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Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St Louis, Missouri, on September 26th, 1888, the youngest of seven children. The family is of English origin, the American line descending from Andrew Eliot who went to Massachusetts from the Somerset village of East Coker in the 17th century.
     T.S. Eliot was educated at Harvard, at the Sorbonne in Paris, and at Merton College, Oxford. His early poetry was profoundly influenced by the French symbolists, especially Baudelaire and Laforgue. In his academic studies he specialized in philosophy and logic. His doctorial thesis was on F.H. Bradley.
   He settled in England in 1915, the year in which he married, and also met his contemporary Ezra Pound for the first time. He taught briefly at High Wycombe Grammar School, and in 1916 spent four terms at Highgate Junior School, where John Betjeman, aged ten, was one of his pupils. In March, 1917, he joined Lloyds Bank in the City of London, in the foreign and colonial department. In this year he published his first volume of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations. His second book, Poems, 1919, was hand-printed by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. The Sacred Wood, a collection of critical essays, appeared in 1920. His most famous work, The Waste Land, came out in 1922 in the first issue of the quarterly The Criterion, which he edited. Three years later her left the bank to become a director of the publishing house of Faber. In 1927 he was recieved into the Church of England, and also became a British citizen. Ash-Wednesday waws published at Easter 1930. Eliot soon became one of the leaders of Anglo-Catholic opinion and a devoted churchwarded in Kensington.
    There have been various collected editions of his poems, and volumes of his literacy and social criticism, notably Selected Essays, On Poetry and Poets and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture.
    During the nineteen-twenties he frequented the ballet, the theatre and the London music halls, especially the Palladium. He wrote a celebrated tribute to Marie Lloyd on her death in 1922. His verse writing for the theatre began with the Sweeney Agonistes fragments in 1927. He wrote the London churches' pageant play The Rock in 1934. Murder in the Cathedral, about the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, was commissioned for the Canterbury Festival of 1935. It was later filmed. The Family Reunion was first performed at the Westminster Teatre in 1939, with Michael Redgrave as Lord Monchensey. Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats appeared in October 1939 ('Possum' was Eliot's alias among his friends). Four Quartets, now generally regarded as his masterpiece, began with 'Burnt Norton' in 1936, continued with 'East Coker' in 1940, 'The Dry Salvages' 1941 and 'Little Gidding' 1942. The seperate poems were gathered together in 1943.
    Eliot recieved the Order of Merit in January 1948, and in the autumn of the same year was awarded teh Nobel Prize for Literature. Among many other honours and distinctions he was an Officier de la Legion d'Honneur. He was awarded the Hanseatic Goethe Prize 1954, and the Dante Gold Medal 1959.
    He subsequently wrote three more verse plays, each of which had its premiere at the Edinburgh Festival: The Cocktail Party, The Confidential Clerk 1953, The Elder Statesman 1958.
    Eliot married for the second time in 1957. He died in London in January 1965. There is a memorial to him in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, beside those of Tennyson and Browning. His ashes rest in St. Michael's Church, East Coker.

