The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (33 page)

1–Aiken,
Turns and Movies, and other tales in verse
(1916).

2–TSE’s review of Victor Boudon,
Avec Charles Péguy, de la Lorraine à la Marne
(
août– septembre, 1914
), appeared in NS 8: 183 (7 Oct. 1916).

3–Between 3 Oct. and 12 Dec., TSE gave afternoon lectures and classes on modern French literature at Ilkley in Yorkshire. The average attendance at each of the lectures was fiftyeight, dropping to fifteen at the discussion classes which followed. In his reports he regretted ‘that no papers were offered as I missed this means of observing the reaction of the audience. The subject was difficult and involved, and most of the writers discussed were new to the majority of the students.’ Shyness prevented questions being asked ‘which might have proved interesting and useful’. Owing to the war there were few men and the local secretary noted the unpopularity of the hour, which meant that most teachers could not attend. Some members were engaged in nursing, while others were ‘too busy or too tired to attend regularly or to read’. For this and TSE’s other lecture series, see Ronald Schuchard,
Eliot’s Dark Angel
(1999), 25–51.

4–Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953), poet, author, and Liberal MP 1906–10.

5–F. E. Smith, created first Earl of Birkenhead in 1919 (1872–1930), lawyer, wit and statesman, had given university extension lectures on modern history.

6–Having volunteered for the Royal Garrison Artillery in Mar., WL spent the rest of the year in military camps in Britain.

7–Ford Madox Hueffer (1873–1939), novelist, memoirist and critic, joined the Welsh Guards in 1915, and fought on the Somme and at Ypres before being invalided out in 1917. The four novels of
Parade’s End
(1924–8) drew on his experiences.

8–Though he volunteered at the outbreak of war, RA’s enlistment was deferred for medical reasons. He was sent to France in Dec. 1916. See Glossary of Names.

9–Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961), American-born poet and novelist, who wrote as H. D. at EP’s instigation. She moved to London in 1911, and in 1913 she had married RA, assistant editor of
The Egoist
.

10–Gilbert Cannan (1884–1955), novelist and dramatist; a founder of the Manchester Repertory Theatre.

11–Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson (1862–1932), historian, pacifist, and promoter of the League of Nations; Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge; Apostle. OM thought him ‘a rare and gentle Pagan Saint … by temperament religious and poetical’ (
Ottoline at Garsington
[1974], 117–19).

12–Laforgue retold the stories of Salomé and Hamlet in his
Moralités Légendaires
(1887). EP’s version of the ‘Salomé’ appeared as ‘Our Tetrarchal Précieuse’,
Little Review
5: 3 (July 1918). TSE’s ‘few pages’ of the ‘Hamlet’ do not survive, and it is unlikely that he persevered with the task, especially in the light of EP’s remark that translations of Laforgue’s prose were held up by copyright laws (‘Irony, Laforgue, and Some Satire’,
Poetry
11: 2, Nov. 1917). In ‘Hamlet and His Problems’ TSE wrote: ‘The Hamlet of Laforgue is an adolescent; the Hamlet of Shakespeare is not, he has not that explanation and excuse’ (
SW
, 102).

13–‘Turns and Movies’ is a narrative and dramatic sequence of fifteen poems about dancers and performers and their amours.

14–
Earth Triumphant
(1914) had been Aiken’s first book, and the last poem in
Turns and Movies
, ‘This Dance of Life’, was subtitled ‘Earth Triumphant: Part Two’.

15–Brother of Darius the Great (King of Persia 522–486 bc), King Artaphernes figures in books V and VI of Herodotus’
Histories
. TSE is parodying the ethnography of classical historians. 

TS
Houghton

5 September 1916

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Eleanor,

You will not believe that this is really the first time that I have been able to write to you! I am in despair at being able to make it clear to everyone how little time I have now. And the more time passes, the better and longer letter one feels that one ought to write, to make up. So in consequence I have been losing my correspondents, except Jim Clement, who writes whether I write or not, though his letters consist chiefly of complaints at my not writing. But then as I have
never
written to you all this year, you have reason to be offended with me. But I hope you will write to me this fall. I used to depend on your letters, and I am hopelessly out of touch with Cambridge gossip, too.

I am writing now because I see no chance of
more
time later. So you will, I hope, accept this scrap as the best I can do. I have just come back to town from our holidays, leaving Vivien behind for a few days to see if she can snatch a little more benefit from the country before the long winter. She had a bad attack of neuralgia just last week, lasting five days, and it undid, I am afraid, most of the good that the previous weeks had done. I am very anxious, as London winters are horrible. I do not know when I shall be able to bring her to America, either from the point of view of time or her health. But I really hope that she will have a somewhat better winter than last.

