The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922
Page 81
My idea is to consult, and perhaps stay some time under, Vittoz, who is said to be the best mental specialist in Europe – now that I have a unique opportunity for doing so. I am satisfied, since being here, that my ‘nerves’ are a very mild affair, due, not to overwork, but to an aboulie1 and emotional derangement which has been a lifelong affliction. Nothing wrong with my mind – which should account, mon cher, for the fact that you like my prose and dislike my verse. However the principal point is that from some day next week our flat will be vacant for six weeks. Would it be of any use to you and your wife to occupy it for that period? It would cost you absolutely nothing, the only condition being the retention of our woman, an excellent cook and discreet servant, at a salary of 25s a week. In any case I did not intend to let the flat, so I should be losing nothing by your having it, and you would be doing us the service of keeping our woman while we are away. I thought that a short season in London might be of use to both of you, if it were possible in some way like this. We should be delighted.
If you decide favourably will you write immediately upon your decision? I shall be here till Friday in any case, but after that may be at 9 C.G.G.
Again I postpone writing! but I hope to hear from you soon.
Yours aff.
Tom.
When am I to see your notes on Waller? I shall be interested, because I made nothing of him, though I admire Denham and Oldham.
1–See note to letter to Julian Huxley, 26 Oct., above.
TO Harold Monro
MS Beinecke
16 November 1921
9 Clarence Gate Gdns, N.W.1
Dear Monro,
Thanks very much for your kind letter. I am just back from Margate, and am off to Switzerland tomorrow. Remember that I shall be back by the middle of January and hope to see you then.
Sincerely,
T. S. Eliot
TO Sydney Schiff
MS BL
[16? November 1921]
[9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
My dear Sydney
I am sending the two stories back because I should be more easy in my mind to have them in your possession. I saw Lewis last night but forgot to give him ‘Bestre’1 so I enclose that also – will you take care of it and give it to him with the same explanation? It may be merely superstition, but I hate to have the responsibility for what is really other people’s property while I am away.
I am writing to the Times, and hope to receive your book2 soon in Lausanne. I’ll send you address as soon as I have one. Meanwhile I am distressed to hear of Violet’s continued ill luck. I need not repeat again how well I know this sort of illness and how miserable it is for her.
I enjoyed Sunday very much and am very grateful to you for encouragement.
Yrs always
Tom.
at the last moment in haste
1–WL’s short story ‘Bestre’, Tyro, Mar. 1922 (repr. in The Wild Body, 1927).
2–SS’s novel, Elinor Colhouse (1921).
TO Glenway Wescott1
MS Beinecke
16 November 1921
9 Clarence Gate Gardens
Dear Mr Westcott,
Thank you for your kind letter, which gave me great pleasure. It is a great disappointment not to see you now. I have had a nervous breakdown and have just returned from the east coast, and am leaving tomorrow for Switzerland. If on your way you pass that country, remember that I shall be in Lausanne, and that a letter in good time to the address above will reach me. I shall be here again by the middle of January.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
1–Glenway Wescott (1901–87), American novelist, lived in Germany, 1921–2, and was to become a prominent figure in the literary community in Paris, 1925–33. He was the model for ‘Robert Prentiss’ in Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises. Although he began his career as a poet, he became best known for later novels inc. The Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story (1940) and Apartment in Athens (1945).
TO Richard Aldington
TS Texas
17 November 1921
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Richard,
Your letters find me in transit between Margate – which I was very sorry to leave! – and Lausanne. We leave London tomorrow morning.
Now about your sister. I have been trying to think whom I know might be useful to her; but unfortunately I have only the most casual musical acquaintances, and none who could be likely to help. As to Edith, the situation is this. The only connexion that she has with music and musical people is through her companion, Helen Rootham,1 an appalling woman who trains and launches young singers. Edith may assist in some small degree in the launching, but I am sure that the only way to enlist that assistance (for what it is worth) is for your sister to take lessons from Helen Rootham. So, although I enclose herewith an introduction, I can hold out no hopes, and do not believe that it is worth your sister’s while to make use of it. I am awfully sorry about this.
I should think it would be better if you could first issue a book of criticisms in London: what I should like to see would be a fairly heavy work including ancient and modern, showing some historical continuity. Is that not possible? Please discuss with me the problem of publishers: you should certainly not give a scholarly work of that sort (such as I have in mind) to Miss Weaver, but should (under the auspices of the Times) get some fairly big publisher, Cape or Collins at least. If you can show reason why this should not be carried out, then do it in America; but I should prefer it to be done here first. I do not know Methuen personally, and I do not know what value a letter from me (merely on the fact of his having published my book), would have. I don’t even know what he thinks of me (I hope he has seen that Saintsbury and Birrell have spoken well of me). But I am at your disposal.
By the way, have they sent you the Little Review (quarterly) in which Ezra (in an otherwise irritating attempted-funny article) speaks of me as the ‘Dean of English Letters’?2 He refers to you also in a common condemnation.
