The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (139 page)

TS
Berg

4 December 1922

The Criterion
, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Virginia,

I was on the point of writing to you over a fortnight ago when an incident occurred which has not left me leisure to write or even enough time to read the
Daily Mail
. I am enclosing two cuttings from the
Liverpool Post
one of the 16th November and the other of the 30th, and you will understand that in the time between these two cuttings my mind has been wholly occupied and my time consumed with taking legal advice and writing difficult letters. I have had to see my solicitors a number of times and have also taken advice from a K.C.
¹
The amount of worry and fatigue, to say nothing of the complete loss of time, involved in a thing like this is incalculable. The length of time between the original paragraph and the apology is explained by the fact that after writing to the
Liverpool Post
and waiting several days with no reply, I asked their London editor to wire to Liverpool, who replied that my letter had never been received. Some days were thus wasted, and I had to send the letter again and wait, presumably while the editor consulted his contributor and found to his satisfaction that the libel had no foundation. I have been extremely anxious to avoid the necessity of a libel action, because of the expense, because of the protracted and immense strain which such action involves, and the utter impossibility of carrying on my own work at the same time. However, I do not consider that the reparation offered by the
Liverpool Post
is at all adequate considering the grossness of the accusation.

I have also received an anonymous letter, stating that the author has heard that a collection is being made for me and that although the author’s means are very small, no one has ever appealed to his charity in vain. He therefore enclosed four three-halfpenny stamps and subscribes himself ‘Your Wellwisher’.

I started to read
Jacob’s Room
²
before this nasty business began and am now starting again and I hope that I shall have time to read it thoroughly before some new attack is made which will require all the same business over again. It will not be a surprise to you to be told that it is a book which requires very careful reading – I should say compels very careful reading because there is a great deal of excitement in reading it. I can only say so far it seems to me that you have really accomplished what you set out to
do in this book, and that you have freed yourself from any compromise between the traditional novel and your original gift. It seems to me that you have bridged a certain gap which existed between your other novels and the experimental prose of
Monday or Tuesday
and that you have made a remarkable success. But I hope that I shall have more interesting and more detailed observations to make after I consider that I have really mastered the book.

I should like to have the title
³
of the story you are giving me in order that it may be mentioned in the list of contents of No. 3 which I am putting into No. 2. I should also be very glad to have the story itself as soon as you can let me have it; it could be set up at once and also it would be a very great help in enabling me to gauge how much space to allow to other contributors.

I hope that you and Leonard are both well and I hope that I may see you before very long.

I have not mentioned this business of the
Liverpool Post
to anyone except the few people I have consulted; please do not divulge it to anybody. I am very tired indeed at present, and I only hope that I may be able to get a little comparative rest for a few weeks.

Yours always,
Tom.

I
rely
upon neither you nor Leonard mentioning this
Liverpool Post
affair to anybody.

1–King’s Counsel, a senior barrister.

2–Her
Monday or Tuesday
(stories) had appeared the previous year.

3–VW, ‘In the Orchard’,
C
. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), 243–5.

TS
Reed College

4 December 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Uncle Tom,

I received from mother the day before yesterday a draft for the equivalent of $10 and a copy of a letter which you had written to her. I am writing first of all to thank you very warmly for the gift, and also to tell you how very much touched and pleased I am at the memorial of which it forms a part. All of father’s children had such deep admiration for him that I am sure they will all, like myself, be more pleased at reading your letter and thinking of the feelings which dictated it than they will be even at receiving the gift. It has always been a source of great regret to me that father’s benefactions to the city of St Louis should have been performed in
such a modest way that his memory will not endure there longer than the lives of a few friends and his descendants. Your remembrance and your letter have I am sure given as much pleasure to me as they can have done to anybody.

I hope that you and all the family are in very good health and will be for many years to come; I hope that we may meet again perhaps in England and perhaps in America. You must come over and see us!

With very many thanks and with the keenest pleasure in your letter. Vivien sends her kind regards –

I am,
Always sincerely your nephew,
Tom.

TS
BL

4 December 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Sydney,

Vivien has reported to me a conversation which she had today with Violet on the telephone. As I understand that you have now a positive attitude in the matter of the anonymous letter, I have decided to let you know about an affair which is indicated by the enclosed cuttings. Please keep these cuttings by you in order that you may refer to them if occasion arises.

This affair has caused me intense worry for a fortnight and has occupied the whole of my time. As you will see at once the question of taking legal proceedings has had to be gone into carefully and with no delay. All of my time has been spent in difficult and harassing correspondence and in consulting my legal advisers. Needless to say we do not consider this reparation adequate.

I have not yet revealed this affair to anyone except those people whom I have consulted legally.
I must ask you not to mention it to anyone
. If any conversation arises in your presence, as some day it no doubt will, you will have certain of the facts at your disposal and therefore no misunderstandings can occur when you are present.

Yours always,
Tom.

TS
Texas

7 December 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Richard,

You will not I know think I have neglected you. I should have written to you at the weekend to tell you how things were getting on but that one event has followed another so rapidly that I have had no time to write or to keep you in touch. I find myself very worn out with this affair and have had to spend today in bed.

I think that I have not written to you since receiving the first cutting from the
Liverpool Post
. I immediately took the matter up with my solicitor and also invoked the aid of Bruce Richmond who has been most extraordinarily kind and helpful. The letter that you see in the enclosed cutting is the combined result of his, my solicitor’s, a K.C.’s, and my own labours. After sending the letter I waited four days and having no response I went to the London office of the
Liverpool Post
and had them wire to Liverpool who replied that no letter had been received from me. It is most extraordinary as the letter was expressed and posted in my own hand. There was nothing to do but to send another copy which I did and received an acknowledgment. After two days more the letter which you see appeared. I have since written, again taking advice, to find out that the motive which they ascribe to their contributor is incompatible with such a story.

