The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922
Page 50
If you haven’t a Prufrock I will get Weaver to send you one. I am sending you Virginia Woolf’s book which seems to me very well done. There is one other French poem, which is in one of the later Little Reviews,2 along with some others – you have that have you not? These and the three I sent you and one half-finished one3 are all I have up to date. Oh, also the thing in Coterie.4
You can put me down for the L.R. if you like – if they pay for their contributions – but candidly my hands are likely to be pretty full, with the work I am doing for the Athenaeum.
Many thanks again for the Gaudier.
Yours
T. S. Eliot
1–Twenty Drawings from the Note-books of H. Gaudier-Brzeska (Ovid Press, 1919).
2–‘Dans le Restaurant’, Little Review 5 (Sept. 1918).
3–‘Gerontion’ was to be completed during the summer.
4–‘A Cooking Egg’, Coterie 1 (May 1919).
Vivien Eliot TO Ottoline Morrell
MS Texas
Wednesday [4 June? 1919]
18 Crawford Mansions
My dear – the letter you sent to Marlow reached me this morning. There was no one in the house to forward it, and it missed me there by a post, I think. I left there more than a week ago. I didn’t mean to when I wrote to you. I felt very upset when I read your letter this morning. But in spite of everything you ought not to say ‘that was a quick change etc. affair’. Believe me it wasn’t. I know I should have written, even without getting your Marlow letter. But I could not write, not to anyone on earth, and have not. I have been ill in a sort of way, and I had to go into a sort of retirement which is so necessary to me at times that I should die without it. It is a seemingly selfish, closed up, kind of affair, but without something like it at frequent intervals I should cease to exist as a person at all. I am perfectly certain that no one has so little resistance to human contacts as I. I do not expect even you to realise how beaten upon and worn by the most ordinary amount of human intercourse I became. I don’t want to bore you but some day I shall insist on forcing you to realise it! Of course I have been thinking about you. That is the worst of it! I had to. By the way you must never never show anyone my letters. But of course you never would.
I am amused by your description of Bertie’s weekend at Garsington. He came straight from there to this flat, in the early hours of a Monday morning, to fetch away another instalment of possessions I had fetched from Marlow. He seemed dreadfully out of temper. Unfortunately I was not dressed, so had to shout to him from the bathroom, as cheerfully as I could. But the response was painful. I was sorry, really, I had asked him to come to tea when he fetched them, and I had come up from Marlow specially. I thought we might have talked a little and come to, at any rate, amicable relations. But it is no good. I will make no more attempts at all. But it is strange how one does miss him! Isn’t it hard to put him quite out of one’s mind? Did you get the tulip box, because I did send it back.
Tom is not abroad. Only backwards and forwards to various parts of England, such as Manchester and Birmingham and Cardiff!! But it is doing him good, even that. He is better. Do you really love England? I used to, but since the war I cannot feel that I really do. That is very painful. If I had known you were in London for that one night I should have come to find you. That would be easier than anything – just to walk, after dark, to that nice old hotel1 and find you there. Tell me what your new dress is like. I really should like to know. Tom’s pyjamas are still at Garsington. Do keep them as a hostage! I can wear them when I come.
Until I have been to Bosham I shall be too tired to see anyone, too stupid and boring and hideous altogether. Everyone thinks I am away or dead. But will you write to me? and give me the chance to write to you. Please.
I am going next Thursday. So this address until then. With love.
Affectly
Vivien E.
1–Garland’s Hotel, Suffolk Street, Haymarket (destroyed by bombs in 1943).
TO Harriet Shaw Weaver
MS BL
5 June 1919
The Egoist, Oakley House,
Bloomsbury St, London, W.C.
Dear Miss Weaver,
Thank you for your letter and the cheque for £6. I am much pleased by the expression of your and Miss Marsden’s wishes. Certainly the Egoist will always have all the support I can give it, and you can depend upon me as a Contributor.1 I hope when the time comes I shall be in a position to do at least as much as I have done in the past. Of course my life is further complicated by my regular long contributions to the Athenaeum, and I am anxious to find
For your other suggestion, I shall probably be able to tell you definitely in July whether I can produce such a book.2 I have had overtures from a publisher who has also left town, on a holiday, and whom I shall not see till into July, but what I may propose to him is an entirely new book which would take some time to prepare. I do not know when your final number will be out, but I presume in August, which would leave time. I have written to Blackwell for Greene’s Groats-worth of Wit, so if it comes will you send it to me and I shall use that for my contribution.3
I shall meanwhile be in town weekends, but I expect to find it impossible to see people, as I have to answer accumulated correspondence and do my Athenaeum article4 then. So I shall not count on seeing you till early in July.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
1–The printer had refused since Jan. to publish any more of Ulysses, robbing Weaver of a prime incentive for continuing her financial support. At the end of May, she found that although the paper was smaller than before, costs had risen, and she was losing as much as ever, so she and Dora Marsden planned to suspend it for a while to enable Marsden to complete her book of philosophy.
