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Eliot's Early Years
Drawing on family papers and Eliot's works, the author recounts the key events and influences of the American poet's life up to 1926, noting links between his life and his poems
- GenresBiographyNonfiction
174 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
About the author
Lyndall Gordon
20 books123 followersLyndall Gordon (born 4 November 1941) is a British-based writer and academic, known for her literary biographies. She is a Senior Research Fellow at St Hilda's College, Oxford.
Born in Cape Town, she was an undergraduate at the University of Cape Town, then a doctoral student at Columbia University in New York City. She married the pathologist Siamon Gordon; they have two daughters.
Gordon is the author of Eliot's Early Years (1977), which won the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize; Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life (1984), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life (1994), winner of the Cheltenham Prize for Literature; and Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft, shortlisted for the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize. Her most recent publication is Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and her Family's Feuds (2010), which has overturned the established assumptions about the poet's life.
(from Wikipedia)
Born in Cape Town, she was an undergraduate at the University of Cape Town, then a doctoral student at Columbia University in New York City. She married the pathologist Siamon Gordon; they have two daughters.
Gordon is the author of Eliot's Early Years (1977), which won the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize; Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life (1984), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life (1994), winner of the Cheltenham Prize for Literature; and Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft, shortlisted for the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize. Her most recent publication is Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and her Family's Feuds (2010), which has overturned the established assumptions about the poet's life.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 10, 2025
I did not want to read a T. S. Eliot biography. Thirty years ago I was obsessed with Eliot and his poetry, so I was generally familiar with his life and works (at least up to the verse plays; I've never seen "Cats") and I didn't want to know any more. But the way so many good books come my way, the local public library had this one on the discard shelf; I picked it up, uninterested, and leafed through it. Pictures! Full-page on glossy paper! And one of a young Emily Hale I'd never seen before. So I paid my quarter and took it home, figuring I'd discard it myself after a month or two. A couple weeks later, I listlessly picked it up...and couldn't put it down.
First of all, it's so small! Literary biographies for someone of Eliot's stature tend to be the size of cement blocks; this one clocks in at 140 pages. In fact it was so short, I figured the "early years" of the title would stop at Harvard and his relocation to London. But it actually takes us past "The Waste Land," with the last photo showing Eliot sitting like the cat who ate the canary behind his desk at Faber & Faber and a one of those angular sub-Picasso Wyndham Lewis portraits from 1938 - a Wyndham Lewis portrait being a sure sign you've made it in pre-war England.
***
I'd never heard of Lyndall Gordon before I found this book, but she is now one of my favorites. This book is...elegant? Clean prose, clearly laid out, and I really appreciated her efforts at trying to explain such difficult subjects as Eliot's philosophy, his religious sensibilities and conversion, and the complex Mrs. Eliot. As literary biographies go, this little gem is right up there with Richard Ellmann's great works.
***
Unfortunately, whenever I read a biography of a favorite poet or writer, I come away feeling a bit unhappy. Why is this? My own immaturity no doubt - I want a hero, and since the Marvel Universe franchise doesn't do it for me, I turn to the poets. Elizabeth Bishop over Spider-Man. But poets, the great ones anyway, apparently become poets because they are not heroes.
Eliot has been criticized (or has he been cancelled by now) because of his anti-Semitism and the way he treated his wife Vivienne. Lyndall addresses these matters with tact and forbearance (those don't rank as virtues these days, but they are, they are); but she makes no excuses, lets events (and the words) speak for themselves. Thanks to her exploration of Eliot's family and formative years, at home in St. Louis and Massachusetts, I was better able to understand what is so maddening to so many, the old-time WASP sense of entitlement coupled with a lacerating, impossible sense of duty. You can loathe 'em for the racism and anti-Semitism, but it is hard not to admire them for their sense of purpose and willingness to sacrifice themselves for... for what? The culture? The body politic? Which is to say, the patrician WASP of 1899 was not having any fun (the men and the women). In Eliot's case the father was a stern man of business who felt his son was wasting his life on the English literary scene, and his mother was a pious, energetic, underutilized woman pouring fourth reams of religious verse of the higher-calling sort (rather than the leap-of-faith or dark night of the soul sort). One of the (well-selected and well-printed) photos in this book (between pages 112 and 113) shows Eliot with his mother during her visit to England in 1921 - Lyndall points out that Eliot was alarmed at seeing his mother in person after so many years - he was expecting a frail old lady, but rather she was as hale and formidable as ever. If anything, the son had become the "frail little old lady"! The photo, almost hilariously so, bears this out; Eliot smiles the smile of a guy trying to justify an unconventional life to a terrifyingly conventional, firm-in-her-convictions mother. But perhaps I'm reading too much into it.
