Chapter 1
1. My own correspondence with Eliot, from which extracts appear in this and later chapters, is deposited in The Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University.
2. One of the few critics to remark the intellectual connection between Burke and Eliot is Northrop Frye, in his brief T. S. Eliot (1963). Lionel Trilling, too, has reminded his readers of Burke on the moral imagination, recognizing the originality of Burke’s concept.
3. James McAuley, “In Regard to T. S. Eliot,” in his Surprises of the Sun (1969), 55.
Chapter 2
1. For an account of Eliot’s relationships with Miss Weaver, The Egoist, and The Egoist Press, see June Lidderdale and Mary Nicholson, Dear Miss Weaver: Harriet Shaw Weaver, 1876–1961 (1970). Wyndham Lewis’ quoted description of Eliot will be found in his sketch “Early London Environment,” in Richard March and Tambimuttu (eds.), T. S. Eliot: A Symposium (1948), 24–32; see also his description of the young Eliot in his Blasting and Bombardiering (1937).
2. Sir Osbert Sitwell, Noble Essences (1950), 39–41.
3. Evelyn Waugh, A Little Learning (1964), 65–66.
4. Sir Osbert Sitwell, Laughter in the Next Room (1949), 32–33.
5. Aldous Huxley to Julian Huxley, December 13, 1917, in Grover Smith (ed.), Letters of Aldous Huxley (1969), 141.
6. Eliot, “A Commentary,” Criterion, Vol. X, No. 61. (July 1931), 715–16.
7. George Orwell, Inside the Whale, in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.), The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell (1968), Vol. I, 524–25.
8. George Santayana, Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922), 177–78.
9. Eliot, “American Literature and the American Language,” in To Criticize the Critic (1965), 44.
10. A good description of Eliot’s family and of St. Louis at that time may be found in the first and second chapters of Herbert Howarth’s Notes on Some Figures behind T. S. Eliot (1964).
11. See Eliot, preface to Edgar Ansel Mowrer’s This American World (1928); and Eliot’s letter to M. W. Childs, quoted in F. O. Matthiessen, The Achievement of T. S. Eliot (1947), 186.
12. Eliot, To Criticize the Critic, op. cit., 44–45.
13. Ibid., 15; and Eliot’s memoir of Babbitt in Frederick Manchester and Odell Shepard (eds.), Irving Babbitt, Man and Teacher (1943), 104.
14. Eliot, After Strange Gods: A Primer of Modern Heresy (1934), 40–41.
15. Eliot, “A Commentary,” Criterion, Vol. XIII, No. 32 (April 1934), 451–54.
16. Conrad Aiken, “King Bolo and Others,” in March and Tambimuttu, Eliot, op. cit., 20–23; and Aiken, Ushant: An Essay (1932), Meridian edition (1962), 133, 137–38, 143, 156–57, 164, 168, 173, 186, 201–202, 205, 215–16, 231–33, 246, 249.
17. Charlotte C. Eliot to Bertrand Russell, May 23, 1916, in Russell, The Middle Years, 1914–1944 (1968), Chapter I.
18. Eliot to Lytton Strachey, May 1919, in Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey (1968), Vol. II, 364–65.
19. Russell’s account of his relationships with T. S. and Vivienne Eliot is to be found chiefly in the first chapter of the second volume of his autobiography, The Middle Years, op. cit.
20. Aldous Huxley to Julian Huxley, June 28, 1918, in Smith, Letters of Aldous Huxley, op. cit., 156.
21. Eliot, Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley (1964), 10.
22. Hugh Kenner, The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot (1959), 55–56.
23. Lewis Freed, T. S. Eliot: Aesthetics and History (1962), 88–89.
24. Richard Wollheim, “Eliot and F. H. Bradley: An Account,” in Graham Martin (ed.), Eliot in Perspective (1970), 169–93.
25. Eliot, “Arnold and Pater,” in Selected Essays (1932), 351.
26. Ian Gregor, “Eliot and Matthew Arnold,” in Martin, Eliot in Perspective, op. cit., 267–68.
27. Eliot, “Matthew Arnold,” in The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933), 1964 edition, 114.
28. George Bernard Shaw, “Heartbreak House and Horseback Hall,” preface to Heartbreak House: A Fantasia in the Russian Manner on English Themes (1919).
