by T. S. Eliot
We must assume that Eliot O.K.’s publication in The Dial without the notes. The one thing which troubles me in addition is Eliot’s remark about making the award the basis of a contract. It seems to me that he means something a little more definite than what you take it to mean, because he surely could not imagine bad faith on our part. I speculate: does he mean that he ought to have a more favourable contract with Liveright because he gets the award? It sounds unreasonable, because he gets the two thousand. Does he mean that he wants some sort of contract with us for the future? I shall, of course, not cable him until I hear from Quinn, so you have time to answer this letter. If cabling becomes necessary owing to delays it would certainly be in such terms as to make him realize that tentative conversations have led both Liveright and Quinn to be enthusiastic and that we will undertake any reasonable contract and ask permission to publish in November.1
The notes, by the way, are exceedingly interesting and add much to the poem, but don’t become interested in them because we simply cannot have them. Please write.
Faithfully yours,
[unsigned]
PS I have bought a Yeats play and as we had no definite rate for plays I said we would pay at a page rate of $8 a page, which is about what a page of prose comes to. The advantage of this is that we can use the small type and still not lose money by doing so. Please decide whether this small type is a good hunch or not, as I wrote to Thayer about it some time ago and have had no reply.2
1–These terms were confirmed at Quinn’s office on 7 Sept. and in letters between Seldes and Liveright, both dictated by Quinn. On the same day Quinn advised TSE: ‘The arrangement insures you (a) $150 from Liveright on publication under his contract, (b) the $2,000 award, and (c) the royalties for the publication of the poem in The Dial, which ought to be at least $10 a page … It was a close shave, and when the papers were all signed up, and I took Liveright and Seldes out to lunch, Seldes went to telephone to The Dial giving them notice about the publication of the poem in the next number.’
2–The Player Queen was printed in small type immediately after The Waste Land.
TO J. M. Robertson
TS Valerie Eliot
4 September 1922
The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Mr Robertson,
I am very happy to have your kind letter of the 3d and trust that you will not allow your search through your manuscripts to flag. Had you merely said ‘more than 5000 words’ I should not have been daunted (by your Shakespeare studies) but as you say ‘far more’ I suppose I must wait until you find something shorter. I accepted, and shall print, one manuscript of 8000 words for the first number, but without having realised the extent to which it was to disturb the arrangement of the other contents.1
Please remember that the choice of subject rests entirely with you; if it is ‘off’ the Shakespeare field, I shall undoubtedly return to you later for something ‘on’ it; and if it is ‘on’, I shall appeal to you later for something ‘off’. The study of Elizabethan blank verse development would suit me admirably. It is precisely a subject on which I have been supposed to be writing a set of articles for the Times, for the past year; but life and vicissitudes have intervened; and now that I hear you have dealt with the subject, I am humbly thankful that I did not venture in before you.2 Or alternatively, your reference to having once hoped to establish a decent method in criticism suggests a very valuable essay. I must say that I have shared your hope, and share your despondency.
May I be precise and say that I should like to receive something from you either by the 1st November or by the 1st February (but of course preferably the earlier date)? I like to allow good time in order to be able to insist upon accurate composition by the printers.
One justification for ‘exoticism’ is that at the present epoch it is necessary to summon aid from the whole of Europe, in order to muster enough good brains to make possible even a quarterly review.
I have good reason to believe that the review signed ‘C. B.’ was written by Mr Clive Bell the art critic. One reason is that he has conceived Hamlet in what he believes to be his own image, but I have others. I am told that Mr [Clutton-]Brock showed him his manuscript before publication.1 It is needless to say that I am immensely interested in both of your forthcoming volumes.2
With the most cordial thanks I remain,
Your Obedient Servant,
T. S. Eliot
1–‘The Case against Hamlet’, the TLS leading article of 18 May 1922 (which was written by John Cann Bailey, not by Clive Bell), discussed Robertson and TSE as well as the book they ‘provoked’, Arthur Clutton-Brock, Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ (1922).
2–J.M. Robertson, The Shakespearian Canon (1922), and Explorations: Essays in Literature and Philosophy (1923).
TO Richard Cobden-Sanderson
MS Texas
7 September 1922
The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Cobden-Sanderson,
I am very sorry indeed to hear your bad news.1 I will not trouble you either with business or expressions of sympathy, but will write to you on Monday.
Yours cordially
T. S. Eliot
1–RC-S’s father, the printer T. J. Cobden-Sanderson, died on 7 Sept. 1922, aged eighty-two.
