{"id":1011,"date":"2026-09-28T19:59:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T18:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/?p=1011"},"modified":"2026-11-08T18:36:37","modified_gmt":"2026-11-08T18:36:37","slug":"ode-to-a-roman-coot","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/ode-to-a-roman-coot\/","title":{"rendered":"Ode to a Roman Coot"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

Ode to a Roman Coot<\/h1>\n

By the author of <\/em><\/p>\n<\/header>\n

\n
\n

\u201cThe Fantasy of Fonthill: or Betjeman\u2019s Folly\u201d1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

and<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cJohn Foster\u2019s Aunt.\u201d2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

My head aches, and a drowsy numbness pains3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

My sense, as though of White Horse4<\/a><\/sup> I had drunk,<\/p>\n

Or else had fuddled my too sensitive brains<\/p>\n

With Meninger,5<\/a><\/sup> or some equivalent bunk.<\/p>\n

\u2019Tis not through envy of thy happy lot<\/p>\n

But being too goofy in thy goofiness,<\/p>\n

That thou, light-headed zany of the trees,<\/p>\n

In some melodious plot<\/p>\n

Of Frognal,6<\/a><\/sup> or of villas numberless,7<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Sing\u2019st of cetaceans in pot-bellied ease.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

For most, I know, thou lov\u2019st retired ground.8<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Thee, with uncertain and tumultuous feet,9<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Quite trustworthy observers oft have seen<\/p>\n

Crossing the stripling High near Oriel Street,10<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Distraught, or in a deep somnambular swound,<\/p>\n

Or idly strumming on a mandoline,11<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

With hair dishevelled and with throat unbound,<\/p>\n

Turning thy steps to greet<\/p>\n

(By some instinctive act centripetal)<\/p>\n

The line of festal drunks in All Souls\u2019 Hall.12<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Coot!13<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

No dwindling populations tread thee down.<\/p>\n

No transitory Wardens give the boot<\/p>\n

To Oxford\u2019s biding bursar, bird and clown.<\/p>\n

Thee have we seen at dawn on Hampstead Heath,<\/p>\n

Forever panting and in cotton pants,<\/p>\n

Forever biting upon rubber fruit,<\/p>\n

Forever singing, although short of breath,14<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

The self-same song, from Galloway to Hants,<\/p>\n

The song of England\u2019s transatlantic doom:<\/p>\n

The same that oft-times hath<\/p>\n

Charmed the loud roisterers in the common room<\/p>\n

And mazed th\u2019attendants in the Turkish Bath.15<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Yet, William,16<\/a><\/sup> we receive but what we give;<\/p>\n

And in our life alone does Nature live:17<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

And what must be his life who can confuse<\/p>\n

The Whale and Elephant, two divers species?<\/p>\n

And overlooking all the obvious clues,<\/p>\n

Conclusions draw, most libellous and vicious?<\/p>\n

And in one breath abuse<\/p>\n

Cetacean coothlessness and elephantine beauty?<\/p>\n

Such nature can be nothing else than cooty.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Look homeward, angel!18<\/a><\/sup> not so far as France;<\/p>\n

Look neither to the jungle where the dance<\/p>\n

Of Kala Nag is hid from human eyes,19<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Nor seek thou to surprise<\/p>\n

The horrid whale who lies<\/p>\n

Curl\u2019d on the Bottome of the monstrous world.20<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

[T. S. Eliot]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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

    JDH note: \u2018A choice wit of the period, a lover of architectural fantasy.\u2019<\/p>\n

