The World Broke in Two
Page 41
with “the publication and sale”: “Seize 772 Books.”
“taken by Mr. Sumner’s command … under threat of having it forced”: “Fizz Taken Out of Seltzer’s Books at Hearing on Vice Charges,” New-York Tribune, August 1, 1922, 5.
“called on Thomas Seltzer”: Sumner’s July 1922 report is in John Saxton Sumner Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Library-Archives Division, Box 2, Folder 8.
“marked [it] for presentation” to the Seventh District Court: Sumner monthly report, June 1922, ibid.
Sumner was given a summons and search warrant: “Blushed Through 254 Pages,” New-York Tribune, July 12, 1922, 22.
“divers persons”: “Censorship Beaten in New York Court: Magistrate Lets Thomas Seltzer Publish Three Criticized Books,” September 16, 1922, Publishers Weekly 102 (July–December 1922): 802, https://books.google.com/books?id=rl02AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA801&dq=censorship+beaten+thomas+seltzer+magistrate&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjEmLuP9tzOAhXD7hoKHT9TBKUQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=censorship%20beaten%20thomas%20seltzer%20magistrate&f=false. See also “Important Censorship Case,” August 5, 1922, Publishers Weekly 102 (July–December 1922): 463–64, https://books.google.com/books?id=rl02AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA463&dq=seldes+seltzer+1922&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiZyYzB-tzOAhWqB8AKHUpSBOcQ6AEIVDAH#v=onepage&q=seldes%20seltzer%201922&f=false.
“Also read books”: Sumner’s July 1922 report is in John Saxton Sumner Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Library-Archives Division, Box 2, Folder 8.
“to rescue its theatre”: John H. Houchin, Censorship of the American Theatre in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 86.
“giants of the Village”: The phrase is Granville Hicks’s, in his book John Reed: The Making of a Revolutionary (New York: Macmillan, 1936). The details of Seltzer’s life are summarized in Levin and Levin, “The Seltzers & D. H. Lawrence,” in Lawrence, Letters to Thomas and Adele Seltzer, 171–72.
Seltzer had more “spark”: Lawrence, Letters to Thomas and Adele Seltzer, 108.
“dramatic occurrence … Of course the burden”: Ibid., 233–34.
Lawrence “enslaves me … But he is lots more”: Ibid., 237.
“in my judgment”: “Seltzer to Fight Charges: Publisher’s Lawyer Says Alleged Obscene Books Are Classics,” New York Times, July 13, 1922, 29.
“is being conducted properly … We are up against a gang”: Lawrence, Letters to Thomas and Adele Seltzer, 233–34.
Why neither Seltzer nor Mountsier felt: The letter would have taken about a month to arrive from the United States (see DHL Letters 4, 266, letter 2543 to Mabel Dodge Sterne). Like almost all correspondence to Lawrence, Seltzer’s letter does not survive.
“his head off”: Frieda Lawrence to Anna Jenkins, University of Nottingham Manuscripts and Special Collections, For L 1/3/4/1.
Somers is walking: Lawrence, Kangaroo, 211.
“the lumber-room of my past … mine and useful”: Forster, Longest Journey, 366.
“lying perfectly still … Till now, he had always”: Lawrence, Kangaroo, 259.
“It was in 1915 … John Bull”: Ibid., 216.
“very strict watch”: Ibid., 218.
“called up … thin nakedness … ignominious … Let them label me”: Ibid., 221.
“find some way … thought about that many times … act from his soul alone”: Ibid., 222.
“within the space of three days”: Ibid., 241.
“report themselves”: Ibid., 242.
“one of his serious deaths in belief”: Ibid., 247.
“this free Australia … same terror … suspect again”: Ibid., 259.
“funny sort of novel”: DHL Letters 4, 271.
Mountsier advised: Ibid., 318.
“Have kept in the War piece”: Ibid., 322.
“it must be so”: Ibid., 323.
“The judgments of society”: Lawrence, Kangaroo, 259.
“by bad luck”: Ibid., 211.
“obscene, lewd, lascivious”: Halsey v. N.Y. Society for Suppression of Vice, 191 App. Div. 245 (N.Y. App. Div. 1920), https://casetext.com/case/halsey-v-ny-society-for-suppression-of-vice.
Halsey was tried and acquitted: Dawn B. Sova, Literature Suppressed on Sexual Grounds (New York: Facts on File, 2006), 156.
