The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922
Page 49
Yours
Tom.
TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
16 May 1919
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mary,
Of course I should be delighted to come to you for Whitsun.1 I am leaving town for an indefinite number of weeks, in a few days, to go about in the unknown provinces on business of the bank. I don’t know how long I shall stay anywhere, and I shall probably be in town every week or so, and this will remain my address. But I shall certainly be able to get away for Whitsun, and can get down to Wittering. Vivien has made arrangements to do something including that time.
Please don’t have anyone else – flattery quite apart! – I should like best to be the only guest. Don’t have anyone for me, I mean – of course, if you were going to have someone anyway, don’t alter your plans.
So you see I can be seduced – I am looking forward to it very keenly.
Yours,
T.S.E.
1–Whitsun was on 8 June. On 10 May, VHE had asked MH to invite TSE for Whitsun.
TO The Editor of The Athenaeum
Published 16 May 19191
Sir,
Mr Lytton Strachey informs me that in my review of Kipling’s verse last week I referred to the ‘Authorized Version’ as the ‘Revised Version.’2 I meant the Bible published by direction of King James I, and still in use in my childhood. Mr Strachey says that there is a modern edition called ‘The Revised Version.’3 I admit and apologize for the error.
Yours, etc.,
T.S.E.
1–A note headed ‘Wednesday’ reads: ‘Dear Strachey Don’t be absurd – of course I should answer. Yrs T. S. Eliot’ (BL). Presumably it was sent on 14 May, though ‘May 21 1919’ has been added in pencil.
2–TSE, ‘Kipling Redivivus’, a review of Kipling’s The Years Between, in A., 9 May 1919. Some Kipling poems, said TSE, convey a ‘touch of the newspapers, of Billy Sunday, and the Revised Version filtered through Rabbi Zeal-of-the-Land Busy’. He remarked too that ‘the Revised Version (substantially the same style as all the versions from Tindall) is excellent prose … but is not a style into which any significant modern content can be shoved.’
3–The Revised Version, 1881–5, was a revision of the Authorized Version of 1611.
TO John Rodker
TS Virginia
17 May 1919
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Rodker,
Leonard Woolf’s edition of a few of my poems is now on the market, and I understand that yours would not be ready before August, so that is all right.1 I accordingly authorise, or give you permission, or whatever is the legal phrase, to print your special edition of 250 copies of a book to contain the poems in the Egoist Prufrock, the poems in Woolf’s small book, and any others that I may send you in a reasonable time. I enclose three new ones.2 I should like to know when you want to start on this book, as I want to think over such questions as the order of the poems, dedication; also I have two more quotations, a Latin and a Greek one, to go in as headings. Will you be able to do Greek type? There are two other short Greek quotations.
I am going to be out of town most of the time for some weeks on my employer’s business; but I shall be up at irregular intervals once a week or so for the night, and as I shall be moving about, this is the only address, and I can answer anything in the course of a few days.
I shall put on [sc. out] a cheap edition, with the Egoist, probably, in the spring of next year: in March or April or May; but that will give you enough time, won’t it?
Yours
T. S. Eliot
I will send you a copy of Woolf’s.
1–Rodker had just started the Ovid Press, and wished to put out a de luxe collection of TSE’s poems.
2–Presumably ‘Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar’, ‘Sweeney Erect’ and ‘Ode’.
Vivien Eliot TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
Sunday [18? May 1919]
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mary,
I love you much more than ever. I turn to you with thoughts of joy and relief after my adventurings. I am fond of you and I think you wonderful. And wonderful you are. So Tom is coming to you for Whitsun! I may go with him for part of this preposterous tour. I may not. I may see you at Bosham just the same though.
Your devoted friend
Vivien
Heaven to be back here.
Lovely white room.
TO Lytton Strachey1
MS BL
Monday 19 May 1919
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Strachey,
I find that I am being sent on a tour of the provinces, by my bank, as soon as I can get off, and that I shall probably be gone some weeks. So unfortunately there is no possibility of my asking you to dine with me in the near future, as I should have liked to have done.2 I only fear that when I am settled here again you will be buried in the country. Perhaps you will keep me in touch with your movements, and perhaps you will even let me have your opinions and Revisions of anything of mine you see in print.
Sincerely
T. S. Eliot
This is my only address.
1–Lytton Strachey (1880–1932), critic and biographer.
2–TSE had seen Strachey at Garsington on 11 May, and dined with him in London the following day. Strachey related to Dora Carrington on 14 May: ‘Poet Eliot had dinner with me on Monday – rather ill and rather American: altogether not gay enough for my taste. But by no means to be sniffed at’ (Letters of Lytton Strachey, ed. Paul Levy, 2005).
