The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (29 page)

1–CCE’s biography of her father-in-law:
William Greenleaf Eliot: Minister, Educator, Philanthropist
(Boston and New York, 1904).

2–VHE had helped BR to prepare a collection of his articles, Justice in
War-Time
(1915).

3–The prestigious Aristotelian Society held regular meetings in London; from 1888 it published
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society
, an important outlet for philosophical debate.

4–After a term at High Wycombe, TSE had accepted a better post (£160 a year with dinner and tea) at Highgate Junior School, where the headmaster kept a place on the staff for young men of literary aspirations who needed to earn some money while trying to make their way. TSE taught French, Latin, lower mathematics, drawing, swimming, geography, history and baseball. John Betjeman, a pupil aged ten, presented ‘that dear good man’ with some poems headed
The Best of Betjeman,
but TSE never revealed his opinion of Betjeman’s work, only laughing when pressed by the author at intervals during their lifelong friendship. In a letter to TSE (17 Dec. 1936), Betjeman wrote: ‘I do remember you at Highgate … You were known as the American Master and I remember that a boy told me you were a poet but I didn’t believe it’ (John Betjeman,
Letters
, I, 1926–1951, ed. Candida Lycett Green, 163).

5–BR told OM on 10 Nov. that he loved TSE ‘as if he were my son’; and he added, ‘he is becoming much more of a man. He has a profound & quite unselfish devotion to his wife, & she really is very fond of him, but has impulses of cruelty from time to time’ (quoted in Ray Monk,
Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude
(1996), 444). 

MS
Professor David G. Williams

28 December 1915

3 Compayne Gdns, London
N.W.

Dear Professor Woods,

I am very glad to hear from you at last, and I shall be very glad to answer your questions and perform your commissions. But I cannot help thinking that a letter I sent you about two months ago went astray, as you ask a question which I thought I had answered, and do not answer some which I asked.

As for the typewritten notes, they were presented me by a man who borrowed mine to have a copy taken for himself. As I have my illegible original, I presented the copy to you.

I will write to Joachim at once about your inquiry. I have no reason for doubting that he will be in Oxford next year, or J. A. Smith either. These are undoubtedly the two best men in Oxford. Ross
¹
I suppose will be back at the end of the war. Beare
²
in Dublin is awfully good of course; but I do not think there is anyone in Oxford to touch Joachim and Smith.

Now as to my own questions. I should like to know as soon as possible whether I could
take my examinations in April
. I have a month’s holiday then, and could perhaps be two weeks in Cambridge, if I took the first boat west and the last east. I could not stay longer. Of course I should prefer to come in the summer, and
if it were in any way possible
to take my examinations in August, I should
prefer
to do so.
But I could not
get to America before the first week in August. I hope you can let me know very 
soon what arrangements I can make. I should also
very
much like to know more detail as to reading for the topicals: ancient philosophy to Aristotle, modern to Kant,
especially
psychology
and
logic
, and either:
         metaphysics
         modern phil.
from
Kant
         ancient  ”   ”   Aristotle.

Should you advise me to choose the latter? I have not read any in Greek, except some Plotinus, but I should like to take it.

I should be very grateful if you could answer these questions.

I hope you will send me the Patañjali here. It will revive very pleasant memories.

I should like to write you a more personal letter than this, and tell you of my own affairs and my life for the past three months – but I must postpone it until I write again.

With all best wishes for the New Year to yourself and Mrs Woods.

Very sincerely
Thomas S. Eliot

1–William Davis Ross (1877–1971), tutor in Philosophy at Oriel College, 1902–29, was in the Ministry of Munitions. TSE’s annotated copy of his translation of the
Metaphysica
(1908), purchased 1912, is in his library.

2–John Isaac Beare (1857?–1918), Regius Professor of Greek, University of Dublin, 1902–15, and a translator of Aristotle. 

MS
Huntington

10 January 1916

3 Compayne Gdns, London
N.W.
(please forward)

Dear Conrad

I owe you many apologies, but I have been most frightfully busy. The news is that I am to be at Highgate School, near town, next term, that I am starting to rewrite my thesis, that my wife has been very ill, that I have been taken up with the worries of finance and Vivien’s health, that my friend Jean Verdenal has been killed,
¹
that nothing has been seen of [Martin] Armstrong, who is now a captain in Kitchener’s army, that compulsion is coming in,
²
that my putative publisher will probably be conscripted, that we are very blue about the war, that living is going up, and that

I am
keen
about rhymes in-een:

As for literature, have you seen our Katholick Anthology? (Elk. Matthews).
³
It has not done very well, in spite of the name of Yeats. I have written nothing lately, too much absorbed by practical worries. Your idea of a kwaterly is very attractive but

But I repeat that

* Charles, the Chaplain.

