T. S. Eliot? W. H. Auden? Vladimir Nabokov? Gloria Goddard? Clement Wood? J. L. Thompson? Tom Congdon? Alan Bennett?
Question for Quote Investigator: The name of the major literary figure T. S. Eliot has inspired entertaining wordplay. A bookseller who visited the London headquarters of Eliot’s publisher, Faber and Faber, supposedly emerged with the following palindrome:
Was it Eliot’s toilet I saw?
This tale is probably apocryphal, but it would be fun to know who constructed this palindrome. Wordsmiths have also created anagrams for T. S. Eliot such as litotes, toilets, and toilest. Would you please explore this topic?
Reply from Quote Investigator: Poet T. S. Eliot was born in 1888 and died in 1965. Here is an overview of the wordplay together with dates and attributions:
1938: toilets – anagram of T. S. Eliot in a book by Gloria Goddard and Clement Wood
1953: toilet – T. Eliot spelled backwards from J. L. Thompson
1962: toilest – T. S. Eliot spelled backwards from Vladimir Nabokov
1969: Was it Eliot’s toilet I saw? – palindrome from Tom Congdon
1975: litotes – anagram of T. S. Eliot attributed to W. H. Auden
This overview represents a current snapshot based on published evidence, and it may change as additional evidence is uncovered. Below are selected citations in chronological order.
In 1938 Gloria Goddard and Clement Wood published “Let’s Have a Good Time Tonight: An Omnibus of Party Games”. The book discussed a game based on scrambled words, i.e., anagrams. The poet’s category included the following five items. QI conjectures that these examples already existed. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
Rice Lodge (COLERIDGE.)
Sword Throw (WORDSWORTH.)
Toilets (T. S. ELIOT.)
He Yells (SHELLEY.)
In 1953 a student publication called “The Journal” from Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina included a poem by J. L. Thompson. The fourth verse implicitly pointed out that “T. Eliot” backwards was “toilet”:2
The Gospel according to Gide and, I guess,
Epistles by Proust are passe, dear, and yet
One has to read . . .” “All modern poetry’s a mess:
Spell ‘T. Eliot’ backwards and what do you get?”
In 1962 the Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov published the metafictional book “Pale Fire” which contained lengthy commentary by the character Charles Kinbote. The notion of “mirror words” was mentioned, and Kinbote credited himself with two examples:3
One of the examples her father gives is odd. I am quite sure it was I who one day, when we were discussing “mirror words,” observed (and I recall the poet’s expression of stupefaction) that “spider” in reverse is “redips,” and “T. S. Eliot,” “toilest.”
In 1969 “New York” magazine held a palindrome creation contest. A reader sent in a phrase containing the name “Eliot” which received an honourable mention:4
WAS IT ELIOT’S TOILET I SAW?
Tom Congdon, Long Ridge, Conn.
In 1973 the British-American poet W. H. Auden died, and in 1975 a compilation of tributes appeared. Orlan Fox wrote the following which credited his friend Auden with the anagram “litotes”:5
Not surprisingly, he was always pleased with people who could come up with a good answer to the anagram of WYSTANHUGHAUDEN. His favourite was ‘Hug a shady wet nun’. ‘Did you know that TSELIOT is an anagram for “litotes”?’, he liked to ask.
Also, in 1975 “The Harvard Advocate” of Cambridge, Massachusetts published a special issue about W. H. Auden. A poem titled “Remembering Auden” by Monroe K. Spears credited Auden with multiple anagrams:6
Loving language, he held anagrams had a meaning:
From Eliot (T. S.) all you could get was Litotes
He said, and from Yeats (W. B.) would have got,
I suppose, Best way?
From his own name made this one both funny and true:
Why shun a nude tag?
Also, in December 1975 “London Magazine” published an article about the English literary critic Cyril Connolly. The article stated that Connolly credited Auden with the anagram “toilets”:7
… Connolly spent hours over making lists (and, later in life, anagrams. Irritated by Wystan Auden telling him for the umpteenth time that T. S. Eliot was an anagram of ‘toilets’ he rang me up once, with bubbling satisfaction, to say he had come up with ‘A nasty unwed’ for Auden) …
In 1979 Gyles Brandreth published “Pears Book of Words” which included a section about palindromes:8
A lot of palindromes involve people’s names, some of them quite famous ones:
‘Was it Eliot’s toilet I saw?’
‘No mists reign at Tangier, St Simon!’
‘Sums are not set as a test on Erasmus.’
In 1980 James Charlton published “The Writer’s Quotation Book” which contained the following entry:9
“Was it Eliot’s toilet I saw?”
Palindrome allegedly uttered by an American publisher after paying his first visit to the London firm of Faber and Faber
In 1981 “The Graffiti File” edited by Nigel Rees contained the following graffito:10
T S Eliot is an anagram of toilets.
