The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (76 page)

1–‘Coming on top of the steel strike, the dock strike in New York, and a large number of lesser strikes in all parts of the union, the coal strike threatens to paralyse the trade and commerce of the country’ (
The Times
, 20 Oct. 1919, 13). By early Nov., 435,000 miners had gone on strike.

2–Laurence Binyon (1869–1943), poet and art historian.

3–TSE, ‘Modern Tendencies in Poetry’,
Shama’a
, I: 1 (Apr. 1920), 1–10.

PC
Texas

Monday 10 November 1919

Crawford Mansions

Thank you for the card – I was sorry I could not come, but I had saved the whole day to finish an important article which I will send you in time – Just finished at
¹
a.m!3
À bientôt.

T.S.E.

1–‘Ben Jonson’.

MS
Houghton

18 November 1919

London

My dearest Mother,

I have sent you my
Times
Article, which the editor was very much pleased with, and you will see that I did another article on Ben Jonson for the
Athenaeum
¹
and one on John Donne
²
for this week, and now I am not going to write at all for a fortnight. I am tired from having to write three articles in rapid succession after the lecture. Vivien is very tired too. Her aunt [Lillia Symes], her father’s sister, who lived in a small flat in Eastbourne, died very suddenly last week. They all went down there for the funeral, and as her mother staid on to put things in order, Vivien has had to go out to Compayne Gardens every day to superintend the servant and charwoman and keep house for her father and Maurice. Her aunt’s sudden death was a blow to Vivien, who was fond of her, and a great blow to her father, as she was his last surviving relative.

Maurice, by the way, appears to be doing very well in the Ministry of Labour, although he has been there only a short time, and will doubtless become a permanent government official.

I shall do nothing for two evenings except read proof: two sets of proof have come at once, one from New York and one from the man who is printing a limited edition here at 25s. The New York edition will sell at $1.50 – about sixty-five pages.

This is one of my short letters – I am anxious to hear from you, very anxious.

Very much love
Your devoted son
Tom.

The [works of Thomas] Jefferson are lined up in my bookcase.

1–TSE, ‘The Comedy of Humours’, on G. Gregory Smith,
Ben Jonson
(a second review) and
Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour
, ed. Percy Simpson, in A., 14 Nov. 1919, 1180–1.

2–TSE, ‘The Preacher as Artist’, a review of
Donne’s Sermons: Selected Passages,
ed. Logan Pearsall Smith, A., 28 Nov. 1919, 1252–3.

MS
Houghton

23 November 1919

[London]

My dearest Mother,

I am glad to have had two letters from you lately. You need not be afraid of a collapse. I am still worried about the labour troubles in America, of which you do not say much. I ordered the
Athenaeum
to go to St L. some time ago, but I will enquire.
The Times Literary Supplement
is a good paper, and not expensive, but you must not expect to find me in it very often. I should only do the ‘leading article’ and no one person writes that more than six times a year. Abigail
¹
has not yet turned up. I will send you a copy of my poems when they appear. I do hope the real estate will go, but not at a sacrifice.

Devotedly your son
Tom.

1–TSE’s first cousin, Abigail Adams Eliot (1892–1992), sister of Frederick and Martha, was to spend a year at Oxford before enrolling at the Rachel McMillan Nursery School and Training Centre, London.

MS
Virginia

[Late November? 1919]

[London]

Dear Rodker

I am sorry I was out, as you appear to have called or sent by hand. Here is the proof [of
Ara Vos Prec
]. Ezra showed me a page of the final setting up which pleased me: the paper is excellent, the type is good, and the initials have come out very well. I hope you are allowing to let me have a certain number of copies, to keep and to give to people who could not afford to buy the book in any case? inasmuch as I am not expecting to make any money out of it whatever.

I think Anderson
¹
ought to pay for the poems if she prints them, tell her they were only given on that explicit understanding. She certainly won’t get any more from me if she doesn’t. Weaver is the only woman connected with publishing whom it is really easy to get on with.

Yours
T. S. E.

1–Margaret Anderson, editor of the
Little Review
(in which none of the new poems appeared).

