The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922
Page 35
It was stupid of me not to say both of you for lunch on Saturday, I meant to. But you are both coming aren’t you?
I actually secured Ezra by himself! This is extraordinary and the first time in years. I seized on a moment of discontent with ‘them’ as he calls his wife!
The Sitwells were here today, and Osbert said I must tell you that he says you are to give a dance. One day you really must try Tom’s Negro rag-time.1 I know you’d love it.
Lunch is at 2.15 on Saturday I am sorry it is so late but it has to be. Until then – Yrs.
V. H. E.
1–For TSE and ragtime, see David Chinitz, T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide (2003), 8–52.
TO His Mother
MS Virginia
[December 1917]
[18 Crawford Mansions]
Dear Mother,
I don’t know whether you saw this book when it came out in America, but if not I hope it will interest you.1
With a very merry Christmas
and infinite love
Tom.
1–Gamaliel Bradford, Union Portraits (1916), which TSE had reviewed, anonymously, in NS, 21 Apr. 1917.
Vivien Eliot TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
[late December 1917]
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mrs Hutchinson
I am so sorry I have not answered your invitation sooner. We shall be glad to come on Thursday night, if Tom is well enough. Thank you very much for asking us.
Tom has been rather ill in the last few days – he is overworked and tired of living. I wish he could break his leg, it is the only way out of this that I can think of.
I have been quite busy and happy lately with my new house and my suburban performances.
Hoping to see you on Thursday. We will bring our gifts.
Yrs.
Vivien Eliot
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
22 December 1917
18 Crawford Mansions
My dearest Mother,
I wanted to write you and father Christmas letters, and here it is nearly Christmas Day, and I have not written for three weeks. Life has been very rushed and confused in these weeks, more than I can ever explain until I see you again, but not so rushed that I have not thought of you continually. In the first place, there is the grey sweater to thank you for. It has been most useful; the weather has been bitterly cold, with one or two snowfalls; and I have been very glad of the sweater in unheated lecture rooms. It is beautifully made, and I sometimes picture you when you were knitting it. Then there are the two small envelopes which of course we have not opened yet; they shall go into our stockings with the things we get each other, and we shall thank you for them after Christmas. This will not be a very merry Christmas. Last year Maurice was in England. We have not heard from him for weeks, and no one knows where he is, so his parents are rather anxious. Of course everything is much sadder this year, but I shall not give details about that. The only pleasant feature is the approaching rise in my salary.
I assisted in a poetry reading last week at the house of some rich person for the benefit of something.1 A hundred and fifty people were induced to pay 10/6 each, so it was rather a rich audience. Edmund Gosse2 presided, and a number of ‘young poets’ of whom I believe I was the oldest, read. It was rather amusing, as the audience and most of the poets were very solemn, and I read some light satirical stuff,3 and some of them didn’t know what to make of it. I think the more intelligent appreciated it, and a number of people asked to be introduced to me afterwards, including several women who said they were Americans, one very nice one, a Mrs Lavery.4 One or two of the ‘poets’ were quite nice persons, and I may be able to interest them in the Egoist, which I want to extend.
I am distressed about George.5 His action seems to me quite irresponsible. A man well over forty, with two children, ought to know better. Even at the most excited period here no one would have expected a man in such a position to enlist. I can’t see what good it will do him; no one will give him work for being ‘patriotic’, as he is not going into the firing line, in such work as he hopes to do. Five years from now everyone will have forgotten whether he was in France or not. The motive seems a very trifling one. Charlotte will have a very heavy burden, and you a heavy responsibility. I am very sorry indeed.
I must stop now. I shall write to father by this same mail. I hope you will have just the most cheerful Christmas possible, and I shall think of you all day.
Your devoted son
Tom
1–The poetry reading was held by Sibyl Colefax (1874–1950) at her house in Onslow Square on 12 Dec. The poets included the Sitwells, AH and Robert Nichols. Osbert Sitwell (who met TSE for the first time only on 11 Dec.) recorded: ‘When Eliot arrived a few minutes late, he was rebuked publicly by Sir Edmund Gosse (though in fact the young man had come straight from the bank where he was then working) … [H]e showed no trace of annoyance at being reproved: for … he never allowed his companions to suspect the fatigue he must have been suffering.’ Sitwell saw TSE as ‘a most striking being, having peculiarly luminous, light yellow, more than tawny eyes: the eyes, they might have been, of one of the greater cats’ (Laughter in the Next Room [1949], 32–3).
2–Edmund Gosse (1849–1928), man of letters, author of Father and Son (1907); from 1904 librarian of the House of Lords.
3–‘The best thing for me was “Hippopotamus”,’ noted Arnold Bennett in his Journal.
