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

by T. S. Eliot

  Ever affectionately

  T.S.E.

  ####160###TO Conrad Aiken

  PC Huntington

  [Postmark 31 May 1922]

  [Lugano]

  I recommend this place as comfortably warm, with good bathing, and free from the picture galleries etc. which are such a nuisance in Italy proper. Back some time next week. Hope you are both well.

  T.S.E.

  TO Hermann Hesse

  PC Schweizerisches Literaturarchiv

  [Postmark 31 May 1922]

  [Lugano]

  Ich empfange Ihre Dichtung mit Freude und herzlichen Dank. Ich werde sie bei meiner Reise nach Mailand lesen. Sonntag fahr ich nach London – 6. Ich erinnere ich mich immer an meinem Besuch bei Ihnen.

  T. S. Eliot1

  1–Translation: I received your book with pleasure and many thanks. I will read it on my journey to Milan. I return to London on Sunday – 6th. I am still full of memories of my visit to you. T. S. Eliot

  TO Sydney Schiff

  MS BL

  [Early June 1922]

  [London]

  My dear Sydney,

  I am very glad to hear that you are back. Your letter to the Bank finally reached me, and I was sorry not to have seen you in Paris; but I did not stop there at all, as my time was so limited and my holiday was for the purpose of health. I was feeling very low indeed and had completely given up writing letters to anybody. Lugano was delightful – Hesse was there too – and walking and boating and bathing were good for me, and I also went to Verona and saw Pound. Now I am plunging into work on Lady Rothermere’s review – and shall be immersed in that for many weeks. But I hope to see you and have a talk soon – I will come in on Saturday at 5 if I don’t hear to the contrary. We have missed you.

  Yours aff.

  T.S.E.

  TO Jacques Rivière1

  TS Texas

  10 June 1922

  9 Clarence Gate Gdns, London N.W.1

  Cher monsieur,

  Je viens de rentrer à Londres après une vacance en Italie, et je m’empresse de vous répondre. Je n’ai pas du tout oublié ma promesse, mais me voici à ce moment écrasé par des devoirs manqués et par des affaires personnelles. Aurez-vous la patience de me permettre de renouveler la promesse à l’échéance? Mon portefeuille est vide, j’ai très peu écris – sauf quelques poésies – depuis six mois. Vous ne voulez que de la prose?

  Je suis occupé d’une nouvelle revue qui va paraître à Londres, dont je vous enverrai un exemplaire lors de sa parution.

  Wyndham Lewis est un de nos meilleurs écrivains (et certainement notre meilleur peintre); peut-être il pourrait vous envoyer un conte.2 Adresse:

  Lee Studio

  Adam and Eve Mews

  Allen Street

  Kensington

  London, w.8

  Agréez, cher monsieur, l’expression des mes sentiments très distingués.

  T. S. Eliot3

  1–The original letter has no addressee, but is presumably addressed to Jacques Rivière to whom TSE had earlier promised another piece for Nouvelle Revue Française.

  2–Nothing by WL was published in NRF in the following year.

  3–Translation: ‘Dear Sir, I have just got back to London after a holiday in Italy, and I am replying immediately. I have by no means forgotten my promise, but at the moment I am overwhelmed by deferred business and personal matters. Would you have the patience to allow me to renew the promise at its maturity? My portfolio is empty – I have written very little – except some poems – since six months ago. Do you only want prose?

  I am busy with a new review which is going to appear in London, a copy of which I will send you on its publication.

  Wyndham Lewis is one of our best writers (and certainly our best painter). Perhaps he would be able to send you a story. Address:

  [etc.]

  Accept, my dear sir, my most sincere good wishes. T. S. Eliot

  TO Leonard Woolf

  MS Princeton

  10 June 1922

  12 Wigmore St, London w.1

  Dear Woolf,

  I should very much like to publish the Dostoevski, but am thinking over the matter carefully – 1

  If you and Koteliansky2 could have ready by the 1st September or the 1st November (i.e. for the first or second number) some of either of the other writers, I think this would be better. For the reason that it would obviously [be] impossible to print the whole of the Dostoevski chapter. There is also this point, that the Dostoevski is coming out in the Nouvelle Revue Française.3

  But if it is unlikely that you could have either of the other writers in time, I should certainly consider using the first part alone. I should prefer Rosanov or the correspondence, but in any case could you let me know soon whether you could promise it, as I shall want to advertise some of the principal contents of the first two numbers in advance.

  Sincerely yours

  T. S. Eliot

  1–LWsent the translation on 25May, adding that Koteliansky was also offering to translate either the correspondence between ‘the best living Russian poet and the best living Russian critic’ or the pensées of V. V. Razanov (1856–1919), a reactionary avant-garde writer (Letters of Leonard Woolf, ed. Frederic Spotts, 1990, 282–3).

