In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

. Eliot the Banker: March , –November  As we have seen,once Eliot had made his decision to stay in England and earn enough money to support himself and his wife, he devoted all his mental and physical energies to writing reviews and essays, teaching school, and delivering a mind-boggling series of lectures. Little time was left for the newlyweds to spend together, and even when they were together, almost inevitably one or the other was sick. As Vivien wrote to Charlotte on April , , she was suffering from migraines and he the “influenza for weeks”—he “felt that life was simply not worth going on with,” each day “the screw turned a little tighter”(LTSE, ).Eliot’s activities in earning a living were so frenzied that he frequently found himself running short of energy or compelled to slow down and get some rest. Little or no time was left to write poems. It is useful to review just how much of Eliot’s time was consumed earning money. The pay was minuscule for the reviews and essays he wrote and not much better for the full-time teaching he began in September  and continued until December . Eliot taught first at High Wycombe Grammar School for a term, September through December ; the salary: [10] – . . : , , , ,   () Eliot the Banker: March , –November , ; () Eliot the Extension Lecturer , ; () Eliot as Eeldrop, ; () Eliot the Assistant Editor: June –December , ; () Eliot the Poet, ; () America Enters War: April , –Armistice Day, November , , ; () “Writing . . . Again”: The French and Quatrain Poems, ; () Poems Written –,  £. During this period he lived at Sidney Cottage, Conegra Road, High Wycombe (a municipal borough in South Bucks, on the River Wye). Next he taught at Highgate Junior School,north London, January through December of ; the salary: £, with dinner and tea. (One of his students there was the future poet laureate John Betjeman.) Although Eliot preferred the older students at Highgate Junior School, he was quite happy to end his school-teaching career at the end of . By that time he was embarked on a three-year career, –, delivering a total of five different extension lecture courses at the college level, all of them requiring different (and extensive) preparations. In –, Eliot taught two such courses (one on Friday afternoons, the other on Monday evenings); the meetings lasted for at least two hours, one hour for the lecture , another for discussion and questions. In –, Eliot again taught two courses but in –, he taught only one course. In effect, Eliot’s collegelevel teaching career was full-time, while he was also devoting much time to publishing prose pieces, including reviews. Then, on March ,  (only three months after giving up his“full-time”grammar-school job),Eliot began working at London’s Lloyds Bank,in the Colonial and Foreign Department— a full-time job in itself. In fact, Eliot quickly found that he liked his bank job and he remained a banker until November , , when he became a “director” of the publishing firm, Faber & Gwyer (later Faber and Faber). Within two days of his appointment, Eliot wrote to his mother describing his great good fortune , for after spending much time “hunting for work to stop the gap,” he has found work and is “in much better spirits. . . . A friend of the HaighWoods is a very successful banker, and he gave me an introduction to Lloyds Bank, one of the biggest banks in London.” Eliot’s tone exudes excitement: “I am now earning two pounds ten shillings a week for sitting in an office from : to  with an hour for lunch, and tea served in the office. This of course is not a princely salary, but there are good prospects of a rise as I become more useful.” Eliot would later write in his biography for the “Harvard College Class of ” (as the editor of the Letters informs us in a note) that he was appointed at Lloyds Bank for “£ a year and no food . . . on the false pretense of being a linguist” (LTSE, –). Most unexpected was Eliot’s attitude toward his job:“Perhaps it will surprise you to hear that I enjoy the work. It is not nearly so fatiguing as school teaching, and is more interesting. . . . The filing cabinet is my province, for it contains balance sheets of all the foreign banks with which Lloyds does business . These balances I file and tabulate in such a way as to show the progress or decline of every bank from year to year.” Eliot owed his job in part...

Share