Book Description

"Jottings to the End of His Days" by T. S. Matthews began a few years before he turned 80. Since the last one appeared in 1990 only months before his death (12 days shy of his ninetieth birthday) they are, in the main, the jottings of an octogenarian. They don't seem so, except for those concerned with becoming and being old and those contemplating death. Most seem to have too much bite or juice to have come from the pen of an old man. They were almost invariably written down on little scraps of paper, never bigger than an old envelope, usually at night with some drink in him, though some were the product of the very early morning before anyone else was awake. Matthews then recorded the ones he liked into blue notebooks. In fact, these "jottings" reveal more about Matthews and his inner self than either of his autobiographical books. There are more intimate revelations, flashes of indecent exposure, if you will, than appeared in his earlier work. Rearranged and further screened, they paint an extraordinary portrait of T. S. Matthews than any biographer would find hard to match. What a portrait it is! About the Author Thomas Stanley Matthews was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the only son of an Episcopal clergyman who later became bishop of New Jersey. Matthews was educated at Princeton University and New College, Oxford. Although expected to follow his father into the church, he lost his faith as a young adult. More to his interest was poetry and writing. After Oxford he married Princeton town belle Juliana Stevens Cuyler and wrote for the "New Republic." A few years later he became a book reviewer for "TIME Magazine." Lifting the level of intellectual coverage "TIME" gave the literary world, Matthews was among the first to discover and give wider currency to such poets as Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, on whom he would later write a biography. By 1943 he landed the managing editor position at "TIME," which he held for the next seven years. To his fellow editors he was known as the toughest and the best editor in America. When Matthews resigned in 1953, he was offered a position establishing "TIME-in-Britain." Businesspeople found that "TIME-in-Britain" would be ready to make a profit after six months. Unfortunately, Luce & Company decided that "Sports Illustrated" would make more money, so "TIME-in-Britain" was scratched. Widowed five years earlier, Matthews felt no desire to return to Eisenhower's America, so he settled in England to do what he had always wanted to do: write poetry and books. While he visited the States many times, Matthews, in effect, became an expatriate. He did most of his writing in England where he died at his home in Cavendish, Suffolk, just twelve days short of his ninetieth birthday.