210. CURRANTS: Eliot*: “The currants were quoted at a price ‘carriage and insurance free to London’; and the Bill of Lading, etc., were to be handed to the buyer upon payment of the sight draft.” In other words, shipping costs were built into the price, payable on delivery. Currants are dried, seedless berries, suggesting infertility, the opposite of the renewal and revegetation themes of the poem (see note 0.2). They also carry inferences of homosexuality and graveside preparations; see note 214 for each of these perceptions.
212. DEMOTIC means common, of the people. Demotic and demobbed (line 139) were the only specific words Ezra Pound had suggested to improve the poem, but he also offered general encouragement and suggested broad edits. See note 0.4 and see F&T*).
214. THE CANNON STREET HOTEL, about a quarter mile northwest of where Eliot worked (see note 66), was frequented by businessmen commuting to and from the Continent through the Cannon Street Station; it was also reputed to be a homosexual rendezvous.
THE METROPOLE is a luxury resort hotel in Brighton on England’s southwestern coast, about sixty miles west of London. The hotel opened to great fanfare in 1890.
HOMOSEXUALITY, already suggested by the rendezvous at the Cannon Street Hotel and the follow-up weekend in Brighton, might also be inferred by the currants in the merchant’s pockets (line 210); see Whitman†, These, I, Singing in Spring, in which currants are among the wild plants being “collect[ed] for lovers” as “the token of comrades”:
“Collecting, I traverse the garden, the world—but soon I pass the
gates,
Now along the pond-side—now wading in a little, fearing not the
wet.”
WEEDS AND WILDFLOWERS may be a homosexual token by Whitman’s measure, or a festive accouterment by any measure (see, e.g., Spenser, Prothalamion (note 176)), but there is also a more somber parallel: Compare the collected merchant’s currants with the “weedy trophies” that Ophelia reached for at her watery death (see notes 172 and 378), or Cornelia’s leaves and flowers covering unburied men (see note 74). See also Whitman†, Memories 7:
“Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes
With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,”
and compare the plants that drain their forgetfulness along the River Lethe (see note 4). See also the death and mourning ties of the lilac (line 2), the hyacinth (line 35) and the violet (note 380).
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* see note 0.1 †See note 2
