Both had mental and physical health problems,[3] and it is often cited as the inspiration for The Waste Land, which remains Eliot's most noted work.

Mary Haigh had inherited seven semi-detached houses in Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire), a Dublin suburb, which gave the family financial stability, allowing Haigh-Wood's father to study at the Manchester Art College and the Royal Academy Schools in London.

[5] Charles Haigh-Wood inherited his mother's property when she died, as well as the family home at 14 Albion Place, Walmersley Road, Bury, and he became a landlord, which allowed him to move his wife and Vivienne to Hampstead, a fashionable part of north London.

[7] Although the family was clearly well-to-do, Seymour-Jones writes that Vivienne was ashamed of her connection to Lancashire, perceived as working-class, and was left with a sense of inferiority that made her self-conscious and snobbish, especially when mixing with Eliot's aristocratic London friends.

Vivienne played the piano, painted, took ballet lessons, was a good swimmer, and worked for a short time as a governess for a family in Cambridge.

[10] She was also plagued by heavy, irregular menstruation, to her great embarrassment, and severe pre-menstrual tension, which led to mood swings, fainting spells, and migraines.

She would insist on washing her own bedlinen, often twice a day, and would take her sheets home with her to clean when on holiday, once leading a hotel to claim she had stolen them, to Eliot's dismay.

[13] I think at first, until one has got the spout of this long disused fountain clear, it is better to let the water burst out when it will and so force away the accumulation of decayed vegetation, moss, slime and dead fish which are thick upon and around it.

"[9] She was flamboyant, a great dancer, spoke her mind, smoked in public, dressed in bold colours and looked like an actress.

"[17] Eliot was in Oxford for one year only, and was expected to return to Harvard to begin a career as an academic philosopher, an idea he railed against.

He had completed The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock in 1911,[18] the poem that was to make his name when it was published in Chicago in 1915, and he saw remaining in England as a way to escape his parents' plans for him.

[18] When he was in his 60s, Eliot wrote that he had been immature and timid at the time, and probably in love with Emily Hale, a Bostonian he had had a relationship with in the United States.

But a meeting with the American poet Ezra Pound had persuaded him that the pursuit of poetry was possible, and marrying Haigh-Wood meant he could stay in England and avoid Harvard.

[17] The couple were married after three months, on 26 June 1915, at Hampstead Register Office in London, with Lucy Ely Thayer (Scofield's sister) and Haigh-Wood's aunt, Lillia C. Symes, as witnesses.

[22] Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye Is underlined for emphasis; Uncorseted, her friendly bust Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.

He was uneasy with female sexuality – which led Seymour-Jones to suspect he was homosexual – which manifested itself both in his poetry and in his attitude toward Haigh-Wood's body.

Menand writes that Eliot's work is replete with oversexed women, whom he saw as modern succubi, such as Grishkin in his "Whispers of Immortality" (1919).

[18] Carole Seymour-Jones writes that it was out of the turmoil of the marriage that Eliot produced The Waste Land, one of the 20th century's finest poems.

[25] Haigh-Wood wrote several stories and reviews for The Criterion, the literary magazine Eliot founded, using the pseudonyms FM, Fanny Marlow, Feiron Morris, Felise Morrison, and Irene Fassett.