The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (34 page)

1–Many of its reviews were unsigned, but none is thought to be by TSE.

2–Naomi Royde-Smith (1875–1964), journalist and novelist, was literary editor of the
Westminster Gazette
, 1912–22.

3–TSE played chess by post with his father.

4–See [Anon.], ‘Fragmenta Aurea’, N., 26 Aug. 1916, 670–2: ‘Mr. T. S. Eliot’s work is far and away the best … [Prufrock] is … brilliant … freely executed, and here and there premising a richer and more mature sense of beauty.’

5–H. W. Massingham (1860–1924) was editor of
The Nation
, 1907–23.

6–Lady Ottoline Morrell, wealthy and eccentric hostess, whose manor house from 1915, Garsington, was an important retreat for writers, artists and opponents of the Great War; see Glossary of Names. 

TS
Houghton

6 September 1916

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Henry,

It is nearly 12 o’clock, and I am very tired, but I must write you just a line, because I shall never have more time than I have now. I enclose a photograph which I had taken for my Identity Book to go into the country; it is rather good, I think. Therefore I shall send this letter to someone to forward to you, as I am not sure that your address is 7 Fifth Avenue or some other number, it sounds too simple to be true. I am also going to get you a
Catholic Anthology
tomorrow. I had a very good review in the London
Nation
which I will send you. I feel a sort of posthumous pleasure in it. I often feel that ‘J.A.P.’ is a swan song, but I never mention the fact 
because Vivien is so exceedingly anxious that I shall equal it, and would be bitterly disappointed if I do not. So do not suggest to anyone how I feel. The present year has been, in some respects, the most awful nightmare of anxiety that the mind of man could conceive, but at least it is not dull, and it has its compensations. You have been awfully good to send us so much money, and we do appreciate it. I am always glad when you write to Vivien, for she is very fond of you. I have left her at Bosham for a few days longer; meanwhile I am working at my lectures. I will send you the syllabus when it is out. I cannot write more, but I will try to write a few lines from time to time.

Affectionately
Tom

TS
Texas

6 September 1916

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Mrs Hutchinson

I was very sorry to miss the opportunity of seeing you when you wrote to me at Bosham, but as I suddenly discovered [Roger] Fry’s
²
plans for taking you on the water, I thought that it would be a pity to interfere with them. When I returned to Bosham, I found that you had left – after I had been occupied for several days with a brother-in-law who turned up from France. Had I known that I should have no other opportunity I might not have been so generous as to yield precedence to the boating party. But I hope that I may see you when you return to town.

Sincerely yours
T. Stearns Eliot

1–Mary Hutchinson, hostess and patron of the arts; see Glossary of Names.

2–Roger Fry (1866–1934), artist and art critic; champion of Cézanne and organiser of the London Post-Impressionist exhibition of 1911, he also founded the Omega Workshops with Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant in 1912. Author of
Vision and Design
(1920) and
Civilization
(1928). 

TS
Professor David G. Williams

7 September 1916

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Professor Woods,

I must apologise for not having answered your exceedingly kind letter sooner, but I can only say that I have been under very great pressure. I want
to tell you how keenly I appreciate your kindness and that of the department in regard to my thesis, and that I shall try to justify its acceptance by passing a good examination when I come. I do not know at all when that can be. My plans are very subject to alteration still, and I have so much on foot that it is difficult for me to make plans for my visit to America. This autumn I am to give a course of six lectures in Yorkshire on Social, Philosophical and Religious Problems in Contemporary France (the syllabus is given as ‘Literature’ and the course is advertised as ‘Contemporary France’, but this is what it really is). If I can establish myself in this Oxford Extension Lecturing I shall abandon teaching, and shall also have a clear six months a year for whatever else I wish to do.

I have been very busy in Fleet Street journalism as well. I am doing considerable reviewing for the
Westminster Gazette
– all sorts of things from Durkheim
¹
and Boutroux
²
down to
Village Government in India
and even H. de Vere Stacpoole’s novels.
³
I got hold of their Indian books by telling them that I was a student of Sanskrit and Pali – whereupon they gave me several books on contemporary Indian politics. I have been doing some work for the
New Statesman
as well,
⁴
Jourdain has been very kind to me, and gives me practically any book I want to review for the
Monist
, besides articles. He will have two articles, I believe, in the October
Monist
– the Leibniz number – one on Leibniz and Bradley,
⁵
the other on Leibniz and Aristotle.
⁶
He wants me to do a series on English idealists of the last generation (Green, Caird etc.),
⁷
but I fear it will progress very slowly, as I have so little time. He has also given me an introduction to Stout,
⁸
in the hope of getting reviews for
Mind
. I was so busy, and so much taken up and concerned about my wife’s health, this last winter, that I was able to attend but very few meetings of the Aristotelian society, much less read the papers beforehand, but I hope to pay more attention to it this year.

