F.R. Leavis once denounced the Twickenham edition of Pope’s Dunciad for producing a meagre trickle of text through a desert of apparatus, the trickle sometimes disappearing altogether. In this volume of T. S. Eliot’s letters, from 1932–1933, the footnotes, the infantry and the grunts, are the stars — shooting stars, flares with flair, illuminating apparently unpromising basic materials.
For example, this is a letter to Auden in April 1932 in all its Spartan amplitude:
Dear Auden, The modifications of the few passages which I discussed with you the other day have been agreed upon. As for the preface I felt myself from the beginning that it was not really desirable and I find my own opinion confirmed by two other directors who feel as I do that there is no need to apologise for obscurity. I hope to send you a copy of page proof before long. Yours ever, T S Eliot.
About as enlivening as an epidural.
John Haffenden’s footnote, in summary, tells us that, in 1965, Auden remembered ‘[he] had used [in “The Orators”] the phrase “A fucked hen”. In 1932, publishers still boggled at four-letter words and a substitute had to be found.’ Eliot suggested ‘A June bride’. Auden was initially baffled that this should be thought to be equivalent. Eliot explained that in an election, the defeated candidate, asked about the voting figures, said he felt like a June bride: ‘sore but satisfied’. The victor was also asked how he felt about the voting figures: ‘Like a June bride,’ he returned, ‘I knew it would be big, but I didn’t think it would be that big.’ In 1965, this anecdote was suppressed to spare Valerie Eliot’s feelings. But Humphrey Carpenter retailed it in his 1981 biography of Auden and the robust Mrs Eliot wrote to him: ‘The anecdote about TSE and the June bride is delicious!’
This is of a piece with the limerick quoted and/or composed by Eliot in a letter
(26 December 1932) to Frank Morley, his Faber colleague: ‘There was a young lady named Ransome/ Who surrendered five times in a hansom,/ When she said to her swain / He must do it again/ He replied: “My name’s Simpson, not Samson”.’
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