The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (50 page)

1–TSE wrote in ‘The Hawthorne Aspect’ that all of George Eliot’s ‘genuine feeling went into the visual realism of
Amos Barton’
(
Little Review
5: 4, Aug. 1918).

2–In ‘Contemporanea’ (on anthologies of French poetry), TSE professed: ‘any one who is writing or seriously criticizing indigenous verse should know the French’ (
Egoist
5: 6, June– July 1918).

3–The first episode of
Ulysses
had appeared in the Mar. issue; EP’s ‘A Study in French Poets’ came out in Feb.

4–TSE’s brother-in-law Alfred Sheffield. On 13 Nov. 1917, Robert Frost, who had been taught by him at Harvard, wrote to his daughter Lesley Frost, who was taught by him at Wellesley: ‘Sheffield is a clever cut-and-dried mind, but he is a survival. Remember how he drove me out of Harvard.’

MS
McMaster

13 April 1918

[London]

Dear Bertie,

I wanted to write you a line before Tuesday – as I should not, of course, be able to be present, as unfortunately on previous occasions.
¹
I am glad 
to hear that Bosanquet and others have turned out so well
²
– I think that is awfully gratifying. Demos
³
told me that he had been giving you bibliography on behaviourism. I am not convinced that Watson
⁴
and those people are really very important. But the avenue of investigation which you suggested to me in a conversation a few weeks ago impressed me very deeply, and I hope you will go in for it very hard. It struck me as important as anything to be done; besides, it would be very amusing to stand the biological sciences on their heads that way.

With all sincerest good wishes.

Yours as ever
Tom

1–BR was coming to the end of a course of eight lectures on ‘The Philosophy of Logical Atomism’, which were printed in
The Monist
between Oct. 1918 and July 1919, and collected in
Logic and Knowledge: Essays
1901–1950
, ed. Robert C. Marsh (1956).

2–Writing in a weekly newspaper,
The Tribunal
, on 3 Jan., BR alleged that American soldiers would be employed as strike-breakers in England, ‘an occupation to which [they were] accustomed when at home’. He was charged at Bow Street on 10 Feb. with ‘having in a printed publication made certain statements likely to prejudice His Majesty’s relations with the United States of America’, found guilty, and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment in the Second Division. Wishing to continue his work in Brixton, and to enjoy maximum privileges, he sought a transfer to the First Division by asking ‘eminent philosophers’, including Bernard Bosanquet (1848–1923), to petition the Home Secretary. The appeal was successful, and TSE was able to visit him in prison.

3–Raphael Demos (1892–1968), philosopher, had reached Harvard from Asia Minor in 1913, and worked as a waiter to pay his doctoral fees. An assistant in philosophy, 1916–17, he was planning to spend a year at Cambridge before returning to Harvard as an instructor. While in England he would call on TSE at the bank, and assist him with modern Greek translation. He was ultimately to become Professor of Philosophy at Harvard, 1919–62; author of
The Philosophy of Plato
(1939).

4–John Watson (1878–1958), American psychologist and founder of behaviourism; author of
Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology
(1914). BR attacked him in
The Analysis of Mind
(1921).

MS
Houghton

28 April 1918

18 Crawford Mansions

Dearest Mother,

I received a letter from you and two newspapers by the last mail. I was very glad to get both. The newspapers, however, made me think that while America is very conscientiously ‘conserving foodstuffs’ etc. she is as wasteful of paper as ever. I fear it would take very serious privation indeed to make Americans realise the wastefulness of such huge papers filled with nonsense and personalities. But can nothing be said? Will you not tell people that all through Europe the greatest economy is now exercised in the use of paper; that newspapers are reduced to the smallest possible
compass, and that the public has lost nothing thereby? The forests won’t hold out indefinitely in any case; and if less pulp were wasted on newspapers, good books could perhaps be printed more cheaply.

Judging from American newspapers, the war seems to have affected the country not very seriously yet. I don’t mean that it is not the chief subject of interest, but that it is
simply
the chief subject of interest, and not the obsessing nightmare that it is to Europe. And we can’t make you realise three thousand miles away all that that means. Even with all your privations and difficulties. Your papers talk about the ‘fight for civilisation’; do they realise either what civilisation means or what the fight for it means? We are all immeasurably and irremediably altered over here by the last three years.

Harold Peters has been in Scotland lately; I have been hoping that he can get up to London. That would be very interesting.

We should be glad of anything you can send, but I do not know what things are possible.

My courses are over, I am glad to say. Both classes want me back next year, one for a course on Elizabethan Literature, the other for a course on the Development of English Poetry. I shall keep up the first one, if it continues, but the other class, the one which started this year, I do not think will be worth my while. They paid me one pound per lecture, but out of that travelling expenses and a dinner in town (not having time to go back) always took 3/-, and the time, by no means inconsiderable, of preparation must be counted too. So I might devote my time more profitably to other things.

The spring is getting on, but we have had no truly warm weather yet, though the trees and bushes are well out.

I hope to write more regularly now.

Your very affectionate son
Tom

MS
Texas

1 May 1918

[Marlow]

Dear Mrs Hutchinson

I only got your note late last night just as I was going to Marlow and did not have time to answer. I should love to come but had arranged sometime ahead to dine with Pound and some others on Thursday. It is annoying because we are at Marlow now and it limits our chances of seeing anyone.
I am very sorry to hear that you are going to Wittering so soon, but I hope that you do not mean what you say, and that it will be only intermittent. Surely you will be up for a little while in June.

