tumults and riotous assemblies

"Eliot's response to the threat of Vivienne's messy and demanding proximity was to escape, to withdraw into 'icy urbanity'. Maurice recalled that Tom spent a night in a deckchair on the beach at Eastbourne, while a distraught Vivienne locked herself in her bedroom and apparently damaged the room. The couple returned early from Eastbourne, Vivienne insisting on bringing the soiled sheets home with her in a laundry basket to be washed at home; the manageress of the hotel wrote to complain that the sheets had been 'stolen'. 'Tom went mad,' recalled Maurice."