Letters of T.S. Eliot: 1898-1922
Page 106
I hope you will write again soon about this and about everything else. Meanwhile receive our very best wishes for Christmas which I hope you will be able to spend at home.
Always your affectionate brother,
Tom.
I held this letter back because I have so much to talk about that I could not let it go without mentioning one or two other things. Mother has told me that the Hydraulic are announcing a dividend both in December and January. I hope that the prosperity will last until the middle of the year, but I want your advice on this point for so far as it affects me the important question is how high to count on the stock going in order to sell. I have a feeling not perhaps wholly justified that six or nine months of industrial prosperity may be followed by another depression. Do you not think that it would be wise to sell out at least half of my stock at 60 or 65? Now so far as this affects you (and affects us indirectly) will this not lead you to consider another visit to England next summer? As you know I am very keen for mother to come and for you to come too. Even if you could not come for so long as she you could come over later, and take perhaps a little time in Paris, and return with her. I feel sure that you can manage to get the time for this if you want to, and I beg you to take it seriously.
I have been harassed lately by two episodes, one a libellous remark in a provincial paper stating that I had been offered £800 two years ago to leave the bank and that I accepted the money and declined to keep my promise, and the other an anonymous insulting letter offering me sixpence for the collection which the writer had heard was being taken up for me. I have had to pursue both these matters and it has involved a great deal of consultation with friends, with legal advisers and a great deal of correspondence. It has been very bad for Vivien to have this strain, especially two such attacks on me coming at once and it has greatly impaired for the time being the good effects of the regime which she has been pursuing.We are both completely worn out. It is as much the damage that these things have done in impairing the four months of dogged and persistent efforts she has made as anything else about the matter, that makes me angry. But of course I should in any case have had to take action about the libel as persistence of such reports might eventually cause a catastrophe to my position at the bank, and for this reason they could more easily ruin me than they might many people. With a very happy Christmas to you from both of us. We are longing to see you again.
T.
TO Wyndham Lewis
TS Cornell
8 December 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Lewis,
I should like to see you on a matter of business: Can you meet me on Sunday evening at 9 o’clock at Verrey’s [in Regent Street] as that is the only time I have over the weekend? Do not telephone unless it is impossible for you to manage this; If I do not hear from you I shall be there.
Sincerely,
T.S.E.
TO Ezra Pound
TS Lilly
12 December 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Ezra,
Enclosed is a copy of your proof. I have already, in order to save time, corrected (so far as necessary) one copy and returned it to the printer, so I hope and trust that you will not require any alteration beyond such printers’ errors as I have not spotted. I have seen Yeats and passed a very agreeable afternoon with him and he has promised a contribution in prose for the following.1
Now as to the Obsequies [by B. M. Goold-Adams]. I couldn’t have got it in to this number because I had already accepted for that purpose some time ago a short sketch which you will see, and which I think is good of its kind. For the next number I have got Virginia Woolf, also arranged some time ago. There will be no number therefore before July, so please let me know when you wish to produce the lady’s book. It seems to me very good, although not emphatically a work of genius. I have been offered a story by Pirandello, do you know anything about him?
I enclose copy of my published word and the newspaper’s retraction of the story which I reported to you. This has given me a devil of a lot of trouble, conferences, consultation with solicitors and a K.C. and letterwriting. At the same time I have had the nuisance of an anonymous letter-from a ‘Wellwisher’ offering me 6d in stamps toward the ‘collection’ which is being made for me. This letter I found upon diligent enquiry was composed at a tea-party in the Bosschère2 household obviously inspired by a person of whose name I have as yet no statement.
The net result of these affaires has been three weeks of no work done and a state of exceptional fatigue but it is obvious to the meanest eye that a person in my position must take the trouble to protect himself against such attacks when made.
I think I must have a number of other things to discuss, but I have had to wait so long to write this that they have got lodged somewhere inside my brain.
I will write again soon. Benedictions.
Yours ever,
T.
1–WBY, ‘A Biographical Fragment’, C. 1: 4 (July 1923), 315–21.
2–The Belgian writer and poet Jean de Bosschère.