I have just returned from a holiday with my wife at the village of Bosham, on the coast near Portsmouth. We had a delightful month, though 
disturbed for my wife by an attack of neuralgia at the end, which I fear will retract some of the benefit of her holiday. Part of the time we had the company of Lowes Dickinson. I have seen a good deal of BR, but it is impossible to report much news of him, for obvious reasons.
⁹

I am still clamouring for Patañjali. Please give my affectionate regards to Lanman when you see him.

Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot

1–TSE, ‘Durkheim’, rev. of Émile Durkheim,
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life: A Study in Religious Sociology
, trans. J. W. Swain, in
Westminster Gazette,
19 Aug. 1916.

2–TSE, review of
Philosophy
and War
by Émile Boutroux, in
IJE
27: 1 (Oct. 1916), 128.

3–Not reviewed.

4–TSE, ‘An American Critic’ (rev. of Charles Sarolea,
The French Renascence
), NS 7: 168 (24 June 1916); and a review of L.M. Bristol,
Social Adaptation
, in NS 7: 173 (29 July 1916).

5–TSE, ‘Leibniz’s Monads and Bradley’s Finite Centers’,
The Monist
26: 4 (Oct. 1916), 566–76.

6–TSE, ‘The Development of Leibniz’s Monadism’,
The Monist
26: 4 (Oct. 1916), 534–6.

7–Not written.

8–G. F. Stout (1860–1944), Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at St Andrews University, was editor of
Mind
, 1891–1920, but TSE did not contribute to it.

9–In June, after BR was convicted of impeding recruitment on account of his support for the No-Conscription Fellowship, he was sacked from his lectureship at Trinity College, Cambridge. 

TS
Chicago

7 September 1916

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Miss Monroe,

Many thanks for your kind letter. The title you have given will do excellently.
¹
The proof is all right except that I am T. S., not T. R. There is only one ‘T. R.’ I hope!
²

I wonder if you have yet received my review of H. D.’s
Iphigenia
?
³
I sent it about the middle of August, but being in the country I did not have the address of
Poetry
by me, and I remembered the number as 345 Cass Street.
⁴
However, if there is any intelligence in the Chicago post-office, the letter ought to reach you. If it does not, I have another copy of the review. I must apologise for the delay in any case. I also have been over-worked.

I am glad that you have taken the ‘Portrait’. All success to your anthology!

Thank you for your suggestions. I shall certainly try a note or two on you, 750 words or so. As I have not time, I am glad that you have not space, for anything long.

I shall be most interested to see the October
Poetry
.

I am interested in what you say about the
Dial
. Is there any chance for
us
with it now? It would be poetic justice if we could capture its columns. 
If you notice any signs of improvement in it, I should consider it a great kindness if you could let me see a copy.

Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot

1–‘Conversation Galante’, ‘La Figlia Che Piange’, ‘Mr Apollinax’, and ‘Morning at the Window’ appeared under the heading ‘Observations’,
Poetry
8: 6 (Sept. 1916), 292–5.

2–Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), President of the United States, 1901–9. This letter arrived after the magazine had been printed, so the initial was not corrected.

3–TSE, ‘Classics in English’,
Poetry
9: 2 (Nov. 1916), 101–4, a review of The Poets’ Translation Series, I–VI, of which
Iphigenia
was III.

4–The correct address was 543 Cass Street. 

MS
Houghton

28 September 1916

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Miss Monroe,

Thank you very much for the cheque for £5, which I received by the last mail. I hope to send you an attempt in prose before long.
¹
I shall be most interested to see a copy of the Anthology as soon as it appears.
²
Will you send me one? With all best wishes for its success

Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot

I like the new cover of
Poetry
very much.

1–This suggests that ‘Eeldrop and Appleplex’ may have been submitted to
Poetry
before appearing in
Little Review
, May and Sept. 1917.

2–
The New Poetry
, ed. Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin (New York, 1917), which TSE would review in
Egoist
4: 11 (Dec. 1917). 

MS
Houghton

Wed[nesday] 11 Oct[ober 1916]

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Henry –

I am writing this in the train on my way to Manchester. I am going to stay with friends at a place called Hale, which is about ten miles the other side of Manchester. This girl I have known all my life. She married a year before I did, and she has got two children. I have never seen her since I was married. I am only going to stay a week, or perhaps ten days. I know I shall hate it. I know my Father was a Lancashire man, and I was born in Lancs. altho’ I only lived there three weeks! but we have a number of old friends who live in Lancashire and in North Wales. They are most dreadful people really – very very rich manufacturing people – so provincial that my American friends tell me they are very much like Americans!! Tom has just met a few at Ilkley (in Yorkshire) when he went for his first lecture – and he says the same – he was struck with how much more like Americans they are than the South of England people. I rather 
dread this visit, because I have got out of the way of these people now – (not that I ever was in the way – having lived in London and in such a different set all my life) but I was more used to them when we used to go every year to spend our summer hols. at the country houses of one or another of them. They have the most beautiful country places you can imagine. I have not been up to the North for just two years now, and so much has happened in between – I feel a different person to the girl who sat in this train just exactly two years ago, going to be bridesmaid at the wedding of this girl I am now going to stay with.

