The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (49 page)

1–John Quinn, American lawyer and patron of the arts: see Glossary of Names.

2–TSE’s pamphlet, published anonymously, was
Ezra Pound
: His Metric and Poetry
(New York: Knopf, 1918). On 9 Sept. 1917, EP had told Quinn, who donated $80 towards the publication, that TSE had ‘made an excellent job’ and that it should ‘at least choke off the imbeciles’ (
Selected Letters of Ezra Pound to John Quinn
,
1915–1924,
ed. Timothy Materer [1991], 129).

3–Quinn investigated an unfounded rumour, started by the editors of the
Little Review
, that Boni & Liveright planned to pirate
Prufrock
. Soon, on 25Mar., Albert Boni wrote to Quinn’s associate Justus Sheffield, ‘Regarding
Prufrock
by T. S. Eliot, will you kindly advise Mr. Quinn that I am under the impression that these poems have not been published as yet in book form in the States. If he cares to arrange for their American publication, I should be pleased to take up the matter with him or anyone else authorized to conclude arrangements.’ On 19 Apr., Quinn sent a copy of this note to TSE, adding: ‘They are a new firm, young Jews, and are sort of making a business of republishing uncopyrighted things or standard works on which copyright has expired … I don’t think you want to hook up with them. When you get enough material for a volume of suitable size for the American public, I don’t think there will be much difficulty about arranging for a publisher.’

4–The publisher Alfred Knopf (see Glossary of Names) had been worried about length when Quinn first recommended TSE to him on 6 Aug. 1917. All the same, Quinn sent the book, and Knopf replied on 17 Aug.: ‘I have read Eliot’s little book of poems with immense enjoyment. I do not know whether it is great poetry or not. I do know that it is great fun and I like it. I surely hope that he writes some more of it so that we can make a book of him over here. You see the present volume consists of only 32 pages of poetry, and it would be quite impossible to do anything with such a thing over here, except to give it away as an advertisement’ (NYPL).

5–‘Eeldrop and Appleplex’: Part II had been published in Sept. 1917, but TSE never continued it.

6–‘Homage à la Langue d’Oc’ and ‘Moeurs Contemporaines’ appeared in the
Little Review
in May. TSE included both in EP’s
Selected Poems
(1928): ‘One of Pound’s most indubitable claims to genuine originality’ was his ‘revivification of the Provençal and the early Italian poetry’ (xii).

7–EP became Foreign Editor of the
Little Review
in Mar. 1917 without informing Harriet Monroe (he was already ‘Foreign Correspondent’ for her magazine
Poetry
). In the
Little Review
(May) he compounded the offence: ‘Poetry has shown an unflagging courtesy to a lot of old fools and fogies whom I would have told to go to hell
tout pleinment
and
bonnement
.’ See
A History of ‘Poetry’ in Letters: The First Fifty Years,
ed. Joseph Parisi and Stephen Young (2002), 198–206.

8–‘He laughed like an irresponsible foetus’ (‘Mr. Apollinax’).

MS
Houghton

11 March 1918

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Mrs Eliot

I hope that you will not get tired of seeing my writing instead of Tom’s – at least I
think
it is instead of Tom’s this week. He may have managed to write a line at the Bank, but I know that all yesterday he never moved out of his chair except for meals. Writing incessantly, until very late at night. There is so much else to do, that the lectures always get put off till the last minute, and Sundays and Thursdays, being the days before the lectures, are
always terrible days. Tom looks very white and thin. The winter has tried him beyond endurance. I feel that he must not ever do this lecturing again. It is too much. It is more than one can endure to see a young man so worn and old-looking, and it is always through fretting that he has no time to do the only thing he wants to do, the only thing he likes. That is the truth of it – it is a good half of it sheer
over work
, and the other half is fretting. It wears me out to see him. I only wish we were near someone of his own family. Of course you must know how he longs to see you. Poetry and literature are the very only things Tom cares for or has the faintest interest in. And
not
the kind of Poetry or literature which
earns money
. He hates to write for money. The Banking frets and irks him
less
than all his other work, because it is so quite different and separate from what he cares about so intensely.

I wish Henry could come over here. Do you not think it would be good for Henry? I
know
it would be good for Tom. We are both pretty sure that Henry could find war work
once he got here
. There is a great deal to do with transport etc. Also the health standards for Red Cross are here
much lower
.

We have had beautiful spring weather this last week, quite hot and brilliant sunshine. But it is not very welcome I assure you. Thank you so
much
for the tea. It was a delight – do, if you can, send some more. Tom does so appreciate good tea. For myself unless I have china tea I never can drink it at all. It is difficult now to get any tea but the most inferior kinds.

Affectly,
Vivien.

Tom has got
two
new suits – one very dark and thick – the other a lightish one. Also a very jolly-looking over-coat. Also a new hat.

