The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922

by T. S. Eliot

  During the course of his correspondence with Emily Hale, between 1932 and 1947 – when Vivien died, after nine years in a mental home – TSE liked to think that his letters to her would be preserved and made public fifty years after they were dead. He was, however, ‘disagreeably surprised’ when she informed him in 1956 that she was giving the letters to Princeton University Library during their lifetime. It seemed to him ‘that her disposing of the letters in that way at that time threw some light upon the kind of interest which she took, or had come to take, in these letters. The Aspern Papers in reverse.’

  1–Valerie Eliot was slightly mistaken here: there are some letters between Charlotte Eliot and TSE beginning in 1923 (the first from her is dated 29 March 1923, and the first to her is from mid-October 1923). See Volume 2.

  On 24 January 1957 the Librarian wrote stating that the letters would remain sealed until fifty years from the death of the survivor [2020]. TSE’s reaction was to ask a friend to incinerate Emily Hale’s letters to him.

  He had met her, the daughter of a Boston Unitarian minister, at Eleanor Hinkley’s house in 1912, and before he left for Europe in 1914, he told her that he was in love with her. He had no reason to believe, from the way in which his declaration was received, that his feelings were returned ‘in any degree whatever’. They exchanged a few letters, ‘on a purely friendly basis’, while he was up at Oxford.

  In a private paper, written in the sixties, he continued: ‘To explain my sudden marriage to Vivienne Haigh-Wood would require a good many words, and yet the explanation would probably remain unintelligible. I was still, as I came to believe a year later, in love with Miss Hale. I cannot however even make that assertion with any confidence: it may have been merely my reaction against my misery with Vivienne and desire to revert to an earlier situation. I was very immature for my age, very timid, very inexperienced. And I had a gnawing doubt, which I could not altogether conceal from myself, about my choice of a profession – that of a university teacher of philosophy. I had had three years in the Harvard Graduate School, at my father’s expense, preparing to take my Doctorate in Philosophy: after which I should have found a post somewhere in a college or university. Yet my heart was not in the study, nor had I any confidence in my ability to distinguish myself in this profession. I must still have yearned to write poetry.

  ‘Then in 1914 … my meeting with Ezra Pound changed my life. He was enthusiastic about my poems, and gave me such praise and encouragement as I had long since ceased to hope for. I was happier in England, even in wartime, than I had been in America: Pound urged me to stay … and encouraged me to write verse again. I think that all I wanted of Vivienne was a flirtation or a mild affair: I was too shy and unpractised to achieve either with anybody. I believe that I came to persuade myself that I was in love with her simply because I wanted to burn my boats and commit myself to staying in England. And she persuaded herself (also under the influence of Pound) that she would save the poet by keeping him in England.

  ‘To her the marriage brought no happiness … to me, it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land.’

  VALERIE ELIOT

  PREFACE

  The publication of Volume 1 of The Letters of T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot in 1988, covered the period of the poet’s life down to the publication of The Waste Land in 1922, with the bulk of the letters dating from between August 1914, when Eliot arrived in England, and the end of 1922. Volumes covering the rest of his career were to have followed, and Valerie Eliot has continued to gather letters from her husband’s correspondents and their families, from libraries in Britain and the USA, from the book trade, and from the archives of Faber & Faber. The remarkable scale and scope of Eliot’s correspondence became increasingly clear, however, and as the materials grew more copious the publication of subsequent volumes was postponed, until eventually the edition had to be reconceived on a more ample scale.

