The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (136 page)

1–‘Giudicio incontastabile gravoso’ [‘judgment severe and incontestible’], Dante, ‘Morte villana, di pietà nemica’, 3 (
Vita Nuova
VIII).

2–Ernest Hemingway.

3–Carl Sandburg (1878–1967), poet and biographer; Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931), poet known as the ‘Prairie Troubadour’; George Sterling (1869–1926), prolific poet and mentor of Robinson Jeffers.

4–Lincoln Steffens (1866–1936), American journalist, best known for his statement after a visit to the Soviet Union in 1921, ‘I’ve been over into the future, and it works.’

5–On the verso of the last sheet, VHE wrote: ‘Would like to go over this letter with you.
Send a line
, and promise to write fully in a week. The man needs dealing with now. Send a line
at once
, and say drily that you
have
seen D[orothy]
twice
.’

TS
copy Valerie Eliot

10 November [1922]

70 bis, N.D. de C.

Cher T:

I enclose communique from that hot bitch Lady R., somewhat lacking, perhaps in veracity,
¹

She was in the summer ready to raise funds for your release. She SAID she had got a donation of 1000 dollars down. I shd. like to have that transferred to B[el] E[sprit] treasury, or to you, before the explosion.

/ / /

She SAID she had a plan to propose, when I met her with Higgins; she also parted saying she wd. call in two days. Then exit. she disappeared.

/ / /

I dont, of course, know what upset her.

Possibly
the appearance of Waste Land in
Dial
may be not unalien to the row. She said in the summer that the
Dial
could NOT have it, because it was to go into the
Crit
.

That may be the fly in her cunt-salve.

/ / /

However I supply you with all possible data. She, as per enclosed, has highest esteem for you, and considers the 1st number of
Crit
. successful.

I suggest that you take the position that you wish to leave the bank, as soon as suitable arrangements can be made, and that relieved of that onus, give the air and exercise you so need (vide enclosure), your soul, much enlarged wd. be even more entirely ‘in’ the
Criterion
and the endeavour benefit english letters, to say nothing of french.

I don’t see any other line that will gather up that 1000 dollars (which for all of me, may be transferred to you at once, without waiting for B. E. [Bel Esprit] subsidy.)

I dont see that anything is to be gained by having her continue in the idea that you consider the bank a pleasure ‘even if it is exhausting’.

I think she hates Thayer and Watson, especially the former. The latter hates her. and that she is possibly wroth over the
Dial
coup. However that is four times as much in yr. pocket as you wd. get from her in a year, and Watson at any rate is a better proposition than she is. I am inclined to prefer S. T. to her, in the light of present events. Her present illumination seems to confirm their versioni of her N.Y. escapade. escapade = eschaper.

Of curse, Caro mio, I have, by the herein enclosed epistle of yr. friend, been ‘deeply insulted,’ I the distinguished man of letters, etc. by a lowbrowed ranting bitch (as V. so aptly calls her).

Now, carino, do be sensible, do not be disturbed by Lady R., consider the course of the moon, watch the day of the month on which her frothings occurr.

Raveth she one way on the first day, she will rave again on the 29th. day, thus with regular or irregular intervals according as to the processes of her endocrines.

Brewster hath said, ‘Never treat with the female client, save in the presence of the male relative’.

and Jackson hath said ‘For three days in every month is every woman a stark raving lunatic.’

Considering which things, I who have nothing to gain from her Bitchshipp have replied to her with a courteous letter, employing soft words, yea even now, O Tomasso.

I have said that you are ‘heart and soul’ in the
Crit
. and that I believe you wd. leave the bank, under suitable circumstances.

I think you can assume that position, at least until the 1000 bones, have been transferred, either to you, or to Richard [Aldington]’s formally organized committee of trustees. (or at least till we have
tried
to get it shifted.)

If you wd. keep me more au courrant, I might play this game of halma a bit better. but if you are too tired to write, dont bother.

Tu ne reponds rien, rien, rien, rien, à mes questions, tu le sais, cochon!!!???> Jam-, jam-, jHDammais
.
²

Did I say that another solid B. E. subscription had come in? and that the secretary of the Persian legation in Washington also approves. Do you want a job on the Persian finance commission?

Have you any kick ref my article in Nov.
Dial
?? If so shoot it along. I’m a glutton for punishment.

Only dont take Lilian [Rothermere] to heart, be not wroth with a menstrous woman.

yours
E 

1–Headed ‘“Claridges”, Paris. 8th Nov. 1922’, Lady Rothermere’s letter reads:

‘I am seriously disturbed to hear from you that Eliot is in such a bad state of health.

‘You write however of the editorship of
The Criterion
as if it were a large monthly review or even a weekly one instead of a slender quarterly! The production of
The Criterion
is not
at all a vital
matter to me.

‘I offered to be responsible for the financial support of it because several friends of mine assured me under the direction of Eliot such a quarterly would do much towards the furtherance of the influence of Eliot and others, which would also be an excellent thing for English literature.

‘Several months after Eliot had undertaken to produce
The Criterion,
I wrote and assured him that he was in no way ever morally bound to see the thing through, and he replied that he was wholly interested in it heart and soul.

‘I have the greatest possible friendship and esteem for Eliot and consider that he has most successfully produced the first number. If this extra work can in any way be injuring Eliot as you think I would infinitely prefer that the production should cease.

‘However I do not believe honestly that the appearance of
The Criterion
is in any way responsible for Eliot’s present state of health. Don’t you think you exaggerate a little?

