Houses Under The Sea...

...T. S. Eliot, bless his fine silk socks, certainly knew how to bandy words about to a fine and proper purpose. All the rights ones and all utterly in the right order. Is there, indeed, any higher Lit. Crit. one could offer the fellow?

Not alone in thinking this I, for have just read that Eliot has been voted the nation's favourite poet in some recent vox. pop. poll or other. Hope for this benighted land of ours then? Well, perhaps best not be too chipper on the back of that alone, for as someone has pointed out - with probable due cause - that may only be because of the author's nominal association with the popular music-hall event 'Cats.'

But if so, then so. A start perhaps, a point of departure even. ('Departures' and 'points' - time/space combo thing - very Eliotesque indeed.) Does one, therefore, picture folk taking feline-type jumps, as it were, from a good foot-tapping tune straight into Prufrock and environs? It could happen. Must ask chum Adrian in that august pile the Office for National Statistics for some relevant data on the matter. Nothing those coves there don't know about our lives it seems.

Actually, a bit of a worrying thing all round this pandemic collection and collation of personal info by all and sundry and their respective computers. Why, only yesterday some jovial sounding fellow, telephoning from one of our larger supermarket chains, asked whether my decision last Friday not to buy the usual biscuit suspect by way of custard creams, but opting rather for the novel and untried caramel crunch item, signalled any fundamental shift in my purchasing habits. Cheek of the man to ask, and horror to me that he had the lowdown on my recent shopping outing in the first place!

The crisper response, of course, should have been to tell said fellow, his masters and their till-linked computers to be off and out of my life pronto. A man's biscuit is his castle and all that. That though the afterthought, as always in these affairs. On the other hand, my actual rambling reply how wonderful it was for him to remind me that we must have a packet of said caramel crunch about the place as I had plain forgotten the purchase entirely, did at least have the happy effect of my being written off as a complete lost cause to the annals of customer research and the phone call ending pronto. (I imagine his computer needed a good re-booting after that exchange, which is a pleasing thought.)

Anyway, back to Eliot. 'Four Quartets' is where we all end up. All poetic roads lead there, don't you find? (Beethoven's last and Eliot's all - the perfect zenith of human creation.) 'East Coker', in particular, one has in mournful mind today on hearing the terribly sad news that Ramsgate Abbey is to close its doors after a century and a half of habitation and prayer. Too few monks, too many empty cells it seems. Quite of lot of that about one must accept, and with heavy heart. They are not to disband, which is promising, but they are to decamp.

Thus spoke Eliot:

"In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto."

Could not have put it better had I tried indeed. The monks are asking that whoever buys their glorious Pugin pile will nurture and care for it, respectful of its past and eternal purpose. One can only hope so, though one fears a call or a conference centre at best: "Good morning Sir. Just a quick call about your snack preferences today...." Bah!