The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (112 page)

MS
Texas

[late Jan 1922?]

[9 Clarence Gate Gdns,
N.W.
1]

Dear Mary,

I am very much disturbed by your note. I had wondered – you must tell me all about it, because we can’t leave things like this. You know I am working on my lecture up to Wednesday the 8th so that I cannot make any appointments, so will you have dinner with me the following Thursday, or if you are alone any night after that let me come to you, if you prefer it, and let me hear as soon as possible.

Tom

MS
Beinecke  

30 January 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns  

Dear Mr Cobden-Sanderson,

Since writing to you I have heard from Lady Rothermere who says that she is only free on
Thursday
. I hope you can come then. She also wishes me to ask you if you will come to dinner on that night? Will you let me know if you will, or whether you prefer to come in afterwards? I will meet you there.

Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot

MS
Beinecke  

Wednesday [1 February 1922]

9 Clarence Gate Gdns  

Dear Mr Cobden-Sanderson,  

Lady Rothermere dines at 8. I shall wear a dinner jacket myself. I think I told you her address is 58 Circus Road, St John’s Wood. I look forward to seeing you again.

Sincerely T. S. Eliot

MS
Virginia  

Sunday [5? February 1922]

9 Clarence Gate Gdns  

Dear Rodker,  

I should have communicated with you before but we have had flu simultaneously and successively ever since getting back. I have finally seen Lady Rothermere and had a long discussion about the paper, and the result is that it is to be
her
paper not mine and she is to do it her own way. I am thankful to get rid of the responsibility of it, which has been a weight on my mind. I have agreed to take charge of the contributions, though not of the payment for them: – I shall try however to see that it is the maximum possible.  

In this capacity, may I ask you to contribute either (as best suits you) the article on cinema you thought of writing,
or
(preferably) a shorter
regular
continued chronicle on cinema and music hall? Apart, of course, from other contributions, which will be welcome?
¹
I want to do my best to get enough good stuff from the start to keep out bad, that’s quite enough of a function to occupy
my
time.  

I hope I shall see you at Lady R.’s on Wednesday – if not, I will write to you later in the hope of arranging a meeting. I have been busy with the enclosed.
²
 

Yours T. S. Eliot

1–In the event, despite TSE’s willingness to accommodate an article on the cinema, Rodker was not to contribute to C. As the years moved on, TSE tended to take an anxious view of the cinema; in a blurb for a study by Peter Mayer,
Sociology of Cinema
(1946), he sounded this note: ‘this book represents a piece of pioneer work on the most serious of all film problems … What is the effect upon the mass of the population who attend a cinema once or twice a week, or more, of the films that they see? And particularly urgent is the question, what is the effect upon the children of the nation? Mr Mayer’s conclusions are by no means reassuring. This book ought to be widely read and seriously pondered. Its readers may well differ as to what ought to be done, but they will agree that the situation cannot be left to look after itself.’ See also David Trotter, ‘T. S. Eliot and Cinema’,
Modernism/modernity
13: 2 (Apr. 2006), 237–65; and on TSE and the music hall, Ron Schuchard, ‘In the Music Halls’,
Eliot’s Dark Angel
(1999); David Chinitz,
T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide
(2003).

2–TSE was now showing
TWL
to friends.

TS
Texas  

6 February 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Mr Bax,

I must apologise for not replying immediately to your kind letter. I am flattered by your compliment, and impressed by the tone of your letter, which augurs well for the duration of the review. My situation is briefly this: I have very little time for writing, and am committed to several regular engagements and connexions. Except for special reasons, therefore, I have to select periodicals by the simple rule of the highest pay. Would you kindly let me know, as soon as your terms are fixed, what your rates will be?

At the present moment I have but recently returned to London after a three months holiday in pursuit of health, and I have several promises to fulfil. A little later I may be able to speak more definitely – please forgive my vagueness in this letter. 

Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot

1–Clifford Bax (1886–1962), prolific writer; editor of
The Golden Hind
, a quarterly magazine of art and literature, Oct. 1922–July 1924. TSE did not contribute to it.

MS
Private collection

17 February 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Sir,

Your letter, as well as your remarks the other night, gave me great pleasure, and were quite enough to reward me for the trouble of preparing a lecture. If I print the paper in this or a revised form, I will send it to you. I have not seen Stoll’s book,
²
but I have an essay of his on
Hamlet
.
³

I find myself still of the opinion that Tourneur’s A.T. precedes R.T.,
⁴
though this opinion is that only of a poetical practitioner, not of a scholar.
Everything that denotes development as a poet, I find in R.T. in contrast to A.T. I cannot think that the ‘more sparing use of rhyme’ is an argument.
⁵
The question is does the R.T. use rhyme as the earlier Elizabethan plays did? It has many rhymes in the body of a paragraph, not simply to close them off: i.e. T. uses rhyme
freely
, not in a convention. The fact that the ‘diction of A.T. is much more elaborate and stilted’ seems to me also in my favour. Also, A.T. is much more
imitative
(see grave diggers’ scene). The Vere poem does present something definite.
⁶
But from what I can see, this was an occasional poem for which T’s genius was far from suited, and it would not be surprising if, in order to do it all, he had to adopt a style he had outgrown, – even putting aside the conjecture that he had his tongue in his cheek.

