13. T. S. Eliot and Groucho Marx
T. S. Eliot was the descendant of one of Boston’s Brahmin families, though born in St. Louis, Missouri, and became a famed American poet, essayist, critic, publisher, and commenter on social mores and behavior. In his 30s he renounced his American citizenship, becoming a subject of the King of Great Britain. Late in life, he wrote a fan letter to a man whose public persona was very much different from his own. Grouch Marx was known as a zany comedian, with irreverent and biting wit, the product of New York’s rougher neighborhoods and the hard life of a vaudevillian before he found success in motion pictures and eventually television.
Eliot requested a photograph of Groucho, and the comedian complied, launching a friendship which lasted for the remainder of Eliot’s life. The friendship was one of the pen, rapidly becoming a lost art in the electronic world, and though the two could not have been more different in temperament, reflected in the tension in their letters, they developed a deep respect for each other. The once anti-Semitic Eliot and the Jewish Groucho skirted around their obvious differences, though with pointed observations about the tension each so obviously felt. Groucho, being Groucho, was never above a barb directed at the well-born poet, including once writing in a letter to the twice-married (and noted philanderer) Eliot, “My best to you and your lovely wife, whoever she may be”.
