T. S. ELIOT was not only the best-known poet of his time but its most distinguished critic. On the evidence of these volumes, he must count also as one of its most compelling writers of prose.
His style conveys an extraordinary sense of authority, combined with a magisterial point of view. It is not just that he seems to have read everything: he is capable of making the most astute judgements between one work and another, expressed in a way that is utterly lucid and often laced with irony. This nearly always results in a strongly conveyed point of view which is difficult to resist. Nevertheless, in 1928, in revising The Sacred Wood for a new edition, even Eliot himself wondered whether he had gone too far, detecting in his earlier writing “an assumption of pontifical solemnity which may be tiresome to some readers”.
The range of Eliot’s interests and reading is truly astonishing, and includes a vast knowledge of European literature, culture, politics, and theology, even his own translations of Jacques Maritain and Charles Maurras. All this when for nine years, until 1925, he worked full time in Lloyds Bank and also had a sick wife to care for.
Eliot is always willing to be positive and respectful in what he writes and usually begins like that, but often ends by being devastating. Reviewing a famous book, Conscience and Christ by Hastings Rashdall, Eliot describes the author’s understanding of conscience as “the usual structure of prejudices of the enlightened middle classes. To the middle-class conscience the teaching of Jesus is gradually assimilated.”
He was even less taken by G. K. Chesterton at this stage. “I find Mr Chesterton’s own cheerfulness so depressing. He appears less like a saint radiating a spiritual vision than like a busman slapping himself on a frosty day.”
In the first volume, I was particularly struck by Eliot’s growing admiration for the writings of those who followed St Thomas Aquinas. But he makes clear in an address that he gave later at Magdalene College, Cambridge, that what really turned him to the faith was “the futility of non-Christian lives” and “the incredibility of every alternative to Christianity”. He thought that one “may become a Christian partly by pursuing scepticism to the utmost limit”. Indeed, the atheism of Bertrand Russell had that effect on him; for it “was certainly the reverse of anything the author intended”.
In this connection, it is interesting to note that he describes the right-wing atheist Maurras as “a kind of Virgil conducting us almost to the doors of the temple”.
In these volumes will be found many examples of his famous criticism, especially of writers important to him, such as Dante and Ezra Pound. There are also long sections of his thought on culture, society, education, and the nature of poetry as well as the dangerous state of Europe, especially in the 1930s. There is even his doctoral thesis on the philosopher F. H. Bradley.
Nearly all the longer pieces have been published before in book form; so what is of most interest are the shorter pieces from The Criterion, which he edited for 17 years, and the Christian News-Letter, as well as reviews and addresses. Also included are his short introductions to the great Anglo-Catholic conferences of the inter-war years. His short pieces on the death of a particular writer are masterly, and what he writes of Charles Williams shows that he shared the view of Auden and others that Williams was a truly saintly man.
AlamyT. S. Eliot at his typewriter, c.1945
There are many perceptive insights: for example, his definition of a sceptic as someone “who suspects the origins of his own beliefs . . . who suspects other people’s motives because he has learnt the deceitfulness of his own”. This means that Voltaire was an imperfect sceptic, because he did not “sufficiently question his own motives for questioning the Christian faith”.
This view found further expression when he made the long journey to Truro School to give a speech-day address whose theme was “Don’t believe anything you are told”, urging people to think for themselves, and ending with a moving recital of the life of Charles de Foucauld.
There are two tributes to Fr Cheetham, Vicar of St Stephen’s, Gloucester Road, where Eliot was a churchwarden for many years, which express his characteristic mixture of generosity and honesty. This church offered a form of Anglo-Catholicism which led him to oppose the formation of the Church of South India. But it was mainly for literary reasons that he was so highly critical of the New English Bible, “which astonishes in its combination of the vulgar, the trivial and the pedantic”, and which he saw as a sign of the decadence of the English language and “an active agent of decadence”.
Eliot had a strong historical sense, and it was this that enabled him to be so alert to the modern world. And it was this which enabled him to be so perceptive regarding the way in which language changes from one generation to another. Although he much admired Samuel Johnson and thought that Johnson, Dryden, and Coleridge were the three great critics of poetry in our language, he judged that Johnson lacked such a historical sense.
Eliot often accepted invitations to give an address or talk and even subjected himself to interviews. These are all included. In an interview given later in life, he said: “My aim has been the maximum emotional effect with the minimum verbal decoration” — a salutary ideal for those of us who preach, teach, or write.
The Rt Revd Lord Harries of Pentregarth is a former Bishop of Oxford. He is the author of Haunted by Christ: Modern writers and the struggle for faith (SPCK, 2018) (Books, 2 November 2018).
The Collected Prose of T. S. Eliot: Volume 1, 1905-1928
T. S. Eliot
Archie Burnett, editor
Faber & Faber £50
(978-0-571-29548-7)
Church Times Bookshop £45
The Collected Prose of T. S. Eliot: Volume 2, 1929-1934
T. S. Eliot
Archie Burnett, editor
Faber & Faber £50
(978-0-571-29550-0)
Church Times Bookshop £45
The Collected Prose of T. S. Eliot: Volume 3, 1935-1950
T. S. Eliot
Archie Burnett, editor
Faber & Faber £50
(978-0-571-29552-4)
Church Times Bookshop £45
The Collected Prose of T. S. Eliot: Volume 4, 1951-1966
T. S. Eliot
Archie Burnett, editor
Faber & Faber £50
(978-0-571-29554-8)
Church Times Bookshop £45
