H. Bradley, who became the subject of Eliot's dissertation. While teaching (by 1916), he completed his dissertation, Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley. The dissertation was accepted, but Eliot did not return to America to defend it so as to receive his doctorate. His study of Bradley, however, contributed to his thought and prose style. Eliot wrote to Conrad Aiken on New Year's Eve 1914: "I hate university towns and university people, who are the same everywhere, with pregnant wives, sprawling children, many books and hideous pictures on the walls.Oxford is very pretty, but I don't like to be dead." Eliot actually spent much of his time in London. This city had a monumental and life-altering impact on Eliot for multiple reasons, the most significant of which was his introduction to the influential literary figure Ezra Pound. Though they were quite different, they shared a devotion to learning and poetry.
He was spending long periods of time in London, in the company of Ezra Pound and "some of the modern artists whom the war has so far spared.It was Pound who helped most, introducing him everywhere.".
Marriage.
William Eliot married Vivienne Haigh-Wood in 1915. The marriage was not successful, in part because of Vivienne's health issues: the two separated in 1933 and Eliot eventually committed Vivienne (still legally his wife) to a mental hospital in 1938. In a private paper written in his sixties, Eliot confessed: to her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came "The Waste Land." In 1957, Eliot married Esme' Valerie Fletcher, his former secretary at Faber and Faber. The two were happy together until Eliot's death in 1965; his poem "A Dedication to My Wife" is a rare public declaration of the deep affection he felt for his second wife. After Eliot's death, Valerie dedicated her time to preserving his legacy, by editing and annotating "The Letters of T.
