by T. S. Eliot
That there be a business and make-up editor, who shall receive a proper salary, and be responsible for regular appearance of the review.
Rider: I imagine that this project will go the way of similar projects in England; that it will end in there being a new periodical devoted to mediocrity, and that good men of business like Bennett and W. L. George6 will net a certain profit; that free speech will remain, as at present, in abeyance; and that good writers will gain neither cash nor leisure from the enterprise.
[unsigned]
1–The Morning Post, a Conservative daily paper edited by Howell Arthur Gwynne (1865–1950), ran a series of hysterically anti-Semitic articles in 1920 (repr. as The Cause of World Unrest). A boycott among Jewish advertisers started a long decline, and the paper was ultimately bought out by the Daily Telegraph in 1937.
2–Sir Alfred Mond, later the first Baron Melchett (1868–1930), industrialist, financier and politician; mentioned in TSE’s poem ‘A Cooking Egg’. Ford Madox Hueffer (later Ford) founded the English Review in 1908 and edited it for just one year; he sold it in 1909 to Mond, who invited Austin Harrison (1873–1928) to become editor.
3–EP, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (Ovid Press, 1920).
4–EP, ‘Credit and the Fine Arts … A Practical Application’ (New Age, 30 Mar. 1922), was about ‘Bel Esprit’, EP’s scheme to find thirty guarantors of £10 a year, to enable TSE to leave the bank. A private circular in the same month stated: ‘[TSE] certainly is not asking favours, our plan was concocted without his knowledge. The facts are that his bank work has diminished his output of poetry, and that his prose has grown tired. Last winter he broke down and was sent off for three months’ rest. During that time he wrote Waste Land, a series of poems, possibly the finest that the modern movement in English has produced, at any rate as good as anything that has been done since 1900, and which certainly loses nothing by comparison with the best work of Keats, Browning or Shelley’ (Letters of Ezra Pound, 241). EP had written to Quinn on 8 Nov. 1920: ‘The suggestion that you and several other[s] should subsidize me is very noble, and I appreciate your spirit in making the tentative suggestion; but I think Eliot is the first man to be taken off the wreckage. After all, I am a free man; not incarcerated for the greater part of the day, all day and every day’ (NYPL).
5–The infamous attack on Keats’s Endymion (Quarterly Review, 1818) was written by John Croker Wilson, though it was widely believed to be by the editor, William Gifford.
6–W. L. George (1882–1926), journalist and prolific short-story writer.
TO Scofield Thayer
TS Beinecke
16 March 1922
12 Wigmore St, w.1
Dear Scofield,
Please excuse my not replying sooner to your letter, except by my wire; but I have had a good deal of trouble over letting my flat furnished and moving here, where I shall be till the 20th June. In addition, there have been engrossing personal affairs, and I have been prevented from dealing with any correspondence.
I also took some days to think about your offer, during which time I happened to hear on good authority that you had paid £100 to George Moore for a short story, and I must confess that this influenced me in declining $150 for a poem which has taken me a year to write and which is my biggest work. To have it first published in a journal was not in any case the way I should choose for bringing it out; and certainly if I am to be offered only £30–£35 for such a publication it is out of the question.
I have written to Ezra Pound to explain my reasons for refusing to dispose of the poem to the Dial at that price and he concurs with me.
I sent a London letter, assuming that it would be for the April number, but as Mortimer’s has just come out in March I infer that mine is not wanted until the May number, so that I am sending Mr Seldes one or two alterations to bring it up to date.
You have asked me several times to give you the first refusal of any new work of mine, and I gave you the first refusal of this poem.1
Sincerely,
Tom.
1–At this point Thayer has written ‘Not submitted’.
TO Wyndham Lewis
MS Cornell
16 March 1922
12 Wigmore St
Dear Lewis,
I have been absolutely taken up the last ten days with the hell of moving etc., am very tired and depressed. Vivien has been in bed with fever, and life has been horrible generally. I have heard from Pound. Will you let me know where you are? if you have gone or if you have not. Can we arrange a meeting? Please write. Not on telephone here. I have been too busy to write, but have been anxious to know about you.
Yours ever
T.S.E.
FROM André Gide
MS Houghton
16 mars 1922
[Paris]
Cher Monsieur Eliot
Ma sympathie vous est toute acquise et déjà je vous envoie mes voeux pour la réussite de votre projet.
Ma collaboration …? Elle vous est acquise en principe; mais je ne puis la rendre effective avant de connaître quelques précisions:– Au sujet de la question matérielle, vous restez bien vague; mais le change permet des conditions avantageuses pour nous sans être désobligeantes pour vous. Au surplus cette question m’importe moins que celle de la composition de votre premier No., que le choix de vos collaborateurs – tant anglais qu’étrangers. J’attends d’être fixé sur ces points; et sans doute pourrai-je ensuite, me rendre compte du genre de collaboration qui serait la plus opportune.
Au revoir cher Monsieur
Croyez à mes sentiments bien cordiaux
André Gide1
1–Translation: Dear Mr Eliot, I am completely at one with you in your enterprise, and I hasten to send you my best wishes for success.