But about the
P
[
oetry
]
Journal
, you see I would be thrown out of
Poetry
if I wrote for that, and
Poetry pays
– which is everything to me. My
only
paying publications are Poetry and the
Int. Journal of Ethics
. Do you know anything about some sons of bitches named Sherman French and Co.?
⁴
They wrote asking me to send them a book, and when I wrote back asking for terms they said they hadn’t known I was an Englishman and they could only boom books by native talent. If you are in with them you might tell them to butter their asses and bugger themselves, or something like that on my behalf, that my great-aunt Hannah married a Cabot,
⁵
and that I have written their name on bumwash.

I
hope
to write, when I have more detachment. But I am having a wonderful life nevertheless. I have
lived
through material for a score of long poems, in the last six months. An entirely different life from that I looked forward to two years ago. Cambridge seems to me a dull nightmare now – but then – it’s a good enough life in its way.

Living is going up. Eggs are three pence. Income tax heavy. Still, one can get a good dinner cheap, if one knows where to go. The heaviest item in London is rent – you can’t get a good flat much under £65, unless you go well out of town. How is your baby?
⁶
Paget
⁷
I see from time to time, and from him I hear that Armstrong says he has ‘left the old life behind him’ i.e. is a soldier and doesn’t care to see his pacific acquaintances. Myers
⁸
married a Belgian.

I have few ideas, and much work to do. Come to England in the spring? We shall be in London through July.

Yours ever
Tom.

Remember me to Jessie.
Congratters on the New book.
⁹
Who will have it here? I shall get one.

1–TSE had last seen him in autumn 1911. TSE’s
Prufrock and Other Observations
(1917) was to be dedicated ‘To Jean Verdenal 1889–1915’; and in
P
1909–1925
, the dedication of ‘Prufrock and Other Observations’ became ‘For Jean Verdenal, 1889–1915. Mort aux Dardanelles’.

2–Prime Minister Herbert Asquith introduced a Bill for the ‘compulsory attestation of single men of military age’ on 5 Jan., which led to conscription for single men (extended to married men in May).

3–EP claimed that Francis Meynell and other Roman Catholics had protested to Elkin Mathews about the title. Copies were still available in 1936.

4–Sherman French & Co., Beacon St, Boston: publishers of poetry books including Louis Untermeyer’s
First Love
(1911).

5–It was in fact TSE’s great-aunt Martha Stearns (Hannah’s sister) who married Joseph Sebastian Cabot. The Cabots were Boston Brahmins: one of the First Families of the City.

6–Conrad and Jessie Aiken’s baby John, b. Oct. 1913.

7–Unidentified.

8–R. H. Myers (1892–1985), music critic and writer, who was involved in postal censorship 1915–18.

9–Conrad Aiken,
Turns and Movies, and other tales in verse
(Boston, 1916). 

MS
McMaster

Tuesday [11 January 1916]

[34 Russell Chambers, Bury St,
London
W.C.
]

Dear Bertie,

This is wonderfully kind of you – really the last straw (so to speak) of generosity.
¹
I am very sorry you have to come back – and Vivien says you have been an angel to her – but of course I shall jump at the opportunity with the utmost gratitude. I am sure you have done
everything
possible and handled her in the very best way – better than I. I often wonder how things would have turned out but for you – I believe we shall owe her life to you, even.

I shall take the 10.30, and look forward to a talk with you before you go. Mrs Saich
²
is expecting you. She has made me very comfortable here.

Aff.
Tom

1–BR had taken VHE to Devon for a change of air. On 3 Jan. he told OM that he had ‘made a valiant attempt to get out of going away with Mrs E’, but that ‘the whole thing rather amused me, because it was so unlike the way things are conventionally supposed to happen’. He had talked to TSE, and felt ‘the responsibility for her health’, and that TSE was ‘willing to take my place, but reluctant on account of his work (He has to take a Ph.D degree at Harvard, and his only time for preparation is during the school holidays)’ (
Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Public Years
1914–1970,
ed. Nicholas Griffin [2001], 51). When BR returned to London, after five days, he invited TSE to join her in Devon at his expense.

2–The charwoman. 

MS
Houghton

14 January 1916

Torbay Hotel, Torquay

My dear father

I wrote to mother yesterday, and I want this to go by the same boat, as I have not written to you for so long. This is a very towny seaside place, but
much
more attractive than Eastbourne (Vivien is massaging my head, so my writing will be rather scrawly) with a real bay and a little harbour just in front of the hotel, with boats. It is wonderful to be here at the seaside in January, warm enough to go out without an overcoat. If I had some old clothes I should be inevitably tempted to seize a boat and put to sea – except that Vivien couldn’t come with me. There are some signs of war even in this remote western country – a torpedo boat from time to time, and a naval officer at the hotel who goes out in a motor boat, looking for submarines.

The west country is very lovely – rich and green, with bright red soil. We passed through Eliot country getting here – Somerset
¹
– quite near.

The post-time has nearly come, and Vivien wants to put in a word, as she hasn’t been able to write to you lately

[In Vivien’s hand:]