by T. S. Eliot
Well, this is really all my news. I am very tired and very happy. I have a great many letters to write. I will send Blast – if it ever comes out! Do pardon the messiness of this letter; at present I find myself writing parts of letters, cramming them into my pocket and finishing them in railway stations or on the street.
Very sincerely yours,
Thomas Stearns Eliot
1–Richard T. Fisher (1876–1934), forester, became Director of Harvard Forest, Petersham, Massachusetts.
2–The Times had announced the Eliots’ marriage on 30 June: ‘STEARNS-ELIOT: HAIGHWOOD. On the 26 June, by special licence, Thomas Stearns-Eliot, youngest son of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ware Eliot, of St Louis, Missouri, U.S.A., to Vivienne Haigh-Wood, only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. C. H. Haigh-Wood, of 3 Compayne Gardens, Hampstead.’
3–Amy Lowell (1874–1925), poet and critic.
4–Mrs Gardner’s house in Brookline, Massachusetts.
TO J. H. Woods
MS Professor David G. Williams
10 July 1915
3 Compayne Gdns
Dear Professor Woods,
I have been starting letters to you for the past three weeks, and have never had the time to finish them. I must first thank you for your efforts on my behalf, though I do not now regret their failure. I must also with apologies withdraw my application for an assistantship at Harvard. I shall be sending you a complete typewritten copy of my notes on Mr Joachim’s Aristotle’s Ethics course.
My reason for resigning is that I wish now to remain in London and engage in literary work. This may perhaps seem a surprising choice and is admittedly a great risk – still it is much worse to be deterred from anything by fear, and I shall try it out. It is what I wanted to do before. Now I have made a few professional connections and am anxious to start the battle, with an initial literary capital of eight guineas from Poetry in Chicago.
I wish also to tell you that on the 26th June I was married quite privately to Miss Vivien Haigh-Wood of London. Our marriage was hastened by events connected with the war.
I do not regret my time spent in the graduate school, and I pant to tell you particularly how much I enjoyed the Sânkya and Patañjali course. And I shall write to Professor Lanman in appreciation of his friendship and kindness.1
Pray accept my wishes for a restful summer for Mrs Woods and yourself at Rockport, and my expression of continued interest in the department.
Sincerely yours
Thomas Stearns Eliot
1–C. R. Lanman (1850–1941), Harvard authority on the ancient languages and culture of India, with whom TSE studied Sanskrit and Pali, 1911–13. He had helped to secure a travelling scholarship for TSE. He edited The Sanskrit Reader, TSE’s copy of which, inscribed ‘Cambridge 1912’, is in his personal library. On 6 May 1912, Lanman gave TSE a Sanskrit edition of The Twenty-Eight Upanishads (Bombay, 1906), now at King’s. Tipped in is Lanman’s hand-written key including ‘Br. hada-ran. yaka, 220 (v. 1, 2, 3), Da-da-da = dāmyata datta dayadhvam’.
TO Professor L. B. R. Briggs
MS Harvard
10 July 1915
3 Compayne Gdns
Dear Dean Briggs,
I must apologise for not having written sooner my final report on my work at Oxford. Unusual preoccupations have prevented me from attending to even very pressing correspondence.
During the second term I attended two courses of lectures, one by Mr H. H. Joachim, my tutor, and one by Professor J. A. Smith. I attended a small class reading a text of Plotinus with Professor J. A. Stewart, was engaged in reading an Aristotle text with Mr Joachim, and once a week brought Mr Joachim papers on the philosophy of Plato.
In the last term I continued attendance at lectures by Mr Joachim and Professor Smith, completed the reading of the text with Mr Joachim, and brought Mr Joachim weekly papers on the philosophy of Aristotle. He has, he tells me, written to Professor Woods some account of my work.1
I thoroughly appreciated the privilege of a year of study abroad, and at Oxford, and feel deeply grateful to the department and to the committee. I only wish that I could express my appreciation by my further work at Harvard, but changes in my plans have made that impossible. I have decided to remain in London, or at least in England, and attempt to engage in literary work, hoping to be able to find a position in a school at the same time.
