Letters of T.S. Eliot: 1898-1922
Page 58
TO Ezra Pound
PC Lilly
[Postmark 2 December 1919]
[London]
‘Ελέναυς!’
I am absorbing this matter slowly. I regret missing you yesterday. Unless I hear to contrary I suppose I am to go direct to the Lady’s2 house (an Uncle Tom for your L’.E.3) on Friday and pronounce my name.
T.
1–Helenaus, ‘destroyer of ships’: an epithet applied to Helen of Troy in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (689). TSE is referring to EP’s Canto VII, ‘But is she dead as Tyro? In seven years? / Ελέναυς, έλαυδρος, έλέπτολις’. Tyro is a sea-nymph raped by Poseidon, an episode EP recreates in Canto II.
2–Unidentified.
3–The pious slave ‘Uncle Tom’, and ‘Little Eva’, a white child who treats her slaves with angelic kindness, feature in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852).
TO Edgar Jepson
MS Beinecke
13 December 1919
18 Crawford Mansions,
Crawford St, W.1
Dear Mr Jepson,
I have been meaning to write to you for some time, but have been very busy indeed. Both Rutter and the Athenaeum liked the content of the article,1 but neither thought it quite suitable. I have now got it back after some delay and propose using it in the last issue of the Egoist, if you do not object. As Weaver is in rather a hurry before Christmas will you write immediately to her if you do object? But I should like the Egoist to have an article by you to its credit before it suspends. Are you never going to produce a volume of critical essays? (for the Egoist Limited to publish?)
Yours ever
T. S. Eliot
1–Jepson’s ‘lecture’ on playwrights.
TO Harold Monro
MS Beinecke
Tuesday [16 December 1919]1
18 Crawford Mansions
My dear Monro,
My intentions were perfect, but here I have been for two days with bronchial cold, and the doctor today tells me not to think of going out till Friday. I very much regret not being able to join you. Is there any possibility of your and Aldous H. being able to join me, after dinner? Though I cannot go out, I can sit up and drink coffee, and if the exertion is not too much, I should be delighted if you would.2
Yours.
T. S. Eliot
1–Dated by Monro.
2–Monro reported next day that they had had a jolly evening but were too far away to visit TSE.
TO Edgar Jepson
MS Beinecke
Wednesday [17 December? 1919]
18 Crawford Mansions
My dear Jepson,
I enclose the Playwrights [lecture], which I have regretfully rescued from Weaver. But of course, if it is to go into the English Review it is better so, as the Egoist, in its present and final stage, is, I fear, only a not very decent interment for any article.1
We should very much have liked to come to tea on Sunday but that 1. my wife will be out of town and I too if I recover from the bronchial cold which is keeping me at home 2. We do want you to come here before you invite us again! And I hope that will be directly after Christmas.
Yours sincerely
T. S. Eliot
1–It did not appear in either.
Vivien Eliot TO Ottoline Morrell
MS Texas
[December 1919]
18 Crawford Mansions
Dearest Ottoline,
I have been longing to answer your letter these last few days. I have felt so impatient to get a chance to sit down and write to you. I loved your letter. I quite see it might have been better to go to Margaret Morris1 with yr. letter before Xmas but I could not. I have been a great deal too busy and I have been overtired and have had two of my migraines, (awful heads) which have taken two days from me. We had to go to Marlow from Sat.–Sunday – it tired me very much, but was rather fun. A man named Sullivan2 wrote and asked Tom about our house at Marlow, he wanted it for a year. So he and his wife came also, on Sat. to see it. But I will not let them have it. I dallied with the idea, but it is no use, for I should be wretched without it. I do love it. The idea of it – thinking about it and planning for it. It all means a great deal in my life. It appears you know the Sullivans! Well, I will tell you my impressions when we meet.
About [Wyndham] Lewis I am sure it is better for him to see Diaghileff in Paris, a little later, if you give him a letter then.
I was interested to hear about yr. weekend with Maria [Huxley] and Iris Moffatt.3 Now you know you would like Mary very much if you knew her well, that is, if you like me! Because although you would not think it we are very much alike. Leaving out the sex business, which of course makes a vast difference. What suggested this to me was your saying you did not find much interest in Iris. Mary finds her terribly boring and uninteresting. I shall meet her, at last, next Tuesday at the Hutches, and shall find, I am sure, that I do not get on with her.
I wish ever so much that I could see you in your Xmas festivities, and that I could help you dance with the tenants, etc. I know how very tiring it must be. I think it is very wonderful of you to do it all. Xmas is awful, awful.
We are both longing for you to come to London. I keep saying to Tom ‘when Ottoline is here we will do so and so’. I am thinking and planning about it all the time. You do not know how I admire you my dearest Ottoline. I hope we shall always be friends.
Are you better? Don’t have people who are a strain and make you ill. Why should you? That is the great disadvantage of living in the country, surely. One must have people in great lumps, or not at all. And what risks!
