Letters of T.S. Eliot: 1898-1922
Page 85
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
1–Clifford Bax (1886–1962), prolific writer; editor of The Golden Hind, a quarterly magazine of art and literature, Oct. 1922–July 1924. TSE did not contribute to it.
TO Henry Dugdale Sykes1
MS Private collection
17 February 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Sir,
Your letter, as well as your remarks the other night, gave me great pleasure, and were quite enough to reward me for the trouble of preparing a lecture. If I print the paper in this or a revised form, I will send it to you. I have not seen Stoll’s book,2 but I have an essay of his on Hamlet.3
I find myself still of the opinion that Tourneur’s A.T. precedes R.T.,4 though this opinion is that only of a poetical practitioner, not of a scholar. Everything that denotes development as a poet, I find in R.T. in contrast to A.T. I cannot think that the ‘more sparing use of rhyme’ is an argument.5 The question is does the R.T. use rhyme as the earlier Elizabethan plays did? It has many rhymes in the body of a paragraph, not simply to close them off: i.e. T. uses rhyme freely, not in a convention. The fact that the ‘diction of A.T. is much more elaborate and stilted’ seems to me also in my favour. Also, A.T. is much more imitative (see grave diggers’ scene). The Vere poem does present something definite.6 But from what I can see, this was an occasional poem for which T’s genius was far from suited, and it would not be surprising if, in order to do it all, he had to adopt a style he had outgrown, – even putting aside the conjecture that he had his tongue in his cheek.
I shall try to get hold of your articles. I think I shall, on rereading the plays you mention, agree with you on their authorships.7
Excuse this haste. I should very much like to continue this discussion with you at leisure.
With many thanks
Yours very truly
T. S. Eliot
1–H. D. Sykes (1874?–1932), author of Sidelights on Shakespeare (1919), and later of Sidelights on Elizabethan Drama: a series of studies dealing with the authorship of sixteenth and seventeenth century plays (1924). He had published an essay on the dating and attribution of Tourneur’s plays (Notes& Queries 96, Sept. 1919). TSE later called him ‘our greatest authority on the texts of Tourneur and Middleton’ (‘Cyril Tourneur’, TLS, 13 Nov. 1930; SE, 186).
2–E. E. Stoll, John Webster: The Periods of his Work as Determined by his Relations to the Drama of his Day (1905), to which Sykes had referred in his letter.
3–E. E. Stoll, Hamlet: An Historical and Comparative Study (1919), is mentioned by TSE in ‘Hamlet and His Problems’ (SE, 141).
4–Both Stoll and Sykes believed that The Atheist’s Tragedy (pub. 1611) was written later than The Revenger’s Tragedy (pub. 1607). The quotations TSE cites in the rest of this paragraph are from Sykes’s essay.
5–According to Sykes, Stoll argued that ‘the more sparing use of rhyme’ and the ‘more elaborate and stilted diction’ are evidence that The Atheist’s Tragedy came at a ‘later stage of Tourneur’s metrical technique’ than The Revenger’s Tragedy; Sykes had ‘no doubt that Dr Stoll is right’. 6–Cyril Tourneur, A Funeral Poem upon the Death of … Sir Francis Vere, Knight (1609), which Sykes cited to help establish the date of The Revenger’s Tragedy. 7–Sykes argued for Tourneur’s authorship of The Second Maiden’s Tragedy.
TO Richard Aldington
MS Texas
Saturday 17 February 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Richard
You will excuse me, I hope, for not answering your letter before. What you say about my poem gave me great pleasure and gratification. I was engrossed with my lecture, then with several social obligations postponed by the lecture, and then with an article for the N.R.F. and now with a letter for the Dial.1 I enclose a copy of the lecture, excuse certain weaknesses of style etc. which I altered on the other copy. It went off successfully – I think of working up the relevant paragraphs into the three articles on Blank Verse that Richmond wants. What do you think?2
Tell me details of your reception with Outlook and N. Statesman; I shd. like to know for my own benefit. Also want to know how to join authors’ society3 and whether they wd. do anything for me about the piracy in the Untermeyer book, anthology.4
I have been hesitating over the Dial’s offer of $150
[unsigned, presumably incomplete]
1–‘Lettre d’Angleterre’, NRF 18 (1 May 1922); ‘London Letter’, Dial 72 (May 1922).