1. Donald McCormick, The Mask of Merlin: A Critical Biography of David Lloyd George (1964), 316.
2. Herbert Read, “T. S. E., a Memoir,” in Allen Tate (ed.), T. S. Eliot: The Man and His Work (1966), 23.
3. See Aldous Huxley to Julian Huxley (June 28, 1918), in Grover Smith (ed.), Letters of Aldous Huxley (1969), 154; also Stephen Spender, “Remembering Eliot,” in Tate, Eliot, op. cit., 63.
4. Clive Bell, “How Pleasant to Know Mr. Eliot,” in Richard March and Tambimuttu (eds.), T. S. Eliot: A Symposium (1949), 18.
5. Frank Morley, “T. S. Eliot as a Publisher,” in March and Tambimuttu, Eliot, op. cit., 61.
6. Letters of Aldous Huxley, op. cit., 117, 123; and Huxley, quoted by Spender, in Tate, Eliot, op. cit., 58–59.
7. Eliot, “American Literature and Language,” in To Criticize the Critic (1965), 58.
8. Eliot, quoted by Herbert Read, in Tate, Eliot, op. cit., 15.
9. Eliot, “Francis Herbert Bradley,” in Selected Essays, (1932), 363.
10. Kathleen Raine, “The Poet of Our Time,” in March and Tambimuttu, Eliot, op. cit., 78.
11. John Halverson, “Prufrock, Freud, and Others,” The Sewanee Review, Vol. LXXVI, No. 4 (Autumn, 1968), 578.
12. Kathleen Raine, op. cit., 79.
13. See John Abbot Clark’s amusing piece of detection, “On First Looking into Benson’s FitzGerald,” The South Atlantic Quarterly, April 1949; reprinted in Fifty Years of the South Atlantic Quarterly (1952), 344–55.
14. For some sensible, though not adulatory, criticism of Eliot’s political inclinations, see J. M. Cameron, “T. S. Eliot As a Political Writer,” in Neville Braybrooke (ed.), T. S. Eliot: A Symposium for His Seventieth Birthday (1958), 138–51; and John Peter, “Eliot and the Criterion,” in Graham Martin (ed.), Eliot in Perspective (1970), 252–66.
15. For a more detailed examination of Eliot on this point, see Russell Kirk, “T. S. Eliot’s Permanent Things,” in his Enemies of the Permanent Things (1969), 51–62.
16. Of many interesting essays concerned with “Gerontion,” four may be mentioned here: Wolf Mankowitz, “Notes on Gerontion,” in B. Rajan (ed.), T. S. Eliot: A Study of His Writings by Several Hands (1964); Hugh Kenner, “Gerontion,” in his Invisible Poet (1959); John Crowe Ransom, “Gerontion,” in Tate, Eliot, op. cit.; Elizabeth Drew, “Gerontion,” in her T. S. Eliot: The Design of His Poetry (1949).
17. Marion Montgomery, T. S. Eliot: An Essay on the American Magus (1970), 70–82; see also Hoxie Neale Fairchild, Religious Trends in English Poetry, Vol. V, Gods of a Changing Poetry (1962), 566–68.
18. Spender, in Tate, Eliot, op. cit., 59.
19. Noel Stock, The Life of Ezra Pound (1970), 166–70.
20. The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams (1951), 217.
21. Montgomery, op. cit., 89; and Graham Martin, “Language and Belief in Eliot’s Poetry,” in Martin, Eliot, op. cit., 127–30.
22. E. M. Forster, Abinger Harvest (1936), 89–96.
23. Malcolm Cowley, “Readings from the Lives of the Saints,” in his Exile’s Return (1934), 123–28.
24. Perhaps the most convincing examination is that of Cleanth Brooks, “The Waste Land: Critique of the Myth,” in his Modern Poetry and the Tradition (1939), 136–72. Another readable and intelligent treatment is that of C. M. Bowra, in his book The Creative Experiment (1948), 159–88.
