The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (14 page)

1–Conrad Aiken, poet, novelist and critic: see Glossary of Names.

2–TSE was imitating WL’s magazine
Blast
1, which had appeared in June, and included a series of Blessings and Curses. Several of the characters here recur in TSE’s Bolo poems. Aiken’s memoir of TSE at Harvard and afterwards offers an account of the ‘hilariously naughty
parerga
’ about Bolo, Columbo and others: ‘these admirable stanzas … were to continue for years as a sort of cynical counterpoint to the study of Sanskrit and the treatise on epistemology’.

3–A. C. Swinburne, ‘Laus Veneris’, l. 55.

4–
The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, a polyptich
by the van Eyck brothers, is the altarpiece of St Bavo’s Cathedral.

5–Andrea Mantegna (c.1431–1506) painted three versions of St Sebastian, the last of which is in the Ca d’Oro in Venice. A ribbon curling from a candle in its bottom right-hand corner bears the motto ‘
nihil nisi divinum stabile est; caetera fumus
’ (‘nothing is permanent unless divine; the rest is smoke’), quoted in the epigraph to TSE’s poem ‘Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar’. The St Sebastian in Bergamo is by Raphael (Antonello da Messina’s is in the Staatliche Gemäldegalerie, Dresden); and Hans Memling’s St Sebastian is in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.

6–‘Disputation contra Hasenpfeffer’.

7–‘Polemics contra Krapp’.

8–‘Pudibund, in the clinging vine’ (‘Exequy’, TWL: Facs, 102–3).

9–‘He said: “Most wretched men / Are cradled into poetry by wrong, / They learn in suffering what they teach in song”’ (P. B. Shelley, J
ulian and Maddalo
, ll. 544–6).

10–‘The humble people of history’.

11–‘The Eternal Feminine’ (Goethe,
Faust
, l. 12,110).

MS
Huntington

25 July 1914

c/o Herr Supdt. Happich,
Luth. Kirchhof 1, Marburg a. Lahn

Dear Conrad,

I’ve written to Murray, who will forward the bag, so don’t concern yourself. I hope you are happily stowed away in the country by this time. I find myself very well fixed here
chez
the Herr Pfarrer, his wife, and his daughter Hannah. The people are extremely kind, the quarters comfortable, the view from my windows (south) excellent – over roofs and hills – the house is on the side of the hill, and the hill is steep – the food is excellent – I find that I like German food! I like German people! and we have five meals a day. I stuff myself; the Frau Pfarrer thinks I don’t eat enough. Then I swim (there are baths) or walk (there are beautiful walks among the woods) but not far, because I must always be back in time for the next meal.

I enclose some
stuff
– the
thing
I showed you some time ago, and some of the themes for the ‘Descent from the Cross’ or whatever I may call it.
¹
I send them, even in their present form, because I am disappointed in them, and wonder whether I had better knock it off for a while – you will tell me what you think. Do you think that the
Love Song of St Sebastian
part is morbid, or forced? Then there will be an Insane Section, and another love song (of a happier sort) and a recurring piece quite in the French style beginning

Then a mystical section, – and a Fool-House section beginning

Does it all seem very laboured and conscious? The S. Sebastian title I feel almost sure of; I have studied S. Sebastians – why should anyone paint a beautiful youth and stick him full of pins (or arrows) unless he felt a little as the hero of my verse? Only there’s nothing homosexual about this – rather an important difference perhaps – but no one ever painted a female Sebastian, did they?
²
So I give this title
faute de mieux.

Send me some verse, please. I am working up my Greek, mornings, and read
Logische Untersuchunger
³
evenings. We rejoice that the war danger is over.

Affy. T. S. E.

 

 

 

1–Aiken later sold the poems enclosed in this letter. They were eventually printed in
IMH
from the drafts that TSE sent with those of
The Waste Land
to John Quinn in 1922.
The Descent from the Cross
(which appears to be the provisional title for the collection of poems he was writing at this time, including ‘The Love Song of St Sebastian’) refers to the central panel in Rubens’s great triptych in Antwerp Cathedral, which TSE had recently seen.

2–The OED’s first record of the term ‘homosexual’ is in a translation of Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s
Psychopathia Sexualis
(1892). This is followed by a quotation from Havelock Ellis (1897), and a reference by Bernard Shaw to ‘The forty tolerated homosexual brothels of Berlin’ (NS 21/22 Nov. 1914). St Sebastian became something of a homosexual icon in the late nineteenth century, as in Frederick Rolfe’s sonnets about Guido Reni’s ‘St Sebastian’ published in
The Artist
magazine (1891), and John Gray’s ‘Saint Sebastian: On a Picture’ (1896). Likewise, Wilde’s
The Picture of Dorian Gray
(1891) refers to ‘medallions of many saints and martyrs, among whom was St Sebastian’. The first art-historical account of homoeroticism in representations of the saint was by Georges Eekhoud, ‘Saint Sebastien dans la peinture’,
Akdemus
1 (15 Feb. 1909).