    \u2018The Fantasy of Fonthill\u2019 refers to the construction by the eccentric bisexual visionary William Beckford (1760\u20131844) \u2013 politician, plantation owner, author of the Gothic novel Vathek<\/em> (1786), lover of books, fine art and buildings, and abuser of boys (he was outed for having a sexual affair with the eleven-year-old son of the 2nd Viscount Courtenay) \u2013 of the tremendous mock-Gothic private house called Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire, which he began in 1796 to a design by the fashionable architect James Wyatt (1746\u20131813), architect to George III. At the age of ten, Beckford inherited a fortune from his father, a Whig politician and businessman who owned substantial sugar plantations and 3,000 slaves in the West Indies: Lord Byron called William Beckford \u2018England\u2019s Wealthiest Son\u2019. In all, William received an inheritance of \u00a31,000,000 in cash and an annual income of c<\/em>. \u00a3100,000, which enabled him to indulge his extraordinary fancies. The upshot was Fonthill Abbey, a gigantic richly-decorated building measuring 270 feet from east to west, 312 feet from north to south, with eighteen bedrooms, and with the structure topped by a madly-conceived and ill-constructed tower rising to 350 feet \u2013 about as high as Westminster Cathedral \u2013 and with 35-foot-high doors. The tower, built of timber and cement, could not sustain itself and fell down after ten years in 1800 (it was rebuilt), while Beckford went on accumulating his fabulous art collection and a library of over ten thousand volumes (he even bought the library of Edward Gibbon). Illustrious visitors included Lord Nelson and Sir William and Lady Hamilton. By 1822, with the collapse of the sugar market, Beckford was obliged to sell Fonthill and withdraw to Bath where he built a more enduring erection, the Graeco-Roman Lansdown Tower: standing 800 feet above sea level, with views over Wiltshire and the Bristol Channel, it is a folly which stands to this day. On 21 Dec. 1825, the new owner of Fonthill Abbey found his investment to be futile: the tower collapsed for good and all.<\/p>\n

    See further Brian Fothergill, Beckford of Fonthill<\/em> (London: F&F, 1979).<\/p>\n

    John Betjeman (1906\u201384): poet, journalist, authority on architecture (he was for many years on the staff of the Architectural Review<\/em>); and highly popular radio and TV broadcaster. He was taught by TSE at Highgate School, London, in 1916, and was C. S. Lewis\u2019s first pupil at Magdalen College, Oxford \u2013 which he left without taking a degree. Author of volumes of verse including Mount Zion<\/em> (1931), Ghastly Good Taste<\/em> (1933), Old Lights for New Chancels<\/em> (1940), A Few Late Chysanthemums<\/em> (1954), Poems in the Porch<\/em> (1954), Collected Poems<\/em> (1958) and the autobiographical sequence Summoned by Bells<\/em> (1960), which includes memories of TSE. Awarded the Queen\u2019s Gold Medal for Poetry 1960; knighted, 1969; appointed Poet Laureate, 1972. See also n.5 to \u2018Abschied zur Bina\u2019 below.<\/p>\n

    See too JDH, \u2018Letter to a Reader \u2026 VI (London, January)\u2019, Bonniers litter\u00e4ra magasin<\/em> 15:<\/p>\n

    There are the artists of the neo-romantic school whose masters are John Piper and Graham Sutherland. And there are also the amateurs or dilettanti<\/em>, somewhat mischievously led on by John Betjeman, who pretend to a passionate love of the \u2018gothick\u2019, and who, given a chance would, I have no doubt, promote a fashion for grottoes, haunted chambers, ivy-mantled towers and all the rest of the modern inconveniences of a Fonthill or a Strawberry Hill.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n

  2. 2.<\/a>\n

    JDH note: \u2018A pseudo-aunt & housekeeper in the Temple of that famous figure Mr Foster.\u2019 The \u2018Temple\u2019 is the Inner Temple, one of the four Inns of Court in London.<\/p>\n