25. Williams, Autobiography, op. cit., 174.
26. Hugh Kenner, The Invisible Poet, op. cit., 171.
27. Rose Macaulay, “The First Impact of The Waste Land,” in Braybrooke, Eliot, op. cit., 30–31.
Chapter 4
1. I. A. Richards, “On T. S. E.,” in Tate (ed.), T. S. Eliot: The Man and His Work (1966), 5.
2. See William Wasserstrom, “T. S. Eliot and The Dial,” The Sewanee Review, Vol. LXX, No. 1 (Winter 1962), 81–91.
3. R. C. K. Ensor, England, 1870–1914 (1936), 311.
4. Hamilton Fyfe, Northcliffe (1930), 106.
5. Eliot to Read (October 1924?), in Herbert Read, “T. S. E., a Memoir,” in Tate, Eliot, op. cit., 20–21.
6. J. M. Cameron, “T. S. Eliot As a Political Writer,” in Neville Braybrooke (ed.), T. S. Eliot: A Symposium for His Seventieth Birthday (1958), 145.
7. Herbert Howarth, Notes on Some Figures Behind T. S. Eliot (1964), 3.
8. J. M. Cameron, op. cit., 139.
9. W. L. Burn, “English Conservatism,” The Nineteenth Century and After, February 1949, 72.
10. Letters of James Russell Lowell (ed. by Charles Eliot Norton, 1894), II, 153.
11. For Eliot on Samuel Johnson, see “Johnson as Critic and Poet,” On Poetry and Poets (1957), 184–222; and Eliot’s introduction to Johnson’s London: A Poem, and The Vanity of Human Wishes (1930).
12. For details of this political struggle, see Beatrice Webb, Diaries 1912–1924 (1952), especially 203–33.
13. D. C. Somervell, British Politics since 1900 (1950), 161.
14. Frank Morley, “T. S. Eliot As a Publisher,” in Richard March and Tambimuttu, T. S. Eliot: A Symposium (1949), 62.
15. Morley, in ibid., 67.
16. Frank Morley, “A Few Recollections of Eliot,” in Tate (ed.), Eliot, op. cit., 100–101.
17. Keith Feiling, A History of England (1950), 1086.
18. Douglas Jerrold, England: Past, Present, and Future (1950), 222–23.
19. Harold F. Brooks, “Between The Waste Land and the First Ariel Poems: ‘The Hollow Men,’” in English, Vol. XVI, No. 93 (Autumn 1966), 89–93. This I believe to be the best short treatment of “The Hollow Men.”
Chapter 5
1. This final scene, which Eliot decided not to include in published texts of Sweeney Agonistes, may be found in Carol H. Smith’s T. S. Eliot’s Dramatic Theory and Practice (1963), 62–63.
2. Helen Gardner, The Art of T. S. Eliot (1950), 132.
3. Nevill Coghill, “Sweeney Agonistes,” in Richard March and Tambimuttu (eds.), T. S. Eliot: A Symposium (1948), 82–87.
4. Eliot to Dobrée, in Bonamy Dobrée, “T. S. Eliot: A Personal Reminiscence,” in Tate (ed.), T. S. Eliot: The Man and His Work (1967), 72.
5. Hoxie Neale Fairchild, Religious Trends in English Poetry: Vol. V, Gods of a Changing Poetry (1962), 564.
6. Dobrée, op. cit., 70.
7. Ibid., 75.
8. Eliot, “A Commentary,” The Monthly Criterion, Vol. V, No. 2 (May 1927), 190.
9. Eliot, review of recent books by Ludovici, Chesterton, Belloc, Hobson, and the authors of Coal, in The Monthly Criterion, Vol. VI, No. 1 (July 1927), 69–73.
10. Eliot, “A Commentary,” The Monthly Criterion, Vol. VI, No. 5 (November 1927), 385–88.
11. Eliot, “A Commentary,” The Monthly Criterion, Vol. VII, No. 2 (February 1928), 98.
12. Eliot, “The Action Française, M. Maurras and Mr. Ward,” The Monthly Criterion, Vol. VII, No. 3 (March 1928), 195–203.
