Stepping Heavenward: A Record

1931

Special Collections PR6001 L4 S73 1931

Florence: G. Orioli

Stepping Heavenward is ostensibly a scholarly account of the life of Blessed Jeremy Cibber, first American beatified, who converted England to Catholicism. It is, however, a savage satire on Aldington’s former friend T. S. Eliot. Jealous of Eliot’s celebrity, Aldington supported Vivienne Eliot as the Eliots’ marriage disintegrated. Aldington makes thinly veiled references to Eliot’s life; for example, Cibber takes a job in a haberdashery, as Eliot took one in Lloyd’s bank. Cibber is a ‘cool fish,’ and, as his wife, Adele Paleologue, is driven into ‘wild neurasthenia,’ ‘their quarrels were conducted on coldly intellectual lines.’ Aldington brutally mocks Eliot’s drift into religion.