T. S. Eliot, Edited by Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton The Letters of T.S. Eliot Volume 2 1923-1925 2011 PDF

the letters of
t. s. eliot
volume 2
This page intentionally left blank
the letters of
T. S. ELIOT
edited by
valerie eliot
and
hugh haughton
volume 2
19231925
general editor
john haffenden
New Haven & London

First published in the
United States in 2011 by Yale University Press.
First published in
Great Britain in 2009 by Faber and Faber Limited.
All writings by T. S. Eliot, introductions

and editorial material Set Copyrights Limited 1988, 2009
All writings by Vivien Eliot Valerie Eliot 1988, 2009
All rights reserved.

This book may not be reproduced,
in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S.
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Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011928725

ISBN 978-0-300-17686-5 (hardcover: alk. paper)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of

ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
i.m. John Bodley (19302004)
contents
List of Illustrations, ix
Acknowledgements, xi
Preface, xv
Biographical Commentary, 19231925 xvii
Abbreviations and Sources, xxvii
Editorial Notes, xxxi
the letters
Glossary of Names, 817
Index of Correspondents
and Recipients, 847
General Index, 855
illustrations
1 Pencil portrait of Eliot by Wyndham Lewis, 1922. Collection

Valerie Eliot. The Estate of Mrs G. A. Wyndham Lewis
2 Eliot in a garden at Bosham. Annotated on the reverse in Viviens
hand, Bosham / August 1922 / Tom, looking like the Prince of
Wales. By permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University, MS Am 2560 (184)
3 Eliots workplace, Lloyds Bank, photographed by his brother
Henry, with St Mary Woolnoth on the right. By permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Am 2560 (263)
4 Vivien in the kitchen at 9 Clarence Gate Gardens.
Collection Valerie Eliot. By permission of the Houghton Library,
5 Richard Aldington. Photograph by Madame Yevonde.
By permission of The New York Public Library
6 Sunday afternoon: Eliot at Garsington with Anthony Asquith,
Lord David Cecil, L. P. Hartley and Edward Sackville-West.
Photograph by Lady Ottoline Morrell, 1923.
National Portrait Gallery, London
7 Ezra Pound in his Paris studio, 1923. Getty Images
8 Eliot in conversation with L. A. G. Strong. Collection Valerie Eliot
9 Mary Hutchinson with her lover Clive Bell, Duncan Grant and
E. M. Forster at Charleston, Sussex, 1923. Tate, London 2009
10 James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Ford Madox Ford and John Quinn in
Pounds studio in Paris, 1923. akg-images
11 Vivien with Lucy Thayer at Fishbourne, June 1924. By permission
of the Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Am 2560 (185)
12 Bertrand Russell at Garsington. Photograph by Lady Ottoline
Morrell, late 1924. National Portrait Gallery, London
ix
13 Advertisement for The Stanboroughs Nursing Home, Watford,
from Good Health magazine, July 1929. Newbold College
Library, Berkshire
14 Aldous Huxley. Photograph by Edward Gooch, c.1925.
Getty Images
15 Eliot with Virginia Woolf at Garsington. Photograph by Lady
Ottoline Morrell, June 1924. National Portrait Gallery, London
16 Cover of the first issue of The Criterion, October 1922.
Collection Valerie Eliot
17 The first edition of The Waste Land, published by the Hogarth
Press, 1923. Collection Valerie Eliot
18 Postcard from Eliot to Ezra Pound, 8 December 1925.
By permission of The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Yale University
19 Eliot at his desk at Faber & Gwyer, 1925. By permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Am 1560 (187)
20 Geoffrey Faber. Courtesy of The Faber Archive
21 Eliot outside the Faber & Gwyer offices. Photograph by Henry
Ware Eliot. By permission of the Houghton Library,
x
acknowledgements
I owe a special debt of gratitude to both Dr William H. Bond, formerly

Librarian, and Rodney G. Dennis, Curator of Manuscripts, at the Houghton
Library, Harvard University; to Dr Donald Gallup, bibliographer of Eliot
and Pound, who has answered innumerable questions with grace; and to
Matthew Evans with my editor, John Bodley, for their generous support
and encouragement.
For permission to print letters and quote from copyright material, I wish
to thank Alain Rivire (Alain-Fournier), Alastair Kershaw (Richard
Aldington), Professor Charles W. Eliot (President Eliot), Mme Catherine
Gide (Andr Gide), The Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust, and James
Laughlin (Ezra Pound), The Bertrand Russell Estate and McMaster
University (Bertrand Russell), Francis Wyndham (Sydney Schiff), Franoise
Valry (Paul Valry), Harvard University Libraries (J. H. Woods).
I am grateful to Professor John Weightman for translating all letters in
French, and to the following for help in various ways: Joan Bailey; Anne
Olivier Bell; Kenneth Blackwell, McMaster University; Michael Harry
Blechner, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa; Mary Boccaccio,
McKeldin Library, University of Maryland; Dr J. M. L. Booker, Lloyds
Bank Archivist; Penelope Bulloch, Balliol College Library; William R.
Cagle, Saundra Taylor, Lilly Library; Douglass Campbell; Dr Joseph
Chiari; the late Marguerite Cohn; Joyce Crick; Arthur Crook; Roy Davids;
Dr A. Deiss, General Secretariat, Swiss Medical Institutions; Giles de la
Mare; Peter du Sautoy; Donald D. Eddy, Cornell University Library;
Barclay Feather, Director of Libraries, Milton Academy; K. C. Gay,
Lockwood Memorial Library, Buffalo; Herbert Gerwing, Special
Collections, University of Victoria; Mrs Ghika; R. C. Giles, T. G.
Mallinson, Highgate School; Robert Giroux; Sir Rupert Hart-Davis;
Professor E. N. Hartley, Institute Archives, MIT; Cathy Henderson,
Humanities Research Center, University of Texas; the late Robert
Henderson; Dr Roger Highfield, Merton College Library; Robert W. Hill,
New York Public Library (Manuscript Division); Penelope Hughes-Hallett;
J. W. Hunt, Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst; Lord Hutchinson;
Carolyn Jakeman; Professor Dorothy O. Johansen, Reed College, Portland,
Oregon; William Jovanovich; Monique Kuntz, Bibliothque Municipale,
xi
Vichy; the staff of the London Library; Richard M. Ludwig, Princeton
University Library; R. Russell Maylone, Northwestern University Library;
Professor B. K. Matilal; Joe Mitchenson; Mary C. McGreenery, Harvard
Alumni Records; Lord Quinton; Angela Raspin, London School of
Economics; Benedict Read; Dr R. T. H. Redpath; Helene Ritzerfeld;
Rosenbach Museum & Library; Anthony Rota; Samuel A. Sizer, Special
Collections, University Libraries, University of Arkansas; Lola L. Szladits,
Berg Collection; Theodora Eliot Smith; Kendon L. Stubbs, University of
Virginia Library; Barbara Sturtevant; Elizabeth Stege Teleky, Joseph
Regenstein Library, University of Chicago; Professor Kathleen Tillotson;
Dr George Watson; the late Helen Willard; Professor David G. Williams;
Patricia C. Willis, Beinecke Library, Yale University; Dr Daniel H.
Woodward, Huntington Library.
It is a pleasure to record my heartfelt appreciation of the Faber team:
Ron Costley, designer, Mark Massingham, typesetter, Jane Robertson,
managing editor, Hazel Orme, copy-editor, and Gillian Bate, proof reader,
who have combined their skills to produce such an elegant tribute to TSE
in his centenary year.
1988
The acknowledgements above are those made by Valerie Eliot in the first
edition of Volume 1. Sadly, a number of those mentioned are now deceased
(as are some of those we will add below). The editors would like also to
thank: Owen Barfield; H. Baugh; Jewel Spears Brooker; Robert Brown;
Andrew Boxer; Ronald Bush; Franois Chapon; Mrs Charlton; Alan
Clodd; the Literary Trustees of Walter de la Mare; J. P. G. Delaney; the
estate of Geoffrey Faber; Toby Faber; Jennifer Formichelli; Mrs Burnham
Finney; Estate of Enid Goldsmith; Herbert T. Greene; Warwick Gould;
Michael Halls; Saskia Hamilton; Hal Hlavinka; Michael Hofmann;
Michael Holroyd; Steven Isenberg; P. D. James; Iman Javadi; Emeline
Jouv; Paul Keegan; Kenneth A. Lohf; Jim McCue; Tessa Milne; Tim
Munby; Mary Middleton Murry; Anne Owen; Craig Raine; Carol
Rothkopt; Gerd Schmidt; Rev. Karl Schroeder, sj; Ronald Schuchard; Jesse
Cordes Selbin; Timothy and Marian Seldes; Prue Shaw; James Strachey;
M. J. Tilby; Franois Valry, Judith Robinson-Valry; David Van Ness;
Michael J. Walsh; Jemma Walton, J. Waterlow; Dave Watkins; Kieron
Winn; Susan Wolfson; John Worthen and Michael Yeats. Special thanks go
to Ron Costley, Donald Sommerville for his copy-editing, Jenny Overton
for proofreading, Alison Worthington for indexing, and to Debbie
Whitfield (PA to Mrs Eliot) for her commitment to this project.
xii
We are grateful in addition to: Leslie Morris and Elizabeth A. Falsey
(Houghton Library); Dr P. Kelly (National Library of Scotland); Robin
Carlaw (Harvard University Archives); Eamon Dyas (News International);
Moira A. Fitzgerald and Eva Guggemos (Beinecke Library, Yale); Thomas
Lannon (New York Public Library); Molly Schwartzburg (Harry Ransom
Research Center, University of Texas); Claire Nicholas-Walker (British
Library); Thomas Whitehead (Temple University Libraries); Stephen
Young (Regenstein Library, University of Chicago); Bibliothque Littraire
Jacques Doucet; Bibliothque Nationale, Paris; Bodleian Library, Oxford;
University of Bonn Library; British Library; Bundesarchiv (German Federal
Archives), Koblenz; Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, Butler Library,
Columbia University, New York; University of California, Los Angeles;
Fondazione Camillo Caetani, Rome; Clare College, Cambridge; Fondren
Library, Woodson Research Center, Rice University; Galleria Nazionale
dArte Moderna, Rome; Harvard University Archives; Special Collections,
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, Mass.; Hornbake Library,
University of Maryland; Special Collections, Keele University; Modern
Archives Centre, Kings College, Cambridge; Magdalene College,
Cambridge; Marshall Library, Cambridge; Massachusetts Institute of
Technology; Lockwood Memorial Library; University Library, Missouri
History Museum; Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at
Carbondale; Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University; National
Library, Scotland; New College, Oxford; Pennsylvania University Library;
Reading University Library; Real Academia de la Historia; Schiller-
Nationalmuseum, Marbach am Neckar; Schweizerisches Literaturachiv
(Swiss National Archives), Berne; University of Sussex Library; Trinity
College, Cambridge; Trinity College, Dublin; University of Virginia
Library; Washington University Library, St Louis, Missouri; Widener
Library, Harvard University; Chapin Library, Williams College,
Williamstown, Massachusetts; Yale University Archives.
2009
The editors and publishers apologise if any person or estate has been over-
looked. They would be grateful to be informed if any copyright notice has
been omitted, or if there have been any changes of ownership or location.
xiii
preface
Volume 1 of the Letters of T. S. Eliot effectively covers the years from

1914 to the end of 1922. Volume 2 covers a shorter period, from 1923 to
1925. They are years of crisis and consolidation, of severe domestic
collapse and hard-won professional recovery. The collection tells us a great
deal about the intellectual culture in which Eliot established himself in
postwar England; it also reveals his constant struggles with ill health and
a distressed marriage personal anguish is a keynote, most evidently in
the candid and terrifying letters that he despatched to John Middleton
Murry in 1925 as well as the strains of balancing full-time employment
at Lloyds Bank with his consummate vocation as poet, critic and editor.
These are the years of The Hollow Men, that elusive, repetition-haunted
ghost sequence, and the satirical and worldly knockabout of his
melodrama, Sweeney Agonistes, which would inaugurate Eliots lifelong
engagement with poetic theatre. The major critical volume he produced in
these years was Homage to John Dryden (published by Leonard and
Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press), which is centred upon three essays
first printed in the Times Literary Supplement.
Most importantly, this second volume documents the founding and early
years of The Criterion, the periodical that Eliot launched with the financial
backing of Viscountess Rothermere in late 1922, and which became a
sometimes overwhelming undertaking throughout the eighteen years of its
duration. If Volume 1 of the Letters shows the emergence of Eliot as poet
and critic, in the period covered by Volume 2 he assumes a broadening
responsibility as editor, publisher and arbiter. Though he had played a
notable part as literary editor of The Egoist in the late 1910s, Eliot came
into his own as cultural commentator only from the mid-1920s, in a role
he would continue to play for the rest of his life.
Eliots biography cannot be understood apart from his work as editor,
and the letters in this volume reveal the dedicated and exacting day-to-day
and quarter-to-quarter work of producing The Criterion. For most of the
period spanned by these letters, he earned his living at the bank; the work
of The Criterion conjuring up ideas, cultivating contributors, revising
submissions, fashioning each and every issue, working out due payments,
lobbying for subscriptions drew relentlessly on nearly all the available
xv
hours of his evenings and weekends, and on his statutory holidays: such
were the demands of the periodical. He wrote in 1924: Conducting a
Review after 8 p.m. in the back room of a flat, I live qua editor very much
from hand to mouth, get myself into all sorts of hot water and
predicaments, and offend everybody. At the end, the review is squeezed
together somehow, and is never the number that I planned three months
before. As these letters demonstrate, it was a blend of high intellectual
commitment, pragmatism, diplomacy, happenstance and perversity that
brought about the appearance of each issue. And as an organ of
documentation seeking to illuminate the time and the tendencies of the
time, The Criterion would become an influential cultural institution in
the changing landscape of the 1920s and 1930s, and would go far to shape
what W. H. Auden called the whole climate of opinion of the period.
In a letter to Geoffrey Faber dating from 1938, Eliot would recall the
large emotional and moral price he had paid for The Criterion: when one
is young, one can say things in ones own periodical which one would not
be at liberty to say elsewhere . . . And there are some bitter memories of
the early years before your time! it was in no mood of enthusiasm, but
more nearly of desperation, that I consented to launch the review . . .
Incidentally, I do not forget that it was on the pretext of the Criterion that
I was insinuated with some difficulty into Faber & Gwyers. The year
1925 marked a major turning-point in Eliots life, with his resignation from
Lloyds Bank and his decision to be recruited into the newly launched
publishing firm of Faber & Gwyer (later Faber & Faber). In a letter to
Faber of 22 March 1925, he indicated: With what you say about the
situation of the Publisher I am in agreement. And the Editor has to
combine and reconcile principle, sensibility, and business sense.
The correspondence in Volume 2 testifies to these reconcilings in Eliots
work, letter by letter, and to the continuities between the poet, the critic
and the editor. It ends with Eliot starting out at Faber & Gwyer, completing
a draft of four of the Clark Lectures on The Varieties of Metaphysical
Poetry that he was to deliver at Cambridge early in 1926, and publishing
Poems 19091925, a volume which brought together all of his verse from
Prufrock and Other Observations to The Waste Land and beyond. It was
one of the first books to be published by the fledgling Faber & Gwyer: a
symbol of Eliots identification with the firm for which he would work for
the rest of his life, and which would publish the rest of his work.
hugh haughton
xvi
biographical commentary
19231925
1923 january TSE works full-time at Lloyds Bank, where he runs an

intelligence department specializing in Enemy Debts under the
Peace Treaties, with Four girls and three men under me. He is
exhausted by all the planning and tact and supervision; but he
later explains: I simply could not resign in January because just
then the bank started this department which they would not have
started at all except for me, because there is no one else available
in the bank who has the education and width of experience to run
such a thing. He deposits in his bank the Dial (New York) prize of
$2,000; and receives a cheque for 50, signed by Ottoline Morrell
and Virginia Woolf on behalf of Bel Esprit (the Eliot Fellowship
Fund), which is intended to provide an income to enable him to
leave the bank: as Ezra Pound puts it to him, it represents an
emergency measure to save or utilize your particular talent. TSE
considers it as a trust fund and invests the money in gilt-edged
securities. He takes out a lease on a tiny suite of two rooms,
primarily for use as an office for the Criterion, at 38 St Martins
Lane, London. He writes of his other work, editing the Criterion,
if one is going to edit a review at all I think the best one can do is
to follow ones own faith and let things rip. Subscriptions run to
between 800 and 1000 copies. Lady Rothermere who funds the
periodical to the tune of 600 a year, and whom TSE respects as a
woman of the world finds the Criterion a little high-brow &
grave. But she never interferes. TSE tells his brother: She has given
me an absolutely free hand, has made no criticisms, has agreed to
every suggestion and has lately slightly increased the sum which
she at first stipulated would be the utmost to which she could go for
its expenses. Yet he grumbles too, The present position with the
Criterion is a farce to make one laugh, if any Eliot could ever laugh.
I am running a quarterly review which has to make the same
appearances, get as good contributors, and give as good value as
any other quarterly . . . The Criterion is run without an office,
without any staff or business manager, by a sickly bank clerk and
xvii
his wife. The latter has had to be on her back half of the time and
the former has conducted all his work in the evening in his own
sitting room, without even a desk, till Christmas! after a busy and
tiring day, and subject to a thousand interruptions. Until the last
few months I have paid my own secretary, a woman who came in
three evenings a week. When I finally add that I have not only taken
no salary but have actually been considerably out of pocket for
payment of a secretary, and for the time that I might have spent on
writing for other papers, it is enough to make any outsider believe
that I ought to be certified a lunatic. In 1924 he will write further
of the fortunes of the Criterion: The ideal which was present to
the mind of Lady Rothermere at the beginning was that of a more
chic and brilliant Art & Letters, which might have a fashionable
vogue among a wealthy few. I had and have no resentment against
her for this. . . I have I think given her as much as possible of what
she wants, and she has given me the possibility of an organ. It is
true that I have laid myself open to the censure both of persons
who assumed that I was making money out of the work, and of
those who knew that I was taking nothing for it and who
consequently believe that I am running the paper for other
discreditable reasons which latter group of persons, by the way,
includes my relatives in America. One does not like to explain
oneself only to arouse the accusation of hypocrisy, to be associated
with the other causes of impeachment, and one learns to keep
silence. I have another reason for keeping silence, and that is that
I find that I sometimes give people an impression of arrogance and
intolerant self-conceit. If I say generally that I wish to form a
phalanx, a hundred voices will forthwith declare that I wish to
be a leader, and that my vanity will not allow me to serve, or even
to exist on terms of equality with others. If one maintains a cause,
one is either a fanatic or a hypocrite: and if one has any definite
dogmas, then one is imposing those dogmas upon those who
cooperate with one . . . When I write, I must write to the limit of
my own convictions and aspirations: but I dont want to impose
these on others, any more than I should be willing to reduce myself
to the common denominator of my colleagues. What is essential is
to find those persons who have an impersonal loyalty to some faith
not antagonistic to my own . . . My conception of leader or
organiser is simply of a necessary organ in a body, which has no
superiority at all, but simply exercises a particular function, and
xviii
makes it possible for the others to do their best work. He
contributes Ulysses, Order, and Myth to the Dial. february
Following a visit from TSE (costive, agonised), Virginia Woolf
suggests to John Maynard Keynes that TSE might become literary
editor of The Nation. Woolf writes in her diary, of TSE: I could
wish that poor dear Tom had more spunk in him, less need to let
drop by drop of his agonized perplexities fall ever so finely through
pure cambric. One waits; sympathises, but it is dreary work. He is
like a person about to break down infinitely scrupulous,
tautologous, & cautious. 23 march TSE turns down the Nation.
Woolf notes: Here I have been toiling these 3 weeks to make Eliot
take it; finally he shied . . . (Leonard Woolf takes up the position
at the Nation.) TSE and Vivien rent a small semi-detached retreat
at 2 Milestone Cottages, Old Fishbourne, Sussex, on the road
between Chichester and the coast at Bosham, and move in on 24
March. In time, TSE will come to think of the cottage as miserable
. . . a hole. Vivien has electric treatment and Plombires
treatment (colonic irrigation). She relates, it is my opinion that
Tom is right in refraining at this point from taking steps which
would make our common dwelling place a four-roomed country
cottage or an attic in London, and which would deprive me of
medical assistance. (Of course there are the nice hospitals, I know.)
Indeed, if he did take such steps I should bear him a considerable
grudge. It is reported that Boni & Liveright (New York) has to
date sold 1,250 copies of The Waste Land. TSE reports in mid-
March: I have sunk the whole of my strength for the past eighteen
months into this confounded paper [The Criterion], when I ought
to have been minding my business and doing my own writing. The
paper has therefore done me more harm than good. april Vivien
suffers a violent crisis of health at first she is completely numb,
[with] terrible palpitations, and gasping for every breath; then she
endures a terrific colitis explosion, followed by others over
succeeding days and is laid up in Fishbourne for many weeks.
The local doctor and the Eliots London doctor, Hubert Higgins,
are called in. There is talk of entero-colitis, enteric influenza,
septic influenza. My wife nearly died of influenza, TSE will say
at the end of May. He reports that malnutrition is at the heart of
her problems. Vivien is treated with serum and Bulgarian bacillus.
Her brother Maurice visits them. TSE uses up a month of his
annual holiday entitlement in caring for Vivien; he feels
xix
dilapidated. may TSE writes to Ezra Pound that Vivien was
contemplating suicide a short time ago . . . Hell. 5 may TSE
lectures on criticism to an undergraduate society at Oxford. Vivien
is extremely feeble and still in a precarious condition. He blames
himself: her mind was utterly worn out and ruined by my
indecision over the Nation which went on so long too - I know
that the strain of that was deadly to her. (In the opinion of his
mother, Vivien eats his life out.) TSE travels back and forth from
Fishbourne to London, to meet his professional commitments at
the bank and for the Criterion. Richard Aldington (very useful and
hard-working) is retained as TSEs paid assistant on the Criterion.
june Vivien reports that since getting back to London she has
been in . . . real despair, which isolates and freezes one . . .
paralysing. 17 july TSE and Vivien visit Virginia Woolf, who
notes that Vivien is very nervous, very spotty, much powdered.
Acting on a recommendation from Morrell, TSE and Vivien have
consultations with a great German doctor, Karl Bernhard Martin,
who is visiting London. TSE salutes him as the wisest, as well as
the most scientific Doctor that I have ever met. Dr Martin claims
to discover in Vivien an extraordinary excess of streptococcus
fecalis, and other mischievous cocci. Vivien has a relapse. TSE
enjoys socialising with James Joyce, who is holidaying in Sussex.
summer Vivien is waited on by a Swedish woman doctor named
Cyriax, who treats her with manipulation and hand vibration. It
is a wonderful system, says TSE. He himself consults the male Dr
Cyriax, who seeks three times a week to treat the nerves of TSEs
head, neck, spine and stomach. The Cyriax treatment eventuates in
two years of starvation dieting for Vivien. Dr Martin encourages
her to stick at it. Virginia Woolf tries to find a teaching
appointment for TSE at Oxford. Irene Pearl Fassett becomes TSEs
secretary. 12 september The Waste Land is published by
Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press: 330 copies (of a
print run of 460) are sold by the end of March 1924, and TSE
receives a royalty cheque for 7. 5s. 7d. Vivien visits Eastbourne.
november Aldington resigns as TSEs assistant on the Criterion.
christmas TSE and Vivien hold a party at 38 Burleigh
Mansions; St John and Mary Hutchinson, Roger Fry, and the
Woolfs are in attendance. Virginia Woolf: We went to a flat in an
arcade, & asked for Captain Eliot. I noticed that his eyes were
blurred. He cut the cake meticulously. He helped us to coffee or
xx
was it tea? Then to liqueurs . . . We discussed the personal element
in literature. Tom then quietly left the room. L. heard sounds of
sickness. After a long time, he came back, sank into the corner, &
I saw him, ghastly pale, with his eyes shut, apparently in a stupor.
When we left he was only just able to stand on his legs. TSE
apologises the next day. TSE and Vivien spend a queer sort of
Christmas driving around Sussex in search of a new retreat.
1924 february Vivien suffers from anaemia and complete
exhaustion. TSE writes to his brother, I am really in such a state
that my mind and judgment and will are paralysed. He is bed-
ridden with flu; Vivien suffers likewise. TSE publishes in the
Criterion passages from Wyndham Lewiss novel The Apes of God,
and so antagonises friends including Sydney Schiff and the Sitwells
who are satirised in barely disguised form. march TSE and
Vivien collaborate in preparing the Criterion. Vivien publishes the
first of her sketches, Letters of the Moment I, in February; then
Letters of the Moment II (which includes some verses rescued
from the draft of The Waste Land) in April using a series of
pseudonyms. I have a very strong feeling, she tells Schiff, that this
is a sort of flash in the pan that it wont go on that, in fact, it is
being done faute de mieux . . . No-one will persuade me that
writing is a substitute for living. The device at least helps her, as she
says, to make money from the Criterion, which TSE is unable to do
(in September 1924, the publisher Richard Cobden-Sanderson
sends Miss Fanny Marlow a cheque for 1. 10. 0d.) Vivien writes
of her pseudonymous selves: There is no end to Fanny! But Feiron
will never make money . . . He is a nasty fellow. TSE informs his
mother: There is no doubt whatever that [Vivien] has talent . . .
She has already a very exceptional and individual style. A year
later, TSE advises Aldington: She is very diffident, and is very
aware that her mind is quite untrained, and therefore writes only
under assumed names: but she has an original mind, and I consider
not at all a feminine one; and in my opinion a great deal of what
she writes is quite good enough for the Criterion . . . I intend to see
that she gets training and systematic education, because there are
so few women who have an un-feminine mind that I think they
ought to be made the most of. TSE goes with Virginia Woolf to a
performance of King Lear: he admires it, she despises it (though
according to her testimony both of them had giggled throughout
the performance). TSE looks back at his recent life: My history
xxi
since this time last year is simply a record of one perpetual struggle
with serious illness, expense far beyond my means and over-
whelming work, done against every kind of obstacle and
vicissitude. The Criterion itself has been torturingly uphill work,
as one must expect with a purely literary quarterly which offers no
political or other excitement and panders to no common taste and
makes no bid for popularity. Vivien has a further attack of colitis.
spring TSEs brother Henry sends $2,000. may TSE and Vivien
again consult Dr K. B. Martin: I have never met a Doctor of such
wide special knowledge . . . a very charming man. june Woolf
writes of Vivien: Mrs. Eliot . . . making me almost vomit, so
scented, so powdered, so egotistic, so morbid, so weakly. TSE takes
pains to cultivate personages such as Morrell and Woolf. He jokes
about the danger of overstaying his welcome during country-house
weekends: I know my failings. Insensitive persons can endure me
for 24 hours; there is one old gentleman who, kept up by Port
Wine, can even survive until the first Monday morning train: but
19 hours is precisely the limit for less coarse and hardy natures.
mid-june: I am giving up my cottage at Fishbourne as soon as I
can get rid of it. The house next door has been turned into a garage
which also sells lemonade and sweets; what with being on the
Portsmouth Road, the place has become quite uninhabitable. july
TSE takes over the offices of the Egoist Press (which Harriet Shaw
Weaver is closing down) at 2 Robert Street, London. Suffers abscess
under a finger nail and undergoes an operation involving the
removal of a piece of bone from the finger. The summer also sees a
stressful visit from TSEs mother, who occupies (with his sister
Charlotte) the flat at 9 Clarence Gate Gardens while TSE and
Vivien move into separate quarters. They visit Eastbourne, but TSE
succumbs while there to what he terms a recrudescence of the flu.
It has been very trying, says TSE of his mothers visit. To Woolf he
laments, I have been boiled in a hellbroth. To Mary Hutchinson:
I have been living beyond my income for five months, and eating
up my savings. Viviens illness and the cost of running two
establishments at once, doctors, food, medicines, constant railway
fares etc. have run me into colossal expense. 23 august Mrs
Eliot and Charlotte sail back to the USA. october Vivien
publishes Th Dansant (as Feiron Morris). TSEs Homage to John
Dryden: Three Essays on Poetry of the Seventeenth Century
appears from the Hogarth Press on 30 October. He also publishes
xxii
Pome (a version of Part I of The Hollow Men I) in Commerce,
and Doriss Dream Songs in Chapbook. november TSE and
Vivien spend a weekend in Paris, staying at Lady Rothermeres
apartment on the Quai Voltaire; they are disappointed by the
Russian ballet. december TSE contributes an introduction to
Paul Valrys Le Serpent (trans. by Mark Wardle; printed by
Cobden-Sanderson). TSE gets on very well with Geoffrey Faber,
who will note in 1925 that he finds TSE a most attractive fellow,
and . . . I am convinced that he will make a considerable name for
himself.
1925 january TSE publishes in the Criterion, over his own name, a
story entitled On the Eve: A Dialogue (though it is principally
written by Vivien). Vivien reviews Virginia Woolfs Mr. Bennett and
Mrs. Brown. TSE contracts influenza, and is released from the
basement [at the bank] for a month. He and Vivien go to the
country: my wife has broken down as the result of the long strain.
february To Morrell: Vivien collapsed just a fortnight ago
my illness coming on top of a very hard and worrying winter of
great strain and anxiety. She simply got out of bed and fell down
both exhaustion of body and spirit like two years ago. march
To Woolf: For the last three days Vivien has been in such agony as
I have never seen, with the most terrific rheumatism all over her
body. It came on quite suddenly, with no apparent cause, just as
she was beginning to show signs of real progress. The doctor calls
it rheumatism, but says that it is a most uncommon and peculiar
variety, and she admits that she has never seen a case like it. The
doctors are puzzled: bronchitis, general neuritis torture. Vivien
spends eleven weeks in bed. TSE publishes parts of The Hollow
Men in the Dial. On John Middleton Murrys recommendation,
TSE is to be appointed (for a fee of 200) Clark Lecturer at
Cambridge for 1926 it came, wrote TSE, just at the blackest
moment in my life. 6 april TSE is invited by Geoffrey Faber
at the new general publishing firm (successor to the Scientific Press)
that will be called Faber & Gwyer to become the editor of a new
quarterly review, for an initial five-year term, at a salary of 400;
there is also the prospect that he could be made a director. Two
weeks later, on 23 April, TSE is invited to join the board of
directors: his salary is to be 325 as editor of a periodical to take
over from the Criterion, with an additional sum of 150 as director
of the publishing house. (In the event, there is a six-month interim
xxiii
between the last issue of the Criterion (July 1925) and the first issue
of the New Criterion (January 1926.) TSEs job is to begin on 1 July
1925, and his first proposal is for a series of monographs on foreign
writers. mid-april Vivien is gravely ill, with violent neuralgia
and neuritis . . . Only her brain [is] alive. TSE sends an alarming
letter to Middleton Murry: In the last ten years gradually, but
deliberately I have made myself into a machine.
I have done it deliberately in order to endure, in order not to feel
but it has killed V . . . I have deliberately killed my senses I have
deliberately died in order to go on with the outward form of
living This I did in 1915 . . . But the dilemma to kill another
person by being dead, or to kill them by being alive? . . . Does it
happen that two persons lives are absolutely hostile? . . . Must I
kill her or kill myself? I have tried to kill myself but only to make
the machine which kills her . . . I feel now that one cannot help
another by ruining ones own soul I have done that can one help
another and save it? Does she want to die? Vivien writes what TSE
calls a wonderful and terrible story: The Paralysed Woman. In
May TSE sends the story It seems to me amazingly brilliant and
humorous and horrible to the Dial, but it is rejected by the editor,
Marianne Moore. TSE becomes enraged with both Dr Martin
(whom he later describes as a German brute) and Dr Cyriax:
These people have done [Vivien] damage that will take a very long
time to repair. Irritating and weakening the stomach, over-
stimulating and exhausting the nerves. . . . in agony . . . almost
blind. april TSE publishes Viviens Necesse est Perstare?, and
writes to Morrell on 1 May: Yes, it is true that Vivien wrote that
poem. In fact she has been writing for a long time and I have
always suspected that you knew it! And I think that she is a very
clever and original writer, with a mathematical and abstract mind
which ought to be trained and I intend that it shall. 1 may TSE
tells Morrell: The fact is that I have been very much more ill than
I knew it was a real breakdown. I had to make a change. And I
shant be fit for any brain work for a long time. 7 may He
appeals for help from Bertrand Russell: I need the help of someone
who understands her I find her still perpetually baffling and
deceptive. She seems to me like a child of six with an immensely
clever and precocious mind. She writes extremely well (stories etc.)
and [with] great originality. And I can never escape from the spell
of her persuasive (even coercive) gift of argument. He is
xxiv
desperate. june a new doctor says of Vivien that he had never
seen so bad a liver on a woman, or an intestine so nearly dead.
july TSE publishes Viviens sketch Fte Galante, which satirises
the Hutchinsons and the Sitwells according to Osbert Sitwell,
St John Hutchinson protests to TSE. august Vivien has shingles.
september TSE undergoes an operation on his jaw: several teeth
are extracted. The Woolfs are angry that Faber & Gwyer is to
publish TSEs poems, including The Waste Land which they have
issued from Hogarth. TSE is criticised too for seeming to poach
other authors they have published. Woolf writes, To-day we are
on Toms track, riddling him and reviling him . . . L. thinks the
queer shifty creature will slip away now. 2 november TSE
resigns from Lloyds Bank, writing to Aldington later in the month:
I am a director of Faber & Gwyer and a humble publisher at your
service. 23 november Poems 19091925 is published. The
book gives me no pleasure and I think The Waste Land appears
at a disadvantage in the midst of all this other stuff, some of which
was not even good enough to reprint. But I regard the book merely
as an ejection, a means of getting all that out of the way. Vivien is
sent away to recover her health: first to an institution near
Southampton, then to a sanatorium called The Stanboroughs
A Modern Hydrotherapeutic Health Institution. I am sorry I
tortured you and drove you mad, she writes to TSE. I had no
notion until yesterday afternoon that I had done it. I have been
simply raving mad. december TSE goes to rest at the Htel
Savoie, La Turbie, in the Alpes Maritimes. He then visits Ezra
Pound in Rapallo, and drafts three of the lectures he is to give at
Cambridge. Vivien writes to her servant, of TSE: tell him his wife
does love him and still loves him and always always has loved him,
(he does not believe I do). Ask him to be kind to me, and to forgive
me for any wrongs Ive done him. And to her doctor: When I think
of all that my husband has done for me, and of all the life I smashed
up (as I do think of it, all night and much of the day) I do not know
why I dont go out and hang myself.
xxv
abbreviations and sources
published works by t. s. eliot

ASG After Strange Gods (London: Faber & Faber, 1934)
AVP Ara Vos Prec (London: The Ovid Press, 1920)
CP The Cocktail Party (London: Faber & Faber, 1950)
CPP The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot
(London: Faber & Faber, 1969)
EE Elizabethan Essays (London: Faber & Faber, 1934)
FLA For Lancelot Andrewes: Essays on Style and Order
(London: Faber & Gwyer, 1928)
FR The Family Reunion (London: Faber & Faber, 1939)
HJD Homage to John Dryden: Three Essays on Poetry of
the Seventeenth Century (London: The Hogarth
Press, 1924)
KEPB Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H.
Bradley (London: Faber & Faber, 1964; New York:
Farrar, Straus & Company, 1964)
IMH Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 19091917,
ed. Christopher Ricks (London: Faber & Faber,
1996)
OPP On Poetry and Poets (London: Faber & Faber, 1957;
New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1957)
P Poems (London: The Hogarth Press, 1919)
P 19091925 Poems 19091925 (London: Faber & Gwyer, 1925)
POO Prufrock and Other Observations (London:
The Egoist Press, 1917)
SA Sweeney Agonistes: Fragments of an Aristophanic
Melodrama (London: Faber & Faber, 1932)
SE Selected Essays: 19171932 (London: Faber & Faber,
1932; 3rd English edn., London and Boston: Faber &
Faber, 1951)
SW The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism
(London: Methuen & Co., 1920)
TCC To Criticize the Critic (London: Faber & Faber, 1965;
New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1965)
xxvii
TUPUC The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in
the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England
(London: Faber & Faber, 1933)
TWL The Waste Land (1922, 1923)
TWL: Facs The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the
Original Drafts, ed. Valerie Eliot (London: Faber &
Faber, 1971; New York: Harcourt, Brace,
Jovanovich, 1971)
VMP The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry, ed. Ronald
Schuchard (London: Faber & Faber, 1993; New
York: Harcourt Brace, 1994)
periodicals and publishers

A. The Athenaeum (see also N&A)
C. The Criterion
F&G Faber & Gwyer (publishers)
F&F Faber & Faber (publishers)
IJE International Journal of Ethics
N. The Nation
N&A The Nation & The Athenaeum
NC New Criterion
NRF La Nouvelle Revue Franaise
NS New Statesman
TLS Times Literary Supplement
persons
AH Aldous Huxley
BD Bonamy Dobre
BR Bertrand Russell
CW Charles Whibley
CWE Charlotte Ware Eliot, TSEs mother
DHL D. H. Lawrence
EP Ezra Pound
EVE (Esm) Valerie Eliot
GCF Geoffrey (Cust) Faber
HR Herbert Read
HWE Henry Ware Eliot (TSEs brother)
IPF Irene Pearl Fassett (TSEs secretary)
JDH John Davy Hayward
JJ James Joyce
xxviii
JMM John Middleton Murry
LW Leonard Woolf
MH Mary Hutchinson
OM Ottoline Morrell
RA Richard Aldington
RC-S Richard Cobden-Sanderson
SS Sydney Schiff
TSE T. S. Eliot
VHE Vivien Haigh Eliot
VW Virginia Woolf
WBY W. B. Yeats
WL Wyndham Lewis
archive collections
Arkansas Special Collections, University Libraries, University of
Arkansas
BL British Library, London
Beinecke The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Yale University
Berg Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English
and American Literature, New York Public Library
Doucet Fonds Bibliothque Littraire Jacques Doucet
Bodleian The Bodleian Library, Oxford University
Bonn Universitts und Landesbibliothek, Bonn University
Brotherton The Brotherton Collection, Leeds University Library
Buffalo Lockwood Memorial Library, State University of
New York at Buffalo
Butler Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, Butler
Library, Columbia University, New York
Caetani Fondazione Camillo Caetani
Clare Clare College, Cambridge
Cornell Department of Rare Books, Olin Library, Cornell
University
Faber Faber & Faber Archive, London
Harvard University Archives, Harvard University
Houghton The Houghton Library, Harvard University
Huntington Huntington Library, California
Keele Special Collections, Keele University
Kings Modern Archive Centre, Kings College, Cambridge
Lilly Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington
xxix
Marshall Marshall Library, Cambridge
McMaster Mills Memorial Library, McMaster University.
Hamilton, Ontario
Morris Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at
Carbondale
Mugar Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University
NYPL (MS) New York Public Library (Manuscripts Division)
Northwestern Special Collections, Northwestern University Library,
Evanston, Illinois
Pennsylvania Pennsylvania University Library
Princeton Department of Rare Books and Special Collections,
Princeton University Library
Reading Reading University Library
Rosenbach Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania
TCD Trinity College, Dublin
Texas The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center,
University of Texas at Austin
Tulsa Department of Special Collections, McFarlin Library,
University of Tulsa, Oklahoma
UCLA University of California at Los Angeles
VE Papers Vivien Eliot Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford
Vichy Bibliothque Municipale, Vichy
Victoria Special Collections, McPherson Library, University of
Victoria, British Columbia
Virginia Alderman Library, University of Virginia Library
Washington Washington University Library, St Louis, Missouri
xxx
editorial notes
The source of each letter is indicated at the top right. cc indicates a carbon
copy. Where no other source is shown it may be assumed that the original
or a carbon copy is in the Valerie Eliot collection or at the Faber and Faber
Archive.
del. deleted
ms manuscript
n. d. no date
pc postcard
sc. scilicet: namely
ts typescript
< > indicates a word or words brought in from another part of the
letter.
Place of publication is London, unless otherwise stated.
Ampersands and squiggles have been replaced by and, except where they
occur in correspondence with Ezra Pound.
Some obvious typing or manuscript errors have been silently corrected.
Dates have been standardised.
Some words and figures which were abbreviated have been expanded.
Punctuation has occasionally been adjusted.
Editorial insertions are indicated by square brackets.
Words both italicised and underlined signify double underlining in the
original copy.
Where possible a biographical note accompanies the first letter to or from
a correspondent. Where appropriate, this brief initial note will also refer
the reader to the Glossary of Names at the end of the text.
Vivienne Eliot liked her husband and friends to spell her name Vivien; but
as there is no consistency, it is printed as written.
xxxi
the letters
19231925
1923
to Henry Eliot 1 ts Houghton

2 January 1923 9 Clarence Gate Gdns, London n.w.1
My dear Henry,
I have so much to write to you about that I must divide it into two or
three letters. The three chief subjects are
Hydraulic2
the Bank
Mothers visit
I will only deal in this letter with the latter two.
Of course I must thank you for your goodness in writing so often, and
keeping me posted about finance in America, and for your last admirable
letter. And most of all for your latest extraordinary generosity. About your
cheque: I imagine that you sent it under the impression that I had either just
left the bank, or that I was just about to leave.3 There are three reasons
why I have not yet done so and cannot at the present time. But I feel that
I ought to return it to you: I will either do that, or else invest it until
needed, as you prefer. Please say. I do not want to take it under any
misapprehension on your part. But if I invest it, I think I shall return it to
you to invest for me in America, as I do not like sinking any more money
in England at the present juncture.
I cannot possibly leave the bank at present, because of the way in which
they have treated me. In spite of the fact that I have been absent about ten
or eleven weeks during the past year, owing to Viviens illness, and
constantly late, they have raised my salary to five hundred pounds, at a
time when they are raising very few salaries indeed. But this is not the main
point. That is that they have shown me in word and deed that they value
my services very highly indeed, and have placed me in a position of
responsibility such that I cannot resign now without letting them down
very badly and behaving with ingratitude. I am now head of an Intelligence
1 Henry Eliot: see Glossary of Names.

2 The Hydraulic-Press Brick Company, established in St Louis in 1864. TSEs father Henry
Ware Eliot had been chairman of the company from 1909 until his death in 1919.
3 TSE was considering leaving Lloyds Bank (where he had started work in the Colonial and
Foreign Department in Mar. 1917), but did not ultimately do so until late 1925.
1
Department with a number of clerks under me, and in sole charge. I have
had to organise the department, and the organisation is still far from
complete. On the contrary, they are just on the point of enlarging the scope
of the department much more. The heads of the bank are anxious to make
a big thing of it; and I know quite well that there is at present no one else
in the bank but myself who can do it for them that is, the one or two men
who might do it are not available for this post. This is not a boast: it is
simply the fact that there happens to be no one available with the proper
qualifications, and as a matter of fact they had me in view from the
inception of the idea. The bank is getting bigger and bigger, with interests
practically all over the world, and affiliated banks everywhere, and there
is the opportunity to create a service of Intelligence which would be quite
unique. It has involved very heavy work so far: I have had to draft schemes,
and at the same time attend to a mass of detail, such as the running of a
printing press (which is always breaking down) and the holidays and
attendances and personal grievances of the clerks; and although I have
much more liberty of movement than before, I have had to be at the bank
early and late to get the work done. And with it all I have to read ten or
fifteen papers a day to try to keep myself posted on all sorts of subjects,
such as foreign budgets, movements of crops, agricultural banks, oil
developments, and what not. In addition, I am still unfortunately the only
person in the bank who knows anything about the Peace Treaties, and
there are two or three big lawsuits with Germans coming on this winter
which involve an intimate knowledge of their history for the past four
years, which no one else possesses. You will think that I have got excited
about all this, but the fact remains that if I left the bank now I should
simply be hanging another millstone round my conscience. The bank took
me in without knowing anything about me whatever, when I was
absolutely on the rocks in 1917, and has treated me with extraordinary
kindness ever since. Of course this big expansion of the Intelligence work
has only happened since my decision to leave: this summer I was merely
running a daily newspaper of extracts from the foreign press, with another
man, and it would not have been nearly so disconcerting for the bank if I
had left then.
This is my main reason. Another reason is the social uncertainty, owing
to the alarming rise of the Labour Party to power.1 It has thrown England
into great anxiety and confusion: no one knows what sort of living
1 At the General Election on 6 Dec. 1923 the Conservatives were defeated, and on 23 Jan.
1924 Ramsay MacDonald formed the first Labour government in Britain.
2 tse at thirty-four
conditions we shall have in six months from now. I have been working
toward getting a position in journalism under Lord Rothermere.1 I am in
sympathy with his views, in general, and he is one of the very richest and
most powerful men in England. This, of course, is the reason why I have
stuck so hard to the Criterion; the support and backing of the Rothermeres
is something which is worth working for. I have not worked for immediate
profit for in fact I have not had a penny from it, except ordinary
payments for contributions but with a view to solidifying myself with
the Rothermeres. I saw Lord Rothermere today, and he said that the
political situation was so dangerous that he would not consider inviting me
to leave the bank, or indeed consider any expansion of his interests or
development of his papers, until the situation had cleared up, and he told
me to see him again at the middle of March.2
Perhaps it is as well that I should not leave just now, from some points
of view. I am so jaded, with the anxiety of the past year, that I simply
cannot write decent prose: my last articles in the Dial are deplorable;3 and
until I can get my mind into better shape I should simply ruin my
reputation by writing at all.
Now about mother. This time, I feel that it [is] impossible for me to take
the responsibility either of urging her to come or urging her to remain. We
have been keeping on our flat, and Ellen,4 simply because we felt that
mother would not want to come to any other place; we should otherwise
have disposed of it a year ago and found a place which [would] both have
been cheaper and more pleasant to us, but we could have found nothing
so suitable in comfort and convenience for mother. Or we should have let
this flat profitably on a long lease. If the Labour Party come in, and there
is a big panic and depression, we may find it very difficult to dispose of.
But if mother comes, what I should do is this. I have a very nice, intelligent,
serious Scotch woman [Miss Duff], who has been coming to me about
twice a week for the past year to do secretarial work. She is engaged in the
1 Harold Sidney Harmsworth, first Viscount Rothermere (18681940): proprietor of the

Daily Mirror, Sunday Pictorial, Glasgow Daily Record, Evening News and Sunday Mail.
Harold Harmsworth also shared ownership of Associated Newspapers with his elder brother,
Alfred, first Viscount Northcliffe. On the death of his brother in 1922, Harold acquired his
controlling interest in Associated Newspapers, including the Daily Mail, for 1.6 million.
2 Since Viscount Rothermere was estranged from his wife, Lilian (she had had an affair with
his younger brother), who was the sole financial backer of the Criterion, it is possible that
he might have been disingenuous in his dealings with TSE.
3 TSE, Letters from London, Dial 73: 3 & 6 (Sept. & Dec. 1922).
4 Ellen Kellond, who had been the Eliots maid since 1918.
3
daytime as a typist in a city office, but she is tired of city work. She is about
forty, and has for me the great advantage of knowing French well. I should
engage her as a resident secretaryhousekeeper. I should put her in to
Clarence Gate to look after mother, with Ellen to cook, and Miss Duff
could go about with mother and would be a much better person than
Marion1 tactful and placid. Marion could thus get some holiday out of
it, and perhaps could go into the country for a bit with Vivien. Then I
should engage a car so that mother need do nothing on foot or in buses,
and I would go away with her sometimes for weekends.
And I think that I could come and fetch mother. I could only come to
New York and meet her at the boat, and leave immediately (I dont know
whether there is any passport or other red tape to interfere). I dont conceal
that this would be a considerable sacrifice. I would take most of my
holiday (which is three weeks and three days and not a day more in a year)
to do that, and it would mean giving up certain other plans of which I
shall speak later. But the immediate point is this: I do not see any point in
arranging a convoy for mother one way, if she has to be alone the other. I
could not possibly make two voyages. If I brought mother over, could you
come and take her back? It would of course be a big sacrifice for you too,
and tantalising to come all the way to Europe and not be able to stay, but
unless you can do this I do not see how mother can come.
What I want you to do is to think over the plan for mothers stay2 which
I have outlined, and consider whether you think it feasible, and also
whether you could escort mother either to England or back from England,
and wire me yes or no at once. I cannot afford to remain in a state of
suspense, as important plans of my own depend on this; and I cannot make
the arrangements for Miss Duff etc. without knowing your opinion. In fact,
our whole life is in suspense on account of the uncertainty of mothers visit.
If mother could not come and if you think she should not come I
would come to America; but I have always felt that a visit of four or five
days, such as mine must be limited to, would be more pain than pleasure
to mother.
Please wire me as quickly as you can.
1 Marion Cushing Eliot (18771964) was the fourth child of Henry Ware and Charlotte
Champe Eliot; TSEs favourite sister, she had travelled with her mother to visit him in London
in 1921.
2 After the success of her visit to England in 1921, TSE was counting on his mother
returning in the summer of 1923. This proved impossible, and she made her second visit only
in 1924.
I shall try to write about other subjects within a few days. I am very
tired. My fatigue, which has been growing for years, is not solely due to
overwork and anxieties: it is largely due to the kink in my brain1 which
makes life at all an unremitting strain for me, and which is at the bottom
of a good many of the things about me that you object to.
Affectionately your brother
Tom2
to Richard Aldington 3 ms Texas

4 January 1923 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Richard
The best wishes for the New Year to you!
I was going to write but I am delighted to see you on Wednesday, as I
have a great deal to speak about, and it is more satisfactory than writing.
Could you manage to fetch me at twelve at my office? We could lunch
nearby I only have one hour! and would save time. It is Bank Station
Central London 75, Lombard Street, 1st floor Information Dept
opposite clock of St Mary Woolnoth. I am sorry you are only here for the
day. But it will be delightful.
Yours
Tom
1 Cf. TSEs letter to RA, 6 Nov. 1921, which spoke of suffering from an aboulie and
emotional derangement which has been a lifelong affliction. Cf. also Celia in CP, II, 55969:
Well, my upbringing was pretty conventional / I had always been taught to disbelieve in
sin. / Oh, I dont mean that it was ever mentioned! / But anything wrong, from our point of
view, / Was either bad form, or was psychological. / And bad form always led to disaster /
Because the people one knew disapproved of it. / I dont worry much about form, myself /
But when everythings bad form, or mental kinks, / You either become bad form, and cease
to care, / Or else, if you care, you must be kinky.
2 At the foot , HWE wrote: Mothers going inevitably uncertain. Could bring her back.
Would keep flat a while if possible [del.]. Write Mother direct. Writing. Wired TSE.
3 Richard Aldington: see Glossary of Names.
5
to Ottoline Morrell 1 ms Texas
My dear Ottoline,
I am writing to tell you in confidence, as you will see that I have just
by an extraordinary piece of good luck come across a tiny suite of two
rooms which are amazingly cheap, and which I intend to take if nothing
goes wrong. My idea is to use them as an office for the Criterion work at
once, and when the lease of this flat is up, which will be before very long,
I expect to give it up.2 We want to decrease expenses of living, and settle
ourselves in a way that would be adaptable to any kind of life. I took the
liberty of giving you as a reference for my respectability, because I knew
that I could depend upon your not mentioning it to anyone at all, and
there are so few of ones friends of whom one can be sure in that way! You
see, this arrangement is so intimately bound up with all of my plans, and
so personal, that I do not want anyone to know about it. I hope you will
not mind the bother of replying at once to the agent, because my only
chance of getting this is to be very quick about it. I shall be very grateful
to you, because there are so few people whom I should care to ask.
I have received from Virginia Woolf a cheque for 50 signed by you and
her. I have written to thank her, and to ask her to express my gratitude
and appreciation to the others whose names I do not know.3 I am really
overwhelmed at what you and a few others do, and by the difficulty of
expressing what I feel. I think the best way of showing in what way I take
this gift is this: I have placed this cheque, together with the Dial prize in a
special account, to which I shall add all the money that I can save.4 I shall
keep this fund intact, by investing it and having the interest accumulate in
the same fund, and I shall not touch it, until the interest upon the savings
is enough to use to alter my way of life in such a direction as I know the
givers would most desire. I shall consider it, in other words, as a Trust.
1 Lady Ottoline Morrell: see Glossary of Names.

2 This is the first reference to TSEs renting a small flat, 38 Burleigh Mansions, St Martins
Lane, nr. Trafalgar Square. Arthur Grover & Co., letting agents, referred to the premises as
an office (letter to TSE, 16 Jan. 1923). Its existence was known only to close friends. VW
describes (19 Dec. 1923) going to a flat in an arcade and asking for Captain Eliot (Diary
of Virginia Woolf, II, 19201924, ed. Anne Olivier Bell [1978], 278). VHE was to ask MH
to meet her there in Oct. 1924.
3 The cheque from OM and VW was from the Eliot Fellowship Fund, set up in July 1922
by OM, RA, Harry Norton, LW and VW. It was designed to enable TSE to leave Lloyds
Bank.
4 TSE had been given the 1922 Dial award (founded by Scofield Thayer in 1921) worth
$2,000, for TWL. The poem had been first published in the USA in Dial 73: 5 (Nov. 1922).
With very many wishes for the new year for you in every way.
Affectionately yours,
Tom
to The Editor of the Daily Mail 1

Published 8 January 1923 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Sir,
It is so remarkable to find oneself in agreement with the policy of any
newspaper on more than one point that I am writing to express my cordial
approval of your attitude on nearly every public question of present
importance.
Nothing could be more salutary at the present time than the remarkable
series of articles which you have been publishing on Fascismo;2 these alone
constitute a public service of the greatest value and would by themselves
have impelled me to write to thank you.
On the Ilford murder3 your attitude has been in striking contrast with
the flaccid sentimentality of other papers I have seen, which have been so
impudent as to affirm that they represented the great majority of the British
people.4
1 The text is from the Daily Mail (8 Jan. 1923, 8), under the heading Right on all Points.
2 On 19 Dec. 1922, the Daily Mail launched a series of articles on Italian politics by Sir
Perceval Phillips: The Red Dragon and the Black Shirts recorded the wonderful epic of
the Fascist Revolution in Italy, and described the war against Bolshevism of the Crusaders
of the Black Shirt. The series concluded on 5 Jan. 1923 with an account of the Italian Fascist
government as the greatest experiment we have witnessed since Lenin overthrew the
Romanoffs, and a portrait of Mussolini as A solitary and terrible figure, with the weight of
Italy on his shoulders. In an editorial The Saviours of Italy at the start of the series, the Mail
observed: The rescue of Italy from the Bolsheviks by the unselfish devotion of the Fascisti is
not only a romance in itself; it is also one of the most important events of our time. Roger
Kojecky suggests that TSEs Triumphal March draws on the poets recollections of these
accounts of Mussolinis March on Rome (Social Thought of T. S. Eliot [1971], 101).
3 The Daily Mail gave detailed coverage of the Ilford Murder Trial, in which Frederick
Bywaters and Edith Jessie Thompson were accused of the murder of the womans husband
. . . stabbed in the streets near his home at Ilford, Essex, when returning with his wife from
the theatre in the early hours of October 4 [1922]. Found guilty on 11 Dec., the two lovers
were sentenced to death. The case aroused huge public interest, with Edith Thompson being
described in the papers as the Madame Bovary of North-East London and the Messalina of
Ilford. Both were hanged on 9 Jan. 1923. Thompson was the first woman to be hanged in
Britain since 1907. Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustaces The Documents in the Case
(1930) was based on accounts of the crime in the Daily Mail and other papers.
4 The Daily Sketch organised a petition for the quashing of the death sentence on the
blameless Bywaters that was allegedly signed by a million people but disregarded by the
Home Office. In contrast, the Daily Mail opposed the crusade of the sentimentalists.
7
On the Turkish question,1 and on other matters of foreign policy, you
have manifested a temperance, sanity, and consistency which can but rarely
be attributed to the Press virtues, however, in which the Press ought to
lead the public. In an age when the intellect is eclipsed alternately by
passion and apathy such virtues can hardly be over-estimated.
T. S. Eliot
to Ottoline Morrell ms Texas

My dear Ottoline,
It was most kind of you to reply immediately to my request, and if I get
this I shall feel that it is very largely by your aid and under your
benediction.2 Thank you a thousand times. Vivien is at Eastbourne it is
an experiment of course it means partly giving up the diet which has
proved so admirable, in exchange for sea air and change. So I shd be very
glad if I mt. come to tea with you on Tuesday?
Affectionately yours
Tom
from Vivien Eliot 3 ms Valerie Eliot

Thurs. [Postmark 11 January 1923] [Eastbourne]
Dearest darling Wing
I wired this morning. Yesterday I was so dead tired I dozed most of the
afternoon, and it was early closing day so that to send a wire one of us wd.
have had to stump all the way to the G.P.O. and I was somehow even too
tired to ask Pearl [Fassett] to do it. My fatigue is immense, but quite
1 The British government, represented by Lord Curzon, was a key participant in the
Lausanne conference, set up to resolve a number of vexed issues in the aftermath of the
Greco-Turkish war of 191922. These included the fate of Greeks in the new Turkish
Republic, the Turkish claim to Mosul, and Turkish proposals that foreign warships in the
Black Sea . . . shall not exceed the strength of the strongest Black Sea fleet. The Mail
supported Curzons view that the proposals were designed to be favourable to Russia, noting
that the Russians are posing at being more eager to protect Turkish interests than are the
Turks themselves (19 Dec.). On 30 Dec., it advised: Talk plainly to the Turks but do not talk
War! The country will not tolerate a war with the Turks on any pretext whatsoever.
2 OM had written a reference for his second flat (see TSEs letter of 5 Jan.).
3 Vivien Eliot: see Glossary of Names.
healthy. At night I just [get] into bed and am half asleep before that. Last
night I slept like a dog without moving. Thank you for yr. very sweet
satisfying letters. Funnily I have had Katherine M. perpetually in my
mind the last two days. and, last night I dreamed of her all night! This
a.m. when I read yr. letter that she was v. ill I felt that there is indeed
something psychic going on. I think Rother. shd. be blamed if anything
happens to K. M. for if she was not mad and irresponsible she wd. not
have allowed K. M. to stay in that bug-house. And Murry !!
Well dear please come down for the weekend and bring me back on
Sunday. Could you get Sat. morning off and come on Friday night? Bring
the suitcase.
Wang Im just pining to see that flat just mad to see it. There is no
denying Im better already altho hideous green and blotched. Wire me
tomorrow morning, dearest.
<Please address this letter have forgotten the address.>
I think Waste Land book very nice.
Have you sent Lewiss drawing yet to Vanity Fair if NOT DO AT
ONCE. You must. Register it. Criterion not bad.
Jack has written and wired each day in wild attempts to make up.
Of course P. has caused me extra fatigue, but yet has stood between me
and unpleasant contacts.
Please send this letter1 at once and register, and put please forward in
Eyetalian on it. Forgotten number.
Do come Friday night if poss.
[Vivien]
to S. S. Koteliansky 2 ms BL
11 January 1923 The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Mr Koteliansky
I hope I have not taken too much time over the essay on Dostoevski? I
have been very much interested in it, but I think it would not be suitable
1 Enclosure no longer present.

2 Born in a Jewish shtetl in the Ukraine, S. S. Koteliansky (18821955) Kot, as he was
known to friends moved in 1911 to London where he befriended DHL, LW, VW, JMM, and
Katherine Mansfield (whom he adored), and the artist Mark Gertler. From 1923 to 1924, he
was business manager of The Adelphi. He translated into English several Russian writers
including Dostoevsky and Chekhov. See John Carswell, Lives and Letters: A. R. Orage,
Beatrice Hastings, Katherine Mansfield, John Middleton Murry, S. S. Koteliansky: 19061957
(1978).
9
for the Criterion for some time to come. In such a small review one has to
proportion and balance very carefully, and as we have just had one very
conspicuous and important Dostoevski contribution1 certainly the most
important thing in no. 1 I think it would be better if the next thing
representing Russia were on quite another subject.
You will think that I should have thought of this before giving you the
trouble. I did. But I was so anxious to satisfy my curiosity about anything
you thought it worth your while to translate, that I asked for it. I am, for
my own sake, very glad I did. But I shouldnt want to publish it for some
time to come, and I am very keen to see the other thing you have promised
to show me.
With cordial wishes
Yours sincerely
T. S. Eliot
to Edmund Wilson 2 ms Beinecke

Dear Mr Wilson,
Thank you for your letter of the 18th December, which has lain on my
table for less time than most of my correspondence! I shall send you a copy
of the Wyndham Lewis drawing3 in a few days, as soon as I have time to
do it up.
There is one favour I wish to ask you, and that is, that in using my
picture, or in any other mention of me, you see that I am not referred to
as editor of the Criterion. It is true that the fact has been stated in several
places, but that is because I have been too occupied to warn my friends,
and others will do so anyway (but it can be denied if necessary). The reason
is that I already occupy one official position in a bank; and it is
inconsistent with the obligations of that position to occupy any other, and
the continued or conspicuous publication of my name in that capacity
might be troublesome for me. My conscience is quite clear, because the
1 F. M. Dostoevsky, Plan of the Novel The Life of a Great Sinner, trans. S. S. Koteliansky
and VW, C. 1: 1 (Oct. 1922).
2 Edmund Wilson (18851972), US journalist and critic; author of Axels Castle: A study
of Imaginative Literature 18901930 (1931) and To the Finland Station (1940). Managing
editor of Vanity Fair from 10 July 1922 to 5 May 1923, he later worked for the New
Republic.
3 WLs 1921 pencil portrait of TSE.
one work does not in fact interfere with the other, and furthermore I am
not taking any money for the Criterion work; but I am sure that I can rely
upon your discretion. I had neglected to mention this to Mr Seldes,1 but I
shall do so when next writing.
Please accept my cordial thanks for your more than generous
appreciation of The Waste Land.2 I think you have understood it
remarkably well, perhaps a little over-understood it! I mean read more into
it than it contains here and there. I am very sensible of its fundamental
weaknesses, and whatever I do next will be, at least, very different; I feel
that it [is] merely a kind of consummation of my past work, not the
initiation of something new, and it will take me all my courage and
persistence, and perhaps a long time, to do something better. But
something must be better. The Waste Land does not leave me well satisfied.
May I raise one objection, since I feel it strongly? It gives me great pain
to have my work used to belittle that of Ezra Pound.3 It is not merely a
question of friendship or of my vast indebtedness to him but of justice;
I admire the Cantos very much myself, and I think that he never receives
the recognition he deserves. And at the least there are unquestionably
respects in which he is far more a master than I am.
With cordial thanks,
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
PS Lady Rothermere has asked for my photograph to be sent to Vogue. As
I am under the impression that Vogue and Vanity Fair are part of one and
the same firm, could not the one you have be handed on to Vogue if
necessary?4 Subject, of course, to the silence about the Criterion explained
in my letter.
T. S. E.
1 Gilbert Seldes: see Glossary of Names.

2 The Poetry of Drouth, Dial 73: 6 (Dec. 1922), 61116.
3 Wilson had contrasted TSEs use of allusion to the extremely ill-focused Eight Cantos of
his imitator Ezra Pound, who presents only a bewildering mosaic with no central emotion to
provide a key.
4 Vanity Fair and Vogue were both owned by Cond Nast (18731942).
11
to Scofield Thayer 1 ts Beinecke
Dear Scofield,
Thank you very much for your letter of 29th December and the enclosed
essay by Hofmannsthal.2 I think it is considerably shorter than 5000 words
and we shall have no difficulty in getting it in to the July number to which
it will add distinction. I shall probably take the liberty of cutting out the
long quotation from Barrs3 as it is out of proportion to the length of the
charming essay and I think we have had nearly enough of Barrs in our
generation. Will you communicate our pleased acceptance of the article to
H. I will write to him direct later.
Since I wrote you I received my copies of the Dial 4 and I have now
received two additional copies for which I thank you.
If any more [simple del.] central! European writers are recommended to
me I will consult you about them. Bertram5 is a professor at Bonn who
was recommended to me by Curtius6 and who has written what is said to
be a very good book on Nietzsche7 which I possess but have not read. I am
glad to hear that you are remaining in Vienna for some time to come.
With best wishes for the New Year,
Yours ever,
Tom
1 Scofield Thayer: see Glossary of Names.

2 Hugo von Hofmannsthal: see Glossary of Names. His essay appeared as Greece in C. 2: 5
(Oct. 1923), 95102.
3 Maurice Barrs (18621923): French novelist, journalist and politician; he served in the
Chamber of Deputies, 188993, and became a nationalist. He was an anti-Dreyfusard during
the period of the Dreyfus Affair (18979), and an ally of Charles Maurras in the French
Nationalist Party. See Michael Curtis, Three against the Third Republic: Sorel, Barrs, and
Maurras (1959).
4 TSEs London Letter on Marie Lloyd appeared in Dial 73: 6 (Dec. 1922).
5 Ernst Bertram (18841957), poet and scholar, was a lecturer at the University of Bonn
until 1922, when he was appointed Professor of German Literature at Cologne University;
author of Nietzsche: An Attempt at Mythology (1918), and essays on literary figures including
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Stefan George, and Thomas Mann (who became his friend and
correspondent).
6 E. R. Curtius: see Glossary of Names. Curtius became a contributor to C. and translator
of TWL.
7 Ernst Bertram, Nietzsche: Versuch einer Mythologie [Nietzsche: An Attempt at Mythology]
(Berlin, 1918).
to Edmund Wilson ts Beinecke
Dear Mr Wilson,
I have sent you a copy of the drawing by Wyndham Lewis,1 but it occurs
to me that of course I have no right to authorise its publication and that
the copyright resides with him. He is entitled, I suppose, to a fee for its
use. May I leave it to you to settle that matter with him? and will you
return the copy to me if you do not use it?
In haste,
Yours sincerely,
T. S. Eliot
to Mrs Walter Edward McCourt

ts Missouri History Museum
12 January 1923 9 Clarence Gate Gardens
Dear Mrs McCourt,
Thank you very much indeed for your kind letter of December 17th. It
is rare for me to receive letters of this sort, and this is the first letter I have
received from my native city. Indeed, it is the first intimation that I have
had that my work is known there, and you must know that in spite of the
admonition of the old proverb, or perhaps because of it, a prophet always
particularly hankers after honour in his own country. At least, this is true
of the minor prophets.
It is many years since I have been in St Louis. Mens memories are short,
especially in a growing and changing town, and I doubt if many of those
who owe most to the university there even now know that it was named
after my grandfather (and later changed at his insistence) or have ever
noticed his portrait hanging there. But I am very proud of all that he did
for the city and for all that he did for the nation at the most critical
moment in its existence. And these feelings give me still more pleasure in
having this letter from you to which to reply.
Yours very truly,
T. S. Eliot
1 On 14 Aug. 1922 TSE had suggested that Wilson use the WL portrait of him alongside
his article on Contemporary English Prose (Vanity Fair 20: 5, July 1923). The prose of WL
was one of the subjects of the essay, which describes Lewiss imagination as primarily visual.
Wilson responded on 26 Feb. to say that the portrait was too faint to reproduce.
13
to Jacques Rivire 1 cc
18 January 1923 [London]
Cher Monsieur,
Je mempresse de vous crire pour vous fliciter sur le numro de la
Nouvelle Revue Franaise en hommage Proust.2 Cest une chose
remarquable que vous avez fait, chose (je pense) unique dans lhistoire des
revues littraires. Puisque je suis moi-mme charg de la rdaction dune
petite revue, je suis capable dapprcier le travail dvou qui a prpar une
telle oeuvre.
Vous menverrez plus tard un petit mot pour me dire quel moment
vous dsirerez une autre chronique.
Plus instamment, je vous rappelle que nous convoitons larticle que vous
avez gnreusement promis,3 et je ne lasserai pas de vous en demander des
nouvelles!
Croyez, cher monsieur, ma sympathie cordiale.
[T. S. E.]4
to Richard Cobden-Sanderson 5 cc
Dear Cobden-Sanderson
I enclose two more articles for No. 3 and I hope that the printers wont
balk at Charles Whibleys writing.6 This is nearly everything; there will
1 Jacques Rivire: see Glossary of Names.

2 The most recent NRF (1 Jan. 1923) was a Proust memorial issue, with articles by Andr
Gide, Albert Thibaudet, Arthur Symons, E. R. Curtius, Joseph Conrad and others. Rivire,
one of the first critics to recognise Proust, published extracts from la recherche du temps
perdu in NRF.
3 On 7 Nov. 1922, Rivire wrote that he was due to lecture on Freud and Proust in Jan.
1923; his Notes on a Possible Generalization of the Theories of Freud appeared in C. 1: 4
(July 1923).
4 Translation: Dear Sir, I am writing at once to congratulate you on the issue of La Nouvelle
Revue Franaise in homage to Proust. You have done something remarkable, something
unique (I think) in the history of literary reviews. Since I myself am responsible for the editing
of a little review, I am able to appreciate the devoted work involved in the preparation of such
an issue.
Please send me a note later to tell me at what date you would like another letter.
More urgently, I remind you that we are eagerly awaiting the article you generously
promised us, and I shall not weary of asking you how it is coming along!
With my warmest and most cordial regards. [T. S. E.]
5 Richard Cobden-Sanderson: see Glossary of Names.
6 See CW, Bolingbroke, Part 1, in C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), 203.
certainly be one more if not two but not more than two; one possibly from
myself. I should like to know the number of words in each contribution as
soon as possible. Also I have not yet heard from Hazell1 the number of
words in the various other articles in No. 2. I dont want to know how
many in Marie Lloyd;2 as I told you some days ago on the telephone, I am
not taking any money for that.
Can you send me a few, ten or fifteen, of the slips of contents which
went in to No. 2.
I saw the advertisement in the TLS3 and now await reviews with anxiety.
Yours ever
[T. S. E.]
I think the contributors ought to be paid as soon as possible. Please note
that Curtius has written to ask that his money be sent to him: c/o Freiherr
E. von Weizscker, Deutsche Consulat, Basle, Switzerland.
Curtius 5430 words 10:16/-
Gmez 1600 3:4/-
Robertson 4847 9:12/-
*Pound 3545 7:12/-
Moore 5714 11:8/-
Hudson (SCHIFF) 1346 2:12/-
Flint (trans) 7030 5:5/-
I still want the no. of words for FRY and PIRANDELLO.
Please check my figures before paying!
* Plus 2 preface????
to Mrs S. A. Middleton 4 cc
18 January 1923 [The Criterion, London]
Dear Madam,
Thank you for your letter, which gave me great pleasure. I have enjoyed
seeing your son, and it would be a delight to me to be the means of his
1 Hazell, Watson & Viney Ltd, printers of C.

2 TSE, In Memoriam: Marie Lloyd, C. 1: 2 (Feb. 1923); reprinted from Dial 73: 6 (Dec.
1922).
3 The TLS advertisement (18 Jan. 1923, 45) listed the contents for Jan. 1923: J. M.
Robertson, Flaubert; Roger Fry, Mallarms Herodiade; E. R. Curtius, Balzac; EP, On
Criticism in General; Luigi Pirandello, The Legend of Tristram and Isolt, II; Stephen
Hudson, The Thief; TSE, In Memoriam: Marie Lloyd; Ramn Gmez de la Serna, From
The New Museum.
4 S. A. Middleton, a translator, did a number of translations from Spanish for C.
15
finding the place he is looking for.1 We must go on looking and trying; I
am a great believer in things turning up. And I have been in a similar
position myself, and when I was some years older than he is!
I enclose the MSS. of [Antonio] Marichalar,2 and shall be very grateful
if you will translate for us.
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
to J. B. Trend 3 cc
Dear Mr Trend,
Thank you very much indeed for your letter of the 13th. I am
communicating your praise of the Gmez translation to Mr Flint, who had
a very tough tussle to make it presentable. It seemed almost untranslatable,
and I was in despair, as I had asked Gmez to contribute, on the strength
of very enthusiastic recommendations.4 I am glad, too, that you like the
Pirandello, for I was delighted with it myself.5
But I had been wondering whether I should hear from you, and whether
you had returned from Spain (though I had seen one or two things I
thought must be by you, in the TLS) and had been for some time on the
point of writing to you. Remember that I have been counting on you, if on
1 TSE took a kindly interest in advising Mrs Middletons son about his job prospects; he
even interviewed him in Jan. 1923. Then, in a letter of 14 Feb., Ian C. Middleton offered his
services to TSE with someone to lick your stamps and envelopes and play office boy
generally, you might gain a little more time for more important work but TSE counselled
him first to study French, as well as shorthand and typing. VHE too talked to him
encouragingly over the phone.
2 See Antonio Marichalar, Contemporary Spanish Literature, trans. by Mde S. A.
Middleton, C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), 27792.
3 J. B. Trend (18871958): British Hispanist, with interest in history of music; first Professor
of Spanish at Cambridge University; author of Manuel de Falla and Spanish Music (1929).
He first met TSE in the summer of 1922, and had a regular music column in C., 192433.
4 Trend praised F. S. Flints translation of From The New Museum, in C. 1: 2 (Jan.
1923): The translation of Gmez de la Serna has the surprizing result of making him read
better in English than he does in Spanish . . . But I rather wish that it had been some other
writer. Gmez de la Serna is amusing enough; but his humour is not in the least Spanish. To
a Spanish mind it would seem very Gallic imitation Gallic, I mean . . . The Pirandello story,
on the other hand, is a glorious contrast. It is a brilliant piece of work; and yet no one but
an Italian would have thought it.
5 Luigi Pirandello, The Shrine, C. 1: 2 (Jan. 1923), 15770.
anyone, to report to me some treasure from Spain which might be
exploited by the Criterion. Unless Spain is absolutely barren can we not
meet before very long and talk about it again?
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to F. S. Flint1 ts Texas
Dear Flint,
I have a letter from Trend, the Spanish literature specialist on the TLS,
who says:
The translation of Gmez de la Serna has the surprizing result of
making him read better in English than he does in Spanish.
I hope this will go to comfort you for what must have seemed thankless
work! Cheque in a few days. With many thanks for helping us out of that
difficulty so triumphantly.
Yours
T. S. Eliot
to John Middleton Murry 2 ms Valerie Eliot

Dear John,
Forgive me for writing to you at all, but one must express oneself if only
by a sheet of paper. There is, of course, nothing that I can say, except to
remind you that I feel very very deeply, and that this has hardly left my
thoughts for ten days, and that my sympathy with your suffering is
something that cannot be written.3
Yours always
Tom
1 F. S. Flint: see Glossary of Names.

2 John Middleton Murry: see Glossary of Names.
3 JMMs wife, the author Katherine Mansfield (18881923), had died at Fontainebleau on
9 Jan.
17
Sometime later just write and say that you did not mind my writing you
this. Later still, when you are working again, I want your article.1 I shall
have done a critical article on Ks work.2
to Daniel Halvy 3 cc
Monsieur,
Je vous remercie de votre lettre du 15 janvier, et du manuscrit de
larticle qui fera grand honneur au Criterion. Je vous prie de rendre
Monsieur Benda4 lexpression de ma vive reconnaissance. Est-ce que le
Criterion a le merite dtre la premire revue en Angleterre de publier
quelque chose de lui?
Veuillez bien me dire si je devrais envoyer les preuves vous ou directe
M. Benda. La traduction parat bien faite, mais jaurai la temerit de
proposer deux ou trois mots alternatifs . . . il y a seulement deux ou trois
phrases dun presquargot qui, en anglais, sentent un peu la banlieue (the
suburbs) toujours sujet lautorit de M. Benda.
Recevez, Monsieur, avec mes remerciements, mes salutations les plus
distingues.
[T. S. E.]
1 TSE had written to JMM the previous year, asking for a contribution, possibly on
Shakespeare. JMMs Romanticism and Tradition appeared in C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924), 27295.
2 Writing to EP in Dec. 1922, TSE had called Mansfield a sentimental crank he had no
time for. An obituary notice appeared in C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923).
3 Daniel Halvy (18721962): French social historian and man of letters; friend and
colleague of Pguy, Sorel and Rolland; acute and dispassionate chronicler of the Third
Republic; biographer of figures inc. Nietzsche, Pguy and Sorel, plus a two-vol. life of
Proudhon; author of Les Visites aux paysans du Centre (1921) and Charles Pguy et les
Cahiers de la quinzaine (1919); editor of Les Cahiers Verts, 19213. See Alain Silvera,
Daniel Halvy and His Times (1966).
4 Julien Benda: see Glossary of Names.
Je viens de lire un article de vous, dans la Revue de Genve, qui ma
interess au plus haut point.1 Cest une critique merveilleusement bien
equilibre.2
to Richard Cobden-Sanderson ms Beinecke

Yes, send a copy to the Freethinker. I trust you got my registered letter
with two more articles. H.W. and V. will I hope let you know quite soon
how many words.
I am only waiting for no. of words of Pirandello.
Fry will be 3.12/- as I make it (1805 words).3
Yours ever
T. S. E.
Pirandello (The Shrine) 4517 words 9.00.
1 Daniel Halvy, France, La Revue de Genve, 5: 30 (Dec. 1922), 74770. This was one
of the reviews regular Chroniques Nationales: its sub-headings were: On the Religious
Question Contrasts of Thought Recent Works by MM. Georges Goyau and Henri
Brmond Another Contrast The Career of M. Maurice Barrs and Catholic Criticism
A Mystical Expression of Contrast. The paper was a concise discussion of French religious
history, commenting on contemporary thinkers including Jacques Maritain, Charles Maurras
and Charles Guignebert.
2 Translation: Sir, Thanks for your letter of 15 January, and for the manuscript of the article
which will bring great honour to the Criterion. I ask you to send Monsieur Benda my hearty
thanks. Does the Criterion have the merit of being the first review in England to publish
something of his?
Would you please tell me whether I should send the proofs to you or directly to M. Benda.
The translation appears well done, but I will have the temerity to suggest two or three
alternative words . . . there are only two or three half-slang phrases which in English smell
of the suburbs always subject to the authority of M. Benda.
Please accept, with my thanks, my greetings.Yours very sincerely [T. S. E.]
P.S. I have just read an article of yours in the Revue de Genve which interested me
intensely. It is a beautifully balanced piece of criticism.
3 Roger Fry, Mallarms Herodiade, C. 1: 2 (Jan. 1923).
19
Thanks for your letter and circulars. Will you tell this man that we will
reconsider the matter next time?* I dont follow his reference to the
Pioneer.
T. S. E.
* I gave that to you!
to W. B. Yeats 1 ts Michael Yeats

23 January 1923 [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
Dear Mr Yeats,
It has been a great disappointment to me not to have received for the
third number of the Criterion the paper, or one of the papers, which we
discussed in London.2 But of course you did not promise it definitely and
it was only a hope on my part that I might hear from you. I trust, however,
that your silence is not due to political or other worries. I congratulated the
Free State on hearing that you had accepted the Senatorship,3 but I cannot
deny that it caused me some alarm both for literature and for yourself.
May I still hope that we can pride ourselves on having a contribution
from you in No. 4? I do not wish to boast of the Criterion, but you know
that I consider it the only periodical in England which ought to have the
privilege of publishing your work.
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
1 W. B. Yeats: see Glossary of Names.

2 Writing to OM on 12 Dec. 1922, TSE recorded meeting WBY at the Savile Club adding
that he was one of a very small number of people with whom one can talk profitably of
poetry. The same day, he told EP that WBY has promised a contribution in prose for the
next C.
3 WBY was elected to the Senate in the Irish Free State on 11 Dec. 1922, serving until 1928.
to Mark Wardle cc
Dear Mr Wardle,
Thank you for your letter of the 14th inst. I have spoken to some friends
who run the Hogarth Press1 about the Serpent 2 and they appeared to be
interested in it. I have promised to show them a copy of the proof of your
version as soon as I get it from the printers in a few days, and I will also
show them the edition which you have sent me and which I will take care
of and return to you.3 I should like to know whether Valry has any
personal choice in mind of an English writer to provide the preface. Of
course, as an admirer of his work, I should be very happy to do it myself,
but there are others more competent and I think that Valry himself ought
to indicate someone to be approached among those who have already
written the most intelligent criticism of his work. The choice might depend
partly upon the choice of publisher, as of course different writers have
different standing among the patrons of different publishing firms.
If the Hogarth Press decides against publishing the Serpent I have one or
two other presses in mind whom I should like to approach.4 I should think
myself that an edition of about 250 copies, well got up, would be right, but
that is merely a suggestion.
Please give my respects to Valry when you see him.
With best wishes to yourself.
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
1 LW and VW had founded the Hogarth Press in 1917.

2 Le Serpent, a poem by Paul Valry (18711945), first published in Charmes (1922). TSE
wrote to Valry on 17 Aug. 1922 to say the Criterion was proud to be publishing Wardles
excellent translation.
3 Wardle had sent his own copy of Charmes: for Heavens sake dont lose it.
4 When the Hogarth Press turned it down, TSE arranged for it to be published as Le Serpent
par Paul Valery, trans. Mark Wardle and with intro. by TSE (Cobden-Sanderson, 1924).
21
to W. B. Yeats ts Michael Yeats
23 January 1923 [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
Dear Mr Yeats,
I was delighted to get your letter.1 I wired you because my letter to you
was posted just before I received yours, and I was afraid that you might be
puzzled on receiving it. I shall be very happy to have your manuscript as
soon as you can send it. I am not absolutely certain of being able to get it
into this number, as I had given up hope, and made other arrangements;
and nearly the whole of the number has already been set up but if I can get
your essay within a few days I shall do my best to include it in this next
number, which in that case will be the best number of the year.2 If it is
impossible, I shall have to content myself with announcing it for the third
number.
It is very thoughtful and kind of you to have taken so much trouble in
the midst of such disturbing circumstances which I hope are now giving
you less anxiety. It is a very great satisfaction to me to know that you like
The Waste Land.3 When it is brought out in this country in a month or two
as a book, with notes, I shall send you a copy and hope to have at some
time either in conversation or by letter, a detailed statement of your
criticism.4 It is quite possible that the passages ought to be repaired.5
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
1 Writing from the Savile Club, London (23 Jan.), WBY explained that he had been unable
to do the Dante around our destructive Dublin life: a childs illness and nurses in the house
had prevented Mrs Yeats from reading Dante to him in the evening. In place of the promised
article, he offered an extract from his autobiography, The Trembling of the Veil, dealing with
a strange psychic experience. He considered it better from your point of view than the
Dante.
2 It appeared as WBY, A Biographical Fragment, C. 1: 4 (July 1923), 31521.
3 In a postscript, WBY wrote: I find The Waste Land very beautiful, but here and there are
passages I do not understand four or five lines. Yeats had read the unannotated text
published in C. 1: 1 (Oct. 1922).
4 The first UK book publication of TWL (Hogarth Press, 1923). Published in Sept., it
included the Notes added to the New York Boni & Liveright edition the previous Dec.
5 Whatever passages Yeats did not understand, TSE never repaired them.
to E. M. Forster1 cc
Dear Forster,
I hope that you remember that when we met at Rodmell2 I succeeded in
extracting from you a promise which I hope was not a reluctant one
for a contribution this year to the Criterion. The time has now come when
I must endeavour to make you realise that promise. I hope that my request
did not make such a faint impression upon you as to be quite obliterated
by time, and I hope that you have on hand something which you will be
willing to give me. It is for the number which will appear in July; I am
particularly anxious to have it for that number, as I wanted the pleasure of
including you in the first volume of the review.3
Anything from you, within the general and elastic scope of the Criterion
will be welcome; but I may hint that I have not asked anyone else for a
story or sketch for that number, and we like to have one (or at most two)
stories or sketches in each number. But also, I should like very much to
have some of your Indian material.4
I do not know whether you have seen the Criterion. If not, I will send
you a copy of number 2. I am using a very charming thing of Virginias in
No. 3 which will appear in April.5
May I say that whenever you should happen to be in town, especially if
you are in town at the end of the week, I should enjoy very much the
opportunity of seeing you again.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
1 E. M. Forster: see Glossary of Names.

2 Forster and TSE had visited the Woolfs on the weekend of 23 Sept. 1922.
3 Forster contributed Pan, an essay celebrating the consumption of pan in the face of the
disapproval of Anglo-Indians, to C. 1: 4 (July 1923), 4028; reprinted as Adrift in India in
Abinger Harvest (1936). Forsters only other contribution was a review essay on The Novels
of Virginia Woolf in NC 4: 2 (Apr. 1926).
4 Forster had made a second visit to India in 19212, working as secretary for the
Maharajah of Dewas, and was just completing A Passage to India, which came out in 1924.
5 Virginia Woolf, In the Orchard, C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923).
23
to John Middleton Murry ts Valerie Eliot
Dear John,
I am very glad to have a word from you.1 I hope you will not forget that
it is a long time since we have met and that I am looking forward to our
next meeting when you are in town and find it convenient and when you
care to see me. I wish that there was something that I could do to help
you, but be assured at least that I constantly think of you.
Yours
Tom
to Alec Randall2 ts Tulsa

Dear Randall,
Thank you for your letter of 19th January. You are quite right in
thinking that what I was interested in was a translation of selected letters,
although I hoped that you would provide some explanatory matter, as
much or as little, as you thought fit, for the benefit of the majority of
English readers who are probably unacquainted not only with Madame
Gontard but with Hlderlin.3 So I shall look forward to seeing your article
in the Fortnightly4 and also hope that you will let me see either the German
text or a translation of some of the letters. But by all means go ahead with
your Fortnightly article and publish it first.
1 On 25 Jan., JMM replied to TSEs letter of 18 Jan. about Katherine Mansfields death.
I should have missed it, very badly, had I had no sign from you. It seems to me that terrible
things are happening to me of which Katherines death is only the beginning.
2 Alec (later Sir Alec) Randall (18921977), diplomat, entered the Foreign Office in 1920.
In the early 1920s he was Second Secretary to the Holy See. He ended his career as
Ambassador to Denmark, 194752. He was a regular reviewer of German literature for both
C. and the TLS.
3 Friedrich Hlderlin (17701843) wrote a number of poems to Susette Gontard, the love
of his life, under the name of Diotima. Her letters to him had recently been published as Die
Briefe der Diotima an Hlderlin, ed. Carl Vitor (Leipzig, 1922). Randall had been given the
English rights for these love letters
4 Randall thought TSE was potentially interested in his translations rather than an article
about them. As a result, he had promised an article about them among other recent literary
discoveries to The Fortnightly Review.
I have heard of Georges1 war poems and should certainly be interested
to see a specimen of them. I have one of his books, (but not that one) which
I confess I have not yet looked at.
I am sorry to hear that you have been ill and I hope that your letter
means that you are now recovered. The weather has been very
unfavourable to invalids.
With many thanks
Yours sincerely,
T. S. Eliot
to John Gould Fletcher2 cc

Dear Fletcher,
I must beg your pardon for not having replied about your manuscript for
such an unconscionably long time. I was very much interested in your
poems both in themselves and of course they seem to indicate a new
direction in your work. But I think I had better return them to you because
we are so choked up with things that I have asked for and have got to
publish that it will be a long time I mean six or nine months before
anything else can be considered. But if you do not publish them elsewhere
in the meantime, I shall remember them and I hope that you will continue
to send both verse and prose.3 If the review can get really on its feet we
may be able to make the public treat with respect the sort of things that it
has hitherto laughed at when it has been allowed to see them at all.
1 Stefan George (18681933), poet. Randall suggested an English translation of the

remarkable War-poems of Stefan George which appeared last year; this must refer to Drei
Gesnge: An die Toten, Der Dichter in Zeiten der Wirren, Einem jungen Fhrer im ersten
Weltkrieg [Three Songs: To the Dead, The Poet in Time of Turmoil, To a Young Leader in the
First World War] (Berlin, 1921). Neither the Gontard letters nor the Stefan George poems
came out in C.
2 John Gould Fletcher (18861950), American poet and critic, scion of a wealthy Southern
family, dropped out of Harvard in 1907 (his fathers death having secured him independent
means) and lived for many years in Europe, principally in London; a friend of EP, he became
one of the mainstays of Imagism. In later years he returned to his native Arkansas and
espoused agrarian values; his Selected Poems won the Pulitzer Prize, 1938. See Fletchers
autobiography, Life Is My Song (1937); Selected Letters of John Gould Fletcher, ed. Leighton
Rudolph and Ethel C. Simpson (1996); Glenn Hughes, Imagism and the Imagists (1931);
and Lucas Carpenter, John Gould Fletcher and Southern Modernism (1990).
3 Fletcher became a frequent contributor to C., writing essays and reviews, as well as three
poems. His first contribution was a poem, The River Flows, in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926).
25
I have often felt a desire to see you but in the prison-like limitation of
my time it has been almost impossible for me to see anyone except for such
interviews as necessity forces upon one. I hope, as I have been hoping for
some time, that a month or so will see a little more leisure.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Mark Wardle cc
Dear Captain Wardle,
I am sending you herewith a copy of your proof.1 Will you correct it
and return it as soon as possible to R. Cobden-Sanderson, 17 Thavies Inn,
Holborn, e.c.1? I have sent another copy to the Hogarth Press and I am
letting them see your copy of the Serpent which you have lent me.
I am very glad to get another manuscript from you. I have not yet had
time to look at it, it lies with a pile of others waiting my attention, but I
have placed yours on the top of the pile.
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
to F. S. Flint ts Texas
2
29 January [1923] The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Flint,
I am proposing to have a regular series of short notes dealing with any
foreign reviews with which we may exchange. They will be very brief and
my idea is not to give a cut and dry synopsis or table of contents of each
review, but merely to acknowledge the receipt and to publish a brief critical
notice of anything in any review which strikes the reviewer as good and
germane to the interests of the Criterion. The notes should therefore be
rather elastic and the length would depend on what the reviewers found
there was of interest.3
I should be highly pleased if you would consent to let me have sent to
you any Spanish, German or Norwegian periodicals which we may receive.
1 Wardles transl. of Paul Valry, The Serpent, for C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923).

2 Misdated 1922.
3 Regular Notes on foreign periodicals began with C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923).
It is obvious that what remuneration we can give pro rata for such notes
is hardly an inducement, and it will not interest you unless you care to get
the reviews and have the curiosity to see what is in them. On the other
hand, if the idea interests you, it ought not to take very much of your time.
It would merely mean looking over the reviews as they came in and sending
me a few notes once a quarter. I propose that the reviews should be
initialled by the writers.
So far I am trying to get the Neuer Merkur1 and the Neue Rundschau.2
I shall try to find out what Spanish and Scandinavian literary reviews there
are and if there are any reviews in any of these languages which you would
specially like to have, I would try to get them for you.
I hope that you have received a cheque from Cobden-Sanderson; if not,
I know that you will get it this week.
Yours ever,
T. S. Eliot
to Virginia Woolf 3 cc
Dear Virginia,
I am sending you herewith a proof of In the Orchard.4 Will you return
the corrected copy direct to Cobden-Sanderson, 17 Thavies Inn, Holborn,
e.c.1?
I am also sending, as I promised, a galley proof of the translation of
Valrys poem [Le Serpent] which I discussed with you and Leonard. The
thing looks perhaps a little preposterous unless one has a French version
with which to compare it. I dont think that the translation has enough
strength to stand entirely on its own legs and I should have liked to print
the French text in the Criterion as well; but as the translation of a difficult
poem to translate it seems to me to have a great deal. I shall send you in a
day or two a copy of the original edition, now out of print. This copy
belongs to Captain Wardle, and he sent it to me to look at, with strict
command to use it well and not to lose it and to return it to him as soon
1 Neue Merkur [New Mercury], an influential German literary periodical edited by Efraim
Frisch, ran from 1915 to 1925.
2 Die Neue Rundschau [New Panorama] founded in 1890, a literary periodical.
3 Virginia Woolf: see Glossary of Names.
4 VWs sketch was published in C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923).
27
as possible. He sent it because as a book production it is the sort of thing
that Valry has in mind. What Valry wants is to have an introduction by
some English writer, which presumably would give it a somewhat larger
English public. He has not yet suggested, however, any name which he
would prefer.
I am very anxious to know how you are, and have had you on my mind
ever since I last saw you. I feel so sure that there is some treatment or
probably simply some regime to which these temperatures would yield.
Apart from anything else, it must be such a drain upon your strength and
such an interruption to your work.
Yours always,
[T. S. E.]
PS I wrote to Morgan Forster last week and sent it care of the Hogarth
Press. Please forgive the trouble of forwarding it that I imposed upon you.
to Richard Aldington ts Texas

Dear Richard
Thank you very much for your letter of the 21st inst. with the statement
which you have prepared.1 Thank you, again, for the trouble you have
taken. I shall write to you again about this as soon as I can.
I am simply writing to say that I contemplate a very brief review of
foreign reviews as a permanent feature of the Criterion. That is to say,
brief but more or less critical notices of anything in the foreign reviews
that might be of interest to the readers of the Criterion, assuming that they
can read the language. Every review received shall be mentioned, but if
there is nothing of any interest in it there is no need to say any more than
that it has been received. Would you care to take over such French and
Italian reviews as come in? There would not be much in it, as income,
because the reviews would be so very short. It would only be worth your
while, I say frankly, if you were interested to receive the reviews and to
glance over them out of curiosity. It need not take you very much time.
1 With his letter of 21 Jan., RA enclosed a statement (1 Jan.) of subscriptions to the Bel
Esprit (English section) scheme, or Eliot Fellowship Fund. The statement records seven
subscriptions from Capitalists, one from Status Unknown, and three from non-Capitalists,
for figures from 2 to 25 (the bulk are for 10). It is signed by RA as Treasurer of the
Fund.
I daresay you receive most of the French periodicals already. If you cared
to do it I should be grateful and the paper will pay what it can. But if you
do not care to do it please do not think of doing it as a favour to me. I
propose to offer Flint the Spanish, Norwegian (if any) and perhaps the
German reviews, and Herbert Read any American ones.
I did not realise when I saw you that the 50 idea was really yours and
that you were the only person who knew anything about it. If so, I should
have discussed it with you at more length, although the time was so short
and must be until you can spend a night in town.
Yours ever
Tom
PS The reviews to which I propose writing are:-
La Nouvelle Revue Franaise,1 LAction
Le Mercure de France Il Convegno
Les Ecrits Nouveaux La Ronda
LEsprit Nouveau Esame
Should you want any others, or should you prefer not to have any of
these, would you let me know, as if there are any you receive already it
would probably be only a nuisance to you to get another copy.
to Herbert Read2 cc
2 February 1923 [The Criterion]
Dear Read,
Thank you for your letter of the 30th January. I am very much pleased
that you consent to do the American periodicals. I will send you what I
have on hand and I will ask the Dial to send you a copy regularly.3 If there
is anything that you would like particularly I will see if I can get it for you
in exchange.
1 The French periodicals are Nouvelle Revue Franaise, founded in 1908 and ed. by Jacques
Rivire; Le Mercure de France, a prestigious literary review founded in 1890; Les Ecrits
Nouveaux, a monthly review founded in 1917; LEsprit Nouveau, an avant-garde journal
which ran from 1920 to 1925; LAction Franaise, founded in 1898, the journal of lAction
Franaise. Of the Italian journals, Il Convegno was founded in Milan after WW1, heavily
featuring the Futurist Marinetti; La Ronda was a literary review, founded in 1919 and
published in Rome, which closed in the course of 1923 in response to the new Fascist regime.
RA agreed to do the notes on French periodicals.
2 Herbert Read: see Glossary of Names.
3 HRs regular notes on American periodicals began in C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), where he dealt
with The Dial, Secession and Rhythmus.
29
I am very much obliged to you for seeing Mr Middleton1 and I am sure
that he will be grateful to you whether anything comes of it or not.
I am sending you your manuscript and proof herewith.2 Will you return
the corrected copy direct to R. Cobden-Sanderson, 17 Thavies Inn,
Holborn, e.c.1 as soon as you can.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]

2 February 1923 The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Richard
I am very much gratified to receive your acceptance of my proposal. You
mention however only the French reviews. Am I to understand that you
would prefer not to touch the Italian? I hope you do not mean that. There
will be very few and I hardly hope that they will contain very much of
interest.3
I will try to get for you all the papers you ask for, although I cannot
promise that they will all agree to exchange with a rather small quarterly
review. I certainly agree that one ought to be perfectly fair and search as
diligently in the older periodicals as in the newer ones.
I am very much obliged for your criticisms of the article on Rtif.4 It did
not look to me very original or very intelligent, but I wanted to assure
myself from an authority before returning it. Besides, I have no particular
desire to boom the stock of any disciple of Rousseau.
Yours always,
Tom
1 HR said he gave him [Ian Middleton] what few crumbs of comfort there were in the
situation; he wished he could have done something more definite.
2 HR, The Nature of Metaphysical Poetry, C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), 24666. TSE made
numerous queries and suggestions on HRs outline for this essay in 1922 (Victoria).
3 RA provided notes only on the French reviews, not the Italian ones. In July, TSE noted,
Italian periodicals are held over until the next number (C. 1: 4, 427).
4 Rtif (or Restif) de la Bretonne (17341806): French author of rambling novels and
memoirs, including Les nuits de Paris (178890); usually viewed as a follower of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau.
to Harold Monro1 ts Beinecke
2 February 1923 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Munro [sic],
Thank you for your letter of the 28th January. I was not only pleased to
receive the Chapbooks but I actually have read your morality, and for me
to read anything is a very exceptional event.2 As a matter of fact, like other
people, I hardly read anything that is sent me for fear of the difficulty of
saying anything nice about it afterward, but I felt fairly safe on account of
my opinion of your poetry, and I can say with a clear conscience that I
enjoyed your play very much and compliment you on it. I think it might
also be very entertaining if performed on a small stage.
I thank you for your compliments on the Sacred Wood.3 I have not
looked at it myself for many months but I know very well that there are
many statements in it which I no longer believe, and sooner or later I
suppose I shall have to publish a more careful revision of many of the
points I discussed. But when one reads ones own dicta later one is always
impressed by ones own temerity at the time.
I am glad to hear that the Chapbook is going so well and to hear such
good news of Sacheverill [sic] Sitwell.4 I always believed that he had a
genuine poetic source in him and I think I was one of the first to say so;5
I was not certain whether it would develop into a river or disappear in
sand. I shall look forward to the March Chapbook and of course to the
second.6
1 Harold Monro: see Glossary of Names.

2 Monro was editor of The Chapbook. TSE contributed A Brief Treatise on the Criticism
of Poetry to Chapbook 2: 9 (Mar. 1920), and Prose and Verse to 22 (Apr. 1921). With his
letter to TSE of 28 Jan., Monro sent a poor little play entitled One Day Awake, published
in Chapbook 32 (22 Dec. 1922). Having just read SW, Monro wondered how he dared send
it, but remarked that it was at least a human document. He also sent the Jan. issue.
3 Monro wrote that SW has been a startling revelation to me. I did not know there was a
living writer capable of such a book. I wish Id read it earlier. It has made a whole lot of
problems clear to me (even if it is only the problem, and not the solution). I offer you my
homage.
4 Monro said that the Mar. Chapbook would contain a charming long poem by S. Sitwell,
who is developing: the poem was Bolsover Castle.
5 TSE reviewed Sacheverell Sitwells The Peoples Palace in Egoist 5: 6 (June/July 1918):
We have attributed more to Mr Sitwell than to any poet of quite his generation; we require
of him only ten years of toil.
6 Monro said he had written some notes on TWL in the Feb. issue. He thought, after the
many times I have read it, I do really know something about it, but confidence fails me when
I try to express myself on paper.
31
I will ask Lady Rothermere to approve of sending you the Criterion
regularly in exchange,1 but I am no longer able to give assurances myself,
as Cobden-Sanderson is on the side of economy in distributing exchange
copies. If we print a larger edition of the third number it may be more
possible to do as a well-conducted review ought in these matters.
As for verse I swear to you that I have not produced the slightest scrap
for a year; I have nothing which I could offer you, or anyone else, or which
I could even light my pipe with. I only hope for conditions under which it
may be possible for me to begin to want to do something!2
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
Dear Flint,
I am very pleased at your acceptance of my proposal.3 I will send you
directly what I have on hand and will ask you to let me have your notes
as soon as possible for No. 3. As I have said, you must use your discretion:
if a review contains nothing worth mentioning we will simply acknowledge
it. If on the other hand it contains something of merit notice it at a length
proportionate to its value, and should you ever come across anything
which strikes you as so good that the author ought to be asked to
contribute to the Criterion, I will trust you to advise me.
The arrangement you suggest is perfectly convenient but will you let us
make the financial arrangements solely with you and will you arrange the
distribution with your colleague? You see we shall not know how much of
the labour is contributed by each, and I think it would be more satisfactory
to us to recognise officially only yourself.
Thank you for your favourable comments on the present number. I hope
that the third one will be better.
Yours ever,
T. S. Eliot
1 Monro asked whether he might have C. in exchange for The Chapbook.

2 Monro asked whether TSE could spare even a short poem. After TWL in C. 1: 1 (Oct.
1922), TSEs next published poems were Pome (later The Hollow Men I) in Commerce 3
(Winter 1924/25) and Doriss Dream Songs in Chapbook 39 (Nov. 1924).
3 Flint had agreed to provide Notes on German periodicals for C. 1: 3.
to Julien Benda1 cc
2 February 1923 [The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn,
London e.c.1]
Monsieur,
Jai lhonneur de vous envoyer ci-inclus preuves de votre Prface.2 Jai
expedi un autre exemplaire Mademoiselle Robinson. Veuillez bien sil
vous plat faire renvoyer moi lun ou lautre exemplaire aprs la rvision?
Au marge jai indiqu quelques suggestions en fait de la traduction de
plusieurs mots, mais vous aurez naturellement tous droits de conserver la
traduction intgralement.
Nous nous flicitons sur loccasion de prsenter un morceau de votre
oeuvre aux lecteurs anglais, et nous allons parler de vous plus tard.
Le numro du Criterion qui contient votre Prface paratra le 15 Avril
et vous recevrez un exemplaire et la rmunration aussitt aprs cette date
que possible.
Recevez, Monsieur, lassurance de mes hommages devous.
[T. S. E.]3
1 Julien Benda: see Glossary of Names

2 Julien Benda, A Preface, C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), 22742.
3 Translation: Dear Sir, Please find enclosed the proof of your Preface. I have sent another
copy to Miss Robinson. Be so kind as to return one or other of the copies to me, after
checking.
In the margin I have made some suggestions relating to the translation of certain words,
but naturally you have every right to leave the translation just as it stands.
We are very pleased to have this opportunity of presenting an extract from your work to
English readers, and we intend to speak about you later.
The issue of the Criterion containing your Preface will appear on 15 April, and you will
receive a copy and payment as soon as possible after that.
Yours faithfully, [T. S. E.]
33
to Ford Madox Ford1 ts Cornell
Dear Mr Ford,
Many thanks for your charming letter of the 25th January. I gather from
the opening phrases that you feel a slight suspicion of me as an editor and
a prose writer, but your compliments on The Waste Land, which I prize
very highly coming from you, more than restore my composure.2 In any
case, my suspicion of your suspicion does not disturb my desire which Ezra
has reported correctly. I do not expect to see eye to eye with anybody, but
I am anxious to discover a few people with whom it is worth while to
disagree and to expose the agreements and disagreements of these people
in the Criterion. I saw not long ago in a periodical which I did not
otherwise admire, an essay of yours on Shelley3 which was at least much
nearer to my own opinion of that poet than any other I have read. I have
myself outraged public opinion in England by my remarks on a greater
than Shelley,4 so that I should very much like to see your immense history
of British literature.5 The only question is, how immense is it? I have
ordered the Criterion to be sent to you and it will give you an idea of the
suitable length of articles, even if it gives you no other idea. For me, English
literature ends well before 1800, (at least that part of it which is written
in verse)6 but I can see that for the purpose of improving the public mind,
1 Ford Madox Ford: see Glossary of Names. In Oct. 1922, TSE had told EP he did not want
Ford for several numbers yet because there are a great many other people beside myself who
do not like him.
2 Ford had been surprised to learn from EP that TSE would like something for C. for we
cant see eye to eye, I fancy, on many things. Since he wanted to help with the good work,
and thought TSE probably didnt want poems or novels, he wondered what he should
write about. He was a quite real admirer of Prufrock and Waste Land which is, curse you!
the real thing. I say curse you! because for months before The Waste Land appeared I was
labouring with an immense Poem on the same lines and have had to cut, hack, dismantle
and alter it. Fords poem was Mr Bosphorus and the Muses (1923).
3 Ford, Third Rate Poet, Golden Hind I (Oct. 1922), 1520. TSE wrote later that an
enthusiasm for Shelley seems to me also to be an affair of adolescence: for most of us, Shelley
has marked an intense period before maturity, but for how many does Shelley remain the
companion of age? (TUPUC, 89).
4 Presumably a reference to his remarks on Hamlet as artistic failure, in Hamlet and His
Problems in SW (1920).
5 Ford spoke of an immense history of British Literature which Ezra wanted him to send
TSE; this was to be The Long March of Literature (1938).
6 In The Metaphysical Poets, TLS (20 Oct. 1921), TSE speaks of something which had
happened to the mind of England between the time of Donne or Lord Herbert of Cherbury
and the time of Tennyson and Browning; it is the difference between the intellectual poet and
the reflective poet. These views were developed further in Andrew Marvell, N&A 33: 26
(29 Sept. 1923). Both essays were reprinted in Homage to John Dryden (1924).
if it is to be improved, there is something to be said about the rest. I think
that your history of British literature is what we want, or, if it is too
immense, the more important parts of it. Can I see it, part of it, or an
outline of it?
As for your pro-French policy,1 that is one with which I am in sympathy,
united (politically) within hereditary and ineradicable toryism.
Will you not let me receive some manuscript, or at least continue these
conversations, as soon as anyone under the influence of the Mediterranean
climate can manage to do so?2
With many thanks,
Yours very sincerely,
T. S. Eliot
to Jacques Rivire cc
2 February 1923 [London]
Cher Monsieur,
Merci bien de votre aimable lettre du 27 pass. Jattendrai avec
impatience larticle dont vous me parlez.3 Est ce que je peux le recevoir
vers le 1o Avril, ou le cas chant plus tt puisquil y a encore le travail de
traduction.
Jespre pouvoir vous donner une chronique vers le 15 fvrier.4
Agrez, cher Monsieur, lassurance de ma sympathie cordiale.
[T. S. E.]5
1 Ford was contemplating a reviewerish sort of article on the differences between the French
& British temperaments; his pro-Frenchness was so absolute he didnt try to keep any
balance.
2 See Fords impressionistic essay From the Grey Stone, in C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923).
3 Jacques Rivire, Notes on a Possible Generalisation of the Theories of Freud, C. 1: 4
(July 1923), 32948.
4 TSEs next Lettre dAngleterre did not appear until NRF 21: 122 (1 Nov. 1923).
5 Translation: Dear Sir, Thank you for your kind letter of the 27th of last month. I shall wait
impatiently for the article you speak of. I wonder if I could have it by 1 April or, if possible,
even earlier, since some time must be allowed for the translation.
I hope to be able to send you my chronicle round about 15 February.
Please accept, dear Sir, my cordial regards. [T. S. E.]
35
to Charles Whibley1 cc
2 February 1923 [The Criterion, London]
My dear Whibley,
This letter is to send you the proof of Bolingbroke.2 When you have
corrected it will you return one copy direct to R. Cobden-Sanderson, 17
Thavies Inn, Holborn, e.c.1. Of course he would like to have it as soon as
possible but I hope you are now well enough for proof-correcting to be
not too intolerable a nuisance.
I hope to have better news and to see you before very long.
Yours always,
[T. S. E.]
PS I am returning you the envelope of your letter as you asked me to do.
It appears to have left Bletchley3 in the morning!
to Mrs S. A. Middleton cc
Thank you for your letter of the 29th ulto. enclosing translation of the
note by Marichalar4 and thank you also for your promptness.
I will certainly keep you in mind in case of hearing of any Spanish
translations to be done.
Yours sincerely
[T. S. E.]
1 Charles Whibley: see Glossary of Names.

2 Bolingbroke, Pt. I, C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), 20316.
3 Whibley lived in Broomhill House, Brickhill, Bletchley.
4 Antonio Marichalar, Contemporary Spanish Literature, C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923) concluded
with a Note on The Nobel Prize and Benavente by A. M.; trans. by Mrs Middleton. See
TSEs letter to Marichalar, 14 May 1923.
to Charles Caffrey1 cc
Dear Mr Caffrey,
I am enclosing herewith the first German manuscript which I have had
since corresponding with you, a fragment of a Greek voyage by Hugo von
Hofmannsthal.2
You will observe at the end I have marked a line after which the essay
consists almost wholly of a long quotation in German from Maurice
Barrs. The length of the quotation is out of proportion to the length of the
article and you therefore need not translate after the line which I have
drawn.
Will you return the original as well when you send me the translation.
You need not hurry over this, but I should be obliged if you would let
me have it within six weeks, and also if you will acknowledge receipt
immediately.
As I said before, I only regret that we have so little material to offer you.
[T. S. E.]
to Ford Madox Ford ms Cornell

Dear Mr Ford,
I see on looking over our correspondence that I did not make clear that
any form of literature (except a novel, which could hardly appear in a
quarterly) would be welcome from you, and of course verse. But I was
excited by the history of British literature, which seemed to fit in to my
critical programme so well. It must depend on your wishes at the moment.
Have you any contes? Is April 15 a possible date?
Cordially and again with thanks
T. S. Eliot
1 Charles Caffrey did a small number of translations from the German for C.
2 Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Greece, C. 2: 1 (Oct. 1923), 103.
37
to George Saintsbury1 cc
My dear Sir,
The publication of your Dullness2 gave the Criterion such a triumphant
start that I am now bold enough to write to you again. The suggestion
which I wish to put to you has been made to me by the editor of The Dial
of New York (a paper which I think you know) and it is one which I
cordially accept and endorse, if it receives your approval.
Would you be willing, at your leisure and convenience, to discuss the
style and the prose rhythms of Mr James Joyces Ulysses? The Dial and
the Criterion would then arrange to publish your essay simultaneously,
and each would pay its full rates.
(The Dial would pay much more handsomely than we can, at the rate
of 2 cents a word.)
The Dial cannot publish quite such long articles as the Criterion, so that
I should think that the limit should be about 4000 words; but if you wished
to take more space I think that to you it would be conceded, as they are
very anxious to publish some of your work.
For my part, I should be delighted if you would accept, and I should
then hope that you could let us have it in time for the October number of
the Criterion and the November number of The Dial, which appear within
a few days of each other.
If you yield to our persuasion, please let me know whether you have a
copy of Mr Joyces book, as I should wish to arrange to have one sent to
you if you are not already the possessor of the book.3
I have myself promised to write something about the book for The Dial,
but I shall limit myself to a discussion of the significance of the association
of the myth with the contemporary action.
1 George Saintsbury (18451933): literary critic and historian; Regius Professor of Rhetoric
and English Literature, Edinburgh University, 18951915. TSE, in his preface to the Collected
Edition of C. (1967), was to call Saintsbury that genial doyen of English letters.
2 George Saintsbury, Dullness, C. 1: 1 (Oct. 1922), 115.
3 Saintsbury had been surprised to receive a press copy of the novel from JJ, who wrote to
Harriet Shaw Weaver (17 Nov. 1922): I am old-fashioned enough to admire him though he
may not return the compliment. He is however quite capable of flinging the tome back
through your window, especially if the 1922 vintage has not matured to his liking. (James
Joyce, Letters, ed. Stuart Gilbert, 1957, vol. I, 195.)
With my renewed thanks for your kindness to our first number, and the
fervent hope that you will accede to the present request.
I am,
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
to Gilbert Seldes1 cc
My dear Mr Seldes,
I have your letter of the 30th ulto. and like your proposal very much. I
have just written to Mr Saintsbury and will let you know as soon as he has
replied.2 He is a very charming and amiable person and I hope that he will
consent, although I have no idea what may be his opinion of Joyce.
You are quite right in assuming that I shall not go into the question of
style and rhythm in Ulysses: I intend chiefly to occupy myself with the
question of the value and the significance of the method of moulding a
contemporary narrative upon an ancient myth, a question which I think
is of interest to Yeats, Pound and myself, though I have not yet found
that it interests anyone else!3 I should suggest, if we get the paper in time,
that it be published in the Criterion of the 15th October and in the Dial
of the 1st November which I assume will be on the bookstalls by the
25th October. We should endeavour to post the American copies of the
Criterion on a date such that they would be received in New York about
the 25th.
I see that you have not yet received at least one letter which I posted to
you in New York, but that it has been forwarded to you. In one letter I
expressed my warm appreciation of your notice of The Waste Land.4
1 Seldes later wrote a number of New York Chronicles for C.

2 Seldes had proposed that Saintsbury should write an essay on the prose rhythms of
Ulysses.
3 Seldes assumed TSE would not have space to go into this special subject when writing
his essay on JJ for The Dial. This appeared as Ulysses, Order and Myth, Dial 75: 5 (Nov.
1923).
4 Seldes hoped TSE was not entirely disappointed with his notice, T. S. Eliot (Nation
[NY] 115, 6 Dec. 1922, 61416), which emphasised the poems historical sense, its
alternation between the visionary . . . and the actual, and its hidden form. He saw it as the
inversion and complement of Ulysses.
39
I am glad that you are having a holiday, I trust not in a sanatorium1 but
on skates or skis.
Sincerely yours
[T. S. E.]
to E. M. Forster cc
Dear Forster,
I am sure neither my letter nor my wire reached you in time.2 But I hope
you will let me know. I feel extremely apologetic about my delay. In any
case, I trust that my letter was forwarded to you from the Reform Club if
you did not call and find it there. I hope that you will be coming up to
London soon on a Saturday or at some time when we can meet.
Meanwhile, I repeat my pleasure at hearing that I may count upon
something from you before the end of March.3
[T. S. E.]
to J. M. Robertson4 cc
Dear Mr Robertson,
I am very much delighted at receiving your kind letter and the
manuscript which you enclosed.5 Your writing is very legible, but in any
case I have passed the severest test known, by reading through a
manuscript of Saintsburys which the printers refused to examine, and
taking [typing] the whole thing out for them.
I shall read through your manuscript at the earliest possible moment,
but meanwhile you need not wait to be told that we shall be happy to have
it. I should like to publish it in the October number, or if I have not already
committed myself to too much material, in the July number.
1 Seldes had written from Sdbahn Hotel, Semmering, Austria.

2 On 29 Jan. Forster invited TSE to lunch with him at the Reform Club on Friday, 2 Feb.
3 Forster, Pan, C. 1: 4 (July 1923), 4028.
4 J. M. Robertson: see Glossary of Names.
5 Robertson had submitted (5 Feb.) a handwritten copy of his article on English Blank
Verse; it appeared as The Evolution of Blank Verse, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924), 17187.
I will try to see Mr Cobden-Sanderson as soon as I can and shall
certainly urge him to publish your book.1 He ought to realise that it is an
opportunity which he should not miss. It is scandalous that you should
have had to publish The Shakespeare Canon2 at your own expense: it is the
sort of thing that the Oxford press ought to do, instead of publishing so
many anthologies, of little or no scholarly interest.
With very many thanks,
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
to Alfred Kreymborg3 cc
Dear Kreynborg [sic],
Thank you for your letter. I also was disappointed not to see you again;4
It is my responsibility but not my fault, as I was constantly waiting for a
free evening when I could suggest something to you and as constantly was
baulked. Then just as I was going to write to you I learned that you had
left London the week before.
1. I have just received a copy of your magazine5 and indeed wish that I
had even half a line which I could send, but I have written absolutely not
a word since the Waste Land was finished and everything that I wrote
before that is either published in my book6 or will never, I hope, be
published at all. And I think it will take me a year or two to throw off the
Waste Land and settle down and get at something better which is
tormenting me by its elusiveness in my brain.
1 Robertson said his book on Hamlet is just about finished after many revisions, and
wondered if RC-S would consider publishing it. It appeared as Hamlet Once More (1923).
2 Robertson had published his The Shakespeare Canon (5 vols, 19225) at his own
expense, which he said was repugnant to [his] financial status.
3 Alfred Kreymborg (18831966): American poet, playwright, and puppeteer.
4 In his autobiography, Kreymborg describes meeting TSE at home at 9 Clarence Gate
Gardens: The man was as clearly the expression of the artist as the artist was of the man. The
suave intelligence was given over to the pursuit of a refinement of experience from which
unnecessary details dropped away with an ironical though almost imperceptible smile
(Troubadour [1925], 3967). Remarking that The man was beautiful to look at as well as
to listen to, he noted too: Eliot was the high priest of the best of the younger English poets
and essayists.
5 Broom: An International Magazine of the Arts, ed. Kreymborg and Harold Loeb; the first
issue was published in Nov. 1921, the last in Jan. 1924.
6 Ara Vos Prec (London: Ovid Press, 1920).
41
2. I have no objection, from what you tell me, to your including The
Portrait of a Lady in your anthology1 to be published in English in
Munich. I hope, however, that the anthology is really and truly for German
and central European consumption, as I do not want to appear in any more
Anglo-Saxon anthologies for one has seen the same poems of mine turn
up again and again in one anthology after another2 and people must be
pretty well sick of them.
3. I am looking forward to the book of yours which I see Secker is about
to produce,3 but will you not let me hear from you about the other article
on the marionette theatre which you promised me and appear to have
forgotten?4
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Charles Whibley cc
My dear Whibley,
Many thanks for your letter. I should of course be delighted to have Mr
Kers article on Byron,5 and am more than grateful to you for the trouble
you have taken and for the use of your influence.6 May I trouble you still
further to tell him that I should be glad to have it as soon as he can send
it to me?
I venture to suggest to you an idea I have had in my mind: would you
care at some time or other to write something for us about Charles
Maurras?7 The political implications would of course have to be handled
1 Having edited a series of annual Others anthologies (191519), Kreymborgs next volumes
were Others: An Anthology of New Verse (1927) and Lyric America: An Anthology of
American Poetry (1930).
2 Portrait of a Lady had appeared, with Prufrock and three other poems, in EPs Catholic
Anthology, in Others (1916), and in Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin Hendersons The New
Poetry: An Anthology (1917). Methuen published La Figlia Che Piange; and Louis
Untermeyers Modern American Poetry (1921) included extracts from Prufrock and Portrait
of a Lady.
3 Puppet Plays, with a preface by Gordon Craig (1923).
4 On 6 Aug., Kreymborg sent to TSE the typescript of Writing for Puppets, but it was
never published (see TSEs letter of 23 Aug.).
5 For W. P. Ker, see note to TSEs letter of 20 Mar.
6 Ker, Byron: An Oxford Lecture, C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923), 115.
7 Charles Maurras (18681952): French poet, critic, political philosopher and polemical
journalist; founding editor and moving spirit of the reactionary and extreme monarchist
delicately in a literary review partly for obvious reasons of discretion but
partly also because I believe the review can only maintain its literary
usefulness by keeping outside of political [discussion]1 and these
implications will have to be left implicit in discussing the general
philosophic position; but of course there is a good deal to be said about his
literary criticism and his conception of the qualities and the place of
literature. Of course I do not want you in any case to bother about this at
all until I have extracted the second part of Bolingbroke from you which
I hope will be soon:2 I merely put this forward tentatively to see how it
strikes you.
You say nothing about your health so I hope the peace and seclusion of
the country are performing good work.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
to W. W. Worster3 cc
Dear Mr Worster,
Very many thanks for your letter of the 29th January and for the article
and story which you have sent.4 I appreciate very keenly the interest you
are taking and the trouble you have given yourself to provide me with such
paper, LAction Franaise (190844), which was to support Ptain and Vichy during WW2.
Building on three traditions classicism, Catholicism, monarchism the thrust of Maurras
ideology became increasingly, and intransigently, right-wing, authoritarian and anti-
democratic. While CW did not complete his piece on Maurras, in 1925 TSE planned to write
a book on him. He later wrote The Action Franaise, M. Maurras and Mr Ward, in NC 7: 3
(Mar. 1928), an issue that included his translation of Maurrass essay Prologue to an Essay
on Criticism. TSE said he had been a reader of the work of M. Maurras for eighteen years,
and, far from drawing him away from Christianity in 1926 Maurras was even condemned
by the Pope, with five of his books being placed on the Index it had had the opposite effect.
In a later essay TSE named CW, Lon Daudet, and Maurras as the three best writers of
invective of their time (SE, 499).
1 Word missing. See Kenneth Asher, T. S. Eliot and Maurras, ANQ 11: 3 (Summer 1998).
2 Whibley, Bolingbroke, Pt. II, C. 1: 4 (July 1923).
3 W. W. Worster, a translator from Norwegian and Danish, was to become well known for
his translations of the Norwegian Nobel laureate Knut Hamsun, inc. Growth of the Soul.
4 Worster submitted for consideration an article Four Icelandic Poets (albeit the writers in
question were not poets) and a short story which my agent has been vainly trying to dispose
of Bohme (the latter in the name of W. Williamsson, his nom-de-plume for fiction).
43
full and useful information. I am hoping to be able to read your
contributions this week; the influx of material is now pretty heavy for me
to deal with singlehanded, but I am looking forward to reading your
manuscript with pleasure.
I have not yet approached any of the writers whose names you have
given me simply for the reason that there have been such a number of
English and French writers and a few German, Italian and Spanish, whose
absence from the first year of the review would be remarked as a defect.1
It is difficult to know when to invite contributions and when to accept
them, with a quarterly, for one does not like to ask people to wait six
months or a year before their contribution is published.
With very grateful thanks and best wishes for improved health,
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
to Egdar Jepson2 ts Beinecke

My dear Jepson,
It is indeed a very long while since we met, and it is a pleasure to me [to]
think you occasionally remember me and wish to see me, and I have very
often thought of you and then waited before writing until I could definitely
fix an agreement. The combination of having had my wife very ill during
nearly the whole of 1922, and the Criterion review, left me very little time
to see people merely because I wanted to see them. Even now I cannot
accept for this Sunday; I have finally made an engagement for Sunday with
friends whom I have not seen for months, and who think that I have
neglected them. May I, however, be allowed to write and suggest my
presence at supper or after supper or before supper the first Sunday I
can, on the understanding that you will put me off till the following Sunday
if you find it inconvenient?
I have had it on my mind also to send you the Criterion in order to
submit my poem to your judgement, but even a little paper and paste, is
1 Worster included with his letter of 29 Jan. a list of Danish publishers and writers.
2 Edgar Jepson (18631938): British novelist; vocal advocate and friend of EP and TSE.
more than I often have time for. But you shall receive it, as I am waiting
your opinion.1
With many thanks. Yours sincerely,
T. S. Eliot
to John Middleton Murry ms Northwestern

Dear John
I am very grateful to you for putting me in the way of the Dostoevski
letters.2 From what you say I should not hesitate to use them as soon as
possible, and I am writing at once to Koteliansky. Thank you very much.
I am asking Cobden-Sanderson to send you a Criterion. I was under the
impression that one had been sent to you.
I want very much to see you; and I have several matters of importance
I am anxious to discuss with you as soon as possible. And it would be
delightful to visit you in the country. Could I come weekend after next
(Feb. 17)?
Yours ever
T. S. E.
to S. S. Koteliansky ms BL
Dear Mr Koteliansky
I have just heard from Murry, telling me about some Dostoevski letters
you have just translated, and recommending me to try to get them, if you
are willing, for the Criterion. I should very much like to publish them, and
hope you will consent. The letters he mentions are
1. Full text of letter of D. to his brother after his reprieve.
2. Ds letter to Maikov outlining a scheme for a great poem on Russian
history.
1 Jepson wrote to thank TSE for TWL, saying he had already read it a good many times
and would be using it in a lecture unsympathetic on modern poetry, though he had said
several pleasing things about TSE. In the event, rather than commenting on the poem itself,
Jepson preferred to discuss From Ritual to Romance, The Golden Bough and Cabells Jurgen.
2 See following letter to Koteliansky.
45
3. Ds letter to Poliedmoszer (no. 3) from Bad-Ems, 24 Aug. 1922 (??)1
explaining part of Brothers Karamazov.
I should use these in the no. of July 1st. (In a case like this, of translation
of a dead author, we can pay at the rate of 10 per 5000 words.)2
I hope you have no objection, as it would be a great honour for the
paper. I understand from Murry that the letters have never been translated
before.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot

Dear Richard
Referring to your letter of the 30th January would you let me know the
addresses to which to write for the following periodicals which you have
recommended:-
Revue de lAmrique Latine3
Intentions
La Revue des deux Mondes
Supplment Littraire du Figaro
La Revue de Paris
La Revue Hebdomadaire
Would you care at your leisure, to use as the pretext for an essay on
Greek verse translation, or on Aeschylus, or on any cognate subject that
you choose, a book of translations of the Oresteia by Robert Trevelyan
1 This should read to Pobiedonoszev, and the date should read 24 Aug. 1879.
2 Koteliansky replied that he would be willing to have the first and third of these published,
but that his publisher would not allow him to publish the other in a periodical. He asked for
them to be published immediately in the Apr. number: his translations duly appeared as
Two Unpublished Letters of F. Dostoevsky, C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), 21726.
3 Revue de lAmrique Latine, was a Paris-based review on Latin America ed. by
E. Martinenche; Intentions a monthly literary review ed. by Pierre-Andr May, 19224;
La Revue des deux Mondes a monthly cultural and literary magazine founded in 1829;
Supplment Littraire the weekly literary supplement of Le Figaro, a newspaper founded in
1826; La Revue de Paris a literary magazine founded in 1829, bought by the parfumier Coty
in 1922; La Revue Hebdomadaire a newspaper of the right-wing group Redressement
Franais. In his notes on French Periodicals in C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), RA commented on NRF,
Mercure de France, La Revue Musicale, Les Marges, Revue de lAmrique, Les Cahiers
Idalistes and La Vie des Lettres.
which I have received?1 If the idea at all appeals to you I will send the book
on to you. It may be good or bad, havent looked.
Yours in haste
[T. S. Eliot del.] T
PS Can you tell me anything about the work of Daniel Halvy? There is
a chronique by him in the Revue de Genve which I am sending you with
other periodicals.2 He appears to act as Bendas secretary and go-between
in the negotiations I have had over Bendas article. I mentioned in writing
to him that I was interested in what he said about the Abb Brmond and
he promptly wrote and offered to write an article about him! All I know
of Halvy is an impression that he was a friend of Pguy and contributed
to the Cahiers de la Quinzaine and that he now edits some Cahiers of his
own. Read his chronique and tell me what you think of him. Du Bos3
sometimes writes intelligently, but somewhat desiccated, I think. Was it
you who reviewed his book in The Times?4
Please let me know whether you receive La Nouvelle Revue Franaise
regularly. If not I will lend you my own copies for the last two months,
including the Proust Memorial,5 and will ask Rivire to send a copy
regularly direct. It is a review that I like to see myself.
to Richard Cobden-Sanderson ts Texas

Dear Sanderson
I enclose herewith a corrected proof from Julien Benda6 and also the
note which I warned you would arrive to be added at the end of the article
by Marichalar.7 Can you have this note set up to go at the end of the
article, in small type, but preferably not quite so small as the italicised
1 Aeschylus, The Oresteia, trans. R. C. Trevelyan (1922).

2 Daniel Halvy, France, La Revue de Genve 5: 30 (Dec. 1922), 74770: a review of the
contemporary religious situation in France. Halvy also edited Les Cahiers Verts.
3 For Charles du Bos, see TSEs first letter to him, 1 May 1923.
4 A French Critic, TLS, 11 Jan. 1923, 23 (rev. of Charles du Bos, Approximations: Essays
on French writers (Paris, 1922). TSE praised du Boss essay on Baudelaire (in
Approximations) as the finest study of Baudelaire that has been made (Baudelaire In Our
Time, FLA, 75).
5 The Jan. issue of NRF was dedicated to the memory of Marcel Proust.
6 Julien Benda, A Preface, C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923).
7 Marichalars article Contemporary Spanish Literature appeared in C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923),
as did his note on The Nobel Prize and Benavente.
47
introduction to Pounds article in the last number? I shall send you a
corrected proof of the article itself and The Obsequies1 in the course of a
few days. You tell me you have received a proof of the Serpent and In the
Orchard.2 You should also have received by this time direct the corrected
proof of the articles by Herbert Read and Charles Whibley.3
With regard to Pounds complaint,4 I was under the impression that I
had informed him that the sum of 10 was for 5,000 words and the
payment was pro rata. I have not yet had a moment to look through my
previous correspondence with him on this point, but as he was under the
impression that he would get 10 for the article I propose that he should
on this occasion have it. I am writing to him to explain the situation and
to make it clear that in future we must stick to the rates at which everybody
is paid, but I should be obliged if you would on my responsibility send
him a cheque for the balance of 2.8.0. [2.12.0 del.] You need not raise the
point in your own letter to him as I shall explain that fully.
There is also a sum owing on account of the translation of the
Marichalar article, which as it happens is owing to me. I had the
translation made long before we could use it and as the translator is a
needy person I paid her out of my own pocket in order that she might not
have to wait. I am simply warning you that I shall send you her receipt
and claim 4.11.4. from you when No. 3 comes out.
I hope at least to ring you up shortly and to find how things are going.
How long does it take to get Criterion letter paper printed? I have
enough to go on with, I think, for about a month, but I should like to
know how long ahead I should apply for a new supply in order that I may
not be caught without any.
Yours ever
T. S. Eliot
<Whibleys article is to start the No. 3>5
There will be a short note in a few days for End of Benda.6
1 A short story by B. M. Goold Adams in C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), 293302.

2 Paul Valry, The Serpent; Virginia Woolf, In the Orchard, in the same issue.
3 Herbert Read, The Nature of Metaphysical Poetry and Charles Whibley, Bolingbroke,
Pt. I.
4 EP had complained about the rate of payment for his essay On Criticism in General in
C. 1: 2 (Jan. 1923). See following letter.
5 Scribbled by TSE by hand at head of letter. Whibley, Bolingbroke, Pt. I was the first
article in C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923).
6 The note explaining the context of Bendas A Preface ends the article in 1: 3 (Apr. 1923).
to Ezra Pound1 cc
Cher Ezra
Point 1
I thought that I had made it quite clear that the payment was at the rate
of 10 per 5000 words. Your essay came to 3545 words.2 That accounts
for the difference. I have not had time to look through our correspondence,
but it is quite possible that I neglected to mention this important detail to
you, and therefore I have instructed Cobden-Sanderson to send you a
further cheque for 2.8.0, which please accept for value received.
Point 2
Thank you for your letter A containing statement about Bel Esprit.3 I
gathered that you agreed that the minimum possible is 300 guaranteed.
If there was more than that, as I have said all along, the guarantee for
everything over the initial 300 need not be so solid.
Do you propose to collect a capital sum of round about 3000?
If you collect only part of this sum is there any other method of
guaranteeing the rest of the income up to 300?
How long do you suppose it will take before matters are settled? I mean
before you know how many of the present subscribers will realise their
promises in a durable form.
If you cant answer this last question you cant, but if you can answer it
I am naturally interested to know how long it will be before the scheme
arrives or collapses.
Point 3
Re letter B. The book by Vivante has arrived.4 I am endeavouring to
acquire the first two chapters as fast as extremely limited time and limited
1 Ezra Pound: see Glossary of Names.

2 EP, On Criticism in General, C. 1: 2 (Jan. 1923), 14356.
3 EP sent two letters, marked A and B in late Jan. In letter A (29 Jan.), EP told TSE that Bel
Esprit was an emergency measure to save or utilize your particular talent but also an idea:
the germ of a reorganisation of civilization, representing the proper way to get work out
of artists. Bel Esprit was a scheme launched in 1922 by RA, EP and others to buy TSE
independence from Lloyds Bank.
4 In letter B, EP said he was sending a book by Leone Vivante, which TSE might use in C.
This was Vivantes Della Intelligenza nellEspressione (Rome, 1922): the English translation,
Intelligence in Expression, was to be reviewed by W. A. Thorpe in C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925),
4634. According to EP, the Value of Vivante is that one can argue against Hueffer without
arguing for Gosse, Pisswallow Murry or the academic imbeciles. It was not that he tells one
anything one didnt know before, but that he makes a full verbal statement of something one
cdnt be bothered to write out.
49
knowledge of Italian will let me. It might be better to do some sort of
general article first dragging in Vivante and perhaps publish chapters one
and two afterward, but I am pretty well in the dark until I have read these
two chapters which I attempt to do during my lunch. I recognise the need
for a small, concentrated and distinct corpus of criticism. Will you tell me
what critical writings of Hueffer1 are available and in what form.
Discussions could be pursued in the Criterion and the results should be
published in book form concentrated to the greatest brevity compatible
with clarity.
Yrs
[T. S. E.]
2
Gmez is in my opinion quite futile. I will have the Criterion sent to
Vivante. Who is Adolfo de Bosis?3 Will you give me the correct title and
address of Mrs, Miss or Mr Goold Adams4 in order that the necessary
cheque may pass on the publication of No. 3.
Cher Monsieur,
Jespre que les deux propositions suivantes recevront votre accueil
favorable; en tout cas, pardonnez moi si vous les trouvez ennuyeuses.
Nous proposons de prsenter dans chaque numro du Criterion une
revue des revues trangres qui indiquerait aux lecteurs anglais ce que
chaque revue contient de plus remarquable. Naturellement, nous voulons
que la Nouvelle Revue Franaise y fasse figure dimportance. Monsieur
Richard Aldington qui soigne la littrature franaise dans le Times Literary
Supplement, et qui est de tous les critiques anglaises le mieux dou pour
1 In his letter, EP sought to establish authority. I.e. a circle of critics serious characters,
with honest, divergent views, who will refer to each others ideas. Referring to Ford Madox
Ford under his original name of Hueffer, he told TSE: I dont see anyone save Hueffer you
& myself capable of understanding the job. He thought Vivante would help argue against
Hueffers attempt to lump verse & prose into a single concept.
2 EP had not yet seen Gmez de la Sernas From The New Museum but found him
very insignificant in Larbauds translation.
3 EP had suggested sending a copy of C. to Vivante and Adolfo de Bosis in Rome. Adolfo
de Bosis (18631924) was a minor Italian poet, translator of Shelley, and editor of the literary
review Convito.
4 B. M. Goold-Adams: author of the story Obsequies in C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923).
cette besogne, soccupera des revues franaises. Pouvez-vous lui faire
expdier rgulirement la Nouvelle Revue Franaise? Il commentera le
contenu des trois numros de la Nouvelle Revue Franaise dans chaque
numro (trimestriel) du Criterion. Puisque je vous envoie dj
rgulirement le Criterion, je ferai envoyer rgulirement un autre
exemplaire la Nouvelle Revue Franaise en continuant lenvoi du
Criterion vous personnellement.
Voici la seconde affaire. Plusieurs mois avant sa mort, qui nous a dsol
tous, Monsieur Proust a promis de nous envoyer quelque chose.1
Dernirement jai caus avec Monsieur Scott Moncrieff2 qui sest fait un
succs clatant par sa traduction de Swann, et qui traduira probablement
A lombre des jeunes filles en fleurs. Je vous cris avec son accord et son
approbation: Est ce que nous pourrions esprer la permission de publier un
morceau ou de loeuvre que Monsieur Scott Moncrieff va entamer, ou
mme de quelque chose dindit?3 a serait naturellement traduit par
Monsieur Scott Moncrieff, et je crois que la traduction des morceaux dans
le Criterion serait avantageuse aux traductions que font publier Messrs.
Chatto et Windus. Si vous en approuvez vous-mme voulez-vous me mettre
sous une obligation profonde en proposant lide Monsieur Gallimard?4
Je vous prie de me pardonner en vous faisant une telle demande. Croyez
moi toujours prt rciproquer en toute manire possible.
1 As early as 9 July 1922, TSE told EP he was fishing for something from Proust (the only
name worth getting in France). Proust died on 18 Nov. 1922.
2 C. K. Scott Moncrieff (18891930): Scottish translator. Educated at Edinburgh University,
he served with distinction in WW1 (Kings Own Scottish Borderers), being awarded the
Military Cross for gallantry. (During 1918 he was to become an intimate friend of Wilfred
Owen.) From 1919 he set himself to translate the entirety of Marcel Prousts sequence la
recherche du temps perdu [Remembrance of Things Past] (though the final volume was
undertaken by Sydney Schiff following Scott Moncrieffs premature death from cancer). His
other translations included Chanson de Roland (1919); Beowulf (1921); the Latin letters of
Abelard and Hloise; novels by Stendhal, and three vols of Pirandello. At the time of his
meeting with TSE, Scott Moncrieff had translated the first vol. of la recherche du temps
perdu: it came out as Swanns Way (2 vols, 1922). This was to be followed by his translation
of Prousts second vol., A lombre des jeunes filles en fleurs [Within a Budding Grove] (1924).
See Scott Moncrieff, Memories and Letters, ed. J. M. Scott Moncrieff and L. W. Lunn (1931).
3 Marcel Proust, The Death of Albertine, trans. by C. K. Scott Moncrieff, came out in C.
2: 8 (July 1924), 37694. This was an extract from the penultimate book, La Fugitive or
Second Part of Sodome et Gomorrhe.
4 Gaston Gallimard (18811975): French publisher who founded Les ditions de la
Nouvelle Revue Franaise in 1911. This later became ditions Gallimard, the most important
French literary publishing house.
51
Jespre bientt recevoir des nouvelles sur votre article.
Recevez, cher Monsieur, lassurance de mes sentiments dvous.
[T. S. E.]1
to Gilbert Seldes cc
Dear Mr Seldes,
I have written to Mr Saintsbury and have received the following reply,
as nearly as I can decipher his handwriting.
Dear Mr Eliot,
Oddly enough I received an Authors Copy of Ulysses but wrote
back saying that I only kept it on the understanding that I was not
to be expected to write about it. That wouldnt interfere of course.
But to tell you the truth I have read very little of it coming on
things not at all obscene but what I risk meaning by nasty. What
they call obscenity can be quite nice, but nastiness obviously cannot.
A and not-A may sometimes coincide but not those! However, if
1 Translation: Dear Sir, I hope that the two following proposals will meet with a favourable
response from you; anyway, please forgive me, if you find them troublesome.
We plan to publish in each issue of the Criterion a review of foreign reviews, aimed at
bringing to the notice of English readers the most important articles of each of these reviews.
We naturally wish the Nouvelle Revue Franaise to occupy an important place in this
chronicle. Mr Richard Aldington, who is in charge of French books in the Times Literary
Supplement, and who is better equipped than any other English reviewer for this task, will
be in charge of the French reviews. Could you make arrangements for a copy of the Nouvelle
Revue Franaise to be regularly sent to him? Each issue of the Criterion, which is a quarterly,
will carry his comment on three issues of the Nouvelle Review Franaise. I already send you
regularly a copy of the Criterion; I shall from now on do the same for the Nouvelle Revue
Franaise, while of course continuing to send you your personal copy.
Now for the second proposal. A few months before his death, which has grieved us all,
M. Proust had promised to send us something. I recently had occasion to talk to Mr Scott
Moncrieff who has scored a brilliant success with his translation of Swann and who will
probably translate A lombre des jeunes filles en fleurs. I write to you with his support and
approval, in order to ask you whether it might not be possible to obtain permission to print
an extract from the work which Mr Scott Moncrieff is about to translate, or even something
from Proust which has not yet been published. This would naturally be translated by Mr
Scott Moncrieff, and I am sure that the publication of such extracts in the Criterion would
benefit the sales of the translation to be published by Chatto & Windus. If you approve my
proposal, you would greatly oblige me by submitting this project to the attention of
M. Gallimard. I beg you to forgive me burdening you with such a task, and I beg you to
believe that I shall always be ready to do the same for you in whatever way I can.
I hope to hear soon about your article.
Please believe me, dear Sir, yours faithfully, [T. S. E.]
you will give me a day or two Ill continue explorations and let you
know . . . .1 Joyce has power of course . . . .
Yours sincerely,
G. S.
So there it is at present, and I will let you know if he succeeds in making
up his mind one way or the other.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
from George Saintsbury ms Valerie Eliot

11 February 1923 1 Royal Crescent, Bath
Dear Mr Eliot
Im afraid its no go. There is no prudery in me but I have what the
doctors I believe call an irritable vomiting centre and Mr Joyce
unfortunately acts on it like ipecacuanha or a feather. It is a pity: for not
only are his more serious or serious-parodist pieces sometimes very good,
but he has an odd faculty of more pictorial or musical than purely literary
composition. The long bar room piece in the middle is a sort of sonata
with the two girls being in and out of it like mottoes.2 But when youre
always expecting to have to run to the side of the ship as you turn the page
it ceases to be delightful. So I must decline to be happy with either of the
two ladies who offer themselves so generously and together on this
occasion.
Yours none the less sincerely
George Saintsbury
to James S. Watson3 ts Berg

Dear Mr Watson,
Mr Seldes told me that he was to be away and that I should address
anything of a personal nature to you. As I conceive the acknowledgement
1 TSE omits Saintsburys remark, Many thanks for what you say about the Dullness,
referring to TSEs comments on his essay in C. 1: 1 (Oct. 1922).
2 The Sirens: episode 11 of Ulysses.
3 Dr James Sibley Watson (18941982): New York philanthropist, who, at the suggestion
of his friend Scofield Thayer, purchased The Dial in 1919 and supported it until its demise
in 1929.
53
of your cheque for the Dial prize1 to be in the nature of a personal
communication, and to require my expression of appreciation not only to
the Dial as an institution but to all of its proprietors and editors severally,
I am therefore writing to you. I cannot however express adequately my
appreciation of the kindness and generosity which I have received from
you from beginning to end. I can only say that the Dial is exceptional in
having such persons to manage it and that its managers are exceptional in
themselves and for having a paper like the Dial which is certainly unique
in the world. Please accept this letter as a weak and partial attempt to
express what I feel.
I shall always give the Dial the refusal of whatever I consider my best
work, and needless to say especially of my verse.2
Believe me,
My dear Mr Watson,
Yours very gratefully
T. S. Eliot
to George Saintsbury cc
15 February 1923 [The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn]
Dear Mr Saintsbury,
Thank you for your letter of the 11th. I am of course very sorry that
you cannot write this paper, for I am sure that such an essay from you
would be an event of great importance. While I do not see eye to eye with
you on this subject, I fully realise the difficulties and sympathise with your
attitude. I can only say that the Criterion will always be glad to publish
anything you care to offer; and I should be very happy if you would
propose some subject of your own choice, for either the October or
December number next. Please believe, for what my opinion is worth, that
I recognise and appreciate the most eminent English critic of our time.3
Yours very sincerely
[T. S. E.]
1 TSE had been awarded the second annual Dial award of $2,000 for TWL.
2 TSE contributed Ulysses, Order and Myth to Dial 75: 5 (Nov. 1923), and Marianne
Moore to 75: 6 (Dec. 1923). The next poem to appear there was The Hollow Men, Parts
III and IV, in Mar. 1925.
3 In 1924 TSE was to dedicate HJD to Saintsbury, whose monograph on the same subject
had appeared in the English Men of Letters series (1881).
My dear Whibley
Thank you for your kind letter. It is a very great pleasure to me to say
that I shall be delighted to come on the 10th of March and I shall look
forward very keenly to seeing you and hope to find you quite restored in
health.
Thank you also for returning the Bolingbroke proof so promptly. I am
anticipating very eagerly the effect which I am sure it will have, and I think
that the next number will be one of the best.
Yours always
[T. S. E.]
to Lady Rothermere1 cc
15 February 1923 [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
Dear Lady Rothermere,
I have at last come to the conclusion that I must ask you about
something which I have been hesitating to ask you for many months.
Since seeing you, I have become more and more convinced that I must
leave the Bank ultimately: and therefore the sooner I can do so, obviously
the better. I find that I have always more and more work to do in the hours
outside the Bank, and my health gives me less and less time and strength
to do it. I cannot help seeing all the time what an infinitely greater success
I could make of the Criterion if only I had sufficient time to give it. It seems
to me already such an astonishing success (I hope this is your opinion) that
I find it so much the more tantalising to have to spend the best eight hours
of the day in the Bank, doing work which can lead to nothing, and give the
Criterion only the evening when my mind is worn out.
Of course, I never imagined that Bel Esprit would enable me to leave
the Bank with security and lack of anxiety, immensely as I have appreciated
the unselfish work done in the matter by my friends. Besides which I think
that even if the scheme did come off I should never really be happy to live
on unearned money. I know that people think me absurd in this direction,
but I cannot help having strong feelings about it.
1 Viscountess Rothermere: see Glossary of Names.
55
This rather long winded preface leads me to what I have come to the
conclusion I will ask, trusting you will take it in the spirit in which it is
meant, and fully realising how unlikely it is that such a thing should be in
anybodys power to help me to.
Is it, do you think, possible that Lord Rothermere could give me a
literary post (even a small one) on one of his journals? You know that I am
accustomed to work, so that the usual work of a literary editor would,
after the pressure under which I have lived for years, seem to me in
comparison to give all the leisure I could ask. At the Bank alone I work
forty-four hours a week, and including the time spent in coming and going,
it takes fifty hours altogether, so that I am not asking for a sinecure!
One naturally wishes to work for a paper with which one has a general
sympathy; I have a great deal of admiration for the way in which Lord
Rothermere conducts his papers and have remarked an obvious
improvement since he took them over.
A crisis which has appeared in my affairs1 has forced me to write now
and if you think it any good at all to make an attempt, it would make all
the difference in the world if you could do it at once. I should be very glad
and grateful if I might hear from you, as I am rather anxious at this
moment.
Of course I know I need not tell you that what I have said is quite
confidential, as I am sure that you will treat it as such.
Always sincerely yours
[T. S. E.]
to J. B. Trend cc
Dear Trend,
Thank you for your letter of the 8th. I have only been waiting for a free
evening in order to propose that evening to you, but business and literary
affairs have been increasingly complicated this last month. So, at the
moment I can only say that I hope that you are settled in London for some
time to come, as I shall propose a meeting at the first opportunity.
1 TSE had been confidentially offered the literary editorship of The Nation by the economist
John Maynard Keynes, who was in the process of acquiring it (see letters below to SS and
John Quinn of 12 Mar.).
Yes I think that Azorn sounds very interesting,1 and I shall look forward
to reading your articles on the other two men you mention.2 I have not
even had time to look at the Supplement lately and have let it accumulate
until I have had time to do so. I should be delighted if you would let me
have specimens, whenever you can, of some of the work of the men you
name.
With many thanks,
Sincerely yours
[T. S. E.]
to Herbert Read cc
Dear Read,
Forgive me for not answering your postcard at once, and indeed for not
having written to you before that, but I have been of late exceptionally
busy and exceptionally worried, even for me. I should very much like to
have a few notes from you for the next number, if possible by the end of
the month.3 Can you manage it? As I have not yet had time to arrange for
the Dial to be sent to you regularly I will send you also the last number,
and hope you will not mind letting me have it back when you are done
with it.
Yours always,
[T. S. E.]
to W. W. Worster cc
Dear Sir,
I have certainly been dilatory in examining and reporting on your
manuscript, but no more so than I have been of late in all my obligations.4
1 Azorn was the pseud. of Jos Martnez Ruz (18941967), Spanish essayist, novelist and
critic, and a central figure, with Miguel de Unamuno, of the Generation of 1898; author of
Al margen de los clsicos (1914).
2 Trend noted in his letter: The Lit. Sup. have had articles of mine on E. DOrs and J. R.
Jimenez lately: & I suppose they will appear in a week or so.
3 In addition to his essay on The Nature of Metaphysical Poetry, HR contributed notes on
American Periodicals for C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923).
4 Worster was pressing (19 Feb.) for a decision on the article on Icelandic literature he had
submitted on 2 Feb.
57
My only excuse is that I am singlehanded and that my free time has been
almost entirely claimed by private business for several weeks past. I hope
to let you know definitively in a week, but if there is any special reason for
haste will you let me know and I will make time somehow to read and
consider your manuscripts.
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]

Dear Richard
Would it be possible for you to let me have some brief notes about the
end of this month? I am sorry to ask you if it is going to be a nuisance to
do them at such short notice, but really brief notes will do unless you find
anything of special importance.1 I have arranged for the Nouvelle Revue
Franaise to come to you direct in future, but I am sending you my copy
of the Proust number as they are out of it. Will you return it some time to
me when you have done with it.
If you cannot manage to do a few notes on the stuff I sent you, please
let me know at once.
I have been fearfully rushed and overwhelmed with several pieces of
important business, besides the Criterion, and have literally not had a
moment in which to write to you. Please be sure that I want very much to
write to you at the first opportunity I can get.
I am feeling pretty well worn out at present and I am convinced that I
cannot keep at this kind of life for very long.
Affectionately,
Tom
1 French Periodicals, C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923).
to Raymond Mortimer1 ts Beinecke
Dear Mortimer,
I should have been delighted to dine with you on Saturday, but alas I
have to go out of town to look at a country cottage2 which I have heard
about and I shall not be back until late in the evening. This is only one of
several important and difficult pieces of business which I have had on my
hands lately, else I should have dropped you a line to remind you to let me
know when you were in town again. It is distressing to have to decline
another opportunity of seeing you. Would you care to look in on me in the
city one day next week and have lunch? I make the suggestion timidly, first
because I am obliged to lunch at 12.00 oclock, and second because I cannot
offer a very good lunch in my neighbourhood, and third because I am
ashamed to ask anyone to make that journey for a meeting which is strictly
limited to an hour. But this is the only thing I can do for the next fortnight
or so, and I therefore make the suggestion and should be very glad if you
would care to come.
In haste
Yours sincerely
T. S. Eliot
Dear Flint,
If humanly possible, I should be glad if you could let me have a couple
of brief notes from the two German papers I sent you, by the end of the
month.3 They will be too far out of date by the following number to review
at all. I cannot make out whether the Merkur intends to send to us
regularly or not, but if so, I will ask them to send it direct to you.
I hope this will not be a nuisance to you. I have been so rushed these last
weeks that I have not been as businesslike as I should have been. I ought
certainly to have let you know before and if you cannot do the notes it
1 Raymond Mortimer (18951980): literary critic and journalist; prolific literary reviewer.
2 TSE and VHE were urgently looking for a country retreat from London.
3 See Flints notes on German Periodicals, signed T.-F., C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), 31011.
59
will be my own fault. I expect that a short paragraph will be enough for
each.
Yours in haste,
T. S. Eliot
to Lady Rothermere cc
Thank you very much for your kind and understanding letter and for
your expressions of sympathy.1 I wish that I had [been able] to discuss the
matter with you in London because I am aware now that it would have
been better from every point of view if I had come to this decision sooner.
I am now within measurable distance of the end of my tether and I may
find before very long that I no longer have time to pick and choose. I
should be very sorry to have to decide on something which I should find
less congenial than work in connection with one of Lord Rothermeres
papers, and that was why I wanted to find out what possibilities there are
in that direction, before I had to make such a choice. You see that I have
something in mind which may or may not become a definitive offer to me
and I am at present very much perplexed.2 I am glad however that you do
not appear to regard my wishes as wholly impossible.
I am doing everything I can in other directions, but I do not see any
prospect of anything which would be as satisfactory to me as what I asked
you. I will keep you in touch with any progress I may make.
I certainly feel the need of a long rest and a complete change, you are
quite right, and if I could get it I should certainly make use of your kind
offer. My mind is completely stale from having to think of many things at
once, and from having to wait eight hours a day in the knowledge that I
must redouble my activity at the end of it, and I am beginning to feel very
definitely the effect of many months of insufficient sleep. It would certainly
be unfortunate if I had to tackle new work in my present condition. I hope
that no choice will be forced upon me until you have been able to find out
from Lord Rothermere whether there is any chance.
I hope, in spite of everything, that the third number of the Criterion will
be a good one and am very much gratified and encouraged by what you
1 A reference to her reply to his letter of 15 Feb., asking about a possible opening for him
on one of Lord Rothermeres papers.
2 The literary editorship of The Nation.
say about my connection with the paper. But as I said before the Criterion
has not yet given me real satisfaction, because I feel how much better it
ought to be and could be if I could devote enough energy to it.
Always sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Mark Wardle cc
Dear Captain Wardle,
I am awfully sorry to return your story,1 because I think it is a very good
one. Half a dozen papers would snap at it, but partly for that reason
it does not fit in with the programme of the Criterion. The Criterion aims
to publish only fiction mirroring some phase of the modern world or the
modern spirit, or illustrating some new development of the modern mind
and sensibility. The sort of fiction, in fact, which would repel most editors.
With regard to the two versions of the Serpent, I cannot find space in
the Criterion, but think they should both go into the book.2 I shall try to
get an early decision from the press to which I have submitted the poem,3
and if it is unfavourable, will try another. I am most anxious to get the
book done.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
Cher Monsieur,
Jtais dsol la fin dtre forc de vous tlgraphier mes mauvaises
nouvelles. Jesprait jusquau dernier moment trouver le temps pour
rdiger mes notes.4 Mais pendant les dernires quatre semaines jai t
1 On 14 Jan. Wardle said he was sending a rather macabre story.

2 Wardles transl. of Valrys The Serpent appeared in English in C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923),
26776, and in tandem with the original when published as a book. Le Serpent had been
published with two different endings: TSE published only the revised version in C. 1: 3, but
the original was included as an appendix in Le Serpent par Paul Valry (1924), trans. by
Wardle and with intro. by TSE.
3 The Hogarth Press.
4 Following on the Lettre dAngleterre in NRF 19: 111 (Dec. 1922), TSE had promised a
second one for the spring. In the event, it did not appear until NRF 21 (1 Nov. 1923).
61
compltement cras par deux affaires personelles qui ne mont pas laiss
mme le temps de mettre deux notes debout. Je suis navr si je vous ai
embarrass ou gn dans la prparation du numro davril. Jespre vous
envoyer quelque chose vers le milieu du mois de mars et jespre que cette
fois vous me pardonnerez.
Je vous remercie de votre letter du 17 fevrier et de votre rponse si
favorable.1 Dornavant voulez vous envoyer regulirement lexemplaire
de la Nouvelle Revue Franaise ladresse suivante:-
Monsieur Richard Aldington,
Malthouse Cottage,
Padworth,
near Reading, Berks.
Jespre que vous continuerez de me lenvoyer aussi et je ferai envoyer
deux exemplaires du Criterion regulirement en change La Nouvelle
Revue Franaise et vous personnellement.
Jattends avec une impatience agrable la rception de votre article vers
le 15 Mars, un article qui fera grand honneur notre numro de Juillet.2
Recevez cher Monsieur avec toutes mes excuses et ma reconnaissance
impresse, lassurance de ma sympathie loyale.
[T. S. E.]3
1 Rivire said he would be willing to give TSE a fragment of Marcel Proust for a future
number of C., but would need to get permission from Dr Proust, his executor.
2 Rivire, Notes on a Possible Generalisation of the Theories of Freud, C. 1: 4 (July 1923).
3 Translation: Dear Sir, I was extremely sorry to be eventually obliged to telegraph the bad
news to you. I had hoped until the last moment to find time to write up my notes. But during
the last four weeks, I have been completely overwhelmed by two personal matters which did
not leave me time to put together even a couple of notes. I would be upset to think I had
caused you any embarrassment or inconvenience in connection with the preparation of the
April number. I hope to send you something towards the middle of March, and I hope you
will forgive me on this occasion.
I thank you for your letter of 17 February and for your favourable reply. Henceforth, could
you send a copy of La Nouvelle Revue Franaise regularly to the following address: Mr
Richard Aldington, Malthouse Cottage, Padworth, near Reading, Berks.
I hope you will continue to send me the review as well and, in exchange, I will arrange for
two copies of the Criterion to be sent regularly, one to La Nouvelle Revue Franaise and the
other to you personally.
I look forward, with pleasurable impatience, to receiving your article around 15 March; it
will be a great honour to have it in our July number.
With all my apologies, my warmest gratitude and faithful regards. [T. S. E.]
to Owen Barfield1 cc
Dear Sir,
I have received your story which I am prepared to accept, if you would
be so good as to change the title as the present title [Dope] is not suitable
for the Criterion and is not, in our opinion, a good enough one.2
With regard to the final paragraph commencing On on on on, we
should be glad to know whether you would object to only one on instead
of the four as we consider this would be an improvement.3
The story will probably appear in the July issue of the Criterion.
I am returning the manuscript and would like to know by return if you
will make these alterations.
Yours truly,
[T. S. E.]
to W. B. Yeats cc
26 February 1923 [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
Dear Mr Yeats,
Not having heard from you since you were last in London I am
beginning to be somewhat apprehensive about the autobiographic
fragment which you promised me and hope that I shall soon receive a re-
assurance from you.4 I have been counting upon it as the most important
contribution for the July number, and also counting upon the satisfaction
of announcing it in the April number.
May I hope to receive it by the end of March? and I should like to
suggest that the earlier we receive it the better, as it will need to be set up,
and the proof will be forwarded to you without delay.
I hope that neither political duties nor domestic anxieties will be too
oppressive to permit of your conferring this great benefit upon the
1 Owen Barfield (18981997), author and anthroposophist, was at this time a freelance
writer; later publications include History in English Words (1926) and Poetic Diction (1928).
2 Barfield replied (27 Feb.) that he would accept a changed title, but that it was originally
conceived to fit that title which he thought exactly expresses its angle of vision. TSEs
secretary wrote back on 4 Apr. to say that on careful re-reading TSE agreed the original title
of the story was the best possible. It appeared as Dope in C. 1: 4 (July 1923), 3228.
3 In his letter of 27 Feb., Barfield thought this a definite improvement.
4 See WBY, A Biographical Fragment, C. 1: 4 (July 1923), 31521.
63
Criterion. I cannot say too often how warmly I appreciate the magnitude
of the favour you will be doing us.
Yours always sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
to Herbert Read cc
2 March 1923 [The Criterion, London]
Dear Read,
Thank you for your notes1 which are excellent. If possible they shall be
published entire, and I hope to collect a more interesting lot for you in
future.
Yours ever
[T. S. E.]
to Ottoline Morrell ts Texas

2 March 1923 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Ottoline
I am very sorry that I could not keep my promise to write to you sooner,
but I have had more to think of and to decide during the last ten days than
at almost any moment in my life.2 I do hope that your cold is better and
that there is a touch of spring in the Garsington air; here there have been
occasional moments of warm sunshine among days of constant rain.
Vivien is sleeping a little better, although it is a hard struggle at best. It
remains to be seen whether the treatment she has been having is not too
drastic for her; it is not at all pleasant and she finds it extremely
exhausting. One never knows whether the benefits of this sort of thing
compensate for the strain which she must put upon herself in order to
undergo them. They have been giving her, as well as the electric treatment,
the Plombires treatment,3 which is the most disagreeable of all; she feels
in a state of complete exhaustion. I will let you know how she progresses.
1 HRs notes on American Periodicals (C. 1: 3, Apr. 1923, 31113) were devoted to issues
of The Dial, Secession and Rhythmus.
2 TSE is referring to his indecision over whether to leave Lloyds Bank to take the literary
editorship of The Nation or else money from the Bel Esprit scheme.
3 A form of colonic irrigation used to treat chronic constipation, colonic catarrh and colitis;
it was first introduced by Dr Langenhagen at Plombires.
I have finally secured a tiny cottage in Sussex1 which we shall use as much
as possible this summer and which we intend to get into the moment she
is out.
I wish I could promise myself a weekend with you soon, but I have so
much to do that I have no right to look forward to such a luxury before
the middle of April. As I told you I have promised to lecture [to the under-
graduate Ordinary Society] at Oxford on the 5th of May, and it will take
me all my spare time for a fortnight beforehand to prepare the lecture. I
regret now that I promised it so soon because I have three articles that I
ought to write first. I look forward to staying with you then, in fact it is
one of the chief inducements. I have promised to speak on Saturday
evening: I suppose that I shall have to dine in Oxford.
I should like very much to meet Dr Bridges2 some time as I have never
seen him and believe that I should like him.
I enjoyed our dinner very much indeed. It was the last occasion on which
I have seen anybody except for business reasons,
Affectionately
Tom
Vivien Eliot to Mary Hutchinson ts Texas

Sunday, 4 March [1923] London n.w.1
My dear Mary
It is very sweet of you to show so much interest and pleasure in my
having secured my cottage. It is really settled, and I can move my furniture
in a fortnight. Wont that be fun?
Meanwhile, since last week and for at least the next fortnight I am
having Plombires treatment. I do not suppose you know what that is, but
perhaps Jack does. It is extremely exhausting for me as I am already very
weak. So I am going to give myself up to it, in order to be ready to go to
the country directly my cottage is ready to receive me.
I am having a Plombires tomorrow so I should not be able to see you
in any case, and therefore I will not telephone.
1 TSE had found a cottage at Fishbourne, only a few miles from Bosham where they had
stayed the year before.
2 Robert Bridges (18441930): doctor and poet; friend and editor of Gerard Manley
Hopkins, and from 1913 Poet Laureate. In an unpublished lecture, TSE called him a
traditional Victorian poet: his greatest distinction is that, in the position of Poet Laureate,
he maintained with dignity the status of the poet as craftsman (The Last Twenty-Five Years
of English Poetry, 1940).
65
In passing, if anyone asks you what is the matter with me I should be so
much obliged if you will reply in crude words Catarrh of the intestines,
with occasional enteritis. That is, if your delicacy will allow you to frame
such an intolerable statement of fact. If you cannot bring yourself to utter
it, will you have the kindness of heart to refer enquiries to me. To my
cynical and unromantic mind a statement of fact presents no difficulties.
Again, in passing, it is my opinion that Tom is right in refraining at this
point from taking steps which would make our common dwelling place a
four-roomed country cottage or an attic in London, and which would
deprive me of medical assistance. (Of course there are the nice hospitals, I
know.) Indeed, if he did take such steps I should bear him a considerable
grudge.
I know, too well, that in your view the poets wife dying in a humble cot
would be a pretty sight almost a nosegay. Alas! that you should never
have the opportunity to experience such a pathetical situation.
But Mary, take my advice and find an artist for a lover.1 Meanwhile be
bold and not too ardent. Conquer Cambridge, then the world (there is a
world).
Your unromantic friend
Vivien

4 March [1923] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Ottoline
Since I saw you I have reached a critical point about the bank and the
Criterion. I must either give it up or get a minimum salary from Lady
R[othermere] (300 a year is little enough, God knows) so that we can go
away and save what remains of our health.
It is a question of my seeing her as soon as possible and getting a
contract. I think it more than likely that she will prefer to drop it, and me.
But she would be much more likely to give me what I ask if I could tell her
that other people (a group) would run a quarterly if she wont. It is simply
a matter of getting the consent to use names (not definite sums). For my
present purpose it would be enough if I could mention people who agree
to back me if she backs out. The promise might be purely nominal as no
sums each need be specified.
1 Mary Hutchinsons lover was Clive Bell, nephew of VW.
Could I say, if necessary, that you (with other names) were one of the
group?
And could you get your brother Henry1 to allow the use of his name
also. It is names (preferably titles) which will impress Lady R., not figures.
This would not actually commit either you or your brother to anything.
If she refused to give me my contract and salary, I should get twenty or
twenty-five people to contribute in this way to subsidize the paper as a
literary and critical, non-political review. But they neednt include all the
people mentioned first. I only want to say to Lady R. So and so and so and
so and so and so are among the people who have agreed to subsidize a
quarterly review; if you dont choose to do it yourself, and at once, the
review will be done by others.
If this is clear to you, and you agree, and can get your brother to agree,
and anyone else! I should be very very grateful. I want to act quickly.
There is 1) the people who allow their names to be used now.
2) the people I should get together if she refused. This would be far more
sympathetic than Bel Esprit scheme, because I should be giving my services
to a literary review instead of receiving charity.
How I wish you were in town, and I could talk to you! It was very
disappointing to see you only once.
In haste,
Affectionately
Tom
2
Bruce Richmond is confident of getting a number of people. 1000 a year
would do it altogether, and some could give a good deal and some very
little.
to W. W. Worster cc
Dear Sir,
I must apologise for the long delay which is entirely owing to the fact
that I have been working under extreme pressure for some weeks past and
have had no time to write any letters. I was very much interested by your
1 Lord Henry Bentinck (18631931): OMs favourite brother; Conservative MP for North-
West Norfolk 188692 and for South Nottinghamshire (with one interruption) from 1895 to
1929.
2 Bruce Richmond was editor of the TLS: see Glossary of Names.
67
article [on Icelandic literature] which I think succeeds in the difficult task
of making entirely unknown and practically inaccessible authors
interesting. What I have to suggest is this, and if it is not acceptable to you
please say so frankly.
The aim of the Criterion, in dealing with foreign literature, is to attempt
to introduce foreign authors themselves and to criticise only such authors
as are either known to our public or can be made known through the
Criterion. What I should like very much would be if you could divide your
article and take for the moment whichever one of your four authors seems
to you the most suitable and expand what you have said about him. We
should then want to get some specimen of his work suitable in character
and in length for the Criterion and present it at the same time. I do not
know whether you would care to undertake the translation as well as the
selection of such a specimen, and I suggest it rather diffidently; but at the
same time I suggest that you are certainly the most suitable person to
introduce such work in this country.1
If, however, you prefer to publish your essay as it stands I do not wish to
stand in your way, as I am sure that several other reviews would be very
glad to have it. I should very much appreciate the honour of having the first
inspection of it and I hope very much that my proposal will appeal to you.
With many thanks,
I am,
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
to Sydney Schiff 2 ts Valerie Eliot

My dear Sydney,
I am very much disappointed that I cannot dine with you on Wednesday,
and this letter will explain why. Ever since I saw you last I have been in a
state of worry to the point of complete paralysis over a crisis in my affairs
which has of course been impending had I not refused to see it for a very
long time. The work of the Criterion has been steadily increasing week by
week to such a point that I have steadily come nearer and nearer to
1 Despite TSEs suggestions, Worster never became a contributor to the C.

2 Sydney Schiff, see Glossary of Names. SSs short story The Thief was published under the
nom-de-plume Stephen Hudson in C. 1: 2 (Jan. 1923), 18891.
exhaustion; so that now when I am suddenly faced with a decision, I hardly
feel capable of making one or carrying it out when made. I have refused
always to recognise that there are any limitations to my capacity for work
and now I am faced with the consequences. I have for a long time been
living under such strain that I lost all power to realise how abnormal the
strain was.
The situation has now come to this: That I must now either give up the
Criterion, and that without any delay, or I must give up the bank and find
some work that I can fit in with the Criterion. After having sunk the whole
of my strength and all my time gratuitously into the Criterion for eighteen
months, and put the whole of my life into this work, it will be a terrific
blow to me to have to admit that it has all been a complete waste of time
and a fatal mistake; but it would be better to make this admission now
than to go on and collapse or that I could no longer carry on the work
which has been my sole source of livelihood.
I am at present faced with this choice. I am offered the literary editorship
of a paper whose name I am not yet at liberty to mention, at a salary of 300
a year with only six months guarantee of security.1 On the one hand it
would allow me the time to run the Criterion; on the other hand it would
be a serious drop of half my income, and I should have to use the rest of
my time in making up my income by other journalism, so that my actual
leisure for poetry and for ordinary living would be no greater than it is at
present. And furthermore I should have to work with the uncertainty
whether the post would last more than six months, and if it did last six
months, I might still be dismissed at three months notice, leaving me in a
worse position than I have ever been in my life. This would be the price for
the necessary time in which to carry on the Criterion; otherwise I must
abandon the Criterion at a moment when there seems to be a definite
prospect of its ultimate success. For that success, however, I cannot afford
to wait; I cannot live as I have been living for many more weeks; the
persons in whose hands this unmentioned paper is, are coming to town
this week; I do not know which day, but I must hold any time open for the
final interview at which all difficulties will be discussed and my final offer
made. That is why I cannot come to dinner on Wednesday. It is quite likely
1 In her diary (19 Feb.), VW said she had been trying to pull wires, to seat Tom at the
Nation as literary editor, & unseat my foe Miss Royde-Smith. She wished poor dear Tom
had more spunk in him, less need to let drop by drop of his agonised perplexities fall ever so
finely through pure cambric. One waits; sympathises, but it is dreary work. He is like a person
about to break down infinitely scrupulous, tautologous, & cautious (Diary, II, 236).
69
that I shall be free that evening, but I should not care to promise and then
disappoint you at the last minute. But if I am free Wednesday evening I
will certainly come in after dinner, and too I am very anxious to see Murry1
and it may be the only opportunity to see him. So it is quite possible, and
I hope, that I may see you on Wednesday.
Vivien is very disappointed that you are not taking a house in Sussex;2
she had been very much looking forward to it and we settled on the cottage
half in the hope that you would not be far away.
I cannot write more now: You will see from this letter what I have been
going through in the interval since I saw you last,
Affectionately,
Tom
to John Quinn3 ts Berg

My dear Mr Quinn,
I was delighted to get your long and kind letter after having heard
nothing of you for many months.4 I had become concerned about you,
because I had recently heard from Pound saying that he had had no news
of you for a long time and I feared that it indicated some severe
breakdown.5 My wife has had so much and so severe illness, and has borne
it and struggled for health with such heroic fortitude, that I think I can
understand the tortures of ill-health better than most people.
I consider your payment for the manuscript very generous indeed,6 and
feel that you have thwarted me in my attempt to repay you in some way
for all that you have done.
1 JMM, as one-time literary editor of the Athenaeum, was in a good position to offer advice.
2 Sydney and Violet Schiff had previously spent summers in Eastbourne.
3 John Quinn: see Glossary of Names.
4 In a letter of 26 Feb., Quinn had thanked TSE for the MSS of TWL and the leather bound
notebook, which TSE sent him in Dec. 1922. He found the manuscript of great interest, and
noted the evidence of Pounds criticisms on the poems: he personally would not have cut out
some of the parts that Pound advised you to cut. He would hold these MSS in trust and
provide copies of the original manuscript with any unpublished poems if required.
5 Quinn said that in early Jan. he had had an attack of some sort, probably due to the
accumulation of toxins in the system. He took two weeks of convalescence in Hot Springs,
Virginia, and returned at the end of Jan. feeling better. He had not written to EP all autumn
and was going to write in a few days.
6 Quinn had the MSS valued by James F. Drake, who thought a payment of about $2 a
page, which would be about $120, would be about right. Quinn considered these figures
I am interested to hear that Liveright has sold 1250 copies of my book
already and am glad that it has exceeded his expectations.1 At the same
time I am all the more surprised that I have had so far had [sic] not a penny
from him. I have just looked at the two contracts which you prepared, and
it seems to me clear that the first contract assured me of $150 on
publication, and that the supplementary contract did in no way affect this
clause. I remember also that you pointed out this advantage in a letter, so
I do not think I can be mistaken. I am very annoyed about this, although
it is the sort of behaviour which I have been led to expect from Liveright.
I am sick of doing business with Jew publishers who will not carry out
their part of the contract unless they are forced to;2 I have not the time
nor can I at this distance keep my eye on him incessantly and I hate to
bother you with these affairs. I wish I could find a decent Christian
publisher in New York3 who could be trusted not to slip and slide at every
opportunity. I should be very grateful if you would just confirm my reading
of the contract and drop a line to Liveright unless I am quite mistaken. As
I say, I hate to impose another burden on you, but who else is there who
would do what you have done?
somewhat conservative, and sent TSE a draft for 29.14.10, the equivalent at the present
rate of exchange of $140, which he thought fair and reasonable.
1 Horace Liveright, see Glossary of Names. TSE had met Liveright with EP in Paris on 4 Jan.
1922, and Quinn set up the contract for him to publish TWL the following summer. In his
Feb. letter, Quinn recorded that when ordering some additional copies of TWL from Boni &
Liveright, he found the first edition of 1,000 copies had been exhausted and that a second
edition of 1,000 copies was sold up to some 240 copies (this was properly a second
impression rather than a second edition).
2 Liverights biographer Tom Dardis notes: The presence of Jews in American publishing
was an anomaly in the pre-World War I years. When Horace [Liveright] and Albert Boni
created their firm in the late spring of 1917, they were entering a Christian industry owned
by Christians and staffed by them (Firebrand: The Life of Horace Liveright, 1995). Dardis
points out that many of the major works of the modernists were published in the US by
Jewish firms, citing JJs Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist (Huebsch), DHLs The Rainbow
and Women in Love (Seltzer), TSEs Prufrock (Knopf), and EP, Eugene ONeill, Ernest
Hemingway, Djuna Barnes, as well as TSEs TWL (Boni & Liveright). TSEs comment is a
response to the openly prejudiced Quinn, who wrote to EP in 1920 of the damned Jew
spewing-up of the Untermeyers, the Oppenheims, the Waldo Franks (Selected Letters of Ezra
Pound and John Quinn, 175). In his previous letter to TSE, Quinn wrote that on Broadway
the streets and sidewalks are infested . . . with swarms of horrible looking Jews, low, squat,
animal-like (26 Feb. 1923).
3 TSE wrote again to Liveright on 23 Aug. about a companion book of prose, which was
never realised. TSE did subsequently change US publishers, with Ash-Wednesday being
brought out by G. P. Putnams (1930); Poems 19091925 (1930) and Selected Essays (1932)
by Harcourt, Brace & Company. By that time, however, Liveright had been forced out of
business.
71
In the circumstances, I do not feel particularly disposed to come to any
arrangement with Liveright about the Criterion. It would apparently be
necessary to keep a collector at his door the whole time and God knows
what other tricks he might play with the paper.
Anyway, I am now in the midst of a terrific crisis. I wish to heaven
that I had never taken up the Criterion. It seemed a good thing and it is
a good thing, but although it is a pity to drop at such a promising
beginning I may very soon have to drop it and I am quite sincere when I
wish that I had never undertaken it. It has been an evergrowing
responsibility; it has been a great expense to me and I have not got a
penny out of it. There is not enough money to run it and pay me too.
I hoped it would be a solid thing for me, but there is no longer time to
wait for that. I think the work and worry have taken ten years off my life.
I have sunk the whole of my strength for the past eighteen months into
this confounded paper, when I ought to have been minding my business
and doing my own writing. The paper has therefore done me more harm
than good. The present situation is this: That I must either give up the
bank at once and find some work which would take less of my time
thereby sacrificing part of an income every penny of which I need or
else I must give up the Criterion before my health crashes and I am no
longer able to perform my bank work. I am now offered the post of
literary editor of the Nation, at 200 a year less than my present salary
and with no assurance that the job will last longer than six months, and
if I take that I shall have to go straight into new work, which for the first
six months will be very difficult and worrying, at a moment when I feel
much more like going into a sanatorium. In order to carry on the
Criterion I have had to neglect not only the writing I ought to be doing
but my private affairs of every description which for some time past I
have not had a moment to deal with. I have not even time to go to a
dentist or to have my hair cut, and at the same time I see the Criterion
full of most glaring defects which I could only avoid by having still more
time for it to devour,1 and at the same time I am simply unfit to take
risks which in any case I should not be justified in taking. .2
1 Ovid, Met. 15: 234: Tempus edax rerum; Shakespeare, sonnet 19: Devouring time
2 Added in ink.
I should like to write to you much more fully than this but I have not
the time.
Always sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot1

My dear Ottoline,
Has mischief been made? If so, I ask you to write and tell me frankly,
and I will clear it up.2
Affectionately,
Tom
1 Quinn responded to TSEs letter on 27 Mar. Not only had he immediately and successfully
chased Liveright for the $150 that he owed to TSE on publication, he agreed to guarantee to
TSE $400 a year for five years, and he had persuaded Otto H. Kahn to subscribe a further
$200 for five years. (Otto Kahn [18671934], German-born investment banker, philan-
thropist and patron of the arts, took British citizenship before moving to the USA in 1893,
whereupon he became a partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Company and a hugely successful banker.
He supported artists such as Hart Crane and George Gershwin, and was the author of many
books including Reflections of a Financier: A Study of Economic and Other Problems [1921].
Quinn had sent Kahn copies of Poems, TWL and SW.) If you accept the offer of the Nation,
at 200 less than your present salary, the $600 which I can guarantee at once and begin to
send you at once for five years would nearly make up that 200, and I think you could count
with reasonable safety upon my getting $200 or even $400 more, making it $800 or $1,000
for five years. He added a consideration that was to prove crucial in TSEs calculations: It
seems to me that if you accept the post of literary editor of the Nation you ought to have a
provision for at least a years notice or a years pay in case the job is terminated. He
counselled too: Now, take off the time and go to your dentist. That is rather important,
much more important than having your hair cut; and closed with this advice: It seems to me
that if the post of literary editor of the Nation is with decent white men, if you would not kill
yourself doing the work, and if it would give you time for your own creative work, that is
possibly the best thing that you could do.
2 The mischief is not known, but may refer to the Bel Esprit scheme discussed in his letter
to OM of 4 Mar. VW wrote to OM on 28 Feb. that TSE was very anxious that I should write
. . . and ask you not to take any further steps about getting subscriptions to the Fund. He says
he cant take any more money so long as he is in the Bank (Letters, III, 17).
73
to Virginia Woolf ms Berg
13 March [1923] [London]
My dear Virginia
This is just to thank you for your kind and encouraging letter.1 In the
midst of this destroying strain it has been a great joy to have such tireless
and generous friendship and understanding as you have given.
Keynes rang up this evening, and I am to see him Thursday, if he cannot
see me tomorrow. He asked me to lunch, but with a strict 12 to 1 in the
City (I cannot be ten minutes over time) there will not be time to say
anything, especially if I come to the West End to see him. So I hope he can
arrange a meeting after bank hours. If our meeting is very brief, it will be
a great advantage that he should have had your letter first.2 Thank you
again. I will let you know immediately I have seen him.
Yours always
Tom
from Henry Eliot ts Houghton

March 1923 [Chicago]
[Dear Tom]
Regarding the enclosed comment of Hechts,3 which was passed round
the office, Buchen and Needham, neither of whom be could be convicted
of snobbery or faddishness, are strong admirers of The Waste Land, and
disagree with Hechts conclusions. I do myself to a great extent, but I see
in the poem considerable spoofing. However, that may be considered
legitimate. There is much spoofing in Cabells work,4 and perhaps in all
good satire. I have never seen it carried to quite the extent that it appears
in The Waste Land; it wearies me a little, like the continual exploits of a
1 This letter does not appear to survive.

2 VW wrote to J. M. Keynes (see TSEs letter to him of 21 Mar.) on 13 Mar.: Eliot rang me
up last night, (apparently on the verge of collapse, but that is neither here nor there) and
explained the present, and very satisfactory, state of affairs. But there still remains the one
great obstacle which makes us hesitate to advise him to accept the question of guarantee
(VW, Letters, III, 20). In her diary (17 Mar.), she noted: Poor Tom the other day actually
couldnt speak for tears (thanking us) on the telephone. He is broken down, & yet must
buckle to & decide shall he take the Nation? can he defeat Maynard? I am tired of writing
the word guarantee which is what he claims (Diary, II, 239).
3 See below for notes to TSEs letter of 20 Mar. to Chicago Daily News.
4 James Branch Cabell (18791958), whose fantastical novel Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice
was published in 1919 and immediately suppressed for obscenity.
practical joker. The obscurantism, moreover, seems to me a little too
wilfully striven for trop voulu.1
The question of how much intent to attract notice there is in the poem
is a good deal similar to the question of the same intent in womens dress.
No nice woman, of course, will admit any reasons for the open bosom,
the sheer waist fabric, the gauzy stockings, the high heels, the skirt drawn
tight over the haunches, the cosmetics, the aphrodisiac perfumes, save that
these things are the fashion, and that she likes to look sweet and dainty.
Strong sub-conscious inhibitions to frankness, and world-old hypocritical
complexes prevent her having any conscious knowledge of her motives.
Of course, most people, like Ben Hecht, recognize no motives except
conscious and deliberate motives.
I believe that you contend that the matter of motive is not relevant to
literary criticism.2 That seems to me to be a superficial psychology. The
whole question of a thing being trop voulu which often spoils a work
of art is one of too apparent motives. If a petty motive is discernible it
lowers the dignity of a work of art. Petty motives inevitably produce bad
art, and it is perhaps a matter of only metaphysical importance whether it
is the motive or the result that offends. To say that it is of no importance
whether the motive of the poet is to buy whiskey for himself or bread for
his baby, is quibbling. Such motives, being on an entirely different plane of
consciousness, are of course irrelevant. But if his motive is to win cheap
popularity it will inevitably be apparent in his work. Neither is the
personality of the artist irrelevant, as you claim.3 Le style, cest lhomme.4
The only other criticism I have to make of the poem is that it is too
excessively allusive. I have always regarded the habit of quoting as a vice
to be tolerated only to a limited extent. It is a substitute for original
thought, and a fatally easy vice for a learned man to fall into. Huxleys
hero, quoting from some poet, wonders disgustedly whether he has a brain
or only an education.5 I do not like a poem to be a scrap book.
1 Too willed (French).

2 See Tradition and the Individual Talent: It is not in his personal emotions, the emotions
provoked by particular events in his life, that the poet is in any way remarkable or interesting
(SE, 57).
3 The poet has, not a personality to express, but a particular medium, which is only a
medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar
and unexpected ways (Tradition and the Individual Talent, SE, 56).
4 Style is the man, a quotation from Buffon.
5 Denis, in Crome Yellow (1922), after quoting some verse, exclaims inwardly: Oh, these
rags and tags of other peoples making! Would he ever be able to call his brain his own? Was
there, indeed, anything in it that was truly his own, or was it simply an education? (Ch. xxv).
75
The trivial passages of the poem certainly do not stand on their own
merits as poetry, and can only be justified as producing a certain
psychological effect. They are the sort of things that one is rather ashamed
of thinking, and that are extracted from peoples minds only by
psychiatrists employing hypnotism. Their introduction seems to me as
dadaistic as sticking a piece of glass, a piece of wood or cloth, to a painting.
They have practically no selective value; for instance, hey, diddle, diddle,
is as good as fe, fi, fo, fum, for these purposes. However, I am no quibbler
about means, if they attain a successful effect.
On the other hand, my sensibility has become dulled to these things by
repeated reading, and my appreciation of the merits of the poem enhanced.
I am skeptical about the value of the thought in the poem (did you not
once say that ideas were a handicap? I agree with you). But I believe The
Waste Land the best approach to a highly serious mood that I have seen
in modern poetry. It approaches at times to Biblical seriousness, than which
there is none finer. And the Bible is certainly not burdened with ideas.
I expect your next poem to be either much finer or much more obscure
and perverse. Heaven direct your steps.1
[Henry]
20 March 1923 [London]
My dear Whibley,
I have been hoping daily to write to you, but I have been postponing it
until I had definite news of myself to report. At present, matters are still
in suspense, but I must tell you that in any case I shall hold out for the two
years which you so strongly advised.2
I will write to you again and only write now to tell you that I enjoyed
my weekend with you more than any occasion on which I have seen you
before which is an expression of very great pleasure indeed. You do not
know what a comfort and satisfaction it has been to me to know you.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
1 He shall direct thy paths (Proverbs 3: 50).

2 To secure a guaranteed two-year contract at the Nation. Replying on 24 Mar., Whibley
was glad TSE was sticking out for two years.
Dear Seldes,
I am feeling a little steadier, but was unable to write you last night. What
I chiefly wanted to say was first, to make clear that the whole matter is
extremely tentative. What I put to you is merely a possible scheme which
depends upon a combination of circumstances. As I said, it is absolutely
vital that the matter should be kept between ourselves, that is you, Thayer,
Watson, and myself, until I myself have discussed it with Lady Rothermere,
and if any hint of it should reach her through any other channel but myself
at the proper moment it would be fatal to the scheme and to the existence
of the Criterion as well. In the first place, I can only put it to her that I can
show her good reason for its being the best course, and in the second place
it is quite likely that the scheme will not appeal to her even then. For
several weeks the situation must be left in complete suspense except of
course for discussion between Thayer and yourself.
The other point is that I did not wish to give you the impression that
Lady Rothermeres attitude toward the paper had been in the least
indifferent or miserly. There was no reason why she should have started a
paper at all except her desire to do so. She was told that it could be done
for the sum which she was able and willing to guarantee and I took it up
as an interesting venture on the basis of that amount. She was quite
prepared, and indeed desired, that I should take a certain amount of the
money in payment for the work, but I was anxious to make the best of the
paper and I preferred to have the whole of the money employed in bringing
out the Criterion properly and in paying contributors at the best rates we
could. As a matter of fact, she gave me 25, which was outside of the sum
guaranteed for the paper, for publishing my poem and I preferred not to
take anything for minor obligations.
I am sure of course that the paper could progress faster and secure a
larger circulation more quickly if it had more capital at its disposal. I think
these are the only points which I wish to make at the moment, but I am
feeling very exhausted and my nerve is not in very good order so I may
want to write to you again very soon.
I was very glad to have had the pleasure of seeing something of you on
Monday and do not forget to let me have your address as soon as you are
77
settled. I hope that you will be able to get to work on your book under the
best conditions.1
Sincerely yours,
T. S. E.
to W. B. Yeats cc
Dear Mr Yeats,
Forgive me for not having written immediately to thank you for your
letter, and again on receipt of your script from your agent.2 I have been so
overwhelmed with personal affairs of the most vital nature that I am forced
to appear unbusinesslike as well as rather ungrateful. It is of course an
immense satisfaction and benefit to the Criterion to have the honour of
being the review to publish anything of yours in this country. Of course the
American publication is a complication3 which has to be worked out in
such a way as to bring no disadvantage to the contributors, as the Criterion
is unfortunately not yet sufficiently remunerative to be able to purchase
from its contributors the exclusive rights in the English language.
I am very happy indeed to have received this essay from you and assure
you that the Criterion fully appreciates your kindness and generosity.
I hope that I may see you again in London before very long.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
His Mother to Henry Eliot cc Houghton

20 March 1923 24 Concord Ave, Cambridge, Mass.
Dear Henry:
I have just received from Tom the letter he told me he was writing. I will
write in part what he says: I have been looking in every letter from you for
some word about your plans for this summer. You must have known, as
1 Seldess pioneering study of American popular culture, The Seven Lively Arts (1924).
2 On 5 Mar., Yeats wrote that his agent Watt would send that article of mine. In a letter
to the Dial, TSE refers to it as describing a kind of vision. Yeats said that TSE might find
it dry but at the worst it records a new kind of cross corroboration.
3 Yeats wanted to publish it in the American Dial: it appeared as A Biographical Fragment
(Dial 75: 1, July 1923, 1319), and was the first item in C. 1: 4 (July 1923), 31521.
I have mentioned it in nearly every letter, that I have been counting on
seeing you this year. If you had made up your mind not to come, you
would, I am sure have told me so and explained the reasons, as it would
be unkind to keep me in unnecessary suspense and deluded hope. If on the
other hand you were merely considering coming and were weighing
reasons on both sides, I should have hoped that you [would] have
expressed to me something of what you were thinking, in order that I
might know the situation and discuss it with you. So I cannot understand
your complete silence on the subject. I am sure you do not realise our state
of suspense and anxiety, or that it would be a greater disappointment now
to learn that you were not coming than it would have been four months
ago. Unless there are strong reasons to the contrary and if there were
strong reasons you would certainly have told me of them and if you really
want to see me as much as I want to see you, you will surely come this
year. Your stock is now, and will probably be for some time to come,
paying better than anyone expected; at the present time all the family are
comparatively affluent. From everything that Henry tells me this is a
season of prosperity in America, and some of your land is he tells me
appreciating in value. You are, unless facts have been concealed from me,
in very good health, and there is nothing to prevent you from coming if you
want to come. If you do not care to come without Henry, I feel perfectly
sure that he could get a long enough holiday either to come with you and
go back first or to come later and return with you, and perhaps his coming
would be a greater inducement, if it did not seem worth while to take such
a journey otherwise.
I cabled you in order to prepare you for this letter and so that you might
be thinking about the question until this letter arrived. If you knew how I
long to see you you would not postpone this decision another day. I know,
because I saw it, and because you and all of the family spoke of it
afterward, how much you enjoyed the trip two years ago.1 Of course you
had then the pleasure of seeing England for the first time as well as seeing
Vivien and myself, and I cannot offer you the same novelty twice. But I
remind you of how much you enjoyed it because you may have forgotten
how much urging it took on my part and how many letters I had to write
in order to induce you to come then.
We have carefully thought out plans. Vivien is much better than last
time, and I can assure you that you would find our arrangements much
1 CCE wrote a detailed diary of her first trip to England to visit TSE and VHE in 1921,
which she copied out later and presented to them as a souvenir of her stay (Valerie Eliot).
79
better than they were the last time. I should live here at Clarence [Gate
Gardens] with you so I should be with you a great deal more than last
time. You would of course have this flat; Vivien would be part of the time
in London and part at a small cottage we have taken near Chichester. It is
unnecessary to go into details, I only assure you that we have worked them
out. And I may assure you that you have not the slightest idea what a
happiness it would be to Vivien to have you here. You will never know
how much your last visit meant to her, and you can have no idea how
much she cares that you should come again.
I can write no more and I do not want to mention anything else in so
important a letter. But please try to realise how much this matters and how
incessantly it has been in my mind.
Toms letter I find distressing to me. I should have written sooner that I
did not feel as if I ought to come this summer. I cannot cross the ocean
more than once more and if I go again it must be next summer. I am sorry
I did not write Tom decidedly that I should not come this summer. I feel
as if I had all too little to divide among my children. But I should like to
feel I could go next summer. I shall never be able if I do go again abroad
to do as much as I did two years ago. You could not possibly go this
summer but next summer you might go with me for a few weeks. I do not
think Marian cares much about it, if Margaret went with me she would be
more of a care than a help.1 She does not realize my infirmity of age. I
should prefer to stay a short time with you rather than a long time with one
of my daughters.
I do not know what to write to Tom. I can only tell him that if it is a
possible thing I will come next spring. That will be for the last time.
I am continually afraid of your taking a cold in your fatigued condition.
The papers say it has been fearfully cold in Chicago, and today the cold
wave is here. Tomorrow, cloudy and warmer.
Write me what you think. I have never given Tom reason to think I was
going to London this year, but I ought to have told him decidedly that I was
not coming. I do not know whether I ought to have planned to go. It is too
late now. Marian is spending ten days with Charlotte2 because she is so
tired all the time. She hardly seems to me fit to go with me as a caretaker.
I do not think she cares much for sight-seeing. And I could not do much.
1 Margaret Dawes Eliot (18711956) was the second Eliot child: TSEs second-oldest sister.
2 Charlotte Eliot: see Glossary of Names.
Tell me whether I ought to risk anything on the Savonarola.1 I fear
Houghton & Mifflin would not assume the expense. I will take this out
and mail it. I hope you will get a pleasant lodger in Sheldons place.
With love,
[Mother]
to Stanley Rice2 cc
Dear Sir,
I am much in the wrong not to have written to you before about your
article3 for I can only excuse myself by pressure of business of the gravest
nature. There has been much difficulty in fitting in various contributions,
some of which had been requested but not expected, and therefore it has
only been possible to assure printing your article in the number which will
appear at the beginning of July. I send you the proof herewith and hope
sincerely that appearance in that month will be satisfactory to you. I shall
be very glad to hear from you on the matter as the issue for July is now
being put together.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
to The Editor of The Dial cc

20 March 1923 [The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn]
Dear Sir,
Mr William Butler Yeats has sent us what he calls A Biographical
Fragment describing a kind of vision. He tells me that he is sending it to
the Dial, according to his arrangements with you. I have spoken to Mr
Gilbert Seldes, who was in London until yesterday, and he has authorised
me to write to you asking you if you would be so kind as to print it in the
July number, as the Criterion will be unable to print it until its issue of that
1 Her poem was ultimately published with an intro. by TSE (Cobden-Sanderson, 1926).
2 Stanley Rice (18691944), Indian civil servant and orientalist, published Tales from the
Mahabharata (1924) as well as studies of Indian religion.
3 Alcestis and Savitri: A Suggestion (C. 1: 4, July 1923) compared the Greek story of
Alcestis (which TSE was later to draw on in CP) to a similar tale in the Indian epic The
Mahabharata.
81
month. This would still give you the advantage of a few days before the
Criterion is on sale in America and we should therefore much appreciate
your generosity if you could arrange publication in that number. The
Criterion on the other hand, would always be glad to arrange that no
contribution which you also were using should appear in the Criterion
before it appeared in the Dial.
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
to W. P. Ker 1 cc
Sir,
I have received from Mr Charles Whibley your Essay on Byron which
the Criterion will be very happy to have the honour of publishing in its July
number.2 It is extremely gratifying, as we have been anxious for a long time
to secure something from you, and I am afraid that I have bothered Mr
Whibley more than I ought to have in begging him to intercede with you.3
You will receive proofs in due course.
I am sorry to say that the Criterion is able to pay so little that it can
make no discrimination between contributors and must pay at the uniform
rate of 10 per 5,000 words.
Mr Whibley has promised me, when he next comes to town, to arrange
that I will have the pleasure of meeting you one evening. I cannot in good
conscience urge him to come to town, because his health lately has suffered
so much from his occasional visits, but I earnestly hope that when he does
come he will carry out his promise.4
With most grateful thanks,
I am, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
[T. S. E.]
1 W. P. Ker (18551923): polymathic Scottish scholar and historian; Fellow of All Souls
College, Oxford; Quain Professor of English Language and Literature, University College,
London, 18891922; Professor of Poetry, Oxford University: see The Art of Poetry: Seven
Lectures, 19201922 (1923); author of Epic and Romance (1897), The Dark Ages (1904),
Essays on Medieval Literature (1905), and Collected Essays, ed. Charles Whibley (1925).
2 In fact, Kers Byron: An Oxford Lecture appeared in C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923), 115.
3 In Nov. 1922, Whibley said he had asked W. P. Ker to write for C.
4 Ker replied on 24 Mar. that he did not expect to be in London before October. In the
event, he died before they could meet.
to The Literary Editor of the Chicago Daily News cc
Sir,
According to your issue of the 21st of February,1 Mr Ben Hecht2 has
stated that he met me in London, and added that he knows that I
thoroughly hate Americans and everything they write and read. Mr Ben
Hecht has never met me in London or anywhere else, and I hope that you
will kindly publish this fact as I think that if it is brought to Mr Hechts
notice he is not likely in future ever to want to meet me. I do not know
what credit is usually given in Chicago to Mr Hechts statements but I trust
that your readers will observe that as Mr Hecht has on a point of fact said
a thing that is not,3 it is superfluous for me even to contradict the further
statements which Mr Hecht has made about me.
I am, Sir,
Your obedient Servant,
[T. S. E.]
Cher Monsieur,
Je suis dsespr quand je pense que jai demand une faveur vous et
que je nai pas encore rempli mes devoirs envers la Nouvelle Revue
1 The literary editor gossiped (The Literary Scene, Chicago Daily News, 21 Feb. 1923, 14):
In speaking about The Waste Land, T. S. Eliots much-discussed modernist poem, Ben Hecht
said on Saturday at Schlogls that he considered it a subtle joke by Eliot on the American
critics. The poem has certain merits in it, said Hecht, as is natural in a poem written by a
big man like Eliot, but it differs so radically from his work in Prufrock and other poems that
I have no doubt that it was carefully planned by Eliot as a hoax on the American public. I met
Eliot in London and know that he thoroughly hates Americans and everything they write and
read and would consider him wholly capable of hoaxing the Dial and all its friends.
2 Ben Hecht (18941964), novelist and dramatist, made his name as a maverick newspaper-
man on the Chicago Daily News, where he wrote a column 1001 Afternoons in Chicago,
before founding the Chicago Times in 1923. He was a friend of Maxwell Bodenheim and
published a novel The Florentine Dagger: A Novel for Amateur Detectives (1923). In 1926
he moved on to Hollywood, where he wrote a series of successful film scripts, including The
Front Page (1928). In Sept. 1922 Edmund Wilson had spoken of Seldes putting him in a
class with Eliot, Joyce, and Ben Hecht; and on 30 Aug. 1922 EP asked, in relation to
contemporary prose writers, Is there anyone but Hecht and Sherw. Anderson?
3 Jonathan Swifts Gulliver, recalling his stay in the land of the Houyhnhnms, reports:
I said the thing which was not. (For they have no word in their language to express lying or
falsehood) (Gullivers Travels, Bk IV, ch. 3).
83
Franaise.1 Depuis deux mois jai eu lutter avec une sant affaiblie contre
des problmes personnels qui ont tous synchronis un moment fatal. Jai
du mme laisser le travail ncessaire pour le Criterion et je ne peux dans
le prochain numro dmontrer que trop clairement le temps exigu, que jy
ai dpens. Ces sont des difficults qui auraient du se rsoudre et qui
devraient encore se rsoudre en quelques jours. Mais, selon le conseil de
mon mdecin, il est probable que je pars en quelques semaines de vacance
aussitt que possible.
Dans ces circonstances que jai signales, vous me trouverez peut-tre
dvergond, parce que jespre que nous allons recevoir votre article
important dans peu de jours.2 Croyez au moins que pour nous cest un
espoir quil serait cruel de decevoir.
Je nai pas encore rpondu la question que vous mavez pose au sujet
de la remunration pour un morceau de Proust. Je ne peux offrir que la
mme que nous offrons tous nos collaborateurs 10 par 5000 mots. Si
la Nouvelle Revue Franaise ne peut pas accepter, je devrais remettre les
ngociations jusqu la retour de Lady Rothermere au mois davril.
Croyez, Monsieur, mes sentiments les plus cordiaux, et la haute
valeur que nous mettons sur nimporte quels crits de vous.
T. S. Eliot
PS Le Directeur de priodique de New York, Vanity Fair, ma demand la
permission de r-imprimer (en anglais naturellement) la dernire chronique
la Nouvelle Revue Franaise.3 Puisque cet article a t command par la
Nouvelle Revue Franaise je ne voudrais pas le faire paratre ailleurs sans
avoir pralablement votre permission. Je vous prie donc de me laisser avoir
un petit mot, mais jespre que vous ny voyez aucune objection.4
1 TSE had not yet submitted the chronicle for NRF he had promised on 2 Feb.; it would
be submitted by 15 Mar.
2 Jacques Rivire, Notes on a Possible Generalisation of the Theories of Freud, C. 1: 4
(July 1923), 32947.
3 Edmund Wilson wrote (26 Feb.): I have just seen your thing on English prose in the
Nouvelle Revue Franaise and I wish you could let us reprint it in Vanity Fair . . . I think it
is so admirable that it would be a great pity for it not to appear in English. We could pay you
about $75.
4 Translation: Dear Sir, I am in despair when I think that I asked a favour of you, and that
I have not yet carried out my obligations towards the Nouvelle Revue Franaise. During the
last two months I had to struggle, in a weakened state of health, with personal problems
which all coincided at a fateful moment. I have even had to neglect the work required for the
Criterion, and the next number will betray only too clearly the inadequately short time I
spent on it. The difficulties are of a kind that ought to have been resolved and should even
now be resolved in a few days. But, following my doctors advice, I shall probably go away
for a few weeks holiday as soon as possible.
to John Maynard Keynes1 ts Marshall
Dear Mr Keynes,
I so completely realise what must have been the effect on you of my
inconceivable delay in replying to your offer of the literary editorship of the
Nation, that I feel that the only thing I can now do is to give you the
satisfaction of turning me down. For this reason I am writing the following
statement, although knowing that it is obviously impossible for you or any
paper to accept:
1. that I receive a guarantee of at least two years.
2. that I give the bank three months notice, with a [further del.]
fourth month of absence.
3. as I have already explained to you, I have been engaged for three
years on special work (Enemy Debts) which is coming to an end,
but some of the most important part of this work is still to be
done, and there is no one else in the bank with the necessary
experience and training to do it. I cannot myself approach, or
allow anyone else to approach on my behalf, any official of the
bank with a view to releasing me before the end of the three
months.
4. I cannot engage to do any work for the Nation while still at the
bank, as I must on the contrary cease all possible work for some
Given the circumstances I have just outlined, you will perhaps find it shameless on my part
to hope that we shall receive your important article during the next few days. Please believe
at least that the disappointment of this hope would affect us cruelly.
I have not yet answered the query you put to me about payment for a piece of Proust. I can
only offer the same rate as for all our contributors 10 per 5000 words. If this is not
acceptable to La Nouvelle Revue Franaise, I must postpone negotiations until Lady
Rothermeres return in April.
I send you my most cordial greetings and assure you of the great value we attach to all your
writings. T. S. Eliot
PS The editor of the New York periodical Vanity Fair has asked for my permission to reprint
(in English naturally) my last letter to the Nouvelle Revue Franaise. Since the article was
commissioned by the Nouvelle Revue Franaise, I would not like to publish it elsewhere
without your prior authorisation. Please send me a word to this effect; I trust that you have
no objection.
1 John Maynard Keynes (18831946), economist author of Economic Consequences of
the Peace (1919), which was much admired by TSE, and Treatise of Probability (1921) had
recently become chairman of the Liberal periodical The Nation. Following the crash of 1929,
he was to write General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1935).
85
time to come. I have been obliged to consult a specialist in
Harley Street, who urged most emphatically the necessity for an
immediate and long rest. I could not possibly ask the bank for
leave of absence after I had given them notice, so I had intended
to take this holiday at the end of the three months. However,
although the consultant declared this period of rest to be
essential, I was prepared to forego it, in order to join the Nation
at the end of the three months. But I have just had news from
America, connected with my private affairs, which makes it of
the utmost importance that I should go to America, at the first
possible moment, even if only for a week. I should not be able
to leave for three months, having given notice at the bank, and
must then make the visit to America, instead of taking the rest
which the doctor insists is essential for the recovery of my
health.
On these conditions I would give notice to the bank on receiving your
formal contract.
Realising perfectly that my behaviour in this matter will always be
incomprehensible to those of my friends who have worked so hard on my
behalf, and that it can have no other effect than to forfeit your good will
and that of many others,1
I am,
Yours faithfully,
T. S. Eliot
His Mother to Henry Eliot ts Houghton

22 March 1923 [24 Concord Ave]
Dear Henry:
I am loathe to trouble you when you are so driven with work, but I do
not know to whom else of the family to go. I have been much distressed
by Toms letter,2 and have hardly known what I ought to do. I suppose he
is justified in reproaching me because I have not written to him decidedly
about going to London this summer, and I should hate to have him
1 RA was to write to HR, 19 June 1925: Eliot has funked his responsibilities to us since
1921. At that date he could have had the Nation . . . (Richard Aldingtons Letters to Herbert
Read, ed. David S. Thatcher, The Malahat Review 15, July 1970, 17).
2 The letter in question is missing.
disappointed. Several times he has referred to my coming this year, but I
have not given the least intimation that I should do so. As, however, I had
not planned to go, [I] should have so written him decidedly.
Do you not receive the impression from his letter that he expects me to
come without Marian? He speaks of my staying with him at Clarence Gate
Gardens, but there are only two bedrooms, and if Marian were with me he
would be obliged to sleep on the lounge in the sitting-room, which, I fear
would not be very restful. I have the impression that Tom thinks I am a
great deal stronger than I am. He does not realize my age. I do not know
whether he thinks I can cross the ocean alone. If I thought there was any
possibility of your being able to take a month off next summer and could
go with me, I should prefer to wait until then. We had a very smooth
passage to London and back two years ago, but a rough passage or a storm
would be a severe strain on me, and I should feel much better to have you
with me than simply Marian, as she is timid and liable to break down in
an emergency. Just now and for the entire winter she has been quite weak
and not at all well. Tomorrow she will have spent ten days with Charlotte
for a change. She has almost nothing to do for me, but takes me as a heavy
responsibility, and it seems to wear on her nerves. This is hard for me as
well as herself.
I thought to consult with Ada1 last night, as she came in unexpectedly
and did a very unfortunate thing. I had intended to read Toms letter to her,
but am so forgetful I put the letter in her hands, and she became very angry
when she read what he wrote about the familys objecting to my going to
London. She said she would not express an opinion either way. Margaret
came into the room while she was talking and expressed the opinion which
Ada agreed, that I was the only one of the family Tom cared for. All this
distressed me greatly. I could not ask Ada to attend to any finance while I
was away.
Charlotte has just been here and says she would go with me, but I should
be sorry to have her leave her family. And I do not know whether they
would want her. I think one thing is pretty certain and that is that I ought
not to cross the ocean alone. And if I was alone with Tom and he gone all
day, I should be pretty lonely. I had rather wait and go with you for a short
visit than to be alone there.
Now I want you to write and tell me what you think I ought to do. I do
not think I am as hale and hearty as Tom thinks. I am sorry for him, more
sorry than I can tell. Do you not think you might get off for a month next
1 TSEs sister Ada Sheffield (18691943).
87
summer? I might pay your expenses if I do not have to pay Marians. If you
have not already written expressing your judgment and your under-
standing of the plan when this reaches you, will you send a night message
for which I will repay you?
Your perplexed
Mother
from John Maynard Keynes ms Valerie Eliot

23 March 1923 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury
Dear Eliot,
I have shown your letter to my associates, and, as you rather anticipated,
they feel with great regret that they cannot meet you. The vital point is of
course the four months delay plus the doubt as to what your health may
be at the end of that time. So I am afraid the proposal must definitely lapse
and we must set about making other arrangements.1
I am very sorry. I think we could have worked together and made a good
thing of it. I appreciate deeply your difficulties. You mustnt think that the
last paragraph of your letter to me is anything but the exact opposite of the
truth. Please believe that my sympathy and goodwill is not diminished but
increased. If I can ever be of any assistance to you on a future occasion, I
hope you will call on me.
Yours sincerely,
J. M. Keynes
to Mary Hutchinson ms Texas

Friday, 23 March 1923 [Postmark n.w.1]
My dear Mary
It is very sweet of you to ask us to the boat race but when is it? is it
tomorrow?2 if so, my question need not be answered, because we shall be
Away. You know, we have got a country cottage, a tiny one; today has
been spent in packing furniture, and tomorrow we go down early to arrive
1 Keynes offered the post to Leonard Woolf. VW noted: Here I have been toiling these 3
weeks to make Eliot take it; finally he shied; & this is the result. No doubt there are
drawbacks, but it means safety for the moment, indeed luxury (Diary, II, 240).
2 The Oxford and Cambridge boat race was held on Sat., 24 Mar.
before the van and get the furniture in.1 It will be such a days work. Well,
anyway, there will be the summer if there is to be any summer with a
chance, I hope of meeting, in aquatic leisure?
Always afftly
T.