Eliot's anxiety about breaking with his parents' ideals was intense, and perhaps was only assuaged by his conversion to the Church of England and a most respectable berth in London publishing (maybe that photo at his desk at Faber & Faber shows more relief than self-satisfaction?). Lyndall's ability to describe the sources of this anxiety, Eliot's stony, WASP-y ancestors and immediate family made Eliot's struggle more vivid for me; I was aware of these things, but until I read this book, I hadn't quite realized how inescapable these things are for the young man patrician. No wonder so many of them became bespoke alcoholics; the pressure was enormous.
***
Religion and philosophy are two topics I have a hard time with; my basic inability to process abstractions always keeps me ankle-deep in the mud, and I'd rather look at earthworms than got to the effort to reach for the stars (per aspera ad astra). That old Latin tag - "through hardship to the stars" as Wikipedia translates it for me - never says what you do with the stars if you do manage to catch 'em. Philosophy, when it is an open-ended search for meaning (and not too abstract or theoretical) works for me - my return, again and again, to E. M. Cioran is proof of that, though he provides no comfort, I like his approach, and can grasp it, along with the earthworms.
As I get older, religion interests me more, in a human, mythological and historical way, but I find myself increasingly dismayed by Christianity's goal - saving your own soul. To even consider your own soul savable, or worth saving, is a difficult concept for me to grasp, but T. S. Eliot grasped it and spent his entire life in ruthless pursuit of salvation. How can the pursuit of salvation be ruthless? Maybe I should use the word selfish. Or heartless. For Eliot, other people were constantly in the way of his goals - both literary and spiritual, two goals which eventually became indistinguishable, especially after he'd reached the pinnacle of literary fame. This all reminded me of Evelyn Waugh's awful Guy Crouchback in his Sword of Honour trilogy; one of the worst protagonists in all of modern fiction. Crouchback's search for personal salvation was ruthless, heartless, and was propelled the whole time by his creator's (I mean Waugh, not God) fond indulgence and self-righteousness. Eliot's Crouchbackian tendencies were most evident, perhaps, in his relationship with his wife. In the novel, Crouchback's wife is faithless succubus. Elito's wife was a nagging, neurasthenic hypochondriac. Both women, fictional and real, somehow come across better, more virtuous than the Great Soul in Agony they were married to.
There is something a bit distasteful, for me anyway, the way Eliot ensconced himself in the highest levels of the Church of England (an Anglican bishop as your own personal confessor - I didn't even know Anglicans confessed with a capital C, but then my grasp of theology is shaky). These bishops and primates and princesses "clutching piaculative pence" were all thrilled to have such a big-time modern poet come to them for succor (this reminds me of the way physicians will puff up around celebrities - see George Harrison's and Susan Sontag's final days). "Prufrock" and "The Waste Land" were such naughty poems, but now our boy has come home, strolling the grounds of Burnt Norton and composing those Four Quartets, so abstractly agonistesesque until it is time for tea...
Which brings me to "The Four Quartets" - I just don't get it. Or them. Over the years I have tried - tried because I never get tired, am always freshly astonished by "The Waste Land" and "Prufrock" and a handful of other early poems. But after a few minutes, momentarily dazzled by a line here and there, a little bolus of surprise, I lapse into boredom and confusion and reader's fatigue. And I'll read the critics, Helen Vendler and whomever, telling me why "The Four Quartets" are the pinnacle of Eliot's achievement, the Paradisio to "The Waste Lands" "Inferno." The problem is, "The Inferno" is much more fun, poets in torment and disarray always more interesting than after being saved. No doubt I'm wrong about "The Four Quartets," but as with Henry James, I just can't get my head around them, one word at a time...