TO John Rodker
MS Virginia
Wednesday [21 May 1919]
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Rodker,
Thanks for your letter. I am sorry for the misunderstanding. I don’t think there is enough new stuff for more than twenty-five pages, but perhaps I shall have more by the end of June.1 I hope so. I wonder if thirty or thirty-five pages is worth your while? With hope to see you in a few weeks.
Sincerely,
T. S. Eliot
1–Rodker’s Ovid Press published Ara Vos Prec in Feb. 1920. The poems from Prufrock and Other Observations occupy twenty-two pages, preceded by twenty pages of more recent work, including the Hogarth Press Poems and ‘Gerontion’.
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
25 May 1919
18 Crawford Mansions
My dearest Mother,
I have not had any letter from you for a very long time, except little short notes – not that they were not very nice ones, but I assumed that you were too busy or preoccupied to write. I have the dressing gown, and am delighted to have it. Everything you have sent has come safely.
I don’t know whether I told you that the lectures were ended, to my great relief. The class seemed to be satisfied with them (though I was not) and presented me with some very nice books1 to mark the completion of the three years’ course. I don’t know whether it will be desirable for me to continue them from any point of view, as perhaps I can make more money as well as more reputation from the Athenaeum. I have got to give one lecture on Saturday next, at London University; subject: ‘the younger poets’.2 I don’t know what to say. It is a delicate subject.
I enclose an article from the Times which will interest you. I haven’t been able to identify the author. I don’t think his critical acumen is very great, though he is flattering. I am not however greatly flattered by the close association with A. H. He is a nice young friend of mine, a grandson of T. H.3
I send you my article on Henry Adams, which I hope will reach you.
Vivien and I both feel pretty tired after the long winter. We didn’t have much in the way of a holiday last year – the Army–Navy affair killed that. Owing to the delay in the formation of the new work – owing to lack of housing room – I have not been able to arrange my holiday yet, but I insist on Vivien’s going for a time to the seaside in June, anyway.
I hope we
shall have a longer letter from you soon. I am anxious that you should be able to leave St Louis before the weather gets too hot.
Your devoted son
Tom.
1–TSE’s leaving gift included The Oxford Book of English Verse, ‘with the gratitude and appreciation of the students of the Southall Tutorial Literature Class May 1919’.
2–Not traced.
3–‘Experiments in Poetry’, TLS, 22 May 1919: a review of Coterie, in which TSE’s ‘A Cooking Egg’ appeared. The anonymous author was RA, who bracketed TSE’s work with the poetry of AH (grandson of the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley).
TO John Quinn
MS NYPL (MS)
25 May 1919
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mr Quinn:
I have your letter of 29 April and am most grateful to you. I do think that the pains you have taken over this book of mine are a very unusual thing for anyone to do for anyone.
I am simply writing to express my appreciation and waiting to hear from you further. If it were possible to alter the manuscript I should like to do so, as I have two or three other essays and a very few poems which I should add, and the essays are better than any in the manuscript. I have been writing a good deal for the rejuvenated Athenaeum lately, and the articles I have done for this are longer and better than any of those for the Egoist.
It would, as you know, be a great satisfaction to me for private reasons to have a book printed in America. I don’t need to dwell on that.
I appreciate all that you say about wasting oneself on trifles.1 It is very easy for a man in my position to do that: working from 9.15 to 5 in a bank, on foreign exchange, I find an infinite number of things to be done in my small leisure. Some of them are very specious and seductive: not only social engagements but various literary enterprises in which one’s very devotion to literature seems to demand that one should take a part – I have to keep a firm eye on what is most important for me.
– Yet I had rather be in a bank than be dependent on literature or journalism for a living. I intend not to see anyone but one man for at least a month.
I do hope you will get the holiday. I am sure you will break down very badly unless you do.
Cordially yours
T. S. Eliot
1–Quinn had written (29 Apr.): ‘Take the advice of an older man who has overdone things and do not waste yourself on trivial things … The great thing is to save one’s self from the unimportant and non-essential things in order to have the leisure and strength to do the bigger and finer and better work.’
TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
Monday [26 May?] 1919
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mary,
I am so sorry about Thursday. It would happen that way, but I am glad I have Wittering to look forward to – sunshine and seawater, and laziness – but I hope my brain will be in a condition worthy of the company. If you will have someone, by the way, I should like to see Roger [Fry].
I haven’t thanked you yet for your letter with Virginia’s review, which I only read on the train going down – I can’t forget Charles’ ride in the morning and arrival at the Rouault farm.1 I shall want to know what you think of me in the next Ath.2 – though it may not interest you. If you ever have time – to write letters – I should get them / it? eventually and be grateful –
Till Pentecost [8 June] –
Yours
T.S.E.
1–It is not clear which VW review MH had sent to TSE, but his comment relates to Gustav Flaubert, Madame Bovary, ch. 2.
