Letters of T.S. Eliot: 1898-1922
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5–According to Arnold Bennett’s Journal, WBY, with Roger Fry and Bennett himself, had attended a spiritualist séance at Mme Van der Velde’s on 8 Feb. Roy Foster reports that WBY had at this time ‘embarked upon one of his most bizarre and credulous involvements yet’ in psychical research. The episode involved a ‘mildly deranged chemist’ who had invented a machine for communicating with the spirit world: this was investigated by the Society for Psychical Research, and declared by WBY to be ‘the greatest discovery of the modern world’ (Yeats: A Life: The Arch-Poet, 2003, 74).
6–Arnold Bennett (1867–1931), novelist, playwright and diarist; author of The Old Wives’ Tale (1908) and The Clayhanger Trilogy (1910–16).
TO J. H. Woods
MS Professor David G. Williams
23 March 1917
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Dr Woods,
It was very good to hear from you at last. I was afraid that my letter had never reached you, and was on the point of writing again. I have been hoping that you might turn up in London, and still hope so, as I cannot possibly come to France.1 I am very sorry indeed to hear that Mrs Woods has been ill; I can sympathise with you fully, as my wife has suffered so much. I suppose you will stay with her during the Easter holidays: could you not come over here in July or August?
First of all, let me report on C. E. B.2 Russell says of him
‘B. is alright. A little supercilious, but no harm in him. Very scholarly and learned, not profoundly original but more or less so.’ Joachim says
‘I only met B. once and B. R. knows him much better than I do. My impression of him is that he is so fearfully competent that he makes me feel very incompetent. However, on reflection out of his presence I don’t think I am so feeble after all. He is perhaps rather lacking in “intuition”. His views on things like war and friendship and logic are very sympathetic to me, and he has always been most flattering when he wrote about me. So I am most grateful to him, but still on intellectual matters I manage to look up to him!’
This is all I have gathered. I know one or two other people who might know him, but probably not well.
I will finish the Organon. I should have done so ere now but that I did not know where to send it. There is not very much to add. The de Anima is a more difficult question. The notes are on interleaves and in such small writing (mostly in the original Latin to boot) that I fear no one could possibly decipher them but myself. I do not quite like to trust the fruit of so much labour to the submarines in the Channel, but perhaps I can offer it as an inducement to you to come and fetch it, until I can transcribe it. I will send you a copy of an article I wrote for the Monist – I fear not a very good one, done under trying conditions – on Leibniz and Aristotle. I promised Jourdain some months ago an article comparing Leibniz’ logic to Aristotle’s, for Scientia, but I have had no time for such a gigantic undertaking.3 Also, I projected a series for him on Green and other Victorian idealists, not a word of which is yet written.4 I am doing a good deal of reviewing for him; he is enlarging the reviewing of the Monist; he takes charge of mathematics, chemistry and physics, and I of philosophy, religion, biology, and anthropology.
I am also writing more or less for the New Statesman. As for my poems, I believe they will be published; it is a question as to whether the printer can do it for £15, which is all the publisher is prepared to spend. I shall of course send you a copy if the book appears. The other book (the Catholic Anthology) got me a very favourable notice from the (London) Nation.
I have an evening class in English literature (mostly social and religious topics, Arnold, Ruskin, etc.) under London University, a class of working people, which I enjoy very much. This class of people is the most agreeable in England to me – you see I am by way of being a Labourite in England, though a conservative at home. The middle class – including most of the people one knows, or at least their families, is hopelessly stupid. Its family life is hideous. When of sufficient means, the middle classes want their sons to go to public schools; but the only motive is snobism, and the lack of respect for education is amazing … Some day I shall write a book on the English; it is my impression that no one in America knows anything about them. They are in fact very different from ourselves.
Have you seen B. R.’s book?5 It is very weak. I don’t know now when I shall be able to go to America for my exams. It doesn’t look like it at present, and if we go to war, I shall want the government to give me something to do. Now I am working by day in Lloyds Bank as a stop-gap. Literature and journalistic work is not in great demand, nor is lecturing or teaching, except school teaching, which I refuse to return to – it is altogether too exhausting. So I have charge of the balance-sheets of the foreign correspondents of Lloyds. It is not uninteresting, and it is pleasant to work in a bank where tea is served at 4 p.m., but I wish it were more remunerative.
Life here simply consists in waiting for the war to stop – if one thought of that too much it would have the same effect as Chancery on Richard Carstone in Bleak House.6 What is the use of plans? one thinks often.
I must stop. Do give my and my wife’s sympathy to Mrs Woods, and let me hear from you soon again.
Yours ever
Thomas S. Eliot
1–Woods was in France on an exchange professorship, and as organiser of the American University Union in Paris.
2–Despite the middle initial, C. E. B. was probably Charles Dunbar Broad (1887–1971), who had studied under Russell, and was now a fellow of Trinity College and lecturer in logic at St Andrews. He was Knightsbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge, 1933–53.
3–The article was never written.
