by T. S. Eliot
T.S.E.
TO Edgar Jepson
MS Beinecke
4 March 1919
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mr Jepson,
I shall be very glad to come and hear you on Sunday at 3 (?) and if you leave any opening shall defend the Elizabethans. I am pretty sure I can come.
I had been meaning to write (but had mislaid your address) to acknowledge your bold championship in The Egoist. I wonder if Monroe will have anything more to say! It was, by the way, to me that she wrote to ask to have the correspondence printed in The Egoist.1
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
1–In ‘Recent United States Poetry’ (English Review, 26 May 1918), Jepson had written dismissively of the poems by Vachel Lindsay, Edgar Lee Masters and Robert Frost to which Poetry had awarded prizes. It seemed ‘incredible’, he said, that in the year when Poetry had published TSE’s ‘La Figlia Che Piange’, its first prize should go to ‘that lumbering fakement, “All Life in a Life” [by Masters]’. When Austin Harrison, editor of the English Review, refused to print Harriet Monroe’s indignant response, it appeared in the Nov.–Dec. issue of the Egoist, together with his reply and a further letter by her. An unrepentant Jepson intervened in the Jan.–Feb. 1919 number, and was criticised by Monroe and Aiken in Sept. (A condensed form of Jepson’s attack in the Little Review in May also provoked a reply from William Carlos Williams.)
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
12 March 1919
18 Crawford Mansions
My dearest Mother
I have had two letters from you since I wrote last, and one enclosing some old letters that father wrote me twenty years ago. I should have written last Sunday but that I have been engrossed in a problem which has come before me; and taking counsel of friends. I have just had a very flattering offer. It will of course be decided in the course of a few days, but while I am writing I might as well tell you about it. I have been asked to become the assistant editor of the Athenaeum,1 on a two years contract, at £500 per annum. It is an old paper, for many years a (purely) literary weekly, with a very high standing in London. More recently it was changed to a monthly, and lost its character, but now it has been bought by a rich man who is turning it into a literary weekly again. The man who is to be editor2 is very anxious to get me as assistant, and says he would rather have me than anyone in England.
The advantages are:
Social Prestige.
Probably more leisure.
More money at once.
The disadvantages are:
It is practically a new paper: it may succeed or fail.
In the latter case I should be in difficulties at the end of my contract. Against this, some probability that the distinction of having held the position would assure me getting something else.
No assurance that the salary would rise. At the bank I am sure of that.
The work might be more exhausting than the bank work; and would have no more relation to my own serious work than the bank work has.
I have lately been shifted into new and much more interesting work in the bank which is not routine but research – practically economics and in fact am a sort of department or bureau by myself.
I am to see the General Manager about this.
The chief fact militating against the acceptance is the insecurity after two years, and the fact that there would be a lot of drudgery in journalism which would be fatiguing. There is of course as much difference between journalism and literature as between teaching and literature.
There it is in brief, but I assure you I have thought hard and am still thinking. I shall decide in a few days – the question is how soon I shall be getting a really good salary at the bank.
Anyway, it is a great compliment.
I am anxious for you to get settled in Cambridge. Then I shall come to visit you and bring you back with me.
Very affectionately
your son Tom.
1–Founded in 1828, the Athenaeum had recently been bought by Arthur Rowntree.
2–John Middleton Murry, critic and editor: see Glossary of Names.
TO Edgar Jepson
MS Beinecke
12 March 1919
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Jepson,
Will you let me have your paper to press on Weaver for the Egoist?1 (I can’t swear how long it is, but lost count of time in listening to it). If you will I should like that and would write or attempt some sort of reply. You know you promised another when you had put it in shape, but I have given up hopes of that.
Yrs.
T. S. Eliot
I have just been given a decadent work of sentiment on the ‘New Elizabethans’2 which makes me feel that some of the sewers of the elder period ought to be aired.
Damn Lamb, Swinburne, J. A. Symonds, Dekker, Heywood and domestic tragedy except Yorkshire Tr[agedy].3
Glad you put in a word for Tourneur – he is a great poet. Think you quite wrong on B. Jonson.4
1–TSE had attended a talk on Elizabethan literature by Jepson on 9Mar. Jepson’s paper was not used in the Egoist.
2–TSE wrote an unsigned review of E. B. Osborn, The New Elizabethans: A First Selection of the Lives of Young Men Who Have Fallen in the Great War, in A., 4 Apr. 1919.
3–TSE wrote later, in ‘Four Elizabethan Dramatists’: ‘The accepted attitude toward Elizabethan drama was established on the publication of Charles Lamb’s Specimens [of English Dramatic Poets, who Lived about the Time of Shakespeare (1808)] … For the Specimens made it possible to read the plays as poetry while neglecting their function on the stage’ (C. 2: 6, Feb. 1924; SE).
