Robert Crawford - Eliot After The Waste Land

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for Alice

with love

T. S. Eliot outside the Faber & Gwyer offices at 24 Russell Square, Bloomsbury. This photograph was taken by his brother Henry.

MS Am2560 (Box 7: 186), Houghton Library, Harvard University; reproduced courtesy of the Houghton Library and with the permission of the T. S. Eliot Estate

T. S. Eliot at his desk at Faber & Gwyer, 1926. This photograph was taken by his brother Henry, and seems to show a marionette hanging from the telephone.

MS Am2560 (Box 7: 187), Houghton Library, Harvard University; reproduced courtesy of the Houghton Library and with the permission of the T. S. Eliot Estate

A studio photograph of Vivien Eliot, inscribed by her to her sister-in-law in 1930.

The T. S. Eliot Estate; reproduced with the permission of the T. S. Eliot Estate

T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf and Vivien Eliot, photographed by Leonard Woolf at Rodmell, Sussex, in September 1932.

MS Thr 560 (Box 1: 87), Houghton Library, Harvard University; reproduced courtesy of the Houghton Library and with the permission of the University of Sussex and the Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Leonard Woolf

T. S. Eliot and Vivien Eliot, photographed by Leonard Woolf at Rodmell, Sussex, in September 1932.

MS Thr 560 (Box 1: 90), Houghton Library, Harvard University; reproduced courtesy of the Houghton Library and with the permission of the University of Sussex and the Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Leonard Woolf

Emily Hale performing in a play put on by The Montebanks at Milwaukee-Downer College in 1924.

From the Archives Department, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries (Milwaukee-Downer College Records: Series 7, Box 24, Volume 41); reproduced with permission

Emily Hale at Milwaukee-Downer College, circa 19261930.

ARC2015-140, Lawrence University Archives, Appleton, Wisconsin; reproduced with the permission of Lawrence University Archives

Emily Hale at Abbot Academy in 1956.

Commissioned by Phillips Academy, Andover, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, and courtesy of Phillips Academy

One of a series of photographs taken on 4 July 1939 at Much Hadham Hall, Hertfordshire, on the occasion of a farewell party for the Morley family, who were leaving for the United States. Left to right in the back row are Richard de la Mare, Catherine de la Mare, Christina Morley, Frank Morley and Geoffrey Faber; in the middle row are the children Catherine de la Mare and Donald Morley; in front is T. S. Eliot.

Faber & Faber Archives; reproduced with the permission of Faber & Faber

Emily Hale with flowers in 1935, probably taken by T. S. Eliot, who called this photograph a masterpiece when he sent it to Emilys friend Jeanette McPherrin.

The T. S. Eliot Estate; reproduced with the permission of the T. S. Eliot Estate

T. S. Eliot and Emily Hale at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, in 1936.

Ruth George Collection of T. S. Eliot, Ella Strong Denison Library, Scripps College; reproduced with the permission of Scripps College

The sloping rear garden of Stamford House, Chipping Campden. The yew tree (no longer present today) is visible at the top of this picture, which is taken roughly from the back door of the house, probably in the 1930s and possibly by Eleanor Malby, who was friendly with Emily Hales aunt Edith Carroll Perkins.

Reginald A. Malby / Royal Horticultural Society Lindley Collections; reproduced with the permission of the Royal Horticultural Society

The rear garden of Stamford House, Chipping Campden, looking towards the back door of the house, probably photographed in the 1930s and possibly by Eleanor Malby.

Reginald A. Malby / Royal Horticultural Society Lindley Collections; reproduced with the permission of the Royal Horticultural Society

A group in the living room at Shamley Wood, Shamley Green, Surrey, around 1941. Left to right: Constance Moncrieff, Mappie Mirrlees, Hettie James (with tray), Ellen James, Hope Mirrlees, T. S. Eliot.

The T. S. Eliot Estate; reproduced with the permission of the T. S. Eliot Estate

The label inside Mappie Mirrleess copy of For Lancelot Andrewes.

Private collection; reproduced with the permission of the owner

Mary Trevelyan, photographed by Elliott & Fry, probably in the 1930s.

National Portrait Gallery, London; reproduced with the permission of the National Portrait Gallery

Shy, smoking and wearing his Order of Merit, T. S. Eliot, recipient of an honorary degree, talks with nineteen-year-old Schlin Andrade-Thompson after a rectorial ball at St Andrews University in April 1953.

Private collection; reproduced courtesy of Schlin Tipping and with the permission of the owner

Valerie Eliot photographed by Angus McBean in 1957.

Angus McBean Photograph (MS Thr 581) Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University; reproduced with permission

T. S. and Valerie Eliot photographed by Angus McBean in 1957.

Angus McBean Photograph (MS Thr 581) Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University; reproduced with permission

T. S. Eliot photographed in Brighton by Valerie Eliot, 195960.

The T. S. Eliot Estate; reproduced with the permission of the T. S. Eliot Estate

ON a wintry day in the late 1950s, around the time of his second marriage, T. S. Eliot came downstairs from his publishing-house office in Londons Russell Square and noticed a restless baby in a pram. The little daughter of Frank and Patricia Herrmann had been left in the office foyer, close to the receptionist, and had kicked off her blankets. When the Herrmanns returned, seeing no pram, they began to panic. Where has the pram gone?, Patricia Herrmann shouted, but the receptionist calmed her, explaining that the poet had seen little Camilla looking unsettled, and had tucked her up, then taken the pram outside to push it round Russell Square. Twenty-first-century readers may be disturbed by this momentary abduction as a gesture of appropriation and control, or touched by it as a small example of observant kindness. Whether, as the Herrmanns did later, they speculate that the experience may have represented a vicarious substitute for unfulfilled parenthood, and whether or not readers choose to relate it to his poetry, is a matter for each individual. Chronicled much later by Frank Herrmann, and in our own century detailed by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue in their annotated text of The Poems of T. S. Eliot, this was a revealing action performed by the elderly poet, publisher, and internationally lauded man of letters. But it may be more appropriate to regard it as something done by the man whom his family simply called Tom.

Both in America, where he had been born in 1888, and in England, where he lived from his twenty-sixth year, many people found it hard to get to know this poet on familiar terms. Even if they did so, some were unsure what to call him. Will he become Tom? Virginia Woolf had wondered in 1921, after she had known him for well over two years. That is why, throughout, I call him Tom.