by T. S. Eliot
TSE’s enjoyment of detective novels, spoofs and riddling came together in a message to John Hayward [6 Jan 1936]: “THE SUPPLY OF GAME FOR LONDON IS GOING STEADILY UP. HEAD KEEPER HUDSON, WE BELIEVE, HAS BEEN NOW TOLD TO RECEIVE ALL ORDERS FOR FLY-PAPER, AND FOR PRESERVATION OF YOUR HEN PHEASANT’S LIFE.” On [20 Jan 1939] he sent Hayward a cutting:
[Poem II 23–24 · Textual History II 634–35]
HE KNOWS THE CAT SLAYER
From our own correspondent Ipswich, Monday. Such is the cunning of Holbrook’s cat‑slayer that it may take three months to bring him to justice and completely solve the riddle of the vanishing cats.
After a week‑end of investigations, William Coombs, called the “Inspector Hornleigh of the pet world” has returned to the London headquarters of Our Dumb Friends’ League, his brief case packed with documentary evidence including an anonymous letter.
Mr. Coombs is confident that he knows the identity of the cat‑killer.
“But bringing a successful prosecution is a different matter,” he told ex‑Serviceman John Lamb, leader of the Holbrook cat lovers. “However, we are determined to see the thing through, and if necessary we shall send an investigator down here for three months.”
“He was wonderful,” Mr. Lamb told me to‑day. “Talking to him was like consulting Sherlock Holmes, and things which I had regarded as immaterial he recognised immediately as important clues.”
The whole village is pinning its faith on the Inspector.
Title Macavity: Ronald A. MacAvity attended Milton Academy two years behind TSE (Stayer). The Mystery Cat: “The Mr. E. Cat”? (Bevis).
1 Hidden Paw: E. D. E. N. Southworth’s adventure novel The Hidden Hand (serial, 1859; book, 1888) was often dramatised. Conan Doyle: Spiritualists and the Hidden Hand, letter to the editor, Daily Express 4 May 1925.
2 who can defy the law: Conan Doyle: “some deep organizing power which forever stands in the way of the law”, The Final Problem.
3 Flying Squad: formed in 1919 and so-called (informally) for its brief to range across London in pursuit of professional criminals.
4–31 when (eight times in all): Kipling: “And when the Thing that Couldn’t has occurred”, The Song of the Banjo 19; see note to Portrait of a Lady I 15–19.
6 he breaks the law of gravity: Kipling: “Laws of gravitation scorning”, La Nuit Blanche 11.
6, 8 he breaks the law of gravity · · · Macavity’s not there: Henry James: “not finding him present when by all the laws and the logic of life he should be present · · · he is definitely not there”, notes for The Sense of the Past (pub. with the novel in 1917).
11–13 he’s very tall and thin · · · his eyes are sunken in. | His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed: Conan Doyle: “His appearance was quite familiar to me. He is extremely tall and thin, his forehead domes out in a white curve, and his two eyes are deeply sunken in this head · · · His shoulders are rounded from much study”, The Final Problem.
12 for: queried by Tandy, but unchanged (see headnote).
[Poem II 23 · Textual History II 634]
15 He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake: Conan Doyle: “his face protrudes forward, and is forever slowly oscillating from side to side in a curiously reptilian fashion · · · He rose also and looked at me in silence, shaking his head sadly”, The Final Problem. TSE: “The great snake · · · awakens in hunger and moving his head to right and to left prepares for his hour to devour”, Choruses from “The Rock” X 7–8.
23 The jewel-case is rifled: Geoffrey Tandy on the draft reading “the jewels have been rifled”: “A box, a safe or a bag can be rifled; but can jewels?”
23–29 rifled · · · stifled · · · a Treaty’s gone astray · · · a scrap of paper: Conan Doyle: “Is there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted, we will say, a house to be rifled, a man to be removed—the word is passed to the Professor”, The Final Problem.
26 Ay, there’s the wonder of the thing: Conan Doyle: “Aye, there’s the genius and the wonder of the thing!” The Final Problem. “Aye there’s the rub”, Hamlet III i, thence colloquial (Shawn Worthington, personal communication).
