The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (46 page)

Published December 1917

Your writer on ‘Elizabethan Classicists’
²
struck me, if I may say so without offence, as straining with youthful zeal after original opinions. His attempted rehabilitation of Ovid merely shows that the true taste for the Classics has gone out with the old classical curriculum; and as for his belittling of Milton
³
– well, I do not believe that he could get a single one of the living Masters of criticism (Mr Edmund Gosse, for example, or Sir Sidney Colvin) to even entertain such views.

J. A. D. Spence
Thridlingston Grammar School.

1–Masquerading as readers’ letters, these ‘excerpts’ were written as fillers by TSE.

2–EP had been contributing a monthly series, ‘Elizabethan Classicists’, since Sept.

3–EP argued that Milton merely followed in the rhetorical wake of the dramatists, ‘adding to their high-soundingness his passion for latinization, the latinization of a language peculiarly unfitted for his sort of latinization … His real place is nearer to Drummond of Hawthornden than to “Shakespear” and “Dante”’ (Nov. 1917).

… I have, I pride myself, kept abreast of the times in literature; at least, if I have not, the times have moved very speedily indeed. I was therefore surprised, in what was otherwise an intelligent review (so far as I can judge, without having read the authors mentioned), to find Rupert Brooke dismissed abruptly with the words ‘He is not absent.’
¹
Brooke’s early poems exhibit a youthful exuberance of passion, and an occasional coarseness of utterance, which offended finer tastes; but these were but dross which, as his last sonnets show, was purged away (if I may be permitted this word) in the fire of the Great Ordeal which is proving the well-spring of a Renaissance of English poetry.

Helen B. Trundlett
Batton, Kent.

1–‘Rupert Brooke is not absent’ had been TSE’s terse comment in his review of Monroe and Henderson’s
The New Poetry
(Egoist 4: 10, Nov. 1917, 151).

… There was a serious and instructive article on Constantinople by a Mr Symons which I greatly enjoyed.
¹
It is good for us to keep our minds open and liberal by contemplation of foreign ways, and though the
danse
du ventre
is repellent to the British imagination, we ought to know that these things exist. I cannot speak so pleasantly of Mr Lewis’s …

Charles James Grimble
The Vicarage, Leays.

1–Arthur Symons, ‘Notes taken in Constantinople and Sofia’ (Egoist 4: 10, Nov. 1917, 153).

… The philosophical articles interest me enormously; though they make me reflect that much water has flowed under many bridges since the days of my dear old Oxford tutor, Thomas Hill Green. And I am accustomed to more documentation; I like to know where writers get their ideas from …

Charles Augustus Conybeare
The Carlton Club, Liverpool.

… Is not Mr Lewis’s objection to the Grin
¹
really a slur upon the cheery philosophy of our brave boys in the trenches, which has been so happily caught by the witty pen of Captain Bairnsfather?
²
And we all know that a little nonsense now and then …

Muriel A. Schwarz
60 Alexandra Gdns, Hampstead,
N.W.

1–‘The Englishman should become ashamed of his Grin as he is at present ashamed of solemnity … he should cease to be ashamed of his “feelings”: then he would automatically become less proud of his Grin’ (WL, ‘Epilogue’ to
Tarr
,
Egoist
4: 10, Nov. 1917).

2–While hospitalised for shell-shock in 1915, Bruce Bairnsfather (1888–1959) was commissioned by
The Bystander
magazine to draw weekly cartoons, which became immensely popular. TSE wrote later that the ‘savage comic humour’ of Marlowe had ‘nothing in common with J. M. Barrie, Captain Bairnsfather, or
Punch
’ (‘Some Notes on the Blank Verse of Christopher Marlowe’,
Art & Letters
2: 4, Autumn 1919; SW).

MS
Texas

[December 1917?]

18 Crawford Mansions,
Crawford St,
W.1

Dear Mrs Hutchinson,

I had a very exciting time with you on Thursday. In fact, I have been ill ever since! I gave you lots of false impressions, but I hope I shall be able to put them right some day.

There seem to be some difficulties about having a dance at Dakyns’ house – but as I shall not see him until tomorrow night I am not sure about it. If he won’t I wish you would have one! I can imagine it being a wonderful occasion. You
must
like dancing.
¹

And, as your husband likes ‘crowds’, you’d be doing him such a good turn too!

We are going to a dance tonight at a Studio in Kensington. Also one on Wednesday night.

Most of this week I shall spend looking for a cottage. I do think you and I both
ought
to have one – it would be the only way we could live.

I will write when I have seen Dakyns. Thank you for keeping my pin.

Yrs.
V. H. E.

1–BR told OM in 1916: ‘The passion of her life is dancing & ever since I have known her I have paid for her to have dancing lessons whenever she has been well enough. I don’t suppose she will ever be any good, because of her health, but it is such a passion that I can’t bear to baulk it’ (Texas; quoted in Ray Monk,
Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude
[1996], 469).

MS
Texas

[December 1917?]

