizabeth (1902) ch. 12.
1 Bravo: OED: “a daring villain, a hired soldier or assassin; ‘a man who murders for hire’ (Johnson); a reckless desperado.” travelled on: to Richard de la Mare, 6 Feb 1945: “There is a line I want to change in the Practical Cats, if there is ever another printing of that. The first line of Growltiger ought to be ‘travelled on a barge’ instead of ‘lived upon a barge’” (Faber archive). Emended in 4th imp. of the illustrated ed. (1946).
3–4 Oxford · · · aims · · · Thames: Arnold’s “story of the Oxford scholar”: “the sparkling Thames · · · divided aims”, The Scholar-Gipsy 202, 204.
[Poems II 6–8 · Textual History II 625–26]
4 “The Terror of the Thames”: Henry VI Pt. I I iv, of Talbot: “Here, said they, is the Terror of the French”. The locution became formulaic, as in Quantrell: The Terror of the West by “Alouette” (1866).
5 did not calculate to please (variant: he was hardly made to please): “Whose constant care is not to please | But to”, East Coker IV 8–9.
6 torn and seedy (variant: rough and shaggy) · · · baggy at the knees: “Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees”, Sweeney Among the Nightingales 1.
15 Woe to the bristly bandicoot: J. G. Wood’s The Illustrated Natural History (1859) described the fur of the Long-Nosed Bandicoot as “very harsh to the touch.” Carroll: “shun | The frumious bandersnatch!” Jabberwocky 7–8 (in Through the Looking-Glass ch. I). See notes to 52 and 53–56.
21–22 Now on a peaceful summer night, all nature seemed at play, | The tender moon was shining bright, the barge at Molesey lay: moonlight on the eve of battle, a commonplace since Homer Iliad VIII. all nature seemed at play: formulaic, as in Mary Rankin: “Autumn was in her glory drest— | All nature seemed at play”, The Prismatic Rainbow in D. R. Good, The Daughter of Affliction (1858).
22 the barge at Molesey lay: Tennyson: “At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay”, The Revenge: A Ballad of the Fleet 1. TSE to Pound, 22 Oct 1922: “‘In old Manila harbour, the Yankee wardogs lay, | ‘The stars stripes streamed overhead, the band began to play’ (From The Fall of Admiral Barry).”
22, 26–28 Molesey · · · the Bell · · · the Lion: TSE knew the area of Hampton-on-Thames, where the Tandys lived. The Bell is in East Molesey, with a Lion close by in Teddington. To Polly Tandy, 31 Dec 1935: “best wishes for the New Year to the Licensee of the Bell”. To Hayward, 15 Apr [1936]: “You may communicate with me at this address, by addressing your letters to ‘White Cargo’ c/o the Licensee the Bell, Hampton‑on‑Thames.” TSE’s facetious “Pickwick Paper (Advanced)”, sent to the Fabers and Hodgsons in Feb 1939, includes a section about traditional pubs.
22, 24, 41–42 tender · · · his sentimental side · · · fierce Mongolian · · · Chinks: “the illusion of the hard boiled. Even Mr. Ernest Hemingway—that writer of tender sentiment, and true sentiment · · · has been taken as the representative of hard boiling · · · only another defence mechanism adopted by the world’s babies; if the Chinese bandits ever discover that they are hard boiled I shall have to infer that the oldest civilization in the world has reverted to · · · puerility”, A Commentary in Criterion Apr 1933.
25 bucko: OED: “Naut. Slang. a. A blustering, swaggering, or domineering fellow; sometimes used as a term of address. Also attrib. or as adj. = blustering, swaggering, bullying; esp. in phr. bucko mate”, from 1883: “no sailor will deny that a ‘bucko mate’ is not sometimes useful”.
27 bosun: pronounced bozun in TSE’s recording.
29 sate: as if rhyming with fate in TSE’s recording. See A Cooking Egg 1.
32 sampans: OED: “A Chinese word meaning ‘boat’, applied by Europeans in the China seas to any small boat of Chinese pattern.” junks: OED n.3: “the common type of native sailing vessel in the Chinese seas”.
[Poem II 8–9 · Textual History II 626–27]
37 And closer still and closer: Macaulay: “And louder still and louder | Rose from the darkened field | The braying of the war-horns, | The clang of sword and shield”, The Battle of Lake Regillus XIV, Lays of Ancient Rome. In TSE’s third-year class at school, Macaulay’s Lays were prescribed reading (Smith Academy yearbook, 1901–02), and a copy appears in TSE’s books: Bodleian list (1934). A. C. Benson: “Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set”, Land of Hope and Glory.
40 toasting forks and cruel carving knives: Carroll: “They pursued it with forks and hope; | They threatened its life”, The Hunting of the Snark Fit the Fifth.
