The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (83 page)

1–Quinn wrote on 6 Mar.: ‘Your book of poems was published a week ago. I have already bought 35 copies … I read it aloud on two evenings to friends of mine, and made converts of both.’

2–EP,
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
, published by the Ovid Press in June 1920. 3 –On 24 Sept. 1920, Quinn would tell TSE that Cummings’s review in the June
Dial
was ‘horrible, a sheer bit of impertinence and not at all likely to help its sale. It is most annoying.’

PC
Texas

[Postmark 4 April 1920]
¹

Paris

Nous y sommes. Quel dommage que vous n’êtes pas ici pour les Pâques. Où passez vous le dimanche? Paris est si
gai
. Nous esperons voir Jack mais le temps est court et nous avons à voir tout.
²
Je pense que nous ne pouvons peut-être pas le voir.

T. S. E.
³

1–Easter Day.

2–On 21 Mar. TSE told OM that he and VHE would have only three days in Paris.

3–
Translation
: We are there. What a pity you aren’t here for Easter. Where are you spending Sunday? Paris is so
gay
. We hope to see Jack but the time is so short and we want to see everything. I think that perhaps we won’t be able to see him. T. S. E.

MS
Texas

Saturday 10 April 1920

[London]

Dear Ottoline,

I opened your letter to Vivien as she is not here. Although we were very happy in Paris, I had the misfortune to get a slight attack of flu, and couldn’t get back until Tuesday night. It was very worrying and exhausting to Vivien having me on her hands in Paris, and having to fetch a doctor, get medicines etc., and the journey back was very trying for her. So as she had an opportunity to go away for a few days and rest she went away with some friends. I am really quite right again, except for feeling very weak and low spirited, especially at the thought of having used more than the money I had put aside for the visit with so little profit. But now I shall have to work hard as I have promised to submit a book to a publisher in June, and shall be hard pressed to get it done in time. Please don’t mention this to anybody as it is a secret.

Vivien will be back I think on Thursday and I expect she will be writing to you. She too will have to stay in town and work after that. I do hope that you will come to town again very soon (and stay the night) as otherwise it will be so difficult to see you for some time.

Yours always
Tom.

MS
Texas

Monday [12 April 1920]

Mary, how charming of you to ask us to dinner, and how we shall both enjoy seeing you again. Vivien is not here just now and she will grumble if I go without her;
also
this week is very difficult for me – especially after the most depressing adventure which Paris turned out to be – so will you please not be nasty, and invite us for next week and write and mention a day? I had influenza in Paris so please be kind, Mary. Let us come next week and have one of our good talks. Love to Jack.

Tom.

MS
Texas

Thursday [15 April 1920]

Mary, thank you for suggesting another day but I think Thursday is best after all so we will come
Thursday
if you please. And so will you wear the cotton earrings and look nice and be nice and we will talk a great deal. Looking forward to the outing.

Tom.

I see your friend Toulet has turned up in the
Times
.
¹

1–Paul-Jean Toulet (1867–1920), journalist, poet and novelist. His novel
La Jeune Fille Verte
was reviewed in the
TLS,
15 Apr. 1920.

MS
Beinecke

19 April 1920

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Mr Shorter,

I am pleased and flattered that you should want my book. The address [of the Ovid Press] is 43 Belsize Park Gardens,
N.W
.3.

I remember also with pleasure the occasion on which I dined with you.

Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot

1–Clement Shorter (1857–1926), journalist and author.

MS
Northwestern

[19 April? 1920]

[London]

Dear John,

I have not quite finished my article on you;
¹
it turns out to be much longer than I expected; but I should have it for you on your return. You have left one or two ‘
pièces d’identité
’ [identity papers] in our hands. I suppose you are going in the morning.

Did I hear you say once you had a Beaumont and Fletcher complete you were willing to dispose of? I should like to buy it from you, or if you want a complete Ford and Massinger I have seen one today which I could post haste to get for you. I need a B & F for my Massinger article and want to own one and can’t get one anywhere.
²

Bonne chance.

TSE

1–‘The Poetic Drama’, a review of JMM’s
Cinnamon and Angelica
,
A.
, 14 May 1920.

2–‘Philip Massinger’, a review of A. H. Cruickshank,
Philip Massinger,
TLS, 27 May 1920 (
SW
).

Published 22 April 1920

Sir,

Your reviewer of last week handled my Essay on the Criticism of Poetry
¹
with more courteous clemency than this defective composition deserved.
My essay contains much matter that should be erased and much that should be reformed; it is incoherent and inexact. I should therefore not affect amazement at learning that the view of criticism detailed in the first paragraph of your reviewer’s article is supposed to be the opposite of mine or at hearing given as my opinion that ‘a poet ought not to know what he is doing, but should just do it.’ I can only apologise to the reviewer for the obscurity which has induced him to this interpretation.

