The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (113 page)

1–Maurice Firuski was proprietor of the Dunster House Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

2–John Freeman,
The Red Path, and The Wounded Bird
(1921), designed by Bruce Rogers. When TSE told Aiken over lunch on 14 Feb. about ‘a poem, 450 lines long’, Aiken recommended Dunster House. The following day, Aiken wrote to Firuski: ‘He seeks a publisher who will produce it nicely, and in America, and in a small edition. Firuski! cried I, and there you are. When I elucidated, mentioning Rogers and 450 copies and two years exclusive right and a possible hundred dollars and a beautifully produced book, his eyes glowed with a tawny light like fierce doubloons … I have not seen the poem. It may or may not be good, or intelligible. But, reflect: Eliot has a real reputation; a poem of that length by him will be a real curiosity, even perhaps an event; and he assumes that you will have of course, the English as well as the American market’ (Chapin Library, Williams College).

3–Firuski replied on 11 Mar. that he usually paid ‘about one hundred dollars for a work of this kind’ and that if TSE sent a copy of the poem, he would decide promptly.

MS
Texas  

4 March 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns  

Dear Mr Knopf,

Thank you for your letter of the 20th ultimo. I have no disposition to interfere with any arrangement you may have made. If my namesake is Mr Harold Stearns
¹
he should be a competent person. I should only protest if he proposed to make an extract from a poem. I should be glad to see a copy of the anthology. Thank you for advising me. 

Yours very truly
T. S. Eliot

1–Harold Stearns (1891–1943), an editor at the
Dial
until 1919; author of
Liberalism in America
(1919), and editor of
Civilization in the United States
(1922). The anthology referred to may be The
Little
Book of Society Verse
, ed. Stearns and Claude Fuess.

Telegram Beinecke

8 March 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

CANNOT ACCEPT UNDER!8!56 POUNDS = ELIOT +

1–This garbled telegram was sent to Thayer in Vienna in response to his offer to pay $150 for publishing
TWL
in the
Dial
. 

TS
Beinecke  

9–10 March 1922

[Paris]  

Dear Thayer:

Here’s the Galligan,
¹
I dare say it is a fluke. He seems to have changed his mind the week after; any how. And ENNY how I did not say I was ‘sathisfied’, I merely said it was . . . . . oh what did I say . . . . ‘at least a review by a literate person’.

(Liveright writes that it hasn’t sold a copy, so thaaaat’s thaaat . . . . . Richard evidently wd.nt. add to the
Dial’s
influence.

And ANNY how, you are certainly right in regarding him with suspicion.

/ / /

 1–A warm review of EP’s
Poems 1918–21
by Richard Le Gallienne,
New York Times
, 5 Feb. 1922.

1–EP had written to Thayer on 8 Feb: ‘Eliot’s poem is very important, almost enough to make everyone else shut up shop … The Eliot, as you have probably decided, is a whole and oughtn’t to be divided’; and would write to Quinn on 21 Feb.: ‘Eliot came back from his Lausanne specialist looking O.K.; and with a damn good poem (19 pages) in his suit case, same finished up here; and shd. be out in Dial soon, if Thayer isn’t utterly nutty. Wadsworth in yesterday on way to Marseilles reported that Eliot was again ill. About enough, Eliot’s poem, to make the rest of us shut up shop.’

2–Robert Frost was poet in residence at the University of Michigan, 1921–3.

TS
Lilly

12 Wigmore St, w.1
¹

 

I have substituted for the J. Conrad the following, or something like it:

I received your message from the young man. The facts are that Thayer (in a letter not distinguished by urbanity) offered me $150, which did not strike me as good pay for a year’s work when I shall not do anything else of that size for two or three years, and shortly after I was told on very good authority that George Moore got £100 for a story,
³
by someone who had been told by George himself. I think these people should learn to recognise Merit instead of Senility, and I think it is an outrage that we should be paid less merely because Thayer thinks we will take less and be thankful for it, and I thought that somebody ought to take steps to point this out. Had he offered the 150 with more graciousness instead of as if he were doing me a great favour I might have felt more yielding. As it is I wired him some days ago that I would take £50 and no less. Liveright
⁴
wrote to say he wanted it, and I have written asking what he wants to give and telling him the exact length, and I have other plans also if Thayer doesn’t cough out.