I wish also to announce my marriage to Miss Vivien Haigh-Wood of London, on the 26th June. Our marriage was accelerated by events connected with the war.
Believe me to remain
yours faithfully
Thomas Stearns Eliot
1–Joachim wrote on 18 June that TSE had ‘worked most thoroughly and enthusiastically’ and ‘undoubtedly made good progress’; his essays showed ‘the extent and solidity of his knowledge of Greek Philosophy’.
TO His Father1
MS Hornbake
23 July 1915
3 Compayne Gdns
My dear Father,
I am writing the night before I sail. This letter I am going to leave with Vivien, and she is to send it to you, I have told her, in case anything happens to me before I arrive home. There is very little danger, I am sure. But if anything did happen, I want to feel that you, as well as her own family, would look after her future as much as you could from that side of the ocean.2
My one certain hope is that you will see that she gets the $5,000.00 insurance which you were so good to take out for me. She will need it. She will be in a most difficult position. Her own family are in very straitened circumstances owing to the war, and I know that her pride would make her want to earn her own living. This would be very hard for her at first, with the weight of my loss.
I have taken on a great responsibility. She has been ready to sacrifice everything for me. I am very very sorry that I have been forced to write so much about our affairs only, and that you know so little of her. But now that we have been married a month, I am convinced that she has been the one person for me. She has everything to give that I want, and she gives it.
I owe her everything. I have married her on nothing, and she knew it and was willing, for my sake. She had nothing to gain by marrying me. I have imposed upon you very much, but upon her more, and I know you will help to make her life less difficult.
Your loving son
Tom.
She has not seen this.
I will seal it and give it her to keep in case of emergency.
1–This unposted letter was found among VHE’s papers and sold by her brother after TSE’s death.
2–The Lusitania had been sunk in May 1915. BR told O Mthat VHE understandably refused ‘to go to see [TSE’s] people, for fear of submarines’ (Autobiography, II [1968], 54).
Vivien Eliot TO Scofield Thayer
MS Beinecke
2 August 1915
3 Compayne Gdns
Dear Scofield,
Thanks very much for your cable – and for your gratters and invitation. Charmed as I should be to avail myself of the latter, I fear it is impossible at present. Tom has gone to America without me, and arrived yesterday. Rather unwise perhaps to leave so attractive a wife alone and to her own devices! However – I did not at all want to go – I am frightened of the voyage and the submarines – and preferred to remain and play my own little games alone. But all the Eliots appear to have an overwhelming desire to see me, and have written me such charming letters of welcome into their select family, that I am sure I shall have to go over very soon – probably in the spring, so I hope you will then repeat your invitation.
Do you remember my mentioning a studio flat which I rather hankered to take, while you were here? Well, Tom and I took it – furnished – and lived there for about three weeks before he went, and I kept it on another week after he had gone. It was a delightful place, I wish you could have seen it. I am here now for three days, and am then going to join Lucy [Thayer] at Thyme Cottage. Tom is supposed to be coming back by September 1st, and after we have had a second honeymoon! we shall ha
ve to set up a house or a flat of our own in London of course. It is very nice being Mrs Stearns-Eliot (notice the hyphen). I am very popular with Tom’s friends – and who do you think in particular? No less a person than Bertrand Russell!! He is all over me, is Bertie, and I simply love him. I am dining with him next week. I see a good deal of the Pounds, of course, and between ourselves, find them rather boring. However, they are very nice to me, and seek me out a lot, so I suppose I should feel honoured! I was at the Savoy the other night, with two male friends who are consoling the grass widow, and I thought of you, Scofield, and that very nice dinner which cost you such an awful lot that we had there. You ought really to be over here now, just to think of the dinners in Soho we could do – and grass widows do seem, I find, to be so very very attractive, much more than spinsters! Now W H Y is that?
