The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (62 page)

1–
Art&Letters,
1917–20, was initially edited by Frank Rutter and HR. SS provided finance, edited one issue, and sought TSE’s advice on the contents.

2–The first of TSE’s regular A. pieces over the next two years was an unsigned review of Osborn,
The New Elizabethans:
4 Apr. 1919.

3–Although he did not accept the post of assistant literary editor, TSE wrote at least fifteen reviews for JMM over the year.

MS
Beinecke

[April 1919?]

The Egoist,
Oakley House,
Bloomsbury St, London,
W.C.

Dear Brigit

Thank you for your letter, in spite of the first and last sentences. But if you were furious, why didn’t you say so? I shouldn’t have been frightened. Do you mean furious altogether, or in so far as you were sure I was wrong? You should, in writing, have given a concise summary of what my ‘judgment’ was, and then for my benefit, separated the chaff from the wheat. As it is, I am in the dark. Then you are wrong about two things. I don’t think I judge to the extent of thinking that I understand the whole or even the essential of a person, but merely that certain expressions and ways of acting seem to indicate certain things about them: these inferences are true or false, and people’s history is another matter. If I knew more of your history I should of course understand better what I can see of you, and of course without that knowledge I cannot judge. I can only observe, and correct by further observation.

And do you think it is necessary to subdue your personality to that of the person you are with, in order to understand them? It seems to me merely a question of being enough interested to forget oneself, which is very different from subduing oneself. I can’t see any reason for subduing
oneself except for convenience, or simply because one is realised through the other person. The people who seem most curious about understanding others have usually struck me as very positive personalities.

Certainly, the man who is without vanity, or who can recover from an attack on his vanity and profit by it, has some greatness. Perhaps their vanity goes deeper than women’s, I don’t know. Vanity is so much part of the human passion – love of power, that it is perhaps never absent.

You must not on any account give me credit for being penetrating. I have impressed people that way before, and the result is always disaster. For there eventually comes some word or action which shows them my immense stupidity, and the whole thing goes up in smoke. Always cut what I appear to understand by half.

Don’t think I should fail to take account of what your life has been – only, however it interested me, and how much light it threw, it is not, in one way, essential. The question is what goes on in your mind now?

I must finish a review, before I get my things together.

Yours
TSE

1–Brigit Patmore (1882–1965), Irish writer and literary hostess: see Glossary of Names.

MS
Texas

1 April 1919

18 Crawford Mansions,
Crawford St,
W.1.

Dear Jack

Your hospitality is very unfair but as you urge arguments of convenience I will accede if you will dine with me next week. I am looking forward to Seraglio
¹
very keenly. Love to Mary,

Yrs ever
T.S.E.

 1–On 3 Apr. they went to a performance of Mozart’s
Die Entführung aus dem Serail
(‘The Abduction from the Seraglio’), conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

MS
Houghton

6 April 1919

18 Crawford Mansions

My dear Henry

I have not written to you for a long time and there are some matters about which I ought to have written you. I suppose that Mother will have sent you some of my letters. First I must thank you for the cheque in your last letter but one, £10 and for the £21 you cabled. The last I did not know about until you wrote, as the bank did not notify me. We are very grateful for the money. We have got to have some wallpapering and painting done soon, which will be rather expensive, as the flat is in a very dirty condition after three years. We should rather like to change, but it would be almost impossible to find another good flat cheap in a good part of town. This flat is good and cheap, and in a good part of town, but the
immediate
neighbourhood and some of our neighbours, are not what we should like. It is rather noisy.
¹
– So we must be here for two years more. Then we shall be able to pay more, and we want a larger flat: we are rather tired of living in three rooms.

What I should have liked to write to you about before is the
Athenaeum
. But it would have been settled before you could have answered. The
Athenaeum
used to be the chief literary weekly in London. Then in the nineties it ran down, and for the past two years was run as a monthly of social reconstruction. Now it has changed hands and the man who is the new editor (it is again a literary weekly) asked me to be his assistant editor at £500. I weighed the matter for some days. My reasons for declining are as follows:

On the paper I should have had no control over the contributors or the policy. I should have been all the more worried if I foresaw at any time that it was not going to succeed.

I probably have more influence and power and distinction
outside
of the journalistic struggle and having no material stake in it.

At any rate I have made the choice and am satisfied with it.

This has absorbed all my time and thought for several weeks, and I am tired out with it.

I hope at least that it will not be necessary for me to give lectures next year.

I want to write more fully about other things too, but I shall wait till next week. I am doing a certain amount of reviewing for the
Athenaeum
to help the editor, and we have also been obliged to dine out and see a great many people lately.

Thank you very much for the photographs. It is a great satisfaction to have them.

