Letters of T.S. Eliot: 1898-1922
Page 31
We are both better for being here. We had some tennis yesterday – myself and Maurice, and Ezra Pound and a man named Dakyns,3 a friend of ours. Maurice has come back from Lincolnshire and is going to have a three weeks ‘course’ at Chelsea Barracks (London) so he will be near us for that time. It is a course given to select officers who have already had experience in France. We are very glad to have him here.
I have done three pieces of work lately – part of a dialogue for the Little Review, a review for the Egoist, and a review for the New Statesman.4 I am to get £3 per month from the Egoist, and £2 per month from the Little Review. The best I can hope at present is to see my income rise at the same rate as the cost of living!
I have been very busy at the bank – an enormous foreign mail lately. I have a dozen letters to dictate early tomorrow. So I think I will go to bed and write again on Wednesday. I like to address letters ‘Eastern Point’.
With very fond love
Tom
1–Henry Cabot Lodge (1850–1924), a leading Republican senator. TSE is probably referring to his ‘Speech delivered in the Senate on the declaration of war with Germany, 4 April 1917’, reprinted in War Addresses 1915–17 (1917); also distributed as a government offprint.
2–Mrs Eliot was a charter member, and successively Secretary, Vice-President and President of the Missouri Society of the Colonial Dames of America. At this period she was serving as chairman of the War Work committee.
3–Arthur Dakyns (1883–1941), barrister-at-law, worked at the Ministry of Labour 1917–20; later Lecturer in Public Administration, Manchester University, 1926–36.
4–TSE, ‘Eeldrop and Appleplex’ [I], Little Review, May 1917; a review of Passages from the Letters of John Butler Yeats, ed. EP, Egoist, July 1917; and a review of Paul Bourget’s Lazarine, NS, 25 Aug. 1917.
TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
2 July 1917
3 Compayne Gdns London N.W.
Dear Mrs Hutchinson,
Your letter was finally forwarded to me here, where we are staying for the present. My wife was just on the point of writing to explain why we were so rude as not to acknowledge your card of the week before, and so I will answer both in one. The truth is that she read the card ‘July 25’, and as we were not sure about that far off date we did not see the card again until too late. We were very much mortified.
It would be very nice to dine with you this week, but we find we cannot fit it in at all. The only free evening is one when my wife has a dancing practice so late as to make it impossible to appear anywhere afterwards. We hope we can come to see you some time before long. In any case will you not be at Wittering this summer? We shall be at Bosham for a time at the end of July – not as long as last summer, unfortunately.
It is good of you to speak well of Prufrock – I fear it will simply appear a réchauffée to most of my friends – they are growing tired of waiting for something better from me.
With many regrets
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
TO Eleanor Hinkley
TS Houghton
23 July 1917
18 Crawford Mansions,
Crawford St, W.1
Dear Eleanor,
I was delighted to get your letter this evening, and felt as if telegraphic communications with the transpontine continent had at last been repaired. In fact I had thought several times of writing to you briefly and brusquely to ask if it was a fact that both my letters had been sunk or engulphed in the censor’s office; or if not to ask you to state succinctly exactly why you hated me. You have just stopped a crisp epistle.
You have given me a long arrears of news. I am surprised to hear that so little has changed. Life moves so rapidly over here that one never hears twice of the same person as being in the same place or doing quite the same thing. It is either killed or wounded, or fever, or going to gaol, or being let out of gaol, or being tried, or summoned before a tribunal of some kind. I have been living in one of Dostoevsky’s novels, you see, not in one of Jane Austen’s.1 If I have not seen the battlefield, I have seen other strange things, and I have signed a cheque for £200,000 while bombs fell about me. I have dined with a princess and with a man who expected two years hard labour; and it all seems like a dream. The most real thing was a little dance we went to a few days ago, something like yours used to be, in a studio with a gramophone;2 I am sure you would have liked it and the people there.
