The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922

by T. S. Eliot

  Of course I wanted to throw it up on account of the old lady’s insolence, but I reasoned that we had lost six months already in hunting, and that it would pay me better to be swindled on the price of the lease, and get settled at once, than to start the hunt anew and not be able to work for several months more. You see, we began looking for a flat in June, and since then I have simply not had the time to do a single piece of work, and when one has in mind a great many things that one wants to do, that irritates the nerves more and more.

  Before I embarked on this flat of which I speak, I had very nearly taken another one – not nearly so good – and dropped it finally because I was convinced that the landlord was asking about twice as much for it as he was entitled to. But to prove that and get him punished would have been difficult, and I should have had to take the flat first.

  My book is ‘out’ on Thursday,1 and I have just received six copies from Methuen. I am sending you one tomorrow. I am pleased with the form they have given it. Knopf, who published my poems in New York, has bought 350 copies, and I suppose it will be reviewed in American papers at the same time.

  I have promised to write occasional ‘London Letters’ for the Dial, and also letters of some sort to a weekly called The Freeman in New York. I have been asked to send a contribution to the Evening Post. Then there is the Revue de Genève, and Bruce Richmond, of the Times (London), wants something from me when I have time. Wyndham Lewis is projecting a small Art and Literature paper and wants my help. So if I would undertake it, I should have my hands very full. But I want to get to work on a poem I have in mind.

  My new address is 9 Clarence Gate Gardens, London, N.W.I.

  But anything that comes here will reach me, as we have not quite moved out yet, and I think a friend of Vivien’s, Lucy Thayer whom you have met, will be here soon and will occupy it. Her mother died of cancer after several years of torment, and Lucy who looked after her the whole time is to come abroad for a rest.

  If you have not yet sent the dividend, you can send it to the new address, but Registered mail had better go to the Bank, as there is always a chance of its being delivered when no one is in, and taken away again. The Bank address you know is Lloyds Bank Limited, Information Department, Head Office, 71 Lombard Street, London E.C.3.

  I of course want the Insurance continued, and I suppose you will pay the Policy out of the dividend before sending it. If I died, this money would be most important for Vivien. She would get £60 a year from the Bank; and I depend on leaving her Insurance, what money I save if I live long enough, and what I may eventually inherit from you (that will, I pray, be a long time ahead) to live upon. What money she will eventually get from her father’s estate will not be enough for support. The death duties in this country are very heavy indeed, and the estate is divided equally between her and Maurice. Again, Vivien and Maurice get nothing until both her father and her mother are dead; so I have to plan for the contingency of Vivien and one of her parents surviving me. If she had to try to support herself even partially, there is not much she could do; her eyes are so weak that the oculist says she must never again subject them to any continuous strain, either reading, writing or sewing, for more than two hours a day. At one time, before our marriage, she was very successful in tutoring backward children, individually; but young unmarried women always find it easier to obtain such work. Therefore I should not for a moment consider letting the insurance drop.

  To add to the confusion, Harold Peters and his friends have been here for a week, their yacht is at Southampton, and they are going to cruise in the Mediterranean. I am very fond of Harold, but this visit has been much more of a strain and a responsibility than a pleasure. I want them to enjoy their stay, but they know no one in London, and could not be combined with the sort of intellectual society that I know, and it would mean giving up a great deal of time.

  I must stop now, I have so much to do –

  You have not written for some time, I suppose because you did not know where to write. But you can always write to the bank, although I prefer to get letters at home. I am anxiously waiting to hear your latest news.

  With very much love,

  your devoted son,

  Tom

  1–The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism was dedicated to his brother. Of the US edition (Feb. 1921), his mother wrote to HWE, ‘I have felt quite badly about it because of the savage criticisms. I do not like the name [and] I think $2.50 is too high a price.’ HWE would write to their mother on 22 Mar. 1921: ‘When I get out of the wilderness of his allusions to writers of whom I have never heard, I like the book; the style is clear, clean-cut, economical of words; the phrases are clear, exact, not mussy or vague. The thought is hard to follow sometimes, though, not because it is obscure, but because it is subtle or complex.’

  TO Sir Algernon Methuen

  MS Lilly

  2 November 1920

  18 Crawford Mansions

  Dear Sir Algernon Methuen,

  Thank you for your letter about your anthology.1 I should be very pleased to have you use any poem of mine in an anthology. I am only not quite certain whether I have anything suitable for your purpose? I take it for granted, perhaps mistakenly, that you mean to use poems that have already been published. I have no unpublished verse at the present time.

  The only poem that strikes me as possible is one called ‘La figlia che piange’. If you still have the small volume I sent you, you will find it at the end. Many people seem to like it who do not like the other things.