Dear Henry:
I shall expect a letter from you tomorrow. I wrote to Tom yesterday telling
him I should probably cable him before he received my letter. It is evident to
me that he expects me without Marian. And I have written him that I could
not go to London without you or Marian not only to accompany me but
to remain with me. I would not like to be alone there. I am aware there is
not one chance in a hundred you could go with me this year.
He writes that I will be with him at 9 Clarence Gate Gardens while Vivien
is at a cottage near Chichester. You know there are only two bedrooms at
their apartments [so] there would be no room for Marian. I should be alone
all day while Tom was at the Bank, and surely Vivien would expect him at
week ends at Chichester. It makes me feel homesick to think of it. I should
feel very helpless especially if I should for any cause break down.
I looked through all Toms back letters last night and found only one in
which he spoke of my coming on. Vivian [sic] however, in her last letter
said they expected me and that Tom or she could get a room outside, so
that I could come. That remark I should have taken more seriously, and I
greatly reproach myself that I did not write Tom I did not expect to go this
year. It at the time seemed to me impossible that I should allow either
Vivien or Tom to sleep outside so as to give me a room. I have done wrong
but I do not feel that Tom is justified in reproaching me as bitterly as he is
doing. It simply seems to me as if I could not be alone in London without
you or Marian. And if he cables for Marian to come with me, I shall hate
to think of his leaving his own home to make a place for her, and it will be
uncomfortable for her to feel that she is not wanted. I would like to please
Tom, for I feel from the tone of his letter that he is sore tried. If I went I
should want to go from Boston and that late in June. The Winifredian sails
the last of May or first of June, and I should not want to go until the last
1 TSE and VHE moved into their rented cottage at Fishbourne, nr. Chichester, on 24 Mar.
89
of June. Another sister ship under a new name is likely to be put on, but
they do not know when the sailing will be. The Winifredian is much
cheaper than the New York steamers, the highest price for two being
$180.00 for an outside state room.
Tom writes Mr and Mrs Haigh-Wood1 will be in London and will be
glad to take me around. Mrs Haigh-Wood is very pleasant, but she is not
congenial to me, and I can not forget. She is not a person of high principle
and I should not want to be much with her. I do not think Tom entirely
trusts her. He makes the very best of his marriage which was a great
misfortune, and becomes more and more so. I can not bear to look forward
for him. The standards in the female branch of that family are not as high
as they should be. I think it is different with the men.
Do you think there is any prospect you could be absent a month next
summer and go with me? I had planned to make the attempt next year but
not this. Do you think I ought to go this to atone for not having written
Tom this year that I was not coming? And ought I to allow him to change
his plan and live outside to make room for Marian? This matter lies heavy
on my mind. Then I had wanted when you came on, to see about the
printing or publishing of the Savonarola. I am hesitating about writing to
Professor Lowes2 to ask if he thinks it worthy of publication. I would give
it to Houghton & Mifflin3 in the summer (if they will accept it at my risk),
and have it published in the late fall.
I hope to hear from you and obtain some expression of opinion
tomorrow morning. I shall be more or less influenced by your judgement
as to what it is my duty to do. If I go to England this summer it is not
probable that I shall ever go again. Tom will have to come here if I feel the
end approaching. I should like to live as long as I can keep my faculties.
I can not bear to think of long days alone in London, and I do not
want to go to Chichester. Itchenor was a nightmare save that we were
with dear Tom.4
1 Charles Haigh-Wood (see Glossary of Names) and Rose Haigh-Wood (ne Robinson),
Viviens parents, whom Charlotte Eliot had met in London in 1921.
2 John Livingston Lowes (18671945) taught at Washington University before becoming
Professor of English at Harvard, 191830; best known for his remarkable study of Coleridges
sources, The Road to Xanadu: A Study in the Ways of the Imagination (1927), a work
discussed in TSEs TUPUC, 789.
3 Houghton & Mifflin was Lowess Boston publisher.
4 In her 1921 memoir, CCE wrote: For a short time in Toms vacation we went together to
a small town called Itchenor. They visited the country home of St John and Mary
Hutchinson.
I asked Mr Hight about the 4% and the 5% Tel & Tel, and he said the
4% appreciated in value so that they would be worth more at the end of
the six years. But of course they would meantime give me less income. My
own feeling is that I prefer the 5% income now. He said that Tel & Tel was
allowable for trust funds that it was regarded as a safe investment. So my
own preference is for four 5% Tel & Tel. I will then purchase one US
Rubber if I have enough left and you desire.
Nichols wrote to know if Halverson was sole Agent for Block 17, and
what I would sell it for. I have just written that I informed Halverson I
would sell at the same price as that obtained for Block 13. And that since
receiving this last letter of theirs I had informed him that I would like to
have them (the Nichols firm) also try to sell it, and if they could get a better
offer than he, I would pay him the half commission. I wrote Halverson
also that I would prefer he should secure a purchaser if he could, but I
would like to double my opportunity. Was not that right? I think the
Nichols Company is waking up. If you do not approve of this let me know.
I am hesitating now about addressing Professor Lowes. What do you
think of it? I think I could say to the publisher Grandgent1 and Lowes
endorsed my book.
I wish you were here and I could talk with you. How are things going
business? I shall be anxious to know whom you take in Sheldons place. I
hope an agreeable person. It will be expensive while there are only you
and Peckham. I suppose if the latter married you would break up.
Ever with love,
Mother
to Horace B. Liveright 2 cc
Dear Mr Liveright,
I like your production of my book but I do not like your business
methods. I intentionally allowed two months to pass without mentioning
the advance royalty of $150 to you, in order to know whether you would
fail to remember it until I reminded you of it.3 I should be glad to receive
1 Charles Hall Grandgent (18621939), Professor of Romance Languages at Harvard,

18961932; editor of Dante, and author of The Power of Dante (1918).
2 Horace Liveright: see Glossary of Names.
3 Valerie Eliot has seen a photocopy (now lost) of the cheque, dated 15 Mar. 1923 (when
TWL was in its second impression). TSE had to countersign it twice because it was made out
to F. S. Eliot.
91
some explanation of this absence of mind, as I shall have to discuss with
Lady Rothermere, immediately on her return to this country, the question
of contracting for the publication of the Criterion in America.
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
to Sydney Schiff ms Valerie Eliot

Tuesday [27 March 1923] 9 Clarence Gate Gardens
My dear Sydney,
This is just a line to tell you that the final decision is: I am staying at the
Bank. I will ask you to keep this to yourselves for a week, as I do not want
discussion going on about it.
We are both very tired tired does not express it we are too tired to
go away at present and shall not go away over Easter.
I do hope the Surrey air is doing you good and giving peace. With love
to both.
Yrs. aff.
Tom
from His Mother ts Valerie Eliot

My very dear Tom:
I received last evening your letter of the 19th inst., and conscious or
subconscious it has not been out of my mind since. I had not altogether
given up the idea of going late in June. Of one thing I was certain I could
not safely cross the ocean alone. I knew that Henry could not go, and that
Marian must, not only for the voyage but in London. Henry has not
influenced me against going. I did not even know you had written to him
or he to you, until I sent him a copy of your letter to me, and asked his
advice. I was already sure he could not leave this year, and he wrote:
The honest truth is that it would be a very bad thing for me to go
abroad to take three or even two months this summer, for this is an
important stage in the progress of my business affairs, and I do not see
how the other two men could possibly get along without me. The thing
means too much to me right now, when prospects are bright, and it looks
like the solution of my whole future. It is exactly the opposite of the case
in 1921, when I thought I had practically nothing to lose by going away.
He also wrote that he had vaguely in mind the possibility of making a trip
next summer.
I think I have already written you some of the details of Henrys
business. He is working very hard. I was sure he could not go with me this
year, and knew there was no place for Marian, unless I went to a hotel
with her. Even if Vivian were in London I should not like to call upon her
as I do upon Marian. I will promise you to come next summer if it is a
possible thing and may go to some private hotel where I could see you
every day one of the not most expensive.
As soon as I had read your letter I started right down to the Square and
sent you a cablegram. It seems to me if I do not go to England this
summer, not until next, it would do you good to come here. If instead of
two vacations you could have a month at one time, you would have ten
days or so here. The ocean trip would quiet your nerves which seem to
me unstrung, and I think would do you more good than travel by land.
I would be only too glad to pay the expense of the trip. I hope Vivian will
urge you to do this. I did wrong not to reply to her very kind invitation
to me to visit you this summer, proposing that one of you should sleep
at the office of the Criterion. It seemed to me that I could not allow that.
But I should have told her so at the time, and I reproach myself that I
did not.
Do not think for a moment that Henry does not care for you. He loves
you next to me better than any one else. He has had cruel disappointments
in his love affairs, and the last time cruel treatment. He sends me every
item about you he finds in the papers, and has sent two magazines with
pictures I have cut out. In these pictures and the large one you sent you
look so smiling, I cannot realize how troubled you are. Will you not write
and tell me what these troubles are, and what are the vital decisions
affecting your whole future. What is crumbling away? You alarm me
and I hope you will soon write again and tell me your troubles. You know
I will do anything I can.
I do not of course understand the situation as you do, or one on the
spot. I have felt regret right along that you undertook the editorship, of the
Criterion. I judge from what Vivian said [the] summer before last, that the
salary is small, and unless it will be increased so that you could give up the
Bank, it does not seem worth while Nay more, it seems to me a positive
injury to you. For evidently you are in a very nervous condition and I fear
will break down again unless relieved. You give to it time that might more
profitably be given to original work waiting for you to do. I have read in
93
several notices of your work that it has made a great impression
considering the size of your output. You would not accept, I remember,
the Assistant Editorship of the Athenaeum, because you wrote it conflicted
with original work.1
I will write you every Sunday except the coming one, Easter, if it would
give you any pleasure. I stopped because I wrote two or three letters to
your one. I shall not have much to tell you, but I can at least express
affection.
Give my love to Vivien and tell her I should have thanked her for her
very unselfish offer to have one of you sleep outside that I might be with
you, in your dear home. It was so good in both of you to let us have it in
1921, while you moved to much less attractive rooms.2 I do hope you will
renew your lease, although seven years seems a long time to look ahead.
Too bad Vivien has to go to country places in the summer, but I suppose
London air is smoky. She must find it lonely.
If I have forgotten anything in this I will write Sunday. Do consider if
you can get a months vacation, coming on here, and I will come next
summer to London. Remember that you are very dear to me. You are in
my heart of hearts. Do not blame me if I do not dare to go alone to
London, and want someone there with me as you are so occupied. If you
are ill I will come and go with Marian to a hotel. If you should break
down, get Vivian to cable me. You are working too hard I am sure.
The dividends ought to come in a few days, and I will send yours. I hope
the cable address was right. I was sorry afterwards I did not send to 9
Clarence Gate Gardens. Remember if you are ill and need me you must
cable and I will come right on and go to a hotel.
Ever and ever yours,
Mother

29 March 1923 24 Concord Ave
Dear Henry:
I had no sooner taken your letter to the mail box yesterday than I
received a very despondent and tragic letter from Tom. I am afraid he is
near a nervous breakdown. He does not see any reason why I should not
1 See TSEs letter, 29 Mar. 1919 (Letters, 1).

2 TSE and VHE moved into a flat at 12 Wigmore Street during her visit in 1921.
come on. He says Vivien would have gone about with me a great deal, and
so would her father and mother. Now I would not like to be dependent
on them. I do not doubt they would be very kind. And Vivien! Tom had
written they had taken a cottage near Chichester. I had supposed that her
absence there made it possible for me to occupy a room at Clarence Gate.
And if she were in London I should not want, invalid as she is, to call
upon her.
As soon as I received Toms letter I went down to the Square in a cold
wind to cable Tom. I cabled: Hope keep apartments. Come summer or
fall. Will pay expenses both ways. Long to see you. I think if he could
take all his vacation at one time, he might have a month, which would
give him ten days here. I have written him this morning that I think the
ocean voyage would be good for his nerves. I should think he could come
in October. It would depend on Vivien. Would she let him come without
her? He generally goes with her in October.
Tom seems to think that I am not coming in deference to your wishes,
and I have written that I had not known there had been any
correspondence between him and you, until I have sent you a copy of his
letter and that you had nothing to do with my not going. I have told him
again I could not go on alone, and that as there was no place for Marian
if I went on with her we would go to a hotel. Marian felt last summer that
Vivien did not want her. Whether she was right I do not know. Anyhow
there would not be room for her at 9 Clarence Gate Gardens.
Tom writes: I have several other matters to write to you about some
about you and some about me and as for my own, I am simply
distracted and destroyed everything seems to be crumbling away about
me and under me, and I am faced with most vital decisions deciding my
whole future. But those I must tell you about separately and face as best
I can: they come at a time when I want you very much. You will never
know how constantly I think of you, and how at every moment of anxiety
or despair, as well as in success or happiness, I have longed for your
presence.
All this is very distressing to me, and if I thought Tom was breaking
down, I would go with Marian and stay at a hotel a few weeks. I cabled:
Hope keep apartments, because Tom had written The lease of this flat
ends on June 25th. I have been hanging on keeping matters in suspense
about signing a new lease, and in some difficulty with the landlord,
simply in order to have it for you to come to, which would have made it
worth while to have taken it on for another long lease of five or seven
years. The new lease is to be a long one, probably seven years.
95
If you do not object I will purchase 5% Tel. & Tel. That would give me
more income than the 4% and when I have sufficient income from bonds
I will transfer rest of the Hydraulic. If I can sell Block 17, Kansas City, I
shall be able to sell 812 North Broadway, for the rental of 2635 Locus will
then pay taxes.
Unless Tom was ill I should not want to go to London until after your
vacation. I hope it is in June. I have quoted from your letter and told Tom
I knew it would have been impossible for you to go to London now.
Ever yours
Mother
[Indecipherable ink half sentence in margin]

Dearest Son:
I wrote you yesterday but have been so troubled about you I have cabled
this morning to ask you to write more fully, and have written to Vivien
hoping she would tell me more about your condition than you yourself
do. Indeed the intimations in your letter cause me anxiety. What are the
vital decisions you will soon be called upon to make, that will decide
[your] whole future.) Such an expression alarms me. And I feel that you
are overwrought as a result of overwork. I am hoping that at the end of the
year you will turn over the Criterion to some other editor. If Lady
Rothermere wants it she ought to pay a living wage.
If you could get away for a month and come over here, I feel it would
do you much good. I shrink from crossing the water alone, but if it would
help you very materially I would cross with Marian and go to a hotel. I
should not go until late and make a shorter stay. Your health both nervous
and physical is of much more importance than sight-seeing. I have for some
time feared your breaking down again from overwork. I think the
Criterion involves more work than you had realized. And it keeps you
from creative work.
When does Vivian go to Chichester? Not until July? I am glad she is to
have her Father and Mother in London this summer. They have such a
lovely house and environment. I do not know what you would do if you
gave up your apartments. The papers, including Punch, speak of the dearth
of houses. I fear you and Vivian would be adrift. And the rooms you have
are exceptionally pleasant. Seven years is a long time. Will not your
landlord compromise on five? Do write me about your affairs. I will go late
and stay a few weeks if you need me badly.
Very affectionately
Mother
to Sydney Schiff ms BL
1
30 March [1923] The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Sydney
This is just a line to thank you for your very kind and sympathetic letter2
and to say that I do indeed appreciate all the thought that you have given
to my affairs. I hope we shall have good news of your health. I am too
tired to write more.
Always affectionately
Tom.
I had tea with [Wyndham] Lewis today and had a good talk with him, and
found him much more sympathetic than when I spoke to him before.

Dear Henry:
I have been so stirred up by Toms letter that I cabled again this morning:
Write more fully. Anxious. I do not know how much of his letter I quoted
to you. I think I copied this: I have several other matters of the most vital
importance to speak to you about some about you and some about me
and as for my own, I am simply distracted and destroyed everything
seems to be crumbling away about me and under me, and I am faced with
most vital decisions affecting my whole future. But these I must tell you
about separately and face as best I can: they come at a time when I want
you very much.
I cannot think what Tom means nor why it is so vital to him to have me
in London. I have written him and Vivian again today, telling Vivian that
from the tone of Toms letter I feared he was facing another nervous
breakdown. I suggested his getting if he could, a months vacation and
1 Written over 27 mars 1923.

2 A reply to TSEs of 27 Mar. confirming he was staying at the bank.
97
coming here. I had already cabled him as I told you, that I would pay
expenses both ways. I wrote Vivian it would involve some self-denial on
her part but it was better than a nervous collapse. I also said in case of
necessity I would come on late with Marian and go to a hotel. I said I was
nervous about crossing alone. What do you think of my going alone? I
had written Tom it was absolutely impossible for you to go. What I am
afraid of is, of Toms injuring his brain and nerves by overwork. I think the
Criterion is a great mistake, and I have told them so.
You have so much to think about in the condition of your own affairs,
I do not know that I ought to trouble you. If I went it would be by
preference late in June, as I hope your vacation is in June. I hope to hear
in a day or two.
It seems to me as if Vivian was enough of a support to him, Tom would
not need me. She is very fond of him, but at the same time an awful drag
on him, she requires so much. She would wear me all out, and I fear she
does Tom. But what can anyone do?
I do not know that I am writing this to any purpose, but just as a relief
and to get your judgment.
Perhaps to relieve myself, for I am very much concerned.
Ever yours
Mother
to Violet Schiff ms BL
1 April [1923?] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Violet
Thank you so much for your letter. At the moment, Vivienne is not
suffering from actual neuritis, but from very peculiar after effects, which
are very worrying indeed a sort of utter prostration and general
numbness; and the effect of the treatment1 now seems to be merely irritant
and disturbing. If this goes on after a day or two I think the treatment will
have to be dropped. You will understand how very worrying and
depressing this is for her. I simply dont know what to do.
Ill write or telephone in a few days and let you know. It is quite
impossible for Vivienne to go out to lunch she only hopes to slip round
one afternoon and see you and Sydney alone. Just now the treatment is all
she can manage (and a bit more) in a day.
1 Presumably the Plombires treatment referred to in his letter to OM of 2 Mar.
I should have liked very much to meet Beerbohm,1 although it would not
take the place of seeing you by yourselves. But Sunday is now our one day
of real rest we shut ourselves up, and dont have our servant come, and
I know I could not be up for lunch. You will understand that we are just
keeping alive and no more. I doubt if I could even get in later in the
afternoon but I do want to see you both soon.
With love from both
Tom.
from John Quinn ts copy Valerie Eliot

2 April 1923 [New York]
My dear Eliot:
I received this morning your cable reading as follows:
London
Quinn
3 Nassau Street
New York
Nation off failing guarantee. Also unable wait necessary notice bank.
Does extraordinarily generous offer hold if bad health forces leave bank
without alternative position. Thank Kahn. Await letter.
If the Nation is not willing to give you a guarantee I think you were
right not to take up with it.
I am not certain about the meaning of the second phrase in your cable,
Also unable wait necessary notice bank. But I take it that that means that
you had to accept or decline the Nation at once without giving the
necessary notice to the bank.
As I wrote you, I am still hoping to get two or three or possibly four
hundred dollars more in addition to the four hundred which I have
guaranteed and the two hundred which Kahn guaranteed for five years.
I am cabling you today as follows:
1 Max Beerbohm (18721956): caricaturist and writer; contributor to The Yellow Book in
the 1890s; author of Zuleika Dobson (1911). On 24 Aug. 1952 TSE was to contribute to an
80th Birthday Album for him.
99
April 2, 1923
Eliot
9 Clarence Gate Gardens
London
Offer holds for five years, unconditional. Writing.
(Sgd) Quinn
I will send you the first check in response to your letter, if that is
satisfactory to you.
Sincerely yours,
[John B. Quinn]
to Messrs. Hazell, Watson & Viney cc

2 April 1923 [The Criterion, London]
Dear Sirs,
I send you herewith my delayed copy for the six pages.1 In order to save
time, you need not send proof unless it exceeds the limit, which I do not
think likely. If it is necessary to save space, and if printing in smaller type
will save space, please do so. And if there is not enough room the obituary
note on Miss Mansfield can be put at the bottom of the last page of The
Obsequies but I prefer that it should have a page to itself.2
Yours faithfully
[T. S. E.]
1 Presumably the Foreign Reviews in C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), 30813. This was the first time
this regular feature appeared.
2 Katherine Mansfield (18881923) had died at Fontainebleau on 9 Jan. The obituary did
have a page to itself: The Criterion desires to express profound regret at the death of
Katherine Mansfield. It had been hoped that Miss Mansfield would be a contributor to these
pages. A study and appreciation of her work will be reserved until the appearance of her
collected works; at the moment we can only register our conviction of the great loss to English
letters. The Obsequies was a story by B. M. Goold-Adams, in the same issue, 293302.

4 April 1923 [London]
Cher Monsieur,
Merci bien de votre amiable et gnreuse lettre du 24 mars.1 Japprcie
fort bien votre indulgence et je ferai de mon mieux pour la justifier.
Je vous remercie aussi de votre aimabilit legard de Vanity Fair et
jcris la Direction de cette revue quil faut indiquer que mon article a
dj paru dans la Nouvelle Revue Franaise.2 Je vous remercie aussi de vos
soins propos de La Prisonnire et je vous remercie de tout mon coeur des
efforts que vous aurez fait auprs du Docteur Proust.3 Vous mavez combl
dactions et dexpressions gnreuses.
ce moment je pars en villgiature pour quelques semaines dans lespoir
de rtablir ma sant, mais on fera suivre toute lettre qui est addresse ici.
Recevez cher Monsieur l4
to Edmund Wilson ts Beinecke

4 April 1923 The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Mr Wilson,
Thank you for your letter of 26th February. I should have replied to it
before but I thought it best to write to La Nouvelle Revue Franaise before
accepting your proposal. La Nouvelle Revue Franaise now tell me that
1 Rivire said TSE should not be too anxious about his delayed chronicle for NRF, wished
him a restful convalescence, and asked for a little notice before TSE submitted his piece.
2 Rivire was happy for TSEs Dec. Lettre dAngleterre to be republished in Vanity Fair
with a note explaining it had already appeared in NRF. It appeared as Contemporary English
Prose, Vanity Fair 20: 5 (July 1923).
3 Rivire was looking for an extract from Prousts La Prisonnire for publication in C., as
TSE wanted. The Death of Albertine appeared, in Scott Moncrieffs translation, in C. 2: 8
(July 1924).
4 The letter breaks off here.
Translation: Dear Sir, Thank you for your kind and generous letter of the 24th March. I
sincerely appreciate your understanding, and I shall endeavour to justify it.
I thank you also for your kind acceptance of my suggestion about Vanity Fair. I am writing
to the Editor to let him know that he must state clearly that the article has already been
published in the Nouvelle Revue Franaise. I thank you also for all the trouble you have
taken about La Prisonnire, and I thank you most sincerely for all the negotiations you have
carried out with Dr Proust. You have showered me with good deeds and generous comments.
I am about to go on holiday for a few weeks, in order to improve my health, but my mail
will be forwarded to me.
Please believe, dear Sir
101
they have no objection to your using the article which appeared in that
paper, providing that you make acknowledgement at the beginning or end
of the article that it has appeared with them first. I am pleased that you
should like this article and accept your terms of $75.1
I have an informal arrangement with La Nouvelle Revue Franaise to
write three or four of these articles a year and if you cared to publish them
regularly I could doubtless arrange with La Nouvelle Revue Franaise. If
this appeals to you, I should be very glad to hear from you on the subject.
I am afraid that it is impossible to get a heavier copy of the [Wyndham]
Lewis drawing from this block. I have spoken to Lewis about it and he
will perhaps take steps to obtain a heavier impression. If not, I will see
about it myself as soon as I have time, but I have been fearfully rushed
lately and am very worn out and am going to the country for several
weeks rest.
I shall have pleasure in taking with me your manuscript to read; I have
been so busy that I have had to lay upon myself a rule to read no
manuscript at all until I can get away with nothing on my mind. I shall
write to you about it later. Thank you for sending it.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
My dear Whibley,
I thank you very much for your two kind letters and particularly for
your kindness and loyalty in sending me your manuscript.2 I confess that
I have had it somewhat on my mind and conscience, and had been feeling
that I ought to write to you to ask you not to bother about it until you were
well again.3 I do very keenly appreciate your thoughtfulness and kindness
because I am sure that it must have been a burden to you to have had this
piece of work to do when you were feeling so ill. I can only say that this
and everything that you will contribute will be of inestimable benefit to the
Criterion.
1 TSEs article appeared as Contemporary English Prose, Vanity Fair 20 (5 July 1923), 51,
98) and was the revised English text of Lettre dAngleterre: Le style dans la prose anglaise
contemporaine, NRF 19: 111 (1 Dec. 1922), 7516.
2 Bolingbroke, Pt II, C. 1: 4 (July 1923).
3 On 24 Mar., CW said he had not been very well and was going to Bath after Easter to
see what a cure will do.

I do hope that you will write to me after you have been at Bath a little
while and tell me what it has done for you. Very likely it will quite set you
up, but if not, I am indeed very much in earnest in my suggestions.
[Yours sincerely
T. S. E.]
from Messrs. Methuen & Co ts Valerie Eliot

5 April 1923 36 Essex St, London w.c.2
Dear Sir,
We are sorry to say that the demand for your book The Sacred Wood
[1920] is not very good, during the last three months we have only sold
about twenty copies. There are about 850 copies in our warehouse and as
at the present rate of selling it will be a very long time before we are able
to make any considerable reduction in this stock we propose, as we must
relieve our store, to try to sell some at reduced prices crediting your
account with 5% of the amount realised as mentioned in clause 8 of the
agreement. Of course this does not mean that the book will be removed
from our catalogues and lists as we propose to keep a good supply to meet
any demand there may be in the ordinary way. We shall be glad to hear
whether you wish to purchase any at 2/3 each.
We are, dear Sir,
Yours faithfully,
Methuen & Co Ltd

6 April 1923 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Sydney
This is in answer to Violets letter to Vivien. She is too ill and exhausted
with battling in the face of obstacles to write. We have not yet left here
and I do not know when we shall, and every hour adds to the difficulties.
When we do get to the country we shall simply have to bury ourselves
completely in order to save our lives, otherwise we could die with less
effort in London. The time has really come when we must consider nothing
but self-preservation: Vivien is an extreme example of a person who has
never learned to put herself first. She has always put other people first
and that is one way in which I myself have done her great harm. She has
103
always been burdened even when so ill that she needed every ounce of
energy she had just to keep alive with me and my affairs.
This is what Dr [Hubert] Higgins has tried to teach her all the winter:
to consider herself he says (and he is a man who never exaggerates, and
speaks quite coldly) that otherwise she will certainly die.
Every doctor she has ever had (Higgins more clearly and cogently) has
urged upon her that she ought to be alone, as she is too sensitive to be
battened on by impressions, and cannot refrain from giving herself
altogether.
I know that you are one of the exceptional people who are intelligently
interested in health and disease, medecine and hygiene; nearly everybody
is ignorant of everything but measles, appendicitis and nerves as they call
them. Nobody has ever heard of malnutrition the root and core of
Viviens illness of which colitis is only a symptom. I must write again, as
I must stop now, and have so much to say to you.
Yrs affectionately
Tom
to The Literary Editor of the New York Globe1 cc Berg2

Sir,
I have received a cutting from your issue of 6th March in which you
quote from the Chicago News some statements about myself which are
asserted to have been made by Mr Ben Hecht. According to this cutting,
Mr Hecht says that he met me in London, and knows that I thoroughly
hate Americans and everything they write and read, and that he considers
1 N. P. Dawson, who quoted this letter in Books in Particular in the Globe and Commercial
Advertiser (17 Apr. 1923, 16), commented: This sounds exciting. But if we were Mr Eliot we
should rather have Mr Ben Hecht say about him what he was quoted as saying in the Chicago
News than witness the swooning ecstasies into which his poem sent some of the critics. As
for ourself, we never for a moment thought that Mr Eliot planned The Waste Land as a hoax.
But the psychological phenomena which reading the poem produced on some of the critics
seemed to us funny. And we were sufficiently flattering to Mr Eliot to think the exhibits of
these critics would seem funny to him too. The Waste Land, of course, is just the kind of
poem to which the Dial would give an award. Although we recall that one of Mr Eliots
swooning admirers said (or we thought he said) that the award was not given to Mr Eliot
because of The Waste Land but because of er er a number of things. The Waste Land
will always remain for us a joyous episode.
2 The carbon was sent to John Quinn, with a note: Writing in two days going to the
country for an essential rest. Very grateful to you. TSE.

me wholly capable of hoaxing the Dial and all its friends. In case there
may be anyone in America who believes this statement, I wish to inform
you that if Mr Hecht made the remarks attributed to him in the Chicago
News, he is a liar. I should be glad if you would make this public.
Mr Hecht has never met me in London or anywhere else. He has not the
slightest ground for the opinions which he assigns to me, and he must be
perfectly aware of this fact. I can only presume that Mr Hecht believes
that my being 3000 miles away will protect him from any legal action, as
it certainly protects him from any physical action on my part. I do not
know whether Mr Hecht is the author or merely the supporter of the libel
which charges me with having hoaxed the Dial, but at least he appears to
have found it necessary to lie about me in order to give substance to this
rumour. If Mr Hecht has succeeded in hoaxing anybody with such a
clumsy falsehood as that reported in the Chicago News, it would hardly be
worth my while to spend two years labour upon a poem in order to hoax
the Dial.
I am, Sir,
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
from Henry Eliot ts Valerie Eliot

7 April 1923 1037 Rush St, Chicago
Dear Tom:
This has been a frantic week, with telegrams and radiograms flying back
and forth. I cabled you yesterday to cable Mother that you were well, for
she is in a way to work herself into a nervous collapse. Your letter, in which
you refer to things crumbling away, has thrown her into a state of alarm
and self-reproach and general consternation. Why, oh why, were you not
more specific? Now it will be at least a month before she will be free of
worry. I have eight letters of hers on my desk, concerned almost exclusively
with her doubts and worries, her plans made and unmade for sailing, her
imaginings of a nervous or physical breakdown on your part, and her
hopes that you do not feel bitterly towards her (the last being a most
extraordinary flight of imagination). She has made a reservation on the
Samaria. The crossing is very rough; a letter from Thomas [a colleague] in
New York says he has spent two days recovering from sea-sickness.
For me to come this summer is out of the question, unless I wanted to
chuck up this business entirely. I am temporarily at least the financial
105
prop of the whole thing. I have no fears of losing money, for we made
$1800 in March, and should make more than that in April. We may earn
50% on our stock for the year. Things are going well. But I may, in part,
have to finance the purchase of the company. I have only mentioned the
suggestion of yours to Buchen, but could see his concern over it.
It would be an act of consideration to Mother for you to come over here
for two or three weeks, though I do not know whether you can arrange it.
It would seem more appropriate, also, and would have a good effect on the
rest of the family, who, I understand, are disposed to observe that Mother
is the only one whom you want to see. I can understand and to a great
extent sympathize with any objections that you might have to coming over
here, your attitude to the country probably being something like mine
toward Winnetka, Ill., or the University Club of Chicago. You will
experience some of the inconveniences of being well known, and having to
be decent to a great many silly people. You could, however, make some
money lecturing; and you will learn what free publicity is, in the country
which invented advertising.
Your letter, or the part of it which Mother quotes to me, is, one must
admit, rather reproachful in tone. The passages about everything
crumbling suggest a great many vague and disturbing things. I have myself
lost some sleep over it, as I cannot imagine the letter being written except
in the stress of desperate emotion, such as might be caused by some
financial disaster or disgrace, or being in love with another mans wife, or
being blackmailed, or seeing Vivien in mortal illness, or anything
calamitous. Not knowing the circumstances, none of us knows how to
help, which any of us would be ready at once to do. In any of the
contingencies suggested, Mother would be a frail reed, physically, to lean
on. The length of her life, I think, depends on her keeping happy and
contented. Anxiety will surely affect her general health seriously.
I do not know how to write until I know what your difficulties are.
Hydraulic1 has sagged off to about 56, which is not an alarming
phenomenon in a thin market, but I see that yesterday 290 shares were
sold at a slightly higher price, which may be accumulation, for a possible
rise before the June directors meeting. I will write about Hydraulic later.
I doubt not that you are a better investor than I, but when you do invest
the proceeds, I hope you will see me first. Of course you will invest in
British securities, which I know nothing about. But in the last four years
I have sown a most fancy variety of wild oats, and have made nearly every
1 Hydraulic-Press Brick Company, their fathers company.

mistake that can be made, including buying on margin, with borrowed
money, and seeing my collateral go down, and the bucket shops blow up
(after I was out); and the net of it all is, that the smarter you are and the
more you know, the harder you fall; and it has cost me very little, owing
to a natural timidity; and it is the cheapest and from a practical standpoint
the most valuable education I possess. Had I studied literature with half the
zeal I have the security markets, I should not now be naked to the shafts
of the literate. I hope that in ten years, at least, none of the family will hold
any stocks or any real estate. Short term bonds yielding 5 to 6%, at
present and watch them!
I hope that meanwhile you are writing me or Mother fully.
Affectionately,
Henry
I have mailed you a copy of the Literary Digest Book Review, containing
a long and sensibly balanced critique of The Waste Land.1 It is
undoubtedly the literary sensation over here, outstripping, I think, Ulysses
which derives part of its fame from the fact that nobody can get hold of
it, just as Jurgen2 did.

[?mid April 1923] 2 Milestone Cottages,
Old Fishbourne, nr Chichester
My dear Ottoline,
We have been through such a terrific crisis that I have hardly had a
moment even to read a letter, much less write one. We were to have come
here ten days ago; we only got off on Thursday. First Vivien got an attack
of bronchitis, so that we waited over in very uncomfortable conditions,
as we were on the point of starting. Vivien got more and more fatigued and
exhausted, and I wanted to get her away from London at the first possible
moment. So I engaged a car for Wednesday, but on Tuesday she was so ill
that I postponed it till Thursday. And on Wednesday she had the worst
crisis, after tea, that I have ever seen, the worst she has ever had. I am sure
that she was on the point of death. She went completely numb, terrible
palpitations, and gasping for every breath. I telephoned to four doctors
1 Herbert S. Gorman, The Waste Land of the Younger Generation, Literary Digest
International Book Review 1 (Apr. 1923).
2 Jurgen (1919) by James Branch Cabell was, like Joyces Ulysses, subject of an obscenity
trial in 1922.
107
all out finally one came. But before he came she suddenly had a terrific
colitis explosion poison that must have been accumulating for two or
three weeks <owing to the terrible strain over the Nation and over getting
ready to come here> and the doctor, and also Dr [Hubert] Higgins, who
had been out but came later, both said that this saved her life. Otherwise,
she would have died of acute toxaemia, or of the strain on the heart from
the effort to resist it. The doctor, and Dr Higgins, both said that the danger
was over for the moment, and she had better get away at once. So we came
down in a car on Thursday . . . I cant write more now because I am so very
tired but instead of the crisis being over, Vivien had two more, all Friday
night, and on Saturday, so that I had to send for her mother. Tonight for
the first time she begins to show a little sign of being alive. She has not
had any meal at all since last Tuesday and for the last three days has been
fed on little drops of milk and teaspoonfuls of brandy to keep her alive. I
think we are through now, but she has wasted in this week to an absolute
skeleton, and it will take weeks to build her up.
I will begin using your bectine tomorrow when I shall get into Chichester
to buy a syringe. I will send you the cheque in a day or two.
We havent dared, of course, to try Vivien with any new thing during this
crisis, but she will begin taking it directly she is able Higgins was
interested in it.
[Unsigned]

[?16 April 1923] The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Cobden-Sanderson,
Copies should go of No. 3 to:1
Whibley )
Koteliansky ) whose addresses you have
Mrs Woolf )
Read )
Marichalar )
Paul Valry 40, rue de Villejust, Paris XVI
Capt. Mark Wardle 13 rue de Mademoiselle, Versailles,
S. et O., France
Ezra Pound 70 bis rue de Notre Dames des
Champs, Paris VI
1 The first six names are of contributing authors and translators in C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923).

Jacques Rivire 3 rue de Grenelle, Paris VI
(as well as to the N. R. Franaise)
Dr Wilhelm Lehmann,1 Holzminden (Braunschweig),
Landschulheim 2, Germany
Also one to
Leonid Massine2
c/o Manager
Covent Garden Opera House
if possible marked
See page 305
yrs
T. S. E.
to John Middleton Murry ms Valerie Eliot

20 April 1923 2 Milestone Cottages,
Old Fishbourne
My dear John,
I should have written to you at once on hearing of your address, but
things have been, up to this moment, in too desperate a state to write any
letters. Vivien did send you a rare and precious postcard, which she hopes
is awaiting you at the farmhouse.3 If, since you wrote, you have gone there,
I assume that this will be forwarded from Selsfield House, and I am asking
Cobden-Sanderson to send you the Criterion to that address.
Vivien was very ill indeed, in fact for several hours was at the point of
death, last week before we came. The doctors advised coming nonetheless,
as they said the crisis was over, and she ought to get into the country. So I
brought her down in a car. She had a series of intestinal crises throughout
the week, and we have had her specialist down from London for two days,
and have a nurse who comes in. It is the worst time she has ever had she
has just escaped, by indomitable pluck in the face of terrible difficulty, so far.
1 Wilhelm Lehmann (18821968): German poet, critic and novelist; author of Weingott
(1921). TSE received a letter from him on 16 Apr. He was never a contributor to C.
2 Lonide Massine (18961979); Russian choreographer and ballet dancer; chief
choreographer and subsequently (following the departure of Vaslav Nijinsky) principal dancer
of Diaghilevs Ballets Russes. The note See page 305 refers to TSEs Dramatis Personae in
which he called Massine the greatest actor whom we have in London, adding: Massine, the
most completely unhuman, impersonal, abstract, belongs to the future stage (C. 1: 3, Apr.
1923, 305).
3 JMM had moved from Selsfield House to a cottage at Boxgrove, nr. Chichester.
109
Most unfortunately, this cottage, which I took only because I was in
despair at finding anything else having tried all the winter is not at all
the proper place for her. It is insanitary, and the noise is terrific besides
the traffic on the Portsmouth road1 the man next door is rebuilding his
house and has been laying floors for the last three days. And three small
children.
So I must find another (unfurnished) cottage or house as soon as
possible. Do you think you could find anything in your neighbourhood, or
near Chichester? Or turn out one of your tenants!
Let me hear from you. I want to know whether you can let me have
something by July for the Criterion?2 You know I have been waiting
patiently for a long time.
It is hard to think, in the midst of such troubles. But it would be a
comfort to have a letter from you.
Yours ever
Tom
to Richard Cobden-Sanderson pc Texas

[Postmark 20 April 1923] [Bosham, Chichester]
Many thanks for Criterion3 and card. Shall write you in a day or two
have had incredible difficulties and anxieties here.
Yours
T. S. E.

Old Fishbourne
Thanks, dear John, for your adorable letter. Will you wire me please, what
you are going to do and where you are to be each day of this week, and
give me a chance to reply by wire. Vivien is so dangerously ill that there is
1 Fishbourne lies between Chichester and Bosham, where their previous cottage had been,
by the route of the current A27 to Portsmouth. JMM at Boxgrove was not far away.
2 JMMs first contribution was to be Romanticism and the Tradition, C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).
3 C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), which had just been published.

a fresh consultation of doctors every day to decide whether she can be
moved to London in a closed car.1
I feel a kind of dependence on you, and it will be a great comfort to
know every day where you are. You are the only person I want to be in
touch with.
Vivien is so ill that of course nobody could see her for a minute. Of
course I should love her to have a cottage near you whatever it was like,
but dont bother and worry yourself about it for the moment just see
how the land lies.
Ever yours
Tom
Vivien sends you her best love. If she is taken back to town on Sat. or Sun.
she wd love to see you in London: if not, she wd like to see you here for a
moment one day next week. Everything is utterly undecided.

[April 1923] 2 Milestone Cottages
My dear Ottoline
I have wanted to write to you for some time, and now that I am back
again in Fishbourne it is my first opportunity. I came up to London for a
week, and tried to attend to all the matters that I had to neglect for six
weeks with an intensification of the familiar feeling of trying to do twice
as much as one can. Now I am back for a fortnight by my doctors orders
(he said three weeks) and the kindness of the bank. I was not to do any
work here, and tried to clear my path while I was in London; but I still
have my Oxford paper to put into shape. It would have been done, but I
spent so much time on writing an article for the Nation,2 which Leonard
Woolf asked me to do at once3 and the effort of concentration to write
anything takes me twice as long as it used to but now that it is done he
says he cannot print it yet so I might better have been getting my Oxford
1 An enclosed car, with roof and side windows, rather than the more usual open car of the
time: cf. a closed car at four (TWL, 136).
2 TSE, John Donne (rev. of Love Poems of John Donne), N&A 33: 10 (9 June 1923).
3 LW was offered the job of literary editor of the Nation on 23 Mar. The Woolfs sailed on
27 Mar. for a months holiday in Spain and Paris, and LW returned on 24 Apr. While LW was
away, Maynard Keynes wrote to TSE on 10 Apr.: we should like something from you for one
of the early numbers. He asked TSE to suggest any subject of criticism or book to review.
In a letter of 4 May, VW said that when they returned they were bombarded with proofs,
reviewers, books and turmoil (Letters, III, 34).
111
paper written, and only did the other first because he said he would like
to have it at once. I am looking forward eagerly to coming down to
Oxford. One always has hopes of undergraduates almost the only kind
of audience that is interesting to talk to. It would be a pity if we quite lost
that hope, wouldnt it. The most hopeless of them are more intelligent and
interesting than the same sort of man ten years later.
Vivien is still very weak, and the weather no sun ever is a great
handicap. She has such faint spells, and so much pain, that it is a struggle
to get through every day, and the slightest exertion of mind or body is a
setback. I am wondering if you are away, and whether you got a letter she
wrote you a week ago. She can write very little about one letter a week
altogether. But you will be at Garsington now, I suppose: for Vivien had a
letter from Virginia Woolf such a curious letter saying that she was
coming to spend the weekend with you.1 I could not understand her letter,
what was at the back of her mind, but people are very mysterious and
changeable, aint they, in their moods? And she seemed to misinterpret
remarks so surprisingly so I dont know what you will hear!
It will be a great pleasure to see Garsington again. I am only sorry that
my visit will be shorter than ever. I suppose I shall have to go to Oxford
direct, dine there Saturday, and not see you till after the meeting. I shall
come out as early as I can, in a taxi.
Vivien hopes she may have a line for you soon, although she is such a
poor correspondent now, and feels that she cannot express anything
without risk of its being misconstrued. But you have suffered so much
yourself that you know what it means to have just gone through a life-or-
death illness, and can allow for it so few people seem to know what it
means!.
Affectionately
Tom

26 April 1923 1037 Rush St, Chicago
Dear Tom:
I received your radio [telegram] today and answered suggesting having
Vivien go to a hospital. I do not know about England, but the tendency
1 This letter does not seem to survive, and its date is not known.

here is more and more to treat all serious illnesses in the hospital, where
better care can be exercised and better facilities are at hand.
A letter from Mother today says that she has received an affectionate
letter from you in which you speak of Viviens having bronchitis. I hope it
has not developed into any more serious form of illness.
If you need money I hope you will cable me. I am not entirely free yet
of the temporary financial burdens of the company, but there are always
ways to raise money.
I have been hoping to hear from you, and perhaps shall before long. I
think it is nearly three weeks since you cabled you were writing, but I do
not know whether you meant writing me or Mother.
I have not really heard from you since January, and not much news for
longer than that. I am much in the dark and should like to know what
your circumstances are; whether the burden of the Criterion is proving
insupportable, together with worry over Viviens illness.
Your letter to the [New York] Globe in regard to Hecht was very good,
though I doubt the advisability of mentioning physical punishment. There
is a possibility also that Hecht never said that he had met you. I was much
surprised that you treated the matter so seriously, as the accusation of
fraud (if hoax means that) is obviously absurd, and if it means concealed
satire, is not derogatory. I do not know Hecht, but understand he is a man
of no fine scruples.
I have passed through four months of work under high pressure,
complicated recently by a bronchial cold and deafness, and a quarrel
between my two partners over apparently nothing a tone, a look, an
inflection. I had thought them exceedingly rational persons hitherto. Now
every remark one makes is suspect to the other, thought to be innuendo or
irony, which is a terrible state which feeds on itself. I suppose the sanest of
us is not exempt from that. I have wasted many hours arguing with them.
I think it will wear off in time.
I enclose data on Hydraulic and on business in general, which I have
sent to various members of the family.
I hope you have written or will shortly snatch time to write. If Viviens
illness becomes more serious I hope you will cable.
Affectionately
Henry
113
Thursday [?26 April 1923] 9 Clarence Gate Gardens
My dear Ottoline,
I am writing for Vivien to thank you for your kind letter. We are going
to the country tomorrow, somehow Vivien is very ill and I dont know
which is worse for us, to make this great effort or to delay in town. We
want to get away and have just solitude and peace and people wont let
one alone and wont understand and take offence: and we feel as exposed
to them in Sussex as in Regent Street. If we could only go abroad for a
long time and hide and forget everything!!
Vivien is very much interested in what you say and would be very
grateful if you would send a tin of the Amidal1 it is
2 Milestone Cottages, Old Fishbourne, near Chichester, Sussex
and I should very much like to know how I could get the Hectene
[?Bectine] and how to take it.
I am looking forward to coming on May 5 and lecturing and staying
with you. I do wish that I could get a connection with Oxford. Will you
advertise me, when you can?
Affectionately
Tom
We did not know Maria Huxley had been ill, as we never see them and
have not seen them or even heard of them for years.
Vivien has had terrible pain in the back of her head lately, with great
stiffness and dizziness. Have you ever had these symptoms? It is caused by
glands in the back of the neck.

2
[Postmark 26 April 1923] 2 Milestone Cottages,
Old Fishbourne
Dear Mary
I am writing this for Vivien as she is not up to writing a letter today. She
says she is so sorry that she invited you to come and see her while she has
malignant influenza, but she was too ill to realise what she was doing. If
1 Amidal is a combination medication used to treat symptoms (coughing, runny/stuffy nose,

congestion) caused by the common cold, allergies, asthma, bronchitis, sinusitis, and other
breathing illnesses.
2 The same morning, TSE sent a telegram to Hutchinson: still ill have written tom.

you had come, though, of course I should not have allowed you to go into
her room. She wants to say that she looks forward to seeing you very much
and has a lot to talk to you about, but that unfortunately next weekend is
not possible in any way, as the doctor from London is coming again to
stay from Saturday over Sunday. There is also some question of moving her
away from here in a car the moment she can be moved. We have never
been able even to arrange the furniture, and it is extraordinarily
uncomfortable and inconvenient for a case of serious illness.
My successful holiday will shortly be at an end, so that perhaps I may
look forward to the pleasure of seeing you in London in the near future.
With love from us both, to you and Jack.
Yours ever
Tom
to John Quinn ms Berg

26 April 1923 as from 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Mr Quinn,
I cabled you yesterday,1 as you must have thought it very extraordinary
that I had not written at all. I have had it on my mind to write to you,
almost from hour to hour, for the last four weeks: during that time I have
not written a single letter, and have had to allow my affairs to drift into
complete chaos.
I am writing this from a small cottage near Chichester, which I took for
a year because it was essential that my wife should be in the country. I
took my three weeks annual holiday in order to get her started here.
Unfortunately, she had a very bad colitis attack just before we came, and
has been ill here under most uncomfortable conditions ever since;
having the specialist from London twice a week, and the local man twice
a day, and her mother most of the time. Another man is coming from
London on Saturday. They have called it septic influenza and then thought
it was turning to pneumonia, and have been taking analyses. Meanwhile
she has wasted away to a skeleton, and my holiday is gone, and I feel a
good deal more ill than when it started, and I shall not get a day more for
a year. And I dont suppose this cottage will be of much use; my wife ought
to be in the country, but she wont be fit to be left here for a long time.
1 Telegram received by Quinn on 26 Apr.: wife ill pneumonia been unable to write
eliot.
115
As we have been two miles out in the country in a labourers cottage, and
my wife could not possibly be moved, the conditions have been the most
inconvenient possible, and I have had to work like a nigger, and have had
not a minute to attend to anything. I give you this very brief history of the
last three weeks only to make clear why I have not written. I feel pretty
well knocked out: the shock of thinking two seven or three eight times
over that my wife was dying at the point of death was enough in itself.
Her fundamental trouble is malnutrition, of which entero-colitis is a
symptom; but there is always risk, in these attacks, of appendicitis or
peritonitis. It is a condition which must have begun many years ago, and
which will take years, with favourable conditions, to set right.
You were right in your interpretation of my cable. The Nation did not
want to give more than six months guarantee and they wanted me at once
if at all. I pointed out that this might be allright for a man who was already
in journalism, but that it is quite different for a man who had to give up a
secure post. I dont know whether I have ever explained this to you, but the
Bank is a secure job for life, with a pension at sixty, and a years salary
and a pension for my wife in the event of my death. The main point, in any
question of leaving the Bank, is (as I explained to Pound) the security for
my wife. She will never be strong enough to shift for herself, or to endure
great privation, she will inherit very little, and not in the ordinary course
for many years, and I must make reasonable provision for her before
undertaking any adventures. I must explain also that owing to the terms
of my fathers will any property coming to me is in trust, and reverts to the
family on my death instead of being left outright, as to my brother and
sisters.1 Thus my wife can get no benefit from my inheritance in the event
of my death. My father disapproved of my residence in England.
I have gone into these details, for the first time, because it might appear,
and I daresay has appeared to people who do not know my circumstances,
that I am either very cowardly or very grasping.2 If I appear in this light
to you, please let me know.
I do regard it as a disaster that I could not come to an arrangement with
the Nation, and if the same post, or any similar post, should be open to me
in the future, I should take it. I mean to leave the bank, and I must leave
the bank, but I cannot say how soon or in what way.
1 TSE had written to HWE on 5 Nov. 1916 that their father had warned him that TSEs life
insurance was probably all there will be for Vivien. TSE was very anxious about her future
in the event of my death, since their fathers will left his inheritance to TSE on condition
that it reverted to the Eliot family in the event of TSEs death.
2 VW noted on 6 Mar.: Eliot slightly disillusions me too; he is peevish, plaintive, egotistical;
what it amounts to is that poverty is unbecoming (Diary, II, 238).

I am at present trying to lay a foundation by investing every penny I can
save. This is a very slow process, with the expenses which I have the cost
of the last fortnight, with the specialist down twice a week from London,
local doctor twice daily etc. etc. have been almost ruinous, and I shall not
be able to put by any more for a long time to come. But I have put the
Dial award, and a little other money, into a separate account, which I
gradually invest in gilt-edged securities, and have the income from these
securities paid into the same account, so that none of these savings goes on
expenses, but it is all put by for capital against the day when I leave the
bank. I regard this as a trust fund, and any money that comes to me
beyond my current income, I shall deal with in this way.
In your letter you said that you would send me a cheque as soon as I
acknowledged receipt of your letter. If you did that, I should of course
put it to my trust fund and invest it. But if you assumed that I was leaving
the bank at once in any case, and meant the money to be payable on my
leaving the bank only, then I should like to know whether the guarantee
of this $600 p.a. for five years holds good whether I leave the bank to go
into another job such as an editorship or whether my health forces me to
leave without any job at all.
None of the literary jobs, such as there are, is very well paid or very
secure, but I should take anything it was possible to accept.
In any case, I want to be sure that you understand and approve my point
of view and my line of action.
I have said nothing so far to show an atom of my appreciation of your
extraordinary generosity and kindness. When I think of all you have done
for me for years past in other ways, I do not know what more to say to
convince you of the strength of my recognition. Perhaps I can only say that
it is the greatest stimulus to me to commence the work I have in mind,
which is more ambitious than anything I have ever done yet.1 And a
stimulus to do my part to bring about the conditions which will make this
work possible.
I hope you will also express to Otto Kahn my very deep gratitude. To
have one of the greatest international bankers interested in me is a
reassurance in itself.
Yours always gratefully
T. S. Eliot
1 Quinn averred, your own writing is the most important, much more than propaganda
work in C., and noted too that an artist was to be judged [by] what he painted and a sculptor
by what he sculpted and a writer by what he wrote.
117
Vivien Eliot to Virginia Woolf ms Berg
27 April [1923] 2 Milestone Cottages,
Old Fishbourne
Dear Virginia
I hope this is in time to welcome you home.
Your letter came in a very bad [?time] and made me happy for a whole
day. You have had a wonderful time, havent you? Of course I should love
to live abroad.
I am very ill at present. I have been really frightfully ill for three weeks
and have nearly died about seven times. It has been dreadful to have it
here, and the ruin of Toms holiday! and the incredible expense!
I cannot write much now. Tom will write to you. When he is able to go
back to London be kind to him. Not getting the Nation was a disaster for
us both indeed, we cannot bear to think of that, at all.
It is so charming of you to say you want to see me. I need hardly say how
much I look forward to seeing you again.
With love from Vivien

Undated [? April 1923] [London]
Dear John
I was very disappointed not to see you this week, but I have had to set
to at masses of correspondence private and otherwise and attend to
innumerable domestic details, and I have not had one free evening. But
believe that I want to see you, and have thought of you daily.
I am devoured by worry too Viviens progress is so slow, and with so
many relapses, and I am anxious every minute. I am just going down there
[to the cottage at Fishbourne].
I have lost yr telephone no (York Bldgs).
Aff. always
Tom
[On back of envelope]
What I do not say, but am always thinking, is the most important. But I
dont know whether you have ever got to such a low point this is an ebb-
tide, in every respect. I have no longer any confidence in my . . .
You have got further, in your own way, than I in mine.

to Mary Hutchinson pc Texas
[Postmark 30 April 1923] [Fishbourne]
Many thanks for your good offices. V is much too ill to see anybody, and
is being kept going on serum and Bulgarian bacillus. When she can, I am
sure she will write to you, but at present she cannot sit up even. We have
the London doctor down twice a week and a local man daily. I will let you
know when things are a little better.
Yrs
T
to Charles du Bos1 ms Texas

1 May 1923 2 Milestone Cottages,
Old Fishbourne
Dear M. du Bos
I am very happy to hear that you are coming to London. I should be
there now, but have been delayed in the country, as my wife has been
seriously ill here. I expect to be in London toward the end of next week,
and will write to you to propose a meeting. I look forward keenly to
seeing you.
Very sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot

[?1 May 1923] 2 Milestone Cottages
Dear John,
If you are in this neighbourhood, will you come over and see me Friday
Saturday or Sunday. I cant promise about V. but I am practically certain
1 Charles du Bos (18321939), French man of letters of French and English literature his
mother was English, and he studied at Oxford wrote one review for C. in 1935. He
published Rflexions sur Mrime (1920), and was later famous for his posthumously
published journals (6 vols, 194655). He contributed some Remarques on Henry James to
La Revue de Genve 5: 30 (Dec. 1922), 81821, introducing the French translation of The
Figure in the Carpet.
119
to be here myself and want badly to see you.1 You might give me a look
at your cottage. With love from us both and thanks for wire.
In great haste
Yrs
Tom

Tuesday [1 May 1923] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Ottoline
I was very glad to get your sweet letter, but dreadfully disappointed
about your health. It is like a horrible treadmill, isnt it? going on struggling
and fighting for health only to be knocked over again and begin at the
beginning. And how few people understand what delicate people have to
put up with, and how much courage and character they have to exercise
at every minute.
I was very troubled at the idea of imposing myself on you at this time
my lecture is on Saturday, and by the idea of abusing your hospitality by
keeping you up and coming out in a taxi so late, at or after bedtime. So I
jumped with relief at the invitation to stay in Balliol [College] so I can
come out directly after breakfast if indeed that is not too much. I feel that
you ought not to have visitors at all, but I want so much to see you, and
stay to lunch? I shall see just as much of you that way, and with an easier
conscience. But I hope that my visit at all will not be too much for you.
It will be the first night that I shall have left Vivien without a proper
attendant. I am bringing her to London it couldnt be helped she
naturally hates to leave the country but I hope she can get away again
soon. I am not at all happy about bringing her back or leaving her.
I do hope you are getting better, and so look forward to seeing you.
Affectionately
Tom
1 The letter is dated in relation to the next one to JMM, which is clearly dated 2 May 1923
and appears to follow on from this one. However, TSE was lecturing at Oxford on Sat., 5
May, and so must be referring here to the following weekend of 12 May.

Old Fishbourne
Dear John
Many thanks for your letter. Referring to mine (which you had not
received) if you are at your cottage and can and will come over, Sunday
would be the best day but come when you can on Friday Sat. or Sunday
and I hope you can. Do let me know in advance, by card or wire.
Yours
Tom
to Mary Hutchinson pc Texas

[Postmark 3 May 1923] 2 Milestone Cottages
If you come to Wittering, I shd be delighted if you would look in and see
me for half an hour on Sunday afternoon?1 V wont be able to see anybody
yet, but sends love.
T.
to Richard Aldington ms Texas

Friday [4 May 1923] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Richard
I was very sorry to miss you on Wednesday, but did not arrive in
London till nearly 7. I am very much obliged to you for having settled
matters with C-Sanderson, and with such discretion.2 Of course, before
another number, I shall be able to arrange with you the division of labour
in an orderly way; but I have had so much on my mind and my time so
taken up the last three months that I have had to be very disorderly. It is
unnecessary to say that your prompt action has saved No. 4, as you must
know that.
1 As with the letter to JMM of 2 May, the postmark poses a problem, since TSE was at
Oxford the following Saturday, 5 May, and due to lunch with Ottoline Morrell at Garsington
on Sunday.
2 As assistant editor, RA took responsibility during TSEs emergency absence in Sussex for
some of the arrangements with RC-S for the next issue of C.
121
Ezras poem is much too long for us, but he insists that it is a unit, and
I believe in respecting the wishes of poets.1 I have got the proof from you
tonight and will let you have my observations in a couple of days.
I have to go to Oxford tomorrow to address some undergraduates on the
subject of criticism I told you about this. And if I am to do any writing
at all this summer, I must deny myself any more weekends for many weeks
to come. I shd have enjoyed the anticipation of a weekend with you may
I be allowed to propose myself, when it is possible, on the understanding
that you tell me if it is inconvenient.
Are you taking a holiday this year, and if so when and where?
I think we ought to subscribe to a few reviews. I doubt if the Germans
will exchange and the cost is not much.
I am not keen on Scandinavians and Czechoslovaks, but we want to do
something to extend the Empire and although I am gallophile in
essentials to check the French hegemony of Europe.2 And Norway and
Holland have always been susceptible to British influence.
I wrote to Richmond [Bruce Richmond, editor of the TLS] (at 3 Sumner
Place) but have no answer.
I have at last got definite promise of an indit of Proust, and Scott
Moncrieff will translate it.3
I shall initial my editorial;4 I cant touch this or the circular5 till after
my talk tomorrow.
I shall be writing you early next week.
Again thanks
Yrs
T.
1 Four of EPs Cantos were published, as Malatesta Cantos (Cantos IX to XII of a Long
Poem), in C. 1: 4 (July 1923), 36384. When EP sent the same texts to the Dial on 4 Jan.,
arranging simultaneous publication in the USA, he wrote: I DONT see how the four ///
cantos can be separated, riven in sunder, without very considerable damage and diminuation
[sic] of interest (Pound, Thayer, Watson, and The Dial, 255).
2 Dutch and Danish periodicals were added to the review of periodicals in C. 2: 6 (Feb.
1924). TSEs notion of Empire may be related to his later claim, We are all, so far as we
inherit the civilization of Europe, still citizens of the Roman Empire (Virgil and the Christian
World [1951], OPP, 130).
3 See Proust, The Death of Albertine, trans. Scott Moncrieff, C. 2: 8 (July 1924).
4 There was no Editorial as such in the next C., only two pages of Notes placed between
the articles and Foreign reviews. TSEs piece, flagged as The Function of a Literary Review,
concludes: It is the function of a literary review to maintain the autonomy and
disinterestedness of literature, and at the same time to exhibit the relations of literature not
to life, as something contrasted to literature, but to all the other activities, which, together
with literature, are the components of life (C. 1: 4, July 1923, 421).
5 A new advertising circular for C.

[Monday 7 May 1923] [London]
My dear Ottoline
This is a hasty paragraph to tell you how very keenly I enjoyed meeting
the young men all of them and how I appreciate the trouble and
thought you took.1 I enjoyed every moment: I wish I might see them all
again! It means so much to find fresh and untried minds, and unspoiled
lives: one doesnt meet many in London. I should like nothing better than
to give a course of lectures in Oxford, if we can arrange it.
I dont know if I made clear that Vivien is not suffering primarily from
colitis, now: she is suffering from the after effects of the devastating
influenza pneumonia very very low vitality, and consequent depression
of mind. I am sure that what she needs is air, and the country, and peace,
and no mental strain, and this Scotch doctor in Chichester is very good
indeed. So I am doubtful of exposing her to the strain of a new doctor,
esp. as he will not have time to go into it thoroughly here but I hope you
will see Martin2 soon and let me know all about it and how he impresses
you. I am very grateful for all your sympathy and thoughtfulness. I cannot
tell you how much I enjoyed seeing you before lunch.
V. aff
Tom
She seems to have almost no colitis at present.
PS I posted your letters. Monday.
Charlotte C. Eliot to Thomas Lamb Eliot 3 ts Houghton

7 May 1923 24 Concord Ave, Cambridge,
Massachusetts
Dear Brother Tom
Because in your letter you say you do not understand Toms poem, The
Waste Land, I am sending you one of the critiques I have which I will ask
1 A reference to his trip to Oxford and lunch at Garsington the previous weekend. Thanking
OM after a visit to Garsington later the same month, on 7 May VW praised the hostesss
genius: I think of the thirty seven young men, and you waving your wand among them. In
a letter to TSE of 4 June, VW said she had met at dinner a young Lord at Oxford who said
that Mr Eliot was his favourite poet, and the favourite of all his friends (Letters, III, 45; she
was referring to Lord David Cecil).
2 Dr Karl Bernhard Martin: see Glossary of Names.
3 Thomas Lamb Eliot (18411936): brother of TSEs father; Unitarian Minister, educated
at Washington University, St Louis, and Harvard; Pastor, First Unitarian Society, Portland,
123
you to return in the enclosed envelope.1 The poem puzzled me at first, but
now I think I understand it better. Tom wrote me before it was published
that he had put so much of his own life into it.2 Certainly up to the time
of his marriage and residence in England, he dwelt in an ideal world. Since
that time he has had pretty hard times. He had made a splendid record in
Philosophy at Harvard, and they intended to advance him as fast as they
could. After he married his wife she and her mother were very averse to her
coming to America, although we urged it all we could. For a year he taught
small boys. In addition he gave courses of extension lectures and reviewed
books. Then he obtained the position at Lloyds he now holds, and all his
literary work has been done in the evening. I was much opposed to his
undertaking the editorship of the Criterion, and indeed he broke down
that fall and had to take three months rest at Lausanne. This year, however,
he finally consented, and is at present very much overworked and tired.
One of his greatest misfortunes has been the invalidism of his wife. It was
not an eugenic marriage.3 He wrote me at Christmas she had not been to
the table for six months. Then she was better, next she had Bronchitis,
and a recent cablegram says: Vivien recovering Pneumonia. Tom has been
a perfectly devoted husband, but it is very hard on him.
Under these circumstances you can easily imagine some of his ideals are
shattered. I would like him to supplement The Waste Land by its natural
sequence The coming of the Grail. He has had for some time the plan for
another poem in his mind but has no time. I earnestly hope he will give up
the Criterion. Love to Etta,
Most affectionately yours,
Lottie Eliot
Oregon, 186793; author of The Radical Difference between Liberal Christianity and
Orthodoxy. TSE wrote to him on 4 Dec. 1922, thanking him for a letter about his father, and
saying how very much touched and pleased I am at the memorial of which it forms a part.
See Earl M. Wilbur, Thomas Lamb Eliot, 18411936 (Portland, Oregon, 1937).
1 Not identified.
2 The letter does not appear to survive. The editors have been unable to trace any letters of
TSE to his mother between the end of Aug. 1921 and Oct. 1923.
3 W. Grant Hague in The Eugenic Marriage: A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better
Living and Better Babies (1913) argued: The eugenic ideal is a worthy race a race of men
and women physically and mentally capable of self-support. The eugenist, therefore, demands
that every child born shall be a worthy child a child born of healthy, selected parents.

11 May 1923 The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Richard,
I feel a special obligation to write to you because you are one of the very
few people who have the constancy to persist in writing to me whether I
answer or not. We have had a terrible month of it and in short my wifes
progress has been set back for a year, I have been at great expense, and I
have exhausted the whole of my holiday and ten days more which the bank
allowed me, without extracting anything but exhaustion. However I am
thankful to say that my wife appears to be recovering; she is beginning to
gain a little strength. For the first two weeks she was frequently not
expected to live; a mysterious form of what the doctors call influenza
the name is perhaps no more than a synonym for ignorance and which
almost became pneumonia, reduced her to a skeleton.
But I will not say more now because I am looking forward to seeing you
on Wednesday. I will do my best to keep the evening free to devote to you:
In case anything should turn up to interfere, will you let me know where
to communicate with you some time on Wednesday? As a matter of fact I
expect to have several things to talk about, besides my desire to see you.
Yours always,
Tom
to Charles du Bos ts Texas

Dear Mr Du Bos,
I got back to London yesterday and after several attempts finally
succeeded in getting Mr Beresford on the telephone this evening. He
informed me of what I feared would be true, that you had only stayed four
days and that you had left England a week ago. I must count this as
another misfortune in a disastrous holiday. My wife has been so critically
ill that it was impossible for me to leave her even for a day or even to
attend to my correspondence, and I am not yet certain that she is safe. I am
very much disappointed at having missed you. I cannot even feel any secure
hope of seeing you in Paris as I have run through the whole of my annual
holiday and can now only look forward to a short weekend in Paris later
in the year, but I trust that your having mastered so completely the English
language if I may say so is evidence that you are a not infrequent visitor
125
to London; and as I am certain to be fixed to London for the next year
without interval I pray that you will let me know of your next visit.
It has occurred to me that it would be interesting to have from you at
some time for the Criterion a critical study of some English writer. We have
already published a German critic on Balzac,1 a Scotch critic on Flaubert,2
and I find these critical studies by writers of different nationality very
illuminating.3 Larbaud, also, has promised us some papers on Walter
Savage Landor.4 I am sure that no one in France is more competent to
write about English literature, either present or past, than yourself. Would
you not suggest a subject?
Yours sincerely,
T. S. Eliot
to Edmund Wilson cc
11 May 1923 [London]
Dear Mr Wilson,
Thank you for your letter of 23rd April with enclosed cheque of $100
for which I enclose your formal receipt.5 I note that your receipt stipulates
that you retain all rights including those of translation, but of course it is
understood that the right of translation into French does not apply to these
articles which are written for the Nouvelle Revue Franaise.
Of course you will understand that this article and articles of the same
series are written primarily for a French public and therefore it is rather to
my advantage that this limitation should be evident. I do not know
whether the Nouvelle Revue Franaise would have any objection to your
publishing them simultaneously. At the moment I am under too much
obligation to Monsieur Jacques Rivire to care to ask such a concession
from him; but I will ask him whether he objects to your using them
regularly the following month. The fact is that at present, and so far as I
can see indefinitely, I have not the time to write two separate sets of
1 Ernst Robert Curtius, Balzac, C. 1: 2 (Jan. 1923), 10518.

2 J. M. Robertson, Gustave Flaubert, C. 1: 2 (Jan. 1923), 12742.
3 TSE later wrote, We cannot determine the true status and significance of the significant
writers in our own language, without the aid of foreign critics with a European point of view.
(Brief ber Ernst Curtius, Freundesgabe fr Ernst Robert Curtius [1956], 27.)
4 See TSEs letter to Valery Larbaud, 8 Nov. 1922, in Vol. 1 of these Letters.
5 Wilson (26 Feb.) had offered about $75 for the translation of TSEs Lettre dAngleterre
from NRF 19: 111 (1 Dec. 1922).

articles.1 I do not see why your acknowledgement should not be in some
such form as the following: Published only in the Nouvelle Revue
Franaise and Vanity Fair.
What the Nouvelle Revue Franaise asked me to do, and what I am
going to do, is a series of chronicles dealing with the contemporary
condition of literature in England. I am allowed to include American
affairs also, but as I am not on the spot I only propose to deal with a few
people and a few books. I intended in the next paper to deal with the
intellectual influences of the older generation upon our own.2
[T. S. E.]
to W. P. Ker cc
Dear Mr Ker,
I should have written to you several weeks ago but I have been detained
in the country by a very critical illness of my wife and I did not have your
address by me, or indeed the time for any correspondence whatever. I am
writing to ask you if you would have any objection to our using your paper
on Byron in the October number of the Criterion instead of in July.3 The
reason is simply that I do not want to spread the butter too thick by putting
all the star performers in one number. Mr Whibleys Bolingbroke must be
published in July because it is a continuation from April; and Mr William
Butler Yeats Reminiscences must be published in July for the reason that
he has arranged simultaneous publication in America.4 If we publish you
1 On 23 Apr., Wilson said they would be delighted to have the other articles too, possibly
simultaneously with NRF. After Wilsons departure in May, the editor Frank Crowninshield
asked TSE on 22 June whether he would write a few articles for Vanity Fair. On his copy
of the letter, TSE jotted first Nouvelle Revue article and third, followed by Future of
Poetry, The need for experimentation in the arts, and The French. Lettre dAngleterre: le
style dans la prose anglaise contemporaine (NRF 19), became Contemporary English Prose
(Vanity Fair 20: 5, July 1923), followed by A Preface to Modern Literature: Being a
Conspectus Chiefly of English Poetry, Addressed to an Intelligent and Inquiring Foreigner
(Vanity Fair 21: 3, Nov. 1923), which was a translation of the earlier Lettre dAngleterre
(NRF 18: 104, 1 May 1922).
2 The next Lettre dAngleterre (NRF 21: 122, 1 Nov. 1923) was later published as A
Prediction in Regard to Three English Authors, Writers Who, though Masters of Thought,
Are likewise Masters of Art, in Vanity Fair 21: 6 (Feb. 1924). The three writers considered
were Henry James, Sir James Frazer and F. H. Bradley.
3 W. P. Ker, Byron, C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923), 115.
4 WBY, A Biographical Fragment, C. 1: 4 (July 1923), and Dial 75: 1 (July 1923).
127
in the same number we shall find it very difficult to keep the October
number to the same level; so I hope that you will have no objection. I am
in any case disappointed at postponing anything so desirable as your essay.
I hope that when you return in October I may have the pleasure of
seeing you.
Yours sincerely
[T. S. E.]
to Ford Madox Ford ts Cornell

Dear Mr Ford,
I have your card and should have written to you long ago but that a
very critical illness of my wife has interrupted all my activities for over a
month. I like your essay From this Grey Rock1 very much. Had it been
possible I should have printed it in the April number, indeed it ought to
have appeared three months ago; I purpose to use it in July. It is an
admirable statement of the Anglo-French policy which I myself strongly
advocate and which needs re-assertion at the present time.2 In fact, it was
never needed more.
As I am so pleased with this article,3 and as I have not had a moment for
reading of any kind, even the newspapers, I have not yet progressed to
your History of British Literature.4 I want to keep it by me if you will let
me for some time and read the whole thing; I am sure that there will be a
great deal which we should be very anxious to publish.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
1 See Ford, From the Grey Stone, C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923). TSEs slip recalls Come under the
shadow of this grey rock from The Death of St Narcissus. Ford reprinted his article as the
last chapter of A Mirror to France (1926).
2 Ford wrote: what stands out in the world of Thought and the Arts is this: It is only
England and France that matter England for all the finenesses that she has produced and
ignored; France for all the glories that would have been for ever hers had she not owned
Provence.
3 For a different view, see TSEs letter to EP of 4 Oct.
4 Ford sent in his history on 18 Feb. as much of it as is written at all telling TSE to
print what he wanted. After From the Grey Stone, however, TSE published nothing else by
Ford.

to Natalie Clifford Barney1 ts Doucet
11 May 1923 [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
Dear Miss Barney,
April is indeed the cruellest month, and the fact follows the word.2 This
is the first moment I have had to sit down and follow my telegram with a
letter. Please accept my very sincere regrets and apologies.
I have been in the country for the last five weeks, having intended to be
there only three. My wife was taken very ill, indeed was very ill when we
went, although the doctors urged me to take her. She was in bed for a
month, and during the first part of the time we did not expect her to live.
The doctors called it enteric influenza, which was narrowly prevented from
becoming pneumonia. We had to have a local doctor in constant
attendance as well as a London specialist twice a week, and I am sure you
will understand that under the conditions, in a half-furnished and not very
comfortable country cottage several miles outside of Chichester, the
situation was one of the very greatest anxiety. My wife is apparently
recovering though very slowly, and it will at best be many months before
she recovers from this illness. It has been very unfortunate in every way. I
have used up the whole of my annual holiday and a little more; a month
of the year which the doctors have been relying upon for my wife to make
the most progress must be spent in slow recuperation, and a complete
restoration is delayed by at least a year. Also, I have had to allow affaires
of the great[est] importance to remain untouched, and I find myself again
in London after great expense with a months arrears of work.
I am so late in replying to your letter of the 4th April that it seems useless
for me to attempt to reply to your questions.3 I do not know what Lady
1 Natalie Clifford Barney (18761972), a wealthy expatriate American writer in Paris,

hosted for several decades (from 1909) a brilliant, legendary salon at a sixteenth-century
pavilion, 20 rue Jacob, on the Left Bank her temple de lamiti attended by innumerable
writers inc. EP, Andr Gide, Anatole France, Paul Valry, Jean Cocteau, Colette, Gabriele
DAnnunzio and Peggy Guggenheim. She also helped to raise funds for certain gifted but
indigent writers including TSE and Valry. A lesbian, she was the addressee of Rmy de
Gourmonts Lettres lAmazone (1914); and in 1927 she founded an Acadmie des Femmes
to honour women writers. See A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney
(1992) and Diana Souhami, Wild Girls: Paris, Sappho and Art: The Lives and Loves of
Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks (2004).
2 Barney opened her letter of 4 Apr. with an allusion to the opening line of TWL: April is
the cruelest month. C. and the Dial had brought her TSEs waste lands, and she wished the
energy of so stimulating a poet might be liberated.
3 In addition to wanting to discuss Bel Esprit in relation to Paul Valry, Barney asked TSE
if he could recommend an anglo-american editor and publisher for her Penses dune
amazone which had been translated by EP and others.
129
Rothermere had in mind in suggesting that the variety of my interests was
a bar to my liberation the only bar that I know of is the difficulty of
combining liberation with a secure income for my wife in the event of my
death or incapacity.1
As I said, I have used up the whole of my holiday, and therefore the most
I can hope for is a hasty weekend in Paris later in the year. If I am able to
come over for a day or two I hope that I may find you there and call on
you, and I shall be very glad to know whether you expect to be away from
Paris the whole of the summer.
Richard Aldington by the way is living in the country: his address is
Malthouse Cottage, Padworth, near Reading, Berks.2
I have been trying to find a publisher for Valrys Le Serpent together
with Captain Wardles translation.3
Will you write to me again?
Yours sincerely,
T. S. Eliot
to F. S. Flint cc
[13?] May 1923 [London]
Dear Flint,
Would you be willing to undertake for the next number the translation
of an article by Jacques Rivire on Freud?4 I have not had time to read it
myself but I think that it ought to be of some interest.
I must explain in passing that the payment to contributors for the
number 3 and a great deal of other business has been delayed owing
to the fact that I have had to throw up everything for the time and remain
for the past month in the country with my wife who has been very
dangerously ill.
Yours in haste,
[T. S. E.]
1 Barney said Lady Rothermere had told her that it was not as easy as EP and she had hoped
to free TSE from the Bank because of the many occupations he seemed interested in.
2 Barney wanted RA to telephone her to discuss her conversations with Rmy de Gourmont.
3 The English translation of Valrys poem was ultimately published by RC-S (1924). Barney
was considering ways of subsidising Valry as well as EP.
4 On 16 May, Flint said he thought Rivire a good critic but inclined to the high-falutin
style. Flints translation appeared as Rivire, Notes on a Possible Generalisation of the
Theories of Freud, C. 1: 4 (July 1923).

to Antonio Marichalar1 ts Real Academia de la Historia
14 May 1923 The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
Cher Monsieur,
Merci de vos deux lettres et de lenvoi du rsum de votre Confrence.2
Javais lintention de vous crire il y a longtemps mais pendant les
dernires 5 semaines jai d laisser toutes mes affaires et rester la
campagne prs du lit de ma femme qui a t dangreusement malade. Pour
cette raison aussi, puisque je navais laiss aucun remplaant Londres, la
bonification des collaborateurs est en retard. Je vous fais toutes mes
excuses. Je suis rentr hier Londres o je me trouve combl daffaires
importantes arrires.
Je suis bien content que vous tes satisfait de la traduction de votre
article.3 Cest facheux quon a d dcouper larticle mais on a d
restreindre ltendue du numro 3 et plusieurs de nos collaborateurs ont
souffert. Jespre plus tard pouvoir disposer de plus nombreuses feuilles et
vous rendre justice la prochaine fois.
Jtais bien intrigu par le compte-rendu de votre Confrence. Est ce
quil vous serait possible de men laisser voir le texte intgral?
Avec toutes mes flicitations sur le succs de votre article, croyez moi,
bien vous,
T. S. Eliot4
1 Antonio Marichalar, Marqus de Montera (18931973), Spanish author, wrote articles for
Revista de Occidente (his subjects including Joyce, Valry and Virginia Woolf).
2 Marichalars letters do not seem to survive; the subject of the lecture is not known.
3 Contemporary Spanish Literature, trans. Mde S. A. Middleton, C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), 277
92. Marichalar (19 Apr. 1923) thought the translation excellente, and the cuts sans
importance.
4 Translation: Dear Sir, Thank you for your two letters and for the abstract of your lecture.
I intended to write to you some time ago but, during the last five weeks, I have had to
interrupt all my activities in order to stay in the country at the bedside of my wife who has
been dangerously ill. This is also the reason why payment to contributors has been delayed,
since there was no one to replace me in London. I sincerely apologise for this. I returned to
London yesterday and find myself overwhelmed by important matters waiting to be settled.
I am pleased that you are satisfied with the translation of your article. It is a pity we had
to make some cuts, but we had to reduce the length of the third number and several of our
contributors have had to suffer. I hope to have more pages available later and to do full justice
to your contribution next time.
I was most interested by the abstract of your lecture. Would it be possible for you to let me
see the full text?
With all my congratulations on the success of your article, Yours ever, T. S. Eliot
131
to Iris Barry1 ts Buffalo
Dear Miss Barry,
I have read your story with interest and amusement but I am returning
it because I think that in its present form at least it is not quite suitable for
the Criterion. It seems to me that you have a very good and amusing idea
but that the point ought to be made more quickly and sharply. That is, the
whole thing needs a good deal of condensation. For instance, it appears to
me that the description of the ladys appetite is an unnecessary addition.
Having stated the personality of the hero and the heroine the point should
be more quickly concentrated on the episode on the staircase. This does not
mean however that the story might not be extremely suitable in its present
form for some paper with more space at its disposal.
Be sure that we shall always be glad to consider anything you submit and
that it would have been a pleasure to me, had I not been exceptionally
pressed for time, to have criticised this contribution in much greater detail.
Will you send something soon?
Yours very truly,
T. S. Eliot
to Wilhelm Lehmann ts Texas

Dear Sir,
Thank you for your letter of the 16th April which I have been unable to
answer because of absence in the country. I have ordered a copy of No 3
of the Criterion to be sent to you and I shall send you as soon as possible
a copy of The Sacred Wood with my compliments. I am glad to hear that
you have received some numbers of the Dial. If your subscription does not
include the November number in which The Waste Land was printed,
please let me know.
I am very much interested in what you say about contemporary German
literature, as I had suspected that the Dial had perhaps made a few
1 Iris Barry (18951969): British writer, now known principally for her film criticism: in
1935 she was to become a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where she
inaugurated film study. She wrote criticism for the Spectator, 192330, and was film critic of
the Daily Mail, 192630; author of Lets Go to the Movies (1926) and Splashing into Society:
A Humorous Tale (1923).

mistakes.1 It would be a great favour if you could arrange to have sent me
a representative book by each of the two men you mention, Moritz
Heimann and Oscar Loerke.2 It is impossible in any country to find out
through the official press who are the really important people; the German
writer who has been the most spoken of here lately is Ernst Toller3 whose
work seems to me somewhat overrated. I should be very glad also if you
would send me some book of your own. Of course I shall be glad to pay
for anything you are kind enough to send me; for it is very difficult and
very tedious getting anything through London booksellers.
I am pleased that you should have liked my article in the Nouvelle Revue
Franaise.4 Had time and anxieties permitted, I should already have
followed it up with another one.
If you are in communication with Curtius will you please give him my
cordial salutations.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
I shall be glad of your opinion on The Waste Land when you see it, because
I think it might translate better into German than into any other tongue.5
TSE
to Ezra Pound ts Lilly

14 May 1923 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Ezra
Your letters of the 6th and 11th received with many thanks. Before
dealing with the enclosed cheques I wish first to ask whether these funds
in any way affect your own pocket. This is important and deserves a
1 On 28 Aug. 1922 TSE had told E. R. Curtius, I know almost nothing of German literature
since 1914. Under the influence of Scofield Thayer in Vienna, the Dial published work by
Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, Stefan Zweig
and Gerhart Hauptmann.
2 Moritz Heimann (18681925): German-Jewish playwright, fiction-writer and journalist.
Oscar Loerke (18841941): German poet, whose Naturlyrik was widely influential,
particularly on Lehmann; his most recent collection was Die Heimliche Stadt: Gedichte
(Berlin, 1921).
3 Ernst Toller (18931939): German dramatist, initially associated with Expressionism;
later responsible for more realistic political theatre such as Die Maschinenstrmer [The
Machine-Wreckers] (1922).
4 TSE, Lettre dAngleterre, NRF 19: 111 (1 Dec. 1922).
5 TWL was translated into German by E. R. Curtius as Das Wste Land, in Neue Schweizer
Rundschau (1 Apr. 1927), reprinted in T. S. Eliot, Ausgewhlte Gedichte (Frankfurt, 1951).
133
truthful and not misleading reply. I wish also to make quite clear that I am
not at the moment forced to borrow money or to realise any of the trust
fund which I believe I have explained to you. If this 20 is to cover
immediate and inevitable expenses I must let you know that even without
it I shall not be quite penniless within the next few weeks. <Not that [it]
wd not be very useful but I wish to be quite clear.> It is true that expenses
have been [very del.] <ruinously!> heavy and likely that they will continue
to be heavy. If you wish me to keep the money I will again explain in case
I have not done so before the nature of the special fund.
The Dial prize, and any other voluntary contributions which I receive
while still in the bank, and any money I can save out of my ordinary
income, are placed to a special account which is invested in securities of
the highest class as it accumulates. The income from such investments
will be paid into the same account and capitalised for reinvestment. A
fund is thus constituted upon which I do not propose to draw so long as
I have my regular salary*. <*exc. to keep out of debt.> It will constitute
a small foundation but at least reliable as long as the capitalist system
continues.
Vivien does not seem to improve with any rapidity and the situation is
rather a dilemma; she is hardly well enough to remain in the country but
hardly seems likely to get better if brought back to town. Later on, I should
like her to get abroad, especially as like all sensible persons she finds the
civilisation of England extremely depressing; but for some time it is
extremely unlikely that she will be fit to travel. At best, she has in a few
weeks lost more than all the benefit she gained from a years strict and
detestable regime, and of course it takes anybody a very long time to
recover from the shock of having been consciously so very near to death.
<Still very anxious.>1
Thanks for miscellaneous information. Is the Dial going to pieces? It
will sooner or later ruin itself by its mania for popular names and by its
lack of any one genuine intelligence directing its policy. I am assured by a
German correspondent that up-to-date Germans consider it all wrong in
its Teutonic selections; I give this merely for what it may be worth, but it
1 EP wrote to Ford Madox Ford at about this time: Eliots wife was at the point of death
for three weeks during the time when he would, otherwise, have been making his calculations
for July contents. Consequently he has got to break his promise to someone IF he is to save
me from extinction. Pound/Ford: The
Story of a Literary Friendship, ed. Brita Lindberg-Seyersted (1982).

does strike me that there is too much Hauptmann.1 Gide is exactly the sort
of person whom one would expect Scofield to respect.
I shall see whether I can press for subsequent publication with any
success. (Am anxious to publish & damn the Dial. Does not affect it so far
as I am concerned.)2 Thirty pages is rather a lot, but perhaps we could use
slightly smaller type without affecting the rates of payment.3 The payment
must be increased to select contributors for select work. Anyway, I will
write you about this again.
Yrs
T
<Have rcd. 3 Mntns autobiog.>4 But have literally read nothing for six
weeks. Saving this up.
to Herbert Read ts Victoria

Dear Read,
This is just a note to congratulate you on the success of your essay in the
April Criterion.5 Newspaper notices, such as they are, do not give much
evidence of the comparative success of the contributions of a quarterly
review, so I wanted to let you know that your essay has been praised to me
from several different quarters and I am sure it has contributed largely to
the good opinion that seems to be held of this number. I hope to have
something more from you soon and will before very long suggest a book
as a possible [egg del.] peg for an article.6
1 Gerhart Hauptmann (18621946): dramatist, novelist and poet, whose The Heretic of
Soana (an extract from his novel Der Ketzer von Soana [1918] had appeared in Dial 74: 4
(Apr. 1923) and 74: 5 (May 1923).
2 Scofield Thayer was deeply sceptical about EPs Cantos, which were due for simultaneous
publication in the Dial and C. but were never in fact published in the Dial. Making use of
the famous phrase Publish and be damned (attributed to the Duke of Wellington when
threatened with blackmail), TSE plays the two magazines off against each other. EP published
a Paris Letter in Dial 74: 3 (Mar. 1923); but thereafter, owing to Thayers dislike of his
work, nothing further until Part of Canto XXVII in 84: 1 (Jan. 1928).
3 Pounds Malatesta Cantos, in C. 1: 4 (July 1923), 36384, were not printed in smaller type.
4 The Three Mountains Press, a small press set up in 1922 by Bill Bird (18881963), brought
out EPs Indiscretions: or, Une Revue de Deux Mondes (1923), the first of the Inquest series.
5 HR, The Nature of Metaphysical Poetry, C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), 24666.
6 HR became a regular contributor to C., his next major article being Psycho-Analysis and
the Critic, C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925).
135
I am looking forward to the appearance of your Phoenix.1
Sincerely
TSE
Payment soon Delayed. I have been in the country my wife has been
dangerously ill there.
to E. R. Curtius2 cc
Dear Mr Curtius,
I have been too occupied with business and personal anxieties for some
time to be able to write to you, but I have wished to say this; I believe that
you are a member of the Faculty of Marburg University, and if you think
that it would be of interest to a sufficient number of the Faculty or of the
undergraduates, I should be glad to arrange to have a copy of the Criterion
sent regularly to the library of the University. This is in memory of my
affection for the town and my respect to the University where but for the
war I should have been a student.3
Please remember I shall always be glad to hear from you and to send you
any book that you specially desire.
Sincerely yours
[T. S. E.]
to Aldous Huxley 4 cc
Dear Aldous,
In the course of several upheavals I have again lost your address but I am
sure this will reach you. It is just to remind you that you have promised me
your essay on Wit5 by the beginning of July, and that I hope we may have
it even sooner. Will you let me know what the title will be?
1 HR, Mutations of the Phoenix (1923), published in May.

2 Ernst Robert Curtius: see Glossary of Names.
3 TSE went to Marburg in 1914 as a postgraduate student in philosophy, only to have his
stay cut short almost immediately by the outbreak of WW1.
4 Aldous Huxley: see Glossary of Names. TSE had known Huxley since 1917.
5 AHs essay on Wit never appeared in C. He had earlier published On Wit a review of
Paul Elmer More, With the Wits in A. (28 May 1920); reprinted in Aldous Huxleys Early
Excursions into Literary Criticism: Some Lesser-Known Essays, ed. James Sexton, Aldous
Huxley Annual 2 (2002), 247.

I have just returned to London after a most awful month of anxiety in
the country and I am overwhelmed with arrears of work. Will you lunch
with me some day in the city, as I see no immediate prospect of seeing
anybody in any other way.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
to Sydney Schiff pc Valerie Eliot

[Postmark 15 May 1923] [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
Vivien improves very slowly, and is weak to the last point, and has
relapses, so we are by no means at ease. The Chichester doctor comes daily.
I am going down as early in the week as I can get away. Crushed with
pressure of affairs, and in great haste
Yrs. aff.
T
to Valery Larbaud1 ts Vichy

Dear Larbaud,
Had time and anxieties permitted I should have written to you already
some weeks ago. You must remember that you promised the Criterion an
essay or a series of essays, or part of what might become a book, on
Walter Savage Landor.2 The Criterion is counting upon this to start its
autumn season. Have you been able to make progress with it, and do you
think that you could let us have it or a section of it, if what you will let
us have is long by July? I have hoped, as you know, that you might
introduce in the Criterion what would develop into a book which I feel
pretty sure I could get published in this country possibly under the
auspices of the Criterion itself.
1 Valery Larbaud: see Glossary of Names.

2 On 20 Mar. 1922 TSE had told Larbaud he would be particularly pleased at having the
honour of publishing first something of yours on Landor. (Larbaud had begun a doctorate
on Landor.) He reiterated this on 8 Nov. 1922, but nothing else by Larbaud was published
in C.
137
I have just received the 14th edition of the Posies de A. O. Barnabooth.1
I had never seen them before I read Barnabooth as it came out in the
NRF2 and I read every word of the book last night in the train coming
up from Chichester. They interested me so much that I cannot understand
why I have never read them before. If I may say so, there is one poem in
particular which struck me as saying something which had never been said
before but as expressing a feeling which I have felt myself very strongly: Le
don de soi-mme.3 But furthermore I think I see in this book the parentage
of what is now a very distinct frame of mind among our contemporaries.4
Is there any possibility of your coming to London this year?
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
to Herbert Read ms Victoria

[? Late May 1923] [London]
Dear Read
Many thanks for the Phoenix.5 It is beautifully done, and I am looking
forward to reading it with the care it demands and deserves. The Donne6
has struck me (at a mere glance) as containing undigested Browning (it is
hard to get away from him) and less ripe than the rest.
Jargon yes it is very difficult to write good prose nowadays on a
technical study.7 Psychology is worse than anything because it is a young
science (if it be a science)8 and hardly born before jargonising was well
1 Larbaud published the Pomes of A. O. Barnabooth in 1908 in a two-vol. Oeuvres

franaises compltes. It was reprinted as A. O. Barnabooth: ses oeuvres compltes, cest--
dire un conte, ses posies et son journal intime in 1913. The 13th and 14th editions came out
in 1923.
2 A. O. Barnabooth: Journal dun milliardaire was serialised in four parts in NRF 5054
(1 Feb.1 June 1913).
3 TSE wrote, in a later year: The poetry of flight . . . in contemporary France, owes a great
debt to the poems of the A. O. Barnabooth of Valery Larbaud (Baudelaire, 1930; SE, 428.
4 Larbaud replied (14 June) that TSEs letter made him feel very proud: it gave him the
incentive he wanted to go on writing at all.
5 HR, Mutations of the Phoenix (1923).
6 HRs poem, John Donne Declines a Benefice, 1924.
7 TSE developed his ideas about modern prose in Contemporary English Prose, sub-titled
A Discussion of the Development of English Prose from Hobbes and Sir Thomas Browne to
Joyce and D. H. Lawrence, Vanity Fair 20: 5 (July 1923).
8 HR was interested in psycho-analysis and went on to publish Psycho-Analysis and the
Critic in C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925). TSEs scepticism towards psychology was evident as early as

advanced. There are Berkeley and Hume,1 of course. Economics is ruined
by it, although Adam Smith could write well.2
Yours in haste
T. S. Eliot
to Ezra Pound ms Lilly

Cher E
Very many thanks for your explanation and for your letter. The money
will either join the investment fund or be used to prevent my breaking into
it. Apart from expenses already incurred, and only partly paid, this disaster
is certain to necessitate more expense for a long time to come. It will take
Vivien a year to get over this. She wont be able to rough it in a small
cottage, and she must go abroad as soon as fit to do so.
If possible, I want to use your cantos in the July no.3 I am finding out
how much space is needed for contributions ordered six months ago &
definitely accepted for July, & will then see what can be chucked out, &
will put it up to Lady R. If successful, I will wire you for MSS.
I am delighted that you have a period of time which the Criterion can
profit by. Do you want to do something about Vivante,4 or about the
general subject including Vivante and the establishment of a small critical
canon (as discussed by us some time ago).5 Hurry up and write something
before you are too busy or go off on yr. Travels.
his PhD thesis Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley, where he wrote:
popular psychology . . . is the only psychology there is (81).
1 The idealist Irish philosopher George Berkeley (16851753), author of A Treatise
Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), and the sceptical Scottish philosopher
David Hume (171176), author of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748).
2 Adam Smith (172390): Scottish political economist; author of An Inquiry into the Wealth
of Nations (1776).
3 On 18 May, EP suggested TSE provide a note saying they are IX to XII in a long poem to
explain the bewildering numerals above each canto. Think it needs to be read aloud, rather
rapidly, in plain matter of fact voice; to get full general swing. The verses were published as
Malatesta Cantos (Cantos IX to XII of a Long Poem) in C. 1: 4 (July 1923), 36384; reprinted,
with revisions, as Cantos VIIIXI.
4 On 28 Jan., EP had sent TSE a book by Leone Vivante, Della Intelligenza nellEspressione
(1922). The English translation, Intelligence in Expression, was reviewed by W. A. Thorpe
in C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925), 4634.
5 On 28 Jan., EP told TSE he wanted to establish a circle of critics serious characters, with
honest, divergent views, who will refer to each others ideas. He stipulated: There has to be
a recognisable body of discussable criticism as an instrument to this revaluation.
139
More about Criterion etc. later. Vivien still in country, as impossible to
move her. I have had to leave her entirely in the care of her mother and the
young man.1 She sends her love to you and D[orothy, Pounds wife] and is
counting on seeing you this summer and again in the winter. On
contemplating suicide a short time ago she was going to leave you a letter.
Hell.
Yrs
T

Vivien Eliot to Ottoline Morrell ms Texas

20 May [1923] 2 Milestone Cottages,
Old Fishbourne
Dearest Ottoline
How are you my dear? I have been longing to write to you and to hear
from you.
I still feel so ill, so intolerably unsteady, weak, dizzy reeling, that life
is a fearful burden.
I hardly know where I am, now. After so great a shock so many shocks
it is coming back from death and I am still gasping for breath just
hanging on. It is not life, I dont know what it is. Time passes, it seems the
summer is going and I cant grasp it. I only wake up and realise every
now and then how time is passing.
I dont feel I could ever pick up the old life again. I feel so many hundred
miles now from everyone and everything. You understand this dont you?
I found that one of the very few really happy, stable, memories I had to
hang on to was Garsington. You and Garsington, there is something
definite there. You have made something real, comforting. A form. Excuse
incoherence.
My love
Vivien
1 Unidentified.

I enclose my list of payments will you check it? please.
I have a parcel of MSS. ready whenever your man can call.
It strikes me that if the Criterion is published in America (e.g. as by
Liveright) we shall have to extract American rights from all contributors
in self protection. Is that not so? and in that case some of the contributors
will want more money!1
Yrs in haste
TSE

Sunday [27 May? 1923] (Returning to) 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear E
I cabled to say we will print poem in July & it will come to about 20.
That is the best we can do, esp. as it is appearing in the Dial.2 I object
strongly on tactical grounds to yr 1st line.3 People are inclined to think
that we write our verses in collaboration as it is, or else that you write
mine & I write yours. With your permission we will begin with line 2. No
time to write more, still having a hell of a time.
Yrs
T
Will you explain to Ford I dont know where he is why we postpone
him till October.4
I have got Richard [Aldington] to assist, do proof, run exchanges, write
letters, & help generally he is the only person in England I could think
of, & I believe will be extremely useful in many ways.
1 US publication did not come to pass.

2 EP replied on 12 June, Not the least sure that Cantos are appearing in Dial.
3 The opening line of Canto IX (later Canto VIII) was These fragments you have shelved
(shored). When TSE objected to EPs overt allusion to the end of TWL: These fragments I
have shored against my ruins (l. 430), EP replied on 12 June, All right, delete first line, if it
worries you. TSE did so, but EP restored the line in A Draft of XVI Cantos (Paris 1925) and
in subsequent editions.
4 EP told TSE that Fords present spouse thought he would not mind his piece being
postponed. See also note to TSEs letter to EP of 14 May.
141
I like cantos immensely, exc. few details of personal fancy. Certainly a
great pioneer invention in method.
Cher Monsieur,
A propos des indits de Proust dont nous avons dj parl,1 je viens de
voir Lady Rothermere. Je suis maintenant dans une position de proposer
une considration au taux de 15 les 5000 mots au lieu de notre taux
ordinaire de 10 les 5000 mots. Nous ne pourrons gure dpasser 15,
puisque nous devrions payer aussi Monsieur Scott Moncrieff pour la
traduction. Je vous saurai bien gr si vous aurez la bont de soumettre cette
proposition au Docteur Proust, parce que si nous parvenons nous
entendre l-dessus je voudrais bien annoncer que le morceau indit de
Proust paratra dans notre numro dOctobre.
Monsieur F. S. Flint sest charg de loeuvre de la traduction de votre
article et jai toute confiance que sa traduction vous plaira.
Ma femme commence se rtablir trs lentement, mais elle ne peut pas
encore se dplacer. Je vais la rejoindre la campagne mercredi pour quinze
jours de repos qui me sont devenus essentiels.
Si vous mcrivez pendant la quinzaine je vous prie dadresser votre lettre
2 Milestone Cottages, Old Fishbourne, Chichester, Sussex.
Recevez, cher Monsieur, lassurance de mes sentiments devous.
[T. S. E.]2
1 M. Proust, The Death of Albertine, C. 2: 8 (July 1924), 37694.

2 Translation: Dear Sir, I have just seen Lady Rothermere concerning the articles from
Prousts unpublished work which we have already discussed, and I am now able to offer you
15 per 5000 words, instead of the usual rate of 10 per 5000 words. As we also have to pay
Mr Scott Moncrieff for the translation, we would find it rather difficult to go beyond 15.
I should be grateful to you if you would be kind enough to submit this new proposal to
Dr Proust for, if we could reach agreement about it, I should very much like to announce the
appearance of this unpublished Proust extract for the October issue.
Mr F. S. Flint has been given the task of translating your article and I am confident that the
result will please you.
My wife is beginning very slowly to recover, but she is not yet fit to move about; I am
therefore joining her in the country on Wednesday for a fortnights rest, which has become
absolutely necessary for me.
If you wish to write to me during this fortnight, would you please address your letter to
2 Milestone Cottages, Old Fishbourne, Chichester, Sussex.
Please accept, dear Sir, my very kind regards. [T. S. E.]

to Richard Aldington cc
Dear Richard,
I have now seen Lady Rothermere and have pleasure in confirming the
proposals which I made to you the other night. She has agreed to them
verbally without hesitation and I am only awaiting the return of an explicit
statement which I am sending to her for her signature.
You will be offered a consideration at the rate of 50 a year to act as
secretary, managing editor, or some similar designation [with] the
following duties and any other work agreed upon between you and myself:
To take charge of the translation of manuscript accepted in foreign
languages, to read the proof and fit together the accepted material, to write
a page or so of editorial matter for each number over your initials.
The work of managing the foreign reviews comprehends arranging for
exchange with such periodicals as you select, correspondence on the
subject with these periodicals and distributing for review to whomever you
think fit such periodicals as you do not wish to review yourself. As in
[sc. I] informed you, I have been sending American periodicals to Read
and German periodicals to Flint. Flint is also prepared to undertake
Spanish, Dutch and Scandinavian periodicals in collaboration with a
colleague of his in his ministry. It is understood that you will be paid
separately for such reviews of periodicals as you write yourself and for all
of your contributions to the paper excepting the editorial page which is
included in the consideration named above.
I think that reviews of foreign periodicals should be paid at the same
rate as other contributions, i.e. at the rate of 10 per 5,000 words. But
they should be kept as short as possible and limited to about four pages of
small print, (see Criterion No. 3)1 in each number. Reviewers are not
expected to consider any but the most important articles, and doubtless it
will often be sufficient to give only a partial list of contents of many of the
reviews received. Reviewers should keep their eyes open for anything they
see of exceptional merit in order that we may come to know of new foreign
writers who would be desirable contributors to the Criterion.
I will ask Cobden Sanderson to send you a supply of Criterion letter
paper.
1 Foreign Reviews, devoted to French, German and US publications, occupied pp. 30813
of C. 1: 3.
143
I hope it will be possible to increase the emolument later. At present of
course I am not taking anything out of the paper myself, but I think that
in future I shall have to be paid for my own contributions at the regular
rates.
I am sending you such correspondence as I have had with foreign
reviews.
I do not think that we can afford at present to exchange with more than
about twenty-five reviews. The list at present is:
Mouton Blanc,1
Indice,
Reine de Genve,
Ecrits du Nord,
Convegno,
Neue Rundschau,
Neue Merkur,
Nouvelle Revue Franaise,
Nation, N.Y.
New Republic,
Dial.
I am not sure that the Mouton Blanc is worth while, and Indice never
appears, but it is desirable to be in touch with somebody in Madrid. If you
can find out the names of any other reviews in Spain, Italy, Germany and
other countries with which it would be desirable to exchange, it would be
a good thing to do.
I have got a fortnights more leave very generously from the bank and
shall be at 2 Milestone Cottages, Old Fishbourne, Chichester, from
Wednesday next. I shall tell Sanderson to send proof direct to you.
I enjoyed immensely seeing you the other night and I wish very much
that we could meet more often.
Yours,
[T. S. E.]
1 Mouton Blanc, an organ of modern classicism, was a French review ed. by J. Hytier;
Indice a Spanish review; Reine de Genve is a slip for Revue de Genve, a French-language
Swiss review of the European elite which ran from 1920 to 1924; crits du Nord, a monthly
review of literature published in Brussels and Paris; Il Convegno an Italian review with a
strong Futurist presence; Neue Rundschau a well-established German literary review founded
in 1890; and Neue Merkur a German literary periodical, ed. by Efraim Frisch, 191525. The
Nation and New Republic were US newspapers with serious literary review sections.

I have arranged with Lady Rothermere to have Richard Aldington as
secretary or assistant editor of the Criterion at the rate of 50 per annum,
payable quarterly.1 He is to take entire charge of foreign reviews, proof
reading, translations, and any other routine business that I cannot manage
myself. This will ensure the continuance of the Criterion should I have any
more disasters like the one I have just been through, and I believe that it
will be a help to you as well as to myself. The amount of routine work
and correspondence has increased so much that at best I simply have no
time to write myself or to do other things for the paper that I should like
to do; and so we have adopted this plan.
Will you send Aldington some Criterion letter paper in order that [he]
may correspond direct with foreign reviews? I shall continue to select
contributions and to approach people who are desirable as contributors,
so you may continue, alas, to send me the contributions that come in.
Will you also, when you get a slip proof, please send two copies direct
to the author or translator as the case may be and one copy to Aldington
instead of to me?
I send you herewith manuscript of a long poem by Ezra Pound and I
should like to know as soon as possible how much space it would take, i.e.
the number of words that a prose article occupying the same space would
contain in order that I may compare it for length with the contributions
we have. If it is possible to get it in, I should like it to go in to the July
number. As it will be published in America it must go in the July number
or not at all.2
Hazells had better go straight ahead setting up all of the ms. If there is
too much for this number, it will go into the October number, in any case,
so that the galley will not be wasted.
I have got two weeks more leave from the bank, as I am feeling
completely knocked up, and am going back to Fishbourne on Wednesday.
So you can write to me there and I will see you about the 15th of June.
Meanwhile I shall ask Aldington to carry on with all the things that he
1 RA had been literary editor of the Egoist and worked on the TLS.
2 In the event it was not published in the Dial.
145
can deal with himself. There is a parcel of rejected manuscript waiting
here for you.
Yours ever,
TSE
Did you get my statement of amts. due to contributors? (G. Adams1 c/o
Ezra Pound)
to Leonard Woolf 2 ts Berg

Dear Leonard,
I tried twice to ring up Hogarth House today, but got no reply.3 I wanted
to explain that I have put a good deal of time on this paper4 all I had to
give but that I am quite aware that it is a failure, incoherent, badly
written, and not long enough for your purpose. Never has my brain been
so costive. I only send it in earnest of my good intentions. If you do not
think it is good enough to print, send it back.5 But I cannot attempt
anything else for several weeks. I have had to go to the bank and ask for
more time, and am going back to Fishbourne on Wednesday for a
fortnights rest, with a prescription and a certificate. During the last week
I have been trying to get through business of every sort, and feel completely
done up.6
How are things going with you, and how is Virginia? I should like to
have seen you or at least spoken to you before I left, but it seems
impossible.
Yours ever
Tom
1 B. M. Goold-Adams.
2 Leonard Woolf: see Glossary of Names.
3 The Woolfs lived at Hogarth House from Jan. 1920 to Mar. 1924.
4 John Donne (rev. of Love Poems of John Donne), N&A 33: 10 (9 June 1923): TSEs first
review since the publication of TWL in Oct. 1922.
5 LW offered TSE more time to revise the article (see TSEs letter of 3 June).
6 TSE had dined with the Woolfs on 17 May. On 18 May, VW told Roger Fry that strange
figure Eliot had been with them the night before: I feel that he has taken the veil, or whatever
monks do. He is quite calm again. Mrs Eliot has almost died at times in the past month.
Tom, though infinitely considerate, is also perfectly detached. His cell is, Im sure, a very
lofty one, but a little chilly. (Letters, III, 38.)

Dear Flint,
I should be glad to know that you received the typed script of Rivires
article on Freud which I sent you some days ago.1 When the translation is
ready will you send it to Richard Aldington? He has accepted the position
as secretary to the Criterion and will have charge of all the business in
connection with translations and with foreign reviews. I am trying to get
recent numbers of the two German reviews for you,2 and will ask you to
send your notes to him by the 15th of June. If you come to know of any
desirable reviews in German or any of the other numerous languages which
you manipulate, will you write to him and recommend them for exchange?
And do not forget that I should welcome from you any suggestions both
for an article or for brief notes by you of a more editorial character.3
Yours ever,
T. S. Eliot
My dear Whibley,
When I suggested to you some months ago that it would be a very useful
thing and a great kindness if you would write at your leisure an article on
Charles Maurras for the Criterion, I think that you did not receive the
proposal unfavourably. I am now writing in the hope that you have not
changed your mind and that you will let me mention among other
contributions that we expect in six months or so to have this important
contribution from you.
I should like however to suggest an alternative; at one time you proposed
writing an essay on Chesterfield4 and this would be equally acceptable.
1 Notes on a Possible Generalisation of the Theories of Freud, trans. by Flint, in C. 1: 4

(July 1923).
2 Flint reviewed Neue Rundschau, but not Neue Merkur, in C. 1: 4 (July 1923).
3 Though a frequent contributor to C. as reviewer and translator, Flint published little in the
way of articles or editorial comments.
4 Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (16941773): politician and diplomat;
author of Letters to his Son. CWs previous contribution was on Bolingbroke (Henry St John,
1st Viscount Bolingbroke, 16781751), whom he described as the wisest and most eloquent
of the Tories. CW wrote too: Chesterfield, by no means the worst critic of his time, thought
147
I will tell you frankly what I have in mind. The Criterion proposes next
year to begin the publication of a very small number of books, exclusively
by contributors to the Criterion and often composed of or including
contributions to the Criterion. The first will be a very small book indeed,
Valrys Serpent with the translation and introductory essay by myself.
What I should very much like would be to have a book of three or four
essays by yourself, some of which should have appeared in the Criterion.
You will see that a book by yourself containing essays on subjects having
some[thing] in common with the subject of Bolingbroke, would be an
important statement of a position, whether it was Bolingbroke,
Chesterfield, Maurras and one or two others and nothing could be more
desirable in indicating the standpoint of the Criterion.1
Of course I do not know what your engagements are, or whether you
would in any case consider publishing with anyone but Macmillan.2 In the
state of my ignorance please excuse my having presented to you what may
be a wholly unacceptable suggestion, and accept it, if you like, merely as
the expression of an impossible wish.
In any case, I am very anxious to have another essay by you in the
Criterion next winter.
My wife is still extremely feeble and still in a precarious condition,
although she is gaining strength. I have obtain[ed] another extension of
leave, very generously given by the bank and am going back to
2 Milestone Cottages, Old Fishbourne, Chichester, on Wednesday for a
fortnight. Indeed, I very much need rest; this has been the greatest strain
I have ever undergone, and I do not feel any the better for having
attempted to make up for the six weeks arrears of work and
correspondence during the fortnight I have been in town.
The work of the Criterion will be somewhat relieved, as I have secured
Richard Aldington, (whose principles political and literary are nearer to
mine than those of anyone whom we could get) to act as secretary to the
Criterion and take charge of much of the routine.
Bolingbrokes style superior to anybodys. This may have prompted TSE to suggest a
companion study of Chesterfield, another eighteenth-century Tory. CW duly contributed
Lord Chesterfield to C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924), 23657.
1 TSEs idea that CWs studies of English Tory writers and of Maurras would represent the
standpoint of the Criterion anticipates his publicity circular of Dec. 1924 which identified
the Criterion with a philosophy of pure Toryism.
2 CWs books Political Portraits (1917), Literary Studies (1919), and Literary Portraits
(1920) were all published by Macmillan.

I should like to have a word from you to let me know how you are and
whether you have been able to make headway against this disastrous
season of bad weather.
Yours ever
[T. S. E.]
PS Do you remember that more than six months ago you told me that
Stanley Baldwin would be the next Prime Minister?1
Dear Lady Rothermere
I enclose a letter which embodies all the arrangements we made, as I
understand them. If I am wrong, will you let me know; if not, will you
sign one copy and return it to me?
I also enclose a sketch of my idea for a monogram for Criterion
publications; it seemed to me that something bold and simple would be
most effective, and I do not greatly admire Cobden-Sandersons own
monogram. What do you think? If this is on the lines you approve, will you
tell him so?
I also enclose a list of Egoist publications, which is not up to date.2 But
there are only three or four things since: Marianne Moore, and Pound,
and H. D., so far as I know.3 Of course I can do nothing about this until
my return.
I presume Cobden-Sanderson will write to you about the cost of printing
Valry [Le Serpent], and submit specimens of paper and binding. I have
told Wardle to write to him, or to tell Valry to write to him, about the
terms of publication.
I understand from you that your offer to me of a salary of 300 (with a
three years guarantee) for editing the Criterion in the event of my leaving
the bank, will hold good notwithstanding the increase of your guarantee
1 Stanley Baldwin (18671947), Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1922, succeeded Bonar

Law as Conservative Prime Minister on 22 May 1923.
2 In addition to being a literary review, the Egoist had published books by contributors,
most notably JJ, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1917), WL, Tarr (1918) and TSE,
Prufrock and Other Observations (1917).
3 Marianne Moores Poems (1921), Ezra Pounds Quia Pauper Amavi (1919), and H. D.s
Hymen (1921) were all published by The Egoist Press.
149
for the Criterion itself from 600 to 750.1 I should like to know whether
I am quite right as I may be making plans on this assumption.
From Wednesday, I shall be at 2 Milestone Cottages, Old Fishbourne,
near Chichester, Sussex. Your address is 33 quai Voltaire, after this week?
I hope I may hear from you in Paris. But I shall ring you up, to say good-
bye, before I go!
[T. S. E.]
to Herbert Read cc
Dear Read,
I have got Richard Aldington to take charge of the foreign reviews of the
Criterion and generally to act as secretary of the paper, because there is
now much more to do than I am able to cope with myself. Will you
therefore send some notes on American periodicals to him at Malthouse
Cottage, Padworth, near Reading, Berks, by the 15th of June?2 I am afraid
there is not much for you to write about. If you know of any interesting
American reviews which you would like to have will you write to
Alding[ton] and ask him to try to get them? I am hoping later to have more
brief editorial notes, comments, favourable or damnatory, on current work
etc. in the Criterion during its second year.3 I hope that you are willing to
associate yourself closely enough with the redaction of the paper to do a
certain amount of this, as well as contribute full-dress articles.4
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
1 Lady Rothermere responded (29 May): Yes, certainly my offer holds good despite of
increased expenses!
2 HR wrote about the latest issues of the Dial from Mar. to May 1923, and gave a brief
report on the Jan. issues of Secession, Poetry, Rhythmus and The Double Dealer.
3 A feature entitled Books of the Quarter began a year later, in C. 2: 8 (July 1924).
4 On 4 June, HR said he was very willing to associate myself with the Criterion during its
second year.

to Harold Monro ts Beinecke
Dear Monro,
I have had it in mind to write to you for a long time but circumstances
of my wifes illness have stopped all correspondence in the last two months.
She has had a very dangerous illness under appallingly inconvenient
conditions in the country and I have been with her as much as I possibly
could. I am returning on Wednesday for a fortnight, having got an
extended leave of absence on the ground of my own health which of course
has suffered incidentally.
So I am extremely sorry that I shall be unable to come and make the
acquaintance of Mr Robinson.1 I should very much have liked to meet
him. I can only hope that he as well as yourself will be in town after June
15th. Will you tell him how very sorry I am that circumstances prevent
me coming.
I have wanted to express my appreciation of your comments on The
Waste Land in The Chapbook.2 They have given me a great deal of
pleasure, especially as so much nonsense has been written about the poem
in America.
I have received from America a book about Wordsworth3 which I think
might interest you. It is by a professor in the university of Wisconsin and
is of course the usual American heavy professional production, but I saw
one or two pages which struck me as not unintelligent. You are one of the
few persons to recognise the merit of Wordsworths prefaces and I wonder
if it would amuse you to use this book as a peg for a note or a short essay
on Wordsworth to appear in the Criterion.4 I hope the idea interests you,
and if you let me know at once I should like to send you the book before
I go away.
1 Edwin Arlington Robinson (18691935), US poet. On 25 May, Monro said Robinson

wished to meet TSE, and suggested supper at the Poetry Bookshop on 4 or 5 June.
2 Monro, Notes for Study of The Waste Land: an Imaginary Dialogue with T. S. Eliot,
Chapbook 34 (Feb. 1923), 1024. Most poems of any significance leave one definite
impression on the mind. This poem makes a variety of impressions, many of them so
contradictory that a large majority of minds will never be able to reconcile them, or conceive
of it as an entity.
3 Arthur Beatty, William Wordsworth: His Doctrine and Art in their Historical Relations
(1922).
4 See Monros Wordsworth Revisited, which touched on Beattys book, as well as on Emile
Legouis, Wordsworth in a New Light, and H. W. Garrod, Wordsworth, in C. 2: 8 (July 1924).
151
I wish that you would tell me about the preparation1 you mention and
its properties and what it is for. Many thanks indeed.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
to Harriet Monroe 2 ts Houghton

Dear Miss Monroe,
Thank you for your letter. I shall be very glad indeed to see you as soon
as it is possible for us to meet. It has been impossible for me lately to see
anyone: I had to be in the country for a month with my wife who has been
very dangerously ill there; I have been in London for a few days but I am
returning to the country on Tuesday to be with my wife and to get a rest
which I very much need. But as you say in your letter that you will be in
London throughout June I shall look forward to seeing you upon my
return in the latter part of the month.3 Meanwhile I hope that the English
climate will be more friendly toward you than it has been these past weeks.
We have had the dreariest month of May that I have ever known here.
Yours sincerely,
T. S. Eliot
to Captain Mark Wardle cc

My dear Wardle,
I think that at last I am in a position to give you something definite about
the Serpent. The Woolfs went away to Spain for a month before making a
decision and I myself you will remember you rang me up on the
telephone shortly before I left have been through a most terrible
experience, having had my wife very ill, at the point of death, in a small
cottage in a remote part of the country. I was with her continuously for five
1 In his letter of 25 May, Monro suggested VHE might benefit from an amazing and quite
genuine thing called Yahdil which cured people with apparently chronic troubles. On 25
June, he said he was sending The Yadil Book, a sumptuous volume with more about this
panacea.
2 Harriet Monroe: see Glossary of Names.
3 Monroe was staying at 58 Bloomsbury St, London.

weeks. She improves very slowly and not without relapses. I am completely
exhausted myself having been wholly unable to attend to business during
that time and having endeavoured to attend to the arrears during the last
fortnight. I am returning to the country on Wednesday for another
fortnight, having secured leave of absence from the bank on account of
my own very dilapidated condition.
The Woolfs would have liked to publish the Serpent but owing to prior
commitments would be unable to do so until some time this winter. I can
now tell you that Lady Rothermere is very anxious to publish it and will
have it published for the Criterion by Cobden-Sanderson, as the first of a
projected series of publications by contributors to the review. Cobden-
Sanderson knows all there is to know about book-making, and Lady
Rothermere is very anxious that the book should be very well done. As
for the terms of publication, may I suggest that you put yourself in touch
with Cobden-Sanderson and make the necessary arrangements, or that
Valry should do so himself. I should be glad to help further but it is
impossible at the present time for me to undertake such negotiations.
The Hogarth Press, I believe, does not usually make contracts but simply
pays royalties as it gets money in hand. I think that the Criterion would
prefer a more business-like arrangement and would either pay a sum down
for the rights in the English language or a royalty by contract.
It is proposed to publish the book in October. I wonder if you would be
so good as to get me, if it is acceptable to Valry that I should write the
preface,1 or ask Valry to have sent me, copies of some of his works which
I have not got. I have Charmes2 but I should like to have the introduction
to Lionado3 and the Soire avec Monsieur Teste4 as well before writing
about either of them. Is there anything else that I ought to know?
My address after Wednesday will be 2 Milestone Cottages, Old
Fishbourne, Chichester, Sussex, for a fortnight only, and I should be
delighted to hear from you.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
1 On 19 Mar., Wardle said Valry initially wanted Lytton Strachey to write a preface for Le
Serpent but had accepted TSEs offer with gratitude.
2 Paul Valry, Charmes ou Pomes (1922), his major collection of poems after La jeune
parque (1917), included Le cimetire marin which TSE thought one of his finest poems.
3 Valry, Introduction la mthode de Lonard de Vinci (1895), his first important
publication: an investigation into the psychology of creation.
4 Valry, La soire avec monsieur Teste (1896). In his Brief Introduction to the Method of
Paul Valry TSE observed that a poet who is also a metaphysician would be a monster, just
as (in my opinion) M. Valrys Monsieur Teste is a monster.
153
to Richard Cobden-Sanderson ts Beinecke
Thank you for your kind letter. I ought to have explained that I like to
pay more for verse than for prose and that I am allowing more to Captain
Wardle than is usual because his translation is more important, i.e. is
responsible for a larger proportion of the interest than in the case of most
translations. Also with regard to the Koteliansky and similar cases where
the translator has the right to some valuable manuscript of a dead
author,1 and so that through the translator we get the advantage of a
scoop, I think that the translator ought to be paid at the ordinary prose
rates.
You are always very considerate about bothering me, but I hope that
you will let me know as soon as you hear from Hazell the particulars about
the Ezra Pound poem. I shall have to deal at least with this one matter
while I am away in order to decide finally on the makeup of No. 4.
As soon as you have some more of the Criterion letter paper with the
Cobden-Sanderson address on it I shall be glad if you will let me have a
supply I shall be sorry to think that my absence from town will be putting
more labour or worry upon you.
Yours ever,
TSE
PS Would you grudge sending copies of No 3 to the following persons
whom I have invited to contribute:
Professor G. Elliot Smith, 31 Belsize Gardens [Crescent], n.w.3.
Miss Rebecca West, 36 Queens Gate Terrace, s.w.
Professor A. B. Keith, 4 Crawford Place, Craigmillar Park, Edinburgh.
F. M. Cornford Esq, Trinity College, Cambridge.
W. Trotter Esq, c/o T. Fisher Unwin Ltd, 1 Adelphi Terrace.
Professor A. S. Eddington, The Observatory, Cambridge.
1 See Kotelianskys translation of Dostoevskys Plan of the Novel The Life of a Great
Sinner, C. 1: 1 (Oct. 1922), and of Two Unpublished Letters in C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923).

to S. S. Koteliansky ts BL
My dear Koteliansky,
I have had to be out of London almost continuously since the time when
you sent me your translation of the Reminiscences of Andreyev.1 I do not
know whether you have heard any news of me so I will explain that my
wife nearly died of influenza in the country and that I had to drop all
business and be with her for five weeks. During the last week I have been
in town endeavouring to rescue my affairs from the disorder into which
they have fallen, and especially affairs of the Criterion. But I now find my
own health so bad that I must return to the country on Wednesday for a
fortnights complete rest.
On returning to town I have discovered among other misfortunes that
there is so much material from authors whom I have asked to contribute
which will either have to go into the July number or not at all, that I should
be unable after all to use but an insignificant fragment of Gorki at best. It
is a very long thing but I do not think that it ought [to] be cut more than
half. It would be a pity to cut it as much as that. If you approve, I will
retain the manuscript and use half of it in the October number; if not I can
only offer my apologies for a muddle which I hope will not occur again.
I am sorry not to have the opportunity of seeing you but I shall again
look forward to a meeting on my return in June.
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
to G. Elliot Smith2 cc
28 May 1923 [The Criterion, London]
Sir,
I take the liberty of writing to you on behalf of the Criterion. As it is
possible that you have not seen or heard of this review, which was started
1 Reminiscences of Leonid Andreyev by Maxim Gorky (18681936) trans. S. S. Koteliansky

and Katherine Mansfield, was published by Heinemann in 1922.
2 Sir Grafton Elliot Smith (18711937), anatomist and anthropologist, was appointed in
1919 Professor of Anatomy at University College, London, where he set up the Institute of
Anatomy which developed rapidly in renown and influence. He was awarded the Royal
Medal of the Royal Society, 1912; the Honorary Gold Medal of the Royal College of
Surgeons, 1930; and the Huxley Medal, 1936; and he was knighted in 1934. His books
include The Ancient Egyptians (1911) and Evolution of the Dragon (1919). By his middle
155
in October last, I enclose a copy of a circular which was issued at the time,
which will give you some notion of the character of the paper and its
contributors. A further circular reviewing the first years accomplishment
will be issued in July. It is desired during the second year to extend the
scope of the paper and include work not only by the most important men
of letters, both English and foreign, but also by distinguished scholars and
men of science. Professor W. P. Ker has contributed a paper for the October
number,1 and Sir James Frazer2 has promised his collaboration also.
The Criterion does not aim at a very large circulation, but aims solely at
publishing the highest class of work. While a contribution to this paper
does not reach a very large audience, it probably receives more intelligent
attention than a contribution to any other review and the audience is not
limited to Great Britain. The Criterion would be very greatly honoured by
a contribution from you on some ethnological or anthropological subject.
While we cannot, of course, publish papers which are only intelligible to
the readers of technical reviews, we believe that distinguished scientists
ought occasionally to address themselves to the cultivated public in
general. There is of course no question of including popular science
articles in the Criterion. Our rates of payment must at present be very
modest, at the rate of 10 per 5000 words, and articles should not greatly
exceed that length.
Should you consent to promise a contribution for next winter I should
be extremely grateful; and if you accept in principle, I will ask the secretary,
Mr Richard Aldington, to discuss any details with you later.3
years, as a result of his fascination with the anthropology and customs of ancient Egypt, he
became a proselytising diffusionist all human culture evolved out of Egypt and published
a series of popularising books on the subject, inc. The Evolution of Man: Essays (1924) and
The Search for Mans Ancestors (1931). TSE said his recent theories were of interest and
importance to every student or practitioner of the arts, as indeed they should be to everyone
who would pay any attention to the history and the future of the human race (C. 2: 8 [1924],
489), and invited WL to review The Evolution of Man and Egyptian Mummies (written by
Elliot Smith and Warren R. Dawson) in C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925).
1 W. P. Ker, Byron: An Oxford Lecture, C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923).
2 Sir James Frazer (18541941): social anthropologist and classical scholar; author of The
Golden Bough (first edn pub. 1890), which TSE hailed as a work of no less importance for
our time than the complementary work of Freud throwing its light on the obscurities of the
soul from a different angle. TSE thought Frazers vision and fine prose style gave him an
inevitable and growing influence over the contemporary mind (A Prediction in Regard to
Three Authors, Vanity Fair 21: 6 [Feb. 1924]). TSEs first note in TWL acknowledged that
he was indebted in general to The Golden Bough, a work which he says has influenced our
generation profoundly. However, nothing by Frazer appeared in C.
3 See G. Elliot Smith, The Glamour of Gold, C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925).

Hoping that I may hear from you.
I am,
Sir,
[T. S. E.]
My dear Koteliansky
Your letter crossed mine. Of course I should not object I shd have no
right to object to your using part in the Cassells Weekly.1 I think there
is really far too much for our small size and infrequent appearance anyway,
and we should simply not use that part. So I imagine that you would like
to have MSS. back for the time and send it regd. tomorrow. Excuse haste
I leave in the morning and I hope to see you late in June.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
to May Sinclair 2 cc
Dear Miss Sinclair,
It is a long time since I have seen you or communicated with you but this
winter and spring have been a very crowded and anxious time for me
divided between domestic anxieties and Criterion business routine and I
have seen myself forced to sacrifice each to the other. At the beginning of
April my wife had a disastrous attack of influenza in the country from
which she nearly died and I have had to be out of town most of the time
since then.
I am hoping that things will proceed more smoothly, because I have
secured the assistance of Richard Aldington to take over a great deal of the
work and help me in various ways with the Criterion and I am sure you
will agree that there is no one better I could have found.
1 A reference to Reminiscences of Leonid Andreyev by Maxim Gorky, which Koteliansky

had offered to C. Cassells Weekly ran from 21 Mar. to 27 Oct. 1923, before metamorphosing
into T. P.s and Cassells Weekly, 19239.
2 May Sinclair: see Glossary of Names.
157
In July we expect to issue a circular in the attempt to secure a larger
circulation. At present it fluctuates, so far as we can judge, between 800
and 1000. A thousand copies of the first number have been sold and the
sales of all three numbers continue. I should like to see the circulation
doubled in this country and see it reach a thousand in America as this does
not seem to be beyond the bounds of possibility. The circular will sum up
the performance of the first year and outline the work of the second year.
May we hope to receive a story from you for one of the numbers of the
second year?1 I say a story, not an article, simply because it is a hundred
times more difficult to secure a story up to the standard which we have set
ourselves and which you set for us in the first number2 four times a
year, than it is to get half a dozen good articles. I am painfully aware that
any contribution from you is a kindness at a financial sacrifice to yourself,
because there are so many other periodicals which would be only too glad
to pay you very much more. To a few contributors like yourself, we shall
be able to give double rates i.e. 20 for 5000 words, but only [on] the
condition that we have first serial rights for both England and America.
I should always be interested to hear from you, and grateful for any
criticisms or suggestions you have to make on the numbers of the Criterion
that have appeared.3 They would be most valuable.
[T. S. E.]
to A. S. Eddington 4 cc
Sir,
1 Sinclairs Joness Karma, C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923) a story TSE always admired (EVE).
2 The Victim, C. 1: 1 (Oct. 1922) was the first piece of new fiction published in C.
3 On 3 Nov. 1923, Sinclair wrote to thank TSE for TWL, saying he had never done
anything more purely beautiful, more haunting & more terrible.
4 Sir Arthur Eddington, OM (18821944): English theoretical physicist and astrophysicist,
whose Space, Time and Gravitation (1920) helped to popularise Einsteins theory of relativity.
His later works include The Mathematical Theory of Relativity (1923).

number, and Sir James Frazer has promised his collaboration also.
a contribution from you on some subject within your own field which
educated and intelligent persons of only the ordinary mathematical
training could understand. While we cannot, of course, publish papers
which are only intelligible to the readers of technical reviews, we believe
that distinguished scientists ought occasionally to address themselves to
the cultivated public in general. There is of course no question of including
popular science articles in the Criterion. Our rates of payment must at
present be very modest at the rate of 10 per 5000 words and articles
should not greatly exceed that length.
Mr Richard Aldington, to discuss any details with you later. I have asked
Mr Cobden Sanderson to send you a copy of the April number.
Hoping that I may hear from you.1
I am, sir, your obedient servant
[T. S. E.]
to Jane Harrison2 cc
Madam,
1 Replying on 3 June, Eddington said that while he shared TSEs wish that science may be
adequately represented in reviews appealing to the cultivated public, he had little time and
energy for all I should like to attempt. He did not contribute to C.
1 Jane Harrison (18501928): pioneering scholar of Greek religion, with anthropological
interests. She was a fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge, until 1922, when she went to
live with Hope Mirrlees in Paris. Her Epilegomena to Greek Religion had appeared in 1921.
159
[number], and Sir James Frazer has promised his collaboration also.
a contribution from you on some subject which would be of interest to
general readers of Themis and The Prolegomena.1
Our rates of payment must at present be very modest, at the rate of 10
per 5000 words, and articles should not greatly exceed that length.
Should you consent to promise a contribution for next winter,2 I should
Mr Richard Aldington, to discuss any details with you later.
I have asked Mr Cobden Sanderson to send you a copy of the April
number.
Hoping that I may hear from you,
I am, Madam, your obedient servant,
[T. S. E.]
to Rebecca West 3 cc
Madam,
I do not know whether you have seen this periodical of which I send
you the prospectus which was issued last October, but I hope at least that
you have heard of it and if so that you have heard well of it. The Criterion
1 Harrisons most influential books were Themis (1912), an attempt to interpret Greek
religion in terms of totemism and fertility rituals, and Prolegomena to the Study of Greek
Religion (1903).
2 Harrison never published in C.
3 Rebecca West (pseudonym of Cicily Andrews, ne Fairfield) (18921983): British novelist,
feminist, journalist and political commentator; author of The Return of the Soldier (1918).

likes to publish one piece of fiction in each of its four numbers during the
year. It is extremely difficult to obtain four short pieces of fiction at the
quality required, although great numbers are submitted. At the end of the
first year, which ends with the number to appear in July, we shall have
published stories by Miss May Sinclair, Miss Virginia Woolf, Signor Luigi
Pirandello, Stephen Hudson, and two writers hitherto unknown, Mr Owen
Barfield and Mrs Goold Adams.1
I was very much struck by your novel The Judge and I am sure that if
you write shorter fiction at all it must be what the Criterion wants. I should
be very happy to receive a story from you, of anything from 1500 to 5000
words, or at least the assurance that we may hope to receive one from you
during the summer or autumn.
Our rates of payment are unfortunately limited to 10 per 5000 words.
We hope that the success of the Criterion will enable it to increase these
rates but at present we must rely for attracting the best writers upon our
maintenance of the severe standards which we have set ourselves.
Should you be able to gratify us immediately, or at least to appease our
request with a promise, I will ask the secretary, Mr Richard Aldington, to
communicate with you.2
number.
I am, Madam, Your obedient servant,
[T. S. E.]
to F. M. Cornford 3 cc
Sir,
1 May Sinclair, The Victim, C. 1: 1 (Oct. 1922); VW, In the Orchard, 1: 3 (Apr. 1923);
Luigi Pirandello, The Shrine, and Stephen Hudson, The Thief, 1: 2 (Jan. 1923); Owen
Barfield, Dope, 1: 4 (July 1923); B. M. Goold-Adams, The Obsequies, 1: 3 (Apr. 1923).
2 Nothing by West appeared in C.
3 Francis MacDonald Cornford (18741943), classical scholar associated with the
Cambridge ritualists Jane Harrison and Gilbert Murray, was author of studies of Greek art
and thought including From Religion to Philosophy: A Study in the Origins of Western
Speculation (1912).
161
a contribution from you on some subject which would be of interest to
readers of your Origin of Attic Comedy.1
Our rates of payment must at present be very modest at the rate of 10
per 5000 words and articles should not greatly exceed that length.
Mr Richard Aldington, to discuss any details with you later.2
number.
Hoping that I may hear from you.
[T. S. E.]
to A. Berridale Keith 3 cc
Sir,
1 The Origin of Attic Comedy (1914) identified a ritual sequence lying behind Aristophanes
plays. On 18 Mar. 1933 TSE told Hallie Flanagan, who was directing at Vassar College a
production of his fragmentary play Sweeney Agonistes (sub-titled Fragments of an
Aristophanic Melodrama): See also F. M. Cornford, Origins of Attic Comedy, which is
important to read before you do the play.
2 Cornford never contributed to C.
3 Arthur Berriedale Keith (18791944): constitutional lawyer and Sanskrit scholar; from
1914, Regius Professor of Sanskrit at Edinburgh University.

a contribution from you on some subject in the field of Indian mythology,
folklore, or classical literature.
Our rates of payment must at present be very modest at the rate of 10
I cannot forbear mentioning that I first heard your name many years
ago from my honoured teacher, Professor Charles Rockwell Lanman,1 of
Harvard, when I was beginning the study of Sanskrit with him. I remember
that he referred to you as knowing more Sanskrit than any man in
England, and mentioned you in the same sentence with Jacobi and Lvy.2
I am, Sir, Your obedient servant,
[T. S. E.]
1 C. R. Lanman (18501941), Professor of Sanskrit, was founding editor of Harvard

Oriental Series; author of The Sanskrit Reader (1884); the foremost authority in the USA.
2 Hermann Jacobi (18501937): pioneering German Indologist and Sanskrit scholar; Sylvain
Lvy (18631935), French Sanskrit scholar; Professor at the Collge de France; author of Le
thatre indien (1890) and Doctrine du sacrifice dans les Brahmanas (1898).
3 On 3 May, Keith replied that he was pleased to hear from a pupil of my old friend, C. R.
Lanman, and promised a contribution on Indian classical literature. TSE was to tell RA in
Sept. 1923 they had an article of his for publication, but nothing by Keith ever appeared in C.
163
to Harold Monro ms Beinecke
[?2 June 1923]1 [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
You will think me very dilatory but I have not even had time to wrap up
the Wordsworth book yet. I will try to get you the new Legouis book on
him too.2 We shd. like article, if it suits you to write 3000 words or so.3
Yours ever
T. S.E.
to Leonard Woolf ts Berg

Sunday, 3 June 1923 [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
Dear Leonard,
Thank you for your letter of the 29th. I am very much relieved to hear
that you do not have to use my article at once after all.4 It was written
in a hurry and under great pressure, and I quite realised how badly it
was written; I only sent it in that form because I had promised it that
week and thought that you wanted it at once. It shows evidence of
pressure and haste, and I fear, mental fatigue. So, as you are not using it
immediately, will you let me have it back to re-write for you? Please be
sure that I should not have allowed such a piece of work to go out of my
hands, and certainly not into yours, but that I had promised it, and
thought that it would be inconvenient for you not to get it. I do not want
to add to your editorial troubles! So please let me have it back to
remodel.
1 The date in pencil was added later, probably by Donald Gallup.

2 On 10 Jan. 1924, Monro told TSE that RA had obtained for him both Emile Legouis,
Wordsworth in a New Light, and H. W. Garrod, Wordsworth: Lectures and Essays (1923).
3 See Monro, Wordsworth Revisited, C. 2: 8 (July 1924).
4 TSEs (revised) review of Love Poems of John Donne John Donne, N&A 33: 10
(9 June 1923) contended that those who take Donne as a contemporary will be taking him
as a fashion only. Proposing that Our appreciation of Donne must be an appreciation of
what we lack, as well as of what have in common with him, he went on: A style, a rhythm,
to be significant, must embody a significant mind, must be produced by the necessity of a new
form for a new content . . . And for this reason, I suspect, most contemporary verse is so
uninteresting in rhythm and so poor or so extravagant in vocabulary . . . we cannot return
to sleep and call it order, and we cannot have any order but our own, but from Donne and
his contemporaries we can draw instruction and encouragement.

After I have got off my mind all the arrears of work and business that
ought to have been attended to weeks ago I am sure that I can do you a
much better article than this.
Yours ever
Tom

Sunday, 3 June 1923 2 Milestone Cottages
About Wardle my idea was that the offer to Valry should be based on
cost and probably receipts. This of course is outside of the financial
arrangements of the Criterion proper and Lady Rothermere will have to
approve such estimates as you lay before her and authorise you to incur the
necessary expenses. When the amount of payment to Valry is settled I
suggest that you draft a letter to him for her to sign. I suggest that you
work out estimates including your commission on sales and send her your
recommendations. As I have never been a publisher I dont think I should
intervene.
Tell Wardle that you are submitting estimates to Lady R. and will make
a proposal approved by her when she has seen them.
Will write about the Criterion in a day or two.
Yours in haste
TSE
to Mary Hutchinson ts Texas

4 June [1923?] [London]
Dearest Mary
Je suis tres affair1

And Bucktooth Maclaggan2
An undernourished bagman
1 I am very busy (French).

2 Eric Robert Dalrymple MacLagan (18791951): an authority on textiles and Italian
sculpture; later Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum, 19445. TSE alludes to the
description in JJs Ulysses of Buck Mulligan as Bucktooth Mulligan.
165
And Mrs H (though rich)1
A dreary kind of bitch
But the Hope of meeting Rodger2
The Aphrican artful Dodger
And the magnetic
Sympathetic pathetic aesthetic
Quality
Of your own personality
And because Im wishin
To see the Great Politician3
Who is Quite Above Suspicion
Attract me
T. S. E.
Vivien would have made the party brighter
Its a Pity you didnt Invite her
But she wouldnt have Come if you had
[envelope] Take, postman, take your little skiff

And ply upstream to HAMMERSMIFF,4
And rest your oar (nay, but you shall),
By RIVER HOUSE, at UPPER MALL;
This letter, when alls said and done,
Is meant for Mrs HUTCHINSON.
w.6
1 Violet Mary Hammersley (18781964): society hostess whose late husband had been a
partner in Coxs Bank.
2 Roger Fry (18661934): art historian and critic; author of Vision and Design (1920); a
close friend of the Hutchinsons. TSEs description of Fry as The Aphrican artful Dodger
associates him with the sweet-talking Cockney pick-pocket in Dickenss Oliver Twist, Aphra
Behn and Africa (whose art had been taken up by the Post-Impressionists whom Fry
championed).
3 Herbert Asquith (18521928): Liberal Prime Minister, 190816. On 29 Dec. 1918, after
the General Election, TSE said it was most deplorable that men like Asquith . . . should have
been defeated.
4 The Hutchinsons lived at River House, Hammersmith, London, w.6. TSEs rhyming
address takes after the neo-classical style of Pope (associated with nearby Burlington House),
and after Rimbaud.

Tuesday [5 June 1923] 2 Milestone Cottages
My dear Ottoline
I am afraid you are very ill the more so as I had a feeling that
something was wrong with you, for days before you wired. I am very
anxious. I dont want you to write, but if you could get somebody to send
me a line a card to say how you are, it would be a great relief.
With much sympathy and love
Tom

9 June 1923 2 Milestone Cottages
I am returning to town this week Wed. or Thurs. and will see you as
soon as possible I know there is a great deal to be discussed. I dont want
to see proofs; but one copy of each and of page proof should go to
Aldington. I expect to be in town for good after this, or for better or worse.
Yours
TSE

Sunday [10 June 1923]
Dear Richard
I am returning to town on Wednesday or Thursday.
Do you mind writing to Constable for a copy of Katherine Mansfields
book for me when it comes out.1 I think her inflated reputation ought to
be dealt with.2
1 Katherine Mansfield, The Doves Nest and Other Stories (1923).

2 On 7 Nov. 1922, TSE told EP that Mansfield was one of the most persistent and
thickskinned toadies and one of the vulgarest women, and a sentimental crank. There was
no review of The Doves Nest in C., but Mansfields letters and journals were sympathetically
reviewed by Orlo Williams in NC 8: 32 (Apr. 1929). Much later, TSE wrote a foreword to
JMM, Katherine Mansfield and Other Literary Studies (1959).
167
I have told C-S to send one copy of Ezras proof [of Malatesta Cantos]
to you. Ford1 will have to wait till October, as you say, we cant have him
and EP together. And we must get that good article on Dizzy2 but there
isnt much time.
I am writing to EP to say his first line (quotation from me) must come
out3 you will see why. Possibly the phrase s.o.b.4 may give offence and
is an unnecessary insult in my opinion.
Yours ever
T

18 June [1923] 2 Milestone Cottages
Dear Virginia
It so stunned me to find that my mental condition was one in which
anything I could write could be construed into a statement that Maynard
Keynes was bankrupt that I immediately ceased to write letters and even
telegrams. It is evidently quite hopeless, and I must accept my fate and
remain cut off from any communication with the civilised world.
Some day I may return to London and try my luck, but at present I am
too timid to return as the instigation of such a rumour.
It becomes more and more pleasant to be in the country, and I spend
some of my time driving about and searching for a really nice cottage, for
this is not one.
Murry has a most beautiful cottage four miles away, but it is too isolated
for me just now. But of course nothing I see is ever quite so perfect as the
Hutchinsons Eleanor, nor could be I am sure.
1 Ford Madox Fords From the Grey Stone was held over to C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923).
2 F. W. Bain, Disraeli, appeared only in C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924).
3 Canto IX opened with the line These fragments we have shelved (shored), an allusion to
TWL, l. 430: see TSEs objections on 27 May above.
4 In Canto XI (later renumbered X), EP referred to that monstrous swollen, swelling s.o.b. /
Papa Pio Secundo. RA, in his autobiography, recalled that when he noted in the proofs that
EP had called the Pope a s.o.b, he considered the severe law of libel, and the sensitivity of
Roman Catholics, and thought it was not urbane to call the Pope a s.o.b: So I cut it out;
whereupon Ezra transferred the epithet to me by mail (Life for Lifes Sake [1941], 266). In
C., the line read that monstrous swollen, swelling / Papa Pio Secundo. EP restored the epithet
in A Draft of XXX Cantos (1930). In Canto XII (later XI), EP referred to Federigo da
Montefeltro as that nick-nosed s.o.b. Feddy Urbino. In that case, the line was printed
without bowdlerization in C.

Tom has, alas, gone back to London and on Saturday is going to Oxford
to lecture to the undergraduates.
I should love to go with him, and on to Garsington the next day, but
perhaps it would be wiser to refrain.
I do hope I shall see you soon. A meeting in the country would be very
delightful.
Yours ever
Vivien Eliot
to Dorothy Pound 1 ms Lilly

Friday 22 June [1923] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Dorothy
I shall be delighted if you will lunch with me on Thursday the 28th, at
Simpsons in Cheapside (where Cheapside joins Poultry [Street])2 at 12
oclock. I say 12 oclock because I have to lunch from 12 to 1. If you take
bus or tube to the Bank you walk back (west) along Poultry (i.e.
Cheapside) about a block and Simpsons is on the left facing west. I will
wait at the entrance to the court. Simpsons is up a little court.
I shall be able then to give you a small present which Vivien has for you.
She was going to send it to Paris, but it is better to give it to you.
Yours always,
T. S. E.
to The Editor of The Nation and The Athenaeum3

23 June 1923 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Sir,
In some interesting remarks on Ben Jonson in the Nation and
Athenaeum of June 23rd with which I am otherwise in accord I observe
that you refer to me as seeming to have praised Jonson apologetically.4
1 Dorothy Pound: see Glossary of Names.

2 Cheapside turns into Poultry St close to Bank tube station, nr. TSEs office at Lloyds Bank.
3 Text taken from TSE, Ben Jonson, N&A 33: 13 (30 June 1923), 426.
4 In The World of Books: Ben Jonson, LW had written: But even Mr T. S. Eliot, and after
him Mr Aldous Huxley, seem to praise Jonson apologetically. The tone seems to be
incongruous and unnecessary, N&A 33: 12 (23 June 1923).
169
My article1 was intended as a defence only in so far as I believed Jonsons
reputation as evidenced by manuals of literature, such as you yourself
quote was a mis-representation; and in this belief, I should imagine, you
concur. And theoretically I agree that the only defence necessary for
Jonson is to tell people to read him.2 But this is equally the only defence
necessary for a number of other writers; and a great deal depends on the
persuasiveness of the way in which one tells people to read them. But if any
defence, further than an oracular invitation to the public to read an author,
implies that the author defended is weak or vulnerable, then my paper on
Jonson was by no means intended as a defence or an apology. On the
contrary, Jonson seems to me to have a particularly strong position.
Yours, &c.,
T. S. Eliot.
Vivien Eliot to John Middleton Murry ms Valerie Eliot

24 June [1923] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear John
Ever since I saw your beautiful cottage I have wanted to write to tell
you how much I like it. I was dumbstruck as Ellen [Kellond] calls it. The
bedrooms particularly touched me. And your furniture is perfect.
To speak the truth to you and you must take this please as my answer
to what you tell me of your feelings about me and Tom since coming
back to London I have been in despair. I mean real despair, which isolates
and freezes one. (I dont much believe in despair which seeks sympathy
and comfort, do you?)
In addition, I am trying to come to a decision. It is an old indecision,
really, but the conclusion becomes always more urgent. My despair is
paralysing me. There, John, there is no-one else in this world today to
whom I would make an explanation.
So I cant see you just now, my dear. But if you are what you must be,
you will let me call on you the moment I smash a chair or two, and will
come then quickly, before I have time to get re-bound.
Vivien
1 TSE, Ben Jonson, originally published anonymously in the TLS (13 Nov. 1919), was
reprinted in SW (1920). TSE said, Jonson behaved as the great creative mind that he was:
he created his own world, a world from which his followers, as well as the dramatists who
were trying to do something wholly different, are excluded (SW, 117).
2 LW wrote: The only defence of Jonson which is necessary is to tell people to read him.

to Dorothy Pound ms Lilly
Sunday [24 June 1923] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Dorothy
I hope you can use this ticket to the Phoenix performance of the Faithful
Shepherdess tomorrow (Monday) afternoon.1 I have given the other ticket
to James Joyce.2 I think it should be interesting. I look forward to seeing
you on Thursday.
Yours ever
T
to James Joyce3 ms Buffalo

Monday, 25 June 1923 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Joyce
Can you and Mrs Joyce have tea with me tomorrow (Tuesday) at 5.30
at Frascatis (Oxford St near the corner of Tottenham Court Road)? There
will only be Lady Ottoline Morrell, who is very anxious to meet you and
is only here for a day or two. I hope you can come. If you will leave word,
I will ring up your hotel in the morning.
Very sincerely
T. S. Eliot
Excuse short notice I was not sure till today that Lady O. M. was coming,
and I knew you were out this evening.
PS Please do not mention to Lady O. M. (if you come, as I hope you will)
that you saw my wife. She is not strong enough to see many people yet.
1 John Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess, was performed by the Phoenix Society at the
Shaftesbury Theatre. The cast included Isabel Jones, Cathleen Nesbitt and Harcourt Williams,
with music arranged by Sir Thomas Beecham. The Phoenix gave us yesterday afternoon
three hours in Arcady. At the end of the performance of Fletchers pastoral play . . . each
member of the audience could truthfully say to himself, Et ego in Arcadia vixi, and there can
have been few who regretted their sojourn at the Shaftesbury (The Times, 26 June, 1923, 10).
2 JJ was on holiday in England with his family, 15 June 9 Aug.
3 James Joyce: Irish novelist and poet, see Glossary of Names.
171
to James Joyce pc Buffalo
[Wednesday, 27 June 1923] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
I will call for you at your hotel tomorrow (Thursday) at 7. I am sorry I was
out this afternoon. I rang you up this evening but you were out also.
Sincerely
T. S. Eliot
to James Joyce ms Buffalo

Friday [?29 June 1923] The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Joyce
Dont forget to write to me here your address in Bognor.1 I hope you
will have no trouble in finding a good hotel. I want to get a car one day
when I am at Fishbourne and fetch you over and show you some of the
waste lands round about Chichester.
Yours ever
T. S. Eliot

Sunday [1 July 1923]2 The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
I have the first set of page proof. Is it too late to alter the order so as to
put Rivire second and Dope third?3 I think it is too much of a contrast
with Yeats.
I am sorry to be a nuisance, having left it so late, but if it can be done
without delay please do. And the last sentence of Dope ought to read
Hide me from this bloody world.4
Dont answer. I will see you on Tuesday.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
1 JJ with his wife and daughter stayed at Alexandra House, a boarding house in Clarence
Road, Bognor Regis, Sussex.
2 Dated by Cobden-Sanderson.
3 No change was made in C. 1: 4 (July 1923). The running order remained Yeats, A
Biographical Fragment, Barfield, Dope, Rivire, Notes on a Possible Generalisation of the
Theories of Freud.
4 These are the last words of the story as published.

to L. A. G. Strong1 ms Texas
3 July 1923 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Mr Strong
Thank you for your kind and flattering letter.2 I am afraid, however,
that I must decline your offer, however much honour it does me. For one
thing, The Waste Land is intended to form a whole, and I should not care
to have anyone read parts of it; and furthermore I am opposed to
anthologies in principle.3 I wrote one or two letters to the Times Literary
Supplement on this subject two years ago.4 I do not know why authors
should make a present of their works to publishers and editors, in a form
which does not lend itself to understanding, and for an undiscriminating
public for if it discriminated, it would not buy anthologies. Especially as
the appearance of verse in anthologies is likely to reduce the sale of the
collected works of the authors included. I must, therefore, decline the
pleasure of inclusion in your book.
Yours very truly
T. S. Eliot
1 L. A. G. Strong (18961958): novelist, journalist, editor and poet; later a director of

Methuen. He edited Eighty Poems: An Anthology (1924) and published Doyles Rock and
Other Stories (1925). With C. Day Lewis, he edited New Anthology of Modern Verse (1940).
2 Strong had asked to include an extract from TWL in an anthology of contemporary verse.
This may refer to The Best Poems of 1923, ed. L. A. G. Strong (Boston, 1924), which included
poems by RA, H. D., De La Mare, E. E. Cummings, Harriet Monroe, Osbert Sitwell and
J. C. Squire; or to Eighty Poems: An Anthology, ed. L. A. G. Strong (1924).
3 TSE consistently refused to allow the publication of extracts from TWL and other poems.
4 In a letter to the TLS (24 Nov 1921), Poets and Anthologies, TSE objected to the
inclusion of extracts from his work in Modern American Poetry, ed. Louis Untermeyer. Some
months ago I discussed the general question of anthologies with a poet (of a very different
school and tradition from mine) whose name is more widely known than mine is. We agreed
that the work of any poet who has already published a book of verse is likely to be more
damaged than aided by anthololgies. Robert Graves, among others, wrote in support; and
the case was developed later in Robert Graves and Laura Riding, A Pamphlet Against
Anthologies (1928).
173
5 July 1923 [London]
If this1 wont go on three pages, let me know and if there is room,
I think it would be good to have a list of contents of the Nos 1234
attached.
T. S. E.
I saw Aldington. Yes, print 1260 and give [W. H.] Smith 300.

Friday, 6 July 1923 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Many thanks for letter and addressed envelope. I shall be very pleased,
for my part, with the Circular as proposed, and am very glad the Contents
will go in. I hope the type will not have to be very small. Im sorry if we
cant come out punct. on the 15th, as it is July especially, but that is my
fault still, I hope we will not be many days out.
We ought to have enough of the circular to be able to send it out again,
in October. Therefore I wish you would change 1st sentence of the circular
to
With the October 1923 number the Criterion begins its second volume.
Dont you think that is better?
1 This refers to the following circular for C.:

The July number of the Criterion just published, completes the first volume of this
interesting literary review. It is likely that the first volume of this brilliant quarterly will be
eagerly sought after by bibliophiles; we understand that the first numbers are out of print and
are only to be obtained at a premium.
A circular issued with this number summarises the achievement and outlines the next year,
which will show some interesting developments. The contents of Vol. I show a list of
distinguished names, of both older and younger writers, such as any literary review might
envy. The July number is in no wise inferior to the three previous. It includes some fascinating
reminiscences by William Butler Yeats; a charming sketch by E. Morgan Forster; the second
part of an essay on Viscount Bolingbroke by Charles Whibley, one of the greatest authorities
on the subject; an essay on Freud by Jacques Rivire, the editor of La Nouvelle Revue
Franaise; an essay on Italian Renaissance poetry by Richard Aldington; an examination of
Indian drama by Stanley Rice; and for those who are capable of appreciating the most modern
literature, some amazing Cantos by Ezra Pound, and a curious story called Dope. The
review is remarkable in the discrimination and skill with which it combines writers of widely
different type, selecting only according to merit, and it deserves praises for introducing
important foreign writers to this country. It is obtainable at booksellers for 3/6, or from the
publisher, R. Cobden-Sanderson, 17 Thavies Inn, e.c.1.

The extra cost of red type is a nuisance, but as it is so distinctive of the
Criterion I think it is worth the money.1
Yours ever
T. S. E.
PS I have just discovered two paragraphs I want to alter. So will you please
hold over and you shall have corrected copy by Monday morning. I swear
I cant let it go out in this form. Im awfully sorry.
to James Joyce pc Buffalo

[Postmark 9 July 1923] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Im awfully sorry but we shall not be able to get to Fishbourne for
another week or so. I will drop you a line when we arrive, so please keep
me posted of your movements. With kind regards to your wife.
Yours ever
TSE
I hope Bognor suits all of you?2

My dear Ottoline
I was very glad to hear from you, but of course disappointed that you
are not stopping over in London. We have had two long interviews with
Dr Martin. He was very much interested indeed and kept Vivien a long
time. He has discovered, by having bacteriological analyses made, an
extraordinary excess of streptococcus fecalis, and other mischievous cocci.
He has promised to send over cultures from Germany. But he says it cannot
be properly done in this country, and it is much as I expected he cant do
much for her unless she can go to Freiburg in the autumn.3 This is what it
comes to. And I have been run into such ruinous expenses with this illness
already that I dont see how I can undertake such a new adventure.
1 RC-S asked (6 July) whether it was really necessary to have Criterion on p. 1 printed in
red ink? It would add another 30/- or so to the cost of printing. On 7 July, however, he said
he would see that the title is printed in red ink.
2 JJ wrote to Harriet Shaw Weaver (5 July): I like it [Bognor] very much . . . The weather
is very fine and the country here very restful.
3 OM went for treatment at Freiburg in the autumn, but VHE was unable to go.
175
It has been terribly exhausting two visits and three analyses and
Vivien is utterly worn out. We hope to get back to the country on Saturday,
and I shall stay as long as I can, for I am utterly worn out. I do hope that
Dr Martin has done you good. We liked him very much.
Ill write to you from Fishbourne.
Always aff.
Tom

15 July 1923 The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear C-S
Could you send tomorrow morning for two parcels? They are for
Aldington (MSS) but I dont want to send them to him till he returns home,
and I dont want to have them here. If youd keep them and send them to him
(registered) at the Criterions expense when he gets back I shd be very grateful.
Shall send you copy [for advertisement] for Rothermere press in a few
days.
Yours ever,
T. S. E.
Sunday
to Robert Graves1 ms Morris

2
Many thanks for J. C. R. MSS. After I have gone over them I will
certainly talk to the Woolfs3 about them, and let you hear.
In haste
T. S. E.
1 Robert Graves (18951985): poet, novelist, critic, mythologist; served during WW1 with
the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and was wounded in June 1917; later author of the modern classic,
Goodbye to All That (1929). After the early war poems of Over the Brazier (1916) and Fairies
and Fusiliers (1917), he produced a series of collections, inc. The Pier Glass (1921). He had
also written On English Poetry: being an irregular psychological approach to this art (1922).
2 John Crowe Ransom (18881974), poet and critic associated with the Fugitives, had
published two books of poems in the USA. Graves was one of the first to admire Ransoms
poetry, and had sent TSE a selection of poems from Ransoms volumes for possible
publication in C. and advice about publication elsewhere.
3 LW and VW had published Gravess The Feather Bed (1923). Ransoms poems eventually
appeared from the Hogarth Press as Grace After Meat, with intro. by Graves (1924).

to Sydney Schiff ts BL
Thursday [19 July? 1923] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
My dear Sydney,
I have long had it in mind to ask you to do something for Volume II of
the Criterion. But knowing how hard you have been working for the past
six months and more I have purposely delayed mentioning it until a more
seasonable time appeared. But now that your book is finished,1 and before
your next book has completely claimed your time I venture to remind you
that we should like very soon a short sketch or story from you. <(Have you
any of your short things?)> I say a sketch or story to give you as much
scope as possible and to allow myself to make a suggestion. I think that
you could do a very amusing satirical sketch of present times and manners;
you know the sort of thing I mean. Yours is a very satirical and observant
mind and you might write some very caustic sketches of the sort of people
who are typical of our time. This is a sort of thing that the Criterion needs.
Can you do something for us now?2
I am sorry to tell you that Vivienne has been quite ill again for the past
two weeks and in fact has had a bad relapse.3 This is a very bitter
disappointment as up till then she had seemed to be making real progress
under the Swede. She has seen no one, but should you be in London and
free on Saturday afternoon, she wants me to tell you that she would like
to see you about 4.30 or 5 just for a short time.
Affectionately,
Tom.
This sounds very dreary when I read it over and comes from dictating
to a new secretary. I could have said simply that Vol. II must have
something from you! There are only half a dozen writers of fiction, and I
depend on you.
1 SSs novel Prince Hempseed (1923), written under his nom-de-plume of Stephen Hudson.
2 SSs Cleste appeared, under his pseudonym Stephen Hudson, in C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924),
33248; it was later the title story of his collection Cleste and Other Sketches (1930).
3 In a letter of 10 Aug., VW mentions that several recent letters by her had semi-fatal
results: for instance, poor Mrs Eliot had a relapse.
177
23 July 1923 as from 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Mon cher
This from Chichester, but letters are forwarded. I most humbly
apologise. There is no justification for such negligence.1 I have not your
original receipt by me, so please date this to suit yourself.2 The fr. 1000 will
of course be kept in trust fund & can be accounted for.
The Criterion cantos3 I am afraid are not perfect in typography, owing
to the muddle in which this no. was produced. I am asking C-S to send you
ten copies.
Will write further as soon as possible.
Tout toi
TSE
to Wyndham Lewis4 ts Cornell

26 July 1923 2 Milestone Cottages,
Old Fishbourne
Dear Lewis
I got your letter forward[ed] this morning. I am awfully sorry I missed
you, and that you are going away;5 as I do not expect to return to town
for ten days. I am delighted to hear about the manuscript.6 Could you send
it to me, here, registered, and if you wish I will post it back within twenty-
four hours. Or if you can leave it with me longer I will keep it locked up
and not let anybody know of its existence. We want to print it, of course.7
If you can have it typed out in duplicate and send me one copy, so much
1 On 19 July, EP wrote: Have tried in VAIN to get you to send me receipt for B.E. twenty
pounds stg/ remitted some weeks ago. Do try. EP wanted to keep his own name unpolluted
in regard to the Bel Esprit fund but also to uphold the idea of it.
2 The receipt read: Received from Bel Esprit per Ezra Pound Esq. 20 (twenty pounds).
T. S. Eliot, June 1923.
3 EP, Malatesta Cantos, C. 1: 4 (July 1923).
4 Wyndham Lewis: see Glossary of Names.
5 On 24 July, WL wrote that he was leaving for France the following Monday.
6 Drafts of what became The Apes of God, WLs first major work of fiction since Tarr
(1917). WL wanted to discuss a section of Book (of which I spoke to you) with view to
publication in CRITERION ETC.
7 TSE initially advised WL to avoid periodical publication of the novel, but later published
extracts from The Apes of God in C. 2: 6 & 7 (Feb. & Apr. 1924).

the better. I hope France will do you good. You do not say how long you
intend to be away. Please let me hear from you on receipt of this, and if
possible send the MSS. at once.
Yours ever
TSE
28 July 1923 2 Milestone Cottages
My dear Sidney,
It has been a great pleasure to us to have your and Violets letters, you
must know; and I am sure that you if anyone will realise that if we have
not answered sooner it is a case of hhere Gewalt.1 I am very glad to know
that you like the Criterion and when you have read it I look forward to
your detailed observations. I also hope you like the prospectus for next
year. It must have been most stimulating to you to have Lewis read you
part of his book.2 I am convinced that it will be a great work. As he took
you so much into his confidence I am surprised that he did not let you
know that I discussed with him the possibility of publishing part of the
book in the Criterion, [and] finally was forced to agree with him that the
book might make a more impressive appearance if none of it had
previously been printed. Thus I sacrificed the Criterion to his interest. I am
very anxious that the book shd make a great success, but had he consented,
I shd have jumped at it for the Quarterly.
It has been a great upheaval again, moving back to the country, and
the first effects have been that Vivien is not nearly so well, has fallen back.
Every time she has to move she loses several weeks, [and] you cannot no
one can imagine, what a great undertaking this moving is. She needs
every ounce of strength she has, merely to live from day to day, which is
all we do, keeping out of doors as much as possible. She has been far too
weak to write letters, but has appreciated very keenly, as have I also,
Violets letters. People pretend that they dont expect letters to be
1 Act of God (German).

2 WLs biographer Jeffrey Myers notes, Sydney Schiff was Lewis generous patron during
the 1920s and a major victim of The Apes of God (The Enemy: A Biography of Wyndham
Lewis [1980], 126). SS called WL the only definitely creative artist this country possesses,
purchased a number of his works at the Tyros and Portraits exhibition (1921), and
commissioned from him a portrait of his wife Violet for which he paid 712. In his novel, WL
satirised SS mercilessly in the figure of Lionel Klein, the rich Jewish patron of the arts.
179
answered, but very few really carry out the pretensions, as you [and]
Violet do, by continuing to write, [and] Vivien wants Violet to know how
highly she appreciates it. She often feels that she must have lost all her
friends, by having been unable to see or even to write to anyone for so
many months.
It is good to hear that you are writing again, and I do hope you will be
able to stay in the delightful solitude you are in, [and] get well under way
something even better than Prince Hempseed. With love from both to
both
Always yours aff.
Tom
I have enjoyed seeing Joyce of late, very much a near neighbour.1 It is
very sad about poor W. P. Ker.2
to Richard Cobden-Sanderson pc Texas

31 July 1923 Fishbourne
3
Stanley Rice is clamouring for a copy of the Criterion. Have you sent one?
His address is New Cottage, East Sheen s.w.14. When I get back, next
week, I will ring you up. I shall want fifty copies of the Criterion then.
Hope all well with you.
T. S. E.
from Paul Valry ts Valry Estate

4 August 1923 Paris, 40 Rue de Villejust XVI
Cher Monsieur,
Jai trouv votre lettre en revenant dun petit voyage. Il est exact que jai
convenu avec le Capitaine Wardle de partager les droits provenir de la
publication du Serpent avec traduction anglaise, dans la proportion de
5/11 pour lui et de 6/11 pour moi.4
1 On 17 July, VW recorded VHE saying Im living between [JMM] and Mr Joyce. Mr Joyce
is very nice, and TSE adding: His wife is very nice too & the children (Diary, II, 256).
2 W. P. Ker had died suddenly while climbing at Macagnaga, Italy, on 17 July.
3 Rices Alcestis and Savitri: A Suggestion appeared in C. 1: 4 (July 1923).
4 See TSEs letter of 28 May to Mark Wardle.

Mais je dsirerais savoir si ldition que vous comptez faire de ce pome1
est tirage limit, ou si larrangement concerne toute publication future du
Serpent en anglais et franais juxtaposs, et stend un tirage illimit?
Je voudrais savoir aussi si la somme de 800 francs que vous proposez est
entirement pour moi, ou si elle doit se partager avec Wardle, dans la
proportion indique ci-dessus?
Quant aux gravures sur bois, vous ferez ce quil vous plaira.2 Et quant
aux preuves, je pense que Wardle pourra fort bien les corriger. Je laiderai,
sil le dsire, bien volontiers.
Veuillez agrer, Monsieur, mes salutations trs distingues.
Paul Valry3
to Richard Cobden-Sanderson pc Beinecke

[Postmark ?4 Aug. 1923] 2 Milestone Cottages, Fishbourne
Excellently produced number!4 Will you send ten copies to Ezra Pound,
please? Circular admirable5
Hope things are going well and not giving you too much work.
Yrs
T. S. E.
Dont send your man with any parcels to C.G.G. till I return.
1 Valry published a limited edition of Le Serpent, illustrated by Jean Marchand (Paris: os,
1926).
2 The English edition was not illustrated.
3 Translation: Dear Sir, I have found your letter waiting for me on returning after a short
absence. It is correct that I have agreed with Captain Wardle to share the royalties from the
publication of the Serpent with the translation into English, in the ratio 5/11 for him and
6/11 for me.
But I would like to know if the edition of the poem you propose to bring out will be a
limited one, or whether the arrangement relates to all future publications of the Serpent with
the French and English texts juxtaposed, and extends to an unlimited number of copies?
I would also like to know if the sum of 800 francs you suggest is entirely for me, or whether
it is to be shared with Wardle, according to the above-mentioned ratio.
As for the wood cuts, do exactly as you please. And as regards the proofs, Wardle can
correct these perfectly well, I think. I am willing to help, if he wants me to.
Yours sincerely, Paul Valry
4 C. 1: 4 (July 1923).
5 The C. circular (see TSEs letter of 5 July).
181
Sunday 5th [August 1923] Milestone Cottages,
Old Fishbourne, Sussex
Dear Virginia
I expect you are now at Rodmell. I have been waiting to be sure you
were there before writing to you. I dont like my letters to be wandering the
world (they are so precious, & really important).
I hope you are enjoying the country more than I am. I have been in bed
nearly the whole time I have been here & Tom & I are completely out of
love with the country & country cottages & the whole country cottage idea.
We are now convinced that we ought to & must have a house in London
with a garden. This will be instead of the Citroen car which was never
more than a dream, I think.
We have had young people staying with us to help! & we are now out
of love with young people too, especially when they have literary
aspirations.
In my experience all young people nowadays do have literary
aspirations; & where they used to go harmlessly about with a box of water
colours & a sketching block they now immerse themselves in ink & shout
their ideas at meal times giving their hosts no chance to digest their food.
I do hope you will relent & answer this letter although I know well
enough it merits no reply.
Tom is thankfully returning to London on Thursday (tomorrow) & my
present hope is that I may soon follow him.
I have seen no one at all here, but I still will hope that we shall be able
to have a meeting. It [seems] Tom will be here for weekends. Next weekend
my doctor is coming down, which is a trial, but after that they will be, I
hope, all free & with possibilities of seeing you.
Much love from us both
Yrs ever,
Vivien Eliot

Wednesday [?8 August 1923] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
My dear Mary
Many thanks for your sweet letter. I got it this morning just before I left.
I am really certain that Vivien will not be fit for anything or anybody this

week, or for some days. She has only been out for half an hour and comes
back very dizzy and faint. I hate to leave her in that hole,1 and hate to
bring her back to this. We must get that small house with a garden soon!
Can you help me?
She is frightfully depressed cooped up and unable to see anyone. I may
bring her back. But we both want to see you soon that was an
unsatisfying glimpse the other day. Ill write on Sunday or Monday and let
you know how things are.
I assure you, Mary, of my faithful affection.
Tom

8 August 1923 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
I have come back today for two days only. But I will telephone you early
next week and arrange a meeting. Meanwhile, thanks for your letter and
for circulars. Will you please send me (here) some more letter paper and
five Criterions?
Aldington sent me a schedule of payments. I have two qualifications
Pound must be paid 182 (Eighteen) on the no. of words stated by
Aldington (not 15) and Rivire must be paid in full,3 without deduction
of translators fee, because I have promised him.
Barfields address is
9 New Street
Dorset Sq.
n.w.1
Yes, send copy to the Cherwell 4 I shall be very glad if you would take up
this Valry matter5 with Lady R. Having just returned, I dont know
whether she has left London or not.
Will try to telephone you on Monday.
Hope your affairs are going smoothly.
Yours ever
T. S. Eliot
1 2 Milestone Cottages, Old Fishbourne, their rented cottage.

2 For Malatesta Cantos.
3 For Notes on a Possible Generalisation of the Theories of Freud, C. 1: 4 (July 1923).
4 An Oxford student magazine founded in 1920.
5 See TSEs letter of 4 Aug. to Valry.
183
to Mary Hutchinson Telegram Texas
10 August 1923
if alone can you picnic sunday meet three thirty black boy 1
fishbourne reply fishbourne
Tom
to Dr Wilhelm Lehmann ms Texas

Dear Dr Lehmann
Please forgive this long long delay. I have meant to write you many a
time, but have been distracted for months by my wifes severe illness in
the country. I have not had a moment even to read the books you so
kindly sent, a pleasure I promise myself still. I send you the Faktura,2 with
Mk 50,000 because I do not think it is enough I want to pay for the
books3 although they are marked Rezension.4 Will you help me to do so.
You may count on hearing from me again when I have had time to read
them. Meanwhile I shd be delighted to hear from you about German
literature or anything!
Forgive this scrawl
Sincerely
T. S. Eliot
Perhaps our announcement will interest you.
Shall we ever meet? I want next year to bring my wife to Freiburg i/B.
There is a great doctor there Martin have you ever heard of him?
1 The Black Boy Inn, Main Road, Fishbourne.

2 Invoice (German).
3 On 14 May, TSE asked Lehmann to send him books by Moritz Heimann and Oscar
Loerke, the writers he had previously mentioned.
4 For review (German).

to Henry Eliot ms Houghton
My dear Henry
This is just a note to begin with. I have written twice to mother thank
God that deficit had been eating into me. You have been with her I
wish you would let me know how you are. She said you looked ill.
I am an ungrateful dog not to have written and thanked you for
everything. I was examined by the doctor for the Life Insurance.1 He said
my hernia was worse (on the other side) and I should wear a truss and
perhaps have an operation.2 I am going to see my doctor about it. Since
then he has written to say that the Company want him to see me again, so
I suppose there is something wrong. I will let you know.
Things have been very bad I cannot write more now only to thank
you and remind you that I am always
Your affectionate brother
Tom
to E. R. Curtius ms Bonn
My dear Curtius
It is very rude of me not to have answered your letter before. I can only
say that I have been mostly preoccupied, in the country, with my wifes
illness, and have neglected everything and everyone. I have at least sent off
Imaginary Portraits3 and hope it will reach you quickly. I should have at
once suggested that you should write us an essay on Pater, but Charles du
Bos4 (whom I think you know) had just suggested that subject for himself,
and I had accepted! But will you let us have an essay on a subject of your
own choosing, in the next six months?5 Do, please. We hope that
1 On 30 July the Canada Life Assurance Company sent HWE a life insurance policy on
TSEs life; the beneficiary was Vivien Haigh-Wood Eliot, and the sum insured $20,000. The
first premium of $558 was paid on 28 July by HWE himself.
2 TSE had a congenital hernia, and had had to wear a truss since childhood (see CCEs letter
to Mr Cobb of end Sept. 1905, in Vol. 1 of these Letters).
3 Walter Pater, Imaginary Portraits (1887). TSE discussed Paters influence in Contemporary
English Prose, Vanity Fair 20: 5 (July 1923). On 30 May, Curtius (who loved and admired
Pater) said that, though he had most of Pater, he did not possess this volume.
4 Du Boss projected study of Pater was never written.
5 Curtius next published On the Style of Marcel Proust in C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).
185
eventually we may have the honour of bringing out a book of your essays
here in English. I wish you wd do a series of English Wegbereiter1 very
much and my choice wd be2
Henry James
Joseph Conrad I shd be tempted
Rudyard Kipling to add Frazer and
Lytton Strachey Bradley
James Joyce
Wyndham Lewis
Ezra Pound
but this is merely to amuse you.
Have you ever heard of a poet named Khlemann? I have seen his
Tristan da Cunha which I liked.3
Do let me hear from you.
Sincerely always
T. S. Eliot
By some inconceivable stupidity I addressed the book Rotenproben 15A!4
I cant think why, when I was thinking of Berne! Let me know if it does not
arrive, and warn your Post Office.
I must wait to write about yr beautiful Balzac.5 I am sending the
Criterion to the university.6
1 Curtius had published Die literarischen Wegbereiter des neuen Frankreich [The Literary
Precursors of the New France] in 1919. He never did a comparable study of English literature.
2 TSEs list of English-language precursors includes his modernist allies alongside Henry
James, Sir James Frazer and F. H. Bradley, who were the subject of his next Lettre
dAngleterre in NRF 21: 122 (1 Nov. 1923), later translated as A Prediction in Regard to
Three English Authors, Vanity Fair 21: 6 (Feb. 1924). TSE had originally chosen an epigraph
for TWL from Conrads Heart of Darkness (The Horror! The Horror!), and Conrad and
James are mentioned in Contemporary English Prose as distinguished aliens with very
personal and incommunicable styles. The mention of Kipling anticipates the admiration
expressed by TSE in A Choice of Kiplings Verse (1942).
3 Johannes Theodor Khlemann (18911939): poet and journalist associated with the
Cologne Dadaist scene. TSE would later refer, in a letter to the NS (Tristan da Cunha,
22 Oct. 1927), to a German poem which is almost unknown even in Germany, the Tristan
da Cunha of Johannes Th. Kuhlemann (Der Strom, Cologne, 1919). I once attempted to
translate this poem, which is very fine, but abandoned the attempt. TSEs attempt at
translation has not been discovered.
4 Curtiuss address was Rotenburg 15A.
5 Following his essay Balzac, in C. 1: 2 (Jan. 1923), Curtius had published Balzac (Bonn,
1923).
6 On 30 May, Curtius said the Director of Marburg University Library would welcome C.

to Glen Walton Blodgett1 ms Texas
14 August 1923 The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Sir
I am very glad to send you my autograph, and hope in return for this
trifling favour you will make me happy by ceasing to split infinitives. But
as for a poem I have disposed of my MSS.2 and I dont think I ought to
forge new ones!
I am, dear Sir,
Yours faithfully
T. S. Eliot
to Charles du Bos ms Texas

My dear Du Bos,
Pray forgive my intolerable delay, due to grave domestic anxieties Alas!
I shd have liked nothing better than Pontigny, but I have had to be absent
so much from London this year that a holiday of any sort is out of the
question Perhaps next year?3
I have the temerity to send you our circular, from which you will see I
have taken you at your word. May we hope for it sooner than spring?4
I want now to entamer5 my next long delayed [article] for the NRF,6
but my brain is hardly fit to cope with it.
With most cordial thanks I shd have been very happy at Pontigny.
T. S. Eliot
1 Glen Walton Blodgett: an autograph hunter from Buffalo, New York.

2 TSE had sold the MSS of TWL to John Quinn; he had given him Inventions of the March
Hare.
3 On 5 July, Du Bos invited TSE to participate in the annual literary conference at Pontigny
(Yonne). He enclosed the booklet Des Entretiens dt de Pontigny, and pointed out that
other participants included Gide, Andr Maurois, Roger Martin du Gard and Edith Wharton.
4 Du Bos suggested an extract from a future book, Walter Pater ou lascte de la beaut,
which would be ready by next spring. In the event, he did nothing for TSE until On
Introduction la Mthode de Lonard de Vinci by Paul Valry, NC 14: 55 (Jan. 1935).
5 Begin (French).
6 Lettre dAngleterre, NRF 21: 122 (1 Nov. 1923).
187
to Natalie Barney ms Doucet
Dear Miss Barney
I am trying shamefacedly to make up arrears of correspondence the
debt to you is one of the first and most disgraceful.1 I see no prospect of
getting to Paris for a long time affairs public and domestic keep me even
from a weekend. One of the first things I shall do will be to call on you
and as it will not be till autumn at least, I have some hope of finding you.
With grateful thanks
believe me
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
to Ford Madox Ford ms Cornell

Dear Ford
Forgive my intolerable (but universal) delay. Your essay shall definitely
appear in October prominently and more timely than ever.2
Had I been able to do anything about the Viscount3 I shd have done
already. I dont know him, have never seen him, and he is very shy is
never in London, or if so is well-protected by his vassals, cannot be got at.
But I will keep my eyes open for the sake of the Cause, and perhaps
something could be done in October. It ought just to suit his book, and I
wish [it] with all my heart.
Im waiting to see the immense poem.4 There are I think about thirty
good lines in The Waste Land, can you find them? The rest is ephemeral.
Yrs ever
T. S. Eliot
1 Barney wrote on 20 June in reply to TSEs letter of 11 May, inviting him to visit when next
in Paris, and hoping to find a capitalist to free him from the bank.
2 From the Grey Stone, C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923), 5776.
3 Thinking that TSE knew Lord Rothermere, Ford had asked TSE to tell him that he (Ford)
would be glad to write some horse-sense about France for one of his periodicals.
4 Mister Bosphorus and the Muses, or a Short History of Poetry in Britain: Variety
Entertainment in Four Acts; Words by Ford Madox Ford, Music by Several Popular
Composers, with Harlequinade, Transformation Scene, Cinematographic Effects, and Many
Other Novelties, as well as Old and Tried Favourites. Decorated with Designs on Wood by
Paul Nash (1923). Ford thought of asking TSEs permission to dedicate it to him, Pereant qui

Many thanks for the Cotton;1 it is a beautiful book, and does you very
great credit. I am very happy to possess it. I have promised to review it for
the Nation if Saintsbury does not want to do it, but I advised them to try
him first.2
I have just bought a new typewriter for which the Criterion must pay.3
As I have worn out my Corona in the service of the paper I consider myself
entitled to this relief. It is only 10, and guaranteed for two years.
I hope you are making the most of your holiday in spite of the unsettled
weather. With best regards to your wife and yourself,
Yours ever
T. S. Eliot
to Antonio Marichalar ts Real Academia de la Historia

Cher collgue,
Merci mille fois pour la Revista de Occidente, qui est vraiment une belle
production;4 jai lu avec un grand intrt vos paroles trs justes sur
Cocteau.5 Succs la Revista: mais puisse-t-elle vous laisser le temps et la
force de rveiller Indice de son sommeil qui dure un peu trop longtemps.6
Tout ce que vous me dtes du Criterion me donne beaucoup de plaisir;
si la revue peut satisfaire une petite lite internationale, je serai recompens
du travail. En somme, nous avons complet le premier volume sans
gaspiller trop dargent.
ante nos . . . (An abbreviation of the dictum by the Latin grammarian Donastus: Pereant qui
ante nos nostra dixerunt: May they perish who expressed our bright ideas before us). Fords
long dramatic poem uses music-hall style and historical pastiche to trace the life and death
of a poet called Bosphorus all the way from a garret to Poets Corner.
1 Poems of Charles Cotton 16301687, ed. John Beresford (Cobden-Sanderson, 1923).
2 George Saintsbury, Charles Cotton, N&A 33: 22 (1 Sept. 1923), 689.
3 HWE had left TSE his typewriter at the end of his visit to England in 1921.
4 The first number of a Spanish review ed. by Jos Ortega y Gasset. On 8 Oct., Marichalar
thanked TSE for the keen notice of it by F. S. Flint in Spanish Periodicals, C. 2: 5 (Oct.
1923).
5 Marichalar, Jean Cocteau, Le Grand cart, Revista de Occidente I: 1 (July 1923), 1236.
6 The review Indice ran for only four numbers in 19212.
189
Des inquitudes personnelles toujours chez moi; et des travaux
commencs et dlaisss. Jai votre confrence toujours a ct; cela a t
precisment une confrence de chevet pas encore termine jespre en
revenir et vous crire dans un avenir trs proche.
Toujours cordialement vtre
T. S. Eliot1
to Horace Liveright cc
Dear Mr Liveright,
Thank you for your letter of 7th instant.2 I am afraid that rumour, as
always, is a little too soon; I hope to have enough material for a
miscellaneous book of essays I suppose about the length of the Sacred
Wood3 in the spring. If so, I should [like] it to be uniform with that
volume. I shall be able to give you a provisional list of contents later.4
Yours truly,
[T. S. E.]
1 Translation: Dear Colleague, Very many thanks for the Revista de Occidente, which is a
truly fine production; I have read with great interest your very accurate comments on
Cocteau. All success then to the Revista but let us hope that it will leave you the time and the
energy to awaken Indice from a slumber that has lasted rather too long.
Everything you say about the Criterion pleases me greatly; if the review can satisfy a small
international elite, I shall be compensated for the work involved. On the whole, we have
completed the first volume without wasting too much money.
I am still involved in personal anxieties and in projects begun and then abandoned. I still
have your lecture beside me; it has actually become my unfinished bedside reading I hope
to come back to it and to write to you in the near future.
As ever, yours cordially, T. S. Eliot
2 Liverights letter has not been traced.
3 TSEs SW, published in London in 1920, appeared in the USA from Alfred Knopf in 1921.
4 On 5 Sept., Liveright agreed the new book should be uniform with The Sacred Wood,
and was eager to get a squint at the table of contents. He also wanted TSEs advice on work
to publish in the USA, and suggested meeting in London in Dec. TSEs next book of essays,
For Lancelot Andrewes: Essays on Style and Order was published by Faber & Gwyer in
1928, and by Doubleday, New York, the following year.

My dear Richard
I have been waiting to hear when you were coming to town, to save me
the trouble of writing to you. However, I must write one line. I enclose
two letters and pray you to answer. I have a card from Monro from
Mrren to say that he has not got the Legouis book1 did you send for it?
Clyne of Pascal writes in a fury.2
Will you work out how much is due to Caffrey for translating
Hofmannsthal and tell Cobden to send it to him?3 It isnt right that the
poor man should have to wait since February until next October. His
address is now [Charles] Caffrey Esq., Manno, near Lugano, Switzerland.
Have you any ANY notion of anyone to ask for a STORY for January?4
I have here a load of poems by one John Crowe Ransom, and cant make
up my mind how good they are.5 They are better than most.
What has Levi-Bruhl6 written about? Whibley has offered me 50 for
my introduction;7 have you heard from him yet?
When I see you we will discuss ways and means of managing in your
absence;8 can you think of anybody whom I could get on with who cd
1 Harold Monro agreed to write an essay on Wordsworth, and asked for a copy of Emile
Legouis, Wordsworth in a New Light (1923). RA told Monro on 23 June that TSE was
counting on his Wordsworth article and would jog his memory about the book. RA also
took the opportunity to calm Monros jealousy: I dont see that the Criterion and Chapbook
clash at all. The Chapbook is now almost entirely new poetry, isnt it? The Criterion is almost
wholly critical. I am urging Eliot to use poetry as rarely as possible (Richard Aldington:
A Life in Letters, ed. Norman T. Gates [1992], 70). See Wordsworth Revisited, C. 2: 8 (July
1924).
2 Anthony Clyne had submitted an article on Pascal: it was never published.
3 On 21 Aug., Charles Caffrey complained that his translation of Hofmannsthal, sent the
previous Feb., had not been acknowledged: see Greece, C. 2: 5 (Oct 1923).
4 Apart from WLs Mr Zagreus and the Split-Man, the only fiction in the New Year issue
was by VHE, under the pseudonym F. M.: Letters of the Moment I, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924).
5 Robert Graves had sent a selection of poems by John Crowe Ransom. The volume
ultimately came out as Grace After Meat, with Intro. by Graves (Hogarth Press, 1924).
6 Lucien Lvy-Bruhl (18571939): French sociologist and anthropologist; Professor at the
Sorbonne. TSE was familiar with his work, and in his A Prediction in Regard to Three
English Authors saluted the brilliant theories of human behavior of MM Durkheim and
Levy-Bruhl (Vanity Fair 21: 6, Feb. 1924). Lvy-Bruhls Primitive Mentality and Gambling
appeared in C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924), 188200.
7 TSEs intro. to Seneca: His Tenne Tragedies, translated into English, edited by Thomas
Newton (1927). This was part of the Tudor Translations Series, which CW edited.
8 On 16 Aug., RA said he had a great longing to winter in Italy, and could do his work
for C. and the TLS just as well in Florence as in Padworth.
191
surrogate for you for the more mechanical work? You continuing to deal
with mss. correspondence, etc.
yours ever
[T. S. E.]
to Alfred Kreymborg cc
Dear Kreymborg,
Many thanks for your letter of the 6th and your previous letter, and your
manuscript.1 I hope we shall be able to publish it in January if not it
would be April Aldington has got January as well as October next nearly
made up, but I want to squeeze it in.
I have not told you yet how much I enjoyed the Secker puppet plays.2 I
think you have really got hold of something new and fruitful in rythym
at any rate they have been a great stimulation to me and I have read them
several times.3 They are very different indeed from what I have in my mind
to attempt, yet they are more like it than anything else I know. I am trying
to get at a dominant rythym and subordinated rythyms for the thing I
expect it will be called jazz drama.4 Anyway, you encourage me to
continue.
By the way, how do you make a puppet? As I think I told you,5 I want
to build a small theatre a box small enough to stand on a table 3 x 3 ft.
1 On 6 Aug 1923, Kreymborg submitted to TSE the article, Writing for Puppets, that he
had been promising for many months.
2 Kreymborg, Puppet Plays, with preface by Gordon Craig (1923). In Troubadour,
Kreymborg describes his post-war years touring the USA with his wife Dorothy, as Puppet
People, performing experimental puppet-shows and playing the mandolute. During his visit
to London he had conceived the idea of issuing a new edition of the privately printed Poem-
Mimes, and Martin Secker agreed to publish the volume.
3 TSEs tribute to Kreymborgs texts for puppets has a bearing on the theatrical experiments
he had in mind at this time. On 14 Jan. 1924, Kreymborg told TSE the paragraph in his letter
about Puppet plays was most encouraging. The book has had a very small audience the
usual happening in my case but your interest, alone, would be enough . . . That you are
planning plays of your own also with puppets was and is an exciting bit of news.
4 A ref. to what became SA (1932), the first section of which was published as Fragment
of a Prologue in NC 4: 4 (Oct. 1926), 71318. As early as 20 Sept. 1920, VW recorded TSE
saying he wanted to write a verse play in which the 4 characters of Sweeny act the parts
(Diary, II, 68).
5 In Troubadour, Kreymborg records meeting TSE in his Clarence Gate flat. TSE fixed him
with a probing eye while drinking Scotch and soda, and asked him a casual question about
writing for puppets. As a result, the man from Manhattan lost himself in a subjective

and preordain every move and gesture and grouping. How do you make
faces for the little devils?1
I am very curious to know what a symphonic comedy is.2
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
to J. B. Trend cc
23 August 1923 [The Criterion, London]
My dear Trend,
I have not heard from you for so long that I imagine you must have lost
all interest in the Criterion. I am however impelled to write to you by a
remark that Bruce Richmond let drop when I saw him last, some weeks
ago. He said that he had heard from you from Spain and that you had
discovered manuscripts of very early English music in the library in
Madrid I think.3 It occurred to me that if you would write a paper about
your discovery it would be immensely interesting for the Criterion which
wishes somewhat to widen its scope.4 Even a short paper, or as much as
you care to make of it, would be very acceptable.
I do hope you will consider this and let me hear from you. I was deeply
interested by an account you gave of a ceremony of Astarte worship in
Spain I wish you would do more of that sort of thing too.
Always sincerely
[T. S. E.]
dithyramb no conscious regard for objectivity could control while Eliot smiled his sphinx-
like smile and nodded in a friendly fashion (397).
1 Replying on 14 Jan., Kreymborg recommended using papier mch and chess pieces, and
reading Mrs Josephs The Book of Marionettes. He enquired when his article on puppets
was due to appear in C. In the event nothing by Kreymborg appeared in C.
2 On 6 Aug., Kreymborg said his article had been delayed due to an interruption on the part
of a clamorous idea for a symphonic comedy (in four acts).
3 Trend reported (7 Sept.) that he had discovered in the Escurial, an English composition
of about 1500 . . . but I havent seriously tried to identify the words . . . I will try to track it
down.
4 See Trend, The Moors in Spanish Music, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924), 20419. Trends essay, the
first serious treatment of music in C., does not draw on the newly discovered manuscripts.
193
to R. O. Morris1 cc
Sir,
I have the permission of my friend Mr Bruce Richmond to use his name
in writing to you. Some little time ago I asked him, as somewhat of an
authority on the subject, who there was who could write on early English
music; he immediately mentioned you, and subsequently sent me an article
of yours in Music & Letters which interested me very much indeed.2
I enclose a circular of the Criterion which will give you some notion of
the nature of the reviews. You will see that we propose to publish from
time to time essays on English painting and on English music. Would you
be willing to write for us a paper on some subject in early English music
I suggest Weelkes, for instance.3 The Criterion would consider itself very
fortunate in securing such a contribution from you.4
I may say that the proper length for an article in the Criterion is not
more than 5000 words; and that our rates are 10 per 5000 words and pro
rata.
Hoping that I may hear from you in a favourable sense,
I remain, Sir,
Your obliged obedient servant,
[T. S. E.]
to Anthony Clyne5 cc
Sir,
I am sincerely grieved by your letter of the 15th instant. Your essay was
not read by me, but by Mr Aldington, who is now editing the Criterion,
1 R. O. Morris (18861948): British composer and musicologist; Professor of Counterpoint

and Composition at the Royal College of Music, London; author of Introduction to
Counterpoint, Contrapuntal Technique in the Sixteenth Century (1922). Renowned as a
teacher of counterpoint, he had among his pupils Gerald Finzi, Sir Michael Tippett and
Constant Lambert.
2 Morris published two articles in Music & Letters in the early 1920s: Hubert Parry in 1: 2
(Apr. 1920), 94103; Maurice Ravel in 2: 3 (July 1921), 27483.
3 Thomas Weelkes (1576?1623); English composer.
4 Morris did not contribute to C.
5 Anthony Clyne was a freelance critic who wrote for Music & Letters and other journals.

and who I presume returned your essay to you. As for the delay, I am
heartily sorry, especially if you have thereby been the loser; the fact is that
I have had to neglect all my affairs in order to be in the country with a
member of my family who was for a long time at the point of death. Thus
the MSS. in hand did not reach Mr Aldington for many weeks. I cannot
understand, however, why you should not have written the other article on
Pascal of which you speak: journalists frequently write two articles on the
same subject.1 And I certainly cannot admit that the Criterion did more
than express its willingness to read your essay; or that delay in return
implies any obligation to print. If such has been your experience, it has
been happier than mine: but you have written for more papers than I
have.2 And I must, without prejudice, deny the existence of a parallel
between yourself and my grocer.3
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
[T. S. E.]
to Charles Caffrey cc
Dear Sir,
I have your note of the 21st instant and am humiliated to think that I
failed to acknowledge the receipt of your admirable translation of
Hofmannsthal.4 Please accept my apologies. I am asking Mr Aldington to
see that the small emolument is paid to you at once. The essay will be
published in October, and a copy will be sent you.5 I did not anticipate
that there would be so long a delay in publication.
During this winter I hope to receive articles from Ernst Curtius6 and
from Ernst Bertram;7 possibly from Hermann Hesse,8 who is, by the way,
1 Clyne had submitted an article on Pascal, and in his letter of 15 Aug. said he could have
written a similar article for another magazine in connection with the centenary, had he not
been led to understand it had been accepted by C.
2 Clynes headed paper included a list of eighty-nine titles of papers, from The Bookman and
The Contemporary Review to The Gas World and The Sunday School Times.
3 In his letter Clyne asked, Why should journalists be treated worse than grocers?
4 Caffrey complained (21 Aug.) that his translation of Hofmannsthal, submitted in Feb., had
never been acknowledged.
5 See Caffreys transl. of Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Greece, C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923), 95102.
6 E. R. Curtius, On the Style of Marcel Proust (trans. F. S. Flint), C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).
7 Ernst Bertram never contributed to C.
8 Hermann Hesse contributed on Recent German Poetry, C. 1: 1 (Oct. 1922).
195
a neighbour of yours, living at Montagnuola; and any of these that come
in I will send to you for translation if you will kindly accept them.
I am, Dear Sir,
Yours faithfully
[T. S. E.]
to Leone Vivante1 cc
Dear Sir,
I owe you my humble apologies for not having replied to your earlier
letters, but I have had to be in the country, on account of my wifes serious
illness, and have neglected all correspondence.2
We expect to publish Part I of your essay in the January number of the
Criterion.3 It is only because the review is a small one, and appears only
quarterly, that we are obliged to defer it so long. A copy will be sent you
immediately on publication.
We are very much obliged to you for allowing us the honour of
introducing such a work to this country.
I am, Dear Sir,
Yours faithfully
[T. S. E.]
1 Leone Vivante (18871970): Italian philosopher; author of a series of works on ethics

and the theory of knowledge, inc. Della intelligenza nellespressione (1922; trans. as
Intelligence in Expression [1925]); Note sopra loriginalita del pensiero (1925; Notes on the
Originality of Thought [1927]); A Philosophy of Potentiality (1955), and the posthumous
Essays on Art and Ontology (1980). The Misleading Comparison Between Art and Dreams
appeared in NC 4: 3 (June 1926); and TSE was to write a preface to English Poetry (1950),
Vivantes own translation of La Poesia Inglese ed il suo contributo alla conoscenza dello
spirito (1947).
2 Vivante wrote twice (6 July, 6 Aug.) to ask whether his essay The Relation between
concept and expression in poetry and prose (which EP had forwarded) was soon going to be
published in C. (Prof. Bullock, at Rome University, had been suggesting improvements to the
translation.)
3 In the event, this essay did not appear, and correspondence lapsed until 19 Aug. 1924.
Della intelligenza nellespressione was reviewed by W. A. Thorpe in C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925),
4634.

23 August 1923 [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
My dear Whibley, I return herewith Kiplings letter.1 I am extremely
grateful to you for your efforts, in addition to all the other kindnesses you
have shown the paper, and shall remember each instance. Of course I am
disappointed at Kiplings refusal; because he would fit in very well to our
cadre;2 but perhaps there may be justification for trying him again later.
I have been in communication with Bain:3 he is evasive, and I have been
waiting for an opportunity to go to see him. If at any time the name occurs
to you of anyone who could write well about Burleigh,4 I hope you will let
me know. I wish you had not already written about Clarendon.5 I should
like to get Oliver on Carteret,6 as you suggest; I only doubted whether this
was a suitable time for Carteret, whom I always imagined as, in his day, a
pro-German. But is this a libel?
I am glad you think the Criterion is beginning to have character:7 it was
hardly visible in the first numbers; but this was partly due to lack of time
and partly to cautiousness.
50 seems quite ample for the introduction to Seneca.8 Will you let me
know about how long you think it ought to be, and how much ground it
1 On 26 July, CW said he had written to Kipling on TSEs behalf, apparently requesting a

contribution to C. On 2 Aug., he enclosed Kiplings letter, saying I am sorry the answer is
not favourable. CW hoped that at a later date he might persuade Kipling to change his
mind.
2 TSE wrote a sympathetic review of Kiplings The Years Between in Kipling Redevivus,
A. (9 May 1919), praising him as a very nearly great writer: The admired creator [G.
Flaubert] of Bouvard and Pcuchet would not have overlooked the Kipling dossier.
3 For F. W. Bain, see note to letter of 3 Sept. On 26 July, CW reported that the diffident
Bain would like to write about Disraeli. See his Disraeli, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924).
4 Alexander Hugh Bruce, sixth Lord Balfour of Burleigh (18491921): Conservative
politician.
5 CW, Edward Hyde, Lord Clarendon, in Political Portraits (1917).
6 F. S. Oliver (18641934); political polemicist (see note to letter of 3 Sept.); John Carteret,
Earl of Glanville (16901763), statesman; Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 172430; Secretary of
State 17424; Lord President of the Council, 175163. In Dec. 1762, Chesterfield wrote that
when he [Carteret] dies, the ablest head in England dies too, take it for all in all.
7 On 2 Aug., CW found much that was interesting in the July C.: it has character, above
all, & I liked your pronouncement at the end. TSEs pronouncement was his Notes on The
Function of a Literary Review, C. 1: 4 (July 1923), his first editorial comment.
8 CW had asked TSE to write an introduction to Senecas tragedies for his Tudor
Translations Series. He had found a copy, and asked whether 50 for the introduction
would be agreeable. It appeared as Seneca: His Tenne Tragedies translated into English,
edited by Thomas Newton (1927): TSEs introduction was reprinted, as Seneca in
Elizabethan Translation, in SE (1934).
197
ought to cover. I do not suppose you want much textbook information put
into it; but I should like to utter a defense of the merit of Seneca as a
dramatist and as a poet, in comparison with Euripides. And something
ought to be said about the general influence of Seneca on English drama
and the influence of this translation.1 I am looking forward to this piece
of work. As there is only one edition, I dont suppose there is any textual
emendation to be done?
I have been to and fro incessantly: my wife is fighting pluckily to stick
it out in the country, but against every discouragement. You say nothing
of your health; may I infer that you are stronger?
Always yours,
[T. S. E.]

Sunday [26 August 1923] [London]
My dear Mary
Very many thanks for your sweet letter, you are an angel and give me
confidence that we shall get a house. The fact is, that it involves so much
that I can do nothing about it at present: because I cannot possibly afford
to take a house unless I can sell the lease of the flat, and get a good price
for it, at the same time. I cannot pay the rent on two dwellings at once.2
My point however is that just now I havent time to attend to all the
business this involves. You see, Mary, I must settle down and write a lot
of articles at once,3 because I must find the money, and I cant do anything
else. I tell you this in confidence: I have been living beyond my income for
five months, and eating up the savings: Viviens illness, and the cost of
running two establishments at once, doctors, food, medicines, constant
railway fares etc. have run me into colossal expense, and I must try to find
1 TSEs introduction opened: No author exercised a wider or deeper influence upon the
Elizabethan mind or upon the Elizabethan form of tragedy than did Seneca.
2 Their London flat at Clarence Gate Gardens and their rented cottage in Fishbourne.
(Since Jan. 1923 he had also been paying for the flat at 38 Burleigh Mansions.)
3 With the exception of his London Letters in The Dial, his Lettres dAngleterre in NRF,
and a couple of contributions to C., TSE had been unproductive as a journalist since late
1922: he had published only one review, John Donne in N&A 33: 10 (9 June 1923). In the
autumn he went on to publish Andrew Marvell and The Beating of a Drum in N&A,
substantial essays on Ulysses, Order and Myth and Marianne Moore in the Dial, a couple
of essays in NRF and Vanity Fair, and two pieces (inc. The Function of Criticism) in C. 2: 5
(Oct. 1923).

50 by writing in a month, and more later. (All this time it has been of
course quite impossible to write, and I must do it now.)
Of course it wd have been much less trouble, taking a house a year ago
than it wd be now. But one important thing that deterred us is that we
should lose Ellen. She has varicose veins and wont stand for stairs etc. But
in any case, with the necessity for two sets of negotiations, buying and
selling, and perhaps immediate moving to do, I dont see how I can do
anything about a house until Vivien comes back to London. But I should
be very grateful if you would see this house on Chiswick Mall1 and tell
me about it. I think we shall depend on you to get us into the house when
it is found!
I am delighted to hear that you are going to give Vivien a course of
reading only dont feed her too fast. Her illness has reduced her vitality
so low that she can only read a very little at a time it is too tiring and too
exciting. I like her to do as much manual work as she can, when she cannot
be out of doors. She has been painting furniture very beautifully: and while
this is physically tiring, it is mentally restful. And also her eyes are so bad
that she ought not to read much.
I am sure also that her mind was utterly worn out and ruined by my
indecision over the Nation which went on so long too I know that the
strain of that was deadly to her. No one will ever know what she went
through.
I should love to see you and discuss everything in London when you are
there it cant be done satisfactorily in Sussex we dont want to think
about practical affairs on our picnics, and meanwhile I hope to see you
and Jack there. I will write before the weekend
What a lovely bonnet.
With much affection
Tom

28 August 1923 [24 Concord Ave]
Dear Henry:
It seems almost cruel to bring to you all my problems, when you are so
busy in your daily business affairs. Yet you are the only person to whom
I can go.
1 A house on Chiswick Mall would have been close to the Hutchinsons at Riverside House.
199
To begin with a small matter of business, I received a note from Miss
Gerlach this morning asking if Brinker could be allowed to stay if he would
confine himself to that portion of Spring Avenue not leased.1 I wrote her
I thought it safest to let him go if Zeibig had so requested as probably the
Southern Wheel Company had complained. Brinker is three months behind
with rent, and I think I will add a postscript to my letter to Miss Gerlach
asking her to try and collect back rent before giving notice to vacate.
The next matter is personal and business both, and relates to a letter
received from Tom yesterday. I had written him that his share of the estate
had been left in trust.2 This causes him concern. I will copy most of the
letter before discussing it. He says referring to his not writing: It hasnt
been simply lack of time but a paralysis from misery. This is about what
I supposed. And it is difficult to say anything to encourage him, for Vivians
seems about the most hopeless case I know of. Then he goes on: Vivien is
still at the cottage sticking it out by pure pluck. It is a dilemma. She ought
to be out of London, but she cannot go to a hotel so long as the doctors
insist on her having her meat minced in a mincing machine. And somebody
must inspect the machine every day to see that it is kept clean.
I must explain about brickstock.3 Until I can convert it into Bonds, I
cannot feel that I can depend on it, useful as it has been. I do not know
how I should have got through without it, yet it might for a year or more
at a time pay no dividends. The point is that I cannot no honourable
man could take risks until I know that in case of my death I could leave
Vivien provided for, with just enough to live upon. She will get very little
from her parents. The estate has dwindled very much since [the] war it
was chiefly in Irish property and you can realize what that means now,4
and as it is her father and mother cannot afford to live in England all the
year round. And death duties are immensely heavy here, that is two death
duties before the money is divided between Vivien and Maurice. So that I
am only taking the precaution that any man would take, especially as it
will be a long time before Vivien is quite cured. Malnutrition which only
1 A rental property that Mrs Eliot owned in St Louis.

2 In her letter to TSE of 5 Aug., Mrs Eliot explained that Margarets and his share of their
fathers estate was left in trust.
3 His stocks in the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company. In her letter of 5 Aug., she reminded
TSE that, in addition to his income from the bank, he had (like Henry) 275 shares in
Hydraulic, and she intended to give him fifty more. She had turned these over to Henry in
case of her sudden death.
4 The Haigh-Wood income derived largely from their Irish property at Ballsbridge, nr.
Dublin. Since the founding of the Irish Free State in 1922, however, Ireland had been
convulsed by civil war between government forces and irregulars opposed to the treaty.

