Mary Jane Roach Masters Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

A. . . .because it's an excellent picture. Do you remember in '34 when he made the tour, what
he was like? Well the head of my department said to me, "Mary Jane, will you look after this
fellow? Everybody in the department is teaching and caught up in classes and somebody has to
look after him" So I went over and spent two or three hours with T. S. Eliot, and I was young
and full of myself and was dying to make an impression, but he just sat and looked at me and now
I realize very well that he was very depressed. He was exhausted. He was worn out by the Tour,
having no money, worried about Viv, his wife, and he just sat and looked at me and when I saw
this movie it was exactly the T. S. Eliot that I'd spent three hours with.
Q. They did a good job with it.
A. Excellent job.
Q. I was surprised that he lived a really very lonely life.
A. A very lonely life and terribly moribund, and terribly ambitious and terribly anglophile. He
was dying to go back to his English roots, to break with his family, break with the Harvard
tradition, Washington University, all of that. He wanted to go back to be Upper Class English.
And I loved that line in the movie when Vivian takes him and shows him her estate and he says,
"It's like St. Louis. It's like Forest Park in St. Louis." It really touched me, and you know the
love song about Alfred J. Prufrock. Everyone who studied this and the symbolism involved in
Prufrock. Well I said, "That was the name of. . . I remember very well it was the name of a
furniture store that I used to see on the Olive Street car. Prufrock-Lytton. And like any artist he
picked it because the name intrigued him and he used it exactly as he wanted to use it. It was
quite an excellent example of how a creative artist uses what he knows.
Q. Well, he was very loyal to his wife.
A. They loved each other deeply.
Q. He never married again did he?
A. Oh, yes. Years later he married his secretary and was very happy.
Q. That's not in the movie at all.
A. Oh no. This is Tom and Viv. Many years passed before he married again.
Q. Have you "measured out your life in coffee spoons"?
A. Well, I'm beginning to do that. One of the advantages of memory, I guess.
Q. What brought you to Springfield?