  Sincerely yours

  T. S. Eliot

  I am very much pleased with the format of the ‘Sacred Wood’.

  1–An Anthology of Modern Verse, ed. A[lgernon]M[ethuen] (1921) was to include ‘La Figlia Che Piange’ (pp. 69–70). Methuen’s request for a poem had specified (30 Oct.) that ‘it must be of a lyrical and moderately intelligible character. Please forgive this insult … the book is not only for the general reader but also for use in schools.’

  TO Walter de la Mare1

  MS De la Mare Estate

  5 November 1920

  18 Crawford Mansions

  Dear Mr de la Mare,

  Harold Monro gave me your very kind invitation, and I had a faint hope of being able to come. But I have been in bed for three days, and even if I am up it will be impossible. We have had very critical illness in my wife’s family lately, and the crisis is not yet past.

  I hope you will ask me again before very long, as I should very much like to meet you. Also, when I am settled in the flat into which I am trying to move, I should be delighted if you would do me the honour of coming to dinner.

  I have never had the opportunity of meeting you before and am very much disappointed.

  Yours sincerely,

  T. S. Eliot

  Please forgive my posting this without a stamp.2 But I only heard from Monro definitely this morning, and, not being able to go out I forgot to ask anyone else to get stamps.

  1–Walter de la Mare (1873–1956), poet and author. Order of Merit, 1953. In due course, TSE became his publisher at Faber&Faber, issuing Collected Rhymes and Verses (1942) and Collected Poems (1948); and he wrote ‘To Walter de la Mare’ for A Tribute to Walter de la Mare (1948).

  2–De la Mare paid 4d on receipt of the letter.

  TO Harold Monro

  MS Beinecke

  Friday [5 November 1920]

  18 Crawford Mansions

  Dear Monro,

  I am writing to de la Mare to express my regrets and to say that I want to come to see him when I am better. Also, I want to try to get him, and you, to come and dine at my new flat. It is true that I was doubtful of being able to come, as my father in law has been at the point of death: now I have been in bed for three days with a cold brought on by fatigue. When I am about, and a bit straightened out, I will write and try to get hold of you. But I still hope to be able to come to your party on the 10th.

  I am
awfully sorry about Sunday.

  Yours ever

  T. S. E.

  TO Walter de la Mare

  MS De la Mare Estate

  8 November 1920

  18 Crawford Mansions

  Dear Mr de la Mare,

  I hope you will pardon my curious behaviour – which was due to the fact that I wanted to come. After being laid up with a cold myself, I infected my wife with it, which is a much more serious matter, as it is apt to lead to complications to which I am immune. I tried all the morning to get someone who could stay with her this evening, but without success.

  I do not know whether you can ever be tempted to town of an evening, but I shall try to do so. My new flat will be one stop from Baker Street Station. If you will not, I shall invite myself to see you, but I should rather you came to see me first.

  Yours sincerely,

  T. S. Eliot

  TO Russell Green1

  PC Texas

  [Postmark 16 November 1920]

  9 Clarence Gate Gdns

  Again I should like to help you, but am involved in personal anxieties which take all my time – I shall not even be able to fulfil my promises made, much less make new. Better luck some other time.

  T. S. Eliot

  1–Russell Green, who had won the Newdigate Prize at Oxford with his poem ‘Venice’ (1916), was editing the seventh number of Coterie. TSE had contributed ‘A Cooking Egg’ to Coterie 1 (May 1919).

  TO Mrs Dawson Scott1

  CC BL

  16 November 1920

  9 Clarence Gate Gdns

  Dear Mrs Dawson Scott,

  I should be very glad to take the chair for Mr Jepson: I hope you will let me have a reminder in February so that I shall be ready for it in good time. I should also be glad to talk at some time, if you care to have me do so.

  Sincerely yours

  [T. S. E.]

  1–Fixtures secretary of the Tomorrow Club, which met weekly at Caxton Hall to hear speakers mostly on literary topics.

  Vivien Eliot TO Mary Hutchinson

  MS Texas

  [17 November 1920]

  9 Clarence Gate Gdns

  Note new address –!

  Telephone. Pad[dington] 3331

  Dear Mary,

  I hope you have not thought me unfriendly. If you will believe me I have longed to see you and talk to you all these horrible weeks. But I see no one, hear of no one, go nowhere. It only amazes me that life can be like this, and one goes on. It is just 5 weeks today, and I have been fighting, every minute, a long losing battle against horrible illness, unimaginable pain, doctors’ mistakes – obstinacy – stupidity – delays – family’s blindness. The only thing on my side has been my father’s courage and determination. But I am afraid we’re going to lose after all, and after so much fighting it will be very hard to bear.

