by T. S. Eliot
TO Antonio Marichalar1
? TS
5 April 1922
12 Wigmore St
Monsieur,
M. Valery Larbaud m’a donné votre adresse, et en vous écrivant je me mets sous sa protection.
Je me suis chargé de l’initiation d’une nouvelle revue littéraire à Londres, qui devrait paraître par trimestre. Dans cette revue je voudrais présenter à l’élite parmi les amateurs anglais des belles lettres les représentants les plus importants de la pensée étrangère; à present, on ne connaît, et très mal d’ailleurs, que la pensée française. Je voudrais canaliser vers Londres les courants étrangers les plus profonds. Ainsi, je veux me mettre en rapport avec les écrivains et les redacteurs de revues les plus illustres de l’étranger.
Si vous regardez mon projet d’un oeil favorable, j’ose espérer que vous daignerez me laisser souhaiter un article de vous; nous serions tout heureux de pouvoir vous présenter aux lecteurs anglais les plus accueillants. Nous comptons faire paraître le premier numéro au mois de juin, ou au mois de septembre au plus tard.
La revue sera subventionée par Viscountess Rothermere; à present nous ne pouvons offrir que la somme modeste de £10 les 5000 mots; et un article ne devrait pas dépasser par beaucoup cette étendue; naturellement, nous accepterions aussi des morceaux plus courts. Nous nous chargerions du travail de traduction.
En comptant beaucoup sur votre appui, je vous prie, Monsieur, de recevoir l’expression de mes sentiments les plus distingués.
T. S. Eliot2
1–Antonio Marichalar (1893–1973), Spanish literary critic; contributor to El Sol and La Revista de Occidente (edited by José Ortega y Gasset). He was to write on ‘Contemporary Spanish Literature’ in C. 1: 1 (Oct. 1922), and took responsibility for the regular ‘Madrid Chronicle’ and ‘Spanish Chronicle’, 1926–38.
2–Translation: Sir, M. Valery Larbaud gave me your address, and in writing to you I place myself under his protection.
I am responsible for starting a new literary review in London, which should appear quarterly. In this review I would like to introduce an elite readership of English letters to the most important representatives of foreign thought; at present only French thought is known about, and poorly at that. I would like to channel towards London the deepest foreign currents. With this in mind, I want to put myself in contact with the most distinguished writers and editors of reviews from abroad.
If you look favourably on my project, I hope you will be willing to offer an article of your own; we would be very happy to introduce your work to the most receptive English readership. We are counting on the first number appearing in June, or in the month of September at the latest.
The review will be financed by Viscountess Rothermere; at present we are only able to offer the sum of £10 per 5000 words, and an article should not go much beyond that limit; naturally we also accept shorter pieces. We would be responsible for the work of translation.
Counting very much on your support, I beg you to accept my deepest respects. T. S. Eliot
TO Sydney Schiff
MS BL
[6? April 1922]
[London]
Dear Sydney
The only person I have to whom I can give you a note is Vanderpyl. I will send it to Foyot,1 as I have had to be out all evening and just got in before the post. I do hope you will find what you want in Paris and both be much better for it. In haste
Yrs aff.
Tom.
Directly I have time I will send a line to Joyce about you.
1–The Hotel Foyot, rue de Tournon, Paris, where the Schiffs lived for many months, and where they would seek to entertain Proust. See also Richard Davenport-Hines, A Night at the Majestic: Proust and the Great Modernist Dinner Party of 1922 (2006).
TO T. Sturge Moore
MS Texas
10 April 1922
12 Wigmore St
Dear Mr Sturge Moore,
Thank you very much for your letter which encourages me to hope that you may have something for me by September 1st. If and as soon as you are moved I hope you will let me know, and what the subject is. I only suggested Murry as a sort of stalking horse, and because I was exasperated to hear that a letter of yours about his filthy1 Flaubert article2 had been omitted from The Times. I am very much flattered by what you say of my book (which was disliked by the Right and the Left) but of course, if (as I hope) you contribute to a very early number, it might be more fitting to have some other subject. But please be sure of the very high importance I attach to securing something from you; and I shall importune you soon again.
Yours sincerely
T. S. Eliot
1–At TSE’s request this ‘deplorable’ adjective was burnt from the holograph before his letters to Sturge Moore were sold. He did not remember the content ‘but there seems to me no excuse for applying’ the word to it. ‘This is not only immoderate but is a very loose and inaccurate use of … “filthy”, since I cannot believe there was anything obscene in an article by Murry, or, indeed in anything appearing in those days in the Times Literary Supplement’ (letter to Mrs Ursula Bridge, 25 Mar. 1959).
2–JMM, ‘Gustave Flaubert’, TLS, 15 Dec. 1921, 833–4.