27–28 Foreign Office find a Treaty’s gone astray, | Or the Admiralty lose some plans: as in Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Naval Treaty and The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans. Holmes’s “interference in the matter of the ‘Naval Treaty’” is also alluded to in The Final Problem.
27–31] Geoffrey Tandy queried: “Do you like Foreign Office, Admiralty and Secret Service as plural nouns?” The lines remained unchanged.
29 a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair: Conan Doyle: “As I took it up a small square of paper upon which it had lain fluttered down on to the ground”, The Final Problem.
33–34 You’ll be sure to find him · · · doing complicated long division sums: Conan Doyle: “endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical faculty · · · no possible connection will ever be traced between the gentleman upon whose front teeth I have barked my knuckles and the retiring mathematical coach, who is, I dare say, working out problems upon a black-board ten miles away”, The Final Problem.
41–42 nothing more than agents: Conan Doyle: “He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organized”, The Final Problem.
42 the Napoleon of Crime: Conan Doyle: “He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson”, The Final Problem. TSE to Hayward, 2 Jan 1936: “Your true Napoleon of crime, John, never descends to such commonplace devices.” To Hayward, 17 Aug 1942: “the Napoleon of Cinematography, Mr. George Hoellering”.
Gus: The Theatre Cat
To Geoffrey Tandy, 10 Feb 1938: “I fear that if Gus is too antiquated for a young man like you, it will be completely unintelligible to a youngster like [Ian] Cox.”
2 as I ought to have told you before: “my sister, of whom I have told you before”, Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats 38.
[Poems II 23–25 · Textual History II 634–35]
16 Irving · · · Tree: actor-managers Sir Henry Irving (1838–1905) and his rival in Shakespeare, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852–1917). TSE was introduced on 28 Oct 1934 to Sir Henry’s grandson, the theatrical designer Laurence Irving, who was involved in commissioning Murder in the Cathedral and designed the set. At Christmas 1957, TSE gave a copy of Henry Irving by Laurence Irving (Faber, 1957) to the producer of all of his own plays, E. Martin Browne.
16 variant Benson: Sir Frank Benson (1858–1939) acted with Tree before becoming an actor-manager and reviving many neglected Shakespeare plays. TSE met him on 5 July 1934.
17–18 his success · · · gave him seven cat-calls: as though cries of “Encore”. OED “cat-call” 1: “A squeaking instrument, or kind of whistle, used esp. in playhouses to express impatience or disapprobation.” 2: “The sound made by this instrument or an imitation with the voice”, citing Johnson: “Should partial cat-calls all his hopes confound”, Prologue to Irene.
20 Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell: Milton’s Hell and the fallen angels: “the parching air | Burns frore, and cold performs th’effect of fire”, Paradise Lost II 595–96. the Fiend of the Fell: feline equivalent of Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles. Scott: “It was the Spirit of the Flood that spoke, | And he called on the Spirit of the Fell”, The Lay of the Last Minstrel I 103–104.
23 to gag: in the Victorian theatre, to interpolate spontaneous material when performing (see OED n. 1, 3).
25 I knew how to act with my back and my tail: the rhetorical stiffness of Victorian theatre was gradually supplanted by new schools of acting such as those of F. Matthias Alexander (Alexander technique) and Constantin Stanislavski (Method acting), emphasizing the body’s expressiveness.
27, 29 the hardest of hearts · · · Little Nell: Oscar Wilde (attrib.) on Dickens’s character in The Old Curiosity Shop: “One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without dissolving into tears of laughter.”
30 When the Curfew was rung, then I swung on the bell: Rose Hartwick Thorpe’s Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight (1867) tells how, with her sweetheart condemned to die when the curfew sounds, Bessie grasps the bell’s tongue:
Out she swung,—far out. The city seemed a speck of light below,—
There ’twixt heaven and earth suspended, as the bell swung to and fro.
And the sexton at the bell-rope, old and deaf, heard not the bell,
Sadly thought that twilight curfew rang young Basil’s funeral knell.
A favourite for recitations, the poem was also made into three silent films (Barbara Lauriat, personal communication).
32 Dick Whittington’s Cat: “I am the Cat who was Dick Whittington’s”, Cat’s Prologue 9 (“Other Verses”).
35 toothful: OED 1: “As much as would fill a tooth; a small mouthful, esp. of liquor”, from 1774.