French and German doctors really understand, is years coming on and
hence a long time to cure.
You tell me that my share of the estate is left in trust. Does this mean
that when I die it reverts? This is important to me because what I need, in
order to feel free to accept a literary post, is assurance of an income, to
cover not my duration of life, but Viviens. In other words I want her to
have a life interest for the duration of her life, not mine, just in case she
outlives me (which is highly improbable). I think it ought to revert to the
family after her death. This is only fair and indeed I should not want any
inheritance that discriminated for me against her.1
What I want is for you to have enough money to make your visit to me
to us next year without pinching. Let me look forward to that we both
talk of it so often. I am going to write to Henry.
[incomplete]
to Virginia Woolf ts Berg

Wednesday, 29 August [1923] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Virginia,
I am immensely pleased more than you realise by your invitation. I
do want to see you, more than anyone, but I dont feel that I can accept
either for the 15th or the 22nd,2 because matters are so unsettled at present
as long as Vivien is at Fishbourne I shall go there every weekend; and she
may be back any day or she may stay into October that is the only safe
way to leave it. So I shall simply wait and let you know and of course in
return I shall want you to say simply that you cannot have me: I put it this
way simply because I want very much indeed to see you, and because I
should like to feel that if at any moment I proposed myself you would not
have the slightest gne [difficulty] in saying that it was not convenient. If
you dont agree to this I can only say: may I spend a night with you (instead
of calculating trains) at Richmond?3
Yours always
Tom
1 Since his marriage, and particularly since knowing of his fathers will, TSE had been
preoccupied by the need to support VHE during her illness and in the event of his death.
2 On 10 Aug., VW told Gerald Brenan she had seen Lytton and Eliot at Rodmell. Eliot will
come and stay with us. At first I shall find him very pompous and American. Later, rather
young and simple (Letters III, 65). TWL was due from the Hogarth Press in a week or two.
3 At Hogarth House, the Woolfs town address.
201
to Valery Larbaud ts Vichy
[Early September 1923] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Larbaud,
Many thanks for your wire. I am very sorry to have worried you about
this while you were ill;1 please accept my sympathy and hopes (not
altogether disinterested) for your rapid recovery. It is of course a great
disappointment not to be able to start volume II with Landor; but the
January number will be all the brighter, if you can get your first section
finished by the 1st of December.
I hope we may see you in London this winter. The English edition of my
Waste Land appears next week,2 and I shall see that a copy is sent to you
and to the Revue Europenne.
T. S. Eliot

[3? September 1923] The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Virginia
Of course you cannot keep space for me on the possibility of my being
able to come I was afraid afterwards that I might have put it that way.
But I want to say that I shall miss my annual visit to Rodmell very much;
but if Vivien can stick it out in the country, I should not like to go so long
as a fortnight without seeing her. I may look forward, however, to spending
the night some time in Richmond?
I am delighted with the Waste Land which has just arrived.3 Spacing
and paging are beautifully planned to make it the right length, far better
than the American edition.4 I am afraid it gave you a great deal of trouble.
1 On 14 June, Larbaud told TSE he hoped to send the first article on Landor at the end
of August. This elusive article, first solicited in autumn 1922, never appeared.
2 The English edn of TWL was to appear from the Hogarth Press on 12 Sept. 1923.
3 The first publication of TWL in book form (and with notes) in the UK; hand-set by LW
and VW, with a print run of 460 copies, it was priced 4s. 6d.
4 The US edn, published by Boni & Liveright in Dec. 1922, had only 12 or so lines per
page, and the poem occupied 49 pages, followed by 11 pages of notes. In contrast, the
Hogarth edn had up to 27 lines per page, so that the poem occupied 20 pages and the notes
just six. This gave a different sense of the poems distinctive form and typographical layout,
closer to that in its first appearance in C. 1: 1 (Oct. 1922), where the poem occupied 15 pages
without notes.

You also had to contend against my abominable proofreading: I see one
dreadful oversight for which I owe apologies: p. 7, I left under London
Bridge instead of over!1 Will you tell Leonard how much I like the book?
Also that if you can, I should like review copies to go to the Nouvelle
Revue Franaise and La Revue Europenne, which ought to review it.2 But
if that exceeds your limit I will send them; I shall probably have to take
most of my royalties in complimentary copies, I have so many I must send.
I think it is simpler if I order a certain number from you and settle it with
you quite apart from royalties, however.
When I see you next I shall attack you again on the subject of a story or
sketch from you for the 1923 Criterion so be prepared with an bauche
[outline].3
Always yours
Tom
3 September 1923 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Whibley,
I am writing, as usual, to ask you for a favour. You promised an obituary
note on Ker,4 and although you have already given your testimony in
Blackwoods5 I read that with great interest, and the Musings, as usual,
with great pleasure I am wholly in agreement about the nature of the
German I hope you will not shrink from the opportunity of doing so
again. As for the collaborate testimony, which I contemplated, I fear it is
now too late to consider such an attempt; but the Criterion, especially as
it is so fortunate as to publish Kers essay,6 as leader, must have some
1 In the Hogarth text, l. 62 read A crowd flowed under London Bridge, so many rather
than A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many; l. 96 read In which sad light a coloured
dolphin swam rather than In which sad light a carvd dolphin swam, as in C. and later
editions. In most of TSEs presentation copies, he corrected these mistakes in the text, as well
as, in the notes, substituting Cambridge for Macmillan as the publisher of Jessie Westons
From Ritual to Romance (a mistake that was taken over from the Boni & Liveright edn).
These corrections were incorporated on the poems republication in P 19091925.
2 There was no review in NRF.
3 VWs next contribution was Character in Fiction (later Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown)
a paper read to the Heretics, Cambridge, in May 1924 in C. 2: 8 (July 1924).
4 On 26 Sept., CW told TSE that W. P. Ker, who had died in July, was a great scholar & a
great man, and his closest friend for many years.
5 CW, W. P. Ker, Blackwoods Magazine 214 (Sept. 1923), 38693.
6 W. P. Ker, Byron: An Oxford Lecture, C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923), 115.
203
tribute to him. And of course apart from the fact that you were
responsible for his appearing here you are the only person to do it. Could
you then let us have within the fortnight about 300 words, to be printed
with the editorial paragraphs at the end.1 Thus printed, it would have the
effect of suggesting a close connexion between yourself and the review: I
hope you will not mind that.
I have seen and enjoyed F. W. Bain;2 I am trying to persuade him to write
on Disraeli, and controvert Strachey;3 he is under the mistaken impression
that the subject, and what he wants to say about it, are not sufficiently
literary.
If I write to Oliver4 or to Kerry,5 both of whom you suggested for their
subjects, may I mention your name? I suppose I shall have to attack J. A.
Smith6 for Aristotle, but I doubt if it is possible to get anything out of him.
Do you happen to know what John Burnets political views are?7 I want
to get something from him on Greek philosophy, but I will not ask him for
Aristotle or Plato if his politics are at all romantic.
If Bain is obdurate, would you be able to have your Maurras in time for
the January number?8 Otherwise I should like to publish it in April.
I hope you are in good health. I am tired and dejected. I feel that I ought
for the obvious reasons to have accepted the Nation, last spring; if there
is ever any chance I do not hope for such good fortune on a more
sympathetic paper I shall take it.9
1 This appeared as W. P. Ker (18551923), C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923), 103.

2 See following letter.
3 As Michael Holroyd notes, Lytton Stracheys portrait of Disraeli, in Queen Victoria
(1921), was almost as sympathetic as his Melbourne (Lytton Strachey: The New Biography,
493). Strachey said the 1874 Tory victory was pre-eminently due to the skill and vigour of
Disraeli. He returned to office, no longer the dubious commander of an insufficient host, but
with drums beating and flags flying, a conquering hero (Queen Victoria, VIII). TSE noted,
Disraeli appears to be too consciously playing a rle for Mr Strachey to extract much fantasy
from him (London Letter, Dial 71: 2, Aug. 1921). See Bain, Disraeli, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924).
4 F. S. Oliver (18641934): a partner in the Debenhams drapery firm; a formidable political
polemicist. He was author of Alexander Hamilton (1906), The Ordeal of Battle (1915), and
The Endless Adventure, a study of parliament in the age of Walpole (3 vols, 19305).
5 Lord Kerry. See TSE to RA, 20 Sept.
6J. A. Smith (18631939): philosopher and classical scholar; Waynflete Professor of Moral
and Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford, known for his contribution to Aristotelian scholar-
ship; author of The Nature of Art (1924). TSE had attended his lectures on De Anima.
7 For Burnet see note to TSEs letter of 1 Oct.
8 Whibley said he could not possibly write on Maurras by Jan. (in fact he never did). His
Lord Chesterfield appeared in C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).
9 This is the first indication that the Liberal-leaning political stance of N. had any bearing
on TSEs rejection of Keyness offer of its literary editorship. In reply, CW said TSE was right

Kers Byron is extraordinarily good.
[T. S. E.]
to F. W. Bain1 cc
Dear Mr Bain
After our conversation which I otherwise much enjoyed I rather
anticipated your refusal, but I was going to write to you tonight in any
case to put you right. I was aware that I had given you a mistaken
impression of our purposes. It is not contemplated merely to treat subjects
of literary interest only. We have in view treatment not only of statesmen
like Bolingbroke, who belong to literature, and statesmen like Disraeli who
touch literature, but others who have no literary interest whatever. I have
wished to get something on Burleigh, if I can find the man to write it; and
Whibley has also suggested Carteret which I should be very glad to have.
The point which I put in a misleading way is this: we want it to be clear
that the Criterion is apart from current political controversy, that it is
independent of party politics, and leagued with an ideal rather than with
the actual Tory party. There is no other periodical extant which pursues the
discovery and maintenance of the philosophy and history of politics; and
a Conservative review which is founded rather on Aristotle than on the
views of Viscount Younger2 is somewhat of a novelty. I do not want people
to think that the Criterion has become a party organ, or that it is pursuing
politics miscellaneously alongside of literature. We have no views on the
occupation of the Ruhr3 or Corfu,4 or tariffs, but we have views on the
nature of to douleion.5 If it were supposed that the Criterion was interested
directly in politics, it would lose its usefulness. My belief is that if one has
not to have anything to do with the Nation: he would have been disgusted by Keyness stock-
jobbing point of view.
1 Francis Bain: see Glossary of Names.
2 George Younger (18511929), chairman of the Unionist party, 191723, was made
Viscount Younger of Leckie in 1923, and was party treasurer of the Conservative and
Unionist Party in the House of Lords until his death.
3 In Jan. 1923, French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr in response to the Weimar
Republics failure to pay reparations in the aftermath of WW1. The British government
deplored the occupation, which lasted until 1925.
4 The Greek island of Corfu was occupied by Italian forces on 31 Aug. 1923 in protest
against the assassination of General Tellini.
5 the slavish (Greek).
205
principles at all, they will have their consequences in both literature and
politics, they will apply to both. I should like too to give to Toryism the
intellectual basis with the illusion of which Socialism has so long deceived
the young and eager. And I believe that the intellectual hold of socialism
on the young is weakening, and that there is the chance of establishing an
austere classicism.1 Toryism is a view of life; and Tory and Whig (I am not
interested in the superficial distinction of Conservative and Liberal) will
[TSEs typing has here run off the page] literature I include things as
discrepant as Gilbert Murray and Lytton Strachey, and Middleton Murry.2
I mean romantic, opposed to classical, to Greek culture.
I want to make it clear therefore that the limitations I sketched the other
day are not limitations to literary subject matter, but limitations to a
somewhat uncommon approach to politics. We shall have many
contributions no more literary, in the narrow sense, than yours: Guignebert
on the Devil,3 and Lvy-Bruhl on Gambling in Primitive Society,4 and
Elliot-Smith on the movements of races.5
So I hope that this letter will persuade you to reverse your decision
you cannot maintain it on the ground you have taken.6
Yours sincerely
[T. S. E.]

3 September 1923 The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Many thanks for your letter. Yes, I should be grateful for the 10 as soon
as you can let me have it, as it is a little difficult to keep my bank account
in funds at present, and I have already paid for this machine.
1 TSEs espousal of Classicism is given further definition in The Function of Criticism in

C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923), where he opposes it to both Romanticism and Whiggery.
2 TSE mounted a critique of the Cambridge classical scholar Gilbert Murray in Euripides
and Professor Murray in SW (1920), portraying his style as a vulgar debasement of the
eminently personal idiom of Swinburne. In one of his London Letters, TSE characterised
Strachey as a romantic mind, dealing with his personages, not in a spirit of detachment,
but by attaching himself to them, tout entier sa proie attach, Dial 71: 2 (Aug. 1921), 215.
He dealt with JMM in The Function of Criticism, in C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923), opposing himself
as a Classicist to JMM as a representative of Romanticism, Whiggery and the Inner Voice.
3 Professor Charles Guignebert, Concerning the Devil, C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923), 1630.
4 L. Lvy-Bruhl, Primitive Mentality and Gambling, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924), 188200.
5 Elliot Smiths essay did not appear; but see The Glamour of Gold, C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925),
34555.
6 Bain did reverse his decision: his Disraeli appeared in C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924), 14366.

I hope you are enjoying your holiday without thought of the Criterion
or other troubles; and I think that No. 11 will be in a state not to disturb
your serenity when you return.
Yours ever,
T. S. E.

My dear Ezra
Enclosed is returned to you for full particulars. I am not sensitive enough
to grasp the meaning.2 Wasnt cheque enclosed or isnt it enough. If latter
will do what I can, but must have more than a hint.
Now what the devil do you want me to print.3
Have done my best to get Joyce and Lewis.4 Cocteau5 has promised (in
conversation with Lady R.) should be glad of a reminder. Hemingway6
you know I have never seen, cant order things without knowing what to
expect, if he sends shall receive careful a tention; Mac Almon7 may be
coming on, but I havnt been privileged to see him come, he was pretty
callow when I knew anything about it, but same applies to him as to
Hemingway; Barfield is I think better than Goold Adams, but they are
1 The first issue of C. 2 was dated October 1923 but numbered Vol. II. No. 5.
2 Presumably a ref. to a complaint about payment for Malatesta Cantos.
3 On 30 July, Pound sent TSE a five-page diatribe against C. 2: 4. With the exception of his
own work, the rest of the number was unreadable, save the Yeats (unimportant and already
read in Dial). He told TSE: But for yr. connection with the review I couldnt go on appearing
with this bunch of dead mushrooms . . . Franchement (tautology perhaps for me to use the
term) cest pire que le Dial. I mean the Criterion is worse than the Dial.
4 See JJ, Fragment of an Unpublished Work, C. 3: 12 (July 1925). Extracts from WLs The
Apes of God appeared in C. 2: 6 & 7 (Feb. & Apr. 1924). EP anathematised all the writers
who appeared in C. 1: 4 (July 1923), and suggested: Lewis (i.e. Wyndham not Sinclair Lewis)
Hemingway, Mac Almon, also Joyce (I take it the answer to the last is in the affirmative).
Cocteau? (at any rate lucid) Cros?
5 Jean Cocteau: see Glossary of Names. His Scandales appeared in French in NC 4: 1 (Jan.
1926). He had promised Lady Rothermere he would contribute something.
6 Ernest Hemingway (18991961) formed part of EPs expatriate circle in Paris, but had not
yet published much. He published Three Stories and Ten Poems in 1923, and made his name
with In Our Time (1925) and The Sun Also Rises (1926). He never published in C.
7 Robert McAlmon (18961956): poet and publisher, an expatriate American in Paris. He
published a book of stories called A Hasty Bunch (1922), and the autobiographical Post-
Adolescence (1923); and he founded Contact editions which published Hemingway, Stein
and others. He did not appear in C.
207
much in the same class;1 have no objection to her translation of Picabia,2
but cannot accept without seeing. You are very wide of the mark about
bloomsbury. If you want to cite facts about Whibleys character3 (which
you have not yet done) they may or may not be relevant; he writes fairly
decent English, and is an enemy of the Mercury, Gosse, G. Murray,
bloomsbury4 and a number of other things. He compares favourably with
your friend Clutton Brock,5 who is the dirtiest shit with the worst mind in
London, which is saying a good deal. May I mention that Robertson, who
has annihilated Brock and Murry as no one else has done, has suffered
through association with me and that he is NOT reviewed any longer by
The Times or the bloomsbury press in consequence, and that although he
is a whig the whig vermin will not associate with him. These points may
not interest you. I ask you to cite one writer of first merit whom I have not
tried to get? It would be useful to know. Of course I dont think of the
stuff worth printing, but is a larger proportion than any other paper
can show.6 Waste Land and Cantos do more good in this society than in
the company of cummings cowley hauptmann etc.7 Please remember that
the Dial, not the Criterion, is the bloomsbury organ, owing to Mortimer,
birrell garnett etc.8 Programme not all there is to say by any means but
authentic so far as it goes.9 More presently.
1 Owen Barfields Dope appeared in the July C., prompting EP to say: Barfield is merde.
At EPs prompting, TSE published Goold-Adamss story The Obsequies in C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923).
2 EP said, I take it there is no use submitting Adamss trans, of Picabias J. C. Rastaquouere,
even after I have gone over it? Francis Picabia published Jsus-Christ Rastaquore in 1920.
3 EP referred to CW as The petrified shit Whibley, and praised Wickham Steed as less
stupid than H. Read and less corrupt than Whibley.
4 In his July letter EP said: I can stand your conservatism, and scholarship, but not the
Bloomsbury mush that seems to get between yr. chinks.
5 Arthur Clutton-Brock (18681924): journalist, critic, essayist; author of Shelley: The Man
and the Poet (1911). His Shakespeares Hamlet (1922) took TSE to task for his account of
Hamlet (in Hamlet and His Problems) as an artistic failure, saying his arguments are partly
taken from Mr [J. M.] Robertson, though not stated with his accuracy.
6 EP reprimanded TSE: You CANT possibly think th of the stuff in this years Crit. has
been in se worth printing. Writing to WL on 6 Sept., EP related that TSE has replied in a
rather satisfactory manner, admitting that ths of the stuff isnt worth printing (Pound/
Lewis: The Letters of Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis, ed. Timothy Materer (1985), 137).
7 In his diatribe against C., EP conceded: On the other hand, the achievement of having
printed Waste Land and Cantos, in London in one year . . . but do we need to bury or embed
it in such diarrhoetic and flowing merde. Malcolm Cowley, E. E. Cummings and Gerard
Hauptmann, who are mentioned by TSE, all appeared in the Dial in the first half of 1923.
8 Raymond Mortimer had published London Letters in the 1923 Dial, and Francis Birrell
an essay on Proust: Prophet of Despair, while David Garnetts Lady into Fox (1922) was
mentioned in a review. All three writers were associated with Bloomsbury. Garnett and Birrell
ran a bookshop in Bloomsbury.
9 In his letter, EP asked: This published programme of yours??? is that all there is to say??
Is it what you mean?? or is there a private programme?

Je tembrasse sur les 2 joues.1
have mapt out Aristophanic comedy,2 but must devote study to phallic
songs, also agons.3
King Bolos big black basstart queen4
Was awfly bright and cheerful
Well fitted for a monarchs bride
But she wasnt always keerful.
Ah yes King Bolos big black queen
Was not above suspicion;
We wish that such was not the case
But whats the use of wishin?
The dancers on the village green
They breathed light tales of Bolos queen
The ladies of King Bolos court
They gossiped with each other
They said King Bolos big black queen
Will soon become a mother[]
They said an embryonic prince
Is hidden in her tumbo;
His prick is long his balls are strong
And his name is Boloumbo.
Basstart is the feminine form of bassturd. Brock is a bassturd.5
1 I kiss you on both cheeks (French).

2 SA was sub-titled Fragments of an Aristophanic Melodrama (1932).
3 In the The Origin of Attic Comedy (1914), F. M. Cornford discusses Aristotles account
of the origins of comedy as deriving from phallic songs. What is now generally called the
Agon is a fierce contest between the representatives of two parties or principles, which
are in effect the hero and villain of the whole piece. TSE drew on Cornford when devising
his own Aristophanic SA; and on 18 Mar. 1933 he would tell the producer Hallie Flanagan,
See also F. M. Cornford. Origins of Attic Comedy, which is important to read before you do
the play.
4 TSEs Bolo poems go back to his student years at Harvard, as recalled in Conrad Aikens
memoir, King Bolo and Others, where they are described as hilariously naughty parerga . . .
devoted to that singular and sterling character known as King Bolo, not to mention King
Bolos Queen, that airy fairy hairy un (in T. S. Eliot: A Symposium, ed. R. March and
Tambimuttu [1948], 22). Some early versions are reprinted in IMH (31520). These latest
variants respond to the scatological abuse in EPs letter, and are themselves an instance of
modern phallic songs.
5 A reference to Arthur Clutton-Brock, described earlier as the dirtiest shit in London.
209
to Bruce Richmond cc
My dear Richmond,
I arise from the grave only to make appeals. You will remember that
you recommended R. O. Morris and that I wrote to him.1 Now he writes
to say that he is not at present, for private reasons, undertaking musical
criticism; he advises me to try Miss Townsend Warner.2 I have the
impression that you mentioned her name, but I made no note of it, and I
am not sure that she was not one of the persons who you said were keeping
the pot of controversy bubbling. Would you mind reminding me, and if
you do not think her suitable would you suggest another? I should be very
grateful.
I wrote also Trend,3 at New Quebec Street, but have no reply. Is he
possibly still in Spain?
Also, I think you offered to write to Burnet. I do want Burnet (I have just
lent his books to Richard, who is delighted with them).4 Might I ask you
to write, and if so should I write simultaneously or wait?
I am placed now (I am moved to the Colonial and Foreign Department,
30 King William Street) so that it is somewhat easier for me to slip away
for lunch, for a shade longer than the statutory hour, and if ever convenient
to you, I should be delighted if you would lunch with me one day at some
place most accessible to yourself.
If you are frightfully busy, forgive me and dont bother to write.
Yours always,
[T. S. E.]
1 See TSEs letter to Morris, 23 Aug.

2 Sylvia Townsend Warner (18931978): English novelist and poet, whose poems The
Espalier (1925) and first novel, Lolly Willowes (1926), were still to come. At this time, she
was an editor of Tudor Church Music (19229). She did not contribute to C.
3 See TSEs letter to J. B. Trend, 23 Aug.
4 John Burnets books included Early Greek Philosophy (1892) and Aristotle on Education
(1903).

to W. R. Lethaby1 cc
5 September 1923 [The Criterion, London]
Dear Professor Lethaby,
I think that it is over a year ago that I wrote to you about the Criterion,
so that you cannot complain that I have plagued you. You will see from
this circular that your name represents a defect in what seems to me an
otherwise brilliant list. I am sending you the essay2 on architecture which
I enclose, in the hope that it may stimulate you to write at least a little
paper for us. But remember that any subject in connexion with art or
architecture that you choose would be welcome to us; and if this essay
does not interest you, or if you are too busy, or for any other reason, do
not bother to return it. There is no one else whom we should ask to write
about these subjects.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]

7 September 1923 The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
Thank you for the cheque, for which I enclose your receipt herewith.
For Gods sake do something at once about Lady Rothermere, and get
enough money to cover the October number too: Wire her at the quai
Voltaire address 33 isnt it?
I am writing to Wardle in Paris, as he does not seem to have come to
London.
I am very glad you are having a lotophagic holiday.
Yours ever
TSE
We shall get a nasty reputation if we cant pay contributors promptly.
1 William Richard Lethaby (18571931): educationist and architect; disciple of John Ruskin
and William Morris; first director of the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London, 1896
1911; and from 1900 professor of the School of Ornament and Design at the Royal College
of Art; surveyor of the fabric of Westminster Abbey from 1906; author of Architecture,
Mysticism and Myth (1891), and Westminster Abbey and the Kings Craftsmen: A Study of
Medieval Building (1906).
2 Not identified.
211
to Mary Hutchinson Telegram Texas
11.00 8 September 1923 Fishbourne
would you like picnic itchenor ferry seven oclock bringing own
food

Dear Cobden-Sanderson.
I am glad to hear that you are back in London. If you have not yet heard
from Lady Rothermere, please write to her at once at Hotel de lEurope,
VENICE, whence I have just heard from her. Will you, at your
convenience, send copies of No. 4 to
Herrn Dr Ernst Robert Curtius,
M a/L,
Rotenberg 15 a,
Hessen, Germany,
and to Dr Wilhelm Lehmann,
HOLZMINDEN (Braunschweig)
Landschulheim 2,
Germany,
and send the Criterion (for one year) with Vol. II no. 1 to
Miss Hale,1
Johnston Hall,
Milwaukee-Downer College,
Milwaukee, Wis. U.S.A.
No. 1 is all in, except 300 words small type from Chas. Whibley.2 I hope
no. 4 has been going well, but we shall meet next week I will ring you
up on Monday.
Yours always
T. S. E.
1 Emily Hale (18911969), with whom TSE had fallen in love while at Harvard.
2 Whibley, W. P. Ker, C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923).

My dear Ottoline,
Thank you very much for your letter and for the enclosure from Lady
Margaret Levett.1 I have no time to write, this is just a line to thank you
for your thought and efforts, and to say that I wait eagerly to hear. Of
course, if I could get such a post, to start with the winter term, I should be
able to leave London and take Vivien to Freiburg, if she would go with
me; but I feel so little hope of eligibility that I do not think about it.
Everything you can say and express is a genuine help, be sure.
With much affection
Tom

Friday, [14 September 1923] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Virginia,
This is very kind of you and distressing: I shall be very sorry not to see
Rodmell this year. But I can only say that I hope that you are coming back
to Richmond soon; I want very much to see you as soon as you do. Vivien
is only staying on as long as the weather makes it possible, so that we have
no idea how long it will be.
I have received the six copies of the Waste Land. Now may I order from
you twelve more copies? I want to pay for them when I get them; it is much
simpler. There are a number of people to whom I must send it.
I have been in to Jones & Evans and corrected the copies they have (they
say they have sold three). There are three mistakes I left: under for over
London Bridge; Coloured for carven dolphin; and Macmillan for
Cambridge University Press for Miss Westons book.2 I hope you will
forgive me.
Will you tell Leonard that I got a note from Miss Jones asking me for
Marvell,3 and sent it off the next day. I have just corrected the proof. I will
try to do you a thing on Elizabethan prose4 next week if I can, to use at
your convenience; because after that I want to clear two or three months
1 Lady Margaret Levett was TSEs English contact with Dr K. B. Martin of Freiburg.
2 See letter to VW of 3? Sept.
3 Andrew Marvell, N&A 33: 26 (29 Sept. 1923), 809.
4 The Beating of a Drum, N&A 34: 1 (6 Oct 1923), 1112.
213
to work more or less connectedly on two rather difficult things, prose and
verse.1
I am very pleased that you cared to write to me again about Sunday, and
I wish I could be at Rodmell and at Chichester at once. But do let me know
when to expect you in London.2
Affectionately
TSE

Dear E. P.
Very well. Please tell me what within possibilities you consider a
reasonable payment.3 I remember wiring to you that it would be about
20. It was 18. I can go the extra 2 but I dont think we can go beyond.
As you did not demur at the time I presumed that you were satisfied.
Remember that it is not a question of absolute values at all but of what we
can afford. Otherwise it would be 50.
Re our recent conversation, I have some hope of something from
Wyndham [Lewis].4 Wickham Steed NO!5 He created Czechoslovakia,
I am told; and I, on the other hand, am anxious to see the Hapsburgs
restored.6
1 The verse is probably a reference to what became SA; the prose probably Ulysses, Order
and Myth for Dial 75: 5 (Nov. 1923), or Lettre dAngleterre for NRF 21: 122 (1 Nov.
1923). After The Beating of a Drum he published nothing else in N&A for three years.
2 The Woolfs returned from Rodmell to London on 30 Sept.
3 In response to TSEs question (3 Sept.), Wasnt cheque enclosed or isnt it enough, EP
wrote Answer to first question is emphatically in the negative. 1800 is insufficient
payment for 11 months work.
4 On 3 Sept., TSE told EP he had done his best to get Joyce and Lewis. WL had evidently
written since then, thanking TSE for TWL, and saying he had been hanging on and [had]
not written because undecided about a title for fragment. He settled on Mr Zagreus and
the Split-Man, which appeared in C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924).
5 Henry Wickham Steed (18711956): foreign editor of The Times 191419; editor
191922. On 30 July, EP told TSE: Wickham Steed, might be better than some of yr.
contributors and was out of a job.
6 TSEs jocular declaration of allegiance to the defunct Hapsburg Empire may have a bearing
on TWL, in which he drew on the recollections of Countess Marie Larisch (Marie, Marie,
hold on tight, ll. 1516). Cf. TSEs declaration that he was royalist in politics, in the Preface
to FLA (1928).

Did I point out that a Tory policy is in no wise acceptable to
Bloomsbury.
Do you think Eeldrop and Appleplex worth continuing?1 As a kind of
deversoir for a variety of thoughts and feels: neither Poetry nor Criticism.
When I suggested this to Richard [Aldington] he said why not write some
historical dialogues. Some people are like that. Please say something
different, at least.
Is it true that the Wild Man dal Bornio2 (che diedi i mai conforti)3 is
coming to London in OctNov? I hope so I may have some things to say
(tu di me novelli porti)4 which I do not care to confide to type.
Yours klansmanikally
T
to Frederic Manning5 cc
My dear Manning,
Thank you for your letter. I am sending the Fernandez to Richard, who
has kindly agreed to do it.6 I am sorry to hear that you are still weak and
are very busy, and also that you are likely to sell your place and go abroad.
That disposes of the hope that I still entertained of coming to spend a
weekend with you during this winter. But you are right to leave England
for the winter.
I should like to have a Newman article from you very much not of
course, immediately after this one, but within a year of it.7 So will you
keep it in mind in the knowledge that I want it?
1 TSEs Eeldrop and Appleplex appeared in two parts in Little Review 4: 1 (May 1917)
and 4: 5 (Sept. 1917). They were satirical dialogues between fictional versions of himself
and EP.
2 Ezra Pound. The reference is to both Dantes Inferno XXVIII, 133 i son Bertram dal
Bornio (I am Bertran de Born) and the Wild Man of Borneo. According to an article in
Illustrated World (Jan. 1922), Wild men of Borneo appeared in Barnums and other circuses,
and were mostly negro canvasmen painted with brick dust or vermilion red, chained, and
their mouths fitted with a false bridge, from which two tusks protruded.
3 He who gave evil counsels, Dante, Inf., XXVIII, 135. Dantes Bertran de Born gave evil
counsels to the young king.
4 Thou mayest carry tidings of me (ibid. 133). Bertran says E perch tu di me novella
porti, / sappi chison Bertram dal Bornio [So that you may carry tidings of me, / Know that
I am Bertran de Born].
5 Frederic Manning: see Glossary of Names.
6 Ramn Fernandez, The Experience of Newman (trans. RA), C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924).
7 See Manning, A French Criticism of Newman, NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926).
215
Inadvertently, I have not replied to you about [Lionel] Johnson. I should
very much like to see the letters and to publish some of them. May I have
them, or some letters, to read? It is very kind of you to suggest them.1 He
is a writer for whom I have a deep respect: with all the faults of writing
which he has, as a writer of that epoch, he is one of its most dignified
figures, and he ought to be more studied than he is.
Yours ever sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
to Mrs Bartholomew cc
Dear Mrs Bartholomew,
Please excuse my not having written to you before, but I have
unfortunately very little time for correspondence and also I wanted to read
your essay with the attention it deserves before writing to you.2 It certainly
has much more than a personal interest for me and I shall consider it a
favour if you will let me keep it longer to read carefully again. I certainly
feel very timid about offering any advice to a writer in fields with which I
am not myself very familiar, but if I can really be of any use to you as a
critic I shall be most happy, only, it will take me some time. I hardly know
whether the subject is suitable for us. It is likely to be more suitable later
on, for the reason that we are anxious to widen the scope of the paper to
include well-written articles on any subjects, except the dreariest one of
economics. But so far we have not had space to include essays on music
and painting and architecture, with which we really ought to deal, and
with which we have promised to deal. The question of expense makes it
imperative to keep the paper down to as small a size as possible until it is
better established, so that our programme at present is an amputated one.
I am very grateful to you for letting me see your essay and shall be very
disappointed if you do not allow me the opportunity for reading it again
at greater leisure.
I am,
[T. S. E.]
1 Lionel Johnson (18671902): poet of the 1890s associated with the Rhymers Club; author
of Poems (1895) and Ireland and Other Poems (1897). His essays appeared posthumously as
Post liminium (1911). See Some Letters of Lionel Johnson, C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925), 35663.
2 On 5 Sept., Mrs Bartholomew wrote that her sister Lady Rothermere had suggested she
send an extract from a book she was writing.

to Owen Barfield cc
Dear Sir,
I have your letter of the 17th inst. I have indeed received your second
sketch and have kept it in the hope of being able to see you or write to
you at some length about it.1 I must tell you frankly that I do not like it
nearly as much as the one which we published.2 The latter impressed me
as having a distinct individual rythym which made it remarkable; the
former seems to me to have the defects of the method without this rythym.
The story which we published, however, interests me so much that I shall
follow with the greatest interest anything you write and hope that you be
as good as to let me see other things which you have written.
Yours faithfully
[T. S. E.]
to Leone Vivante cc
Dear Sir,
Thank you very much for your letter of the 17th inst. and for your
manuscript which has arrived at the same time.3 I am very grateful to you
for giving us the opportunity of printing it and hope that it may be possible
for us to do so, as it would be only fair to you and to our readers after
printing the first part.4 The difficulty is that we have accepted so much
material for the next three numbers that I cannot at present say when or
whether it will be possible, but I will let you know at the earliest possible
moment.
Faithfully yours,
[T. S. E.]
1 On 17 Sept., Barfield asked TSE to return his story The Devastated Area if he was not
going to use it.
2 Dope, C. 1: 4 (July 1923), 3228.
3 Vivante wrote that he was sending for any emergency the corrected copy of The Original
Reality of Poetic Thought i.e., the second chapter of his book Intelligence in Expression,
which EP had recommended for publication in C.
4 On 23 Aug. TSE told Vivante he intended to publish Part I in C. 2: 2 (Jan. 1924), but it
never appeared. Vivantes The Misleading Comparison Between Art and Dreams appeared
in NC 4: 3 (June 1926).
217
20 September 1923 [London]
My dear Richard
I was very much pleased and flattered by receiving your translation of
Cyrano with the inscription.1 It is a book which I should have wanted to
possess even without the pleasure of receiving it as a gift, and I
congratulate you on such a scholarly piece of work and such an interesting
introduction. I like the translation although of course I cannot compare it
with an original which I have never seen or read. What article of Croce
have you accepted?2 I hope you did not promise Ainslie3 that it would
appear in any particular number, because I am beginning to be worried by
the amount of stuff that may come in for the January number. We have
already got Robertson and Keith and Levy-Bruhl; Larbaud [on Walter
Savage Landor] may turn up; Bains I expect to get in December.4 I do not
know whether the Marcel Proust fragment will come in (I wrote to Rivire
a week ago about another matter and have had no answer.5 I presume you
have written to him about this.) Finally I have accepted as much as we can
possibly print, and I want to print a good deal, of a very brilliant novel
Wyndham Lewis is now writing6 and of which he read me parts the other
night, and there is also this Italian of Ezras7 whom I cannot read and
whom you cannot read. I think we must be prepared to postpone both
1 Cyrano de Bergerac, Voyages to the Moon and Sun, trans. RA (1923): the first modern
English translation of the work of the seventeenth-century French writer, Savinien Cyrano,
the inspiration for Rostands verse drama.
2 Benedetto Croce (18661952): critic, idealist philosopher, politician; author of Breviario
di estetica (1912). RA wrote on 17 Sept. that he had accepted Ainslies Croce article. On 18
Aug., Douglas Ainslie had written to RC-S (believing him to be the editor of C.) to ask
whether or no you would care to see my versions hitherto unpublished in English of
Benedetto Croces Heine, Balzac & Zola? They form part of his Poesia e non poesia which I
shall eventually publish complete. RC-S must have forwarded Ainslies letter to RA, TSEs
assistant on C.
3 Douglas Ainslie (18651948): Scottish poet, translator, critic and diplomat; associated in
the 1890s with such personages as Aubrey Beardsley and Walter Pater; contributed to the
Yellow Book. He was the first to translate into English the work of the Italian philosopher
Benedetto Croce, inc. European Literature in the Nineteenth Century (1924). See Croce, On
the Nature of Allegory, trans. Douglas Ainslie, in C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925).
4 See J. M. Robertson, The Evolution of English Blank Verse, Lvy-Bruhl, Primitive
Mentality and Gambling, and Bain, Disraeli: all in C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924). Neither Keiths nor
Larbauds essays materialised.
5 Proust, The Death of Albertine, C. 2: 8 (July 1924).
6 The Apes of God, WLs satirical account of the post-war London art world.
7 Vivante (see previous letter). On 30 Aug., RA said: Vivante I cant read; it bores me.

Keith and Joachim1 to April, and perhaps other things as well. Ezra has
now offered me an article for the January number; as you are familiar with
Ezras style of letterwriting you will quite understand that I am not certain
what this article is about; but it appears to concern itself with some new
German musician with whom he is very friendly and who he naturally
assumes to be so illustrious that there is no need to tell me anything about
him.2 Ezra seems to be showing a certain tenderness toward the Huns at
present. As I want to put in as much as I can of Lewis it will be an excellent
excuse for excluding Ezra, one of the very few excuses which Ezra may
accept.
Lewis rather astonished me by telling me that Ezra had written to him
to say that he was assembling a number of the Criterion and asked Lewis
to contribute to his number.3 This Lewis did not appear particularly
anxious to do, so that he asked me what arrangement I had made with
Ezra for compiling a Criterion. I told him that this was the first I had heard
about it and that I supposed that this was the effect on Ezras imagination
of my having invited him to send for inspection any of the brilliant works
which to judge from his recent strictures on the paper we were apparently
excluding.4
I should like very much to get something from Maurras for the April
number for which I expect Whibleys article on him. But is it any use
writing to Maurras if he is still in Jail?5 I think your suggestions are
excellent and I shall write to the cher matre in that tone.6
1 Harold Joachim: see Glossary of Names. Nothing by him was published in C.

2 On 16 Sept., EP said he was doing an article on Antheil, who is really of some interest.
Trust you will hold space for it in Jan. number. George Antheil (190059) was an American
avant-garde pianist and composer, of German extraction. See George Antheil, C. 2: 7 (Apr.
1924).
3 On 6 Sept, EP told WL: At any rate, I am putting together a more lefterly outburst for
some future number of his organ (Pound/Lewis, 137).
4 See TSEs letter of 3 Sept.
5 CWs article never appeared. In June, Maurras and three members of the Camelots du
Roi were tried for assault upon three men, two of whom were deputies in the Chamber of
Deputies. On 27 June, Maurras was sentenced to a fine and four months in prison. The Times
reported that Maurras, as one of the directors of the Royalist newspaper LAction Franaise
. . . voluntarily presented himself before the examining magistrate, and declared that he had
ordered the attacks of 31 May to be made and took full responsibility for them . . . he refused
to make any apology (Times, 28 June 1923, 13). RA said he was still climbing up the ever
climbing way of the treadmill.
6 On 17 Sept., RA advised TSE to Cher Matre him vigorously, discourse of the iniquity
of La democrasserie, express the homage of England to le grand Maurras. See TSEs letter
to Maurras of 4 Oct.
219
Of course the articles on music and painting that we promised must go
by the board for a number or two. I consider them incidental, valuable but
incidental, to the main programme of literary, social and political reform.
I have just been looking at Frederick Scott Olivers book on Alexander
Hamilton and I think it is very good.1 I think he might be a very good man
to have, whether he wrote on part of it or on any other subject. The only
other political article that I have in mind is one which I may have
mentioned to you to be got from Lord Kerry on Shelburne.2 But it would
be more important to get someone to write about Burke.3
If you can come up to town next week will you drop a line to Whibley
as well as myself saying what night it will be any night except Monday
or Saturday. I should be delighted to offer you my roof, my only difficulty
is this: that I keep everything ready here in case it should at short notice
be necessary or desirable for my wife to return from the country. Therefore
I cannot offer a bed very far ahead; but I can always be pretty certain
within a day or two; so that if you have an alternative lodging I should be
able to let you know the day before whether I am certain to have room. It
would be much more satisfactory if you could stay the night here.
Yours ever affectionately
[T. S. E.]
My dear Lady Rothermere,
Thank you very much for your letter. I was beginning to wonder where
you were as I knew that by this time you must have left Evian where I am
happy to hear that you have thriven. I have been very busy this summer
and had to be a great deal up and down between here and the country.
Only within the last two or three weeks my wife has been a little better but
1 F. S. Oliver, Alexander Hamilton (1906). The book presented the early United States as a
model for British imperial federation.
2 Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, Baron Fitzmaurice (18461935): Liberal politician, under-
secretary in Foreign Office, historian. His three-vol. Life (18756) of his ancestor William,
Earl of Shelburne established his reputation as a historian. William Petty (17371805) was
second Earl of Shelburne and first Marquess of Lansdowne; politician and prime minister.
3 Edmund Burke (1729/3097): Irish politician and author, whose Reflections on the
Revolution in France (1790) had become a classic of counter-revolutionary thought. The only
discussion of Burke to appear was a review by K. Pickthorn of B. Newmans Edmund Burke,
in NC 6: 6 (Dec. 1927).

she has had to make a terrible fight of it all this summer. But had I at any
particular moment been certain that a letter from me would reach you I
should have written to you some time before.
The October number is now quite ready. I think it is good on the whole
and I have written a long essay for it in the attempt to give the liveliness
of controversy and the noise of battle.1 We have had one very fortunate
stroke. W. P. Ker sent an article in and a few weeks later died of heart
failure in the Alps, and as his death has attracted a great deal of attention
and notice, and as I think we shall be the first if not the only review to
publish anything by him since his death, it ought to be a very good
advertisement.2 There is one dreadful failure of which [to] warn you,
otherwise you will wonder at my lack of judgement. On this occasion at
least you shall have no reason to complain that I have not explained fully
in advance. Over a year ago, when I was still wondering where the
contributions were to come from and how the paper was to be filled, I
accepted an article by a learned and well-known Shakespearian scholar
named Lawrence.3 Had filling the paper proved as difficult as I then feared,
this article would have been very good stuff, but as things turned out, it
simply means postponing much better stuff. The article is terribly dull. I
have managed to put him off from one number to the other for nearly a
year, but unfortunately the poor man has made some discovery which he
is afraid somebody else will make and get the credit for, so he is beginning
to get a bit impatient, and I find myself simply forced to print it. Do not
think that this mistake will occur again; for now the difficulty is to keep
the paper down to the right size, not to keep it up. But the January number
will have to be a very big one, because I have accepted a large piece of a
new work by Wyndham Lewis which I think will be somewhat of a
sensation although not (at any rate the part I am going to print) a
scandalous sensation.4 And it is also likely that the thing from Proust will
turn up for the same number.5
I am very annoyed with Sanderson for his unbusinesslike methods. I find
that he delayed writing to you about the finances of the paper until very
late, and then apparently kept writing to the wrong addresses: with the
result that the July printers bill is still unpaid. I have urged upon him the
1 TSE, The Function of Criticism: an attack on JMM and Whiggery.

2 Byron: An Oxford Lecture, C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923).
3 W. J. Lawrence, author of The Elizabethan Playhouse and Other Studies (1912). See his
A New Shakespeare Test, C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923), 7795.
4 Mr Zagreus and the Split-Man, in C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924), did create a scandal.
221
necessity for looking a little farther ahead, especially as it is important for
the credit of the paper that contributors be always paid on the nail.
Of course there are no returns yet from the July number, but we shall
know in a couple of weeks whether Smiths have disposed of the 300 copies
which they took. Unless I am entirely mistaken, the next three numbers
ought to sell better than any of the previous. Now that Aldington has taken
so much of the routine off my hands, I have been able to devote much
more time to plotting out the contents, and I think that these numbers will
provide more excitement and stimulate more curiosity and discussion than
any of the previous.
You say you are going to Paris in October but I hope you will also pay
your usual quarterly visit to London about the time that the Criterion
comes out. May I look forward to seeing you then?
[T. S. E.]
to H. Dugdale Sykes1 cc
20 September 1923 [The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn]
Dear Mr Sykes
I am an ungrateful dog not to have written to you for such a long time
to express my appreciation of your essay on Middleton2 and my entire
agreement with its conclusions. I must tell you frankly that the reason why
I clung so long to your paper was that I had the desire to get it published
in a quarterly review, the title of which you see above, in which I take a
keen interest. But we have been forced to forego, on account of lack of
space, the publication of a great many things which interest me extremely,
and in this way I am afraid that your paper is too technical to give me the
right to include it to the exclusion of certain other things. It is with great
regret that I release it to you. I must explain that in consequence of many
requests I have consented to contribute to this paper four essays on
Elizabethan dramatists so that for the next year we shall not be able to
1 Henry Dugdale Sykes (1874?1932): author of Sidelights on Shakespeare (1919) and

Sidelights on Elizabethan Drama (1924). In his essay Cyril Tourneur TSE called Sykes
perhaps our greatest authority on the texts of Tourneur and Middleton (SE, 186).
2 In John Ford the Author of The Spanish Gypsy (Sidelights on Elizabethan Drama), Sykes
argued that a number of plays ascribed to Middleton were patently by other people. In
Thomas Middleton (1927), TSE cites Sykes as having written authoritatively on this subject
(SE, 161).

include much else in the same field. The four whom I have chosen are
Webster, Middleton, Chapman and Tourneur,1 and I shall take the
opportunity of having sent to you each of these numbers as they appear in
the hope that they may provoke some correspondence from you which we
will publish in the Criterion2 or by which I may correct my conclusions
when I come to make the articles into a book.
I hope that you will give me the opportunity of seeing anything you write
on the subjects which interest us both and I should be very glad to resume
contact with you again.
Sincerely yours
[T. S. E.]
to Wyndham Lewis ms Cornell

Dear Lewis
Many thanks. May I take it that we shall have definitely
1. Mr Zagreus3 for Jan. number
2. An essay for March4
?
If so, how soon Zagreus? I must tell you again I think this will be a great
book5 dont let anything interfere with it.
I understand that you encourage me to go on with the Sweeney play6
I hope that is what you mean. Eeldrop7 was only intended as a fill up or
an occasional release of otherwise useless cerebration.
1 Four Elizabethan Dramatists I: A Preface appeared in C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924), but the

promised essays on Webster, Middleton, Chapman and Tourneur did not follow. TSE wrote
later Mr Lucass Webster, NC 7: 4 (June 1928), Thomas Middleton, in TLS (30 June 1927),
The Sources of Chapman, TLS (12 Feb. 1927), and Cyril Tourneur, TLS (13 Nov. 1930).
The second and fourth of these were republished in SE (1932) and EE (1934).
2 Sykes did not appear in C.
3 Mr Zagreus and the Split-Man, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924).
4 A second instalment of the novel appeared as The Apes of God, C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).
WLs first essay was an Art Chronicle, C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924).
5 The Apes of God did not appear in book form until 1930.
6 A ref. to what became SA. In his letter, WL said: perhaps the play should come next.
7 Eeldrop and Appleplex, The Little Review 4: 1 & 5 (May & Sept. 1917). WL told TSE
to develop what he started in TWL, but this did not mean I squint at EELDROP (Selected
Letters of Wyndham Lewis, 135).
223
Disgusting and filthy article on me by Clive Bell in Nation1 sort of
thing one can only receive in silence.
Let me know when to expect Zagreus. I should like to get it set up quite
soon.
Have you arranged publication of your book of essays?2 If not, I shd
like to get the Criterion to do it as a book. That is where it ought to appear.
We bring out Valry in December,3 & yours could appear in the spring. Let
me know what sort of terms you expect for it. Im sure Lady R wd be keen
about it. Give us the first chance. & Let me know about Zagreus.
Please answer.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
I wrote to the Dial & gave them your address and told them they had the
chance of getting something from you if quick.4
to W. B. L. Trotter5 cc
Sir,
1 Clive Bell, T. S. Eliot, N&A 33 (22 Sept. 1923), 7723. Bell attacked TWL as a case of
the poet more or less repeating himself; lack of imagination being the essential defect. TSE
was one of that anything but contemptible class of artists whose mills are perfect engines in
perpetual want of grist; an exceptional critic; Unluckily he is a Cubist. Bell deplored above
all TSEs indiscreet boosting of the insignificant Miss Sinclair and the lamentable Ezra
Pound.
2 WL published no polemical books between The Caliphs Design (1919) and The Art of
Being Ruled (1926).
3 In fact, Le Serpent par Paul Valry came out in Dec. 1924.
4 Although he had published Paris versus the World in Dial 71: 1 (July 1921), WL did not
publish there again.
5 W. B. L. Trotter (18721939): surgeon and social psychologist; Professor of Surgery at
University College Hospital, London, and pioneering neurosurgeon; serjeant-surgeon to King
George V; author of The Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War (1916).
224 tse at thirty-five

number, and Sir James Frazer1 has promised his collaboration also.
a contribution from you on some subject which would interest the readers
who like myself have gained so much from the study of Instincts of the
Herd in Peace and War. While we cannot, of course, publish papers which
are only intelligible to the readers of technical reviews, we believe that
distinguished scientists ought occasionally to address themselves to the
cultivated public in general. There is of course no question of including
popular science articles in The Criterion.
Our rates of payment must at present be very modest, at the rate of 10
number.
[T. S. E.]
to Wyndham Lewis ts Cornell

[Early October? 1923] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
Dear Lewis
Send the essays along as soon as you can, and give me a few days to
read them carefully, then we will discuss them.3 It seems a pity if (as I
understand from you) the book of essays must come out in March, because
thus you [pass up] the profit of selling some to Vanity Fair, the Dial and
the Criterion.4 But perhaps I am mistaken, or at any rate you will have
1 Despite CWs assurance that Sir James Frazer was willing to contribute, he never did so.
2 Trotter never contributed to C.
4 No book of essays appeared, and Lewis published no other periodical pieces in 1923 or
1924.
225
some more afterwards? At any rate, the Criterion wants the first chance at
publishing the book. We can certainly do better for you than Miss Weaver1
could and perhaps as well as others.
Remember that I want Zagreus2 by November 1st. see enclosed.
I will not mention your movements to Schiff or to any one.3 I presume
that your movements include your new address,4 which I will not mention
either.
Yours
TSE
Yes, Huffer5 is starting a paper.
to Wyndham Lewis cc
1 October 1923 [London]
Dear Lewis
Many thanks indeed. I will give you as long as I can, but I should like
to have Zagreus in a month. Meanwhile, will you send me the essays you
speak of and we will then arrange a meeting and discussion. I have not yet
written to Crowninshield6 but I will do so very soon. We are advertising
Zagreus for the January number.
I dont propose to pick a quarrel with the Nation on this point.7 I shall
leave it alone they have one article of mine8 but I expect that after the
1 Harriet Shaw Weaver had published Lewiss Tarr at the Egoist Press.
3 SS was one of WLs most generous patrons. In an undated letter to TSE, WL said: Dont
inform Schiff about my movements, theres a good fellow (Letters of Wyndham Lewis, 126).
4 Lee Studio, Adam & Eve Mews.
5 Ford Madox Ford (formerly Hueffer) launched the short-lived Transatlantic Review in
Paris in Jan. 1924. In his undated letter, WL wrote: Letter from Pound saying Hueffer and
he starting paper. No answer of course to that (Letters, 126).
6 Frank Crowninshield (18721947), scion of a Boston Brahmin family and editor of Vanity
Fair, to whom WL proposed to send one of his essays. The sophisticated Crownie, who was
hired by his friend Cond Nast, published many of the leading writers of the era including
AH, TSE, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Dorothy Parker; he also cultivated modern
artists.
7 Having read Clive Bells clearly personal review, WL thought it betrayed the Nations
attitude towards TSE. He advised withdrawing any articles already sent or cancelling any
writing arrangement with N. (Letters of Wyndham Lewis, 135).
8 The Beating of a Drum, N&A 34: 1 (6 Oct. 1923). TSE made no further contribution
until Dec. 1926.

next two or three numbers of the Criterion there will be attacks enough
from that quarter. The Criterion policy will probably be put down to a
splenetic rage on my part and I therefore state to you beforehand that it has
nothing to do with my personal relations past or future. I like to keep
literary controversy completely impersonal.1
The articles that I have been writing lately are simply wiping out old
commissions that I have undertaken in some cases as much as a year ago.2
In addition, I happen to want just now any money that I can get by
journalism. But I hope to get myself clear this week and thereafter to write
no articles at all for the next year except a quarterly article for the
Criterion. I shall thus have time, I hope, for the play3 and for other
activities besides writing. Let me hear from you soon.
Yours ever
[T. S. E.]
to J. M. Robertson cc
1 October 1923 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Mr Robertson,
I am very sorry that my occasion for writing to you is what it is; but I
have come to depend on you as one of the chief supporters and distinctions
of the Criterion: therefore I hope you will consent to our postponing your
blank verse article` to the January number,4 when I will explain to you the
reasons.
Over a year ago, when I was in terror lest it should be impossible to
secure enough contributions to keep the Criterion going, I accepted a very
long, very dull, and very badly-written article on the Elizabethan theatre.5
I had it set up in type, but have managed to postpone it from number to
number on the theory that the longer the delay the better the position of
the Criterion to bear such a weight. Unfortunately, Mr Lawrence has made
a kind of discovery which may be useful to scholars in fixing the dates of
1 Cf. TSEs insistence in Tradition and the Individual Talent: The emotion of art is
impersonal (SW, 53; SE, 22).
2 Lewis wrote: I hope to hear soon you are getting your play done. Why dont you stop
writing articles for a bit and do nothing but work of your own?
3 SA.
4 The Evolution of English Blank Verse, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924), 17187.
5 W. J. Lawrence, A New Shakespearean Test, C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923), 7794.
227
Elizabethan plays;1 and he is justly anxious that his article should be
published before anyone else makes the same discovery. He has borne my
delays with great patience; and we are therefore publishing it in October.
The article is so long that something else must be omitted and as it is in the
same field as yours I feel that for the sake of proportion, and out of justice
to both yourself and him, it would be better not to print both in the same
number. I am very sorry for the sake of the Criterion, because the October,
which starts the New Year, will be inferior to the January one and if this
arrangement inconveniences you or displeases you in any way I shall be
very deeply grieved. It is simply the blunder of an inexperienced editor.2
I hasten to add, in the event of your not going to America this winter,
that this need not and I hope will not affect the first of the future Studies
in Genius.3 We shall be ready to publish the latter in the April number if
we can have it then, and I hope that we may. There are only a very few
people whom the Criterion is anxious to publish as often as it can, and
you are one of them.
If you are a reader of the Nation, I hope you will have paid your [sc. no]
attention to an article about me by Mr Clive Bell,4 which is incorrect in its
facts and malignant in its insinuations, and which conveys an impression
of intimacy which is far from being a faithful report of Mr Bells relations
with me.5
I hope that you will forgive my clumsiness, because the Criterion
depends as much upon you as upon any of its contributors.
[T. S. E.]
1 According to Lawrence, no extant common theatre play of the period anterior to the
second decade of the seventeenth-century presents any indication of the use of cornets by
adult players (82). On the basis of this new test, he offered some speculative dates for The
Merchant of Venice, Alls Well, and Henry VIII among other plays.
2 On 3 Oct., Robertson replied: Dont worry in the least . . . I have been an editor myself.
3 Robertson said if his proposed American trip fell through, he would get on with the
Studies in Genius.
4 Clive Bells review of TWL, T. S. Eliot, N&A 33 (22 Sept. 1923); reprinted the same
month in Vanity Fair as The Elusive Art of T. S. Eliot, 53.
5 Bell claimed to have heard TSE read Prufrock in 1916, and that he was one of the first
in England to sing the praises of Eliot.

to Mark Wardle cc
My dear Wardle,
I think it would be a good thing if we printed the alternative ending of
Le Serpent together with your translation, as well as the usual ending. It
should form a sort of appendix. Do you not agree? I hope to get my
introduction written within a week or so and I should like then to arrange
for a meeting and show it to you for your comments. Will you be in town
when Valry comes to lecture in the middle of the month?1 I saw Whibley
the other evening and he told me that he was going to take the Chair.
Yours in haste,
[T. S. E.]
to Stanley Rice cc
1 October 1923 [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
Dear Mr Rice,
(By the way my name is not Sanderson Eliot you are confusing me
with the Criterions publisher, Mr Cobden Sanderson.)2
Thank you for your letter of the 19th ulto. The subject you suggest is a
very interesting one and is one of which I should very much like to read an
article from you.3 It is difficult for us absolutely to engage ourselves to
accept an article which is not yet written or to accept an article for
publication by any definite date. It is particularly difficult in the case of a
subject the treatment of which affects so closely the policy of the paper.
Such an article as you suggest would either fit in admirably with the design
of the review or else, if treated in another way, would absolutely contradict
it; and it is therefore only fair that I should explain to you the position of
the paper. I am myself, having dabbled in Oriental languages,4 very keen
on the scholarly presentation of the Eastern world to occidental Europe
which knows so little about it. But I am very much opposed to certain
1 On 3 Oct., Wardle said he was going to Valrys lecture, and he wondered whether TSE
wished to discuss the affairs serpentine in French with Valry, or in English with him. Valry
was due to talk on Victor Hugo at the French Institute, 16 Oct., under the chairmanship
of CW.
2 Rices letter of 19 Sept. opened Dear Mr Sanderson Eliot.
3 Rice hoped to write on the artistic influences of Asia on Europe & of Europe on Asia.
4 At Harvard, TSE took courses in Elementary Sanskrit in 191112, and Pali in 191213.
229
forms of Oriental influence which seem to me conducive to hysteria and
barbarism.1 You will have noticed probably that since the war, and indeed
less forcibly for some years before the war, the Eastern ideas or rather
paraphrases and corroborations of Eastern ideas, have been creeping into
Western Europe through the gate of Germany. As the Germans are a very
hysterical race they always select the most hysterical and unwholesome
aspects of Oriental art and thought, and within the last few years they have
been turning more and more toward the East, and more and more toward
Russia apparently undeceived by the fiasco of the Treaty of Rapallo.2 The
effect of this, if the German Asiatic influence permeates Western Europe,
will be to relax our hold on those European traditions without which I
believe we should relapse into a state of barbarism equal to that of America
or Russia.3 My friend Hermann Hesse4 for whose talent I have great
respect is an example of the sort of orientalisation which I fear, and I have
been tempted to write a denunciation of his book (which I commend to
your interest) and of the author whom he so highly praises Dostoevsky.5
Now the standpoint of the Criterion is distinctly Aristotelian and in a sense
Orthodox.6 As for Tagore,7 I cannot read at all but his work in translation
seems to me a miserable attenuation of the robust philosophy of early
India.
Pardon my writing to you at such length, but the subject you suggest
seems to me so important that I feel it is only right to give you some vague
idea of its relations to the Criterion.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
1 As examples of an Oriental tendency in European Art of late, Rice cited Chu Chin Chow,
Madame Butterfly, the whole tone scale, and the vogue of Russia.
2 At the Treaty of Rapallo (1922), Germany and Bolshevik Russia renounced all territorial
and financial claims against each other in the wake of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918).
3 Cf. TSEs Notes, C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923): all European civilisations are equally dependent
upon Greece and Rome so far as they are civilisations at all. It was as ridiculous for us to
deny our ancestry as for India and China to reject their ancient literature, con Virgil, and
compose Horatian odes.
4 TSE had met Hesse in Switzerland in 1921.
5 Hermann Hesse, Blick ins Chaos: Drei Aufstze (Berne, 1920), cited in the notes to TWL,
ll. 36676. TSE read Hesses work in Lausanne in 1921, and persuaded SS to translate it into
English. The Brothers Karamazov the Downfall of Europe was published in Dial 72: 6
(June 1922), and the remainder as In Sight of Chaos (Zurich, 1923). Hesse said: It seems to
me that European and especially German youth are destined to find their greatest writer in
Dostoevsky . . . The ideal of Karamazov, primeval, Asiatic, and occult, is already beginning
to consume the European soul. That is what I mean by the downfall of Europe.
6 In ASG (1934), TSE associates orthodoxy with both Christianity and tradition.
7 Rabindranath Tagore (18611941): Bengali poet, philosopher, playwright; Nobel laureate,
1913. Rice cited the cult of Tagore as an instance of Oriental influence.

to John Burnet1 cc
1 October 1923 [The Criterion, London]
Dear Sir,
Thank you very much indeed for your kind letter of the 26th September.
It will suit us very well if you can let us have an article in the Spring: we
hope not later than in time for the July number.2 I may say that if your
health and leisure should permit, we should be of course delighted to
publish anything that you might send earlier, but for the July number the
date of receipt should be the 1st of June, and I sincerely hope that you will
be sufficiently restored to health, and not too pressed by other obligations
to let us have something by then.
The Criterion will consider any contribution from you a very great
honour indeed.
I am,
[T. S. E.]
to J. B. Trend cc
My dear Trend,
I am sorry to have been unable to answer your letter sooner. By all means
do the article you suggest, only dont be afraid to make it too technical,
because the Criterion makes no concessions to its readers in this way.3 We
either omit a subject altogether, such as mathematics or economics, or else
we expect the reader to have some education and to take some trouble.
I wish you could find the rest of the words that you quote and include the
whole thing. But you will do the essay in your own way.
With many thanks,
Yours in haste,
[T. S. E.]
1 John Burnet (18631928) was Professor of Greek at St Andrews, 18811926. His works
included a commentary on Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics (1899); Greek Philosophy: Part
I: Thales to Plato (1914); and a critical edition, in the Oxford Classical Texts series, of the
complete works of Plato (19008).
2 Nothing by Burnet appeared in C.
3 Trend related (7 Sept.) that he would very much like to do an article, for I met some very
queer people as well as queer music, and there would be no need to go into technicalities.
231
2 October [1923] [London]
My dear Ottoline
Many thanks for your kind letter and yr. wire. I was afraid you might
already have gone, or be on the point of going.1 Vivien wanted to see you
before you went, but now I think she will be able to arrange it. I suppose
you will be in London for a night on your way. No as I said I dont see
how she can go until the new year because I do not feel that it would be
safe to let her go without me, even if Germany quietens down.2 After a
year of [Dr Hubert] Higgins, she has not the confidence or resistance she
would collapse before she got there. But meanwhile I want to keep in touch
with Martin.
I will write you more fully later. There is so much to say. Thank you
very much for Gordons card it is much more favourable than I shd have
expected.3 But so many things might stand in the way that I must not think
about it.
I am glad you feel so about Clives article. It made me feel as if I was
covered with lice. But I dont want to say anything about it, because I take
it the Woolfs consider it as a compliment4 and it is not the sort of thing
one resents it is too general and intangible the vulgar and tasteless soul.
Please dont mention it to Vivien I have not shown it to her. I dont feel
these things but she does, and she has quite enough to do to keep her body
alive at present.
The dreadful thing about alien atmospheres is when one gets so used to
them that one is not conscious of what is wrong unconscious suffering
is the worst for one dont you think? because one is denying oneself.
Always affectionately
Tom
1 OM went to Freiburg that autumn to attend the clinic of Dr K. B. Martin, whom VHE and
TSE had consulted in the summer.
2 The situation in Germany was highly unstable as a result of the French occupation of the
Ruhr earlier in the year, hyper-inflation, and the threat of a Communist rising in central
Germany.
3 Presumably a ref. to TSEs request that she look out for a position for him at Oxford.
G. S. Gordon (18811942) had been elected in 1922 Merton Professor of English Literature,
Oxford University; later President of Magdalen College, and Vice-Chancellor, 193841.
4 On 14 Sept., VW had told Bell, who had written a favourable review of her work, that he
was the best journalist, possibly critic, of the day (Letters of Virginia Woolf, II, 70).

to Marianne Moore1 ms Rosenbach
Dear Miss Moore
I have sent off to the Dial an article on you, long delayed by
circumstances beyond my control.2
I hope you will like it. But it does you less than justice.3
When you are ready to publish another book here let me know I think
I could float it better than the last which never got a fair show.4
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
to Ezra Pound cc
Cher Ezra
Your article on Antheil is received.5 It seems to be of excellent substance,
so far as I can understand it; unfortunately music is what I know least
about, but what is of general intelligibility is admirable.
But January, in any case, is impossible. I have promised Lewis all the
possible space for as large a chunk as possible of his new book. He will
never finish the damn thing, I must get what I can when I can get it. It is
good stuff, Lewis is coming on. There shd. be a short essay of his in April,
also the Proust indit (not to my taste, merely a necessary sensation, we
drop Proust after that, he is no part of the programme)6 also Cocteau,7
1 Marianne Moore: see Glossary of Names.

2 TSE, Marianne Moore (rev. of Poems and Marriage), Dial 75: 6 (Dec. 1923).
3 TSE could only think of five contemporary poets whose work excited him as much as,
or more than, Miss Moores. Moore told her brother that TSEs review was a very stately
natively sweet natured affair . . . If bolstering by the profession can do one any good it
certainly will advantage me (Selected Letters of Marianne Moore, ed. Bonnie Costello and
Cristanne Miller [1998], 205).
4 The next book of hers to be published in the UK was Selected Poems, with Intro. by TSE
(Faber & Faber, 1935).
5 George Antheil, C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).
6 Proust, The Death of Albertine, C. 2: 8 (July 1924). William Empson records TSE telling
students at Cambridge I have not read Proust, but the following week giving a very weighty,
and rather long, tribute to Scott Moncrieffs translation, which he said was at no point
inferior to the original (T. S. Eliot: A Symposium [1948], 367).
7 Jean Cocteau proved elusive, but Scandales was to appear (in French) in NC 4: 1 (Jan.
1926).
233
also two other things of which you will not approve, you shall therefore
know nothing about it yet, lest you should talk against the Criterion. I
know du Bos wont do us any good, I could have done better, and Huffer
wont do us any bleeding good either.1 I only could put him in because he
insists upon one of our important principles, Anglo-French unity. He is
rhetorical, verbose, and damn vulgar. He always has one or two good ideas
and it is a pity he wont put them into decent English. Say what you will,
there is a lot of the Hun about Huffer. I never knew a man who could
make good ideas so unacceptable, exc. yrself. I wish you wdnt. sometimes
write on his model. I want to publish yr. Antheil, but swear to me that Im
not landing a catfish like Major Douglas,2 the Messiah of Golders Green.3
Anyway I gather that I shall have a chance of hearing him in London, and
if I like him as much as I do Strawinskij,4 I will print it in red ink. Antheil
a Pole5 he must have been born in Lodz or Kattowitz to have a name like
that. Can you land any decent fiction. REMEMBER that I am prepared to
publish a chunk of cantos as big as Sigismund every year until the ship
sinks.6 But if January dont sink it what with Lewis and Bain I dont know
what will. Nobody can live off the Criterion even with the 2 you will get
presently until there is a real tory government which there never will be.7
Put no trust in Cecils.8
Yours ever
[T. S. E.]
1 Huffer: Ford Madox Ford (formerly Hueffer). TSE published nothing by Du Bos until
Jan. 1935.
2 Major C. H. Douglas (18791952): engineer and economic theorist; author of Economic
Democracy (1920). His theory of Social Credit was heavily promoted by EP, who decreed that
Douglas should command the unqualified respect of all save those few cliques of the
irresponsible and the economically guilty (Little Review 6: 11, Apr. 1920).
3 Golders Green in London had a prominent Jewish community.
4 On 16 Sept., EP called Antheil a conscious Stravinsky, instead of an instinctive peasant-
genius; and in his article he said Stravinskys merit lies very largely in taking hard bits of
rhythm, and noting them with great care. Antheil continues this. TSE was a strong admirer
of Igor Stravinsky (18821971), and the composer later became a friend.
5 Pounds biographical notes began: George Antheil, born Trenton, N.J., July 8, 1901, of
Polish parents; taken to Poland at age of four, returned to America at fourteen . . .
6 Sigismundo da Montefeltro, protagonist of the Malatesta Cantos, in C. 1: 4 (July 1923).
7 On 6 Sept., Pound said that, if he had known of TSEs political allegiances earlier, he
would have suggested the subtitle: The Criterium, or The Tory Review.
8 There were two members of the Cecil family in Baldwins Conservative government of
1923: Lord Robert Cecil, and James Edward Hubert Gascoyne Cecil, fourth Marquess of
Salisbury.

to John Quinn ts Berg
My dear Mr Quinn,
There is absolutely no apology possible for my failure to write to you in
August when I got your letter and draft. I only feel somehow that you
meant what you said when you told me not to bother to write though of
course I did not intend to take you at your word.1 But I dont know anyone
but yourself who would say a thing like that, after such an action, and
really mean it. Yet I ought not to impose on such rare generosity as I have
done.
It is partly my inveterate habit of leaving important letters, which I want
to be long and good letters, until I have time. And doing all the paltry
business ones. It is true that I have been harassed and constantly out of
town. All summer I have been up and down to the country, skipping a day
or two from work nearly every week, and having had about two months
leave altogether besides. The bank have been extremely decent to me. For
the last month I have been trying to get straight. I have written two things
for the Dial, two for the Criterion, one for the Nouvelle Revue Franaise,
and am sitting down to do a preface for Paul Valry. These are all very old
commissions. When I have got these done I must pay a lot of bills, make
out my income tax, my American income tax (it comes to three dollars, but
takes about three evenings work), review the situation and write to my
mother. This will take me to the end of next week. Then I shall do no more
writing except a quarterly article for the Criterion, for the next year.2 I shall
write nothing else. I have besides one preface to do within eighteen months.
So I hope this winter to get time to start my play. No more articles for
anybody, except the Criterion.
The Criterion does give a lot of trouble. I am very slowly learning the art
of making other people work and only doing oneself what nobody else
can do, but I am a slow learner. And you have to go slowly, or else they are
either doing things you dont want done or referring things to you you
dont want to know about, such as the size of a circular and how many to
print. Then there is the trouble of trying to combine people who wont
combine, Pound and Aldington, and defending one against the other, and
everybody protesting against something and most jealous of each other,
1 Quinn said there was no hurry about acknowledging this letter.

2 Apart from an English version of his Lettre dAngleterre in Vanity Fair 21: 6 (Feb. 1924),
TSE published only his prose writing in C. in 1924.
235
and very few to be depended upon. Still, it is amusing, and will be for at
least a year. Also there is satisfaction, for anyone who has been so much
an object of charity as myself, in being able to put money in the hands of
people like Lewis and Aldington and Pound (even though it is not very
much) and not take any myself. It is harder to help Pound than anyone
else. Apart from the fact that he is very sensitive and proud and that I have
to keep an attitude of discipleship to him (as indeed I ought) every time I
print anything of his it nearly sinks the paper. And he offers more than
I want, thinking that he is helping. I am willing to sink the ship for things
like cantos, which are great stuff whether anyone likes them or not, but it
goes against the grain to do it for his articles. He always puts them in such
a way that the errors stick out and the good points (there always are some)
stick in, and he will imitate Hueffer, who writes vilely and who never omits
to mention that he is an Officer (British) and a Gentleman. I have got one
thing of Hueffers that I took for Ezras sake: it has good things in it too,
but is twice as long as it need be.1 I am simply getting execrated by all, but
if one is going to edit a review at all I think the best one can do is to follow
ones own faith and let things rip.
I am for the moment engaged in rather more tolerable work at the bank.
I edit a daily sheet of Extracts (commercial and financial) from the foreign
press, and have to be an authority on affairs in France, Italy, Spain,
Roumania, Greece, Turkey and the U.S.A. And write a monthly article on
foreign exchange. It is not bad. There is some possibility of a small job at
Oxford, but I dont much bank on that.
I shall, of course, consider the money you sent as a trust, contingent
upon my leaving the bank, and not dip into it unless in absolute need. I
have been fairly near it, for my expenses in connexion with my wifes
illness have been terrific, running a country cottage as well as this flat,
doctors bills, medicines, fares, motor car rides, and always feeding at least
one extra person as she must always have some relative or friend with her
to do house-keeping, see to preparation of her special food etc. I wanted
her to be under a German physician [Dr K. B. Martin] who seems just the
man he was here for a week, but she is not fit to go to Freiburg, even if
things settle down, unless I can go with her and stay with her, and this I
cannot do. I am not looking forward to the winter.
1 From the Grey Stone, C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923). Quinn gave $1,000 that autumn to subsidise
Fords The Transatlantic Review, which was to be launched in Jan. 1924.

I have not attempted to express my thanks. It is really beyond words. But
you have been a greater support and encouragement to me than I can
possibly say. It is unique.1
I will write again.
Yours always gratefully
T. S. Eliot
to Charles Maurras cc
Cher Matre,
Jespre que vous pardonnerez mon hardiesse en vous crivant propos
de cette revue anglaise trimestrielle The Criterion. Nous allons vous
supplier de nous donner quelque chose dindit pour cette revue.
Jusquici je crois que votre oeuvre tonnante a t ignore et mme
supprime en Angleterre. La cause suffisante, cest que la plus grande partie
de la presse littraire est controle par les Libraux effectivement par des
groupes qui sont de la gauche politique et presquouvertement
rpublicains. Je crois mme que lcrivain contemporain franais qui est le
mieux connu et le mieux gout parmi les intellectuels de Londres cest
Andr Gide.2 Cela vous donnera quelquide de la situation actuelle. Cest
cette position que The Criterion veut renverser. Ici, mme les journaux soi-
disant conservateurs sont timides et maintiennent des vues plutt
flottantes. Cest seulement The Criterion qui avoue franchement une
philosophie qui aux yeux de la dmocrasserie3 paratra ractionnaire,
quoique cest notre avis la seule philosophie qui puisse, de nos jours,
offrir le moindre espoir de progrs. Je suis certain que les opinions du
groupe du Criterion sont celles qui se rapprochent le plus lAction
Franaise. Il y a, naturellement, des rserves faire d aux circonstances
variantes des deux peuples; mais mutatis mutandis, je crois que le font de
notre philosophie, une philosophie Aristotlienne, est le mme que le vtre.
Donc nous voulons tablir des relations amicales.
1 Quinn died on 28 July 1924, and this is TSEs last tribute to him.
2 Andr Gide (18691951): novelist, diarist, man of letters; author of Limmoraliste (1911)
and La Porte troite [Strait is the Gate], 1909) among many other influential works.
3 TSE took the term, as he took his tone, from RA. On 17 Sept., RA had advised TSE to
discourse [to Maurras] of the iniquity of La democrasserie the term being probably
derived from Flaubert, who used it in a letter to Taine in 1866: Je vous sais gr dexalter
lindividu si rebaiss de nos jours par la Dmocrasserie [I am grateful to you for singing the
praises of the individual, who is so denigrated nowadays by La Dmocrasserie].
237
Dans notre numro dAvril nous allons publier un grand article sur vous
par Charles Whibley, crivain minent, duquel vous connaissez sans doute
le nom. Or, cette article serait de beaucoup plus effectif si nous pourrions
faire paratre quelquindit de vous au mme numro. Pour un tel indit
nous pourrions vous indemnifier raison de 700 francs les 5000 mots
honoraire bien au dessous de limportance capitale dune telle contribution.
Un article ne devrait pas dpasser par beaucoup cette tendue.
Il faut qualifier en pratique lide que je vous ai donne de notre revue.
The Criterion nest pas une revue de caractre directement politique. Nous
ne nous occupons point des activits politiques. Nous nous abstenons
compltement du jeu futile des partis; nous ne sommes partisans daucun
gouvernement. Nous ne parlons pas politique. Nous ne nous prsentons
pas aux scrutins. Nous sommes simplement en train de labourer une
philosophie gnrale do dcoulera une influence lente dans la politique,
la thologie et la littrature. The Criterion est daveu simplement une revue
littraire.
Il convient par consquent, qui si vous nous faites le grand honneur de
collaborer notre revue, votre article soit un article de critique gnrale ou
plutt littraire.1 En vous, nous saluons la grande critique littraire
autant que le matre de politique.
En esprant un accueil favorable, je vous signale, Monsieur, ma grande
admiration et mes hommages dvous.
[T. S. E.]2
1 Maurras did not contribute to the following number, but his Prologue to an Essay on
Criticism appeared in NC 7: 1 (Jan. 1928), in a translation by TSE.
2 Translation: Dear Sir, I hope you will forgive my boldness in writing to you in connection
with the English quarterly review, The Criterion. We wish to urge you to let us have some
unpublished text by you for this review.
Until now, I believe, your very remarkable work has remained unknown, or has even been
suppressed, in England. Of this the sufficient cause is that the greater part of the literary press
is controlled by Liberals, in effect by groups belonging to the political Left and almost openly
republican. I would even say that the contemporary French writer who is best known to, and
most appreciated by, London intellectuals is Andr Gide. This will give you some idea of
the present situation. It is this attitude that The Criterion wishes to reverse. Here, even the
so-called Conservative papers lack boldness and profess rather indefinite opinions. Only The
Criterion frankly proclaims a philosophy which democrassery is bound to find reactionary,
although, in our view, it is the only philosophy which offers the slightest hope of progress at
the present time. I am certain that the Criterion group represents the body of opinion nearest
to lAction Franaise. There are, naturally, certain reservations to be made, because of the
differing circumstances of the two nations; but mutatis mutandis, I think that the basis of our
philosophy, an Aristotelian philosophy, is the same as yours. We wish therefore to establish
friendly relations.
In our April number, we propose to publish a long article about you by Charles Whibley,
an eminent writer whose name is no doubt known to you. This article would, of course, be

to Ford Madox Ford ts Cornell
4 October 1923 The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
My dear Ford,
In reply to your letter of the 28th of September, I have after several
attempts succeeded in sending off your manuscript of a history of literature
to you, registered.1 Please let me know when you get it. I have got many
suggestions from it and if you dont publish it quickly you may see my
plundering first.
Certainly, I should be delighted to write you an open letter for your
paper, and welcome the prospect of its appearance; 2 but first I should like
to have some idea of what it stands for in every important respect and
what it aims at. The Criterion is developing a clearer general policy and I
certainly hope that the two will be in harmony. As a matter of fact I intend
to reduce my writing to the minimum this winter and beyond a quarterly
contribution to the Criterion I dont think that I shall write at all.
Many thanks for your flattering remarks.3 It is a great deal to find that
there is one person, and that person is yourself, who regards the poem as
more effective if we could bring out some previously unpublished text by you in the same
number. We could offer payment at the rate of 700 francs per 5,000 words a fee not at all
commensurate with the capital importance of such a contribution. The text should not greatly
exceed the length indicated.
I must add a practical qualification to the description I have given you of our review. The
Criterion is not a review of a directly political character. We do not deal with political activity.
We stand completely aloof from the futile games of the parties; we do not lend support to any
government. We do not discuss politics. We do not seek elected representation. We are solely
engaged in working out a general philosophy which will exert a gradual influence on politics,
theology and literature. The Criterion presents itself solely as a literary review.
It follows, therefore, that if you do us the great honour of contributing to our review, your
article should concern itself with general criticism, or rather literary criticism. In you, we
salute a great literary critic as well as an eminent political authority.
Hoping for a favourable reply, I assure you, Sir, of my great admiration and most respectful
regards. [T. S. E.]
1 In his letter to TSE of 28 Sept., Ford asked for his short history of Brit. Lit. back: he
wanted to print a slab of it.
2 Ford was re-starting on the weary road: founding a Review, monthly, in this city to be
published in New York & London too. The Transatlantic Review was launched in Paris in
Jan. 1924. Ford wanted a word from TSE just to show we are a band of brothers: just a letter
would do.
3 Ford thought TWL all pretty level & a unit. He liked personally Death by Water &
from there to the end best but would not have liked it so well if it hadnt come after the
Shakespeherian rag & Mr Eugenides. From April is the cruellest month to mon frre was
all very beautiful, but wouldnt be as beautiful if it was not a prelude to the rest.
239
having any pretensions to coherence and unity at all. It has been
unfavourably reviewed in this country; the critics here are too timid even
to admit that they dislike it.1 As for the lines I mention,2 you need not
scratch your head over them. They are the twenty-nine lines of the water-
dripping song in the last part.3
With best wishes
Yours
T. S. Eliot
Very many thanks for your card. I am personally delighted by your
news: and remember that anything you send will be acceptable but that
we must have your big article on Tourgenev in any case.4 It is an
important part of the structure of the Criterion. But I should be very
interested to see your opinions on Santayana.5 I dislike his style and do
not much like the man.
[T. S. E.]
1 Clive Bell said How the man can write! but noted TSEs disconcerting habit of omitting
inverted commas and thought the butter was spread unconscionably thin (N&A 33, 22
Sept.); Edgell Rickword thought TSEs method had some theoretical justifications but that
TWL existed in the greater part in the shape of notes (A Fragmentary Poem, TLS, 20 Sept.
1923); J. C. Squire was unable to make head or tail of it, seeing only a vagrant string of drab
pictures . . . interspersed with memories of literature, lines from old poets, and disconnected
ejaculations a grunt would serve equally well (London Mercury 7, Oct. 1923).
2 TSE had told Ford (14 Aug.) there were about thirty good lines in The Waste Land, and
asked if he could find them. Ford protested against the cruelty of the question: I DONT
KNOW!
3 What the Thunder Said, from Here is no water but only rock to But there is no water
(TWL, ll. 33158).
4 Robertson published nothing on Ivan Turgenev (181883) in C. TSE had praised Turgenev
for maintaining the role of foreigner with integrity, and called him a source of authority . . .
but also isolation (Turgenev, Egoist 4: 11, Dec. 1917).
5 George Santayana (18631952): Spanish-born American philosopher. TSE had taken his
courses at Harvard on History of Modern Philosophy (19078) and Ideals of Society,
Religion, Art and Science in their Historical Development (190910). In Aug. 1920, TSE
told SS he had never liked Santayana, thinking him essentially feminine. Later, when
discussing Santayanas Three Philosophical Poets (1910), TSE said he was more interested
in poetical philosophy than philosophical poetry (VMP, 49).

to John Collier1 cc
Dear Sir,
I must apologise humbly for not having written to you about the two
drafts of a poem which you have submitted. I have read these with great
care and several times over, and I was only waiting in the vain hope of
finding time to submit to you a detailed criticism. I consider that the poem
has merit; I merely dont think that it is sufficiently mature and significant
to take its place in a periodical which hardly expects to publish more than
two or three poems a year.2 To tell the truth, it reminds me somewhat of
the work of Mr Conrad Aiken,3 which you probably have not read; it
reminds me certainly of my own earlier verse. This is something which I
have outgrown, and which I think you will outgrow also: I think that there
is a great deal of sentimentality to be purged out of it. This particular type
of fragmentary conversation (see page 4) was invented by Jules Laforgue4
and done to death by Aldous Huxley.5 Incidentally, Laforgue has made it
impossible for anyone else to talk about geraniums.6 I have been a sinner
myself in the use of broken conversations punctuated by three dots.7 But
you have every reason for going on and you yourself will know, better than
1 John Collier (190180): British-born novelist and screenplay writer, famous for his stories
in The New Yorker. He began as a poet influenced by the Sitwells and by JJ (as well as by
TSE), but published only one collection, Gemini (1930), before making a successful career
as a writer of fiction. He won attention with a satire, His Monkey Wife (1930); and a
collection of his stories, Fancies and Goodnights (1951), won the first International Fantasy
Award in 1952.
2 The only poems published in the first year of C. were TWL in 1: 1 (Oct. 1923), Valrys
The Serpent 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), and Pounds Malatesta Cantos, 1: 4 (July 1923).
3 Conrad Aiken: see Glossary of Names.
4 Jules Laforgue (18601887), French poet, was the first to teach me how to speak, to
teach me the poetic possibilities of my own idiom of speech (What Dante Means to Me,
TCC, 126).
5 Reviewing Aldous Huxleys The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems (1918), TSE said AH
had come down with a serious attack of Laforgue (which may be a good thing), and we
must wait until he has worked it off (Verse Pleasant and Unpleasant, Egoist 5: 3, Mar.
1918).
6 Notable examples are in Pierrots, where Laforgue speaks of La bouche clownesque
ensorcel / Comme un singulier geranium, and Derniers Vers in which he addresses
graniums diaphanes. Cf. TSEs Rhapsody on a Windy Night: Midnight shakes the
memory / As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
7 TSE employed this device in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (I grow old . . . I grow
old . . .) and Portrait of a Lady (I shall sit here, serving tea to friends . . .), as well as in
Mr Apollinax and Hysteria.
241
anyone else, when you have actually done something. Meanwhile I should
not recommend you to publish this poem.
I am,
Dear Sir,
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
to Otto Heller1 ms Washington

Sir,
Some time ago I read (I think in the Post-Dispatch) a review of my poem,
The Waste Land by you.2 It struck me as the most intelligent review of that
poem that I have seen, and I have intended to write to thank you for it.
The poem is neither a success nor a failure simply a struggle.
Practically, one crucifies oneself and entertains drawing rooms and
lounges. But the reception is irrelevant.
It is a pleasure to me that I remember you, although you are hardly likely
to remember ever having seen me.3
I am,
Yr. obliged obt servt
T. S. Eliot
1 Otto Heller (18631941) was from 1892 Professor of German Language and Literature
at Washington University, St Louis; literary editor of the St Louis Post-Dispatch, 191924;
author of Prophets of Dissent: Essays on Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Nietzsche and Tolstoy
(1918).
2 Some critics deny emotion to Mr Eliot, others point out confusion in his thinking. The
present writer disagrees, and finds the young poet altogether admirably equipped for his
office. Only hes got into bad company for the time being, as young poets will . . . Mr Eliot
betrays himself over and over again as the possessor of an orderly mind throwing itself not
without difficulty into experimental disorder . . . enthusiasts are quick to read a marvelous
temperamental response of its author to the passing tragedy of the period, the reflection of a
civilization torn away from its moorings by deep and violent perturbations. They sense in The
Waste Land a poets intense suffering (News of New Books and Those Who Write Them,
St Louis Post-Dispatch, 24 Feb. 1923, 10).
3 TSE went to school, 18981905, at Smith Academy, the prep school for Washington Univ.

to Stephen Gaselee1 cc
Sir,
It has occurred to me that if you ever write at all, you would find the
Criterion a suitable periodical in which to allow your articles to appear.
The Criterion is a quarterly review founded by Lady Rothermere and
edited by Mr Richard Aldington, the policy of which is directed by myself
with the advice and assistance of Mr Charles Whibley. I enclose a recent
circular, which will give you a partial, but only a partial, notion of its
tendencies. You will gain a further perception when I inform you that we
are publishing in the January number an essay on Disraeli by Mr F. W.
Bain, and in the April number on Charles Maurras by Mr Charles
Whibley.2 We also hope for contributions from Mr Maurras himself and
from Monsieur Pierre Lasserre,3 and a paper on Aristotles politics.4
It must be made clear, however, that the Criterion has no interest in
actual politics but only in abstract ideas. On the other hand, in literature
it supports such work as that of Mr James Joyce and Mr Wyndham Lewis.
You will see that it is from the point of view of the usual Whig and semi
socialist press of London an undesirable production.
I have suggested to Mr Saintsbury, who has already been a contributor,
that he should write us a paper on Quintillian, or on Macrobius or on
Charles II, or on some equally obscure subject. There are many subjects,
such as Machiavelli,5 which only await a well affected and properly
qualified exponent. From what I have said, and from what you will find
in the circular, there should suggest itself to you some subject in those fields
of learning in which you have become eminent to the point of myth. If the
prospect commends itself to you, and if you care to discuss the matter first,
1 Stephen Gaselee (18821943): Fellow and Pepys Librarian at Magdalene College,

Cambridge, 190819; Keeper of the Papers at the Foreign Office, 192043; a classical scholar
whose publications included The Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse (1928).
2 Bains Disraeli appeared in C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924), but CW never wrote on Maurras.
3 Pierre Lasserre (18671930): French literary critic and essayist, influenced by George Sorel
and Charles Pguy. A champion of French classicism, he was a leading literary critic in
LAction Franaise. He was the author of Charles Maurras et la Renaissance classique (1902),
among other studies (though he broke with Maurras in 1914). He never wrote for C.
4 By Mr F. S. Oliver del.
5 Niccol Machiavelli never featured as a topic in C. In Shakespeare and the Stoicism of
Seneca (1927), TSE praised WL for calling attention to the importance of Machiavelli in
Elizabethan England (SE, 128).
243
I should be happy if you would lunch with me or come to see me one
evening.1
I am,
Sir,
[T. S. E.]
PS The rates of pay are insignificant, being 10 per 5000 words, and no
contribution should exceed that length. If you do us the honour of
accepting in principle, I will ask Mr Aldington [to] write to you.
My dear Richard,
I merely meant that I thought the names ought to be uniform on the
cover. I see your point, but it looks to me a little odd to see a list with Ker
given simply as W. P. and Guignebert as Professor.2 Inside, I think that we
ought to make distinctions according to the notoriety of the contributor.
Ker, to take the same example, needs no title, but I should give people like
Guignebert their full designation, i.e. Charles Guignebert, and then below
Professor of such and such in the University of Paris. It is too late for this
number but I think we might adopt it when we get to Lvy-Bruhl in the
next.3 What do you think?
Dont do anything about Vivante until I have had time to read it. Send
me on the article by the Honourable George Sinclair.4 I am still playing
with the idea of approaching the Crown Prince of Sweden.5
I saw Lady Rothermere for a few moments. She is on her way to Vienna
and thence is going to Rome and will see Mussolini. I suggest that when
1 On 30 Nov., Gaselee proposed an essay pursuing an idea through classical antiquity to

modern times that he provisionally entitled The Soul in the Kiss: it was published under that
title in C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924), 34959.
2 In the contents for C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923), W. P. Ker, Byron: An Oxford Lecture was followed
by Professor Charles Guignebert, Concerning the Devil.
3 In C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924), the Contents gave L. Lvy-Bruhl, Primitive Mentality and
Gambling.
4 On 3 Oct., RA described George Sinclairs article as a chatty travel-bore note on the
portraits at Gripsholm (Swedish Royal Palace, home to the National Portrait Gallery). There
was no kudos to be got from publishing it, but it provides a first harmless liaison with
Scandinavia.
5 TSE was to write to the Crown Prince on 30 Jan. 1924.

she has seen him I should get from her an introduction to him for you.
I wish you would look about at Fashismo [sic], find out whether it has any
general philosophy and if so whether its general ideas can in any way be
attached to our own. I am still in a state of doubt. There is an immense
faschista press which you might look at. Not only the Popolo but the
Critica, Faschista and many others.1 We are having a devil of a row now
about the discipline of the local leaders or ras and Mussolini seems to be
getting the best of it. But so far as I can see, the whole movement is still
fluid, and adapting itself to circumstances. In other words we do not know
what it is until it has been in office for several years. But if there is anything
to be said about it I dont see why you should not write an article as well
as or better than any Italian.2
I have an embryonic notion of publishing in a year or so a book of essays
by several hands: either essays reprinted from the Criterion, or essays by
contributors to the Criterion. Half a dozen or so chosen as a collective
statement of the Criterion position. For instance, if we reprinted, we might
use my essay on Criticism, Bains Disraeli, Whibleys Maurras, your article
on Faschismo and Leonard Whibleys on Aristotles politics if it is any
good, perhaps an essay on art by Wyndham Lewis and so on.3 On the
other hand, if all the papers have appeared already in the Criterion,
perhaps there would be no sale for the book. Tell me what you think of the
idea in general.
I am sending to Heinemann to ask them for William Archers book on
the drama, because I think I can work it in nicely with my four essays.4
Can you think of any other conspicuous contemporary whom I could work
in in the same way and beat about the ears, or on the other hand use as a
1 Il Popolo dItalia was Mussolinis paper. La Critica was edited by Benedetto Croce, who,
after initial enthusiasm for the Fascist regime, became an opponent from 1925. Critica
Fascista was a semi-monthly journal, 192343. The notes on Italian Publications (C. 1924),
by F. S. Flint, concentrated on literary items in Il Convegno rather than the Fascist press or
journals.
2 RA did not meet Mussolini during his Italian trip, or write on Fascism for C. TSE later
discussed British Fascism in Commentary, NC 7: 1 (Jan. 1928), and The Literature of
Fascism, NC 8: 31 (Dec. 1928).
3 Nothing came of this idea.
4 The Old Drama and the New: An Essay in Re-valuation (1923), by William Archer (1856
1924), theatre critic and journalist. In Four Elizabethan Dramatists, TSE said Archers
brilliant and stimulating book had succeeded in making quite clear all of the dramatic faults
of Elizabethan drama. What vitiates his analysis is his failure to see why these faults are
faults, and not simply different conventions, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924), reprinted in SE, 10917.
245
support? Is there anything in Lytton Stracheys essays1 which you have
read? Archer is a minion of the cocoa press you know.2
Yours ever
[T. S. E.]
PS I lunched with Cobden Sanderson today and passed for printing the
new circular instead of sending it back to you. I did this to save time.
By the way, if you stop in Paris do not forget to make enquiries about
Migne,3 if you have time.
I have read Valrys LAme et la Danse and it is rubbish.4 He knows
nothing whatsoever about dancing, not much about the soul, and very
little about Socrates. It is the usual sort of French bluff. (Monsieur Teste
is also rubbish.)5 Valrys dialogue is followed by an article by Suars
which is pure imbecility.6 There are also sketches by artists who are equally
ignorant of dancing and which show up as humbug beside the few little
drawings of Degas7 who knew everything that a painter need know about
dancing. I venture the idea that Valrys poetry has merit, but the man
cannot think.
to Herbert Trench8 cc
My dear Mr Trench,
I hope you will pardon me for my delay in writing to you about your
poem.9 I have kept it a long time and am liking it very much indeed, while
coming to a decision about the policy of the Criterion in publishing verse.
The Criterion is a very small paper, and quarterly is a very infrequent
publication, and our problem is that of a person stopping in a hotel who
1 Lytton Strachey, Books and Characters (1922). TSE did not refer to Strachey in his article.
2 The Liberally-inclined newspapers owned by the Cadburys and Rowntrees. Archer had
been theatre critic of The Star and Daily Chronicle, both owned by George Cadbury.
3 Jacques Paul Migne (180075), French publisher and patrologist.
4 Valry, LAme et la Danse (The Soul and the Dance) was published in a special
supplement to La Revue Musicale 2: 1 (Dec. 1921), on nineteenth-century ballet, 132.
5 La soire avec Monsieur Teste (1896). TSE said M. Valrys Teste is a monster (A Brief
Introduction to the Method of Paul Valry).
6 Andr Suars, Danse et Musique, 3745.
7 La Danseuse by Edgar Degas, 336.
8 Frederick Herbert Trench (18651923): Irish poet and playwright who had died in Italy
on 11 June. He had written to TSE on 24 Jan. 1923, with a poem and commentary. His
Selected Poems appeared in 1924.
9 Song of the Larks at Dawn: fragments of the poem had already appeared in anthologies.

has made many purchases and finds at the last moment that his luggage is
inadequate. We shall therefore only publish two or three lots of verse
during the year, and this will be either groups of poems or single poems of
such a length as to preclude their publication in most other papers. Our
idea is partly to publish work which is not likely to be suitable for, or
[is] unacceptable to any other review: either because it is too radical,
or because it is too re-actionnary [sic] or because it is by a foreigner, or
because it is too scholarly. So I regretfully return to you this poem. I hope
that we may meet again, but I imagine that you are very seldom in London.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
to Hugo von Hofmannsthal1 cc

Sir,
I welcome the opportunity of writing to you to inform you that your
essay on Greece which Mr Scofield Thayer so kindly obtained for us is to
appear in the Criterion next week.2 A copy will be sent you and you should
receive at the same time or a little later a fee for the equivalent of five
guineas.
I admire this essay very much indeed and consider that the Criterion is
very fortunate in being allowed to publish a translation in this country.
But I have been an admirer of your work for the last thirteen years and
your contributions to the Dial are to me the most interesting things in that
paper.3 I hope that we may have the opportunity of publishing further
work of yours and I shall [ask] Mr Richard Aldington who is editing the
Criterion under my direction to write to you next year. We only regret that
the Criterion, being a quarterly and a very small one, can publish so little
of any one contributor.4
1 Hugo von Hofmannsthal: see Glossary of Names.

2 Greece, C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923), 95102.
3 TSE dates his admiration of Hofmannsthals work back to his student year abroad in
France, Germany and Italy in 191011. Later, TSE said he read him in Bavaria in 1911
(Preface to Michael Hamburgers trans. of Hofmannsthal, Poems and Verse Plays, 1962). In
Marianne Moore, TSE ranked Moore with five other poets American, English, Irish,
French and German who interested him (Dial 75: 6, Dec. 1923, 594). The unnamed
German poet was Hofmannsthal (see Herbert Howarth, Notes on Some Figures Behind T. S.
Eliot, 190).
4 Hofmannsthal never contributed again.
247
Viscountess Rothermere, who is the founder and patroness of the
Criterion, is now in Vienna, at the Hotel Bristol. She is also an admirer of
your work and would be gratified if she might meet you. I am therefore
giving you her address and expressing the hope that you will call upon her.1
With many thanks,
I remain,
[T. S. E.]
PS Is it the fact that none of your poetry has ever been translated into
English?2
to George Saintsbury cc
Dear Mr Saintsbury,
Some time ago you held out to me the faint hope that you might again
be persuaded to contribute to the Criterion. To this distant offer
corresponds a firm determination on my part. Do you think that you could
contribute a paper next year? There are many subjects on which no one is
so qualified to speak as yourself: it has occurred to me that we should like
to have from you an essay on Quintilian or on Macrobius3 or on any of
the excellent critics who in this age of darkness are neglected and
unknown. But be assured that any essay on any subject at any time would
be welcome from you. A defence of the character and rule of Charles II for
example. I make this last suggestion in the knowledge that your political
leanings are similar to my own.4
I am,
Dear Mr Saintsbury,
your obedient servant,
[T. S. E.]
1 On 10 Oct., Hofmannsthal wrote that he was not near Vienna but in the mountains, and
writing very hard: he sent his regrets to Lady Rothermere.
2 Hofmannsthal said that several of [his] lyric dramas and all [of his] poems (being very
few) had been translated and published in America. He singled out Arthur Symonss
masterly translation of Elektra (1908).
3 Quintilian (c.35100): Roman rhetorician, author of Institutio Oratoria; Macrobius
(395423): Roman grammarian and Neoplatonist philosopher, author of a commentary on
Ciceros Dream of Cicero. Saintsbury wrote A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in
Europe from the Earliest Texts to the Present Day (3 vols, 19004).
4 Saintsbury worked as a journalist on the Saturday Review, of which he was assistant editor
188394. According to DNB, The independent toryism of the Saturday Review was never

to Robert Graves ts Morris
My dear Graves,
I am very sorry that I have not let you know before. I kept the poems a
long time and went through them pretty thoroughly, and then sent them
to Aldington and discussed them with him.1 But I could not make any
selection that would do for the Criterion what we want, as we only
publish verse about twice a year, is always some one thing of some length
or importance both positively, and relatively in [the] work of the author.
So I sent them on to the Woolfs. Tonight I rang them up about the matter,
and learned that they had just got back from the country, and had had a
mass of stuff to deal with, and had not had time to read the poems.2 They
should write to you when they have done so.
What I suggest, if they do not want them and I think they would only
want to print a smaller book, selecting from these, or rather letting you
select is to try Harold Monro. I do not know whether he is publishing at
all on his own account now, but I think he would like these. I dont know
why, as I have had no personal dealings, but without prejudice or
responsibility I have a slight prejudice against Blackwell.3
I was rather pleased with Squires comments, to tell the truth. The man
is honest.4
With all best wishes, and apologies,
Sincerely
T. S. Eliot
more vigorous than in the years when Saintsbury became a seasoned Fleet Street
commentator. Saintsbury never contributed to C. again.
1 See TSEs letters to Graves of 16 July and to RA of 23 Aug.
2 Later published as John Crowe Ransom, Grace After Meat, introd. by Robert Graves
(1924).
3 Basil Blackwell (18891985): bookseller and publisher, who had joined the family
bookshop of Blackwell & Sons in Oxford. In 1913, he launched the annual Oxford Poetry,
which had published Graves.
4 In his review of TWL in London Mercury 7 (Oct. 1923, 6556), the editor J. C. Squire
thought it scarcely worthy of the Hogarth Press.
249
11 October 1923 The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Many thanks, the Criteria1 are highly satisfactory, the only thing I can
find wrong are some bad errors in the German quotations in Kers article,2
thats not your fault.
I have finished my preface, sent it to Wardle for comment, got it back,
and sent it to Aldington for comment.3 When I get it back it may have a
few alterations made, and then it will be quite ready for you. Thank you
for Valrys address. I am supposed to be going to hear his lecture, but I
havent the slightest curiosity.4
Yes, please, pay Pound 2 more (in English cheque) for his cantos.5
I hope to have news of the results of July no. soon from you.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
to Arnold Bennett6 ms
Dear Mr Bennett
Thank you very much. I shall be very happy to come on Tuesday at
9 oclock.7
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
1 The copies of C. 2: 1 (Oct. 1923).

2 There were mistakes in the German quotations from Eckermans Conversations with
Goethe in Kers Byron: An Oxford Lecture, C. 2: 5, 4.
3 A Brief Introduction to the Method of Paul Valry. Wardle wrote with detailed comments
on 9 Oct. With reference to TSEs remark that he was not implying that Valry was a
derivative poet, Wardle asked whether the appearance of so many of Valrys kinsmen from
the vasty deeps does not leave a taste of derivation that needs a brief gargle to remove it?
4 TSE was more enthusiastic when writing to Valry on 6 Nov., after the lecture.
5 See TSEs letter to EP of 14 Sept.
6 Arnold Bennett: see Glossary of Names.
7 To discuss SA, among other matters.

to Ford Madox Ford1
Dear Ford,
I welcome with extreme curiosity the appearance of the Transatlantic
Review.2 If it is similar to the Criterion I shall take it as the best possible
testimony of the blessings of the gods upon our enterprises; in so far as it
be different, I hope that the differences will be complementary or at least
antagonistic.3
But from the prospectus which you have sent me I take no prescience of
antagonism. Personally, I have always maintained what appears to be one
of your capital tenets: that the standards of literature should be
international. And personally, I am, as you know, an old-fashioned Tory.4
We are so far in accord.
The present age, a singularly stupid one, is the age of a mistaken
nationalism and of an equally mistaken and artificial internationalism. I
am all for empires, especially the Austro-Hungarian empire,5 and I deplore
the outburst of artificial nationalities, constituted like artificial genealogies
for millionaires, all over the world. The number of languages worth
writing in is very small, and it seems to me a waste of time to attempt to
enlarge it. On the other hand, if anyone has a genuine nationality and a
genuine nationality depends upon the existence of a genuine literature, and
you cannot have a nationality worth speaking of unless you have a national
literature if anyone has a genuine nationality, let him assert it, let the
Frenchman be as French, the Englishman as English, the German as
German, as he can be; but let him be French or English or German in such
1 Text from Transatlantic Review (Paris) 1: 1 (Jan. 1924), 956. Ford wrote: Mr T. S. Eliot,
the editor of the only other purely literary periodical that reaches us shall answer with his
definition of what is the task of the Perfect Editor. On Valerie Eliots copy, TSE wrote in
1958: I seem to have assumed an odd tone of authority in addressing a man older than
myself!
2 In the version of this letter written on 11 Oct. 1923 (Beinecke), the title was given as The
Paris Review as in the draft circular Ford sent. This was changed in the published edition.
3 In the Oct. draft, TSE wrote: I hope that the differences will be complementary or else
[and not del.] antagonistic.
4 The circular made a point of stressing that the periodical would introduce into
international politics a note more genial than that which, almost universally prevails to-day
. . . The politics will be those of its editor who has no party politics save those of a Tory kind
so old fashioned as to see no salvation but in the feudal system practised in the fourteenth
century.
5 Cf. TSEs letter to EP, 14 Sept., in which he said he wanted to see the Hapsburgs restored.
With the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, a large number of new states
came into existence, including Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.
251
a way that his national character will complement, not contradict, the
other nationalities.1 Let us not have an indiscriminate mongrel mixture of
socialist internationals, or of capitalist cosmopolitans, but a harmony of
different functions. But the more contact, the more free exchange, there
can be between the small number of intelligent people of every race or
nation, the more likelihood of general contribution to what we call
literature.
I agree also that there can only be one English literature; that there
cannot be British literature, or American literature.2
You say that you wish to provide another vehicle for the younger
writers.3 I object that this is an unnecessary discrimination in favour of
youth. In America there seem to be a considerable number of periodicals,
appearing more or less periodically, for this same purpose: and in England
there do not seem to be any younger writers anyway. That is one advantage
of living in England: one remains perpetually a very young writer. I have
enquired after younger writers; but those who are young in years seem
anxious to pretend that they are round about forty, and try as hard as
possible to assimilate themselves to the generation which has just gone out
of date. They have no politics, or liberal politics (which is much the same
thing); and if they had any politics, they would mix them up with their
literature instead of keeping their literature clean.4 They have nothing. It
is your business to help create the younger generation, as much as to
encourage it. It does not need much encouragement.
But a review is not measured by the number of stars and scoops that it
gets. Good literature is produced by a few queer people in odd corners;
the use of a review is not to force talent, but to create a favourable
atmosphere. And you will serve this purpose if you publish, as I hope you
will find and publish, work of writers of whatever age who are too good
and too independent to have found other publishers. I know that there are
1 In his letter, Ford said he wanted a situation where there are no English, no French or
for the matter of that, no Russian, Italian, Asiatic or Teutonic literatures, there will only be
literature.
2 Ford said: There is no British literature; there is no American literature: there is only
English literature which embraces alike Mark Twain and Thomas Hardy with the figure of
Henry James to bracket them.
3 Ford said his first objective was widening the field in which young writers of the day can
find publication.
4 Cf. The Function of a Literary Review, C. 1: 4 (July 1923): It is the function of a literary
review to maintain the autonomy and disinterestedness of literature, and at the same time to
exhibit the relations of literature not to life . . . but to all the other activities, which,
together with literature, are the components of life (421).

good writers, young and old, who belong in this category. In the Criterion
we have endeavoured not to discriminate in favour of either youth or age,
but to find good work which either could not appear elsewhere at all, or
would not appear elsewhere to such advantage.
But I have only one request to make: give us either what we can support,
or what is worth our trouble to attack. There is little of either in existence.
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
to W. R. Lethaby cc
Dear Mr Lethaby,
I think that I have not thanked you for your letter. Certainly it is right
that you should not notice such an essay, and as you have that opinion of
it I certainly should not let anyone else do so.1 But we do indeed want
something from you very badly; it is appalling that there should be no one
else in England who can write sense about architecture, but it is the truth.
I have just seen your book on Roman London:2 I congratulate you on
an important and extremely interesting book: important I think as much
by reason of the point of view toward architecture in general and the
subject in particular, as by the erudition itself.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to His Mother3 ts Houghton

[? Mid-October 1923] [London]
Dearest Mother:
First let me thank you very much for the birthday cable and the birthday
cheque.4 It touched me very much that you should remember so exactly.
I am using the cheque as a luxury: not for clothing but to buy a book that
I have wanted for a long time.
1 On 5 Sept., TSE sent an unidentified essay on architecture to Lethaby to be vetted. He

hoped it would stimulate him to write something, but Lethaby was never to write for C.
2 William Richard Lethaby, Londinium: Architecture and the Crafts (1923).
3 From a copy made by HWE.
4 TSEs 35th birthday fell on 26 Sept.
253
Every day that passes without my having written to you hurts me, and
I know it must seem strange that I write so seldom. During the past month
I have been alone here in London, only going down to Fishbourne at week-
ends, or occasionally for the night during the week. During that time I
have been working very hard to make up some arrears of promises viz:
An article for the October Criterion.1
An editorial
An essay on Andrew Marvell for the Nation.2
An essay on the drama
An essay on James Joyce for the Dial.3
An essay on Marianne Moore
A chronicle for the Nouvelle Revue
Franaise.4
A preface for the poem of Paul Valry to
appear as a book published by
the Criterion.
A review of the money market for the Lloyds Bank Financial
in France and Spain. Monthly.5
A digest of Roumanian for my Lloyds Bank Extracts
debt legislation. from the Foreign Press.
So now I am clear of old debts. I have also cleared up all my business
correspondence (Criterion) to date, and am now ready to attack my
income tax returns (English and American). My plans for the winter are to
write nothing but one article for each Criterion, and to write nothing else.
I have undertaken to write four articles for the Criterion on four
Elizabethan dramatists: Webster, Tourneur, Middleton and Chapman; and
as I want to make them pretty long and careful and scholarly, that will be
quite enough to undertake, besides a few editorials, and to work in a
1 The article was The Function of Criticism; the editorial (signed T. S. E.), The Classics
in France and in England, C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923), 3142, 1045.
2 Andrew Marvell, N&A 33: 26 (29 Sept.); The Beating of a Drum, 34: 1 (6 Oct.).
3 Ulysses, Order and Myth, Dial 75: 5 (Nov.); and Marianne Moore, 75: 6 (Dec.).
4 Lettre dAngleterre, NRF 21: 122 (Nov. 1923).
5 [Unsigned], Foreign Exchanges, Lloyds Bank Monthly, Oct. 1923, 360. TSE noted, the
main points of interest during the month have been directly connected with the political
situation. Fluctuations of the franc had long since come to be dominated by political, rather
than economic movements, but the present ascent had long been less political than
emotional. Of the coup dtat in Spain: unlike that of the Italian fascismo, it had not been
prepared by any gradual conversion and training of the middle classes, and must be judged
by results.

desultory way on preparations for my play, which involves studying
Aristophanes and learning all I can about the Greek theatre.1
As for the work of the Criterion, I am very slowly learning how to make
other people do the work, and only do myself what no one else can do as
well. I have been very slow to learn this. But now I simply make decisions,
about general policy and about important contributors. I have aimed to get
together people whose bond should be myself, so that the power should
remain in my hands. Richard Aldington is very useful and hard-working,
and more suitable for my purpose than anyone else who I could have had.
And I have managed to associate to myself certain allies, like J. M. Robertson
and Charles Whibley, of an elder generation, whose support is very valuable.
The paper is now pretty well established in opinion, though I shall not be
satisfied until it pays its way apart from Lady Rothermeres subsidy. If it
reaches that point, I shall be willing to entrust my livelihood to it; and until
it reaches that point I prefer to do less work and draw no pay. Of course, if
I could have at the same time some other editorial post, I would do that
now. But if it comes and such posts are few I should prefer to be
associated with a more Conservative paper than the Nation though this did
not influence me at the time, as it was quite clear that I was to be literary
editor solely. But as you will see, the Criterion without descending to actual
current politics, is developing a clearer programme and attitude than during
the first year. I thought it wisest to be rather non-committal at first.
The work at the Bank is interesting, as interesting as bank work can be.
Besides retaining what work there is left in connection with Enemy Debts
under the Peace Treaties, I have to make myself a sort of authority on
everything that goes on of financial and commercial interest in France,
Belgium, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Roumania, and North and South America.
I read a number of newspapers from the various countries every day, and
make such extracts as I have shown you; and I have to make enquiries,
and see people at the Board of Trade, and so on. It is a kind of writing.
Vivien has been in the country, having had a friend till now. She will
have to come back shortly, and is dreading it; and I very much regret not
having taken the Nation, because I could then have lived in the country.
She gets more fresh air, and in the country she can be in and out, and in
the garden and the fields, all day long, and it is wonderful what a difference
it makes when one can spend most of the day out of doors. It would not
be so bad in London if we had a house and a little garden of our own; but
living in a flat one must dress up properly, and go out for a purpose, or else
1 A further reference to what would become SA.
255
stay indoors; and at best the London air is not very good, especially in
November and December, when there are so many fogs. I know too that
her illness in the spring gave her a great nervous shock, as to any delicate
person it must, to come so near to dying, and it will take her a long time
to get over it. So the question is how she can survive a winter in London.
It has been a strain for us both to have her in the country when I had to
be in town, but still it was better than her being in London. She gains no
weight at all only three pounds in four months, and weighs only a little
over 80 pounds. Yet she has been making the most heartrending efforts,
eating all she can, and forcing herself to be up and go out and pay no
attention to her feelings, when she only feels like staying in bed; because
her great horror is invalidism, and being dependent upon other people.
She needs quiet and fresh air, and a perfectly steady and peaceful routine
of life, to get well. She still has very bad intestinal attacks, sometimes
keeping her up most of the night.
I heard from Henry that you are likely to have the Savonarola printed.
I hope so. I should like to have written a preface or introduction for it.1
I should have been very proud.
Thank you a thousand times for all your sweetness and all the trouble
you have taken about the will.2. It does indeed lift a load off my mind. I
cannot tell you what a difference it makes, and if anything like the Nation
should ever be offered again, I should feel able to accept. About the
insurance I have been thinking about that.3 While I am alive I do not like the
idea of depriving you of any part of your income. I should like, for the
present, to leave it like this: if I get a literary position offering less security
than the Bank, and no pension (the Bank pension would be sixty pounds a
year if I died now, and more in proportion to further years of service and
salary) I should like to have the insurance on the terms you suggest. But until
then I do not think that I ought to put you to that expense and privation.
The extra dividend was a godsend,4 as my expenses have been
enormous. The difference between running one establishment, and two
1 See Charlotte Eliot, Savonarola, with intro. by T. S. Eliot (1928).

2 She had cabled: Can change will for Vivians lifetime, will do so at once. On 10 Sept., she
said she would create a trust for VHEs benefit, in the event of TSEs prior death, with the
income payable to her during her lifetime and with the principal payable at her death to
Charlotte Eliots other children and their descendants. With the change in my will you need
not remain in the Bank for the small widows pension. He would be free to accept a two
years engagement with this guarantee.
3 CCE said it would enable him to accept such a position as that on N. if he took additional
insurance on his life and she paid the premiums.
4 CCE enclosed a cutting announcing that The Board of Directors of the Hydraulic-Press
Brick Company yesterday declared two dividends of 1 per cent each, or $1 dollar a share.

one in town and one in the country is much more than one would think.
And then the doctors bills, and medicine, and special foods, and train fares
up and down. And an extra person to feed at the cottage always, and a
charwoman to pay, and Ellen to look after me. Of course, when Mrs
Haigh-Wood has been there, which has been as much as she can, she has
always paid all her own expenses, and some of ours too. But she has been
very poorly herself, with bad arthritis, and I think the exertion of those
first terrible weeks in April was a very great strain for her at her age.
I must stop now. Remember next spring.
Tom1
to Bertrand Russell 2 ms McMaster

Dear Bertie,
I was delighted to get your letter.3 It gives me very great pleasure to
know that you like the Waste Land, and especially Part V which in my
opinion is not only the best part, but the only part that justifies the whole,
at all. It means a great deal to me that you like it.
I must tell you that eighteen months ago, before it was published
anywhere, Vivien wanted me to send you the MS to read, because she was
sure that you were one of the very few persons who might possibly see
anything in it.4 But we felt that you might prefer to have nothing to do
with us. It is absurd to say that we wished to drop you.5
She thought TSE would be glad of an extra dividend, given that his expenses must be so
excessive.
1 CCE wrote at the foot of his copy: This letter of Toms was a long one and it has taken
me several hours to copy it. I think Tom has done wonders in the way of literary work under
the circumstances.
2 Bertrand Russell: see Glossary of Names. He quotes this letter in his Autobiography: 1914
1944, vol. 2 (1968), 173.
3 BRs letter does not appear to survive. After returning from China and getting re-
established in Chelsea at the end of Aug., BR told OM on 14 Oct. that he was particularly
excited to get hold of Eliots Wasteland, recently published by the Hogarth Press.
4 BR claimed in his Autobiography that during the war, I used in imagination to see the
bridges collapse and sink, and the whole great city vanish and I would wonder whether the
world in which I thought I had lived was a mere product of my own febrile nightmares. BR
then took this credit: I spoke of this to T. S. Eliot, who put it into The Waste Land, 18.
5 VHE told OM in May 1919, I shall never try to see him again. Having broken off all
contact with him, VHE wrote on 1 Nov. 1921 to congratulate him on the birth of his son. In
the same letter, she reported that TSE was having a nervous or so called breakdown and
was at present in Margate. TSE was working on TWL at the time.
257
Vivien has had a frightful illness, and nearly died, in the spring as
Ottoline has probably told you. And that she has been in the country ever
since. She has not yet come back.
Dinner is rather difficult for me at present. But might I come to tea with
you on Saturday? I should like to see you very much there have been
many times when I have thought that.
Yours ever
T. S. E.

Dear C-S,
The second ending goes in (text and translation) as an appendix.1
Wardle shd. tell you how it should be marked, or any note of explanation.
Yes, I shd send a copy to Paris.
A copy of October should go to
J. Middleton Murry Esq
The Adelphi
18 York Bldgs
Adelphi
And one to Wyndham Lewis Esq
61 Palace Gardens Terrace
Kensington, w.8
Many thanks.
Preface will be reviewed in a few days.
Yrs ever
T. S. E.

[Postmark 19 October 1923] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Have been trying to get you on telephone for two days, as am going to
Chich. tomorrow and shant be here dreadfully disappointed. Thank you
1 Valrys alternative ending to Le Serpent was published as an appendix to Le Serpent

par Paul Valry (1924), 51. It was introduced by a note: The last strophe did not exist in the
first edition. The poem ended with the preceding, or thirtieth, strophe, which then read . . .

very much, I shd have loved to go. I want to see you soon and will
telephone tomorrow morning before 10.

17 October 1923 [24 Concord Ave]
Dear Henry:
I received your letter last evening and was very glad to have you write
that you had as lief trust U.S. to pay their rent as an unknown party to pay
a note.1 I wrote Terry last week that I preferred $25,000.00 cash to
$26,500.00 with notes. I think I should accept a cash payment, but I am
timid about taking notes up to $18,000.00 in value. Evidently Terry does
not look up his parties and if the party in question is not perfectly reliable,
there will be difficulty in disposing of the notes. Before he sold note for
4446 Westminster the Banks had to look up Mrs Ledlie. Is Terry sure of
being able to sell the thirteen thousand note? He says nothing about the
second note. I should be anxious until both those notes were paid. To sell
Bohns $3500.00 note I had to pay 6%. If the party has no security but
the building itself, is that sufficient? I went in to consult Mr Martin at the
Old Colony, and he agreed with me $8,000.00 was a small proportion of
cash on a $26500.00 sale. If there was delay in disposing of the $13,000.00
note I should be very anxious.
I have been hesitating about telegraphing to Terry Get no more reports.
Duns all sufficient. It seems to me outrageous for him to charge me
$20.00 I think he is mad. I do not believe he would look up the party.
I think he should belong to Duns and look up parties who give notes.
I am sorry as I have said before, to trouble you when you are so busy. It
must be a problem to get a new bookkeeper. Women have been so flattered
by their own sex, they expect more than men.
I should like you to return me Duns report after you have shown it to
business friends.
To turn from business, or shall I first write of codicil. I am waiting to
sign until I receive your verdict. Is there any loophole by which Toms share
might go to Haigh-Woods?2 Dana will charge me at least fifty dollars for
1 From HWEs letter of 5 Oct., it is clear that U.S. Army Stores had offered to lease her
property at 812 Broadway again, but that she had also received an offer to buy it for $26,500.
2 Writing to TSE on 2 Oct., HWE said I have now in front of me a five-page codicil to her
will (copied off by her on the typewriter!) creating a life estate for Vivien. I had supposed that
was a matter of inserting seven or eight words. Mrs Eliot was concerned that the money
should not go to Viviens family, the Haigh-Woods, in the event that Vivien predeceased them.
259
the long document. It seems to me to repeat much that is in the will. If he
changes ten years to fifteen in the will it will have to be re-written and he
will charge much more. I am sorry I went to him a second time.
Tom wrote me last the 15th August.1 In that letter he said he did not
know whether he wanted to take any more inheritance if Vivian was not
included. I immediately prepared to have a codicil to my will including her
if she outlived Tom. I cabled Tom I had done so. I have written him every
Sunday since April because he reproached me for having discontinued
doing so. He has never acknowledged as I told you my gift of one hundred
dollars.2 He has not replied to what I wrote him about the codicil. In giving
him outright the dividends and having the codicil, I have disobeyed Fathers
instructions which I was loath to do [. . .]3 I wrote him just what property
I had, and told him it was not as much as Lady Ottoline and Mrs Haigh-
Wood supposed. Perhaps that offended him. I do not think you should
send him money. His salary is probably four thousand, and he has
dividends. I do not want you to give anything to Charlotte, but he has
more than she. I want you to invest in gilt-edge bonds.
It is very nice in Tom to say he would write a preface to my book4 if it
is accepted, (if so probably with guarantee). If it should be I would pay
him, but I would not like to tell him so. I am preparing a third copy which
I will send you to forward to him. He can at least criticise or make
suggestions. I infer that he thinks a preface by him would help in its
acceptance. I shall discontinue writing except in reply to his letters. I am
afraid I have written something he did not like, and if so I had better write
less and less frequently. It is a dreadful thought if he avoids communication
with me, it troubles me. You have been more than faithful What should
I do without you? Toms last letter was written on 15th August.
I shall probably send the Savonarola in a week.
I am glad the firm is doing so well, but sorry you have so much to do.
Get all the sleep you can. I am glad you enjoyed the concert. Hope you can
go with Hambleton again. Marian is going to hear Pachmann.5
Do not forget your teeth. Are you having any more trouble? Do not
think I am angry with Tom only hurt because I am so fond of him. Vivian
is fond of him too, how could she help being, but she eats his life out.6
1 TSEs letter of 15 Aug. does not seem to survive.

2 Sent as a present for his birthday on 26 Sept.
3 A heavily deleted and illegible phrase follows loath to do.
4 Savonarola: A Dramatic Poem.
5 Vladimir de Pachmann (18481933): flamboyant virtuoso pianist.
6 Alongside this remark about VHE, Mrs Eliot wrote by hand Is that too strong?

I am very glad Tom was kind to Nancy Porter1 and her friend. I have given
a young aspirant to literary fame a letter to him the grandson of my
neighbour, Mrs Spencer. I could not refuse.
Ever yours with love,
Mother.
<Do you endorse codicil? Shall I sign?>
When I do get a letter from Tom it will probably be a very affectionate
one but when? Christmas is on the way.
from His Mother ts Houghton

[20 October 1923] [24 Concord Ave, Cambridge,
Massachusetts]
Dear Tom,
I have just finished copying your letter to send to Henry, and it has taken
at least two hours, so I appreciate your sending me such a long letter.2 If
you only knew how much satisfaction and relief it has given me. I wish
now you would write to Henry. I have to consult him about so much
business, and he is so busy himself. He and I have been worried to know
whether to sell the store on Broadway or to continue to lease it. The offer
was only one-third cash and two notes. I am timid about notes. And I did
not know about the would-be purchaser. The real estate has been a great
care and anxiety to me. And I am so far away.
I noticed in copying your letter, that you speak of writing a preface or
introduction for the Savonarola. Of course I should prefer the Introduction
if you could find time for it. It suggests to me more weighty matter than a
preface. How about the intellectual atmosphere of that period? However,
do nothing if you are driven by more insistent and normal claims.
Give my love and sympathy to Vivien. She must have great resistive
power of some kind to have gone through what she has. She wrote me she
was more happy in London than in the country. I hope she will continue
to improve. Tell her I often think of her.
I am glad you have your intellectual interests to stimulate and occupy
your mind. It must be a great source of happiness to know that all you
write will be read with interest. Miss Spencer, to whose nephew I gave the
1 HWE wrote to TSE on 19 Oct.: I appreciate highly your entertainment of Nancy Porter,
as the Porters are my favorite cousins. The young ladies seem to have been delighted.
2 TSEs letter of mid-Oct. 1923 above.
261
letter of introduction to you, tells me he admires your writings very much.
I will end this with love. I hope you will keep me informed as to Viviens
health, and write me again of your interests and health.
Yours ever with much love,
Mother.

21 October [1923] 24 Concord Ave
Dearest Tom:
I wrote you a short note yesterday on the receipt of your letter, and
enclosed it in the envelope with the Savonarola. As I wrote you I had
intended sending it to Henry with the request he forward it to you. I do not
know, of course that it will ever be published, even with my guarantee.
And I do not know that I shall ever be willing to use money for that
purpose. I had been told (by Aunt Nellie), that I should receive a few
thousand, two perhaps, from the Thomas Blood estate, two-thirds of
which was to go to Aunts Mattie and Nellie. I found, however, when
Thomas Jr. died, that Aunt Mattie had made Aunt Susie residuary legatee,
and Aunt Nellie has like Uncle Will left everything to Aunt Susie, who will
have quite a large estate. I may, however, get a few hundreds out of a
separate small fund.
I would be much gratified if you would read through the manuscript
and give me your opinion as did Drs. Grandgent and [Livingston] Lowes.
Then if you can write me a preface which would enhance its value, I should
like to pay you as would a magazine, for your time is valuable. However,
if you are very busy do not try. I may have written this in yesterdays note.
It was a great relief to me to receive your letter yesterday, as I had been
considerably troubled by your long silence. The photographs gave me a
pleasanter impression than the picture I had formed in my own mind. The
cottage especially at least in outward appearance was much more
attractive, and the pictures of you and Vivian in the garden left a pleasant
impression. She looks, of course, very thin, and I am sorry she does not
gain more in weight. I do not wonder that her nerves are still shaken by her
experience in the spring. And what a problem you have had to meet and
are still having. Although Regents Park is so near you one must, as you
say, dress for an outing to go there.
Under the circumstances, going back and forth between Old Fishbourne
and London, I think your literary output has been remarkable. You must

have worked very hard. I was much interested in the two articles you sent.
I should think your Bank Reports would be very interesting but very
difficult. Have you a working knowledge of such languages as
Roumanian? It appals me to think of these financial reports. They ought
at the Bank to pay you well for such expert and difficult work.
I am glad you have transferred the more laborious and less important
work on the Criterion to Mr Aldington and others. I am glad to have you
write that you would like to be associated with a more conservative paper
than the Nation. I feel as if radicalism would run us on to the rocks both
in England and America. I fear what this next Congress will do with La
Follette, Brookhart and Magnus Johnson working for the irrational
Farmer-Labor party. And Senator Moses says Ford is the most popular
man in the country Ford with his hundred million when his advocates are
against capitalism. He is most unfit for the Presidency.
I am not surprised to hear you say that your expenses have been
enormous. One household is costly and two must be extreme. I fear you
have had to spend the two thousand prize it seems cruel. And doctors!
How little they can do, and what prices they charge. Yet we must have
them.
As to the insurance I suggested. If I gave you two hundred for a premium
I must give each of the others the same. I still have three hundred shares
of stock the dividends of which would give you two hundred dollars
apiece. It is, of course, impossible to tell how long I or anyone else will
live.
Charlotte has not been very well housework is beginning to tell on her.
She spends all her dividends on her children. Even if she could afford a
maid it is difficult to obtain one in Millis, I wish they wd try to sell the
place.
I have said nothing about your offer of writing an Introduction to the
Savonarola. It would please me very much and I think would aid in its
acceptance by the publisher and its sale. If I received anything from the
Blood Estate I would use it as a guarantee, but I fear the amount will be
very small. I should not want you to give too much time to it that you
required for your legitimate promised work. Or if you did I should want
to make it good. I am copying for the printer the text with the name of the
character presented on the same line as the first line of his speech. It is so
written in plays I have examined. I discovered that two of my concluding
sonnets have twelve lines instead of fourteen. I find it difficult to introduce
two more lines without all re-writing. All Michelangelos sonnets have
fourteen lines. They are not very interesting.
263
Remember if necessary to balance expenses I will pay for the next few
months for Ellen. Vivian cannot be left alone and unattended.
Ever yours,
Mother.

27 October [1923] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Dorothy,
Do forgive me. I had not realised that I had let so much time elapse. As
for your question, I dont think I will give you the name unless you ask me
again, or unless you want to do somebody in.1 He nearly put V. in her
grave, she just escaped at the moment of expiring. Hence this years
disasters. She has an excellent man [Dr K. B. Martin] now only
unfortunately he is practising in Germany being a German. I dont know
who the best man is for glands that man was not a specialist on the
subject, but I can recommend this German to anyone who is willing to go
to Freiburg. Vivien is fighting her way up, very slowly.
Of course I will have tea with you when you return. Let me know.
Yours aff.
T. S. E.
from Paul Valry ms Valerie Eliot

Mardi [30? October 1923] 40 rue de Villejust, Paris
Cher Monsieur Eliot,
Jai infiniment regrett que vous nayez pu dner avec Whibley et moi,
lUniversity Club. Nous avons agit de vieux souvenirs qui vous auraient
peut-tre intress; et puis, jaurais bien aim faire avec vous plus profonde
et plus parfaite connaissance. Mais je sais que la sant de Madame Eliot
vous proccupe beaucoup et que vous allez auprs delle aussi souvent que
votre banque sentrouvre. Je sais ce que cest que lesclavage et ce quest
aussi quune femme malade . . .
1 Dorothy Pound had asked for the name of VHEs doctor for treatment of her glands.
Cf. SA: I once knew a man who did a girl in. / Any man might do a girl in (CPP 124).

Vous voulez bien me demander mes notes sur Baudelaire.1 Je vous les
donnerais bien volontiers si elles existaient le moins du monde . . . Mais
vous avez vu que je parlais comme je pouvais, et mme un peu plus que je
ne pouvais, car jai perdu tout coup ma pense, et je me suis gar dans
ma fort. Il a fallu lire des vers pour orner le vide! Mes confrences sont
des improvisations, qui ne sont pas toujours heureuses; et joublie ce que
jai dit aussi vite que je lai dit. Ainsi, je ne me souviens plus davoir parl
doriginalit, et ce que jen ai dit mest inconnu. Si jessayais de le
reconstituer, je suis sr que je formerais autre chose.2
Je penserai au Criterion aussitt que ma terrible vie me donnera un peu
de calme et de temps. Je sais que vous avez dexcellents traducteurs, et je
suis encore merveill de la transposition du Serpent par Wardle.
Je vous dirai aussi ce sujet que jai publi dans la Revue Hebdomadaire
un article sur Pascal, qui a fait quelque scandale ici.3 Peut-tre,
intresserait-il le lecteur anglais? Si vous dsirez le voir, je vous lenverrai;
et si le Criterion peut et veut le donner, je serai assez amus de voir ce texte
traduit.4
Je vous flicite de la forme et de la substance de votre excellente revue.
Le dernier numro que jai lu en passant la Manche, ma extrmement
intress, et peut-tre sauv du mal de mer. La mer tait fort svre, mais
le numro du Criterion ma rendu indpendant du mouvement. (Quelle
belle rclame!)
1 On 16 Oct., Valry gave a talk at the French Institute (chaired by CW) on Victor Hugo.
TSE was present, and remembered Valry speaking also about Baudelaire. As Valry indicates,
TSE missed out on the opportunity to dine with him because he had rush off to see to the sick
VHE. Of his encounters with Valry, TSE was much later to recall the utterly consistent
personality: The social qualities and the charm such an unaffected modesty of manner,
more impressive than any grandeur, and the kind of impish wit that indicates a man who needs
no assumed dignity these were apparent at once. But only gradually it struck me that these
qualities of manner were integral to his type of mind. His modesty and his informality were
the qualities of a man without illusions, who maintained no pretence about himself to himself,
and found it idle to pretend to others (Leon de Valry, Listener 37 [9 Jan. 1947], 72).
2 Valry lectured on Baudelaire again in Monaco in Feb. 1924: published as La situation
de Baudelaire in Revue de France, 15 Sept. 1924, with the note: Texte dune confrence sur
Baudelaire reconstitu daprs la stnographie [a text of a lecture on Baudelaire from a
shorthand record]. The lecture was later reprinted in Matres et amis (1927).
3 Variation sur Une Pense de Pascal: a contribution to the 300th anniversary of Pascal, in
La Revue hebdomadaire 7: 28 (14 July 1923), 16170 (reprinted in Varit, 1927). In his
distinctly sceptical essay, Valry found something rather dubious, something rather facile in
Pascals making a speciality of tragic themes and imposing subjects (trans. Martin Turnell).
4 Valry told a friend, The article on Pascal is everyday stuff, nothing worth communicating
to any but the 40,000 readers of Revue hebdomadaire (Pierre Fline, Souvenirs sur Paul
Valry, Mercure de France 1, 1954, 417). Although TSE did not take it up, a translation was
published in Fords Transatlantic Review 2: 7 (July 1924).
265
Noubliez pas de me prvenir quand vous-mme passerez cette mer. Rien
de plus sot que de se manquer!
Croyez, mon cher Eliot, toute ma sympathie et mes sentiments
vritablement les meilleurs.
Paul Valry1
to Paul Valry ts Valry Estate

6 November 1923 The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
Mon cher Valry,
Merci infiniment pour votre charmante lettre, qui ma donn tant de
plaisir, que jose vous rpondre en franais. Quoique je nai jamais, hlas!
bien parl ou bien crit en langue franaise je prfre lemployer en causant
avec les personnes qui me sont sympathiques, parce que votre langue me
donne une certaine libert desprit et de sentiments que la langue anglaise
me rfuse. En tout cas je me trouve moins gn.
Je me suis bien aperu que vous naviez pas de notes votre Confrence
mais je dois vous fliciter du succs prestigieux avec lequel vous avez combl
1 Translation: Dear Mr Eliot, I am extremely sorry you were unable to dine with Whibley
and me at the University Club. We stirred up old memories that might have interested you;
I would have very much liked to develop and deepen our acquaintance. But I know that you
are greatly concerned about Mrs Eliots health and that you go to her whenever you are
released from the bank. I know what slavery is, and also what it is to have an ailing wife.
You do me the kindness of asking for my notes on Baudelaire. I would let you have them
by all means, if in any sense they existed . . . But you saw that I spoke as best I could, and
even a little more than I could manage, because my thoughts suddenly went astray and I
became lost in my forest. I had to recite poetry to adorn the void! My lectures are
improvisations, which do not always come off; and I forget what I have said as soon as I
have said it. So, I no longer remember having talked about originality, and what I said about
it is unknown to me. If I tried to reconstruct my remarks, I am sure I would say something
different.
I shall think about the Criterion as soon as my terrible life allows me a degree of calm and
time. I know that you have excellent translators, and I still marvel at Wardles transposition
of the Serpent.
I also mention in this connection that I have published, in La Revue Hebdomadaire, an
article on Pascal, which has caused a slight scandal here. Perhaps it might interest the English
reader? If you would like to see it, I will send it to you; and if the Criterion is able and willing
to bring it out, I should be quite intrigued to see this text in translation.
I congratulate you on the form and substance of your excellent review. The latest issue,
which I read during the Channel crossing, interested me greatly, and perhaps saved me from
sea-sickness. The sea was fierce, but my copy of the Criterion made me independent of all
motion. (What a splendid advertisement!)
Dont forget to let me know when you are about to make the crossing yourself. Nothing
could be more stupid than to miss each other!
I send you, my dear Eliot, all warmest and sincerest regards. Paul Valry

un vide quon ne souponnait pas, ctait bien limprovisation, si cetait une
improvisation, dun homme qui connat son sujet fond et qui peut le traiter
dun point de vue personnel. Mais jesprais que vous avez un manuscrit,
ou des notes, quelque part: si non, jesprais que vous consentiriez rediger
quelques unes de vos ides sur un sujet auquel, vous le savez, jattribue une
importance capitale pour la posie. Je sais bien que dans votre vie vous avez
peu de temps pour de tels parerga, mais si vous consentez laisser paratre
ici vos ides sur Baudelaire je peux vous assurer un succs retentissant.
Vous cherchez assez adroitement de me distraire avec votre Pascal;1
envoyez-le moi je vous en prie; mais ne croyez pas que vous me ferez
oublier lautre.
Jespre bien vous chercher Paris dans quelques mois.
Recevez, mon cher Valry, lexpression de ma vive sympathie et
galement de mon admiration profonde.
T. S. Eliot2
6 November 1923 [London]
Dear Seldes
Thank you for your two letters and for the two cheques received.3 I have
also just received your November number with my note on Ulysses. I was
1 Variation sur une Pense de Pascal: Valry enclosed a copy with his letter of 17 Nov.
2 Translation: My dear Valry, Very many thanks for your charming letter, which has given
me so much pleasure that I dare to reply in French. Although I have never, alas, spoken or
written the French language well, I prefer to use it in talking to people with whom I feel in
sympathy, because your language gives me a certain freedom of mind and feeling that the
English language denies me. At any rate, I find myself less embarrassed.
I noticed, of course, that you spoke without notes during your lecture, but I must
congratulate you on the brilliant success with which you filled a void that no-one suspected.
If the lecture was improvised, the improvisation was by a man who knows his subject
thoroughly and can deal with it from a personal point of view. But I had hoped that there
might be a manuscript or notes somewhere: if not, I hoped that you might consent to write
down some of your ideas on a subject which, as you know, I consider to be of capital
importance for poetry. I know that there is little time in your life for such parerga, but if you
agree to your ideas on Baudelaire being published here, I can assure you of a resounding
success.
You try, very cleverly, to put me off with your article on Pascal; please send it to me; but
dont imagine that you will make me forget about the other.
I have great hopes of seeking you out in Paris in a few months time.
I send you, my dear Valry, my warmest regards together with the assurance of my
profound admiration. T. S. Eliot
3 Seldes had written on 4 and 17 Oct., with cheques in payment for TSEs Ulysses, Order,
and Myth in Dial 75: 5 (Nov. 1923) and Marianne Moore in 75: 6 (Dec. 1923).
267
certainly under the impression that you never wanted anything that had
already appeared in any other periodical, and for this reason it never
occurred to me to offer the Dial my papers in the Nouvelle Revue Franaise.1
I therefore arranged with Vanity Fair to let them have all these papers for
such publication in America; I could not very well ask the Nouvelle Revue
Franaise to agree to simultaneous publication. I certainly hope after a few
months to have another outburst of critical activity and to offer you either
the article on prose and verse or something better.2 I am pleased that you
should want me to write about Saintsbury3 and I should certainly be glad
always of any opportunity of advertising him, but I feel that the notice on
Saintsbury ought to appear immediately instead of in two or three months
and that therefore you should get someone else to do it.
I have weighing on my mind a long article which I ought to write for the
January Criterion.4 If you hear no news of me for some time, you will not
suppose that I am neglecting my promises in order to write for other papers
the Criterion excepted but simply that as I warned you I am not writing
at all.
I am still looking forward to your Seven Arts, I enjoyed very much your
article on jazz music.5 My play, if it is ever written, will certainly appear
as a text, although I intend it for production with an orchestra consisting
exclusively of drums.6
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
1 On 4 Oct., Seldes noted that Vanity Fair had published the essay on English prose which
was his first letter to the NRF of 1 Dec. 1922. He hoped that in future TSE would give the
Dial any such essays for simultaneous publication in English. The reference is to A Preface
to Modern Literature: Being a Conspectus Chiefly of English Poetry, Addressed to an
Intelligent and Enquiring Foreigner, Vanity Fair 21: 3 (Nov. 1923).
2 Seldes hoped that after the moratorium of two months, TSE would feel like doing the
essay on the development of prose and verse which is to be part of my series.
3 On 17 Oct., Seldes said it would be a real service to George Saintsbury if TSE would write
a short thing about him. Saintsbury had just published his Collected Essays (3 vols, 1923).
4 Four Elizabethan Dramatists: A Preface, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924).
5 Gilbert Seldes, The Seven Lively Arts (1924). Toujours Jazz appeared in Dial 75: 2
(Aug. 1923) as a response to Clive Bells attack on jazz in Since Czanne (1923).
6 Seldes had asked, Is the Jazz Oratorio [TSEs work-in-progress, SA] a work publishable
in print or does it require something which the magazine page cannot offer?

to Frank Crowninshield cc
Dear Mr Crowninshield,
Thank you for your letter of the 10th of October with the cheque.1 I am
sending you enclosed the English manuscript of another article which I
have written for the current number of the Nouvelle Revue Franaise and
which you may use any time if you like it.2 May I say at the same time
that I have not forgotten my promise to write something exclusively for
you and that I intend to keep it at the first moment that the circumstances
of my life permit.
Yours faithfully
[T. S. E.]
to Marianne Moore ts Beinecke

7 November 1923 The Monthly Criterion,
24 Russell Sq, London w.c.1
Dear Miss Moore
I have just heard from Ezra Pound enclosing a letter of the 24th October
which you wrote to him. I do not want you to delay any part of the
Schloezer essay on our account.3 I was as a matter of fact on the point of
writing to you to ask you to let me know if you would immediately what
point you would have reached in your issue of next March. I could not
possibly use any of the book before that issue. But if there is part of it
which you would ordinarily be publishing in that issue I wish you would
let me know what part that is, as I should like to consider using it
simultaneously. I will communicate with Pound on hearing from you.
Yours sincerely,
T. S. Eliot
1 Payment for TSEs A Preface to Modern Literature: Being a Conspectus Chiefly of English
Poetry, Vanity Fair 21: 3 (Nov. 1923).
2 Lettre dAngleterre, NRF 21: 122 (1 Nov. 1923): in translation, A Prediction in Regard
to Three English Authors, Writers Who, though Masters of Thought, Are Likewise Masters
of Art.
3 Boris de Schloezer (18811969): migr Russian literary and music critic, translator and
philosopher; author of studies of Scriabin, Stravinsky and Bach. Nothing of his appeared in
the Dial in 1924 or in C. In 1923 he published a study of his friend Scriabin in Russian and
a French translation of the critic Leo Shestov, Les Rvlations de la mort: DostoevskiTolstoi
(1923): this may be the book to which TSE refers. EPs translation from the French of
Schloezers Igor Stravinsky was later serialised in the Dial, starting in 85: 4 (Oct. 1928).
269
Sunday [11 November 1923?] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Virginia
I am disappointed that this week is no good, but may I come the first day
next week the 19th (Monday).1 I am looking forward most keenly to
seeing you again after such a long time. I am most anxious to know how
you are and what you have been writing.2
I will come on the 19th unless I hear from you to the contrary. Tell
Leonard that I think I can do a middle by Dec 15th,3 but we will talk about
that.
Yours always
T. S. E.
to His Mother 4 ts Houghton

Dearest Mother:
Your manuscript [of Savonarola] arrived safely last week, and I wired
you to say that it had come. I should like very much to write an
introduction for it and I think it is quite suitable that such a drama dealing
with such an historical subject should have an introduction and I should
like to do it thoroughly. It will take me several months to make a good job
of it, but in any case you would not, I suppose, be bringing it out before
the spring. What I suggest is that I should send back to you the play with
the introduction and that prospective publishers should see the thing as a
whole; as they would hardly be likely to accept a play without seeing the
introduction if they knew that an introduction was to follow. We will then
try several publishers; I think that Houghton Mifflin are very cautious
people who seldom take any risks and like to be held guaranteed by the
authors, so that we can probably do better in New York. It might be best
in a limited edition.5 As soon as the January Criterion is off my mind I
shall tackle it seriously.
1 On Monday 3 Dec. (Diary, II, 277), VW recorded a catastrophe then two weeks old,
when her sister rang her up in the middle of dinner with Tom here (i.e. 19 Nov.).
2 VW was writing Mrs Dalloway.
3 Unidentified.
4 From a copy made by her for HWE: her own letter follows her transcription of TSEs letter.
5 It was to be published in Mar. 1926 by RC-S, with TSEs intro., in an edition of 300 copies.

As I wired you I have been extremely busy at the bank. Until the last few
weeks I had a colleague in conducting this small department; now he has
been appointed to another post and I am running it by myself. It means
that until they give me an assistant I am trying to do two mens work. The
managers are quite aware of this and in a way I am glad of an opportunity,
as it will be a conspicuous success if I manage to carry it on properly. But
there is a great deal of work and responsibility of all sorts, as well as the
work of the five other people who are under me. I sent you some specimens
of a little publication which is part of the work.1 This is not uninteresting
as I have to keep in close touch with everything that happens in all
European countries and at present have to read about twenty newspapers
a day from all over the world.
London is not nearly so healthy in the winter as the country is, and the
dampness and fogs are very bad for Vivien. She does not, however, need
Ellen to go out with her, she goes out alone; but of course it is impossible
to get the benefit from walking in London, especially London in the winter,
that one gets in the country. I think I told you in my last letter more about
Dr Martin, the great German Doctor who has been taking such an interest
in her. He seems to me the wisest, as well as the most scientific Doctor that
I have ever met. It is extraordinarily good of him and shows what an
interest he takes in her case, that he agreed to send advice and prescriptions
and medicines from Germany throughout the winter. Of course he said
that he could not cure her of the chronic anaemia and defective circulation
of so many years standing without seeing her every day, but he will be a
great help even at a distance throughout the winter. I explained to him that
I could not take her to him in Fribourgh [sic] this year for the reason that
I had already had to have so much time away from my work that it had
injured my standing and salary and that I could not ask for any more time
now except by handing in my resignation.
So far I have dictated to my typist secretary. The rest I am writing myself
because it is more private. I am very glad of this opportunity to have this
work to do at the bank two mens work, because I want to leave a good
impression behind me. I leave the bank in January.2 I need not go into all
the reasons now; staying with the bank would mean and always did mean,
giving up all writing. I think I can just manage expenses. My income will
be reduced nearly half and what I do get will be precarious instead of sure.
I must of course reduce expenses and the first thing to do will be to let the
1 Lloyds Bank Extracts from the Foreign Press.

2 TSEs intention to leave Lloyds in Jan. came to nothing: he did not leave until late 1925.
271
flat. But I shall let it only on a short lease so that it may be free for you to
come to in April.1 We shall have to dismiss Ellen of course and I do not
think that she would care to stay on with the people who took the flat. But
as I know how much you liked her I should be inclined to pay her a weekly
wage pension until you came on condition that she comes back. She could
take any work she liked meanwhile.
I want to have everything for you just as it was before: the flat and Ellen.
After I have left the bank we shall have to live much more cheaply and
shall not be able to have a servant at all. Heretofore in the feverish life we
have had to live, I have had to have certain comforts and luxuries simply
to save time.
I am depending on the Criterion and a small salary from Lady
Rothermere and what I can make by outside writing.
I am leaving the bank in January not because it is an opportune moment
and without any such chance as I had in April the Nation which I
bitterly regret having refused. I am leaving simply because I have got to the
end of my strength and endurance. In fact, any time, up to this summer
would have been a better time than this.
I do not want you to worry but to keep well so that you will be fit to
come early in the spring April. And remember that I shall be able to be
with you much more than last time.
Dear Henry:
It is a little hard for me to understand Toms state of mind. His previous
letter written while Vivien was in the country was quite cheerful. I have a
theory that since her return she calls on him in the night. He is very
dependent on his sleep. You know she is pretty exacting. The only excuse
for his resigning would be that he was so run down physically and
nervously he could not carry on.
I can not understand how they could give up having a servant unless
they are going into lodgings. Vivien could not do the work. Now I have a
plan. I do not want you to send any money to Tom. I have a plan which is
to set aside a thousand dollars for Tom and give each of you a bond to
that amount; yours will be subtracted from what you owe me on the store.
I do not want Tom to know of the transaction. I will send in such sums as
are needed. I have cabled him I will pay rent for six months so that they
need not leave their apartments. I think I can give up the interest on six
thousand as I shall [have] $1800.00 this year from Hydraulic. You notice
1 CCE was to make a second visit to England the following spring.

Tom in enumerating his sources of income does not include Hydraulic
which will have given him this year $1650.00. He does not seem to
appreciate his stock. I hope he will not want to sell it unless he puts it
immediately into bonds. He will spend otherwise his principal.
I want you to promise me if you buy the store you will leave it to me to
look after Tom and will keep your money to pay your notes. I should like
to have them paid during my lifetime. I think as you say Uncle Ed could
draw up the deed of sale and the notes. That will save commission. If I
pay Terry for commission that will leave you free to charge agency at any
time you wish. They have been good about collecting. I certainly will not
say anything to Terry about sale to you.
You will be here in less than four weeks. Wear one of your best suits. We
have had our Thanksgiving dinner today with Charlotte and had the
pleasure of telling her about the 6% dividend. Ada is putting her dividends
into her house.
Of course I should not think of going to London before June. Margie
thinks (so Marian tells me), that I ought to take her if I go again. She does
not realize that I take Marian because of my age. Otherwise I would go
alone. Margie would be a care lying in bed until one oclock. She thinks of
me as stronger than she. I absolutely could not take her.
I should hesitate to have Tom give so much time to Savonarola. I shall
send for Christmas Tom $25.00 and Vivian $15.00. Do not you send. Save
all you can for your notes.
Ever with love,
Mother.
I think before long Tom may get another offer similar to that of The
Nation.

Dear Lewis,
Thanks for your letter.1 I expect to be in my office up to one oclock
tomorrow, after that less certain. I am sorry you have had so much to do
but it is really essential for this number of the Criterion to have your
1 This may refer to an undated letter by WL in which he said he was working incessantly
on his The Man of the World I but that Zagreus will follow shortly (dated October? 1923
in Letters of Wyndham Lewis, 1367).
273
manuscript by Saturday. I would give you more time if I could but I dont
think you will need to worry about its not being as finished as you would
like.
Yours ever,
TSE
to Henry Eliot ts Houghton

14 November 1923 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Henry,
It is so long since I have written to you that I hardly know where to
begin, and I shall only make this a short letter to break the silence and tell
you that I have been thinking of you constantly and wanting to write every
day.1 At present I am so tired from having to do the work of two men in
the bank for the last three weeks, and shall have to go on until they give
me an assistant that I hardly have energy now to take up the threads.
First of all to thank you again and again for your generous thoughtfulness
in the insurance.2 This is a very big thing in itself because it will have, you
shall see before very long, the effect which you intended and of course the
only way in which I can compensate such a gift is by the work it will enable
me to do. I have also your power of attorney which I will return to you as
soon as I have found time to go to a commissioner for oaths and get it
sworn.3 I am writing to you again in a very few days. Several things have
happened which require a very early decision, but remember that I am
always,
Your appreciative and affectionate brother
Tom
I intend to write to you fully about my plans soon. Meanwhile I am very
grateful for business data sent, but should like a long letter about yourself.
1 On 2 Oct., HWE wrote: We do not hear a great deal of news from you . . . and are rather
in the dark as to your affairs.
2 On 19 Oct. HWE asked: Did you ever get a policy (insurance) that I mailed you? This
refers to the certificate of the insurance on TSEs life, valued at $20,000. The first premium
of $558 was paid by HWE on 28 July 1923.
3 On 2 Oct, HWE enclosed a new power of attorney prepared by Uncle Ed which he
wanted back as soon as possible. TSE was to sign as Thomas Stearns, as on the original
certificate, rather than T. S. Eliot. This covered the sale of 275 shares in the Hydraulic-Press
Brick Company.

to Arthur Symons1 cc
14 November 1923 [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
Dear Mr Symons,
As Mr Aldington has left for a holiday in Italy he has handed your story
to me and asked me to read it and write to you. Anything that you write
always interests me and I have very much enjoyed reading this story.2
I wish indeed that we might have the honour of publishing it but the
capacity of the Criterion, as you may have seen, is very small; and it
attempts such a wide range perhaps too wide a range that it has had
to make a rule of never printing more than one piece of fiction in each
number.3 This may be a mistake, but we are now committed to the
acceptance of so many articles that we must pursue this policy for at least
another year; and we have already accepted the stories to cover that period.
That is why I am returning the story to you, with many regrets.
I hope you will not mind if I take this opportunity as it is the first
occasion on which I have written to you of expressing my warm
admiration both for your prose and for your verse. I have a peculiar debt
of gratitude to your Symbolist Movement4 for that was my introduction,
for [which] I have never ceased to be grateful to you, to a poetry which has
been one of the strongest influences on my life.
I am,
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
1 Arthur Symons (18671945): poet, translator and critic; associated with the Decadent
movement in England in the 1890s.
2 The unpublished sequel to two stories about Lucy Newcome published in The Savoy in
Apr. and Dec. 1896.
3 This was not strictly true. TSE published Pirandellos The Shrine and Gmez de la Sernas
From The New Museum in C. 1: 2 (Jan. 1923); VWs In the Orchard and Goold-
Adamss The Obsequies in 1: 3 (Apr. 1923); and Owen Barfields Dope and E. M. Forsters
Pan in 1: 4 (July 1923). The following year, WLs The Apes of God and Stephen Hudsons
Cleste were both included in C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).
4 Symonss The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899). TSE had come across the second
edition of the book in the Harvard Union Library in Dec. 1908 (his own copy is now in
Houghton). In The Perfect Critic, he described his encounter with it as an introduction to
wholly new feelings, as a revelation (SW). Elsewhere, he wrote: but for having read his
book, I should not, in the year 1908, have heard of Laforgue or Rimbaud . . . So the Symons
book is one of those which have affected the course of my life (NC 9: 35 [Jan. 1930], 357).
275
from Paul Valry ts Houghton
17 November 1923 40, rue de Villejust, Paris XVIe
Mon cher Eliot,
Vous crivez dlicieusement en franais. Cest une rvlation! Je vous
avoue que je parle de vous ici, toutes les fois que loccasion sen prsente
ou que je la cre . . .
Je lis en ce moment The Waste Land qui est un trange monde lyrique.1
La combinaison singulire de lantique et du moderne donne des effets que
je nai trouv nulle part encore, et il me semble que la musique dont vous
envelopez votre sombre et rudite fantaisie soit, comme jaime, toujours
prsente et vivante. Je vous remercie beaucoup de mavoir envoy ces
pomes, dont le physique, dailleurs, est charmant. Les Woolfs travaillent
fort bien.
Je vous mets sous ce pli le Pascal mal fam.2 Vous en ferez ce que vous
voudrez.
Jai appris que ma confrence sur Hugo avait fait des mcontents
Londres. Un de mes amis, qui est critique, a reu une lettre anonyme et
indigne, contenant un article indign et anonyme de la Chronique de
Londres . . . Il parat que jai dit des horreurs sur Hugo.3
Mon Baudelaire est toujours quelque part dans lunivers. Je crois que
vous avez eu une hallucination chez Mrs. Morley car je ne me souviens
que dun trou dans mes penses, et cest ce trou qui fut baptis confrence.
1 TSE inscribed a copy of TWL au grande pote franais Paul Valry, hommages de lauteur
T. S. Eliot. 1.xi.23. [to the great French poet Paul Valry, with homage from the author T. S.
Eliot. 1. xi. 23.].
2 See Valrys letter of 30? Oct. for more details about the Pascal essay.
3 See Michel Jarrety, Paul Valry (2008): Le mardi 16 [Oct.] au soir, lInstitut francais, sous
la prsidence de son vieil ami Charles Whibley, il prononce une confrence consacre
loeuvre de Hugo quil a choisi denvisager dans son progrs technique. Afin dillustrer la
vitalit du pote, il distrait son public de quelques anecdotes alors moins connues
quaujourdhui il mangeait les oranges avec leure corce, et les langoustes avec leur carapace
et, pour souligner sa puissance de travail, raconte comment, le jour ou mourut Franois-
Victor, il refusa de quitter son ouvrage tandis quon frappait sa porte et attendit de lavoir
achev pour descendre auprs de son fils qui entre-temps tait mort. En racontant cette
anecdote tragique quil tient de Marcel Schwob qui lui-mme la tenait peut-tre de Georges
Hugo, Valry nentend que marquer la nature surhumaine plutt quinhumaine de Hugo.
Mais, quelques jours plus tard, lhistoire donne lieu un article de la Chroniques de Londres
o on laccuse davoir trait le pote de <<pere dnatur>> et de <<goinfre>>. . . (557). One
member of the audience recalled him saying Hugo, hlas! (Dwight MacDonald, Esquire,
1964). He must have spoken also about Baudelaire, a poet who fascinated TSE: The Lesson
of Baudelaire appeared in Notes on Current Letters, Tyro 1 (Spring 1921), and TWL is
threaded with allusions to Les fleurs du mal.

Jai bien des notes sur la littrature. Elles sont perdues dans les cahiers
que je remplis de rveries depuis trente ans. Jessaye, en ce moment davoir
une dactylo pour copier et dbrouiller ce chaos. Si je puis organiser cette
opration coloniale, je trouverais, je pense, quelque chose pour le
Criterion.
Au revoir, cher Eliot, noubliez pas de venir Paris. Je vous serre les
mains avec la plus grande sympathie.
Paul Valry1

Dear Cobden Sanderson,
Could you send yr. man for some MSS in the morning (before 3). Trend2
is to be set up and I want to know no. of words in both Trend and Lewis
as I dont think we have space for Pt. III of Lewis so I shd like to know
number of words in each part of Lewis separately.3
1 Translation: My dear Eliot, You write delightfully in French. This is a revelation! Let me
tell you that I speak about you here, whenever the opportunity arises or I create it . . .
I am busy reading The Waste Land, which is a strange and lyrical world. The curious
combination of ancient and modern produces effects such as I have never seen anywhere
before, and I have the feeling that the music in which you wrap your sombre and learned
fantasy is, as I prefer, always present and vital. I thank you very much for sending me these
poems, the physical presentation of which, incidentally, is charming. The Woolfs do very
good work.
I enclose the notorious article on Pascal. You may do what you like with it.
I have been told that my lecture on Hugo caused some unhappiness in London. A friend
of mine, a critic, has received an indignant and anonymous letter, containing an anonymous
and indignant article from The London Chronicle . . . It seems that I said terrible things about
Hugo.
My Baudelaire is still somewhere in the universe. I think you must have had a hallucination
at Mrs Morleys since all I can remember is a gap in my thoughts, and this gap was dubbed
a lecture.
I have a great many notes on literature. They are lost in the notebooks I have been filling
with my musings during the last thirty years. I am trying, at the moment, to find a typist to
copy and sort out this chaos. If I manage to organise this colonial operation, I think I might
discover something for the Criterion.
Goodbye, dear Eliot, do not forget to come to Paris. With warmest regards, Paul Valry
2 J. B. Trend, The Moors in Spanish Music, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924).
3 On 19 Nov., WL delivered what he called the third part (new to you) about Split-Man,
saying it was about 9,000 words long. Use it all if you can. Mr Zagreus and the Split-Man
appeared in shortened form in C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924).
277
Will you please return this MSS with a slip (havent any). Will ring you
up in the morning.
Yrs
T. S. E.

1
[early December 1923] [London]
My dear Mary,
I have read your list for Vivien and here is one of mine.2 Of course both
you and Vivien have read a good part of it and I have left out other things
because they have been read and I have left out French because there is
enough English to keep one a lifetime to begin with But please return it
as I have not made a copy.
Always aff
Tom
to Hugh Walpole 3 ts Valerie Eliot

3 December 1923 The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
Dear Walpole
Thank you very much indeed for your kind letter of the 28th. You have
no idea how much pleasure it gives me to receive an expression of approval
of the Criterion such as your letter.4 I have put a great deal of energy into
it, a great deal of time which I could ill spare; and I often feel a great
discouragement in thinking that such a paper will interest very few people
indeed. And on the other hand, I realise fully how much better I could have
made it had not more serious claims on my time, and the necessity of
earning my livelihood by a very busy life in the City, hampered me, at
times, to the point of hopelessness. The impartiality of which you speak5
is certainly representative of my own taste, which I think is pretty catholic,
1 MH dated this December 1923. It probably predates the related card, postmarked 7 Dec.
2 On 26 Aug. TSE thanked MH for saying she would give VHE a course of reading. The
lists themselves do not survive.
3 Hugh Walpole: see Glossary of Names. Walpole went on to contribute The Old Ladies
to C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924) and 2: 8 (July 1924)
4 On 28 Nov. Walpole said C. went beyond any periodical we have had in English.
5 Walpole admired its avoidance of jealousies, back-bitings and clique opinions.

and the paper would be more representative still were it possible to enlarge
its size. But this impartiality subjects it to criticism from every quarter and
deprives it of unanimous backing from any one set of people.
The Criterion is not directly in danger of stopping: it is only in danger
of stopping insofar as it depends on my continuing. As I say, I have only
been able to give to it my spare time, and for the work I have done I have
not as you may not know accepted payment of any kind. Lady
Rothermere has subsidised the cost of producing the paper, but my
continuing depends on making it sufficiently successful to provide an
income. In other words, I must sooner or later, and probably sooner, as
my health has been going down for the last year, give it up unless it can be
made a substantial thing and pay me a small but sure income. For this
reason, every subscription counts, and your suggestion would certainly be
a very great help.1 If there are enough people in England who care enough
for the Criterion to make it possible for me to continue, they will also help
to make it possible for me to improve the paper. I should be glad of course
to find some other work than that which keeps me in the City from 9 to 5
every day, so that I could have more time and freedom of movement, and
which I could carry on at the same time as the Criterion; but I must look
for something which would offer a reasonable hope of security, no matter
how small the salary.
Please know in any case that your letter has given me great pleasure,
Yours sincerely,
T. S. Eliot

Dear Wyndham,
I am sorry about the cheque. You should have received it about four
days ago but for distractions on my part.2 I have seen Cobden-Sanderson
today and have asked him to forward you today a cheque for the two
sections we are issuing in this number: It comes to 23. I hope this is
satisfactory. As I said, I should like to publish the third part in the April
1 Walpole wondered if it would help if supporters took out five or six subscriptions a year.
2 On 2 Dec. WL reminded TSE he had promised to pay me a cheque as soon as I handed
you the MSS. This was advance payment for Mr Zagreus and the Split-Man in C. 2: 6 (Feb.
1924), for which WL was paid double rates.
279
number.1 I send you the manuscript herewith, as you say you want to work
on it, but I hope you will see no objection to returning it to me by the end
of February if you let me know in time. You will of course get the same
rates and if you have it finished and send it sooner you shall have a cheque
for it when we get it back, as I have had the number of words counted.
Please let me know if you have received it.
Meanwhile there are two other points of importance. One is the short
explanatory note which you promised me and which we ought to have at
once.2 Can you let me have it by tomorrow or the next day as otherwise we
must go to press without it. You will get proof of the whole thing next week.
The other point is that you promised to ring me up one morning and
arrange so that we could meet and so that I can see the manuscript, or part
of the manuscript, of your book.3
And finally, you promised to let me know whether the copyright of Tarr
and the Caliphs design was in your name or not.4 Of course any arrange-
ments made with Miss Weaver, in any case, will have to have your
approval; and you understand that the whole matter is at present entirely
confidential.
Let us discuss the second paragraph of your letter5 when we meet.
I have only one objection to make to Adams article6 and that is that I
hope he will not use the quotation which I have marked on page three. It
is not a good passage.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
<Is there a Tyro soon?>7
1 The third part was published as The Apes of God in C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).
2 WL promised a few lines by way of explanation of this fragment. They read: These few
pages . . . belong to a book which will be finished I hope by next autumn. Mr Zagreus is an
important ghost; he, however, remains attached to his disguises, a central myth. Krang is a
subordinate character, but gives more development in the book than can be seen in the
fragment. The Apes of God was not published until 1930.
3 On 26 Sept. TSE had offered to have WLs essays published by C.
4 WLs Tarr (1918) and The Caliphs Design (1919) were published by Harriet Shaw
Weavers Egoist Press, which had recently wound up.
5 On 2 Nov., WL said TSE had promised him: To print a largish section of my book. He
did not want this printed in small bits.
6 WL asked TSE to appraise a review by Adams of TWL commissioned for WLs Tyro. He
asked TSE to let him know if it will pass muster or return it.
7 These words are scribbled in ink at the head of the letter. WL had published two issues of
The Tyro. The first (1921) included TSEs Notes on Current Letters, and Song to the
Opherian by Guz Krutsch, while the second (1922) included TSEs The Three
Provincialities. There were no further issues.

3 December 1923 [London]
As a special favour (not a precedent) please pay immediately Wyndham
Lewis, 61 Palace Gardens Terrace, Kensington, w.8 for Mr Zagreus and
the Split-Man Parts I and II. This is (Hazells estimate) 5724 words, which
at double rates (giving exclusive periodical rights in England and America
till Apr. 15) amounts to 23.
T. S. Eliot

[Postmark 7 December 1923] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
I forgot that I put in your list too. V. wants it back at once!
You make notes on mine.1
T. S. E.

9 December 1923 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear C-S,
Heres mine.2 It is short. There only remains my edit, as I enclose
Aldingtons. I will ring up or write tomorrow about what to omit.
Many thanks for yr Christmas gift! It is a beautiful book, and I am
delighted to own it.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
1 See TSEs letter of early Dec. relating to the reading lists he and MH had drawn up for
VHE.
2 Presumably TSEs Four Elizabethan Dramatists: A Preface, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924), 11523.
281
to Lytton Strachey1 ms James Strachey via Michael Holroyd
10 December 1923 38 Burleigh Mansions2
. . . And once again although I admire and enjoy your portraits in the
Nation, it is to my interest to say that they are not long enough to do you
justice. So although you once refused two years ago3 please remember
that I should like to lead off a number of the Criterion with you, up to
5000 or 8000 words . . . I have thought that you ought to do Macaulay
but anything from you would ensure the success of a number, besides the
pleasure it would give me. Could you?4 . . .
[Incomplete]

Dear C-S,
The order:5 Lewis (expurgations as per attached and with note)
Lvy-Bruhl
How many pages? Robertson
Hauptmann
Trend
Eliot
6
Murry must be postponed and announced in circular.
In haste
T. S. E.
1 Lytton Strachey: see Glossary of Names. This fragment of a letter from TSE to Strachey
is quoted in Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey and the Bloomsbury Group: His Work, Their
Influence (revised edn, 1971), 777. Valerie Eliot records that by 1968 the original letter seen
by Holroyd had disappeared and there is no copy of it. She went to the late James Stracheys
home in Marlow, but was unable to find it among Stracheys papers (letter to Dorothea
Richards, 23 May 1968).
2 According to Holroyd, TSE invited Strachey to a small party at his flat in 38 Burleigh
Mansions in Dec. For VWs account of a dinner there with TSE at this time, see her diary
entry for 19 Dec. 1923 (Diary, II, 278).
3 VHE told MH in late 1922: T. wants very much to ask Lytton but does not think Lytton
would be at all likely to consent to write for the Criterion.
4 Strachey did not write for C.
5 The proposed running order for C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924). The final order was different: TSE,
WL, F. W. Bain, May Sinclair, J. M. Robertson, Lvy-Bruhl, Gerhart Hauptmann, J. B. Trend,
and F. M..
6 JMM, Romanticism and Tradition, was postponed to C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).

My dear Read
I got the Speculations1 last night. Many thanks. I must have an article
about it in the Criterion if I cant think of anyone else I shall do it myself
certainly a congenial subject.2 I shall also urge Leonard Woolf to give it
a good notice.3 Its a very fine thing and it does you credit.
I have been wanting to see you, often, if you can, it can be realised after
Christmas.
Cordially
T. S. Eliot

[Postmark 19 December 1923 London w.1.]
Many thanks for various communications. Will you lunch with me on
business! directly after Christmas? Thursday? There is one worrying point
I want to ring you up about tomorrow and I think I have made a mistake.
to Hugh Walpole ts Valerie Eliot

24 December 1923 The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn,
London e.c.1
9 Clarence Gate Gdns, n.w.1
My dear Walpole,
I hope you will forgive my delay in answering your very kind letter of
the 7th December.4 I hope you will take it for what it is, an instance of the
1 T. E. Hulme, Speculations: Essays on Humanism and the Philosophy of Art, ed. HR

(1924).
2 TSE was to write of the book: The posthumous volume of Speculations of T. E. Hulme . . .
appears to have fallen like a stone to the bottom of the sea of print but was a book of very
great significance. Calling Hulme the author of two or three of the most beautiful short
poems in the language, TSE said that he appears as the forerunner of a new attitude of mind,
which should be the twentieth-century mind, if the twentieth century is to have a mind of its
own. Hulme is classical, reactionary, and revolutionary; he is the antipodes of the eclectic,
tolerant, and democratic mind of the end of the last century, C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924), 231.
3 There was no notice in N&A.
4 This does not appear to survive, but see TSEs letter to him of 3 Dec.
283
absurd and lamentable disorder of my life, that I cannot even answer such
a letter immediately.
The Criterion is 14/- a year, so that five subscriptions would be three
pounds, ten shillings. And I say again, that every subscription is a most
valuable help. The present circulation is 800 to 1000, and I estimate that
the Criterion could pay for itself, and pay me the sufficient basis of a living
with what I could write outside, on a circulation of 2500 to 3000 copies.
That seems a moderate ambition; but it is only possible because we run the
paper very economically, without an office or staff; but as we can afford
very little advertising, and as 3000 is I suppose the limit of the number of
persons who might be interested in such a paper, the progress is very slow
indeed. Subscriptions should be sent to Cobden-Sanderson, whose address
you see above.
I should welcome any criticism of the paper or suggestions from you. Of
course I should be immensely grateful for anything you could do. I cannot
afford to wait until the Criterion has a circulation of 3000. I need to find
some secure position which would take only about half my time, and,
preferably, which would allow me to live largely in the country and
occasionally go abroad for considerable periods on account of failing
health. But I must in one way or another make 700 or 800 pounds a year.
I can write for the Times Literary Supplement and the Nation and one or
two American papers, but the total would produce only a part of what I
need, and implies a precarious existence of continuous writing. I should
like to get some editorial position or a readership or simply a commission
for journalistic writing on a contractual basis. I sometimes think that it
would be better if I had never gone into a bank at all. For I have been
advanced very rapidly, and my prospects are, I suppose, from a banking
point of view, almost brilliant, and the income is absolutely secure it
would go on till doomsday, with a pension at the end, and a widows
pension, and all of the inducements that enslave one. So that, when one has
serious responsibilities, one simply feels that one has no right to surrender
so much for an income which might be both much smaller and precarious.
Yet there are only two things I really want to do the Criterion and my
own writing.
Forgive me for writing so openly to you but you have really invited it.
With very cordial thanks,
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot

Vivien Eliot to Sydney Schiff ms BL
26 December [1923] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Sydney,
We have just returned from a queer sort of Christmas spent in wandering
about the country in Beasleys car, in search of a more convenient and
accessible country cottage than our own. We are very tired, and have
discovered nothing that is, in our opinion, worthy to be compared with
Milestone Cottage.
In reading Tony1 I noticed a development of a new style, of which
I thought I saw the beginnings in Prince Hempseed.2 I must say that at
first I missed the extraordinary detachment and sort of cool indifference of
the style in which you wrote Elinor Colhouse. Of course I think that you
are writing of things too near to you in feeling as perhaps in time for that
style to be a possible one. But, what has struck me most forcibly in the
book is an extraordinary change of key in the writing, from (about) page
184 (or I think a little earlier) from which, to the end, it seems to me you
have achieved a most moving and serious piece of work, an important
document in the history of that period and a fine piece of character work.
(I think the Rock3 is very cleverly done, and with such economy).
With very good wishes, yours always
Vivien Eliot
from His Mother [extract] ts Valerie Eliot

30 December 1923 24 Concord Ave, Cambridge, Mass.
Dear Tom:
Henry left last night having been here barely six days. They had an
excess profits law suit in his firm and as he is Treasurer it was necessary
for him to be in Chicago the last day of December. He was very tired when
he came and I think the short vacation rested him somewhat. I was
somewhat distressed when he told me he had sold one hundred shares of
your stock. Had he consulted me I should have advised strongly against it,
especially as the Company had made much money this year, a surplus. You
1 SSs novel (published as by Stephen Hudson), Tony (1924) deploys the main characters of
his previous novels, Elinor Colhouse (1921) and Richard Kurt (1922).
2 Hudson, Prince Hempseed (1923).
3 The nickname of the narrators notorious pro-German Uncle Fred who works in the City.
285
will realise what the difference means to you when I send the next dividend
of $175.00 instead of $275.00. On the sale of one hundred shares you will
lose this year $300. The stock at 6% would yield you $600 and the six
bonds $300. If you sold all your Hydraulic you would receive $825.00
less income.
Now the 6% may not possibly continue more than a year or two, but
this will probably be your hardest year, and I should advise you to hold on
to the stock a while longer. If you decide to do so, you can write Henry to
purchase back the hundred shares. He can certainly do so and make a
hundred or so on the deal because the stock has gone down two points. He
could watch the market.
[. . .]
I have faith that before the end of a year you will receive an offer of a
position on some periodical that will yield you a far better income than
the Criterion. Eleanor gave Henry a copy of a paper edited by J.
Middleton Murrey [sic], called, I believe, The Adelphi.1 I read or tried to
read it and it is far inferior to the Criterion in contents, and what is of less
importance, the cover was ugly and cheap. I looked through it and found
the first article, a refutation of your theory of criticism, or rather of what
the author termed classicism against romanticism, the only article worth
reading.2 The magazine was cheap.3 The only articles I object to in the
Criterion are those by Ezra Pound. They seem to me heterogeneous dry
bones of literature. Are you obliged to publish his desiccated
contributions? The next Criterion will be out in two weeks but it will be
four before I receive it.
I am making another copy of Savonarola to submit to a publisher after
your Introduction is ready. I should like to try Houghton & Mifflin,
1 JMM founded The Adelphi, a yellow-bound shilling monthly, in June 1923. He outlined
its rationale in an editorial entitled The Cause of It All, Adelphi 1: 1 (June 1923). Eleanor
is TSEs much-loved first cousin on his mothers side: Eleanor Holmes Hinkley (1891
1971).
2 JMM took up the challenge laid down by TSEs attack in The Function of Criticism in
C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923). He was pleased to have a real opponent, in Mr T. S. Eliot, the gifted
editor of the Criterion, and said the debate between them was concerned with fundamentals
(More About Romanticism, Adelphi 1: 7 [Dec. 1923], 55769). For JMM, a man who has
reached a condition of sufficient spiritual maturity to be a classicist or a Romantic, must be
one or the other. However, even Mr Eliot, the author of The Waste Land, the champion of
Ulysses, is not a true-blue classicist in his bones; an English Tory is quite another thing.
3 The Adelphi carried across its front page an advertisement for Remington typewriters,
while other pages had advertisements, not only for publishers but department stores.
C. carried no such advertisements.

although I think they would require a guarantee. If they refuse I should
like you to help me try a New York publisher.
[. . .]
Ever your loving
Mother.
Sunday [?30 December 1923] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Sydney
I have not time to write a proper letter this is just to thank you for
two of yours to which I shall reply fully as soon as I can or when I can
come to see you but that must be next week, I am afraid. I think what
you say about Hulme has a lot of truth in it, and hope to discuss that with
you.1
I have just finished Tony and will get it back to you. There is a lot to talk
about there. I am inclined to think you get your best effects in spite of your
theory of the novel-document! but you will deny that vigorously. I think
the Rock is extremely real and alive.2
With love to you both
Yours aff
Tom
Forgive this scrawl am very run down and can do less and less now.
to C. K. Scott Moncrieff cc
31 December 1923 [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
Dear Mr Scott Moncrieff,
I have recently received from the Schiffs your translation of the Death of
Bergotte.3 I am very glad to have this, but very sorry to infer from what
1 On 29 Dec., SS said he had read T. E. Hulmes Speculations alongside TWL and saw
a certain correspondence between them. While he thought Hulmes volume a noteworthy
contribution to certain aspects of modern thought, he found it occasionally superficial and
frequently elliptical, and judged that a second grade logician would make short work of
most of his theories. He saw Hulme as un original rather than original and looked forward
to discussing his provocative book with TSE.
2 Cf. VHEs letter of 26 Dec. 1923.
3 Prousts account of the death of his fictional novelist Bergotte, in La prisonnire, the fifth
book of la recherche du temps perdu, published posthumously in French in 1923.
287
Mrs Schiff tells me that there has been a misunderstanding. Your letter to
me did not go astray, but I gave it to Richard Aldington, who was assistant
editor of the Criterion, and asked him to reply to you explaining the
situation. He was just leaving for Italy and I thought that he would write
to you from Rome. Evidently he did not do so, and as I received from him
his resignation after he had left, it is possible that he overlooked the
matter.1
The situation is this: Jacques Rivire arranged with Doctor Proust that
we were to have a fragment from part of the book still unpublished in
French, and I understand that we are to receive this fragment before the
end of January. I thought that it would be so much more of a distinction
for the Criterion to be able to publish some of Prousts work even before
its appearance in French. This is what I asked Aldington to tell you and I
asked him to say that we wished to send you the manuscript for translation
as soon as received.
If the unpublished fragment arrives, will you consent to translate it
especially for me?2 I hope so, because, rather than have it translated by
anyone else, I would even publish it in French. If, however, the promised
fragment does not arrive, I should very much like to publish the Death of
Bergotte. I am very sorry that this was not explained to you when it should
have been, and I hope you will accept my apologies. Meanwhile, I of
course wish to retain the manuscript you sent.
With all best wishes for the New Year.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
My dear Seldes,
Many thanks for you highly personal Christmas card and my wishes to
you for the New Year.
I am very sorry to hear of your resignation from the Dial.3 It gives me
the hope, however, that you will now have more time to devote to writing,
1 RA left for Italy in early Nov., and resigned soon afterwards.

2 Proust, The Death of Albertine, trans. Scott Moncrieff, C. 2: 8 (July 1924).
3 Seldes resigned his editorial position at The Dial in Dec., but continued to write Theatre
pieces until it ceased publication in 1929.

both in the Dial and out of it. I hope to hear that your book is published.1
And finally, for the New Year, I hope that the Dial will continue to be as
encouraging to me as you have always been.
I have been looking over the last two things of mine, and really I do not
think that either the Dial or myself has any reason to be proud of them.2
I am really ashamed to have sent you such badly written articles, and I feel
again that I must stop writing and read and think for a long time before
recommencing. Otherwise, I shall simply lose my reputation and disgrace
the periodicals for which I write. For this reason you will see nothing of
mine in the January Criterion: I have twice rewritten and finally scrapped
an essay on a new direction for the drama which I hope some day to make
fit for publication.3 But it is no use squeezing a dry sponge and it is no use
trying to work a tired and distracted mind. So I shall send the Dial nothing
more until I feel certain that I have come back.4
Again with all best wishes,
Yours always,
[T. S. E.]

Dear Lewis,
I have waited to answer your letter until I had the time to deal with it as
thoroughly as I could.5 The amendments to Zagreus are perfectly
acceptable. The words in question were queried by the printer and not
Cobden-Sanderson.6 I should however have discussed the matter with you
had you not so amiably sent in the alteration. The point is that your
contribution is to be the first in the number, and therefore the questionable
words would have been particularly conspicuous. Furthermore, I hold this
1 The Seven Lively Arts appeared in spring 1924.

2 Ulysses, Order, and Myth, 75: 5 (Nov. 1923); Marianne Moore, 75: 6 (Dec. 1923).
3 Four Elizabethan Dramatists: A Preface did appear, presumably in rewritten form, in
C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924). With one exception, TSE published his prose only in C. in the following
year.
4 TSEs next prose contribution was Literature, Science, and Dogma, Dial 82: 3 (Mar.
1927).
5 In the margin by the opening, TSE wrote: Dictating to a typist therefore periphrastic.
6 On 13 Dec., WL told RC-S he found some of the queries about Mr Zagreus and the Split-
Man useful, and had rehandled one passage to omit the word bugger (an ugly word
that is however, I regret to say, often used, and perhaps sometimes justifiable).
289
principle: that in a book a writer can and ought to say anything he likes.
But a periodical is a different matter. The majority of readers may be
presumed to buy it because they believe that it will have good things in it
and many of the readers buy it without knowing what any one
contribution will be. Unless one aims at a very small and definite class of
reader, an editor is not justified in risking offending harmless and otherwise
desirable readers by anything except statements of principle. If we
published your book, either here or in France, I should only do so on
condition that everything was published in it which you wanted to put in
it. I am perfectly in agreement with you about cunning people, but I must
say that I think you are preposterously over-elaborating your suspicions of
Lady Rothermere. This suspiciousness first took the form of a shyness of
the Criterion, and now takes the form of a shyness toward her publishing
your book.1 I have always found her perfectly straight with me, and I am
sure that she has nothing up her sleeve in connection with the publishing
business. As a matter of fact, the idea of publishing books was suggested
and developed entirely by myself, although she welcomed the idea with
considerable enthusiasm. She does not pretend to want to make a martyr
of herself or sacrifice everything to the cause of literature, but she has
nothing whatever to get out of these enterprises except a certain distinction
among a very small number of people. She has occasionally made
suggestions but has never attempted to interfere or overrule my direction
of the Criterion in any way. If you are now inclined to believe that you are
dealing with me in the Criterion, you have just as much reason for
believing that you are dealing with me in the publishing. The matter is
perfectly simple. If you can get for your book of essays a publisher who
will pay more and circulate it better there is no reason whatever why you
should not do so. I never contemplated doing you out of a better
engagement. I only meant that you should let us publish the book if Lady
Rothermere could give you for it as much as you were likely to get
elsewhere. If you have a good offer from a good publisher, and let me know
what that offer is, I will see what Lady Rothermere will go to. That is all
there is to it.
You do not seem to be aware that I have never taken any money for
running the Criterion. The reason is that Lady Rothermere put down a
definite subsidy, and I preferred to apply this to the paper and the
contributors, rather than starve the paper to get a hundred or so a year
1 In Nov., WL said I am rather shy with you but I will give you everything I have for
nothing, as you did did [sc. for] me (for The Tyro).

while it lasted. It would not be worth my while to take so much trouble
over a paper unless there was a chance of its perpetuation. If the paper
establishes itself, I shall naturally see that there is enough in it for me to
make it worth my while to go on with it. In any case it was not worth my
while to cheapen the paper and reduce its chances of survival in order to
take a hundred a year for three years. The paper is only worthwhile to me
if it can establish itself sufficiently to give me the basis of a livelihood.
The publishing scheme does not relieve Lady Rothermere of expenses in
any way, but on the contrary would considerably increase them. Sanderson
would get his small percentage out of the publishing just as he does out of
the Criterion. But I say again, this was not Lady Rothermeres idea, nor
was it Sandersons, but my own.
You surely know by this time that I have had a continuous and
disinterested desire to push your work as far as in my power. I dont see
why you shouldnt make a great deal more money by writing than you do;
and I have urged you to write for the Dial and for Vanity Fair which are
quite respectable papers in their way and are open to you as well as the
Criterion. Of course I dont want to urge you into journalism, but at
the same time I think that you would find more or less regular writing
for the American public less antipathetic than incessant portrait-painting
of people whom you despise and whom you cannot trust. And, of course
every man has his own way of working, and I am a pretty slow writer
myself. But I confess that I do not see where all your time goes. That is
perhaps not my affair, but I am sure that everyone who admires your work
as much as I do regrets that there is not more of it. Now, if you can get a
better publisher for your books, I am the last person to stand in your way;
It seems to me that after this book is published you ought to make a serious
effort to beat up journalistic connections.
Yours ever,
Thomas Eliot
291
1924

1
Tuesday [1 January 1924] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Mary
Thank you so much for the lovely handkerchief which is very gay and
buckish, and for the portrait of a lady resembling a lady of my
acquaintance.2 The latter has merits of its own, of an austere kind, but
there are in existence informal views made on a picq-nicq with a small
camera, which have more of the warmth of humankind. But I hope in a
week or two to see the original?
T.

11 January 1924 The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
Dear Monro,
I have been waiting for the last fortnight for an opportunity to write or
telephone to you and suggest your lunching with me, as I wanted to talk
to you about the Wordsworth, and I am ashamed that I should have
received your letter first. About the time: if your essay is under 3000 words
I should like it by March 1st for the April number; if it is over that, I should
like it by June 1st for the July number; but it should be exactly the length
that you are inspired to make it.3 It is to be about any part of
Wordsworths life or work or aspect of his work that you choose; his Youth
would be perfectly suitable, but you need not confine yourself very closely
to the matter of the books you get, if you wish to divagate. Only, I should
like to know, as soon as you have got the scheme into shape, about what
length you think it is likely to be.
I am sorry to have been so unbusinesslike, but I have been hopelessly
tired out and run down for a long time, and not fit to be in charge of a
1 Postmarked 2 Jan. 1924.
2 The handkerchief and portrait were Christmas presents; the lady was MH.
3 Wordsworth Revisited, C. 2: 8 (July 1924).

review at all. As I had to reduce correspondence and seeing people to the
minimum, I had left it to Richard [Aldington] to arrange with you, but I
dont think I said anything to him about time or length. Thats my fault.
Will you not come and lunch with me one day in the City next week? Let
me have a card to say what day would suit you, and what hour. My
address is Lloyds Bank, 20 King William Street, near the Bank Station. We
have not met for a long time.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
Ill try to get the other book for you.1
to Hugh Walpole cc
My dear Walpole,
Your kindness to me personally, and the great encouragement you have
given me about the Criterion, make it possible for me to write to you to
ask a favour which I should not have ventured to have asked before. In the
early days of a new review, especially a review which cannot afford to pay
very high rates to contributors an Editor like myself is forced to depend
very largely on his personal friends for contributions. This is especially
true when one wants stories;2 it is always possible to get good scholarly or
critical articles; but for fiction I have only dared approach writers whom
I thought would be likely to let me have something as a personal favour.
As the Criterion wants to keep its stories to the general standards of the
paper I have thus the greatest difficulty of all; because I felt that it was
undesirable to approach the best known writers prematurely. As the paper
gets better known it will no doubt be easier but at present there are very
few writers whom I want to publish and of these fewer still whom I am in
a position to ask. But the Criterion needs more stories very badly and I
therefore hope that you will forgive me if I now ask you if you will let us
have something of yours either a short story, or (what would be equally
interesting) a fragment of some unpublished novel.3
1 H. W. Garrod, Wordsworth (1923), one of three books Monro asked for.

2 On 29 Dec., Walpole wrote: for popularitys sake you might . . . have a little more good
fiction in C.
3 The first two chapters of Walpoles The Old Ladies appeared in C. 2: 7 & 8 (Apr. & July
1924).
293
If you would, I should be killing a number of birds with one stone, for I
am sure that having had your name in the paper I should find it much easier
to get contributions from others including the people you have mentioned.1
It would be a very great kindness on top of your previous generosity,
but your interest in the Criterion encourages me to believe that you might
be inclined to help it in this very substantial way. I shall be very happy if
you assent in principle and still happier if you can let me have something
at once. In any case please forgive my asking you.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
Thank you for your letter. Of course I only decided on the postponement
very suddenly and wrote you at once.2 I had not realised until I looked
over the whole of the proof together that I was not at all satisfied with the
number. It seemed to me so unsatisfactory that I preferred, and I felt sure
that you would prefer, to postpone it for a few weeks rather than turn
anything out under our usual standard. It was not that any of the
contributions were bad, but rather that the number was badly put together
and needed one or two things of a different kind, including an article by
myself. It seems to me most important, until the Criterion has been running
for a long time, that each number should be in some respect a little better
than the last, and this number was no better than any of the others. I shall
now have time to revise my article and get it into this number.3
The advertisements have been postponed so that there will be little if
any extra expense, beyond the printing of two more contributions.
What has added to my delays and confusions has been losing my
Assistant Editor and my Secretary at the same time and accordingly having
had no assistance whatsoever. I am glad to report that I have just secured
another Secretary4 and as he has had wider experience and better
opportunities than the last, I hope that he may be able to undertake in time
1 Walpole had mentioned May Sinclair, VW, Stella Benson, David Garnett and William
Gerhardie.
2 The Jan. issue C. 2: 6 was postponed until Feb.
3 Four Elizabethan Dramatists I: A Preface, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924), 11523.
4 J. R. Culpin.

enlarged functions and relieve me of much of the routine work so that I
may be able to do without an Assistant Editor. This will be an ultimate
economy which is our great point and keep the expense down, so that
without increasing the cost of the paper we may be able to increase the
pay to contributors.
Yes, everything is indeed muddle and confusion here but I really now
begin to have hopes that things may turn out better than one expected.
Thank you for telling me that Miss Ireland is at 58; I am glad to know
of it but I do not think that just at the moment there is anything I could
discuss with her instead of with you.
Now, please let me know in advance of your movements and I will write
to you again very shortly when I see better how things are going and just
before the number comes out.
Yours always sincerely
[T. S. E.]
to Frederic Manning cc
Dear Manning,
Thank you very much for your letter of the 5th January. I was very glad
to hear from you. I am afraid that I must confess ignorance of the Pre
Hyacinthe,1 and I have put myself in a position where we have promised
to print in the next three numbers more than we possibly can print; but I
should like very much to be able to publish something by you. If you are
going to write the article I should earnestly ask you to let us have the first
sight of it. If you are not going to write until you have settled on
publication might I ask that you will let me know to about what length you
want to go and also inform my ignorance of the subject.
Thank you for mentioning my very rough and unsatisfactory article.2
I should like to talk it over with you. I thank you for your invitation.3 At
1 Manning suggested he write on Le Pre Hyacinthe by way of a book by his friend Albert
Houlin. Charles Loyson (18271912), known as Le Pre Hyacinthe, was a French preacher
who described himself as a priest without an altar; after being a member of three Roman
Catholic religious orders, he was excommunicated in 1869 and became an Old Catholic
pastor in Geneva. Ten years later, he founded the Gallican Catholic Church in Paris where
he evolved his own version of liberal Christianity.
2 Manning said that TSEs The Function of Criticism (C. 2: 5 [Oct. 1923]) interested him
in more ways than one, but that Most of Rmy de Gourmonts criticism was essentially
vicious.
3 Manning had invited TSE to stay at his sixteenth-century farmhouse near Woking.
295
present I have the whole work of the Criterion on my hands and cannot
possibly get away from London but if I am freer in the spring I may write
to propose myself.
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
to E. R. Curtius cc
My dear Curtius,
It was very pleasant to hear from you again after such a long silence and
to know that you still think of the Criterion and want to write for us. I
should very much like to publish something by you on Proust and it would
be especially interesting if we could do so in the April or July number as I
am expecting from Jacques Rivire an unpublished fragment which we
shall publish in translation.1 The April number is going to be a very
crowded one and I shall have a great deal of difficulty with it; but your
offer is so tempting that I am writing to ask whether you could, without
unfairness to your own ideas, let us have a very short Essay on Proust not
more than 3000 words. If you will let me know at once about what you
consider the minimum length for a satisfactory essay I will write to you
definitely.
I am writing this in a great hurry, and I will write to you again soon
about the rest of your letter and about the books that you will need for the
series of English studies which I very much hope that you will make.2
With all best wishes,
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
1 See Curtius, On the Style of Marcel Proust, C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924), 31120.

2 Curtius had heard about D. H. Lawrence but had not read him. He also wanted to find
out about the new literary movements in England for the book TSE suggested on 14 Aug.
1923.

to Harold Joachim1 cc
My dear Mr Joachim,
Forgive me for not having written to you immediately but I have for
some time been deprived of both an Assistant Editor and a Secretary and
it has been impossible for me to keep up with my correspondence. I should
be very disappointed not to publish your Essay, and the only reason for our
not doing so would be that you wished to publish elsewhere before we had
had time to publish it in the Criterion. I had hoped to publish it sooner,
but, handicapped as I have been, I have made numerous mistakes and have
had to postpone a number of contributions. I count definitely upon
publishing your Essay either in the April or the July number.2 If that is
alright, will you let me know and I will have a type-written copy made so
that you may have the original back for your own reference. I should be
very sorry to be deprived of such a distinguished contribution.
I take a late opportunity of wishing you and your family a happy year,
and I hope that I may come down to Oxford at some time during the
Summer term and that I may see you then.
[T. S. E.]
to Valery Larbaud ts Vichy

My dear Larbaud,
I do not suppose that you are in Paris at least I hope for your own
sake that you are much further south but I hope that this letter will reach
you. I have had no news of you for a long time and so have been
wondering how you are and whether you have been able to work on
Landor.3 I was very happy to receive your book4 and am cherishing it on
the top of my pile, to read, and partly to re-read, at the first opportunity.
1 Harold Joachim: see Glossary of Names.

2 TSE listed Joachim: The Absolute etc for possible publication in C. 2: 6 (Jan. 1925), but
nothing came of this.
3 Larbaud had promised an essay on Landor as long ago as Mar. 1922.
4 Amants, heureux amants (1923), three novellas about love, was dedicated to JJ (the only
begetter of the form [the interior monologue] I have adopted). Larbaud had written about
Ulysses in C. 1: 1 (Oct. 1922).
297
Everything that you write is extremely important to me. Thank you very
much indeed for thinking of me.
I do not want to worry you, but please do let me have a line to say how
you are and where you are and when you think you will have the first part
of Landor ready.1 I do hope you are very much better than when I saw
you last.
T. S. Eliot
to The Reverend S. Udny cc

Dear Sir,
Please forgive me for not having replied at once to your second letter.2
I should have written to you a long time ago but for a great pressure of
work and I am sorry to have appeared very rude. It is very kind of you to
offer us your translations of DAnnunzios3 verse but I am afraid that the
Criterion is hardly the place for them. We publish very little verse and our
space is so restricted in view of the number and variety of contributions
which we wish to include that we are forced to rule out translations of
foreign verse. If, however, you have access to any manuscripts of
DAnnunzio which are unpublished in Italian we should be delighted if
you let us consider them.4
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
1 On 4 Feb., Larbaud explained that before the war he had sent a volume, Selections from
the Works of W. S. Landor, to Daniel OConor in England, but the war had prevented
publication. If TSE could track it down, his notes for C. would be ready much sooner.
2 The Rev. S. Udny wrote twice (14 Nov. 1922; Jan. 1923) to offer to C. some of his
renderings of DAnnunzios verse: they had originally been requested by the Fortnightly
Review, but the editor had ultimately found himself cramped for space after all.
3 Gabriele DAnnunzio (18631938), poet, playwright and nationalist politician, who, after
establishing the short-lived Republic of Fiume, became a vocal supporter of Mussolini.
4 Nothing by DAnnunzio appeared in C.

My dear Whibley,
I have asked Dr Cyriax1 about Trigeminal Neuralgia and find he is quite
familiar with it and has treated cases of it. I think that he might do you a
great deal of good; in fact, I believe it is a sort of trouble with which he
might be particularly successful. Of course he would not pretend that he
could cure such a thing absolutely but there is always the possibility that
he might and in any case I feel that it is more than probable that he could
do you a great deal of benefit. And in that event it would be a comfort to
know that you could always go back to him and get relief if you had later
attacks. I feel almost sure that he could make it more possible for you to
sleep and eat in comfort.
So I will leave it at that for the present, but if you are willing to give him
a trial, I will at any time arrange an appointment for you. His address is
41 Welbeck Street.
I enjoyed immensely our evening and I am hoping that I may see you
more frequently now, if you are coming to town from time to time. I should
be glad for my own sake if you had a course of treatment with Dr Cyriax
because you would be in London more often. I am looking forward with
impatience to reading your Chesterfield,2 and of course to your book.3
Yours affectionately,
[T. S. E.]
to Iris Barry cc
Dear Miss Barry,
I have by no means forgotten the story which you sent me last May and
have been hoping that you would send us something else, but as you have
not done so I am writing to remind you.4 I hope that you remember that
1 Dr Edgar Ferdinand Cyriax (18741955): Swedish-born doctor, specialising in Swedish

medical gymnastics and manipulative treatment. He was the son-in-law of Henrik Kellgren,
a notable figure in the promotion of Swedish remedial gymnastics and massage. Cyriax
lectured in physiology at the Central Institute for Swedish Gymnastics, London.
2 See Whibley, Lord Chesterfield, C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).
3 Presumably Literary Studies (1925).
4 See TSEs letter of 14 May 1923.
299
I liked your story very much although I did not find it quite suitable for the
Criterion in the form in which I read it. One of the objections, which I
mention again because it is a very important point with us, was that it was
too long. I know by report that you have done better things since and I
hope that among the products of the last year there is one suitable in
brevity and in every respect for the Criterion. If you have something on
hand of not more than 2500 words and as I say to all contributors as
short as possible, will you not let me see it, and at once?1
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to F. S. Flint cc
My dear Flint,
The manuscript which I am sending you herewith2 represents a favour
which I am asking you. Would you mind reading it and giving me your
opinion? If it is a very interesting essay we might publish it in the Criterion,
if you would translate it. I have not had time to read it, and in any case I
should hesitate to pronounce a verdict on the merit of such a composition
from my faulty knowledge of the language.
I hope to have some stuff for you soon, including something by Cocteau
if you will continue to give us the really invaluable benefit of your genius
for translation. But let me say again that it is not fitting that a man of
letters who has appeared so frequently in the Criterion as a translator and
as an annotator of foreign periodicals should not from time to time be
represented by an original article also. Will you not reconsider the subject
which you suggested a long time ago, or if not, will you suggest a new
one?
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
PS You need not return this typescript as I have another copy.
1 She never contributed to C.

2 A typescript article by Antonio Marichalar.

to Osbert Sitwell1 cc
My dear Osbert,
Thank you very much indeed for the Essay on Baroque Architecture,
which is extremely interesting, and which we shall be delighted to use.2
I am never sure in which of two numbers anything can be published, but
this will be either in the April or July number, and I will let you know later
before sending proof.
Whenever you have a story ready which is not too long for us, do please
let me see it at once. The most difficult thing in the world to find is a good
short story.
I will write you again when I know where you are. Berners3 reports that
you are soon returning to London. I hope that is true.
Ever yours,
[T. S. E.]
PS If you have any story on hand of less than 6000 words, do let me see
it now.
Dear Manning,
Thank you very much for telling me something about le pre
Hyacinthe.4 Now that you tell me, I remember quite well having had the
usual vague hearsay knowledge of him. I have been thinking it over pretty
carefully and it has taken a good deal to outweigh the benefit of having
something from you. Were le Pre Hyacinthe representative of something
for which the Criterion definitely stood, I should jump at the opportunity.
But my own position toward modernist movements in the Catholic Church
is at best one of neutrality, as never having been a member of that Church
1 Osbert Sitwell: see Glossary of Names.

2 A German Eighteenth Century Town, C. 2: 8 (July 1924), 43347: a sketch of the
architecture of Bayreuth, republished in Discursions on Travel, Art and Life (1925). It was
Sitwells last contribution to C.
3 Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt Wilson, 14th Baron Berners (18831950), eccentric English
composer.
4 On 26 Jan., Manning described Hyacinthes work as a criticism of the ecclesiastical
disclipline of the Roman Church, the preaching of a mystical non-sectarian Christianity, and
later of a kind of theism (the unknown God).
301
I cannot adopt a more positive attitude. I was myself brought up in a
strong atmosphere of the most liberal Liberal theology and I cannot but
regard such tendencies as unsuitable to the needs of the time.1 They have,
rightly or wrongly, associations in the mind with liberalism in political
thought, and my own position is too near that of Charles Maurras for me
to have much sympathy with them. I read at one time a good deal of the
modernist philosophy of Le Roy2 and other Bergsonian clerics whose
names I no longer retain, and I felt in them an ingenious leger de main of
confusion of the better and worse which I disliked. This is of course a
subject for an article by itself, and I should be extremely interested to know
what your own position is.
The other things you tell me about interest me immensely.3 I shall look
forward to reading your article in the Quarterly4 and I wish that we might
have had the honour of printing it ourselves. I certainly welcome the
suggestion that you make for sending a full article or study; please suggest
some subject that you want to write about in order that we may waste no
time. If you will read any number of the Adelphi, you will perhaps see why
I am so shy of Father Hyacinthe.5 I wish that we might talk these things
over at length.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Johan Mortensen6 cc
Dear Sir,
I am glad to hear that you received the number of the Criterion which
I had sent to you and thank you very much for your kind invitation to
lunch. Unfortunately I am already engaged for lunch on Wednesday, and
1 TSE was brought up outside the Christian Fold, in Unitarianism; and in the form of
Unitarianism in which I was instructed, things were either black or white (NC 10: 41, July
1931, 771).
2 Edouard Le Roy (18701954), French philosopher and mathematician; Professor of
Philosophy at the Collge de France and author of A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson (1913).
A devout Catholic as well as modernist, he was later associated with Teilhard de Chardin,
and his works were placed on the Index of prohibited books by the Vatican.
3 Manning was interested in the distinction between Fact and Value.
4 Critic and Aesthetic, Quarterly Review, 480 (24 July 1924), 12344.
5 Despite TSEs reservations, Le Pre Hyacinthe appeared in C. 2: 6 (July 1924), 4607.
6 Johan Mortensen: a translator from Danish and other Scandinavian languages.

as I am extremely busy at my vocation in the City at present, the National
Liberal Club is rather far for me to go. Will you not therefore lunch with
me on Monday next at the Cock in Fleet Street which should be an
intermediate point for both of us? If Monday will not do, please suggest
another day. Let us say one oclock, unless some other time is more
convenient for you. I hope that you will be able to come to meet me on
Monday.
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
to Miss J. C. Colcord1 cc
Dear Miss Colcord,
Forgive me for not having answered your charming letter of the 6th
December which my sister [Ada Sheffield] forwarded. The delay has been
wholly due to pressure of other work. It is distressing to me to be obliged
to decline such a flattering request. Had it been one of my other poems I
should certainly have been inclined to accede although the power to give
permission to reprint these rests with my American publishers.2 But in the
case of The Waste Land I feel very strongly against publication of any parts
separately. The poem is intended to be a whole and if I allowed parts of it
to be printed separately, it might not only spread the impression that it is
merely a collection of unrelated parts, but might also appear to give
sanction from myself of this impression. I do not want people to read the
poem at all unless they read the whole thing, and it is quite impossible for
any part of the poem to give a fair conception of the whole. It is with
reluctance that I adhere to this decision and I sincerely hope that you will
some day ask of me a favour which I shall be able to grant.
With all best wishes for the success of your anthology,
I am, yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
1 Joanna Carver Colcord (18821960): social worker and author of Broken Homes (1919).
She spent her first eighteen years at sea and was the editor of Roll and Go: Songs of American
Sailormen (1924), the first comprehensive collection of American sea-songs. She wrote twice
to TSE (12 Nov., 6 Dec. 1923), to request permission to include his beautiful poem Death
by Water in her proposed collection of poems by American authors about the sea and
seafaring.
2 Boni & Liveright. TSE consistently opposed the publication of extracts from TWL.
303
to Douglas Ainslie cc
Dear Mr Ainslie,
Thank you for your card giving me your address. I should be glad if you
would let me know, whether Mr Aldington, who has now resigned his
position, suggested any particular date for the appearance of your
translation of Croces essay.1 I am afraid that it will be impossible to use
it in the April number, and expect to publish it in the following number
which appears in July. Will you let me know if this [is] satisfactory as I
should be very sorry if there were any misunderstanding. We look forward
with great pleasure to publishing this essay.
I hope that you will be so kind as to keep me in touch with any change
of address or else to give me some permanent address from which letters
will be forwarded to you.
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
PS We should of course be glad to use other writings of Croce but as the
Criterion is so small and appears only quarterly, it is very rarely advisable
or possible to publish work by the same author more than once a year.2
to May Sinclair cc
Dear Miss Sinclair,
I am writing to ask you whether you will continue your kindness to the
Criterion by suggesting the names of any writers of fiction whom you think
we ought to get into the Criterion. It is no flattery, but a simple statement
of a situation which worries me a good deal, when I say that your stories
have set such a high standard that it is difficult to find three other stories
a year, and I dare not ask you for more than one story annually.3 We get
a good many sent voluntarily, but they are all very crude or hopelessly
second rate. I never get time for any general reading myself and I simply
1 Croces essay on Alfred Vigny, later published in Croces European Literature in the
Nineteenth Century, trans. Ainslie (1924).
2 The Vigny article did not appear, but Ainslies translation of Croces On the Nature of
Allegory was published in C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925).
3 Sinclairs The Victim appeared in C. 1: 1 (Oct. 1922); Joness Karma in C. 2: 5 (Oct.
1923).

do not know who are the writers worth asking, or who, amongst these
writers, might be willing to let us have a contribution. I do not know of any
promising new writers who ought to be helped, nor do I know, on the
other hand, who are the established writers who are really good and whose
names would help the paper. I have written to Walpole, but I do not know
where he is at present and whether he can give us anything. He has been
extremely kind to the Criterion, and has given me great encouragement
and has even taken out five subscriptions, which is a very great help.
I calculate that the Criterion ought to appeal to about 3000 persons,
and that if all of these unknown 3000 took it in, it could pay for itself
amply, so that I could devote my time to it. At present I have been working
practically singlehanded for some time and it is a real torment to feel that
I could make the paper much better if I had the time to do so. But any
suggestion from you for improving the paper would be extremely valuable.
I do not know whether you are in town now but I hope that some time
you will let me come and see you again.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to His Royal Highness the Crown Prince of Sweden1 cc

Your Royal Highness,
I am asking Messrs. Norstedt and Sner to forward this letter to Your
Royal Highness, together with a copy of the Criterion which I am sending
them. The Criterion is a literary quarterly review of an international
character, aiming to bring together for the most discriminating public the
best work of writers of all nationalities. While the Criterion, as I have said,
is a literary review, its scope is wide enough to include almost everything
of interest to people of culture with the exception of economics and
contemporary politics. The paper has no political character and takes no
part in political controversy. The list of contributors for the past year will,
we think, maintain the claim of the Criterion to be the most choice and
enlightened literary review in England. Although the review has been in
1 The letter was sent to the Prince via Messrs. Norstedt and Soener, his publishers. Stockholm
wrote back on 13 Feb.: I have the honour to tell You, that You seem to have made a mistake
as far as the letter ought to have been addressed to HRH Prince Wilhelm of Sweden, to whom
it today has been passed. HRH the Crown Prince has never written anything that has been
published. The reference is to Prince Wilhelm of Sweden (18841965).
305
existence only a year, it is not too much to say that it is appreciated not
only in England but in France, in America, and gradually wherever English
literature is read.
I do not know whether Your Royal Highness ever consents to publish
articles in foreign reviews, but if so, I believe with confidence that the
Criterion is more worthy than any other literary review outside Sweden to
have the honour of publishing such contributions. I may add that a
contribution from Your Royal Highness would be very much appreciated
by a British audience which is already acquainted with some of Your Royal
Highnesss writings.
The Criterion has not yet been able to include any representative of
contemporary Scandinavian literature, but is anxious to do so, and we
should consider it a most fortunate beginning if we could publish a
contribution from Your Royal Highness.
In any case the Criterion would consider it a greater error to have failed
to ask for a contribution from Your Royal Highness than to ask even
without the expectation of a favourable reply.
I have the Honour to be,
Your Royal Highnesss
humble servant
[T. S. E.]
to May Sinclair cc
Dear Miss Sinclair,
Thank you so much for your kind letter. It is very good of you to take
so much trouble and I should like to talk over with you the work of these
writers of whom I confess I am completely ignorant.1 Of course I know
and admire the work of [D. H.] Lawrence2 but there are reasons which
I should like to explain to you why I feel that it is not quite suitable for the
Criterion. Of course I should be only too happy to have your two poems,3
1 Sinclair suggested (29 Jan.) E. L. Grant Watson (18851970), Australian novelist and
author of Innocent Desires (1924); Stacy Aumonier (18871928), author of Miss Bracegirdle
and Others (1923); and John Gilbert Bohun Lynch (18841928), novelist, boxing writer and
founder of P.E.N. Of these, only Grant Watson would publish in C. (as a reviewer).
2 Sinclair asked if TSE had written to DHL. TSE was to publish a number of pieces by DHL
later, starting with Jimmy and the Desperate Woman, C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924).
3 Sinclair had thought of sending two poems or chapters of a novel in free verse. Her
poem The Grandmother was published in C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924), 16770.

the only possible question is the one of length as I have already nearly filled
the April number and it will be a question of what can be postponed. Can
you let me know how many lines there are to the poem and whether, if it
is very long, it would be possible to publish one of the two chapters
without the other?
I shall be very happy to dine with you on Thursday next and look
forward to see[ing] you again with great pleasure.1
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Leonard Woolf cc
Dear Leonard,
Thank you for your card. I should like very much to write you a notice
about Hamlet and promise to do so.2 I am going on March 1st to the
performance of the Birds in Cambridge.3 Would you care to have me do a
note about that too? Please let me know, as otherwise I shall write
something and offer it elsewhere.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
to Herbert E. Palmer 4 cc
Dear Sir,
Thank you very much indeed for letting me see your poem and for the
interesting letter which we [you] wrote me. Unfortunately, it would be
1 The other guests were Stacy Aumonier, WL and the novelist Mary Webb (18811927).
2 LW had invited TSE to write 200250 words on Hamlet, which he understood TSE was
going to see at Oxford. Hamlet was directed by J. B. Fagan at the Oxford University
Dramatic Society (OUDS), 1217 Feb., and was reviewed in The Times on 13 Feb. There
was no notice of it in N., but Jean de Menasce sent TSE his review of it.
3 Aristophanes The Birds was to be performed in Greek at the New Theatre, Cambridge,
from 26 Feb. to 1 Mar. 1924, and was reviewed in The Times on 28 Feb.
4 Herbert E. Palmer (18801961) submitted a long poem about thirteen pages of the
Criterion, I think Cynewulfs poem of Constantines Vision of the Cross. The work
had been accepted by the London Mercury, but the editor J. C. Squire had overfilled his next
issue; and it was to be published early in 1924 by William Heinemann. Heinemann wanted
307
quite impossible for me even to consider it for the Criterion as we shall not
be able to accept any more contributions until after the July number. Of
course the space of the Criterion is very limited; being only a quarterly, it
is much more restricted in capacity than a monthly. It is very seldom that
we are able to publish contributions under six months after receipt.
With best wishes for the success of your book,
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
to Richard Cobden-Sanderson cc
I enclose one of the additional contributions, a poem by May Sinclair.1
Will you please [have] it set up in galley and sent to me, because there are
a few lines which I shall suggest to her that she take out. If it will save
time, Hazells need not submit any page proof.
I have made one draft of my article and will let you have it completed
about the beginning of the week.2 I may decide to omit the [John] Rodker
article3 and include one other short thing instead, but you will have
everything by the beginning of the week.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
to know if I was a Roman Catholic. No! I am not a Roman Catholic I just followed my
ancient or sub-conscious self, or whatever you like to call it, strengthened in that by an
extraordinary manifestation I saw in a flaming sunset sky when I was walking with a friend
away from the abbey. It was the bow of the Saxon harp . . . as clear and defined as a piece
of blue and burnished steel. In a later letter (10 Apr. 1925) presumably referring to a
different poem Palmer asked for information about the poem I sent you some weeks ago.
I propose now to change the title and call it The copulation of Heaven & Hell. . . The
main theme is the rape of celestial inspiration by Demonic hate or evil passion. The Bible is
full of its offsprings. I think nobody yet has written that sort of thing so clearly if my vanity
be allowed. A number of Palmers poems were published by JMM in the Adelphi; and future
publications were to include The Judgement of Franois Villon (1927) and Cinder Thursday
(1931). His Collected Poems came out in 1933.
1 Sinclair, The Grandmother, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924), 16770.
2 TSE, Four Elizabethan Dramatists: A Preface.
3 TSE wrote to Rodker (7 Apr.) to apologise for not printing his Note on the Cinema.

