The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (109 page)

1–
Translation
: Dear Sir, I have just received your kind letter, which you sent to my London address. Since you already knew I was ill, I hope you concluded – while waiting for a reply – that I was not at home, and so do not hold the delay against me.

Indeed, I consider your invitation as a compliment of the highest order, and I should be delighted to contribute to
La Nouvelle Revue Française.
At the moment, however, I am not in a position to reply as I would like. Until I take up my normal life again, I do not know how much energy or leisure I shall have. I go back to London around
15 January.

It is not for me to state conditions. If the
NRF
is prepared to wait, I shall be very interested to continue negotiations (I should very much like to know 1. how many articles a year 2. the length of each article – if it is a question of dealing only with books of a certain literary standard, I don’t think there will be enough material for an article every month.) – If the
NRF
cannot wait, I can only express my keen regret.

I shall be spending several days in Paris around 5 January. If you are not going to be in Paris, I could perhaps see M. Rivière. But I hope I shall be able to have the pleasure of making your acquaintance one of these days.

I shall be very pleased to receive the book, although some of your works have been known to me for the last eleven years. If you know me only through
The Sacred Wood
, I should like to send you my poems, which are at least superior to my prose writings!

I leave Lausanne at Christmas; after that, the only address I can give you is Hôtel du Pas de Calais, 59 rue des Saints-Pères, Paris, until I return to London.

Yours most sincerely, T. S. Eliot

MS
Beinecke

18 December 1921

1, Habsburgergasse 2, Vienna.

Dear Tom,

I was glad to hear from Pound that you looked not badly when he saw you in Paris.

I am sorry to receive a letter from Mr Seldes in regard to ‘a lad named St John Hutchinson whom I used to know at the Foreign Office’. Mr Seldes writes further: ‘He is a charming lad and a great gossip. And he sent us a horrid and vulgar and tedious and totally impossible London Letter. Not knowing how close his connection with Eliot may be, Watson
¹
and I decided to send him a small cheque for the article. We sent him $25 which was about 2/3 of the actual amount it came to as 1/3 of it was so out of date that we felt justified in refusing to consider it. But this $25 is pure loss and we do not feel justified in printing the article at all. I managed to explain that the article came too late to be printed in the current number and to prevent the man from sending any more. Arrangements for a substitute we have not yet made, but we must have something before March which is the earliest date of restoration of Eliot’s correspondence.’

You see I believe in frankness and hope you understand that Mr Seldes, Mr Watson and Mr Thayer are all very sorry indeed that the charming lad was not delivered of so charming a letter as his friend Mr Eliot and as we Mr Eliot’s friends had hoped.

I am writing Raymond Mortimer
²
asking him to let us have a London Letter. But I do hope we shall have a new London Letter from you soon
and howsoever good your next London Letter may be the best thing about it will for me at least be that it will indicate that you are well again.

Merry Christmas!

[unsigned]

1–James Sibley Watson (1894–1982), doctor, inventor of early internal X-ray procedures, silent film maker, and co-owner of
The Dial.

2–Raymond Mortimer (1895–1980), critic and writer, whom TSE had known at Oxford. After writing his first ‘London Letter’, he went on to succeed TSE as London correspondent of the
Dial
at the end of the year. Literary editor of NS, 1935–47.

MS
Waterlow

19 December 1921

Lausanne (leaving Saturday)

My dear Sydney,

Thanks awfully for writing to me – this is a dull place, and I am grateful for letters. Yes, I am feeling much better. I have been under Vittoz, who is not a psychoanalyst, but more useful for my purpose; I was aware that the principal trouble was that I have been losing power of concentration and attention, as well as becoming a prey to habitual worry and dread of the future: consequently, wasting far more energy than I used, and wearing myself out continuously. And I
think
I am getting over that.

I shall not stay in this
carte-postale colorée
[picture postcard] country any longer than necessary – its chief recommendation is that it is full of foreigners – American countesses, Russian princesses, Rumanians, Greeks and Scandinavians, Czecho counts, Belgian punks etc. I am not quite certain whether I shall immediately rejoin Vivien in Paris, or go south first. Apparently all of Western Europe is equally expensive. I’m delighted to hear that your holiday was such a success – you sent me p. cards, but no address on them. It’s also delightful to know that you will be as near as Holland Park. I shall return sometime in January and hope to find you installed. I don’t think you will regret it.

No, I don’t expect to visit Montana.
¹
I had a letter from J.M. just before leaving England – so curious that it was quite impossible to reply at all.
²
Its bearings are also curious. But more of that later.

I am trying to finish a poem – about 800 or 1000 lines.
Je ne sais pas si ça tient.
[I do not know if it will work.]

Yours ever
T.S.E.

