The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (51 page)

1–[TSE], ‘New Philosophers’, unsigned review of J. S. Mackenzie,
Elements of Constructive Philosophy
; De Witt H. Parker,
The Self and Nature;
James Gibson,
Locke’s Theory of Knowledge
, in
NS
11 (13 July 1918).

2–TSE, ‘The Hawthorne Aspect’,
Little Review
5: 4 (Aug. 1918).

3–Henry James,
The American Scene
(1907).

MS
Houghton

9 June 1918

31 West St,
¹
Marlow, Bucks

My dearest Mother,

It is a very long time since I have heard from you. I wonder if you have been waiting the same length of time to hear from me; I have not missed a week in writing since a couple of months, to the best of my knowledge and belief. But possibly some letter has not been forwarded yet. You will see by the address above that we have finally (like all our friends) come out of London. There are several reasons – you know we had contemplated it before; but finally we both were in very poor health after the winter, and the doctor said that I ought to be out in the country, for the summer anyway. So we are staying out here, on the Thames, a charming old little town, in the street where Shelley used to live.
²
And I feel much better already, mentally and physically. The relief of being out of London, getting quite away from it at the end of the day, is very great. The train journey is restful too. Of course it adds to the expenses, principally through the cost of a season ticket to go up and down every day, but it is fully worth it, even if it necessitates, as it does, more sacrifices in other directions. The suburban traffic of London is tremendous – most ‘city workers’ people in offices, live out of town and commute every day, and I am sure that it is much better for one. I think I am a little bit fatter – you know I have lost 15lbs. since leaving Oxford. Vivien is of course much better here too. I wish you could see an English county town in summer. You will find this on the map. I have been sitting out in a back garden all day writing about Henry James and Hawthorne.
³
The roses are wonderful.

I have a week’s holiday, a few days hence, and I shall take some long walks and go out on the river.

I do hope I shall have a letter from you in a few days, dear mother, as it is over a fortnight. I shall write to father as soon as my holidays begin.

Your devoted son
Tom.

1–VHE had leased the house for five years from 5 Dec. 1917. BR had a financial interest in the arrangement, and provided some of the furniture. On 17 Dec. BR told OM that it would give him ‘a quiet peaceful existence in which I can work’; and on 6 Jan. 1918 he said to Colette O’Neil that his ‘work-a-day life will be at Marlow, with Mrs. E’ (quoted in Monk,
Bertrand Russell
, 515–16).

2–Shelley leased Albion House, West Street, Marlow, in 1817–18.

3–‘The Hawthorne Aspect’.

TS
Houghton

23 June 1918

[London]

Dearest mother,

I have just written to father, but I want to write a short one to you to acknowledge three from you which I have studied attentively. I am relieved that father has so rapidly rallied and only think that he ought to take very good care of himself for the rest of the summer especially if you stay in St Louis. There is something to be said for Millis, even with the increased fares. I am sure you will let me know how he is, and also how you are (but you have
never
done that!) in every letter.

I gave a good many particulars in my letter to father. Now I am writing with yours open in front of me, so that I may not overlook anything that requires an answer. I
did
get the £2 for the suit: it is very strange on this as on one or two other occasions that I have a strong conviction that I acknowledged it at once. Thank you very much indeed; I think I wrote and told you what a nice suit I got, and what a wise investment it was, as prices have been soaring since.

We both had a very painful time at the dentist, and Vivien has also been having much trouble with her eyes, and has had to have some expensive glasses. She fully meant to write to you today, but woke up with a very bad migraine (I think a delayed result of the dentist several days ago) and was so dizzy when she got up that she had to lie down again. We feel sometimes as if we were going to pieces and just being patched up from time to time. The strain of life is very great and I fear it will be for the rest of the lives of anyone now on earth. I am very pessimistic about the world we are going to have to live in after the war.

You type beautifully.

We had a pleasant day yesterday: a young friend of mine, named Huxley, a grandson of the scientist T. H. Huxley, who is a master at Eton not far away, came out to spend the day with us.
¹

I have some poems appearing very soon in the
Little Review
²
in New York, and also an article which I wrote at the beginning of this holiday on 
Henry James and Hawthorne. I have just reviewed some philosophy books for the
New Statesman
, have some more to do, and am commissioned for articles for that and for a paper called
To-Day
,
³
when I can get them done. Also, I have this week done my monthly work for the
Egoist
, including the delicate task of reviewing half a dozen books by men I know. I think I know most of the people in London who write verse, and a fair number of the other men of letters. I have also read this week most of Catullus, and two plays of Ben Jonson.

