The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (9 page)

1–His first visit, always associated in his mind with the music of Herman Finck’s ‘In the Shadows’ (1910), which was popular at the time.

2–Henry (‘Harry’) Dana (1881–1950): educated at Harvard, he had been a lecturer in English at the Sorbonne 1908–10. He was later dismissed from Columbia for pacifist activities.

3–Jean Verdenal, who was to be dedicatee of
Prufrock and Other Observations
: see Glossary of Names.

4–‘Have you taken my trunks [
malles
] up to the attic [
grenier
]?’

5–‘We hibernate among the bricks / And live across the window panes’ (‘Interlude in London’, ll. 1–2, in IMH, 16).

6–Motor cab proprietors were seeking an increase in charges, which had remained unaltered since 1907, and their drivers were in dispute with them over the payment of petrol tax. Although the Home Secretary had appointed a commission to examine the grievances, drivers in London’s West End went on strike on 15 Apr. To the public’s delight, the horse cab came into its own again,
The Times
reporting two days later that ‘the cab-driver with a silk hat reappeared after a long absence and some astonishing animals were to be seen between the shafts’.

7–Cricklewood, London
N.W.2
, ‘was [then], I should think, part of the parish of Hendon but no more than a hamlet. It rose to fame owing to its position on the Edgware Road and the tavern there which became a tram stop’ (John Betjeman to Valerie Eliot, 15 Mar. 1978). Though most of the places that TSE visited would form part of a regular tourist itinerary, his ‘pilgrimage to Cricklewood’ (like his visit to the City and Camberwell Work House) shows his independence of Baedeker. TSE’s copy of Baedeker,
London and Environs
(1908), is at King’s.

8–‘Germelshausen’ by Friedrich Gerstäcker (1816–72) tells of a lost village, under Papal interdict, which appears for a day’s revelry once every hundred years before sinking beneath the earth again. On 18 June 1936 TSE wrote to Lady Richmond ‘
East Coker
was delightful, with a sort of Germelshausen effect’; and after publication of East Coker he wrote to H. S. Häussermann on 24 May 1940, ‘I think that the imagery of the first section (though taken from the village itself) may have been influenced by recollections of
Germelshausen
, which I have not read for many years.’

9–King George V was crowned on 22 June.

10– St Helen’s Bishopgate, St Stephen Walbrook, St Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield, and St Sepulchre Old Bailey are churches in the City of London. The medieval Roman Catholic St Etheldreda is in Ely Place, Holborn. TSE’s love of City churches is further in evidence in TWL, l. 264 (his note to that line refers to
The Proposed Demolition of Nineteen City Churches
), as well as in his pageant play
The Rock
(1934), staged on behalf of the ‘Forty-Five Churches Fund of the Diocese of London’.

11–The old name for the Victoria & Albert Museum (until 1899).

12–By 1900 there were about 135,000 Jews in London, most of whom lived within the East End around the Whitechapel area. In
East London
(1898), the Christian missionary Henry Walker noted of Whitechapel, ‘Here, in spite of the English-looking surroundings, [the stranger] is practically in a foreign land, so far as language and race are concerned. The people are neither French nor English, Germans nor Americans, but Jews.’

13–An apterix is ‘A New Zealand bird, about the size of a goose, with merely rudimentary wings and no tail, called by the natives Kiwi’ (OED). TSE wrote three reviews for the Egoist in 1918 under the pseudonym ‘Apteryx’, or ‘T. S. Apteryx’. 

MS
Harvard

22 May [1911]

c/o Credit Lyonnais, 19 bvd des
Italiens [Paris]

My dear Mr Forbes

I have just arranged with Alphonse-Picard that they should send you a copy of the Trocadero catalogue.
²
It appears to be a new edition. As for the Luxembourg, there is no catalogue. I suppose that the museum is conceived to be never in a stable enough condition to warrant it.
³
There are three ‘guides’ containing selections (illustrations) of the sculptures only. If you would like them, let me know, but I judged them useless for museum purposes.

This is a long time since you wrote asking for the catalogues, and no doubt you thought that your letter was never received. Perhaps you have already obtained the catalogue through someone else, or perhaps the lack of it may have bothered you a great deal. In any case, I hope you will not attribute my delinquency to gross negligence, but rather to a fundamental failing of character. I have been known to procrastinate even longer.

— — — — — — — — — — —

I have enjoyed my winter very keenly, and have gained, I think, a great deal. My opinions on art, as well as other subjects, have modified radically. At Christmas I travelled for two weeks in France, and saw several things not often visited – including Poitiers, Angoulême, Toulouse, Albi, Moissac, and other places in the south west. My Easter vacation I spent in London. At present, I am commencing a series of trips to towns about Paris, and began last Sunday with Rouen.

After the middle of June I shall go to Munich for some time, to study German.
⁴
I hope to spend a few weeks, at least, in Italy.
⁵

If you come to Europe this summer, I shall hope to see you. In case the catalogue does not arrive, send me word of it.