At present I work from 9.15 till 5.30 in Lloyds Bank Limited, Foreign Department, consigning vast sums of money to various destinations, writing letters to banks in such places as Toronto, Japan, Copenhagen, Mauritius, or Buenos Aires. I feel very important, and should feel more so if I got more money from it. My other occupations are editing the Egoist (assistant) of which I will send you a copy, writing for the Little Review, for the New Statesman (and also helping the editor thereof to read proof, while he listens at the telephone for the latest news from the House of Commons).3 My book seems to have sold pretty well, although it has not been much reviewed yet. I also go to the dentist. My teeth are falling to pieces, I have to wear spectacles to read, and from time to time I am contorted with rheumatism – otherwise I am pretty well. I managed to play a game of tennis Saturday.
I hope that Sohier4 will let us know when he gets to England. He will surely come to London. I don’t know whether I shall be called up in the course of time or not; perhaps I shall be if things go to pieces in Russia.5 But I am not sure that I should pass the medical examination.
I am delighted to hear of your dramatic triumphs. I am sure that I could never write a play. I wish that I could see yours.6
I have a small Jewish messenger boy named Joseph, in brass buttons. He said today: ‘I know what I should do if I had £5000’. This precocious creature is about eleven. ‘What would you do?’ ‘I’d invest it in Canadian Pacific preferred.7 But not now’, continued the loquacious youth, ‘this is not a good time. If I had it now, I’d have a good dinner – duckling and green peas, gooseberry tart and cream. Duckling is nicer than duck, the bones are tenderer’. Such is the society I move in in the City. My typist is Mrs Lord, whose husband is a captain in the regular army – she carries his D.S.O. medal about.
Write soon again, and give my love to your mother.
Always affectionately
Tom
1–TSE is alluding to the Austen-inspired sketch in which he had acted with Hinkley in 1913.
2–Though not writing of this occasion, Stella Bowen remembered ‘our flattered pleasure when T. S. Eliot turned up, with his gentle, benevolent smile and a black satin chest protector, at some of our beer and gramophone parties’ (Drawn from the Life: Reminiscences [1941], 61).
3–J. C. Squire, a founder member of the Fabian Society, had been a parliamentary reporter until 1912, and stood unsuccessfully as the Labour candidate for Cambridge in the election of 1918.
4–Her brother-in-law, Edward Sohier Welch.
5–Following its disastrous June offensive, the Russian Army was collapsing, and there were fears that Russia would withdraw from the war, making American support for the Western Allies essential to prevent a German victory. The Bolshevik Revolution was to begin in November.
6–She had completed The Clam Digger, a tragedy in three acts, in the spring, and Their Flesh and Blood, an earlier comedy in four acts, was to be produced later in the year in the 47 Workshop.
7–‘The Empire’s Greatest Railway’ had been in the news, having taken over the Allan Line shipping company.
TO Robert Nichols1
TS Mrs Charlton
8 August 1917
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mr Nichols,
It was a very great pleasure to me to receive your letter. I found it yesterday on my return from a short holiday. Oddly enough, I had seen St John Hutchinson2 in Sussex the day before, and he had spoken of you. I also know of you of course from Aldous Huxley and (if you do not mind my mentioning it!) from the Tim
es. So I am sure that there is enough basis for correspondence! I sincerely hope that when you are next in London you will not find it too much trouble to look me up – or even to let me know in advance – as I can always be found at this address. It would be a pleasant anticipation for me.
Your more than appreciative praise gave me great pleasure. I have heard very little of my book, since it was published, and have ceased to look for reviews. Still I fear that I have had too much appreciation rather than too little. I am not anxious to write more – or rather I feel that the best promise of continuing is for one to be able to forget, in a way, what one has written already; to be able to detach it completely from one’s present self and begin quite afresh, with only the technical experience preserved. This struggle to preserve the advantages of practice and at the same time to defecate the emotions one has expressed already is one of the hardest I know. I wonder if you will agree with me.