TO Ottoline Morrell
TS Texas
12 December 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Ottoline,
I have been wanting to write and tell you that I wired to Yeats after hearing from you and consequently lunched with him at the Savile Club. I enjoyed seeing him immensely; I had not seen him for six or seven years and this was really the first time that I have ever talked to him for any length of time alone. He is really one of a very small number of people with whom one can talk profitably about poetry, and I found him altogether stimulating.
I have been also far too busy with two very nasty little personal affairs which have taken the whole of my time: one an anonymous letter enclosing 6d in stamps for the ‘collection’ which the writer had heard was being made for me, and the other a bit of personal gossip in the Liverpool Post, giving a good deal of information evidently taken direct out of the circular which ‘Bel Esprit’ issued in America and incorporating the story that two years ago I had been offered £800 to leave the bank and had accepted the money on those grounds and then failed to fulfill my promise. My legal advisers held no doubt that the allegations were libellous at law, but they advised me to obtain an apology from the paper inasmuch as no damages I might get would ever compensate for the strain and worry of fighting the case. The most dangerous aspect of the matter was of course the possibility of such a malicious lie getting to the ears of the bank. It involved two or three weeks of intense strain and during that time gave me no interval for anything else.
I have only mentioned this matter to a very few persons and they have all promised not to discuss it, ormention it, and as I think it is best that it should not be talked about publicly I rely on your keeping it absolutely to yourself.
This has been a very great strain for Vivien as well as she has been sleeping worse than I have ever known her to do before. She has been quite too ill with these matters to write or to do anything.
Thank you again for my meeting with Yeats. I hope we may have good news of you soon.
Always affectionately,
Tom
TO Antonio Marichalar
TS Real Academia de la Historia
12 December 1922
The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Cher Monsieur
Merci de votre lettre du 2 courant. Certainement, j’indiquerai la date de vôtre article!1 C’est grand dommage que nous n’avons pas pu l’insérer plus tôt, mais la tache de rédiger une revue d’une étendue si étroite, et qui ne paraît que trimestriellement, est très ennuyeuse. Je voudrais bien recevoir votre petite note sur Benavente.2 J’espère quand même que son talent est à un niveau supérieur à ceux de la plupart des gens auxquels les prix sont cernés (exception faite d’Anatole France).3 La bonification sera rendue au commencement du mois d’avril.
Bien cordialement,
Vôtre
T. S. Eliot
1–When Marichalar’s article on ‘Contemporary Spanish Literature’ appeared in C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), it was dated ‘August 1922’.
2–The Spanish dramatist Jacinto Benavente (1866–1954) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1922. Marichalar appended a brief note on Benavente to his essay in C., recording that the award of the prize had caused as much surprise ‘within his own country’ as abroad.
3–The French writer Anatole France (1844–1924) had been awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921.
4–On 20 May TSE had asked Marichalar to send him a copy of the Spanish review Indice.
5–Translation: Dear Sir – Thank you for your letter of the 2nd inst. Certainly, I will indicate the date of your article: it is a great pity that we have not been able to get it in earlier, but the task of editing a review on such a small scale, and which only appears quarterly, is very tedious. I would be very glad to receive your little note on Benavente. I hope, however, that his talent is on a superior level to that of the majority of the people to whom prizes are given (with the exception of Anatole France). Payment will be made in April.
Yours cordially, TSE.
Will Indice reappear soon?
TO Ezra Pound
MS Lilly
15 December 1922
The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Ezra,
I sent you cutting from Lpool Post. That is ended so far as the paper is concerned – though their apology is a meagre one – remains to find out the author. The other affair – the anonymous letter – was hatched in the Bosschère household –Madame d’E. says she wrote it – both shuffling and unconvincing, but I am sure it was inspired by another person – anyway, I have of course had to drop Bosschère.
It may appear that in the disturbance and exasperation of these and such affairs – which are perhaps a much greater strain and wear upon me than on almost anyone else – I overlook the intentions, thought and labour of my friends for many months past. This is not the case. If I did not attempt to expose the difficulties of my situation to you I should appear (& be) much more unreasonable. It has been a great annoyance to me that I have not been able simply to express appreciation. I have however a faint but consistent notion of the amount of time, thought and energy you must have spent on this matter, and I don’t underestimate this or take it for granted – I think it’s wonderful.
Yours ever
T.
