Painted Shadow: A Life of Vivienne Eliot

This is a superb study of the frustration that a bad marriage can wreak on two (mostly) admirable individuals: Vivienne Haig, sexually hungry and emotionally fragile, and Thomas Stearns Eliot, a homosexual who blithely imagined that marriage would cure him. The chafing these two endured makes for painful reading, though the author tells her story with such dispassion and aplomb that she mitigates their pain. Each marital partner damaged the other: for instance, whereas Vivienne openly slept with Bertrand Russell, Eliot openly sought "German Jack" as his lover. Everyone around them was disappointed and dismayed--increasingly so. Only when the two partners worked together on literary projects did their troubled marriage blossom. But when Eliot ran away from Vivienne in 1926 and then for years cruelly evaded her, she fell apart; and after she apparently threatened to expose his sexual preference, Eliot had her committed from 1938 till she died in 1947. This biography tells what the film TOM AND VIV omits: the sexual hostility that fueled their marriage. Highly recommended.