13. Eliot, “A Reply to Mr. Ward,” The Criterion, Vol. VII, No. 4 (June 1928), 372–76.
14. Eliot, “A Commentary,” The Criterion, Vol. VIII, No. 30 (September 1928), 4–5.
15. Eliot, review of Freud’s The Future of an Illusion, in The Criterion, Vol. VIII, No. 30 (December 1928), 350–52.
16. Eliot, “A Commentary,” The Criterion, Vol. VIII, No. 32 (April 1929), 377–81.
17. Eliot, “A Commentary,” The Criterion, Vol. VIII, No. 33 (July 1929), 575–79.
18. Eliot, “The Literature of Fascism,” The Criterion, Vol. VIII, No. 31 (December 1928), 280–90.
19. Eliot, “Mr. Barnes and Mr. Rowse,” The Criterion, Vol. VIII, No. 33 (July 1929), 682–91.
20. Eliot, “A Commentary,” The Criterion, Vol. IX, No. 35 (January 1930), 182–84.
21. Eliot to Bonamy Dobrée, in Dobrée, op. cit., 81–82.
22. Stephen Spender, “Remembering Eliot,” in Tate, op. cit., 49.
23. Helen Gardner, op. cit., 104.
24. Rose Macaulay, “The First Impact of The Waste Land,” in Neville Braybrooke (ed.), T. S. Eliot: A Symposium for His Seventieth Birthday (1958), 33.
25. Grover Smith, T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays: A Study in Sources and Meaning (1958), 146, 150.
26. Eliot to Bonamy Dobrée, in Dobrée, op. cit., 81.
27. See Genesius Jones, Approach to the Purpose: A Study of the Poetry of T. S. Eliot (1964), 112–13; Leonard Unger, T. S. Eliot: Movements and Patterns (1956), 49–54; Grover Smith, op. cit., 144–45; B. C. Southam, A Student’s Guide to the Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot (1968), 112; Helen Gardner, op. cit., 115–16.
28. Allen Tate, “On Ash Wednesday,” in his Collected Essays (1959); reprinted in Hugh Kenner (ed.), T. S. Eliot: A Collection of Critical Essays (1962), 129–35.
29. See Genesius Jones, op. cit., 116–20.
30. Leonard Unger, op. cit., 62–64.
31. Eliot’s understanding of love in its several forms will be made clearer by a reading of M. C. D’Arcy, The Mind and Heart of Love (1947), the work of a scholar closely associated with Eliot.
32. Eric Voegelin, “Immortality: Experience and Symbol,” Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 60, No. 3 (July 1967), 235, 257.
Chapter 6
1. Wyndham Lewis, “Early London Environment,” in Richard March and Tambimuttu (eds.), T. S. Eliot: A Symposium (1948), 29–30.
2. See Frank Morley, “T. S. Eliot As a Publisher,” in ibid., 69–70.
3. The preceding quotations from Eliot’s Commentaries in the Criterion of 1931 all will be found in Volume X: 307–14, 481–90, 709–16.
4. F. O. Matthiessen, The Achievement of T. S. Eliot (first published in 1935); Galaxy edition, 1959, with a chapter on Eliot’s later work by C. L. Barber, 137–43.
5. D. E. S. Maxwell, The Poetry of T. S. Eliot (1952), 137–43.
6. Elizabeth Drew, T. S. Eliot: The Design of His Poetry (1952), 133.
7. Eliot, “A Commentary,” The Criterion, Vol. XI, No. 42 (October 1931), 65–72.
8. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933), 68–69.
9. Ibid., 73–74.
10. Ibid., 155–56.
11. Ibid., 26.
12. Ibid., 139.
13. Ibid., 131–35.
14. Ibid., 136–37.
15. Frank Morley, “A Few Recollections of Eliot,” in Allen Tate (ed.), T. S. Eliot: The Man and His Work (1966), 104–107.
16. Wyndham Lewis, “Early London Environment” in March and Tambimuttu, Eliot, op. cit., 29–30.
17. Eliot, After Strange Gods: A Primer of Modern Heresy (1934), 19–20.
18. See William Turner Levy and Victor Scherle, Affectionately, T. S. Eliot: The Story of a Friendship: 1947–1965 (1968), 81.
19. Sir Herbert Read, “T. S. E., a Memoir,” in Tate, Eliot, op. cit., 30.
20. After Strange Gods, 19.
21. Ibid., 33.
22. Ibid., 35–40.
23. Ibid., 43.
24. Ibid., 53.
25. Eliseo Vivas, D. H. Lawrence: The Failure and the Triumph of Art (1960), 102.
26. After Strange Gods, 57–63.
27. Eliot’s Commentaries in The Criterion, from October 1932 to July 1933: Vol. XII, 73–79, 224–49, 468–73, 642–47.
28. A full account of the production of The Rock will be found in two pieces by its director, E. Martin Browne: “T. S. Eliot in the Theatre: The Director’s Memories,” in Tate, Eliot, op. cit., 116–32; and “From The Rock to The Confidential Clerk,” in Braybrooke (ed.), T. S. Eliot: A Symposium for His Seventieth Birthday (1958), 57–69.
