PARTISAN REVIEW
at a loss to know what this means.
If
his country
is
a bad cause, then
no one would expect him to sacrifice anyone to it. But
if
it is a good
cause for which Forster would be ready to sacrifice himself, then
one would think that the basis of friendship was agreement about
ideas which each friend would sacrifice himself for. So that the ques–
tion of sacrificing one's country for one's friend could not arise in
an enduring friendship, for the friend would be willing to sacrifice
himself.
If
he were not, it seems difficult to think that the friendship
could survive, if such a sacrifice were demanded.
When I was twenty, a friend sent some of my poems to T. S.
Eliot, and a few weeks later I met him for the first time in one of
those London Clubs where I have met him so often since. His ap–
pearance was grave, slightly bowed, aquiline, ceremonious, with some–
thing withdrawn, about his glance. When Eliot orders a drink or
inclines over the menu to order a meal the effect is such as to pro–
duce a hush. It is a priestly act as he says in a grave voice: "Now
will you have turtle soup (I doubt whether it will be made from
real
turtles) or green pea soup." On the occasion of one of our first
meals, I disturbed him a little by announcing that I would choose
smoked eel to eat. I was rather surprised to hear him say "I don't
think I dare eat smoked eel," thus unconsciously paraphrasing Mr.
Prufrock.
Eliot's conversation is gravely insistent. It does not give the
impression of exceptional energy, but it has a kind of drive all its
own, as it proceeds along its rigid lines. He cannot be interrupted or
made to change the subject. Here one has insight into the working
of his mind. Once he has got onto a topic, one cannot get him off it
and he is liable to exhaust it pretty thoroughly. For example, the
weather: I say it is a fine day, and Eliot says gravely: "Yes, it is fine
today, but it was still finer yesterday-" with a faint hint in his voice
that when I described today as "fine," I was not choosing the word
altogether exactly. However, he continues about the weather:
"If
I
remember rightly this time last year the lilac-" and then it is quite
probable that if one has gone on listening carefully, out of this dry
climate there will suddenly strike a few words of poetry like a king–
fisher's wing across the club room conversation. His voice alone,
grave, suggesting a bowed gesture, almost trembling at moments, and
yet strangely strong and sustained-his voice alone is Eliot.
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