  You see I never can make an engagement more than an hour ahead. There are changes every few hours, and every single complication and misadventure happens. I never go to bed without fear, and to ring up first thing every morning takes all one’s courage. If you could, when you have a perfectly free afternoon, ring me up, (if you would like to see me) about 2 o’clock, I would come over then and there if it happened to be one of the afternoons when I feel a little security. If I am not in, get Ellen to ring me up and give me your message, because she always knows where I am.

  I’ve been out of ‘the great world’1 so long I am afraid I shall soon fade away altogether.

  Your very affect.

  Vivien

  1–Byron, Don Juan xi, xlv.

  TO Sydney Schiff

  MS BL

  30 November 1920

  9 Clarence Gate Gdns, London N.W.1

  My dear Sydney,

  We were much distressed at hearing of Violet’s last misfortune, and wait to hear how serious it will prove. I pray that it will not retard and complicate her recovery from her illness and operation. Do give her our warm sympathy.

  Certainly this is the way in which I have known disasters to follow each other, and always when one has drawn up one’s plans with the greatest exactness. Events succeed one another, apparently for the purpose of making one’s mind useless to one. There are times, I think, when one must try to seal one’s intellect hermetically, to prevent it from being destroyed by circumstances which it cannot mend.

  Vivien’s father has kept much in the same state, with some improvement but alarming fluctuations which cause great anxiety to the family. The surgeon was called for a consultation today, and Vivien spent the day at Hampstead and is completely exhausted by the agitations. I am much concerned about her health; she manages to keep up and do a great deal, at the price of a migraine once a week, and bad nights. I have not at all been in a mood for work.

  What you say about my book gives me great pleasure – but notwithstanding this and the respect I have for your good opinion – it makes me a little apprehensive. I fear that in the course of time you will find that it is not quite so remarkable as you had thought, and that you will then cease to find any merit in it: I only hope that you will express your opinion as frankly then as now.

  You have no reason for not saying what you think about Murry. His criticism is dictated by emotion, which is not the same thing as saying that he feels strongly about the things he criticises. Even when he is right, he is the victim of an emotion, and the rightness seems an accident. He never surrenders himself,1 but uses what he is talking about as an outlet for some feeling; and this is a sort of irreverence for reason which is hard to bear. It is quite tolerable for an artist, scientist or workman to be an egotist if he will give himself up to the one thing, but Murry I believe is an egotist in that too – hopelessly isolated from persons and causes.

  I saw Trench2 last night, but am sorry that I got no chance to talk to him – at a dinner given by the ‘Poetry Circle’ of the Lycaeum Club (Ladies).3 It was an odd gathering – we all (i.e. the speakers) – seemed to be lions of various sizes, from the Dean Inge4 to Edith Sitwell and myself – but no one seemed very clear as to what we were or what we did.

  Are any doctors or nurses ever satisfactory?

  With, again, sympathy for you and for Violet, and hoping to hear soon that things are better

  Affectionately

  T.S.E.

  1–‘What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of the artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality’ (‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’; SW, 52–3).

  2–Herbert Trench (1865–1923), poet and playwright; author of Ode from Italy in Time of War (1915).

  3–For further accounts of the occasion, at which he made his first after-dinner speech and met the woman who was to introduce him to the Tarot pack, see both the next letter (to his mother, 2 Dec.) and Aldous Huxley 1894–1963: A Memorial Volume, ed. Julian Huxley (1965).

  4–W. R. Inge (1860–1954), Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, 1911–34.

  TO His Mother

  TS Houghton

  2 December 1920

  9 Clarence Gate Gdns

  My dearest mother,

  You will I know understand why I have not written for such a long time again. Nevertheless I have been thinking about you and wondering about your health a great deal, and I was very glad to get a letter from Marion yesterday which sounded very cheerful and happy. I am delighted to think that you are seeing so many people and entering into so many activities, and I like to imagine you going about Cambridge. I like seeing many people myself; I even enjoy large crowds and public occasions. And then the most complete solitude to recuperate in.

  We have of course been on pins and needles about Vivien’s father the whole time. When we think that the surgeon, one of the most skilled in London, was so horrified when he opened him, at the second operation, at what he found inside that he wanted simply to sew him up and let him die in peace – we are absolutely terrified to believe that it is now
possible, and even probable, that he will recover. I am really uneasy the whole time, thinking what would happen to Vivien and her mother now should a new complication arise – as it might do at a moment’s notice. When there seemed no hope they could keep up, because there was always something to be done and they were quite prepared for the worst, but they could not possibly go through it again. Even if things continue for the best, it will take them a long time to recuperate. And there have been all sorts of minor difficulties: the two nurses did not get on together; the two servants Mrs H. had to have are unsatisfactory and don’t want to stay in a house with an invalid, and so on.