The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922
Page 94
says that you beg me to do nothing more than acknowledge formally without consulting you, I await your further advices.
I hear good report of the progress of Cantose. If the Dial refuses please let me inspect, but probably unwise to make the paper too conspicuous at first, if the rape of the bishop is an integral part. I have decided not to put any manifestoe in the 1st number, but adopt a protective colour for a time until suspicion is lulled. What do you think of ‘The Possum’ for a title?
The reason why I did not send Vivien over to Paris is that first she is extremely run down, at a very low point where all weak spots break out – neuralgia, neuritis, eye trouble etc., and second that she has just been started on a new diet for colitis (of the colitis there is no doubt whatever) which involves great care in the preparation of food – all meat to be minced in a machine three times, milk to be the best sealed medical milk, certain proportions of vitamines and proteids daily; the diet seems to be the best so far and really doing her good. I didnt want to run the risk of upsetting her improvement at the start by letting her break the diet by Duval or even the Voltaire. But if Berman comes to London I should be delighted. Ask him does he know of a man named Hogben who is writing a book on hormones, in England. What I want to know and what I do not get from Berman’s book is what treatment he gives after he has diagnosed. Both of the doctors Vivien has seen lately have examined her teeth with great care and were disappointed to find nothing wrong. I should like to put her into your hands but think that from present appearances Paris should be postponed till October.
I have just had a little difficulty with Richard over an article he contributed, and which I ventured to criticise mildly (at his request) and which he immediately sent to the XIXth Century2 without asking permission. As he has not proposed to send me anything else to take its place I am annoyed. He improved the occasion to (1) reprove me for ‘expressing contempt (in the Dial) for eminent writers in language so defective’ (2) say that the Criterion is a very dangerous title and ‘somewhat pretentious’: ‘I wonder’ he says ‘if you quite understand the profound english repulsion for everything which seems to be assuming superiority? It is a very subtle thing.’ (3) says that everyone says that I am getting bitter and hypercritical.
Insultos
Also evidently regards Bel Esprit as entirely a personal favour toward me. I dont want personal favours, I want it to be purely a question of the production of verse, a small, a very small, but still a public utility of work.
I Dont think 300 a year however is a living income for me, especially with vagueish guarantees, unless some very definite way is shown me of getting another 300 by not too close or bestial labour. I shall not stand in the way of your finding out just how much money can be got and how many people will give it for the arts in any form, only I do not at present find 600 a penny too much and cannot accept one bed room as being liberty in comparison with my present life. I only say this not to pledge myself now and finally to accept the terms when they are finally drawn up in black and white: while the matter has been in this nebular state I should have been a fool if I discouraged it but also fool if I pledged myself … however have met Orage1 and liked him
Lady Rothermere is coming to Paris and wishes to meet you. She will be there next week at Hotel Westminster. I like her. You might put Berman on to her after a time, but I dont think he would find many weak glands. I shall give her your address and she will probably communicate with you.
I trust Quinn is not having too much trouble with Liveright.
Good fucking, brother.
[unsigned]
1–From ‘Bel Esprit’ funds.
2–RA’s article was not published.
TO E. R. Curtius
TS Bonn
21 July 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Sir,
Thank you for your letter of the 14th inst., I am very much delighted at the prospect of receiving an early contribution from you and at having the distinction of being the first editor to introduce your work in this country. I should like very much to have from you, not simply a ‘chronique’ of contemporary literary activity in Germany, but a piece of your individual criticism, whether dealing with modern literature or with the writers of the nineteenth century. The subject which you suggest of fixing contemporary valuation of the older writers is very attractive.
As I am very much pressed both for time and for space with the first number I should be very glad if you could promise me an article by the first of November at the latest, for the second number, in which I shall be able to give you the full space of 5,000 words if you wish it.
You ask about the programme of the review. The first number will contain contributions by myself, Mr George Saintsbury, Mr T. Sturge-Moore, Miss May Sinclair and Mr Richard Aldington in this country, and two or three foreign contributions – Gómez de la Serna, Valery Larbaud, and Hermann Hesse.
In general it will consist of a small number of critical and reflective essays and an occasional poem or story. We are also publishing a translation of a Plan of a novel by Dostoevski.
Its great aim is to raise the standard of thought and writing in this country by both international and historical comparison. Among English writers I am combining those of the older generation who have any vitality and enterprise, with the more serious of the younger generation, no matter how advanced, for instance Mr Wyndham Lewis and Mr Ezra Pound.
Now that I know you are an English scholar I shall have pleasure in sending you a book of critical essays [SW] of my own, which although it contains many statements which I have come to question or even repudiate, is still representative.
I am also interested to know that you live in Marburg, where I was myself living in 1914, and of which I have the pleasantest memories.
Be assured that any contributions you send will be highly appreciated and the sooner you send them the better I shall be pleased.
