by T. S. Eliot
I wish that I were anywhere near satisfied with the book.
But of course I don’t know yet whether the book has been accepted by Boni or by anyone else, or whether your cable only means that someone wants to see more material. Anyway, I leave it in your hands in all confidence, but with the always stronger feeling that you ought not to accept or have forced upon you so much disinterested labour. My only justification is that I do not know anyone else with either the influence, the intelligence, or the generosity necessary to undertake it. It is quite obvious that without you I should never get anything published in America at all.
I hear that several weeks ago the New Republic1 referred to me in very flattering terms. I have not seen the paper and do not know the date, but it ought to be of influence with a publisher.
* * *
As for my plans over here, John Rodker has undertaken to print for private circulation a limited edition of some of my poems, rather expensive, this summer, with designs by Edward Wadsworth. I shall see that you are sent a copy.
I have had some correspondence with Sir Algernon Methuen (Methuen and Co.), who asks to discuss my next book with me when he returns to town. I do not know what he wants, but I shall propose either a complete edition of poems, or to write a book on Tudor literature, which I have had in mind for a long time. If he does not want the poems, the Egoist will print a complete edition next spring, as the Prufrock is sold out;2 and in any case Miss Weaver wants to reprint some of my essays as a book. Martin Secker has also suggested that I should write a book on Stendhal, which would be very interesting to do, but according to his offer I should only get about £25 out of it which does not seem to me enough for so much fresh work.
I find it very difficult to keep in front of me the things I want to do most and not be distracted by many things that turn up. As it is I must always live under pressure – at least until I have enough income so as not to worry over all of the details of existence. I have greatly appreciated your comments from time to time upon this matter of wasting energy.
* * *
I have just received from Pound in France a copy of your admirable defense of Ulysses (May L. R.)3 with the suggestion that it should be printed in the Egoist when and if I receive permission from you. I hope to get this permission. The affair is only one more episode in a national scandal. I should like to do everything I can about it over here. The part of Ulysses in question struck me as almost the finest I have read: I have lived on it ever since I read it. You know the trouble the Egoist came up against with printers in attempting to print Ulysses here.
I am sorry to say that I have found it uphill and exasperating work trying to impose Joyce on such ‘intellectual’ people, or people whose opinion carries weight as I know, in London. He is far from being accepted, yet. I only know two or three people, besides my wife and myself, who are really carried away by him. There is a strong body of critical Brahminism, destructive and conservative in temper, which will not have Joyce. Novelty is no more acceptable here than anywhere else, and the forces of conservatism and obstruction are more intelligent, better educated, and more formidable.
* * *
As for the Egoist, the ladies who run it have decided to suspend publication, after the next two numbers, till further notice. I think that from a financial point of view they are right, and if they devote the money at their disposal to book publication, as they propose to do, it may turn out for the best. It robs Pound and me, of course, of any organ where we can express ourselves editorially or air any affair such as this of Joyce. On the other hand, other publications cut in to the Egoist to a certain extent, and the public which I could bring to it now reads the Athenaeum every week. There I am a sort of white boy;4 I have a longish critical review about three weeks out of four; but don’t write editorials. It has brought me a certain notoriety which I should never have got from the Egoist. I had always the most pleasant relations with Miss Weaver. I have only met Miss Marsden once, and then (in strict confidence) frothed at the mouth with antipathy. The fact that the paper was primarily a means for getting her philosophical articles into print, and that its appearance was at irregular intervals owing to the length of time it took her to write them, I think militated against the success of the paper with many people who did not want to read them.
I have taken a great deal of your time – if you have read this far – and I ought to apologise for relieving myself at your expense. I can only end by thanking you again and again for all your kindness.
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
1–Conrad Aiken, ‘The Ivory Tower’, a review of Louis Untermeyer, The New Era in American Poetry, in New Republic 19 (10May 1919), 58–60; reprinted in Scepticisms: Notes on Contemporary Poetry (1919).
2–In fact, the final copies of Prufrock were sold, autographed, at 10s 6d in 1921.
3–The May issue of the Little Review, containing episode IX of Ulysses, ‘Scylla and Charybdis’, had been stopped by the US Post Office. Judging by his experience of the censorship of WL’s ‘Cantleman’s Spring-Mate’, Quinn felt it was pointless to go to court, so instead he sent a brief to the solicitor of the Post Office department in Washington. He sent a copy of this brief to EP, who wrote to him on 6 July that it was ‘the best apologia for J. that has been written. It shd. be printed. I am sending it to Eliot with instructions to publish in Egoist when he receives your permission’ (Selected Letters of Ezra Pound to John Quinn 1915–1924, 176). Quinn did not grant permission.
4–White boy: ‘A favourite, pet, or darling boy: a term of endearment for a boy or (usually) man’ (OED, citing this letter).