18 Crawford Mansions

My dear Mrs Hutchinson,

I am writing quickly to say that I do not think I had better come to see you next Thursday, because I am coming up on that day for a lesson, and I should be tired and the time limited and so I am sure it would not be satisfactory. I would far rather come up one day just to see you and nothing else. That would have to be the week after, and I will leave you to fix a day. Will you? Meanwhile,
will
you be nice and come to tea next Saturday (tomorrow week)? You have never been to see us, and we want you to. Saturday is Tom’s only afternoon at home. I should like to ask a few other people if you came, and I wonder if it would amuse you at all to meet the Pounds, or if you’d rather not? You might just mention that when you write. O I do hope this will not be the weekend you go away, but I expect it will! I shall be wretched, if so.

We both positively loved your party, and I was furious at being torn away. And also I must tell you that I have seldom seen Tom so stimulated by anything as he was last night. I am so glad I got the little china man cut of the ham pie.

I liked Miss Sitwell much better yesterday, so I take it back (I told you I did not like her).

Hoping you will write and say you will come.

Yrs.
Vivien Eliot

MS
Texas

Tuesday [December? 1917]

The Flat [18 Crawford Mansions]

I am so glad you are coming on Saturday, and thank you for that very nice letter. I have thought of this flat as a ‘remote tower’, somehow it seems so secret and shut off, all the street noises.

You know I have loved this flat, and I think I shall never like the Marlow house so much. But somehow I think I shall like it more if you will really come there. You must come alone sometimes, when it is very
hot
, and we can be just three by ourselves. And then I keep thinking of and planning a very ripping weekend party, if only people won’t mind the scarcity of the furniture
and
the food. We could go on the river in punts in the day, and perhaps we should dance in the evening. Do nice things that one
plans
ever really happen, now?

It was stupid of me not to say both of you for lunch on Saturday, I meant to. But you are
both
coming aren’t you?

I actually secured Ezra by himself! This is extraordinary and the first time in years. I seized on a moment of discontent with ‘them’ as he calls his wife!

The Sitwells were here today, and Osbert said I must tell you that
he
says you are to give a dance. One day you really must try Tom’s Negro rag-time.
¹
I know you’d love it.

Lunch is at 2.15 on Saturday I am sorry it is so late but it has to be. Until then – Yrs.

V. H. E.

1–For TSE and ragtime, see David Chinitz,
T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide
(2003), 8–52.

MS
Virginia

[December 1917]

[18 Crawford Mansions]

Dear Mother,

I don’t know whether you saw this book when it came out in America, but if not I hope it will interest you.
¹

With a very merry Christmas
and infinite love
Tom.

1–Gamaliel Bradford,
Union Portraits
(1916), which TSE had reviewed, anonymously, in
NS
, 21 Apr. 1917.

MS
Texas

[late December 1917]

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Mrs Hutchinson

I am so sorry I have not answered your invitation sooner. We shall be glad to come on Thursday night, if Tom is well enough. Thank you very much for asking us.

Tom has been rather ill in the last few days – he is overworked and tired of living. I wish he could break his leg, it is the only way out of this that I can think of.

I have been quite busy and happy lately with my new house and my suburban performances.

Hoping to see you on Thursday. We will bring our gifts.

Yrs.
Vivien Eliot

MS
Houghton

22 December 1917

18 Crawford Mansions

My dearest Mother,

I wanted to write you and father Christmas letters, and here it is nearly Christmas Day, and I have not written for three weeks. Life has been very rushed and confused in these weeks, more than I can ever explain until I see you again, but not so rushed that I have not thought of you continually. In the first place, there is the grey sweater to thank you for. It has been
most
useful; the weather has been bitterly cold, with one or two snowfalls; and I have been very glad of the sweater in unheated lecture rooms. It is beautifully made, and I sometimes picture you when you were knitting it. Then there are the two small envelopes which of course we have not opened yet; they shall go into our stockings with the things we get each other, and we shall thank you for them after Christmas. This will not be a very merry Christmas. Last year Maurice was in England. We have not heard from him for weeks, and no one knows where he is, so his parents are rather anxious. Of course everything is much sadder this year, but I shall not give details about that. The only pleasant feature is the approaching rise in my salary.

I assisted in a poetry reading last week at the house of some rich person for the benefit of something.
¹
A hundred and fifty people were induced to 
pay 10/6 each, so it was rather a rich audience. Edmund Gosse
²
presided, and a number of ‘young poets’ of whom I believe I was the oldest, read. It was rather amusing, as the audience and most of the poets were very solemn, and I read some light satirical stuff,
³
and some of them didn’t know what to make of it. I think the more intelligent appreciated it, and a number of people asked to be introduced to me afterwards, including several women who said they were Americans, one very nice one, a Mrs Lavery.
⁴
One or two of the ‘poets’ were quite nice persons, and I may be able to interest them in the
Egoist
, which I want to extend.

I am distressed about George.
⁵
His action seems to me quite irresponsible. A man well over forty, with two children, ought to know better. Even at the most excited period here no one would have expected a man in such a position to enlist. I can’t see what good it will do him; no one will give him work for being ‘patriotic’, as he is not going into the firing line, in such work as he hopes to do. Five years from now everyone will have forgotten whether he was in France or not. The motive seems a very trifling one. Charlotte will have a very heavy burden, and you a heavy responsibility. I am very sorry indeed.

I must stop now. I shall write to father by this same mail. I hope you will have just the most cheerful Christmas possible, and I shall think of you all day.

Your devoted son
Tom