The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I
Page 71
In Pound’s case, TSE made an exception to his principle that “books about F. & F. authors should be published by other firms”, writing “This book · · · has the advantage of being an introduction to ALL the poetry, and nothing but the poetry. I mean, it does not concern itself with Pound’s economic doctrines or political nonsense; though it inevitably (and rightly) concerns itself with his interest in Chinese ideograms, poetry, and Confucius”, “The Poetry of Ezra Pound” by Hugh Kenner, reader’s report (1949). The book was published by Faber in 1951, but in 1960 Kenner’s The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot was published in the UK by W. H. Allen.
Revisiting Milton Academy, TSE emphasised how dedicated Pound had been: “I think of a friend who, in the early days, was as much concerned with the encouragement and improvement of the work of unknown writers in whom he discerned talent, as with his own creative work; who formulated, for a generation of poets, the principles of good writing most needful for their time; who tried to bring these writers together for their reciprocal benefit; who, in the face of many obstacles, saw that their writings were published; saw that they were reviewed somewhere by critics who could appreciate them; organized or supported little magazines in which their work could appear—and incidentally, liked to give a good dinner to those who he thought could not afford it, and sometimes even supplied the more needy with articles of clothing out of his own meagre store”, Leadership and Letters (1949).
“I believe that I have in the past made clear enough my personal debt to Ezra Pound during the years 1915–22. I have also expressed in several ways my opinion of his rank as a poet, as a critic, an impresario of other writers, and as pioneer of metric and poetic language. His 70th birthday is not a moment for qualifying one’s praise, but merely for recognition of those services to literature for which he will deserve the gratitude of posterity, and for appreciation of those achievements which even his severest critics must acknowledge”, Ezra Pound at Seventy (1956). “My criticism has this in common with that of Ezra Pound, that its merits and its limitations can be fully appreciated only when it is considered in relation to the poetry I have written myself”, The Frontiers of Criticism (1956).
When Leslie Paul asked about Pound’s revisions of The Waste Land, TSE explained: “He cut out a lot of dead matter. I think that the poem as originally written was about twice the length. It contained some stanzas in imitation of Pope, and Ezra said to me: ‘Pope’s done that so well that you’d better not try to compete with him.’ Which was sound advice. And there was also a long passage about a shipwreck which I think was inspired by the Ulysses canto in Dante’s Inferno. At any rate, he reduced it in length. Well, the fate of that manuscript or typescript with his blue-pencillings on it is one of the permanent—so far as I know—minor mysteries of literature · · · You know, I’m in two minds about that search. I should like it to be found as evidence of what Ezra himself called his maieutic [obstetric] abilities—evidence of what he did for me in criticizing my script. On the other hand, for my own reputation, and for that of The Waste Land itself, I’m rather glad that it has disappeared”, A Conversation, recorded in 1958, between T. S. Eliot and Leslie Paul ([1964/]1965).
To J. M. Aguirre, 23 Nov 1956: “I am afraid that I am unable to answer most of the questions in your letter of November 19th, some of them because they seem to imply a kind of rational structure in the poem which does not exist.” Asked by Donald Hall, “Did the excisions change the intellectual structure of the poem?” TSE replied: “No. I think it was just as structureless, only in a more futile way, in the longer version”, Paris Review (1959). “No doubt my readers would be interested to see the original version, but it is certain that Pound’s editing improved the poem and there is no ground for suggesting that it became more enigmatic”, Northrop Frye corrigenda (1963).
[Poem I 53–71 · Textual History II 359–408]
To Daniel H. Woodward, 3 Apr 1964, on The Waste Land draft and then the March Hare Notebook: “I cannot feel altogether sorry that this and the notebook have disappeared. The unpublished poems in the notebook were not worth publishing, and there was a great deal of superfluous matter in The Waste Land which Pound very rightly deleted. Indeed, the poem in the form in which it finally appeared owes more to Pound’s surgery than anyone can realise” (Woodward 268).
Despite such public and private tributes to him, Pound sent a message from Rapallo on 31 July 1959:
TSE
Forgive us our trespasses. Even you will forgive me when you realize the extent of my failure.
Yrs,
E.
On 5 Aug, TSE replied: “I am distressed and alarmed by your laconic note of the 31st July. What on earth is the failure you are talking about, and I don’t like the insinuation that I have an unforgiving nature. Please reply quickly.”
