The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (38 page)

TS
Houghton

23 March 1917

18 Crawford Mansions, Crawford
St,
W.1 W.
1

Dear Henry,

This is only a short note, but it is perhaps better than nothing. I have never written to thank you for the draft of £10 which you sent at a very opportune moment, just in the nick of time to save me from withdrawing my £50 which I have managed to tuck away in a deposit account. Later, father sent me some money. He has been wonderfully good, but it does go against the grain for me to take it; I have taken so much and so thoughtlessly in the past. Just now I am earning £2 10s a week filing balance sheets in Lloyds bank; the work is not exhausting, and the pay may improve; besides, I have my evening class and what writing I do. I sent you a copy of the
New Statesman;
¹
I am trying to think of another article now.

Remember that every letter you write helps to keep me in touch with America, and that it is fully appreciated by both of us. The world seems a complete nightmare at times; nothing that could happen would be surprising. I wonder if there will ever come a time when we shall look back and find that the period we are living through seems quite unreal in retrospect.

I hope you will not go to Chicago unless you are quite certain it is a better thing. But you might, on the whole, prefer to be back there to living permanently in New York, wouldn’t you?

I shall not write any more, because I want to get into the habit of writing single pages like this more often.

Very affectionately,
Tom

1–He was probably referring here to ‘Reflections on Vers Libre’ (3Mar. 1917), although the issue of 17 Mar. carried his unsigned review of ‘Diderot’s Early Philosophical Works’.

MS
Texas

28 March 1917

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Mrs Hutchinson

I must apologize very deeply for not having answered your letter before. I was away when it came, and so could not answer before the afternoons 
you suggested; and I have been meaning to write to ask if I could come another time. I should like very much to come to see you soon. I am now at Lloyds Bank all day, and cannot leave till 5. I have no idea how long it takes from Cannon Street to Ravenscourt Park – perhaps you know better than I. But will you let me know whether I may come on a Saturday, or in the evening, if the afternoon is too late?

I was very sorry to hear that you have been ill. The weather must have handicapped you severely, but I hope you are very much better by now.

Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot

MS
Texas

29 March 1917

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Squire,

Here is another contribution, which I submit for your approval.
²

I should like to drop in and see you, but I am at present working in Lloyds Bank from 9.15 till 5. I have been there for the past ten days. It is not bad work, and much more comfortable and less wearing than schoolmastering, though (so far) even less remunerative. But I hope to preserve some energy for writing.

I shall try the
Dial
shortly, and then the
Century
, but have nothing on hand yet.

Sincerely
T. S. Eliot

Are you ever in town on Saturday at lunch time? I am free then.

1–J. C. Squire (1884–1958), poet and critic; literary editor of NS 1913–19, where he wrote as ‘Solomon Eagle’; later founding editor of
The London Mercury
, 1919–34.

2–Probably the unsigned review of Gamaliel Bradford,
Union Portraits
, in NS 9 (21 Apr. 1917); he would send a copy of the book to his mother for Christmas.

MS
Houghton

4 April 1917

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Charlotte

I feel very much ashamed of not having written sooner to thank you for sending the photos. We were delighted with them – they are such jolly 
ones. I am quite proud of my nieces (it seems so odd to have nieces.) I think that big head of the little one – Charlotte – is most artistic. I am having it framed. I like the way she has her hair cut. I am always threatening Tom to cut my hair like that! But he won’t let me. I am writing on the eventful day of American’s declaration of war.
¹
No news
seems
so thrilling as it used to, as we are no longer allowed posters – But today’s news is very exciting – rather unpleasant but exciting to me personally. You said a few things in yr. last letter that made me think you may feel sympathetically about the war – or war. I am sure you will hate the thought of yr. husband’s possibly going to fight. But I suppose, and hope and pray, that the married men will not be conscripted for a long time – and if one dared to think that the war ever ever will be over one wd. hope it wd. be over before that. I can’t help feeling, indeed I
know
that many of you in America simply don’t know what war means – I mean what
this
war means. I don’t suppose you ever will, as we have known it. This sounds a depressing letter, but I have got a bad sore throat, and it does not help towards looking on the bright side of things, if there is such a side!