36 East Lynne: melodramatic novel by Mrs. Henry Wood, 1861, soon adapted for the stage; filmed 1916.
[Poem II 25–26 · Textual History II 635–36]
37–38 At a Shakespeare performance he once walked on pat · · · the need for a cat: King Lear I ii: EDMUND: “And pat he comes like the catastrophe of the old comedy.” The Merchant of Venice IV i: “Why he, a harmless necessary cat”.
39–40 a Tiger · · · Which an Indian Colonel pursued down a drain: Conan Doyle: Colonel Sebastian Moran “was always a man of iron nerve, and the story is still told in India how he crawled down a drain after a wounded, man-eating tiger”, The Empty House (Priscilla Preston).
44 when a house was on fire: melodramas such as Boucicault’s The Poor of New York (1857) showed burning buildings on stage for the first time.
45–48 “Now these kittens, they do not get trained | As we did · · · jump through a hoop: Hamlet II ii, ROSENCRANTZ: “there is, sir, an eyrie of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question; and are most tyrannically clapped for’t; these are now the fashion”.
Bustopher Jones: The Cat about Town
In the copies of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats in which he wrote emendations A and emendations B, TSE noted the original (alternative) readings “One club that he’s fixed on’s the Wormwood and Brixton” and “Joint Correctional Schools” (13, 16). In the copy of 1939 that contains emendations C he also identified: Fox’s = Brooks’s; Blimp’s = White’s; Stage and Screen = Garrick; Pothunter’s = Orleans; Drones = Boodle’s; Siamese = Oriental; Tomb = Athenæum. Against Glutton he wrote “?” The other clubs were perhaps Senior Educational = Oxford and Cambridge; Joint Superior Schools = Public Schools; Glutton = Beefsteak. Facetious names were evidently in vogue, for on 25 Feb 1930 TSE invited Dobrée to lunch at “the Low Society Club”.
To Hayward, 22 Oct 1940, after bombing of the Oxford and Cambridge Club: “The O. & C. has now been patched up · · · but its atmosphere is unrestful because it has given refuge to three other clubs which are in a worse way, and the mixture of types is disturbing.” [2 Feb] 1942: “I think of trying to join the Garrick, because it does not appear to be crowded with supernumerary wartime feeders, because it still has a certain proportion of male staff, because it still is possible to entertain guests there in a cabinet particulier, useful also for ladies (not les girls) and because I am told by Ashley Dukes that H. G. Wells is not, as I had thought, a member · · · You would have liked the Authors’ Club · · · as much like a club as one floor of an office building can be: the food is poor, the members are musty. I still have not placed the Authors: it was a snowy day, and some of the most eminent, e.g. Sir Wm. Beach Thomas, did not turn up. There was a stout Colonial Office man named Sir. Wm. Dawe; there was a whimsical man with a little white beard who talked to me about his cat. The atmosphere is that of Brothers of the Pen: rather more refined brothers than frequent the pothouse called the Savage, and rather more antiquated brothers, dug out of suburban retirement, than the brethren of the Savile.” TSE resigned from the O & C, his earliest London club, in Dec 1957, after more than 25 years, because he no longer used it, but maintained his memberships of the Garrick and Athenæum and also listed “several dining clubs, the Burke Club (political), All Souls’ Club (religious)” and numerous overseas memberships, in Harvard College Class of 1910, Fiftieth Anniversary Report (1960). In 1930 he was also using the Royal Societies Club in St. James’s. He had been clubbable since his Harvard days, when he joined the Southern Club, the Digamma (Fox Club), the Signet Society and the Stylus Club.
[Poems II 26–28 · Textual History II 636]
Title Bustopher: Mustapha (Arab.) = “the Chosen One”. (Christopher = Christ-bearer.)
7 mousers · · · trousers: pronounced mouzers · · · trouzers in TSE’s recording.
7–10 well-cut trousers · · · Brummell: Beau Brummell (1778–1840), arbiter elegantiarum of Regency Mayfair, credited with establishing men’s fitted suits, including full-length trousers.
