The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922
Page 64
2–Marie Laurencin (1883–1956) and Jean-Émile Laboureur (1877–1947), painters; Max Jacob (1876–1944), poet, critic and painter; Jean Giraudoux (1882–1944), dramatist, novelist and diplomat; André Salmon (1881–1969), poet and art critic.
3–EP was trying to establish the terms on which TSE was prepared to leave the Bank.
TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
Sunday [Postmark 6 June 1920]
Dear Mary do you think we could have dinner a bit earlier tomorrow as we are now such a long journey from Hammersmith that we shall have to leave very early and it gives so little time for conversation after dinner? I shall be with you by half past seven. with love from
Tom.
TO Conrad Aiken
MS Huntington
9 June 1920
Lloyds
I am very sorry I had unexpectedly to be away yesterday and did not have time to let you know. I shall be here tomorrow if you will do me the favour.
T.S.E.
TO Conrad Aiken
MS Huntington
Thursday [10 June 1920]
18 Crawford Mansions,
Crawford St, W.1
Dear Conrad
Can you come in to tea tomorrow
You can’t answer of course. It is just off Edgware Road (toward Baker St) just near the end of the Marylebone Road. Do come.
Yrs.
Tom
TO Herbert Read
ms Victoria
20 June 1920
18 Crawford Mansions
My dear Read,
I had been waiting, since the appearance of your first book, to see what you would do when you demobilised your talents. Not having had that experience myself – I speak not from extreme age but from the advantage or disadvantage of a C2 rating which kept me out of the army – I have been a disinterested spectator of the struggles of others with war and peace. My first impression is that you have managed wisely (for there must be a very large part of conscious management) in conserving your forces (instead of making Kneeshaw go violently to peace,1 as many would have done) and therefore managed better than some contemporaries. I think I like the first series the best of the book;2 they support each other and produce a cumulative effect, as such still life pieces should do. I might question, from my own point of view, the word ‘soul’, which is too easy a substitute for any state of consciousness, but I have been an offender myself. Afterwards ‘Unicume’ interests me, but it is different, and I don’t quite understand it.3
However, here is one person who has enjoyed your book – so success to it and the next.
Yours sincerely
T. S. Eliot
1–TSE, in ‘Reflections on Contemporary Poetry’ [IV], had described parts of ‘Kneeshaw Goes to War’, in HR’s second collection Naked Warriors (1919), as ‘decidedly successful’.
2–HR, Eclogues, A Book of Poems (1919). This collection included ‘The Sorrow of Unicume’.
3–HR replied on 27 June: ‘I don’t think Eclogues is in any sense the “demobilisation of my talents”.’ Apart from ‘Etude’ and ‘Unicume’, the poems ‘were all either contemporaneous with or anterior to my war stuff … they are a few unconscious scraps gathered over the last few years’. He said too that he had sent the ‘silly book’ to TSE because he was ‘one of the few living people’ who gave him ‘the feeling of a gradient of thought’; and he hankered to be ‘in with’ him in some sense.
TO The Editor of The Athenaeum
Published 25 June 1920
Sir,
Mr William H. Polack’s perplexity (Athenaeum, June 18, p. 810) is a spectacle before which it is impossible for me to remain passive.1 He encourages me by saying that he is anxious to learn; and if the knowledge of what I do not believe is a possession which he would dignify with the name of learning, he is welcome to it.
First, then, I am not in the least ‘indifferent as to what is expressed.’ If I were, I might have a higher opinion of Massinger; for if Mr Polack has done me the honour of reading that review, he must see that my judgment at that point was simply that Massinger had very little personality – very little to express. This misunderstanding is related to the other. I do not believe that a work of art is any ‘complete and precise expression of personality’. There are all sorts of expressions of personality, complete or precise or both, which have nothing to do with art; so that the phrase seems to me of very little use for literary criticism. Mr Polack will notice furthermore that I said in my article ‘transformation’, not ‘expression’. Transformation is what I meant: the creation of a work of art is like some other forms of creation, a painful and unpleasant business; it is a sacrifice of the man to the work, it is a kind of death.
I should be glad if Mr Polack would study my quotations from Gourmont in their context in the Problème du Style, and also Dujardin’s ‘Stéphane Mallarmé’ (Mercure de France).
Mr Polack ‘feels that T. S. E. deplores the fact that Dickens was not an artist’. I feel that Mr Polack’s feelings have run away with him. (So look’d he once, when in an angry parle He smote …)2 But if Mr Polack is again mistaken, what then?
I am, Sir,
Your obliged obedient servant,
T.S.E.
1–William H. Polack had written in response to TSE’s ‘The Old Comedy’, a review of A. H. Cruickshank, Philip Massinger, A., 11 June 1920 (repr. as ‘Philip Massinger’ [II], SW). Dickens had not been mentioned by TSE, but Polack contrasted his views with those expressed by JMM in a leading article on the novelist: ‘T.S.E. is indifferent as to what is expressed, provided the expression be complete and precise, whereas M. hints that the point to which criticism should apply itself is the nature of that which is expressed … I feel that T.S.E. deplores the fact that Dickens was not an artist, but (perhaps) a man of genius; while M. thanks God for it.’
