The Silenced Muse

Reviews / Votes

Sara Fitzgerald . . . offers us the first biography of Hale herself, a task that seemed, until this book was published, just shy of impossible . . . Drawing on an impressive plethora of sources . . . Fitzgerald charts not only the course of Hale's life, but composes a picture of her seen through eyes other than Eliot's * The T.S. Eliot Studies Annual * Retired journalist Fitzgerald offers a heartbreaking biography of Emily Hale (1891-1969), T.S. Eliot's secret love. The pair met as teenagers in 1905 Boston, and though Hale spurned Eliot's "awkward attempts at courtship," they kept in touch after Eliot left to study at Oxford University. Eliot married Vivienne Haigh-Wood in 1915, but her mental and physical health problems strained their relationship. He reconnected with Hale during her 1929 visit to London, finding in her "a sympathetic listener" capable of providing the emotional support his wife no longer could. Though they only saw one another intermittently, Hale fell in love with Eliot and urged him to get a divorce, an idea he repeatedly batted down on religious grounds. After Haigh-Wood died in 1947, he refused to wed Hale for vague reasons ("I cannot, cannot, start life again," he wrote at the time), only to marry his 30-year-old secretary, 38 years his junior, in 1957. Eliot comes across as by turns pitiful and detestable (he bitterly downplayed his feelings for Hale in a 1960 message he arranged to be released simultaneously with correspondence Hale had scheduled for publication 50 years after their deaths), and though Fitzgerald succeeds in reconstructing Hale's career as an amateur actress and director, it's the riveting, star-crossed love story that steals the show. This makes for a powerful complement to Anna Funder's Wifedom. * Publishers Weekly * Although Eliot famously tried to erase his long attachment to his muse as "the love of a ghost for a ghost," The Silenced Muse gives Emily Hale the substance she carried throughout her life. Fitzgerald's meticulous research and abundant, accurate notes bring to light a full record of her performances on stage and her successes as a director of plays. The book's apt subtitle, The Role of a Lifetime, and the stress on drama shows Hale as her own woman with a fulfilling vocation for theatre and teaching. For Hale showed heartfelt generosity not only in private to a great poet, but to a myriad of obscure pupils whose latent gifts she elicited. The wealth of facts about this lively woman prompt further debate about the nature of the Eliot-Hale relationship. -- Lyndall Gordon, author of The Hyacinth Girl: T. S. Eliot's Hidden Muse Drawing extensively on T. S. Eliot's private correspondence and on newspaper archives on three continents, Sara Fitzgerald presents the first biography devoted exclusively to Emily Hale, the American actress and teacher who was throughout four decades the love of the poet's life. The Silenced Muse tells Hale's story with single-minded dedication and contains material available in no other book. -- Robert Crawford, author of Eliot After "The Waste Land" and Young Eliot Sara Fitzgerald's The Silenced Muse gives voice to the complex push and pull in T.S. Eliot and Emily Hale's on-again, off-again relationship. Impeccably researched and dramatically written, Fitzgerald's book illuminates the life of a woman whom history-and archival strictures-have kept in the shadows. Fortunately for us, Fitzgerald has changed this. -- Julie Dobrow, author of After Emily: Two Remarkable Women and the Legacy of America's Greatest Poet Captivated by the relationship between T.S. Eliot and his long-lost American love Emily Hale, author Sara Fitzgerald initially wrote a well-reviewed novel about the romance. Now she has written the definitive biography of Hale, an actress and educator. It is well-researched and riveting. -- Meryl Gordon, bestselling author of Bunny Mellon: The Life of An American Style Legend Actor and educator Emily Hale takes her rightful place center stage in this sensitive biography of the woman who served as the poet T.S. Eliot's muse. Sara Fitzgerald's deep research reveals Hale's intelligence, independent spirit, and great capacity for love and loyalty, and she renders Hale's successes and heartbreaks with visceral clarity. It's a satisfying story of a complex woman that readers won't soon forget. -- Theresa Kaminski, author of Queen of the West: The Life and Times of Dale Evans Emily Hale in her own right at last, emerging from behind the mirrors of Eliot-focused scholarship and the poet's own letters, in this thoroughly researched biography. -- Paul Keers, Chair of the T.S. Eliot Society (UK) The Silenced Muse sizzles with the tension of love's complications. That the emotionally tumultuous relationship involves the celebrated poet T. S. Eliot and his lifelong friend and confidante Emily Hale makes this compelling book a must-read. Fired by a reporter's zeal to uncover the full story, Sara Fitzgerald has given us the first-ever biography of the long-obscure woman who inspired some of Eliot's most memorable writings, only to discover he wasn't always a man of his words. -- Diana Parsell, author of Eliza Scidmore: The Trailblazing Journalist Behind Washington's Cherry Trees Original, intelligent, and extensively researched, Sara Fitzgerald's biography tells the story of Emily Hale's and T. S. Eliot's secret relationship from Hale's perspective. When Eliot's letters to her were opened, they called for major rethinking of the poet's life and work. But Hale's own story is also complex and historically important. Fitzgerald tells two stories-the Hale/Eliot relationship and Hale's own world and career before, during, and after it. In a time when women had few options, she led a rich and fascinating life of her own. -- Nancy Gish, co-editor, with Cassandra Laity, of Gender, Desire, and Sexuality in T. S. Eliot Secretly loved and betrayed by T. S. Eliot during his life, then publicly scorned by him in a letter he left for posthumous publication, Emily Hale finally gets her story told in this stunning new biography by Sara Fitzgerald. The recent release of more than one thousand letters written by Eliot to Hale reveals the celebrated poet as a manipulative liar. After decades of badgering Hale to write back to him, Eliot had her side of the correspondence burned. Yet, drawing on a rich tapestry of sources, Fitzgerald resurrects Emily Hale in full voice. Stepping out from Eliot's shadow, Emily Hale is the quintessential shabby-genteel career woman, struggling to leave her stamp on the world while paying her bills. The Silenced Muse is delicious reading for all who have doubted the mostly white-male canon and for anyone who has rooted for Louisa May Alcott's Jo March, Charlotte Bronte's Lucy Snow, or TV's Mary Richards. -- Marcia Biederman, author of The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill: Abortion, Death, and Concealment in Victorian New England