Further anguished pages arrived from Pound, impossible to print except in facsimile, but including such phrases as “I am trying to repudiate 30 years of injustice to you, from time of Ash Wednesday”, “you doing real criticism and me playing a tin penny whistle” and “30 years of impertinence from me”. Pound’s daughter, Mary de Rachewiltz, also wrote, on 23 Oct 1959, wondering whether TSE might visit, and reporting: “he is so overwhelmed by fragments that he does not even believe in his Poetry any more & that’s the worst part of it all”. TSE sent a cable from the US, 30 Oct: “TWO LETTERS RECEIVED I NEVER FORGET MY OWN GREAT DEBT TO YOU TO WHOM ALL LIVING POETS ARE INDEBTED STOP YOUR CRITICISM HAS ALWAYS BEEN IMMENSELY HELPFUL STOP YOUR OWN ACHIEVEMENT EPOCH MAKING STOP NOW JUST GOING WEST BUT WILL WRITE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE LOVE POSSUM”. Then a letter, 11 Nov: “Damn it, you’re still the biggest man in the poetry world, and have had the greatest influence on poetry of anyone in this century.”
Once back in London, TSE wrote again, 28 Dec 1959: “I have known well enough states of mind similar to yours. To tell a man what he has achieved in the world, how big his own work is, all he has done for other people and for the world at large, civilisation, society, etc. etc. doesn’t reach to the heart of the doubt, disgust, despair, etc. from which the victim is suffering. He knows all that and yet feels himself an utter failure · · · Your achievement in poetry the greatest that has happened in my lifetime.”
After letters from Pound of 22 and 30 Dec, and 16 Jan 1960, TSE wrote once more: “Still can’t understand why you have been so depressed about your work, or your life—trust you will get the right balance soon. Hell, there’s so much in my life I can’t bear to think about for long at a time. Still think Waste Land and three last quartets worth while. A lot of very silly stuff in my prose · · · Affectuous greetings, TP”.
[Poem I 53–71 · Textual History II 359–408]
11. THE FATE OF THE DRAFTS
To John Quinn 19 July 1922, thanking him for negotiating the contract for publication of the poem in America: “I should like to present you the MSS of The Waste Land, if you would care to have it—when I say MSS, I mean that it is partly MSS and partly typescript, with Ezra’s and my alterations scrawled all over it.” Quinn replied, 28 July–1 Aug 1922: “I shall be glad to have the MS. of Waste Land but I shan’t let you ‘present it to me’. When you finish the whole thing, poetry and prose, if you will send the MS. or MSS. to me, I shall be glad to have it, but you must agree to the condition that I send you a draft for what I think it is worth. I shall feel happier to do it that way.” (For more of this long serial letter, see Egleston ed. 264–67.) TSE, 21 Aug 1922: “I certainly cannot accept your proposal to purchase the manuscript at your own price, and if you will not accept it in recognition of what you have done for me lately and in the past, it will not be any pleasure to me to sell it to you. I therefore hope that you will accept it. But as I feel that perhaps you like some of my early poems best I should be glad, for example, to send you the manuscript of Prufrocks instead, and I hope you will let me do this.” (There was no mention of any material relating to the 1920 poems, although TSE included typescripts of eleven of these with the early poems.) After a meeting on 7 Sept wi
th Gilbert Seldes, managing editor of the Dial, settling terms for periodical publication of the poem, Quinn wrote again: “We won’t quarrel about the MS. of The Waste Land. I’ll accept it from you, not ‘for what I have lately done for you and in the past’, but as a mark of friendship, but on this condition: That you will let me purchase of you the MS. of the Early Poems that you referred to. If you have the Prufrock only, then I’ll purchase that. But if you have the MS. of the whole volume of your poems [Poems (1920)], including the Prufrock, I should greatly value that, and then I’ll have two complete manuscripts of yours. If you leave to me the fixing of what the MS. of those poems would be worth, I would discuss the matter with one or two dealers in rare books and manuscripts and autograph letters and would be guided by their advice. If I had to choose between the MS. of The Waste Land and the Notes and the Prufrock MS. alone, I would choose The Waste Land MS. But I feel sure that you’ll agree to my condition that I pay you for the MS. of the Early Poems. That meets your point and it gives me another MS. of yours, and each of us will be happy” (WLFacs xxiv).