Now there is this in which your cooperation is necessary. I have now arranged with Lady Rothermere about the quarterly review, have decided on quite a good small format and paper, neat but no extravagance and not arty, to be published probably by Cobden-Sanderson, in such a way that I shall have only to select the contributions. She will finance it for three years anyhow, there is enough money to pay contributors at £10 per 5000 words and proportionately (should be 80 pages) and I don’t see why it shouldn’t be tried and the right people as far as possible (i.e. as far as they can be enlisted) get the money regardless of consequences. Lady R. is a particular admirer of yours and especially anxious for your collaboration, as of course I also consider it an essential condition. Also, my credit with her would suffer seriously if you did not. Will you therefore consider

1.  A Paris letter every quarter as per
   Dial
   , say 1500 words.
   
2.  Of course cantos etc. except that I suppose you would get more by putting them in the
   Dial
   , but I shall hope to arrange much higher rates for verse.
   
3.  Sending over contributions by the best people. I am particularly anxious to obtain Picabia,
   ⁵
   for whom I have much respect. None of these people can get printed in England otherwise. When you translate, translator’s fee also.
   

It is of course clear that the selection of contributions is entirely in my hands. If Lady R. goes in for illustrations later, which I discouraged for the present, I should with your permission suggest that you should for a fitting consideration be given a free hand to make up special numbers devoted to the work of one man each. Otherwise illustrations do more harm than good, and she warmly admires the Brancusi no. of
Little
Review
.
⁶

[Wyndham] Lewis has not got a portrait out of Lady R. and is in an extremely pessimistic mood, as you will find when you see him. Do not allow this to affect you. I want the paper to be good while it lasts, and if at any time I could not have my own way with it I should drop out and publish the fact. But I see no reason for anticipating this. Any suggestions from you as to people anywhere on the continent to be approached would be cordially welcome, but I should take anything from Picabia, Cocteau, etc. that you approved provided the space permitted.

I thought it would be a good idea to get Larbaud to send me his lecture on Joyce.
⁷
I also see no reason why some things should not appear in this and in the
Little Review
concurrently. Please consider that this venture is impossible without your collaboration, and let me hear from you as soon as possible.

Best sympathies to D. and enquiries after Agamemnon.

T.S.E.

1–For a second time, TSE and VHE moved out of Clarence Gate Gardens and into the flat at 12 Wigmore Street leased by Lucy Thayer, who was away on the Continent: they sublet their flat in Clarence Gate Gardens, and did not return there until late June.

2–This quotation from Petronius,
Satiricon
, was corrected before appearing as the epigraph to
TWL
.

3–George Moore, ‘Peronnik the Fool’,
Dial
71 (Nov. 1921) 497–533.

4–Horace B. Liveright (1884–1933), partner in the publishing firm of Boni & Liveright.

5–Francis Picabia (1879–1953), French avant-garde painter and writer. He never contributed to C.

6–The ‘Brancusi Number’,
Little Review
8 (Autumn 1921), included EP’s essays ‘Brancusi’ (3–7) and ‘Historical Survey’ (39–42)

7–Larbaud’s ‘James Joyce’ –
NRF
18 (Apr. 1922), 385–409 – had been delivered first of all as a lecture at ‘la Maison des Amis des Livres’ in Paris, Dec. 1921. For Larbaud see note below.

TS
Vichy

12 March 1922

12 Wigmore St, London w.1
temporary address for two months

Dear M. Larbaud,

I am initiating a new quarterly review, and am writing in the hope of enlisting your support. It will be small and modest in form but I think that what contents it has will be the best in London. It is guaranteed for three years and if I can get enough material of the best quality will persist for at least that time.

I hope, for instance, that you will let me have your lecture on James Joyce. I want to get work by the best writers on the continent, as other reviews here publish very little by foreign authors. There is, in fact, as you very well know, no literary periodical here of cosmopolitan tendencies and international standards. I am not at present aiming at a very large public, but at the most enlightened part of the British public – there are, I think, at least a thousand people in England who are aware of the low state of literary journalism here.

At present the review can only offer at the rate of £10 per 5,000 words, and cannot use anything much longer than that, but if there is sufficient demand for the paper, these conditions can be altered.

I mentioned the Joyce Lecture because I know that it exists and because if we could have it this year it would be timely, but of course any contribution from you would be very welcome. I should not desire French or other contributors to write specially for the English public, or to consult any other motive than the subjects they were interested in writing about;
but of course, with you, there are also many subjects in English literature about which you may be writing, or want to write, and of which you are much better qualified to speak than anyone in this country.

As a postscript, I should like to say that I should be very happy if you could suggest or put me in touch with any writers in Spain whose work ought to be better known in this country. I remember that the last time I saw you you mentioned several with approbation.

I do not know where you are at present, but I trust that this letter will be forwarded to you and that I may soon hear from you in a favourable sense.

Sincerely yours,
     T. S. Eliot