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  Among the letters that have come to light, over the last twenty years, a good many date from the period covered by the first volume, and fill important gaps in the literary record. These now appear in this integrated revised edition, along with others originally excluded as being of minor interest, but which flesh out the story of Eliot’s social life and literary career during these years. In all, the new edition contains some 200 new letters. These include important items of correspondence from Eliot to members of his family, while others illuminate his many friendships – with Mary Hutchinson, Wyndham Lewis, Aldous Huxley and Julian Huxley, the Sydney Schiffs and Virginia Woolf, as well as a wider cast of acquaintances and contacts. A few of the letters are straightforward arrangements to meet, but they help document Eliot’s London life during the years when he was establishing himself as an intellectual presence and writing some of his greatest poems; and they add valuable information about the publication of his work, particularly that of Ara Vos Prec with John Rodker’s Ovid Press in 1920, and The Waste Land in periodical and volume form in 1922. The cards and letters written during the gestation of The Waste Land from early 1921 to the end of 1922, though often brief and telegrammatic, are of enormous intrinsic importance, and they dramatise a crucial moment.

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  One of the strengths of the 1988 edition of Volume 1 came from Valerie Eliot’s decision to include voices other than the poet’s own, and in particular those of his family. The thirty-eight letters from Vivien Eliot are now supplemented by a further twenty, some written by her to Eliot’s mother in parallel with Eliot’s own letters. To the letters from Eliot’s father in the original edition are now added two more, both addressed to Eliot’s uncle, the Rev. Thomas Lamb Eliot; also included is a notable additional letter to Eliot from his mother.

  Incorporating these additional letters into the original volume has involved several editorial adjustments: the text of the letters already published remains intact, but the annotation has been revised where necessary, and much additional annotation has been provided.

  HUGH HAUGHTON

  BIOGRAPHICAL COMMENTARY 1888–1922

  1888 26 SEPTEMBER – Thomas Stearns Eliot, seventh child of Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Champe Stearns Eliot, born at 2635 Locust Street, St Louis, Missouri.

  1894? His nursemaid, Annie Dunne, takes him to Mrs Lockwood’s school. Spends summer holidays in Maine and at East Gloucester, Mass.

  1897 Composes his first poem, four little verses, about the sadness of having to start school again every Monday morning.

  1898 Goes as a day boy to Smith Academy.

  1899 28 JANUARY to 19 FEBRUARY – Writes and illustrates in pencil fourteen numbers of ‘A Weekly Magazine’, The Fireside, containing ‘Fiction, Gossip, Theatre, Jokes and all interesting’.

  1904 Visits the St Louis World’s Fair.

  1905 JANUARY – Publishes in the Smith Academy Record ‘The Birds of Prey’; FEBRUARY – ‘A Fable for Feasters’; APRIL – ‘A Tale of a Whale’ and ‘A Lyric’; JUNE – ‘The Man Who was King’. Recites ‘Standing upon the shore of all we know’ on Graduation Day. 19 SEPTEMBER – TSE begins the academic year at Milton Academy, Milton, Mass.

  1906 OCTOBER – Starts his freshman year at Harvard, lives at 52 Mount Auburn St. He studies Greek and English Literature, Elementary German, Medieval History and Constitutional Government. In DECEMBER he is put on probation for poor grades and ‘for working at a lower rate than most Freshmen’, although he has ‘an excellent record of attendance’.

  1907 26 FEBRUARY – TSE is relieved from probation. (He told his second wife that he ‘loafed’ for the first two years.) 24 MAY – The Harvard Advocate publishes ‘Song’: When we came home across the hill’, and 3 JUNE ‘If time and space, as Sages say’, a slightly altered reprint of ‘A Lyric’. OCTOBER – In his sophomore year he shares rooms with John Robinson and Howard Morris in 22 Russell Hall, and meets Conrad Aiken, who becomes his closest Harvard friend. He studies History of Ancient Art, French Prose and Poetry, German Prose and Poetry, Greek Literature, Greek
Prose Composition, History of Ancient Philosophy and History of Modern Philosophy.