Grateful to Pound as well as Quinn for helping to secure both publication in the Dial and the Dial award, TSE wrote to Quinn on 21 Sept saying that Pound had deserved to be recognised first.
In the manuscript of The Waste Land which I am sending you, you will see the evidences of his work, and I think that this manuscript is worth preserving in its present form solely for the reason that it is the only evidence of the difference which his criticism has made to this poem. I am glad that you at least will have the opportunity of judging of this for yourself. Naturally, I hope that the portions which I have suppressed will never appear in print and in sending them to you I am sending the only copies of these parts.
I have gathered together all of the manuscript in existence. The leather bound notebook is one which I started in 1909 and in which I entered all my work of that time as I wrote it, so that it is the only original manuscript barring of course rough scraps and notes, which were destroyed at the time, in existence. You will find a great many sets of verse which have never been printed and which I am sure you will agree never ought to be printed, and in putting them in your hands, I beg you fervently to keep them to yourself and see they never are printed.
I do not think that this manuscript is of any great value, especially as the large part is really typescript for which no manuscript except scattered lines, ever existed. It is understood that in the valuation you speak of The Waste Land is not to be included and the rest must be valued at its actual market value and not at any value which it may (or may not) acquire in course of time.
[Poem I 53–71 · Textual History II 359–408]
Valerie Eliot: “The packet containing the manuscripts was sent to Quinn by registered post on 23 October 1922, and reached his office at 31 Nassau Street, New York, on 13 January 1923” (WLFacs xxix). Quinn explained to TSE, 26 Feb 1923, how its value was calculated: “With the notebook · · · there are some fifty-three pages of manuscript in the book and some five or six pages of loose manuscript, making roughly sixty pages. Then there are the typewritten drafts, which Drake [a bookdealer] did not rank as manuscript and disregarded in his valuation. He thought that a payment of about $2 a page would be ‘about right’. But I thought his figures were somewhat conservative and I am sending you London draft to your order for £29 14s 10d, the equivalent at the present rate of exchange of $140, which I think is fair and reasonable” (WLFacs xxvi). TSE responded, 12 Mar 1923: “I consider your payment for the manuscript very generous indeed, and feel that you have thwarted me in my attempt to repay you in some way for all that you have done” (WLFacs xxvi).
Quinn, 26 Feb 1923: “I have read the manuscript of The Waste Land which you sent me with great interest. I have noted the evidence of Pound’s criticisms on the poem. Personally I should not have cut out some of the parts that Pound advised you to cut out. Of course the portions which you have scrapped will never appear in print from the copies that I have” (Egleston ed. 276).
Six years after Quinn’s death in 1924, his sister proposed an edition of letters received by him (all now NYPL). Lennox Robinson, the editor, sent TSE transcripts of those from him, but there appears to have been no mention of the drafts of The Waste Land or the March Hare Notebook. Unusually, TSE agreed to the request in principle, lightly editing the copies of his letters and returning them to Robinson, but the edition came to nothing. To Robinson, 17 Sept 1930: “I wish most cordially that I could contribute some memories. But I never had the pleasure of meeting Quinn; the letters themselves show I think the kind and extent of my relations with him; though these letters are far from covering the whole of his benefactions to me.”
TSE to Jeanne Robert Foster, 11 Jan 1934: “Your name has been given to me as that of the Literary Executor of the late Mr. John Quinn. I am writing to ask if you can tell me anything of the fate of two MSS. of my own which were in Mr. Quinn’s collection. I have never heard what became of them after his death, and I am told that they were not included in the sale. One was a medium-sized note book, bound in half leather, which contained the manuscript of all my early poems, and of a good many youthful poems which I never wished to publish. The other was partly typescript and partly manuscript, and consisted of the original Waste Land with Ezra Pound’s suggestions and some of my own revisions.” TSE does not appear to have written again to Mrs. Foster.
