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

by T. S. Eliot

  I have no doubt the portrait has reached you by this time. Hoppé took two: the one I chose is very good.

  I am glad to hear that the book will be out by March 15,1 and thank you for the name of the press bureau.

  Faithfully yours

  T. S. Eliot

  1–Poems, TSE’s first American book, would be published in late Feb.

  TO Mary Hutchinson

  MS Texas

  Wednesday [7 January 1920?]

  18 Crawford Mansions

  Dear Mary,

  I am ashamed of the meal you had to share, but I was very happy having you and I hope it will happen again.

  This is to wish you bon chemin [a good road] for your journey. Don’t get tired, and give my love to Lytton.

  Yours

  Tom.

  I had forgotten all about the flat and will do so again.

  TO His Mother

  MS Houghton

  11 January 1920

  18 Crawford Mansions

  My dearest Mother,

  I have nothing of much importance to tell you this week. I have taken up the Muller system of exercises1 before breakfast, and I think they are benefiting me. I have written an article for the Athenaeum2 this week, and I am starting to put my lecture3 into book form. I dined with Murry night before last, just back from Italy. Next Tuesday we have asked Abigail to dinner with Arthur Dakyns, Sydney Waterlow, and a man named [J. W. N.] Sullivan who writes the science articles in the Athenaeum. Vivien has not been at all well lately – very run down – and has been in bed today.

  I am sending you the final Egoist.

  I am counting on your being here in the spring. I am frantically eager to see you. Vivien sends her love.

  Your devoted son

  Tom.

  1–These exercises ‘for everyone from infancy to old age’ were devised by Lt J. P. Muller, late of the Danish Tubercular Sanatorium, and endorsed by Roosevelt, Baden-Powell and Conan Doyle.

  2–TSE, ‘Swinburne’, a review of Selections from Swinburne, ed. Edmund Gosse and T. J. Wise, A., 16 Jan. 1919 (repr. as ‘Swinburne as Poet’, SW).

  3–TSE’s lecture on poetry, 28 Oct.; published as ‘Modern Tendencies in Poetry’.

  TO Sydney Schiff

  MS BL

  12 January 1920

  18 Crawford Mansions

  Dear Sydney,

  An extremely good postcard set you both vividly before me, but it was not needed for that, as I have had it on my mind for a long time to write to you. Just before Christmas I had a bronchial attack which laid me up for a week, and although I spent the holidays in Wiltshire with the Waterlows, (where it rained the whole time) I do not feel very well yet. Also Vivien got run down largely through nursing me, and she is not at all well. I wish she was in the south. I am hoping to hear that you are ever so much better and fatter than when you left. I hope you have been able to shake off all correspondence with its reminders of affairs in England, and if you are sufficiently rested, to concentrate on your novel. I have been trying to start work myself, and it is very difficult when both people in a household are run down. You know that I have felt for some time that I have been devoting myself too exclusively to weekly article writing, and felt that perhaps I was losing both the energy, and the power of sustained thought necessary for a longer piece of work. Some time ago Miss Weaver suggested to me that I should collect all my Egoist articles to make a book. Then I gave my lecture, and the great fault I found with that was that it contained too many headings each imperfectly elucidated, and imperfectly connected one with the other. So I thought that instead of reprinting essays (a form of book making to which I am averse) I would boil down the lecture and the essays together into a small but constructed book. Now that I have got to making a scheme for it, I find that the difficulty will be to keep it small enough. I want it small – 150 pages or so – more if large type – both in order to get it done sooner and in order to make it a single distinct blow. I want to discuss 1. the modern public 2. the technique of poetry 3. the possible social employment of poetry. It strikes me that people ever stopped to ask themselves what they wanted of poetry, the major part of contemporary verse would appear so obviously superfluous that there would be nothing to say about it. We have in modern society a huge journalistic organism which must be fed – there simply is not enough, nowhere near enough, good creative work to feed the ‘critical’ machine, and so reputations are manufactured to feed it, and works born perfectly dead enjoy an illusory life. If the whole journalistic fabric collapsed, as the economic fabric collapsed in Russia, innumerable ‘creative’ writers would go down with it. There are always a few good books which can stand alone, forever.

  At present I see no sign of the journalistic machine collapsing. It is a quite suitable member of modern industrial society. I see no reason why it should not go on for some time developing, unifying and ramifying like Lever Bros. Ltd. Accordingly, you see, I consider a paper like Art&Letters a most valuable stand against it –

  I saw Rutter the other day and he told me I should have proof soon. I must explain that I wrote the article1 under great stress to get it in by December 15, the time you mentioned, and I am afraid it is not very good – certainly far inferior to the last. So I hope there will be other things so good that mine will escape notice.

  The show which Lewis put on exhibition at Rutter’s [Adelphi Gallery], at your suggestion, has some extraordinarily fine drawings in it. I hope it will attract notice. It is a pity that the room is not bigger. I went on the first day, and there were no visitors. Wadsworth’s show at the Leicester Galleries was on the other hand crowded. With many more drawings, and a conspicuous gallery (I believe they are skilful advertisers) and more illustrative subjects – the Black Country – it seems to go well, and might attract more people than Lewis’s, which would only interest people who are really interested in art. Not that Wadsworth’s work was not very fine – it struck me as far and away in advance of any of his previous work.

