The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922
Page 102
Dear ole SON. You jess set and hev a quiet draw at youh cawn-kob.
The only asset of the Crit. is YOU, youh-sellf. If you quit, it quits. You’ll have been euchred for a free start that is the common fate of all mankind, them as boosts periodicals they dont own.
Run one more number. at least. Announce your resignation therein, if necessary. Pay your patient friends. and announce the opening of the ‘New Effigy’, ‘The Golden Vanity’ (there’s fine title for for a really sumptuous work).
But sink money into a liability, that wd. stay a liability for some years. Nevairrrrrrrrr! For the privilige of disguising oneself to look like a member of the Athenaeum Club. Mon gibletts. Mon Gosh, Mon chienggggg.
If you can trust my discretion, send me the correspondence between you and L. R. and I’ll try to get a clear idea of the matter.
£500 is bunk. If she is scared of the prospect of expenses she’ll give the damn thing away. Chrisssstttttt cant you see that you are the Criterion. If you go it collapses. Have you … got a contract? Not that English contracts are worth a damn, but on the chance that she may not know that no english contract is binding.
I dont see that one story by Katherine M. wd. queer the review. Print the Adams in the next number,2 and the Mansfield in the third. That will hold things calm over the interval. Tell her you had already accepted the Obsequies for the 2nd number. I dare say K. M. IS the most intelligent female she has ever met. So long as she dont include Middleton M., I dont mind. Personally I find it no worse to conciliate the K. M. faction than to conciliate the [Laurence] Binyon faction. When I first met Lady R. she seemed rather more ready to burn the Bastile than you are.
Air yew sure, mon cher, that she is being intentionally offensive. Remember that she is not one who has started at the social apex and descended. People of a slightly lower social order than we are ..... apt to be offensive when they are only, in their own eye, being frank, hearty and outspoken.
especially in your present exhausted and enerve condition …. perhaps a slight magnification takes place.
At any rate, consider hanging on for another three months. Let us get our own money back out of it. At least divide what spoils there are, IF there are any. I hope you haven’t undertaken printing expenses on yr. own???
IF you’re going to chuck it, you at least have the chance of launching a few explosives, or a few new authors before you abandon the deck. Print my article,3 and blame the demise on me.
et tu exageres. NO periodical cd. be the ‘affair thing of our lives’
As I said in note to V. Bill Bird who is doing the 3Mts Press4 is ready to print a review at his expense.
IF you cant stick the Crit. let it go out in glory and seek then the southern shore. more anon. must keep an appointment.5
E
1–EP wrote to VHE: ‘Dear Vivian, Your bomb to hand … CERTAINLY do NOT fork out £500. We are trying to build up yr. bloomin income, NOT to blow it in wild speculation … Do understand that I take no interest in England or English magazines. I dont think the island matters a damn, I shd. like to get T. out of it into a decent climate. If he likes to print Stsbury, Stg Moore, Binyon, etc. that’s his affair. He has got out a damn good quarterly for the purpose, i.e. of being feasible in a damned country, where any more active manifestation wd. be doomed to extinction. BUT . . . . . . . . buy it? NO.’
2–B. M. Goold-Adams, ‘The Obsequies’, C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), 293–302.
3–EP, ‘On Criticism in General’.
4–William Bird (1889–1963), an American, had founded the Three Mountains Press in Paris in 1921, and published four of EP’s books, 1923–8. On 29 Aug. 1922, EP had told TSE of planned limited editions by Ford Madox Hueffer,William Carlos Williams, Hemingway, and others, and invited a contribution ‘in yr. non-academic vein’, perhaps the Bolo poems. ‘The plan seems to me to solve the question of free expression, better than the Little Review did; and better than the necessary caution of heavier periodicals, like the Dial and the Crit. can afford.’
5–A further six-page letter in the same vein followed the same day.
TO John Middleton Murry
MS Northwestern
5 November 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns, N.W.1
Dear John
I should like very much to spend the weekend of the 25th with you. I was just on the point of writing to suggest a meeting soon.
I wonder if you know the work of a German critic named Curtius. I have sent him your Problem of Style [1922], and as I happen to have two copies of his book on modern France, it seemed appropriate that I should send you one, unless you know it already.1 I look forward to seeing you on the 25th.
Yours ever
T.S.E.
1–E. R. Curtius, Die literarischen Wegbereiter des neuen Frankreich.
TO F. S. Flint
TS Texas
6 November 1922
The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Flint,
I am now back in town and am sending you back the Gómez manuscripts and your translations. Do you think you could lick some of these into English by the 1st December? If you cannot, I do not know who can, as this is not a problem for the ordinary translator at all. I do not want very much, only two or three of those which you think can be made most presentable. At any rate they will provide relief for the lighter-minded of our readers who find the review too dull and indigestible. I shall be awfully grateful to you if you will exercise your talents upon this material.
Would you care to tackle a critical essay on Balzac, written in German, by Ernst Curtius1 which I hope to receive in a few days? He is quite an intelligent German and has written an essay on Proust which Proust is highly pleased with.2 It ought to prove more interesting to you than the Gómez.
