Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot, also spelt Vivien (28 May 1888 – 22 January 1947), was the first wife of American-British poet T. S. Eliot, whom she married in 1915, less than three months after their introduction by mutual friends, when Vivienne was a governess in Cambridge and Eliot was studying at

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

. Vivienne had suffered from many serious health problems, beginning with tuberculosis of the arm as a child and the marriage appeared to exacerbate her mental health issues. Husband Eliot would not consider divorce, but formally separated from Vivienne in 1933. She was later committed to an asylum by her brother, against her will, eventually dying there apparently from a heart attack, but possibly by deliberate overdose. When told via a phone call from the asylum, that Vivienne had died unexpectedly during the night, Eliot is said to have buried his face in his hands and cried out ‘Oh God, oh God.’ Both Vivienne and T. S. Eliot stated that Ezra Pound had encouraged Vivienne to marry Eliot as a pretext for the poet to remain in England, where Eliot and Pound believed he would have greater career success, but also against the wishes of his family who wanted him to return to America. Neither set of parents were informed of the wedding beforehand. Vivienne made creative contributions to her husband's work during their 18 year marriage, but it was a difficult relationship, both suffering from mental and physical health problems, and is often cited as the inspiration for ''

The Waste Land ''The Waste Land'' is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the Octob ...

'', which remains Eliot's most noted work. He consulted with Vivienne, refusing to release a section of the poem until she had approved it. Eliot later said: 'To her the marriage brought no happiness ... to me it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land..'. Research into their relationship has been hampered by lack of access to her diaries, whose copyright was granted to Eliot's widow

Valerie Eliot Esmé Valerie Eliot (née Fletcher; 17 August 19269 November 2012) was the second wife and later widow of the Nobel prize-winning poet T. S. Eliot. She was a major stockholder in the publishing firm of Faber and Faber Limited and the editor and ...

, but surviving letters have been published.

Early life

Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot by Lady Ottoline Morrell

Haigh-Wood was born in Knowsley Street, Bury, Lancashire,Gordon 2009
the first child of Rose Esther ( née Robinson 1860–1941) and Charles Haigh-Wood (1854–1927), an artist and member of the Royal Academy of Arts. Charles was local to the area, but his wife was born in London where the couple had been living, and they had returned to Bury for an exhibition of Charles's paintings at a gentleman's club, with Rose Esther heavily pregnant. The journey may have triggered the birth earlier than expected, and Haigh-Wood was born in Lancashire rather than London.Gordon 1998, p. 114. She was registered at birth as Vivienne Haigh, though as an adult she called herself Haigh-Wood, and later spelt her first name Vivien. Her paternal grandfather was Charles Wood, a gilder and picture framer from Bolton, so her father called himself Charles Haigh-Wood to distinguish himself. The "Haigh" came from his mother, Mary Haigh, originally from Dublin. Mary Haigh had inherited seven semi-detached houses in Kingstown (now

Dún Laoghaire Dún Laoghaire ( , ) is a suburban coastal town in Dublin in Ireland. It is the administrative centre of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown. The town was built following the 1816 legislation that allowed the building of a major port to serve Dubli ...

), a Dublin suburb, which gave the family financial stability, allowing Haigh-Wood's father to study at the Manchester Art College and the

Royal Academy Schools The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purpo ...

in London. Charles Haigh-Wood inherited his mother's property when she died, as well as the family home at 14 Albion Place, Walmersley Road, Bury, and he became a landlord, which allowed him to move his wife and Haigh-Wood to Hampstead, a fashionable part of north London. They settled into a house there at 3 Compayne Gardens around 1891.Seymour-Jones 2001. Haigh-Wood's brother, Maurice, was born there in 1896; he went on to train at Sandhurst and fought during the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. Although the family was clearly well-to-do, Seymour-Jones writes that Haigh-Wood was ashamed of her connection to Lancashire, perceived as working-class, and was left with a sense of inferiority that made her self-conscious and snobbish, especially when mixing with Eliot's aristocratic London friends.