  Please do not mention to anyone what I have said about the contents of my book – I do not want other people, except yourselves and perhaps one or two whom I may consult, to have any notion of what I want to say.

  Don’t think you need answer this – you are too conscientious in that way – but do send me a card to say how you are and encourage me to continue this letter. With kindest regards to Violet and yourself from both of us.

  Yours always

  T. S. Eliot

  1–‘The Duchess of Malfi at the Lyric: and Poetic Drama’.

  TO Mary Hutchinson

  MS Texas

  Wednesday [14 January 1920]

  Crawford Mansions

  Dear Mary

  I am glad to hear that you enjoyed yourself and didn’t get tired, and that Lytton’s life is so perfect. But it is a jazz-banjorine1 that I should bring, not a lute. You apparently were sheltered from the tempest which made our lives miserable.

  I wish we could come on Sunday, but we are both going out of town for the week-end – was it I gave you the Hindu Magazine?2 But it is much more praiseworthy than the Mercury. I regret Sunday.

  Tom.

  1–‘The banjorine (or “banjeaurine”) was a small, high-pitched banjo’ (Chinitz, T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide).

  2–Shama’a, which carried TSE’s ‘Modern Tendencies in Poetry’.

  TO Ottoline Morrell

  TS Beinecke

  Wednesday [14? January 1920]

  18 Crawford Mansions

  Dear Lady Ottoline,

  I understood that you were to be at Bedford Square today and tomorrow; I hope this is so, because I should very much like to see you again before you leave tomorrow. May I come in tomorrow afternoon at tea time, or rather, a little after 5, after I leave the bank? I will telephone to Bedford Square at noon, so that I may know if it is impossible, but I do hope you can.

  I saw Wyndham Lewis yesterday,
and he told me he was sending you his book.1 He is leaving town on Friday, and I should like to bring him to call with me, if I may, as he is one of the most intelligent people I know.

  Vivienne sends her love, and if she can get away from her wretched Hampstead [missing word] she would like to come too.

  Sincerely yours

  T. S. Eliot

  1–Probably The Caliph’s Design: Architects!Where is your Vortex? (1919).

  TO Mary Hutchinson

  MS Texas

  Sunday [18? January 1920]

  18 Crawford Mansions

  Dear Mary

  Just found your note. We thought we were coming to dinner tomorrow and I trust you continue to expect us. I suppose it is at 8. Vivien will try to get to you about 7, but might possibly be delayed. She sends her love.

  Your Tom.

  You have a very suspicious nature.

  TO John Rodker

  TS Beinecke

  20 January 1920

  18 Crawford Mansions

  Dear Rodker,

  I am sorry that I have not had time to answer your letter of the 17th sooner. Your scheme is an interesting one and I shall be very glad to appear as a Director if my name is of any use to you. Thank you for suggesting it.

  I do not see any reason against your announcing that you have Edition de Luxe privileges for my works.1 I don’t suppose it would complicate any future contracts; anyway it is quite informal and merely amounts to my stating that I am pleased with the job you have made of Ara Vos Prec and should be glad to entrust my next book to your press – which is perfectly true. So I am quite ready to do what I can to push the Press, if this is any help.

  Will you send me six copies when they are ready?

  Yours,

  T. S. Eliot

  1–Ara Vos Prec, the first Ovid Press book, was issued in an edition of 264 copies at 15s, with initials by Edward Wadsworth.

  TO John Quinn

  MS NYPL (MS)

  25 January 1920

  18 Crawford Mansions

  Dear Mr Quinn,

  I am not sure whether I have acknowledged and thanked you for your last letter. I have had a letter from Knopf to say that he expects to bring out my book on March 15th, which will be very satisfactory.

  I am working at present on some old essays and a lecture, in order to make with these and other material a small book on the criticism of poetry and the state of poetry at the present time. Miss Weaver has announced it for the spring, and I hope it will be ready by April. I have had it in my mind for so long that I feel that I must get it done in order to be able to get on to something more creative. And I think that it is time some definite public statement were made of standards in the writing of poetry. If Knopf does well with the poems, and if the book has any notice here, I may offer it to him later. But the articles you returned to me I do not think I shall try to reprint at all.

  I have just received a copy of the new monthly Dial. It struck [me] as exceedingly dull: I don’t see why the Atlantic Monthly should need a competitor in dullness, and the Dial is an exact copy of it. There is far too much in it, and it is all second-rate and exceedingly solemn. The illustrations are appallingly bad. The proprietors sent me by a man who is here on business for Holt and Company a list of English writers from whom they want contributions. But it is hardly worthwhile to ask the best writers to send things over unless they know they will be published and how soon. The only way would be to have someone here empowered to receive and select.1