Gilbert Seldes TO Horace B. Liveright
TS copy NYPL
7 September 1922
[New York]
Dear Mr Liveright:
This is to confirm the understanding between me as Managing Editor of The Dial and yourself with reference to the publication in The Dial of Mr Eliot’s poem The Waste Land as follows:
We are to publish the text of the poem, without the notes, in the November Dial, which will be published about October 20th. We will not publish the prose notes in our publication of the poem. The poem will be copyrighted together with other literary matter in The Dial.
In consideration of your consent and agreement to the above publication of the poem, we agree to purchase from you, on publication, 350 copies of the book at the usual forty per cent. discount of the retail price. We will pay for the books purchased within six months of their delivery, and this arrangement regarding the purchase of said books from you shall not apply to or be considered part of our separate arrangement regarding advertisements and book purchases.
I have no hesitation in saying to you personally that The Dial, on the merits of Mr Eliot’s work as a whole, intends to give to Mr Eliot its this year’s annual award of two thousand dollars ($2,000) for services to the cause of letters.
In connection with our publication of the poem in The Dial we will announce its publication in book form by your firm with notes.
It is our understanding that your contract with Mr Eliot for the publication of the book, both as to time and so forth, will be modified in order to perform this arrangement.
Will you kindly confirm the foregoing.
Yours very truly,
The Dial by
[ ] Managing Editor.
TO Richard Cobden-Sanderson
MS Beinecke
10 September 1922
The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Cobden-Sanderson
I am sorry to delay you. I had to go out of town for the weekend on Friday afternoon and did not return home and found your letter tonight on my return.
We will stick to the ninety-six pages, and leave out Parts III, IV and V of The Waste Land, if the printer’s estimate (returned herewith) leaves room for title and note about contributions subscriptions etc and a note stating that the Dostoevsky will come out in a book (it will only be a sentence, and I will send it tomorrow). Will you let me know this.
The sooner we can send the estimates to Lady Rothermere the better; I have her address now.
Yours (to catch the last post) ever
T. S. Eliot.
Sample very nice
TO J. M. Robertson
TS Valerie Eliot
12 September 1922
The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Mr Robertson,
I have read your essay on Flaubert with great interest and am in accord with you,
I have not estimated the number of words but I think with the omission indicated that it will fit in quite well.
When I read Murry’s article in the Times I was, like several other people, very much irritated.1 An additional reason for my irritation was the fact that he had obviously borrowed several very useful ideas from an essay by Marcel Proust which was published in Paris about a year before, and borrowed them without acknowledgment.2 His estimate of the value of Flaubert’s work however, was very different from that of M. Proust.
At one time I knew Mr Murry very well indeed, when I was working with him on the Athenaeum. Since then differences of temperament have divided us and he has treated me in his published writings, with either open patronage or disguised innuendo.3
It is however on wholly impersonal grounds that I have not yet invited him to contribute to this Review.
I think it would be interesting to mention in a footnote that your essay is one of a proposed series unless you preferred that I did not do so.
I hope that the publication of this essay will only remind you more strongly that I very much hope to have the honour of publishing your paper on Elizabethan blank verse at a later date. I should be sorry to forego the latter, but your paper on Flaubert is so appropriate and desirable that we must use it as soon as possible which will be in the second issue, to appear on January 15th.
You will receive proof in due course.
With very many thanks, believe me,
Sincerely Yours,
T. S. Eliot
1–JMM, ‘Gustave Flaubert’, TLS, 15 Dec. 1921. Robertson’s essay began by engaging with JMM’s published essay.
2–JMMborrowed from Marcel Proust, ‘À propos du “style” de Flaubert’, NRF (Jan. 1920). RA had written to Sturge Moore on 30 Dec. 1921: ‘Did you observe that a paragraph in the 2nd column, 2nd page (about Flaubert’s sense of time) was taken from an article by Marcel Proust in La Nouvelle Revue Français?’ (Senate House).
3–JMM, in a review of SW (New Republic, 13 Apr. 1921), wrote that TSE possessed ‘a critical intelligence of a high order’, but found his manner ‘portentous and disdainful’, his writing ‘often stiff and hidebound’. On 7 June 1921, VW recorded TSE in conversation apropos JMM: ‘“When we first knew each other we seemed to be becoming very friendly; but then we realised that we were fundamentally antagonistic”’ (Diary, II, 124).
4–TSE corrected a number of errors by hand.
