Page 47 - WTP Vol. XIII #3

and how you brag about your lack of metaphysical sensitivity, as if it were a badge of honor.”
“Ah, but the badge is called truth, Thomas,” Frazer said taking his friend’s fur-lined coat. “For we who seek the truth know that false prophets abound ev- erywhere and that they speak in false tongues from their myriad pulpits on every topic imaginable. ‘How Jesus will help you with your investments.’ ‘How the Holy Spirit will cure your gout.’ ‘How this war has been pre-ordained for English victory, as prophesied by our British Christ, and yet this same Christ adroit- ly whispers into the German Lutheran’s ear that he too will be rewarded with divine victory.”
“You’re mixing politics with religion again,” Eliot said gruffly, as Frazer led him into the glowing warmth of his study.
“Exactly my point,” he said. “Primitive cultures see no differences between divine and socio-political an- nouncements. Even Plato recognized that all social endeavors, even poetry, were encompassed by poli- tics. I just prefer to see hypocrisy for what it is, and not pretend that pious prelates know more than I, when what they preach as truth is non-testable, non- verifiable in any meaningful intellectual way.”
“Humpf,” Eliot snorted, a nervous habit he’d devel- oped amongst his financier friends at the Lloyds Bank of London; a monosyllabic gesture used by bankers as a modest deterrent to discussion, at least till they had mentally composed the panegyric neces- sary to laud an application for fiduciary credit, or else send the beggars packing with nary a cent. In truth, Eliot spent most of his time at the bank nibbling on
a pencil, deep in thought, belly against the banister of the highest catwalk overlooking the cavernous depths of its central rotunda. There he was left to his own devices, to work on his poetry, which owed most of its free-flowing métier to the tongue-in-cheek
machinations of his editor, Ezra Pound. Yet, it was
to Sir James that Eliot always repaired when he felt overwhelmed by his immensity of sensation, seeking a brilliant quaff at the source of the rational; Frazer a more cogent and pragmatic persona than Pound and possibly someone more capable of reining in his flights of fantasy with strange historical minutiae.
“Some sherry, to warm your old bones, Thomas? I have an aged Madeira recently brought from Spain.”
“Excellent,” he replied and as Frazer filled the two small glasses with garnet colored liquid, Eliot rum- maged through the mounds of paper on his friend’s desk, as if looking for something, a nervous habit he’d picked up from teaching at Oxford, the fussy manifes- tations of poetic genius making its way through the plethora of facts and philological codes left to him by ancient theosophists, bards and historians.
“Well, what brings you out tonight?” Frazer asked, handing him his sherry.
“Have you heard of Robert Graves, the soldier-poet?” Eliot asked.
“Yes, isn’t he the fellow that writes Poetry from the Front, reads more like love letters to Ganymede though, than Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars?”
“Exactly the fellow! Sits in the trenches and writes verses about the Battles on the Marne and his com- rades chewed up by artillery like ‘Leonidas and the Hundred’ before Thermopylae.”
“Yes, I see some of those same invalids and pension- ers he writes of in Piccadilly and Coventry Gardens begging for food,” Frazer replied. “Just torn bits of men really, only stumps for flesh. And yet the Foreign Office claims we’re winning this war,” he added with a questioning arched eyebrow.
“It remains to be seen what’s actually been won,” Eliot replied with a shrug. “Perhaps no more that a charred landscape to frighten away the last of the Valkyries,” he added thoughtfully. “Ah yes, but as to Graves! He’s sent me a note and from of all places Scotland Yard. Seems he’s being detained and needs someone to vouch for him.” Then he pulled the note from his pocket and read aloud, “Eliot, there’s been a murder and the brother of a comrade of mine has been seized as culprit, I as possible accomplice. Please come post-haste. The victim was found butchered in a most unusual manner.”
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