by T. S. Eliot
I am the Cat who was Dick Whittington’s,
10
And now we’ll show you how our story runs.
Extra lines for The Rock, written in [Apr?] 1934 for Patricia Shaw Page, who played the part of the cat at Sadler’s Wells, and spoke to introduce the “Ballet: The legend of DICK WHITTINGTON and his CAT” (The Rock 81). This appears to precede the posting of the earliest of the Practical Cats poems, The Naming of Cats. (“I once understudied Dick Whittington’s Cat”, Gus: The Theatre Cat 32.)
Sadler’s Wells programme note: “Dick, miserable as a scullion, is loved by his master’s daughter. He ventures his Cat on a ship going to the Barbary coast; the Cat rids the Court of vermin and the king buys it for much gold. Meanwhile, Dick has run away; but Bow Bells bring him back to find fortune and his bride.”
8 Who built St. Michael Paternoster Royal: as four-times Lord Mayor of London, Richard Whittington gave money in 1409 to rebuild and extend this City church, later rebuilt under the aegis of Christopher Wren. See note to WLComposite 421.
TEXTUAL HISTORY
ts1 (Valerie Eliot collection): on Faber stationery, folded in eight, almost certainly typed by TSE (with characteristic run-together, “St.Michael”). With a letter to the actress’s mother: “Let me assure you about Patricia’s delivery of the verses. I thought she recited them very nicely indeed; and I did try to write verses that would not sound inappropriate when delivered by a child of eleven. I believe that the whole ballet is extremely popular with the audience; and I am sure that it deserves its popularity”, 7 June 1934. A carbon, also on Faber stationery, is at Houghton (no variants).
Valerie’s Own Book: headed “Lines spoken by the Cat in the little scene in The Rock”, but without 7–8 (which are shown by lines of dots). A note beneath explains: “Imperfect. Sent me 18/9/61 by Patricia Shaw-Page, who had been the Cat. She hoped I could fill the gap.”
4 time;] time. Valerie’s Own Book 5 pantomime] Pantomime Valerie’s Own Book 6 puss] Puss Valerie’s Own Book 2nd reading 10 we’ll show] I’ll tell Valerie’s Own Book
Back head be full of aches
How very kind of you. The New Yorkers to nourish my mind and the Turtle Soup my body. I had never tasted it before.
Back head be full of aches
Chest be full of croup,
But Belly see thou have store enough
Of jolly good turtle soup.
To Hayward (who had sent him Lusty’s tinned turtle soup), 24 Oct 1934 (King’s).
(As an alternative to “Chest” or “Chest be”, TSE wrote “or Weasand?” [= gullet].)
Mr. Possum wishes that his name was Tristram Shandy
Mr. Possum wishes that his name was Tristram Shandy,
Or Mahatma Gandhi
Or even Yankee Doodle Dandy
So that he could reply in poetry to the kind invitation of
5
Miss Alison Tandy:
But as it is, this is only verse
Going from worse to worse.
In the first place, January 5th is a Sunday,
NOT a Saturday or a Monday,
10
And Saturday is the Four
Of January, neither less nor more.
FURTHERMORE:
Mr. Possum has inadvisedly said
That alive or sleeping or dead
15
And whether well or poorly
He would go to visit Mr. & Mrs. Morley
As well as Donald Oliver and Susanna Morley
(Though he may regret it sorely)
And their zoo and aviary,
20
Carrying his breviary,
And whether sad or merry,
On the Fourth of January,
And with a spell of the Dry G(r)in
To see the New Year WELL in.
25
O Dear will Miss Tandy give another party a little later
And Mr. Possum would love to come all rolled up in gravy and sweet pertater.
P.S. I ADMIRE your Handsome Drawing.
To the five-year-old Alison Tandy [Dec 1935] (BL). (Undated, but 5 Jan 1936 was a Sunday, and the Faber stationery is of the right era.)
2 Gandhi] TSE typed “Ghandi”.
19 their zoo and aviary: at Pike’s Farm, the Morley family kept farmyard animals and hens. In a comic list of characters expected at a Criterion meeting, TSE listed “F. V. Morley, An honest downright farmer” (to Bonamy Dobrée, 20 Apr 1932). See headnote to Mr. Pugstyles: The Elegant Pig for TSE’s advice to Morley on obtaining a good pig (3 May 1933).
