by T. S. Eliot
You would have, for your 4000 readers whom you have in mind, to cut the throat of the Mercury and perhaps also the English Review. I imagine you pay considerably better, but as I have never contributed to either of these I cannot say for certain. I can find out from others. It is not simply, however, a matter of paying more, to get their best contributors away, but of having some busy person on the spot to overcome the inertia of the elder writers. When you are, for example, no longer in a position to share an article by Robert Bridges or Conrad or Hardy with the Mercury, these people must be persuaded that the Dial is more respectable company to appear in.
Another point I have been requested to mention, unrelated to the above. I took a deferred six days holiday in Paris a fortnight ago, and saw Fritz Vanderpyl. He complains of receiving communications from various people on the Dial who do not appear to be working quite in concert. He says that he was sent some copies to dispose of on the impression that he had a bookshop, then when he explained he received an apology, but later the enclosed invoice which he asked me to send you. As I do not know the full facts, and am not sure that Vanderpyl is capable of giving them, I pass this on without comment. I thought his article on Vlaminck rather poor journalese,1 but perhaps that sort of thing goes down. He showed me some poems which were certainly much better than that, and which seemed to me quite good, and I will tell him to send them on unless you are choked up with material at present.
Has, if I may mention it, the question of a more cheerful cover (I dont mean a Christy Girl2 but something as bright as the Nouvelle Revue Française) ever been raised? I think for an English edition a cover whichmade more prominent some of the names familiar to this public might be well.
The Dial is undoubtedly better than any English literary paper I know, and the book reviewing in it far less dull.
If you had someone over here who could fly about, I might be able to make myself useful to him, or even if you nominated some native inhabitant for this preliminary exploration. I understand from Pound that what prevents you from coming at present is that your colleague is temporarily incapacitated from full activity by the labours of a medical degree, in other words taking some examinations. If this is so I suppose you will not be able to come before the summer.
I wish I could give more helpful suggestions, but I am now exhausted by such a long letter. I will write you again in sending the ‘Letter’, if I can by that time suggest anyone here who would be suitable for your purpose.
Yours ever
T.S.E.
I have not mentioned this matter to anyone.
1–Fritz Vanderpyl, ‘Maurice Vlaminck’, Dial, Dec. 1920.
2–Howard Chandler Christy (1873–1952), American artist. The ‘aristocratic and dainty though not always silken-skirted’ young woman of his illustrations became known as the Christy Girl.
TO Maxwell Bodenheim
TS Estate of Enid Goldsmith
2 January 1921
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Bodenheim,
Your (undated) letter has remained for some time on my table, but only as all the other letters of the same period have remained, finding me still in the midst of practical anxieties which take precedence over not only correspondence but literature. I was, however, very glad to hear from you. My irritation at your imagined grievance against me (even now I am not clear that it was more than your having supposed me to have missed an appointment, which set fire to some stored impersonal suspicion), was at the time considerably tempered by anxiety; and I am greatly relieved, not only to hear that you are pacified, but that you are in New York and apparently living. I only hope that the domestic weepies, which must have tortured you here, can be more readily coped with there.
I of course escape to Paris whenever I can get a bit of holiday, which is not very often. I will agree with you in anything you care to say about the placid smile of imbecility which splits the face of contemporary London, or, more abstractly, the putrescence of English literature and journalism. I am inclined to think that I am slightly more comfortable here than in America, I can get a drink of very bad liquor of any sort when I want it;1 which is important to me, and several of our little colleagues in America are just as muddleheaded as the English. I have got used to being a foreigner everywhere, and it would fatigue me to be expected to be anything else. I intend to visit America some day, but I don’t think it will amuse me. I have, moreover, a certain persistent curiosity about the English and a desire to see whether they can ever be roused to anything like intellectual activity. And I suppose there are more people in America to tell the natives what’s what from a European point of view than there are in England. Once there was a civilisation here, I believe, that’s a curious and exciting point. This is not conceit, merely a kind of pugnacity.
I am glad to have your poems, and wish I could place them for you lucratively, but the only place where I can sell my own is the Dial, and whatever influence, if any, that I ever had with the Athenaeum has disappeared. Some day I want to force a rather detailed opinion of your poetry upon you.
Unfortunately, Poetry is never sent to me. I should like to see that one.2 I should like to hear from you about New York sometimes.
Yours always,
T. S. Eliot
1–Prohibition had been introduced in the USA in 1920, and lasted until 1933.
2–The Dec. issue of Poetry included Bodenheim’s ‘In Defence of Rodker’.