I did not conceal from you that I think you overrate H. D.’s poetry. I do find it fatiguingly monotonous and lacking in the element of surprise. I mean that this last book is inferior to her earlier work; that many words should be expunged and many phrases amended; that the Hellenism lacks vitality; and also morally, I find a neurotic carnality which I dislike. (I imagine you dislike equally the Prudentianism of myself and Mr Joyce, and expect you to abhor the poem on which I have been working and which I am taking away with me!) But our correspondence would be irreparably injured if I did not deliver my opinions. I wish, on the other hand, you would let me know at some time your final opinion on my verse, and tell me frankly why you dislike it.
I think you have said about Waller exactly the sort of thing that there is to be said, and I only wish that the article could have been of a good length (two or three times as much, with quotations).3 I do think it is worthwhile discussing these questions of derivation, neglected in English criticism, but important for the ‘tradition’. I should like to know, however, why it should be Waller, rather than Denham, who seems to me just as smooth and gives a deal more pleasure, who should have had the influence. Can you tell?
Of course I agree with you about Amy Lowell.
I must stop now. Good luck to you, and I will write and send you my address from Lausanne. And please will you get me a copy of the Times with Ronsard4 in it, as I shall be away, and send it to me later? Do you not agree that Bellay is rather the greater poet of the two?5
If you come to Paris, my wife will probably be there and will be glad to see both or either of you.6 I shall be there for two or three days only in January.
yours affectionately
Tom
PS On second thoughts, I address the letter to Miss Rootham. I believe, by the way, she is a good teacher, and a very pushing and successful launcher. Perhaps your sister could not do better.
I am writing to Edith Sitwell also.
1–Helen Rootham (1875–19
38), Edith Sitwell’s governess and subsequently companion. Osbert Sitwell thought her ‘perhaps the finest woman pianist it has ever been my good fortune to hear’. Her translation of Rimbaud’s ‘Les Illuminations’ was set to music by Benjamin Britten (1939).
2–EP, ‘Historical Survey’, Little Review 8: 1 (Autumn 1921), 39–42. EP disagreed with TSE’s statement that ‘the greatest poets have been concerned with moral values’, and was sarcastic about RA’s English Review article on JJ.
3–RA, ‘A Note on Waller’s Poems’, To-Day 8: 48 (Dec. 1921), 245–8.
4–[RA], ‘Pierre de Ronsard’ (leading article), TLS, 2 Mar. 1922, 129–30.
5–As members of the Pléiade, Ronsard (1524–85) and Joachim du Bellay (c.1525–60) led a renaissance of French poetry.
6–HWE wrote to his mother on 1 Dec. 1921: ‘I sent you Vivien’s cablegram giving her address, 59 rue des Saints Pères. It must be a literary street. I saw in a book that Ernest Renan lived there once. I showed the cablegram to a man named Sherwood Anderson, who was over there this summer, and he said Ezra Pound lived on that street. Vivien does not say how long she will be there, so that one does not know how long to continue sending letters there’ (Houghton).
TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
[17 November 1921]
[London]
Dear Mary,
This is a farewell note, to tell you how very much I enjoyed seeing you yesterday – it gave me great pleasure – and also to thank you again for your sweet and beautiful present.
Au bonheur!
Tom
TO The Editor of The Times Literary Supplement
Published 24 November 1921
Lausanne
Sir,
In your last issue I have read a review of an anthology of Modern American Poetry;1 from this review I gather that certain of my verses appear therein. I should be grateful to you if you would make public the fact that I had no knowledge that any of my verse was to be used in this way; that I was not consulted in the choice; and that, in short, the whole production is a surprise to me.
This statement in itself may interest but few of your readers. But I should like to remark that I should have much preferred not being included in this anthology. On previous occasions, when compilers of such works have asked my consent, there have always been personal reasons for my willing compliance: here there would have been none.
Some months ago I discussed the general question of anthologies with a poet (of a very different school and tradition from mine) whose name is much more widely known than mine is. We agreed that the work of any poet who has already published a book of verse is likely to be more damaged than aided by anthologies. I hope that other writers may be encouraged to express their opinions.2
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
T. S. Eliot
1–Modern American Poetry (1921), ed. Louis Untermeyer, included TSE’s ‘Morning at the Window’ and extracts from ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ and ‘Preludes’.
2–TSE was supported the following week (1 Dec.) by Robert Graves – possibly the poet mentioned – who wrote to ‘commend heartily’ TSE’s ‘courageous letter’. But Adam L. Gowans, who had not heard of TSE until he read the review, said he would ‘certainly purchase his poetical works’ if any of his poems in the anthology appealed to him (8 Dec.); and John Haines (15 Dec.) had bought Prufrock ‘entirely on account of the poems from it contained in Catholic Anthology’.
TO Ottoline Morrell
MS Texas
30 November 1921
Hôtel Ste. Luce, Lausanne
My dear Ottoline,
This is just to tell you that I am here, in your room (so they tell me) and under Vittoz; and that I am very much pleased, with Lausanne, with the pension (the food is excellent, and the people make everything easy for one – ordering milk etc.) and with Vittoz. I like him very much personally, and he inspires me with confidence – his diagnosis was good and in short he is, I am sure much more what I want than the man in London. I never did believe in ‘nerves’, at least for myself! He is putting me through the primary exercises very rapidly – so that I seem to have no time for any continuous application to anything else. I shall be here till Christmas. So thank you very much for Vittoz, and for the pension. Of course I can’t tell much about the method yet, but at moments I feel more calm than I have for many many years – since childhood – that may be illusory – we shall see.
