by T. S. Eliot
Vivien will be back in a day or two, and will no doubt begin cleaning at once. I have been looking after myself, and the rooms have not been cleaned for ever so long. I make oatmeal overnight and warm it in the morning. She is going to bring up quantities of blackberries to make jam.
London has been having perfect weather lately; I only hope you have had as good. I am sorry you intend to leave Gloucester early, but I suppose as you say it is very expensive. You have had Charlotte and the children for a long time; it must be fatiguing at times. I should like to know what Theodora is like now. I suppose very tall.
When I was at Bosham I wished that I could take you out sailing there. I don’t regret all the sailing that you and I and father did together, I assure you!
Your devoted son
Tom
I am sorry Henry does not get away.
I should like some ice cream.
1–Starting on 28 Sept., TSE was to give a course of twenty-five lectures on Victorian Literature at the County Secondary School, Sydenham, under the auspices of the London County Council.
2–See TSE, ‘Syllabus for a Tutorial Class in Modern English Literature, Second Year’s Work’ (1917); in Schuchard, Eliot’s Dark Angel, 41–4. His salary was raised to £70 for the year.
3–TSE’s unsigned review appeared in NS, 22 Sept. 1917, but he did not succeed in placing a second notice either in Jourdain’s philosophical journals or in the Egoist (letter to EP, 23 Sept.). Already a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, May Sinclair (1863–1946), author of The Three Sisters (1914), became the first woman member of the Aristotelian Society after publication of A Defence of Idealism, and was among the first novelists to use ideas from psychoanalysis. TSE was to publish her story ‘The Victim’ in C. 1: 1 (Oct. 1922).
Vivien Eliot TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
Wednesday [12? September 1917]
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mrs Hutchinson,
Here is your story – and my husband is ever so pleased with it. He is going to write to tell you so. I admire you very much.
Yes, please do what you can to find me a cottage – it is the one thing I want. But I forgot to tell you it must be unfurnished. I have so much furniture I want to get rid of from here. Besides, I shd. hate other people’s furniture.
It would have been nice to have stayed a few days with you. I wish I could have.
It really is not bad to be back again. It is nice to see people once more, when I am away I am apt to forget that people – friends – really are important.
Let me know when you come back, and you must come here and see us. We shall both like that. Meanwhile let me hear the minute you can, about the cottage, and do go on writing!
Yrs.
Vivien Eliot
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
19 September 1917
[London]
Dearest Mother,
I shall send this to St Louis, as I am sure that you will be there by the time this arrives. It has seemed like winter here today. The clocks have been put back to solar time, so that what was half past six last week is half past five now; so it seems dark much earlier; and today has been a rainy dark day like winter. Saturday still seemed summer; it was hot and cloudless; I spent the afternoon on the river with a man in the bank1 who owns a ‘sailing canoe’; they are tiny little boats like toys. You sit on the edge of the cockpit with your knees up to your chin. A breath makes them move, but they are very steady. There was no wind, and the water was covered with rowboats and punts and canoes; still, it seemed like sailing.
Vivien came back Monday afternoon, after a very crowded and tiring journey; with a quantity of blackberries, which she has made into delicious jam, working all day yesterday; so she is now quite exhausted. She is better on the whole, I think, but she had a severe migraine today in consequence of her efforts.
I had a pleasant evening with Professor Hocking of Harvard a few days ago. He was just returning. He is a very nice man, but not very intelligent. He had been invited (among others) to come over and inspect conditions here and report them in America – saying of course whatever he likes. He did not impress me as having learned much. I should like to see [James] Woods. He is much more alert.
I am busy reading Emerson. He strikes me as very wordy. He has something to say often, but he spreads it out and uses very general terms; it seems more oratory than literature. His biography is interesting, and contains many familiar names.
I must stop now. It is late.
Your very devoted son
Tom
No letter from you so far this week.
1–James de Vine Aylward (1871–1966) had been a painter of horses and a pupil of Bouguereau (1825–1905) before the war. He was to publish a monograph, The Small-Sword in England (1945; rev. edn, 1960), as well as The House of Angelo (1953) and The English Master (1956). Fluent in French and German, he became TSE’s assistant in the Foreign Intelligence Bureau at Lloyds Bank, and was a great support during his domestic problems.
TO Julian Huxley1
MS Fondren
19 September 1917
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Huxley,
It is very pleasant to hear that you are back in London, for a time at least. Certainly we shall meet, so far as it depends on me, but probably I shall not lunch with you or anyone else for thirty-five years – except on Saturdays. Are you free on that day, or do you go out of town? I could be depended on for 1.30; all other days I snatch half an hour in Cheapside. Otherwise, we must arrange another hour. I should like you to come here as soon as our autumn cleaning is over; my wife has just got back from the country and as I have been doing some cooking in her absence there is some filth.
