The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (110 page)
Read The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 Online
Authors: T. S. Eliot
Over the next few months, TSE revealed the poem to other friends – Richard Aldington, Edgar Jepson, Aldous Huxley, the Woolfs and the Hutchinsons – but when offering it to potential publishers such as Knopf or Maurice Firuski he seemed reluctant to show or even name it. Thayer wrote on 29 January offering $150, sight unseen, for publication in
The Dial
, but because of a misunderstanding TSE turned this down on 8 March. Pound’s suggestion to Thayer that TSE might be awarded the $2,000
Dial
Prize came just too late. Liveright had already expressed interest, and by 3 April he had offered ‘$150 against 15 per cent royalties’, again sight unseen. This time TSE accepted, but when the contract arrived in June he was dissatisfied and asked Quinn to act on his behalf in rewriting it. Meanwhile, he was making arrangements for
The Criterion,
in which
The Waste Land
was to be published for British readers.
With publication in Britain and America apparently settled, TSE agreed to type the poem out again for Pound’s confidential use, adding that he now had no objection to its being shown to James Watson or Scofield Thayer. Watson was in Paris, and although he was not initially impressed by the poem,
The
Dial
made another bid for it, with a hint to TSE that the
Dial
Prize would be part of the remuneration. At first TSE said he would accept this with Liveright’s approval, but then decided he could not trouble Liveright and Quinn any further and wrote on 21 August to Watson (who was en route to New York) saying that it was too late. He also wrote to Quinn, mentioning that he had had ‘an attractive proposal’.
The Dial
was undeterred, and Gilbert Seldes approached Liveright with a suggestion for generous terms. Finally Quinn invited Seldes and Liveright to his office on 7 September, by which time Liveright already had the poem in proof. Quinn dictated letters from each to the other which sealed the agreement that resulted in the poem’s publication in
The
Dial
during October and as a book from Boni and Liveright in December,
TO
Mary Hutchinson
MS
Texas
Thursday 12 Jan[uary 1922]
Hôtel du Bon Lafontaine,
64 & 66 rue des Saints-Pères, Paris
Mary dear
What a
wonderful
letter to add to my collection! And thank you for the book of Clive’s
Poems
,
1
which I am indeed very glad to have.
Forgive my not writing sooner. I have so much to tell you and complain – but as I should be back in London in less than a fortnight, I would rather talk it than write it.
I long to see you again, and to have a long talk with you.
Indeed you are right about Paris, and French people. I don’t want to live in Paris,
but
—
Tom has been here ten days. I think he is much better. You must judge for yourself. I know he is looking forward to seeing you, and not very many others. He will be back on Monday. I am going to Lyons for about a week on Saturday and then Paris again for a few days, then London. I won’t
try
to write anything.
My love to you, and to Jack.
I hope I am still your ‘greatest friend.’
Vivien
1–Clive Bell,
Poems
(1921).
Scofield Thayer
TS
Beinecke
20 January 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns, London
N.W
.1
Dear Scofield,
I now have your letter of the 18th ulto. and am in bed with influenza. I regret that my action – as you make it painfully evident – has precipitated an embarrassing situation for Mr Hutchinson,
The Dial
, and myself.
1
I am sure that you and Mr Seldes will agree that his letter was as good as mine have been. Your account leaves nothing obscure, and you may inform the business manager that I wish him to deduct $25 from the next payment, if any, that may ever become due to me. I trust that this may be if any before the next general meeting of shareholders, in order that there may be no inconvenient questions.
The next letter possible from me would be for the April number. In response to a hint from Mr Seldes, I should no longer analyse particular books, but should perform more general rumination on London (would the Señor like soliloquies in London) by the gentleman with a
vacuum-cleaner
. But if you find Mortimer more satisfactory, you need not make another change.
I understand that I am to prepare a few words about Miss Moore. I shall shortly have ready a poem of about 450 lines, in four parts, and should like to know whether the
Dial
wishes to print it (
not
to appear in any periodical on this side) and if so approximately what the
Dial
would offer.
2
I should like to know quickly as I shall postpone all arrangements for publication until I hear. It could easily divide to go into four issues, if you like, but not more. It will have been three times through the sieve by Pound as well as myself so should be in final form.
I trust that you [are] gaining spiritual and physical benefit from Vienna,
3
give my best respects to Schnitzler.
I think something conclusive should be done to Murry.
Yours
Tom
1–Having rejected St John Hutchinson’s trial ‘London Letter’, the
Dial
paid him a kill fee of $25.
2–At the head of the letter are Thayer’s sums dividing 450 by 35 and by 40 (the approximate number of lines per page), with ‘12pp. 120’.
3–Thayer was undergoing analysis with Sigmund Freud in Vienna.
André Gide
MS
Mme Catherine Gide
24 January 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Cher monsieur,
J’ai été désolé de ne pas pouvoir vous voir à Paris. M. Rivière me dit que vous étiez chez lui une demi-heure avant mon arrivée. Le jour après, le samedi, je suis allé vous chercher à Auteuil, mais apparemment vous fûtes déjà parti pour Bruxelles. J’espère toujours ce plaisir de faire votre connaissance à ma prochaine visite à Paris.