29. Herbert Hensley Henson to E. Lyttleton, January 3, 1934, in Evelyn Foley Braley (ed.), More Letters of Herbert Hensley Henson (1954), 91.
30. See Cyril Garbett (Archbishop of York), In an Age of Revolution (1952), 55.
31. See David E. Jones, The Plays of T. S. Eliot (1960), 38–49; Carol H. Smith, T. S. Eliot’s Dramatic Theory and Practice (1936), 83–90; and the treatments by F. O. Matthiessen and Grover Smith, op. cit.
Chapter 7
1. Wyndham Lewis, letter to the editor of The Spectator, November 2, 1934; reprinted in W. K. Rose (ed.), The Letters of Wyndham Lewis (1965), 222–25.
2. William Empson, “The Style of the Master,” in Richard March and Tambimuttu (eds.), T. S. Eliot: A Symposium (1948), 35–37.
3. Desmond Hawkins, “The Pope of Russell Square,” in ibid., 44–47.
4. George Orwell, Inside the Whale (1940), reprinted in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.), The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell (1968), Vol. I, 512.
5. Hawkins, op. cit., 45–46.
6. Christopher Dawson, “Religion and the Totalitarian State,” The Criterion, Vol. XIV, No. 54 (October 1934), 1–16.
7. Eliot, “A Commentary,” The Criterion, Vol. XIV, No. 55 (January 1935), 260–64.
8. Eliot, “A Commentary,” The Criterion, Vol. XIV, No. 56 (April 1935), 431–36.
9. Eliot, Commentaries in The Criterion, Vol. XV, Nos. 58 and 59 (October 1935 and July 1936), 65–69, 265–69.
10. The planning and production of Murder in the Cathedral are described by the three men most nearly associated with Eliot in this undertaking. See E. Martin Browne, “The Dramatic Verse of T. S. Eliot,” in March and Tambimuttu, op. cit., 196–207; Browne, “From The Rock to The Confidential Clerk,” in Braybrooke (ed.), T. S. Eliot: A Symposium for His Seventieth Birthday (1958), 57–69; Browne, “T. S. Eliot in the Theatre: The Director’s Memoirs,” in Tate (ed.), T. S. Eliot: The Man and His Work (1966), 116–32; Robert Speaight, “Interpreting Becket and Other Parts,” in Braybrooke, op. cit., 70–78; Speaight, “With Becket in Murder in the Cathedral,” in Tate. op. cit., 182–93; Ashley Dukes, “T. S. Eliot in the Theatre,” in March and Tambimuttu, op. cit., 111–18. See also T. S. Eliot and George Hoellering, The Film of Murder in the Cathedral (1952), 7–14.
11. Hilaire Belloc, The Old Road (1911), 89–90.
12. Henri Daniel-Rops, Cathedral and Crusade (translated by John Warrington, 1957), 216.
13. Grover Smith, T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays (Phoenix edition, 1960), 183–84.
14. Ashley Dukes, “T. S. Eliot in the Theatre,” op. cit., 114.
15. Eliot, “A Commentary,” The Criterion, Vol. XV, No. 61 (July 1936), 663–68.
16. Eliot, “A Commentary,” The Criterion, Vol. XVI, No. 62 (October 1936), 63–69.
17. William G. Peck, “Divine Democracy,” The Criterion, Vol. XVI, No. 63 (January 1937), 255–66; Eliot, “A Commentary,” same number, 289–93.
18. Eliot, “A Commentary,” The Criterion, Vol. XVI, No. 64 (April 1937), 469–74.
19. Eliot, “A Commentary,” The Criterion, Vol. XVI, No. 65 (July 1937), 669–70; Herbert Read and Eliot, “Correspondence,” The Criterion, Vol. XVII, No. 66 (October 1937), 123–24.
