The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (134 page)

MS
Lilly

2 November [1922]

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Ezra,

1) T. is running down again. He keeps trying to write to you I know but in the meanwhile I am writing and this letter is PRIVATE.

2) –
and most important
– the Rothermere woman has been and is being offensive to T. about the
Criterion
. She has written three offensive letters and I am afraid this is going to bring about an awful crisis unless someone can be clever about it –
in time
. She is coming to London about the 15th and if when she sees T. she behaves in the same way as her letters I don’t see that he can do anything but throw up the
Criterion – and I believe that is what she wants
. She is unhinged – one of those beastly raving women who are the most dangerous. She is now in that asylum for the insane called La Prieuré
¹
where she does religious dances naked with Katherine Mansfield. ‘K.M.’, she says in every letter –‘is
the most intelligent
woman I have
ever
met.’ K. M. is pouring poison in her ear (of course) for K. M. hates T. more than anyone.

3) Can you get for T. this money (Bel Esp.) which you speak of in yr. letter,
²
without the condition that he leaves the Bank
immediately
? If so – could he not buy the
Criterion
from Rothermere? Not using his own name in the transaction. I am sure a few people here would help in
that
, with small sums. She
might
be glad to sell it, now, for it may be that she is just furious at having promised the money for something she now hates and is bored with. She would
not sell it later on
if it began to
pay
. Do you think this is a possible idea? If so, how shall we do it – and
can you get that money?
T. would of course leave the Bank ultimately – and I know he
could make the
Criterion
a success. I could provide £500 (it wd halve my income) – and wd gladly. Write at once.

VE

It could not be run
at all
under £400 a year.

1–A former Carmelite monastery at Fontainebleau where George Gurdjieff (1872–1949), a Russian mystic of Greek parentage who had left Russia about 1920, had re-established (with financial support from Lady Rothermere and others) his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, originally founded in Moscow in 1914. His followers participated in stylised dancing in order to attain a greater degree of consciousness. Katherine Mansfield was to die at La Prieuré on 9 Jan. 1923.

2–EP’s letter to TSE, dated ‘1 Hephaistos’ (1 Nov.), explained that ‘Bel Esprit’ had so far collected pledges of £230 for five years (including permanent pledges for £120), and Liveright’s pledge was yet to come. In all, £345 had been raised for the first year. EP concluded optimistically: ‘Seems a fair chance that one cd. proceed at same rate. You will have the Dial 2000 in case of any utter emergency … All I can add is that I am ready to use my best endeavours to keep the subsidy at £300 a year.’

MS
Lilly

[3 November 1922]

[London]

Cher Ezra

Vivien wrote to you yesterday about the position I am in. Lady Rothermere has been getting increasingly offensive ever since the
Criterion
came out, and especially since she entered her retreat for maniacs. I wish you could see her before she leaves Paris and tell her bluntly that the
Criterion
is a SUCCESS. I have had nothing but good notices. Nearly all the copies are sold (600 printed). But this woman will shipwreck it.

V’s idea is to get the money somehow and buy the paper from her –
before
she has time or opportunity to make my position such that I must throw it up, on her hands. V. thinks she would take £500 for it
now
, especially if my name was kept out of it, and we could find some American who would allow us to use his name in the purchase.

Can you not come over to London for a weekend and see me, as you
know
I cannot come to you.

If you and I could get the
Criterion
into our own hands and could only find the money to run it for a couple of years, it would be the thing of our lives.

Try to get over here to see me, and meanwhile
don’t let a soul suspect that
everything is not absolutely right between me and Rothermere.

 T.

TS
Valerie Eliot

4 November [1922]

70 bis, N. D. des Champs, Paris vi
^e

Cher T:

This shd. reach you on the anniversary of the Guy Fawks plot.

I answered V’s note last night, but had no means of knowing whether her letter was a familial consortium or her own impressions.
¹

I have this a.m. written to Lady R. asking for an interview. Last time I saw her she was affable, and said she was coming to tea, whereafter she vanished, and I did not know she was still in Paris. I wish you’d be specific. What is she trying to force into the Crit.

Of course if she says it looks like a corpse, she’s right, mon POSSUM, do you expect her to see what is scarce discernable to the naked eye, that it is
supposed
to be PLAYIN’ POSSUM

I think both you and V. are in delirium, thinking of payin £500 for the privilege of having worked six months. Bring out another number. Put in all our own stuff. IF, ever IF the bills have been and are being paid. £500 for a review that has run one issue?? Gees she’d be SOME financier if she cd. work that dimereena

Dear ole SON. You jess set and hev a quiet draw at youh cawn-kob.

The only asset of the Crit. is YOU, youh-sellf. If you quit,
it
quits. You’ll have been euchred for a free start that is the common fate of all mankind, them as boosts periodicals they dont own.

Run one more number. at least. Announce your resignation therein, if necessary. Pay your patient friends. and announce the opening of the ‘New Effigy’, ‘The Golden Vanity’ (there’s fine title for for a really sumptuous work).

But sink money into a liability, that wd. stay a liability for some years.
Nevairrrrrrrrr!
For the privilige of disguising oneself to look like a member of the Athenaeum Club. Mon gibletts. Mon Gosh, Mon chienggggg.

