By Ian Webster
Gloucester was such an important place for T. S. Eliot: From the age of five he spent his childhood summers there and he returned much later in life to proudly show Valerie his childhood haunts. With Eliot’s latest biographer Robert Crawford even proposing that the town shaped Eliot as a poet, the opportunity to visit Gloucester provided a fitting end to the 2023 Annual Meeting.
Gloucester is about 40 miles northeast of Boston, but in that short distance the noise and frenetic energy of the city is replaced by something more peaceful, more serene, but not without its own particular energy. The bus journey was over quickly: some nattered to pass the time, others debated what they had heard over the previous days, while there were those who used the journey to catch up on their sleep, or simply to watch the scenery slip by.
Arriving at Eliot’s summer house we were graciously welcomed by Dana Hawkes, a previous owner who sold the property to the Eliot Foundation in 2015. The house, known as The Downs, is now run as a writers’ retreat. Dana told us the history of the house from when it was built in the late nineteenth century, at the instigation of Eliot’s father, to the present day. Of course, the Eliot family vacationed there for many years, but Dana also told us about how she and her family had made it a home, living with its storied past. She emphasised that the place is a home, not a museum. And it is a home of great beauty. It is light and airy and while the rooms are spacious, they are not grand; it is a place built for comfort, not show. Having been regaled with the history of the house, we were left to explore all the various nooks and crannies of the place on our own.
Wrapped around two sides of the house is a shingled veranda where at the end of our exploring we all gathered. As the weather was clement, Tropical Storm Ophelia having abated, the veranda provided a welcoming spot for Eliot Aloud, the annual opportunity for society members to read or recite Eliot’s work. Such passion and joy were there in the readings that we went on for much longer than expected. Now we were behind time, so we had to move quickly: The Eastern point lighthouse and afternoon travel schedules were beckoning. start to rush.
As we left the house there was a brief moment to reflect on the setting of the property: The elegant house is built in land that has not been gardened in any meaningful manner. It is built amongst rocks; it emerges from nature and fits into its setting, not overwhelming the natural landscape.
Following a short bus ride, we arrived at the shore. To get to the lighthouse and the pier there was a tricky trek over rocks. Most of us chose to make the journey. A firm footing and a sense of balance was needed, and for some a helping hand, but it was worthwhile to get closer to the sea, to walk along the pier, to be able to look back on Gloucester, and to feel the spray from the waves and the wind from far out in the ocean.
Crawford reminds us that, in The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, Eliot wrote:
There might be the experience of a child of ten, a small boy peering through sea-water in a rock-pool, and finding a sea-anemone for the first time: the simple experience (not so simple, for an exceptional child, as it looks) might lie dormant in his mind for twenty years, and re-appear transformed in some verse-context charged with great imaginative pressure.
Our scramble to the lighthouse and the pier was one that Eliot had undoubtedly made numerous times. We, like him, stopped and stared, looked closely, but also, we gazed into the distance.
We had spent too much time at the house, and we lingered on the shore long enough that there was no time for lunch or to re-caffeinate. We needed to get back to Boston. The travel back seemed quicker, maybe because the volume of chatter had been turned up with more animated discussions. We returned to our various places: some directly to the airport with long journeys ahead, some back to their hotels, some directly home, but all enlivened by our visit.
The week following our trip to Gloucester I happened to pick up a copy of Timothy Donnelly’s recent collection of poems, Chariot. In the Acknowledgements I found this: “I am grateful to the T. S. Eliot Foundation and everyone at the T. S. Eliot House, where many of these poems were written and a vision of this book was first conceived.” That the place, through the generosity of the Eliot Foundation, remains a place of poetic inspiration is, to me, the most fitting legacy of Gloucester.
