The Cultivation of Christmas Trees. Illustrated by David Jones [Ariel Poems, New Series.]

Bookseller Notes

Inscribed by the author on the title-page, 'for Meg Nason, this premature Christmas greeting, from T.S. Eliot, 1954'. The recipient owned the Bindery tea shop in Broadway and was a friend and correspondent of the poet from the late 1930s until his death; she would send cakes to mark his birthdays and other occasions (the letters tell us that chocolate cake was his favourite and describe the manner in which they were apportioned within the Faber offices) and received books in return. Their acquaintance had been made during the heady days of Eliot's pre-war traipses around the Cotswolds in the company of John Perkins, Minister at the First Unitarian Church of Boston, his wife Edith, and - most significantly - their niece, Emily Hale. Her family have some recollection of being told that he had once proposed to Meg Nason, but the letters do not offer anything to substantiate this claim; they are, however, characterised by a warmth and affection that we might perceive as being tinted by her connection with his known romantic attachment to their mutual friend.