A Cold Coming
"A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year."
The famous opening lines of T. S. Eliot's 1927 poem The Journey of the Magi echo a much earlier writer. On Christmas Day 1622, the Anglican bishop Lancelot Andrewes preached at Whitehall, to a congregation which included James I.
The sermon, Of the Nativity, included the following passage:
It was no summer progress. A cold coming they had of it, at this time of the year; just, the worst time of the year, to take a journey, and specially a long journey, in. The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off in solstitio brumali, the very dead of Winter.
Eliot had written some years before that "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal", and The Journey of the Magi shows something of how that creative process works.
Similarly, in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1917), we find the line "I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each." It is an echo of the poetry of another 17th-century writer, John Donne. "Teach me to hear mermaids singing" is the final line of the magical verse beginning "Go, and catch a falling star."
A number of Eliot's poems have given us lines and phrases which have become part of the language. Someone living a life as cautious as Prufrock might say: "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons", or wonder if they "dare to eat a peach". A wet, cold April often evokes the bitter comment that "April is the cruellest month."
We think of Eliot as a serious writer, but he has lighter moments - not least in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939). In this book, he points out that the "Naming of Cats is a difficult matter." From Growltiger to Griddlebone, the cats featured have wonderfully inventive names. One of them, indeed, has become a familiar allusion. Macavity the Mystery Cat, stifler of Pekes, is a criminal mastermind and specialist in alibis, the feline 'Napoleon of Crime'. He consistently eludes both Scotland Yard and the Flying Squad, since "when they reach the scene of crime - Macavity's not there!"
Elizabeth Knowles
01/01/2007
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