The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (142 page)

1–Sinclair Lewis,
Babbitt
(1922), a novel.

Conrad Aiken
(1889–1973): American poet and critic. Though he and Eliot were a year apart at Harvard, they became close friends, and fellow editors of
The Harvard Advocate.
TSE said he had ‘gone in for
psychoanalysis
with a Swinburnian equipment’ and did not ‘escape the fatal American introspectiveness’ (‘Reflections on Contemporary Poetry’,
Egoist
6: 3, July 1919). Aiken wrote a witty memoir of their times together, ‘King Bolo and Others’, in
T. S. Eliot: A Symposium
, ed. Richard Marsh and Tambimuttu (1948), describing how they revelled in the comic strips of ‘Krazy Kat, and Mutt and Jeff’ and in ‘American slang’. His writings include volumes of poetry among them
Earth Triumphant
(1914); the Eliot-influenced
House of Dust
(1921); and
Selected Poems
(1929), which won the Pulitzer Prize 1930; editions of
Modern American Poets
(1922), and
Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson
(1924); and essays gathered up in Scepticisms (1923) and
Collected Criticism
(1968). His eccentric
autobiographical
novel
Ushant:
An Essay
(1952) provides a satirical portrait of TSE as ‘Tsetse’.

Richard Aldington
(1892–1962): poet, critic, translator, biographer, novelist. A friend of Ezra Pound, he was one of the founders of the Imagist movement; a contributor to
Des Imagistes
(1914); and assistant editor of
The Egoist.
In 1913 he married the American poet H. D., though they were soon estranged. In 1914 he volunteered for WW1, but his enlistment was deferred for medical reasons; he went on active service in June 1916 and was sent to France in December (TSE replaced him as literary editor of
The Egoist
). During the war, he rose from the ranks to be an acting captain in the Royal Sussex Regiment. He drew on his experiences in the poems of
Images of War
(1919) and the novel
Death of a Hero
(1929). After WW1, he became friends with TSE, working as his assistant on the
Criterion
and introducing him to Bruce Richmond, editor of the
TLS
(for which TSE wrote some of his finest essays). From 1919 Aldington himself was a regular reviewer of French literature for the
TLS.
In 1928 he went to live in France, where, except for a period in the USA (1935–47), he spent the rest of his life. He is best known for his early Imagist poetry and translations. In 1931, he published
Stepping Heavenward
, a lampoon of
TSE – who is portrayed as ‘Blessed Jeremy Cibber’: ‘Father Cibber, O.S.B.’ – and Vivien (as ‘Adele Palaeologue’). This ended their friendship. His growing estrangement from Eliot was further publicised in an essay written in the 1930s but published only in 1954,
Ezra Pound and T. S Eliot:
A Lecture
, which takes both poets to task for their putatively plagiaristic poetry. He also wrote an autobiography,
Life for Life’s Sake
(1941), controversial biographies of D. H. Lawrence and T. E. Lawrence; and
Complete Poems
(1948).
See also Richard Aldington: An Intimate Portrait
, ed. Alister Kershaw and Frédéric-Jacques Temple (1965), which includes a brief tribute by Eliot; ‘Richard Aldington’s Letters to Herbert Read’, ed. David S. Thatcher,
The Malahat Review
15 (July 1970), 5–44; Charles Doyle,
Richard Aldington: A Biography
(1989);
Richard Aldington: A Life in Letters
, ed. Norman T. Gates (1992);
Richard Aldington & H.D.: Their lives in letters
1918–61, ed. Caroline Zilboorg (2003).

Richard Cobden-Sanderson
(1884–1964), printer and publisher, was the son of the bookbinder and printer, T. J. Cobden-Sanderson (1840–1922), who was Bertrand Russell’s godfather; and grandson of the politician and economist Richard Cobden (1804–65). He became the publisher of the
Criterion
from its first number in October 1922 until it was taken over by Faber&Gwyer in 1925. He also published three books with introductions by TSE:
Le Serpent
by Paul Valéry (1924), Charlotte Eliot’s
Savonarola
(1926), and Harold Monro’s
Collected Poems
(1933). In addition, his firm produced books by Edmund Blunden and David Gascoyne, editions of Shelley, and volumes illustrated by Rex Whistler. He became a dependable friend as well as a colleague of TSE.