2–The final issue of the Egoist, Dec. 1919, announced that the Egoist Press promised publication of The Art of Poetry by TSE in early spring, and a flyer for ‘The Egoist Press Publications’ announced it as ‘in preparation’. It did not appear.
3–Robert Greene, Groats-worth of Wit, reprinted in the Sheldonian Series, 1919. TSE did not write about it.
4–TSE, ‘Criticism in England’.
TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
Tuesday [10 June 1919]
18 Crawford Mansions,
Crawford St, W.1
Dear Mary
About half a mile further the car collapsed completely and at the same moment punctured a tire, in the middle of a vast plain. Nothing passed but two brakes full of boy scouts so I proceeded on foot followed by three ducks, and arrived at Chichester, dusty but triumphant, in time for a glass of beer at the Woodman just before the train. I reached C. Mansions at a quarter to 2! However, I enjoyed the Pentecost very much indeed – you were very charming.
Yrs.
Tom
TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
Sunday [15? June 1919]
[18 Crawford Mansions]
Dear Mary,
My scrawl was despatched in some haste on a hurried day, and did not express much of the pleasure with which I am still looking back on the two days at Wittering. I preserve – at least the illusion – that it was not a drifting fog but was rather only something interrupted or suspended.
one’s opinion having had the slightest effect. I am not sure that I should see it just as you do, mind. I think you are capable of being quite incomprehensible and unaccountable, except to yourself. There is something odd in you which makes you appear independent and self-sufficient to a degree – at least to the degree of only wanting from anybody what you deliberately want to want from them. It is very interesting.
I shall send you some of Pound’s poems as soon as I can, and hope you will see why I like them so much.
I must interrupt this at some point –
Yours
Tom.
You haven’t written to Vivien –
I have to go to Garsington on my next return –
I wonder who wrote in the last Times?2 He found my joints in one or two places very cleverly.
Lewis is not a sham, but a simple natural innocent, like myself.
1–‘I believe it because it is impossible’, a common variant of Tertullian’s rule of faith ‘Certum est, quia impossible est’ (‘It is certain, because it is impossible’).
2–‘Not Here, O Apollo’, TLS 12 June, was by Arthur Clutton-Brock. ‘Mr. Eliot, like Browning, likes [in Poems] to display out-of-the-way learning, he likes to surprise you by every trick he can think of’ but is ‘fatally handicapping himself with his own inhibitions’.
TO Brigit Patmore
MS Beinecke
15 June 1919
[in transit]
Dear Brigit
This is a hasty greeting in the midst of my pilgrimages. I have been in London several times, but neither seen people nor had time to write satisfactory letters to anyone – the only exception a Whitsun visit to some friends in Sussex – the most of my time rushed about in interviews in Birmingham, Manchester and elsewhere. I wonder if you could give a satisfactory account of yourself – but I shan’t attack you because I know perfectly well that you are pleased to be lectured to – that is what irritates me. It doesn’t worry you a bit, and it’s not a bit of use. And it’s boring.
I have had a very interesting time on the whole, very crowded, especially including an article and correspondence to be done on Sundays. But mostly a very specialised exercise of intelligence, and rather restful – reading nothing but commercial reviews, and seeing new and strange people.
If I can get back by Saturday I have promised to go down to Oxfordshire over Sunday – otherwise I may be here in the middle of the week, and if not then, not until the middle of the following week, possibly. You see what a nomadic life it is! I hope we can meet by July anyway – unless you have disappeared to your country seat by then. Are you still at this address, in case –?
Yours
T.S.E.
TO Eleanor Hinkley
MS Houghton
17 June 1919
8 Crawford Mansions,
Crawford St, W.1
Dear Eleanor,
I am rather ahead with my writing this week, so I can at last consecrate an hour to writing to you. It is 10 p.m. I am alone with Dinah Brooks (Yorkshire terrier). It is very hot. Vivien I have left in Bosham (Sussex) for a much needed holiday, and the servant is also taking a fortnight’s holiday at Margate, presumably making herself ill on prawns and winkles. But as she says of everything ‘it makes a change’ (i.e. when she bakes potatoes instead of boiling them).
