The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922
Page 71
I went out to see Mr Haigh-Wood this afternoon after the bank, and found him very bright and hopeful and patient.
Vivien has had to be at home most of the time, housekeeping and shopping and so on, and has not seen any friends or been out in the evening for six weeks. I have been out twice lately, once to Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s, where I found Lowes Dickinson,1 and once to a dinner at a Ladies Club called the Lycaeum Club. That was rather amusing. Their ‘Poetry Circle’ gives a large dinner once a year and invites men of letters to speak. There were seven speakers:Maurice Hewlett,2 Dean Inge (better known as ‘The gloomy dean’), Sturge Moore the poet,3 St John Irvine (a dramatist), Edith Sitwell, Aldous Huxley, and myself. I had been asked to speak on ‘Modern Tendencies of Dramatic Poetry’, but when I got there and saw the list I found that the subject was given to someone else, and mine was ‘Modern Audiences of Dramatic Poetry’. So I had to prepare an entirely new speech while the others were speaking. Then Huxley, who was ahead of me, fainted in the middle of his speech, the atmosphere being rather close, and I had to speak five minutes before I had expected to! However, I described the sort of audience I should like to have, and the sort I should not want to have, if I were having a verse play produced, and it appeared to be received very well.4 Some of them read their speeches from a manuscript which seems to me a mistake, and the gloomy dean’s speech consisted almost wholly of quotations. I sat next to an elderly lady who asked me if I knew a poem called ‘The Thin Red Line’,5 so I lied and said yes, and she said she had written it. She was Scotch and believed firmly in ghosts, and invited me to a ‘Celtic concert’.
Knopf, who brought out my poems, has bought 350 copies of my book, but I do not know whether bound copies or merely the pages, so I do not know how soon it will be out, but I certainly expect before Christmas. It would be quicker if you wrote yourself to Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 220West 42nd Street, and asked him about it, than if I wrote and told you. It has been very well received so far, and I hope it will sell. Several other books of essays have appeared simultaneously, and one, by Clutton-Brock,6 at the same price and in the same binding; I do not know whether that will affect the sales adversely, but if so it is Methuen’s fault, as he published both books. There is one by Murry too.7
I am rather tired of the book now, as I am so anxious to get on to new work, and I should more enjoy being praised if I were engaged on something which I thought better or more important. I think I shall be able to do so, soon. Having Peters and his friends on my mind has worried me too a good deal. One of them is ill in a nursing-home and they may be here till nearly Christmas.
Poor Maurice [Haigh-Wood] has been pluckily struggling to prepare for an examination for a new post which he greatly covets, and the examination is tomorrow. He has been under insuperable disadvantages; the nurse is installed in his room and he has not even a room to himself to work in uninterruptedly in the evenings, besides having to run out for medicines and things often, and to do his work at the Ministry of Labour in the daytime.
I must stop now and go to bed. I shall attempt to write to Marion and to Henry in the course of a few days. Mrs Haigh-Wood was delighted with your letter, and so was Mr Haigh-Wood; so it did much good.
Always your devoted son,
Tom
1–Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson (1862–1932) – affectionately known as ‘Goldie’ – Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge; author, and advocate of a league of nations. His writings include Letters from John Chinaman (1901), A Modern Symposium (1905), and The International Anarchy, 1904–1914 (1926). See E.M. Forster, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson (1973), and The autobiography of G. Lowes Dickinson and other unpublished writings, ed. Dennis Proctor (1973). VW wrote in her diary on 5 Dec., ‘Eliot & Goldie [Lowes Dickinson] dined here t’other night – a successful party’; and she remarked of TSE that he was ‘all caught, pressed, inhibited; but great driving power some where – & my word what concentration of the eye when he argues!’ (Diary, II, 77).
2–Maurice Hewlett (1861–1923), English novelist and poet; his poetry includes the wellregarded The Song of the Plow (1916).
3–Thomas Sturge Moore (1870–1944): English poet, playwright, author, engraver.
4–This impromptu speech was probably akin to ‘The Possibility of a Poetic Drama’.
5–‘The Thin Red Line’ was the title of a famous 1881 painting by Robert Gibb ra depicting a noted action by the British Army’s 93rd (Highland) Regiment at the Battle of Balaclava on 25 Oct. 1854, during the Crimean War. Frederick W. O. Ward wrote a poem with the title, in English Roses (1899). The anonymous lady’s poem is unknown.
6–Arthur Clutton-Brock, Essays on Books (1920).
7–JMM, The Evolution of an Intellectual (1920).
TO Sydney Schiff
MS BL
6 December 1920
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Sydney,
I had not heard of Lynd’s article until I got your letter, and I have procured the Nation today. I am not so affected by Lynd’s hostility as I am by your act of friendship – for whether your opinion of the book is modified by friendship or not, the public expression of your opinion is an act of friendship, which I value.1
It is curious
We hope to hear that Violet is progressing, and that weather at Eastbourne is favourable. She must have been very discouraged. Vivien’s father has progressed, and has even been lifted into a chair for an hour – but there is a long anxious time still ahead. I may run over to Paris on Saturday – I have a week’s holiday due me – I have been trying to write a little and find my brain quite numb, and Vivien wants me to have a change. I am only afraid of the absence of artificial heat in Paris.
