Letters of T.S. Eliot: 1898-1922
Page 65
I want to know where you are, and what you are doing, and especially how you are. Are you at Millis? I hope it is cool and comfortable there.
With very very much love
your son
Tom
1–E. E. Cummings, in ‘T. S. Eliot’ (Dial 69: 6, June 1920), characterised Poems as ‘an accurate and incorpulent collection of instupidities’, and praised its ‘overwhelming sense of technique’ and ‘delicate and careful murderings … of established tempos by oral rhythms’.
2–La Revue de Genève.
3–‘The Old Grimace’, TLS, 27 May 1920, a review [by Arthur Clutton-Brock] of AH’s Leda, noted that many of AH’s poems ‘remind one, in mood and even in manner, of Mr. T. S. Eliot; they express the fact that to the writer life is absurd in its traditional delights and, for the rest, tiresome’ (327).
TO Ezra Pound
PC Beinecke
[Postmark 13 July 1920]
[London]
Belphégor1 received and much pleased with it. If you can procure any other of J. B.’s works I will purchase them from you. Will write shortly.
Yrs.
TSE
1–Belphégor: essai sur l’esthetique de la présente société française (1918) by Julien Benda. EP reviewed it (signing himself ‘B. L.’), A., 9 July 1920, and arranged for its publication in the Dial.
TO Lytton Strachey
MS BL
14 July 1920
31 West St, Marlow
Dear Strachey,
I am delighted to hear from you and should have loved to come, but unfortunately I have some people motoring down for Saturday afternoon. Perhaps this is providential, as I ought to work Sunday on a book which is heavy on my conscience. How do you ever write a book! It seems to me a colossal task. Perhaps you will ask me again some time? On the assumption (quite unjustified) that I shall have finished by the end of the month, I am going to France in the middle of August. I have heard that you might be in London this winter. I hope so.
Yours ever
T.S.E.
Does that mean that Q. V. will be finished?1
1–Strachey’s Queen Victoria was published the following spring.
TO Conrad Aiken
PC Huntington
20 July 1920
You must get your visa via Southampton–Havre as I have my ticket.
Lv. Waterloo Saturday 14th August abt. 7.30 p.m. Arr. Paris 12 noon.
TSE.
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
27 July 1920
18 Crawford Mansions,
Crawford St, W.1
My dearest Mother,
I received your cheque for $225 from the H. P. Brick Company and your letter yesterday. You can write to Crawford Mansions as before, because we have not found another dwelling of any kind. If I changed my address suddenly I should cable you, but such an event is I fear very unlikely.
The $900 will certainly be a great boon to me. We find that the cost of living still increases, and even if we stay in this flat we shall shortly have to pay a good 50% more in rent. Then everything else is more expensive all the time.
As you send a cheque on St Louis I shall have to sell it here (or else send it to Saint Louis for collection), and I do not know whether it is more profitable to do that in future or to have the dividends made out to you, or Henry, and have you send me a draft on London. I will find out. The latter would make more trouble for you and you have had quite enough already. I am sorry that you have to attend to all these shares for your children in the midst of finding a house. I do not remember which house is 27 Concord Avenue. I hope that the proximity to the street cars is not likely to make the house noisy.
This again is only a note of acknowledgement, thanks and affection in the midst of my final activities, which are now beginning to look like a book. And then it will be three months before it is out.
Your very loving son
Tom.
TO Wyndham Lewis
MS Cornell
Wednesday [28 July 1920]
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Lewis
I am supposed to be ill and have been at home for two days using the time in finishing my book. I shall be back again on Friday. Will you be in London next week? I should like to see you again before either of us goes away. I saw Pound today, and of course did not mention this matter to him; but I feel rather embarrassed about it. Will you not broach it to him before long? I don’t think he would take a very keen interest in it, but there are so few intelligent persons as it is. Besides, the longer you wait the more likely he is to throw cold water on it, naturally.1
There were one or two things I did not like the other evening on thinking over afterward. I am not sure of the desirability of fiction, at any rate at the start – it might weaken the effect. The idea of a large number of (anonymous) topical paragraphs appealed to me. Surely the prime object of such a paper is to give the effect of a nucleus of intelligent independent and powerful opinion about art, and incidentally about literature and general matters. This could be better dealt with in conversation.
Pound showed me a letter from Murry saying that he had taken on permanently someone else for the dramatic criticism, but hoped he would review more books. Murry is in a fairly strong position, as Ezra had not been on the job long before leaving the country for three months; though I think Murry’s motive was more dislike of turning another man out (i.e. moral laziness) than anything else. E. P. was very low about this; and I shall see Murry and try to get him to send some books.2
I shall be at the Schiffs the weekend of the 6th. Try to come then. I should like to see you first.
Yrs.
