The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (26 page)

1–C. R. Lanman (1850–1941), Harvard authority on the ancient languages and culture of India, with whom TSE studied Sanskrit and Pali, 1911–13. He had helped to secure a travelling scholarship for TSE. He edited
The Sanskrit Reader
, TSE’s copy of which, inscribed ‘Cambridge 1912’, is in his personal library. On 6 May 1912, Lanman gave TSE a Sanskrit edition of
The Twenty-Eight Upanishads
(Bombay, 1906), now at King’s. Tipped in is Lanman’s hand-written key including ‘Br. hada-ran. yaka, 220 (v. 1, 2, 3), Da-da-da =
dāmyata
datta dayadhvam
’. 

MS
Harvard

10 July 1915

3 Compayne Gdns

Dear Dean Briggs,

I must apologise for not having written sooner my final report on my work at Oxford. Unusual preoccupations have prevented me from attending to even very pressing correspondence.

During the second term I attended two courses of lectures, one by Mr H. H. Joachim, my tutor, and one by Professor J. A. Smith. I attended a small class reading a text of Plotinus with Professor J. A. Stewart, was engaged in reading an Aristotle text with Mr Joachim, and once a week brought Mr Joachim papers on the philosophy of Plato.

In the last term I continued attendance at lectures by Mr Joachim and Professor Smith, completed the reading of the text with Mr Joachim, and brought Mr Joachim weekly papers on the philosophy of Aristotle. He has, he tells me, written to Professor Woods some account of my work.
¹

I thoroughly appreciated the privilege of a year of study abroad, and at Oxford, and feel deeply grateful to the department and to the committee. I only wish that I could express my appreciation by my further work at Harvard, but changes in my plans have made that impossible. I have decided to remain in London, or at least in England, and attempt to engage in literary work, hoping to be able to find a position in a school at the same time.

I wish also to announce my marriage to Miss Vivien Haigh-Wood of London, on the 26th June. Our marriage was accelerated by events connected with the war.

Believe me to remain
yours faithfully
Thomas Stearns Eliot

1–Joachim wrote on 18 June that TSE had ‘worked most thoroughly and enthusiastically’ and ‘undoubtedly made good progress’; his essays showed ‘the extent and solidity of his knowledge of Greek Philosophy’. 

MS
Hornbake

23 July 1915

3 Compayne Gdns

My dear Father,

I am writing the night before I sail. This letter I am going to leave with Vivien, and she is to send it to you, I have told her, in case anything happens to me before I arrive home. There is very little danger, I am sure. But if anything did happen, I want to feel that you, as well as her own family, would look after her future as much as you could from that side of the ocean.
²

My one certain hope is that you will see that she gets the $5,000.00 insurance which you were so good to take out for me. She will need it. She will be in a most difficult position. Her own family are in very straitened circumstances owing to the war, and I know that her pride would make her want to earn her own living. This would be very hard for her at first, with the weight of my loss.

I have taken on a great responsibility. She has been ready to sacrifice everything for me. I am very very sorry that I have been forced to write so much about our affairs only, and that you know so little of her. But now that we have been married a month, I am
convinced
that she has been the one person for me. She has everything to give that I want, and she gives it.

I owe her everything. I have married her on nothing, and she knew it and was willing, for my sake. She had nothing to gain by marrying me. I have imposed upon you very much, but upon her more, and I know you will help to make her life less difficult.

Your loving son
Tom.

She has not seen this.
I will seal it and give it her to keep in case of emergency.

1–This unposted letter was found among VHE’s papers and sold by her brother after TSE’s death.

2–The
Lusitania
had been sunk in May 1915. BR told O Mthat VHE understandably refused ‘to go to see [TSE’s] people, for fear of submarines’ (
Autobiography
, II [1968], 54). 

MS
Beinecke

2 August 1915

3 Compayne Gdns

Dear Scofield,

Thanks very much for your cable –
and
for your gratters and invitation. Charmed as I should be to avail myself of the latter, I fear it is impossible at
present
. Tom has gone to America without me, and arrived yesterday. Rather unwise perhaps to leave so attractive a wife alone and to her own devices! However – I did not at all want to go – I am frightened of the voyage and the submarines – and preferred to remain and play my own little games alone. But all the Eliots appear to have an overwhelming desire to see me, and have written me such charming letters of welcome into their select family, that I am sure I
shall
have to go over very soon – probably in the spring, so I hope you will then repeat your invitation.

Do you remember my mentioning a studio flat which I rather hankered to take, while you were here? Well, Tom and I took it – furnished – and lived there for about three weeks before he went, and I kept it on another week after he had gone. It was a delightful place, I wish you could have seen it. I am here now for three days, and am then going to join Lucy [Thayer] at Thyme Cottage. Tom is supposed to be coming back by September 1st, and after we have had a second honeymoon! we shall have to set up a house or a flat of our own in London of course. It is very nice being Mrs Stearns-Eliot (notice the hyphen). I am very popular with Tom’s friends – and who do you think in
particular
? No less a person than Bertrand Russell!! He is all over me, is Bertie, and I simply love him. I am dining with him next week. I see a good deal of the Pounds, of course, and between ourselves, find them rather boring. However, they are very nice to me, and seek me out a lot, so I suppose I should feel honoured! I was at the Savoy the other night, with two male friends who are consoling the grass widow, and I thought of you, Scofield, and that very nice dinner which cost you such an
awful
lot that we had there. You ought really to be over here now, just to think of the dinners in Soho we could do – and grass widows do seem, I find, to be so very
very
attractive,
much more
than spinsters! Now W H Y is that?

