The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (128 page)

TS
Berg

21 August 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Mr Watson,

I am very sorry that your wire did not arrive in time for me to write to you at Plymouth, but I hope that this letter will reach you very soon after your arrival in New York.
¹

I answered your first charming letter in haste and without having thought over the matter very thoroughly. But now it seems to me that it is far too late and that matters have gone too far for me to change my plans.

It would involve altering the contract with Mr Liveright in which business I should again have to invoke the aid of Mr Quinn and I think it would be quite unjustifiable for me to give any further worry to either Mr Quinn or Mr Liveright, quite aside from the fact that I myself am so busy for many weeks to come that I shall have no time to devote to any additional business.

You of course were not able to approach me in the matter earlier, but had it been possible or had Thayer explained the difficulty to me as you have done instead of leaving it in complete silence, I should of course have
fallen in with your proposal. But as things are I should not feel justified in troubling Mr Quinn in any case, and I should not feel justified in troubling Mr Liveright unless the alteration were to his advantage as well as mine. Furthermore to put the matter frankly, the advantage to me would be nil unless the receipt of the prize were to form the basis of a contract which of course you would not be likely to give.

Let us hope that on a future occasion, if I survive to write another poem, no such difficulty will arise.

Believe me, with all best wishes,

Yours very sincerely,
T. S. Eliot

1–Watson had telegraphed from Paris on 18 Aug. that he had not received TSE’s second letter, but that communications ‘addressed Steamship
La France
touching Plymouth Saturday night will reach me’. The next day, he sent a letter: ‘I hope we shall be able to have the poem at your terms. Please let me know in care of the
Dial
152 W. 13th St, etc. I am eager to start persuading Mr. Liveright and also to settle the matter of the
Dial
award.’ 

TS
Beinecke

21 August 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Sir,

Referring to my letter of the 14th, I have spoken to the Secretary of Mr E.O. Hoppé, the photographer, who has promised to send you a photograph of me immediately. If you do not receive it perhaps you will let me know.

Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot

TS
Victoria

23 August 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Read,

Thank you for your postcard with a nice window. I should have returned your brief with comments before, but have been so very busy. What I have written on it are therefore only jottings which I intended to make into a letter, and may be largely unintelligible, but take them for what they are worth to you. I am looking forward to the article with great interest, but you don’t need to feel pressed for time.
¹
My great
difficulty, I find today, is that contributions are too long for my
ninety-six
pages; I overestimated the capacity of ninety-six pages, and I am having to postpone one or two things for the first number. So if you can be
under
5000 words an embarrassed editor will appreciate it. I think your essay will be a good one!

Yours ever,
T. S. Eliot

1–HR’s ‘The Nature of Metaphysical Poetry’ was to be held over to C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923). TSE’s jottings on HR’s typescript draft included the two observations: (i) ‘Some philosophies are in themselves incoherent & emotional (e.g. B. Russell) and therefore useless for poetry. Bradley more useful than Russell.’ (ii) ‘Function of poetry is to express as a whole of feeling a digestion of
all
experiences in a mind. The more complicated & comprehensive the mind the better. Also the mind should be
continuous
with
all
(or as much possible) previous mind. Peel the onion.’ (Victoria

PC
Texas

[Postmark 23 August 1922]

I will be in Monday evening 28th by 9 – is that convenient for you? Let me know.

T.S.E.

PC
Lilly

[Postmark 23 August 1922]

[London]

I am delighted to hear you are back.
¹
I am
rushed
this week, may I come in on
Tuesday
afternoon and see sketches?

Yrs. ever
T.S.E. 

1–She had been on holiday on Dartmoor 

PC
Texas

[Postmark 23 August 1922]

[London]

I will answer yr. letter in a day or two – I have my hands full trying to get the French translation finished.
¹
Excuse delay.

T. S. Eliot

1–TSE’s translation of Larbaud’s lecture, ‘The “Ulysses” of James Joyce’.

TS
copy Valerie Eliot

23 August 1922

24 Concord Avenue, Cambridge [Massachusetts]

Dearest Son:

Aunt Susie was here last evening with Eleanor and I read to them the prospectus of
The Criterion.
Aunt Susie said she would subscribe, so will you have the prospectus sent to her? and will you fill out the address on all copies sent to America, for I do not think just Holborn is enough from this side of the water. Have you sent to any of the Harvard professors? And do you think it would be well to do so? I have sent to the University for a list of the professors in the Department of Literature, and will forward to you to use or not as you think best. I do not know whether you would send them to Harvard University or to their residences. There is Professor Lowes, he is lovely. I gave him a copy of your
Sacred Wood
, and Mrs Lowes brought a copy to me of his
Convention and Revolt in Poetry
.
¹
Henry read it when at home and was delighted with it. He talked of sending you a copy. If you would like it I will send you my copy.

Professor Lowes’s address is: John L. Lowes, 983 Charles River Road, Cambridge, Mass. Professor Kittredge’s is: Prof. George L. Kittredge, 8 Hilliard St, and Professor Grandgent’s: Charles H. Grandgent, 107 Walker Street.

I would also like another copy of the prospectus, two or three copies, with address filled out.