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
10 July 1919
18 Crawford Mansions
My dearest Mother,
I have lately received several parcels from you, and the care and beauty of the packing almost made me cry. What a time it must have taken you! First the books – the set of Dickens which is now on my shelf, and the beloved Rollo books. Then the bathrobe, which is just what I need for this time of year, and the little picture of the carthorse, and the medals; and finally the beautiful pen, which you had so nicely engraved – that I shall prize – the medal of the Latin prize, which I should have preferred you to keep. Father gave me $25 for winning that, and I stole $2 out of it to buy a copy of Shelley’s poems, and no one ever knew it. Also the handsome watch fob and the two spoons. But doesn’t the watch fob belong to Henry? I seem to remember years ago Henry’s being given a fob with a scarab, and a discussion of the best way to mount a scarab. I want to be sure about this. I almost hated to unpack the parcels, I wanted to preserve them because of the care that had gone into them. The spoon was given me by Aunt Cathie, wasn’t it? It is odd – I can’t remember her married name – what the L. stands for.1
You must not think that it bores me to hear about your business affairs; I could just as well say that my literary affairs were tedious to tell about. I had a cable from John Quinn in New York to send him some more poems and articles so I suppose he has arranged finally for my book to be published. Quinn has been very kind to me as he is to all artists and men of letters. He is a successful Irish American lawyer – counsel for the National Bank of Commerce in New York. He interested [himself] on my behalf and prevented my poems from being ‘pirated’ in New York about a year ago. He tried to get a publisher last summer, and it was a great disappointment to me that they did not come out then. The trouble was that there was not enough verse to make a big book, and publishers are scary about printing books containing both verse and prose.
How splendid it would be if you could have sold the real estate this summer and could come across at once. I would gladly do without any holiday for three years if that were possible. On the other hand, ocean travel will probably not be easy till next year. One plan would be for me to come across and to bring you and Marian back with me – then we could have such a long time together at once.
I must stop now. I am taki
ng a short holiday in the middle of August, and if I find that the Government’s put no obstacles in the way, I intend to go to France. I hear that there is a man in Paris who wants to import my books.
Always devotedly
Your son
Tom
1–A christening present from TSE’s great-aunt, Caroline Eliot (Lackland by her second marriage).
TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
[11? July 1919]
[London]
Dear Mary,
What a charming letter – so that I must write at once – having written nineteen letters in the last two days – to explain that mine was despatched six hours before yours arrived. I am so pleased – I mean something more important than feeling flattered.
I was so glad you had the sail together.1 What you say will certainly reach Vivien. Your neighbourhood has made a vast difference to her at Bosham – and I think you are the only woman who really interests her. Besides, I think we are both grateful to anyone who is intelligent enough to take us as two individuals – not as one, or the other, or a neutral composition. But perhaps I will reserve this point for conversation. I have a good deal to say which would simply appear as an illegible mass of blottings and scratchings and revisions, on paper.
Perhaps I will say civilised instead of cultivated. I certainly do not mean a mass of chaotic erudition which simply issues in giggling. You can supply instances of this easily enough. And I loathe ‘amusing’ information. Culture, if it means anything decent, means something personal: one book or painter made one’s own rather than a thousand read or looked at. Some people really read too much to be cultivated. I think everyone must estimate his own powers of assimilation. What I feel about much contemporary taste is that people have merely assimilated other people’s personal tastes without making them personal – tastes which are essentially personal. One could make a short list
Byzantine (a little out of date).
Polynesian, African, Hebridean, Chinese, etc. etc. say savage and Oriental art in general, by people who have not the training to know what these have in common with our traditional art –
Stendhal.
Mozart, Bach etc.
Flaubert (yes!)
Russian ballet (when liked by people who know nothing of the art and its relation to Italian).
Russian novels.
Laforgue (really inferior to Corbière at his best).
I think this comprises modern culture. As I like most of these things I am annoyed. They mostly begin as personal enthusiasms or convictions of people who know and can give reasons. But in the ordinary mind they are completely unorganised.
I have now got started on a long subject which I have not now either time or energy to carry out – instead of replying simply to a question of civilisation and culture. I think two things are wanted – civilisation which is impersonal, traditional (by ‘tradition’ I don’t mean stopping in the same place) and which forms people unconsciously – I don’t think two or half a dozen people can set out by themselves to be civilised – though one can insist on not relaxing what civilisation one has in favour of people who are incapable of appreciating it. I mean the ‘shouting and bad manners’ need not be tolerated – and culture – which is a personal interest and curiosity in particular things – I think it is largely the historical sense,2 which is not simply knowledge of history, a sense of balance which does not deaden one’s personal taste, but trains one to discriminate one’s own passions from objective criticism. It seems that one ought to read in two ways: 1) because of particular and personal interest, which makes the thing one’s own, regardless of what other people think of the book 2) to a certain extent, because it is something one ‘ought to have read’ but one must be quite clear that this is why one is reading. Although my education is very fragmentary I believe I shall do no more of this.
