ELIOT’S CAT CHAT

LETTER TO TOM FABER, 1931

“I am glad you have a Cat, but I do not believe it is So remarkable a cat as My cat. My Cat is a Lilliecat Hubvously. What a lilliecat it is. There never was such a Lilliecat. ITS NAME IS JELLYLORUM and its one Idea is to be USEFUL!!” [Accompanied by cartoon drawings of Jellylorum doing the housework, as proof.]

LETTER TO POLLY TANDY, 1934

“So far in my experience there are cheifly [sic] 4 kinds of Cat the Old Gumbie Cat the Practical Cat the Porpentine Cat and the Big Bravo Cat; I suspect that yours is a Bravo Cat by the look of things.”

LETTER TO POLLY TANDY, 1936

“When a Cat adopts you, and I am not superstitious at all I don’t mean only Black cats, there is nothing to be done about it except to put up with it and wait until the wind changes, and perhaps he will go away of his own accord and never be heard of again. But as I say there is nothing you can do about it. You must for the present provide liver and rabbit, and a comfortable seat by the fire; and perhaps he will disappear. I am sorry to give such cold consolation, but one might as well face facts.”

“Macavity: The Mystery Cat”: “Mr Richard Tandy observed that ‘it’s like Growltiger, but not so rough and tumble’. Of the corpus known to him he places Old Deuteronomy 1st and The Old Gumby Cat second. He says he would like to hear about other Kinds of Cat.”

Eliot had planned, initially, a book of broader scope – there were to be dogs, too. Mr Eliot’s book of Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats As Recited to Him by the Man in White Spats was first advertised in the Faber and Faber catalogue for spring 1936, much to the surprise of the book-buying public. Could this really be the latest title from the author of The Waste Land? And what on earth did it mean?

Well, Jellicle was derived from the name of Eliot’s own cat, Jellylorum, Pollicle from Polly “Pollicle” Tandy, mother of Alison, and Possum was the author’s nickname, coined by friend and fellow poet Ezra Pound. The Man in White Spats, meanwhile, was inspired by two of Eliot’s well-dressed friends, John Hayward and Ralph Hodgson, who were both approached as possible illustrators for the book.

Despite the catalogue’s promise that the poems “should be completed by Easter”, delays caused by all this other work and writer’s block meant it would be another three years before they appeared. In that time, Eliot’s idea for an elaborate framing device about the Man in White Spats fell by the wayside, as did the dogs – possibly thanks