  2–Born in a Jewish shtetl in the Ukraine, S. S. Koteliansky (1882–1955), ‘Kot’, as he was known to friends, moved in 1911 to London where he befriended DHL, LW, VW, JMM, and Katherine Mansfield (whom he adored), and the artist Mark Gertler. In 1923–4, he was business manager of The Adelphi. He translated into English several Russian writers including Dostoevsky and Chekhov. See further: John Carswell, Lives and Letters: A. R.Orage, Beatrice Hastings, Katherine Mansfield, John Middleton Murry, S. S. Koteliansky: 1906–1957 (1978).

  3–Dostoievski, ‘La Confession de Stavroguine’, published in NRF in two parts: 18 (June 1922), 647–65; 19 (July 1922), 30–57.

  TO T. Sturge Moore

  MS Texas

  11 June 1922

  12 Wigmore St

  Dear Mr Sturge Moore

  It would be quite possible, I think, to publish in the quarterly such an essay as you outline, as it appears to fall into two distinct parts – so that the lapse of three months would not seriously matter. I must express my great pleasure at hearing that my hope of support from you is so near to being realised. Could you let me know the title of the essay and the probable length of each part – also when the first part is likely to be ready?1

  I only hope that you will have reason to be satisfied with the company in which your work will appear.

  Yours very truly

  T. S. Eliot

  1–T. Sturge Moore, ‘The Story of Tristram and Isolt in Modern Poetry’: I. Narrative Versions (C. 1: 1, Oct. 1922, 39–49); ‘The Story of Tristram and Isolt in English Poetry’: II. Dramatic Versions (C. 1: 2, Jan. 1923, 171–87).

  TO Richard Cobden-Sanderson

  MS Beinecke

  12 June 1922

  12 Wigmore St

  Dear Cobden-Sanderson,

  I trust that you are back in town now. Will you come and see me as soon as possible? Could you dine with me on Thursday, say at the Cock – or if more convenient I could come to see you at 5.30 or could meet in the evening.

  Sincerely yours

  T. S. Eliot

  TO Ottoline Morrell

  MS Texas

  15 June 1922

  12 Wigmore St

  My dear Ottoline,

  I am afraid there has been a misunderstanding about the weekend. Vivien I find was under the impression that I had arranged about it with you at dinner. For she knew that I had already told her that I could not leave London for a weekend until she went to Bosham in July. Perhaps I have not sufficiently explained to you or to anyone that through my ill health and inability to cope with anything I have kept Lady Rothermere waiting to bring out her Review, for a whole year. That is one of the reasons why I took my holiday early, to prepare myself for the next three months of entire conce
ntration on this one object. Lady Rothermere has been so extraordinarily good about all this delay that I now owe it to her to push the Review forward with the greatest possible speed. I shall not go out anywhere and must not contemplate any weekends. I wish we could have come at the same time as Lewis, as was previously arranged. If I was a man of leisure and had not three weeks only of holiday a year, how many nice things I could do – but one is always disliked for one’s hardships I find!

  Vivien asks me to tell you that she has, since seeing you, and greatly on account of your having urged it, gone to a wholly new specialist, who immediately diagnosed her whole trouble as glands. Most of her glands are not working at all. In addition to this there is poisoning from colitis. These two things more than account, the specialist says, for all her symptoms. He has outlined for her a perfectly new and violent cure, which she has already begun. She is to have the glands of animals, but of course this at present is purely experimental, and it may take a long time before they find the right glands. In addition to that she is to have a very strong internal disinfection, going without food completely for two days a week.

  She sends you her best love and hopes this cure will prove scientific enough.

  We can only look forward to seeing you again.

  Yours affectionately

  Tom.

  TO Wyndham Lewis

  TS Cornell

  18 June 19221

  12 Wigmore St

  Dear Lewis,

  I am very sorry to find that tomorrow afternoon will be impossible – we are getting in – or starting to get in to Clarence Gate on Tuesday, and I have got to see a furniture remover here tomorrow, and that is my only time to do it. Do forgive me, I hope not to have to move again for some time, and will Tuesday be possible for you – if not perhaps Wednesday? I want particularly to see you as soon as possible. Will you let me know about Tuesday, and I hope I have not deranged any plans of yours.

  Yours ever

  T.S.E.

  1–TSE wrote ‘18. vi. 21’.

  TO John Quinn

  TELEGRAM NYPL (MS)

  21 June 1922

  DISSATISFIED LIVERIGHTS CONTRACT POEM MAY I ASK YOUR ASSISTANCE APOLOGIES WRITING ELIOT.

  FROM John Quinn

  TELEGRAM NYPL (MS)

  22 June 1922

  GLAD TO ASSIST EVERYWAY POSSIBLE YOUR CONTRACT CABLE WHETHER SHALL SEE LIVERIGHT OR AWAIT YOUR LETTER QUINN.1

  1–Quinn followed up with a letter the same day: ‘you don’t have to tie up with Liveright. I could easily arrange for your next book with another publisher’, adding that he had heard from EP ‘that you had finished a very fine poem of, I think, some twenty pages, which would shortly appear in the Dial’.

