Letters of T.S. Eliot: 1898-1922
Page 57
5 November 1919
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mr Quinn:
This is to thank you for your kind letter of the 3rd October, long unanswered.1
I am entirely unexperienced in such matters, but I should have accepted any form of contract that you approved; the contract you enclosed is quite satisfactory to me. I have written to Knopf saying that I have received it and that I confirm your action in signing on my behalf. I am sorry that I bothered you by an unnecessary letter of instructions which might just as well have gone direct to Knopf. I earnestly hope that my affairs will not take any more of your time and thought; if you took no further interest in them whatever you would still have earned my lifelong gratitude, which, I assure you, you shall have.
At your leisure, you can have the Prose in your possession returned to me. Some of it I shall probably use; some of it I shall certainly suppress; I do not want to use any of it without thorough revision. It is in fact a great relief to me that it will not reach print in the form in which you have it. Some of it I may work into a book which the Egoist will print in the spring, and which I think will be a series of connected essays on the Art of Poetry. But the nucleus of the book will be a lecture which I delivered last week for an organisation called the Arts League of Service, on Poetry.2 It was one of a series in which Lewis spoke on Painting;3 it was, I believe, successful, and I want to expand and continue this lecture for a small book. If I do something that satisfies me, I do not see why I should not offer that to Knopf as my next book; if he turns it down I am quit of obligation to him, and if he takes it I shall be pleased. It was the preparation of this lecture that delayed my writing to you. I am now at work on an article ordered by The Times, and when that is off I hope to get started on a poem that I have in mind.4
Again with most grateful thanks.
sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
1–Quinn enclosed an amended contract for TSE’s Poems, limiting Knopf’s control of the copyright to ten years.
2–TSE’s lecture, given on 28 Oct. at the Conference Hall, Westminster, later appeared as ‘Modern Tendencies in Poetry’, Shama’a I: 1 (1920).
3–WL’s extemporised lecture, on 22 Oct., was chaired by Bernard Shaw.
4–The Waste Land.
TO The Editor of The Athenaeum
Published 7 November 1919
Sir,
Mr Pound’s letter of last week1 appears to me quite superfluous. It is perfectly obvious that he must have been indebted to someone, unless he is a Chinese scholar, which nobody supposes; I am perfectly willing to believe that his creditor is the late Mr Fenollosa;2 but the gist of my criticism is that Mr Pound is less indebted to previous translators – Giles3 and Legge4 – than subsequent translators are indebted to Mr Pound.
As for his suspicion that I did not enjoy his Propertius,5 I did not think the question of public interest: his non plebecula gaudet.6
I am, Sir, yours, etc.,
T.S.E.
1–EP’s letter, headed ‘Mr Pound and his Poetry’ (A., 31 Oct.), took exception to TSE’s review, ‘The Method of Mr Pound’ (24 Oct. 1919, 1065–6), of EP’s Quia Pauper Amavi.
2–As literary executor of the American Orientalist scholar Ernest Fenollosa (1853–1908), EP had edited his essay ‘The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry’, Little Review 6 (Sept.–Dec. 1919). In his letter to the A., EP declared himself ‘most decidedly indebted, if not to the Chinese, at any rate to Ernest Fenollosa’s profound insight into the Chinese written character as a poetic medium. This debt is so great that I would not have it lightly forgotten.’
3–H. A. Giles (1845–1935), Professor of Chinese, Cambridge University, 1897–1932; author of A History of Chinese Literature (1901) and Chinese Poetry in English Verse (1898).
4–James Legge (1815–97), first Professor of Chinese, Oxford University, 1875–97.
5–EP’s book included the first publication in full of ‘Homage to Sextus Propertius’. However, TSE was to omit ‘Homage’ from EP’s Selected Poems (1928) on the grounds that it was ‘too much a “translation” to be intelligible to any but the accomplished student of Pound’s poetry’ (xxiii).
6–‘the common people do not rejoice in these things’ (Horace, Epistles 2. 1, 186), a rejoinder to the Latin tag in EP’s letter, ‘Mollia, Pegasides, date vestro serta’ [‘Muses, grant a delicate garland to your poet’] (Propertius, III, 19). The quotation from Horace is used as the epigraph to Ben Jonson’s Catiline, which TSE was reading.
TO John Middleton Murry
TS Northwestern
[November? 1919]
[London]
Dear JM,
Lloyds Bank Limited, 75 Lombard Street, (Bank Station), 1st Floor, Information Department, at 12.30. It is quite easy to find. Take a bus to the bank.
Will you please bring the Jepson article with you, if as I expect it is of no use to you, as I shall put it into the last Egoist.1
God from a Cloud to Squire2 spoke
And breath’d command: take thou this Rod
And smite therewith the living Rock;
And Squire hearken’d unto God.
