The Grave of Vivien Eliot

Vivien Eliot Headstone : Reads “In Loving Memory of
Vivien Haigh Eliot Died 29th January 1947”

Vivien Haigh-Eliot (formerly Vivienne Haigh-Wood) is buried in Pinner New Cemetery, North London. She was born in Bury, Lancashire on 28th May 1888, and famously was the first wife of modernist poet, author, playwright and publisher T. S. Eliot.

At the time of her death on January 22nd 1947, she was resident at Northumberland House psychiatric hospital in Finsbury Park, having been sectioned in 1938 after a period of erratic and unpredictable behaviour. The cause of death was given as a heart attack.

The green band attaches the headstone to two upright posts to the rear. This is a health and safety measure to avoid accidents caused by toppling headstones which have become prey to subsidence. There are several of these in the cemetery.

Register of Burials with the 
Listing for Vivien

Vivien Haigh-Eliot 1888-1947

A sad reflection of the care afforded to her memory, was that although she died in fact on January 22nd, no-one saw any reason to ensure the correct date was recorded on her headstone.

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A Visit

I visited the grave on November 25th 2011, and so recalling the visit now after several months is a task fraught with the risk of false notes – no, not a risk, but a certainty.

I asked for help at the site office, to find Vivien’s grave. The distance between the cemetery office and the plot is a short one. I was accompanied by the cemetery groundsman, the young man of whom I made my initial enquiry. We walked in silence, he looking from side to side as he walked, verifying the letters and numbers on some mentally-configured grid; and I, simply pacing a step or two behind him, in deference to his knowledge and quietly pleased to have found such a willing helper.

We reached the grave. I made a brief exclamation, the words of which I dare not recall because of the risk of a false note. The gap between anticipation and reality is understood as a shadow which has no definition. The moment of seeing Vivien’s grave for the first time was layered with every element of that gap.

I was in awe of the moment: here was the grave in its simple, physical reality: yet the moment of first sight opened up and absorbed a backwash of surprise and puzzlement, of melancholy.

Immediately obvious was the faded inscription – Vivien’s name is difficult to decipher. Weathering has taken its toll. But equally obvious was the presence of a bright green band of plastic, encircling the headstone and holding it to two wooden stakes. My impromptu guide/groundsman explained the health and safety regulations which create the need to secure those headstones which are prone to toppling due to subsidence. Vivien’s headstone is amongst the several thus affected. A metaphor perhaps for the support of strangers as institutionalised life takes hold.

I was grateful still for the presence of the young man who was helping me. I was curious as to how many people had come, like me, to visit the grave. In his six years in the role, he told me, he had seen only two people before me. I thanked him for his help and let him get back to his work. 

Age, Art and Withering

The Coming of Wisdom with Time

(Published 1916)

Though leaves are many, the root is one;

Through all the lying days of my youth

I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;

Now I may wither into the truth

  - W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)

We learn today that David Bowie has released a new record after 10 years. I was never a fan in his earlier incarnations, though was aware of the effect he was having on the new wave of youth which I was already leaving behind at the time. And because his music is woven now into the fabric of the past 45 years, it is impossible to deny his brilliance, and the huge paradox of his revolutionary, esoteric art combined with his appeal to a huge mass audience.

I really like this song “Where are we now”, which is an honest exploration of how it is to start feeling older. The video with it is extraordinary. No vanity, much depth. I particularly like the images of Berlin in the late 1970s, where Bowie lived for 3 years.  I feel lucky to have had several trips there in the same era.  Didn’t see him though!

The announcement of Bowie’s  record was on BBC news in the morning. In the same programme they had Andrew Motion on to talk about a Poetry competition for teenagers. At the end of the interview, and weaving in an earlier comment about age and Bowie, he chose a Hardy poem, which I found I half-remembered as I had learnt it verbatim for my college exams.

I Look Into My Glass
(Published 1898)

I look into my glass,
And view my wasting skin,
And say, "Would God it came to pass
My heart had shrunk as thin!"

For then I, undistrest
By hearts grown cold to me,
Could lonely wait my endless rest
With equanimity.

But Time, to make me grieve,
Part steals, lets part abide;
And shakes this fragile frame at eve
With throbbings of noontide.
 - Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

No withering into the truth there, then.

Oddly enough, as part of the focus of past couple of days, on themes of growing older, I was looking at some poems of Yeats, including the short 4-liner above. This one seemed highly appropriate

An Acre Of Grass
(Published 1939)

Picture and book remain,
An acre of green grass
For air and exercise,
Now strength of body goes;
Midnight, an old house
Where nothing stirs but a mouse.

My temptation is quiet.
Here at life's end
Neither loose imagination,
Nor the mill of the mind
Consuming its rag and bone,
Can make the truth known.

Grant me an old man's frenzy,
Myself must I remake
Till I am Timon and Lear
Or that William Blake
Who beat upon the wall
Till Truth obeyed his call;

A mind Michael Angelo knew

That can pierce the clouds, 

Or inspired by frenzy

Shake the dead in their shrouds;

Forgotten else by mankind, 

An old man's eagle mind.
   - W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)

This was part of his “Last Poems”  written in 1939, the year of Yeats’ death, and 20 years after “The Coming of Wisdom with Time” (1919) . Here, rather than withering, he is calling out in his old age, to become like these raging figures of old, who “beat upon the wall” to get truth to show itself, so that he can express it, externalise it (in poetry).  for fear that his “eagle mind” is forgotten to posterity.

Random thoughts.

T. S. Eliot and Football Supporters

Dublin October 2012

A trip via North Wales to Dublin with friends from Swansea University days, included an extended visit to Ireland's National Gallery.  This gallery is intuitively laid out to take the visitor though the various eras of art history, all helpful.

Back this enjoyable weekend we were travelling on a train back from Bangor to Euston. At Milton Keynes, the carriages were suddenly invaded by crowds of football supporters heading for some London-based fixture. They were a boisterous, good-humoured lot, but the contrast between the peace of the earlier part of the trip, and the chaos we were now subjected to, was palpable.

Here is the set of words (somewhat more judgmental)  from TSEliot about the “Inner Voice”  They are from an Essay called “The Function of Criticism” and actually addresses the relative merits of an understanding of “Classical”  and “Romantic” in art and literature.  In this section, he focuses on the importance of “Tradition” to advance a civilisation via its literature  – the Classical mode,  as preferable to the Romantic mode which relies on reference to the self, the “inner voice”.

North Wales October 2012

“My belief is that those who possess this inner voice are ready enough to hearken to it, and will hear no other. The inner voice, in fact, sounds remarkably like an old principle which has been formalised by an elder critic in the now familiar phrase of “doing as one likes”. The possessors of the inner voice ride ten to a compartment to a football match at Swansea, listening to the inner voice which breathes the eternal message of vanity, fear and lust.”

Thus the themes of our trip were joined, fragmentally, with Swansea and football hooligans!