“whether a book is obscene”: Halsey v. New York Soc. for Suppression of Vice, 136 N. E. 219 (Court of Appeals of New York, July 12, 1922), reprinted in National Reporter System: The New York Supplement, vol. 195, September 11–October 2, 1922 (St. Paul, MN: West Publishing, 1922). Available online at https://books.google.com/books?id=guYKAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA964&dq=raymond+d.+halsey+maupin&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XhVbUa6eB4jD4AOxoIHACw&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=raymond%20d.%20halsey%20maupin&f=true, 964.
“No review of French literature … felicitous style … passages of purity”: Ibid., 965.
Henry James’s remark: Ibid.
The court acknowledged: Ibid.
“The excuse for parts of Ulysses”: Ezra Pound to James Joyce, October 1920, in Pound/Joyce, 185.
“Blushed Through 254 Pages”: New-York Tribune, July 12, 1922, 22.
“Salacious matter … profoundly shocked”: Ibid.
“more than pleads the case”: Lawrence, Letters to Thomas and Adele Seltzer, 235.
“Today is the worst day … hot spell is broken”: Ibid.
“one of the most widely discussed cases”: Boyer, Purity in Print, 384n31.
“Fizz Taken Out of Seltzer’s Books”: “Fizz Taken Out of Seltzer’s Books.”
“perused only passages”: “Critics Find No Evil in 3 Impugned Books,” New York Times, August 1, 1922.
The main focus of the experts’ testimony: “Fizz Taken Out of Seltzer’s Books.”
“its putative effect on immature readers”: Boyer, Purity in Print, 81.
“would not interest a child”: “Fizz Taken Out of Seltzer’s Books.”
“sedulous care … distinct contribution … Mere extracts”: “Book Censorship Beaten in Court,” New York Times, September 13, 1922, 5. See also “His Books Held Lawful, Seltzer Says He’ll Sue,” New-York Tribune, September 13, 1922, 11.
“Technically it was a case”: “Censorship Beaten in New York Court,” Publishers Weekly, 801.
“Books will not be banned by law”: Ibid.
“It has been said with some justice”: “His Books Held Lawful, Seltzer Says He’ll Sue.”
“You can’t win every case”: Boyer, Purity in Print, 81.
The evening papers: Lawrence, Letters to Thomas and Adele Seltzer, 240.
“Everybody is happy about it”: Ibid., 241.
“rushing in for the three ‘obscene’ books”: Ibid.
“We haven’t a copy left”: Ibid., 243.
Sales reached upwards of fifteen thousand copies: Ibid., 244.
“I should still be poor sans Women in Love”: DHL Letters 4, 457.
“getting a bit tired of me”: Ibid., 277.
“I hope I needn’t all my life”: Ibid., 152.
“All we can do is grin and bear it”: Ibid., 276.
“Pfui”: Ibid., 292.
“New Mexico, U. S. A.”: Ibid., 281.
12: The Waste Land in New York
“the current rumours of its having been abandoned”: TSE Letters 1 2009, 685.
“upon certain groups”: Ibid.
“simply because I liked the sound of the word … apparently harmless”: Ibid., 701.
“more historical work”: Ibid., 688.
“an elite readership of English letters”: Ibid., 659n2.
“the multiplication of magazines … It was to avoid … The more artistic journals”: Scofield Thayer to Vivien Eliot, October 20, 1921, Dial/Scofield Thayer Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, YCAL MSS 34, Series IV, Box 31, Folder 813.
running a deficit for 1922 of $65,000: Nicholas Joost, Scofield Thayer and The Dial: An Illustrated History (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1964), 40.
“Dial costs 46 cents to print”: Pound, Ezra Pou
nd to His Parents, 481.
“the business afresh”: TSE Letters 1 2009, 584.
“Lady Rothermere dines at 8 … I shall wear a dinner jacket myself”: Ibid., 633.
“a good small format and paper”: Ibid., 642.
“that the selection of contributions”: Ibid.
“certain of the right contributors for the first four numbers”: Ibid., 656.
“handicapped by a good deal of illness and worry”: Ibid., 672.
“so that your staff can read it”: Ibid.
“of entire concentration on this one object”: Ibid., 678.
“perfect” evening … “Vivien starved”: Ibid., 680.
“drop my attempts”: Ibid., 690.
shorthand typist: Ibid., 688.
“to dispose of the poem”: Sutton, Pound, Thayer, Watson, and the Dial, 239.
“endocrine boil over … My present impression of the case”: Ezra Pound to Scofield Thayer, May 1922, Dial/Scofield Thayer Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, YCAL MSS 34, Series IV, Box 38.
“to correspond with Eliot only in the meagerest”: Scofield Thayer to Gilbert Seldes, April 30, 1922, Dial/Scofield Thayer Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, YCAL MSS 34, Series IV, Box 40.