Tom and I live a scrambling, over worked, hand-to-mouth sort of existence, which I know it wd, be quite useless to describe to
anyone
who does not see us living it. We muddle along somehow, and time flies. I should like you to see our flat. It is the one thing I do really take a pride in – I mean seem to have succeeded in. It means an extraordinary lot to me – I am a person who simply does not exist without a home, and am always fussing with it. Well, please excuse a very dull letter – most of what one wd. like to say one can’t.

Affectly Vivien

1–President Wilson had addressed Congress seeking a declaration of war on 2 Apr. but the USA’s formal declaration of war on Germany did not in fact follow until 6 Apr.

MS
Houghton

Easter Sunday 8 April [1917]

18 Crawford Mansions

My dear Mrs Eliot

We have just been home to lunch and tea. We nearly always go on Sundays. We got back here at 6. Today the time has been changed.
¹
We all had to put our clocks on one hour. It is such a good idea, I think. So now, although by our new time it is 7.30 p.m. it is broad daylight. In another 
month it will be light up till nearly 9. ocl. I love long days. But summer is so pitifully short, and winter so hideously long. I never can quite enjoy the summer, because I can’t forget the terrible winter that has gone, and the terrible one so soon to come. Life rushes by – with us. Somehow it all seems a long scramble, and
effort
, and one scarcely has time to think. A good thing, perhaps. Please excuse pencil. I cannot write in ink except on the smoothest paper. The
act
of writing is a terrible effort to me. My mind is full of things to say, but my hand will not obey my mind. I write laboriously and illegibly.

Tom is going on smoothly at the Bank. His health is
much
improved since he went there. There is a marked change in him. Everyone notices it. His nerves are so much better – he does not have those black silent moods, and the irritability. Those months when he was entirely at home were very very trying. He
writes
better, feels better and happier and has better health when he knows that money (however
little
) is
assured
, and coming in regularly – even tho’ he has only a few hours a day to write in, than when he has
all
day – and nothing settled, nothing
sure
. I am so
thankful
this work is congenial to him. I never thought it would be. It was quite a surprise to me to find he liked it.

I long for the end of the war (such an expression is most futile to express my longing) and when we can come to America. The fact that America has declared war is rather terrible to me. I so dread that Tom might have, some day, to fight. And yet I think he would almost like to. You, over there, do not realise the bad and dreadful effect war has on the characters of young men (and old men). If they are nervous and highly strung, (as Tom is, and also my brother) they become quite changed. A sort of desperation, and demoralisation of their minds, brains, and character. I have seen it so, so often. It is one of the most dreadful things. But how can they help it?

I must stop now. I am very tired.

Affectly,
Vivien

1–British Summer Time was introduced as a wartime measure in 1916.

MS
Houghton

11 April 1917

18 Crawford Mansions

Dearest Mother

I have been wondering very much what you think now, and am looking forward to your letters. Do you like [President Woodrow] Wilson any better? I am sure that it was the right thing, and had been expecting it for 
some little time. It ought to make his two messages more important in the eyes of those who were not inclined to take them very seriously at the time. The German declaration that American armed liners would be considered as pirates was the last touch. I am pleased for several reasons, but chiefly because I think the war was so momentous as it was, that winding it up as a world war will be the best chance now for a satisfactory conclusion. I wish that our country might have a chance to refresh its memory as to what war really is like, – now that it is such a very vivid thing to Europe. On the other hand I hope now that it will not last long enough for that. You will be having all the excitement and bustle of war without the horrors and despairs – except those which will follow from taxation. It will be very interesting to hear from you how St Louis is taking the affair (I take the society meetings, national anthems, etc. for granted – I mean what the different nationalities really feel, and what the lower classes think). I can imagine the mob breaking the windows of Faust’s Restaurant, and sacking the Anhaüser-Busch,
¹
and Mr Busch giving a million dollars toward national defense.

