The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922
Page 43
I hope to return to America for a visit in the summer or autumn, as soon as conditions are normal for travel and I can be spared for a time from my Foreign Exchange work. I look forward to seeing you then. I am aware of still having the Organon which I will now finish for you with all possible expedition. I hope you will forgive the delay. I shall also see that you get a copy of a small book which I expect to publish in the spring.
I suppose that you have either been doing war work of some kind or else the Department has been so depleted that you have been over-worked, and in either case have had no time for any independent scholarship. You never sent me Patañjali, but I am not in a position to reproach you! I should like to know what work you have in mind to do. It is a great pity that the life of a Harvard Professor is so engrossed with executive work and committees that he has scant time for writing. Oxford dons complain of this too, but they really don’t know how bad it can be.
I should like to have news of Lanman sometime. Will you give him my affectionate regards?
With best wishes for Mrs Woods and yourself
Gratefully yours,
Thomas S. Eliot
Vivien Eliot TO Henry Eliot
MS Houghton
21 Nov[ember] 1918
18 Crawford Mansions
My dear Henry
Thank you ever so much for sending me (us) that £20 which arrived two days ago. It was a shame you had to cable it – it costs so much. I expect the mails will be safer now. It was a very unexpected present, and I have reason to thank you, for Tom says I am to get my winter clothes out of it. Having been out of London for six months at a stretch, and too ill to think of such things I have also lately arrived at my last rag. Now, the weather is cold, and the prices of clothes and materials are very high, higher than they have been at all up till now. I have got a suit in hand already, and shall now be able to get all I need, thanks to you.
How are your ears at present? Your mother wrote that your good ear had been giving trouble as well. That is really sickening, but I hope there is nothing in it. Tom gets very deaf, at times, but when he gets the doctor to blow the wax out he is all right again. I think there is nothing actually wrong with T’s ears, as with yours. My father is quite deaf with one ear, but he hears very well with the other, so it doesn’t matter much.
The day before yesterday I had a tooth extracted, with gas. I have a great loathing of gas, and am terribly cowardly about it. I scream the whole time! It upsets me very much, but I had a splendid anaesthetist this time and it was not so terrifying. I had an abscess this size at the end of my tooth. It had been giving me great agony at times. My teeth now seem to have gone all to pieces again. There are endless fillings to do, and I think another might [have] to come out. Isn’t life a hell with bad teeth?
On the morning I was to go and have this done Tom started to have flu, so I went with a heavy heart. He has not been very bad, so far, I am glad to say. I think we took it in time – he is up, but not out, today. Tom takes cold very much more easily than I do. Most of my colds are caught from him. I think he would be better if he had one side of his nose cauterised, as our doctor advised.
I really have not been able to rejoice much over Peace! In the abstract I do, and I try to make myself realise it. But conditions here will be so hard, harder than ever, perhaps, for a long long time, and I must say it is difficult to feel anything at all. One is too stunned altogether.
Poor Tom’s disaster over his Navy job very nearly did for both of us. It was indeed the last straw. I don’t know how we have weathered that storm. The first thing I am trying to realise is that as soon as I can, I really must, I ought to, go to America. I say I, but I mean we. Only, of course now again, there are such difficulties about Tom. Had he got into the Navy it would have been easy, it would have followed. But now, back at the Bank, and with the Bank’s amazing kindness and tolerance behind him, he can scarcely begin agitating about something else at once. I should think he could manage to get a month’s holiday during next summer, if he explained the circumstances, and that could just give time for a flying visit. I think your parents can count on that, and perhaps something will turn up to make a longer visit possible.
I can’t help feeling it is almost absurd to be writing this, and that I never shall get to America really.
Do write to me soon.
Yrs. ever
Vivien
I am going to enquire if photographs can be sent now. It has been forbidden all this time or I should have sent you some.
__________________
You see all your drafts did arrive, it was dreadful that you should have been left in doubt. We were off our heads all the summer.
TO John Rodker
MS Virginia
2 December 1918
18 Crawford Mansions
I sent you the books several days ago to deal with as you think fit. Could you let us have article some time next week. Don’t need to mention all of them – do as you please. I waited to write because I hoped to suggest a meeting, but I have been ill and now my wife is, so my plans are all suspended.
Yours ever
T.S.E.
FROM John Quinn
CC NYPL (MS)
3 December 1918
[New York]
Dear Mr Eliot:
I received your letter of the 13th of November this morning.