2–TSE, ‘Beyle and Balzac’, a review of George Saintsbury’s A History of the French Novel, to the Close of the Nineteenth Century, vol. 2, in A., 30 May 1919, 392–3.
TO Brigit Patmore
MS Beinecke
Tuesday [27 May? 1919]
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Brigit,
This is a letter crowded into the end of an evening of writing, and won’t amount to much. But I can’t see that it is really a question of expression, but simply of complete integrity – if one is quite honest and fair to oneself the personality will be sufficiently there. There is such a difference between seeing the point of view of people one is with and accepting it. And I don’t believe there is such a frame of mind as pure receptivity. I think that when one is most alert to impressions one is also doing the most immediate thinking. And I cannot see that there is a contest between reason and intuition – the most intuitive people I have known have also had the clearest minds – if they cannot give a reason for their opinion they can at all events state it clearly. One can be very alive to any person or situation and at the same time go on with one’s own mind undisturbed.
Perhaps all I have to say is that one must develop a hard exterior in order to be spontaneous – one cannot be that unless nothing can touch what is inside.
But then one never does actually understand other people by thinking in this abstract way – understanding is a by-product of seeing them in different situations, talking of particular and concrete things.
Perhaps we could meet before long though it would have to be at rather short notice on my side. I shall join Vivien for this weekend and next also – perhaps you would be free and perhaps I should, one evening next week.
Yrs.
TSE
TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
1 June 1919
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Mary
Whatever your doubts as to your epistolary genius on May 29, your Seidlitz powder blue1 was very welcome when I returned on May 31st to deliver a lecture and pass Sunday trying to write a review. In spite of the stimulus of your real or pretended enjoyment of Adams I was unable to get on very fast:2 Robert Lynd’s collected papers3 stuck in my throat, or clogged my liver – and in revenge he shan’t go in this week, but Murry will provide a disquisition on Gerard Hopkins.4 So you see it will never be clear whether he or Roger was first over the fence. Anyhow, Father Hopkins (fact) has been dead, I gather from J.M.M., déjà quelques années [some years already]. I am glad Roger is coming, and also glad to have an afternoon and evening first: I see you expect accounts of my provincial amours, but if you are too prying I shall reveal all the gossip of the tinplate industry. I am off to Manchester. I shall probably not leave there till Friday night or Saturday morning early; there is a train which gets to Chichester at 4.4 Saturday afternoon. There I suppose I charter a taxi to your house, unless I hear other instructions from you. I shall pass by Crawford Mansions on my way; of course I shall have to do so to fetch flannels. You will be ready to pour out tea when I arrive? I will try to be intelligent more so than usual.
Yours
Tom.
1–Effervescent laxative.
2–TSE, ‘A Sceptical Patrician’ (on Henry Adams).
3–TSE, ‘Criticism in England’, A., 13 June 1919: a review of Old Men and New Masters by Robert Lynd (1879–1949), Irish journalist and essayist; literary editor of the Daily News.
4–JMM, ‘Gerard Manley Hopkins’, A., 6 June 1919: a review of Hopkins, Poems, ed. Robert Bridges. The book was not reviewed by Roger Fry.
TO Lytton Strachey1
1 June 1919
[18 Crawford Mansions]
…Whether one writes a piece of work well or not seems to me a matter of crystallization – the good sentence, the good word, is only the final stage in the process. One can groan enough over the choice of a word, but there is something much more important to groan over first. It seems to me just the same in poetry – the words come easily enough, in comparison to the core of it – the tone – and nobody can help one in the least with that. Anything I have picked up about writing is due to having spent (as I once thought, wasted) a year absorbing the style of F. H. Bradley – the finest philosopher in English – Appearance and Reality is the Education Sentimentale of abstract thought.
You are very – ingenuous – if you can conceive me conversing with rural
deans in the cathedral close. I do not go to cathedral towns but to centres of industry. My thoughts are absorbed in questions more important than ever enter the heads of deans – as why it is cheaper to buy steel bars from America than from Middlesborough, and the probable effect – the exchange difficulties with Poland – and the appreciation of the rupee. My evenings in Bridge. The effect is to make me regard London with disdain, and divide mankind into supermen, termites and wireworms. I am sojourning among the termites. At any rate that coheres. I feel sufficiently specialized, at present, to inspect or hear any ideas with impunity.
1–Text from Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey, II, The Years of Achievement 1910–1932 (1968), 364–5. The letter disappeared from James Strachey’s files shortly before his death.
TO John Rodker
MS Virginia
1 June 1919
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Rodker,
I have been back over Sunday and leave again tomorrow. It occurred to me after leaving that I had most rudely forgotten to thank you for the Gaudier.1 It was good of you to send it to me, and it seems to me very well done. I should have preferred slightly thicker paper.