Letters of T.S. Eliot: 1898-1922
Page 83
The Pounds have a most exquisite Studio (with two rooms) not far from here! Only £75 a year. Now if I could secure such a thing, or even two or three rooms, I would certainly take them, for on the whole I think I would prefer to live here. For Tom, I am convinced, Paris!
I have an awful down on London, which increases. That last evening –! at the Huxleys. What a last impression of London. And that has stuck in my mind. The monotony, the drivel of the whole stupid round. Here of course you will disagree. I have seen Joyce several times and find him a most unsympathetic personality. Vain!! egoist! Unseeing.
Now, my dear, dear Mary, there are only three people in London I can bear the thought of seeing. The first, of course is you.2 I do miss you fearfully. You would almost force me to go back, if I knew I should not see you otherwise. I adore the thought of you. Are you coming here? Write to me, please forgive me – tell me everything. About Tom – I don’t know I don’t know. About that maid you sent me I am too ashamed to speak. I forgot it all! Does she think she is engaged? O Lord. Tom kept on Ellen. He would. I may not go back for ages. What has happened? Are you angry? Have I behaved even worse than usual? Please write, and do not frighten me.
Ever,
V.
The man from Cologne arrives tomorrow – will stay with me. After that I don’t know. If I really engaged that maid I will have her. Have both. But she would have to wait till I return.
1–TSE added his seasonal greetings on a card on 23 Dec: ‘Pour vous souhaiter la bonne année’ [‘To wish you a happy new year’].
2–The others were Sydney and Violet Schiff: see SS’s letter to VHE, 9 Dec.
TO Alfred A. Knopf
MS Texas
25 December 1921
Lausanne
Dear Mr Knopf,
I have your letter of the 5th instant. I am sorry to have given you the impression of criticising any action of yours within the contract. I merely wrote to ask whether this use of my verse had had your approval, before taking any further action. I had assumed, perhaps quite unreasonably, that I should be informally, at least, notified when any of my verse was to be used, or that I should receive a copy of the volume in which they appeared.
Furthermore, as I have been away for nearly three months by ill-health, and could not consult my contract, I was unaware that the contract included rights of publication of selections in Great Britain. When I return I shall consult the contract, and shall have pleasure in confirming your statements.
With best wishes,
Yours faithfully,
T. S. Eliot
Not having seen the book, I cannot have any opinion on the actual selection.
His Mother TO Henry Eliot1
Fragmentary TS Valerie Eliot
29 December 1921
I received yesterday a cheerful letter from Tom following the Christmas cablegram of the previous day. Both with a letter dated Lausanne. ‘I shall soon rejoin Vivien in Paris … where there are so many people I want to see. I am ever so much better, my concentration improves and I am beginning to feel full of energy. I am working at a poem too.’
59 Rue des Saints-Pères.
1–The full text of this letter, and the letters and cablegram from TSE to which CCE refers, have not been found. On 12 Nov., HWE had written to his mother: ‘I think probably Tom is too tired to write about business matters, perhaps his physician has told him not to. In any case his not writing is probably caused by his travelling about and being at places like Margate. He may be feeling depressed, though I should think his vacation would benefit his spirits’ (Houghton).
1922
At the beginning of January 1922 TSE rejoined Vivien in Paris, where Pound introduced them to the American publisher Horace Liveright and they all dined with James Joyce. During the next ten days or so, TSE and Pound worked over the drafts of The Waste Land. In mid-January TSE returned to London alone while Vivien went to Lyons. Pound’s work was not yet finished, however, as he had yet to put the poem a third time ‘through the sieve’. Responding to a further draft, presumably sent from London, he thought the poem‘MUCH improved’, and gave final guidance in an exchange (misdated in the first edition of these Letters) which began on 24 January.
Over the next few months, TSE revealed the poem to other friends – Richard Aldington, Edgar Jepson, Aldous Huxley, the Woolfs and the Hutchinsons – but when offering it to potential publishers such as Knopf or Maurice Firuski he seemed reluctant to show or even name it. Thayer wrote on 29 January offering $150, sight unseen, for publication in The Dial, but because of a misunderstanding TSE turned this down on 8 March. Pound’s suggestion to Thayer that TSE might be awarded the $2,000 Dial Prize came just too late. Liveright had already expressed interest, and by 3 April he had offered ‘$150 against 15 per cent royalties’, again sight unseen. This time TSE accepted, but when the contract arrived in June he was dissatisfied and asked Quinn to act on his behalf in rewriting it. Meanwhile, he was making arrangements for The Criterion, in which The Waste Land was to be published for British readers.
