The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922
Page 41
You know I had been trying every quarter to see what I could get into. At first it was the navy, but after saying that they wanted me they told me that I could only come in for the Intelligence work by enlisting as a seaman and taking an examination in a variety of subjects. As this was slow and precarious, and the examination would be difficult and pure waste of time, and also as I could not live for any time on a seaman’s pay, I tried the army. The first thing suggested to me was the Quartermaster Corps – my physical rating precludes me from active service, and I found that I should have to get testimonials. I gathered in time about sixteen excellent recommendations from various English prominent official people of my acquaintance,1 and just as I was ready to put them in with an application I met a man who was a Lieutenant engaged in starting a Political Intelligence section for extremely interesting work, and he was quite sure that I was the man he wanted and asked me to wait and see his chief who was coming to town in a few days. Then after a week or so he told me that this was called off, as some department in Washington had interfered and the Intelligence section was not to be started at all. A few days after that I was introduced to a Major in charge of the ordinary Army Intelligence, whose work appeared interesting. He said he thought he could get me a commission, but that I must have at least three American testimonials as well as my English ones. Of course I had difficulty there, as I did not know any Americans here whose names would be immediately recognised as carrying weight. Then I cabled to you and Shef. Finally I found a Captain in the Embassy whom I knew slightly at Harvard;2 I also found the Ex-Dean of Harvard, who finally gave me a very stiff little letter, which was of no use. So I had to wait. Then President Eliot’s kind letter came. And the Harvard Certificates, which were not what I wanted at all; I meant personal letters from professors, but Shef did not understand. So I had to wait again. Then I ran across an old Harvard Professor3 here in a government capacity who gave me an enthusiastic letter, and later a letter came from Professor Woods, to whom I had cabled. So I was all ready.
Just then, when I was finally after long delays going to put my application in, the Navy Intelligence sent for me. The Commander was very polite, said he had heard of me and thought I was just the man he needed very badly; that unfortunately they were not allowed to give commissions straight off, but that they could make me a Chief Yeoman, with a fairly good salary – enough, with ration allowance, to live upon – put me at an interesting piece of work here in the London office, and that I would probably be given a commission in a few months’ time. He asked me if I would come and how soon. So I went to the bank, explained that the Navy wanted me very badly as soon as possible. They were very nice to me at the bank, as they always have been, and said that in consideration of the importance of the work and my fitness for it they would make no objection to my going, and would have my place for me when the war was over. So I arranged to go in two weeks, after I had trained another man to do my work, and told the navy when I was coming. About a week later I went to the navy for the slight medical examination required for the work, and then learned that they had to cable to Washington for approval of the appointment. I was told that this was done in every case and was merely a formality.
At the appointed time I left the bank, as the other man was doing my work and the bank had no further need for me unless I could stay on. But the approval had not yet come, and I could not be enrolled. Finally, two weeks after the cable had been sent from here to Washington, I had a telegram from the navy
‘Approval received as requested – no further difficulty’.
So I went in to be enrolled. They had started to enroll me when they discovered that the cable from Washington read
‘Appointment approved … if not registered selective service …’
They had assumed here that I was not registered. But I pointed out to them that under the Convention every American of draft age is registered in England, and that Americans who had failed to register are automatically liable for service in the British Army, and the American Government has no further claim upon them; that therefore, the cablegram was incomprehensible. They then applied to our Army here, who could cast no light on the matter, and said they had no claim upon me. So then they said they must cable again.
I then pointed out: ‘You sent for me, asked me to come as soon as possible, and led me to believe that the matter was quite settled. I took you at your word, and arranged accordingly. Through the delay in your cable (and I was not even told that cabling was necessary) I have already been out of work a week, a luxury which I can ill afford. If this cable takes as long as the other, and I wait for it, I shall have been out of work and without pay for a month. Why should I suffer for your mistakes? You made me a definite offer, and you have not fulfilled it’.
However, they cabled very urgently. Last Thursday they received an answer, saying that the matter would have to be referred to the Provost Marshal General in Washington, and asking for my registration number, address of local board, etc. The Navy has cabled back, and there it is. Meanwhile I have been out of work for two weeks, through no fault of my own. Had they even told me that there might be delay I could have arranged otherwise with the bank, instead of teaching another man in a hurry, and might still be at the bank drawing pay.