  The London Mercury,2 which started with a great deal of advertisement, will I hope, fail in a few years’ time. It is run by a small clique of bad writers. J. C. Squire, the editor, knows nothing about poetry; but he is the cleverest journalist in London. If he succeeds, it will be impossible to get anything good published. His influence controls or affects the literary contents and criticism of five or six periodicals already. The Times always more or less apart, the Athenaeum (and, of less influence, Art & Letters) are the only important reviews outside of the Squire influence. As the majority of the Athenaeum contributors belong to a small set that dislikes Pound, this is unfortunate. I used my influence to get Lewis into the Athenaeum, and I think he is now pretty safely established.3 But Pound would be a more difficult matter.4 The fact is that there is now no organ of any importance in which he can express himself, and he is becoming forgotten. It is not enough for him simply to publish a volume of verse once a year – or no matter how often – for it will simply not be reviewed and will be killed by silence. Here in London a man’s first work may always attract attention, because while he is unknown he has no enemies, but later it is essential that he should establish solid connections with at least one important paper. People like Osbert Sitwell are now much more prominent than Pound, simply because they are always reviewed. No one ever praises Osbert Sitwell’s poetry, but all the reviewers mention it, and that is the essential.

  As I consider that Pound and Lewis are the only writers in London whose work is worth pushing, this worries me. I know that Pound’s lack of tact has done him great harm. But I am worried as to what is to become of him. I should at some time – when you have time, if you ever have any time – like very much to know your candid and confidential opinion about Pound and his future, if you have enough confidence in my discretion to express it.

  Osbert Sitwell tells me that Knopf is publishing his poems [Argonaut and Juggernaut] in the spring. Did you know this? I hope they do not appear at the same time as mine. Some of them are rather clever imitations of myself and other people.

  I have ordered copies of the article and book you ask about (I was almost sure that I had sent you the latter), but as they are slow in coming I enclose the original proof of the article and a copy of the poems, from which I cut one out for Knopf. I will send you a copy of Rodker’s edition, which ought to be ready in a few days.5

  Always gratefully yours

  T. S. Eliot

  I hope to hear that your health is better, and that you occasionally insist on holidays.

  1–The Dial had been a fortnightly for three decades, but was now monthly under its new owner–editor, Scofield Thayer, and publisher, James Sibley Watson. The visitor from Holt & Co was Lincoln Mac Veagh (1890–1972), who had studied philosophy under Royce at Harvard. The list of desired ‘English writers’ included TSE, JJ, WL, Strachey and Conrad. See EP to Thayer, 25 Jan. 1920 (Pound, Thayer, Watson, and The Dial: A Story in Letters, ed. Walter Sutton, 1994).

  2–London Mercury ran from 1919 until 1939, when it was incorporated in Life & Letters.

  3–WL’s ‘Prevalent Design’ appeared in A. in four parts from 21 Nov. 1919 to 16 Jan. 1920.

  4–In fact, probably on account of TSE’s influence, in Mar. 1920 JMM employed EP as theatre critic of A., where he wrote under cover of the initials ‘T. J. V.’. EP contributed on a regular basis from 19 Mar. to 21 May, when JMM terminated his contract.

  5–Quinn wrote on 6 Mar.: ‘Thank you for ordering copies of the article [‘Ben Jonson’] and book to be sent to me. The only copy that I got of your poems by the Hogarth Press was the one that you sent me recently with the Hippopotamus cut out.’ But TSE was probably referring to the omission of ‘Ode’ from the Knopf book (see letter to HWE, 15 Feb.).

  TO His Mother

  MS Houghton

  26 January 1920

  [London]

  My dearest Mother,

  I am very sorry to hear that you had to stay in bed, but I am sure that Marian will keep you there until it is quite safe for you to be up. I have heard that there is an epidemic of influenza in New York and also in Tokyo, so please go to bed on any curious symptoms appearing. The form that influenza has taken here this winter is intestinal. There is no fever or cold, but violent internal pains, extreme weakness, and in some cases that I know of, fainting spells. Vivien had a mild attack last week, and is still very easily fatigued in consequence. So take note of these symptoms.

  The mails are still very slow. The last letter I have
from you was written on the receipt of my picture.

  I have just received a copy of the (New York) Dial in its new form. It is very dull – just an imitation of the Atlantic Monthly, with a few atrocious drawings reproduced. It is owned and run by Scofield Thayer, who was with me at Milton and at Oxford, and who is enormously rich. He has sent me a message asking me to get contributions from certain writers here (Pound, Lewis, Yeats, Russell, Strachey, and several others), but I am not going to complicate my personal relations with these people by asking them for writings unless I have a definite promise to accept what is sent. It is impossible for him to know, at such a distance, who are the right people and how to approach them, and he ought to have a permanent agent here. A paper like the London Mercury looks important at a distance, but is despised here. I hear that Hugh Walpole’s novels sell well in America. We do not take him seriously; and personally, he is rather a bore.

  Lady Ottoline Morrell has taken a house in London for some weeks, and as she is a great friend of Vivien’s and has not been in London except for a night or two for some years, we have seen a good deal of her.1 She is also giving Thursday evening receptions, and there has been a great deal of jealousy and excitement aroused among all the people who were not invited.

  I am working on my book and on an essay on Literary Criticism which is to appear with two others in a month’s time. After that there may be one or two bigger things that I want to turn my attention to.