2–These articles were never to be written, though TSE would write ‘Four Elizabethan Dramatists’, C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923). See letter to J. M. Robertson, 4 Sept., below.
3–The Society of Authors, London, was founded in 1884.
4–Modern American Poetry (1921), ed. Louis Untermeyer
TO John Middleton Murry
MS Valerie Eliot
Tuesday night [21 February 1922]1
[London]
My dear John,
I enjoyed my weekend with you more than I can tell you, though you must have realised something of my satisfaction. And I think the circumstances were ideal for persons like ourselves.
Vivien is very ill, and has today gone to a nursing home outside of London at her doctor’s urgent request. She may not stay very long, but I expect three weeks at least. There was nothing else to be done at the moment. She must be made to sleep.
I have sent your letter on to her but I am afraid she will not be able to write letters.
Yours always
Tom.
1–Misdated ‘20 Feb.’ by JMM.
TO Maurice Firuski1
MS Williams College
26 February 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Sir,
Your name has been given me by Mr Conrad Aiken, who has also shown me a volume of poems by Mr John Freeman, recently published by you, with the appearance of which I was very much pleased.2
I have now ready a poem for which that form of publication seems to me the most suitable. I understand that you issue these books in limited editions, and that for the volumes you take for this series give a sum down in advance royalty.
My poem is of 435 lines; with certain spacings essential to the sense, 475 book lines; furthermore it consists of five parts, which would increase the space necessary; and with title pages, some notes that I propose to add, etc., I guess that it would run to from twenty-eight to thirty-two pages.
I have had a good offer for the publication of it in a periodical. But it is, I think, much the best poem I have ever written, and I think it would make a much more distinct impression and attract much more attention if published as a book.
If you are interested in this, I should be glad to hear from you what terms you would be prepared to offer for it, at your earliest convenience, as the other offers for it cannot be held in suspense very long.3
I am,
yours faithfully,
T. S. Eliot
1–Maurice Firuski was proprietor of the Dunster House Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
2–John Freeman, The Red Path, and The Wounded Bird (1921), designed by Bruce Rogers. When TSE told Aiken over lunch on 14 Feb. about ‘a poem, 450 lines long’, Aiken recommended Dunster House. The following day, Aiken wrote to Firuski: ‘He seeks a publisher who will produce it nicely, and in America, and in a small edition. Firuski! cried I, and there you are. When I elucidated, mentioning Rogers and 450 copies and two years exclusive right and a possible hundred dollars and a beautifully produced book, his eyes glowed with a tawny light like fierce doubloons … I have not seen the poem. It may or may not be good, or intelligible. But, reflect: Eliot has a real reputation; a poem of that length by him will be a real curiosity, even perhaps an event; and he assumes that you will have of course, the English as well as the American market’ (Chapin Library, Williams College).
3–Firuski replied on 11 Mar. that he usually paid ‘about one hundred dollars for a work of this kind’ and that if
TSE sent a copy of the poem, he would decide promptly.
TO Alfred A. Knopf
MS Texas
4 March 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Mr Knopf,
Thank you for your letter of the 20th ultimo. I have no disposition to interfere with any arrangement you may have made. If my namesake is Mr Harold Stearns1 he should be a competent person. I should only protest if he proposed to make an extract from a poem. I should be glad to see a copy of the anthology. Thank you for advising me.
Yours very truly
T. S. Eliot
1–Harold Stearns (1891–1943), an editor at the Dial until 1919; author of Liberalism in America (1919), and editor of Civilization in the United States (1922). The anthology referred to may be The Little Book of Society Verse, ed. Stearns and Claude Fuess.
