{"id":1001,"date":"2026-09-28T19:59:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T18:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/?p=1001"},"modified":"2026-11-08T18:36:37","modified_gmt":"2026-11-08T18:36:37","slug":"introduction","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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Introduction<\/h1>\n<\/header>\n
\n

\u2018Oh yes, one wants to keep one\u2019s hand in, you know, in every type of poem, serious and frivolous and proper and improper. One doesn\u2019t want to lose one\u2019s skill.\u2019<\/p>

T. S. Eliot, interviewed in 1958 by Donald Hall, in Remembering Poets: Reminiscences <\/em> and Opinions<\/em> (New York, 1978), 211<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2018The idea of a commercial edition of Noctes Binanianae<\/em> has already occurred to us and we plan to publish it in due course \u2026\u2019<\/p>

Matthew Evans (Managing Director, Faber & Faber) to John Haffenden, 12 Oct. 1983<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2018I shall be publishing an ordinary edition of Noctes Binanianae <\/em>\u2026\u2019<\/p>

Valerie Eliot to Canon Donald Nicholson, 19 Jan. 1989<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2018[T]he little book that [Delmore Schwartz] saw in the library \u2013 which is now, with other items in the Houghton Library at Harvard \u2013 was not a book of parodies at all, though some of the poems were written in the manners of various elder bards. It was a collection of poems by several hands, Frank Morley, Geoffrey Faber, John Hayward and myself, in which we exercised our gifts of reciprocal insult in humorous verse. Only a few copies were printed. I gave one to my brother, who left it to the Eliot Collection, and in that way it met the eyes of Delmore Schwartz. I am glad he thinks that the book is masterly, although he was unaware that there were four masters and not one \u2026 I do think our efforts were pretty good, and I was particularly pleased with one of my own effusions written in almost faultless French and another written in rather bad German.\u2019<\/p>

T. S. Eliot to Dwight Macdonald (New Yorker<\/em>), 25 Mar. 1959<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

*<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Noctes Binanianae<\/em> (1939) \u2013 \u2018Bina Nights\u2019 \u2013 comprises the proceedings, and the proceeds, of a poetry symposium held over a period of several months between 1936 and 1939 by T. S. Eliot and three of his dearest friends \u2013 specifically his publishing colleagues Geoffrey Faber and Frank Vigor Morley, and their younger associate, the editor, critic and bibliographer John Hayward. Since Hayward was confined by illness to a wheelchair \u2013 he could not even leave his apartment and get onto the street without one or more assistants to manhandle his wheelchair \u2013 the friends would spontaneously gather from time to time for a drinking and poetry party at Hayward\u2019s large rented room not far from Gloucester Road in South Kensington. Eliot spoke appreciatively of such gatherings with his coterie as \u2018the Kensington Kulture Club\u2019.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

To date, Eliot\u2019s contributions to the unitary volume of nonsense verses have been extracted, with reports of the other contributions, in The Poems of T. S. Eliot<\/em>, edited by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue (2 vols, Faber & Faber, 2015).2<\/a><\/sup> The present edition provides an opportunity for readers to enjoy the complete concatenation as it was intended: in full and in sequence. Eliot himself knew that Noctes Binanianae<\/em> was a collaborative work, not to be dissevered: he scarcely thought to print his own verses separately from the group production.3<\/a><\/sup> The full text of Noctes Binanianae<\/em> \u2013 this interanimated series of light verses, centos and pastiches \u2013 provides a grand opportunity for his readers, including devotees of Old Possum\u2019s Book of Practical Cats<\/em> and the world-wide audience for the musical Cats<\/em>, to appreciate to a fuller extent his comic genius \u2013 his kindliness, his playfulness, his mischievousness \u2013 with his bantering verses put back into their full context, their original occasion, alongside the provocative rejoinders of the other players. Much recent literary-critical labour has gone towards assessing Eliot as mimic, parodist, pasticheur and dandy \u2013 his sources, his indebtedness, his creative transformations \u2013 but few readers have been able to estimate the true scale of his achievements in light verse. Accordingly, one major purpose of this edition of Noctes Binanianae<\/em> is to show off more of his humour, his collaborative inventiveness and his grace in knocking out chaffing verses with his friends.<\/p>\n

John Hayward, who was one of Eliot\u2019s longest-standing friends, aptly described him as:<\/p>\n

a satirical wit \u2026 a connoisseur of the ridiculous, an ironical commentator on human folly, a lover of allusive quotation (particularly from the dicta of Sherlock Holmes and other eminent detectives), and a passionate observer of what may be called the Bouvard et P\u00e9cuchet<\/em> way of life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Hayward, the \u2018only begetter\u2019 of Bustopher Jones and Skimbleshanks, was the \u2018Man in White Spats\u2019 to whom Eliot gave thanks in Old Possum\u2019s Book of Practical Cats<\/em>.4<\/a><\/sup>)<\/p>\n

Few commentators on Eliot, whether critics or biographers, have reckoned with the scope of his hilarious ability to \u2018do the police in different voices\u2019: the perfect pitch of his ear for mimicry. It is what makes him such a brilliant parodist and pasticheur, such a great writer of nonsense-verse, and what (most especially) animates the flytings of Noctes Binanianae<\/em>. Critics who discuss Eliot\u2019s \u2018wit\u2019 in solemn tones tend to miss the versatility and deliciousness of his humour. For example: while everyone knows that the nickname \u2018Possum\u2019 is taken from Uncle <\/em> Remus<\/em>, few of Eliot\u2019s readers have been able to appreciate the fact that he was so steeped in the artificial dialect of Uncle Remus<\/em> that he could impersonate it to a T. Eliot told Janet Adam Smith: \u2018I have found that Uncle Remus needs to be modified a good deal to be intelligible; and that\u2019s difficult to keep up, because as I warm to the theme I tend to lapse completely into my native patois. The result, in one lamentable instance in Clackmannan, was a flood of tears, and some embarrassment to the reader.\u20195<\/a><\/sup> He was not exaggerating, as this sustained riff illustrates:<\/p>\n

