T.S. Eliot’s love of all things English had its limits, according to an unpublished poem that reveals his hidden distaste for England’s cows.

The poet, who was born in America but took British citizenship at the age of 39, poured out his ill feeling towards the animals in a 34-line poem that he composed for the children of Frank Morley, a friend and a fellow director of the publisher Faber and Faber.

Cows records Thomas Stearns Eliot’s discomfort at the vacant gaze and aggressive curiosity of the horned beasts that he had encountered on country walks. He bemoans the fearlessness of country folk, who are able to “persist in hearty talking” in the presence of cows, while he is reduced to timidity by the thought of being tossed on their horns.

Until now it has been printed in full only in Family News, an annual scrapbook created by Morley’s children, but it did not have a clear path to publication. Susanna Smithson, Morley’s daughter, told a documentary team for the BBC programme Arena that it appeared in the scrapbook in 1938.

“The amusing part to me is that [Eliot] actually submitted it in 1937, a year before,” she said. “My older brother, Donald, who at the age of about 10, I think, was editor of the Family News that year, said: ‘No. I’ve got too much material this year. It’ll have to wait.’ So Tom was turned down, probably for the only time in his life, I should think, and it was published the following year.”

Eliot had already produced his most highly regarded work, The Waste Land, 15 years earlier, and had become a towering figure on the British literary scene as a director of Faber and Faber. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948.

Mrs Smithson said that the family magazine was an ordeal to compile. “We all had to contribute something. Quite a lot of effort and blood and sweat and tears went into it.”

Eliot moved to live next to the Morleys in 1932 to seek refuge from the rages of his wife, Vivienne, whose mental health was deteriorating. She was committed to a mental asylum six years later. The young Susanna grew fond of him and referred to his house as Uncle Tom’s Cabin. “He didn’t want to be with Vivienne and she was very anxious that he should be, so it was a way of avoiding her, I’m afraid.

“He was like a big brother to us. We were pretty well always outside in the garden and he would come and join in with whatever there was. He would play cricket with the boys.”

Craig Raine, author of T.S. Eliot, a critical analysis of Eliot’s poetry, said that Cows demonstrates that his reputation for formality was merely a persona. “Virginia Woolf once said that Tom Eliot was here ‘in his four-piece suit’, but I think this shows he was capable of unbending and unbuttoning in the most charming manner — for his intimate circle.”

Arena: T.S. Eliot will be broadcast tonight at 9.45pm on BBC Two as part of the BBC Poetry Season

Cows

Of all the beasts that God allows
In England’s green and pleasant land,
I most of all dislike the Cows:
Their ways I do not understand.
It puzzles me why they should stare
At me, who am so innocent;
Their stupid gaze is hard to bear —
It’s positively truculent.
I’m very inconspicuous
And scarlet ties I never wear;
I’m not a London Transport Bus,
And yet at me they always stare.
You may reply, to fear a Cow
Is Cowardice the rustic scorns;
But still your reason must allow
That I am weak, and she has horns.
But most I am afraid when walking
With country dames in brogues and tweeds,
Who will persist in hearty talking
And stopping to discuss the breeds.
To country people Cows are mild,
And flee from any stick they throw;
But I’m a timid town bred child,
And all the cattle seem to know.
But when in fields alone I stroll,
Oh then in vain their horns are tossed,
In vain their bloodshot eyes they roll —
Of me they shall not make their boast.
Beyond the hedge or five-barred gate,
My sober wishes never stray;
In vain their prongs may lie in wait,
For I can always run away!
Or I can take sanctuary
In friendly oak or apple tree.

©The Estate of T. S. Eliot

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