Will you write directly you have time? Goodbye my dear. Be good and well – I mean happy and well!
Write soon. Love from us both
Yrs ever
Vivien
You are right. I dislike Yeats. Also he and Tom are ← → He hates Tom’s poetry. His wife is a distant relation of Dorothy Pound’s, I think Anglo-Indian people.4 She has a good deal of money.
Do you really think Iris Tree’s poetry good?5 O Ottoline!Must we have Iris as a bone of contention as well as Joyce!
1–Margaret Morris (1891–1980), dance teacher.
2–J. W. N. Sullivan (1886–1937), popular scientific writer and literary journalist; a close friend of JMM, and his assistant editor at A.
3–Iris Tree (1897–1968), daughter of the actor-manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm-Tree, had married in 1916 the American artist and photographer Curtis Moffat.
4–George Hyde-Lees, who had wed WBY in 1917, was the stepdaughter of Dorothy Pound’s uncle. She was also a close friend of Dorothy Pound.
5–TSE called Iris Tree’s contribution to Wheels: A Second Cycle (1917) ‘the most mature of the lot’ (‘Verse Pleasant and Unpleasant’, Egoist, Mar. 1918, 43–4). Her Poems were published in 1920.
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
[Postmark 18 December 1919]
[London]
My dearest Mother,
This letter will, I fear, not reach you till after Christmas. I sent you an advance copy of my portrait in order that you might have it by Christmas. I will send you a finished copy if you will return that one, as Vivien wants to keep one. I wonder where and in what form Knopf intends to publish it!
I have been at home for a few days with a cold on the chest, but shall be out tomorrow. Also, my doctor has given me a special spray for my nose. I have apparently the same trouble that you had, and he says that if this spray does not cure it I ought to have the membrane cauterized. I always sleep on my left side because I breathe more easily.
I have just finished two articles, one for Art & Letters1 and one for the last issue of the Egoist,2 both of which I will send you when they are printed. Murry has been called to Italy to see his wife and I have promised to do two articles for the Athenaeum while he is away. But my New Year’s Resolution is ‘to write a long poem I have had on my mind for a long time and to prepare a small prose book from
my lecture on poetry.’ I have one or two other schemes but they are more in the air.
It will be Christmas in a very few days, and I wish that this letter might reach you by Christmas day. I shall think of you all day and Christmas eve. We shall spend Christmas here, and dine with Vivien’s family in the evening. The following day I shall go to Wiltshire to stay until Monday with the Waterlows. Vivien did not want to go, but she wanted me to go in order to get a change of air. I think I have often mentioned Sydney Waterlow, whom I have known for the past four years. He is a very important official in the Foreign Office now, and was decorated with the Legion of Honour at the Peace Conference.
The peace treaty seems to be held up indefinitely in America.3 I hope it will not prevent America from helping in Central Europe; the destitution, especially the starvation in Vienna,4 appears to be unspeakable. I suppose Americans realise now what a fiasco the reorganisation of nationalities has been: the ‘Balkanisation’ of Europe.
I am praying to hear that you have sold real estate, and that affairs in America improve. I wish you were here now, for we could certainly keep you warm. You must come in the spring.
How do you like the photographs that Vivien sent?
She is in fairly good health, but sleeps very badly. We both send New Year’s thoughts and much love.
Very affectionately
Your son
Tom.
1–‘The Duchess of Malfi at the Lyric: and Poetic Drama’, Art & Letters 3: 1 (Winter 1920), 36–9.
2–‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ [II], Egoist 6: 5 (Nov.–Dec. 1919, 72–3; SW).
3–The Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919, was not ratified by the USA until Dec. 1921.
4–Lord Haig and others had just written to the newspapers on behalf of the government-backed ‘Vienna Emergency Relief Fund’, appealing for financial donations: ‘The prospect of a city of 2½ million inhabitants being left without adequate means of keeping its women and children alive, or in health, must appeal to every human heart.’ N. reported on 20 Dec. that ‘the task of saving Vienna, one of the first cities of the world, from the horrors of starvation is urgent’.
1920
Vivien Eliot TO Charlotte Eliot
MS Houghton
5 January 1920
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mrs Eliot
First I must thank you very much for sending me such a generous Xmas present (£3). I was surprised and delighted. It was so kind of you. Tom was very touched at your sending him so much, too. I have not written to you for a long time, as I have had a more than usually busy time lately, and a good deal of worry owing to my aunt’s death and my Father’s very bad health. Thank you for writing to me after the death of my aunt. I appreciated your kind letter. It was so extremely sudden that the shock of it was too much for my Father. His health has been failing very much the last year, and this trouble made him so much worse that we have all been most anxious about him. He had three sisters, all younger than he. And now they are all dead. They were all unmarried. I have very very few relations in the world, scarcely any. It is different to Tom, he has so many. The day before yesterday we had Abigail Eliot to tea. She is the first of Tom’s relations I have ever seen – it does seem strange, after 4½ years. We both liked her very much. She seems a nice girl, and I hope we shall see more of her.