TO Leonard Woolf
TS Berg
2 January 1921 [misdated 2 Dec. 1921]
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Woolf,
I shall be very glad to dine and discuss with you on Sunday the 9th. I should of course enjoy staying the night with you, but as I have to be at my office so early, I fear it is rather impracticable; I should have to be up at peep of day and should not see any more of you that way: but I shall not rush away early unless to spare you fatigue.
By the way, can you keep me a copy of the Gorki–Tolstoi book.1 I have been meaning daily to get a postal order for it.
With new year’s wishes for both of you
Sincerely
T. S. Eliot
1–Maxim Gorky, Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi, trans. S. S. Koteliansky and LW (1920; repr. Jan. 1921).
TO Mrs Dawson Scott
CC BL
2 January 1921
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Mrs Dawson Scott,
You will think it odd of me not to have let you know about my paper, but I was away for some time till just before Christmas, and then got your circular. I think April 21st will suit me very well; as for the subject, I wish I had provided you with a proper title in good time, but at least the one you have been obliged to give will not, I believe, be misleading.
With best wishes for the new year,
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
Vivien Eliot TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
5 January 1921
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Mary
Did you really invite us to dinner on Saturday? If so we shall be delighted to come. It seems a long time since I saw you, and I shall be glad to.
Of course I dread making an engagement. It seems fatally unwise, I have had so many disasters. But there it is. It is nice of you to constantly ask us out of our turn. We want you to fix a day for next week, to come here. Last time was nice, was’nt it.
My father is at present, at the moment, quite comfortable and getting a little stronger. His illness has long ago passed beyond the comprehension of anybody, – of any of the doctors. So one has nothing to go on, and just waits to see what will happen next. He still firmly believes he is going to get well, and is talking about going to the South of France, next month!
I have done nothing, of course, but have just bought a copy of Tom’s book to send to my lover of the past, anonymously.1
Goodbye till Saturday Mary dear
V.
1–VHE�
�s former boyfriend was a schoolteacher named Charles Buckle.
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
16 January 1921 [misdated 1920]
[London]
My dearest Mother
This is just to tell you that I am alive and well, but very tired and postponing writing for a day or two. Vivien’s father is getting on miraculously well but now that the strain is somewhat relaxed Vivien is showing signs of breaking up and has been kept in bed all day with a bad migraine.
I was so glad to get your last dear letter.
Your devoted
Tom.
TO Leonard Woolf
TS Berg
18 January 1921
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Woolf,
Thank you for your letter of the 11th. We were very sorry that you could not come on Monday, but we hope that we can arrange an evening soon which will be convenient to you both.
I am forwarding your story on to the editor of the Dial, asking him to communicate directly with you about it. I will send your friend’s story too if you wish, but candidly I had rather you did it yourself. It does not really strike me as good enough; but you know I have no official connexion with the Dial whatever, but simply happen to be an old school and college friend of the proprietor. The address is
Scofield Thayer Esqre.,
The Dial, 152 West 13th Street,
New York City.
I am glad to hear that you are bringing out a volume in the spring,1 and please remember that I shall want a copy, as also of the Tchehov Notebooks.2
Sincerely,
T. S. Eliot
1–LW, Stories of the East (1921).
2–Maxim Gorky, The Note-Books of Anton Tchekhov Together with Reminiscences of Tchekhov, trans. S. S. Koteliansky and LW (1921).
TO His Mother
TS Houghton
22 January 1921
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dearest Mother,
I have not written you a real letter for a very long time. I have been working this weekend on an overdue article for the Dial, the first I have written for many months. It came very hard, and I do not think that it is very good or very well written, but it is a start, and I hope that I shall soon get my hand in again. As you know, I have several commissions for articles for the Times and elsewhere. I do not feel any great desire to renew my connexion with the Athenaeum. For one thing, the space is too limited to develop a really serious article, and for another thing I and Murry have fallen apart completely. I consider his verse quite negligible, and I don’t like his prose style; his articles seem to me to become more and more windy, verbose and meaningless. Personally, I think him a man of weak character and great vanity, and I do not trust him; I think he loves both money and being a public figure. He will become more and more a conventional and solemn pundit, quite insincere, hysterical and morbid. Richmond of the Times I like very much; and he has the very great advantage of not being himself a writer, so that the element of professional jealousy cannot enter.
Robert Lynd’s article in the Nation has no importance, except that three columns of such violent abuse may be a good advertisement. He is an utter nonentity; his own literary criticism is wholly worthless; I reviewed one of his books in the Athenaeum a year ago, none too favourably, and I do not imagine that he has forgotten the fact.
