Eliot among the typists: Writing The Waste Land

Modernism - Modernity

Volumn 12, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 27-84

  Rainey, Lawrence ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61149220131     PISSN: 10716068     EISSN: 10806601     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/mod.2005.0049     Document Type: Review

References (94)

1. Valerie Eliot, ed., T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land. A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts Including the Annotations of Ezra Pound (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1971), hereafter cited as TWL:AF
2. Hugh Kenner, "The Urban Apocalypse," in Eliot in His Time: Essays on the Occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the THE WASTE LAND, ed. A. Walton Litz (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 23-49, hereafter cited as "UA"
3. Grover Smith, "The Making of The Waste Land," Mosaic 6.1 (1972), 127-41, hereafter cited as "MOTWL."
4. Lyndall Gordon, Eliot's Early Years (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1977), Appendix II, "Dating The Waste Land Fragments," 143-6; hereafter cited as "DTWLF."
5. Peter Barry, "The Waste Land Manuscript: Picking Up the Pieces - In Order," Forum for Modern Language Studies 15 (1979), 237-248
6. David Moody, in his contemporary study of Thomas Stearns Eliot: Poet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 310-8, largely assumed that the poem was written in a straightforward sequence from Part I to Part V
7. Ronald Bush, T. S. Eliot: A Study in Character and Style (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), Chapter 5, "'Unknown Terror and Mystery': The Waste Land," 53-78
8. Christine Froula, "Corpse, Monument, Hypocrite Lecteur: Text and Transference in the Reception of The Waste Land," Text: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Textual Studies 6 (1996), 297-314, here 313
9. "I am not anxious to produce another [book of criticism] for a year or two; and meanwhile have a long poem in mind and partly on paper which I am wishful to finish." T. S. Eliot to John Quinn, 9 May 1921, in Valerie Eliot, ed. The Letters of T. S. Eliot, vol. 1, 1898-1922, (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1988), 451; hereafter cited as LOTSE within the text, followed by the page reference
10. The myth that the name Madame Sosostris was derived from "Sesotris, the Sorceress of Ecbatana" in Huxley's Crome Yellow was first promulgated by Grover Smith, "The Fortuneteller in Eliot's Waste Land," American Literature 25 (1954), 490-2
11. In support of his claim Smith cited a letter he had received from Eliot, dated 10 March 1952, in which Eliot had said it was "almost certain" that he had borrowed the name from Crome Yellow ("almost certain" are the only words of the letter which are directly quoted by Smith). Smith then paraphrased the rest of the letter: "he has also said that, being unconscious of the borrowing, he was unaware of any connection between the name of the clairvoyant and that assumed by Mr. Scogan." Eliot had better reason than he knew for being "unaware of any connection" between the two characters. As we shall see below, Eliot had probably completed the scene with Madame Sosostris by early February, if we accept the evidence of a letter by Wyndham Lewis; and at the very latest he completed the typescript of Parts I and II sometime in mid-May 1921. Aldous Huxley, then living in Italy, did not even begin to write his novel until the beginning of June that same year, "pledging himself to finish it within two months," according to his biographer. It took just a bit longer, and he finished it in the second week of August, the same biographer says (see Sybille Bedford, Aldous Huxley: A Biography, vol. 1 1894-1939 [London: Chatto and Windus, 1973), 117 and 119)
12. Eliot and Huxley did not correspond during this period, as the two men were not close; Eliot, writing late in January 1921, had damned Huxley's recent poem "Leda" as "a concession to the creamy top of the General Reading Public." (See T. S. Eliot, "London Letter: March 1921," in The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot's Contemporary Prose, ed. Lawrence Rainey [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005], 139.)
