by T. S. Eliot
· · · I have some more Surprises for You about the Crew: including the Boatswain (Bill so-called of Barcelona) and especially the Chaplain (the Reverend Philip Skinner, known familiarly as “Prick” Skinner), he who converted the Bolovians to Hard-Shell Baptism; the Cook (Mrs. Cora Bumpus) and the Cabin-Boy (Orlando (fam. Orlo) K. Putnam).
Murravian: John Middleton Murry’s Towards a Synthesis in the Criterion of June 1927 distinguished intelligence from intuition (“the faculty of apprehending a whole as a whole, and not as the sum of its parts”), and was much discussed in subsequent issues.
The Wedding Guest · · · Wuxoon: Coleridge: “The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast, | For he heard the loud bassoon”, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner I 31–32.
————
To Dobrée, [Sept 1927?]:
Dear Bungamy:
The Stanxo suppressed on Friday (out of respect to Mr. Felsinger as a Loyal Son of the Stars & Stripes, and the General Pudicity of Sectarians such as Harold) is as follows:
It is called
AMERICA DISCOVER’D
NOW when they’d been 4 months at Sea
Columbo Slapped his Breaches.
Let someone go Aloft, Said He;
I’m Sure that I Smell Bitches!
Just then the LOOKOUT man exclaim’d:
He’s spoken like an Oracle!
I see a Big Black KING & QUEEN
Approaching in a Coracle!
Of Columbo’s sense of Smell, there will be more evidence Later. But you will agree that it was Tactful of me not to Recite this Stanzo in the presence of Mr. Felsinger.
Before acknowledging this Stanzo, await my EPISTLE DEDICATORY to Maister Bomany Dobrée, Tutor in Culture to the Egyptians, Ethiopians and Nubians, and Envoy Extraordinary to the Court of Prester John; and my EPISTLE EXPIATORY to Maister Herbert Read.
————
To Dobrée, [Sept? 1927], Letters 3 666–67:
Dear Bungamy: Re C. C.’s Sense of Smell we have the Following:
One Day Columbo & His Men
They Took & Went Ashore.
Columbo Sniffed the Banyan Trees
And Mutter’d: I Smell Whore!
And when they’d Taken Twenty Steps
Into the Cubian Jungle,
They Met King Bolo’s BIG BLACK QUEEN
A-scratching of her Bung Hole.
The foregoing is Private and Confidential.
Yours etc.
T. S. E.
Our Next Instalment will be a Description of the Columbian Sport of: Fucking the Tortoise.
THINGS YOU OUGHT TO KNOW:
What is a Wuxuar?
What is a Cuxative?
————
To Dobrée, 29 Sept [1927]:
Dear Buggamy:
I have this day of St. Michael sent you a Wire. I have No doubt that meanwhile you have thought of me as what the Bolovians, in their simple, terse and classical tongue call a “Horse’s Arse” · · · My reference above to Bolovian terminology recalls a Stanxo which you may not know, viz:
DEIPNOSOPHISTIC
Now while Columbo & his Crew
Were drinking (Scotch & Soda),
In Burst King Bolo’s Big Black Queen
(That Famous Old Breech-loader).
Just then the COOK produced the Lunch—
A Dish of Fried Hyeneas;
And Columbo said: “Will you take Tail?
Or just a bit of Penis?”
With reference to the Hyena, I should be very much obliged, if, on your next Excursion to the land of Prester John, you would look into the matter, and tell me, What the Hell has the Hyena to laugh at?
Also, about the famous Blue Bottom’d Babboon: Is he really the Aristocrat of the Simian World?
I shall shortly begin agin again my instruction in Bolovian Theology. Meanwhile I warn you against one Heresy. Certain authorities (e.g. Schnitzel aus Wien, Holzapfel aus Marburg) think that the Bolovians were the Tenth (lost) Tribe of Israel. This is based on a Corrupt Stanzo, i.e.
Now while King Bolo & his Queen
Were feasting at the Passover,
In Burst Columbo & His Men—
In fact Tea-Kettle-Arse-Over.
Now I maintain that this Stanzo is Corrupt (but how lovely it must have been before it was corrupted!) and that it should read
Now the Jewboys of Columbo’s Fleet
Were feasting at the Passover:
King Bolo & His Big Black Queen
Rolled in Tea-kettle-arse-over …….
I have written a Monograph to shew that the true Bolovian rhyme is Simple and pure; and whenever we find elaborate rhymes (e.g. Stockings Off and Hauptbahnhof) we are confronted with a spurious XVII Century addition (Concettismo) · · · Please do not address me as Thomarse.