PS Your letter received. Lawd how you cuss and rave. I have reread your Preface – praps you’ve forgotten what it is, but I see nothing in it violent enough to warrant complete expurgation (I only think ‘damn their eyes’ weakens an otherwise forcible remark). It appeared detached from the rest, and it was a question of space. I have turned in some bad copy of mine own, and with your Preface will now have 104 pp. as before instead of 96. So chaw yore old corn cob & think of God & Maise Huffer.1
However, in my opinion, it is not the bite of the thing – the bite is ‘criticism is a preliminary excitement’.2
Now if your goin on cussin cuss to me at Lloyds Bank, 71 Lombard St E.C.3.
1–The phrase ‘damn their eyes’ was cut from the brief preface to EP’s ‘On Criticism in General’, in C. 1: 2 (Jan. 1923) – the issue runs to 96 pp. – which discusses his debt to Hueffer (Ford Madox Ford).
2–EP wrote in his piece: ‘I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.’
TO Richard Aldington
MS Texas
15 December 1922
The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Richard,
Thank you very much for your letter. Do not think that I suppose that these attacks are the consequences of any activities of yours; because I do not. Likewise I want to say that these misfortunes, and any other worries and vexations which have been by-products of Bel Esprit, have not for a moment obscured my appreciation of your great and ceaseless toil on my behalf. God knows how many hours you have spent on it. One’s appreciation is a continuous feeling: the worries and anxieties and deliberations may appear at any particular moment more instant and pressing. When I have discussed this business with you, they have had to come first, if it was to be discussed at all. But I assure you now that I recognise your part in this and am not in the least blinded to it by the serious anxieties I have had.
One would like to be able to write letters, real letters – if there were time.
When are you coming to fetch Plautus? And why not, for a change! tell me how your life is going on?
With heartiest good wishes for Christmas
Yours ever
T.S.E.
TO Scofield Thayer
TS Beinecke
18 December 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Scofield,
I am very glad to hear from you once again and to receive your expression of approbation of the Criterion. I am also glad to know that you (who must now be an authority on the subject), consider Hesse’s article to be not unjust toward his contemporaries.1
I shall look forward with great interest to reading more of the German stuff that you have got hold of. I have heard of Thomas Mann from Curtius and mean when I have time to look into the subject.2 But I find that I have at present very little time for reading which is rather a handicap as one likes to be able to know something about people before asking them to contribute.
Your offer of Hofmannsthal is extremely generous. I should certainly be glad if you would put in a word for us with him and should like his essay on his visit to Greece if it is not more than 5000 words.3 Preferably less, as I find it more difficult to get good short contributions than good long ones. You may tell him that our rates are £10 per 5000 words, and like the Dial we make no distinction of persons. (You need not emphasise the latter part!) Of course, foreign contributions cost us more as we have to pay the regular rates to translators as well. I should be very grateful if you would make this proposal to him.
Referring again to the difficulty which my friends had in getting the Dial in London, I also would remark that I have not yet myself received a copy of the December number which I imagine appears on the 25th of November. I am only querulous about this for the reason that I always look forward so keenly to reading it. I gather, from cuttings which have reached me from New York, that it also announces that the Dial prize has been awarded to me. Although accordingly I have not received exactly official intimation I trust that I may express my profound appreciation of the honour which the Dial has bestowed upon me and hasten to add my assurances that I hope I shall be able to do my little bit in helping the future success of the Dial by always giving it a refusal of whatever I consider to be my best work.
Possibly I may be tempted to make a flying visit to Germany some time next year and if so I hope that we may meet somewhere on the Continent. Meanwhile accept my most cordial good wishes of the season, and many thanks.
Yours ever,
T.S.E.
I am told that a writer named Ernst Bertram4 is very good.
1–Hesse, ‘Recent German Poetry’.
2–C. would print articles by Thomas Mann in 1931 and 1933.
3–Hugo von Hofmannsthal, ‘Greece’, C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923), 95–102.
4–Ernst Bertram (1884–1957), poet; Professor of German Literature, Cologne University, 1922–46.
TO Richard Cobden-Sanderson
MS Beinecke
26 December 1922
The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Sanderson
I have returned the complete page proof to Aylesbury. I suppose you have instructed them about cover and margins. It came to 97 pp. so I told them to put the contributors’ note etc. on p.98 and have fly leaf in front only, making 100pp. altogether. Should not Hachette’s name a
nd address be below yours on cover, in small type?