Please remember me to Mrs Forbes

Sincerely yours
Thomas Eliot.

1–Edward Forbes (1873–1969): collector and Harvard benefactor; Director of the Fogg Museum at Harvard, 1909–44. TSE had taken his course Fine Arts 20b in 1909–10.

2–Camille Enlart,
Le Musée de Sculpture Comparée du Trocadero
(1911).

3–The Luxembourg Museum was devoted to works by living painters and sculptors. They remained there for ten years after the artist’s death, and the best of them were then selected for the Louvre.

4–He left France in July 1911 for Munich and northern Italy before returning to Harvard for the autumn to work for his doctorate in philosophy. In a letter to Eudo Mason (21 Feb. 1936), he was to recall that most of ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ was written ‘in the summer of 1911 when I was in Munich’.

5–See TSE’s ‘Notes on Italy’ (Houghton). 

MS
Houghton

Dimanche [July? 1911]

[Paris]

Mon cher ami,

Je suis impatient de vous voir trouver du papier à lettres en Bavière, et d’en recevoir un échantillon couvert de votre belle écriture avant que la bière allemande n’ait engourdi votre esprit. Elle y aurait d’ailleurs de la peine, si lourde soit-elle, et nous voyons que quelques naturels du pays y échappèrent; l’histoire conte que le terrible Schopenhauer en était fort amateur. Il jouait aussi de la clarinette, mais c’était peut-être pour embêter ses voisins.
¹
Voilà bien assez de choses pour nous rattacher à la vie. La volonté de vivre est mauvaise, cause de désirs et de peines mais la bière est appréciable – et l’on continue. O! Raison.

Je viens de lire hier soir la
Mère et l’Enfant
de Philippe,
²
quelle belle et bonne chose; blanche comme le pain et le lait, sans procédés, sans littérature. Il faut l’aimer, bien l’aimer pour la comprendre. J’ai compris à propos de ce bon Philippe tout ce qu’a d’inférieur la critique purement intellectuelle, un jour où j’ai entendu quelque Sorbonnard dire à propos de ses romans: ‘Très intéressant! Comme il a bien
étudié
la vie des humbles.’ Pauvre, pauvre ami, plus que toutes les misères, cette phrase lui eût été douloureuse. Avoir souffert, vécu chacune de ses lignes pour servir de sujet d’étude au professeur de littérature – qui n’y verra rien – tant il est vrai que c’est nous-mêmes que nous projetons sur toutes les choses extérieures. Il faudrait, en critique, réserver la raison à démolir, à cogner sur les faux bonshommes, à cogner dur pour mettre par terre les faiseurs, falsificateurs professionnels de l’art. Les bonnes choses restent à la lumière; il faut en parler pour les faire connaître, comme on prête un livre à un ami. Tout essai de démonstration par l’intelligence de la beauté d’une oeuvre d’art est, sans aucun doute, une contradiction. Monsieur Dana en tressaillerait derrière ses lorgnons d’or, mais c’est comme cela, le critique rationnel m’a toujours fait penser à l’enfant qui casse son jouet mécanique pour voir ce qu’il y a dedans. Et que dire des critiques scientifiques? Mais ceux-ci ne sont pas dangereux, ils sont trop embêtants et personne ne les lit.

Au revoir, mon vieux, je vous serre la pince cordialement.

Jean Verdenal.
³

1–The daily routine of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), author of
Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung
(1819), involved a good intake of beer as well as clarinet practice. TSE later noted that his (and Verdenal’s) literary hero Laforgue was fascinated by ‘the Kantian pseudo-Buddhism of Schopenhauer’ (
VMP
, 216).

2–
La Mere et l’Enfant
(1900), by Charles-Louis Philippe (1874–1909). TSE’s copy of this novel (Édition de la NRF, 4th edition), is inscribed ‘T. S. Eliot / Paris / September 1911’ (Houghton). In his preface to a translation of Philippe’s
Bubu of Montparnasse
, TSE would praise the author’s ‘sincerity’; comparing him to Dickens and Dostoevsky, he called him ‘perhaps the most faithful to the point of view of the humble and oppressed themselves … more their spokesman than their champion’ (
Bubu of Montparnasse
, trans. Laurence Vail [Paris, 1932], 10).

3–
Translation
: My dear friend, I am waiting impatiently to hear that you have found some notepaper in Bavaria, and to receive an example of it covered with your beautiful handwriting, before German beer has dulled your wits. As a matter of fact, it would have some difficulty in doing so, and we see that even a few natives of the country escaped its effects; history tells us that the formidable Schopenhauer was a great beer-lover. He also played the clarinet, but perhaps that was just to annoy his neighbours. Such things are quite enough to make us cling to life. The will to live is evil, a source of desires and sufferings, but beer is not to be despised – and so we carry on. O Reason!

