Letters of T.S. Eliot: 1898-1922

by T. S. Eliot

  TO His Mother

  MS Houghton

  27 April 1921

  9 Clarence Gate Gdns

  Dearest Mother,

  I have your two letters of the 12th and 15th, the former containing two clippings. I thought Murry’s very good; he sent it to me from where he is living in France. He seems to be very anxious to be friendly at present. I thought that Aiken’s1 was rather grudging and not the result of a conscientious study of the book. When I say ‘science’ he assumes that I mean ‘psychology’ because he is interested in that superstitious study: and I thought I noted a desire to disparage. There was a review of one of his books of verse in the Dial a couple of months ago, showing by parallel passages how much he had borrowed or stolen from me.2

  I also received a few days ago your registered letter with the Hydraulic cheque in it, for which I thank you. It is good that the Hydraulic has been able to keep on paying dividends in the midst of the industrial depression which is very bad in America as well as here.

  Now for your dividends. The simplest and best way is to instruct the company or companies to pay the dividends direct to your bank for your account. This is the usual way in England and I suppose it can be done in America. You get a letter of credit, not buying so much English money outright, but of such a kind that the bank debits your banking account as you draw on the letter of credit. you get the Letter of Credit for a much larger sum than you expect to need. You should also provide yourselves with some English money before you start – buy it from the Bank so as not to be cheated. Get some £5 notes, some £1 notes, and some silver and copper, say £20 in all for the two of you.

  I have already advised your getting your letter of credit made out so that either you or Marian or Henry can draw on it – so that you will not have to go ‘down town’ or as we say ‘to the City’ every time you want money. We shall see that your expenses are moderate, once you get here.

  I am very glad indeed that Henry can come. It is a unique opportunity and must not be missed and I am delighted that you urged him to come. It will do him a world of good at a critical moment. I want him to keep up his drawing all the time.

  1. Now mother dear there are two things I want to impress on you. One is that you are not to worry any more about being in our flat, or to go on making other plans. We shall arrange for you and for Henry in the way that is best for everyone, and only we who are on the spot can do it or can know what is best and what is feasible. So think no more about it until you get here, for you can do no good by that. Everything is settled.

  2. The other thing is that the coal strike will look much more alarming to you than it does from here. It may be settled before you get this letter, but even if not, I am sure the boats will run. The danger of a general strike is over. So do not be apprehensive or alter your sailing unless the boats are running differently. The temper of England is not revolutionary – it is only in Scotland that we see some manifestations of that spirit.

  I will stop now and write again as soon as I think of more advice.

  I have Baedeker’s London and Great Britain etc.

  Your devoted son

  Tom

  1–Conrad Aiken, ‘The Scientific Critic’, a review of SW, Freeman 2 (2 Mar. 1921), 593–4.

  2–Babette Deutsch, in her review of Aiken’s volume The House of Dust, set four passages by Aiken against TSE’s originals (‘Orchestral Poetry’, Dial 70: 3 [Mar. 1921], 343).

  TO John Quinn

  TS NYPL (MS)

  9 May 1921

  9 Clarence Gate Gdns

  Dear Mr Quinn,

  In a moment’s breathing space after a protracted series of private worries extending over some months – for one, my wife has been ill and in bed for eight weeks, and has just gone to the seaside – I have been running over delayed correspondence, and discover that I am still your debtor for a letter received many months ago. This perhaps the worst of the many negligences I have committed in this time. I do not know whether you can easily turn up a copy of that letter, but it was one for which I was very grateful.

  You appear, like me, to lead a very exhausting life, with the leisure that you want always a mirage ahead of you, your holidays always disturbed by unforeseen (or foreseen) calamities. But of course your work is far more difficult and worrying than mine. Even what I do – I am dealing alone with all the debts and claims of the bank under the various Peace Treaties – sometimes takes a good deal of thought and strength. When my private life is uneventful, that is not serious enough to matter; but when I have private anxieties on my mind, it is too much. Now I am expecting my mother from Boston in a few weeks; as she is seventy-seven, and not so strong as she was when I saw her last, that will be another anxiety as well as a joy.

  I have not yet had any practical reason to regret my livelihood, in the circumstances. Had I joined the Athenaeum, two years ago, I should now be desperate, as the Athenaeum has disappeared, and I am certain that I at least would not have been one of those to find a safe nest in the Nation. The chief drawback to my present mode of life is the lack of continuous time, not getting more than a few hours together for myself, which breaks the concentration required for turning out a poem of any length.

  I see reason in your objection to my punctuation; but I hold that the line itself punctuates, and the addition of a comma, in many places, seems to me to over-emphasise the arrest. That is because I always pause at the end of a line in reading verse, which perhaps you do not.1

  My book of essays has come out since I wrote to you last. I was under the impression that I sent you a copy, as I seem to remember clearly writing your name in one; but as I do not appear to have heard from you, it is quite possible that under the strain of the effect of my father-in-law’s critical illness upon my wife, I have mistaken the intention for the fact. If so, I should like to know, and send you an English copy. It is a very imperfect production, and there are only four or five of the papers which I should like to save for a definitive book. I have no idea whether it has sold either here or in America; the reviews have been various. I am not anxious to produce another for a year or two; and meanwhile have a long poem in mind and partly on paper which I am wishful to finish.