We enjoyed Bosham very much. It is a tiny fishing village, with no hotels, not on the open sea, but up an inlet at the head of a bay, not very far from Portsmouth. It is very informal, and I lived most of the time in a shirt and flannel trowsers.
¹
The chief occupations bathing, boating, and bicycling. There are lovely walks back toward the Sussex downs. The natives are charming, much like New England country people, both in aspect and accent, they use ‘sir’ rather more, but are equally keen on making money out of visitors. But I must say that only a few days ago, when we were out walking, we stopped in at a farmhouse where we were given as many mushrooms as we could take away for sixpence. We had lodgings, with meals in our own rooms in the usual way, and a bouncing kindly landlady, named Miss Kate Smith, a very good cook. Her brother-in-law, Mr Tillett 
(he would be ‘Capn’ with us), is an authority on the weather, and informed us every night exactly what the prospects for tomorrow would be, but as he always prophesied rain, and also gravely informed me that the barometer in Bosham usually went contrariwise, I came to place very little faith in him. When we had my brother-in-law for a few days (he has been invalided home for insomnia) we had a sail boat twice, a very slow one, but it was the first time I had been in a sail boat for two years, and I enjoyed it as much as Vivien and Maurice. He is a tall, rather stylish boy, with a bristly little moustache, and looks nearer twenty-five than twenty. He is thoroughly WORN OUT and from some of the horrors which he once entertained us with I am not surprised. A boy of nineteen (for he had his twentieth birthday with us) who is quite used to the sight of
disjecta membra
and has spent nights when he couldn’t sleep in shooting rats with a revolver, makes me feel comparatively immature. But his life has not made him callous at all. And he is very open minded, much more so really than my own family or our friend Roscoe Thayer
²
of Cambridge, in certain respects.

There were a number of friends of mine at or near Bosham for some time, including a man named Lowes Dickinson, who has just been lecturing in America. So that we were by no means lonely. Then I had a good deal of work to do there, reviewing, which has to be punctual, and some preparation for the course of lectures which I am to give in the winter, or rather in the next three months. I will send you the prospectus
³
for them when it is out, it looks very impressive, but I am wondering how I can acquire knowledge of all the things which I have therein engaged myself to talk about. That is what I have come up for, to read at the British Museum, and write out full analyses of the lectures. It will be rather trying at first, and I am hoping that the attendance will not be large.

Do write to me. There is so much that I want to hear about. Tell me what Frederick is preaching about.
⁴
Tell me how Emily [Hale] is. And about the aunts and uncles. I
must
try to write to Aunt Mattie.
⁵
And lastly, tell me a lot about your immediate family and then about yourself. It will take you at least six of your typed pages. Remember that you are going to 
see me again as soon as I can come, and that I hate to lose contact in the meantime. Give my love to Aunt Susie, and Believe me

Your affectionate cousin
Tom

I enclose a picture – made for my Identity Book, to go to Sussex. Do I look the same?

Remember that this and all letters are read by the censors. Give my affection to Harry Child, if you see him.

1–‘I shall wear white flannel trowsers, and walk upon the beach’ (‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, 123 (TSE’s spelling is the same as in his TSS, and in
Poetry
and
Catholic Anthology
).

2–William Roscoe Thayer (1859–1923), Harvard-educated author and editor.

3–TSE’s lectures at Ilkley, Yorkshire, from 3 Oct. to 12 Dec.: ‘Syllabus of a Course of Six Lectures on Modern French Literature by T. Stearns Eliot,
MA
(Harvard)’. See Schuchard, ‘In the Lecture Halls’,
Eliot’s Dark Angel
, 27–32.

4–TSE’s cousin Frederick Eliot was Associate Unitarian Minister of the First Parish in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1915–17. TSE remarked in a later year, ‘some Eliots are wiser than others, and my cousin Frederick … is an ass’ (quoted in Mary Trevelyan, ‘The Pope of Russell Square’).

5–Martha Laurens Stearns (1849–1919), unmarried younger sister of TSE’s mother. 

