How to Pick a Possum1

To Geoffrey Faber Esqre.

When the flowering nettle’s in blossom

And spring is about in the air,

How delightful to meet the O’Possum2

With fragments of hay in his hair.

When the bullocks have horns (and they toss ’em)

And summer is seen on the lea,

How delightful to meet the O’Possum

As he swings from a neighbouring tree.

At home, he appears in a mitre

And a cope, or a cape and a cowl.

Although he’s not known as a fighter

He has a most terrible growl.

On some days he’s duller or brighter,

He abominates pencil and ink;

Yet he bangs on an ancient typewriter

Without ever stopping to think.

He’s inclined to frequent railway stations

Where he studies the maps on the wall;

He is skilful at solitaire patience,3

And never reads poetry at all.

From April to middle-December

He is apt to occur in the parks,

For which reason it’s well to remember

His peculiar distinguishing marks:

His habits are strictly arboreal,4

Affording protection from cows;5

And in spring he affects such sartorial

Display as the fashion allows.6

When he walks, he is quite perpendicular

Although rather weak in the knees;

His diet’s extremely particular,

For he eats almost nothing but cheese.7

He’s a nose, which in summer is pinky,

And in winter a beautiful blue;

He has hair, which is not at all kinky—

Which I would not say, were it not true.

He has ears, which are almost symmetrical,

And of use when the wind is behind;

And a mouth, which is rather upsetrical

And not always easy to find.

At the sound of a sudden sub-pœna

He withdraws in alarm to his lair—

Very much like the spotted hyæna

When pursued by the cinnamon bear.8

In the summer, when flowers are blooming,

His voice is compelling and gruff

And cannot be confused with the booming

Of the bittern,9 or cry of the chough.

In the winter, when fields are forsaken,

He develops a saturnine laugh,

Which prevents him from being mistaken

For the hyperborean giraffe.

He has teeth, which are false and quite beautiful,10

And a wig, with an elegant queue;

And desires to convey his most dutiful

Respects to your family and you.11

[T. S. Eliot]

Notes
  1. 1.

    King’s HB/H/2: ‘Copy of Verses by T. S. Eliot sent to me [JDH] in September, 1937.’

    ‘Possum’ was a moniker bestowed upon Eliot by Ezra Pound. Various species of opossum are found in the Americas from Canada to Argentina.

  2. 2.

    JDH note: ‘The nickname by which the author was known to his friends.’

    ‘How delightful to meet Mr. Hodgson!’, ‘Five-Finger Exercises IV: Lines to Ralph Hodgson Esqre.’, l. 1 (Poems I).

  3. 3.

    ‘Auden told me how, visiting Eliot at the flat which he shared with John Hayward in Chelsea, he found him playing Patience. “Tell me,” he asked, “why do you like playing Patience?” Eliot reflected gravely for a few moments and then replied, “Well, I suppose it’s because it’s the nearest thing to being dead”’ (Stephen Spender, Eliot [London: Fontana/Collins, 1975], 240). Cited in Poems I, 808.

  4. 4.

    This stanza is given as a ‘P.S.’ in King’s HB/H/2.

  5. 5.

    See John Hayward, ‘London Letter’, New York Sun, 19 Dec. 1936: ‘Mr Eliot is composing nonsense verses and has written me a verse-epistle about cows …’

  6. 6.

    See for example TSE to JDH, 13 Dec. 1939, on visiting Raynes Park County School: ‘I dressed for the occasion with some care, and I think made the right compromise: viz. a black short jacket and grey stripe trousers, but a light blue-grey wool shirt, with the grey tie usual with the black jacket. It seemed to strike the right note between formality and informality.’

  7. 7.

    TSE’s relish for cheeses was legendary. He wrote to The Times, 29 Nov. 1935, 15, on the subject of Stilton cheese:

    May I be allowed the pleasure of supporting Sir John Squire’s manly and spirited defence of Stilton cheese? At the same time I should like to add, before it is too late, a few reflections on the project of a statue.

    I do not suggest for a moment that the inventor of Stilton cheese is not worthy of a statue. I only criticize the proposal on the ground of the transitory character of the result. Certainly, all the business of public subscriptions, speeches, broadcasts, the wrangling over designs, the eventual unveiling with a military band, and the excellent photograph in The Times – this is all exciting indeed. But once a statue is erected, who in this country ever looks at it? Even the work of Mr. [Jacob] Epstein is now so familiar to the common man that he no longer stops to ask what it is all about. In a few years’ time the Stiltonian monument would be just another bump in a public place, no more inspected than the rank and file of statesmen, warriors, and poets.

