The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (79 page)

 1–The
Dial
had been a fortnightly for three decades, but was now monthly under its new owner–editor, Scofield Thayer, and publisher, James Sibley Watson. The visitor from Holt & Co was Lincoln Mac Veagh (1890–1972), who had studied philosophy under Royce at Harvard. The list of desired ‘English writers’ included TSE, JJ, WL, Strachey and Conrad. See EP to Thayer, 25 Jan. 1920 (
Pound, Thayer, Watson, and The Dial: A Story in Letters
, ed. Walter Sutton, 1994).

2–
London Mercury
ran from 1919 until 1939, when it was incorporated in
Life & Letters.

3–WL’s ‘Prevalent Design’ appeared in
A
. in four parts from 21 Nov. 1919 to 16 Jan. 1920.

4–In fact, probably on account of TSE’s influence, in Mar. 1920 JMM employed EP as theatre critic of
A.,
where he wrote under cover of the initials ‘T. J. V.’. EP contributed on a regular basis from 19 Mar. to 21 May, when JMM terminated his contract.

5–Quinn wrote on 6 Mar.: ‘Thank you for ordering copies of the article [‘Ben Jonson’] and book to be sent to me. The only copy that I got of your poems by the Hogarth Press was the one that you sent me recently with the Hippopotamus cut out.’ But TSE was probably referring to the omission of ‘Ode’ from the Knopf book (see letter to HWE, 15 Feb.).

MS
Houghton  

26 January 1920

[London]  

My dearest Mother,  

I am very sorry to hear that you had to stay in bed, but I am sure that Marian will keep you there until it is quite safe for you to be up. I have heard that there is an epidemic of influenza in New York and also in Tokyo, so please go to bed on any curious symptoms appearing. The form that influenza has taken here this winter is intestinal. There is no fever or cold, but violent internal pains, extreme weakness, and in some cases that I know of, fainting spells. Vivien had a mild attack last week, and is still very easily fatigued in consequence. So take note of these symptoms.  

The mails are still
very
slow. The last letter I have from you was written on the receipt of my picture.  

I have just received a copy of the (New York) Dial in its new form. It is very dull – just an imitation of the
Atlantic Monthly
, with a few atrocious drawings reproduced. It is owned and run by Scofield Thayer, who was
with me at Milton and at Oxford, and who is enormously rich. He has sent me a message asking me to get contributions from certain writers here (Pound, Lewis, Yeats, Russell, Strachey, and several others), but I am not going to complicate my personal relations with these people by asking them for writings unless I have a definite promise to accept what is sent. It is impossible for him to know, at such a distance, who are the right people and how to approach them, and he ought to have a permanent agent here. A paper like the
London Mercury
looks important at a distance, but is despised here. I hear that Hugh Walpole’s novels sell well in America. We do not take him seriously; and personally, he is rather a bore.  

Lady Ottoline Morrell has taken a house in London for some weeks, and as she is a great friend of Vivien’s and has not been in London except for a night or two for some years, we have seen a good deal of her.
¹
She is also giving Thursday evening receptions, and there has been a great deal of jealousy and excitement aroused among all the people who were not invited.

I am working on my book and on an essay on Literary Criticism which is to appear with two others in a month’s time. After that there may be one or two bigger things that I want to turn my attention to.  

I am sending you the photograph, and you can send the other back when you get it.  

 

It seems to me that it would be just as economical for you to take a flat, if not a small house, in Boston as to run that large and expensive house in St Louis. I do not believe that your presence in St L. is essential for the sale of the property, and the present
suspense
and waiting must be very trying. Have you worked out (1) The expense of living in a very modest way in the east and shutting up the St Louis house, as compared with your present life. (2) Whether any of the
important
business requires your presence in St Louis.
²
 

Always your very devoted son
Tom.

1–After the Eliots’ most recent visit, OM recorded in her diary that VHE made her understand why some women fell in love with their own sex. Of TSE she noted (17 Dec.): ‘his mind is so accurate and dissecting and fits in every idea like a Chinese puzzle, and my mind is so vague and floating and I feel he must think me such an ass’ (quoted in Seymour,
Life on the Grand Scale
, 315).

2–TSE emphasised the last two sentences with firm marginal lines.