13. Smith went on to diffuse the claim in his subsequent monographs on Eliot: T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays: a Study in Sources and Influence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 76, a work that went through numerous impressions and a second edition in 1974
14. and The Waste Land (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983), 47, 67-8
15. Through these it has become a standard note in all commentaries on the poem. See, for example: B. C. Southam, A Guide to the Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot (New York: Harcourt, 1968), 74-75, note to line 43
16. and The Waste Land: A Norton Critical Edition, ed. Michael North (New York: Norton, 2001), 6 n. 4
17. Wyndham Lewis, "Early London Environment," in T. S. Eliot: A Symposium, [1948] ed. Tambimuttu and Richard Marsh (London: Frank and Cass, 1965 [1948]), 24-32, here 30
18. "Mr. Apollinax" is assigned to 1916 by Christopher Ricks in his edition of T. S Eliot, Inventions of the March Hare (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1996), xli
19. I have been unable to locate this unpublished review of H.D., Choruses from Iphigeneia in Aulis (London: the Egoist, 1916), no. 3 in the Poets' Translation series
20. Lewis held a private viewing of his exhibition, "Tyros and Portraits," at the Leicester Galleries on 9 April, where he distributed the first copies of the journal to visitors; see Paul O'Keefe, Some Sort of Genius: A Life of Wyndham Lewis (London: Jonathan Cape, 2000), 229-30
21. Ezra Pound to Agnes Bedford, 20 April 1921, Indiana University, Lilly Library, Pound Mss. II
22. Ezra Pound to Isabel Pound 24 April [1921], Yale University, Beinecke Library, YCAL Mss. 43
23. Wyndham Lewis to Sidney Schiff, 7 February 1921; British Library, Ms. Add. 52919. The existence of this letter was first noted by Peter Ackroyd, T. S. Eliot: A Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 110 and 345 n. 6
24. T. S. Eliot, "The Metaphysical Poets," Times Literary Supplement, no. 1031 (20 October 1921): [669]-70)
25. now in The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot's Contemporary Prose, ed. Lawrence Rainey (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 192-201
26. This dating differs sharply from that of Lyndall Gordon, "DTWLF," 144, who urges: "It is impossible, so far to date the Hieratica cluster exactly, but 1918 seems a reasonable guess." The guess is just that, a guess, and it is by no means a reasonable one. Her arguments are followed by Ronald Bush, T. S. Eliot: A study in Character and Style (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 53-78, in particular 56-7 and 248, nn. 14-5, who then uses this early dating of the passage of "London, the swarming life" to argue that Eliot began The Waste Land in 1918 with programmatic intentions that later "fell away" (57)
27. The letter to Pound is misdated by Valerie Eliot, who assigns it to [24? January 1922]. The mistake results from her error in dating an earlier letter by Pound, one which he had dated "24 Saturnus" according to an arcane calendar ("The Little Review Calendar") that he published in the Little Review 7.2 (Spring 1922), 2
28. The month "Saturnus" was to corresponded with January. Mrs. Eliot, in her edition of LOTSE, mistakenly assigned the letter to December, following D. D. Paige, the editor of Ezra Pound, Selected Letters 1907-1941 (New York: New Directions, 1971), 169. Though Paige's error was first noticed back in 1972 by Hugh Kenner, "UA," 44, n. 7, it had not come to Mrs. Eliot's attention before she published her edition of the letters in 1988
29. On these discussions over publishing the poem see Lawrence Rainey, Institutions of Modernism (New Haven, CT Yale University Press, 1998), Ch. 3, "The Price of Modernism: Publishing The Waste Land," 77-106, here 82
30. Much of the discussion has focussed on Eliot and Wagner. See Sarah Wintle, "Wagner and The Waste Land - Again," English: The Journal of the English Association 38.162 (Autumn 1989), 227-50
31. Philip Waldron, "The Music of Poetry: Wagner in The Waste Land," Journal of Modern Literature 18.4 (Fall 1993), 421-34
32. and Margaret Dana, "Orchestrating The Waste Land: Wagner, Leitmotiv, and the Play of Passion," in T. S. Eliot's Orchestra: Critical Essays on Poetry and Music, ed. John Xiros Cooper (New York: Garland, 2000), 267-94