20. See William Turner Levy and Victor Scherle, Affectionately, T. S. Eliot (1968), 79.
21. Eliot, “A Commentary,” The Criterion, Vol. XVIII, No. 70 (October 1938), 58–62.
22. Eliot, “A Commentary,” The Criterion, Vol. XVII, No. 68 (April 1938), 478–85.
23. Eliot, “A Commentary,” The Criterion, Vol. XVII, No. 66 (October 1937), 81–86.
24. Eliot, “A Commentary,” The Criterion, Vol. XVII, No. 69 (July 1938), 686–92.
25. Eliot, “Last Words,” The Criterion, Vol. XVIII, No. 71 (January 1939), 269–75.
26. Eliot, “Poetry and Drama,” in On Poetry and Poets (1957), 75–95.
27. F. R. Leavis and Q. D. Leavis, Lectures in America (1969), 51–52.
28. Ibid., 49–50.
29. Arthur M. Sampley, “The Woman Who Wasn’t There: Lacuna in T. S. Eliot,” The South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. LXVII, No. 4 (Autumn 1968), 603–10.
30. Eliot, After Strange Gods (1934), 46.
31. Leavis, op. cit. 53.
Chapter 8
1. Philip Mairet, “Memories of T. S. E.,” in Neville Braybrooke (ed.), T. S. Eliot: A Symposium for His Seventieth Birthday (1958), 36–44.
2. Edwin Muir, “The Political View of Literature,” reprinted in his Essays on Literature and Society (1949), 138–39.
3. George Orwell, Coming up for Air (1939). See also Orwell’s “Not Counting Niggers,” in The Adelphi, July 1939; reprinted in Orwell and Angus (eds.), The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell (1968), Vol. I, 394–98.
4. Eliot, The Idea of a Christian Society (1939), 94–97.
5. Ibid., 15–16.
6. Ibid., 23, 63.
7. Ibid., 33–34.
8. Peter Kirk, “T. S. Eliot,” in Melville Harcourt (ed.), Thirteen for Christ (1963), 3–26.
9. The Idea of a Christian Society, 59.
10. Ibid., 62.
11. Ibid., 63–64.
12. George Orwell, “The Rediscovery of Europe” (BBC Eastern Service talk, March 11, 1942), reprinted in Orwell and Angus, op. cit., Vol. II, 197–207.
13. Orwell, review in Poetry London, October–November 1942; reprinted in Orwell and Angus, op. cit., Vol. II, 236–42.
14. Vincent Buckley, Poetry and the Sacred (1968), 223.
15. Denis Donoghue, The Ordinary Universe: Soundings in Modern Literature (1968), 260–61.
16. Eliot, On Poetry: an address by T. S. Eliot on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Concord Academy (1947).
17. Martin D’Arcy, Death and Life (1942), 152.
18. For an argument that Eliot, in “Burnt Norton” and even in the later Quartets, has not fully accepted Christian revelation as Saint John of the Cross accepted it, see Sister Mary Gerard, “Eliot and John of the Cross,” Thought, Vol. XXXIV, No. 132 (Spring, 1939), 107–27.
19. The turning world and the still point are interestingly discussed by Philip Wheelwright in The Burning Fountain: A Study in the Language of Symbolism (1954), Chapter XV.
20. See Helen Gardner, The Art of T. S. Eliot (1950), 158–85.
21. That the “silent motto” was Eliot’s, not Mary Stuart’s, has been unearthed by Elizabeth Drew, whose chapter on Four Quartets is very good; see her T. S. Eliot: The Design of His Poetry (1949), 165, n.
22. Christopher Dawson, Progress and Religion (1929), 75, 89–90. So far as I know, the only critic to have noticed Dawson’s bearing on Four Quartets is James Johnson Sweeney, “East Coker: a Reading,” in The Southern Review, Vol. VI, No. 4, (1941), 771–91; reprinted in Unger (ed.), T. S. Eliot: A Selected Critique (1966), 395–414.
23. Paul Elmer More, Shelburne Essays, Seventh Series (1910), 201–202.
24. In Somerset, where Eliot’s ashes are laid, churchyard yews are especially numerous. See Vaughan Cornish, The Churchyard Yew and Immortality (1946).
25. Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life (translation by J. E. Crawford Flitch, 1923), 248–49.
26. Martin D’Arcy, op. cit., 174–75.
27. T. O. Beachcroft, “Nicholas Ferrar and George Herbert,” The Criterion, Vol. XII, No. 46 (October 1932), 24–42. For comments of members of the Criterion group on Ferrar, see Bernard Blackstone’s review of Nicholas Ferrar of Little Gidding, by A. L. Maycock, The Criterion, Vol. XVIII, No. 70 (October 1938), 154–56; and Charles Smythe’s review of The Ferrar Papers, edited by Bernard Blackstone, The Criterion, Vol. XVIII, No. 71 (January 1939), 366–71.