4–Hazel Martyn of Chicago was a widow when in 1910 she married the painter John Lavery (1856–1941).
5–His brother-in-law George Lawrence Smith had volunteered for active service (though in fact he was assigned to assist engineers Stone & Webster at the US Army base in nearby South Boston).
TO His Father
MS Houghton
23 December 1917
18 Crawford Mansions
My dear Father
Thank you very much for the £10 which arrived Saturday via the Midland Bank. It came at a very useful time, as I shall not be paid my rise until I get my January salary at the end of that month. I shall be paid for the first part of my lecture courses then too.
For the next two or three weeks I shall have a much desired respite from lecturing, and an opportunity to catch up a little on some of my writing. The lectures do take a great deal of time, and it seems really a Christmas holiday not to be doing them, though the only holiday I get from the Bank is Christmas Day and the day after. I wish I had longer, so we could go into the country out of the nervous strain for a few days. Vivien will not go without me, and she only went for that two weeks in the autumn at my earnest solicitation. Of course the excellent servant we have makes it quite possible, as she is so efficient, and likes responsibility, but Vivien will not go.
I suppose this will be a sad Christmas for you too, but I hope you will have Henry with you.
It seems strange that I should have so busy a life and so little to tell about it. But I think that it is just because it is so busy and rushed that there is so little; – because I don’t have time, and no one has time, to stop and enjoy life and tell about it. Besides, everyone’s individual fortunes lives are so swallowed up in the one great tragedy, that one almost ceases to have personal experiences or emotions, and such as one has seem so unimportant! – where before it would have seemed interesting even to tell about a lunch of bread and cheese. It’s only very dull people who feel they have ‘more in their lives’ now – other people have too much. I have a lot of things to write about if the time ever comes when people will attend to them.
But I think about you very much.
Your loving son
Tom.
I should like American papers.
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
30 December 1917
18 Crawford Mansions
My dearest Mother,
The first letters came yesterday that we have had for a long time: none from you, but one from
father and one from Henry. We had our envelopes on Christmas day, in stockings as usual, and thanked you again. I have deposited mine, but will of course spend it on clothing: I have not yet decided what clothing I need most. Another nice present arrived – Henry’s portfolio. I had no idea that all these pictures existed; some of them I did not remember having seen before; some I remembered quite well. The only member of the family I missed was the Elsa, and I should have liked some views of Gloucester. I was very glad to have those of you and father at the Westminster breakfast table,1 and there was a very good one of Henry there too which I had never seen. I like especially one of you writing at your desk in your bedroom.2 It gives one a strange feeling that Time is not before and after, but all at once, present and future and all the periods of the past,3 an album like this. I have been showing the pictures with great pride.
Our Christmas was very quiet but unexpectedly pleasant. The Haigh-Woods had two letters from Maurice that morning, the first in several weeks. He is in Italy now, on the Staff, and I expect is having a very exciting time. He did awfully well to get this post, having passed some examinations with very high rank; and we are very proud of him. He ought to be a Captain before long.
The weather has been very bad, windy and cold; needless to say we prefer it so; but we both have bad coughs and use quantities of handkerchiefs; and the winter in England seems very long. You never know when it is over; finally June comes and you decide to call it summer.
I hope you have a servant now. They are no longer easy to get in England and must be still more difficult to get in America – I hate to think of your having to do your own work.
Tomorrow night is New Year’s Eve. I hope you will be thinking of us then, as we shall be thinking of you, and hoping that this may be better for all of us than the last.
Your devoted son
Tom.
Vivien is anxious to write, but has not had time by this mail.
1–Their St Louis address was 4446 Westminster Place.
2–See Plates 19A and 23.
3–‘Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future / And time future
contained in time past’ (Burnt Norton 1–3).
TO Henry Eliot
MS Houghton
30 December 1917
18 Crawford Mansions
My dear Henry,
This will be a poor sort of letter, as it is very late, and I have a bad cold, and ought to be in bed. Your portfolio arrived several days before Christmas, but of course I did not open it until the day itself. It has given me a lot of pleasure, some of it of a pathetic (but pleasant) sort, and I have enjoyed showing it to people. I am always glad to think it is there, too, as it makes me feel that I have something of the people and the places over here. And it is certainly beautifully done.
Your cheque arrived yesterday. I can only repeat how very generous and good you are. Half shall be spent on Vivien and half on me – mostly on clothes I fancy, which are of course expensive now, and on comforts which one has learned to regard as luxuries nowadays. I am rather better off now than I have been; my rise to £200 a year is of the first of January, and I am promised something more in the middle of the year. The manager has undoubtedly pushed me on fast. The work is interesting, though occasionally trying.
We are neither of us very well at present – colds and coughs – weather bad, and we have reason to be glad when it is.