MS
Virginia

1 February 1920

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Rodker,

The Copies arrived yesterday, and I congratulate you on an admirable book. I do not think that a guinea is at all too much to charge for such a piece of work. I have not noticed any mistakes except in
Apollinax
and of course my own mistake about the title.
¹

Do you send copies to Pound and Lewis as if not I must present them? And I understood from you (didn’t I) that Quinn had ordered several copies of all these publications. Still, I think I had better send him one personally from myself.

I notice stated in the back that ten copies are for review. What papers do these go to?

Many thanks for producing such an excellent book.

Yours
T. S. Eliot

When you have the copies ready for signing, let me know where the signature ought to be put. I have numbered the copies you gave me.

1–The title of the poem was misprinted as ‘Mr. Appolinax’.

MS
Virginia

6 February 1920

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Rodker,

Thanks for your letter. I will come out and sign the books on Monday evening if nothing hinders, and unless I hear from you to the contrary. If Monday does not suit you, please give me two other evenings to choose from.

No, I don’t think that Review Copies need be sent elsewhere, those three seem to me quite enough.

Yours
T. S. Eliot

TS
Beinecke

14 February 1920

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Scofield,

I saw Lincoln MacVeagh a fortnight or more ago, and he gave me some copies of the
Dial
and some instructions from you. It struck me that he was far too much occupied with the business on which he had been sent by Holts to be able to accomplish very much; and furthermore that he would not be here long enough to familiarise himself with the London situation; and also that he did not have sufficient authority on behalf of the
Dial
, so I told him that I would write to you myself.

I shall be very glad to do what I can to further your designs. But MacVeagh was unable to be very clear as to what you wanted. Apparently, you would like me to show the
Dial
to the people on the list he gave me, mention the rates of payment, and inform them that you would accept anything they sent – whether appearing also in Europe or not. I know most of the people – at least in England – and could do this. But I should, you see, be incurring a certain responsibility in making such a request of people, and I should prefer to wait until I hear from you exactly what you want and what you offer. So I shall hope to hear from you.

Meanwhile, I have two suggestions to offer. I think, in the first place, that if you wish to make much of your English contributions, that you ought to come and inspect conditions here for yourself, and second that you ought to have a permanent representative here. I mean by the latter a person of discrimination and intimate knowledge of London letters, who would know everybody, and would have authority to fill a certain number of pages every month, and could solicit, accept, and pay for contributions on the spot. I think that this is as necessary for a paper as for a business house. People are much more likely to contribute if the matter can be pushed and settled on the spot.

As to your coming here, I think you would find it worthwhile to get a reorientation. If you only want to get people who have an
American
reputation already, in order to have their names to impress the American public, then of course the only essential is to pay enormous rates. But I rather infer from your list that you would like to have others as well – people who are among the best but not known in America as yet. Only a person on the spot knows just who these people are and their relative rating. It is a question of investment – if you were going to make an investment in English shares you would either come here or consult an English Broker. You have no idea how things have changed in four years since you were here. 

I do not think that you ought to form any alliance or appoint a representative until you have been here yourself. For instance, you must understand that writers here are divided into at least two groups, those who appear regularly in the London
Mercury
and those who do not.
¹
The
Mercury
has no standing among intelligent people, and the paper appeals wholly to a large semi-educated public. It is socially looked down upon – a point which is difficult to explain at a distance but quite evident here. Not many of the best writers here would care to appear in a paper which was closely associated with it, and some might decline altogether.

I introduced MacVeagh to Murry, who is the editor of the
Athenaeum
. It might be possible to get essays which appear in this: Santayana, Russell, Strachey, Lewis, Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, have contributed various series of essays to it.

Hardy and Conrad (to say nothing of France, d’Annunzio, Gorki etc.) have reached a point of distinction where they do not add to the
prestige
of any paper: simply because they are so well on that they cannot be considered by anyone as associating themselves with the policy or taste of a paper, and only occasionally contribute to any younger paper as a kindness to the editors.

I think you would want a similar representation in France. The more important men there would be such as Romains, Duhamel, Vildrac, Cros, Valéry, Vanderpyl, André Salmon
²
… But Pound knows much more about them than I do, as he lives in France a good deal now, and knows most of these men personally.

Also, if you want drawings etc. an art representative. Lewis, Wadsworth, John, Roberts, Sickert ought to be glad to have their drawings used. There are of course important people in Paris too: Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse, Marchand
³
etc.

The
Little Review
has been represented here (since Pound withdrew) by John Rodker (who is publishing a limited edition of my poems), and I hear that they are making an effort to collect money to pay English contributors.

But I think, as I say, that it would be worth your while to come and spend several months here, and meet people.