I was very angry about their having invited me to leave my work without having previously informed themselves accurately as to the conditions on which they could take me. So I cabled to you to try to get an introduction to the Admiral to lay the matter before him personally and explain the injustice. I have tried to get an introduction to him here but not yet succeeded. Lady Cunard gave me a letter to the Chief of Staff. He however was called out just as I came in and turned me over to the chief of the personnel department. He was very nice to me, perhaps as an effect of the effect of the letter on the chief of staff, but he could do nothing except through Washington. He was not the person who made the mistake which has been so costly to myself, in any case. Of course it has not got through to Washington that I was actually promised the post, nor is it likely to. There might perhaps be a case for a reprimand, if it got very far. The man who first saw me and offered me the job has told me that it was his fault, but that does not do very much good. My losses are:
1. At least two weeks pay, which I shall stand to lose in any case.
2. I have abandoned the attempt to get an army commission. That would take two months, I was told. I cannot wait two months without work, and I cannot ask the bank to take me back for that time. If the bank takes me in now the least I can do is to let them appeal for me and not attempt to get into the army.
3. My Questionnaire had come from St Louis. The Local Board will soon be wondering why they have not heard from me. I cannot fill it in until I know whether I am to be in the navy or not. When I can get it off I shall cable to you to let them know that it has been delayed and is on the way, and why it has been delayed. But I do not think they are likely to call me up before it comes, as the physical examiner recommended me for six months exemption straight off. So that is all for the present. I have not heard from you for a long long time, and am waiting anxiously. But perhaps the letters have gone to Marlow and will come here deviously.
I am so tired with this long explanation that I cannot write more now. I hope now you know the story you will forgive me for not having written. You see at each step it was either a question of cabling, or else I expected to be able to cable and say that I had got something. This constant deferment for three months has told on me very much; I feel years older than I did in July! I feel now that perhaps I am much more useful in the bank than in the army, and that I would have done better not to have bothered about it.
With very much love to both of you, and to all of you,
Your very affectionate son
Tom
I shall simply have to have this settled or go back to the bank this week or I shall be bankrupt. The financial end of it is the most important of all, now.
1–They included J. C
. Squire, Graham Wallas, St John Hutchinson, Philip Jourdain, F. S. Boas and the Dean of Merton.
2–Bronson Cutting (1888–1935), publisher; later a US Senator. A Harvard contemporary of TSE, he was Assistant Military Attaché in London, 1917–18.
3–G. H. Palmer.
TO Henry Eliot
MS Houghton
4 November 1918
18 Crawford Mansions
My dear Henry,
After all your goodness in cabling and working and writing and providing funds it seems very shabby that you should be in doubt because I have not even let you know when I received money from you. As a matter of fact, all the money came, as I wrote you last week, so I trust you will advise the banks which stopped payment. I cannot tell you how grateful we both have been for this money, it was providential. Even now, I am in rather a bad way, owing to the fact that the Navy have promised me a job and induced me to leave the bank on a certain date, and have then kept me waiting two weeks (without pay) on account of certain technical difficulties which have involved much cabling to Washington. I feel very sore about it, and it is not settled yet. I have just written explaining in full to father, and I hope he will send the letter on to you, as it took three closely typed pages to explain.
There are a great many things I want to write to you about, but I can’t put my mind on them now. Three months of trying for a job, and for a month or so expecting to get it any day, has told on my nerves; and I feel very old at present, and mentally quite exhausted.
I can’t help feeling, after seeing more of my fellow countrymen lately than I have for four years – that I get on very much better with [the] English. I am not speaking only of my friends, but of the ordinary people one’s in contact with in both countries. Americans now impress me, almost invariably, as very immature.
Can you not take a couple of months, when the war is finally settled and your colleagues are back, and come over here on a holiday? Keep thinking about it.
As always affectionately
Tom.
TO Mrs Jack Gardner
MS Gardner Museum
7 November 1918
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mrs Gardner,
I have been intending throughout the summer to answer your letter of June 2nd. I must have appeared unaccountably rude both to you and to everyone else of my friends in America: even my family have had to cable to me once or twice for assurance of my continued existence. This has been the most terribly exhausting year I have ever known, and one unfortunate event has crowded another. In the first place my wife’s health was so affected by the terrible events of the winter that we had to leave London, and the material discomforts, deprivations and expenses of living in the country (I came to town every day) made a considerable total of embarrassment. On top of that I have spent an immense amount of energy, time, and have been at great expense in trying to get into some branch of government work for which I was fitted. As I was declared unfit for active service I tried to get into either the Army or Navy Intelligence, for which it seemed to me that I was highly qualified, but some official difficulty or other has always arisen. It seems an impossibility for a man to secure any position for which he is really fitted. Only lately I was invited by the Navy to come in to their Intelligence; and threw up my position in Lloyds Bank upon their offer. When the time arrived for me to come in they discovered some technical flaw in the process, and have been cabling to Washington ever since. The only result, so far as I am concerned, is that I have lost a considerable amount of money through having given up my position upon the Navy’s assurances, and that I have no likelihood of getting this money back. So apparently my only course is to appeal for exemption on the ground of a dependent wife, and being partially unfit physically, and await events. Possibly in the course of time the army will discover that they need me to peel potatoes.