28. Anthony Thorlby, “The Poetry of ‘Four Quartets,’” The Cambridge Journal, Vol. V, No. 5 (February 1952), 280–99.
Chapter 9
1. Emilio Cecchi, “A Meeting with Eliot,” in Richard March and Tambimuttu (eds.), T. S. Eliot: A Symposium (1948), 73–77.
2. Bertrand Russell to Lady Ottoline Morrell, May 1914, in Memoirs of Lady Ottoline Morrell: A Study in Friendship (edited by Robert Gathorne-Hardy, 1963), 255.
3. John Cowper Powys, The Meaning of Culture (1928), 273.
4. Clive Bell, Civilization: An Essay (1928), Chapter VII.
5. R. H. Tawney, Equality: Dalley Stewart Lecture, 1929 (1931), 98–118.
6. Eliot, Notes towards the Definition of Culture (1948), 18–19.
7. Ibid., 26.
8. Ibid., 36–37.
9. See Karl Mannheim, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction: Studies in Modern Social Structure (translated by Edward Shils, 1940), particularly the first chapter of Part II.
10. Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, 1780–1950 (1958), 241–43.
11. Eliot, Notes, op. cit., 43–44.
12. Ibid., 47–48.
13. For an interesting discussion of Burke on this point, see Harvey Mansfield, Jr., Statesmanship and Party Government: A Study of Burke and Bolingbroke (1965), Chapter 8.
14. Rowland Berthoff, An Unsettled People: Social Order and Disorder in American History (1971), xiii.
15. Eliot, Notes, op. cit., 62.
16. Ibid., 81–82.
17. Ibid., 88–89.
18. Eliot, introduction to Josef Pieper’s Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1952), 11–14.
19. Eliot, Notes, op. cit., 91–92.
20. Ibid., 109.
21. Ibid., 122.
22. Eliot, “Yeats” (first annual Yeats Lecture, 1940), printed in Eliot, On Poetry and Poets (1957), 301–302.
23. Eliot, “The Social Function of Poetry” (address delivered in 1943 and 1945), printed in On Poetry and Poets, op. cit., 15–16.
24. Eliot, Notes, op. cit., 108.
25. Of all the analyses of The Cocktail Party, I find most illuminating Helen Gardner’s “The Comedies of T. S. Eliot,” in Allen Tate (ed.), T. S. Eliot: The Man and His Work (1966). There is much of value in D. E. Jones’ The Plays of T. S. Eliot (1960).
26. Leslie Paul, “A Conversation with T. S. Eliot,” The Kenyon Review, Vol. XXVII, No. 1 (Winter 1965), 19–20.
27. Helen Gardner, “The Comedies of T. S. Eliot,” op. cit., 169–70.
28. Philip Rahv, “T. S. Eliot: The Poet as Playwright,” in his Literature and the Sixth Sense (1969), 350.
29. There has appeared as yet no careful detailed study of Eliot’s exploration of Time and Self; and the subject is too complex for extensive treatment in this book. An interesting discussion of Eliot on such matters, “Bergson, and the Problem of Time,” may be found in Kristian Smidt’s Poetry and Belief in the Work of T. S. Eliot (1949 and 1961), 165–81. See also William T. Noon, “Modern Literature and Time,” Thought, Vol. XXXIII, No. 31 (Winter, 1958–59), 571–603.
30. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (1958), 285.
31. See Kristian Smidt, Poetry and Belief in the Work of T. S. Eliot, op. cit., 174.
32. Eliot, “Virgil and the Christian World,” On Poetry and Poets (1957), 137.
Chapter 10
1. Eliot, “A Commentary,” The Criterion, Vol. XI, No. 42 (October 1931), 65–72.
2. Eliot, “A Commentary,” The Criterion, Vol. XIII, No. 52 (April 1934), 624–28.
3. Eliot, “A Commentary,” The Criterion, Vol. XIV, No. 55 (January 1934), 264; Bernard Iddings Bell, “The Decay of Intelligence in America,” The Criterion, same number, 200.
