by T. S. Eliot
[London]
Dear Mary
Many things have prevented me from writing before – the departure of my family, moving back, and a business which I must ask you not to mention to anyone, as I am not certain whether it will come off. It is a project for a new quarterly, the patron Lady Rothermere, the question whether it can be run on the money which Lady R. can provide. Therefore I am immersed in calculations and estimates, and problems of business management. Do you think, candidly, that a paper the size of Art&Letters (or a mite more in it) is (1) possible (2) worthwhile. There are the questions (1) are there enough good contributors (2) are there enough possible subscribers (3) cost (4) whether I am competent and have time enough.
I have only discussed this with two or three people for the sake of technical information which they have, so please keep it to yourself till I let you know it may be revealed. You will understand that I have had little time for the amenities of society or even the pleasures of friendship. Also I am feeling completely exhausted – the departure of my family laid us both out – and have had some splitting headaches. To complete my tale of complaint I have had to put my holiday a week earlier, the first October, the day I was to come to you. I should have put it in September if I could, so as to get a rest and then begin my business afterwards. But I had to have as much time after my holiday as possible, as, if this is realised, I should want to get a number out in December. As it is, I shall be rushed before and after, and I have one weekend, which, as I shall be here, and accepted it some time ago, I must keep, to the Woolfs. I am hideously annoyed, and disappointed. Is there any chance of your coming up to London before October, and could we meet? Do you know we have not met since April! Do write and comfort me.
Affectionately
Tom
What was your hotel in Paris – Hôtel de Nice? Bd. Montparnasse?
TO Richard Aldington
MS Texas
Wednesday [7 September 1921]
9 Clarence Gate Gdns, N.W.1
My dear Richard
I am dreadfully sorry that I have not written. I have been burning to do so but my wife has been very ill, we have had to have new consultations, and to make matters worse we have been moving from Wigmore Street back here, and I have had no time or brains to write to you. This is just to tell you that I shall write to you fully on Thursday or Friday – Please wait!
Yours ever affectionately
Tom
TO Richard Aldington
TS Texas
8 September 1921
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear R.A.,
I think you and Jackson have done me very handsomely between you; in fact, I have never received any recognition nearly so flattering as this.1 I hope it will at least come to the notice of Messrs. Methuen, against whom I have no grievance except that they chose ‘La figlia che piange’ to print in an anthology because it is the mildest of my productions. As for the content of your article, I cannot in the least judge! I can only feel, and be greatly pleased and encouraged by, the spirit of it.
I enjoyed immensely my little weekend with you, and look forward to some week when I can come on a Friday evening. As for a cottage, I think I had better hope for one in Kent, which would bring me to London Bridge or Cannon Street, and make it possible for me to live in the country for a week or two at a stretch. So I cannot help wishing that you were in Kent too.
I have also enjoyed the literature you lent me, which I have been reading at lunch and in trains. The Epstein book2 is most interesting; I disagree with some important conclusions, but it is a formidable work to attack, and therefore very tonic. Also, he makes his texts – Aragon, Cendrars, Apollinaire etc., – a more serious affair, to be tackled in earnest.3
I will write you more about the Hypothetical Review later. With affectionate regards to you and your wife.
T.S.E.
1–RA described SW as ‘the most stimulating, the most intelligent, and the most original contribution to our critical literature during the last decade’ (To-Day, Sept. 1921).
2–Jean Epstein, La Poésie d’aujourd’hui (Paris, 1921).
3–Louis Aragon (1897–1982), French poet and novelist; Blaise Cendrars (1887–1961), Swiss novelist and poet, naturalised French, 1916; Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918), Frenchspeaking poet and art critic.
TO Richard Aldington
MS Texas
16 September 1921
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Richard,
I return the depressing letters with my sympathies. I have been looking for the review in the Dial, but without success. This is only what one must expect, but that does not make it any the less depressing.
I have quite my share of the universal ignorance and superficiality – I only lay claim to a certain cunning in avoiding direct bluff and dealing chiefly with what I do know, only hinting at my pretended knowledge of what I don’t know. I have, I confess, always been rather afraid of shocking you by revealing the imperfection of my scholarship in every language, art and science.
It was charming of you to send me that apposite and cheering quotation from Coleridge.1 I have asked someone who knows [Richard] Cobden-Sanderson the publisher to arrange a meeting. Do you think that it would be any good for me to see Waugh,2 or is there any better way to approach Chapman and Hall? The only alternative seems to be to employ some sort of business man of the kind that pick up a living by odd journalistic jobs of the sort. At present I am feeling tired and depressed – I don’t like you to make your cottage a home for neurasthenics like Manning and myself – you have enough on your mind and shoulders without that.
