Vers Pour la Foulque1
Feuillet d’Album2
Allons nous promener, si tu veux.3
Nous allons diriger nos pas
Du côté de chez Bina:
Cherchons le numero vingt-deux.4
N’as-tu pas vu, que c’est grotesque,
Ce paysage aux plates-bandes ternes?
C’est un pays de balivernes!
Il n’est pas lieu moins pittoresque.
Le facteur même grince des dents
Et prend un aspect plus farouche
En passant par ce quartier louche5—
Un faubourg des moins alléchants.
C’est un pays de bambochades,
Où par des portiques de Willett6
Des boniches insolentes vous guettent
En attendant vos sérénades.
Peu de vivant qui se remue—
Un terrain vague et désolé:
On voit des chats avariés,
Et même parfois une ancienne grue.
Mais derrière une vaste fenêtre
Où s’étale un vase de nénuphars,7
Ecoute! des chuchotements épars
Et des rires fous. C’est lui! l’être
Immonde! c’est la Tarentule
Aui yeux multiples, an vénin sur,
Qul nous fait, d’un regard impur,
Un geste que le strabisme annule.
Allons nous promener, si tu veux;
Nous allons filer droit jusqu’à
Ces chétifs jardins de Bina:
Cherchons le numéro vingt-deux.
Nous allons nous donner la peine8
De nous soulager—et sonner;9
Laissons nos culs se ventiler
En attendant la Madeleine.10
[T. S. Eliot]
Notes
- 1.
TSE to Emily Hale, 31 Aug. 1935: ‘Geoffrey has a feeling of inferiority because he can’t talk French, and because he fancies that there is such a thing as a Brilliant Society (represented for him by Ottoline [Morrell], of whom he is terrified) in which he would feel a fool. He has a kind of uneasy awe of Morley and me, because he thinks we are quick-witted, and that he isn’t, and that is an unnecessary barrier.’
JDH (22 Bina Gardens, London SW5) to TSE, 17 Nov. 1937: ‘My Dear Tom: I was overcome with amusement – and by the brilliance of “Vers pour La Foulque”. For sheer virtuosity, and indeed for everything else, it surpasses all the poems in the canon! I showed them to Louis Roché, a secretary of Embassy, who was here last night, and asked him to make any necessary corrections. I find that the few he suggested have been incorporated in the improved and emended version which came this morning. But there are still two small revisions needed to make the verses perfect. “Tu vois bien, que c’est bien grotesque” [l. 5] is apparently not French as she is spoke. Roché suggests: “Ne vois pas combine c’est grotesque”. Also, “grincer” being an intransitive verb, the first line of the third stanza must read: “Le facteur même grince des dents” [l. 9]. “Peu de vivant”, by the way, which you’ve now altered, was incorrect. I hope to hear in due course if there are any more poems, apart from this one, to be added to the list I sent to F.V.M. You see I’m not in a funny mood this morning – so I’ll just subscribe myself/Aillevard, duc et pair.’
Aillevard – sometimes Jean-Baptiste Aillevard – was one of JDH’s many secret sobriquets. John Smart, Tarantula’s Web, 105: ‘Letters between Hayward and Eliot form a tapestry of allusion to a writer whose work they both loved, and Eliot could quote by heart: Arthur Conan Doyle. They both relished the world of detectives and aliases – Hayward was Jean-Baptiste Aillevard, Jonny Heywald, Miss Eleanor Gallielax, Headmistress of St Winifred’s School, Eastbourne, or Tarantula; Eliot, Sherlock Holmes, J. Hussein B.A. (Calcutta), Tom Possum – and so on. The correspondence is full of references to disguises, mysterious plots, and letters written on plain pages in case they fell into the wrong hands.’
(On 3 Mar. 1936 TSE was informed by S. R. Sheppard, Clerk of the Hospital, Hill End Hospital for Mental and Nervous Disorders, St Albans, Herts., that an acquaintance of his named Frederick Giles Porlock had been admitted to the hospital as a voluntary patient on 2 Mar. ‘His case appears to be one of delusional insanity of the uncommon form known as Aillevard’s Syndrome. It takes the form of entropic diathesis commonly observed in those who have suffered from acute psychological trauma … At the moment he is entirely pre-occupied with a system of numerical cypher – a characteristic of the disease.’ But the letter may of course be apocryphal.)
- 2.
Feuillet d’album – ‘Album leaf’ – signifies an occasional piece, usually for piano or voice, by a classical composer, such as Ludwig van Beethoven or Hector Berlioz.
- 3.
‘Si tu veux’ is a phrase that Laurent Tailhade likes to use (as in his poem ‘Si tu veux, prenons un fiacre’ in ‘Quatorzains d’été’).
- 4.
JDH note: ‘The residence of Mr. H.’
- 5.
Laurent Tailhade rhymes ‘douche’ with ‘farouche’ in ‘Hydrothérapie’, ll. 1–13, in Poèmes aristophanesques, 28.
- 6.
JDH note: ‘Wm. Willett (temp. XIX cent) creator of “Pont St. Dutch” & “Etruscan Tudor”.’
- 7.
‘Nénuphar’ crops up in several of Tailhade’s poems: see Poèmes aristophaniques, Paris, 1914. See Tailhade, ‘Et vous garde Cypris de blémes nénuphars’, in ‘Vielles actrices’, 39; ‘Plure d’hymen du nénuphar’, in ‘Parabase symbolique’, 159; and ‘Sons corps d’affranchi grec; blanc comme un nénufar’, in ‘Épigramme’ (l. 7), in Poèmes élégiaques (Paris, 1907), 57.
- 8.
In King’s HB/H/2, TSE wrote ‘Perhaps best omitted’ against this ninth stanza.
- 9.
An even more vulgar variant is at HB/H/2a: ‘De chier sur le seuil. Sonnez!’ (‘To shit on the doorstep. Ring!’) – with TSE’s autograph comment in the margin of the stanza: ‘Perhaps best omitted.’
- 10.
JDH note: ‘One Magdalen, a rude skivvy at no. 22. Afterwards in a convent but was removed.’