The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (22 page)

1–Ezra Pound: see Glossary of Names.

2–Above these smudged words TSE added ‘excuse tea’, which he had spilt on them.

3–‘Portrait of a Lady’.

4–Miss Adeleine Moffatt, the subject of the poem, lived behind the State House in Boston and invited selected Harvard undergraduates to tea. During a visit to London in 1927 she asked the Eliots to dine, offering ‘a modest choice of dates to sacrifice yourselves on the altar of New England’, but they were away.

5–Arnold Dolmetsch (1858–1940), musician and craftsman, who made early English musical instruments and revived the playing of them. The eldest of his four gifted children was then aged eight.

6–(Percy)Wyndham Lewis, writer and painter: see Glossary of Names. Though often difficult and cantankerous, he was greatly admired by TSE.

7–‘Eliot has sent me Bullshit and the Ballad for Big Louise. They are excellent bits of scholarly ribaldry. I am longing to print them in Blast; but stick to my naif determination to have no “Words ending in –Uck, –Unt and –Ugger”,’ said WL to EP in Jan. 1915 (
Pound/Lewis: The Letters of Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis,
ed. Timothy Materer [1985], 8). For ‘King Bolo and his Big Black Kween’, see
IMH
, 315–21.

8–Wassily Kandinsky (1886–1944), Russian abstract painter and writer on art. EP had written that he thought WL ‘a more significant artist than Kandinsky’, adding that ‘I have not yet seen enough of Kandinsky to use a stronger verb than “think”’ (‘Affirmations … II. Vorticism’,
New Age
16: 11 (14 Jan. 1915), 277–8; reprinted in
Ezra Pound and the Visual Arts
, ed. Harriet Zinnes (1980).

9–
IMH
, 54. 

MS
Huntington

25 February [1915]

Merton College

My dear Conrad,

I was very much grieved to hear of your loss, though of course I had not known of your expectations.
¹
But I hope that Jessie is well, and that John is thriving – you do not mention him.

I should think that you would be glad to leave Cambridge [Mass.] for a time at least. Even New York I should think you would prefer, if you have friends there, and unless the cost of living is appreciably higher. Italy I suppose is unlikely to take part in the war, and would be safe enough: but why not try Spain, if you can find a good place for babies? I suppose that one can secure fairly sanitary conditions in the large cities, and in Spain you would be remoter from this exhausting war talk.

I do not know my own plans for the future. Day before yesterday came a telegram from Harvard, notifying me of my renomination to my fellowship. But I do not know what I should do with it if I had it. Oxford I do not enjoy: the food and the climate are execrable, I suffer indigestion, constipation, and colds constantly; and the university atmosphere. If I could be allowed to stay in London and work at the Museum I should be content; but the War suffocates me, and I do not think that I should ever come to like England – a people which is satisfied with such disgusting food
is
not
civilised. On the other hand I dread returning to Cambridge, and the nausea of factory whistles at seven and twelve o’clock (one doesn’t mind it so much at night – one doesn’t
see
, then) and the college bell, and the people in Cambridge whom one fights against and who absorb one all the same. The great need is to know one’s own mind, and I don’t know that: whether I want to get married, and have a family, and live in America all my life, and compromise and conceal my opinions and forfeit my independence for the sake of my children’s future; or save my money and 
retire at fifty to a table on the boulevard, regarding the world placidly through the fumes of an aperitif at 5 p.m. – How thin either life seems! And perhaps it is merely dyspepsia speaking. I suppose that I shall be forced to a decision in a few days, and if I have to be in Cambridge next winter I shall wish secretly that you remain; but I think you would do well to travel.

I will put one or two small verses into this letter. Pound is still trying to get two of my things into print.

Affectionately
TSE

The idea of a submarine world of clear green light – one would be attached to a rock and swayed in two directions – would one be happiest or most wretched at the turn of the tide?

1–His second son had died at birth on 11 Feb.

2–Aiken sold these two poems, copied on the first and third pages of a folded sheet now lost, but made typescript copies (Huntington); see
IMH
. 

MS
Professor David G. Williams

2 March [1915]

Merton College

Dear Professor Woods,

I have to thank you for two letters, as well as the cablegram, and I do not know how to thank you for your encouragement and interest. I presume that you have received my cable in reply.

I am still hesitating. I feel, in the first place, that there must be equally deserving and perhaps abler students in the department who would be benefited by a year abroad; and I should feel that perhaps it would be very unfair for me to stand in the way of a man of the grade say of Sen Gupta.
¹
And particularly because there is no one piece of work which I should be completing or continuing. I do not feel that I should care to spend another year in Oxford, though I am not dissatisfied with this. Certainly I think that the alternatives seem to be limited to Germany and Italy. I should want to go where I could profitably continue work on Greek philosophy, and perhaps on other periods in the history of philosophy: for, as I said before, the historical and critical aspect is that which now appeals to me the most strongly. I mention Italy as the alternative to Germany, because it is as well to have alternatives at a time like the present; one does not know what may happen by next fall, and it might be that Italy would have more to offer. (I am hopeful, you see, that the Italians will be prudent enough to pursue their present policy of keeping both sides in doubt). But I really do not know what either country has to offer at present, and so cannot present a convincing programme.

Besides reasons of modesty, which are cogent enough, I am also urged by the feeling that it is time to take my degree, if I can, and start my
métier
. I do not know how cogent this feeling ought to be when a man has at least no one dependent on him.

I wait to receive further counsel from you, and it would interest me to know what other students are desirous of the appointment.