[?7 February 1924] The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Sydney
This is just a line to say that I hope that you are much better and
stronger and feeling able to work. I hope you can let me have the sketch
soon;1 I should like to have it by the end of this month in time for the April
number. Is that possible? Do let me know how you are. <With love to
Violet from both of us.>
Yours ever affectionately,
Tom
Vivien has been wondering every day how you are, and hoping to hear.
My dear Lady Rothermere,
Thank you for your letter and for letting me know your address. I rang
up Miss Ireland and asked her to tell you about the present state of the
Criterion. I think that it will be very much improved over what it would
have been, had it appeared on the usual date. I have enough material on
hand and definitely promised for the April number but I should be very
glad if Cocteau could be induced to let us have his manuscript by the end
of this month for translation. People are so undependable especially when
they are at a distance. I asked Miss Ireland to explain about Valrys book.2
I had the preface all ready in November but Cobden-Sanderson warned me
that there was an exceptionally large output of new books for Christmas
and also that the booksellers were taking very little and reported a very bad
trade. What with the election and the general unsettled conditions,3 this
Christmas was an especially bad time for bringing out books. I am also
glad on my own account that we postponed the book as a preface to such
a book is a very difficult and delicate matter, and on rereading what I had
written, I was dissatisfied; so I have been rewriting it but I have had to lay
it aside in order to get my article ready for this Criterion.
1 Schiffs sketch was published as Stephen Hudson: Cleste, C. 2: 7 (Apr., 1924).

2 Le Serpent was to have been published by C. in 1923 but came out only in Dec. 1924.
3 The General Election on 5 Dec. 1923 resulted in a hung parliament and the first ever
Labour government, led by Ramsay MacDonald.
309
As soon as that is out of the way, I shall complete the revision of my
preface and the book should be out toward the end of March, which will
be a very good time, as it is slightly in advance of the bulk of the spring
issues.
I have had one or two things in my mind for the next publication, but
it seemed to me that it would be better not to decide on any step until after
we see how the first book goes, as we may learn something from that. If,
as I hope, you are back in Paris early in May, then I shall hope to see you
there (or perhaps in London?) and discuss the next publication.
I have got the American Mercury.1 I think it is dreadfully dull. The sight
of publications like that is most encouraging!
I do hope that you will have good weather in the South2 and that you
will like the new Criterion.
[T. S. E.]

Sunday [February? 1924] 38 Burleigh Mansions,
St Martins Lane, London w.c.2
Dear Sidney
Thank you for your letter. I do feel indeed grateful to you for allowing
me to see one chapter of the new book. I must add, however, that I am by
now so accustomed to reading typed MS and to having to form my
opinions on it before I see it in print, that I do not think that it any longer
makes the slightest difference to me, although I know well what you mean,
and shd. probably feel exactly the same about any MS. of my own.
Anyhow, will you send any part or parts that you are willing to let me
see, to Clarence Gate Gdns, and I shall look forward to reading it with
tremendous excitement. Of course it is understood that all I tell you is
absolutely and irrevocably in confidence, (and the same in your case with
me) so that I feel I should like to, and perhaps ought to mention now,
before seeing yr. MS. that from what you said of it in yr. letter it seems to
1 The American Mercury was founded in Jan. 1924 by H. L. Mencken and George Jean
Nathan. The first issue sold more than 15,000 copies, and by the end of that first year
circulation was over 42,000. Nathan left it the following year and Mencken in 1933, but it
continued until 1981. Early contributors included Sinclair Lewis, Scott Fitzgerald, Langston
Hughes, Conrad Aiken and William Faulkner.
2 Lady Rothermere had left Paris for Cap dAil, a seaside resort in the Alpes-Maritimes.

me possible that I have been trying out during the last two months or so,
something in (possibly) the same form as your new book. But with this
difference; I have not attempted to make each sketch from the point of
view of a different person involved but rather the attempt is to make
them all from the point of view of a very interested, and a very intimate,
outsider. (Or not necessarily even an outsider, but of someone who does
not actually appear in the sketches).
Of course this is a very important difference indeed, and no doubt the
only similarity is in that they are both a series of sketches which could
appear separately, but which do, when all is finished (not yet, alas, with
me!) make up a whole.
But the point is that I have not finished, not nearly. Only a little over
half. And for this reason I have removed myself, sore throat and all, to
this address. I cannot work, or find the atmosphere I need, at Clarence
Gate. All the same, I shall be backwards and forwards and in and out, so
it wd. be safer to send the MS. to Clarence Gate. I will send more news in
a few days meanwhile my love to both of you.
V.
to Pearl Fassett cc
My dear Pearl,
I have read your story called Mrs Pilkington visits Paris. It is the best
thing that you have done. If you are willing to make some alterations
which I will suggest to you, I shall be able to print it in the Criterion.
I notice you say that you will get Mrs Pilkington or die. But you have
got Mrs Pilkington, so please do not touch her again or you will spoil her.
Therefore there is no need for you to die. I consider that the letter with
which you open the story is much too long. I have marked with red pencil
the parts which I think would be better to omit; not only is it too long but
it is not well handled. You are make statements on subject[s] of which you
have not thought sufficiently about.1
In general your writing suffers very much from the fact that you have
never thought enough, and that you have never formed any theories of
your own. You write from observation and what you get is entirely from
outside; nothing from inside. The only way for you to improve is to force
1 The grammar in the copy is mangled.
311
yourself to think and to form theories on every subject even if at first they
are wrong.
Will you try to rewrite the letter at the beginning of your story? making
it very short.1 I am afraid I do not like the title of the story; can you think
of another title or titles from which I could choose?2 I should like the story
not to be more than 1000 words. You could cut out a few words at the
very end without hurting it.
[T. S. E.]
to Jean Cocteau3 cc
Cher Monsieur,
Je suis ravi de recevoir votre petit volume sur Picasso;4 surtout de
possder un exemplaire sign par lauteur. Tout ce que vous crivez
renforce en moi limpression que mont donn vos posies et Le Secret
Professionel.5 Jai cit ce dernier dans un article de thtre, il y a quelques
mois.6 Je salue en vous une des intelligences les plus solides et cratrices de
la France moderne. Jattends avec impatience daborder la lecture du
Thomas lImposteur.7
Mais, voici mon inquitude du moment; quand est-ce que nous allons
recevoir le manuscrit indit que vous mavez si aimablement promis pour
1 When published, the opening letter was only seven lines long.
2 The story appeared as Mrs Pilkington, by Felix Morrison, in C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924), 1036.
In choosing her pseudonym, TSEs secretary associated herself with VHE, who published as
F. M. in C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924) and later used the pseudonyms Fanny Marlow and Feiron
Morris.
3 Jean Cocteau: see Glossary of Names.
4 Cocteau, Picasso (1923). TSEs copy, inscribed T. S. Eliot son admirateur Jean Cocteau
1924, is at Harvard. When he sent it to HWE in 1937, to be deposited at Eliot House, TSE
described it as a somewhat rare pamphlet.
5 Cocteaus Le Secret Professionnel (1922) prescribed a return to the rules of classical
versification.
6 In Dramatis Personae, C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), TSE quoted Cocteaus remark: Le cirque, le
music-hall, le cinmatographe et ces entreprises qui, depuis Serge de Diaghilew, mettent de
puissants vehicules aux mains des jeunes . . . conspirent, sans mme connatre leur entente,
contre ce que le thtre est devenu, savoir: un vieil album de photographies (303); [The
circus, the music-hall, the cinema and these enterprises which, since Serge Diaghilev, put
powerful instruments into the hands of the young . . . conspire, without even knowing their
effect, against the theatre which has become: an old photograph album.]
7 Thomas lImposteur: one of two novels Cocteau published in 1924.

le Criterion et que nous devions recevoir dans le mois courant?1 Cest
dune importance capitale que ce que vous nous enverrez soit bien traduit.
Je veux le remettre Monsieur Flint, et je ne veux pas quil soit press dans
un travail qui ne sera pas des plus faciles. Quandmme, jespre que votre
contribution donnera son clat notre numro du quinze avril et je vous
supplie de nous donner votre appui.
Dans lattente de vos nouvelles,
Je me soussigne, cher Monsieur,
Votre admirateur dvou,
[T. S. E.]2
to F. S. Flint cc
Dear Flint,
As I have not heard from you, I am rather concerned to know whether
you got my letter of the 28th January addressed to you at 65 Highbury
New Park and containing a typescript article by Marichalar [on the art of
criticism], on which I wanted your opinion with a view to translation.
Will you please let me know whether you got it? I am expecting a
contribution from Cocteau very soon which I want to send you, as I had
rather that you translated it than anybody else.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
1 Cocteaus promised contribution did not arrive. It was not until two years later that his
Scandales appeared in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926).
2 Translation: Dear Sir, I am delighted to have your little book on Picasso; and especially a
copy signed by the author. Everything you write strengthens in me the impression created by
your poems and The Professional Secret. I quoted the latter work in a theatre article, a few
months ago. I salute you as one of the most robust and creative intelligences of modern
France. I am waiting impatiently to begin reading Thomas the Imposter.
But this is what is worrying me at the moment; when shall we receive the unpublished text
that you so kindly promised for the Criterion and which was to reach us during the course
of this month? It is of vital importance that what you send us should be well translated. I
intend to entrust it to Mr Flint, and I would not like him to have to work hurriedly at a
rather difficult task. At all events, I am hoping that your contribution will add its lustre to
our issue on 15 April, and I plead for your support.
Waiting to hear from you, I sign myself, Sir, Your devoted admirer, [T. S. E.]
313
to E. R. Curtius cc
My dear Curtius,
Very many thanks for your letter of the 31st January and for the
manuscript which has just arrived and which I look forward to reading
within a few days. Even without having read it I can safely say that I would
very much like to use it and I want to ask you whether it would still be
possible to allow us to use it in the July number if, as I fear, it is impossible
to make room for it in April. I think also that the unpublished fragment of
Proust which Rivire has promised me is not likely to be ready and
translated in time for the April number and it would be interesting if we
could use your essay in the same number as the fragment of Proust.1
Will you let me know, in what way I can best help you in the preparation
of your English Studies which I am very anxious to see written. If you
would like any help, either in the selection of authors to be treated or in
obtaining books, I shall be glad to do what I can. I will send you a copy
of the Adelphi and you will see from [the] article in No. 5 of the Criterion,
which I am also sending, something of my own attitude towards Mr
Murrys philosophy.2 I am sorry that you have not had the Criterion
regularly.
Sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
to Humbert Wolfe3 cc
Dear Wolfe,
I have just received your Kensington Gardens4 from the publisher and
have read it through with great pleasure. This is a double compliment
1 Curtiuss On the Style of Marcel Proust, was published in C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924); Prousts
The Death of Albertine in 2: 8 (July 1924).
2 Curtius requested copies of JMMs Adelphi and asked what TSE thought of JMMs The
Problem of Style. TSEs article was The Function of Criticism, in C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923), which
offered a sustained critique of JMMs critical positions.
3 Humbert Wolfe (18851940) born Umberto Wolff was a successful civil servant
(working at the Board of Trade, the wartime Ministry of Munitions, and the Ministry of
Labour), as well as a keen and versatile poet, translator, satirist, editor and critic.
4 Kensington Gardens (1924) was a series of vignettes about flowers, trees, and people
associated with the London park, mainly in quatrains.

because I very seldom read a book of poems through and almost never
with the slightest pleasure. It seems to me that you have found an
extremely good medium and that you have managed it with great skill, for
the secret of such poetry is surely the delicacy with which it handles
something which in clumsier hands would be fatuous just as it seems to
me that all artistic skill means going just to the frontier, and never a hairs
breadth beyond the frontier, on the other side of which is some dreadful
vice. Anyway I know that I like your poems and that I dislike heartily the
sort of contemporary poetry which appears to be the nearest to it; which
appears to bear out what I was saying.1
I have been and still am frightfully rushed with two numbers of the
Criterion coming out on top of each other, but if, as a prelude to a more
satisfactory evening, you would come and lunch again with me next week,
I should be delighted. Would Wednesday or Thursday be possible for you?
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
Dear Manning,
Thank you very much for letting me see your quarterly article.2 I am
returning it at once as you ask for it, although I have only been able to
read it rather hurriedly. But I see that I want to read it very carefully when
it appears and should like to have an opportunity of discussing it with you
after that. I think that on the whole I am in agreement with you in
opposition to Gourmont and I am certain that there is a lot to be done in
restating and interpreting the Platonic doctrines.3 I do hope that you will
1 Wolfe replied (23 Feb.): I had rather that you liked my verse than that the whole
Squirearchy [J. C. Squires faction] burst into unanimous song which, as you may
conjecture, is extremely unlikely.
2 Manning, Critic and Aesthetic.
3 Manning said (26 Jan.) he was concerned with the Platonic criticism of consciousness in
Theatetus and Sophist, its development in Aristotle, and the distinction between Fact and
Value. Rmy de Gourmont (18581915), essayist, novelist, philosopher, playwright whom
TSE lauded in SE was a major figure in the Symbolist movement; associate of Villiers de
lIsle Adam and Joris-Karl Huysmans; co-founder in 1889 of the influential Mercure de
France; also co-founder of LYmagier and La Revue des Ides. Born in Normandy, he studied
law at the University of Caen, and then worked for ten years from 1881 as an associate
librarian at the Bibliothque Nationale in Paris though he was sacked for writing a
supposedly unpatriotic article Le joujou patriotisme [Patriotism: A Toy], which argued,
315
not abandon your project of writing a whole book. I hope your note on
Houtin is progressing.1
With many thanks,
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
to William Carlos Williams2 cc

Dear [Wolfe del.] Williams,
Very many thanks for your letters and for sending me your manuscript
on Marianne Moore which interested me extremely and made me feel that
my own was very crude.3 I am very proud of having had the honour of
reading it in manuscript and if it were possible, I should like to print it in
the Criterion. But we are absolutely full for the next six months.
Furthermore, I think that your article ought to appear first in America
because Marianne Moore is practically unknown here and your article
really presupposes in the reader a mind already adapted to receive this
kind of poetry. To me it is all the more interesting for that reason, but the
public has to be educated very slowly.
I hope that you will remain in Europe all summer so that I may have a
chance of seeing you. If you come to England, I shall of course expect that
against nationalists in both countries, for a rapprochment between France and Germany on
grounds of their common culture and aesthetics. In Physique de lamour: Essai sur linstinct
sexual (1903; translated as The Natural Philosophy of Love, 1904), he controversially argued
that human love is fundamentally an animal instinct, scarcely a matter of heart and soul.
However, his greatest influence upon modern European and American writers including
TSE, EP and the Imagists derives from Le problme du style (1902), which argued for the
primacy of the visual image in the work of poetry: poetry makes us literally see. See also
Richard Aldington, Rmy de Gourmont: Man of Letters (1928) and Richard Sieburth,
Instigations: Ezra Pound and Rmy de Gourmont (1978).
1 See Manning on Albert Houtins life of Charles Lyson: Le Pre Hyacinthe, C. 2: 8 (July
1924).
2 William Carlos Williams (18831963): poet and doctor; friend of EP and H. D. Author
of Spring and All (1923) and In the American Grain (1925), he advocated an indigenous
American modernism he opposed to TSEs TWL, which he described in his Autobiography
(1915) as a disaster for American letters.
3 On 9 Dec. 1923, Williams had commented on the excellence as criticism of TSEs review
of Marianne Moore in Dial 75: 6 (Dec. 1923); he had been working upon the same theme
and somewhat similarly at the same time. On 16 Dec., he sent TSE his essay on the work
of Marianne Moore, which he had just finished writing over and over and over: see
Marianne Moore, Dial 78: 5 (May 1925), 393401; reprinted in Imaginations (1970).

pleasure but if you remain in Paris, there is always a chance of my coming
over for a few days during the spring1 and it would be a pleasure to be able
to look forward to meeting one from whose poetry I have had so much
pleasure.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Owen Barfield cc
Dear Sir,
Thank you very much for responding to my request. I was of course
interested in your story2 as in everything you write but I do not feel that
this one is quite suitable for the Criterion. It is very much slighter than the
one which we published and I think that the proper place for it would be
in a monthly or a weekly rather than a quarterly review. Nevertheless I am
sure that amongst what you write, there will soon be something suitable
for us and I shall be very glad if you will continue to let me see your
manuscripts from time to time. I must say that in Dope, you got some
extremely interesting rhythmical effects which I hope you will work upon
and develop in subsequent writing.
With many thanks,
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]

18 February [1924] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
My dear Henry
I am still hanging about after my illness. I dont seem to have anything
like the strength I used to have. It is quite impossible for me to go away,
because Vivien is too ill to go and too ill to be left. She broke down a week
ago after my illness on top of everything else got out of bed and fell
down, and has been sleeping most of the time ever since. Her condition of
1 Williams hoped to see TSE when he was abroad this spring. He gave his address as
Shakespeare & Co., Paris.
2 Unidentified.
317
anaemia and complete exhaustion is not merely a question of the moment
but of the whole future, as it is a result not of the moment only but of the
whole past.1
I am distracted by dilemmas of the most serious [kind], and I feel that
you are the only person who can help me because you are the only
understanding person who knows me from the beginning and because you
are in some ways like me and because you have good judgment. When can
you come even for a short visit? Could you fly across this summer? I want
to see you and talk to you far more fully and intimately than three years
ago. If you cant come then I shall have to come and see you (though it
would be much more effective to see you here) but in order to do that I
shall have to leave the Bank first, and I should prefer to see you first.
I am really in such a state that my mind and judgment and will are
paralysed.2 Please realise that I mean this: I want to see you, and as soon
as possible. I wish to God you were here now.
Affectionately your brother
Tom

[late February? 1924] [London]
My dearest Mother:
I am just recovering from influenza, and so am writing to you this way
in pencil. I see no other way now than just to write on and on and set
things down just as they come. There is too much to say for me to try to
put things in the order of their importance.
Ever since November I have been overwhelmed with work. First Richard
Aldington went to Italy, and I received his resignation from him the day he
had left. There was pique and bad blood involved, and subsequent
1 In an unpublished memoir of TSE, Osbert Sitwell recalled that in 1923/24 he spoke to TSE
at a time when the Eliots marriage had reached a state of despair and hopelessness.
Although TSE was always careful and kind in the way he referred to her, he spoke with
some bitterness about the fact that during his engagement to VHE she had never mentioned
to him the appallingly bad health from which she had suffered as a small child. Being
afflicted with tuberculosis of the bones, she had undergone so many operations before she
was seven, that she was able to recall nothing until she reached that age. TSE thought she
should have told him, and thus have prepared him in advance for her later illnesses, which
were to impose so crushing an additional burden on him during many years (Texas).
2 Cf. Paralysed force, gesture without motion (The Hollow Men, l. 12)
3 From a copy made by his mother.

correspondence and an endeavour on my part at least to set things right,
but to no purpose.1 So, although he nominally gave three months notice,
I did not feel disposed to give him any work to do, and took it on myself.
Then in January I lost my Secretary-typist, whom I had had for nearly a
year. This again involved trouble. She had practically accepted my offer to
her to take her as housekeeper to stay with Vivien in the country from
March and to come and housekeep for you and go about with if you came
to London. She was a quiet steady middle-aged woman and then when we
came to the point of settling the date of leaving she said she must decline
and had never intended to give the impression that she would definitely
accept. So besides the disappointment of my plans, I could of course not
keep her on as secretary. And Vivien and I have been doing all the work
ourselves. Hence the January number had to be postponed to Feb 29th. It
is ready now and I think pretty good, but at what cost!2 But we swore that
we should at least complete Vol II Criterion and make it better than ever,
so that the Criterion, while it lasted, should be the best literary review ever
published in England. And I think we shall.
At the same time I have been made head of a Department at the Bank
which has meant much more responsibility and worry. Four girls and three
men under me, planning and tact and supervision and carrying on this
newspaper for the bank and the printing press and also detailed work of
my own trying to read a dozen foreign papers a day and keep in touch
with everything going on in a number of foreign countries, and be an
authority on foreign bonds in certain complicated cases, and fight other
departments that interfere with mine.
During all this time I have been tormented and torn with indecision,
trying to settle in my mind my major problem as well as devote myself to
1 RA left for Italy in the first half of Nov. 1923. In explanation of his subsequent resignation
RA told Harold Monro (8 May 1924) he found TSE difficult to work with and that he was
paralysed mentally by the snobbish attitude of the Criterion; his reward was a piffling little
attack on something I said about Joyce, and the growing realisation that I was a useful
hack journalist (Richard Aldington: An Autobiography in Letters, 723). He is referring to
TSEs remarks about RAs essay on Joyce, in Ulysses, Order and Myth (The Dial 75: 5 [Nov.
1923]). TSE said RA found the book an invitation to chaos, and an expression of feelings
which are perverse, partial, and a distortion of reality as well as a libel upon humanity.
While affirming their shared classicism, TSE questioned RAs idea that it was possible to
libel humanity, his notion of Joyces undisciplined talent, and pathetic solicitude for the
half-witted. Later TSE wrote: We were on the same side for a long time and I was the first
to give offence, although unintentionally, which made a breach between us (Richard
Aldington: An Intimate Portrait, ed. Alister Kershaw and F.-J. Temple [1965], 25).
2 On 19 Feb., RC-S said he despatched the final copy to the printers: copies should be with
him by 27 Feb., for circulation on the 29th. This suggests a date for the letter of 20 Feb. or after.
319
the bank and to the Criterion and at the same time deal with the problems
of our daily life. It has been so agonising that I have been completely
paralyzed by it. I simply could not resign in January because just then the
bank started this department which they would not have started at all
except for me, because there is no one else available in the bank who has
the education and width of experience to run such a thing. And during all
this time I have been waiting and seeing Lord Rothermere now and then,
to see if he would have anything to offer me; and he was in a panic over
the prospect of a socialist government and kept telling me that this was no
time to leave a good job, because there was no telling what might happen
to the country, and to wait a few months and see them again. And I have
made so many mistakes in the past, that I often feel no confidence
whatever in my judgment, and act like a frightened rat.
I am trying to acquire a little capital by keeping dividends in [a bank] in
America so far as I can do without them that is why I cabled you to send
the proceeds of my last dividend to Henry in order so that he might invest
it for me. If I can build up a little income absolutely safe, then I shall feel
more justified in giving up my bank salary. I hate to lose the good 6% on
Hydraulic and if I was going to stay forever in the bank I should not dream
of selling now, but I cannot leave the bank on the basis of an income which
might cease altogether for a time just when I most wanted it. I do so want
for the sake of my own work to be essentially independent and feel that I
do not absolutely need to earn more than I certainly can earn.
Literary connections are always uncertain. I am no longer very popular
with the Nation people, because my political and social views are so
reactionary and ultra-conservative.1 They have become gradually more so
and I am losing the approval of the moderate and tepid whigs and Liberals
who have most of the literary power. It is less offensive to be a Socialist
nowadays than it is to be a Tory. I want to be able to say just what I think.
But if I stay in the bank I shall never have time to say what I think. There
is so much I want to do.
Vivien has made great progress this winter, considering that she has had
nearly everything against her the London winter and the flat where there
is no fresh air and the worry of my decisions and the strain of the Criterion.
She has only been able to keep up and make progress by going every day
to Dr Cyriax, the Swedish doctor, who treats her for an hour with
manipulation and hand vibration, getting her digestive organs into place
1 TSE published no reviews for LW (N&A) for a period of over three years, between The
Beating of a Drum (34: 1, 6 Oct. 1923) and Whitman and Tennyson (40: 11, 18 Dec. 1926).

and stimulating them to do their work. It is a wonderful system. Dr Cyriax
treated Mrs Haigh-Wood for arthritis, but her special interest is the
digestive system, colitis, etc. Viviens colitis is very much better, but I think
she is now at the end of the winter beginning to show signs of anaemia
again. This is always the worst time of year for her it is just a year ago
that she broke down so badly as it often is with anaemic persons, and I
want to get her to the country as soon as I possibly can.
I am sorry that Mrs Haigh-Wood thought fit to use the word drugs.
Viviens drugs consist of a bismuth solution for the intestine, occasional
doses of carbonate of magnesia and bicarbonate of soda and a mild
sedative at night prescribed by Dr Martin. She has succeeded in doing
without a stronger narcotic which was prescribed for her by the same
physician who attended Mrs Haigh-Wood in her illness. Every bit of her
doing without drugs is due to her own effort and persistence of will. I say
this simply because I know that her mother will not have given her the
credit for it.
I have been under Dr Edgar Cyriax the husband of Dr Cyriax who treats
Vivien. He treats the nerves of my head and neck and spine, and stomach,
three times a week, and I must say that I think he has been the cause of my
keeping going through this terrible strain. He has come and treated me at
home for the same fee during all this influenza, three weeks. I do not know
how we should have got through without the two of them. No one knows
what a struggle we have had, what a fight. I have nothing to complain
of, but it has been a struggle. Of course the treatment has been a great
expense, although at reduced fees.
I am slowly getting over the influenza and am out and about. I had to
wire instructions about a number of matters at the bank, all through it
except the first week, and also about the Criterion. Vivien has handled a
great deal of the latter business for me, and we have a young man in the1
[incomplete]

Dear Lewis,
I am sorry I did not answer the door this afternoon but I was in bed and
did not want to get up or see anybody. Had I known it was you, I should
1 CCE wrote (8 Mar.): I am glad you have a young man to do secretarial work in the
evening (see below). This is a reference to J. C. Culpin.
321
have let you in. It would really be better in future if you would telephone
beforehand to say that you are coming.
As soon as I can possibly get the MS read,1 including what you have
just left, I will come to see you at your studio in the evening. I hope this
will be by Friday of this week and I will send you a card or wire to let you
know.
Yours,
T. S. E.
My dear Sydney
Thank you very much indeed for Celeste.2 The Criterion is very
fortunate to have it, for it is a brilliant piece of work, and moved me
extremely.
I have been laid up in bed with influenza, but hope to be out in a day or
so. Largely fatigue we have both been working at top pitch for the last
[three del.] five weeks to get out the Criterion it is all ready and will be
sent out on the 29th. And now we must set to work at once on the April
number.
We do indeed want to see you. There is so much to talk about after this
long time. Vivienne has stood the winter in London far better than last
year, and has kept up remarkably well, but this long spell of bitter cold
weather is beginning to wear on her and she has been very feverish this
afternoon, and is beginning to exhibit some of the old symptoms of this
time last year. Nevertheless, when she is able to see friends, I think it is
much better for her and more cheering to go to see them than for them to
come here. I will ring you up on Tuesday evening, so you need not bother
to answer this.
Affectionately,
Tom
1 The second instalment of Lewiss new novel, for publication in C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).
2 On 23 Feb., SS sent TSE his story Cleste, a study written from the point of view of a
sentimental character. It was based on Cleste Albaret, in Prousts la recherche du temps
perdu, who SS said was an excellent and tiresome woman, whose only value was her
devotion to her master. Despite some diffidence, Schiff thought its conscientious banality
might give it some historical interest. It appeared, as by Stephen Hudson, in C. 2: 7 (Apr.
1924), 33248.

PS Vivienne has had you both so much on her mind that she has been
intending to ring up Lye Green1 to ask how you were, but I forgot to
mention that she has had an attack of influenza the last ten days and I
think I caught it from her.
My dear Whibley,
I have been in bed with influenza and am still feeling pretty miserable. I
have been invited to Cambridge this weekend, to see The Birds, but I dont
think I shall be up to it and I dont suppose you will be there, which
would be a strong inducement.
May we hope to receive Chesterfield2 in the next two or three weeks?
Remember that we are depending upon it and shall be in a bad way
without it. You will have the delayed January number on the 1st March.
Do you consider it desirable to invite Kerry to write on Shelburne?3
I did not tell you that what you said at our last meeting was a great
encouragement to me. But I hope to say more about this at our next
meeting. I also want to discuss my article in the Criterion4 with you after
you have seen it I should have preferred doing so before I printed it, had
that been possible.
[T. S. E.]
to Italo Svevo5 cc
Dear Sir,
I am sorry that I was not at home when you called, as I should always
be very happy to meet any friend of Mr James Joyce. I am very much
1 The Schiffs lived at Lye Green House, Chesham, Buckinghamshire.

2 CWs Lord Chesterfield appeared in C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924), 23657.
3 See TSEs letter to RA of 20 Sept. 1923.
4 Four Elizabethan Dramatists: A Preface.
5 Italo Svevo Italus the Swabian pseudonym of Ettore Schmitz (18611928), Italian
novelist from Trieste. JJ became his English teacher in 1907 and encouraged and promoted
his novels. Like TSE, Svevo spent a period in a bank (Viennese Unionbank in Trieste in the
323
obliged to you for your book,1 which I shall read with great interest,
although I fear very slowly.
Could you lunch with me on Thursday next, at the Cock in Fleet Street,
at 12.30? I should meet you just inside the entrance.
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
to His Royal Highness, Prince Wilhelm of Sweden cc

I have to thank Your Royal Highness for Your letter of the 12th
February and to express the hope that Your Royal Highness will reconsider
judgment. The Criterion and its contributors would be in every way
honoured by Your Royal Highnesss collaboration. Your Royal Highnesss
letter indicates complete command of the English language, but if this
should still be a difficulty, I have to inform Your Royal Highness that we
are quite prepared to translate from Swedish any manuscript that Your
Royal Highness might be good enough to allow us to use.
I remain Your Royal Highnesss
obliged and obedient servant,
[T. S. E.]
Will you kindly debit the Criterion and send a cheque for 4.0.0 to J. R.
Culpin at this address with a receipt form for four weeks secretarial work
for the Criterion?
1890s), and combined a career as a businessman with writing. He lived in England

early in the century and again after WW1. His impressions are recorded in This England is
So Different: Italo Svevos London Writings, ed. John Gatt-Rutter and Brian Moloney (2003).
1 La Coscienza di Zeno (1923) later translated into English by Beryl de Zoete as The
Confessions of Zeno (1930 ) which Svevo had delivered in person to TSEs flat in London.
It was sceptically reviewed by G. B. Angioletti in his Italian Chronicle, C. 4: 3 (June 1926).

I hope that you will not have a great pressure of work in getting the
Criterion distributed as I shall feel that it is my fault.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
to Mrs Arnold Bennett1 ts Keele

Dear Mrs Bennett
I am indeed deeply flattered at being asked by you to speak about
Ronsard at the celebration of the Institut Franais.2 It is a great temptation
to accept such an honour although I am only a humble admirer of
Ronsard3 and have no thorough knowledge or special competence to speak
about him. I have learnt by experience that it is extremely dangerous to
make such engagements, because, as I lead a life which never leaves me a
free moment, I know that when the time comes, it is always very difficult
for me to carry out my promises, and often they have had to be carried out
in an inadequate way. Rather than take a risk which might involve either
disappointing you altogether at the last moment, or else doing badly by the
guests and by myself, I must regretfully decline the honour.
With many thanks and best wishes for the success of a celebration which
I should be proud to support,
I am,
Yours sincerely
T. S. Eliot
1 Marguerite Bennett, ne Soulier, French wife of the novelist Arnold Bennett (who had left
her the previous year). With Edith Sitwell and Helen Rootham, she launched the Anglo-
French Poetry Society in 1920, though she soon fell out with them. Lytton Strachey described
how at a meeting of the Society in June 1921, after TSE had read some poems, Mrs Arnold
Bennett recited, with waving arms and chanting voice, Baudelaire and Verlaine till everyone
was ready to vomit (quoted in Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey: The New Biography, 497).
2 She invited TSE as an English poetic admirer of French poetry to give a talk at an
occasion to commemorate the fourth anniversary [centenary] of the birth of Prince de
Ronsard. Pierre de Ronsard (152485), was a French Renaissance poet who, with du Bellay
and others, founded the Pliade. TSE had told RA on 17 Nov. 1921 that he thought du Bellay
the better poet.
3 Writing as F. M. in C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924), VHE quoted Ronsards Le temps sen va.
325
to F. S. Flint cc
Dear Flint,
Thank you for your letter. What you say about Marichalars article
seems to me entirely just and in accord with the impression a superficial
examination gave me.1 You need not bother to return the article as I have
another copy.
The Criterion is out today and I trust that you will receive it tomorrow.
The April number, by the way, should appear on the 15th April as usual
so that we shall want your notes at the usual time.2
As for your remark about your inability to write;3 that is entirely absurd
and reprehensive and I shall have to see you soon and speak seriously to
you about it. Otherwise, you will become as bad as Richard [Aldington]
whose ideas of scholarship are so high, that he practically refuses to write
at all. And remember that I am myself very poorly educated and have a
smattering of a great variety of subjects. After the pressure of getting the
April number to press is over, I shall ring you up and suggest a lunch.
Yours ever
[T. S. E.]
to Herbert Read cc
Dear Read,
Thank you for your letter. As the Modern Quarterly have been so polite
and as you think well of it, you must certainly have it.4 Would you mind
writing to Cobden-Sanderson for me and asking [sc. saying] that I have
asked you to ask him to put the Modern Quarterly on the exchange list?
And if you would also write to the Modern Quarterly on my behalf and
1 On 25 Feb., Flint said Marichalars article on the art of criticism lacked the seriousness
at which TSE aimed in C. Given that it was largely derivative from current French writing,
it would be better to go direct to Frenchmen for this, and not to a Spaniard.
2 Flints notes on Italian Periodicals and Danish Periodicals for C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).
3 Flint said: As for contributing something more serious than notes and translations, Im
afraid youve come to the wrong man. Im not half educated, and I wonder at my cheek in
ever having published anything at all.
4 On 26 Feb., HR quoted V. F. Calverton, American Marxist critic and editor of The Modern
Quarterly (Baltimore), saying I still believe the Criterion to be the best magazine that is now
appearing in England, and said he wanted an exchange copy. HR thought the Quarterly
more of an ally than most of the American papers.

tell them that the Criterion is coming, and ask them to send their review
direct to you as I am extremely pressed for time. Sanderson will give you
some subscriptions forms if you ask him.
I quite agree with you about the desirability of building up a circulation
in America.1 Would you let me know the names and addresses of what
you consider the most important American periodicals with which we [do]
not exchange?
I am sorry to have been so vague about the date when I wanted your
article,2 but as you also seem to be a busy man, and as I understood that
you did not want to be pressed for time, I thought I would merely wait
until you had it ready, and then fit it in the first number possible.
Meanwhile I have more than filled up the April number, so that the only
question is whether it can go into July or whether it should wait till
October.3 The difficulty with a Quarterly is that one cannot risk getting
suitable material at short notice; consequently there has to be a sort of
waiting list, as a result of which everybody has been appearing a quarter
or so later than they should do. I must get the April number ready for press
within the next fortnight. When the pressure is over I shall write to you and
if meanwhile, you should be visiting East London, as you used to do, please
ring me up at Central 8246 and arrange a lunch with me.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
to Coningsby Disraeli 4 cc
Sir,
At the request of Mr F. W. Bain, I am having sent to you a copy of the
Criterion containing Mr Bains essay on the late Earl of Beaconsfield.5 I hope
that Mr Bains essay and the paper in general will be of interest to you.
I am, Sir,
[T. S. E.]
1 HR said it ought to be possible to build up an American circulation, and exchange

copies would help do this.
2 HR wanted to know when his article on Psychology and Criticism was needed.
3 HRs Psycho-Analysis and the Critic appeared in C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925), 21430.
4 Coningsby Disraeli (18671936): Conservative politician; nephew of Benjamin Disraeli.
5 F. W. Bain, Disraeli, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924), 14366.
327
to Anabel M. Berry1 cc
Dear Miss Berry,
Thank you very much for thinking of me and for sending me the tickets
to Miss Sitwells lecture.2 I should very much like to come, both for the
pleasure of hearing Miss Sitwell and for the purpose of supporting any
undertaking of the Arts League of Service.3 I have unfortunately made
another engagement for Wednesday which will be difficult for me to break;
but if I cannot come myself, I shall try to pass the tickets on to someone
who would enjoy it. I hope on the next occasion to be able to come and
see your new premises and I hope that your presence in London means
renewed and beneficient activity on the part of the Arts League of Service.
[T. S. E.]

Sunday night [?2 March 1924] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Lewis
Very many thanks. If you will send MSS.4 as soon as ready there will
always be someone here, or they will be quite safe in my letter box. I am
not always here at night but you can always find me in the day, or for
lunch, at 20 King William Street (Central 8246). Come and lunch any day
in the City. In any case I shall want to see you three or four days after I
receive MSS.
Yours
T. S. E.
Might there be another part of the Zagreus book for April or June?5
1 Anabel M. Berry, organising secretary of the Arts League of Service; author of Animals in
Art (1929) and Art for Children (1929).
2 Edith Sitwell was to lecture on Forms of Expression in Contemporary Poetry, at the Arts
League of Service, Adelphi Terrace House, London, on 5 Mar.
3 TSE gave a lecture on poetry at the Arts League of Service on 28 Oct. 1919.
4 In a letter dated by W. K. Rose to February 1924 WL speaks of leaving of the MSS: a
section (roughly 50 pages) of a book Man of the World, delivered should the Apes of God
by any mischance not turn up by March 10 (Letters of Wyndham Lewis, 139).
5 The Apes of God appeared in C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).

3 March 1924 The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
My dear Monro,
I do indeed wish that we could meet more often and what you call my
politeness is certainly sincere. It is true my difficulties of seeing anyone any
oftener than at long intervals are much greater than anyone understands,
because few people realise what it means to have to put a whole days work
into an evening. Unfortunately, I cannot come to supper this Wednesday
because I have made an engagement, but I should be very glad to come
some other Wednesday to meet your friend. Of course I must explain in
advance, that the Criterion cannot at present afford an Assistant Editor; it
has had pretty heavy expenses lately and I am trying to run it with the
utmost economy. That keeps me extremely busy of course but I must get
along somehow with what help I can afford, as I do believe that the thing
is worth while keeping up. But nevertheless I should be glad to make the
acquaintance of the man you have told me about.
It will suit me capitally if you can let me have your article1 by the 1st of
June; but remember that I shall have to have it by that date in order to get
it into the July number.
I am delighted to hear that you will be spending part of your time in my
neighbourhood this summer. Do let me know how near to Chichester you
are. I may be going down quite soon for a long stay and I shall be there
through the summer for weekends and we shall look forward to having
you as a neighbour. Do let me have your address. Meanwhile, I hope we
may meet again in a week or two.
Yours ever,
T. S. Eliot
My dear Sydney,
I cannot tell you how touched we are by the inscription which you have
put in the copy of Tony.2 But I am writing for both of us and must make
an attempt to express what we both feel. We should like you to believe
1 Monro, Wordsworth Revisited, C. 2: 8 (July 1924).

2 Stephen Hudson, Tony (1924).
329
that our encouragement is always ready for you if you need encourage-
ment, because you must know that we can give much more than what is
expressed by the word approval. But we are really distressed at your
giving us this book, because we had wanted to buy a copy for ourselves.
We shall however nevertheless buy a copy and give it to someone whom
we like very much and whom we think might understand it.
We are very much struck by your exposition of the fundamental idea of
Tony as expressed in your letter to Sadleir.1 It is the essential idea to keep
in mind, I think, in reading the book and it is one with which I am very
much in sympathy. I really wish that such a letter might have been
published as a preface to the book itself. For I fear, that not many readers,
however much they appreciate the skill of the story, will be able to draw
this conclusion for themselves.
I am looking forward to a long talk with you later in the week.
Meanwhile we both send our love and sincerest good wishes for Tony.
Affectionately,
Tom

[Early March? 1924] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
Dear Lewis
Many thanks for the fresh MSS.2 I will do as you say. I hope it will do
if I return you the part you want when I come on Wednesday evening. I am
afraid I have mislaid your new address. It is ? Holland Walk ?3
Yours
T. S. E.
Zagreus looks very well in the C. I think4
1 Michael Sadleir (18881957): book collector, writer, bibliographer, and SSs publisher at
Constable; later author of Fanny by Gaslight (1940).
2 Probably a reference to the second extract from The Apes of God, C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924),
30010.
3 Lewiss letters were addressed from 61 Palace Gardens Terrace.

My dear Whibley,
I am sending the book registered and insured to Constable in Edinburgh
as you requested.1 I shall certainly do my best to get it finished by the
autumn.
I for one can say that I enjoyed our lunch immensely.2 I liked Baldwin3
very much indeed. But there was much that I should have liked to have
discussed with you which had to be left unsaid, and I hope therefore that
you will come up to town soon as you promised and that we may have an
evening together.
Affectionately,
[T. S. E.]
This is just a note in great haste to enclose this letter from Cocteau.4 It
looks as if he meant to give us the slip. That would be a great pity, because
I have already advertised him as a contributor and a contribution from
him would have impressed many people here and in Paris. This letter
arrived at the exact moment when he had promised a contribution. I wish
you would let me know if you can think of any way of bringing pressure
on him to send something. It is most unfortunate to lose this contribution.
[T. S. E.]
1 Seneca: His Tenne Tragedies, trans. into English by Thomas Newton, to which TSE had
agreed to write an introduction for CWs Tudor Translations Series.
2 TSE and Whibley lunched on 2 Mar., together with an undergraduate named Wood.
3 Stanley Baldwin (18671947): Conservative politician. He became Prime Minister on 22
May 1923, but lost his majority in the General Election of Dec. 1923. Although he attempted
to stay in office leading a minority government, his government was defeated on 21 Jan.
1924. Baldwin resigned but was confirmed as leader of the Conservative Party on 11 Feb. In
a series of speeches over the following months he set out what came to be termed the new
conservatism, and was returned to power in Oct. with a massive majority.
4 See TSEs letter to Cocteau of 17 Feb.
331
to Frank Crowninshield cc
Dear Mr Crowninshield,
Thank you very much for your note of the 20th and for continuing to
think of me.1 I have not by any means forgotten either Vanity Fair or
yourself and I sincerely hope to become a more frequent contributor in the
course of this summer.2 I have been so busy with the Criterion this winter,
that I have had no time for anything else; for several months I have been
without an Assistant Editor and for most of the time without even a
secretary. We have just brought out the number which should have
appeared in January and I am now engaged in making up the number for
April. Meanwhile I hope, that you can remember me for two or three
months longer until I send you something which I have in mind to write.
And if, as I hope, you are going to visit us again this year, you must let me
know in advance and I shall hope to see more of you than I did a year ago.
[T. S. E.]
to Cecil Scott 3 cc
Dear Mr Scott,
I am returning herewith your manuscript on Rimbaud which I have
retained for so long because it interested me.4 But as it would be impossible
for us, in any case, to publish an article of this length within the next nine
months owing to our having accepted a great deal of material, I think that
I had better now return it to you. It is an interesting subject, but I think that
you need to develop it still further and make a very thorough study of it.5
1 Crowninshield, editor of Vanity Fair, wrote (5 Mar.): You wont forget us, will you.
He was unable to forget meeting TSE.
2 TSE had published A Prediction in Regard to Three English Authors, Writers Who,
though Masters of Thought, Are Likewise Masters of Art, in Vanity Fair 21: 6 (Feb. 1924).
He published nothing further in Vanity Fair.
3 Cecil Scott reviewed in the Adelphi and elsewhere.
4 I wrote it in the first place with no intention of publishing it, said Scott in an undated
letter from Trinity College, Cambridge, but because of the indignation I felt at Mr Harold
Nicolsons picture of the poet [Rimbaud] in his book on Verlaine . . . No French writer has
traced the connection between de Nerval and Rimbaud; or made any direct reference to the
Cabbala.
5 On 4 June Scott asked for TSEs views about a revised version that would include
Baudelaire and de Nerval.

If you are in London during the vacation, I hope that you will let me know,
so that we may renew our acquaintance and discuss these and other
subjects. Do drop me a line in advance if you are expecting at any time to
be in London for a few days.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to H. P. Collins1 cc
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your letter of the 27th January enclosing MS of your
essay on Housman.2 I shall look forward to seeing the book and wish that
we could use the MS. But unfortunately we have so much material
accepted, that it is impossible even to consider any more contributions for
the next six or nine months.3
With many thanks,
Yours faithfully
[T. S. E.]
to Gilbert Brooks4 cc
Dear Mr Brooks,
I am very much pleased at receiving from you a copy of your poems
inscribed with your name. I have not had time yet to read enough to
venture on a criticism, but I think from what I have read, that if I did, it
would be of a complimentary nature. I am extremely distrustful always of
my own judgements in contemporary literature and therefore I never
venture any until I have time for a thoroughly considered opinion. But
1 Harold Poulton Collins (18991985): English editor and critic; worked with JMM on the
Adelphi.
2 Collins offered a chapter from his forthcoming Modern Poetry (1925); it appeared as
A. E. Housman: A Retrospective Note, in Adelphi 3: 3 (Aug. 1925).
3 Collins contributed A Note on the Classical Principle in Poetry, C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925), and
numerous later reviews.
4 Benjamin Gilbert Brooks: poet and critic; author of Camelot (1919).
333
I shall look forward to reading your book and if possible to writing to you
again about it.1
I remember very well having met you and look forward to some day
having the opportunity of renewing our acquaintance.2
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
to Miss Kate Buss3 cc

Dear Miss Buss,
Excuse me for not having answered your letter of the 12th January and
for not having thanked you for your compliments. If you wish to send me
the title page of Prufrock, I will gladly put my name on it and return it to
you and I return herewith your postage stamp for that purpose.4
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
1 Exile: Poems (Dijon: Maurice Darantire, 1923). I am aware, wrote Brooks (13 Feb.),
that it may seem rather cavalierly [sic] to send such a book to you who, to judge from your
critical writings, seem to have so rigid a system of selection to apply to poetry. Still, I have
the courage of honest workmanship. I should be pleased to know how certain of the poems
strike you.
2 I had the pleasure wrote Brooks, of being introduced to you once at Oxford, at the home
of Lady Ottoline, by Aldous Huxley, about the summer of 1920, shortly after the appearance
of my first volume . . .
3 Kate Buss: American writer; author of Jevons Block (1918) and Studies in Chinese Drama
(1922). An early admirer of EP, she reviewed Cathay in the Boston Evening Transcript (6 Dec.
1916). In 1916, EP had told her: Do keep an eye out for Joyce and also for T. S. Eliot. They
are worth attention. She and EP corresponded about TSE and Bel Esprit in 1922.
4 I have one of the rare and precious copies of your PRUFROCK, wrote Buss. Do you
think I might have your signature to add to its lustre? Or, should I enclose a title-page, would
you write your name upon it? . . . Although you will never have heard of me I have listened
to your praise frequently by your Paris friends. Also I read and, too rarely you publish
so seldom, review you . . . That I refrain from adding a stamp signifies inability to procure
one in Boston!! Will this U.S. issue serve as the fair exchange in some American
correspondence?

My dearest Tom:
I received yesterday your lovely letter and it made me very happy.1
I feared you were offended with me because of what I had written
regarding putting your Hydraulic stock in trust, and I felt I could not bear
it in my old age. So night before last I lay awake many hours in much
trouble. Your letter reassured me of your continued affection.
Some time today (I am awaiting a telegram from Henry,) I will send you
a weekend letter. I have been thinking over what you wrote regarding my
going to see you this summer, and your coming here in the fall. It seems to
me that if there is any certainty regarding your coming here in the fall, that
will be better for you than my going to London. Of course it will depend
more or less on Viviens condition, but fall ought to be her best time. I
think the time spent on the ocean voyage would greatly benefit you.
Charlotte was going with me, and she came in yesterday. She and Ada both
thought you might be able to make profitable lecture engagements here
especially in New York. Certainly you could deliver one here. What do
you think? I think you could cover any loss of salary. If not I would pay
that as well as your travelling expenses.
It wrings my heart to think what a hard time you have had this year. I
am disgusted with Mr Aldington, but I have felt the situation was a delicate
one. He would resent a superior over him being an author himself. I should
expect a person in his position to desire to have his own contributions
published, and perhaps to resent a controlling judgment in choice of
articles. How you and Vivian must have worked! Must you do as much on
July and October numbers, as you say you want to carry the magazine
through its second year? It has seemed to me you could do more creative
work if you did not have the editorship of the Criterion.
Do not suggest such a thing as that my affections or even Henrys could
possibly be alienated from you. Not while I possess conscious being. So
long time elapsed that you did not write, I felt I had gone out of your life.
And I knew that were you happy and untroubled you would write, which
excited my apprehensions still more and caused many wakeful hours. For
I had rather know the worst than be kept in ignorance. It seems to me I
have written quite frequently, but when you were silent so long I did not
know what to write. Your last letter I shall always treasure. I have all your
1 TSEs letter of late Feb.
335
letters from the time you first went to Milton. I suppose I ought to destroy
at least part of them.1
As to your income I intend soon as it can be done to advantage to sell
300 shares (all I have left of Hydraulic) and divide. Your portion I will put
in trust with the Old Colony. I should like you to put in with it the bonds
Henry has purchased for you. If you approve let us know later. I shall start
also if I can a trust for Margaret. I wish Marian would put her money in
trust, as she does not know much about business. Gradually I want to turn
over to my children all I can spare from my income while still living. I have
just had an offer for Locust Street and have telegraphed Henry. Congress
(the House) wants a tax on gifts. I hope the Senate will not confirm.
Your work at the Bank must be tremendous. I am sorry the Socialists are
so in the ascendant. There is a considerable amount of parlor Bolshevism
here. I do not know how Shef2 feels I do not dare to talk freely with him.
I think you had better rent your apartments at once and will let you
know by cable if I am not coming. Of course if you were prevented from
coming I should be very greatly disappointed, but one can never be sure of
the future. I want what is for your best good, and feel it would
be a good thing in many ways for you. I am glad to know you are more
conservative. I think many Social Reformers are destroying many of the
finer qualities of the classes they desire to benefit.
I fear you will find it a slow process to regain your strength after
Influenza. I feared you would go out too soon and contract Pneumonia
which often happens. I hope that danger period is passed, as also I hope
danger of Vivians taking the disease from you. I am glad that the Swedish
cure is benefiting you both. I believe in the treatment.
Please do not let so long time elapse again without writing. Write just a
few lines. I cannot expect many such long delightful letters as the last with
its warm expressions of affection. Since I came from the hospital I am on
strict diet, but I think lying awake at night increases my trouble.
I hope you will find another satisfactory person to stay with Vivian in the
country. Charlotte would have gone about with me she dearly loves sight-
seeing. I could not have kept up with her. I should enjoy her company.
Is the April first or is it April 15th number of the Criterion still to be
prepared by you and Vivian? I am glad you have a young man to do
1 None of TSEs early letters from Milton Academy or Harvard survive: he destroyed
them after her death. On 5 May 1930 he told HWE he was glad to have the letters to
make ashes of.
2 Alfred Dwight Sheffield (see Glossary of Names), husband of TSEs sister Ada.

secretarial work in the evening. And I am very glad you think Vivian has
improved this winter. Give her my love.
You have ere this received Henrys report of your finances. I should think
it would be safe for you to keep your stock at 6% a while longer. It would
not do to put it in trust in that form. It would be better, I should think to
add it to the fund later.
If I went to London it would not be for sight-seeing but to see you. But
as I previously have stated, if you can come in the fall it will be better for
you. Of course I like Henrys protecting presence. I do not know whether
he can come another year or for some time to come. He does not entirely
trust the business judgment of the other two men. He says Buchen does not
realize income must exceed outgo. He pledged his stock for them last year.
I hope he will not do such a thing again.
I am glad that in the writing your essays on the Elizabethan Period in the
Criterion, you are planning to expand them into a book.1 I have always
had that in mind for you in relation to that period. I wish too that poem.
Perhaps you could write in crossing Atlantic if you could get as Henry
did a state room to yourself.
I wish to tell you in confidence that I have received a small inheritance
from the Blood Estate, of which the bulk goes to Aunt Susie. It is five
hundred dollars. I will tell you in confidence what I wish to do with it.
Houghton & Mifflin may not be willing to publish my Savonarola on any
terms, but if they will do so on my guarantee, I feel that I can use this
money leaving not so much to take from my childrens estate, from which
I should not have liked to take the full amount. You say you will write a
separate letter regarding the Savonarola. I know how horribly you are
pressed, but wish to say you can make the Introduction as short as you
please. I have a sentiment about having your name associated with mine,
which will also be an advantage. I should like now as soon as possible to
put my fortune to the test, to win or lose it all. I do not think a long
Introduction is necessary if you can just say the fitting word.
I think I will close this letter and write again very soon. I shall always
keep your last letter. It was a delight to me to receive such a long
communication. Remember you are always with me in spirit and thought.
And I am anxious to do all I can to help you. And I am always
Your devoted Mother
1 Four Elizabethan Dramatists: A Preface in C. 2: 6 was to have been followed by a book.

This never happened, though TSE did publish Elizabethan Essays (1934).
337
to Jean de Menasce1 cc
Dear Menasce,
Thank you very much for your letter and for fulfilling your promise of a
note on Hamlet.2 Your note is extremely interesting and needs no apologies,
and I hope to be able to use it. Meanwhile will you let me know as soon as
possible when you will be passing through London and how long you will
be here? I believe you told me that you are going to Paris for the Easter
vacation, but I hope that you will be staying for a few days in London.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to E. M. Forster cc
Dear Forster,
Jean de Menasce has lent me the manuscript of some translations of
poems of your friend Cavafy.3 He has suggested that we might like to print
some of them in the Criterion and tells me that you are the person to whom
to apply. There are several which I like very much. Might we use them?
I understood from Menasce that you had given him the manuscript for
the purpose of selecting a few poems for the [Oxford periodical] Isis but
he has generously suggested, that if you agree to our using a few in the
Criterion, I may have the first choice.4
1 Jean de Menasce (190273): born in Alexandria of a Jewish father; trained in law and
philosophy at Alexandria, Cairo, and Balliol College, Oxford, 19214, where he came to
know OM and her circle. He became secretary of the Zionist Bureau in Geneva, before
converting to Catholicism in 1925 and being ordained a Dominican priest in 1935. He
published a French translation of TWL, described as revue et approuve par lauteur, in
Esprit 1 (May 1926), as well as translations of parts of Ash-Wednesday in Commerce 15
(Spring 1928) and 21 (Autumn 1929). He became a professor of the history of religions and
missiology in Fribourg. His missiological essays were collected in Permanence et
transformation de la mission (1967).
2 On 1 Mar. de Menasce sent TSE his review of the OUDS production of Hamlet. He went
on to discuss Coriolanus in musical terms, comparing it with Boris Goudounov and
suggesting it was written on the same thematic principles as a Wagner opera.
3 Constantine Cavafy (18631933), Greek poet from Alexandria. Forster met him there
and on his return to England in 1919 helped to promote his work. Forsters essay on Cavafys
poetry in Pharos and Pharillon (1923) introduced Cavafy to the English-speaking world.
4 C. P. Cavafy, Ithaca, trans. G. Valassopoulo, appeared in C. 2: 8 (July 1924), 4313.

If this is all right, please let me know the person or persons who ought
to be paid for the translation apart from the payment to the author. It will
not amount to very much for anybody, I am afraid, but we manage to pay
[a] little higher rates for verse than for prose.
Now that I have the opportunity of asking, is there any chance of your
being able to offer us anything of your own before very long? It is a long
time since I have heard from you. We should very much like to print
something more of yours.
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
I am not quite certain about payment for Lvy-Bruhl,1 as this was all
arranged by Richard Aldington. The general terms decided upon for
foreign contributions are that payment at the rate of 15/- per 1000 words
to the translator should be deducted from the payment to the contributor;
and that the contributor should then be sent a draft in his own currency.
It is possible that Aldington in his correspondence with Lvy-Bruhl quoted
some definite sum and I hope it is not troubling you too much to ask if you
would not mind writing to Aldington to find out whether he made any
such arrangement. But if he quoted a definite sum in Francs, I think that
nevertheless Lvy-Bruhl ought to be given the advantage of the fall in the
French exchange. Another point to find out from Aldington is the name
and address of the person who made the translation.
I will write to Aldington later about the question of French periodicals.
There is also the question of payment on account of Hauptmanns
notes.2 I understood that Randall had the rights for this country. Could
you write also to Randall and ask him, to whom the payment should be
made and find out whether we should send a separate cheque to
Hauptmann or an inclusive cheque to Randall?
I am very sorry to trouble you with these details but I have had no time
at all lately as my wife is very seriously ill with influenza and I have been
1 L. Lvy-Bruhl, Primitive Mentality and Gambling, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924).

2 Gerhart Hauptmann, Notes on Art and Life, trans. by A. W. G. Randall, in the same
number.
339
at home most of the time for the past three or four days. As soon as
circumstances permit, I will telephone to you and arrange a meeting.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
to Messrs. John Lane, The Bodley Head Ltd1 cc

Dear Sirs,
I have to acknowledge receipt of several books which you have sent me
for notice in the Criterion. I think that it is only fair to mention that the
Criterion does not make a regular practice of reviewing current books but
only notices such as are thought worthy of particular mention in articles
or in editorial notes. I propose to give a notice of your excellent series of
Bodley Head Quartos as soon as possible but I am afraid that it will be
impossible to mention the other volumes which you have sent.2 I should
be glad if you would continue to send volumes of the series I have just
mentioned, as they appear. But in general, I prefer to let publishers know
when any volumes appear which we wish to mention. And you may be
assured that when we ask for any book to be sent, it will receive due notice.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
to G. Elliot Smith cc
Dear Mr Elliot Smith,
I am writing to remind you of a letter you wrote me on the 30th May
last, in which you promised me, that at some time you would write a paper
for the Criterion dealing with your views in Anthropology or with some
particular problem in which you are interested. I should like to claim the
fulfilment of this promise, as we have assured our readers that we should
1 The Bodley Head Press, founded by John Lane and Elkin Mathews in 1887.
2 In his Commentary (C. 2: 7, Apr. 1924), TSE said: To the public spirit, or the sagacity
of such publishers as John Lane and Routledge, has been left the publication of two recent
excellent series. He was referring to The Bodley Head Quartos (John Lane) and The
Broadway Translations (Routledge & Co.). The Bodley Head Quartos were scholarly reprints
of rare Tudor texts edited by G. B. Harrison.

publish something by you in Volume II. Do you think that it would be
possible for you to let me have something by the 1st of June, that is to say
for the July Number? I cannot tell you how highly we should appreciate
the honour of publishing a contribution by you or how much good it
would do the Criterion.1 If you are able to do us this favour, I should like
to have the title of your essay as soon as possible in order that we might
advertise it in the April number.
I repeat that a contribution from you would be of the highest value to
the Criterion.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to E. M. Forster cc
12 March 1924
Dear Forster,
Thank you very much for your letter and the information about Cavafy.2
I want to use at any rate the first poem which is called in the manuscript
ITHACA. I only questioned one or two points of spelling and the
translation:
And beget the goodly merchandise.3
But as I should not be able to use the poem until the July number, there
is plenty of time. I might be able to use one or two other of the poems as
well.
I am sorry that you do not feel in a fluent mood yourself but hope that
after the influenza season is over, you will be able to let us have something.
I am sure that you are able to make even Coleridge interesting.4
Sincerely yours
[T. S. E.]
1 See Elliot Smith, The Glamour of Gold, C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925).

2 On 11 Mar., Forster provided Cavafys address in Alexandria and the name of the
translator, G. Valassopoulo. They had given some poems to Jean de Menasce for Oxford
Outlook but otherwise left the English arrangements in Forsters hands. He had placed The
City and Theodotus with N.
3 When Ithaca was published in C. 2: 8 (July 1924), line 18 read And procure the goodly
merchandise.
4 Forster wrote that he had nothing in mind at all except for some possible reflections
about when Coleridge fell off his charger three times in a week and ended up helping a
comrade in a workhouse near Henley.
341
to Wyndham Lewis pc Cornell
[Postmark 13 March 1924] [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
Apes1 ?
2
Z. is a masterpiece.
Want Apes at once

17 March 1924 [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
Dear Virginia
I am very happy to learn that I shall have the honour of your company
at King Lear on the 30th (Sunday night) and have written for my tickets.3
I had to find out whether you would come before deciding which
performance to apply for.
Tell Leonard that I rang up again as he asked me to do, but got no reply,
so your bell is evidently not in order yet.4
Always yours
T. S. E.
1 WL, The Apes of God, Extract from Encyclical Addressed to Daniel Boleyn by Mr
Zagreus, C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).
2 Mr Zagreus.
3 The Phoenix Society production of King Lear, which TSE and VW attended on 30 Mar.
Writing as Crites (C. Apr. 1924), TSE applauded the production as almost flawless: It is
commonly said that King Lear is not a play to be acted . . . It is more likely, to judge from
the response of the audience, that King Lear is a work of such immense power that it offends
and scandalizes ordinary citizens of both sexes. On 5 May, VW recorded her sense of
betrayal: He took me to Lear (unrecorded) & we both jeered & despised; & now he comes
out in the Criterion with solemn & stately rebuke of those who jeer & despise. I taxed him,
lightly with this: he sat tight & said that he meant what he wrote: then what does he mean
by what he says? God knows. Theres something hole & cornerish, biting in the back,
suspicious, elaborate, uneasy, about him: much would be liberated by a douche of pure praise,
which he can scarcely hope to get (Diary, II, 302).
4 On 21 Mar., VW told Lytton Strachey she fled to Stracheys works when she heard the
telephone ringing with Toms sepulchral voice (Letters, III, 94).

My dear Whibley,
I regret very bitterly that I was not able to dine with you last week
because I have a great deal to say to you and there are several important
matters I should like to go into with you as soon as possible. It would give
me great pleasure as well, if you would dine with me on the first possible
evening from next Monday the 24th.
My wife has been dragged through a very bad attack of influenza by the
Doctors Cyriax, in a most miraculous way, but as you know, the after-
effects of influenza are so pernicious and dangerous, that she must be sent
into the country as soon as possible, as they say that there is no chance for
recuperation without sea-air and healthy surroundings.
I could arrange any night next week for dinner, but the earlier the better,
if you would let me know as soon as you possibly can. I do hope that the
warmer weather has brought you some relief.
[T. S. E.]
My dear Whibley,
Many thanks for letter which crossed mine. Wednesday the 26th will
suit me capitally. You say Wednesday the 24th, but I take it that you mean
the Wednesday and not the Monday, although either day would suit me.
Do come as early as you can after 7 oclock. I am delighted to be reassured
about Chesterfield.1
Affectionately,
[T. S. E.]
1 Whibley, Chesterfield, C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).
343
to Ada Leverson1 cc
Dear Mrs Leverson,
I have had it in mind for a long time to ask you for a contribution to the
Criterion, but I am always naturally timid of asking anyone so well known
and established as yourself to contribute to a new and comparatively
unknown review. But now I feel that the Criterion is about to justify its
existence, so may I hope that you will let me have something: in satiric
vein? If you will do us this honour, I must explain, that having to run the
Criterion alone and under so many difficulties, I can only manage it by
having contributions in hand very well in advance. I should be very pleased
if you could let me have something now, which I could use for April or
July. I shall be having the July type set up within the next few weeks; in fact
I often have three numbers in process at the same time, as it is such a great
help in giving the years volume the form which I should like it to have.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]

[Postmark 19 March 1924] [London]
Dear Lewis
You have surpassed yourself and everything. It is worthwhile running the
Criterion just to publish these.2 It is so immense that I have no words for
it. I can only say that you have taken a weight off my mind, and off my
chest, so that I breathe better after it.
Can I see you on Monday? I have a lot to do for the Criterion this week.
Yours
T. S. E.
1 Ada Leverson, ne Beddington (18621933), a sister of Violet Schiff; notable salonire

(her friends included Beardsley and Beerbohm); novelist and contributor to the Yellow Book
and Punch. She was a close friend of Oscar Wilde, who nicknamed her The Sphinx and
saluted her as the wittiest woman in the world, and she remained loyal to him after his
imprisonment. See Julie Speedie, Wonderful Sphinx: The Biography of Ada Leverson (1993).
2 Mr Zagreus and the Split-Man and The Apes of God, from The Apes of God (1930),
in C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924) and 2: 7 (Apr. 1924). The main target of WLs satire is the very select
closed club of moneyed descendants of Victorian literary splendour, who differ from
previous Bohemians by substituting money for talent as a qualification. These Apes of God

to Ada Leverson ms NYPL
27 March [1924] [The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn]
Dear Mrs Leverson,
I ought to have answered your letter at once, and should have done so
had I had one moment. Of course I should like to have the Wilde as soon
as possible,1 but I can safely give you till three weeks from the end of this
week the 18th of April? Can you have it ready by then? Please let me
know.
I am very pleased to hear about the Consultation too.2 I have been
thinking about the Proust too. But in April and July, as it happens, we are
having something by Proust and several things about Proust, and I dont
think we can publish any more Proust for a long time after that! And I
think the sooner you can publish the thing you have in mind the better. You
see I want you to write it, even if the Criterion cant publish it!
I do look forward to our next meeting. If we go away soon I shall write
to you as soon as we return.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
I like the title very much The Importance.3
Have you seen what Middleton Murry has written about George Moore
in the April Adelphi.4 It is the filthiest low poisonous attack I have ever
read. Do look at it.
are all geniuses, before whose creations other members of the Club, in an invariable ritual,
would swoon with appreciation (307).
1 On 24 Mar. Leverson suggested a sketch called The Last First Night, describing the first
night of Wildes The Importance of being Earnest on 14 Feb. 1895.
2 As an alternative, she suggested a burlesque dialogue medical consultation, between a
retired Philistine soldier of 35 & his soul physician an improvement on the Psycho-analyst
doctor: the title would be Consultation Sentimentale.
3 She suggested First Night: or The Importance of Being Oscar as another possible title for
her Importance article.
4 JMM, Wrap me up in my Aubusson carpet, Adelphi 1: 11 (Apr. 1924), 9518. This
diatribe against the Irish novelist George Moore was prompted by his Conversations in Ebury
Street (1924), which included an attack on Thomas Hardys absurd novels. In his treatment
of Mr Hardy, said JMM, he has surpassed his own previous triumphs in envy and vulgarity
. . . He cannot help himself; he is possessed but by such a mean, ugly, contemptible little
demon that we can feel no pity for him (958). On 28 Mar., Hardy congratulated JMM on
his brilliant little article, but added: I doubt if he was worth such good powder and shot as
you give him!
345
Will you please send a cheque for four Pounds to Mr J. R. Culpin at this
address in payment of secretarial work for the Criterion from 20th Febr.
to 19th March.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]

Dear Sirs,
I enclose herewith Mr Wyndham Lewiss The Apes of God. I shall be
obliged if you will immediately set it up for the April Criterion and send
the proofs direct to me. Please print the selection entitled Encyclical to
come first.1 I shall be glad if you will send me a card to acknowledge
receipt.
Yours faithfully
[T. S. E.]
30 March 1924 [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
Dear Mr Scott Moncrieff,
I am enclosing the Manuscript of Marcel Proust2 which I have just
received from Jacques Rivire and very much hope that you will be able to
let us have the translation not later than the 15th of June, as we count
upon this to be one of the most important contributions in the July
number. We very much appreciate the honour that you are doing us in
making this translation for the Criterion as it has been an essential part of
1 On 29 Mar. the printers confirmed receipt of The Apes of God, Extracts from Encyclical
and Lord Osmonds Lenten Party. The Apes of God appeared in C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924), ending
with the sentence: [Now, again, keep yourself free for the Lenten Party.]. Despite this trailer,
the third extract did not appear in a later issue.
2 La Mort dAlbertine, which appeared in Scott Moncrieffs translation as The Death of
Albertine, C. 2: 8 (July 1924).

my design of publishing the Manuscript of Proust, that the translation
should be by yourself.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Scofield Thayer ts Beinecke

Dear Scofield,
I was very pleased to get your letter of the 11th February and the delay
in answering represents only the extent to which I always undertake more
than I can do. I have been under great difficulties in running the Criterion
this winter as you may judge from the fact that the January number did not
appear until the end of February. This delay has also embarrassed the April
number since it has allowed me only six weeks instead of three months to
get it ready. Now the April number is nearly finished and I have to
complete an introduction which I have promised to the work of Paul
Valry and then I hope to get away for a months rest.
This is to assure you that I have not forgotten the promised essay which
I have not yet been able to write, but which nevertheless I shall attempt by
mid-summer.1 It is true that you have waited very patiently and I feel that
I must have pretty nearly exhausted the patience of the Dial as well as of
every other periodical and person with whom I come into contact.
I wish indeed that I had seen your folio.2 I should like very much to do
something about it, but the fact is that I could not put into the Criterion
anything of any length until at least October. I should be delighted to write
an Editorial paragraph meanwhile, but I quite realise that that would not
do. You will by-the-way observe that in a new series of Editorial
meditations which I have started,3 I shall refer frequently to the Dial and
1 On 11 Feb., Thayer enquired after TSEs promised essay upon recent developments in
English prose. No essay of TSEs appeared in the Dial in 1924. His next, Literature, Science,
and Dogma came out only in 82: 3 (Mar. 1927).
2 Thayer said he was giving out a very few copies of our folio Living Art, and wondered
if C. might be interested. Living Art was a book of reproductions of paintings, sculpture and
drawings by contemporary artists selected by Thayer, published by the Ganymed Press in
Berlin for The Dial in 1923, at $60. It included work by Picasso, Matisse, Vlaminck, and
other leading European and American artists. Nicholas Joost notes that securing a favorable
reception for Living Art was a difficult task. See review by WL in Art Chronicle in C. 3:
9 (Oct. 1924).
3 A Commentary, the first of TSEs regular editorial statements, appeared as the opening
item in C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).
347
to articles which appear in it. That will show you how much we depend
upon the Dial for intellectual food.
When do you return to Europe?
Yours ever,
T. S. E.
I am enclosing a third receipt for the transcription of Hugh Walpoles
Manuscript.1 I think that when I sent you Chapters I and II, I enclosed
receipts amounting to 1.3.7 so that the total which the Criterion owes
me is now 1.14.7.
I have had a letter from Douglas Ainslie asking when the Croce article
is to be published.2 This is something which Aldington accepted with my
consent and I feel therefore that I ought to read it before replying. Would
you mind sending it on to me some time this week?
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
to Catherine M. Maclean3 cc
Dear Madam,
I must apologise for the delay over your Manuscript [The Art of Mr
James Joyce] and for the delay in answering your letter of the 12th inst.
I have been very much interested in your essay on Mr James Joyce which
strikes me as a valuable piece of criticism and it is wholly for that reason
that I hesitated over it. But I feel that I had better return it to you, for in
any case, it would be impossible for us to make use of it for nearly a year
owing to the number of contributions already accepted. I feel therefore
1 Hugh Walpole, The Old Ladies, I and II, in C. 2: 7 & 8 (Apr. & July 1924).
2 Croces essay on Alfred Vigny. Ainslies translation of Croce, On the Nature of Allegory
appeared in C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925).
3 Catherine Maclean taught English at University College, Cardiff; later author of Dorothy
and William Wordsworth (1927) and Born Under Saturn: a Biography of William Hazlitt
(1943). She never contributed to C.

that I should be doing you an injustice by retaining it any longer and I
hope that meantime you will succeed in finding another publisher.
Yours faithfully
[T. S. E.]
Dear Elliot Smith,
Thank you very much for your letter. The title you have suggested
suggests an extremely interesting paper and I shall be delighted to have an
essay from you on that subject.1 Our only qualification is that we do not
deal with contemporary economics (or politics), so that I hope that what
you have in mind is a treatment of a general or historical character rather
than a discussion of contemporary problems. Of course, it is possible that
your intention is to throw light on these problems and there would be no
objection whatever if your essay does not go too deeply or technically into
contentious contemporary questions.
May I hope that we shall receive your contribution about the 1st of
May?
I hope that you will be visiting and lecturing at Harvard University as I
spent some years there and have many friends and relatives among the
faculty.
With many grateful thanks,
sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Jacques Rivire ts Dr Gerd Schmidt

31 March 1924 The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
Cher Monsieur,
Je vous fais toutes mes excuses davoir nglig de vous remercier pour
lenvoi du prcieux indit de Proust2 et de vous remercier aussi de tout
mon coeur de ma part et de celle de la Vicomtesse Rothermere pour tous
1 Smith, The Glamour of Gold, in C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925), was an historical account of the
most potent factor in the history of civilisation (355).
349
les soins que vous avez pris pour nous. Je suis comme vous, toujours
dbord de travail.1 Dans les circonstances o vous vous trouvez, vous
avez t infiniment gentil de vous occuper des intrts du Criterion.
Je veux vous avertir que nous voudrions bien recevoir de vous une autre
contribution indite qui galerait en importance la premire.* Je vous
signale encore une fois le bruit qua fait ici votre article sur Freud.2
Avec mes remerciements, je vous assure de mes sentiments les plus
cordiaux,
T. S. Eliot
* vers lautomne est-ce possible?3

30/31 March 19244 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My Dear Sydney,
I wanted to write to you sooner to thank you for your letter. But the
weekend was a strain (our weekends always are) and today I have been to
see King Lear (the Phoenix) and that has nearly done me in.
I am sure you will not give me away, you do not need to persuade me
that anonymity is vital;5 the more so as I have a very strong feeling that this
1 On 17 Mar., Rivire said he was dbord de travail [overwhelmed with work].

2 Rivire, Notes on a Possible Generalisation of the Theories of Freud, C. 1: 4 (July 1923).
3 Translation: Dear Sir, I offer you my most sincere apologies for having neglected to thank
you for having sent me the precious unpublished extract from Proust, and also to thank you,
both in my name and in that of Viscountess Rothermere, for all you have done for us. Like
you, I am always overwhelmed with work, and bearing in mind your situation, I appreciate
all the more the great kindness you have shown me in looking after the interests of the
Criterion.
I should like to let you know that we should be very glad to print another unpublished
article by you, which, I have no doubt, would be as important as the first.* I am glad to let
you know that your article on Freud has been widely acclaimed here.
With my thanks, please believe me, yours very cordially, T. S. Eliot
* towards autumn is that possible?
4 Schiff noted: answd 2d April.
5 A reference to VHEs authorship of an anonymously printed sketch in the latest C. This
appeared as F. M., Letters of the Moment I, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924), 2202: the first of a series
of fictionalised sketches she was to contribute at this time under a variety of pseudonyms, all
beginning with F. M.. (The others were Fanny Marlow and Feiron Morris.) Letters of
the Moment I, dated London, February 10th was very of the moment, and referred to the
Phoenix Society production of The Country Wife on the 17th. With its opening echoes of TSE
(My hyacinths are bursting clumsily out of their pots . . . And this is the essential spring
spring in winter, spring in London, grey and misty spring, grey twilights, piano organs . . .),
its quotation from Ronsard (Le temps sen va, le temps sen va, madame), its reference to

is a sort of flash in the pan that it wont go on that, in fact, it is being
done faute de mieux. But what is mieux? Why life, of course, my dear
Sydney. No one will ever persuade me that writing is a substitute for living.
And yet, it makes me very happy that this temporary aberration of mine
has given such added proof of your, and Violets friendship.
We must, please, meet before we both go away. The next Criterion
however is blocking every moment until Saturday, when it MUST go to
print. Until then chaos!
With my love to you both
Ever affectionately
Vivienne
to Ada Leverson cc
Dear Mrs Leverson,
I am deeply distressed. I am expecting to go to the country on Friday at
very short notice indeed and in order to do so I have had to fill up every
moment of my time until then with duties and appointments which would
otherwise have extended over a fortnight.1 I am distressed however merely
because you feel that it is necessary that you should discuss any details of
your contribution with me, not because I recognise this is necessary. I must
assure you that I am completely confident that anything you write will be
a brilliant success and that your misgivings are entirely unnecessary. I
cannot flatter myself that there might be anything about which you should
need to consult me in advance. Had it been possible, I should certainly
have come to see you but only for the pleasure of the visit and for the sake
of assuaging your anxiety. But I do not believe that any impartial witness
who knew your work would share these anxieties. Do write your
contribution just as you would for any other periodical2 and be assured of
Volumnia (a name drawn from Coriolanus), its discussion of artists and egoists, and its
play on Whigs and Tories (For Whigs rush in where Tories fear to tread), VHEs piece
suggests a strong convergence between husband and wife, even as it strikes a disturbing note
of its own: Now one begins to beat against the bars of the cage: the typewriter and the
telephone, and the sight of ones face in the glass (220). The image of beating against the
bars is taken by VHE from Stravinskys The Firebird.
1 On 31 Mar., Leverson asked for an opportunity to discuss her contribution on The
Importance before submitting it.
2 Leverson had been a frequent contributor to periodicals in the 1890s.
351
my confidence and of my desire to come to see you as soon as I am in
London. Indeed I can tell you that any contribution that appears in the
Criterion must be as the author would wish it to be.
Looking forward to seeing you on my [return].
[Sincerely yours,
T. S. E.]
to F. W. Bain cc
My dear Bain,
Thank you very much for your letter. I am very grateful to you for
putting me in the way of such a contribution and should like very much to
see it. It sounds like one of the sorts of thing that we want. Will you please
ask your friend Mr Selby to send the essay to me?1 I shall try to read it
immediately and return it gratefully if we cannot use it.
I had been meaning to write to you to tell you what a brilliant success
your Disraeli2 has been and how grateful we are to you. But I wanted still
more to say that we want another article from you this winter and as you
have yourself put the temptation into my head, I should like to suggest
that an essay by you vindicating either Charles the Second or George the
Third would be truly appreciated.3 Of course this is only a suggestion not
a limitation.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]

4 April 1924 [24 Concord Ave]
My dear Henry:
I will write you and use a special delivery stamp in the hope that you
will receive this Sunday evening, and can include in your night message
your opinion and advice as to whether I shall go to England this summer
or concentrate on the possibility of Toms coming here. Under date of
1 An essay on Bacon and Montaigne by F. G. Selby. For Selby see TSEs letter of 8 Apr.
2 Disraeli, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924).
3 Bain did not take up TSEs suggestions; he contributed 1789 (C. 3: 9, Oct. 1924).

March 16th1 he writes: Your cable on receipt of my letter leads me to
believe that you have finally abandoned the idea of coming to England
this spring. I told you in my letter that if you did not come to England, I
would come to America and, of course, I will. That is obvious. You will
of course realize that I cannot say when that will be, but it will be just as
soon as I possibly can.
Of course I must say that I am disappointed that you have given up all
idea of coming to Europe again as I had looked forward to great happiness
in having you here with me in the flat. You and I and Marion would have
been here with Ellen and Vivian would simply have come up now and then
from the country to see you. Of course it was out of the question her being
in London the whole summer, as it is essential for her to have six months
a year in the country. I realised naturally that you could not go about as
you did before and I should not have encouraged you to do so, but at the
same time I had hoped that you would be able to do a certain amount of
sightseeing and little trips with me. I shall be here in the flat all alone
during the summer and shall constantly think of how it would have been
to have had you. Anyhow the flat will be here and ready if you should
change your mind. It will seem very lonely without you. Will write soon
about Savonarola. This is the only important part of the letter.
Now I have written Tom in my letter before the last, that if his salary
was not continued during his visit here, I would pay it. He had expressed
doubt as to whether it would be paid. If I incur the expense of going this
summer, I shall not feel as if I ought to pay both salary and expenses.
Besides I understand that if I go this summer Tom will not come here, and
I feel as if it would be an advantage to him to visit America and if possible,
lecture. Can you advise me what you think would be for his best good. If
so and you send a night message Sunday, please express an opinion therein.
I shall not mail the Deed until I hear from you, although I am going now
to a Notary. I will wait to hear from you before I write to Zeibig, because
I want to know about the notes, and I emphatically want you to do what
is best for yourself.
With love,
Mother
1 TSEs letter is missing.
353
to St John Hutchinson1 pc Texas
Thanks very much. I am in great hopes of leaving London on Saturday
for a month. However, if I am prevented, I will come with pleasure. Dont
bother about lunch, because possibly I will have had it before I come.
Love to you both.
I enclose copy of my letter to Hazell, Watson & Viney Ltd, which will
explain itself. I have been working up till the last moment arranging the
make-up and correcting proof. I am afraid that this number will have to
be pretty bulky and there is no help for it.2 I shall try to ring you up
tomorrow in case there are any points to discuss.
I was very sorry to miss your party, although not altogether sorry to
have missed such a lamentable race.3 I wonder how it happened!
Yours in haste,
[T. S. E.]

Dear Sirs,
Herewith you will find the following enclosures:
1. Corrected proof of A Commentary
2. dto. The Old Ladies
3. dto. The Soul in the Kiss
4. Typescript of Letters of the Moment II
5. Corrected proof of George Antheil
6. Order of Contents
1 St John Hutchinson: see Glossary of Names.

2 The April number was 140 pages, as against about 110 for the previous two.
3 The Oxford and Cambridge boat race on 5 Apr.: Cambridge won by 4 lengths.

You will observe that I wish A Commentary to appear on the cover as
inside and without the writers pseudonym.1 You need not send Galley
proof of Letters of the Moment, but I should be glad to see Page proof if
you can let me have it.
I may send you two or three more paragraphs to add to A Commentary
by express letter to-morrow morning. You need not send Galley proof of
these either. I should not send it later than by express to-morrow morning.
If you have not yet sent out Galley proof of Lord Chesterfield, The
Apes of God and On the style of Marcel Proust, I should be glad if you
would send one copy of the pull to me.
IMPORTANT. Of the Apes of God, please notice that only the Section
entitled Encyclical Letter is to be printed in this (April) issue. The other
two sections are to be kept set up for July.2 I should be obliged if you will
kindly acknowledge receipt of the enclosures.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
PS Please do not alter the punctuation of Letters of the Moment in any
way.3
to Sydney Schiff ts Valerie Eliot

Old Fishbourne
My dear Sydney,
I must answer several letters at once. I did not mean to suggest that
Hulmes point of view was tentatively held, or that his mind was in a state
of suspense on main issues. Nor should I say that his philosophy was
1 TSEs pseudonym Crites did appear at the foot of his Commentary.

2 Extract from Encyclical Addressed to Daniel Boleyn by Mr Zagreus appeared in C. 2: 7
(Apr. 1924), but Lord Osmonds Lenten Party, the third extract, never followed.
3 This is an indication of TSEs close investment in VHEs anonymous contribution, dated
1 April, which included twenty lines of verse (described as obsequies on the passing
Movement) rescued from the rejected draft of The Fire Sermon, beginning When sniffing
Chloe, with the toast and tea, / Drags back the curtains to disclose the day, / The amorous
Fresca stretches, yawns, and gapes, / Aroused from dreams of love in curious shapes (C. 2: 7,
3601); see TWL: Facs, 39. VHEs letter of the moment also refers to bawdy Caroline
renovations by Congreve, the gently undulating bog of Anglo-Saxon democracy, JMM,
Proust, Stravinsky, Cocteau and the literary periodicals of the day, from the pink Dial and
austere Nouvelle Revue Franaise to the lemon yellow Adelphi and slim and elegant
Nation.
355
amorphous. It had not been elaborated; perhaps in logical structure it
might always have been defective. But I should say that he did set down in
essentials the only alternative directions that I can see to the directions of
the nineteenth century.1
As you know, I have read very little of Proust, but I am so far as I am
qualified to speak, of the opinion that he is not a classical writer.
Reconstruction of a past period and investigations of the unconscious do
not appear to me relevant: they might be attributes of either classic or
romantic. Proust appears to me, from what little I know of him, to be far
too much a sensationalist. It is I am sure a wonderful commentary on the
world that exists and has existed, not the discovery of a new one.
I should have included another section of my essay had I had the time
or strength to write it. A Commentary is no more than its name implies.2
I agree with what you say about democracy, though I see no necessary
connexion between democracy and Christianity. Christianity as I see it is
anti-democratic. But you are not to imagine that in this I am the
spokesman for any religious sect.
One may be certain of directions although not knowing where they lead.
I have not seen the Transatlantic Review. I remember meeting Adams
some weeks ago at your house, and had met him once years ago. Probably
he thinks that he has written an original poem. He is poor and obscure,
and no doubt industrious, and is welcome, like everyone else who is, to
what he can borrow from me. I speak from fatigue and indifference.3
If I find that I am reproached with having published such a perfectly
justifiable article as Wyndham Lewiss Apes of God, I fancy that I shall
know from what sources the trouble has sprung.4 Had I been in London,
I do not imagine that there would have been such a hue and cry set up
about it. In fact, my absence from London at this moment has given the
most excellent opportunity to all those people who bear me a grudge for
one reason or another, to gather together and vent their spleen in a cause
1 TSE remarked, in A Commentary, C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924), that T. E. Hulmes Speculations
(1923), with all its defects . . . is an outline of work to be done, and not an accomplished
philosophy. Yet it was equally the forerunner of a new attitude of mind, which should be
the twentieth-century mind, if the twentieth century is to have a mind of its own (231).
2 This was the first Commentary by TSE. It became an enduring editorial feature until
1939.
3 See John J. Adams, Dust and Brainworm, in Transatlantic Review 1: 2 (Feb. 1924).
Dust combines visions of London and images of the desert: Hurrying along the path over
Hell Rise, / Because of black clouds gathering and night descending. / Not knowing what
loss or ruin might befall me. Other lines include: What does it all mean? Whos there? Lord,
its you! /. . . The dry dust dancing beneath the moon corpses candle!
4 The Apes of God included much satire of Osbert Sitwell (Lord Osmund) and others.

which, being impersonal, will seem to them to conceal their personal
malice. In short, I have played into the hands of all my London friends
and given them an opportunity to display the hostility to the Criterion
which without exception they have most obviously felt since it first made
its appearance. Fortunately I am editing the paper for a woman of the
world and a cosmopolitan, who is not interested in petty tribal vendettas,
and whose idea of a quarterly is of one which will appeal not only to
London but to England, to America and perhaps other countries.
Ever yours aff.
T. S. E.
to Ada Leverson cc
My dear Mrs Leverson,
I quite agree with you that there is likely to be a revival of the nineties
and Vivienne and I are anxious to do all we can to help it forward.1 So
dont worry, but let us co-operate. I think you ought to send things to the
Dial and to Vanity Fair in New York. Can you not write something else
about the period soon and I will drop a line to Mr Crowninshield of Vanity
Fair.
I am so sorry that you have been ill and I only pray that it will not
interfere with your work. We both look forward very much to seeing you
in May.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to John Rodker 2 cc
Dear Rodker,
I feel that I owe you an apology for the long delay in the matter of your
Note on the Cinema. It has never quite seemed to fit in till now you know
1 On 5 Apr., Leverson wrote: this nearly 30 years after the troubles is the year there will
be a great revival & so forth of interest in O. Wildes work and life. So I long to have this thing
done for your Criterion. She reported meeting several co-idolators of TSEs poetry at Edith
Sitwells flat, and hearing a mere child quote from The Waste Land & Prufrock.
2 John Rodker: poet and publisher, see Glossary of Names.
357
how these things are. I am going to be quite frank with you as to what has
now happened. I had the type set up for this number. On seeing the proof
however, I honestly felt that it was not the best you could do that in fact
it would not do you justice and that I should ask you to write something
else. I cannot feel that you cared for the subject or that you wanted to
write this article, and such a feeling in any article always gives a lack of
conviction. You must at any rate give me the benefit of frankness in this
matter. I should be delighted to receive and to publish an article by you on
some subject which you felt to be completely congenial, and an article you
really wish to write and wish to appear in the Criterion.1
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
to Messrs. Curtis Brown Ltd cc

Dear Sirs,
I am returning to you enclosed story by Miss May Sinclair.2 As you will
see from the contents of past numbers of the Criterion, I have a very high
opinion of Miss Sinclairs work and am anxious to publish it whenever
possible. But we have already published two contributions by Miss Sinclair
in the present volume of the Criterion3 and as the Criterion aims to be a
representative publication, it is impossible with only four issues a year, to
include any contributor more than twice. It would therefore be impossible
for us to publish anything more by Miss Sinclair in the present year and I
can only express the hope that she could let us have something for the next
volume.4
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
1 On 8 Apr., Rodker thought he had asked TSE not to print his article, and was immensely
relieved it did not appear. He never contributed to C.
2 On 18 Mar., Curtis Brown submitted May Sinclairs The Mahatma Story.
3 Joness Karma in 2: 5 (Oct. 1923) and her poem The Grandmother in 2: 6 (Feb. 1924).
4 Harold Monro wrote a warm review of her verse novel The Dark Night, in C. 3: 9 (Oct.
1924), but she never published in it again.

to F. G. Selby1 cc
Dear Sir,
I thank you for sending me your manuscript on Bacon and Montaigne2
which seems to me extremely interesting. I should like very much to
publish it but owing to the fact that our April and July numbers are already
filled, I cannot promise to use it before the number of October 15th. Will
you let me know whether that suits you or not? I should very much regret
the loss.
I am, dear Sir,
yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
Please let us publish it in October.
to Bertrand Russell cc
Dear Bertie,
I am sending you herewith proof of a little editorial about you which I
am publishing in the next Criterion and is what, I suppose, most people
would call an attack upon you.3 I do not call it an attack myself but
simply a legitimate dispute and I hope you will take it as such; for you
must know that I am not a likely person to make anything in the nature of
a personal attack upon you. Anyway it is simply a point I am sure you
would know that I should disagree with you, but I had rather you saw it
before it appeared.4 I enjoyed very much seeing you that Sunday
1 F. G. Selby, English historical scholar; editor of works by Bacon, including the Essays
(1894), as well as Burke and other prose writers.
2 Bacon and Montaigne appeared in C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925).
3 The Honourable Bertrand Russell and Culture in A Commentary (by Crites), 2: 7
(Apr. 1924), 2323 attacked BRs assertion, in A Motley Pantheon (Dial 76: 3, Mar. 1924),
that science was the nineteenth centurys only claim to distinction, and that its literary men
were mostly second-rate, its philosophers sentimental, its artists inferior to those of earlier
times. On the contrary, said TSE, the man of culture of the present time is far too easily
impressed and overawed by scientific knowledge and ability; the aristocracy of culture has
abdicated before the demagogy of science (233). TSE acknowledged BR as a great
philosopher but he deplored the vulgar conception of culture in his article.
4 On 12 June, BR replied, There was absolutely nothing in it to vex me; Your opinion is
different from mine, but why shouldnt it be? Neither is founded on reason.
359
afternoon.1 I am going away in a day or two to the country but if you are
in London when I get back, I hope that I may come to see you again.2
Yours always,
[T. S. E.]
to Allan Wade 3 ts Valerie Eliot

8 April 1924 [The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn]
Dear Sir,
As one of the original members of the Phoenix Society, I am writing to
you to express my gratitude for the amazingly fine performance of King
Lear. I am certain that it is the finest performance that the Phoenix Society
has ever given; and since you are able to dispose of such fine actors as
those who played King Lear, I hope that the Society will devote more
attention to the less familiar plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries
rather than to Restoration Comedy.4 I am aware of course that the latter
is much more popular, but the performance of King Lear was enough in
itself to justify the existence of the Society. I suppose that it is too much to
hope that a supplementary performance with the same cast may be
performed at the end of the season but I have voiced this hope in the April
Criterion.
Yours faithfully,
T. S. Eliot
1 On 15 Oct. 1923, TSE had invited BR to come to tea the following Saturday.
2 BR was lecturing in the USA from 1 Apr. to the end of May.
3 Allan Wade (18811954), English actor, manager and producer, founded the Phoenix
Society and directed nearly all of its productions.
4 F. M., in Letters of the Moment II, made great play with the vogue for Restoration
Comedy represented by the Phoenix productions. Since their foundation, they had revived
Drydens Marriage la Mode and All For Love, Wycherleys The Country Wife and
Congreves Love for Love. Wade replied to TSE (9 Apr.): I agree with you in thinking that
there is much more useful work to be done in what for the sake of convenience one calls
Elizabethan drama than in Restoration. At present, as you say, Restoration drama seems to
be more popular . . . The supply of first rate Restoration comedy is pace my friend &
colleague Montague Summers strictly a limited one, & unless our audience are prepared to
support a good deal of experimental work we may find ourselves at the end of our tether far
sooner than need be.

to Duncan Yarrow 1 cc
Dear Sir,
Some time ago I wrote to express my appreciation of your magnificent
performance of Edward II,2 and I am now writing to tell you that your
performance of Edgar in King Lear seemed to me equally fine.3 I mean
that I do not think that the part and it seems to me a very difficult part
could have been better done. The play will remain in my memory as the
finest performance in the history of the Society. I have written a short
notice very much limited by space for the next number of the Criterion.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
to Hubert Carter 4 cc
Dear Sir,
I am taking the first opportunity which I have had to write to express my
very great admiration for your performance as Lear, and I hope that the
appreciation of a private individual who has attended the Phoenix Society
performances since the formation of the Society will not be unwelcome.
The performance was in my opinion much the finest that the Phoenix has
ever given, and this is due chiefly to the prodigious vigour and subtlety
with which you acted your part. I am mentioning the performance in the
next number of the Criterion but space has made more than a very brief
mention impossible. I hardly think that a finer representation of the title-
role could be given.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
1 Duncan Yarrow (b.1884): English actor.

2 Marlowes Edward II was directed by Allan Wade for the Phoenix Society at the Regents
Theatre, 1819 Nov. 1923. TSEs letter of congratulation to Yarrow for his performance as
the king is missing, but it was acknowledged with thanks on 7 Dec. 1923.
3 In A Commentary TSE commended the success of Yarrow as Edgar (a most difficult
role).
4 Hubert Carter (18691934): English actor, who had played the title role in the Phoenix
production of King Lear.
361
to Frank Cellier 1 cc
Dear Sir,
I am writing to express my appreciation of what seemed to me a really
perfect interpretation of the role which you took in King Lear. It is difficult
to believe that the play was not rehearsed for a very long time, and in any
case it is obvious that your performance of the part of Gloucester was
prepared with very great care. I hope it will not be unwelcome to you to
receive a word of praise and admiration from one of the original
subscribers to the Phoenix Society.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
8 April 1924 The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
Dear Flint,
I am looking forward to seeing you tomorrow but I shall be in a great
hurry and in any case I should have preferred to write to you about this.
As Richard has given up his criticism of French periodicals along with his
position,2 there is no one in London as competent to deal with this
criticism as yourself. Of course, I consider the French reviews the most
important part of the foreign reviews and it is really a question of finding
someone competent to give a rsum of the activity of the French mind
over three months. French reviews are of course more numerous than the
others and the space devoted to France must be longer than that devoted
to other nations. If you find the work too much for you, I really hope you
will consider taking on the French and dropping the others, but I hasten
to assure you that I much prefer that you continue to do what you have
been doing as well.3 Please think this over and let me know if you agree.
1 Frank Cellier (18841949): English actor, who played the part of Kent. TSE confused
Cellier with Frank Cochrane, who played Gloucester. In his Commentary TSE praised
Frank Cochrane and Frank Cellier as Gloucester and Kent.
2 Since RAs resignation, there had been no notes on French reviews in C. 2: 6 & 7 (Feb. &
Apr. 1924).
3 Flint reported on German periodicals in C. 1: 4, on Spanish and Italian ones in C. 2: 5,
on Danish and Italian in 2: 6 and 2: 7. In 2: 8 (July 1924), he would provide notes on an
accumulation of six months of French periodicals in addition to Italian and Danish ones.

In any case you cannot deny that you are the one person marked out for
this, and that you will be carrying on the work in which you were a pioneer
before the war; and remember that you will be able to say what you
damned well please about Paul Morand without any objections from me.1
Yours ever,
T. S. Eliot
to Conrad Aiken 2 ts Huntington

Dear Conrad,
The appearance in the Dial of your admirable essay on Emily Dickinson3
has reminded me of our loss of this contribution and of the fact that I have
not written to you. My wife only recovered from a severe attack of
influenza in time for us to put all our energies into preparing the April
Criterion which has now gone to press, but will be, I am sorry to say, a
week or so late. Meantime I have been wondering how you are and
whether you have been in London. I am very sorry indeed that we could
not use your essay within the time limit which you set. I am now however
advertising to you a vacancy in October. Will you promise me a critical
essay for that number? I think we may leave the subject to you. In spite of
your increasing laziness I think that you might be able to do me this
kindness.4
1 Paul Morand (18881976): French diplomat, novelist, playwright and poet; author of
Ouvert la Nuit (1922) and Ferm la Nuit (1923). During WW2 he was to be a prominent
collaborator. TSE had already encouraged his wife to say what she damned well please
about Paul Morand in her pseudonymous Letters of the Moment II. In mischievous mood,
VHE undertakes to parody one of the regular features of C., the notes on the contents of
other periodicals, domestic and foreign the monthlies, weeklies, the quarterly reviews, set
out in rows like a parterre. While purporting to flip through the Nouvelle Revue Franaise,
the London Mercury, the Adelphi, and so on, she chances upon an article, a Paris Letter by
Paul Morand, in the latest issue of the Dial (Mar. 1924, 26573), and proceeds to burlesque
the self-importance of Morands address to the Americans: A postiche style, this, not too
difficult to imitate . . . Mark my words well, we shall soon see plenty of little Paul Morands
and little Pauline Morands too, scribbling for their suppers. And then, our Monsieur Paul,
citizen of Paris in spite of all, with perfect facility will change his style, and leave them all dans
la pure.
2 Conrad Aiken: see Glossary of Names.
3 Emily Dickinson, Dial 76: 4 (Apr. 1924); reprinted in Aikens Collected Criticism (1968).
4 On 22 Apr., Aiken contested the charge of laziness, citing a book of short stories, a 2,000-
line poem and a novel. He had nothing on hand or in mind for Oct. He later wrote reviews
of Osbert Sitwell and Gilbert Seldes, and a poem Psychomachia, for C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924).
363
Do let me know also how you are and what your plans are for the
summer. I shall be going away for a short time but anything addressed to
me here is certain to reach me.
Yours ever,
Tom

Dear Lewis,
I presume that you received your proof direct this morning as I received
one copy. If you have not already returned it, will you please do so at once
direct to Messrs. Hazell, Watson & Viney Ltd., Printers, Aylesbury, Bucks.
I have read over the Encyclical once more1 and am more amazed at it than
ever. There is one phrase which I think mars the effect because it is
superfluous and weakens the effect. I think it is much better to leave the
Bloomsbury accent at a queer exaggeration of speech and omit the
parenthesis bringing to ones mind the sounds associated with spasms of
a rough Channel passage which seems to me to cheapen it.2
I presume that you have deleted the word Bloomsbury and altered the
name Osmund.3
Yours ever,
T. S. E.

1 Extract from Encyclical Addressed to Daniel Boleyn by Mr Zagreus.

2 The passage was thus amended to read: It was this rather scandalous shabbiness, and a
queer exaggeration of speech, that cut them off from the outside world (C. 2: 7, 308).
3 In an undated letter to TSE, WL allowed: the name Stillwell (if too suggestive of certain
people) could be altered to anything you like, and Bloomsbury (only occurring once)
could be deleted. However, he also conceded in a postcript: I . . . think that in any case
another name, for the purposes of this extract, had better be given to Lord Osmund. Neither
Osmund (i.e., Osbert Sitwell) nor Bloomsbury figure in the version published in C. Lewis
re-introduced Osmund and Bloomsbury when publishing The Apes of God as a novel in
1930. When the Sitwells and the Schiffs did expostulate about WLs piece, he defended himself
in another undated letter to TSE; There was no question about the cap fitting they put
it on and rushed out into the street exclaiming. Schiff this morning writes me that I shall be
molested in consequence of my article by those I have castigated . . . The article is a
very general statement, and (except for the bare truth of what it says) there is no excuse for
the threatening noises that these outraged gentlemen have filled the air with. So tender with
their own sweet selves, the least speck of dust blown they think purposely their way is, to our
spoilt children, a terrible offence. I hope they have not been disturbing you too much
during your much-needed holiday?

to Herbert Read cc
Dear Read,
I return herewith the letter from the Modern Quarterly.1 I shall be very
grateful if you will deal with it.
After the Criterion is out, I will ask Cobden-Sanderson to see about the
exchanges. As the number of exchange copies must be kept down within
reasonable limits, I think that we ought to select our exchanges with the
whole world in view, not merely one country or language by itself, so I
suggest that at our next fortnightly luncheon2 I should produce a list of our
present exchanges and then that we should all decide in committee what
are the most important to add and how many new exchanges can be
allocated to each country. I may write to you again before our next
meeting. It is pleasant I think to have these luncheons even for people like
you and myself whose time is so limited.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]

For the attention of Mr Jowatt
Dear Sirs,
I hereby confirm our telephone conversation of this afternoon in which
we arranged that you should get the bound copies of the April Criterion
to the hands of Mr Cobden-Sanderson by Thursday morning the 17th inst.
at the latest and if possible on Wednesday, the 16th inst.; and I confirm our
arrangement that you should work overtime to the extent necessary to
make this possible; and our arrangement that you should send me the page
1 On 10 Mar., HR listed the US periodicals with which they exchanged The Literary
Review, The Dial, The Century, The Yale and The Modern Quarterly as well as other
possible ones, including North American Review, Scribners and Harpers.
2 HR later recorded: in order to preserve a regular contact, it was agreed that we should
meet for lunch one day every week in South Kensington, and for the next seven years we
forgathered at a pub called The Grove in Beauchamp Place. The Grove became the Mermaid
Tavern to which, week by week (I think it was every Thursday), came not only some of the
regular contributors to The Criterion, but also any sympathizing critics or poets from abroad
(T.S.E. A Memoir, in T. S. Eliot: The Man and his Work, ed. Allen Tate, 1966, 24).
365
proofs as printed and that I should make any alterations necessary by
telephone to you on the day of receipt. It is understood that you will not
delay paging on account of any corrected proof not yet received, and that
you should take every possible means of accelerating production to the
date named or even earlier if possible. I beg to express my obligation and
appreciation of your courtesy and attention.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
PS Referring to your letter of the 8th inst., please note that in my editorial
the name is spelt Athene Seyler.1
9 April 1924 [The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn]
I enclose a carbon copy of a letter which I have posted to-night to Hazell
Viney and Watson. I had a letter from them this morning saying that they
could not get the copies to you much before the 25th. On account of the
postponement of the January number I was particularly anxious that the
April number should be out as near the time as possible, so I telephoned
to Aylesbury and used every means to induce them to hurry it up. I told
them that Lady Rothermere was very annoyed at the postponement of the
January number and that if this number was delayed for Easter, she would
be very likely to stop the Criterion altogether.
I hope that it will not be inconvenient to you to have the copies in on
Wednesday or Thursday, but I do feel that it is very important to get this
number out by Easter. I suppose that if you get the copies by the time
agreed, the Inland subscribers will be able to receive them by Saturday
morning. It is really a great pity that I could not have the number ready so
as to be on sale before Good Friday, because of the Easter holidays. The
delay is wholly due to the difficulties under which I work myself, and I
take full responsibility for any expense incurred in hastening delivery.
I tried to ring you up today after telephoning to Aylesbury but could not
get through.
1 TSE described Athene Seyler (18891990), who featured in the Phoenix Society
production of Wycherleys The Country Wife, as probably the finest living actress of comedy
in England; She played the part of Lady Fidget with a cold ferocity, a pure and undefiled
detachment which makes her worthy to rank in that supreme class which includes Marie
Lloyd and Nellie Wallace (C. 2: 7 [Apr. 1924], 234).

About the French reviews, I have arranged with Flint to do these, so will
you post on to him all that come in. At your leisure, say after the Criterion
is out, I should very much like to have a list of all periodicals with which
we exchange.
I take it that there is no reason for altering the review list and the
advertising list for this number? I am keen about the advertising scheme
which you proposed. I am still hoping that we may be able to arrange for
American distribution in some regular way; several people in the States
have been complaining to me about the difficulty of getting copies.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
to Dr K. B. Martin1 cc
Dear Dr Martin
I am very much obliged to you for answering my wire and very much
relieved to be assured that you are actually coming to London.
I shall be very grateful if you will let me know for how long a period you
propose to be in London, and also what your London address will be.
I understand that you will be staying at Lady Margaret Levetts.2 It has
been quite out of the question for me to get over to Germany this winter
and I am afraid that it will be quite impossible next autumn and winter as
well, and for this reason your visit to London is of the greatest importance
to my wife and myself. May I ask you to be so kind as to consider how
practically impossible it is to get abroad, and ask you to give as much time
as you possibly can while you are in London to seeing my wife and myself?
I am anxious to see you separately.
I quite agree with your suggestion about my seeing you first but that of
course was in the circumstances even more impossible to carry out than for
me simply to have brought my wife to Germany.
I am anxious to see you as often as possible while you are in London.3
With very grateful thanks for all your kindness.
Yours very truly
[T. S. E.]
1 Dr Karl Bernhard Martin: see Glossary of Names.

2 Martin, in reply (13 Apr.), thanked TSE for his X-mas present; he would be staying at
Mr Levetts house, 6 Eaton Square, for most of May.
3 Martin said the length of his stay would give the Eliots a chance: he would try to see both
as often as possible.
367
[Received 17 April 1924] [London]
Dearest Mother:
The Criterion has this minute gone to press and I am so tired that I want
to lie down and sleep for a year.
Today I received your two letters dated 25 and 23 March.2 Thank you
very much.
I enclose in this letter two copies of press cuttings which have been
sent me from America. As one concerns Cousin Charles3 and the other
concerns your youngest son,4 I am in hopes that they may have interest
for you.
In a few days Vivien and I will go to the country for three weeks to the
cottage at Fishbourne. Please continue, however, to write to this address.
Vivien is much better. She has been writing since Christmas and although
her output is small she has met with extraordinary success. There is no
doubt whatever that she has talent. She should have been encouraged to
write years ago. She has already a very exceptional and individual style.
Please oblige me by keeping an open mind with regard to coming to
London this summer. There is no need for you to make long and elaborate
preparations. There is no need for you to give me long warning. I shall be
here all the summer probably alone. So keep an open mind.5
1 This letter, transcribed within a letter from CCE to HWE of 17 Apr., was probably written
over the weekend of 1112 Apr., since TSE went to Fishbourne on Monday 13th.
2 On 23 Mar., CCE said she thought the last C. was one of the best, especially TSEs article
on Elizabethan Dramatists; and she was looking forward to the book. She thought his
style had improved, and noted he had given up parentheses.
3 President Charles William Eliot of Harvard University, whose ninetieth birthday was
celebrated at Harvard on 20 Mar. 1924. See Charles William Eliot: The Man and his Beliefs,
with a Biographical Study by President Neilson (1926).
4 T. S. Eliot in a Nutshell, New York Herald (Mar. 1924), reported that TSE was a man
of abundant health and great vigor.
5 Having transcribed TSEs letter, CCE told HWE: I have sent an immediate answer . . . that
with increasing age I had become timid about going abroad with Marian, and that I had
written you I had rather pay your passage and be away a month with you than a longer time
with Marian . . . Toms letter did not sound as though he expected me very much . . . I do not
think he would have much time to give me. Vivien would have to be his first thought and I
should be much alone. It does not look to me very attractive I think I should be lonely.

13 April 1924 [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
Dear Scott Moncrieff,
Thank you for your letter. I am delighted to hear that you think so
well of the selection which Rivire sent me; such a contribution will
certainly be the making of our next issue, but I assure you that it would
have failed to produce its full effect upon the public, had we not been so
happy as to have you to translate it. I am sorry to feel that it will divert
you from your other work1 and hope very earnestly that you can let us
have it by the 1st of June at the very latest. I am anxious to bring out the
July issue on July 1st.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
to Stephen Gaselee cc
13 April 1924 [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
Dear Mr Gaselee,
I owe you an apology, although in the circumstances I could not have
done otherwise than I have done. There was considerable delay in getting
to press the number of the Criterion which will be out next week and at
the last moment it was necessary to decide what contributions should be
postponed to the following issue. Before proofs of your article2 were ready,
I telephoned to your house and was informed that you were leaving
Madeira in a few days, that the last post to catch you was that leaving the
same night, and that thereafter you would be inaccessible until the 14th. I
therefore took it upon myself to correct your proofs, and hope that you
will not find many considerable errors. But my classical learning is of
course much more restricted than yours and I am afraid also that I
corrected your proof in great haste and I hope you will let me know of
any errors which you remark.3 A copy should reach you by the middle of
next week.
1 Scott Moncrieff was still ploughing through Guermantes II, though getting rather tired
of the Guermantes dinner party.
2 The Soul in the Kiss, C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924), 34959.
3 The essay traced the pretty conceit that kisses join souls, all the way from the Greek
anthology to John Galsworthy, and involved extensive quotation from Greek and Latin.
369
With very many thanks for so interesting an essay, I am,
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
One copy of the April number will be sent to you at Cap dAil and the
rest to Paris. The printers had assured me that the April number would be
ready by the 16th, and I have been constantly in telephone conversation
with them at Aylesbury to hurry the printing forward and give them every
assistance; but you will see from the enclosed letter from Cobden-
Sanderson that they now refuse to promise it before the 23rd. It appears
that they do no work over the Easter holidays. This is extremely annoying
to me, as I had done a great deal of work in order to make it possible to
get this number out punctually; and I have given more time to it than to
any previous number, even the last one.
I am sorry that you found the last number so dull,1 as I had received
numerous assurances that it was the best we have so far produced. I cannot
say that the contributions from May Sinclair and J. M. Robertson were
exciting, and I had no illusions about them at the time.2 In my opinion
what the Criterion now needs is chiefly a more distinct standpoint and a
more topical quality; and you will see from the April number that I have
made several innovations with this in view. Of course, it is much more
difficult in a quarterly than in a monthly as the topics have to remain
interesting for three months instead of one. But in so far as I can find the
people to do it, I want to work in periodical comment on contemporary
life, thought and manners, of a lighter and more satirical tone.3
It is particularly important to get exactly the right people from Paris,
and that implies also getting them at the right moment, before they are
stale here, and before they are stale in America which is equally
important. Cocteau4 would have come just at the right moment; and had
1 On 26 Mar., Lady Rothermere commented on the severely serious tone of C.

2 Sinclair, The Grandmother, and J. M. Robertson, The Evolution of English Blank Verse,
in 2: 6 (Feb. 1924).
3 This must refer to WLs contributions and the two Letters of the Moment by F. M. (VHE).
4 Lady Rothermere had enclosed a note from Cocteau of 16 Mar., asking forgiveness for not
doing anything: Pour vous, pour Eliot que ne ferai-je? Pardonnez moi. Cest une passe terrible

he behaved properly and done what he promised to do, I had in mind to
offer him a regular chronique. It is as much his loss as ours, because there
is not yet any other paper in England which is likely to want him, and our
public would have given him a better hearing than any. But Morand
I know is stale. He has already been taken up by the Dial and Vogue,1 and
that means that he would do us no good. I have watched him pretty
carefully, and I think that he has nothing fresh to give. Stories of his are
being sent about by press agencies, and I have refused several which arrived
in that way. His things would annoy the larger and more dependable part
of our English readers; and the small coterie who pretend to keep in touch
with French literature would only despise us for printing him so late. In a
short time he will be out of date, and we shall be better thought of for not
having published him at all.
I am trying to find out whether Max Jacob2 writes anything that might
be translated into English. I have several other ideas for illuminating our
sombre pages.
I am keeping Gleizes essay3 to read in the country. I am sorry that I have
been much too busy to interview the editor of The Daily Express,4 and
must go to the country for several weeks rest.
I hope that you will be coming to London in May or June, or at least to
Paris: even one meeting is more useful than a great many letters.
[T. S. E.]
que je traverse [For you, for Eliot, what will I not do? Forgive me. It is a terrible time Im
going through]. Cocteau was impossible, being perfectly fit now & enjoying himself down
here [in the South of France], she said.
1 See Morands Paris Letter, Dial 75: 2, 5, 6 (Aug., Nov., Dec. 1923); 76: 3 (Mar. 1924).
2 Max Jacob (18761944): avant-garde poet and painter; author of Le cornet ds (1917)
and Le laboratoire central (1921). Jewish by birth, he converted to Catholicism in 1915,
became a recluse in 1921, and perished in the concentration camp of Drancy. He never
featured in C.
3 Unidentified essay. Albert Gleize (18811953) was a Cubist painter; author of Le cubisme
et les moyens de le comprendre (1920).
4 Lady Rothermere enclosed a letter of 19 Mar. from Lord Beaverbrook, proprietor of the
Daily Express: Will you ask Mr Eliot to go and see Blumenfeld at the Daily Express office?
I have spoken to Blumenfeld about him.
371
to Cecil Scott cc
Dear Mr Scott,
I was very glad to hear from you but have been so busy with the
Criterion that I have had no time to reply. I was disappointed that you
could not come to see me on your way through London, because I am
going to the country tomorrow and probably shall not be back in London
until some time in May. Nevertheless, when you do pass through London
please drop me a line as there is a chance of my being here. And if we are
unable to meet then, I shall still count upon seeing you when you come
down in June.1
Meanwhile I hope that you will consider our acquaintance solid enough
ground for letting me see the things that you are writing, and anything else
that you may write.2 In writing on the criticism of Baudelaire you have
chosen a subject in which I am very much interested.3 Do you know also
Mon coeur mis nu?4 There is a good book or at least a good essay to
be written on the importance of Baudelaire for English poetry; and so far
as I know there is nothing really good written about him in English.
I am also waiting for an opportunity to talk about your essay on
Rimbaud with you.
Do not fail to let me know when you pass through London and write to
me and do keep me in touch with your work in any case.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
1 TSEs kind remarks speak to Scotts self-deprecation (25 Mar.): I want to renew our
acquaintance very much, though there is nothing I can tell you which would be worth a
discussion . . . I have a clumsy mind and a tremendous sincerity, and that combination is
hopeless for the dialogic style.
2 Scott said (25 Mar.) that he was working on a poem and an article on the criticism of
Baudelaire LArt Romantique and the Curiosits Esthetiques.
3 TSE had published The Lesson of Baudelaire in Tyro 1 (Spring 1921), and quoted from
Baudelaires writings on caricature in the London Letter, Dial 70: 6 (June 1921).
4 My heart laid bare: from Baudelaires Intimate Journals. Introducing Christopher
Isherwoods translation of these in 1930, TSE called them indispensable for any student of
his poetry, and noted that in Mon coeur mis nu Baudelaire had a great deal to say about
the love of man and woman and understood that seeing the sexual act as evil is more
dignified, less boring than as the natural, life-giving, cheery automatism of the modern
world (SE, 41930).

Dear Mr Ainslie,
I must apologize for the delay in answering your letter of the 21st
March. I was overwhelmed with work and had to ask Mr Cobden-
Sanderson to send me Croces essay which Mr Aldington had chosen and
which I had never read. I have finally managed to read it. As this matter
had been left in Mr Aldingtons hands, I am afraid that I had not
appreciated the fact that the essay was to be part of a volume to appear in
the near future; and I should be very glad if you would let me know how
soon you wish the book to appear, because it will be impossible, owing to
the number of contributions previously ordered and accepted, to print this
essay before the October number.1
I hope you will not be offended if I say frankly that the essay does not
interest me nearly as much as the essay on Heine which you previously
sent and which I read. Of course this is a point of delicacy, as I am aware
that Mr Aldington selected this essay from several others and I have no
claim upon your patience or time. But as Mr Aldington has now for private
reasons resigned from the Criterion, I feel that it is my duty to depend
upon my own opinion; and if it is still possible I should very much like to
see the Heine again and perhaps other essays. I put this quite frankly to you
as a favour and hope that you will consider it as a request made in all
courtesy and deference.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
Dear Mrs Middleton,
I am extremely sorry for the repeated delay in answering your letter, but
when you wrote I was just preparing the Criterion for press and have had
to sacrifice everything to that up to the present moment. Since I last
corresponded with you I have had your son very much in my mind. I know
1 On 21 Mar., Ainslie said he wanted his translation of Croces article on Alfred de Vigny
to appear prior to the publication of Croces European Literature in the Nineteenth Century,
trans. Ainslie (1924). RA had promised publication early in 1924.
373
that it will be difficult for you to believe me if I told you the kind of life I
lead. My history since this time last year is simply a record of one perpetual
struggle with serious illness, expense far beyond my means and
overwhelming work, done against every kind of obstacle and vicissitude.
The Criterion itself has been torturingly uphill work, as one must expect
with a purely literary quarterly which offers no political or other
excitement and panders to no common taste and makes no bid for
popularity. During the past winter I have run it myself for a considerable
time without other help except a shorthand typist.
I have had no Spanish contributions whatever since that you translated
for us;1 otherwise I should assuredly have sent such contributions to you.
I am really interested to know to what point your son has arrived in the
course of self training which I suggested, and which I think is very essential
for him, and what he has been doing. I am just leaving for the country for
about four weeks my only holiday in the year. If your son cares to come
down for a couple of days, any time after Easter week, to a very small
cottage near Chichester, both I and my wife should be pleased to see him.
He could choose his own date after that week. Not only I but my wife also
have constantly thought of him and felt anxious about him, and I hope
that you will convey to him our expression of interest.
If he does not come to see me in the country, I will allow nothing to
prevent my seeing him within reasonable time after my return; I would
certainly see him by the first of June.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
Country address:- Milestone Cottages, Old Fishbourne, nr Chichester,
Sussex
to Ada Leverson cc
Dear Mrs Leverson,
Thank you for your letter and for letting me know your address. I have
been in the country for the last week and have had no letters forwarded
and only came up last night, so that I did not get your letter until I came
back. Vivienne has been here the whole time as she had a bad attack of
1 Marichalar, Contemporary Spanish Literature, C. 1: 3 (1923).

colitis and was too ill to come with me, but I am hoping that she will be
well enough to come down with me on Saturday morning. I am so sorry
to hear that you have been ill again and hope that this fine weather will set
you right. It is most exciting to hear that you will include some
unpublished letters in your Oscar Wilde.1 I am looking forward keenly to
the pleasure of reading it.
[T. S. E.]
Mon cher Rivire,
Dans quelques jours de repos la campagne, je viens de lire votre article
dans lavant-dernier numro de la Nouvelle Revue Franaise et je dois vous
fliciter sur une belle exposition dune ide dune haute importance.2 Vous
avez pos un problme et vous avez nonc un dogme trs voisin mon
propre point de vue et jai lintention de citer votre article dans quelque
chose que je vais crire pour attaquer les ides de Middleton Murry qui
maintient une thorie oppose.3
Jespre que vous nous enverrez pendant lt un article dune gale
importance. Je ressens mme un peu de chagrin en sachant que larticle en
question est inutilisable pour le Criterion, puisque mon avis la
philosophie que vous dtruisez est mme plus rpandue en Angleterre
quen France.
Jai aussi admir un bel article de Ramn Fernandez.4
1 The Last First Night (NC 4: 1, Jan. 1926) did not include any new Wilde letters.
2 Rivire, La crise du concept de littrature [The Crisis of the Concept of Literature], NRF
11: 125 (1 Feb. 1924). Responding to Marcel Arlands article on a new Mal du sicle, Rivire
attacked the legacy of the Romantic idea of the literary act as religious, or une sorte de
tentative sur labsolu [a sort of attempt at the absolute]. He identifies this in the work of the
Dadaists and Surrealists (Andr Breton et ses amis), the paintings of de Chirico, photos of
Man Ray and post-Dadaist poetry (toute la posie post-dadaste). Rivire insisted instead
on the strong limits of literature, not confounding our unconscious with revelation, and not
subordinating literature to transcendental ends (des fins transcendantes).
3 In A Commentary (C. 2: 8, July 1924), TSE attacked the alarming tendency in our time
for literary criticism to be something else. Citing JMM among other offenders, he observed:
This particular heresy has lately been dealt with very ably by Monsieur Jacques Rivire in
the Nouvelle Revue Franaise on the Crisis of the Concept of Literature (373).
4 Ramn Fernandez, La garantie des sentiments et les intermittences du coeur, NRF 11:
132 (1 Apr.).
375
Est-ce loisible de demander si vous aurez une note sur The Waste Land
ou non?1
Cordialement,
Votre
[T. S. E.]2
My dear Whibley,
I was very glad to get your kind letter although it reminded me that
I have been waiting for about a fortnight for an opportunity to write to
you. But what with the final work on the Criterion which was particularly
heavy for this number, and what with preparations for removal to my
country cottage, I have had not a moment to spare.
I am very happy to hear that you have been out of pain for so long and
I hope that the weather will favour you. At any rate the cessation for so
long is a very favourable omen and will give you greater strength to resist
another attack if it comes. But these maladies often leave as suddenly and
irrationally as they come and I hope that yours has left you for good.
I meant to write to you immediately after our dinner which I enjoyed so
much.3 For one thing I wanted to explain that I was really much keener
about the London University than I gave you any hint of. If I did not
express all the interest and all the gratitude which I felt, it was because
I have habituated myself to regard these things as only remote possibilities
1 There was no mention of TWL in NRF in 1924.

2 Translation: My dear Sir, I have made use of my brief period of rest in the country to read
the article which you published in the Nouvelle Revue Franaise of two months ago and I
must congratulate you on your exposition of a most important idea. You have asked
questions and you have expounded a point of view which is, in fact, extremely close to mine;
so much so that I intend to quote your article in a paper in which I propose to attack the ideas
of Middleton Murry, who upholds views opposed to mine.
I hope that during the summer you will send us an article of the same importance as this
one. As, in my opinion, the philosophy which you seek to destroy is even more widespread
in England than in France, I cant help feeling rather sad at the thought that the article in
question cannot be used for the Criterion.
I also much admired an excellent article by Ramn Fernandez.
I wonder if I could ask you whether or not you hope to be able to say something about The
Waste Land?
Cordially yours, [T. S. E.]
3 On 15 Apr., CW recalled their very pleasant dinner at Kettners.

for myself. It is a movement of self-protection against disappointment, but
please know that I am very grateful to you and that I should be overjoyed
if anything came of it. Will you let me know if anything can be done or if
I can do anything myself?
Also, I should like very much to join the Travellers Club.
The printers of the Criterion have disappointed me in not getting it out
before Easter, but you will have your copy by the middle of next week.
I have asked that a copy should be sent to Charles Strachey1 as I hoped it
might interest him. Of course, he will be glad to have your essay. I read it
in the proof and admired it immensely.
I shall of course be very grateful for any criticisms you may care to make
on any and as many of the contributions as interest you at all. I am trying
now to give the thing a little more point, and I think you will see that
several of the contributions are meant to fit in with each other. As for
Middleton Murry, I shall have to write a short rejoinder to this apostle of
suburban free thought.
[T. S. E.]
to Ramn Fernandez 2 cc
Monsieur,
Jai t extrmement frapp par votre article dans le dernier numro de
la Nouvelle Revue Franaise3 et je vous cris pour demander si vous ferez
lhonneur de donner au Criterion une contribution indite. Je vous ferai
parvenir un numro spcimen, et je vous fais remarquer que nous avons
dj publi des choses par plusieurs autres collaborateurs la Nouvelle
Revue Franaise, notamment Monsieur Jacques Rivire.
Malheureusement nous ne pouvons pas publier des choses qui ont dj
paru en France, sauf en cas exceptionnel; cest que la plupart de nos
lecteurs sont bien au courant de la littrature priodique de Paris.
1 Sir Charles Strachey (18621942), brother of Lytton Strachey, was a diplomat; editor of
The Letters of the Earl of Chesterfield to his Son (reprinted 1924).
2 Mexican by birth but educated in France, Ramn Fernandez (18941944) was
philosopher, essayist, and novelist; a regular contributor to NRF, 192343. His later
publications include Messages (1926), De la personnalit (1928), and Lhomme est-il humain?
(1936). In the mid-1930s, he was a fierce anti-fascist, but during WW2 he became a
collaborator.
3 La garantie des sentiments et les intermittences du coeur, NRF 11: 132 (1 Apr.).
377
Lhonoraire est 10 les 5000 mots, moins les frais de traduction pour les
contributions reues en langues trangres; et une contribution quelconque
ne doit pas par beaucoup dpasser cet tendue.
Puis-je vous proposer de me suggrer quelques sujets sur lesquels vous
voulez crire? Cest vident que vous connaissez trs bien la littrature
anglaise et vous seriez libre de choisir un sujet anglais si vous voulez: par
exemple le Cardinal Newman.1
En esprant une rponse favorable, je me soussigne,
Monsieur, avec beaucoup dadmiration,
[T. S. E.]
PS Dans le numro de juillet, nous allons publier la traduction dun
morceau fort intressant de Proust, pour lequel nous sommes redevables
lamabilit de Monsieur Rivire.2

Friday 19 April [1924] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
My dear Henry
Thank you very much for your letter of the 5th instant, which arrived
yesterday. I can only answer it briefly now .
1 On 19 July, Fernandez said he was working at the essay on Cardinal Newman, which he
would send in French. Translated by RA, this appeared as The Experience of Newman in
C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924): the first of a number of contributions by Fernandez.
2 Translation: Dear Sir, I have been deeply impressed by your article which appeared in the
latest issue of the Nouvelle Revue Franaise and I write to ask you if you could do us the
honour of contributing something of yours, as yet unpublished, to the Criterion. I shall send
you a specimen copy of this periodical, and I take the liberty of informing you that we have
already published articles by various contributors to the Nouvelle Revue Franaise, among
them Mr Jacques Rivire.
As most of our readers are well informed about French periodicals, we cannot,
unfortunately, except in very exceptional cases, publish articles which have already been
published in France.
The fee we could offer you is 10 per 5000 words, less translation costs for articles in a
foreign language. The articles should not exceed 5000 words in length.
I wonder if you could propose to us some subjects about which you could write. It is
evident that you have an extensive knowledge of English literature, and, if you like, you could
write something on an English subject, Cardinal Newman for instance.
Hoping for a favourable answer, I send you the expression of my admiration. [T. S. E.]
PS In the July issue we shall publish the translation of a very interesting extract from
Proust, which we owe to Mr Rivires kindness.

I send you herewith the trust forms, signed, and will leave it to you to
arrange with the State Street Trust Co.1 when you get to Boston. You have
not answered my other question how I can keep my other money
(investments) in America without tying it up. I want to keep some property
liquid, in case of unforeseen emergencies.2
I do not want to despoil mother of any of her present income as long as
she lives.
And as for you, I want you to keep every penny of your money for
yourself, and to retire from this damned business at the first possible
moment, when you have the barest minimum of subsistance.3 As I shall
show you eventually, you could be of far greater help to me by being free,
and by being able once a year to come to England, to see me and advise
me, than by gifts however generous and self-sacrificing.
My present anxieties are not primarily financial. I have a scheme which,
if it comes off, will enable me in two months to leave the bank on about
half my present salary, but give me much greater freedom. I should have
to make up my income by outside work, but I can see my way if other
troubles do not interfere for a year at least.
No, what I need you for is to come and view the whole situation
myself, my future, Viviens health, and what sort of life is best for both of
us. You understand me as no one here does, and you understand V. in some
ways, perhaps better than I do, though no doubt in other ways having
seen so little of her in your short visit you may be quite wrong! No matter
you would understand better than anyone if you came even for a very
short time. Vivien has this instinct as strongly as I that you could help us
as no one else can, in the world.
And I feel that the next time I shall be able to get nearer to you than I
did then. I think of that visit with regret as a wasted opportunity of mine.
There is no one to whom I feel I should be nearer than to you.
This last illness of V.s has been indescribable. She suffered more in spirit
than ever before. I have not been able to leave her for three months. I have
gone through some terrible agony myself which I do not understand yet,
and which has left me utterly bewildered and dazed.
1 State Street Trust Co., one of Bostons long-established Trusts (it acquired the National
Union Bank in the 1920s), is commemorated in State Street Trust and Others, Sketches of
Boston and New England, vol. 3 (1930).
2 There is a marginal bracket to the left of the paragraph extending from how to
emergencies.
3 TSE uses the archaic spelling of subsistence.
379
Oh do come when you can. You know what you can do I only know
my own need, and merely cry out to you.1
This is all in complete confidence.
I will write again [?soon].
Ever affectionately
Tom
V. wants you just as much as I do

19 [April] 19242 The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
My dear John,
You know it is impossible for me to come to your wedding,3 as I am in
a bank and cannot get away at such an hour. I am sure that you have done
the best thing for yourself in marrying again, but you know that it has
always been impossible for me to understand any of your actions.4
Ever yours
T. S. E.
Old Fishbourne
I approve the advertising scheme, and appreciate the detail and precision
of it.5 The only question I ask is: does the Post Office admit Imitation-
Typewritten-Letters at half-pence rate? At Lloyds Bank we lately had some
difficulty with a provincial Post Office about printed matter done on the
1 Cf. And let my cry come unto Thee, Ash-Wednesday VI (CPP 99).
2 Misdated 19 May.
3 JMM married his second wife, Violet le Maistre (c.190131), on 24 Apr., fifteen months
after the death of Katherine Mansfield. He had become engaged just before Easter.
4 JMM had written on 10 Apr., without mentioning his forthcoming marriage, but saying
he was going on a fortnights holiday. He thought TSEs recent demeanour towards him was
of mistrust once more, speculatively ascribing this to the Gertler affair in which he was
absolutely innocent . . . But . . . if you have anything against me, I shd. be told of it.
5 On 16 Apr., RC-S submitted an estimate (for 37 5s 10d or 35 15s 10d depending on
whether the name of the paper was printed in red or black) for sending circulars to 5000
potential subscribers, inc. libraries in the UK and USA and Canada as well as clubs and
universities in the UK.

Multigraph machine, which is not even an imitation of typing in intention,
but simply has letters in standard typewriter sizes and shapes and of the
same size for the whole alphabet (in order to compose mechanically).
Will you submit it to Lady Rothermere? She has returned to Paris.
I dont think I can make any estimate of your own charges, because I
have no idea of the amount of time involved for your staff or of the rates
of pay. So I am afraid that I shall have to leave that entirely to you. I shall
be writing to Lady Rothermere in a day or two.
I am sorry to have left this so long, but country life in a cottage is
arduous without servants and leaves little time for business.
It is distressing that the number could not have been got out before
Easter. I cannot help harping on it, because I do feel that it will affect the
sale and the interest very adversely, especially as this number was so much
more topical than any before; and I feel that Lady Rothermere will have
strong grounds for complaint. Do you think that Hazells are as quick in
their work as anyone who would do work of that quality at that price?
Yours in haste
[T. S. E.]
Sacheverell Sitwell: 2 Carlyle Square, s.w.3

24 April 1924 24 Concord Ave, Cambridge, Mass.
Dearest Tom:
After quite an interval I received your cablegram from Chichester. I am
afraid you will suppose that I consider lecturing an important part of your
visit to America, but I do not. I hope, O, I hope, you will come this late fall,
just to see us and friends. Think how many years it is since you were here.1
And I will meet all your expenses as I have written several times, and your
salary. I can see it will be quite a while before you can write lectures. And
with the Criterion, I do not see how you can write anything original.
Especially since Mr Aldington is gone. It must be very difficult to find
anyone to fill a position that requires so much learning and literary
judgment and is far from lucrative.
I have just received a letter from Henry; Mr Bertrand Russell has been
staying at his apartments for four days; the Dudleys introduced him to
them. Whatever his morals and erraticisms are Henry found him a
1 TSE had not been back to the USA since July/Aug. 1915, soon after his marriage.
381
delightful and interesting companion. I mentioned him here to repeat one
remark he made. It was as follows: He thinks editorial work is deadening
to creativeness. That has always been my idea. So I hope that you will not
continue much longer on the Criterion. Russell says that when you return
from the Bank you can put aside that work because it is unrelated to literary
work, and you can forget it. But it is not so with editorial work. Now even
Henry thinks Russells judgment in politics is wrong, but I should think his
opinion regarding editorial work was correct. At least it seems so to me. Mr
Russell was much struck with Henrys resemblance to you.
I have never suffered more from uncertainty in plans than the last few
weeks or is it months? I had quite made up my mind to go to England until
Marian told me when she came out to see me at the Hospital that she did
not feel well enough to go to England. I have been considering Charlotte
who would enjoy going. Several times I have almost decided to take her,
but she would not want to remain very long and if anyone of her family
should be ill, I should feel I must send her home at once. Even at the last
minute something might happen too late to get Marian a passport. I
thought of going today and asking about passage, and then the thought
occurred to me what if Charlotte should give out (through illness in her
family), too late for Marian to get a passport. So I have been much
agitated.
If you could come late fall, I paying your salary (for you have taken your
vacation) I would do everything I could for you. I would want you to send
me a list of all the people you wanted me to invite to meet you. I should
love to be able to do something for you. I do not feel as if I ought to expect
you to write an Introduction to my Savonarola, much as I should
appreciate it. You must have other work waiting for you, like the
Elizabethan authors. I would like to send it to Houghton-Mifflin early
June, so as if they return it to have you send it to a New York publisher.
Would Alfred Knopf1 take it? I shall try Houghton-Mifflin first as
Grandgent advised.
I hope you have been able to rest at Old Fishbourne. I hope you have
someone to cook for you. Pegasus in harness2 you are too much of the
time. My poor boy. I hope you can sleep. I will finish this and let Margaret
mail it.
Ever your loving
Mother
1 Knopf had published US editions of TSEs P (1920) and SW (1921).

2 Pegasus in Harness was the title of Bowrings translation of Schillers 1796 poem.

27 April 1924 At present: Milestone Cottages, Old
Fishbourne, nr Chichester, Sussex
In case this letter does not reach you before you leave Paris, I am wiring
to you tomorrow to ask for your address in New York, and will
immediately write to you there. This is the first moment, after moving to
the country, that I have had for writing. I shall be back in London in about
a fortnight.
I got the Philosophies, with the letter of M. Grenier in it, and I think his
article is very good.1 I shall write to him, but I think before accepting this
thing for publication I must ask him if he can let me see the rest of it. He
is dealing with a subject which seems to me very important and very
interesting, and his essay ought to be just what we want. Certainly we
ought to exchange with this review. It will take me some time to go through
Gleizes,2 because his essay would have to be cut very much to be possible
for us. But you have got hold of two very good things. If you could find
out (but probably you have not time) a variety of unprejudiced opinions
of Jacob (without intimating that we have him in view as a Paris
correspondent) it would be very useful; verbal opinions are so much better
than those got by letters.
I am indeed aware that the Criterion has been on the dull side (my wife
has reminded me of this fault every few days!) and I am not offended at
your saying so.3 I think that the new number is an improvement in this
respect, but I want to do a great deal more. There will be at least two good
things for July, a new play by W. B. Yeats4 and the indit of Proust5 which
is now in the hands of Scott Moncrieff. These two things alone ought to
mean a column in The Times. But what I want to do is to reduce the
number of star turns and introduce more regular chroniques, etc., reviews
of a very few books (say three books in each number) letters from Paris,
Rome, Berlin or Vienna, and Madrid and perhaps New York (yes, certainly
1 Jean Grenier, European Nihilism, Philosophies 1 (Paris). On Grenier, see TSEs letter of
15 May.
2 See TSEs letter to her of 13 Apr. The French cubist never published in C.
3 Lady Rothermere said she appreciated all TSE did for her and C. & if I have found it
a little high-brow & grave, perhaps it is my fault!
4 WBY, The Cat and the Moon: A Play for Dancers, C. 2: 8 (July 1924), 395408.
5 The Death of Albertine, C. 2: 8 (July 1924).
383
New York).1 A dramatic chronique and a review of English periodicals.2
We should provide people with more opinions on current literary etc,
events.
I was very much vexed and irritated and disappointed at the delay in
publication. When you return I should like to discuss the whole question
of the methods of publication and distribution with you. If you find any
misprints or faults in the production of this number I wish you would let
me know. Of course the manuscript was not all in the hands of the printers
as early as usual, and I had myself to correct the proofs of two or three
articles for writers who were abroad, but nevertheless the printers told me
that they would get it out just before Easter, and then changed their minds.
But all this involves points that can only be discussed when we meet.
In accord with your suggestion of some time ago, Cobden-Sanderson is
submitting to you an estimate for sending out sample copies of back
numbers and circulars. He asked me to suggest what I thought a proper
commission for him to ask, but I told him that I had not the knowledge of
his expenses (labour of his staff, rates of pay) necessary; I think that he
might simply make a statement of what it costs him in this way, if he has
to take his assistants off his own work to put them onto this, or else simply
charge a small percentage toward covering these expenses. Of course, he
does not get much out of the Criterion at present, in proportion to the
work involved for him; but on the other hand the Criterion very much
improves his prestige as a publisher, and it is to his own interest that it
should prosper; if the advertising increases the sales it will increase his
commission.
If you approve this scheme in general, I will draw up a letter and circular.
I think that it is most important and in every way good for the paper that
you should be visiting New York; it ought to be possible to do a great deal
there. I think that we ought to have 2000 subscribers in America. I should
like very much to know how much the Criterion is now seen and read in
New York, and how much trouble people have to get it. My mother (in
Boston) has lately complained to me and so have other people of the
difficulty of getting extra copies. It is certain that either an agent or a
publisher in New York is a necessity. I know that Cobden-Sanderson has
corresponded with several publishers over there without success; but with
Americans much more can be done by conversation than by letter; and
1 From Oct., C. included a review section, Books of the Quarter; and in Jan. 1925 TSE
inaugurated a series, New York Chronicle, by Gilbert Seldes.
2 C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925) included the first occasional report on Music, and the Stage. But no
attention was paid to English periodicals.

also American men of business are used to such violent methods of pushing
and being pushed, that they do not respond to the ordinary quiet
approaches of English proposals! There are, as you know, two ways of
spreading the Criterion in America. One is to have an agent who will either
buy so many copies outright or take them on commission, and advertise
himself and the magazine in the American papers, the other to arrange
with an American publisher to take unbound copies, advertise the paper,
print American advertisements in it if he likes.
The increase of the topical element, and an appeal to the snobbish desire
of cultivated America to be au courant with what is being talked about,
fresh, in Europe, ought to stimulate our circulation there. They should like
local news from London and Paris etc. even about plays which they will
never see and authors whom they will never read; but in order to compete
with the Dial we must retain the character and appearance of a London
quarterly, in order to remind Americans that our news is more first hand.
It might be possible to arrange with the Dial for a combined
subscription offer in America, sharing the cost of advertisement. We ought
in this case to prepare our own advertising copy, and not leave it to the
Dial. Any such arrangement with the Dial would have to be very carefully
safeguarded, because the Dial is our most formidable competitor there. It
pretends to be in very close touch with European affairs.
Please let me know your address in New York so that I can write
immediately about anything else that occurs to me.
[On second] thoughts, that is a matter to go very carefully about. If
arranged at all, it might be better with some other paper than the Dial (but
of at least as good standing and at least as well known).
If no publishers cared to take up the Criterion direct, perhaps one or
more New York people might like to guarantee the expenses of an
American edition which expenses would be chiefly advertising in
American papers and extra payment to contributors for American rights.
There must be people in New York who would be sufficiently flattered by
having a hand in the paper to this extent, without having any control over
the form or contents.
If you are going at once, bon voyage, and better weather than we are
having here. I do hope you will get this in time to let me hear from you
before you leave.1
How long do you expect to be in America?
[T. S. E.]
1 She was leaving for the USA for a short stay on the 30th.
385
to Hugh Walpole ms Valerie Eliot
[28? April 1924] 38 Burleigh Mansions,
My dear Walpole
I am glad to hear from you delighted that you think so well of the last
number.1 I wish the Old Ladies book was not appearing so soon.2 I look
forward to discussing the future of the paper with you.
Any night I think wd do (not weekend) evening I cd come to you or
where you like or come in here (this is two rooms and a washstand!) let me
hear when you get back, at this address.
Always yours
T. S. Eliot

Dear Ezra
Your card just received with address. Antheil3 has appeared in an
inflated and shapeless number of the Criterion in a somewhat abbreviated
form; as this was due to exigencies of amateur editorship I hasten to inform
you that payment will be made for the complete manuscript.
I also inform you that for about four people there is money enough to
pay for their best creative work at double rates. That is, for any stuff like
the Malatesta [Cantos] I should be able to pay you at the verse equivalent
to 20 per five thousand words prose. I count each page of verse as four
hundred words which is about what it would be if it was prose. This is on
condition that the contribution is not printed in English in any other
periodical in England, America or elsewhere for three months after its
appearance in the Criterion. What have you got or what will you have?4
I have other things to write to you about but they must wait, meanwhile
send me your various addresses, and if you have any notion yourself let me
1 On 27 Apr., Walpole said he was delighted with the new number (C. 2: 7, Apr. 1924),
which included ch. I of his novel The Old Ladies.
2 Walpoles book was due out in Oct., making it impossible to publish the four chapters
as planned; chap. II appeared as a last instalment in C. 2: 8 (July 1924).
3 George Antheil, in C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).
4 EPs next contribution was Antheil 19241926, in NC. 4: 4 (Oct. 1926), followed by
Horace in 9: 35 (Jan. 1930).

know where you expect to be next winter; I will keep the information to
myself if so desired.
Yours,
T.
Dear Mr Ainslie,
I am indeed deeply sorry for this unfortunate misunderstanding for
which I must take the blame as I should have made full enquiries from Mr
Aldington about his correspondence with you.1 I am sending the
manuscript of Croces Alfred de Vigny to Mr Arthur Waugh as you
request. Let me express the sincerest hope that you will soon have
something else of Croces ready and that you will let me see it as we should
like very much to have the honour of publishing something by Croce
translated by you in the Criterion.2 It is a loss to the review to have been
unable to publish any of these things this year.
With many thanks and best wishes for the success of the volume to
which I shall look forward,
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]

Old Fishbourne
Dear Leonard,
Please excuse me for not having thanked you for your cheque for
7. 5. 7 representing royalties on the sale of The Waste Land.3 I am very
glad that the book has already sold enough to cover expenses and I hope
that you will be able to get rid of the whole edition.
1 See TSEs letter of 13 Apr.

2 See Ainslies transl. of Croces On the Nature of Allegory in C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925).
3 We consider that the book has done extraordinarily well, wrote LW (12 Apr.), and I
hope you feel the same. 330 copies had been sold by 31 Mar. Total printing, binding,
advertising and distribution costs were 25 6s. 3d, and TSE received 25% of the gross profit.
387
I should like very much to get something done for you soon.1 Here in the
country life has been intolerable and has consisted entirely in an
unsuccessful struggle to keep warm and to keep fed. I look every day at a
suitcase full of letters, papers, books, notes, unpaid bills, and unread
manuscripts which I have not had time to disturb. I had hoped to get all
my work for the next Criterion done, but I now see it is useless to attack
it until I get back to London. I am afraid it is quite impossible for me to
attempt anything else for the next month or more, but I hope to see you
as soon as we return and then I shall report my progress.
Yours ever,
T. S. Eliot
to Virginia Woolf ts Texas

1 May 1924 2 Milestone Cottages
My dear Virginia,
Thank you for your card. Yes, I wished that we could have had that
essay2 in the Criterion, [even if del.] as you will not release your clutches
on any sketch or part of a novel. I can only offer you two inducements, one
noble and the other mercenary: the first that you might let me have
something too long for the Nation, because you may be sure that there
will be no limitations of length. (Indeed, what you gave me last year was
far too short to represent such a distinguished name in the Criterion.) The
other inducement is this: I am now at liberty to offer to the most desirable
contributors, at my discretion, double rates for the first periodical rights
in England and America; that is, I can pay 20 instead of 10 per five
thousand words. There are at most four people to whom I should offer
this, one of whom is of course yourself. When may I hope for something
from you?
I am now struggling, in the few intervals one gets here in the terrible
struggle for life in the country, with Jacobs Room,3 with a view to
chronique for the Nouvelle Revue Franaise on the evolution of the roman
contemporain anglais.4 But you do not make it easy for critics; one feels
that a superhuman cleverness is called for or disaster is inevitable.
1 TSE published no further signed articles in N. until 29 Jan. 1927.

2 The Patron and the Crocus, N&A, 35: 2 (12 Apr. 1924).
3 VWs Jacobs Room had been published by the Hogarth Press in Oct. 1922.
4 In Le roman anglais contemporain (NRF 28: 164, 1 May 1927), TSE discussed the effect
of psycho-analysis and the lack of Jamesian moral preoccupation in contemporary fiction,

We are looking forward to seeing you in London and I subscribe myself,
in starvation, cold and hopeless confusion,
T. S. E.
to Henry Eliot ts Houghton

Dear Henry,
This is just a short note and will not deal with any of the important
things about which I have to write to you and which every day I am
struggling to find time to write about fully. This is simply to tell you that
Lady Rothermere is going to New York and will be there by the time this
letter reaches you.
I do not think I have ever explained to you fully the terms on which I run
the Criterion or my relations with Lady Rothermere. The fact is that I was
a damned fool ever to agree to run the review without a salary; or, in fact,
to run it at all. Having in the first place shown my willingness, or perhaps
eagerness to run the paper for her on the minimum amount of money and
for no salary, I have never since been in the position to demand a salary.
You will see this, I am sure. However, the general position becomes every
day more impossible and I am certain that my health will give out
completely if I go on with things as they are, for another year.
When the question of my leaving the Bank was first brought up and
made public, Lady Rothermere expressed approval of my leaving and told
me that she would guarantee me a salary of three hundred pounds a year
(clear of anything I should make by writing for the Criterion) on my
leaving the bank. In this way she has made my having a salary for the
Criterion conditional, and I feel a certain resentment on this account, for
in my view she has no right to impose any condition at all. If I am worth
a salary, I am worth a salary whether I am in the bank or out of it. I am
telling you this in order to get that side of the position quite clear. On the
other hand, I want you to understand that I have never had the slightest
difficulty with Lady Rothermere on the subject of the Criterion in any
drawing on VW, DHL, David Garnett and Aldous Huxley. VW deserved credit for having
performed at Kew and at seaside watering places what Conrad performed in the tropics and
the south seas.
389
respect. She has given me an absolutely free hand, has made no criticisms,
has agreed to every suggestion and has lately slightly increased the sum
which she at first stipulated would be the utmost to which she could go for
its expenses.
Lady Rothermere is always flying about the world and is scarcely ever
in London at all. Although she keeps a large house in London she is never
here for more than a month out of the year. She lives a great deal more in
Paris where she keeps up a very luxurious flat. She is a very cosmopolitan
woman without a trace of snobbism and we have always without
exception been on the friendliest terms. She is curiously Americanised; so
much so that at first I always thought she must be an American by birth.
She is much more like an American than any English woman I have ever
met and has got a great liking for Americans and America. I fancy, by the
way, that most of the Rothermeres money is invested in America and
Canada by now.
One of my greatest pulls with her is being an American myself. When she
decided to go to New York, she asked me to tell her of anything she could
do or any people she could see that would be of use to the Criterion. I feel
that it would be a very great advantage to me if she could meet some
relation of mine while in America, and a great help to me to have my point
of view shown to her by an American. In short, I should like you to meet
her and you would be doing me a great favour if you could possibly
arrange to see her, although I am afraid it would necessitate your going to
New York. For this reason I hesitate to ask you. I am perfectly convinced
that she would like to meet some relative of mine and also that you would
like her. She is an extraordinarily intelligent woman, perhaps the most
intelligent woman I have ever met, though not an intellectual. Although she
is about fifty years of age, she is an extremely attractive and young looking
woman, very smart and very gay.
If you could manage just two days in New York and would present
yourself at the Plaza Hotel, I feel sure that everything would arrange itself
and that you would be received with open arms.
There is no other member of my family whom I would ask to receive her
for two reasons: there is no other who would be as likely to get on with
her as you and there is no other who has anywhere near as much
knowledge and understanding of my position as you have.
You know about the movement called Bel Esprit. Several years ago there
were several wealthy people ready to provide annual payments to help me
to live without working in a bank. I never had any of this money. In the
form which the scheme took I could not have accepted it, I refused. It

involved my leaving the bank for a very inadequate income without
certainty of continuity, on the promises only without guarantees, and with
indefinite obligations to various individuals each with his own conception
of what was to be expected of me instead of a definite contract for a
definite job. The bank was preferable to that.
Now if, instead of this abortive scheme, this money which was once
promised could be concentrated on providing me a decent salary for a
definite task: editing the Criterion, it would be the true solution of my
difficulties. The present position with the Criterion is a farce to make one
laugh, if any Eliot could ever laugh. I am running a quarterly review which
has to make the same appearances, get as good contributors, and give as
good value as any other quarterly. The Criterion has to compete with
reviews which have an editor and a sub-editor devoting all their time to it,
a business manager, an office and a secretarial staff. The Criterion is run
without an office, without any staff or business manager, by a sickly bank
clerk and his wife. The latter has had to be on her back half of the time and
the former has conducted all his work in the evening in his own sitting
room, without even a desk, till Christmas! after a busy and tiring day, and
subject to a thousand interruptions. Until the last few months I have paid
my own secretary, a woman who came in three evenings a week. When I
finally add that I have not only taken no salary but have actually been
considerably out of pocket for payment of a secretary, and for the time
that I might have spent on writing for other papers, it is enough to make
any outsider believe that I ought to be certified a lunatic.
The Criterion work is increasing all the time, the correspondence
increases, the thought and labour in attempting to make each number
better than the last increases, and the editorship of the Criterion has now
become really a full time job. I consider that it is worth a living wage of at
least five hundred a year. And at that I should still be working without an
editors usual aids of an office, an assistant editor, a business manager and
a full time secretary.
Lady Rothermere has been so little in England during the past year that
I have never had an opportunity to make this position clear to her. Possibly
she wonders why I do not leave the bank on her guarantee of three
hundred a year for three years. I am sure that you will see without my
saying more how impossible this would be.
If you see Lady Rothermere there is one point on which I wish to caution
you. About two years ago when Vivien began to break up in health, Lady
Rothermere sent her her own doctor, a very cranky and unstable individual
who was the real cause of Viviens final collapse this time last year.
391
Naturally this matter has caused a little embarrassment as Lady
Rothermere still has an implicit faith in this charlatan. It would be better
therefore to avoid all mention of Vivien, and that is the only warning I
have to give you.
Lady Rothermeres address, as I mentioned above, is the Hotel Plaza.
Do you think you could possibly get to New York?
Always your affectionate brother,
Tom.
Lady R. has been very appreciative of the Criterion and regards it, quite
rightly, as an asset to her own importance. Naturally she wants to keep this
distinction for herself, and not share the ownership of the paper with
others, but on the other hand it ought to make her anxious to do
everything else possible to keep the paper alive.
If I give it up, I dont suppose she could find anyone else to run it on the
terms on which I have run it!
PS If you can get to New York, Cable me (Eliot, Colforloyd, Cannon,
London) and I will cable to Lady Rothermere to say you are coming to see
her. T.

Old Fishbourne
Dear Monro
I have only just got your letter:1 you see where I am. I would gladly turn
up if I were in London, but I shall not be at home for another week. I
rather thought you would be down in these parts yourself just now. I am
very sorry to miss the party.
I have already had a torrent of abuse over Lewiss article [The Apes of
God] in the Criterion, but probably only a shower compared to what is
to come. Of course I knew this when I accepted the article. Anyhow, I trust
you as you say that the Criterion is on the upward grade and that
Lewiss article has great style to uphold it as an impersonal work of
literature.2 If people are going to take things like this with a petty personal
1 On 30 Apr., Monro invited TSE to a party at the Poetry Bookshop on Tues., 6 May, in
company with WL, the graphic designer E. McKnight Kauffer, Flint and the Sitwells.
2 TSEs comment is canny: he knew that WLs piece was full of scarcely veiled attacks on real
people, including the Sitwells.

bias, and make a grievance, it is not worthwhile trying to produce
literature at all. It is thankless work running a literary review, at best: I
say this to you because you have been through it yourself.1 Of course I
want the Criterion to be a good review, indeed to be the best review, and
not simply a good review for a man in my circumstances; but it is
interesting that nobody, even those who know the circumstances quite well
enough, ever makes the slightest allowance. The Criterion is condemned if
it is not better in every way than the Mercury, the Quarterly, the English,
or any other.2 It has to make the same appearances, get as good
contributors, and give as good value as any other paper. It has to compete
with reviews which have an editor and a sub-editor paid and devoting all
their time, which have a business manager, an office and a secretarial staff.
The Criterion is run without any office, without any staff or business
manager, by a sickly bank clerk and his wife: the latter has had to be on
her back half the time and the former has conducted all his work in the
evenings in his own sitting room, after a busy and tiring day, and subject
to a thousand interruptions: without even a desk until he bought a second
hand one at Christmas! Until the last few months I have paid my own
secretary, a woman who came in three evenings a week. I shouldnt mind
if people thought me a lunatic for doing this (and without a salary) but
they simply think me mercenary for staying in a bank instead of giving all
my time to it. The whole thing is enough to make me laugh, if any Eliot
ever could laugh. And after all to find that some people simply find in the
Criterion an occasion for personal offense . . . . !
Anyway, I am glad that you like this number. When I get back I will ring
you up, as I should like to see you soon (in that hollow vale).3 I do hope
you have broken Wordsworths back by this time.4
Yours ever,
T. S. E.
1 Monro launched The Poetry Review in 1912, and edited The Chapbook, 191925.
2 The London Mercury was founded by J. C. Squire in 1919; The Quarterly Review dated
back to the nineteenth century; The English Review was founded by Ford Madox Ford in
1908.
3 Monro wrote, Please dont fail to meet me in this (what is it? O choice of epithet!)
something vale, next Tuesday. The reference is to Bishop Henry King, The Exequy: Stay
for me there; I will not fail / To meet thee in that hollow vale.
4 Monro was thinking of calling his latest article Wordsworth: Our Grandfather; it
appeared as Wordsworth Revisited, in C. 2: 8 (July 1924).
393
My dear Manning,
I am very glad to hear from you and very sorry that I cannot accept your
kind invitation.1 I am down here in the country for a supposed rest but
really dealing with past arrears of Criterion correspondence and my own
writing. I still hope to be able to spend a weekend with you later in the
year. I am staying here for some little time and on the other hand I may
have to return to London at any moment, so it is safer to address me at 9
Clarence Gate Gardens, n.w.1.
May I have the note on Father Hyacinthe?2 I wonder if the Murry
muddle has any pathological interest for you. I am obliged to write some
sort of brief reply to his article in the Criterion,3 simply to make clear that
everything that Murry believes in is anathema to me, but I shall not be
able to go into everything at all thoroughly. It will hardly be more than a
statement or creed. I have never found any writer whose views were so
antipathetic to me as Murrys.4 I agree with what you say about faith and
religion.5
I want a long article from you: If you do not suggest a subject yourself,
I shall probably before long suggest to you several which I think ought to
be dealt with by the Criterion.
I am very sorry that we meet so seldom.
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
1 On 2 May, Manning had invited TSE to his farm in Surrey for a day or two.
2 Le Pre Hyacinthe, C. 2: 8 (July 1924), 4607.
3 JMMs Romanticism and the Tradition, C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924), a reply to TSEs The
Function of Criticism, C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923). JMM said that since the debate was originally
opened in The Adelphi of which he was editor, he had replied to Mr Eliot . . . in an article
entitled More About Romanticism in The Adelphi for December. However, he thought
the more leisurely and expansive pages of The Criterion offered a better chance of
conducting this controversy to some issue. See also David Goldie, A Critical Difference:
T. S. Eliot and John Middleton Murry in English Literary Criticism, 19191928 (1998).
4 JMM argued that the tradition of Romanticism is just as lofty and august as the tradition
of Classicism and in the present condition of the European consciousness is of more
immediate importance. He saw Religion and Literature as branches of the same everlasting
root, and construed Romanticism as something that happened to the European soul after
the Renaissance, which was characterised by the assertion of mans independence of the
external spiritual authority of the Church. Far from being impersonal, the work of art was,
according to JMM, a manifestation of the rhythm of the soul of the man who created it.
5 Murry should distinguish between faith and religion, wrote Manning.

I am sorry that I have not had time hitherto to answer your letters or
anybody elses for that matter. I hope that you managed to get the draft
scheme into Lady Rothermeres hands before she left Paris, and got an
answer from her about it.1 I had a letter from her just before leaving but
she does not mention this matter at all.
Do not think that I am not aware you had a very short time in which to
get the number out and I must take my part of the responsibility for the
delay. What I am more concerned about at present is the number of
printers errors or blemishes in the present number. There are a great many
errors of a sort which have not occurred before and for which the printers
themselves ought to be responsible and they are the sort of error which
ought not to occur in a paper of our high quality. They show signs of haste
in the composition which I should have quite excused had they been able
to get the number out before Easter. But as Hazells had the usual amount
of time for the final make up, I do not see that there is any excuse for errors
of this sort. I have apologized for them to Lady Rothermere because I
know that this is the sort of thing which annoys her particularly: You know
yourself that she has always been very proud of the paper and sets great
store by having it absolutely perfect. If this sort of carelessness were to
continue she would just as likely as not throw the whole thing up, so I
think that it ought to be brought to Hazells attention in detail. The errors
consist chiefly in irregularities in placing the letters and in unevenness of
inking of certain letters. I am sending you herewith a copy in which I think
most of these errors have been marked and I am sending another one to
Hazell. We cannot be too particular on these points.
My secretary Mr J. L. Culpin will bring you this letter and a marked
copy of the Criterion himself and I should be obliged if you would give him
a cheque for 5 for payment of salary for the four weeks from March 19th
to April 16th.
In case any press cuttings get lost in the post coming to me, I hope that
you will have them all yourself. If the Criterion does not get good notices
this time from all the Rothermere and Beaverbrook press, I shall draw
1 A reference to the plan put forward by RC-S for circularising 5000 names.
395
Lady Rothermeres attention again to this. I have not received any press
cuttings yet,
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
PS Could you let me know the number of words in all the contributions
to the April Number, so that we may get the contributors paid off?
to W. B. Yeats cc
3 May 1924 [London]
My dear Mr [Yates del.] Yeats,
I am very much obliged at receiving from Messrs. A. P. Watt & Son your
play The Cat and the Moon.1 You know how intense an admiration I
have for all of your work and you know that I should be very happy to
publish in the Criterion everything that you would give us. Also, I venture
to hope that you will agree with me that the Criterion is far the most
suitable review in this country in which your work could appear. Of course
the Criterion is run on very scanty means and it is a hard struggle to make
the appearance that we do with the capital at our disposal. In order to run
it at all, I am working without a salary, without an Assistant Editor,
without a business Manager, a staff or an office; doing all the editing at
home in the evening. I remind you of this only to explain that my offer to
Watts is not commensurate with my desire to get this play but only
commensurate with the means at my disposal. I have offered 10.00.0 for
the British Serial rights with the suggestion that I might be able to pay
rather more if the play does not appear in America until after July 15th,
the date of the issue in which I should publish it. If you will let me have the
play, I shall consider it a favour and a kindness to my attempt to run a
good literary review in London.
I look back with great pleasure to my lunch with you at the Savile Club2
and I hope that I may have the pleasure of seeing you when you are next
in London.
I suppose that The Trembling of the Veil3 has been entirely distributed
but I am just contemplating having in each number of the Criterion
1 WBYs The Cat and the Moon appeared in C. 2: 8 (July 1924).

2 On 12 Dec. 1922 TSE had told OM he had lunched with WBY at the Savile Club. He
found WBY very stimulating: one of a very small number of people with whom one can
profitably talk about poetry.
3 1000 copies of WBYs autobiography were privately printed in 1922. In reply, WBY
offered to lend TSE a copy as there was none to be had. It was reviewed in C. 5: 3 (June

substantial reviews of a very small number of books.1 Would it be possible
for us to get a copy for that purpose? I admired and enjoyed immensely all
that I read in the Dial.2
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Harriet Shaw Weaver3 cc

Old Fishbourne
Dear Miss Weaver,
I am very glad and very sorry to hear from you: sorry to hear your news4
and also sorry that I did not take this matter up with you before. I had
been intending to do so for some weeks, but had to postpone it from day
to day owing to pressure of other business; I have been waiting for an
evening to come and see you.
I should like very much to discuss your proposal with you and I hope
that the matter can wait for a week or so until I return to town. I shall
come to see you as soon as I return. I should like to consider the possibility
of our taking over the poets translation series and of arranging with Lewis
about his two books as well.5 When I see you, I hope that we can come to
some arrangement which I could submit to Lady Rothermere for her
approval. I am very sorry about the Joyce books.6
1927), after being reissued in Autobiographies: Reveries over Childhood and Youth and The
Trembling of the Veil (1926).
1 Books of this Quarter first appeared in C. 2: 8 (July 1924).
2 Instalments of WBYs autobiography appeared as More Memories in Dial 73: 14
(JulyOct. 1922).
3 Harriet Shaw Weaver: see Glossary of Names.
4 On 1 May, Shaw Weaver said the Egoist Press had now reached that stage where to
expand requires too much capital, and not to expand means . . . slow extinction. She and
Dora Marsden had decided to close down.
5 Weaver said that RA believed TSE might want to take over all or some of the Poets
Translations series, albeit of little commercial value; the copyright and what remains of the
stock of Tarr and The Caliphs Design are being made over to Mr Lewis who wants to
concentrate on one publisher.
6 RA said TSE would be sorry that Mr Joyces books have gone. Sylvia Beach had taken
Ulysses, while Cape took over the other four Joyce titles Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as
a Young Man, Exiles and Chamber Music.
397
I want to put into the next Criterion a note commemorating the end of
the Egoist Press.1 For I am convinced that what you have done in
publishing the Egoist through those years, in bringing out the books which
you published, and in advancing the work of certain authors, is a work of
very great importance and value. I doubt if you realise yourself how much
you have done for English literature or with what unselfishness, modesty
and public spirit you have done it.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]

3 May 1924 at 2 Milestone Cottages,
Old Fishbourne
My dear Walpole,
I am very glad to hear from you and to know that the new number
pleases you. I have been waiting to write to you for a very long time, but
have had no address whatever. When I returned your manuscript to your
Secretary, I asked for an address to which I could write to you but he did
not reply. Had I been able to communicate with you I should have
explained my intentions and asked your approval and should of course
have sent you proof of the Old Ladies. I hope you will understand that it
is through no fault of mine that I was unable to do so.
I had hoped to publish two chapters in the April number and two more
in the July issue in order to get in all that you gave me before your book
appeared, but I found myself overwhelmed with material; Middleton
Murrys article was twice as long as I expected it to be and several other
things have turned up which I had imprudently promised to publish. In
consequence the April number is really bigger than our means allow and
I am afraid that the July number will also be bigger. So I am disappointed
in only being able to publish one chapter in April and another in July; this
is a pity as the four chapters are something rather complete in itself.
1 In his Commentary, TSE said he had learnt with great regret that the Egoist Press has
ceased to exist. It had performed a service that is one function of a private press. It made
possible the publication of the works of authors then unknown which would never have been
accepted by the larger publishing houses. Citing JJs Portrait of the Artist, as well as volumes
by WL, EP, Marianne Moore, and H. D., he added: With complete disintestedness and
modesty the Egoist Press performed services to literature wholly out of proportion to its
capital and position (C. 2: 8 [July 1924], 3723). TSE dedicated SE to Shaw Weaver, in
gratitude and recognition of her services to English Letters. See also his tribute, Miss Harriet
Weaver, Encounter, Jan. 1962.

I think that you left England before I had an opportunity of telling you
how much I liked and enjoyed the Old Ladies and how grateful I am to
you for letting me use it. I think that the portrait of Mrs Payne is
extraordinarily good.
I am trying to improve the Criterion in various ways but it is difficult
with the time and funds at my disposal. I find that it takes more and more
time and thought, and I always see how much better it might be, had I
more time to give to it. I have come down to the country for a supposed
rest, but I find myself doing several hours work on it every day, and yet I
have a bag full of unanswered correspondence. I am dreading the point at
which running the Criterion will obviously be too much for my time and
strength.
I expect to be in town again in a week or so and I should be delighted
to come and see you, or we could lunch somewhere together.
Lunch is an unsatisfactory meal for me at best, because it has to take
place in the City and I am always too busy to spare more than an hour and
a half at most but I do hope that we can arrange a meeting very soon.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
I hope the proof-reading was satisfactory?
to J. E. Spingarn1 ts Berg
Dear Sir,
Thank you very much for your book of poems2 which I have just
received and for your cordial greetings which I cordially reciprocate. I am
indeed flattered that you should have paid me this attention and shall look
forward with great pleasure to reading the poems as well as to having an
inscribed copy. I should like very much to send you a copy of my prose
book of criticism,3 should you care to receive it but you may already have
seen it and not care to encumber your shelves with a presentation copy.
1 J. E. Spingarn (18751939): Professor of Comparative Literature, Columbia University,

18991911.
2 Spingarn, Poems (1924): a limited edition of 40 copies.
3 SW (1920). Replying on 24 May, Spingarn said he would like a presentation copy: I know
it well, but do not own a copy, and the American Edition seems to be out of print. He had
followed TSEs career as poet and critic from the beginning.
399
I was pleased to see that your publishers had thought me worthy to be
included in a volume of select essays in which you are represented,
although a little annoyed that I should never have been notified of it and
should have known of the fact only from a notice in The Times.1 But that
is the way publishers behave.
I have known and admired your book on the Renaissance for many
years.2
Yours very truly,
T. S. Eliot
to Ramn Fernandez cc
3 May 1924 [London]
My dear Sir,
I am very glad to have your letter of the 1st inst. and delighted by your
having accepted my suggestion. I also appreciate very highly what you say
about the Criterion and myself.3
I could ask for nothing better than the essay on Newman which you
suggest and in fact I cannot think of anyone either here or abroad from
whom I should prefer to have such an essay.4 I may say that ever since the
beginning of the Criterion, I have been looking for someone to write an
essay on Newman: I have not had the time to do so myself and until I read
your essay in the Nouvelle Revue Franaise,5 I did not know whom to ask.
But I do not wish to hamper you; if there is some other subject on which
you would prefer to write, please let me know.
Write in French or English as you please: if the former, we will have it
translated; if the latter, we will have any corrections made that may prove
1 Criticism in America, its Functions and Status (1924) included essays by Irving Babbitt,
Van Wyck Brooks, TSE and Spingarn, among others.
2 A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance (1899). TSEs annotated copy (2nd ed.,
1908) is at Houghton,
3 Replying on 1 May to TSEs letter of 17 Apr., Fernandez said: I read the Criterion, value
it highly, and follow and admire very much your personal work, both as a poet and as a
critic.
4 Fernandez would be delighted to contribute to the Criterion an essay on Newman as the
master of concrete thought, which could stand as an indirect criticism of Russells assertion
concerning science and culture (the subject of TSEs Commentary, C. 2: 7, Apr. 1924). On
16 Sept. 1921, TSE had told RA: I am not sure that the greatest Nineteenth Century poets
(in your sense!) are not Ruskin and Newman.
5 La garantie des sentiments et les intermittences du coeur, NRF 11: 132 (1 Apr.).

necessary. I agree with you that it is difficult to write in a foreign language
except while one is in the habit of thinking in that language.
I look forward to meeting you when I am next in Paris and look forward
with impatience to your essay on Newman.1
[T. S. E.]
to Olivia Shakespear 2 cc
3 May 1924 Milestone Cottages
Dear Mrs Shakespear,
On the contrary, it is possible that Ezra may curse me. To the best of my
recollection the complete works of Thomas Jefferson were left at Holland
Place Chambers.3 Ezra had them for a long time and I think that when he
went to Paris, we had some discussion as to whether he should return them
to me. There are a great many volumes and my flat was already filled with
books, so I think that he agreed to store them for me. At any rate I have
not got the Jefferson now and I think that you will find them at Holland
Place Chambers.
No, I have never met George Antheil.4
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
1 Fernandez, The Experience of Newman, C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924).

2 Olivia Shakespear (18641938), mother of Dorothy Pound, made an unhappy marriage
in 1885 with Henry Hope Shakespear (18491923), a solicitor. She published several novels
including Love on a Mortal Lease (1894) and The Devotees (1904). Through her cousin, the
poet Lionel Johnson (18671902), she effected a meeting with WBY, which resulted in a
short love affair and a lifetimes friendship. WBY wrote at least two poems for her, and she
was the Diana Vernon of his Memoirs (ed. Denis Donoghue, 1972).
3 TSE had acquired his fathers Complete Works of Thomas Jefferson on his fathers death
in 1919. Jefferson was a crucial figure in EPs later intellectual Pantheon, featuring in Cantos
XXXIXLI entitled Jefferson Nuevo Mundo, Jefferson and/or Mussolini (1935) and The
JeffersonAdams Letters as Shrine and Monument (1937). The Pounds lived at 5 Holland
Park Chambers from 1914 until their departure for Paris at the end of 1920.
4 See EP, George Antheil, C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).
401
to E. R. Curtius cc
3 May 1924 [London]
My dear Curtius,
Thank you for your letter of the 29th ult. I have taken note of your
change of address.1 You shall receive [a] cheque for the Proust article in
due course.2
I am sorry that Mr Flints note3 has given offence to you. It did not occur
to me that this would cause ground for complaint, but of course all such
comments ought to be made either by the Editor himself or else to be
submitted to the contributor for his approval. I quite agree with you about
the principle involved.
I certainly look forward to meeting one day and meanwhile at more
leisure I look forward to writing to you about your projected studies in
English literature.4 I feel that you take Mr Murry a little too seriously.5 In
his own paper the Adelphi, he has subsequently denied to Marcel Proust
all importance.6 Since the publication of the book which I sent you which,
having been a course of lectures delivered at Oxford was comparatively
restrained in tone, he has indulged in considerable loose and even
vituperative criticism of writers who fall outside of his rather narrow
sphere of sympathy.
I am writing a short rejoinder to his article in the Criterion.7
[T. S. E.]
1 Curtius had recently been appointed Professor of German at Heidelberg University.

2 On the Style of Marcel Proust, trans. F. S. Flint (C. 2: 7, Apr. 1924).
3 Flint added a footnote to the phrase rocket-like effusion: Sie-raketenartige Aufsprhen,
or rocket-like sparkling-up. It is questionable whether effuser is good French. Most French
writers would say fuser, I think. In any case, it is hardly just to describe the lilac as rocket-
like F.S.F. (314).
4 TSE met Curtius only once or twice in their thirty-five years of correspondence, but
counted him among his old friends (Brief ber Ernst Robert Curtius, 1956). In his letters
Curtius frequently alluded to a possible English sequel to his French Literary Relations.
5 Curtius considered: Prousts style confirms Middleton Murrys affirmations in his
suggestive and thoughtful book, The Problem of Style (313) a book that TSE had sent
him.
6 I saw Marcel Proust and James Joyce emerge . . . Essentially, from my point of view, they
are nothing. Landmarks, perhaps, to tell me twice again that the intellectual consciousness
is utterly kaput . . . There is more really profound thought-adventure in one of Tchehovs
stories like The Black Monk than in all their work put together (Novels and Thought-
Adventures, Adelphi 1: 6, Nov. 1923, 536).
7 TSE did not publish a rejoinder to JMMs Romanticism and the Tradition, C. 2: 7 (Apr.
1924).

to Jean de Menasce cc
3 May 1924 [London]
Dear Menasce,
I have only today received your letter.1 By ill luck it must have been
delivered by the next post after I had left for the country and before my
instructions to the Post Office had taken effect; in consequence it remained
at Clarence Gate Gardens until someone called there yesterday and
brought it to me. I had been wondering when you would return but was
afraid that I should be out of town at the moment of your passage. Thank
you very much for the version of Ithaca.2 I hope to use two or three of
these poems in the July number.
I hope to be back in London by the time you come up for a visit and look
forward to seeing you and hearing about Paris.
I have never met Supervielle nor read any of his work, although I have
heard much of him and once received a cheque for Fc 75- which was
intended for him. I believe he belongs to a wealthy family of bankers in
Montevideo.3 Antigone must have been very interesting.4
Looking forward to seeing you,
Sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
to Messrs. A. P. Watt & Son cc

Dear Sirs,
Mr Cobden-Sanderson has forwarded to me your letter of the 22nd ult.
together with a copy of Mr W. B. Yates [sic] play entitled The Cat and the
Moon. As you know, our uniform rates are 10.0.0 per 5000 words, but
for such an important contribution from so distinguished a writer, I would
make an exception. The play appears to me to be under 2000 words: I will
1 De Menasce had written on 18 Apr.

2 De Menasce sent a translation of Cavafys Ithaca by G. Valassopoulo, saying it will stand
a good deal of sub-editing. It appeared in C. 2: 8 (July 1924).
3 Jules Supervielle (18841960), whom de Menasce had been glad to meet, was a French
Uruguayan poet, novelist and dramatist, whose collection Dbarcadres appeared in 1922.
His uncle, who adopted him in infancy, founded a bank in Montevideo.
4 De Menasce had seen Cocteaus Sophoclean adaptation of Antigone performed in Paris in
1922, with scenery by Picasso and music by Paul Honegger.
403
take it upon myself to offer on behalf of The Criterion 10.0.0. This is the
only occasion on which I have ever offered more than the standard rate;
but I have very great admiration for Mr Yates work and I am convinced
that The Criterion is the most suitable periodical in England in which it
could appear.
I should publish this play in the number to appear July 15th. If Mr Yates
arrangement with The Dial permits of the play appearing in America not
before this date that is to say, if The Dial could publish it not earlier than
from the August number, I should be able to make a larger offer.
I should be glad to hear from you as soon as possible.
Yours faithfully
[T. S. E.]
to Dr Wilhelm Lehmann cc
3 May 1924 [Fishbourne]
Dear Dr Lehmann,
I am in the country and separated from my letter files so that I am
obliged to write to you care of your publishers to thank you for your book1
which has just arrived. I have been looking forward for a long time to
reading something of yours after our interesting correspondence and am
delighted to have at last the opportunity. I hope to read it before returning
to London. I have come away for a supposed rest but in reality am dealing
with immense arrears of correspondence in connection with the Criterion.
I have been meaning to write to you for a long time and to send you one
of the books that you asked for. I will at least do that when I return to
London. Meanwhile, with many thanks and looking forward with great
interest to reading your story.
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
1 Presumably Lehmanns Die Bedrngte Seraph. Novelle (1924).

4 May 1924 [Fishbourne]
Mon cher Rivire,
Merci de votre aimable lettre; il ma beaucoup plu. Je suis enchant de
recevoir une promesse mme un peu vague.1 Jespre que nous pourrons
publier quelque chose dans notre numro doctobre, parce que a nous
serait assez utile cause de la confrence que vous proposez.2 Je suis
certain quon pourrait arranger une ou deux confernces qui vous
ddommageraient des frais de voyage. prsent je suis en villgiature un
repos illusoire parce que jy ai apport un paquet norme de
correspondance relative au Criterion. Ds mon retour, je ferai une enqute
l-dessus. Si Lady Rothermere vient Londres pendant lautomne, je suis
sr quelle donnerait son appui et nous pourrions peut-tre avoir une
confrence lance par le Criterion. En tout cas nous pourrons
probablement prparer la situation par un peu de rclame.
Je vous ferai parvenir un exemplaire du Waste Land.3 Cest curieux que
vous ne laviez pas encore reu parce que jai insist chez les editeurs quun
exemplaire fut envoy votre revue.
Jai reu une trs gentille lettre de Fernandez.
Cordialement, votre
[T. S. E.]4
1 On 22 Apr. Rivire promised a new article after he completed a novel.

2 Rivire asked whether there would be an audience for a lecture on Proust in London the
following year, and if it would cover his costs.
3 On 17 Apr., TSE had enquired whether the NRF would do a note on TWL. Rivire said
they had not received a copy (though on 21 May VW confirmed that one had been sent).
4 Translation: My dear Rivire, Thank you for your kind letter, which gave me much
pleasure. I was delighted to receive a promise from you, however vague it might be. I hope
we might be able to publish something from you in the October issue, for, bearing in mind
the lecture which you propose, this would be very useful to us. I am sure that we could
organise one or two more lectures for you, so as to enable you to cover your travel expenses.
For the moment I am supposed to be on holiday, but it is only an illusory rest, for I have
brought with me an enormous amount of mail from the Criterion, which has to be dealt
with. As soon as I am back in London, I shall look into the problem of your lectures, and if
Lady Rothermere comes to London in the autumn, I am sure that she would give us her
support and that we could perhaps organise a lecture under the auspices of the Criterion. In
any case, we could probably prepare the ground by making some publicity out of it.
I shall let you have a copy of The Waste Land. I am surprised that you have not had a
copy yet, for I had specifically asked the publishers to send a copy to your review.
Ive had a very nice letter from Fernandez. Cordially yours [T. S. E.]
405
Old Fishbourne
My dear Whibley,
I am delighted that you consider this Criterion so good.1 I do think
myself that it has much more character than any previous number, and for
that reason am all the more glad to have had your Chesterfield in this
number, as I think that nothing could fit any better with that character.
You give me great encouragement.
As you say nothing about your health, I do hope that it continues as
good as it was when we last met.
I return to London in a week or two.
[T. S. E.]
to Lady Margaret Levett cc

Dear Lady Margaret Levett,
You may remember that you kindly arranged last year two appointments
for myself and my wife to see Dr Martin. I have been in communication
with Dr Martin all the winter and he now informs me that he will be
staying with you from the 10th till the end of the month. I asked him, in
view of my difficulties in getting to Germany, whether he could not give me
and my wife a number of appointments and I enclose a copy of his reply.
Assuming that Dr Martin will arrive at the end of this week or the
beginning of next, I should like particularly to arrange two appointments
for myself for next week, and an appointment for my wife early in the
following week.
As I am in the city during the day, the best time for me if possible is from
5.30 in the afternoon, but should there be any difficulty in fixing an
appointment for this time or later, I could probably keep any other
appointment that Dr Martin could give me.
I shall return to town at the end of this week and meanwhile I am at
this address. I am very sorry to trouble you, but I know that Dr Martins
1 On 1 May, CW said that TSE was giving the Criterion by degrees a distinctive character.
He hoped TSEs notes (Crites) would become a permanent feature, praised the pieces by
WL and Sitwell, and disparaged JMM as all soap bubbles & cotton-wool.

time is likely to be very full, and as I have been looking forward to
his coming all the winter, I am very anxious to miss no opportunity of
seeing him.
I am yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
to Bonamy Dobre1 ts Brotherton

My dear Dobre
I have at last had the opportunity to read carefully your essay on
Laforgue.2 I am very sorry that it has been utterly impossible to deal with
it before. I am very much interested by it and in my opinion it is well worth
developing at greater length. It would be extremely interesting if you could
go thoroughly into the philosophical basis of Laforgues thought, which so
far as I know has never been properly done. Of course no discussion of
Laforgue would be complete without an analysis of his technical
innovations in verse. But I think it might be a most valuable piece of work
and it would be an interesting thing to make a short series including
Rimbaud and Corbire. I do hope that you will go ahead with this essay.
As for the poems3 you left with me, that will take more time, one cannot
form an opinion on poetry in the time I have had at my disposal. So I
should like to keep them a little longer and meanwhile if you want them
back, please let me know. I should like very much to hear from you in any
case. Do let me know when you are again in this country.
T. S. Eliot
1 Bonamy Dobre: see Glossary of Names. At this time, prior to his academic career, BD was
living in Larrau in the Pyrenees.
2 BD responded (8 May) that he would try to develop the essay on Laforgue that TSE
returned to him. I must, however, confine myself to a discussion of his material, as I am not
competent to deal with his technical innovations in verse. Frankly I dont think his
philosophic basis very profound: he fastened eagerly, I think, upon any scheme that seemed
at the moment likely to assuage his tormenting sensibility. I should like to do Rimbaud also
some time, but he is a more complicated problem. He made and destroyed sanctuaries as fast
as Millamant said she could make and unmake lovers. I know too little about Corbire at
present to want to write about him; I am curious now only to read him more thoroughly.
3 BD had sent TSE some poems by A. J. C. Brown that he admired.
407
to Ottoline Morrell cc
Old Fishbourne
My dear Ottoline,
I have forwarded your letter to Modern Medicines Ltd., Bush House,
Aldwych, w.c.2. but these people are very undependable. They only get
very small supplies of Mutaflor1 and often one has to wait for a week or
a fortnight. If you are in a hurry, I should advise you to write or telegraph
to Robert Hanagarth, Apotheker, Freiburg, Breisgau, who will post the
Mutaflor immediately, registered.
We have been living in such a muddle and have had so many disasters
here, that Vivienne has simply not had the time or strength to write any
letters whatever. The weather has been abominable, the domestic
difficulties of keeping house in a small cottage with very undependable
help, has simply meant slavery from morning to night. We are both longing
to get back and are simply waiting for Dr Martin on whom we have been
counting for so many months. I have written to Lady Margaret Levett and
hope for an early appointment. It is very kind of you to ask us to
Garsington while he is here; but I know that it would be impossible for
either of us to leave London at all during that time. Vivienne will need to
keep all the strength she can for the treatment, and as it is there will be a
thousand and one things to be left undone during that time.
What a miserable spring we have had. You cannot be looking forward
to Dr Martins coming more eagerly than we. Vivienne wants to write to
you as soon as she gets back to London and into the life which at least
makes correspondence possible.
Always affectionately,
[T. S. E.]
PS Thank you very much for letting us know about Dr Martins fees. At
the rate at which I paid last year, we certainly could not afford to see him
more than once or twice, and I am very anxious to get the maximum
possible number of appointments.
1 Mutaflor, a medication developed in Germany in 1917 by Prof. Alfred Nissle, is still used
in the treatment of bowel disorders.

to Conrad Aiken ts Huntington
Dear Conrad,
I am glad you are able to account for yourself so well but sorry that you
remain so evasive in response to my demands. Please however, in your
search for emoluments (with which I sympathise) remember that there is an
emolument always waiting for you at the Criterion; also that you or I or the
Criterion might disappear at any moment and that it would a pity that this
should happen without your name ever having appeared in it. I hope that
business if not pleasure will call you to London this summer. I have
organised some fortnightly lunches at the Cock in Fleet Street at which
several regular contributors usually turn up and we should be glad to have
your company on one of these Wednesdays. I also should be glad to have
your private company on another day. I hope things are going smoothly
with you, barring the need for money which is perpetual. I have come down
here for a short rest but as a matter of fact to deal with arrears of work and
shall be in London again in a week or so.
Yours ever,
T. S. E.
to D. R. Gillie1 cc
My dear Gillie,
I have only today received your letter. By a curious piece of ill luck, it
seems to have been delivered on the evening of the day on which I left for
the country together with a letter from Menasce and one or two others. In
consequence it arrived too soon for my instructions to the Post Office to
forward letters to have taken effect and was only discovered yesterday by
someone who went into my flat. I am extremely sorry, although I was out
of town in any case, on the days you mention. I suppose you will be too
busy during this term to come up to London at all, and it is hardly likely
that I shall get to Oxford. So I wish you the best of luck for there is luck
in your examinations although I have not the slightest doubt of the result.
1 D. R. Gillie: a student of Balliol College, Oxford; later translator of Joseph Pilsudski, The
Memories of a Polish Revolutionary and Soldier (1931).
409
In any case I hope you will let me know when you have come down to
London again with success behind you.1
Valery Larbaud lives at 70 rue du Cardinal le Moine, Paris V and you
had better put faire suivre on the letter because I have not heard from
him for some time and he may not yet have returned from Italy. When I
spoke to him in November, he was very indefinite about coming to
England but I think that if you wrote to him, it would serve as an
additional inducement. He is more likely to come in June than at any other
time of the year. Certainly use my name.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to J. Shand 2 cc
Dear Sir,
I am returning herewith your two essays on Hamlet and Satire, because
although they are very interesting they do not very well fit in with the
make-up of the several next numbers of the Criterion.3 With your
permission I will retain a little longer your very interesting paper on
Conrad as it might be possible for us to use this.4
Yours faithfully
[T. S. E.]
1 On 18 Apr. Gillie recalled TSE mentioning at Christmas time that Larbaud was coming
over in the summer and might be willing to come to the Ordinary. I have more or less
decided not to put off my schools and am watching the dreadful term approach with a sort
of fatalistic indifference. He hoped to be able to call on TSE in London on 22 or 23 Apr. if
he was free.
2 John Shand (b. 1901) was an occasional contributor to C. He later wrote an essay Around
Little Gidding, Nineteenth Century 136 (Sept. 1944).
3 On 25 May Shand submitted an essay on Othello, and on 16 June a dialogue on The Art
of Acting. He published Satire and Cynicism in The Contributors Club, Adelphi 2: 9
(Feb. 1925).
4 See Shand, Some Notes on Joseph Conrad, C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924).

7 May 19241 Milestone Cottages
My dear Virginia,
Five thousand words are no drawback, when the words are yours; I wish
for nothing better than to attract the sparkish wits2 of undergraduates;
I accept the article which you offer me.3 May I have it at once, and set it
up? You can fashion it to any cut you please when you get the proof. I shall
print it in the July number. If you will send it to Clarence Gate Gardens I
shall be there in time to receive it.
I hope indeed that the Criterion has improved. If so, it must be chiefly
due to having an article by Murry.4 Of course his contribution is probably
not up [to] the level of his newest obstetric style under the name of Helen
Thomas (vide the last Adelphi)5 but it would be unreasonable of me to
expect him to honour me with his very best which is perhaps a little
above the heads of the Criterion public. I should be interested to know
1 Misdated April 1924.

2 The phrase sparkish wits had figured in VHEs Letters of the Moment II, published
in C., Apr. 1924. In the course of her sketch, F. M. quotes what she calls a few poor verses
in fact, they were a modified extract from TSEs draft opening of The Fire Sermon
including: But see, where Fresca in her boudoir sits, / Surrounded by a court of sparkish
wits (Vivien Eliot Papers, Bodleian: Eng misc. c 624, folios 1078). The epithet sparkish
aptly picks up the name of a character in The Country Wife the play that has supposedly
sparked F. M.s verses in the first place. It is probable that TSE gave VHE the term sparkish,
since the word is written in his hand at the foot of folio 110v in the Bodleian MSS. TSE
evidently relished the private joke of devising a sketch that incorporated an adapted portion
of his draft of TWL, since not only is VHEs piece dated 1st April, but TSE also pressed the
printers to ensure that the issue in which it was to feature should be published on April Fools
Day: Hazell, Watson & Viney wrote on 3 Mar. 1925, We note that you are very anxious that
this should be published on April 1st and we will do everything possible to work to this date.
See further J. Haffenden, Vivien Eliot and The Waste Land: The Forgotten Fragments, PN
Review 175 (33: 5, MayJune 2007), 1823.
3 On 5 May, VW was flattered that TSE wanted anything of hers in C. where she would
rather appear than anywhere else. The only thing she had was a lecture called Mr Bennett
and Mrs Brown: the drawbacks are that it is elementary and loquacious, being meant for
undergraduates . . . and that we are going to print it next autumn (Letters, III, 106). See
Character in Fiction, described as A paper read to the Heretics, Cambridge, on May 8,
1924, in C. 2: 8 (July 1924); it was reprinted as Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown (Hogarth Press,
1924).
4 VW said it was a very good number, but she experienced a complete failure as to what
Murry means. See JMMs Romanticism and the Tradition, C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).
5 Helen Thomas (widow of the poet Edward Thomas), Birth, Adelphi 1: 12 (May 1924).
The piece began with a description of the birth of her son: I woke up in the night, and knew
that at last my waiting was over. My baby was making ready for his mysterious entrance
into life. I held my breath, and waited. (108591).
411
your verdict on his essay when you have given it really adequate study,
because I have not yet had time to read it. If your opinion accords with that
of the Times Literary Supplement1 (and I somehow divine your approval)
I shall be glad to feel that I have been the humble instrument of reinstating
Murry to his place in society, beside the hearths of civilised homes, from
which he has wilfully strayed in recent years,
e cio gli fece
Romeo, persona umile e peregrina . . .
2
and I shall not have run the Criterion for two suicidal3 years in vain.
I have already been warned and put on my guard, in fact perhaps
threatened by our venerable and august friend Mr Sydney Schiff, that I
may be met on my return at Victoria Station by a mass-meeting of
protestants against my careless editing in not having had time to read
and expurgate Wyndham Lewiss article before publication, there being
only twenty-four hours in a day. This armed and menacing mass-meeting
of all those who feel that the cap fits (I expect to recognise many friendly
faces) will presumably be led by Mr Sydney Schiff himself in the costume
and headpiece of a pseudo-Proust.4 But when I am dismembered, like a
hero of Grecian tragedy5 (rather than a bungalow bride) it is you, my dear
Virginia, whom I shall reproach and execrate with my last breath. For you
are my oracle and counsel in matters journalistic, and did you not advise
me (with the supporting opinions too of Leonard and Clive as junior
counsel) that it was in pursuance of the best tradition of British
1 Continuing his discussion of Classicism and Romanticism with Mr T. S. Eliot, the editor
of The Criterion, Mr Murry sets out in some detail his theory of religion as a relation between
the fundamental I Am in the soul and the greater I Am beyond, which imperatively
demands the rejection of any external spiritual authority in its task of overcoming the
antithesis between inner freedom and external necessity, and apprehending the mystical unity
of the world . . . His theory is fertile enough of new ideas to demand careful attention even
from those who reject his individualism (TLS, 1 May 1924, 271).
2 Dante, Parad., VI, 135: and this was wrought / for him by Romeo, a lowly and an alien
man (Temple Classics). Dantes adjective peregrina re-appears in English guise as
unappeased and peregrine in Little Gidding.
3 On the carbon copy TSE wrote tedious.
4 In his satire on literary London, WLs narrator said: In a little artificial world of carefully-
fostered self-esteem I will show you a pseudo-Proust. Replying on the 11th, VW said she and
LW had imagined this referred to JMM and had not connected the pseudo-Proust with
Schiff. She added: everyone Lytton, Osbert Sitwell, Mary Hutchinson is claiming to be an
Ape of God and identifying the rest of the pack.
5 A reference to the ritual dismembering of the hero in Greek tragedy, exemplified by
Pentheus in Euripides The Bacchae.
6 VW replied that TSEs oracles and counsels, Virginia, Leonard and Clive [Bell] are fallible
mortals, instancing their mistaken identification of the pseudo-Proust with JMM.

journalism to let one contributor say what he likes about another?6
But seriously, Virginia, how tired I am of being supposed to edit the
Criterion, how tired of the very word Criterion! and yet you would be
surprised how many substantial personages and men of weight, Oxford
dons and grave statesmen, come and tell me what a lucky young man I am
at my age to have a review to do as I like with! Do as I like! as if there
were any satisfaction in doing as one likes with editing a review in the
fragmentary evening hours given at the cost of sleep, society, recreation
and neglect of private affairs; having to make the same appearances, get as
good or better contributors, as reviews provided with an editor and sub-
editor (with salaries and devoting all their time to it) a business manager,
an office and a staff; doing as one likes by editing a review in ones sitting
room in the evenings, subject to a thousand interruptions: without staff,
assistants or a business manager: only since Christmas with a Desk (the one
Vivien shewed you: nine pounds ten second hand saved up for) and
recently with a job secretary who performs domestic duties as well, so that
I may have a little more time for my part of the work! I should not mind
if people thought me a lunatic (and agreed that I was a harmless one) but
they simply think me mercenary for staying in a bank instead of giving all
my time to my lunacy.
I am glad to hear that Rodmell is purged, and clergy, as you may
imagine, are always a temptation to me.1 But what would happen, and
how would you behave, if I were to extend my next visit to 20 hours? You
would expire of boredom. I know my failings. Insensitive persons can
endure me for 24 hours;2 there is one old gentleman who, kept up by Port
Wine, can even survive until the first Monday morning train: but 19
hours is precisely the limit for less coarse and hardy natures. So you see
there is method in my time-table. But if you sent me to Divine Service on
Sunday Morning, and to walk with the Curate on Sunday afternoon, could
you endure me a little longer? It would still be a risk.
Vivien, in one of her lightning changes of Policy, has decided not to
return to London at all this summer. She sends you her love.
I have just faced and taxed the Nouvelle Revue Franaise with never
having reviewed The Waste Land. With specious palaver, and filthy French
knavery, they say they never received a copy. Would the Hogarth Press try
the experiment of sending them another copy? If advised of its despatch,
I will attempt my Arts and Browbeating ways on the Frenchmen again.
1 VW had said that We remain in solitude with the clergy, which is as it should be.
2 Recalling his previous visits, VW had written: Please begin to set aside your 19 hours
for Rodmell in September.
413
Meanwhile I retain my chronique, and have other cards in my sleeve.
I shall study my essays carefully on my return to London.1
Ever yours
T. S. E.
PS I will come to see you and fetch the manuscript on my return, instead
of asking you to post it.

Dear Lewis,
I have got back and want to see you soon.2 I cannot manage this week
but will you let me know what evening next week you have free and I will
come in about the usual time?
Yours ever,
T. S. E.

Dear Graves,
Please forgive me for not replying immediately to your letter.3 I hope
that the enclosed manuscripts will not reach you too late for your purpose.
As a matter of fact I was in the country and could do nothing about
returning the manuscripts until I came back to town yesterday.
I am very pleased that you should have thought of the Criterion and
hope that you will send us something more. Of course we publish very
little poetry and I am afraid that we should not be able to accept any more
until next January; otherwise I should have clung to them.4 I hope we may
1 On 5 May, VW wrote dont forget your essays: TSEs Homage to John Dryden: Three
Essays on the Poetry of the Seventeenth Century was published by the Hogarth Press in Nov.
1924.
2 Probably to discuss the rumpus caused by The Apes of God. The third instalment never
appeared.
3 On 3 May, Graves asked if TSE would return the poems, if he did not intend to publish
them in C. Edith Sitwell was staying with him in Oxford the following week and wanted to
see them.
4 None of Gravess poems were published in C.

meet again within a reasonable time. I should like very much to see you but
it does not look as if I were likely to visit Oxford again within the present
generation.
Yours sincerely,
T. S. Eliot
Do send some prose as well.
to Frederick Etchells1 cc
14 May 1924 [Criterion] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Etchells,
My sincere congratulations on the beautiful piece of work.2 I think these
things ought to sell very well at such moderate prices and I shall be glad
to insert a note in the Criterion about them.3
I shall be delighted to make suggestions about reprints. I shall not be
able to tell you what the first editions are like but I can recommend a few
things which ought to be reprinted. It seems to me that wherever possible,
it would be more useful to reprint things which are difficult to obtain in
any form, and from this point of view I should suggest that less easily
obtainable things could be found than any of Swifts pamphlets. One or
two things of Bolingbrokes for example.
As soon as anything particularly suitable occurs to me I will let you
know and I should like very much to see you later to talk it over.
With all success to your work,
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
1 Frederick Etchells (18861973), architect and writer, studied at the Royal College of Art
and worked for a while at the Omega Workshops established by Roger Fry, and then as a
Vorticist artist. Following WW1 he went into partnership with Hugh MacDonald and
practised thereafter as an architect: by 1928 he was principal architect to the Grosvenor
Estate. Haslewood Reprints was a short-lived publishing venture; but presently he undertook,
at the behest of John Rodker, a translation of Le Corbusiers classic Vers une architecture
(Towards a New Architecture, 1927).
2 Sir Thomas Browne, A Letter to a Friend upon occasion of the death of his Intimate Friend
(Frederick Etchells and Hugh Macdonald, 1924).
3 A new press which is welcome is that of Frederick Etchells and Hugh Macdonald, who
announce the Haslewood Reprints. Sir Thomas Brownes Letter to a Friend, which is the first
in the series, is an admirable reproduction of the first edition; and the volumes of the series
are published at very moderate prices (A Commentary, C. 2: 8, July 1924, 374).
415
to Owen Barfield ts Barfield
Dear Mr Barfield,
Thank you for your letter of the 30th April and for the manuscript. I
think I appreciate what you say about the rhythm of Dope but all the
same I believe in a fundamental rhythm of which ones original work gives
variations and I think that this is very much stronger in Dope than in
anything else of yours I have seen. About the present story [Mr Cayleys
Bet]. There are things in it which I like very much[;] they are to me an
exact statement of an aspect of the Cockney type. The first part seems to
me very successful: the episode of the quarrel and the bet. But it seems to
me that in the figure of the narrator you have invented a superfluous
character and that in the episode of the death you have invented a
conclusion dangerously near to the worst tricks of Dickens and Thomas
Hardy. It seems to me that it was unnecessary to make the child into such
a central figure. I am aware that the narrative manner is usually liked, but
the restriction to exact statement seems to me a higher form of literature.
It is rather like the difference between the battle of Waterloo described by
Stendhal on the one hand and by Victor Hugo on the other.1
I have expressed myself very badly, but you will see perhaps that up to
a point you have been working in a way which I very much like, and that
after that point you have been working in a way which I very much dislike.
But I do not think that the manner and tone of a public house quarrel has
ever been better done and I wish that this might be re-cast in a form in
which we might use it.2
With best wishes,
Yours truly
T. S. Eliot
1 See Stendhals account of Fabrice in the Battle of Waterloo (La Chartreuse de Parme), and
the apocalyptic account of the same battle in the first book of Pt II of Victor Hugos Les
Misrables.
2 On 10 May, Barfield had written that he did not want the rhythm of Dope to be his
permanent rhythm and that the character of the narrator was of paramount interest in
the new story. He was not ready to alter the thing yet awhile. It was not published in C.

to Henri Bremond1 cc
Cher Monsieur,
Je suis enchant de recevoir votre charmante lettre et ensuite votre livre
qui vient darriver.2 Je connaissais dj le nom de votre livre dont je viens
daborder la lecture avec un grand intrt. Tout ce que vous dites sur
Boileau mintresse et me plat.3
Je vous ferai parvenir avec beaucoup de plaisir les deux numros de
Criterion qui ont attir votre attention.4 Jai lide que la discussion entre
Monsieur Murry et moi a lieu sur tout autre terrain que votre admirable
travail. Je ne suis pas de ceux qui croient une distinction absolue entre le
classicisme et le romantisme; je trouve quon peut mme regarder plus
souvent quon ne croit un seul auteur sous les deux aspects. Ce qui est en
cause entre Monsieur Murry et moi, cest plutt quil confond mon avis
la littrature avec la religion et dans cette question i, je me trouve fort
heureusement appuy par un bel article de Jacques Rivire sur la crise du
1 Henri Brmond (18651933): French literary scholar and Catholic philosopher; author of
Newman (1905) and Histoire littraire du sentiment religieux en France (6 vols, 191622).
His The Mystery of Newman (1907) was discussed in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926).
2 On 6 May, Brmond wrote to say that Charles du Bos had alerted him to an article in the
TLS about TSEs controversy with JMM about classicism and romanticism (TLS, 1 May
1924, 271). As a result he was sending TSE his book Pour le Romantisme (1923), which had
aroused considerable public controversy in France: Le dernier document ce sujet est dans
le numro du 1 mai de la Revue des Deux Mondes larticle dAndr Seaunier. Comme je
compte revenir prochainement la charge pour rsumer le dbat, je serais trs curieux de
connatre ce qui a t dit chez vous. Il serait en effet trs intressant de prendre sur le fait une
mme proccupation littraire des deux cts de leau. Puis-je donc, sans tre trop indiscret,
vous demander de bien vouloir me faire envoyer ce qui a t crit dans votre revue autour de
la question (MS Houghton). Trans.: The latest contribution is to be found in the 1 May
issue of La Revue des Deux Mondes the article by Andr Seaunier. As I intend to re-enter
the fray in order to sum up the debate so far, I should be very curious to know what views
have been expressed in England. It would, indeed, be very interesting to discover the same
literary preoccupation at work on both sides of the water. Can I, without putting you to too
much trouble, ask you to send me what has been written on the question in your review?
3 Brmonds opening chapter, La Lgende de Boileau, disposes of the myth of Boileau as
le classicisme fait homme [classicism made man] in favour of a writer who is vivant,
pittoresque, color, savoureux, sonore, le vrai Boileau enfin, tout diffrent de celui de la
lgende [living, picturesque, colourful, pungent, sonorous, the real Boileau, quite different
from the figure of legend] (p. 2). He says in the introduction that the aim of the book, with
its studies of Scott, Lammenais, Sainte-Beuve and Barrs, is to dispel the absurd quarrel
between Boileau and Victor Hugo (x).
4 TSEs The Function of Criticism in C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923), and JMMs Romanticism and
the Tradition in C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).
417
concept de littrature dans un des derniers numros de la Nouvelle Revue
Franaise.1
Quand-mme je vous prie de me donner votre opinion quand vous aurez
lu mon article et de ma part je ne manquerai pas de vous crire la longue
ds que jaurai termin la lecture de votre tude.
En esprant vous voir votre prochaine visite Londres ou ma
prochaine visite Paris, je vous prie, cher Monsieur Brmond, de recevoir
lexpression de mes
hommages respectueux,
[T. S. E.]2
to Alexander Porterfield3 cc
Sir,
I was very much struck by a story which appeared under your name in
the Storyteller magazine with the title The Old Guard Dies.4 I should very
much like to see some of your other work with a view to publication in the
Criterion.5 On the one hand the Criterion probably does not offer
competitive remuneration: our rates are 10.0.0 per 5000 words and
1 Rivire, La crise du concept de littrature [The Crisis of the Concept of Literature],

NRF 11: 125 (1 Feb. 1924): TSE alludes to it in his Commentary in C. 2: 8 (July 1924).
2 Translation: Dear Sir, I am delighted to have your charming letter and, following it, your
book which has just arrived. Its title was already known to me, and I have begun reading it
with great interest. Everything you say about Boileau interests and delights me.
I shall have great pleasure in sending you the two issues of the Criterion which attracted
your attention. I fancy that the discussion between Mr Murry and myself is concerned with
quite a different area from that of your admirable study. I am not among those who believe
in an absolute distinction between Classicism and Romanticism; I even find that, more often
than is supposed, one and the same author can be looked at from both angles. What is at issue
between Mr Murry and myself is rather that he, in my opinion, confuses literature with
religion and, in this connection, I find very welcome support for my view in an excellent
article by Jacques Rivire on the crisis in the concept of literature in one of the latest numbers
of La Nouvelle Revue Franaise.
Nevertheless, please give me your opinion when you have read my article and I, for my
part, will not fail to write to you in due course when I have finished reading your study.
Hoping that I shall see you during your next visit to London or my next visit to Paris,
I assure you, dear Monsieur Brmond, of my most respectful regards. [T. S. E.]
3 Alexander Porterfield, an American short-story writer (resident in New York City) whose
work appeared in Harpers and other magazines.
4 The Old Guard Dies, Saturday Evening Post (22 July 1922); reprinted in The Storyteller.
5 See Porterfield, A Marriage Has Been Arranged, C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925).

contributions should be under that length if possible. On the other hand
the inducement is the appreciation of a different public.
The Criterion is a quarterly and publishes one or two pieces of fiction
in each number.
I am, yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
to Jean Charles Grenier1 cc

Monsieur,
Madame la Vicomtesse Rothermere ma envoy le premier numro de
votre review Philosophies qui contient la premire partie de votre article
sur le Nihilisme europen.2 Voil un sujet qui a dj attir mon attention
et que je trouve dune importance capitale. Jai t normment intress
par votre article; je voudrais bien que cette question fut pose aux lecteurs
anglais et je partage avec Lady Rothermere son admiration pour votre
article. Pourriez vous mindiquer ltendue eventuelle de votre article et les
conclusions gnrales? Sil est admissible, je voudrais bien voir la suite de
cet article dont je prendrais tous les soins possibles.3
Nous serons heureux dinsrer une note sur Philosophie dans un
numro futur du Criterion4 et je ferai parvenir le Criterion votre bureau
Paris.
En vous flicitant encore sur la revue que vous avez initie, je vous prie,
Monsieur, dagrer lexpression de mes sentiments tres distingus.
[T. S. E.]5
1 Jean Grenier (18981971): French philosopher, essayist and novelist.