We have received all the parcels now and are most grateful.
            Sweater
            Muffler (this is very useful)
            Pyjamas
            Tea

MS
Texas

Wed[nesday] 13 March 1918

Flat [18 Crawford Mansions]

My dear Mrs Hutchinson

It was awfully good of you to ask us to this dance. I have really
never
disliked having to refuse an invitation so much as I did that. It was so
tempting to me. Dances are so few, and as you know, they mean a lot to me. I am trying to earn an honest (for a change) penny, by cinema acting, and have attained an unexpected success. I had to refuse the Sitwells – last night – for the same reason.

I do not like it. But one must do something, and I have been spending recklessly lately. I get so fearfully tired, for I am really a wretched crock, and always have been, but I hate to own it. So I can never do two things, but only one at a time. I have been envying you tonight.

I have lots to say to you, and I do so want to see you. It was really nice of you to ask us. I appreciated it. Will you come to
lunch
, at 2 o’clock, on
Saturday week? Please
do. I do
want
you to. It is the first time we have free. Please let me know, and do say yes.

Tom is impossible at present – very American and obstinate! Let me know about Sat. week – and do not say no. I have wanted a talk with you for a long time.

I had the delight of seeing Ottoline enter Selfridges today! It was wonderful. Write
here
and say
yes
to Saturday.

Yrs
V.E.

Published March 1918

Little Tichester,
¹
Bucks

Madam,

I shall be grateful if you will allow me to state in your columns (in response to numerous inquiries) that to the best of my knowledge and belief Captain Arthur Eliot, joint author of
The Better ’Ole,
²
is not, roughly speaking, a member of my family.

Yours, etc.,
T. S. Eliot

1–The fake address alludes to the music-hall comedian Little Tich (1867–1928), whose acts TSE later described as ‘an orgy of parody of the human race’ (‘In Memoriam: Marie Lloyd’, C. 1: 2, Jan. 1923, 193).

2–
The Better ’Ole,
‘A Fragment from France’, by Bruce Bairnsfather and Arthur Eliot, with music by Herman Darewski, opened at the Oxford Theatre, London, on 4 Aug. 1917. It ran for 811 performances, and was made into a silent film in 1918. Osbert Sitwell recorded that in the 1920s, visitors to TSE’s flat, 38 Burleigh Mansions, were told by TSE to ask at the lodge for ‘Captain Eliot’.

MS
Houghton

24 March 1918

18 Crawford Mansions,
Crawford St,
W.1

My dearest Mother,

I should be very much pained if you thought it was not worthwhile to write so often, just because you hear from me so seldom. I always look forward to your letters; of course they do not arrive so regularly as they are written, but I like to think of you, writing every Sunday. And I am always interested in what you have to say, and it doesn’t matter what you write about. It
is
, of course a check to one in writing, always finding oneself running up against subjects which it is wiser not to mention, and everything seems to lead to such subjects now. Do you remember the letters I wrote at the beginning of the war? I used to enjoy describing the appearances of London then. And even if one wrote so freely now, one would do it only as a kind of duty of letting people at a distance know.

The spring has come very early and very warm and dry. Yesterday was a boiling day for this time of year, the sky absolutely cloudless. We had five people to lunch, the most ambitious attempt we have ever made, and our small dining-library was packed. But it went off very well; we are excellent hosts, I think; and our servant did admirably. It is easier to have people to lunch than to dinner, of course, because of the impossibility of serving meat; at lunch fish and spaghetti suffice. Of course, entertaining is in some respects cheaper because of the restrictions.

This week brings me two holidays, Good Friday and the Monday after Easter. Also, after tomorrow, no lectures for a fortnight; and then only two weeks more of lectures after that. Then I shall be able to do something for the
Little Review
. I will send you a number of the
Egoist
. If you see the
Nation
, there is a review of mine (
Mysticism and Logic
) in this week’s (Sat. 23d Mch) issue.
¹

I had a nice letter from Ada this week, enclosing their wedding present. Has Shef had any rise in salary? She does not say so.

I look forward always to your next letter. In the last you mention sending the pyjamas. In case my letter went astray, I acknowledge them again, with much thanks. They will be very nice for Summer.

Goodbye, dear Mother
Your devoted son
Tom.

1–TSE, ‘Style and Thought’, unsigned review of BR,
Mysticism and Logic
(1917). On 17 June, Russell wrote to Miss Rinder of the No-Conscription Fellowship: ‘Much the best review of
Mysticism,
the only one with distinction, was Eliot’s in
Nation
’ (quoted in Ray Monk,
Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude,
519).

TS
Houghton

1 April 1918

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Eleanor,

I just received your charming letter this morning, and as today is a bank-holiday, I felt that I ought to try to make a more adequate return to it than the scrap I sent off to you yesterday. So you will be astonished to receive two letters at once.

