T. S. Eliot in Gloucester by Nan Webber

I have always harbored the most crystalline image of a young T.S.Eliot,18 or19, sitting in his favorite summer rocking chair on the great wrap-around porch at Eastern Point, his scratch pad in hand. His mother would say that she caught him time after time just staring out to sea; just as it was a more mature Eliot who sat on the Rockport rocks and gave us "The Dry Salvages".

However, being a Gloucester native, it was the young T.S. Eliot who captured my young imagination. For the scratch pad told the story of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". Prufrock, the timid, aging loner Prufrock, who will never dare disturb the Universe. Through Eliot's young eyes, we see that the varied themes in the poem are: a.) the realization of life's emptiness — "there will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet", b.) the sense of boredom — "in the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo", c.) the sense of futility — "for I have known them all: have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons".

Yet, with all these realizations, we see that the dominant theme is the overwhelming question, "What is the meaning of life?"

"Would it have been worthwhile,
to have better off the mother with a smile,
to have squeezed the universe into a hall
to roll it toward some overwhelming question"

As a young man, T.S. Eliot would wander Main Street in Gloucester, penetrating every shop window that he passed by:

"Should I say I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt sleeves leaning out of windows?"

Hence, many of the evocative images of Prufrock come from Cape Ann.

See this from a 19 year old Harvard student who sat on his porch at Eastern Point, stared out to sea, and gave the world a new school of poetry.