With many thanks, believe me,
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
TO The Editor of The Dial
TS Beinecke
28 July 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns, London n.w.1
Dear Sir,
I cabled you to the effect that I had sent you my letter on the 24th saying that it amounted to about 1,000 words. I did this in the hope that it would enable you to publish the letter in your September number if you were depending upon it.
I have had it very much on my conscience that for some time my letters have only reached you at the last possible moment. What is more important, as I told you in my last letter to you, is that I am quite aware that they have not been very good stuff. This is not only my own opinion but that of others. I do not like to think that I have been providing you with poor material, and I should always like to do my best work for the Dial; I now feel that the sort of letters which I have been sending you, are not only damaging to myself, but perhaps also to the Dial. This has been due to unfortunate circumstances and pressure of a great deal of business of other kinds. I therefore wish to say frankly that I think it would be to your interest to have some other correspondent, one who would have time both to get about more and know what is going on in London, and also to produce a more finished article. I therefore offer you this opportunity of changing your correspondent, as I am sure you must concur with me in my opinion of the work I have been doing.
I have two pieces of work still to do for you which I have undertaken, and I shall always prefer contributing to the Dial than to almost anything else, but I do not like contributing anything but the best I can do.
Yours very truly,
T. S. Eliot
TO Ezra Pound
ts Lilly
28 July 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Ezra,
I have this evening your letter with the typed script of the prose of your unknown friend which I shall peruse carefully over the weekend, hoping that I shall see the point to which you refer. Your letter, as frequently
, is extremely obscure; I do not understand the point of the pug dog nor the apparently more significant allusion of the storming of the bastille. Perhaps you will kindly explain this latter point to me as it might prove a useful piece of knowledge?
I will let you have a copy of the Waste Land for confidential use as soon as I can make one. Of the two available copies, one has gone to Quinn to present to Liveright on completion of the contract, and the other is the only one I possess. I infer from your remarks that Watson is at present in Paris. I have no objection to either his or Thayer’s seeing the manuscript.
As for the circular I do not suppose that you wish any comments from me and I suppose that it is already in circulation. If so I trust that it will, as it requests, be circulated privately only; if I was doing such a thing myself I should have omitted the name of Lloyds Bank.1 The other point that occurs to me is that the less of my private circumstances that need be issued, so much the better; even when such private circumstance are accurately reported. Particularly I do not want any rumour to get into circulation, especially in America, to the effect that I have a family which should be providing for my support. As I have already informed you what my Mother’s means are, you will be in a position to deny any such rumor. I do not know why the suspicion should have come into my head, but I do conceive that it is the sort of sensational falsehood which might well be supported by hysterical and sympathetic persons in the United States.
The presenting of Neophytes however commendable they may be will not absolve you from the liability of contributing yourself. I have put your name down in the circular and I think that the second number will be a suitable time for you to make your appearance. That number should be out early in January, and therefore we must fix November 1st as the last date on which you should send it, and it will be more preferable for me to have it locked up in my care long before even that date. I do not want to concentrate the jailbirds too much at the beginning and I think that if the Waste Land bursts out in the first number and you contribute to the second, that Lewis must remain behind the scenes until the third. Of course one can throw in always a few people whose names are entirely unknown.
I wait in hope that Berman is coming to this country.
I understood from Dorothy that a translation of Rémy’s Physique with either an essay or supplement by yourself was soon to appear in New York.2 Am I to receive a copy or am I to order it myself through Messrs. Jones and Evans in Cheapside?
I am glad that you have lunched with my friend and that she has your approval.
Yrs. fraternally
T.
If this Circular has not gone out, will you please delete Lloyds Bank, to the mention of which I strongly object. If it is stated so positively that Lloyds Bank interfered with literature, Lloyds Bank would have a perfect right to infer that literature interfered with Lloyds Bank. Please see my position – I cannot jeopardise my position at the Bank before I know what is best. They would certainly object if they saw this. If this business has any more publicity I shall be forced to make a public repudiation of it and refuse to have anything more to do with it.
1–Printed by Rodker, the ‘Bel Esprit’ circular opened: ‘In order that T. S. Eliot may leave his work in Lloyd’s Bank and devote his whole time to literature, we are raising a fund, to be£300 annually.’ EP wrote to Quinn on 10 Aug.: ‘if you reprint Bel Esprit private circular, please omit name of LLOYD’S bank.’
2–Rémy de Gourmont, Physique de l’Amour: Essai sur l’instinct sexuel (Paris, 1903), trans. by EP as The Natural Philosophy of Love (Boni & Liveright, 1922).
TO T. Sturge Moore
PC Texas
Postmark 28 July 1922]
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
I have your MSS. and am looking forward to reading it over the weekend. I am very grateful for your punctuality – it is of the greatest assistance.
With many thanks,
Yours sincerely
T. S. Eliot
TO T. Sturge Moore
MS Texas
29 July 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Mr Sturge Moore,
I have read your essay with great pleasure and interest: it would certainly give distinction to any review in which it appeared. On the first reading I seem to find myself wholly in agreement with you. I did not know that [Laurence] Binyon was so good: I have never read anything of his.2
With many thanks
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
1–Moore, in his critical treatment of Tristram and Isolt in English poetry, praised Laurence Binyon’s Odes (1901, rev. 1913).