  I have had no news whatever from Pound, beyond two postcards with no address, since he left this country. He appears to be avoiding communication with England, and to consider the country hopeless. I hope to see him in Paris at some time during the summer or autumn. I hope he and Thayer will not contrive to rub each other the wrong way, and I certainly would do everything I could to smooth both down; but each has his spines. Pound undoubtedly got a great deal of the best stuff in the Dial; I wish that I could have replaced him here after he left, but I have been quite incapacitated this winter, and I never did get about or pick up as many people as he did.

  Did I tell you that I met Joyce in Paris last autumn? I found him quite charming, and liked him; though I can see that he is certainly a handful, with the true fanatic’s conviction that everyone ought to forward the interests of his work. It is however the conviction of the fanatic, and not the artfulness or pertinacity of ordinary push; and the latter part of Ulysses, which I have been reading in manuscript, is truly magnificent. I hear that he has captured some of the French literary elite who profess to know enough English. I have promised to reply to an article by Aldington deprecating his influence; but that was in the April English Review, and I have not begun.2

  Lewis I see often, and he is one of the few whom I have seen of late. His recent show [‘Tyros and Portraits’] at the Leicester Galleries was too small for the kind of work exposed, but evidently to my mind, an advance on his previous work. They were the first canvasses of his which have much interested me; I have heretofore thought of him as a consummate draughtsman rather than a painter. One of the figures, a large portrait of a woman, called ‘Praxitella’,3 was very good, but I am more interested in his caricatures and satires, two or three of the ‘Tyros’, and a self-portrait
in the same vein. It seems to me that he ought to go on and develop this type of work, which no one else practises. At any rate, his show has had very favourable notices and much advertisement.

  I objected to Thayer that the Dial contained too much, and was not got up brightly enough for the British public; that the print, rubrics, etc., ought to show more diversity and emphasis, and that the most important articles ought to be exhibited more clearly. He replied that the present form was the best for America. I hope his business sense is as good as his intentions. The paper is certainly better than anything of the same bulk in this country.

  I should like very much to hear from you at any time, but I have no justification for expecting to do so, and I ought to appreciate, if anyone does, and respect your lack of time.

  Sincerely yours,

  T. S. Eliot

  There is a young American here named Robert MacAlmon (he has been connected with a paper called Contact in New York) who seems to me of promising general intelligence and very amiable personality.

  1–Quinn wrote on 24 Sept. 1920, ‘Your avoidance of punctuation marks [in certain poems] is obviously studied, but it occurred to me that in some cases the sense, in others the grammar and in others the rhythm required a certain pause that might be indicated by a comma.’

  2–He did not write a reply to ‘The Influence of Mr. James Joyce’, English Review, Apr. 1921.

  3–WL’s oil portrait of Iris Barry, bought by Edward Wadsworth for £200; now in Leeds Art Gallery.

  TO His Mother

  MS Houghton

  9 May [1921]

  9 Clarence Gate Gdns

  Dearest mother,

  I thank you very much for the cheque, but I did not want you to pay Frau Happich: it is a debt I ought to pay, and that is why I did not tell you how much. It was £10 I sent (MK.2400), so you sent £2.11.11 too much. Today finally I have her acknowledgement.

  We wait and pray for your coming. I cannot think just now of any more advice to give. I think of you all the time.

  If you want to go to France you must, when you get here, postpone your return till October, which I hope you may do. You will I think easily be able to sell your passage for a later one. Paris is hot, dusty, unhealthy, and crowded in August, and I do not at all approve your going in that month.

  Much much love, dear mother –

  Tom.

  If you can, I should like to have my silver stick and especially the gold one of grandpa’s, but do not burden yourself with such unnecessary commissions – the only thing essential is you.

  TO Edgar Jepson

  MS Beinecke

  18 May 1921

  9 Clarence Gate Gdns

  Dear Jepson,

  Thank you very much for sending me your paper, which I have read with much pleasure. I suppose you want it back. Especially agree with the incantation idea, which seems to me quite enough to condemn a large part of what is called vers libre. I shall be sending you a copy of the Chapbook and would be glad of any comments.1

  I should love to hear the next part of your series, but I doubt very much whether I shall be able to. Unfortunately, it is probable that my mother will arrive, from America, on the same day, and thus it will be impossible to come or to accept your kind invitation to dinner. But in that case I hope you will let me see the MSS. But I should have preferred to come to the lecture and support you as you supported me, or to the best of my ability.

  Sincerely yours,

  T. S. Eliot

  1–Chapbook 22 (Apr. 1921) included TSE’s ‘Verse and Prose’.