Horace B. Liveright TO Gilbert Seldes
TS copy NYPL
12 September 1922
[New York]
Dear Seldes:
I have yours of the 8th and it is understood between us that we are not to publish The Waste Land previous to its appearance in The Dial and that the retail price will not exceed $2.00.
I don’t think that we’ll publish it before January, so you need have no worry about this. I also think that it would be a good idea to number the copies in the first edition whatever its size may be. Naturally, I’ll be glad to take back copies of the book as I need them.
Faithfully,
Horace B. Liveright
TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
13 September 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns, N.W.1
Dear Mary,
I was really dreadfully sorry to have to upset the picnic last Saturday. There was a bungalow to be sold which seemed exactly what we wanted.1 I went in the morning to see it and found there would be no one there till late in the afternoon, and then only for an hour or two. I felt we must see it, as we were leaving the next day, and we are so anxious to get something permanently in the neighbourhood. Unfortunately, it was no good, for it wanted a great deal of money to put it into repair, and also the price was absurdly high. We were both disappointed. Vivien wanted to move right in somewhere. She hated leaving the country. She says she will send you back the book tomorrow.
We look forward to seeing you in London as soon as the country releases you. It was a shame we had no picnics this year. If we could only get a cottage in the neighbourhood!
Affectionately
Tom.
1–They were no longer able to rent the seaside cottage at Bosham for their holidays, and so hoped to find something else near the Hutchinsons in nearby West Wittering.
TO Ezra Pound
TS Lilly
15 September 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Ezra,
The fact that I have not written for some time or made any comment on your letter is no evidence of dilatoriness. I have a great deal to say but for reasons which I do not pretend are reasonable, I prefer to wait until after you have seen Richard as I presume you will on his way back from Rome. Richard has not recently been (using the word in the most exact sense) sympathetic; for that matter I do not think that Richard and yourself have much more in common than a disapproval of my way of life up to the present. I, or both of us, may be in Paris in October; this is not absolutely certain as I may not want at that time to go so far for so few days; but if I do come, I may wait and discuss matters with you fully in person. If not, I will write you fully as early as possible. Please do not mention to Richard what I have said as I do not want to widen the breach or to have any quarrel with him.
Your contribution is quite admirable and will form a conspicuous adornment of the second number.1
Please give my apologies and regrets to Dorothy. As it happened I went to the country on Friday and got leave at the last moment to stay over until Monday night. I wired to her on Tuesday but my wire was returned undelivered with the report that she had already left for Paris. We shall see her I trust if we come to Paris in October.
Yours ever,
Ts.
Liveright’s proof is excellent.
1–EP, ‘On Criticism in General’, C. 1: 2 (Jan. 1923), 143–56.
Vivien Eliot TO Ottoline Morrell
TS Texas
15 September 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dearest Ottoline,
I was dreadfully sorry to miss you when you were in London, as I am so anxious to see and talk to you. I came back just after and I was very sorry to leave the country, but I had to give up the cottage then. I feel more and more that I should like to live in the country, London is so horrible.
Thank you so much for your letter and for what you say about the ‘Bel Esprit’ scheme. I have a lot to say on that subject, more than I can write in a letter at present. As for giving you a list of names of people who would be likely to be interested, I do not know of one person outside of those who have already been approached (or who I suppose have been approached) who would be likely to take the slightest interest in the scheme. Anyhow, I do so long for T. to have a freer life and a less ugly one.
T. had dinner with Murry the night before last and enjoyed seeing him again. I certainly do wish that there was not so much hatred, and when one gets right away from everybody one cannot see what it is all about.
I do wish you were in better health – you must have had a horrible summer. I am feeling very ill again just now but I hope it will pass.
With so much love to you, dearest Ottoline,
Your affectionate friend,
Vivien
TO Antonio Marichalar
TS Real Academia de la Historia
16 September 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gardens
Cher Monsieur,
Merci de votre aimable lettre, et de vôtre bénédiction! Je vous envois ciinclus une annonce corrigée avec la liste des principaux collaborateurs. Le premier numéro contiendra:
George Saintsbury: ‘Dullness’
Dostoevski: Plan of an Unfinished Novel
(translated by S. Kotel
iansky and Virginia Woolf)
T. Sturge Moore: The legend of Tristram and Iseult, I
T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land (poem) I–II
May Sinclair: The Victim
Hermann Hesse: German Poetry of To-day
Valery Larbaud: Ulysses
Second numéro (probablement):1
Rt. Hon. J. M. Robertson: Flaubert
Paul Valéry: Le Serpent (and translation by
M. Wardle)