2 European Nihilism, Philosophies 1: 1 (1924).
3 Grenier replied (23 May) that the two articles he had written were just a fragment of a
book he had been working on since Oct. 1923, and which would be published only after a
few years.
4 In his note on French Periodicals, F. S. Flint called it a new review for the discussion of ideas
from all angles. The opening numbers were full of interesting matter and it promised to be
valuable . . . for those not afraid of ideas, whatever their nature, C. 2: 8 (July 1924), 498.
5 Translation: Dear Sir, Lady Rothermere sent me the first number of your review
Philosophies which includes the first part of your article on European Nihilism. Its a subject
which had already caught my attention, and is of capital importance. I was immensely
interested in your article; I wish this question could be put before English readers and share
Lady Rothermeres admiration for your article. Could you let me know the eventual scope
of the article, and its general conclusions? If permitted, I would very much like to see the
sequel of the article which I would take great care of.
419
to Hugh Walpole cc
Dear Walpole,
I am back from the country and should like very much to see you.
I could lunch on any day you like next week except Wednesday but a
work-day lunch would necessitate your coming to lunch with me in the
City, which as I said, would be rather hurried and crowded and I am afraid
I could not give you a very good lunch either. On the other hand I could
meet you for lunch on a Saturday, either next Saturday or the following,
anywhere you liked. But if Saturday is not a good day for you, then
I should suggest lunching with me on a weekday at the Cock in Fleet Street
which is about as far west as I can get on a working day. I do hope in any
case that you will choose one day within the next week.
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]

17 May 1924 David C. Thomas Company
(Advertising), 28 East Jackson Bvd,
Chicago
Dear Tom:
I received your long letter of May 1 on the 14th, and cabled you that day
regarding making an appointment with Lady Rothermere. As I did not
know how long she was to be in New York I later thought it might be best
to write her a note, explaining the circumstances, your having suggested
my meeting her, etc. From what you have written me I judged her to be
extremely sensible and capable of understanding the business exigencies
of correspondence. I did not in my note (which was purely formal) go into
any reasons for wishing to see her, but based it on a common interest in
your affairs. Today I received a telegram from her, Delighted if you will
lunch with me 25th. Rothermere.
At first I was not able to see in what way I could be of much help or
exert much influence, but I was convinced from your letter that it would
We would be happy to insert a note about Philosophies in a future number of the Criterion
and I will send the Criterion to your office in Paris.
With many congratulations again on launching your review, and my sincerest regards,
[T. S. E.]

be agreeable to her and that in some indirect way it might have a good
effect. At least I can give her an outline of your finances and your extreme
difficulties. It is difficult to know just what course to steer. Her offer still
stands, I take it, of 300 pounds a year if you leave the bank. I am not sure
whether your present aim is to have her offer you the 300 pounds while
you are still at the bank, or to increase the offer so that you can leave the
bank. I do not see, myself, how the former would help you otherwise than
financially. It would perhaps enable you to have more assistance (would
enable you to hire helpers) but would not relieve you from the physical
and nervous strain which you cannot support long.
It seems to me it would be better if she would increase the salary, or
allow you money for assistants, or both, and you should then leave the
bank, provided that the bank people are not still insisting that it is your
sacred duty to stay. As I understand it, Lord Rothermere insists the same
thing, and if this is so, he and Lady Rothermere are in conflict on that
point. In this case, the difficulty is more than a money difficulty.
You have $1500 a year from your securities, which with 300 pounds
would make about $2800 a year. To this I could add, as long as my affairs
prosper, $1500 a year more. I get $1200 from my securities. I think that it
would be better before very long for you to sell the rest of your Hydraulic.
It has slipped off lately to about 67. I believe it will fall off somewhat
more during the summer, but it may come back in the fall or at the
beginning of next year. This of course would reduce your income from
securities to about $1200, which with my $1500 and the 300 pounds
would mean about $4000 a year to you. Could you do with that?
Mother is contemplating dividing $18,000 in securities among the
children. I should advise her dividing her remaining 300 shares of
Hydraulic, as that will do away with a Missouri inheritance tax on them.
That would give you $150 or $180 a year more. I think however that she
wants first to have you put your securities in trust, and then she will put
this $3000 with them. Her idea is to have you create a voluntary trust,
making yourself the beneficiary, Vivien the beneficiary after your death,
and the five children the beneficiaries in event of Viviens death. Such a
trust could be made revocable, but would become irrevocable on your
death. I myself am in favour of such a trust, but whether you want to make
the five children the ultimate beneficiaries or not I do not know. The
principal reason for making it revocable, to my mind, would be on the
chance that you would want to use the money to build a house, or to invest
in a publishing venture. The latter course I hope you will never take, not
that I do not believe in new ventures, but that neither your fortune (if such
421
it can be called) nor mine is sufficient to allow of the least risk being taken
with it. I would certainly put my own money in trust for myself if I did not
have to be in a position to borrow on it in emergency. The fact of having
ready money and borrowing power is one of my chief holds on this
business and gives me an importance which I should not otherwise possess.
In case of any split, it would theoretically be possible for Needham and
myself to take most of the clients away and start a new agency. This keeps
the other fellow in line. I should not like to have to make such an
investment, but I am too old to go out and get a job and it might be the
only course. It would not be a serious risk with a few good clients; this
business can be run on amazingly little capital, and theoretically we are
paid before we disburse, and practically we come pretty close to that. We
can do a half million dollar business a year on three or four thousand
dollars capital.
My business is prospering at present. A month ago my salary was put up
to $8000, and while the total of our salaries is staggering for so small a
business we still continue to show a small profit each month. We have a
back tax claim of $6000 against us, but expect to get that reduced by half,
if not more. Relations are again amicable. The business still seems less
precarious than it did, though we have new offices, at twice the rent, and
a high payroll, which I believe we can reduce.
I mention all this because I feel that I am at present in a position where
I can give you a good deal of help, provided the status quo continues. I can
easily spare the income I get from securities, and more, provided everything
goes well. It is the uncertainty bothers me. So I would like to know the
minimum on which you can live, in order to have some basis to figure. I
want to save a little each year.
When I have to quit business myself, will come the difficulty. Probably
by that time you will be getting $2500 a year from securities, but I shall
need all of my income from my securities. I am going to have an operation
on my ear before very long, which will make me deafer. I do not want to
work out my life. I can do on $3000, perhaps $2500, if I have few doctors
bills.
There are three dangers: business disaster, death and marriage. In the
case of my death, you would receive two thirds of my estate, and I believe
it would be advisable to leave the other third to you instead of to Charlotte.
The others can help Charlotte, if they are minded to.
As to marriage, it is very difficult to prognosticate. It is a well known fact
(to myself at least) that I would be putty in the hands of any decent looking
woman who ever spoke two kind words to me, and that I have only

escaped because no woman has ever happened to take a notion to speak
kindly to me. I am equally certain that I shall never get married (and never
want to get married) and that I am to be had for the whistling (and want
nothing else in the world than to be married). However, forty-four years
of immunity augurs well for the future.
IMPORTANT
1. Please give consideration to the trust matter as soon as possible, as
that will release the $18,000 which Mother wishes to distribute.
2. Be sure to make out and mail the income tax return at once on receipt
of this letter, if you have not done so, as by the time you receive this notice
there will just barely be time to get it to Baltimore. Mail check with it and
I will reimburse you.
Re Mothers visit:
My last letter from Mother, received today, says I have been enduring
much mental suffering over the question whether to go or not to go to
London. Now I have the refusal of a stateroom on the 21st of June, and one
returning on the 23d of August. She says she has cabled you to this effect.
In all of her recent letters she has spoken of the nervous strain of
deciding the matter, and I have hoped for months that she would come to
a final decision. I think it would be well for her to go, and my only doubt
has been whether it would be better to wait till you are free of the bank and
had leisure. I thought in that case you could even go to Italy for a week
with her, which I am sure would delight her above all things. I hope that
you can do this if she comes. I think that once she has made a final decision
she will be relieved and will look forward to the trip. I shall write her today
urging her going.
I do not believe that I have written you that Bertrand Russell spent two
or three days at my flat on Rush Street. This was suggested to him by the
Dudleys. I believe he was really pleased to get away from wherever he was
at the time and preferred it much to a hotel. The place is shabby, but it is
comfortable and we do have good food. He had the run of the place and
no one disturbed him or tried to entertain him. My conversation with him
was chiefly about you and Vivien. I confess to quite a feeling of affection
or at least strong friendliness for him, wholly personal.
Naturally I shall be much interested in meeting Lady Rothermere, but I
shall stick pretty close to the matter in hand and shall confine myself to
sketching the situation rather than suggesting anything. I suppose I must
not mention Russell? I shall play safe.
Affectionately,
Henry
423
to Allan Wade ms Valerie Eliot
Dear Mr Wade,
I have not yet thanked you for your long and very important letter, but
that is because I am waiting for the opportunity to reply fully.1 I shall
certainly do so.
I have asked your secretary if for the last performance of the season I
could be given a box (Sunday night). Can you help me?2
I am looking forward with great interest to next years performance.
Yours very truly,
T. S. Eliot
to F. W. Bain cc
My dear Bain,
I would have written before but have been away in the country. Of
course we shall be delighted to have something from you on some subject
connected with the French revolution early in the autumn.3 May I depend
upon you and would it be possible for you to let us have it by the 1st
September?
Yours in haste,
[T. S. E.]
Thank you for your letter of the 19th enclosing Hazells report which
I will submit to Lady Rothermere.4 I enclose [a] list of payments to
1 See TSEs letter of 8 Apr. congratulating Wade on the Phoenix King Lear.
2 Wade replied on 18 May, reserving a box for The Old Bachelor at the Regents Theatre,
and acknowledging TSEs appreciative notices of the last two plays in C.
3 On 7 May, Bain said he could write you things worth reading on the French Revolution
a sealed book to most people in this country. See 1789, C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924), 4371.
4 The printers report on the defects in printing that TSE complained of in C. 2: 7 (Apr.
1924) blamed the problems in the printing of the issue on the pure carelessness of the

contributors with the exception of Ezra Pounds article1 and the foreign
reviews. As the foreign reviews are composed by different people, I am
afraid I must ask for a statement of the number of words in the reviews of
each country separately. As for the article by Ezra Pound, I forgot to say
that as I cut out part of this without referring it to Ezra Pound first, I feel
that it ought justly to be paid as for the whole article. Will you therefore ask
Hazells to let me have the number of words in the complete galley proof of
the Antheil article instead of the words actually printed in the number.
I enclose the manuscript of W. B. Yeats as he has agreed to our
publishing it if the number can be printed by the end of June. I think that
the stage directions at various points ought to be printed in small type.
I deposited with you the manuscript of an article by Osbert Sitwell. Will
you please send this on to Hazells and call their attention to the fact that
a large section at the beginning marked by the author has not to be printed.
I think you now have the following manuscripts:-2
Yeats,
Selby,
Cavafy,
Sitwell,
Proust,
I should of course like to have the number of words in each as soon as
Hazells can count them.
I shall be obliged if you will have a copy of the October and of the April
number sent to:
Monsieur Henri Brmond
7 rue Mechain
Paris XIV
I think that we ought also to send copies regularly to the publishers of
any books noticed in the Criterion, especially as I am intending in future
to have a few book reviews. So would you mind sending a copy of the
February number of [sc. to] Messrs. Heinemann, re William Archer, The
Old Drama and the New, discussed in my article and copies of the April
number to Kegan Paul re Hulmes Speculations and to John Lane and
Routledge re their series mentioned in my commentary.3
operator, and assured RC-S and TSE that everything would be done to prevent a recurrence.
1 EP, George Antheil, in C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).
2 WBY, The Cat and the Moon; F. G. Selby, Bacon and Montaigne; C. P. Cavafy, Ithaca;
Osbert Sitwell, A German Eighteenth-Century Town; Marcel Proust, The Death of
Albertine all in C. 2: 8 (July 1924), with the exception of the Selby (3: 10, Jan. 1925).
3 TSE wrote on Archer in Four Elizabethan Dramatists, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924), and praised
the public spirit or sagacity of such publishers as John Lane and Routledge for their Bodley
425
I am sorry to give you so much trouble.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]

My dear Conrad,
Yes, it is true that I have no right to complain.1 I return you herewith
your Emily Dickinson with compliments and thanks. As for
Psychomachia, I am still clinging to that with the desire of printing it in
the autumn.2 May I ask politely whether it has been or is likely to be
published anywhere in America meanwhile? Also I press for your article.
I shall be very disappointed if I do not eventually get Henry James from
you,3 but of course if you dont want to write about that subject, you must
choose your own. As I dont think candidly that we could use anything
very long about Williams or Miss Moore4 I should like very much if you
would do a review on either or both of them when any book of either
appears. I am intending to introduce into each number reviews of three or
four books of importance and have made a short and very select list of
people to do this. Will you give your support? Would you by the way care
to write a review on Riverss last book?5 Or is that somewhat outside your
interest? I hope that you will be coming up soon if only for the day.
Yours in haste,
T. S. E.
Head Quartos and the Broadway Translations in A Commentary, C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924); he

also discussed T. E. Hulme. Book reviews began with the next issue, 2: 8 (July 1924).
1 See TSEs letter of 4 May. On the 7th, Aiken responded to TSEs prompt, made so
movingly (but surely a little pessimistically) that it would be a pity if you or I or the Criterion
should cease, my name not having appeared there. Aiken reminded TSE that he had had his
poem Psychomachia for a year and a half, in addition to the MS of his essay on Emily
Dickinson.
2 Aikens Psychomachia appeared in C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924), 7983.
3 Aiken had written about James and American Criticism in A Letter from America in
London Mercury IV (June 1921). He later wrote a review of Theodora Bosanquets Henry
James at Work, C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925).
4 No review of William Carlos Williams appeared, but Marianne Moores Observations
was reviewed by RA in C. 3: 12 (July 1925).
5 W. H. Rivers, Medicine, Magic and Religion, was reviewed by WL in C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925).

to Cecil Scott cc
Dear Mr Scott,
I was very pleased by your sending me your poem which I liked very
much.1 I have only two criticisms to make. If you read it aloud I think you
will see that certain lines are lacking in rhythm and that there is in general
an absence of plan in the rhythm which very much weakens the effect. It
is unsatisfactory to criticise the rhythm of a poem by correspondence; it is
so much easier to explain what one means in a few minutes by reading
aloud and one finds out very much more quickly what sort of rhythm was
intended by hearing the author reading aloud. My second criticism is that
you happen to have used a number of words which occur rather
conspicuously in certain parts of my own work and although there is no
question of borrowing, I think an association might suggest itself to some
readers. I have marked some of these words so that you may see what I
mean. These are both difficulties that one is apt to meet and can easily be
corrected. Do go on and send me more.2
If I get down to Cambridge during the summer term I shall hope to see
you; otherwise I hope you will let me know when you next come to
London.
I am not surprised to hear that James Joyce is not read in Cambridge!3
[T. S. E.]
to Messrs. Methuen & Co. Ltd cc

The Criterion would be pleased to receive for review copies of the recent
books of Mr W. J. Perry. The Criterion proposes to give serious notices of
1 I am writing a poem here, a Testament, which is very beautiful but which I cannot finish,
wrote Scott (25 Mar.) from a hotel in Paris.
2 Scott wrote back (undated letter) to apologise for bothering TSE with the poem: I shall
destroy it and my borrowings and begin again. Although there was one deliberate borrowing
from Joyce Paris nor Zurich nor Trieste TSE must have felt astonished and irritated
when he read it. Despite re-reading his work with TSEs scan arrows, he still thought the
rhythm was all right really. He hoped TSE would visit him in Cambridge.
3 Scott wrote from Trinity College, Cambridge, on 5 May: Nobody knows anything about
it [the poem he had finished that morning] here, but then nobody here reads James Joyce.
427
three or four important books in each number and it prefers to apply to the
publishers for such books as it wishes to review rather than to receive
books submitted by the publishers.
[T. S. E.]
to Hugh Walpole cc
My dear Walpole,
It is very disappointing that you are going away again so soon and
cannot lunch with me and I wish that something more satisfactory could
be devised than a visit to the city, but I want very much to see you and so
I should be delighted if you would look in on me on Friday afternoon. The
address is Lloyds Bank, 20 King William Street, on the corner of Cannon
Street and the telephone number is Central 8246. If you can, ring me up
in the morning to let me know about what time to expect you.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Henry Eliot Telegram Houghton

[Received 21 May 1924] London
dangerous complications arisen making inadvisable force
definite financial discussion 1 make visit purely cordial
social courtesy opportunity see her again when you come
fetch mother will give mother all time possible you
know limitations impossible accept extreme generosity you[r]
offer
[unsigned]
1 In a telegram HWE asked whether TSE could leave the bank if he was assured of $1,500
a year from HWE himself in addition to his own income and C. salary.

to Osbert Sitwell cc
Dear Osbert,
As the Phoenix Society have seen fit to reward my services by giving me
a box for the Congreve Play1 on Sunday, June 1st, I should be honoured
by the company of you and Sachie.2 Richardson Wood3 is coming and just
possibly another man.
And if you or any of your family have any feeling of annoyance on
any matter, it would be a good opportunity for discussing it frankly.4
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
I am sending this by messenger as I want to make up my party without
delay.

22 May 1924 [The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn]
My dear Virginia,
The article5 has been received, read and forwarded, registered, to the
printers. I have asked the printers your questions6 and asked them to write
direct to you in reply.
I must tell you how fully I appreciate your generosity in letting me have
this article, especially at the present time. If the Criterion should be
extinguished, I want it to go out at full flame and with your paper and
unpublished manuscripts of Marcel Proust and W. B. Yeats, the July
number will be the most brilliant in its history, and suitable to close the
second volume.7 It will help me to feel that the Criterion has not been
altogether without value or distinction.
1 William Congreve, The Old Bachelour, Regents Theatre, 1 June: the first performance of
the play since 1789.
2 Sacheverell Sitwell.
3 For Richardson Wood, see TSEs letter of 27 May.
4 Presumably a reference to the Sitwells reactions to WLs The Apes of God, in C. 2: 7 (Apr.
1924). Sacheverell Sitwells Three Variations appeared in the same number.
5 VW, Character in Fiction, C. 2: 8 (July 1924).
6 On 21 May VW asked for estimates from TSEs printers for printing her lecture as a
pamphlet. On 30 Oct. it was issued as Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown, in Hogarth Essays, First
Series, No 1.
7 VW asked (23 May): But is there any danger that the Criterion is dying? I hope not.
429
I do not suppose that as Editor I am required to expurgate your
comments on myself but they do somewhat embarrass me as being
excessive for what I know my own work to be.1 Nevertheless they gave me
great pleasure. Apart from these remarks, your paper seems to me a most
important piece of historical criticism. It also expresses for me what I have
always been very sensible of, the absence of any masters in the previous
generation whose work one could carry on,2 and the amount of waste that
goes on in ones own work in the necessity, so to speak, of building ones
own house before one can start the business of living. I feel myself that
everything I have done consists simply of tentative sketches and rough
experiments. Will the next generation profit by our labours?
Yours ever,
T. S. E.
<This is very badly written>
PS I cannot help writing this Postscript to make a suggestion, because I
really feel that it is an opportunity which I should like you to know of. A
very remarkable German Doctor, Dr Martin is at present in London for a
fortnight. He was here last year for a short time and was able to do
Vivienne a great deal of good, in fact made the turning point in that serious
illness. I am going to him myself now. I have very great belief in him, he is
not a specialist but I have never met a Doctor of such wide special
knowledge. In addition he is a very charming man. I hope that you are
perfectly well now, but even if you are, I really think that it would be worth
your while to see him while he is in London because I feel that he might
be useful to anybody and it would be an advantage to have seen him,
should you ever want a first rate physician. Also he is extremely
accommodating about his fees. He is staying at Lady Margaret Levetts,
61 Eaton Sq. I think so much of him that I should like any friend of mine
to see him if they can. Do consider this, because I like him more than any
physician I have ever had to do with.
1 VW named TSE, JJ, E. M. Forster, DHL, and Lytton Strachey as representative of the
modern generation of writers who wrote after December 1910 when human character
changed. Of TSE: I think that Mr Eliot has written some of the loveliest lines in modern
poetry. But how intolerant he is of the old usages and politenesses of society respect for the
weak, consideration for the dull! (40930).
2 VW said that the men and women who began writing novels in 1910 or thereabouts had
this great difficulty to face that there was no English novelist living from whom they could
learn their business. TSE wrote later that there was no poet, in either country [UK or USA],
who could have been of use to a beginner in 1908. The only recourse was to poetry of another
age and to poetry of another language (Ezra Pound, Poetry 78: 6, Sept. 1946).

27 May 1924 [The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn]
I shall expect you on Tuesday.1 I dont think that Riverss book which is
entitled Medicine, Magic and Religion is at all unsuitable2 but my idea is
as much to have a small and select number of reviewers and have them
review what they want to review, so that if you would prefer not to do
this, please suggest something else. Meanwhile I should be still more
grateful if you could do a short review say 1000 words on Sacheverell
Sitwells Southern Baroque Art for the July number, by the end of next
week.3 Would you do this for me as a kindness? Unless I hear from you by
Thursday morning, I shall post the book to you.
Yours ever,
T. S. E.
to James Smith4 cc
Dear Sir
Thank you for your kind letter of the 26th.5 I shall look forward with
pleasure in addressing your club and meeting the members on Saturday,
November 8th.
Yours sincerely
[T. S. E.]
1 On 27 May Aiken said he was going to the Phoenix show on 1 June and suggested lunch
with TSE the following Monday.
2 Aiken said that Riverss new book would require more technical knowledge than he had.
3 See Aikens review of Sitwell, Southern Baroque Art, in C. 2: 8 (July 1924).
4 James Smith (190472): English literary critic; author of Shakespearean and Other Essays
(1974). A scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, he took a double first in English and modern
languages. According to a profile in Granta (which he edited, 19256), he revived the Cam
Literary Club, and even presided over it for a year, in order to introduce Cambridge to T. S.
Eliot (quoted in John Haffenden, William Empson: Among the Mandarins [2005], 603).
Smith was Vice-President of the club (the President being Professor Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch).
Empson recalled having weekly supervisions with I. A. Richards, then treacherously listening
to the James Smith group, who favoured T. S. Eliot and Original Sin (195). Smith was to
become an occasional contributor to C. (he wrote brilliantly on metaphysical poetry and on
Empsons Seven Types of Ambiguity) and to Scrutiny.
5 An intervening letter by TSE seems to be lost: Smith initially invited TSE (letter of 21
May) to speak to the Cam Literary Club on any subject connected with the Elizabethan
drama on 8 Nov. According to a letter to OM of 30 Nov, TSE spoke on Chapman,
Dostoevski and Dante.
431
27 May 1924 [17 Thavies Inn]
My dear Walpole,
I now understand that a letter I wrote you last week cannot have reached
you,1 a letter in which I said that in default of any other opportunity of
seeing you, I should be delighted if you would come to see me on Friday
afternoon last. I am so sorry that you have gone away again and I hope
that you will let me know as soon as you get back. If you find an odd time
you can get me on the telephone at Central 8246 during the day.
I enclose the proof of Chapter 2 of The Old Ladies. Will you please
correct it and return it to R. Cobden-Sanderson Esq, 17 Thavies Inn,
Holborn, London e.c.1. I am afraid that you will find a great deal of
superfluous punctuation in it.
Yours sincerely
T. S. Eliot
to Osbert Sitwell cc
My dear Osbert,
I am delighted that you and Sachie are coming to the Phoenix on June
2nd [sc. 1st]. We are evidently in the same case in having so many
annoyances that we have no time to be annoyed with anyone in particular.2
That is exactly my dilemma. For the rest of your letter, I shall have to await
elucidation until we meet for there is a key word which I am unable to
decipher and I should love to know who it is who has behaved as you
expected him to behave.3 To me this habit seems a little tedious and I
should be glad if my expectations were not always fulfilled.
Vivien wonders whether you went to Murrys wedding.4
1 On 20 May, TSE said that he was disappointed that Walpole was going away again so
soon and couldnt have lunch. Walpole replied on 23 May that he had been expecting to
hear from him, but was off to Cumberland the following day.
2 With ref. to TSEs earlier enquiry as to whether he had any feeling of annoyance on any
matter (letter of 22 May), Sitwell had responded that he had too many annoyances ever to
be annoyed with anyone in particular, and that The Apes of God was wonderful but
dangerous.
3 The illegible word was Lewis (whom Sitwell had not seen for eight months). He thought
it better to stake his claim by writing to WL first: it always delighted when people behave
as you would expect them to.
4 TSE was invited to JMMs wedding to Violet le Maistre on 24 Apr., but he did not go.

Richardson Wood is staying with me and I am hoping you and Sachie
will come in and have a talk after the play. I shall ask Roger [Fry] and one
or two others if they are there. We will meet you in the main entrance
at 7.30.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
to Humbert Wolfe cc
My dear Wolfe,
I am very glad to hear from you. I have indeed been immersed in what
you may call a stupor but not at all for the reason you allege. It may rather
be called a kind of paralysis. Will you help to release me from it by
lunching with me on Thursday or Friday? I should be delighted if you
would ring up Central 8246 one morning and tell me that you will come.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
to Richardson Wood1 cc
Dear Wood,
The 14th will suit me very well and I am willing to put up with the
crowd of young ladies and young men.2 I look forward to seeing you on
Sunday.3 Will you fetch me, not at this address but at 28 [38] Burleigh
Mansions, St Martins Lane over Chatto & Windus shop?4 Trafalgar
Square is your nearest station. I will be there at 6 oclock and that is where
we shall be staying the night.
I hope at all events that I have contributed to a small extent to helping
you take honours in your examinations!
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
1 Richardson Wood (b. 1903): an American undergraduate at Kings College, Cambridge,

19225; later editor and managing editor of Fortune, 193745, and a community economic
consultant in New York City.
2 The date of TSEs proposed trip to Cambridge, Saturday 14 June.
3 At the Phoenix Society production of Congreve, The Old Bachelor, along with the Sitwells.
4 TSEs office in central London.
433
to W. B. Yeats cc
My dear Mr Yeats,
I am very grateful to you for your permission to use The Cat and the
Moon in our July number.1 Messrs. Watt & Son inform me that perhaps
you did not understand that I had no objection to the fact that a private
edition of 250 copies was to be published first; perhaps your hesitation
was due to this. In any case I wish to say that I do not want the publication
of the book to be delayed on account of the appearance of the play in the
Criterion and it will not matter to me if the book appears first.
I hope that you will also make good your promise to let me have some
prose from you later on.
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
to Leonard Woolf cc
29 May 1924 17 Thavies Inn
Dear Leonard,
It is rather difficult to suggest proper terms without knowing the
magnitude of the undertaking.2 I should say that where the circulation of
the paper is particularly stationary the percentage ought to be fixed, but if
the circulation is highly variable, or if it is expected to increase, a higher
scale should be devised. That is to say, the lower the circulation, the higher
the percentage for the publisher in order that he should get anything out
of it at all. For a periodical of large circulation like the Adelphi, I should
say 10% on the sales or perhaps less, but for a periodical of small
circulation and limited appeal, I should say from 10 to 15%. In any case
1 WBY wrote on 13 May that it was impossible to let TSE have his play, due to his sisters
publishing schedule. However, on 19 May he telegrammed in reply to a telegram from TSE:
I accept but my sister must publish a few copies not later than June 29th save copyright,
Yeats. This enabled TSE to publish The Cat and the Moon in C. 2: 8 (July 1924), following
its publication by the Cuala Press.
2 LW wrote on 29 May, A certain periodical has asked us to publish it, but he did not
know what terms publishers ask in these cases. He asked TSE in confidence what terms
Cobden-Sanderson has in publishing the Criterion.

I suggest you should work out your commission on the basis of the sales
of the periodical in question.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
My dear Whibley,
I am delighted to hear from you after such a long time and to have such
good news of your health. This is really a blessing and I am very glad that
it has made it possible for you to do a good deal of work. When is the
Manners book to appear?1 I am looking forward to it eagerly. I am of
course very disappointed not to have something from Oliver2 in the July
number; it breaks the continuity which I had hoped to establish of having
in each number an important historical article on sound principles. May I
hope that you will endeavour to get something out of him this summer
that I can print in October? And if not, can you suggest anything else? I
really depend upon you entirely in these matters.
I am trying to re-organise the Criterion somewhat and introduce some
regular chronicles by regular contributors in the hope that it will give the
paper more popularity and also that it will spare me part of the enormous
correspondence involved in getting so many contributions. I believe that if
I can reduce the star contributions to four or five and fill the paper up with
reviews and chronicles, and notes by dependable people, it will save me
trouble and increase the circulation. After all, what people want out of a
review is criticism of books they are reading and the things they are talking
about and to be provided with opinions to give material for dinner table
conversation. From my point of view too, the work is increasing with every
number and unless I can start some cooperative machinery, will soon be
beyond my strength and time. Perhaps when some particularly important
book appears you would consent to write a review for me? And I hope
you will be able to let me have an essay at latest by January.
There are many things I am anxious to talk to you about. But I shall be
at Cambridge not at Whitsuntide but on the 14th and I hope from your
1 CW, Lord John Manners and His Friends (2 vols, 1925).

2 F. S. Oliver had written (23 Aug. 1923) that he wanted to write an article for C.
435
letter that you will be there then. Could you let me have a line to say
whether I may count on seeing you?
If not, I must write you a longer letter.
Ever yours affectionately,
[T. S. E.]
to M. Jean Grenier cc
My dear Sir,
Thank you for your letter of the 23rd inst.1 I await with interest Number
2 of your review and will then write to you more fully about the two articles.
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
to Herbert Bates2 cc
29 May 1924 [London] ]
Dear Sir,
I have your letter of the 6th inst. You should have addressed yourself to
Mr Knopf instead of myself as he has the powers of granting anthology
rights for any of the poems of the volume in which the poem you mention
is to be found. It is a poem which has been used by several anthologists and
seems to be successful with children and the public for which anthologies
are published and I do not believe that Mr Knopf will see any objection to
its inclusion in another anthology.3
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
1 On 31 May, Grenier thanked TSE for his exaggerated praise, and said the second issue
of Philosophies was appearing shortly. It was from a book to be called Thse de philosophie,
written from a purely speculative viewpoint, with no political or national bias. He was happy
for TSE to translate it for C. if he wished, but nothing by Grenier was to appear there.
2 Herbert Bates (18681929): US critic and anthologist. He published Poems of Exile
(1896), an annotated edition of Palgraves Golden Treasury (1905), and Books for Home
Reading for High School and Junior High School (1923); and he later compiled Modern Lyric
Poetry (1929).
3 Bates said he was working on an anthology of modern verse, intended primarily for high
school students, and requested permission to reprint TSEs La Figlia Che Piange. As the
publisher of Poems (1920), Alfred Knopf had the US rights to TSEs poems. La Figlia Che
Piange had also been included in An Anthology of Modern Verse, chosen by Algernon
Methuen (1921).

to Wyndham Lewis cc
29 May 1924 [The Criterion]
My dear Lewis,
Thank you for your letter. I really hope that this time you will let me
have your thing in good season, that is to say by Saturday at the latest as
I am very anxious to include it in the July number.1 I hope that you will
remember also that this is to be the first of a regular chronicle2 and that I
shall depend upon you for another on the 1st of September. If you can do
this regularly it will really be the greatest help that you can give.
As for your proposal, I am very much pleased that you should have
thought of this and appreciate the offer,3 but apart from the iniquity of
paying other contributors at the expense of my friends, I shall be able to
give you several good reasons why it should not be done. I shall insist upon
your being paid for these art notes at the same rates as other contributors
and of course for special contributions at the double rates which I can give
to a very few people.
Dont fail to let me have the article by Saturday morning and let me have
a line from you as soon as you get back from France. I hope you will enjoy
it and come back rested and ready to deal with publishers [incomplete]
Dear Mrs Middleton,
I am back in London and hasten to write to you as I promised. I have
had your sons affairs very much on my mind and I should like first of all
to come and see you before I see him. I could call upon you in the evening
on Wednesday or Thursday next, preferably Thursday, if you will let me
have a line to say whether I shall find you and which evening would be
more convenient.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
1 Art Chronicle, C. 2: 8 (July 1924), 47782.

2 WL wrote that newspapers refer politely to art as though it still existed: I have been
asked by The Criterion to write an art-chronicle, and am playing my part in the general
pretence, as you see. In the end, he wrote only one other art chronicle in 3: 9 (Oct. 1924).
3 WLs letter does not appear to survive. He seems to have offered to write for TSE gratis
or at least at a lesser rate than other contributors.
437
from Henry Eliot Telegram Valerie Eliot
[Received 31 May 1924] Chicago
interview without result 1 two other guests at lunch brief
conversation alone afterward i outlined family finances
casually and said i was anxious to help you leave bank lady
displayed complete reticence salary not mention cordial but
uncommunicative doubt if fetch mother as charlotte
competent writing
[unsigned]

2 June 1924 1037 Rush St, Chicago
Dear Tom:
I cabled you the other day the inconclusive results of my interview with
Lady Rothermere, and had meant to write you earlier, but my life now is
so ordered, or disordered, that I can get nothing done. I still drudge much
in the evening at the office, write Mother about interminable things like
your trust and her mortgage notes which I am to buy, and the rest of my
time is devoured by people of no importance or advantage to me.
I arrived in New York Sunday morning, called at the Harveys first (H. B.
Harvey, once my room-mate in Chicago, m. Dorothy Dudley) where to
my surprise I found Bertrand Russell visiting. I went to the Plaza, and up
to Lady Rothermeres apartments, where there were two visitors, a Mr
Loewenthal (I think) and a Miss or Mrs Muriel Draper, who had been
invited to luncheon. Mr Lowenthal seems to be a poet of sorts, a handsome
young Jew, faultlessly dressed and rather pleasant. The Draper person was
cleverish, smart-looking, gaily dressed, talkative and a bit noisy, hardly
pretty, but entertaining. She seemed to know Lady Rothermere extremely
well, called her Lillian, mauled her affectionately and smoked cigarettes
end-to-end. After I got accustomed to the excessively histrionic New York
manner of Mrs Draper I rather liked her.
Conversation started with people, Chicago, New York, the effects of
arsenic, hotel service, and finally drifted around to the Gurdjieff dancers,
1 This telegram, relating to HWEs meeting with Lady Rothermere, is in answer to TSEs
telegram (30 May): Please wire result interview also are you coming fetch mother or not
important.

around which topic it hovered pretty much throughout the visit. The
Gurdjieff Dancers, and the Gurdjieff Institute for the Harmonious
Development of Man, appeared in Chicago some months ago, and I
attended, and found the dances very interesting (being ritualistic dances
of antiquity), but found myself much bored with their memory tests. A
pamphlet which I have somewhere elucidating their theory of harmonious
development contains, as I remember it, some excellent common-sense
ideas and a certain amount that has a flavor of quackery. As well as I could
guess, Mrs Draper was trying to interest Lady Rothermere, [who,] while
interested intellectually, was inclined to be very canny. I cannot imagine
two philosophies of conduct more opposed than those of Mr Gurdjieff and
those actually practised by people of Mrs Drapers type. However, you
probably know more about this institution than I do.
After these two people left, I remained for about fifteen or twenty
minutes, both because I wanted to see whether Lady Rothermere had
[anything] to communicate to me and because I could not well do otherwise
with courtesy. Naturally the conversation dwelt on the Criterion, on English
literary magazines in general, and on you. I ventured the remark that you
were intensely interested in the Criterion, and wished to give your whole
time to it, and that I hoped you would soon be able to give up bank work,
and that you had about $1200 a year from securities and that I was happily
able to help you now to about the same extent but doubted whether that
was enough for you to live on. I did not leave any embarrassing pauses for
her to fill in nor did I ask her any point-blank questions about the
management of the Criterion or intimate that you had ever told me
anything about the financial details of the Criterion. I said incidentally that
I was poorly posted on your affairs because you were so busy that you had
little time except for cables, and that I wished she might give me some recent
news of you. She expressed great delight at the management of the Criterion
by you, and said she had a cable from you saying that the April number was
a great success. We discussed the April number briefly and agreed that it
was one of the best numbers. We discussed the Adelphi and the American
Mercury and the advantages and disadvantages of advertising pages, and
the possibilities of increasing circulation in America. I said that Mother was
going over to England again and wished that she might meet Mother.
I made my visit appear, so far as was possible, casual, and said I had
been planning for some time visiting some friends in New York and also
seeing my mother in Boston. I was a little surprised that she did not ask me
about ways and means of furthering the American circulation of the
Criterion in America, though offhand I can think of no means but
439
circularizing library and club lists and advertising in the Dial or the Times
or Transcript.
Lady Rothermere was very cordial and very easy, but I have an
impression of her treating my visit in a purely perfunctory and entirely
social way, and displaying not very great curiosity about me, even a
reflected curiosity. I have an impression of slightly strained reticence when
I touched on your finances, and in general when we were alone, though
always of amiability. I do not think she suspected me of coming there with
ulterior motives, and certainly I gave her every chance of either discussing
finances or avoiding the subject as she chose, without appearing to do so.
I hardly think I could have been accused of hinting, though of course the
mere fact of my being there could have been so construed, if she had a
mind to do so. However, I did, I think, make it appear that I had other
affairs in the East besides calling on her.
So I do not know whether anything was accomplished or not. I liked
her and am glad to have met her, and it is possible that I may have dispelled
some incorrect notions that she may have had about your family and your
finances. I do not think that I am able to judge from this interview whether
she is interesting or intelligent. Of course I cannot say that I like her as
well as Russell, for whom I have a great admiration and a great feeling of
friendliness. I told her that I had seen Russell that morning (having first
ascertained from him that there was no political or other antagonism) and
she said quite positively that she would like to see him. In fact I think she
told me to tell him that she would like to see him.
I went down to Boston in the evening, and spent four hours next day
with Mother, who seems very well and I think happy over the idea of going
abroad again. Charlotte also is delighted. The Porters, by the way, invited
me yesterday to go to Norway with them at their expense, which would
land me in England July 23. A delightful trip, as there are some other
rather pleasant people whom I know going on the boat. I could then stay
in England and come back with Mother. The only trouble is that I cant do
it, for business reasons already briefly outlined, and because anyway I
should appear rather badly in Mothers eyes after having declared that I
was unable to go with her.
This is all I can write, or think of to write, at the moment.
With much affection,
Henry
I agree with you that the present financial arrangement as to the Criterion
is unreasonable and cruel. I should think you could throw yourself on her
mercy. Has she no humanity?

to Barrett H. Clark cc
2 June 1924 [London]
Dear Sir,
I regret that I am unable to understand your letter of the 21st ultimo.1
I do not appear to have had any previous communication from you. The
article by Hugo von Hofmannsthal on Greece was received by me direct
from Vienna in the printed German text through the medium of
Mr Schofield Thayer.2 I sent it out to a gentleman in Switzerland who made
the translation and both translator and author were paid direct by Mr
Cobden-Sanderson. In the circumstances, you will understand that I am
more [than] puzzled by your letter. If any further explanation is needed
you will doubtless write again.3
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]

12 June 1924 The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
Dear Conrad,
I am glad that the book arrived,4 but very sorry to hear that you have
been under the weather. I hope this is nothing serious. But do let me know
how you are getting on. I have been very seedy myself the last day or so,
both in stomach and head.
I have no right to worry you about this book, but every day saved will
now count, and the sooner you can let me have the review the more
grateful I shall be to you. About a thousand words is enough. Next time
I shall offer you a couple of months in which to do it.
It is very good of you to do this review at all, as I know how busy you are.
Yours ever,
T. S. E.
1 On 21 May, Barrett Clark asked about payment for his translation of Hugo von
Hofmannsthals article Greece in The Criterion.
2 Hofmannsthals Greece, in C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923), in a translation by Charles Caffrey.
3 On 13 June, Clark apologised for his misapprehension: a friend had mistakenly thought
the translation was one he had submitted to J. T. Grein, who offered to send it to English
editors.
4 Sacheverell Sitwell, Southern Baroque Art, was reviewed by Aiken in C. 2: 8 (July 1924).
Aiken replied the same day that he had found it rather tiresome reading, for all the talent
displayed: Sitwells remarkable ability entitled him to a kind word, but not too kind.
441
to Gilbert Seldes ts Timothy and Marian Seldes
My dear Seldes,
This is to thank you for your book1 to which I had been looking forward
for so long and which I have now read through with great interest and
pleasure.
Of course a great deal of it is obscure to me as I have never had the
opportunity of seeing most of the comedians you mention; but when I
come to New York I shall expect you to introduce me to Al Jolson and
Fanny Brice and some of the others who in your pages have impressed my
so deeply.2 Anyway I like the book immensely and I wish you would come
over again and do an English edition introducing some of the comedians
of this country and of France.
I have now started having a few reviews in each number of the Criterion,
and I intend to review your book myself in the October number.3 I should
have done so in the July number, but I was so pressed for time in getting
it ready that I should not have been able to do the book justice.
I now want to make a suggestion. I design to have in the Criterion more
regular features such as book reviews, art and music notes and dramatic
articles. The number of ordinary contributions will accordingly be slightly
diminished. Amongst other contributions I want to have a regular
chronicle or letter from several of the principal capitals of Europe and also
from New York. Of course we are very much cramped for space, and it will
at present hardly be possible to have any one city represented more than
twice a year that is, in every other number. Eventually I hope that it may
be possible to have a chronicle from each city in each number. These
chronicles must be limited to two or three thousand words. Would you
consent to undertake to report and comment upon the activities of New
1 The Seven Lively Arts (1924).

2 Seldes writes, in The Daemonic in the American Theatre: One man on the American
stage, and one woman, are possessed Al Jolson and Fanny Brice. Their daemons are not of
the same order, but together they represent all we have of the Great God Pan, and we ought
to be grateful for it (191). He adds, the fury and exultation of Jolson is a hundred times
higher in voltage than a Roosevelt, while courageous and adventurous women who shoot
lions or manage construction gangs . . . remain pale beside the extraordinary cutting loose
of Fanny Brice. Al Jolson (18861950) was a Jewish-American singer, comic and actor,
specialising in black-face roles, most famously in the film The Jazz Singer (1927); Fanny Brice
(18911951), an American comedian, singer, entertainer and film actress, who starred in the
Ziegfeld Follies, 191130.
3 In fact it was reviewed by Conrad Aiken (C. 3: 9, Oct. 1924, 14850).

York for the British public?1 By a chronicle I mean, of course, an
entertaining review of any events, exhibitions, theatres, shows, books, etc.
which would give a reader the impression of being in touch with all the
artistic activities of New York. There must often be new things in the
theatres which we should like to have intelligently reported and
commented upon. You would be of course quite as free in a choice of
material as even Paul Morand when he writes for the Dial,2 and I am sure
that anything that you would write would be equally amusing and less
superficial.
Our emoluments are of course insignificant compared to those of
America, as they would work out at about five or six pounds per article.
The only inducement would be that there is no one else doing quite the
same thing here and you would therefore be able to impress upon the
British public any opinion that you wished.
I do hope that you will undertake this. It ought not to be a difficult thing
for you to do as you are so much in touch with everything that happens.
Do let me hear from you as soon as possible.
T. S. Eliot

My dear Monro,
I am so sorry. Most unfortunately I was ill all of last night, and when I
finally got to sleep I did not wake up until half past one. I have had to stop
in bed the whole day, but if I had not slept so late I should have telephoned
to you. Will next Wednesday be possible? I will drop you a line the day
before.
I hope you are not taking too much trouble over your proof.3 I hope
that you will be able to let Cobden-Sanderson have it back with the
additional paragraphs by Saturday, as we want the printers to start setting
up the numbers in pages on Monday.
1 Seldes contributed a first New York Chronicle to C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925).

2 Paul Morand was contributing the regular Paris Letter to the Dial.
3 Monro, Wordsworth Revisited, C. 2: 8 (July 1924). Monro wrote again on 16 June,
saying it was still unfinished and needed more editorial attention. He suggested it should
conclude with To be continued. The note was inserted, but the article was never continued.
443
I infer from your silence that you did not think Abercrombies book
worth reviewing.1 I should very much like to have a review of something
from you next time.
I am giving up my cottage at Fishbourne as soon as I can get rid of it.
The house next door has been turned into a garage which also sells
lemonade and sweets; what with being on the Portsmouth Road, the place
has become quite uninhabitable. So I shall not be down any more except
to move my furniture when I find somewhere to put it, but we must meet
oftener in London.
Yours ever,
T. S. Eliot

12 June [1924] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
My dear Virginia,
I have been annoyed about the delay of the printers in sending your
proof, but today I have received a copy and so I trust that you have yours
also.2 I hope that you will be able to let Cobden-Sanderson have the proof
back by Saturday, so that the number may come out by July 1st. But I dont
want to worry you: on the contrary, you are a model, indeed the model
contributor no one else has ever taken the trouble to remind us about
proof. And again I tell you how delighted I am to have this essay.
I have just got the final preparations for this number completed, and
have taken to my Bed today and perhaps tomorrow. If I can struggle up by
that time I must go to Cambridge on Saturday (not to lecture, but as a
private individual) where I hope to make a good impression, or at least be
tolerated, on the ground of being a friend and publisher of Mrs Woolf.
Who seems to have made a permanent impression herself, to judge from
the minds of the two undergraduates whom I have since seen.3
And we hope you are not going to Paris, or Spain, or Rodmell, in the
immediate future? And that you are going to Rodmell in July. As our
Cottage is now flanked by a Garage selling BP Motor Spirit at all hours,
and faced by a Lemonade Stall, we have come to the conclusion that it is
1 Presumably Lascelles Abercrombie, The Theory of Poetry (1924).

2 Character in Fiction, C. 2: 8 (July 1924). The proofs had not yet reached VW.
3 VWs Mr Bennnett and Mrs Brown (Character in Fiction) had been read to the Heretics,
Cambridge, on 18 May. It is likely the undergraduates were Richardson Wood and Cecil
Scott.

uninhabitable. It is possible that Vivien may be at Eastbourne, and also
that we may be again in search of a cottage on the Downs.
Yours ever,
T. S. E.
Vivien tells me that she is writing to ask you and Leonard to dinner next
week. I do hope you can come. Please do.1
Vivien Eliot to Virginia Woolf ts Berg

13 June 1924 9 Clarence Gate Gardens
My dear Virginia
I telephoned, but you were out (as usual). I am very sorry that you
cannot both come to dinner next week. We should love you to come alone
on Thursday and yet we should so much like you both to come together,
and I am afraid two occasions of us in rapid succession would be too
boring for you and after the first occasion you might not feel equal to
repeating it. Therefore will you keep Tues 24th for us? We shall look
forward to seeing both of you then, if we may.
About the proofs, Tom thinks that the reason that Hazells said nothing
to you about extra copies is because they are waiting to set it up in pages
before they can tell you. They promised him they would let you know.
Their telephone is Aylesbury 15. Will you let us know if we can do
anything?
Yes I am going about about as much as I ever go about and I want to
come and see your room. Please can I come, and when??? Writing !?
Editing, perhaps.
Yrs ever
Vivien
YES, please, a cottage near the downs, and quickly.
1 In her diary for 21 June, in a list of people recently seen, VW includes: Mrs Eliot this
last making me almost vomit, so scented, so powdered, so egotistic, so morbid, so weakly
(Diary, II, 304).
445
to May Sinclair ts Pennsylvania
Dear Miss Sinclair,
I am delighted to have your book with your signature and incidentally
to have such a beautiful edition.1 I liked The Grandmother2 so much that
I am certain I shall like the whole poem, to which I have been looking
forward with great interest. It seems to me a very remarkable thing to have
accomplished, and perhaps too an important step in the transition of the
novel into some other form, which I feel is an inevitable development
already foreshadowed in some of your own work as well as in that of Joyce
and a few others. But I shall say no more about the poem until I have had
time to study it carefully: I should not myself have cared for any criticism
of The Waste Land which came from only a first reading.3
Thank you for troubling to return the books. Some day when you have
time I should like to know your opinion of them.
I hope that you have had an interesting visit to America and that you are
now settling down to fresh work. Thank you again for giving me The Dark
Night which I shall always treasure.
Very sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
My dear Manning,
Would you be willing to review any or all of these books for the October
Criterion?4 I am starting book reviews and intend to have three or four
reviews, not more, in each number, of about 1000 words each. There will
probably not be more than this number of books worth our reviewing and
there certainly will not be more than a very limited number of people
whom I should care to ask to review. If you will do this for me I shall be
1 May Sinclair, The Dark Night: A Poem (1924).

2 The Grandmother, an extract from her verse novel, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924). Sinclair wrote
(13 June): Im afraid that it does not follow that because you liked that you will like the
rest.
3 The Dark Night was reviewed by Harold Monro in C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924).
4 A. J. Toynbee, Greek Historical Thought and Greek Civilisation and Character; and T. D.
Denniston, Greek Literary Criticism.

very grateful; if not, I shall not have them reviewed at all. I do not know
anyone else to whom I should be willing to give them.1
I do not know what you mean about the left and the right in literature.
From a literary point of view I do not recognise any left or right; only what
I like. I do not much admire the work of Paul Morand but I give him the
admiration which I should give to a brilliant designer of hats or gowns. But
I should like to discuss this question of left and right in conversation with
you rather than by correspondence.2
[T. S. E.]
I hope the Criterion will be out about the 1st of July.
to Leonard Woolf cc
19 June 1924 [The Criterion, London]
Dear Leonard,
Forgive me for not answering your letter immediately.3 I am glad to say
that the whole question of American publication of Virginias article is
nonexistent. We do not purchase American rights for the purpose of
separate publication in America. The idea is that the Criterion aims at
increasing its American circulation which is already a considerable fraction
of the total. It is therefore to our advantage that our best contributions do
not appear also in American reviews, and I therefore secured from Lady
Rothermere an additional small subsidy which makes it possible to offer
a very small number of writers double rates for exclusive rights. Virginias
article will therefore be circulated in America only in those copies of the
July Criterion which will reach America, and therefore there will be
nothing to interfere with your publishing the book as soon after July as you
choose.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
1 Mannings review appeared in C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924), 1347.

2 On 18 May, Manning suggested an article on modern critical tendencies, but he suspected
TSE would not want this because his sympathies with the left were not his own. Manning
said: I admire Paul Morand as a writer, I admire his diagnosis, but I do not think him an
artist.
3 LW wrote (17 June) about some difficulties with regard to the American rights of
Virginias article (Character in Fiction, C. 2: 8). He understood TSE had taken both UK and
US rights and was paying more than the usual rate. They intended to publish it as a pamphlet
early in the autumn, but Knopf had asked for first refusal in the USA. If TSE could not
447
to F. W. Bain cc
My dear Bain,
In case I did not make it clear when I last wrote to you, may I hope to
receive your essay called A Conspiracy of Silence by the 1st of
September?1 I do hope that this may be possible and am looking forward
to it with great eagerness.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to G. A. Porterfield cc
Dear Mr Porterfield
I am very glad indeed to hear from you. As you do not say exactly when
you are coming back, would it be possible for you to send me one or two
stories soon to look at? I should promise not to mutilate any of them
without your permission.
I am very much pleased to learn that you like what you have seen of the
Criterion. I am having a copy of the July number sent to you.
Yours faithfully
[T. S. E.]
My dear Manning,
Thank you very much for your letter and for consenting to do the books.
I will try to get Mackails lecture also.2
arrange for serial publication in the US before 30 Sept., VW would be happy to accept
ordinary rates for its publication in C.
1 On 29 May, Bain proposed to call his essay on the French Revolution A Conspiracy of
Silence. On 3 Aug., he changed it to 1789: this was adopted in C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924).
2 On 20 June, Manning said he would review the books on classical thought TSE had
sent but wanted to include Mackails lecture mentioned in the previous TLS. See J. W.
Mackail, Bentleys Milton (British Academy Warton Lecture, 1924): reviewed in TLS, 12
June 1924, 374.

I see that the reference to the left was my own blunder.1
I am very sorry indeed to hear that you have had appendicitis. An
operation like that is an unpleasant shock to ones nerves at the very
mildest but I judge from your letter that you have got through it as
successfully as could be expected. Your present condition sounds very
painful indeed.2
[T. S. E.]
to Johan Mortensen cc
Dear Mr Mortensen,
I did not answer your letter of the 22nd at once because I waited until I
had had an opportunity of reading the story you so kindly sent me.3 I am
grateful to you for letting me see it because the story is extremely
interesting and has moments of great power. I think that we can use it and
it will certainly be a welcome change from the usual fiction. Will you let
me know whether the author has left it entirely in your hands or whether
I ought to communicate with the author direct? Address is not on the
manuscript.
We usually divide the payment between the author and the translator;
that is our payment is at the rate of 10.0.0 per 5000 thousand words and
from this we deduct the translators fee of 15/- per 1000 words, unless the
author has made private arrangements with the translator. We also like to
know the name of the translator as this is published. There are a few places
where I think the English could be somewhat improved, and as it would
not involve mutilation of the story, I presume there would be no objection.
I should like to hear from you on
[incomplete]
1 Manning said his reference to the left in literature was apropos of a casual remark that
TSE had made in town.
2 Manning had spent three weeks in a nursing home; the coughing brought on by his
bronchial troubles made it hard for his wound to heal.
3 On 22 June, Mortensen submitted a story of a young Swedish authoress whose
significance went beyond the limits of nationality; it was by Anna Lenah Elgstrm (1884
1968): see Two of the Red Cross, NC 5: 2 (May 1927).
449
Vivien Eliot to Leonard Woolf ts Berg
27 June 1924 9 Clarence Gate Gardens
Dear Leonard,
Thank you for your letter. It was good of you to write, but the whole
thing is a complete fantasy. Neither Tom nor I have ever for one moment
thought or imagined that you or Virginia have ever written or said
anything insulting or unkind about The Waste Land. We cannot imagine
what we did or said but for a little crude and meaningless badinage
which has led you to suppose that we took offence on these grounds.
For myself, I have no idea whatever about the facts of private publishing;
I should have no more idea of the success of the publication if I heard that
forty copies had been sold by the Hogarth Press, or 4000. The subject of
the sales of the Hogarth Press has never once been discussed between Tom
and myself.1 We have never conceived it possible that Tom or any good
poet could be popular in this country or in any other country. We have
never imagined that any money could be made out of good poetry.
Therefore, we have never considered poetry as a financial asset, and that
is why Tom earns his living in other ways.
We still cherish hopes of leisure and independence, bringing such a
command of conversation as will make it impossible for misunder-
standings of this kind to occur.
Yours sincerely,
Vivien Eliot
4 July 1924 [The Criterion, London]
My dear Sir,
I wrote to you last on the 3rd May expressing my pleasure at your
willingness to let us have an essay on Cardinal Newman. I should very
much like to publish this essay in our October number if possible and am
therefore writing to ask if you could let me have it by the 1st of September
in English or a fortnight earlier if you prefer to write it in French. As I say,
I should particularly like to publish it in the October number.
[T. S. E.]
1 See TSEs letter to Leonard Woolf, 1 May 1924.

to Louis Untermeyer 1 cc
Dear Mr Untermeyer,
Thank you very much for your letter of the 13th inst. Aiken was quite
right about my willingness to be included in the American Miscellany.2
I have not seen either of the numbers, but he has explained the scheme to
me and it seems to be one which is very fair to the contributors.3 The only
obstacle to my contributing at present is the most insuperable obstacle
possible; that is to say I have written nothing whatsoever for three years
and I do not see any immediate likelihood of my writing. The writing of
poetry takes time and I never have any time. With the prospects of the
summer which I have before me, I can say definitely that it will be utterly
impossible for me to write anything by next November.4 I am however
obliged to you for your proposal and hope that we may meet when you
come to London.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Harriet Shaw Weaver cc

Dear Miss Weaver,
Thank you very much for the books and for sending them so promptly.5
I will send them on to Lady Rothermere and will let you know directly I
hear from her. Meanwhile I will consult Mr Cobden-Sanderson about the
possibilities of storage.
1 Louis Untermeyer (18851977): American poet and anthologist; author of Collected

Parodies (1926), Long Feud: Selected Poems (1962), and a memoir From Another World
(1939).
2 Untermeyer had already edited two anthologies: American Poetry Miscellanies (1920,
1922).
3 In his Foreword, Untermeyer explained that this volume of new poems by a dozen
representative native authors was based on a selection composed by the poets themselves
(American Poetry 1925: A Miscellany, 1925, iii.). The anthology was based on cooperative
participation and divisions of royalties.
4 In fact, TSE contributed Three Dream Songs to American Poetry 1925: the version of Part
I of The Hollow Men published in Commerce 3 (Winter 1924) and Doriss Dream Songs
published in Chapbook 39 (Nov. 1924).
5 WLs Tarr and The Caliphs Design, published by Weavers defunct Egoist Press.
451
But I must say again that I think it is a public misfortune as well as a
strong private regret to me that the Egoist Press should go out of existence.
It will be some small compensation for me if the Criterion can to this
extent carry on a little of your work.
I telephoned to Fladgates1 this morning and found as I expected that
your neighbour had an option on the office. They said they would know
next week whether the option would be exercised. I very much hope not
because I cannot imagine a more suitable place for the purpose. It would
be a godsend. I do not suppose that the people would be inclined to give
it up if they have an opportunity of getting it but it would be a sentimental
pleasure as well as a practical advantage to have your office as well as your
books.
We both enjoyed very much seeing you last night and hope that we may
see something more of you this summer.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
PS I enclose cheque for 6/9 for Tarr and the Caliphs Design with many
thanks.

Dear Miss Weaver,
I am more grateful to you than I can express for all the trouble you have
taken about the room.2 I am sure that no one else would have taken so
much trouble or managed it so neatly. The office is exactly what I want for
the Criterion and will simplify the running of the paper very much indeed.
I hope that you will not bother yourself to have the room cleaned.3 I
should like to come in to see you soon and discuss the practical details of
the sub-tenancy and if nothing prevents, I shall look in on you in your
office hours this Wednesday. I say if nothing prevents, because I have just
had a slight operation on my finger which has been giving me a good deal
of trouble and for several days I am not able to move about as freely as I
1 Messrs. Fladgates, the firm responsible for renting out the offices used by the Egoist Press
at 2 Robert Street, which TSE wanted to take for C.
2 On 7 July, Weaver said that, after consultations with the estate agents, TSE could
definitely have the former offices of the Egoist; she and Dora Marsden remained technically
the tenants.
3 It was in a dirty state, Weaver reported.

should like. But as I understand you will be there on Wednesday and
Friday mornings in any case, I will simply drop you a line the night before
to say whether you may expect me.
My wife is anxious also to see the office. But I doubt whether she will
be able to come in this week. She has her hands so full of this unfortunate
business of preparing for my mothers arrival,1 which all falls on her, and
with her own preparations for going away in order that my mother may
come here, that I doubt if she will have a moment to come in. She will take
the first opportunity to come at a time when you are there, but it may be
not for several weeks.
Thank you very much also for the lists,2 of which we shall make full
use. Again with very grateful appreciation and thanks,
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
PS My wife does not expect to be away from London the whole of the
time this summer and we both look forward to seeing you oftener.
to A. B. Walkley 3 cc
Sir,
At the suggestion of Mr Scott Moncrieff, I have asked Mr Cobden-
Sanderson to send you a copy of the July Criterion containing an
unpublished fragment by Marcel Proust, which we think should interest
you. We should of course be glad if you found it possible to mention this
fragment, and this number of the Criterion in The Times.4
I am, Sir,
[T. S. E.]
1 TSEs mother was to arrive in London on 14 July.

2 On 22 July she referred to sending a list of subscribers to the Poets translations series.
3 Arthur Bingham Walkley (18551926): literary and drama critic; reviewer for the Times
and TLS.
4 On 11 July, The Times carried an advert for C. 2: 8 (July 1924), highlighting an
unpublished fragment by Marcel Proust as well as the pieces by WBY, VW and others. On
23 July, Walkley devoted his column to the latest manifestation of Prousts novel in C., saying
no novelist was more suited to the instalment plan than Proust (Albertine Dead. A Proust
Fragment, The Times, 23 July, 12). On 30 July, Walkley returned to C. when he used his
column to take issue with VWs Character in Fiction under the headline Character in Fiction.
Miss Virginia Woolfs Paper. Strange Occurrence in 1910 (The Times, 30 July 1924, 10).
453
My dear Manning,
Thank you for your letter. I am sorry to hear that you are not recovering
more rapidly but I hope that you are having no set-backs beyond the
slowness of the wound in healing. I do not want to add another obstacle
to your progress, but in spite of what you say, should very much like you
to do these books.1 I know that it is tiresome to have to think about books
of this sort at all, but it seems to me very desirable that this sort of
publication should be denounced. I am not surprised to hear what they
are because I have always had the impression that Arnold Toynbee2 was a
noxious humanitarian. The point is that these books have been well spoken
of in The Times and praised in the Nation and I think that some voice
ought to be raised against this degraded culture.3 If you do not think so,
please let me know frankly; and perhaps you would prefer to devote to
other tasks the little strength that you have at present.4
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
1 On 7 July, Manning said he did not think the books in the Library of Greek Thought
useful and that Toynbee wrote deplorable journalese. He wondered if C. should notice
them at all.
2 Arnold Toynbee (18891975), English historian, had published The Western Question in
Greece and Turkey: A Study in the Contact of Civilizations (1922, 2nd edn 1923). He was
to become Professor of International History at University College, London, and author of
A Study of History (12 vols, 193061). In a letter to The Times (3 Jan. 1924), he explained
that he had resigned his Koraes Chair at the University of London in protest against the
conduct of the Greek authorities in Asia Minor.
3 Both Greek Historical Thought and Greek Civilization and Character were praised in
The Good of Greek (TLS, 19 June 1924, 382). The reviewer praised the abundance of
material not available elsewhere, and spoke of Toynbee as a thoroughgoing modernist, or
man of his age, who must have his Greek authors to speak as if they were men now living.
4 See Mannings review in C. 2: 9 (Oct. 1924): it was evident that such books are profitable
. . . but their value is less obvious. He criticised Toynbees translations on the grounds that
it was advisable that a translator from Greek into English should know at least one of the
two languages with which he deals (1347).

to Jean de Menasce cc
Dear Menasce,
I am glad to hear from you at last.1 I heard rumours in Oxford that you
had not stopped in London and therefore imagined that you did not get my
card.2 Do let us meet when you return to London and we will see whether
I can give you any introductions that will be of use to you. I am sure that
the America tour will be a great success. And meanwhile write to me some
time if you ever feel inclined.
Yours,
[T. S. E.]

9 July 1924 The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn,
London e.c.1
Dear Conrad,
I am sorry that I missed you the other day. I have been having a great
deal of trouble with my hand getting an abscess under the finger nail which
became infected and I am not out of trouble yet. Nevertheless, I am in the
city now nearly every day and hope that you will try again if you are in
town. You had best ring me up at Central 8246.
Would you care to review Gilbert Seldes book on the Lively Arts for
the October number? I hope you will. Let me hear from you so that I may
send it.3
Yours ever,
T. S. E.
1 De Menasces letter does not survive. TSEs letter is addressed to him in Paris.
2 Writing on 18 Apr., de Menasce had hoped to see TSE when he got up to London, as he
expected to fairly often during the term.
3 Aiken reviewed it in C. 2: 9 (Oct. 1924).
455
to May Sinclair cc
Dear Miss Sinclair,
Thank you for your letter.1 I should very much have liked to see you
before your departure and am extremely sorry that Monday night is
impossible. Very unfortunately, my mother who is eighty-one is arriving on
Monday from America to pay me a visit of a few weeks and I do not think
that I ought to leave her on the evening of her arrival. We have been
completely up-side-down with preparations for her coming as this flat has
to be prepared for her and my wife and I must disperse for the time into
other and much less comfortable quarters. In addition to these afflictions,
I am at present hampered by an accident which has necessitated an
operation to my hand.
I suppose that you will be away until the autumn. May I hope that you
will let me hear when you return or that if you come to town meanwhile
at any time for a few days, you might give me an opportunity of seeing
you. There are several things which I should like to talk about.
[T. S. E.]
My dear Whibley,
Although I enjoyed our boating expedition, it did not lend itself to
conversation.2 So I should like to hear from you and to hear when you are
to be in London again.
I hope that your neuralgia has shown no sign of returning, so that you
can steadily build up strength against next winter. I have been bothered
lately by an abscess in my finger which has given me a great deal of pain
and been an infernal nuisance. I have just had it operated upon and some
of the nail and flesh removed and now hope that there will be no further
consequences. It is extremely trying to have it happen at this time because
we are domestically in chaos and mentally in nervous tension before the
arrival next week from America of my mother who is eighty-one and
1 On 8 July, Sinclair said she hoped to see TSE before leaving for Stow-on-the-Wold.
2 On his trip to Cambridge of 14 June TSE had visited Whibley and gone punting on the
Cam.

insists on coming over to visit me. I shall not be able to draw a peaceful
breath or think an intelligent thought until the end of August.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
PS I should like to know what you think of the July number. But there are
many other things which I want to talk about which were in my mind at
Cambridge but which of course I had no opportunity to mention.
[Richardson] Wood appears to be enjoying himself motoring about the
continent. I imagine he is happier now than anyone can expect to be again.
to J. B. Trend cc
My dear Trend,
As you have honoured the Criterion with your collaboration, may I ask
you three questions: (1) Do you think it would be possible for us to get an
article on some musical matter from de Falla?1 I should very much like to
have something from him. If you encourage me to ask him, will you let me
have his address and would you object to my mentioning your name? (2) I
am proposing to have a set of regular chronicles of literary and other
artistic events from various foreign capitals: Paris, Berlin, Rome, Madrid,
New York. Each foreign representative would contribute a chronicle of
2 or 3000 words twice a year. I want in each case someone who is on the
spot and active in the life of the capital. Do you think that Ortega y Gasset2
would be a good man for Spain, and do you think that he would be
inclined to do it? I only know that you and others have spoken highly of
him to me and that he is the Editor of a review which I find sympathetic
and with which I should like to be on closer terms.3 (3) I am also intending
to have regular chronicles on art, music and the drama when I can find the
suitable people who will undertake them. These should be about 2000
1 Manuel de Falla (18761946): Spanish composer whose ballet The Three-Cornered Hat
had been performed by Diaghilevs Russian Ballet in 1917. Trend, a friend of his, was author
of Manuel de Falla and Spanish Music (1929). On 11 July Trend said he tried to persuade
Falla not to write such articles because he took such immense trouble: a page of prose
took longer than a page of music. But maybe Falla would dictate something when he visited
him in Oct.
2 Trend replied that Gasset would be the very man for the chronicle from Madrid. He
would be gratified, since the Criterion was one of the few reviews he really liked. For
Gasset, see TSEs letter of ?13 July.
3 La Revista de Occidente was founded by Gasset in 1923.
457
words each and should appear in every number. I must explain that I do
not want a summary of all the exhibitions, plays, concerts, etc which take
place, for such are only suitable in periodicals appearing much more
frequently. What I want, is really a short article by someone who can write
with knowledge and interest, dealing with some event or aspect of that
particular contemporary art. In this way the writer would have a good
deal of latitude and would be able to make general reflections for which
there might not be scope in for instance a weekly periodical. Would you
care to honour us by undertaking music?1 If you happen to be in Spain,
you could write about Spanish music, if in Austria, on German music: there
is no need to be comprehensive.
I hope you will not think all this an impertinence and a bore, I really
should like to secure your regular appearance and closer collaboration in
the Criterion. May I send you a copy of the July number which I think in
some respects, the best that we have produced?
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
to Herbert Read cc
My dear Read,
I am so sorry that I was unable to meet you on Tuesday and also that I
could not let you know so that you should not come in vain. Please accept
my apologies. I have been having a great deal of trouble with my hand,
getting an abscess under the finger nail which became infected and I am not
out of trouble yet.
I have discovered a good and cheap restaurant called the Bell which is
in Holborn near Chancery Lane. Is that a very inconvenient place for you?
or could you take the Piccadilly railway, getting out at Holborn? Monros
restaurant was not a success and Monro himself was not there to justify it.
I am sending you the Babbitt book.2
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
1 Trend said TSEs view of musical criticism interested him very much. He contributed a
Musical Chronicle to C. on a regular basis from 3: 9 (Oct. 1924) to 12: 49 (July 1933).
2 Irving Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership, which Read reviewed in C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924),
134. Professor of French at Harvard, Babbitt had been one of TSEs most influential teachers
there: see The Humanism of Irving Babbitt (1928), reprinted in SE.

to Alec Randall cc
My dear Randall
I do not know whether you are back yet, but I want to have this question
ready for you on your return.1 Can you tell me much about Fritz von
Unruh,2 and do you think he would be possible as a German
correspondent? I have never read anything of his except some agreeable
war reminiscences in the Nouvelle Revue Franaise.3 I met him in London
a short time ago and he struck me as chaotic but I hear that he has a
considerable following in Germany. Is he what in journalism is called a
representative writer of the present time?
Would you mind writing yourself to the Editors of the periodicals you
want to exchange with?4 If you have no Criterion paper, drop a line to
Cobden-Sanderson and he will send you some.
Would a restaurant called the Bell in Holborn near Chancery Lane be a
particularly inconvenient place for you? I lunched there the other day and
found it extremely good and very cheap and have heard it highly
recommended. I am writing to ask the others.5 I hope you had a very
successful holiday.
Yours ever
[T. S. E.]
PS You promised to send me the address of the Revista [de Occidente]. If
you can find it, may I have it?
1 Randall had been for a holiday in Brittany.

2 Fritz von Unruh (18851970), son of a German Army officer, was an Expressionist
dramatist, poet and novelist whose notable early works, inc. the play Offiziere (Officers,
1911) and Louis Ferdinand (1913) both produced by Max Reinhardt and the narrative
Der Opfergang (Way of Sacrifice, written in 1916 during the siege of Verdun but
published only in 1919), proclaimed his lifelong pacificist idealism. Winner of the Kleist
Prize (1915), the Das Junge Deutschland Prize (1920), and the Grillparzer Prize (1923), he
was to be an outspoken opponent of the Nazi Party. He left Germany in 1932, and lived,
until 1962, in the USA. Randall replied (4 Aug.): Unruh is a good writer, but he has a
political bee in his bonnet, which might awkwardly affect his writing of a chronicle. Unruh
never published in C.
3 Fritz von Unruh, Fragments dun Journal de guerre, NRF 19: 108 (1922).
4 On 4 June, Randall complained that Neue Rundschau was no longer being sent to him;
he suggested adding Die Literatur to the list of reviews for exchange.
5 Randall was a regular attender at the weekly C. lunches, along with HR, Flint and TSE.
459
9 July 1924 The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
Dear Monro,
I am sorry to miss you at your restaurant last week. What happened? I
have discovered another, which with all due respect seems to me
remarkably good and cheap, called the Bell in Holborn near Chancery
Lane Station. Would this be a possible rendez-vous for you in the future?
I hope you like the Criterion. Would you care to write a short notice of
Campbells poem1 for the next issue? I should be very glad if you would,
only I am afraid that it would be necessary for you also to review May
Sinclairs poem as I cannot very well review verse and leave her out.2
Would you be willing to tackle this and to deal gently with her? If not, I
should have to see whether someone would be willing to review it as a
novel.3
Yours ever,
T. S. E.
to Dr E. Classen cc
Dear Sir,
I learn from Dr Mortensen that you wish to revise your translation of
Mrs Elgstroens story4 and I therefore return it to you herewith. I shall be
glad if you will kindly acknowledge receipt and hope that you will be able
to return it to me within the course of a few days.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
1 The Flaming Terrapin (1924), by Roy Campbell (190157), South African poet and
satirist.
2 May Sinclair, The Dark Night (1924).
3 Monro replied (29 July) that he would do a comparative review of Campbells poem &
May Sinclairs and would not say anything derogatory. In his review (C. 3: 9, Oct. 1924),
he noted Campbells colonial flavour, calling him precocious and unweariedly exuberant
but with sufficient restraint not to become tiresome. Sinclairs poem he put down as a novel
in verse (free of a kind) of an accomplished novelist who has already expressed herself again
and again in her natural medium and is now trying an experiment in a medium not naturally
her own.
4 See Anna Lenah Elgstrm, Two of the Red Cross (C. 5: 2, May 1927, 20213).

My dear Seldes,
I was very glad to get your wire and today have your letter. I am very
glad that you will do a chronicle for us. I hope that you can arrange them
to fit in so as to arrive just in time for the two numbers in which they
should appear. In future I hope to bring out the Criterion on the first day
of Oct. January, April and July. That means we should have to receive the
copy for the January number by December 1st at the very latest. Can you
manage this? I was hoping that you would let me have something in time
for the October number, but if this is impossible, can you not manage to
get it into my hands by the latter part of November?1
I am glad to hear that you will be part of the time in Europe and felicitate
you upon your marriage.2 It appears possible that I may get over to Paris
in the late autumn and certainly hope to see you there or in London before
your return to America.
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
to Messrs. Curtis Brown3 cc

Dear Sirs,
I have read with great interest Mr D. H. Lawrences story entitled
Jimmy and the Desperate Woman submitted with your letter of the 8th
inst. and if possible should like to publish it in the October number of the
Criterion.4 I should like first to know whether any arrangement has been
made to publish this story in America and when it is likely to be published
there. We should of course like to have prior or simultaneous publication.
I should be glad to hear from you at the earliest possible moment.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
1 Seldess first New York Chronicle appeared in C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925).

2 Seldes married Alice Wadhams Hall in Paris on 21 June.
3 DHLs literary agency.
4 Jimmy and the Desperate Woman, C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924), 1542: the first of five pieces by
DHL.
461
I enclose a list of the periodicals to be dropped or be taken up for
exchange. I should be grateful if you could provide each of the colleagues
concerned, i.e. Read, Flint and Randall, with a small quantity of Criterion
paper to enable them to write to the reviews which they want to take up.
I have been having trouble with my hand. I bruised the finger a fortnight
ago and rather neglected it; it developed an abscess under the finger nail
which has had to be operated upon and I am not yet out of trouble with
it.
The telegram from Seldes means that he accepts my proposal that he
should write for us an occasional review of events in the world of arts in
New York.
I am struggling to the city every day, so you ought to be able to get me
on the telephone there when you want me.
Yours ever
[T. S. E.]
To be dropped:-
The New Republic New York
The Nation
Indice Madrid
Les Ecrits du Nord Brussels
Europe Paris
To be taken up for exchange:-
American Mercury
North American Review
Atlantic Monthly
Philosophies, rue de Douai 50, Paris
Die Literatur, Munich
Le Disque Vert
Revista de Occidente
Le Crapouillot,1 3 Place de la Sorbonne, Paris
If you have not the addresses of any of these new periodicals, you can
get them from Flint, Randall and Read respectively.
1 Le Crapouillot: a satirical magazine launched in 1915 by Jean Galtier-Boissire; it lasted

until 1996.

Vivien Eliot to Mary Hutchinson ms Texas
10 July [1924] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Mary
This is too disappointing. To miss the one party of the season to be
stuffily here packing while you are having, as I am sure it is, the most
perfect party. Such a lovely night. I had three beautiful dresses laid out to
choose from and had really looked forward to it. Toms hand is very
painful, he had to have a piece of bone removed today from the top of his
finger. He is feverish.
Very sadly yours
V
to Messrs. Curtis Brown cc

Dear Sirs,
I have your letter of the 10th inst. Whilst I should be very glad to use this
story by so distinguished a writer as Mr Lawrence, I am afraid that for
any contribution which is to be published separately in an American
periodical, we can only offer our usual terms which are at the rate of
10.0.0 per 5000 words. If therefore you can place Mr Lawrences story
to much better advantage in some other British periodical, I shall be glad
to hear from you without delay.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
to Harold Monro cc
Dear Monro,
I think that it is time that I returned you these manuscripts of Prentis.
You will remember what I said about them and I dont think he has done
anything formed enough for us to publish but I trust that you are keeping
an eye on his work because I do think that something may come of it. His
vocabulary and syntax need a good deal of disciplining, dont you think.
I should like to see his stuff from time to time and hope for another
opportunity to meet him. At present I am in a state of chaos awaiting a visit
463
from my mother who is crossing the Atlantic at the age of eighty-one and
arrives tomorrow.
Did you get my last letter? I hope that you will be willing to review those
two books as well as to let me have the continuation of your Wordsworth,
the first part of which has contributed so largely to what I consider the
best number of the Criterion so far.1
I shall not be able to lunch this week, but what about Wednesday week?
In haste, yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
I have your second letter this morning. The matter of the publication2
is of course one of the subjects which I wish to discuss with you and if you
can manage to come to London, you shall hear all about it. This subject
also includes the question of the Egoist Press. Of course it is difficult to go
very far as a publisher under present conditions when one is also an Editor
and it is simply a practical question of the amount of time at ones disposal.
Our programme involves time and organisation which I suppose such a
press as the Three Mountains3 enjoys.
I never see Rodker and cannot carry messages to him and I am sure that
he would feel more pleasure in hearing from you direct. His address is
4 Tooks Court, Cursitor Street, e.c.4.
[T. S. E.]
1 Monros Wordsworth Revisited was set to be continued, but it never was. The two
books are those by Campbell and Sinclair.
2 This apparently refers to the proposal that C. move into book publishing.
3 The Three Mountains Press was a small press launched in Paris by the American journalist
William Bird (18881963): its publications included EP, A Draft of XVI Cantos; Ernest
Hemingway, In Our Time (1924); and William Carlos Williams, The Great American Novel.

to Sydney Schiff cc
My dear Sydney,
This is just a short note to enclose the manuscript verses of Mr Edward
Moore.1 I am very glad to have seen them but I remain of the same opinion
and I think that on the whole you will agree with me that Moores vehicle
is much more philosophic prose than verse. I have been much interested by
the two books you lent me2 and I should very much like to meet him when
he comes to this country.
I cannot write any more just now because we are in the convulsions of
preparation for my mothers arrival. The whole business is unspeakably
difficult to arrange and [we] shall be quite exhausted by the end of the
summer.
Affectionately,
[T. S. E.]
to Arnold Bennett ts Beinecke

Dear Mr Bennett,
If you are in town and have the time, I should very much appreciate it
if you would let me come and see you one day after 5 oclock or in the
evening. I shall be in town every day except Thursday and Friday of this
week. I am sorry to trouble you but I have a scheme in view concerning
which yours is the only advice which would be of any help.3 So I hope that
it will not be impossible for you to see me.
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
1 Pseud. of Edwin Muir, Scottish poet and novelist: see TSEs letter of 12 June 1925.
2 Muirs first two books of essays were We Moderns: Enigmas and Guesses (1918) written
under the pseud. Edward Moore, and Latitudes (1924).
3 On 10 Sept. Bennett recorded in his journal that TSE had visited him at the Reform Club
the evening before: TSE was now centred on dramatic writing and wanted to write a
drama of modern life (furnished flat sort of people) in a rhythmic prose perhaps with
certain things in it accentuated by drum-beats. And he wanted my advice. We arranged
that he should do the scenario and some sample pages of dialogue (Journals 19211928, ed.
Newman Flower [1933], 482). Bennetts remarks relate to SA.
465
to Jos Ortega y Gasset1 cc
[?13 July 1924] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Sir,
I am writing to you under the auspices of our friend Mr J. B. Trend,
who is a regular contributor to the Criterion. I believe that we have another
common friend in M. Valery Larbaud, who has often told me of your
work.
I hope that you have seen the Criterion, which is sent to your review. I
am writing to you in the hope that you may become one of our
contributors, and that also in this way the two reviews may become more
closely associated. It is one of the aims of the Criterion to establish
international standards, and to publish work of British and foreign
contributors equally. It is also our aim to establish close relations with one
similar review in every country, such as the Nouvelle Revue Franaise, and
the Dial in New York.
We now propose to publish a Literary Letter, twice a year, from each of
the important foreign capitals.2 This letter must be contributed by one of
the most distinguished and authoritative men of letters in each capital; and
I am assured that Madrid could have no better representative than
yourself.
If you consent en principe I will immediately write to you more fully
on the subject, and I trust that you will find the terms and conditions quite
satisfactory. If I might appeal also to your public spirit, I would say that
nothing could so assist the interest in and knowledge of Spanish letters of
today, in England, as such a regular contribution to the Criterion from
yourself.3
I have the honour to be,
Sir,
[T. S. E.]
1 Jos Ortega y Gasset (18831955), Spanish essayist, philosopher, lecturer and journalist,
was Professor of Metaphysics at Madrid University. He founded La Revista de Occidente in
1923, and was its director until 1936. He was the author of Espaa invertebrada (1921);
trans. as Invertebrate Spain (1937) and La rebelin de las masas (1930); trans. as The Revolt
of the Masses (1932).
2 This plan never fully materialised, but chronicles from New York and some European
capitals were published from time to time. The Spanish Chronicles were undertaken by
Marichalar.
3 In the event, Ortega y Gasset never published in C.

to May Sinclair cc
Dear Miss Sinclair,
You said in your letter that you were leaving town on the 17th. I should
very much like to see you before you go, especially as I imagine that there
will be no further opportunity of seeing you until the autumn. As Monday
is impossible for me, could I come for a little while on Tuesday or
Wednesday evening at 10 oclock or 10.30? but if this time is inconvenient,
especially when you are preparing to leave town, I do not want to disturb
you.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Osbert Sitwell ms Mugar

15 July [1924] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
Dear Osbert
I am writing for Vivien, to say that she is ill. We have had a very hard
time and incredible complications caused by my familys arrival in England
and occupation of Clarence Gate Gardens.1 I have also been ill myself with
a poisoned hand, and have to have two slight operations. Not having heard
from you Vivien did not know whether you expected to see her tomorrow
or not, but she is in bed with fever, and quite unfit to see anyone.
I should like to see you myself about several matters, but at the moment
I am driven to death. On what date are you leaving London and what is
the last possible date for seeing you? Could you have lunch with me (as the
lunch hour is the only time I now have available) on Thursday or Friday
of next week?
Yours ever
T. S. E.
1 CCE (with daughter Charlotte) arrived on her second visit on 14 July. According to Mrs
Eliots memoir, TSE engaged apartments for Vivien at Eastbourne while Tom was with us
this time sleeping on the lounge . . . His presence added greatly to my pleasure. During her
stay, Mrs Eliot met the Sitwells. In an unpub. memoir of TSEs marriage, Osbert Sitwell
records that old Mrs Eliot was a strait-laced, straightforward, conventional, but kindly
lady (TS Texas).
467
Dear Dorothy
Excuse chaos. My mother is occupying this flat, we are in temporary
slums and I am waiting to go to Eastbourne with Vivien who is completely
exhausted.1 Ill write early next week and come to tea if I may.
Yours ever
T.
to Wyndham Lewis cc
Dear Lewis,
I have just (yesterday) returned from Eastbourne, where I have been ill
with influenza.2 I have my mother here for several weeks to look after, but
I am available at tea time, as you propose, if you telephone to Central 8246
during the day, or by arrangement the day before.3 I am as much as
possible in occlusion, but want to see you if you will meet me, and about
the next Criterion.
Thanks for tip about Moore.4 He has been writing to me, but I had no
time even to reply. I will get hold of him if possible: I have no means of
getting his present address except through Schiff, and I do not want to
write to him, in case he should be in town, as I do not want to see people
presently.
I am asking Sanderson to send you Criterion, it should come to you
regularly.
Yours ever
[T. S. E.]
1 TSEs mother and sister joined them in Eastbourne, staying in a good hotel on the front
near the apartment they had rented. Altogether a delightful scene, noted Mrs Eliot.
2 In her memoir, CCE recorded that, during her visit to Eastbourne, TSEs physician told her
that her son ought to remain in bed and rest for some time as he was very very tired from
overwork. The doctor urged as long as possible his giving up work. CCE and Charlotte
returned to London to do more sight-seeing, leaving TSE ill in Eastbourne. When he rejoined
them in London, he seemed a little better, though not very strong.
3 CCE said they were glad to have Tom with us at dinner time and in the evening when we
sat with him in the study. WL suggested tea if convenient after TSEs day in the city.
4 Edwin Muir. WL wrote (undated letter): Edwin Moore is in London for a few days at
Schiffs request. He doesnt seem overburdened with intelligence, but probably is a little more
useful than Herbert Read. He suggested TSE would find in MOORE a useful collaborator.

5 August 1924 The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
My dear Monro,
The May Sinclair1 has been sent to you today. I returned yesterday from
Eastbourne, where I was in bed with an attack, or a recrudescence, of
influenza.
About Wordsworth there seem to be three possibilities.2 You can drop
him altogether, and wait for a more inspiring subject to propose itself, or
you can hang him over for the January number, which will give you plenty
of time for new inspirations about him, or you can follow one of the lines
you suggested. It seems to me that perhaps the exploration of his prose is
the most interesting avenue. But shall we lunch next Wednesday, and
perhaps you will have decided by then what you really want to do?
Many thanks for your letter; I am very glad to hear that you like the
number in general. I shall be happy to have this review from you.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
5 August 1924 [London]
My dear Manning,
Circumstances have prevented me from correspondence altogether;
I have not only had my family, but have been ill with influenza in
Eastbourne, and other afflictions. I have never answered your question
about the series of books: I should be very glad if you would do a short
notice of it, for the January number, as the October number will have more
than its share of reviews.3
How soon will it be convenient for you to let me have the review of
Toynbee?4
1 May Sinclair, The Dark Night (1924), which Monro was reviewing.
2 Monro said (26 July) he did not know how to complete Wordsworth Revisited which had
been announced in C. 2: 8 (July 1924): torn between comparing him to Byron, discussing
nature poetry, or confining himself to his prose writings, he was awfully inclined to drop
him.
3 See Mannings reviews of the Library of Greek Thought, C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924).
4 On 14 July, Manning called Arnold Toynbee a vulgar scribbler, and hoped to have some
fun with him if well enough to feel vindictive.
469
I understand from Sanderson that he has sent you the cheque for Le Pre
Hyacinthe.1 Have you received it?
I am inclined to agree with you about Garrod and the others. Ker was
the only one of any substance.2
I wish I could look forward to a definite date when I could see you.
There would be a great deal to talk of. My present life is worst than an
anchorites, for I cannot meditate. I hope that you make progress
physically?
[T. S. E.]
to F. S. Flint ms Texas
10 August 1924 The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
Dear Flint
I am forwarding book3 to your abode in Atlantis. I am very tired of your
damned modesty (cloak of laziness).4 Not that I wish to disturb any mans
holiday. I wd have kept it against your return.
I hope you are enjoying the menus plaisirs of life. N. Devon must be
dreadful in summer. You know I dislike Americans, as a rule.5
Hope to see you in a 4tnight. Please do this book. Of course you can.6
Yours ever
T. S. E.
1 Le Pre Hyacinthe, C. 2: 8 (July 1924). Manning needed money for medical treatment.
2 H. W. Garrod (18781960): Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. Following the death of
W. P. Ker, he became Professor of Poetry on the strength of his Wordsworth: Lectures and
Essays (1923). Manning asked TSE whether he liked Garrod, who professes poetry; he
thought him a degree better than Gordon, who professes literature. Manning mourned Ker,
who, apart from his magnificent learning, could think like a man, and fight like a gentleman.
3 RA, Literary Studies and Relations (1924), which TSE sent to Flint at Parracombe, Devon,
where he was on holiday.
4 On 8 Aug. Flint said: I dont know that I am capable of writing a review for the Criterion.
Replying to TSEs charge in this letter, Flint said his damned modesty was not a cloak for
laziness he worked hard and exhaustingly but a tribute.
5 On 8 Aug. Flint told TSE: You are so little of an American that it might amuse you to
know that this is one of the parts of England that the Americans do in a few days. After
citing an Americans derogatory remark about the natives, he added: Queer American
tourists cant appreciate the sleepy shrewdness of these folk.
6 Flints review appeared in C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924).

to Arnold Bennett ms Beinecke
Dear Mr Bennett
I failed to thank you for your kind letter (I was ill at Eastbourne) but
I hope I may have the pleasure of calling on you whenever you are in
London and find it convenient see me.1
Yours sincerely
T. S. Eliot
to Hugh Walpole cc
My dear Walpole,
I hope that you have not forgotten that I am anxious to see you when
you are in London and when you can arrange a meeting? And I want to
hear your opinion and criticisms of the last Criterion.2
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
to Alfred Kreymborg cc
My dear Kreymborg,
I have often thought of you and have been on the point of writing to
you. I am ashamed (as an amateur editor I have often cause to be ashamed)
about the Puppets: I can only say that there are others in fact nearly all
of my contributors at one time or another whom I do not dare to meet
in the street. Conducting a Review after 8 p.m. in the back room of a flat,
I live qua editor very much from hand to mouth, get myself into all sorts
1 Bennett took TSE to lunch at the Reform Club on 9 Sept.

2 C. 2: 8 (July 1924) included Character in Fiction, VWs critique of Arnold Bennett.
Having returned from Bayreuth (26 Aug.), Walpole wrote the following day: I read the
Criterion coming over and think that for variety and entertainment it is the best number yet
How far in advance (even though I am a contributor) it seems to me of every other
publication. The Adelphis egotism makes me ill, the Mercury sleepy and what else in English
is there? He took TSE to lunch on 11 Sept., recording in his diary: Enjoyed it very much.
He is a very quiet man and of course I am a little afraid of him. But he was awfully kind and
seemed genuinely to have enjoyed The Old Ladies.
471
of hot water and predicaments, and offend everybody. At the end, the
review is squeezed together somehow, and is never the number that
I planned three months before. But I hope to get your Puppets in early next
year.1
When are you coming back to London to let us see the puppets
themselves, and hear the mandolute?2 You know I have already expressed
the hope that you would.
I have written nothing, but my commentary in the Criterion.
Otherwise, I have been speechless for nine months, until perhaps I have lost
the power of speech.3 The pressure of time is squeezing me out, like the
walls of The Pit and the Pendulum.4
I look forward to your book (it sounds almost as if you had become one
of the elder men of letters writing reminiscences!) and shall be flattered
to find myself mentioned in it, even if in anything but the heroic role!
And why not more plays? Mine is in the same state.5 But perhaps when
you return there will be more of it to discuss with you.
Yours ever, with best wishes,
[T. S. E.]

My dear Virginia,
We had already retired to Eastbourne, before your letter arrived, and as
no letters were forwarded, your party was already history long before we
had knowledge of it which was only a day or two ago, when on my
return I seized it from the mass of letters, manuscripts and bills and
1 On 6 Aug. 1923, Kreymborg had sent his article, Writing for Puppets. On 12 July 1924,
he asked whether it had appeared or was going to. But nothing by Kreymborg was to appear
in C.
2 Kreymborg had spent years after the war touring the USA, performing experimental
puppet-shows and playing the mandolute.
3 Kreymborg wrote: Outside an occasional essay, one sees nothing of yours over here.
Apart from two Commentary pieces in C. 2: 7 & 8 (Apr. & July 1924), TSE published
almost no prose apart from Four Elizabethan Dramatists (C. 2: 6 [Feb.]). As to poetry, the
first poems to be published since TWL in 1922 were Doriss Dream Songs (inc. The Hollow
Men III) in Chapbook 39 ([Nov.] 1924) and Pome (The Hollow Men I) in Commerce 3
(Winter 1924).
4 Edgar Allan Poes story, The Pit and the Pendulum.
5 A ref. to what became SA.

moneylenders advertisements. I have only regrets, and apologies for my
silence to be expressed. But for the disease which confined me at
Eastbourne, there would have been a risk, of which you were ignorant, of
a charabanc of American visitors arriving for tea at Rodmell; it was in
question; but perhaps I shall perpetrate this expedition another year.1 You
have many admirers on the dark Continent; they have borrowed all of
your works. So you will have to finish the new novel this summer, and let
me have it in the autumn.2
Ever yours
T. S. E.
This is merely to ask you whether you will be so good as to drop a line
to Cobden-Sanderson to say that you approve of the scheme (which is of
course your own invention!) which he outlined to you, for sending
specimen copies and circular letters to a selected list of persons here and
abroad and in America? I think myself that it is well worth trying, and I
think that you thought so too.
Cobden-Sanderson tells me that the April number sold better than any
previous number except Nos 1 and 2, and that the July number is selling
still better, and may sell out, to judge from present appearances.
I am writing tonight to Massine, to ask him to come and see me when
he returns. I should like to get some sort of notes from him, from Diaghilev,
from Stravinsky and from Cocteau, if possible. There will not be any too
much time, if the Ballet is definitely coming in the autumn.3
[T. S. E.]
1 TSE took his mother and sister on a series of expeditions from Eastbourne during their
visit, including to Pevensey.
2 VW was finishing Mrs Dalloway.
3 Replying on 12 Aug., Lady Rothermere said she was in touch with the impresario Serge
Diaghilev (18721929), and hoped to arrange Ballet for this Autumn. In his Commentary
for C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924), TSE noted: From November 27 the London public is to have the
inestimable privilege of a season of the Diaghilev Ballet, and will be able to see again Leonid
Massine and Lydia Lopokova, as well as several new acquisitions of the finest ballet in
Europe.
473
to Natalie Barney ts Doucet
Dear Miss Barney,
I am very very sorry that my mental peculiarities should have put you
and the Princess Bassiano1 to so much trouble in return for your kindness.
I did indeed receive the cheque, from you, about Christmas time: here it is.
At the time when Princess Bassiano sent it she was no doubt under the
impression, as I was myself, that I was leaving my bank in January; or
perhaps she thought that I had already left. Being in doubt, I postponed
writing. I have been unable to change my mode of living until I could
reduce certain expenses and pay off certain liabilities, and it has been
impossible for me this year to forego my regular salary, as indeed all of
my income, and somewhat more, has been covered by expenditures. My
intentions are the same: but I do not know whether I can carry them out
in three months or in six. Meanwhile I am not entitled to any support of
this kind. I prefer to leave the money in your hands to retain or to return.
It would certainly be of great value when the time comes, but Princess
Bassiano may change her mind; and it is only fair that she should have the
opportunity of acting upon her views. I only ask you to express to her my
grateful appreciation, and to accept yourself the appreciation which I
would wish to express to you.
It is possible that I may come to Paris for a weekend to see Lady
Rothermere in the autumn: if so, I hope that I may find you there, and will
certainly seek you. I should only be able to come for two days, as my
holidays are exhausted.
T. S. Eliot
1 Marguerite de Bassiano, Princess Caetani: see Marguerite Caetani in Glossary of Names.

In 1924 she established the literary review Commerce (ed. Valery Larbaud, Lon-Paul Fargue
and Paul Valry) in which TSE placed Pome (The Hollow Men I) later in the year
(Commerce 3, Winter 1924 [/1925]). After WW2, she founded another international review,
Botteghe Oscure, based in Rome. She and Natalie Barney had put up money for TSE in the
event of his leaving Lloyds Bank.

to Gilbert Seldes ts Timothy and Marian Seldes
My dear Seldes,
Thank you for your letter of the 1st, which I have been considering.
Your idea for a first chronicle sounds like just what I want.1 The only
question was whether it should appear in October or January. I should
prefer October, but there are two reasons why January might be better.
One is that I am more in the dark than usual as to how big the October
number will be, and as the July number was unusually expensive (we had
to pay something for an unpublished Proust!) although it has been selling
extremely well, I want to keep October down as much as possible. A more
important reason is that once the chronicles are started (and in any case
they would start with yours), I dont want any hiatus: I have not yet
definitely arranged any of the other chroniclers, and if you came on in
October, there would be a risk of January appearing without any.
Spaniards never write letters in the summer, because they go to the
mountains and leave no addresses2 (perhaps they are afraid of being sent
to the Canaries), I am hesitating between two or three Germans, and I shall
wait till I can get to Paris in October before I choose a Frenchman.3 So I
think January is better, but I hope that Ring Lardners book will still be
valid then.4
Yes, one can never strike the popular fancy, Im afraid;5 all one can do
is avoid writing for intellectualsintelligenzzia [sic] by aiming at what
OUGHT to be the popular fancy if there was a People (and in these days
of democracy there isnt any people) and if it had a fancy.
Best wishes for your southern voyage.
Yours always
T. S. Eliot
1 On 1 Aug., Seldes suggested a general letter attached to a few specific phenomena, using
How to Write Short Stories (1924), by the journalist and short-story writer Ring Lardner as
a centre.
2 J. B. Trend told TSE that Ortega y Gasset would be away for the summer. Cf. The Fire
Sermon: The nymphs are departed. / And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors; /
Departed, have left no addresses (TWL l. 17981).
3 See Seldes, New York Chronicle, C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925). The only other international
chronicle to appear in the coming year was J. Kessels A Note from Paris, C. 3: 11 (Apr.
1925).
4 Seldes called Lardner the last American who will be civilised (to wit, understood) by the
English; important, interesting and entertaining; and as peculiar to America as a folk-song.
5 According to Seldes, The Seven Lively Arts had failed to strike the most popular fancy.
475
to Henry Eliot cc
My dear Henry,
I want to tell you something of mother and Charlotte, but first as briefly
as possible to discuss my financial affairs in the light of your last letters and
my conversation with mother. I am going to make some arrangement,
because I have felt for a long time that I was placing far too great a burden
and responsibility upon your already heavily burdened shoulders.1 Beyond
this, what I must consider are
Security of capital
Size of income
Convertibility of capital
With regard to the last, I wish to retain a certain amount of capital in a
form in which it could quickly be realised, in the event of any emergency;
furthermore, I do not like to tie up any more capital than can be helped in
any one country, in view of the unsettled social conditions which will
prevail everywhere during our lifetime.2 There are three ways:
1. To put 8000 in the trust with mothers 6000, realise the Hydraulic
and bring the balance over to London under my own supervision.
2. To put the whole of my money into a revocable trust of my own, and
receive the income from mothers 6000 during her lifetime, the 6000
itself to be added to her trust for me after her death.
3. To realise and transport the whole of my capital, and receive the
income from the 6000 in the way mentioned under (2).
There is also the way of putting all my capital into mothers trust, but
this ties up all of my property in America whatever happens.
In any event, I think that it is best that the insurance you have taken out
should be made payable to the trust, as you suggest, or to the trust to be
established after mothers death, assuming that I survive her. In this way it
would ultimately revert to the family, as it ought to do. The same
disposition ought to be made of any property left me in your will.
1 HWE had offered to add $1500 a year out of his own pocket to the $1500 securities TSE
should earn.
2 Since TSE was responsible for writing about Foreign Exchanges for Lloyds Bank
Monthly, he was well informed in this matter. In Aug. he said that in the present unsettled
state of Europe, and the confused state of the exchanges, it was doubtful whether the world
was reverting gradually to the conditions which obtained before the war, as observers
claimed (Lloyds Bank Monthly No. 81, Aug. 1924, 325).

Before coming to any conclusion, I want to know to what extent my
income would be reduced by putting it in the trust. I suppose that the range
of securities allowed by law for trust funds would make it unlikely that I
should get more than an average 5%, instead of the 6% bonds you have
bought for me? This is an important point, and I should be grateful if you
would let me know.
Taking the exchange at 4.60 which is slightly less favourable to me than
the actual rate today, I work it out as follows:
(When I give proceeds of Hydraulic, I mean $15,000 shares @ 65).
Scheme 1:
14,000 10,000 (proceeds of Hydraulic)
.05 @ 4.60 . . . 2,173
700.00 .06
35 130
665.00 @4.60 . . . 144
130
274. . . total income
Scheme 2:
18,000 (whole of my money)
.05
900.00
40.00 (trust co.s commission?)
860.00
300.00 (income from mother on 6000 @ 5%)
1160.00 @ 4.60 . . . 252 . . . total income
Scheme 3:
18,000 (whole of my money)
@ 4.60 . . . 3913 300 from mother @ 4.60 . . . 65
.06
234
65
299 . . . total income
Or if I invested in government stock only here, total income wd. be 260.
It accordingly appears that under these schemes my income wd. be 274,

252 and 299 respectively, if my computations are correct. I therefore
incline to either 1 or 3. Under 3, eventually, half my income would be from
England, and on realisable capital, half from America, on unrealisable.
477
There is one more point. As the Old Colony1 will be my trustee under
mothers will, it might be safer to have any other trust with some other
company: I might suggest the Bankers Trust Co. in New York, which has
the advantage of a Paris office.
I may say that in the unlikely event of Vivien outliving me, my money
would revert to the family in any case by her will. The property, if here,
would be kept separate and in a different bank from any that she inherited
on the death of her father and mother, which might amount to about 200
p.a. I think; it is hardly likely to be more.
I shall have the power of attorney sworn and returned to you in a few
days, for dealing with the Hydraulic stock. In any case I want to realise my
Hydraulic this autumn. Do you think that it is likely to rise any higher
than 65?
Obviously, what I keep in America must be in some form of trust:
English investments I can keep my eye on and have every facility for being
informed about.
I did not state explicitly that if I do not form a trust with mother, she has
offered to let me have the income on the 6000 during her lifetime, and add
the principal to my trust in her will.
You will have learned that mother was ill on the voyage.2 Since being
here she has improved very much. The weather has been very warm for
London, that is to say what to Americans is a fine temperate summer, and
I think that it has been much better for mother than the hot summer in
Cambridge. I do not think that she ought to be in Cambridge in the
summer. Both she and Charlotte look very well now, and have good
appetites, and I think that Charlotte also will have benefited by the change.
Charlotte does not take the responsibility nearly as heavily as Marion, I
believe; mother has told me that she was happier with Marion, which is
natural. They make quite contradictory statements about themselves:
Charlotte told me that she had dreaded coming and had wept on Georges
shoulder with relief when they heard at one moment that mother could
not get passages. Mother, on the other hand, says that Charlotte wanted
very much to come and that Charlotte told Marion that if she had not been
taking this trip she would have had to use some of her capital in the
autumn to stay in town for a time to rest from the fatigues of Millis.
Charlotte says that she would have done so in any case, but that the
1 Old Colony Trust Company, a Boston Bank.

2 In her memoir, Mrs Eliot wrote that, after a day of rough sea, she woke up only able to
utter one or two words at a time, which alarmed me. The doctor reassured her that this was
caused by sea-sickness, and the following day she recovered.

expense of the trip will make it impossible. So there it is. However, I am
certain that the change is doing them both good.
It turned out rather unfortunate taking them to Eastbourne, as it led to
a muddle, and it was impossible to get to the truth of the matter, whether
they liked being there or not, and if so or if not so, which. They both said
that the hotel was very comfortable. Before we went I suggested that they
should stay ten days, as owing to a public holiday, and two holidays of
my own, I should have been there all but three days in the middle; but
after two days each one told me that the other one wanted to go back.
This continued after I was sent to bed there by the doctor I unfortunately
assumed that they would want to stay until I was able to return. Charlotte
(according to a note she wrote) persuaded mother to stay two days longer;
mother said that she wanted to stay but did not want to keep Charlotte
there; mother then declared that she would stay as long as I did, and
Charlotte said that she must insist on going back because she herself was
not sleeping and had indigestion.1 I should not have minded that in the
least if she had said so at once quite frankly, and if she had not waited
until my return to inform me that that was not the reason at all, but a
pretext for getting mother away because mother was not well there. I wish
Charlotte would be more frank. She will probably tell you about this
incident herself. I am used to people who deal openly and directly.
I will write again soon. I wish that mother and Charlotte would stay
longer, as it seemed to me from the start a long journey and a great expense
for only five weeks, and we should love to have them here and it makes
no difference whatever to us in the way of inconvenience but mother
says that Charlotte wants to get back and I dont want to start that round
again.2
I will write again soon.
Affectionately
[T. S. E.]
1 In her memoir, Mrs Eliot recalled with pleasure their trips to Pevensey, Beachy Head, Old
Eastbourne, and a tea house called Devonshire House which reminded her of VHEs story
Th Dansant (C. 3: 9, Oct. 1924). Recounting their departure, she said I left Tom with
great regret but Charlotte thought life in a hotel did not agree with her.
2 TSE went with them by train to Liverpool to see them off when they sailed on 23 Aug.
479
to Conrad Aiken ms Huntington
Dear Conrad
Of what use are stuffed peacocks tongues to him who has just feasted?
The figure is not quite apposite, because I have the pleasure of reading;
but editorially a surfeit. Psychomachia1 in October, O Florentine2
Wd you be willing also to do Triple Fugue (Osbert Sitwell) briefly 1000
words?3 I hate to pile it on, but having already approached the only other
person I should trust with it (F. M. [Vivien]) who is ill and cant or wont
work, I wish you would. It is good very good in parts, and not quite
what you wd expect.
Yours ever
T. S. E.

My dear Ottoline
Vivien has been unable to write: she has had ten days in bed at
Eastbourne and is only just up and went out yesterday; and she is anxious
for news of you. I am all the more sorry to have missed you. It has been
very trying for both of us as I have had to be in London at weekends
with my mother, and could only get down to see her by snatching a day
now and again during the week. But there has been a great deal more to it
than that. Do let us hear from you and news of you.
Affectionately
Tom
1 Aiken, Psychomachia, C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924), 7983.

2 See perhaps F. T. Palgrave, O Florentine, O Master, who alone / From thy loved Vergil till
our Shakespeare came / Didst climb the long steps to the imperial throne (The Visions of
England, 1891).
3 See Aikens review of Sitwells Triple Fugue, C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924), 1414.

Dear Miss Weaver,
Thank you for your letter.1 The end of September will suit me quite well.
Meanwhile shall I keep the key? I do not expect to have occasion to go to
the office, so if you need the key please let me know.
I think that the enclosed agreement will do quite well, and it will not be
necessary to submit it to Lady Rothermere before it is ready for stamping.
Thank you for the list of subscribers2 etc. I suppose that there were no
definite arrangements with Pound, Miss Moore etc.3 You may of course
say that we shall be responsible for the refund of the subscriptions if no
more volumes are issued, but that continuation of the series is under
consideration.
I should be very glad to have the use of the typewriter, and will see to
having it put in order.4 Thank you very much indeed.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Leone Vivante cc
My dear Sir,
Thank you very much for your letter of the 15th. I must apologise to you
very humbly. I am only an amateur editor: as a bank employee for my
livelihood, I can only be an editor in the evenings and on Sundays, (I run
this review solely because it interests me to do so) and owing to
inexperience, illness and the very little time of which I [may] dispose, I
have got into many difficulties. I had looked forward to publishing your
essay (the first part) early next year. But at least let us give it a careful and
considered review (either I or some quite competent person will write it)
and let me hope that the book will have the success it deserves.5 And
1 On 4 Aug. Weaver said TSE could take over the Egoist office at the end of the week; she
would give him a second key on 13 Aug. The official date of transfer would be the end of
Sept.
2 A list of the subscribers to the Poets Translations series.
3 Weaver replied (31 Aug.): There was no definite arrangement with Mr Pound or Miss
Moore.
4 Weaver left behind a Remington no. 11 Typewriter that was not in the best order.
5 In Jan. 1923, EP sent TSE a copy of Vivantes Della Intelligenza nellEspressione (1922),
suggesting he might use it in C. An English trans. of the book by Broderick-Bullock entitled
481
afterwards, may I hope to have something else from you that we may
publish?1
With best wishes, I am,
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
Dear Mr Ainslie,
Thank you very much for your kindness in sending me the Allegory,2
and please accept my apologies for my delay in replying. I should like to
publish this essay: I have filled the October number so full that part of the
contents must be postponed until January, which also is overflowing.
Would April be too late?3
When I started the Criterion I was afraid that I should not be able to fill
it; now I find my greatest difficulty is keeping it within the limits of our
purse. I find it necessary (it is what readers like mostly) to put in so much
of immediate interest for the moment, that the more permanent work is
limited. We hope that some day it may be turned into a monthly, but from
present appearances, that requires to cover expenses a much larger public
than such a review can ever hope for. The audience of the Criterion is not
a large one.
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
Intelligence in Expression was imminent (1925): it was reviewed in C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925),

4634, by W. A. Thorpe, who described it as very welcome as an application of Croces
theory of art to the wider problem of organic life.
1 Vivantes The Misleading Comparison Between Art and Dreams would appear in NC 4: 3
(June 1926).
2 On 24 May Ainslie sent his translation of Benedetto Croce, On the Nature of Allegory
one of his most interesting and original contributions to the higher criticism. On 14 Aug.,
he enquired if TSE wanted it.
3 See On the Nature of Allegory, trans. by Ainslie, in C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925), 40512.

27 August 1924 38 Burleigh Mansions,
My dear Virginia
Forgive the unconscionable delay in answering your charming letter and
invitation.1 I have been boiled in a hell-broth, and on Saturday journeyed
to Liverpool to place my mother in her transatlantic, with the confusion
and scurry usual on such occasions, and the usual narrow escape from
being carried off to America (or at least to Cobh) myself.2 In the tumult on
the dock an impetuous lady of middle age, seeing off a relative going to
make his fortune in the New World, by way of the Steerage) stuck her
umbrella in my eye, which is Black. I should love to visit you, seriously: the
Prince of Bores to refresh his reputation: but the only pleasure that I can
now permit myself is, that should I come to Eastbourne (which is doubtful)
we might visit you by dromedary for tea:3 if I leave London at all I am
most unlikely to get done all the things that I ought to do (such as my 1923
Income Tax Return) and certainly not any of the things that you want me
to do. I have done absolutely nothing for six weeks. One thing is certain:
I MUST stay in London, where Vivien will be, after this week, is uncertain.
But
When do you want to publish my defective compositions?4
When do you want the MSS?
I should like at least to provide a short preface, which might take two
or three nights work, and make a few alterations in the text to remove the
more patent evidences of periodical publication.5 These three essays are
1 VW wrote on 15 Aug.: You do not imagine, I hope, that you are going to escape your
annual visit. The 6th September will that suit you?
2 In her memoir, Mrs Eliot described her leavetaking on 23 Aug.: The sad moment arrived
when Tom was obliged to leave the boat as the whistle sounded. He left us with a last embrace
and then we watched him standing on the dock until as we moved away we lost sight of him.
An ocean seems such a long long distance away from those we love.
3 In reply (3 Sept.), VW wrote: It is a dreadful pity the Prince of Bores cant come to keep
his reputation on the boil . . . Come by dromedary (this leaves me quite mystified) rather
than not at all (VW, Letters, III, 128).
4 On 15 Aug. VW wrote: We want to know about your essay too for our pamphlet series.
May we count on it and when? It would lend to the prestige of the series. The ref. is to
Homage to John Dryden, published as the fourth in the Hogarth Essays series in Oct. 1924.
5 In his preface, TSE explained that the essays were written for the TLS and were to form
part of a series of papers on the poetry of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: beginning
with Chapman and Donne, and ending with Johnson. This proved fruit of impossible
leisure. He had long felt that the poetry of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries . . .
possesses an elegance and a dignity absent from the popular and pretentious verse of the
Romantic Poets and their successors (9).
483
not very good (the one on Dryden is the best)1 but I cannot offer you my
Reactionarys Encheiridion or my By Sleeping-Car to Rome: A Note on
Church Reunion because they will not be ready in time. But you shall see
for yourself, as soon as you wish, whether you think these three papers
good enough to reprint.
But what about a FRAGMENT of an Unpublished Novel from you to
me?2 One exists most of the time in morose discontent with the sort of
work that one does oneself, and wastes vain envy on all others: the worst
of it is that nobody will believe one. But no one regrets more that these
moods should occur to Mrs Woolf (of all people) than
Yr. devoted servt.
Thos. Eliot
I am just recovering from the exhaustion of seeing my mother off from
Liverpool and have been recuperating at Eastbourne and as Cocteau would
say, incapable of writing four lines.3 I am writing to him now. I infer
however that his article is not about the Ballet. Now, is it certain yet that
the Ballet is coming this autumn? And if so, the following would be useful:
if Diaghilev would write us a letter even, that we could publish, about the
ballets that he is to bring over some inside information which would
shew that the Criterion had privileged access to Ballet affairs. I do not
suppose that Massine is back at his London address, as he has not
answered my letter.
Would you write to Diaghilev? (According to Cocteaus letter he is [at]
the Hotel de Paris, Monte-Carlo.)
1 The essays, dating from the year before TWL, were John Dryden (TLS, 9 June 1921),
The Metaphysical Poets (TLS, 20 Oct. 1921), Andrew Marvell (TLS, 31 Mar. 1921).
2 VW was writing Mrs Dalloway, but nothing from any of her novels appeared in C. On
15 Aug., she said: I have come to the stage where I can only tolerate plays & poetry: novels
seem to me utterly loathsome.
3 These appear to be Cocteaus exact words (see TSEs letter to him of 5 Sept.). Cocteau was
grieving for the death by typhoid of his friend Raymond Radiguet (190323). On 7 Aug., he
told Valentine and Jean Hugo: I am suffering suffering in the sun, and this is atrocious
(Francis Steegmuller, Cocteau: A Biography, 1970, 332). He had also started smoking opium.

Do you know anything about Kessel?1 Besides, Romeo has not been
made into a ballet, has it: and apart from the ballet, I dont see why we
should advertise Cocteaus work YET, do you?2 If Cocteaus own essay is
any good, however, I think we ought to have it.3
I cant think what more I can do about the Ballet, at present. Do let me
know, if you think of anything else that I can do. If I only knew for certain
when they were coming, and knew their programme as nearly as possible,
I could write some editorial matter myself.4 I propose, in the
circumstances, to postpone publication for two weeks (to November 1st)
unless you disapprove. The 1st of the month is always the best date, as the
number thereby remains current longer, and I could not possibly have got
it ready by October 1st, this time.
Anyways, you have worked a miracle in getting something out of
Cocteau! I hope that Walter Shaw will send his article.5
In haste,
always yours sincerely
[T. S. E.]
1 Joseph Kessel (18981979): French novelist and reporter born in Argentina; later author
of Les Captifs (1926), Les Secrets Parisiens (1930), and LArmes des ombres (1943) about
the French Resistance. Kessel had proposed an interview with Diaghilev: although this did not
take place, TSE later invited Kessel to write A Note from Paris for C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925).
2 Cocteau had written a balletic version of Romeo and Juliet, which was performed as part
of Beaumonts season of Soires de Paris in June 1924. Designed by Jean Hugo, it had a score
by Roger Dsormire, and Cocteau played the part of Mercutio. Its homoeroticism earned it
the soubriquet of Romo et Jules.
3 An article by Cocteau, Scandales, appeared much later (in French) in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926).
4 TSE eventually wrote a paragraph on the inestimable privilege of a season of the Diaghilev
Ballet, in A Commentary, C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924).
5 On 5 Sept. Shaw offered TSE an article on the Soire de Paris. Published as The Foreign
Theatre, The Soire de Paris, in C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924), it included comments on Cocteaus
Romeo and Juliet (described as a triumph, though it would have annoyed those whose
interest in Shakespeare is purely literary) as well as work by Tristan Tzara and Massine.
485
to Jane Heap1 ts Beinecke
Dear Miss Heap,
Very many thanks for your letter and all the trouble you have taken.2
I should very much like to discuss business with you, and shall welcome
any suggestions for enlarging circulation in America or anywhere else. I
hope that I can manage a weekend in Paris in October. I really know
nothing whatever of Gertrude Steins work, but should much like to see
some of it.
Again thanking you,
Sincerely yours,
Thos Eliot
to Harold Monro ms Beinecke

28 August 1924 The Criterion, 38 Burleigh Mansions
My dear Monro
I was afraid afterwards, from your recurring to the subject, that my
mention of superabundant material might put you off the Wordsworth.3
If so, I have done very badly by myself, for I want your continuation very
much please assure me that we shall have it. The superabundance, alas,
is quantitative not qualitative. And in any case I want your continuous
collaboration.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
to Messrs. Curtis Brown cc

Dear Sirs,
I must apologise for my absence from town, and for not having
answered your letters. Mr Lawrences story is accepted at our usual rates,
1 Jane Heap (18831964): American publisher; co-editor (with her lover Margaret
Anderson) of the Little Review (191629).
2 Heap wrote on 18 Aug. about Ford Madox Fords attempts to induce Lady Rothermere
to take over his magazine Transatlantic Review; she told TSE she had ideas that should work
for our mutual good, and offered to discuss distribution and advertising for C.
3 Monro never completed Wordsworth Revisited.

as explained, which will bring the price to your figures (18.00.0) subject
to our printers confirmation of the number of words; and we propose to
print the story in the October number, which will probably appear
November 1st.
I enclose a story which Mr Alexander Porterfield has asked me to
forward to you, as we are unable to make use of it. Kindly acknowledge
receipt.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
to Miss Hope Clutterbuck1 cc

Dear Madam,
It would always be a pleasure to me to be of service to any patient of Dr
Cyriax,2 although your enquiry is so general that it is difficult to answer.
It is first necessary to decide what field of journalism one will enter. Usually
one begins by writing about some subject which one knows, or which one
is supposed to know: at one period a certain paper sent me for review all
books on contemporary Asiatic politics, merely because I knew Sanskrit:3
I did not then know or care about contemporary Asiatic politics, but by
being supposed to have the knowledge I got the opportunity to acquire it.
Then, when one is established in the minds of editors as an authority on
one subject, one may gradually get the license (by another irrational
process in editors minds) to write about anything one likes. After a time
one reprints a collection of ones essays or reviews as a book. But you must
begin by being or by pretending to be an authority on some subject or
other, by studying the style and tricks of the papers one is trying to write
for, and adopting its tone and prejudices. I suggest that you are an
authority on Music, and that you should send musical articles, preferably
short ones, and shewing omniscience on the latest movements and
1 On 3 Sept., Hope Clutterbuck explained that owing to a breakdown when studying

music abroad, she had had to give up her studies. Being anxious to take up journalism which
Dr Cyriax thinks would be an appropriate hobby, she wanted TSEs advice.
2 TSE and VHE were patients of the two Dr Cyriaxes. During her visit to England, TSEs
mother met Madame Cyriax, whom she described as a lady of culture and charm.
3 This account of TSEs early career as reviewer refers loosely to his occasional reviews for
International Journal of Ethics from Jan. 1916 to July 1918. His output included reviews of
anthropological, religious and occasionally Asian material (including Brahmadarsanam, or
Intuition of the Absolute Brahmadarsam, or Intuition of the Absolute by Sri Ananda Achary).
487
composers, to such papers as you choose to write for. You should also get
personal introductions to editors of daily papers, and here I fear I cannot
help you. But if at some time you sent me a short article or criticism, and
told me what sort of paper you intended it for, I would give you my brief
opinion of it.
I have never known a journalist who had been to a school of
journalism,1 and I have known many journalists. In short-story writing
the competition is of course tremendous. A few people make modest
fortunes out of writing, many make some sort of living, and others, like
myself, have to earn their living by working.
I am afraid that this letter is not very helpful, but it contains all that I
know.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
to Jean Cocteau cc
Cher Monsieur,
Madame la Vicomtesse Rothermere me transmet la triste nouvelle que
vous refusez catgoriquement dcrire 4 lignes sur le ballet etcetera mais
que, par un tour diplomatique dont nous serons complices, vous pourrez
nous faire parvenir un article qui devait paratre aux Annales. Je ne sais pas
si cest un article indit ou une confrence incrite? Si vous avez le
manuscrit sous la main, je serai heureux de le dchiffrer; si lide gt encore
aux tnbres corticales, donnez moi au moins le titre de larticle futur, afin
que nous puissions rendre nos lecteurs cette promesse de bonheur qui
est la beaut.
Et recevez, cher monsieur, lassurance de ma vive sympathie.
[T. S. E.]2
1 Clutterbuck wanted advice about the various Journalists Schools she had contacted.
2 Translation: Dear Sir, Viscountess Rothermere has brought me the sad news that you
categorically refuse to write four lines about the ballet et cetera, but that, thanks to a
diplomatic trick in which we shall be your accomplices, you will give us an article which was
intended to be published in Les Annales. I do not know whether this article is unpublished,
or if it is an as yet unwritten lecture. If you have the text ready, I should be very pleased to
read it; if on the other hand, the whole thing is still gestating in the dark cells of your cortex,
then please do let me have at least the title of this forthcoming article, so that we might be
able to offer our readers the promise of happiness which is beauty.
Accept, dear sir, the expression of my sincere friendship. [T. S. E.]

Cher Monsieur Rivire,
Voulez-vous me laisser avoir un mot pour dire en faveur de qui on
devrait tirer le chque au sujet du morceau de Proust?1
Cette Mort dAlbertine a eu un succs norme, et Scott Moncrieff a
execut quelque chose de merveilleux en fait de traduction. Je vous
remercie de tout mon coeur pour vos si aimables soins.
Et voulez-vous bien me rassurer lgard de votre article? Nous y
comptons.2
Avec lassurance de mes amitis trs cordiales,
[T. S. E.]
Jespre descendre Paris au mois de novembre. Il y a une possibilit
minime quon menvoie Basle en qualit de reprsentant des crditeurs
anglais de la ville de Budapest!3
I am delighted to hear of your progress so far. I have received the article
from Shaw, and have sent it to be set up in type, although, should the ballet
not come this autumn, I should hold it over till next time.4 The interview
with Diaghilev, and the programme, are just what we want. So the
Criterion is nearly ready, for either contingency. I hope that the interview
1 The Death of Albertine, C. 2: 8 (July 1924) had appeared through Rivires mediation.
2 There was no further article by Rivire, who died the following year.
3 Translation: Dear Mr Rivire, Could you please let me have the name of the person to
whom we should make out the cheque for the Proust extract?
This Death of Albertine has had an enormous success, and Scott Moncrieff has done
something wonderful with the translation. I thank you most sincerely for all the help you
have given me.
Would you be kind enough to reassure me about your article? We rely on it.
Please believe in my very cordial friendship. [T. S. E.]
I hope to come to Paris in November. There is the faintest possibility that I might be sent
to Basle as a representative of the English creditors to the town of Budapest!
4 Walter Hanks Shaw, The Soire de Paris, C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924): an account of the inaugural
seven-week season at the Soire de Paris of five ballets and two dramas, which included
collaborative work by Milhaud, Satie, Massine, Picasso, Marie Laurencin, Cocteau and
Tzara.
489
will take place soon, and that Kessel will send the notes of it quickly, and
that then you will wire me if Rothermere and Diaghilev come to terms for
this autumn.1 Then perhaps it would be a good thing if I could have a
short article about the ballet in the Daily Mail, just when it starts, and
drag in the Criterion as well. Or in the Standard?
The last Criterion was rather more expensive, because of the high rates
I had to pay for Proust and Virginia Woolf; both of them seemed to help
a good deal to send up the circulation, but I shall keep the payment to
contributors down a bit after this, and trim down the reviewers and
chroniclers a little.
I should have sent you the office contract2 with this letter, but that I
have not a long envelope, and I will keep it till you come, if it is true that
you will be here next week.
The Barnes story3 does not seem to me first rate: I think that she can do
better, and I know that there are one or two others who can. We shall see!
Miss Heap has sent me two manuscripts of Gertrude Stein; they are not
like the story, and they are quite meaningless to me.4 It seems to me to be
nonsense; I will shew them to you when you come. I am so glad that the
Hindu is a success, and that you are feeling so well.
[T. S. E.]

Dear Conrad,
Many thanks for the reviews, which are, as always, very much to the
point.5 I hope that you have returned corrected proof of Psychomachia6
1 Rothermere and Diaghilev did come to terms for Diaghilevs company to offer a
programme of ballet in London in Nov., but Kessels projected interview with Diaghilev never
came to pass.
2 The contract with Harriet Shaw Weaver for sub-letting the Egoist office.
3 Djuna Barnes (18921982): novelist, poet and short-story writer, who lived in Paris,
192032. Though her stories never appeared in C., TSE wrote a preface to her novel
Nightwood (1936).
4 TSE was to publish Steins The Fifteenth of November in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926). He
reviewed her Composition as Explanation in Charleston, Hey! Hey!, N&A 40: 17 (29 Jan.
1927).
5 Aiken had sent his reviews of Osbert Sitwell, Triple Fugue, and Gilbert Seldes, The Seven
Lively Arts, for C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924).
6 Aikens long poem in the same issue.

to Cobden-Sanderson, though you do not say so. Yes, I know the cheques
are smallish, but I hope that some day they will be larger.1
I am very sorry to hear your news. Please give my sympathy and my
felicitations to your wife I may say that the former is much more
profound than the latter.2 I hope that things are clear enough now for you
to work with as peaceful a mind as one can ever expect to have.
Yours ever,
Tom
12 September 1924 [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
There is a point I should have asked you before. Would the saving of
space by putting the bulk of the book reviews in small type be any
considerable saving of money as well? And even if not, from the point of
view of typography do you as a publisher think that it would look better
or worse?3
You can ring me up on Monday and give me your opinion. If you say
small, I should leave the two most important (every time: this time Read
and Manning) in large type and then run on in small. And in that case it
would be necessary to reset the Flint review of Aldington in small, because
it would be invidious to set Aldington in large and Sitwell and Seldes in
small. The two enclosed by Conrad Aiken should go in small if small, and
of course in large if all large.
There are two more to come, and my editorials.4 And IF the ballet is
coming (I have asked Lady R. to wire me) then the Walter Shaw goes in,
and an interview with Diaghilev which would arrive.
1 Aiken was grateful that RC-S had sent him his cheque (smallish).
2 A daughter (Joan) has been added to the family but Aikens wife had had a bad time
of it.
3 In C. 2: 8 (July 1924), the new Books of the Quarter section was printed in the same type
as the lead articles. In 3: 9 (Oct.), the issue being discussed here, the first two reviews were
printed in larger type, while the rest were in the smaller type used in Foreign Reviews. From
3: 10 (Jan. 1925), all reviews were printed in smaller type.
4 IPFs review of E. M. Forster, A Passage to India, and Harold Monros review of poems
by Sinclair and Campbell. TSEs Commentary dealt with the death of Joseph Conrad and
the death of F. H. Bradley, as well as with the British Association for the Advancement of
Science, folk-dancing, Bernard Shaws St Joan, and the Russian Ballet.
491
I forgot to include the press-comment (enclosed) in my circular. Will you
have a look and see if there would be room to insinuate them anywhere,
or if you think the circular too verbose as it is . . . .
I have written to Rivire.
Yours ever
[T. S. E.]
My dear Richard,
(1) Very many thanks. I should very much like to publish the Villon. It
would probably be in January, though I have got into so many scrapes by
this time, with promises and postponements, that I dare not swear it would
not be April, but I think I can do it in January. Is that all right? I can swear
it will be published, if you let me keep it. I suppose it is the first scholarly
article on him in English.1
(2) Would you care to write a thing on English influence in France,
based on some books (theses) from Champion2 which have been sent and
which you probably have (I believe you reviewed one). The last is on Swift.
(3) Would you be willing and I know how busy you are, so dont mind
refusing to translate an essay by Ramn Fernandez on Newman for the
next Criterion? I could give you a fortnight. Flint says he is incapable of
understanding it, Manning sneers at it (without having seen it) and I am
up a tree. But if you cant, for Gods sake suggest someone who could and
would.
Can you lunch one Wednesday. Next Wednesday I am alone; the
following is the meeting at the Garrick.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
1 RAs Villon, in C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925), 37688 based on his reading of Franois Villon,
Oeuvres, ed. Louis Thuasne (3 vols, 1923) presents Villon as writing for a very small circle
of clercs and constantly using topical and local allusions . . . incomprehensible to us without
a huge commentary.
2 ditions Honor Champion, a scholarly publishing company founded by Honor
Champion (18461913). RA mentions Champions Histoire Potique du Quinzime Sicle in
his essay.

My dear Richard,
Very good and very many thanks. I certainly dont think that the
translation is beyond you! though the point of view may not be
sympathetic to you the ideas are subtle and interesting.1 I will post it
tomorrow, accept my appreciation of your doing this.
If you are coming on Wednesday week, as I hope, and do bring
Richmond if you can, I will give the French books then. I hope I get the
Villon into January, dans lhyver.
Scofield Thayer is now described as Editor of the Dial, and he is in New
York, I am pretty sure.2 Why not address it to him? I dont know whether
you care to say I wanted the Dial to have it and urged you to send it, you
probably know the Dial too well for that, but I used to know Thayer very
well personally.
The Fernandez is in French.
Yours ever,
Tom
to Messrs. Alfred A. Knopf Inc. cc

Dear Sirs,
I am preparing an essay on the poetic drama, embodying a good many
conclusions which I have come to since the publication of The Sacred
Wood, which I intend to publish together with a series of verse dialogues
(not a play) on the life of Savonarola, by my mother, and which I think is
worth publishing.3 It would be ready for publication in the spring and
would make I think (together) about 125 to 150 pages at most. I do not
intend to print my essay in any other form.
1 See RAs translation of Ramn Fernandez, The Experience of Newman, C. 3: 9 (Oct.

1924), 84102.
2 RA wanted to send an article on Voltaires poetry to the Dial: it was not published there.
3 Knopf published SW (1921) and had first rights on his next prose book. TSEs introduction
to his mothers Savonarola consisted of two sections. The first, Of History and Truth, argued
that a historical work tells us more about the age in which it is written than about the past;
the second, Of Dramatic Form, discussed the medium within a line the termini of which are
liturgy and realism. Presenting Ibsen and Chekhov as drama at the extreme limit beyond
which it ceases to have artistic form, TSE argued that the next form of drama will have to
be a verse drama but in new verse forms (Savonarola: A Dramatic Poem, 1926, xi).
493
I should be glad to know whether you would consider publishing this
volume, and what terms you would offer.1 It will be my first American
publication since The Waste Land.2
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
to Jean Cocteau cc
3
Mon cher Cocteau,
Trs bien quant au pome,4 simple question de longueur nous serons
combls de bonheur de publier un pome, mais certainement dans le
franais, puisquil ny a personne capable de vous traduire et vous rendre
un peu de justice et pour cette raison le pome ne dois pas tre une
pope! Voulez-vous bien mavertir? Et larticle vous navez pas rpondu
ma question? Il est dj crit? Prire de menvoyer tous les deux par
retour de courrier.
En rptant lassurance de mon admiration devoue
[T. S. E.]5
1 On 26 Sept., Blanche Knopf turned down the proposal. Knopf would like to continue to
publish your prose over here, but combining the material would make a difficult book: it
was not sufficiently saleable or interesting.
2 Published in the USA by Boni & Liveright in Dec. 1922.
3 TSEs previous letter (12 Sept.) was addressed to Cher Monsieur Cocteau. Cocteau
replied: Mon cher Eliot, (disons-nous Eliot, Cocteau), Ne sommes-nous pas potes, donc
rois, donc cousins? [My dear Eliot (lets say Eliot, Cocteau). Are we not poets, therefore
kings, therefore cousins?]
4 Cocteau had asked: voulez-vous un pome? Jai une pice indite que je refuse partout
[Do you want a poem? I have a piece which I have refused to everyone]. It was to appear
in a book in Dec. (Posies 19161923, 1924). Neither poem nor essay arrived in time.
Cocteaus book was reviewed by RA along with Marianne Moores Observations, in C. 3: 12
(July 1925).
5 Translation: My dear Cocteau, Excellent idea as for the poem, there is only the problem
of its length, but we shall be delighted to publish it, and without any doubt in its original
French, for there is no one capable of doing justice to you in translation; and that is why the
poem must not be of epic length! Will you please give me some information about it? You
have not answered my question about the article. Is it already written? Could you please
send me both by return of post?
Renewing the expression of my faithful admiration for you [T. S. E.]

Dear Koteliansky
I think the Tolstoy letters are extremely valuable and interesting, and
should very much like to publish them, in January.1 If you intend printing
them in a book before then, will you let me know? I wish that the October
number was not completely made up, as it wd have suited me to use them
at once.
Have they been published in any other language than [German del.]
Russian?
With many thanks.
Yours sincerely
T. S. Eliot

[Postmark 23 September 1924] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
2
Very many thanks for punctual MS. I shall expect the others during the
week. Excellent. If you can send me this week all the things you promised
to send, I want to see you again soon and discuss affairs.
T. S. E.
to Harold Joachim cc
Dear Mr Joachim,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. I did not expect that you
would be able, at the moment, to write for us even a short obituary,
I merely expressed the hope that you might do so later.3 No doubt you
1 A Few Extracts from Letters exchanged between Leo Nicolayevich Tolstoy and N. N.
Strakhov relating to F. M. Dostoevsky, trans. S. S. Koteliansky, C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925), 1649.
2 See WL, Art Chronicle, C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924).
3 F. H. Bradley had died in Oxford on 18 Sept., and TSE approached Harold Joachim as his
Oxford colleague. Joachim thanked TSE on 24 Sept. for the kind offer to take an obituary
or article on Bradley, if I write one. His lecturing and other duties made it unlikely, he said,
but Bradley was a very great man greater perhaps than any of us have realised.
495
will record the event in Mind;1 but I should like to impress Bradley on a
different public. I have succeeded in imposing a word about him upon such
unlikely organs as Vanity Fair and Vogue!2 I shall send you a copy of the
October Criterion containing my own notice: very inadequate, as it must
be, when there is so much to say, and to so indifferent and so unprepared
readers.3 I enclose the notice from the Nation, which is just what I should
expect from that implement of Cambridge free-thought, and which roused
me to my own small effort.4
Always your pupil5
[T. S. E.]
to Harold Monro ms UCLA

My dear Monro
I am very very sorry.6 I have been ploughing away at wiping off some
much older debts, as C-Sanderson can testify, and also trying to get down
a little verse, which is a hell of a sweat for anyone whose hand is so far out
as mine (the latter wd be of no use to you or anyone in its present form).
But I will still try to do that small piece, if theres time without holding
you up. I do owe it to you indeed in return for all you have done (and I
hope will do!) for me.
Yours
T. S. Eliot
1 The obituary article for Mind 34: 133 (Jan. 1925), 112, was by A. E. Taylor.
2 TSE had discussed F. H. Bradley in Contemporary British Prose, Vanity Fair 20: 5 (July
1923). On 13 Aug., the editor of Vogue asked to reprint TSEs piece.
3 TSE paid tribute to Bradley in his Commentary (C. 3: 9, Oct. 1924, 12), calling him the
last survivor of the academic race of metaphysicians: Few will ever take the pains to study
the consummate art of Bradleys style, the finest philosophic style in our language, in which
acute intellect and passionate feeling preserve a classic balance: only those who will surrender
patient years to the understanding of his meaning. But upon those few, both living and
unborn, his writings perform that mysterious and complete operation which transmutes not
one department of thought only, but the whole intellectual and emotional tone of their being.
To them, in the living generation, the news of his death has brought an intimate and private
grief.
4 See Omicron, in the column From Alpha to Omega, N&A 35: 26 (27 Sept. 1924), 777.
5 Joachim had been TSEs tutor at Oxford in 191415. On his death, TSE wrote Professor
H. H. Joachim, The Times, 4 Aug. 1938.
6 On 18 and 26 Sept., Monro pressed for TSEs promised short contribution (only
two pages) to Chapbook, which was due on 30 Sept.: Please be in it for the sake of
representation.
496 tse at thirty-six

Do you like Emily Dickinson and if so wd you care or be willing to review
her book?1
Shall turn up next Wednesday.

Dear Lewis
I do not know in the least what you mean by some economic factor at
work on my side. I thought it was quite clear why I suggested next week.2
You seem to have misunderstood me. As for the finances of the Criterion,
they are entirely in Cobden-Sandersons hands; he keeps the ledgers, which
are audited by auditors, and reports to Lady Rothermere; and I only
receive the ordinary rate of payment for my contributions, and have never
received anything else from her or from the paper.
Also, I dont understand what you say about what you had hoped to do
(for the Jan. no.).3 You know quite well that I would publish practically
anything you gave me, except anything which I thought would render us
liable to prosecution, and that there is almost no one but yourself of whom
I would accept so much.
I saw C.-S. today but his cheque books were in the bank, and he could
not make out a cheque till tomorrow, that is why I enclose my own cheque
for 10 which is all I can spare over the weekend and I will get C.-S. to pay
me.4 This is no inconvenience at all. If you can let me have up to 5000 to
6000 words for January, as well as chronicle, I will see that everything is
paid for at once.5
Yours ever
T. S. E.
1 See Monro on Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson, ed. Conrad Aiken, in C. 3: 10 (Jan.
1925).
2 WL wrote (undated letter): As you suggested next week for this exceptional advance
payment, I know that this must mean some economic factor is at work on your side.
3 WL wrote: What I had hoped was to do you something of the length and importance of
the Apes [of God], and I meant to ask you directly for a similar sum.
4 WL, who had been penniless for a week, had asked TSE under the circumstances to
make the cheque as large as you can.
5 In the event, neither an Art Chronicle nor a substantial piece of fiction appeared in
C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925), only a couple of reviews.
497
to Harold Monro ts UCLA
My dear Monro,
I am afraid that I have not been able to do what I promised.1 The
subject you suggested is one that I want to write something about in a
pamphlet which I have put down for future agenda,2 but it is too much
aside from what I have been working at lately for me to be able to get my
mind onto it. I am sending you the only things that I have. Print them if
you like or not, I dare say that they are bad enough to do the Chapbook
no good and to bring me considerable discredit.3 If you want them you are
welcome, if not, I am very sorry that I have done nothing better that I
could give you. They were all written for another purpose and perhaps
would not look quite so foolish in their proper context as they probably
do by themselves.4
I hope to see you on Wednesday. What about Emily Dickinson?5
Yours ever
T. S. E.
to E. R. Curtius cc
[?6 October 1924] [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
My dear Curtius,
You will think it very rude of me not to have written to you before, but
during the summer I have been worried and ill, and since then have been
very busy. I wish that I could have come to Pontigny, but I have not been
out of England for a year, and am not likely to be: such is the life of a
Bankbeamte.6 I will see that you receive a copy of the last and the next
(October) Criterion; the former will certainly interest you.
2 On 18 Sept., Monro said he was not sure about the Dawes exposition that TSE had
proposed, and suggested something about International Intellectualism, or Intellectual
Internationalism.
3 Doriss Dream Songs (Chapbook 39, 1924, 367). Along with Pome, in Commerce 3
(Winter 1924 [/1925]), these were the first poems to be published since TWL two years
earlier.
4 This may refer to the sequence that became The Hollow Men, first published as a whole
in P 19091925.
6 Bank clerk. Curtius had been to the annual literary conference at Pontigny, to which TSE
had also been invited.

I am writing to Professor Jacobsthal,1 and hope that he will let me see
his essay. I wish that I might hear from you what work you are doing
yourself, and whether you are any nearer to the English Wegbereiter?2
I am bringing out a small book in January with the Hogarth Press, but
that is only three essays written several years ago: but I shall send you a
copy.3
With kindest regards,
Yours always
[T. S. E.]
to Paul Jacobsthal 4 cc
Sir,
Our friend Dr Curtius tells me that you have an essay on Bewertung
und Wirkung antiker Kunst in Deutschland which you might care to
publish in England.5 If it is not too long for the possibilities of the Criterion
(our contributions ought not to exceed 5000 words) I should very highly
appreciate the honour of examining this essay. May I hope to hear from
you?
I am, Sir,
[T. S. E.]
1 Curtius recommended an article by his friend Paul Jacobsthal, a scholar of Greek vases.
2 An allusion to their earlier discussions about an English version of Curtiuss Die
literarischen Wegbereiter des neuen Frankreich (1919), or The Literary Precursors of the New
France (see TSEs letter of 14 Aug. 1923).
3 In fact, Homage to John Dryden came out on 30 Oct.
4 Paul Jacobsthal (18801957): German scholar of Greek vase painting and (in a later year)
Celtic art; author of Der Blitz in der Orientalischen und Griechischen Kunst: ein form-
geschichtlicher Versuch (1906), and Ornamente Griechische Vase (1927) and Early Celtic
Art (1944). In 1912 he was appointed a professor at the University of Marburg. Of Jewish
origins, he left Germany in 1935 and became a lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford; co-editor
of Oxford Classical Monographs. He was Oxford Reader in Celtic Archaeology, 194750.
5 See Paul Jacobsthal, Views and Valuations of Ancient Art since Winckelmann, chiefly in
Germany, trans. Charles Caffrey, C. 3: 12 (July 1925), 54356; NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 13847.
499
to Ernst Bertram1 cc
Sir,
Our friend Dr E. R. Curtius has made me acquainted with your Nietzsche,
of which I admire both the matter and the style.2 I should consider it an
honour if you would consider contributing a critical essay to the Criterion,
which would be happy to introduce your work in this country. Dr Curtius
suggested that you might care to let us have an essay on Hlderlin,3 but
I should be delighted to consider any suggestions from you.
I must explain that as we give equal importance to foreign and to British
contributors, we must ask that every contribution appear first in the
Criterion, before appearing in the country of its origin. Our rates of
payment are 10 per 5000 words, less translators fees of 15 shillings per
1000 words. Perhaps Dr Curtius would tell you something of the character
and standing of the review.
I am, Sir,
[T. S. E.]
to G. A. Porterfield cc
Dear Mr Porterfield
I must apologise for not writing before. I have been very busy. What I
should have told you is this: I should like to use the Colonel, if as you say
you will allow me to cut it down considerably: I must go over it carefully
again. There is much dialogue which I enjoy immensely. I choose this one,
because the other would be much more difficult to cut. The third story
struck me I hope you will not mind my saying so as much more
superficial, and at the same time probably more acceptable to many other
magazines, and I therefore sent it to Curtis Brown, and have his receipt. As
I have no instructions from you, I shall hold the other story subject to your
commands, and retain the Colonel for the Criterion.4
1 Ernst Bertram (18841957): poet and scholar: see note to letter to Scofield Thayer, 12
Jan. 1923.
2 Nietzsche: Versuch einer Mythologie (1918).
3 Bertram later edited Hlderlins Letters (1935); he did not contribute to C.
4 TSE solicited stories from Porterfield on 14 May. Having chosen The Colonel, TSE later
gave it another title. Its protagonist remains Colonel Bellamy, but it appeared as A Marriage
Has Been Arranged, etc., in C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925), 193213.

I am so glad that you like the Criterion, and grateful to you for making
it better known in New York. That is what we need. One reason why I
postponed writing was that I had hoped to see you in London this autumn.
Yours sincerely
[T. S. E.]
to G. Elliot Smith1 cc
I know that you will think me a great nuisance, but I cannot allow you
to forget that you promised me an essay on The Glamour of Gold2 when
you went to America. I did not want to bother you during the summer I
was much disappointed that the Association Meetings3 did not include an
address by you but if you have now returned, I hope that you will be
able to offer me the hope of something from you during the winter.
I think that Volume III of The Criterion promises to surpass the previous
two volumes, but I shall not account it successful unless it contains
something from you and there are others whom I wish to ask but who
should be preceded by yourself.
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
to Jean Cocteau cc
Mon cher Cocteau
Vous me prsentez une coupe et vous me larrachez aux lvres. Me
voici en prsence dun beau pome que je ne peux pas publier.4 Et
1 See letter of 28 May 1923.

2 Elliot Smith suggested this title in a letter of 30 May 1924. The Glamour of Gold
appeared in C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925), 34555.
3 Presumably the British Association for the Advancement of Science, as discussed in TSEs
Commentary, C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924): their published addresses were always a document of
general importance.
4 TSE seems to have misunderstood Cocteaus remark that his poem would appear with
NRF to refer to the Nov. issue of NRF. Cocteau was in fact referring to its appearance as a
book, viz. Posies 19151923, published by NRF in late 1924.
501
pourquoi? Je veux exposer les raisons: Ce pome paratra dans La
Nouvelle Revue Franaise au mois de novembre. Notre numro doctobre
tait dj sous presse, donc votre pome ne pourrait paratre chez nous
quau mois de janvier. Mais La Nouvelle Revue Franaise est la seule que
nous ne pouvons absolument pas nous laisser dvancer. Notre public,
plus tendu naturellement, comprend tous les lecteurs anglais de la NRF:
il sensuit que trop de nos lecteurs auraient dj vu le pome en question.
Nous nosons pas leur donner raison de dire que nous sommes arrirs.
Jespre que vous comprendrez ma position, parce que je suis combl de
dsespoir.
Mais, ce mme titre, un INDIT de vous aura un succs retentissant,
et nous enveloppera de gloire. Sinon un pome, permettez-moi de vous
supplier de nous envoyer EXPRS votre prose lors de votre arrive
Paris.1
Et recevez toujours lassurance de ma profonde admiration.
Votre
[T. S. E.]2
to Harold Monro ts UCLA

My dear Monro,
Will you kindly give the bearer of this letter, my secretary, the three MSS.
I sent you last night.3 I promise that you shall have them back or their
verse equivalent by hand in the evening. I know you are in a hurry, and
1 Cocteaus Scandales appeared (in French) in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926).

2 Translation: My dear Cocteau, You offer me a full cup, and you snatch it away just when
it reaches my lips. You offer me a fine poem and I cannot publish it. Why? Here are the
reasons. The poem is to be published in the Nouvelle Revue Franaise in November. Our
October issue is already at the printers, therefore your poem could not be published by us
until the January issue. Now the Nouvelle Revue Franaise is the only review which we
cannot allow to publish before us, things we ourselves intend to publish. Our reading public,
which naturally is wider, nevertheless includes all the English readers of the NRF; therefore
if this poem were published in the NRF, too many of our readers would already have seen it
before it appears with us. We dare not offer them grounds to label us backward and slow. I
am deeply distressed, and I hope you will understand my position.
For these very reasons, an unpublished text from you will have a resounding success which
could only bring glory to us. If you cannot send us a poem, I beg you to send us by express
post your prose article as soon as you reach Paris.
Please accept once more the expression of my deep admiration. Yours, [T. S. E.]
3 The three poems TSE sent to Monro for the Chapbook on 5 Oct.

I wont let you down, but I must have them back today. I will write to you
fully tonight.1
In great haste,
T. S. Eliot
My secretary is authorised to give you a receipt for them.
Dear Mr Ainslie,
This is only a hurried line to thank you for your letter of the 26th
ultimo. I should not think that there was any doubt of the position which
Croce has reached.2 By the way, the European Poetry has not reached
me, I should be very much interested to see it.3 I am glad that the
Criterion is of some interest to you, and that you do not think that it is
too big.4
I have enjoyed reading your poems. Unfortunately, there is nothing for
which there has been so little room in the Criterion as poetry; and I have
imprudently accepted more than can, I think, be published within the
next year! But I hope that that will not discourage you from sending
more.5
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Ford Madox Ford cc

Dear Ford,
Thank you for your letter of the 18th ultimo. I quite understand your
difficulties, which I share. I have not seen the current number of the
1 The later letter seems to be missing.

2 Ainslie wrote that Croce seems to be making his way to ever wider recognition.
3 Ainslie named Croces European Poetry (presumably European Literature in the
Nineteenth Century, 1924) as the most recent of his translations.
4 Ainslie hoped C. would increase its bulk.
5 Ainslie had sent TSE a few small poems, with sources in The Vedanta and Upanishads.
His Chosen Poems appeared from the Hogarth Press in Mar. 1926, but no poem was used
in C.
503
Transatlantic, but I assure you that I only consider it an honour to be gibed
at therein.1 Many thanks for your complimentary expressions.2
I cannot find in my records of Corrupted Contributors, or of
Contributors-to-be and to-be-Corrupted, or of Contributors in Process of
Corruption, any mention of one of your staff, nor can I think whom it
would be that I should thus desire to entice. I have never made it a
condition, to any of my contributors, that his or her name should never be
seen in The Transatlantic: I am extremely liberal in such matters. And
fourpence is really beyond our means.3
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Jane Heap cc
Dear Miss Heap,
I am returning to you Miss Steins MSS. I have read them through several
times and think I have grasped some at least of the intention: and they
certainly produce a peculiar hypnotic effect upon me. But I do not think
that they would do for us in the Criterion; and they seem to me much more
for the professional, as a technical study, than for the ordinary reader. They
are extremely interesting to me, as I have been working in a method of
repetition and variation lately myself; and some day I should much like to
meet the author.4
1 On 18 Sept., Ford wrote: There is in the current number of this review a rather silly gibe
at yourself . . . It is difficult to know how to deal with these matters. You ask a contributor
to write for you on his general record and then he smacks in the eye your dearest and best
. . . and you remain plant l. I hope youll forgive. Ernest Hemingway had written: It is
agreed by most of the people I know that Conrad is a bad writer, just as it is agreed that T. S.
Eliot is a good writer. If I knew that by grinding Mr Eliot into a fine dry powder and
sprinkling that powder over Mr Conrads grave Mr Conrad would shortly appear, looking
very annoyed at the forced return and commence writing I would leave for London early
tomorrow morning with a sausage grinder (Appreciations of Conrad, Transatlantic Review
2: 3 [Sept. 1924], 3412). Ford made a public apology in a later issue, 2: 5 (Nov. 1924), 550.
2 Ford said: You know in any case I have a great admiration for your poems and I will
shortly make occasion to say so with great emphasis in the review.
3 Ford wrote: An eccentric rumour has reached me to the effect that you have offered one
of my regular contributors an immense sum to go over to the Criterion . . . You might have
me and the lot for about fourpence.
4 This may refer to the short poems such as Doriss Dream Songs and the drafts of The
Hollow Men, or to SA.

I am very sorry that you are returning to New York before November;
as I am disappointed of my hope of meeting you, and also as a
conversation would have been so much easier than a correspondence. We
are getting out a new circular and letter toward the end of October, and
propose to send it to 5000 selected names in England and America. I have
composed a special letter addressed to prospective American subscribers.
Could you make use of and distribute some of these circulars, or could
you even slip one into each number of the next Little Review? I should
not dream of asking such a thing, but that you have been so kind in
offering help. I should like to see the Criterion firmly on its feet this year;
anyway, I think that at the end of the third year it will have as brilliant a
record of contributors as any magazine could have in the time; and I
should like to see the subscription list at the same level.
And when you get back will you see that the Little Review is sent
regularly to Herbert Read, 35 Beaumont Road, Purley, Surrey, who reviews
all the American periodicals? I presume that you get the Criterion regularly.
With all best wishes, many thanks, and the hope of seeing you some day
in London or Paris.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]

Dear Mr Bennett,
I hope that you have not forgotten your kind and inestimable offer to
examine my work, and I hope that you realised that I would take full
advantage of it.1 I have five or six typed pages of dialogue, and a very brief
scenario, which I should now like to submit to you. May I, as you
proposed yourself, come to see you at your convenience? I could come to
see you either Monday, Tuesday or Thursday evenings of next week, if any
of those times is possible for you. I should be extremely grateful. Perhaps
I shall have a little more dialogue by then.
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
Say nine oclock?
1 On 10 Sept. Bennett recorded in his journal that TSE had visited him at the Reform Club
the evening before; see note to TSEs letter to Bennett of 13 July.
505
8 October [1924] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
My dear Richard,
Many thanks for lending me the Garnier book, and for giving me the tip
about him.1 Of course, I am genuinely extremely ignorant my only
strength is that I am not abashed to admit it.
If I can write English prose and I imagine that there are more
Americanisms in my prose than you wish to see2 it is due to two causes:
an intensive study of two years of the prose of Bradley,3 and an inherited
disposition to rhetoric, from innumerable ancestors who occupied
themselves with the church, the law, or politics! On the other hand, this
gives my prose, I am aware, a rather rheumatic pomposity I am conscious
of this stiffness, but I do not trust myself elsewhere.
Would you be willing to review a book for January called Contemporary
Criticism of Literature by Orlo Williams? It seems to me not a bad book,
though I may be prejudiced by the fact that the author is not unfavourable
to me, and in any case it gives scope for saying anything one wants to say
about criticism.4
Yours ever
Tom
1 A. M. Witherspoon, The Influence of Robert Garnier on Elizabethan Drama (1924).

2 RA said that TSEs was the only prose by a native-born American where he could not
scent the American note. On 8 Oct. he replied to TSE that I have just re-read three of
your essays, and still assert there is no Americanism in them!
3 In the 1965 preface to his doctoral thesis, published as KEPB, TSE noted that his wife
observed at once, how closely my own prose style was formed on that of Bradley and how
little it has changed in all these years.
4 Orlo Williamss chapter on Scientific Critics includes an extended discussion of TSEs
SW (Contemporary Criticism of Literature, 1924, 13454), which he described as a small
critical portmanteau admirably packed with controversial topics. Williams (for whom see
TSEs letter of 13 Oct.) noted that some readers found something repellent in the cold lucidity
of [TSEs] critical prose as there is in the equally cold want of lucidity in TWL, and described
TSE as an elect mind consciously for the elect: Mr Eliot is not generous, especially to the
art and enthusiasms of the present, but it is bad criticism to be annoyed with him instead of
inquiring how near he comes to the truth (145). In his review, RA called Williams a critic
sitting in judgement upon other critics, who had accomplished the task with urbanity and
impartiality (C 3: 11, Apr. 1925, 4536).

to Herbert Read pc Victoria
[Postmark 9 October 1924] The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
The undersigned begs to express his humble penitence at continued default
and absence from meetings of The Criterion Club,1 but confesses to a state
of utter mental unreliability owing to preoccupation with a piece of work
which he hopes you will (later) consider extenuating: he forbears from
alleging the strong practical reasons which exist. If the next meeting can
be held on a Saturday he promises and undertakes to provide such quantity
of Port as shall induce the plaintiffs to withdraw their process.
T. S. Eliot
Diaghilev never responded to my wire at all,2 and Kessels story arrived
three days too late, after everything had been finally set up. But it is very
interesting, and I see no reason why it should not go into the January
number.3 January and April are now practically complete, except of course
for the topical chronicles etc.
The October number should be out about the end of the week. It is I
think the most alive of any that we have had: there is nothing of the costly
showiness of Proust and Virginia Woolf (neither of which I cared much
about myself), but there is a brilliant and ferocious essay by F. W. Bain, an
extraordinary thing by Fernandez, and some first rate fiction and verse by
very promising people; and the chronicles and reviews are exceedingly
good.4 The Shaw review comes in very well, and if you see him, do tell
him that I like it.
1 A reference to the weekly meetings of TSE, HR, Monro, and others associated with C.
2 On 13 Sept., TSE told her: The interview with Diaghilev, and the programme, are just
what we want.
3 Joseph Kessel sent from Paris an interview with one of Diaghilevs dancers about which
Lady Rothermere had spoken to TSE; he was deeply interested in writing a regular Letter
from Paris.
4 The issue included: F. W. Bain, 1789; Ramn Fernandez, The Experience of Newman;
DHL, Jimmy and the Desperate Woman; John Shand, Some Notes on Joseph Conrad;
VHEs Th Dansant; IPFs Mrs Pilkington; Conrad Aikens poem Psychomachia; WLs
Art Chronicle; J. B. Trend, Music; Walter Hanks Shaw, The Soire de Paris; and Zoe
Hawley, Celui qui reoit les gifles, C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924).
507
I am writing to Kessel about the chronique.1
Certainly, the Mardrus must be a small and special subscribed edition.2
If you find it difficult, I could probably find someone to collaborate, but I
am sure you can do it. The Valry of course will be a test, but I am
convinced that there is a market for limited editions of small books at high
prices, and in America also.3 Your friend Milbanke who has just been here
has promised to make enquiries about the New York market. The Mardrus
is just the sort of thing that Rodker would like to get.
Will you let me know whether the 15th would be an equally
[convenient] date for me to come to Paris, as it would suit me much better,
and I am not sure that the 21st is possible. The ballet, by the way, has been
changed from the 27th to the 24th, so if you want to come I hope you
will, as it would be a good thing for us in every way that is the night for
a box.4
Yours always
[T. S. E.]
to Harold Monro ms UCLA

Dear Monro,
The title is not good, but it has a connexion for me, and I cant think of
a better.5
I shall appear on Wednesday week. Have you received Dickinson from
Cobden-Sanderson?6
1 Kessels A Note from Paris appeared in C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925).

2 Joseph Charles Mardrus (18681949): French doctor born in Cairo, famous for his
translations into French of 1001 Nights and the Koran: TSE is referring to his The Arabian
Nights in 4 vols.
3 Le Serpent by Paul Valry (1924) was intended to be the first of a series of C. publications.
4 On 24 Nov., the Russian Ballet performed at the Coliseum. They played Cimarosiana,
based on music by Cimarosa, and Le Train Bleu, une oprette danse about Flappers and
their Boys by Darius Milhaud. It was choreographed by Mlle Nijinska, and starred Anton
Dolin as the Beau Gosse and Lydia Sokolova as his partner.
5 Doriss Dream Songs, the title he gave to Eyes that last I saw in tears, The wind sprang
up at four oclock and This is the dead land, in Chapbook 39. The connexion is with the
contemporary SA, in which Doris is the main female protagonist. Deaths dream kingdom
and deaths other kingdom in the songs may be linked with Sweeneys declarations: He
didnt know if they were both alive or both were dead and Death is life and life is death
(CPP, 125).
6 Conrad Aikens Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson (1924), which Monro was to review.

I am sorry to make trouble. But, as I particularly should not be willing
to appear on the same page with anyone else, I will immediately produce
another page of verse if you have any difficulty with the cul-de-lampe.1
Will you let me know? You can telephone Central 8246 if necessary.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
to Orlo Williams2 cc
Dear Sir
I have to thank you for the book and for your kind letter of the 5th
instant.3 I have read your book, with an interest prompted by vanity but
sustained by respect. Any opinion of mine is no doubt likely to be
deflected by the honour which you do me, and is perhaps worthless. I am
impressed by the justice with which you represent my point of view: I do
not think that I have ever (as a critic) been treated more impartially and
fairly. I have the same opinion of your treatment of the other writers
discussed: the book seems to me to display very rare virtues of
temperateness and understanding, and I do not think that one of your
subjects has the slightest reason to complain of injustice. May
Rhadamanthus4 treat us as kindly.
Yes, I think, for what my opinion is worth, that the book is a valuable
contribution, and that you display as valuable critical qualities as any of
the persons in whom you interest yourself.5
1 Doriss Dream Songs occupies two pages in Chapbook 39. The first two poems (of fifteen
and twelve lines) are on one page, while on the second page the third poem (of thirteen lines)
is followed by a black-and-white vignette (or cul-de-lampe) set in an otherwise empty lower
half-page. The semi-abstract vignette suggests the cactus land and stone images of the
poem, and their position on the page meant that TSE did not have to appear on the same
page with anyone else.
2 Orlo (Orlando) Williams (18831967): Clerk to the House of Commons; scholar and
critic; author of The Clerical Organization of the House of Commons 16611850 (1954); Vie
de Bohme: A Patch of Romantic Paris (1913); Some Great English Novels: The Art of Fiction
(1926).
3 Williams, Contemporary Criticism of Literature (1924).
4 In Greek mythology, Rhadamanthus, son of Zeus and Europa, is a severe judge in the
lower world.
5 Williams also discussed Edmund Gosse, J. C. Squire, JMM, George Saintsbury and Percy
Lubbock.
509
I do not mean that I agree with you in everything. Nobody likes being
called a highbrow.1 But there are some things you say that positively
delight me. Yours is the first expression that I have seen in print of the
disgust with which I was inspired by the tributes to Marcel Proust,2 and
what you say on pages 6264 is a favourite cause of my own.3
I should like to see your name in the Criterion please take this as a
suggestion to send me, when you will, some critical essay, if you will.4
Yours very truly
[T. S. E.]
from Herbert Read ts Valerie Eliot

18 October 1924 35 Beaumont Rd, Purley
Dear Eliot,
Perhaps I wrote hastily and it would be as well to withdraw.5 I dont
want to say anything that would offend you, and it is easy enough to
criticise from an irresponsible position like mine. I realise that you have
difficulties due to the necessity of making some sort of commercial show
which wouldnt exist if free critical considerations only were in the field.
Some degree of compromise is necessary and from that point of view
1 Williams proclaimed: T. S. Eliot is a highbrow, and writes with admirable limpidity (122).
In a contemporary story by IPF, when Mrs Pilkington hears that Marion is reading a French
novel in French too, she says you were always a bit of a highbrow, which provokes Marion
to say I hope not (Felix Morrison, Mrs Pilkington, C. 3: 9, Oct. 1924, 104).
2 Marcel Proust: An English Tribute (1923), collected by C. K. Scott Moncrieff. The twenty-
one contributors included Conrad, Arnold Bennett and JMM. Several of the pieces were
newspaper reprints, and two were extracts from letters to the editor. In his book, Williams
asked: Could anything have been more unnecessary or ridiculous than this uncertain chorus
of miscellaneous voices in honour of a remarkable and recently dead French novelist? (173).
3 Williams observed that in England, the critical biography, or monograph, involving the
delineation of an authors worldly figure, gracefully and sympathetically carried out,
prevailed over works which focus on the work of art alone (63); we are bare of conclusions
about the literature of the immediate past and the actual present. Modern poetry is still a
battlefield: The labour of tidying-up, were it seriously undertaken, would be colossal, and
there is no inducement to undertake it. We seem to look in vain for an intellect large enough,
a knowledge wide enough, and a disinterested energy powerful enough to force order upon
this confusion (634).
4 Williams reviewed JMMs Keats and Shakespeare in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), and became a
regular reviewer and contributor.
5 On 14 Oct., HR thanked TSE for suggesting a Donne book for review. He added: A
phalanx yes! That is the right image. I confess I have been a bit afraid, lately, that you were
using forces too scattered in disposition. But there is no knowing how far strategy may be
carried.

I suppose even Hugh Walpole is permissible.1 All that is fully granted and
anything I can find to say is to that extent vitiated.
I dont know anything about the history of journals, but wouldnt it be
true to say that reviews like the Edinburgh, the Quarterly, Frasers at the
period of their maximum force2 were not the repositories of all possible
brilliance, but rather well-disciplined teams even to some extent composed
of rather dull units, but coherent, definite and decisive? At any rate, isnt
that the ideal? The Dial, as I have heard you say, is a miscellany of accepted
reputations. Isnt it a mistake to be a miscellany of any sort? I think you
agree, and I have construed your present policy as one of experimental
assortments as though you had said: Let us be miscellaneous for a year
or two and then gradually weed out, until only the coherent band remains,
the phalanx of your own evocation.3
It is conceivable, of course, that there isnt a phalanx that you simply
cant see your way to a closing of the ranks. But there I shouldnt agree
with you. I think there is just about enough talent of the right sort [to]
make a show. (A little that you havent tapped at all yet.) I think, too, that
you are the only possible nucleus: that your critical standards are so
adequately defined and so definitely orientated that it is possible for a good
few of us to follow your track.
Im really avoiding your direct question. Personally, I like Robertson and
I like Whibley: they are at least objective.4 Whether they like us is another
question. I think you can rely (for standards) on Lewis.5 I dont share the
general disapproval of Ezra.6 I think the foreign introductions have been
excellent, and liaison with the right elements abroad will always be
desirable. Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster and Osbert Sitwell all fulfil their
1 Hugh Walpoles The Old Ladies, chs 1 and 2, appeared in C. 2: 7 & 8 (Apr. & July
1924).
2 The Edinburgh Review, The Quarterly Review and Frasers were among the most
influential nineteenth-century periodicals.
3 In T. S. E. A Memoir, HR recalls the regular C. meetings as being meant to build up
some kind of phalanx whose unity would be reflected in the pages of the magazine. I doubt
if they achieved their purpose, but they were enjoyable and intellectually stimulating (T. S.
Eliot: The Man and His Work, ed. Allen Tate [1971], 24).
4 J. M. Robertson published The Evolution of English Blank Verse in C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924)
and was to publish The Naturalistic Theory of Hamlet in 3: 10 (Jan. 1925). CW contributed
Bolingbroke, 1: 3 & 4 (Apr. & July 1923), and Lord Chesterfield, 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).
5 In addition to Mr Zagreus and the Split-Man and The Apes of God in 2: 6 & 7 (Feb.
& Apr. 1924), WL contributed an Art Chronicle to 2: 8 (July 1924).
6 EP had contributed On Criticism in General, 1: 2 (Feb. 1923), Malatesta Cantos, 1: 4
(July 1923), and George Antheil, 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).
511
function:1 they amuse; and if they do not altogether illustrate, yet they do
not contradict the larger function of the review. That doesnt leave,
perhaps, so very many disconnected stragglers. Bain, Ford, (Murry was
involved in the argument), May Sinclair, J. B. Trend, W. B. Yeats (?)2 and
another whose contribution struck me as romantic irony in the worst
Stracheyan manner: a little mind dancing round a big one.3
Dont take these opinions too seriously. Ive only been driven to
expressing them because you flatter me that I shall help you in doing so.
And finally, there is no question of my faith being disturbed.
Yours ever,
Herbert Read

Dear Read,
Thank you for your letter. I concur with nearly everything you say. It is
quite true, that having to experiment with what the public would take, I
have spent most of these two years in casting about. When I wrote to you
I was indicating my belief that we were at last settling down to some kind
of order.
It was a part of my original programme that if the Criterion was ever to
become effective, it must make itself independent and aim at just a large
enough circulation to support itself (This of course is not yet the case). A
certain amount of window dressing was necessary, and also the complicity
of certain people was to be gained by publishing their contributions (I do
not mean Walpole, whom I included on other grounds).
Also I have had Lady Rothermere nagging at me for dullness ever since
the first issue4 (not that I take any notice of that beyond what is politic).
And there has been a small amount of unsuccessful experiment as well.
1 VW, In the Orchard, 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), Character in Fiction, 2: 8 (July 1924); E. M.

Forster, Pan, 1: 4 (July 1923); Osbert Sitwell, A German Eighteenth-Century Town, 2: 8
(July 1924).
2 The second volume included F. W. Bain, Disraeli, 2: 6 (Feb. 1924); F. M. Ford, From the
Grey Stone, 2: 5 (Oct. 1923): JMM, Romanticism and the Tradition, 2: 7 (Apr. 1924); May
Sinclair, The Grandmother, 2: 6 (Feb. 1924); J. B. Trend, The Moors in Spanish Music, 2:
6 (Feb. 1924); and WBY, The Cat and the Moon, 2: 8 (July 1924).
3 Unidentified.
4 C. 1: 1 (Oct. 1922) opened with Dullness by George Saintsbury.

I shd like your opinion of the new number next week, and especially of
the work of several young writers, which I have included as being
independent and promising.
I shall always be grateful to you for criticism, as I depend upon you for
support and collaboration. We might continue this discussion perhaps after
you have seen the next number.
Yours ever
T. S. Eliot
to Herbert Read1 ts Victoria

[18 October 1924] [London]
Dear Read,
I answered your letter immediately on receipt, this afternoon, because it
was a letter which deserved immediate acknowledgement, and because I
find that if a letter is not answered at once, it risks not being answered at
all. But there was much more that might be said, and now, although I have
sat down to another task, I am impelled to write again and impart some
of what is in my mind.
I dont want to bore you with a lengthy Apologia; in any case the time
has not yet come for that: I merely want to put a little more clearly what
I have just said to you.
The ideal which you propose in your letter is very near to that which I
proposed to myself when I undertook the review, and which I have kept in
mind ever since. The ideal which was present to the mind of Lady
Rothermere at the beginning was that of a more chic and brilliant Art &
Letters, which might have a fashionable vogue among a wealthy few. I had
and have no resentment against her for this, as I have no criticism to make
of her conduct throughout: she has given me a pretty free hand, has been
quite as appreciative as one could expect a person of her antecedents and
connexions to be, and the game between us has been a fair one. I have I
think given her as much as possible of what she wants, and she has given
me the possibility of an organ. It is true that I have laid myself open to the
censure both of persons who assumed that I was making money out of the
work, and of those who knew that I was taking nothing for it and who
consequently believe that I am running the paper for other discreditable
1 HR quotes much of this letter in his T.S.E. A Personal Memoir, where he calls it an
apologia and observes that it shows how early Eliot had formulated certain principles of
personal conduct which he was to maintain for the next forty years (T. S. Eliot, ed. Tate, 25).
513
reasons which latter group of persons, by the way, includes my relatives
in America. One does not like to explain oneself only to arouse the
accusation of hypocrisy, to be associated with the other causes of
impeachment, and one learns to keep silence.1 I have another reason for
keeping silence, and that is that I find that I sometimes give people an
impression of arrogance and intolerant self-conceit. If I say generally that
I wish to form a phalanx, a hundred voices will forthwith declare that I
wish to be a leader, and that my vanity will not allow me to serve, or even
to exist on terms of equality with others.2 If one maintains a cause, one is
either a fanatic or a hypocrite: and if one has any definite dogmas, then one
is imposing those dogmas upon those who cooperate with one.
I wish, certainly, to get as homogenous a group as possible: but I find
that homogeneity is in the end indefinable: for the purposes of the
Criterion, it cannot be reduced to a creed of numbered capitals. I do not
expect everyone to subscribe to all the articles of my own faith, or to read
Arnold, Newman, Bradley, or Maurras with my eyes.3 It seems to me that
at the present time we need more dogma, and that one ought to have as
precise and clear a creed as possible, when one thinks at all: but a creed is
always in one sense smaller than the man, and in another sense larger;
ones formulations never fully explain one, although it is necessary to
formulate: I do not, for myself, bother about the apparent inconsistency
which has been made the most of between my prose and my verse. Why
then should I bother about particular differences of formulation between
myself and those whom I should like to find working with me?
This is to make a little clearer my notion of a phalanx. When I write, I
must write to the limit of my own convictions and aspirations: but I dont
want to impose these on others, any more than I should be willing to
reduce myself to the common denominator of my colleagues. What is
essential is to find those persons who have an impersonal loyalty to some
faith not antagonistic to my own.
1 The Eliot family motto was Tacuit et facuit (Be silent and act).
2 For this phalanx, see HRs letter of 18 Oct.
3 TSEs investment in Arnold was clear as early as the Introduction to SW, was implicit in
The Function of Criticism (C. 2: 5, Oct. 1923), and became explicit in Arnold and Pater
(1930) and Matthew Arnold (TUPUC, 1933). In the last, TSE refers to Arnold as the poet
and critic of a period of false stability, whose writing is a valiant attempt to dodge the issue,
to mediate between Newman and Huxley (106). He included Fernandezs The Experience
of Newman in C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924), and paid tribute to F. H. Bradley in his Commentary in
the same issue, as well as in Three British Prose Writers and KEPB (1964). In the first years
of C. TSE had hoped for an article on Maurras by CW, but Maurras did not figure until his
Prologue to an Essay on Criticism (trans. by TSE) appeared in NC 7: 1 (Jan. 1928). In 1925
TSE thought of writing a book on him.

Now as to persons. I agree about those you mention, except Bain, whom
I do not consider disconnected. But I should like to discuss this when you
have seen more of his work. In the absence of exactly the right person for
the musical equivalent of what we want in literature, Trend represents,
I think, a decent compromise. Three persons you rate higher than I do.
Certain others represent the payment of an honest debt: Murry of course
there is no need to discuss. The contribution you allude to if my guess
is right1 represents an experiment in absorption the question was
whether that person would give the proper response to the new
environment the risk I hope you will agree was worth taking, even if
the result be disappointing.
I think you must agree that in my commentary I have spoken more and
more clearly in opposition to the factions which in the beginning and
still to some extent I have attempted to placate.
For Whibley I have a warm personal friendship: we have much in
common, though no doubt there are many countries in which we speak a
different language. For Robertson I have a very great respect: he is I believe
wholly honest; I do not mind if he be called dull. Manning2 represents
something valuable. So does, in a minor way, Stephen Gaselee.3 Whibley
and Robertson support us, and as they represent to the public such
antithetical abstractions, to each other they are both valuable. They have
both shewn more sympathy and kindness than anyone but myself is aware
of. To both of them, and especially Whibley, I am constantly in debt.
Harold Joachim too, though to the public he will mean only dullness,
represents something to me.4
I shall welcome any suggestions of untapped talent (to which you
refer). I have thought of one Orlo Williams and an Edward Muir.5 My
anxiety about the latter is the fear that his mind has been fed too
exclusively on contemporary and on German literature: that his culture, in
other words, is too shallow. I should be glad of your opinion of these
people, if you have one.
You flatter me by the word nucleus. My conception of leader or
organiser is simply of a necessary organ in a body, which has no
1 The unidentified contribution which struck HR as romantic irony in the worst Stracheyan
manner.
2 Frederic Mannings Le Pre Hyacinthe appeared in C. 2: 8 (July 1924), and he became a
regular contributor.
3 Stephen Gaselee, The Soul in the Kiss, C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924): his only contribution.
4 Writing to RC-S on 21 Oct., TSE mentions Harold Joachims The Absolute etc. as a
possible item in the Jan. 1925 issue, but his Oxford tutor never published in C.
5 TSEs attention had been drawn to Edwin Muir by SS (see his letter of 13 July).
515
superiority at all, but simply exercises a particular function, and makes it
possible for the others to do their best work.
I hasten to write all this now, because I should like you to have it in
mind when you see the October number next week, and let me have your
criticisms in the light of it. And lastly, your assurances give me great
encouragement in what may easily become a heart-breaking struggle. You
help me to believe it possible that a trial of Faith may overcome the
world.1
Yours ever,
T. S. Eliot

19 October [1924] 38 Burleigh Mansions,
St Martins Lane
Dear Mary
I would have telephoned you if I could, but I have a telephone complex
which has been very active for the last few days. I have been struggling
with it, for I have really wanted to speak to you.
Will you come and have tea with me at this address next Thursday? Do
come. (about 4.)
With love
V. E.
to Sydney Schiff ts Valerie Eliot

My dear Sydney,
I hope that you will get your Criterion tomorrow or rather, I am sorry
to think, Thursday, as I suppose it will have gone to Cambridge Square.
Had I remembered, in the rush, I should have told them to send it direct
to Lye Green. I think it is a good number: it does not appear so brilliant,
as a mere list of eminent names, as some of the others, but I should like you
to regard it from the point of view of a unity of purpose, and see whether
1 For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that
overcometh the world, even our faith (1 John 5: 4).

you do not agree that there is a greater harmony and even a common will
amongst the contributors than ever before.
It is a weakness in the machinery, and I fear patent testimony of amateur
production, that it is a week late. I hope to avoid this particular fault in
future.
I wish that it had been out when I came to see you the other evening:
I was feeling singularly vigorous and calm and energetic that night, and it
would have been a good opportunity for discussion.
Vivienne has been belittling the contribution of Feiron Morris1 and
saying that it is trifling and insignificant; and I fear that she has said so to
you.2 This is quite the contrary of my own judgement, and she will have
done you and it a great injustice if she has conveyed that impression in
advance. You will observe in this and in subsequent numbers, that I want
to give an important place to younger writers, to writers who can really
speak for a generation which is maturing but as yet almost inarticulate,
and who, however little their practise may be, will not merely ape the elder
age. The majority of writers of any period seem to me and often the most
skilful, to be simply concealing themselves beneath a dead and past
maturity of others, rather than expressing an immaturity which is at least
interesting because genuine. This thing of Viviennes may appear very
slight, but it is an integral part of the whole book, and just as important
in its place. It does I am convinced express a point of view which is original
and which is more than original which is typical: typical of a very
modern mentality which has not yet been expressed in literature, and of
which Vivienne is the most conscious representative. I am fearful of saying
much, for fear of misleading you in my turn: but I do want to say that this
sketch goes very much deeper than its deceptive surface indicates.
I am looking forward to another talk with you.
With love to both
yours ever
Tom
1 Feiron Morris, Th Dansant, C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924), 728.

2 VHE had written this (undated) note to SS: Fanny is the money maker she spins on for
ever like a spider. There is no end to Fanny! But Feiron will never make money. And he does
not spin. He is a nasty fellow (BL: Add MSS 52918). Deprecating her writing as this
temporary aberration of mine, VHE confided to Schiff too that she feared her writing was
merely a sort of flash in the pan that wont go on.
517
Thank you for the copies.1 I return herewith the proof of the circular, in
which I have made, I am sorry to say, several improvements in the writing.
I think it is very cleverly put together.
Conrad Aiken did not receive his copy of the last number, so will you see
that he gets this one? I should like a copy of this one and of the last one to
go to Ernst Curtius (whose address you have) but that can wait until the
rest of the posting is off your hands.
Now about the next number! I think that you hold the following:2
PROOF: Clive Bell
F. G. Selby
MSS: Robertson: Hamlet
Elgstrm: Story
Sturge Moore: Poem
Aldington: Villon
Read: Psychoanalysis etc.
Joachim: The Absolute etc.
Keith: Sanskrit Literature
Croce: Allegory
Tolstoi: Letters
Johnson: Letters
Will you please confirm?
Selby and Bell are to go in to the January number. So are Robertson,
Read and Tolstoi, which could go to Hazells immediately, and I shall be
sending you the other articles quickly. And Sturge Moore is to be set up. I
want to get the next number under way at once, and will send my
commentary early, so that they can start on the page proof as soon as the
1 Copies of C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924).

2 TSE lists the following contributions, all of which appeared in C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925), unless
otherwise stated: Clive Bell, Prologomena to a Study of Nineteenth-Century Painting;
F. G. Selby, Bacon and Montaigne; J. M. Robertson, The Naturalistic Theory of Hamlet;
Anna Lenah Elgstrm, Two on a Cross (5: 2; May 1927); T. Sturge Moore, The Vigil of
Julians Friend by his Dead Body (3: 11, Apr. 1925); RA, Franois Villon (3: 11, Apr. 1925);
HR, Psycho-Analysis and the Critic; Harold Joachim, The Absolute, never appeared nor
did anything by A. B. Keith (though TSE mentioned having a contribution from him, possibly
on Sanskrit Drama, in a letter to RA of 20 Sept. 1923); Benedetto Croce, On the Nature of
Allegory (3: 11, Apr. 1925); L. N. Tolstoi and N. N. Strakhov, Extracts from Letters Relating
to F. M. Dostoevsky; Some Letters of Lionel Johnson (3: 11, Apr. 1925).

galley proof of the articles is corrected. The chronicles and reviews I shall
get in by the latter part of November, so that the number can be out by
Christmas. The sooner the better, as the election will hit the October
number, but the following ought to benefit by the revival immediately
afterwards.1
Finally, will you please make out a cheque to J. R. Culpin (I have let this
get frightfully in arrears) from the last day of payment to the end of this
week @ 25/- per week, and send it to him here? By the way, he hopes that
you do not include this in income tax returns. I shall be grateful if you can
do this at once, as I am ashamed not to have attended to it.
Yours
[T. S. E.]
And last of all, will you ask Hazells to give me an itemised statement of
the number of words in each contribution, counting the reviews and the
foreign review notes separately? Curtis Brown will expect to be paid
quickly for the Lawrence story.2
from Irene Fassett ts Valerie Eliot

22 October 1924 [32 Pembroke Rd, Kensington, w.8]
Dear T. S. E.,
I have been thinking over your letter all the morning. I must say first
that I think you are making me a very generous offer and I consider myself
very lucky to have such a chance. I would rather do work connected with
the Criterion than anything else.
I am sorry that I cant meet you at six tonight, but I have an appointment
for that time which I must keep.
There are two or three points which I must put to you before agreeing
definitely to your proposals one of which worries me very much:
1. I arranged, some days ago, to give music lessons to the de la Voye
children twice weekly from six to seven I did this because I want to earn
as much money as I possibly can without hurting my writing work in any
way. Of course I am sorry now that I did this, but I have made the
arrangement and am starting on the work tonight. I feel that I could
persuade Mrs de la Voye to change one of the evenings to Saturday
morning, though I know this would not really suit her, but until the end of
1 The General Election (29 Oct.) was won by the Conservative Party under Stanley Baldwin.
2 DHL, Jimmy and the Desperate Woman, C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924).
519
this term I should really have to give her that hour on Monday or Tuesday
evenings. If you could possibly let me leave at 5.30 on one night a week, I
would of course make up the hour and a half at another time or forego
part of my fifteen shillings. I am furious that I have to put this to you, but
so far I can think of no other way out of the difficulty.
2. I have promised my mother to ask for next Wednesday afternoon off
(this was when I was doing odd jobs for Saigie). For various reasons this
was unavoidable.
3. I do hope that the above statements wont give you the idea that I
should be constantly doing things like this. Once I had made a definite
arrangement with you I should stick to it through thick and thin to the
very best of my ability and I should always be prepared to deal with any
particular rush of work that might necessitate my staying late or working
after dinner I mean that I should not do the work with an eye on the
clock, I would do my best to make your new arrangement as successful as
possible.
If you would care to telephone to me tonight, I would answer the
telephone at 9 oclock.
In haste,
I. P. F.

Dear Mr Bennett,
I am writing to tell you that I am reconstructing my play according to
all of your suggestions.1 I was tremendously encouraged by seeing you,
and finding that you thought the thing worth going on with. There is no
one else in London whose opinion on such an attempt would mean so
much to me, and had you so advised me, I should have abandoned the
project at once.
I cannot tell you how grateful I am, and how fully I realise the privilege
of having the counsel and guidance of a man like yourself, and how highly
I appreciate your generosity in giving your time and attention to teaching
me. In any case, I shall feel that the play will be as much yours as mine; but
if I cannot make a good thing of it with the advantage of help which
anyone would envy me, it will be final evidence of my dramatic incapacity.
1 See TSEs letter of 8 Oct., on the drafts of SA he had discussed with Bennett. Fragment
of a Prologue was first published in NC 4: 4 (Oct. 1926).

Now, I shall to my vexation have to postpone further work for several
weeks. On the 8th I must go to Cambridge to read a paper which I have
not yet prepared;1 and on the 15th I have to go to Paris for the weekend
to see Lady Rothermere. I shall begin work again immediately after that,
and shall have something to show you by the 1st December. I shall write
before that to ask when you can see me. If you are out of London I shall
be utterly lost, as I depend wholly upon your advice.
T. S. Eliot
28 October 1924 23 Alephi Terrace House,
Robert St, London w.c.
Dear Mr Robertson,
Thank you very much for your letter of the 5th. I asked Cobden-
Sanderson to send you back the Arnold paper,2 and I hope you received it
safely. And I am counting on having the Turgenev essay when it is ready.
I have been trying to find out the names of the Hamlet books which I
saw mentioned.3 Unfortunately I did not make a note of them at the time
and I have only been able to discover the George Macdonald book4 which
I do not suppose is worth reviewing by itself. If I can trace the other I shall
get it for you, and if I see anything else that I think might interest you I
shall write to you about it; because it would be an excellent thing for the
Criterion to have a review from you.
[T. S. E.]
1 Chapman, Dostoevski and Dante: TSEs paper to the Cam Literary Club, 8 Nov.
2 On 20 June, Robertson offered TSE a paper on Matthew Arnold in place of a piece on
Turgenev. He hoped it would appear in C. in Oct., but then on 28 July suggested an
alternative paper on The Naturalistic Theory of Hamlet. Evidently, TSE replied on 8 Aug.
(in a missing letter), accepting the new paper. Writing on 12 Aug., Robertson was glad TSE
was inclined to restore Arnold, and supposed he was right about Culture and Anarchy
though he himself had earlier attacked it. Replying to another missing letter on 5 Oct.,
Robertson said the whole of the Arnold paper was now being sent to publishers and he
would like it back.
3 On 5 Oct., Robertson said he would like to review the Hamlet books TSE mentioned.
4 George MacDonald, The Tragedie of Hamlet . . . A Study, with the text of the Folio of
1623 (1924). Robertsons The Naturalistic Theory of Hamlet came out in C. 3: 10 (Jan.
1925), but did not mention more recent studies.
521
to La Revue de France cc
28 October 1924 23 Adelphi Terrace House
Dear Sirs,
You have been sending La Revue de France regularly to The Egoist at this
address. I have to inform you that The Egoist has been taken over by The
Criterion and I shall be obliged if you will in future send La Revue de France
to the publishers office of The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn, Holborn, London
e.c.1. If you will do so, a copy of The Criterion will be sent to you regularly.
The principal contributions of your review will be noticed in The
Criterion. I wish to point out that The Criterion is the only English literary
review which pays serious attention to foreign periodicals and that a
section in each number is devoted to notice and criticism of the principal
reviews in foreign countries.
I am, dear Sirs,
Yours faithfully
[T. S. E.]
to Rollo Myers1 cc
Dear Mr Myers,
Thank you for your letter of the 16th. I forwarded your cheque to Mr
Cobden-Sanderson.2
The idea of a translation of Le Secret Professionel interests me as I like
the book.3 I wonder if you would mind trying to get hold of a copy for me
as I have lent or lost the one which I had. When you see Cocteau next,
you might suggest to him that he should mention the question to Lady
Rothermere. I will mention it to her myself when I next write to her.
I am sorry to say that I did not see your book which I am sure would
interest me.4
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
1 Rollo Myers (18921985): music critic, with a special interest in French music.
2 Myers subscribed to C. on 16 Oct.
3 Myers had translated Cocteaus Cock and Harlequin for the Egoist Press, and proposed
to translate Le secret professionel (1922). Myerss translation eventually appeared in Jean
Cocteau, Call to Order . . . written between the years 1918 and 1926 and including Cock and
Harlequin, Professional Secrets and other critical essays (Faber & Gwyer, 1926).
4 Myers asked if TSE knew his Modern Music: Its Aims and Tendencies (1923).

to Wyndham Lewis cc
My dear Lewis,
I hope you can let me have the complete manuscript by the end of next
week at the latest.1 The January number is to come out on the 1st of
January and as the printers do no work for about a week at Christmas
time, we have to be very early with it.
Is the enclosed cutting of any use to you for your chronicle?2
Would you be willing to do a review of a couple of Elliot Smiths new
books for the same number? This ought not to give you very much trouble
and I should be delighted if you would do it. I could send you a book of
Rivers3 at the same time. Do let me know the moment you are ready to
see me as I am very anxious to hear about your affairs.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
to F. S. Flint cc
Dear Flint,
I am sending you some more periodicals and hope to get the Revue de
France regularly for you. I was disappointed that you did not turn up on
Wednesday; only Monro and Read came. What was the matter with you?
Can you let me have your foreign periodicals notes for the January
number by November 25th?4 I want to have the number out punctually by
the 1st of January.
Also would you be willing to translate a French manuscript relating to
the adventures of a Russian dancer attempting to escape from Russia?5
I should like to send you this at once. I hope you will.
1 The substantial MS promised for C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925).

2 WLs Art Chronicle, in C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924) proved to be his last.
3 G. Elliot Smith, Essays on the Evolution of Man, G. Elliot Smith and Warren R. Dawson,
Egyptian Mummies and W. H. R. Rivers, Medicine, Magic and Religion were reviewed by WL
in C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925).
4 Flint contributed a short section on Danish Periodicals; a longer one on French
Periodicals. In the latter, he welcomed Philosophies as the most interesting of the French
reviews received, and Commerce as a new quarterly de luxe run by Paul Valry, Lon-Paul
Fargue and Valery Larbaud.
5 Unidentified.
523
Let me know how you are and whether you are going to fail us next
time.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
to Edith Sitwell1 cc
Dear Edith,
I have just seen Osbert who tells me that you have returned to London,
so I am writing to you about your poems.
You sent me some time ago two poems.2 One of them, Colonel
Fantock, I saw lately in The Spectator:3 that is very much our loss as I
liked it extremely and wanted to publish it. If the other one, The Man
with the Green Patch, has not yet been published anywhere I want to use
it in the January number, but if it has already appeared, or if you now have
anything else that you would rather publish first, please let me know.4 In
any case I am anxious to have something of yours in the January number
and I should like to use this poem, but if not this, another. I should like to
have it set up immediately so I hope you will answer as soon as you can.
I do hope that you are better now. This has been a miserable summer for
all of us.
Always yours,
[T. S. E.]

[? 28 October 1924] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
Dear Conrad,
By all means: Thursday with great pleasure.
Criterion should reach you tomorrow but will bring one on Thursday in
case. It is an Aiken number, which will add lustre to the name. Incidentally,
1 Edith Sitwell: see Glossary of Names.

2 Sitwell had sent the poems on 31 Mar.
3 Colonel Fantock, The Spectator, 31 May 1924, 880.
4 The Man with the Green Patch, C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925). The ghost in the poem was based
on our ghost at home in Derbyshire, said Sitwell.

your note on O. Sitwell is one of the most brilliant pieces of destructive
criticism I have ever read.1 It couldnt be better.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
to John Crowe Ransom2 cc

Dear Mr Ransom,
I was very pleased to receive your book with an inscription from
yourself.3 I have probably a higher opinion of your verse than you have of
mine.4 My attention was first called to something of yours by Robert
Graves a year or so ago: he showed me a poem which I liked very much,
and subsequently a quantity of manuscript which I had pleasure in giving
to the Hogarth Press with a recommendation that they should publish it.
You will understand, therefore, that I am very glad to have this book and
hope that it will receive the praise that it deserves.5
Yours faithfully
[T. S. E.]
1 C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924) included Aikens poem, Psychomachia, and his reviews of Osbert
Sitwell, Triple Fugue, and Gilbert Seldes, The Seven Lively Arts. In his review of Sitwells
stories, Aiken borrowed Henry Jamess criticism of Swinburne as a writer in quest of a
theme. He called the title story a disastrous failure and considered the volume typical of
not only the Sitwells but the momentary appetite for hard, bright colours and irony, for
disillusionment that tries to laugh and satire which tries to injure.
2 John Crowe Ransom, US poet and critic, see note to TSEs letter to Robert Graves, 16 July
1923.
3 Grace After Meat, with Intro. by Robert Graves (Hogarth Press, 1924).
4 Ransom published a critique of TWL as the apotheosis of modernity. While praising the
Sweeney verses and Prufrock as coming out of a fairly mature and at any rate an equal
art, he dismissed TWL as one of the most insubordinate poems in the language and perhaps
. . . the most unequal (Waste Lands, New York Evening Post Literary Review 3 [14 July
1923], 8256).
5 It was not reviewed in C. However, Ransoms later Two Gentleman in Bonds (1927) was
reviewed in C.; so too his critical studies, God Without Thunder: An Unorthodox Defence
of Orthodoxy (1931) and The Worlds Body (1938).
525
to Zoe Hawley1 cc
Dear Miss Hawley,
If you have in mind any subject similar to that of the short essay by you
which appears in the October Criterion,2 it would give me great pleasure
to know of it; or else if you would send me 1000 words on some subject
you think suitable, by the 21st November.3
I think that your little dramatic article reads very well, and I was sorry
that it was absolutely necessary to cut it down as much.
Hoping to hear from you,
I am,
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
to Conrad Aiken pc Huntington

[Postmark 1 November 1924] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Let me know if you havent got your Criterion. Exiguous payment follows
next week. By the way, the F. M. who wrote the letters you liked is the
author of Th Dansant not the other.4 I think it has a distinct quality,
though apparently very slight. What do you think of Lawrence on Murry?5
[unsigned]
1 Zoe Hawley was a writer and theatre critic.

2 Hawley, Celui qui reoit les gifles came out under the heading of The Foreign Theatre
in C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924): a review of a play by L. Andrieff at the Thtre du Vieux Colombier,
Paris.
3 Her review of the play Fata Morgana appeared as The Theatre, C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925).
4 In C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924), Th Dansant by Feiron Morris was by VHE, but Mrs Pilkington
by Felix Morrison was by IPF. The two book reviews signed F. M. in 2: 8 (July 1924) were
by Frederic Manning.
5 Jimmy, the hero of DHLs Jimmy and the Desperate Woman (C. 3: 9 [Oct. 1924], 1543),
is editor of a high-class, rather high-brow, rather successful magazine called The
Commentator and in his own opinion a Martyred Saint Sebastian with the mind of a Plato.
The story is based on an anecdote told by JMM about a London editors visit to a miners
cottage to see his wife (David Ellis, D. H. Lawrence: Dying Game 192230, 165). It was
evidently a satirical portrait of JMM.

to Viola Tree1 cc
4 November 1924 23 Adelphi Terrace House
Dear Madam,
In reply to your letter in which you ask for details of the kind of
contribution I want from you, and also whether you should write under
you own name Viola Tree or under a pseudonym.2
I should like you to give me a commentary on the affairs of the world
you live in a review of the events adducing between each issue of the
Criterion which strike you as being in any way significant. I should like you
to do this from your own personal point of view. This is the reason why I
have asked you to write for me for your point of view rather than for the
information or material because of the personality in what you write.
The essential thing for me is that you should be Viola Tree. If you keep that
in your mind then anything that you write will be interesting, and
everything you mention will have its interest in your article.
I particularly liked a very short sketch in the Evening Standard about a
week ago I cannot remember the date in which you described a dress
show or mannequin parade.3 In this your own personality was very
marked and that is what gave it its value. Chiefly I want notes about social
functions, dress, or modern manners, and theatrical performances both
public and private.
As to theatrical gossip, you have only yourself to consider. For myself
you can be as extreme as you like, short of libel; but if you want to say
anything about any play which you would not want to say under the name
of Viola Tree, then I suggest that you should write a rather shorter
contribution as Viola Tree, and a separate note under a pseudonym.4
1 Viola Tree (18841938): actress, singer and author; daughter of the actor-manager Sir
Herbert Beerbohm Tree (18531917).
2 In an undated letter, Tree said that she was honoured to be part of TSEs wonderful Cast,
but asked for a line on what she should do: she could be much fairer, particularly in dramatic
criticism, if not writing under her own name.
3 Viola Tree, The Frocks of To-day, Evening Standard, 20 Oct. 1924, 11.
4 As Viola Tree, she published Mayfair and Bohemia; as Violet Ray, The Stage, in C. 3: 10
(Jan. 1925). In her reply, she said she chose the pseud. Violet Ray because it was how her
name sounded when said by Cockneys. In Jan., as Ray, she discussed the theatre at the time
when her father and George Alexander died the last of the older generation, and Granville
Barker did as good as die and when people were left with Gerald du Maurier in charge of
modern drama (305). She wrote too a note, under her own name, on the Phoenix Society
production of Jonsons Epicoene, a work that also featured in Mayfair and Bohemia.
527
I hope I have made myself quite clear: if there is anything you want to
know at any time do not hesitate to ask me; and please do not forget that
we go to press on the 25th November.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
I trust that you received my second letter (supplementary to that written
by my secretary) addressed to 1 Percy Street.

[Postmark 5 November 1924] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Mary
Thank you very much for your letter, for the letter to Lucas, and for the
cigarettes. I shall try to see Lucas, certainly.1 His review interested me, it
is on the right side, though I think he could have demolished Fausset more
thoroughly with his own weapons i.e. the philosophy itself of Fausset
is unsound and shallow.2
It was sweet of you to give me the cigarettes the only kind I can smoke!
And I hope you did enjoy the lunch, because I did.
Affectionately
Tom
to P. N. Rowe cc
Dear Mr Rowe,
Thank you very much for your letter of the 26th ultimo, which gave me
great pleasure. Such expressions of approval are a great support in what
is indeed a heartbreaking labour.
1 F. L. Lucas (18941967): English literary critic, based in Cambridge.

2 Lucass rev. of Hugh LAnson Fausset, John Donne: A Study in Discord (1924), appeared
as John Donne in NS 24: 602 (1 Nov. 1924), 11213. Lucas deplored Faussets glib
dogmatism about creative purpose and the life-force: Mr Fausset should decide whether
he wants to write philosophy or biography, to follow M. Bergson or Mr Lytton Strachey. He
cannot do both. The book was adversely reviewed too by HR, who deplored its mixture of
biographical and mystical interpretations of Donne (C. 3: 10, Jan. 1925).

I can reassure you about Wyndham Lewis. He is not only producing,
but has just completed a large book which will be a work of the greatest
importance, and is also engaged on several other creative works.1
I think I can say that there is a strong likelihood of the Criterion
appearing more frequently. It is possible that next year it may be issued at
intervals of two months instead of three.
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
to Mona Wilson2 cc
Dear Miss Wilson,
Thank you for your letter of the 2nd instant. I should be very pleased to
reconsider your manuscript,3 but I must warn you that I am afraid it will
be quite impossible for us to accept any more manuscripts for publication
before July next. I only regret that the Criterion is not a monthly, and hope
that some day it may be. But with our present small dimensions and small
resources I find myself more and more embarrassed by having to refuse or
to postpone contributions which seem to me really valuable. I should
prefer it if you would wait a few months before sending your manuscript,
which, however, I shall be very happy to have the opportunity of re-
reading.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
1 According to Timothy Materer, Between 1921 and 1926 Lewis lived in semi-retirement
and near poverty to write a gigantic anatomy of post-World War I called The Man of the
World (Pound/Lewis, 1423). The Man of the World was never published, though parts of
it contributed to The Art of Being Ruled (1926) and The Lion and the Fox (1927).
2 Mona Wilson (18721954): English civil servant (she worked from 1911 for the National
Insurance Commission, and from 1917 for the Ministry of Reconstruction; resigning from the
civil service in 1919) and scholar; author of These were Muses (1924), followed by a series
of biographies and biographical studies (inc. lives of William Blake, Jane Austen and Queen
Elizabeth I). On 22 Mar. 1923 she had submitted 3 articles on Sara Coleridge, Mrs Trollope
& Lady Morgan, all of which were rejected on 4 Apr. 1923 in consideration of the very
limited size of the Criterion. Still, it was added in the rejection letter that TSE earnestly
hoped she would continue to submit manuscripts. On 26 Jan. 1925 she was to submit a
piece on Cressida the Inconstant Woman. Along with TSE, she later contributed to From
Anne to Victoria: Essays by Various Hands, ed. Bonamy Dobre (1937). She did not appear
in C.
3 Unidentified.
529
6 November 1924 [The Criterion]
23 Adelphi Terrace House
Dear Mr Fernandez,
Thank you for your letter of the 27th. I can assure you that your
Newman has not only pleased me but has attracted a great deal of notice
and has cast great credit upon the Criterion. I hope that you will be a
constant contributor.1
I shall be in Paris on Saturday week, the 15th, and shall be staying with
Lady Rothermere at 33 quai Voltaire. If you are in Paris on that Saturday
afternoon, I shall certainly hope to see you, and I shall write to Rivire.2
[T. S. E.]

Dear Richard,
Thanks for your letter of the 25th. I hope that you will not find the
books uninteresting.3 If I get any American cuttings I will pass them on to
you, but my own cuttings bureau in New York is very irregular and
unsatisfactory.4 I have not seen Priestleys book or bothered about it,
because it seemed to be second rate from the notices I have seen.5
What is the work which Ezra sent you?6 He puzzled me very much some
weeks ago by sending me a lot of manuscript of a new poet which consisted
simply of competent but quite uninteresting exercises in the style of
1 The Experience of Newman, C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924). Fernandez made a few later

contributions.
2 On 24 Nov., TSE told RA he had met Fernandez in Paris, and liked him very much: he
thought him one of the most promising young men in Paris.
3 Orlo Williams, Contemporary Criticism of Literature, and Cyril Falls, The Critics
Armoury, which RA reviewed in C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925).
4 About RAs Literary Studies and Reviews (1924). RA was pleased with Flints review in
C. 3: 10 (Oct. 1924), and said there had been an excellent one in the New York Times,
comparing Priestleys style unfavourably with mine.
5 J. B. Priestley, Figures in Modern Literature (1924).
6 EP, Antheil and the Treatise on Harmony (1924). On 25 Oct., RA called it an
extraordinary and incomprehensible work: he wished EP would stick to writing poetry.