-from a CATS playbill

    In an early poem, 'The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock', T.S. Eliot likened the yellow fog of St Louis to a cat
"That rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its toungue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled oncee about the house, and fell asleep..."
    There are other references to cats in his work, but it was to his Godchildren, particularly Tom Faber and Alison Tandy in the 'thirties, that he first revealed himself as Old Possum.
    Writing to Tom in January 1931 he described and drew his Lilliecat called Jellylorum whose "one idea is to be USEFUL...and yet it is so little and small that it can sit on my ear!...I would tell you about our Cus Cus....except that I can't Draw Dogs so well as Cats, Yet; but I mean to..." When Tom was four TSE suggested that all Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats should be
"INVITED to Come
With a Flute a Fife a Fiddle Drum
With a Fiddle, a Fife, a Drum a
Tabor
To the Birthday Party of THOMAS EARLE FABER!
Then there was "a very Grand Cat...a Persian Prince and it is Blue because it has Blue Blood, and its name was MIRZA MURAD ALI BEG but I said that was too Big a Name for such a Small Flat, so its name is WISKUSCAT. But it is sometimes called The MUSICAL BOX because it makes a noise like singing and sometimes COCKALORUM beccause it looks like one. (Have you ever seen a Cockalorum? Neither have I)." In April 1932 Tom learnt that "the Porpentine cat has been in bed with Ear Ache so the Pollicle Dog stopped At Home to Amuse it by making Cat's Cradles." Both children were sent 'The Naming of Cats' in January 1936.
    TSE was always inventing suitable cat names, as he was often asked for them by friends and starangers. I remember 'Noilly Prat' (an elegant cat); 'Carbuckety' (a knock-about cat); 'Tantomile' (a witch's cat); he also liked 'Pouncival' with its Morte d'Arthur flavor, and 'Sillabub,' a mixture of silly and Beelzebub.
    Alison received "the last poem I have written: 'The Rum Tum Tugger'" in October 1936. A year later TSE wrote: "Some time ago I mentioned in a letter that I was meaning to write a poem about TWO cats, named Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer- and here it is. You may not like it because those two Cats have turned out to be even worse than expected." On Ash Wednesday 1938 he told her, "I am trying to do a poem about a Railway Train Cat and if I can do it I will send it to you in due course." 'Skimbleshanks' followed.
    Although Faber & Faber announced 'Mr. Eliot's book of Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats As Recited to Him by the Man in White Spats' in their 1936 Spring catalogue, TSE had run into difficulties over his general approach. "The idea of the volume was to have different poems on appropriate subjects...recited by the Man in White Spats...At the end they all go up in a balloon, self, Spats, and dogs and cats.
'Up up up past the Russell Hotel,
Up up up to the Heaviside Layer.'"
Three more years, as his publisher put it, brought "a growing perception that it would be impolite to wrap cats up with dogs" and the realisation that the book would be exclusively feline. Ralph Hodgson, the poet who bred bull-terrires, had hoped to illustrate it but at the crucial period he was househunting in America. He felt that 'the fun of doing it- or attempting it- is the thing, and that is only possible with my feet up on the mantlepiece, as the saying is."
    Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats was published on 5 October 1939 in an edition of 3005 copies at 3/6d (30c) with TSE's drawings on the front cover and the dust-wrapper. He was nervous about its reception. His verse play The Family Reunion had appeared in March and The Idea of a Christain Society was due in three weeks. "It is intended for a NEW public," he informed Geoffrey Faber, "but I am afraid cannot dispense with the old one." He need not have worried. "CATS are giving general satisfaction," the Sales Manager reported shortly afterwards. Today they have become a minor classic and are to be found in Danish, German, Italian, Japanese, Swedish, Hungarian and Polish.
    'The Marching Son of the Pollicle Dogs' appeared in The Queen's Book of the Red Cross in 1939; 'Grizabella: the Glamour Cat' is an unpublished fragment of which only the last eight lines were written as TSE thought her history too sad for children.

- Valerie Eliot
PS. Whenever he was unwell or could not sleep, TSE would recite the verses under his breath.

Most of the poems were written between 1936 and 1938. 'I have done a new cat, modelled on the late Professor Moriarty but the doesn't seem very popular: too sophisticated perhaps...' TSE wrote wrote to Frank Morely. This will surprise today's many admirers of 'Macavity'. Although he confided to Enid Faber on 8th March 1938 that 'The Railway Cat (LMS) is rather stuck', a week later the poem was finished. 'Skimbleshanks' is based on Kipling's 'The Long Trail' just as 'The Marching Song of the Pollicle Dogs' was written to the tune of 'The Elliots of Minto'. 'Grizabella the Glamour Cat' is an unpublished fragment of which only the last eight lines were written because TSE realised she was developing along the lines of Villon's 'La Belle Heaulmiere' who ell on evil days and he felt it would be too sad for chldren.
    About this time, when he was driving to the country, he and the driver began discussing their respective dogs. The chauffeur wishing to make clear that his was a mongral said, 'He is not what you would call a consequential dog'. This delighted TSE that he resolved to write a book of Consequential Dogs to match the Practical Cats. But, alas, it was never done. During the war when he was living with friends in Surrey he remarked of the temporary absence of a noisy pug 'When does"...that fatall and perfidious Bark/Built in th' eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark..." return to us?' (Milton).
    Although Faber & Faber announced 'Mr. Eliot's book of Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats As Recited to Him by the Man in White Spats' in their 1936 Spring catalogue, TSE had run into difficulties over his general approach. "The idea of the volume was to have different poems on appropriate subjects...recited by the Man in White Spats...At the end they all go up in a balloon, self, Spats, and dogs and cats.
'Up up up past the Russell Hotel,
Up up up to the Heaviside Layer.'"
Three more years, as his publisher put it, brought "a growing perception that it would be impolite to wrap cats up with dogs" and the realisation that the book would be exclusively feline. Ralph Hodgson, the poet who bred bull-terrires, had hoped to illustrate it but at the crucial period he was househunting in America. He felt that 'the fun of doing it- or attempting it- is the thing, and that is only possible with my feet up on the mantlepiece, as the saying is."
    Of the poets who haver written about cats TSE most admired Christopher Smart: 'His poem about his cat is to all other poems about cats what the Iliad is to all other poems on war.'

