The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922

by T. S. Eliot

  What I should have liked to write to you about before is the Athenaeum. But it would have been settled before you could have answered. The Athenaeum used to be the chief literary weekly in London. Then in the nineties it ran down, and for the past two years was run as a monthly of social reconstruction. Now it has changed hands and the man who is the new editor (it is again a literary weekly) asked me to be his assistant editor at £500. I weighed the matter for some days. My reasons for declining are as follows:

  1) I cannot be sure that the paper will succeed. If it failed, I should be in the street at the end of two years. New papers are risky. In the prime of the Athenaeum there was no competitor; now there is the Times Supplement at second. The Athenaeum is sixth.

  2) I am not sure that journalistic life would be good for me. It would involve doing a good deal of writing week by week, on books that I should not always be interested in. It might leave me less energy for original work than I have at present. My reputation is built on writing very little, but very good, and I should not add to it by this sort of thing.

  3) The bank have not only been very kind to me in the past but have now started me in some new work which promises to be very interesting and to lead to something good. It is economic and statistical. I do not yet know what I shall get to begin with. It won’t be anything like what the paper offered but it will eventually be better.

  On the paper I should have had no control over the contributors or the policy. I should have been all the more worried if I foresaw at any time that it was not going to succeed.

  I probably have more influence and power and distinction outside of the journalistic struggle and having no material stake in it.

  At any rate I have made the choice and am satisfied with it.

  This has absorbed all my time and thought for several weeks, and I am tired out with it.

  I hope at least that it will not be necessary for me to give lectures next year.

  I want to write more fully about other things too, but I shall wait till next week. I am doing a certain amount of reviewing for the Athenaeum to help the editor, and we have also been obliged to dine out and see a great many people lately.

  Thank you very much for the photographs. It is a great satisfaction to have them.

  Always affectionately

  Tom

  1–Osbert Sitwell reports that two ‘actresses’ who lived below the flat spent their time ‘playing the piano, singing, or putting some particularly loud record on the gramophone’, as well as yelling to ‘gentlemen friends’ in the street. This often went on ‘far into the small hours and without interval’. When TSE complained to the landlord, he was told, ‘Well, you see, Sir, it’s the Artistic Temperament.’ Sitwell thought the experience contributed to SA, and that he could ‘hear the voices of the Waste Land [there]’(‘T. S. Eliot’, unpublished memoir, Texas).

  Vivien Eliot TO Charlotte C. Eliot

  MS Houghton

  7 April 1919

  18 Crawford Mansions

  My dear Mrs Eliot

  There is a letter from you for Tom lying on the table, and he will be pleased to find it when he comes in. He will get in about 5.30, and will then have tea and supper together, and go off to his lecture at 6.30. He will get back again at 11 – and have something more to eat. Monday is always a hard day. It is the most beautiful warm Spring day today, and makes one think of the country.

  Our woman, who was so very dreadfully ill with influenza and pneumonia, is now back doing a few hours work a day, but cannot do much as she is still weak. She was ill six weeks and her illness cost us a good deal. Did Tom tell you how she was taken suddenly ill here in the flat one Saturday night, just as she was going home?We had to put her to bed on the sofa, (we have no second bed or bedroom) and there she was for five days, getting worse and worse. I nursed her night and day and we thought she would die on our sofa. I cld. get no one to help me as it was in the midst of the influenza epidemic, and even the doctor did’nt come regularly. It was a dreadful time. I have never seen anyone so frightfully ill as she was. It is a terrible illness. The doctor saw that we could’nt help her all through it, so at last she was taken away in an ambulance. I disinfected the whole flat, and the marvel is that we neither of us caught it. I had a septic throat for a week, but that was all.

  Tom is now pretty well, although of course always over-worked and over-tired. The winter has been a trying one. I hope he will get three weeks holiday from the Bank during the spring or summer, and I should very much like him to go abroad, to France, if he thinks he can afford it. After being cooped up in England all these years, everyone feels an intense longing to get out of it, and I think it is particularly necessary for Tom to have a complete change, and rest for his brain. He has a friend Windham [sic] Lewis (you will know his name, I expect) who will be in Brittany all summer, and Tom wd. love to join him for his little holiday. Ezra Pound and his wife are going to France in a week – to Toulouse – for six months. His wife’s health has suffered during the war and her doctor recommends she shd. get out of England. They are lucky to be able to, lucky to be so free. Mrs Pound is English, and very charming. She has never been to America, and in several ways she and I have much in common. We are friends. Tom and I are very happy in the people we know – it is a pity you have no outsider to tell you things about us. It is difficult to tell you everything ourselves. I remember you have several times said you wished you had some person intimate with us who would give you news. Of course you could at any time have written to my parents, who would have been glad to keep you posted. Tom has a splendid social position here, and we belong to quite the most interesting set. How happy it would make Tom if you would visit England! I should think it would interest you too, although of course I realise only too well what an undertaking it is.

