The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (131 page)

1–On 7 Sept., Quinn wrote that he had invited Seldes and Liveright to his office that morning, and they had come to an agreement. Liveright would allow the
Dial
prior publication of the poem, without notes, in return for which the magazine would buy 350 copies of the book and give its $2,000 award to TSE. ‘So everything is all right … it was a pleasure to do this little job for you today.’ Instead of quarrelling about the manuscript of
The Waste Land
, Quinn would accept it ‘as a mark of friendship’, on condition that he would allowed to purchase the manuscripts of the early poems that TSE had mentioned. TSE eventually received $140 (£29 14s 10d) from Quinn.

2–EP did not receive a
Dial
award until 1928.

3–These materials were to be posthumously published in
IMH
(1996).

MS
Texas

22 September 1922

Dear Flint,

Can you manage to return this
¹
to the printers, getting it off by
Monday night?
I am
very
sorry to press you but there have been delays. The printers are

I am instructing them to
add
your name
(unless you prefer not I prefer to have it).

In haste,

apologetically
T. S. Eliot

1–The proofs of Hesse, ‘Recent German Poetry’, translated (though unsigned) by Flint.

MS
Valerie Eliot

25 September 1922

Monks House, Rodmell, Lewes

Dear Tom,

I hope you will forgive me for what I feel to be an impertinence on my part, but circumstances compel me to risk annoying you.

I think it best to explain to you openly that Ottoline asked me some time ago to join Mr Aldington’s Committee for what they call the Eliot Fellowship Fund. I did not altogether agree with their proposals, particularly as I could not make out that they knew what your views were. But I agreed to join. From what you said on Sunday I gathered that – as I had thought – the scheme was impracticable from your point of view. Today Ottoline has sent me a revised version of the scheme which is still less satisfactory than the first. I feel therefore that I must explain the position to her and must ask you therefore whether I am right in
understanding
you to say that

1)  £500 a year is the least sum that would make it worth your while to leave the Bank.

2)  that you do not consider the pledges to pay a yearly contribution are a sufficient security to warrant you in giving up your present work.

If you simply put ‘Yes’ on a postcard I shall take it to mean that I am right on both points.

(Perhaps I may add that Leonard and I entirely agree with you, if these are your views).

Yours ever
Virginia Woolf
¹

1–On the same day, VWwrote to OM: ‘I wired to you to day to stop sending out the circular because I cant agree to the scheme which is now proposed, and – what is far more important – I find that Tom himself, (who was here yesterday) is not ready to accept the original scheme, let alone this one … Anything less than £500 would, he says, throw him into journalism, and he prefers the Bank. But now I see from the revised circular that we are trying to get only £300 a year for a period of not less than five years, and this depends upon pledges to contribute yearly … It is a thousand pities that Pound and Aldington didn’t get Tom to explain his views before they launched the scheme. Let alone the worry to Tom himself – and I’m afraid he takes it all much to heart and feels his position most awkward – the scheme once muddled will be very hard to start again’ (
Letters
, II, 561).

MS
Beinecke

Tuesday [26 September 1922]

The Criterion,
9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Sanderson,

I enclose proof. Saintsbury, Miss Sinclair, and Flint (Hesse) I told to return direct to [the printers at] Aylesbury. I hope that was not wrong. I will send you cover copy and final note tonight.

In haste
T.S.E.

TS
Beinecke

27 September 1922

The Criterion, 9
Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Sanderson,

I am returning herewith your letter of the 22nd., of August to Lady Rothermere, which I understand you will alter, in respect of the one point of responsibility for payment, and send to her in duplicate at Claridges Hotel, Paris. I am also sending you the manuscript and the Proof of the first part of my poem, so that you may have a record of the undesired alterations made by the printers. You will observe that the translator’s name is given only in the case of the Dostoevsky, and that it should be in brackets underneath. Finally I enclose a note re manuscript etc.

I am to send you in a day or two the copy for advertisements, and a list of Periodicals in order; also the copy of a new circular for insertion.

Lady Rothermere is to send you from Paris, some names of people to whom circulars should be sent.

Yours
T. S. Eliot

MS
Beinecke

28 September 1922

The Criterion,
9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Cobden-Sanderson,

Enclosed circular. I do not think I can abbreviate much, I suppose that if a somewhat smaller type is used than for the last it can be brought down to the size to fit into the Review?

Enclose also advert. Only question: can it all go in to the small size space in daily papers? If not, list of contributors must then be omitted, but these should go into
Times Lit Supp
double advert.
¹
I give list of papers in what seems order of importance. Will you let me know
how many
can be done for £40?

I tried to telephone three times in afternoon. I will ring your office up at 12 tomorrow in case there is anything pressing.

I don’t of course suppose
all
of these can be done, but this is the
order
, subject to your judgment; and perhaps some are comparatively cheap?

Yrs. ever
T. S. Eliot

1–The two-column announcement of the
Criterion
(
TLS
, 19 Oct. 1922) listed the contents of the first number, including
The Waste Land,
and future contributors including E. M. Forster, Roger Fry, WL, JMM, EP, Marcel Proust, HR, Paul Valéry, CW and VW.

