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FGM
Saturday January 5 2013 | the times
Weekend
ISMAIL NIYAZ
nonfiction
T. S. Eliot – the man who isn’t there MYRON DAVIS / TIME LIFE / GETTY IMAGES
Eliot’s letters shy away from the truth of his vexed sex life
W
hen the third volume of T. S. Eliot’s letters came out I calculated that at its present rate the series would complete in 300 years. The fourth has been prompter, but I guess few readers of this newspaper will live to see the last of Eliot’s letters in print. It simply does not seem to want to see itself published. There are good reasons, which I’ll come to later. First, the praise. This is a beautifully produced, tactfully annotated volume. Eliot is not writing his greatest poetry or criticism over these two years. The correspondence chronicles Eliot the editor. His journal, The Criterion, has lost its financial backer. The publishing firm Faber and Faber, of which he is a director, is having financial troubles. It’s a fascinating story, but 800 pages of overwhelmingly business correspondence is wearying. We catch occasional glimpses of the man behind the editorial mask. There are a dozen letters by Eliot’s wife Vivienne, a woman sick in body and mind. In one of them she tells a friend, “I am very unhappy and . . . quite defenceless . . . If you hear of me being murdered, don’t be surprised.” In fact, what happened to her six years later was scarcely kinder: incarceration in a mental institution. “Tom”, she reports, has taken up dancing and is learning to drive. He has had two teeth removed. But as one reads on and on Eliot the man is a veritable Macavity. He isn’t there. Nor did he intend to be. He instructed Valerie, his second wife, 38 years his junior, not to publish his letters. He later lifted his prohibition, “On condition,” as she recalled in her preface to the first volume, “that I [Valerie] did the selecting and editing.” He was adamant that no biographies should be authorised or in any way assisted.
The Letters of T. S. Eliot Volume 4: 1928-1929 Edited by Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden Faber and Faber, 836pp £40 £32
John Sutherland
Was Eliot an anti-Semite, a proto-fascist, or was he gay? There is no evidence here
How much selecting and editing was there?There was certainly alot of pre-emptive destruction. There are, for example, virtually no family letters in this volume, although many were written. The prohibitions Eliot laid on his widow were crushing. That it took 23 years after his death for the first volume of The Letters (without the defining terms “collected” or “selected”) to appear was symptomatic. Valerie was, as her 1974 edition of The Waste Land manuscripts shows, an able editor. But she simply could not bring herself to release her husband’s literary remains. I saw something of her in her later years. She was an admirable woman, fanatically loyal to the man she would always love and with whom she had eight happy years of
fiction A wonderful, winding road to contentment Something Like Happy by John Burnside Jonathan Cape, 244pp £16.99 £13.99 e-book £17.72
Paul Dunn
Moving stories of truckers, transvestites, dreams and delusions
H
ow many synonyms for “poignant” are there? You’ll need 12 more to do justice to these wonderful stories by John Burnside without lapsing into repetition. Best known as a poet — he won both the Forward and T.S. Eliot prizes in 2011 — Burnside is just as acclaimed for his fiction writing(he hada novel on theCosta prize shortlist the same year). Perhaps that is why
these stories are free of the self-consciousness of some poets’ prose, but retain an intensity that transcends narrative. Whether it’s the oppressive air of a factory town, the smell of coming snow or the minute detail of self-delusion, Burnside nails it with pinpoint accuracy. Each story is told by a narrator on the edge of events, or is about something that doesn’t quite happen:the womanwhose sister goes out with a man who beats up his brother over a borrowed sweater; the lecturer who fantasises about, but never seduces, her students; the knife robbery averted. In Sunburn, for example, a man explains why he likes to get his skin burnt on
for better or worse T. S. Eliot with his second wife Valerie in Chicago, 1959
marriage. The obituaries of her death last November were too polite to describe the price she paid. Long after his death, she would, after a few drinks, offer to introduce whoever she was talking with to “Tom”. In the letterless vacuum speculation ran rife. Eliot, it was asserted, was an antiSemite. There is no evidence of it here. Letters record him encouraging a young Jewish writer and helping an older Jewish man of letters get British citizenship. He was gay (no evidence here). He was a proto-Fascist (no evidence apart from a carefully armslength exchanges with the French crank Charles Maurras).