2–‘… the sledded Polacks on the ice’ (Hamlet I. i. 66).
TO Harold Monro
MS Beinecke
1 July 1920
[London]
Dear Monro,
Thank you very much for your letter of the 25th. I shall be delighted to give you an option on the execution of any idea that comes which appears suitable for the Chapbook – which, being sui generis, is an extremely useful periodical for any writer to be able to contribute to.
I don’t suppose I shall have a single idea until I have my book off my mind and a couple of months rest. But I hope to be replenished later.
Yrs sincerely
T. S. Eliot
I’ll write again when I have time and try to have some ‘ideas’ for you!
TO Ezra Pound
TS Beinecke
3 July 1920
at 31 West St, Marlow
Dear EP
I have not yet received the Benda of which you speak.1 I recall his name as a colleague of Péguy. Is that the same man? I will try to do it as soon as possible but shall be rushed for the next three or four weeks trying to finish polishing the essays for my book. You appear to have made a pretty clean sweep of Paris, on which I congratulate you. With all this stuff and the best English it ought to be possible to extend the circulation of the Dial even into England. I certainly cannot think of any other French writer worth having. I am afraid there won’t be so much in this country. I am sending Scofield two articles I have just done on criticism, which I hope he will use soon if at all as I must use them for the book.2
I expect to be here until July 25 (about) after which address Crawford Mansions but I expect you will be in this country by that time. I plan to go to France in September. I wish to go to the country for ten days or two weeks (any suggestions for itinerary welcomed) and the rest of the time in Paris, where I should like to see anybody worth seeing. Vivien will probably join me in Paris, and therefore there is now no chance of her going there in July.
I
s there any chance of Joyce staying in Paris or coming to London, so that he could be seen?
Bodenheim now says he is returning to New York at the earliest possible opportunity. He has discovered that it is very difficult to make a living in London, Murry after preliminary effusiveness has dropped him altogether, and he has put the backs up against him of most of the native English whom he has met. I don’t know that there is anything to be done for him (I fear a contribution toward his travelling expenses will be necessary – Mr B. Mrs B. and Master Max junior). He is in some ways more intelligent than the native Britons and excites hostility in that and other ways. Do you take any interest in this case? Lewis finds him much more tolerable than Rodker. But I can’t see any means by which Bodenheim might be made self-supporting here; can you?
I have seen a copy of Instigations which was sent to Lewis.3 It makes a very favourable impression.
I await your further news. Regards to Dorothy, and hope that Paris is not too oppressively hot and humid for her.
Yours
T
I meant to begin with this: I have seen Murry and secured a vague understanding that he would print a few of the poems (I said not more than five) but he has not read them yet. I must say that he is much more difficult to deal with when K. M. is about, and I have an impression that she terrorises him. He told Ottoline that K. M. was the only living writer of English prose (this is as Ott. reports it). I believe her to be a dangerous WOMAN; and of course two sentimentalists together are more than two times as noxious as one. She is going back to San Remo for the winter, in September.4
1–Julien Benda (1867–1956), French critic and essayist; author of LaTrahison des Clercs (1927).
2–TSE’s first contributions to the Dial: ‘The Possibility of Poetic Drama’ (Nov. 1920) and ‘The Second-Order Mind’ (Dec. 1920). The first was reprinted in SW; the second formed part of the introduction.
3–EP’s essays (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1920).
4–Although OM had been close to Katherine Mansfield and her husband JMM, there had been rows in 1917 when JMM told his wife that OM was in love with him, and in 1918, when JMM gave a hostile review of Siegfried Sassoon which led OM to write, ‘A mighty quarrel is raging between JMMand myself’ (Seymour, Life on the Grand Scale, 299). It is not clear why TSE felt such hostility towards Mansfield. However, he and VHE had recently dined with JMM and Mansfield, who took a violent dislike to VHE, as she explained in a letter to Violet Schiff on 14 May: ‘The Elliots [sic] have dined with us tonight. They are just gone – and the whole room is quivering. John has gone downstairs to see them off. Mrs E’s voice rises “O don’t commiserate Tom; he’s quite happy.” I know its extravagant … but I dislike her so immensely. She really repels me … And Elliott, leaning towards her, admiring, listening, making the most of her – really minding whether she disliked the country or not … I am so fond of Elliot … But this teashop creature …’ (Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield IV, ed. Vincent O’Sullivan and Margaret Scott, 1966).
TO His Mother
TS Houghton
3 July 1920
18 Crawford Mansions,
Crawford St, W.1
Dearest Mother,
I believe it is over three weeks since I have written to you, not counting enclosures sent you to peruse. I have been first very busy trying to find a flat, and have not succeeded, and second, have been trying to do my book. First then, I have received the power of attorney forms several days ago,1 and did not have time to attend to them for two or three days. Then I went to my solicitor, Mr Leigh Hunt (of James & James) to do it for me, and he said he would have to get a proper notary for it, but that he would do to identify me. So I am to see him tomorrow, and will cable you the same day. I am sorry for the delay, but I did not know any notary or government official who could swear to my identity, so I am doing it this way.