FROM John Quinn
TELEGRAM photocopy Valerie Eliot
29 July 1922
[New York]
LIVERIGHT EXECUTED CONTRACT PREPARED BY ME TYPESCRIPT RECEIVED TODAY SUGGEST MAIL LIVERIGHT NEW YORK BRIEF DESCRIPTION FOR CATALOGUE GLAD EVERYTHING SATISFACTORILY ARRANGED BEFORE GOING MY VACATION TOMORROW WRITING1
QUINN
1–Quinn’s letter details his activity over several days: ‘I dictated the contract between you and Liveright, based upon your Knopf contract, late yesterday …you did not give the name of the book. But fortunately, in a postscript in one of his recent letters to me Pound gave me thename’ (28 July). ‘[Y]our letter of July 19th, with the typescript of the poem, came today [and I told Liveright that] you would “rush forward the notes to go at the end” … I have asked one of the careful stenographers in the office to make a copy of the poem from the typescript. I’ll send the typescript to Liveright on Monday morning. When I told him I had it, he asked me to give my opinion of it. I told him that I would read it over Sunday. You wrote that that copy would do for Liveright “to get on with”. But you said nothing about proofs or reading proofs. In a small book, where style and form of printing and the format of the book generally have such a part, I should think you would insist upon having page proofs and not galley proofs. I dare say there will not be time for Liveright to send you first galley proofs and have you correct those galley proofs and return them to him, and then have Liveright send you page proofs and have you correct these and return them to him. So I suggest that you cable him that you want page proofs or write that to him. If the notes that go at the end come to me, I’ll send them at once to Liveright’ (29 July). ‘I received this morning in the mail from Liveright, without letter, a duplicate of the contract signed by him … I am writing to Mr. Liveright this morning sending him (a) the original typescript of the poems, which was received from you last Friday, and (b) a careful copy of it. I read the poems last night between i11:50 and 12:30 … Waste Lands one of the best things you have done, though I imagine that Liveright may be a little disappointed at it, but I think he will go through with it. It is for the elect or the remnant or the select few or the superior guys, or any word that you may choose, for the small number of readers that it is certain to have’ (31 July). ‘[Liveright] may be disappointed in the size of the book. Frankly, if you could add four or five more poems to it, even if it meant delaying the publication of it for a month, I should be inclined to recommend that you do so. But that is only a suggestion. I don’t know how lengthy the notes are, or how many pages they will take, so I am writing a little in the dark. I give you my impression, though, that people are likely to think that the book is a little thin and to compare it with your first volume of poems published by Knopf …You won’t mind my suggestion’ (1 Aug). (See Charles Egleston, The House of Boni&Liveright, 1917–1933: A Documentary Volume [Dictionary of Literary Biography vol. 288, 2004], 264–7.)
TO Ottoline Morrell
TS Texas
[end July? 1922]
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Ottoline,
I was very glad to hear from you, and to know that you are now a little better; though your letter is a sad one, and I had not known what a bad time you had been having. I do indeed sympathise with you. I have just returned from a weekend in the country: Vivien is better, but the difficulties of
living in the country are so great under such conditions, when it is impossible to get exactly the food necessary for the regime, and impossible to get it properly prepared, and when the weather is so bad – that I cannot feel quite certain that the benefit is enough to compensate for the privations. And she keeps having attacks of the neuritis in her right arm.
I have, too, been buried in correspondence over the review, of which I suppose you have received a notice; and its success must of course be the first thing in my mind at present, and the most important thing to me. But also I have preferred not to think much about the Bel Esprit. I have been very much impressed by the kindness of my friends and their untiring efforts, but of course the publicity is painful, and I cannot help feeling that I cannot have anything to do with it myself, and in fact must pretend to know nothing about it. Sometimes I simply want to escape from the whole thing and run away. I am sure that you will understand why I feel this way, and why I cannot say anything about a committee or any other details. And why I cannot criticise Pound; and, even though I may not care for some of his methods, I appreciate that it has been part of his method to try to keep me out of the business as much as possible. I am sure you will understand my feelings about this matter, though I put them very lamely. Thank you very much for your letter – I wish that I could answer it and write fully and leisurely.
Always yours affectionately,
[Unsigned.]
I need hardly say that this is a confidential letter – what I have said would be certain to be misunderstood by most people and would give the impression that I was ungracious and ungrateful. The last thing I want to do is to offend against or hurt the feelings of my good friends who have toiled so hard and disinterestedly for me. But I am sure you will understand that appreciation of this kindness is part of the pain and embarrassment that I feel; and I am sure that you will understand my feelings on this matter if anyone will. – The committee would, I am sure, make the project much more impressive to the public. I started this letter on Monday! and have had to put it aside for work on the review: difficulties start up quite unexpectedly now and then.