The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (141 page)

1–Hesse, ‘Recent German Poetry’.

2–
C
. would print articles by Thomas Mann in 1931 and 1933.

3–Hugo von Hofmannsthal, ‘Greece’,
C
. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923), 95–102.

4–Ernst Bertram (1884–1957), poet; Professor of German Literature, Cologne University, 1922–46.

MS
Beinecke

26 December 1922

The Criterion
, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Sanderson

I have returned the
complete
page proof to Aylesbury. I suppose you have instructed them about cover and
margins
. It came to 97 pp. so I told them to put the contributors’ note etc. on p.98 and have fly leaf in
front
only, making 100pp. altogether. Should not Hachette’s name and address be below yours on cover, in small type?

I hope you are enjoying yourself and look forward to dining next week. In haste

Yrs –
T. S. Eliot

TS
NYPL (MS)

27 December 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Mr Quinn,

Thank you very much for your kind letter of the 4th. It contained a filing card from the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress, certifying that
The Waste Land
was Copyright in my name.
¹
I repeat this merely because the letter was stamped ‘Received unsealed’ and was officially sealed by the post office department, so that I want to be quite certain that there was no other enclosure except of course a copy of your letter to Gilbert Seldes. I am perpetually grateful for your continuous and unremitting devotion to my interests, in the midst I am sure, of innumerable other duties apart from your own affairs; and I am immensely grateful always for your continued support and encouragement.

What I particularly want to mention, in a letter which must be a very brief one, is to ask you whether you have received the manuscript of all my poems which I sent you some weeks ago. I sent it by registered post and it should have reached you long since.
²
If you have not received it please let me know so that I may institute inquiries at once. If it has gone astray, my only but very deep regret will be that it was my only means of expressing my gratitude for all that you have done for me.

I am very glad that you like the
Criterion
.
³
It has taken a great deal of time and thought, and the approval of my friends is the only reward that I can at present expect. I hope that we can make the thing a real success. I shall ask Cobden-Sanderson to get into touch with Liveright. I am not sure that he has not already made some temporary arrangement with Brentano,
⁴
but if a pushing publisher like Liveright would take hold of the thing I have no doubt that it would be more satisfactory in the long run. I am very much obliged to you for having spoken to Liveright about it.

I hope to write to you again soon – but you will think that I live perpetually in the hope of writing and never fulfill my promises.

I trust that you are able this winter to take a little better care of your health and not sacrifice it to all the calls that are made upon you.

Yours very sincerely,
T. S. Eliot

1–‘For the first term of 28 years’.

2–The
March Hare
notebook and the drafts of
The Waste Land
reached Quinn on 17 Jan. 1923.

3–Quinn called the first issue (he had been sent a ‘sample editorial’ copy on 13 Dec.) a ‘beautiful thing, beautifully printed’. He had discussed American distribution with Liveright, who ‘might consider it if the thing was presented to him’, and suggested that RC-S approach Liveright directly.

4–The New York bookseller.

TS
Victoria

27 December 1922

The Criterion
, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns

My dear Read,

I have at last had time over the holidays to read pretty carefully your essay
¹
although it is very solid reading, and I am going to read it again; and I must tell you that I like it very much indeed. I had been considering whether it would be possible to divide it into two parts but I am anxious if possible to avoid mutilating it in this fashion and it does appear as far as I can make out that we shall be able to publish it entire in No. 3. This depends of course on two or three contributors keeping their word and confining themselves to the limits which they promised. If it is necessary to print the article in two I shall of course ask your permission and leave it to you to indicate the division, but as I say I am anxious to respect the construction of your article.

I hope for an opportunity to discuss it with you at more length. Forgive this hasty and tardy acknowledgement and thanks,

Yours ever,
T. S. Eliot

1–‘The Nature of Metaphysical Poetry’,
C
. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), 246–66.

TS
Timothy and Marian Seldes

27 December 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

My dear Mr Seldes,

I thank you very much for your letter of the 14th December. Although I gather from your letter that you are going to be absent, presumably for a needed holiday, I am addressing one more letter to you. This is merely to acknowledge the December
Dial
and your article in the
Nation
which has reached me.
¹
I can say without flattery that I prefer your remarks about
The Waste Land
to those of Mr Wilson which are somewhat more sensational in tone. I do not mean that I do not like his article, but that the whole thing was just a little too highly coloured. At the same time, he made some rather acute remarks which showed me how people may be affected by certain elements in the poem that I do not myself very much like. I do not think that I can put this any more clearly at present.

While I wish to express my appreciation of Mr Wilson’s praise, there is one point in Mr Wilson’s article to which I must strongly take exception. I do very much object to be made use of by anyone for the purpose of disparaging the work of Ezra Pound.
²
I am infinitely in his debt as a poet, as well as a personal friend, and I do resent being praised at his expense. Besides, what Mr Wilson said of him was most unfair. I sincerely consider Ezra Pound the most important living poet in the English language. And you will see that in view of my great debt to him in literature it is most painful to me to have such comments made.

I have always on my mind the articles which I am to write for you and be assured that the delay has been through no fault of mine.

By the way, in response to your earlier question, there are a certain number of copies of the first number of
The Criterion
available and you will be able to get one from Brentano. If not, I have two of my own, and I can save one for you.

I am very deeply aware of the honour which
The Dial
has bestowed upon me as well as of the financial assistance which will be a very great help at a difficult time. May I be able to give
The Dial
still better work in the future!

