In many ways, this year of Eliot\u2019s life is the personal calm before the storm, although that is scarcely obvious from the public and professional nature of his letters.<\/p>\n
At the end of 1931, Eliot accepts a year-long post at Harvard; on 11 December, his wife, Vivienne, writes to Ottoline Morrell: \u201cI was so happy at your house today \u201d\u00a6. Particularly it did strike me, for I had just been through such a fearful time with T. All of a sudden.\u201d\u009d \u201cT\u201d\u009d is clearly her husband, and it seems likely that they were discussing his near departure.<\/p>\n
This year will be the last that he and Vivienne spend together; on his return from Harvard he will endure a horrible and disturbing separation from her as she will enter a sanatorium where she will remain for the rest of her life.<\/p>\n
The utter tragedy of this personal story, though, is rarely glimpsed in Eliot\u2019s letters, and the always excellent footnotes provide much of the back story, with excerpts from letters written by Virginia Woolf or Morrell, who detail Vivienne\u2019s increasingly erratic behaviour (Vivienne tells them both she keeps hornets \u201cin her bed\u201d\u009d).<\/p>\n