  Of course Tom’s money-earning activities are of a kind that make it very difficult for him to think of getting away for any length of time for a good while. If he had accepted that very flattering offer of Sub-Editor to the Athenaeum he would have been just as tied. I think on the whole he did wisely to stay at the Bank, although I found it hard to think so at the time.

  With love, and hoping to hear from you before long

  Your affect.

  Vivien

  TO Virginia Woolf

  MS Berg

  12 April 1919

  18 Crawford Mansions

  Dear Mrs Woolf,

  I must apologise for the delay in sending you this list1 – the only excuse is fatigue. You will have some of these on your list already. Where I have not got the addresses they will mostly be in the telephone directory, I think. I have probably omitted several of the likeliest people, as one does, but I have a copy of the list and will send you any more names as they come to my mind.

  We are having workmen in directly after Easter, and as soon as they let us have our flat again we should be so pleased if you and your husband could come and dine with us one evening.2

  Sincerely yours,

  T. S. Eliot

  1–A list of potential purchasers of his Poems.

  2–The Eliots had dined with the Woolfs a few days earlier, on 6 Apr. VW recorded: ‘I amused myself by seeing how sharp, narrow, & much of a stick Eliot has come to be, since he took to disliking me. His wife a washed out, elderly&worn looking little woman’ (Diary, I, 262).

  Vivien Eliot TO Bertrand Russell

  MS McMaster

  Sunday [13? April 1919]

  18 Crawford Mansions

  My dear Bertie,

  I went to Marlow1 a week ago and fetched away several small belongings of yours, and packed up the table, but was unable to get anyone to carry it to the station at the last minute. Tomorrow, unless my cold turns to influenza, I am going again and shall bring the table and whatever else I can carry. Then I will try to get this first collection conveyed to your present address.

  I am sorry it has been so long, and I am afraid it will take a good many journeys before you have everything. So plea
se have patience! Do come and see us when you have a free evening.

  Yours ever

  Vivien.

  1–The Eliots relinquished their lease on 15 Nov.

  TO J. H. Woods

  MS Professor David G. Williams

  21 April 1919

  18 Crawford Mansions

  My dear Dr Woods,

  Your two letters of Feb 15 and Feb 27 have been a long time unanswered, and this must appear very rude of me.1 Your first letter came, oddly enough, just as I had received another proposal, which, with illness, occupied my time for many weeks after. May I say first of all, how keenly I appreciate your never failing kindness toward me since the very beginning of our acquaintance? Your last letters are only one more proof of it, but one which has touched me very deeply. In the second place of course I feel very much pleased at the honour in such a suggestion – an honour really out of proportion to my attainments in philosophy.

  When I first settled in England my material ambitions were toward a literary editorship. I only went into a Bank as a stop gap until I became sufficiently well known to get the sort of offer I wanted. Now that I am well known I have had the offer and find that I don’t want it any longer. I have been offered the assistant-editorship of the Athenaeum at a very good salary and have declined it. This for two kinds of reason.

  The first is that I have got on very well in Banking, and although I have not yet anywhere near as good a salary as the Athenaeum offered me I have lately been pushed into a post of some importance which offers fairly lucrative prospects, and interesting work in economics and foreign affairs. I suppose also I take some self-satisfaction in having carried off a tour de force in succeeding with an occupation apparently so incongruous. Also I like the men I have to deal with, and they have been kind to me.

  The other reason is more ideal. I think that my position in English letters is all the stronger for my not being associated with any periodical as an employee. Journalism is a profession like any other, and it has no more to do with literary art than any other occupation. This is a cardinal point. In writing for a paper one is writing for a public, and the best work, the only work that in the end counts, is written for oneself. If one has to earn a living, therefore, the safest occupation is that most remote from the arts.

  There are only two ways in which a writer can become important – to write a great deal, and have his writings appear everywhere, or to write very little. It is a question of temperament. I write very little, and I should not become more powerful by increasing my output. My reputation in London is built upon one small volume of verse, and is kept up by printing two or three more poems in a year. The only thing that matters is that these should be perfect in their kind, so that each should be an event.

  As to America: I am a much more important person here than I should be at home. I am getting to know and be known by all the intelligent or important people in letters, and I am convinced that I am more useful in the long run by being here. Finally, one changes. I have acquired the habit of a society so different that it is difficult to find common terms to define the difference.

  My father died early in the year, and my mother is going to settle in Cambridge as soon as her affairs are in order. I am looking forward to visiting her there at sometime during next winter or spring. Surely you will be there?