I should have been delighted personally if you could have got a chance to come over, and had been secretly hoping to see you; but you would certainly have cracked up with your constitution and ears. I think to stay at home and have to go through all the popular silliness there must be very trying. Somehow I have not felt since last March that I ever wanted to see America again. Certainly at the present time I think I should feel like an adult among children. Probably I shall get over this dread in time.
I must go to bed soon. I will send you a copy of the Egoist – I take a good deal of interest in the paper.
With much love from both of us
Affectionately
Tom.
TO Eleanor Hinkley
MS Houghton
31 December 1917
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Eleanor,
This is just a scrawl at the end of the year to thank you for your last letter of I don’t know how long ago! and to recall myself to you, and to combine Christmas and New Year’s wishes. I cannot tell you how pleased I was to hear of the success of your play.1 You deserve it. I wish you would send me one of the printed copies – if there are any – and I should tell you just what I think of it. Of course it is the branch of literature which I know least about.
I will send you a copy of the Henry James number of the Egoist2 when it appears. The idea is mine, and I have a great admiration for him. Not so much the later stuff, but read The Europeans and The American, and Washington Square, and Daisy Miller. The first especially is a wonderful criticism of New England. I have been reading Turgenev with great delight – he is one of the very greatest.3 While you are about it, you ought to read Stendhal – Le Rouge et le Noir, and La Chartreuse de Parme.
I suppose most of our friends are playing tin soldiers now. The breezes whisper to me that I should not enjoy America at the present moment. But I wish it were all over and you could come and have a winter in London. We shall manage to make it worth your while, even in post-war conditions.
With love and best wishes to you and Aunt Susie.
Affectionately
Tom.
1–Their Flesh and Blood, a comedy in four acts, was produced in the 47 Workshop, Dec. 1917.
2–The issue of Jan. 1918 carried TSE’s ‘In Memory of Henry James’: ‘I do not suppose that any one who is not an American can properly understand Henry James.’
3–TSE reviewed Edward Garnett, Turgenev, with foreword by Joseph Conrad, in Egoist 4: 11 (Dec. 1917).
1918
Vivien Eliot TO Charlotte C. Eliot
TS Houghton
6 January 1918
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mrs Eliot
Thank you very much indeed for the £1 you sent me for Xmas. It was very good of you. I hope you all had a nice Xmas. We had a fairly nice one. We had our Xmas dinner at my home, in the middle of the day, because of air raids! There was no raid as it turned out, but being a full moon it was rather expected. Tom and I went to the country in the late afternoon, and had just two days’ holiday. It was nice. We enjoyed looking at Henry’s photographs. It was a very nice present for Tomto get, and pleased him immensely. It was good of Henry, and must have taken him a long time to do.
We hear from Charlotte that we may be seeing her husband before long. That would be very nice. I hope, if he does get to France, that he will spend his first leave with us. It will be exciting to see one of the family, although I wish it could be a real Eliot. You are naturally upset at his leaving Charlotte to manage the farm, but she appears to want him to go, and it is apparently to his advantage, so I suppose she will prefer it that way. He will not be running any particular risk if his job is what she says. In one of your letters you seemed to be under the impression that I was away in the country for a very long time in the autumn. I only went for a fortnight, and Tom came for both weekends. When he gets away in the country for his weekends, his health is good. When he stays for a long unbroken period in town, it is not. I am therefore trying to get him away as often as possible. Life in London, at the present time, is much more than trying. About the work in the Government office which I tried for, you will have received Tom’s letter in which he told you why I was rejected. Although I have never been to America I am, by law, an ‘American born’ citizen – and therefore not eligible. The work I now intend to do is tilling the soil, and raising the ‘natural fruits of the earth.’
Hoping that you and Mr Eliot are both well, and with our very best wishes that you may have a happy and healthy New Year,
Affectionately,
Vivien
TO Osbert Sitwell
MS Mugar
10 January 1918
18 Crawford Mansions
I am very glad you can both come. I imagine that the colds will be universal, so you will find sympathetic company. I find however that I should have said 2.15 not 2, as I may not be home much before that. I hope you don’t mind it so late. Accept my apologies for the error.
[unsigned]
TO Julian Huxley
MS Fondren
16 January 19181
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Huxley,
I am writing this to you, as I feared that Aldous might possibly have returned to Eton. I did not get his letter, unfortunately, in time to let him know that I could not come on Saturday, and was leaving for the weekend. Since then I have been hoping to find time but have not.
Can we not fix some evening next week? I am always away weekends now (I hope you will come and visit us at Marlow when we are settled). Would Tuesday do?
I shall be disappointed if Aldous has already gone. If he is still here but going shortly tell him to drop in if he can tomorrow evening (or both of you). If he has left I will write at once to Eton.