The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (135 page)

1–See Ernst Robert Curtius, ‘Balzac’,
C
. 1: 2 (Jan. 1923), 105–18.

2–Curtius, ‘Marcel Proust’,
Neue Merkur
, Feb. 1922.

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 preferable 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
.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

TS
copy Valerie 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 , IN TIME.

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.

Can I lucidify further. The
Criterion
is ‘good’ so long as it is a tube down which Lady R.’s or someone elses funds flow toward YOU.

As a hole into which our funds < = or funds to be raised by us>, wd. have to be poured to feed IT, it is
not
good. It is another printer to feed.

It is estimable as a high court of letters, position now held by the
Dial
, against which there is no appeal save to you (or possibly to the Three Mts. Press)
incontrastabile
[
sic
]
e gravoso.
¹

It is merely a question of whether the bank is more exhausting than
Crit
. plus 6
Times
articles, plus six squibs for
Dial
. Plus any further or more lucrative sinches you cd. devise.

Lady R. is a natural force, to be exploited. One does not ask reason (ratio), rationationation of the ocean currents.

As next move, I suggest that you write to her, admitting dullness, saying that Stsby. is the best of a set of necessary evils. That the format is universally commended. That I have tried to communicate with her and have written to you to know her whereabouts.

Is she paying the bills? to date?? As long as she goes on doing that

Seems to me easier (IF the cash will continue to flow from Lady R.) to keep her tolerating a ‘politic’ dullness, holding her to bait of greater liveliness at a steadily disappearing future,

THAN to find new capital. ANY other owner wd. have ideas about the magazine, and probably want to WRITE in it, and have his or her friends in greater numbers.

The last subscriber to B[el] E[sprit] (new this week) talked of starting a magazine with Hem.
²
(upon which Hem brought him to me) but he wdn’t stand the
Crit
. for ten minutes. he’d want Sandburg or Lindsey, or possibly Sterling
³
(he don’t admire the latter’s poesy, but thinks him the best fooker in California.) says ‘George is a great boy.’

I can’t see ANY capital for a conservative quarterly. Apart from Thayer and Lady R. all the capital I know wd. prefer my position to yours.

I dont see a ‘jeunes’ magazine. Hueffer and I cdnt. see a ‘jeunes’ magazine two years ago. Hence the 3 Mts. brochures. Minimum expense on printing. For maximum meaning.

When I say I want you out of bank I mean I want you relieved of strain before you
crever
[burst].

I agree with Lenin, that those who have lived under the old dispensation are no good; only hope of a node of civilization lies in bringing in new blood.

Hem. is more intelligent than Saintsbury. I dont expect anyone save me and Linc. Steffens,
⁴
and Soiseau [Bird], and Hem’s present boss to think so, YET. For purposes of an Eng. Quarterly, Stsb. is more opportune.

You did? get the fact that I approved of yr. editing; of the editorial feat of No. 1. Crit. Misunderstanding seems to lie in interpretation [of] my loose phrase ‘become a property’, used at a time when I was ignorant and wholly unsuspicious of a rift in the Eliot–Rothermere lute, thinking the £1200 of opening expenses guaranteed by Lady R.

Has she seen the favourable press notices? and does she know edtn. is nearly sold out?

I think youre right about ole Fraser, never heard of the other ole blokes. Whibley is a complete shit who used to write horsepiss in the
Daily Mail,
but is said to have written good 17th century essays at one time.

Have I, caro mio, have I protested against anything except the expenditure of £500, for the shadow of a name, substance of which cd. be had for the grabbing.??

Vale et me ama
[farewell and with my love]

E.
⁵