The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (101 page)

1–They visited OM at Garsington on 7 Aug.

MS
Texas  

23 June 1921

Address still 9 Clarence Gate Gdns  

My dear Aldington,  

I trust you know me well enough by this time to believe that I would have written to you long ago but for circumstances of an unusual character (as my circumstances usually are!). We have moved for the summer to 12 Wigmore Street (but address letters for security as before) in order that my mother and sister, whom I have not seen for six years, might have our flat.
My brother is here also. These new and yet old relationships involve immense tact and innumerable adjustments. One sees lots of things that one never saw before etc. In addition my wife is here for their benefit against the express command of her specialist, who told her that it was very wrong for her to be in town at all this summer. So I shall not rest until I have got her away again.  

I was very distressed by your previous letter. I hope that this can be arranged without its imposing the whole financial burden on you. If so, it is unspeakable. I have no idea whether your sisters are children or grown. You must get them into practical occupations or trades if or as soon as they are old enough, because they will be happier.  

I felt on the contrary that it was I who did not support you adequately with Balderston,
¹
particularly about Manning.
²
Will B. give him any work? All it seems that I can do is to write to MacCarthy – shall I do that? I do not know the
Nation
people who run the
Athenaeum
now. If however there is anyone else you think it would help if I wrote to, let me know.  

You tempt me to undertake more than I can, perhaps – there is so much that one would like to do or be glad to do, and it is so easy to postpone the most important thing. But I
will
keep in mind what you say, and am grateful to you. My Dryden was not good, because only a series of unconnected scraps.
³
How are you now? I am very tired and can hardly drive this pen. With kind regards to your wife.  

Yours ever
T.S.E.  

Harriet Weaver has just published a book of Marianne Moore’s verse.
⁴
Have you had it? Can anything be done about it? Can you do anything about getting a good review in the
Times
?
⁵
I am glad if you are going to do something on Cowley. Should like to help with Jackson later
^.6

1–John Lloyd Balderston (1889–1954), American playwright and screenwriter; editor of the
Outlook
(which had published RA’s ‘The Poetry of T. S. Eliot’ on 7 Jan.).

2–Frederic Manning (1882–1935), Australian novelist and poet.

3–TSE’s review of Mark Van Doren,
John Dryden, TLS,
9 June 1921 (SE).

4–Moore,
Poems
(Egoist Press), was edited without the author’s approval by H. D. and ‘Bryher’, pseud. of Winifred Ellerman (1894–1983), wealthy English writer, philanthropist, and patron of many writers ranging from James Joyce to Edith Sitwell.

5–[Harold Child],
TLS
, 21 July 1921. TSE discussed the book in ‘Marianne Moore’,
Dial
75: 6, Dec. 1923.

6–Holbrook Jackson (1874–1948), editor and literary historian, founder-editor of
To-Day
, 1917–23.

TS
Texas  

6 July 1921

9 Clarence Gate Gdns  

My dear Aldington,  

We very deeply appreciated the kindness of you and your wife in offering us your house for the time you are to be walking, and had circumstances been favourable I should certainly have accepted. I recall it as a Paradise. But I was just getting my wife away to a place in the country on Chichester harbour which I hope she will find agreeable enough to stay in till the end of July, and meanwhile I must be in town to be with my mother. I am going to Warwick (where I have never been) with them on Saturday – my mother proceeding to Stratford and Kenilworth from there. She is terrifyingly energetic for seventy-seven.  

Anxieties of several kinds; and the strain of accommodating myself to people who in many ways are now strangers to me, have consumed my time and energy. I have also had another matter to deal with, which I may want to discuss with you at a later opportunity. I am sorry for the pain you must have, as well as for the practical anxiety. Is it clear how much financial, as well as parental, responsibility will fall upon you if no arrangement can be made with your mother? How much more money will you have to make, and how are you going to make it? How much sacrifice is required?  

I shall be glad to accept credit at the Poetry Bookshop instead of payment for the Notes:
¹
will you signify this to Monro? I have asked several persons to buy their books there.  

I am not as much impressed by Manning’s
Scenes and Portraits
²
as I expected to be – it seems to me rather derivative as literature. But I think he is undoubtedly one of the very best prose writers we have, and if literary journalism won’t support him it ought not to support anybody. I am writing tonight to MacCarthy, and am also mentioning Miss Moore’s poems to him. Do you know what can be done to get the book some favourable reviews? I presume that Miss Weaver has sent you a copy – if not, ask her for it.  

I shall be glad to send something to Jackson, as soon as the pot has settled down and I can look through the steam and count my chickens.
³
It might fit in well with my general programme of literary criticism which
must by this time be fairly obvious to you, and I hope and believe fairly congenial: I mean that any innuendos I make at the expense of Milton, Keats, Shelley and the nineteenth century in general are part of a plan to help us rectify, so far as
I
can, the immense skew in public opinion toward our pantheon of literature. But I should like to discuss this with you in conversation.  

I do hope your holiday will be a happy one. Write to me when you return.  

Yours ever
T.S.E.

1–TSE, ‘Prose and Verse’,
Chapbook
, Apr. 1921.

2–Frederic Manning,
Scenes and Portraits
(1909).

