The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (140 page)

TS
Cornell

8 December 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Lewis,

I should like to see you on a matter of business: Can you meet me on Sunday evening at 9 o’clock at Verrey’s [in Regent Street] as that is the only time I have over the weekend? Do not telephone
unless
it is impossible for you to manage this;
If I do not hear from you I shall be there.

Sincerely,
T.S.E.

TS
Lilly

12 December 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

My dear Ezra,

Enclosed is a copy of your proof. I have already, in order to save time, corrected (so far as necessary) one copy and returned it to the printer, so I hope and trust that you will not require any alteration beyond such printers’ errors as I have not spotted. I have seen Yeats and passed a very agreeable afternoon with him and he has promised a contribution in prose for the following.
¹

Now as to the Obsequies [by B. M. Goold-Adams]. I couldn’t have got it in to this number because I had already accepted for that purpose some time ago a short sketch which you will see, and which I think is good of its kind. For the next number I have got Virginia Woolf, also arranged some time ago. There will be no number therefore before July, so please let me know when you wish to produce the lady’s book. It seems to me very good, although not emphatically a work of genius. I have been offered a story by Pirandello, do you know anything about him?

I enclose copy of my published word and the newspaper’s retraction of the story which I reported to you. This has given me a devil of a lot of trouble, conferences, consultation with solicitors and a K.C. and letterwriting. At the same time I have had the nuisance of an anonymous letter-from a ‘Wellwisher’ offering me 6d in stamps toward the ‘collection’ which is being made for me. This letter I found upon diligent enquiry was composed at a tea-party in the Bosschère
²
household obviously inspired by a person of whose name I have as yet no statement.

The net result of these
affaires
has been three weeks of no work done and a state of exceptional fatigue but it is obvious to the meanest eye that a person in my position must take the trouble to protect himself against such attacks when made.

I think I must have a number of other things to discuss, but I have had to wait so long to write this that they have got lodged somewhere inside my brain.

I will write again soon. Benedictions.

Yours ever,
T.

1–WBY, ‘A Biographical Fragment’, C. 1: 4 (July 1923), 315–21.

2–The Belgian writer and poet Jean de Bosschère.

TS
Texas

12 December 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Ottoline,

I have been wanting to write and tell you that I wired to Yeats after hearing from you and consequently lunched with him at the Savile Club. I enjoyed seeing him immensely; I had not seen him for six or seven years and this was really the first time that I have ever talked to him for any length of time alone. He is really one of a very small number of people with whom one can talk profitably about poetry, and I found him altogether stimulating.

I have been also far too busy with two very nasty little personal affairs which have taken the whole of my time: one an anonymous letter enclosing 6d in stamps for the ‘collection’ which the writer had heard was being made for me, and the other a bit of personal gossip in the
Liverpool Post
, giving a good deal of information evidently taken direct out of the circular which ‘Bel Esprit’ issued in America and incorporating the story that two years ago I had been offered £800 to leave the bank and had accepted the money on those grounds and then failed to fulfill my promise. My legal advisers held no doubt that the allegations were libellous at law, but they advised me to obtain an apology from the paper inasmuch as no damages I might get would ever compensate for the strain and worry of fighting the case. The most dangerous aspect of the matter was of course the possibility of such a malicious lie getting to the ears of the bank. It involved two or three weeks of intense strain and during that time gave me no interval for anything else.

I have only mentioned this matter to a very few persons and they have all promised not to discuss it, ormention it, and as I think it is best that it should not be talked about publicly I rely on your keeping it absolutely to yourself.

This has been a very great strain for Vivien as well as she has been sleeping worse than I have ever known her to do before. She has been quite too ill with these matters to write or to do anything.

Thank you again for my meeting with Yeats. I hope we may have good news of you soon.

Always affectionately,
Tom

TS
Real Academia de la Historia

12 December 1922

The Criterion
, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Cher Monsieur

Merci de votre lettre du 2 courant. Certainement, j’indiquerai la date de vôtre article!
¹
C’est grand dommage que nous n’avons pas pu l’insérer plus tôt, mais la tache de rédiger une revue d’une étendue si étroite, et qui ne paraît que trimestriellement, est très ennuyeuse. Je voudrais bien recevoir votre petite note sur Benavente.
²
J’espère quand même que son talent est à un niveau supérieur à ceux de la plupart des gens auxquels les prix sont cernés (exception faite d’Anatole France).
³
La bonification sera rendue au commencement du mois d’avril.

Bien cordialement,

Vôtre
T. S. Eliot

Indice
⁴
va-t-il reparaître bientôt?
⁵

1–When Marichalar’s article on ‘Contemporary Spanish Literature’ appeared in C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), it was dated ‘August 1922’.

2–The Spanish dramatist Jacinto Benavente (1866–1954) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1922. Marichalar appended a brief note on Benavente to his essay in
C.
, recording that the award of the prize had caused as much surprise ‘within his own country’ as abroad.

3–The French writer Anatole France (1844–1924) had been awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921.

4–On 20 May TSE had asked Marichalar to send him a copy of the Spanish review
Indice
.