20–21 breviary · · · merry: John Crowe Ransom rhymes “merry · · · breviary”, Armageddon 1, 4.
26 Mr. Possum would love to come all rolled up in gravy and sweet pertater: “A Practical Possum once lived in a Pye, | Surrounded by Gravy and Sweet Pertaters”, A Practical Possum 1–2.
Many thanks for your letter and card which details
Dear Tom,
Many thanks for your letter and card which details
With precision the pleasures of winter in Wales.
Your snow-man is truly a stout looking yeoman
Of noble proportions and ample abdomen
5
Or abdomen, if you pronounce it like that;
I also admire both his pipe and his hat.
And I venture to hope you are still feeling perky,
After such a huge pudding and such a small turkey.
The subjoined design, although rude and ungainly,
10
Will exhibit our Christmas festivities plainly—
I mean me and my friend, the Man in White Spats,
Both buried in Cheese till you can’t see our hats.
And afterwards, see us take our constitutional
Along Piccadilly, and also Constitution Hill.
15
And now as there’s danger that I may be froze
From the ends of my fingers to tips of my toes,
I am thinking, dear Thomas, it’s time that I close.
So sending my love (or whatever is proper)
To your brother & sister & mommer & popper,
20
Without stopping to think about colons and commas
I will end,
most devotedly yours,
UNCLE THOMAS
For the eight-year-old Tom Faber, dated 25 Dec 1935.
1 details: Fowler: Pronounce the noun dee’tale, the verb dita’le. OED now gives the stress on either the second or the first syllable for both noun and verb.
4–5 abdomen: Fowler: “Pronounce ab-doughmen.” OED, which gives abb-d’men before ab-doughmen: “L. abdōmen, of unknown etymology; it has been suggested from abd-ĕre to stow away, conceal, cover; and from adeps, adip-em, fat, as if for adipomen. Occurs first in transl. from French. 1. orig. Fat deposited round the belly; the fleshy parts of the belly or paunch. Obs.”
12 buried in Cheese: a week earlier, on 18 Dec, TSE had written to J. D. Aylward: “There cannot be too many kinds of cheese, and variety is as important with cheeses as with anything else. I partook yesterday of the best bit of Wensleydale that I have tasted this year · · · I hope that you will come to lunch or dinner and partake of a little cheese with me. You mention one cheese which is unknown to me, but a part of the reason for living is the discovery of new cheeses. I have visited Poitiers and its environs but I have never before heard of Chabichou. But there are other excellent French cheeses which you do not mention, Pont l’Evêque for instance, which in prime condition is better than an imperfect Brie. And also Bondon, which has its attractions. You mention the Welsh cheeses, which as you say are not too easy to get, but have you also tasted a good Fressingfield? Double Cottenham I have never tasted. Perhaps it is the rarest of all. There are also the exotic cheeses such as Liptauer and Yet Ost, the delicate Bayerische Beerkase, which as I remember is a delicious shell-pink. I do not like a month to pass without one good feast of Limburger, which requires the accompaniment of quantities of dark Münchener. And
beyond them all rises in gloomy and solitary grandeur the majestic Gammel Ost, the Mount Everest of cheeses, in its brilliant colours of bright orange and emerald green, made of reindeer milk and then stored for years under the beds of the Norwegian farm folk. I have only made one ascent of this cheese, which ended in disaster, but I hope to try again with a better equipped expedition.”
13 constitutional: OED B. “a walk taken for health’s sake, or for the benefit of the constitution. (App. this originated at the English Universities.) colloq.”
15 froze: OED “freeze”: for forms of frozen, “froze (now vulgar)”,
16 the ends of my fingers to tips of my toes: “With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, | She shall have music wherever she goes”, nursery rhyme. TSE: “And the tips of his ears and his tail and his toes”, A Practical Possum 61. “From the tips of his ears to the ends of his pedals”, Mr. Pugstyles: The Elegant Pig 11.
20 colons: OED colon1: “Anat. The greater portion of the large intestine .. Formerly, popularly, the belly or guts; to feed or satisfy colon: to appease hunger.”
Now my Idea of Bliss
Now my Idea of Bliss
Were this—
Upon the Whole—
Eternal Chats
5
About Cats
With Major Sidney Woodiwiss
And Mrs. Cattermole.