MS
Texas

24 November 1919

18 Crawford Mansions,
Crawford St,
W.1

Dear Lady Ottoline,

May we choose the 6th to come to Garsington (that is Saturday week), as you said either the 6th or the 13th would do equally well?
¹

We should like to see you again before then, if you are to be in town. I shall be busy until Sunday with various importunate affairs; but if you can, I hope you will suggest any evening after Saturday, and we could go to the ballet. I hope you are and will be in town. We enjoyed so much seeing you the other evening.
²

Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot

1–The Eliots do not appear in the Garsington guest book during the winter season.

2–VHE’s diary, 18 Nov.: ‘Ottoline to dinner’.

MS
Texas

1 December 1919

18 Crawford Mansions

Dear Mary,

I think I will not come on Wednesday, but would rather you would ask me another time. – Vivien said to tell you not to tell the Sitwells that she is coming; and she hopes you won’t ask any other woman. She also said that she very much enjoyed seeing you today. I look forward to seeing you before very long on some other occasion.

Yours
Tom

MS
Houghton

2 December 1919

18 Crawford Mansions

My dearest Mother,

I have just got your card and have written off at once to the
Athenaeum
to ask for an explanation.

Now you ask several questions. You may give the photographic Natural History to Charlotte’s children, with my best compliments. The Audubon is precious to me, and I want to keep it.

It is very thoughtful of you to send me a cheque £1.8.3. for my cable, which did not come to so much as that.

I thanked you for the Jefferson in a letter some time ago, and thank you now again. They arrived beautifully packed and in perfect order, and are now on my shelves. The freight shipment seems to cost as much as parcels post, as I had to pay 10s cartage on the books from Shef.

I have (from Shef) the remaining volumes of Boswell, and I am glad to hear that the other was not lost.

I am afraid you have subscribed to the wrong
Times
. The weekly that I wrote in you will have received from me:
Literary Supplement.
The other is a digest of news. The
Times
would probably arrange to send you the
Literary
instead – or you may find this interesting enough to continue. In any case I will see that you get everything I write.

‘Westminster’ is simply the district of London around Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, as you would say ‘Back Bay’ [in Boston]; Goosens
¹
(Belgian extraction) is a musician, but I have never heard anything of his.

I should love to have pyjamas made by you. I need pyjamas, and it would seem to keep us nearer together.

I am still worried about American affairs insofar as they may affect you, and the sale of real estate.

Devotedly your son
Tom.

I have just had my photograph taken to advertise my book, and shall send you one for Christmas. He is a very swell photographer who charges £10 per dozen.
²
But he will give me a few at reduced prices.

1–Eugène Goossens (1893–1962), English composer and conductor, who had spoken on ‘Music’ at the Arts League of Service.

2–Emil Otto Hoppé (1878–1972), the best-known photographer of the Edwardian era; later a photojournalist; author of
The Image of London
(1935).

PC
Lilly

[Postmark 2 December 1919]

[London]

‘Ελέναυς!’
¹

I am absorbing this matter slowly. I regret missing you yesterday. Unless I hear to contrary I suppose I am to go direct to the Lady’s
²
house (an Uncle Tom for your L’.E.
³
) on Friday and pronounce my name.

T.

1–Helenaus, ‘destroyer of ships’: an epithet applied to Helen of Troy in Aeschylus’
Agamemnon
(689). TSE is referring to EP’s Canto VII, ‘But
is
she dead as Tyro? In seven years? / Ελέναυς, έλαυδρος, έλέπτολις’. Tyro is a sea-nymph raped by Poseidon, an episode EP recreates in Canto II.

2–Unidentified.

3–The pious slave ‘Uncle Tom’, and ‘Little Eva’, a white child who treats her slaves with angelic kindness, feature in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
(1852).

MS
Beinecke

13 December 1919

18 Crawford Mansions,
Crawford St,
W.1

Dear Mr Jepson,

I have been meaning to write to you for some time, but have been very busy indeed. Both Rutter and the
Athenaeum
liked the content of the article,
¹
but neither thought it quite suitable. I have now got it back after some delay and propose using it in the last issue of the
Egoist
, if you do not object. As Weaver is in rather a hurry before Christmas will you write immediately to her if you do object? But I should like the
Egoist
to have an article by you to its credit before it suspends. Are you never going to produce a volume of critical essays? (for the Egoist
Limited
to publish?)