If you can trust my discretion, send me the correspondence between you and L. R. and I’ll try to get a clear idea of the matter.

£500 is bunk. If she is scared of the prospect of expenses she’ll give the damn thing away. Chrisssstttttt cant you see that
you are
the Criterion. If you go it collapses. Have you … got a contract? Not that English contracts are worth a damn, but on the chance that she may not know that no english contract is binding.

I dont see that one story by Katherine M. wd. queer the review. Print the Adams in the next number,
²
and the Mansfield in the third. That will hold things calm over the interval. Tell her you had already accepted the
Obsequies for the 2nd number. I dare say K. M. IS the most intelligent female she has ever met. So long as she dont include Middleton M., I dont mind. Personally I find it no worse to conciliate the K. M. faction than to conciliate the [Laurence] Binyon faction. When I first met Lady R. she seemed rather more ready to burn the Bastile than you are.

Air yew sure, mon cher, that she is being
intentionally
offensive. Remember that she is not one who has started at the social apex and descended. People of a slightly lower social order than we are ..... apt to be offensive when they are only, in their own eye, being frank, hearty and outspoken.

especially in your present exhausted and enerve condition …. perhaps a slight magnification takes place.

At any rate, consider hanging on for another three months. Let us get our own money back out of it. At least divide what spoils there are, IF there are any. I hope you haven’t undertaken printing expenses on yr. own???

IF you’re going to chuck it, you at least have the chance of launching a few explosives, or a few new authors before you abandon the deck. Print my article,
³
and blame the demise on me.

et tu exageres. NO periodical cd. be the ‘
affair
thing of our lives’

As I said in note to V. Bill Bird who is doing the 3Mts Press
⁴
is ready to print a review at his expense.

IF you cant stick the Crit. let it go out in glory and seek then the southern shore. more anon. must keep an appointment.
⁵

E

1–EP wrote to VHE: ‘Dear Vivian, Your bomb to hand … CERTAINLY do NOT fork out £500. We are trying to build up yr. bloomin income, NOT to blow it in wild speculation … Do understand that I take no interest in England or English magazines. I dont think the island matters a damn, I shd. like to get T. out of it into a decent climate. If he likes to print Stsbury, Stg Moore, Binyon, etc. that’s his affair. He has got out a damn good quarterly for the purpose, i.e. of being feasible in a damned country, where any more active manifestation wd. be doomed to extinction. BUT . . . . . . . . buy it? NO.’

2–B. M. Goold-Adams, ‘The Obsequies’,
C
. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), 293–302.

3–EP, ‘On Criticism in General’.

4–William Bird (1889–1963), an American, had founded the Three Mountains Press in Paris in 1921, and published four of EP’s books, 1923–8. On 29 Aug. 1922, EP had told TSE of planned limited editions by Ford Madox Hueffer,William Carlos Williams, Hemingway, and others, and invited a contribution ‘in yr. non-academic vein’, perhaps the Bolo poems. ‘The plan seems to me to solve the question of free expression, better than the Little Review did; and better than the necessary caution of heavier periodicals, like the Dial and the Crit. can afford.’

5–A further six-page letter in the same vein followed the same day.  

MS
Northwestern

5 November 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns,
N.W.1

Dear John

I should like very much to spend the weekend of the 25th with you. I was just on the point of writing to suggest a meeting soon.

I wonder if you know the work of a German critic named Curtius. I have sent him your
Problem of Style
[1922], and as I happen to have two copies of his book on modern France, it seemed appropriate that I should send you one, unless you know it already.
¹
I look forward to seeing you on the 25th.

Yours ever
T.S.E.

1–E. R. Curtius,
Die literarischen Wegbereiter des neuen Frankreich
.

TS
Texas

6 November 1922

The Criterion
, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Flint,

I am now back in town and am sending you back the Gómez manuscripts and your translations. Do you think you could lick some of these into English by the 1st December? If you cannot, I do not know who can, as this is not a problem for the ordinary translator at all. I do not want very much, only two or three of those which you think can be made most presentable. At any rate they will provide relief for the lighter-minded of our readers who find the review too dull and indigestible. I shall be awfully grateful to you if you will exercise your talents upon this material.

Would you care to tackle a critical essay on Balzac, written in German, by Ernst Curtius
¹
which I hope to receive in a few days? He is quite an intelligent German and has written an essay on Proust which Proust is highly pleased with.
²
It ought to prove more interesting to you than the Gómez.

I may say that the payments for the first number have been delayed by the fact that Sanderson and myself have been single-handed and have had a great many unexpected details to attend to, but this matter will be dealt with this week.

I am much obliged to you for letting me see the story. It struck me that the writer has distinct ability and ought to be encouraged, and I shall write to her to express the hope that she will go on. I do not think that I shall be able to use this one because we shall only publish, as a rule, one piece of fiction in each number and I have already secured fiction for two or three numbers ahead; so that I should prefer to wait as I think – for what my opinion is worth – that your friend will easily surpass it before very long.

Yours ever,
T. S. Eliot