I am hoping to settle down to work now. Vivien’s father is apparently getting on nicely. They had him downstairs for a few hours today; we brought him down and up in a special invalid chair; he can even walk a few steps alone, but of course is very very weak. It is proposed to take him away to a healthy place in the country, with the nurse, in a few weeks. He has become touchingly devoted to Vivien, in consequence of the contact they have had during his illness, and her goodness to him; in fact, I think he is really fonder of her than of anyone else, though he does not know that.
My own health has been much better since my week in Paris before Christmas. It was such a complete change, and I enjoyed myself so thoroughly. I stayed at my old pension Casaubon, you know the old people are all dead, and the grandson is now proprietor. But I was out to most meals. Part of the time I was with Maurice, and mostly with old and new French friends and acquaintances, writers, painters (I got very cheap a drawing for Vivien of one of the best of the modern painters, Raoul Dufy),1 and the sort of French society that knows such people. I want to get over again in the spring for a short time, just before you come. If I had not met such a number of new people there Paris would be desolate for me with prewar memories of Jean Verdenal and the others. But it is very easy to make new acquaintances, as so many of them have heard of me even if they do not read English. And of course they are very anxious to get articles into English and American papers, as they are, many of the writers, very poor now!
What you wrote me about having tired yourself out worried me very much – not so much for this occasion, but for the future. Do you think that you can do things which would tire a woman of thirty? Of course your Christmas dinner was a tremendous thing to do, and I have no doubt that there were a lot of incidental activities, like buying presents for everybody. I can picture you rushing about and not lying down all day, and Marion following up trying to restrain you and wringing her hands and you not allowing her to do anything for you, and she too getting more tired in the end than if you had let her. But seriously, although you say so little about it, this sounds like a piece of pure folly. Besides, I want you to be very well in the spring, and I promise you you shall be made to lie down every day for a good long rest.
I am very glad you had Henry with you. I have not heard whether he ever received my book, which I sent him to arrive about Christmas.
I hope to have a more satisfactory report from you in a few days.
Your devoted son,
Tom.
By the way, there is a question I have had in mind to ask you a hundred times. Did you ever pay my bill to those kind German people (Happich)2 in Marburg early in the war? You know, when I got back to England it was forbidden to send money to Germany, and I asked you to pay it for me. But if you have not, or cannot remember, I will try to get in touch with them, if they are still alive, and pay it. That money, with the interest, would be a little fortune to them now. Please let me know.
1–Raoul Dufy (1877–1953), French painter of the Fauvist school.
2–TSE had stayed with Herr Superintendent Happich and his wife in July–Aug. 1914.
Vivien Eliot TO Charlotte C. Eliot
MS Houghton
25 January 1921
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Mrs Eliot,
First of all I must thank you for your Xmas present, and for your kind letters, and ask you to excuse my not having written before. I am so very tired that it seems too much to do to write a letter, I have had to reduce my activities to the lowest point. During Father’s illness I have given up all attempts to see my friends, or to read, or write. All the same I feel completely exhausted. Father is making a miraculous recovery, and was carried downstairs in a carrying chair on Sunday! We all assembled for tea, and he lay on the sofa for an hour with great pleasure and triumph. His spirit is as young as a schoolboy’s and he has a wonderful and sweet character.
A letter came to Tom from you this morning, telling of your bad cold. We are very distressed to hear of it, and we are hoping you are really well again. The one great thing, almost the only thing, to guard against, is over fatigue. If one always kept well within one’s strength, I believe there would be very little illness. But of course, one often has no choice.
We like this flat immensely. It is quiet, warm, well ventilated, and in nearly every way satisfactory. Clarence Gate Gardens is really one huge block of flats, taking up a whole street, and on both sides of the street. We find it well managed and properly controlled and after our experiences at Crawford Mansions, where there was no management or control it is a great relief. Tom is better than he was at Christmas time. But he is a
lways distressed that he can do so little writing. He gets tired with his long day at the Bank, and feels more inclined for a quiet evening of reading, and early to bed, than to begin the real business of his life, and sit up late.
I want to thank you again for your very generous Xmas present. I shall begin now to look for rooms for you and Marion, and I shall enjoy doing it.
With love, from Vivien
TO Scofield Thayer
TS Beinecke
30 January 1921
[London]
Dear Scofield,
I enclose a story which Leonard Woolf gave me to send you. He is I consider a very able man, and well known as a writer on political and economic subjects, and was formerly a civil servant in Ceylon. He is the husband of Virginia (Stephen) Woolf, some of whose short stories are extremely good. I have heard his novel (The Village in the Jungle [1913]) strongly praised. I confess that I find this story disappointing, but I told him I would send it on to the Dial and ask the Dial to reply direct.1 It has not been published here but is in print because he is having a small volume privately printed in the spring.2 Will you deal with him? his address is
Hogarth House,