DEIPNOSOPHISTIC: see headnote to Noctes Binanianæ, 3. PRINTING.
begin agin again: the nursery rhyme Michael Finigan ends each verse with “begin again”, and does so indefinitely (Donald Sommerville, personal communication).
Schnitzel aus Wien: Viennese schnitzel.
Holzapfel: Rudolf Maria Holzapfel, Austrian psychologist.
Tea-kettle-arse-over: OED “tea-kettle”: “Phr. ass (= arse) over tea-kettle, head over heels (cf. arse over tip), U.S. slang”. OED “half-seas over” 1: “Halfway across the sea”. 2: “Half-drunk” (humorous)”, from 1700.
————
To Dobrée, “This Day of St. Gumbolumbo” [? Oct 1927]:
Dear Buggamy,
On due Reflexion, I consider that you are probably by this time in a fit State to resist influenza, and receive the true Doctrine of the Bolovian Quarternion. In other words, WUX. But before I Impart the Dogma of WUX, it is As Well that you should know something of the Proper pronunciation of the word WUX.
First, the W. You will understand that WUX is correctly transliterated, but that the transliteration is quite inadequate to the pronunciation, which is Almost impossible for European Lips. The W, then, is half way between the WH as pronounced in the Gateshead & Newcastle district (sc. as in WHORE in Gateshead) and the HW of Danish (not the corrupt Danish of Jutland and West Friesland, which are affected by High and Low Dutch respectifly, but the Pure Danish of East Friesland) as in hwilken. An accurate transliteration would be like this [WH typed over HW] but Printers say this is impossible.
Second, the U. The U is very long, and might be rendered OOUHOUHUH. There is a slight, a very slight, Caesura in the middle of the U, which is expressed, in Pure Bolovian, by a slight Belch, but no European can render this, so do not try.
Third, the X. This is a combination of the Greek Ksi and the German schch. If you attentively Cough and Sniff at the same time you will get nearer to it.
That is enough for one lesson. You will now realise that the Bolovian tongue is extreamly Subtile, impossible to the European Mouth. You have heard of the Zulu Click, a sound that no Caucasian can make? Well, the Zulu Click is nothing to the Bolovian Fart, by which in that language the most subtle distinctions are rendered. Even our analytic terminology is hopelessly inadequate. Fracastoro, and Cuntarella, in the XVI and XVII centuries respectively, went a little way with their distinctions between the Fart Proper, the Fart Improper, the Farticle, the Gaspop, the Pusspurr and the Butterbreath, but the Bolovian distinctions are comparatively Legion.
At any rate, you should in a week’s time, with an Hour’s devotions a day, be able to pronounce WUX as well as you ever will.
Yr. Brother in Wux
T. S. E.
Gumbolumbo: OED “gumbo”, U.S. “[Negro patois; ‘from the Angolan kingombo’]”. 1: “a. A colloquial name for the okra plant · · · b. A soup thickened with · · · this plant.” 3: “A patois spoken by Blacks and Creoles”.
the Proper pronunciation of the word WUX: Paul Elmer More described the Hindu Om as “made up of three corresponding elements, O being a diphthong composed of the vowels A and U. Now they say the first letter, A, because of its Attachment to all other letters and b
ecause it is the first among them, is no other than Vaiçvanara · · · But the fourth, they say, is not a letter at all, but the whole syllable Om, the incommunicable · · ·” The Great Refusal 136–37.
Quarternion: OED 5: “Consisting of four persons, things, or parts”, with first citation from Purgatorio XXXIII: “The trinal now, and now the virgin band | Quaternion their sweet psalmody began” (tr. Cary).
sc.: scilicet (= namely, L.)
the Fart Proper, the Fart Improper: As You Like It V iv. TOUCHSTONE: “this is called the Retort Courteous · · · this is called the Quip Modest · · · this is called the Reply Churlish · · · And so to the Lie Circumstantial and the Lie Direct.” Touchstone’s distinctions are a parody of manuals of courtly rhetoric.
In John Ford (1932), TSE quoted Ford’s “They are the silent griefs which cut the heart-strings; | Let me die smiling” (The Broken Heart V iii). On 10 Nov 1936, he wrote to Theodore Spenser: “I can only say, in the words of JHON [?JOHN] FOORDE who put it so pithily in his play The Broken Wind—
It is the silent farts that wet the pantseat!
