The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922
Page 63
3–Translation: We are there. What a pity you aren’t here for Easter. Where are you spending Sunday? Paris is so gay. We hope to see Jack but the time is so short and we want to see everything. I think that perhaps we won’t be able to see him. T. S. E.
TO Ottoline Morrell
MS Texas
Saturday 10 April 1920
[London]
Dear Ottoline,
I opened your letter to Vivien as she is not here. Although we were very happy in Paris, I had the misfortune to get a slight attack of flu, and couldn’t get back until Tuesday night. It was very worrying and exhausting to Vivien having me on her hands in Paris, and having to fetch a doctor, get medicines etc., and the journey back was very trying for her. So as she had an opportunity to go away for a few days and rest she went away with some friends. I am really quite right again, except for feeling very weak and low spirited, especially at the thought of having used more than the money I had put aside for the visit with so little profit. But now I shall have to work hard as I have promised to submit a book to a publisher in June, and shall be hard pressed to get it done in time. Please don’t mention this to anybody as it is a secret.
Vivien will be back I think on Thursday and I expect she will be writing to you. She too will have to stay in town and work after that. I do hope that you will come to town again very soon (and stay the night) as otherwise it will be so difficult to see you for some time.
Yours always
Tom.
TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
Monday [12 April 1920]
Mary, how charming of you to ask us to dinner, and how we shall both enjoy seeing you again. Vivien is not here just now and she will grumble if I go without her; also this week is very difficult for me – especially after the most depressing adventure which Paris turned out to be – so will you please not be nasty, and invite us for next week and write and mention a day? I had influenza in Paris so please be kind, Mary. Let us come next week and have one of our good talks. Love to Jack.
Tom.
TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
Thursday [15 April 1920]
Mary, thank you for suggesting another day but I think Thursday is best after all so we will come Thursday if you please. And so will you wear the cotton earrings and look nice and be nice and we will talk a great deal. Looking forward to the outing.
Tom.
I see your friend Toulet has turned up in the Times.1
1–Paul-Jean Toulet (1867–1920), journalist, poet and novelist. His novel La Jeune Fille Verte was reviewed in the TLS, 15 Apr. 1920.
TO Clement Shorter1
MS Beinecke
19 April 1920
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mr Shorter,
I am pleased and flattered that you should want my book. The address [of the Ovid Press] is 43 Belsize Park Gardens, N.W.3.
I remember also with pleasure the occasion on which I dined with you.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
1–Clement Shorter (1857–1926), journalist and author.
TO John Middleton Murry
MS Northwestern
[19 April? 1920]
[London]
Dear John,
I have not quite finished my article on you;1 it turns out to be much longer than I expected; but I should have it for you on your return. You have left one or two ‘pièces d’identité’ [identity papers] in our hands. I suppose you are going in the morning.
Did I hear you say once you had a Beaumont and Fletcher complete you were willing to dispose of? I should like to buy it from you, or if you want a complete Ford and Massinger I have seen one today which I could post haste to get for you. I need a B & F for my Massinger article and want to own one and can’t get one anywhere.2
Bonne chance.
TSE
1–‘The Poetic Drama’, a review of JMM’s Cinnamon and Angelica, A., 14 May 1920.
2–‘Philip Massinger’, a review of A. H. Cruickshank, Philip Massinger, TLS, 27 May 1920 (SW).
TO The Editor of The Times Literary Supplement
Published 22 April 1920
Sir,
Your reviewer of last week handled my Essay on the Criticism of Poetry1 with more courteous clemency than this defective composition deserved. My essay contains much matter that should be erased and much that should be reformed; it is incoherent and inexact. I should therefore not affect amazement at learning that the view of criticism detailed in the first paragraph of your reviewer’s article is supposed to be the opposite of mine or at hearing given as my opinion that ‘a poet ought not to know what he is doing, but should just do it.’ I can only apologise to the reviewer for the obscurity which has induced him to this interpretation.
I must say, however, that your reviewer’s notions of criticism are not much more satisfactory to me than my own. I suppose that it will be admitted that, with one or two exceptions in remote antiquity, all the best criticism of poetry is the criticism of poets; and I am not prepared to concede that the criticism of Dryden, or of Coleridge, or even Matthew Arnold has the ‘intellectual incoherence’ which the reviewer says is the ‘innocent defect of art’ and apparently the inevitable vice of criticism written by poets. The review’s use of the word ‘philosopher’ seems to point not to Aristotle so much as such persons as Hegel and Croce. I am not sure that your reviewer distinguishes the mind which endeavours to generalise its impressions of literary beauty from the mind which endeavours to support a theory of aesthetics by examples drawn from the arts. Schopenhauer, I seem to remember, admired the Apollo Belvedere because the head – the spiritual residence – appeared to strive to detach itself from the body. In general, philosophers (or professors of philosophy) are as ignorant of poetry as of mathematics; and the fact that they have read much poetry is no more assurance of competence in criticising poetry than their ability to reckon in shillings and pence is of their competence to criticise mathematicians.