Butler-Thwing is in the 5th Lancers! so is of course bullied1 to death. But he has done well – it is a very crack regiment.
Perhaps you will see Tom while he is there – if so remember me kindly to him.
Have you seen the new Blast?
I am mentioned in it – as the Poet’s Bride, and blessings are called down on my head.2
Do you remember that terrible dinner with [Wyndham] Lewis?Why on earth were you so cross? But what an impossible man! I hope you were amused at the ‘lost woman’ incident! I did that rather well.
Are you married yet? If not why not? If you can manage to refrain from marriage (it is catching I know!) do come over here before long and let us resume our childish acquaintance, and youthful prattle. I don’t think I’m really keen on meeting you in U.S.A. London’s far better – is it not so? Please answer this – this address will always find me.
Vivien S-E.
1–Reading uncertain.
2–Wyndham Lewis, in the ‘Blasts and Blesses’ section of Blast 2 (July 1915, 93), bestows his final blessings upon ‘The Poet’s Bride (June 28th)’.
TO Conrad Aiken
MS Huntington
5 August [1915]
Eastern Point, Gloucester,
Massachusetts
My dear Conrad,
I wonder where you are. I should rejoice to hear that you are in Cambridge. If you are, let me know at once! I am here for a limited engagement – three weeks only. Have you heard my news? I was married on June 26 to Miss Vivien Haigh-Wood of London England. I mean to try to go back there to live, and have a job in a school for next year in point of fact; but I have agreed to my family’s wish that I should complete my work and take my Ph.D., so it’s not yet certain whether I stay this winter or return for it later. What I want is MONEY!$!£!! We are hard up! War!
BLAST
THE KAISER ED. GREY1
THE AMERICAN AMBASSADORS (SÄMTLICH)2
THE DEMOCRATS
BLESS
CONSTANTINOPLE3
T. S. ELIOT HARRIET4
GEN. BOBO GEN. BLOT5
Now tell me your news. I hear you have plunged into the Atlantic.6 Good for it.
Yours
T. S. E.
1–Sir Edward Grey, third baronet, later Viscount Grey of Fallodon (1862–1933); Liberal politician and Foreign Secretary, 1905–16.
2–‘to a man’: the US Ambassador Walter Hines Page was in dispute with the Foreign Office about the right of Americans to pursue ‘neutral trade’ at sea during wartime. Page’s letter of 17 July and the ensuing correspondence were published as ‘Rights of Neutrals at Sea’, The Times, 4 Aug. 1915, 5.
3–During the Dardanelles Campaign, 1915, the fate of Constantinople was crucial to both Allies and the Germans.
4–Harriet Monroe.
5–In July, the US cruiser Washington had steamed to Haiti in response to a revolt of rebel troops under Dr Rosalvo Bobo. The rebels withdrew on the arrival of government forces under General Blot, but at the end of the month, after mass executions and riots, US forces invaded.
6–Aiken’s poem ‘Rupert Brooke’ was published in the Atlantic Monthly in July.
TO Scofield Thayer
MS Beinecke
Monday [9 August 1915]
Eastern Point, Gloucester
My dear Scofield
It is very pleasant to hear from you after such a long silence broken only by the medium of the transatlantic cable.1 Alas! a few miles can separate friends as effectually as an ocean. Heaven alone, if we concede it omniscience, is the guardian of the secrets of the future. This weekend I have promised to some relatives in Weston, and by next weekend I may be gone. I must always be one of the first to testify to your taste for hospitality, but in the limited time that I have, we should be obliged to meet, if at all, on neutral ground; if there is any likelihood of your coming to Boston next week, let me know.
I must confess that at the time I was surprised at the extent to which you were ‘nettled’. You had never given me the impression that your interest in the lady was exclusive – or indeed in the slightest degree a pursuit: and as you did not give her this impression, I presumed that I had wounded your vanity rather than thwarted your passion. If I was in error, at least Time (let us say) is the anodyne of disappointment rather than the separation of friends.