Gordon has far too much tact (and class) to criticize Eliot for all his soul-searching, but she does describe the long, drawn-out process, and assesses the poetry along the way. Although she doesn't quite come out and say it, I detected a definite falling off in her enthusiasm when she got to "The Four Quartets." Not much on those verse plays either (but her book is on Eliot's early years, and the plays are definitely later years).
***
I also admire the way Gordon handled the women in Eliot's life. Since this book was written, the Emily Hale correspondence has been released to the public, but even without this trove, Gordon has done a good (and fair) job outlining the long, long drawn-out quasi-courtship Hale put up with, and her role as Eliot's far-away, abstract second muse. As for Eliot's first wife, Vivienne, Gordon does an admirable job describing her complicated, tragic character, and her role - probably essential role - in Eliot's development as a poet, critic and a man. As she does throughout the book, Gordon lets events, and facts, speak for themselves, without subjecting these 100-years-ago people to contemporary theories and morals and right-thinking. As biographers sometimes do, Gordon does not pretend she is a marriage councilor. Also, thank goodness, she does not indulge in Freudian or post-Freudian analysis, something that plagued literary biography throughout the 20th century (see Berryman's Stephen Crane, etc. etc.).
This is a fine, fine biography. Wish I'd encountered it 20 years ago, but better late than never.
First of all, it's so small! Literary biographies for someone of Eliot's stature tend to be the size of cement blocks; this one clocks in at 140 pages. In fact it was so short, I figured the "early years" of the title would stop at Harvard and his relocation to London. But it actually takes us past "The Waste Land," with the last photo showing Eliot sitting like the cat who ate the canary behind his desk at Faber & Faber and a one of those angular sub-Picasso Wyndham Lewis portraits from 1938 - a Wyndham Lewis portrait being a sure sign you've made it in pre-war England.
***
I'd never heard of Lyndall Gordon before I found this book, but she is now one of my favorites. This book is...elegant? Clean prose, clearly laid out, and I really appreciated her efforts at trying to explain such difficult subjects as Eliot's philosophy, his religious sensibilities and conversion, and the complex Mrs. Eliot. As literary biographies go, this little gem is right up there with Richard Ellmann's great works.
***
Unfortunately, whenever I read a biography of a favorite poet or writer, I come away feeling a bit unhappy. Why is this? My own immaturity no doubt - I want a hero, and since the Marvel Universe franchise doesn't do it for me, I turn to the poets. Elizabeth Bishop over Spider-Man. But poets, the great ones anyway, apparently become poets because they are not heroes.
Eliot has been criticized (or has he been cancelled by now) because of his anti-Semitism and the way he treated his wife Vivienne. Lyndall addresses these matters with tact and forbearance (those don't rank as virtues these days, but they are, they are); but she makes no excuses, lets events (and the words) speak for themselves. Thanks to her exploration of Eliot's family and formative years, at home in St. Louis and Massachusetts, I was better able to understand what is so maddening to so many, the old-time WASP sense of entitlement coupled with a lacerating, impossible sense of duty. You can loathe 'em for the racism and anti-Semitism, but it is hard not to admire them for their sense of purpose and willingness to sacrifice themselves for... for what? The culture? The body politic? Which is to say, the patrician WASP of 1899 was not having any fun (the men and the women). In Eliot's case the father was a stern man of business who felt his son was wasting his life on the English literary scene, and his mother was a pious, energetic, underutilized woman pouring fourth reams of religious verse of the higher-calling sort (rather than the leap-of-faith or dark night of the soul sort). One of the (well-selected and well-printed) photos in this book (between pages 112 and 113) shows Eliot with his mother during her visit to England in 1921 - Lyndall points out that Eliot was alarmed at seeing his mother in person after so many years - he was expecting a frail old lady, but rather she was as hale and formidable as ever. If anything, the son had become the "frail little old lady"! The photo, almost hilariously so, bears this out; Eliot smiles the smile of a guy trying to justify an unconventional life to a terrifyingly conventional, firm-in-her-convictions mother. But perhaps I'm reading too much into it.