I am sorry you had the worry between the Army and the Navy matter. I am glad that you were able to return to the bank and that your maximum loss was a month’s time.
You at least have the satisfaction of knowing that it was not your fault that you were unable to make yourself useful to the country, and that you were willing to go. That is the main thing.
Personally, I am very sorry for the armistice. I should like to have had the war go on until half a million Germans were captured in warfare or killed. I think there has been a complete misunderstanding of the German psychology. A Hun does not understand kindness or generosity or magnanimity. A blooded horse or a blooded dog does, but not a Hun or a hyena.
What I did for you about the Army was done cheerfully of course, and was very little at that.
I have heard nothing from Knopf about your book. He possibly will talk to me about it. If he decides against it, and if I can be of any help to you in looking for another publisher, I shall be glad to do it. Personally, I think you could do a little better than Knopf, with possibly some such house as Scribner’s or the Macmillan Company, for, after all, your work is not quite as revolutionary and as explosive as E. P.’s.
You say that you ‘wonder why The Little Review does not gain subscriptions in America’. The answer is that ‘gaining subscriptions’ is a business matter, and that the two women that run The Little Review know nothing about business matters, that they are wholly lacking in tact and what I once called the minor amenities of life, what a stenographer
I think you quite aptly describe the present condition of The Little Review as that of a ‘Coalition Government, satisfying nobody’. But I imagine there will be a dissolution very soon, as to which you may consult E. P., to whom I am writing sending him a copy of a letter declining to make any further financial contributions. Two thousand dollars in two years is quite enough. But Pound can tell you that part of it.
The Dial has been moved to New York, and while it is pseudo-socialistic and pseudo-ethologistic and pseudo-Freudistic and pseudo-philosophistic and pseudo-a-lot-of-things, even pseudo-litho literature, it cannot pay much, if anything. But it does not stink as much as the pseudosities of The New Republic. I occasionally buy The New Repub
lic, but I think too much of my person to use its sheets in the toilet. The New Republic reminds me of the story that a friend of mine used to tell of the proper reply to an insulting letter:
‘Dear Sir:
Your letter of such-a-date is before me. In a moment it will be behind me.’
The Atlantic Monthly is of course academic, but within strictly academic lines it has published some pretty lively things during the last year. The North American Review occasionally has an article or two devoted to literature or art, but for the most part the things in it are mere journalism.
Again let me say that if Knopf is not interested in your book I shall be glad to do what I can to get another publisher for it here.
With kind regards, I am,
Sincerely yours,
[unsigned]
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
8 December 1918
18 Crawford Mansions,
Crawford St, w.1
My dearest Mother,
I was very much relieved to hear from you at last that father had got my first letter and my cable. I had been worrying very much over not having written to either of you during that trying period.
Since the armistice we have had a round of illness. First Vivien had her tooth out and I at the same time had a light attack of what I think must have been influenza, as it left me so very weak afterwards. As soon as I was out again V. caught it in earnest from a friend, was in bed for over a week, and has not been out of doors yet. The worst is that it has affected her nerves so that she can hardly sleep at all. She wanted to get some Christmas presents to send to you in America, but she can’t tell when she will be able to do shopping.
Today I thought I was going to have influenza again, having all the symptoms including a splitting head. However, it has quite left me this evening, but I feel very very weak, and have written to postpone my lecture.
I have £360 a year salary now, so that I ought to be practically selfsupporting, which would be a great relief to me. It is certainly a great improvement. What I aimed at was to earn enough from the Bank so that I could devote my evenings and Sundays to literary work without thought of gain. There will probably be a number of new periodicals in London soon, and with my extended connections, and becoming more and more well known in London I could keep myself busy with contracts the whole time. But I have come to the conclusion that it would be frittering my mind and energy away. Also, at present I am very tired from a most exhausting year, alarms, illness, movings, and military difficulties. I want first a rest. So I am not going to write for several months, except perhaps a little
[incomplete]
TO John Rodker
MS Houghton
9 December 1918
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Rodker,
I have given your review to Weaver for the January issue, and have also forwarded your communication to her.
I shall not be doing any writing for the Egoist for some months, as my doctor has advised me to take a rest and merely read for some time. Would you care to deal with any review books that come in from month to month, on the style of your excellent Egoist and L. Review reviews. In consideration of a fee. I have spoken to Weaver about this, and it is quite definite whether she writes to you or not – I don’t know whether she expected to, as I said I was writing to you.
