The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922
Page 84
[unsigned]
1–This date was interpreted as 24 Dec. 1921 in Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907–1941 (1951), ed. D. D. Paige, which was followed in the first edition of TSE’s Letters. However, given the calendar that EP published in the Little Review (Spring 1922), Hugh Kenner reinterpreted it (‘The Urban Apocalypse’, in Eliot in His Time, ed. Walton Litz [1973], 44n). EP wrote to H. L. Mencken, 22 Mar. 1922: ‘The Christian Era ended at midnight on Oct. 29–30 of last year. You are now in the year 1 p.s.U [post scriptum Ulysses].’
2–The superfluities run to seventeen pages in all (TWL: Facs, 90–123). Of these, EP annotated three typescripts, ‘Song [for the Opherion]’, ‘Exequy’, and the two pages of ‘The Death of the Duchess’, plus one manuscript, the fair copy of ‘Dirge’. This letter mentions the first two, and EP’s enclosed poem ‘Sage Homme’ alludes to ‘Dirge’, so these were probably the ‘last three’ still being considered for inclusion by TSE. However, EP’s annotation, ‘cadence reproduction from Pr[ufrock] or Por[trait of a Lady]’, suggests that it was perhaps ‘The Death of the Duchess’ that did not ‘advance on earlier stuff’.
3–A marginal bracket by EP on the typescript of ‘Song [for the Opherion]’, interpreted by Valerie Eliot as covering four lines, perhaps spanned only ‘When the surface of the blackened river / Is a face that sweats with tears?’ (10–11): TWL: Facs, 98–9.
4–‘Exequy’ at one time ended ‘SOVEGNA VOS AL TEMPS DE MON DOLOR’ (‘be mindful in due time of my pain’, Purg. xxvi, 147; TWL: Facs, 100–1). TSE retained Dante’s next line (TWL, 427), and quoted this passage in the Notes and elsewhere.
5–TSE had proposed to use an epigraph from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, ending ‘The horror! the horror!’ (TWL: Facs, 2–3).
6–TWL, 111.
7–Presumably in a letter not preserved.
8–‘Wise man’; but also a pun on ‘sage femme’, meaning ‘midwife’.
9–‘Poet with a fistula (or ulcer)’.
10–He typed ‘in the The’.
TO Ezra Pound
TS Houghton
[26? January 1922]1
[London]
Cher maitre,
Criticisms accepted so far as understood, with thanks.
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Sustained by standards wrought with fruited vines
Wherefrom …???2 OK
Footsteps shuffled on the stair … 3 OK
A closed car. I cant use taxi more than once.4 OK
Departed, have left no addresses …???5 OK
What does THENCE mean (To luncheon at the Cannon St Hotel)???6
Would D[orothy Pound]’s difficulty be solved by inverting to
Drifting logs
The barges wash …???7
Do you advise printing Gerontion as prelude in book or pamphlet form?
Perhaps better omit Phlebas also???8
Wish to use caesarean operation in italics in front.
Certainly omit miscellaneous pieces. Those at end
Do you mean not use Conrad quot. or simply not put Conrad’s name to it? It is much the most appropriate I can find, and somewhat elucidative.
Complimenti appreciated, as have been excessively depressed. V. sends you her love and says that if she had realised how bloody England is she would not have returned.
I would have sent Aeschyle9 before but have been in bed with flu, now out, but miserable.
Would you advise working sweats with tears etc. into nerves monologue; only place where it can go?10Have writ to Thayer asking what he can offer for this. Trying to read Aristophane.
[unsigned, perhaps incomplete]
1–Tentatively dated [24? Jan. 1922] in the first edition of these Letters, but evidently a reply to EP’s letter of that day. EP added the comments in bold and returned the letter, presumably with the next, which answers the remaining points.
2–This version of TWL 78–80, which does not exactly match the surviving drafts or printed text, is probably a response to EP’s comment on the typescript ‘3 lines Too tum-pum at a stretch’ (TWL: Facs, 10–11). ‘Wherefrom’ appears in the unpublished typescripts in Thayer’s papers (Beinecke) and Watson’s papers (Berg), and in C., though not in the Dial, Boni & Liveright or Hogarth Press printings.