Dear Pollytandym\u2019m,<\/p>\n

Well Mis\u2019 Tandy yo\u2019 oughta know they aint no need for to beat roun\u2019 de bush wit ole Possum. Bless yo\u2019 hea\u2019t, ma\u2019am, they aint no diffunce \u2019twixt now an\u2019 nex\u2019 June so fur as that go, \u2019cept what ole Possum is now live \u2019n kickin\u2019 \u2019n mebbe by June he may be co\u2019pse. Le\u2019s deal wit\u2019 situatiums as they \u2019rise, and mebbe by summertime we review needs and fun\u2019s. Aint got no time fo\u2019 to \u2019spatiate, kase gotta put on Sunday-go-to-meetin\u2019 clo\u2019s termorrer fo\u2019 to go to de Big House; but I certainly have \u2019preciated yo\u2019 familious news and would likewise \u2019preciate dat li\u2019l chicken, but would much mo\u2019 ef yo\u2019 brung it up yo\u2019self by han\u2019, or mebbe a l\u2019il shoat er some simmons er passel er sparrowgrass, en ef yo\u2019 come have a seegyar wit\u2019 me and Mis\u2019 Meadows an\u2019 de gals. Well now Mis\u2019 Tandy I mus\u2019 en\u2019 dis \u2019pistle en\u2019 hopin\u2019 yo\u2019 co\u2019porosity sagasnate same as old Possum\u2019s,<\/p>\n

TP6<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Eliot simply loved playing the clown, and was far more spontaneously high-spirited than some of his more po-faced commentators have suggested. As the Irish librarian William Lefanu attested, \u2018Eliot I met several times with John [Hayward] and elsewhere, though I never knew him well; I disagreed with most of his opinions, but couldn\u2019t but enjoy his charm and mischievous teasing \u2013 he was so much nicer than his austere public image.\u20197<\/a><\/sup> Equally notable is the fact that Eliot really could take a joke: he enjoyed being teased and bantered. One of his close friends, the German translator Nora Wydenbruck, recorded in 1949: \u2018Eliot\u2019s ready sense of humour and his sensitive tact make him a brilliant conversationalist on every theme \u2026 Eliot loves to tell stories against himself and enjoys incidents which would be gall and wormwood to a vain man.\u20198<\/a><\/sup> So too, Ian Bevan, in a published profile of the poet dating from 1950: \u2018The ability to laugh at himself is not the least of Eliot\u2019s virtues.\u20199<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

In January 1937, at a time when exchanges of the Noctes Binanianae<\/em> verses were already in hand, Rose Macaulay and Maurice L. Richardson proposed to compile an entertaining collection of what they called \u2018Modern Vulgar Errors or pseudodoxica\u2019 \u2013 \u2018the mind of the modern public teems with fallacies of a more sociological nature, any one of which could be made the subject of an amusing short light essay\u2019, they noted \u2013 and they invited Eliot to contribute a brief essay (up to 3,000 words) on a fallacy of his own choosing. They were approaching some thirty prominent writers, ranging from Clive Bell and Isaiah Berlin to Leonard and Virginia Woolf, they told him. The volume would make up \u2018quite a revealing commentary on our peculiarly distressing times\u2019.<\/p>\n

In the event, Eliot declined the tempting invitation. Nonetheless, he continued to be stimulated by Macaulay and Richardson\u2019s prospectus of \u2018modern vulgar errors\u2019. He wrote on 2 August 1938, for Hayward\u2019s benefit:<\/p>\n

\n

I have added one more to my growing collection of<\/p>\n

Pseudodoxia Contemporanea<\/span><\/p>\n

i.e.<\/p>\n

All Policeman have big feet.<\/em><\/p>\n

(Janes10<\/a><\/sup> turns out to have smaller feet than I have.)<\/p>\n

The previous items in the collection are<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

A fart, strained through bath water, loses both odour and inflammability.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

A cigarette, smoked before breakfast, is sovereign against costiveness.<\/em><\/p>\n

(With which may be compared the superstition recorded by Ben Jonson:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

To rub the fingers between the toes, and sniff them, is sovereign against costiveness.<\/em><\/p>\n

The number of pseudodoxia turning on the matter of costiveness must be legion.<\/p>\n

Other specimens welcomed.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/blockquote>\n

On 3 August 1938:<\/p>\n

\n

Pseudodoxia Contemporanea<\/span>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

That cigar ash, stirred into black coffee, is most urgently aphrodisiac.<\/em><\/p>\n

P.S. It is further argued, that the better the cigar (irrespective, it seems of the kind<\/p>\n

or quality of the coffee) the more powerful its aphrodisiac action.<\/p>\n

I cannot find any respectable authority for this further pseudodoxy.<\/p>\n

The number of aphrodisiac pseudodoxia must be legion.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/blockquote>\n

Similarly, in 1946, soon after Eliot and Hayward took up residence together in a flat, 19 Carlyle Mansions, on Cheyne Walk, London, Hayward reported this incident to a friend as entirely typical of his spontaneously jovial flatmate: \u2018Yesterday I succeeded at last in buying Tom a chamber-pot which he duly placed on his head (for the first & last time) in the extasy of acquiring it. It was rather small for the noble knob, but will be adequate for its proper purpose.\u2019 It was just as typical of Eliot\u2019s impishness that when he spotted a newspaper article mentioning the proper names \u2018Firo and Farts\u2019 he suggested to Hayward that he should organize a New <\/em> Statesman<\/em> competition to find the most succinct Who\u2019s Who<\/em> entries for the persons who rejoiced in such names. Likewise, in December 1937 \u2013 at a time when he was engaged in devising the poems of Old Possum\u2019s Book of Practical Cats<\/em> \u2013 his eye seized with delight upon an item in the Evening Standard<\/em>, as he reported to another friend:<\/p>\n

Have you seen that remarkable Piece in the Standard about Mr. Woodiwiss the bull-dog breeder? Well it seems Mr. Woodiwiss went to some dog show some years ago and he noticed a \u2018smell of cats\u2019; so he went upstairs and there was a cat show in progress, and his attention was caught by a short-haired tabby named Champion Xenophon. \u2018Within a few minutes he was mine.\u2019 And that\u2019s how Mr. Woodiwiss began to breed cats. You do get your 1d worth out of the Evening Standard, and no mistake, every time. So will close, and thanking you for your hospitality, which was much appreciated & enjoyed, TP11<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