Eliot's anxiety about breaking with his parents' ideals was intense, and perhaps was only assuaged by his conversion to the Church of England and a most respectable berth in London publishing (maybe that photo at his desk at Faber & Faber shows more relief than self-satisfaction?). Lyndall's ability to describe the sources of this anxiety, Eliot's stony, WASP-y ancestors and immediate family made Eliot's struggle more vivid for me; I was aware of these things, but until I read this book, I hadn't quite realized how inescapable these things are for the young man patrician. No wonder so many of them became bespoke alcoholics; the pressure was enormous.
***
Religion and philosophy are two topics I have a hard time with; my basic inability to process abstractions always keeps me ankle-deep in the mud, and I'd rather look at earthworms than got to the effort to reach for the stars (per aspera ad astra). That old Latin tag - "through hardship to the stars" as Wikipedia translates it for me - never says what you do with the stars if you do manage to catch 'em. Philosophy, when it is an open-ended search for meaning (and not too abstract or theoretical) works for me - my return, again and again, to E. M. Cioran is proof of that, though he provides no comfort, I like his approach, and can grasp it, along with the earthworms.
As I get older, religion interests me more, in a human, mythological and historical way, but I find myself increasingly dismayed by Christianity's goal - saving your own soul. To even consider your own soul savable, or worth saving, is a difficult concept for me to grasp, but T. S. Eliot grasped it and spent his entire life in ruthless pursuit of salvation. How can the pursuit of salvation be ruthless? Maybe I should use the word selfish. Or heartless. For Eliot, other people were constantly in the way of his goals - both literary and spiritual, two goals which eventually became indistinguishable, especially after he'd reached the pinnacle of literary fame. This all reminded me of Evelyn Waugh's awful Guy Crouchback in his Sword of Honour trilogy; one of the worst protagonists in all of modern fiction. Crouchback's search for personal salvation was ruthless, heartless, and was propelled the whole time by his creator's (I mean Waugh, not God) fond indulgence and self-righteousness. Eliot's Crouchbackian tendencies were most evident, perhaps, in his relationship with his wife. In the novel, Crouchback's wife is faithless succubus. Elito's wife was a nagging, neurasthenic hypochondriac. Both women, fictional and real, somehow come across better, more virtuous than the Great Soul in Agony they were married to.
There is something a bit distasteful, for me anyway, the way Eliot ensconced himself in the highest levels of the Church of England (an Anglican bishop as your own personal confessor - I didn't even know Anglicans confessed with a capital C, but then my grasp of theology is shaky). These bishops and primates and princesses "clutching piaculative pence" were all thrilled to have such a big-time modern poet come to them for succor (this reminds me of the way physicians will puff up around celebrities - see George Harrison's and Susan Sontag's final days). "Prufrock" and "The Waste Land" were such naughty poems, but now our boy has come home, strolling the grounds of Burnt Norton and composing those Four Quartets, so abstractly agonistesesque until it is time for tea...
Which brings me to "The Four Quartets" - I just don't get it. Or them. Over the years I have tried - tried because I never get tired, am always freshly astonished by "The Waste Land" and "Prufrock" and a handful of other early poems. But after a few minutes, momentarily dazzled by a line here and there, a little bolus of surprise, I lapse into boredom and confusion and reader's fatigue. And I'll read the critics, Helen Vendler and whomever, telling me why "The Four Quartets" are the pinnacle of Eliot's achievement, the Paradisio to "The Waste Lands" "Inferno." The problem is, "The Inferno" is much more fun, poets in torment and disarray always more interesting than after being saved. No doubt I'm wrong about "The Four Quartets," but as with Henry James, I just can't get my head around them, one word at a time...
Gordon has far too much tact (and class) to criticize Eliot for all his soul-searching, but she does describe the long, drawn-out process, and assesses the poetry along the way. Although she doesn't quite come out and say it, I detected a definite falling off in her enthusiasm when she got to "The Four Quartets." Not much on those verse plays either (but her book is on Eliot's early years, and the plays are definitely later years).