3–The first appearance in final form of TWL, l. 107.
4–The first appearance in final form of this phrase in TWL, l. 136. EP had written ‘1880’ against the anachronistic ‘closed carriage’ in the TS (TWL: Facs, 12–13), but TSE wished to keep ‘the human engine waits / Like a taxi throbbing’, 216–17.
5–The first appearance in final form of TWL, l. 181. No TS of ll. 173–82 survives in the drafts, but EP had presumably objected to the manuscript reading, ‘Departed, and left no addresses’ (TWL: Facs, ll. 24–5).
6–‘To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel / Followed by a weekend at the Metropole’ (TWL, ll. 213–14. EP must have written ‘THENCE’ on a draft that is now lost. On both the TS and its carbon, EP had objected to the word ‘perhaps’ in ‘And perhaps a weekend at the Metropole’ (TWL: Facs, 30–1, 42–3).
7–TWL, ll. 273–4. No pertinent TS survives among the drafts, so Dorothy Pound’s difficulty is unknown, but these lines were restored to their original order.
8–EP had cut eighty-two lines of ‘Death by Water’, leaving only the ten lines about Phlebas (TWL: Facs, 62–9).
9–It is not clear what ‘Aeschyle’ refers to, but possibly EP and TSE had thought to make a translation. In an earlier year, EP had written on ‘Aeschylus’ in Egoist 6: 1 (Jan.–Feb. 1919) and 6: 2 (Mar.–Apr. 1919): see ‘Translators of Greek’, Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, ed. with an Introduction by TSE (1954), 267–75. See also EP, ‘Jean Cocteau Sociologist’, New English Weekly, 10 Jan. 1935, repr. in EP, Selected Prose 1909–1965, ed. with an Introduction by William Cookson (1973), 405–6: ‘As to Greek drama, before Cocteau had published any, Eliot and I looked over the ground. This is no place to say what we thought of it. But it is, permissably, a place to register the fact that we did nothing about it, except possibly form a few critical opinions that we wouldn’t have had, if we hadn’t prodded and poked at Father Aeschylus.’
10–TSE is asking what to do with the lines bracketed by EP in ‘Song [for the Opherion]’: ‘When the surface of the blackened river / Is a face that sweats with tears?’ (TWL: Facs, 98–9).
FROM Ezra Pound
####160###TS Houghton
[28? January 1922]1
[Paris]
Filio dilecto mihi:2
I merely queried the dialect of ‘thence’; dare say it is o.k.3
D. was fussing about some natural phenomenon, but I thought I had crossed out her queery. The wake of barges washes
I shd. leave it as it is, and NOT invert.
I do not advise printing Gerontion as preface. One dont miss it AT all as the thing now stands. To be more lucid still, let me say that I advise you NOT to print Gerontion as prelude.
I DO advise keeping Phlebas. In fact I more’n advise. Phlebas is an integral part of the poem; the card pack introduces him, the drowned phoen. sailor, and he is needed ABSoloootly where he is.
Do as you like about my obstetric effort.
Ditto re the Conrad; who am I to grudge him his laurel crown.4
Aeschylus not so good as I had hoped, but haven’t had time to improve him, yet.
I dare say the sweats with tears will wait.
Aristophanes probably depressing, and the native negro phoque melodies of Dixee more calculated to lift the ball-encumbered phallus of man to the proper 8.30, 9.30 or even ten thirty level now counted as the crowning and alarse too often katachrestical summit of human achievement.
I enclose further tracings of an inscription discovered recently in the buildings (?) outworks of the city hall jo-house at Charleston S.C.5
May your erection never grow less. I had intended to speak to you seriously on the
subject, but you seemed so mountany gay while here in the midst of Paris that the matter slipped my foreskin.
You can forward the Bolo to Joyce if you think it wont unhinge his somewhat sabbatarian mind. On the hole he might be saved the shock, shaved the sock.