I remember getting hold of Laforgue years ago at Harvard, purely through reading Symons,3 and then sending to Paris for the texts. I puzzled it out as best I could, not finding half the words in my dictionary, and it was several years later before I came across anyone who had read him or could be persuaded to read him.4 I do feel more grateful to him than to anyone else, and I do not think that I have come across any other writer since who has meant so much to me as he did at that particular moment, or that particular year.
Let me say that I do not think you have any more reason to be downcast at being praised by the Times than I have for not being. I have not yet seen your book; I hope that I may do so.5
With every hope of meeting you
Yours sincerely
T. S. Eliot
1–Robert Nichols (1893–1944), war poet, novelist and playwright. He joined the Royal Field Artillery in Oct. 1914, fought at the Battle of Loos in 1915, and was invalided out with shell-shock. Professor of English, Imperial University, Tokyo, 1921–4.
2–St John ‘Jack’ Hutchinson (1884–1942), barrister-at-law; husband of MH.
3–The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899) by Arthur Symons (1867–1945). ‘But for having read his book, I should not, in the year 1908, have heard of Laforgue or Rimbaud: I should probably not have begun to read Verlaine; and but for reading Verlaine, I should not have heard of Corbière. So the Symons book is one of those which have affected the course of my life’ (review of Peter Quennell, Baudelaire and the Symbolists, in NC 9 [Jan. 1930], 357).
4–While TSE was in Paris in 1910–11, his friend and French teacher Alain-Fournier discussed Laforgue several times in his literary column in Paris-Journal.
5–Nichols’s Ardours and Endurances (1917) received a glowing review: ‘Nothing can prevent poetry like this from taking its place among those permanent possessions of the race which will remain to tell the great-grandchildren of our soldiers to what pure heights of the spirit Englishmen rose out of the great war’s horror of waste and ugliness, noise and pain and death!’ (TLS, 12 July).
TO His Mother
TS Houghton
8 August 1917
18 Crawford Mansions
Dearest Mother,
This must be a very short letter, as it is late; several business letters I had to write took much longer than I expected. I got back from Bosham Monday night, after a very rainy week. We went out every day however, and got soaked on the water – there was very little wind and much rain, and we had to row home always – and I think got benefit out of the holiday. Bosham is not as good harbour as [East] Gloucester, as there is a narrow channel and a strong tide, but sailing is the same thing everywhere. We had a delightful sail Sunday. The morning was very bright, and we sailed about ten miles down the harbour to have lunch with some friends who have a house in a remote spot. The wind brought us most of the way back, then it began to rain and we had to row. Bosham is less beautiful naturally than Gloucester, but more picturesque; the village is much prettier. The natives are much the same, and have a curious middle-western twang.
I am sure that I acknowledged that $12 long ago! In fact, I remember the letter – I think it was in May. I am very sorry you have had so much trouble over it, and that I did not write again to thank you. I have the suit, as you know.
I wrote to father for money several weeks ago. I presume he will cable it to ‘Linen’.
Now I must stop and write again on Sunday. I will tell you more about Bosham.
With very much love
your devoted son
Tom
TO Eleanor Hinkley
TS Houghton
8 August 1917
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Eleanor,
I wrote you a brief but rather dull letter about ten days ago; as it occurred to me that it was just possible the letter might never reach you, and as I have a moment spare before going to bed, I am writing you a still briefer one to let you know that I have already written. I sometimes think it is better to write brief letters – unless one had one particular thing to say at some length; one sits down to write a ‘good long letter’ and becomes conscientiously dull – I do, I am sure you don’t! Short letters are sometimes more personal. I remember Jean Verdenal saying to me when I left Paris that Space more than Time would separate us.1 I think one feels space less in a short letter.
I should like to write oftener, just to be able to feel more certain that we should recognise each other and have more or less a common language when we meet again. I don’t imagine you as changed at all – I am sure that I don’t want to! – as for myself, I think that in some ways I have improved (somewhat less selfish and more considerate), also hardened a bit. However, we shall see eventually.
My plan is that when I come over after the war you and Aunt Susie will come back with me for a visit.
