Letters of T.S. Eliot: 1898-1922

by T. S. Eliot

  When we made up our minds to leave, I did not know whether it would be possible to get to England or not, but there was a rumor (nothing was more than a rumor) that one could get money by having one’s letter of credit viséd by a consul, and I thought I could throw myself on the consul at Rotterdam, in any case. Anything to get out of the country, even if we had to travel steerage (we were prepared for that). We left Marburg Sunday afternoon. The trip to Frankfurt is ordinarily an hour and a half. It took five hours. Mobilization ended, but they were still on the lookout for bombs. There were soldiers on the train, too, reservists. I shall never forget one woman’s face as she tried to wave goodbye. I could not see his face; he was in the next compartment. I am sure she had no hope of seeing him again.

  At Frankfurt we had to spend the night, and see the consul next day. Here there was good news; boats were moving to England. We have our passes viséd by the Dutch consul, and went on. We had taken a chance; it was not certain that we could get through Cologne by train; but the boats down the Rhine would have taken three days, and it was raining. Some went to Cologne. In the train we fell in with a man I had known in college, with his wife, and as we filled one compartment, had a pleasant day. Of course there was little enough to eat, as no dining cars were run. We reached Cologne at 10 p.m. after a change and a tedious wait. We made a good supper, and decided to press on the same night. So we tried to sleep with our heads on tables in the waiting room, and were very uncomfortable till 3 a.m., when we took our train. The train was crowded; Germans but some Americans; and we were packed in tight. We got underway late, just at daybreak. At 7 a.m. we had to change again, and had time for breakfast. There was another change; then another, and we reached the frontier about 3 p.m. We were very nervous, expecting to be searched, but they did not even open our bags; looked at our passes – ‘Amerikaner – ach, schoen!’ [‘American – oh fine!’] let us by.

  It was a tremendous relief to be in neutral country; even the landscape seemed more peaceful. We reached Rotterdam at 10 p.m. and got the last room in the hotel. I slept very solid! We had to wait a day there; a most uninteresting shipping town. There two of our party got passages on a freighter for $100 apiece to Boston. The last man and I took a train for Flushing – changing twice – slept on the boat, an excellent boat; and got to London the following night. And that’s all. The American pass does anything in Germany. They are making a strong bid for American sympathy.2 I was treated with the greatest courtesy everywhere. As the German press offers only a very one sided view of affairs, it is safe to say that they are getting this sympathy from Americans in Germany. Besides, they are extremely hospitable and warmhearted; all the hosts of Americans in Marburg told them to stay and not to think of paying. The people in general are persuaded of the rightness of the German cause; so was I, to a certain extent, till I found that the English papers were making exact contradictions of the German. Germany is animated by an intense spirit, but I don’t see how she can possibly win. They will do no harm to England; the waters as we approached were black with English warships. And Germany is putting forth every ounce of strength. ‘Deutschland kaempft um das Existenz!’ [‘Germany is fighting for her existence!’] they say and they are right. But I think it is better that Germany should go. London is full of Americans but I have not met any acquaintances yet.

  [incomplete]

  1–From a copy in her hand.

  2–‘As soon as the panic that followed the outbreak of war had subsided, elaborate orders were issued that every courtesy should be shown to Americans, and all this week special trains have been running for their benefit from Munich, Frankfurt and other centres to Rotterdam and Flushing, where nothing was left undone which could give to the departing guests a favourable last impression of Germany’ (The Times, 25 Aug. 1914).

  TO Henry Eliot

  MS Houghton

  Monday 7 September [1914]1

  28 Bedford Place, Russell Square,

  London W.C.

  My dear Henry,

  I will ask my tailor to send you some samples at once, if he has any winter goods now; he could make you a suit to my measure; as he is a cash tailor he would have to have the money before you have the suit. I will pay him if you like, when the time comes.