I shall try to get hold of your articles. I think I shall, on rereading the plays you mention, agree with you on their authorships.
⁷

Excuse this haste. I should very much like to continue this discussion with you at leisure.

With many thanks

Yours very truly
T. S. Eliot

1–H. D. Sykes (1874?–1932), author of
Sidelights on Shakespeare
(1919), and later of
Sidelights on Elizabethan Drama: a series of studies dealing with the authorship of sixteenth and seventeenth century plays
(1924). He had published an essay on the dating and attribution of Tourneur’s plays (
Notes& Queries
96, Sept. 1919). TSE later called him ‘our greatest
authority
on the texts of Tourneur and Middleton’ (‘Cyril Tourneur’,
TLS,
13 Nov. 1930; SE, 186).

2–E. E. Stoll,
John Webster:
The Periods of his Work as Determined by his Relations to the Drama of his Day
(1905), to which Sykes had referred in his letter.

3–E. E. Stoll,
Hamlet: An Historical and Comparative Study
(1919), is mentioned by TSE in ‘Hamlet and His Problems’ (SE, 141).

4–Both Stoll and Sykes believed that
The Atheist’s Tragedy
(pub. 1611) was written later than
The Revenger’s Tragedy
(pub. 1607). The quotations TSE cites in the rest of this paragraph are from Sykes’s essay.

5–According to Sykes, Stoll argued that ‘the more sparing use of rhyme’ and the ‘more elaborate and stilted diction’ are evidence that
The Atheist’s Tragedy
came at a ‘later stage of Tourneur’s metrical technique’ than The Revenger’s Tragedy; Sykes had ‘no doubt that Dr Stoll is right’. 6–Cyril Tourneur,
A Funeral Poem upon the Death of
…
Sir Francis Vere, Knight
(1609), which Sykes cited to help establish the date of
The Revenger’s Tragedy.
7–Sykes argued for Tourneur’s authorship of
The Second Maiden’s Tragedy.
 

MS
Texas

Saturday 17 February 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

My dear Richard

You will excuse me, I hope, for not answering your letter before. What you say about my poem gave me great pleasure and gratification. I was engrossed with my lecture, then with several social obligations postponed by the lecture, and then with an article for the
N.R.F
. and now with a letter for the
Dial
.
¹
I enclose a copy of the lecture, excuse certain weaknesses of style etc. which I altered on the other copy. It went off successfully – I think
of working up the relevant paragraphs into the three articles on Blank Verse that Richmond wants. What do you think?
²

Tell me details of your reception with
Outlook
and
N.
Statesman
; I shd. like to know for my own benefit. Also want to know how to join authors’ society
³
and whether they wd. do anything for me about the piracy in the Untermeyer book, anthology.
⁴

I have been hesitating over the
Dial’s
offer of $150

[unsigned, presumably incomplete]

1–‘Lettre d’Angleterre’,
NRF
18 (1 May 1922); ‘London Letter’,
Dial
72 (May 1922).

2–These articles were never to be written, though TSE would write ‘Four Elizabethan Dramatists’, C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923). See letter to J. M. Robertson, 4 Sept., below.  

3–The Society of Authors, London, was founded in 1884.  

4–
Modern American Poetry
(1921), ed. Louis Untermeyer 

MS
Valerie Eliot  

Tuesday night [21 February 1922]
¹

[London]  

My dear John,

I enjoyed my weekend with you more than I can tell you, though you must have realised something of my satisfaction. And I think the circumstances were ideal for persons like ourselves.

Vivien is very ill, and has today gone to a nursing home outside of London at her doctor’s urgent request. She may not stay very long, but I expect three weeks at least. There was nothing else to be done at the moment. She must be made to sleep.

I have sent your letter on to her but I am afraid she will not be able to write letters.

Yours always
Tom.

1–Misdated ‘20 Feb.’ by JMM.

MS
Williams College

26 February 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Sir,

Your name has been given me by Mr Conrad Aiken, who has also shown me a volume of poems by Mr John Freeman, recently published by you, with the appearance of which I was very much pleased.
²

I have now ready a poem for which that form of publication seems to me the most suitable. I understand that you issue these books in limited editions, and that for the volumes you take for this series give a sum down in advance royalty.

My poem is of 435 lines; with certain spacings essential to the sense, 475 book lines; furthermore it consists of five parts, which would increase the space necessary; and with title pages, some notes that I propose to add, etc., I guess that it would run to from twenty-eight to thirty-two pages.

I have had a good offer for the publication of it in a periodical. But it is, I think, much the best poem I have ever written, and I think it would make a much more distinct impression and attract much more attention if published as a book.

If you are interested in this, I should be glad to hear from you what terms you would be prepared to offer for it, at your earliest convenience, as the other offers for it cannot be held in suspense very long.
³

I am,
yours faithfully,
T. S. Eliot