I suppose Vivien is still at Bosham. I addressed to her my note of thanks to Clarence Gate Gardens, and you will take to her as I suppose she will not leave Bosham for a while yet. I judge from the tone of your last letter she was better. It was very sweet in her to send me the lavender. Barbara thought she looked far from well, and said she felt very sorry for her. But I hope she will soon be better. I am glad to hear you say you are well, and hope you will remain so. Let me know what I can do for
The Criterion.

Ever yours with love,
Mother.

1–John Livingston Lowes,
Convention and Revolt in Poetry
(1919).

TS
Bonn

28 August 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns,
N.W.1

My dear Herrn Curtius,

Thank you very much for your kind letter. I shall look forward toward having your Essay by the 1st November, and later, I hope for something on some subject in contemporary, or nineteenth century, German literature. But my purpose is not so much to give the readers information
about
German literature, as to give them a direct acquaintance with German writers; so that you will see that almost any subject about which you care to write will suit us equally well.

I am very much pleased by your wanting to reciprocate by a German book. I do not know what books you have published, except the
Literarische
[
n
]
Wegbereiter
which I already possess, but if you have published any other, that would be my first choice. And if you have
not
, then I should prefer
you
to choose something which you think I ought to become acquainted with. Beyond your book and that of Hesse, and a few things of Spengler and Keyserling,
¹
I know almost nothing of German literature since 1914.

The problem of selling the
Criterion
in Germany is at the moment a very difficult one. It will be sold here at 3s 6d, for export we might reduce it to the bare cost of printing, that is 2s, which with the mark at eight thousand to the pound, would be eight hundred marks per copy, to say nothing of the profit wanted by whatever German bookseller, of course, who might act as agent. I should like to know, at your leisure, at what price you think such a review could be
sold
in Germany to the public.

There is another point on which I beg your tolerance. I should like to exchange copies with foreign reviews, with a view, later, to having a ‘
revue des revues’
in each number, as soon as the
Criterion
can be enlarged to that extent. What German reviews do you think would do this with me? I have noted the names of
Die Neue Rundschau, Die Neue Markur
[
sc. Merkur
],
Der Sturm
and
Die Aktion
. I want, of course, reviews as nearly as possible of similar aims, limitations, and sympathies as our own. Are these suitable? Like books, the German reviews are difficult to obtain here and expensive.

I want to thank you also most heartily and appreciatively for your generous offer to notice the
Criterion
in the
Frankfurter Zeitung.

Always yours cordially,
T. S. Eliot

1–Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), philosopher of history; author of
Der Untergang des Abendlandes
(‘The Decline of the West’, 1919). Hermann Keyserling (1880–1946), cultural philosopher.

PC
Victoria

[Postmark 29 August 1922]

[London]

I agree that there is both in Guido and the others, and Italian poetry seems to me to retain a debased form of the metaphysics after the psychology is gone. But I think the distinction, in one and the same author, is worth drawing … But I do not know these early Italians well – only in selections. You may know them a good a deal better than I.

Also important not to confuse the ‘literary’ with the ‘philosophical’ senses of
Metaphy
. and
Psych
.

yours,
T.S.E.

1–The advice concerns HR’s ‘The Nature of Metaphysical Poetry’, for
C
. 1: 3, Apr. 1923. ‘Guido’ is Guido Cavalcanti (
c
.1255–1300), friend of Dante.

TS
Lilly

30 August 1922

The Criterion,
9 Clarence Gate Gdns,
N.W.1

Cher Ezra,

Yes, it is quite true that one does not want to write any prose, and I never feel quite justified in doing so myself, nevertheless one does. I can’t myself see what good it does, and the effort of persuading oneself that it is worthwhile writing at all is only just about enough to cover one’s verse and nothing over. 99%of the people who ‘appreciate’ what one writes are undisguisable shits and that’s that. Your notes, epistolary, telegraphic, etc. are cordially appreciated and after I have corrected the speling will in due time appear and in due time be paid for. With most grateful thanks yours always sincerely, faithfully. I received a letter from your friend Watson most amiable in tone

For below a voice did answer, sweet in its youthful tone,     

The sea-dog with difficulty descended, for he had a manly bone.               

                         (From ‘The Fall of Admiral Barry’).
¹

offering $150 for the ‘Waste Land’ (not ‘Waste Land’, please, but ‘
The
Waste Land’, and (in the strictest confidence) the award for virtue also. Unfortunately, it seemed considerably too late, as I had the preceding day got the contract, signed by Liveright and Quinn, book to be out by Nov. 1st, etc.) I can’t bother Quinn any more about it, I don’t see why Liveright should find it to his advantage to postpone publication in order to let the
Dial
kill the sale by printing it first, and there has been so much fluster and business about this contract that I don’t want to start the whole thing up again, so I see nothing but to hope that the
Dial
will be more businesslike with other people. Watson’s manner was charming, if Thayer had behaved in the same way the
Dial
might have published it long ago, instead of pretending that I had given him the lie as if he was
ehrenfähig
[capable of honour] anyhow. Anyway, it’s my loss I suppose; if Watson wants to try to fix it up with Liveright I suppose he can, that’s his affair. I suppose the move was entirely due to your beneficent and pacific efforts, which are appreciated. Dam but why don’t they give the prize to you?

More presently.

T.