Read The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 Online
Authors: T. S. Eliot
The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (115 page)
1–
The Morning Post,
a Conservative daily paper edited by Howell Arthur Gwynne (1865–1950), ran a series of hysterically anti-Semitic articles in 1920 (repr. as
The Cause of World
Unrest). A boycott among Jewish advertisers started a long decline, and the paper was ultimately bought out by the
Daily Telegraph in
1937.
2–Sir Alfred Mond, later the first Baron Melchett (1868–1930), industrialist, financier and politician; mentioned in TSE’s poem ‘A Cooking Egg’. Ford Madox Hueffer (later Ford) founded the
English Review
in 1908 and edited it for just one year; he sold it in 1909 to Mond, who invited Austin Harrison (1873–1928) to become editor.
3–EP,
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
(Ovid Press, 1920).
4–EP, ‘Credit and the Fine Arts … A Practical Application’ (
New Age
, 30 Mar. 1922), was about ‘Bel Esprit’, EP’s scheme to find thirty guarantors of £10 a year, to enable TSE to leave the bank. A private circular in the same month stated: ‘[TSE] certainly is not asking favours, our plan was concocted without his knowledge. The facts are that his bank work has diminished his output of poetry, and that his prose has grown tired. Last winter he broke down and was sent off for three months’ rest. During that time he wrote
Waste Land
, a series of poems, possibly the finest that the modern movement in English has produced, at any rate as good as anything that has been done since 1900, and which certainly loses nothing by comparison with the best work of Keats, Browning or Shelley’ (
Letters of Ezra Pound
, 241). EP had written to Quinn on 8 Nov. 1920: ‘The suggestion that you and several other[s] should subsidize me is very noble, and I appreciate your spirit in making the tentative suggestion; but I think Eliot is the first man to be taken off the wreckage. After all, I am a free man; not incarcerated for the greater part of the day, all day and every day’ (NYPL).
5–The infamous attack on Keats’s
Endymion
(
Quarterly Review
, 1818) was written by John Croker Wilson, though it was widely believed to be by the editor, William Gifford.
6–W. L. George (1882–1926), journalist and prolific short-story writer.
Scofield Thayer
TS
Beinecke
16 March 1922
12 Wigmore St, w.1
Dear Scofield,
Please excuse my not replying sooner to your letter, except by my wire; but I have had a good deal of trouble over letting my flat furnished and moving here, where I shall be till the 20th June. In addition, there have been engrossing personal affairs, and I have been prevented from dealing with any correspondence.
I also took some days to think about your offer, during which time I happened to hear on good authority that you had paid £100 to George Moore for a short story, and I must confess that this influenced me in declining $150 for a poem which has taken me a year to write and which is my biggest work. To have it first published in a journal was not in any case the way I should choose for bringing it out; and certainly if I am to be offered only £30–£35 for such a publication it is out of the question.
I have written to Ezra Pound to explain my reasons for refusing to dispose of the poem to the
Dial
at that price and he concurs with me.
I sent a London letter, assuming that it would be for the April number, but as Mortimer’s has just come out in March I infer that mine is not wanted until the May number, so that I am sending Mr Seldes one or two alterations to bring it up to date.
You have asked me several times to give you the first refusal of any new work of mine, and I gave you the first refusal of this poem.
1
Sincerely,
Tom.
1–At this point Thayer has written ‘Not submitted’.
Wyndham Lewis
MS
Cornell
16 March 1922
12 Wigmore St
Dear Lewis,
I have been absolutely taken up the last ten days with the hell of moving etc., am very tired and depressed. Vivien has been in bed with fever, and life has been horrible generally. I have heard from Pound. Will you let me know where you are? if you have gone or if you have not. Can we arrange a meeting? Please write. Not on telephone here. I have been too busy to write, but have been anxious to know about you.
Yours ever
T.S.E.
André Gide
MS
Houghton
16 mars 1922
[Paris]
Cher Monsieur Eliot
Ma sympathie vous est toute acquise et déjà je vous envoie mes voeux pour la réussite de votre projet.
Ma collaboration …? Elle vous est acquise en principe; mais je ne puis la rendre effective avant de connaître quelques précisions:– Au sujet de la question matérielle, vous restez bien vague; mais le change permet des conditions avantageuses pour nous sans être désobligeantes pour vous. Au surplus cette question m’importe moins que celle de la composition de votre premier No., que le choix de vos collaborateurs – tant anglais
qu’étrangers. J’attends d’être fixé sur ces points; et sans doute pourrai-je ensuite, me rendre compte du genre de collaboration qui serait la plus opportune.
Au revoir cher Monsieur
Croyez à mes sentiments bien cordiaux
André Gide
1
1–
Translation
: Dear Mr Eliot, I am completely at one with you in your enterprise, and I hasten to send you my best wishes for success.
As for my contributing …? I can readily agree in principle; but before doing so in practice, I should need further information on certain points. As regards the material question, you remain rather vague; but the exchange rate works at present in our favour without putting undue strain on you. Besides this consideration is less important for me than that of the makeup of the first issue, and the choice of your contributors, both English and foreign. I wait to hear from you on these points; and after that I shall no doubt be able to see what kind of contribution would be most appropriate.
