Reading it, I recall how later in life Eliot was happily married. His second wife Valerie is known to have said that all his life 'the little boy in him' was trying to get out, and that his marriage to her for the last few years of his life allowed that to happen. ( See for example Sarah Begley’s 2016 obituary‑essay in TIME , and Aida Edemariam’s profile of Valerie Eliot in The Guardian (2012) - both open in new tab).
I think of the song 'My Back Pages' by Bob Dylan, with its refrain ‘I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now’. The song appeared in 1964, only a year before Eliot died.
Dylan’s verses about 'abstract threats / too noble to
neglect,' about defining good and bad 'quite clear, no doubt, somehow,' could
have been written for the Eliot of masks, of high
seriousness and of spiritual vigilance. The Eliot who lived behind a wall of
refinement, who felt he had 'something to protect', when deciding for example that his faith precluded any notion of divorce from his first wife Vivienne. And for example, after years of a declared spiritual and emotional connection to Emily Hale, he could not marry her either. And yet the man Valerie describes — drinking Drambuie, playing Scrabble,
leaving her weekly love letters — seems to have stepped out of those old pages
entirely.
Whether he ever heard the song seems unlikely, though not impossible. It is pleasant to imagine someone playing it to him, if only to watch the faint smile of recognition.
Audio here:
Rollin’ high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps
“We’ll meet on edges, soon,” said I
Proud ’neath heated brow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now
Full Lyrics here: