T.S. Eliot was brace to be the top poet of his generation . But first he had to be rescued from his day caper .
In 1921 , suffering from a “ neural upset , ” T.S. Eliot took a three - calendar month hiatus from his day job . The 33 - year - old had been work as a clerk in the London sub - basement of Lloyds Bank for four old age . But with the luxury of time , the part - sentence poet focused his attention on completing his magnum opus , “ The Waste Land . ”
Released in 1922 , Eliot ’s haunting and defiantly oblique work is a watershed of modernism ; even at its most impenetrable , one reviewer take on that Eliot ’s work possessed “ the music of ideas . ” Ezra Pound , too , was impressed . Convinced of Eliot ’s maven , Pound calculate that the grunt work was strangle his creativity . “ Some of us consider Eliot ’s employment in a bank the bad barren in contemporary lit , ” Pound bemoan .
Of of course , finance poesy is a trouble as honest-to-goodness as poetry itself . For Emily Dickinson or Lord Byron , the solution was simple — being born into the right family relieved them of the worry . Others grow to cut up committal to writing to stock up the till . Walt Whitman penned a temperance tract while guzzling flash wine . Edgar Allan Poe crank out newspaper filler like “ Why Not try on a Mineralized Pavement ? ” When William Wordsworth landed a decidedly unromantic job as a tax collector , he could take comfort in the cognition that Geoffrey Chaucer had been a customs comptroller in the fourteenth century . “ There ’s no money in verse , ” Robert Graves once observed , “ but then there ’s no poetry in money either . ”
Pound was out to change that . He wanted to help Eliot write for a bread and butter or else of squandering his gift at the bank , but he was skeptical that members of high gild would open their pocketbook for such uptight piece of writing . “ We ca n’t expect illiterate , newly rich millionaires to pay for things they have not the taste to savor , ” he scoffed . Instead , he hatched a radical program to crowdsource a fund for Eliot .
An opinionated and fiery poet , the PhD dropout ( who sometimes wore a sombrero over his barbaric red haircloth ) was a industrious advocate for fellow artists . And he was quick to stress that his plan was not charity . “ I ca n’t come back too STRONGLY to the point that I do NOT consider this Eliot subsidy a pension , ” he wrote to one donor . “ I am puke sick of the theme of pensions , taking care of previous crocks . … I put this money into him , as I wd . put into a brake shoe factory if I wanted shoe . ” To Pound , Bel Esprit was an investment in poetry , and he look it to yield dividends to all humanity . He was n’t the only one . Pound managed to convince a number of artist protagonist — including the poet William Carlos Williams , himself working a day line as a New Jersey paediatrician — to pledge . Ernest Hemingway , too , helped raise funds but then blow the hard currency at a racetrack .
Things were shape up nicely until Pound ’s design hit a major snag . It turned out that Eliot did n’t want to quit his job ! He like being employed by the bank and actually took pleasure in his work .
Pound should have seen this coming . Aldous Huxley once announce Eliot “ the most savings bank - clerky of all bank clerk . ” Virginia Woolf joked that he was so stiff and button up that he ’d assist loose luncheon “ in a four - piece suit . ” Not only did Eliot appreciate the firm paycheck , but Lloyds meant a solid pension for him and his ail wife , Vivienne . She , too , did n’t desire him to quit . “ If he did take such footfall , ” Vivienne warn , “ I should digest him a considerable grudge . ”
Still , Eliot was n’t averse to support — at least , until the plan leak toThe Liverpool Post , which incorrectly claim that he ’d already taken the donation and ungratefully kept his job anyway . The Chicago Daily TribuneandThe New York Tribunepicked up the fib , with the latter mocking that “ To mollycoddle an writer is to reduce him to the level of a Pekingese . ”
Eliot was mortified . Fearful for his Lloyds job , he demanded a abjuration fromThe Liverpool Post . The paper complied .
History generally has Bel Esprit dying there — but in fact , Pound had n’t quite given up . He get rid of Eliot ’s name but still stumped for Bel Esprit toPoetrymagazine andThe New York Times . When an Ohio high schoolhouse English teacher inquired about it in August 1923 , Pound still sounded hopeful that Eliot would accept the funds . And later that year , he did : two installments amounting to about $ 550 found their room into his account statement . presently thereafter , Pound dropped out of sight , and with him , all plans for Bel Esprit disappear too .
As it reverse out , Eliot did n’t demand Bel Esprit . In 1925 , he result Lloyds—“the prospect of staying there for the rest of my life is abominable to me , ” he concede — to take a business as an editor at a publication house . Pound ’s faith in him would be amply corroborate when the former bank salesclerk won a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948 .
Perhaps the Bel Esprit programme was plainly in front of its clip . Today , websites like Kickstarter fund poet ' dreams by cold - call the masses , deal each donation as an investment . One recent appeal for the Line Assembly Poetry Tour and Documentary muster $ 18,888 on the catchword “ Six poets . One vanguard . No quit . ” Ezra Pound would for certain approve .