Sincerely
T. S. Eliot
TO Arnold Bennett
MS Beinecke
14 December 1918
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mr Bennett,
I am writing to thank you in retrospect of the kind letter you wrote for me this summer when I was trying to get an American Commission. I can testify to the effect it produced upon more than one official, though I found that no letter or accumulation of letters would have cut the red tape of American bureaucracy at once. Happily the letter remains in my possession, to be realised upon by my heirs at Sothebys; and I remain in civilian life.
I took the liberty of sending you some time ago the Little Review with some verse of mine which I hoped you might like.
I trust that you will soon be able to give all your attention to your own work, and perhaps incidentally preserve Government-Office life in wartime for future generations through that medium.1
Again with many thanks.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
1–Bennett had briefly been Director of Propaganda at the Ministry of Information, Oct.– Nov.
TO Graham Wallas
MS LSE
14 December 1918
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Professor Wallas,
I am writing, after a long epidemic of domestic influenza, to thank you in retrospect for your testimonial last summer. It is hardly necessary to say that I am still a civilian, but I only missed a Navy place by a hair’s breadth. Under the circumstances, I am just as well satisfied. I encountered a great deal of red tape, and met with several disappointments during the summer, and still (as a result of this plus peace plus influenza) feel very tired, and [am] not writing at present.
I wonder if an American friend named Gray,1 professor of history at Bryn Mawr, and on the Shipping Board over here, presented an introduction to you. I think you would have found him agreeable.
With many thanks and most seasonable wishes to Mrs Wallas and yourself,
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
1–Howard L. Gray, Professor of European History at Bryn Mawr, 1915–40; author of War Time Control of Industry: The Experience of England (1918). TSE wrote ‘Grey’.
Vivien Eliot TO Charlotte C. Eliot
MS Houghton
15 December [1918]
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mrs Eliot
Of course this will arrive very late for Xmas, and I am so sorry. But influenza has prevented my getting anything off in time – even now I have not been well in time to get any little presents for anyone in America. I shall send you something a little later on – and meanwhile I hope so much that you will all have a very happy Xmas. We ought all to have a much happier Xmas than we have had for years. It is disappointing that thousands of people are still separated, but that is inevitable. My brother will not be with us again, he is at home now, as he managed to get a few days leave, but must go back to Italy on December 20. My parents are very disappointed.
It is really difficult to adapt oneself to the new conditions – although the conditions here continue in most ways to make ordinary living difficult and terribly expensive. But to realise that at last the fearful weight and horror are over, well, one can hardly understand it.
Tom started with influenza, and although he had it extremely slightly it left him very weak. I got it about a week later, and had such a persistent fever that I was kept in bed for a week, and indoors for a fortnight. I am only just getting strong enough to get about again. Since the war stopped and all that period of indecision and anxiety is over Tom’s health seems to be very gradually improving. But he has been worrying himself about his mind not acting as it used to do, and a feeling that his writing was falling off. So I felt very strongly that a complete mental rest was what he really ought to have. So after a good deal of argument I have got him to sign a contract with me, saying that he will do no writing of any kind, except what is necessary for the one lecture a week which he has to give, and no reading, except poetry and novels and such reading as is necessary for the lectures, for three months from now.1 Also he has promised to take a walk every day. I am sure you will be glad to hear this. When one’s brain is very fatigued, the only thing to do, I think, is to give up the attempt to use it. For if one goes on tasking it and it will not respond one feels one’s powers are failing and that means despair. I believe if Tom tries now to live healthily and regularly for three months he will find his mind is quite fresh again.
We are now beginning to look forward to going to U.S.A. I expect Tom told you he thinks he can ask for two months off at t
he end of the summer. It seems a long time to wait, but as Lloyds have behaved with so much appreciation and generosity to him through all that trying time, and always take such interest in him, he feels he cannot ask before that, as business will not be settled down for a long time yet. What we both hope is to bring you both back with us, and perhaps some others of the family too, so that we might get a Xmas together next year.
With love and best wishes to you both,
from Vivien
1–As agreed, TSE published nothing for three months, taking up reviewing again in Apr. 1919.
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
22 December 1918
18 Crawford Mansions
My dearest Mother,
It is some days since I have heard from you. I shall hope to hear that Henry is with you for Christmas and the rest of the week. It would be nice if he could take a long holiday, when Husband and Thomas get back, and come over here – it is really time that he came abroad, and just now he must be very stale, and depressed to think that the war is ended without his having taken part in it.