TSE
1–This almost certainly refers to WL’s projected journal, Tyro: A Review of The Arts of Painting, Sculpture and Design (which would be issued for just two numbers in 1921). EP wrote to WL in an undated letter: ‘Can’t see that TYRO is of interest outside Bloomsbury’ (Pound/Lewis, 127).
2–EP wrote weekly theatre reviews for A. in Mar.–Apr. (signed ‘T. J. V.’), but then took himself off for an extended holiday and was dismissed by JMM.
FROM His Mother
TS Valerie Eliot
1 August 1920
Millis, Massachusetts
Dearest Son:
I have received two letters from you recently, and right glad I was to get them. The proxies preceded them. I have not yet used them and hope it will not be necessary to do so, except in the event of your desiring to sell your stock and re-invest. I hurried off the dividend checks lest you might not receive them before you left for your vacation. With the assurance of the State St Bank (George’s), that you could cash them in London, I felt it would not be necessary to convert them into drafts. If you can cash without disadvantage in London, I will have Mr Baker send directly to you. I may be obliged myself to pay taxes on the dividends in Boston, but there is no tax on stock. I shall copy a long letter on the subject of Hydraulic, just sent me by Henry. The Company pays the tax on Stock.
As to the Insurance Policy, as I have already said, I will send it to you the first of September. You had better have it while I am still living, as it would be sent you in event of my death.
As to Henry’s letter it will give you information that will assist you in deciding when to sell your Hydraulic Stock. You will understand it better than I, being in a bank. The larger operations of finance are beyond me. It is as much as I can do to look after my own finances.
I shall be very much relieved to hear when you do get a house or apartments – I presume the latter would be better for you for the reasons you give.1 A house, as you say, requires more in the way of service. For several years now we have had but one
atizing industry. The proletariat are better off than most of the bourgeois. Someone examined marriage statistics in Massachusetts, and found that the last year while the number of marriages among the working (hand) classes, had greatly increased, among clerks and professional men they had greatly decreased.
I believe in telepathy. I have been thinking for several days I would ask you about Bertrand Russell when I wrote. I was thinking of him this morning, and when Marian brought me up last night’s [Boston Evening] Transcript which I had not seen, there was an editorial of his on the Russian regime – Lenine and Trotzsky. The testimony against the Soviet comes with greater force from him, because he is inclined to Socialism. I was very sorry that he was a Pacifist, because I so intensely disapproved of and despised Pacifism, and I felt that at heart he was a man of high ideals, lofty but perverted. And I have always been grateful to him for his kindness to you, although I have too much confidence in your clear intelligence to think you could agree with him.
Apropos of the Transcript, one has to take it here, but I shall never get over my grudge against the paper for its scurrilous attack on you. I suppose they resented your poem. The article in question was not a critique, it was vulgar abuse.
I am sorry rents in London are so high. I am paying almost a third more than I should have had to pay last year, $500 more than the last lessee paid. But it was that house or nothing, and I got that only through friends. I could not stand an ordinary boarding house, and a hotel would be very expensive. It is a double house, which I like. It is, of course, smaller than the St Louis house, and has not all the modern improvements – indeed it is quite old, but pretty. If I had taken a smaller house, it would not have held all our furniture. If you were not so far away I would give you some pieces of furniture and pictures. I think it will be more expensive living in Cambridge than in St Louis.
I want a copy of your book [SW] as soon as it comes out. I do not know whether I can buy it at once in this country. If you will send me a copy, I will pay for it. I hope Methuen will want another, and that you will ‘follow this up with another book on English prose’, and one on the Elizabethan era, ‘going into it rather more profoundly than the former critics have done.’ You are already recognized in England, as an authority and successful writer on the Elizabethan period. It seems as if it would be well to follow it up. Prof. Lowes2 has made a speciality of Spenser – not nearly as interesting as the Elizabethans. I wish Methuen would use the picture you had taken. It is very good. It is this minute looking at me, being over the table on which the typewriter stands.
Henry promises to come on for a little visit. I shall try to take some trips with him. We want to go to Plymouth – other places too. I shall ride all I can. I shall probably have to diet somewhat the rest of my life, but under that condition it is said the renal trouble does not shorten life. Bread seems to be the most strictly forbidden, and it has been to me a staff of life. I can eat oatmeal of which I am very fond.
I propose if I can go to London in the spring to leave Margaret in the house, and find someone to stay with her. I shall want in London, rooms in which I can live and get my meals out or at least à la carte. The rooms must be as near you as possible. Then when I take trips, as I would like to do, I shall have only to pay for the rent of rooms. I should want to see London first, and then what I have strength for of England. You may have a vacation before I return, so you could go with us. It would be a great saving if I could close the house, but I am afraid of fire in a frame house.