With many thanks for your letter

Yours always sincerely,
T. S. Eliot

1–The
Dial
75: 6 (Dec. 1922) included both TSE’s final ‘London Letter’ and Edmund Wilson’s ‘The Poetry of Drouth’, a review of
TWL
(‘So Mr Eliot hears in his own parched cry the voices of all the thirsty men of the past – of the author of Ecclesiastes in majestic bitterness at life’s futility, of the Children of Israel weeping for Zion by the unrefreshing rivers of Babylon, of the disciples after the Crucifixion meeting the phantom of Christ on their journey; of … Dante’s astonishment at the weary hordes of Hell, and of the sinister dirge with which Webster blessed the “friendless bodies of unburied men”’). Seldes’s ‘T. S. Eliot’ appeared in
Nation
[NY]. 115 (6 Dec. 1922); repr. in
T. S. Eliot,
ed. Grant, 144–51.

2–Wilson criticised the ‘extremely ill-focussed Eight Cantos of [Eliot’s] imitator Mr. Ezra Pound’.

MS
Texas

29 December 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

My dear Ottoline,

Thank you so much for your present which surprised me on Christmas morning – the beautiful little diary is now in my pocket waiting for the new year – through which it will remind me of you as well as of my
engagements
– and I hope that your name will occur in it from time to time. I hope that next year will have a brighter record of engagements than this!

Vivien is longing to write to you, and will, soon, to thank you and to answer your letter. But this week has brought her a fresh attack of neuritis alternating with neuralgia, and she has been quite used up since Christmas. It’s wonderful how keen her mind keeps with such pain. With love and best wishes from both of us.

Yours affectionately
Tom

TS
Beinecke

31 December 1922

The Criterion,
9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Cobden-Sanderson,

Thanks for your letter of the 27th inst. I trust that you have had a satisfactory holiday in spite of the miserable weather, and greet you on your return with the compliments of the season. I am looking forward to seeing you on Tuesday and hope that you will not object on this occasion to dining
here
with me instead of my going to your club. Will you accept my hospitality at 7?.

About the Hachettes’ name I thought that you had arranged that in some way with Lady Rothermere. I think it would be a good thing if their name as French agents appeared somewhere in the paper. 800 seems to me definitely the maximum that we ought to print. But we can talk this matter
over and also discuss the question of the amount of advertising to be done when we meet.

Yours ever,
T. S. Eliot

PS Did I ask you to send a press copy to
Les Ecrits du Nord
, 1385, Chaussée de Waterloo, Uccle, Brussels, Belgium. I thought I had done so but I have heard from the Editor who says that he has not received it. This can wait however until No. 2 is out and I will give you a fresh list of foreign press copies.

There is a parcel of rejected MSS. ready for your man. 

TS
Houghton

31 December 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

My dear Henry,

Your very nice letter of the 3rd December arrived just before Christmas with your drafts and we were overwhelmed at your kindness and generosity. I hope that you have received the shirt from me and the book from Vivien undamaged.

I have been infernally busy with the
Criterion
which takes up more time than in the circumstances I should wish to give to it. Of course the hope is that in a year’s time it may have got on to such a footing as to provide a certain amount of income for me; if it can be made absolutely solid, and either self-supporting (but that would take very much longer than one year) or else important enough and with a large enough circulation and sphere of influence to attract more support it might provide at least a partial way out of my problem of living a double or triple life. If the paper did not arrive at something like this point within a year it would obviously be folly for me to go on with it indefinitely. In any case if I can get out a year or so of really good numbers so as obviously to make it the best paper of its kind in England it will give me standing as an editor and perhaps invite other openings. So you see I have perfectly practical aims and motives for undertaking the work. If it were not for these possibilities, it would be only a curse, for even the interest of the work and contact with interesting people would not justify my almost complete inability to do any writing of my own which the
Criterion
enforces. All this of course is only for your private consideration and not to be mentioned to anyone else.

The
Dial
prize also may improve my standing and add to the circulation of my books and perhaps make my work of all kinds more sought after. But of course under present conditions I could not make use of such
advantages because I have not the time to do so. I sometimes envy you for having an occasional evening in which you can sit down and read a book; for at least I am sure that you have read much more than I have done in the past year. I know in a general way what is going on and glance at contemporary work with a view to finding new contributors but what I particularly long for is time to fill in the innumerable gaps in my education in past literature and history. There is very little contemporary writing that affords me any satisfaction whatever; there is certainly no contemporary novelist except D. H. Lawrence and of course Joyce in his way, whom I care to read. But there are all the things that I ought to have read long ago and so much that I should like to know in the various sciences.

Does your work keep you very long hours now and do you find it very fatiguing? And if circumstances improved sufficiently, do you intend to leave Rush Street and find rooms by yourself?

Vivien has been very tired since Christmas. She sat up to dinner in the evening on that day for the first time in months. As I have said before, she has been living since last July under the severest and most spartan regimen that I have ever known, which has been much more difficult than any regimen in a nursing home or sanatorium because living it in the midst of ordinary life imposes much more responsibility on her and requires infinite tenacity of purpose; she has not been able to deviate in the slightest from the most limited and particular diet, and she has not been able to take ordinary exercise, only the special exercises prescribed for her and she has hardly seen anybody. I have never known anybody stick to a thing with such persistence and courage, often with relapses which made her feel that the whole thing was useless. She has certainly made great gains by it, but I think that the strain of such a mode of life is beginning to tell on her, and lately she has been sleeping very badly indeed. If I were not tied to the bank I could have gone abroad with her for a time; as it is she is not only under the strain of her own treatment but the strain of our very tense and always rushed and overworked mode of life.

We thought of you a great deal on Christmas day and wished that you were here. Do write again very soon and tell me also in what health you find the family in Cambridge.

Always affectionately
Tom.

V. has read me some bits of
Babbitt
.
¹
It has some good things in it.