Health and education

Little is known of her education. She played the piano, painted, took ballet lessons, was a good swimmer, and worked for a short time as a governess for a family in Cambridge. She had multiple health problems. She was diagnosed with

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, i ...

of the bone in her left arm when she was a child; this was before the discovery of

antibiotics An antibiotic is a type of antimicrobial substance active against bacteria. It is the most important type of antibacterial agent for fighting bacterial infections, and antibiotic medications are widely used in the treatment and prevention o ...

and apparently little could be done about it. She was treated by Sir Frederick Treves and said she had had so many operations, she had no memory of her life before the age of seven. She was also plagued by heavy, irregular menstruation, to her great embarrassment, and severe pre-menstrual tension, which led to mood swings, fainting spells, and migraines. She would insist on washing her own bedlinen, often twice a day, and would take her sheets home with her to clean when on holiday, once leading a hotel to claim she had stolen them, to Eliot's dismay. She apparently felt unable to ask her mother for help. Eventually her mother took her to a doctor who prescribed potassium bromide to sedate her, which probably meant he had diagnosed " hysteria".

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

described Haigh-Wood on 8 November 1930 in her diary:

Oh – Vivienne! Was there ever such a torture since life began! – to bear her on one's shoulders, biting, wriggling, raving, scratching, unwholesome, powdered, insane, yet sane to the point of insanity, reading his letters, thrusting herself on us, coming in wavering trembling ... This bag of ferrets is what Tom liotwears round his neck.

As the medical bills rose, so did her family's resentment of her. Her brother, Maurice, blamed her for what he saw as his second-rate education, because there was no money left to send him to public school. She became engaged to a schoolteacher, Charles Buckle, in 1914, but Buckle's mother was apparently unhappy about it. Haigh-Wood's health problems persuaded Rose Haigh-Wood that her daughter had "

moral insanity Moral insanity referred to a type of mental disorder consisting of abnormal emotions and behaviours in the apparent absence of intellectual impairments, delusions, or hallucinations. It was an accepted diagnosis in Europe and America through the s ...

." She decided that Haigh-Wood should not marry or bear children, and withdrew the family's consent to the marriage.

Relationship with T. S. Eliot

First meeting

Haigh-Wood met Tom Eliot in or around March 1915 at a dance in London, where he took tea with her and a friend. They met again shortly after that at a lunch party in

Scofield Thayer Scofield Thayer (12 December 1889 in Worcester, Massachusetts – 9 July 1982 in Edgartown) was a wealthy American poet and publisher, best known for his art collection, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and as a publisher and editor of the l ...

's rooms at Magdalen College, Oxford. Eliot and Thayer, both from privileged

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the Can ...

backgrounds, had been at Harvard together, where Eliot had studied philosophy, and both had arrived in Oxford on scholarships. According to another friend of Eliot's,

Sacheverell Sitwell Sir Sacheverell Reresby Sitwell, 6th Baronet, (; 15 November 1897 – 1 October 1988) was an English writer, best known as an art critic, music critic (his books on Mozart, Liszt, and Domenico Scarlatti are still consulted), and writer on a ...

, Eliot had noticed Haigh-Wood earlier, punting on the

River Cherwell The River Cherwell ( or ) is a tributary of the River Thames in central England. It rises near Hellidon, Northamptonshire and flows southwards for to meet the Thames at Oxford in Oxfordshire. The river gives its name to the Cherwell local g ...

. Seymour-Jones writes that Oxford attracted young women visitors, or "river girls", who would come in search of eligible husbands; women were not allowed to take degrees at Oxford until 1920.