With publication in Britain and America apparently settled, TSE agreed to type the poem out again for Pound’s confidential use, adding that he now had no objection to its being shown to James Watson or Scofield Thayer. Watson was in Paris, and although he was not initially impressed by the poem, The Dial made another bid for it, with a hint to TSE that the Dial Prize would be part of the remuneration. At first TSE said he would accept this with Liveright’s approval, but then decided he could not trouble Liveright and Quinn any further and wrote on 21 August to Watson (who was en route to New York) saying that it was too late. He also wrote to Quinn, mentioning that he had had ‘an attractive proposal’. The Dial was undeterred, and Gilbert Seldes approached Liveright with a suggestion for generous terms. Finally Quinn invited Seldes and Liveright to his office on 7 September, by which time Liveright already had the poem in proof. Quinn dictated letters from each to the other which sealed the agreement that resulted in the poem’s publication in The Dial during October and as a book from Boni and Liveright in December,
Vivien Eliot TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
Thursday 12 Jan[uary 1922]
Hôtel du Bon Lafontaine,
64 & 66 rue des Saints-Pères, Paris
Mary dear
What a wonderful letter to add to my collection! And thank you for the book of Clive’s Poems,1 which I am indeed very glad to have.
Forgive my not writing sooner. I have so much to tell you and complain – but as I should be back in London in less than a fortnight, I would rather talk it than write it.
I long to see you again, and to have a long talk with you.
Indeed you are right about Paris, and French people. I don’t want to live in Paris, but—
Tom has been here ten days. I think he is much better. You must judge for yourself. I know he is looking forward to seeing you, and not very many others. He will be back on Monday. I am going to Lyons for about a week on Saturday and then Paris again for a few days, then London. I won’t try to write anything.
My love to you, and to Jack.
I hope I am still your ‘greatest friend.’
Vivien
1–Clive Bell, Poems (1921).
TO Scofield Thayer
TS Beinecke
20 January 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns, London N.W.1
Dear Scofield,
I now have your letter of the 18th ulto. and am in bed with influenza. I regret that my action – as you make it painfully evident – has precipitated an embarrassing situation for Mr Hutchinson, The Dial, and myself.1 I am sure that you and Mr Seldes will agree that his letter was as good as mine have been. Your account leaves nothing obscure, and you may inform the business manager that I wish him to deduct $25 from the next payment, if any, that may ever become due to me. I trust that this may be if any before the next general meeting of shareholders, in order that there may be no inconvenient questions.
The
next letter possible from me would be for the April number. In response to a hint from Mr Seldes, I should no longer analyse particular books, but should perform more general rumination on London (would the Señor like soliloquies in London) by the gentleman with a vacuum-cleaner. But if you find Mortimer more satisfactory, you need not make another change.
I understand that I am to prepare a few words about Miss Moore. I shall shortly have ready a poem of about 450 lines, in four parts, and should like to know whether the Dial wishes to print it (not to appear in any periodical on this side) and if so approximately what the Dial would offer.2 I should like to know quickly as I shall postpone all arrangements for publication until I hear. It could easily divide to go into four issues, if you like, but not more. It will have been three times through the sieve by Pound as well as myself so should be in final form.
I trust that you [are] gaining spiritual and physical benefit from Vienna,3 give my best respects to Schnitzler.
I think something conclusive should be done to Murry.
Yours
Tom
1–Having rejected St John Hutchinson’s trial ‘London Letter’, the Dial paid him a kill fee of $25.
2–At the head of the letter are Thayer’s sums dividing 450 by 35 and by 40 (the approximate number of lines per page), with ‘12pp. 120’.
3–Thayer was undergoing analysis with Sigmund Freud in Vienna.
TO André Gide
MS Mme Catherine Gide
24 January 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Cher monsieur,
J’ai été désolé de ne pas pouvoir vous voir à Paris. M. Rivière me dit que vous étiez chez lui une demi-heure avant mon arrivée. Le jour après, le samedi, je suis allé vous chercher à Auteuil, mais apparemment vous fûtes déjà parti pour Bruxelles. J’espère toujours ce plaisir de faire votre connaissance à ma prochaine visite à Paris.
J’ai peur que votre volume de morceaux choisis ne fût égaré, puisque je ne l’ai pas trouvé ici. Je veux le commander d’une librairie, pourtant il m’aurait été un grand plaisir d’en avoir un exemplaire qui fût présenté par vous.
Je suis heureux de constater que M. Rivière et moi, nous nous sommes entendus très bien et que j’enverrai un chronique à la N.R.F. au mois de février.
Je vous prie, cher monsieur, de recevoir encore l’expression de mes hommages sincères.
