The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922
Page 60
I am sending you the photograph, and you can send the other back when you get it.
It seems to me that it would be just as economical for you to take a flat, if not a small house, in Boston as to run that large and expensive house in St Louis. I do not believe that your presence in St L. is essential for the sale of the property, and the present suspense and waiting must be very trying. Have you worked out (1) The expense of living in a very modest way in the east and shutting up the St Louis house, as compared with your present life. (2) Whether any of the important business requires your presence in St Louis.2
Always your very devoted son
Tom.
1–After the Eliots’ most recent visit, OM recorded in her diary that VHE made her understand why some women fell in love with their own sex. Of TSE she noted (17 Dec.): ‘his mind is so accurate and dissecting and fits in every idea like a Chinese puzzle, and my mind is so vague and floating and I feel he must think me such an ass’ (quoted in Seymour, Life on the Grand Scale, 315).
2–TSE emphasised the last two sentences with firm marginal lines.
TO John Rodker
MS Virginia
1 February 1920
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Rodker,
The Copies arrived yesterday, and I congratulate you on an admirable book. I do not think that a guinea is at all too much to charge for such a piece of work. I have not noticed any mistakes except in Apollinax and of course my own mistake about the title.1
Do you send copies to Pound and Lewis as if not I must present them? And I understood from you (didn’t I) that Quinn had ordered several copies of all these publications. Still, I think I had better send him one personally from myself.
I notice stated in the back that ten copies are for review. What papers do these go to?
Many thanks for producing such an excellent book.
Yours
T. S. Eliot
When you have the copies ready for signing, let me know where the signature ought to be put. I have numbered the copies you gave me.
1–The title of the poem was misprinted as ‘Mr. Appolinax’.
TO John Rodker
MS Virginia
6 February 1920
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Rodker,
Thanks for your letter. I will come out and sign the books on Monday evening if nothing hinders, and unless I hear from you to the contrary. If Monday does not suit you, please give me two other evenings to choose from.
No, I don’t think that Review Copies need be sent elsewhere, those three seem to me quite enough.
Yours
T. S. Eliot
TO Scofield Thayer
TS Beinecke
14 February 1920
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Scofield,
I saw Lincoln MacVeagh a fortnight or more ago, and he gave me some copies of the Dial and some instructions from you. It struck me that he was far too much occupied with the business on which he had been sent by Holts to be able to accomplish very much; and furthermore that he would not be here long enough to familiarise himself with the London situation; and also that he did not have sufficient authority on behalf of the Dial, so I told him that I would write to you myself.
I shall be very glad to do what I can to further your designs. But MacVeagh was unable to be very clear as to what you wanted. Apparently, you would like me to show the Dial to the people on the list he gave me, mention the rates of payment, and inform them that you would accept anything they sent – whether appearing also in Europe or not. I know most of the people – at least in England – and could do this. But I should, you see, be incurring a certain responsibility in making such a request of people, and I should prefer to wait until I hear from you exactly what you want and what you offer. So I shall hope to hear from you.
Meanwhile, I have two suggestions to offer. I think, in the first place, that if you wish to make much of your English contributions, that you ought to come and inspect conditions here for yourself, and second that you ought to have a permanent representative here. I mean by the latter a person of discrimination and intimate knowledge of London letters, who would know everybody, and would have authority to fill a certain number of pages every month, and could solicit, accept, and pay for contributions on the spot. I think that this is as necessary for a paper as for a business house. People are much more likely to contribute if the matter can be pushed and settled on the spot.
As to your coming here, I think you would find it worthwhile to get a reorientation. If you only want to get people who have an American reputation already, in order to have their names to impress the American public, then of course the only essential is to pay enormous rates. But I rather infer from your list that you would like to have others as well – people who are among the best but not known in America as yet. Only a person on the spot knows just who these people are and their relative rating. It is a question of investment – if you were going to make an investment in English shares you would either come here or consult an English Broker. You have no idea how things have changed in four years since you were here.
I do not think that you ought to form any alliance or appoint a representative until you have been here yourself. For instance, you must understand that writers here are divided into at least two groups, those who appear regularly in the London Mercury and those who do not.1 The Mercury has no standing among intelligent people, and the paper appeals wholly to a large semi-educated public. It is socially looked down upon – a point which is difficult to explain at a distance but quite evident here. Not many of the best writers here would care to appear in a paper which was closely associated with it, and some might decline altogether.
I introduced MacVeagh to Murry, who is the editor of the Athenaeum. It might be possible to get essays which appear in this: Santayana, Russell, Strachey, Lewis, Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, have contributed various series of essays to it.