Swinburne and Dowson.1 What is the meaning of this reactionary
movement?
I dont understand about The Times.2 Who is at the bottom of this and
with what motive?
I have been working hard on something new until quite recently but I
have had to put it aside in order to deliver a lecture at Cambridge next
Saturday.3 It is still in very rough shape and I did not want to write it and
I dont want to read it and I dont suppose that the Cambridge
undergraduates will want to hear it.4
I am looking forward keenly to your new poem, about which I have
heard most interesting rumours.5
When are you coming up to town?
Yours ever
Tom
to F. W. Bain cc
My dear Bain,
Thank you for your letter of the 22nd. Your 1789 has brought the
Criterion a great deal of notice, and, I think, has made a sensation.6 It
seems to me even more brilliant than your Disraeli.7 If you write anything
1 On 28 Sept., EP said he was sending carbons of poems by Ralph Cheever Dunning: Very
much in the tone of the 90s. the mans period; Rubaiyat, Swinburne, Dowson, but great verse.
EP pressed TSE to read Dunnings poems and if accepted, publish soon.
2 Edmund Gosse asked RA to sign the English Ronsard centenary address, and the Royal
Society of Literature asked him to contribute towards a gift for the Poet Laureate (Robert
Bridges). RA observed that on both occasions The Times reports omitted any mention of his
name. While not distressed by this slight, he was interested in tracing the hidden hand.
3 TSEs lecture was Chapman, Dostoevski and Dante.
4 According to the issue of Granta published the day before, the most discussed of
contemporary highbrows was due to appear at the Cam Literary Society at the Tea Shop the
following day. Mr Eliot is notorious for his poem The Waste Land, which has occasioned
nearly as many disputes as Prohibition . . . ! The Secretary says that he had hoped to obtain
larger premises, but he has not yet been able to. Members or guests are therefore advised to
appear fairly punctually, unless they want to sit on the floor (The Waste-Landers, Granta,
7 Nov. 1924, 70).
5 RA, The Fool i the Forest: A Phantasmagoria (1925).
6 Bains essay 1789 (C. 3: 9, Oct. 1924) is a critique of the historiography of the French
Revolution. The Terror was the Revolution: all the Revolutionary protagonists might figure
in the pages of the Newgate Calendar, 4371.
7 Disraeli, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924).
531
about the Russian revolution, I hope that you will give me the opportunity
of publishing it.1 I could not use anything of any length before next July.
I should like a full contribution from you then, but meanwhile, if you
thinking of writing any short notes, do let me know.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Joseph Kessel cc
Cher Monsieur,
Merci bien de votre aimable lettre.2 Jai consign votre manuscrit aux
mains de Monsieur F. S. Flint qui en fera une belle traduction, jen suis sr.
Cest une histoire des plus intressantes; je regrette, seulement, que nous ne
layons pas reu temps pour notre numro doctobre qui vient de
paratre.
Je suis bien content que nous nous entendons au sujet dune chronique.
Quant aux conditions et aux sujets que vous y traiterez, je crois que nous
pouvons nous mettre daccord quand nous nous rencontrerons le samedi
soir le 15 novembre chez la Vicomtesse Rothermere.
En vous remerciant de votre appui, je vous prie, cher Monsieur, dagrer
lexpression de mes sentiments tres distingus.
pp T. S. Eliot3
1 Bain wrote of the sinister quality of 1789, which nineteenth-century Liberalism has
studiously disguised, just as the sentimental democratic idealism of to-day turns a blind eye
on the Bolshevik atrocities in Russia (51). On 22 Oct., Bain suggested doing a short line or
two on 1917 (Russia) or some literary thing.
2 See letter to Lady Rothermere of 13 Oct. above.
3 Translation: Dear Sir, Thank you very much for your cordial letter. I have sent your
manuscript to Mr F. S. Flint, who Im sure will make a fine translation. It is a really interesting
story; and my only regret is that we didnt receive it in time for the October number, which
is about to appear.
Im very happy to know that you would like to write a chronicle. As to the conditions and
subjects you might address, I believe we can agree on that when we meet up on Saturday
evening, 15 November, at Lady Rothermeres.
In thanking you for your note, dear Sir, I send you my warmest regards. pp. T. S. Eliot

to Edwin Muir cc
Dear Mr Muir,
I must apologise for not having written to you sooner, but I have had a
great deal to do for the last few weeks. I return your manuscript with great
regret because I should very much like to secure your collaboration.1 I had
already asked Ernst Bertram to write on the subject of Hlderlin.2 I do not
know whether he will do it or not, but meanwhile you no doubt prefer to
place this essay somewhere else. But I should be glad if you would suggest
some other subject on which you would like to write. I should be very glad
to hear from you. It will probably be very difficult for me to accept any
original contributions for publication earlier than July, but meantime
would you care to help us with an occasional review if I find anything that
is likely to appeal to you?3
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Marianne Moore ts Rosenbach

Dear Miss Moore,
Thank you for your letter of the 1st ultimo.4 I discussed the subject
yesterday with Miss Weaver. I could not think of letting you purchase any
copies of your book from the Criterion for the very good reason that Miss
Weaver did not receive any money for them from us. At first I was under
the impression that you wished to withdraw your book from circulation
in favour of a revised edition, but I now understand that this is not the
case. If you actually want any number of copies, I shall be pleased to send
them to you, but it will suit me very well to keep as many as possible here
1 On 19 Sept., SS had sent Muirs essay on Hlderlin to TSE.

2 See TSEs letter to Bertram of 6 Oct.
3 See Muirs review of Conrad Aiken, Bring! Bring!, C. 3: 12 (July 1925).
4 On 1 Oct., Moore reported that Harriet Shaw Weaver had told her that C. had bought
the remaining copies of her Poems (Egoist Press, 1921), and deplored the precariousness of
the purchase. She was preparing an American issue of the book with additions and would
like to buy them back from TSE. The new book was Observations (New York: Dial Press,
1924).
533
in the belief that there will eventually be a sale for them. You will of course
share in the profits of any copies that we sell.
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
to E. R. Curtius ts Bonn
My dear Curtius,
Many thanks for your letter of the 1st instant. I am delighted to hear that
there is a possibility of your visiting England next year and am sure that it
will result in a most interesting volume of English studies.1 I shall look
forward to welcoming you here. Meanwhile I hope that you will send me
a copy of your forthcoming book for review in the Criterion.
I should be very glad to see some of your work translated into English.
Thank you very much for your offer about German books which I
sincerely reciprocate. I have very little time for reading, but if anything
appears in Germany which you think I ought not to miss, I hope that you
will let me know, and I will send you anything that seems to me of real
importance.
T. S. Eliot
to Ernst Bertram cc
My dear Sir,
I thank you for your letter of the 21st ultimo and am much pleased to
hear that we hope for your collaboration in the Criterion. For the subject
you mention, I should be very glad to have an essay in the form of a short
review, say a thousand words, but for a longer article I think that a more
comprehensive subject would be desirable. Also it would give readers a
better conception of your own standpoint. For a longer article I should
suggest either a general essay on the work of one man or on a more general
critical subject. But I should very much like to have a shorter article from
you as well. The Criterion has only lately started a section of reviews of
1 See TSEs letter to Curtius of 6? Oct.

books and it occurred to me that it would be an interesting innovation
for I do not think I have seen it done in any periodical occasionally to
have reviews of the work of foreign writers by critics of first rank among
their own nation.1
With many thanks, and hoping to hear from you soon,
I am,
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
to Mark Wardle cc
My dear Wardle,
I am returning you some poems which I have kept for a very long time,
but I find that we are absolutely choked with material for at least nine
months, so I think that these ought to have the opportunity of finding
publication elsewhere. I part with them as always with great regret.
I can now somewhat furtively look you in the face again because the
Valry book is well on the way to publication. I have only released my
introduction after holding it up for a year because I despaired of doing
anything better, but do not suppose that I am pleased with it or that I feel
anything but extreme dissatisfaction with what I have written.2
I hear from Cobden-Sanderson the good news that you are coming to
London for several years at least. I do hope that we may see something
more of each other.
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]

Dear Lewis,
After two frantic letters from Schiff requesting and entreating me to
grant him an interview on an exceedingly important matter connected with
yourself (I can produce said letters if necessary) I had an hours talk with
1 Nothing by Bertram was published in C.

2 A Brief Introduction to the Method of Paul Valry, for Le Serpent par Paul Valry (1924).
535
him tonight.1 This was absolutely against my will and caused me infinite
annoyance: I have to go to Paris on Friday on what is to me a most tedious
and distasteful affair, and tear back to London on Sunday night; since I
returned from Cambridge on Monday, I have had no time to sleep or eat.
I write now in haste merely to inform you that Schiff produced a paper
on which he had typed out or so he told me, for I did not read it each
sum of money you have had from him and the date.2 The object of the
interview was to coerce me into mediating between himself and you, and,
as far as I gathered, to force or persuade you to behave in a proper manner
towards him.
I refused to do so or to have any hand in the matter. Upon this he lost
his temper and some disagreeable words passed between us.
I will tell you more of this when we meet next. The purport of this letter
is to warn you that if Schiff takes now what I expect will be his next step
and vilifies me to you, or attempts to make mischief between you and me,
you will understand the reasons.
I write you this in the conviction that you will do nothing in the matter
and will treat this letter in confidence.3
Thank you very much for both MSS. which are splendid stuff.4 More
about this when I get back.
COULD you use a stall at the Phoenix on Sunday night (Ben Jonsons
Epicoene) and would you DEFINITELY go?5 My secretary will wait for an
answer, as I must know at once. Please say YES or NO and if YES dont
fail to go. I should join you about the middle of the performance; would
you wait for me?
Yours ever
T. S. E.
1 These letters do not appear to survive.

2 During his financial crisis of 1924, WL had been heavily dependent upon SS, who, after
giving him 60 between Apr. and Aug., gave him a further 20 on 29 Aug., and then the
same again on 17 Sept. and 13 Oct. When WL asked for more, SS said: I cannot go on giving
you money at this rate. (See Paul OKeeffe, Some Sort of Genius: A Life of Wyndham Lewis
(2000), 2557.)
3 TSE marked this and the preceding paragraph with double marginal lines.
4 On 26 Nov., RC-S received The Perfect Action: it was over 20,000 words long.
5 Ben Jonsons Epicoene was performed by the Phoenix Society at the Regents Theatre on
16 Nov.

to Virginia Woolf ms Texas
My dear Virginia
I was delighted to find the authors copies on my return this evening;
and must thank you and Leonard for giving my essays those advantages of
print and form which I feel they need, but hardly justify.1 May the
appearance of the book, and the prestige of the Hogarth Press, give a value
to the production which is lacking to the matter! But, avoiding
indirections, I think the cover is charming it only needs the signature of
the designer.2 The book gives me great pleasure if I do not read it. And
I hope that I have not made any abominable errors in proofreading.
I have been submerged lately, in preparing a paper for Cambridge but
which, after all my labours, is unworthy of subsequent publication.
Fortunately, it was not for the same audience as Mr Bennett and Mrs
Brown, so I did not have that standard to contend with.
We are going to Paris on Friday, but I shall come back on Monday
morning. May I be allowed to emerge from oblivion and see you before
very long.
Yours always
T. S. (if you wish)
Eliot

Dear Lewis,
Thanks for your letter. I am glad to hear that you will go and I shall see
you there.3 This is just to let you know that I have had a note from Schiff
tonight, simply to enclose a copy of your letter to him (identical with the
copy you sent me) and also a copy of his reply to you of todays date.4
1 Homage to John Dryden: Three Essays on Poetry of the Seventeenth Century was
published by the Hogarth Press on 30 Oct.: it was the fourth of the Hogarth Essays.
2 The cover had a black-and-white design of a woman reading by Vanessa Bell.
3 The Phoenix Society production of Jonsons Epicoene.
4 Writing to Lewis on 13 Nov., SS attempted to make peace and offered further financial
support (12 every four weeks for six months) OKeeffe, Some Sort of Genius, 2567.
537
We must arrange a more satisfactory meeting as soon as soon as I have
got back from this wretched visit to Paris1 and have got the bulk of the
Criterion off my hands.
Yours ever,
T. S. E.
ticket enclosed
Remember that I shall be very late so dont leave till I come

My dear Monro,
Thanks very much for your letter.2 I have only just got back from Paris
and am writing in haste to catch the post. I agree that this thing ought to
be done, but I am afraid it is too late for January 1st. But if you can let me
know IMMEDIATELY the names of the publishers of these books I will
send for copies and we shall see what can be done. It seems to me that
I am in as difficult a position to review these anthologies as you are,
because I am not in them: but can you suggest anyone else who could do
it properly?3 If so, let me hear at once.
What about the Chapbook?
I am very sorry about the Wordsworth: I meant it quite literally when I
said we could do without it.4 It wont embarrass me, but I hope you will
do that or something you would like better to do suggest something else
when it occurs to you soon.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
1 TSE and VHE left for Paris on Friday 14 Nov. TSE was back in London by the Sunday
evening.
2 On 15 Nov., Monro reviewed a number of new anthologies of modern poetry: J. C. Squire,
Second Selections from Modern Poets (1924); Laurence Binyon, The Golden Treasury of
Modern Lyrics (1924); Joan Beauchamp, Poems of Revolt (1924); Jessie B. Rittenhouse, The
Little Book of Modern British Verse (1924); L. A. G. Strong, Eighty Poems: An Anthology
(1924). Monro called the first two infamous: Believe me, it really is your duty to write an
article on these five works, though probably too late for the next number. The anthologies
were well worth being angry about, but in a reasoned manner.
3 Monro could not review them himself, being too much involved, and in the eyes of other
persons, inherently or technically prejudiced. They were not reviewed in C.
4 Monro could not get on with the concluding part of Wordsworth Revisited.

I am delighted to hear from you at last, as I had been on the point of
writing again to ask if you were back from your voyages.1 What you say
is extraordinarily gratifying as I am as anxious as ever to publish
something by you.2
Now that I am writing to you, I should like to ask a favour. When
recently in Paris I met a Doctor Mardrus, who seems to be a well known
Orientalist and Egyptologist, and who, I am told, has made a remarkable
translation of The Arabian Nights in French.3 I hope you will not mind
my asking you whether you know of him and whether you consider him
to be a scholar of standing, as he has been recommended as a possible
contributor, and as I am ignorant in these matters.
I hope you will forgive my asking you, even if you do not feel able or
inclined to answer the question.
With many thanks,
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
to S. S. Koteliansky cc
Dear Koteliansky,
I hope you will forgive me for not answering your letter at once but I
have been extra busy, and for the last week have been in bed with a cold.
I should have let you know that there is no objection to the publication of
the Tolstoy letters in America in January.4 The enclosed Dostoevsky letter
is also interesting, but as the Tolstoy letters form a whole without it, and
as the January number is already so crowded that I am puzzled to
distraction how to use everything I have promised to include, I must deny
myself the pleasure of publishing this, at least in that number.5 I hope that
1 See TSEs letter of 6 Oct.
2 A ref. to progress on The Glamour of Gold, for C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925).
3 Joseph-Charles-Victor Mardruss French translation, Les Mille Nuits et une Nuit, was
published in 16 vols, 18981904. He never contributed to C.
4 On 4 Nov., Koteliansky asked if he could offer the Dial his translations of the
StrakhovTolstoy letters.
5 See A Few Extracts from Letters exchanged between Leo Nicolayevich Tolstoy and N. N.
Strakhov relating to F. M. Dostoevsky, C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925).
539
the Dial will be able to do so; it is so much easier to arrange the contents
of a monthly than of a quarterly.
I hope that some time next year you will have something else as
interesting and important as these Tolstoy letters.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Edwin Seaver1 cc
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your letter (undated). I have not seen No. 1 of your
magazine because it is forwarded directly to Mr Herbert Read who reviews
American periodicals for us. So I shall be glad to have another copy, as
well as 2 and 3, and I may be able to write you a note in reply to Mr
Munsons essay.2 As for exchange, it is entirely at the discretion of Mr
Read, but I will put the question to him.
With all best wishes for success and looking forward to seeing your
review.
I am,
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
My dear Seldes,
Thank you very much for your admirable chronicle which arrived
exactly at the right time to go to the printers.3 It shall appear without
alteration.
1 Edwin Seaver (190087): Socialist critic; editor of a new magazine entitled 1 9 2 4.

2 In his account of US periodicals in C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924), HR said of Gorham B. Munsons
article The Esotericism of T. S. Eliot (1 9 2 4, 1: 1, July 1924) that it was extremely able
and comprehending criticism; but he did not accept Munsons identification of TWL with
the fatalism of Spengler, or the implication that there was a distinction between a sterile
decayed Europe and an America of abounding energies and high spiritual potentiality
(1523). For Munson, see TSEs letter of 3 Nov 1925.
3 New York Chronicle, C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925).

I will ask Cobden-Sanderson to have volume 2 of the Criterion bound
up and sent to you, to be deducted from your insignificant payment. If you
also wish volume 1, let me know, but I am afraid that numbers 1 and 2 are
completely out of print.
Let me hear from you as soon as you reach Paris even if you do not feel
moved to write to me before that. As your copy seems to have gone astray,
I will have an October Criterion sent to you. Unfortunately I was too busy
to be able to review your book adequately myself so I had to hand it over
to Conrad Aiken.1
With all best wishes
Yours always,
[T. S. E.]
My dear Richard,
Thank you very much for your letter and for honoring me with a sight
of the proof of your poem.2 I have not had time yet to read it through,
having been in bed with a cold, so may I keep it for a few days? What I
have looked at I liked immensely.
Yes I dare say you are right about the preface and prefaces.3 At any rate
I am pleased to find that you still like the essays. I think that the one on
Dryden is the only one which has any merit.
I think that Edith [Sitwell] has a sincere interest in and respect for good
writing wherever she perceives it, and I agree with you that she is
trustworthy. As for the others, I never supposed that any of them was
deserving of the least confidence. The first two of them are purely parasitic.
As for [John Gould] Fletcher, when I knew him years ago, he seemed to me
always wavering between generous admiration and bitter envy of people
who were in any way more successful than himself. I used to be very sorry
for him.
I will look out for your Mark Twain with great interest. Something
certainly needs to be said about him.
1 See Aikens review of Seldes, The Seven Lively Arts, C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924).
2 RA, A Fool i the Forest (1925).
3 The one-page Preface to HJD (1924), in which TSE described the book as preserving in
cryptogram certain notions which, if expressed directly, would be destined to immediate
obloquy (9). The essays were John Dryden, The Metaphysical Poets and Andrew
Marvell.
541
I have sent a card to your friend1 and asked him to come to lunch with
me. You may depend on my doing anything I can.
I wish I might see you soon and have a talk about the Criterion. I should
like to know your opinion of the Commentary, whether you think it is
worth continuing or not.2 I feel sometimes that it is nothing but a bid for
unpopularity. When will you be in London again?
My lecture at Cambridge seemed to go off successfully, but as you say,
lectures are a waste of time. I met Fernandez in Paris a week ago and liked
him very much. He is one of the most promising young men in Paris I
think.
About [Orlo] Williams, I hope you will not think it necessary to speak
well of the book unless you like it. But I hope that you find it interesting
enough to be worth writing about at all. Can I possibly have the review by
Thursday?
[Alec] Randall has suggested that he would like occasionally to write a
note about a German book. Would you ever care to review a French book
when you come across one that seems to you to deserve a place?
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
1 George Dunning Gribble, whom RA described (25 Nov.) as a specimen of the Inglese
Italianato di nostri giorni and a really cultured man who pretends he isnt. RA admired
Gribbles intro. to his translation of The History of Manon Lescaut and the Chevalier de
Grieux (1925), which he had seen in proof.
2 RA thought the Commentaries excellent (30 Nov.). His advice was to make C. the
foremost literary review in England, and gradually to withdraw from politics. Most of the
other reviews were attached to a party and most of them are Conservative. With a strong
Conservative government in power there was little point in advocating a Right view, and
there was a danger that Commentaries would be tilting at windmills or knocking down open
doors. The Socialists were unlikely to be a threat for many years, but if they did emerge
again, Crites [TSE] would be most valuable. He suggested enlarging C. and bringing in a few
more elements, especially les jeunes if they could be found. In the post-war world most
people sought peace, and intellectual harlots like ourselves must please rather by entertaining
than by taking a hand in politics.

to Geoffrey Faber1 ts Valerie Eliot
Sir,
I understand from my friend Charles Whibley that he has conveyed to
you his reasons for thinking that we should meet; and if you are so
inclined, I should be happy to call upon you, if you would suggest an
evening.2
I am, Sir,
T. S. Eliot

Dear Sirs,
I enclose herewith three further contributions to be set up for the
January Criterion. Please note as to the pieces of theatrical criticism that
the first is to be set up in large type and the two following notes in small
type and that they are to run on continuously together without leaving any
part of the page blank.3
The Diary of the Rive Gauche4 is to be set up in large type.
1 Geoffrey Faber: see Glossary of Names. At All Souls College, Oxford, GCF met Maurice
Gwyer, whose wife had inherited the Scientific Press from her father, Sir Henry Burdett (1881
1943). It specialised in medical books and published a successful weekly paper, The Nursing
Mirror. In 1922, with a view to expanding into general publishing, the Gwyers invited GCF
to join the board as Chairman. They founded the firm of Faber & Gwyer in 1925.
2 They met on Mon., 1 Dec. at GCFs house, 21 Ladbroke Grove, London. At a memorial
service for GCF, TSE was to recall nearly forty years later: For personal reasons, I found it
necessary to change my means of livelihood, and to seek a new position which should also
give some assurance of permanence. Faber, on the other hand, was looking only for a writer
with some reputation among the young, who could attract promising authors of the younger
generation as well as of our own, towards the newly founded firm of Faber & Gwyer. He
wanted an informal adviser and, in fact, a talent scout. My name had been suggested to
him with warm commendation by my elder friend Charles Whibley, on an occasion when CW
was a weekend guest at All Souls. I do not remember how it was, during the evenings
conversation between Faber and myself, that our two designs became identical. I suspect that
it was merely that we took to each other (St Giles-in-the-Fields, Holborn, 10 May 1961;
privately printed).
3 Viola Tree (as Violet Ray), The Stage: An Uninteresting Era, was printed in large type,
followed by two short reviews: one by Ray on the Phoenix Society Epicoene, the other by Zoe
Hawley on Fata Morgana, both in smaller type: C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925), 30510.
4 Fanny Marlow, Diary of the Rive Gauche I, in the same issue, 2907.
543
All of these should be returned to myself for proof correction, except
that a copy of the Fata Morgana note should be sent to Miss Zoe Hawley,
129 Church St, Chelsea, s.w.3.
You have now nearly everything except the Commentary and a few
notes which shall follow in the course of this week. The Perfect Action1
should be set up immediately. I am anxiously awaiting from you a full
statement of the number of words in each contribution which you have
set up for the reason that something will have to be cut or postponed until
the following issue and until I know the number of words, I cannot arrange
the Number. Please note that I am anxious to get this Number out on
January 1st.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
to D. H. Lawrence2 cc
Dear Mr Lawrence,
I like your stories very much and have just accepted from Messrs. Curtis
Brown Limited a second story entitled The Woman Who Rode Away.3
I like your style and I like your perceptions. I should be glad if at any time
you cared to contribute more regularly to the Criterion, as one of the half
dozen or so writers who contribute to such an extent as to form the
character of the paper. I mean that I should like to have something of yours
in almost every number, shorter essays, notes or reviews.4
If you are ever in London and care to meet me, I should be glad if you
would let me know. You could write to this address or to 9 Clarence Gate
Gardens.
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
1 An extract from WLs long story, which ultimately never appeared.

2 D. H. Lawrence (18841930): novelist, short-story writer, poet and essayist. He had
published Women in Love (1920), Kangaroo (1923), Studies in Classic American Literature
(1923), and Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923).
3 The Woman Who Rode Away appeared in C. 3: 12 (July 1925) and NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926).
4 DHL made five contributions altogether before his death in 1930.

[Postmark 25 November 1924] The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
It is true, dear Mary, that I have been more busy than is dreamt of in
your philosophy (Hamlet)1 and that I am more tired than I like to be, and
have had more to think of than can be thought in the day and the night.
But all the same I hope to see you next week. It is also true that Vivien is
a very long way from recovery, and I dont expect she will be able to make
any progress during the winter: but I think she would have rung you up,
but that she has been making an exhaustive study of Clives works,2 in her
thorough way, and when she has finished she wants to discuss them with
you
Affectionately
Tom

30 November 1924 The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Ottoline
I am writing for Vivien. I wish she had not come back from Paris3 the
journey, and the Ballet (which was certainly not worth coming over for!)
resulted in a very alarming bronchitis which has settled at the back of the
lungs. So she has been in bed with a high temperature ever since. The
doctor was more reassuring today, but we are not yet certain whether the
inflammation has been checked.
Par dessus le march,4 I have been in bed since Wednesday, with
influenza. I am very weak still, and may not be up or out for several days
yet. You can imagine what chaos and torment we have been living in!
I think we must both have had a suppressed influenza for a long time
since July. I was in bed four days after my visit to Paris, a fortnight ago,
then was up for three days, and then in bed again!
1 There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your
philosophy (Hamlet I. 5, 1667).
2 The works of Clive Bell (Hutchinsons lover) included Art (1913), Since Czanne (1922),
On British Freedom (1923) and The Legend of Monte Della Sibilla (1923). His Prologomena
to a Study of Nineteenth-Century Painting was to appear in C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925), 23144.
3 TSE returned from their Paris weekend on 16 Nov. The Paris trip informed VHEs A Diary
of the Rive Gauche (C. 3: 10 & 11, Jan. & Apr. 1925), which she published as Fanny
Marlow. The first of these pieces, dated December, is set in an unnamed hotel, but ends up
near quai Voltaire where the Eliots stayed in Lady Rothermeres apartment.
4 Into the bargain (French).
545
I think the Ballet was bad from every point of view, and we are very
glad you think so too.1 I am pleased that you like the poems2 they are
part of a longer sequence which I am doing I laid down the principles of
it in a paper I read at Cambridge, on Chapman, Dostoevski and Dante
and which is a sort of avocation to a much more revolutionary [style del.]
thing I am experimenting on.3 But I dare not work on the latter except
when very well and strong.
We are both bitterly disappointed not to see you this time. Vivien is too
ill to be allowed to see anyone. She wants me to say that neither of us have
heard anything about Philips mother. We are very sorry indeed to hear of
it. She must be a great loss to Oxford. Will you please give Philip our
sympathy?4
We must see you the next time you come. With love from both.
Tom
I wanted to speak to you after the ballet but I had Diaghilev5 etc. on my
hands.
1 On 24 Nov., TSE and VHE went to see Diaghilevs Ballets Russes in Cimarosiana and
Cocteaus Le Train Bleu (starring Anton Dolin) at the Coliseum in London. TSE had heralded
the London season of the Ballets Russes in his Commentary, C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924).
2 Doriss Dream Songs [IIII], Chapbook 39 (Nov. 1924), 367.
3 The paper TSE gave to the Cam Literary Society on 8 Nov. was not published. A
Neglected Aspect of Chapman was due to be published in C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925), but prevented
by severe illness. The longer sequence is The Hollow Men; the more revolutionary thing
SA. In his talk at Cambridge, TSE said of Chapmans plays that more or less consciously the
personages are acting, and accepting, inevitable roles in this world, and the real centre of
their action is in another Kingdom. In Dostoevskys novels likewise, there are everywhere
two planes of reality . . . The characters themselves are partially aware of this division, aware
of the grotesque futility of their visible lives, and seem always to be listening for other voices
and to be conducting a conversation with spectres. In conclusion, he said, Chapman and
Dostoevski and ourselves are all part of a modern world while Dante belonged to another
and perhaps a wiser one (A Neglected Aspect of Chapman, unpub.).
4 Philip Morrells mother died of pneumonia on 9 Nov.
5 TSE wrote that at the present time the ballet appears to depend almost wholly on Mr
Diaghileff, and deplored the withdrawal of some of his best dancers. It was a public
obligation . . . to continue to support Mr Diaghileffs ballet, and use our efforts so that on
his next visit to London he may have the facilities for producing the Sacr and the newer
work of Stravinski (C. 3: 10 [Jan. 1925], 1612).

from Geoffrey Faber cc
[2 December 1924] [London]
My [dear] Eliot
[I am] sending you a short memorandum of the [several words illegible]
interesting conversation last night.1 I hope [you] will make any alterations
or additions to it that may suggest themselves to you. The whole idea is one
that makes a great appeal to me personally, and I am not without hopes
that something more definite may come of it, but you understand from
what I said that I shall have rather to pick my foot-steps.2
I hope I did not keep you out of bed too long last night.
[Geoffrey C. Faber]
2 December 1924 23 Adelphi Terrace House
I have a favour to ask you which I hope you will not have the slightest
hesitation in refusing if you are too busy to grant it, inasmuch as it is one
which I have no right to ask.
Two manuscripts have been offered to me for publication in the
Criterion, the merits of which I have not the competence to decide. One
is a theory of A Lovers Complaint by one R. L. Eagle, who, I believe, has
recently made himself notorious by championing the Baconian heresy.3
Nevertheless, to an uninstructed reader it appears interesting; but I do not
wish to use [it] if it is patently absurd. The other is entitled Marvells
Hand in Arden of Feversham, by E. H. C. Oliphant, who writes from
Melbourne and speaks of himself as a well known writer on Elizabethan
drama.4
1 TSE and GCF met on the evening of Mon. 1 Dec. at GCFs house, 21 Ladbroke Grove.
Unfortunately, the memorandum GCF attached to this letter does not survive; and his diary
entry for 1 Dec. reads merely: T. S. Eliot dined with me, & we had a long & interesting talk
about the Criterion, recorded elsewhere (Faber Archive).
2 GCF hints at the hope that TSE might be able to join his proposed firm of Faber & Gwyer.
3 William Shakespeare, A Lovers Complaint. Roderick L. Eagle was author of New Light
on the Enigmas of Shakespeare Sonnets (1916) and later studies in support of Bacons
authorship of Shakespeare, inc. Shakespeare: New Views for Old (1930). Replying on 3 Dec.,
Robertson called Eagle a quite exceptional Baconian.
4 This should read Marlowes hand in Arden of Feversham (as Robertson pointed out to
TSE). Robertson indicated his agreement with him on this point in his recent Introduction
to the Study of the Shakespearian Canon, and gave Oliphant the credit. Oliphants Marlowes
hand in Arden of Feversham appeared in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 7693.
547
If you had time, immediately or later, to glance at these typescripts and
give me your opinion of their value, I should be more than grateful to you.
For even if I found it impossible to use both of these myself, I always feel
a certain obligation to encourage anything that deserves publication and
to recommend it to other reviews.
But I do not want to lay any burden on you, so if you cannot look at
these yourself I should be grateful if you could suggest the name of
someone else competent to decide.
The Criterion containing your Hamlet should appear on the 1st
January.1
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]

Dear Lewis,
I have been ill in bed with influenza and bronchitis, hence the delay.
Whibley says he does not expect to be in London again before Christmas,
and suggests that if you will send him the complete manuscript he will
send it to Macmillan personally.2 If you do not like this will you write to
him (Charles Whibley, Broomhill House, Great Brickhill, near Bletchley,
Berks3) and try to arrange to see him when he next comes to town. I
suggest writing to him first in any case, before sending MSS.
About your Perfect Action: I have just learned that it is 20,000 words.4
I could only publish it all at once by arranging a number some time in
advance, as it would otherwise involve putting off several contributors,
and practically all in this number have been put off already for some
months. May I use it in parts? It is over twice as long as anything we have
ever published. I could print a part in this number (but let me know at
once) and if the book came out before the next issue we could substitute
the rest by something else of yours. You see I hope how I am fixed: I want
1 The Naturalistic Theory of Hamlet, C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925), 17292.

2 Presumably WLs huge new manuscript.
3 Bletchley is in Buckinghamshire not Berkshire.
4 The working title of WLs latest contribution.

you in more than everybody else, and if you could let me have 5,000 or
6,000 word lengths could use you in practically every number.1
Yours ever
T. S. E.
I know of a new publishing firm which is promising, but it wont even be
formed for six months or so.

Dear Sirs,
I enclose three reviews for small type, by2
Harold Monro
Feiron Morris
Frederic Manning
Also MS. of a poem by myself (large type).3 In order to save time please
send all the proof to me and a copy to Mr Cobden-Sanderson but send Mr
Monros proof to Mr Cobden-Sanderson.
The FOUR LETTERS of Tolstoi may be set up in a page to follow
directly the COMMENTARY.4 I shall let you have the remaining order
[in] a few days time.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
1 The Perfect Action was never to be published in C.

2 Harold Monro on Aikens Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson and Sacheverell Sitwells
The Thirteenth Caesar; Feiron Morris (VHE) on Virginia Woolfs Mr Bennett and Mrs
Brown; and Frederick Manning on Collection Christianisme: all in C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925).
3 Thomas Eliot, Three Poems in the same issue: I Eyes I dare not meet in dreams, II Eyes
that last I saw in tears and III The eyes are not here: the first poems TSE had published in
C. since TWL in the first issue.
4 L. N. Tolstoy and N. N. Strakhov: Extracts from Letters relating to F. M. Dostoevsky.
549
to Marguerite Caetani ts Galleria Nazionale dArte Moderna
Dear Princess Bassiano
It is very rude of me not to have written to you.1 But first I hoped to meet
you at Miss Barneys,2 and second, I have been ill in bed, with intervals of
a day at a time, (twice), ever since with influenza following a chill on the
journey.
I tried to explain to Miss Barney my scruples, but expressed myself very
badly. If I saw you I could put the arguments better than in writing. The
point is not that I dont need it. I need it very badly at the moment but
is chiefly that if I employed my spare time in other ways than I do, I could
make more money out of writing than I do that is almost nil.
I propose to send you, as soon as work and worry will allow me, MS
copies of five new short poems. I.e. I compose on the typewriter, but there
will be no other copies of these poems in long hand.3 As I wish you to
have something in return.
As I say, I could explain myself much better if I met you.
But, looking forward to that, some day.
I am
Very gratefully
T. S. Eliot
Enclosed is a statement of moneys owing to me from The Criterion on
account of disbursements. Will you let me have a cheque for this 8.8.8d.
at once, so as to settle all outstandings before Lady Rothermere arrives?
We will discuss other matters when we meet. I continue to enjoy the
appearance of The Serpent. Let us hope that it is not a poisonous serpent.
1 See TSEs letter to Natalie Barney of 11 Aug. Caetani and Barney had both put up money
for TSE in the event of his leaving Lloyds Bank.
2 During his visit to Paris in Nov.
3 Presumably the Three Poems in C. 3: 10, plus the other new poems in Doriss Dream
Songs in Chapbook 39 (Nov. 1924).

I am very sorry to hear that your wife is ill.
Yours ever
[T. S. E.]
I have received your letter and will ring you up directly upon your
arrival, when we can make all arrangements: including a meeting at
Cobden-Sandersons office to discuss all business and the accounts; also a
visit to your own office in the Adelphi, which you have never yet seen!1
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to R. Cobden-Sanderson cc
[11? December 1924] [London]
This is just suggestions for us to say you may think too violent. But on
the way we must arrange a system of signs, to communicate with each
other, because if she is in a violent temper, I advise saying nothing at all.2
C-S
Now Lady Rothermere I have paid up everything and I have exactly
. . . . . in hand as you can see by my books if you come to my office.
The January Criterion is now ready and in my hands and complete. My
publishing business lately has been widening out and I have been in
discussion with other publishers and I have been very much criticised for
running a review in this way. It is nothing to do with you personally but
there are such things as accidents, illnesses etc. And supposing anything
were to happen to you rendering you incapable of signing a cheque for
three or four months I simply have not the means to LOAN THE
MONEY temporarily. Of course, legally, I have no responsibility, but
many of the contributors would press for payment instantly, specially
the better known ones, and the printers. I am not legally bound to
1 The new Criterion offices had been taken over from the Egoist.
2 The first lines are written in pen. What follows is a typed memo in dialogue form to guide
their discussion with Lady Rothermere about C. business.
551
anybody but at the same time possibly some people might think so and
in that case proceedings might be started against me and in that case my
position would be very awkward. I havent money or time to engage in
legal proceedings and to me time is money. It makes no difference to you
whether you make a cheque in December or Jan. or in Feb. to pay off
debts. Difference to me so much that I feel bound to ask whether you
agree to pay for each issue in advance. There is nobody in the contract
but yourself. What should I do if anything happened to you. You must
have thought about that. I think that I may speak for Eliot that he has not
either the cash or the time to attend to such a situation which might
arrive. Let C.S. then turn to me and say I think I am right Eliot in saying
that you are pledged quite nine months ahead to certain contributors.
These contributors would have to be paid by law whether the Criterion
was issued or not.
ELIOT says:
Quite so, I think every word C.S. has said is just and right, and I know
myself that it is considered more than foolish and unbusinesslike for people
to produce a review for which they will pay contributors and printers
whatever happens. This has just been brought home to me and we know
you will understand same money only two months sooner. This as [sic]
a matter of fact C.S. remarked on it and I have been thinking it over and
the matter was brought to a head by a conversation I had with B[ruce]
R[ichmond] of the Times and C[harles] W[hibley] and several other men
of knowledge in these matters on that very unfortunate occasion of the
first night of the Diaghilev season.
Which occasion of course needs explaining away. You had offered me
your box and so I invited B. R. and C. W. and another man to join me and
we found your box had been sold by your orders and this led to a
discussion. That night was a ghastly catastrophe for the Criterion.
BOTH
If she cuts up we advise you to consult Lord Rothermere who is at least
a man of business.

My dear Eliot
I am once more enclosing [a] copy of memorandum of the conversation
between you and me. No doubt there are points in it which you will again

wish to correct, but, on the whole, I fancy it gives a pretty accurate account
of the general sense of what passed between us.1
I am afraid I was anything but at my best last night, but you will make
allowances for the fact that I have been under considerable strain for the
last ten days.
I have not said anything in the memorandum about what we agreed to
call testimonials, but the more I think over the position, the more certain
I feel that our hope lies in these. What I should like you to get for me, if
you can, is quantities of opinions about yourself, from men whose names
will carry weight with my Directors. Those you mentioned last night would
do splendidly. Can you collect more of the same kind? Bruce Richmond,
Hugh Walpole, Arnold Bennett and Robertson. What we do not want
them to say is: Mr Eliot is a profound and scholarly critic. What we want
them to say is: Mr Eliot is a brilliant editor, as well as a brilliant writer and
critic. What will impress my directors favourably in the scheme, if
anything will, is the sense that in you we have found a man who combines
literary gifts with business instincts, who has a wide circle of literary
friends, and who is quite as much at home on the lower levels as on the
lonely peaks.
If you could deluge me with this sort of thing, and the sooner the better,
I am not without hopes that we may not be able to make some
arrangement but, of course, there is more than one lion in my path!
Yours sincerely
[Geoffrey C. Faber]
PS The memorandum is copied [the remainder is indecipherable].
I enclose title page. You will see that I have put much more on to the
cover than usual; because it ought to attract purchasers and because it
makes the paper look less arty and precious. I suppose the top will have to
be shoved up and bottom down a bit?
Will you let Hazells know at once, so that they can proceed with the
page proof?
1 GCF and TSE met for a second conversation on Tues., 11 Dec. GCFs memorandum of the
conversation does not survive, and he recorded in his diary merely, Eliot came to call about
9, & stayed till 11 discussing the Criterion.
553
I also enclose circular copy to be slipped in. What do you think of having
the prospectus on one side of a leaf and the New Statesman encomium on
the other?1
Thursday at 5.15, in any case.
Yours ever
[T. S. E.]

Monday 15 December 1924 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear John,
If you are going to be in London, you will probably find a great many
friends to welcome you and such a display of flags from ships not in
stony places, that you may not find it necessary to recognise my ensign. So
I shall not accept this letter as really a signal: but shall wait for another if,
and when, you have use for me.2
But do you really consider it a good sign that the time of stony places
is over?3 If so, you are luckier than the Saviour, who found things pretty
stony to the last and would, I believe, have continued to find them so,
had he not been removed at an age less ripe than yours or mine.4 I do not
suppose that I share any other characteristic of the Founder of Christianity,
but at least I have nothing but stony places to look forward to. This isolates
me, of course, from those who can pass in and out of stony places with
practised ease.
Yours ever,
Tom
1 For comments on C. by Affable Hawk, in NS, 22 Nov. 1924, 204, see TSEs letter to
Desmond MacCarthy, 23 Dec. 1924.
2 Since his second marriage in the spring, JMM had been living at Abbotsbury, nr. Chesil
Beach (a stony place). Evidently, in a missing letter JMM notified TSE he was visiting London.
3 TSE appears to be quoting from JMM quoting either the Bible (And some fell on stony
ground, Mark 4: 5) or TWL (After the agony in stony places, l. 324).
4 JMM was born in 1889, TSE in 1888; both were older than Jesus at the time of the
Crucifixion. JMM was working on his The Life of Jesus (1926).

My dear Eliot
Thank you for your letter of the 14th. I am glad you think I have a good
memory, I have never thought so myself. I see your difficulty about testi-
monials. As far as we are concerned, provided you leave our name out, I do
not mind what you say; but no doubt the difficulty is on your side. I do not
want to raise your hopes unduly, but I do think, if we go about things in the
right way, that there is a fair chance of something emerging at the end.
Yours sincerely
[Geoffrey C. Faber]

17 December [1924] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear John
I hope you will not mind if I ask you to postpone our lunch till after this
week? The fact is that I am at this moment so preoccupied and worried by
certain affairs of my own, that I have not the energy or vitality to give to
anything else or to see you or anybody. If you will let me suggest a day
next week, or better still after Christmas, I think it would be better from
every point of view, and you will find me, I trust, less distracted. In fact,
I had held this week clear over a month ahead, knowing that it wd need
all my attention. As you are settled in London, there is no reason why we
should not see more of each other, free from rush and hurry.
Yours ever
Tom.
to Wyndham Lewis pc Cornell

[Postmark 18 December 1924] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
I have been very harassed and occupied Could we meet directly after
Christmas say Monday or Tuesday week? Am anxious to see you, but
have had my hands full. Think can arrange my suggestion next week.
[Unsigned]
555
Dear Sirs,
Criterion No. 10
I enclose herewith corrected page-proof of pp. 161192; also corrected
slip proof of Miss Sitwells poem.1
There are three alterations to be made in three contributions viz. On the
Eve, Diary of the Rive Gauche and Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown, and I
think that it will save time and trouble if you make them at once before
setting up the pages:2
ON THE EVE Toward the end there is a song of four lines, followed
by the words he sang savagely. Delete the word savagely.3
DIARY OF THE RIVE GAUCHE Third line from the end attracting
foreign visitors. Alter to attracting American visitors.4
MR. BENNETT AND MRS. BROWN (review). 1. Paragraph
beginning But are we to accept James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and Wyndham
Lewis . . . Alter to But are we to accept these three nightmare figures,
James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and Wyndham Lewis . . . etc.5 2. Paragraph
beginning Mrs Woolfs Mrs Brown is a romantic creature. Third sentence
from the end Modern young intellectuals . . . etc. Alter to Modern young
intellectuals and here I distinguish between the minority of really modern
young intellectuals and the semi-modern majority who still think that
Katherine Mansfields stories are simply too wonderful for words
1 TSE, A Commentary; Edith Sitwell, The Man with the Green Patch, C. 3: 10 (Jan.
1925).
2 These three contributions are credited: T. S. Eliot, On the Eve; Fanny Marlow, Rive
Gauche I; Feiron Morris, Virginia Woolf, Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown. Donald Gallup was
to report presumably on TSEs authority that the story On the Eve: A Dialogue, was
actually written, at least in part, by VHE, and extensively revised by TSE (T. S. Eliot: A
Bibliography, 1969, 211). However, on 24 May 1940, TSE had informed the Swiss critic
Hans Husermann (a friend of Herbert Read) that On the Eve, though published under his
name, was written by my wife, who was then in a not very well balanced mental state; I did
in fact help her in the writing of it, though, so far as I can recollect, not to the extent to which
you would suppose. It is very probable too that TSE helped VHE with both Diary of the
Rive Gauche and her review of VW.
3 See C. 3: 10, 281. The song is: Its the sime the whole world over / Its the pore that gets
the blime, / Its the rich what gets the pleashur: / Isnt it a ber-loody shime!
4 Ibid., 296.
5 Ibid., 328. The inserted word turns TSE, Joyce and Lewis into nightmare representatives
of modern literature. The knowledge that VHE (writing in concert with TSE) was responsible
for this review of VWs essay gives a different status to sentences such as the following: Is it
true that Mr James Joyce for Mrs Woolf cites him arrived at Bloom by observations in a
Dublin tram? and also: did Mr Eliot for Mrs Woolf cites him deduce Sweeney from
observations in a New York bar-room? (328).

refuse any longer to be filled with romantic interest in the doings and
sayings of some patchwork Petrouschka . . . etc.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
to Ezra Pound ts Beinecke

22 December 1924 The Criterion,
Dear Ezra,
Thanks for your two letters. I think you are probably quite right about
Dunning but it means nothing to me.1 Call it a blind spot if you like.
Probably the fact that Swinburne and the poets of the nineties were entirely
missed out of my personal history counts for a great deal. I never read any
of these people until it was too late for me to get anything out of them, and
until after I had assimilated other influences which must have made it
impossible for me to accept the Swinburnians at all.2 The only exception
to the above is Rossetti.3 I am as blind to the merits of these people as I am
to Thomas Hardy.
The other thing you propose sounds very interesting but I think the
necessity for diagrams rules it out.4 I therefore should not dare to order a
translation without seeing either translation or original beforehand.
1 Ralph Cheever Dunning (18781930): expatriate American poet settled in Paris since
1905. He published Hyllus (1910), and went on to publish parts of The Four Winds in
Poetry and Transatlantic Review (1924, 1925). On 28 Sept. EP wrote: I was called across the
garden to look after a sick man, the day before yesterday. And have come back with the first
poetry I have seen for a very long time . . . Very much in the tone of the 90s . . . single lines
certainly as good as any we have done. Two days later, he sent the carbon of Four Winds.
TSE wrote: I dont understand with all due respect what is the disease? Should prefer
your own unfinished inedita. Do you think I have brain softening? This gives me a jolt. (In
a draft, TSE asked whether EP had brain softening.) EP wrote on Mr Dunnings Poetry in
Poetry 26: 6 (Sept. 1925), and continued to champion him, to the amazement of friends. JJ
talked later of Mr Dunnings drivel, which Pound defends as if it were Verlaine (Letters of
James Joyce, III, ed. Richard Ellmann, 155).
2 TSE discussed the influence on EP of the Nineties in general, and behind the Nineties,
of course, Swinburne and William Morris in his intro. to EP, Selected Poems (1926), ix. Of
himself, TSE said later: I took the usual adolescent course with Byron, Shelley, Keats,
Rossetti, Swinburne (TUPUC, 33).
3 Dante Gabriel Rossetti (182882): poet and translator, whose The Blessed Damozel TSE
encountered in early adolescence, and echoed in La Figlia Che Piange.
4 On 11 Dec. EP recommended an article by Samojloff of the University of Kazan on Die
Anordnung der musikalischen Intervalle in Raume [The ordering of musical intervals in
space], published in Psychologische Forschung. EP said Vladimir Dixon was willing to
translate it; it involved Technical mathematics with diagrams but was very interesting.
557
What I really want is a canto or two. Can you inform me as to present
condition and prospects?1 Also re appendicitis?
Yours,
T.
Dear Richard,
I did not have time to speak to you about your review the other day.2
When I heard from you I withdrew it and substituted one or two other
things which would otherwise have gone into the following number.
I could, of course, have added yours as well, but this number is going to
be twenty pages longer than any other and we must really try to cut down
the size on account of the expense. I find that we tend to have more and
more book reviews, and I think, at least to the extent to which this is done
in the January number, that this is a good feature as well as a popular one.
But this will make it necessary to have fewer contributed articles. In the
January number I was unable to reduce the number of contributed articles
for the reason that I had so many which had been accepted some time ago
which could not be delayed any longer.
Now I am wondering whether you would be willing to revise your
review of Williams so as to make it a review of his book and another book
of criticism called The Critics Armoury by Cyril Falls. I dont know that
they have much in common, but probably neither is important enough to
require an extended review separately. If you are willing, I will have it sent
to you at once.3
Your Villon is to appear in the next number after January.
Our meeting the other day was of course very unsatisfactory as
luncheons usually are. I wish that it were possible to arrange a dinner, but
you hold out no hope of being in London overnight.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
1 The next instalment, Cantos XVIIXIX, appeared in This Quarter 1: 2 (1925/6).

2 On 4 Dec., RA thought he had done Orlo Williams an injustice: he wanted TSE to cancel
the article and let him do another. Then on 12 Dec. he changed his mind.
3 See RA on Cyril Falls, The Critics Armour, and Orlo Williams, Contemporary Criticism
of Literature, C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925).

to Alec Waugh1 cc
Dear Waugh,
Thank you for your letter of the 8th instant. I have read Scott
Moncrieffs story and like it very much indeed so am keeping it.2 I think
it would be necessary to publish it in two parts as it is rather long. I cannot
let you know at the moment exactly when it will be possible to use it, but
I think early in the Spring. Will you please let Scott Moncrieff know, or if
you will let me have his present address I will write.
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
to Walter Hanks Shaw cc

Dear Mr Shaw,
Thank you for your letter of the 7th instant. I trust that your cheque
reached you in good time as it was sent by Mr Cobden-Sanderson before
your letter arrived.3 If you care to submit any more articles or if you think
of any subjects on which you would like to write, please let me know.4
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
to Desmond MacCarthy5 cc
Dear MacCarthy,
Had I been able to do so I should have written to you immediately to
thank you for your remarks in The New Statesman about the October
1 Alec Waugh (18981981): novelist and elder brother of Evelyn Waugh; author of The
Loom of Youth (1917), and Myself when Young (1923).
2 C. K. Scott Moncrieff, Cousin Fanny and Cousin Annie, NC 4; 2 & 3 (Apr. & July 1926).
3 Payment for his Foreign Theatre, C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924).
4 On 25 Jan 1925, Shaw was to offer an article, The Youngsters of the Moderns: Trois
Enfants Prodigues. His next piece was Cinema and Ballet in Paris, NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926).
5 Desmond MacCarthy (18771952): literary editor and journalist; author of Remnants
(1918). In 1920 he became literary editor of NS, for which he wrote a weekly column on
Books in General under the pseud. Affable Hawk.
559
Criterion.1 Such criticism is not only extremely flattering to the paper, but
is the most useful attention which we could possibly receive. What you
say about the difficulties is indeed true. The review is run most
economically: the labour expended by Mr Cobden-Sanderson is much out
of proportion to the commission he receives, and as for myself, I have never
taken anything from the magazine except payment for my own
contributions at the ordinary rates.
The proprietor, Lady Rothermere, was so impressed by your notice that
she directed that it should be quoted on a leaflet for the next number.2
I was also pleased to see that Arthur Symons book on The Symbolist
Movement in Literature has at last received recognition through your
criticism.3 The book was my first introduction to modern French verse
and in this way had the most immeasurable influence on my own poetical
evolution.4
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
1 Desmond MacCarthy wrote: My respect for this magazine steadily increases; I find more
good criticism in it than in any other . . . Altogether, this number, and the more recent
numbers of The Criterion have made me wish to act as town-crier for it. It is not a popular
kind of periodical; no doubt it exists with difficulty. It should therefore be supported by all
who want to see current literature and art discussed by critics who care about distinguishing
and expounding, and believe what they say. Though it appears only once a quarter, I know
no magazine which enables its readers to keep in touch with so many aesthetic questions. If
it dies, which I trust it will not, it will have set a standard to subsequent ventures of the same
kind hard to reach. Books in General, NS 24 (22 Nov. 1924), 204.
2 See letter to RC-S ,13 Dec. Lady Rothermere commanded the printer: Please have this
excellent notice reprinted as a sheet of paper & sent to certain important & advisable people.
3 In Books in General, NS 24 (13 Dec. 1924), 299), MacCarthy said: the young are apt
to forget that it was Mr Symons who first praised writers like Laforgue and Rimbaud in
English. We, who can no longer be called young, know that there was no one to touch him
as a guide to the decadents . . . After quoting a passage from Symons on Laforgue,
MacCarthy asked: And, then, does it not also strike you that in this passage Mr Symons has
been describing the latest kind of modern poetry itself? Nearly the whole of it is applicable
to a poet and critic whose name I mentioned above, Mr T. S. Eliot. He, too, does not
distinguish between irony and pity; he, too, makes his patter and his patterns largely out of
the unconscious, is full of that self-pity which extends itself across the world . . . and he, too,
belongs to the class of ironic sentimentalists, metaphysical Pierrots, who invent a new way
of being Ren and Werther.
4 TSE described his encounter with Symonss work as an introduction to wholly new
feelings . . . a revelation (SW, 1920, 5).

to H. P. Collins1 ts Private Collection
Dear Sir,
In reply to your letter of the 12th instant, I wish to use your essay on
Classicism from about page 9.2 The first part seems to me a little too
generalised, and the general principles laid down therein need a whole
volume of elucidation rather than a few pages. Also, I am not quite sure
of the soundness of your criticism of Milton. What I particularly like is
the comparative analysis of poems by Marvell, Lionel Johnson and Doctor
Bridges. This is all very much to the point and is the sort of thing that is
very much needed.3 In fact, I wish you might do a whole book by this
method. It is only by sticking very close to the examination of specimens
that any investigation of Classicism and Romanticism is likely to be
fruitful. The terms are so elusive and alter their meaning so completely in
different contexts that the majority of discussions, such as that between Mr
Middleton Murry and myself, are quite futile.4
You shall receive proof in due course.5
Yours faithfully,
T. S. Eliot
With best Christmas wishes.
Will you please let Miss Fassett have a cheque for 2.9.0. The items
consist of one pound salary to the 27th instant, nine shillings stamps and
office expenses of which she will give you a list and one pound petty cash
to go on with for stamps etc. You will observe that I have purchased a cash
box (5.6d) and I propose that the secretary shall keep a petty cash account
and render a full account to you when the cash is exhausted.
1 See note to letter of 5 Mar. 1924.

2 On 31 Aug. Collins had offered an extract on Classicism from his forthcoming book, and
on 9 Nov. he allowed TSE to choose an extract from it.
3 Collins compared Marvells Horatian Ode with Lionel Johnsons poem on Charles I,
commenting on the groping feeling of the latter when brought to the touchstone of Marvells
intellectual sanity. Cf. TSEs comparison of Dryden and Shelley: John Dryden, HJD (1924).
4 See TSE, The Function of Criticism, C. 2: 5 (Oct. 1923); JMM, On Fear and
Romanticism, Adelphi (Sept. 1923), and Romanticism and Tradition, C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924).
5 H. P. Collins, A Note on the Classical Principle in Poetry, C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925), 389400.
561
I also propose that hereafter the secretary be paid two pounds
fortnightly instead of one pound weekly, and that she come to you for the
cheque and give you the receipt. This seems to me more businesslike than
the previous method by which I paid her and recouped myself from you.
There will accordingly be two pounds owing to her today fortnight.
I enclose a copy of a letter sent by Selfridges to a lady who asked them
to get her a copy of the October Criterion. This sort of thing is abominable
and likely to do us harm. I propose to write very severely to Selfridges but
I should like to know first whether you have any knowledge of Selfridges
having made any attempt to get a copy from you.
[T. S. E.]

My dear Eliot
I write to say that I have to take my wife away for two or three weeks
to the South Coast on Wednesday, January 7th. Will you have anything to
say to me before that date? If not, I shall probably have to come up to
town now and then from Eastbourne (which is where we are probably
going) and could always do so for anything of real importance.
I saw Charles Whibley in the Club today, and I gathered from him that
you are still taking the proposition seriously.
Yours ever
[Geoffrey C. Faber]
to Orlo Williams cc
My dear Williams,
I have now finally read your story and should very much like to publish
it.1 I am only afraid that I cannot yet say definitely how soon we shall be
able to use it merely for the reason that we have so much material waiting
to be published, and also there is always the question of fitting the right
contributions together. But you shall of course receive proof in good time.
1 Orlo Williams, Capitaine Ensorceleur, NC 4: 4 (Oct. 1926), 65972.

I enjoyed very much lunching with you the other day and hope that you
will again seek me out in the city.
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
Thank you very much for your letter of the 26th.1 I am really most
grateful to you for the trouble you have taken and for your frank and
satisfactory expression of opinion. I shall certainly accept the essay on
Arden of Feversham.2 I have neither the time nor the knowledge to read
carefully and to judge essays of this kind, and your help is of the very
greatest value to me.
Again with many grateful thanks,
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Humbert Wolfe cc
My dear Wolfe,
I have at last read your story and like it. I should like to keep it, though
I cannot say yet at what date publication will be possible, for the reason
that we have so much material waiting to be published, and there is always
the question of fitting the right contributions together. But you shall of
course receive proof in good time.3
1 On 26 Dec. Robertson reported that E. H. C. Oliphants essay, Marlowes hand in Arden

of Feversham, was a solid and important piece of scholarship well worth publishing, but
Roderick Eagles piece on The Lovers Complaint was the skinniest gammon of Bacon he
had ever seen.
2 See E. H. C. Oliphant, Marlowes hand in Arden of Feversham, NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926).
3 On 29 Dec. Wolfe enquired if TSE had had time to look at the article he had sent him for
C. (having enquired on 27 May about the possibly odious contribution he had sent). No
story by Wolfe appeared in C.
563
I also like your dialogue, but I see less prospect of being able to use this
within a reasonable time. So I am sending it back to you, as you may wish
to use it elsewhere.1
If you are in London, will you not come and lunch with me again?
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Gilbert Brooks cc
Dear Mr Brooks,
I was glad to get your letter of November 27th. I am very much
interested by your poems and should like to keep them a little longer for
consideration.2 Meanwhile, I am merely writing to ask your permission to
do so and to say I should be delighted if you would submit a note on the
Norwich Theatre. I have, as a matter of fact, had in mind to try to get
something written about it, so I hope you will let me have it soon.3
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
1 TSE published another dialogue by Wolfe, English Bards and French Reviewers, in
NC 5: 1 (Jan. 1927).
2 No poems by Brooks came out in C.
3 See The Maddermarket Theatre, Norwich, C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925): an account of recent
productions Shakespeare, Restoration drama, Noh plays, Stravinskis Lhistoire du soldat
mounted on the Elizabethan stage at this theatre.

1925
to H. Dugdale Sykes cc
[?early January 1925] 23 Adelphi Terrace House
Dear Mr Sykes
I was very much pleased to receive your volume of Elizabethan studies
and am glad for my own purposes to have so much of you in a collected
form.1 I shall try to do you justice in a review in the Criterion, but, as you
probably know, I am no scholar in these subjects and the weight of my
opinion will probably not be so valuable as the book deserves.2
Sincerely yours
[T. S. E.]

My dear Eliot
Thank you for yours of New Years Eve.3 I go to Eastbourne next
Thursday, not Torquay which is rather too long a journey. We pray for
better weather. Write to me as soon as you are ready to do so. I shall be
very interested to see the January number of the Criterion.
Yours sincerely
[Geoffrey C. Faber]
1 Sidelights on Elizabethan Drama: A Series of Studies dealing with the Authorship of

Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Plays (1924).
2 It was reviewed by J. M. Robertson in C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925).
3 TSEs letter of 31 Dec. 1924 does not appear to survive.
565
6 January 1925 The Criterion,
Dear Scofield,
I am very glad to get your letter of the 17th ultimo and receive the news
of the latest Dial award with satisfaction. I will say something about it in
the Criterion.1 I certainly cannot think of any more suitable recipient
amongst our nationality assuming, of course, that Ezra Pound was
always disqualified as being over the age limit. But in any case, Miss
Moores award is fully deserved: to my mind she has made a very definite
contribution to verse form and rhythm, and there are not more than half
a dozen people living of whom one can say as much. I have thought that
she was in danger of becoming monotonous and I hope that she will take
advantage of the prize by travelling about a bit!
As for the embryos of the contributions which I have promised you at
various times, they lie most uncomfortably on my brain at night. The fact
is that I have done no writing whatever for the last two years except the
scrappy contributions and editorials which you may have seen from time
to time in the Criterion.2 This is, from my point of view, a lamentable
condition and greatly to my disadvantage. Had I had the time or strength
during these years for my writing beyond the above mentioned scraps, you
would have been the first to receive specimens; the scraps themselves have
been drops of blood out of an exhausted stone. For every reason I should
like to appear before long in the Dial. I may be able to send you some
prose in a few months and meanwhile here are the poems you have heard
of and possibly a few more. The ones marked A have appeared in Harold
Monros Chapbook; the ones marked B will have appeared in the January
Criterion before you receive this letter; the one marked C is to appear in
Commerce, a French review.3 There is at least another one in the series
1 The Dial award 1925 was given to Marianne Moore for Observations. Thayer thought
TSE should hear in advance because of his championship of her.
2 Thayer was disappointed not to receive any of the many manuscripts from TSE he had
been allowed to hope for. Apart from contributions to C., the previous year TSE had
published only one essay, A Prediction in Regard to Three Authors, in Vanity Fair 21: 6
(Feb. 1924) and one poem, Pome, in Commerce 3 (Winter 1924[/1925]). His last
contribution to The Dial was Marianne Moore in 75: 6 (Dec. 1923).
3 Doriss Dream Songs, I Eyes that last I saw in tears, II The wind sprang up at four
oclock, III This is the dead land, Chapbook 39 ([Nov.] 1924); Three Poems: I Eyes I dare
not meet in dreams, II Eyes that last I saw in tears, III The eyes are not here, C. 3: 10 (Jan.
1925); and We are the hollow men in Commerce 3 (Winter 1924[/1925]).

which is not yet written.1 If the fact of publication here is no obstacle I
should be glad to see them in the Dial.2 But I hope you will let me know
about this as soon as you can.
Vivien and I reciprocate cordially with best wishes for 1925 and the
hope of seeing you in London.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
to D. H. Lawrence cc
6 January 1925 23 Adelphi Terrace House
Dear Sir
Mr Cobden-Sanderson has handed me your letter of the 1st ultimo. I am
very glad to hear that you like the Criterion3 and can say in return that
I very much admire your two stories the one which I have already
published and the one which I have accepted, The Woman Who Rode
Away, for publication not before June. I hope that you will be a frequent
contributor.4
Yours faithfully
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF5
1 At this stage TSE seems to have conceived all these poems as part of the same series (The
Hollow Men), but two were later transferred to Minor Poems.
2 The Hollow Men, IIII, in Dial 78: 3 (Mar. 1925), became The Hollow Men, I, II and
IV in the full sequence, in P 19091925 (1925).
3 On 1 Dec. 1924, DHL told RC-S he was relieved that C. had got some guts and was not
another Adelphi or London Mercury.
4 In reply, DHL said he thought the Jan. number a disappointment. Its all bits and bobs,
like the rest of the literary magazines, and with no real raison dtre. He liked F. W. Bains
1789 and Fernandezs The Experience of Newman, in C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924), but doubted
whether anybody cared now about Hamlet or arranged marriages (The Naturalistic Theory
of Hamlet by J. M. Robertson and A Marriage has been Arranged by G. A. Porterfield in
the current issue). It bored him to turn the very pages: If youre a quarterly, damn it, you
ought to be a lonely bird and a fighter. He berated the review for being the old barn-hen
stuff and too literairy.
5 Irene Pearl Fassett habitually marked the letters she typed for TSE in this way.
567
My dear Richard
I am very glad that my information was of service to you. It comes from
the chief enquiry agency which is used by all the banks and I think,
therefore, is as reliable as information can possibly be. I hope that the
business will have at least indirect consequences for you. I am very glad to
hear that your mother is beginning to mellow and treat you as she should.
The new company ought certainly to be a good thing if well managed, and
I hope that this gift is a prelude to further benefactions.1 I should welcome
anything that relieved you from the necessity of doing so much editing and
translating which seems to me to have reached a point beyond which it
will only be a hindrance to your more important activities.
Your letter is full of good news and arrived at a moment when it was
very welcome. I am delighted to hear about the Mystery Play.2 It struck
me that Harold Monro was in a mood of asperity at the moment; at any
rate he did not appear to take chaffing very amiably. I must tell you in
confidence that I am not altogether satisfied with him as a critic of poetry
and I should be glad to have your opinion after you see the next
Criterion.3
About [Orlo] Williams and [Cyril] Fall[s], I should like about a thousand
words, but I will leave it to your discretion if you think the two books
deserve less or more. I should prefer to publish the English Influence article
in June.4 Will that suit you? Also would you care to do a shortish review
of Rodkers reprint of Ned Wards London Spy?5 It is a very nicely printed
book. I think you will find something about Ned Ward in one of Whibleys
books; if I can find the place for you I will let you have it.6
1 RA had enquired about a firm called Botterel & Roche on behalf of his mother who was
entering into a business arrangement with it. On 3 Jan., RA said she had also begun to do
the right thing by transferring to him his fathers books, some old pewter, and some shares:
it was the first step towards economic independence.
2 Monro had sneered at RAs transl. of The Mystery of the Nativity (1924), but there had
been a few performances, and copies of the book had been selling well.
3 Monros review of Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson (ed. Aiken) was in the current issue,
C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925), 3225.
4 RAs article on the English influence in France.
5 See RAs rev. of Ward, The London Spy Compleat, C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925).
6 CW discusses Ward (16671731) in An Underworld of Letters, in Literary Studies, which
TSE had reviewed: The Local Flavour, A. (12 Dec. 1919). For Ward, see H. W. Troyer, Ned
Ward of Grubstreet: A Study of sub-literary London in the Eighteenth Century (1946).

I am very glad to hear that you are on with Vogue again, both for your
own sake and my own.1 I feel that my mind is too rheumatic to compete
with most of the brisk wits who shine in that paper, or else my critical
conscience is too acute, and the presence of a scholar like yourself may
make it easier for me to edge in. I should certainly accept any offer from
Vogue if I knew what they wanted of me and was sure that I could do it,
and I shall certainly accept your intervention. At any rate it is a resource
which, if genuine, may be very important to me before long. I am very
grateful for your generous solicitude.
As touching the third paragraph of your letter I hope that you will be
in town soon and can talk things over with me.2
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
to Messrs. Selfridge & Co. Ltd cc

Dear Sirs,
I enclose a copy of a letter which you wrote on the 22nd ultimo to a
lady [IPF] who had made enquiries for the current number (i.e. the number
published in October) of The Criterion.3 You will observe that you express
your regret that the current number is out of stock at the publishers. I have
to point out that this statement is quite untrue, and furthermore, that Mr
Cobden-Sanderson the publisher and all of his office staff state that they
have received no enquiry from you. In the circumstances, therefore, it
appears astonishing that you should have provided one of your customers
with this piece of information without having any knowledge whatever.
Apart from the impression which this piece of misinformation gives of
your business methods, I consider that an explanation is called for. Such
misinformation is extremely damaging to the periodical, and if such a
1 RA said the Vogue affair had blown over, and he was unwilling to lose his job there,
since it paid so well; TSE would have no difficulty in getting 100 a year from Vogue if he
wished, and that Miss Todd was very impressed by his position in the world of letters.
(Dorothy Todd was editor of British Vogue, 19226.) The brisk wits writing for Vogue at
this time included VW, AH, Clive Bell, and Raymond Mortimer.
2 Bruce Richmond had hinted at possible developments and changes in C.
3 The letter from Selfridges of 22 Dec. was addressed to Mrs Fassett: With reference to
your order for The Criterion, we much regret that the current number is now out of stock at
the publishers. We shall be glad to know, therefore, if you wish us to keep it on order for you.
569
mistake is repeated we shall be obliged to issue a statement ourselves
denying such rumours.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
My dear Richard,
My wife tells me that you rang up today to give me a message and that
she suggested your telephoning to the Bank in order to save time. She is
very sorry, now, that she did not take the message herself because, if you
were able to telephone, you evidently found it impossible to get on to me.
I was there until half past five but was out of my room a great deal and it
is possible that someone may have forgotten to tell me that you rang up.
I am very sorry indeed and hope you have written. I am disappointed and
regret that you should have been in town and I not seen you.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
to Muriel Ciolkowska1 cc
Dear Madame Ciolkowska,
I was much pleased to hear from you again after such a long time and
have read your essay on Rosny2 with great interest. I should like to publish
it, but I am afraid that it will be difficult to fit it in. A Quarterly does not
give much scope as the contents must always exhibit as much variety and
balance as possible, and contributions of any particular kind are very much
limited. The paper is practically filled for several numbers ahead. But if
1 Muriel Ciolkowska was the author of Rodin (1912) and later Blameless Man (1926), and
had contributed to Poetry, The Nation and The Egoist. Nothing by her appeared in C.
2 J.-H. Rosny was the pseud. of the brothers Joseph H. H. Boex (18561940) and Sraphin
J. F. Boex (18591948), joint authors of a series of novels and stories published in French
between 1886 and 1909. After 1909, they published separately as J.-H. Rosny an and jeune.
They are considered among the founders of modern science fiction. I have not mentioned
Rosny Jeune, announced Mrs Ciolkowska (4 Dec. 1924), because there really is no such
writer, though there is still a person. He has had no literary connection with Rosny an for
years and years.

you care to leave the manuscript with me I shall be glad to keep it for some
time. If, on the other hand, you wish to publish it elsewhere as soon as
possible, please let me know.
With all good wishes for the New Year, and hoping to see you again in
Paris,
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
Thank you for your letter of the 27th ultimo. If your story is divided,
your indication shall be scrupulously observed.1 I had not heard of
Lawrences story, but the similarity of title is of no importance.2
I should very much like to have the first chance of your article on
Pirandello. The time would do nicely. I should also be glad to see anything
by Norman Douglas.3 I am ashamed to say that I have never read anything
he has written, so I cannot accept in advance. But I should be extremely
interested. I am very much obliged to you for having thought of The
Criterion.
With best wishes for the New Year,
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF
1 Scott Moncrieffs Cousin Fanny and Cousin Annie, in NC 4: 2 & 3 (Apr. & June 1926).
2 DHL published a story, Fanny and Annie, in England, My England (1922).
3 Norman Douglas (18681952), travel writer, worked for a while at the Foreign Office;
then for Cornhill Magazine and English Review; author of Old Calabria (1915) and South
Wind (1942).
571
to Mark Van Doren1 ts Butler
7 January 1925 The Criterion,
Dear Mr Van Doren,
I was very pleased to get your letter of the 28th November and thank
you for what you say about my essays. I take the opportunity of thanking
you for the pleasure your book on Dryden gave me, and of expressing my
admiration for it.2
I shall be very glad to review your book of poems, and only hope that
the review will not arrive too late to be of any use to you.3 I hope to get it
done within a week or two. I am a very slow writer, and in the pressure of
my affairs I have hardly been able to do any writing at all during the last
two years.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
TSE/IPF

My dear Walpole
I am writing this only to ask you if you will please let me know where I
may write to you? As I have a favour to ask in the form of a testimonial!4
I wish you would come to London sometimes. I have several times wanted
to consult you.
What about James-and-Conrad essay?5
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
1 Mark Van Doren (18941972): US poet and critic; Professor of English at Columbia
University, New York, 192059; literary editor of The Nation (New York), 19248.
2 The Poetry of Dryden (1920), which TSE reviewed in John Dryden, TLS (9 June 1921):
an admirable book . . . which every practitioner of English verse should study.
3 Van Doren, Spring Thunder and Other Poems (1924). TSE sent off his review on 26 Feb.
4 In relation to his appointment at Faber & Gwyer.
5 Walpole never wrote on James or Conrad for C.

to Aldous Huxley cc
Dear Aldous
I was delighted to get your letter of the 19th December and to have at
last a contribution from you; though I still hope that you will write the
one which we discussed.1 This one, however, shall go in as quickly as
possible, I hope in the March number which I am just on the point of
making up.2 No sooner is one finished than another begins: I used to think
that running a Quarterly ought to mean two months leisure and one
months work, but I have found it literally continuous.
I agree with you that one can dispense with almost anything in return for
sunlight, although your picture of Italy in winter makes me wonder where
that part of the year ought to be spent.3 I cannot say that I have any mature
plans, and I console myself at this season by thinking that I should prefer
the summer for accustoming myself to your climate.
I am afraid I have no news for you of any importance. It is true that the
Adelphi group is in some disorder and I gather that Murry is now
producing that periodical without the group of friends who formerly
supported him.4 But you will probably find Sullivan a mine of information
on this subject.5 He promised to come and see me before leaving for Italy
in January, and if he does not do so I will ask you to reproach him for me.
John Franklin, by the way, is Sydney Waterlow, who lunched with me
today and on that occasion broke his usual custom of subsisting entirely
on fruit and omelettes.6 So you were right in believing that there are no
new luminaries in the sky of letters which you have not yet marked.
I am sending you a copy of the new Criterion because I think you will
find it considerably altered since you last saw the review. I think myself that
it is very much better, but you can judge that with a more detached mind
than I or anyone living in London.
1 See AHs story, The Monocle in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926). But presumably TSE is here regretting
the non-appearance of the essay on Wit mentioned in his letter to AH of 14 May 1923.
2 Unidentified.
3 The Huxleys lived in Montici, Florence, from Aug. 1923 until June 1925.
4 In late 1924 there had been dissension among the sponsors of JMMs Adelphi, which was
seen as a vehicle for JMMs views and Katherine Mansfields literary remains. This led to
Koteliansky resigning as business manager.
5 J. W. N. Sullivan (18861937): Irish scientist. A close friend of JMM, he had been an
assistant editor of A. and later wrote Beethoven (1927). In a letter of 25 Jan., AH described
him as a most interesting man and stimulating companion.
6 Sydney Waterlow (18781944), diplomat, reviewed for NS under the pseud. John
Franklin; see Glossary of Names.
573
If you ever come across any new Italian books that interest you, do let
me have a note on them, and let us have your Italian impressions from
time to time. I am really delighted to have this sketch and also to have the
prospect of having your name on the cover at last.
The festive season being thankfully over, Vivien and I send you both our
best wishes for the New Year.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF

[early January? 1925] [London]
Dear Lewis
Im afraid you were right. I looked it up and found Lawrence was just
under 9000 words.1 I do understand your difficulty and hope you
understand mine 15,000 is impossible without special preparation.2 But
we might be able to hold this MS. as a hostage as before. Certain
circumstances which have arisen which make it impossible to say definitely
at the moment: but I should like to see you one afternoon early next week.
Im very disappointed over this. I particularly wanted an article or some
long thing by you this time. I have sent an American publisher named
Boni3 (no longer connected with Liveright) to see you.
About Arch4 You will have something else in the Spring? Well discuss
that when we meet.
Yrs
T. S. E.
1 DHL, Jimmy and the Desperate Woman, for C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924), 1542.
2 Prob. a ref. to The Perfect Action, the 20,000 word MS Lewis left with C. in Dec.
3 TWL was published in the USA by Boni & Liveright (1922). Albert Boni had left the firm
and founded another publishing house with his brother. WL was seeking potential publishers.
4 Prob. Archie, one of WLs many projected books. In a letter to EP (29 Apr. 1925), WL
mentions it being complete and thirty or forty thousand words long. According to
OKeeffe, this lost novel followed the fortunes of a Jewish pupil at Joints school and his
relationship with his father in the East End of London (Some Sort of Genius, 258).

to Messrs. Watson & Austin cc
Dear Sirs,
I have just discovered with great regret that owing to the pressure of
business and absence from town, your letter of the 1st instant has remained
unanswered. I have known Mr Wyndham Lewis for many years. While I
have no knowledge of his financial position, I can assure you that Mr
Lewis is one of the most eminent painters and writers of the day and has
a reputation amongst amateurs of these arts throughout the world.
These facts speak for themselves. As far as I know Mr Lewis should be
a desirable tenant.1 In all dealings that I have had with him I have found
him highly honourable.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
to Messrs. Selfridge & Co. Ltd cc

Dear Sirs,
I have your letter of the 9th instant in reply to mine of the 7th instant.2
I am interested in your explanation but hardly agree with the adjective
which you employ. It was certainly excusable for your messenger to be at
the moment destitute of petty cash; and it would have been excusable also
if you had informed your customer that you had been unable to obtain
The Criterion for her because your messenger was not provided with petty
cash; but it does not appear to me excusable to inform your customer that
The Criterion was out of stock at the publishers when The Criterion was
in stock at the publishers, and when the only reason for your not obtaining
it was that your representative did not have the money to pay for it.
1 WL was evicted from his studio in 44 Holland Street in early 1925 for non-payment of
rent. WL later vented anger about the lateness of TSEs reference on his behalf.
2 Selfridge & Co. Ltd had replied (9 Jan. 1925): We understand that a collector was sent
for the copy, but Messrs. Simpkin Marshall were out of stock at least they told our
messenger so. He then went to your office at Thavies Inn and applied for a copy for Selfridges
but was not supplied as he was unable at that time to pay cash for it; unfortunately, he had
used his petty cash prior to reaching the office. In all the circumstances, especially at a
particularly busy season when the collector was more than ordinarily busy, we think you will
agree that the letter to the customer was more or less excusable.
575
I should suggest, without prejudice, that the substitution of a false
explanation for a true one, whether deliberate or inadvertent, is a fact
demanding explanation, and your letter of the 9th instant leaves your
conduct in this matter more curious than before. Moreover, you have failed
to give us any assurance that on future occasions your messenger will be
provided with sufficient pocket money.
I have dictated the foregoing on the assumption that the statements
contained in your letter of the 9th instant are correct. I would remind you,
however, of my previous observation that neither Mr Cobden-Sanderson
nor any of his staff has any recollection of your representative having
called.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
to E. M. Forster cc
Dear Forster,
I have your letter and I am very glad to hear from you. I wish that people
would write more frequently to express their opinions.1 As for the
Rimbaud, I only glanced through the book myself, but it did not impress
me very favourably. Rimbaud happens to be an author whom I know
pretty well and the translation struck me as bad.2 I find that Flints opinion
of the book is supported by a reviewer in a recent number of the Dial,
whose review is longer and consequently more thoroughly damaging.3 But
unless I hear from you to the contrary, I shall send your letter on to Flint
as he might be interested to reply.4
I do hope you will have something to offer us before long.5
Yours sincerely,
1 On 12 Jan., Forster wrote to protest against F. S. Flints scathing review of Edgell

Rickwords Rimbaud: The Boy and the Poet, in C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925), 32930. Forster said
that the victim was a young writer; and while he knew little of Rimbaud, he found the
book thrilling as a story, sound in psychology, and admirable in shape.
2Acc. to Edward J. H. Greene, TSE said that in his early work Rimbaud had une influence de
plus et plus importante [a more and more important influence] on him; he had read Rimbaud
several times after the influence of Laforgue waned (T. S. Eliot et la France [1951], 63).
3 Lewis Galantire, The Problem of Rimbaud, Dial 78: 1 (Jan. 1925), 549.
4 Forster replied (18 Jan.) that he was an absolute outsider in the matter of French
literature, and didnt want the letter to go directly to Flint. If TSE thought it deserved notice,
he would write to Flint directly.
5 Forster contributed The Novels of Virginia Woolf to NC 4: 2 (Apr. 1926).

The above letter was dictated by Mr Eliot who was taken ill last night. In
his absence I am talking the liberty of signing it on his behalf.
[I. P. Fassett]1

Monday [?19 January 1925] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Mary
Thank you very much for bringing all those beautiful violets and
snowdrops. It was charming of you. I wish I had seen you, but I could not
have uttered a word yesterday as it happened. Tom has not been so well
it is not only influenza, of course! He has been working in a dark airless
basement for the last six months and I think it has quite seriously affected
his health. I am praying that this breakdown will bring our troubles to
an end.
You must have had a fearful time moving into your new house. It
sounded too awful. I am looking forward to seeing the house, but I feel it
cant be as nice as River House, which I shall always regret!
Tom has seen no-one yet he may not. I want to get him away to
the country as quickly as possible, but the doctor does not think he is
ready yet.
With love, and so many thanks from both of us for being so very kind.
Yrs,
V. H. E.

Monday [26 January 1925] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
Dear Conrad
Delighted to have your admirable review.2 Hope you will do Huxley.3
Not yet up to reading stories.4 Sit up a bit every day, but very weak.
1 IPF reviewed Forsters A Passage to India in C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924): Mr Forster is so very clever
what is it that his work lacks? What is it that we miss in Passage to India? Something that
could lift it above the level of Sound Contemporary Fiction where it must inevitably lie (138).
2 Of Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, and Walt Whitman, Criticism, in C. 3: 11
(Apr. 1925), 4658.
3 Aikens review of AHs Those Barren Leaves appeared in the same issue, 44952.
4 On 14 Jan., Aiken offered TSE a very good short story. His book of stories, Bring! Bring!
(1925), was about to be set up, but he would hold it until he heard from TSE.
577
Drs. want to send me away for three weeks when I can get out. So I
might be charmed to make a detour and burst in on you for two days at
Rye (as p.g.) if that mention of a spare bedroom was sincere.1
But I am no use tomorrow.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
Would have asked you to do Richards for us, but Read asked for it long
ago2
Have read you in Nation.3
Shd like to discuss Reads article with you.4
to Aldous Huxley cc
Dear Aldous,
Thank you for your letter of the 19th instant enclosing an essay on
Breughel.5 For several reasons, however, I prefer the previous essay which
has gone to the printers.6 Also, I am rather puzzled by your not mentioning
the fact that there were several Breughels, all of whom are good, and who
are difficult for the ordinary observer to distinguish from each other. No
doubt you know a great deal more about the Breughels than I do, but I was
tremendously interested in their painting ten years ago when I was in
Belgium.7
1 Aiken moved from Winchelsea to Jeakes House, Rye, East Sussex, the previous year.
2 HR reviewed I. A. Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism, in C. 3: 1 (Apr. 1925), 4449.
While sceptical about Richardss frank acceptance of utilitarian or prudential ethics, he called
it an important contribution to the rehabilitation of English criticism perhaps, because of its
sustained scientific nature, the most important contribution yet made. TSE was to take up the
debate with Richards in Literature, Science and Dogma, Dial 82: 3 (Mar. 1927).
3 Aiken reviewed I. A. Richardss book in N&A 36: 17 (24 Jan. 1925), 5856.
4 Aiken wrote, Curse you for printing Read after rejecting my own treatment of that
matter. Referring to HRs Psycho-analysis and the Critic, C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925). Aiken called
HRs article more painstaking than his own but less comprehensive and perceptive.
5 See AH, Breughel in Along the Road: Notes and Essays of a Tourist (1925).
6 This unidentified essay never appeared.
7 The most famous of the family was Pieter Breughel the Elder (c.152569), whose Census
at Bethlehem, Fall of Icarus and Massacre of the Innocents TSE would have seen in
Brussels in 1914. His sons Pieter Breughel the Younger (15641636) and Jan Breughel the
Elder (15681625) were also painters. AH responded (30 Jan.) that there were of course
three considerable Breughels, but that it was only the elder who counts.

It might be suitable for Rickwords magazine1 and for many others.
Considering the fact that both Vivien and I took the trouble to write
very nice letters to you, in the midst of a life in which any sort of
correspondence is almost impossible, your reply of the 19th seems to me
inadequate.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF
to Conrad Aiken pc Huntington

[30? January 1925] [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
Very many thanks indeed.2 I have had a sort of setback and dont know
when I shall be out, and will write again. I have been shuddering over your
stories, which have a terrible frisson.3 How do you do it?
Unable to write, and very sick of myself.
T. S. E.
Look forward to seeing you.

Dear Lewis
I have your letter dated the 30th January. You are certainly entitled to
some explanation of the advertisement in question, and the tone of your
letter seems to call for a clear statement of my attitude in this matter. The
notice of The Perfect Action was to have been followed by a letter to you
which was unfortunately prevented by my illness; from which, as a matter
1 Calendar of Modern Letters: a literary journal (19257), founded by Edgell Rickword,

Douglas Garman and Bertram Higgins. AHs Breughel appeared in 1: 6 (Aug. 1925),
41728.
2 Aiken said he would be glad to review AH, Those Barren Leaves: see C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925).
3 Aiken had sent TSE three stories, Hey, Taxi, The Anniversary, and Bring! Bring! They
came out in Bring! Bring! (1925), reviewed by Edwin Muir in C. 3: 12 (July 1925). According
to Muir, Aiken touched the fringe of a whole section of modern experience, working on
the mass of data about the unconscious which psychoanalysis has discovered.
579
of fact, I have not yet recovered.1 The point is this. You will remember
that I have repeatedly expressed my desire that there should be a
contribution of some kind from you in every number of the Criterion; that
is to say a chronicle and also a review (whenever any books appeared
which you wished to review) in every number and a leading essay or piece
of fiction as well in two numbers out of four. This is more than I care to
take from any other contributor. Apart from the benefits of this regularity
to the review and the benefits (upon which you will of course put your
own valuation) to yourself, I had always in mind the benefit to us
collectively. That is to say, there are as you are quite well aware a number
of people who would be glad to see and to instrument any possible
separation or disagreement between us for their own purposes. Such
separation, or even the report of it, would I believe be harmful not only to
ourselves but to the public good. The last number unfortunately contained
nothing from you except a book review, which, although a valuable piece
of writing and given the first place among the reviews, was not in my mind
sufficient to keep the association before the public mind.2 I therefore
advertised the contribution from you for the next number and gave it the
name which I had. I had proposed to write to you urging you, if you could
not put the contribution into available form for the Criterion, to find or to
write something of a possible length. I think that I made clear to you and
that you understood that with the present resources of the Criterion it was
impossible to publish contributions of this length from anyone
whomsoever. I am quite well aware that you wish to devote the whole of
your attention to the preparation of your books. I think that you ought to
be convinced by this time that I have wished to do everything in my power
to assist in the speedy completion and publication of your principal book.
You will remember that on every occasion on which I have seen you, you
have said that your book would be ready for the publishers within a week
1 On 22 Jan., WL asked IPF whether he could revise The Perfect Action and if it would
appear complete. She replied the following day on behalf of TSE, who was ill, to say WL
could make revisions but they could use only 6,000 words. To TSE on 30 Jan., WL wrote:
You advertised my article as appearing in the forthcoming number of the Criterion but Miss
Fassett tells me you do not intend printing it after all . . . I hope the following statement will
simplify matters. 1) The Perfect Action is no longer available for publication in the
Criterion. I have just sold it to another paper. 2) You have still various fragments of mine,
such as the Lenten Party. These fragments are no longer at your disposal for publication in
the Criterion. He would regard any attempt to publish these pieces as treachery rather than
a harmless trick, or as the inadvertence of a harassed man (Letters of Wyndham Lewis, 149).
The Perfect Action was an earlier title for The Dithyrambic Spectator, later published in
book form as part of The Diabolical Principle and the Dithyrambic Spectator (1931).
2 WLs review of W. H. R. Rivers, Medicine, Magic and Religion, in C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925).

or two, and that I have urged you to finish this book and get it published
as quickly as was possible, and that this has gone on for some months.
Everyone has his own methods of work and no one is entitled to say that
another persons methods are mistaken. But I have felt very strongly that
it would be in your own interest to concentrate on one book at a time and
not plan eight or ten books at once, and I have endeavoured to intimate
this.1 On the other hand you are certainly entitled to respect, and you
certainly have mine, for making every sacrifice to devote yourself to your
main work and not disperse your activity.2 But the dispersing in one
direction seems to me possibly as unwise as a dispersal in another would
be. And I cannot help feeling that it is possible, with organisation, for a
man who is not engaged in any outside business merely for his livelihood
to write a book and at the same time do a certain amount of current
journalism without damage to his work and with advantage to his pocket.
You will remember that I have occasionally mentioned to you American
periodicals which pay well and would be glad to publish pieces of work
from you on the subjects in which you have been interesting yourself. I
have also assured you that, so far as the means of the paper permitted, you
should receive better terms of payment than other contributors. Under
present conditions even the ordinary rates are only made possible by my
taking no salary or other remuneration for running the magazine. I only
mention this fact because my friends seem sometimes to ignore it.
Please do not think that I am pressing upon you, in the manner of one
of our friends whose name I need not mention, a reminder of supposed
services.3 I consider that anything I do is equalised by any support which
you give to the Criterion. Furthermore I am not an individual but an
instrument, and anything I do is in the interest of art and literature and
civilisation, and is not a matter for personal compensation. But in the
circumstances I cannot help feeling that your letter expressed an unjustified
suspiciousness. I am unable to interpret your remark about your fragments
finding their way into other hands than mine in any other way.4
1 WL was working on Archie, Joint and The Man of the World, none of which was finished.
His next published books were The Art of Being Ruled (1926) and The Lion and the Fox
(1927).
2 In an earlier Jan. letter WL wrote: I have quarrelled with almost everybody in order to
get the money and time to write this and other books: and I have really worked very hard.
My gesture, at the moment, may seem a foolish one (people are angry, and in consequence
laugh): But there is an old saying, he laughs best who laughs last.
3 Presumably SS (see TSEs letter of 12 Nov. 1924).
4 On 30 Jan., WL wrote: Should any of these fragments find their way into other hands
than yours . . . I shall regard it as treachery.
581
You say that your letter is not intended to be unfriendly and mine is
certainly not so intended. If you are unable to do any work for the
Criterion for an indefinite period, it will be very much to my
disappointment and regret. I shall be very glad to know for the immediate
future whether you prefer not to write at all or whether you care to
continue the Art Chronicle and reviews for the next number.1 If not, I can
only wait until you have more leisure.
Charles Whibley is leaving England for some time on the 27th February,
so if you want to get in touch with Macmillans I should urge you to
communicate with him as quickly as possible.2
I am still far from recovered from my influenza and my doctors wish
me to go away for several weeks as soon as I have sufficient strength, but
any correspondence from you would be forwarded. And if you feel any
definite grievance in consequence of my behaviour I should be glad if you
would make it clearer.
Yours,
T. S. Eliot
If you cannot review in any way the four books which you have I should
be glad if you would write to my secretary and leave them ready at your
house to be called for. I should of course much prefer to have a short notice
of them from you.

2 February [1925] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Walpole,
This is merely to say that I am very glad that the first visit in my
convalescence was yours, as it cheered me up particularly: and also to
thank you more distinctly than I did at the time for your interest and
encouragement. If a few more people took so practical an interest I should
have no fears for the future of the Criterion or at least of the same paper
under a different name.3
1 Lewis had written two Art Chronicles, for C. 2: 8 (July 1924) and 3: 9 (Oct. 1924). After
his review in C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925) and the present quarrel, WL published only one more piece,
The Values of the Doctrine behind Subjective Art, in NC 6: 1 (July 1927).
2 See WLs letter to CW, Mar. 1925 (Letters of Wyndham Lewis, 1545).
3 Faber proposed that his firm should publish a new quarterly under TSEs editorship.

Of course the new scheme must be kept quite in confidence its all very
harassing. But my health, the doctor tells me, wont stand work in a dark
basement indefinitely, or much longer.1
Will you do the James when you get back?2 And meanwhile enjoy Egypt.
And the testimonial [for TSE] will be as valuable as anyones can be.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot.

4 February [1925] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
My dear Virginia,
It is time that I wrote to thank you for your last letter. I am rather in the
doldrums at present I feel like a shell with no machinery in it, the moment
I try to use my mind at all; its no use, and then up goes the temperature.
And Vivien is worse than I am by far, besides having to suffer now for the
anxiety and strain of the first ten days of my illness. But as for me, I am to
be congratulated rather than condoled with, as this has released me from
the basement for a month.
Anyway, I wish that I could write as charming and perfect letters under
influenza as you do. I dont know whether you are in London. I hope at
Rodmell. Now what we want again! is a cottage, a barn, a stable, or a
shed, or even a bit of land on which a sectional bungalow could be put up
it doesnt matter what, so long as it is in the country, and is cheap. Ever
since we have been without even that miserable place at Fishbourne we
have pined more and more. Its the only way to get out of London
however miserable, we want something of our own.3 So if you hear of
anything, or can find anything . . . . We only want to go and live in the
country, and if Lady R. would only provide a possible salary which is not
to be hoped we should go at once.
1 TSEs offices at Lloyds Bank in Henrietta Street were below ground level. I. A. Richards
visited him there: Within a foot of our heads when we stood were the thick, green glass
squares of the pavement on which hammered all but incessantly the heels of the passers-by.
There was just room for two perches beside the table (T. S. Eliot: The Man and His Work,
ed. Tate, 910).
2 Walpole had been a friend of Henry James, but no such piece on James appeared.
3 The Eliots had abandoned their cottage in Fishbourne the previous summer. VW wrote to
RA on 16 Feb.: every letter I have had from Tom or Vivien lately has reiterated their desire
to have a country cottage and his belief that most of their ill health is due to their not having
one (Woolf, Letters, III, 170).
583
Do let us know as soon as you return, and I hope we shall be fit to see
and be seen I want news of your work and of the Press. I was very pleased
to hear Keyness opinion of the Dryden1 and flattered, but I will wager
you 10/- that Mr Bennett2 sells out first (what an advertisement for the
actual Mr B. by the way).
V sends love.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
Dont lend us Rodmell we want a hovel of our own, not the House of
friends! I hope Leonard has escaped the flu.
from Hugh Walpole ts Houghton

4 February 1925 90 Piccadilly, London w.1
My dear Eliot,
Forgive this typewritten note. I hope the enclosed letter3 is what you
require, it is at any rate absolutely sincere. Do look after your health; if I
may say so without presumption your continued ability to do your work
(critical and literary, not financial) is of great importance to a great many
of us. You know that I will do anything in the world I can to help.
Yours ever,
Hugh Walpole
4
Vita Nicolson was talking much of you yesterday. I think shed help later
if needed.

4 February [1925]5 The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
My dear Walpole
Your letter is absolutely perfect for my purposes. It is so fine that I could
hardly believe it was about myself. It is exactly what is wanted, and, a few
1 HJD was published in the Hogarth Essays series the previous Oct.
2 VWs Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown, the first of the Hogarth Essays.
3 Hugh Walpoles letter of 4 Feb. is quoted in full in GCFs memorandum, Proposed
publication of a Quarterly Review, 5 Apr. 1925, below.
4 Vita Sackville West (18921962), English poet and novelist, married in 1913 the diplomat
and writer Harold Nicolson (18861968).
5 Misdated 3 Feb.

more, even half as enthusiastic, would make this a certainty. I cannot tell
you how grateful I am for all your support including this letter. Youve
been a tremendous help to me. Thank you again with all my heart.
Of course I want as many as I can get but I shall not get any to delight
me so much as this, or to do me so much good.
I hope to see you as soon as you return? Please let me know. And bon
voyage.
Yours ever
T. S. Eliot
I dont think I have ever met Vita Nicolson but have often heard of her.
My only justification for asking you the following favour is the
paradoxical but practical reason that you have always been so kind to me
in the past and have given me so much help and encouragement with the
Criterion. In connection with a project about which the projectors wish me
at present to give no details, but the nature of which will be sufficiently
manifest, I should be extremely grateful if you could let me have some sort
of letter stating anything favourable that you can honestly say of my
abilities as an editor so far as they are visible to you. I do not so much
need reference to anything I have done in verse or criticism, but rather to
my capacity for running a magazine, business sense as an editor, and
catholicity and discrimination in selection and composition of a review.
For the purposes in question I do not wish to emphasise the appeal to a
limited or exclusively intellectual audience, but if possible to a union of
high standards with breadth of appeal.
This project, if it comes off, may improve my situation: I am reaching the
point when it will no longer be possible for me to continue to be an editor
and at the same time earn my living in the city. I am just recovering from
a very severe attack of influenza and breakdown which will have kept me
away from work for at least two months and my strength is no longer
what it once was. I have been running the Criterion without remuneration
and this position cannot very long be maintained.
I should feel distressed if this request embarrassed you, and I do not
want to ask you for anything more than you can easily say. But I have
ascertained that a word from you, together with others which I have
585
received or shall receive, is one that would impress the group of people
concerned. Of course for the present this project is wholly confidential and
I have only mentioned it to the people whose testimonials I have asked for
and particularly desire.
I hope, in any case, that you will forgive this importunity.
I am
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]

Dear Lewis,
As I am unable to attend to much correspondence at present indeed my
last letter to you was much the longest that I have yet written your letter
of the 4th instant has remained unanswered for a week. I am sorry to find
that your letter does not appear to me to deal satisfactorily with the points
that I raised and I am sorry that your renewed assertion that you have no
wish to be on anything but friendly terms is not embodied in a more
friendly letter. You say that in the circumstances you do not care to
continue your Art Chronicle, but you do not specify what the
circumstances are, and it is not clear whether you imply any other reasons
except lack of time, nor do I know what you mean by suggesting that I
understand better than you do yourself why you have been compelled to
the slight readjustment which seems to mean declining to contribute
regularly to the Criterion. I had certainly supposed that you were in
contact with certain persons who would be pleased to find that you were
no longer a contributor to the Criterion. Your denial of this fact leaves
nothing more to be said.
You give no reason for wishing to have your name omitted from reviews.
Your wish shall on this occasion be respected unless you prefer not to do
the reviews at all, in which case I should be obliged for the return of the
books. But I cannot understand your motive and the fact that you state
none seems in itself an indication that you do not wish to be closely
associated with myself or the other reviewers in the Criterion.
The tone of your two letters strongly suggests a definite grudge which
you have not disclaimed. If you prefer to keep your reasons to yourself

and merely adopt a mysterious and truculent manner, there is nothing more
to be said.
Yours etcetera,
T. S. Eliot

My dear Read,
The secretary has just shown me your letter of the 28th January.1 I am
very grateful to you indeed. As a matter of fact the material for the number
was already in hand and arranged except for the reviews to come in which
is a simple matter. So I do not think that there will be more than I can do
or direct. But I am particularly grateful because I have often thought that
in case of emergency I might want to call upon you, and now I feel that I
can do so.
I should have gone to the country but my temperature is still very
irregular and I am very weak. If I am in town and about before I return to
work I shall hope to seek you out and have a leisurely meeting.
I am looking forward to reading your review of Richards.2 If you dont
want the copy of Wards book I should be glad to see it, but there is no
hurry because at present I can read very little.
With very grateful thanks,
Yours ever,
T. S. E.

My dear Conrad,
Thank you very much for the review of Huxley which is brilliant,
eminently just, and covers the ground perfectly.3 I have been meaning to
1 Worried that TSEs illness might delay publication of C., HR offered to help.
2 HR reviewed I. A. Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism, and Stephen Ward, Ethics:
An Historical Introduction, in C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925).
3 Conrad Aiken, rev. of Aldous Huxley, Those Barren Leaves, C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925). Though
Aiken was wary of AHs incessantly frivolous satire, blending the ingenious morbidezza of the
nineties with the very latest fashions . . . from Paris and Vienna, he thought Those Barren
Leaves AHs best work, and that it marked the sharpest single advance that he has made.
587
write to you about your stories. I should like very much to use Hey, Taxi!,
but I find that it will be impossible to get it in until October. The last
number was so big and expensive that the next one must be smaller and
I am having to postpone several contributions which should have gone in
because of the length of time I have had them. In June I must publish two
long stories, one by D. H. Lawrence, which I cannot afford to postpone
because of the complication of American rights.1 Will you let me know if
there is any chance of October not being too late, as I should like to use it.
I select this one not only because I like it but because the others, if
published separately, would be more difficult for the English public to
understand. I do hope you will let me use this and should like to know
soon.2
It does not look as if I should be able to pay my long looked-forward-
to visit to you for some time. I am still too variable in temperature to risk
visits, my wife has broken down as the result of the long strain, and finally
our servant seems to be on the verge of bronchitis. So as there is not much
time remaining, I shall probably have to cancel all my visits, except
possibly a short one to Cambridge which is principally a matter of
business.3 But I hope it may be possible for me to run down for a weekend
with you either at the end of my leave or shortly after, if that is convenient.
It seems to me that we have not had a proper conversation for ten years.4
Yours ever,
T. S. E.
TSE/IPF
<Your card just arrived. Have written to printers to return MS. to you.
Send it back soon.>

16 February [1925] The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Read,
Thank you again, for your last letter. It gave me much pleasure.
1 DHL, The Woman Who Rode Away I, and JJ, Fragment of an Unpublished Work (an
extract from what would become Finnegans Wake) appeared in C. 3: 12 (July 1925).
2 Aikens story was published in Bring! Bring! (1925), too early for publication in C.
3 See letter to JMM, 20 Feb.
4 Aiken recalled that during the winter of 19212 he and TSE lunched together two or
three times a week (T. S. Eliot: The Man and His Work, 196).

I have read some of the chapters of Richards book,1 but cannot read
very much yet. I found it hard going; it is badly organised, and I find the
uncoordinated short chapters very bothering. I should like to talk or write
to you about it again later. I have the same racial prejudice myself; and I
am always inclined to suspect the racial envy and jealousy which makes
that people inclined to bolshevism in some form (not always political)
though I suspect something of this destructive instinct in Disraeli, in spite
of the conventional Tory exaltation of him.2
Many thanks again.
Yours ever,
T. S. E.

My dear Mary
I have had in mind to drop you a line for some time, but even cutting it
down to the minimum I have had a certain amount of correspondence to
deal with in one way or another each day, and quite enough of this business
of family letter writing to exhaust ones energy. I am getting on, except for
extreme feebleness of body and spirit. Vivien has been very ill much iller
than she realised or yet realises. Yesterday she seemed better, today I am
not so sure, and it will be a long time before we see daylight. Meanwhile
keep me in your mind as we do you.
Affectionately
Tom.
1 TSE later described Principles of Literary Criticism, by I. A. Richards (1924), as a

milestone, though not an altogether satisfactory one. Richards had difficult things to say
but had not wholly mastered the art of saying them (Literature, Science, and Dogma, Dial
82: 3 [Mar. 1927], 239).
2 HRs letter appears to be missing. In his Disraeli, F. W. Bain argued that Disraeli was
the last great Tory leader: he had a passionate belief in his own race; and in all his life, in
all his works, he stood up for the Jews, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924).
589
from Bruce Richmond ms Valerie Eliot
20 February 1925 The Times, Printing House Square,
London e.c.4
I have read The Criterion regularly, and have great pleasure in bearing
testimony to the qualities shewn by its Editor. Mr Eliot has succeeded in
impressing upon the paper as a whole the stamp of his own taste and
intellectual keenness which, in a paper consisting mainly of signed
contributions from writers who have their own firmly defined points of
view, is difficult to do. He obviously has a full sense of the value of variety.
For the uniformity of quality in The Criterion was never allowed to
become monotony either of subject-matter or of critical reaction. Mr
Eliot found a place both for young new writers and for authors of
established reputation. Technical literary and artistic criticism has been
well balanced by historical & philosophical studies; and The Criterion has
escaped the peril of making its readers feel that they have entered into a
library. Mr Eliot has shown particularly in his choice of fiction that his
sympathy is wide: he has published stories which would be read with
pleasure by the general public and has insisted only on a high level of
workmanship as the necessary qualification for admission to The
Criterion. It is reasonable to predict that the broadening of interest which
has been a marked feature in the course of The Criterion would increase
if he were called on to direct a paper of a less severely critical type. Though
one would feel confident that, whatever variety and enlargement of
interests he came to shew, he would retain as an editor the intellectual
keenness as well as the integrity and solidarity of judgment which have
been remarkable from his earliest days of writing.

Dear Ottoline
I have a sure conviction that I offended you. I am not sure in what way,
but I know it is so. I find (and Vivien finds) such silent estrangement
unendurable. Will you not write and frankly? Because I have never had
any desire or intention to hurt you in any way. This is much on my mind.
We have been very ill. I am still almost confined to the house, after six
weeks of influenza, and it will be several weeks more before I can take up
any work. I cannot read more than a few minutes and only write a few

necessary notes. Some part of my strength, I know, has left me forever.
Vivien collapsed just a fortnight ago my illness coming on top of a very
hard and worrying winter of great strain and anxiety. She simply got out
of bed and fell down both exhaustion of body and spirit like two years
ago. Yesterday I thought she was better; today I am not sure. Even a few
minutes conversation sends her temperature up.
Affectionately
Tom.
I should like to know how you are.1

Dear John
I do indeed appreciate your kindness in suggesting me for the Lectures
at Cambridge.2 I think it likely almost certain that I should accept. 200
would make a vast just all the difference to my inclination to jump out
into the world this year and the appointment is very attractive.
Meanwhile could you let me know the terms and conditions i.e. subject
of lectures, expenses /whether one is put up at Trinity, whether fares paid
etc and anything else whether it is definitely during the winter term?
Yes, I think I should accept. How soon would the offer be made, if at all?
And in any case, I think it very kind of you <a very feeble expression.>
I should want to think a little, but I believe I should accept. It would get
one through the first year.
I want to see you again before long.
Tom
1 Acc. to her biographer, OM was depressed because she and her husband had temporarily
moved out of Garsington into Black Hall in Oxford, which she hated. Her plan to take a
house in St Leonards Terrace in London also fell through in Feb. due to the influence of
Logan Pearsall Smith and Alys Russell (Miranda Seymour, Life on the Grand Scale, 339).
2 The Clark Lectures were inaugurated in 1884, with an endowment of 300 per year by a
Fellow of Trinity College, William George Clark (182178). JMM gave lectures on Keats and
Shakespeare (19245): published as Keats and Shakespeare (1925), and reviewed by Orlo
Williams in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 1935. It was JMM, the vocal apologist for Romanticism,
who nominated TSE, the proponent of Classicism, as his successor. The decision was the
responsibility of Trinity College Council, who initially nominated one of their own Fellows,
A. E. Housman, but ultimately opted for TSE.
591
<The incoherence of this letter shows the state of my mind.> V. is rather
weaker again, after a bad night. She sends a message will you keep her
in your thoughts as much as possible, as she feels that does her good. She
is feeling dreadfully ill and in extremity of body.
You must have realised that your proposal of my name, and the hope of
this job, would come as a ray of hope just at the blackest moment in my
life. I think there is no doubt I should accept.

[22? February 1925] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear John
Your second letter has just arrived. The answers are simple:
1. I should accept.
2. The subject you suggest was of course an intuition on your part.
What I am aching to do <if acceptable> is to take the 17th C.
metaphysicals (not only the poets, but the Cambridge platonists) and
compare and contrast them with Dante and his school (Guido, Cino etc)
and this wd be a big job and primarily for the hypothetical. What you
say merely convinces me that I want to do this.1
And now I am inclined to retract my views about friendship. Other
people have offered things, gifts, but no one, except you, has ever come
with them exactly at the right moment. What is this except friendship?
You came once with the Athenaeum and I have since felt that this was a
gran rifiuto2 on my part, and that somehow, if we had been working
together on it, we might have pulled it through and made things different,
and that not at all out of vanity but, if you like, a superstition.3 It was the
idea of working with and under you. Anyway, I shant make that mistake
again.
1 This is TSEs first account of the scope of the Clark lectures, published as The Varieties of
Metaphysical Poetry (VMP), ed. R. Schuchard (1993).
2 The great refusal. Among the shades in the vestibule of Hell, Dante recognises colui / che
fece per viltade il gran rifiuto [he who in his cowardice made the great refusal],
Inf., 3: 5960). This is generally taken to be a reference to Pope Celestino V.
3 On 6 Apr. 1919, TSE told HWE that JMM had invited him to be his assistant editor at
500. He turned it down because it was financially risky and would have left him less
energy for original work. On 30 June 1922, TSE told RA he rejected JMMs offer on his own
instinct and against VHEs advice, and it had proved correct. A. foundered two years after
JMM took over.

Vivien said a couple of months ago (and has said several times) Murry
was always your luck. I wish I might be yours. I have never known you to
do or say anything against me. What I think now is: What can I ever do
for Murry?
This is a symbolic event. It has just saved Vivien at this lowest moment
and perhaps will have given her just what will save her life. I cannot
explain how your two letters have affected her.
T.
I am always likely to be accessible by telephone here after 2 p.m. I am not
likely to be out.
to John Middleton Murry pc Northwestern

[Postmark 24 February 1925]
Thank you with all my heart. This would make all the difference to me. V.s
bronchitis very bad today. In haste.
T. S. E.
Will write later.

[late February 1925] [London]
Dear John
I have done a damned and foolish thing. I was seeing Charles Whibley
this week and I went and told him the whole thing about the Trinity
Lectures I suppose because I was so pleased about it, or I dont know
why. I am beginning to feel very much like Vivien that from you I get good,
and am becoming superstitious about it.
She (V.) hates Whibley and believes him to be the devil, although she
has never so much as seen him.1 I do hope I havent done anything stupid
1 VHEs dislike of CW may possibly be explained, at least in part, by a recollection by Enid

Faber: I dont know what she really felt for Tom. One day she said to me What would you
feel like if you were told you must not have any children and described how Charles Whibley
had warned her that financially, and so as to leave Tom freer[,] she must wait. She said that
Toms work had always been put first. But I do not know that that sentiment was any more
real than her usual one which was I think it must be dreadful to have children to think that
you might pass on something of yourself (Recollections of Vivienne Eliot, 10 Nov. 1950).
593
or to impede this thing which I believe to be the path leading out of the
wilderness we are now stuck in.
V. is very slowly picking up again, but I dont think she would ever do
that without your thoughts.
Tom.

[late February 1925] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear John
Thank you for your letter. I am very sorry (and rather superstitious) at
having introduced the matter to another person, though it is only fair to
say that I dont think Whibley would crab me. But it would have been only
right and decent as well as prudent to have asked you before mentioning
it to him.
I once met Q-Couch1 at lunch at Whibleys in Cambridge. I dont know
that that affects the matter one way or the other. Whibley once suggested
to me a year or so ago that I might at some time be put up for the
Clark, but it was very indefinite.
I shant mention it to anyone else without speaking to you first, and I
dont know of anyone I should be likely to. I understand how much trouble
you are taking. The suspense and the issue are so great that I wonder, in
my present state, whether I shall have the mind left to prepare the lectures,
if I get it.
I am trying to see B. L. R.2 next week, but about quite a different matter.
Gratefully
Yrs ever
T. S. E.
1 Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (18631944): King Edward VII Professor of English Literature
at Cambridge 191244, and like CW a Fellow of Jesus College. He was editor of The Oxford
Book of English Verse, 12501900 (1900).
2 Bruce Richmond, editor of TLS. This was in connection with TSEs negotiation with Faber.

to Lucia Joyce1 cc
Dear Miss Joyce,
Thank you very much for your letter as we have been anxious for news
of your fathers health.2 I am very sorry to hear that he has been having
such acute trouble and that the physicians have not yet finished with him,
but I sincerely hope that a few weeks will see him on the road to recovery.
Please give our sympathy to him and to your mother and tell them that we
have constantly thought and talked about your anxieties.
I am delighted to hear that I may soon have some of his work to publish.
Will you tell him that I had refrained from bothering him but had been
constantly hoping to hear. I should like to have the manuscript as soon as
possible for the June number, as the April number has already gone to
press.3 Perhaps he will be so kind as to prepare it immediately he is able
to work again so that I can send it to the printers at once and allow him
plenty of time to deal with the proof.4
I should be very grateful for any further news of your father after he
returns from the clinic.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Bonamy Dobre ts Brotherton

26 February 1925 The Criterion,
Dear Dobre,
I am still kept to the house owing to this vile weather but I hope that you
will be able to see me before you leave this country. I certainly expect to
be about some time early next month and hope that you will drop me a line
1 Lucia Anna Joyce (190782): JJs only daughter. She was to be diagnosed as suffering
from hebephrenic schizophrenia in 1932, and spent her last thirty years in the care of St
Andrews Hospital, Northampton.
2 Lucia reported that her father had just returned from the clinique des yeux after an
attack of episcleritis. He was due to return for a final operation on the left eye.
3 JJ said that TSE can have the piece for The Criterion at three or four days notice.
Fragment of an Unpublished Work was published in C. 3: 12 (July 1925).
4 Lucia said JJ hoped to revise the proof very carefully before he leaves Paris about the
middle of next month.
595
to let me know when you are in London as I understood from my secretary
that you would be here about that time.
Let me express my appreciation of your book on Restoration Drama
which is quite the best thing of its sort that I have seen. I have kept it in
order to do an adequate review of it for the Criterion, but owing to my
misfortunes I am afraid that I shall not be able to deal with it until the
June number.1
Will you also let me know whether you still hold yourself responsible for
the manuscripts of A. J. C. Brown. I have only recently looked them over,
and while I think that there is some meat in them, I dont think that he has
yet arrived at enough individuality for our uses. If you could let me know
about this or drop a line to my secretary at 23 Adelphi Terrace House
I should be grateful.
Yours sincerely,
T. S. Eliot
to Mark Van Doren ts Butler

26 February 1925 The Criterion,
Dear Mr Van Doren,
In fulfilment of my promise I am enclosing a review of your book of
poems.2 The delay is explained by the fact that the reading of the book
and writing the notice have been one of my first occupations during
convalescence after a long illness. I feel that my review fails to express the
pleasure which your book gave me, but I was tempted by the fact that it
proved such an excellent instance of a thesis. There is very little good verse
in America of the kind that you write, and I sincerely hope that you will
be able to let us have much more.
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
1 BDs Restoration Comedy 16601720 (1925) was reviewed by RA in NC 4: 2 (Apr. 1926).

2 TSEs review of Mark Van Doren, Spring Thunder and Other Poems (New York, 1924)
Why Rural Verse? came out in the Nation (NY), 120 (15 Apr. 1925), 432. I enjoy Mr
Van Dorens poems in the same way, I think, that English readers enjoy the poetry of Mr De
la Mare and Mr Blunden. I believe that it is at least of the same excellence . . . [P]oetry like
that of Mr Robert Frost and that of Mr Van Doren is a valuable antidote to the Manhattan
brilliance and often sham originality by which American poetry has lately come to be known.

PS If the allusions to Jews are undesirable you may omit them.1
TSE/IPF

[early March 1925] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Lewis
My apology was for the one point which seemed to me to require an
apology. For the rest, it is a pity that we have not a higher opinion of each
others characters, apart from the intelligences, as to which, I think, we
have both formed an opinion which no dissensions can affect.
Whibley is in the Mediterranean with Lord Brabourne. He told me the
day before he left that he could not be reached by letter, as he was on The
Arcadian the whole time, and that he was taking his holiday so that no
correspondence could reach him. He expects to be back about April 1st
so I should write again to Broomhill House I should ask Macmillans to
send him the MSS. I think you might publish the book in five volumes if
necessary.2 I know another (new) publisher who might consider at least a
part of it.3
Yours sincerely
T. S. E.
1 TSE observed in his review: Racial migrations and the economic conditions of modern life
have had one consequence which, among so many others, has been neglected. The universal
and rapid growth of the reading public has produced a variety of cultures existing side by side
in the same village, in the same street, exhibiting differences even between members of the
same family . . . Moreover, literature has partly for economic reasons, i.e., the necessity for
grinding journalistic axes tended to concentrate its activities in a few international capitals.
There it becomes occupied chiefly with metropolitan emotions and sensations. And the
metropolitan public, composed of various races and various social origins, has in common
only these metropolitan feelings and emotions. Here too the metic plays a large part; for the
metic, like the Jew, can only thoroughly naturalize himself in cities . . . I have no solution to
offer for the problems of modern life. But . . . it is a good thing that rural verse should be
written.
2 On 29 Apr., WL told EP he was dividing up his 500,000-word book The Man of the World
into a series of shorter works: one on Shakespeare, The Lion and the Fox (published in 1927),
one on contemporary sensibility called Sub Persona Infantis, one on exoliti & sex
transformation called The Shaman, and others entitled The Politics of Personality, The
Politics of Philistia and The Strategy of Defeat. WL would send them to Robert McAlmon
of Contact Press (see Pound/Lewis, 1425).
3 The Scientific Press, shortly to become Faber & Gwyer.
597
Sunday [8? March 1925] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
My dear Virginia,
If you did see the cottage at Ringmer,1 I shall be glad to know, but in the
present circumstances I shall rather be distressed to think that you should
have taken that trouble. For at the moment I have no time even to think
of houses. For the last three days Vivien has been in such agony as I have
never seen, with the most terrific rheumatism all over her body. It came on
quite suddenly, with no apparent cause, just as she was beginning to show
signs of real progress. The doctor calls it rheumatism, but says that it is a
most uncommon and peculiar variety, and she admits that she has never
seen a case like it. She has hardly slept for three nights, and during the day
also is in the greatest pain, almost delirious, so that it has seemed at times
that she would simply expire from exhaustion.
So life is simply from minute to minute of horror. This is only to give you
our news and explain any subsequent silence. The anxiety is terrible.
I recognised your imagination in the Times propos of unicorns and
jewellers.2 If it was not you, who else could it possibly have been?
Yours ever,
T. S. E.

[9 March 1925] [London]
My dear Eliot
I have been thinking over our conversation on Thursday, and am sending
you the results; they may perhaps help you in formulating whatever
proposal you ultimately make to us.3
It seems clear that the idea of a monthly must be abandoned. The market
is glutted with them, and however good a new monthly was it would find
1 Ringmer is a village in East Sussex. VW was helping the Eliots to look for a country
retreat.
2 Notes on an Elizabethan Play, TLS (5 Mar. 1925), 1456. All TLS articles were
anonymous, but TSE was right to identify this as by VW: it was reprinted in The Common
Reader (1925). Comparing Elizabethan drama and the modern novel, VW wrote: Thus, in
spite of dullness, bombast, rhetoric, and confusion, we still read the lesser Elizabethans, still
find ourselves adventuring in the land of the jeweller and the unicorn.
3 GCF noted in his diary, 5 Mar.: Eliot lunched with me at the Club. He now proposes a
Quarterly, & we talked till very late (Faber Archive).

it very difficult indeed to make its way. The idea of publishing a quarterly
was, when you broached it to me, new to my mind, but there is a good deal
to be said for it. There is an obvious gap, at present filled, I think solely,
by The Criterion.
What are the chances of a new quarterly, and what sort of character
must it have? I should not think it worthwhile publishing such a review if
its circulation is going to be limited to 1000. I have not the least idea what
the circulations of the present Quarterly Review and Edinburgh Review
are not, I should imagine, very wide. But they are, it must be admitted,
on the whole dull and heavy stuff; they seem, in their very nature, to cater
for clubs rather than for the fire-side at home. They are almost entirely
reviews, they do not give an opening, and I think never have given an
opening, for creative or imaginative work, or indeed anything except full-
length criticisms of history, literature, science, current politics and the like.
This points to the gap which has got to be filled. There is a limit to the
amount of criticism which one can read, even though it be very good,
without a dulling of interest. But of the art itself which is the food of
criticism one can never have enough, so long as it is genuine and fresh. It
is to such art that a new quarterly must try to give a place. The attempt is,
to some extent, being made in the better class monthly magazines, but one
of the troubles is that it is made on too small a scale, the articles and the
stories are too short to satisfy ones appetite. I do not mean, of course, that
true criticism should be excluded from the ideal quarterly; let the
proportions be about half and half. Of course, there is a sense in which art
and criticism meet and are one, still, for journalistic purposes, it is right to
make the distinction.
On the whole my readings of the Criterion have left me with a somewhat
unsatisfied feeling. There has been a tendency to shortness in the items of
the collection, and some of the long ones have been very obscure. That is,
I think, to have things rather the wrong way round; the obscure articles,
stories or poems should be brief. Another element in my judgment of the
Criterion has been a faint feeling of being led through a somewhat exotic
country. The ideal quarterly would have to stand a little more obviously on
firm ground. When I get to this point in my reflections I begin at once to
see the danger that in re-acting from what Robertson, I think quite rightly,
called the exotic, one will plunge into what is merely dull and
commonplace. I dare say if I were to edit such a Review myself that is what
would happen. If you were to edit it I think you would avoid that danger
and that is why I am tempted to insist rather that in scheming out your
paper you will have to take more account of the average man than you
599
have done in editing the Criterion. Would this mean losing the bulk of the
Criterions circulation?
There is, however, no point in publishing a paper unless it is going to be
unique, a leader of critical thought and of literary expression and,
consequently, in some respects, irritating to the conservative mind. It is no
good thinking of making it merely popular. If we did that there would be
no point in approaching it from the publishers point of view. I should
want to use the Review first and foremost as a stimulus to young writers,
so that having helped them to find their souls in print we should have a
succession of the right sort to go on from the writing of articles and stories
to the writing of books. One would like to repeat, in a healthier
atmosphere and with stronger ideals, the kind of work that John Lane did
with the Yellow Book.1
That is where the publisher comes in in this business.
So far, in talking together, we have both rather skirted round what is
perhaps the really vital point, and that is the relation of the paper to the
book publishing part of the show. Is it your idea that both are to fit in to
each other with extreme nicety and that a rigid test is to be applied to every
book, those which did not definitely tune in with the paper being refused
publication? Something of this sort was, I think, in your mind to begin
with when you spoke of the continental system. Personally I should not
care to go so far as that. I do not think that it is at all necessary for an
English publishing business to restrict itself in that kind of way. It is only
necessary if the ideal set up is rigid, dogmatic, partial, of the school rather
than of the people. That is not the natural English way, and when it is
attempted in England something very limited and temporary results. Of
course it may be true that there are times when the artistic instinct can
only be roused by the weapon of a new dogma, but I cannot think that that
is the case today. We have had nothing but a succession of attempts at new
dogmas, and to add another would be to court obscurity. To my way of
thinking what is wanted is, if anything so definite is wanted, the re-
statement of the old eternal principles of Art which the new dogmatists
have now, for many years, been trying to undermine. But more than a re-
statement, perhaps, is wanted the active, continuous combination of the
young men under the unifying principle not of a new dogma, but of a
personality, and if our scheme comes to anything it is you who will supply
that. The result would be nothing rigid, exclusive or artificial in the bad
1 John Lane (18541925) initially set up a London bookshop in partnership with Charles
Elkin Mathews; their imprint, The Bodley Head (founded 1887), put out the Yellow Book,
18947.

sense of the word; but something organic, catholic, like Shakespeares
laugh in Merediths Sonnet, Broad as ten thousand beeves at pasture.1
As for the relationship between the paper so conditioned and the book
publishing business, growing up side by side with it, that I think must be
left to make itself. After all, a publisher is not either a preacher or a
philosopher; he is a tradesman, and if he picks and chooses too much and
gives the public nothing but what a rigid aesthetic theory thinks it ought
to have, he ceases to be a tradesman and becomes a propagandist. I want
to avoid deceiving myself with false logic; and I must admit that one has
to draw the line somewhere. I do not want to publish anything that seems
to me worthless or decadent or positively bad. So that one must apply
some kind of criterion. The point which I am labouring to get at is this,
that the criterion should be not a set of pre-conceived judgments, but the
whole of ones intellectual life; but even now I fail to express myself very
clearly, and must rely on your critical intuition of what is in my mind.
The Publisher must be much more of an opportunist than the Editor, at
any rate to begin with. In order to get going at all one may have to publish
books which one would send elsewhere later on. At any rate I do set this
standard that whatever we publish shall have some virtue in it, even though
it may not be of the very first order. My tentative suggestion that, if we
entered into an alliance for the publication of a quarterly magazine or
review, you might join us as a Director, would go a long way towards
establishing the kind of organic connection between the paper and the
books which I should hope to see grow up.
To go now to the question of finance. I should not like to commit the
business to a probable loss of more than, say, 750 a year on the suggested
paper, though we might perhaps be willing to spend some additional sums
on preliminary advertisement, and I should certainly hope to see my way
through the initial two or three years to such a circulation as would enable
the paper to be run for a small profit. We shall have, therefore, to go very
carefully into the costs of production, into the question of size, into the
question of price and of advertising. On all these points I hope you will be
able to give me fairly detailed information.
One thing more before I close. I want to say again, as I have said once
or twice already, that once the thing is launched I should withhold criticism
unless it was asked for, and put full confidence in you. The man who is
actually steering the ship has to take into account all sorts of things which
1 George Meredith, The Spirit of Shakespeare: Thence had he the laugh / We feel is thine:
broad as ten thousand beeves / At pasture.
601
the passengers know nothing about; but this being so I feel it to be essential
that we should thoroughly understand what is at the back of each others
minds before we commit ourselves to the general undertaking; hence the
length and, I am afraid, obscurity of this letter.
Yours sincerely,
[Geoffrey C. Faber]

[Postmark 10 March 1925] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Thank you very much for the list of houses, which came at a most
opportune moment, which I shall probably make use of. I cannot say more
now but will write again when I have seen the doctor.
Love from us both.
T.

Many thanks for sending Ward.1 I will let you know as soon as I am
about have much to discuss with you. Do you think you could prepare
those notes of Hulme, with your commentary, soon?2 Fernandez (to whom
I sent a copy of Speculations) has become very excited, and is writing an
essay on him.3 We might have a Hulme number?4 Will reply more
ceremoniously about G. W.5
Yours always
T. S. E.
1 HRs review of Stephen Ward, Ethics, for C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925), 4449.

2 See T. E. Hulme, Notes on Language and Style (ed. by HR), C. 3: 12 (July 1925), 48497.
These notes had been excluded from Speculations (1923) for economic reasons, and because
of the illegibility of the script.
3 No essay by Fernandez on Hulme appeared in C.
4 A special issue on Hulme never came to pass.
5 On 8 Mar., HR enclosed a letter and poem by Grant Watson, saying it would make it
easier for him to reply that he had shown them to TSE but that etc. . . .

to E. R. Curtius ms Bonn
My dear Curtius,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. I will see that the January
and April numbers are sent to you.
By the way, Fernandez (whom I like, and you would like, very much, he
is one of the most intelligent of that group) has written an essay in the
February Nouvelle Revue Franaise on my prose, which I like very much.1
But I attach more value to my verse.
May I send you either Miss Westons book or the one volume Golden
Bough of Frazer?2 The complete Golden Bough is quite beyond my means
to possess ten or twelve expensive volumes.
At present, my wife is very ill, so I have only leisure to send you my
greetings and continued thoughts. How I wish we might meet! I hope to
find a publisher here for one of your books. It is deplorable that your work
is not better known in England.3
Yours ever sincerely
in friendship
T. S. Eliot.
1 Ramn Fernandez, Le Classicisme de T. S. Eliot, NRF 137 (1 Feb. 1925), 24651.

Fernandez began by saying: En un temps o le sentimentalisme, vainement combattu,
triomphe encore sous des dguisements trompeurs, le pote amricain T. S. Eliot nous propose
un classicisme svre, sain, authentique que les Franais ne mditeront pas sans fruit [In a
time when sentimentalism, combated in vain, still triumphs under deceptive disguises, the
American poet T. S. Eliot proposes a severe, healthy, authentic classicism which the French
might fruitfully reflect upon]. He described TSE as ni un pote critique, ni un critique pote:
il est un pote qui analyse latmosphre pour la purifier [neither a poet critic nor a critic poet:
he is a poet who analyses the atmosphere to purify it]. He praised the ardour and intellectual
precision of his accounts of Aristotle and Dante, affirmed his reading of Hamlet and, while
comparing him to French writers like Lasserre and Benda, noted his prcision presque
angoissante [almost disturbing precision]. He alluded too to TSEs Bostonian family
background of lawyers and clergymen, and the detestation of his familys belief in the
transcendental atheism of Emerson.
2 In his Notes to TWL (1923), TSE acknowledged: Not only the title, but the plan and a
good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Jessie L. Westons book
on the Grail legend: From Ritual to Romance. In addition, he acknowledged being indebted
in general to Sir James George Frazers The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion
(13 vols, 1890): the abridged, one-volume edition appeared in 1922. Curtiuss German
translation of the poem, Das wste Land, was to come out in Neue Schweizer Rundschau
(Apr. 1927).
3 It took some time for Curtiuss works to be translated: among the first were The
Civilisation of France, trans. Olive Wyon (1930), and European Literature and the Latin
Middle Ages, trans. W. R. Trask (1953).
603
to Bonamy Dobre ts Brotherton
Dear Dobre,
Thank you for your letter. I still find myself unable to make any
engagements because, although I am myself practically recovered, though
very weak, my wife is so ill as to need exclusive attention. I not only cannot
ask anyone here at present, but cannot even promise to be able to go out.
I will keep your letter in front of me and will communicate with you at the
Savile Club if I find there is any chance of our meeting. I should very much
like to see you before you leave England.1
I hope that you never suffer from rheumatism and neuralgia, as I have
been [sc. seen] in my wifes case2 that the pain can be so great as almost to
lead to delirium, and I have thought at moments that she would die of
pure exhaustion. But the doctor says this is a very uncommon and peculiar
case.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
I want you to send me something, or suggest a subject, for an essay for the
Criterion.
to Mary Hutchinson ts Texas

My dear Mary,
I should have written to you sooner after sending you my card [of 10
March], but Vivien has been so very ill that there has been no time for
anything else. She had been making progress, but for several days and
nights has had such a fearful attack of what at first appeared to be
rheumatism and neuralgia that I have never seen any human being in such
agony. She has had practically no sleep for three nights and although she
is having treatment continuously from her doctor, there seems to be
nothing in the world that will stop the pain. The doctor says that she has
never seen such a case and that it is a most uncommon thing; the nearest
analogy appears to be rheumatism and neuralgia but this is very much
more severe and continuous. She has been practically at deaths door and
1 On 2 Mar., BD said he would be in London for four days from 20 Mar., before returning
to the Pyrenees.
2 At this point, TSE changes from typewriter to pen.

at moments I have thought that she would die simply from exhaustion.
There is no improvement yet. I will try to write again in a few days.
Affectionately
Tom.
I do appreciate your letters. V. has not been able to see them even.

1
Sunday 15 March 1925 The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
My dear Read,
Good. Please consider it a definite commission.2 I have always suspected
a tacit conspiracy: and as the life of a review like The C is always fragile,
I should like to perform this function as soon as possible.3 (I have thought
that there was a conspiracy of silence in England, against Maurras also,
to whom I have thought of devoting a future number. Who has ever heard
of Georges Sorel but ourselves?)4
Should like to put the no. together by May 1st. Let me know how to get
hold of Worringer and what subject to ask him for.5
Who do you think most suitable to write a short note on Hulmes
poetry? R. A.?6
I am sending Speculum Mentis to Thorpe for the next no.7 Given him
something else for this no.8 Should like to know what you think of a man
1 Misdated 13 March.
2 On 12 Mar., HR said he could send T. E. Hulmes unpublished notes & one or two
unpublished poems if he had a definite commission. This resulted in T. E. Hulme, Notes
on Language and Style, C. 3: 12 (July 1925).
3 HR said Hulmes Speculations (1924) had sold only 150 copies: he was almost driven to
suspect conspiracies in Bloomsbury.
4 Georges Sorel (18471922): French philosopher and theorist of revolutionary syndicalism.
T. E. Hulmes intro. to his trans. of Rflexions sur la violence (1908) was included in
Speculations. Sorel applauded Maurras and lAction Franaise for their opposition to
bourgeois democracy. In a list of six books that exemplified what he termed the tendency
toward a higher and clearer conception of Reason, TSE was to include Sorel, Rflexions sur
la violence; Maurras, LAvenir de lintelligence; and Hulmes Speculations (The Idea of a
Literary Review, NC 4: 1, Jan. 1926).
5 HR had been reading the German art historian Wilhelm Worringer (18811965), to whom
Hulme owed a considerable debt. He suggested inviting him to write for C. Worringer
contributed Art Questions of the Day to NC 6: 2 (Aug. 1927).
6 Richard Aldington.
7 R. G. Collingwood, Speculum Mentis, or the Map of Knowledge, was reviewed by W. A.
Thorpe in C. 3: 12 (July 1925).
8 See Thorpe on Leone Vivante, Intelligence in Expression, C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925).
605
named Collins when you see April no.1 If I were living a more normal
existence, I should try to confer with you much more often, and verbally,
about the Criterion and things in general. I say this now because I want you
to understand that I am not, in running a paper, naturally an autocrat, but
that merely lack of time, and private preoccupations, make me play a much
more solitary hand than I otherwise should. These causes have precipitated
also a quarrel with Lewis, which distresses me: especially as a man like W. L.,
once set off, behaves so insolently that it is difficult to patch up.
At the moment I am distracted by my wifes illness: for three days and
nights she has been in such agony with something resembling, but far
exceeding rheumatism that puzzles the doctor, that I can hardly think of
anything else.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
to Leonard Woolf ms Berg

Friday [March? 1925] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Leonard
Very many thanks for your sponsorship and your trouble.2 I infer that
Miss Fry refuses the gratification?3
I will do my best. I have not yet been able to get out, except with Vivien
to the doctor. (The treatment, is, I think, good. At any rate, she is eating
more and with some appetite.) In any case, would you be inclined to accept
a pamphlet next winter? I could always do a few articles or reviews, base
a pamphlet or book on them, and you could accept the articles only on the
[private del.] informal understanding that you should have the book. But
this is merely if you dont have the poems.4
Enclosed some reviews by a young man sent me by Yeats. MacGreevy.5
Might he be of any use to you? I have accepted one thing from him and

2 LW had agreed to be one of TSEs referees for Fabers new firm.
3 Joan Mary Fry (18621955): unmarried sister of the artist and art critic Roger Fry, who
kept house for him until 1919.
4 TSE was offering the Woolfs another prose pamphlet, in lieu of the new collection of
poems they understood would be coming to them. On 1 June 1925, VW recorded that some
old firm would be publishing The Criterion in the autumn & all his works must go to them
a blow to us (Diary of Virginia Woolf, III, 192530, 27).
5 Thomas MacGreevy: see TSEs letter of 30 May. MacGreevys poem Dysert appeared in
NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926) under the pseud. L. St. Senan.

suggested another. Of course I have not seen him, so cannot speak [for
del.] about his personal appearance.
Love to Virginia. I have enjoyed very much my two visits.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
to Geoffrey Faber pc Valerie Eliot

Please dont think I have neglected writing but my wife has been so
very ill with general neuritis that I have had no time to think of letters
and this must be a long one.1
T. S. E.

Dear Scofield,
I was very glad to get your letter of the 10th. I had a bad time myself
with influenza during January and February and Vivien has had a very
much worse time with the same malady followed by bronchitis and a
terrible attack of general neuritis.
I am glad that you like the poems.2 I am not altogether satisfied with
them myself. If, however, the other one is written, I will let you have it.
My note on Miss Marianne Moore in the April Criterion, which you
will soon see, will be followed by a review of her book in the June number.3
1 A ref. to TSEs reply to GCFs proposals (9 Mar.) apropos C. and the new publishing
house. GCF replied (19 Mar.): I am exceedingly sorry to get your postcard, and hear that
your wife is so ill. Please do not worry yourself to think about writing to me until you are
more at ease.
2 The Hollow Men, IIII, which appeared in Dial 78: 3 (Mar. 1925), became The Hollow
Men, I, II and IV. In Jan., TSE sent them to Thayer, and on 10 Feb, Thayer congratulated
TSE, saying he particularly liked the first two stanzas of the last (beginning The eyes are not
here). The other one presumably refers to V, published in P 19091925.
3 Our contemporary, The Dial, of New York, has justly bestowed its annual award for
literature upon Miss Marianne Moore. In the dismal flood of affected and fantastical verse
poured out in America within the last ten years, Miss Moores poetry endures, the wave
may go over it if it likes. She is one of the few who have discovered an original rhythm in
an age when the defect of rhythm is the most eminent failure of verse both English and
American. She has found a new verse-rhythm of the spoken phrase. Miss Moores work is of
international importance, and her book will be the subject of review in a later number
607
Owing to the circumstances mentioned above, my essay on George
Chapman has not been written. If it ever is written I will let you know and
you can have it if you can arrange to publish it not earlier than it appears
in the Criterion.1
I wish I could do an adequate review of Schnitzler.2 Do forgive me for
not having replied to this part of your letter at once, for I see that it may
have inconvenienced you. Besides the fact that I am not able to do much
work, I feel that this book ought to be reviewed by someone who is
thoroughly well acquainted with Schnitzlers work which I know only in
fragments. It is quite true that I was impressed by what I read in the Dial,
and also, by the way, very much so by Thomas Manns Death in Venice.3
I wish indeed that I could do the Schnitzler for you but I actually have not
at present the time or strength to do it properly even if I had the adequate
knowledge. I have hopes, however, that I may be able to do more for you
a few months hence, if you want me to.
Is there any chance of your coming to Europe this summer?
Yours ever,
T. S. E.
to Geoffrey Faber ts Valerie Eliot

My dear Faber,
I am now replying to your letter of the 9th March.
It appears that we are agreed that for every reason a Quarterly is more
desirable than a Monthly. With the means at your disposal a Monthly is
impossible; a Quarterly may get hold of a part of the public which remains
indifferent to the monthlies; people are more likely to take in a quarterly
as well as a monthly, than they are to take in two monthlies; and in the end
(A Commentary, C. 3: 11, Apr. 1925, 343). Moores Observations was reviewed by RA in

3: 12 (July 1925), 58893.
1 Thayer had enquired whether TSEs An Aspect of George Chapman would be available
for the Dial. In A Commentary, in C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1924), TSE announced that due to severe
illness he had been unable to prepare his essay on A Neglected Aspect of George
Chapman for this number.
2 Thayer remembered TSE writing appreciatively about Arthur Schnitzlers novel Dr
Graesler, and hoped he might review it in the Dial on its appearance in book form.
3 See Schnitzler, Doctor Graesler, in Dial 73: 15 (JulyNov. 1922). Thomas Mann, Death
in Venice, was serialised (trans. Kenneth Burke) in 76: 35 (Mar.June 1924).

it is more feasible to turn a quarterly into a monthly than it is to transform
a monthly into a quarterly.
A quarterly would not aim at quite such a large circulation as a monthly:
the circulation which I have in view is 5000 within five years. With proper
business management it might be more; and I think that there is a better
chance of foreign (primarily American and colonial) circulation with a
quarterly than with a monthly it is less quickly out of date. The Criterion
has of course been run in a amateur way; and it has been impossible to
push its circulation in America (incidentally, if I were publicly and openly
the editor, with my name on the paper, it would probably considerably
assist the expansion in America).
As to the proportion of critical and creative work. I do not think that
any review can carry the same amount of literary criticism that it could
have carried a hundred years ago in fact, that is self-evident. Two good
critical articles (not meandering comment, but asserting principles) are
enough. The critical attack must be developed by a fairly homogeneous
but catholic corps of reviewers at the end of the review. Nowadays people
like to read reviews, but they must not be very long, and they must be
signed.1 I should wish to continue the reviewing as it is at present done in
the Criterion, and about the same proportion, not more.
But besides criticism and fiction, verse etc. there should be a place for
good solid articles on subjects of general interest to the educated man:
history, scholarship, review of current work in archaeology and
anthropology etc., articles by foreign scholars such as Diehl2 (Byzantine
art), Picavet3 etc. (these people can always be got, and fairly cheaply);
English scholars such as John Burnet. One or two in each number.
As to the proportion of elder and known writers to younger and
unknown ones, I should wish to select only such elder writers as might in
one way or another serve as a stimulus or guide to the younger generation,
and who would fit in with a new or nascent point of view. Here there is
considerable latitude of opinion. But I should instance Frazer (as one of the
oldest!) as a living force; whereas Saintsbury, with all his merits, has now
1 The TLS continued the tradition of anonymous reviewing, but it had been largely
abandoned elsewhere. Since introducing reviews in 2: 8 (July 1924), C. had published signed
reviews (though sometimes under a pseudonym).
2 Charles Diehl (18831944): expert on Byzantine Art at the Sorbonne; author of Manuel
dart Byzantin (Manual of Byzantine Art, 1910) and History of the Byzantine Empire
(1925).
3 Prob. Franois Picavet (18511921): French philosopher and expert on Kant; author of
Les Idologues (1891).
609
little point. Whibley has something to give, and Robertson who represents
the opposition to sentimentality in criticism. Elliot Smith1 will be one of the
forces of our time. Most of the older writers of fiction and verse are
meaningless from this point of view: Hardy, Kipling, Bennett, Yeats and
many other names would be worthwhile only for advertising value (if
desired) but would have no value in building up the character of a paper.
My belief is that much more catholicity should be maintained in the
creative work than in the critical. Only in the smaller part of the paper
which would be literary criticism would any uniformity of idea be aimed
at. If you look over the reviews in the last and in the next Criterion I think
you will see that there is no hint of a drilled uniformity even here. By
selecting intelligent men who can write, and giving them each to review
such books as will best bring out their points of sympathy with each other,
enough homogeneity is obtained; but I do not suppose that any two of
them would agree with each other, or with me, on more than a few cardinal
points. Of course there are a few with whom I have more in common than
others: Aldington, Manning, Read, Fernandez especially but there is no
dogma binding us.
In verse and fiction, as I suggested above, one would include almost
anything that had life in it, without exacting conformity to any rules of
taste or tendency.
I did not have in mind an exact correspondence between the publishing
and the review. That would limit both too narrowly. I should think it only
desirable to avoid any gross inconsistency i.e. publishing a book by some
writer who had been consistently and steadily damned in the review. That
is an unlikely contingency.
There are one or two points in your letter which I should like to hear
more of. You refer to the old eternal principles of Art which the new
dogmatists have been trying to undermine. That is allright but the
variations of opinion as to what are the eternal principles of Art are apt to
constitute dogmata. What are yours and what are mine? And finally, who
are the new dogmatists? I hope we agree on the names of the
reprehensible people. I do not want to form any critical school so close
that it will be able to contain and produce no creative writers: in fact,
several critical attacks upon me (vide Murry) have been concentrated upon
the point that I cannot really be a Classicist at heart, because of my
1 The first half of WLs essay The Dithyrambic Spectator is an exposition of Elliot Smiths
exhilarating and adventurous book, The Evolution of the Dragon, which WL describes as
a brilliant account of the origin of the fine arts from the practice of mummification
(Calendar of Modern Letters, I: 2, Apr. 1925, 89107).

admiration for James Joyce and because of my own verse.1 That is the
weakness of the critique of the school of Maurras and Pierre Lasserre, that
it is in a partial vacuum, and cannot support, correct, or develop any of the
actual creative writing in France.
With what you say about the situation of the Publisher I am in
agreement. And the Editor has to combine and reconcile principle,
sensibility, and business sense. That is why an editors life is such a bloody
sweat.
If there are any points in your letter which I have not dealt with please
let me know. There remains the capital question of cost. Certain expenses
of the Criterion as at present run you would not have: there would be no
publishers commission; and perhaps you would have sufficient staff to
provide a shorthand secretary. I assume that the publishing house would
be able to attend to the business end and pushing the circulation without
further staff. But 750 would just cover the expenses without any salary
for the editor. The question to consider, therefore, is whether you or
members of the firm have the opportunities for finding a few persons to
subvention the rest of the money needed: I mean also that the position
would be simpler if this were done through the firm, or through
personalities associated with the firm, rather than through my personal
friends I think you will see this point?
Oh yes there is one other question: I should like to be clearer as to
what you term the exotic element in the Criterion. A little more detailed
criticism, quoting chapter and verse, would I think help us to what I
agree is of the first importance to understand what is at the back of each
others minds. I believe, so far, from our conversations, that the financial
problem is the most difficult; and that I imagine you can quickly decide.
T. S. Eliot
1 In More about Romanticism, JMM wrote: And even Mr Eliot, the author of The Waste
Land, the champion of Ulysses, is not a true-blue classicist, however much he might like to
be, Adelphi 1: 7 (Dec. 1923), 557. The most developed expression of JMMs critique of
TSEs classicism figures in his later essay, The Classical Revival, Adelphi 3 (Feb. 1926).
Remarking on the profound and absolute contradiction beneath TSEs professions of
classicism, JMM identified him as essentially, an unregenerate and incomplete romantic.
611
Dear Lewis
Your essay reached me after as I found by telephoning to Aylesbury
the April Criterion had already been set in pages.1 The June number is the
next available.
I cannot, however, consider this quite apart from your previous letter,
and I cannot work with you so long as you consider me either the tool or
the operator of machinations against you. The incident of the house agent
I certainly much regret: owing to preoccupation with anxieties which
concern only myself, I was not able to write the same night, and it entirely
slipped my mind. When I found your letter I wrote immediately, and the
agent can tell you that I did so; it was, however, two weeks late. If this lost
you the flat, I am very sorry, and offer my apologies.2
As for the Bell episode, it did not strike me that an article which did not
in any way appear to controvert your own opinions would be a cause for
offence.3 It might however have been better had you written at once to
state your point of view: we might have come to an understanding for the
future.
But until you are convinced by your own senses or by the testimony of
others that I am neither conducting nor supporting (either deliberately or
blindly) any intrigue against you, I do not see that we can get any farther.4
As for the Calendar, it would not have occurred to me that this required
any justification on your part, without the elaborate defense which you
present.5 If you can discover any further evidence of my ill will, or of any
plot to which you suppose me to be a party, please let me know.
Sincerely
T. S. Eliot
1 Unidentified. WLs Subjective Art in NC 6: 1 (July 1927) was his last contribution.
2 See TSEs letter to Watson & Austin of 13 Jan.
3 See Clive Bell, Prolegomena to a Study of Nineteenth-Century Painting, C. 3: 10 (Jan.
1925). WL was offended it took the place that his Art Chronicle had held in C. 3: 9 (Oct.
1924).
4 WL said their ten years of being vaguely associated evidently counted little against TSEs
passionate intrigue: if TSE did not reply soon, he would conclude that the devil had him
by the heel.
5 On 30 Jan. WL withdrew The Perfect Action, originally intended for C. It appeared as
The Dithyrambic Spectator: An Essay on the Origins and Survivals of Art in The Calendar
of Modern Letters I: 2 & 3 (Apr. & May, 1925). In Mar., WL said Harold Monro told him
that in publishing there he was associating himself with a rival venture to C.

My dear Eliot,
Many thanks for your letter of March 22nd.
Before I say anything in reply, I want to put the following questions:
(1) What size do you propose that the new Quarterly should be? Would
you take as your standard the last number of the Criterion, or do you wish
to make it rather larger?
(2) What amount have you been spending on contributors, or, say, what
did the contributors to the last number cost you? I think you pay at present
rather under a pound a page, do you not? This is perhaps rather under the
rate that you would like to fix. If we do the thing at all, we ought to fix an
adequate scale; but I suppose the rate would not be the same right the way
through, from the first to the last page, or would it?
(3) Standard of Production: Do you wish to take the standard of the
Criterion as your absolute standard? If we find it possible to produce a
similar paper, of not quite such excellent quality, more cheaply, what would
you say to that?
(4) Precisely what office accommodation would you need? One room
for yourself I take it, and some sort of accommodation for a typist-
stenographer. If we were unable to find you accommodation in our own
premises, could you go on using your present offices, and if so, how much
does that cost you?
(5) Do you need a whole-time typist, and if not, how much?
(6) What proportion of the present circulation of the Criterion is by
private subscription, and what proportion is supplied through the trade,
and what discount does the trade take? (Rates of discount vary
considerably with the different class magazines; in the case of the ordinary
shilling magazine the discount works out at something like 40%.)
These are all the questions which I have to put at the moment. Now for
your letter. I find everything that you say in it to fit in with my own views.
I agree with you on the proportion of critical and creative articles; on the
desirability of articles on subjects of general interest; on utilising only those
elder writers who have the spirit of the younger generation in them; on
maintaining a more exact standard in the critical than in the creative part
of the paper, and on avoiding the publication of books by writers
consistently damned in the paper.
I think that we really are, so far as all points of importance are
concerned, at one over the character which the paper is to have. I own I
613
was rather afraid lest you might wish to cramp the book publishing side
of the business into the Procrustean frame-work of the Criterion. This
doubt your letter entirely removes, and I am glad I put the question to you
point-blank; but I feel that I was extremely rash in making use of that old
clich about the eternal principles of Art. Your observation that the
variations of opinion, as to what are the eternal principles of Art, are apt
to constitute dogmata, is a nasty one. It reminds me of Bradleys
observation, that the man who says he does not believe in Metaphysics is
himself propounding a metaphysical theory.1 You have, it is evident, the
advantage of an amateur in these matters.
On the whole I suppose I meant something like this. Little effective art
has ever sprung directly from theories about Art. Indirectly the theories, I
suppose, do affect the minds of all intelligent people, and consequently (if
we assume that artists are intelligent people) the work of the artist. But
this is only (I am, of course, restricting my remarks to the best sort of
work) when the influence of theory and criticism have soaked right down
into the soul. The result is more in the nature of an unconscious
physiological process, than of conscious rational effort. Unqualified this
view is, of course, untenable, since a great deal of an artists work is
conscious, though it is perhaps rather a conscious process of selection
amongst the suggestions provided from a source within himself but outside
his conscious control than a process of conscious creation. There are also
the technical methods which he has learnt, or elaborated for himself, most
of which he applies unconsciously perhaps, but the acquisition of which
was conscious and deliberate. But I think you would probably agree with
me that both the selective process and technical methods are equally
characteristic of all minor arts and handicrafts, as well as of Art with a
capital A; and that what gives Art its capital A is the judgement of life or
of the Universe which the selective process and the technical methods
enable the artist to express; and that this judgement is, when it is a
judgement of real value, formulated by the whole personality of the artist,
and is far more an uncontrolled and involuntary reaction to the facts than
a deliberate gesture. What I meant, therefore, when I used that unfortunate
phrase about the eternal principles of Art was that the Artist ought always
to seek to express his genuine re-action rather than make striking gestures;
1 The man who is ready to prove that metaphysical knowledge is wholly impossible has no
right here to any answer. He must be referred for conviction to the body of this treatise. And
he can hardly refuse to go there, since he himself has, perhaps unknowingly, entered the
arena. He is a brother metaphysician with a rival theory of first principles (F. H. Bradley,
Introduction, Appearance and Reality [1893], 12).

and what I meant by the New Dogmatists was all those people who think
out and practice new gestures, and try to convince themselves and the
public that it is the gesture and the style of the gesture which matters
for Art.
I hope this wont seem to you a farrago of nonsense. I have no intention
of naming any names!
Of course the reactions must vary infinitely. For myself, I think I belong
to that dwindling band which reads this world in the light of another. I
am venturing to send you copies of two small books of poetry; and in the
preface to the earlier volume you will find a rather obscure statement of my
point of view.1 But Art can certainly treat, and on the whole does
nowadays tend to treat, the present world as self-complete. If that is the
Artists genuine reaction to his experience I have no sort of quarrel with it.
I think there is, in fact, a dualism, difficult if not impossible to reconcile,
and that the greatest Artists are those who are at home at both foci of the
ellipse. There are very few, if any, such Artists living today.
But we are getting rather far away from the Criterion. One other
question you asked me was what precisely I mean by the exotic element in
the Criterion. I must reserve that for another time. But it was not I who
first used the word exotic; it was, I think, Robertsons word.
Yours ever,
[Geoffrey C. Faber]
PS I had a seventh question to put to you, about price. There seem to be
three alternatives:
(a) To keep the price as it is now [3s 6d].
(b) To raise it to four or five shillings.
(c) To lower it to, say, half-a-crown.
I should like to know in what direction you think we ought to go. Three
and sixpence seems to me rather an unsatisfactory sort of price, but at half-
a-crown I do not think we could ever see our way to running the paper at
much of a profit. If the price was put up to four or five shillings what do
you think would be the effect on the present subscription?
Of course the paper would be publicly and openly edited by you, and
would carry your name on the cover.
1 GCF had published two books of poetry: Interflow: Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1915) and In
the Valley of Vision: Poems Written in Time of War (1918). In the Preface to his first, he
wrote: The sublimest Art, whether it be music or poetry or painting, is that which floods the
soul with beauty . . . I will not conceal my belief that beauty, so understood, belongs not to
this world of sense, but to another world of the spirit. It comes into being when the facts of
this world are brought into sudden unsuspected union with the facts of that other world.
(xiiixiv).
615
to Geoffrey Faber ms Valerie Eliot
My dear Faber,
I shall only attempt in this letter to answer your direct questions.
1. If the price were 2/6 I should say 125 pp. if 4/- or 5/- 180 to 200 not
more. The last (Jan.) Criterion was 180 the April 140 a better size for
the present (3/6) production.
2. The Contributors have had 100 out of the Jan. no. I have pared the
payt. for reviews to the minimum (1.1. to 2.2.) really exploiting their
loyalty or the advantage they get by association with the review. It could
however be kept to this. My policy has been, as far as possible, only to
have such reviewers as I could also publish articles by (what a sentence!)
once or twice a year.
3. Personally, I should even prefer a less luxurious appearance, and I
think that, aiming at a larger circulation, it would be desirable. I was
assured that for a printing of only 1000 copies the saving by cheaper paper
would be negligible. But I am all for a practical rather than a luxe
appearance.
4. I should not need a whole time secretary. If you had an efficient and
intelligent shorthand typist who could give half (at most) of his or her time
to this, it would be an economy.
5. The present office is 20 a year, with some small extras, and could I
think be retained. It might be dispensed with, if I had a desk in yours.
6. About 200 subscribers, the rest through newsagents. Discount: agents
pay 2/- as a rule or 1/8 for larger orders. Smiths take about 300 copies.
7. I dont think that raising the price wd. lose many subscribers. It is
very difficult to say. There are very few reviews as cheap as 14/- p. annum.
8. I dont like papers having the editors name on them, but I think my
name might do something in America and it is the custom now.
Personally, I prefer the old fashioned anonymity.1
I am in sympathy about the other world in poetry. It was the theme of
a lecture I gave at Cambridge in November (on Chapman) and wd. be of
the Clark Lectures at Cambridge, which have been offered to me for next
year. But that is a
1 In his Commentaries in C., TSE had written in the guise of Crites. When the review was
relaunched as NC in Jan. 1926, it opened with The Idea of a Literary Review by T. S. Eliot.
Though TSEs Commentaries were no longer signed Crites, neither they nor NC carried his
name as editor.

practical question: I must decide before the end of April, and of course I
could not give these lectures unless I abandoned my job in the city.
Therefore how soon is the Scientific Press able to come to a decision
and if affirmative agree upon the sum which could be assigned? After that,
it seems to me that we should meet and discuss ways and means . . . It is
this lectureship (which wd. give me perhaps 200 and some notoriety)
which makes me pressed for time!
Yours ever
T. S. Eliot
<The [form del.] example of poetry which is particularly anathema to me
is that of Sacheverell Sitwell. No other world there!>1

My dear Eliot
Many thanks for your letter of the 25th, and your reply to my questions.
I think the price would have to go up. I am a little surprised at the large
discount taken by the trade: which amounts, apparently, to over 50% in
the case of large orders.
About time. If you want a decision before the end of April, of course we
must give it you. I dont know that there is any real reason why we should
not be able to make up our minds during the next three or four weeks;
though I had hoped to be able to postpone the decision until the new
control of the Company had found itself more completely than it will be
able to do in so short a time. However I entirely understand that the
question is, for you, an urgent one. I do hope very much that we may be
able to give you an opportunity of delivering the Clark lectures. Will you
give us the opportunity of publishing them if you do?2
I dont wonder that you were pleased with Fernandez observations in
La Nouvelle Revue Franaise, which I am very much interested to read.3
Yours ever
[Geoffrey C. Faber]
1 These sentences are added at the head of the page. TSE reviewed Sacheverell Sitwells The
Peoples Palace in The Egoist 5: 6 (June/July 1918), and published his Three Variations in
C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924), 2969: this was the only work by Sitwell to be published there.
2 The Clark lectures were published only posthumously (VMP, 1993).
3 Ramn Fernandez, Le Classicisme de T. S. Eliot, in Lettres trangres, NRF 12: 173
(1 Feb. 1925), 24651.
617
Thursday [2 April 1925]1 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Mary
This is merely a line to signify that we are still alive if this is life but
no more. How are you? I only go out myself for a few hours in the
afternoon, and Vivien is in torture again with a return of neuritis in arms
and legs. I was sorry to miss you yesterday at Viola Trees, but we look
forward to a time when there will again be haystacks and picnics. We do
want to rent a cottage or hovel near Chichester.
With love from both of us
Affectionately
Tom.
We may be going to explore soon.

My dear Eliot
I am going away for ten days or so next Wednesday, and I think I shall
have to broach the question of the quarterly to my Directors before I go
away, that is to say probably next Monday afternoon. But before I do so,
I should like to have a final conversation with you. Will you let me know
if you can manage this? Perhaps you would come and see me at my house
some time on Sunday?2 I shall not be at the office again till Monday
morning.
Yours ever
[Geoffrey C. Faber]
1 Postmarked 3 Apr. 1925.

2 GCF noted in his diary (4 Apr.): Eliot came to tea, & we talked Criterion till 7. (Faber
Archive).

Sunday [5 April 1925] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Sydney
Thank you for your letter. I am afraid that there is no chance of our
meeting before Wednesday, but please let me know when you will be back,
because it is hopeless to try to explain what things have been and what
they are, until we meet: I must depend upon your faith until then.
I should like very much to see Saurats book.1
I wish we could have come today. For one or two weeks we are certain
to be in a tormented condition, for certain reasons, besides the fact that
my fate depends on events of the next few days. I dont know when I
shall be able to read Myrtle but Vivienne has told me something about
it, and anything that she says in praise of a book is worthwhile, because
it is always definite the only kind of praise worth having, in my
opinion.2
Yours affy
Tom
[Memorandum by Geoffrey C. Faber, 5 April 1925]

Proposed publication of a Quarterly Review
With some remarks on other methods of securing writers.
1. Development of literary side of business.
In setting to work to build up a literary connection de novo it has to be
remembered that there are a great number of publishers competing for
1 Denis Saurat, Milton: Man and Thinker (1925), a translation of La pense de Milton
(1920): it was reviewed by H. P. Collins in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 196202.
2 TSE was not letting on that he had already enabled VHE to poke fun at SSs novel Myrtle
(1925), written under his nom-de-plume Stephen Hudson. Hidden behind the initials F. M.,
in C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925), VHE praises the novelists gift of saturating one in an atmosphere,
but then she moves on to joke that the trouble with Myrtle is that one cannot find Myrtle,
and one is worried by looking for her all the time . . . The result is a collection of character
studies of somewhat uninteresting and unsavoury persons. But, as one peers between these
figures, hoping to catch sight of the supremely interesting figure of Myrtle, around which
this odd assemblage is hung, one is perpetually baffled. Where is Myrtle? Thus, laying waste
to SSs fiction, VHE closes her review; but she had preceded that coup-de-grace with a lance
in her first paragraph in which she suggests that Mr Hudsons work is a model of
concentration . . . This looks to me like the dramatic gift. It seems to me that Mr Hudson
might write very good plays.
619
authors, and that there is a natural reluctance on the part of many authors
to give their work to an unknown firm, and a disposition on the part of the
copyright agents to deal with the established publishers to whom they have
hitherto sent their clients work. These difficulties will gradually disappear
as the firm becomes known; but at the outset and for the first two or three
years efforts of a special kind will have to be made in order, primarily, to
make the name of the firm known in the right kind of way, and,
secondarily, to attract individual authors into our orbit. In particular, great
efforts must be made to get hold of young writers the Kiplings and
Bennetts of the next generation and, having got them, to treat them
sufficiently well to encourage their allegiance to the firm when their
reputation has been made. It is perfectly clear that, while we may hope to
recoup ourselves by some early successes, our right policy is to put that
out of our minds, and deliberately spend money to begin with on building
up the connection we desire.
Authors can be got hold of in various ways. There is (i) the method of
direct personal approach. Nothing need be said of that here, except that,
valuable as it is, and though we shall practise it to the fullest possible
extent, it is limited in range and results and can only be one factor in the
growth of the business; (ii) the establishment of friendly relations with the
copyright agencies. This is being done already to some extent, and will
become easier when we are well under way. No more need be said of it
now. But there are two other methods, both of which I think it will be
advantageous for us to use: namely (iii) the offer of substantial cash prizes
for the best novels or other works submitted to us; and (iv) the publication
of a literary periodical.
As to (iii) I think it would be better to wait until the name of the
Company has been changed before we come to any decision or make any
announcement. But I certainly think we should do something of the kind.
Public competitions of this sort do stimulate public interest in a remarkable
way and in exactly the right quarters for our purposes. Such a competition
would do a great deal to bring us at one step into the limelight.
2. History of the Quarterly project.

But the proposal which calls for immediate decision is (iv). I had not
intended to bring it so suddenly to an issue, but events have forced my
hand.
In November last I asked Charles Whibley if he could get me into touch
with some of the younger writers. He replied by introducing me to Mr
T. S. Eliot, of whom he wrote to me subsequently as follows:

Jesus College
Cambridge
Dec. 7th
My dear Faber,
I will gladly tell you what I know about Eliot. He is of American birth
and is related to the Eliot Nortons and Norton Eliots of Boston and
Harvard. (He is strongly anti-American, as you would suppose, and is now
being naturalized.) He was educated at Harvard and Oxford, and is at
present in Lloyds Bank, in the Foreign Department. The Bank thinks very
highly of him, and I believe he is at the head of the Intelligence Department.
So that you may take it that he has been trained in business. He has
published several books The Sacred Wood (prose), and Poems and
The Waste Land. As a critic, he is the best and most learned of his
generation, and is respected (and a little feared) by the young. As a poet he
is obscure and allusive, but I have faith that he will come out of his
obscurity and write something really fine.
I know him intimately, and count him among my closest friends, and I
have a perfect belief in his star. He knows all the young writers and is well
able to discriminate among them. He gave a lecture here in Cambridge not
long since, and met with a reception from the Undergraduates which
surprised me.
Is that the sort of thing you wanted to know?
Yours always
Charles Whibley
In the meantime I had met Mr Eliot, and had a long conversation with
him the first of many which have steadily deepened my sense of his
ability, sincerity and charm. E. is a man of about thirty-five. He has for
something over two years been the editor of a Quarterly Review called
The Criterion, which is in fact the property of Lady Rothermere, and has
cost her about 750 a year. It is a rather rarefied review, expensively and
luxuriously produced, and is published by Cobden-Sanderson. It is priced
at 3s. 6d. and has a circulation of about 1000. It has been very little
advertised, and the business management has been very slight indeed.
Nevertheless it has a growing readership, entirely the result of Eliots
editorship, hampered though that has been by the circumstances of the
Review, and by the fact that he has had no remuneration and has had to
find time to edit the paper in the intervals of a business life (which he
would give up if he could).
The following letter from Hugh Walpole indicates the kind of impression
which Eliots editorship has made in literary circles.
621
90 Piccadilly,
London w.1
4th February 1925
Dear Sir,
I have been asked to say something of my opinion of Mr T. S. Eliot as
an editor. I do this with great readiness because for myself and a number
of others who are interested in the future of English letters Mr Eliot is by
far the most important figure as an influence in contemporary literature
now in England. It is, I suppose, not necessary for anyone to say much
about Mr Eliots gifts as a poet and critic. I can imagine that the austerity
of his judgement and the beauty of such a poem as The Waste Land
must be sufficient evidence to anyone who really cares about English
literature, but his great gifts as an editor have been a revelation to many
of us during the publication of his Quarterly, The Criterion. That
Quarterly started very austerely and in its earlier numbers appeared to
make its appeal of necessity only to a small circle of readers. The question
was how to broaden its appeal without losing its character, the real test
of any editor. The later numbers of The Criterion have in my opinion
shown Mr Eliot to be a really great editor because he has made his own
paper acceptable to a much larger reading public and at the same time
has impressed everything in the paper with the mark of his own
personality. I venture to think that if Mr Eliot had editorial control of a
literary monthly that had sufficient money behind it to allow of some
enterprise and adventure we should have one of the most remarkable
periodicals that English letters have yet seen. In spite of his very high
personal critical standards he has a wide appreciation of the different
tastes of our English reading public and he has that finest editorial gift
of all, the power to extract the highest standard of work from his
contributors because of the force of his own personality. I think that as
editor of such a monthly he would gather round him a very fine band of
contributors. I hope he will be given an opportunity for work of this
kind.
Yours truly,
Hugh Walpole.
Similar letters have been written by Bruce Richmond, editor of The Times
Literary Supplement, and other distinguished judges. Worth quoting is the
following from a reference to The Criterion by Affable Hawk in The New
Statesman (November 22, 1924):
My respect for this magazine steadily increases; I find more good
criticism in it than in any other . . . Altogether this number, and the more

recent numbers of The Criterion, have made me wish to act as town-
crier for it . . . Though it appears only once a quarter, I know no
magazine which enables its readers to keep in touch with so many
aesthetic questions. If it dies, which I trust it will not, it will have set a
standard to subsequent ventures of the same kind hard to reach.
Eliots reputation is, in fact, growing very surely, and is not confined to
this country. From a very remarkable appreciation of his critical work in
La Nouvelle Revue Franaise by Ramn Fernandez occupying some six or
seven pages I take the following:
Je connais peu de juges mieux arms que lui: intelligence incisive,
courageuse, toujours insatisfaite delle-mme, soucieuse la fois de se
limiter et de toucher le tuf des ralits quelle considere; culture vaste et
comprehensive . . . fortes reactions traditionelles contre lesquelles il a
du sans doute lutter afin de se conqurir moi-mme, voil des titres qui
le dsignent pour la tache, infiniment prilleuse de chasseur de nuces et
de redresser des torts de lesprit.
Such testimony speaks for itself. But it is as well to add that Mr Eliot, in
spite of his unusual equipment, is anything but a paralyzing highbrow. On
the contrary he has the faculty of stimulating work, and a personality
which will certainly make itself more and more felt.
Eliots desire, at the time of my first meeting with him, was to convert
The Criterion into a monthly, and to get some firm or a private group to
guarantee it. He could not go on editing it for love, and wanted a five-year
contract at a fixed salary.
Subsequently we agreed that a new monthly was out of the question.
There are too many already in the field. Some of these will die, and the way
may be open later for the conversion of a Quarterly into a monthly. For a
really good Quarterly, containing criticism, fiction, some poetry, articles of
general interest to educated people, and reviews, there seems to be a
definite opening. Both the Edinburgh and the Quarterly are massive and
on the whole dull, as well as expensive (7s. 6d.). A quarterly can, doing the
thing only four times a year, do it better and more fully than a monthly can;
and it can get a bigger foreign and American circulation than a monthly,
because it gets less quickly out of date.
We were still tentatively discussing this possibility, when Eliot was asked
to deliver the Clark lectures at Cambridge next year. He has till April 24
to accept or refuse. He cannot accept, unless he gives up his job at Lloyds;
and he cannot afford to do that unless he knows whether we will back
him or not. The lectures will add to his reputation, and to his value as an
editor.
623
3. Financial.
I have been closely into cost. Clearly, while the immediate value of the
Quarterly will be the publicity we shall get from it and the contact we shall
hope to establish through it with new writers, it is undesirable to commit
ourselves to an undertaking which could never pay its way. Allowing 400
a year for the editors salary, 400 for contributors, 100 for typist-
secretary (half-time), 200 for ordinary advertising, 40 for stationery and
postage, and for free copies overs and discounts, and taking the
advertisement rates at 10 a page subject to 25% discounts, I have worked
out the net annual loss or profit according to the attached table. The figures
are, of course, only approximate estimates; but they are as exact as they
can be made, and are based on the estimates I have obtained from different
printers. They show clearly that the right policy is to price the paper higher
than lower. I think it should be 5/-. It ought to be quite possible to work up
to 3000. At that we should make a profit of over 500 a year. At 2000 it
would just about pay for itself. At 1000 (of which we may be certain, I
think) the loss at the very worst could not be more than some 700 a
good deal less than the loss on the Hospital and Health Review. It would
be advisable to spend an additional 100 or so on preliminary advertising.
It is interesting to note that the advertisement revenue, while it might be
of great assistance, would never justify low pricing. At 2/6 with a maximum
circulation of 5000 and a maximum of 19 pages of advertisements the
annual profit would only be 368. At 5/- with half that circulation and half
that number of advertisements the profit would be about 480.
4. Outlines of proposal.
It is proposed to invite Mr Eliot to join the Board of Directors and to agree
with him to publish a Quarterly Review, to be edited by him at a salary of
325 a year in addition to his remuneration as Director (400 if he is not
a Director). The agreement to be for five years, with the usual safeguards,
and a proviso that we may cease publication within that period, provided
we pay him his salary for the remainder of the period. The first number to
be published in the autumn, and the agreement to take effect as from July
1 1925. Salary to be subject to revision, if and when the paper makes a
sufficient profit.
Mr Eliot should prove a valuable member of the Board; his presence
there would greatly assist us in making contact between the Company and
the contributors to his paper.
Geoffrey C. Faber
April 5th 1925.

My dear Eliot
I am very glad to be able to tell you that at a meeting of our Board of
Directors this afternoon, we decided to invite you to become the Editor of
a new quarterly review, to be published by us, at a salary of 400 a year,
to be reduced to 325 a year if it should be possible to offer you a seat on
the Board of Directors at any time, carrying with it a remuneration of
150.1 We are prepared to enter into an agreement with you for a period
of five years with the proviso that we may cease publication of the review
within that period on condition that we pay you the salary due for the
remainder of the period. The first number to be published in the Autumn,
and the agreement to take effects as from July 1st, 1925.2 It is further
understood that if and when the paper should
[. . .]3
know you will be glad to hear of our decision, and to be able to make your
plans accordingly.
To your own letter I can say nothing in reply, except that it is of the sort
to warm the heart.
Yours ever,
[Geoffrey C. Faber]

Tuesday, 8 April 19254 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Richard
I have just seen the new Vogue, and re-read your article, and am more
than ever overwhelmed by your generous pleasure in praise.5 This would
1 GCF wrote in his diary (5 Apr.): Special directors meeting in the afternoon, to . . . decide
about Eliot. We did decide finally to back him as editor of a Quarterly review. I am
tremendously pleased. I wrote to E. tout de suite. He will now be able to give up his job at
Lloyds. (Faber Archive)
2 In the event, there was no Autumn number of C. There was a six-month interregnum
between C. 3: 12 (July 1925), published under Lady Rothermeres patronage, and NC 4: 1
(Jan. 1926), published by F&G.
3 Five lines of this letter, taken from the faded carbon copy in GCFs letter-book, are worn
out.
4 Misdated 7 April.
5 RA, T. S. Eliot, Poet and Critic: A Scholarly and Austere Modern Whose Classicism and
Coherent Thought is of Serious Importance to His Generation, Vogue 65: 7 (Apr. 1925),
625
be the same even if I believed that every word of it was true! I think it is a
most marvellous eulogy. What a man you are. My wife sends you a
message: that she is very glad that I have you for a friend, and that I ought
to be very proud of your friendship. But I am.
I dont suppose you will be in London till after your holiday, and I dont
think you ought to come to this horrid town (vide Dr Johnson) yet, but I
should like to see you when possible.
It is probable that I shall either have another quarterly or the Criterion
on a salary, and leave the bank in June. I shall want you, and as much of
you, as I can get. <Everything is very complex at the moment.> This is in
confidence.
Would you have time this summer to do a Tudor Tr? I am seeing C. W.
Enclosed Bruce [Richmond]s letter. I had to write as he was out of town.
Will you write to Miss Todd, and get what scanty credit there is for the
work? I wish I could have done something.
My wife is still very weak, and ought to get away, but I am tied hand and
foot to London by the business I mentioned. She really broke down
completely in health. She had been working very hard for some months,
doing a lot of the Criterion work, and also writing. She is very diffident,
and is very aware that her mind is quite untrained, and therefore writes
only under assumed names: but she has an original mind, and I consider
not at all a feminine one; and in my opinion a great deal of what she writes
is quite good enough for the Criterion. She has not had the strength to do
701, 96. No English writer of his generation has exerted so intense an influence through so
little published work. Mr Eliots reputation and influence may not unjustly be likened to
those of Mallarm in the eighties and of M. Paul Valry in our own time. He is not known
to the crowd; he is not even very widely read by the educated classes; but his influence can
be detected in many places. His work is incessantly discussed by those who are genuinely
interested in modern literature. If he chose to play the game of Fashion he might easily aspire
to the intellectual dictatorship of Mayfair. It is only ten years since he came here, quite
unknown, from America with the manuscript of Prufrock in his baggage. Without any of the
pleasing exaggerations of friendship one can say that within a decade his four small volumes
have given him the reputation at least of showing more promise, both as a poet and as a
critic, than any English writer of his generation (71). His conversation, added RA, is as
stimulating and brilliant as his writing; so that altogether: here is a modern among moderns
who is not scared of the past, who gladly acknowledges his immense debts to Aristotle and
Dante; a man of culture who is intensely preoccupied with the problems of modern art. His
thought is destructive because it attempts to annihilate Romanticism aesthetic, moral and
political; but it is constructive because it attempts to put something better in its place. The
piece was accompanied by a full-page photograph of TSE by Maurice Beck and Macgregor:
he is dressed in an elegant suit, seated, reading a folio vol. and smoking a cigarette.
1 Samuel Johnson, London (1738).

all this and lead a social life as well, and therefore has almost disappeared
from the world. I intend to see that she gets training and systematic
education, because there are so few women who have an un-feminine mind
that I think they ought to be made the most of. You are the only person,
except two of her friends, who now knows of her writing. But I see no
reason now for concealment.
Ever yours
Tom
Let me have your news.
Tell me if you consider H. P. Collins, in the new Criterion, a likely recruit?1

[mid-April? 1925] [London]
In the last ten years gradually, but deliberately I have made myself
into a machine. I have done it deliberately in order to endure, in order
not to feel but it has killed V.2 In leaving the bank I hope to become less
a machine but yet I am frightened because I dont know what it will do
to me and to V. should I come alive again. I have deliberately killed my
senses I have deliberately died in order to go on with the outward form
of living This I did in 1915. What will happen if I live again? I am I3 but
with what feelings, with what results to others Have I the right to be I
But the dilemma to kill another person by being dead, or to kill them by
being alive? Is it best to make oneself a machine, and kill them by not
giving nourishment, or to be alive, and kill them by wanting something
that one cannot get from that person? Does it happen that two persons
lives are absolutely hostile? Is it true that sometimes one can only live by
anothers dying?4

2 It was ten years earlier, on 24 Apr. 1915, that TSE told Eleanor Hinkley he had recently
met an English girl named Vivien in Oxford. TSE and VHE were married on 26 June 1915.
3 Cf. I am that I am (Exodus 3: 14). Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I (Richard III,
5. iii 183).
4 Cf. SA, in which Sweeney says Life is death:
He didnt know if he was alive
and the girl was dead
He didnt know if the girl was alive
and he was dead
He didnt know if they were both alive
or both were dead
Fragment of a Prologue appeared in NC 4: 4 (Oct. 1926).
627
<Answer this> During this illness she really went away for three days
she felt that she had left her body. Is this wrong? Should it be discouraged?
Is there a way in which I can lay down my life and gain it? Must I kill her
or kill myself? I have tried to kill myself but only to make the machine
which kills her. Can I exorcise this desire for what I cannot have, for
someone I cannot see,1 and give to her, life, and save my soul? I feel now
that one cannot help another by ruining ones own soul I have done that
can one help another and save it?
Does she want to die? Can I save myself and her by recognising that she
is more important than I?
T. S. E.

Easter [12 April 1925] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
My dear John
I have wished daily that I might talk to you. But now I think I
understand Viviens illness a little better than when I saw you, and I want
to put it to you now and get your opinion and advice.
I dont know yet what is the core, the egg, of the thing. I dont know
what is the spring that is snapped, the formula of her mind, her
temperament, personality, that has been isolated. What I am convinced of,
however, is that this illness was directly precipitated and brought about by
the interview she had with Dr Martin last June.2 Dr Higgins, and indeed
every previous doctor, had directed her mind outward and forward:
Martin, seeing her once, deliberately turned it inward and backward. She
has become a different person since that day. The process has continued,
and the burden of this consciousness and introspection has become so great
that she collapsed under it. It paralyses action, and as she sees more and
more clearly and dwells more and more constantly on the past, she is
overwhelmed by the damage that people have done her (and I am not the
least important of them) and how her personal relations with her family,
with me, with friends have been poisoned.
There are many things, my dear John, which I should like to ask you,
because I know that in many ways spiritually, you are much wiser than
I. Intellectually, we are often, perhaps always, at opposite poles. To me
1 Emily Hale.
2 Both TSE and VHE saw Dr K. B. Martin in May and June 1924.

and you not to the general public that is a small matter it is
comparatively easy to find intellectual sympathy.
We agree, I believe, about the danger and harm of psychoanalysis
tampering with minds.1 This having been done by Martin, what is the way
to put Vivien right again?
Yours
Tom
Do you know standing in another
persons light (from either side)?2
How can I get out of hers?
At the moment she is utterly dependent.
to Ada Leverson ms Berg

Easter [12 April] 1925 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Mrs Leverson
Thank you very much for your note. I am so glad you like the new
Criterion I think it is a particularly good one. I believe you must have
guessed that all the contributions signed by F M are by Vivienne and
although the secret is not out yet, I have no objection to your knowing
in confidence. Vivienne has had a horrible time this winter with influenza
and neuritis, and is very run down, and is going to the country at once to
try to get over it. She sends you her love and best wishes. Do send me a
contribution, I should be delighted to look at anything from you.3
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
1 In his London Letter of Aug. 1922, TSE wrote of the soul of man under psychoanalysis.
He noted that there is no possibility of tapping the atmosphere of unknown terror and
mystery in which our life is passed and which psychoanalysis has not yet analysed
(Dial 73: 3, Sept. 1922, 330).
2 As if officium came of officiendo, of standing in another mans light, & doing other men
hurt . . . There is no power given to any to destruction, or to do harm (Lancelot Andrewes,
Sermon on Whit-Sunday 1622).
3 Ada Leversons memoir of Wilde, The Last First Night, appeared in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926).
629
Wednesday [15 April 1925] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
My dear Richard
I feel that I have failed to express my appreciation of your kindness in
writing this article for Vogue I do indeed realise the thought and
generosity which have gone into it.1 Incidentally, it says just what I should
like to be said.
I want to show you the Rothermere correspondence when I come. I felt
that it was safer for you as well as for me not to run any risk of pneumonia
or bronchitis while on your hands, especially as my chest seems to be
weakened by this illness.
If you hear of any cottage to let or to sell cheap let me know.
By the way, I can introduce you to a good broker if you wish. Without
any personal interest at stake, I have an aversion for most foreign
securities.
If you wish to come up on Wednesday I could arrange to wait till then
and go back with you. I want to see Bruce, but I had rather see you first.
Yours ever
Tom.
to Sylvia Beach2 ms Princeton

Dear Miss Beach
Thank you for your letter and for Mr Joyces MSS. which I am delighted
to have.3 Will you, when you can, convey my and my wifes deep sympathy
1 See TSEs letter of 8 Apr. (above).

2 Sylvia Beach (18871962), American expatriate who in Nov. 1919 opened Shakespeare
& Company, a bookshop and lending library, at 8 rue Dupuytren, Paris, moving two years
later to 12 rue de lOdon. Her customers included Joyce (she published Ulysses), Gide,
Maurois, Valry, Pound, Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. TSE wrote in a tribute (Miss Sylvia
Beach, The Times, 13 Oct. 1962): I made the acquaintance of Sylvia Beach, and . . . of her
friend Adrienne Monnier, on a visit to Paris early in the nineteen twenties, and thereafter saw
them frequently during that decade. Only the scattered survivors of the Franco-Anglo-
American literary world of Paris of that period, and a few others like myself who made
frequent excursions across the Channel, know how important a part these two women played
in the artistic and intellectual life of those years.
3 Fragment of an Unpublished Work appeared in C. 3: 12 (July 1925), 498510: this was
an early version of Finnegans Wake, 10425.

to him and to Mrs Joyce? I should be very grateful if you would let me
know later the result of the operation.1
With all best wishes to yourself.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
The next Criterion should appear toward the end of June.
from John Middleton Murry ms Valerie Eliot

Thursday [? 16 April 1925] The Old Coastguard Station,
Abbotsbury, Weymouth, Dorset
My dear Tom
Your letters have reached me only this morning. I am very sorry for the
delay: but it was unavoidable.
Of one thing I am convinced. That it is your duty absolutely to come
alive again. Absolutely, this without regard to what may be the
consequences for V. How you are to do it, and what may be those
consequences for V., I cannot prophesy. You have done a great wrong to
yourself, and a great wrong has been done to her. You are involved in a
vicious circle, which thinking only tightens: you must break it by
destroying the machine into which you have made yourself.
I know the consequences of this may be awful for V. I dont know that
they will be. But I am sure that nothing but harm can come of your trying
to kill yourself to keep her alive.
Dont misunderstand me. I am not saying you will not continue to make
sacrifices for her, and great ones. But you must cease to sacrifice your
inviolable self. What you choose to do for her, you must do with all
yourself; what you refuse to do for her, you must refuse with all yourself.
Let the giving and the refusing alike be your own wholly: the word being
This I will do: this I cannot and will not do.
Oh, Tom, I am almost afraid to say these things, because I do not feel
certain that I could do what I tell you to do. But I think I know this. There
1 On 23 Apr., Beach reported that JJ had had a capsulotomy operation on his left eye, which
enabled him to see immediately but not at all afterwards, possibly owing to some
haemorrhaging. As he was still suffering from conjunctivitis in the right eye, he could only
read with the aid of three magnifying glasses. JJ had left hospital on 22 Apr. but would have
to return twice a day for treatment; he told Beach that the only thing they had left to do with
his eye now is to take it out and take it home with them.
631
is a point at which the choice really is: she may die, I must die. Then you
must say: I will not die.
That sounds terrible: it is terrible, but not in the way it sounds terrible.
When you take your stand: I will not die, then indeed you do die to all
that you were. That choice is a self-sacrifice of the deepest.
Live, and let come what may. One of you two must go forward. It cant
be V. She can only go forward by bodily death, in the state she is in now.
And anyhow going forward is the mans job. If going forward for you
means an end of some sort of your relation, still, go forward. Get out of
her light that way. But try not to think about the future. You cant know
what will be. And I am sure that there is no other way of helping her.
I see no good in discouraging her from going away. It is only her
particular form of a going away that is inevitable as between you. You will
have to do yours but differently.
Give V. my love
John.

Friday [mid-April 1925] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
My dear John
Thank you for your letter. I think I understand it. What I do not know
is whether I have put the case rightly without distorting it to my own point
of view. I must ask: does it all correspond with what you have seen for
yourself?
I know that the spring is Fear a fear which I cannot account for.1 And
I know that I have killed her.2 And this terrible sense of the most subtle
form of guilt is itself paralysing and deadening.
At the moment, I want to ask one thing more. V. knew that I was writing
to you suggested it. She asked if I had heard from you. I dont think I can
show her your letter not now. Will you write to me again what you
think she should see and more for her case than mine.
I give her nothing to live for, I have blocked every outlet.
We think of you constantly. We want to know when your child is born.3
Tom.
1 Cf. TSEs draft title for Murder in the Cathedral: Fear in the Way. JMM had written On
Fear; And on Romanticism, in Adelphi 1: 4 (Sept. 1923).
2 Cf. SA: I knew a man once did a girl in.
3 A daughter, Katherine, was born to the Murrys on 20 Apr.

to Violet Schiff ms Valerie Eliot
My dear Violet
I am just writing a line to both as Vivienne is unable to sit up. On top
of everything she has had the most excruciating neuralgia in her head and
sinus result of a chill which is not only most weakening, but the pain
puts her stomach all wrong too. I dont think anyone has ever had such a
chain of misfortune. I have plans but the immediate present and future
are the anxieties.
She showed me your letter I was delighted with what you say. She must
come out and be known she has another wonderful <and terrible> story,
if she will let me print it!1
We must meet (tell S.) when <as soon as> you come back. I think of you
often.
Yrs affectionately,
Tom
She must be made to act you can train her better than anyone.2 Should
we have more charades next winter?
to Allan Wade ms Valerie Eliot

Dear Mr Wade
Thank you for your time and flattering letter. I am writing to Mr
Wilkinson to say that I shall be very glad to accept, and hope to be of more
service in the autumn than I could be at present.3
Also, I shall look forward to meeting you.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
1 VHEs story is The Paralysed Woman, which TSE was to send to the Dial for publication
under the name of V. H. Eliot. It tells the story of Sybilla, a writer who is in pain as she types,
and realises she is envied by an immaculate and elegant young woman who lives across the
way. The other woman is attended to by maids and chauffeurs, but is paralysed. Sybilla is
staying with a friend in her seaside flat, while her husband comes at weekends, with his
bowler hat and suitcases, one of which is full of books and periodicals and the other full of
medicine bottles.
2 Writing to SS on 31 Aug. 1920, TSE had asked about Viviens success as an actress.
3 This may refer to TSEs offer to give advice about Renaissance plays to the Phoenix Society.
633
Dear Mr Bennett,
I came to see you last in November with the outline and some dialogue
of my play [Sweeney Agonistes]. I am writing now to explain that since
December either I or my wife has been continually ill I have had two
months lately on end; and my wife three months, of critical illness which
is not ended; and I have had to let everything go.
I do not want you to think that I have troubled you for nothing. The
help you gave me determined me to carry out this play: I have thought of
it a great deal, and I shall finish it next winter.
And especially I wish that I may bring it to you again; I hope you will
allow me to do so in the autumn because, as I said before, and as I have
proved, there is no one but yourself for whose opinion and advice I care,
in such a venture.
<And may I remind you that you promised to let me publish, at some
time, your observations on the art of fiction and character?1 I still hope.
I wish that I might see you, and have your criticism of recent fiction in the
Criterion.>
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot

Sunday, 19 April 1925 The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
My dear Ottoline,
Neither of us has heard from you for so long that we are rather
concerned. Do let me know if you can how you are. I am afraid you
have been very ill and harassed?
Vivien is still paying for the bad effects of the Cyriax treatment.2 I am
convinced that these people have done her damage that will take a very
1 This was conceived as a response to VWs critique, in Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown,
published as Character in Fiction in C. 2: 8 (July 1923). It never materialised.
2 The treatment given by the husband-and-wife team of Cyriax who attended VHE. HWE
would write to CCE on 10 May 1925: What ill luck they do seem to have with doctors!
They thought this Dr Cyriax was such a wonder at the time. Tom has indeed a dreadful time.
I suppose it is cruel and unsympathetic to think of Toms troubles more than Viviens, but it
is of course natural . . . I cannot believe that all the congratulation that Vivien receives on her
writing is quite sincere (Houghton).

long time to repair. Irritating and weakening the stomach, over-stimulating
and exhausting the nerves. Her stomach is persistently relaxed and out of
place, pressing on the heart and on nerves, and I think thereby causing the
neuritis. She is now for the last week in agony with neuralgia of the
sinus and antrim [sc. antrum]. And you know what that is, and the
excruciation of any pain so near the brain.
The immediate future is giving me great anxiety. I cannot leave V. at
present, and yet I ought to be in the City, for particular reasons. I have
certain schemes which should mature before I see you but when will that
be? Vivien often speaks of you and longs to see you. When do you come?
Please let me hear of you if not from you.
With love from both
Affectionately
Tom.
This neuralgia makes her almost blind, so that she cannot write a line. But
she does want you to be one of her very first contacts in attempting to
return to life.

Sunday 19 April [1925] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
My dear Virginia,
You said you were going to France for a fortnight, but I am sure it is much
longer than that.1 If you are in London now, why do you not let me know?
Do not deprive me of the hope of seeing one of the few people. Especially
as I dont know about the more distant future we dont know where we
shall be after June, but I hope not in London. May I come to see you?2
Vivien cant move, with violent neuralgia and neuritis. It will be months
before she can get right again: only her brain is alive, at present.
How are you both?
Yrs ever
T. S. E.
Why are the Essays not out?3
<It has been a great distress to me to have seen so little of you.>
1 The Woolfs were on holiday in France, 26 Mar. 6 Apr.

2 VW records in her diary that TSE visited them on the evening of Tues., 28 Apr.
3 VW, The Common Reader, a collection of essays published by Hogarth Press on 23 Apr.
635
from John Middleton Murry ms Valerie Eliot
20 April [1925] The Old Coastguard Station,
Abbotsbury
My dear Tom,
A daughter was born this morning at 5.20, tell Vivien. A queer strange
business. One is taken in hand, borne on the flood, by something far
greater than we can know. One listens, and the cries of the woman upstairs
are not her cries at all, not her voice: but the voice of something terribly
strong and impersonal. Suddenly they are still quite suddenly and out
of the tense stillness a queer, strange, new little cry. That moment of
stillness is like a crack in the universe for the man listening utterly
unfathomable.
I am a bit tired. Therefore what I say may not be too coherent. But this
is clear. Dont be afraid of coming alive: it is a fearful thing it may,
certainly will, involve consequences unknown, for you and V. You cannot
foreknow them: when you think you do, you deceive yourself and increase
the burden of your fear. You have to take a leap in the dark nothing you
can do, save the leap itself, will lighten the darkness. But, if you will really
lead, take the decision and the responsibility, V. will follow. Every new
shoot you can put out will, in some way or other be life-giving for her. She
will only look forward, because you are going forward. A womans
direction is given only by her man: that is the law.
Even though your mind should tell you that the leap, or any move,
forward towards your self, will be dangerous to V., still you must do it.
Your mind doesnt know anything about it, because it can only speak of
what has been, not of what will be. The truth is that if you can break
through the circle, V. breaks through too. (You know I am not talking of
happiness: I dont know whether you or she will be happy. But happiness
doesnt matter. Life does.)
Nothing matters now, not even V., beside the question: will you go
forward or not? (Show her this: she will understand.) How go forward? Do
whatever thing your being says you must, and trample down what your
mind says you ought. Put resolutely away from yourself all sense of guilt
for the past: put that responsibility on to the universe. You may, and must.
There is no past, once you begin to live: then there is only the present.
I wish, at this moment, you both were here, or I was there.
John

to Marianne Moore ms Rosenbach
Dear Miss Moore,
But for constant illness I should have written to you some time ago to
express my pleasure at the Dial award which confers a new and
retroactive value upon the award itself. You must know that no choice
could have pleased me more.
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
to Humbert Wolfe cc
My dear Wolfe,
Many thanks for your new poems and for the inscription.1 I have been
enjoying them. But you have given me a difficulty. I must try to find a
reviewer with a muse as light-footed as your own and who will appreciate
the kind of conversational grace which is pretty uncommon nowadays,
and which makes me think of Calverley although I am not making any
close comparisons.2
I am going to read your story at once.3 Please forgive the delay, as both
I and my wife have had a very long illness. When I return to the world
again I hope I shall find you there.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF
1 Humbert Wolfe, The Unknown Goddess (1925).

2 It was reviewed by H. P. Collins, C. 3: 12 (July 1925), 5846. Charles Stuart Calverley
(183184): poet and parodist whose Verses and Translations (1862) and Fly Leaves (1872)
combined academic scholarship and wit with parodies of the popular poets of the day.
3 TSE later turned down Wolfes story Mr Fromage and George Gregory.
637
to Gertrude Stein1 ms Beinecke
Dear Miss Stein
I must apologise most humbly for the long delay, due to my and my
wifes severe illness. I no longer, of course, have any claim on your poem,
but I should like to use it. That would have to be in October,2 as the
unexpected receipt of two contributions from people whom I promised to
print as soon as possible, has jammed the June.
I am immensely interested in everything you write.
Hoping that we may meet again before long.
Sincerely yours
pp. The Criterion
T. S. Eliot

Dear Mr Bennett
Thank you very much for your kind letter. I should love to lunch with
you on Saturday, but unfortunately under present conditions it is
impossible for me to lunch or dine out. I should like to come to see you
if I may, one day at teatime (late) or after dinner. If that is possible in the
immediate future could you leave word, and I will ring up? I am only not
free on Tuesday next.
I am very sorry indeed that I cannot lunch with you.
With many thanks
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
1 Gertrude Stein (18741946), American writer; author of The Making of Americans (1911)
and other experimental essays in prose and drama; famous for her Paris salon and association
with artists and writers inc. Picasso and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
2 The autumn C. did not appear. Steins prose sketch Fifteenth of November appeared in
NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 715.

to Bertrand Russell ms McMaster
21 April [1925] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Bertie,
If you are still in London I should very much like to see you.
My times and places are very restricted, but it is unnecessary to mention
them unless I hear from you.
I want words from you which only you can give. But if you have now
ceased to care at all about either of us, just write on a slip I do not care to
see you or I do not care to see either of you and I will understand.1
In case of that, I will tell you now that everything has turned out as you
predicted ten years ago.2 You are a great psychologist.
Yours
T. S. E.
from Bertrand Russell ms Valerie Eliot

23 April 1925 Carn Voel, Porthcurno, Penzance
My dear Tom
I am very sorry I am not in town now, as I should very much wish to see
you, in view of your letter. If you can come down here, say at Whitsuntide,
I should be more glad than I can say. My affection for you is what it always
has been since I got to know you well.3 So if there is any moment when
your duties allow you to get away, do come and pay a visit here.
Meanwhile, would you care to write more fully about what is wrong?
Vivien has avoided me for the last seven or eight years, and I suppose still
wants to do so, but if not I shouldnt like her to imagine that there is any
1 VHE had broken off relations with BR in early 1919, though she wrote again during TSEs
breakdown on 1 Nov. 1921 to congratulate him on the imminent birth of his first child.
2 BR first met VHE on 9 July 1915, soon after the Eliots marriage. It is possible that he was
briefly her lover in the course of that summer. In Sept. 1915, he told OM that VHE had
a great deal of mental passion & no physical passion, a universal vanity, that makes her
desire every mans devotion, & a fastidiousness that makes any expression of their devotion
disgusting to her (Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude, 440). The prediction
to which TSE refers could be that which BR penned to OM on 10 Nov. 1915: she is really
very fond of him, but has impulses of cruelty to him from time to time. It is a Dostojewsky
type of cruelty . . . She is a person who lives on a knife edge, & will end as criminal or saint
I dont know which yet (ibid., 440).
3 On 10 Nov. 1915, BR had told OM that he loved TSE as if he were my son.
639
lack of friendliness on my side.1 Whatever is the matter, you can count on
me to help in any possible way.
You know, I suppose that I stayed with your brother in Chicago he
was very kind, and reminded me vividly of you.2 With all affection,
Yours
Bertrand Russell

My dear Eliot
I am glad to be able to say that I have received the resignation of one of
our Directors, and that at our Directors Meeting this afternoon, you were
appointed a Director of the Company. Our arrangements therefore with
you will be on the lines which we agreed upon; namely, a salary of 325
as Editor and 150 as Director. The latter is paid half-yearly in arrear, so
that you will, at the end of June, get two-sixths of 75, i.e. 25.
We must meet as soon as possible and celebrate the victory.
Yours ever
[Geoffrey C. Faber]
to L. H. C. Prentice ts Reading
Dear Mr Prentice
The poems3 which you sent me for my opinion have considerable merit.
They suffer from a defect from which nearly all contemporary verse
suffers, i.e. lack of an individual and mature rhythm. The versification is
often rough, and the technique, though ingenious and showing a sense of
experiment, is not accomplished. Bearing in mind what seems to me the
1 According to Colette ONiel, VHE wrote to BR in Jan. 1919 to say that she disliked fading
intimacies and wanted to break with him completely (cited in Monk, Bertrand Russell, 544).
2 BR had stayed with HWE for four days in Apr. 1924.
3 On 16 Mar. L. H. C. (Charles) Prentice (an editor at the publisher Chatto & Windus) sent
TSE some poems by Alec Brown (a friend of Prince Mirskys) which had flummoxed him:
he offered to pay TSE two guineas for his evaluation of the MS. Brown was a prolific
translator from Russian and French; and author of Beethoven Deaf, and Other Poems (New
York, 1927). See also Richard Aldington, Pinorman: Personal Recollections of Norman
Douglas, Pino Orioli, and Charles Prentice (1954).

policy of your house, that is, I believe, to concentrate on rather a small
number of writers and publish the whole of their work, I should not say
that this writer had yet reached the point of being a safe and suitable
investment for your house. When I say investment, I do not merely mean
that the publication would not be remunerative; I mean that one cannot yet
be certain of the authors future. The verse is too good to be popular and
too crude to be distinguished. It seems to me, frankly, more suitable for one
of the smaller publishing houses or private publishing firms which make
more of a speciality of introducing new poetry.
I am returning the manuscript to you with this letter by hand.
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
(pp IPF)
TSE/IPF
to S. S. Koteliansky ts BL
24 April 1925 The Criterion,
Dear Koteliansky,
Thank you for your letter of the 22nd sending me the new manuscripts
of Dostoevsky.1 They seem of great interest and I should like to use them.
The July number is already filled to overflowing. Would October suit you?
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
to W. L. Johnston cc
24 April 1925 23 Adelphi Terrace House
Dear Sir,
I have your letter of the 21st. I quite agree with you about the quality of
Mr Bains work and am taking the liberty of sending him your letter. We
hope to have one or two contributions by Mr Bain regularly.
Mr Bain is not a prolific writer, and furthermore, you will understand
that in a small quarterly review like the Criterion it is impossible to have
1 Koteliansky wrote on 22 Apr., enclosing an article, Dostoevsky on The Brothers

Karamazov, a set of new, hitherto unpublished letters.
641
many long contributions by the same writer. And it is necessary to appeal
to a variety of tastes and interests. But I wish to assure you that on the
subjects on which Mr Bain writes he is not only voicing his own opinions
but is representing the policy of this paper, which is strongly reactionary
and anti-romantic.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF
to F. W. Bain cc
My dear Bain,
I think that you ought to see the enclosed letter, and to know that I am
as desirous as the writer that we should have more of your work.1 I should
have written to you and attempted a meeting this winter, but have been
almost completely a recluse owing to a severe illness, followed by the much
more severe illness of my wife.
By the way, a young Balliol man of my acquaintance, a clever Jew from
Alexandria, named Jean de Menasce,2 has written to ask me if you would
allow your article on Disraeli3 to be published in translation in La Revue
Juive, which he is editing in Paris.4 I told him to write to you and quote his
terms.
With all best wishes, and looking forward to seeing you again and to
having more essays from you,5
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF.
1 From W. L. Johnston.
2 See TSEs letter of 10 Mar. 1924.
3 Disraeli, C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924), 14366.
4 In the first issue of La Revue Juive (15 Jan. 1925), the editor Albert Cohen proclaimed that
it was fonde par des hommes qui ont conscience dappartenir une race vivante dont
luvre spirituelle nest pas encore acheve [founded by men conscious of belonging to a
living race whose spiritual work is not yet completed].
5 Bains only other contribution was a review of books on Napoleon, in 11: 42 (Oct. 1931).

Dear Mr Ainslie,
I must apologise to you for not having written to you about your poem
but I have been ill for a long time and unable to attend to any
correspondence. I am afraid that there has been some misunderstanding.
While I expressed appreciation of your poem, I did not hold out to myself
any hope of being able to use it.1 We are unfortunately able to print only
very little verse, and with the other contributions which have been accepted
I am afraid that it will be impossible for us to accept any more verse for at
least a year.
Pray forgive the delay in answering your letters.
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]

Tuesday [28? April 1925] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear John
Thank you very much for the essay.2 As I said, it is too late for June. I
can use it in October. I am eager to read it.
I very deeply appreciate your writing me such a letter as yours at a
moment so vital to you.3 I shall write to you, but meanwhile only say that
we are very glad for your having a child, and successfully, I hope, in every
way. We think of you very often.
Ever yours
Tom
The clouds have not lifted, and so forgive me for not writing sooner.
1 Ainslie wrote on 19 Apr. to regret that his little poem Idoch had not yet appeared in C.;
he thought TSE had agreed to print it eventually.
2 The Romantic Fallacy, a discussion of Tolstoys What is Art? and Keatss Letters, NC 4: 3
(June 1926).
3 See JMMs letter of 20 Apr. above.
643
to Adrienne Monnier1 ms Doucet
Mademoiselle,
Je vous remercie de votre aimable lettre du 21. Que les haruspices soient
favorables votre revue! Je veux bien que mon nom figure dans le premier
numro.2 Je trouve votre traduction excellente, je nose pas essayer de
lamliorer! Je pense que Prufrock se traduit en franais mieux que The
Waste Land, cause du fait que linfluence de Laforgue y est pour
beaucoup.3
(puis) Prufrock (crit en 1911) est paru 1917 (The Egoist Press)
Poems Knopf, New York 1920
The Sacred Wood Methuen, London 1920
The Waste Land Hogarth Press, London 1923
Homage to John Dryden Hogarth Press 1925
Voil la bibliographie complte!
Je vous flicite, vous et Mademoiselle Beach, et vous remercie de cette
belle traduction.
Coulons pic est trs bien.4
Recevez, mademoiselle, lassurance de mes sentiments les plus distingus.
T. S. Eliot
Vous tes libre de parler du Criterion.5
1 Adrienne Monnier (18921955): French poet, bookseller and publisher. In 1915 she
opened a bookshop called La Maison des Amis des Livres in the rue de lOdon, which was
across the road from Sylvia Beachs Shakespeare & Co. In 1925 she launched a review, Le
Navire dArgent, the first issue of which appeared in June.
2 The translation of Prufrock by Monnier and Sylvia Beach appeared as La Chanson
damour de J. Alfred Prufrock in Le Navire dArgent 1 (June 1925), 239. It was the first
translation into French of one of TSEs major poems.
3 On 18 Oct. 1938 TSE was to tell Edward H. Greene that Prufrock was one of four poems
written under the sign of Laforgue.
4 Coulons pic (to sink like a stone). The phrase occurs at the end of the French
translation: Nous avons tard dans les chambres de la mer / Devant les filles de la mer
courronnes dalgues rouges et brunes / Jusquau jour o des voix humaines nous veillent,
et nous coulons pic. [We have lingered in the chambers of the sea / By sea-girls wreathed
with seaweed red and brown / Till human voices wake us and we drown.]
5 The translators described C. as la plus haute et la plus critique des revues littraires
anglaises [the highest and most critical of English literary reviews].
Translation: Dear Mademoiselle, I thank you for your kind letter of the 21st. May the
haruspices prove favourable to your review! I am quite willing for my name to appear in the
first number. I find your translation excellent and would not presume to try to improve it! I
think Prufrock goes into French more easily than The Waste Land, because Laforgues
influence has a lot to do with it.

Wednesday, [29 April 1925] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Leonard
I am writing to express my gratitude and appreciation of the interest
you took last night in a matter which worried me very much.1 If I find in
the next week anything disturbing I shall consult [Henry] Head or
[Maurice] Wright2 without letting V. know. But I have been observing her
since I saw you, and am convinced that it has been purely a nervous, not
mental breakdown; that she acted with an instinct of self-preservation
when she took to bed and gave everything up as she did; and that she is
making a consistent effort to resume regular functioning. I think that the
years of loneliness since marriage, the mental impressions of years coming
to the surface in her weak condition, may be enough to account for the fear
of being left.3
(out of print) Prufrock (written in 1911) appeared in 1917 (The Egoist Press)
Poems Knopf, New York 1920
The Sacred Wood Methuen, London 1920
The Waste Land Hogarth Press, London 1923
Homage to John Dryden Hogarth Press 1925
That is the complete bibliography!
I congratulate both you and Miss Beach, and thank you for the fine translation.
Coulons pic is very good.
Yours sincerely, T. S. Eliot
You are free to mention the Criterion.
1 In her diary for 29 Apr., VW gave a long account of TSEs emotional rather tremulous &
excited visit the previous evening. She spoke of his release from the Bank and heavensent
appointment at 4/5 of his present salary: He has seen his whole life afresh, seen his relations
to the world, & to Vivien in particular, become humbler suppler more humane good,
sensitive, honourable man as he is, accusing himself of being the American husband, &
wishing to tell me privately . . . what store V. sets by me, has done nothing but write since
last June, because I told her to! (Diary, III, 14).
2 Henry Head (18611940), FRCP, FRS, was consulted by VW in 1913. Consulting
physician at the London Hospital, he was editor of the periodical Brain, 191025, and
knighted in 1927. His works include Studies in Neurology (co-authored: 2 vols, 1920) and
Aphasia and Kindred Disorders of Speech (2 vols, 1926). Dr Maurice Wright was also
consulted by VW, and LW during the war. LW said in his next letter to TSE (30 Apr.) that on
reflection he would recommend Wright rather than Head: Head could be rather brusque
in manner. See further: Stephen Trombley, All that Summer She was Mad: Virginia Woolf
and Her Doctors (1981).
3 VW records TSE asking LW whether he knew anything about psycho-analysis: Tom
then told us the queer story how Martin the dr. set V. off thinking of her childhood terror
of loneliness, & now she cant let him, Tom, out of her sight. There he has sat mewed in her
room these 3 months, poor pale creature, or if he has to go out, comes in to find her in a half
fainting state (Diary, III, 15).
645
There is one question I should like to ask you (I know you will forgive
me, as there is no one else I can trust). We shall go away within a month
or so, and therefore it is out of the question to start a tutor or any other
new regime until the autumn the question is what she shall do until we
do leave. She wants to begin writing again: do you think I should
encourage this or not, and if so, should she try to write a little each day or
in spells. Should you say that it is good or bad for her to write yet?1
It is a sign of my appreciation that I write to ask you this. I enjoyed
seeing you and Virginia more than I can say.2
Yours ever
T. S. E.

Thursday [30 April 1925] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Leonard
Thank you very much indeed.3 There is one point however which
complicates it. Vivien was (as I mentioned) never trained in regular habits
of study. She is naturally immoderate. When she gets an idea she wants to
work it out at once. If she postpones writing, the idea goes on fermenting
in her brain, so that often it has seemed better to let her write. And with
this neuralgia, she thinks and thinks the whole time, and because she must
keep still there is no occupation one can substitute for that.
Would you begin by limiting and regularising her times of writing or
at the other end?4
Yours gratefully
T. S. E.
1 VW said TSE defended not writing which is her device he said, & went into her
p[s]ychology (Diary, III, 14).
2 VW found TSEs coming to them not merely touching to her vanity but to her sense of
human worth. She was conscious of his liking for them, and trust in Leonard (Ibid.).
3 For LWs letter of 30 Apr., see Letters of Leonard Woolf, ed. Frederic Spotts, 2278. As
to whether or not VHE should be encouraged to write, LW said it depended on the actual
cause of the disturbance. When VW was recovering from acute nervous exhaustion, she
began by limiting her writing to half an hour a day, and gradually built up from there. LWs
editor notes that at this time TSE and LW exchanged more than thirty letters and lunched
together weekly.
4 LW responded (1 May): If the writing seems to decrease excitement or depression when
she is no longer writing, then it is good; but if excitement and depression shows the slightest
sign of increasing, it is bad.