It would be helpful if your critic would elucidate his use of the term ‘philosophy’. My chief reason for writing this letter is my desire that the problems of critical principles should be more pondered and discussed, and that both critics and readers should apply themselves to consider the nature of criticism.2
I am, Sir, your humble servant
T. S. Eliot
1–‘The Criticism of Poetry’, TLS, 15 Apr. 1920, a review of Chapbook 2: 9: Three Critical Essays (which included TSE’s ‘A Brief Treatise on the Criticism of Poetry’).
2–Unknown to TSE, the reviewer was Arthur Clutton-Brock, who did not respond to this letter. However, in an unsigned article, ‘The Function of Criticism’ (13May), JMMdisagreed with TSE’s assertion that poets are the best critics.
TO John Middleton Murry
MS Northwestern
Sunday [25? April 1920]
18 Crawford Mansions,
Crawford St, W.1
Dear John,
Thank you very much. I have appreciated your thought of me, though I have never said much about it. Well, I have lectured, as you know, and it was very very fatiguing and worrying to me, and this is a provincial university too. If I ever took the plunge, it would be, I suppose, for the freedom of journalism: but just now I feel too tired and depressed to put my mind on it.
This is unsatisfactory to you and will appear ungracious. I would much rather have had a talk with you. I am going, from Tuesday, to live in Marlow for three or four weeks, and hope both to rest and to work. I don’t want to be in town for the evening more than I can help. I wish you could lunch with me one day and after I have done two articles we should dine.
Thanks for B & F which I shall take care of and return in due course. I shall want to know how much you enjoyed Stratford. We are looking forward to seeing Katherine [Mansfield; JMM’s wife].1
Yours aff.
TSE
1–Katherine Mansfield: see Glossary of Names.
TO John Quinn<
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TS NYPL (MS)
10 May 1920
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mr Quinn,
I do not know whether I wrote to thank you for your kind letter about my book. I must repeat my gratitude to you.
I was delighted at your prompt and effective intervention with the Dial.1 I think Pound will make a good job of it. I can testify that it had a great effect in raising his spirits; and when he left for Italy he was most cheerful. In addition, he has just finished what seems to me a very good poem, so my mind is at rest about him.
I have contracted with Methuen, here, for a prose book of essays [SW], to be in his hands if possible by the end of June. He is one of the best London publishers, so I am pleased. In conformity with my contract with Knopf, I put in a clause stating that the option on American sheets should be offered to him, so I suppose that is all right?2 I presume that if Methuen and Knopf fail to come to terms, that is nothing to do with me, though I should be glad for Knopf to have it.
I hope you will be having a holiday before long. I am feeling rather washed out myself, with practical worries like the impossibility of getting a tolerable flat to live in at a possible price, health, whether I should stick to banking if a good journalistic post turned up, and other such problems.
With sincere good wishes for your health
Yours cordially
T. S. Eliot
1–The Dial was paying EP $750 a year as its agent, and soon he became its Paris correspondent.
2–The contract for Poems gave Knopf ‘the first refusal of the Author’s next work in verse or prose’, but Quinn had advised TSE (3 Oct. 1919) that this meant nothing: ‘An author can easily comply with it by making impossible conditions.’
TO John Rodker
MS Mrs Burnham Finney
16 May 1920
[London]
Dear Rodker,
I have done what I could – you needn’t take my word for it, but it does not look promising. M[onro] does not see how he could review such a book for the ordinary public – he doesn’t want to curse it and wouldn’t venture to praise it.1A fortiori, the Times would be worse.
The best thing from a practical point of view, is to become well known to the review press through some volume or volumes which it can endure, before circulating generally anything like this. If one specialises on this sort of work, the only hope of fame is posthumous. If not, a volume, not for ordinary citizens, but of stuff they could tolerate, would make the rest get by afterwards. I feel myself, that with so much worthless verse selling in thousands, it is just as good at the present time to have an audience of 200 as 2000, and perhaps a better investment.
Yours ever
T.S.E.
Send E.P.’s book to the Ath[enaeum]. I think it will do better generally than Propertius did.
1–Rodker’s Ovid Press published Hugh Selwyn Mauberley in an edition of 200 copies.