Butler-Thwing is in the
5th Lancers!
so is of course bullied
¹
to death. But he has done well – it is a very crack regiment.

Perhaps you will see Tom while he is there – if so remember me kindly to him. 

Have you seen the new
Blast
?

I am mentioned in it – as the Poet’s Bride, and blessings are called down on my head.
²

Do you remember that terrible dinner with [Wyndham] Lewis?Why on earth were you so cross? But what an impossible man! I hope you were amused at the ‘lost woman’ incident! I did that rather well.

Are you married yet? If not why not? If you can manage to refrain from marriage (it
is
catching I know!) do come over here before long and let us resume our childish acquaintance, and youthful prattle. I don’t think I’m really keen on meeting you in U.S.A. London’s far better – is it not so? Please answer this – this address will always find me.

Vivien S-E.

1–Reading uncertain.

2–Wyndham Lewis, in the ‘Blasts and Blesses’ section of
Blast
2 (July 1915, 93), bestows his final blessings upon ‘The Poet’s Bride (June 28th)’. 

MS
Huntington

5 August [1915]

Eastern Point, Gloucester,
Massachusetts

My dear Conrad,

I wonder where you are. I should rejoice to hear that you are in Cambridge. If you are, let me know
at once!
I am here for a
limited
engagement
– three weeks only. Have you heard my news? I was married on June 26 to Miss Vivien Haigh-Wood of London England. I mean to try to go back there to live, and have a job in a school for next year in point of fact; but I have agreed to my family’s wish that I should complete my work and take my Ph.D., so it’s not yet certain whether I stay this winter or return for it later. What I want is MONEY!$!£!! We are hard up! War!

BLAST

THE KAISER ED. GREY
¹

THE AMERICAN AMBASSADORS
(
SÄMTLICH
)
²

THE DEMOCRATS

BLESS

CONSTANTINOPLE
³

T. S. ELIOT HARRIET
⁴

GEN. BOBO GEN. BLOT
⁵

Now
tell me
your
news. I hear you have plunged into the
Atlantic
.
⁶
Good for it.

Yours
T. S. E.

1–Sir Edward Grey, third baronet, later Viscount Grey of Fallodon (1862–1933); Liberal politician and Foreign Secretary, 1905–16.

2–‘to a man’: the US Ambassador Walter Hines Page was in dispute with the Foreign Office about the right of Americans to pursue ‘neutral trade’ at sea during wartime. Page’s letter of 17 July and the ensuing correspondence were published as ‘Rights of Neutrals at Sea’,
The Times
, 4 Aug. 1915, 5.

3–During the Dardanelles Campaign, 1915, the fate of Constantinople was crucial to both Allies and the Germans.

4–Harriet Monroe.

5–In July, the US cruiser
Washington
had steamed to Haiti in response to a revolt of rebel troops under Dr Rosalvo Bobo. The rebels withdrew on the arrival of government forces under General Blot, but at the end of the month, after mass executions and riots, US forces invaded.

6–Aiken’s poem ‘Rupert Brooke’ was published in the
Atlantic Monthly
in July.

MS
Beinecke

Monday [9 August 1915]

Eastern Point, Gloucester

My dear Scofield

It is very pleasant to hear from you after such a long silence broken only by the medium of the transatlantic cable.
¹
Alas! a few miles can separate friends as effectually as an ocean. Heaven alone, if we concede it omniscience, is the guardian of the secrets of the future. This weekend I have promised to some relatives in Weston, and by next weekend I may be gone. I must always be one of the first to testify to your taste for hospitality, but in the limited time that I have, we should be obliged to meet, if at all, on neutral ground; if there is any likelihood of your coming to Boston next week, let me know.

I must confess that at the time I was surprised at the extent to which you were ‘nettled’. You had never given me the impression that your interest in the lady was exclusive – or indeed in the slightest degree a pursuit: and as you did not give
her
this impression, I presumed that I had wounded your vanity rather than thwarted your passion. If I was in error, at least Time (let us say) is the anodyne of disappointment rather than the separation of friends.

Sincerely yours
Thomas Stearns Eliot

1–Scofield Thayer’s letter has not survived. 

MS
Harvard

16 August [1915]

Eastern Point, Gloucester

Dear Professor Woods,

I now expect to return to Cambridge in September. I have seen Professor Palmer,
¹
and also Professor Perry,
²
who thinks that the difficulties of preparation while teaching school would be very great. My only compunction is toward the headmaster: I have given him five weeks notice, but he has lost a month through having engaged me.

Unfortunately I have just had word that my wife is very ill in London, so I must go at once, sailing Saturday. I do not anticipate that her illness will prevent my return before the opening of college; but if it is serious enough to detain me I will cable to you.

Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot

Address as above until Saturday: after that 3 Compayne Gardens, London,
N.W.

1–G. Herbert Palmer (1842–1933), Professor of Philosophy, with whom TSE studied History of Ancient Philosophy, 1907–8, and Ethics, 1912–13. Palmer later wrote that, though TSE had a mind of ‘extraordinary power and sensitiveness’, he ‘allowed himself to be turned into weak aestheticism by the influence of certain literary cliques in London’ (cited in Manju Jain,
T. S. Eliot and American Philosophy
(1992), 34).

2–Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957), chairman of the Philosophy Department, Harvard, 1906–14.