The next thing is for you and Marion to come! Do try hard. If you could come in April, just in time for the most beautiful time of the year in England. You would love the climate then, and the voyage would be less trying. Tom is longing for you. He could, we think, get leave from the Bank to come over to you within the next three months, but for so terribly short a time. He would not get more than three weeks altogether, and it would have to be instead of a summer holiday. Now that he is in a more responsible position in the Bank it is harder for him to get away, although the work is easier and more interesting for him.
The pyjamas you sent him are beautifully made. And so very nice. In the winter he really ought to wear rather warmer pyjamas. He has had three pairs of flanelette ones, but they are pretty well worn out now. He had to have a new overcoat this winter. It cost £10.10/-and is a very very good one. The best cloth, and lined with wool. Would that be dear, or cheap, in America?
With much love from Vivienne.
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
6 January 1920
[London]
My dearest Mother,
We are shivering in a cold spell that came immediately after the Christmas holidays. Your cheques arrived on Christmas eve, and I thank you very very much for my generous present. I shall save up for a suit in the spring. There are many things to tell you about. We had Christmas at home with stockings and a tiny growing tree as usual. It was very difficult to find anything for Christmas presents this year, everything was either very expensive or non-existent. On the day after Christmas I went to Wiltshire to stay with the Waterlows. Vivien did not go because she knew that she would get very tired going such a distance for a short time; besides, Mrs W. is not very interesting. I am fond of Sydney: he has been very kind to me in the past. Lowes Dickinson was there: I never liked him much, he is very common, at bottom. But the rain held off just enough for walks, and the country there is beautiful, and Desmond MacCarthy,1 who was living there, is good company. I don’t know that it did me very much good, but it is a good thing to get out of town once in a while.
My salary has been raised £65, and as the salary of the bank has been raised all round, it brings my total to about £500. That would have seemed a fortune to me four years ago, but it is worth about what £250 was then. It takes all one’s toil, nowadays, to earn enough more money every year to keep in the same place. The doctors have all raised their fees, and I am just paying a dentist bill of £14. Yet I am very fortunate in having got into the bank and being so highly thought of there – not only for the acquirements which they overestimate (I am supposed to be a profound economist, and a special scholar in French, German, Spanish and Norwegian) but in being liked. I was told by a high official that when some of the men who returned from the war presented a petition against the advancement of newer men over their heads, they made an exception of my case.
And then the difficulties of living are universal. The American professors must be having a very bad time. I wonder if America realises how terrible the condition of central Europe is. I can never forget quite put Vienna out of my mind. And I have seen people who have been in Germany and they are most pessimistic about the future, not only of Germany, but of the world. They say that there is no hope unless the treaty is revised. I believe by the way that J.M. Keynes: Economic Consequences of the Peace [1919] is an important book, if you can get hold of it.1
Abigail Eliot came to tea Saturday, and we were both much taken with her. She seems intelligent, and has a sense of humour, and charming manners. She and Vivien found each other very congenial. Vivien had always longed to meet an Eliot, and I believe she thinks every day about you.
I shall have to stop this letter soon, so I want to put the most important thing of all. I want you to let me know as soon as you can whether you are going to be able to come with Marian to England this year. Because if not, I will come to America early, for a very short visit, instead of a summer holiday. But I must know in good time, in order to arrange. The physical difficulties in my way are, so far as I can see, these: 1. passages are difficult to get, and must be taken long in advance, 2. ships are at present very slow. I should want to come when I could get a fast ship both ways, or else I should have no time at all. I should also prefer to come when you are settled in the East, incidentally saving four days on the train. Also, it is at present much cheaper for you to come than for me to come to you, as the pound is worth only about $3.75; you get many pounds for your dollars, but I get few dollars for many pounds.
These are the considerations, but this is the issue: I want so very much that you should see us in England some time. The s
ooner you come the better. For I can come to America as well next year, or any year, or every year, as I can this. And for the reasons stated, I could come better next year.
But think it out carefully, mother dear, and then write to me fully. I am thinking of it constantly.
With very much love from us.
Your devoted son
Tom.
I am sending a complete photograph. Will you then send me the other one back, for Vivien?
I have not heard from Henry for months.
1–Desmond MacCarthy (1877–1952), literary and dramatic critic.
TO Henry Eliot
MS Houghton
6 January 1920
[18 Crawford Mansions]
Dear Henry,
It is several months since I have had a word from you. Please send me a line of explanation, if no more, before I write to you. I feel as if this was going out into empty space. I depend on hearing from you oftener, and I have been anxious.
Always affectionately
Tom.
TO Alfred A. Knopf
MS Texas
7 January 1920
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mr Knopf,
This is merely to thank you for your two letters – one acknowledging the proof – and to reciprocate your New Year’s wishes.
I have no doubt the portrait has reached you by this time. Hoppé took two: the one I chose is very good.