I may say that the payments for the first number have been delayed by the fact that Sanderson and myself have been single-handed and have had a great many unexpected details to attend to, but this matter will be dealt with this week.
I am much obliged to you for letting me see the story. It struck me that the writer has distinct ability and ought to be encouraged, and I shall write to her to express the hope that she will go on. I do not think that I shall be able to use this one because we shall only publish, as a rule, one piece of fiction in each number and I have already secured fiction for two or three numbers ahead; so that I should prefer to wait as I think – for what my opinion is worth – that your friend will easily surpass it before very long.
Yours ever,
T. S. Eliot
1–See Ernst Robert Curtius, ‘Balzac’, C. 1: 2 (Jan. 1923), 105–18.
2–Curtius, ‘Marcel Proust’, Neue Merkur, Feb. 1922.
TO Ezra Pound
CC
7 November 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Cher Ezra,
In answer to your question: yes, of course I have a contract for three years, prepared for me by an able solicitor, as binding and clear as possible, and OF COURSE I know that a contract would be no damb use if she wanted to chuck the paper or give it to someone else. Even with the contract the TITLE, which we presented, belongs to her, and the title is the paper.
So far the point is not the number of lunatics whom she wants included. She objects (1) to the whole getup and printing of the paper without specifying anything good about it, and I have with difficulty persuaded the publisher not to throw it all up at once; which would mean the trouble for me of getting another publisher if possible, lot of trouble, and she would probably insult him too (this in STRICT confidence); also her only comment on the contents is that it is Dull and that Saintsbury is bad.1
I am not running the paper for Binyon any more than for K. Mansfield. Of course I dont mind printing a story by K. Mansfield, though I prefer Binyon and have no use for either. I will however suggest to Lady R. that she should secure a story from K. Mansfield. I myself should much prefer to have something from Murry; he is at least in every way pr
eferable to his wife. The latter is not by any means the most intelligent woman Lady R. has ever met. She is simply one of the most persistent and thickskinned toadies and one of the vulgarest women Lady R. has ever met and is also a sentimental crank.
I notice that the Criterion is generally reckoned as a source of income when Bel Esprit income is calculated, but is useless and hopeless on other occasions. I am not entitled to want more than £300 stipend, but am expected to edit a review for which there is no need or use and to write articles for the Times which are also of no use and furthermore are said to damage my brain. My dear Ezra, I dont want to write articles for the Times or for anything else, I dont want to write articles at all, I dont want to write, no sensible man does who wants to write verse. But I dont see how I am supposed to be selfsupporting in five years except by an enormous output of useless articles, literary rubbish etc. instead of the small number by which I have hitherto supplemented my income. It is preferable to run a review and be paid for letting other people write than to write oneself, but if the situation for a review is as hopeless as you make out I dont see any reason for bothering about that either. (I thought you said it ‘might become a property’).
Of course I do not see England exactly as you do, it comes largely from having spent so much of my time among commercial people and not mixing with literary people as much as you have done; it also comes from a belief that nothing matters about a country except being let alone, climate, chemists, and the character of the lower classes: of course England is deficient in some of these qualities.
My own idea is that the way to make a review is to make it as unliterary as possible: there are only half a dozen men of letters (and no women) worth printing, better get good people from other occupations who at least write about something they know something about. (This is NOT for publication to Lady R. or anyone else.) I want Sir J. Frazer, Trotter, Eddington, Sherrington or people like that.2 Also historians if they can write. (Hence Whibley on Bolingbroke).
Unless I can edit a paper that pays, or else that is so ‘important’ in some way or other that rich ignoramuses will feel that they MUST subsidise it, I dont see how I can ever earn more than £150 per year maximum.
Lady R. is (so far as I can make out her address) at La Prieuré, Avon, Fontainebleau. Only thing is to congratulate her on the review as if ignorant of what I have told you, to counteract influence of K.M. who has presumably told [her] that it is bad.
[T. S. E.]
1–Saintsbury’s article ‘Dullness’ was the first item in C. 1: 1 (Oct. 1922), 1–15.
2–Sir James Frazer (1854–1941), anthropologist; Wilfred Trotter (1872–1939), neurosurgeon and psychologist; Sir Arthur Eddington (1882–1944), astronomer; Sir Charles Sherrington (1857–1952), physiologist – none of whom contributed to C.
TO Richard Cobden-Sanderson
TS Beinecke
8 November 1922
The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Sanderson,
I think that we should now settle the payment due to the contributors as early as possible, and give you hereunder the schedule with the number of words computed by Messrs Hazell,Watson and Viney. I have estimated the payment at £10 per 5000 words accordingly. Will you check my figures?