Leicester University
In 1984 the Long Island newspaper “Newsday” printed the following:11
Making anagrams out of “T.S. Eliot” remains a literary litmus test and a parlor game that anyone might play. W. H. Auden, whom Eliot published, opted for “litotes.” Vladimir Nabokov, who held no brief for Eliot, leaned to “toilets” — and incorporated a spoof of “Ash Wednesday” in “Lolita.”
In 1986 the play “Kafka’s Dick” by Alan Bennett premiered at the Royal Court Theatre London. One of Bennett’s characters referred to the “toilets” anagram. The ellipsis occurred in the original play text:12
BROD: And T. S. Eliot . . . is an anagram of toilets so does that make him a closet?
In 2014 Peter Rogers published “Straight A’s at Stanford and on to Harvard” which included the following remark:13
T. S. Eliot added the initial “S” to his name because otherwise it would spell “toilet” backwards.
QI has not yet found any substantive evidence supporting the assertion above which appeared decades after Eliot’s death. A similar claim appeared in the 2015 book “Let’s Talk in English: A Practical Guide to Speaking Fluent English” by Manish Gupta which contained the following passage:14
The only reason T. S. Eliot (Thomas Stearns Eliot), the Nobel Prize-winning essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic, and ‘one of the twentieth century’s major poets’ insisted on his middle initial, was that he was painfully aware that: ‘My name is only an anagram of toilets.’ As a young adult, Eliot felt so embarrassed by this association that he occasionally signed his name as T. Stearns Eliot. A famous palindrome, ‘Was it Eliot’s toilet I saw?’ may have added to his grief, though I am not sure if it was coined during his time.
In conclusion, the “toilets” anagram for “T. S. Eliot” circulated in 1938. It appeared in a book by Gloria Goddard and Clement Wood although it is not clear whether they constructed it. The fact that “toilet” is “T. Eliot” backwards was pointed out by J. L. Thompson in 1953. Eliot died in 1965, but his attitude toward this wordplay remains uncertain. The palindrome “Was it Eliot’s toilet I saw?” was probably first constructed by Tom Congdon in 1969.
Image Notes: Picture of a bathroom with sinks, toilet, and shower from Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Jacob Cappell whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration. Cappell pointed to “Let’s Talk in English” and other helpful citations.
- 1938 Copyright, Let’s Have a Good Time Tonight: An Omnibus of Party Games by Gloria Goddard and Clement Wood, Hash, Scrambled Words: Hashed Poets, Quote Page 137, Grosset & Dunlap, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1953 May, The Journal: The Wofford Magazine, Holy, Wholly Holy by J. L. Thompson, Quote Page 6, Published by the Students of Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1962, Pale Fire: A Novel by Vladimir Nabokov, Section: Commentary, Quote Page 193, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1969 December 22, New York Magazine, Volume 2, Number 51, New York Magazine Competition, Edited by Mary Ann Madden, Results of Competition Thirty-One, Quote Page 82, Column 3, NYM Corporation, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1975, W. H. Auden: A Tribute, Edited by Stephen Spender, Chapter: Friday Nights by Orlan Fox, Note: Orlan Fox became a close friend of Auden’s in the poet’s later years, Start Page 173, Quote Page 179, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1975 Copyright, The Harvard Advocate, Special Issue: W. H. Auden 1907-1973, Volume 108, Remembering Auden (poem) by Monroe K. Spears, Quote Page 18, Column 1, Published by Advocate House, Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1975 December, London Magazine, Volume 15, Number 5, Before the Women: Connolly in the 20s by Alan Ross, Start Page 62, Quote Page 64, London, England. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1979 Copyright, Pears Book of Words by Gyles Brandreth, Part 2: Word Play, Chapter: Word Entertainments, Palindromes, Quote Page 128, Pelham Books, London. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1980 Copyright, The Writer’s Quotation Book, Edited by James Charlton, Quote Page 19, (Third printing August 1981: Gift copy from Blackwell North America), Pushcart Press, Yonkers, New York. (Verified with hardcopy) ↩︎
- 1981, The Graffiti File, Edited by Nigel Rees, Quote Page 30, Book Club Associates, London. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1984 November 11, Sunday Newsday, Section: Books, T. S. Eliot: A Life and Work Emblematic of an Age by David Lehman, (Continuation Tile: T. S. Eliot’s Life), (Book review of Peter Ackroyd’s “T. S. Eliot: A Life”), Start Page 20, Quote Page 17, Column 1,Nassau Edition, Long Island, New York. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1986 Copyright, Kafka’s Dick by Alan Bennett, Presented by The Royal Court Theatre and Michael Codron, Act Two, Quote Page 51 and 52, Limited edition specially produced on behalf of The Royal Court Theatre by Faber and Faber, London. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 2014 Copyright, Straight A’s at Stanford and on to Harvard. Teenager Version by Peter Rogers MD, Chapter 69: How To Write Better, Quote Page 161, Published by Peter Rogers. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 2015, Let’s Talk in English: A Practical Guide to Speaking Fluent English by Manish Gupta, Chapter 19: Airways, Unnumbered Page, Penguin Books India, New Delhi, India. (Google Books Preview) ↩︎