41 GILBERT: OED: “Obs. rare. A proper name used as the apellation of a male cat (cf. Tom). Usually shortened to Gib.” The name was changed in productions of Cats after the first to “Genghis”. For “Jenghiz Khan”, see note to The wind sprang up at four o’clock 12, “Tartar”.
41–42 fierce Mongolian horde · · · swarmed: “Who are those hooded hordes swarming | Over endless plains”, The Waste Land [V] 368–69 (see note).
42 Chinks: OED “Chink”: “A Chinaman (derogatory)”, from 1901.
43 pullaways: sole citation of this sense in OED (“pull-”). “In the midst of the sea, like a tough man of war, | Pull away, pull away, yo ho there!” The Land in the Ocean in Dibdin’s Songs, Naval and National (1841).
47 I’m sure she was not drowned: The Ballad of the House Carpenter (American ballad, based on a Scottish original): “They had not been at sea three weeks, | And I’m sure it was not four, | When the vessel it did spring a leak, | And it sank to rise no more!” (quoted for instance in Bayard Taylor, The Story of Kennet, 1866, 417).
48–50 flashing steel · · · vast surprise: Pope: “his shining sword · · · view the slain with vast Surprise”, The First Book of Statius His Thebais 725–27, the locutions becoming formulaic in battle poetry.
49–50 rank on rank · · · walk the plank: Meredith: “he looked, and sank. | Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank, | The army of unalterable law”, Lucifer in Starlight. For TSE’s use of Meredith’s last line, see note to Cousin Nancy 13.
52 to go ker-flip, ker-flop: Carroll: “The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! | He left it dead”, Jabberwocky 18–19. ker-flip, ker-flop: OED “ker-”: “U.S. vulgar · · · The first element in numerous onomatopœic or echoic formations intended to imitate the sound or the effect of the fall of some heavy body”, citing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) “ker-blam!”; J. Runciman Skippers & Shellbacks (1885) “They hoists him over and lets him go ker-whop”; H. G. Wells (1935) “And plump back ker-splosh! into the sea!”; with TSE the only citation for “ker-flip, ker-flop”.
53–56 joy · · · Victoria Dock · · · day · · · Bangkok: Carroll: “‘And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? | Come to my arms, my beamish boy! | O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’ | He chortled in his joy”, Jabberwocky 21–24.
The Rum Tum Tugger
Title Rum Tum: OED: “[A fanciful formation.]” 1: “dial. A jovial diversion or prank.” 3: “Used in imitation of a regular rhythmic sound”, quoting Joyce, “Of all the glad new year, mother, the rum tum tiddledy tum”, Ulysses episode III (Proteus). (A rum-tum i
s a boat, and so is a tug.) Tugger: OED: “One who tugs or pulls with force; spec. one who pulls in a tug-of-war.” A. A. Milne’s Tigger figures in Winnie-the-Pooh (1926).
[Poems II 9–10 · Textual History II 627–28]
1 a Curious Cat: curiosity killed the cat, proverbial. (“Man’s curiosity”, The Dry Salvages V 16; see note.)
9–10 For he will do | As he do do: Dickens, Our Mutual Friend bk. I ch. X (Valerie Eliot, WLFacs 125):
“And other countries,” said the foreign gentleman. “They do how?”
“They do, Sir,” returned Mr. Podsnap, gravely shaking his head; “they do—I am sorry to be obliged to say it—as they do.”
11 And there’s no doing anything about it: TSE to Frank Morley, “Friday” [after Feb 1938]: “a longstanding engagement · · · fixed by Mabel · · · and theres no doing anything about it”.
16 He likes to lie in the bureau drawer: “bureau drawer”, Goldfish IV 6, at the line-end.
24–26 habit · · · he won’t eat rabbit: see note to The Ad-dressing of Cats 60–61.
25 If you offer him fish then he always wants a feast: for a cat that “began to complain of the Food and saying it didn’t like Dried Haddock & Kippers”, see letter to Tom Faber, 28 Dec 1931, in headnote to The Old Gumbie Cat. fish · · · feast: to I. A. Richards, 1 Mar 1934: “Friday March 10th will do for me as well as any other night. The only difficulty being the limitation of a fish diet.” To Richard Jennings, 21 Nov 1939: “Friday is fish or eggs.”
The Song of the Jellicles
1 Jellicle: recalling Edward Lear’s nonsense word “runcible” from The Owl and the Pussy-Cat (see 28). To Polly Tandy, 21 May 1935:
As for those Cats with short names they may wag their tails at Mr. Kipling. But I bet half a Crown he will outlive the pair of them and
Jellicle cats & dogs all must