Also, as I said once, I think there are two kinds of intelligence: the intellectual and the sensitive – the first can read a great deal because it schematises and theorises – the second not much, because it requires to get more out of a book than can immediately be put into words. Don’t you think you belong to the second? I read very little – and have read much less than people think – at present I only read Tudor drama, Tudor prose, and Gibbon – over and over – when I have time to read at all. Of course I don’t count the countless books I have had to skim for lectures etc.
I don’t know whether I think you more complicated than you are – but I have fewer delusions about you than you think – but no doubt a great deal of ignorance. I certainly don’t recognise the portrait you hold up as painted by me. But remember that I am a metic – a foreigner, and that I want to understand you, and all the background and tradition of you. I shall try to be frank – because the attempt is so very much worthwhile with you – it is very difficult with me – both by inheritance and because of my very suspicious and cowardly disposition. But I may simply prove to be a savage.
But don’t think that my ignorance makes me wholly unappreciative – even the ignorant can have a sense of values.
Yes, I should like some Flaubert.
Yrs.
Tom.
It would be lovely to come Aug. 1st. I shall consult V. There are only two objections possible 1) time 2) I have been down so often, and we are engaged to go to Eastbourne next week: the expense. This, I am afraid, weighs with me seriously at present.
1–VHE noted in her diary, 9 July: ‘Wonderful day with Mary. Started in boat 9.30 … sailed to Hayling. Landed at a perfect beach, had lunch, and I bathed. Mary told me her life, she was delightful’ (Bodleian).
2–‘Tradition … involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year’ (‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ [I], Egoist 6, Sept. 1919; SW).
TO Edgar Jepson
MS Beinecke
11 July 1919
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mr Jepson,
We should have loved to come on Sunday, but unfortunately I have promised to go down to Oxfordshire for the weekend.1 I do hope you will ask us again later – also the day and the hour suit us beautifully.
With kindest regards to Mrs Jepson and yourself.
Sincerely,
T. S. Eliot
I should be very much interested to have your candid opinion of my verse in the current Art & Letters. If you don’t see that publication I will send you typed copies.
1–TSE was to spend the weekend of 12–13 July with OM at Garsington.
TO Sydney Schiff
MS BL
16 July 1919
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mr Schiff,
I ought to have written to you long ago, but I have simply felt too ill to do any writing. This is merely to thank you for your letter, and for your great kindness in analysing my poem [the unpublished ‘Gerontion’] so carefully. I wish this letter was able to reciprocate – I can just say a few words before we meet. When I wrote last I had not even begun Richard Kurt,1 so your fears were unfounded. Now I have read it once, and with great interest, and hope to have time to go over
If it is possible for me to get away in time, we should like very much to come down by the 5.20 train [to Eastbourne] Friday afternoon. (The ballet is postponed until next week). I hope this will suit you – it seems odd of me perhaps to ask to come earlier, at such late notice – but we should like to come!
I will l
et you know of course if I can’t come by this train, but I am practically certain.
We are looking forward to seeing you and Mrs Schiff very keenly.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
1–Stephen Hudson, Richard Kurt (1919), the first in SS’s sequence of autobiographical novels.
Vivien Eliot TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
Wed. [16 July 1919] Flat
[18 Crawford Mansions]
Mary dear
Thank you for letter. This week has been – is – a horrid muddle and disappointment. We were going to the Ballet with the Sitwells on Friday, and I hoped to see you. Now they say that the new one is postponed until Tuesday – so we are going with them that night.1Will you be there? Surely you need not go back, or else you can come up again? I wanted to go to the Ballet tonight but Tom is IMpossible – full of nerves, really not well, very bad cough, very morbid and grumpy. I wish you had him! So we are to go to the Schiffs on Friday evening instead of Saturday morning, (for the weekend). This is entirely Tom altho’ I don’t expect you to credit it – As things are I can’t do anything about the Bank holiday weekend with you. The money trouble is always cropping up, and it is very bad for him to think we are spending too much. V. bad for his work, or for any man’s work I suppose. He gets entangled into going to places he does not really want to, or enjoy, and then has to sacrifice the nice things. He gets angry and stubborn. Mary dear the photographs will not be ready for a fortnight. I can’t bear to wait so long. I did write to O. M. exactly what I told you I should, and I put it most sensibly and friendlily and with all due regard to her hothouse feelings. And behold, she is furious with me! I am cast into outer darkness, so I can join you there.