Yours ever
T. S. Eliot

1–Jepson’s ‘lecture’ on playwrights.

MS
Beinecke

Tuesday [16 December 1919]
¹

18 Crawford Mansions

My dear Monro,

My intentions were perfect, but here I have been for two days with bronchial cold, and the doctor today tells me not to think of going out till
Friday. I very much regret not being able to join you. Is there any possibility of your and Aldous H. being able to join
me
, after dinner? Though I cannot go out, I can sit up and drink coffee, and if the exertion is not too much, I should be delighted if you would.
²

Yours.
T. S. Eliot

1–Dated by Monro.

2–Monro reported next day that they had had a jolly evening but were too far away to visit TSE.

MS
Beinecke

Wednesday [17 December? 1919]

18 Crawford Mansions

My dear Jepson,

I enclose the Playwrights [lecture], which I have regretfully rescued from Weaver. But of course, if it is to go into the
English Review
it is better so, as the
Egoist
, in its present and final stage, is, I fear, only a not very decent interment for any article.
¹

We should very much have liked to come to tea on Sunday but that 1. my wife will be out of town and I too if I recover from the bronchial cold which is keeping me at home 2. We do want you to come here before you invite us again! And I hope that will be directly after Christmas.

Yours sincerely
T. S. Eliot

1–It did not appear in either.

MS
Texas

[December 1919]

18 Crawford Mansions

Dearest Ottoline,

I have been longing to answer your letter these last few days. I have felt so impatient to get a chance to sit down and write to you. I
loved
your letter. I quite see it might have been better to go to Margaret Morris
¹
with yr. letter before Xmas but I
could not.
I have been a great deal too busy and I have been overtired and have had two of my migraines, (awful heads) which have taken two days from me. We had to go to Marlow from Sat.–Sunday – it tired me very much, but was rather fun. A man named
Sullivan
²
wrote and asked Tom about our house at Marlow, he wanted it
for a year.
So he and his wife came also, on Sat. to see it. But I will not let them have it. I dallied with the idea, but it is no use, for I should be
wretched
without it. I
do love it.
The idea of it – thinking about it and planning for it. It all means a great deal in my life. It appears you know the Sullivans! Well, I will tell you my impressions when we meet.

About [Wyndham] Lewis
I am sure
it is better for him to see Diaghileff in Paris, a little later, if you give him a letter then.

I was interested to hear about yr. weekend with Maria [Huxley] and Iris Moffatt.
³
Now you know you would like Mary very much if you knew her well, that is, if you like me! Because although you would not think it we are very much alike. Leaving out the sex business, which of course makes a vast difference. What suggested this to me was your saying you did not find much interest in Iris. Mary finds her terribly boring and uninteresting. I shall meet her, at last, next Tuesday at the Hutches, and shall find, I am
sure
, that I do not get on with her.

I wish
ever so much
that I could see you in your Xmas festivities, and that I could help you dance with the tenants, etc. I know how very tiring it must be. I think it is very wonderful of you to do it all. Xmas is awful,
awful.

We are both longing for you to come to London. I keep saying to Tom ‘when Ottoline is here we will do so and so’. I am thinking and planning about it all the time. You do not know how I admire you my dearest Ottoline. I hope we shall always be friends.

Are you better? Don’t have people who are a strain and make you ill.
Why should you
? That is the great disadvantage of living in the country, surely. One must have people in great lumps, or not at all. And what risks!

Will you write directly you have time? Goodbye my dear. Be good and well – I mean happy and well!

Write soon. Love from us both

Yrs ever
Vivien

You are right. I dislike Yeats. Also he and Tom are ← → He hates Tom’s poetry. His wife is a distant relation of Dorothy Pound’s, I
think
Anglo-Indian people.
⁴
She has a good deal of money.

Do you really
think Iris Tree’s poetry good?
⁵
O Ottoline!Must we have Iris as a bone of contention as well as Joyce!