OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 09/02/22, SPi Rhythms of Feeling in Edward Lear, T. S. Eliot, and Stevie Smith OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 09/02/22, SPi OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 09/02/22, SPi Rhythms of Feeling in Edward Lear, T. S. Eliot, and Stevie Smith JASMINE JAGGER 1 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 09/02/22, SPi 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Jasmine Jagger 2022 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2022 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. 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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 09/02/22, SPi OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 09/02/22, SPi Acknowledgements My deep gratitude goes to the following people, each of whom contributed generous ideas, suggestions, and edits in the making of this book: Steven Connor, James Williams, Angela Leighton, Seamus Perry, and Will May. Thanks also to my dear friend Thomas Russell for casting his eye upon countless drafts. For funding the bulk of this research, I am most grateful to the Wolfson Foundation. For additional funding, I am grateful to Jesus College and the Faculty of English, Cambridge. I am indebted to the archivists at Houghton Library (Harvard), the Berg Collection (New York), McFarlin Library (Tulsa), Somerville College Library (Oxford), and the Tennyson Research Centre (Lincoln), for their tireless help with manuscript materials. My thanks also go to the patient editorial team at OUP. The following are used by permission: ‘Edward Lear’ from Collected Poems by W. H. Auden, by permission of Penguin Random House LLC; extracts from The Complete Nonsense and Other Verse by Edward Lear, by permission of Watson, Little Ltd; Edward Lear manuscript letter to Emily Tennyson (9 October 1879), by permission of Lincoln Heritage Services; drawing by Alfred Lord Tennyson from his In Memoriam manuscript notebook (1834), by permission of The Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd: extracts from The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volumes I and II by T. S. Eliot; The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript by T. S. Eliot; Stevie Smith, The Collected Poems and Drawings of Stevie Smith; manuscript ma ter ials by Stevie Smith, by permission of the University of Tulsa; extracts from Some Are More Human than Others by Stevie Smith, by permission of Peter Owen and New Directions Publishing Corporation; John Lee Hooker quote, by permission of the John Lee Hooker Estate; Human Nervous System dissected by M.A. Schalck and L.P. Ramsdell, by permission of the Museum of Osteopathic Medicine, Kirksville, Missouri; ‘Bynogen Brings Health’, two adverts from The Athenaeum, by permis- sion of University Library, Cambridge; ‘Dancers’ by William Patrick Roberts, by per- mission of The Treasury Solicitor, Mishcon de Reya LLP. At Jesus College, University of Cambridge, I would like to thank Rod Mengham and Christopher Burlinson for their kind mentorship. At the University of Oxford, I would especially like to thank Matthew Bevis, Stephen Gill, and Sophie Ratcliffe, for their long- standing support, guidance, and inspiration. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to: my husband Douglas Maxwell, for his love and companionship; my father Hugh, for always reminding me to believe in myself; and my courageous mother Suzy, who provided endless support and OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 09/02/22, SPi viii Acknowledgements encouragement for this book while fighting for her life against motor neurone disease. Rhythms of Feeling could not have been written without you. Finally, this work has been animated and loved by not one, but two thinkers— and my greatest debt is to my teacher, Anne Malone Stillman, la miglior fabbra, who saw me through it all. —J.J., 2020. OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 09/02/22, SPi Contents List of Illustrations xi List of Abbreviations xvii Introduction 1 I. Affect and creativity 6 II. The poets’ affects 10 III. Affect and rhythm 22 IV. Rhythm and ‘relief’ 41 Lear’s Tears 48 I. Breaking 52 II. Private melody 62 III. Turtle, you shall carry me 71 IV. Too deep for tears 93 Eliot’s Nerves 98 I. Early jitters 103 II. Nerves in patterns 119 III. Sickly vehicle 130 IV. When words fail 140 Smith’s Scratches 148 I. Beast within 154 II. Scratching out 163 III. Too low for words 175 IV. Darker I move 188 Coda: Dancing Feeling 202 Selected Bibliography 213 Index 225