33. Readers will recognize that I am drawing here on Michael Levenson's excellent discussion of the opening passage in his A Genealogy of Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 165-73
34. Calvin Bedient, He Do the Police in Different Voices: The Waste Land and Its Protagonist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 56
35. Michael Levenson, "Does The Waste Land Have a Politics?," Modernism/Modernity 6.3 (September, 1999), 1-13, here 1
36. The ten essays which Eliot published while writing The Waste Land are conveniently collected in The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot's Contemporary Prose, ed. Lawrence Rainey (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), hereafter cited as TAWL. The first note to each essay provides the rationale used to assign it a date of composition, and those dates of composition (as opposed to publication) are followed in the discussion below
37. T. S. Eliot, "Andrew Marvell," Times Literary Supplement, 1002 (31 March 1921), [201]-2
38. T. S. Eliot, "John Dryden," Times Literary Supplement, 1012 (9 June 1921), [361]-2
39. T. S. Eliot, "London Letter: July 1921," the Dial, 71.2 (August, 1921), [213]-7
40. T. S. Eliot, "London Letter: May 1921," the Dial, 70.6 (June, 1921), [448]-53
41. T. S. Eliot, "The Metaphysical Poets," Times Literary Supplement, 1031 (20 October 1921), [669]-70
42. Eliot, "John Dryden," now in TAWL, 180
43. Carol Christ, "Gender, Voice, and Figuration in Eliot's Early Poetry," in T. S. Eliot: The Modernist in History, ed. Ronald Bush (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 33
44. Martin Scofield, T. S. Eliot: The Poems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 118
45. See Clara del Rio, Confessions of a Type-Writer (Chicago: Del Rio Publishing, 1893)
46. and Elinor Dawson, Confessions of a Typewriter, or Merciful Unto Me, a Sinner (Chicago: Charles Thompson, 1903). The Library of Congress catalogues the latter under the title Merciful Unto Me, a Sinner, and dates it to 1905; but the copy of the novel I own, a 1912 reprint, has the title as I've given it here and dates the copyright to 1903
47. See also Elizabeth Baker, Miss Robinson: A Play in Three Acts (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1920), 58
48. Examples include T. W. H. (Thomas William Hodgson) Crosland (1865-1924), "To the American Invader," in his Outlook Odes (London: At the Unicorn, 1902), 30-2
49. Enoch Miner [pseud.: Topsy Typist], Our Phonographic Poets. Written by Stenographers and Typists upon Subjects Pertaining to their Arts. Compiled by "Topsy Typist" (New York: Popular Publishing, 1904)
50. Samuel Ellsworth Kiser, Love Sonnets of an Office Boy (Chicago: Forbes and Co., 1907), twenty-eight sonnets addressed to the office typewriter girl
51. Andrew Lang, "Matrimony," in The Poetical Works of Andrew Lang, ed. Leonora Blanche Lang (London: Longmans and Co., 1923), vol. 3, 179-80
52. A serious and hence rare poem about a typist is "Interlude - Eurydice," by Arthur Henry Adams, in his London Streets (London and Edinburgh: T. N. Foulis, 1906), 34-6
53. See Christopher Keep, "The Cultural Work of the Type-Writer Girl" Victorian Studies 40 (1997), 401-26
54. Morag Shiach, "Modernity, Labour and the Typewriter," in Modernist Sexualities, ed. Hugh Stevens and Caroline Howlett (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 114-29
55. and Pamela Thurschwell, "Supple Minds and Automatic Hands: Secretarial Agency in Early Twentieth-Century Literature," Forum for Modern Language Studies 37 (2001), 155-68
56. The discussion which follows draws on J. R. Winton, Lloyds Bank, 1918-1969 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 1-43
57. JoAnne Yates, Control through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 37
58. On the changes detailed here and below see Elyce J. Rotella, "The Transformation of the American Office: Changes in Employment and Technology," Journal of Economic History 41 (1981), 51-7
59. Thomas Whalen, "Office Technology and Socio-Economie Change, 1870-1955," IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) Technology and Society Magazine 2.2 (June, 1983), 12-8
60. and JoAnne Yates (see preceding note), Ch. 2, "Communication Technology and the Growth of Internal Communication," 21-64
61. Peter D. McDonald, British Literary Culture and Publishing Practice 1880-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 96
62. Frances, "Five O'clock Tea Talk: A Woman's Restaurant," T. P.'s Weekly, 11 December 1903: 918. All subsequent citations are from this page. My thanks to Tom Holland for drawing attention to this essay
