52 Monday November 12 2012 | the times Cyclist who twice won bronze at the 1948 Games Tommy Godwin Register Page 54 MYRON DAVIS /TIME LIFE PICTURES /GETTY IMAGES Obituaries As it became notoriously difficult to wrote for amultitude of little maga- Lives remembered gain permission to quote Eliot even in zines and journals over some five the most favourable contexts, Faber — decades —was announced at the where his affairs were handled by her beginning of 2006, under Schuchard’s GeraldineMucha husband’s friend John Bodley —began general editorship, but this has grown Valerie Eliot to claim that quoting as little as five or to such ascale that aprinted version is Jill Gomez writes: Geraldine’s (obituary, six lines was abreach of copyright. In no longer feasible. November 5) gifts were recognised 1997, however, this stance was Proper concern among those around from her earliest years when she could Wife andliteraryexecutorofT.S.Eliot whostrove to challenged by an author who wrote to her for Mrs Eliot’s privacy too often led improvise at the piano before she could Mrs Eliot pointing out that in After to akind of secrecy which made editori- read. She went on to study (piano and protecthis legacy by tightlycontrollinghis archive Strange Gods Eliot had quoted six lines al tasks unnecessarily difficult —and composition) at the Royal Academy of of Yeats without payment or elaborate the resulting delays only intensified the Music and her mentors included At her death, Valerie Eliot was prob- just 14. Like schoolgirls today setting acknowledgment. Grudging permiss- feeling that there was something to Benjamin Dale, Alan Bush, Arnold Bax ably the last person in the world who out to marry Prince Harry, she decided ion to quote The Waste Land without hide. Having retained Eliot’s library in and William Alwyn. could talk unaffectedly, if startlingly, that she must work for this most payment was granted. toto at his death, she possessed one of Her substantial body of work about “Tom” and “Ezra”. Her life had eminent of figures and took asecretar- Mrs Eliot’s fears for her husband’s the crucial archives, and she was active includes pieces commissioned by the been devoted to the work and wellbe- ial course with this express purpose. reputation were at their most acute in the salerooms buying further oboist George Caird and Ifelt ing of her husband. From her school- Against her parents’ wishes, she moved over the oft-repeated allegations of material, particularly letters. But while privileged that she wrote many songs days, she devoted herself to meeting to London to work for Charles Morgan anti-Semitism (which Eliot himself had she would offer the editors tea in her dedicated to me which Ihugely him, working for him, making him at Faber’s (Eliot joked that he was pre- strenuously denied). In 1996 Anthony flat, and answer their specific queries enjoyed performing both in concert happy as his second wife, and then pared to overlook this), and in 1949, Julius grossly exaggerated these about Eliot —which books he owned, and in recordings for the BBC. The protecting his posthumous reputation. against stiff opposition and to the charges in his book T. S. Eliot, Anti- when he had bought them, and so forth ideas for them were often conceived Not, perhaps, since Boswell has anyone annoyance of rivals who regarded her Semitism and Literary Form, which gave —the contents of her invaluable during the many holidays that Patrick been so dedicated to aliterary figure, in as very much a“downstairs” part of the rise to afrenzy of impatient and ill- archive have so far, 50 years after Carnegy and Iwere lucky enough to life and in death, as Valerie Fletcher company, she was promoted to be judged press speculation. Eliot’s death, only been glimpsed. share with her at her idyllic house near was to T. S. Eliot, yet almost the entire- secretary to the man who the previous In 2003 Professor Ronald Schuchard If Valerie Eliot was sometimes Ballater on Deeside. There she loved to ty of his enormous literary output was year had been created OM and award- published details of apreviously thought paranoid in her protectiveness spend the summer months gardening, behind him before they met. ed the Nobel Prize. unknown cache of letters from Eliot to of her husband’s reputation and effects, walking in the Cairngorms, plunging Because he was 38 years older than Eliot suffered from continual poor Horace Kallen, which reveal that in the her attitude was not without good spontaneously into icy mountain she, the worlds in which they grew up health, including atouch of rather early 1940s Eliot was actively helping cause. It was said that on one occasion, streams, collecting wild mushrooms were entirely different. He had a relished hypochondria, and he became