Yours ever,
Tom.

1–This etiquette was not observed by VW(
Diary of Virginia Woolf
, II, 1920–1924, ed. Anne Olivier Bell [1978], entry for 31 Jan. 1920).

2–Jules Romains (1885–1972); Georges Duhamel (1884–1966); Charles Vildrac (1882–1971), Guy-Charles Cros (1879–1956); Paul Valéry (1871–1945); Fritz Vanderpyl (1876–1950); and André Salmon (1881–1969).

3–Jean Hippolyte Marchand (1883–1940), painter admired by the Bloomsbury Group.

TS
Houghton

Sunday 15 February 1920

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Henry,

I sent you a few days ago by registered post a copy of my portrait (the one Knopf is using for advertising) and a copy of my Limited Edition. I have not sent this to Mother or told her about it. I thought of cutting out the page on which occurs a poem called ‘Ode’ and sending the book as if there had been an error and an extra page put in. Will you read through the new poems and give your opinion. The ‘Ode’ is
not
in the edition that Knopf is publishing, all the others are. And I suppose she will have to see that book. Do you think that ‘Sweeney Erect’ will shock her?

Some of the new poems, the Sweeney ones, especially ‘Among the Nightingales’ and ‘Burbank’ are intensely serious, and I think these two are among the best that I have ever done. But even here I am considered by the ordinary Newspaper critic as a Wit or satirist, and in America I suppose I shall be thought merely disgusting.

I am grateful to you for giving me so much news of mother. She gives it herself only in a vague and fragmentary form. I am interested in your suggestion that she ought to put the Mercantile Trust Co. in charge. I am always wondering whether it [is] really necessary for her to take so much upon her own shoulders, or whether it is not merely the family temperament – to do everything oneself and to put on climbing irons to mount a molehill. I am not in the least surprised at Uncle Ed, and the sooner she gets good lawyers, brokers, estate agents and bankers and has nothing to do with Ed the better.
¹

I have just written to her: I want her to take her summer holiday here in England instead of in Boston. I can see nothing against it. She will have to leave St Louis anyway for three months. She does not want to come to England until her estate is settled. I cannot believe that she would stand any serious financial loss by a few months absence, with you in Chicago and good agents in St Louis. I cannot believe that the difference between 1200 miles and 3000 miles matters so much as that. I know she wants to come, I am sure that it would do her a world of good, not only seeing me and seeing how I live, but the voyage, the change, the getting away from old scenes. I cannot see that expense, compared with the expense of my coming to America, can count at all. For she would be able to live in comfort here
for much less than at home – the cost of living is less, and the rate of exchange would make her money go much further. I mean, of course, that Marian should come with her.

The only thing that I think is holding her back is the family Fear and Conscience – the feeling that she ought not to leave her business matters even for a short time lest something (unknown) should happen, and she might then have less to leave to her children. And the same feeling will make her go on postponing and postponing until it is too late.

Consider my position. I am thinking all the time of my desire to see her. I cannot get away from it. Unless I can really
see
her again I shall never be happy. Now if I come to America it will be nothing but haste, worry, and fatigue. I can get, at most, ten or
possibly
fourteen days with her. We should be thinking of the end the whole time. Vivien could not come with me because of the cost of the fare, and mother would never see her. Mother and I would both be simply worn out by it (and of course, it would be my only holiday for a year). Now why should not mother come here while she is physically able, and keep my visit to America until
she
is no longer strong enough to come? I feel sure that if mother could see things in the true perspective, look ahead and not see, in the Eliot way, only the immediate difficulties and details, she would make up her mind at once and come this summer.

I feel that I am struggling not against real material obstacles but against the family temperament. And I seem to see the relatives lifting up their eyes piously and saying that it is
my
duty to come to mother, and not proper for mother to come to me. As if it were filial piety to see her for ten days instead of ten weeks.

What she is likely to do is to wait until she has sold the house, and then wait until she is settled in Cambridge, and then wait until she has provided for Margaret in her absence, and then wait for something else, and like the rest of us, always put the little things in front of the big. The time for her to come is after she has sold the house, or
before
she has found a house in the East. That may take a long time, and why should she not take a holiday first? The point is that there are
always
enough things at
any
moment to prevent one doing
anything
important.

Will you try and look at this in a large perspective, even if no one else will, and then try to help me? This has been the greatest problem on my mind ever since peace.

I must stop now. I will write again soon.

Always affectionately,
yours,
Tom