  I fear that I have no interesting anecdotes of my adventures beyond what I have already imparted. I was interviewed by a reporter when I got here, but had nothing interesting to give him even had I been willing to communicate it. It is really much more interesting to be in London now than it was to be in Germany: the latter experience was much like the childhood’s exasperation of being in an upper berth as the train passed through a large city. – In fact it was an intolerable bore. There, one was so far from any excitement and information that it was impossible to work; here in all the noise and rumour, I can work. The quarter where I live is rather foreign anyway, being composed exclusively of boarding houses, in rows, all exactly alike except for the fancy names on them; and now we are full up with Belgian and French refugees, whole families of them, of the well-to-do sort, with babies and nurses;2 – we have just acquired a Swiss waiter instead of a German one who was very unpopular (one excited lady said ‘what’s to prevent him putting arsenic in our food?’ I said ‘Nothing! – he already puts blacking on my tan shoes’) so I have been talking French and acquiring a war vocabulary. The noise hereabouts is like hell turned upside down. Hot weather, all windows open, many babies, pianos, street piano accordions, singers, hummers, whistlers. Every house has a gong: they all go off at seven o’clock, and other hours. Ten o’clock in the evening, quiet for a few minutes, then a couple of men with late editions burst into the street, roaring: GREAT GERMAN DISASTER!3 Everybody rushes to windows and doors, in every costume from evening clothes to pajamas; violent talking – English, American, French, Flemish, Russian, Spanish, Japanese; the papers are all sold in five minutes; then we settle down for another hour till the next extra appears: LIST OF ENGLISH DEAD AND WOUNDED. Meanwhile, a dreadful old woman, her skirt trailing on the street, sings ‘the Rosary’4 in front, and secures several pennies from windows and the housemaid resumes her conversation at the area gate.5

  I find it quite possible to work in this atmosphere. The noises of a city so large as London don’t distract one much; they become attached to the city and depersonalise themselves. No doubt it will take me some time to become used to the quiet of Oxford. I like London better than before; it is foreign, but hospitable, or rather tolerant, and perhaps does not so demand to be understood as does Paris. Less jealous. I think I should love Paris now more than ever, if I could see her in these times. There seems to have come a wonderful calmness and fortitude over Paris, from what I hear; the spirit is very different from 1870. I have a great deal of confidence in the ultimate event; I am anxious that Germany should be beaten; but I think it is silly to hold up one’s hands at German ‘atrocities’ and ‘violations of neutrality’. The Germans are perfectly justified in violating Belgium – they are fighting for their existence – but the English are more than justified in turning to defend a treaty. But the Germans are bad diplomats. It is not against German ‘crimes’, but against German ‘civilisation’ – all this system of officers and professors – that I protest. But very useful to the world if kept in its place.

  Yours

  affy Tom

  1–TSE put ‘Monday 8 September’.

  2–See ‘London, The City of Refuge’: ‘This invasion has turned London into a city where alien tongues can be heard everywhere. In omnibuses and trains, in the shops and theatres, one sees foreigners and one listens to foreign speech. One might almost suggest that London’s motto should be, “Ici on parle Français”, for in certain parts of the city the language of our allies is heard almost as frequently as our own. The bulk of London’s French and Belgian guests are women and children, whose men are under arms …’ (The Times, 10 Sept. 1914, 4).

  3–See ‘Severe German Defeat’, The Times, 8 Sept. 1914, 8: ‘In an attack on the southern se
ction of the Antwerp fortifications yesterday the Germans lost a thousand dead and retreated towards Vilevorde in a demoralized condition.’

  4–‘The Rosary’ (c.1901): poem by Robert C. Rogers, music by Jennie P. Black.

  5–‘I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids / Sprouting despondently at area gates’ (‘Morning at the Window’, 3–4).