As for my contributing …? I can readily agree in principle; but before doing so in practice, I should need further information on certain points. As regards the material question, you remain rather vague; but the exchange rate works at present in our favour without putting undue strain on you. Besides this consideration is less important for me than that of the makeup of the first issue, and the choice of your contributors, both English and foreign. I wait to hear from you on these points; and after that I shall no doubt be able to see what kind of contribution would be most appropriate.
Hoping to hear from you again, With my most cordial regards, André Gide
TO Valery Larbaud
TS Vichy
20 March 1922
12 Wigmore St, w.1
Dear M. Larbaud,
I am very much gratified at receiving your gracious letter of the 18th, and look forward with keen pleasure toward reading your critique of Joyce. But I should be particularly pleased at having the honour of publishing first something of yours on Landor; that would also be a happy rebuke to the English literati for their neglect of a great poet and prose author.1 Certainly, I hope that you will write those articles in English, as there is inevitably some loss in translation. But I shall do my best, and exercise my own supervision, for what that is worth, to secure for you a good translation of the Joyce.
I am also very much obliged for the names of Spanish writers. None of them, I regret to say, is known to me, but I have no hesitation in accepting your judgement, and shall write to them.
I will send you details of the contents of early numbers as soon as possible. I hope that later it may be possible to improve the rates of payment, so I invite the first contributors for the honour they will do the review, and not for their personal advantage.
Very sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
1–Larbaud had translated Walter Savage Landor’s High and Low Life in Italy in 1911, and had written that he was contemplating a series about him.
TO Hermann Hesse
PC Schiller-Nationalmuseum
27 March 1922
12 Wigmore St
I have your manuscript today1 and thank you very much. I will write to you in a week or two. I am delighted to receive
something from you.
Mit herzlichem Gruss [With warmest regards]
T. S. Eliot
1–Hesse, ‘Recent German Poetry’ (trans. by F. S. Flint), C. 1: 1 (Oct. 1922), 89–93.
TO Scofield Thayer
MS Beinecke
27 March 1922
12 Wigmore St
Dear Scofield,
I discovered when in Switzerland a very admirable essay entitled Blick ins Chaos by Hermann Hesse. Mr Stephen Hudson has made a translation of this and is sending it to you. I think that you will find it an interesting work.
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
TO Harold Monro
MS Beinecke
[April? 1922]
[London]
My dear Monro,
It was a great pleasure to me to receive your book,1 especially with your name in it, and I am looking forward to putting it into my pocket to read at lunch time, when most of my reading is done!
I hope we may meet at some fortunate date.
Yours ever T. S. Eliot
1–Harold Monro, Real Property (1920).
TO Sydney Schiff
TS BL
3 April 1922
12 Wigmore St
Dear Sydney,
I have written to Joyce, and enclose a note to [Fritz] Vanderpyl. You will infer therefrom that he plumes himself on being as well as an art critic (in the Petit Parisien) and a poet (not at all bad), an archimage in the arts of eating and drinking. He can probably introduce you to good restaurants. He writes very learned articles on Cuisine for the Petit Parisien. I should like to get some of them published in this country.
I hope that the weather is not quite so vile as it is here, and that you are really finding the atmosphere an elixir. Do let me hear from you as soon as you are rested and have assembled impressions.
with love to both,
yours always,
Tom
TO T. Sturge Moore1
TS Texas
3 April 1922
12 Wigmore St
Sir,
I applied to my friend Richard Aldington for your address. I have undertaken the task of finding and selecting the contributors for a modest quarterly review which is subsidised to a moderate extent for three years. I propose that the quarterly should be simple and severe in appearance, without illustrations, and my only ambition is that it should unite the best critical opinion in England, together with the work of the best critics whom I can find from other countries. Whilst I should admit other writing in very small quantity, I wish to make it primarily a critical review. To its ultimate financial success I am comparatively indifferent; but while it lasts, under my direction, I shall make its aim the maintenance of critical standards and the concentration of intelligent critical opinion; also, the diffusion of such funds as can be mustered, among the proper persons as contributors.
I have a great respect for your judgement and taste, and count it of the highest importance to secure your support. I think that you would appear in as respectable company as there is, and a company which would feel itself dignified by your presence. Would you be willing to contribute an essay of say five thousand words, or more or less, to an early number? I should be delighted, for instance, to publish anything by you on the subject of Flaubert (versus Mr Middleton Murry’s opinions) or if you chose to dissect Murry’s Oxford lectures, The Problem of Style, I would obtain it for you.2
I should like to start publication in June, but am not certain whether it will be possible until autumn, as I am not disposed to launch this paper until I am certain of the right contributors for the first four numbers. At present the review can only offer at the rate of £10 per 5000 words, but my first endeavour would be to improve these terms. In the hope of hearing from you favourably, I remain,
your obliged obedient servant,
T. S. Eliot
1–Thomas Sturge Moore (1870–1944), English poet, playwright, author and wood engraver, published his first book of poems, The Vinedresser and Other Poems, in 1899. His brother was the philosopher G. E. Moore. A respected acquaintance of many writers, including A. E. Housman and AH, he also designed bookplates and bookbindings for WBY. See W. B. Yeats and T. Sturge Moore: Their Correspondence, 1901–1937, ed. Ursula Bridge (1953).
