While I was researching Rhyme & Reason (available in all good and goodish bookshops), I came across a little anecdote that tells us something Terribly Important (I think) about history.
It's a anecdote about T.S. Eliot and the young -
indeed future - Queen Elizabeth the Second. There is a story, which is recounted
as history in several perfectly respectable books, about a reading of The Waste
Land at Windsor Castle during the Second World War. T.S. Eliot, so the tale is told, recited
his great poem, but the young princesses got the giggles, as did their mother,
and then the king. Here is a link to one book, among many, that tell the tale.
It's interesting because you can, or at least I did, trace the source, see
everything that's wrong with it, and then discover the truth.
Let's start with the false account.
In 1990 the writer A.N. Wilson wrote an article in The Spectator
recounting, verbatim, a conversation that he had had with the Queen Mother in
1980. Notice the ten year gap. Here is the conversation as it has gone into
history:
Queen Elizabeth [the Queen Mother]: I thought the girls . . . you see, they were marooned in
Windsor Castle for most of the war, and I was not sure that they were having a
very good education and kind Sachie and Osbert [Sitwell] said they would arrange a
poetry evening for us. Such an embarrassment. Osbert was wonderful, as you
would expect, and Edith, of course, but then we had this rather lugubrious man
in a suit, and he read a poem . . . I think it was called 'The Desert'. And
first the girls got the giggles, and then I did and then even the King.
Self:
'The Desert', ma'am? Are you sure it wasn't called The Waste Land?
Queen
Elizabeth: That's it. I'm afraid we all giggled. Such a gloomy man, looked as
though he worked in a bank, and we didn't understand a word.
Self: I believe
he did once work in a bank.
It may well be that Mr Wilson writes everything down immediately afterwards, but
for the sake of kindness, we should remember that there was a decade between his conversation with the Queen Mother and his writing it up. As the story she told took place during WWII, she was remembering something from forty years previously.
Fifty years in total, and two levels of remove. But it is an eyewitness account.
Let's look at the problems.
Assuming that A.N. Wilson
is being word perfect, there are a few things in the Queen Mother's account that
don't ring true. The first is misremembering the name "The Waste Land" as "The
Desert".
People rarely confuse synonyms when they misremember. If you can't quite remember the name of Kingsley Amis' first novel Lucky Jim, you might call it Lucky Him, or maybe Plucky Jim. But you wouldn't think it was called Fortuitous David.
Here are some
plausible, and implausible, misrememberings of names (I've just invented this
list, but you'll see what I mean)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Plausible:
Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows
Harry Potter and the Deathly
Gallows
Implausible:
Harry Potter and the Morbid Praises
Sons and Lovers
Plausible:
Sons are Lovers
Implausible:
Offspring and Enthusiasts
Casablanca
Plausible:
Casabianca
Implausible:
Rabat
Even though Rabat is another town in Morocco.
Then you have the idea that a chap giving a performance to the Queen, the King and two princesses didn't look at them once. It would be extraordinary for T.S. Eliot to care so little about his audience. This seems suspicious.
It would also be quite odd for a couple of teenage girls of the 1940s to be laughing at a poem with a rather obvious reference to abortion, among other things. I've personally sat through some terribly boring and pretentious art events and I've certainly laughed about them afterwards, in the pub with a pint, but I can't recall a time that I've laughed the whole way through. The Waste Land is a long poem.
And then there's the question of why she thought he looked like a banker. T.S. Eliot had worked in a bank. That's a famous fact about a famous poet. But it would be hard to deduce from his face, or merely from his suit.
But then there is the biggest problem of all. How did the Queen Mother remember all these little details, and not remember the central fact that she had had a private reading of The Waste Land from the most famous poet of the C20th? And, even more importantly, if this event had really meant so little to her WHY WAS SHE STILL TALKING ABOUT IT FORTY YEARS LATER?
If these were the words that the Queen Mother used, every one of them smells wrong.
Now, let's turn to the second problem.
Why don't we have T.S. Eliot's version of the story? T.S. Eliot wrote letters about everything. He couldn't sneeze without writing to somebody about it. And yet...
He's meant to have given a command performance to the Royal Family at Windsor Castle, and then forgotten about it. The story doesn't pop up in his letters, and it doesn't pop up in any of the biographies of him.
Omission isn't a perfect historical guide. But that's a level of omission that should make you wonder.
And now let's turn to the third point. (I feel there should be some drum roll here): the event was very well recorded by several eye-witnesses at the time. It occurred on the 14th of April, 1943.
It just didn't happen how the Queen Mother said it did. In fact, it was almost the opposite.
T.S. Eliot did read to the Queen Mother and the princesses, but it wasn't at Windsor Castle, it was at the Aeolian Hall, a theatre near Bond Street. There twelve poets gave a recital to a packed audience. Let's start with the letter that Eliot did write about it (because Eliot couldn't sneeze without writing a letter about it). The letter is dated 26 April 1943.
The poetry recital consisted of twelve poets, all of us of the 'older generation', beginning with Masefield, each reading from our own works for six minutes. Most of them, I thought read rather badly; De la Mare, who read extremely well, yet did so in a voice which could hardly have penetrated beyond the first six rows. (Incidentally, I got high mark from the reporter of the 'Evening Standard'). It is very difficult to read for that length of time - one needs about that to get warmed to the task - but the last section of 'The Waste Land' just fitted the time well. It would not have done to give that audience anything at all new: they came to look at us and to hear how we recited, rather that from love of poetry; and it was a more or less fashionable audience, what with have the Queen there and all. We were presented during the interval; and in the second half of the programme I had to sit next to Princess Elizabeth. Bu there was no conversation; she didn't say anything, and I thought that perhaps she was getting too old to be addressed first. I wanted to say that I was as bored as she was: but that might not have been quite the right thing. I must say they were attentive; and as the Queen didn't have to make a speech, it was perhaps preferable from her point of view to opening a bazaar. I escaped the parties afterwards by having my fire watching duties....
So the Queen Mother had got the location wrong and the attendees wrong. No King. But might she have been right about she and the princesses getting the giggles during Eliot's performance?
Luckily we have four further eyewitness accounts. First, as Eliot said, the event was written up in the Evening Standard the next day. The article said that Eliot was the joint-best reader. But that wasn't the only newspaper report. A journalist from the Picture Post was there (who noted that "T.S. Eliot, too, can read poetry as well as recite it") but was much more interested in the watching the royals in the audience:
The Queen and the two Princesses listened intently right through the two-hour programme, and the audience sat in solemn reverence.
The poet Edith Sitwell was also watching the royals. Afterwards she said that the princesses "sat very still in the front row and stared at one".
Harold Nicolson was there and watching. He was "impressed by Eliot's reading", but again no record of giggles.
If the princesses had been giggling in the front row, you can be sure that somebody would have noticed.
You can learn some important things about history here. A.N. Wilson's 1990 article was an eyewitness account of an eyewitness account. That's why it's repeated in lots of history books. But it's incorrect.
You wouldn't think it was incorrect, until you start sniffing. If you sniff, everything smells wrong.
If you then check up, and - as I did - search every biography of T.S. Eliot for references to Windsor Castle, you get nothing. A strange omission.
If you check further... bingo.
And now, it is very important that you go and buy Rhyme & Reason: A Short History of Poetry and People (for People Who Don't Usually Read Poetry).
Banker
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