TS
Valerie Eliot

30 September [1922]

Monks House, Rodmell

My dear Tom,

Of course I understand how difficult your position is, and only regret that I was forced to open the question again, for it must be a torment to you.

I have had a very reasonable letter from Ottoline, and no harm has been done. She will wait until she hears from me again.

Please come and see us, for that will be much better than writing. We go back on Thursday. Will you dine on Sunday, (the 8th, I think.) Dinner is at seven thirty, but come earlier if you will, for we shall be in anyhow.

I am extremely sorry to hear such bad news of your wife. Please give her my sympathy. I can’t imagine any fate more odious. Indeed, you have had a frightful time of it.

Ever yours,
Virginia Woolf
¹

1–On the same day, VW wrote to OM: ‘I have just heard from Tom who writes – “I should like to be able to answer your questions as you ask them, but when I force myself to put my mind on it I know that the whole matter is or has become so very difficult and complicated that I cannot without going into it from top to bottom. I have had to keep my mind off this matter as much as possible and concentrate on what I must do from hour to hour. It has been an incessant strain, knowing that this business was going on; I have been assailed from all sides, and the situation has been made in some quarters very difficult. When no definite offer has been made one cannot let one’s imagination run on what one might do in one set of circumstances or another. I find the only way to live at all is to fix my attention on the particular work of the moment. If I may come and see you as soon as you get back to Richmond, I should like to discuss every aspect thoroughly with you, and I think I can make clear why it is so difficult. I am sure however that you will understand my present attitude; so do you mind waiting until I see you? I hope it will not put you in a difficult position.” So we have asked him to come next week, and I will let you know whatever I can make out from him … I should like to be able to tell Tom exactly how the matter stands so that he may not be in the dark any longer. So could you let me hear before Sunday … And he says that Mrs Eliot has now been ordered to undergo treatment at some remote place for several months – another expense I suppose’ (
Letters
, II, 563–4).

TS
Beinecke

1 Oct[ober] 1922

The Criterion
, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns, London
N.W.1

Dear Sanderson,

I agree that the best way to publish the circular is to print it like the previous one and have it folded, I do not think that I can reduce its size any further. Beside the six hundred copies to be enclosed I think that enough should be printed to send to all the persons on our list who received the first circular, and have not subscribed as well as a few for trade purposes. Will you let me know what it will cost to print thirteen or fourteen hundred?

I hope to hear from you the cost of printing the display cards which I had mentioned in our conversation. How many do you think we can dispose of? The only question is whether we should use enough to justify the cost of printing.

I received last night a part of the page proofs, which look very well, and I am posting it back to-night. I suppose that I shall now receive parts from day to day.

Yours ever,
T. S. Eliot

TS
Beinecke

1 October 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Mr Wilson,

Thank you very much for your letter of the 20th of August, and for your kind expressions which are very welcome.
¹
Mr Hoppé has promised* to send you my photograph either direct or through his New York office, and if you have not yet received it by the time you get this letter please let me know and I will remind him again.

Yours sincerely,
T. S. Eliot

* some weeks ago.

1–Wilson, ‘The Poetry of Drouth’,
The Dial
73: 6 (Dec. 1922), 611–16; repr. in
T. S. Eliot: The Critical Heritage
, I, ed. Michael Grant (1982), 138–44.

TS
Beinecke

3 October 1922

The Criterion
, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Cobden-Sanderson,

Thank you for two letters. I return the proof of circular herewith. Your estimate for the advertisements, including the
Southport Guardian
, is quite satisfactory.

I have had the full proof sheets today and am returning them tonight. It is extremely satisfactory.

You will see that I am enclosing the corrected proof of the rest of
The Waste Land
. I shall ring you up tomorrow morning at about 11 and will explain why I have done so. I particularly regret that I have someone coming to see me at five-thirty, but if necessary I could look in at 12. I hope you can manage to be there at 11, as I particularly want to get you.

I will send a list of the Press and of complimentary copies in a day or two.

Yours ever,
T. S. Eliot

TS
Northwestern

3 October 1922

The Criterion, 9
Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear John,

I had been hoping that it might be possible to see you again soon after our dinner, but I have heard that you are at East Grinstead and therefore difficult of access for persons like me, so I must write to you instead; and perhaps, when you are in town for the day, you will come and lunch in the City, at least. The first number of the
Criterion
has involved endless detail, and a great deal of the side of the venture that is least interesting. You, if no one else, will I hope sympathise with the worries of even a paper which is to appear only quarterly. I have hesitated, considering the exiguity of both emolument and public, to press upon you the claims of an unborn quarterly of unknown qualities – but you must know what my ideal of a ‘critical quarterly’ is – and no other interests me. Are there in existence any parts or fragments of the work on Shakespeare,
¹
that you would allow to appear in such a form? I say Shakespeare, because I imagined you might be working on it, and I do not want to ask you to go out of your way;
besides, I think it is more interesting to get writers to give what they are working on in any case. But if not, you surely have set down, or want to set down, some meditations which might be too difficult for any other vehicle.
The Criterion
will fail of its purpose unless it can get what the stomachs of coarser periodicals fail to digest.

May I now proceed to the blunter question: on what date? if my hopes have any foundation.

When shall I see you again?

Yours ever,
T.S.E.