4–TSE had a high regard for Jonson as poet and dramatist: ‘Ben Jonson’, TLS, 13 Nov. 1919; SE).
TO Virginia Woolf
MS Berg
26 March 1919
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mrs Woolf,
Thank you so much for sending me the patterns,1 and so many of them. I still think that the one originally chosen is the best, and would probably also be best liked by the people who might buy the book. The dark blue one is also good. But these may be rather expensive, so I have chosen one of the others (marked 3) as an alternative, and it is only reasonable to leave the choice between these three to you.
I wonder if your husband got my note. We were very annoyed at having made an engagement for Saturday so far ahead that it could not be broken, but I do hope you will ask us again.
I look forward to seeing you. It is very good of you to have taken so much trouble over the papers.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
1–Papers of various designs and textures were used to cover copies of Poems, issued on 12May.
TO Herbert Read1
MS University of Victoria
26 March 1919
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Read,
Thanks for your book.2 I like it. I read most of it in the train this morning, and when I have read it again I should like to discuss it with you.
I want No. 19 of Wadsworth’s Landscape in two colours.3 Framed. Only I can’t pay for it till after the 1st of the month.
Shall see you Friday.
Yours
T. S. E.
1–Herbert Read, art and literary critic, poet and novelist, friend of TSE: see Glossary of Names.
2–HR had sent his collection, Naked Warriors (1919), with a note: ‘Here is my gory war-book. You might like “Comeliness”.’ TSE later called it ‘the best war poetry that I can remember having seen’ (‘Reflections on Contemporary Poetry’, Egoist 6: 3, July 1919).
3–TSE had seen the picture at Frank Rutter’s new Adelphi Gallery, where Edward Wadsworth was exhibiting his drawings and woodcuts. Frank Rutter (1876–1937), art critic and curator, and active supporter of women’s suffrage, edited (with HR) the journal Art & Letters, 1917–20. He had been editor of To-Day, 1902–4, and curator of Leeds City Art Gallery,
1912–18; and he was art critic of the Sunday Times from 1903 until his death.
TO Bertrand Russell
MS McMaster
26 March 1919
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Bertie,
We had been considering the means of getting your things back to you when your letter came.1 The people will be leaving at the end of this week. Vivien will not be able to go down on that day, but if the weather moderates so as to make the journey possible for her she will begin to send the things on by the latter part of next week. She will be using the house a good deal this spring; but it does not look as if the weather would permit her to do so for some little time. She will however go down as presently as possible and look after your articles.
Sincerely
T.S.E.
1–Russell had written asking for the return of his belongings from the Marlow cottage. ‘You needn’t bring the things all at once, if it is easier to bring them by degrees,’ he wrote on 19 Mar.; but he wanted the ‘tea-table & coffee-grinder as soon as possible’, and enclosed a list including ‘check trousers, thick overcoat, top hat, fur for neck, long coat or cloak for term, rough coat for country, and day dress for term and day dress for country’.
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
29 March 1919
18 Crawford Mansions
My dearest Mother,
I have neglected you this week, but it is so hard to write about affairs when you know that they will be decided even before the recipient gets the letter. They are decided now. I am staying in the bank. The bank people were very anxious for me to stay. They are organising some new work, a new department, in fact, of a very interesting and important kind – not ordinary bank work at all, but economic work – I cannot go into further details about it, but I am started on it already; and it will be on a large scale, with numerous assistants. There is a man from the Foreign Office coming in too. As for the salary, I shall know in a few days what it will be. It will be better than my present one, and in a few years ought to be beyond the £500 offered by the Athenaeum. The work gives opportunity for initiative and is work for which they wish men of higher education. It will give much more responsibility, and therefore more freedom.
I was moved to this conclusion for several reasons. First the insecurity of a paper. A weekly which is practically a new one, and which must build up a new circulation, is a great venture. If it failed I should have to begin a new struggle – in journalism. I should be worrying all the time about whether it would succeed. The bank work offers prospects of a very good salary. I know the people and like them, and they like me very much. I know where I am with them.
But there is another argument besides the financial one. I felt that the constant turning out of ‘copy’ for a weekly paper would exhaust me for genuine creative work. It would never be my first interest, any more than finance is. Finance I can get away from at the end of a day; but review writing would stay by me; I should always be toiling to make my work better than it need be for ephemeral reading. I could not turn it out mechanically and then go to my own work.
Then, if I turned out a good deal of second rate stuff it would not in the end add to my reputation – and to make everything first rate would take too much out of me.