Ada Eliot
(1869–1943): Eliot’s eldest sister – whom he liked to describe as the Mycroft to his Sherlock Holmes – and wife of Alfred Dwight Sheffield. A prominent Boston social worker, she was a graduate of the Mary Institute, St Louis, Missouri, and went on to further study at Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was district secretary of the Family Welfare Society, Boston, 1897–1900; Secretary of the Dependent Children’s Committee, New York Charity Organization Society, 1900–1. She served too in many other capacities: Probation Officer, New York City, 1901–4; Massachusetts State Board of Charities, 1909–14; President of the Society for Aiding Destitute Mothers and Infants, Boston, 1914–18; Director of the Research Bureau on Social Case Work, 1919–27; member of the Advisory Board of the Massachusetts Public Welfare Commission, 1919–34; and member of the Board of the Boston Children’s Mission,
1927–39. Her writings included ‘The Social Case History’ (1920); ‘Case Study Possibilities’ (1922); and ‘Social Insight in Case Situations’ (1937).

Charlotte Eliot
(1874–1926), TSE’s third eldest sister, married George Lawrence Smith, an architect, in September 1903. She studied art at college in St Louis and then in Boston, with sculpture being her especial interest.

Charlotte Champe Stearns Eliot
(1843–1929), the poet’s mother, was born on 22 October in Baltimore, Maryland, the second child and second daughter of Thomas Stearns (1811–96) and Charlotte Blood Stearns (1818–93). She went first to private schools in Boston and Sandwich, followed by three years at the State Normal School, Framingham, Massachusetts, from which she graduated in 1862. After teaching for a while at private schools in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she spent two years with a Quaker family in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. She then taught at Antioch College, Ohio, 1865–7; at her Framingham School; and at St Louis Normal School. It was while she was at the last post that she met Henry Ware Eliot, entrepreneur, whom she married on 27 October 1868. She was secretary of the Mission Free School of the Church of the Messiah for many years. As her youngest child (TSE) was growing up, she became more thoroughly involved in social work through the Humanity Club of St Louis, whose members were disturbed by knowing that young offenders awaiting trial were being held for long periods with adults. In 1899, a committee of two was appointed, with Mrs Eliot as chairman, to bring about reform. It was in large part due to her campaigning and persistence over several years that the Probation Law of 1901 was approved; and in 1903, by mandate of the Juvenile Court Law, a juvenile court was established with its own probation officer and a separate place of detention. As a girl, Charlotte had nursed literary ambitions, and throughout her life wrote poems, some of which (such as ‘Easter Songs’ and ‘Poems on the Apostles’) were printed in the
Christian Register.
In 1904 she published
William Greenleaf Eliot: Minister, Educator, Philanthropist
, a memoir of her beloved father-in-law; and it came as a great joy to her when TSE arranged for the publication of her
Savonarola: A Dramatic Poem
, with an introduction by himself (London, 1926). When she was shown the issue of
Smith Academy Record
containing TSE’s ‘A Lyric’ (1905), she said (as TSE would remember) ‘that she thought it better than anything in verse she had ever written’. TSE reflected on that fine declaration: ‘I knew what her verse meant to her. We did not discuss the
matter further.’ Inspired by a keen ethic of public service, she was a member of both the Wednesday Club of St Louis and the Missouri Society of the Colonial Dames of America, serving successively as secretary, vicepresident, and president. She chaired a committee to award a Washington University scholarship that required the beneficiary to do a certain amount of patriotic work; and in 1917–18 she did further service as chair of the War Work Committee of the Colonial Dames. After the death of her husband in January 1919, she moved home to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Henry Ware Eliot Snr
(1843–1919), the poet’s father, was the son of the Rev. William Greenleaf Eliot (1811–87) and Abby Adams Cranch (1817–1908). Born on 25 November 1843, he was educated at Washington University, St Louis. To his father’s disappointment, he eschewed the ministry –‘too much pudding choked the dog’, he maintained in his unpublished memoirs ‘The Reminiscences of a Simpleton’ (1910-11) – in favour of a business career. After several years with a grocery firm, Reed and Green, he went into partnership as a manufacturing chemist, Eliot and Larkin. When flood and fire contributed to the firm’s failure, he borrowed money from his father to meet his debts, later repaying the money tenfold. In 1868 he met Charlotte Champe Stearns, whom he married on 27 October that year. They had seven children and settled at 2653 Locust Street, St Louis. In 1874 he became Secretary of the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company and subsequently its President and Treasurer. On his retirement at seventy, he was appointed Chairman and attended the office until his death. From 1877 to 1919 he was a member of the board of directors of Washington University. As a consequence of scarlet fever as a boy, he was handicapped by deafness: Eliot said he had such an acute sense of smell that he could identify which of his daughters owned a stray handkerchief.