T. S. Eliot1
1–Translation: Dear Sir, I was extremely sorry not to be able to see you in Paris. M. Rivière tells me that you were with him only half an hour before my arrival. The following day, Saturday, I went to look for you in Auteuil, but you had apparently already left for Brussels. I am still hoping to have the pleasure of making your acquaintance during my next visit to Paris.
I am afraid the anthology [Morceaux choisis, ed. Gide (1921)] must have gone astray, since it was not waiting for me here. I will order it from a bookshop, but I would have had great pleasure in owning a copy presented by you. [A copy inscribed by Gide to TSE is now at Houghton.]
I am happy to note that M. Rivière and I reached a very satisfactory agreement, and that I shall be sending a London Letter to the NRF in February.
Once again with my respectful regards. T. S. Eliot
TO Richard Cobden-Sanderson
MS Beinecke
24 January 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Mr Cobden-Sanderson
I am very glad to hear from you. I have only been back ten days, and have been laid up with flu all that time. At the present moment everything is still in the air, therefore, and I have not yet seen Lady Rothermere.2 I will write to you a little later and tell you how things stand, and shall hope to see you before very long.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
2–TSE had approached RC-S about the possibility of his becoming publisher of the new magazine to be financed by Lady Rothermere and edited by TSE.
FROM Ezra Pound
TS Houghton
24 Saturnus An I [24 January 1922]1
[Paris]
Caro mio [My dear]:
MUCH improved. I think your instinct had led you to put the remaining superfluities at the end.2 I think you had better leave ’em, abolish ’em altogether or for the present.
IF you MUST keep ’em, put em at the beginng before the April cruelest month. The POEM ends with the Shantih, shantih, shantih.
One test is whether anything wd. be lacking if the last three were omitted. I dont think it wd.
The song has only two lines which you can use in the body of the poem.3 The other two, at least the first, does not advance on earlier stuff. And even the sovegna doesnt hold with the rest;4 which does hold.
(It also, to yr. horror probably, reads aloud very well. Mouthing out his OOOOOOze.[)]
I doubt if Conrad is weighty enough to stand the citation.5
The thing now runs from April … to shantih without break. That is nineteen pages, and let us say the longest poem in the Englisch langwidge. Dont try to bust all records by prolonging it three pages further. The bad nerves is O.K. as now led up to.6
/ / / /
My squibs are now an bloody impertinence. I send ’em as requested;7 but dont use ’em with Waste land.
You can tack ’em onto a collected edtn, or use ’em somewhere where they wd. be decently hidden and swamped by the bulk of accompan[y]ing matter. They’d merely be an extra and [w]rong note with the nineteen-page version.
Complimenti, you bitch. I am wracked by the seven jealousies, and cogitating an excuse for always exuding my deformative secretions in my own stuff, and never getting an outline. I go into nacre and objets d’art. Some day I shall lose my temper, blaspheme Flaubert, lie like a shit-arse and say ‘Art shd. embellish the umbelicus.’
SAGE HOMME8
These are the Poems of Eliot
By the Uranian Muse begot;
A Man their Mother was,
A Muse their Sire.
How did the printed Infancies result
From Nuptuals thus doubly difficult?
If you must needs enquire
Know diligent Reader
That on each Occasion
Ezra performed the caesarean Operation.
E.P.
/ / / / / / / / / / / / / /
Caul and grave clothes he brings
Fortune’s outrageous stings,
About which odour clings
Of putrifaction,
Bleichstein’s dank rotting clothes
Affect the dainty nose,
He speaks of common woes
Deploring action.
He writes of A.B.Cs.
And flaxseed poultices,
Observing fate’s hard decrees
Sans satisfaction;
Breedings of animals
Humans and canibals,
But above all else of smells
Without attraction.
Vates cum fistula 9
E. P.
E. P. hopeless and unhelped
Enthroned in the10 marmorean skies
His verse omits realities,
Angelic hands with mother of pearl
Retouch the strapping servant girl,
The barman is to blinded him
Silenus bubling at the brim, (or burbling)
The glasses turn to chalices
In his fumbling analysis
And holy hosts of hellenists
Have numbed and honied his cervic cysts,
His follows Yeats into the mists
Despite his hebrew eulogists.
Balls and balls and balls again
Can not touch his fellow men.
His foaming and abundant cream
Has moulded this world
Has coated his world with . The coat of a dream;
Or say that the upjut of his sperm
Has rendered his senses pachyderm.
Grudge not the oyster his stiff saliva
Envy not the diligent diver. Et in ae
ternitate
It is after all a grrrreat littttterary period
Thanks for the Aggymemnon.
[unsigned]