    John Galway Foster (1903\u201382) graduated in 1924 with a first-class degree in History from New College, Oxford, and was elected to a Fellowship of All Souls, where he became acquainted with Geoffrey Faber. He then studied law, and was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1927, specializing in private international law and tax law; appointed QC in 1950. He was lecturer in private international law at Oxford, 1934\u20139, and at the Hague; Recorder of Dudley, 1936\u20138, and of Oxford, 1938\u201351, 1956\u201364. From 1939 he served as First Secretary and legal adviser to the British Embassy in Washington, and subsequently as legal adviser to Gen. Dwight Eisenhower. For his wartime service he was awarded the Legion of Honour, the American Legion of Merit, and the Croix de Guerre. In 1945 he became Conservative MP for the Northwich division of Cheshire, holding the seat until retirement in 1974; and he served as Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, 1951\u20134. He was a foremost figure in the setting up of the European Convention on Human Rights, and he worked with Miriam Rothschild in securing safety in the UK for German Jews, and compensation for them. Knighted in 1964.<\/p>\n

    See Miriam Rothschild\u2019s warm memoir \u2018Sir John Foster and the Jews\u2019 at the website of the Rothchild Foster Human Rights Trust: https:\/\/rothschildfostertrust.com. Rothschild emphasizes Foster\u2019s sparkling sense of humour, his love of anecdote, gossip and laughter \u2013 qualities which must have endeared him to the Bina circle. Foster dined chez Hayward, along with Faber and Eliot, on Monday, 28 March 1938.<\/p>\n

    \u2018John Foster\u2019s Aunt\u2019 glances too at the hugely popular farce Charley\u2019s Aunt<\/em> (1892), by Brandon Thomas (1848\u20131914).<\/p>\n

    On 12 Feb. 1939 TSE posted to GCF and his wife Enid a typescript skit headed \u2018THE AUTOLYCAN INTELLIGENCER: Once a Week For Private Circulation Only<\/em> edited by John Foster\u2019s Aunt<\/em>, Vol. I, No. 15\u2019:<\/p>\n

    ANGLO-AMERICAN TENSION<\/em>: The Staff of the German Embassy in Washington are chuckling over an incident which, while it has so far been kept out of the news, has gone far to disturb Anglo-American relations. It appears that the text of Mr. T. S. Eliot\u2019s new play (\u2018The Family Reunion\u2019 \u2013 we understand that it is based on the theme of \u2018Blood is thicker than water\u2019) was sent over to his New York publishers containing the phrase \u2018block house\u2019. Later, a corrected text was received from the London publishers, in which the term \u2018block house\u2019 had been replaced by \u2018stockade\u2019. Somehow or other, this alteration leaked out, and reached the ears of Senator Jones Snoot of Montana, the inveterate enemy of Anglo-American understanding. Senator Snoot raised the question at a secret meeting of the Foreign Relations Committee. \u2018If them kind of censorship is tolerated\u2019, barked Senator Snoot, chewing his cigar in the way so well known to cartoonists, \u2018it comes to a virtual suppression of U.S.A. culture in the American-speaking Dominions under the British flag.\u2019 The incident has led to a realignment of forces in the Foreign Relations Committee; and has brought together in alliance with Senator Snoot \u2013 the Great Cornhusker \u2013 his old enemies Senator Hugh Cabot Jones of Massachusetts (glad of any opportunity, it is said, to down an Eliot) and Senator Joe Claiborne Pinckney of Georgia. Meanwhile, the wire keeps buzzing between Washington and London. The First Secretary of the American Embassy in London, answering our telephone enquiry, said: \u2018The Ambassador is in retreat in Connemara, and we can answer no questions.\u2019 No importance is attached to the fact that Mr. Julian Huxley has just given a party to introduce the German Ambassador officially to the Giant Panda.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n

  3. 3.<\/a>\n

    John Keats, \u2018Ode to a Nightingale\u2019, ll. 1\u201310:<\/p>\n

    My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains<\/p>

    My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,<\/p>

    Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains<\/p>

    One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:<\/p>

    \u2019Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,<\/p>

    But being too happy in thine happiness \u2013<\/p>

    That thou, light-winged dryad of the trees,<\/p>

    In some melodious plot<\/p>

    Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,<\/p>

    Singest of summer in full-throated ease. (cited in Poems<\/em> II, 222)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/li>\n

  4. 4.<\/a>\n

    JDH note: \u2018A whisky whose vile flavour could be recognised by a man blind-fold.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  5. 5.<\/a>\n