I have a note from Jackson suggesting dinner some evening next week and saying that he would try to get you too, but I fear that you cannot be persuaded to come. I observe that the last train to Aldermaston is 9.15 and I have a boarder at present, or I should offer you a bed. When I haven’t a boarder, you will always be welcome here.
I have just finished an article, unsatisfactory to myself, on the metaphysical poets.3 The only point made is that the metaphysicals are not, as a group, metaphysical at all, but a perfectly direct and normal development, and that if English verse had not gone to pieces in the eighteenth century after Pope (with reservations) and never recovered the seventeenth century poets might be taken quite naturally and without quaintness. They are quaint because we are unused to the intellectual quality in verse. I am not sure that the greatest nineteenth century poets (in your sense!) are not Ruskin and Newman. Do you know them well?
I enclose a letter from MacCarthy which may interest you. I find Apollinaire a little disappointing.
Yours ever
T.S.E.
Do write as often as it is not a burden: it is a great pleasure to me.
1–RA’s letter is lost.
2–Arthur Waugh (1866–1943) was managing director of Chapman & Hall. In all probability, the matter went no further. Waugh’s contempt for Prufrock, as expressed in the Quarterly Review (Oct. 1916), provoked EP’s reply, ‘Drunken helots and Mr. Eliot’, Egoist, June 1917.
3–TSE, ‘The Metaphysical Poets’, a review of Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century: Donne to Butler, ed. Herbert J. C. Grierson, TLS, 20 Oct. 1921, 669–70 (SE).
TO Edgar Jepson
MS Beinecke
23 September 1921
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Jepson,
We have perpetual bad luck – we seem never to be able to meet except when one of us gives a lecture – and not always then. I’m going away for the weekend, having made the engagement about two months ago. I have never met Hueffer, and I should have been delighted to get the chance finally of a talk with you.
This summer was quite taken up by a visit from my family, to whom we gave up this flat.
I expect to go away next week for a holiday, but when I come back I shall try to arrange a Sunday meeting with you?
With many regrets
Yours sincerely
T. S. Eliot
TO Richard Aldington
MS Texas
[28? September 1921]
[9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
My dear Richard
Your letter touched and pleased me more than I can say. If I do not reply immediately it is not because I don’t take it seriously or don’t feel grateful to you, but for reasons which will let me write in a day or two – i.e. I am seeing a nerve specialist. Please don’t mention this to anyone at present.
Ever yours
Tom.
TO Wyndham Lewis
MS Cornell
Friday [30? September 1921]
[London]
Dear Lewis,
Will you please not mention to anybody what I told you this afternoon about the possibility of my going away for two or three months. I don’t even know that I shall take this man’s advice, and haven’t yet mentioned it to the Bank. I expected to be run down and I am – but after all I haven’t had a holiday yet and may feel quite different after. So as things are so unsettled, such a rumour of my going away and not going would make me look very foolish. As nobody knows anything about it whatever except the specialist, my wife and yourself, it can go no further if you don’t speak of it.
In any case, it would only make a difference of only one issue to the paper. I will let you know what I decide. Meanwhile I hope you will be successful in getting a studio.
Yours,
T.S.E.
I hope we can arrange a dinner soon.
TO Richard Cobden-Sanderson1
MS Beinecke
2 October 1921
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Mr Cobden-Sanderson,
I should have written to you much sooner, but that my time and thought has been absorbed in private problems of the moment.
As I told you, what I have in mind is a quarterly review, of which we should print 500 copies for the first issue. It would be about the size of the Nouvelle Revue Française, or a little bigger, and I want estimates based on 80 pages for the first issue.
What I should like to have from you, if possible, is a statement of the various items of expenditure involved in printing and publication, including the
Of course, the estimate could not be exact, but it would have to be a safe one; as you know, I cannot launch out with impunity, as the funds are clearly defined. Also, it would in any case be impossible to start publication before March, so that we should have to make some alteration in the estimates then; it is to be hoped that costs of some items will be lower. I had hoped to be able to have a number out by January 1st, but I have been ordered away for complete change and rest, by a nerve specialist, and have just been given leave of absence by my employers. This is quite a surprise to me, but simply implies a gap of three months, and no change in future plans.
As I am going away in ten days, is it too much trouble to ask you to look over the enclosed estimates from four printers and let me have them back by the end of the week? If you have not time, would you simply return them, and I will discuss the business afresh with you in January. I simply thought that I should like to have some idea where we were, before I left. I should like to think that we should be able to do something along the lines we discussed.
