no wish to become
compulsory reading so
he regretted that

When I told him that my daughter Melinda was studying his poetry at Beverly High, he said he regretted that, because he had no wish to become compulsory reading.

In a letter from Groucho Marx to his brother, Gummo Marx, in which Groucho described his recent dinner and conversation at the home of T.S. Eliot in June, 1964.

I am not making this up.

It seems that in 1961, Mr. Eliot wrote a fan letter to Mr. Marx and a minor correspondence between the two continued over the next two years as the two men exchanged pleasantries about cigars and swapped autographed portraits.

Through this exchange, the two men also pursed the possibility of meeting for dinner either in New York City or London or anywhere the two men might happen to be at the same time.

The dinner finally took place in London in early June, 1964 and Mr. Eliot arranged for a car to pick up Groucho and his wife at the Savoy Hotel to bring them to his home in London.

Over drinks, Groucho quoted Eliot’s poems to Eliot and Eliot told Groucho jokes to Groucho.

Mr. Marx reported in his letter that he had re-read Wasteland 3 times to get ready for the dinner but that when he tossed off a bit of verse, Mr. Eliot smiled faintly, “as though to say he was thoroughly familiar with his poems and didn’t need me to recite them.”

Then when Mr. Eliot told Groucho jokes, Groucho reported that “Now it was my turn to smile faintly.”

The evening wore on.

That’s a nice expression.

With your permission I’ll say it again.

The evening wore on (I stole the last 4 lines from the movie, Harvey … the pooka, you remember) and Mr. Eliot and Mr. Marx parted.

Mr. Eliot died soon after in January of 1965

The following June, the friends of TS Eliot, folks of the like of Peter O’Toole, Laurence Olivier, Paul Scofield, Nicol Williamson, Cleo Laine, John Dankworth, Anna Quayle and Clive Revill, organized a “Homage To T.S. Eliot” at the Globe Theatre in London.

Mr. Marx was invited to say a few words.

And he did.

And he also read Mr. Eliot’s poem, “Gus – The Theatre Cat” from Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.

Cats may have been one of the longest running shows on Broadway but for my money, this reading of Gus – The Theatre Cat by Groucho Marx was better than the whole show and one of the best readings of the poem I know of as Mr. Marx doesn’t try to get cute with it but that is neither here nor there.

You can hear it for yourself here.

And here is the poem for that you can read for yourself as well.

Gus – The Theatre Cat”

Gus is the Cat at the Theatre Door.
His name, as I ought to have told you before,
Is really Asparagus. That’s such a fuss
To pronounce, that we usually call him just Gus.
His coat’s very shabby, he’s thin as a rake,
And he suffers from palsy that makes his paw shake.
Yet he was, in his youth, quite the smartest of Cats –
But no longer a terror to mice and to rats.
For he isn’t the Cat that he was in his prime;
Though his name was quite famous, he says, in its time.
And whenever he joins his friends at their club
(Which takes place at the back of the neighbouring pub)
He loves to regale them, if someone else pays,
With anecdotes drawn from his palmiest days.
For he once was a Star of the highest degree –
He has acted with Irving, he’s acted with Tree.
And he likes to relate his success on the Halls,
Where the Gallery once gave him seven cat-calls.
But his grandest creation, as he loves to tell,
Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.

“I have played,” so he says, “every possible part,
And I used to know seventy speeches by heart.
I’d extemporize back-chat, I knew how to gag,
And I knew how to let the cat out of the bag.
I knew how to act with my back and my tail;
With an hour of rehearsal, I never could fail.
I’d a voice that would soften the hardest of hearts,
Whether I took the lead, or in character parts.
I have sat by the bedside of poor Little Nell;
When the Curfew was rung, then I swung on the bell.
In the Pantomime season I never fell flat,
And I once understudied Dick Whittington’s Cat.
But my grandest creation, as history will tell,
Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.”

Then, if someone will give him a toothful of gin,
He will tell how he once played a part in East Lynne.
At a Shakespeare performance he once walked on pat,
When some actor suggested the need for a cat.
He once played a Tiger–could do it again–
Which an Indian Colonel pursued down a drain.
And he thinks that he still can, much better than most,
Produce blood-curdling noises to bring on the Ghost.
And he once crossed the stage on a telegraph wire,
To rescue a child when a house was on fire.
And he says: “Now then kittens, they do not get trained
As we did in the days when Victoria reigned.
They never get drilled in a regular troupe,
And they think they are smart, just to jump through a hoop.”
And he’ll say, as he scratches himself with his claws,
“Well, the Theatre’s certainly not what it was.
These modern productions are all very well,
But there’s nothing to equal, from what I hear tell,
That moment of mystery
When I made history
As Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.”

The letters are reprinted in The Essential Groucho Marx: Writings by, for and about Groucho Marx, Edited and with an Introduction by Stefan Kanfer (Penguin Books, 2000).

About the letters, Mr. Kanfer reports that, “In 1964 an official at the Library of Congress learned that Groucho had corresponded at some length with T. S. Eliot. Intrigued, he asked the comedian if the library could be the custodian of his letters. Groucho, reminding the world that he had never finished grade school, was only too glad to comply. Three years later a selection of those missives were included in The Groucho Letters.“