  1908 OCTOBER – begins his junior year and lives at 25 Holyoke Street. He studies the Literary History of England and its relation to that of the Continent from the Beginning to Chaucer, and from Chaucer to Elizabeth; Tendencies of European Literature of the Renaissance; English Composition; Latin Literature – General View of Latin Poetry; Latin Literature – The Roman Novel. 13 NOVEMBER – The Harvard Advocate publishes ‘Before Morning’, 25 NOVEMBER ‘Circe’s Palace’. DECEMBER – In the Advocate Library TSE finds The Symbolist Movement in Literature by Arthur Symons, which he describes in 1920 as ‘an introduction to wholly new feelings, as a revelation’ . Ten years later he continues ‘But for having read his book, I should not, in the year 1908, have heard of Laforgue or Rimbaud; I should probably not have begun to read Verlaine; and but for reading Verlaine, I should not have heard of Corbière.’ It has ‘affected the course of my life’.

  1909 JANUARY – Joins the editorial board of the Harvard Advocate, which publishes 26 JANUARY ‘Song: The moonflower opens to the moth’ and ‘On a Portrait’, 7 MAY a review of The Wine of the Puritans by Van Wyck Brooks, 20 MAY ‘The Point of View’, 25 MAY ‘Gentlemen and Seamen’. 30 JUNE – BA. OCTOBER – starts his senior year and lives at 42 Apley Court. Begins MA course in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences with: Chaucer; the Drama in England from the Miracle Plays to the Closing of the Theatres; Studies in the Poets of the Romantic Period; Literary Criticism in France, with special reference to the Nineteenth Century (with Irving Babbitt); Studies in the History of Allegory; Philosophy of History – Ideals of Society, Religion, Art and Science in their historical development (with George Santayana); and Florentine Painting. A classmate introduces him to Pound’s Exultations and Personae, with the comment ‘this is up your street: you ought to like this’, but TSE ‘didn’t really. It seemed to me rather fancy old-fashioned romantic stuff … I wasn’t very much impressed by it.’ 5 OCTOBER – The Harvard Advocate publishes his review of Egoists by James Huneker, and 12 NOVEMBER ‘Nocturne’.

  1910 12 JANUARY – The Advocate prints ‘Humouresque’ (after J. Laforgue), and 26 JANUARY ‘Spleen’. FEBRUARY – Writes Part II of ‘Portrait of a Lady’. MAY – TSE in Stillman Hospital with scarlet fever. 24 JUNE – Class of 1910 graduates. TSE reads the Class Ode: ‘For the hour that is left us Fair Harvard, with thee’, in Sanders Theater, and it is published in the local newspapers. OCTOBER – TSE goes to Paris to attend the Sorbonne and hear Henri Bergson’s weekly philosophical lectures at the Collège de France. He is tutored by Alain-Fournier, and introduced to his brother-in-law, Jacques Rivière. At his pension, 151 bis rue St Jacques, he meets Jean Verdenal, a medical student, and they become very friendly. NOVEMBER – Writes Part I of ‘Portrait of a Lady’.

  1911 21 FEBRUARY – MA. april – Pays his first visit to London, writes a poem, ‘Interlude in London’. JULY – Leaves for Munich and Northern Italy. Completes the third ‘Prelude’ and the final version of ‘Prufrock’. c. mid-SEPTEMBER – Leaves for America and East Gloucester. OCTOBER – Returns to the Harvard Graduate School to read for a doctorate in Philosophy. Lives at 16 Ash St. Aiken finds him ‘perceptibly Europeanized’. Enrols in Professor Lanman’s Indic Philology course, studies Sanskrit and reads Indian Philosophy with Professor Woods. NOVEMBER – Completes ‘Portrait of a Lady’.

  1912 Appointed Assistant in Philosophy. Meets and falls in love with Emily Hale. The New Realism by E. B. Holt and others is published and ‘made a considerable stir in the philosophical departments of American universities’, TSE wrote in 1935. The Six Realists ‘were animated by a missionary zeal against the Hegelian Idealism which was the orthodox doctrine of the philosophical departments of American universities at the time, and which had begun to turn manifestly mouldy … the Six Realists were un-Teutonised, and on the whole anti-religious, which was refreshing; they were ascetically, even gloomily, scientific; and they professed considerable respect for Mr Bertrand Russell and his Cambridge friends. All this was to the good; but it must be admitted that the New Realism, like most pre-War philosophies, seems now as demoded as ladies’ hats of the same period.’

