Becoming T. S. Eliot This page intentionally left blank Becoming T. S. Eliot The Rhetoric of Voice and Audience in Inventions of the March Hare Jayme Stayer Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore © 2021 Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2021 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Stayer, Jayme, author. Title: Becoming T. S. Eliot : the rhetoric of voice and audience in Inventions of the March Hare / Jayme Stayer. Description: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020045436 | ISBN 9781421441030 (hardcover ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781421441047 (paperback ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781421441054 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888–1965—Criticism and interpretation. | Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888–1965—Technique. | Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888–1965. Inventions of the March Hare. Classification: LCC PS3509.L43 Z8699 2021 | DDC 821/.912—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045436 A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more information, please contact Special Sales at [email protected]. Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post-consumer waste, whenever possible. For Barry and Lauren, Nick and DeAnne This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations xiii Introduction The Apprentice Alone in His Workshop: The Inventions Notebook 1 1 Indebted and Well Bred: Literary Models and Authority in the Juvenilia 9 2 The Notebook, Begun: The Clash of Laforgue and Baudelaire in the Poems of November 1909 47 3 Clearing the Throat: The Poems of Early 1910 72 4 Raising the Voice: The Sequence Poems of Fall 1910 109 5 Trembling with Pathos: The Paris Poems of Late 1910 and Early 1911 141 6 The Short and Surprisingly Private Life of King Bolo: The Bawdy Poems and Their Audiences 180 7 “Prufrock,” Abandoned: How the Poem Was Written, How It Was Received, and How It Works 209 8 Mumbling the Denouement: The Last and Undated Poems of the Notebook, Late 1911–1915 239 Appendix: Chronology of Eliot’s Work, 1899–1915 291 Notes 295 Works Cited 329 Index 337 Acknowledgments In his fine biography of W. H. Auden, Richard Davenport-Hines begins his otherwise generous acknowledgments with the claim “I have always had a distaste for long, diffuse, emotional acknowledgements presenting their au- thor as the centre of a uniquely loving, supportive network of scholars and admirers.” I find this prejudice odd because this is exactly what I read an acknowledgments section hoping to discover: that behind the edifice of schol- arship and evidence of hard labor there is love to be found. And so, without fear of sentimentality, I gladly name here many of the people and institutions who have helped, supported, and loved me during this project. This book was originally begun more than a decade ago as my first book, but three other books, various articles, and years of Jesuit formation kept postponing its completion. Although it is my fourth published book, it is still my first monograph, and it seems appropriate to begin by acknowledging those formative influences from as far back as college and graduate school. At the University of Notre Dame, I benefited greatly from John Matthias’s famous seminar on modernist poetry, which formed many future modernist scholars. Likewise, Susan Youens—though she taught musicology rather than literature—was the first to give me an inkling of how a life devoted to schol- arship and archival research might be a thrilling adventure. At the University of Toledo, I was lucky enough to take Noel Stock’s final course in modernism before he retired, and I am indebted to the late Wallace Martin for his help. In endless independent studies and on my dissertation committee, Jamie Bar- low and Don Bialostosky were kind and crucial influences on my intellectual development. Thanks to family and friends with whom I stayed while writing or visiting archives: Anthony and Melanie Fathman, and Matt and Julie Somers. Many hospitable Jesuit communities also served as inns or residences, and they did