I wanted to answer your letter before I left home but hadn’t time. Really Henry I am quite sure you
cannot
afford these constant five poundses. I
shall
thank you whatever you say – and I tell you I think you are nobly adorably generous and kind. It was very very welcome because we are very low at present – we have only got
about
£22 in the bank, and Tom won’t get any more till Christmas – so you can see we are in a fairly tight place. Unfortunately it has meant writing to your Father for help again. I can’t bear to do that. I should never have arranged to go on this visit if I had known how low we should be – for it has entailed getting more clothes than I should have needed otherwise – but I promised in July to go now, so I really could not back out. I liked your letter to me – thank you. I shan’t have my sinus trouble touched until I simply have to. I still hope to live it down. Did T. tell you they sent me to see a doctor three weeks ago? It was chiefly for my headaches (I don’t mean the sinus pain, these headaches are something quite separate and much
more
horrible!) So I went and he said I was chiefly starved! The headaches are called hemicranial migraine, and they are really ‘nerve storms’ affecting one whole side of me – they make me sick and feverish and they always last 15–24 hours – and I rise up weak and white as if I had been through some long and dreadful illness. He explained that they are caused in me by starvation – I do not eat enough to nourish my nervous system – and brain. They are rather rare, these headaches –
no drug touches
them. I have taken (before I knew the futility of it) 15–20 grains of phenacetin without having the slightest relief). However he gave me some medicine to take regularly, and told me not to economise – and I have certainly had them less often since. But it will take a long time, he said. I must have been iller last winter than I thought. I hope all this does not bore you. I have really a lot to say to you in this letter. Tom got your letter about two days ago – as he was out I opened and read it (we always do this with
family
letters) so that I read the postscript which you did not intend me to see. I had read it all sort of in one glance – so that by the time I’d realised it was private I had seen it all. However, 
it does not matter, Tom knows perfectly well that I share his feeling over the poetry – in fact, he knows that of the two of us perhaps I worry most – and rather more often get despondent. I look upon Tom’s poetry as real genius – I
do
think he is made to be a great writer –
a
poet. His prose is very good – but I think it will never be so good as his poetry. Anyhow, it is a
constant
canker with me that it is at a standstill – and every time that thought is in Tom’s mind I see it. I know how he feels – he has told me more than once – he feels
dried up
– not a bit as if he could write poetry even if he had the leisure and circumstances.

For this – I feel
very
strongly that Journalism is bad for Tom. It is. If he was not a poet it would be excellent for him. He loves it. But I am sure and certain that it will be the
ruin
of his poetry – if it goes on. For him – he ought never
to
have to write
. For you – I daresay it would not be at all a bad thing for you to have to write. I believe too, that you would be infinitely happier, doing journalism.

This brings me to what I had decided to speak to you about. After Tom got your last letter, he and I have talked about you, and thoroughly discussed the whole matter of you and your work and your life!! I hope you don’t mind. But even if you do I am going to tell you what conclusion Tom and I came to. Now please this is
quite
serious, and it is
Tom’s
just as much as
my
idea. Well, we want you to come and live in England. You are not doing well in your business – in America. It is a business you could do here – you might do much
better
here, – anyhow you couldn’t do much worse. You would have references and could get introductions.
But
,
chiefly
, you could fill out your life by writing. You say you long to write, and we believe you. We both think you could do well at journalism. Now directly Tom gets sufficient lectures1 to keep us, he will do no more
journalism
. He will keep on writing for
The Monist,
and will certainly write on Philosophy. He is, by the way, more interested in Philosophy than he was a year ago. The reaction against it is passing. But all his journalistic work you could take over. He could put you in to
more
than you could do, even now. I must stop now, and will continue again before you answer this. So wait. But Tom said he thought your life would be much more 
worth while
if you were living earning less than you are now, and
writing
, and living over here – than it can ever be as you are. You could risk it – you have no one to keep. Tom took on a much larger risk than that would be – a year ago – and I can swear he has never regretted it. Of course he has had me to shove him – I supply the motive power, and I
do
shove. If you were here I should shove you! Tom is writing to you about this.

I arrived here yesterday. I hate it. It is poisonous. I shall leave as soon as I decently can.

Until the next instalment –

Yrs.
Vivien