Keeping The Poet Alive: Vivienne Eliot

Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot (also Vivian, born Vivienne Haigh on 28 May 1888) was the first wife of American-British poet T. S. Eliot, whom she married in 1915, less than three months after their introduction by mutual friends, when Vivienne was a governess in Cambridge and Eliot was studying at Oxford. Vivienne was the daughter of an artist and landlord father, Charles Haigh-Wood, whose work you can see around the world. Plagued by health issues including TB and treated with potassium bromide (which causes cognitive decline) at a young age, Vivienne struggled in the Eliot marriage. Eliot decided on a separation in 1932/1933 which Vivienne struggled to accept. Her younger brother, Maurice, committed her to Northumberland House Mental Hospital in 1938. She died, not visited by her husband, in 1947. Her private diaries were possessed by Eliot's second wife, Valerie, despite Vivienne's gift of her personal papers to the Bodleian Library of Oxford upon her death.

Sources:

Dalya Alberge, Diaries of TS Eliot's First Wife, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jun/02/diaries-of-ts-eliots-first-wife-reveal-her-torment-at-end-of-their-marriage

The TS Eliot Foundation, A First Look at Eliot's Pocket Diaries, https://tseliot.com/foundation/a-first-look-at-eliots-pocket-diaries/ (2018)

Lost Hospitals of London, https://ezitis.myzen.co.uk/northumberlandhouse.html

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