“When are you coming home?”: Sutton, Pound, Thayer, Watson, and the Dial, 243.
“there is not a poem nor a filler”: Ibid.
“nothing of astounding brilliance … a few things … Seriously, we will be”: Ibid., 244.
“coy veiled hint”: Ibid., 245.
“for confidential use”: TSE Letters 1 2009, 711.
“to present to Liveright”: Ibid.
“Cher S. T.… Eliot seems”: Sutton, Pound, Thayer, Watson, and the Dial, 247.
“The poem is not so bad”: Ibid.
“I found the poem disappointing”: Ibid., 248.
“Gilbert could get around Liveright”: Ibid.
“less and less supportable”: Ibid.
“Shall I try to persuade him”: Ibid., 247.
“I don’t see why”: Ibid., 250.
“at least from the point of view”: TSE Letters 1 2009, 699.
“I am quite aware … gained nothing … prestige and usefulness”: Ibid.
“persecution mania”: Ibid.
“superiority … getting bitter and hypercritical”: Ibid., 708.
“uniquely valuable intrinsically and ‘publicitically’—(a good word that)”: Kingsley Martin to Leonard Woolf, September 7, 1929, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library, Berg Collection, m.b. (Woolf).
“I am not anxious”: TSE Letters 1 2009, 693.
Schiff … C. K. Scott Moncrieff: Schiff remained bitter about this, though after Moncrieff’s death in 1930, he completed his rival’s translation with the concluding volume, Le temps retrouvé, Time Regained, which he published under his usual pen name, Stephen Hudson.
“private address … I await consequences”: TSE Letters 1 2009, 689.
“I have been waiting … I am very disappointed … yield to your persuasion”: Ibid., 697.
“possibly our best critic”: Richard Davenport-Hines, Proust at the Majestic: The Last Days of the Author Whose Book Changed Paris (New York: Bloomsbury, 2006), 268.
his publisher Gallimard, on July 7: Marcel Proust, Correspondance, ed. Philip Kolb, vol. 21, 1922 (Paris: Plon, 1993), 345.
“cette question Eliot” was “all mixed up with”: Ibid.
“I’m too tired to go on. I still haven’t written to M. Eliot”: Ibid., 364.
“Ode to Marcel Proust”: Proust, Selected Letters, vol. 4, 95n2.
“I have not read Proust … very weighty, and rather long … at no point inferior to the original”: TSE Letters 2, 233n6.
“new lump of Proust”: Davenport-Hines, Proust at the Majestic, 186.
“The little lickspittle wasn’t satirising”: Pound, The Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907–1941, 249.
Quinn finally received: TSE Letters 1 2009, 713–14n2.
Early on Saturday morning: Jeanne Foster’s recollections are in her typescript “Notes on var. orig. ‘Wasteland,’” Jeanne R. Foster–William M. Murphy Collection, b. 3, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.
eleven-room apartment: Reid, The Man from New York, 402.
thirty-five copies of Eliot’s first book: Londraville and Londraville, Dear Yeats, Dear Pound, Dear Ford, 197.
complete manuscript of Ulysses: Reid, The Man from New York, 589.
“to show adequately”: Ibid., 598.
insured: Ibid., 565.
“resembled not a gallery”: Ibid., 598.
“unromantic duties … read over”: Ibid., 402.
Foster would read the brief twice: Ibid., 403.
Quinn had dictated a new Liveright contract: TSE Letters 1 2009, 713–14n2.
“tucked away”: Ibid.
Quinn had read “the poems”: Ibid.
“close to a nervous breakdown”: Reid, The Man from New York, 564.
“working too hard to quit”: Ibid.
“Waste Land is one of the best things … Liveright may be … for the elect”: TSE Letters 1 2009, 713–14n2.
“the book is a little thin … I give you my impression”: Ibid.
“Cable deferred rate”: Charles Egleston, ed., The House of Boni & Liveright, 1917–1933: A Documentary Volume (Detroit: Gale, 2004), 264. Egleston’s transcription of Quinn’s letter to Eliot records the time Quinn read the poem as between 11.30 p.m. and 12.30 a.m. (267). TSE Letters 1 2009 records it as between 11.50 p.m. and 12.30 a.m. (713–14n2).