3–
Logische Untersuchunger
[‘Logical Investigations’], (1900–1) by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), Austrian founder of the philosophy of phenomenology. TSE’s annotated copy of the 1913 edition, inscribed ‘T. S. Eliot / Marburg 1914’, is in the London Library.

4–TS Hornbake Library. For TSE’s manuscript, see
IMH
, 75–9.

5–So, correctly, ‘led’.

MS
Houghton

26 July 1914

bei Herrn Suptdr. Happich,
Luth. Kirchhof 1, Marburg a. Lahn

 

Dear Eleanor

Mit freun[d]lichem Gruss aus Deutschland! [With friendly greetings from Germany!] Here I am, safely out of harm’s way, settled in the bosom of the family of the Lutheran Pastor, and the church is right across the street. I have just been to church, and feel as good as gold. This will not be an exciting summer, but I think a pleasant one, though I hope you will not circulate any gossip about me and the Pastor’s daughter. She is named Hannah. In the evening, when we gather about the lamp, and the Herr Pfarrer takes a nap and composes his thoughts, and the ladies sew needlework, then the Frau Pfarrer says ‘Ach Hannah, spiel uns ein Stuck Beethoven’, [‘Oh, Hannah, play us a bit of Beethoven’,] and Hannah spiels for 15 minutes. Hannah also sings, and can talk a little French and English (but she hasn’t tried it on me). Then we read the paper, and discuss the Balkan Question, and the difference in climate between America and
Deutschland. Altogether they are aw’f’ly good people, and we all eat a great deal. I feel that I am quite in darkest Germany. I have heard talked not a word of English since my arrival. This is a small town, but as small towns in Germany sometimes are, more a miniature compact city than a small town, as it has very good shops, and a cunning little street car that runs round the town on one track, and little narrow streets. You walk down the middle of the chief business street, and the street is about as wide as a very wide sidewalk, and on the sidewalks just two people can pass squeeze by (two Germans). As the town is very small, and the university numbers 2500, the students are much in evidence. Lately they have been having student
fests
, and the various clubs parade the streets in the evening carrying paper lanterns of their colours (usually three colours); and as they come winding down the steep narrow streets it makes a pretty sight. The houses are much decorated too; apparently each student hangs a flag of his club colours out of his own window.

 

The students appear a little cub-like and uncouth, but are fearfully polite – I have always considered the Germans the politest people on earth. In fact everyone, servants, railroad employés, and all, are very obliging.

 

From my window I have a beautiful view (there is a little grove – telegraph poles, I believe? I am not
strong in botany). The house is on the side of this steep hill, and my window looks out over the roofs toward distant hills on the other side of the Lahn valley. The country about is really quite charming, hilly and wooded, with nice walks, not too wild; a woody farming country, such as I like – I don’t care for ‘sublime’ scenery, do you? Only one cannot walk far, or one would miss a meal; – for we have five a day. One is either just recovering from a meal or just preparing for one. As I was going out to swim the other day the Frau Superintendent (Superintendent seems to be a sort of
rector
) suggested that I had better eat some bread and sausage to fortify myself. Really, the food is very good; I had not supposed that I could like German food.

 

I shan’t have anything very exciting to narrate this summer; this is as peaceful a life as one could well find. Perhaps I shall make some amusing acquaintances in my summer-school; the reception is next Sunday evening. They have excursions, just as in Cambridge, and I intend to participate in them. You must tell me about your Summer School and I will tell you of mine … I wrote to Walter Cook;
²
has he come to see you? I think that he will if the letter reaches him. Do you know Bill Greene,
³
or shall I send him an introduction to you? You would like him, I know; he is not
intense
, but he is very gentle and good and nearintellectual. He will be in Cambridge this winter.

 

I wished that you had been on the boat; there were some amusing characters. Miss
Levi
was very attractive in her way. She is an Irish Roman Catholic Jew! Her mother was Irish. – There were several persons on the boat who claimed to come from Chestnut Hill
⁴
– ‘but it’s really Newton’. Sometimes it was Newton Highlands, – but I think every Newton had a representative. You should have seen us round the piano on the 4th July, singing ‘Rally, rally round the Flag, Boys!’
⁵
They were awfully good people, some of them. Then there was Miss Bessie Wood, of Somerville (do you know her? She is a Saff.); everyone thought I was her nephew.

Affy
Tom.