The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (65 page)

MS
Beinecke  

Friday [16 May 1919]

18 Crawford Mansions,
Crawford St,
W.1
 

Dear Brigit  

After all I have not thanked you for your letter, which is only another illustration of my imbecility – but the telephone always appals me anyway. I was very grateful for it and you are very kind and generous.  

I think I realised how you feel among strangers, before you mentioned it. I am naturally so self-conscious myself that I feel it in others. Perhaps one never conquers it quite, but one must never capitalise! You see I have left the laziness and gone on to something else. However, we shall test the constraint.  

Au revoir till Sunday. If that won’t do you must give me an evening when you come back from Marlow. I am very glad you are going: Vivien will enjoy it.  

Yours
Tom.

MS
Texas  

16 May 1919

18 Crawford Mansions  

Dear Mary,  

Of course I should be delighted to come to you for Whitsun.
¹
I am leaving town for an indefinite number of weeks, in a few days, to go about in the unknown provinces on business of the bank. I don’t know how long I shall stay anywhere, and I shall probably be in town every week or so, and this will remain my address. But I shall certainly be able to get away for Whitsun, and can get down to Wittering. Vivien has made arrangements to do something including that time.

Please don’t have anyone else – flattery quite apart! – I should like best to be the only guest.
Don’t
have anyone for me, I mean – of course, if you were going to have someone anyway, don’t alter your plans.

So you see I can be seduced – I am looking forward to it very keenly.

Yours,
T.S.E.  

 1–Whitsun was on 8 June. On 10 May, VHE had asked MH to invite TSE for Whitsun.

Published 16 May 1919
¹
 

Sir,  

Mr Lytton Strachey informs me that in my review of Kipling’s verse last week I referred to the ‘Authorized Version’ as the ‘Revised Version.’
²
I meant the Bible published by direction of King James I, and still in use in my childhood. Mr Strachey says that there is a modern edition called ‘The Revised Version.’
³
I admit and apologize for the error.  

Yours, etc.,
T.S.E.

1–A note headed ‘Wednesday’ reads: ‘Dear Strachey Don’t be absurd – of course I should answer. Yrs T. S. Eliot’ (BL). Presumably it was sent on 14 May, though ‘May 21 1919’ has been added in pencil.

2–TSE, ‘Kipling Redivivus’, a review of Kipling’s
The Years Between,
in A., 9 May 1919. Some Kipling poems, said TSE, convey a ‘touch of the newspapers, of Billy Sunday, and the Revised Version filtered through Rabbi Zeal-of-the-Land Busy’. He remarked too that ‘the Revised Version (substantially the same style as all the versions from Tindall) is excellent prose … but is not a style into which any significant modern content can be shoved.’

3–The Revised Version, 1881–5, was a revision of the Authorized Version of 1611.

TS
Virginia  

17 May 1919

18 Crawford Mansions  

Dear Rodker,  

Leonard Woolf’s edition of a few of my poems is now on the market, and I understand that yours would not be ready before August, so that is all right.
¹
I accordingly authorise, or give you permission, or whatever is the legal phrase, to print your special edition of 250 copies of a book to contain the poems in the Egoist
Prufrock
, the poems in Woolf’s small book,
and any others that I may send you in a reasonable time. I enclose three new ones.
²
I should like to know when you want to start on this book, as I want to think over such questions as the order of the poems, dedication; also I have two more quotations, a Latin and a Greek one, to go in as headings. Will you be able to do Greek type? There are two other short Greek quotations.

I am going to be out of town most of the time for some weeks on my employer’s business; but I shall be up at irregular intervals once a week or so for the night, and as I shall be moving about, this is the only address, and I can answer anything in the course of a few days.

I shall put on [sc. out] a cheap edition, with the Egoist, probably, in the spring of next year: in March or April or May; but that will give you enough time, won’t it?

Yours
T. S. Eliot

I will send you a copy of  Woolf’s.

1–Rodker had just started the Ovid Press, and wished to put out a
de luxe
collection of TSE’s poems.

2–Presumably ‘Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar’, ‘Sweeney Erect’ and ‘Ode’.

MS
Texas  

Sunday [18? May 1919]

18 Crawford Mansions  

Dear Mary,  

I love you much more than ever. I turn to you with thoughts of joy and relief after my adventurings. I am fond of you and I think you wonderful. And wonderful you
are
. So Tom is coming to you for Whitsun! I may go with him for part of this preposterous tour. I may not. I
may
see you at Bosham just the same though.  

Your devoted friend
Vivien  

Heaven to be back here.
Lovely white room. 

MS
BL

Monday 19 May 1919

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Strachey,

I find that I am being sent on a tour of the provinces, by my bank, as soon as I can get off, and that I shall probably be gone some weeks. So unfortunately there is no possibility of my asking you to dine with me in the near future, as I should have liked to have done.
²
I only fear that when I am settled here again you will be buried in the country. Perhaps you will keep me in touch with your movements, and perhaps you will even let me have your opinions and Revisions of anything of mine you see in print.

Sincerely
T. S. Eliot

This is my only address.

1–Lytton Strachey (1880–1932), critic and biographer.

