The O’Possum Strikes Back1

At a point between Edgware and Morden,

At a place between Wapping and Kew,

Dwells a very hardworking churchwarden2

With at least six men’s business to do.3

His name is not Spender or Auden,4

And his pleasures are simple and few:

An occasional abuse of Burgundian booze,5

An occasional cruise on the Serps6 (or the Ouse7)

And a view of the gnu at the Zoo.8

Here and there between Wessex and Mercia,9

Here and there between Orkney and Kent,

Strays a wholly preposterous burser,10

And before he is there he has went.

And I even suspect that his spouse11 is

Unaware how his time has been spent:

An occasional tea with a casual spinster

At Stranraer, Kidwelly, or else Kidderminster,

An occasional spree on the banks of the Dee,

An occasional fling among heather (or ling)

Where he points his proboscis at innocent grouses—

Or a revel at Burton-on-Trent.12

But what among worst things still worse is,

And again among worse things is worser,

I must mention the sybilline13 verses

Of this more than surrealist burser.

Not content with the bursing of burses

And picking his tenantry’s purses

(The technical skill of his verses

Is such, I acknowledge, as I respect,

Whether Latin or in Yorkshire dialect14)

He over the mill throws his bonnet,

And produces a frivolous sonnet

To one who, when considering how his life is spent,15

Regards Montrachet16 as his native element,

And does not often repent.

[T. S. Eliot]

Notes
  1. 1.

    King’s HB/H/2: ‘To Geoffrey Faber Esqre.’ JDH notes, in King’s HB/H/2: ‘Copy of Verses by T. S. Eliot, sent to me by the author, Sept. 1937.’

    Cf. Sapper, Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (US, 1933).

  2. 2.

    JDH note: ‘An office held by the author at St Stephen’s Church, Gloucester Rd, S.W.7.’

  3. 3.

    TS footnote in King’s HB/H/2:

    E.G. presuming poets to be taken down, Sir,

    Or morning coffee with our Mrs. Trouncer.

    Margaret Trouncer (1903–82) was author of A Courtesan of Paradise: Louise, duchesse de La Vallière, or Sister Louise of the Order of Mount Carmel (F&F, 1936). See <http://archive.thetablet.co.uk/article/18th-december-1982/23/ obituary-margaret-trouncer>

  4. 4.

    JDH note: ‘Mr W. H. Auden & Mr Stephen Spender, young poets published by the author.’

  5. 5.

    JDH note: ‘Mr E was a great lover of fine Burgundy.’

  6. 6.

    The Serpentine, the twenty-eight-acre lake in Hyde Park, London, created in 1730.

  7. 7.

    It is not clear which River Ouse TSE has in mind but it is most probably the Sussex River Ouse. The Ouse system comprises a total of 750 miles of rivers, streams and brooks, with its source near Slaugham in West Sussex. The principal River Ouse flows south-east and then southwards via Lewes until reaching the sea at Newhaven. Leonard and Virginia Woolf lived close to the river.

  8. 8.

    The Zoological Gardens, Regent’s Park, London – Regent’s Park Zoo – included gnus (wildebeests) in its collection in the 1930s.

  9. 9.

    Wessex: Anglo-Saxon kingdom in the south of Great Britain, c. 519–927. Mercia: dominant Anglo-Saxon kingdom south of the Humber, 527–879.

  10. 10.

    JDH note: ‘Mr F was Estates Bursar of All Souls Coll: in Oxford.’ GCF held that post from 1923 to 1951.

  11. 11.

    JDH: ‘One Enid.’

    Enid Faber (1901–95) – daughter of Sir Henry Erle Richards (1861–1922), Fellow of All Souls College and Chichele Professor of International Law and Diplomacy at Oxford University – married GCF on 30 Dec. 1920.

  12. 12.

    JDH note: ‘A fleer at the brewing interests of Mr F’s family.’

    At the invitation of his father’s cousin, David Faber, Geoffrey Faber worked from 1919 to 1923 for the family brewing firm of Strong & Co., of Romsey.

  13. 13.

    Sybilline: misspelling in the original. Cf. Coleridge, Sibylline Leaves (1817) (cited in Poems II, 217).

  14. 14.

    See Geoffrey Faber’s verses – published under the pseudonym ‘Offa E. Freyberg’ (an anagram) – ‘Poetae Cuiusdam Ignoti: Carmen Singulare’ [translation: ‘Some Unknown Poets: A Single Song’], The Criterion 16: LXV (July 1937), 655–6; its twelve stanzas open:

    O qui quondam homines cavos

    vastamque terram vaticinae lyrae

    chorda celebrasti receptis

    a pedibus simul abstinentis

    et syllabarum bis resonantium

    frequente meta, nunc tibi debitas

    poenas poposcerunt, amice,

    Mnenonides, tibi dant flagellum.

    Nam super ausus visere frigidos

    Septentriones, insolitus meri,

    quot pocula exhausisse vino

    plena Calendonio fateris,

    seu vi ferorum territus hospitum,

    sermone longo seu magis et magis

    lassus, propinabasve laeti

    more sodalicio iuvenci?

    Including both private and public jokes – such as a reference to the fact that TSE and Frank Morley had undertaken an alcohol-enhanced trip to Scotland in the first week of April 1937 – Faber offered the following translation of his cliquey quatrains:

    [N.B. – Owing to the obscurity of many of its allusions this ode requires very careful study. An exact and literal translation without pretension to literary merit, will be of more assistance to the reader than a free rendering.]

    O thou who formerly hast celebrated hollow men and a wasted land with loosened string of a prophetic lyre [a lyre] abstaining at once from received [metrical] feet and from the frequent turning-point of twice re-echoing syllables, now from thee, friend, the Muses have demanded due punishments, to thee they present the scourge. For recently having dared to visit the cold north, being unused to unmixed wine, how many cups filled with Caledonian wine dost thou confess to have drained, whether terrified by the violence of savage hosts, or whether more and more exhausted by long talk, or wast thou going on drinking healths in the companionable manner of a cheerful youth?

    GCF to FVM, ‘Friday’ (1937): ‘All my spare strength has gone into those Alcaics for TSE – now finished & being annotated. Very elaborate joke indeed.’ (Faber E6/48)

    TSE to Dwight Macdonald, 25 Mar. 1959: ‘Hangover or no hangover my Latin is not adequate for parody poems in that language. One is not taught Latin verse composition in American schools but proses only. The only such poem that ever appeared in The Criterion was by Sir Geoffrey Faber, who is a good classical scholar.’

  15. 15.

    John Milton, Sonnet 19: ‘When I consider how my light is spent’ (cited in Poems II, 217).

  16. 16.

    Montrachet is a type of dry white wine made from the Chardonnay grape in the southern part of the Côte d’Or. It is very expensive.