63. The Prudential Assurance headquarters, Holborn Bars, was constructed between 1899 and 1906, designed by Alfred Waterhouse (1830-1905). The neo-Gothic edifice was one of fifteen office buildings which Waterhouse designed for Prudential. See Alastair Service, London 1900 (New York: Rizzoli, 1979), 97-8
64. Ivy Low, The Questing Beast (London: Martin Seeker, 1914), hereafter cited as TQB
65. In 1916 Ivy Low married Maxim Litvinov and changed her name; she moved with him to the new Soviet Union after 1917, where ultimately he became Foreign Minister under Stalin. After his death she returned to England. The Questing Beast was her second novel. Her first, Growing Pains (London: William Heinemann), was published in 1913
66. See John Carswell, Exile: The Life of Ivy Litvinov (London: Faber, 1983)
67. Anonymous, "Suffragette Secretaries: A Report on Office Life 60 Years Ago," Survey of Secretarial and Clerical Salaries: Alfred Marks Bureau, Statistical Services Division (October 1979), 19-29
68. Sophie Cole, Money Isn't Everything (London: Mills and Boon, 1923), 24-5
69. Tom Gallon, The Girl Behind the Keys (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1903), 5
70. David Graham Phillips, The Grain of Dust (New York: D. Appleton, 1911), 300
71. T. S. Eliot, "London Letter: March 1921," The Dial 70.4 (April 1921), [448]-53, here 450
72. For Low's rapport with Mansfield and Murry, see Carswell (n. 60), Exile, 74, 96-7, 165
73. Eliot's publications in the Athenaeum are catalogued by Donald Gallup, T. S. Eliot: A Bibliography, revised ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1963), 203-7
74. See, for example, Grace Miller White, Edna, the Pretty Typewriter (New York: J. S. Ogilvie, 1907)
75. and Eliza Margaret J. Humphreys (pseud. Rita), Betty Brent, Typist (London: T. Werner Laurie, 1908)
76. See, for example, Sophie Cole, A Plain Woman's Portrait (London: Mills and Boon, 1912)
77. Ruby M. Ayre, The Winds of the World (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1918)
78. Elinor Glynn, Man and Maid (London: Duckworth, 1922)
79. Sophie Cole, Money Isn't Everything (London: Mills and Boon, 1923; and the novel cited below, n. 80
80. Warren Titus, Winston Churchill (New York: Twayne, 1963), 7
81. Winston Churchill, The Dwelling-Place of Light (New York: Macmillan, 1917)
82. Arnold Bennett, Lilian (London: Cassell and Co., 1922)
83. Rebecca West, The Judge (London: Hutchinson, 1922; reprinted London: Virago, 1980)
84. and Sinclair Lewis, The Job; an American Novel (New York: Harper, 1917; reprinted Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1994)
85. The identification of the typist and Tiresias is noted by Christ (see n. 50), 33; that of machine, typist, and Tiresias by Michael North, The Political Aesthetic of Yeats, Eliot and Pound (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 99
86. Charlton Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), s.v. vanus
87. Propertius compares his relation to Cynthia to military service at 1.6.40 and 4.1.135-8. Ovid extends the conceit with comic hyperbole in Amores 1.9. For the view that this conceit has no history but is a timeless propensity of the human mind, see George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 49
88. Elenore Meherin, "Chickie": A Hidden, Tragic Chapter from the Life of a Girl of this Strange "Today" (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1925), 272-3
89. See Jonathan Barnes, ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), vol. 1, "Parts of Animals," 1071-2
90. for Heidegger, see the terms "presence-at-hand" and "ready-to-hand" which recur throughout his Being and Time, transl. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1961)
91. For a view of the hand in English and American literature, see Katherine Rowe, Dead Hands: Fictions of Agency, Renaissance to Modern (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999)
92. See Martin Kirigin, La mano divina nell'iconografia cristiana (Città del Vaticano: Istituto pontefice di archeologia cristiana, 1976)
93. for a discussion of the hand in Byzantine churches and its development from Jewish tradition, see André Grabar, L'Art de la din de l'antiquité et du moyen age, vol. 2 (Paris: Collège de France, 1968), 791-4
94. T. S. Eliot, "'The Duchess of Malfi' at the Lyric; and Poetic Drama," Art and Letters 3.1 (Winter [1919]/1920), 36-9, here 37