Jewish refugees from Germany and after ahospitable dinner at her flat, she and, most importantly, writing music. complicated, if distinguished, family increasingly dependent upon the Austria to resettle in Britain and Amer- showed avery eminent American The songs for me included five John background in America, which he women around him. Friends such as ica. In letters written after the war, professor three important letters. Con- Webster songs, including Cinco Can- rebelled against but never entirely left Mary Trevelyan had for some years Eliot also voiced support for modern versation and consumption continued, ciones de Antonio Machado,and Four behind, and studied classics, literature chivvied him, cheered him, and ferried Israel. Mrs Eliot herself said that she until finally it was time for him to leave. Sonnets of Hawthornden to words by and philosophy at Harvard before him around London. But aspecial sort never heard Eliot make any remark When she asked him to pass the letters William Drummond. En Los Pinares settling in London in 1915. She was an of friendship with Valerie developed that was at all anti-Semitic, and that it back to her, he proffered only two. She De Júcar,aGolden Age Spanish ballad unremarkable girl from suburban York- over lunches in the Russell Hotel, and would have been quite out of character. asked about the third, but he assured by Luis de Góngora, was written for shire, whose life from adolescence was friendship led to love. Eliot undoubted- Yet her own reactions could be dispro- her that she had shown him only two. myself, oboe d’amore and small string lived under his influence, and subse- ly fell deeply in love with her, and for portionate —and imperious. When She, sadly, had then to ask him to turn ensemble, premiered with the string quently under his wing. Valerie this was the goal of her life. Faber published Christopher Ricks’s out his jacket pockets, and there, to his players of the Scottish National Esme Valerie Fletcher was born in Eliot proposed to her at the Faber offic- calm and judicious book T. S. Eliot and surprise, was the third letter. Orchestra in Glasgow to critical 1926, in Headingley, Leeds. By this time es in Russell Square at the end of 1956, Prejudice,which argues that Eliot’s The launch in May 1981 of Andrew acclaim in the 1970s. Eliot and Ezra Pound had changed the nearly eight years after she had begun fascination with the power of pre- Lloyd Webber’s musical Cats based on An orchestral version of the John course of poetry, and Eliot’s position working for him. She gave him the love judices scarcely ever slipped into regret- her husband’s jeu d’esprit, Old Possum’s Webster Songs featured alongside her was well established. Prufrock and of awoman which he had been denied table indulgence in them, she wondered Book of Practical Cats,was to prove Piano Concerto and Ballet Suite for Other Observations (1917) had button- for 40 years. “There was ...alittle boy whether Ricks was “one of us”. “We extremely lucrative for Mrs Eliot (and Macbeth in the celebratory concert for holed atiny readership for his poetry; in him that had never been released,” didn’t really like that book,” she said. for the small investors gathered her 95th birthday given at the Prague the essays of The Sacred Wood (1920) she later said. Ricks’s book was one of aseries that together by Cameron Mackintosh to Conservatory on September 26 and had proclaimed Eliot’s academic They were married at 6.15am on Janu- grew out of the T. S. Eliot lectures at the fund the initial £450,000 costs). Produc- recorded by Czech Radio. Ever credentials and mastery of the tradi- ary 10, 1957,atStBarnabas Church, Ken- University of Kent, over which Mrs tions followed in New York, Vienna, excessively modest about her music, tion he was carrying forward, and The sington, where —they delightedly dis- Eliot annually presided. But she was Hamburg and elsewhere. much of which was recorded over the Waste Land (1922) had enjoyed ahuge covered —the French poet Laforgue distressed, reasonably enough, to find Valerie Eliot’s life remained very years by Supraphon, the success of this vogue with the young. Then in 1925 had also been married. The priest then that several of the lecturers, such as much bound up with Faber &Faber, concert gave her great pleasure. Eliot had given up his post at Lloyds took them to breakfast at his house, Richard Poirier, went on to deprecate and several of her friends, such as P. D. Among the many famous visitors to Bank to become adirector of the new which to Eliot’s surprise was at 10 Ken- Eliot, as areaction against the idolatory James and Natasha Spender, the whom Geraldine enjoyed showing the publishing house of Faber &Gwyer, sington Church Walk, where Ezra of an earlier era.