TS
Houghton

6 September 1916

18 Crawford Mansions

Dearest Mother,

Before I mention anything else I must speak of the letter which you enclosed to me, else I shall forget it. It is quite true that there is a picture which I forgot, in the scramble and confusion, to deliver. It is a small water colour of Oriel College, and is wrapped in brown paper, addressed to E. D. Keith, Phoenix Mills, North Brookfield. It should be in a drawer of my bureau at Gloucester, or else on the shelf of the closet. If you do not find it in either place it might be in the drawer of the little smelley table, or in the steamer trunk which I took and left behind. I hope you will be able to find it, as I feel very much ashamed at having failed in the commission. If you do find it, will you send it on for me to E. D. Keith, ‘Plumstead’, North Brookfield, Mass.? I will write to him as well. He was a nice fellow, and roomed at Miss Carroll’s on my floor. He has been married since.

Another thing to mention is your offer of sending books. It is ever so kind of you, dear mother, but I think I can do without any. Fifteen dollars is a great deal to pay, and the few books I absolutely need I can buy. But I may make out a list of a
few
, perhaps three or four dollars worth, for Shef to send. Thank you very much.
New
philosophic books that I want I do not need to buy, as I can usually get them from the
Monist
or the
Westminster
. Jourdain (the
Monist
and the
I. J. Ethics
) is the most satisfactory employer I could wish. I have only to suggest an article and he clamours for it, and any book I see advertised and want to review he will send for, for me. Most papers only give you books which have been sent to them, and do not trouble to send to publishers unless the publishers send to them. The
Westminster
have given [me] some novels to do.
¹
At 
first sight they do not appear to pay much, as it is only half a crown (60¢) per each short notice of six or eight lines. But the editress
²
told me that she could read and review six novels in an evening! and encouraged me to do the same. Vivien can do some of them for me, and the editress also informed me that I could sell the novels (published at 6s) for 2s each. At that rate one would rake in £1 7s for an evening’s work, which is not bad. I am learning something of the ins and outs of journalism, you see. These short notices are invaluable to the publishers, as they get from them all the little phrases, such as ‘enthralling’, ‘good workmanship’, ‘a book of wide appeal’, et cetera, which, with the name of a good newspaper after them, constitutes an important part of advertisement. This is Fleet Street!

I am working on my lectures now. The syllabus will be out in a few days, and it will look very imposing, with T. S. ELIOT M.A. (HARVARD) on it. I shall send you one directly. There is a good deal of reading to be done, and I want to be well prepared for the discussion which will follow every lecture.

I enclose, among several other things, (chess problems
³
and a rather amusing letter of an autograph fiend), a review of the
Catholic Anthology
printed in the
Nation
.
⁴
It is the best review I have had yet. Bertie thinks it is due to the fact that Massingham,
⁵
the editor, visited Lady Ottoline Morrell
⁶
lately, and probably had the things called to his attention there. Anyway, I am hoping that it will be of some help to me in getting work from the
Nation
.

I have begun this letter upside down. The facts are that I came up from Bosham yesterday, leaving Vivien there to try to squeeze a few more days benefit out of the seaside before the winter. I do not know how long she can stand it alone, but I hope that she can be induced to stay a week without me, as it is very good for her. We enjoyed our month immensely, and it did us both a world of good. Unfortunately, Vivien had the ill luck to have a very bad attack of neuralgia last week. It lasted the whole week, and discouraged her fearfully, as she felt that she had lost all the benefit of 
the previous weeks. These attacks always weaken her very much. It was aggravated, I think, by the fact that we had to move into different rooms (in the same house) as the landlady had let the ones we were in. The new rooms were unused and the sitting room very damp; I think this protracted the neuralgia. At any rate it gave us both mild attacks of rheumatism, mine in the left leg. Hers is nearer to gout, which she gets in the feet. It remains to be seen when she comes back what the net result of the seaside was. I hated to leave Bosham; it seems like a beautiful dream. The villagers all know us now, and we felt quite at home there. They are very much like New England fishing people, but rather more complete in their way. The old men are the typical old sailors of pictures, with great rings of white beard around their faces, play bowls on the green in the evening (it calls itself the Bosham Bowling club, Members Only) and arguefy in the
Anchor Tavern
in the evening and on Sunday after church. There is also the village idiot, the village drunkard (‘a splendid workman afore the drink got him’), the curate, et cetera. It is idyllic.

You are so good and kind with offers of help that I should like to work night and day without stopping to make up for it, but I know I never can. How splendid you and father are! I do appreciate it all, and so does Vivien. We shall, as you say, probably need some help before Christmas, but I hope not much. I have only recently paid the Oxford bill: the Linen Bank sent the cheque back to St Louis before crediting me with the money.

I must stop now. Good-night!

Your loving son
Tom.