You will remember (or if not remind me of) the occasion when the whole company arose as one man and burst out singing ‘Gawd save the Queen’. The ante-lynch law (postlude of mediaeval right to scortum ante mortem)6 has I see been passed to the great glee of the negro spectators in the congressional art gallery.7
Dere z also de stoory ob the poker game, if you hab forgotten it.
[unsigned, perhaps incomplete]
1–This letter was tentatively dated ‘[27? Jan. 1922]’ in the first edition of these Letters. ‘Say early in 1922 TSE’, is written in crayon at the head in TSE’s hand.
2–‘Hic est Filius meus dilectus in quo mihi conplacui’: ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’ (Matthew 3:17).
3–EP writes as though ‘thence’ had been TSE’s word, not his own. In the TS of ‘Death by Water’, he had changed ‘descends / Illicit backstreet stairs, to reappear’ to ‘descends / Illicit stairs, thence to reappear’ (TWL: Facs, 62–3), but those lines were cut.
4–Valerie Eliot remarked, in a BBC broadcast (2 Nov. 1971): ‘Pound left the decision to him, so he omitted the passage, a fact which he later regretted.’
5–Enclosure no longer present.
6–‘Whoring before death’.
7–The House of Representatives had passed an anti-lynching Bill, but Southern Senators blocked it with a 21-day filibuster.
TO Richard Cobden-Sanderson
MS Beinecke
29 January 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns, N.W.1
Dear Mr Cobden-Sanderson
If you are free on Thursday or Friday evening could you come to Lady Rothermere’s after dinner and discuss matters with her directly? I have shown her your letter and she is much interested. I hope one of these nights is possible. I will let her know as soon as I hear from you which.
Sincerely yours T. S. Eliot
She lives at 58 Circus Road which should not be far from you?
FROM Scofield Thayer
MS Beinecke
29 January 1922
1, Habsburgergasse 2, Vienna
Dear Tom,
It is good to know that you have again taken up the old-fashioned custom of answering letters. I hope I shall not have to await another case of influenza before receiving another letter. I also hope you have now recovered from this case of influenza.
You seem to take ill my frankness in re the lad Hutchinson. I informed you of the details merely because I felt that unless you knew The Dial’s grounds for not publishing you would in conjunction with Mr Hutchinson in all probability judge this delinquency upon The Dial’s part harshly. The shareholders of The Dial are happy to be able after protracted deliberations to inform you that provided you are agreeable to receiving $25 more than you otherwise would receive for your next London Letter the Board of shareholders on its part will be agreeable to the deduction from this sum of $25. Then you and Mr Hutchinson and The Dial and Mr Seldes and the mad hatter will no doubt be tutti contenti.
I note that the next Letter possible from you will be for the April number and therefore take this opportunity to beseech you to endeavour, the god of influenza permitting, to get off this Letter soon. Mortimer, in sending me a copy of his London Letter spoke of his profound admiration for you and of his hesitation at supplying so exalted a position even for one Letter. ‘I feel it a presumption to replace Eliot, whom I admire greatly, even for an instant.’ Also allow me to state that you are The Dial’s favorite foreign correspondent not excepting the indefatigable Ezra. Write about what you damn well please.
Yes we await your ‘few words’ à propos Miss Moore.
Of course I am most interested to hear about the long poem. I thought you were aware that we pay fixed rates always and that therefore it is not for us to bargain. We pay for prose that has been unpublished anywhere 2 cents the word. We pay for verse that has been unpublished anywhere $10 the page which is something more than double our rates for prose. Four hundred and fifty lines will take something more than 11 pages. The Dial allows itself when dealing with famous writers to offer round sums rather than split figures. Can we have the poem? The Dial would pay $150. The fact that the poem has been sieved three times by your great colleague should sufficiently ensure against any impropriety which might otherwise have got by your own censor. Can you not send me here a copy of the poem?
Dr Schnitzler is acquainted with your name though not inappropriately enough with your longest and most shall I say Viennese poem.