TO Sydney Schiff
MS BL
10 April 1922
12 Wigmore St
Dear Sydney,
I am writing to tell you for Vivien who is very tired from her journey home with a temperature of 100, among fearful crowds: so much so that three trains were run. I think she was most wise to make up her mind as she did, so quickly, to cut her losses and come home, ill as she was. She stood no chance of getting well quickly in a Paris hotel. I regret now that I urged her to go. If you remember, she had been so ill here up to the last and had not really recovered. She sends you both her love, and it is not necessary to say how much she regrets having had no opportunity to see a good deal of you in Paris, which you know she had looked forward to for so long.
Ever yrs. affectionately
Tom.
I shall write in answer to your letter in a few days time.
TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
Wednesday [12? April 1922]
12 Wigmore St
My dear Mary,
I rang you up tonight but you were said to be out – I find from the doctor that Vivien’s temperature has kept steadily about 100, and he says that she must keep very quiet for the next day or so and ought not to see anyone or talk, as the first thing is to get her temperature down. She is frightfully vexed, but it can’t be helped: she mustn’t see you tomorrow; she told me to tell you that the moment she was allowed to see anyone, she should send someone to telephone to you to try to arrange if you can come. She said to tell you that she had several most important matters to discuss with you, so she wants to lose no time in seeing you.
I enjoyed last evening very much, for my part, I assure you – I was afraid that I was tired and not in good form – but I hope I can do better soon – and see you before your party.
affectionately
Tom
TO Sydney Waterlow
MS Professor Waterlow
Monday [17 April? 1922]
12 Wigmore St
My dear Sydney,
I was very glad to hear from you and to know both that you are settled and that you are not going to Genoa. That is very good. I have been laid up for the past week with a chill and a temperature which I have not been able quite to get rid of, and hardly expect to find it wise to get out in the evening for some days. I shall I hope be able to come on the following Thursday.
I rather want to see J. M.’s book. Vivien read it and gave me a pretty good idea of it. According to her there are passages where one would say that it was – Sullivan speaking. But one or two good things. I shall certainly read the book on style.1
It hardly seems to me worthwhile for one to say anything about Ulysses for six months at least – until all the imbeciles who like and dislike it for insince
re reasons have tired themselves. But when you’ve finished it I should like to discuss it with you.
Please give Margery my kindest regards.
Yours ever
T.S.E.
1–JMM had published two books in Mar.: The Things We Are (a novel) and The Problem of Style.
TO Mary Hutchinson
PC Texas
Wednesday [19 April 1922]
Thank you for your suggestion. Come to the Piccadilly at 5.15 and I will look out for you – inside the Regent St entrance. That will be the best place for me as I too shall be on my way somewhere.
T.S.E.
TO Sydney Schiff
MS BL
20 April 1922
12 Wigmore St
My dear Sydney,
I return herewith the letter from Squire1 which I think ought to be preserved. You have all my sympathy for having had to receive such an insult. It is much worse even than I should have expected. You see, don’t you, that no truce is possible with such people when anything out of the ordinary merely provokes a sneer, in the very first sentence. I like his saying that it doesn’t ‘bowl us over’! Please look at the sort of thing they ‘find room for’ in the last number. I know how you must feel about it.
I am glad to hear that you are finding Paris profitable, with new people of interest as well as old friends; and it is very satisfactory to know that Elinor Colhouse is to be translated into French. Had I not fallen ill, I should have written to ask you, as I had in mind, whether you wished Vanderpyl to know that you are a writer.
It has been rather difficult, as Vivien has had a bad time recovering herself and has had me on her hands as well. I am behindhand with a lot of work – a week in bed is a serious loss for a man in my position – and am about ready to chuck up literature altogether and retire; I don’t see why I should go on for ever fighting a rearguard action against time, fatigue and illness and complete lack of recognition of these three facts.
Always yours aff. T.S.E.
1–The letter from J. C. Squire does not survive.
TO Edgar Jepson
MS Beinecke
20 April 1922
12 Wigmore St
It is very pleasant to hear from you again. O dear, I should have liked to come to supper on Sunday, but I have been laid up for several days with a chill, and shan’t be out in the evening anyway. Is there any chance of a subsequent Sunday?
Yours sincerely
T. S. Eliot
Ezra Pound TO Scofield Thayer
TS Beinecke
23 April 1922
Dear Thayer:
Thanks for permission to use Turk. Night.
I shd. be very glad to use The Hungarian Night; as it appeared in The Dial = but I’m afraid the damn technicalities of my contract oblige me to make a new translation.1 it is a waste = but I have done it. Have done it here where I cdn’t compare it to the anonymous Dial version. I don’t think I have improved on it.
Will of course make due acknowledgments to Dial.
Re. Eliot. he is again ill, I hear.
Order of facts in face of anomaly.