So long as you hold the shares for me I suppose that you will pay the insurance out of it, keeping the policy there, but if you sold the shares and remitted me the money to invest here, you would send me the policy so that I could pay the premiums myself. I agree with you about not selling at the present time. I hope that the labour over this transfer has not added much to what you must have gone through in leaving St Louis. You must be thoroughly exhausted, and on top of that you have to go househunting. I shall wait anxiously for reports of your health. I know that househunting is the most tiring thing one could do. We have looked at a few houses too. A few were slightly cheaper than some of the flats we have seen, but we calculated that they would be very much more expensive to run. They all needed cleaning, painting, and papering to begin with, they would use much more coal and gas, and an extra servant now and then. We want something that we could manage without any servant if necessary. The flats have run from two to four times what we pay now. In addition, everybody has been waiting for the new rents act to pass Parliament.2 Rents have been limited during the war, but people have been demanding ‘premiums’: £200–£500 down on signing the lease, besides the regular rent. They say premiums will be illegal, but prices will certainly go up 40% now. Flats are very much in demand, because English houses were constructed when it was easy to get servants very cheap, and are very difficult to run without servants. If we lost the woman we have now, we should have to pay twice as much for another who would probably work shorter hours. And if we move to very far from where we are, she will not be able to come to us from where she lives. So it is a very difficult problem, and we have been utterly tormented. We may have to stay where we are. Yet there are flats to be had – only at such prices! And Crawford Mansions we have come to loathe on account of the noise and sordidness.
All this has been very unsettling for taking a vacation. I made enquiries, some time ago, and was told by the Cunard that I could not get a passage to America before November. When I come I shall have to come by that line, because it is much the quickest. This year the boats are crowded with American travellers. So, as we both are so unsettled and homeless, and as I do not like to be far away in case of losing a chance to secure a flat, it seems to me much better to leave it till spring. If you are in a position to come then, that will be the best thing in the world for me; and if not, you will know by February definitely, and I will come in March. It must be one or the other. You said in one letter ‘don’t you want to come to America?’ It is not at all that I don’t want to come. But I do rather dread coming for such a very very short time, because I know that there will [be] so much pain about seeing you for such a short time. If I could come for six weeks I should be wild with impatience to come. And if I can’t see you here next spring I must come, because I should regret it every hour of my life if I did not.
My book is supposed to be out in the autumn, and therefore I must try to get it finished by the end of this month. There will not be much in it that you will not have seen already. But it will be a satisfaction to have a prose book. Methuen suggests that I should follow it up with another on English prose, so I hope that this will succeed so that he will want another. I want to do a book on the Elizabethan era, going in to it rather more profoundly than any of the former critics have done.
I enclose review from the Dial. It is very flattering, but silly and pretentious.1 When I get a scrapbook and paste all my reviews in it I will send it to you to read. If reviews sell a book, mine ought to be a success, but that is not certain.
I am to contribute to the Dial when I can. Pound is English editor, and is now in Paris getting French contributors. I have been invited to collaborate in a review in Geneva,3 and Wyndham Lewis wants me to help him with an art and literature review, Art & Letters having gone out of existence. I cannot do all of these things.
I do not accept the interpretation of me which the Times Literary Supplement is accustomed to make, elsewhere as well as in the review of Huxley’s book which you read. I have a very low opinion of this book. Huxley has, of course, like a number of other young men, borrowed a good deal from my poetry.3 Aldingto
n is an exception – he does not like my poetry, and says so frankly, but I like him none the less. I do not know why it is, but men five years younger than I seem to me much younger, and if they become my friends I feel a sort of paternal responsibility, yet men five years older seem to me about the same age. Murry is my age, Pound is four years older, Lewis is five years older, and Strachey is nearly forty; so is Sydney Waterlow. But Osbert Sitwell and his brother, Aldington, Huxley, Herbert Read, and several Americans whom I only know by correspondence, all seem children almost.
Conrad Aiken is in London – I think you have heard me speak of him, I knew him at Harvard, and he is now quite a flourishing poet in America. He is very nice, but in comparison with Englishmen seems to have had rather a soft and easy intellectual existence – not the hard knocking about that one gets among men of brains here. There is an odd American Jew here named Bodenheim; rather pathetic, although foolish. He is a vagrant poet and man of letters at home, and thought that he could pick up a living just as easily here. He received his first blow when he found that no one had heard of him. I told him my history here, and left him to consider whether an American Jew, of only a common school education and no university degree, with no money, no connections, and no social polish or experience, could make a living in London. Of course I did not say all this; but I made him see that getting recognised in English letters is like breaking open a safe – for an American, and that only about three had ever done it. The worst is that he has a wife – they came in the steerage – and his wife is having a baby, and now he wants to go back, and cannot get a passage, and his wife is not well enough to travel, and I do not believe he has any money. What is one to do! it is very distressing, but I think it is better that he should go back. Yet he has a better mind than most of the people here, though he has never been taught to write properly; a much better mind than Aiken, who gets on much better (he has an independent income too).