I think I have given all my news between you and father. We have not heard from Maurice for some time; I expect he is pretty busy just now. He had a few days in Rome about six weeks ago.

Always your devoted son
Tom

1–Of his visit to Marlow, AH wrote to his brother: ‘Eliot in excellent form and his wife too; I rather like her; she is such a genuine person, vulgar, but with no attempt to conceal her vulgarity, with no snobbery of the kind that makes people say they like things, such as Bach or Cézanne, when they don’t’ (
Letters of Aldous Huxley
, ed. Grover Smith [1969], 156).

2–Four poems appeared in the
Little Review
5 (Sept. 1918): ‘Sweeney among the Nightingales’, ‘Whispers of Immortality’, ‘Dans le Restaurant’, and ‘Mr Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service’.

3–He published one article in
To-Day
4: 19 (Sept. 1918): ‘A Note on Ezra Pound’.

TS
Beinecke

30 June 1918

at 17 Cornhill, London,
E.C.3

Dear Scofield,

Delightful to hear from you, both sentimentally and because it is cheering that there should still be someone who preserves in these times the literary standards of epistolary style. I am also delighted that you should be applying your cosmopolitan talents where they are needed, and breasting the full flood of bovine excreta of which the effluvium in occasional gusts attacks my nostril from oversea. I look forward to the receipt of your specimen.
¹
Of course, your superior officer is a Lady. They always are. Be PATIENT, I say PATIENT. Be Sly, INSIDIOUS, even UNSCRUPULOUS, Suffering Many Things, Slow to WRATH, concealing the Paw of the Lion, the Fang of the Serpent, the Tail of the Scorpion, beneath the Pelt of the ASS. Under the cloak of imbecility dart forth your scorn and pour the vials of contumely upon the fair flat face of the people. Be Proud, but Genial, Affable, but Inflexible; be to the inhabitants of Greenwich Village a Flail, and to the Intellect of Indianapolis a Scourge. I WILL REPAY, saith the LORD.
²

I speak from experience, as asst. (I say ASSt) Editor of the
Egoist
, which I will send you, numero specimene, if you do not know it. I am the only male, and three (3) women, incumbents, incunabula, incubae. 

Do you see the
Little Review
? I hope so. There you can watch (in bathing) our Friend Ezra, and sometimes myself (
sc
. next July and after), and particularly the superb new novel of Joyce, which I do commend to your attention. You no doubt have read the
Portrait of the Artist
by him. The best living prose writer.

I
should be delighted to write for your paper – or rather for any paper with which you are connected. Is Conrad Aiken still to be the Critic?
³
I think that if I composed something in the hope of your printing it I ought to exploit my geographical position rather than send you my projected series on the Jacobean Dramatists. Studies in European Literature, by one on the SPOT! Reflections on American Literature, by one NOT on the spot!
⁴
As
Poetry
said of J. G. Fletcher ‘cosmopolitan by education and residence’.
⁵

Everything I say is quite serious. I am delighted with your occupation.

Vivien says (and says to tell you) that she is homesick for America.

Adieu. Would I might talk to you. You have as much news of friends here as I. Harwood,
⁶
I hear (from the charming Aldous Huxley) is in London again, in some Govt. office. Willie King
⁷
is in London, in [Military] Intelligence Dept, I have seen him occasionally.

Note my address above.

Je t’embrasse sur les deux joues.

Yours ever
T.S.E.

1–Thayer was planning to support the
Dial
financially.

2–TSE is parodying various biblical proverbs and epistles, as well as
sententiae
in Shakespeare.

 3–Once Thayer took charge of the
Dial
, Aiken was a contributor but never its official critic.

4–TSE, ‘American Literature’, a review of
A History of American Literature
, vol. 2, by William B. Trent, John Erskine, Stuart P. Sherman and Carl Van Doren, in A., 25 Apr. 1919.

5–John Gould Fletcher (1886–1950), American poet and critic, scion of a wealthy Southern family, dropped out of Harvard and lived for many years in Europe; a friend of EP, he became one of the mainstays of Imagism. His Selected Poems won the Pulitzer Prize, 1938. See his autobiography,
Life Is My Song
(1937), which includes a portrait of TSE; and
Selected Letters of John Gould Fletcher,
ed. Leighton Rudolph and Ethel C. Simpson (1996). From 1926 he was to become a frequent contributor to C. and he was also one of the first of the Faber poets.