As it is, I occupy rather a privileged position. I am out of the intrigues and personal hatreds of journalism, and everyone respects me for working in a bank. My social position is quite as good as it would be as editor of a paper. I only write what I want to – now – and everyone knows that anything I do write is good. I can influence London opinion and English literature in a better way. I am known to be disinterested. Even through the Egoist I am getting to be looked up to by people who are far better known to the general public than I. There is a small and select public which regards me as the best living critic, as well as the best living poet, in England. I shall of course write for the Ath. and keep my finger in it. I am much in sympathy with the editor, who is one of my most cordial admirers. With that and the Egoist and a young quarterly review1 which I am interested in, and which is glad to take anything I will give, I can have more than enough power to satisfy me. I really think that I have far more influence on English letters than any other American has ever had, unless it be Henry James. I know a great many people, but there are many more who would like to know me, and I can remain isolated and detached.
All this sounds very conceited, but I am sure it is true, and as there is no outsider from whom you would hear it, and America really knows very little of what goes on in London, I must say it myself. Because it will give you pleasure if you believe it, and it will help to explain my point of view.
I will send you the Athenaeum when there are things of mine in it. There will be one on Friday.2 I suppose it will be in the library too.
I have written this long letter all about myself, but only on one point, and with none of the personal details about ourselves that ought to go into a letter. And of course too I am very anxious for more news from you.
But just now I am very busy. I have promised to do a good deal of work for Murry (the editor-in-chief) until he finds someone else, because he has been so kind to me.3 And with the new bank work, I shall find my hands quite full for a time.
Always your devoted son
Tom
1–Art&Letters, 1917–20, was initially edited by Frank Rutter and HR. SS provided finance, edited one issue, and sought TSE’s advice on the contents.
2–The first of TSE’s regular A. pieces over the next two years was an unsigned review of Osborn, The New Elizabethans: 4 Apr. 1919.
3–Although he did not accept the post of assistant literary editor, TSE wrote at least fifteen reviews for JMM over the year.
TO Brigit Patmore1
MS Beinecke
[April 1919?]
The Egoist, Oakley House,
Bloomsbury St, London, W.C.
Dear Brigit
Thank you for your letter, in spite of the first and last sentences. But if you were furious, why didn’t you say so? I shouldn’t have been frightened. Do you mean furious altogether, or in so far as you were sure I was wrong? You should, in writing, have given a concise summary of what my ‘judgment’ was, and then for my benefit, separated the chaff from the wheat. As it is, I am in the dark. Then you are wrong about two things. I don’t think I judge to the extent of thinking that I understand the whole or even the essential of a person, but merely that certain expressions and ways of acting seem to indicate certain things about them: these inferences are true or false, and people’s history is another matter. If I knew more of your history I should of course understand better what I can see of you, and of course without that knowledge I cannot judge. I can only observe, and correct by further observation.
And do you think it is necessary to subdue your personality to that of the person you are with, in order to understand them? It seems to me merely a question of being enough interested to forget oneself, which is very different from subduing oneself. I can’t see any reason for subduing oneself except for convenience, or simply because one is realised through the other person. The people who seem most curious about understanding others have usually struck me as very positive personalities.
Certainly, the man who is without vanity, or who can recover from an attack on his vanity and profit by it, has some greatness. Perhaps their vanity goes deeper than women’s, I don’t know. Vanity is so much part of the human passion – love of power, that it is perhaps never absent.
You must not on any account give me credit for being penetrating. I have impressed people that way before, and the result is always disaster. For there eventually comes some word or action which shows them my immense stupidity, and the whole thing goes up in smoke. Always cut what I appear to understand by half.
Don’t think I should fail to take account of what your life has been – only, however it interested me, and how much light it threw, it is not, in one way, essential. The question is what goes o
n in your mind now?
I must finish a review, before I get my things together.
Yours
TSE
1–Brigit Patmore (1882–1965), Irish writer and literary hostess: see Glossary of Names.
TO St John Hutchinson
MS Texas
1 April 1919
18 Crawford Mansions,
Crawford St, W.1.
Dear Jack
Your hospitality is very unfair but as you urge arguments of convenience I will accede if you will dine with me next week. I am looking forward to Seraglio1 very keenly. Love to Mary,
Yrs ever
T.S.E.
1–On 3 Apr. they went to a performance of Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail (‘The Abduction from the Seraglio’), conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
TO Henry Eliot
MS Houghton
6 April 1919
18 Crawford Mansions
My dear Henry
I have not written to you for a long time and there are some matters about which I ought to have written you. I suppose that Mother will have sent you some of my letters. First I must thank you for the cheque in your last letter but one, £10 and for the £21 you cabled. The last I did not know about until you wrote, as the bank did not notify me. We are very grateful for the money. We have got to have some wallpapering and painting done soon, which will be rather expensive, as the flat is in a very dirty condition after three years. We should rather like to change, but it would be almost impossible to find another good flat cheap in a good part of town. This flat is good and cheap, and in a good part of town, but the immediate neighbourhood and some of our neighbours, are not what we should like. It is rather noisy.1 – So we must be here for two years more. Then we shall be able to pay more, and we want a larger flat: we are rather tired of living in three rooms.