[Poem I 53–71 · Textual History II 359–408]
On 30 June 1958, Donald Gallup wrote to Donald Hall that he had had confirmation of a rumour that “the typescript of The Waste Land had been offered, at $100,000 (but whether with other manuscripts and letters I don’t know), to ‘a mid-Western university library.’ According to my sources, this library refused the offer and suggested that the Morgan Library might be interested. Apparently the offer was then made to the Morgan and also turned down there.” TSE to Donald Hall, 20 Aug 1959: “It is very satisfactory to know that rumour has now reduced the price of The Waste Land script from 200,000 to 100,000 dollars, and we can only hope that it will eventually be reduced to such a small amount that I may regard the sale with complete indifference; but I shall be glad to hear any further news that reaches you.” Gallup to Alan Clodd, 27 Aug 1959: “I think we may be certain that the typescript of The Waste Land, at least, showing Ezra Pound’s deletions, is still very much in existence and it will probably come out of hiding before very long”. TSE to Hall, 1 Oct 1959: “Thank you for your further news, or rather for letting me know that there is no further news about The Waste Land MS. I wonder if the whole thing is imaginary. It seems very odd that the rumour should be so persistent and yet so devoid of foundation.”
A draft letter from Jeanne Robert Foster to Valerie Eliot (undated but probably 1971) states: “I believe the year 1966 Dr. and Mrs Conroy found the MS in 1966. It would have been held in the Quinn materials shippe in [? shipment] approximately 41 years” (NYPL).
In 1971, Valerie Eliot explained that the drafts
were not mentioned in Quinn’s will, but formed part of the estate inherited by his sister, Julia (Mrs. William Anderson). After Mrs. Anderson’s death in 1934, her widower and daughter, Mary (Mrs. Thomas F. Conroy) moved to a smaller apartment, and many cases of Quinn’s papers were put in storage. It was not until the early 1950s, after a prolonged search, that Mrs. Conroy found the manuscripts.
On 4 April 1958 she sold them to the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library for $18,000. The purchase remained private, neither Eliot nor Pound being told about it. The Curator, the late Dr. John D. Gordan, asked a common friend if she could arrange an appointment for him with Eliot to discuss “a business matter” when he visited London in May that year. Eliot was in America at the time unfortunately, and Dr. Gordan made no further attempt to communicate with him.
I was informed of the acquisitions when Mr. James W. Henderson gave me a microfilm of them, in the summer of 1968, with the request to observe secrecy until the Library issued a public statement on
25 October, the date of the publication of Professor B. L. Reid’s biography, The Man from New York: John Quinn and His Friends.
Mrs. Conroy has presented twenty-two letters and six cables from Eliot to her uncle to the Manuscript Division of the Library.
WLFacs xxix
Valerie Eliot ended her introduction to the facsimile with a summary:
The manuscript-typescript of The Waste Land consists of fifty-four leaves (of which forty-seven are single), together with three receipted bills for the period 22 October to 12 November 1921, from The Albemarle Hotel, Cliftonville, Margate (where Eliot began his convalescence), and the label from the packet. There are no notes. Someone, possibly Eliot, has divided the leaves into two sections: the main text, and the miscellaneous poems [that] were considered for it; these now contain forty-two leaves and twelve leaves respectively. An assortment of paper has been used.
WLFacs xxx
The announcement of the discovery of the drafts was followed by an account of them by Donald Gallup, TLS 7 Nov 1968, with illustrations of three leaves (WLFacs 4, 10 and 58), and quoting the six lines WLComposite 552–57. A slightly revised account was published in the Bulletin of the New York Public Library Dec 1968.
Valerie Eliot, interviewed by Timothy Wilson, The Observer 20 Feb 1972:
[Poem I 53–71 · Textual History II 359–408]
“We were in New York a number of times between 1958 and 1965, and my husband could have seen his manuscript,” Mrs Eliot says. “Part of me is angry that he was never told about it, and part of me feels that it was merciful. The years of The Waste Land were a terrible nightmare to him, and I did not want him to relive them: if he had seen these drafts, they might have brought back all the horror. In the last months of his life there was a persistent rumour that the University of Texas had acquired the manuscript for a considerable sum. We never thought it would turn up, but Tom told me that if it did I was to publish it. ‘It won’t do me any good,’ he added, ‘but I would like people to realise the extent of my debt to Ezra.’” · · · She also visited Pound in Venice, but apparently it distresses him to think that he ever criticised Eliot. “He told me,” Mrs Eliot says, “that if my husband had waited until he was better, he would have made the cuts and improvements himself.” However, during her second visit to New York, Pound turned up unexpectedly and went with her to the library, to see if the actual manuscript would help his memory. But he was so moved by seeing it that he just sat for a long time in front of it, tears in his eyes.