Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot and Irene Fassett. Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot (28 May 1888 – 22 January 1947) was the first wife of American poet T. S. Eliot, whom she wed in 1915, while he was studying at Oxford. They were never compatible; he seems to have been seeking a pretext to stay in England, in defiance of his family, by marrying an English bride. Haigh-Wood had always suffered from serious health problems, compounded by insecurity about her social class. It is clear that her disastrous marriage worsened her condition. Eliot would not consider divorce, but formally separated from her in 1933.
T. S. Eliot his religious views that he combined "a Catholic cast of mind, a Calvinist heritage, and a Puritanical temperament". He also had wider spiritual interests, commenting that "I see the path of progress for modern man in his occupation with his own self, with his inner being" and citing Goethe and Rudolf Steiner as exemplars of such a direction. One of Eliot's biographers, Peter Ackroyd, commented that "the purposes of [Eliot's conversion] were two-fold. One: the Church of England offered Eliot some hope for himself, and I think Eliot needed some resting place. But secondly, it attached Eliot to the English