Hoping to see you soon,
Sincerely,
T. S. Eliot
Is Aldous2 at Garsington? I have not heard from him.
1–Julian Huxley (1887–1975), zoologist, writer, philosopher and administrator. After enlisting in the spring he had been commissioned into the Intelligence Unit of the Army Service Corps. After WW1, he would return to his career as a zoologist: his works include Essays of a Biologist (1923).
2–While still at Balliol College, Julian’s brother Aldous was a frequent visitor to Garsington. After Oxford, he taught at Eton for a year, starting this month.
TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
19 September 1917
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mrs Hutchinson,
Vivien showed me your story [‘War’], but unfortunately through misunderstanding sent it back before I meant her to. I enjoyed it very much. It may seem gratuitous for me to give any opinion when I haven’t been asked – and I have never written a story in my life. I thought yours was very well written. There were only a few phrases I should have dared to question (I think the words ‘sharp’ and ‘incisive’ and one or two others – I wish I had it here). The descriptive part seemed to me the best written – the more mature and final choice of words; but the situation seemed to me very firmly grasped and handled, and it doesn’t suggest any literary precedent that I know. The only fault I find (and I am not sure that the fault is present, or even that it is a fault) is – it struck me (I have only read it twice) that you had got thoroughly inside the feelings, but hadn’t quite got out again. I like to feel that a writer is perfectly cool and detached, regarding other people’s feelings or his own, like a God who has got beyond them; or a person who has dived very deep and comes up holding firmly some hitherto unseen submarine creature. But this sort of cold detachment is so very rare – and stupid detachment is so much the rule, that it may be only a particular taste.
It is temeritous of me to ask for contributions for the Egoist, as I have above me a nice but timid person1 who likes to stick to old standbys, or else take the remains of Arthur Symons and Yone Noguchi,2 and with very small space we have two novels on our hands – Lewis’s now and Joyce’s next book next – but if
you were willing to let me have the manuscript in January say, I should like to try to get it in, and I think I could. Will you let me know if you are willing?
I hope we shall see you before very long.
Yours sincerely,
T. S. Eliot
1–Harriet Shaw Weaver.
2–Yone Noguchi (1875–1947), poet and essayist who wrote in English and Japanese, and had been acclaimed by Symons.
TO Ezra Pound
MS Beinecke
23 September 1917
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Ezra
Forgive me. Lecture tomorrow night, also Weaver on my path. Lecture Friday & Appleplex on the brain.1 Shall make no engagements hereafter, but may try to find time after business one day, taking chances.
Should like to do a short notice on May Sinclair’s book for the Egoist. I wish Dora did not have to have the very front,2 as I should like to do monthly series of pungent paragraphs (not necessarily all by one hand) instead of my articles, which I feel have been of inferior quality. One could easily turn out a number of them in four weeks, whereas one does an article all at one go.
Weaver is sending for James.3 Thursday – I thought too many women – it lowers the tone: not up to the Café Magry: perhaps there should be a special evening for males only, as well as this. Eeldrop on the feminisation of modern society.
Yrs.
T.
1–EP was pressing TSE to submit the second part of his experimental dialogue ‘Eeldrop and Appleplex’, which was to be published in Little Review 4: 5 (Sept. 1917).
2–Each issue of Egoist began with a philosophical essay by contributing editor Dora Marsden.
3–TSE was preparing a special ‘Henry James’ issue of Egoist (Jan. 1918), to which EP contributed a review of The Middle Years: Autobiographical Reminiscences (1917).
TO Julian Huxley
MS Fondren
23 September 1917
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Huxley
I got away from the City at 1.15, but under the impression that Waterloo Bridge was near Waterloo Place I did not find my way to Lancaster Place till 1.45. As I could not identify any of the offices as yours I hung about in the hall for some time and then decided that you had gone. It is most deplorable that I should have missed you as Saturday seems to be the only day available and I may be out of town next Saturday. Perhaps you would drop in some evening for coffee?
Yours
T. S. Eliot
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
3 October1 1917
18 Crawford Mansions
My dearest Mother,
I have several letters to thank you for. First for the letter enclosing the birthday cheque, which shall be devoted to the purpose for which you intended it. I shall let you know as soon as I have purchased the flannels. Then for two letters dated September 2 and September 14, one about Rupture. I had forgotten that it was congenital – I thought it was due to an early accident.