*<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Geoffrey Faber first met Eliot in December 1924, when Eliot was thirty-seven: they hit it off instantly. Faber resolved to make full use of his new friend\u2019s aptitude, know-how (including his years of experience of working for Lloyds Bank in the City of London), wide-ranging intellect and literary expertise by appointing him in 1925 to the board of his fledgling firm, Faber & Gwyer. The American author and editor Frank Morley (1899\u20131980), who joined the team in 1929, was to say of Faber: \u2018His was \u2026 a very complicated, penetrative, sensitive, excitable and tolerant genius.\u2019 (As is well known, Faber was disposed to tolerate the penchant for practical joking that his fellow directors sometimes indulged at his expense.) But above all, Faber, with the support of his wife Enid, had the vision and courage to launch Faber & Faber as a trade imprint, confident in the knowledge that Eliot would identify the pick of the poetry. A century on, it is easy to underestimate the enormous risk that Faber took. The American publisher Donald Brace scoffed at him in the 1920s, \u2018Faber is a gambler\u2019; and Brace\u2019s equally famous publishing partner Alfred Harcourt dismissed Faber and his editorial team as \u2018a bunch of Oxford amateurs; won\u2019t last\u2019. Faber was to express his grateful regard for Eliot in September 1953: \u2018Let me say, Tom, simply that, poetry and publishing and plays put aside, \u2013 and that is to put aside something! \u2013 nothing better has ever happened to me, short of my wonderful good fortune in marriage, than the meeting with you which Charles Whibley planned twenty-five years ago, or thereabouts.\u2019<\/p>\n

Nowadays Geoffrey Faber may be best remembered as the brilliant businessman who enabled the Faber poetry list to become pre-eminent in the world, but it should never be forgotten that he himself loved poetry and was a notable poet in his own right. T. S. Eliot insisted upon this crucial point when he proclaimed at the memorial service for Faber: \u2018First of all he was a poet: an admirer of George Meredith \u2026 Matthew Arnold was the poet with whom he had the closest affinity \u2026 We cannot understand Faber if we ignore the poet in him.\u2019 The mutual esteem of Eliot, Faber and Morley, and their affectionate mockery of one another, are manifest in the splendidly funny poems they exchanged during evenings of wine and wit. The point of such exchanges was not self-congratulation, nor just a kind of jejune jocosity; the real point was that they shared a love of poetry and so inhabited the language and spirit of their favourite authors. They were perhaps the very last in that fine old tradition of poets who found it natural and necessary to trade pastiches, lampoons and ruderies. At the back of it all lay an unshakable confidence in one another\u2019s intellectual capacities, professional judgement and unassailable goodwill. Frank Morley was to say of Eliot, some years after his death: \u2018His was a large, serious spirit, undoubtedly one of the great ones, and of wonderful quick wit.\u201912<\/a><\/sup> Morley likewise told Helen Gardner, in 1978: \u2018I loved him, as I think you know, near to the side of idolatry.\u2019 In our more cynical age, few professional colleagues might so profess to love one another; but there is no doubt that Morley, who understood the weight of his words, meant precisely what he said.<\/p>\n

Frank Vigor Morley (1899\u20131980), son of a distinguished mathematician \u2013 his brothers were the writer Christopher, and Felix (editor of the Washington Post<\/em>) \u2013 was brought up in the USA before travelling as a Rhodes Scholar to New College, Oxford, where he earned a doctorate in mathematics. After working for a while at the Times Literary Supplement<\/em>, he became London Manager of The Century Company (Publishers) of New York. Then he was recruited as a founding director of Faber & Faber, as Eliot related to his brother Henry on 19 October 1929:<\/p>\n

I have got into the firm a very able American named Morley, a brother of Christopher Morley, to supply a business sense which I felt was wanting; who shares my room with me, and whom, fortunately, I find sympathetic \u2026 While congenial to everybody, he supplies an element of push and initiative, as well as of caution, which was very much needed in this rather close correct Oxford atmosphere of Faber & Faber.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Morley, in turn, would remark that Eliot\u2019s \u2018great skill\u2019 as a publisher was that he \u2018had an unerring gift for spotting talent, but he would never fight for people. I used to watch, and know him so well that if he quietly suggested publishing the poetry of Marianne Moore, whom nobody knew, I would take up the cudgels and be the loud hailer.\u201913<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

In 1933 when Eliot separated from his first wife Vivien, Morley arranged convivial temporary accommodation for him at his farmhouse at Pike\u2019s Farm, Lingfield, Surrey. In 1939 he moved to the USA, where he became Vice-President of Harcourt Brace and Company (and during the war he served too on the National War Labor Board in Washington, DC). In 1947 he returned with his family to England, where he took up the post of Director at Eyre & Spottiswoode. A large, learned, ebullient figure, he earned the sobriquet \u2018Whale\u2019 \u2013 though not merely on account of corpulence: in his youth he had spent time aboard a whaling ship (he was revolted by the slaughter), and subsequently wrote (with J. S. Hodgson) Whaling North <\/em> and South<\/em> (1926), which was reviewed in the Monthly Criterion<\/em> by his friend Herbert Read. His other writings include River Thames<\/em> (1926), Inversive Geometry<\/em> (1933), My One Contribution to Chess<\/em> (1947), The Great North Road <\/em>(1961), The Long Road West: A Journey in History<\/em> (1971) and Literary <\/em> Britain<\/em> (1980).<\/p>\n

Morley Kennerley, a Faber colleague, told The Times<\/em> (25 Oct. 1980) that<\/p>\n

one of [Frank Morley\u2019s] hobbies was to work out complicated problems for his friends, and for those baffled there were amazing practical jokes. Convivial lunches with interesting people were a joy to him \u2026 He found jobs for many and squeezed me into Fabers where he generously put up with my sharing a corner of his room for some years. I was present all day during his interviews, dictation, visitors and often lunch. How he put up with all this I do not know. His correspondence with Ezra Pound was quite something, and I think he out-Pounded Pound. As his family say, he was a compulsive letter writer and was rarely without a pencil in his hand or pocket.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The other thing that these men shared was a fierce loyalty. \u2018Eliot was loyal to all his friends, old and new\u2019, wrote Peter du Sautoy in 1985. All the evidence goes to show that his friends reciprocated his confidence. Even John Hayward, who felt grievously let down when Eliot committed himself in 1957 to his happy second marriage, was at great pains in later years not to talk about Eliot\u2019s private life and to head off the possible indiscretions of others. Just a few days after Eliot\u2019s death in January 1965, for example, Nancy Cunard sent Hayward a poem depicting the young Eliot whom she had known in the 1910s as a \u2018bitter-sweet dandy\u2019; Hayward\u2019s response was to enunciate with firm tact: \u2018Of course I don\u2019t mind your showing the poem to some choice friends, but I suggest that you should choose none who might conceivably take offence or objection to the intimate nature of the occasion recollected. You know how awful people can be \u2013 how prone to hint at \u201crevelations\u201d!\u2019<\/p>\n