    Karl A. Menninger (1893-1990), American psychiatrist, was author of The Human Mind<\/em> (1930) and Man Against Himself <\/em>(1938). (TSE\u2019s spelling \u2018Meninger\u2019 has been emended.)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  6. 6.<\/a>\n

    JDH note: \u2018In the north of London, the seat of Mr F.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  7. 7.<\/a>\n

    \u2018villas numberless\u2019 \u2013 variant: \u2018loonies numberless\u2019.<\/p>\n

    GCF\u2019s typescript has this side-note: \u2018Can the poet be thinking of Mr Unwin? See Kelly\u2019s Guide to Hampstead.\u2019 Sir Stanley Unwin (1884\u20131968), publisher, lived just over the road from Faber in Frognal. GCF wrote in his diary, 13 June 1939, of Unwin: \u2018His efficiency & his apparent liberalism of thought do, I think, cover a very narrow personality.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  8. 8.<\/a>\n

    Matthew Arnold, \u2018The Scholar-Gipsy\u2019, ll. 71\u20134:<\/p>\n

    For most, I know, thou lov\u2019st retired ground.<\/p>

    Thee, at the ferry, Oxford riders blithe,<\/p>

    Returning home on summer-nights, have met<\/p>

    Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe (cited in Poems<\/em> II, 222)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/li>\n

  9. 9.<\/a>\n

    \u2018\u2026 hiding their tossing manes and their tumultuous feet\u2019: W. B. Yeats, \u2018Michael Robartes Bids his Beloved Be at Peace\u2019, l. 12.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  10. 10.<\/a>\n

    JDH note: \u2018In Oxford, where Mr F. passed his week-ends.\u2019<\/p>\n

    \u2018Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe\u2019: Matthew Arnold, \u2018The Scholar-Gipsy\u2019, l. 74 (cited in Poems<\/em> II, 222).<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  11. 11.<\/a>\n

    \u2018The pleasant whining of a mandoline\u2019: The Waste Land<\/em>, l. 261 (Poems<\/em> I, 64).<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  12. 12.<\/a>\n

    \u2018The line of festal light in Christ-Church hall\u2019: Arnold, \u2018The Scholar-Gipsy\u2019, l. 129 (cited in Poems<\/em> II, 222).<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  13. 13.<\/a>\n

    Keats, \u2018Ode to a Nightingale\u2019, ll. 61\u201370:<\/p>\n

    Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!<\/p>

    No hungry generations tread thee down;<\/p>

    The voice I hear this passing night was heard<\/p>

    In ancient days by emperor and clown:<\/p>

    Perhaps the self-same song that found a path<\/p>

    Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home<\/p>

    She stood in tears amid the alien corn;<\/p>

    The same that oft-times hath<\/p>

    Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam<\/p>

    Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. (cited in Poems<\/em> II, 222\u20133)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/li>\n

  14. 14.<\/a>\n

    Keats, \u2018Ode on a Grecian Urn\u2019, ll. 24\u20137:<\/p>\n

    For ever piping songs for ever new;<\/p>

    \u2026<\/p>

    For ever warm and still to be enjoyed,<\/p>

    For ever panting, and for ever young. (cited in Poems<\/em> II, 223)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/li>\n

  15. 15.<\/a>\n

    JDH note: \u2018Mr. F. was much addicted to this luxury.\u2019<\/p>\n

    GCF was an habitu\u00e9 of Nevill\u2019s Charing Cross Turkish Bath for Gentlemen at 25 Northumberland Avenue, London, in part because he mistakenly believed that a good sweat bath enabled him to lose weight. The Turkish Baths, which could serve dozens of men, occupied the basement, ground floor, and second floor of the purpose-built building, all decorated in Moorish style. Over the road was the Metropole Hotel.<\/p>\n