5–
Translation
: Dear Sir – Thank you for your letter of the 2nd inst. Certainly, I will
indicate
the date of your article: it is a great pity that we have not been able to get it in earlier, but the task of editing a review on such a small scale, and which only appears quarterly, is very tedious. I would be very glad to receive your little note on Benavente. I hope, however, that his talent is on a superior level to that of the majority of the people to whom prizes are given (with the exception of Anatole France). Payment will be made in April.

Yours cordially, TSE.

Will
Indice
reappear soon? 

MS
Lilly

15 December 1922

The Criterion
, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Ezra, 

I sent you cutting from
Lpool Post
. That is ended so far as the paper is concerned – though their apology is a meagre one – remains to find out the author. The other affair – the anonymous letter – was hatched in the Bosschère household –Madame d’E. says
she
wrote it – both shuffling and unconvincing, but I am sure it was inspired by another person – anyway, I have of course had to drop Bosschère.

It may appear that in the disturbance and exasperation of these and such affairs – which are perhaps a much greater strain and wear upon me than on almost anyone else – I overlook the intentions, thought and labour of my friends for many months past. This is not the case. If I did not attempt to expose the difficulties of my situation to you I should appear (& be) much more unreasonable. It has been a great annoyance to me that I have not been able simply to express appreciation. I have however a faint but consistent notion of the amount of time, thought and energy you must have spent on this matter, and I don’t underestimate this or take it for granted – I think it’s wonderful.

Yours ever
T.

PS Your letter received. Lawd how you cuss and rave. I have reread your Preface – praps you’ve forgotten what it is, but I see nothing in it violent enough to warrant complete expurgation (I only think ‘damn their eyes’ weakens an otherwise forcible remark). It appeared detached from the rest, and it was a question of space. I have turned in some bad copy of mine own, and with your Preface will now have 104 pp. as before instead of 96. So chaw yore old corn cob & think of God & Maise Huffer.
¹

However
, in my opinion, it is
not
the
bite
of the thing – the bite is ‘criticism is a preliminary excitement’.
²

Now if your goin on cussin cuss to me at Lloyds Bank, 71 Lombard St
E.C
.3. 

1–The phrase ‘damn their eyes’ was cut from the brief preface to EP’s ‘On Criticism in General’, in C. 1: 2 (Jan. 1923) – the issue runs to 96 pp. – which discusses his debt to Hueffer (Ford Madox Ford).

2–EP wrote in his piece: ‘I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.’

MS
Texas

15 December 1922

The Criterion,
9 Clarence Gate Gdns

My dear Richard,

Thank you very much for your letter. Do not think that I suppose that these attacks are the consequences of any activities of yours; because I do not. Likewise I want to say that these misfortunes, and any other worries and vexations which have been by-products of Bel Esprit, have not for a moment obscured my appreciation of your great and ceaseless toil on my behalf. God knows how many hours you have spent on it. One’s appreciation is a continuous feeling: the worries and anxieties and deliberations may appear at any particular moment more instant and pressing. When I have discussed this business with you, they have had to come first, if it was to be discussed at all. But I assure you now that I recognise your part in this and am not in the least blinded to it by the serious anxieties I have had.

One would like to be able to write letters, real letters – if there were time.

When are you coming to fetch Plautus? And why not, for a change! tell me how your life is going on?

With heartiest good wishes for Christmas

Yours ever
T.S.E.

TS
Beinecke

18 December 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Scofield,

I am very glad to hear from you once again and to receive your expression of approbation of the
Criterion
. I am also glad to know that you (who must now be an authority on the subject), consider Hesse’s article to be not unjust toward his contemporaries.
¹

I shall look forward with great interest to reading more of the German stuff that you have got hold of. I have heard of Thomas Mann from Curtius and mean when I have time to look into the subject.
²
But I find that I have at present very little time for reading which is rather a handicap
as one likes to be able to know something about people before asking them to contribute.

Your offer of Hofmannsthal is extremely generous. I should certainly be glad if you would put in a word for us with him and should like his essay on his visit to Greece if it is not more than 5000 words.
³
Preferably less, as I find it more difficult to get good short contributions than good long ones. You may tell him that our rates are £10 per 5000 words, and like the
Dial
we make no distinction of persons. (You need not emphasise the latter part!) Of course, foreign contributions cost us more as we have to pay the regular rates to translators as well. I should be very grateful if you would make this proposal to him.

Referring again to the difficulty which my friends had in getting the
Dial
in London, I also would remark that I have not yet myself received a copy of the December number which I imagine appears on the 25th of November. I am only querulous about this for the reason that I always look forward so keenly to reading it. I gather, from cuttings which have reached me from New York, that it also announces that the
Dial
prize has been awarded to me. Although accordingly I have not received exactly official intimation I trust that I may express my profound appreciation of the honour which the
Dial
has bestowed upon me and hasten to add my assurances that I hope I shall be able to do my little bit in helping the future success of the
Dial
by always giving it a refusal of whatever I consider to be my best work.

Possibly I may be tempted to make a flying visit to Germany some time next year and if so I hope that we may meet somewhere on the Continent. Meanwhile accept my most cordial good wishes of the season, and many thanks.

Yours ever,
T.S.E.

I am told that a writer named Ernst Bertram
⁴
is very good.