A Cooking Egg

1] The title refers to eggs not good enough to eat by themselves and so reserved for cooking (in dishes).
The epigraph is taken from the opening of "Le Testament" by François Villon (Poésies, ed. Jean Dufournet [Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1984]: 65): "In the thirtieth year of my life, / When I had drunk up all my shames."
Pipit: a nickname, suggesting a young girl.
sate: archaic past tense. Back to Line

3] A picture book, such as W. A. Delamotte's Original Views of Oxford, its Colleges, Chapels, and Gardens (London: Thomas Boyes, 1843). Back to Line

5] Daguerreotypes: early photographs produced on a silver-covered copper plate. Back to Line

8] Possibly Carl Maria von Weber's "Afforderung zum Tanz" (Invitation to the Dance), a popular score for solo piano. See Piano Music (New York: Dover, 1992; M 22 .W37D6). Back to Line

10] Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86), the Elizabethan courtier-poet, author of the love sonnet-sequence Astrophel and Stella and the essay Defence of Poetry. Back to Line

11] Coriolanus: Roman general and hero of Shakespeare's tragedy of the same name. Back to Line

12] kidney: "sort." Back to Line

14] Sir Alfred Mond: capitalist founder of Imperial Chemical Industries, the First Commissioner of Works in Great Britain at the time that the poem was written, and a public figure (1868-1930). Back to Line

15] lapt: folded about. Back to Line

16] a personal loan to the British State Treasury guaranteed to yield 5% interest. Back to Line

18] Lucretia Borgia (1480-1519), duchess of Ferrara and a rich, powerful, and ruthless governor in Renaissance Italy; she was wedded four times and died at the hands of her brother. Back to Line

22] Madame (Helene Petrovna) Blavatsky, a Russian Theosophist and mystic popular in England at this time, notably with Ezra Pound and the editor of The Egoist (which published Eliot's poems), Dora Marsden. Back to Line

24] Piccarda de Donati: a nun in Dante's Paradiso, III, formerly a nun who broke her vows. Back to Line

25] penny world: candies and cakes that can be had for a penny. Back to Line

26] behind the screen: children like Pipit were sometimes made to eat behind one. Back to Line

28] Kentish Town and Golder's Green: suburbs in north London, near which Eliot lived during the first World War. Back to Line

29] the eagles are the symbol of the Roman empire. Back to Line

33] "I.e. an endemic teashop, found in all parts of London. The initials signify: Aerated Bread Company, Limited." [Eliot's note] Back to Line

Publication Start Year

1919

Publication Notes

Coterie 1 (May-Dec. 1919): 44-45. In England published in an almost identical book, Ara Vos Prec (London: Ovid Press, [1920]). Donald Gallup, T. S. Eliot: A Bibliography (London: Faber and Faber, 1969): A4b, C81

RPO poem Editors

Ian Lancashire

RPO Edition

RPO 1998.

Rhyme

abcb