Tom to T. S.

Among the undergraduate literary lights in the bright Harvard Class of 1910, Heywood Broun was a mere twinkle. He wrote for the highbrow Advocate, but was not elected to its board. His serious classmate Walter Lippmann made the heavy Monthly (now defunct). Rustic Stuart Chase wrote nothing but routine essays for professors. Ebullient John Reed made both the Monthly and the whimsical Lampoon. Beefy Hamilton Fish Jr. was in the literary Signet Society, partly because he was football captain. Brightest light of all was Thomas Stearns Eliot -- he was taken into the two literary clubs, Stylus and Signet, was secretary of the Advocate.

Still going strong, the latest issue of "Mother" Advocate pays tribute to her 1910 secretary by printing a whole number in his honor. The issue was interesting principally as it showed in what ways the boy Tom Eliot was father to T. S. Eliot, the poet.

Tom was a brilliant, hard-working student who finished his undergraduate course in three years, took an M. A. in his fourth. His interests were always violently eclectic, never popular. He fancied French poets but abhorred the self-conscious readings at Charles Townsend ("Copey") Copeland's rooms, and shied away from the spectacular new drama courses of George Pierce Baker. Harvard scholars then had a Teutonic reverence for degrees, and after a graduate year in Paris Eliot returned to Harvard and worked for a Ph.D. in philosophy, studying Sanskrit and Pali on the side. His Ph.D. thesis on F. H. Bradley and Meinong's Gegendstandstheorie was accepted, Eliot says, "because it was unreadable." He never took his degree.

Youngest child of elderly parents, Eliot at Harvard was tense, sensitive and reserved. His Advocate contemporaries say he was English in everything but accent and citizenship. His remarks were quiet, witty, precise but not precious. He smoked a pipe, liked to be alone, carefully avoided slang, and dressed with the studied carelessness of a future dandy.

Now he wears his handkerchief in his cuff. Still a lonely man (though married), he likes genteel drinks (Burgundy, hock, sherry), games like chess (which he plays badly), rummy and slippery Ann (for low stakes). His undergraduate timidity has carried over into fear of cows and high places, but not of critics. At 50, T. S. looks like an only slightly older brother to Tom.

In 1932, when he returned to Harvard for a year as Charles Eliot Norton Professor, U. S. critics seethed to see him wince at Americanisms, to hear him admit he had little knowledge of U. S. poetry or interest in it. He gave reticent teas, at which young Harvard intellectuals silently watched the silent poet eat cake. Eliot seemed to enjoy flaunting his English ways: "I tend," said he, "to fall asleep in club armchairs, but I believe my brain works as well as ever, whatever that is, after I have had my tea."

In the Advocate, some U. S. poets pay respectful respects to T. S. Eliot. Conrad Aiken: ". . . stinging and subtle . . ."; Archibald MacLeish: "No one has taught us more"; Allen Tate: "I have had only two Masters, and one of them is T. S. Eliot."

Below such praises the editors did Eliot the less certain favor of printing eight of his undergraduate poems, first published in the Advocate in 1907-10, never reprinted. Sample:

Romeo, grand serieux, to importune

Guitar and hat in hand, beside the gate

With Juliet, in the usual debate

Of love, beneath a bored but courteous moon;

The conversation jailing, strikes some tune

Banal, and out of pity for their fate

Behind the wall I have some servant

wait, Stab, and the lady sinks into a swoon.

Blood looks effective on the moonlit ground--

The hero smiles; in my best mode oblique

Rolls toward the moon a frenzied eye profound,

(No need of "Love Forever?"--"Love next week?")

While female readers all in tears are drowned:--

"The perfect climax all true lovers seek!"

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