On the other hand, it must also be said, Hayward was no mere sycophant, adulating Eliot\u2019s every thought or seeking to bask in reflected glory, as some commentators have suggested. While he had the utmost admiration for Eliot as poet, he was less unequivocally enthusiastic about the poet\u2019s prose writings. It seems to me almost a canard for Lyndall Gordon to have alleged, for example, in Eliot\u2019s New Life<\/em> (1988): \u2018A devotee, hanging on Eliot\u2019s lips, Hayward seems not to have recognized the Master\u2019s inscrutable distance.\u2019 Indeed, Gordon\u2019s sniff must be seen to be unwittingly directed just as much at Eliot himself, who would not have put up with such a lickspittle as she imagines Hayward to have been \u2013 let alone have agreed to share a residence with him for a decade after the Second World War. From an early stage in their enduring friendship, Hayward would on occasion assess Eliot with an acerbic eye; he told Ottoline Morrell, for example, in November 1932,<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think Bertrand Russell was entirely correct in saying that Tom\u2019s manners were those of an Etonian. I should have thought that, at their best, Eton manners were characterized by an air of complete self-possession, a kind of ease which Tom has never quite attained. America is always breaking in! But he was certainly right about the window-dressing \u2026 I dare say this explains Tom\u2019s obsession with European tradition, his love of formality, bowler hats, stiff collars, Royalism, old port, Classicism etc.!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He could be quite as coolly cutting in his estimate of his friend\u2019s prose writings, as in this further confidence to Morrell (December 1932): \u2018He\u2019s too dry in his prose: no passion, scarcely any feeling at all. It\u2019s odd, because his poetry is quite otherwise. Sometimes he makes me feel that he is frightened of giving himself away, or something away \u2013 I don\u2019t know what. I have felt as much in his conversation.\u2019 However, it is safe to say that Hayward\u2019s appreciation of his friend\u2019s writings in prose grew as the years moved on. Yet Hayward was always perfectly prepared to disagree with the \u2018Master\u2019 when he thought he was mistaken, and indeed to tell him so. Notably, he did not share Eliot\u2019s religious faith \u2013 Hayward was an atheist \u2013 and had no hesitation in averring to Frank Morley, in a letter dating from March 1942: \u2018For myself, though still unregenerate, I believe that \u201cthe idea of a Christian Society\u201d is more likely to be realized by [the Archbishop of Canterbury\u2019s] inspiration and guidance than along the lines propounded by Tom and his intellectually exclusive Christian Laity.\u2019 He repeated in another place that he did not credit \u2018Uncle Tom\u2019s \u00e9lite hierarchy\u2019.<\/p>\n

For the most part, however, he and Eliot enjoyed a tremendously fond accord in their tastes, social judgements and literary inclinations \u2013 and in their relish for sharing private jokes. For example: it is not widely known that it was Hayward who made up the epigraph to Stephen Potter\u2019s satire The Muse in Chains: A Study in Education<\/em> (1937). David Bowen, with whom Hayward himself shared the secret, told me: \u2018It is in the form of a piece of French poetry beginning: \u201cLe Pauvre Muse deschin\u00e9e\u201d \u2026 and is signed Jean Aillevard \u2013 the transliteration of how a Frenchman might be expected to pronounce \u201cJohn Hayward\u201d. Incidentally this is not mentioned in the biography of Stephen Potter recently published [Alan Jenkins, Stephen <\/em> Potter: Inventor of Gamesmanship<\/em> (1980)]. A pity, as it seems to me a typical jeu d\u2019esprit.\u201914<\/a><\/sup> The epigraph to Potter\u2019s The Muse in Chains<\/em> \u2013 it is given on the title page \u2013 reads:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018Pauvre Muse, deschir\u00e9e et vilain\u00e9e d\u2019opinions15<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

phantasques, qui te liberera de la prison de<\/p>\n

l\u2019impudente ignorance o\u00f9 l\u2019on te tient enferm\u00e9e.\u201916<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Jean Aillevard<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Potter in his acknowledgements gave thanks \u2018to Mr John Hayward for having given me my title and put in my way the quotation from which it was contrived\u2019. But in truth the alias \u2018Jean Aillevard\u2019 was coined by Eliot in his letters to Hayward from 1935, in what he called his \u2018DOSSIER AILLEVARD\u2019.<\/p>\n

Hayward provided in the 1930s a place and an occasion for these men of letters to relax in each other\u2019s company out of office hours, and to regale one another with a sprightly exchange of verses. His local habitation in the large ground-floor front room of a lodging-house at 22 Bina Gardens, London SW7, where he resided from 23 March 1933 until November 193817<\/a><\/sup> \u2013 afforded an apt title for their gathering of complementary \u2013 but not complimentary \u2013 verses, which he arranged to have privately printed in August 1939 (in an edition of just twenty-five copies) by the genial and generous publisher Eric \u2018Peter\u2019 Gregory, Chair of the firm of Lund Humphries Ltd.18<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Hayward\u2019s life, activities and achievements have been well recounted in the opening chapter of Helen Gardner\u2019s The Composition of \u2018Four Quartets\u2019<\/em> (1978), and in John Smart\u2019s comprehensively-researched Tarantula\u2019s Web: John Hayward, T. S. Eliot and Their Circle<\/em> (2013). Here it is enough to say that, undaunted by the disability of a progressively paralysing disease, muscular dystrophy (which caused him sometimes to speak with an acidulous tongue), Hayward (1905\u201365) \u2013 who was some seventeen years younger than Eliot \u2013 resolved at an early age to make his mark in the world of letters. While still an undergraduate he edited the Nonesuch edition of Rochester\u2019s works, so successfully that Edmund Gosse called him \u2018the best and, in fact, only competent editor of Rochester\u2019; and before the age of thirty he had managed the extraordinary feat of editing both the Nonesuch Donne and the Nonesuch Swift (including the first correct recension of Gulliver\u2019s Travels<\/em> to appear since the eighteenth century); an edition of the Letters of St Evremond; and a biography of Charles II which Graham Greene acclaimed as a \u2018brilliant and satisfying character study\u2019; as well as the first of his discerning anthologies. His brilliance as editor and bibliographer earned him a considerable reputation, and many writers came to depend on his editorial skills \u2013 not least Eliot with Four Quartets<\/em>, the early plays and several of the mature essays. (Eliot valued his counsel not so much as an artist but as a technician: Hayward had a sure touch for style, syntax, idiom and sense.)<\/p>\n