the first hot day of summer. He is trapped by the memory of when he was 14 and flirted with the woman next door as she rubbedsoothinglotion into his burnt shoulders. This detachment links the stories. Denied real happiness, these are people finding solace where they can — in a plate of hot toast or the memory of a perfect ice cream. Even a love affair can be just “a game we played to ease the boredom . . . of being the people we turned out to be”. What they all know is that “Happy is dangerous. Happy costs you.” In The Cold Outside, Bill, an unhappily married lorry driver dying of cancer, offers a lift to a young transvestite who has been beaten at an S&M party. As they talk, a brief, intense relationship grows between them. But this is never sexual; instead emotional comfort is exchanged. As Bill says, “It was his happiness I was curious about — because I thought he wanted me to imagine him as happy”. The story ends with
travel The Bandos Island resort, Maldives (21), and below, the Riad el Fenn, Morocco (47)
Finally, as Mrs Eliot became terminally incapable, Faber recruited the eminent and energetic Professor John Haffenden. Since he is, like me, “emeritus” (ie, well retired), I suspect that he will not have a long spell at the wheel. But he will, one hopes, get the show on the road and drive it faster. It will not be easy. There are unexploded bombs in Haffenden’s way. A principal reason Eliot was so keen to destroy or control the publication ofhis correspondence was his vexed sex life. The marriage was on the rocks in 1928-29. Eliot would, later, be party to Vivienne’s committal. There will surely be some surviving correspondence relative to that painful business. One of the other womenin Eliot’s life was the American Emily Hale. It was suspected, when they were both young, that they would marry. They didn’t. The relationship came back to life at the period covered by these letters. It was intimate, although Hale gets only one passing footnote reference. When Vivienne died, wretchedly, in 1947, Emily again expected a proposal. None came. She was infuriated when Eliot married his young secretary in 1957 and broke off all communication. To Eliot’s matching fury, Emily deposited his 1,200 letters to her (he burnt hers to him) in Princeton Library. That huge trove comes into public access, by Hale’s ordinance, in 2019. The preface to this volume indicates that the Faber editors do not know what they contain. One thing is certain: no more T. S. Macavity. The Hale letters will open the way to a slew of “now it can be told” biographies. And how will Faber handle this hot potato? A separate volume, leapfrogging the years? Or will Haffenden and his successors plant them in the relevant volumes as the series churns on for another 20 instalments? This project is going to get a lot more interesting over the coming decades. It’s a pity that I — and many of you, I fear — won’t be around to see how it all works out.
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Bill back at home, waking his sleeping wife in a world that “felt familiar and more or less happy”. The Deer Larder is a perfect ghost story for the internet age. The narrator receives a series of misdirected e-mails telling of spooky happenings on the island of Jura. Thinking that it is a cyber hoax, he fails to intervene. Then a press clipping reveals the truth. Again, Burnside is interested in the framing; a man at his computer watching the main event unfold at a distance. In that story, Burnside writes of those surreal fragments found on the internet: “Sad little narratives of trouble and desire, of achievement and loss.” That description would serve these stories well: nothing cries out to be longer or outstays its welcome. Each is a perfectly pitched, perfectly weighted gem.
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To order books at discounted prices call 0845 2712134
50 breaks for body and soul From a raw-food detox in Italy to yoga in India, Caroline Sylger Jones picks the world’s best spa breaks Change your life 1 Wellness retreats Kamalaya Koh Samui, Thailand
This Thai retreat is a soothing blend of contemporary spaces and well-thought-out holistic programmes. It’s set beside a private lagoon at the quiet end of Koh Samui, in a fairytale ravine strewn with granite boulders and tropical plants. You can now attend complimentary Stress Dissolution and Mastering Relationships workshops to help you deal with stress at home or learn how to get on better with your loved ones. Whatever your needs, leave plenty of time for the exceptional Thai massage. Details A seven-night programme costs
from £1,715pp (00 66 0 77429800, kamalaya.com)
2 Relax and revive, Ynyshir Hall Wales
A cosseting nine-bedroom 16th-century manor house next to an RSPB Nature Reserve in the Powys countryside runs three-night “Relax & Revive” breaks designed by the owner, Joan Reen. Joan has put together an impressive selection of therapies and activities led by local experts from which you can pick and choose, including meditation walks, shiatsu, bio-energy healing, kinesiology, tai chi and massage . Details From £800pp forthree nights, with meals, two sessions and access to the reserve (01654 781209, ynyshirhall.co.uk)
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Experiences are arranged by your own personal adventure butler, including foraging and meditation
3 Adventures in the Intrinsic Cornwall New for 2013, this life-coaching holiday is based at a luxury cottage and led by Nicolaas Engelbertus, a personal-development coach and author of The 7 Step Guide for Resilience. The break centres on practical techniques for change and includes a range of experiences arranged by your own personal “adventure butler”, from foraging and seascape painting to beach meditation. They can also arrange a couples coaching break with kids in tow. Details From £995pp for three nights, including accommodation and coaching (0843 5085005, adventuretemples.com)