Bob Miller, Founder and Chairman of the T S Eliot Society, writes …
I visited Little Gidding in England only a year ago and became acquainted with the place and the poet T S Eliot for the first time. Such was the impact of this that I applied for a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship almost immediately. This is from a Trust Fund set up in Sir Winston’s memory after his death in 1965, coincidentally the same year as the passing of Eliot.
The scholarship is one of a hundred awarded annually to British citizens, of any age, to travel and broaden their horizons. It must also bring something back to the English way of life. As a result I have set up at Little Gidding, the T S Eliot Society. It has now a membership of seventy people who bring with them a whole host of skills including sculpture, writing and even being a Judge.
Valerie Eliot has agreed to be the Patron and supports every meeting and event. Founder members who have joined me and showed their support include Wendy Cope the poet, Karen Armstrong the spiritual writer, A David Moody and Lyndall Gordon the author of An Imperfect Life. Paul Keegan from Faber and Faber the publisher acts as an adviser where necessary.
Jewel Spears Brooker, Professor of Literature at Eckerd College, whom I met whilst in America, is one of the foremost authorities on the works of Eliot anywhere in the World. In 2001 she edited the acclaimed T S Eliot and Our Turning World published by Palgrave Macmillan. In her words, ‘We need somewhere to act as a clearinghouse for everything Eliot’. I believe Little Gidding will fulfill that dream.
During the weekend of 19-20th May 2007 we will hold an Eliot weekend that will include a Little Gidding lecture ‘Never cease from exploration’ delivered by the succentor from St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Lyndall Gordon will be the keynote speaker and in the evening we will be putting on a symphonic play at Steeple Gidding Church and the re-dedication of a stained glass window will take place in the Little Gidding Church on Sunday.
The Four Quartets is the high water mark of Tom Eliot’s mystical achievement. It his vision of reality reached after a long and arduous spiritual and artistic journey. It makes manifest his final recognition of the great wisdom of humility and its accompanying condition of simplicity. The summation of the four poems is found in the last of these, Little Gidding, which he visited seventy years ago and which we celebrated.
The impact of this very special place was so great that it took a further 6 years before the poem was actually published. It is therefore right and proper for this to be the place to house the society’s HQ in England. My vision is for it to become the centre for Eliot studies, to be a retreat for Eliot scholars, writers and poets. As part of my exploration I have come to America to visit places associated with T S Eliot that will include Harvard and Princeton universities as well as the site of the poem Dry Salvages.
When I was interviewed for this scholarship, Randolph Churchill asked me if I knew of any connection between Eliot and his great grandfather. At that stage I knew nothing but suggested that Chartwell would have meant as much to Sir Winston as Little Gidding did to Eliot. I have since found a leading piece written by Eliot in the 1930’s in The Criterion paper concerning the poetry of Sir Winston and through Mrs Eliot’s good services I was able to supply Randolph with a copy. However, I have since found, according to Lord Moran’s diaries, that he introduced Churchill to Eliot at a dinner party in Tangiers in 1960 and from the expression on Winston’s face he clearly didn’t know of him.
BBC Radio 4 had broadcast a programme on ‘Poetry in History’ in the summer of 2006. In it, reference was made to the lines in Little Gidding ‘What we call the beginning is often the end and to make a beginning is often the end and to make an end is to make a beginning’. They compared this with Sir Winston’s immortal words ‘Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.’ [A speech made on 10th November 1942 at the Lord Mayors lunch at the Mansion House London – the same year as Little Gidding was published.]
My purpose was to establish if Eliot’s poetry is as relevant and prevalent today as it was during his lifetime. Also, whether the language and philosophy is in today’s world. Eliot was a man dedicated to the Book of Common Prayer, certainly since 1927 when he became Anglicized. I find it strange that he loved its outdated language but at the same time suggesting that historical texts should be modernized to be relevant and meaningful to those reading it today.
I concluded that in America he is not studied to any great degree in either the High Schools or Universities. Where he is, it is either The Waste Land or The Love Songs of J Alfred Prufrock. I found that nowhere did they study The Four Quartets, it being considered too difficult. In my opinion Eliot is on the wane in the USA.
Here in England The Waste Land still predominates undergraduate English courses. Libraries confirm that the borrowing of his works have been steady for the past 30 years. I wonder whether this adds anything to the debate as to Eliot being considered American or English?
I hope that some of you reading this article will want to join us at Little Gidding in May or even become a member of the Society. For further information on either please contact Ferrar House, Little Gidding, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire www.ferrarhouse.co.uk or e-mail info@ferrarhouse.co.uk