‘I believe Eliot is nervous and run down because of the effect of years of lack of fresh air, exercise and proper nourishment on a delicate constitution. With regard to the suggestion that he should leave the bank I really do not think that it is
anyone’s business
but Eliot’s and my impression is that he likes the work even if it is exacting.

‘I am leaving for London in a few days and shall certainly see Eliot and hope to find his state of health less grave than you think.’

2–‘You tell me nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing in response to my questions, as you know, pig! Nev-, nev-, never.’

MS
Beinecke

12 November 1922

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

Dear Cobden-Sanderson,

As I just told you on the telephone I forgot to include the payment due to F. S. Flint for translating the German article [by Hermann Hesse]. The article is 1484 words which for this purpose I will call 1500 and at the
usual rate of 15/-per 1000 we therefore owe to him £1.2.6. You have his address, as he is a subscriber.

Yours,
T. S. Eliot

Have you any news from Paget about placing American copies? This ought to be hurried on, so that we can know how many of No 2 to print.

I notice that the Agencies who send MSS. to you do not usually send stamps. What do they expect? 

TS
Timothy and Marian Seldes

12 November 1922

The Criterion,
9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Mr Seldes,

I am afraid that I have not thanked you for your cheque of $130. This is due to the fact that it arrived while I was at the seaside taking a
muchneeded
rest, and while I was there I neither received nor wrote any letters. I must also thank you for your letter of the 10th ulto. and for your review of
Ulysses
in the
Nation
which I think extremely interesting and valuable and which I should have liked to see in its complete form. It is on the whole much more satisfactory than any other review of the book that I have seen and I shall find it still more difficult to say anything about the book myself.
¹

I am sending you a few circulars of the
Criterion
, and I trust you have received the first number which I had sent to you. Now sold out. So far, no steps have been taken toward acquiring American subscribers. This is owing to the appearance of my poem in the first number; I do not want the first number to be put upon the American market as it would have been unfair in view of the almost simultaneous appearance of the poem in the
Dial
. I am looking forward to receiving the Nov. no.; Liveright’s proof was on the whole very good indeed and I have no doubt that the appearance in the
Dial
will be equally good.

I hope that you received my cable in time to make use of my valedictory letter on Marie Lloyd for the December number.
²

Yours always sincerely,
T. S. Eliot

November number just received. Poem admirably printed. I see some remarks by you which I find very flattering
²
– But I find this poem as far behind me as ‘Prufrock’ now: my present ideas are very different. Thanks for hint: I want to deal with the ‘intellectual love of God’ later.
³

1–Seldes described
Ulysses
(
Nation
[NY], 30 Aug. 1922, 211–12) as a ‘monstrous and magnificent travesty’, and called JJ ‘possibly the most formidable writer of our time’. TSE’s review, ‘
Ulysses
, Order and Myth’, came out in
Dial
75
: 5 (Nov. 1923), 480–3.

2–‘London Letter’,
Dial
73: 6 (Dec. 1922); repr., with revision, as ‘In memoriam: Marie Lloyd’, C. 1: 2 (Jan. 1923), 192–5, and as ‘Marie Lloyd’ (
SE
).

3–Seldes wrote, ‘Until I had read
The Waste Land
by Mr Eliot I believed that
Ulysses
was the only complete expression of the spirit which will be “modern” for the next generation’ (‘Nineties – Twenties – Thirties’,
Dial
73: 5, Nov. 1922, 577).

4–Seldes’s paragraph about TSE and JJ concluded: ‘That infinite intellectual love which God has for himself, according to Spinoza, is perhaps the last remaining contact of this age with what is divine.’ In ‘The Perfect Critic’ (
SW
), which also invokes Spinoza, TSE had written: ‘without a labour which is largely a labour of the intelligence, we are unable to attain that stage of vision
amor
intellectualis
Dei’.

PC
Beinecke

13 November 1922

[London]

Thank you for your letter and statement of disbursements. I hope that you can manage Thursday: if
not
, can you let me know definitely by Thursday
morning
, if I telephone you about noon?

Yrs,
T.S.E.

Can give you larger part of MSS. on Thursday.

PC
Lilly

14 November 1922

[London]

I sat down to write to you tonight but am so very tired that I cannot. I will try again tomorrow –

Yrs. ever
T. S. E.

TS
Texas

15 November 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gardens,
N.W.1

Dear Richard,

I was very glad to get your letter and enclosures. As for my health, I am very tired, but this is not unusual. As for
The Waste Land,
that is a thing
of the past so far as I am concerned and I am now feeling toward a new form and style.

I do not know how the
Dial
separated the prefix of ‘Apothanein’;
¹
I spelt it out carefully enough for them.

Ezra’s Paris Letter is certainly excellent.
²
As for the
Phoenix and the
Turtle
I do not see what you mean by a parody of Donne; I wish you would quote me phrases of Donne of which it seems to you reminiscent.
³
I expect that the person who praised it was Murry; I do not know of anyone else except myself who has ever expressed admiration for it.

Your notice of the
Criterion
ought certainly to boost its circulation in America.

Your poem I much enjoyed; I can pay it the compliment of saying that it makes one realise how far this excellent instrument of the seventeenth century is deteriorated in the hands of Georgian versifiers. Have you studied with any care Bishop King in Saintsbury’s collection? He seems to me one of the finest and I have long desired to write a short paper about him.
⁴
I want to write something about Cowley
⁵
also, undeterred by the fact that you preceded me and probably know a great deal more about him.

As I hoped, your visit to Italy seems to have stimulated you; I think your article on Pastoral Drama might be a valuable one,
⁶
and I hope you will write it. I know nothing about these people, but the verses which you quote give me pleasure. Do write it.

Yours ever,
T. S. E.

May I keep poem or not?