I wonder what the Service Act will be.
²
I don’t suppose persons like myself would be called up for a couple of years, and it will be over before that. Peters
³
and Little
⁴
(Leon) are no doubt patrolling the seas – they were in the naval reserve; and various others who were in the Troop or the Battery – George Parker
⁵
you remember, our cousin – are now in camp. I don’t envy them. I certainly do not feel in a position to go until ‘called out’, though Vivien has been rather troubled – I should go then, but not till then.

I am getting on nicely in my work at the bank, and like it. It is wonderful to find something to do in wartime which is less fatiguing than teaching, and the men at the bank are very pleasant. I want to find out something about the science of money while I am at it: it is an extraordinarily interesting subject. Besides, Vivien was very anxious about my health while I was at home – it seemed to get worse and worse; and now I am better and more cheerful she is much happier. Then too I have felt more creative lately. 
Besides my lectures, which are now on Ruskin and involve some reading in political economy, and considerable reviewing for Jourdain (mostly anthropology and biology lately)
⁶
I have been doing some writing – mostly in French,
⁷
curiously enough it has taken me that way – and some poems in French which will come out in the
Little Review
⁸
in Chicago. I shall probably appear in that every month. I start with a sort of dialogue serial (prose) which will be continued.
⁹
Besides, I have some ideas for an Article on Introspective Consciousness.
¹⁰
My essay in the
Statesman
,
¹¹
which should have reached you by this time, brought me several compliments.

The weather has been fearful lately, snowing every day, and melting into slush. Poor Vivien has felt it in several ways, including
neuralgia
, rheumatism and catarrh. On the whole she is much better, but for the weather. I look forward to your seeing her well and happy, – one does not dare say next summer, but one hopes it. She has taken a most positive affection for you, and talks of you very often.

I must stop now.

With very much love

Your devoted son
Tom

1–Faust’s was a German-owned restaurant, Anheuser-Busch a big brewery: both in St Louis.

2–The Selective Service Act, introduced on 18May, required the registration of all men aged 21–30 (later extended to 18–45). Exemptions from service were granted to those with dependent families, indispensable duties at home, or physical disabilities.

3–Harold Peters, TSE’s Harvard room-mate and sailing companion; see Glossary of Names.

4–Leon Little (1887–1968), a Harvard classmate, served as a lieutenant and was awarded the Navy Cross.

5–George Alanson Parker (1887–1966), lawyer and classmate; he was descended, like TSE, from Colonel Charles Cushing (1744–1809).

6–Reviews of William Temple’s Mens Creatrix (1917) and R. G. Collingwood’s
Religion and Phillosophy
(1916), in
IJE
, July 1917.

7–‘I thought I’d dried up completely. I hadn’t written anything for some time and was rather desperate. I started writing a few things in French and found I
could
… I think it was that when I was writing in French I didn’t take the poems so seriously, and that not taking them seriously, I wasn’t so worried about not being able to write. I did these things as a sort of
tour de force
to see what I could do. That went on for some months … then I suddenly began writing in English again and lost all desire to go on with French. I think it was just something that helped me get started again’ (‘The Art of Poetry, 1: T. S. Eliot’,
Paris Review
21 [Spring/Summer 1959], 47–70).

8–‘Le directeur’, ‘Mélange adultère de tout’, ‘Lune de miel’ and ‘The Hippopotamus’, were to be published in
Little Review
4: 3 (July 1917). Margaret C. Anderson (1890–1973) had founded the
Little Review
in 1914. EP was its foreign editor, 1917–19.

9–‘Eeldrop and Appleplex’,
Little Review
4: 1 (May 1917), 7–11.

10–Probably never written.

11–‘Reflections on Vers Libre’.