  TO Mary Hutchinson

  MS Texas

  Friday [23 June 1922]

  9 Clarence Gate Gdns, N.W.1

  Dear Mary,

  I want to write this note just to tell you how much I enjoyed the evening. I liked Massine very much indeed – with no disappointment – and hope that I shall see him again. He was much as I expected him to be. I enjoyed the whole evening and thought it perfect. It was very sweet of you to have arranged it. I am sorry to hear that you expected me to dinner – I thought it was left that I could either come to dinner or pick you up afterwards. As a matter of fact, I was having a sitting with Lewis for a drawing and did not get home till nearly eight; so I just had time to wash and change and eat something and reach the restaurant by 9.30. Of course I was disappointed not to have dinner with you as well; I expected at least to arrive early enough to find you in the middle of dinner.

  I am rather tired – I went out to a dinner and a dance last night, while Vivien starved; and enjoyed myself, and got off with the Aga Khan, and finished up the evening at Wigmore Street where I ended the vermouth and packed my clothes, rather fun. I hope I shall see you next week.

  With love,

  Tom.

  Do you think Massine liked me? and would he come and see me, do you think?

  TO John Quinn

  TS NYPL (MS)

  25 June 1922

  Clarence Gate Gdns

  Dear Mr Quinn,

  I was overjoyed to get your cable last night, generously giving me your help. I must say to begin with that I was very loath to trouble you in this affair, as the original book with Knopf had given you such endless difficulty and taken so much of your time. Had I not had this in mind, I should have consulted you at the very beginning of the negotiations with Liveright. It is only that I now see no other possible way of settling the matter, that I have appealed to you; and I thank you from the depth of my heart for your kindness.

  I have written, mostly when I was at Lausanne for treatment last winter, a long poem of about 450 lines,1 which, with notes that I am adding, will make a book of thirty or forty pages. I think it is the best I have ever done, and Pound thinks so too. Pound introduced me to Liveright in Paris, and Liveright made me the offer of 15 per cent royalty and $150 in advance. I thought I ought to give Knopf the option, and did so; but Knopf said that it was too late for his autumn list this year, and Liveright offered to publish it this autumn, so I cabled to him to say he could have it. I then received the letter and memoranda of agreement which I enclose, and after some days deliberation decided to cable to you.

  I think you will agree that the form of agreement is extremely vague and gives all the advantage to the publisher. I wish exactly the same terms that you made for me with Knopf: i.e. American (and Canadian) rights only, book rights only, copyright in author’s name, and contents to belong to me when this book is out of print. As I read Liveright’s form, it practically gives him world rights, translation rights, periodical rights, anthology rights, and seems tantamount to selling him the book outright for $150. I do not know the ‘term of the standard contract of the Authors’ League of America’, and it seems to me that the question of what matters are ‘not specifically covered’ might involve litigation.

  I am writing to Liveright to say that I am placing the agreement in your hand, that you have Power of Attorney to act for me, and that I am leaving the entire question of the terms of contract to you.

  I cannot see any reason why he should not give a proper formal contract, and if he will not make the same terms as Knopf I authorise you to withdraw the poem from him altogether.

  I am sending you as quickly as possible a copy of the poem merely for your own interest, and I shall send you later the complete typescript with the notes, in the form to be handed to the publisher. Liveright said he would print it for the autumn if he had the poem by the end of July.

  There are other matters which I have been waiting for an opportunity to write to you about, but I will write of them later, as it would take much space and time. The last nine months have been months of illness and anxiety and worry; otherwise there are several letters that I should have written you. I am ashamed to be writing now only to ask another sacrifice of time and thought from a man who has far too many demands upon him. But there is simply no one else in New York America whom I can ask, or trust, in a matter like this.

  With my very great gratitude,

  sincerely yours,

  T. S. Eliot

  1–TSE typed ‘words’.

  TO Sydney Schiff

  TS BL

  25 June 1922

  9 Clarence Gate Gdns

  Dear Sydney,

  Thank you very much for your letter. It is very good of you to offer me ‘The Thief’, which you know I liked particularly. I should be exceedingly glad to have it. Of course I do not want to interfere with your arrangements with the Dial; and it is difficult to make appearance in a quarterly coincide with that in a monthly; but if the Dial could use the other sketches first I should be very glad indeed. I should like to use ‘The Thief’ in the second number (December),1 as I have a great deal of material which I have promised to put in the first, and I am afraid I shall have to postpone some of that. After the first number it will be easier fitting things in.
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  And of course it would be a help if I could have it as soon as possible, as I am trying to make up the two numbers as exactly as possible now.

  Vivien sends her love to you and Violet, and would have rung Violet up today for a talk, but knew your Sundays were always very much occupied. She is dreadfully tired by the moving and as we are now not quite satisfied with the result of this new treatment she is seeing another doctor tomorrow or the next day and had better keep quiet till after that. Although we feel that we have got on the right direction now, the starvation is producing other symptoms which make me feel that some modification is necessary; and we have heard of another man who uses the same treatment but very much better. She says she will ring up directly this wretched time of uncertainty is over.

  Yours always affectionately,

  T.S.E.

  TO John Quinn

  TELEGRAM NYPL (MS)

  26 June 1922

  VERY GRATEFUL PLEASE WAIT LETTER ELIOT

  Vivien Eliot TO Ezra Pound