Henry Ware Eliot, Jr
(1879–1947), TSE’s elder brother, went to school at Smith Academy, and then passed two years at Washington University, St Louis, before progressing to Harvard. At Harvard, he displayed a gift for light verse in
Harvard Celebrities
(Cambridge, Mass., 1901), illustrated with ‘Caricatures and Decorative Drawings’ by two fellow undergraduates. After graduating, he spent a year at law school, but subsequently followed a career in printing, publishing and advertising. He attained a partnership in Husband&Thomas (later the Buchen Company), a Chicago advertising agency, from 1917 to 1929, during which time he gave financial assistance to TSE and advised him on investments. He accompanied their mother on her visit to London in the summer of 1921, his first trip away from the
USA. In February 1926, he married Theresa Anne Garrett (1884–1981), and later the same year the couple went on holiday to Italy along with TSE and Vivien. He was one of TSE’s most regular and trusted correspondents. It was not until late in life that he found his true calling, as a research fellow in anthropology at the Peabody Museum, Harvard. He was instrumental in building up the T. S. Eliot collection at Eliot House. Of slighter build than his brother – who remarked upon his ‘Fred Astaire figure’ – Henry suffered from deafness owing to scarlet fever as a child, and this may have contributed to his diffidence. Unselfishly devoted to TSE, whose growing up he movingly recorded with his camera, Henry took him to his first Broadway musical,
The Merry Widow
, which remained a favourite. It was with his brother in mind that TSE wrote: ‘The notion of some infinitely gentle / Infinitely suffering thing’ (‘Preludes’ IV).

Margaret Dawes Eliot
(1871–1956): the second child in the Eliot family.

Marion Cushing Eliot
(1877–1964), the fourth child of Henry Ware and Charlotte Champe Eliot, studied at Miss Folsom’s school for social service in Boston. She was Eliot’s favourite sister and visited him in London with his mother in 1921.

Vivien Eliot,
née Haigh-Wood (1888–1947). Born in Lancashire, she was brought up in Hampstead from the age of three. Having met TSE in company with Scofield Thayer in Oxford in the spring of 1915, she and TSE hastened to be married just a few weeks later, on 26 June 1915. She developed close friendships with Mary Hutchinson, Ottoline Morrell and others in TSE’s circle. Despite chronic personal and medical difficulties, they remained together until 1933, when TSE finally resolved to separate from her during his visit to America. She was never reconciled to their separation, became increasingly ill and unhappy, and in 1938 was confined to a psychiatric hospital, where she died in 1947. She is the dedicatee of
Ash Wednesday
(1930). She published a number of sketches and stories in the
Criterion
(under various pseudonyms with the initials ‘F. M.’), and collaborated with TSE on the
Criterion
and other works. See Carole Seymour-Smith,
Painted Shadow: The Life of Vivienne Eliot
(2001).

Charles Haigh-Wood
(1854–1927): TSE’s father-in-law. Born Charles Haigh Wood, in Bury, Lancashire, the son of a carver and gilder who prospered, he was educated privately, at the local grammar school, and (from 1873) the Royal Academy School in London. He started exhibiting
in the Academy three years later. He became a member of the RA, and pursued a successful career as a minor portrait and genre painter. On his mother’s death, he inherited her properties in Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire) in Ireland, as well as Eglinton House, and thereafter he was supported by the rents of his tenants. In 1885 he married Rose Esther Robinson (1861–1941). They moved to Hampstead in 1891, settling at 3 Compayne Gardens, where they lived for the rest of his life. According to TSE (Oct. 1920), Vivien was ‘particularly fond of her father; she takes more after him and his side of the family, and understands him better than the others do’.

Maurice Haigh-Wood
(1896–1980): TSE’s brother-in-law. He was six years younger than his sister Vivien, and after attending Ovingdean prep school and Malvern School, trained at Sandhurst Military Academy, before receiving his commission on 11 May 1915 as a second lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion, the Manchester Regiment. He served in the infantry for the war, and on regular visits home gave TSE his closest contact with the nightmare of life in the trenches. After the war, he found it difficult to get himself established, but became a stockbroker, and he remained friendly with, and respectful towards, TSE even after his separation from Vivien in 1933. In 1930 he married a 25-year-old American dancer, Ahmé Hoagland, and they had two children.