  TO Scofield Thayer

  TS Beinecke

  21 May 1921

  9 Clarence Gate Gdns

  My Dear Scofield,

  I am glad to hear that my letter was received in time. I shall try to get my next one to you by the middle of June. I am also glad to get your draft for $40.00 for which I thank you. I note with discomfiture that the exchange is, as the phrase ironically puts it, ‘moving in England’s favour’, but that you cannot help.

  I have perused the offending paragraph1 with complete placidity, and find it as correct as reports usually are. I cannot see how a malicious construction could be put upon it, but on the other hand I cannot see that it means anything more than that I invited MacAlmon to dinner. I don’t know what the ‘Late French Hamper’ is, but I don’t think anyone else does either, so that’s allright. The same criticism applies to your comments on Contact in the May Dial, which mystify, but do not libel. What on earth does it all mean? I have ventured to tell MacAlmon that it means nothing. I have found him a very charming young man of lively intelligence and amiable personality. But why on earth do you devote so much space and such obscure vaticination to a young writer who might just as well, and who would willingly, remain in privacy until he has performed some notable feat? I found Contact an interesting little paper, with the exception of the letters of Mr Slinkard, for which there is a sufficient explanation. MacAlmon’s remarks about me were in part quite shrewd,2 and in part based, as I explained to him, on misinformation. But why make an international event out of a private matrimonial union which is only interesting for the parties concerned?

  I am sorry to hear of a little embroglio with Aldington. Apart from any question of his importance as a writer, he is an extremely nice man, and I quite believe the account he gave me, of his having wished to spread the Dial about here, and of the subsequent discovery that one of the members of his club had been in the habit of purloining parcels of books. He says that this incident has made it impossible for him to offer any more contributions to the Dial? Is that so?

  I propose, in my next ‘Letter’, to mention the fact that Strachey’s book [Queen Victoria] appeared here at about the same moment that it began appearing serially in the New Republic. I suppose that publication in New York was delayed to allow the readers of the New Republic to enjoy the first taste.

  It is not likely that I shall be in Paris until October, but I suppose that you will still be there, and will, I presume, pay a visit to London in the autumn. There is not much reason for coming here in July or August.

  I shall receive you with pleasure in the autumn, or as you say, in the fall! Come!

  Yours ever,

  Tom.

  1–Thayer proposed to refer to TSE in the Dial in a ‘facetious manner without malice’: ‘According to the latest dispatch, Mr. T. S. Eliot (who was wrung through Milton Academy, Harvard College, the University of Paris, and Merton College, Oxford, before coiling down and curling up in his Late French hamper) has bidden Mr. McAlmon to meat.’ The matter was dropped.

  2–TSE ‘will become a poor critic’, McAlmon had written, ‘if he does not relate literature to reality rather than to literature’ (‘Modern Antiques’, Contact, Jan. 1921).

  TO James Joyce

  TS Buffalo

  21 May 1921

  jetzt1… … 9 Clarence Gate Gdns,

  London, N.W.1

  My dear Joyce,

  I am returning your three manuscripts by registered post as you require, and am exceedingly obliged for a taste of them.2 I think they are superb – especially the Descent into Hell, which is stupendous. Only, in detail, I object to one or two phrases of Elijah: ‘ring up’ is English, ‘call up’ the American; ‘trunk line’, if applied to the telephone service, is English, the American is, if I remember, ‘long distance’. I don’t quite like the wording of the coon transformation of Elijah, either, but I cannot suggest any detailed alteration. But otherwise, I have nothing but admiration; in fact, I wish, for my own sake, that I had not read it.

  I am delighted to hear that even a limited and very expensive edition is to appear. Has it been properly circularised in England? If not, I might supply a few names. I wish that Miss Beach would bring out a limited edition of my epic ballad on the life of Christopher Columbus and his friend King Bolo, but

  Bolo’s big black bastard queen

  Was so obscene

  She
shocked the folk of Golder’s Green.

  Aldington’s article I only heard of when Miss Weaver sent me a copy ten days ago.3 He has promised to write to Austin Harrison to ask him to print a letter by me; Aldington is quite a decent person, and I am sure he has done. I wanted this precaution because the next issue of the English Review was already out, and as Harrison does not know me at all, he might have declined to print a communication so late, especially since his paper does not print letters as a rule.4

  I do not expect to get over to Paris until October, as I shall have my mother here most of the summer. I hope very much to find you there then, as I so much enjoyed seeing you in December. I have heard that you were about to move into a new flat, and if so I trust that you will let me have your new address.5

  Yours always sincerely,

  T. S. Eliot

  1–‘now’.

  2–‘Circe’ (subject of the detailed comments in this paragraph), ‘Eumaeus’ and ‘Oxen of the Sun’.

  3–RA, ‘The Influence of Mr. James Joyce’, English Review 32 (Apr. 1921), 333–41. RA considered Ulysses ‘a tremendous libel on humanity’ and a damaging influence on young writers.

  4–No letter was published. TSE responded in ‘Ulysses, Order and Myth’, Dial 75: 5 (Nov. 1923), 480–3.

  5–On 3 June JJ moved into Valery Larbaud’s flat in the rue du Cardinal Lemoine, where he spent four months, rent-free, during its owner’s absence.