Let me die smiling …
————
To Dobrée, 12 Nov 1927:
Dear Buggamy · · · I am very busy writing a Poem about a Sole. That is, it is about a Channel Swimmer who has a Sole as a mascot; you see it is allegorical, and everything can be taken in an allegorical, analogical, anagogical, and a bolovian sense. So it is giving me much trouble. There is also a Dove that comes in, but I dont understand how
The Dove dove down an oyster Dive
As the Diver dove from Dover …
Then the sole
was solely sole
Or solely sold as sole at Dover …
you get the drift of it, but it is Difficult. When he reaches the other side
“He’s saved his sole whole!” Cry’d the Priest;
Whose Sole? OUR Sole! the folk replied …
His balls are Bald! the people Bawled …
This Sole, which had been Dover bred,
Was shortly cooked with chips in Greece …
It is very difficult to put all this together; it is called How we Brought the Dover Sole to Calais · · ·
ever yrs.
T. S.
The Sole—
Although it hung about the Plaice
’Twas solely sold as Sole at Dover …
Or solely sold as sole: TSE typed “sold solely” and transposed them. Ash-Wednesday V 8: “Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled”.
How we Brought the Dover Sole to Calais: Browning, How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix. TSE to F. S. Flint, also 12 Nov 1927: “I am at present engaged on a poem about a Channel Swimmer which I will send when completed. It is called ‘How we Brought the Good Sole from Dover to Calais’.”
————
To Dobrée, [22 Nov?] 1927 (Letters 2, 720):
DO YOU KNOW
that King Bolo’s Big Black Queen was called the CHOCOLATE CLEOPATRA?
DO YOU KNOW
that this is due to her words when she first glimps’d C. Columbo,
viz.:
Give me my Crown, put on my Robes, I have
Immortal Longings in Me.
DO YOU KNOW
that
One day Columbo & the Queen
They fell into a Quarrel.
Columbo shew’d his Disrespect
By Farting in a Barrel.
The Queen she call’d him Horse’s Arse—
And Blueballed Spanish Loafer:
They arbitrated the Affair
Upon the Cabin Sofa.
DONT FORGET
To Sport your Bowler among the heathen Tarbouches.
That “Bowler” is derived partly from “Bolo”. Why is it called (in France) “melon”. Because the Melons of Bolovia were perfectly Sperical, and the Hat was moulded upon half a Melon. Why was it called Bowler? For one reason, because the Bolovian game of Bowls was played in the ripe melon season.
[22 Nov?] 1927: TSE typed “Saint Clelia’s Day” but probably intended “St. Cecilia’s Day”. (St. Clelia’s feast day is 13 July, but she was canonised only in 1989.)
CHOCOLATE CLEOPATRA: for The Chocolate Soldier see Goldfish I 10 and notes. The name hovers between different syllable-counts. CLEOPATRA · · · Give me my Crown: Antony and Cleopatra V ii. CLEOPATRA: “Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have | Immortal longings in me.”
One day · · · Upon the Cabin Sofa: TSE repeats the first four lines when writing to Hayward, [24 Aug] 1940, about Hayward’s anthology Love’s Helicon (1940): “True, there are aspects of Love which, I dare say, fall outside the terms of reference. Such as: A Little Bit of What you Fancy always Does you Good. Or the topic of ‘Lovers’ Quarrels’, e.g. · · ·”
Quarrel · · · Barrel · · · Tarbouches: Lewis Carroll: “Tweedledum and Tweedledee · · · Just then flew down a monstrous crow, | As black as a tar-barrel; | Which frightened both the heroes so, | They quite forgot their quarrel”, Through the Looking-Glass ch. IV. Tarbouches: OED “tarboosh”, “a cap of cloth or felt (almost always red) with a tassel”. From the Arabic, tarbush, “so called in Egypt”.
————
Undated greeting to Dobrée:
11 Century
J. Wesley
“’Tis WUX that makes the world go round,
And sets the balls a-rolling;
WUX fills with ecstacy our soul,
Our soul in whole consoling”.
This was explained, 24 Jan 1928: “The tune is 11th century, the words were adapted by J. Wesley from the original and literal translation. The tune has also been used for Auld Lang Syne, Of All the Fish that Swim the Sea etc. There is no relation between Wuxianity and Islam.” (For “the X. Society”—The Idea of a Christian Society—see Four Quartets headnote, 5. THE WAR.)