Hoping to hear from you again, With my most cordial regards, André Gide
Valery Larbaud
TS
Vichy
20 March 1922
12 Wigmore St, w.1
Dear M. Larbaud,
I am very much gratified at receiving your gracious letter of the 18th, and look forward with keen pleasure toward reading your critique of Joyce. But I should be particularly pleased at having the honour of publishing first something of yours on Landor; that would also be a happy rebuke to the English literati for their neglect of a great poet and prose author.
1
Certainly, I hope that you will write those articles in English, as there is inevitably some loss in translation. But I shall do my best, and exercise my own supervision, for what that is worth, to secure for you a good translation of the Joyce.
I am also very much obliged for the names of Spanish writers. None of them, I regret to say, is known to me, but I have no hesitation in accepting your judgement, and shall write to them.
I will send you details of the contents of early numbers as soon as possible. I hope that later it may be possible to improve the rates of payment, so I invite the first contributors for the honour they will do the review, and not for their personal advantage.
Very sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
1–Larbaud had translated Walter Savage Landor’s
High and Low Life in Italy
in 1911, and had written that he was contemplating a series about him.
Hermann Hesse
PC
Schiller-Nationalmuseum
27 March 1922
12 Wigmore St
I have your manuscript today
1
and thank you very much. I will write to you in a week or two. I am delighted to receive something from you.
Mit herzlichem Gruss
[With warmest regards]
T. S. Eliot
1–Hesse, ‘Recent German Poetry’ (trans. by F. S. Flint),
C
. 1: 1 (Oct. 1922), 89–93.
Scofield Thayer
MS
Beinecke
27 March 1922
12 Wigmore St
Dear Scofield,
I discovered when in Switzerland a very admirable essay entitled
Blick ins Chaos
by Hermann Hesse. Mr Stephen Hudson has made a translation of this and is sending it to you. I think that you will find it an interesting work.
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
Harold Monro
MS
Beinecke
[April? 1922]
[London]
My dear Monro,
It was a great pleasure to me to receive your book,
1
especially with your name in it, and I am looking forward to putting it into my pocket to read at lunch time, when most of my reading is done!
I hope we may meet at some fortunate date.
Yours ever T. S. Eliot
1–Harold Monro,
Real Property
(1920).
Sydney Schiff
TS
BL
3 April 1922
12 Wigmore St
Dear Sydney,
I have written to Joyce, and enclose a note to [Fritz] Vanderpyl. You will infer therefrom that he plumes himself on being as well as an art critic (in the
Petit Parisien
) and a poet (not at all bad), an archimage in the arts of eating and drinking. He can probably introduce you to good restaurants. He writes very learned articles on Cuisine for the
Petit Parisien
. I should like to get some of them published in this country.
I hope that the weather is not quite so vile as it is here, and that you are really finding the atmosphere an elixir. Do let me hear from you as soon as you are rested and have assembled impressions.
with love to both,
yours always,
Tom
T. Sturge Moore
1
TS
Texas
3 April 1922
12 Wigmore St
Sir,
I applied to my friend Richard Aldington for your address. I have undertaken the task of finding and selecting the contributors for a modest quarterly review which is subsidised to a moderate extent for three years. I propose that the quarterly should be simple and severe in appearance, without illustrations, and my only ambition is that it should unite the best critical opinion in England, together with the work of the best critics whom I can find from other countries. Whilst I should admit other writing in very small quantity, I wish to make it primarily a critical review. To its ultimate financial success I am comparatively indifferent; but while it lasts, under my direction, I shall make its aim the maintenance of critical standards and the concentration of intelligent critical opinion; also, the
diffusion of such funds as can be mustered, among the proper persons as contributors.
I have a great respect for your judgement and taste, and count it of the highest importance to secure your support. I think that you would appear in as respectable company as there is, and a company which would feel itself dignified by your presence. Would you be willing to contribute an essay of say five thousand words, or more or less, to an early number? I should be delighted, for instance, to publish anything by you on the subject of Flaubert (versus Mr Middleton Murry’s opinions) or if you chose to dissect Murry’s Oxford lectures,
The Problem of Style
, I would obtain it for you.
2
I should like to start publication in June, but am not certain whether it will be possible until autumn, as I am not disposed to launch this paper until I am certain of the right contributors for the first four numbers. At present the review can only offer at the rate of £10 per 5000 words, but my first endeavour would be to improve these terms. In the hope of hearing from you favourably, I remain,
your obliged obedient servant,
T. S. Eliot
1–Thomas Sturge Moore (1870–1944), English poet, playwright, author and wood engraver, published his first book of poems,
The Vinedresser and Other Poems
, in 1899. His brother was the philosopher G. E. Moore. A respected acquaintance of many writers, including A. E. Housman and AH, he also designed bookplates and bookbindings for WBY. See
W
.
B
.
Yeats
and
T. Sturge Moore: Their Correspondence,
1901–1937, ed. Ursula Bridge (1953).
2–In his reply (n. d.), Moore declined Flaubert and JMM, but offered to write on SW, ‘the critical work which has most interested me since Santayana’s
Poetry of Barbarism’
.