Lyndall Gordon Lyndall Gordon (born 4 November 1941) is a British-based biographical and former academic writer, known for her literary biographies. She is a senior research fellow at St Hilda's College, Oxford. Life Born in Cape Town, she had her undergradua ...

writes that Eliot was jolted to life by Haigh-Wood. He was a repressed, shy, 26-year-old who was bored in Oxford, writing of it that it was very pretty, "but I don't like to be dead." She was flamboyant, a great dancer, spoke her mind, smoked in public, dressed in bold colours and looked like an actress. Impressed by her apparently wealthy background, the artist father and the brother at Sandhurst, he failed to realise that, within the rigid English class system, Haigh-Wood was no match for his New England background or for the English aristocrats with whom he had surrounded himself. A few of his friends, including

Aldous Huxley Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the prominent Huxle ...

, said they liked Haigh-Wood precisely because she was vulgar. For her part, she fell in love with Eliot, seeing in him what she described as "the call to the wild that is in men."Seymour-Jones (''Observer''), 14 October 2001

Marriage

Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot, US passport photograph, 1920 (cropped)

Eliot was in Oxford for one year only, and was expected to return to Harvard to begin a career as an academic philosopher, an idea he railed against. He wanted to be a poet. He had completed ''

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", commonly known as "Prufrock", is the first professionally published poem by American-born British poet T. S. Eliot (1888–1965). Eliot began writing "Prufrock" in February 1910, and it was first publishe ...

'' in 1911, the poem that was to make his name when it was published in Chicago in 1915, and he saw remaining in England as a way to escape his parents' plans for him. When he was in his 60s, Eliot wrote that he had been immature and timid at the time, and probably in love with

Emily Hale Emily Hale (27 October 1891 – 12 October 1969) was an American speech and drama teacher, who was the longtime muse and confidante of the poet T. S. Eliot. Exactly 1,131 letters from Eliot to Hale were deposited in Princeton University Libra ...

, a Bostonian he had had a relationship with in the United States. What he wanted from Haigh-Wood, he said, was a flirtation. But a meeting with the American poet Ezra Pound had persuaded him that the pursuit of poetry was possible, and marrying Haigh-Wood meant he could stay in England and avoid Harvard. Eliot told a friend,

Conrad Aiken Conrad Potter Aiken (August 5, 1889 – August 17, 1973) was an American writer and poet, honored with a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, and was United States Poet Laureate from 1950 to 1952. His published works include poetry, short ...

, that he wanted to marry and lose his virginity. The couple were married after three months, on 26 June 1915, at Hampstead Register Office in London, with Lucy Ely Thayer (Scofield's sister) and Haigh-Wood's aunt, Lillia C. Symes, as witnesses. Eliot signed "no occupation" on the certificate and described his father as a brick manufacturer. Neither of them told their parents.

Separation

Eliot arranged for a formal separation in February 1933 and thereafter shunned Haigh-Wood entirely, hiding from her and instructing his friends not to tell her where he was. She could not accept the end of the relationship. Her efforts to find him appeared to his friends to confirm that she was mentally ill. The last time she saw him was on 18 November 1935 at a ''Sunday Times'' Book Fair in Regent Street, London, where he was giving a talk. Carrying three of his books - and her dog, Polly - she arrived in clothes she had taken to wearing to performances of his plays: a British Union of Fascists uniform, black beret and black cape. She wrote in her diary:

I turned a face to him of such joy that no-one in that great crowd could have had one moment's doubt. I just said, Oh ''Tom'', & he seized my hand, & said how do you ''do'', in quite a loud voice. He walked straight on to the platform then & gave a most remarkably ''clever'', well thought out lecture. ... I stood the whole time, holding Polly ''up'' high in my arms. Polly was very excited & wild. I kept my eyes on Tom's face the whole time, & I kept nodding my head at him, & making encouraging signs. He looked a ''little'' older, more mature & smart, much thinner & not well or robust or rumbustious at ''all''. No sign of a woman's care about him. No cosy evenings with dogs and gramophones I should say.Seymour-Jones 2001, pp. 547–548.

