by T. S. Eliot
Although sorry to trouble you, we do not feel ready to accord Tom the required permission until we are better acquainted with conditions.2
Very cordially yours
C. C. Eliot
FROM H. W. Eliot to E. H. Wells3
MS Harvard
7 December 1906
The Hydraulic-Press Brick
Company, Missouri Trust Building,
St Louis
Dear Sir,
I thank you for your letter of the 4th containing information which I already had received from my son, who is sufficiently concerned therefore.4 He did not know that English did not count. I am inclined to think that he has been permitted (with the assistance of his College advisors) to take courses all of which are difficult and require much outside reading. I do not know if this can be remedied. When he comes home for the holidays I will discuss it with him.
Yours truly,
H. W. Eliot
1–Abby Adams Eliot (‘Ada’) had drowned in 1864, aged sixteen, in a skating accident. TSE’s eldest sister was named after her.
2–On the Head Master’s reassurance, permission was given. He added that TSE seemed happier than he had been at first, and was mingling much more with his fellows (23 May).
3–E. H. Wells was Assistant Dean of Harvard College, 1905–7.
4–TSE had been placed on probation at the end of his first semester at Harvard. He later told Valerie Eliot that he ‘loafed’ for the first two years.
TO His Mother1
PC Houghton
Tuesday [1909]
Port Clyde, Maine
My dear Mother
We have had very light and very warm weather: pleasant and lazy. This is only about twenty-five miles from North Haven.
Your aff. Son
Tom
1–Addressed to Mrs H. W. Eliot, Eastern Point, Gloucester, Massachusetts.
FROM His Mother
MS Houghton
3 April 1910
4446 Westminster Place,
[St Louis]
My dear Boy,
I was very glad indeed to receive your last letter,1 and pleased with the success of your lecture. I am so much interested in every detail of your life, my only regret being that you have not time to write more fully. You have not yet told me your marks in the two remaining courses. Surely you must know by this time. I enclose a postal on which I hope you will write and mail.
I hope in your literary work you will receive early the recognition I strove for and failed. I should so have loved a college course, but was obliged to teach before I was nineteen. I graduated with high rank, ‘a young lady of unusual brilliancy as a scholar’ my old yellow testimonial says, but when I was set to teaching young children, my Trigonometry and Astronomy counted for naught, and I made a dead failure.
Shef2 wrote early in the fall, that he thought before the end of the collegiate year your ideas would crystallize and you would know better the best direction for your literary activity. I have rather hoped you would not specialize later on French literature. I suppose you will know better in June what you want to do next year. And you will have the literary judgment of able advisers probably. I cannot bear to think of your being alone in Paris, the very words give me a chill. English speaking countries seem so different from foreign. I do not admire the French nation, and have less confidence in individuals of that race than in English. I suppose I am not enough of a scholar to know what is termed the ‘particular genius’ of any people. I will enclose Henry’s last letter, as you say you have not heard from him for so long. I wish you could live nearer together. But New York is more likely to be your destiny than Chicago.
You must be sure and secure tickets when the time comes for Father and me to hear your Ode.3 Is it on Class Day, at Sanders? You know Henry had no tickets. Having a part may enable you to secure them. I am glad you know the Littles so well. They must be a fine family. Ed4 was one of the nicest of Henry’s friends. Poor fellow! he was very pathetic in his enfeebled condition.
I suppose you have been too busy to see Marian or Uncle Chris’ family. And also too busy to write for the Advocate,5 since you have sent no more copies.
Father will send your draft tomorrow. When is the Easter vacation?
Today has been typically April – showers and sunshine. We have a wood fire in the study. Father has had a little cold. He seems to tire easily. We are hoping Ada will come on in May to the Conference of Charities.6 She thinks she must be at the Hotel several days. I hope then she will stay with us as long as possible – until we go.
I will not enclose the card – Please let me know without.
Your loving Mother
Hope the trip to New Haven will be pleasant. Father thinks before long you can take your deposit from Bank if you are to leave Cambridge.
1–None of TSE’s letters to his parents from Milton Academy, Harvard or Paris has been
preserved. After their mother’s death, TSE told his brother on 25May 1930 that he was ‘glad
to have the letters to make ashes of’.
2–He was about to become an instructor in rhetoric and composition at Wellesley College.
3–As Class Odist, TSE recited his tribute to ‘Fair Harvard’ in Sanders Theater on Graduation Day, 24 June (Poems Written in Early Youth).
4–Edward Little (1881–1905), who died of tuberculosis, was co-illustrator with Frederick Hall of Harvard Celebrities. His brother Clarence (1888–1971), known as ‘Pete’, was a classmate of TSE.
5–After the ‘Ode’, TSE did not contribute again until 1934.
6–Ada was a member of the Massachusetts State Board of Charities, 1909–14. As a probation officer in New York City’s prison, 1901–4, she had been known as ‘the angel of the Tombs’.
Henry Ware Eliot to Thomas Lamb Eliot1
MS2 Reed College
[St Louis]
12 May 1910
Dear Bob,
The world wags and the end draws nigher.
Laus Deo.