  TO Eleanor Hinkley

  MS Houghton

  8 September [1914]

  28 Bedford Place, Russell Square

  My dear Eleanor

  Here I am in Shady Bloomsbury, the noisiest place in the world, a neighbourhood at present given over to artists, musicians, hackwriters, Americans, Russians, French, Belgians, Italians, Spaniards, and Japanese; formerly Germans also – these have now retired, including our waiter, a small inefficient person, but, as one lady observed, ‘What’s to prevent him putting arsenic in our tea?’ A delightfully seedy part of town, with some interesting people in it, besides the Jones twins, who were next door for a few days, and Ann Van Ness1 who is a few blocks away. I was quite glad to find her, she is very pleasant company, and not at all uninteresting quite interesting (that’s better). Only I wish she wouldn’t look like German allegorical paintings – e.g. POMONA blessing the DUKE of MECKLENBURGSTRELITZ, or something of that sort – because she hasn’t really a German mind at all, but quite American. I was in to tea yesterday, and we went to walk afterwards, to the Regent’s Park Zoo. The only other friend I have here now is my French friend of the steamer, just returned from Paris, who is also very interesting, in a different way – one of those people you sometimes meet who do not have much discursive conversation on a variety of topics, but occasionally surprise you by a remark of unusual penetration. But perhaps I do her an injustice, as she does talk pretty well – but it is more the latter that I notice. Anyway it is pleasant to be in contact with a French mind in a foreign city like this. I like London very well now – it has grown on me, and I grew quite homesick for it in Germany; and I have met several very agreeable Englishmen. Still I feel that I don’t understand the English very well. I think that Keith2 is really very English – and thoroughly so – and I always found him very baffling, though I like him very much. It seemed to me that I got to know him quite easily, and never got very much farther; and I am interested to see (this year) whether I shall find it so with all English; and whether the difficulty is simply that I consider him a bit conventional. I don’t know just what conventionality is; it doesn’t involve snobbishness, because I am a thorough snob myself; but I should have thought of it as perhaps the one quality which all my friends lacked. And I’m sure that if I did know what it was, among men, I should have to find out all over again with regard to women.

  Perhaps when I learn how to take Englishmen, this brick wall will cease to trouble me. But it’s ever so much easier to know what a Frenchman or an American is thinking about, than an Englishman. Perhaps partly that a Frenchman is so analytical and selfconscious that he dislikes to have anything going on inside him that he can’t put into words, while an Englishman is content simply to live. And that’s one of the qualities one counts as a virtue; the ease and lack of effort with which they take so much of life – that’s the way they have been fighting in France – I should like to be able to acquire something of that spirit. But on the other hand the French way has an intellectual honesty about it that the English very seldom attain to. So there you are.

  I haven’t said anything about the war yet. Of course (though no one believes me) I have no experiences of my own of much interest – nothing, that is, in the way of anecdotes, that are easy to tell – though the whole experience has been something which has left a very deep impression on me; having seen, I mean, how the people in the two countries have taken the affair, and the great moral earnestness on both sides. It has made it impossible for me to take adopt a wholly partizan attitude, or even to rejoice or despair wholeheartedly, though I should certainly want to fight against the Germans if at all. I cannot but wonder whether it all seems as awful at your distance as it does here. I doubt it. No war ever seemed so real to me as this: of course I have been to some of the towns about which they have been fighting; and I know that men I have known, including one of my best friends, must be fighting each other. So it’s hard for me to write interestingly about the war.

  I hope to hear that you have had a quiet summer, at best. Did Walter Cook ever call? If you have seen Harry [Child] let me know how he is, and that he is not starving himself.

  Always affectionately

  Tom

  PS (After rereading). Please don’t quote Pomona. It’s perhaps a literary as well as a social mistake to write as one would talk. I apologise for the quality of this letter anyway.

  1–Ann Van Ness (b. 1891), daughter of a Unitarian Minister.

  2–Elmer D. Keith (1888–1965) graduated in 1910 from Yale, where he won the University poetry prize. A Rhodes Scholar at Oriel College, Oxford, 1910–13, he later worked at Harvard University Press.