1–Montana-Sierre in Switzerland, where Katherine Mansfield had been living since May, and where JMM had now joined her.

2–The letter from JMM has not survived.

MS
Texas

Tuesday [20? December 1921]

Hôtel du Pas-de-Calais,
59 rue des Saints-Pères, Paris

Mary!

Paris was too much for me, and for the first three weeks I was stunned. I wrote to no-one. I could not remember England. I felt so strange. It comes of having been shut up in England for about seven years. It is bad for one. It is very painful, being torn up by the roots, and thrown, hurled, alone and stunned, into such a strange way of living. The first weeks were really painful. I was so
absolutely
alone. I was almost frightened. All the French I knew deserted me. I
did
things, but they made no impression, were no good. Only very gradually, and not fully yet, I have begun actually to
live
here. The first few days with Tom were very perfect, and it was only after I saw him climb into that dreadful Swiss train, and me left on the platform, at 9.20 in the evening, that I felt someone had taken a broomstick and knocked me on the head. After that I forgot London and everything and everyone, and became absorbed in getting a clutch on Paris. Do you see? I have even forgotten Tom. No-one seems at all real to me. At the end of ten days I decided to go to Cologne. I knew a man there. It took me four days to arrange passports and visas, and at the end of that the mark dropped 500, and I got a cold. The man was returning to Paris in a fortnight. So I wired, and said I would not go. Just at that time I saw Roger [Fry], in the post office. He did not seem at ease, or pleased to see me, and escaped hastily. What makes life difficult is the awful expense. I am paying for this myself. I live in a high up little room, and have meals
en pension
which I loathe, to save money – but everything is too incredibly dear. It costs
fortunes
.

The Pounds have a most exquisite Studio (with two rooms) not far from here! Only £75 a year. Now if I could secure such a thing, or even two or three rooms, I would certainly take them, for on the whole I think I would prefer to live here. For Tom, I am
convinced, Paris
!

I have an awful down on London, which increases. That last evening –! at the Huxleys.
What
a last impression of London. And that has stuck in my mind. The monotony, the
drivel
of the whole stupid round. Here of course you will disagree. I have seen Joyce several times and find him a most unsympathetic personality. Vain!! egoist! Unseeing.

Now, my dear,
dear
Mary, there are only three people in London I can bear the thought of seeing. The first,
of course
is you.
²
I do miss you fearfully. You would almost force me to go back, if I knew I should not see you otherwise. I adore the thought of you. Are you coming here? Write to me, please forgive me – tell me everything. About Tom – I
don’t know
I don’t know. About that maid you sent me I am too ashamed to speak.
I forgot it all!
Does she think she is engaged? O Lord. Tom kept on Ellen.
He would
. I may not go back for ages. What has happened? Are you angry? Have I behaved even worse than usual? Please write, and do not frighten me.

Ever,
V.

The man from Cologne arrives tomorrow – will stay with me. After that I don’t know. If I really engaged that maid I will have her. Have
both
. But she would have to wait till I return.

1–TSE added his seasonal greetings on a card on 23 Dec: ‘Pour vous souhaiter la bonne année’ [‘To wish you a happy new year’].

2–The others were Sydney and Violet Schiff: see SS’s letter to VHE, 9 Dec.

MS
Texas

25 December 1921

Lausanne

Dear Mr Knopf,

I have your letter of the 5th instant. I am sorry to have given you the impression of criticising any action of yours within the contract. I merely wrote to ask whether this use of my verse had had
your
approval, before taking any further action. I had assumed, perhaps quite unreasonably, that I should be informally, at least, notified when any of my verse was to be used, or that I should receive a copy of the volume in which they appeared.

Furthermore, as I have been away for nearly three months by ill-health, and could not consult my contract, I was unaware that the contract included rights of publication of selections in
Great Britain.
When I return I shall consult the contract, and shall have pleasure in confirming your statements.

With best wishes,

Yours faithfully,
T. S. Eliot

Not having seen the book, I cannot have any opinion on the actual selection.

Fragmentary
TS
Valerie Eliot

29 December 1921

I received yesterday a cheerful letter from Tom following the Christmas cablegram of the previous day. Both with a letter dated Lausanne. ‘I shall soon rejoin Vivien in Paris … where there are so many people I want to see. I am ever so much better, my concentration improves and I am beginning to feel full of energy. I am working at a poem too.’

59 Rue des Saints-Pères.

1–The full text of this letter, and the letters and cablegram from TSE to which CCE refers, have not been found. On 12 Nov., HWE had written to his mother: ‘I think probably Tom is too tired to write about business matters, perhaps his physician has told him not to. In any case his not writing is probably caused by his travelling about and being at places like Margate. He may be feeling depressed, though I should think his vacation would benefit his spirits’ (Houghton).