As he signed copies of the books for her, she asked him, "Will you come back with me?" and he replied, "I cannot talk to you now," then left with someone else.

Commitment

Vivienne was committed to the Northumberland House mental hospital in Woodberry Down,

Manor House, London Manor House, also known as Woodberry Down, is an area of North London in the northwest corner of the London Borough of Hackney. It lies immediately east of Finsbury Park, north of Stoke Newington, west of Stamford Hill and Seven Sisters, and ...

, in 1938, and remained there until she died. Although Eliot was still legally her husband, he never visited her.

Eliot's attitude toward women

Carole Seymour-Jones, one of Haigh-Wood's biographers, argues that there was a strong streak of

misogyny Misogyny () is hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women. It is a form of sexism that is used to keep women at a lower social status than men, thus maintaining the societal roles of patriarchy. Misogyny has been widely practice ...

in the way Eliot regarded Haigh-Wood. He wrote to a friend that Haigh-Wood had "an original mind, and I consider not at all a feminine one."

Louis Menand Louis Menand (; born January 21, 1952) is an American critic, essayist, and professor, best known for his Pulitzer-winning book '' The Metaphysical Club'' (2001), an intellectual and cultural history of late 19th and early 20th century America. ...

argues in ''The New Yorker'' that Eliot regarded women the way he regarded Jews, seeing both as responsible for irrationality and romanticism. He was uneasy with female sexuality – which led Seymour-Jones to suspect he was homosexual – which manifested itself both in his poetry and in his attitude toward Haigh-Wood's body. Menand writes that Eliot's work is replete with oversexed women, whom he saw as modern

succubi A succubus is a demon or supernatural entity in folklore, in female form, that appears in dreams to seduce men, usually through sexual activity. According to religious tradition, a succubus needs male semen to survive; repeated sexual activi ...

, such as Grishkin in his " Whispers of Immortality" (1919).Menand (''New Yorker'') 2002

Legacy

Carole Seymour-Jones writes that it was out of the turmoil of the marriage that Eliot produced ''

'', one of the 20th century's finest poems. Eliot's sister-in-law, Theresa, said of the relationship: "Vivienne ruined Tom as a man, but she made him as a poet."

, the poet's second wife (from 1957) claimed the copyright of Haigh-Wood's writings in 1984, including her private diaries, which has complicated the research into her role in Eliot's life.Seymour-Jones 2001, pp. 1–6.

Writing

Haigh-Wood wrote several stories and reviews for ''

The Criterion ''The Criterion'' was a British literary magazine published from October 1922 to January 1939. ''The Criterion'' (or the ''Criterion'') was, for most of its run, a quarterly journal, although for a period in 1927–28 it was published monthly. It ...

'', the literary magazine Eliot founded, using the pseudonyms FM, Fanny Marlow, Feiron Morris, Felise Morrison, and Irene Fassett.

Notes

References

Bibliography

*Artnet
Charles Heigh-Wood
accessed 9 November 2009. *Eliot, Valerie and Haughton, Hugh (eds.). ''The Letters of T.S. Eliot, Volume 1, 1898–1922'', Faber and Faber, 2009. * Gordon, Lyndall (1998). ''T.S. Eliot. An Imperfect Life'', W. W. Norton & Company. *Gordon, Lyndall (2009). "Eliot, Vivienne Haigh," ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''. * Menand, Louis (2002)
"The women come and go"
''The New Yorker'', 30 September 2002. *Miller, James Edwin (2005). ''T.S. Eliot: the making of an American poet, 1888–1922'', Penn State Press. * Seymour-Jones, Carole (2001). ''Painted Shadow'', Doubleday. *Seymour-Jones, Carole (14 October 2001)
"Tom and Viv ... and Bertie"
''The Observer''. *Woolf, Virginia (1981). ''The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Vol 3, 1925–1930'', Harvest Books.