And Squire smote the living Rock,
And Lo! the living Rock was wet –
Whence issue, punctual as the clock
Land and Water,
The New Statesman,
The Owl,
The London Mercury,
And the Westminster Gazette
Yrs,
TSE
1–Jepson’s article did not appear in the Egoist.
2–TSE adapts his own verses ‘Airs of Palestine, No. 2’ (‘God from a Cloud to Spender spoke’), which probably date from 1917 (IMH, 84–5). Cf. Numbers 20.11: ‘And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts also.’ J. C. Squire had relinquished his literary editorship of the New Statesman to found The London Mercury, which he was to edit from Nov. 1919 until 1934. In addition, he edited Land &Water from 1914 until 1920 (when it was incorporated into The Field), advised Robert Graves about his short-lived Owl, 1919, and contributed to the Westminster Gazette.
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
10 November 1919
[London]
My dear dear Mother,
I wired to you day before yesterday, because I had not written to you for some time. I keep saying to myself that I should write just half a page, but the desire to write a really good letter is too strong for me, and I postpone it to the next night. And the trouble is also that I want to write you several letters at once: one about my and our personal affairs, one about literature, one about your affairs, and one just affection.
Now I have not heard from you for some time, and I am worrying about strikes in America. From what little is in our papers the situation appears very critical;1 it is quite impossible here to understand what is going on or the motives of both combatants. But I see it always as it may affect you, both financially and worse than personal inconvenience. I have felt that at such a time I must have you over here where you would be safe. My dearest wish is that you may get rid of the real estate, and get east, and then I can come and fetch you to stay with us for months.
The particular causes of my being so busy have been two, of both of which I sent you notices. My lecture was said to be a great success. There were about three hundred present – the room was full, and a good many poets etc. came prepared to ask questions. I had, in a sense, both a hostile chairman and a hostile audience. The chairman, Binyon,2 is a middle aged poetic celebrity who evidently knew nothing about me except that I was supposed to be the latest rage and he didn’t understand it and didn’t like it. He did his best, but thought it his duty in his introductory speech to refute – or at least deny – everything he thought I would say. I carefully avoided mentioning any living poet by name, which disappointed the people who had come to hear me praise Pound or condemn Rup
ert Brooke, or put my foot into it in any of the ways in which I might bring popular fury onto myself. There was a heavy fire of heckling afterward, out of which I managed to escape by the philosophic method of replying to any question by another question.
It took me a long time to prepare the lecture. I have sent it off to the Secretary of the Arts League of Service, who wants it for a Review in India.3 I am going to develop the various parts of it, divide it into separate essays or chapters, and make a small book of it.
The other thing was a long essay on Ben Jonson for the Times Literary Supplement, which I have just finished; about twice as long as an Athenaeum review. It should appear on Thursday, and I will send it you. You will therefore be interested in the letter which I enclose.
I must stop now – this is already too long for a short letter! I will write again on Sunday, and I owe letters to Marion, Charlotte, Ada and Shef. The books have arrived, beautifully packed.
Your very loving son
Tom.
1–‘Coming on top of the steel strike, the dock strike in New York, and a large number of lesser strikes in all parts of the union, the coal strike threatens to paralyse the trade and commerce of the country’ (The Times, 20 Oct. 1919, 13). By early Nov., 435,000 miners had gone on strike.
2–Laurence Binyon (1869–1943), poet and art historian.
3–TSE, ‘Modern Tendencies in Poetry’, Shama’a, I: 1 (Apr. 1920), 1–10.
TO Mary Hutchinson
PC Texas
Monday 10 November 1919
Crawford Mansions
Thank you for the card – I was sorry I could not come, but I had saved the whole day to finish an important article which I will send you in time – Just finished at 1 a.m!3 À bientôt.
T.S.E.
1–‘Ben Jonson’.
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
18 November 1919
London
My dearest Mother,
I have sent you my Times Article, which the editor was very much pleased with, and you will see that I did another article on Ben Jonson for the Athenaeum1 and one on John Donne2 for this week, and now I am not going to write at all for a fortnight. I am tired from having to write three articles in rapid succession after the lecture. Vivien is very tired too. Her aunt [Lillia Symes], her father’s sister, who lived in a small flat in Eastbourne, died very suddenly last week. They all went down there for the funeral, and as her mother staid on to put things in order, Vivien has had to go out to Compayne Gardens every day to superintend the servant and charwoman and keep house for her father and Maurice. Her aunt’s sudden death was a blow to Vivien, who was fond of her, and a great blow to her father, as she was his last surviving relative.
Maurice, by the way, appears to be doing very well in the Ministry of Labour, although he has been there only a short time, and will doubtless become a permanent government official.
I shall do nothing for two evenings except read proof: two sets of proof have come at once, one from New York and one from the man who is printing a limited edition here at 25s. The New York edition will sell at $1.50 – about sixty-five pages.
This is one of my short letters – I am anxious to hear from you, very anxious.
Very much love
Your devoted son
Tom.