On an enclosure to the Tandys (BL), alongside a cutting from The Times, 28 Jan 1937, exhaustively detailing the Class Winners at the Southern Counties Cat Show. Major E. Sydney Woodiwiss won three prizes and Mrs Cattermole two. TSE underlined the final word of the report, “Siamese”, adding “3 CHEERS”. TSE had sent a draft of The Naming of Cats to Tom Faber on 7 Jan, but such names in the Times report as Ballochmyle Hot Pot, Gippeswych Uncle Podger and Standish Sinia Ladybou are likely to have caught his eye.
To Polly Tandy, 30 Dec 1937: “Have you seen that remarkable Piece in the Standard about Mr. Woodiwiss the bull-dog breeder? Well it seems Mr. Woodiwiss went to some dog show some years ago and he noticed a ‘smell of cats’; so he went upstairs and there was a cat show in progress, and his attention was caught by a short-haired tabby named Champion Xenophon. ‘Within a few minutes he was mine’. And that’s how Mr. Woodiwiss began to breed cats. You do get yr. 1d. [penny’s] worth out of the Evening Standard, and no mistake, every time.”
————
Untraced. TSE to Frank Morley and his wife, 19 Feb 1936: “I hope Christina received the poem I sent her, care of Harcourt, Brace, about the goats. I did not keep a copy of it, and I was rather proud of the effort, except the last line, which I think could be improved.”
This Lion which I have pourtrayed
Dear Tom,
This Lion which I have pourtrayed Will hardly make you much afraid And he is much more mild because Of what I put between his jaws And he, I hasten to remark Is called the Lion of St Mark: A Saint of whom you have heard tell Who wrote a book that sold quite well And had considerable fame Before the firm of Faber came But not to leave you in the dark The reason why I name St. Mark And in my feeble fashion try on A portrait of his favourite lion (Were I an artist which I ain’t) Is that this literary Saint Is so to speak a kind of neighbour Of Thomas of the house of Faber Because the day that bears his name Is most auspiciously the same As that on which for Thomas’ sake We all are willing to partake Of something called a birthday-cake. With wishes for your health and cheer And wealth throughout the coming year And closing with a joyful psalm I sign myself your
Uncle Tom
Sent to Tom Faber for his tenth birthday, 25 Apr 1937 (Valerie Eliot collection).
pourtrayed: OED lists the spelling as 16th–19th century. Edward Lear: “the quaintest monsters ever pourtrayed”, Journals of a Landscape Painter in Albania (1851) 315. what I put between his jaws: a ten shilling note, in the drawing.
Whan Cam Ye Fra the Kirk?
or
THE LASS WHA WRAPT ME IN HER PLAIDIE
or
THE BONNIE BONNIE BRAES OF GLENGOOFIE
A Porpoise Sang
by
Tam o’ Elliot
The Skewbald o’ Galloway.
Where Castleawray’s froonin’ peaks
Reflect upo’ Lochaisie,
’Tis there that every grannoch speaks
Remembrance o’ ma Maisie.
5
There’s na a brae fra Inverloch
Tae Caverkeld an’ Drumpit,
Fra Cabertoch tae Clandagoch
That we twa hae na thumpit.
The mavis an’ the laverock
10
Sang blithely in the marnin’;
The dew was airly on the brock
Ere we twa turned tae scornin’.
The skevertary tauld the truth
That was past a’ subornin’:
15
For he sang: “Wale a wale tae youth
Sae airly in the marnin’.”
It was the bannocks and the boons
That toorned ma stomach soorly,
The baps an’ the potato scoons
20
That made me skimple doorly.
Ah mony a guid Talisker
An’ mony a Tobermory
I’ll need before ma pibroch skirr
Tae sing auld Scotland’s glory.
25
An’ though I be a lauchin’stock
Frae Strathstrachern tae Paisley,
Yet bide ye weel, ma honest Jock,
Ma honest sonsie bawsent Jock —
I’ll be wi’ ye by eicht o’clock
30
O’ Sunday evenin’ aislie.
Dated by Hayward, 9 Apr 1937.
