This appears in a pre-2010 issue
of cc&d magazine.
Saddle-stitched issues are no longer
printed, but you can requesting it
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You gave me hyacinths first a year ago
They called me the hyacinth girl
David J. Thompson
Eliot was reading “The Wasteland” at a little theater
on the edge of Bloomsbury. I was there with the Woolfs,
trying to impress them by listening intently with my eyes
squeezed tight, when noise from the stage and gasps
from the audience forced me to look. A woman dressed
in a long, black cape, beret, and boots let a white terrier
loose on the stage. It ran for Eliot immediately, yapping
incessently, jumped up on his leg. Oh, God, no, I heard
Virginia say as she covered her eyes, It’s Vivienne.
The woman in black yelled, Have you missed us, Tom?
Have you missed us at all? We’ve certainly missed you
more than you’ll ever know. Eliot didn’t move at all,
an expression of indistinguishablly frozen wonder or
horror on his face. Men came on stage, pushed her
and grabbed the dog; moved them offstage. Leonard reached
across me to reassure Virginia who was shaking, muttered
something about this bloody awful business under his breath.
Eliot steadied himself on the podium and began to read again,
now with his head down, but all I could hear was the fading
sound of that little white dog that wouldn’t stop barking
even as they carried it away.