Always affectionately,
T.S.E.
1–Robert Lynd. ‘Buried Alive’, N., 4 Dec. 1920, 359–60: ‘Mr Eliot, in his critical essays, is an undertaker rather than a critic … he fails as a critic because he brings us neither light nor delight.’ SS’s protest was not published.
2–TSE, ‘Criticism in England’, A., 13 June 1919.
3–Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, 530.
TO Edgar Jepson
TS Beinecke
8 December 1920
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Jepson,
I am returning your tickets with many regrets. I should not have failed to come to hear you, but I am taking a long deferred week of my holiday on Saturday, and if nothing prevents I shall be in Paris on the date of your lecture. But should anything detain me in London, I should certainly turn up at your lecture and buy my own ticket.
I should very much have liked to come, and I am disappointed. I have, however, promised to take the chair for you at the Tomorrow Club I think in March, and I shall look forward to that. I hope I shall see you and extract from you what you are going to talk about, long before that. I have promised to address that institution myself, and if I had not already engaged myself to chair for you, I should have asked you to do it for me.
I have moved to this address, hence the delay in replying.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
Miss Ana M. BERRY, I believe, is the person.1 She is found, or was found – for I have heard nothing of or from her since the summer – at the Arts League of Service, 24 Adelphi Terrace House, Robert Street, Adelphi; and I can’t remember the address of her flat. It is in Sloane Court, Sloane Street, I think.
1–Anabel M Berry, organising secretary of the Arts League of Service (which TSE had addressed on the topic of ‘Modern Tendencies in Poetry’ in Oct. 1919).
TO R. C. Trevelyan1
TS Trinity College, Cambridge
10 December 1
920
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Trevelyan,
It is a great pleasure to receive such a letter as yours – a greater pleasure than the most flattering review. All human feeling seems to desert a reviewer, whether he be favourably disposed or the reverse.
I admit that I had several motives in saying what little I said, in passing, about Milton.2 First I find him, on the whole, antipathetic. Dante seems to me so immeasurably greater in every way, even in control of language, that I amoften irritated by Milton’s admirers. Then I have certain specific charges to bring against Milton. As I did not have occasion to discuss them at length, I introduced them in a way which I hoped might stimulate the reflective, and which I was not unwilling should vex the thoughtless. I have no great desire to write about him, and I think it is wisest – for me at least – only to write about subjects in connection with which I have strong convictions or enthusiasm about or on behalf of something. The only way I feel at present any desire to write about Milton is in connection with the history of blank verse; and I have been intending, when I had leisure, to do that.
But I was not writing to expatiate upon my intentions, but to thank you for your letter, which gave me, as I said, very keen pleasure.
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
1–R. C. Trevelyan (1872–1951), poet, translator, playwright; son of the historian and statesman Sir George Macaulay Trevelyan (1838–1928) and brother of G. M. Trevelyan (1876–1962).
2–Writing on 7 Dec., Trevelyan described SW as ‘the most helpful literary criticism of our time’, and proposed: ‘I wish you would come into the open a little more about Milton. What you implied, rather than stated, seems to be of great importance, and I think the whole book would have gained a great deal if you had boldly said what you felt. Some day any how, you should write a history of English blank verse, if only in 20 pages. That would give you your opportunity.
‘I was fascinated by what you said about “rhetoric”. Rhetoric is out of fashion just now, and no doubt imitative and stupid rhetoric is about the worst of poetic vices. But after all, in a work of any scale, like a play or long poem, something, or rather a number of things have to be done to keep things alive and in movement, and to prevent the design falling flat and dead; and the sum of these things may as well be called rhetoric as anything else’ (Houghton).
In ‘Notes on the Blank Verse of Christopher Marlowe’, TSE contended that ‘after the erection of the Chinese Wall of Milton, blank verse has suffered not only arrest but retrogression’ (SW, 87). Returning to the term ‘rhetoric’ (‘Milton I’, 1936; OPP, 1957), TSE stated that it was ‘not meant to be derogatory’.
TO Ezra Pound
TS Lilly
Wednesday [22 December 1920]
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Cher Maitre:
I infer that there is no prospect of seeing you. Your letter is extremely obscure, but it appears that you are going South. This is a blow. Please write and explain lucidly what your plans are and for how long. What happens to the Dial? Am I expected to receive books for review, in your absence? I will deal with them as directed. I have the opuscule1 this evening, and observe that you have commenced operations on it.
If no more, Farewell and Pleasure.
Yours
T.