6–Henry Harwood (1893–1964), an Oxford acquaintance who became a journalist.

7–William King (1894–1958), who was to become Deputy Keeper of British and Medieval Antiquities, British Museum, 1952.

MS
Texas

1 July 1918

[London]

I meant to let you know that I had sent your P.O. on. I sent it to Pound as I thought he could let you have the backnumbers at once.
¹
The Joyce is quite superb. I should be interested to hear your opinion of it. I wonder if you are in a hammock reading Ste Beuve. I shall want to know what you think of Sachie’s poems.
²

We have not seen anyone for a long time.

Sincerely
T. S. Eliot

1–The postal order was presumably for back numbers of the
Little Review.

2–Sacheverell Sitwell,
The People’s Palace
, was reviewed by TSE in the
Egoist
5: 6 (June– July).

MS
Houghton

6 July 1918

17 Cornhill, London
E.C.3

Dear Miss Monroe,

Thank you for your appreciation of my review.
¹
I know how difficult a task you had, and the result is certainly of great interest.

I shall be glad to write on
Rimbaud
and
Tristan Corbière
. I suppose you want about 1000 words apiece? Not more, I take it. I shall I hope send the first in about a month, perhaps less.
²

Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot

1–‘Reflections on Contemporary Poetry’ [III].

2–Though mentioned again to his mother on 7 July, no essay by TSE on Rimbaud or Corbière was published. In
T. S. Eliot et la France
[1951], Edward H. Greene notes TSE told him that after 1912 and his Laforguian period, TSE read Rimbaud several times, mentioning in particular the influence of his ‘Cabaret-Vert’ and ‘Vénus Anadyomene’ (62–3). For his poem ‘Tristan Corbière’, see
IMH
, 88.

MS
Houghton

7 July 1918

17 Cornhill

My dearest Mother,

We have been living on quietly and trying to escape the ‘Spanish influenza’ so called.
¹
A good many men – and women – have been away 
from the office lately, with that curious malady, and as a result I have had more to do, helping out. The season has been very dry – whether that has anything to do with it I don’t know – and out here in the country everything is done to a crisp. The flowers seem to stand it better than the vegetables, and just now we are very grateful for fresh vegetables – peas and beans and salads. The weather has been very hot, and appropriate to the 4th July, which was celebrated in London. I say ‘celebrated’ in quotation marks because it was taken so solemnly, more as a very serious act of international courtesy, something of gravity, than the hilarious 4th of boyhood. I think that the appetite for the noisier sort of fireworks should have died out for this generation. I only missed the strawberry icecream and the yacht race. London is very seriously interested in the game of baseball, which is now practised by Americans and Canadians regularly, and of which I am constantly called upon to explain terms.
²
There seem to be many American soldiers about; at least I see officers pretty often, though I have never seen any of my acquaintance. Occasionally some come to the bank with Letters of Credit. I told you how I missed Harold Peters when he was in Glasgow; I have been waiting for him to turn up again.

I have not had a letter from either of you lately. I am waiting eagerly for news of father, and how you manage to stand the heat at this time of year. Have you tried to let Gloucester or is it shut up? It is rather difficult to let a house when you are not on the spot, I fancy, to put it in order for the tenant. Is Marion going to spend most of the summer with Charlotte? We had a letter from Charlotte not very long ago, in which she spoke more cheerfully of George’s work. Also one from Aunt Mattie, who said nothing at all, except that she had been very ill for a long time, and that she was no longer at Mrs Sutherland’s, but nearby.

I had a letter from Maurice yesterday, of course with nothing definite as to his location – somewhere in Venetia, living in a large villa, with a Colonel and a Major, and finding the weather very hot.

Naturally, we have seen very few people lately, and as a matter of fact nearly everyone has gone out of town for the indefinite future – or enough people so that those who remain remain as scattered individuals. We long for Bosham and the sea – would that it were near enough to London to come up every day. 

I am thinking of getting together a collection of prose and verse to come out in America in the spring. There is a publisher in N.Y. [Alfred Knopf] who wants it. I should have several essays from the
New Statesman
and the
Little Review
, and a good deal from the
Egoist
, and two essays which
Poetry
in Chicago wants me to write on French poets.

And a few more poems besides those in my book.

I must stop now and go to bed. I hope there will be a letter tomorrow.

Many long thoughts and very much love to both of you

Your devoted son
Tom

Vivien’s newly filled tooth has a nerve which every now and then
jumps
or seems to take a twist, and nearly takes her out of her chair. I wonder very much what the matter is.