I tried to get him to finish poem & send it to you from Paris (in January I think)
1a. Wrote to Eliot to send poem.
I wrote to X to
Spoke with friend, returning to London saying he shd persuade T. S. E. to send poem.
Eliot writes me (as I think I mentioned in a p.s.) that Geo Moore is getting special rates from the Dial. (also S. Anderson)
That being the case I can hardly reprove Eliot – if you have put the thing on a commercial basis, for holding out for as high a price as he can get. i.e. if the Dial is a business house, it gets business treatment. If the Dial is a patron of literature T. contends it should not pay extra rates for ‘mere senility’. All of which is extreme theory-ism, perhaps, on his part.
I do not concur in his refusing to let you publish the poem. (In fact I have emphatically dis-concurred with a number of his recent movements re/ another matter.)
I don’t from your note, know precicely what he thinks I concur in, or what he has led you to think I concur in.
I cannot relish being paid less than a senile bunch of tripes like Geo. Moore, any more than does Eliot. But then you and I haven’t the long personal background, that you and he have and I am possibly less mercurial in these matters. – my health is better than his.
I happen to think his poem worth more than a whole vol. or six vols. of Geo. M. – especially since the old souse has taken to gingerbread fake antiques.
I shd. prefer one good review to several less good ones.
I have, as I think you know, always wanted to see a concentration of the authors I believe in, in one review. The Dial perhaps looks better to me than it does to Eliot. (life in general does.)
However if you and Lady R. and the ‘Times’ want him I can’t but concur in his holding out for the highest bid. (Though I think it is a little rough of him to drag me into the auction rooms – where I have no desire to be.[)]
I have, I must have, bored you to death reiterating my belief that the way to make a literature is to provide the few men capable of producing it, with leisure.
This ‘few’ does not, alas, include all of your contributors.
It would mean in a perfect state of things, very high payment for a piece of real work. If you haven’t even seen the mss. it is rather unreasonable of Tom to expect you to believe that it is a masterpiece.
But as I’m not au courant with Geo. M’s prices, etc. etc. etc. I cannot go into details about price. I have never I think, gone much into details about my own prices (am perhaps an awful warning to T.) & I cannot be expected to go into details about other peoples prices. THERE IS MORE OF THIS LETTER TO COME2
Yours
Ezra Pound over for P.S.
Have recd. two letters from America mentioning the Dial, one thought it was improving. Tother complained that Dial readers were probably too ‘Sherwood-Andersonized’ to take in any extraneous idea. – but then I hardly hear from anyone who isn’t more or less on my side of the fences: international high vs. localism. E. P
1–Paul Morand’s ‘Turkish Night’, trans. by EP, Dial, Sept. 1921, and ‘Hungarian Night’, Dial, Nov. 1920. An English edition was envisaged but not achieved.
2–Thayer replied to EP on 30 Apr. that TSE’s letter of 16 Mar. had accused him of lying about the rates paid by the Dial. ‘In offering to accept his poem without having seen it and in offering to pay him a round sum for it I went beyond the limit of what an editor should do. And in answer I received a telegram which I could take only as an insult’ (Pound, Thayer, Watson, and The Dial).
TO Ottoline Morrell
MS Texas
26 April 1922
12 Wigmore St, w.1
My dear Ottoline,
I was so glad to get your letter – I was just on the point of writing to you too. Vivien sends you her love. We have both had incessant illness since a week before Easter – neither of us has seen anyone for some time. What we want is to go for a few weeks somewhere near enough for me to get up to town, as I can’t get any holiday just now. We want to get braced up. We have never been to Brighton, and I know you know it and I should be very grateful if you could recommend a hotel there to start with. Even if it was expensive for us, it would not matter so much, as we could look about for a cheaper one when we got there. Brighton is a very easy journey with good early trains. It is no use my wasting time looking about – so could you tell me of the hotels you know there?
We should both love to come to Garsington as soon as we are back and recuperated. If we stayed away as long as three weeks the 20th would be too soon, but might we fix the week or the fortnight afterwards? I will get [Wyndham] Lewis – I have not seen him for a number of weeks. Unless he is particularly interested in Eights Week!
I did enjoy seeing you, so much, that brief afternoon, and you looked so well – I hope you are. Vivien wil
l write very soon, and longs to see you; she had been intending to write for some days, but not up to it.
Have you read Murry’s books? I cannot get up enough interest at the moment.
Yours always affectionately
Tom.
TO Mary Hutchinson
MS Texas
Thursday [27 April 1922]
[12 Wigmore St]
My dear Mary
Be it so – I trust your judgment. I hope your news of Massine1 at the Coliseum is true, as I have been to see him and thought him more brilliant and beautiful than ever – if what you said was sincere it is I consider a great compliment, as I (having never been so close before) quite fell in love with him. I want to meet him more than ever, and he is a genius.