  1913 JUNE – Buys F. H. Bradley’s Appearance and Reality. OCTOBER – Is appointed President of the University Philosophical Club. 15 DECEMBER – Pays Emma Wright Gibbs seven dollars for three hours’ dancing lessons.

  1914 27 MARCH – TSE meets and comes under the influence of Bertrand Russell, a Visiting Professor at Harvard. 31 MARCH – TSE, who is appointed a Sheldon Travelling Fellow in Philosophy for the academic year 1914/15, plans to spend it at Merton College, Oxford. 7 JULY – Passes through London on his way to a summer school in Marburg. 1 AUGUST – Germany declares war on Russia. 2 august – The course, due to start next day, is cancelled, and students are told they cannot leave for a fortnight. 16 AUGUST – TSE departs for Frankfurt, reaches London five days later. Stays at 28 Bedford Place, Russell Square, W.C.1. Early SEPTEMBER? –Writes ‘Morning at the Window’. 22 SEPTEMBER – Meets Ezra Pound. OCTOBER – Runs into Bertrand Russell in New Oxford Street. 6 OCTOBER – Goes up to Merton College to study Aristotle under Harold Joachim. Pound sends Harriet Monroe ‘Prufrock’. DECEMBER – TSE, Brand Blanshard and Karl Culpin spend a holiday together at Swanage in Dorset.

  1915 JANUARY – Lives at 1 Gordon Street, Gordon Square. MARCH – Reads a paper on ‘The Relativity of the Moral Judgement’ in Russell’s rooms at Trinity College, Cambridge. 24 APRIL – Tells Eleanor Hinkley that he has met some English girls ‘with such amusing names’, and one is called Vivien [Haigh-Wood], who is at that time living as a governess at 26 Malcolm Street, Cambridge. 2 MAY – Jean Verdenal is killed in the Dardanelles. JUNE – Poetry prints ‘Prufrock’. 26 JUNE – TSE marries Vivienne Haigh-Wood at Hampstead Registry Office. JULY – Wyndham Lewis’s magazine, Blast, prints ‘Preludes’ [I–IV] and ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’. 24 JULY – TSE sails for America to join his parents at East Gloucester. Visits Harvard’s Philosophy Department to discuss returning tor his degree. 21 AUGUST – Leaves for England, having decided his future lies there. SEPTEMBER – ‘Portrait of a Lady’ appears in Others. Russell offers the Eliots a room in his Bury Street flat. TSE begins teaching at High Wycombe Grammar School, lives at Sydney Cottage, Conegra Road, High Wycombe. OCTOBER – Poetry prints ‘The Boston Evening Transcript’, ‘Aunt Helen’ and ‘Cousin Nancy’. NOVEMBER – Catholic Anthology is published.

  1916 Early JANUARY – Russell takes Vivien to Torquay for a holiday and is succeeded after five days by TSE, whose first review for the International Journal of Ethics is published. TSE begins teaching at Highgate Junior School. 6 MARCH – Tells Professor Woods that he is sending his thesis in a few days. Late MARCH – The Eliots move to 18 Crawford Mansions, Crawford Street, W.1. TSE prepares to sail to America on 1 APRIL in order to take his viva at Harvard, but at the last minute his boat is delayed for five days and he cancels his plans. 2 APRIL – TSE and Pound see Yeats’s Noh play, At the Hawk’s Well, with Mischio Itow as the hawk and masks by Edmund Dulac, in Lady Cunard’s drawing-room. 23 JUNE – Woods informs him that his thesis has been accepted ‘without the least hesitation’. 24 JUNE – TSE’s first contribution to the New Statesman. 21 AUGUST – The Eliots at Bosham cottage. 3 SEPTEMBER – Pound writes John Quinn that ‘Eliot seems to be getting on all right (though he is producing very little, practically nothing)’. 6 SEPTEMBER – TSE tells Henry that he often feels that Prufrock ‘is a swan song’. october – Begins reviewing for The Monist. 3 OCTOBER to 12 DECEMBER Gives a course of six lectures on Modern French Literature at Ilkley, Yorkshire, and begins the first year of a three-year tutorial class on Modern English Literature at Southall on Monday evenings. 3 DECEMBER – TSE’s first visit to Garsington. 5 DECEMBER – Tells Henry that he is giving up teaching at Christmas as he finds that he is ‘losing in every way’.