4. G. H. Bantock, T. S. Eliot and Education (1970).
5. Eliot, Notes towards the Definition of Culture (1948), 95–103.
6. Eliot, Notes, op. cit., 99, 106–107.
7. Robert M. Hutchins, “T. S. Eliot on Education,” Measure, Vol. I, No. 1 (Winter 1950), 6.
8. Hutchins, “The Theory of Oligarchy: Edmund Burke,” The Thomist, Vol. V (January 1943), 61–78.
9. Hutchins, “T. S. Eliot on Education,” op. cit., 8.
10. Eliot, “The Aims of Education,” in four parts, Measure, Vol. II, Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4; reprinted in To Criticize the Critic (1965), 61–124.
11. Bantock, T. S. Eliot and Education, op. cit., 109.
12. For an English sociologist’s ironical demolition of the new élite created by examinations, see Michael Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy, 1870–2033: An Essay in Education and Equality (1958). For accounts of what has been done to British schooling by the theories that Eliot opposed, see the essays in the two “Black Papers” edited by C. B. Cox and A. E. Dyson, Fight for Education and The Crisis in Education (1969).
13. Of many books touching on the decline of American culture, Thomas Griffith’s The Waist-High Culture (1959) is particularly telling, because in part autobiographical. For England’s precipitous descent to the level of Sweeney, see Christopher Booker, The Neophiliacs: A Study of the Revolution in English Life in the Fifties and Sixties (1969).
14. Seán Lucy, T. S. Eliot and the Idea of Tradition (1960), 201–202.
15. Eliot, “The Lion and the Fox,” Twentieth Century Verse, Nos. 6–7 (November-December 1937), 6–9.
16. R. H. S. Crossman, “Towards a Philosophy of Socialism,” in Crossman (ed.), New Fabian Essays (1952), 1–32.
17. W. L. Burn, “The Last of the Lynskey Report,” The Nineteenth Century and After, Vol. 145, No. 4 (April 1949), 222–29.
18. See William Turner Levy and Victor Scherle, Affectionately, T. S. Eliot (1968), 71, 79.
19. Eliot, “The Literature of Politics,” in To Criticize the Critic (1965), 136–44.
20. The only fairly detailed study of Eliot’s political theories so far published is Rajendra Verma’s Royalist in Politics: T. S. Eliot and Political Philosophy (1968); but that little book does not take up fully Eliot’s political observations in the Criterion, or his other occasional excursions into the practical political controversies of his age.
21. Leslie Paul, “A Conversation with T. S. Eliot,” The Kenyon Review, Vol. XXVII, No. 104 (Winter 1965), 11–21.
Chapter 11
1. Eliot, “The Function of Criticism,” Selected Essays, 1917–1932 (1932), 12–22.
2. Eliot, “The Classics and the Man of Letters,” To Criticize the Critic and Other Writings (1965), 145–61.
3. Eliot, “What Is a Classic?” On Poetry and Poets (1957), 71–73.
4. Eliot, “The Frontiers of Criticism,” On Poetry and Poets, op. cit., 113–31.
5. John Wain, “A Walk in the Sacred Wood,” The London Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 1 (January 1958), 45–53.
6. Eliot, “To Criticize the Critic,” in To Criticize the Critic, op. cit., 11–26.
7. Eliot, “The Three Voices of Poetry,” On Poetry and Poets, op. cit., 96, 98.
8. Ibid., 111.
9. Grover Smith, T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays: A Study in Sources and Meaning (Phoenix edition, 1960), 248.
10. D. E. Jones, The Plays of T. S. Eliot (1960), 213.
11. Eliot to William Turner Levy, in Levy and Scherle, Affectionately, T. S. Eliot (1968), 98–99.
12. Eliot, “A Dedication to My Wife,” Collected Poems, 1909–1962 (1963), 221.
13. W. B. Yeats, A Vision (1962 edition), 219.
14. Aldous Huxley to Dr. Humphrey Osmond, December 16, 1958, in Grover Smith (ed.), Letters of Aldous Huxley (1969), 857–58.
15. Eliot, Introduction to The Sacred Wood (seventh edition, 1950), xv–xvi.
16. Eliot, The Idea of a Christian Society (1939), 23–24.
17. Audrey Fawcett Cahill, T. S. Eliot and the Human Predicament (1967), 1–4.