-Valerie Eliot

Anecdotes Pertaining to T.S. Eliot


1. I. A. Richards, the eminent literary critic and scholar, knew T.S. Eliot when he was a junior member of the staff of Lloyd's Bank in Queen Henrietta Street, London, at the end of World War I. By chance he met one of Eliot's superiors on holiday in Switzerland and the two men discovered that the poet was a mutual acquaintance. The senior banker was a pleasant man who seemed unable to frame a question that he obviously wanted  to put to Richards. Eventally it came out: did Richards think that Eliot was a good poet? Richards replied that in his opinion, which would not be shared by everyone, Eliot was a good poet. The other man was pleased to hear it. Some of his colleagues considered that banking and poetry did not go well together, but in his view if a man had a hobby and did it well it helped him in his work. He ended by telling Richards that he could tell Eliot that if he continued as well as he was doing at the bank, "I don't see why- in time of course, in time- he mightn't even become a branch manager." Richards found great delight in relating this conversation to Eliot.


2. Critics and admirers of Eliot's work both found Four Quartets obscure. During his lecture tours students took the opportunity to question Eliot on the meaning of the poems. Louis Untermeyer repeated to Eliot a story he had heard of how a student at a midwestern university had volunteered a lengthy analysis of a passage from "East Coker." Eliot was said to have listened patiently. At the end the young man had said, "Isn't that what it means?" and Eliot responded, "It may very well mean that." Eliot smiled as Untermeyer finished his story, then remarked, "I may very well have said that."


3. On his way to Stockholm for the Nobel prize-giving ceremony, Eliot was interviewed by a reporter who asked him for which of his works the prize had been awarded. Eliot replied that he believed it was for the entire corpus. "And when did you publish that?" asked the reporter. Eliot observed afterward that The Entire Corpus might make a rather good title for a mystery story.


4. At a meeting of the Oxford Poetry Club Eliot was the guest of honor and agreed to answer questions about his work. An undergraduate asked him what he meant by the line from Ash-Wednesday: "Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree." Eliot answered, "I mean, 'Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree.'"


5. An American arriving in England in 1961 for postgraduate study went to visit Eliot. As he was leaving, he noticed that the poet was apparently searching for the right remark with which to bid him farewell. "Forty years ago I went from Harvard to Oxford," Eliot began. "Now, what advice can I give you?" There was a prolonged pause while the younger man waited breathlessly for the poet's words of wisdom. Finally Eliot said, "Have you any long underwear?"


6. W.H. Auden, finding Eliot engrossed in a game of patience, expressed surprise at his apparent enjoyment of this trivial occupation. "Well," said Eliot thoughtfully, "I suppose it's the nearest thing to being dead."


7. Asked why he did not go the the movies more often, Eliot replied, "Because they interfere with my daydreams."


8. Publisher Robert Giroux once asked Eliot whether he agreed with the widely held belief that most ediors are failed writers. Eliot pondered for a moment, then said, "Yes, I suppose some editors are failed writers- but so are most writers."