No sooner had the copy of the
Liverpool Post
arrived than I received an anonymous letter signed ‘Your Wellwisher’ stating that the writer had heard that a collection was being taken up for me and that although the writer’s means were small no claim on his charity was ever in vain and he therefore enclosed four postage stamps with the hope that this would help to strengthen my poetry until I became poet laureate!

These things have made a complete interruption in my work for several weeks as well as leaving me with a feeling of utter exhaustion. I will write again as soon as I have time, with so much work in arrears.

Yours ever
Tom.

MS
Valerie Eliot

7 December 1922

Malthouse Cottage, Padworth, Near Reading, Bucks.

Dear Tom,

The news in your letter fills me with indignation and I waste my imagination in wondering who could be so petty, so base, so disgusting as to send you that anonymous letter. I feel conscience-stricken at the part I have unwittingly played in making this possible, yet I do not know how to express to you my sorrow that all this should have happened to annoy you, from an impulse which was meant very differently. Truly, may you reflect that indiscreet friends are a hundred times more dangerous than open enemies. As to ‘Bel Esprit’, I cut off from its public manifestations months ago – but that doesn’t help you.

I wish I might console you for these
déboires
[annoyances]. If I say they are the common lot of men of genius you will feel the implied compliment inadequate to cover the affront to your honour. If I declare that an anonymous insult is no insult, because it comes from a coward, that will not take away from your headache. And if I send you a few rags from the wardrobe of Zeno and Epicurus, I carry coals to Newcastle. Try to think though that persecution precedes its opposite, that venom exerts itself always against what is noblest and finest, and do not turn the fine edge of your mind by hacking with it.

Such thoughts probably come merely as an additional irritant, since they proceed from the tranquillity of one whose withers are unwrung. But let me repeat that I will sign and make public any announcement or disclaimer you like to dictate. Beyond this I do not know what I can propose; if there is anything, suggest it.

Meanwhile, I hope your rest will enable you to get this business out of your head and to regain tranquillity.

I am sending you later a copy of Jackson’s
To-Day
, which has a pleasant air of good-fellowship about it.

Yours as always
Richard.

TS
Houghton

8 December 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gardens,
N.W.1

Dear Henry,

It was kind of you to send your wire of congratulations although I gathered from your letter of the 11th November that you are more pleased with the Prize than with the work for which it is bestowed. I am sorry that you did not really like the poem. There is a good deal about it that I do not like myself, but I do not think that my own reasons for finding it short of what I want to do are reasons which are likely to occur to any of its critics. It is very difficult to anticipate what particular kind of misunderstanding will become current about anything one writes. I consider my Sweeney poems as serious as anything I have ever written, in fact much more serious as well as more mature than the early poems but I do not know anybody who agrees with me on this point except Vivien and William Butler Yeats who have both said much the same thing about them. You say you are trying to be honest and you ask me to give you the benefit of the doubt if you seem malicious. I confess that your attitude toward literature often seems to me unnecessarily complicated by the motives which you impute to the author, for example what you say about Saintsbury as well as what you say about myself. I think that you do not take things (even things such as my own which do not seem at all simple) simply enough, and I think that a simple person who is not worried as to whether they ought to like a thing or not and does not approach a thing with an attitude of suspicion frequently gets a truer impression than the more sophisticated who are constantly occupying their minds in dissecting art and the impressions it makes on them. But such simple sensitive natures, especially in this age of great chatter and great consumption of printed chatter, are very rare. I have a long letter to write to you on this and other subjects, but I must defer it for the present. I must write again about the Hydraulic Stock, because it is more important for me to choose the right moment for getting rid of it and it is for reasons which I will explain later most important that I should be able to convert it into something which would bring a certain if considerably diminished return.

I hope you will write again soon about this and about everything else. Meanwhile receive our very best wishes for Christmas which I hope you will be able to spend at home.

Always your affectionate brother,

Tom.

I held this letter back because I have so much to talk about that I could not let it go without mentioning one or two other things. Mother has told me that the Hydraulic are announcing a dividend both in December and January. I hope that the prosperity will last until the middle of the year, but I want your advice on this point for so far as it affects me the important question is how high to count on the stock going in order to sell. I have a feeling not perhaps wholly justified that six or nine months of industrial prosperity may be followed by another depression. Do you not think that it would be wise to sell out at least half of my stock at 60 or 65? Now so far as this affects you (and affects us indirectly)
will this not lead you to consider another visit to England next summer?
As you know I am very keen for mother to come and for you to come too. Even if you could not come for so long as she you could come over later, and take perhaps a little time in Paris, and return with her.
I feel sure that you can manage to get the time for this if you want to, and I beg you to take it seriously.

I have been harassed lately by two episodes, one a libellous remark in a provincial paper stating that I had been offered £800 two years ago to leave the bank and that I accepted the money and declined to keep my promise, and the other an anonymous insulting letter offering me sixpence for the collection which the writer had heard was being taken up for me. I have had to pursue both these matters and it has involved a great deal of consultation with friends, with legal advisers and a great deal of correspondence. It has been very bad for Vivien to have this strain, especially two such attacks on me coming at once and it has greatly impaired for the time being the good effects of the regime which she has been pursuing.We are both completely worn out. It is as much the damage that these things have done in impairing the four months of dogged and persistent efforts she has made as anything else about the matter, that makes me angry. But of course I should in any case have had to take action about the libel as persistence of such reports might eventually cause a catastrophe to my position at the bank, and for this reason they could more easily ruin me than they might many people. With a very happy Christmas to you from both of us.
We are longing to see you again.

T.