***
I also admire the way Gordon handled the women in Eliot's life. Since this book was written, the Emily Hale correspondence has been released to the public, but even without this trove, Gordon has done a good (and fair) job outlining the long, long drawn-out quasi-courtship Hale put up with, and her role as Eliot's far-away, abstract second muse. As for Eliot's first wife, Vivienne, Gordon does an admirable job describing her complicated, tragic character, and her role - probably essential role - in Eliot's development as a poet, critic and a man. As she does throughout the book, Gordon lets events, and facts, speak for themselves, without subjecting these 100-years-ago people to contemporary theories and morals and right-thinking. As biographers sometimes do, Gordon does not pretend she is a marriage councilor. Also, thank goodness, she does not indulge in Freudian or post-Freudian analysis, something that plagued literary biography throughout the 20th century (see Berryman's Stephen Crane, etc. etc.).
This is a fine, fine biography. Wish I'd encountered it 20 years ago, but better late than never.
January 29, 2021
Some random notes:
Eliot's father viewed sex as "nastiness." What effect could this have had on him?
When Eliot went to Paris, he planned to gradually give up English and write in French.
Eliot "sees Londoners hibernating behind their bricks, shut in by sudden rains, and tied to their routines--tea and marmalade at six. Whatever the city--Boston, Paris, London--he saw the same: people who were too apathetic and inarticulate and undisciplined to hope to escape their dreary fates."
"Eliot said several years later that a poet should state a vision which includes a coherent formulation of life outside the poem. Eliot did not wish to create a rag-bag of moods, insights, and sensations; he wanted his poetry to terminate in a formulated philosophy and extend, even further, into a way of life. He decided a poet should realize emotionally and dramatically 'that which constitutes the truth of his time, whatever that may be'."
In the summer of 1911 Eliot made a decision to study philosophy. I like him better already.
In his copy of Hegel's Philosophy of History, Eliot underlined "Thought ought to govern spiritual reality."
Eliot studied the different saints and mystics, such as Saint Theresa, Dame Julian of Norwich, Mme Guyon, Walter Hilton, St John of the Cross, Jacob Bohme, St Bernard.
He studied visions, such as Dame Julian's steady gazing on a crucifix, Jacob Bohme's gazing on a dazzling light reflected from a tin vessel, St. Theresa's assertion she never saw visions with the eye of the body.
One book he read was Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill. Here is a quote: "Visionary experience . . . is a picture which the mind constructs . . . from raw materials already at its disposal."
He focused on the maladies of the religious life, its discipline and curses.
Some other books:
St. Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises
St. John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul
Eliot said The Wasteland was not a "criticism of the contemporary world" but a personal "grouse against life."
Eliot had a sudden precipitous marriage following the death of his young French friend in WWI and a 1921 nervous breakdown. He suffered from what he described to Richard Aldington as "an aboulie and emotional derangement which has been a lifelong affliction." That word may be from the French aboulia (or abulia) which is a "condition marked by loss of will power, an abnormal inability to act." Doesn't that sound so much like Prufrock wondering if he should "disturb the universe?"
Eliot told a New Yorker interviewer: "In The Wasteland, I wasn't even bothering whether I understood what I was saying." I love that quote and have no problem with it.
Eliot thought Pound's poems were "old fashioned." But he likes the way "he says it."
Without Eliot's knowledge, Pound borrowed money to publish Eliot's Prufrock poems.
Eliot's "preoccupations with questions of Christianity, theology, and evil remained undercover because he remained in doubt." I see a lot of time wasted and poems not written.
"Marriage was Eliot's one memorable act of daring self-surrender . . . . A little more than a year after his marriage Eliot wrote of the attractions of passion after a practical, sensible, and emotionally undernourished upbringing."
Three types of male characters with their female counterparts in Eliot according to Gordon:
1. Suffering from "a sense of inadequacy like Prufrock." Here "the woman is unapproachable."
2. Suffering from "emotional barrenness as in the case of the house agent's clerk." Here the woman is "hysterical."
3. Suffering from "automatic lust like Sweeney." Here the woman "remains indifferent."
He does not place Eliot in any of the three categories for they are "caricatures." But I would place him in the first.
Eliot's wife Vivienne remained in ill health for most of her life with him. She had frequent "nervous collapses." There's no telling what kind of medicine she received. That was probably part of the problem along with drinking.
She would eventually enter a mental home where she would die in 1947. Eliot would marry again late in life in 1957 for eight years until his death. He appears to have "at last known happiness."
