The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (6 page)

MS
Houghton

August [1904]

Oliver’s Corner
²
[Province of Quebec, Canada]

Dear Charlotte,

I am afraid this letter will not please you but I hope you will excuse your brother

Tom.

1–Charlotte had married George Lawrence Smith, an architect, in Sept. 1903. Their daughter, Theodora, had been born on 25 July 1904. Charlotte studied at the St Louis and Boston Art Schools, specialising in sculpture. For her oil portrait of TSE, see Plate 15.

2–In 1903 TSE’s uncle, Christopher Rhodes Eliot, had bought some land over the border in Canada, on Lake Memphremagog, as a site for a family camp. In the early years everyone slept under canvas. 

MS
Milton Academy

27 March 1905

2635 Locust St, St Louis

My dear Mr Cobb,

I write to ask whether at Milton Academy you will take a boy who has passed his finals for Harvard. My son is sixteen years of age and will be seventeen the 26th of September. As a scholar his rank is high, but he has been growing rapidly, and for the sake of his physical well being we have felt that it might be better for him to wait a year before entering on his college career. If you have any provision for such cases, and can keep him employed without his going over the same ground, please let me know, and oblige

Yours very truly,
Charlotte C. Eliot
Mrs Henry W. Eliot

Tom passed his preliminaries with credits in two studies. Took Latin prize last year at Smith Academy.
³

1–Charlotte Champe Stearns Eliot, TSE’s mother; see Glossary of Names.

2–In Milton, Massachusetts. Richard Cobb was Head Master, 1904–10.

3–From 1898 to 1905 TSE was a dayboy at Smith Academy, which his grandfather had founded. ‘My memories of [it] are on the whole happy ones; and when, many years ago, I learned that the school had come to an end [in 1917], I felt that a link with the past had been painfully broken. It was a good school.’ He recalled with gratitude Mr Hatch, his English master, who ‘commended warmly my first poem [‘A Lyric’], written as a class exercise, at the same time asking me suspiciously if I had had any help in writing it … Well! so far as I am educated, I must pay my first tribute to Smith Academy; if I had not been well taught there, I should have been unable to profit elsewhere … I remember it as a good school also because of the boys who were there with me: it seems to me that, for a school of small numbers, we were a well-mixed variety of local types’ (from an Address delivered at Washington University, 9 June 1953). See ‘American Literature and the American Language’,
To Criticise the Critic.
 

4 April 1905

2635 Locust St, St Louis

My dear Mr Cobb,

Your letter was received yesterday, and I enclose today a list of studies taken here which my son has prepared. He and I have examined the catalogue you sent, and Tom thinks he could make out a course partly scientific, and then there are elective studies like ‘Advanced History, English and American’. Then he has had but two years of German, one with a poor teacher, and could resume that study, and drop French, in which he needs principally conversation. I should think he could drop Latin and Greek this year. He took the Latin prize last year at Smith Academy. His teacher informs him that in the Harvard preliminaries he received credit in French and English. He has always been a student, and read extensively in English literature, especially Shakespeare. He has read practically all of Shakespeare, whom he admires, and retains much in memory.

It is now partly in deference to his own wishes that we consider sending him to Milton. A friend suggests that he will be lonely there, because most of the boys have been there some years. I hope not, for although quiet and very dignified he is a most friendly boy, of sweet nature, and every inch a gentleman, withal very modest and unassuming, yet very self-reliant too.

We have lived twenty-five years on the old Eliot place, while all our friends have moved out, and Tom desires companionship of which he has been thus deprived.
¹
I talk with him as I would with a man, which perhaps is not so good for him as if he had young people about him.

If you think that Tom can make out a course, and you advise and are willing to take him, I should like a decision very soon, as otherwise his room must be engaged for Harvard. He has been a faithful student and we are willing to have him wander a little from beaten paths this year and take a somewhat miscellaneous course.

His teacher here says he can enter Harvard next year without repeating his examinations. I will write to Mr Hart and inquire.

 I have gone somewhat into detail to assist you in making an early decision, as the number admitted into your school is limited, I judge, and I should like a place reserved in one of the cottages of the upper school.

Yours very truly
Charlotte C. Eliot
Mrs Henry W. Eliot

English: Hill’s
Principles of Rhetoric.
Pancoast’s
Introduction to English Literature.
Reading:
Othello, Golden Treasury, Macbeth,
Burke’s Speech on Conciliation [with America, 1775], Milton’s Minor Poems, Macaulay’s ‘Milton’ and ‘Addison’. Themes. Elocution.

Latin: Virgil’s
Aeneid
, Books 3–12. I read Books I–II last year. Ovid 2000 lines. Cicero, Milo. Grammar. Composition based on Caesar.

Greek: I read Xenophon’s
Anabasis
Books I–IV, with
Hellenica
at sight last year.
Iliad
I–III. Also Books IV–VI, VII and XVIII at sight.
Odyssey
selections. Xenophon at sight. Prose composition. 

French: Fraser and Squairs’ Grammar. Stone’s
Grammaire Française.
Résumés in French of the authors read. Reading:
Horace,
Corneille;
Le Misanthrope,
Molière;
Andromaque,
Racine;
Zadig
and other tales, Voltaire;
Hernani, Les Misérables,
Hugo;
La Mare au Diable, La Petite Fadette,
Sand;
Five Tales
of Balzac;
Mademoiselle de la Seiglière,
Sandeau;
Athalie,
Racine; and others. Memorizing poetry.

History: Myers’
History of Greece
and
History of Rome.

Physics: Wentworth and Hill’s
Principles of Physics. Forty experiments.

Thomas S. Eliot

7 April 1905

St Louis

My dear Mr Cobb,

I do not know whether in my last note I made it sufficiently explicit, that if after reading my letter and looking over my son’s schedule, you approve of his entering Milton Academy, I desire to make formal application for his admission into one of the Upper School dormitory buildings.

Yours very truly
Charlotte C. Eliot

22 July 1905

Eastern Point, Gloucester

My dear Mr Cobb,

Your letter has just been forwarded to me from Saint Louis, which has caused delay in answering. My son’s marks were ‘B’ in History, and ‘C’ in everything else except Physics, in which he was conditioned, receiving ‘E’. This result was not unexpected, as he had in the latter study a poor teacher, who finally broke down with nervous prostration.

He would still greatly prefer to attend Milton Academy – I was, however, so discouraged by your last letter that I took steps to hire rooms at Cambridge. If Mr Eliot approves, however, I will see what steps can be taken to dispose of these (they are in a private house on Mt Auburn Street), provided you are still willing to take him on his ‘one condition’. He had intended to take German this year, which is on your programme.

How early is it necessary for you to know results of my Cambridge inquiries regarding disposal of rooms?

Yours sincerely,
Charlotte C. Eliot

You are probably out of the city, but I address this to Milton.

23 July 1905

Eastern Point, Gloucester

My dear Mr Cobb,

I write a line to say that if you are still in Boston or Milton, my son and I will make an appointment to call on and confer with you. I want to be
sure
he can go to Milton Academy, before taking active steps to dispose of his rooms.

I greatly prefer to have him a year at a Preparatory School, rather than to enter college this year. I am officially informed that his certificate of admission will hold good next year, making up physics.

Yours sincerely
Charlotte C. Eliot
Mrs Henry W. Eliot