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Some notes on the text
The cover of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
In an early poem. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S Eliot likened the yellow fog of St Louis to a cat
"that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep..."
There are other references to cats in his work, but it was his Godchildren, particularly Tom Faber and Alison Tandy in the 1930s, that he first revealed himself as Old Possum.
Writing to Tom in January 1931 he described and drew his Lilliecat called Jellylorum whose "one idea is to be USEFUL... and yet it is so little and small that it can sit on my ear!...I would tell you about our Cus Cus...escept that I can't draw dogs so well as cats. Yet; but I mean to..." When Tom was four TSE suggested that Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats should be
"INVITED to come
With a Flute & a Fife & a Fiddle & Drum
With a Fiddle, A Fife, & a Drum & a Tabor
To the Birthday Party of THOMAS ERLE FABER!"
Then there was a "very Grand Cat...a Persian Prince and is Blue because it has Blue Blood, and its name was MIRZA MURAD ALIBEG but I said that was too Big a Name for such a Small Flat, so its name is WISKUSCAT. But is is sometimes called the MUSICAL BOX because it makes a noise like singing and sometimes COCKALORUM because it looks like one. (Have you ever seen a Cockalorum? Neither have I)". In April 1932 Tom learnt that "the Porpentine cat has been in bed with Ear Ache so the Pollicle Dog stopped At Home to Amuse it by making Cat's Cradles". Both children were sent The Naming of Cats in January 1936.
TSE was always inventing suitable cat names, as he was often asked for them by friends and strangers. I remember Noilly Prat (an elegant cat); Carbucketty (a knock-about cat); Tantomile (a witch's cat); he also liked Pouncival with its Morte d'Arthur flavour, and Sillabub, a mixture of silly and Beelzebub.
Alison received "the last poem I have written: The Rum Tum Tugger" in October 1936. A year later TSE wrote: "Some time ago I mentioned in a letter that I was meaning to write a poem about TWO cats, named Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer - and here it is. You may not like it because those two cat have turned out to be even worse than I expected". On Ash Wednesday 1938 he told her, "I am trying to do a poem about a Railway Train Cat and if I can't do it I will send it to you in due course". skimbleshanks followed.
Although Faber & Faber announced "Mr. Eliot's book of Pollicle Dogs and Jellicles Cats As Recited to Him by the Man in White Spats" in their 1936 spring catalogue, TSE had run into difficulties over his genera approach. "The idea of the volume was to have different poems on appropriate subjects...recited by the Man in White Spats...At the end they all go up in a balloon, self, Spats, and dogs and cats.
"Up up up past the Russell Hotel,
Up up up to the Heaviside Layer."
Three more years, as his publisher put it, brought "a growing perception that it would be impolite to wrap cats up with dogs" and the realisation that the book would be exclusively feline. Ralph Hodgson, the poet who bred bull-terriers had hoped to illustrate it but at the crucial period he was house-hunting in America. He felt that "the fun of doing it - or attempting it - is the thing, and that is only possible with my feet up on the mantelpiece, as the saying is".
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats was published on 5 October 1939 in an edition of 3,005 copies at 3/6d (17 1/2p) with TSE's drawings on the front cover and the dust-wrapper. He was nervous about its reception. His verse play The Family Reunion had appeared in March and The Idea of a Christian Society was due in three weeks. "It is intended for a NEW public," he informed Geoffrey Faber, "but I am afraid cannot general satisfaction", the sales manager reported shortly afterwards. Today they have become a minor classic and are to be found in Danish, German, Italian, Japanese, Swedish, Hungarian and Polish.
The Marching Song of the Pollicle Dogs appeared in The Queen's Book of the Red Cross in 1939. Grizabella: the Glamour Cat is an unpublished fragment of which only the last eight lines were written as TSE thought her history too sad for children.
PS Whenever he was unwell or could not sleep, TSE recite the verses under his breath.
~ by Valerie Eliot
Back to Old Possum's book of practical cats
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