As early as 4 October 1935 Frank Morley posted this testimonial to his publishing pal C. A. Pearce (a senior editor at Harcourt, Brace & Company, New York): \u2018John Hayward is a good man under the right influence. That\u2019s about all that is needed in the way of biography. You may read him with a certainty of getting perfect truth.\u2019 Paul Val\u00e9ry formed such a high opinion of Hayward\u2019s friendship and literary skill that he commissioned him to translate \u2018Mon Faust\u2019, and he had good reason to write towards the end of his life, \u2018Je n\u2019oublierai jamais <\/em> Bina Gardens<\/em>\u2019, adding: \u2018On a tant de besoin de voir des visages humains dans cette epoque de barbares<\/em>.\u2019 Morley would relate in April 1939:<\/p>\n

As an instance of the breadth of Hayward\u2019s acquaintance, he was the only Englishman for whom John O\u2019Hara fell \u2026 One would find O\u2019Hara and [James] Thurber and lads like that gravitating naturally to Hayward\u2019s apartment, along with the intellectuals from Paris and the young and old of both sexes in London.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Morley was by no means exaggerating, for Thurber would himself write to Hayward in 1950: \u2018Time runs on too fast and so many of the great joys are in the past, a lot of them in the London of John Hayward twelve years ago.\u2019<\/p>\n

In time, Hayward\u2019s extraordinary circle of friends grew to include figures including Peter Quennell, Bruce Richmond (editor of the Times Literary Supplement<\/em>), Rupert Hart-Davis, Dilys Powell, William Empson, C. P. Snow, Anthony Powell, Louis MacNeice, Stephen Spender, W. H. Auden, Rosamond Lehmann, Ottoline Morrell, Cyril Connolly, Stevie Smith, Edith Sitwell and Elizabeth Bowen. Safe to say that Hayward, though he spent many hours alone in his study, reading and writing, was utterly gregarious by nature; as he happily owned in a letter to Anne Ridler (Christmas 1950): \u2018I\u2019m as much of a diner-out as my wicked ancestor Abraham Hayward who wrote \u201cThe Art of Dining\u201d.\u2019<\/p>\n

Hayward started lunching regularly with Eliot from 1926, and came to know him more closely after taking up residence at Bina Gardens in 1933. Eliot promptly conceived a high regard for his young friend\u2019s promise and early accomplishments; he wrote in a testimonial dated 10 June 1932:<\/p>\n

I have followed Mr John Hayward\u2019s work with interest ever since he came down from Cambridge to London. He has reviewed regularly for The Criterion<\/em> and I have also read his contributions to the Times Literary Supplement<\/em> and other papers.<\/p>

His scholarship is considerable, his criticism acute, and his style admirable. I have found his reviewing in certain departments indispensable; but I have often expressed the wish that he might use his abilities in writing more literary essays, rather than in reviewing and editing, so that they might secure a wider recognition and express themselves in a more permanent form.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The soir\u00e9es<\/em> with Eliot, Faber and Morley that produced Noctes Binanianiae<\/em> were in progress by the mid-1930s. (Eliot\u2019s own lodgings, initially at Grenville Place, South Kensington, and then for the duration of the 1930s at an Anglican clergy-house on Emperors Gate, were a short walk away.) Forty years later, Morley was to inform Peter Croft (Archivist at King\u2019s College, Cambridge): \u2018In the late 1930s, though Eliot was the most frequent of visitors to Hayward at Bina Gardens, Faber and I (though for each of us it was more of a journey) also made fairly regular visits and were among Hayward\u2019s cronies.\u2019<\/p>\n

Hayward rejoiced in his literary eminence and the extensive network of his friends (his ambiguous nickname \u2018Tarantula\u2019 referred not only to the sting of his wit but to the astonishing spread of his social web).19<\/a><\/sup> He was being disingenuous when he wrote to Anne Ridler in 1944:<\/p>\n

I must \u2026 discountenance, once again, the pleasing legend \u2026 that I hold court, or whatever the word is, to the Great & Good & Beautiful & Intelligent of the five continents. I can\u2019t conceive how this popular fallacy arose, unless it is that my sedentary life & consequently relatively rare appearances in public places lead people to suppose that I\u2019m unusually closeted with visitors! The legend is played up, you may recall, in the Master\u2019s German verses in \u2018Noctes Binanianae\u2019.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(See Eliot\u2019s \u2018Abschied zur Bina<\/a>\u2019.)<\/p>\n

Quite naturally, he was proud to be associated with so many authors of distinction, and especially with Eliot. Though skilled as a versifier, Hayward did not possess the exceptional creative gifts he did so much to nurture in others. However, like Eliot, Faber and Morley, he was devoted to poetry (indeed, he once claimed to have read the whole of English literature, by which he must have meant the established canon), and he began to write his own poetry even as an adolescent. His mother was to remind him in 1943, \u2018You began versifying at a very early age in the last Great War \u2026 Sir Humphry Davy [an ancestor] wrote poetry & like other gentlemen valued that side of his genius more than what brought him fame, his chemical & medical & industrial researches.\u201920<\/a><\/sup> Moreover, like all expert composers of comic and nonsense verse, including Eliot, Faber and Morley, he kept at heart the poetry he had loved as a child, the freshness of the child within the adult, the child\u2019s ear and eye. As his father marvelled at the man, \u2018Children so appeal to you \u2013 how many godchildren have you got? \u2013 and you have kept your own child life so fresh.\u201921<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n

*<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Biographers and critics of Eliot have had relatively few good words to say about Noctes <\/em> Binanianae<\/em>. They sometimes appear to disdain the very idea that grown men \u2013 even men of such large intelligence, sophistication and perspicacity as Eliot and his circle \u2013 should write superbly witty verses for their mutual delectation, let alone read them aloud to one another of an evening. Yet there is a fine long-standing tradition of such convivial colloquies \u2013 the fruits of drinking and japing \u2013 including the delightfully imagined exchanges of Noctes Ambrosianae<\/em> (1822\u201335), as arranged by the Scottish advocate, author and critic James Wilson (1785\u2013 1854), and involving John Gibson Lockhart and James Hogg (the Ettrick Shepherd) \u2013 which Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue identify as the primary forebear in their authoritative edition of The Poems of T. S. Eliot<\/em> (2 vols, Faber & Faber, 2015). Geoffrey Faber was to recall the get-togethers with immense pleasure, as he wrote to Hayward in the black period of August 1943: \u2018I look back constantly at those Nights when our extemporisations ravish\u2019d the ears of the neighbours in Bina Gardens.\u2019 And Faber had keenly noted in his diary on 16 June 1939: \u2018Coot & whale were our respective totems in the quadripartite correspondence w. TSE (elephant) & John Hayward (tarantula).\u2019 \u2018Quadripartite correspondence\u2019 are two crucial words; indeed, all of the contributors continued to feel gratified with this special coterie collaboration.<\/p>\n

