The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922
Page 74
2–‘In his poetry, he seems to move troutlike through a multiplicity of foreign objects and in his instinctiveness and care as a critic, he appears as a complement to the sheen upon his poetry’ (Dial 70: 3 [Mar. 1921], 336–9).
3–Others: An Anthology of the New Verse (1917) included thirteen of her poems.
4–Robert McAlmon (1896–1956): American poet and publisher; from 1921, an expatriate in Paris; friend and supporter of numerous modern writers. His own publications include stories (A Hasty Bunch, 1922), the autobiographical novel Post-Adolescence (1923), and Being Geniuses Together: An Autobiography (1938). He founded Contact editions which published Hemingway, Stein and others.
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
3 April 1921
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dearest mother,
I have not written lately, being very busy and also there was nothing further to say on the subject most on my mind until I heard from you. I was very glad to get your last two letters and to hear that you had changed to June 1st. Also, Southampton is much nearer London than Liverpool. I doubt if I can get to Southampton, but I shall meet you at the station.
Our flat has electricity, gas stoves in bedrooms, anthracite stoves in sitting room. Hot water is supplied constantly from a heater to all the building. First floor (i.e. second floor, American style) and lift (elevator) also.
I have Baedekers.
Bring hot water bottles each, and heavy and light underwear.
I should like to have as many of my books as possible. Especially the Century Dictionary, the heaviest of all! There are also a few photographs I bought in Paris and Italy, and a copy, illuminated, of the Eliot arms. This would have to be taken from its frame. The books should be sent by slow freight to save expense.
I will send you in a day or two my Andrew Marvell article from the Times.1
You overestimate the cost of cable. But thank you for the cheque.
I have managed to arrange a week’s holiday in July, so as to go away with you. I should like to take you to some cathedral town like Exeter, and for a few days into the country. But we shall see how much and what you will want to do. I understand that Henry cannot come with you. It is a great pity, but he must come another year.
I shall write again in a few days.
Always your devoted son
Tom.
An old friend of the Thayer family, a Mrs Studt, is coming on the Adriatic, so you may meet her.
1–TSE, ‘Andrew Marvell’, TLS, 31Mar. 1921, 201–2. This influential article on seventeenthcentury poetry memorably defined Marvell’s Puritan wit as ‘a tough reasonableness beneath the slight lyric grace’, and defined literary wit, not as ‘erudition’, but ‘a recognition, implicit in the expression of every experience, of other kinds of experience which are possible’ (SE, 303).
TO Sydney Schiff
MS BL
3 April 1921
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Schiff,
I hope this note will catch you before you leave Roquebrune. I would have acknowledged your letter before, but besides several pieces of work I had undertaken, I have been occupied with Vivien’s illness. You probably have not heard of this, but she was so ill – after her father was out of danger she nearly collapsed, that the only thing was a thorough treatment. So she has been in bed for the last five weeks, at first in a nursing-home, and lately, on account of the expense, at home. We have had a specialist treating her for nervous exhaustion and for her stomach trouble, which became very alarming; and also massage etc. She has not been allowed to see any one, except myself, or to write letters. When she is up again she will go to the country for a month. I think she is better, but of course the immediate effect of taking to bed, and relaxing from the strain, was to increase the symptoms, so that I have had some very anxious moments. In any case she cannot expect to be really well for a year or two, but I hope that with careful living – and occasional treatment – she will improve steadily.
Please explain to Violet that Vivien has been unable to write even a card.
My poem has still so much revision to undergo that I do not want to let anyone see it yet, and also I want to get more of it done – it should be much the longest I have ever written. I hope that by June it will be in something like final form. I have not had the freedom of mind. I have done an ‘Andrew Marvell’ (just appeared in the Times) one or two things for the Dial, one for the Chapbook, and something for Lewis. I believe the paper is now in the press. He has been doing much painting, and I am looking forward to his exposition next week;1 I have seen a few canvasses which I liked very much. I like the drawing you gave me more and more; it seems to me one of his best.2
I am so sorry to hear of Violet’s continued ill health. I suppose of course she will not be able to stand the strain of a journey to Berlin but will remain in Switzerland. You have had, I fear, an unfortunate winter. But I certainly hope you will be able to return to London for a time, this summer.
We both send love.
Yours ever
T.S.E.
1–‘Tyros and Portraits, Drawings by Wyndham Lewis’, at the Leicester Gallery.
2–Reproduced in Vol. 2 of these Letters.
TO Richard Aldington
CC
7 April 1921
[9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
My dear Aldington,
Thank you very much for your letter. The flowers will be a continuous pleasure for days. Of course she would be very happy if you could send some next week, and even a few kingcups buds might last long enough to give delight, as she is very fond of them.