4–TSE’s interest in T. H. Green (1826–1882) – political and religious philosopher, philosophy tutor at Balliol College, Oxford; later Whyte’s Professor of Moral Philosophy; leading member of the British Idealist movement – was probably a product of his work on F. H. Bradley, who was taught by Green. Other notable British Idealists included Harold Joachim and J. M. E. McTaggart.
5–Why Men Fight, the US edition of Principles of Social Reconstruction, had been published in Jan.
6–Richard Carstone is destroyed by his obsession with a case in the Court of Chancery. TSE later called Bleak House Dickens’s ‘best novel’ (‘Wilkie Collins and Dickens’, SE, 461).
TO Henry Eliot
TS Houghton
23 March 1917
18 Crawford Mansions, Crawford
St, W.1 W.1
Dear Henry,
This is only a short note, but it is perhaps better than nothing. I have never written to thank you for the draft of £10 which you sent at a very opportune moment, just in the nick of time to save me from withdrawing my £50 which I have managed to tuck away in a deposit account. Later, father sent me some money. He has been wonderfully good, but it does go against the grain for me to take it; I have taken so much and so thoughtlessly in the past. Just now I am earning £2 10s a week filing balance sheets in Lloyds bank; the work is not exhausting, and the pay may improve; besides, I have my evening class and what writing I do. I sent you a copy of the New Statesman;1 I am trying to think of another article now.
Remember that every letter you write helps to keep me in touch with America, and that it is fully appreciated by both of us. The world seems a complete nightmare at times; nothing that could happen would be surprising. I wonder if there will ever come a time when we shall look back and find that the period we are living through seems quite unreal in retrospect.
I hope you will not go to Chicago unless you are quite certain it is a better thing. But you might, on the whole, prefer to be back there to living permanently in New York, wouldn’t you?
I shall not write any more, because I want to get into the habit of writing single pages like this more often.
Very affectionately,
Tom
1–He was probably referring here to ‘Reflections on Vers Libre’ (3Mar. 1917), although the issue of 17 Mar. carried his unsig
ned review of ‘Diderot’s Early Philosophical Works’.
TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
28 March 1917
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mrs Hutchinson
I must apologize very deeply for not having answered your letter before. I was away when it came, and so could not answer before the afternoons you suggested; and I have been meaning to write to ask if I could come another time. I should like very much to come to see you soon. I am now at Lloyds Bank all day, and cannot leave till 5. I have no idea how long it takes from Cannon Street to Ravenscourt Park – perhaps you know better than I. But will you let me know whether I may come on a Saturday, or in the evening, if the afternoon is too late?
I was very sorry to hear that you have been ill. The weather must have handicapped you severely, but I hope you are very much better by now.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
TO J. C. Squire1
MS Texas
29 March 1917
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Squire,
Here is another contribution, which I submit for your approval.2
I should like to drop in and see you, but I am at present working in Lloyds Bank from 9.15 till 5. I have been there for the past ten days. It is not bad work, and much more comfortable and less wearing than schoolmastering, though (so far) even less remunerative. But I hope to preserve some energy for writing.
I shall try the Dial shortly, and then the Century, but have nothing on hand yet.
Sincerely
T. S. Eliot
Are you ever in town on Saturday at lunch time? I am free then.
1–J. C. Squire (1884–1958), poet and critic; literary editor of NS 1913–19, where he wrote as ‘Solomon Eagle’; later founding editor of The London Mercury, 1919–34.
2–Probably the unsigned review of Gamaliel Bradford, Union Portraits, in NS 9 (21 Apr. 1917); he would send a copy of the book to his mother for Christmas.
Vivien Eliot TO Charlotte Eliot Smith
MS Houghton
4 April 1917
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Charlotte
I feel very much ashamed of not having written sooner to thank you for sending the photos. We were delighted with them – they are such jolly ones. I am quite proud of my nieces (it seems so odd to have nieces.) I think that big head of the little one – Charlotte – is most artistic. I am having it framed. I like the way she has her hair cut. I am always threatening Tom to cut my hair like that! But he won’t let me. I am writing on the eventful day of American’s declaration of war.1 No news seems so thrilling as it used to, as we are no longer allowed posters – But today’s news is very exciting – rather unpleasant but exciting to me personally. You said a few things in yr. last letter that made me think you may feel sympathetically about the war – or war. I am sure you will hate the thought of yr. husband’s possibly going to fight. But I suppose, and hope and pray, that the married men will not be conscripted for a long time – and if one dared to think that the war ever ever will be over one wd. hope it wd. be over before that. I can’t help feeling, indeed I know that many of you in America simply don’t know what war means – I mean what this war means. I don’t suppose you ever will, as we have known it. This sounds a depressing letter, but I have got a bad sore throat, and it does not help towards looking on the bright side of things, if there is such a side!
