The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (5 page)
Read The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 Online
Authors: T. S. Eliot
| | PERIODICALS AND PUBLISHERS |
| A. | The Athenaeum (see also N&A ) |
| C. | The Criterion |
| F&G | Faber & Gwyer (publishers) |
| F&F | Faber & Faber (publishers) |
| IJE | International Journal of Ethics |
| N. | The Nation |
| N&A | The Nation & The Athenaeum |
| NC | New Criterion |
| NRF | La Nouvelle Revue Française |
| NS | New Statesman |
| TLS | Times Literary Supplement |
| | PERSONS |
| AH | Aldous Huxley |
| BD | Bonamy Dobrée |
| BR | Bertrand Russell |
| CW | Charles Whibley |
| CWE | Charlotte Ware Eliot, TSE’s mother |
| DHL | D. H. Lawrence |
| EP | Ezra Pound |
| EVE | (Esmé) Valerie Eliot |
| GCF | Geoffrey (Cust) Faber |
| HR | Herbert Read |
| HWE | Henry Ware Eliot (TSE’s brother) |
| IPF | Irene Pearl Fassett (TSE’s secretary) |
| JDH | John Davy Hayward |
| JJ | James Joyce |
| JMM | John Middleton Murry |
| LW | Leonard Woolf |
| MH | Mary Hutchinson |
| OM | Ottoline Morrell |
| RA | Richard Aldington |
| RC-S | Richard Cobden-Sanderson |
| SS | Sydney Schiff |
| TSE | T. S. Eliot |
| VHE | Vivien Haigh Eliot |
| VW | Virginia Woolf |
| WBY | W. B. Yeats |
| | ARCHIVE COLLECTIONS |
| Arkansas | Special Collections, University Libraries, University of Arkansas |
| BL | British Library, London |
| Beinecke | The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University |
| Berg | Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library |
| Bodleian | The Bodleian Library, Oxford University |
| Bonn | Universitäts und Landesbibliothek, Bonn University |
| Buffalo | Lockwood Memorial Library, State University of New York at Buffalo |
| Bundesarchiv | German Federal Archives, Koblenz |
| Chicago | Special Collections, The Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago |
| Cornell | Department of Rare Books, Olin Library, Cornell University |
| Fondren | Fondren Library, Woodson Research Center, Rice University |
| Gallup | Donald Gallup Papers, The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University |
| Gardner Museum | Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, Massachusetts |
| Harvard | University Archives, Harvard University |
| Hornbake | Hornbake Library, University of Maryland |
| Houghton | The Houghton Library, Harvard University |
| Huntington | Huntington Library, California |
| King’s | Modern Archive Centre, King’s College, Cambridge |
| Lilly | Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington |
| LSE | British Library of Political and Economic Science, London School of Economics |
| McMaster | Mills Memorial Library, McMaster University. Hamilton, Ontario |
| Milton Academy | Milton, Massachusetts |
| MIT | The Weiner Papers Institute Archives, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. |
| Reed College | Portland, Oregon |
| Mugar | Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University |
| NYPL (MS) | New York Public Library (Manuscripts Division) |
| Northwestern | Special Collections, Northwestern University Library, Evanston, Illinois |
| Princeton | Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library |
| Rosenbach | Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| Texas | The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin |
| Tulsa | Department of Special Collections, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa, Oklahoma |
| UCLA | University of California at Los Angeles |
| Vichy | Bibliothèque Municipale, Vichy |
| Victoria | Special Collections, McPherson Library, University of Victoria, British Columbia |
| Virginia | Alderman Library, University of Virginia Library |
| Washington | Washington University Library, St Louis, Missouri |
| Williams College | Williamstown, Massachusetts |
The source of each letter is indicated at the top right.
CC
indicates a carbon copy. Where no other source is shown it may be assumed that the original or a carbon copy is in the Valerie Eliot collection or at the Faber and Faber Archive.
| del . | deleted |
| MS | manuscript |
| n. d. | no date |
| PC | postcard |
| SC. | scilicet : namely |
| TS | typescript |
| < > | indicates a word or words brought in from another part of the letter. |
Place of publication is London, unless otherwise stated.
Ampersands and squiggles have been replaced by ‘and’, except where they occur in correspondence with Ezra Pound.
Some obvious typing or manuscript errors have been silently corrected.
Dates have been standardised.
Some words and figures which were abbreviated have been expanded.
Punctuation has occasionally been adjusted.
Editorial insertions are indicated by square brackets.
Words both italicised and underlined signify double underlining in the original copy.
Where possible a biographical note accompanies the first letter to or from a correspondent. Where appropriate, this brief initial note will also refer the reader to the Glossary of Names at the end of the text.
Vivienne Eliot liked her husband and friends to spell her name Vivien; but as there is no consistency, it is printed as written.
26 September 1888
St Louis, Missouri
‘Young Thomas (Stearns for his Grandfather) came forth at 7.45 this a.m. I like the name for your sake, and shall always feel as though
that
part of it was for you, though the prime cause was the other …’
1
13 April 1943
Cambridge, Massachusetts
‘When you were a tiny boy, learning to talk, you used to sound the rhythm of sentences without shaping words – the ups and downs of the thing you were trying to say. I used to answer you in kind, saying nothing yet conversing with you as we sat side by side on the stairs at 2635 Locust Street. And now you think the rhythm before the words in a new poem! … Such a dear little boy!’
2
1–Henry Ware Eliot to his elder brother, the Reverend Thomas Lamb Eliot (ms Houghton).
2–Ada Eliot Sheffield (1869–1943), the first-born, in her last letter to TSE, written while she was dying of cancer (
MS
Valerie Eliot). She and TSE were intellectually close; he described her as the Mycroft to his Sherlock Holmes. She has in mind
The Music of Poetry
(1942): ‘I know that a poem, or a passage of a poem, may tend to realize itself first as a particular rhythm before it reaches expression in words, and that this rhythm may bring to birth the idea and the image.’
1898–1922
His Father
1
MS
Houghton
Thurs. 23–24 June 1898
Gloucester
2
[Massachusetts]
Dear Papa,
It is very cool here when we get up – that is, indoors, outdoors it is just right. We have no sunflowers, there were two in the rosebed, and Marion weeded them up. I found the things in the upper tray of my trunk all knocked about. A microscope was broken and a box of butterflies and a spider.
Charlotte and I hunt for birds. She found a
empty
nest yesterday (23d). Marion, Margret (?) & Henry are going to Class-day.
3
Yours Truly,
Tom.
1–Henry Ware Eliot; the other family members referred to are Marion, the fourth child and TSE’s favourite sister; Charlotte, the third child; Margaret, the second child; and Henry, the fifth child and TSE’s only brother, who was nine years his senior. See Glossary of Names.
2–From 1896 the family spent their summers in the house built by Henry Ware Eliot on land originally purchased in 1890 at Eastern Point, overlooking Gloucester Harbor. On earlier visits they had stayed at the Hawthorne Inn.
3–When ceremonies are held in schools or colleges to mark the graduation of the senior class.