Hardy and Conrad (to say nothing of France, d’Annunzio, Gorki etc.) have reached a point of distinction where they do not add to the prestige of any paper: simply because they are so well on that they cannot be considered by anyone as associating themselves with the policy or taste of a paper, and only occasionally contribute to any younger paper as a kindness to the editors.
I think you would want a similar representation in France. The more important men there would be such as Romains, Duhamel, Vildrac, Cros, Valéry, Vanderpyl, André Salmon2 … But Pound knows much more about them than I do, as he lives in France a good deal now, and knows most of these men personally.
Also, if you want drawings etc. an art representative. Lewis, Wadsworth, John, Roberts, Sickert ought to be glad to have their drawings used. There are of course important people in Paris too: Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse, Marchand3 etc.
The Little Review has been represented here (since Pound withdrew) by John Rodker (who is publishing a limited edition of my poems), and I hear that they are making an effort to collect money to pay English contributors.
But I think, as I say, that it would be worth your while to come and spend several months here, and meet people.
Yours ever,
Tom.
1–This etiquette was not observed by VW(Diary of Virginia Woolf, II, 1920–1924, ed. Anne Olivier Bell [1978], entry for 31 Jan. 1920).
2–Jules Romains (1885–1972); Georges Duhamel (1884–1966); Charles Vildrac (1882–1971), Guy-Charles Cros (1879–1956); Paul Valéry (1871–1945); Fritz Vanderpyl (1876–1950); and André Salmon (1881–1969).
3–Jean Hippolyte Marchand (1883–1940), painter admired by the Bloomsbury Group.
TO Henry Eliot
TS Houghton
Sunday 15 February 1920
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Henry,
I sent you a few days ago by registered post a copy of my portrait (the one Knopf is using for advertising) and a copy of my Limited Edition. I have not sent this to Mother or told her about
it. I thought of cutting out the page on which occurs a poem called ‘Ode’ and sending the book as if there had been an error and an extra page put in. Will you read through the new poems and give your opinion. The ‘Ode’ is not in the edition that Knopf is publishing, all the others are. And I suppose she will have to see that book. Do you think that ‘Sweeney Erect’ will shock her?
Some of the new poems, the Sweeney ones, especially ‘Among the Nightingales’ and ‘Burbank’ are intensely serious, and I think these two are among the best that I have ever done. But even here I am considered by the ordinary Newspaper critic as a Wit or satirist, and in America I suppose I shall be thought merely disgusting.
I am grateful to you for giving me so much news of mother. She gives it herself only in a vague and fragmentary form. I am interested in your suggestion that she ought to put the Mercantile Trust Co. in charge. I am always wondering whether it [is] really necessary for her to take so much upon her own shoulders, or whether it is not merely the family temperament – to do everything oneself and to put on climbing irons to mount a molehill. I am not in the least surprised at Uncle Ed, and the sooner she gets good lawyers, brokers, estate agents and bankers and has nothing to do with Ed the better.1
I have just written to her: I want her to take her summer holiday here in England instead of in Boston. I can see nothing against it. She will have to leave St Louis anyway for three months. She does not want to come to England until her estate is settled. I cannot believe that she would stand any serious financial loss by a few months absence, with you in Chicago and good agents in St Louis. I cannot believe that the difference between 1200 miles and 3000 miles matters so much as that. I know she wants to come, I am sure that it would do her a world of good, not only seeing me and seeing how I live, but the voyage, the change, the getting away from old scenes. I cannot see that expense, compared with the expense of my coming to America, can count at all. For she would be able to live in comfort here for much less than at home – the cost of living is less, and the rate of exchange would make her money go much further. I mean, of course, that Marian should come with her.
The only thing that I think is holding her back is the family Fear and Conscience – the feeling that she ought not to leave her business matters even for a short time lest something (unknown) should happen, and she might then have less to leave to her children. And the same feeling will make her go on postponing and postponing until it is too late.
Consider my position. I am thinking all the time of my desire to see her. I cannot get away from it. Unless I can really see her again I shall never be happy. Now if I come to America it will be nothing but haste, worry, and fatigue. I can get, at most, ten or possibly fourteen days with her. We should be thinking of the end the whole time. Vivien could not come with me because of the cost of the fare, and mother would never see her. Mother and I would both be simply worn out by it (and of course, it would be my only holiday for a year). Now why should not mother come here while she is physically able, and keep my visit to America until she is no longer strong enough to come? I feel sure that if mother could see things in the true perspective, look ahead and not see, in the Eliot way, only the immediate difficulties and details, she would make up her mind at once and come this summer.