I like your letters, especially lately, (if I can speak of your last before this as ‘lately’) because they give me more positively than anyone’s else from America the impression that everything is the same, and at the same time the impression that you are interestingly changing. You always begin by conjuring up the exact image of a Sunday afternoon and evening with baked beans and toast and cocoa and other nice things and firelight, quite as it always was, and conversation about little odd new people whom we had just met. But what is larger, your letter gave me the impression of your being quite untouched by the war, and as pursuing your own way quietly and persistently. Perhaps you think it was simply an accident or because the subject is depressing that you omitted all reference, and perhaps you hardly realise consciously yet what the effort to keep oneself unaffected by the war means, but I think it was instinctive force of character. Everyone else in America who writes to me is quite lost in the war and become quite uninteresting, and it makes me feel much more remote from them than if they lived in an oasis where the war had never been heard of. Most people cease to develop, or develop only in the same unpleasant way as each other. Of course in England the sentimental heroic phase is gone, but there are very few people who have been able quite to preserve values and stick to their own business. I think that the play writing has probably done a lot for you. I imagine that you have changed a great deal since I knew you, but changed in ways that I should like and understand; and I fancy that when I see you again it will be like making a new and interesting friend and at the same time an understood old one, I am looking to the hope that you will come over here for a long stay after the war, and I shall gladly take the responsibility of its being worth your while.

You appear to have been making a good many acquaintances. I think one ought always to be meeting new people, and indeed to spend more time with them than with one’s old friends, for various reasons – partly
that they demand more of one, (the former) and that one mustn’t lose one’s curiosity and adaptability.

I am very glad you like James. You have read some of the best. I believe that the
Aspern Papers
, the
American Scene
, and the
Middle Years
are very good. He is a wonderful conscientious artist, one of the very few, and more European than most English or Americans. I think he has about the keenest sense of Situation of any novelist, and his always alert intelligence is a perpetual delight. As a critic of America he is certainly unique. I am reading
R
[
oderick
]
Hudson
now in preparation for an article for the James number of the
Little Review
[August 1918]. I am writing on the Hawthorne influence on James, which comes out at the end in an astonishing unfinished book
The Sense of the Past
(read the scenario at the end).
Hudson
I find dull and stilted and old fashioned; but it is a very early one. I think you might like Turgenev. I admire him as much as any novelist, but especially in the
Sportsman’s Sketches
. His method looks simple and slight, but he is a consummate master with it.
A House of Gentlefolk
is good. I come more and more to demand that novels should be well written, and perceive more clearly the virtue and defects of the Victorians. George Eliot had a great talent, and wrote one great story,
Amos Barton
, and went steadily down hill afterwards.
¹
Her best stunt was just this exact realism of country life, as good in its way as anything in Russian, and she thought her business was philosophic tragedy.
Romola
is the most inartistic novel I have ever read. Every novelist has a knack for doing some one stunt, and the Victorians none of them were selfconscious enough. Thackeray could do the
Yellowplush Papers
and the Steyne part of
Vanity Fair
, but he had a picture of himself as a kindly satirist. Not at all, he hadn’t brains enough, nor courage enough to find out really what he could do well, which was high society sordidness, and do it. Standards of good writing in English are deplorably low. Meredith knew what he was doing, but unfortunately it wasn’t worth doing, don’t read him.
The Way of All Flesh
was written by a man who was not an artist and had no sense of style; it is too long, and the beginning of the book and the adventures of Ernest are dull, but the character of Christina is amazing. Butler Notebooks
> just happened to know this phase of English life particularly well; Christina is one of the finest pieces of dissection of mental dishonesty that I know anywhere; Butler pursues her relentlessly to her death. It is a book you must read. 

But one simply must read French; let there be no nonsense about that; it is the most serious modern literature.
²
Both for prose and poetry. It is hard work, and one will never know the language thoroughly, but no one can ever have a really trained taste with English alone. English writing is mostly very careless. When you can afford it I think you ought to subscribe to the
Little Review
. I would send it to you but it is published in New York. There is a good deal about it that is offensively aggressive, but it will keep one’s brain active. Make them send you back numbers for several months, so as to have James Joyce’s novel complete and you ought to have the February number, which is a most valuable collection and guide to modern French verse.
³
Your account of Shef’s criticism is amusing. Of course Shef is wholly a schoolmaster, and a very good one, but with little or no literary critical sense. No, he has more than that; I am unjust; he has extremely good ‘native perceptions’; but nothing does more harm to these perceptions than the profession of teaching; the conscientiousness which comes with responsibility toward young people. He is terribly conscientious. He has not preserved any wildness, any liberty.
⁴

I must really stop now. Thank you for your letter!

Affectionately
Tom