TO Ezra Pound
TS Beinecke
30 Maggio [May] 1920
18 Crawford Mansions
Cher E.,
Tengo en mi poder su honrada del 13 cnte.1 I at last must face the fact that I cannot join you in June, nor, probably, in July. My book is far from forward, but, although it is promised for the end of June, that would not alone have the force to stand in my way. But I am still engaged in pourparlers with my family, and it is likely that I go to America in Oct or Nov, though, if my mother continues to believe that she will come here next May, I shall point out the great expense of two voyages in the family at such a short interval. Furthermore, we are both (i.e. Vivien and myself) in a state bordering on prostration from flathunting, and faced with the prospect of having to pay about 250% above what we pay now, if we get anything at all. However, we must go on with it. Kind friends remark, Why not live a little way out of town … No prospect of a job at £1000 a year for anybody. I am mindful of your hint before you left that you would probably not go to Italy next year, and it is therefore great sorrow to me. I will transmit the article to Lewis whom I shall see this week after many moons. He is said to be working, but was lately seen with a new female of suburban appearance (Ealing?) outside Verrey’s.2 Berry is promising everyone soundproof studio flats at a trifling rent in six months’ time. Conrad Aiken is here; stupider than I remember him; in fact, stupid. Also Bodenheim, the American Max,3 who arrived in the steerage on Monday with a wife and a baby which will see the light in a few weeks (‘Almost any time, in fact’ Mrs B. says). He is a bit upset at not finding Rodker, and is asking for Bosschère.4 He is not unintelligent, anyhow better than Aiken, and being Semites I suppose they will survive somehow. He reports that Hecht5 has decided to make a million dollars in a year, and has become press agent for the Baptist Church. When asked could not recall anyone else of intelligence in America. I am sending you article on Bolshevist poetry in the Morning Post.6 Lewis thinks he has discovered a poet named J. J. Adams.7 O god to be out of England, in June.8
yrs affexionately
T.S.E.
I gather that you want me to offer Murry a section of Moberley to print. Will act on that and suggest ‘Moluccas’ but leave choice to him.9Art & Letters is going out of existence. Schiff (and others) pleased by your Arthur Symons.10 Schiff here and very depressed about the state of English literature, a gloom which I did nothing to alleviate.
Boston Ev.Transcript says I am An Exotic Poet.11 (‘Closed room … stale perfumes … memories of lusts … open the window’).
1–‘I am in receipt of your esteemed letter of the 13th inst.’ (Spanish).
2–Verrey’s Café, Regent St, a favourite of WL’s.
3–Max Bodenheim (1893–1954), American poet, novelist and (with Ben Hecht) playwright. He published in The Egoist and other little magazines.
4–Jean de Bosschère (1881–1953), Belgian engraver, poet and novelist.
5–Ben Hecht (1894–1964), American novelist and dramatist.
6–E. B. Osborne, in ‘Certain American Poets: The Bolshevist Touch’, Morning Post (28May), claimed that EP was ‘capable of clever work’, but that ‘the best of his stuff’ seemed ‘like mustard-and-cress grown on a red flannel petticoat in a suburban hothouse’.
7–A mysterious British poet, author of ‘Café Cannibale’, Tyro 1, Apr. 1921.
8–Cf. Browning, ‘Home Thoughts, From Abroad’: ‘Oh to be in England / Now that April’s there.’
9–EP’s Mauberley IV begins ‘Scattered Moluccas …’ JMM did not publish any part of the poem.
10–EP, ‘Arthur Symons’, A., 21 May 1920, 663–4.
11–A hostile review of Poems by W[illiam] S[tanley] B[raithwaite], Boston Evening Transcript, 14 Apr. 1920. TSE’s volume reprinted his poem ‘The Boston Evening Transcript’. HWE wrote to their mother on 27 Apr.: ‘I don’t know whether it would be well to write to the Transcript about that review or not. It would be good advertising for the book; but it might inspire the reviewer to reply. That is, presuming you want a letter to be published in the Transcript. I have a copy of the book. I like of course most of the older poems; the later ones I do not understand. All I can see is that there are occasional beautiful lines in them. They are like something in cipher. There is nothing in them that could be called sensual; though occasionally something expressive of a horror of sensuality. The review was mischievously misleading.’
TO Ezra Pound
ts Beinecke
[June? 1920]
[London]
Dear Ez.,
Your three letters to hand and contents seriously noted. I expect to see murry this week and shall endeavour to guide him to the poems i consider most suitable for him. A person named Boulestin may be writing to you to ask you for a poem for an anglo French anthology he wants to publish.1 He runs a painted furniture shop in George street portman square. He offers no money but only the advertisement of appearing with so many distinguished anglo french names. lewis has promised him a drawing and I have promised a poem if I write one by the end of the month, that is not a v
ery compromising promise. edition on japanese vellum price eighteen and six illustrated by such people as marie laurencin laboureur texte by max jacob giraudoux salmon2 and such aldington huxley sitwell.
please write to say how long you will be in paris as vivien may come over in july. will you be there till the end of the month?
Private and confidential:3
Bank Lst. 500 including bonus
elsewhere not much at present praps Lst. 50 p.a.
I want Lst. 800 a year at least, and must provide for old age.
I could write at least one article a week if not at bank.
I find lectures (not giving any this year) much more fatiguing
than banking in proportion to the time.
Should of course like six mo. abroad. But in any case must have
a flat in London.
Regards to Dorothy. I may have to take my holiday in August now. Any suggestions as to what to do with them?
Yours ever
T.
1–The New Keepsake for the Year 1921 (1920), ed. X. M. Boulestin (1878–1943), would include no contributions from TSE, WL or EP.