The title Noctes Binanianae<\/em>, coined by Eliot himself,22<\/a><\/sup> is an allusion to Horace\u2019s Sixth Satire: \u2018O noctes coen\u00e6quae deum!\u2019 l. 65 (\u2018O nights and supper of the gods!\u2019); in Alexander Pope\u2019s translation, \u2018An Imitation of the Sixth Satire of the Second Book of Horace\u2019, ll. 133\u20136, \u2018O charming Noons! and Nights divine!\/Or when I sup, or when I dine,\/My Friends above, my Folks below,\/Chatting and laughing all-a-row.\u2019 One other notable precedent could be the Kit-Cat Club, orchestrated in the 1690s by the publisher Jacob Tonson, whose literary circle included William Congreve and John Vanbrugh: see Ophelia Field, The Kit-Cat Club: Friends Who Imagined a Nation<\/em> (2008). Also relevant in the background might be the activities of the Crochallan Fencibles, the Edinburgh drinking club at which Robert Burns is thought to have recited bawdy verses including \u2018Not for Maids\u2019 \u2013 otherwise known as \u2018Nine Inch Will Please a Lady\u2019. (The Crochallan Inn also turns up in Burns\u2019s version of \u2018Rattlin\u2019 Roarin\u2019 Willie\u2019 [1788].)<\/p>\n

While Hayward was the chef d\u2019orchestre<\/em> of the undertaking to publish this collaborative project, Eliot was at all times constructively engaged with it. He wrote to Hayward as early as 22 November 1937, in eager anticipation:<\/p>\n

This matter of the en-tete [heading] is very difficult. Your suggestion is admirable in itself but I wonder \u2026 I mean \u2026 perhaps there is enough Vapulation of the Coot in the text, and I should like the Title to suggest collaboration between the Coot and others \u2026 Besides, the possum should not be too forward \u2026 perhaps some such title as originally proposed by me<\/p>\n

\n

NOCTES BINANIANAE<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Wherein are contained such Voluntary & Satyrical Compliments and Verses as were lately Exchang\u2019d between some of the Choicest Wits<\/em> and Most Profound Deipnosophists<\/em> of the AGE<\/p>\n

\n

(Ornament or Emblem of a Coot,<\/p>\n

or other Absurd Bird), or Figure<\/p>\n

in which is tapaster\u2019d an Elephant,<\/p>\n

upon whose back capers a Whale, upon<\/p>\n

whose head a Coot with wings extended,<\/p>\n

holding in his mouth a stockfish<\/em>, and<\/p>\n

above all a Vesperal Spider<\/em> suspended,<\/p>\n

which spinneth his Web about all.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Imprinted for Rchd. de la Mare, His Maiestie\u2019s Printer, dwelling in Paules Churchyard,<\/p>\n

at the South west doore of Saint Paules<\/em> Church, and are there to be had.23<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

But I am mixing the periods. Anyway, what about the capital point?24<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<\/div><\/blockquote>\n

\n

*<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The happy truth is that Eliot was<\/em> the very spirit of such occasions, and that the others rose to the example, and the challenge, that he set them. The wonderful exordium \u2018How to Pick a Possum\u2019, for example, which was written in September 1937, was possibly confected with a view to its inclusion in Old Possum\u2019s Book<\/em>; but then Eliot found a better place for it as the opening poem of Noctes Binanianae<\/em>: it is not a whit inferior to anything in Old Possum\u2019s Book of <\/em> Practical Cats<\/em>. Dame Helen Gardner had it absolutely right when she wrote that, just as Old <\/em> Possum\u2019s Book<\/em> is \u2018a memorial of Eliot\u2019s friendship with Hayward at this time\u2019, so too Noctes <\/em> Binananiae<\/em> is the \u2018memorial of the meeting of these friends\u2019: the two collections complement one another to a high degree. But the most conspicuously pleasurable feature of the verses of Noctes Binanianae<\/em> is that they add up to a remarkable anthology of parodies, pastiches and satires \u2013 spoofing everything from Shakespeare and Milton to Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson and Edward Lear, and not forgetting popular song. Lovers of literature may revel in them as much as fans of light verse in general delight in Old Possum\u2019s Book<\/em>, if it be only for that kick of recognition.<\/p>\n

It feels something of a shame to extract Eliot\u2019s verses from the boon companions which fundamentally complement them. Each poem in the sequence takes off from the one before and seems to be trumped by the next. The second poem in the sequence, for example \u2013 Faber\u2019s sonnet beginning \u2018Arboreal though the natural habitat\/Of Possums \u2026\u2019 \u2013 is specifically entitled \u2018An Answer to the Foregoing Poem\u2019, and so Eliot\u2019s buoyantly satirical \u2018The O\u2019Possum Strikes Back\u2019 duly follows as a riposte. (Incidentally, these were men who knew their popular reputations and had the good sense not to take themselves too seriously in such appointed roles: Faber\u2019s \u2018An Answer to the Foregoing Poem\u2019 originally sported the subtitle \u2018Addressed to the Rev. Uncle Possum by his unworthy coadjutor, Father Faber\u2019.) The effect is like a series of turns at the music-hall: high spirits are disciplined by form, and the pace and exuberant interplay of the poems are joyously sustained. Moreover, the sequence is evidently the product of creative responsiveness. Just as Eliot invited formative participation in both The Waste Land<\/em> and Four Quartets<\/em>, so too the poems he wrote for Noctes Binanianae<\/em> are the fruit of a generative partnership. He responded eagerly to creative collaboration quite as much as he delighted in constructive criticism.<\/p>\n

John Haffenden<\/em><\/p>\n

Note To the Reader<\/em><\/p>\n

The poems included in Noctes Binanianae<\/em> constitute a historical document and are reproduced in their original form. The work contains instances of language and terminology that are now considered offensive or inappropriate by contemporary standards. Such language is retained solely to preserve the historical accuracy and authenticity of the work and does not reflect the views or values of the present publisher.<\/p>\n