2–In his reply (n. d.), Moore declined Flaubert and JMM, but offered to write on SW, ‘the critical work which has most interested me since Santayana’s Poetry of Barbarism’.
TO Alfred A. Knopf
TS Texas
3 April 1922
12 Wigmore St
Dear Mr Knopf,
According to the terms of our contract for Poems, you will remember, I was to offer you my next two books, i.e. The Sacred Wood and the next thereafter. I have now a poem of about 450 lines which I wish to publish as a small book, of about thirty pages. It is, I think, a good one.
I have no desire to evade or withdraw from the terms of the contract, but I have already received an unsolicited offer of $150 down against 15 per cent royalty from Mr Liveright, whom I met in Paris, for publication in the autumn. This is what I should have asked in any case. If you do not care to take the poem will you let me know immediately? Also, if you do. I am anxious to get the poem published as soon as possible. Perhaps you would prefer an option on the next prose book, when it is ready, which will not be for a year or so.1
With kind regards,
your very truly,
T. S. Eliot
1–On 1 May, Knopf replied that ‘in view of the fact that you are anxious to have the new book out at once, it is best for you to accept Mr Liveright’s offer’. But he looked forward eagerly to TSE’s ‘next prose book, option on which you were good enough to offer me in exchange for the Poems’.
TO Lucy Thayer
CC Valerie Eliot
3 April 1922
12 Wigmore St
Dear Lucy,
I am enclosing (1) receipt for gasbill for the December quarter: this I paid some time ago, as I found it here on arrival, and thought it best, as it was overdue, to pay it and collect it from you afterwards; (2) John’s bill for electricity for the same quarter, which seems pretty late; if you have paid it already send me the receipt and I will take the matter up with him; (3) John’s rent due March 25th. I understood from Vivien that you said you had sent the money to him already; in that case let me know.
In writing to John will you let him know that you are not taking the flat on, and also will you please tell him that I will see to the disposition of the furniture at the end of the lease? I don’t want him to wonder why I am taking the furniture out when the time comes.
I would have written before, and sent this gasbill, but have been very over busy, and also Vivien was very ill indeed from the moment we arrived. I hope that there is some prospect of your returning to Europe – especially now that Vivien is so much at home on the continent, and evidently really needs to get away from London and from England for long periods together.
I hope that your father’s health is not now a cause for anxiety.
Very sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
TO Sylvia Beach1
TS Princeton
4 April 1922
12 Wigmore St
Dear Miss Beach,
Thank you very much for sending the beautiful broché copy of Ulysses on faith; it also comes most opportunely in that it provides me with wrapping for returning you the unbound sheets. I am sorry that I have cut some of the pages; I was expecting to have it bound here. I am posting you the sheets, registered, tomorrow.
I am distressed and indignant at this news. If you cared to entrust me with the names of the mentioned literary critics I could make, gradually, discreet investigations about the conspiracy. I presume you have documentary evidence of their having asked for the book, in the form of letters to yourself. I might be in a position later to give publicity to the affair, if that were possible and desirable.2 Perhaps, ho
wever, you prefer to keep these secrets to yourself. I thank you for the enclosure, which I will preserve. In any case, believe me,
your obliged obedient servant,
T. S. Eliot
1–Sylvia Beach (1887–1962), American expatriate who in Nov. 1919 opened Shakespeare & Company, a bookshop and lending library, at 8 rue Dupuytren, Paris, moving two years later to 12 rue de l’Odéon. Her customers included JJ (she published Ulysses), Gide, Maurois, Valéry, EP, Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. TSE wrote in a tribute (‘Miss Sylvia Beach’, The Times, 13 Oct. 1962), ‘I made the acquaintance of Sylvia Beach, and at the same time of her friend Adrienne Monnier, on a visit to Paris early in the nineteen twenties, and thereafter saw them frequently during that decade. Only the scattered survivors of the Franco-Anglo-American literary world of Paris of that period, and a few others like myself who made frequent excursions across the Channel, know how important a part these two women played in the artistic and intellectual life of those years.’
2–Though there was probably no ‘conspiracy’, the dearth of British reviews of Ulysses made JJ suspicious too. He wrote to Harriet Shaw Weaver on 10 Apr., ‘There is a rumour here that certain critics who had asked for press copies and obtained them had decided to boycott the book. I am inclined to believe it’ (Letters, I, ed. Stuart Gilbert, 1957). TSE wrote later (‘Miss Sylvia Beach’), ‘No tribute to Sylvia Beach would do her justice that did not stress her services to James Joyce. But for two generous and devoted women – Harriet Weaver and Sylvia Beach – I do not know how Joyce could have survived or how his works could have got published.’