TO Scofield Thayer1
Telegram Beinecke
8 March 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
CANNOT ACCEPT UNDER!8!56 POUNDS = ELIOT +
1–This garbled telegram was sent to Thayer in Vienna in response to his offer to pay $150 for publishing TWL in the Dial.
Ezra Pound to Scofield Thayer
TS Beinecke
9–10 March 1922
[Paris]
Dear Thayer:
Here’s the Galligan,1 I dare say it is a fluke. He seems to have changed his mind the week after; any how. And ENNY how I did not say I was ‘sathisfied’, I merely said it was . . . . . oh what did I say . . . . ‘at least a review by a literate person’.
(Liveright writes that it hasn’t sold a copy, so thaaaat’s thaaat . . . . . Richard evidently wd.nt. add to the Dial’s influence.
And ANNY how, you are certainly right in regarding him with suspicion.
/ / /
1–A warm review of EP’s Poems 1918–21 by Richard Le Gallienne, New York Times, 5 Feb. 1922.
I am afraid Eliot has merely gone to pieces again. Abuleia, simply the physical impossibility of correlating his muscles sufficiently to write a letter or get up and move across a room.
It is most ‘undiplomatic’, I dare say you and I have more reasons for wanting to wring his neck than any one else has; I mean we wd. have, or wd. have had, if it were not definitely a pathological state, due to condition of his endocrines.
His poem is as good in its way as Ulysses in its way—and there is so DAMN little genius, so DAMN little work that one can take hold of and say ‘this at any rate stands, and makes a definite part of literature’.1
I wish to Christ he had had the December award [from the Dial], or even that you wd. chuck the Dial and pension him off, to get him out of his bank. (Inconvenience of such a course to me wd. be considerable … but there it is.[)]
I don’t know whether a loan wd. cover the case. Damn him for not sending you the mss. And curse his family; they are the absolute punk of punk
Dont bother to return the Galligan review
Next Morning.
I wonder, cd. Eliot be got into some sort of job on the Century or Atlantic. (God knows he is not an affirming revolutionary, and he dont, as I at moments, get mistaken for a labour-leader or bolshy bomb-thrower
I wonder wd. he take a professorship. Probably not.
Some bloody college had given FROST a job with no duties.2 It’s a long, Chrrrist its a L O N G way to Tipperary.
Three months off and he got that poem done. I think he is being in that bank is the greatest waste now going on in letters, ANYWHERE. Joyce is provided for, at least he now has a steady income only somewhat too small. Wd. be AMPLE if he hadn’t two offspring, which I can’t see that he has any business to have.
Anyhow, he and I are tougher than Thomas. I dont know whether strong editorial statement of this waste, wd. be any use.
1–EP had written to Thayer on 8 Feb: ‘Eliot’s poem is very important, almost enough to make everyone else shut up shop … The Eliot, as you have probably decided, is a whole and oughtn’t to be divided’; and would write to Quinn on 21 Feb.: ‘Eliot came back from his Lausanne specialist looking O.K.; and with a damn good poem (19 pages) in his suit case, same finished up here; and shd. be out in Dial soon, if Thayer isn’t utterly nutty. Wadsworth in yesterday on way to Marseilles reported that Eliot was again ill. About enough, Eliot’s poem, to make the rest of us shut up shop.’
2–Robert Frost was poet in residence at the University of Michigan, 1921–3.
You and Watson are certainly doing your share of upkeep <(of Am. Lit.)>. So is Quinn.