Yours
T. S. Eliot

I hope the book will amuse [incomplete: the margin of the paper is torn]

MS
Houghton

10 May 1918

[18 Crawford Mansions]

Dearest Mother,

In your last letter received Saturday you ask me whether I got the $10 you sent me for my suit. I did, and I am sure that you will have got my letter thanking you for it by this time, but I will thank you again to be sure.

I shall soon have ten days holiday, in the middle of June, and I have two days at ‘Whitsuntide’ next week, which will be very welcome. The weather is beginning to be settled and warm now – we had a thunder shower with hail this morning, and everything is very green.

I am trying to do some writing now – an article on Henry James for the
Little Review
, and trying to write verse again. I am glad to have some leisure for reading also, as all my reading last winter was for the courses. My Southall people want to do Elizabethan Literature next year which would interest me more than what we have done before, and would be of some use to me too, as I want to write some essays on the dramatists, who have never been properly criticised.

I have taken up the rudiments of both Spanish and Danish this winter, but have not got very far with either. I can read a Spanish newspaper pretty easily.

I was dining with May Sinclair (the novelist) the other day and met a woman named Robbins [
sic
]
¹
who said she was a cousin of the Macks in Portland. She seems to write popular novels and to know a good many people here. Did you ever hear of her?

Vivien will write again and give you news. She has been glad to have a letter from you lately, and would have written more often, but that it is 
very fatiguing to her and she did not know whether it was of any interest to you to hear from her.

I do hope you are going to Gloucester. I really think it would break you both up not to go. Please do.

Your devoted son
Tom.

1–Elizabeth Robins (1865–1952), American actress and novelist. She later described her experience of creating Ibsen roles in
Ibsen and the Actress
(1928), and edited the letters written to her by Henry James,
Theatre and Friendship
(1932).

MS
Houghton

22 May 1918

[18 Crawford Mansions]

Dearest Mother,

I have letters from you and father. It is now ten o’clock in the evening, and we have just turned on the lights – daylight saving and a northern latitude. I suppose it will be light till 11 in the middle of June, when I take a holiday. The weather has been very beautiful lately; clear, hot days. In the country wistaria and the golden laburnum are in full bloom.

I am glad you found the article in the
Nation
; but I am surprised and sorry you cannot get the book.
¹
It would make the article more intelligible. If the Mercantile Library takes the
English Review
you will find an article in the May issue, mostly about me, by Edgar Jepson,
²
‘Recent United States Poetry’.
³
I was reviewed quite favourably in the
New Republic
some months ago.
⁴

It is
Lloyds Bank
, which has no connection with Lloyds Insurance. It is the second largest bank in England. Banks here are different from in America, where a bank is purely local. There are about a dozen very large banks with head offices in London and branches in the country and sometimes abroad. Lloyds Bank has about 900 branches and four or five in France. Of course I have to do only with foreign business. The address is 17 Cornhill,
E.C.
3., in the heart of the ‘City’, and opposite the ‘Bank’ (of England). I have half of a room, two girls, and half of a typist. I share a typist with someone else.

I am very grateful to father for enquiring about the Policy. It sets my mind at rest.

You don’t say anything about Gloucester in this letter. But I should feel rather anxious if you were to try to spend a summer in St Louis now.

We are both feeling the combined effect of sudden hot weather and the strain of a long winter.

Always your loving son
Tom.

1–Russell,
Mysticism and Logic
(1917).

2–For Edgar Jepson see TSE’s postcard of 5 Feb. 1919.

3–Edgar Jepson, ‘Recent United States Poetry’,
English Review
26 (May 1918).

4–[Babette Deutsch], ‘Another Impressionist’,
New Republic
14 (16 Feb. 1918).

MS
Houghton

2 June 1918

[18 Crawford Mansions]

My dearest Mother,

I have not heard from you or father, I think, since I wrote last. I have been wondering if it has been as hot or hotter in St Louis than it has here. It is really midsummer; often in England August is much colder than June. We have had perfect cloudless days and nights. I am very much afraid that if it were as hot as it sometimes is in St Louis from July to September, in ‘spells’, you would suffer very much. I thrive on hot weather, and today I have done a lot of work, including a number of necessary business letters. I have written several poems lately, which will be published eventually, and wrote a review today of three philosophy books
¹
for the
New Statesman
. I am now preparing to write an article on Henry James and Hawthorne;
²
I read James’s little book on Hawthorne [
Hawthorne
, 1879] yesterday – very good. James was a fine writer – his book of impressions of America, written about 1907 I think, is wonderfully well written.
³
There are so very few people who will take the trouble to write well. It is full of acute criticism too.

Then I am reading, and rereading the poets and dramatists of the time of Shakespeare and immediately after. My Southall class is going to take up that period next year, if we are allowed to continue, and I am looking forward to it, as I prefer it infinitely to the 19th Century – to any periods in English Literature.

We are feeling the strain of this trying time very much – when you get this letter you will have to look back to see what time it was. One can hardly think or talk – only wait.

Your devoted son
Tom.