Of course V. would be delighted and flattered to have The Common
Reader, and wd certainly read it! though slowly, at present.1

1 May 1925
My dear Eliot
Thanks for yours of Thursday. Make what objections you think fit to
make to the proposed Agreement. It is but a tentative draft. Of course
Clause 5 was not intended in any way to prevent you from contributing to
any papers you like; it was really meant to apply only to financial or
editorial interest. I think, for example, that if you were to be offered a
permanent post on the staff of some other periodical, it is reasonable that
our consent should be asked. I should not however consider an
arrangement under which you contributed regularly to any other paper as
being on the staff of such a paper; but editorial or quasi-editorial control
or assistance or advice would, I think, come under that description.
How would the following substitute for Clause 5 do?
Mr Eliot undertakes, during the continuance of this Agreement,
not to acquire a financial interest in any other literary periodical
or publishing house, nor to take any part in promoting or editing
or managing any other literary periodical without the consent of
the Company, and to give the option of publishing any work
written by himself, at the terms upon which such work is offered
to be published by any other publishing house in book form, to the
Company. Provided that nothing in this Agreement shall restrict
Mr Eliot from contributing to any periodicals or miscellanies
published by any other firm.
I hope you wont consider this clause unduly oppressive; knowing you
I think it was hardly necessary to include it in the Agreement; but one has
to think of other interested parties who have not that privilege.
About our name. We are waiting for a licence from the Board of Trade
to change our name to Faber & Gwyer, Ltd, and I hope that this change
will be effected before June 30th.
Yours ever
[Geoffrey C. Faber]
1 VW, The Common Reader, was published by the Hogarth Press on 23 Apr. VW asked LW
to find out from TSE whether it would be all right for VW to give a copy to VHE.
647
My dear Ottoline,
I have been meaning to write to you for many days. I hope this will catch
you before you leave Garsington.
Vivien has had a continuous torture with neuralgia a peculiar neuralgia
which comes from the back of the neck and affects all of one side of her
face. It has never left her for three weeks. I think it is a little abated now,
but it has been impossible for her to stir out of bed: any movement
aggravates it. But the simple fact is that the Cyriax treatment has simply
exhausted every nerve in her body to breaking point had she gone on
much longer I dont think she would ever have recovered. What doctors
can do, in the way of criminal maltreatment, is incredible and one can
never prove it in a court of law. But I will explain to you more fully about
the Cyriax treatment, and also about Dr Martin when we meet. I dont
think anyone could have fought through and pulled herself out of such a
terrible crash of nervous exhaustion more bravely and tenaciously than V.
has. But it will take her a long long time to regain health. She has years to
make up. I have seen, during the enforced leisure of this winter, many
things which I never gave myself the time to see before.
It is true that I am leaving the bank almost immediately but I shall
only be telling a very few people at present. It had got to the point where
I realised that neither of us could stand it any longer. I shall take a long rest
we shall disappear this summer; I have a new job to go to in the autumn
I am not in a position to divulge it yet, but shall be very soon. The fact
is that I have been very much more ill than I knew it was a real
breakdown. I had to make a change. And I shant be fit for any brain work
for a long time.
Yes, it is true that V. wrote that poem.1 In fact, she has been writing for
a long time and I have always suspected that you knew it! And I think
that she is a very clever and original writer, with a mathematical and
abstract mind which ought to be trained2 and I intend that it shall
But this letter is merely an outline of some of the things I shall tell you
when we meet. I do hope you are better and stronger, and will enjoy
London. And to see you soon.
1 Necesse est Perstare? by F. M., C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925), 364. The poems last lines are:
Is it necessary / Is this necessary / Tell me, is it necessary that we go through this?
2 On 28 May, TSE was to tell the Woolfs that VHE had the abstract, he the historic mind
(Diary, III, 15).

Ever affectionately with love from both
Tom.
1
Menasces MS received

My dear Read
Thank you very much for your two letters: I have wanted to answer
them at length, but cannot do so even yet.2
I expect to be away from town for the whole summer: but must see you
before I leave to discuss several important matters. I hope you will be in
London throughout May.
Thorpe I like: I have sent him the Collingwood book.3 I should like to
try Willie King with something4 the Chesterfield goes to Aldington, who
wanted it.5
Is there anything you would care to review? Collins I hope to keep and
am sending one or two things to him.6
Richards does not write very well, I think; and lacks ordonnance.7
1 This may refer to Jean de Menasces French translation of TWL La Terre Mise Nu
which Menasce mentions in a letter of 22 Aug. It was published in Esprit I (May 1926).
2 HR wrote on 3 and 18 Apr. to discuss the T. E. Hulme notes he was preparing for C. 3: 12
(July 1925), and to give his reactions to 3: 11 (Apr. 1925).
3 On 18 Apr., HR asked: Do you approve of [W. A.] Thorpe? See Thorpe on R. G.
Collingwood, Outline of a Philosophy of Art and Speculum Mentis in 3: 12 (July 1925),
57983.
4 See William Kings review of RAs Voltaire, NC 4: 3 (June 1926): the first of many reviews.
5 Probably Roger Coxon, Chesterfield and his Critics (1925), but when approached for his
review later in the year, RA had not done it.
6 HR thought H. P. Collins, A Note on the Classical Principle in Poetry (C. 3: 11, Apr.
1925), excellent. Collins reviewed Humbert Wolfe, The Unknown Goddess, and VW, The
Common Reader, in 3: 12 (July 1925).
7 HR said that I. A. Richards had written him a very splenetic letter following his review
of Principles of Practical Criticism in 3: 11 (Apr. 1925). He does not, however, move me
from my position and I feel that any misunderstanding of his work is excused by the manner
in which it is expressed. I perhaps, in my desire for a contrast, gave [Ethics by Stephen Ward]
rather too easy a show; Richards cries Damn all this fine writing and in a sense he is right.
Ward is not exact enough, but his fundamental attitude is a better one than Richards.
649
I absolutely agree about Community (re NRF).1 Next winter I really
hope we can organise some life. It is most important but people must be
trained to it! We must cooperate to that end. More later.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
to Bonamy Dobre ms Brotherton

Dear Dobre
It was still more unfortunate for me. And circumstances have made it
impossible for me to write, and now impossible for me to write more than
a line. My wife is still very ill, but there is a possibility of our taking a long
holiday in France. Where will you be this summer? And what do you
consider the best make of cheapish small French car (new or second
hand)?2
I should like to reply at length, but can only say this: do go on with the
comparative Anthony and Cleopatras the subject would interest me
very much.3 Or if not that, then something else soon!
Yes, I agree with you about Richards.4
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
1 HR felt the lack of any valuable community in their literary life, a fact borne in upon
him when reading the issue of the NRF dedicated to Jacques Rivire, who had edited it from
1919 until his death in Feb. 1925. The issue was entitled Hommage Jacques Rivire 1886
1925, NRF (1 Apr. 1925), and TSE had contributed a tribute, in French, entitled
Tmoignages trangers.
2 BD recommended first a Michelin Mixte, then on 29 June, a Michelin Confort.
3 On 10 Mar., BD said he intended to do a comparative critical study of the four Cleopatra
plays of Daniel, Shakespeare, Sedley & Dryden, and wondered if TSE was interested.
4 BD said he had been reading I. A. Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism, with great
interest but thought the chapter on Value needed re-writing. All that Richards had actually
proved was that value = value, leaving us face to face with the ultimates he tries to destroy.

Sunday [3? May 1925] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
My dear Virginia
Vivien has asked me to write to thank you for The Common Reader,
which she is delighted to have, with the inscription, and which she will
read. (But I shall probably read it first, for I see it as a most important
document or text for a certain future work of my own. Are all writers such
egoists as I?)
Vivien is not so well again, but in an illness like this, which is the fruit
of so many years, she is bound to progress very slowly and have relapses
for a long time to come. But I know that she would be delighted at any
moment to have a letter from you especially if you advised or instructed
her about writing. But only if and when it occurs to you.
My love to you both
T. S. E.

Tuesday [5 May 1925] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Leonard
I have not thanked you for your second letter and do so now. It puts the
answer very clearly, and I am grateful.
Now could you give me the name of the best M.D. there is with
psychoanalytic knowledge if there is one? Would you say Wright1 or
someone else? This is obviously not for V. but for myself if anyone.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
to Bertrand Russell ms McMaster

7 May [1925] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
My dear Bertie,
Thank you very much indeed for your letter. As you say, it is very
difficult for you to make suggestions until I can see you. For instance,
1 Dr Maurice Wright (see TSEs letter of 29 Apr.). LW replied (8 May) that Wright, though
not a practising psychoanalyst, was the best doctor he knew with psychoanalytic knowledge.
He thought James Glover probably the best English analyst; for Glover, see note to TSEs
letter to Charles Haigh-Wood, 12 July.
651
I dont know to what extent the changes which have taken place, since we
were in touch with you, would seem to you material. What you suggest
seems to me of course what should have been done years ago. Since then
her health is a thousand times worse. Her only [choice del.] alternative
would be to live quite alone if she could. And the fact that living with me
has done her so much damage does not help me to come to any decision.
I need the help of someone who understands her I find her still
perpetually baffling and deceptive. She seems to me like a child of six with
an immensely clever and precocious mind. She writes extremely well
(stories etc.) and [with] great originality. And I can never escape from the
spell of her persuasive (even coercive) gift of argument.
Well, thank you very much, Bertie I feel quite desperate. I hope to see
you in the autumn.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
11 May 1925 23 Adelphi Terrace House
My dear Manning,
Thank you for your letter of the 9th. I am returning the cheque herewith.
Would you mind endorsing it to Miss Johnson1 and, if you wish, return it
to me and I will have it sent to her direct. Unless you have any special
reason for wishing to have a new cheque made out to Miss Johnson, this
is much the simplest way from the point of view of the Criterion accounts.
As for payment, I am very sorry indeed if my illness and the very little
time which I have been able to give to the Criterion have made me
overlook your previous correspondence or any tacit agreement between
us. I will have the correspondence looked up. I do not consider that the
figure you name is at all too high, but in the circumstances I should like to
propose that the balance be paid on publication of a second selection of the
letters.2 For reasons, the explanation of which I cannot enter upon now as
they are extremely involved, but which I should be glad to explain to you
in conversation, this would not only simplify the accounts, but would be
of great personal assistance to myself. I should propose to publish the
1 This was in payment for Some Letters of Lionel Johnson, C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925). Manning
had forwarded the letters to TSE and acted on behalf of the executrix, Miss Johnson.
2 No second selection appeared.

remaining letters in October, as it is absolutely essential to reduce the July
number to the smallest possible compass.
Will you please let me know whether you concur?
Thank you for your expressions of sympathy. I am very sorry indeed to
hear of your own illness:1 please let me know how you get on, and I hope
we may meet before the summer.
[T. S. E.]
to John Middleton Murry cc

My dear John
I was very glad to hear from you and I think it is very kind of you to give
me the option of using this article by Gorki.2 I have read it, but I do not
think that it is quite suitable for our readers either; it is a sort of general
conspectus which, to tell the truth, I have always been anxious to avoid.
What I should rather have, for instance, is specimens of original work by
Russian writers which might have interest and value for European readers.
However, I am very much obliged to you, and when I can reciprocate I
will.
I shall be writing to you very soon: forgive this letter for being purely
business.
SIGNED FOR T. S. ELIOT
(Secretary)

My dear Eliot
Many thanks for yours. The weekend after next, i.e. Saturday, 23rd, is
perfectly all right for me. Unless I hear from you to the contrary I will take
it that you will try to manage Saturday to Monday, which would on all
accounts be best. If you cant do that, make it Saturday, stay to dinner and
1 Manning was torpid with cold.

2 On 6 May, JMM offered TSE an article that Gorki had sent to The Adelphi: the most
valuable & comprehensive synopsis of the present condition of Russian literature I have read.
However, JMM considered it too specialised and literary for readers of The Adelphi.
653
go back by the last train, i.e. 9.22, which gets to Paddington at 10.46: this
would just give you a chance to be seen, though a very brief one. [One-
sentence insertion illegible.] If you had to go back on Sunday there are
plenty of trains from 7.40 in the morning to 8.17 in the evening. The later
ones are too bad to take. But if, best of all, you can stay till Monday
morning, you could catch the 8.33 and be at Paddington by 9.
By the way, our next Directors meeting is on May 26 at 2.30 or
thereabouts. I hope you will be able to manage to attend this. You will
have to take up a small number of qualifying shares. The present
qualification is fixed at five 10 Preference Shares, bearing interest at the
rate of 7%. I could let you have five of mine at par, if that suits you. The
qualification may be altered in the new articles which we are about to
adopt, and as you have two months grace from the date of your
appointment as a Director you may prefer to let the matter stand over for
a little.
About the Criterion: can you tell me when you are likely to see Lady R?
I incline to think that the best name for the new paper would be The New
Criterion. If it were possible I should like some announcement of the fact
to appear in the June number of the Criterion. Will Lady R. be in England
in time for that?
I hope your wifes health is benefiting by the change in the weather.
Yours ever
[Geoffrey C. Faber]

My dear Eliot
Yes, do try and make it Saturday and Sunday. It would be much better
than going back by the 9.22 on Saturday night, since that would prevent
you from seeing more than the two or three people you happened to sit
next to at dinner.1
Try and come to our meeting if you can, even if it is only for a short
time; but of course if you cant I will explain the circumstances to the other
Directors.
Yours ever
[Geoffrey C. Faber]
1 TSE was to be GCFs guest at All Souls College, Oxford, for the night of Sat., 23 May.

My dear Manning,
Thank you very much for your letter. I am glad to hear that you are
progressing. I am also glad to settle the matter of the Johnson letters.1
My secretary is sending you the Newman book.2 Take as much time as
you need.
I should very much like to spend a weekend with you, but it is practically
out of the question, I am afraid, until the autumn. I have a great deal of
business to attend to here, and then I hope that my wife and I can get away
for the whole summer. I am likely to be here for another month, and should
you be coming to town during that time I hope that we might arrange a
meeting. I suppose that you will be staying at Chobham all the summer and
I hope that you will be there when I come back in the autumn.
Yes, but what you expect with a man like Churchill as Chancellor?3
[T. S. E.]
to Ellen Thayer 4 ts Beinecke

Dear Ellen Thayer,
I am sending you herewith a story by Vivien, The Paralyzed Woman,
which will appear in the July number of the Criterion, and which I think
you would like for publication in the Dial.5 It seems to me amazingly
brilliant and humorous and horrible, and I have never read anything in
the least like it. It is likely to attract a good deal of notice here, and it is the
longest story she has yet published. You could publish it under her own
name (V. H. Eliot), or Vivien Eliot, as you think best.
1 See TSEs letter to Manning, 11 May.

2 Bertram Newman, Cardinal Newman (1925). Mannings A French Criticism of Newman,
in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 1931, was primarily a response to Ramn Fernandezs The
Experience of Newman, in C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924).
3 Winston Churchill (18741965) had become Chancellor the previous Nov., and recently
delivered his first Budget. On 12 May, Manning said he was a little ashamed of a
Conservative Government indulging in more benevolence.
4 Ellen Thayer, Scofield Thayers cousin, joined The Dial as Assistant Editor in May 1925.
5 The story did not appear in C. or The Dial, though VHEs Fte Galante was to appear
under the name Fanny Marlow in C. 3: 12 (July 1925), 55763. In the event, VHE never
published under her own name, and her story remained unpublished.
655
I am, as you know, printing Lawrences The Woman Who Rode Away
(first part) in the Criterion, so the two cases are the same.1
Lucy2 is still here, and we are sometimes a little worried on her account.
I hope for an opportunity of meeting you this summer.
If you cannot use this story there are others unpublished, but I think
that this is the best up to date.
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
PS Vivien wrote Night Club and also the poem by F. M. in the last
Criterion.3 Did you read them?
to W. W. Worster cc
Dear Sir,
I am very glad to hear from you again and very glad that you should
consider contributing to the Criterion.
I should be very glad to have a review of a thousand words of the poetry
of Gustav Frding.4
I am afraid that it is impossible to consider at present your essay on
Buchholtz5 for the reason that I have already accepted several articles of
this type from foreign authors German and Italian and it is impossible
in a periodical of the size of the Criterion to print more than one such
essay in each number.
I should certainly be interested to see an article such as you mention in
your last paragraph.6
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
1 DHL, The Woman Who Rode Away I, appeared in C. 3: 12 (July 1925) and in Dial 79: 1
(July 1925).
2 Lucy Thayer (Ellens sister) had been a friend of VHEs since before she met TSE.
3 Feiron Morris, Night Club; F. M., Necesse est Perstare?, in C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925).
4 Gustav Frding (18601911): Swedish lyric poet, whose Guitarr och dragharmonika
appeared in 1891. On 12 May, Worster offered to review Guitar & Concertina (1925), a
selection trans. C. D. Lockwood, but no review ever appeared in C.
5 Worster enclosed an article on Johannes Buchholtz (18821940): Danish novelist. Worster
had translated his Egholm and his God (1921) and The Miracles of Clara van Haag (1922).
6 Worster proposed an article based on certain books published in recent months which
seem to fit together as showing the general trend of thought in Denmark, namely a reaction
from radical atheism to a more aristocratic and more spiritual view. Several deal with Brandes
and his school from different angles (two novels by different writers and three critical works);

to J. M. Cohen 1 cc
Dear Sir
I am sorry that illness prevented my answering immediately your letter
of the 18th February.
I find your poem interesting and hopeful but, if you will allow me to
say so, I think that you still need to digest the influences to which you have
subjected yourself.2 The influences themselves I cannot help considering
very good ones, and we must all develop our originality in the same way;
that is by steeping ourselves in the work of those previous poets whom we
find most sympathetic. I think that the best antidote to the almost
contemporary sources whom you mention is Dante and perhaps Virgil.3
The forgoing implies that I should like to see more of the your work
from time to time.
Yours faithfully
[T. S. E.]
to Allen Tate 4 cc
Dear Mr Tate
of the 28th February. I am sorry that we cannot find room for the enclosed
poems, but I should be interested in following your work and I should be
one with feminism, one with the study of Child Psychology, and one which I consider specially
important as an indicator of modern Danish thought is called Fllesaanden (the Collective
Spirit) and offers a kind of practical working gospel that supplements the negative element
of the rest.
1 John Michael Cohen (190389): critic and translator, later editor of Penguin Classics.
2 The influences mentioned by Cohen included the Belgian symbolist Emile Verhaeren
(18551916), Jules Laforgue, Heinrich Heine, and perhaps Prufrock and The Waste Land.
3 TSE had already written an essay on Dante in SW (1920). In his influential Dante
(published as a Faber pamphlet in 1929), he was to propose that more can be learned about
how to write poetry from Dante than from any English poet. In an unpublished memoir,
Mary Hutchinson mentions that he usually carried an edition of Dante or Virgil in his pocket.
TSEs views of Virgil were articulated in Virgil and the Christian World (1951), in OPP
(1957).
4 Allen Tate (18991979): US poet and critic. He was to be editor of T. S. Eliot: The Man
and his Work (1966). His Reactionary Essays on Poetry and Ideas (1936) was reviewed in
NC 15: 61 (Apr. 1936).
657
very much pleased if you would continue to let me see portions of it from
time to time with a view to publication in the Criterion.1
Yours faithfully
[T. S. E.]
to R. P. Blackmur 2 cc
Dear Sir,
of the 16th December.
I think your poem3 is very promising and I have taken the trouble to
read it several times. The scheme which you mention is all right and it is
highly desirable, in my experience, to have a kind of scheme or scaffold;
but usually this scheme is useful chiefly to oneself. I think that your verse
tends to diffuseness and to use of words of too general a meaning. Your
poppy is not a definite poppy seen in a particular place or associated with
particular circumstances and emotions. I think that you need to work the
precise image. Laughter like hot ashes in the throat is not a very good
comparison because one does not know what hot ashes in the throat are
like and they do not suggest any kind of laughter. I think that a study of
the similes of Dante might help you.4 Later, I should very much like to see
more of your work.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF
1 No poetry by Tate came out in C., but his essay The Fallacy of Humanism appeared in
NC 8: 33 (July 1929).
2 R. P. Blackmur (190465): US poet and critic. His The Double Agent: Essays in Craft and
Elucidation (1935) was to be reviewed by Michael Roberts in NC 15: 61 (July 1936),
alongside Tates Reactionary Essays.
3 In a Falling House, written Oct. 1924.
4 In his Clark lectures (1926), TSE was to note the rational necessity of Dantes similes and
metaphors. None of Blackmurs poems or essays appeared in C.

to Herbert Read cc
My dear Read,
Thank you for your card and for letting me know about your absence
from town. I think we shall have to wait until you come back, when I shall
make a determined effort to get hold of you.
Thank you for returning your proof punctually.1
The next number of the Criterion will have to be rather a small one and
therefore I have had to forego the idea of including several essays about
Hulme. But I will explain the whole position to you when we meet.
Yours ever,
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF
to Ada Leverson cc
Dear Mrs Leverson,
Thank you very much for sending me the interesting material for your
essay on Oscar Wilde. I have looked it over but have not read the whole
because I have found it necessary to make a rule never to read any
contributions that are not typed. If you will put your material together for
me and have the whole essay typed, I think that I am safe in assuring you
that we should be very happy to make use of it, because I am certain that
any original and first hand reminiscences of Oscar are always of very great
interest to the public. I should like to know about how long an essay you
wish to make of it.2
Always yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
1 T. E. Hulme, Notes on Language and Style, C. 3: 12 (July 1925).

2 The Last First Night, an account of the opening of The Importance of Being Earnest,
appeared in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 14853. Leverson was disappointed that TSE published
only the second part of her article, because she felt Wildes less well known jokes worth
recording.
659
Vivien Eliot to Lucy Thayer cc
Dear Lucy,
I am sending back your letter because I cannot read the greater part of
it and the part which I can read I cannot understand. I may add that I have
never understood anything you have said or done since you last made your
appearance in England. I do not think yours is a mind I should ever
understand, nor a mind which I particularly wish to understand.1 Now
that the cause, or causes, for your preferring to keep away from Paris have
been removed or are no longer active, and you are returning there so soon,
I think, in view of everything, and after thinking it over for a long time,
that it would be better to take this moment permanently to break off our
relationship. I am sure you will agree. In so far as there is any relation to
break off it is an impossible one on every count. I shall probably be in
Paris myself before long. I have a great many friends in Paris, friends who
know me well and in whom I have confidence, and in whom I should not
hesitate to confide.
I hope your future will continue to prosper.
Yours
[V. H. Eliot]2

My dear Eliot
Many thanks for your two letters, and the promised copy of The Waste
Land, which I shall be most interested to read. I am so glad you enjoyed
your brief stay at All Souls; it was a great pleasure to entertain you there.
I hope we may see you tomorrow afternoon. There is a General Meeting
at 2.30; the Board Meeting will follow, and will probably not begin much
before 3 oclock.
Yours ever
[Geoffrey C. Faber]
1 See TSEs letter to Lady Rothermere, 18 June 1925.

2 This letter may have been typed by TSE: VHE rarely typed letters.

My dear Eliot
A postscript to my other letter of todays date, though not connected
with it.
You asked to see a list of contemplated books. I enclose a rough list,
without much detail, but just enough to show you how the thing is
shaping.1 I am not satisfied with it by any means. There is almost nothing
there of real literary merit, I want, very badly, to get hold of two or three
(or more) striking things, or things that are really good without being
striking, to publish in the autumn. Novels or other kinds. If you can help
me to get onto anything, I should be very grateful; and I should, of course,
be ready to pay a fee (2.2.0) for anything that came to us through you,
that we took.
Yours ever
[Geoffrey C. Faber]
Mr Eliots poems of course excepted!!2
Of course there are other possibilities I havent put down and not all on the
list will necessarily materialise.
to William Plomer3 cc
Dear Sir
The Editor of The Criterion has directed me to return to you the
enclosed manuscript.
Mr Eliot thanks you for the compliment and has made pencilled
observations on the manuscript of the poem.4 He recognises a certain
1 The list does not survive.

2 Poems 19091925 was to be published by F&G on 23 Nov.
3 William Plomer (19031973): poet, novelist, and librettist; later author of the novel
Turbott Wolfe (Hogarth Press, 1926); co-founder and editor of Voorslag (19256), the first
bilingual South African literary journal; publishers reader for Jonathan Cape; and
collaborator with Benjamin Britten (Gloriana; Curlew River; The Burning Fiery Furnace;
The Prodigal Son).
4 Plomer wrote from Zululand on 3 May that he would regard it as a very great honour
if TSE would tell him what he thought of his poem The Ballad of John Cotton, since he
believed TSE was as good a judge of poetry as any man alive.
661
feeling and some sense of rhythm, but he thinks you should pay more
attention to the exact sense of words and phrases. He thinks that you
should read a great deal of good poetry and cultivate your ear.1
Faithfully yours
For the Editor of The Criterion
[I. P. Fassett]
Secretary
from Geoffrey Faber ms Valerie Eliot

28 May 1925 21 Ladbroke Grove, London w.11
[Extract]
My dear Eliot,
I am v. glad to have The Waste Land. You wont think it unkind of me
to say that I am excitedly groping in it. You are obscure, you know! with
an obscurity compared to which Meredith at his most bewildering (and
he can baffle, too) is the purest ray serene. I wonder if you realize how
difficult you are? and alternatively I wonder if I am specially stupid. Is it
that you are using a language of which I have learnt only the vocabulary
but not the syntax? I havent yet got the key to your poetry, I say frankly.
You try the stranger a bit high: only those who have trod the same
labyrinth as yourself can follow the clue. The others must put too much
detective-work into their reading, to lose the sense of the chase in the
understanding of the thing captured and, moreover, one asks oneself if
it isnt really something quite other than one has at first thought.
Please understand me this is not criticism. I am profoundly sensible, in
reading The Waste Land, as I was in reading your three-fold Eyes poem
in the Criterion, of a meaning not the less truly there because I can only
grasp it fragmentarily of astounding vivid glimpses now of the pit
beneath the human mind, and now of beauties seen and painted in the
sharp startling precision of which, at your best, you are master.
There the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column . . .
How thin my own stuff must seem to you!
Well, I write like this, tho it may be an odd way of thanking you for a
gift, because I will not pretend to understand where I dont understand;
1 TSE pencilled this paragraph on Plomers letter, beginning Say I thank him for the
compliment etc.

and I suspect that a good many people have praised The Waste Land who
hadnt the faintest atom of an idea what it was all about!! You have the
pull on them but more on me. I daresay posterity will wonder that
anybody cld. have found you obscure we puzzle at peoples obtuseness
over Browning now.
Having said that, you wont suspect me of flattering you, when I
reiterate that you do impress, and impress with a sense of a new way of
seeing and relating things, which will be understood all in good time; and
meanwhile gives bright unforgettable landing-places.
I wonder if I dare send you all this!
[. . .]
Geoffrey C. Faber

My dear Eliot
Under the new Articles which were adopted yesterday and will be finally
adopted at a confirmatory meeting on June 18th, the qualification of a
Director is to be the possession of a single 10 share. I suggest that I should
transfer a 10 Preference Share to you at the next Board Meeting, i.e. June
25th. This will be exactly two months after your original appointment as
Director. The Articles require you to take up your qualification within two
months; but I think we may take it that the formal requirement will be
adequately satisfied in this way, and nobody is in the least likely to raise
any objection. If you would prefer to take up five 10 shares, by all means
do so; but I expect you will prefer the smaller amount. The purchase
money will be 10 per share, and you will, I suppose, have to pay a trifling
stamp fee in addition.
Yours sincerely,
[Geoffrey C. Faber]
663
Geoffrey Faber to Charles Whibley cc
29 May 1925 [Scientific Press, 28 Southampton St,
Strand, London w.c.2]
My dear Whibley,
I have been on the look out for you lately in the club, but when I saw
you the other day I was tied by a guest.
I expect Eliot has told you about his arrangement with us; we are going
to take him on as Editor of The Criterion or its successor, and he is also
joining our Board of Directors.1 I want to say to you how very glad I am
that you have made us acquainted. He is a most attractive fellow, and if
only his health holds out I am convinced that he will make a considerable
name for himself. I am running him for a research fellowship at All Souls
next November, and with great difficulty got him to spend last Saturday
with me at Oxford. His health really does rather alarm me; the strain of
looking after his wife seems to be telling on him severely. I do hope now
that he will soon be in the way of earning a reasonable income, by
congenial means, that both he and she will climb rapidly out of the
melancholy state they had got into.
All is going pretty well here. We are changing our name to Faber &
Gwyer Ltd, and are moving in September to new premises at 24 Russell
Square. Rather a fine house; we have got to build up as fine a publishing
business as we can to inhabit it! Amongst the many schemes which chase
each other through my mind is one for a series of monographs on the great
foreign writers, rather after the style of the Macmillans English Men of
Letters. I should like to find a good man to edit such a series. Do you think
Eliot might do it? I havent asked him; or would it be better to get the
nearest approach we can find to a John Morley?2 But I suppose a modern
John Morley, if he exists, would have a very full sense of his own value.
Yours ever,
[Geoffrey Faber]
1 TSE was elected to the Board on 23 Apr.

2 John Morley (18381923): politician and biographer; editor of The Fortnightly Review
and Pall Mall Gazette, as well as of English Men of Letters, a series of biographical studies.

to Thomas MacGreevy 1 ms TCD
Dear Mr MacGreevy
Please excuse my not having acknowledged at once your letter of
introduction from Mr Yeats.2 Illness at home has made it difficult for me
to make appointments. I hope that you will be in London permanently, or
long enough for us to meet, though I am not likely to be here throughout
the summer. Meanwhile I like your poems, and should like to use your
Dysert probably in October.3 I will not mention it to Mr Yeats until it
is published. I should like to know about your critical work too, what you
have written, and what you propose to do, and what you are interested in.4
Yours very truly
T. S. Eliot
Is the name ST SENAN?
to Alfred Kreymborg ms Virginia

My dear Kreymborg
Many thanks I am delighted to have your book and inscription, and
overcome by the portrait of myself.5 The only adequate recognition would
be to write my own biography and give my view of the meeting! But that
I shall never do my own aim is to suppress my own biography even
otherwise I could not make mine as interesting as yours. But may there be
1 Thomas MacGreevy (18931967): Irish poet, literary and art critic, curator; served in the
Royal Field Artillery in WW1; graduated in history from Trinity College, Dublin; met JJ and
began a lifelong friendship with him; forged a very close friendship with Samuel Beckett;
taught in Paris, then at the National Gallery, London; contributed to periodicals inc. C.,
Formes, The Studio and TLS. From the 1940s he lived in Dublin, where he was appointed
Director of the National Gallery of Ireland, 195064. In 1948 he was made a chevalier of the
Lgion dhonneur. His works included Thomas Stearns Eliot: A Study (1931) and Richard
Aldington: An Englishman (1931), as well as monographs on Jack Yeats and Poussin.
2 On 11 May 1924, WBY introduced MacGreevy as a cultivated man and subtle critic,
especially of painting, of which he has great knowledge. On 16 Aug. 1926 MacGreevy would
tell George Yeats that TSE was a Unitarian Athenian, very Unitarian but more Athenian.
3 There was no issue of C. in Oct. 1925, but Dysert appeared under the pseudonym L. St.
Senan in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 94; it was reprinted as Homage to Jack Yeats, in Poems (1934).
4 MacGreevy contributed a number of reviews and essays, starting with a review of George
Moore in NC 4: 2 (Apr. 1926).
5 Kreymborg, Troubadour, An Autobiography (1925), 3967.
665
another meeting, and a long post-autobiographical life for the
mandolutanist.1
Ever yours
T. S. Eliot
to Marianne Moore ms Rosenbach

Dear Miss Moore,
In spite of your prohibitive clause, I wish to thank you for your letter,
which gave me much pleasure. It is also very gratifying to have your
approval of my Dryden,2 although those essays were written so long ago
as to cease to belong to me. But I hope to be in a position to resume work
in the autumn, and in that event I shall not fail to give you an opportunity
to sit in editorial judgement.
I shall only regret your association with the Dial if it leads you in
mistaken modesty to print less of your own poetry in it. Please dont let it
do that.
I gather that you are actually Literary Editor3 and Miss Thayer Managing
Editor? I sent Miss Thayer some MSS. by my wife which I think rather
remarkable and am using in fact in the Criterion (not, as I told her, in July,
but in October); but presumably if she likes it she will pass it on to you.4
I hope you will like Aldingtons review of you in the July Criterion.5
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
1 The mandolute is a combination of mandolin and lute, with the solo register of the violin
and mandolin and the tone of the lute. Kreymborg describes being introduced to the
instrument by Franklin Hopkins, as well as his tours of the USA giving recitals and poetry
readings with it.
2 On 3 May, Marianne Moore wrote: I cannot say how rich in entertainment and in analysis
I find your Homage to John Dryden . . . and at the risk of seeming to retract the
understanding which I have of your statement that one learns to conduct ones life with
greater economy, I venture to hope that you will yet write criticisms of other poets of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She pressed him for a contribution of this kind for the
Dial.
3 Moore joined the Dial as acting editor on 27 Apr.
4 See TSEs letter to Ellen Thayer of 17 May, and to Moore of 18 June.
5 RA reviewed Moores Observations alongside Jean Cocteaus Posie 19161923, in
C. 3: 12 (July 1925), 58894. Describing them as two rare birds, modern poets of
originality, he yet considered Moore the subtler and more important: she was the most
high-brow poet in the world and best poet now living in America.

My dear Richard
Many thanks. I am grateful to you for doing this admirable review1 at
a time when, returning from your holiday, you must be under considerable
pressure of work. I quite agree with your opinions but I wonder if you
would mind slightly modifying, or allowing me to modify, the [asperity,
no, del.] the strength of your judgment on Cocteau I mean, by all means
preserve the judgment, but delete a phrase or two so as not to rub it in so
much? It is merely that I have accepted some notes by Cocteau on the
Theatre2 he is much better at this sort of thing than at verse.
But if you prefer to leave it as it is, I shall print it as it is. It is only a
question of removing a phrase here or there, anyway.
This is all I have time to write. More news later. I should be very glad to
know how you are after your walk, and any other news.3 I agree about the
Welsh!4
Ever aff.
T. S. E.

Wednesday [1 June 1925?] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
I see there has been some misunderstanding. Ellen is very stupid indeed
about taking messages on the telephone. I find we shall be kept in
London for some considerable time, for reasons which I will explain
later; but at any rate we ought to see each other a good deal. Vivien is
unwell just at the moment, and is feeling particularly knocked out by it,
as she is having a most frightful and terrifying treatment by a new doctor
who is really clever, very modern, and who has at last seen her case as it
really is. There is much more the matter with her than we suspected. She
will write a long letter to Mary directly she has finished being unwell, and
1 RAs review of Cocteau and Moore, C. 3: 12 (July 1925), 58894.

2 Cocteau, Scandales, published in French, NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 12537.
3 RA said he was going for a three-week walking tour in Wales.
4 On 23 May RA had written: The Welsh are the most poisonous Puritans I have yet
struck, and still subject to the grossest superstitions and vices.
667
then we must really arrange to have more meetings and some long talks
all four of us.
Love to Jack
Tom

[June? 1925]
It is odd that we should both have been following the same rather
unknown trail. Have you seen Bourquins Julien Benda?1 Do you know
anything about Gonzague Truc, or Jules de Gaultier, or Henri Massis?2
There are other things I am pining to talk to you about also.
T. S. E.
Please dont offer your book anywhere until I can see you or write to your
about it (soon). I have a publisher in mind.3
to F. S. Flint cc
My dear Flint,
I find that Cobden-Sanderson failed to mention in sending you your
cheque that it was in payment for both the Danish notes and the
translation.4 The translation amounted to 1415 words and the Danish
notes to 547 words, so that I made it a guinea for each. I wish that the
1 Constant Bourquin, Julien Benda, ou le point de vue de Sirius, with an Intro. by Jules de
Gaultier (Editions du Sicle, 1925).
2 Gonzague Truc (18771972): essayist, critic, biographer; author of Charles Maurras et son
temps (1917). On 19 June RA described him as a scholar of immense erudition in French
literature. TSE cites his Les mystiques espagnols in the Clark lectures (VMP, 65). Jules de
Gaultier (18581942): philosopher, and author of a number of books on Flaubert including
Le Bovarysme, la psychologie dans luvre de Flaubert (1892) and La Sensibilit
mtaphysique (1924). Henri Massis (18861970): literary critic and historian, closely
associated with Charles Maurras, who had recently published Jugements II: Andr Gide,
Romain Rolland, Georges Duhamel, Julien Benda, les chapelles littraires (1924) and Jacques
Rivire (1925). A defender of Mussolini and Salazar, Massiss later books included Chefs:
les dictateurs et nous (1939) and Maurras et notre temps (2 vols, 1951). His Defence of the
West appeared in NC 4: 2 & 3 (Apr. & June 1926).
3 HRs book of essays, later entitled Reason and Romanticism (F&G, 1926).
4 Danish Periodicals, C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925). The translation may have been of J. Kessels A
Note from Paris in the same issue, for which no translator was named.

Criterion could pay better, but please remember that I have always wanted
to get a great deal more work out of you than you have ever been willing
to do! Will you never suggest something that you would really like to write
about, or are you becoming more and more absorbed in official activities?
That is what all your friends wish to prevent.
Also I wish we could meet oftener, but, as you know, I have been able
to see almost no one for several months, but when I emerge you shall hear
from me.
Ever yours,
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF

4 June 1925 28 Southampton St, Strand, London
My dear Eliot,
I am most awfully sorry to hear that you have such a serious report of
your wifes health: though it is something to know that her doctor sees a
definite line of treatment to be followed. I hope to goodness you will follow
it strictly, even if it means some financial stringency. If I had any resources
of my own I would offer you a loan; but almost every penny I have is now
locked up in the business, and I have very shallow waters to negotiate
myself before Xmas! We can let you have an advance at the beginning of
July. You ought to be able to spare the necessary two hours for our Board
meeting on the 25th June; and that will assure you of a few pounds. You
will also, I hope, be able to come to the following meeting, on the 4th
Thursday in July. In August there is no meeting; and we shall not meet you
again till the 4th Thursday in September.
About Lady R. I am of opinion that, under the circumstances, you must
write.1 Several people now know that you are coming to us to edit a
successor to the Criterion. These things cant be kept hidden; and it would
be most unfortunate if news leaked round to her, before she heard of it
from you. Even if she doesnt answer your letter you will at any rate
safeguard yourself against that contingency. I should most strongly advise
you to write at once, and tell her of the offer you have had, which you
1 GCFs diary (7 May): [TSE] thinks Lady R. wld give up Criterion if we could publish a
sort of overflow irregular paper, together with certain expensive editions, she standing
expense.
669
were not in a position to refuse; going on to say that you (and the
publishers) would like to continue as much as possible of the best
traditions of the Criterion, and to embody its name in The New Criterion;
but this, of course, depends on her; and then developing your suggestions
for continuing her interest in publishing. Saying, too, that some amount
ought to go into the next no. of the Criterion, and therefore you would be
glad if she could write or wire her agreement (or otherwise) with your
letter. I enumerate the points of importance to us; dont imagine I wld. be
dictating the form of your letter. But I am absolutely clear that you have
no alternative but to write, and that your letter should cover the points I
have mentioned, and that it should go immediately.
It is not, as a rule, a wise thing to anticipate the future; but I have great
hope that All Souls will take you at the end of October.1 That will mean
300 a year, if it comes off, less Income Tax, of course, and some necessary
expenditure in College. You would get the NovDec portion in February;
but I can always make advances to Fellows, so long as the advance is
covered by the period which has run. Otherwise emoluments are paid
annually in February in respect of the twelve months ending the previous
Dec. 31.2
Yours ever
GCF

[Postmark 9 June 1925] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
I got a confused message about dinner tonight, but could get no reply
from your telephone. We are having a very intensive treatment now, in
order to get to the South as quickly as possible and soak in the heat in a
car, and on to Rome.3 V. much hopes to see you before we go: at the
moment nothing is possible. I hear J[ack] is having a glorious time in Italy.
Love from both,
T.
1 Despite GCFs support, TSE was not elected to a research fellowship at All Souls.
2 GCF was Estates Bursar at All Souls.
3 This trip did not materialise but the Eliots visited Rome the following summer.

My dear Eliot
Many thanks for your letter and the letter from Leonard Woolf, which
I return herewith.1
I should certainly like to publish your [poems in]2 the Autumn, about the
time when the New Criterion starts, [and] I am quite prepared to give you
the terms offered by the Woolfs.3 I hope, however, that by complying with
the conditions of our agreement you wont upset your relations with your
friends. I should be very sorry to think that we had put you in such a
position.
As regards the lectures; these too we should certainly want to publish.4
I should suggest 50 on advance of a 10% Royalty; a higher on subsequent
editions, if any. I doubt if the C. U. P. would give you a 15% Royalty
throughout, and I am quite confident that the Oxford Press would not give
it. We can defer the decision as to terms until the lectures are in the process
of being delivered. Will this be all right?
Yours ever
[Geoffrey C. Faber]

9 June 1925 The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Mr Bennett
It is my misfortune that after making myself such a nuisance to you I
have been unable to worry you still further by coming to see you. We are
going abroad in July, and I should very much like to see you before we go.
Could you give me the pleasure of dining with me, at the Savoy Grill, one
evening soon? I suggest Friday or Saturday of this week, or Tuesday of
next week.
1 VW records that TSE visited them on 31 May: he was to be the editor of a new quarterly,
which some old firm was publishing in the autumn, and all his works must go to them a
blow to us (Diary, III, 27).
2 The paper of the carbon copy in GCFs Letter Book (E/2) is torn here.
3 Poems 19091925, published by F&G on 23 Nov. 1925. The first issue of NC was
postponed until Jan. 1926.
4 The Clark lectures.
671
I will confess that I also want to take that opportunity if I may have it
of asking you some more questions in connection with my play [Sweeney
Agonistes].
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
to W. E. Sskind cc
11 June 1925 [The New Criterion,
24 Russell Square, London]
Dear Sir,
I owe you many apologies for the delay in replying to your letter of the
15th April. I have myself been away for reasons of health, and my office
was not for a long time in touch with me. I read with great interest your
essay on the Tnzerische Generation which I took abroad with me.1
I confess that I was very much tempted, but our policy has always been to
print only inedited matter or at any rate to print simultaneously with some
foreign periodicals, and I feel that it would be a dangerous precedent for
us to republish an essay from so well known a periodical as the Neue
Merkur. We recently, however, modified this principle so far as to publish
an essay by Monsieur Henri Massis, a part of which had already appeared
in La Revue Universelle; but Monsieur Massis modified and extended this
essay for us so as to give it new value.2 If it interested you to write for us
another essay similar to the one you sent me, I should be very happy
indeed; and I should also be very glad to see more of your work.
With many thanks,
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF
1 W. E. Sskind, Die tnzerische Generation [The Dancing Generation], Der neue Merkur,
8: 2 (1925), 58697: an article about the democratic pleasure of dancing to jazz bands. See
further Guy Stern, War, Weimar, and Literature: the story of the Neue Merkur, 19141925
(1971), 129.
2 Henri Massis, Defence of the West, NC 4: 2 & 3 (Apr. & June 1926).

to Thomas MacGreevy ms TCD
Dear Mr MacGreevy
I have written to my friend Leonard Woolf, literary editor of The
Nation, and he says he thinks he could use reviews by you.1 Will you ring
up The Nation, and go and see him when he is there.
Many thanks for Ballet excellent will write later.
Sincerely
T. S. Eliot

12 June 1925 The Criterion,
My dear Monro,
Very many thanks for your post-card. Is it true that I failed to answer
your last letter? If so, I am very, very sorry. On the contrary, it is a great
pleasure to me to be importuned, as you call it, and to think that I have a
few friends who still remember my existence after such a long
disappearance. My wife is still ill and has just started on a new and very
drastic treatment for a serious liver trouble which all the doctors until the
present one failed to discover. Hence I have been very much preoccupied,
but you have been in my mind lately and I had already made a note to
suggest a meeting at dinner one evening as soon as practicable. Let me
know should you be intending to leave town so that I may not miss you.
Ever yours,
T. S. E.
1 Mr Woolf has been as kind as could be to me. I am very grateful to you for that
introduction, MacGreevy replied on 24 Sept. MacGreevy was to write regular (usually
unsigned) pieces in the Alpha and Omega column in N&A, as well as reviews, from 27 June
1925 to 13 Aug. 1927.
673
to Edwin Muir1 cc
12 June 1925 23 Adelphi Terrace House
Dear Mr Muir,
I am extremely grateful for your very thorough and convincing criticism
of the adaptations from Hlderlin.2 You really have taken much more
trouble than was necessary, as merely a word from you would have
satisfied me whether the translations were good or bad.
Your letter has so impressed me that I am inclined to ask you whether
you are interested yourself in translating some of Hlderlin into English.3
If you would, I should like to publish some of them in the Criterion, and
I think it probable that I could find a good publisher for a volume of such
translations by you, together with an introductory essay by you. Does this
appeal to you?
Has your essay on Hlderlin ever been published? Because, if not, I
should like to have the opportunity of working it into the Criterion next
winter.
I am glad to see that you are living nearer to London. I do not know
whether you ever come to town, but when I have an opportunity but I
am afraid not very soon I shall make an attempt to arrange a meeting
with you.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF
1 Edwin Muir (18871959): Scottish poet, novelist, critic and prolific reviewer, and
translator (with his wife Willa) of Kafka. He had been an editorial assistant to A. R. Orage
on The New Age, and spent the early 1920s in Prague, Germany, Italy and Austria. His First
Poems was published by the Hogarth Press in Apr. 1925. TSE came to think his criticism the
best of our time (The Times, 7 Jan. 1959), and was impressed by the power of his early
work, even though he considered the later work the most remarkable. See TSE, Edwin
Muir: 18871959 An Appreciation (Listener 71, 28 May 1964, 872), reprinted with
modifications as the Preface to Muirs Selected Poems (1965).
2 On 3 June, IPF sent Muir a set of translations of Hlderlin by Pierre Loving, with a request
for his opinion. On 8 June, Muir replied that it would be a gross injustice if these little
scraps torn from the work of the greatest after Goethe of German poets . . . should purport
to give to English readers, and for the first time, too, a notion of Hlderlins quality.
3 Muir was one of the first to introduce the Romantic poet to the English-speaking public,
in his A Note on Friedrich Hlderlin, Scottish Nation (Sept. 1923). In his reply to TSE,
Muir said he had not yet tried to translate him, but would try a version of Patmos. Neither
Muirs essay nor any translations appeared in C. His Essays on Literature and Society (1949)
included Hlderlin and Hlderlins Patmos, and Muirs poem Hlderlins Journey
appeared in NC 16: 63 (Jan. 1937).

My dear Flint,
Many thanks for your letter, compliments and manuscript. I like your
poem very much except that I am not certain whether I like the fourth
part, the part which is rather in the manner of James B. V. Thomson which
seems to me at first two readings to jar a little with the rest.1 However, I
should like to keep the poem for publication. The only difficulty is that
the title and subject make reason for delay. If you were an editor, which
you should thank God you are not, you would know that the public will
tolerate almost anything except the publication of a spring ode in the
autumn. I think, however, that it might make the public feel pleasant to
read about spring in January. Do you agree?
I hope that the pleasant days of beef steak and beer and discussion may
return to us.
Ever yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Ronald Davis2 cc
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your letter and the copy of your book which has just
arrived.3 I am asking Mr Cobden-Sanderson to send you the copies of The
Serpent which you require, together with the invoice.
Allow me to compliment you on the delightful appearance of your
translation and to express my great pleasure at the inscriptions by
Monsieur Valry and yourself. I should like to take up the question of the
publication in this country with Lady Rothermere when I next see her.
Have you translated any other of Monsieur Valrys essays? I am asking
1 Flint sent his poem Spring Ode in response to TSEs letter of 4 June. It appeared in
NC 4: 3 (June 1926), minus its fourth (and last) section.
2 Ronald Davis was a translator, and co-editor (with Raoul Simonson) of Bibliographie des
oeuvres du Paul Valry 18951925 (1926).
3 Paul Valry, An Evening with M. Teste, trans. Ronald Davis, avec une prface indite de
lauteur (Paris, 1925): the first English translation of Valrys 1919 essay, in a limited edition
of 208 copies.
675
because it has occurred to me that there might be some demand for a larger
publication of Valrys prose work.
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
to L. A. G. Strong cc
Dear Strong,
Many thanks for your letter which is so amiable that I am disposed to
accede to your request.1 I should be inclined to ask three guineas as a fee
for republication. Will you let me know if you agree?
I have, however, another short poem in the same series which has been
published in Paris and New York but not here.2 It seems to me better than
the ones you have seen. I should prefer to substitute for this series a series
containing the other poem, as it appeared in the Dial last March.3 If we are
in agreement on both points, I will send you the copy.
Thank you for the rest of your letter. Be sure that I look forward to a
meeting when possible. Unfortunately my illness, and subsequently my
wifes illness, still make it a little difficult, but in any case I hope you will
let me know when you are in London and we will see what we can do.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Mansfield Forbes 4 ts Clare

My dear Mr Forbes,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. I am looking forward very
keenly to visiting Cambridge and to making your acquaintance while there.
1 Evidently a request to reprint TSEs Three Poems, from C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925).

2 Pome, Commerce 3 (Winter 1924 [/1925]), reprinted in The Dial, became Part I of The
Hollow Men.
3 The Hollow Men, IIII, Dial 78: 3 (Mar. 1925), was reprinted as The Hollow Men,
Parts III, and IV, in P 19091925 (1925).
4 Mansfield Forbes (18901936): Fellow in English of Clare College, Cambridge. See Hugh
Carey, Mansfield Forbes and his Cambridge (1984).

It is unfortunately true that both my wife and myself have been in very
bad health and have been almost shut off from the world for some months,
but I hope that next winter we may have the pleasure of seeing you in
London as well as Cambridge.
With many thanks,
Yours sincerely,
T. S. Eliot
to H. P. Collins cc
Dear Mr Collins,
I hope that my testimonial will be of some use.
Had I had the opportunity I should have written to you before to explain
that I was obliged to cut down your review of Mrs Woolfs book.1 For
certain reasons it is necessary to make the forthcoming issue of the
Criterion of as small a compass as possible, and it is solely on this account
that your review, as well as other contributions, has been reduced. I hope
that in future numbers such restrictions will not be necessary. I should be
very interested to hear whether you get the job you are after.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF

12 June 1925 1037 Rush St, Chicago
Dear Tom:
You ask me to write about myself. That is what I am going to do. I think
you are the only person to whom I can express my innermost thoughts
and feelings with complete candor, and without fear of being
misunderstood. It may be that soon I shall not be able to express myself
with complete candor. I sometimes doubt if any married man can.
Sometimes in their cups or in their grief married men have talked freely
about marriage to me, but have always recanted.
1 See Collins, rev, of VW, The Common Reader, C. 3: 12 (July 1925).
677
I am engaged to be married.1 See attached memo. Also attached photo.
I am very proud of this, and very happy, and very frightened lest I fail to
measure up to expectations. I am quite in love with her, but of course not
as much in love as if she had flouted, scorned, deceived, cheated and
ridiculed me. However, the kind of affection which I have for her is rare,
solider, more lasting and more certain of bringing happiness than the kind
with which I have usually nourished my masochistic tendencies. This is
the kind of girl of whom I could, and probably did (though my memory is
indistinct) say, before romance had begun to cloud my judgment, that she
would be an ideal person for me to marry. I said to her lately (and it seemed
to please her greatly) that if she had been a man, or I a girl, she would
have been my best friend.
She is a most happy combination of the kind of qualities that I like with
qualities that make her wholly acceptable to such a fanatically conservative
family as ours is. I have to accept the facts that she is a mildly devout
church-goer, that she does not bob her hair, nor smoke cigarettes. She is,
however, no proselyte; as to point two, the way she does her hair is so
excellent and has so much distinction of its own that I should view with
alarm any suggestion of change; and as to point three (due largely to filial
affection) I do not care either way. I cannot think of anyone I know who
would not like her unreservedly. You and Vivien would both find her tonic
and sympathetic I do not mean sentimentally, merely, but mentally
sympathetic.
I shall not be my own master, but at least I shall be under a benevolent,
affectionate, and intelligent rule. The most astonishing thing and one
which it is a constant effort to realize is that she is quite fond indeed,
I might almost say, quite in love with me. This is too seemingly
preposterous a statement for me to commit myself to unqualifiedly. To me
it is an almost frightening and disconcerting phenomenon. It never
happened before, although at times I have been under the illusion of it.
I am not quite clear why either of us wants to get married. We should
both probably be better off for the material comforts if we remained single.
I have as frequently convinced myself that under no circumstances could
I possibly get married, as of the contrary thesis that I was predestined to
get married. Of course I should be better off unmarried; and yet something
has always driven me counter to reason. Hence Winifred, Ethel, Eunice,
Mary, Bess, Rosamond, Geraldine, Katharine, and Joan. Il catalogo. Thank
God none of them ever loved me enough, at least. Two people would
have been miserable.
1 HWE and Theresa Garrett were to be married on 15 Feb. 1926.

In time, if I remained single, I might achieve freedom I might save
enough to live on, to go abroad, to read and think. I have always
desiderated the luxury of thinking; as a pastime it is without equal. And yet
that may have been a mirage. If I had leisure, I should be frightfully lonely,
because no one else has leisure; I should become soft, introspective and
misanthropic. Here is a companion who openly countenances such fruitless
occupations as reading, thinking, working at what you like, and enjoying
life intelligently. Few people (I did not say merely few women) have ever
seemed to me so completely simpatico. The thought of her her sincerity,
honesty, vitality, joyousness, and courage is very comforting.
Perhaps she will make a Man out of me. I never had any very strong
ambition toward that end. The field is already overcrowded. I had rather
be the freak nature meant me to be. It is bad news for the disagreeable
hobgoblin inside of me who claims to be me, and who has been laughing
cynically over the whole business. He will have to retire into my
Cimmerian sub-consciousness.
Good God, how does anyone get married? I would not accept a job as
a traffic manager or shipping clerk because I know nothing about it, and
yet here is a job which every man accepts apparently on the blithe
assumption that knowledge of the business is innate in him. Should I take
a course in obstetrics, infant feeding and household management? On top
of my present duties, and the necessity of making a change in my whole
mode of life, I cannot casually pick up these things. I have often puzzled
over the marriage relationship, which seemed to me the most incongruous,
impossible, and inconsistent thing ever conceived. One must translate an
iridescent fantasy into the hardest and ugliest of facts. One goes to a
bourne of which no traveller ever tells. It is the most secret of all secret
cults.
Once I learned to ride a horse. Nothing seemed to me at the time so
preposterous as the idea that I could learn to ride a horse. Yet some
automaton inside of me did learn, after a fashion, to ride. It was not I; I do
not know that person. Whoever he was, would probably have made some
sort of a soldier out of me, had I ever by unkind fate been elected to that
lot. Whoever he is, he will probably see me through married life.
If you have any advice to give me, now is the time. You can probably
help me. Please do. I am very fond of you, and very fond of Vivien. You
and Theresa are the only persons by whom I have any hope of being
understood.
Affectionately your brother,
Henry
679
[17? June 1925] [London]
My dear Read
We shall probably be here most if not all of the summer. My new doctor
has found my wifes liver and intestine so nearly paralized [sic] that he does
not dare to let us move for the present.
I am anxious to see you when we both can. Meanwhile:-
1. What do you think of Fernandez on Maritain?1 It seemed to me a little
specious and Bergsonian.2 I have sent for Maritains book.3
2. You spoke once of making a book including your two essays in the
Criterion, one on the Brontes, and perhaps more. Will you let me know
about it? I have a reason.4
Ever yours
T. S. Eliot
to Violet Schiff ms Valerie Eliot

17 June [1925] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Violet
Why do V. and I never hear from either of you? How are you? V.s new
treatment continues, but will be very hard and very long. She was just on
the verge of paralysis of the intestine and some terrible functional liver
trouble. The doctor said he had never seen so bad a liver on a woman, or
an intestine so nearly dead.
I am sure she would like to hear from you.
Ever aff
Tom
1 Ramn Fernandez, Lintelligence et M. Maritain, NRF 12: 141 (1 June 1925), 98694.
2 Fernandez found an equivalent to scientific enquiry rather than Thomist reason in modern
works such as Einsteins writings, Bergsons La Matire et Mmoire, Czannes paintings and
Prousts novels. On 19 June, HR said that while the article initially gave him firm ground,
he agreed it was very specious.
3 Maritains Rflexions sur lintelligence et sur sa vie propre (1924): HR had been reading
it and Lart scholastique, and found them extremely interesting.
4 HRs proposed book was to include The Nature of Metaphysical Poetry (from C. 1: 3,
Apr. 1923) and Psycho-analysis and the Critic (from 3: 10, Jan. 1925) as well as Charlotte
and Emily Bronte and eight other essays. In reply, HR reaffirmed that he wanted to write a
book.

to Sydney Waterlow ms Private Collection
My dear Sydney
Will you listen to a voice from the tomb? I dont know whether news
from any source has reached you, as I have been inaudible and almost
invisible for nearly six months. Vivien has had a frightful illness, which is
now proved to be some liver disorder and intestinal infection and the
new doctor has just told me that she will probably recover he was very
doubtful, as she must have had it for many years. I have literally hardly left
the house for months, except to see doctors, and a few imperative visits
which had to be arranged carefully. In July we must go abroad, not
Germany. Will you be accessible in the autumn I should like to continue
our conversation. I saw Murry once in March.
Meanwhile will you do me a favour? You once signed a naturalisation
form for me. I am now only completing it, but have lost the form you signed.1
Would you be willing to sign another? I particularly wanted you on it.
Please remember me to your wife, and Id like to know what you are
thinking about and how you are.
Ever yours
T. S. E.
to The Collector of Inland Revenue, Baltimore, MD cc

Sir,
I enclose my income return for the year 1924 together with cheque [for]
$12.44. I regret the delay, which is due to very exceptional difficult
personal conditions.
This is as accurate a return as I have been able to prepare in the
circumstances. The inaccuracies and omissions are only such as would, if
corrected, reduce the tax payable by me. For instance, you will observe
that I have made no deduction on account of income tax paid here. Had I
made all inclusions and allowances the tax, to the best of my knowledge
and belief, would have been something between four and five dollars.
I have the honour to be, Sir,
[T. S. E.]
1 TSE was eventually naturalised in Nov. 1927.
681
to Marianne Moore cc
Dear Miss Moore,
I have your letter of the 4th June. I am surprised at hearing from you
when I wrote to Miss Thayer, and I observe the insulting tone of your
letter.1
I wrote personally to Miss Thayer, who had privately expressed strong
admiration for some of my wifes earlier work. I now know that Miss
Thayer has made use of you in order to insult me and my wife for personal
reasons. You may or may not know the facts of the influences which have
converted Miss Thayer from admiration to hostility, and for her reasons
for replying in this fashion through you instead of writing herself. It is
indifferent to me whether you know these reasons or not; it is enough that
you have lent yourself to this plot, and have written to me in a manner
which I can only call insulting. It is an insult that you wrote to me, when
my letter was pointedly to Miss T.
I have hitherto praised your work both in America and here, without
reserve, especially here: where the literary public sees in it no merit
whatever. I have championed you in the face of derision and indifference,
and I had the right to expect better treatment from you.2 In future, I shall
take a different course, and I intend to see that justice is done and the
balance righted.
I am surprised that Scofield Thayer should leave a woman in charge who
is merely the tool of such a woman as Ellen Thayer.
I have already observed, in connection with your own work, that
opinion as to what is good writing is utterly different here and in America,
and this story will be published here in the autumn.
1 On 17 May TSE had sent VHEs story The Paralyzed Woman to Ellen Thayer at the
Dial. Moore replied on 4 June: We are sorry not to publish in America, Mrs Eliots story . . .
which you were so good as to let us see at the hand of Miss Ellen Thayer. Your opinion, as
you know, is held in the most profound esteem by the editors of The Dial, and we could not
be insensible to the resilience and grace, of this story; yet, it has not for us, that finality which
you feel it to have. Although TSE was furious that it was rejected by the Dial, neither did it
appear in C. even though he had already despatched it to be set up by the printers: it is
possible that he came to agree with Moores judgement. The story is preserved under the
nom-de-plume Feiron Morris among VHEs papers in the Bodleian (MSS Eng. Misc. c.624).
2 TSE had recently championed Moore in C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925), when she won the Dial
award. Despite this letter, normal relations were soon resumed, and TSE went on to publish
Moores Selected Poems (1935).

I do not intend to endure this manoeuvre, and I propose to put all the
readers of the Dial whom I know and I know a good many in
possession of the facts.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
Dear L. R.
This is to warn you against a person named Lucy Thayer, an American,
aged thirty-eight but looks younger, who is now loose in Paris and who is
anxious to injure me. She is (I am convinced) mad.
She was some years ago a friend of my wife.1 She has been alone in
London for the past two years, and has been persecuting my wife during
that time with her very obscene attentions. Two years ago in the country
she came down to see my wife, and told her that she was going to kill her
father, against whom she had a perfectly unwarranted grudge. My wife is
devoted to her own father, and this woman saw the horror in her face and
changed the subject abruptly. Since then, having lived under the influence
of several psycho-analysts whom she saw every day she became madder.
She is psycho-analysis mad, and cannot even speak now except in the
language of psycho-analysis.
Several months ago this woman lay in wait for my wife at her doctors,
when she was very ill, and told her in so many words that she had killed
her father at last. I have another witness for this. She then made violent
love to my wife, kneeling at her feet. She is perverted. My wife was
prostrated by this shock, especially as she was then in a state of great
anxiety about her own father. She has been very ill ever since, and nearly
lost her reason for a time. Her doctor knows all about this. Consequently
I forbade the woman the house and forcibly removed her and have
prevented her from communicating with my wife in any way.
This is her grievance against me. She is in Paris and burning to injure me
in every way possible. She is a cousin of the editor of The Dial and has
1 VHE met Lucy Thayer in Vevey in 1908, some years before meeting TSE. Lucy Thayer was
a witness to the Eliots wedding in June 1915.
683
already done me in in this quarter, so that I have lost a very important part
of my income.1
She is now busy in defaming and libelling me and my wife everywhere
where harm can be done us. She knows about you and about the Criterion.
You may hear of her activities, and she is quite likely to seek you out for
the purpose of telling you lies about us. Hence this letter.
Always very sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
Vivien Eliot to Ezra Pound ts Beinecke

[June 1925] [London]
Ezra Pound. Excuse length of letter.
Dear Ezra,
This is odd. I was just going to rite to you on another matta. Very
import. to me.
Meanwhile damn Sco.s cousin. But she has done me in. I think she hates
Tom more than death. She came to my doctors (Where I used to go every
day to have my stomach punched which is now sed to have done me in)
and told me her Pa was dead at larst & as she had already told me she
ment to kill him it upset me. Then she nelt down beside me and asked me
if I loved her, & made love. I could not get at anyone to help me & so
nearly went mad. Helpless. Not dressed. Alone. So Tom afterwards
removed her. He sent her a chit to say she should never seee me againe. She
then left England, to poison France.2
Meanwhile I MUST explain that I have been riting (writing!) for a long
time under various names and nomenclatures. Have written a lot of stories.
Very peculiar. I wrote nearly the whole of the last Criterion except
anything that was good in it, if there was such under different names, all
beginning with F. M. I thought out this skeme of getting money out of the
1 VHE told EP that TSE cursed Ellen and Marrrriannnne and Lucy, and so ends the Dial
for us. TSEs next contribution to the Dial was Literature, Science, and Dogma in 82: 3
(Mar. 1927).
2 Surprisingly, Ellen Thayer would write to TSE again two years later, on 31 Jan. 1927:
Lucy writes me good news of Vivien, and seems herself very happy (MS Valerie Eliot).
However, Carole Seymour-Jones sums up the fate of Scofields cousin: Lucy . . . was
unbalanced and, like Scofield, now under analysis with Sigmund Freud in Vienna, and . . . like
Vivien, would end her days as a psychiatric patient (Painted Shadow: The Life of Vivienne
Eliot [2001], 403).

Criterion a year ago. Because was always annoyed by spouse getting no
salary. So thought what a good idea will receive money for contributions.
Have received money. No one knows. But unfort. I was mis-led into telling
Scos cousin Lucy (it is the one we went on the river with in a punt).
Nearly finished now cheer up1
Scos cousin professed great admiration & fuss about writings, made great
scene. She wrote to her sister Ellen ELLEN (age about 41) who Sco has left
the Dial to, & her sister Ellen expressed much joy & sed my stories made
her laugh & laugh & split her sides etc. etc. So I got ambitious & sent a
long story to the Dial (O hell-blood why did I) thinking that Ellen Thayer
was a just woman & knew her sister to be mad & bad & insane &
shocking and murderous.
Ellen Thayer immediately returned my story which is damn good by
means of a gastly female called Marrriannnnne Mooooore or (sum such
name) a POETESS (Christ!) & who is left in co-partnership of Dial. Spouse
had written letter concerning story to Ellen Thayer & at same time
enclosed my doctors diagnosis of present disease, to explain why her sister
was dangerous to me, but as the reply (curt & rude) came via
Marrrriannnnne Moore, he rote & cursed her out. He cursed out Ellen
and Marrrriannnne & Lucy & so ends the Dial for us.
Other matter (most important).

Am ill (still ill) not ill again (always ill)
Became exceeeedingly ill nearly ded just after Xmas. Took to swoons &
trances etc. Much horror. Other doctor considered necessary. Spouse
having remembered that your spouse was much sett up by man called
W E S T (& being convinced) (as am I) that all ordinary medical men are
fools) fetched W E S T. After long exam. & screams by West he sed
This female is starved to death. This female has very very strong h a r t
No spine fuss, but [underlined 7 times] this female has got the most terrible
huge vast hideous gastly rock-like shocking incredible
LIVER
I have ever
seen or hard of or her
tell of in life or on any
living or ded female. MUST
go V I C H Y in the end.
I think, well praps.
1 Last two words added by hand.
685
Drag self to W. who treats me 3 times per week always yelling about
one thing or another. Become slightly sickened.
Convinced had nervous breakdown owing to various causes will not
bore you with. Certainly starved. Being anxious to due took to trances.
(Am very hypnotic, always was. Could be 1st class MEDIUM).
Enjoyed trances. Went off for 2 or 3 weeks at a time. (Had very queer
experiences in sum other Place).
Spouse explained trances to W. who sed starvation induces trances in
mediumistics.
Dislike West terribly. Is improving health but terrible dislike grows.
Hate his manner, hate his ways, hate his mind, hate his house & the row
& his lowness (is really very LOW Irish from W. America). Hate going to
him. Now he says I shall be fit to got to Vichy (where he goes twice a year)
in Aug. I still feel very unwell. Tired. Hav not been in a train for 3 years.
Only hired car. Am too nervous to shop alone. He ses Vichy, I say no.
Spouse all of a dither. Fearful clinch. Have got suspiciouns about Vichy
business. Also suspiciouns about liver. Kant believed in L I V E R. Cant
think it true. Crying with rage.
Loathe indecision. Give me advice on a post card quick.
Is West alrite?
Do you know?
Do you believe in Vichy?
Do you believe in Liver?
Please E. P. relieve a tormented Celt (Am Welsh Irish).
Believe West gets commission on patients taken to Vichy. (Know this is
case at Evian). Was warned once years ago, by best doctor ever had,
against Vichy.
Just relieve me on a p. card on 3 points.1
oooo-oooooo
[Unsigned]
1 EP wrote to TSE on 28 June 1925: Am sending V. a long screed part serious, and part
intended to be diverting.
As to Wests diagnosis of liver; the phantasms might very well indicate liver, i.e. liver does
make one see things.
AND starvation produces visions (less vigorous than liver visions) & it produces tears,
dither, agoraphobia etc. . . .
She says West is doing her good . . . If it is hard liver, I dont KNOW anything, merely;
Wests diagnosis sounds plausible; see nothing against it; but it ought to be controllable by
fecal analysis (though there may be special liver troubles that aint.)
EPs response to VHE herself has not been found.

19 June 1925 [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
Dear Lewis
I return your MS as you request,1 but bear in mind that it would have
suited me perfectly for October, and will still do so. For certain reasons I
have had to make the July no. very small.
As soon as circumstances permit me to make engagements more freely,
I shall suggest a meeting. Meanwhile, I should be glad to know what is
the position about your books, and especially the Arch-Zagreus etc. cycle.2
I have something in view (new).3
Yours
T. S. E.

My dear Read
Pending a meeting, will you tell me what you think of this idea (in
confidence) This is not in any way a substitute for the present Criterion
or its equivalent, but as well.
A small periodical (say 60 pp.) quarterly or six times a year, and possibly
irregularly i.e. four numbers during the year but not necessarily at regular
intervals; each no. to contain essays by four or six writers of various
nationalities on the same (set) subject;4 the subject to be one within
literature or the sphere of general ideas and of European (not merely local)
interest. The writers might also append their views of each others views.
It could hardly have more than a very small circulation. The question is
its interest, utility and influence. Writers to be paid of course.
1 Unidentified.
2 TSE had published Mr Zagreus and the Split-Man in C. 2: 6 (Feb. 1924); and The Apes
of God in 2: 7 (Apr. 1924), both of which became part of The Apes of God (1930). On 29
Apr., WL told EP he had completed two volumes of The Apes of God and Archie. The latter
was never published, but the MS is in the Olin Library, Cornell University.
3 Presumably a ref. to possible publication by F&G.
4 TSE has written Symposium vertically in the left margin. This letter indicates that he was
considering the possibility of running two parallel reviews; one, a continuation of C. financed
by F&G; the other a Symposium (which he refers to on 31 July as the Cahiers) financed
by Lady Rothermere.
687
There seems to me to exist (1) great ignorance and indifference here to
continental ideas (2) a certain waste in that writers in modern Europe tend
to apply themselves too narrowly to local aspects of general problems.
Mediaeval Europe was more economical.
More French names, of course, occur to one than of other nationalities.
But we might scrape together half a dozen here; there are few enough who
think at all.
The tendency in England is of course (vide Vogue, Lytton Strachey et
other phenomena)1 to avoid thought altogether.
If this were done it might be published in Paris (in French) also.
If you see anything in this rough outline we will discuss it further. It
would never of course pay for itself, but it is entertained by me as a
possible line for certain funds which would otherwise be spent at Deauville
and Cannes.2
Ever yours
T. S. E.

Sunday [21 June 1925] [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
My dear Richard
I was very disappointed to have so unsatisfactory an afternoon.3 I should
have been very glad to see S[ydney] W[aterlow] at another time, but the
coincidence when you come to town so seldom was deplorable. I
wanted not only to hear more of your affairs but to tell you privately about
my own designs. For the energy to write six close pages is lacking if there
is any hope of your coming again within the month.
I was discussing our plans for Ezra with my wife last night she thought
that a book of essays was no good unless we could get a good number of
big names and I dont see where they are to come from. Even Yeats is not
likely to be of much use. She thought that a smaller book a critical study
by one man would be better i.e. either
by me with a preface by you
you me
but}
1 RA, writing to HR in June, wondered why TSE is so very bitter against Lytton Strachey
(Richard Aldingtons Letters to Herbert Read). Strachey, like RA, published in Vogue.
2 An allusion to Lady Rothermere.
3 On 19 June, RA said he would call on TSE the following day (Saturday).

when will either of us have the time? I should like to get something done.
But it seems as if Ezra would have to wait for his luck until after he is
dead.1
Nevertheless, I much enjoyed seeing you, even under unsatis-
factory conditions.
Ever yours
Tom
to Theodore Spencer2 ms Harvard

Dear Mr Spencer
I should be happy to have a talk with you. Unfortunately, my
circumstances are such at present that it is difficult for me to make
engagements ahead, and I am also very busy. If you will write to me when
you come to London, and tell me what times are possible for you (not the
morning or evening) I will try to arrange it.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
Criterion Contract ts Valerie Eliot

25 June 1925
AN AGREEMENT made the 25th day of June One thousand nine
hundred and twenty-five B E T W E E N THE SCIENTIFIC PRESS
LIMITED of 28 and 29 Southampton Street London w.c.2 (hereinafter
called the Company) of the one part and THOMAS STEARNS Eliot of
9 Clarence Gate Gardens in the County of London (hereinafter referred to
as Mr Eliot) of the other part
WHEREBY IT IS AGREED as follows
1. THE Company will employ Mr Eliot and Mr Eliot will serve the
company as sole Editor of a quarterly literary periodical the property of the
1 TSE had published Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry (1917), and was to publish EPs
Selected Poems, ed. T. S. Eliot (1928). The mooted book of essays never materialised.
2 Theodore Spencer (190249), poet, critic, Shakespearean scholar, taught English at
Harvard, 192749, and was close to TSE there during his Charles Eliot Norton professorship
19323.
689
Company intended to be shortly published for a period of five years from
the First of July One thousand nine hundred and twenty-five.
2. THE Company will pay Mr Eliot by way of remuneration so
long as he shall remain a Director of the Company a salary in addition
to his remuneration as such Director at the rate of Three hundred and
twenty-five pounds per annum by quarterly payments on the usual
quarter days of One hundred and eighteen pounds fifteen shillings to be
paid on the Twenty-fifth day of March and the Twenty-ninth day of
September respectively and the sum of Forty-three pounds fifteen
shillings to be paid on the Twenty-fourth day of June and Twenty-fifth
day of December respectively the first payment of One hundred and
eighteen pounds fifteen shillings to be made on the Twenty-ninth day of
September One thousand nine hundred and twenty-five Provided that if
Mr Eliot shall not cease to be a Director of the Company during the
continuance of this Agreement then the said salary of Three hundred and
twenty-five pounds per annum shall be increased to Four hundred
pounds per annum payable by equal quarterly payments Each quarters
salary may be paid wholly or partly in advance provided no such
payment in advance shall be made in respect of any half-yearly period
except within that period A half-yearly period is a period from the First
day of January to the Thirtieth day of June and from the First day of July
to the Thirty-first day of December in any year.
3. Mr Eliot shall during his employment hereunder secure
contributions for and decide the contents of the said periodical at such
remuneration as may be agreed between the contributor and Mr Eliot not
exceeding Two pounds per thousand words except with the specific
consent in writing of the Chairman of the Company and shall endeavour
as far as possible to obtain from the various contributors and to correct
and prepare for press and deliver to the Company the manuscript of the
several contributions to be included in each issue of the said periodical at
such times as the Company may require.
4. ALL expenses of and attending the preparation compilation and
publication of each issue of the said periodical including the remuneration
of the contributors shall be borne by the Company who will provide Mr
Eliot with such secretarial assistance as may be necessary. The Company
will be responsible for the mechanical production of the said periodical.
5. Mr Eliot shall not during the continuance of this Agreement
without the previous sanction in writing of the Company acquire a
financial interest in any other literary periodical or publishing house or
without the like consent edit or assist in editing or take any part in the

preparation or production of any publication of a similar nature to and
calculated to compete with the said periodical but Mr Eliot shall be at
liberty at all times to contribute to any other publication or periodical.
6. Mr Eliot agrees to offer in the first place to the Company for
publication in book form by them upon terms not less favourable than
those offered by any other publisher all or any original works written by
him.
7. If Mr Eliot shall be incapacitated by illness from editing two
consecutive issues of the said periodical then this Agreement may be
determined by the Company upon their giving six calendar months notice
in writing to that effect.
I N W I T N E S S WHEREOF the Company has caused these
presents to be signed on its behalf and the said Thomas Stearns Eliot has
hereunto set his hand the day and year first above written.
[Signed by
Geoffrey C. Faber
Witness A. S. Ward
Secretary]

My dear Eliot,
(1) The New Criterion
I want as soon as possible to have a meeting here between you and me
and our Publications Manager, to settle definitely the form of the paper.
Our Advertisement Manager wants to have as exact answers as he can to
the following questions:-
1. Title, size, style, type area and number of pages.
2. Date of the first number.
3. Scope of contents.
4. Number to be printed each quarter and probable readers.
He also wants to know as far ahead as possible what books will be under
review in the first and all succeeding numbers, so that he can make
arrangements to secure advertisements from the publishers concerned. All
these points we can discuss when we meet.
We have also got to consider what steps ought to be taken with regard
to sales overseas; especially, I suppose, in Paris and the United States. Any
information you can give us on these points will be welcome.
691
We shall, as soon as possible, for the sake of the Advertisement Manager,
have to get out dummy copies showing the cover design and a page or two
of text matter. This we ought to do if possible during the next fortnight.
(2) Books
About the various suggestions you made to me the other day. They were
all sound; and I should be grateful if you would take whatever steps you
can to bring any of them nearer realisation. I should like to have as much
as possible fixed up before the end of July so that we shall have sufficient
in hand for the Autumn and Christmas season.
Yours ever,
[Geoffrey C. Faber]
to L. A. G. Strong cc
Dear Strong,
I apologise for not having replied immediately to your letter of the 14th
instant. But I am still in doubt as to how I wish this suite to be arranged;
as a matter of fact, it is not quite complete.1 Therefore I should be very glad
if you would use only the poem which provides the title, i.e. Part I of the
three poems printed in the Dial.2 This is the only one with which I am at
present satisfied. I should therefore ask only two guineas, as the original
subject of negotiation was a set of three.
Write to me when you come to London, and if I have not left town we
will meet.
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF

Dear Lewis,
This is the first opportunity I have had to reply to your letter. I shall be
very glad to discuss the matter of the books with you as soon as you are
1 The Hollow Men.
2 Parts III and IV of the final suite were published in Dial 78: 3 (Mar. 1925). The opening
of I reads: We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men.

ready to negotiate.1 Meanwhile I want to say that I know nothing
whatever about Whibleys actions. I have not seen him for a very long time
and although I have had letters from him, he has not alluded to this
business in any way.2 I should therefore be very glad if you would let me
know what has happened. If the negotiations for this book have fallen
through, I should be very glad to take it to the people I have in mind.
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
My dear Richard,
I waited in the hope that you might get up to town and I shall now
continue to wait. Our last interview was so unsatisfactory that I hope we
can meet again as soon as possible. I am very sorry that you disliked S. W.3
He is a peculiar person, but when one understands him I dont think that
there is very much to dislike seriously. But he was very kind to me at
one time years ago, and was in fact the first person to give me any writing
to do.4
This note is merely to tell you that I am waiting for you.
Ever yours,
[T. S. E.]
PS I am sending you a little book on verse translation from Latin. If you
think it is worth a note in the Criterion I shall be delighted to have it. At
any rate this is your book if it is anybodys.
1 See TSEs letter of 19 June, asking for the position about The Apes of God and Archie.
2 WL wrote to CW in Mar. about his offer to introduce WL to Macmillan in connection
with his 100,000-word MS The Politics of the Personality (Letters of Wyndham Lewis,
1545).
3 Sydney Waterlow (see letter of 21 June).
4 Waterlow was on the editorial committee of International Journal of Ethics, 191416,
and had invited TSE to write his review of A. J. Balfours Theism and Humanism, in IJE 26: 2
(Jan. 1916). This had been TSEs first review (with the exception of those in Harvard
Advocate).
693
My dear Eliot,
Thank you for your secretarys letter and the enclosure from Scott
Moncrieff from which I gather that there is nothing in immediate prospect
that we can hope for. I note that you have asked for an option on the books
mentioned if they are declined by Chatto & Windus.1 Many thanks for
the trouble you have taken. I hope your interview yesterday with Lady R.
eventuated and was successful.
We enjoyed the rehearsal on Sunday very much, and were able to use all
four tickets.
Yours ever,
[Geoffrey C. Faber]
to George Rylands2 cc
7 July 1925 23 Adelphi Terrace House
Dear Mr Rylands,
I have had your poem in my hands for some little time and must
apologise for not having written to you about it.3 I like it very much on the
whole but should like to make certain comments in the margin if you will
allow me, and return it to you for consideration. I have considered the
possibility of using it in October if the Woolfs are not going to publish it
before I could do so, but in the case of verse I cannot be certain very long
in advance.4 What would be best would be if we could meet some time
1 In a postcard (Nov.? 1925) Scott Moncrieff was to ask whether TSE proposed to use his
story (Cousin Fanny and Cousin Annie, which would appear in NC 4: 2 & 3, Apr. & June
1926) or Pirandellos Black Shawl. He also offered one of Pirandellos recently published
one-act plays. Since Chatto & Windus continued to publish Scott Moncrieffs translation of
Proust, the letter may refer to the Pirandello translations.
2 George Dadie Rylands (190299), literary scholar and theatre director, was elected in
1927 a Fellow of Kings College, Cambridge, where he became renowned for his expressive
and inspirational teaching and theatrical productions; in later years he became a governor of
the Old Vic Theatre, London, and chairman (from 1946) of the Cambridge Arts Theatre.
3 Russet and Taffeta.
4 The Oct. C. never appeared. Russet and Taffeta came out as an eight-page pamphlet with
the Hogarth Press in Dec. 1925. (Rylands had worked with the Woolfs at the Hogarth Press
for six months in 1924.) Humbert Wolfe, in a review of it, regretted that, despite its easy
happy grace, it did not offer the puzzled critic more to bite on (NC 4: 2 [Apr. 1926]).

late in the summer and discuss it. But meanwhile I will offer my criticisms
and shall be glad to hear what you think of them.
Yours sincerely
[T. S. E.]

My dear Read,
I have not had time even to thank you for your valuable notes and
suggestions.1 I shall do everything I can to realise such a project and if
anything comes of it your words will have had a formative influence.2
I should particularly like to start something along these lines, because it
seems an appropriate vehicle for the kind of thought in which we have
both become interested. You are not to suppose that I know any more
about Thomism than you do, but in fact rather less. Hulmes book3
awakened in me certain desires of exploration which had slumbered during
many years of Lombard Street. The only qualification I have, but for which
I am very thankful, is that I was pretty well grounded at one time in
Aristotle.4 Beyond this I have nothing more at present than an instinct. Of
course the religious difficulty is the great one and it is impossible to tell
what ones solution will be. All that one can do at present is conscientiously
to avoid anticipating the conclusions to which one may come five or ten
years hence. I mean that one must be on guard against the prejudices of
ones training on the one hand and any emotional collapse on the other. I
certainly do not want to fall into the pit of obscurantism. But one way or
the other it will need an heroic effect to keep from allowing oneself illicit
conclusions.
I think that you have found the weak spot in Fernandez.5
You may hear from me in a short time about the practical side of this
matter.
Ever yours,
T. S. E.
1 These notes do not appear to survive.

2 A ref. to TSEs plan to run another review in tandem with C.
3 T. E. Hulme, Speculations: Essays on Humanism and the Philosophy of Art ed. by HR
(1924).
4 TSE took courses on Aristotle with J. A. Smith, R. G. Collingwood and Harold Joachim
in 191415.
5 Ramn Fernandez, Lintelligence et M. Maritain, NRF 12: 141 (1 June 1925), 98694.
695
Yes, I do feel that important things are possible, but that the possibilities
may somehow evaporate.

Dear Conrad,
I was very pleased to get your letter of the 23rd June and apologise for
my inability to answer it at once. I am afraid that it will be impossible for
me to get away from town for a considerable time, but nevertheless, it is
most cheering to have such an invitation at my disposal. I should like
nothing better than to share your seaside pleasures.
How are you? What are you thinking and writing about? And when
David Garnetts new book appears may I send it to you?1 You are the man
to deal with him. I should like to get from you a complete and destructive
study of this author, as good as your one of Huxley.2 I can send you his two
earlier books if you have not got them.3
And another suggestion for you to consider. There is a remarkable unity
about things you have done for me about Huxley, the Sitwells, etcetera.4
Would you consider the gradual preparation of a book of papers on
contemporary British authors, or perhaps more particularly authors of
fiction? I think that I can almost guarantee the publisher, and, if I may say
so, I believe a better publisher than Secker.5 With this in view I should like
to send you Virginia Woolfs new novel also.6
Do let me hear from you again, and remember that sooner or later I shall
descend upon Rye.
Ever yours,
Tom
1 David Garnett, The Sailors Return (1925).

2 Aiken reviewed AHs Those Barren Leaves in C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925). While considering it
AHs best work, and admirably, if ornately written, he yet complained that it offered not
so much a story or series of character studies as another tremendous example of Mr
Huxleys highly cultured conversation.
3 Garnett, Lady into Fox (1922) and Man in the Zoo (1924).
4 Aikens other reviews had been of Gilbert Seldes, The Seven Lively Arts, and Osbert
Sitwell, Triple Fugue, in C. 3: 9 (Oct. 1924).
5 Aiken had published with Secker Nocturne of Remembered Spring (1922), Punch: The
Immortal Liar (1921), The Pilgrimage of Festus (1924) and Bring! Bring! (1925). On 9 July,
he said he was negotiating a book of verse with Hogarth Press and had agreed to give them first
refusal of his prose. Aikens Senlin: A Biography came out with Hogarth Press in July 1925.
6 VW, Mrs Dalloway (May 1925).

to Edmund Wilson cc
Dear Sir,
Mr Eliot is very sorry that the length of your story precludes the
possibility of considering it for the Criterion. Also, in view of the fact that
the Criterion publishes very little fiction, and has already published one
war story and accepted another, the subject happens to be rather a
disqualification.
Mr Eliot hopes very much that you will send him more contributions,
both fiction and critical essays.1
Yours faithfully
For the Editor of The Criterion
Secretary

My dear Monro,
Thank you very much for your last letter and for your good wishes. I
think that Lost Sheep might be a better phrase than Lost Leader.2 At any
rate you may be certain that this lamb of Lombard Street has not left you
for a handful of silver and that he intends to keep his wool and eventually
return to the fold.
I wish I could definitely arrange a luncheon with you, but it is cheering
to know that you will be in London more or less the whole summer, and
please be sure that I shall ring you up as soon as a meeting is possible.
Meanwhile, I am ashamed to have been unable to do anything for the
Chapbook in the Bloomsbury quarter, but I dont suppose that it would
have altered the result. I must also say that I have not a shred of verse or
prose which would be of any use to you. If I had time, I should make a
1 Wilson never appeared in C.

2 On 1 July, Monro wrote: With gangs so strong one does want to see something of you
again however detestable the expression lost leader may ring to you. The Lost Leader
is a poem by Robert Browning, from Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845), which begins:
Just for a handful of silver he left us, / Just for a riband to stick in his coat. It refers to
Wordsworth in later life. The Lost Sheep refers to the parable in Matthew 18: 1014.
697
great effort to fabricate something. But last year you gave me until
November. What is your absolutely final date this year?
Believe me,
Ever yours,
T. S. E.

My dear Eliot,
Many thanks for your letter. I conceive that your interview [with Lady
Rothermere] must have required an amazing amount of tact on your part.
I shall hope to hear fairly soon that she has agreed with you, or at any rate
that you have got the title, and the right to insert a notice in the July
number. As soon as that is settled we must have a meeting here and decide
various points which I mentioned the other day.
Yours ever,
[G. C. F.]

Wednesday 8 July1 [1925] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Leonard,
As I may not be able to come in tomorrow after all, and as you were so
helpful to me, I am writing to tell you this. I took your advice and went to
[Dr Henry] Head, before Vivien saw a doctor at all, but he did not seem
to me modern enough. Although we have got her apparently over her fear
of doctors, it has not yet been successful. On each occasion on which she
has seen doctors since then the first effects have been apparently good, but
have been followed by collapses, and she has been very ill indeed. I have
now working together a big specialist and a consultant who agree that the
effect of Dr Martin (the German doctor I told you of) upon her was much
more serious than at first supposed. I may write to you again about this.
1 Misdated 10 July.

I should consider suing Dr Martin but understand it would mean my going
to Germany, which I cannot do.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
PRIVATE.
to Rollo Myers cc
10 July 1925 23 Adelphi Terrace House
Dear Mr Myers,
Thank you for your letter of the 2nd July. I shall be very glad to
undertake the arrangement for publication of Le Secret Professionel
translation if possible.1 At the moment, everything is rather fluid and I
cannot speak definitely, but I should be glad if you would bring your
manuscript over and I will take charge of it. I should certainly be able to
give you something much more definite within about ten days time.2
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF

Dear Lewis,
I have your letter of the 8th instant. As I know nothing whatever about
the matter of Whibley and your book, and as neither of you has given me
any hint as to what happened, I shall not myself raise the question with
either of you. As you make no suggestion of the book being available for
publication, I presume that you have made your arrangements.
I may say that the publishing firm which I have in mind is one consisting
of persons whom I believe to be not only unknown to you but quite out of
1 Jean Cocteau, Le secret professionel (1924). Myers said his translation was still at TSEs
disposal; but he now had an American offer and wanted to know whether TSE was interested
in publishing it.
2 It appeared as A Call to Order, written between the years 1918 and 1926 and including
Cock and Harlequin, Professional Secrets, and other critical essays, trans. Rollo Myers
(F&G, 1926).
699
touch with anyone of whom you have suspicions. It is probable that any
manuscript placed in my hands would fall under the eyes of a man named
Faber and possibly under the eyes of a man named Burdett,1 but no one
else. There is no possibility that anyone could assert that he was rendering
you a service, and the assertion is not one that I should have any advantage
whatever in making myself.2
In my opinion, and so far as I know anything of either side, the firm is
a suitable one, but as it is just starting its existence as a general publishing
firm, I have no means of proving this assertion nor you of testing it. Your
book has certainly not been offered to this firm. It is of course impossible
for me to guarantee their acceptance, nor until they had seen the
manuscript could I possibly suggest any definite sum as an advance. I
should be glad to hear from you further.
Thanking you for your good wishes, I am,
Yours,
T. S. Eliot

Dear Read,
Thank you for your letter. I had already observed J. F. Holms and noted
that the review in question is a better one than any I have seen;3 is indeed
1 Osbert Burdett (18851936): author of The Idea of Coventry Patmore (1921), The
Beardsley Period (1925), and Critical Essays (1925). Maurice Gwyer, GCFs partner, was
married to Alise Burdett, who had inherited the Scientific Press from her father Sir Henry.
GCF reflected in his diary (18 Nov. 1924) upon Burdett, whom he liked very well, that he
seemed the rather unpractical writer, full of ideas, some valuable others not (Faber Archive).
2 WL desired the strictest secrecy regarding The Apes of God. He confessed (8 July): there
are two or three people that I have offended who would not pass the suspiciousness test,
if suspiciousness were given a really free hand as inquisitor . . . [O]f late I have had what
in my wild brain has seemed a proof of flagrant hanky-panky. Under these circumstances
would you mind my asking you for an assurance that your offer (re books) is entirely your
own affair; and that with however blameless intentions you are not seeking to render me
a service at the instigation of anyone in England who could subsequently claim that your
assistance was his? WLs letters to EP (11 June) and McAlmon (24 July) are equally
suspicious of the motives of would-be publishers and promoters (see Pound/Lewis, 1501;
Letters of Wyndham Lewis, 161).
3 J. F. Holmss review of Mrs Dalloway appeared in Calendar of Modern Letters (July 1925).
Though Holms thought it the best book she has written, he asked how could such talent
co-exist with a sentimentality that would be remarkable in a stockbroker, and inconceivable
among educated people? Though the novel had the design, apparent intensity, and

better than the one I have by Collins for the next Criterion.1 It is perhaps
hardly fair to judge Collins by this, especially as I have never yet seen him
nor given him a direct line on what we want, but at the same time a review
is often a pretty good test of independence and fearlessness.
Muirs essay is also good.2
The other elements you suggest, and more still, might be useful later if
one could bring out such a publication more frequently, but it seems to me
that at the beginning one would have to limit oneself to such people as
could be made to fit in pretty clearly with a general policy. What do you
think? Of course nothing may come of it, but if it does I shall try to arrange
a meeting with you at the earliest opportunity.
I am trying to get the Keyserling book3 for you if it is not too late to
secure a review copy. At the moment I do not know of anything else worth
your trouble. I should like also to discuss your suggestion which appeals
to me: the only objection which occurs to me at the moment is something
which I always have to keep in mind, i.e. the awakening of jealousy
amongst other contributors. You will understand this I am sure. Otherwise
it appeals to me very much.
Yours ever,
T. S. E.
to Messrs. Peter Jones cc

10 July 1924 [?1925] [London]
Dear Sirs,
57 Chester Terrace4
In reply to your letter of the 9th inst., I have been advised by my
solicitors that I should pay a deposit upon completion of the contract and
immediate aspect of a work of art, he thought it an interesting problem of aesthetic

psychology to explain so self-subsistent a mirage entirely unconnected with reality.
1 H. P. Collins reviewed Humbert Wolfe, The Unknown Goddess, and VW, The Common
Reader, in C. 3: 12 (July 1925).
2 Edwin Muir reviewed Conrad Aikens Bring! Bring! in C. 3: 12 (July 1925).
3 Count Hermann Keyserling, The Travel Diary of a Philosopher, trans. J. Holroyd, (1925).
HRs review of it (NC 4: 1, Jan. 1926, 18993) deplored its orientalism which he described
as not so much a direct advocacy of the philosophies of the East as an implicit reflection
on the adequacy of Western thought from their standpoint and its Rousseau-like
subjectivism.
4 On 12 July 1925, TSE spoke of moving VHE into Chester Terrace that week which
suggests that the present letter may be misdated. In the event the Eliots did not move from
Clarence Gate Gardens to 57 Chester Terrace until spring 1926.
701
the balance upon transference of the lease. My solicitors are taking up the
matter with Mrs Tollemaches solicitors.
With regard to the articles which Mrs Tollemache wishes to dispose,
Mrs Eliot would be disposed to take them over and would be glad to know
the value to be set upon them.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
to Charles Haigh-Wood1 ts Valerie Eliot

Dear P.,2
Just a line as I never have time for more. To say V. thanks you for your
kind and sympathetic letter and begs you not to return earlier on her
account. She will be very much upset if you do, and I should think it better
you should not. I should like her to be a little better when you see her. We
have Dr Glover3 (17 Fitzjohns Avenue) with Dr Barris (of 50 Welbeck
Street) directing him and have settled into some sort of routine. They are
both fine men, and gentlemen, and we have full confidence. We want to get
her to Chester Terrace this week as both of them agree she will be better
moved away from such unhappy surroundings.
I will just tell you that the whole murder is out. To begin with it is agreed
that the Cyriax treatment caused her to starve for nearly two years. Mrs
Cyriax although knowing she was getting thinner and lighter the whole
time never once suggested her taking food. On the contrary, whatever
article of food V. mentioned such as milk, toast, meat, veg. etc., her
invariable reply was that it was not good for the stomach. So V. quietly
gave up one food after the other until in the end she gave up eating
altogether.
1 Charles Haigh-Wood, TSEs father-in-law: see Glossary of Names.

2 It is uncertain whether VHEs father saw this letter because he had left his French hotel
before it arrived, and though re-addressed to his London home, it was probably returned to
TSE who had registered it. Furthermore, TSE recalled by wire the copy he had sent to his
brother-in-law, Maurice, in Rome marked Please keep; it came back with the words, Dear
Tom Here is the letter. Much love M, pencilled on the original envelope.
3 Dr James Glover (18821926): pioneering British psychoanalyst whom LW recommended
to TSE in May. Glover qualified as a surgeon in Glasgow at twenty-one, but transferred his
interest to psychotherapy. After being in analysis with Karl Abraham, he became a member
of the newly formed Psychoanalytic Society in 1922, and would arrange for the transfer of
the International Library of Psychoanalysis to the Hogarth Press.

1. So you have long starvation, with long periods (there were many
intervals) of the most exhausting stomach treatment which all four doctors
I have in all consulted agree tended to wear out the nerves.
2. The German brute of a doctor [K. B. Martin] whom I took her to
(against her will) in the spring of last year. He never saw her starvation
symptoms, and always urged her to continue the Cyriax treatment. She
never went alone (I always [went] with her) until one day last July. Then
she went alone, and he was in some hysterical state, and in a diabolical
rage for reasons of his own. He began to psychoanalyse her and poke into
her childhood and youth, and told her finally that she was living on Will,
that she had a terrific will which kept her alive, and that if this will ever
collapsed she would be nothing but a feeble minded little snivelling invalid,
asking only for a little pity and led about by an attendant. He even pointed
to the corner of the room and said she would be sitting there and painted
in words a filthy picture of a semi-idiot. She sat still and looked at him
and said nothing at all, and this must have infuriated him more, for when
they came out of the room I noticed at once that his forehead was heavily
beaded with sweat. V. seemed quite calm and appeared to take no notice
whatever of his words. In fact, she did not tell me what he had said until
a long time afterwards.
Shortly afterwards they went to Eastbourne as you know, and there she
continued to starve, and most unfortunately there lived opposite her
window a paralysed woman, who somehow joined up in her mind the
horrible ideas which the German doctor had planted there. She very
seldom went out and spent a lot of time watching the paralysed woman
and feverishly writing stories, always starving. I was completely taken up
with my mother and sister and neither Jack nor Pearl is fully developed or
responsible, and certainly unfit to be with anyone in such a state. When she
returned she soon got into a depressed and gloomy state. She went fitfully
to the Cyriax woman who never saw anything wrong with her to the very
end. She was bitterly disappointed that some of her stories were rejected,
and she continued to starve, and I am ashamed to say that I was on the
verge of a nervous breakdown myself and didnt notice it at all. As you
know I had influenza just after Christmas and I was scarcely out of bed
before V. suddenly rushed into bed and refused to get up any more. From
that time for eleven weeks she refused to get up and insisted on sleeping at
any cost, nearly all the time. Whenever she was awake she made me
promise never to let a doctor see her again, and it got to the point where
she wouldnt even let her family see her; and I know her mother blames me
for this, but this is the true reason which I couldnt state. She was in such
703
a shocking state in between the long sleeps she had, of terror that she was
becoming an idiot, that her only idea was that if anyone saw her they
would realise that she was becoming an idiot. For this reason she had a
particular horror of a doctor seeing her, for she constantly said that she
knew a doctor would say she was becoming an idiot.
I must say that I had very grave fears that her reason would go
altogether, and I was in a state of horror and tension indescribable to you,
who have never gone through anything like it, I am sure. I dared not fetch
a doctor, I dared not fetch one of you into her room, I was paralysed. She
became more and more frantic as time went on and took to making the
most shocking faces and hypnotising herself. I can say no more of this; it
is too horrible. I leave it to your imagination.
As you know, we got her up and out, but she had small collapses at the
slightest thing, and still flatly refused to see a doctor. The mania was still
strong in her mind. At last I thought of a scheme by which I could get
outside help. I pretended that there was something wrong with her spine,
and that she ought to see an osteopath. She did not raise objections, she
was not afraid of an osteopath for some reason, heaven only knows. I got
in an osteopath at once and told him the whole story. At last we got her
out to him regularly three times a week, and I must say he stood by her
very well, and was a very decent fellow, extremely clever. However, he
underestimated her condition, both mental and physical. In endeavouring
to force her to attend to her body, instead of constantly thinking whether
she was an idiot or not, and to force her to eat enough food, he shouted
at her and frightened her so that she had another most frightful and serious
collapse so that I thought she would die. However, this brought good in its
train, although she was more ill than I can possibly tell you, for a fortnight.
The reaction from the osteopath at last broke down her horror. She
consented to see a doctor. Having been recommended most tremendously
by our friends the Schiffs, a consultant by the name of Dr Barris of
Welbeck Street, I instantly sent for him, and we sat up till 12 oclock
waiting for him to come. Vivien was in bed in a state of most complete
collapse, shewing terrible symptoms. (In any mental strain her nervous
breakdown and idiot-mania symptoms return, even to the hour). At last Dr
Barris came at 12 oclock and we found him a most charming and
delightful creature. After a little conversation he went in to Vivien, and
quieted her down within an incredibly short time, making her perfectly
adore him at the same time. He took away all her fears, sympathised with
her, and has the most courtly and charming manners. All the same,
afterwards, he said to me, that of course a great deal of this was caused by

starvation, and that he thoroughly disapproved of the Cyriax method and
treatment on any account whatever. He seems fully to understand the case,
and feels that Vivien ought to have some attendant or maid or nurse, some
responsible elderly female who will never leave her, until she is perfectly
strong again, which will be several years. He considers her extraordinarily
undeveloped, in fact all doctors do, every one has commented on her
extreme youth and almost childishness. And have said that this largely
accounts for what the German doctor said to her having taken such terrific
hold on her mind. Dr Barris being a surgeon-consultant cannot of course
attend to her regularly, and we have had some difficulty in finding a
perfectly suitable practitioner, clever, modern, experienced, and kind. But
Dr Barris has been very kind in helping in this matter, and we have taken
his advice and have now Dr Glover in consultation with him all the time.
I have told them about her brother being in Rome and both are agreed
that it is most advisable, in fact almost necessary, to send her abroad to a
good climate in three or four months time, as that will strengthen her. They
think the companionship of Maurice would be good for her, and I myself
am of that opinion. The dreadful part is that for a whole year I have paid
the rent of a flat and a house.
You now see the reason why I left the bank. Of course I have never dared
leave Vivien for one second up to now. I really am nearly ruined. I bled my
mother white for money, and you know yourself what a generous woman
she is. The future fills me with horror. I do not know what I shall do. The
unfortunate part is that the expenses are not by any means at an end; I
have doctors to pay, bills not in yet, Vivien to be sent to Rome, in luxury,
a maid or nurse to pay for, God knows how I can let this flat, I dont, I shall
never be able to sit all day here, which is the only way to let a flat; I have
thrown up the Criterion, as I did not get a farthing out of it, and I have
thrown over Lady Rothermere for good. You have often offered me help,
and I have always promised to come on you in an hour of need, and I may
have to come on you before long, but [you] may be sure I will keep my
expenses to the absolute minimum.
Vivien sends love, and is very happy to have her mothers letters and little
presents, but of course has to stay in bed, keep absolutely quiet, sees no
one and knows nothing. As for Jack and Pearl they are practically useless,
and I have practically cast them out; Pearl is the more useful of the two.
With love from
Tom
705
[mid-July 1925] Chicago
Dear Tom:-
I have just seen Theresa off on the train. This is no cool-headed affair de
convenance. Yet sometimes I feel that I am doing a fine bit of acting. How
one can act under the stimulus of emotion! Who is it that is doing it? And
my letters I wish I did not perceive how absurd they are.
For most of us for those who must lead a life of action, of contacts and
conflicts success in life is largely a matter of histrionic ability. All self-
improvement, all self-development, is histrionic. You create the mental
image of the kind of hero you wish to be, and then proceed to play the
part. After you have played it for years, you almost become it. Few
including yourself can distinguish the real self, the puppet-master, behind
you. That is what I must do. I must act. Acting and action are alike foreign
to my nature. I prefer to be a still mirror of contemplation.
Already I know the loss of liberty, the little encroachments on ones time,
the seemingly senseless expenses, of life with another person. And there is
the sordid business of picking out a ring; not imposed by her so much as
by custom. For she is intensely unselfish. She wants to earn money to set
aside for a trip abroad; she wants to pay her mothers living expenses; she
wants to work if I am ever sick and unable to earn.
But I have never known liberty anyway. Cutting myself off as much as
possible from social life for its own sake, I am still unable to find an
evening when I can sit down and read. In this country one has no choice
between constant senseless activity and the life-in-death of a hermit.
On July 23 the premium on your policy will be due. I want to do just
what you wish about this: to pay it, or send you the money itself. It is not
that I begrudge the money, I only want it to be of the most good. Do you
think, now, that the insurance is worth the price? The policy was written,
you know, before Mother changed the terms of her will. It seems to me that
the cash in hand is worth more than the protection against the contingency
of your death before Vivien. Please write me when you get this letter.
I told Theresa I wish to send you $1000. She assented gladly. Mother has
a bond which I sent her to make up for selling 100 shares of Hydraulic
before it went up ten points. She will not take it, and is going to return it
to me. I shall compromise by sending the money to you. You can, if you
wish, add this to the trust she is having drawn up, that is to say, the one
you sent me signed. Or you can use it to tide you through the difficult
period of which you wrote.

The rest of my money I shall certainly put in trust. I shall bend my efforts
toward getting out of the business what I have in it. I shall look for a job
in New York or Boston. What I hope for is a place in a small but successful
business where I can be treasurer as well as write advertising copy. I
suppose it will entail some sacrifice, but eventually I am certain to be
eliminated from the present business by Buchen. He has already picked
out a man whom he wished to bring into the business in about a year. He
has already suggested a cut in both our salaries; he can carry this down to
a point where I will have to go elsewhere, and then pay himself back salary
after I am out. But the crux of the matter is that I hate him with a bitter
hatred, and he hates me; we cover it up, but we know it.
Ever affectionately,
Henry
from Geoffrey C. Faber cc

My dear Eliot,
(1) I send you a copy of the memorandum which has gone to the other
Directors and chief shareholders. This is the only copy I have, so
that I shall be glad if, after digesting it, you would kindly return it
to me.
(2) There will be a formal Directors Meeting at 3.15 next Thursday
afternoon; but there is no need for you to attend that if it is not
convenient for you, though of course we should like to see you; the
important Directors Meeting will be held on Tuesday July 28th, at
2.30; and that I hope you will be able to attend.
I have been anxiously awaiting for news about The Criterion; time is
getting infernally short, and I devoutly hope that I may hear, before
Monday, what Lady Rs attitude is to be.1
Yours ever,
[G. C. F.]
1 GCF noted (diary, Sat. 19 July): Telephoned to Eliot: the Criterion, alas, comes out on
Monday, without our notice in it; Lady R. having behaved in an exasperating manner.
707
to St John Hutchinson ts Texas
18 July 1925
Very many thanks. I had not wished to hurry you, but wanted to be sure
you have received it.
V. never hears from Mary?
T. S. E.
to George Rylands ms Kings

Dear Mr Rylands
Here are my comments, for what they are worth; you may ignore them
all! In any case, let me see the poem again when you are ready.1
I am sorry to have missed you, but look forward to meeting you later,
and, meanwhile, success to the Fellowship.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
I think the second two pages are almost allright as they stand.

Sunday [19? July 1925] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Conrad
Please accept my sincere apologies and deep regrets at not having
answered your card it was absolutely impossible for me just then, and
very difficult even to write. And I think I have also failed to answer a
previous letter. I am sorry about the book, dispirited about the reviewing,
but glad that if you are fixed up it is with the Woolfs.2 They did Senlin
quite well, I thought.3
1 Rylands, Russet and Taffeta, appeared from the Hogarth Press in Dec. 1925.
2 Aiken responded on 9 July to TSEs letter of 7 July that he could not offer TSE a book of
essays on fiction because the Hogarth Press had first refusal. He was suffering from paralysis
of the critical faculty and an intense hatred of reviewing, and could not face reviewing the
novels by David Garnett and VW that TSE had suggested.
3 Aikens poem Senlin: A Biography was published by the Hogarth Press earlier in July.

But as I cant get away from London, when will there be another chance
of seeing you here?
Ever yrs.
T. S. E.

Dear Eliot,
Many thanks for your letter of yesterdays date. You blame yourself
unnecessarily; there are certain kinds of inertia against which the best of
men spend themselves in vain.
But I am afraid that we have now got to a point when it would be foolish
to attempt to bring the paper out in October. Nothing can be usefully
settled now before the end of July, and we have then the dead period of
August and September before us. If the paper is to be brought out under
the best conditions, with the whole of the business side of the undertaking
explored and properly mapped out, we must, as you suggest, wait till the
New Year. I cannot however, think of leaving you stranded during these
five or six months. For one thing if we publish in January your salary
would certainly begin to run from the end of September, and could, under
the terms of our agreement, be drawn upon in advance. The best way out
of the difficulty that I can see, if you agree to it, is that you should take
your salary for the current quarter as payment for the task of planning
and starting a series of studies on foreign writers, of the sort we were
discussing the other day; what do you think of this suggestion?
I am looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.
Yours ever,
[Geoffrey C. Faber]
709
[late July? 1925]1 [London]
Dear Leonard
I am sorry I could not answer at once, but circumstances have been very
difficult indeed. I dont see how I can do any work for some weeks, and
then I must attend to
{
my new job
the bank
my Camb. lectures
In addition I have the Tudor Translation introduction and another
commission and a preface to write for my mothers poems!2 So I dont see
how, at best (and things dont look very bright) I can get you a pamphlet
before the latter part of Nov. What I have in mind is a reply to Graves
analogy (misleading I think) between poetry and politics.3 But if you prefer
to avoid controversy between one of your pamphleteers and another, let me
know I have other ideas. All these difficulties affect the poems because
I have no time to write anything else, i.e. I shall have nothing to give them
but the poems, which increases the difficulty.4 The fact that they are
advancing my salary aggravates it further. But more later. You shall have
a pamphlet in any case, the only question is when.5
Love to Virginia. When do you go to Rodmell? I want to see you once
before you go.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
1 The Woolfs, who went to Rodmell for eleven weeks on 28 July, suggested a date in late
July.
2 In addition to the Clark lectures to be delivered at Cambridge in spring 1926, TSE is
referring to Seneca: His Tenne Tragedies, trans. into English by Thomas Newton, with intro.
by TSE (1927) and Charlotte Eliot, Savonarola, A Dramatic Poem, with intro. by TSE (1926).
3 Robert Graves, Contemporary Techniques of Poetry, A Political Analogy (1925).
4 On 1 June VW regarded it as a blow that all of TSEs works would have to go from the
Hogarth Press to F&G (Diary, III, 27).
5 In the event, having published Poems (1919), TWL (1923) and HJD (1924), the Hogarth
Press published nothing else by TSE.

[?29 July 1925] [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
Dear Richard
I miss your letters. How are you? We have been having an anxious time
for a fortnight. I think it is a little better now.
When you write, can you suggest any bibliography of
}
Marini1
Marinism
Gngora2
Gngorism
for my lectures on XVII C. poets (English). I must be well fortified.
Ever yours aff.
Tom.

My dear John
You are so often in our thoughts and in our conversation that I was very
surprised to realise how long a time it is since I have written. I find myself
making the assumption, often, that you (though no one else) will somehow
know what one is going through without being told. And, somehow, there
is nothing that can be told only facts that give no indication. And there
is nothing essential to tell which you dont know already.
Vivien has been terribly ill and we have had terrible practical
difficulties. And it all seems to mark the end of an epoch a period of
awful changes. A great deal of structure seems to have collapsed. Here I
feel that you have given me immense help for which I shall always be
grateful the Cambridge Lectures are something definite and firm to hold
on to in the midst of dissolution: they will keep my mind together if
anything will.3
1 Giambattista Marino, or Marini (15691625): Italian religious poet. In his Clark lectures,
TSE argued that the influence of Marino, St Theresa and John Donne combined to inform
the poetry of Richard Crashaw. His views developed after reading Mario Prazs Secentismo
e Marinismo in Inghilterra (1925), which he reviewed in the TLS (17 Dec. 1925).
2Luis de Gngora y Argote (15611627): Spanish poet and priest. TSE noted that for English
poetry the influence of Gongorism was much less than that of Marinism (VMP, 1812).
3 JMM had put TSEs name forward to be Clark lecturer. In the lectures, TSE spoke of the
tendency toward dissolution in Donnes poetry, and noted that dissolution so frequently
begins within, and talked of the spectacle of thought in dissolution (VMP, 76, 80, 155).
711
Vivien had a terrible breakdown the climax came long after the time
when you saw her. She is fighting most courageously.
Ever yours aff.
Tom
I should like a line to know how you are, and your family?1

My dear Richard
Thank you very much for your letters. The information about Marini is
most useful.2
We have been going through the same sort of vicissitudes I wont
bother my friends with monotony which have made correspondence
impossible. But I often think hungrily when shall I see you? and alone.
There will be a new quarterly in the new year which will depend very
much on you, if it may instead of the Criterion. It is not secrecy, only
fatigue, which prevents me from giving details in this letter.
Also Confidential
Would you be disposed, next year, and for a reasonable sum, to write a
short critical and expository book (40,000 words) on Rmy de Gourmont?
I may be editing a series of Foreign Men of Letters. You are the only man
who could de Rmy in English.3 Epicurus on Epicurus. You would not
need to do much reading you have it all in your head.
Let me have a line to say how you are, and whether you will ever be in
London in these dog days.
Ever your aff.
T. S. E.
1 On 7 Aug., JMM replied that TSE and VHE were constantly in his thoughts, and that his
daughter Katherine was flourishing now and a great delight.
2 See TSEs letter of 29 July.
3 RA had corresponded with de Gourmont as well as helping him financially; see his Rmy
de Gourmont: A Modern Man of Letters (1928), and his later translations from de
Gourmont: Selections from All His Works (1929) and Letters to the Amazon (1931).

My dear Read
Many thanks for your letter. I wish indeed that I had been present when
you were at Aldingtons.1 I hope that we may have some triangular
conversations this autumn. We might hatch a few eggs. I have several to
bring for joint incubation.
Meanwhile I am still hoping for a meeting with you. The Criterion is to
be succeeded, in the new year, by a new quarterly which I have undertaken,
in which I hope to keep all that is worth preserving. It is an opportunity
for revision, so far as revision is needed, and I shall wish to take your
counsel.
As for the Cahiers, that is still in the air.2
What are you reading and thinking?
Ever yours
T. S. E.

Sunday [2? August 1925] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Mr Rylands
I must apologise for not having answered your letter. I agree with your
alterations and am persuaded by your defenses.3 I like the poem very
much. I cannot see that the quotation is sentimental, and it seems to me to
make the poem more intelligible.
I should like to print it, but if Leonard is to bring it out before
Christmas, I am afraid it is impossible. For there will be no Criterion in the
autumn, so far as I am concerned, or ever again. In January I am to edit a
new quarterly very similar, as I made the one and shall have the making
of the other and I am glad to receive contributions for that. So if the
Woolfs should happen not to publish first, I should like to be able to use
this: otherwise, I hope you will send me your next.4
1 On 30 July, HR said he had spent a weekend with RA, and had much profitable
discussion, but they needed a third point of view.
2 The proposal for a Symposium-style review to run alongside NC.
3 A reply to the suggestions sent with TSEs letter of 18 July for revisions to Rylandss poem
Russet and Taffeta, provisionally accepted for the autumn C.
4 Rylandss Russet and Taffeta appeared from the Hogarth Press in Dec. 1925. Rylands did
publish one further book of poetry, Poems (1931), but none of his verse appeared in C.
713
I dare say you have left Cambridge now, but I hope this will be
forwarded.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
Do you want the MS back?

[8? August 1925] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
Dear Murry
The message you sent me in your letter to Tom has made me feel that I
may write to you, as I have been wishing to do for so long.
Up till now, it has seemed to me impossible that you would care to hear
that I have thought about you constantly for the last month. And that I
have had what has happened incessantly in my mind.
Perhaps we may meet some day, and be able to talk.
I am afraid Toms terrific life takes all my energy, and I can only lie still
and wait for it to end.
With all my thoughts and wishes for you
Vivien Eliot

Tuesday, 11 August [1925] Ty Glyn Aeron, Ciliau Aeron,
Cardiganshire1
Dear Dorothy
Your kind note has just reached me here. I am sorry, I shall not be back
in London till the 17th, and have dinner engagements on the 17th and
18th am free for tea on 18th and at any time on any day after that. So
you can either ask me to tea or dinner, or will you please name a day to
lunch with me? I have a lovely p.c. for you but left it in London not
knowing where you were: six cows killed by lightning under a tree in
Gloucestershire.
Yrs. devotedly
Possum.
1 TSE was visiting the Fabers in Wales.

to H. P. Collins ms Private Collection
Dear Mr Collins
I apologise for not replying at once. I am afraid it is impossible to use
your Romanticism in October, for the reason that there will not be any
Criterion in October.1 There will be a new quarterly in January (not under
the auspices of Lady Rothermere) which I shall edit and which will
welcome and solicit your contributions, so I hope you will have something
for me the Milton at least.2
I am sorry that you have been ill. I look forward to your book,3 and
shall write to propose a meeting as soon as I have a little more leisure.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
to Geoffrey Faber ts Faber

My dear Faber,
Here is a programme of Foreign Men of Letters for you to mull over at
your leisure. The prospectus is not supposed to be in printable form, but
merely to contain suggestions to which you may add or from which you
may detract. After we have arrived at some formula on which we agree,
I propose to shew it to one or two of the men whom I want to write, and
get their opinions.
I may have forgotten somebody very important. You will notice that
I have omitted Tchehov and Dostoevski for the present.
I see that a good deal of correspondence will be necessary, first and last,
with the writers enlisted.
Incidentally, the series might help us to secure the rights of translation
of some of the authors, if and when we want them.
My own inclination is to keep the number of words on the short side.
I have the E. M. of L. Ben Jonson in front of me,4 and it runs to 302
1 Collinss fragment on Romanticism and Language (as he termed it on 2 Aug.) was not
published, but he reviewed Lascelles Abercrombie, Romanticism, in NC 5: 1 (Jan. 1927).
2Collins reviewed Denis Saurat, Milton: Man and Thinker, in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 196202.
3 Collins, Modern Poetry (1925).
4 On 29 May GCF told CW they were contemplating a series of monographs on foreign
writers in the style of the Macmillans English Men of Letters. TSE reviewed G. Gregory
Smiths Ben Jonson in the series, TLS (13 Nov. 1919).
715
pages in small type. I think that is much too long for this purpose. Also, it
seems possible nowadays to sell very small books for absurdly high prices
(vide the Hogarth Pamphlets @ 2/6 and the preposterous Kegan Paul
Future of . . . series at the same price). I suggest about 200 pages of
somewhat larger type than the E.M.L. at 2/6 or 3/6 preferably. But here my
opinion is of no more value than anyone elses.
Lady R. seems to have gone into the Bush, or gone native; I have written
again.
I am seeing Stewart about my poems as soon as he is back.1
Meanwhile I hope that you are free from all cares and that your family
is flourishing.
Ever yours
T. S. E.
FOREIGN MEN OF LETTERS
The design of this series is to introduce the British reader to the most
important movements of thought and literary art on the continent of
Europe. It will include studies of both living and dead authors: the
principle of inclusion being that each volume shall consider an author or
a group of authors representative of some living force or tendency; an
author who has made an important contribution to the thought of
contemporary Europe. While the series is not limited to a definite number
of volumes, it aims nevertheless at a certain unity.
For the moment, authors on whom any considerable work in the English
language has recently appeared will be excluded. The aim of the series,
however, differs both from that of any single biography or critical study,
or from that of any existing series. The studies do not attempt to replace
any works on the authors considered, which already exist in any foreign
language. They are written for English readers, as an introduction to the
work and influence of foreign writers. For this reason the volumes will for
the most part be written by English critics of the younger generation, who
are themselves representative, and who have experienced the influence of
the authors of whom they treat.
A few works will be included by foreign critics of international
reputation and international point of view.
Each volume will contain the necessary minimum of biographical
material, and a critical and expository account of the authors work,
emphasising its international, rather than its local importance.
1 Charles W. Stewart was Publications Manager at Faber & Gwyer Ltd, and Company
Secretary; later a director.

PRELIMINARY LIST OF SUBJECTS AND WRITERS SUGGESTED
Henri Bergson Herbert Read
Rmy de Gourmont Richard Aldington
Henrik Ibsen Edwin Muir
*Maurice Barrs Ernst Curtius1
G. DAnnunzio Aldous Huxley
Loisy and French Modernism Frederic Manning
Marcel Proust Ramn Fernandez
*Friedrich Nietzsche Ernst Bertram
Ernest Renan Frederic Manning
Charles Maurras T. S. Eliot2
Pirandello Orlo Williams (?)
Perez Galdos
(or some other Spaniard) J. B. Trend
French Symbolist Poetry Bonamy Dobre
Hugo von Hofmannsthal Edwin Muir
Paul Valry Mark Wardle
*Julien Benda Constant Bourquin3
Andr Gide B. Cremieux (?)
G. Verga D. H. Lawrence4
*In existence. To be translated and abridged.
Possible: Fustel de Coulanges,5 Knut Hamsun, Gerhardt Hauptmann,
Benedetto Croce.
1 Ernst Robert Curtius, Maurice Barrs und die geistigen Grundlagen des franzsischen
Nationalismus [Maurice Barrs and the intellectual foundations of French Nationalism]
(1921).
2 TSEs proposed study of Maurras, like many of the projected studies, never appeared. He
published The Action Franaise, M. Maurras and Mr Ward in NC 7: 3 (Mar. 1928).
3 Constant Bourquin, Julien Benda, ou le point de vue de Sirius [Julien Benda, or the
viewpoint of Sirius] with an Introduction by Jules de Gaultier (1925).
4 DHLs transl. of the Sicilian novelist Giovanni Vergas Mastro-Don Gesualdo was
published in New York in 1923. He later translated Vergas Cavalleria Rusticana, and Other
Stories (1928), for which he wrote a Preface.
5 Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges (183089): French historian; author of La cit antique
(1864) and Histoire des institutions politiques de lancienne France (6 vols, 187492).
717
[mid August? 1925] [London]
Dear John
Thank you for writing.1 I always like to have a letter from you and the
yellow envelope of the Adelphi is an extraordinarily comfortable sight, yet
altho I dont want you to feel youve got to write to me, or anything, it will
always be a particular joy and help to get a letter from you. I am beginning
to believe now that I have really got a little niche in your thoughts, and
thats what I want. When things are extra bad I shall always write and ask
you to give me as much of your attention as you have time for. Anyhow
you wrote me a perfect letter, and I thank you for it.
Really John I think of you for ever, constantly, and I know, by thinking,
lots of little things about you that it seems to me nobody else knows now.
I think, in certain cases one can know a person much better by seldom
meeting and constantly thinking than by being with them all the time.
I am so furious and worried about this Whibley, and why did O well.
W. is an evil genius if ever there was one.
Vivien
to Geoffrey Faber ts Valerie Eliot

My dear Faber,
I enclose a copy of a letter today received from Lady R. I am no more
certain than you will be whether this is lunacy or cunning. At any rate, if
it is the latter, it seems to indicate that she realises that it is not worth her
while to try to continue on her own.2
I shall be writing to her to say that we agree, if she will sign the enclosed
form of agreement, which I have today (letter by hand) asked my solicitor
to draw up. If she does not change her mind, but returns me the signed
agreement, we shall be in the following position:
1 JMM wrote to TSE on 7 Aug.: I have you both constantly in my thoughts: & sometimes
the strong desire to see you & talk to you. That moment will doubtless come when it ought
to come . . . Give my love to Vivien. Often I think of writing to her: and then I dont because
I feel that what little I have to give is given otherwise & better just now than by letters.
2 Lady Rothermere declared on 14 Aug. that TSE had best take on The Criterion for
another year at any rate & see what happens. However, if F&G could offer her a better
price than RC-S, she might consider giving it up, but meanwhile it would be better to remain
with RC-S.

It will be undesirable to get her to assign the name of The Criterion, for
she appears to be a nominalist and more attached to names than to
realities. If I have the agreement, she cannot compete; I should take the
style and format of The Criterion for the new review, and produce
something quarterly for her under the title of The Criterion, but in a
different shape and of content approximating what I proposed. When my
ideas are clearer on this subject you shall have them. My point at the
moment is that it is better to humour her, and arrange a scheme for
transferring the subscribers etc. later.
The agreement would be simply to appoint myself as editor for another
year with advance quarterly payments covering the cost (I have said 700)
to be made to Faber & Gwyer Ltd. For The Criterion, a [review del.]
periodical of literary and artistic character. Published for the Criterion
Press by Faber & Gwyer Ltd. Out of the 700 some remuneration to
myself and a commission to Faber & Gwyer Ltd.
We can settle details when you return the important thing at the
moment is to get her pinned down.
Did you get a letter from me with outline of Foreign Men of Letters?
You dont need to answer it.
Ever yours,
T. S. E.
PS If The Criterion name continues, is not The Critic too similar a name?
Will you try to think of another? My wife suggests The Metropolitan.1
to Messrs. Broad & Son2 cc

Dear Sirs,
I enclose copy of the original agreement between Lady Rothermere and
myself for the Criterion.
1 It had been VHE who came up with the name The Criterion in 1922. These names are for
the other periodical TSE was to edit, which he referred to earlier as a Symposium or Cahier.
GCF responded (18 Aug.): I think you are right about The Critic. Im not sure that I like
The Metropolitan very much: it has an uncomfortable flavour to my foolish mind a X
between the Underground & the Roman Catholic Church! If anything better comes to me I
will send the result to you. But Mrs Eliot is prolific in ideas: I expect she will think of another.
See further TSEs postcard to GCF, 21 Aug., below.
2 TSEs solicitor, J. Moxon Broad, Broad & Son, 1 Great Winchester Street, London, e.c. 2.
719
Referring to my recent interview with Mr Moxon Broad on this subject,
I have just heard from Lady Rothermere asking me to continue The
Criterion for a year.
I should be obliged if you would kindly provide me with a short letter
or form of agreement, to be signed by Lady Rothermere, appointing me
editor of The Criterion for one more year, and guaranteeing 700 for the
year payable in quarterly instalments in advance of each number, the first
payment to be made one month in advance of the first number. The first
(or next) number to be produced as soon as I can arrange for publication,
but not before October 1925.
The sums to be paid to Messrs. Faber & Gwyer Ltd., to be held in a
special account called Criterion Press Account, and to be operated by
Faber & Gwyer Ltd. for the purpose of the magazine solely.
I am to be entitled to arrange with Faber & Gwyer Ltd. for their
commission and for my salary out of the 700 and any receipts from sales
and advertisements.
Clauses 2 and 3 can stand I think as in the original, except that it seems
worthwhile to add to 2 The accounts are to be audited, if I desire and on
my written request to Messrs. Faber & Gwyer Ltd etc . . . .
I should like it also to be clear that the form and contents of the
magazine are wholly within my control (except that the paper is to be
primarily literary and artistic and not the organ of any political party),
and that disposal of the funds for printing, advertising, payment of
contributors etc. is to be made by Faber & Gwyer with my approval.
I want it to be such that any process for non-payment of funds would
be between Faber & Gwyer Ltd. and Lady Rothermere, not between
myself and Lady Rothermere.
For your own information I will state that I am a Director of Faber &
Gwyer Ltd.
I should be very grateful if you can do so on the basis of this letter
if you could draw up this agreement as quickly as possible, before Lady
Rothermere changes her mind. Brevity is desirable! but at the same time I
wish to be clear on the points mentioned, and wish without its being so
expressly stated, to be free to alter the form and content and size of The
Criterion as I choose, while keeping it to a literary and artistic character.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
[Attachment]

My dear Faber
I should like a line from you, to know whether you have had my letters,
and because I do not wish to move in the Rothermere matter without your
concurrence.
I might not make a penny out of this scheme myself for I might have
to, and indeed wd. prefer to pass the work (and remuneration) over to
someone like Herbert Read and concentrate on the more important things
but I think it would be a better advertisement both for F. & G. Ltd. and
for myself if we produced something for her, as well as our own, for a
year than if the Criterion simply ended in a mess. I hope you will be in
town before the date when she promises to arrive, and we should have a
triangular meeting. If we cannot agree then by that time she will probably
be so sick of it all that she will let it all go!
And if we do something for a year, it may not only be conspicuous, but
will lead to absorption instead of breach.
My F. M. L. plan is a fluid one. I have just discussed it with Whibley
(who said you had told him of it) and with Aldington, who will do Rmy
de Gourmont.
But do let me hear, as I want to reply to Lady R. How are you?
Ever yours
T. S. E.
Yr. letter just arrived after sealing this That is all right.1 I will proceed.
I agree about Sr. D. J. Carrambas biography.2 St Augustine bathed after
the death of his mother; may you bathe again on receipt of this letter.3
Salve.
1 GCF approved (18 Aug.) TSEs prospectus for the series. He thought 50,00060,000
words the right length and suggested each should begin with a succinct biographical
statement. He found TSEs list admirable, but would like to see Hauptmann and Croce in
from the start and suggested it might eventually include the big omissions including
Checkov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, France.
2 With his letter GCF sent a brief outline life of the fictitious Jos Carramba (1878 ),
Spanish novelist and theologian as a model for the sort of thing he had in mind.
3 GCF said that while in Norfolk he wrote letters all morning, and then bathed. TSE recalls
St Augustines account, in The Confessions, of going to the baths after his mothers funeral.
721
Tuesday [August 1925] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
Dear John
Certainly I shall read it, and I should like another copy for review, for it
is impossible for me to take the time to do that adequately myself.1 I should
not dream of giving it to Aldington.2 Orlo Williams asked for it long ago.
I dont know whether he is competent or not. Is there anyone, suitable for
the Criterion, whom you would prefer? If so, name him.3
This will probably be published in January. I am taking on a new
quarterly for Faber & Gwyer Ltd. which will be virtually the Criterion.
I am also continuing the Criterion for Lady R. but the form must be
substantially altered. All this tedious business would be much more easily
explained (if you care to hear) if I could see you.
I often wish I could see you. I have several times re-read your letters.4
Ever yours
Tom
I hope you can find time to answer my previous letter.

[August? 1925] [London]
Dear John
How sweet of you to send your book to Tom and me. It was kind of you.
I shall read it, some day soon, but at present I cant read and dont want to
read. I hope you understand that feeling. I had the most terrific nervous
breakdown after I saw you in Jan. and lay as one dead for eleven weeks.
I really dont know what happened because one minute I was standing up
talking and the next I had gone on a very long and peculiar journey. Poor
Tom. He says you have helped him. I came out of this all the wrong way
up. That was the worst part. It has taken me months and months to get
1 In an undated letter (Aug.), JMM said he had asked Oxford University Press to send TSE
his Keats and Shakespeare, based on his 1924 Clark lectures and published in Aug. He told
TSE he would like it reviewed in C., and could send another copy (I know you cant review
it yourself).
2 JMM requested that it not be given to RA, who wont have an idea what it is about.
3 Orlo Williams reviewed JMMs book in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 1936. While noting that
JMMs prose made some little minds cross, Williams said that no book of his had so
completely proved his qualities of absolute sincerity, deep sensibility, passionate conviction
and profound loyalty to apprehended truth.
4 See their correspondence of 1220 Apr.

myself at all straightened out. I tell you this not because I suppose it will
interest you much, but to explain why at present I hardly dare to read. I
have so much to do to get strong and fit again that I darent take my eye off
the ball. That seems a terrible complication in life to me, i.e. how to keep
ones eye on the ball. It gets off without ones knowing it. I often feel I shall
have to turn into a farm labourer or a mechanic or something like that.
Tom and I speak of you very often. He is not well. He seems to me again
to have involved himself in too much work. It is so hopeless one cant
live, like this.
I hope your baby is flourishing. I hope you will let her be fond of animals
and accustomed to deal with them. There are times when animals are the
only companions one can have. Thanking you again.
I read your article: Mans faith in Man yes.1 But what about the times
when we are not on this earth. Who, or what are we to look to then? Cant
there be a God, yet not a God the Father? The latter idea may have been
created by Christ but there may still all the same be a God whom He could
not conceive?
Yrs.
V. H. E.
to Geoffrey Faber pc Valerie Eliot

[Postmark 21 August 1925]
The Albany is a possible title, but I still think The Metropolitan better
wd. appeal to provincials. One must think of a future amalgamation
The X. and the Criterion how it would sound. On the other hand, I am
not sure that The Critic is not still as good as any.
Yours ever
T. S. E.2
1 JMM, in Christ or Christianity? (Adelphi 2: 4, Sept. 1925, 23341), scorned to believe
in God the Father, a figure who exacts blood-sacrifice but is hailed as a God of Love. Yet
one can believe in Jesus, the figure of infinite love who accepted a shameful and atrocious
death so as to create a loving God who was a man. There will, there must, come the time
when all men will create within themselves the infinite love that he had. Man may, in the
long run must, believe in man.
2 GCF responded (23 Aug.): I dont much care about The Albany which seems to lack
meaning. The Metropolitan is certainly better, & is rather popular here; tho I cannot rid my
own mind of a certain discomfort about it. The Critic is good; but is open to the objection
that it suggests too rigidly critical a paper, excluding original imaginative work, which we are
both anxious to include. Of the three I wld. vote for The Metropolitan, & will agree to this
if a better cannot be found.
723
Dear Mr Rylands,
Here is your MS.1 Perhaps I shall be able to ask for it back later. I am
glad that you are not a fluent poet: fluency is fatal.
Will you let me know when you are next in London and come to see me
and we will discuss the future. In the odd muddle of literary ventures in
which I find myself, it is possible that something will turn up.
If you will tell me what you would like to review, and mention any
books as they come out. I will give you some reviews to do. I think it would
be a good thing if you had later a heavy, i.e. a serious critical essay. The
chief advantage of publication in the Criterion, or any of the humble
ventures with which I am or will be associated, is that the right people see
it, and a good thing attracts offers from elsewhere. And I would help
personally also.
Good verse is only recognised after five years, at least. Good criticism is
noticed at once. The cultivated public prefers critical to creative work.
Come and see me.
Yours sincerely
T. S. Eliot
to Signora G. Celenza2 cc
Dear Madam,
Thank you for your letter of August 10th and for sending me the article
by Signor Liuzzi.3 Before accepting articles on any musical subject I always
submit them to the gentleman who has charge of such matters, Mr J. B.
Trend, and it may, therefore, be some little time before I am able to report
to you about this.4 It is, however, very welcome.
1 Rylandss poem Russet and Taffeta was issued by the Hogarth Press in Dec. 1925.
2 Giulia Celenza taught at the University of Florence; her publications included an Italian
translation of Swinburnes Atalanta in Calydon.
3 An article on Italian opera by Fernando Liuzzi (18841940), Italian composer and
musicologist; author of Estetica della Musica (1924). He did not contribute to C.
4 J. B. Trend adjudged (9 Sept.) that while Liuzzi offered some good things, he assumed
everyone to be familiar with contemporary Italian works, & also Italian operas of the last
twenty years or so, most of which have never been given out of Italy. His view seemed just
too parochial to be of real interest, while it would need very careful & artful translation.

I am sorry to hear that you have had a severe illness and hope that you
will soon be well enough to prepare an article for me to read on one of the
subjects which you suggest.1
Please accept my thanks, also, for your kind remark about my own
verse.
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]

22 August 1925 [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
My dear brother
Thank you a thousand times for the money.2 Some day I will explain to
you how it has saved me for it is wrong for me to take it when you need
it most yourself. Thank you for your letters and affection. I am glad you
are to be married3 but I know this that if you are happy (as I expect)
you will not need me, and if you are unhappy your pride will cut you off
from me. But nothing can destroy the deep and essential affection.4 I want
to know Theresa.
If you could come, I could tell you much more than in letters. It would
be a great happiness too. But I shall try to give you more in my letters.
Ever your devoted brother
Tom
1 On 10 Aug. she proposed articles on (a) recent Italian poetry; (b) the structure of Modern
Prose (English, French & Italian): the psychology of its technique.
2 A gift of $1,500, cabled on 17 July. HWE explained that it was separate from the insurance
and investments discussed in his other letters.
3 On 12 June, HWE said he was very proud, very happy, very frightened, quite in love
with Theresa Garrett. On 9 Aug., he thanked TSE for his kindly letter about the engagement:
but TSEs letter has not been located.
4 HWE wrote on 9 Aug.: I have written to you frequently with a degree of self-revelation
which I have never even approximated with any other person . . . Any other person than
yourself would undoubtedly misunderstand me completely and censure me severely. My faith
persists that you do, in a measure at least, understand me. I have a similar faith that I can
understand anything that you might wish to write me about yourself.
725
to L. Tilden Smith cc
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your letter of the 11th inst and for sending me Mr
Worthams story.1 While I find it very clever and amusing, it does not strike
me as emphatically suitable for the Criterion, and therefore, as I have much
other material on hand, I am returning it herewith. I should, however, be
very glad to see any other work by Mr Wortham, or indeed anything
whatever that strikes you as likely to interest the Criterion audience.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
24 August 1925 23 Adelphi Terrace House
My dear Seldes,
I find that I failed to acknowledge your letter which was dated the 1st
July. As your letter contained a most interesting chronicle, this is all the less
excusable on my part. I can only say that I have been more than usually
occupied by a bewildering variety of affairs. I do not expect to be able to
use this letter until January, for reasons of publication which I can explain
to you more fully later.2 If there is anything in it which you would wish to
bring up to date let me know, but so far as we can see here it needs no
alteration.
I hope that you will be able to finish your long and remunerative work
this winter and come abroad in April as you suggest.
Faithfully yours,
[T. S. E.]
1 Hugh Evelyn Wortham (18841959), music critic of the Morning Post; author of A
Musical Odyssey (1924). The story in question was Mr Jaspar Fells Strange Complex, of
which Tilden Smith, Worthams agent, related (11 Aug.): Messrs. Faber & Gwyer are
publishing Mr Worthams first novel in the autumn. Mr Faber has suggested that I should
send this story to you; but he has not seen it, and he tells me that he makes no attempt to
influence you in any way over individual contributions. Wortham was not to be a contributor
to C.
2 Seldess New York Chronicle was published in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 1707.

Monday, 24 August 1925 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Faber
Without having seen the book, I should support [Osbert] Burdetts
opinion; only, I should stress even more strongly the importance of the
play.1 That will carry it; otherwise, I should be adverse.
Is there any danger of another translation, or are the rights sound and
exclusive? But the only person to eclipse Koteliansky would be Constance
Garnett.
In general, in the case of translations done for succs destime, I should
incline to authors, even if less famous here, whose names were not already
associated with another publishing house.
Lets leave the title till the time comes, waiting for possible inspirations.
Six to one Lady R. will change her mind and drop the Criterion anyway.
I quite understand and agree about not disbursing money on the F.
Writers in 1925. It would hardly be possible to get the first lot ready before
spring in any case. I agree about the price 5/-.
Ever yours
T. S. E.
I have at last heard from Lady Rothermere from an address in Arcachon.
As of course she gives no explanation of her movements and does not say
how long she has been there, how long she is going to stay or where she is
going next, it is impossible to say whether she got your letter or not. But
if she got it she probably forgot all about it in the excitement of travel. I
am writing to her but as I have quite enough to say for her mind to take
in, and because of what I am saying, I think it would be better, if you dont
mind, for you also to write again separately and address it to 33 quai
1 Koteliansky offered a translation of The Wood-Demon: A Comedy in Four Acts, which

was eventually published by Chatto & Windus (1926). GCF pursued (26 Aug.): The
Tchehov play is a one act thing, never intended for publication, & I gather from Burdett not
up to much. Constance Garnetts The Plays of Tchehov had been published by Chatto &
Windus in 2 vols (19223).
727
Voltaire. I should like to see you and tell you all about it when you have
come back to town I dont want to bother you more than is absolutely
necessary on your holiday. Do make the most of it.
Ever yours,
[T. S. E.]
to James Joyce cc
Dear Joyce,
I was glad to have a letter from you after being without news of you for
a long time.1 I hope that I may be able to get to Paris before the end of the
year, but I am not certain and therefore it is good news to hear that you
are likely to be in London in January. I am very sorry to hear about your
past and future operations and I hope that the next one will be the last.2
I have taken note to tell Cobden-Sanderson to send your cheque to Miss
Sylvia Beach for your account.3
I congratulate you on having found a flat. My wife and I send our best
wishes and sympathy to Mrs Joyce and yourself.
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
to Ada Leverson ms Berg

Dear Mrs Leverson,
I am very glad to hear from you. I do indeed hope you will be able to get
ahead with Oscar now and let me have it soon.4 And Vivienne says to tell
you not to go abroad so much but stay in London and write more. I am
looking forward to reading your Oscar soon.
1 The letter does not appear to survive. JJ was on holiday in Arcachon, from where he wrote
to Harriet Shaw Weaver (15 Aug.) with a parody of TWL: But we shall have great times, /
When we return to Clinic, that waste land / O Esculapios! / (Shant we? Shant we? Shant
we?)
2 Joyce was due to have a further operation on his eyes in Paris in Sept.
3 Payment for Fragment of an Unpublished Work, C. 3: 12 (July 1925), 498510.
4 The Last First Night appeared in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 14853.

We really have moved to S.W. but are back here temporarily on account
of servant troubles.1 Vivienne was quite recovered and was getting rapidly
stronger when she came down with shingles, which of course will weaken
her and keep her back.
I am so pleased that you liked the Criterion and her sketch.2 You know
how we both value your opinion.
Vivienne sends her love, and I my kindest regards.3
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot

[late August? 1925] (Temporarily) 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dearest Ottoline
Thank you so much for your charming and affectionate letter. It was the
greatest pleasure to hear from you. Especially as when one is ill for a very
long time one begins to feel that one has no friends left a fearful feeling
of isolation. It is indeed awful that you have been in London for months
and that I have never seen you. It is a dreadful catastrophe, because you
so seldom settle in London for any length of time. Of course I have seen
no one but a lot of miserable doctors. I was much better and we had moved
to the house in Chester Terrace, where I was looking forward to being
your neighbour for a time, when suddenly my parents arrived in England,
(when all the worst was over!) and bore down on me and settled down in
a hotel with nothing on earth to do but to interfere with me and shout
advice in my ears and sit over me and make my life a hell. I very soon got
1 The Eliots did not in fact move into their house in 57 Chester Terrace until 1926.
2 Fte Galante, which VHE published as by Fanny Marlow in C. 3: 12 (July 1925). It was
an account of a late-night literary party in London, featuring the Sibylla who had figured
in Night Club (C. 3: 11, Apr. 1925), as well a society hostess known as The Macaw (OM),
a great art critic, white locks gleaming in the moonlight (Roger Fry), and an American
financier, with a thickly powdered face, who speaks in a muffled, pedantic, and slightly
drunken voice. The latter (who resembles TSE) is said to be the most marvellous poet in the
whole world, which provokes Sibyllas retort: He might be if he ever wrote anything.
3 Leverson wrote in an undated letter to Osbert Sitwell: I have an affection for her [VHE]
& she is amusing tho I wouldnt exactly like to live with her, shes very nice really. It must
be very chilly living on the Bostonian heights with Mr Eliot. I shouldnt like it at all, though
I also like him. Their innocent snobbishness is quite touching, & like something in an
American book (Julie Speedie, Wonderful Sphinx, 2534).
729
shingles then, owing I believe, to the extra dose of misery and as we had
great difficulty with servants there, the only thing was to rush back to
cover in this flat. We had, and do intend to let this flat furnished as it
would be a dead loss to give it up. (We have a fairly long lease, and they
let furnished very well). To continue this boring tale of afflictions I have
been laid up with shingles ever since and am all stuck up with bandages
and ointments and loathsomeness. My father and mother are still sitting
over me and driving me to desperation but they are leaving on Monday.
But you are leaving on Sunday. I might have seen you at the last minute but
I am too involved in parental toils to call a moment my own. Isnt it
horrible? Being helpless I can do nothing. They come every day, or twice
a day. If I live till Monday I shall be surprised.
All the same I feel too degraded and bandaged and in a mess (with my
hair about three inches down my back) even to see you with satisfaction.
One of the worst features of this complaint is that you may not have a
bath. You can scarcely wash, and to move is intolerable.
Yes, Tom is learning at a motor school, although we shall never be able
to afford a car. My one, my only remaining ambition is to have a car and
drive to Garsington to see you!
With ever so much love dearest Ottoline, and the most bitter regrets
(I can hardly say how I have felt it)
Your affectionate old friend
Vivien
I have not lived in a wonderful world for years. I was soon dragged out of
that. I have lived in a world of unpleasant realities. I have . . . . . . nothing
interesting and only law statistics, constitutional history I may yet turn
into a barrister.
Tom felt he needed some very hard food for my mind and I have always
hankered after the [law] he turned me into it it really is, to me,
fascinating.1
to Curtis Brown Ltd cc

Dear Sirs,
I regret that it has been impossible for me to give you an earlier decision
about Mr D. H. Lawrences sketch, which is the subject of your letters of
1 The last two paragraphs are difficult to make out.

the 13th January and the 13th August.1 I now find that for certain reasons
it will be impossible for me [to] decide this question until the latter part of
September at the earliest. It is therefore only fair to yourselves and to Mr
Lawrence to suggest that if you wish to attempt to dispose of it elsewhere
in the meantime, I should return it to you. Please bear in mind, however,
for the future, that I shall always be glad to use as much of Mr Lawrences
work as I possibly can.
I should be glad to know when and where this sketch is to appear in
America, if any arrangements have been made. I should be able to use it
at a later date if not in January. But if it is to appear in America in
December or January, and if I cannot use it myself until April, or later, I
should of course prefer to have then some other contribution by Mr
Lawrence if one was available.2
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF

Thursday, [27 August 1925?] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Faber,
I know nothing of Ludovicis published work3 or of its sale. This is the
sort of book which one feels one could write oneself better than anyone
else! but I must say that the outline seems to me excellent, and predisposes
me very favourably. I should like to see this published. But it ought to be
of a size to be published at a moderate price more useful and more
saleable than a large tome of 15/- or a guinea. Even 12/6 is rather high.4
1 DHL, Saturday.
2 Curtis Brown replied that there was no American publisher for Saturday, but TSE did not
use it. The Woman Who Rode Away, which had been postponed because of the cancellation
of the autumn number, appeared in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 95124.
3 Anthony M. Ludovici (18821971): English political philosopher; author of A Defence of
Aristocracy: A Text-Book for Tories (1915) and The False Assumptions of Democracy
(1921).
4 Ludovicis book was published at the price of 12/6d as A Defence of Conservatism: A
Further Text Book for Tories (F&G, 1927). TSE, who reviewed it (NC 6: 1, July 1927), said
Ludovici had much to say which everyone interested in political theory should study; he
sympathised with so many of his views. Nonetheless, he objected to the isolation of politics
from economics and religion, and particularly disliked his account of the relation of Toryism
to the Church, arguing that Toryism is essentially Anglican rather than Catholic (6971).
731
The idea of a Fabrian Society1 is very good if such a thing were ever
realised we ought to try to secure the publication of its treatises pamphlets
or periodicals.
Tell me what you think of the enclosed essay.2 Do you know the author?
It is dully written but praiseworthy, and I think we might use it in the X.
review at some time.
Ever yours
T. S. E.3
from Lady Rothermere ts Valerie Eliot

28 August 1925
Dear Sir,
I confirm the arrangement we have come to for the continuance of your
editorship of The Criterion for a further period of one year to include the
next four successive quarterly issues of the magazine.
The terms of such arrangement are as follows:-
(1) I will provide the sum of 700 for the year to meet with any receipts
from sales and advertisements the expenses involved in getting up, printing,
issuing and advertising the magazine. You are entitled to any surplus which
the 700 and any such receipts may give in excess of the expenses as
remuneration for your services up to the sum of 100 (one hundred
pounds).
(2) The said sum of 700 will be paid by me by equal quarterly
instalments of 175 to Messrs. Faber & Gwyer Ltd., the first of such
instalments to be paid one calendar month in advance of the next quarterly
number which number is to be produced as soon as you can arrange for
publication but not before October 1925.
1 The Fabrian Society would presumably have offered a conservative alternative to the
Fabian Society, the Socialist society founded in 1884 in which Sidney and Beatrice Webb
played a leading part.
2 Dalway Turnbulls Aristotle on Democracy and Socialism (see TSEs letter of 2 Sept.).
3 GCF replied (29 Aug.): I am glad you like Ludovicis synopsis I thought it good. L. has
a name &, I think, a public; tho I should have thought him a rather unstable mind. (A gt.
Nietzschean at least he used to be.) I am told his Lysistrata: or the Future of Woman has
been very successful. Of Turnbulls essay: It is excellently clear & easy reading, & tho I
am not an Aristotelian student I should say very sound. I think it wd. do well for the X; tho
as you say it is not exciting!

(3) Messrs. Faber & Gwyer Ltd., are to place the quarterly payments to
be made by me to a special account with their bankers to be called
Criterion Press Account to be operated by them for the purposes of the
magazine solely and subject to your direction. All receipts are to be paid
in the same account.
(4) Messrs. Faber & Gwyer Ltd., are to keep separate and detailed
accounts of all matters connected with the publication and sale of the
magazine including all receipts and disbursements, and if I desire I am to
be at liberty to nominate an accountant to audit either annually or semi
annually as I think fit the said accounts all facilities for the audit to be
afforded by Messrs. Faber & Gwyer Ltd.
(5) Except with my express consent all expenses including commissions
and payments to contributors are to be made out of the said sum of 700
provided by me and any such receipts as above mentioned.
(6) During the said period of one year the contents of the magazine are to
be within your entire control (except that the magazine is to be primarily
a literary and artistic magazine and not the organ of any political party)
and you are to have the sole authority to solicit, accept and reject
contributions.
Yours faithfully
Lilian Rothermere
I will instruct Lloyds Bank to make the quarterly payments.

My dear John,
I was very much struck by your leader in the last Adelphi, which Vivien
read first and pointed out to me.1 It seemed to me clearer and sharper and
bolder, and somehow more assured, than anything of yours for some time.
There are some things I agree with some I dont what I want to ask is:
did you also write the note on Life and Death by one Wilmshurst?2 The
1 Christ or Christianity?, Adelphi 3: 4 (Sept. 1925), 23341. JMM asked his readers to
bear in mind two things: The first is: that I am fully conscious of the debt that I owe the
Church . . . The second is: that I now hold that the finer conscience of mankind has now
passed definitely outside the Church (233).
2 W. L. Wilmshurst, On Life and Death and Science, 2904. Although not written by JMM
it built on his Science and the Control of Life (Adelphi 3: 3, Aug. 1925, 15566). Comparing
Buddhism and Christianity, Wilmshurst sought to clarify the meaning of the terms life
and death by way of ten propositions. In the final one, he asserted that the idea of
733
latter I admired very much, and I detected some of your ideas in it; but
some of the conclusions strike me [as] incompatible with those of the
article signed by you. The Wilmshurst is to me more Christian as well as
more Buddhist, in its view of progress and temporal vs. non-temporal
values. It seems to me that one must either ignore the Church, or reform
it from within, or transcend it but never attack it. The Wilmshurst seems
to me to go beyond the creed of any church.
You see I happened to be brought up in the most liberal of Christian
creeds Unitarianism: I may therefore be excused for seeing the dangers
of what you propose, more clearly than I see the vices of what you attack.
If one discards dogma, it should be for a more celestial garment, not for
nakedness.1
I wish I could discuss this with you for hours. I also liked The
Journeyman very much;2 I disliked intensely the Diary of H. T.3
I will write again I like to keep a letter to one subject
Ever yours aff.
Tom

[2? September 1925] at 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Virginia
How are you? We both envy you in the country. It makes us quite ill to
see the evening skies. I cant write much now as I am exceedingly busy.
From January I shall be running two periodicals at once, and there is no
need to tell you how much work that involves.
May I beg pray and entreat that you will help me? What can I have of
yours? Could you possibly let me have a story sketch essay or criticism
creative evolution is a complete fallacy: Real Being is outside evolution, outside time-
space-causation, although involved in them. The true gospel therefore is, and can only be,
liberation of our involved permanent Self from the sphere where alone flux, evolution and the
time-order obtain. My kingdom (real Being) is not of this world and can never evolve from
it (293).
1 Cf. TSEs remark about Blake: if there was nothing to distract him from sincerity, there
were, on the other hand, the dangers to which the naked man is exposed (SW, 155).
2 JMM (writing as The Journeyman), Round and About Sincerity, criticised Horace
Thorogoods Concerning God in the current Hibbert Journal.
3 Helen Thomas, As It Was, the second of three extracts from the narrative of her courtship
and marriage to the poet Edward Thomas, who had been killed at the Battle of Arras in
1917. As It Was was published as a book in 1926.

and send it to me in good time. I feel my new venture will never succeed
unless you are represented in the first number.1 Will you give this matter
your earnest consideration for the rest of the time you are in the country.
Please do not fail me.
Vivien is very much better indeed, although she has just had a bad attack
of shingles which tied us here for most of this month. She is over it now
and I am thankful to say she looks like being much stronger, in the end
than she has been for many years. She sends her love to you and wishes me
to say, what a blessing your ear stoppers have been.2 I can testify that she
has slept better since she had them than for about four years.
With love from
Tom
<Will write soon about certain other matters.>
to H. G. Dalway Turnbull 3 cc
2 September 1925 23 Adelphi Terrace House
Dear Sir,
I have just read your essay on Aristotle4 and apologise for the delay. It
seems to me extremely suitable for my review and in fact I cannot think of
any other periodical for which it would be so suitable. At the moment the
Criterion is about to undergo considerable changes; its character will
probably be altered but I am to bring out in January the first number of
another Quarterly Review for Messrs. Faber & Gwyer, Limited, which will
pursue a similar policy and in which I should like to use your essay. It is
difficult, however, at the moment of starting a new periodical and
reorganising an old one, to state definitely when any one contribution can
be published; and I shall therefore be very grateful if you are willing to
leave the essay in my hands, and I will let you know at the first possible
moment in what number I can publish it.
1 VW replied (3 Sept.) that it would be an honour to be in the first number of Criterion

Junior waiting for the demise of Criterion Senior.
2 VW replied that the ear plugs had changed her life too.
3 H. G. Dalway Turnbull, author of Shakespeare and Ibsen (1926).
4 Aristotle on Democracy and Socialism appeared in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 718.
735
I had been obliged to leave a huge number of manuscripts unread, but
Mr Bain, in a recent letter, referred to your essay and I immediately looked
for it and read it.
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF
to Herbert S. Gorman1 ts Morris

Dear Mr Gorman
I am very glad to hear from you. In fact I have reproached myself several
times in the last few years because I had intended to write to you and
express my appreciation of your review of The Waste Land which gave
me a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction.2 I should very much like to see
you. I am not very well myself and my wife is ill with Shingles, but if it is
possible to get hold of you on short notice I will try to suggest in a few days
a meeting at my office, 23 Adelphi Terrace House, Robert Street, w.c.2,
for a talk and a cup of tea.
I have not seen your book on Joyce3 but I am sure that it would interest
me very much indeed and I wish you would let me know who published
it, and when, so that I may get a copy. As for influence, that is a very
important matter in any case.
With all best wishes
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
1 Herbert Gorman (18931954): US novelist, critic, journalist; later author of James Joyce:
The Definitive Biography (1941).
2 The Waste Land of the Younger Generation, Literary Digest International Book Review 3
(Apr. 1923), 46, 48, 64.
3 James Joyce, His First Forty Years (1925).

to Major Desmond Chapman-Huston1 cc
Dear Sir,
I like your essay on Lord Curzon very much and should like to publish
it. It strikes me as eminently suitable for my review, perhaps more so than
for any other.
I should like to publish it in January and hope to be able to do so but
cannot bind myself to publish it before April. Will you kindly let me know
if you have any reason for wishing to have it published sooner?2
Yours faithfully,
[T. S. E.]

5 September 1925 [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
Dear Lewis
I simply dont understand you at all. If you are dissatisfied please explain
with figures. No malevolence on my part I simply dont understand.3
T. S. E.

5 September 1925 at 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Virginia
This is sad news, to be in bed at Rodmell in such weather as we have
been having. But now the weather has turned to the worse, I hope you are
turning to the better. I fear that this means that you were overdoing during
the Season, before you left town.
But I shall not relax my petitions.
1 Desmond Chapman-Huston (18841952): Irish biographical writer; author (with Owen

Rutter) of Sir John Cowans: The Quartermaster-General of the Great War (1923).
2 Lord Curzon the Man and the Orator appeared in NC 4: 2 (Apr. 1926), 31328.
3 WLs letter does not survive. As early as 15 Mar., TSE spoke to HR of a quarrel with
Lewis. The present crisis seems to be about not being paid for contributions to C. (see TSEs
letter of 24 Sept.).
737
But first I think I detect an overtone of disapproval in your critical
voice. Certainly it sounds irrational, to run two reviews.1 The truth is
simply this: Lady R. (Visc.) hasnt cut up anything but smooth.2 When she
had recovered from the blow of my appointment to run another Quarterly,
she wrote and asked me to take on the Criterion as well for another year.
As I had offered to do anything I could for her, I agreed. It is understood
that it must assume some form in which it will not conflict with the other
(which we will call for the moment the Heavy Review) and should be in
fact a kind of supplement. In fact, it is far less of a task to run two things
in this way as twins, with one proper office and full secretarial assistance,
and a firm to deal with the whole of the business part, than to run Lloyds
Banks Extracts from the Foreign Press in the City in the day and the
Criterion here at night.
I dont know yet quite what form the Light will take. I want the
contribution from Mrs Woolf for the Heavy, and it will be anything she
pleases to give, and she can sell it in America too, if it does not appear in
America before January or preferably February, as my infolio will appear
abt. Jan. 15th. Can she not provide an essay, a story, a sketch, or a chapter
of a novel, at any length she thinks fit, and let me have it by November 1st?3
Truly there is much to discuss, but September wanes already, the nights
are drawing in, and it is impossible for me to get away from London during
this month, even for a night and probably October also. Alas, there is too
much and too many for me to get away at all. So when do you return? I
want to come to see you as soon as you are here, and then we will discuss
(among other things) publishing in all its aspects. I dont want my House
to be a competitor of the H. Press, and I dont think it is at all likely to,
judging from our list unless you go in for Nursing and Indian Education.4
Ever yours
T. S. E.
V. sends love, and is picking up rapidly after her Shingles.
1 On 3 Sept., VW asked TSE why he had two magazines on [his] shoulders?

2 VW asked if he had ever cornered the Countess Is she only a Baroness? & whether she
cut up rough. As TSE indicated, Lady Rothermere was in fact a Viscountess.
3 VW had in mind a story, an article on some thing like Painting & Writing, & another
undecided promised to America.
4 Specialities of F&G, inherited from the Scientific Press. With the Hogarth Press in mind,
VW wrote in her diary on 14 Sept. that TSE had treated them scurvily: On Monday I get
a letter that fawns & flatters, implores me to write for his new 4ly; & proposes to discuss
press matters as soon as we get back; on Thursday we read in the Lit. Supt. that his new firm
is publishing The Waste Land & his other poems a fact which he dared not confess, but
sought to palliate by flattering me (Diary, III, 41). The TLS reported that F&G had

My dear Faber
I hope you have returned after killing innumerable birds. I am looking
forward to seeing you; if you will let me know that you are back. I will
arrange to come in one morning toward the end of the week.1 (I have to
be gassed and have my teeth out one day this week, and I dont yet know
which). I want to discuss with you the various alternatives to lay before
Lady R. when we interview her, etc. I will have a talk with Stewart about
the poems at the same time.2
I have not much to report to you meanwhile.
There is one small matter. An old friend of Oscar Wilde, Mrs Leverson,
has given me some reminiscences of Oscar (The First Night of The
Importance of Being Earnest) which I think quite good and amusing. If
I take these for the Quarterly I can also probably get the option on her
book on O. W. if you want it (I suppose [Osbert] Burdett could give an
authoritative opinion about this). I have promised her 10 for the
reminiscences which I have. But she is a mad and improvident person, and
wants the money at once, before her daughter Mrs Guy Wyndham comes
back on Wednesday and finds that she is overdrawn at the bank (her
daughter is her financial guardian). I would not promise, but I said I would
put it to my principal, and if he was agreeable ask him to send a cheque
for 10 at once to Lloyds Bank, 81 Edgware Road, w.c.2 for a/c Mrs
Ernest Leverson. She is in a panic, and has been sending me express letters
twice a day. So there it is, and I leave it to you.
By the way, you might ask Burdett what he thinks of the Letters of
Lionel Johnson for a book. Would it sell at all? I could probably get them.
The two in the April Criterion are samples out of a lot.3
Ever yours
T. S. E.
When do you move?
announced a new volume of Critical Essays by Osbert Burdett and Collected Poems by
T. S. Eliot, containing The Waste Land, now out of print, together with many pieces no longer
obtainable, and some not previously collected (TLS, 10 Sept. 1925, 581).
1 TSE and GCF talked in person in the morning of 9 Sept.
2 TSE, Poems 19091925 published by F&G on 23 Nov.
3 Some Letters of Lionel Johnson, C. 3: 11 (Apr. 1925), 35674: TSE had acquired these
through Frederic Manning. Johnsons Some Winchester Letters came out in 1919, but it was
not until 1988 that his Selected Letters appeared.
739
toViolet Schiff cc
Wednesday, 8 September [?1925] 9 Clarence Gate Gardens
Dear Violet
Your letter does not bore me. What you tell me is not altogether news
to me, although it gives me a fresh and stronger impression. And I think
that it is tragic (I do not use such words frivolously).
I know perhaps more than you realise about the general case. And I
think (whether you know it or not) that it is precisely this experience
which is the bond between you and Vivien. I say that you may not know
it, because she never speaks, even to someone who could best understand,
about her own case. She is quite aware, as I am aware, that she is not
primarily and primitively a writer this has only come to her (lately) as
a partial compensation for what she wanted. There were several things
which came to her more naturally painting then bad eyesight music
then an operation which crippled, for musical purposes, her right hand:
but deepest and strongest, dancing. She had a genius for dancing it was
not until after she was married too late for success, and with a
constitution already ruined by neglect and misunderstanding that she
was even free enough to take up ballet training. Even then, and knowing
that it was too late to succeed in that profession her dancing gave her
far more satisfaction and fulfillment than her writing has done or ever
can do: until the unwise discouragement of a doctor, and lack of
encouragement from anyone else, put an end to it. When she had that
even what she did have she needed nothing else, and no other
realisation of personality was necessary to her. You have only really
known her since this failed. Lately, and only lately, she has created, by
pure force of character, another occupation: it represents an immense
victory of will.
You are, like her, essentially a professional: you are essentially a singer.
I can understand what it means to you to be able to train someone else
to create someone else, for the material was nil to do something of what
you can no longer do. But you will I hope forgive me, if I say that I do not
believe that this is your real compensation. It is not enough. You will, I
hope and believe, find some other more direct means of expressing yourself
like Vivienne in some other art or profession, rather than in training
someone else in your own (for the people one trains are always
disappointing they are passive, inert, they never bring that intensity and
conviction one has oneself, they live only with the life one infuses into
them, they live on your blood Vivienne knows this too).

You may say that even if you and Vivienne know these things, that I
have no right to discuss them because I have had a straight road, with no
obstacles and no substitutions. It may be so, certainly it looks so, and I
have no grounds for regret. I am not sure however that I have not been
forced into poetry by my weakness in other directions that there is not
something else that I want but at all events, I took this direction very
young, and learned very early to find my life and my realisation in this
curious way, and to be obtuse and indifferent to my reality in other ways.
So it has been much easier for me. The admission of this fact may help you
to admit that I understand in part the tragedy of others. But your letter
seemed to require my explaining to you for Vivienne as she never
explains herself the degree of resignation and the force of will and
character which her present activities represent.
Yours ever aff.
[T. S. E.]

[9? September 1925] [London]
My dear Read
Thanks for your notes. I appreciate the force of your criticisms some
of the objections had already occurred to me. I had also thought of
Cahiers de la Quinzaine such as you suggest.1
Could you now suggest
approx. length of each Cahier
four or six Cahiers p. annum?
A few names of people who might contribute? Who is there in this
country?
I want to get all the suggestions out of you I can now, because I may be
bringing this matter to a head next week.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
I will send you Bourquins book.2 It is not important, if you have read
Belphgor.3
1 The poet Charles Pguy published his Cahiers de la Quinzaine [Fortnightly Notebooks]
from 1900 to 1914. On 31 July, TSE suggested Cahiers to HR as a title for his alternative
review.
2 Constant Bourquin, Julien Benda, ou le point de vue de Sirius (1925).
3 Julien Benda, Belphgor: essai sur lesthtique de la prsente socit franaise (1919).
741
[mid? September 1925] [London]
Thanks for yours. I am ill, harassed, impoverished, and am going to have
five teeth out. I have managed to avoid seeing anyone for a very long time.
I have several enemies. But the little matter you mention shall be attended
to.1 Best wishes.
T. S. E.

My dear Read
I am very glad to have your notes in. It is probable that the Criterion will
be very late or else skip a number, but your notes will be used in any case.2
It is also probable that the reorganisation of the Cr. will be instead of the
additional periodical for which you sent me notes. Your notes shall be
preserved, being most valuable, against the time when we can get someone
to finance the scheme.
The details are not very interesting so I shall save them till we meet,
when we must discuss the future programme of the Criterion.
Also, I have a proposal to make to you for writing a short book on
Bergson and his Critics for a series on Foreign Writers.3 I intend to do one
on Maurras and get Aldington to do Gourmont. Etc. Can I persuade you
to tackle this during the winter? Payment on receipt of ms.4
Yours in haste
T. S. E.
1 On 14 Sept., IPF sent WL a cheque for two guineas in payment for reviews for C. received
from him the previous Apr. (but not published).
2 HR, American Periodicals, NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 21013.
3 GCF wrote to Mrs Gwyer, 9 Oct. 1925: we are now in a good way to coming to a definite
arrangement with Lady Rothermere, under which she will continue her subsidy of 700 a
year to The New Criterion. I have not time to go into all the details of the arrangement;
but I shall be very glad to have the use of this money, since we shall of course have to find a
good deal of cash both for our book developments and for the weekly paper. Eliot himself
has been through a bad time, and has not yet been able to help me very much outside The
Criterion; but he is getting together what will, I believe, prove to be an important and
valuable series of monographs on Foreign Writers, which we shall probably begin to publish
next autumn. One or two other things are also coming to us through him not money-makers
but reputation-makers (Faber Archive).
4 RA, whom HR consulted about this approach by TSE, wrote on 16 Oct.: Yes he
approached me in the publishers line and I believe I am vaguely committed to a Gourmont

to John Gould Fletcher ms Arkansas
Dear Fletcher
I have not written to you heretofore about your poem, because the
Criterion is passing through a certain reorganisation. It was a question
whether, with all the prose already accepted or ordered, I could find room
for so long a poem. Probably the Criterion will not appear again till
January then in a larger form. But this means a still greater congestion
of accepted stuff. Anyway may I hold it? If not room for whole, could
the Mississippi section appear alone?1 I like it very much indeed.
Also, would you be interested in doing a book in a series in view, of
which I am to be the general editor a series on foreign writers. They will
be short critical books (not much biographical matter) for English readers.
Aldington will do Rmy de Gourmont, I shall do Charles Maurras we
thought you might do a Rimbaud. There is nothing in English that I know
of but an atrocious book by Rickword.2 Let me know if this interests you.
Payment on receipt of ms.
Yours sincerely
T. S. Eliot
and a translation. But I never start a commission book until the contract is signed, so he
wont get anything from me till he sends it . . . I suspect him, Herbert, most vehemently. There
isnt an honest man in the whole goddam American race. Il se fiche de nous. We are his
claque, his suite, his ladder, his footprints in the sands of Time, his stepping-stones to higher
things . . . Eh lad, goo yer own weay, an fook im . . . (Richard Aldingtons Letters to
Herbert Read, 201). RA had earlier grumbled to HR (17 Aug.): Make up your mind to this
T. S. E. sees nothing in any of us, we are a mere chorus of Theban old men useful as
celebrators and disciples; and he would return to this resentful theme on 2 Oct.: You know
Ive backed him very warmly, in public and in private; and shall continue to do so. But I have
lost faith in him and I feel suspicious I mean that I do most vehemently suspect him of
condescension to us all and of making us his cats paws (ibid., 89). But see TSEs fuller
proposal to RA, 26 Nov., below.
1 The River Flows, NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 467. As a native of St Louis, TSE may have
relished Fletchers account of the Mississippi: At St Louis we waited all morning with the roar
of the trucks cutting across the cobbles, / The river swirling through the great arches of the
bridge above us, / The mules flicking their ears aganst the flies. Fletcher acknowledged to TSE
(7 May) that it was influenced by TWL (a poem no contemporary can afford to neglect).
TSE returned to his own memories of the river in The Dry Salvages, which he once said
begins where I began, with the Mississippi (The Influence of Landscape upon the Poet,
Daedalus 89: 2, Spring 1960, 422).
2 Edgell Rickword, Rimbaud: The Boy and the Poet (1924).
743
My dear Richard
Good.1 It shall all be commission work, with the Gourmont to begin
with. Should like to have the anthology also wd. urge it strongly on my
people Can it be done so that the Introduction and the Book dont
overlap?2
About your series for Vogue answer this at once they have asked me
to do an essay on contemporary American poetry, but I wont if it will
conflict in any way.3 Can you give me a better idea of what you are doing,
with any suggestions for what I can do? Or I will offer some other topic.
Glad to hear all is well with you both.
Ever aff.
T. S. E.
to Antonio Marichalar
ms Real Academia de la Historia
Mon cher ami
Vous tes bien aimable de me prvenir je serai ravi de vous voir.
Malheureusement, je suis cas demain dans un nursing home, sous les
soins de mon mdecin et mon dentiste, pour une opration assez grave. Si
je suis assez rtabli je vous enverrai une dpche le vendredi matin, en
esprant vous voir dans laprs-midi. Mais je vous prie de rester Londres
jusquau dimanche, afin que nous puissions nous faire la connaissance.
Bien cordialement votre
T. S. Eliot
<Jaurai beaucoup vous dire.>4
1 On 1 Sept., RA said he would be grateful for any remunerative work.

2 In addition to taking on the study of Rmy de Gourmont commissioned by TSE on 31 July,
RA wanted to do an anthology; he later published Selections from all his Works (1929).
3 RA published Modern Free Verse The First of a Series of Articles Dealing with the
Free Verse Movement in England and America, its History and its Results in Vogue 66: 6
(Late Sept. 1925), 57, 90: The only English poet . . . with much interest in Paris is the
American T. S. Eliot. The second appeared in Vogue 66: 11 (Early Dec. 1925) and included
photographs of TSE, EP, Flint, JJ, H. D. and T. E. Hulme. TSE did not publish anything in
Vogue in 19256.
4 Translation: My dear friend, It is very kind of you to let me know in advance I shall be
delighted to see you. Unfortunately, tomorrow I shall be shut up in a nursing-home, and in

to Richard Cobden-Sanderson ms Texas
Received 21 September 19251 [London]
My dear Cobden
I am convinced that by this time I am either
1. Insane, and in concealment
2. Perpetually drunk and in concealment
3. Avoiding the Police and in concealment
It is however a fact which can be proved by application to the matron of
the nursing home at 3 Mandeville Place, that I have had a damnable
operation on my jaw. No-one warned me how serious it would be. I
thought I should be well as ever the next day went blithely and found two
dentists, a doctor, an anaesthetist and a swarm of Scotch nurses and male
coolies waiting for me they chiselled and chipped and scraped at my jaw
for an hour and I came out of the ether in the middle of the afternoon,
cursing God. Now I am ordered to keep quiet for several days with an
occasional hypodermic in my arse, as a treat.
However, I will come to see you by Thurs or Friday and meanwhile send
my apologies and this list, which I cannot alter much. I have ticked those
who ought to be paid first. Meanwhile I can write to you, at least. You
will certainly be glad to see the last of me. What a blessing for you (and
for many others) if I had never come out of the ether at all! I dont think
anyones patience has ever been tried more than yours.
Yours ever
T. S. E.
the care of my doctor and my dentist for a fairly serious operation. If I have recovered
sufficiently, I shall send you a telegram on Friday morning, with the hope of seeing you in the
afternoon. But please stay in London until Sunday, so that we can get to know each other.
Most cordially yours, T. S. Eliot
I shall have lots to tell you.
1 Noted by RC-S.
745
My dear Faber
Many thanks.1 The operation was in fact more than expected they
were sawing away at my jawbone (under ether) for over an hour, and the
doctor has kept me in bed ever since. I did not stay in the nursing home, I
am back here.
I expect to be out tomorrow but it is unfortunate for me that the board
meeting is fixed for Wednesday. My wifes doctor has just returned from
his holiday and has fixed Wed., 3.15 for the first appointment, and Im
afraid I really must go with her. What I propose to do is to come to see you
in the morning (Wed.) but if you prefer will come the following morning
(Thurs.). Ill discuss the Cocteau business with you then.2 I will write to
Manning about the [Lionel] Johnson letters.
I return the draft agreement. I have been through it three times and fail
to pick any holes in it it seems to me excellent.
Are you settled yet?
I will see you on Wednesday unless I hear to the contrary.
Ever yours
T. S. E.
I am awfully sorry about Wednesday. Let me know if there is anything
very important?
I have arranged three volumes of F. writers so far, besides my own.3
I will see Stewart when I come.

Undated [late September 1925] [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
Dearest Ottoline
Thank you so much for your letter, and for the previous letter which I
liked very much indeed. I should have answered, but was upset and ill over
1 GCF wrote (17 Sept.): When I wrote to you yesterday about Lady Rothermere, sending
you my draft proposals for the contract, I had quite forgotten, under the stress of my own
affairs, that you must be feeling very sorry for yourself after your encounter with the dentist;
it is, as I know well, a miserable condition for the first few days. I hope you will soon get over
that and I dont doubt that you will benefit immensely in the long run.
2 Rollo Myerss translations of Cocteaus prose appeared as A Call to Order (1926).
3 The Foreign Men of Letters series outlined on 14 Aug.

Toms operation. Thank you for your sympathy. He had some terrible
trouble, of very long standing, under some dead stumps. Abcesis or
osseoposis (or whatever it is called!) anyhow it was quite a big dental
operation and they had to take a bit of the bone away too.
I have felt frightfully ill ever since so shaken. Incredibly violent
neuralgia. Tom is full of poisoning from his teeth and is now feeling very
ill indeed and is having deep injections every day from our doctor. Let me
write again in a few days. I am not very well today. I want to thank you
and tell you how much I value your friendship.
Very affectly.
Vivien
Vivien Eliot to Ada Leverson ms Berg

Undated [late September 1925] [9 Clarence Gate Gdns]
My dear Ada
Thank you so much for your kind letter, and your other very kind letters
which I am afraid I did not answer at the time. You are very sympathetic.
My husbands operation on the jaw was very bad, and it has made him
feel very ill ever since. He has to have deep injections from his doctor every
day, and you know what a horrid thing that is, it is so painful. I am not
very happy at the moment, there are many worries, but soon we shall be
going to Cambridge where my husband has a lecturing post and I am
looking forward to it.
How exciting about your play! Of course it will be an immense success.
Lucky for you to be going to Rapallo everyone we know is at Rapallo at
the moment.
Yes we hope Sachie will be happy with his bride.1 I thought the Huxleys
would be still in Paris as they were there so recently. I think Osbert will feel
lonely, if they are going to have such a long honeymoon.
With love, and best wishes and yes certainly its allright about the
German rights
Love from
Vivien
1 Sacheverell Sitwell married Georgia Doble in Paris on 12 Oct. 1925.
747
to Thomas MacGreevy ms TCD
Dear Mr MacGreevy
I must apologise for not answering your postcard. I have been in a
nursing home for an operation.
The Criterion is being reorganised and will appear from another firm.
Therefore it will probably not be published in October. How soon the first
of the new series will appear I cannot yet tell. You may be sure I shall try
to get your poem into the first issue.1
Meanwhile I shall be interested to see more of your work whenever you
care to let me see it.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot

Dear Read
Many thanks for your letter. I will expose the situation to Faber at once,
and I have no doubt he will be ready to sign a contract at once.2 I will
write to you in Yorkshire. You could then truthfully and without risk say
that this volume has already been promised. I dont like to cut across the
Woolfs in any way, but it means a tremendous lot to me to have your name
in any way associated with mine.3
The Bergson book wd. be very short, and it wd. be 50 down. I do
intend the series to have a purpose, though it will be necessary to include
a few names without the purpose. I will explain fully when I write again.
Ever yr
T. S. E.
1 MacGreevys Dysert was published, as by L. St. Senan, in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 94.

2 TSE offered to publish a book of HRs essays in June.
3 HR published Mutations of the Phoenix with Hogarth Press in 1923; and In Retreat was
due from Hogarth Press in Oct. 1925. HR had also promised the Woolfs his next book. In
her diary for 30 Sept., VW said they were on Toms track, riddling him and reviling him:
He wont let Read off that book, has been after him for three or four months (Diary, III, 45).

[22? September 1925] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
Dear F
Enclosed for your consideration before I see you. I think it is well
worthwhile to make him an offer.1 He is to do Bergson for FML and I
have already spoken of him to you.
Yrs in haste
T. S. E.
to Bonamy Dobre ms Brotherton

My dear Dobre
I send this at random, hoping that it will reach you somewhere perhaps
you are in London! I am delighted to hear that you will be lecturing and
working with Nicoll.2 That is very good news.
I am in six minds about your brilliant dialogue.3 I will explain when I
know whether I am in communication with you. And I wonder whether it
would interest you to do a small book a critical essay for cash for a
series of Foreign Writers which I am to edit? say on Pirandello? or whom?
It is restricted only to writers of living influence on the Continent, whether
alive or dead. e.g. I am doing Maurras and we shall probably include Ibsen,
Renan but the dead ones must be people who have not yet been
adequately treated in English.
In any case, let me know that you get this letter.
Havent bought a car yet. No money. Many thanks for tips, though.
Come to the Show on Oct. 9th!
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
1 The enclosed must be a synopsis or MS of HRs book, published by F&G as Reason and
Romanticism (1926).
2 In 19256, BD was a lecturer at East London College (London University), where
Allardyce Nicoll (18941976), author of Restoration Drama (1923), was Professor, 192433.
3 Sir John Denham, a conversation between Bishop Henry King and Edmund Waller,
NC 4: 3 (June 1926), 45464.
749
[late? September 1925] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
My dear Read
My people are very anxious to arrange with you and ready to give a
contract.1 Will you let me know what sort of terms you want, and how
much you ask as cash advance on delivery of MS. and I can probably get
it settled at once.
Yours in haste
T. S. E.

Dear Lewis
I enclose a statement from Cobden Sanderson of moneys paid you.2 The
extra 3.14. can very well go in as additional payment for the reviews of
January 25, which were long and very good. I will ask C.-S. to return you
the cheque for two guineas which I sent on to him with your letter. This
makes us square. Hereafter I have nothing to do with the financial end.
Yours
T. S. Eliot
to H. P. Collins ms Private Collection

Dear Mr Collins,
I am very sorry about the delay which the contributors are enduring. It
is due to the reorganisation of the Criterion and the absence abroad of one
of the principals. I hope you can be paid soon. The Criterion is not to be
discontinued, but there will probably be an interval before the appearance
of the next no. with your admirable review of Saurat.3
1 See letter to HR, 22 Sept.

2 The statement of Contributions by Wyndham Lewis to The Criterion itemised all of WLs
contributions, from Mr Zagreus and the Split-Man (Feb. 1924) to Art Chronicle (Oct.
1924), and including three reviews for Jan. 1925 the last two being marked as unpaid.
3 Collins, rev. of Denis Saurat, Man and Thinker, NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 196202.
750 tse at thirty-seven

I am very sorry indeed to hear of your illness. I hope it is not merely a
rest, and not a source of any kind of worry to you?1 We must meet in a
month or two. I have just had an operation in a nursing home myself.
All best wishes
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot
to Viola Tree cc
Dear Miss Tree
Thank you for your letter. I had been meaning to write to you to warn
you to hold up your Dramatic criticism for the next Criterion until you
hear from me again. The reason is that the paper is being reorganised on
a somewhat larger scale, and owing to the machinery of reorganisation we
shall have either to postpone the October number or miss it out altogether.
In any case I will let you know in good time.
As the new Criterion will be somewhat heavier and less frivolous than
the old, I think that we shall have to omit the Mayfair and Bohemia gossip
from its programme,2 but on the other hand I should be very glad if you
could continue to do the same, or rather longer, Dramatic notes on the
same terms as before.3 I assure you I consider that we are very fortunate
to have you in charge of the Dramatic reviewing.4
If you are going abroad before Christmas, I hope that you will let me
know, and that you will be able to let me have something before you leave.
I look forward to seeing you again; as a matter of fact I have just come out
of a nursing home where I had an operation on my jaw, so that I do not
expect to be fit for much for some little time.
Yours sincerely
[T. S. E.]
1 Collins explained (29 Sept.) that he had been suffering from perpetual dyspepsia arising
from a kind of nervous breakdown.
2 Tree had contributed Mayfair and Bohemia to C. 3: 10 (Jan. 1925), 2823.
3 As Violet Ray, she was to write The Theatre, NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 1619: a discussion
of contemporary plays by John Galsworthy and Fred Lonsdale as well as The White Devil
(a play of iridescent beauty like the multi-coloured water on the blackness of a morass), Dr
Faustus, and The Wild Duck.
4 Tree responded (25th): I shall have time to send you a slight notice on Hamlet as Violet
Ray early tomorrow morning if you care to add it to the Theatrical News from New York
(under Violet Ray of course).
751
to Orlo Williams cc
Dear Williams,
I must apologise for the series of vicissitudes which prevented me first
from reading your essay and second from writing to you culminating in
a minor operation since which I have only just left a nursing home. But I
have read your essay and I want to keep it. On the other hand, I do not
know just when I can use it. Owing to reorganisation under a new
publisher, it is probable that we shall omit the October number, which is
inconvenient in that it means a plethora of stuff of all sorts accepted for
early publication. And I have your story which I want to work in as soon
as I can, and it is rather a long one too.1 So if you want to publish Tom
Jones quickly, and have an opportunity of doing so elsewhere, I do not
want to stand in your way, though I should surrender it with great regret.2
I shall keep it, therefore, for ultimate publication unless you now, or at
any time, command me to return it. Incidentally, it makes me ashamed of
being unacquainted with any other of Fieldings novels besides Tom Jones.
The whole volume ought to be a very interesting one. Is it already
arranged for, or is there any possibility of my obtaining it for the new
publishing firm with which I shall be associated Messrs. Faber & Gwyer
Limited? I should be very proud if I might lay it before them.
Yes, I hope we can meet before long and I will drop you a line when
conditions are possible for me. Meanwhile, I should be delighted to hear
from Carlo Linati.3
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
1 See Orlo Williamss story Capitaine Ensorceleur, NC 4: 4 (Oct. 1926), 65972.

2 Williams had indicated on 4 May 1925: My attitude to T. J. is one of calculated
admiration tempered by a personal inability to find it really entertaining. He included a
study of Henry Fieldings Tom Jones in Some Great English Novels: Studies in the Art of
Fiction (1926), but his essay did not appear in C.
3 Carlo Linati (18781949): Italian author and literary critic; translator of JJ, DHL, WBY
and others. JJ sent him a famous plan of Ulysses which became known as The Linati
Schema.

to Thomas MacGreevy ts TCD
Dear Mr MacGreevy,
Thank you very much for your kind letter and for sending me the new
poems which I shall write to you about later on.1 I hope you may soon
have a book ready.
I will do what I can to turn anything your way that may appear, but I
cannot hold out very much hope at present in connection with the
Criterion.2 It will continue to be run for the present in a pretty modest
way although on more businesslike lines than heretofore, and the chief
difference for the present will be that I shall myself get just enough salary
to be able to give a good deal of time to it. I ran it for three years without
any salary and did practically all the work at home in the evenings. That
is too much for anybody. I also have been a clerk and a schoolmaster in my
time and I should not like to see you forced into either of those
professions.3 Of the two I think it is better to be a clerk.
As soon as I begin to get about and keep office hours, I shall ask you to
come and see me. Meanwhile, write whenever you care to. I hope you have
had your cheque by now.
Yours sincerely
T. S. Eliot
1 On 24 Sept., MacGreevy sent what he deprecated as rather frivolous poems, which he

hoped might divert a convalescent. They included Evening Recalled, which he described
as all that came of trying to write an essay on TSE.
2 As L. St. Senan MacGreevy reviewed George Moores Hloise and Abelard, in NC 4: 2
(Apr. 1926), 36871; and in subsequent issues he contributed articles on The Ballet.
3 MacGreevy asked, is it beastly of me to ask whether there is any possibility of my being
fitted in anywhere in the reorganisation [of the Criterion]? I must try to get regular work . . .
And I dont want to clerk or schoolmaster if I can help it. He had had a ridiculous job at
Lucerne in the summer, taking lower middle class English Nonconformists up the Alps.
When the Yeatses had dined with him there one day, Mrs Yeats asked Dare I eat a peach?
and declared him a poor Eliotite when he had to guess at the source of her quotation.
753
to John Hayward1 ts Kings
My dear Sir,
I am much pleased and flattered by your kind invitation on behalf of
your committee to read a paper to the Heretics.2 I should very much like
to allow myself this privilege. But at present I cannot see my way to
accepting definitely for either this term, next term or the summer term. As
to the first, I am just recovering from an illness and have an enormous
amount of writing and organising work ahead of me; as for the second, it
will be all that I can do to deliver my Clark lectures and attend to my other
business as well; as for the third, I should be delighted to speak then if I
were in England, but it is possible that I may take at that time a much
needed holiday abroad.
Knowing the reputation of your Society for merciless criticism of your
speakers weaknesses, I should want to be pretty carefully prepared; so
that, esteeming it a great compliment to be invited, I am in effect paying
you a compliment by declining that is to say I dare not accept any
engagement so important for another year.
With many thanks,
I am
Yours faithfully,
T. S. Eliot
1 John Hayward (190565), editor, critic and anthologist, studied modern languages at
Kings College, Cambridge. Despite the early onset of muscular dystrophy, he became a
prolific and eminent writer and editor, bringing out editions of the works of Rochester, Saint-
vremond, Jonathan Swift, Robert Herrick and Samuel Johnson. Other publications included
Complete Poems and Selected Prose of John Donne (1929), Donne (1950), T. S. Eliot:
Selected Prose (1953), The Penguin Book of English Verse (1958), and The Oxford Book of
Nineteenth Century English Verse (1964). Celebrated in addition as the learned and acerbic
editor of The Book Collector, he was made a chevalier of the Lgion dhonneur in 1952, and
a CBE in 1953. He became one of TSEs closest friends, and shared a flat with him, 194657.
Writers including Graham Greene and Stevie Smith valued his keen editorial counsel; and
Paul Valry invited him to translate his comedy Mon Faust. Hayward advised TSE on various
essays, poems, and plays including The Cocktail Party and The Confidential Clerk, and
(especially) Four Quartets. See Helen Gardner, The Composition of Four Quartets (1978).
2 The Cambridge Heretics Society, founded by C. K. Ogden and others in 1908, boasted a
distinguished list of visiting speakers, including VW whose talk Character in Fiction was
published in C. 2: 8 (July 1924).

to Bonamy Dobre cc
My dear Dobre,
I am very glad that my letter reached you;1 I felt almost certain that you
must be in England, but it was quicker to write to your old address than
to make enquiries.
I dont remember whether I congratulated you in my last letter on your
new appointment if not, it would be because I had not yet heard of it.2
In any case let me say that I am delighted to think that we may have you
fixed in London for a part of every year.
Ibsen is certainly a possibility and I want to talk to you about that as
soon as I can, though I should have liked you to do Pirandello in any case.
I cant make any engagements at present I am just recovering from an
operation but I will write to you as soon as I can.
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF
to Walter H. Shaw cc
Dear Mr Shaw,
Thank you very much for the interesting article.3 I shall be delighted to
use it if I can. I say If I can because it is probable that owing to
reorganisation under different publishers the Criterion will not reappear
until January. It is a little difficult to know so far in advance what, and
how much, I can accept, particularly in the way of more or less topical
notes. But I should like to keep your article and use it if I can. As you are
going to America it is impossible to consider bringing it up to date in any
way for January, but I think the matter may retain its interest.
1 On 29 Sept., BD said he might do Pirandello for the Foreign Men of Letters series, but
would prefer Ibsen if he was not already preoccupied.
2 BD had been appointed lecturer in English at East London College (London University).
3 Shaws Cinema and Ballet in Paris, NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 17884, covered Marcel
lHerbiers LInhumain, Picabias Entracte, Saties Relche, and Cocteaus Le Train Bleu,
among other films and ballets.
755
Please let me know at what address or addresses I can reach you for the
rest of the year.
Yours sincerely
[T. S. E.]
to W. A. Thorpe cc
Dear Mr Thorpe,
It would give me great pleasure to have your criticism of the Tess,1 but
there are two reasons why it is difficult for me to accept. One is that owing
to reorganisation the Criterion will probably not appear again until
January, and it is difficult to plan for Dramatic criticism so far ahead. The
other is that we have a standing agreement with a lady who prefers to write
under a pseudonym2 to provide Dramatic notes in every number, and I feel
that it would be hardly fair to her to use Dramatic criticisms by anyone
else, however interesting and valuable they were and however different the
point of view.
I am very sorry about this because I want to interest you in the Criterion
as much as possible. I hope that you will not only continue to review, but
that you will also submit independent contributions. Will you let me know
the moment you have any other ideas in mind for writing?
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Kate Buss ts The Rev. Karl Schroeder, sj

Dear Miss Buss,
I shall be very glad to inscribe your copy of my book on Ezra Pound.3
If you will send it I will do this at once.
1 A stage adaptation by Thomas Hardy of Tess of the DUrbervilles which had been playing
at the Barnes Theatre since early Sept.
2 Viola Tree, alias Violet Ray.
3 Ezra Pound, His Metric and Poetry (Alfred Knopf, 1917): it had been published
anonymously in Jan. 1918, and its authorship made public in Knopfs The Borzoi 1920 (New
York, 1920).

Should I ever reprint this book I should of course put my name to it.1 It
did not seem advisable at the time for the reason that when I wrote it my
name would have carried no weight whatever and would have probably
have done the book more harm than good. That is to say it might have
been suspected to be a bit of log rolling or back scratching or whatever one
chooses to call it, instead of an independent piece of criticism. What I want
to do is eventually to re-write it and bring it up to date and make it more
of a critical study: because I have never yet adequately expressed my
admiration of Pound as a poet and my debt to him as a tutor and critic.2
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot
TSE/IPF

Thursday, 8 October [1925] [London]
Dear Leonard
I am very sorry indeed to hear that Virginia is in bed.3 Please give her all
my sympathy.
I am also sorry if my postcard was misconstrued. I did not for a moment
suppose that Virginia had been able to do any work this summer. Therefore
there was no suggestion: I was merely paying a clumsy compliment on a
brilliant piece of writing.4 No one living can write like that.
I should like to see you soon, but wont bother you in your present
circumstances.
V. is much better.
Ever yours
T. S. E.
1 TSE never reprinted the book, but the text was included in To Criticize the Critic and
Other Writings (1965). TSE later wrote: Ezra was then known only to a few and I was so
completely unknown that it seemed more decent that the pamphlet should appear
anonymously (The Cantos of Ezra Pound: Some Testimonies, 1933).
2 Though TSE never revised Ezra Pound, His Metric and Poetry, he wrote an Intro. to EP,
Selected Poems (F&G, 1928), and publicly declared his debt to EP in the dedication of TWL
first inserted in P 19091925 (1925): For Ezra Pound, il miglior fabbro.
3 VWs doctor was sent for on 5 Oct., and she was confined to bed for Oct. and much of
Nov.
4 Unidentified: the postcard appears to be missing. TSE may have complimented VW on her
lead essay on Swifts Journal to Stella, published anonymously in the TLS (24 Sept. 1925).
757
to John Gould Fletcher ms Arkansas
Dear Fletcher
I did not answer your letter because I thought you had left. I am very
pleased indeed. The letter arrived punctually.
The book should be 30,000 to 40,000 words.1 My people (Faber &
Gwyer Ltd) want to purchase outright, in order to keep the series intact
the books ought to go on selling for many years. The terms (to all) are:
50 in two instalments
25 on recpt. of MS.
25 on publication -
and 10% royalty on all sales after the first 3,000.
In haste
T. S. E.
The others so far are Aldington, Read, Dobre, Muir and myself.2
to Ezra Pound ms Beinecke

Cher E.
Re enclosed,3 esp. II III and IV can you tell me by return
(1) Is it too bad to print?
(2) If not, can anything be done to it? Can it be cleaned up in any way?
I feel I want something of about this length (IV) to end the volume as
post-Waste,4 but if you think it is
[incomplete]
1 TSE had asked whether Fletcher was interested in writing on Rimbaud for the proposed
Foreign Men of Letters series.
2 RA was booked to write on Rmy de Gourmont; HR on Bergson; BD on French Symbolist
Poets, Edwin Muir on Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and TSE on Maurras.
3 Evidently The Hollow Men IV, due to appear in full in P 19091925.
4 The Hollow Men was the only work in P 19091925 to postdate TWL.

to Marguerite Caetani ms Caetani
Dear Cousin
Very many thanks. I must tell you that I showed the Bioplastina circular
to my doctor he is an Italian and a very fine doctor and he told me that
he has a very high opinion of it and was actually the first doctor to
introduce it in England and he is giving my wife injections of it!1 He is
giving me injections a little different, with iron.
I am afraid Virginia Woolf is very ill I have not seen her, but her
husband tells me she is in bed and must not work. When she is better I
will try again. Meanwhile I will think of others.2
Yes, I will look in on Quaritch3 and nose about. Exactly what is he
supposed to do? Perhaps I could get my own firm to take it on they are
very active new people if I knew what was wanted and they could also
arrange advertisements here etc. I think I could help in Oxford and
Cambridge. You know I am going to lecture next term at Cambridge and
my principal, Geoffrey Faber, is a Fellow of All Souls College.
T. S. Eliot

[Postmark 17 October 1925] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
I applaud with cheers your criticism of Keyserling. The true gospel. It shall
lead off in January.4 I will give you more news next week.
Yrs
T. S. E.
1 Bioplastina Serono. Serono was an Italian pharmaceutical company founded in Rome in

1906 by Cesare Serono, a doctor in chemistry and medicine, who extracted lecithin from egg
yolks to create a tonic called bioplastina. It was used to treat anaemia and other conditions.
2 A ref. to possible contributors to Commerce, the Paris-based review financed by Caetani,
192432.
3 Bernard Quaritch, London booksellers.
4 HRs review of Count Hermann Keyserling, The Travel Diary of a Philosopher was the
lead review in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 18993. HR argued: To deny the objective reality of the
content of knowledge can only lead to this now too familiar cult of the self to this gospel of
inwardness, to this denial of science, to the ideal of personal perfection as opposed to that
of professional efficiency. Although Keyserling does not mention Rousseau, HR identified
this as the same solitary voice that once broke the silence of the groves of Ermenonville!
(192).
759
<There are one or two good men on The Calendar1 only we ought to
absorb them. But I think W. Lewis is indulging himself in style. Difficult
and lazy.>2

Dear Mr Rylands
I had been speculating for a long time about you, as you never answered
the letter (enclosing MSS) which I sent in your envelope to an address near
Bristol.3 Will you set my mind at rest about this?
I shall be a little more at leisure next week, although I am still very much
handicapped by my and my wifes ill health. I should like to drop you a line
early next week, suggesting that you should call here or that you should
have tea with me somewhere meals are still rather difficult. I shall be
very glad to meet you at last.
Sincerely yours
T. S. Eliot

Tuesday morning [20? Oct. 1925] 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Faber
This is to say that my solicitor has found a good deal of trouble. He
considers that the triple agreement assumes me to be a proprietor not
a servant, etc: and in short he proposes to draft two agreements: F&G
and Lady R., and F&G and myself (based on the one which I hold from
you). He then wants to discuss these with me, and afterwards take it up
with your people. This is all very tiresome.4
1 The Calendar of Modern Letters, a literary review ed. Edgell Rickword and Douglas
Garman, ran from Mar. 1925 to July 1927.
2 WLs essay The Foxes Case appeared in Calendar of Modern Letters 2: 8 (Oct. 1925):
divided into seven sections, it was later reprinted (with revisions) in The Art of Being Ruled
(1926) and The Lion and the Fox (1927).
3 TSE was returning the MS of Russet and Taffeta, published by the Hogarth Press in Dec.
4 GCF responded (21 Oct.): I do think that it would be a great pity to insist on replacing
the triple agreement by two other agreements, and I gather from his letter to you that he has
now abandoned this idea.

I was very glad to see you yesterday.
Yrs ever
T. S. E.

Tuesday evening [20 October 1925] [London]
Dear Faber
Yes, I should like [you] to see Lady R. (Tinkerbell)1 on Thursday and
have so appointed with her. She is a fool and needs the impact of your
impressive presence.2 I think you can manage her allright, but she actually
suggested that F&G ought to pay her something for the goodwill.
I pointed out that if there was any question of goodwill for a review
which I had built, I myself should come down on somebody for 300
representing the minimum loss to myself of running it for three years for
nothing: also that F&G would have me anyway, and therefore would not
consider the market value of the title, without me, very great. This left her
rather pensive, but I think you should give her a final blow very quickly.
She also wanted to turn it into a monthly at once I replied that I should
want more salary and an assistant editor, and that F&G would need more
money to launch it.
On the other hand she is willing to sign an agreement for a much longer
time, and to increase her subsidy later. However . . . .
I will have a word with you on Thurs. first. Have made appt. with her
for 5.
Ever yours
T. S. E.
1 Tinkerbell is a cantankerous fairy in J. M. Barries Peter Pan.

2 GCF replied (21 Oct.): I will do my best to live up to the character which your letter
ascribes to me; but I am sorry to say that I have a bad cold which may detract from the
intended effect!
761
[late October 1925] [London]
Dear Faber
I was very distressed about this morning, especially as you did not ring
up again. I shall be in tomorrow and Sat. a.m. if he cares to come. Next
week I shall be freer.
Bookshelf about 5 ft. high I should think, along one wall. Later we will
cover the top with objets dart.1
Graves a good thing, I think:2 will you ask him to write to me about
it? Or as you please if you prefer I will write to him.
I have asked my secretary to post you two copies of Commerce which
will remind you to remind me etc. I think there might be a little money
and some good connexions in it. But we need not mention it for the present
(in any case) to Lady R., as she and the Princess B.3 are best kept apart.
Yrs. in haste
T. S. E.

[Postmark 21 October 1925] [London]
Thanks for your card. I have not wanted to keep you (or anyone) in the
dark, but have simply not had time to write. I shall now wait till after
Thursday when there is a meeting of myself, Lady R. and Faber & Gwyer
and can I hope give further news. Then I really want to see you as soon as
the negotiations are over, next week and have a long talk.
My mistake You were to hear from me. I was to find out from you how
big a book4 (how many words approx.) as the size of the cash in adv.
royalty depends on that. Can you give me some details?
<T. S. E.>
Do you know what terms L. W.5 would give? 
1 This was in connection with furnishing TSEs office at the new premises of F&G at 24
Russell Square, London.
2 See TSEs letter to Robert Graves, 27 Oct. (below).
3 Princess Marguerite Caetani di Bassiano, who financed Commerce, 192432.
4 HRs book of essays, to be published by F&G the following year.
5 LW wanted to publish HRs book with Hogarth Press. GCF proposed (23 Oct.) a 40
advance on a 10% royalty . . . pretty good terms for a book of essays which is not likely to

to E. M. W. Tillyard 1 ms Kings
Dear Sir,
I am very sorry not to have answered your letter at once.
I cannot give you an outline of my lectures, which have not yet taken
definite shape. But I shall deal especially with Donne, Crashaw and Cowley
(three different types); only touching Marvell lightly, and shall mention
Benlowes and Cleveland.2 I shall make no attempt to be comprehensive
I only take representatives. An acquaintance with Waller and Denham
(Coopers Hill) would be useful.3
Cowleys Mistress; Crashaws Weeper and St Teresa it is impossible
to select any one poem of Donnes.4
With thanks for your good wishes.
Yours very truly
T. S. Eliot
have more than a somewhat limited sale . . . Of course Woolfs terms a quarter of the
profits are very much less advantageous to the author of a book like this, than a royalty with
an advance.
1 E. M. W. Tillyard (18891954): Renaissance scholar, Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge
and Secretary of the English Faculty; later author of The Elizabethan World Picture: A Study
of the Idea of Order in the Age of Shakespeare, Donne and Milton (1942) and Shakespeares
History Plays (1944). Basil Willey dated the beginning of climatic change in Cambridge
English from the day Tillyard said there was a new chap called T. S. Eliot for whom one
should be on the look-out (Cambridge and Other Memories [1968], 267).
2 TSE devoted four of the eight Clark lectures to Donne (lectures 25), with the sixth
devoted to Richard Crashaw (161249) and the seventh to Abraham Cowley (161867). He
had written about Marvell in HJD (1924), and Marvell scarcely figured in the lectures: TSE
argued that Marvell was not at his best really metaphysical at all; he was verbally conceited,
but not metaphysical in spirit (135). In the same lecture he declared the poetry of John
Cleveland (161358) not very remunerative, and said of Edward Benlowes (?160276) that
his verses, like those of Miss Gertrude Stein, can, for anyone whose taste has already been
disciplined elsewhere, provide an extremely valuable exercise for unused parts of the mind
(137).
3 Edmund Waller is scarcely mentioned. In the lecture on Cowley and the Transition,TSE
quoted Coopers Hill by John Denham (161569) as an instance of the new poetry arising
alongside Cowleys (195).
4 In the lecture on Cowley TSE emphasised the vast difference between the lyrics of Donne
and the Mistress of Cowley (187). This is a reference to The Mistress: or, Several Copies of
Love-Verses (1647). In the lecture on Crashaw TSE discussed his Sainte Mary Magdalene or
The Weeper from Steps to the Temple (1646), and argued that his two most remarkable
poems are those to St Theresa: To the Name and Honour and To the Book and Picture
(178).
763
My dear Read
I put the cards on the table: see enclosed. So why not just decide what
are the best terms for you, and let Woolf and myself know on that basis?1
I dont want to embroil you, or myself for that matter, with the Woolfs
who are old friends of mine, and this seems to me perfectly fair So make
up your mind!
More later about other matters.
Ever yours
T. S. E.
But remember that I am very keen to have the essays!2
Please return enclosure.
to Robert Graves ms Morris

Dear Graves
Thanks for your very interesting letter. I should be honoured to
collaborate in such a work: my only doubt is whether, with the little time
at my disposal, and the multitude of tasks undone, I can ever find the time
for it.3
I have promised to write a short article for Vogue, in which, dealing with
American poets alone, I should classify in three groups according to
sophistication of sensibility.4 This might be somewhat on the line
It would not matter, I think, if we did not altogether agree, so long as we
made our differences conspicuous and interesting.
I am not quite clear as to whether this is to be an anthology or merely
essays with specimens? I should incline to the latter: there have been many
anthologies, and I believe that a friend of mine is now preparing a new
one of American vers libres.
1 See note to postcard of 21 Oct.

2 The essays by HR that would comprise Reason and Romanticism.
3 Graves invited TSE to collaborate on a study of modern poetry GCF had referred to it
earlier, in a letter to Graves (14 Oct.), as a critical survey. Although this came to nothing,
Graves went on to collaborate with Laura Riding on A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1928).
4 TSEs projected article was not written.