Sincerely yours
Thomas Stearns Eliot
1–Scofield Thayer’s letter has not survived.
TO J. H. Woods
MS Harvard
16 August [1915]
Eastern Point, Gloucester
Dear Professor Woods,
I now expect to return to Cambridge in September. I have seen Professor Palmer,1 and also Professor Perry,2 who thinks that the difficulties of preparation while teaching school would be very great. My only compunction is toward the headmaster: I have given him five weeks notice, but he has lost a month through having engaged me.
Unfortunately I have just had word that my wife is very ill in London, so I must go at once, sailing Saturday. I do not anticipate that her illness will prevent my return before the opening of college; but if it is serious enough to detain me I will cable to you.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
Address as above until Saturday: after that 3 Compayne Gardens, London, N.W.
1–G. Herbert Palmer (1842–1933), Professor of Philosophy, with whom TSE studied History of Ancient Philosophy, 1907–8, and Ethics, 1912–13. Palmer later wrote that, though TSE had a mind of ‘extraordinary power and sensitiveness’, he ‘allowed himself to be turned into weak aestheticism by the influence of certain literary cliques in London’ (cited in Manju Jain, T. S. Eliot and American Philosophy (1992), 34).
2–Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957), chairman of the Philosophy Department, Harvard, 1906–14.
TO J. H. Woods
MS Chicago
Monday [16 August 1915]
Eastern Point [Gloucester]
Dear Professor Woods
I forgot to answer your questions. The first notes I copied myself; the last were a duplicate of a copy ordered by a friend for himself. So there was no expense involved. I shall bring back de An. and Organon.
R. P. Hardie1 is an authority on Greek Philosophy and I believe professes at Edinburgh, whether in a school or at St Andrews I do not know; nor do I know how rich he is. I don’t see why Harvard should not accept his offer; on the other hand I do not see any reason for his not taking the market price for the volumes.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
1–R. P. Hardie (1864–1942), Professor of Philosophy at Edinburgh University
TO Scofield Thayer
MS Beinecke
4 September [1915]
Eastbourne1
Dear Scofield
I have just returned to England after my brief visit to my family in Gloucester. Now that I detach myself from the excitement and fluster of a hurried trip, I regret very much not having seen you. And, though I could not have come, I realise that my letter was a very shabby one. It was certainly very kind of you to ask me to Edgartown,2 and I really should have enjoyed seeing you. However,
I do hope it will not be very long before you exhaust the limited resources of New York society, and return to your proper environment in London. When that happens, I look forward to seeing a good deal of you. I hope you will write and tell me your plans very soon. My address (anyhow till Christmas) will be care of Bertie Russell, 34 Russell Chambers, Bury Street, w.c. He is lending us his flat for a time.3
Do accept my regrets for a petty irritation which should have evaporated long before I wrote, and believe me
yours ever
Tom.
1–The Eliots were having a belated honeymoon, following TSE’s return from the US.
2–Believing that the USA was about to enter the war, Thayer had abandoned his planned thesis on Aesthetics and left Oxford in the summer, returning home to Edgartown, Mass.
3–Russell was allowing them to stay at his flat, and he was also there much of the time. Russell had first met VHE on 9 July 1915, two weeks after her marriage. He told OM by letter that VHE was ‘light, vulgar, adventurous, full of life’, and that ‘she says she married [TSE] to stimulate him, but finds she can’t do it’ (Texas). On 2 Aug. VHE wrote to Thayer that she was ‘popular with Tom’s friends’, particularly Russell: ‘He is all over me, is Bertie, and I simply love him’ (Beinecke). By the time TSE returned from the USA at the beginning of Sept., it was decided that the Eliots would move into the spare bedroom in Russell’s Bury Street flat: they stayed there until Christmas 1915.