1–The Dial (Dec.) included ‘The Second-Order Mind’. Eight months after EP had ‘commenced operations’ as foreign agent for the Dial, he wrote about the Nov. issue to Thayer (8 Nov.): ‘AT LAST a magazine that I can read!!’ (Pound, Thayer, Watson, and The Dial). ‘Opuscule’ is a minor literary work. (See ‘opusculus’, EP letter to Thayer, 7 June 1920.)
TO Leonard Woolf
TS Berg
26 December 1920
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Woolf,
I read your review1 when I got back from Paris, and I should have written to you before to thank you, but simply that I have not had the leisure.
I need hardly say that I should feel sufficiently flattered merely by the fact that my book suggested Aristotle to your mind. But it is a much more delicate flattery to feel that you have got, I think, what I am after, whether I have succeeded or not. I feel that there is much in the book which ought to have been completely rewritten, which is unnecessarily difficult or obscure. What I should like would be to have an opportunity of discussing with you, not so much the book, as the general questions of critical method which your article provokes. I hope that may be soon.
We were very disappointed to learn that you are at Rodmell, and cannot come to dinner this week. I trust that we can arrange it soon after you return. Meanwhile, I am sorry to say, my wife’s father has only last night taken a turn very much for the worse, and we fear that it is merely a matter of a few days; I am very anxious for my wife’s health in consequence.
With best wishes for the new year to both of you,
Sincerely,
T. S. Eliot
1–LW, ‘Back to Aristotle’, a review of SW, A., 17 Dec. 1920, 834–5: ‘Mr Eliot means by criticism what Aristotle meant by criticism’; he brings ‘us up with a shock against the satisfying, if painful, hardness of the intellect’.
1921
TO Scofield Thayer
TS Beinecke
1 January 1921 [misdated 1920]
9 Clarence Gate Gdns,
LONDON N.W.1
Dear Scofield,
Wishing you all the compliments of the season:
I have your letter of the 11th and your letter of the 15th ultimo, and thank you, first, for your amiability and mansuetude in not reproaching me for the ‘London Letter’. Had I been able to do any writing in the past two months, this would have taken precedence over everything else; and for the present and future it will, as I intend to get it done in the course of the coming week. The fact that Vivien’s father has been at the point of death for ten weeks has interfered with every plan that has or could have been made; and a number of difficulties, partly issuing therefrom and partly quite independent, have further embarrassed my activity to a point unknown even in the last five years.
I hope to post you this ‘London Letter’ in a week.
Now for the other matter. I have turned over in my mind what there is to be done, with a view to seeing what part of it I could compass; for I think it would be quite obvious to you if you were here that the job itself is wholly beyond my powers. I am very desirous that it should be done, but for me it is physically impossible. For one thing, you need a man who can get about, call on merchants and printers etc. and also lunch with the valuable people. As I have to be at an office six days a week, and my hours are 9.30 to 5, you see it is impossible for me to do anything during the day; and for seeing friends and acquaintances, doing my personal business, writing letters, accounts, and finally my reading and writing, I have to divide my evenings and my Sundays among these as best I can. You certainly need a man who can devote a good half of his time for several weeks, merely to obtain the preliminary information; and it is true that the most of this can only be done by personal interviews. If you like, until you can send or find here someone else, I will try to see Mr Ratcliffe; but if I promised to try to do what you need I should simply delay you indefinitely.
Offhand, I can only say that I know the cost of paper and labour to have increased enormously here since five years; I cannot say how it compares, taking into account the rate of exchange, with costs in America. The papers here at all comparable to the Dial sell at higher prices; the London Mercury, for example, is now 3s, and has no illustrations; but perhaps all these papers aim at a larger profit per copy than the Dial does.
Then as to the possibility of working up a subscription list in England. This, I think, will take considerable time. Undoubtedly Americans can make better magazines than the English can, but it takes time to persuade the English, as the fact must be made softly to penetrate their unconsciousness. Vogue, for example, is far better than anything they do themselves in that line, and th
ey know it, but in the first place Vogue is not a literary paper, and in the second place it is not conspicuously an importation. There seem to be two things to do: to aim at a circulation only among the sufficiently intelligent, which would be in time three or four hundred; or to produce an English edition, with English theatrical, musical etc. notes instead of American. Perhaps, as the latter is a very big undertaking, the first is more feasible.
I should of course have been very glad to fling myself into this work, even without the fee which you suggest: it is not, however – to return to what I said before – a question of its interfering with what I am doing; it would prevent me from doing anything else, and at that it wouldn’t, it couldn’t possibly, get done!
In writing such a long letter as this I am compelled to leap about from one point to another as they occur to me, or I would not get it done at all. There is this: English people, with very few exceptions, are unused to subscribing to anything. They either buy things as they see them on bookstalls, or at most they order them from a bookseller, and pay his bill once a quarter. At one time I got quite tired of hearing people say that they ‘had been meaning to’ subscribe to the Little Review. They never did, even when pretending to be very much excited by Ulysses. If you want more than the 300 or 400 readers (and that would take time to get) you must have your future manager here arrange for the paper to be visible and handy on every bookstall, at every tube station.