I hope you will write for the Statesman. With the downfall of the Athenaeum and its more and more complete extinction in the Nation,1 the Statesman has been coming up in the popular estimation (I mean in the estimation of the ‘intellectuals’) and is the ‘thing’ to write for. MacCarthy has a good chance to make something of it.2 I have known him off and on for some years. I don’t know what they pay now, but I believe as well as any weekly; I got Lst.5 each for a couple of articles years ago.3 I think more intelligent people would see your work in the N. Statesman than in any other weekly.
Although we cannot in the least afford it, we are frightfully keen to get a tiny country cottage. It would be very good for both of us. I should be extremely grateful to you if you would find out all you can about any vacant cottages and let me know as soon as you can; rent, price, habitability, size, garden, plumbing, distance from a town or station, whether isolated, terms of tenancy etc. A country cottage might be just the saving of my wife’s health. So I should be infinitely grateful to you for the trouble – and I know how much trouble it is.
I fear that in a day or two our communications will be stopped by the strike, for god knows how long.4 Having only contempt for every existing political party, and profound hatred for democracy, I feel the blackest gloom.
Whatever happens will be another step toward the destruction of ‘Europe’. The whole of contemporary politics etc. oppresses me with a continuous physical horror like the feeling of growing madness in one’s own brain. It is rather a horror to be sane in the midst of this; it is too dreadful, too huge, for one to have the comforting feeling of superiority. It goes too far for rage.
Yours sincerely
[T. S. E.]
1–In Feb. 1921 the Athenaeum was absorbed by the Nation, leaving RA temporarily without a job.
2–Desmond MacCarthy was literary editor of the NS, 1920–7.
3–TSE, ‘A Victorian Sculptor’, NS, 23 Mar. 1918; ‘New Philosophers’, 13 July 1918.
4–The coal-miners’ strike which began on 1 Apr. continued until 1 July.
TO His Mother
MS Houghton
14 April 1921
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dearest Mother,
I have your letter of March 27 and am replying now, lest the strike dislocate the mails. It is cert
ain to be settled somehow before you sail.
I am very glad you transferred to the Adriatic, June 1st. How glad we shall be when you are safely over. I did not wish to urge you to prolong your stay at the other end, as August is a good month on the sea, and June should be a good month here.
I suggest that you should have your letter of credit made out so that either you or Marian can draw on it, in case of an emergency, and also to save you from going to the City (business part of town) whenever you want money. If you get it from the Old Colony you can have it made out on Lloyds Bank so that I could help you with it.
You will have Henry given the necessary powers to act for you in your absence.
As to Paris, we shall see when the time comes whether you feel up to that. I have made no plans for that holiday, waiting to make them with you. There are all sorts of nice places I have thought of, depending on how far we go, country or town etc. It was advisable to have France on your passports, however.
I do not want you to exert yourself at all over my books. They are not worth one minute of fatigue on your part. Only if Shef could get them ready at his leisure I should be very grateful to you.
The other little flat we should use is very cosy and in some respects nicer than ours, so you have no cause to worry about that. It is settled that you are to be here.
I sent you my Marvell a few days ago. I have to give a lecture next week to a literary club [at Caxton Hall]. I am sorry I promised to do so – several months ago. I shall not waste much time on it.
I say this now – please have Henry cable to me when you sail to let me know you have started. Or just before. I shall feel more contented to have him come to New York with you in any case. Do not start fatigued, and remember that Marian is bound to worry about you, and spare her by doing much less than you feel you can do.
You are of course to have breakfast in bed every morning, the later the better, for Ellen!
Must stop now.
Your devoted son
Tom.
Vivien would have been not only disappointed but anxious if you were at an hotel.
TO Wyndham Lewis
MS Cornell
Saturday [16? April 1921]
[London]
Dear Lewis,
Thank you very much for the Tyro1 which has just arrived; I am writing at once before reading it as I should like to say some things in reference to the conversation last night. I think the Tyro has a very good appearance indeed this time. But my first thought on looking at the reproductions was that it is and has always been a pity that you have associated yourself with so many inferior artists. It seems to me that the idea of a group may have been all right once, but that now it is just wrong for you – that you should dissociate yourself, in the public mind, from any group and from all other British painters. I think that this way of making associates of Dobson, Wadsworth etc. gives them a certain power to damage you – i.e. you drag them up to your level and give them a kind of chance to repudiate you. (Would I think of contributing to Wheels? and so give the S[itwells] a lift and the right to sneer at me?) I think that you ought to emphasise your isolation.2 When I looked through the illustrations just now rather carefully I felt that it almost looked as if you were disparaging your own work in putting it alongside that of these people.