Whether printed statement, backed by fact that prize has been favourably commented on, wd. rouse some latent capitalist! I suppose they cant want literature until they have some idea what it is.
yrs. ever
Ezra Pound
TO Ezra Pound
TS Lilly
12 Wigmore St, w.11
I have substituted for the J. Conrad the following, or something like it:
Nam Sibyllam quidam Cumis ego ipse meis oculis vidi, in ampulla pendere, et ubi pueri dicerent, ‘Σι´βυλλα τ.ι´ θέλεις; respondebat illa, αποθανε[ι]ν θέλω.’2
I received your message from the young man. The facts are that Thayer (in a letter not distinguished by urbanity) offered me $150, which did not strike me as good pay for a year’s work when I shall not do anything else of that size for two or three years, and shortly after I was told on very good authority that George Moore got £100 for a story,3 by someone who had been told by George himself. I think these people should learn to recognise Merit instead of Senility, and I think it is an outrage that we should be paid less merely because Thayer thinks we will take less and be thankful for it, and I thought that somebody ought to take steps to point this out. Had he offered the 150 with more graciousness instead of as if he were doing me a great favour I might have felt more yielding. As it is I wired him some days ago that I would take £50 and no less. Liveright4 wrote to say he wanted it, and I have written asking what he wants to give and telling him the exact length, and I have other plans also if Thayer doesn’t cough out.
Now there is this in which your cooperation is necessary. I have now arranged with Lady Rothermere about the quarterly review, have decided on quite a good small format and paper, neat but no extravagance and not arty, to be published probably by Cobden-Sanderson, in such a way that I shall have only to select the contributions. She will finance it for three years anyhow, there is enough money to pay contributors at £10 per 5000 words and proportionately (should be 80 pages) and I don’t see why it shouldn’t be tried and the right people as far as possible (i.e. as far as they can be enlisted) get the money regardless of consequences. Lady R. is a particular admirer of yours and especially anxious for your collaboration, as of course I also consider it an essential condition. Also, my credit with her would suffer seriously if you did not. Will you therefore consider
A Paris letter every quarter as per Dial, say 1500 words.
Of course cantos etc. except that I suppose you would get more by putting them in the Dial, but I shall hope to arrange much higher rates for verse.
Sending over contributions by the best people. I am particularly anxious to obtain Picabia,5 for whom I have much respect. None of these people can get printed in England otherwise. When you translate, translator’s fee also.
It is of course clear that the selection of contributions is entirely in my hands. If Lady R. goes in for illustrations later, which I discouraged for the present, I should with your permission suggest that you should for a fitting consideration be given a free hand to make up special numbers devoted to the work of one man each. Otherwise illustrations do more harm than good, and she warmly admires the Brancusi no. of Little Review.6
[Wyndham] Lewis has not got a portrait out of Lady R. and is in an extremely pessimistic mood, as you will find when you see him. Do not allow this to affect you. I want the paper to be good while it lasts, and if at any time I could not have my own way with it I should drop out and publis
h the fact. But I see no reason for anticipating this. Any suggestions from you as to people anywhere on the continent to be approached would be cordially welcome, but I should take anything from Picabia, Cocteau, etc. that you approved provided the space permitted.
I thought it would be a good idea to get Larbaud to send me his lecture on Joyce.7 I also see no reason why some things should not appear in this and in the Little Review concurrently. Please consider that this venture is impossible without your collaboration, and let me hear from you as soon as possible.
Best sympathies to D. and enquiries after Agamemnon.
T.S.E.
1–For a second time, TSE and VHE moved out of Clarence Gate Gardens and into the flat at 12 Wigmore Street leased by Lucy Thayer, who was away on the Continent: they sublet their flat in Clarence Gate Gardens, and did not return there until late June.
2–This quotation from Petronius, Satiricon, was corrected before appearing as the epigraph to TWL.
3–George Moore, ‘Peronnik the Fool’, Dial 71 (Nov. 1921) 497–533.
4–Horace B. Liveright (1884–1933), partner in the publishing firm of Boni & Liveright.
5–Francis Picabia (1879–1953), French avant-garde painter and writer. He never contributed to C.
6–The ‘Brancusi Number’, Little Review 8 (Autumn 1921), included EP’s essays ‘Brancusi’ (3–7) and ‘Historical Survey’ (39–42)