I must say, however, that your reviewer’s notions of criticism are not much more satisfactory to me than my own. I suppose that it will be admitted that, with one or two exceptions in remote antiquity, all the best criticism of poetry is the criticism of poets; and I am not prepared to concede that the criticism of Dryden, or of Coleridge, or even Matthew Arnold has the ‘intellectual incoherence’ which the reviewer says is the ‘innocent defect of art’ and apparently the inevitable vice of criticism written by poets. The review’s use of the word ‘philosopher’ seems to point not to Aristotle so much as such persons as Hegel and Croce. I am not sure that your reviewer distinguishes the mind which endeavours to generalise its impressions of literary beauty from the mind which endeavours to support a theory of aesthetics by examples drawn from the arts. Schopenhauer, I seem to remember, admired the Apollo Belvedere because the head – the spiritual residence – appeared to strive to detach itself from the body. In general, philosophers (or professors of philosophy) are as ignorant of poetry as of mathematics; and the fact that they have read much poetry is no more assurance of competence in criticising poetry than their ability to reckon in shillings and pence is of their competence to criticise mathematicians.

It would be helpful if your critic would elucidate his use of the term ‘philosophy’. My chief reason for writing this letter is my desire that the problems of critical principles should be more pondered and discussed, and that both critics and readers should apply themselves to consider the nature of criticism.
²
 

I am, Sir, your humble servant
T. S. Eliot

1–‘The Criticism of Poetry’,
TLS
, 15 Apr. 1920, a review of
Chapbook
2: 9:
Three Critical Essays
(which included TSE’s ‘A Brief Treatise on the Criticism of Poetry’).

2–Unknown to TSE, the reviewer was Arthur Clutton-Brock, who did not respond to this letter. However, in an unsigned article, ‘The Function of Criticism’ (13May), JMMdisagreed with TSE’s assertion that poets are the best critics.

MS
Northwestern

Sunday [25? April 1920]

18 Crawford Mansions,
Crawford St,
W.1

Dear John,

Thank you
very much.
I have appreciated your thought of me, though I have never said much about it. Well, I have lectured, as you know, and it was very very fatiguing and worrying to me, and this is a provincial university too. If I ever took the plunge, it would be, I suppose, for the freedom of journalism: but just now I feel too tired and depressed to put my mind on it.

This is unsatisfactory to you and will appear ungracious. I would much rather have had a talk with you. I am going, from Tuesday, to live in Marlow for three or four weeks, and hope both to rest and to work. I don’t want to be in town for the evening more than I can help. I wish you could lunch with me one day and after I have done two articles we should dine.

Thanks for B & F which I shall take care of and return in due course. I shall want to know how much you enjoyed Stratford. We are looking forward to seeing Katherine [Mansfield; JMM’s wife].
¹

Yours aff.
TSE

1–Katherine Mansfield: see Glossary of Names.

TS
NYPL (MS)

10 May 1920

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Mr Quinn,

I do not know whether I wrote to thank you for your kind letter about my book. I must repeat my gratitude to you.

I was delighted at your prompt and effective intervention with the
Dial
.
¹
I think Pound will make a good job of it. I can testify that it had a great effect in raising his spirits; and when he left for Italy he was most cheerful. In addition, he has just finished what seems to me a very good poem, so my mind is at rest about him.

I have contracted with Methuen, here, for a prose book of essays [
SW
], to be in his hands if possible by the end of June. He is one of the best
London publishers, so I am pleased. In conformity with my contract with Knopf, I put in a clause stating that the option on American sheets should be offered to him, so I suppose that is all right?
²
I presume that if Methuen and Knopf fail to come to terms, that is nothing to do with me, though I should be glad for Knopf to have it.

I hope you will be having a holiday before long. I am feeling rather washed out myself, with practical worries like the impossibility of getting a tolerable flat to live in at a possible price, health, whether I should stick to banking if a good journalistic post turned up, and other such problems.

With sincere good wishes for your health

Yours cordially
T. S. Eliot

1–
The Dial
was paying EP $750 a year as its agent, and soon he became its Paris correspondent.

2–The contract for
Poems
gave Knopf ‘the first refusal of the Author’s next work in verse or prose’, but Quinn had advised TSE (3 Oct. 1919) that this meant nothing: ‘An author can easily comply with it by making impossible conditions.’

MS
Mrs Burnham Finney

16 May 1920

[London]

Dear Rodker,

I have done what I could – you needn’t take my word for it, but it does not look promising. M[onro] does not see how he could review such a book for the ordinary public – he doesn’t want to curse it and wouldn’t venture to praise it.
¹
A fortiori
, the
Times
would be worse.

The best thing from a practical point of view, is to become well known to the review press through some volume or volumes which it can endure, before circulating generally anything like this. If one specialises on this sort of work, the only hope of fame is posthumous. If not, a volume, not
for
ordinary citizens, but of stuff they could tolerate, would make the rest get by afterwards. I feel myself, that with so much worthless verse selling in thousands, it is just as good at the present time to have an audience of 200 as 2000, and perhaps a better investment.

Yours ever
T.S.E.

Send E.P.’s book to the
Ath
[
enaeum
]. I think it will do better generally than
Propertius
did.