3–September’s
To-Day
published ‘Maxims and Precepts’, a page of excerpts from TSE.

MS
Texas  

14 July 1921

9 Clarence Gate Gdns
(for letters, but still at Wigmore St)  

My dear Ottoline,  

I have been wondering for a long time how you have been and should so much like to know. It seems almost incredible that you should really be as well as you appeared the last time I saw you – after such a terrible ordeal.
¹
But I have been involved in the most trying complications since then, which have exhausted my time and strength completely. There has been a project for the revival of
Art&Letters
, or rather as it now appears, a quarterly of similar size under a new name. It has undergone various transformations and passed through various hands since it was first broached to me – Schiff has taken part in it, but the person to provide the money is Lady Rothermere.
²
I found myself in a very difficult situation in it, and I am sorry to say was obliged to call Vivien back from the country to help me out. It has called for exceptional tact. Even now Lady R. has not placed the project on a definite basis, and we are no further forward than we were when we started. It is not, in its present form, a scheme that could possibly replace the bank, and indeed what little I should get out of
it would be no more, I imagine, than any other contributors. But it is something that, once started, one feels could be made something of, in time, and would be an interesting attempt just now when there is
nothing
in London. But I cannot tell you how very exhausting and difficult the business has been – at least, I can tell you better when I see you, and the most fatiguing thing is the lack of definite progress.  

I tell you all this
in the strictest confidence
, of course: I particularly don’t want it mentioned at present. It is so vague. We have done all we can at present, and Vivien, who has been
invaluable
, is going back to the country at once. She is worn out. I had already got my brother in to live with me (at Wigmore Street) as we did not expect her to come back, and it is very confined and uncomfortable quarters for three people.  

Of course I did not expect to do any work while my family were here; but I have not even attended to ordinary and necessary business correspondence.

I am taking a short holiday at the end of next week, till the 2nd. Vivien sends her love and is very anxious about you, and will write soon. I am looking forward to seeing you in August –  

Affectionately
Tom.

1–In June 1921, DHL had published
Women in Love
, in which the character of Hermione Crich is based partly upon OM. When she read a typescript in 1917, she claimed to have been libelled and investigated the possibility of legal action, but none was taken.

2–Mary Lilian Harmsworth, née Share (d. 1937): Lady Rothermere. Daughter of George Wade Share, in 1893 she married Harold Sydney Harmsworth, first Viscount Rothermere (1868–1940). It was owing to Scofield Thayer, whom she met in New York, that she became the backer of TSE’s periodical
The Criterion
, 1922–5. The first issue (Oct. 1922) was to feature the first UK publication of
The Waste Land.

ms Beinecke  

20 July [1921]

9 Clarence Gate Gdns  

Dear Scofield  

Tom is so tired and hot, and is busy finishing off various things before he goes away for ten days of his holiday, that I am writing for him, altho’ my mind has left me and I am becoming gradually insane.  

T. says that there is no reason whatever for your leaving your 103º in the sun for the cool breezes of this island –
because
, so far, nothing in the least definite has been done by Lady Rothermere. She seems to be anxious to postpone any positive action, for private reasons of her own, – and nothing at present can be done. (In my own opinion there is nothing in the whole business). However, the one definite utterance I can report, from several sources, is that she does
not
wish or intend to amalgamate in any journal or to spill her cash for the cause of Literature. If she really puts her mind to anything it will be to purchase and run a small paper of her
own
. I am sorry, and Tom is sorry. The other would have been a good idea.

You must excuse Tom for any dilatoriness in writing, he has had his family on his hands since early in June. We have given up our at least cool and civilised flat to them, while we are encamped in an attic with a glass roof. So you see other people have troubles as well as yourself, and I believe you invited me to come and drown myself with you, once. I am ready at any moment. T. says delighted to review Joyce. That at least is definite. Will let you know if anything happens to, or with, Lady R., not that you will have any interest.  

Well, go and frizzle – we shall be in Paris in
October
, many D’s V.  

Yrs.
Vivien

MS
Timothy and Marian Seldes  

6 August 1921

9 Clarence Gate Gdns  

Dear Mr Seldes  

Thank you very much for the draft £10 10s 6d. I hope my next letter will arrive in better season.
²
 

I am glad to find that you also are an admirer of Swift – and an acute one.
³
 

Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot

1–Gilbert Seldes (1893–1970): American writer and cultural critic; managing editor of
The Dial
; see Glossary of Names.

2–Payment for TSE’s ‘London Letter’ in
Dial
71: 2 (Aug. 1921).

3–Seldes’s review of  Shaw,
Back to Methuselah
, compared it to
Gulliver’s Travels
(‘Struldbrugs and Supermen’,
Dial
71: 2).

MS
Mrs Burnham Finney  

8 August 1921

9 Clarence Gate Gdns  

Dear Rodker,  

I am very sorry to hear that the press has had to come to an end, after doing such good (and improving) work. I shan’t bother you about the £5.15.9 – I hope you will succeed in emerging from your difficulties. I wish you could put your experience in with someone else who wanted to run a
press. I had been hoping to see
Ulysses
emerge from your press. Is there no chance of your being associated with a printing business again?  

Yours
T.S.E.