The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical EditionVol. 6: The War Years, 1940-1946

Memoir on Irving Babbitt

On the occasion of Irving Babbitt’s death, I wrote an editorial note from which I quote the following passage as appropriate to this occasion:

Those who know Babbitt only through his writings, and have had no contact with him as a teacher and friend, will probably not be able to appreciate the greatness of his work. For he was primarily and always a teacher and a talker. He combined rare charm with great force: so that those who knew him will always remember his foibles with affection, and cherish the memory of his brusqueness when other men’s suavity is forgotten. Twenty-four years ago, when I first knew him, his reputation was only amongst a few. He was the author of two books, the first of which I still regard as the more important, Literature and the American College, and The New Laokoon. He was considered an interesting, eccentric, and rebellious figure amongst the teaching profession; and his outspoken contempt for methods of teaching in vogue had given him a reputation for unpopularity which attracted to him some discerning graduates and undergraduates at Harvard University. Fortunately for his pupils, his classes in those days were small, and could be conducted informally round a small table. For Babbitt, I think, like most great teachers, was at his best with a small group of pupils. Superficially, his lectures were almost without method. He would enter the room with a pile of books, papers, and notes, which he shifted and shuffled throughout the hour; beginning to talk before he sat down, beginning anywhere and ending anywhere, he gave us the impression that a life-time was too short for telling us all that he wanted to say. The lectures which I attended were concerned with French Literary Criticism; but they had a good deal to do with Aristotle, Longinus, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus; they touched frequently upon Buddhism, Confucius, Rousseau, and contemporary political and religious movements. Somehow or other one read a number of books, Aristotle’s Politicsor La Fontaine’s Fables, just because Babbitt assumed that any educated man had already read them. What held the lectures or talks together was his intellectual passion, one might say intellectual fury; what made them cohere was the constant recurrence 187of his dominant ideas; what gave them delight was their informality, the demand which they made upon one’s mental agility, and the frankness with which he discussed the things which he disliked, and which his pupils came to dislike too. ²

That paragraph, I think, will still do; and seems appropriate to the present context, though the rest of what I wrote then may not be. In the way of personal reminiscence I have little to add to what can be said better, and in more luminous detail, by those who have had more continuous relations with him. Babbitt’s influence was one of the forces that sent me to Paris; and for three years after that I was immersed in the technical philosophy of the time. After many years, I saw him after he had spent a few months lecturing at the Sorbonne. I think it was only the accident of a time-table which led to his returning from a British port, that had brought him to London. The evening that he spent with me, during a very brief sojourn in London, remains a very memorable one; though a poor memory has let slip the details of a conversation that I should have liked to preserve. I know that Babbitt in the role of guest was at his most charming – having that quality of the perfect guest, of being able to be formal and informal at once, combining the best of both attitudes. He had at command a graciousness, a wit, and even a light humor which most of those who knew him only as a public figure never suspected. There was nothing of the ogre known to the conventional academic world, to the world of literary journalism, or to the sluggish pupil. Yet to have...