    One fictional client of the Northumberland Avenue establishment was Sherlock Holmes, as related by Dr Watson in \u2018The Adventure of the Illustrious Client\u2019 (1924): \u2018Both Holmes and I had a weakness for the Turkish bath. It was over a smoke in the pleasant lassitude of the drying-room that I have found him less reticent and more human than anywhere else. On the upper floor of the Northumberland Avenue establishment there is an isolated corner where two couches lie side by side, and it was upon these that we lay on September 3, 1902, the day when my narrative begins.\u2019<\/p>\n

    Another patron of the same Turkish Baths was E. W. Hornung (1866\u20131921), author of the famous series of stories about the gentleman thief A. J. Raffles.<\/p>\n

    GCF\u2019s diary, 2 Jan. 1926: \u2018Spent much of day in Turkish Bath. Weight going up alas! (13.9 before: 13.7 after).\u2019<\/p>\n

    GCF\u2019s diary, 2 Aug. 1927: \u2018Turkish Bath. Weight at end 12.11\u2014a good stone below what I was two months ago: the result of massage, diet, exercises, Carlsbad cure, & T. baths. Can I keep myself to 13 stone, I wonder?\u2019<\/p>\n

    GCF\u2019s diary, 24 July 1941: \u2018Went to T. Bath at 5; weight, on going in 13.4\u00bd, on coming out 13.1.\u2019<\/p>\n

    GCF\u2019s diary, 7 Mar. 1932: \u20187 Mar. \u2018Drove up from Oxford with Enid; & then down to Northumberland Avenue Baths \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  16. 16.<\/a>\n

    JDH note: \u2018At this point the unknown poet himself seems to have become fuddled, and imagined that he was addressing the late Wm. Wordsworth.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  17. 17.<\/a>\n

    Samuel Taylor Coleridge, \u2018Dejection: An Ode\u2019, ll. 47\u20138:<\/p>\n

    O Lady! we receive but what we give,<\/p>

    And in our life alone does Nature live \u2026 (cited in Poems<\/em> II, 223)<\/p><\/div>\n

    Sylvia Lewin to Haffenden, 11 Oct. 1979: \u2018I was tidying some drawers [at Cheyne Walk] and found in one of them, mixed up with rubber bands and so forth, a small book. \u201cWhat\u2019s \u2018Lyrical Ballads\u2019 doing here?\u201d \u201cOh, do be careful,\u201d said John Hayward, \u201cthat\u2019s Coleridge\u2019s copy.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  18. 18.<\/a>\n

    \u2018Look homeward angel now, and melt with ruth \u2026\u2019 John Milton, \u2018Lycidas\u2019, l. 163 (cited in Poems<\/em> II, 223).<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  19. 19.<\/a>\n

    See Rudyard Kipling, Jungle Book<\/em>, ch. 11 \u2013 \u2018Toomai of the Elephants\u2019 \u2013 for the story of how the 67-year-old elephant Kala Nag (\u2018Black Snake\u2019) \u2013 who \u2018stood ten fair feet at the shoulders, and his tusks had been cut off short at five feet\u2019 \u2013 bears Little Toomai into the forest to enable him to witness the nighttime dance of the elephants (cited in Poems<\/em> II, 224).<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  20. 20.<\/a>\n

    John Milton, \u2018Lycidas\u2019, 157\u201367:<\/p>\n

    Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide<\/p>

    Visit\u2019st the bottom of the monstrous world;<\/p>

    \u2026<\/p>

    Look homeward angel now, and melt with ruth.<\/p>

    And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth.<\/p>

    Weep no more, woeful shepherds weep no more,<\/p>

    For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,<\/p>

    Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor (cited in Poems<\/em> II, 223)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/details>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Ode to a Roman Coot By the author of \u201cThe Fantasy of Fonthill: or Betjeman\u2019s Folly\u201d1 and \u201cJohn Foster\u2019s Aunt.\u201d2 My head aches, and a drowsy numbness pains3 My sense, as though of White Horse4 I had drunk, Or else had fuddled my too sensitive brains With Meninger,5 or some equivalent bunk. \u2019Tis not through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":11,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1011","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1011","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=1011"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1105,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1011\/revisions\/1105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}