2–TSE had seen Strachey at Garsington on 11 May, and dined with him in London the following day. Strachey related to Dora Carrington on 14 May: ‘Poet Eliot had dinner with me on Monday – rather ill and rather American: altogether not gay enough for my taste. But by no means to be sniffed at’
(Letters of Lytton Strachey,
ed. Paul Levy, 2005).

MS
Virginia

Wednesday [21 May 1919]

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Rodker,

Thanks for your letter. I am sorry for the misunderstanding. I don’t think there is enough new stuff for more than twenty-five pages, but perhaps I shall have more by the end of June.
¹
I hope so. I wonder if thirty or thirty-five pages is worth your while? With hope to see you in a few weeks.

Sincerely,
T. S. Eliot

1–Rodker’s Ovid Press published
Ara Vos Prec
in Feb. 1920. The poems from
Prufrock and Other Observations
occupy twenty-two pages, preceded by twenty pages of more recent work, including the Hogarth Press
Poems
and ‘Gerontion’.

MS
Houghton

25 May 1919

18 Crawford Mansions

My dearest Mother,

I have not had any
letter
from you for a very long time, except little short notes – not that they were not very nice ones, but I assumed that you were too busy or preoccupied to write. I have the dressing gown, and am delighted to have it. Everything you have sent has come safely.

I don’t know whether I told you that the lectures were ended, to my great relief. The class seemed to be satisfied with them (though I was not) and presented me with some very nice books
¹
to mark the completion of the three years’ course. I don’t know whether it will be desirable for me to continue them from any point of view, as perhaps I can make more money as well as more reputation from the
Athenaeum
. I have got to give one lecture on Saturday next, at London University; subject: ‘the younger poets’.
²
I don’t know what to say. It is a delicate subject.

I enclose an article from the
Times
which will interest you. I haven’t been able to identify the author. I don’t think his critical acumen is very great, though he is flattering. I am not however greatly flattered by the close association with A. H. He is a nice young friend of mine, a grandson of T. H.
³

I send you my article on Henry Adams, which I hope will reach you.

Vivien and I both feel pretty tired after the long winter. We didn’t have much in the way of a holiday last year – the Army–Navy affair killed that. Owing to the delay in the formation of the new work – owing to lack of housing room – I have not been able to arrange my holiday yet, but I insist on Vivien’s going for a time to the seaside in June, anyway.

I hope we shall have a longer letter from you soon. I am anxious that you should be able to leave St Louis before the weather gets too hot.

Your devoted son
Tom.

1–TSE’s leaving gift included
The Oxford Book of English Verse
, ‘with the gratitude and appreciation of the students of the Southall Tutorial Literature Class May 1919’.

2–Not traced.

3–‘Experiments in Poetry’,
TLS
, 22 May 1919: a review of
Coterie
, in which TSE’s ‘A Cooking Egg’ appeared. The anonymous author was RA, who bracketed TSE’s work with the poetry of AH (grandson of the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley).

MS
NYPL (MS)

25 May 1919

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Mr Quinn:

I have your letter of 29 April and am
most
grateful to you. I do think that the pains you have taken over this book of mine are a very unusual thing for anyone to do for anyone.

I am simply writing to express my appreciation and waiting to hear from you further. If it were possible to alter the manuscript I should like to do so, as I have two or three other essays and a very few poems which I should add, and the essays are better than any in the manuscript. I have been writing a good deal for the rejuvenated
Athenaeum
lately, and the articles I have done for this are longer and better than any of those for the
Egoist
.

It would, as you know, be a great satisfaction to me for private reasons to have a book printed in America. I don’t need to dwell on that.

I appreciate all that you say about wasting oneself on trifles.
¹
It is very easy for a man in my position to do that: working from 9.15 to 5 in a bank, on foreign exchange, I find an infinite number of things to be done in my small leisure. Some of them are very specious and seductive: not only social engagements but various literary enterprises in which one’s very devotion to literature seems to demand that one should take a part – I have to keep a firm eye on what is most important for me.

– Yet I had rather be in a bank than be dependent on literature or journalism for a living. I intend not to see anyone but one man for at least a month.

I do hope you will get the holiday. I am sure you will break down very badly unless you do.

Cordially yours
T. S. Eliot

1–Quinn had written (29 Apr.): ‘Take the advice of an older man who has overdone things and do not waste yourself on trivial things … The great thing is to save one’s self from the unimportant and non-essential things in order to have the leisure and strength to do the bigger and finer and better work.’

MS
Texas

Monday [26 May?] 1919

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Mary,

I am so sorry about Thursday. It
would
happen that way, but I am glad I have Wittering to look forward to – sunshine and seawater, and laziness – but I hope my brain will be in a condition worthy of the company. If you
will
have someone, by the way, I
should
like to see Roger [Fry].

I haven’t thanked you yet for your letter with Virginia’s review, which I only read on the train going down – I can’t forget Charles’ ride in the morning and arrival at the Rouault farm.1 I shall want to know what you think of me in the next
Ath
.
²
– though it may not interest you. If you ever have time – to write letters – I should get them / it? eventually and be grateful –

Till Pentecost [8 June] –

Yours
T.S.E.