Virginia Woolf in the early 20s got a little tired of Eliot. "His self pity became a bit tiresome," says Gordon, "and she did not look forward to his visits and she used to sigh over him in her diary: Oh, dear, Eliot on the phone again." The Woolfs and the Bells "treated him as a family joke." Virginia joked, "Eliot will be there in a four-piece suit." That quote should be on T. S. Eliot's gravestone.
When Eliot visited Michelangelo's Pieta in Rome 1926, he fell on his knees to the surprise of the relatives with him. The next year he entered the Church of England. His confessor called him "a thoroughly converted man." It was not some superficial ploy.
"Every poem is an epitaph."--Eliot in Four Quartets.
The Wyndham Lewis portrait of T. S. Eliot:
https://www.npg.org.uk/wyndhamlewis/m...
Photos of Eliot from the T. S. Eliot Society:
http://s699163057.websitehome.co.uk/t...
Here are 326 images:
https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/t....
Eliot's father viewed sex as "nastiness." What effect could this have had on him?
When Eliot went to Paris, he planned to gradually give up English and write in French.
Eliot "sees Londoners hibernating behind their bricks, shut in by sudden rains, and tied to their routines--tea and marmalade at six. Whatever the city--Boston, Paris, London--he saw the same: people who were too apathetic and inarticulate and undisciplined to hope to escape their dreary fates."
"Eliot said several years later that a poet should state a vision which includes a coherent formulation of life outside the poem. Eliot did not wish to create a rag-bag of moods, insights, and sensations; he wanted his poetry to terminate in a formulated philosophy and extend, even further, into a way of life. He decided a poet should realize emotionally and dramatically 'that which constitutes the truth of his time, whatever that may be'."
In the summer of 1911 Eliot made a decision to study philosophy. I like him better already.
In his copy of Hegel's Philosophy of History, Eliot underlined "Thought ought to govern spiritual reality."
Eliot studied the different saints and mystics, such as Saint Theresa, Dame Julian of Norwich, Mme Guyon, Walter Hilton, St John of the Cross, Jacob Bohme, St Bernard.
He studied visions, such as Dame Julian's steady gazing on a crucifix, Jacob Bohme's gazing on a dazzling light reflected from a tin vessel, St. Theresa's assertion she never saw visions with the eye of the body.
One book he read was Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill. Here is a quote: "Visionary experience . . . is a picture which the mind constructs . . . from raw materials already at its disposal."
He focused on the maladies of the religious life, its discipline and curses.
Some other books:
St. Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises
St. John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul
Eliot said The Wasteland was not a "criticism of the contemporary world" but a personal "grouse against life."
Eliot had a sudden precipitous marriage following the death of his young French friend in WWI and a 1921 nervous breakdown. He suffered from what he described to Richard Aldington as "an aboulie and emotional derangement which has been a lifelong affliction." That word may be from the French aboulia (or abulia) which is a "condition marked by loss of will power, an abnormal inability to act." Doesn't that sound so much like Prufrock wondering if he should "disturb the universe?"
Eliot told a New Yorker interviewer: "In The Wasteland, I wasn't even bothering whether I understood what I was saying." I love that quote and have no problem with it.
Eliot thought Pound's poems were "old fashioned." But he likes the way "he says it."
Without Eliot's knowledge, Pound borrowed money to publish Eliot's Prufrock poems.
Eliot's "preoccupations with questions of Christianity, theology, and evil remained undercover because he remained in doubt." I see a lot of time wasted and poems not written.
"Marriage was Eliot's one memorable act of daring self-surrender . . . . A little more than a year after his marriage Eliot wrote of the attractions of passion after a practical, sensible, and emotionally undernourished upbringing."
Three types of male characters with their female counterparts in Eliot according to Gordon:
1. Suffering from "a sense of inadequacy like Prufrock." Here "the woman is unapproachable."
2. Suffering from "emotional barrenness as in the case of the house agent's clerk." Here the woman is "hysterical."
3. Suffering from "automatic lust like Sweeney." Here the woman "remains indifferent."
He does not place Eliot in any of the three categories for they are "caricatures." But I would place him in the first.
