‘X onlif /^^sii3Sf ,nf f,^Z^ £>/^ UlCn”^^’^^nTHE SCANDAL IN T.S. ELIOT’S LIFEnby James W. TuttletonnTS. Eliot (1888-1965), dead now for more than 20n, years, continues to vex those for whom his poetry isnnot complete — or is not completely to be understood—nwithout an intimate knowledge of his biography. At the timenof his death, of course, Eliot’s reputation was somewhat inndecline, despite the Nobel Prize of 1948, the Order ofnMerit, and many other awards. But during the years that henflourished, his literary authority was so commanding thatnthose irritated by what he had done and what he stood fornfelt the need to diminish his remarkable achievement oncen]ames W. Tuttleton is professor of English at New YorknUniversity.niW MK hai/e k> Mi/e ifH-n^e6C atUMtt?rf&i:^'”^ii*Lk^nI^’it^ io/n-ie-/^i^^ risa).n’ua^t,n7^ei£. i^jSti, a eUxiprn^^ Z et^oUit /i^ ^J^sa ‘^- In;^;^/fe^^W^.-^- -nk^-Ce^ T (ii^ ^”^2^ ^*^/;nmxU-‘^s h5i{1 jy/6nis a/c/}e^ Hit e^er’nPte^Sif •pMecffo^’^’ 7An’Bransdi, MIM letii^n141 CHRONICLESnnnhe was gone. Gossip about his life was always a Londonnpastime, but the passing of the great poet sharpened theninterest in the story of his life, and more than a few readersnstill look forward to revelations that will supposedly clarifynwhat is felt to be the hidden scandal of his youth.nCertain already-known facts about Eliot’s past give antitillating foretaste of the anticipated scandal. It is known, fornexample, that Eliot broke with his distinguished family innCambridge, Massachusetts, and that he insisted on livingnapart from them in London. Why, is not perfectly clear.nThen there was the discovery of his King Bolo verses, withntheir obscene sexual ribaldry. Some of the early poems liken”Rhapsody on a Windy Night” were said to suggest that henhad prowled the Paris red-light districts, a la Charles-LouisnPhillipe’s Bubu de Montparnasse. Is there a concealednmurder somewhere (“Any man has to, needs, to wants to /nOnce in a lifetime, do a girl in”)? Even odder was Eliot’snimpulsive marriage to Vivienne Haigh-Wood in 1915,nwhich estranged him even further from his family. Luridntidbits about this strange marriage were traded by insiders innLondon. Didn’t this vivid and impulsive girl leave Eliot,nshortly after the marriage, to seek the counsel (if not sexualncomfort) of the priapic Bertrand Russell, who had beennEliot’s philosophy tutor at Harvard? He must have beennimpotent — no? Isn’t that the source of his mysteriousnaboulie? Didn’t Eliot’s exhausting struggle to support thenbizarre and frequently ill Vivienne produce that famousnnervous breakdown, the psychiatric medical treatment henunderwent in a Swiss sanitarium, and the despair of ThenWaste Land (1922)? (“By the waters of Leman I sat downnand wept.”)nOr was it because he was in love with somebody else?nWhat about those hundreds of letters in the PrincetonnUniversity library, written to his American friend EmilynHale — closed to inspection until the next century? Was shenhis lifelong mistress? And wasn’t there something secretivenand scandalous in his sudden marriage in 1957 to ValerienFletcher, a woman so much younger than he? And if there’snnothing to any of this, wasn’t he at least a crypto-fascist whonhated American democracy? In the continuous effort to dignsomething up to downgrade Eliot’s reputation as a writer,nthere have been, in short, many insinuations of scandal, butnfew surprising revelations.nEliot, it must be said, indirectly contributed to thisnappetite for scandal. As his fame grew, he insisted that hisnpoetry was impersonal, indeed, that all great poetry was, ornought to be. And his resistance to inquiry into his private lifensimply whetted curiosity and led many readers to supposenthat some very dark secret, some wonderfully rich and juicynscandal, was hidden in the obscurity of his early years. Thenmanifest element of guilt in his verse and his absolvingnembrace of Christianity in 1927, together with his prohibitionnof a biography and of an edition of his letters (so farnhonored by his widow) made it seem inevitable to some thatnthe life of Eliot, when it was finally and definitively written,nwould disclose moral horrors that only the despair of ThenWaste Land and The Hollow Men could adequately express.nSince his death, of course, we have had a number ofn