Yours always affect.
Tom
TO Wyndham Lewis
PC Cornell
[Postmark 3 December 1921]
Hôtel Ste. Luce, Lausanne
I wish you wd. send me the criticism you said you would write, please.1 I shall be here till Christmas. Good doctor.
Yrs.
T.S.E.
1–WL had perhaps offered to write a critique of drafts of TWL, which TSE may also have shown to SS in London (letter of [4? Nov]).
TO Mary Hutchinson
PC Texas
[Postmark 4 December 1921]
Hôtel Ste. Luce, Lausanne
This is [a] very quiet town, except when the children come downhill on scooters over the cobbles. Mostly banks and chocolate shops. Good orchestra plays ‘The Love Nest’.1 A horse fell down yesterday; one cannot see the mountains, too foggy. How are you? Yrs. aff. T.S.E.
1–From the musical comedy Mary, with music by Louis A. Hirsch, and book and lyrics by Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel, which opened at the Knickerbocker Theater, New York, in Oct. 1920.
TO Jacques Rivière1
MS Texas
5 December 1921
Hôtel Ste. Luce, Lausanne – Suisse
Dear [?] Monsieur,
Je viens de recevoir votre aimable lettre qu’on m’a expediée de Londres. Je rappelle bien ma promesse, et j’aurais dû vous prévenir de ma situation. Je suis ici jusqu’à Noël, au moins, pour un traitement de psychasthénie – sous la direction d’un célèbre médecin d’ici. Je n’ai rien écris depuis longtemps, et avec la meilleure volonté du monde, je ne crois pas pouvoir un article, si petit que ça soit, pendant deux mois encore.2 Je suis comblé de regret, et je vous fais toutes mes excuses, et vous prie d’accepter l’expression de mes sentiments les plus cordiaux.
T. S. Eliot3
1–Jacques Rivière (1886–1925): French critic, cultural arbiter, novelist, and director, 1919–25, of NRF, which he made into the premier French intellectual review.
2–TSE’s promised letter from England was deferred until the spring, as agreed when he met Rivière in Paris in Jan.; it was published as ‘Lettre d’Angleterre’, NRF 18 (1 May 1922).
3–Translation: Dear Sir, I have received your kind letter which has been sent on to me from London. I remember my promise very well, and I should have warned you about my situation. I am here till Christmas, at least, for treatment for psychoasthenia – under the direction of a celebrated doctor here. I have written nothing for a long time, and with the best will in the world, I don’t believe I could do an article, however little, during the next two months. I am extremely sorry, and send all my apologies, and ask you to accept the expression of my warmest regards. T. S. Eliot
FROM André Gide1
MS Houghton
7 décembre 1921
Cuverville, par Criquetot l’Esneval,
Seine Inférieure
Monsieur,
Permettrez-vous à un lecteur attentif du Sacred Wood de vous faire une proposition:
La rubrique des lettres anglaises, à la Nouvelle Revue Française se trouve à présent sans titulaire. Accepteriez-vous de nous envoyer régulièrement une chronique, qui renseignât les lecteurs français sur l’état de la littérature de votre pays, qui l’éclairât sur la valeur des oeuvres nouvelles et ne lui laisse rien ignorer d’important? – une chronique enfin qui ne permît plus aux Anglais de juger cette époque inférieure à celle de Matthew Arnold.
Jacques Rivière, le directeur de la Nouvelle Revue Française se pr
opose de vous écrire, si vous acceptez en principe, au sujet des conditions matérielles, et de la question de traduction.
Je vous fais adresser d’autre part un petit volume de morceaux choisis, où vous reconnaîtrez, je l’espère, ma pensée souvent voisine de la vôtre.
J’apprends indirectement, par Lytton Strachey qui me donne votre adresse, que vous venez d’être souffrant et qu’un repos complet vous est prescrit. Mais il dit aussi son espoir en votre très prochain rétablissement. Je m’autorise de cet espoir pour vous écrire ainsi, tout en m’excusant de venir troubler votre convalescence. Le moindre mot de vous, qui ne serait pas un refus, nous permettrait de patienter en attendant votre guérison complète.
Croyez à mes sentiments bien cordiaux.
André Gide2
1–André Gide (1869–1951), French essayist, critic, novelist and dramatist. Founding editor of NRF, 1909. Nobel Prize for Literature, 1947.
2–Translation: Dear Sir, Would you allow an attentive reader of The Sacred Wood to make you a proposal:
At the moment, La Nouvelle Revue Française has no established contributor dealing with English literature. Would you agree to send us a regular Letter from London, informing the French reader about the state of literature in your country, enlightening him as to the quality of new works and keeping him up to date with all important new developments? – a Letter, in short, that would make it no longer possible for the English [French?] to think the present age inferior to that of Matthew Arnold.