Jean Jules Verdenal

Jean Jules Verdenal (11 May 1890 – 2 May 1915) was a French medical officer who served, and was killed, during the First World War. Verdenal and his life remain obscure; the little that is known comes mainly from interviews with family members and several surviving letters.[1]

Verdenal was born in Pau, France, the son of Paul Verdenal, a medical doctor.[2] He had a talent for foreign languages.[3][4] He was athletically inclined.[5][6] Verdenal as a student was interested in literature and poetry and possessed copies of Stéphane Mallarmé's Poésies and of Jules Laforgue's Poésies and Moralités Légendaires.[7][8] It was perhaps Verdenal's literary inclinations that led him to become friends with American poet T.S. Eliot, whom he met in 1910 at the Sorbonne. After they parted ways, Verdenal and Eliot corresponded through letters.[9] Verdenal was killed on 2 May 1915 while treating a wounded man on the battlefield.[10][11][12] This was just a week into the Gallipoli Campaign and a few days shy of his twenty-fifth birthday.

  1. ^ Primary sources: Watson 1976, Perinot 1996, Eliot 1988
  2. ^ Father: Perinot 1996, p. 267
  3. ^ Languages: Perinot 1996, p. 268
  4. ^ Languages: Watson 1976, p. 468
  5. ^ Athletic: Perinot 1996, p. 266
  6. ^ Athletic: Eliot 1988, p. 35
  7. ^ Personal library: Perinot1996, p. 272
  8. ^ Personal library: Watson 1976, p. 468
  9. ^ Letters: None of Eliot's letters to Verdenal survive, but seven letters written by Verdenal to Eliot were donated in 1967 to Harvard University's Houghton Library by Theresa (Garrett) Eliot, the widow of T.S. Eliot's older brother, Henry Ware Eliot Jr. These letters, dating between July 1911 and December 1912, have been published in their original French and in English translations by John Weightman (Eliot 1988, pp. 20–25, 27–36). Both James Miller and Carole Seymour-Jones have provided notes about the affection between Verdenal and Eliot displayed in the letters (Miller 1998) (Seymour-Jones 2001, pp. 49–54).
  10. ^ Battlefield death: Watson 1976, p. 467
  11. ^ Perinot 2008, pp. 49–50
  12. ^ Perinot 2011, p. 44