Volume 25, Number 19 · December 7, 1978
The Music of Suffering
By Irvin Ehrenpreis
The Composition of Four Quartets
by Helen Gardner
Oxford University Press, 239 pp., $32.50
Remembering Poets: Reminiscences and Opinions
by Donald Hall
Harper & Row, 253 pp., $10.00
At the end of the year 1914, when T.S. Eliot was twenty-six and living in England, he wrote to a friend about the unpleasantness of meeting sexual opportunities in the street and feeling his own refinement rise up to obstruct them. Eliot thought he might be better off if he had lost his virginity some years earlier, and he contemplated disposing of it before marriage. At the same time, he thanked the friend for executing a commission. Writing from England, he had wanted roses delivered to Emily Hale, to celebrate her appearance in a play produced by the Cambridge (Massachusetts) Social Dramatic Club. In his next letter, Eliot wondered whether or not he should get married and sacrifice his independence for the sake of his children. We may conjecture that the poet was meditating marriage and had even begun considering a choice of spouse.
Review, 3987 words
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