  TO Conrad Aiken

  MS Huntington

  30 September [1914]

  Merton College, Oxford

  Dear Conrad,

  No, I’m still in London, but I go to the above address Tuesday. I reflect upon the fact that I neglected to add my address to my last. I wait till Tuesday because there is a possibility of dining at a Chinese restaurant Monday with Yeats,1 – and the Pounds. Pound has been on n’est pas plus aimable,2 and is going to print ‘Prufrock’ in Poetry and pay me for it.3 He wants me to bring out a Vol. after the War. The devil of it is that I have done nothing good since J. A[lfred] P[rufrock] and writhe in impotence. The stuff I sent you is not good, is very forced in execution, though the idea was right, I think. Sometimes I think – if I could only get back to Paris. But I know I never will, for long. I must learn to talk English. Anyway, I’m in the worry way now. Too many minor considerations.4 Does anything kill as petty worries do? And in America we worry all the time. That, in fact, is I think the great use of suffering, if it’s tragic suffering – it takes you away from yourself – and petty suffering does exactly the reverse, and kills your inspiration. I think now that all my good stuff was done before I had begun to worry – three years ago. I sometimes think it would be better to be just a clerk in a post office with nothing to worry about – but the consciousness of having made a failure of one’s life. Or a millionaire, ditto. The thing is to be able to look at one’s life as if it were somebody’s else – (I much prefer to say somebody else’s). That is difficult in England, almost impossible in America. – But it may be all right in the long run, (if I can get over it), perhaps tant mieux [so much the better]. Anyway, I have been living a pleasant and useless life of late, and talking (bad) French too. I have dined several times with Armstrong5 who is very good company. By the way, Pound is rather intelligent as a talker: his verse is well-meaning but touchingly incompetent; but his remarks are sometimes good. O conversation the staff of life shall I get any at Oxford? Everything à pis aller. Où se réfugier? [Everything’s a stand-in. Where can one hide?] Anyway it’s interesting to cut yourself to pieces once in a while, and wait to see if the fragments will sprout.

  My war poem, for the $100 prize, entitled

  UP BOYS AND AT’EM!

  Adapted to the tune of ‘C. Columbo lived in Spain’ and within the

  compass of the average male or female voice:

  I should find it very stimulating to have several women fall in love with me – several, because that makes the practical side less evident. And I should be very sorry for them, too. Do you think it possible, if I brought out the ‘Inventions of the March Hare’,6 and gave a few lectures, at 5 p.m. with wax candles,7 that I could become a sentimental Tommy.8

  1–William Butler Yeats (1865–1939): Irish poet and playwright.

  2–‘Pound couldn’t have been kinder’: TSE called on Ezra and Dorothy Pound (for EP, see Glossary of Names) at 5 Holland Place Chambers, Kensington, with an introduction from Aiken, on 22
Sept.

  3–On this same day (30 Sept.), EP wrote to Harriet Monroe, editor of Poetry, telling her that ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ was ‘the best poem I have yet had or seen from an American. PRAY GOD IT BE NOT A SINGLE AND UNIQUE SUCCESS. He has taken it back to get it ready for the press and you shall have it in a few days.’ EP sent the poem in Oct., writing ‘Hope you’ll get it in soon.’ When Monroe demurred, he wrote: ‘No, most emphatically I will not ask Eliot to write down to any audience whatsoever … Neither will I send you Eliot’s address in order that he may be insulted’ (9 Nov.). To further objections, he replied: ‘“Mr. Prufrock” does not “go off at the end”. It is a portrait of failure, or of a character which fails, and it would be false art to make it end on a note of triumph. I disliked the paragraph about Hamlet, but it is an early and cherished bit and T. E. won’t give it up, and as it is the only portion of the poem that most readers will like at first reading, I don’t see that it will do much harm’ (31 Jan. 1915). Finally he implored her (10 Apr.), ‘Do get on with that Eliot’ (Selected Letters of Ezra Pound 1907–1941, ed. D. D. Paige, 1950). The poem was published in Poetry 6: 3 (June 1915).