Tom Eliot

Rozanne and I had dinner last night with our old friend Dixon Long (ZYZZYVA Fall '06).

He was a few years ahead of me at Amherst, and I had first looked him up because, upon graduation, he became a Fellow at Amherst House, a dorm/missionary outpost (that looked like a frat house) and was maintained by Amherst at Doshisha University in Kyoto--I wanted to be an Amherst Fellow, too, but was not accepted.

At dinner, we were rumbling around in Amherst memories, when Dixon asked if I remembered the distinguished English professor G. Armour Craig, whose wife, I had heard, had had a fling with Dylan Thomas, when he passed through town.

It turned out that, circa 1955, Dixon and his friend (and mine) Jack Hagstrom had driven Professor Craig to Harvard to hear T.S. Eliot read.

Wow, I said, what was Eliot like?

I don't remember, Dixon said, I can see the room he read in, the high ceiling, but that's all.