I should very much like to see the article on your work in the Times Literary Supplement. Could you send it and let me return it? Or is it pasted into a book? I do not think much of the Dial. Henry writes: ‘I picked a volume of Conrad Aiken’s poems lately – one called Senlin3 – and the chief thing that struckme was the fact that he imitated Tom’s work. Whole phrases were lifted out of Prufrock – for instance “music with a dying fall” – and the cast of thought was similar. What strikes me about many of these present-day poets, is that they have exuberant imagination but little thought.’
Again Henry writes: ‘Tom’s critical articles seem to me vastly more “meaty” and less diffuse than the majority of such writing. He is genuinely interested in ideas, whereas most of the critical writing that one sees is a mere display of literary sophistication and erudition. The ones by J. M. M. of which I spoke in a recent letter, on Tom’s critical work, were tediously diffuse. I am not interested in the Elizabethans particularly, but I have an idea that Tom’s study of them is a penetrating one, and I should not be surprised to see him publish a book on them which will be adopted by the colleges. Tom’s criticisms are always full of concrete examples, which is always illuminating, instead of the vague generalities usually seen.’ I find the Elizabethan period one of the very most interesting.
Have I previously answered your letter? It seems as if I had previously referred to the Jew, Bodenheim. It is very bad in me, but I have an instinctive antipathy to Jews, just as I have to certain animals. Of course there are Jews and Jews, and I must be not so much narrow-minded, as narrow in my sympathies. There must be something in them which to me is antipathetic. Father never liked to have business dealings with them, and they took advantage of Henry in the Publishers’ Press.
This is a long letter. I will stop now, and copy for you Henry’s letter on Hydraulic Stock.
It has just occurred to me that I wrote to Vivian [sic] and sent her a small birthday check the 15th of June. Did she receive it? I sent to Lloyds as I thought you might have moved.
Very affectionately,
Mother.
I will finish Henry’s letter which I am copying and send tomorrow.
1–In his letter of 3 July.
2–John Livingston Lowes (1867–1945), Professor of English at Harvard University, 1918–39; author of Convention and Revolt in Poetry (1919), but now best known for his study of Coleridge’s sources, The Road to Xanadu: a study in the ways of the imagination (1927), which TSE would discuss in TUPUC (1933). He was formerly an English professor and Dean of Arts at Washington University, St Louis (1909–18), where he had become a family friend. In due course, Charlotte Eliot would consult him about publication possibilities for her long poem Savonarola. TSE wrote in ‘The Frontiers of Criticism’ (1956): ‘Livingston Lowes was a fine scholar, a good teacher, a lovable man and a man to whom I for one have private reasons to feel very grateful’ (OPP, 108).
3–Conrad Aiken, The Charnal Rose, Senlin: A Biography, and Other Poems (1918).
FROM Leonard Woolf
TS Valerie Eliot
3 August 1920
Monk’s House, Rodmell,
near Lewes, Sussex.
Dear Eliot,
We have sold out the edition of your Poems. I wish we had printed more as we still get orders for them. After deducting copies for review &c we had 190 for sale and these have all gone now. There are still however one or two at the Chelsea Book Club on sale or return not accounted for. Since I sent you the 18/8 in April, we have sold 21 copies, and the receipts have been £1-19-4½. I enclose a cheque for 10/-which is your share. The total receipts from all sales have been £18-10-4, and the total expenditure £6-1-10; the net profits are therefore £12-8-6, of which your share has been £3-2-6. I sent you a cheque for £1-13-10 last year, 18/8 last April, and now 10/-, total £3-2-6. I hope this is intelligible and correct.
Yours sincerely
Leonard Woolf
TO Sydney Schiff
MS BL
Wednesday [4 August 1920]
18 Crawford Mansions,
Crawford St, W.1
Dear Sydney,
I have not read Bridges (in the London Mercury) but I should hardly suppose that he was the man to do it.1 Sullivan in the Athenaeum has hardly said more than that Santayana was worth reading.2 As for Pearsall Smith, I do not believe that any selections of specimens can give much of a philosopher. I have never liked Santayana myself, because I have always felt that his attitude was essentially fem
inine, and that his philosophy was a dressing up of himself rather than an interest in things. But still I think one ought to read Reason in Common Sense3 or one other volume.
Vivien has broken down rather badly – you may have observed last time we saw you that she was looking very ill – and has had to go to bed. She has been very run down lately and the damage was completed by a
I haven’t looked up the train, but it will be the earliest after one o’clock that I can get.
With love from both of us.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
1–Robert Bridges, ‘George Santayana’, London Mercury 2: 10 (Aug. 1920), 409–19: a review of Little Essays: Drawn from the Writings of George Santayana, ed. Logan Pearsall Smith. Bridges said he found Santayana’s philosophy ‘very consonant with my own thought’.