It was a very nice letter dated April 8 that I had from you, and I wish I could have answered it before. This spring has been, however, a very busy one for me. My lectures ended only in May. Then I have been writing long articles for the Athenaeum which not only take time but make me more conspicuous and bring indirectly social engagements. Then I have produced a certain amount of copy for a quarterly called Art & Letters.1 Then I have had one small book brought out and am preparing a larger one (limited edition). Then I have been corresponding with a publisher about a possible prose book (I dare say it will fall through). Then several stripling poets want their long poems criticised. Then to show you what social life entails, I will retail or detail one incident:—
I happen to make to a lady I know pretty well named A. some flippant remarks about a lady B. Later I get to know B. and get on with her quite well. B. repeats to others the compliments I paid her on one of her books. Then a sudden coolness. Next C. a mutual friend asks me if I ever said that I disliked B. and thought her book rubbish because B. has been told that I said it, and was much upset. I may remark that B. has occasionally suffered from melancholia. I deny the remarks, but say that some time ago I had made some light comments which might have been twisted that way. C. promises to report to B. Meanwhile A. gets in a funk lest I hear of this and trace it to her, and anxiously confides in Vivien. A. you see hates B. and also is jealous of her. She therefore repeats my remarks to D. a man friend of hers (A.’s) who dislikes me because A. likes me. D. is a connection of B. and when he hears her repeat my compliments, is irritated, and tells her, with alterations, what I said elsewhere. B.’s husband says he is going to tax me with it. A. hearing of this is frightened and rings up B. to say not to tax me with it, as D. may have made a mistake. This leaves the situation with D. more hating me than ever, as he is put in rather an awkward situation, with B. still suspicious, and A. very humble and contrite, although she is not quite sure that I know anything about it. This puts me in a position to make A. uncomfortable by innuendoes. I leave B. quite alone. A.’s husband in conversation constantly tries to hint to me how vain and perverse B. is, and tries to make me say something uncomplimentary to her work. I dodge this, and praise her. I also take the trouble to be very good friends with C., E. and F. all close friends of B.
The sequel is this. G. another woman, is jealous of A. She hears that I spent a weekend at A.’s house. She promptly invites me for a weekend and says that B. is coming. This is very clever, for she knows that I have had no opportunity of a rapprochement with B. and that I dare not refuse to come for fear of offending B. In either case G. will be pleased: if I don’t go, I shall be out with B. forever, and no woman likes one to be on good terms with another; if I do go, she will get back one on A. So I must go smiling on Saturday, knowing that there will be a large party, all knowing all the facts, to see how I shall get on with B. and knowing also that G. will do her best to get me to say something unpleasant about A., and also that A. will want to know later what G. said about her. Meanwhile I believe that D. is spreading the report that I am very conceited, he being annoyed at my having been asked for a weekend to A.’s, where I bathed in the sea and played with the children, and talked about aesthetics with F. And I like A. and B. very much and don’t hate even D.2
This is an illustration. It will seem to you foolish. But think of this sort of thing as going on continually in a society where everyone is very sensitive, very perceptive and very quick and you will see that a dinner party demands more skill and exercises one’s psychological gifts more than the best fencing match or duel.
The first thing one tries to notice in entering a room is everyone’s frame of mind and attitude towards everyone else, individually, which may have changed in twenty-four hours! It does use one’s brains! Only, one needs to retire from time to time and rest.
I have written to Emily – I hope it was a nice letter. I should, I think, like her to know what a keen interest I take in everything that happens to her.
I like your letters very much. But I wish you would send me copies of any of your printed plays, and I should like to know how you look on your work, and its relation to literature, and what experience of life you think is required for it. But I must defer that till another letter. I take it unkindly that you never write.
Always affectionately
Tom
1–‘Marivaux’ in Art & Letters 1 (Spring 1919); ‘Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar’ and ‘Sweeney Erect’ in 2 (Summer).
/> 2–The scenario seems to be as follows: A = Mary Hutchinson; B = Virginia Woolf; D = Clive Bell; F = Roger Fry; and G = Ottoline Morrell. For C and E there are several possibilities: C may have been John Middleton Murry and E Lytton Strachey. VWhad reported on 17 Apr. that when she visited the Murrys, ‘the mystery of Eliot was further thickened by hearing how he praised me to the skies to them’ (Letters, II, 350); and she had written to Duncan Grant the same day: ‘we have a letter asking us to dinner, and I’m determined, in spite of Mary [Hutchinson] to draw the rat from his hole’ (Letters, II, 350). VHE wrote to MH on 17 June 1919: ‘Tom is going to Garsington, think of Virginia, Tom and Ottoline! O think of it.’
TO Ottoline Morrell
MS Texas
Monday [23 June 1919]
18 Crawford Mansions
Dear Lady Ottoline,
Finally I have a chance to write and tell you what happened. First of all, I was bitterly disappointed. And will you let me come very soon? I expect to be settled here again after this week, and after that I should love to come for a weekend if you would ask me.
The man [Harold Peters] who turned up so suddenly is a lieutenant with the American navy and he is the oldest and loyalest American friend I have. He was here about two months ago for two nights, and I begged him to come again before he went back to the States. He has been mine sweeping in the Orkneys; now he is suddenly demobilised, and came down from Liverpool entirely to see me before leaving Europe finally tomorrow. I got a wire from him, and when he arrived I realised that I should have to give up my weekend – at first I thought that I could take an earlier train back to town on Sunday, but there wasn’t any. And I saw that it would be a bitter blow to him if he could not have me for the whole of the short time. He would never have got over it; he had come from Liverpool only to see me, and he will probably never be in this country again, and he would not have understood, so I gave up. I could not let him think that anything was different from what it was five years ago. He had been almost the only man in my class at Harvard whom I could endure; and we had been through various adventures and physical risks together; I don’t feel at all sentimental about it, but I could not let him go back to America thinking that our relations were altered.