I feel that I am struggling not against real material obstacles but against the family temperament. And I seem to see the relatives lifting up their eyes piously and saying that it is my duty to come to mother, and not proper for mother to come to me. As if it were filial piety to see her for ten days instead of ten weeks.
What she is likely to do is to wait until she has sold the house, and then wait until she is settled in Cambridge, and then wait until she has provided for Margaret in her absence, and then wait for something else, and like the rest of us, always put the little things in front of the big. The time for her to come is after she has sold the house, or before she has found a house in the East. That may take a long time, and why should she not take a holiday first? The point is that there are always enough things at any moment to prevent one doing anything important.
Will you try and look at this in a large perspective, even if no one else will, and then try to help me? This has been the greatest problem on my mind ever since peace.
I must stop now. I will write again soon.
Always affectionately,
yours,
Tom
1–Edward Cranch Eliot (1858–1928), lawyer. The family felt that he should not charge a widowed relative his full professional fees.
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
15 February 1920
18 Crawford Mansions
My dear dear Mother,
The last letter I have from you is one of January 27. It gave me pleasure of course but it did not answer my question. I wanted to know definitely whether you would come to England this year, so as to arrange my holidays, which arrangement is made in March. The point is that if I come I must take my holiday for it. I shall not get another.
I want to see you soon, not wait until conditions are perfectly favourable. Now just consider what it will be if I try to come to America:
I shall have to fix my holiday late in the year, so as not to conflict with others
Now is this worth it, while you are still physically able to come here? For you to come and have time, settle down for a time and live with us? Unless I can see you once again for something better than the breathless visit I have described, I shall never be really happy to the end of my life.
Is anything so important as that? does anything else really matter? Do you want to come?
Have you worked out just what you will lose in money by coming? Have you seriously considered putting your real estate in the hands of the Mercantile Trust Co, or some company like that <, and leaving power to Henry to act if necessary>? I feel that time is more important in our meeting than in the sale of property. It seems incredible that there is no one you can trust to do these things for you.
You will have to come east anyway for the three hot months – your children will not allow you to stay in St Louis as long as you did last year – and if you can go as far as Boston, why not London? Will just that difference mean financial ruin?
As to the expense. You have only to consider the fare – that will be double the cost of my coming to you, because of Marian coming too. That is the only difference. The cost of living here would be less than the cost of a summer in Massachusetts. 1) Because the cost of living is, still, lower than in America 2) Because your dollars would buy many more pounds than in normal times.
So please consider the practical question of a summer here, for you and Marian, compared with a summer in Boston. I say nothing about the benefit I think you would both get (after your worries of the past year) from the voyage and the change. I only repeat that if you cannot come, if I can never again see you for more than ten days or two weeks, that I shall never be happy. And if you come, it must be quickly, soon.
I do not want to speak of anything else in this letter. I am busy at the Bank, having been put in charge of settling all the pre-War Debts between the Bank and Germans, which is an important appointment, full of interesting legal questions. I shall have several assistants.
Your devoted son
Tom.
TO Ottoline Morrell
MS Texas
Sunday [15 February 1920]
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Ottoline,
I found your card on getting back from Marlow this evening. I should have liked so much to come tomorrow night, but I ca
nnot. I am disappointed at having seen so little of you during this very brief visit, in fact, only having made the beginning of seeing you at all. For you, I am sure, the visit to town will have been an unqualified success. I hope we can make the most of Wednesday evening.
Vivien can come tomorrow night, and would like to, very much, but says that if you have anything else you care to do will you please wire to her not to come. She will come unless she hears from you. She is dreading your leaving, too.
Till Wednesday, then –
Yours
Tom.
I enclose the Phoenix letter. You could never go, of course, but if you know any people who you think ought to join, would you let them know? Do you think Miss Sands would take tickets?1 It seems as if there ought to be enough people in London to fill the Lyric five times a year, who could afford to join the Phoenix.
1–Ethel Sands (1873–1962), wealthy American-born painter; pupil of Walter Sickert and friend of OM. For the Phoenix Society, see letter to The Athenaeum, 27 Feb.
TO Lytton Strachey
MS BL
17 February 1920
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Lytton,
It is delightful to hear from you1 sitting alone in Pangbourne ‘like a Sage escaped from the inanity of Life’s battle’,2 but I hear that you were lately in town and did not apprise me. So how should I believe you when you say you wish I was in Pangbourne too? Nevertheless I wish you were here. How extraordinarily difficult London is. One bleeds to death very slowly here. I find that Dryden is a very great man, and I am trying to read Clarendon’s History3 – is it a good book? Why are you distracted?