I have not seen your Tom3 lately but he is well and busy. My Tom is in hospital at Cambridge – probably scarlet fever which is epidemic in Boston. We have so much difficulty in getting information that Lottie goes to Boston tonight. Why don’t folks think more of the feelings of absentees and give them the whole story! It is unfortunate just now as Tom is working so hard for his A.M. which is just in sight.4
Tis a parlous world.
Yr
H
In the autumn of 1910, TSE went to Paris for the academic year to attend the Sorbonne, and to hear the weekly lectures at the Collège de France by the philosopher Henri Bergson. Nearly fifty years later he said, ‘I had at that time the idea of giving up English and trying to settle down and scrape along in Paris and gradually write French.’ He left France in July 1911 to visit Munich and northern Italy, before returning to Harvard to work for his doctorate in philosophy.
1–Thomas Lamb Eliot (1841–1936), brother of TSE’s father, was Pastor of the First Unitarian Society of Portland, Oregon, 1867–93; author of The Radical Difference between Liberal Christianity and Orthodoxy. See Earl M. Wilbur, Thomas Lamb Eliot, 1841–1936 (Portland, 1937).
2–From a copy made by the recipient’s granddaughter.
3–Thomas Dawes Eliot (1889–1973), who was to become Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University, 1924–54.
4–Although his illness was not serious, he was unable to sit his final examinations.
TO Theodora Eliot Smith
MS Houghton
[Postmark 23 December 1910] [Paris]
1911
TO Theodora Eliot Smith
MS Houghton
[late February? 1911]
Paris
My Dear Theodora,
Thank you very much for the nice letter that you sent me, and the Valentine of Puss in Boots. Have you the puss in the green boots still, and do you remember the story about him?
You must have been studying hard in order to be able to wri
te so nicely. I have been studying too. But I often go out and walk in the Luxembourg Gardens, which is a sort of park like the Boston Public Gardens, or the park back down the hill from your home in Brookline, where you used to go. There is a pond there too, and the children play boats when it is not too cold. There are lots of boats and they sail right across the pond and right through the fountain and never upset. They spin tops and roll hoops. You would like the French children. I don’t think they have as many playthings as the American children, but they seem quite happy. I see lots of them in the Champs Elysées (which is a long wide street) on Sunday afternoon, riding in little carts behind goats. But it is hard to talk to the little ones, because they don’t talk French very well yet, and I don’t either.
When they are older and go to school you see them walking out two by two, very quiet and proper, in a long line, with their teachers. They all wear black capes, and carry their schoolbooks on their backs underneath the capes, so that they all look as if they had big bumps on their backs. And they wear black pinafores, and have their legs bare all winter. But it is never very cold in Paris. It has not snowed here all winter, and the little steamboats go up and down the river like black flies: ‘fly-boats’, they call them.
Just about now you are having supper in America, and here, it is my bed time. Isn’t that funny?
– With love to mother and father and all the dolls
Your
Uncle
TOM
TO Eleanor Hinkley1
PC Houghton
[Postmark 24 March 1911]
[Paris]
Dear Eleanor, I have been meaning to write a letter to thank you for your Christmas card, and I don’t think that I did. I am not sure that this card will go through the American post. I have not seen this costume2 on the street and I don’t think it will be a success. Is the Cambridge season agreeable this year? I have no news from there.
Ever sincerely yours
T
Give my regards to Aunt Susie and Barbara3
1–Eleanor Hinkley, TSE’s cousin; see Glossary of Names.
2–It showed a model wearing la jupe-culotte (divided skirt) at the Auteuil races, where it continues, according to the caption, ‘à égayer les habitués … qu’elle intrigue par la nouveauté de ses mystérieux dessous’ [‘to amuse the race-goers … intriguing them by the novelty of the mysterious under-garments’].
3–Eleanor’s mother (sister of TSE’s mother) and Eleanor’s sister, Barbara (1889–1958), who in 1909 had married Edward Welch (1888–1948).
TO Eleanor Hinkley
MS Houghton
26 April [1911]
151 bis rue Saint Jacques [Paris]
Dear Eleanor,
I just came back from London1 last night, and found a pile of letters waiting for me, with yours sitting on the top. I mounted to my room to read them; then my friend the femme de chambre burst in to see me (after two weeks absence). She tells me I am getting fat. Also she had a store of news about everyone else in the house. Monsieur Dana2 has gone to the Ecole Normale, where he has to rise every day at seven. This is a prime joke, and lasted for ten or twelve minutes. Monsieur Verdenal3 has taken his room, because it is bigger than M. Verdenal’s room, and gives upon the garden. Had I been out into the garden to see how the trees poussent [are growing]? So then I had to go into M. Verdenal’s room to see how the garden did. Byplay at this point, because M. Verdenal was in the garden, and because I threw a lump of sugar at him. And a Monsieur americain named Ladd has taken M. Verdenal’s room. He does not speak French very well yet. He speaks as Monsieur spoke in November. (And I shortly heard Monsieur Ladd bawling through the hall ‘A-vous monté mes trunks à l’attique?’4 – I settle the affair by crying out ‘les malles au grenier!’