I owe you contrite apologies for my inexcusable delay in forwarding more notes. The fact is that my superfluous time has been going (with very meagre results) towards a paper I am to read before the Moral Science Club at Cambridge.
²
As I have chosen an ethical topic I feel some fear of
rough treatment at the hands of Moore and his disciples.
³
But I hope that I can send you the
de Anima
notes by the 15th and follow them with the second section of the
Nic
[
omachean
]
E
[
thics
] notes, and my annotations on the
Post. Anal
. I hope that these will still be of some use to you.

In any case, I shall have to be in America this summer, and hope to see you and Mrs Woods at Rockport.

Yours very gratefully
Thomas S. Eliot

1–Dhirendra C. Gupta (d. 1956), attended Harvard 1909–12, then returned to India.

2–On 12 Mar., in Russell’s rooms, he ‘read a paper entitled The Relativity of the Moral Judgment in which he attempted to compromise between an absolute idealist position and a relativist view. In the course of the discussion which followed it became evident that he regarded value as in some sense dependent upon the feeling of a particular subject at a particular moment and in some sense not. Conversation was kept up till 11.30’ (minutes of the Moral Science Club, Cambridge University Library). See also Jack Pitt, ‘Russell and the Cambridge Moral Science Club’,
Russell: The Journal of Russell Studies
1: 2 (1981–2), 112.

3–G. E. Moore (1873–1958): philosopher; author of
Principia Ethica
(1903); Cambridge Apostle. 

MS
Houghton

21 Mars [March 1915]

[London]

Dear Eleanor

I have really two of your letters to acknowledge and thank for, haven’t I? as I have not really written a letter since the important announcement of Master Frederick’s engagement. And that, I remember, was not long after Christmas, for I recollect as clearly as’twere yesterday the shock of surprise when I saw the envelope (‘Why the devil is Frederick writing to me?’); so I infer that I have written to you only once in two months or more.

There has really very little happened since. I am back in London now; and as the boarders are few, I have been promoted to the table with the delightful Miss Cook, from New Zealand, with red hair. Her first name is
Sheila
, and she likes pillow fights, and I must finish this page rapidly so that she won’t look over my shoulder and see that I’ve written her name. She is now sitting on the sofa and reading fashion notes aloud to myself and two Harvard Ph.D’s of the English department. My friend Miss Smart is still here, and there are also two Belgian ladies who say ‘oh yesss!’ to everything. That’s about all of interest.

I have somewhat enlarged my acquaintance in Oxford society also. Do tell Aunt Susie that the Miss Rhyss’ are the most charming persons I have met in Oxford – certainly the most
aristocratic
. They have invited me several times, usually to help entertain Belgians: though I am so
disaccustomed that when I find myself obliged to make conversation in French at a formal dinner party I break into a perspiration and eat nothing. I also made the cardinal blunder of addressing Sir John as
Mr
Rhys, under the impression that he was somebody else who edited something:
¹
I have rectified the error in a distinct voice since.

Besides Belgians, there is a very pretty Miss Cobb whose mother was a Bostonian (I don’t know what her name was); the mother is an odd fluttering person who is evidently looking out for her daughter, and lays compliments very thick (I know this because I have seen her laying them on to other people); she never talks to me for five minutes without bringing out Julia Ward Howe,
²
whom she knew in Boston, and evidently considers a very illustrious person. – A very tiresome person, I should say, for all the anecdotes about her end by making her recite the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ (like Mrs Leo Hunt[er]’s ‘[Ode to an] Expiring Frog’)
³
which I always considered pure bombast. But Miss Cobb is very nice. Then there are the Petersens, a mother with three daughters. Unfortunately the beautiful one (really very beautiful indeed) is the younger one, aged sixteen or so; and, as in the
Taming of the Shrew
, the interests of the elder are consulted first. This is really a very nice girl however; she plays the fiddle and raises white rats, and we have lots in common – at least I shall have to take her punting next term. I should like English girls better if they were not so completely managed by their mothers – but perhaps it is merely that the ones I have met have been rather young.

I have met several very agreeable men this term, too. Two Irishmen, who have rather raised my opinion of that race, one or two new Englishmen, and several Indians, (whom on the whole I find more congenial than English – but Bertie Russell says they give him the creeps). As I have said already, I don’t think there is any more
brains
here than at Harvard, but the average of culture is far higher. A cultivated aristocracy is sadly to seek even in England, but God knows it is better here than in our Slaterised society.
⁴
There is a marked difference I think even between Oxford
and Cambridge, where I have just been. Both at the Moral Science Club, where I read a paper, and at the Heretics (the leading literary society) the men impressed me by their resemblance to Harvard graduate school types; serious, industrious, narrow and plebeian. The more
brilliant
ones (one or two) more like the clever Jew undergraduate mind at Harvard; wide but disorderly reading, intense but confused thinking, and utter absence of background and balance and proportion. I should expect it to be accompanied by a philistine aristocracy. As I remember, Harry Child’s friends were very attractive (three years ago), and there must be many other charming men at Trinity and King’s; yet I think the centre of intelligence and the centre of society are probably farther apart at Cambridge than at Oxford. The temper of the place is
scientific
, whereas that of Oxford is
historical
; and history is a more aristocratic pursuit than natural science, and demands a more cultivated mind. Not that Bertie Russell is not an aristocrat, but not quite in that sense; he has a sensitive, but hardly a cultivated mind, and I begin to realise how unbalanced he is. I do enjoy him quite as much as any man I know; we had breakfast with him, and stayed talking with him one night till one o’clock; he talked very well about the war, and is wonderfully perceptive, but in some ways an immature mind: wonderfully set off in contrast by Santayana, (who was in Cambridge too).

Now I am back in London, the town of cubist teas, and find it more delightful and beautiful than ever. Also healthy, which Oxford is not.

Always affectionately
Tom