J’ai peur que votre volume de morceaux choisis ne fût égaré, puisque je ne l’ai pas trouvé ici. Je veux le commander d’une librairie, pourtant il m’aurait été un grand plaisir d’en avoir un exemplaire qui fût présenté par vous.
Je suis heureux de constater que M. Rivière et moi, nous nous sommes entendus très bien et que j’enverrai un chronique à la
N.R.F.
au mois de février.
Je vous prie, cher monsieur, de recevoir encore l’expression de mes hommages sincères.
T. S. Eliot
1
1–
Translation
: Dear Sir, I was extremely sorry not to be able to see you in Paris. M. Rivière tells me that you were with him only half an hour before my arrival. The following day, Saturday, I went to look for you in Auteuil, but you had apparently already left for Brussels. I am still hoping to have the pleasure of making your acquaintance during my next visit to Paris.
I am afraid the anthology [
Morceaux choisis
, ed. Gide (1921)] must have gone astray, since it was not waiting for me here. I will order it from a bookshop, but I would have had great pleasure in owning a copy presented by you. [A copy inscribed by Gide to TSE is now at Houghton.]
I am happy to note that M. Rivière and I reached a very satisfactory agreement, and that I shall be sending a London Letter to the
NRF
in February.
Once again with my respectful regards. T. S. Eliot
Richard Cobden-Sanderson
MS
Beinecke
24 January 1922
9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Mr Cobden-Sanderson
I am very glad to hear from you. I have only been back ten days, and have been laid up with flu all that time. At the present moment everything is still in the air, therefore, and I have not yet seen Lady Rothermere.
2
I will
write to you a little later and tell you how things stand, and shall hope to see you before very long.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
2–TSE had approached RC-S about the possibility of his becoming publisher of the new magazine to be financed by Lady Rothermere and edited by TSE.
Ezra Pound
TS
Houghton
24 Saturnus An I [24 January 1922]
1
[Paris]
Caro mio [My dear]:
MUCH improved. I think your instinct had led you to put the remaining superfluities at the end.
2
I think you had better leave ’em, abolish ’em altogether or for the present.
IF you MUST keep ’em, put em at the beginng before the April cruelest month. The POEM ends with the Shantih, shantih, shantih.
One test is whether anything wd. be lacking if the last three were omitted. I dont think it wd.
The song has only two lines which you can use in the body of the poem.
3
The other two, at least the first, does not advance on earlier stuff. And even the sovegna doesnt hold with the rest;
4
which does hold.
(It also, to yr. horror probably, reads aloud very well. Mouthing out his OOOOOOze.[)]
I doubt if Conrad is weighty enough to stand the citation.
5
The thing now runs from April … to shantih without break. That is nineteen pages, and let us say the longest poem in the Englisch langwidge. Dont try to bust all records by prolonging it three pages further. The bad nerves is O.K. as now led up to.
6
/ / / /
My squibs are now an bloody impertinence. I send ’em as requested;
7
but dont use ’em with Waste land.
You can tack ’em onto a collected edtn, or use ’em somewhere where they wd. be decently hidden and swamped by the bulk of accompan[y]ing matter. They’d merely be an extra and [w]rong note with the
nineteen-page
version.
Complimenti, you bitch. I am wracked by the seven jealousies, and cogitating an excuse for always exuding my deformative secretions in my own stuff, and never getting an outline. I go into nacre and objets d’art. Some day I shall lose my temper, blaspheme Flaubert, lie like a shit-arse and say ‘Art shd. embellish the umbelicus.’
8
These are the Poems of Eliot
By the Uranian Muse begot;
A Man their Mother was,
A Muse their Sire.
How did the printed Infancies result
From Nuptuals thus doubly difficult?
If you must needs enquire
Know diligent Reader
That on each Occasion
Ezra performed the caesarean Operation.
E.P.
/ / / / / / / / / / / / / /
Caul and grave clothes he brings
Fortune’s outrageous stings,
About which odour clings
Of putrifaction,
Bleichstein’s dank rotting clothes
Affect the dainty nose,
He speaks of common woes
Deploring action.
He writes of A.B.Cs.
And flaxseed poultices,
Observing fate’s hard decrees
Sans satisfaction;
Breedings of animals
Humans and canibals,
But above all else of smells
Without attraction.
Vates cum fistula
9
E. P.
E. P. hopeless and unhelped
Enthroned in the
10
marmorean skiesHis verse omits realities,
Angelic hands with mother of pearl
Retouch the strapping servant girl,
The barman is to blinded him
Silenus bubling at the brim, (or burbling)
The glasses turn to chalices
In his fumbling analysis
And holy hosts of hellenists
Have numbed and honied his cervic cysts,
His follows Yeats into the mists
Despite his hebrew eulogists.
Balls and balls and balls again
Can not touch his fellow men.
His foaming and abundant cream
Has moulded this worldHas coated his world
with. The coat of a dream;Or say that the upjut of his sperm
Has rendered his senses pachyderm.
Grudge not the oyster his stiff saliva
Envy not the diligent diver. Et in aeternitate
It is after all a grrrreat littttterary period
Thanks for the Aggymemnon.
[unsigned]