But finally I read the letters, and enjoyed yours more than any. In fact I must compliment you on it – you have a gift for letter writing. This was quite different from any I have had all year. I have no news equally amusing to repay with. I feel rather guilty about that, I do: for Paris has burst out, during my absence, into full spring; and it is such a revelation that I feel that I ought to make it known. At London, one pretended that it was spring, and tried to coax the spring, and talk of the beautiful weather; but one continued to hibernate amongst the bricks.5 And one looked through the windows, and the waiter brought in eggs and coffee, and the Graphic (which I conscientiously tried to read, to please them) and commented on the chauffeurs’ strike6 and all was very wintry and sedate. But here! –
But I was outdoors most of the time. I made a pilgrimage to Cricklewood. 7 ‘Where is Cricklewood?’ said an austere Englishman at the hotel. I produced a map and pointed to the silent evidence that Cricklewood exists. He pondered. ‘But why go to Cricklewood?’ he flashed out at length. Here I was triumphant. ‘There is no reason!’ I said. He had no more to say. But he was relieved (I am sure) when he found that I was American. He felt no longer responsible. But Cricklewood is mine. I discovered it. No one will go there again. It is like the sunken town in the fairy story,8 that rose just every May-day eve, and lived for an hour, and
only one man saw it.*
<* Note explanatory: I suggest that if the Sayward family were English
– well, they might live in Cricklewood.>
– I have just discussed my trip with the prim but nice English lady at the pension. She said ‘And did you go through the Tower?’ ‘No!’ ‘Madame Tussaud’s?’ ‘No!’ ‘Westminster Abbey?’ ‘No!’ here I triumphed again – ‘the Abbey was closed due to the coronation preparations!’9 (This is a remark which, in a novel, would be ‘flung back’). I then said – do you know
St Helens
St Stephens
St Bartholomew the Great
St Sepulchre
St Ethel[d]reda10
and finally – Camberwell Work House! And she knew none of these. ‘I have it on you!’ I cried (for I know her well enough for that). But she does not understand the American dialect.
– But at this point, lest you should give people the idea that I wasted my
time! note that I have seen
National Gallery
Brit[ish] Mus[eum]
Wallace Collection (made notes!!)
S. Kensington11 (in large part)
Cambridge University
Hampton Court
The Temple
The City – Thoroughly
Whitechapel (note: Jews)12
St Pauls
et al.
also the Zoo (note: gave the apterix a bun)13
And so I will close this spring letter which becomes more and more foolish. Do write again.
Thanking you in advance
Yours faithfully
Thos. S. Eliot
1–His first visit, always associated in his mind with the music of Herman Finck’s ‘In the Shadows’ (1910), which was popular at the time.
2–Henry (‘Harry’) Dana (1881–1950): educated at Harvard, he had been a lecturer in English at the Sorbonne 1908–10. He was later dismissed from Columbia for pacifist activities.
3–Jean Verdenal, who was to be dedicatee of Prufrock and Other Observations: see Glossary of Names.
4–‘Have you taken my trunks [malles] up to the attic [grenier]?’
5–‘We hibernate among the bricks / And live across the window panes’ (‘Interlude in London’, ll. 1–2, in IMH, 16).
6–Motor cab proprietors were seeking an increase in charges, which had remained unaltered since 1907, and their drivers were in dispute with them over the payment of petrol tax. Although the Home Secretary had appointed a commission to examine the grievances, drivers in London’s West End went on strike on 15 Apr. To the public’s delight, the horse cab came into its own again, The Times reporting two days later that ‘the cab-driver with a silk hat reappeared after a long absence and some astonishing animals were to be seen between the shafts’.
7–Cricklewood, London N.W.2, ‘was [then], I should think, part of the parish
of Hendon but no more than a hamlet. It rose to fame owing to its position on the Edgware Road and the tavern there which became a tram stop’ (John Betjeman to Valerie Eliot, 15 Mar. 1978). Though most of the places that TSE visited would form part of a regular tourist itinerary, his ‘pilgrimage to Cricklewood’ (like his visit to the City and Camberwell Work House) shows his independence of Baedeker. TSE’s copy of Baedeker, London and Environs (1908), is at King’s.
8–‘Germelshausen’ by Friedrich Gerstäcker (1816–72) tells of a lost village, under Papal interdict, which appears for a day’s revelry once every hundred years before sinking beneath the earth again. On 18 June 1936 TSE wrote to Lady Richmond ‘East Coker was delightful, with a sort of Germelshausen effect’; and after publication of East Coker he wrote to H. S. Häussermann on 24 May 1940, ‘I think that the imagery of the first section (though taken from the village itself) may have been influenced by recollections of Germelshausen, which I have not read for many years.’
9–King George V was crowned on 22 June.
10– St Helen’s Bishopgate, St Stephen Walbrook, St Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield, and St Sepulchre Old Bailey are churches in the City of London. The medieval Roman Catholic St Etheldreda is in Ely Place, Holborn. TSE’s love of City churches is further in evidence in TWL, l. 264 (his note to that line refers to The Proposed Demolition of Nineteen City Churches), as well as in his pageant play The Rock (1934), staged on behalf of the ‘Forty-Five Churches Fund of the Diocese of London’.