Select Reading<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

A. S. G. Edwards, \u2018T. S. Eliot and Friends: Noctes Binanianae<\/em> (1939)\u2019, The Book Collector<\/em>, Winter 2009, 503\u201310<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Toby Faber, Faber & Faber: The Untold Story<\/em> (London: Faber & Faber, 2019)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The Letters of T. S. Eliot<\/em>, Volume 9: 1939\u20131941<\/em>, ed. Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden<\/p>\n

(London: Faber & Faber, 2021)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The Poems of T. S. Eliot<\/em> (2 vols), ed. Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue (London: Faber &<\/p>\n

Faber, 2015)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

John Smart, Tarantula\u2019s Web: John Hayward, T. S. Eliot and Their Circle<\/em> (Wilby, Norfolk:<\/p>\n

Michael Russell, 2013)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Michelle A. Taylor, \u2018(In)discreet Modernism: T. S. Eliot\u2019s Coterie Poetics\u2019, College Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies<\/em> 47: 1 (Winter 2020), 34\u201364<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Abbreviations Used in Notes<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Sources<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

King\u2019s: Papers of the John Hayward Bequest, Modern Archives Centre, King\u2019s College,<\/p>\n

Cambridge<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Poems<\/em>: The Poems of T. S. Eliot<\/em> (2 vols), ed. Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Faber: Archive of Faber & Faber Ltd.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

People<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

EVE: Valerie Eliot<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

FVM: Frank Vigor Morley<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

GCF: Geoffrey Cust Faber<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

JDH: John Davy Hayward<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

TSE: T. S. Eliot<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\nNotes<\/summary>\n
    \n
  1. 1.<\/a>\n

    TSE to JDH, 21 Aug. 1936.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  2. 2.<\/a>\n

    Ricks and McCue note, in Poems<\/em> II, 208\u20139: \u2018The present edition reprints TSE\u2019s contributions to the 1939 volume \u2026 with poems by others to which he (nominally) responded \u2026 Five other items by Faber, two by Hayward and three by Morley are not reprinted in the present edition, although their positions in the volume are marked within the sequence.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  3. 3.<\/a>\n

    TSE to Henry Eliot (his brother), 14 Oct. 1939: \u2018Dear Me! I am somewhat embarrassed by having this pamphlet taken so seriously: it is merely the last flicker of expiring civilisation, a commemoration of the elegant pastimes of gentlemen and scholars. The verses were not, of course, composed with a view to publication; but after the accumulation of a year or two, Hayward arranged with a nice man named Gregory, who has a printing business, to have a few copies printed, as a Festschrift<\/em> for Faber\u2019s birthday and in commemoration of pleasant evenings that are past.\u2019 Geoffrey Faber turned fifty on 23 Aug. 1939 \u2013 TSE was the elder by a year \u2013 and copies were made ready the week before.<\/p>\n

    (See Valerie Holman, Peter Gregory: Publisher and Patron of Modern British Artists<\/em> [London: Lund Humphries, 2024]; sadly, Holman does not mention Noctes<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

    Only once was Eliot tempted to reprint a poem, \u2018Vers pour la Foulque\u2019, separately from Noctes<\/em> as a whole, when he told Pierre Leyris \u2013 who was preparing a volume of French translations of Eliot\u2019s earlier poems: \u2018I think the best title would probably be La Terre Gaste<\/em>, pr\u00e9c\u00e9d\u00e9 de quelques po\u00e8mes anciens. Only if you put in the French poem that John Hayward had, that dates from 1938 and therefore ancient hardly applies. But that is I think, the only one of the French poems which I should like to have included \u2026 It would need a few notes for which I could supply the material\u2019 (cited in Poems<\/em> II, 230). He still thought highly of that poem in \u2018faultless French\u2019.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  4. 4.<\/a>\n

    But see TSE to Peter Mayer, 8 Aug. 1946: \u2018You will have to tell your son that for the present the identity of the Man in White Spats remains a close secret. He only appears from time to time and always comes and goes by going up and down the chimney. This is why he wears white spats.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  5. 5.<\/a>\n

    TSE was referring to his glum experience of reciting his comic verses to the children of his sometime colleague George Blake, at their home in Dollar, Clackmannanshire.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  6. 6.<\/a>\n

    TSE to Polly Tandy, \u2018Ash Wednesday\u2019 [11 Feb. 1948].<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  7. 7.<\/a>\n

    William LeFanu to Haffenden, 18 Apr. 1980.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  8. 8.<\/a>\n

    \u2018Nora Wydenbruck, \u2018A Personal Note\u2019, World Review<\/em>, n.s. 9 (Nov. 1949), 20.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  9. 9.<\/a>\n

    \u2018T. S. Eliot, Box Office Poet\u2019, John Bull<\/em>, 6 May 1950, 16.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  10. 10.<\/a>\n

    William Leonard Janes (1854\u20131939) was an ex-policeman who worked from 1924 as Eliot\u2019s factotum. \u2018If I ever write my reminiscences, which I shan\u2019t\u2019, Eliot told Mary Trevelyan, 2 Apr. 1951, \u2018Janes would have a great part in them.\u2019 Eliot told his godson Adam Roberts, 12 Dec. 1955: \u2018I \u2026 knew a retired police officer, who at one period had to snoop in plain clothes in the General Post Office in Newgate Street \u2013 he caught several culprits, he said.\u2019 \u2018When Janes fell ill, Tom visited him in hospital and took him champagne, which Janes shared with other patients in the middle of the night.\u2019 Janes died in Apr. 1939, and TSE went to his funeral. Eliot to Emily Hale, 4 May: \u2018Mrs [Clara] Webster [Janes\u2019s sister-in-law] embarrassed me by sending me his sister\u2019s \u2026 engagement ring, which it was Janes\u2019s wish that I should have as a memento \u2026 I shall miss him; he was a faithful friend, a most diverting talker, and a link with the past, having had his ears boxed by Disraeli when he was a choir boy at Hughenden. And it seems odd after five months not to pay the weekly visit to the hospital.\u2019<\/p>\n

    JDH to TSE, 28 Apr. 1939: \u2018I am glad you were able to make him comfortable. I know the value of your friendship: I\u2019m sure he did too.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  11. 11.<\/a>\n

    TSE to Polly Tandy, 30 Dec. 1937: Letters<\/em> 8, 746\u20137.<\/p>\n

    See too Eliot\u2019s ingenious anagrams on his own name, dating from June 1954:<\/p>\n