————
To Dobrée, [early Feb? 1928]:
QUESTIONS TO ANSWER: What makes the World go Round? Why did they wear Bowler Hats? Why did their Chariots have square Wheels? · · · Morley is reformed and now always wears a Bowler or a Melon · · · It is well to remember that
King Bolo’s Big Black Bastard Queen
Was very seldom Sober—
Between October and July
And then until October;
Ah Yes King Bolos Big Black Queen 5
Was call’d a Heavy Drinker;
But still she always kept Afloat
And Nobody could Sink her.
very seldom Sober— | Between October and July | And then until October: “I’m drunk today and I’m seldom sober”, Carrickfergus (trad. Irish song). Burns: “frae November till October · · · thou was na sober”, Tam O’Shanter (Donald Sommerville, personal communicastion).
The Columbiad
Following publication of Bolovian verses in Letters (1988), stanxos 6, 41 and 44 were published in The Faber Book of Blue Verse (1990). Stanxos 1–16 and 49 were published in March Hare (1996).
Title The Columbiad: used by TSE in Valerie’s Own Book, where a dozen stanzos are transcribed in the first exercise book and two in the second. The title, which TSE may have had in mind for half a century, had previously been used for several earnest long poems about American history, of which the best known was Joel Barlow’s The Columbiad (1807).
This editorial composite begins with sixteen stanxos (st. 3 and 9 having only four lines each) from leaves among Ezra Pound’s papers in the Beinecke Library, Yale. They were published in March Hare because they appear on leaves excised from the Notebook, and the same order is retained here. The final stanxo in March Hare, followed by its “Flourishes” and “Exeunt”, here becomes the last of The Columbiad (st. 49).
St. 17–48 are from various sources. St. 17 and 18 appear on a torn leaf, with ms frag of Portrait of a Lady (III 31–41) on the verso. (Not being excised from the Notebook, this leaf was not available to the editor of March Hare.)
Six leaves from a small notebook, with one
edge perforated, are also in the Beinecke, accompanied by an envelope postmarked 11 Jan 1915, on which Pound pencilled the soubriquet “Chançons ithyphallique”. These leaves provide st. 19–38. The order is uncertain and of little consequence, but they are here designated A–F, with contents as follows (noting verso and recto):
A (r) st. 19 and 20
A (v) st. 21 and 22
B (r) st. 23 and 24
B (v) st. 25 and 26
C (r) st. 27 and 28
C (v) st. 29 (preceded by four lines similar to last four of st. 8)
D (r) st. 30 and 31
D (v) st. 32 and 33
E (r) st. 34 and 35
E (v) st. 36 (preceded by a version of st. 27)
F (r) st. 37 (followed by the first four lines of st. 28)
F (v) st. 38
(Of these, A is torn in two, which explains the reference in March Hare 321 to “seven leaves”.)
The remaining stanxos of The Columbiad are from later sources, though the date of composition is unknown:
st. 39 from TSE to Howard Morris, 24 Oct 1929.
st. 40 and 41 from TSE to Theodore Spencer, 1 Dec 1932, which also contains st. 36 (ts, Pusey Library, Harvard).
st. 42–47 from Valerie’s Own Book. (The first four lines of st. 42 were sent to Dobrée, 7 Aug [1927]; the last four are a version of another stanxo sent to him [22 Nov?] 1927. For a version of st. 43 sent to Aiken at the end of TSE’s life, see note below.)
st. 48 from an undated ms fragment, written out in prose by TSE and subscribed “Rippling Rimes”. The ms was sold by House of Books, Oct 1978 (untraced; photocopy in a private collection).
Valerie’s Own Book also contains versions of stanxos 6 (twice), 18, 20, 23, 41 and a version of America Discover’d (which TSE had sent to Bonamy Dobrée, [Sept 1927?]). For the full contents and grouping, see headnote to the Textual History, 6. VALERIE’S OWN BOOK. A typed “Check List of the More Authentic Columbovian Stanzos” (Valerie Eliot collection), probably from the early 1960s, lists a score of those which comprise The Columbiad, with two of those sent to Dobrée, [Sept 1927?], plus opening lines of some others: “The sailors of Columbo’s fleet | Were called ‘The Rectum Rammers’”; “‘Avast, my men!’ Columbo cried, | ‘Regard the placid waters’”; and “Columbo and his merry men | Enjoyed a game of rugger”. A “Select Bibliography” explains that “The classical work on Bolovian customs is Lipschitz: Grundlinien der Bolo’shen Sittenlehre, 3 Bänder, Pforzheim, 1873”, and lists also “Trautwein: Streitschrift gegen Holzapfel and Holzapfel: Polemisch gegen Trautwein, both Pforzheim also, 1912 and 1913.”