Tom and I live a scrambling, over worked, hand-to-mouth sort of existence, which I know it wd, be quite useless to describe to anyone who does not see us living it. We muddle along somehow, and time flies. I should like you to see our flat. It is the one thing I do really take a pride in – I mean seem to have succeeded in. It means an extraordinary lot to me – I am a person who simply does not exist without a home, and am always fussing with it. Well, please excuse a very dull letter – most of what one wd. like to say one can’t.
Affectly Vivien
1–President Wilson had addressed Congress seeking a declaration of war on 2 Apr. but the USA’s formal declaration of war on Germany did not in fact follow until 6 Apr.
Vivien Eliot TO Charlotte C. Eliot
MS Houghton
Easter Sunday 8 April [1917]
18 Crawford Mansions
My dear Mrs Eliot
We have just been home to lunch and tea. We nearly always go on Sundays. We got back here at 6. Today the time has been changed.1 We all had to put our clocks on one hour. It is such a good idea, I think. So now, although by our new time it is 7.30 p.m. it is broad daylight. In another month it will be light up till nearly 9. ocl. I love long days. But summer is so pitifully short, and winter so hideously long. I never can quite enjoy the summer, because I can’t forget the terrible winter that has gone, and the terrible one so soon to come. Life rushes by – with us. Somehow it all seems a long scramble, and effort, and one scarcely has time to think. A good thing, perhaps. Please excuse pencil. I cannot write in ink except on the smoothest paper. The act of writing is a terrible effort to me. My mind is full of things to say, but my hand will not obey my mind. I write laboriously and illegibly.
Tom is going on smoothly at the Bank. His health is much improved since he went there. There is a marked change in him. Everyone notices it. His nerves are so much better – he does not have those black silent moods, and the irritability. Those months when he was entirely at home were very very trying. He writes better, feels better and happier and has better health when he knows that money (however little) is assured, and coming in regularly – even tho’ he has only a few hours a day to write in, than when he has all day – and nothing settled, nothing sure. I am so thankful this work is congenial to him. I never thought it would be. It was quite a surprise to me to find he liked it.
I long for the end of the war (such an expression is most futile to express my longing) and when we can come to America. The fact that America has declared war is rather terrible to me. I so dread that Tom might have, some day, to fight. And yet I think he would almost like to. You, over there, do not realise the bad and dreadful effect war has on the characters of young men (and old men). If they are nervous and highly strung, (as Tom is, and also my brother) they become quite changed. A sort of desperation, and demoralisation of their minds, brains, and character. I have seen it so, so often. It is one of the most dreadful things. But how can they help it?
I must stop now. I am very tired.
Affectly,
Vivien
1–British Summer Time was introduced as a wartime measure in 1916.
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
11 April 1917
18 Crawford Mansions
Dearest Mother
I have been wondering very much what you think now, and am looking forward to your letters. Do you like [President Woodrow] Wilson any better? I am sure that it was the right thing, and had been expecting it for some little time. It ought to make his two messages more important in the eyes of those who were not inclined to take them very seriously at the time. The German declaration that American armed liners would be considered as pirates was the last touch. I am pleased for several reasons, but chiefly because I think the war was so momentous as it was, that winding it up as a world war will be the best chance now for a satisfactory conclusion. I wish that our country might have a chance to refresh its memory as to what war really is like, – now that it is such a very vivid thing to Europe. On the other hand I hope now that it will not last long enough for that. You will be having all the excitement and bustle of war without the horrors and despairs – except those which will follow from taxation. It will be very interesting to hear from you how St Louis is taking the affair (I take the society meetings, national anthems, etc. for granted – I mean what the different nationalities really feel, and what the lower classes think). I can imagine the mob breaking the windows of Faust’s Restaurant, and sacking the Anhaüser-Busch,1 and Mr Busch giving a million dollars toward national defense.
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I wonder what the Service Act will be.2 I don’t suppose persons like myself would be called up for a couple of years, and it will be over before that. Peters3 and Little4 (Leon) are no doubt patrolling the seas – they were in the naval reserve; and various others who were in the Troop or the Battery – George Parker5 you remember, our cousin – are now in camp. I don’t envy them. I certainly do not feel in a position to go until ‘called out’, though Vivien has been rather troubled – I should go then, but not till then.
I am getting on nicely in my work at the bank, and like it. It is wonderful to find something to do in wartime which is less fatiguing than teaching, and the men at the bank are very pleasant. I want to find out something about the science of money while I am at it: it is an extraordinarily interesting subject. Besides, Vivien was very anxious about my health while I was at home – it seemed to get worse and worse; and now I am better and more cheerful she is much happier. Then too I have felt more creative lately. Besides my lectures, which are now on Ruskin and involve some reading in political economy, and considerable reviewing for Jourdain (mostly anthropology and biology lately)6 I have been doing some writing – mostly in French,7 curiously enough it has taken me that way – and some poems in French which will come out in the Little Review8 in Chicago. I shall probably appear in that every month. I start with a sort of dialogue serial (prose) which will be continued.9 Besides, I have some ideas for an Article on Introspective Consciousness.10 My essay in the Statesman,11 which should have reached you by this time, brought me several compliments.