Now as to Paris. I can’t feel that there is a great deal of hope in your going there permanently. Painting being so much more important in Paris, there are a great many more clever second-rate men there (and the second-rate men are so infinitely cleverer than the second-rate men here) to distinguish oneself from. Then you know what ruthless and indefatigable sharpers Frenchmen are; in comparison the methods of Dobson etc. being only schoolboy tricks. Are they likely even to refrain from interfering with you?? If you do go to Paris (for a time) the best way seems to me to live in retirement there and just work and get some things done for an exhibition here. (Your last one was a success in spite of being hurried and had a very good press). I think it is a good thing to get out of people’s way and not be seen for some time, not see any of the Chelsea people etc. Separate oneself from the ‘young’ whose company is only a taint on one – but as a matter of fact you could do that as effectively in London as in Paris, and I cannot help feeling that this temporary retirement would at this point be your wisest course.
If you are going away this week let me know in time so that we can arrange a meeting first.
Yours ever
T.S.E.
1–Tyro: A Review of the Arts of Painting, Sculpture and Design (1921) included TSE’s ‘Song to the Opherian’ (signed Gus Krutzsch) and ‘Notes on Current Letters’. In addition to four illustrations by WL, there were reproductions of works by William Roberts, David Bomberg and Frank Dobson.
2–Wheels, a series of annual poetry anthologies, 1916–22, was a platform for the Sitwell trio and friends inc. AH. TSE wrote, in an unsigned review of Wheels: A Third Cycle: ‘Every one of the writers of Wheels must make a choice. They can either hang together, and make a small place for themselves in the history of literature by being the interesting fashion of a day, or they can choose to run the risk of being individuals’ (‘The Post-Georgians’, A., 11 Apr. 1919).
TO Edgar Jepson
PC Beinecke
20 April 1921
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
If you cared to take the trouble to come to Caxton Hall tomorrow night I should of course be delighted, but it will be a very poor address, as I have had very little time.
Sincerely
T. S. Eliot
TO John Middleton Murry
MS Northwestern
22 April 1921
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear John,
I was glad to hear that you will be in England next month, if only for a short time, and send you my new address. I was also glad to have a letter from you, and to get a copy of your article for the New Republic1 for which I thank you. It is on the whole the best review I have had. For one thing it calls attention to the only part of that book which seems to me of any permanent value. I think that the essays on Jonson, Massinger, Marlowe and Dante are the best. ‘The Perfect Critic’ I should not wish to reprint. I should prefer to reprint the papers that I like in some more homogeneous volume; I envisage 1. An Elizabethan volume. 2. A seventeenth Century volume to Pope with a Nachblick [glance] at Collins and Johnson. 3. A volume containing analyses of my favorite poets in French, German, Italian and the Classics. 4. Perhaps a volume on the present day. This seems to me at present all the critical prose I shall ever want to do. It is true that I have started a poem. But Vivien has been very ill. Eight weeks in bed so far, and I shall be occupied this summer with my mother who will be here.
I thought I identified an article on Baudelaire as yours.2 It struck me as the best thing I have seen in English on a poet whom I admire immensely. The Swinburne–Symons illusion of him (more Symons) has taken hold and will be difficult to dislodge, but this article is an important step forward.
I do not know whether you disapproved of me or not, but I was convinced that you had since a certain period lost all desire to see me, and all interest in myself. The reasons for this were a matter of conjecture; it seemed on the surface capricious, but I did not doubt that reasons existed, in your own mind. But we shall soon meet, I trust, and discuss many things. Your idea of a note book strikes me as a very good one, and it ought to be possible to produce such a thing at very small cost. Whether it would sell is another matter. But I think the best thing now would be, if there were several modest periodicals on the market, involving little outlay, which could be left off or transformed at any time. I am too tired to write further at the moment either personally or impersonally. You do not say how long you will be here, but surely you will be in London long enough for one or two satisfactory conversations.
It is possible (not likely) that I may get to Paris for Whitsun, if I can afford it, but only for two or three days. I should not like to miss you.
Y
ours ever,
TSE.
Do let me know your dates as soon as possible. Will the address be printed?3
1–JMM, ‘The Sacred Wood’, New Republic 26 (13 Apr. 1921), 194–5. ‘Mr Eliot possesses a critical intelligence of a high order’; his manner is ‘often unfortunate, portentous and disdainful’.
2–‘Baudelaire and Decadence’, TLS, 7 Apr. 1921, 217–18.
3–JMM was to give six lectures at Oxford, from 16May; published as The Problem of Style (1922).
TO Edgar Jepson
MS Beinecke
[22 April 1921]
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Jepson,
In the fatigue of last night I failed to express my thanks afterwards to you for coming and for supporting me so ably.
I know you disapprove of Elizabethan Drama, and this is not the example I should have chosen to convince you, but it may be interesting and well acted and I have this extra ticket as my wife can’t go. It’s The Witch of Edmonton – and Sybil Thorndyke is in it.1 If you care to use this I shall be glad to see you there.
Sincerely
T. S. Eliot
1–The Witch of Edmonton by William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford, was put on by the Phoenix Society, under the direction of Montague Summers (1880–1948), at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, on 24 Apr.. Sybil Thorndyke (1882–1976) played the witch.