I have just returned from a week at the seashore, splashing about in a boat. Vivien is staying on for a few days, and so I am alone till Monday. I meant to write a long review this evening, but my time has been taken up with letters.
Affectionately
Tom
1–See Verdenal’s letter of 5 Feb. 1912.
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
Sunday 2 September2 1917
[London]
My dearest mother,
It is a long time since I have written. I have thought of you all the oftener for not writing, however. I have in the last two weeks – I think it is ten days or more since I wrote – done two articles for the Egoist, and two for the New Statesman, and have nearly finished a longer one. I must now begin at once to prepare my two sets of lectures; which will involve reading a number of authors of whom I know very little: Brontë, George Eliot, Emerson, Charles Reade, Kingsley, Huxley, Spencer, Samuel Butler. I should slip a prospectus of one of my two sets of lectures into this letter, but I know that enclosures are not allowed. While I enjoy these lectures very much in a way, I shall be very glad when I can give them up altogether, for they take a great deal of time that I want to devote to work of a more permanent nature. Just at present they form a very important addition to my income,2 but at my present rate of increase of salary I can reasonably look forward to a time when they will be unnecessary, and I shall be able to spend all my spare time exactly as I please. When I can earn all the money I need out of one thing, and be able to read and write in the rest of my time without thinking of the financial reward for what I do, then I shall be satisfied. The lecturing really takes more out of me than the bank work during the day. Vivien is staying on for a few days more at Bosham; and I have been for the past five days with my friends the Dakyns’s, who live about ten minutes walk from us. It is an economy, and they leave me quite to myself for working, and going out or coming in when I like; and they have a large house with a good library, so that I am quite comfortable. I shall go home again in a day or two, not to abuse their hospitality too long.
I wonder how much longer you are staying at Gloucester. I like to think of you being there until October, but perhaps it will be cold by then.
I see that the first draft is being called up soon.
I must get back to work. It is Sunday, and I must make the most of it. After all, without working very hard, I think the times we live in would be unendurable.
Always your very devoted son
Tom
1–Misdated August.
2–TSE was to receive a flat fee of £1 per lecture.
Vivien Eliot TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
Saturday [8? September 1917]
South View, Bosham
Dear Mrs Hutchinson
I am not sending back your story1 today because I want you to let me show it to my husband – will you? I know he would be so interested, and I enjoyed it immensely – it is so vivid and amusing. You must let me show it to him. Please write me a line and say yes. I will take great care of it – and you shall have it back as quickly as possible.
I must really go back on Monday – there are ever so many reasons. So write to 18 Crawford Mansions (W.1) to say if I may show it. Of course I will not until I hear.
I enjoyed our talk. I hope I shall see you in London.
Yours
Vivien Eliot
1–MH’s story ‘War’ was to be published by TSE in Egoist 4: 10 (Dec. 1917).
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
12 September 1917
[18 Crawford Mansions]
My dearest Mother,
I have begun to be very busy the last few days preparing my lectures. One set covers very much the same ground as my lectures at Southall last year, but more broadly, beginning with ‘The Makers of 19th Century Ideas’, lectures on Carlyle, Mill, Arnold, Huxley, Spencer, Ruskin, Morris – then the poets, and then the novelists.1 I have never read much of George Eliot, the Brontës, Charles Reade, or the Kingsleys. I have read The Mill on the Floss and Wuthering Heights last week. The other course is a continuation of last year’s;2 they want me to start with Emerson, go on to Samuel Butler and Wm. Morris, then the Pre-Raphaelites, and so on. Both of these courses depend for their continuance upon the enrolment at the first few lectures, so I am waiting anxiously. The first lecture is on the 28th. The preparation keeps me fairly well occupied, along with the Egoist, the New Statesman, the Spanish Irregular verbs, and the subject of Foreign Exchange, which I find very knotty in the books on the subject. I am behindhand with Jourdain too. I have been trying to read May Sinclair’s Defence of Idealism to review for the Statesman and Jourdain.3 She is better known as a novelist. Did you ever hear of her? She is a pleasant little person; I have met her several times.