But I do not want to take up this delayed letter with my grievances. I have of course been unable to do any serious work. My contributions to the last two numbers of the Little Review (which I hope you will like!) were written in the spring. Of course I have the Egoist editing, and a series of lectures on Elizabethan literature, on my hands as well as my daily work in the Foreign Department of Lloyds Bank. The latter will sound odd to you, but it is the most interesting business work there is, and offers a secure livelihood, and enables me to live in London and pursue my interests and see my friends and the bank have been very appreciative and encouraging. So I shall go back to them, after this disastrous fiasco with the navy, if they will take me.
I think there will be a certain literary activity in London after the war. I think that my friends Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis are the ablest literary men in London, and I hope we can do something. Do you know any of Lewis’s work, either in drawing or painting, or his novel Tarr? He is, in my opinion, the most interesting man in London Society. The army has temporarily robbed literature and art to make an artillery officer of him, but he has lately been doing some work for Beaverbrook.1 I also think that a younger friend of mine named Sacheverell Sitwell has unusual poetic merit. What do you think of Joyce? I admire Ulysses immensely. Lytton Strachey2 has suddenly become a social lion on the strength of his Eminent Victorians which is really very entertaining.
I hope I shall be able to write to you again and give more literary and art gossip soon, if I get my own affairs in order. I wish I could state my case in Washington. Please write to me and tell me about yourself, and Boston – if there is anything to say about the latter. I hope you keep that torpid pool stirred up a little!
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
1–WL had left the Royal Artillery to join Lord Beaverbrook’s ‘War Memorials’ project, commissioning war artists such as Augustus John and C. R. W. Nevinson to record the part played by Canadians in the war.
2–Lytton Strachey, critic and biographer; see Glossary of Names. Eminent Victorians had been published in May. In an undated letter to MH, VHE wrote: ‘Tom would like to see more of Lytton. And I feel it’s been my fault. That was one of my indiscretions. But I know Tom rather wants him. He is lonely. How can he be otherwise? And Lytton is such a dear, and surely they could be friends?’ (Texas).
TO John Rodker
MS Virginia
7 November 1918
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Rodker
Would you care to exercise your critical acumen by doing an article1 of any length or brevity you please à propos of a number of volumes of verse (inc. Fletcher, Sitwells, etc.) for the Egoist. I hope you will and I will see to getting the books to you.
Our attempts to meet have usually been abortive. I have been engrossed in personal difficulties connected with the Military. But would you care to come here and dine with me solus on Saturday night? I am alone, my wife is still in the country.
Yrs.
T. S. Eliot
1–Apart from a poem, his first contribution was ‘Blackwelliana’, Egoist 6 (Sept. 1919).
TO Douglas Goldring1
MS Virginia
7 November 1918
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Goldring,
I am writing to tell you that the delay over your manuscript is due to myself. Pound gave it to me and I intended to see Miss Weaver at once and put it in her hands. Owing to complications in my private affairs connected with military service I failed to do so.
I have given her the stuff now and she will be writing to you herself. We shall be very glad to print some or all of what you send; but it is very doubtful whether we should be able to offer any remuneration. The finances are in not a flourishing state, owing to the war, and there is very little cash available, so perhaps you won’t consider it worthwhile.
What about the cuttings from New Ireland?2 I enjoyed these very much, as my opinions nearly coincide with yours, and I want to send them on to the Sitwells who have not seen them.
I hope you will be back in this country before long.
I enjoyed t
he Fortune, as my review testified.3
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
1–Douglas Goldring (1887–1960), novelist and travel writer. Beginning in Nov.–Dec., the Egoist carried consecutive articles by him on ‘Three Georgian Novelists’ (Compton Mackenzie, Hugh Walpole and Gilbert Cannan).
2–Goldring had published anonymously Dublin: Explorations and Reflections By An Englishman (1917), in which he mocked Ireland’s Literary Renaissance (New York, 1916) by the Irish author and journalist Ernest A. Boyd (1887–1946). The two went on sparring for weeks in The New Ireland, a Dublin weekly paper, throughout May and June.
3–TSE found the first half of The Fortune (Dublin, 1918) ‘boring’, but thought its portrayal of English Society on the eve of war made it ‘unquestionably a brilliant novel’ (Egoist, Jan. 1918).
TO Harriet Monroe
MS Houghton
7 November 1918
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Miss Monroe
I have handed your correspondence re Mr Jepson to Miss Weaver, who I expect will include it at my request in the next issue of the Egoist, deleting the phrases mentioned.1
I confidently hoped that I should be able to send you the article at the time promised, but various personal matters have so broken up my summer that I have done no work at all. I still hope to let you have it this autumn. As for verse – I have so very little nowadays that I have been able to provide enough only for one issue of the Little Review in the past year.
With all best wishes for the future success of Poetry.
Sincerely yours