  I am hoping to hear from you in answer to my last letter, but you are of course waiting for this letter from me. I hope you will reply to this, and provoke another letter from me: one cannot put the process of four years experience clearly on four sheets of paper.

  Very gratefully yours

  T. S. Eliot

  1–TSE, ‘A Romantic Patrician’, a review of George Wyndham, Essays in Romantic Literature, in A., 2May 1919; collected in SW. ‘How very good is your essay on Wyndham!’ wrote JMM. ‘I could not have wished it better done. What a great pleasure it is to have you working with me. I only hope that the collaboration will not be interrupted until we have restored criticism.’

  TO His Mother

  MS Houghton

  23 April 1919

  18 Crawford Mansions

  My dearest Mother

  It seems a very long time since I have written to you. I have just had a holiday: Friday to Tuesday was a general ‘bank holiday’ in England this year, but it has gone very quickly. Vivien unfortunately came down with a mild attack of influenza and was in bed the whole time. She is much better now, but weak. We were to have gone to the country, to Lady Ottoline Morrell’s. It was just as well, however, that her attack should have come when I could be at home, as our daily woman only stays till 4 o’clock at present, until she is quite strong again. What usually happens after V. has influenza is that I get it and she has to nurse me before she is well, but I took extra precautions this time.

  I spent part of my time writing an article for the Athenaeum,1 and was rewarded by a warm letter of appreciation this morning from the editor. I will send you the paper when it comes out. When I declined his offer he decided not to have any assistant editor, as, he said, he did not know of anyone else in England whose critical judgment he could trust in matters of the literary policy of the paper. That is very flattering, and makes me feel that I ought to do all I can to help the paper: it is the only weekly that I should care to be associated with. As the articles are to be initialled I shall have credit for them among the people who count.

  I have been trying the last two afternoons to buy a muzzle for our dog. We have a dog – a very small Yorkshire terrier with hair over its eyes, a waif which followed me in the street.1 We have had it some time. It is of very good breeding, and was beautifully trained by someone and a good companion for Vivien when she is alone during the day. Lately there was a dog accused of rabies near London, and so all dogs must be muzzled. The shops have been besieged by frantic people wanting muzzles, all bringing their dogs. I waited in a queue for half an hour yesterday and the woman just ahead of me bought three – and there were no more of the size. I managed to get one today, and then had to buy a file and a pair of pincers to alter it to fit. The dog hates it, of course.

  I enclose the form of receipt for the stick. I think you had better keep it until I come unless there is some very secure way of packing, but I don’t want to run any risks with an object of such value. The worst of such a possession is that I shall be afraid ever to use it. You have another stick of mine, silver headed, at Gloucester. The only things I want immediately are a few books which I asked Shef to send, if possible.

  The question of leave of absence is rather a difficult one at present. I had hoped that the new department would be organised at once. It is held up at the moment because we are waiting for rooms. Another department is to move away and give place to us. Until they do so, and it may be two or three weeks, we can do nothing, as the work involves a large outfit of filing cabinets, etc. I cannot broach any question of holiday until the department is actually in existence, and then it will be a question of seeing how the work is to be divided up among my colleagues. I shall probably be very busy and have a good deal of responsibility in the initial organisation, and I don’t know whether I can get even an ordinary vacation this summer. At any rate, I must get my foot firmly planted first, and then take a rest. I am also hoping (but this is in strict confidence) to be in a position to show that I could do some work in the bank’s interest on the other side, and so get part of the expense paid. Very likely nothing will come of this, however. As soon as the work is under way I can size up better what to ask for and when. The more important I am the more time I can beg, but also the more delayed I may be. It would be in the winter or early in the spring. I cannot tell you how anxious I am to come to you, and how much I think about it. If it was the spring do you think it would be any easier for you to help us both to come? Vivien is very anxious to come.

  I had a very nice letter from Marion which I hope to answer soon. I must write to Henry.

  With very much love

  Your affectionate son
<
br />   Tom.

  1–They named the dog ‘Dinah Brooks’.

  TO Mary Hutchinson

  MS Texas

  Thursday [1? May 1919]

  18 Crawford Mansions

  Dear Mary,

  Are we going to see you before you go away? Vivienne has been ill this week and we have had so much to do getting ready to leave the flat that we have not had time for any social engagements.

  If possible, could we not arrange to meet on Sunday or on Saturday afternoon? Do let me know if you are available. It is so long since we have seen you.

  Sincerely,

  T. S. E.

  We are leaving here by Saturday morning so could you just send a line that I should get by then.

  TO His Mother

  MS Houghton

  4 May 1919

  18 Crawford Mansions

  Dearest Mother,

  I must answer your questions first.