One of the most amusing - or, if you prefer it, one of the most heartwarming - episodes in the history of early Modernism centres on Ezra Pound's attempt to 'liberate' T.S. Eliot from his clerk's job at Lloyds Bank. In 1921, Pound started up a fund called Bel Esprit and set about trying to persuade 30 subscribers to fork out ten pounds each: £300 p.a. would, he believed, enable Eliot to forsake his regular employment - employment which, as Pound saw it, represented 'the greatest waste in ang. sax. letters at the moment'.

LRB 18 June 1998 | PDF Download