T.S Eliot's Life In England

In 1927, Eliot took two important steps in his self-definition. On 29 June he converted to Anglicanism and in November he dropped his American citizenship and became a British subject. In 1928, Eliot summarised his beliefs when he wrote in the preface to his book, For Lancelot Andrewes that "the general point of view may be described as classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion." Eliot was a vestryman of his parish church, Saint Stephen's, Gloucester Road, London, and a life member of the Society of King Charles the Martyr.

By 1932, Eliot had been contemplating a separation from his wife for some time. When Harvard University offered him the Charles Eliot Norton professorship for the 1932-1933 academic year, he accepted, leaving Vivien in England. Upon his return in 1933, Eliot officially separated from Vivien. He avoided all but one meeting with his wife between his leaving for America in 1932 and her death in 1947.

From 1946 to 1957, Eliot shared a flat with his friend, John Davy Hayward, who gathered and archived Eliot's papers and styled himself Keeper of the Eliot Archive. He also collected Eliot's pre-"Prufrock" verse, commercially published after Eliot's death as Poems Written in Early Youth. When Eliot and Hayward separated their household in 1957, Hayward retained his collection of Eliot's papers, which he bequeathed to King's College, Cambridge in 1965.

Eliot's second marriage was happy but short. On 10 January 1957, he married Esmé Valerie Fletcher, to whom he was introduced by Collin Brooks. In sharp contrast to his first marriage, Eliot knew Miss Fletcher well, as she had been his secretary at Faber and Faber since August 1949. Like his marriage to Vivien, the wedding was kept a secret to preserve his privacy. The ceremony was held in a church at 6.15 a.m. with virtually no one other than his wife's parents in attendance. Valerie was 37 years younger than her husband. Since Eliot's death she has dedicated her time to preserving his legacy; she has edited and annotated The Letters of T. S. Eliot and a facsimile of the draft of The Waste Land.

Eliot died of emphysema in London on 4 January 1965. For many years, he had health problems owing to his heavy smoking, often being laid low with bronchitis or tachycardia. His body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium and, according to Eliot's wishes, the ashes taken to St Michael's Church in East Coker, the village from which Eliot's ancestors emigrated to America. There, a simple wall plaque commemorates him with a quote from his poem, "East Coker": "In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning." On the second anniversary of his death, a large stone placed on the floor of Poets' Corner in London's Westminster Abbey was dedicated to Eliot. This commemoration contains his name, an indication that he had received the Order of Merit, dates, and a quotation from his poem, "Little Gidding": "the communication / Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond / the language of the living."

No comments:

Post a Comment

Labels