Poor Murry! With London, Paris and Vienna all out to get him one wonders what the future holds for this sparse husband of England’s latest short-story prima-donna!
Valentinian love to Vivien and yourself!
[unsigned]
TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
[late Jan 1922?]
[9 Clarence Gate Gdns, N.W.1]
Dear Mary,
I am very much disturbed by your note. I had wondered – you must tell me all about it, because we can’t leave things like this. You know I am working on my lecture up to Wednesday the 8th so that I cannot make any appointments, so will you have dinner with me the following Thursday, or if you are alone any night after that let me come to you, if you prefer it, and let me hear as soon as possible.
Tom
TO Richard Cobden-Sanderson
MS Beinecke
30 January 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Mr Cobden-Sanderson,
Since writing to you I have heard from Lady Rothermere who says that she is only free on Thursday. I hope you can come then. She also wishes me to ask you if you will come to dinner on that night? Will you let me know if you will, or whether you prefer to come in afterwards? I will meet you there.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
TO Richard Cobden-Sanderson
MS Beinecke
Wednesday [1 February 1922]
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Mr Cobden-Sanderson,
Lady Rothermere dines at 8. I shall wear a dinner jacket myself. I think I told you her address is 58 Circus Road, St John’s Wood. I look forward to seeing you again.
Sincerely T. S. Eliot
TO John Rodker
MS Virginia
Sunday [5? February 1922]
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Rodker,
I should have communicated with you before but we have had flu simultaneously and successively ever since getting back. I have finally seen Lady Rothermere and had a long discussion about the paper, and the result is that it is to be her paper not mine and she is to do it her own way. I am thankful to get rid of the responsibility of it, which has been a weight on my mind. I have agreed to take charge of the contributions, though not of the payment for them: – I shall try however to see that it is the maximum possible.
In this capacity, may I ask you to contribute either (as best suits you) the article on cinema you thought of writing, or (preferably) a shorter regular continued chronicle on cinema and music hall? Apart, of course, from other contributions, which will be welcome?1 I want to do my best to get enough good stuff from the start to keep out bad, that’s quite enough of a function to occupy my time.
I hope I shall see you at Lady R.’s on Wednesday – if not, I will write to you later in the hope of arranging a meeting. I have been busy with the enclosed.2
Yours T. S. Eliot
1–In the event, despite TSE’s willingness to accommodate an article on the cinema, Rodker was not to contribute to C. As the years moved on, TSE tended to take an anxious view of the cinema; in a blurb for a study by Peter Mayer, Sociology of Cinema (1946), he sounded this note: ‘this book represents a piece of pioneer work on the most serious of all film probl
ems … What is the effect upon the mass of the population who attend a cinema once or twice a week, or more, of the films that they see? And particularly urgent is the question, what is the effect upon the children of the nation? Mr Mayer’s conclusions are by no means reassuring. This book ought to be widely read and seriously pondered. Its readers may well differ as to what ought to be done, but they will agree that the situation cannot be left to look after itself.’ See also David Trotter, ‘T. S. Eliot and Cinema’, Modernism/modernity 13: 2 (Apr. 2006), 237–65; and on TSE and the music hall, Ron Schuchard, ‘In the Music Halls’, Eliot’s Dark Angel (1999); David Chinitz, T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide (2003).
2–TSE was now showing TWL to friends.
TO Clifford Bax1
TS Texas
6 February 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Mr Bax,
I must apologise for not replying immediately to your kind letter. I am flattered by your compliment, and impressed by the tone of your letter, which augurs well for the duration of the review. My situation is briefly this: I have very little time for writing, and am committed to several regular engagements and connexions. Except for special reasons, therefore, I have to select periodicals by the simple rule of the highest pay. Would you kindly let me know, as soon as your terms are fixed, what your rates will be?
At the present moment I have but recently returned to London after a three months holiday in pursuit of health, and I have several promises to fulfil. A little later I may be able to speak more definitely – please forgive my vagueness in this letter.