  1917 19 MARCH – Starts work in the Colonial and Foreign Department of Lloyds Bank. 6 APRIL – America
declares war on Germany. MAY – Begins writing for the Little Review. JUNE – The Egoist Limited publishes Prufrock and Other Observations. Clive Bell takes a number of copies to a party at Garsington and distributes them among the Morrells, Mary Hutchinson, Aldous Huxley, Middleton Murry and others, including Katherine Mansfield who reads the title poem aloud. TSE appointed Assistant Editor of The Egoist. JULY – Reviews ‘Reflections on Violence’ by Georges Sorel, trans. with an introd. by T. E. Hulme, in The Monist. (His copy is dated MAY 1916). 28 SEPTEMBER – Begins a course of twenty-five Friday evening lectures on Victorian Literature at the County Secondary School, Sydenham. OCTOBER – Starts second year of his tutorial class in Modern English Literature.

  1918 JANUARY – In New York Knopf publishes Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry, after the subject has supplied the title and made three deletions in the text. It is issued anonymously because, Pound tells Quinn, ‘I want to boom Eliot and one can’t have too obvious a ping-pong match at that sort of thing.’ 9 JUNE – The Eliots at 31West St, Marlow. 2 AUGUST – TSE cables Henry to inquire about his chances of a military or naval training commission if he returns to America. 5 AUGUST – Tells Lewis that he is trying to get into US Navy. 25 august –Writes Henry that he has had a medical examination and been passed fit for limited service. As Washington has forbidden ‘any more commissions over here’ he is applying to be an officer in the Quartermaster’s or Interpreters’ Corps, and has been collecting testimonials. ‘It was a shock to both of us that Tom was graded so high in the medical exam,’ Vivien writes earlier to Mary Hutchinson. ‘I did not realise until then how much I had counted on his being passed quite UNFIT. I can’t understand it. He took a very strong certificate from our doctor, and had been fearfully ill over the weekend so that he was obviously in a wretched state.’ 8 SEPTEMBER – Tells his father that he now needs three American testimonials. 11 SEPTEMBER – Afraid that TSE ‘was likely to be took fer the Army’, Pound tells Quinn that he went to the Embassy ‘to point out that if it was a war for civilisation (not merely for democracy) it was folly to shoot or have shot one of the six or seven Americans capable of contributing to civilisation or understanding the word’. 11? SEPTEMBER – Pound sends Knopf TSE’s manuscript of poems after putting it into shape, as TSE has no time. He thought early publication ‘could strengthen TSE’s position with the authorities’. Mid-SEPTEMBER – The Eliots let their Marlow house ‘at a good rent’. OCTOBER – TSE begins his final Southall course on Elizabethan literature. c. 26 OCTOBER – Leaves bank as US Navy Intelligence has sent for him. 9 NOVEMBER – Returns to bank after official muddle and confusion. 10 NOVEMBER – Tells Jack Hutchinson ‘this ends my patriotic endeavours’. 11 NOVEMBER – Armistice Day. 15 NOVEMBER – Visits Leonard and Virginia Woolf at Hogarth House to discuss the publication of his Poems. 27 NOVEMBER – TSE sent Order of Induction into Military Service of the United States from St Louis, and told to report to the Headquarters European Forces in London. 18 DECEMBER – Pound writes Quinn that he is afraid that TSE is ‘in a bad way, back in his bank, but health in very shaky state. Doctor orders him not to write any prose for six months.’