Looking forward to seeing you again,
sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
1–Richard Cobden-Sanderson, printer and publisher: see Glossary of Names.
TO Henry Eliot
TS Houghton
3 October 1921
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Henry,
I have been feeling very nervous and shaky lately, and have very little self-control. Vivien wanted me to see a nerve specialist, so she made an appointment and went with me, to the most celebrated specialist in London. He examined me very thoroughly with his own tests, and said I had greatly overdrawn my nervous energy, and must go straight away for three months complete rest and change and must live according to a strict regimen which he has prescribed. The bank have been very kind about it and have given me three months leave without any difficulty at all. So I am going in about a week, as soon as I have trained another man to my work. I am going first, I think, (we have not yet decided) to Eastbourne (by the sea) for a month anyway. After that I might go abroad, if I could find a place cheap and comfortable – of course I could not travel.
I ought to be very grateful for this, as I suppose I should have to have it some time, and having it now, before there is anything really serious wrong with me, ought to set me up for a long time. I confess I dread this enforced rest and solitude (I must be away completely among strangers with no one I know) and expect a period of great depression. It is very terrifying to stop after having gone on for so long. I am told that people always find the first part of such a cure very trying indeed. I wish more than ever that you were here now. Vivien will have to stay here; if possible, I should like her to go abroad. She so terribly needs change and stimulus. She felt very deeply, much more than you can imagine, your all leaving, and life has seemed much sadder since then. It did not seem right or inevitable. We cannot reconcile ourselves to it.
Your having been here seems very real, and your not being here but in Chicago seems as unreal as death.
I was most painfully touched at finding that you had secretly left your typewriter behind instead of my wretched old one, which I hope will not fall to pieces. I have the same feeling whenever I look at it or use it.
Of course I made lighter of my treatment in writing to mother than in writing to you, so please do not let her know that it is more than a fortunate opportunity to rest and recuperate. I have not described to her at all how I feel, and indeed it is almost impossible to describe these feelings even if one wants to.
Vivien was very pleased with your letter, and thinks the photographs simply wonderful; but waited to write to you until I had done so.
I will send you a card from time to time.
Very affectionately
Tom
TO St John Hutchinson
MS Texas
3 October 1921
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Jack,
I have an idea. As I am going away in a week, and of course am forbidden to do any writing whatever, I shall have to write to the Dial and say that I cannot do my London Letter for them. I do this letter every other month. The idea is a sort of chat (which I do very badly) about the intellectual life and the life of the intellectuals in London at the moment – not criticism of new books etc. so much as to communicate to the lonely reader in Chicago or Los Angeles a pleasant comforting sense of being in the know about activities in London. Excellent models are provided in the Patrician.1 You would be able to provide that pleasant comforting sense, knowing everything and everybody, with a tone of smartness foreign to my heavy pen. You would get £10 more or less, for each article.
May I write to the Dial and tell them that I have a distinguished substitute? I would have to be sure that your contribution would be sent off by the 15th October. You would be doing me a great favour, and I don’t know anyone in London who would do it better. Will you let me know immediately? Please accept.
Yours
Tom.
1–The British edition of Vanity Fair, launched 1919.
TO Richard Aldington
MS Texas
[3? October 1921]
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Richard,
Forgive my not writing – I have had so much to do, and have felt so ill that it has taken me twice as long to do it. I have seen the specialist (said to be the best in London) who made his tests and said that I must go away at once for three months,
, not exert my mind at all, and follow his strict rules for every hour of the day. So I have been given leave by the bank for that period, very generously – they continue to pay my salary. I am going in about a week, as soon as I have taught enough knowledge of my work to a substitute.
I did not anticipate such a medical verdict, and the prospect does not fill me with anything but dread. But the only thing is to carry out the doctor’s instructions exactly, and refuse to think of the future after the three months.
Perhaps you will think: why not simply chuck the bank, rest, and begin journalism. But I simply feel too ill for that, and I am sure that this would be the worst possible moment for such a change. I should have to brace myself to a new effort, instead of relaxing, and I should worry myself in a short time into a far worse state. So I am sure you will agree with me that the best thing is to follow the doctor’s orders for the three months, and not make any plans beyond that date.
So will you guard your intercession in patience and my gratitude will not die! I really feel very shaky, and seem to have gone down rapidly since my family left.
I will let you know (in confidence) where I go and will hope to be cheered by an occasional letter, which will be acknowledged by a postcard, all I may write: I don’t want correspondence from the general public of my acquaintance at all. I should have liked to spend a night with you before I go off, but it is contrary to orders, and I ought to lose no time in beginning. Were I not forbidden intercourse I should have liked to go somewhere within a possible distance of you.