12 in white spats: for “the original Man in White Spats—only begetter of Bustopher Jones and Skimbleshanks”, see note to TSE’s Preface.
14–16 it is against the rules | For any one Cat to belong both to that | And the Joint Superior Schools: “Mr. Beaumont Pease has recently been elected to the captaincy of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrew’s. He is also captain of the Royal St. George’s Golf Club, and therefore will hold the two offices concurrently”, reporting the dinner of the British Bankers’ Association, A Commentary in Criterion July 1931. (Properly, “St Andrews” with no apostrophe.) it is against the rules · · · Cat · · · Schools: “Mary had a little lamb · · · it followed her to school one day, | That was against the rule; | It made the children laugh and play | To see a lamb at school”, nursery rhyme.
17 when game is in season: for a cat that asked “why wasn’t there more Game even when there was no Game in Season”, see letter to Tom Faber, 28 Dec 1931, in headnote to The Old Gumbie Cat. “He always knows what game is in season”, The Practical Cat 18.
21 venison · · · ben’son: pronounced ven’zon · · · ben’zon in TSE’s recording. This pronunciation of “venison” is the first of three in OED, which recommends the pronunciation benn-is’n. (TSE initially wrote “benison”.) TSE rhymes “benison · · · Tennyson” in An Exhortation 6, 8 (see note).
37 variant to put it in rhyme: “I shall last out my time”: Bustopher’s “time” rhymes only internally with “rhyme” itself, an effect made more visible by TSE’s bracketing of “(to put it in rhyme)” in his emendations (first printed in 1964 pbk). See Textual History.
39 Pall Mall: (pronounced pal mal), the smart avenue that is home to several London clubs. See note to Montpelier Row author’s Notes 13.
Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat
To Alison Tandy, 2 Mar 1938: “I am trying to do a Poem about a Railway Train Cat, and if I can do it I will send it to you in due course.” To Hayward on the same day: “I am plodding on with the Railway Cat, and have produced one good line, viz.: ‘All the guards and all the porters and the superintendent’s daughters—’.” To Enid Faber, 8 Mar 1938: “The Railway Cat (L.M.S.) is rather stuck.” (The West Coast line to Scotland run by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, 1923–48, was at this time in competition with the East Coast line of the London and North Eastern Railway. The six-and-a-half hour Coronation Scot service was introduced by the L.M.S. in 1937.) A “Supplementary Agenda” by TSE (dated by Hayward 14 Mar 1938 and beginning with “A Night at the Flicks”) includes “Railway Cats”. This may indicate that TSE was reading the poem to Hayward, or consulting him about it. Smart 12, on Hayward’s fascination with trains: “a party piece in later life was a vigorous full-voiced imitation of steam engines”. (For Hayward as “only begetter” of this poem, see note to Preface, “the Man in White Spats”.)
[Poems II 27–31 · Textual History II 636–37]
To Geoffrey Faber, 29 Oct 1937: “Having just arrived from Edinburgh by the Night Mail, your Agent has the honour to submit the following report · · · P.S. One does feel
a Swell leaving by sleeping car and walking up and down the station platform in a dinner jacket.” The term “Night Mail” could apply to any train carrying mail, including those with sleeping cars, as well as specifically to Travelling Post Offices, which were devoted entirely to mail and had onboard sorting offices. A Travelling Post Office is the subject of the 1936 documentary film Night Mail, which begins: “8.30pm, weekdays and Sundays, the down Postal Special leaves Euston for Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen”. For Auden’s poem Night Mail (1935), commissioned for the film, see The English Auden ed. Edward Mendelson (1977) 290–92. (OED “down” c: “Of a train or coach: Going ‘down’, i.e. away from the central or chief terminus; in Great Britain, from London.”)
1–3 There’s a whisper down the line · · · Saying “Skimble, where is Skimble”: Kipling: “There’s a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield · · · Singing: ‘Over then, come over’”, The Long Trail 1, 3 (in A Choice of Kipling’s Verse) (G. Schmidt, N&Q Dec 1970). 11.39: “Trains from Bristol, Cardiff, Manchester, Stoke, Liverpool and Birmingham bring a thousand bags of mails for the north between 10.57 and 11.39pm”, Night Mail (commentary).