Eliot's wife Vivienne remained in ill health for most of her life with him. She had frequent "nervous collapses." There's no telling what kind of medicine she received. That was probably part of the problem along with drinking.
She would eventually enter a mental home where she would die in 1947. Eliot would marry again late in life in 1957 for eight years until his death. He appears to have "at last known happiness."
Virginia Woolf in the early 20s got a little tired of Eliot. "His self pity became a bit tiresome," says Gordon, "and she did not look forward to his visits and she used to sigh over him in her diary: Oh, dear, Eliot on the phone again." The Woolfs and the Bells "treated him as a family joke." Virginia joked, "Eliot will be there in a four-piece suit." That quote should be on T. S. Eliot's gravestone.
When Eliot visited Michelangelo's Pieta in Rome 1926, he fell on his knees to the surprise of the relatives with him. The next year he entered the Church of England. His confessor called him "a thoroughly converted man." It was not some superficial ploy.
"Every poem is an epitaph."--Eliot in Four Quartets.
The Wyndham Lewis portrait of T. S. Eliot:
https://www.npg.org.uk/wyndhamlewis/m...
Photos of Eliot from the T. S. Eliot Society:
http://s699163057.websitehome.co.uk/t...
Here are 326 images:
https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/t....
May 31, 2022
4.5 stars
Gordon provides a fascinating dive into T.S. Eliot’s upbringing, education, career, and early love life. I learned so much about him and feel way more equipped to deal with reading more works of his in the future because of a more intimate understanding of who he was (as I write this review I’ve only read Prufrock).
I know “The Wasteland” is Eliot’s main work and it makes sense that a lot of time was dedicated to it, but I feel like a more apt title perhaps would’ve been “Eliot’s Journey to the Wasteland,” as the whole book kept foreshadowing that poem and the longest chapter by far was “The Wasteland Traversed.” I did enjoy the poetic analysis in addition to the context, but I think I would’ve gained a little more from the reading experience if Gordon had provided even more historical/personal context and then left the readers to draw their own conclusions about the implications of Eliot’s works. Regardless, my perspective was definitely broadened both about the poet and about implications of his works. It’s interesting to see a through-line drawn between all of his poems when we begin to look deeper at his life. I definitely need to read his other works to see this for myself, but everything started falling together while reading this book which was really cool to see.
It was very well written and very thorough. I learned a lot about T.S. Eliot and have now been driven into an obsession with Vivienne Haigh-Wood that will probably last until my dying breath.
Gordon provides a fascinating dive into T.S. Eliot’s upbringing, education, career, and early love life. I learned so much about him and feel way more equipped to deal with reading more works of his in the future because of a more intimate understanding of who he was (as I write this review I’ve only read Prufrock).
I know “The Wasteland” is Eliot’s main work and it makes sense that a lot of time was dedicated to it, but I feel like a more apt title perhaps would’ve been “Eliot’s Journey to the Wasteland,” as the whole book kept foreshadowing that poem and the longest chapter by far was “The Wasteland Traversed.” I did enjoy the poetic analysis in addition to the context, but I think I would’ve gained a little more from the reading experience if Gordon had provided even more historical/personal context and then left the readers to draw their own conclusions about the implications of Eliot’s works. Regardless, my perspective was definitely broadened both about the poet and about implications of his works. It’s interesting to see a through-line drawn between all of his poems when we begin to look deeper at his life. I definitely need to read his other works to see this for myself, but everything started falling together while reading this book which was really cool to see.
It was very well written and very thorough. I learned a lot about T.S. Eliot and have now been driven into an obsession with Vivienne Haigh-Wood that will probably last until my dying breath.
September 29, 2020
Wonderful :D
February 6, 2012
The precursor to Gordon's Eliot's New Life, this biography covers Eliot's life up to his conversion. Beautifully written and intelligent, Gordon writes less of a factual, chronology of Eliot's life and more of a psychological sketch. She shows how each part of Eliot's life affected his work and how it manifested in it. Amazing.
May 10, 2009
Incredibly detailed and insightful. Very useful to anyone looking to better understand Eliot's works. Everything a biography is meant to be, although it doesn't delve into Eliot's later years, unfortunately.
June 15, 2014
A very good biography of the first portion of Eliot's life.
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