The [works of Thomas] Jefferson are lined up in my bookcase.
1–TSE, ‘The Comedy of Humours’, on G. Gregory Smith, Ben Jonson (a second review) and Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour, ed. Percy Simpson, in A., 14 Nov. 1919, 1180–1.
2–TSE, ‘The Preacher as Artist’, a review of Donne’s Sermons: Selected Passages, ed. Logan Pearsall Smith, A., 28 Nov. 1919, 1252–3.
TO His Mother MS Houghton
23 November 1919
[London]
My dearest Mother,
I am glad to have had two letters from you lately. You need not be afraid of a collapse. I am still worried about the labour troubles in America, of which you do not say much. I ordered the Athenaeum to go to St L. some time ago, but I will enquire. The Times Literary Supplement is a good paper, and not expensive, but you must not expect to find me in it very often. I should only do the ‘leading article’ and no one person writes that more than six times a year. Abigail1 has not yet turned up. I will send you a copy of my poems when they appear. I do hope the real estate will go, but not at a sacrifice.
Devotedly your son
Tom.
1–TSE’s first cousin, Abigail Adams Eliot (1892–1992), sister of Frederick and Martha, was to spend a year at Oxford before enrolling at the Rachel McMillan Nursery School and Training Centre, London.
TO John Rodker
MS Virginia
[Late November? 1919]
[London]
Dear Rodker
I am sorry I was out, as you appear to have called or sent by hand. Here is the proof [of Ara Vos Prec]. Ezra showed me a page of the final setting up which pleased me: the paper is excellent, the type is good, and the initials have come out very well. I hope you are allowing to let me have a certain number of copies, to keep and to give to people who could not afford to buy the book in any case? inasmuch as I am not expecting to make any money out of it whatever.
I think Anderson1 ought to pay for the poems if she prints them, tell her they were only given on that explicit understanding. She certainly won’t get any more from me if she doesn’t. Weaver is the only woman connected with publishing whom it is really easy to get on with.
Yours
T. S. E.
1–Margaret Anderson, editor of the Little Review (in which none of the new poems appeared).
TO Ottoline Morrell
MS Texas
24 November 1919
18 Crawford Mansions,
Crawford St, W.1
Dear Lady Ottoline,
May we choose the 6th to come to Garsington (that is Saturday week), as you said either the 6th or the 13th would do equally well?1
We should like to see you again before then, if you are to be in town. I shall be busy until Sunday with various importunate affairs; but if you can, I hope you will suggest any evening after Saturday, and we could go to the ballet. I hope you are and will be in town. We enjoyed so much seeing you the other evening.2
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
1–The Eliots do not appear in the Garsington guest book during the winter season.
2–VHE’s diary, 18 Nov.: ‘Ottoline to dinner’.
TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
1 December 1919
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mary,
I think I will not come on Wednesday, but would rather you would ask me another time. – Vivien said to tell you not to tell the Sitwells that she is coming; and she hopes you won’t ask any other woman. She also said that she very much enjoyed seeing you today. I look forward to seeing you before very long on some other occasion.
Yours
Tom
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
2 December 1919
18 Crawford Mansions
My dearest Mother,
I have just got your card and have written off at once to the Athenaeum to ask for an explanation.
Now you ask several questions. You may give the photographic Natural History to Charlotte’s children, with my best compliments. The Audubon is precious to me, and I want to keep it.
It is very thoughtful of you to send me a cheque £1.8.3. for my cable, which did not come to so much as that.
I thanked you for the Jefferson in a letter some time ago, and thank you now again. They arrived beautifully packed and in perfect order, and are now on my shelves. The freight shipment seems to cost as much as parcels post, as I had to pay 10s cartage on the books from Shef.
I have (from Shef) the remaining volumes of Boswell, and I am glad to hear that the other was not lost.
I am afraid you have subscribed to the wrong Times. The w
eekly that I wrote in you will have received from me: Literary Supplement. The other is a digest of news. The Times would probably arrange to send you the Literary instead – or you may find this interesting enough to continue. In any case I will see that you get everything I write.
‘Westminster’ is simply the district of London around Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, as you would say ‘Back Bay’ [in Boston]; Goosens1 (Belgian extraction) is a musician, but I have never heard anything of his.
I should love to have pyjamas made by you. I need pyjamas, and it would seem to keep us nearer together.
I am still worried about American affairs insofar as they may affect you, and the sale of real estate.
Devotedly your son
Tom.
I have just had my photograph taken to advertise my book, and shall send you one for Christmas. He is a very swell photographer who charges £10 per dozen.2 But he will give me a few at reduced prices.
1–Eugène Goossens (1893–1962), English composer and conductor, who had spoken on ‘Music’ at the Arts League of Service.
2–Emil Otto Hoppé (1878–1972), the best-known photographer of the Edwardian era; later a photojournalist; author of The Image of London (1935).