“Many poets who became prominent”: In W. W. Norton and Company records, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Series III (Boni and Liveright, Inc./Horace Liveright, Inc. Records), Box 8.
a ledger for the book was created: Ibid., Box 7. “Wasteland” it remained. There are four pages of Wasteland entries, including the cost of additional printings and royalty payments to Eliot through December 31, 1929, long after Liveright had any right to print the book. All of them carry over Wasteland to the top of the next page. On the last days of October, November, and December 1922, further costs itemized include: proofs, $6.50; printing and binding 1,012 copies, $61.50 for the first 500 and $78.07 for the rest; paper, $31.50; dust jackets, $21.62.
13: “I Like Being with My Dead”
“on the chance … It will be painful stopping”: EMF to FB, 17-6-22, EMF Papers, KCAC, EMF/18/38/1, vols. 34/1–2.
On the same day in late June: Forster, Journals and Diaries, 2:67. He refers to the news in his letter to Masood on June 26 EMF Papers, KCAC, EMF/18/360/1.
“nearest approach to a shock”: Forster, Journals and Diaries, 2:67.
a vision he had: Ibid., 68.
“The affair has treated me”: Ibid., 67.
“almost directly”: Ibid.
“nice food and straggling talk”: EMF Letters 2, 31.
“dissatisfied with what I do … the faintest conviction”: EMF to Siegfried Sassoon, 12-6-22, EMF Papers, KCAC, EMF/18/489/3.
“Of course I could write”: Forster, Longest Journey, 361.
“I had a special and unusual”: Ibid.
“the manuscript broke off”: Ibid.
“come upon me without”: Ibid., 366.
“including that very valuable faculty”: Ibid., 362.
“secresy [sic] conveniences me”: EMF to GHL, 6-13-22, EMF Papers, KCAC, EMF/18/333.
“Confused dream”: Forster, Journals and Diaries, 2:68.
“always know that he has died … My boy I am oppressed … always this sober trying”: Ibid.
“to know exactly what you were like”: Ibid.
“with my mind on you”: Forster, Alexandria, 329.
dated the letter: Ibid.
“for you and me”: Ibid.
“although I know”: Ibid.
“I am professionally a writer”: Ibid.
“I write for my own co
mfort”: Ibid.
He wrote out a dedication: Ibid.
Morgan also added an epigram: Ibid.
“mediaeval” handwriting: K. Natwar-Singh, ed., E. M. Forster: A Tribute, with Selections from His Writings on India (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964), 24.
“cacography”: John H. Stape, “Editing Forster,” Essays in Criticism 26, no. 2 (April 1, 1976): 177–81; first draft (“superseded”) in EMF Papers, KCAC, EMF/34/1, related to the Abinger edition of Howards End. The phrase “self-styled ‘cacography’” is dropped from the published article.
“dead six months”: Forster, Alexandria, 329.
“December 27th, 1929”: Ibid., 334.
“This book belongs to … ninety-two handwritten pages”: The notebook is in EMF Papers, KCAC, EMF/11/10, vol. 3/1.
“I get so miserable”: EMF to SRM, 30-8-22, EMF Papers, KCAC, EMF/18/360/1.
“She had eluded him thus … the very fact”: Forster, Passage to India, 68–69.
“absolutely battered at by people … they think I am amusing”: EMF to SRM, 30-8-22, EMF Papers, KCAC, EMF/18/360/1.
“I am in several other universes”: EMF to OM, 28-8-22, Ottoline Morrell Collection, HRC, Box 6, Folder 9.
“terribly slowly … quite alone in the house … I like being with my dead”: EMF to FB, 19-11-22, EMF Papers, KCAC, EMF/18/38/1, vols. 34/1-2.
“the occasional nights … last instants we sat together … you nudged me”: Forster, Alexandria, 330.
“the greatest thing in my life”: Ibid., 328.
“This day I received”: Forster, Journals and Diaries, 2:68.
“a silk bag inside cotton wool”: EMF to FB, 12-10-22, EMF Papers, KCAC, EMF/18/38/1, vols. 34/1-2.
“after due pretending”: Ibid.
“just goes on to my little finger”: Ibid.
“generally at night”: EMF to SRM, 27-6-23, EMF Papers, KCAC, EMF/18/360/1.
He also put it on occasionally: Forster, Alexandria, 334.
“I know that if I lost it”: EMF to SRM, 27-6-23, EMF Papers, KCAC, EMF/18/360/1.
a copy of Women in Love: EMF to Siegfried Sassoon, 27-6-22, EMF Papers, KCAC, EMF/18/489/3.
“Yes I think of you”: DHL Letters 4, 301.
14: A September Weekend with the Woolves
“unpretending house”: VW Diary 1, 286.
“long & low, a house of many doors”: Ibid.
“incessant nibble nibble”: VW Letters 5, 211.