    No, Sir, if cheese is to be brought back to its own in England, nothing less is required than the formation of a Society for the Preservation of Ancient Cheeses. There is a great deal of work which such a society, and its members individually, could do. For instance, one of its first efforts should be to come to terms, by every possible persuasion, with the potteries which supply those dishes with three compartments, one for little biscuits, one for pats of butter, and one for little cubes of gorgonzola, so called. The production of these dishes could be stopped by a powerful organization of cheese-eaters. Also troops of members should visit all the hotels and inns in Gloucestershire, demanding Double Gloster. (On two occasions I have had to add the explanation: ‘it is a kind of cheese.’)

    On one other point I disagree with Sir John. I do not think even the finest Stilton can hold the field against the noble Old Cheshire when in prime condition – as it very seldom is. But this is no time for disputes between eaters of English cheese: the situation is too precarious, and we must stick together.

    TSE to Stephen Spender, 21 Nov. 1939:

    A proper Wensleydale should weigh at least five pounds, but I have never heard of or come across any of the colossal size of fifteen pounds. I should have thought something like eight pounds would probably turn out best. But I write to assure you that if you had sent me a proper Wensleydale, I should not have known what to do with it. I should have had to present it to the Club, and consequently should probably have only had a few mouthfuls from it myself. So your midgets are just what I can do with. I am afraid that economic conditions are gradually forcing the great English cheeses out of existence. We can only hope that they or something as good will revive, if and when there is a proper revival of the country’s agricultural life and population.

    A proper Wensleydale in good condition is probably the most interesting of all cheeses. I say the most interesting, because when it is a good cheese in good condition, its peculiarity is that no two mouthfuls taste exactly alike. The result is that no two spoonfuls of Wensleydale are identical, and even the same spoonful would be different if eaten in a different order of mouthfuls. Each, however, is always a perfect melody in itself. If I were to draw on remote analogies from other arts, I should compare Wensleydale to Mozart, in contrast to a more ripe old Cheshire or to the majestic Norwegian Gammell Ost, both of which combine the sensations of beauty and terror as nobody but Beethoven knows how to do.

    TSE to Anne Ridler, 22 Sept. 1948:

    You will be reporting on Thos. Merton after I have left … One is not frantic to take on a new American poet with the market as it is, but he does seem to have had a success there; and after all he is a Trappist, and the Trappists in Canada make some excellent cheese.

  8. 8.

    The spotted hyena – Crocuta crocuta – is a species of hyena native to Sub-Saharan Africa; the largest of the Hyaenidae, it lives a very social life in a matriarchal society. The cinnamon bear – Ursus americanus cinnamomum – is a subspecies of the American black bear; native to central and western USA, it has red-brown hair, unsurprisingly resembling cinnamon; omnivorous and mostly nocturnal, it can live for thirty years. In the wild at least, a cinnamon bear will not get to pursue a spotted hyena.

    ‘Cinnamon Bear’ was an American character – ‘Paddy O’Cinnamon’ – in the twenty-six fifteen-minute episodes of a fantasy serial produced by Transco (Transcription Company of America) and broadcast for six days a week in the lead-up to Christmas 1937. Cinnamon Bear guides Judy and Jimmy Barton into the country of Maybeland in their bid to recover the stolen Silver Star that usually adorns their Christmas tree.

  9. 9.

    Oliver Goldsmith, An History of the Earth, and Animated Nature (1774), Bk VI, ch. VI: ‘Those who have walked in an evening by the sedgy sides of unfrequented rivers must remember a variety of notes from different water-fowl … But of all these sounds there is none so dismally hollow as the booming of the bittern’ (cited in Poems II, 213).

  10. 10.

    TSE to Alison Tandy (‘Poonie’) – who had just lost a tooth or two – 16 Apr. 1937:

    … think upon Poor Possum’s case.

    For he is much worse off than you

    In losing teeth: but two by two

    And year by year, they are extracted.

    His agony is more protracted.

    And though you now must feed on mushes,

    You very soon will have new tushes

    (To crack a nut or chicken bone)

    Which you can call your very own.

    But Poor Old Possum has to wait

    For something called a Dental Plate

    Worse was to come. TSE to JDH, 14 July 1941:

    I have to have teeth extracted on Thursday to the number of three. Three weeks hence, four more. They are mostly dead moalers [sc. molars]. This will introduce a new topick of conversation, between Geoffrey and myself, from which I fear that you will be for some years to come excluded: that of dental Plates. At a go I advance well ahead of him, by having to have upper & lower, whereas he has only lower.

    TSE to E. McKnight Kauffer, 29 Aug. 1941: ‘… since July [I] have gone through the various stages of having most of my teeth out and new ones supplied.’

  11. 11.

    See for example, R. Turner, The Parlour Letter-Writer, and Secretary’s Assistant (Philadelphia, 1835): ‘From a Rich Gentleman to a Lady, with a Proposal of Marriage, August 1st, 19—’, 119; with ‘The Lady’s Answer’: ‘You will have the goodness to present my most dutiful respects to them [the Gentleman’s family], and accept the sincere and tender affection of your respectful and honoured …’, 120.