Valerie Eliot - T.S. Eliot

The news that Valerie Eliot died on Friday has provoked lots of pieces in the Press about her life, and her marriage to T. S. Eliot, as you'd expect.  I hadn't really thought much about her life, post-Eliot's death, but there is a lot to reflect on in her role as protector of Eliot's legacy.  An article in today's Telegraph talks about the literary widow, and asks, "who ultimately knows the dead writer better, the academics who pick over his work, or the woman who shared his life (or part of it)"

It is a very emotively worded question, and yet one that strikes at the heart (emotive again!) of a literary academic's research life.  Do we "pick over", like vultures, the works of dead authors?  And does there have to be conflict between the people who (of course) knew the writer personally, and those who read, respond to and appreciate his/her literary outputs?  

Eliot loved his wife, and I was amazed and moved by the poem he dedicated to her when he wrote his play, The Elder Statesman:

To whom I owe the leaping delight
That quickens my senses in our wakingtime
And the rhythm that governs the repose of our sleepingtime,
The breathing in unison

Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other
Who think the same thoughts without need of speech
And babble the same speech without need of meaning.

No peevish winter wind shall chill
No sullen tropic sun shall wither
The roses in the rose-garden which is ours and ours only

But this dedication is for others to read:
These are private words addressed to you in public.

There is a wonderful little video clip of Valerie Eliot and Fiona Shaw, who reads this poem to her, here.  Valerie Eliot lived a long time after her husband's death:  I hope that looking after his literary estate was a real bibliotherapeutic vocation for her, and that her work will be sensitively continued by those that will continue this now she is gone.

Links to more articles of interest:
Revealed: The Remarkable Tale of T S Eliot's late love affair
The Two Mrs Eliots
Guardian Obituary