I suppose you are back in St Louis now.
We are going to try to find rooms outside of London, not too far for me to come up every day. It is absolutely imperative; we cannot stand the strain of moonlight nights in London.2 Last week was a great strain. We spent Saturday and Sunday night in the country, and I persuaded Vivien to spend Monday night there too, as I had to go out to lecture. Now the weather has changed to stormy, so we feel a bit easier; still, we should prefer to be west of London, and I am sure you will agree.
My old course of lectures at Southall has started off on its second year with very good promise; the new course is still inchoate.
Don’t talk about not seeing me again; it is too painful, and besides you shall see me again. I remember all those occasions you mention, and a great many more, usually beginning with the ‘little Tailor’ and the firelight on the ceiling.3 But you must not doubt that you will see me directly the war is over.
I must go to bed now.
Vivien is going to write tomorrow. She has simply not been able to write letters, and she has had all the housework and part of the washing to do for some time.
Your very devoted son
Tom
1–Misdated September.
2–When the danger of German bombing raids was greatest.
3–TSE returns to memories of this song in a letter to his mother of 12 Jan. 1919.
Vivien Eliot TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
9 October [1917]
18 Crawford Mansions
Thanks so much for yr. letter. I made Tom ring up Malleson1 (before I heard from you) – I was glad I did as they seemed rather sour about it! I went [house-hunting] to Chesham and Wendover but never found Cholesbury, and I had the most depressing and damping experiences at both those places. They were filled with the East End of London. Horrible Jews in plush coats by the million.
I haven’t done anything since, out of sheer inertia – and also my time has been entirely occupied in washing up greasy dishes. You have no idea the sort of feelings that take possession of me on discovering, at 11.30 at night, that the bed is not made!! But I believe I have got a woman now. Anyhow she said she would come tomorrow, but I don’t trust her.
Bertie now says he wants to go shares in a country cottage. That will probably mean being out of the frying pan but in the fire! However as I have NO money, and insufficient energy, the plan has its merits. We are going forth to hunt, in a few days.
Huxley2 was here on Saturday and spoke very nicely of you – he quoted a saying of Gertler’s3 that rather amused us – viz. that the Mallesons might be said to keep ‘open bed’. It’s true, from all I hear!
I do hope you are finding servants. I would offer to help, but it would be a farce. If I do get this cottage or house, you will come, won’t you, and bring people? It will be so funny.
I go on looking forward to seeing you when you come back.
Yours
Vivien Eliot
1–Miles Malleson (1888–1969), actor and director, whose wife Lady Constance (1895–1975) used the stage name Colette O’Neil.
2–AH wrote to OM that he had gone to town and ‘found Eliot crouching with Bertie Russell over a dying fire. Our conversation consisted of long silences occasionally interrupted by Bertie saying something, like “How good it would be to exterminate the whole human race.”’ (Texas)
3–Mark Gertler (1891–1939), artist.
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
14 October 1917
[London]
My dearest Mother
I have not written to you or heard from you for ever so long, and it is winter, now that I am writing to St Louis again. I always think of return to St Louis as meaning Concord grapes on the table1 in the blue fruit basket, and Stephen2 washing the brick side walk, and the smell of new school books, Latin and Greek and Geometry. But enough of the smell of school books since then! I am always thankful to be done with teaching. My work has been very light lately. Both my courses of lectures are, I think, assured; as enough members have enrolled for each; whereat I am much rejoiced, as it is rather a compliment to a class to exist at all at the present time, and also, we shall need the money very much this winter. So I shall have my hands just as full as I expected; and it is a good thing to be so busy that one cannot take time to worry much about the present condition of the world and the future of civilisation. Also I take a great deal of pleasure in The Egoist; struggling as it is, it is known to some of the most intelligent people, and it stands for something which needs to be kept going; the fact that it is practically the only publication, except perhaps technical ones, which makes no reference to politics or the war, and that it can keep on its way determined to assert the perpetual importance of other things, is itself important; even though it is possible to get only a small number of the good contributors who were possible a few years ago. I ought to be pretty well satisfied with my life then, in a way, seeing that I can name almost no one whose life ha
s not been thoroughly disorganised in the last three years. Besides, everything I do is interesting, in different ways; the only permanent good I get out of the lectures however is a vast amount of miscellaneous reading and a certain practice in public speaking.
I must stop now. We have had no luck in finding rooms in the country – everything near London is taken – I doubt whether we shall get out of London at all. I am anxious, of course, but these are not matters we can speak write about.