I have just read – only last evening –
Mother and Child
by Philippe, what a good and beautiful book; as wholesome as bread and milk, without artifice or rhetoric. To understand it, you have to like it, really like it. It was in connection with Philippe that I realised what is so unsatisfactory about purely intellectual criticism, one day when I overheard some Sorbonne professor saying about his novels: ‘Very interesting! How well he has
studied
the lives of humble people.’ Poor, good fellow, the remark would have hurt him more than the worst of his sad experiences. To have suffered and lived every line he wrote only to become a subject of study for a professor of literature – who will miss the point – so true it is that we project ourselves on to everything outside us. Reason, in criticism, should be reserved for demolishing, for hammering charlatans, for hammering phoneys and falsifiers of art until they are laid low. The good things stand out of their own accord; they have to be talked about to make them known, as you lend a book to a friend. Any attempt on the part of the intelligence to demonstrate the beauty of a work of art is, undoubtedly, a contradiction in terms. Monsieur Dana would shudder behind his gold
pince-nez
if he heard this, but it’s true; a rationalistic critic always makes me think of a child breaking his clockwork toy to see what there is inside. As for scientific critics? But they are not dangerous; they are too boring and no one reads them.

Goodbye, my dear fellow, I shake you warmly by the hand. Jean Verdenal. 

MS
Houghton

[Mid-July 1911]

151 bis rue St Jacques, Paris

Mon cher ami,

Je reçois votre lettre
¹
au moment où je vais quitter Paris pour aller quinze jours là-bas aux Pyrénées. Tout le monde a quitté déjà, à part Fellows;
²
et des figures de passage remplissent la maison; presque toutes repondent à l’étiquette ‘vieille fille americaine’. Cela suffit.

Le spectacle de Paris ces jours-ci (fête du 14 juillet) était assez intéressant. C’est, avec les jours gras, la vraie fête de Paris, maintenant que l’ ‘antique renouveau des fêtes surannées ne fleurit plus aux vieux pavés du siècle dur’. Je crois même que l’expression artistique est plus parfaite qu’au Mardi gras, rien ne sonne de travers. Illuminations officielles, revue et cocardes, populo dansant; horribles orchestres dont les valses vous suggestionnent totalement; c’est une atmosphère chaude, poussiéreuse, suante sous un ciel ardent; c’est tricolore, commandé par l’État et les gens s’en donnent de rigoler. L’après-midi les gosses triomphent, les sales gosses à mirlitons; le soir il monte une excitation sensuelle qui va en grandissant; le cheveux des filles sont collés aux tempes de sueur; la roue des loteries tourne; la roue des chevaux de bois tourne entraînante, attirante de lumière, chaque oscillation des chevaux cambrant le torse souple des poules, une jambe bien prise est entrevue par la ‘jupe fendue à la mode’; un souffle lourd et gras passe chaudement.

Toute cette manifestation extérieure répond bien, sans aucun doute, à l’actuelle tendance régnant dans le peuple de Paris. C’est, tendance peu élevée, matérialiste, mais je ne dirais pas grossière, car le peuple Parisien reste fin, sceptique et distingué malgré tout; dans les instants graves il saura être généreux, je crois. On peut considérer qu’il subit la même poussée que l’aristocratie au XVIII
^e
siècle. Vous rencontrerez constamment aujourd’hui le type ‘ouvrier intelligent et instruit’; il ne croit plus aux vieilles histoires de jadis; beaucoup croient à la science (!) mais surtout beaucoup ont refoulé les bons élans intérieurs, attirés par le désir de raisonner. Sans doute la plupart restent de braves gens et de bons types, malgré tout, et intuitivement, mais leur système les condamne, logiquement. Vous entendez des gens du monde dire avec sourire que ‘la demi-culture, la demiscience, le demi-intellectualisme ne leur donnera rien’. Mais, ô braves gens, est-ce que l’intellectualisme tout entier vous donnera beaucoup plus? Cependant que le positivisme (matérialisme mal déguisé) descend et se vulgarise, voici qu’une tendance vers l’Idée se montre dans l’Élite, chaque jour plus forte. Toute la fin du XIXe siècle en est pleine et la manifestation la plus marquée est sans doute dans la poésie moderne, puis dans la musique. La forme souvent prise est celle d’un retour au christianisme catholique ou évangélique galiléen. Quelle valeur y a-t-il dans les innombrables et diverses oeuvres ayant cet aspect? Quelles différences en effet! aperçues dès qu’on prend q[uel]ques noms (Verlaine, Huysmans, Barrès, Francis Jammes, Péguy, Bourget, Claudel, Le Cardonnel etc.).
³
Je fais cette salade exprès, pour montrer le tri à faire. Nous en recauserons si vous voulez. Il serait convenable de discerner en chacun ce qui revient à diverses causes: snobisme, intérêt, sincère repentir, defaut d’intelligence, croyance catholique et littérale du dogme, point de vue social (national, provincial, traditionnel, école), évocation du passé, procédé littéraire, pragmatisme, etc. Il convient surtout de dire pour chacun
en quelle mesure il peut influencer notre vie intérieure vers la connaissance du bien suprême.

Mon vieux, je serai là en septembre, bien content de vous revoir; croyez à toute mon amitié.

Jean Verdenal