    First Witch:<\/p>

    Shit! Master a\u2019nt loose.<\/p>

    Second Witch.<\/p>

    Harlot\u2019s note is steam.<\/p>

    Third Witch<\/p>

    Er \u2026 Mash loins to taste.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/li>\n

  12. 12.<\/a>\n

    Morley to Mrs Stiefvater, 4 June 1976.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  13. 13.<\/a>\n

    Frank Morley, \u2018The Time When Eliot Lit the Fuse\u2019, Sunday Times<\/em>, 8 June 1980.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  14. 14.<\/a>\n

    David Bowen to Haffenden, 5 Aug. 1981.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  15. 15.<\/a>\n

    Properly: \u2018d\u00e9chir\u00e9e et vilaine d\u2019opinions<\/em>\u2019.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  16. 16.<\/a>\n

    Stephen Potter, The Muse in Chains: A Study in Education<\/em> (London: Jonathan Cape, 1937). Title page.<\/p>\n

    While it may look like something of a parody of Tristan Corbi\u00e8re, the passage is in fact not poetry but prose. In translation: \u2018Poor Muse, torn and vile with fantastic opinions, who will free you from the prison of the impudent ignorance in which you are imprisoned.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  17. 17.<\/a>\n

    JDH to Ottoline Morrell, 29 Mar. 1933: \u2018The room is not so vast as the old one, and prettier, I think. It faces quite an \u201cinteresting\u201d road, which I like: and then a piece of garden with trees, where I can sit in warm weather; and<\/em> the SUN. i.e. it faces W.S.W. \u2026 The house is run by a working-housekeeper, her husband and two maids; the landlord lives in the West End and simply takes the rent. I pay the housekeeper for food and service. So far everything seems admirable \u2013 I like them (the staff) and they seem to like me and to want to make me comfortable.\u2019<\/p>\n

    Vera Russell, \u2018Some Memories\u2019, The Book Collector<\/em>, Winter 1965, 456: \u2018I remember particularly my first evening in 1933 in John Hayward\u2019s flat in Bina Gardens. The sitting-room (later to be so faithfully reconstructed in his last home in Carlyle Mansions) was the scene of a special showing of Chaplin films. I was young and intimidated, for T. S. Eliot was among the small audience. But the laughter was uproarious, the atmosphere warm and friendly.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  18. 18.<\/a>\n

    The 25 copies were never put on sale, but were distributed among JDH (6 copies), TSE (4), GCF (4), FVM (4), Anne Ridler (1), E. McKnight Kauffer (1), Eric Gregory (2) and the files of the printers (3). (However, no copies survive at Lund Humphries.)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  19. 19.<\/a>\n

    Other eminent or emerging figures whom JDH met and cultivated over this pre-war period included Virginia Woolf, Edmund Gosse, Harold Acton, Arthur Waley, Clive Bell, Harold Nicolson, John Sparrow, Geoffrey Keynes, Edith Sitwell, Gerald Brenan, Desmond MacCarthy, E. M. Forster, Peter Quennell, Margaret Gardiner, Michael Sadleir, Carrington, Brian Guinness, David Garnett, E. McKnight Kauffer, Marion Dorn, Mary Hutchinson, Harold Monro, Graham Greene, Cyril Connolly, W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Maurice Bowra, Stephen Spender, John Lehmann, Rosamund Lehmann, William Empson, Rupert Doone, Victor and Barbara Rothschild, Arthur Bryant, Stevie Smith, Isaiah Berlin, Julian Trevelyan, Emily Coleman, Peggy Guggenheim, Roland Penrose, Jean Giraudoux, Janet Flanner, Antony Powell, Ian Parsons, Fran\u00e7ois Mauriac, Man Ray, Lee Miller and Elsa Lanchester. The strands of his worldwide network knew no limits.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  20. 20.<\/a>\n

    William LeFanu to Haffenden, 18 Apr. 1980: \u2018\u2026 through his mother John had a distinguished scientific and medical ancestry, and was descended from Sir Humphry Davy\u2019s brother Dr John Davy through Professor George Rolleston of Oxford.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  21. 21.<\/a>\n

    King\u2019s.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  22. 22.<\/a>\n

    TSE to JDH, 31 Mar. 1937: \u2018On the eve of my departure for the Northern Kingdom, I employ a short respite to pen these hasty lines by way of valedictory. From the frequentation of my society, and my abundant conversation (it afflicts me to think how often I must have wearied you with my dilatations on this and other topicks) (O noctes Binanianae!!) you will be fully acquainted with my abhorrence of the uncouth manners, the barbarous repasts, and the heady liquours of our northern neighbours.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  23. 23.<\/a>\n

    Richard de la Mare (1901\u201386) \u2013 elder son of the poet Walter de la Mare \u2013 joined Faber & Gwyer as production manager in 1925, and became a principal director in 1928; he was appointed Chairman in 1960; later, President of Faber & Faber Ltd. Geoffrey Faber to Alsina Gwyer, 2 Oct. 1924:<\/p>\n

    He is 24 and appears to be all that a young man ought to be. Very pleasant mannered, intelligent and not afraid of hard work \u2026 The de la Mares, as I expect you know, have an extraordinarily wide circle of literary friends and acquaintances, and the association of your de la Mare with us may prove a very useful one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Dick de la Mare became expert in all aspects of book design and production, and he commissioned designs and illustrations from artists including Rex Whistler, Edward Bawden, Paul Nash and John Nash; he also introduced to the firm a number of writers including Siegfried Sassoon, Edith Sitwell and David Jones.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  24. 24.<\/a>\n

    Eliot\u2019s secretary Anne Ridler (n\u00e9e Bradby), who produced a flawless typescript of the work, was praised by Hayward, 1 May 1939: \u2018It\u2019s clear that you have taken immense trouble to achieve elegance & accuracy. I hope you thought your great labour not wholly ill-spent. I\u2019m delighted with the result, & most anxious that you should know how grateful I am. I speak for the others, who have yet to see immortalized in Messieurs Lund Humphries of Bradford\u2019s quaint process, their work & yours. Thank you very, very much indeed.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/details>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Introduction \u2018Oh yes, one wants to keep one\u2019s hand in, you know, in every type of poem, serious and frivolous and proper and improper. One doesn\u2019t want to lose one\u2019s skill.\u2019 T. S. Eliot, interviewed in 1958 by Donald Hall, in Remembering Poets: Reminiscences and Opinions (New York, 1978), 211 \u2018The idea of a commercial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1001","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1001"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1114,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1001\/revisions\/1114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}