Dullness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,304 words . . . . . . . . . . .£10. 6. 0
Story of Tristram and Isolt . . . 4,720 words . . . . . . . . . . . . .8. 14. 0
F. M. Dostoevsky . . . . . . . . . 4,548 words . . . . . . . . . . . . .8. 11. 0
Recent German Poetry . . . . . . 1,484 words . . . . . . . . . . . . .2. 10. 0
The Victim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8,000 words . . . . . . . . . . . .16. 0. 0
Ulysses of James Joyce . . . . . . 3,520 words . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6. 10. 0
I think that you have the addresses of all the writers to whom to send cheques. The cheque for the Dostoevsky should be made out to Mrs Virginia Woolf, and I will ask her to settle the indebtedness between Koteliansky and herself.
Yours sincerely,
T. S. Eliot
Have you figures handy for the total cost of No. 1? I should like them ready for Lady R.
TO Richard Aldington
TS Texas
8 November 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Richard,
I have only a few days ago returned from Worthing where I have been having a fortnight’s rest, the remainder of my holiday. I was sure that you would understand that I was not writing a single letter while I was there and that you would hear from me upon my return. I hope that your holiday in Rome was in every way a satisfactory one and that it has had a stimulating effect. It is very good news to hear that you are doing an essay which will be very welcome. I shall count upon you for the third number, in which I know you will not find Whibley’s ‘Bolingbroke’ an unwelcome neighbour. I am looking forward to reading your further news in the literary review.
I do not think that Larbaud’s article can be taken as criticism at all. It is merely an introduction to the subject, and I think it is useful to anyone who is going to read the book. I am struggling with a notice of Ulysses myself which I have promised long since to the Dial; I find it extremely difficult to put my opinion of the book intelligently, inasmuch as I have little sympathy with the majority of either its admirers or its detractors.
The Criterion has kept me very fully occupied and still does. I should very much like to know who wrote the extremely amiable and, as I thought, intelligent notice in the Times?1
Is there any prospect of seeing you in London in the near future?
Yours ever,
T. S. E.
1–[Harold Child], in TLS, 26 Oct. 1922, praised both C. and TWL: ‘We know of no other modern poet who can more adequately and movingly reveal to us the inextricable tangle of the sordid and the beautiful that make up life.’ Repr. in T. S. Eliot, ed. Grant, 134–5.
TO Valery Larbaud
TS Vichy
8 November 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Larbaud,
Thank you for your letter of the 29 ulto. I hope that you found the translation of your essay as satisfactory as you pretend; I can only say that it hardly does justice to the original. I am very sorry to hear that you have been ill and overworked. I had intended to come to Paris for a few days last month, but I was so tired that I merely went to the seaside instead and I am afraid that I am not likely to be in Paris again until the spring. Your essay on Landor sounds extremely desirable and I hope also that you can include Landor’s unpublished letters.1 I have complete faith in the excellence of your English, but if you wish, I will read it through carefully with an eye to possible solecisms. Can you tell me how long it is likely to be and when you can promise it to me, or at least promise the first part of it?
It is high time that some justice should be done to Landor in this country.
I will try to find or procure a spare copy of my paper on Andrew Marvell for you. I have had the design of ultimately polishing it up for a projected volume of essays on the English seventeenth century.
Yours very sincerely,
T. S. Eliot
1–Larbaud had offered an article on ‘Landor and Italy’, which would include letters by Landor that he had discovered in Florence, but it did not appear.
TO Edmund Wilson
TS Beinecke
8 November 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Mr Wilson,
I have received your letter of the 17th ulto. and have written strongly to Mr Hoppé [about his photograph of TSE] protesting against the carelessness in his office. I am also sending you shortly a copy of the Wyndham-Lewis drawing. I am very sorry that you have had the trouble of writing again. Of course I shall be very glad to let you have an article as soon as I can fulfil one or two long outstanding obligations.
Yours sincerely,
T. S. Eliot
FROM Ezra Pound
TS copy Vale
rie Eliot
[9? November 1922]
70 bis, N.D. de C. [Paris]
Cher T:
A. I have written to lady R. (as per request) several days ago, stating that the Crit. was a masterpiece of editing.
She is right about its being dull; and UTTERLY wrong in disapproving the format.
I cant judge of the relative intelligence of her female friends, never having met K[atherine] M[ansfield]. If she hasn’t suggested printing K. M.; I shdnt. and if she hasn’t committed any greater crime than saying the review is dull and expressing a divergent taste in formats, I don’t see that the insult is very deadly.
/ / /
As to my other inconsistencies. A half dozen articles for the Times, WHILE you are working in bank, is a vastly different thing, i.e. computed in mental strain, to same or even larger number of said articles done in comparative leisure.
/ / /
The Crit. is a £100/ a year as long as you stick to it. As I wrote V. yesterday, it may become a property, but that process of werden [becoming] implies Lady R’s initial outlay; to become a property means, as I used the phrase, to have the prospect of paying its expenses
You are entitled to want any income you can get. Six articles to Times, plus Review, plus £300, plus incidentals.
I certainly agree that it is preferable to run a review to writing too much.
Saintsbury is a meritorious old dodo, if he had had any more pep he wdnt. be where he is. Oh well.