The Voice of Lancelot Andrewes in Eliot's Ash-Wednesday

WHEN T. S. Eliot revealed in 1928 that the viewpoint of his forthcoming work would be "classicist in literature, royalist in politics, anglo-catholic in religion," (Andrewes ix) many critics were not amused. Or else, like Sherry Mangan, they were very amused indeed:

If even certain Anglo-French circles in Paris which are in close touch with the English scene still consider the best joke of the past three years Mr Eliot's "daring" in proclaiming himself a royalist in politics (and after all, for England, it is pretty funny), of how much less interest to our present generation in America are Mr Eliot's however sincere preoccupations with out-cocteauing M Cocteau in what is to American-born eyes the so much swankier English Church. (296)

Who could begrudge such critics their cynicism? The poet they had come to revere as the voice of daily death in modern America was now to be identified not just with Christianity, but with England? It is little wonder that, as Eloise Knapp Hay notes, "Van Wyck Brooks and other patriotic American critics scathingly paired him with Henry James as another failed American" (15). To such critics it was inconceivable that Eliot would ever again enjoy the admiration he had merited in such...

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