TS Eliot’s Restless Ghost Finds Home in Seaside Idyll
The Guardian UK
February 14, 2015
By Robert McCrum
Last September, listeners to National Public Radio, the US equivalent of Radio 4, heard an elderly New England widow, Dana Hawkes, describe how, at home in Massachusetts, her late husband would sometimes say “he used to see TS Eliot’s ghost.”
TS Eliot at his house, 18 Edgemoor in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Photograph: © Estate of T.S. Eliot
There is something apt in this claim. The author of Four Quartets and Murder in the Cathedral, who was born in St Louis on 26 September 1888, but lived and died in London, has always projected a rather spectral persona.
From his haunting recitation of The Waste Land (“Unreal city …”) to his cadaverous alter ego, Old Possum, and his fascination with clairvoyants such asMadame Sosostris, Eliot has always been a sombre, other-worldly figure in the literary landscape.
In his afterlife, as an Anglo-American literary giant with a long shadow, the poet’s psychic exile has never been quite fully commuted. Despite a memorial stone in Poet’s Corner and the kind of instant recognition known to Shakespeare, Keats and Wordsworth, TS Eliot has no shrine to equal Stratford, Hampstead or Grasmere.
Even in his native America, Eliot has remained homeless. In New England, Concord celebrates Henry Thoreau. Emily Dickinson is remembered in Amherst, and Nathaniel Hawthorne in Salem.
In contrast, the founding father of Modernism and author of The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, seems remote and unaffiliated. For all his British citizenship and membership of the Church of England, Eliot has become strangely rootless.
But now, 50 years after his death, and two years after the passing of Valerie, his beloved second wife, Eliot’s ghost is being appeased. The Observer has learned that, in a remarkable coup, the poet’s estate has just acquired the Eliot family’s summer house by the sea, in Gloucester, Massachusetts. READ FULL STORY HERE
18 Edgemoor, Eastern Point ~ The Eliot family house in Massachusetts. Photograph: © Estate of T.S. Eliot
Not only has the estate bought the house (for $1.3m), it plans to use it to promote Eliot’s life and works to his American readers. Reihill said: “By this time next year we hope to offer up to six poets, essayists or playwrights at a time a peaceful retreat to work on their projects. We’d also like to work with institutions of higher education to make it a centre for weekend symposia on Eliot or on poets and poetry related to him.”
View from the porch at 18 Edgemoor
Young Tom with his mother at the house in 1895. Photograph: © Estate of T.S. Eliot
TS Eliot with his cousins Eleanor and Barbara Hinkley in Gloucester in 1897. Photograph: © Estate of T.S. Eliot
Tom sitting on the veranda in his sailor suit playing with his toy yacht, and reading.Photograph: © Estate of T.S. Eliot
Shared on FB by Eastern Point Lit House co-founder Chris Anderson.
Good Morning Gloucester 
Kim, thanks for posting this remarkable story. I had no idea that there was a Gloucester – Eliot connection. This is one more step in making G-town an art and literature mecca.
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Thank you Marty. I have to credit Eastern Point Lit House’s Chris Anderson who I see in the comment below is crediting John McElhenny for sharing on both their FB page’s. Great story, and as you pointed out, super great for Gloucester!
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Great news, indeed. Though I have to give props to John McElhenny for breaking this story for me (on FB, of course). There’s definitely something special happening with the literary scene here on Cape Ann!
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Thanks to people like you and Jenn, too Chris!
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Well, everyone who knows Dana Hawkes can certainly attest that she is far from being “elderly”. A first rendition of the article placed Gloucester into New Hampshire. At least the latter is corrected. But Mr. McCrum should be more careful in his research.
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Thank you for pointing that out NYCswashbuckler.
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What a great thing for Gloucester and Cape Ann. I grew up in E. Gloucester, at the edge of Eastern Point in the 1940s. In those days most of the homes were known by their owners names and many of the owners were “from away” and only there in the Summer season. A number of our neighbors were caretakers of those seasonal properties and one of them took care of the Elliot House on Edgemore Rd. In those days I had no idea who TS Eliot was, but I certainly knew of the home. It was on the edge of the “seine fields” and a favorite area for rabbit hunting. Note that you couldn’t go there today with a gun without someone calling the PD but, 60 years ago that area was sparsely populated between Labor Day and Memorial Day.
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Great share Bill, thank you for posting! Still beautiful today, but must have been extraordinary when it was less populated. It appears as though in the view from the porch that there were hardly any homes.
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His great works were the greatest, but one thing has always troubled me. I wonder how the Eliot Estate addresses the poet’s anti-semitism?
See: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jun/07/poetry.thomasstearnseliot
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Thanks for bringing that up Ted. I wasn’t aware. Interesting article and great question. I haven’t read the five poems, but will do so. He has such a tremendous body of work and wonder if he was anti-semitic all his life?
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Great work here and nice walk back in the history and photo’s – thanks! 🙂 Dave & Kim 🙂
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Welcome home Tom!
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