Always affectionately
Tom

1–Osbert Sitwell reports that two ‘actresses’ who lived below the flat spent their time ‘playing the piano, singing, or putting some particularly loud record on the gramophone’, as well as yelling to ‘gentlemen friends’ in the street. This often went on ‘far into the small hours and without interval’. When TSE complained to the landlord, he was told, ‘Well, you see, Sir, it’s the Artistic Temperament.’ Sitwell thought the experience contributed to
SA
, and that he could ‘hear the voices of the
Waste Land
[there]’(‘T. S. Eliot’, unpublished memoir, Texas).

MS
Houghton

7 April 1919

18 Crawford Mansions

My dear Mrs Eliot

There is a letter from you for Tom lying on the table, and he will be pleased to find it when he comes in. He will get in about 5.30, and will then have tea and supper together, and go off to his lecture at 6.30. He will get back again at 11 – and have something more to eat. Monday is always a hard day. It is the most beautiful warm Spring day today, and makes one think of the country.

Our woman, who was so very dreadfully ill with influenza and pneumonia, is now back doing a few hours work a day, but cannot do much as she is still weak. She was ill six weeks and her illness cost us a good deal. Did Tom tell you how she was taken suddenly ill here in the flat one Saturday night, just as she was going home?We had to put her to bed on the sofa, (we have no second bed or bedroom) and there she was for five
days, getting worse and worse. I nursed her night and day and we thought she would die on our sofa. I cld. get no one to help me as it was in the midst of the influenza epidemic, and even the doctor did’nt come regularly. It was a dreadful time. I have never seen anyone so frightfully ill as she was. It is a terrible illness. The doctor saw that we could’nt help her all through it, so at last she was taken away in an ambulance. I disinfected the whole flat, and the marvel is that we neither of us caught it. I had a septic throat for a week, but that was all.

Tom is now pretty well, although of course always over-worked and over-tired. The winter has been a trying one. I hope he will get three weeks holiday from the Bank during the spring or summer, and I should very much like him to go abroad, to France, if he thinks he can afford it. After being cooped up in England all these years, everyone feels an intense longing to get out of it, and I think it is particularly necessary for Tom to have a
complete change
, and rest for his brain. He has a friend Windham [
sic
] Lewis (you will know his name, I expect) who will be in Brittany all summer, and Tom wd. love to join him for his little holiday. Ezra Pound and his wife are going to France in a week – to Toulouse –
for six months.
His wife’s health has suffered during the war and her doctor recommends she shd. get out of England. They are lucky to be able to, lucky to be so free. Mrs Pound is English, and very charming. She has never been to America, and in several ways she and I have much in common. We are friends. Tom and I are very happy in the people we know – it is a pity you have no outsider to tell you things about us. It is difficult to tell you everything ourselves. I remember you have several times said you wished you had some person intimate with us who would give you news. Of course you could at any time have written to my parents, who would have been glad to keep you posted. Tom has a splendid social position here, and we belong to quite the most interesting set. How happy it would make Tom if you would visit England! I should think it would interest you too, although of course I realise only too well what an undertaking it is.

Of course Tom’s money-earning activities are of a kind that make it very difficult for him to think of getting away for any length of time for a good while. If he had accepted that very flattering offer of Sub-Editor to the
Athenaeum
he would have been just as tied. I think on the whole he did wisely to stay at the Bank, although I found it hard to think so at the time.

With love, and hoping to hear from you before long

Your affect.
Vivien

MS
Berg

12 April 1919

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Mrs Woolf,

I must apologise for the delay in sending you this list
¹
– the only excuse is fatigue. You will have some of these on your list already. Where I have not got the addresses they will mostly be in the telephone directory, I think. I have probably omitted several of the likeliest people, as one does, but I have a copy of the list and will send you any more names as they come to my mind.

We are having workmen in directly after Easter, and as soon as they let us have our flat again we should be so pleased if you and your husband could come and dine with us one evening.
²

Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot

1–A list of potential purchasers of his
Poems
.

2–The Eliots had dined with the Woolfs a few days earlier, on 6 Apr. VW recorded: ‘I amused myself by seeing how sharp, narrow, & much of a stick Eliot has come to be, since he took to disliking me. His wife a washed out, elderly&worn looking little woman’ (
Diary
, I, 262).

MS
McMaster

Sunday [13? April 1919]

18 Crawford Mansions

My dear Bertie,

I went to Marlow
¹
a week ago and fetched away several small belongings of yours, and packed up the table, but was unable to get anyone to carry it to the station at the last minute. Tomorrow, unless my cold turns to influenza, I am going again and shall bring the table and whatever else I can carry. Then I will try to get this first collection conveyed to your present address.

I am sorry it has been so long, and I am afraid it will take a good many journeys before you have everything. So please have patience! Do come and see us when you have a free evening.

Yours ever
Vivien.