Lawrance Thompson describes a dinner at the St Botolph Club, Boston, on 15 Nov 1932, at which Robert Frost heard TSE say “that no good poetry had ever been written north of the Scottish border except, perhaps, for one poem, William Dunbar’s Lament for the Makers with its Latin refrain ‘Timor Mortis conturbat me’.” Frost asked if an exception might be made for Robert Burns. “No, Eliot thought not.” Was he at least a good song-writer? “‘One might grant that modest claim’, Eliot acknowledged”, Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph (1971) 402. In 1926, in his seventh Clark Lecture, TSE had referred to the “maudlin provincialism of Burns” (The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry 202). At Harvard in 1933: “Perhaps I have a partiality for small oppressive nationalities like the Scots that makes Arnold’s patronising manner irritate me; and certainly I suspect Arnold of helping to fix the wholly mistaken notion of Burns as a singular untutored English dialect poet, instead of as a decadent representative of a great alien tradition”, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism 106. In 1937, TSE visited Burns’s grave.
Although Was There a Scottish Literature? (1919) implies that any such Scottish literary tradition had been broken, TSE wrote to Bruce Richmond, Editor of the TLS, 14 Aug 1931: “I wonder if you could make any use of a Scot named C. M. Grieve, who under the name of Hugh MacDiarmid has written a good deal of Scottish verse published by Blackwood? His verse · · · seems to me to have a good deal of vigour although I have not the patience myself to take much trouble over dialect poetry.” (For “little Jock Elliot” and the Scottish branch of the family, see headnote to The Marching Song of the Pollicle Dogs.)
To John Hayward, 12 June 1943: “I don’t want to tackle Chaucer or the Scotch poets in a lecture because I have forgotten how to pronounce the former language and have never acquired the other speech.” In 1941: “As an example of religious verse on a relatively primitive level · · · I would offer the Christian prayers and incantation found in that remarkable repository, the Carmina Gadelica or anthology of Gaelic (Scottish) poetry”, Moot Paper 58. “I myself have got a good deal of stimulation from Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica, a collection of Highland folk poetry”, Ezra Pound (1946). Chiari 9 recalls discussing Scottish clans with TSE in Edinburgh in 1949: “he told me that he thought the Eliots came originally from Scotland, and he had a very extensiv
e knowledge of Scottish history and literature, including its songs and ballads, such as Bonnie Dundee, Sir Patrick Spens and The Twa Corbies.”
TSE to Frank Morley, Whit Monday 1944, referring to Morley’s wife Christina: “I wish that she could have been present the other day in this corner of Surrey which is Little Scotland, to take part in a discussion as to the precise question whether old Mrs. Stewart of Auchielockie was a Grant of Rossiemucous or a Grant of Monybuigs and to enjoy the season.”
Although some of the poem’s place names are genuine, such as Tobermory (22) and Paisley (26), most are invented or adapted, such as Castleawray (1, Castlecary?), Inverloch (5, Inverlochy?), Drumpit (6, Drumnadrochit?), Strathstrachern (26, Strachur + Strathearn?), while Cabertoch (7) apparently metamorphoses the Highland Games sport of tossing the caber (Robert Crawford, personal communication, as throughout).
First title Kirk: church.
Second title Plaidie: Scottish pleated garment. Burns: “My plaidie to the angry airt, | I’d shelter thee”, Oh Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast.
Third title The Bonnie Bonnie Braes: “By yon bonnie banks an’ by yon bonnie braes”, The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond, anon 19th-century song (chorus: “On the bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomon”). Glengoofie: to Enid Faber, 6 Apr 1937: “the universal goofiness of the Highlands”. To Geoffrey Faber, 20 Apr 1937: “that goofy country”. For “too goofy in thy goofiness”, see Ode to a Roman Coot 6 (Noctes Binanianæ).
Subtitle A Porpoise Sang: TSE had recently chosen the poems for The Image o’ God and Other Poems (1937) by the Scottish miner and poet Joe Corrie, published by the Porpoise Press in Edinburgh (1922–39) in which Faber had a commercial interest. During 1936–37, TSE exchanged several letters with John Dover Wilson and others, on behalf of the Porpoise Press, in an attempt to commission scholarly editions of The Kingis Quhair, attributed to James I of Scotland, and of Gavin Douglas’s Aenead. “I have heard the mermaids singing”, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 124.