Stepping Heavenward: A Record

Date

1931

Identifier

Special Collections PR6001 L4 S73 1931

Publisher

Florence: G. Orioli

Abstract

Stepping Heavenward is ostensibly a scholarly account of the life of Blessed Jeremy Cibber, first American beatified, who converted England to Catholicism. It is, however, a savage satire on Aldington’s former friend T. S. Eliot. Jealous of Eliot’s celebrity, Aldington supported Vivienne Eliot as the Eliots’ marriage disintegrated. Aldington makes thinly veiled references to Eliot’s life; for example, Cibber takes a job in a haberdashery, as Eliot took one in Lloyd’s bank. Cibber is a ‘cool fish,’ and, as his wife, Adele Paleologue, is driven into ‘wild neurasthenia,’ ‘their quarrels were conducted on coldly intellectual lines.’ Aldington brutally mocks Eliot’s drift into religion.

Files

Cabine 13 Sleeping Heavenward-inside.jpg

Citation

Richard Aldington, “Stepping Heavenward: A Record,” ourheritage.ac.nz | OUR Heritage, accessed March 29, 2024, https://otago.ourheritage.ac.nz/items/show/8396.