I approve of most of your names, but should add Gertrude Stein,
without doubt, and perhaps Mina Loy.1 I question Aldous Huxley and
Bynner,2 and I dont know Davidson;3 there are two or three more
Americans: Wallace Stevens, W. C. Williams, and I think Lindsay ought
not to be out of it.4 Frost (though very good at times) seems to me for this
purpose obsolete.5 I should not like to omit T. E. Hulme. What about
Wilfred Owen?6
Might there be a chapter on the relation of such verse to certain modern
prose Joyce etc.?
These are merely suggestions. I hardly know whether to wish you to
Liverpool or Cairo7 in either case you are lost to Oxford and London.
But I wish you whichever you want.
What do you think of an international survey English, French, German
or is it too ambitious and troublesome? One would have to include
Cocteau, Cendrars, Sternheim, and the like.8
Ever yours sincerely
T. S. Eliot
1 Mina Loy (18821966): British/American poet and polemicist; author of Lunar Baedeker
(1923) and Feminist Manifesto. She was a friend of Gertrude Stein and Djuna Barnes, and
much admired by William Carlos Williams.
2 Witter Bynner (18811968): US poet and scholar. In 1916 he was responsible for the
Spectra hoax a parody of Imagism and later for influential translations from the Chinese,
including The Jade Mountain (1929).
3 Donald Davidson (18931968): US poet and critic. With John Crowe Ransom, he was a
founding contributor to The Fugitive magazine and a leading Southern Agrarian.
4 Wallace Stevens (18791955): US poet; author of Harmonium (1923). TSE later published
his Collected Poems (1955). Although TSE did not publish William Carlos Williams, he seems
to have shared some of Pounds enthusiasm. Vachel Lindsay (18791931) was the author of
the hugely popular General Booth Enters Heaven and Other Poems (1913).
5 On 9 Aug. 1920 TSE had told his mother he had never had much interest in Frosts poetry
though he was better than most others. Graves later introduced Selected Poems of Robert
Frost the first American who could be honestly reckoned a master-poet by world
standards.
6 Wilfred Owen (18931918): poet of WW1. This is a rare mention of Owen by TSE.
7 Graves took up a Chair at the University of Cairo in 1926.
8 TSE published Cocteaus Scandales in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), and A Call to Order (F&G,
1926). Blaise Cendrars (18871961) was a French-Swiss novelist who had recently published
Lor (1925), trans. H. L. Stuart as Sutters Gold (1926). Carl Sternheim (18781942) was a
German dramatist and short-story writer.
765
to Ezra Pound ms Beinecke
Cher E
Havnt all of your works here i.e. have (or V. has) Provena but not
Personae or Exultations.1
Canzoni:2 include Of Incense
Of Angels
Na Audiart
Provena:3 include Famam Librosque
In Temp. Senect.
Camaraderie
Idyll for Glaucus
Piccadilly
Night Litany
Altaforte
Planh for the Y.K.
Alba
Laudantes
4
Ripostes: include Akr aar
Portrait dune Fme.
N.Y.
1 At EPs request TSE compiled this list for possible inclusion in a UK edn of Personae (New
York, 1926). EPs ticks on the letter are shown. None of the suggested omissions was accepted
and some of the proposed inclusions were rejected. See TSEs intro. to EPs Selected Poems
(F&G, 1928): Mr Ezra Pound recently made for publication in New York a volume of
collected poems under the title of Personae. I made a few suggestions for omissions and
inclusions in a similar collection to be published in London; and out of discussions of such
matters with Pound arose the spectre of an introduction by myself (vii).
2 Canzoni (London: Elkin Mathews, 1911). Na Audiart was first published in A Lume
Spento (1908); Canzone: Of Incense and Canzone: Of Angels in Canzoni (1911). Of
Incense was included in Selected Poems (1928) under the heading of Early Poems Rejected
by the Author and Omitted from his Collected Edition.
3 Provena (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1910) was the first US edition of EPs work and
included poems from Personae (Elkin Mathews, 1909) and Exultations (Elkin Mathews,
1909). The poems listed are: Famam Librosque Cano, In Tempore Senectutis,
Camaraderie, Idyll for Glaucus, Piccadilly, Night Litany, Planh for the Young English
King, Alba Innominata and Laudantes Decem Pulchritudinis Johannae Templi. Of these,
In Tempore Senectutis, Camaraderie and An Idyll for Glaucus were included as Early
Poems Rejected by the Author in Selected Poems.
4 Ripostes (London: Stephen Swift & Co., 1912). The poems named are: The Tomb at Akr
aar, Portrait dune Femme, N.Y., A Girl, Quies, The Seafarer, Echoes, An
Immorality, , A Virginal, Pan is Dead, The Picture, Jacopo del Sellaio and The
Return. All except An Immorality were included in Selected Poems.

A Girl
Quies
Seafarer
Echoes
An Immorality

A Virginal
Pan is Dead
The Picture
Jacopo del S.
The Return
Include Cathay1 entire.
From Lustra2 omit Millwins
Bellaires
Cake of Soap
Simulacra
Social Order
Ancient Music
Contemporaries
Housmans Message
Include everything else.
Omit Contemporanea3
Except I Vecchi[i] and
The Old Lady.
Include Mauberley4 entire.
I think these are all my suggestions. Send me a review copy. Many
thanks for suggestions. The good Eliots do not understand the conduct of
this worlds affairs. In fact, they understand them so badly5
Yrs
T.
1 Cathay (1915): seventeen poems from Cathay were included in Selected Poems.
2 Lustra (London: Elkin Mathews, 1916; New York: Knopf, 1917). The omitted poems are:
Les Millwin, The Bellaires, The New Cake of Soap, Simulacra, The Social Order,
Ancient Music, Our Contemporaries and Song in the Manner of Housman (Mr
Housmans Message), originally published in Canzoni (1911).
3 Moeurs Contemporaines, published in Quia Pauper Amavi (London: The Egoist, 1919).
I Vechii is number VII, Ritratto (The Old Lady), number VIII in the eight-part sequence,
all of which was included in Selected Poems.
4 Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) was included in full in Selected Poems.
5 With the substitution of his surname TSE is quoting the opening lines of The Bellaires,
one of the poems (from Lustra) that he proposed to omit. It begins: The good Bellaires / Do
not understand the conduct of this worlds affairs. / In fact they understand them so badly /
That they have had to cross the Channel (Poems and Translations, 276).
767
My dear Virginia
It was a delight to see your handwriting again. We are so glad that you
are so much better. I have intended for days and days to look in and ask
how you were because I know what a nuisance the telephone can be; but
I have been very busy, not very well, and Vivien has had a bad chill.
I will write again shortly meanwhile, if you can let me have the essay
within a fortnight that would be capital, and it wd appear in the middle of
January.1 And after that, I want another one for Commerce!2
Ever yours
T. S. E.

Dear Graves,
Many thanks for your second letter which makes the subject still more
interesting.3 I return your list with a few names added which I think
inadvisable to omit. Some of these people, as you yourself suggested, could
be dealt with together. I have also marked with an X the people whom
I should like to tackle myself. I notice that neither of us is tempted by D. H.
Lawrence. I still query Frost because although he has done good work it
does not seem to me modern enough to fall within the scope of this book,
but I may be wrong.
I think now that an international study is too ambitious, and perhaps
confusing, but I think that I should like to touch on certain foreign writers
in my essay.
There is one thing which is certain and that is that I cannot tackle such
a work for a full year. After I have finished my Cambridge lectures I must
try to write a book on Charles Maurras. So that if you can do the book
before then by yourself, by all means do it: it will be none the worse for
the lack of my collaboration.
1 See VW ,On Being Ill, NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 3245.

2 See TSEs letter to Caetani, 13 Oct.
3 See TSEs letter to Graves, 27 Oct. Gravess letter appears to be missing.

I have crossed out my own name. It seems to me that we shall have to
forego the pleasure of doing each other!
T. S. Eliot
I enclose a circular of the Criterion simply to let you know what is happening.
to W. G. Johns1 cc
Dear Mr Johns,
This letter is private. I have no objection to your shewing it to Mr
Crofton,2 and making any use of it that may be necessary; but afterwards
I should be glad if you would destroy it.
This letter is to convey, first, the resignation which you must have been
expecting for several months. It is of course not so much the resignation
as the delay in resigning which demands explanation.
I wrote to you long ago to say that I must seek some employment which
would give me the time to attend to my domestic anxieties. This I have
found. I should have written this letter weeks and weeks ago but that I
quite literally have had no moment of time in which to write it. The
inevitable term has come to this situation, my wife has been sent to a
nursing home in the country by Sir William Willcox,3 and I am being sent
on a voyage by the insistence of my doctor and the kindness of friends.
For a long time, even after recognising that I must resign, I was the dupe
of my own conscience, and hoped that I should be able to return to give
the Bank a month or two of work. This I regarded and regard as the only
honourable course. From week to week I was deceived by appearances of
improvement, alternating with regression. I ought to have recognised the
facts much sooner than I did.
As for myself, I shall earn a sufficient income if I have the strength and
brain to do so. If not, at any rate I shall not be encumbering the Bank, and
I shall be in a position where my defaults can no longer provide a bad
example to others. It will be the publishing firm of Faber & Gwyer
Limited, and Trinity College, Cambridge, that will suffer, not the Bank,
which has already suffered too much.
1 W. G. Johns: Assistant General Manager (Administration), Lloyds Bank Head Office.

2 H. C. Crofton: senior manager in the Colonial & Foreign Department at Lloyds.
3 Sir William Willcox, kcie (18691941), consultant physician.
769
I had two other reasons, besides honour, for wishing to return for a time.
First, I should have liked to see the Intelligence Section a reality it has
never been more than the aspiration of a few persons, including myself. If
I may now speak frankly, as an outsider, it seemed to me unfair that this
Section should be charged upon the Colonial and Foreign Department
unfair to the Section, which was starved, and unfair to the Department,
which was taxed. I should have liked to see the Section established on a
proper basis before I left. And I should have liked to see it detached from
the Credit Information Service with which it has no sort of relation.
My other reason is still more compulsive. Fearing without conceit, for
I reflected that a bad excuse serves in the world better than none that my
resignation would be made the excuse for further indefinite postponement,
very likely even for the destruction of the rudimentary section which exists,
I have felt very gravely my obligations toward my colleague Mr J. D.
Aylward.1 I am quite aware that his case has already been fully
considered. But with all respect and without prejudice injustice not
only remains injustice, but has been enormously aggravated. For Mr
Aylward has performed his work and that which was mine, alone since
January; he has had one week of holiday and no more, and this only in
October; he has had the responsibility without the authority of the Head
of a Section, with scant respect and little aid, I sincerely believe (for this is
my belief based on previous observation, not on complaints from him; he
has not complained to me) from those who dislike to take orders or advice
from a supplementary man. It is bad enough that he should remain in his
present situation; it would be worse if he were now degraded to some
inferior or less agreeable post. It would be the source of endless regret and
self-reproach to myself. In his letters to me, Mr Aylward has aimed even
to conceal his own fatigue and anxieties, and has aimed always to raise
my spirits and divert my mind from my troubles. The very least I can do
and it is no more than the most detached critic would do is to make a
final plea for the reform and improvement of his status.
But this concern does not blind me to the fact that in my relations with
the Bank, the position is quite the reverse. It is only an instance of the
invariable irony of life that I, who have done so shabbily by the Bank and
deserved so little of it, should have met with such uncommon and
consistent kindness there. From Mr Harrison,2 of whom many spoke with
animosity, I received the most unusual consideration from the moment
1 James de Vine Aylward (18711966).
2 E. J. Harrison was secretary to the Bank when TSE joined it; in 1919 he became Joint
General Manager.

when he took me into the Bank with no enquiry for the credentials which
I might have provided; I, from my own experience of him, must hold his
memory in respect. For Mr Stevenson1 and Mr Crofton, I have an intimate
and affectionate regard; their abundant generosity and sympathy I shall
never forget. It was a great pleasure to me to work under the supervision
of Mr Paine2 and Mr Barchard.3 There are many who have been kind to
me, few whom I have disliked. It is only because it is you to whom I write,
that I put your name at the close: I have not forgotten your generous
patience when I came to you at one or two moments of great distress of
mind.
At this time, all my feelings are numb; but I know that it is, and I fear
always will be, very painful to me to have severed my connection with
Lloyds Bank in this way a way which could justly be qualified as
desertion rather than resignation.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
I am not at my own address; at my doctors solicitation I removed at once;
and am this week at 58 Circus Road, St Johns Wood, n.w.8.4
to Signora Celenza cc
Dear Madam,
I must apologise for not having let you know more quickly about the
enclosed manuscript.5 As I think I told you, I submit all contributions on
musical subjects to the editor of our Musical Chronicle. He speaks very
highly of this article but considers that it requires more familiarity with
contemporary Italian operatic work than can be assumed on the part of an
English audience. That, of course, is the difficulty about any critical essay
on foreign work that it is apt either to tell the British Public what it
knows already or to tell it what it does not understand. It is not meant
that this essay is not of very high critical value; the author is obviously a
first rate musical critic; only that it is not perfectly fitted to our audience.
1 W. M. Stevenson was a General Managers Assistant.

2 W. W. Paine was a Joint General Manager 191925; Director, 192545.
3 E. H. Barchard was a Principal in the Legal Department.
4 Lady Rothermeres London residence. On 8 Dec., Dr Hubert Higgins recommended TSE
to return there again after his trip to France.
5 A MS on Italian opera by Fernando Liuzzi.
771
I am still hoping to receive some contribution from yourself,1 but
anything you can send us by other Italian writers, whether critical or
creative, will always receive a welcome.
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
to Ellen Taylor 2 cc
Dear Madam,
Mr Eliot is very sorry indeed that he has not been able to see you but he
has had to leave London for some weeks under doctors orders. He asked
me to say that he very much enjoyed your story3 but that he felt that the
atmosphere was too emphatically American to be intelligible to the
majority of readers of the Criterion. He hopes that you will have other
material to submit later.
Yours faithfully,
For the Editor of the Criterion,
[I. P. Fassett]
Secretary
from Vivien Eliot ms Valerie Eliot

[Postmark 2 November 1925] Elmsleigh, Bassett, Southampton4
Dear Tom
Please give access to Mother to see to my clothes. Do not let the flat. I must
also have Ellen and I can pay her wages if you do not wish to keep her.
I apologise for having upset you. But I take it you are being helped over
it. Try not to allow yourself to be led around by the nose by Higgins and
Rothermere. It is undignified. Remember you go all out for things and we
must both do our own thinking. Alone. I have such good clever nurses that
I am glad now to be here.
1 She never contributed to C.

2 Ellen du Pois Taylor contributed to The American Mercury and the Transatlantic Review;
she wrote to TSE from London, where she was visiting, with a request for an interview.
3 One Crystal and a Mother, which Ford Madox Ford suggested she send to TSE.
4 Dr Hubert Higgins had arranged for VHE to be treated at a nursing home near
Southampton.

Will you please arrange at once to send me my cheque book. Put Jack
[Culpin] in our flat while you go away if you are going.
Leopard skin coat. Money cheques books and Lulu must not be
sacrificed. She also has her rights. The only safe thing I can think of if you
are going away is to put her in the hands of the best Vet you know.
I am sorry I tortured you and drove you mad. I had no notion until
yesterday afternoon that I had done it. I have been simply raving mad. You
need not worry about me. I am really being saved but its hard work
[illegible word]. Get the money from Father.
[Incomplete; unsigned]
<Please write to this doctor instantly and tell him the truth, that we have
had sexual relations>1
<if you can>
<Do these things for me. Especially about our married life and make him
see it had been good. All here believe not. Also explain about the scars on
my back. I dont blame West now. I wish I could see him.>

3 November 1925 7 Oak Hill Park, Hampstead n.w.3
My dear Eliot,
I am only just back from Oxford to find your letter waiting for me, and
being rather weary I am writing and not the obvious thing to do ringing
you up.
I am glad, for your sake and I include in that phrase your wifes sake,
that your doctor has had his way. But I can understand your own state of
mind. You have fought a losing battle, and you feel the reaction now that
the issue is decided. It must have been a very bitter experience, and oh
well, what can I say except that I am sorry for you both from the very
bottom of my heart? Anyhow, you have done your best and the
responsibility is now on other peoples shoulders, and I cant but think that
your wife will find herself more quickly again in a nursing home than she
ever could in the familiar round of associations. As for you, I am thankful
to hear of your Riviera voyage. Do not make it too short. We will see to
the mechanical production of the paper if you will make sure of the copy.
I dont know if Lady R. has responded to my letter, to the office. But the
affair must be settled now; and I want to see you about this and one or two
1 This and the following passages are written in the margins of the two-page MS.
773
other matters. I wonder if you wld. come to dine here with my wife and
myself early tomorrow. A new maid, and the nurse is out but you wont
mind that, I expect? Ring me up (if you can get my number!) at the office
tomorrow morning. Gerrard 2734.
About All Souls. I do think it will ultimately go through: but we will
talk of this when we meet.1
Yours ever
GCF
PS Certainly we will take the cat; and eke the maid or at any rate can
find her the right sort of place. So dont despatch her till I see you!
Your letter is combusted.
<PPS My wife says please, if you can, ring me up here (Hampstead 4839)
before 9.30 a.m.>
to Gorham B. Munson2 cc
Dear Mr Munson,
I have had my eye on you for some time, clearly enough to ensure a
welcome to any contribution you send. I accept your article on Irving
Babbitt,3 whose work I have always wished to make better known here. I
cannot tell how soon we can use it, and I hope you will not be impatient
with me if there is some months delay.4 When one issue of a quarterly
1 GCF recorded in his diary (Sat., 31 Oct.): Coll. Meeting. Eliots election [as Research
Fellow] postponed at Simms instance. Fairly no doubt; but a disappointment. On 3 Nov.:
College meeting. Elected Rowse & Makins, both historians & both of the House [Christ
Church, Oxford]. (Faber Archive)
2 Gorham B. Munson (18961969): American critic; founder-editor of the magazine
Secession. He taught at the New School for Social Research, New York; and his publications
included Destinations: A Canvas of American Literature since 1900 (1928) and The
Awakening Twenties: A Memoir-History of a Literary Period (1985). He published The
Esotericism of T. S. Eliot in 1 9 2 4 1 (July 1924), 310.
3 At Harvard, TSE took Irving Babbitts course on Literary Criticism in France. He wrote
later that Babbitts ideas are permanently with one, as a measurement and test of ones own
(Irving Babbitt: Man and Teacher, 1941, 1034). His essay The Humanism of Irving Babbitt
appeared in Forum 80: 1 (July 1928); reprinted in SE.
4 In The Socratic Virtues of Irving Babbitt (NC 4: 3, June 1926, 494503), Munson argued
that Babbitt was a figure to be reckoned with in any discussion of culture and anarchy;
to be read in conjunction with Matthew Arnold, Paul Elmer More, Pierre Lasserre and Julien
Benda.

review is omitted, as the enclosed circular will show, a frightful congestion
of material ensues.
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF
to B. G. Brooks cc
Dear Mr Brooks,
I owe you many apologies for not answering your first letter and for not
acknowledging your manuscript.1 I am all the more to blame as I feel that
I have given you unnecessary trouble. I can only say that I have been so
engaged in personal business for the last two months that I have hardly
been able to attend to editorial duties at all. The reorganisation of the
Criterion, also, has taken a great deal of time. You will see from the
enclosed circular that no number has appeared this autumn, and for that
reason the January number will be a very bulky one. Had there been an
October number I should have sent your manuscript to J. B. Trend. It
interested me very much, but as I have given all musical matters into his
control I could not accept any contribution without his approval. I hope
that you will forgive me and that you will make other suggestions and will
send other contributions of both verse and prose.
Yours sincerely
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF
to F. S. Flint cc
3 November 1925 The New Criterion, 24 Russell Sq,
London
My dear Flint,
I am sorry to spring this on you so abruptly, but I really have not had
the opportunity to write to you or to anybody before now. Could you let
us have some French, Italian, Scandinavian and Brazilian notes by the 15th
1 On 1 Oct., Brooks sent an article on the Venice Festival of Chamber Music held in Sept.
This piece was never published, and Brooks did not publish in C. again.
775
November? At any rate as much as you can manage.1 And if so would you
please send it direct to Faber & Gwyer, see enclosed circular. I have been
struggling to realise this design for some months. The Criterion will go on
just as before and I hope that it will eventually become more lucrative for
the regular contributors who have made it what it is.
I am writing in great haste as I expect to leave in a few days for a short
holiday. I should like very much to see you when I get back.
Yours,
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF
to T. Sturge Moore 2 cc
Dear Mr Sturge Moore
I am very much honoured at receiving an unsolicited contribution from
you, and one of so much interest. The January number is already made up
but I should like very much to publish this essay later if possible.3 On the
other hand I should not like to stand in the way of your publishing it
elsewhere in the meantime if you wish to do so, but I think we could
certainly bring it out in April, or in April and July.
I am leaving for a short holiday, but am giving your manuscript into the
hands of my secretary for safe keeping. If you should wish to publish it
elsewhere, will you write to her at 23 Adelphi Terrace House, Robert
Street, w.c.2. But I hope to find the manuscript still here on my return.4
1 For NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), Flint contributed notes on Italian and Danish Periodicals, but said
that owing to an accident he was unable to contribute as usual on French Periodicals.
2 Thomas Sturge Moore (18701944), English poet, playwright, author and wood engraver,
published his first book of poems, The Vinedresser and Other Poems, in 1899. His brother
was the philosopher G. E. Moore. A friend of many writers, including A. E. Housman and
Aldous Huxley, he also designed bookplates and bookbindings for W. B. Yeats. See W. B.
Yeats and T. Sturge Moore: Their Correspondence, 19011937, ed. Ursula Bridge (1953);
and Frederick L. Gwynn, Sturge Moore and the Life of Art (1951).
3 Sturge Moore, A Poet and his Technique (on Paul Valry), NC 4: 3 (June 1926), 42135.
4 Moore replied (10 Nov.) that he was quite content to wait.

I presume that the enclosed circular has already been sent to you. The
review will go on just as before, except that I shall now have a salary and
shall be able to devote more time to it.
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF

3 November 1925 The Criterion, 9 Clarence Gate Gdns
My dear Read,
This is a hasty note to thank you for your post card and to say that I had
done nothing yet about any of the Russian writers for the reason that many
books about them have appeared in the last few years. There is, for
instance, Gerhardies Chekov,1 but I think that they ought certainly to be
dealt with, though not in the first batch, and I should like to know about
your man.
I have sent your letter on to Faber and asked him to communicate with
you direct as to when he wants your manuscript, etc. I have also
recommended him to accept the poems.2 I should have liked to see you. I
may be going away within the next few days, but if I see any opportunity
I shall ring you up at the Museum.
Ever yours,
T. S. E.
TSE/IPF
to Orlo Williams cc
Dear Williams,
I must apologise for the delay in sending you the Murry book3 which is
due to the preoccupations of private business. In the circumstances I have
no right to press you, but if you could possibly deal with this in about a
thousand words and send it direct to Messrs. Faber & Gwyer Limited
1 William Gerhardie, Anton Chekhov: A Critical Study (1923).

2 HR, Collected Poems, 191325 (F&G, 1926).
3 JMM, Keats and Shakespeare (1925).
777
(28 Southampton Street, Strand, w.c.2) by November 15th at the latest,
I should be very grateful indeed. I particularly want this book to be done
and I particularly want you to do it and of course to do it with perfect
frankness and we must have it by that date in order to get it into the
January issue.1 The reason for sending it to Faber & Gwyer is shown in
the enclosed circular. The reason for not sending it to me is that I shall
probably be away on a short holiday. After that we must arrange a meeting.
In haste,
Yours cordially,
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF
Many thanks for your letter and good wishes. Of course I should like to
see the Pirandello or anything else you care to send.2 I am slightly
embarrassed by the cheque you sent me. The latest news is contained in the
enclosed circular. So I leave it to you to decide about the other six shillings
and meanwhile will have your cheque kept here.
I am attempting to clean up an enormous correspondence before going
away for a holiday and will write to you again at more leisure.
Ever yours,
T. S. Eliot
TSE/IPF
1 See Williamss review, in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 1936.

2 Scott Moncrieff had asked whether TSE proposed to use Pirandellos Black Shawl. He
offered in addition one of Pirandellos recently published one-act plays. Neither was published
in C.

to H. Baugh1 ts H. Baugh
5 November 1925 The Criterion,
Dear Sir,
I have read the enclosed study of Rimbaud with very great interest but
after due reflection have decided that I cannot use it. A good deal has been
written about Rimbaud in the past few years and therefore, to speak quite
frankly, I cannot feel justified in accepting anything on the subject unless
it is also first rate.
The matter of your article is extremely interesting but I think that you
ought to put in a good deal of work on the style. As you get to the heart
of your subject your style on the whole becomes more simple and clear, but
the writing, especially at the beginning, seems to me heavy and involved.
Pardon me for speaking so frankly; ordinarily I do not take the trouble to
do so; but the material which you have presented speaks so well for your
brain power that I feel that it would be a great pity if you did not take the
trouble to learn more about the writing of English prose. Study Swift and
Newman.
I hope very much that I may hear from you again.
Yours faithfully,
T. S. Eliot
TSE/IPF
to Rollo Myers cc
Dear Myers,
Thank you for your letter. I am just off for a sea voyage tomorrow and
have not time to write to Cocteau now but will try to do so on the boat. I
was completely mistaken about Scandales. It was only because I assumed
that it was going into the book that I had not had it translated for the
January number which has been made up.2 I shall be very grateful if you
1 Hansell Baugh, critic; editor of The Figure in the Carpet, a magazine published by the
New School of Social Research (19289), and of Frances Newmans Letters (1929).
2 Jean Cocteaus Scandales appeared, in French, in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 12537. A
polemical autobiographical essay, it chronicled the scandals precipitated by the first
performances of Stravinskys Rite of Spring, Saties Parade, Darius Milhauds Le Boeuf sur le
Toit, and Cocteaus Maris de la Tour Eiffel and other works. The essay was not included in
Cocteaus Call to Order (F&G, 1926).
779
will explain this to him meanwhile and say that we are going to try to
shove it in in French if there is room.
I have discussed the question of payment again with Messrs. Faber &
Gwyer. I have come to the conclusion that the most satisfactory method of
contract is to pay a certain cash sum in advance of royalties to the
translators, all royalties beyond this amount to go to the author.
If you have the manuscript ready within a month, will you send it
direct to Geoffrey Faber Esqre., Messrs. Faber & Gwyer Limited, 28
Southampton Street, Strand, London w.c.2 instead of to me. I have handed
him your translated Professional Secrets. He will then write to you and
to Cocteau, making a definite proposal for the cash advance and royalties.
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF
to Paul Jacobsthal cc
My dear Sir,
I must apologise for not having written to you for a very long time but
private affairs have made it almost impossible for me to attend to business.
You will see from the enclosed circular the reasons for the postponement
of our next issue until January. This January issue will contain the
conclusion of your essay. I very much regret this unavoidable break in the
continuity of your essay.1
As the business is now changing hands, I cannot at present answer your
enquiries. It is probable, however, that the next issue will be in the hands
of different printers, which of course will make it more difficult to obey
your original request for separate copies of your essay. So that I suggest
that we should send you the required number of copies of the two issues
of the Criterion and deduct them from the next payment to you at the
lowest wholesale price.
Yours very truly,
[T. S. E.]
1 Part I of Paul Jacobsthals Views and Valuations of Ancient Art since Winckelman
appeared in C. 3: 12 (July 1925), 54356; Part II in NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 13847.

My dear Ottoline
I opened your letter to V. in case it required an immediate answer. V.
has just gone to the country we called in other opinions, according to
which the country was absolutely necessary; and a very good local man is
to keep his eye on her. And I am going tomorrow morning for a short sea
voyage. I have never quite got over that operation. I shall write to you
when I am back; I dont think V. will be in London again till Christmas.
This Cambridge business1 will make it difficult for me to get out of London
again till the spring.
I should have loved to see you and so I know wd V. Perhaps we can
both come to Garsington, later. I think so.
Very much love
Tom.
from Vivien Eliot pc Valerie Eliot

5 November 1925 Elsmleigh, Bassett, Southampton
Thank you very much for cheque book and letter. I will write fully
tomorrow. I hope you are getting ready to go. If sending things, the books
in my bedroom only Synge and all of E.P.2 [are del.] what I should like
to have very much. I hope you are better. I am getting on well.
I. P. Fassett to Richard Aldington cc

Dear Sir,
Thank you for your letter of the 9th November and for the two books.3
1 The Clark lectures.

2 VHE had been enthusiastic about EPs poetry since before her marriage to TSE.
3 IPF wrote on 7 Nov. asking RA to send the review he was holding for C. RA replied (9
Nov.) that he had not known until a day or two previously that C. was resuming and was
unable to review the two books at a moments notice. He therefore returned the books with
apologies to TSE. On 16 Oct., RA had told Read he had not looked at the books TSE had
sent him, and did not see why he should whore unprofessionally at half the regular Piccadilly
rate in exchange for Mr Es patronage (Richard Aldingtons Letters to Herbert Read, 201).
781
I must apologise for my two letters of the 7th and 12th November, which
were written, it seems, upon a misunderstanding. Mr Eliot left England a
week ago to take a short sea voyage under strict medical orders.1 I
understood from him that he had written to you himself before he left,
and I understood also that the reviews in question were ready for us when
we wanted them. Mr Eliot left in a great hurry after a great rush of work
and I have no doubt I misunderstood him. I expect to be in touch with
him in about three weeks time, when I will explain to him what has taken
place.
Yours faithfully,
For the Editor of the Criterion,
[IPF]
Secretary.
Vivien Eliot to Henry Eliot ms Houghton

14 November [1925] c/o Dr Hawkesworth,
Elmsleigh, Bassett, Southampton
Dear Henry,
I do hope Tom has let you know, before this, that I am here in a nursing
home, and that he has gone abroad. The last I heard from him was that he
was leaving for an eight days trip on the water, going, I think to the S. of
France via Gibraltar. After that I do not know. I wish I [were] able to write
more fully to you, but I cannot. I wish you and Theresa were here. Cant
you come? Of course I know you do intend coming but if only you could
come now, just now, it is so necessary. My own people are all in Rome. I
cannot get out to buy you anything but please will you give the enclosed
handkerchief to Theresa with my love. Please write Henry and soon.
Yrs. ever,
Vivien Eliot
1 TSE left England on 6 Dec, and stayed away until 24 Dec. He sailed to Marseilles, then
went on to spend a month at Lady Rothermeres apartment at the Savoy Hotel in La Turbie
in the Alpes Maritimes, before crossing the border to pass a few days with EP in Rapallo.

15 November 1925 c/o Dr Hawkesworth,
Elmsleigh, Bassett
Dear Mary
I dont know if you have heard that I am here. I wish you would write
to me. And please send me Virginias address, I have stupidly forgotten the
number. Tom is abroad. I dont know how long I shall be here.
Do write, Mary, and give my love to Jack.
V. H. E.
from Dr T. A. Hawkesworth ms Valerie Eliot

18 November 1925 Elmsleigh, Bassett
Dear Sir
At Dr Higgins request I am writing you a short report of Mrs Eliots
progress. I may truly say she has improved since she came as on her
arrival she was in an acutely restless and hysterical condition. Sleep is as
yet uncertain, but she gets a reasonable amount every night even when
broken, and on some nights gets six hours or more undisturbed. She is
taking a full diet perfectly well. As to the nervous condition that is
variable at present but there are indications now of some wish to get back
to a reasonable state of mind and she is willing to admit her mistakes and
to wish for a better state of balance. The hysterical state, when it recurs,
is now very much less acute and less prolonged.
So that altogether the outlook is brighter and I hope we shall see
continued progress.
Yrs faithfully
T. A. Hawkesworth
from Dr Hubert Higgins1 ms Valerie Eliot

Dear Eliot
Your wife is doing very well. She is most anxious to get your address,
doubtless to belabour you. They are always full of [?furies] against their
1 Hubert Higgins, the Eliots doctor.
783
slaves. Considering that her will to take drugs is being systematically
opposed, she is a good case and most favourable.
I am going to Paris on Friday till the following Tuesday
Hotel Terminus
Gare St Lazare
I do hope you are not feeling too exhausted by your reaction. The only
way is to lie down and rest as much as possible and grin and bear it. Itll
go off. The worse you feel now the better you will be when you come back.
You dont mean to tell me that you havent got a reaction after all these
awful experiences. If you havent itll be astonishing. I wish I was there to
have a chat with you. Write to me about Lady Rothermeres studio at Paris.
She arrives there on Sunday and may want to know. The best of good luck.
Hubert Higgins
PS Let me know, very fully, how you are and, if possible, your symptoms
in the [illegible word] H. H.

[20? November 1925] Savoy Hotel, La Turbie,
Alpes Maritimes
My dear Read,
It was kind to write to me at Marseilles, and relieved my mind
considerably. I reread the article on the boat, at more leisure, and was
pained by more than one passage.1 The author does not really take
seriously what he is writing about; his tone is as much as to say, I know
it seems odd that I should be writing about this sort of thing; but it is really
quite inoffensive, and rather quaint and charming. That sort of person is
not of much use. I have ventured to hint this to [Bruce] Richmond.
1 The Margins of Philosophy, TLS, 5 Nov. 1925, 7256: a review of Robert Sencourt,
Outlying Philosophy; Etienne Gilson, St Thomas DAquin; F. Olgate, Lanima del umanismo
e del rinascimento; Etienne Gilson, The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (a transl. of Le
Thomisme); Aelred Whitacre and others, St Thomas Aquinas; Jacques Maritain, Rflexions
sur lintelligence; Etienne Gilson, La philosophie de Saint Bonaventure; Henri Ghon, Le
triomphe de Saint Thomas DAquin. On 9 Nov., HR wrote to disown the piece: not mine
the lux beatissima! He acknowledged it was a curious coincidence, because he had thought
of writing about these books; in his view, the writer failed to bring out the contrast between
the mediaeval standpoint & the modern.

I am glad you have settled with Faber about the essays. A good title.1 He
took a great fancy to you, and he ought to be delighted to get the Poems.
(I have asked them to send you a copy of mine as soon as they are ready,
so you will be able to criticise their production).2
I have written to him to say that I think the F.M.L. series3 ought to be
between 30,000 and 40,000 words according to the wish of the writer. My
first estimate of 25,000 was I think rather short.
I want to interfere as little as possible. But the general idea is critical in
a humane sense, rather than biographical or expository. To put the English
reader in contact with some world-current. So I thought it would be
interesting (and I think has never been done) if you could trace some of the
influences and oppositions: such as the NRF on the one hand and Benda
and Maritain etc. on the other.
Of course we shall have to include some pretty dull folk in the series:
Hauptmann for instance (though I think Muir can make him interesting if
anyone can). But I hope that the series as a whole and on the whole will
have some significance, and certain volumes a sort of inner circle ought
taken together to have more than that. I think that some of the bigger
people of the last generation should eventually be included such as Taine
and Renan4 (by the way I have Lasserres book, and can lend it to you
later; it is interesting); later, if the series proved a success, we could dare to
present quite unknowns, such as Fustel de Coulanges, or even men of our
own generation abroad. The difficulty is, that when it comes to a foreign
writer whom I really care about having done just right, there are so few
men in this country with the knowledge or the ideas. Barrs would be good
if well done, awful if badly done.
I will write again when I have time, but I am just facing two weeks
correspondence forwarded from London, and a good deal of the time I
merely lie in the sun (when there is any). I shall be back within a month.
Ever yours
T. S. E.
1 Reason and Romanticism: Essays in Literary Criticism (F&G, 1926).

2 TSE, Poems 19091925, published by F&G on 23 Nov.
3 The projected Foreign Men of Letters series.
4 Hippolyte Taine (182893): French positivist critic, author of Origines de la France
Contemporaine (187593) and History of English Literature (1871). Ernest Renan
(182392): cultural theorist and orientalist; author of La Vie de Jsus (1863).
785
to Mario Praz1 ts Galleria Nazionale dArte Moderna
23 November 1925 Savoy Hotel, La Turbie
Dear Sir,
I have just read your Marinismo e Secentismo in Inghilterra2 which I am
about to review for the Times Literary Supplement.3 I shall also make
copious reference to it in some lectures which I am to give during the
winter at Trinity College, Cambridge, on the metaphysical poetry of the
XVII Century in England.4 I am writing to tell you that I have found
nothing by any of our scholars even by Saintsbury or Grierson or Gosse,
which can challenge comparison with your book for critical taste and
judgement and for width (envergure) of learning.5 I am a little jealous
indeed that you have forestalled me on several points: in your criticism of
Miss Ramsay, in your comparison and contrast of Donne and Guido
Cavalcanti, and in your insistence on the importance of the Society of Jesus
in England at the time.6 All of these points had occurred to me, but you
have spoken first.
I wish to extend to you an invitation to contribute a critical essay to The
New Criterion. I do not know whether you know the Criterion (yes, you
referred to it in a footnote) which I have directed from the beginning. I will
send you the next issue in January.
1 Mario Praz (18961982): Italian scholar of English literature; later author of The
Romantic Agony (1930). At this time, he was Senior Lecturer in Italian, Liverpool University.
2 Secentismo e marinismo in Inghilterra: John Donne Richard Crashaw (Florence, 1925).
3 TSE, An Italian Critic on Donne and Crashaw, TLS, 17 Dec. 1925, 878. The best study
of Crashaw that I know, and a very fine and suggestive essay, is that by Mario Praz, wrote
TSE.
4 In the Clark lectures, TSE frequently cites Prazs study, putting it at the head of his reading
list after the first lecture (VMP, 64).
5 TSE wrote later: I immediately recognised these essays and especially his masterly study
of Crashaw as among the best I had ever read in that field. His knowledge of the poetry of
that period in four languages . . . was encyclopaedic, and, fortified by his own judgement
and good taste, makes that book essential reading for any student of the English meta-
physical poets (Friendships Garland: Essays Presented to Mario Praz On his Seventieth
Birthday, ed. Vittorio Gabrieli, 1966).
6 In his lectures esp. Donne and the Middle Ages (6772) TSE criticised Mary Paton
Ramsays Les Doctrines mdivales chez Donne, le pote metaphysicien de lAngleterre
(1917). Following Praz, he drew parallels and comparisons between Donne and his group
on the one hand and Guido Guinizelli, Guido Cavalcanti, Cino da Pistoia on the other (58).
On the Society of Jesus, TSE observed: Jesuitism came to Donne through the intellect, and
in his mind and memory it had to compete with Calvinism, Lutheranism, and everything else.
It entered Crashaws mind through poetry . . . and it found practically nothing in his mind
to struggle against (1634).

I presume that you write English as well as you read and no doubt
speak it; if you prefer to write in Italian or French we of course undertake
the translation. Only, in that case, we are obliged to deduct the
translators fee from the payment (which is at the rate of ten pounds per
5000 words: articles should not much exceed 5000 words). I should be
very much pleased if you cared to suggest a subject. We only publish
indits, but have no objection to any contribution appearing elsewhere,
in a language other than English, six weeks after appearing in The New
Criterion.1
I beg you to accept my compliments and admiration for your book.
Yours very truly,
T. S. Eliot
Editor of The New Criterion
I shall be at this address for two or three weeks. When I return to London
the address is
care of Faber & Gwyer Limited,
28 Southampton Street,
Strand, w.c.2
London.
to Ezra Pound pc Beinecke

[Postmark 24 November 1925] Savoy Hotel, La Turbie
Here for two or three weeks. If in Rapallo, write perhaps we could meet
somewhere? But dont give my address to anyone.
T. S. Eliot
from Dr Hubert Higgins ms Valerie Eliot

Wednesday morning [25 Nov. 1925] Hotel Terminus, rue St Lazare, Paris
Dear Eliot,
I liked your letter. Your symptoms are good. They are a normal, healthy
reaction from your imprisonment.
1 Praz contributed a number of essays and reviews to C., starting with Chaucer and the
Great Italian writers of the Trecento in NC 6: 13 (JulySept. 1927).
787
I say imprisonment advisedly because you were forced, by your higher
instincts of protection and chivalry,1 into a region of restricted contacts
with reality.
This is imprisonment of the mind. You are like a man who, for a
considerable part of your life, was shoved, by authority, into an oubliette.
There is no difference.
Provided your mind can survey the two worlds: the world of restricted
contacts, on the one side, and that of wide unrestricted contacts, on the
other, and can see these worlds from the aspect rather of comedy than
tragedy your experience is a precious experience and one you can use to
help humanity to step out of the little into the great world only dont
argue dont think just submit to the exigencies of your strained and
tired brain which is readjusting and admirably healing itself.
This is written in great haste.
I shall, all being well, see your wife tomorrow. I will wire a message.
Yours ever
H. H.

26 November 1925 Savoy Hotel, La Turbie
My dear Richard,
I am writing sooner and therefore (my typewriter is abme2 and the
mechanic in Nice has not improved it much at a cost of 200 francs) ther
efore the r therefore more briefly than I intended and shall do when I get
to Nice again and hie h ir e hire a typewriter merde.
I thought I wrote to you just before I sailed.3 But I dic-dictated forty
letters and meant to write to you myself as I did not want to dictate it; and
was writing till 3 a.m. before departure so cannot remember whether I
wrote to you or not. Anyhow, I THOUGHT you wrote to me that you had
written a review of Chesterfield, so I told my secretary to get it from you.4
1 In early Dec., Higgins wrote again: I must confess that the new England conscience,
especially your brand thereof, claims, through its fruits, my most respectful admiration. At
the same time irrelevant and impertinent enquiries into motives and hair-splitting weighings
and measurings of unworthy ingredients, cant help the business end of your mind.
2 Ruined (French). The typescript is erratic, with the lower part of individual letters
missing.
3 See IPFs letter of 14 Nov.
4 On 1 May, TSE told HR that RA had asked to review the Chesterfield probably Roger
Coxon, Chesterfield and his Critics (1925).

It is just one of the things that have gone wrong. Of course you could not
write a review in two days; but I am very disappointed because I
particularly wished your name to appear in the first new number. It cannot
be helped. Is there anything you have or want to write that I could publish
(not a review, I mean an essay etc.) in the following Number?1 I hesitate
always to ask you because there is no less lucrative occupation than writing
for the Critero Cr Criterion. This type looks just like Hebrew. But I hope
soon to pay a little more. So in any interim between more remunerative
occupations remember the Criter Criterion. You see what has happened.
It is the abutaboutissement of my efforts for some months. As I had to
leave the bank anyhow it is the best thing for me in the circumstances. The
pay is less than Richmond once said an editor ought to get but there will
be some perquisites from Faber & Gwyer. They combine with Lady R. to
own and manage the review and I get a five years contract. So I am a
director of Faber & Gwyer and a humble publisher at your service. NOW
what about GOURMONT? Did I tell you that the terms offered are 25
pounds on recpt of MS and 25 more on publication, and a royalty of 10%
after 3000 copies? Length 30,000 to 40,000 words and model model the
English Men of Letters, but more criticism and less biography, and of
course more explanation of the milieu influence etc. My scheme is to deal
with writers of living influence whether alive or dead within a generation.
I should like to have Renan, Taine and perhaps Sainte-Beuve later. I cant
think of anyone to do Barrs. I shall do Maurras next autumn, and hope
to have a book by Dobre and one by [John Gould] Fletcher (at your
instigation) in the autumn, but should LIKE to start in the spring with you,
and with the Bergson of Read and the Hauptmann of Muir which are
promised for then. How busy are you going to be this winter? I shall write
a more pussnel2 (as Ezra would say) letter later, but must lie down and
rest. I cant stand this typewriter very long at a time. The Cte dAzur is
DAMNED COLD.
Ever yours aff
T.
1 RA contributed a review of five books by BD to NC 4: 2 (Apr. 1926).

2 personal.
789
to Richard de la Mare1 cc
Dear Mr de la Mare,
I have made a few tentative corrections on the Scandales proof, but I
do not feel at all competent to correct it as a whole.2
Mrs Leverson wants a space of a few lines after a paragraph ending
some chill presentiment and a space of one line after frame of mind at the
last, omitting the phrase something of the sort.3 I think it is quite likely
that Mrs Leverson will have made these corrections herself already and
merely writes to me to confirm them.
Yours sincerely,
[T. S. E.]

Tuesday 8 December [1925] 46 Brook St, London w.1
Dear Eliot
I met your wife at Waterloo and saw her through to Euston.
Lady Rothermere has now contributed 50. She is willing to let you live
at 58 Circus Road when you return but you must pay for your food.
I should strongly advise you to stay there and let me arrange some slight
disciplines for you. Mainly learning to relax and thought control no more.
Nothing in any way difficult, but brains like yours want little sensible
disciplines and tips. I am most alarmed about the cold that is very bad
for you. All the other symptoms are exactly what are to be expected. I will
go down to see your wife in a day or two and will let you know all about
everything. I should like to see the lectures.
My Master Craft is shaping itself even better than I thought.
With congratulations for your
Excellent reactions.
1 Richard de la Mare (190286) son of the poet Walter de la Mare joined Faber &
Gwyer as production manager in 1925 and was to be made a director in 1928; ultimately he
would be Chairman and later President of Faber & Faber.
2 Jean Cocteau, Scandales, NC 4: 1 (Jan. 1926), 12537.
3 The Last First Night, in the same issue (14853).

There will also be some hydrotherapy for you I have a most skilful
assistant who has made a thorough study of this and also some electricity
I think I can borrow a friends machines for you.
Hubert Higgins
to Ezra Pound pc Beinecke

[Postmark 8 December 1925] Savoy Hotel, La Turbie
Me and my lil ole saxophone will be with you some day next week.1 I must
get new passport and hire a mewl to tote my traps down the mountain.
Will send wire first and await reply as dont wish to arrive in yr absence.
Bad enough to cross Genoa without a guide. It cant be colder than here
they hav to break the ice in the horsetrough to wash mah pants. T.

11 Dec[ember 1925] Savoy Hotel, La Turbie
Questo mio primo amico2
It doan matter a toads fart whether your village is Syracuse Aggrigentum
or Buffalo, the point is it aint in France, my passport expired with a sigh on
the 7th instant, I had to go to Nice which is a hell of a journey down the
mountain in a brokendown motor bus orijinly a U.S.A. army lorry it aint
got no springs & you shd see the priests bouncing up and down when we
take the hairpin curves on the Cornishe with ole Fernand singin and shoutin
& flirtin with the girls in the seat behind him. Then when you get to Nice
you gotta find the American consulat which is a long walk and they keep
the door locked. After waitin hour there I was told they would have to
apply to Paris & it wd take 10 days. & I had to get a photo so I went to a
photographe and jes as he wasstartin to take me his damn electric light
died, and while he was tinkrin with it I nearly lost my bus back, and had
to run my balls off across the Place Messena because you have to be there
hour ahead to get a seat, and it takes 1 hrs to get back here because it
is up hill and the bus breaks down and the lamps go out when he takes a
corner and me with a baby with a bad cold and a bottle of wine with no
1 The Pounds were in Rapallo, just over the border from TSE at La Turbie.
2 This first friend of mine: ref. to Cavalcanti in Dante, La Vita Nuova XXIV: 3. 6.
791
cork in it in my [?] lap, and a parcel of medicaments wch I had bought for
chilblains awful on my feet & so has the rest of the local population of this
commune, and for constipation because of the cold and for neuralgia and
insomnia and Enos Fruit Salt on principle, but I am much better here is my
photo to prove it. Well, then when I do get my passport which may be
sooner because I forgot to tell you I hear from London my new one from
Wash has arrived so I have wired to them to send it to Nice consul. and
Nice consul. are to wire me when it arrives. Well then I got to hire my mule
48 hrs ahead to take my luggage down the mountain from Monsieur Grinde
NEGOCIANT EN TRANSPORTS wch means mules. So I will wire you
when I can get away & I hope I dont have to cross Genoa bt can leave same
station. Dont worry about calorifero,1 people who been living on top of a
mountain can keep warm in a refrigerator.
Yours truly
T.

11 December 1925 Savoy Hotel, La Turbie
My dear Richard,
I wired you today and hope I made it clear that I was returning in two
weeks in any case, and hoped that that would do. I am held up here
waiting for a new passport, and cannot stir till it arrives. Then I want to
spend a night with Ezra in Rapallo not having seen him for four years
I had intended to take a few days in Paris more on business than pleasure,
but being delayed here and having your news it will be better for me to
come straight back and return to Paris for a week later.
What you say sounds incredibly perfect, and if it comes off will require
a bottle of fizz to precede the Cockburn. Your influence over Routledge
must be immense. As you say, it would advantage me in every way.
Whatever happens, you have my sincere and respectful gratitude.2
1 Radiator (Italian).
2 See David S. Thatcher, Richard Aldingtons Letters to Herbert Read, 78: In 1923
Aldington was asked by the publishing firm of Routledge to collaborate on a series of critical
biographies, to be called The Republic of Letters and edited by William Rose. Aldington
asked Eliot and Read to contribute, but both declined. Eighteen months later Eliot initiated
a similar scheme as director of Faber & Gwyer. Routledge, after consulting Aldington,
proposed to combine the two series under the joint editorship of Eliot and Rose, and the
joint imprint of the two rival publishers. Aldington felt bitter because Eliots venture was
backed by the very people who had shown no interest in the project when Aldington himself

No good writing to me here any more. Will communicate immediately
I reach London. By the way, should a Migne1 not be beyond our joint
purses, I would be glad to split one with you, if we can agree as to who
should possess which volumes, lending the others reciprocally. What I want
chiefly is XII and XIII century philosophy,2 and Erigena; Prudentius and
Tertullian3 and the fathers I should be content to borrow!
By the way, to get away from here I have to hire a mule to take my
luggage down the mountain. The mule belongs to Monsieur Grinde, who
accordingly calls himself NEGOCIANT EN TRANSPORTS.
Ever affectionately
Tom
had canvassed support. Once it began to look as if Eliot would accept the new arrangement,
Aldington wrote to Read: This affair is the biggest setback I have had since the war and loses
me the fruit of years of work. Not only is this editorship a big thing in itself, but it would have
led me to a permanent connection with Routledge and would have lifted me out of the mire
of journalism and poverty. However, it is no use crying over split milk; and the right thing to
do is to smile and congratulate Tom (13 Dec. 1925). RA had told Harold Monro, in
confidence, on 26 Nov. that Routledge had appointed him editor of a new complete section
of the Broadway series of translations as well as joint editor of The Republic of Letters. He
thought it would be a big thing and provide a certain counterpoise to the Gang [associates
of TSE and Faber & Gwyer]. The series would be devoted to historical figures and therefore
not cut across TSEs projected series, which was to be devoted to contemporaries. (Richard
Aldington: An Autobiography in Letters, ed. Norman T. Gates [1992], 756.)
1 Jacques Paul Migne (180075): French priest and publisher responsible for inexpensive
and widely distributed editions of early theological works. The most important of these were
the Latin Patrologiae cursus completus (Patrologia Latina) in 221 vols (18445) and the
Patrologia Graeca, with Greek text and Latin translation (165 vols, 18578). In his lecture
on Donne and the Trecento TSE refers to Richard of St Victors works occupying the greater
part of one volume in Mignes Patrologia (VMP, 101).
2 Noting that the generation of Dante was nourished on mediaeval Latin culture, TSE
declared that no one who has read even a little of the Latin of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries can doubt that the delight in ideas, the dialectical subtlety, the intensity with
which ideas were felt, and the clarity and precision of the expression, came partly from
this source (99).
3 Johannes Scottus Erigena (c.800c.877), Irish theologian, author of Periphyseon and
translator of the Pseudo-Dionysus; Marcus Aurelius Clemens Prudentius (348c.410), the
best-known of the early poets of the Christian Church, author of Cathemerinon Liber;
Tertullian (c.160230), the first Christian theologian to produce major works in Latin. In
the Clark lectures TSE said he thought he had an inability to feel devotional verse before he
had read the Paradiso, or any of the Latin hymns from Prudentius to Aquinas (167).
793
to George Rylands ts Kings
Dear Mr Rylands,
Your letter has just reached me here. I shall look forward to seeing your
book.1 I leave in about a week and expect to be in London about
Christmas time. I will let you know as soon as I am back, and you will I
hope come and lunch with me. We will then see what we can arrange
I have some hopes, but very indefinite. I shall have an office at 24 Russell
Square, quite near to you.2
Sincerely yours,
T. S. Eliot

My dear Read,
The reply to your letter has suffered a common fate. I had to postpone
it for a few days, during which it grew and grew to a size beyond either the
time or energy at my disposal for writing it out. If I could dictate as I lie
in bed at night my letters might be written and be complete; what issues is
merely a series of fragments.
First, thank you very much for the tip about Routledge. I had never
realised the possible conflict. I wrote at once to Aldington, without
indicating in any way that I could have been warned by you. The result is
first that he was pleased and relieved, second that he has made a dmarche
[an approach] with Routledge, and they are favourably disposed toward
an understanding. So I am to interview Routledges immediately on my
return. For this I am obliged to you.
I am inclined to concede another season, especially as I shall not know
for two or three weeks how we shall break with Routledge, and as I do not
wish to rush you but am anxious that your book should be in the first lot.3
So do not consider your work hurried, but take as much time as you need.
It is not as if the work were lucrative enough for you to devote yourself to
it exclusively. If you think the terms need revision we will discuss that as
soon as I return and I will see what can be done.
1 Rylands, Russet and Taffeta.

2 Rylands wrote from 37 Gordon Square.
3 HRs projected book on Bergson for F&Gs Foreign Men of Letters series.

I will give you the Constant Bourquin book on Benda when I get back.1
You will not find very much use for it, except that there is a certain amount
of controversial gossip showing the relations between the different camps.
It would appear from that book that Benda was at one time well thought
of by the Maurresiens, but that he has kept himself very much lcart. At
the end of Belphgor an appendix has some acid words about the
romanticism of the anti-romantics, which is probably aimed at Maurras.2
As for religion, I should say he was very much the Jew, no doubt a very
emancipated Jew, but perhaps still responsive to le mysticisme juif.3 He
was a detached and critical Dreyfusard.4 His circle of friends is rather a
Jewish circle Spire etc. and at one time there was a Jewish review not
this tedious Revue Juive but I think called the Revue Blanche with
which he was associated.5 I can lend you some of his books.
I have never read any Renouvier,6 I know that William James thought a
good deal of him, and borrowed from him. That is hardly a
recommendation.7 I think Maine de Biran8 is a more likely name; he is
always turning up. I have not read any of him either. When I do the
Maurras book I shall have to look into Comte, Joseph de Maistre9 etc.
1 Constant Bourquin, Julien Benda, ou le point de vue de Sirius (1925).

2 In Note J (The Romanticism of Reason) Benda said of Maurras: The eulogies bestowed
daily on the high-priest of the Action Franaise for returning to the manners of the classic
style make us smile when we consider his enthusiasm for his own doctrines, the violence of
his arguments, and especially the virulent, contemptuous tone he uses towards his adversary
(Belphgor, trans. S. J. I. Lawson, with an intro. by Irving Babbitt [1929], 156).
3 Jewish mysticism (French). Bendas parents were both Jewish. Acc. to Anthony Levi, he
disliked Jewish assumptions of supremacy and Zionism, preferring the Judaism of his mother,
the little Jewess of the Paris Marais, scribbling and petulant, to that of his father, a Jew of
the Orient in antiquity, in love with eternity (Guide to French Literature [1992], 98).
4 See Bendas defence of Dreyfus and reflections on the affair, in Dialogues Byzance (1900).
5 Benda was one of a group of talented writers (including Debussy, Lon Blum and
Mallarm) associated with La Revue Blanche, 18911903. Andr Spire (18681966) was a
Jewish poet, friend of Charles Pguy and author of Pomes Juifs (1919). Valery Larbaud
thought Spire Frances only successful satirical writer. La Revue Juive was founded in Jan.
1925 under the direction of Albert Cohen; TSEs friend Jean de Menasce worked on it.
6 Charles Renouvier (18151903): French neo-Kantian philosopher and student of Comte.
His books included Essais de critique gnrale (185464) and La Science de la morale (1869),
and he figures in Maritains Rflexions sur lintelligence (1924).
7 TSEs judgement of William James was largely sceptical. He once praised the fact that
what seems scepticism or inconsistency or vagueness in others, James has the knack of
communicating as a sense of sincere adventurousness (William James on Immortality, NS 9:
231, 8 Sept. 1917).
8 Maine de Biran (17661824): French philosopher. Starting out as a follower of Locke and
Condillac, he subsequently became an intellectualist and then a mystical theosophist.
9 Joseph de Maistre (17531821): political philosopher; author of Considrations sur la
France (1796), a critique of the French Revolution; Du Pape (1819), a defence of papal
infallibility; and Soires de St Ptersbourg (1821).
795
Do you know anything about a contemporary named Ernest Seillire?1
I am delighted about the poems as well as the essays.2 About the
dedication: for myself, modesty is not proof against such a compliment,
and I am candidly immensely flattered and pleased. I know no greater
compliment. Dedications are too often used for paying off worldly debts;
as there is no debt at all in this case, I am all the more honoured. There is
only one point that occurs to me as an objection, which I will put to you:
namely: whether the statement of a certain community of interest and
point of view implied by such a dedication is, from the point of view of
efficacy, good or injurious? For the purpose of implanting the right ideas
in the public mind, is an obvious intimacy a good thing or does it raise the
spectre of a Gunpowder Plot? I have doubts. As you say, my knowledge of
your wish is the main thing: and I hope you will base your decision on
your judgment of what is most to the public interest! After all, no harm is
done by your not dedicating the book!3
I have read Maritains book,4 and other books, since I have been here.
I think it a valuable and significant book, but nevertheless am a little
disappointed with it. I feel that the man has been somehow in too great a
hurry to arrive, that he has with good intentions fallen into the trap of
zealotry; and in his satisfaction at having found a point of view, is inclined
to indulge himself in a political activity, and slanging his opponents. The
attack on James5 is well conducted, and brings some amazing follies to
light, but is used more to gain a temporary platform victory than to
consolidate his own position. If he had made it part of a thorough
historical defense of thomism or of the Church to show that any
philosophy except that of the church leads to heresies which ordinary
common sense condemns it would be more permanent (this is what I
should attempt if I put myself in his place). But Maurrasism, an excellent
thing within its limits, is too exciting for a rather emotional philosopher
1 Baron Ernest Seillire (18661955); French critic and philosopher who was an opponent
of romanticism and an exponent of imperialism; author of La Philosophie de limprialisme
(4 vols, 19038) and Essais critiques sur la psychologie du romantisme franais (1933).
2 In 1926, F&G published two books by HR: Collected Poems 19131925 and Reason and
Romanticism: Essays in Literary Criticism.
3 In the event, HR dedicated his Collected Poems to William Prior Read.
4 Jacques Maritain, Rflexions sur lintelligence et sur sa vie propre (1924). In his
Commentary, in NC 5: 1 (Jan. 1927), TSE called Maritain the most conspicuous figure, and
probably the most powerful force, in contemporary French philosophy (3).
5 In ch. 8, La Nouvelle Thodice Americaine, Maritain mounted a critique of William
Jamess pluralism and pragmatism, in opposition to what he called in the next chapter Le
Ralisme Thomiste: the Thomist realism of Aquinas.

who was converted from Protestantism by Lon Bloy1 (as the Tharauds
say in their reminiscences of Pguy which are appearing in the Revue
Universelle very interesting too Maritain was a friend of Pguy, so was
Sorel).2
I feel more and more, with the example of these impetuous Frenchmen
before us, the necessity of proceeding very slowly, never anticipating or
faking the cards. What has been done, is to make the work of S. Thomas
and others more accessible and more intelligible: but this is only the
material of neo-thomism. The great perhaps the only analogy being
the transformation performed by Thomas himself upon Aristotle; and
keeping in mind that in respect of the matter to be ordered, the donnes of
life, science and society, our time differs far more from that of Aquinas
than the time of Aquinas differed from that of Aristotle; the work to be
done on Thomas therefore exceeds that which he did himself. Modern
psychology is tiresome, misleading and full of humbug; but you cannot
push it aside; you have to get straight through it somehow: for it has called
into existence a thousand new questions which are potential in the
humblest mind today, and which indefinitely complicate to take one
group of phenomena alone any problem of religious belief. Meanwhile
to make more possible the required patience, attentiveness and
anonymity one needs of course some tentative scheme which shall simply
go far enough to make action possible, and give to action a kind of moral
and liturgical dignity.
I feel certain of one thing however, and that is that taking things as they
stand the XII and XIII centuries offer the finest and perhaps the only
training one can give oneself at the moment. If it only serves as an
analogical stimulant to the mind and imagination, that is a great deal in
itself. If we can add it, in our self education, to our knowledge of Greece,
then it gives a second point of orientation, a standard of perfection to
direct and enlarge, without prejudicing, our purposes.
This is really the theme of my lectures on Donne etc. which I should
very much like to show you on my return. The idea is briefly this: to take
the XIII century in its literary form, Dante as my point de repre, to
1 Lon Bloy (18461917): prolific essayist, novelist and religious polemicist. TSE later
confirmed his characterisation of Maritain as rather emotional when he wrote: I have never
seen a more romantic classicist, or a Thomist whose methods of thought were less like those
of Aquinas (Three Reformers, TLS, 8 Nov. 1928, 818).
2 Jean and Jerome Tharaud, Notre cher Pguy was serialised in La Revue Universelle
XXIII, in late 1925. It was at the suggestion of Pguy that Maritain attended Bergsons
lectures at the Sorbonne.
797
treat subsequent history as the history of the disintegration of that unity
disintegration inevitable because of the increase of knowledge and
consequent dispersion of attention, but bringing with it many undesirable
features.1 Disintegration, which, WHEN the world has crystallised for
another moment into a new order, can be treated as a form of generation;
but which the historian at the present time, who does not anticipate, must
regard partly as the history of corruption. That is to say, to consider and
criticise the poetry of the XVII century from the point of view of the XIII.2
It seems to me that such an examination should bring out some curious
things. I am far from sure that I have succeeded.
I am leaving here in a week if I have written four lectures3 and if my
new passport arrives, shall go Rapallo for a few days, and probably come
straight back from there.
I have asked my secretary to ask you whether there is any new book you
care to review for April; but if there is, dont wait for her, but write to her
(Miss Fassett, at 23 Adelphi Terrace House) and ask her to send for it.
Ever yours
T. S. E.
Truc has a new book Notre Temps (Renaissance du Livre)4 I have not seen
it, but I think rather well of him.
Vivien Eliot to Ezra Pound ms Beinecke

14 December [1925] The Stanboroughs,5 Watford
Ezra. I wrote today to T. care of you. I have a feeling it wont arrive. I
want you to let me know at once if it doesnt. Tell T. not to be a fool. He
pretends to think I hate him, but its just a lie. All this is the handiwork of
Lilli Anne.
1 In his Preface to VMP, TSE presented the book as part of a trilogy with the general title
The Disintegration of the Intellect.
2 This argument is particularly prominent in the third lecture, Donne and the Trecento.
3 The first of TSEs eight Clark lectures was to be given on 26 Jan. 1926. On 12 Jan., TSE
said he had written three of the lectures by the time he returned to England from Italy.
4 Gonzague Truc (18771972): critic and biographer, associated with lAction Franaise
and author of Charles Maurras et son temps (1917). Notre Temps was published by ditions
du Sicle in 1925. TSE cites his Les mystiques espagoles: Sainte Terese Saint Jean de la
Croix (1921) in his reading list at the end of the first Clark lecture.
5 The Stanboroughs: A Modern Hydrotherapeutic Health Institution described itself as a
medical and surgical institution employing all the curative agencies recognized in rational
medical science. Nervous complaints and all forms of rheumatism treated successfully.

Bless L. A. O bless her. Speak to Tom. Ask him, dear Ezra, make him
rescue me before Xmas. I am well now. At least I shd be well with/given
one half grain of happiness, peace of mind, assurance, & time &
opportunity to read & think. But O the starvation with all these things
missing. I dont know where I am. I want a few books, my liberty, & peace.
Is that too much? T. is unbalanced, & is in the toils of Lily & one Higgins.
Pull him up O Ezra. S. O. S. Mrs. [? Yrs] V. H. Eliot
to Ezra Pound1 pc Beinecke

[Postmark 15 Dec. 1925] Savoy Hotel, La Turbie
I feah ma passpot probly arrive at Nice. Have been laid up with bad cold,
but a hot grog & a hot brick wrapped in the Morning Post v. comfortable.
Hope to join you by end of week.
Yrs
Tar Baby2

Sunday [December 1925] 46 Brook St, London w.1
Dear Eliot,
Your wife is really better and, I am sure, very keen and eager to do her
best to get thoroughly well. She has been at Stanborough Park now for
nearly a week. Lady Rs contribution of 50 has paid for the Dr. Your wife
paid 21 herself and I paid 52 in addition to this there was travelling
expenses and Willards fee making about 15 extra, leaving a balance. The
matron at Stanborough Park is an old friend of mine, a kindly, competent
woman who has lived a long time in the U.S. and acquired, more
Britannica, some of your more desirable characteristics. I am most
annoyed about the cold, its a beastly waste of time for you. I wish you
were at Rapallo.
On the whole, bar the tiresome and annoying cold, you are all the better
for your rest. I will complete your [?cemetarium] against wastage of vital
force (so called for want of a better phrase) as well as [illegible] for its
1 Addressed to Ole Marse Ezra Pound.

2 Like the Possum, the Tar-Baby is a character in Joel Chandler Harriss Uncle Remus. It is
a doll made of tar and turpentine, used to trap Brer Rabbit in the second story.
799
creation &c &c & storage. Please let me know whether it was or was not,
in your judgment, a mistake to have loaded my stuff on to your brain. Has
it clarified things? If it has, I hope it has operated unconsciously.
With my best wishes and heartiest congratulations for your restoration
Yours sincerely
Hubert Higgins
PS I should be obliged if you could send a P.C. for me to Miss Fanny
Gilbertson, Hotel Washington, Lugano, Swizzera, giving details about
prices and hotels. She is a favourite patient of mine about eighty-three.
Vivien Eliot to Sydney and Violet Schiff ms Valerie Eliot

16 December 1925 The Stanboroughs, Watford
Dear Violet and Sydney,
I have always looked upon you as friends. Am I right? I am in a very
great difficulty, and in a most lonely and precarious situation. I do not
know what to do, and I can think of no people who could advise me better
than yourselves.
Would it be possible for you to motor here and see me any afternoon
during the next week, from today? You can ring me up here 1.30 is the
best time, or 6 oclock to 9. If you come, come about 2.30 or 3, not
morning when I have treatments. When you come, ask to see the matron,
and ask her if you may take me out for a short drive and return me.
You must not be upset at my looks I look worse than I am. This is
chiefly worry and fear and torment. Send me a line directly in return for
this, and tell me what you will do. I am going quite gray. Do help me. Do
write and then do come.
Yrs ever
Vivienne1
to Gorham B. Munson cc
Dear Mr Munson
I am just on my way back to England, but I have today received your
letter, forwarded from London, and I cannot forbear writing a line to say
1 This letter was forwarded by the Schiffs to TSE: see SSs letter to TSE, 27 Dec.

I do hope you will go on along this line with your investigations.1 That is
exactly the conclusion I had come to from Babbitts last book,2 and I
thought no one had seen it except myself. It has been growing on him, but
one only sees it clearly in the Democracy and Leadership book.3 There, it
is almost enough to faire craquer le systme4 this constant leading up to
the point of Christian ethics just avoiding the bankruptcy of the inner
check. The Holy Ghost always descends in the nick of time, and always
in disguise.5
It is no use, I feel, calling his attention to this. And the Frenchmen have
not got any farther from their direction (though please examine Maritains
books). I should like to recommend to you one who seems honest as well
as learned Gonzague Truc (La retour la scholastique, Lavenir de la
raison, Notre temps just out, I have not seen this last).6 But you are on the
right line anyway. I hope you will let me see anything you write.
Sincerely yours
[T. S. E.]

17 December [1925] Savoy Hotel, La Turbie
Dear Leonard
I have just seen your review of my poems, which my secretary has sent
me; it is the only review I have seen.7 This is merely to say that it gave me
great pleasure, and I much appreciate the whole of it, but especially your
1 See Munson. The Socratic Virtues of Irving Babbitt, NC 4: 3 (June 1926), 494503.
Munson wanted to uncover the crucial problem Babbitt presents, namely whether religious
virtues, which in spite of several denials and qualifications he appears to claim for humanism,
can really be achieved by the habitual practise of a humanistic technique.
2 Probably Rousseau and Romanticism (1919).
3 Munsons essay is largely a response to Democracy and Leadership (1924).
4 Make the system crack (French).
5 TSE returns to the argument in The Humanism of Irving Babbitt, Forum 80: 1 (July
1928), taking issue with the doctrine of the inner check which runs through Babbitts
work. He argues too that Babbitts humanism is alarmingly like very liberal Protestant
theology of the nineteenth century and a by-product of Protestant theology in its last
agonies (SE, 475).
6 Gonzague Truc, Le Retour la scolastique [The Return to Scholasticism] (1919); LAvenir
de la raison, prolgomnes une histoire de la raison [The Future of Reason, Prolegomena
to a History of Reason] (1922); Notre Temps [Our Time] (1925).
7 LW in Jug Jug to Dirty Ears, a review of P 19091925 (N&A 28, 5 Dec. 1925, 354)
called TSE a long way the best of the modern poets . . . a real poet; the spirit of the age
is breathed into TWL, much as the spirit of 1850 was breathed into In Memoriam.
801
generously extra-critical remarks at the beginning! Your stricture does
certainly apply to the whole book, but I purposely omitted some
incomplete things to which I think it would not apply, because I thought
it better to wind up and liquidate this phase and start afresh.1 The book
gives me no pleasure and I think The Waste Land appears at a
disadvantage in the midst of all this other stuff, some of which was not
even good enough to reprint. But I regard the book merely as an ejection,
a means of getting all that out of the way.
I hope to be back about Christmas time, and hope that I shall find you
and Virginia both very well.
Yours ever
T. S. Eliot

My dear Richard
I expect to arrive in London on Christmas Eve. I should like to see you
(for one reason) before I see Routledge.2 IF convenient for you and your
wife, I think the best way would be for me to spend a night with you the
following week. IF that suits you, will you drop me a line to 9 Clarence
Gate Gardens to say what nights are NOT convenient I think any would
do for me, but of course cannot tell what I shall have to do till I arrive. IF
not convenient for me to come at all, please say when and where we can
meet.
I dont know about Whibley. I had a letter from him the other day, quite
agreeable, but making no mention of the book I had sent him. I got a vague
impression of depression from the letter whether the Tudors3 (as I
suspect) have not gone well, or ill health, or old age, or the feeling of failure
which I think he gets from time to time, I dont know. I shall go down to
see him before long, and find out whats wrong.
1 LWs only criticism of TSEs poems was that the theme which he plays on these subtle
strings is always the same and is very old. The splendour and romance of our desires and
imaginations, the sordidness of reality that is the theme of Prufrock, of Sweeney, of
Burbank, of The Waste Land, of the Hollow Men. TSEs reference to omitting incomplete
things may refer to SA: Fragment of a Prologue was to come out in NC 4: 4 (Oct. 1926).
2 To discuss the relation between F&Gs Foreign Men of Letters and The Republic of
Letters for Routledge.
3 The Tudor Translations series, ed. by CW.

Best cordial Christmas wishes to you both,
Ever affectionately
Tom
Please let me inscribe my book for you when we meet. I have only seen
one review Leonard Woolfs.1 It is very kindly, but it does not encourage
me.
to Vivien Eliot2 ms Valerie Eliot

My dear Wee,3
Very pleased to get yr. letter of the 18th from Stanborough. I am leaving
tomorrow and arrive Rapallo tomorrow night. It only costs 10/- first class.
I must find out about trains RapalloCalais when I get there, but if nothing
goes wrong I shall arrange to arrive in London on 24th (Thursday). I shall
send you a wire from Dover just to let you know I have crossed safely; you
will not hear from me again till then unless some alteration has to be made.
Could not leave sooner as passport has only just arrived, and had to get
Italian visa.
My love till then
T.
Vivien Eliot to Ellen Kellond4 ms Valerie Eliot

Sunday night [20? Dec. 1925] The Stanboroughs, Watford
Dear Ellen,
Dont say anything about Lady R. to anyone, or to Mr Eliot. You
understand. But Ellen dear tell him his wife does love him and still loves
him and always always has loved him, (he does not believe I do). Ask him
to be kind to me, and to forgive me for any wrongs Ive done him. Ask
1 LW, Jug Jug to Dirty Ears.

2 From a handwritten copy by VHE, enclosed with her letter to Ellen Kellond, [21? Dec.].
3 The origin of this pet name is not known.
4 Ellen Kellond had been the Eliots maid since 1918, and the letter was addressed to her at
6 Elgin Avenue, Maida Vale, London w.9. TSE said that part of The Game of Chess was
pure Ellen Kellond (TWL: Facs, 127). When Ellen left their service the following Mar. to get
married, VHE told OM (27 Mar.): She has been my greatest best almost only friend for
nine years.
803
and beg him to come quickly and fetch me away and have me with him
for Xmas. And to put me right with these people here, for Ellen I am in
such an awful position. The humiliation of it. Dr Higgins is very angry,
and I fear Mr Eliot will be angry. O dont let him. Promise me I can come
home for Xmas. Order Beasleys car for Thursday or perhaps it will be
engaged.
If Mr Eliot does not arrive till night, what shall I do? I shall go mad
Ellen.
Vivien Eliot to Ellen Kellond ms Valerie Eliot

Monday morning [?21 Dec. 1925] The Stanboroughs, Watford
Dear Ellen
Here is a copy of Mr Eliots letter to me, which has just this moment
arrived.1 This is an answer to two of mine which were long letters and
most affectionate and in which I begged him to have me home for Xmas.
So now you can see for yourself. Is this like the Mr Eliot you used to know?
You see, he no longer wants me and no longer cares for me. O Ellen what
shall I do what shall I do. And I am kept here in the pretence that it is to
get me well, while they torture me with neglect, and cruelty, and despair.
I have not slept at all for the last two nights, and for the last four nights I
think I have only slept about six hours in all.
Yet I am kept here for my health. I am banished from my home, from
my husband, from my parents, from all and everything that makes life
worth living, by the will of one man and one woman, who [sc. you] know
who so that they may secure my husband and turn him from me for ever.
Well Ellen, this is the end of it. I mean to take my life. At the first
opportunity I shall do so. It is difficult here, but I shall find a way. This is
the end.
V. H. Eliot.
Keep all my letters. You will need them soon.
1 TSEs letter of 18 Dec.

Vivien Eliot to Dr Hubert Higgins ms Valerie Eliot
Tuesday 22 December [1925] The Stanboroughs, Watford
Dear Dr Higgins
I have very good news of my husband from Mr Pound with whom he is
staying telling me that he is in excellent health and spirits. Mr Pound has
known him for twelve years, so he can judge, (he has also been very ill
himself for years and knows about health).
I know how pleased you will be. You need no longer make him out an
invalid (or an imbecile). Thank you for your letter. I have an idea which I
think will meet everybodys wishes, and I shd. like to discuss it with you
when I have seen my husband. (Brighton yes).
You see, the first time you came to see me here you said I was to stay two
or three months, and the next time you said you had never intended that
I shd. stay here. So in points of consistency there is nothing to choose
between us.
If I find you have induced my husband to disbelieve my statements
I shall kill myself. I feel so ill and so worried that I have gone and kept the
nurse another week, Dr Rubli also thinking it advisable.
I need to go to the dentist at once, and the oculist at once. I am all falling
to pieces and to keep me anywhere in this state is certainly not for my
health.
Will you help me to get all these things seen to. And Xmas! If am left
here alone over Xmas I shall [sentence unfinished]
If my husband wont help me you can rely on J. R. Culpin Esq. C/o
Anglo-Argentine Bank, 24 Lombard St, e.c.3 (Royal 4020) to do any
business and arrangements for me.1 He will always help in any way.
Some friends of ours [Sydney and Violet Schiff] who have known us
since we were married and who have known Lady Rothermere for many
many years are motoring down to see me today as they are anxious. They
will find me a dreadful sight.
1 J. C. Culpin told TSE (25 Nov.) that he had seen IPF, who had given him an account of
what had happened & of her news of Vivien . . . [A]s far as can be judged by Viviens letters,
she appears to have passed through the crisis. He had been to see Ellen Kellond at Clarence
Gate and looked in at the other flat in Burleigh Mansions (which TSE had offered for his use)
and found everything satisfactory. He would be happy to attend to any of TSEs affairs if
needed.
805
I am in constant communication with the Eliot family, who, oddly, are
fond of me! They are very worried over all this.
With sincere good-feeling
Yours
V. H. Eliot
PS I was unhappy here and I did write to my husband asking to be sent to
Margate with a good elderly nurse. I take it he communicated with you.
Later. When I think of all that my husband has done for me, and of all
the life I smashed up (as I do think of it, all night and much of the day) I
do not know why I dont go out and hang myself.
There is so much opportunity for sorrow and brooding here and the
atmosphere fosters it. I feel absolutely done.
Vivien Eliot to Ellen Kellond ms Valerie Eliot

Undated [late December 1925] The Stanboroughs, Watford
Dont trust Miss Fassett she is not altogether my friend. You could
better trust Mr and Mrs Schiff
Mrs Hutchinson
the Sitwells
Mrs Woolf
Lady Ottoline Morrell
Dr Miller.1

Dearest Ottoline
I am only writing to wish you a very very happy Christmas and to tell
you that I am now nearly well. I am leaving here in a few weeks, and going
to Brighton, to finish the cure.
I have thought of you very often. I hope you have not forgotten me.
I should love to see you. If you go to London, do let me know in time. Do
write, anyhow, and tell me how you are.
1 Dr Raymond Miller, one of VHEs doctors, had a practice at 110 Harley Street. On 10 Feb.
1926, he reported on VHEs progress to TSE. He was not worried about her fears, and
recommended that they move into their new house together. VHE liked to be a sort of dressed
up doll, and she felt in her mind that she must dominate TSE or he would dominate her.
He told TSE he regretted the tendency to make the circles of your lives too coincident.

I feel so much better.
With ever so much love.
Affectly
Vivienne Eliot

Dear Mary
Your letter was forwarded to me here, and I have been intending to write
to you, but I have been so busy arranging my next plans.
How sad that you have given up Eleanor.1 Only I think in the long run
every change is good dont you!
I am nearly well now, and going to London soon, and then to Brighton,
or abroad. Perhaps I shall see you then, before long. I do hope so.
Of course I have no news, but you must have a great deal. I should love
to meet you again, after such ages. It will seem like starting a new life,
to me.
Do write again. Write anything, about yourself.
My love
Vivien
from Sydney Schiff ms Valerie Eliot

27 December 1925 18 Cambridge Square, Hyde Park,
London
My dear Tom
There is no letter so far from Vivienne though (exceptionally) there was
a post this morning. The enclosed is the one that caused our visit.2 The
agitation apparent therein was less in evidence than the letter would have
led one to anticipate and passed away gradually during the afternoon until
towards the end she became perfectly reasonable.
Recalling her long account of her experiences, the point she seemed most
concerned to emphasize was that her habit of taking chloral during many
1 Eleanor House, which the Hutchinsons had rented in West Wittering.

2 The Schiffs had visited VHE at the Stanboroughs, as she had implored them to do: SS
enclosed her letter of 16 Dec.
807
years was the cause of all her troubles and she repeated several times that
though she still slept very badly and could not dispense with a night nurse,
nothing would induce her ever to take a narcotic again.
Yours ever affectly
Sydney

1
caro lapino,
jes to reassure you its as I thought all moonshine. But delighted at
the idea of coming with me later in hot weather and bathing. Physically
fitter than I have ever seen her, I think. Otherwise, much to be desired, Im
not so optimistic as I might be. She is to go to Brighton in a furnished flat
with a nurse. But there are some very good signs.
Yew dropped a brick for a minute in telling her I look in exclnt health.
Itll come out in the wash, but dr. was trying to impress her I had been on
the verge and was just pulling round with care and treatment, people in this
state always inclining to vampire.2
Anny way, I shll thank God when the next six months is over, if still
alive.
Coming to Rapallo was well wuth it, for me. Shall communicate shortly
about finances. Comfortable journey.
Finding myself having to explain how I heard a bit of Antheil, said you
played me bits on the barroom piano.3
ever
T.
Find she may have written letters and spread undesirable (and untrue)
rumours about me.* If you shd at any time hear such, youll be ready for
them, & will have to say she has had a nervous breakdown. And you might
let me know. Im ready to wipe up after these rumours when necessary.
<It appears that at the first place they had to remove your works as she
would read em the whole time?>4
*<But on the whole I found her extremely affectionate.>
1 Dear Rabbit (Italian) an equivalent to Brer Rabbit.

2 See VHEs letter to Dr Higgins of 22 Dec.
3 EP was continuing to promote the US composer George Antheil, on whom he wrote his
next piece for TSE, Antheil, 19241926, NC 4: 4 (Oct. 1926), 6959.
4 The first place was Elmsleigh, nr. Southampton, where VHE was treated for a while.

Tuesday, 28 December [1925] The Criterion, 17 Thavies Inn
Dear Mr Bennett
I was extremely sorry to fail, especially after your kindness in making a
second appointment. I shall be out again soon, and if it is not too
importunate should like to come next week (or I could come to tea on
Saturday). But unless the latter, please dont bother to answer. I will write
again and ring up afterwards.
With apologies and regrets
T. S. Eliot

My dear Ottoline,
This is just to say that I got back late on Christmas Eve, and found your
little diary, which gave me very great pleasure more than I can tell you;
for indeed I expected that you would forget me this year. Also a parcel and
a letter which I took out to Vivien; I do not know what you gave her, but
I know that both present and letter made her very happy, and she has
expressed great affection for you. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate
and value your friendship and loyalty.
So I hope you got the volume of my poems which I sent you from
France?
I am frightfully rushed at the moment, and will write more fully in a
week or so. I should like very much to see you, and I should like to see you
before Vivien does.
Ever affectionately
Tom
Vivien Eliot to Ottoline Morrell ts Texas

Dearest Ottoline,
I only sent you a card, in haste, to thank you for your very very beautiful
present. I was so touched that you remembered me, after so long!
809
Being away from everyone for a long time makes one realise who really
are the friends of ones choice, and who one needs to keep. I do need yr.
friendship, and hope you will give it to me will you? I have thought of
you very often. I feel there is so much in you I have never really
appreciated.
I have been busy arranging to move from here thats lucky I did not
write sooner. I am much better, only not yet strong, or up to much effort.
I leave here on Monday, and go to 9 Clarence Gate for a week or so. Then
to Brighton for a long stay, to get really strong. Can I see you? You do go
to Brighton you know. Get yr. husband, or a nice rich friend or relation to
take you there for a long visit! Please do. Tom will be down each week.
[Enclosed]:
O Ottoline how could you?
How could you Ottoline
How could you take me in like that
And make feel so green.
O what a truly Otto-trick
Upon a friend to play
To make her feel as green as grass
Upon a Christmas Day!
For when I got your letter
In which you said Alas!
Ive done no Christmas shopping
So lets let the Season pass.
I turned again to regimen
And thought how wise is she
I wont send ANY present
And let dd Christmas be.
But as I sniff your glorious scent
My one pet Luxureee
I say thank Heaven Ottoline
Has played this trick on me!
December 26th,
With apologies and great love.

from Vivien Eliot Telegram Valerie Eliot
11.30 30 December 1925 Watford
afraid higgins 1 choosing out-skirts brighton terrified
isolation melancholia can you wire him do help division
[incomplete]
Vivien Eliot to Charlotte Eliot2 ts Victoria

Received about 30 December 1925 [The Stanboroughs, Watford]
My dear Mrs Eliot:
Today I have received your nice kind letter, dated November 29. I hope
you have heard frequently from Tom. He is at La Turbie, which is a small
place over Monte Carlo. I believe he is leaving there within the next few
days and going to see Ezra Pound in Italy, and then to Paris on his way
back. It should have done his health good. I do not know exactly when he
is returning to England.
I have left the home in Southampton, where you sent your letter. I did
not like it very much, although in many ways my health was greatly
improved there. I am now at a Sanatorium which is under an American
doctor, and which is run by people who belong to a religious sect call the
Seventh Day Adventists. The food is entirely vegetarian. There are very
elaborate treatment rooms where one may have every possible kind of
electrical treatment, heat and light and galvanism, and baths of every
description, and massage. There is a staff of well trained nurses who give
the treatments. As I am still far from well, and unable to sleep, I have a
nurse of my own, who sleeps in my room. She is very nice to me. I should
be most unhappy but for that. Of course it costs me more, and soon I fear
I must do without her.
How I wish I could see you. Do not let Tom come to America without
me. I must come. My family are all in Italy in Rome, and with Tom also
abroad I feel very very lonely.
Yes, Tom is still to edit the New Criterion, and under different
circumstances, but as it is all so complicated all his new business
arrangements, I shall leave it to him to tell you of them.
1 Dr Hubert Higgins. TSE told CCE (12 Jan. 1926) that VHE was back at Clarence Gate
with a nurse.
2 The text is from a typed copy, made and dated by CCE for HWE.
811
So Henry is to be married in February. I wish we might be present at the
wedding. I think of you with great devotion. Do not forget me. Keep well
for my sake. Never die.
from Geoffrey Faber to Lady Rothermere cc

I have now got from our solicitors the various documents which require
your approval, or the approval of your representatives before we can go
ahead with the formation of The New Criterion Ltd.1 Will you kindly let
me know whether you wish these to be sent direct to you or if not, whom
do you wish to act for you? The agreement you and we signed recently
provides that the Memorandum and Articles of Association shall be
approved by your legal advisers. Will you, if you wish them to consider the
Articles on your behalf, kindly send me their name and address.
Alternatively, of course, I can send them to Mr Horne.2 But that is just as
you desire.
Eliot has just returned from La Turbie and is a different man after the
change. But I fear he has a difficult time ahead of him.
Yours sincerely,
[Geoffrey C. Faber]
1 At a Directors Meeting to be held on 21 June 1928, Geoffrey Faber opened proceedings

by rehearsing the circumstances under which the Company was founded:
The Criterion had hitherto been operated solely upon the private generosity of Lady
Rothermere, and at a cost to her in the neighbourhood of 750 per annum. This figure was
borne in mind when the preliminary agreement between herself and Messrs. Faber & Gwyer
Limited, which led to the founding of The New Criterion, was drawn up. The arrangement
was of the following character: The number of Ordinary Shares in the new company was
fixed at 20,000 Ordinary one shilling shares, of which 10,500 were allotted to Messrs. Faber
& Gwyer Limited and 9,500 to Lady Rothermere. The money received from these shares
was paid to Lady Rothermere and to Messrs. Faber & Gwyer Limited as consideration for
the copyright and the undertaking to publish. The working capital was provided by 5,000 1
Preference Shares of which 3,500 were allotted to Lady Rothermere and the balance in effect
to Messrs. Faber & Gwyer Limited. It was hoped that this would be sufficient to finance the
publication of the review for five years, the deficit on publication being estimated to amount
to 1,000 a year. In effect this would mean that Lady Rothermere would find 700 and
Messrs. Faber & Gwyer 300 a year. Under the new arrangement provision was made for the
payment of a salary to the Editor, no salary having previously been paid. At the formation
of the Company the amount of 8s. per share was called up, and the Company therefore
started operations on a working capital of 2,000. The first number was published in January
1926. Memorandum of a Directors Meeting (Present: GCF, TSE, the Company Secretary)
2 H. S. Horne, Solicitor, 74 Park Street, London w.1.

to F. Scott Fitzgerald1 ts Princeton
31 December 1925 Faber & Gwyer Ltd,
24 Russell Sq, London w.c.1
Dear Mr Scott Fitzgerald,
The Great Gatsby with your charming and overpowering inscription
arrived the very morning I was leaving in some haste for a sea voyage
advised by my doctor.2 I therefore left it behind and only read it on my
return a few days ago. I have, however, now read it three times. I am not
in the least influenced by your remark about myself when I say that it has
interested and excited me more than any new novel I have seen, either
English or American, for a number of years.
When I have time I should like to write to you more fully and tell you
exactly why it seems to me such a remarkable book. In fact it seems to me
to be the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James.3
I have recently become associated in the capacity of a director with the
publishing firm whose name you see above. May I ask you, if you have not
already committed yourself to publish The Great Gatsby with some other
publishing house in London, to let us take the matter up with you?4 I think
that if we published the book we could do as well by you as anyone.
1 F. Scott Fitzgerald (18961940): novelist and short-story writer; author of This Side of
Paradise (1920), The Beautiful and the Damned (1922), and The Great Gatsby (1925). This
letter from TSE was reproduced, with the third paragraph omitted, in F. Scott Fitzgerald,
The Crack-Up, ed. Edmund Wilson (1945).
2 TSEs copy was inscribed: For T. S. Elliot [sic] / Greatest of Living Poets / from his
enthusiastic / worshipper / F. Scott Fitzgerald. / Paris. / Oct / 1925. Replying in early Feb.
1926 Fitzgerald said that A Portrait of a Lady was his favourite modern poem. He also
described the elation he had felt when Edmund Wilson had given him the proofs of TWL
to read.
3 Fitzgerald wrote to Maxwell Perkins (20 Feb. 1926): Now, confidential. T. S. Eliot for
whom you know my profound admiration I think hes the greatest living poet in any
language wrote me. Hed read Gatsby 3 times and thought it was the 1st step forward
American fiction had taken since Henry James (Matthew J. Bruccoli, F. Scott Fitzgerald:
A Life in Letters, 1994, 137). TSEs praise, he believed, was easily the nicest thing thats
happened . . . in connection with Gatsby; and he later told Ernest Hemingway it made him
feel like the biggest man in my profession . . . everybody admired me and I was proud Id
done such a good thing (quoted in Scott Donaldson, Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald: The Rise
and Fall of a Literary Friendship [2000]).
4 The Great Gatsby was committed to Chatto & Windus: it was published in Feb. 1926.
813
By the way, if you ever have any short stories which you think would be
suitable for the Criterion I wish you would let me see them.1
With many thanks,
I am,
Yours very truly,
T. S. Eliot
PS By a coincidence Gilbert Seldes in his New York Chronicle in the
Criterion for January 14th has chosen your book for particular mention.2
to F. L. Lucas3 cc
Dear Mr Lucas,
I hope that you will remember that I had the pleasure of coming to see
you one Sunday last year at Kings. In any case you probably do not know
that I have become associated with the publishing firm of Faber & Gwyer
who also publish the Criterion. I am writing to you in my role of publisher
because I have heard indirectly that you have recently written a novel, the
publication of which, I hope, is not yet arranged. If the rumour is correct
and if my hope is justified, may I ask you to consider letting us see your
manuscript?4
1 None of Fitzgeralds stories appeared in C.

2 Gilbert Seldes, in New York Chronicle (NC 4: 1, Jan. 1926, 1707), observed that the
American press had been not too enthusiastic about Fitzgeralds novel, but said it was
a brilliant work which has structure, and . . . has life. The Great Gatsby was reviewed
later by Conrad Aiken in NC 4: 4 (Oct. 1926). Though Aiken called it a highly coloured and
brilliant little novel, he was less impressed: It is not great, it is not large, it is not strikingly
subtle . . .
3 F. L. Lucas (18941967): English classical scholar, literary critic, and poet; Fellow and
Librarian of Kings College, Cambridge; author of Seneca and Elizabethan Tragedy (1922)
and Euripides and his Influence (1924).
4 Lucass novel The River Flows was published by the Hogarth Press in Oct. 1926.

I hope that you will be in Cambridge during the winter term as I have
been looking forward to meeting you again when I come up to lecture at
Trinity.1
Sincerely yours,
[T. S. E.]
TSE/IPF
1 Lucas had published a hostile rev. of TWL: a poem that has to be explained in notes is
not unlike a picture with This is a dog inscribed beneath; he added, the borrowed jewels
he has set in its head do not make Mr Eliots toad the more prepossessing (NS 22, 3 Nov.
1923, 118). According to E. M. W. Tillyard, Lucas was openly hostile to TSE at Cambridge
(The Muse Unchained [1958], 98); and according to T. E. B. Howarth, Lucas would not
even allow Eliots work to be bought for the library (Cambridge Between Two Wars [1978],
166). See TSE on The Complete Works of John Webster (4 vols), ed. Lucas, in NC 7: 4 (June
1928), 4436.
815
glossary of names
Conrad Aiken (18891973): American poet and critic. Though he and

Eliot were a year apart at Harvard, they became close friends, and fellow
editors of The Harvard Advocate. TSE said he had gone in for psycho-
analysis with a Swinburnian equipment and did not escape the fatal
American introspectiveness (Reflections on Contemporary Poetry, Egoist
6: 3, July 1919). Aiken wrote a witty memoir of their times together, King
Bolo and Others, in T. S. Eliot: A Symposium, ed. Richard Marsh and
Tambimuttu (1948), describing how they revelled in the comic strips of
Krazy Kat, and Mutt and Jeff and in American slang. His writings
include volumes of poetry among them Earth Triumphant (1914); the
Eliot-influenced House of Dust (1921); and Selected Poems (1929), which
won the Pulitzer Prize 1930; editions of Modern American Poets (1922),
and Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson (1924); and essays gathered up in
Scepticisms (1923) and Collected Criticism (1968). His eccentric auto-
biographical novel Ushant: An Essay (1952) provides a satirical portrait of
TSE as Tsetse.
Richard Aldington (18921962): poet, critic, translator, biographer,

novelist. A friend of Ezra Pound, he was one of the founders of the Imagist
movement; a contributor to Des Imagistes (1914); and assistant editor of
The Egoist. In 1913 he married the American poet H. D., though they were
soon estranged. In 1914 he volunteered for WW1, but his enlistment was
deferred for medical reasons; he went on active service in June 1916 and
was sent to France in December (TSE replaced him as literary editor of
The Egoist). During the war, he rose from the ranks to be an acting captain
in the Royal Sussex Regiment. He drew on his experiences in the poems of
Images of War (1919) and the novel Death of a Hero (1929). After WW1,
he became friends with TSE, working as his assistant on the Criterion and
introducing him to Bruce Richmond, editor of the TLS (for which TSE
wrote some of his finest essays). From 1919 Aldington himself was a
regular reviewer of French literature for the TLS. In 1928 he went to live
in France, where, except for a period in the USA (193547), he spent the
rest of his life. He is best known for his early Imagist poetry and
translations. In 1931, he published Stepping Heavenward, a lampoon of
817
TSE who is portrayed as Blessed Jeremy Cibber: Father Cibber, O.S.B.
and Vivien (as Adele Palaeologue). This ended their friendship. His
growing estrangement from Eliot was further publicised in an essay written
in the 1930s but published only in 1954, Ezra Pound and T. S Eliot:
A Lecture, which takes both poets to task for their putatively plagiaristic
poetry. He also wrote an autobiography, Life for Lifes Sake (1941),
controversial biographies of D. H. Lawrence and T. E. Lawrence; and
Complete Poems (1948). See also Richard Aldington: An Intimate Portrait,
ed. Alister Kershaw and Frdric-Jacques Temple (1965), which includes
a brief tribute by Eliot; Richard Aldingtons Letters to Herbert Read, ed.
David S. Thatcher, The Malahat Review 15 (July 1970), 544; Charles
Doyle, Richard Aldington: A Biography (1989); Richard Aldington: A Life
in Letters, ed. Norman T. Gates (1992); Richard Aldington & H. D.: Their
lives in letters 191861, ed. Caroline Zilboorg (2003).
Francis William Bain (18631940): author and scholar; educated at Christ

Church, Oxford; Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, 188997; Professor
of History and Political Economy at the Deccan College at Poona, India
where he came to be considered not only as a professor but also as a
prophet and a philosopher 18921919. An old-style High Tory,
enthused by the writings of Bolingbroke and Disraeli, his publications
included The English Monarchy and its Revolutions (1894) and On the
Realisation of the Possible and the Spirit of Aristotle (1897), and a series
of Hindu love stories purportedly translated from Sanskrit originals. See
K. Mutalik, Francis William Bain (Bombay, 1963).
Julien Benda (18671956): journalist, political and social philosopher, and

critic. Born into a Jewish family in Paris, he studied history at the
Sorbonne, and was quickly recognised as a noted essayist and intellectuel,
writing for a variety of periodicals including Revue Blanche, Nouvelle
Revue Franaise, Mercure de France, Divan and Le Figaro. A passionate
upholder of the Graeco-Roman ideal of rational order and dis-
interestedness Eliot said that Bendas brand of classicism is just as
romantic as anyone elses his works include Dialogues Byzance (1900),
complete with pro-Dreyfus pieces; Le Bergsonisme: ou, Une Philosophie de
la mobilit (1912); Belphgor: Essai sur lesthtique de la prsente socit
franaise (1918); and Le Trahison des clercs (1927; trans. by Richard
Aldington as The Treason of the Intellectuals, 1928). See Ray Nichols,
Treason, Tradition, and the Intellectual: Julien Benda and Political
Discourse (1978).
818
Arnold Bennett (18671931), author and journalist (and son of a weaver
and tailor who eventually qualified and practised as a solicitor), grew up
among the five towns of the Potteries and began work at the age of
sixteen in a solicitors office; but he swiftly made a name for himself as a
journalist and prolific author. His best-selling novels include A Man from
the North (1898), Anna of the Five Towns (1902), and The Old Wives
Tale (1908) the first book in the Clayhanger trilogy. His plays, including
The Great Adventure (1913), were just as successful, with much
naturalistic and effective dialogue; and it was in his capacity as a capable
dramatist that TSE consulted him in the early 1920s ironically when Eliot
was attempting to write a determinedly (and ultimately unrealised)
experimental play, Sweeney Agonistes. It says much for Bennett that he
took TSE seriously and gave him advice that was valued. See The Journals
of Arnold Bennett, ed. N. Flowers (3 vols, 19325); and Margaret
Drabble, Arnold Bennett: A Biography (1974).
Marguerite Caetani, ne Chapin (18801963) born in Connecticut, she

was a half-sister to Katherine Biddle, and a cousin of TSE was married
in 1911 to the wealthy Roffredo Caetani, 17th Duke of Sermoneta and
the Prince of Bassiano. A generous patron of the arts, she founded in Paris
a review called Commerce, 191839; and then, in Rome, Botteghe oscure,
194860, a biannual review featuring poetry and fiction from many
nations Britain, Germany, Italy, France, Spain and the USA with all
contributions being published in their original languages. Among the many
celebrated authors gathered up in the journal were Andr Malraux, Albert
Camus, Paul Valry, Ignazio Silone, Robert Graves, Archibald MacLeish,
e. e. cummings and Marianne Moore.
Richard Cobden-Sanderson (18841964), printer and publisher, was the

son of the bookbinder and printer, T. J. Cobden-Sanderson (18401922),
who was Bertrand Russells godfather; and grandson of the politician and
economist Richard Cobden (180465). He became the publisher of the
Criterion from its first number in October 1922 until it was taken over by
Faber & Gwyer in 1925. He also published three books with introductions
by TSE: Le Serpent by Paul Valry (1924), Charlotte Eliots Savonarola
(1926), and Harold Monros Collected Poems (1933). In addition, his firm
produced books by Edmund Blunden and David Gascoyne, editions of
Shelley, and volumes illustrated by Rex Whistler. He became a dependable
friend as well as a colleague of TSE.
819
Jean Cocteau (18891963), playwright, poet, librettist, novelist, film-
maker, artist and designer, was born near Paris and established an early
reputation with two volumes of verse, La Lampe dAladin [Aladdins
Lamp] and Prince Frivole [The Frivolous Prince]. Becoming associated
with many of the foremost exponents of experimental modernism such
as Proust, Gide, Picasso, Stravinsky, Erik Satie, Amedeo Modigliani and
Sergei Diaghilev, he turned his remarkable energies to many modes of
artistic creativity ranging from ballet-scenarios to opera-scenarios, as well
as fiction and drama. Astonish me! urged Diaghilev. A quick
collaborator in all fields, his works embrace stage productions such as
Parade (1917, produced by Diaghilev, with music by Satie and designs
by Picasso); Oedipus Rex (1927, music by Stravinsky); and La Machine
Infernale (produced at the Comdie des Champs-Elyses, 1934); novels
including Les Enfants Terribles (1929; translated as Enfants Terribles,
1930); and the screenplay Le Sang dun poete (1930; The Blood of a Poet,
1949).
Ernst Robert Curtius (18861956), German scholar of philology and

Romance literature. Descendant of a line of famous scholars, he studied
philology and philosophy at Strassburg, Berlin and Heidelberg, and taught
in turn at Marburg, Heidelberg and Bonn. His most substantial work was
Europische Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter (1948), a study of
Medieval Latin literature and its deeply fructifying influence upon the
literatures of modern Europe.
Bonamy Dobre (18911974), scholar, editor and critic, was to be

Professor of English Literature at Leeds University, 193655. After early
service in the army (he was twice mentioned in despatches and attained
the rank of major), he read English at Christs College, Cambridge, and
taught briefly in London and as a professor of English at the Egyptian
University, Cairo. His works include Restoration Comedy (1924), Essays
in Biography (1925), Restoration Tragedy, 16601720 (1929), Alexander
Pope (1951), and critical editions and anthologies. From 1921 to 1925,
Dobre and his wife Valentine resided at Larrau, a village in the Pyrenees,
where he worked as an independent scholar. He was one of TSEs most
constant correspondents. See Jason Harding, The Criterion: Cultural
Politics and Periodical Networks in Inter-War Britain (2002).
Charlotte Eliot (18741926), TSEs third eldest sister, married George

Lawrence Smith, an architect, in September 1903. She studied art at
820
college in St Louis and then in Boston, with sculpture being her especial
interest.
Charlotte Champe Stearns Eliot (18431929), the poets mother, was born
on 22 October in Baltimore, Maryland, the second child and second
daughter of Thomas Stearns (181196) and Charlotte Blood Stearns
(181893). She went first to private schools in Boston and Sandwich,
followed by three years at the State Normal School, Framingham,
Massachusetts, from which she graduated in 1862. After teaching for a
while at private schools in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, she spent two years with a Quaker family in Coatesville,
Pennsylvania. She then taught at Antioch College, Ohio, 18657; at her
Framingham School; and at St Louis Normal School. It was while she was
at the last post that she met Henry Ware Eliot, entrepreneur, whom she
married on 27 October 1868. She was secretary of the Mission Free School
of the Church of the Messiah for many years. As her youngest child (TSE)
was growing up, she became more thoroughly involved in social work
through the Humanity Club of St Louis, whose members were disturbed
by knowing that young offenders awaiting trial were being held for long
periods with adults. In 1899, a committee of two was appointed, with Mrs
Eliot as chairman, to bring about reform. It was in large part due to her
campaigning and persistence over several years that the Probation Law of
1901 was approved; and in 1903, by mandate of the Juvenile Court Law,
a juvenile court was established with its own probation officer and a
separate place of detention. As a girl, Charlotte had nursed literary
ambitions, and throughout her life wrote poems, some of which (such as
Easter Songs and Poems on the Apostles) were printed in the Christian
Register. In 1904 she published William Greenleaf Eliot: Minister,
Educator, Philanthropist, a memoir of her beloved father-in-law; and it
came as a great joy to her when TSE arranged for the publication of her
Savonarola: A Dramatic Poem, with an introduction by himself (London,
1926). When she was shown the issue of Smith Academy Record containing
TSEs A Lyric (1905), she said (as TSE would remember) that she thought
it better than anything in verse she had ever written. TSE reflected on that
fine declaration: I knew what her verse meant to her. We did not discuss the
matter further. Inspired by a keen ethic of public service, she was a member
of both the Wednesday Club of St Louis and the Missouri Society of the
Colonial Dames of America, serving successively as secretary, vice-
president, and president. She chaired a committee to award a Washington
University scholarship that required the beneficiary to do a certain amount
821
of patriotic work; and in 191718 she did further service as chair of the
War Work Committee of the Colonial Dames. After the death of her
husband in January 1919, she moved home to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Henry Ware Eliot, Jr (18791947), TSEs elder brother, went to school at

Smith Academy, and then passed two years at Washington University,
St Louis, before progressing to Harvard. At Harvard, he displayed a gift
for light verse in Harvard Celebrities (Cambridge, Mass., 1901), illustrated
with Caricatures and Decorative Drawings by two fellow undergraduates.
After graduating, he spent a year at law school, but subsequently followed
a career in printing, publishing and advertising. He attained a partnership
in Husband & Thomas (later the Buchen Company), a Chicago advertising
agency, from 1917 to 1929, during which time he gave financial assistance
to TSE and advised him on investments. He accompanied their mother on
her visit to London in the summer of 1921, his first trip away from the
USA. In February 1926, he married Theresa Anne Garrett (18841981),
and later the same year the couple went on holiday to Italy along with TSE
and Vivien. He was one of TSEs most regular and trusted correspondents.
It was not until late in life that he found his true calling, as a research
fellow in anthropology at the Peabody Museum, Harvard. He was
instrumental in building up the T. S. Eliot collection at Eliot House. Of
slighter build than his brother who remarked upon his Fred Astaire
figure Henry suffered from deafness owing to scarlet fever as a child, and
this may have contributed to his diffidence. Unselfishly devoted to TSE,
whose growing up he movingly recorded with his camera, Henry took him
to his first Broadway musical, The Merry Widow, which remained a
favourite. It was with his brother in mind that TSE wrote: The notion of
some infinitely gentle / Infinitely suffering thing (Preludes IV).
Vivien Eliot, ne Haigh-Wood (18881947). Born in Lancashire, she was

brought up in Hampstead from the age of three. Having met TSE in
company with Scofield Thayer in Oxford in the spring of 1915, she and
TSE hastened to be married just a few weeks later, on 26 June 1915. She
developed close friendships with Mary Hutchinson, Ottoline Morrell and
others in TSEs circle. Despite chronic personal and medical difficulties,
they remained together until 1933, when TSE finally resolved to separate
from her during his visit to America. She was never reconciled to their
separation, became increasingly ill and unhappy, and in 1938 was confined
to a psychiatric hospital, where she died in 1947. She is the dedicatee of
Ash Wednesday (1930). She published a number of sketches and stories in
822
the Criterion (under various pseudonyms with the initials F. M.), and
collaborated with TSE on the Criterion and other works. See Carole
Seymour-Smith, Painted Shadow: The Life of Vivienne Eliot (2001).
Geoffrey Faber (18891961), publisher and poet, was educated at

Malvern College and Christ Church, Oxford, where he took a double first
in classical moderations (1910) and literae humaniores (1912). He was
called to the Bar by the Inner Temple (1921), though he was never to
practise the law. In 1919 he was elected a prize fellow of All Souls College,
Oxford, which he went on to serve in the capacity of estates bursar, 1923
51. Before WW1 in which he served with the London Regiment (Post
Office Rifles), seeing action in France and Belgium he spent eighteen
months as assistant to Humphrey Milford, publisher of Oxford University
Press. After the war, he passed three years working for Strong & Co. Ltd,
brewers (there was a family connection), before going in for publishing on
a full-time basis by joining forces with his All Souls colleague Maurice
Gwyer and his wife, Lady Alsina Gwyer, who were trying to run a
specialised imprint called the Scientific Press that Lady Gwyer had
inherited from her father, Sir Henry Burdett: its weekly journal, the
Nursing Mirror, was their most successful output. Following protracted
and difficult negotiations, in 1925 Faber became chair of their
restructured general publishing house which was provisionally styled
Faber & Gwyer. After being introduced by Charles Whibley to T. S. Eliot,
Faber was so impressed by the personality and aptitude of the 37-year-old
American that he chose both to take on the running of the Criterion and
to appoint Eliot to the board of his company (Eliots Poems 19091925
was one of the first books to be put out by the new imprint), which was
relocated from Southampton Row to 24 Russell Square. By 1929 both
the Gwyers and the Nursing Mirror were disposed of to advantage, and
the firm took final shape as Faber & Faber, with Richard de la Mare and
two additional Americans, Frank Morley and Morley Kennerley, joining
the board. Faber chaired the Publishers Association, 193941
campaigning successfully for the repeal of a wartime tax on books levied
by the government and helping to set up the National Book League. He
was knighted in 1954, and gave up the chairmanship of Faber & Faber in
1960. His publications as poet included The Buried Stream (1941), and
his major works of non-fiction were Oxford Apostles (1933) and Jowett
(1957), and an edition of the works of John Gay (1926). In 1920 he
married Enid Richards, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. He
died at his home in 1961.
823
Frank Stuart (F. S.) Flint (18851960), English poet and translator, and
civil servant, left school at thirteen but persevered with educating himself
in European languages and literature as well as in history and philosophy;
in 1908 he started writing articles and reviews for the New Age, then for
the Egoist and for Poetry (ed. Harriet Monroe). Quickly gaining in regard
and authority (especially on French literature: his influential piece on
Contemporary French Poetry appeared in Harold Monros Poetry Review
in 1912), he soon became associated with T. E. Hulme, Ezra Pound,
Richard Aldington and Hilda Doolittle; and he contributed poems to the
English Review (ed. by Ford Madox Hueffer, later Ford) and to Pounds
anthology Des Imagistes (1914). With TSE and Aldous Huxley, he was
one of the contributors to Three Critical Essays on Modern English Poetry,
in Chapbook 2: 9 (March 1920). Between 1909 and 1920 he published
three volumes of poetry, though his work as essayist, reviewer and
translator was the more appreciated: he became a regular translator and
reviewer for the Criterion from the 1920s till the 1930s and a member of
the inner circle gathered round TSE even while continuing to work in the
statistics division of the Ministry of Labour until his retirement in 1951.
Ford Madox Ford (18731939) originally Ford Hermann Hueffer (his

father was German, his mother English) novelist and editor, grew up in
London and quickly became associated with a wide circle of talented
friends including Edward Garnett, Henry James, Stephen Crane, H. G.
Wells, Ezra Pound and Joseph Conrad; he was the discriminating founder-
editor of the English Review, and later of the Transatlantic Review for
which he selected pieces by writers ranging from Conrad (see Joseph
Conrad: A Personal Remembrance, 1924), D. H. Lawrence and Wyndham
Lewis to James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. His novels include the celebrated
impressionist novel The Good Soldier (1915), which drew on his
experiences at a German sanatorium following a nervous breakdown in
1904; and the four-volume sequence Parades End (19248), which took
fire from his experiences as an officer in the Welsh Regiment during WW1
(he had been involved in the bloody conflicts of the Somme in 1916 as
well as at Ypres). See Max Saunders, Ford Madox Ford (2 vols, 1996).
E. M. Forster (18791970), novelist and essayist, was educated at Kings

College, Cambridge, where he gained a second in the classics tripos (and
where he was elected to the exclusive Conversazione Society, the inner
circle of the Apostles). Though intimately associated with the Bloomsbury
Group in London, where his circle of friends and acquaintances came to
824
include Edward Marsh, Edward Garnett, Duncan Grant, Roger Fry, Lytton
Strachey and Leonard and Virginia Woolf, he derived much from visits to
Italy, Greece, Egypt and India where he worked for a while as private
secretary to the Maharaja of Dewas: that experience brought about one of
his most acclaimed novels, A Passage to India (1924), which sold around
one million copies during his lifetime. His other celebrated novels include
Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), A Room with a View (1908), Howards
End (1910), and the posthumous Maurice (1971, written 191013), a
work that addressed his homosexuality. He gave the Clark Lectures at
Cambridge in 1927 in immediate succession to TSE which were
published as Aspects of the Novel (1927). Though he turned down a
knighthood, in 1953 he was appointed a Companion of Honour; and he
received the OM in 1969. See also P. N. Furbank, E. M. Forster (2 vols,
1977, 1978); Selected Letters of E. M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P. N.
Furbank (2 vols, 19835); Nicola Beauman, Morgan: A Biography of E. M.
Forster (1993).
Charles Haigh-Wood (18541927): TSEs father-in-law. Born Charles

Haigh Wood, in Bury, Lancashire, the son of a carver and gilder who
prospered, he was educated privately, at the local grammar school, and
(from 1873) the Royal Academy School in London. He started exhibiting
in the Academy three years later. He became a member of the RA, and
pursued a successful career as a minor portrait and genre painter. On his
mothers death, he inherited her properties in Kingstown (Dn Laoghaire)
in Ireland, as well as Eglinton House, and thereafter he was supported by
the rents of his tenants. In 1885 he married Rose Esther Robinson (1861
1941). They moved to Hampstead in 1891, settling at 3 Compayne
Gardens, where they lived for the rest of his life. According to TSE (Oct.
1920), Vivien was particularly fond of her father; she takes more after him
and his side of the family, and understands him better than the others do.
Maurice Haigh-Wood (18961980): TSEs brother-in-law. He was six

years younger than his sister Vivien, and after attending Ovingdean prep
school and Malvern School, trained at Sandhurst Military Academy, before
receiving his commission on 11 May 1915 as a second lieutenant in the
2nd Battalion, the Manchester Regiment. He served in the infantry for the
war, and on regular visits home gave TSE his closest contact with the
nightmare of life in the trenches. After the war, he found it difficult to get
himself established, but became a stockbroker, and he remained friendly
with, and respectful towards, TSE even after his separation from Vivien in
825
1933. In 1930 he married a 25-year-old American dancer, Ahm
Hoagland, and they had two children.
John Hayward (190565), editor, critic and anthologist, studied modern

languages at Kings College, Cambridge. Despite the early onset of muscular
dystrophy, he became a prolific and eminent writer and editor, bringing out
in quick succession respectable editions of the works of Rochester, Saint-
vremond, Jonathan Swift, Robert Herrick and Samuel Johnson. Other
publications included Complete Poems and Selected Prose of John Donne
(1929), Donne (1950), T. S. Eliot: Selected Prose (1953), The Penguin Book
of English Verse (1958), and The Oxford Book of Nineteenth Century
English Verse (1964). Celebrated in addition as the learned and acerbic
editor of the Book Collector, he was made a chevalier of the Lgion
dhonneur in 1952 and a CBE in 1953. Writers including Graham Greene
and Stevie Smith valued his keen editorial counsel; and Paul Valry invited
him to translate his comedy Mon Faust. Hayward advised TSE on various
essays, poems and plays including The Cocktail Party and The Confidential
Clerk, and most helpfully of all on Four Quartets. See also Helen Gardner,
The Composition of Four Quartets (1978).
Hofmannsthal, Hugo von (18741929), Austrian dramatist and poet, was

educated at the University of Vienna, where he studied law before
transferring his attention to Romance philology (writing a dissertation on
the Pliade poets, followed by a thesis on Victor Hugo). Inspired by French
symbolism and Viennese neo-romanticism, he launched his career as a
poetic dramatist and became a full-time writer in 1901. He enjoyed huge
success through his operatic collaborations with Richard Strauss: the
works they produced together included Elektra (a remodelling of
Sophocles which was acclaimed upon its first production in Berlin, 1903),
Der Rosenkavalier (1911), and Ariadne auf Naxos (1912). He became too
a virtuoso of dramatic adaptation, starting out in 1912 with Jedermann (a
version of the English morality play Everyman) and culminating with the
tragedy Der Turm (The Tower, adapted from a play by Caldern, 1927),
which sought to portray a society in a crisis of materialistic violence. In
1919 he was co-founder, with Max Reinhardt, of the Salzburg Festival
(Reinhardt was to produce no fewer than nineteen of his plays). E. R.
Curtius said of Hofmannsthal that after 1914 he ceased to be a romantic
aesthete and became a conservative-revolutionary, seeking to set up
intellectual authority based on spiritual motives.
826
Mary Hutchinson, ne Barnes (18891977): a half-cousin of Lytton
Strachey, married St John (Jack) Hutchinson in 1910. A prominent
Bloomsbury hostess, she was for several years the acknowledged mistress
of the art critic, Clive Bell, and became a close, supportive friend of both
TSE and Vivien. TSE published one of her stories (War) in the Egoist,
and she later brought out a book of sketches, Fugitive Pieces (1927) under
the imprint of the Hogarth Press. She wrote a short unpublished memoir
of TSE (Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austin) and was for
a time in the late 1910s a very intimate friend of his. See David Bradshaw
Those Extraordinary Parakeets: Clive Bell and Mary Hutchinson, The
Charleston Magazine 1997/1998, 16 & 17.
St John (Jack) Hutchinson (18841942): barrister-at-law; husband of

Mary Hutchinson. Educated at Winchester and Magdalen College,
Oxford, he was an unsuccessful Liberal parliamentary candidate, but acted
as a legal adviser to the Ministry of Reconstruction, 1917; and was
Recorder of Hastings from 1930.
Aldous Huxley (18941963): novelist, poet, essayist, whose early novels

Crome Yellow (1921) and Antic Hay (1923) were immensely successful
satires of post-war British culture. While teaching at Eton, Aldous told his
brother Julian in December 1916 that he ought to read Eliots things,
which are all the more remarkable when one knows the man, ordinarily
just an Europeanized American, overwhelmingly cultured, talking about
French literature in the most uninspired fashion imaginable. For his part,
Eliot thought Huxleys early poems fell too much under the spell of
Laforgue (and of his own work), but Huxley went on to become not only
a popular comic novelist, but, as the author of Brave New World and The
Doors of Perception, a highly influential intellectual figure. See Nicholas
Murray, Aldous Huxley: An English Intellectual (2002); and Aldous
Huxley, Selected Letters, ed. James Sexton (2007).
Harold Joachim (18681938): fellow and tutor in philosophy in Merton

College, Oxford, 18971919; British Idealist philosopher and follower of
F. H. Bradley; author of The Nature of Truth (1906), an influential account
of the coherence theory of truth. TSE recalled buying Joachims The
Nature of Truth at Harvard, and taking it with him in 1914 to Oxford,
where Joachim was his tutor. According to Brand Blanshard, it was
claimed that if you started any sentence in the Nichomachean Ethics of
Aristotle, Joachim could complete it for you, of course in Greek (Eliot at
827
Oxford, in T. S. Eliot: Essays from the Southern Review, ed. James Olney,
1988). TSE wrote an obituary letter in The Times (4 Aug. 1938; to his
criticism of my papers I owe an appreciation of the fact that good writing
is impossible without clear and distinct ideas), and also paid tribute to
him in the introduction to Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of
F. H. Bradley (1964). In a late letter, he said he taught me more about how
to write good prose than any other teacher I have ever had as well as
revealing the importance of punctuation in the interpretation of a text
such as that of the Posterior Analytics (24 June 1963: ts Merton College).
TSEs systematic notes on Joachims lectures on Aristotles Nichomachean
Ethics at Oxford 191415 are at Houghton.
James Joyce (18821941), expatriate Irish novelist, playwright and poet.

Having lived in Zurich and Trieste, Joyce moved to Paris in 1920, where
he became a centre of expatriate writers, including Pound and Stein. In
Blasting and Bombadiering (1937), Wyndham Lewis recounts his and
TSEs first encounter with Joyce there in August 1920 when bringing him
a parcel of shoes. Joyces A Portrait of the Artist was serialised in the
Egoist, and Ulysses in the Little Review up to 1920. When Ulysses
appeared in book form in 1922, the same year as The Waste Land, TSE
called it the most important expression which the present age has found
a book to which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can
escape (Ulysses, Order and Myth, Dial 75: 5, November 1923). TSE
published in the Criterion a number of pieces by and about Joyce, and at
Faber he was responsible for the publication of Finnegans Wake (1940).
See The Letters of James Joyce, ed. Stuart Gilbert and Richard Ellmann
(3 vols, 1957, 1966); Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (2nd edn, 1982).
Valery Larbaud (18811957): French poet, novelist, translator and essayist,

of independent means and with erudition and good taste. He translated,
among other works, James Joyces Ulysses. Pseudonymous author of Pomes
par un riche amateur (1908), Le Journal Intime de A. O. Barnabooth (1913),
and Ce Vice Impuni, la Lecture (1925). In a letter of 20 March 1922, TSE
called him a great poet and prose author. Larbauds essay The Ulysses
of James Joyce appeared in Criterion 1: 1 (October 1922).
Wyndham Lewis (18821957) was a painter, portraitist, novelist,

philosopher and critic; and one of the major modernist writers. A friend
of Ezra Pound, Lewis was the leading artist associated with Vorticism, and
editor of BLAST, the movements journal, 191415, in which TSEs
828
Preludes and Rhapsody on a windy night appeared (in issue 2, July
1915). Lewis served as a bombardier and war-artist on the Western Front,
191618, and later wrote memorable accounts of the period in his memoir
Blasting and Bombardiering (1937), including brilliant portraits of TSE,
Pound and Joyce, and wartime and modernist London. TSE reviewed
Lewiss first novel Tarr (1918) in the Egoist 5: 8 (Sept. 1918), describing
him as the most fascinating personality of our time, in whose work we
recognize the thought of the modern and the energy of the cave-man.
Lewis considered Eliot the most interesting man in London society
(7 Nov. 1918). TSE went on to publish Lewis in the Criterion and, even
though Lewis was notoriously querulous, carried on a lifetimes friendship
and correspondence with him. Lewis did a number of drawings of TSE,
one of which hung in Eliots flat, and his portrait of TSE is in the National
Portrait Gallery. On Lewiss death, TSE wrote The Importance of
Wyndham Lewis in the Sunday Times (10 March 1957), and a memoir in
Hudson Review X: 2 (Summer 1957): He was . . . a highly strung, nervous
man, who was conscious of his own abilities, and sensitive to slight or
neglect . . . He was independent, outspoken, and difficult. Temperament
and circumstances combined to make him a great satirist . . . I remember
Lewis, at the time when I first knew him, and for some years thereafter, as
incomparably witty and amusing in company . . . See The Letters of
Wyndham Lewis, ed. W. K. Rose (1963), and Paul OKeeffe, Some Sort of
Genius: A Life of Wyndham Lewis (2000).
Horace Liveright (18841933): American book publisher and (later) stage

producer. With Albert Boni, he founded Boni & Liveright in 1917, which
published not only The Waste Land (1922) but Ezra Pounds Instigations
(1920) and Poems 191821 (1921), as well as works by Ernest
Hemingway, Theodore Dreiser, Djuna Barnes, Bertrand Russell and Hart
Crane. He was a strong campaigner against literary censorship. Pound
considered him a jewel of a publisher. See Tom Dardis, Firebrand: The
Life of Horace Liveright (1995).
Desmond MacCarthy (18771952): literary and dramatic critic, intimately

associated with the Bloomsbury Group. Literary editor of the New
Statesman 19207, he moved in 1928 to the Sunday Times, where he
stayed until his death.
Frederic Manning (18821935): Australian writer who settled in 1903 in

England, where he came to know artists and writers including Max
829
Beerbohm, William Rothenstein, Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington;
author of Scenes and Portraits (1909). Despite being an asthmatic, he
served in the ranks (Shropshire Light Infantry) in WW1, being involved
for four months in heavy fighting on the Somme: this experience eventually
brought about his greatest achievement, a novel about the Western Front,
The Middle Parts of Fortune (privately printed, 1929; standard text, 1977;
expurgated as Her Privates We, credited pseudonymously to Private
19022, 1930; republished in full, with intro. by William Boyd, 1999). In
a letter to Aldington (6 July 1921), TSE described Manning as
undoubtedly one of the very best prose writers we have. See V. Coleman,
The Last Exquisite: A Portrait of Frederic Manning (1990).
Dr Karl Bernhard Martin lived at Dorfstrasse 15, Freiburg-Gnthersthal,

Germany, and ran a clinic called Sanatorium Hoven, Lengenhardstrasse.
The treatments he meted out combined starvation dieting with psycho-
analysis. One of his most socially prominent British patients was Lady
Ottoline Morrell, who chose to submit herself to his ministrations for
several years. Lytton Strachey, who met Martin at Morrells country house,
Garsington, thought him a miserable German doctora psycho-analyst
of Freiburg (letter to Dora Carrington, 3 June 1923). According to
Miranda Seymour, Morrells biographer, It was as a doctor, not as an
analyst, that Marten [sic] was an unfortunate choice. He thinks he has
found out my trouble some old germ left from typhoid years ago,
Ottoline reported to Bertie [Russell] in November 1923, and now he is
injecting me with all sorts of injections of milk and other things in advance
of England. The milk injections did her no good; Martens belief in
starvation diets, dutifully followed by Ottoline over the next ten years
whenever she felt ill, did her considerable harm. No woman of her age and
complicated medical history should have expected an improvement in
health from fortnightly rgimes of fruit and water which left her so weak
that she could scarcely sit up, but that was Dr. Martens panacea for all
ailments (Ottoline Morrell: Life on the Grand Scale [1992, 1998], 4489).
In due time, Virginia Woolf too would encourage Roger Fry to consult
Dr Martin. Another such sorry patient was Edward Sackville-West
(novelist, music critic, patron of the arts; heir to the grand Knole House in
Kent) at a dinner party in June 1923, he gaily declared to Virginia Woolf
that Mr. Eliot was his favourite poet, and the favourite of all his friends
who spent some weeks in Freiburg under Martins odd orders in the hope
of getting a cure for his homosexuality. Strachey subsequently mocked
Frys efforts, in a letter to Carrington: After 4 months and an expenditure
830
of 200 he found he could just bear the thought of going to bed with a
woman (quoted in Michael De-la-Noy, Eddie: The Life of Edward
Sackville-West [1988, 1999], 87).
Harold Monro (18791932): poet, editor and publisher. In 1913 he founded

the Poetry Bookshop at 35 Devonshire Street, London, where poets would
meet and give readings and lectures. In 1912 he briefly edited the Poetry
Review for the Poetry Society; then his own periodicals, Poetry and Drama,
191314, and the Chapbook (originally the Monthly Chapbook), 191925.
From the Poetry Bookshop, Monro published the five volumes of Georgian
Poetry, ed. Edward Marsh (18721953) between 1912 and 1922, and the
first volumes of poetry by writers including Richard Aldington and Robert
Graves, and some of his own collections including Children of Love (1915)
and Strange Meetings (1917). He married in 1920 Alida Klemantaski
(daughter of a Polish-Jewish trader), with whom he never cohabited but who
remained loving, loyal and supportive to him; both endeared themselves to
Eliot, who would often use the premises of the Poetry Bookshop for
meetings with contributors to the Criterion. After his death, TSE wrote a
Critical Note to The Collected Poems of Harold Monro (1933). See Joy
Grant, Harold Monro and the Poetry Bookshop (1967); Dominic Hibberd,
Harold Monro: Poet of the New Age (2001).
Harriet Monroe (18601936): American poet and editor, based in

Chicago. Monroe was the editor of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, which she
founded in 1912 when she was already over fifty and continued to edit
until 1936. It provided a crucial launching place for many modern poets,
including Eliot (whose Prufrock was published there in 1915), Ezra
Pound, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, W. B.
Yeats and Robert Frost. She was co-editor, with Alice Corbin Henderson
(first associate editor of Poetry), of The New Poetry: An Anthology (New
York, 1917), which TSE reviewed in Egoist 4: 9 (Oct. 1917). Her auto-
biography, A Poets Life: Seventy Years in a Changing World, appeared
posthumously in 1937. See also A History of Poetry in Letters, ed. Joseph
Parisi and Stephen Young (2002).
Marianne Moore (18871972), American poet and critic, contributed to

the Egoist from 1915. Her first book, Poems, was published in London in
1921. She went on to become in 1925 acting editor of the Dial, then editor,
19279, and one of the most important and influential modern poets in
America. Writing to her on 3 April 1921, Eliot said her verse interested
831
him more than that of anyone now writing in America. In his
introduction to her Selected Poems, which he brought out at Faber &
Faber in 1935, Eliot declared that her poems form part of the small body
of durable poetry written in our time.
Lady Ottoline Morrell (18731938): daughter of Lieutenant-General

Arthur Bentinck and half-sister to the Duke of Portland. In 1902 she
married Philip Morrell (18701941), Liberal MP for South Oxfordshire
190218. A patron of the arts, she entertained a notable literary and
artistic circle, first at 44 Bedford Square, then at Garsington Manor, nr.
Oxford, where she moved in 1915. She was a lover of Bertrand Russell,
who introduced her to TSE, and her many friends included Lytton
Strachey, D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Siegfried Sassoon, the Woolfs,
and the Eliots. Her memoirs (ed. Robert Gathorne-Hardy) appeared as
Ottoline (1963) and Ottoline at Garsington (1974). See Miranda Seymour,
Life on the Grand Scale: Lady Ottoline Morrell (1992, 1998).
John Middleton Murry (18891957): influential English writer, critic and

editor, founded the magazine Rhythm, 191113, and worked as a reviewer
for the Westminster Gazette, 191214, and the Times Literary Supplement,
191418, before becoming editor from 1919 to 1921 of the Athenaeum,
which he turned for a time into a lively cultural forum in a letter of 2 July
1919, TSE called it the best literary weekly in the Anglo-Saxon world. In
a London Letter in Dial 72: 5 (May 1921), Eliot said he considered
Murry as editor genuinely studious to maintain a serious criticism, but he
disagreed with his particular tastes, as well as his general statements.
After the demise of the Athenaeum, Murry went on to edit the Adelphi.
192348. In 1918, he married Katherine Mansfield, who died in 1923. He
was friend and biographer of D. H. Lawrence; and as an editor he provided
a platform for writers as various as George Santayana, Paul Valry, D. H.
Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Virginia Woolf, and TSE. His first notable
critical work was Dostoevsky (1916); his most influential critical study,
The Problem of Style (1922). Though as a Romanticist he was an
intellectual opponent of the avowedly Classicist Eliot, Murry offered Eliot
in 1919 the post of assistant editor on the Athenaeum (which Eliot had to
decline); in addition, he recommended him to be the Clark lecturer at
Cambridge in 1926, and was a steadfast friend to both TSE and his wife
Vivien. See F. A. Lea, The Life of John Middleton Murry (1959); and David
Goldie, A Critical Difference: T. S. Eliot and John Middleton Murry in
English Literary Criticism, 19191928 (1998).
832
Dorothy Pound ne Shakespear (18861973), the daughter of Yeatss
mistress Olivia Shakespear, married Ezra Pound in 1914 and remained
with him for the rest of his long life. Having started as a landscape
watercolourist, like her father, she began to visit Wyndham Lewiss Rebel
Art Centre, and adopted a Vorticist style. Her Snow Scene appeared in
BLAST 2, and she designed the cover of The Catholic Anthology (1915).
She was a friend of TSE and Vivien during the Pounds London years. See
Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakespear: Their Letters 19091914, ed. Omar
Pound and A. Walton Litz (1984)
Ezra Pound (18851972), American poet and critic, was one of the prime
impresarios of the modernist movement in London and Paris, and played
a major part in launching Eliot as well as Joyce, Lewis, and many other
modernists. Eliot called on him at 5 Holland Place Chambers, Kensington,
on 22 Sept. 1914, with an introduction from Conrad Aiken. On 30 Sept.
1914, Pound hailed Prufrock as the best poem I have yet had or seen
from an American; and on 3 October called Eliot the last intelligent man
Ive found a young American T. S. Eliot . . . worth watching mind
not primitive (Selected Letters of Ezra Pound, 401). Pound was
instrumental in arranging for Prufrock to be published in Poetry in 1915,
and helped to shape The Waste Land (1922), which Eliot dedicated to
him as il miglior fabbro. After their first meeting, the poets became
friends, and remained in loyal correspondence for the rest of their lives.
Having initially dismissed Pounds poetry (to Aiken, 30 Sept. 1914) as
well-meaning but touchingly incompetent, Eliot went on to champion
his work, writing to Gilbert Seldes (27 Dec. 1922): I sincerely consider
Ezra Pound the most important living poet in the English language. He
wrote an early study of Pound, Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry (1917),
and went on, as editor of the Criterion and publisher at Faber & Faber,
to publish most of Pounds work in the UK, including Selected Shorter
Poems, The Cantos and Selected Literary Essays. After his move to Italy
in the 1920s, Pound became increasingly sceptical about the direction of
TSEs convictions and poetry, but they continued to correspond. After
Eliots death, Pound said of him: His was the true Dantescan voice not
honoured enough, and deserving more than I ever gave him. See A. David
Moody, Ezra Pound: Poet: A Portrait of the Man and his Work I: The
Young Genius 18851920 (2007), Humphrey Carpenter, A Serious
Character (1988), and The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound 19071941,
ed. D. D. Paige (1950).
833
John Quinn (18701924): Irish-American corporate lawyer in New York;
major patron of modernist writers and artists; and collector of
manuscripts. He afforded generous support, both financial and legal, to
writers including Conrad, Yeats, Joyce and Ezra Pound. TSE began
corresponding with him at the urgent prompting of Pound, who had read
about him as a patron, in the New Age in January 1915: the
correspondence ran until Quinns death. Pound urged TSEs importance
upon Quinn (I have more or less discovered him, he proclaimed). Quinn
bought from TSE (for a fair price) the drafts of The Waste Land, which he
later bequeathed to the New York Public Library. Though a supporter of
the Irish nationalist cause, he worked for the British intelligence services,
helping to report upon agents provocateurs who were working in the USA
to mobilise anti-British groups of Irish and Germans. See B. L. Reid, The
Man from New York: John Quinn and His Friends (1969).
Herbert Read (18931968): English poet and literary critic, and one of the
most influential art critics of the century. Son of a tenant farmer, Read
spent his first years in rural Yorkshire; at sixteen, he went to work as a
bank clerk, then studied law and economics at Leeds University; later still,
he joined the Civil Service, working first in the Ministry of Labour and
then at the Treasury. During his years of service in WW1, he rose to be a
captain in a Yorkshire regiment, the Green Howards (his war poems were
published in Naked Warriors, 1919); and when on leave to receive the
Military Cross in 1917, he arranged to dine with TSE at the Monico
Restaurant in Piccadilly Circus. This launched a life-long friendship which
he was to recall in T. S. E. A Memoir, in T. S. Eliot: The Man and his
Work, ed. Allen Tate (1966). Within the year, he had also become
acquainted with the Sitwells, Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, Richard
Aldington and Ford Madox Ford. He co-founded the journal Art &
Letters, 191720, and wrote essays too for A. R. Orage, editor of the New
Age. In 1922 he was appointed a curator in the department of ceramics
and glass at the Victoria and Albert Museum; and in later years he was to
work for the publishers Routledge & Kegan Paul, and as editor of the
Burlington Magazine, 19339. By 1923 he was writing for the Criterion:
he was to be one of Eliots regular leading contributors and a reliable ally
and advisor. In 1924 he edited T. E. Hulmes posthumous Speculations.
His later works include Art Now (1933); the introduction to the catalogue
of the International Surrealist Exhibition held at the New Burlington
Galleries, London, 1936; Art and Society (1937); Education through Art
(1943); and A Concise History of Modern Painting (1959). In 1947 he
834
founded (with Roland Penrose) the Institute of Contemporary Art; and in
1953 he was knighted for services to literature. Eliot, he was to recall
(perhaps only half in jest), was rather like a gloomy priest presiding over
my affections and spontaneity. See Herbert Read, Annals of Innocence
and Experience (1940); James King, The Last Modern: A Life of Herbert
Read (1990); Herbert Read Reassessed, ed. D. Goodway (1998); and Jason
Harding (The Criterion: see citation under Dobre above), who states
that Read contributed sixty-eight book reviews, four articles, and five
poems to the Criterion.
Bruce Richmond (18711964), editor, was educated at Winchester and

New College, Oxford, and called to the Bar in 1897. However, he never
practised as a barrister. Instead, George Buckle, editor of The Times,
appointed him an assistant editor in 1899, and in 1902 he assumed the
editorship of the fledgling Times Literary Supplement, which he
commanded for thirty-five years. During this period, the TLS established
itself as the premier academic and critical periodical in Britain. He was
knighted in 1935. TSE, who was introduced to Richmond by Richard
Aldington in 1919, enthused to his mother that year that writing the
leading article for the TLS was the highest honour in the critical world of
literature. In a tribute, he recalled Richmond as possessing a bird-like
alertness of eye, body and mind . . . It was from Bruce Richmond that I
learnt editorial standards . . . I learnt from him that it is the business of an
editor to know his contributors personally, to keep in touch with them and
to make suggestions to them. I tried [at the Criterion] to form a nucleus of
writers (some of them, indeed, recruited from the Times Literary
Supplement, and introduced to me by Richmond) on whom I could
depend, differing from each other in many things, but not in love of
literature and seriousness of purpose. And I learnt from Richmond that I
must read every word of what was to appear in print . . . It is a final tribute
to Richmonds genius as an editor that some of his troupe of regular
contributors (I am thinking of myself as well as of others) produced some
of their most distinguished critical essays as leaders for the Literary
Supplement . . . Good literary criticism requires good editors as well as
good critics. And Bruce Richmond was a great editor (Bruce Lyttelton
Richmond, TLS, 13 Jan. 1961, 17).
Jacques Rivire (18861925), writer and periodical editor, was born and
brought up in Bordeaux (where he befriended the writer Henri Alain-
Fournier, who was to become his brother-in-law). In Paris, he taught for a
835
while at Lcole Saint-Joseph des Tuileries, then at the College Stanislas,
before taking a higher degree at the Sorbonne. By 1907 he was writing for
the Occident; and from 1909, for Nouvelle Revue Franaise (founded in
1908 by Andr Gide), which he made into the premier French intellectual
review. His elegant essays were collected in tudes (1912). During WW1,
in which he served in the infantry, he was captured and held for four years
in German prisoner-of-war camps until being repatriated in 1918. From
1919 until his death, he was the esteemed editor of NRF. He helped bring
the work of Proust to prominence. TSE extolled him after his death
(Rencontre, NRF 24: 139 [1925], 6578) as une personnalit charmante
et gracieuse, un esprit si alerte and si enthousiaste que dj alors il semblait
presque une menace pour le corps dlicat qui labritait. As opposed to
someone with a temperament like his own trop dispos mesurer toutes
choses selon les rgles dune conception dogmatique qui tendrait de plus en
plus devenir rigide et formelle Rivieres large-mindedness, his precise
but supple thinking, seemed an excellent discipline. See Jean Lacouture,
Une adolescence du sicle: Jacques Rivire et la NRF (1994).
J. M. Robertson (18561933), Scottish author, journalist, politician, began

his career as a clerk; then worked as a journalist on newspapers including
the Edinburgh Evening News and National Reformer. He was Liberal MP
for Tyneside, 190818. Though self-taught, he published more than a
hundred books and pamphlets. See M. Page, Britains Unknown Genius:
The Life-Work of J. M. Robertson (1984).
John Rodker (18941955): poet, novelist and publisher. Born in

Manchester, of an immigrant Jewish family, he published his Poems in
1914. During WW1, Rodker was a conscientious objector, and after
going on the run, sheltering with the poet R. C. Trevelyan, he was
imprisoned in Dartmoor Prison. In 1919 he started up the Ovid Press (a
small press which lasted about a year), and published TSEs Poems
(1920), Ezra Pounds Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, and his own Hymns
(1920), as well as portfolios of drawings by Wyndham Lewis, Henri
Gaudier-Brzeska, and Edward Wadsworth. In 1919, he took over briefly
from Pound as foreign editor of the Little Review. In the 1920s he spent
time in Paris on the second edition of Joyces Ulysses and set up the
Casanova Press. He published his Collected Poems, 19121925 (1930),
and later worked with Anna Freud on the Imago Press in order to publish
translations of Freud.
836
Viscountess Rothermere (Mary Lilian Harmsworth, ne Share) (d. 1937).
The daughter of George Wade Share, in 1893 she married Harold Sydney
Harmsworth, first Viscount Rothermere (18681940). It was owing to
Scofield Thayer, whom she met in New York, that she became the patron
and financial backer of TSEs quarterly review the Criterion 19225.
Discussion of her backing for TSEs review, a successor to Schiffs Art and
Letters, was first floated in July 1921, and became a reality when the first
issue of the Criterion appeared in Oct. 1922, featuring the first UK
publication of The Waste Land.
Bertrand Russell (18721970): one of the most influential twentieth-

century British philosophers; co-author (with Alfred North Whitehead) of
Principia Mathematica (191013), and author of innumerable other books
including the popular Problems of Philosophy (1912), Mysticism and
Logic (1918) which was reviewed by TSE in Style and Thought (Nation
22, 23 March 1918) and History of Western Philosophy (1945). In 1914,
Russell gave the Lowell Lectures on Our Knowledge of the External
World at Harvard, where he encountered Eliot. On 27 March 1914,
Russell described Eliot as very well dressed and polished, with manners of
the finest Etonian type. He later characterised him as proficient in Plato,
intimate with French literature from Villon to Vildrach, and capable of
exquisiteness of appreciation, but lacking in the crude insistent passion
that one must have in order to achieve anything. After their accidental
meeting in 1914, Russell played an important role in introducing TSE to
British intellectual life, as well as getting him launched as a reviewer for
International Journal of Ethics and the Monist. However, it has been
alleged that, not long after TSEs marriage, Russell may have had a brief
affair with his wife Vivien. The three friends shared lodgings for a while
at Russells flat in London. Russell was a conscientious objector and vocal
opponent of WW1, which led to a brief prison sentence in Wandsworth.
In later years, TSE saw little of his one-time professor and friend, and he
later attacked Russells philosophical and ethical views, in his
Commentary in the Criterion (April 1924), and elsewhere. Russell
provides a partial account of his relationship with the Eliots in The
Autobiography of Bertrand Russell II: 19141944 (1968). See also Ray
Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude (1996).
Sydney Schiff (18681944): novelist and translator, and patron of the arts.
In 1911 Schiff married his second wife Violet Zillah Beddington (1874
1962), sister of Oscar Wildes friend Ada Leverson, and a gifted musician
837
who had studied singing under Paolo Tosti. Schiff soon began writing
fiction and engaging in patronage of the arts. His first novel, Concessions
(1913), was published under his own name, but War-Time Silhouettes
(1916) and later novels appeared under the nom-de-plume Stephen
Hudson. The pseudonym was adopted in anticipation of the appearance
of Richard Kurt (1919), the first of a sequence of autobiographical novels
the series would be gathered up in a volume advisedly called A True Story
(1930). Schiff came from a wealthy Jewish family (his father having been
a successful stockbroker), and he chose to support Isaac Rosenberg among
other writers and artists; he would subsidise the short-lived but notable
periodical Art & Letters (191820), as well as contributing to it and
editing one issue. He was a major champion of Marcel Proust (and he
would ultimately translate Le temps retrouv), a friend of several other
writers (Vivien Eliot dubbed him the Sitwells Holy Ghost), and a
supporter of Wyndham Lewis (who painted a commissioned portrait of
him and then went on to satirise him in The Apes of God). He and his
wife were to become close friends of the Eliots: his first surviving letter to
TSE dates from 3 May 1919. Though always ready to salute greater talents
than his own, Schiff was still his own man, with decidedly independent
views: he was for example prompt to dispute with TSE the value of the
posthumously collected writings of the philosopher T. E. Hulme. On the
death of Violet Schiff, TSE wrote in tribute to the couple: In the 1920s the
Schiffs hospitality, generosity, and encouragement meant much to a
number of young artists and writers of whom I was one. The Schiffs
acquaintance was cosmopolitan, and their interests embraced all the arts.
At their house I met, for example, Delius and Arthur Symons, and the first
Viscountess Rothermere, who founded the Criterion under my editorship.
Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield knew their house, and
Wyndham Lewis and Charles Scott-Moncrieff, and many others . . . I write
primarily to pay homage to a beloved friend, but also in the hope that
some future chronicler of the history of art and letters in our time may
give to Sydney and Violet Schiff the place which is their due. (See Mrs
Violet Schiff: All-Embracing Interest in the Arts, The Times, 9 July 1962.)
See also Richard Davenport-Hines, A Night at the Majestic: Proust and
the Great Modernist Dinner Party of 1922 (2006).
Gilbert Seldes (18931970), journalist, editor and critic, graduated from

Harvard in 1914 and was a war correspondent before becoming for a
while editor of the Dial, 19203. His works include the influential study
The 7 Lively Arts (1924) on popular arts, embracing the comic strip and
838
popular songs as well as cinema and vaudeville and The Stammering
Century (1928). In later years he was prolific as an essayist; he also wrote
for the Broadway theatre, and became the first director of TV programmes
for CBS News, and the founding Dean of the Annenberg School for
Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. See Michael G.
Kammen, The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of
Cultural Criticism in the United States (1996).
Alfred Dwight (Shef) Sheffield (18711961), husband of TSEs eldest

sister Ada (18691943), taught English at University School, Cleveland,
Ohio, and was an English instructor, and later a Professor, of Group Work
at Wellesley College. His publications include Lectures on the Harvard
Classics: Confucianism (1909), and Grammar and Thinking: a study of
the working conceptions in syntax (1912). He later joined the editorial
staff of Websters International Dictionary.
May Sinclair, pseud. of Mary St Clair (18631946): English novelist; active

in the movement for womens suffrage, and an early apologist for psycho-
analysis; author of The Three Sisters (1914), Mary Olivier: A Life (1919),
and The Life and Death of Harriet Frean (1922) which TSE thought a
most interesting specimen of modern English fiction, and which made all
the use that is possible of psycho-analysis. TSE reviewed her A Defence of
Idealism: Some Questions & Conclusions (1917) in New Statesman 9 (22
Sept. 1917), while she reviewed Prufrock and Other Observations in Little
Review 4 (Dec. 1917). She was a good friend to TSE, who printed her
work in the Egoist and her story The Victim in the Criterion 1 (Oct.
1922). According to Valerie Eliot, in TSEs play The Elder Statesman
(1959) the phrase that Mrs Carghill remembers reading somewhere
Where their fires are not quenched (CPP, 553) is a deliberate allusion
to Where their fire is not quenched in Sinclairs Uncanny Stories (1923).
See Suzanne Raitt, May Sinclair: A Modern Victorian (2000).
Edith Sitwell (18871964): poet, biographer, anthologist and novelist;

editor of Wheels 191621. Her collection, The Mother and Other Poems
(1915), was followed by Clowns Houses (1918) and The Wooden Pegasus
(1920). In 1923, her performance at the Aeolian Hall in London of her
cycle of poems, Faade (1922), with music by William Walton, placed her
briefly at the centre of modernistic experimentation. Other writings include
Gold Coast Customs (1929), Collected Poems (1930), Fanfare for
Elizabeth (1946), The Queens and the Hive (1962), and a tart auto-
839
biography, Taken Care Of (1965). She was appointed a DBE in 1954. See
John Lehmann, A Nest of Tigers: Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell in
their Times (1968); John Pearson, Faades: Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell
Sitwell (1978). TSE published one of her poems in the Criterion.
Osbert Sitwell (18921969): English poet and man of letters. Early in his
career, he published collections of poems, including Argonaut and
Juggernaut (1919), and a volume of stories Triple Fugue (1924), but he is
now celebrated for his remarkable memoirs, Left Hand, Right Hand
(5 vols, 194550), which include a fine portrayal of TSE. TSE published
one sketch by him in the Criterion.
Sacheverell Sitwell (18971988): English writer, poet and art critic; the
youngest of the Sitwell trio. T. S. Eliot thought him the most important
and difficult poet in the anthology Wheels (1918). Reviewing The Peoples
Palace, he praised its distinguished aridity, and said he attributed more
to Sacheverell Sitwell than to any poet of his generation (Egoist 5: 6,
June/July 1918). However, it was not as a poet but as an idiosyncratic
writer of books about travel, art and literature, including Southern
Baroque Art (1924), that he came to be best known. TSE published one
poem by him in the Criterion.
Lytton Strachey (18801932): English critic, biographer, and essayist,

associated with the Bloomsbury Group. After early journalistic work,
including Landmarks of French Literature (1912), he came to prominence
with Eminent Victorians (1918), an exercise in cultural iconoclasm which
launched the New Biography. This was followed by Queen Victoria
(1921) and Elizabeth and Essex (1928). TSE wrote that he invented new
sensations from history, as Bergson has invented new sensations from
metaphysics (Dial 71: 2 [August 1921]). See Michael Holroyd, Lytton
Strachey: The New Biography (1994), and The Letters of Lytton Strachey,
ed. Paul Levy (2005).
Scofield Thayer (18901982): American poet and publisher; pioneering

editor of the Dial. Thayer came from a wealthy Massachusetts family,
which enabled him to travel and act as a patron of the arts. He was a friend
of TSE from Milton Academy, where he was his junior by a year. Like TSE,
he went on to Harvard and Oxford, where from 1914 he spent two years
studying philosophy at Magdalen College: it was at his rooms there that
TSE met Vivien Haigh-Wood in 1915. From 1919 to 1925 he was editor
840
of the Dial, having joined forces with Dr James Sibley Watson (who
became president of the magazine) to save it from closure. Re-launched as
a monthly in January 1920, the Dial became the most enterprising and
innovative cultural and arts magazine in the USA. It published TSEs
London Letters and The Waste Land as well as important essays by him
such as Ulysses, Order and Myth; Yeats, Pound, cummings, Joyce and
others of the most important Anglophone modernists; and influential
European writers including Mann, Hofmannsthal and Valry. A meeting
with Lady Rothermere prompted her to finance the Criterion, with Eliot
as editor. In 1921, Thayer settled in Vienna, where, while continuing
remotely to edit the Dial, he underwent analysis with Sigmund Freud. He
suffered a series of mental breakdowns, resigning from the magazine in
June 1926. Certified in 1930, he spent the remainder of his life in care.
Watson kept going with the Dial, and Marianne Moore took over as editor
until its final issue in 1929. Moore judged Thayer to be very quiet friendly
polished and amusing, and in his discernment and interplay of metaphor
. . . very brilliant (Selected Letters of Marianne Moore, ed. Bonnie Costello
[1998]). See also Nicholas Joost, Scofield Thayer and The Dial (1964).
Paul Valry (18711945), poet, essayist and literary theoretician, was born
near Marseilles (his father was French, his mother Italian) and educated at
the University of Montpellier, where he read law. After settling in Paris in
1894, he developed close friendships with Andr Gide and Stephane
Mallarm (from whom he took inspiration). For many years, 190022, he
worked for Edouard Lebey, director of the Press Association and Havas
news agency; and he co-edited the review Commerce, 192432. His early
reputation was built on his symbolist poems and some reviews,
supplemented by two prose studies, Introduction la mthode de Lonard
de Vinci (1895), and La Soire avec Monsieur Teste (1896) an abstract,
rational figure in search of quintessences. After a delay of nearly twenty
years, Valry then published a poem entitled La Jeune Parque (1917) and
a volume titled simply Charmes (Incantations, 1922) which gathered up
his poems of the period 191322, and which included his most celebrated
work, Le Cimetire Marin (The Graveyard by the Sea), a symbolical,
classically strict, modulated and musical meditation upon the essence of
death and life. In 1925 he was elected an acadmicien, and from 1937 he
held the post of Professor of Poetry at the Collge de France. Later writings
include numerous elegantly composed essays distilled from the pages of
the vast number of cahiers that he filled outover a period of almost forty
years with reflections upon literary theory and philosophy. Works
841
translated into English include Le Serpent (for which TSE wrote a preface
in 1924). Eliot came to know Valry fairly well over a 21-year span from
1923, and later said of him that his philosophy lays itself open to the
accusation of being only an elaborate game. Precisely, but to be able to
play this game, to be able to take aesthetic delight in it, is one of the
manifestations of civilised man . . . His was, I think, a profoundly
destructive mind, even nihilistic. This cannot, one way or the other, alter
our opinion of the poetry; it can neither abate nor magnify the pleasure or
the admiration. But it should, I think, increase our admiration of the man
who wrote the poetry. For the agony of creation, for a mind like Valrys,
must be very great . . . It is strange, but my intimacy with his poetry has
been largely due to my study of what he has written about poetry. Of all
poets, Valry has been the most completely conscious (perhaps I should
say the most nearly conscious) of what he was doing . . . It is he who will
remain for posterity the representative poet, the symbol of the poet, of the
first half of the twentieth century not Yeats, not Rilke, not anyone else
(Paul Valry, Quarterly Review of Literature 3, 1946).
Hugh Walpole (18841941): prolific, popular novelist. Born in New

Zealand but educated from the age of ten in England, he graduated from
Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1906. He put out his first novel, The
Wooden Horse, in 1909, and thereafter produced a best-seller almost
without exception, they were old-fashioned, honest, unpretentious tales
at the rate of almost one a year. Later successes include the five novels in the
Herries series, beginning with Rogue Herries (1930) and concluding with
The Bright Pavilions (1940). I know that I am sentimental, romantic and
slipshod, he good-humouredly conceded; and certainly exponents of more
modernist experimental fictions did not much value his work though the
wealthy Walpole was the well-regarded acquaintance of numerous writers
from Henry James and Joseph Conrad to Dorothy Richardson. Though
wary of the modern, Walpole had a good deal of keen respect for certain
modernist writers and their endeavours, including Eliots Criterion. In 1918
(while working in the Department of Information at the Foreign Office), he
wrote a letter of support for Eliot in his negotiations with the US Navy;
and in 1925 he wrote a further testimonial to support Eliots bid to get the
Criterion taken over by Geoffrey Faber and the Gwyer family at the
Scientific Press. When Eliot invited him to contribute a work for serialisation
in the Criterion, Walpole was pleased to submit The Old Ladies, which was
published in two parts (2: 7, April 1924, and 2: 8, July 1924), and in book
form later the same year. Knighted in 1937, he died in 1941.
842
Sydney Waterlow (18781944): British diplomat and writer. Educated at
Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge (where he gained a double first in
classics), he joined the diplomatic service in 1900 and served as attach
and third secretary in Washington. TSE met him in 1915, when Waterlow,
as a member of the editorial committee of International Journal of Ethics,
invited him to review for it. In 1919 Waterlow served at the Paris Peace
Conference (helping to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles), and in 1920 was
re-appointed to the Foreign Office, later serving as British Minister to
Bangkok, 19268; and Athens, 19339. In January 1920, Eliot told his
mother he was fond of Sydney, who had been kind to him. See Sarah M.
Head, Before Leonard: The Early Suitors of Virginia Woolf (2006).
Harriet Shaw Weaver (18761961): English editor and publisher, and

political activist, whom Virginia Woolf described as modest judicious &
decorous (Diary, 13 April 1918). In 1912, Weaver began by giving
financial support to the Freewoman, a radical periodical founded and
edited by Dora Marsden, which was renamed in 1913 (at the suggestion
of Ezra Pound) The Egoist. Weaver became editor in 1914, turning it into
a little magazine with a big influence in the history of literary modernism.
Following in the footsteps of Richard Aldington and H. D., TSE became
assistant editor in 1917 (having been nominated by Pound) and remained
so until it closed in 1919. When Joyce could not secure a publisher for
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Weaver in 1917 converted the
Egoist into a press to publish it. She went on to publish TSEs first book,
Prufrock and Other Observations (1917), Pounds Dialogues of Fontenelle
and Quia Pauper Amavi, Wyndham Lewiss novel Tarr, and Marianne
Moores Poems, and other notable books. (She played a major role as
Joyces patron and confidante, and went on to be his literary executor and
to help to put together The Letters of James Joyce.) TSE wrote in tribute
in 1962: Miss Harriet Shaw Weaver . . . was so modest and self-effacing
a woman that her generous patronage of men of letters was hardly known
beyond the circle of those who benefited by it . . . Miss Weavers support,
once given, remained steadfast. Her great disappointment was her failure
to persuade any printer in this country to take the risk of printing Ulysses;
her subsequent generosity to James Joyce, and her solicitude for his welfare
and that of his family, knew no bounds . . . [Working for her at the Egoist]
was all great fun, my first experience of editorship. In 1932 I dedicated
my Selected Essays to this good, kind, unassuming, courageous and lovable
woman, to whom I owe so much. What other publisher in 1917 (the
Hogarth Press was not yet in existence) would, I wonder, have taken
843
Prufrock? See also Jane Lidderdale and Mary Nicholson, Dear Miss
Weaver: Harriet Shaw Weaver, 18761961 (1970).
Charles Whibley (18591930) took a first in classics from Jesus College,

Cambridge, in 1883 and embarked on a lifelong career as journalist,
author and editor, and as a well-connected social figure (his chums were
to include Lord Northcliffe and Lady Cynthia Asquith). After working
briefly for the publishers Cassell & Co., he wrote for the Scots Observer
and the Pall Mall Gazette (he was posted as Paris correspondent for some
while in the 1890s, which enabled him to become acquainted with
Stphane Mallarm, Paul Valry and other considerable figures), and for
the Daily Mail, and above all for Blackwoods Magazine where he
produced for over twenty-five years a regular commentary, Musings
without Methods, of sharp High-Tory substance and style. TSE hailed his
column as the best sustained piece of literary journalism that I know of in
recent times. His several books included William Pitt (1906), Political
Portraits (1917 and 1923), and Lord John Manners and his Friends (1925).
Leonard Woolf (18801969): writer and publisher, and husband of

Virginia Woolf, whom he married in 1912. A friend of Lytton Strachey
and J. M. Keynes at Cambridge, he played a central part in the Bloomsbury
Group. He wrote a number of novels, including The Village and the Jungle
(1913), as well as political studies, including Socialism and Co-operation
(1919) and Imperialism and Civilization (1928). As editor, with Virginia
Woolf, of the Hogarth Press, he was responsible for publishing TSEs
Poems (1919) and The Waste Land (1922). In 1923 he became literary
editor of the Nation & Athenaeum (after TSE had turned it down),
commissioning numerous reviews from him, and remained a friend. See
An Autobiography (2 vols, 1980); Letters of Leonard Woolf, ed. Frederic
Spotts (1990); and Victoria Glendinning, Leonard Woolf: A Life (2006).
Virginia Woolf (18821941), English novelist, essayist and critic, was the
author of Jacobs Room (1922), Mrs Dalloway (1925), and To the
Lighthouse (1927), among many experimental and influential novels, as
well as of A Room of Ones Own (1928), a classic of modern feminist
criticism, and The Common Reader and other collections of essays.
Daughter of the biographer and editor Leslie Stephen (18321904), she
married Leonard Woolf in 1912, published her first novel The Voyage Out
in 1915, and founded the Hogarth Press with her husband in 1917. The
Hogarth Press published TSEs Poems (1919), The Waste Land (1923),
844
and Homage to John Dryden (1923). For his part, TSE published in the
Criterion Woolfs essays and talks including Kew Gardens, Character in
Fiction, and On Being Ill. In addition to being his publisher, Woolf
became a friend and correspondent; and her diaries and letters give a
detailed first-hand portrait of him. See Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf
(1996).
William Butler Yeats (18651939): poet and playwright. According to

TSE, he was one of those few whose history is the history of their own
time, who are part of the consciousness of an age (On Poetry and Poets).
TSE met Yeats soon after arriving in London, but despite their mutual
admiration of Pound, they had little contact until late 1922, when TSE
told Ottoline Morrell that Yeats was one of a very small number of people
with whom one can talk profitably of poetry. In his review of Per Amica
Silentia Lunae, TSE said One is never weary of the voice, though the
accents are strange (A Foreign Mind, Athenaeum, 4 July 1919). He was
keen to publish Yeats in the Criterion: see a Biographical Fragment in
Criterion 1: 4 (July 1923), The Cat and the Moon in 2: 8 (July 1924), and
The Tower in 5: 3 (June 1927). Yeats was instinctively opposed to TSEs
work, but discussed it at length in the Introduction to Oxford Book of
Modern Verse (1936), and declared after the publication of The Waste
Land that he had found it very beautiful (January 1923). See also Roy
Foster, Yeats: A Life: I The Apprentice Mage (1997), and Yeats: A Life: II
The Arch-Poet (2003).
845
index of correspondents
and recipients
correspondents
Eliot, Charlotte Champe (TSEs mother), 7881, 868, 8991, 924, 946, 967, 978,
1234, 199201, 25961, 2612, 2624, 2723, 2857, 3357, 3523, 3812
Eliot, Henry Ware, Jr (TSEs brother), 1057, 11213, 4203, 438, 43840, 6779,
7067
Eliot, Vivien (TSEs first wife; ne Haigh-Wood), 89, 656, 118, 140, 1689, 170, 182,
285, 31011, 3501, 445, 450, 463, 516, 577, 660, 6846, 714, 718, 7223, 72930,
7467, 747, 7723, 781, 782, 783, 7989, 800, 8034, 804, 8056, 806, 8067, 807,
80910, 811, 81112
Faber, Geoffrey, 547, 5523, 555, 562, 565, 598602, 61315, 61718, 618, 61924,
625, 640, 647, 6534, 654, 660, 661, 6623, 663, 664, 66970, 671, 6912, 694, 698,
707, 709, 7734, 812
Fassett, Irene Pearl, 51920, 7812
Hawkesworth, T. A., 783
Higgins, Dr Hubert, 7834, 7878, 7901, 799800
Keynes, John Maynard, 88
Methuen & Co, 103
Murry, John Middleton, 6312, 636
Quinn, John, 99100
Rothermere, Viscountess (Mary Lilian Harmsworth, ne Share), 7323
Russell, Bertrand, 63940
Saintsbury, George, 53
Schiff, Sydney, 8078
Valry, Paul, 1801, 2646, 2767
Walpole, Hugh, 584
recipients
A. P. Watt & Son, 4034
Aiken, Conrad, 3634, 409, 426, 431, 441, 455, 480, 4901, 5245, 526, 5778, 579,
5878, 696, 7089
Ainslie, Douglas, 304, 373, 387, 482, 503, 643
Aldington, Richard, 5, 289, 30, 467, 58, 1212, 125, 1434, 1678, 1912, 21820,
2446, 492, 493, 506, 5301, 5412, 558, 5689, 570, 6257, 630, 667, 6889, 693,
711, 712, 744, 7812, 7889, 7923, 8023
Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 4934
Bain, Francis William, 2056, 352, 424, 448, 5312, 642

Barfield, Owen, 63, 217, 317, 416
Barney, Natalie Clifford, 12930, 188, 474
Barry, Iris, 132, 299300
Bartholomew, Mrs, 216
Bassiano, Princess see Caetani, Marguerite
Bates, Herbert, 436
847
Baugh, H., 779
Beach, Sylvia, 6301
Benda, Julien, 33
Bennett, Arnold, 250, 465, 471, 505, 5201, 634, 638, 6712, 809
Bennett, Marguerite, 325
Berry, Anabel M., 328
Bertram, Ernst, 500, 5345
Blackmur, R. P., 658
Blodgett, Glen Walton, 187
Bodley Head Press, 340
Bos, Charles du, 119, 1256, 187
Brmond, Henri, 41718
Broad & Son, 71920
Brooks, Benjamin Gilbert, 3334, 564, 775
Burnet, John, 231
Buss, Kate, 334, 7567
Caetani, Marguerite (ne Chapin; Princess Bassiano), 550, 759

Caffrey, Charles, 37, 1956
Celenza, Giulia, 7245, 771
Carter, Hubert, 361
Cellier, Frank, 362
Chapman-Huston, Desmond, 737
Chicago Daily News, Literary Editor, 83
Ciolkowska, Muriel, 5701
Clark, Barrett H., 441
Classen, Dr E., 460
Clutterbuck, Hope, 4878
Clyne, Anthony, 1945
Cobden-Sanderson, Richard, 1415, 19, 20, 478, 1089, 110, 141, 1456, 154, 165,
167, 172, 174, 1745, 176, 180, 181, 183, 189, 2067, 211, 212, 250, 258, 2778,
281, 282, 283, 308, 3245, 33940, 346, 348, 354, 3667, 3801, 3956, 4246, 462,
4912, 51819, 5501, 5512, 5534, 5612, 7278, 745
Cocteau, Jean, 31213, 488, 494, 5012
Cohen, John Michael, 657
Colcord, Joanne Carver, 303
Collector of Inland Revenue, Baltimore, MD, 681
Collier, John, 2412
Collins, Harold Poulton, 333, 561, 677, 715, 7501
Cornford, Francis MacDonald, 1612
Crowninshield, Frank, 269, 332
Curtis Brown, 358, 461, 463, 4867, 7301
Curtius, Ernst Robert, 136, 1856, 296, 314, 402, 4989, 534, 603
Daily Mail, Editor, 78

Dalway Turnbull, H. G., 7356
Davis, Ronald, 6756
de la Mare, Richard, 790
The Dial, Editor, 812
Disraeli, Coningsby, 327
Dobre, Bonamy, 407, 5956, 604, 650, 749, 755
848
Eddington, Sir Arthur Stanley, 1589
Eliot, Charlotte Champe (TSEs mother), 2537, 2702, 31821, 368, 81112
Eliot, Henry Ware, Jr (TSEs brother), 15, 746, 7881, 868, 8991, 946, 978, 185,
199201, 25961, 2723, 274, 31718, 3523, 37880, 38992, 428, 4769, 725, 782
Eliot, Thomas Lamb, 1234
Eliot, Thomas Stearns, 924, 967, 2612, 2624, 7723, 781, 8078
Eliot, Vivien (TSEs first wife; ne Haigh-Wood), 803
Elliot Smith, Sir Grafton, 1557, 3401, 349, 501, 539
Etchells, Frederick, 415
Faber, Geoffrey, 543, 607, 60811, 61617, 71517, 71819, 721, 723, 727, 7312,
739, 746, 749, 7601, 761, 762
Fassett, Irene Pearl, 31112
Fernandez, Ramn, 3778, 4001, 450, 530
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 81314
Fletcher, John Gould, 256, 743, 758
Flint, Frank Stuart, 17, 267, 32, 5960, 130, 147, 300, 313, 326, 3623, 470, 5234,
6689, 675, 7756
Forbes, Mansfield, 6767
Ford, Ford Madox, 345, 37, 128, 188, 23940, 2512, 5034
Forster, E. M., 23, 40, 3389, 341, 5767
Gaselee, Stephen, 2434, 36970

Gillie, D. R., 40910
Gorman, Herbert S., 736
Graves, Robert, 176, 249, 41415, 7645, 7689
Grenier, Jean Charles, 419, 436
Haigh-Wood, Charles, 7025

Halvy, Daniel, 1819
Harrison, Jane, 15960
Hawley, Zoe, 526
Hayward, John, 754
Hazell, Watson & Viney Ltd, 100, 346, 3545, 3656, 5434, 549, 5567
Heap, Jane, 486, 5045
Heller, Otto, 242
Higgins, Dr Hubert, 8056
Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 2478
Hutchinson, Mary (ne Barnes), 656, 889, 11415, 119, 121, 1656, 1823, 184,
1989, 212, 2589, 278, 281, 292, 463, 516, 528, 545, 577, 589, 602, 6045, 618,
6678, 670, 783, 807
Hutchinson, St John (Jack), 354, 708
Huxley, Aldous, 1367, 5734, 5789
Jacobsthal, Paul, 499, 780

Jepson, Edgar, 445
Joachim, Harold, 297, 4956
Johns, W. G., 76971
Johnston, W. L., 6412
Joyce, James, 171, 172, 175, 728
Joyce, Lucia Anne, 595
849
Keith, Arthur Berridale, 1623
Kellond, Ellen, 8034, 804, 806
Ker, W. P., 82, 1278
Kessel, Joseph, 532
Keynes, John Maynard, 856
Koteliansky, S. S., 910, 456, 155, 157, 495, 53940, 641
Kreymborg, Alfred, 412, 1923, 4712, 6656
Larbaud, Valery, 1378, 202, 2978

Lawrence, D. H., 544, 567
Lehmann, Wilhelm, 1323, 184, 404
Lethaby, William Richard, 211, 253
Leverson, Ada, 344, 345, 3512, 357, 3745, 629, 659, 7289, 747
Levett, Lady Margaret, 4067
Lewis, Wyndham, 1789, 2234, 2256, 2267, 2734, 27980, 28991, 3212, 328,
330, 342, 344, 364, 414, 437, 468, 495, 497, 523, 5356, 5378, 5489, 555, 574,
57982, 5867, 597, 612, 687, 6923, 699700, 737, 742, 750
Liveright, Horace, 912, 190
Lucas, F. L., 81415
MacCarthy, Desmond, 55960

McCourt, Mrs Walter Edward, 13
MacGreevy, Thomas, 665, 673, 748, 753
Maclean, Catherine M., 3489
Manning, Frederic, 21516, 2956, 3012, 31516, 394, 4467, 4489, 454, 46970,
6523, 655
Marichalar, Antonio, 131, 18990, 744
Martin, Dr Karl Bernhard, 367
Maurras, Charles, 2378
Menasce, Jean de, 338, 403, 455
Methuen & Co, 4278
Middleton, Mrs S. A., 1516, 36, 3734, 437
Monnier, Adrienne, 644
Monro, Harold, 312, 1512, 164, 2923, 329, 3923, 4434, 460, 4634, 469, 486,
4967, 498, 5023, 5089, 538, 673, 6978
Monroe, Harriet, 152
Moore, Marianne, 233, 269, 5334, 637, 666, 6823
Moore, Thomas Sturge, 7767
Morrell, Lady Ottoline, 67, 8, 645, 667, 73, 1078, 11112, 114, 120, 123, 140,
167, 1756, 213, 232, 408, 480, 5456, 5901, 6345, 6489, 72930, 7467, 781,
8067, 809, 80910
Morris, R. O., 194
Mortensen, Johan, 3023, 449
Mortimer, Raymond, 59
Muir, Edwin, 533, 674
Munson, Gorham B., 7745, 8001
Murry, John Middleton, 1718, 24, 45, 10910, 11011, 118, 11920, 121, 170, 380,
554, 555, 5912, 5923, 5934, 594, 6278, 6289, 632, 643, 653, 71112, 714, 718,
722, 7223, 7334
Myers, Rollo Hugh, 522, 699, 77980
The Nation and the Athenaeum, Editor, 16970
850
New York Globe, Literary Editor, 1045
Ortega y Gasset, Jos, 466
Palmer, Herbert E., 3078

Peter Jones, Messrs, 7012
Plomer, William, 6612
Porterfield, Alexander, 41819, 448, 5001
Pound, Dorothy (ne Shakespear), 169, 171, 264, 468, 714
Pound, Ezra, 4950, 1335, 13940, 1412, 178, 2079, 21415, 2334, 3867, 5578,
6846, 758, 7667, 787, 791, 7912, 7989, 799, 808
Praz, Mario, 7867
Prentice, L. H. C., 6401
Quinn, John, 703, 11517, 2357
Randall, Alec, 245, 459

Ransom, John Crowe, 525
Read, Herbert, 2930, 57, 64, 1356, 1389, 150, 283, 3267, 365, 458, 507, 51012,
51213, 51316, 587, 5889, 602, 6056, 64950, 659, 668, 680, 6878, 6956,
7001, 713, 741, 742, 748, 750, 75960, 7623, 764, 777, 7845, 7948
La Revue de France, 522
Rice, Stanley, 81, 22930
Richmond, Bruce, 210, 590
Rivire, Jacques, 14, 35, 502, 612, 834, 101, 142, 34950, 3756, 405, 489
Robertson, J. M., 401, 2278, 240, 521, 5478, 563, 5856
Rodker, John, 3578
Rothermere, Viscountess (Mary Lilian Harmsworth, ne Share), 556, 601, 14950,
2202, 2945, 30910, 331, 3701, 3835, 464, 473, 4845, 48990, 5078, 551,
6834, 812
Rowe, P. N., 5289
Russell, Bertrand, 2578, 35960, 639, 6512
Rylands, George Dadie, 6945, 708, 71314, 724, 760, 794
Saintsbury, George, 3940, 54, 248

Schiff, Sydney, 6870, 92, 97, 1034, 137, 177, 17980, 285, 287, 309, 31011, 322,
32930, 3501, 3557, 465, 51617, 619, 800
Schiff, Violet, 989, 633, 680, 7401, 800
Scott, Cecil, 3323, 372, 427
Scott Moncrieff, Charles Kenneth, 2878, 3467, 369, 571, 778
Seaver, Edwin, 540
Selby, F. G., 359
Seldes, Gilbert, 38, 523, 778, 2678, 2889, 4423, 461, 475, 5401, 726
Selfridge & Co Ltd, 56970, 5756
Shakespear, Olivia, 401
Shand, John, 410
Shaw, Walter Hanks, 559, 7556
Sinclair, May (Mary St Clair), 1578, 3045, 3067, 446, 456, 467
Sitwell, Edith, 524
Sitwell, Osbert, 301, 429, 4323, 467
Smith, James, 431
Spencer, Theodore, 689
851
Spingarn, J. E., 399400
Stein, Gertrude, 638
Strachey, Lytton, 282
Strong, L. A. G., 173, 676, 692
Sturge Moore, Thomas see Moore, Thomas Sturge
Susskind, W. E., 672
Svevo, Italo, 3234
Sykes, Henry Dugdale, 2223, 565
Symons, Arthur, 275
Tate, Allen, 6578

Taylor, Ellen, 772
Thayer, Ellen, 6556
Thayer, Lucy Ely, 660
Thayer, Scofield, 12, 3478, 5667, 6078
Thorpe, W. A., 756
Tilden Smith, L., 726
Tillyard, E. M. W., 763
Tree, Viola, 5278, 751
Trench, Frederick Herbert, 2467
Trend, J. B., 1617, 567, 193, 231, 4578
Trotter, W. B. L., 2245
Udny, Revd S., 298

Untermeyer, Louis, 451
Valry, Paul, 2667

Van Doren, Mark, 572, 5967
Vivante, Leone, 196, 217, 4812
Wade, Allan, 360, 424, 633

Walkley, Arthur Bingham, 453
Walpole, Hugh, 2789, 2834, 2934, 386, 3989, 420, 428, 432, 471, 572, 5823,
5845
Wardle, Mark, 21, 26, 61, 1523, 229, 535
Waterlow, Sydney Philip Perigal, 681
Watson, James Sibley, 534
Watson & Austin, 575
Waugh, Alec, 559
Weaver, Harriet Shaw, 3978, 4512, 4523, 481
West, Rebecca, 1601
Whibley, Charles, 36, 423, 55, 76, 1023, 1479, 1978, 2035, 299, 323, 331, 343,
3767, 406, 4356, 4567, 664
Wilhelm, Crown Prince of Sweden, 3056, 324
Williams, Orlo, 50910, 5623, 752, 7778
Williams, William Carlos, 31617
Wilson, Edmund, 1011, 13, 1012, 1267, 697
Wilson, Mona, 529
Wolfe, Humbert, 31415, 433, 5634, 637
Wood, Richardson, 433
Woolf, Leonard, 146, 1645, 307, 3878, 4345, 447, 450, 6067, 6456, 646, 651,
6989, 710, 757, 8012
852
Woolf, Virginia, 278, 74, 118, 1689, 201, 2023, 21314, 270, 342, 3889, 41114,
42920, 4445, 445, 4723, 4834, 537, 5834, 598, 635, 651, 7345, 7378, 768
Worster, W. W., 434, 578, 678, 656
Yarrow, Duncan, 361

Yeats, William Butler, 20, 22, 634, 78, 3967, 434
853
general index
Page references in bold indicate a biographical note
A. P. Watt & Son, 4034, 434 own writing with, 215; translations for
Abercrombie, Lascelles, 444, 715n Criterion, 215, 4923; Criterion
Abraham, Karl, 702n correspondence with TSE, 21820,
Achary, Sri Ananda, 487n 2446, 249; and EP, 235; TSE on pleasure
LAction, 29 of helping, 236; advises TSE on approach
LAction Franaise, 42n, 43n, 243n, 605n to Maurras, 237n; Italian trip, 2445,
The Action Franaise, M. Maurras and Mr 288; Valry intro sent for comment to,
Ward, 43n, 717n 250; TSE on helpfulness, 255; resigns
Adam, Villiers de lIsle, 315n from Criterion, 288, 31819, 335, 362;
Adams, John J., 356 TSE on, 326, 400n; tying up Criterion
The Adelphi, 9n, 286, 573, 7334 loose ends, 339; book reviews for
Aeschylus, 467 Criterion, 426n, 530, 558, 568, 596n,
After Strange Gods, 230n 605, 608n, 649, 666, 667, 693, 7812,
Aiken, Conrad, 817; and Colliers poetry, 7889; discusses TSEs prose style with
241; and American Mercury, 310n; TSE TSE, 506; on Criterion, 542; financial
solicits Criterion contributions from, affairs, 568, 630; and Vogue, 569; and
3634, 409; and Untermeyer, 451; book TSE, 570, 6889, 693; and VW, 583n;
reviews for Criterion, 426, 431, 441, TSE on, 610; Welsh walking tour, 667;
442n, 455, 480, 490, 491, 506, 541, on Truc, 668n; TSE discusses EP with,
5778, 579n, 587, 696, 798n, 814n; 6889; TSE asks for help with Clark
daughters difficult birth, 491; TSE lectures, 711, 712; and F&G Foreign
discusses Criterion with, 526; and TSE, Men of Letters, 712, 717, 721, 742n3n,
578; move to Rye, 578n; on HR, 578n; 744, 758, 789; and JMM, 722; on TSE,
TSE approaches about F&G, 696, 7089 743n; and Routledge Republic of Letters,
WORKS: Bring, Bring!, 577n, 579, 588, 792, 794, 802
701n; King Bolo and Others, 209n; WORKS: Cyrano translation, 218; de
Psychomachia, 426, 480, 4901, 507n, Gourmont translations, 712n; The Fool
525n; Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson, i the Forest: a Phantasmagoria, 531n,
549n, 568n; Senlin, 708 541; Literary Studies and Relations,
Ainslie, Douglas, 218n, 304, 348, 373, 470n, 491, 530n; Modern Free Verse,
387, 482, 503, 643 744n; The Mystery of the Nativity
Aldington, Richard, 81718; and TSE, 5, translation, 568; Rmy de Gourmont,
125, 6889, 693; and Bel Esprit scheme, 712; T. S. Eliot, Poet and Critic, 6256,
6n, 28; and Criterions Notes on Foreign 630; Voltaire, 649n
Periodicals, 289, 30, 467, 501, 58, 62; Alexander, George, 527n
and HR, 86, 688n, 713, 742n3n, 781n, Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 190n, 382, 436,
793n; covers at Criterion for TSE, 1212; 447n, 4934, 756n
country address, 130; as secretary of The American Mercury, 310, 462
Criterion, 141, 1434, 145, 147, 148, American Poetry: A Miscellany, 451
150, 1912; cuts line from Cantos, 168n; Anderson, Margaret, 486n
Criterion contributions, 174, 492, 493, Andrew Marvell, 34n, 198n, 213, 254n,
518; winters in Italy, 191; TSE discusses 484n, 541n
855
Angioletti, G. B., 324n Bartholomew, Mrs, 216
Anglo-French Poetry Society, 325n Bassiano, Princess, see Caetani, Marguerite
Antheil, George, 219n, 233, 234n, 386, Bates, Herbert, 436n
401, 425, 808 Baudelaire, Charles, 265, 276, 372
Approximations, 47 Baugh, Hansell, 779n
Aquinas, Thomas, 7967 Beach, Sylvia, 397n, 630n, 6301, 644,
Ara Vos Prec, 41 728
Archer, William, 245, 246, 425 Beardsley, Aubrey, 344n
Aristophanes, 162n, 307, 323 The Beating of a Drum, 198n, 226, 254n
Aristotle, 209n, 695 Beauchamp, Joan, 538n
Arland, Marcel, 375n Beaverbrook, Lord, 371n
Arnold, Matthew, 514, 521, 774n Beckett, Samuel, 665n
Arnold and Pater, 514n Beecham, Sir Thomas, 171n
Arts League of Service, 328 Beerbohm, Max, 99n, 344n
Ash Wednesday, 71n, 338n, 380n Bel Esprit scheme (Eliot Fellowship Fund),
Asher, Kenneth, 43n 6, 28n, 49, 55, 64n, 67, 73n, 12930,
Asquith, Herbert, 166n 178n, 3901
Athenaeum: TSE refuses assistant Bell, Clive, 66n, 224, 226n, 228, 232,
editorship, 94, 592; TSE contributions, 240n, 268n, 412n, 518, 545, 569n, 612
197; see also Nation Bell, Vanessa, 537n
Atlantic Monthly, 462 Bellay, Joachim du, 325n
Augustine, St, 721 Ben Jonson, 170n
Aumonier, Stacy, 306n, 307n Benda, Julien, 18, 33, 478, 717, 741,
Aylward, James de Vine, 770n 774n, 795, 818
Azorin (Jos Martnez Ruz), 57n Benlowes, Edward, 763
Bennett, Arnold, 819; TSE discusses SA
Babbitt, Irving, 30n, 458n, 774, 801 with, 250, 465, 471, 505, 5201, 634,
Bain, Francis William, 818; suggests Selby 638, 6712, 809; wife, 325n; VW on,
as Criterion contributor, 352; HR on, 471n; and Proust, 510n; GCF suggests as
512; TSE on, 515; TSE receives fan letter possible referee for TSE, 553; TSE on,
for, 6412; book reviews for Criterion, 610
642n; recommends Dalway Turnbull, 736 Bennett, Marguerite, 325n
WORKS: 1789, 424, 448, 507, 5312, Benson, Stella, 294n
567n; Disraeli, 168n, 197, 204, 2056, Bentinck, Lord Henry, 67n
218, 234, 245, 327, 512n, 531, 589n, Bergson, Henri, 717
642 Berkeley, George, 139n
Baldwin, Stanley, 149n, 331n, 519n Berners, Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt Wilson,
Balfour, A. J., 693n 14th Baron, 301n
Balfour of Burleigh, Alexander Hugh Berry, Anabel M., 328n
Bruce, sixth Lord, 197n Bertram, Ernst, 12n, 195, 500n, 533, 534
Ballets Russes, see Russian Ballet 5, 717
Barchard, E. H., 771n Bible, 76, 554n, 627n, 697n
Barfield, Owen, 63n, 161, 172n, 174n, Binyon, Laurence, 538n
181, 183, 2078, 217, 317, 416 Biran, Maine de, 795n
Barker, Granville, 527n Bird, William, 135n, 464n
Barnes, Djuna, 71n, 490n, 765n Birrell, Francis, 208n
Barnes, Mary, see Hutchinson, Mary Blackmur, R. P., 658n
Barney, Natalie Clifford, 129n, 12930, Blackwell, Basil, 249n
188, 474, 542 Blake, William, 734n
Barrs, Maurice, 12n, 37, 717, 785 Blodgett, Glen Walton, 187n
Barris, Dr, 702, 7045 Bloy, Lon, 797n
Barry, Iris, 132n, 299300 Blum, Lon, 795n
856
Bodenheim, Maxwell, 83n Caetani, Marguerite (ne Chapin; Princess
Bodley Head Press, 340, 600n Bassiano), 474n, 550, 759, 762, 819
Boileau, Nicolas, 417 Caffrey, Charles, 37n, 191, 1956, 441n,
Bolingbroke, Henry St John, 1st Viscount, 499n
147n8n Les Cahiers Idalistes, 46n
Bolo poems, 209 Les Cahiers Verts, 47n
Bonar Law, Andrew, 149n Calendar of Modern Letters, 579n, 760,
Boni, Albert, 71n, 574 803n
Bos, Charles du, 47, 119n, 1256, 186, Calverley, Charles Stuart, 637n
187, 234, 417n Calverton, V. F., 326n
Bosanquet, Theodora, 577n Cam Literary Society, 431, 521n, 531, 542,
Bosis, Adolfo de, 50n 546n
Botteghe Oscure, 474n Cambridge: Greek plays, 307, 323;
Bourquin, Constant, 668n, 717, 741, 795 Heretics Society, 444, 754; TSE visits,
Bradley, F. H., 127n, 186, 491n, 4956, 456; Clark lectures, see The Varieties of
506, 514n, 614 Metaphysical Poetry
Brmond, Henri, 417n, 41718, 425 Campbell, Roy, 460n, 491n
Brenan, Gerald, 201n Carter, Hubert, 361n
Breton, Andr, 375n Carteret, John, 197n
Breughel, Jan, the Elder, 578n Cassells Weekly, 157n
Breughel, Pieter, the Elder, 578n Catholic Anthology, 42
Breughel, Pieter, the Younger, 578n Cavafy, Constantine, 338n, 3389, 341,
Brice, Fanny, 442n 403, 425
Bridges, Robert, 65n, 531n Cavalcanti, Guido, 786
A Brief Introduction to the Method of Paul Cecil, Lord Robert, 234
Valry, 28n, 148, 153, 229, 246n, 250, Celenza, Giulia, 724n, 7245, 7712
254, 535 Cellier, Frank, 362n
A Brief Treatise on the Criticism of Cendrars, Blaise, 765n
Poetry, 31 The Century, 365n
British Association for the Advancement of Champion, Honor, 492n
Science, 491n, 501 The Chapbook, 31, 32n, 393n, 451n,
Britten, Benjamin, 661n 472n, 496n, 498, 5023, 5089, 566,
Brooks, Benjamin Gilbert, 333n, 3334, 6978
564, 775 Chapin, Marguerite, see Caetani,
Broom: An International Magazine of the Marguerite
Arts, 41 Chapman, Dostoevski and Dante, 431n,
Brown, A. J. C., 407, 596 521, 531, 537, 546
Brown, Alec, 6401 Chapman, George, 223, 254, 431n, 521n,
Browning, Robert, 697n 531, 537, 546, 608
Buchholtz, Johannes, 656n Chapman-Huston, Desmond, 737n
Burdett, Alise, see Gwyer, Alise Chekhov, see Tchehov
Burdett, Sir Henry, 700n Cherwell, 183
Burdett, Osbert, 700n, 727, 738n, 739 Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope,
Burke, Edmund, 220n fourth Earl of, 147n, 1478, 197n
Burke, Kenneth, 608n Chicago Daily News, 83, 104
Burnet, John, 204, 210, 231n, 609 Chirico, Giorgio de, 375n
Buss, Kate, 334n, 7567 Churchill, Winston, 655
Bynner, Harold Witter, 765n Cimarosa, Domenico, 508n
Bywaters, Frederick, 7n Cino da Pistoia, 786n
Ciolkowska, Muriel, 570n, 5701
Cabell, James Branch, 74n, 107n Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Lord, 197
Cadbury, George, 246n Clark, Barrett H., 441
857
Clark, William George, 591n Collins, Harold Poulton, 333n; book
Clark lectures, see The Varieties of reviews for Criterion, 619n, 637n, 649,
Metaphysical Poetry 677, 701, 715n, 7501; illness, 751;
Classen, Dr E., 460 Modern Poetry, 715; A Note on the
The Classics in France and in England, Classical Principle in Poetry, 333, 561,
254n 6056, 627, 649n
Cleveland, John, 763 Commerce, 32n, 338n, 451n, 472n, 474n,
Clutterbuck, Hope, 4878 498n, 523n, 566n, 759n, 762
Clutton-Brook, Arthur, 208n, 209n Comte, Auguste, 795
Clyne, Anthony, 191, 194n, 1945 The Confidential Clerk, 754n
Cobden-Sanderson, Richard, 819; and Congreve, William, 429, 4323
Criterion, 1415, 19, 20, 478, 1089, Conrad, Joseph, 14n, 186, 491n, 504n,
110, 141, 1456, 149, 154, 167, 172, 510n
1745, 211, 212, 246, 250, 2778, 281, Contemporary English Prose, 13n, 84,
282, 283, 308, 319n, 3245, 3267, 339, 1012, 126, 127n, 138n, 186n, 496n
346, 348, 354, 3667, 3801, 384, 395 Il Convegno, 29, 144, 245n
6, 4246, 462, 473, 4912, 497, 51819, Corfu, 205
550, 5512, 5534, 560, 5612, 745, Cornford, Francis MacDonald, 154, 161n,
750; publishes Le Serpent for Criterion, 1612, 209n
148, 149, 1524, 165, 181, 250, 258, Cotton, Charles, 188
309, 5501; publishes Poems of Charles Cowley, Abraham, 763
Cotton, 189; pays TSE for new Cowley, Malcolm, 208
typewriter, 189, 206; TSE complains Coxon, Roger, 649n, 788n
about, 2212; publishes Savonarola, Craig, Gordon, 42n
270n; and WL, 289; and Wardle, 535; Crane, Hart, 774n
wifes illness, 551; and F&Gs takeover of Le Crapouillot, 462
Criterion, 7278 Crashaw, Richard, 711n, 763, 786n
Cochrane, Frank, 362n Cremieux, Benjamin, 717
The Cocktail Party, 5n, 81n, 754n Criterion (later New Criterion):
Cocteau, Jean, 820; and Barneys salon, advertising, 3801, 384, 395, 453n;
129n; TSE solicits Criterion banner, 175; book publications, 148, 149,
contributions, 207, 233, 300, 309, 1523, 165, 224, 464, 508; costs and
31213, 331, 3701, 473, 488, 494; size, 616, 621; Culpins secretarial work,
and Radiguets death, 484; and Diaghilev, 2945, 321, 324, 395, 519; DHL on,
489n; and Egoist Press, 522n; TSE 567; end of first year circular, 1745; EP
discusses with Graves, 765 and TSE discuss, 2079, 214, 219, 2334;
WORKS: Antigone, 403; A Call to Order, exchange copies, 32, 51, 62, 143, 144,
522n, 699, 746, 779n; Cock and 326, 365, 462, 522; GCF on, 599; HR
Harlequin, 522n; Maris de la Tour Eiffel, on, 51012; IPF at, 51920, 5612, 567n,
779n; Posie, 494n, 649n, 666n, 667; 577, 580n, 6612, 674n, 742n, 772,
Romeo and Juliet, 485, 485n; Scandales, 7812; Monnier and Beach on, 644n;
233n, 313n, 485, 5012, 667, 77980, monogram, 149; name, 719, 723; NCs
790; Le secret professionel, 312, 522, launch, 5823, 598602, 607, 60811,
699, 780; Thomas lImposteur, 312; 61318, 61925, 6534, 66970,
Le Train Bleu, 546n 68992, 694, 698, 707, 709, 716,
Cohen, Albert, 642n, 795n 71821, 7278, 7323, 738, 742, 7601,
Cohen, John Michael, 657n 812; New Statesman on, 554, 55960,
Colcord, Joanna Carver, 303n 6223; office move, 4523, 481, 490,
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 90n, 341n 551; political standpoint, 148, 2056,
Colette, 129n 237, 238, 243, 542n, 642; possible extra
Collier, John, 241n, 2412 funding, 77; RA covers for TSE at,
Collingwood, R. G., 605, 649, 695n 1212; RA made secretary, 141, 1434,
858
1456; RA on, 542n; RAs resignation, 289, 294, 308, 323, 337, 425n;
288, 31819, 335, 362; regular lunches, Fragment of a Prologue (from SA),
365n, 409, 458, 459, 460, 507, 523; staff 192n, 520n, 802n; The Function of a
shortages, 31819, 329, 374; strains put Literary Review, 122n, 197n, 252n; The
on TSE, 689, 72, 96; subscription Function of Criticism, 198n, 206n, 254n,
figures, 158, 284, 616, 621; TSE and a 286n, 295, 314, 417, 514n, 561n; On
salary, 14950, 38992, 4201, 423, 428, the Eve (and VHE), 556; Three Poems,
43840; TSE on, 601, 146, 2356, 255, 549, 550, 566n, 676n; TWL, 202n;
393, 413, 51216; TSEs idea for general, 283n, 302n, 342n
collected essays volume, 245; TSEs NC Criterion Prospectus, 39
contract, 68991; TSEs position at, La Critica, 245
1011; TSEs reasons for working for, 3; Critica Fascista, 245
US publication/distribution, 92, 141, 367, Criticism in America, 400
3845, 43940, 486, 505; Valry on, 265; Croce, Benedetto, 218n; and Fascism,
and VHE, 319, 321, 325n; Walpoles 245n; TSE on, 304, 503; and F&G
suggested financial help, 2789, 2834 Foreign Men of Letters, 717, 721n;
ISSUES: (Jan. 1923), 1415, 16, 17, 19; Alfred de Vigny, 304, 348, 373, 387;
(April 1923), 23, 27, 478, 1089, 110, On the Nature of Allegory, 218n, 304n,
146; (July 1923), 14, 812, 141, 143, 348n, 482, 518
172, 181, 183, 212; (Oct. 1923), 12, 37, Crofton, H. C., 769n, 771
127, 156, 158, 168, 195, 207, 212, 221, Crowninshield, Frank, 127n, 226n, 269,
247, 250; (Feb. 1924), 40, 277, 281, 282, 332
294, 308, 319, 3501, 370; (April 1924), Cuala Press, 434n
346, 3545, 3657, 370, 377, 381, 386, Culpin, J. R., 2945, 321, 324, 346, 395,
395, 406, 41112, 4245, 473; (July 519, 773, 805
1924), 302, 383, 425, 429, 431, 434, Cummings, E. E., 208, 774n
437, 453, 473, 475; (Oct. 1924), 442, Curtis Brown, 358, 461, 463, 4867, 500,
4912, 507, 51618; (Jan. 1925), 519, 7301
51819, 5434, 549, 5534, 5567; Curtius, Ernst Robert, 820; recommends
(Dec. 1927), 220; (Jan. 1930), 275; Bertram to TSE, 12, 500; Proust article
(July 1931), 302 for NRF, 14n; Criterion contributions,
SERIES: art, music and drama chronicles 15, 126n, 1856, 195, 296, 314, 402;
start, 4578; Books of the Quarter starts, German translation of TWL, 133n, 603n;
150n, 384n, 397n; city chronicles, 384n, TSE offers to give copy of Criterion to his
4423, 457, 461, 466, 475, 485n, 508, university, 136, 186; TSE sends Criterion
540, 814; Letters of the Moment (VHE), to, 212, 499; moves to Heidelberg
3501, 355, 360n, 363n, 370n, 411n; University, 402; at Pontigny, 4989;
Notes on Foreign Periodicals, 267, recommends Jacobsthal to TSE, 499; and
2830, 32, 467, 501, 57, 58, 5960, TSE, 534, 603; English translation of
62, 122, 143, 144, 147, 150, 189n, 245, works, 603n; and F&G Foreign Men of
3267, 3623, 365, 459, 462, 505, 522, Letters, 717
523, 540, 7756 Curzon, Lord, 8n
TSE CONTRIBUTIONS: The Action Cyrano de Bergerac, 218
Franaise, M. Maurras and Mr Ward, Cyriax, Dr Edgar Ferdinand, 299n, 321,
43n, 717n; book reviews, 617n, 731n, 343, 487, 634, 648, 7023
815n; The Classics in France and in Cyriax, Dr (wife of the above), 3201, 343,
England, 254n; A Commentary, 245n, 487n, 634, 648, 7023
340n, 347, 355, 356, 359n, 361n, 362n, Cyril Tourneur, 223n
375n, 398n, 400n, 415n, 425n6n, 473n,
485n, 491n, 496n, 514n, 542, 546n, Daedalus, 743n
607n8n, 616n, 796n; Four Elizabethan Daily Chronicle, 246n
Dramatists, 223n, 245n, 254, 268, 281n, Daily Express, 371
859
Daily Mail, 78 650, 717, 749, 755, 758, 789n, 820
Daily Sketch, 7 Dolin, Anton, 508n, 546n
Dalway Turnbull, H. G., 732n, 735n, Donne, John, 111n, 146n, 1645, 198n,
7356 711n12n, 763, 786
DAnnunzio, Gabriele, 129n, 298n, 717 Doolittle, Hilda (H. D.), 149n, 316n, 398n,
Dante, 657n 744n
Dante Alighieri: Chapman, Dostoevski and Doriss Dream Songs, 32, 451n, 472n,
Dante, 431n, 521, 531, 537, 546; TSE 498n, 5023, 504n, 5089, 546, 566n
on, 7978; TSE recommends, 657, 658; Dostoevsky, Feodor Mikhailovich, 910,
TSEs allusions to, 215, 412, 592, 791n; 456, 230, 431n, 521n, 531, 537, 539,
and VMP, 592, 712n 546, 641, 721n
Dardis, Tom, 71 The Double Dealer, 150n
Davidson, Donald, 765n Douglas, Major C. H., 234n
Davis, Ronald, 675n, 6756 Douglas, Norman, 571n
Dawson, N. P., 104n Drake, James F., 70n
Dawson, Warren R., 523n Draper, Muriel, 438, 439
de la Mare, Richard, 790n The Dry Salvages, 743n
Death by Water, 303n Dryden, John, 484, 541, 561n, 572
Debussy, Claude, 795n Duff, Miss, 34
Degas, Edgar, 246 Dunning, Ralph Cheever, 531n, 557n
Denham, John, 763
Denniston, T. D., 446n, 448 Eagle, Roderick L., 547n, 5478, 563n
Dsormire, Roger, 485n Eastbourne, 467n, 468, 479
Diaghilev, Serge, 473, 4845, 48990, 491, crits du Nord, 144, 462
507, 546; see also Russian Ballet Les crits Nouveax, 29
The Dial: 1922 award (TSE), 6n, 534; Eddington, Sir Arthur Stanley, 154, 158n,
1925 award, 566; and Bloomsbury, 208; 1589
and Criterions Notes on Foreign The Edinburgh Review, 511, 599, 623
Periodicals, 29, 64, 144, 150n, 365n; and ditions Gallimard, 51n
EP, 122n, 135; German authors published ditions Honor Champion, 492
by, 1323, 1345; possibility of combined Edwin Muir, 674n
subscription with Criterion, 385; Seldess Eeldrop and Appleplex, 215, 223
resignation, 2889; Thayer as editor, 493; The Egoist, 241n, 522, 617n
TSE on, 1345, 511; VHE contributions, Egoist Press, 149, 226n, 280n, 3978,
633n, 6556, 666, 6823, 688; and WL, 4512, 453, 464, 481, 522n
224; and Yeats, 78n, 812, 404 Elgstrm, Anna Lenah, 460, 518
TSE CONTRIBUTIONS: The Hollow Men, Eliot, Ada (TSEs sister), see Sheffield, Ada
54n, 607; Literature, Science and Eliot, Charles William (TSEs cousin), 368n
Dogma, 289n, 347n, 578n, 589n; Eliot, Charlotte (TSEs sister), 8201;
Marianne Moore, 54n, 198n, 233, Marian stays with, 80; offers to visit
247n, 254, 267n, 289; Ulysses, Order England with CCE in 1923, 87; health,
and Myth, 38, 39, 54n, 198n, 214n, 254, 263; financial affairs, 263, 273, 422;
267, 289, 319n; general, 347, 5667, 1924 England visit, 335, 336, 382, 440,
6078, 666, 684; see also Letters from 467, 468n, 473n, 4789, 482
London Eliot, Charlotte Champe (TSEs mother),
Dickinson, Emily, 363, 497, 508 8212; possible summer 1923 visit to
Diehl, Charles, 609n England, 34, 7880, 868, 8991, 926,
Le Disque Vert, 462 978, 105; 1921 England visit, 79n, 94n;
Disraeli, Benjamin, 204, 327, 589 investments and property, 91, 96, 200,
Disraeli, Coningsby, 327n 259, 261, 262, 2723, 336, 337, 706;
Dixon, Vladimir, 557n invites TSE to visit her, 934, 978, 106;
Dobre, Bonamy, 407, 529n, 5956, 604, discusses TWL with brother-in-law,
860
1234; attitude to TSEs marriage, 124; 260; and CCEs 1924 London visit, 273,
writes to HWE about TSEs money 353, 382; money, 336
concerns, 2001; TSE writes to thank for Eliot, Theresa (ne Garrett; TSEs sister-in-
birthday present and give news, 2537; law), 6789, 706, 725, 782
will, 256, 25960, 4213, 4767, 478, Eliot, Thomas Lamb (TSEs uncle),
706; and VHE, 260, 261, 262, 272, 123n4n
3367; replies to TSEs letter, 2614; and Eliot, Valerie, 282, 628n
TSEs plans to leave Lloyds, 2703; 1924 Eliot, Vivien (TSEs first wife; ne Haigh-
England visit discussed and planned, 272, Wood), 8223; health and treatments, 1,
273, 3357, 3523, 368, 382, 423, 440, 89, 64, 656, 98, 1078, 10910,
640; TSE writes to with news, 31821; 11011, 112, 11416, 118, 123, 124,
invites TSE to USA for 1924, 3357, 125, 129, 134, 139, 140, 142, 148, 152,
3523, 381; reply to TSEs letters, 3357; 1756, 177, 17980, 232, 236, 2556,
preparations for arrival in London, 453, 264, 271, 31718, 3201, 322, 33940,
456; 1924 England visit, 467, 468n, 343, 367, 368, 3745, 379, 3912,
473n, 4789, 483, 487n; and Sitwells, 4067, 408, 430, 467, 480, 545, 546,
467n; VHE writes to from nursing home, 583, 589, 592, 593, 594, 598, 603,
81112; Savonarola (TSE intro), 81, 90, 6045, 606, 607, 618, 626, 6289, 633,
91, 256, 260, 261, 262, 263, 270, 2867, 6345, 648, 651, 667, 670, 673, 680,
337, 382, 493, 710 681, 6856, 6989, 7025, 71112,
Eliot, Henry Ware, Jr (TSEs brother), 822; 7223, 72930, 735, 759,769; at
TSE writes to about work and CCEs Eastbourne, 8; and Ian Middleton, 16n;
visit, 15; writes to TSE about TWL, and Schiffs, 70, 285, 31011, 323, 3501,
746; CCE urges to take her to visit TSE 800, 805, 806, 8078; and CCE, 79, 80,
in England, 868, 90, 923; business 89, 93, 94, 95, 978; at Fishbourne
affairs, 923, 1056, 113, 285, 337, 422, cottage, 89; TSEs financial worries for,
707; investments, 1067, 7067; TSE 116, 119, 2001, 256, 25960, 478;
enquires after health, 185; gives CCEs attitude to the marriage, 124;
typewriter to TSE, 189; and familys looks for new cottage, 168;
investments and money concerns, 199 correspondence with JMM, 170, 714,
201, 25961, 274, 285, 286, 320, 3789, 718, 7223; on JJ, 180n; with young
4213, 4768, 706; CCE writes to about visitors in the country, 1823; made
TSE leaving Lloyds, 2723; TSE longs to beneficiary of TSEs life insurance, 185n;
see, 31718, 37980; possibility of still in the country, 198, 200, 220;
England trip, 337; and CCEs 1924 therapeutic work, 199; expense of caring
England trip, 3523; and BR, 3812, 423, for, 236, 705; and BR, 257, 63940; and
438, 440, 640; TSE asks to meet Lady CCE, 260, 261, 252, 272, 3367; MHs
Rothermere on her New York trip, reading list for, 278, 281; on own writing,
38992, 4201, 423, 428, 43840; will, 311, 6845; pseudonyms, 312n; state of
422; reasons for not marrying, 4223; marriage, 318n; and Criterion, 319, 321,
offers TSE money to leave Lloyds, 428, 325n; TSE on writing skills, 368, 6267,
476; on Cyriaxes and VHEs writing 648, 652; TSEs help with her writing,
skills, 634n5n; engagement and 411n, 556n; in country again, 413; and
marriage, 6779, 706, 725, 812; gives Woolfs, 445, 450; VW on, 445n;
TSE money, 706, 725; VHE writes to ask preparations for CCEs arrival, 453, 456;
to come, 782 misses MHs party, 463; and Sitwells,
Eliot, Henry Ware (TSEs father), 1n 467; in Eastbourne during CCEs visit,
Eliot, Margaret Dawes (TSEs sister), 80n, 467n, 468; and MH, 516, 577, 783, 807;
87, 200n, 336 to Paris with TSE, 538n, 545; to Russian
Eliot, Marian Cushing (TSEs sister), 4n; Ballet, 546n; book reviews for Criterion,
possible summer 1923 visit to England, 4, 549, 5567, 619n; on JMM, 593; on CW,
80, 87, 89, 90, 93, 95; Pachmann concert, 593, 718; TSE discusses their marriage
861
and her health with JMM, 6279, 6312, and TSEs letters of appointment, 625,
636; mental health, 6289, 645, 7025, 640, 647; and TSEs qualifying shares,
7223; HWE on writing skills, 635n; TSE 654, 663; invites TSE to board meetings,
discusses with BR, 6512; and Lucy 660, 669, 707; discusses books to be
Thayer, 656, 660, 6835; and EP, 683n, published with TSE, 661, 692, 694, 727,
6846, 781, 7989, 805, 808; and 7312, 749, 762; on TWL, 6623;
Criterions name, 719; Leverson on, consults CW about TSE, 664; as bursar of
729n; TSE on her skills in general, 7401; All Souls, 670; as TSEs publisher, 671; on
correspondence with OM, 72930, Burdett, 700n; TSE stays in Wales with,
7467; goes into various nursing homes, 714; and Foreign Men of Letters, 71517,
7723, 781, 782, 7834, 7989, 799 721, 727, 746; and NC, 71819, 721,
800, 8037, 8078, 80910, 811; on her 723, 742n, 7601, 762, 7734, 780, 812;
marriage, 773; writes to ask HWE to writes to TSE about his Riviera trip,
come, 782; to go to Brighton with a 7734; and HR, 785
nurse, 808, 810, 811; verse thank you for Faber & Gwyer (formerly Scientific Press):
present from OM, 80910 foundation, 543n; and Cocteau, 522n,
WORKS: A Diary of the Rive Gauche, 699, 746; overtures to TSE, 543n, 547,
543, 545n, 556; Fte Galante, 655n, 5523, 555, 562, 565, 572; launches NC,
729n; Letters of the Moment, 3501, 5823, 598602, 607, 60811, 61318,
355, 360n, 363n, 370n, 411n; Necesse 61925, 6534, 66970, 68992, 694,
est Perstare?, 648, 656; Night Club, 698, 707, 709, 716, 71821, 723, 7278,
656, 729n; On the Eve, 556; The 7323, 738, 742, 7601, 762, 7734,
Paralysed Woman, 633, 6556, 6823, 812; and WL, 597, 699700; TSEs letters
688; Th Dansant, 479n, 507n, 517n, of appointment, 625, 640, 647, 664;
526 name change to Faber & Gwyer, 647,
Eliot Fellowship Fund, see Bel Esprit 664; TSEs qualifying shares, 654, 663; as
scheme TSEs publisher, 657n, 661n, 671, 710,
Elizabethan Essays, 223n, 337n 716, 785; TSE at board meetings, 660,
Ellen (maid), see Kellond, Ellen 669, 707; move to Russell Square, 664;
Elliot Smith, Sir Grafton, 154, 155n, Foreign Men of Letters series, 664, 712,
1557, 206, 3401, 349, 501, 523, 539, 71517, 721, 727, 742, 743, 744, 746,
611 748, 749, 755n, 758, 777, 785; and HR,
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 603n 668n, 748, 749, 750, 7623, 764, 777,
Empson, William, 233n, 431n 785, 796; TSEs NC contract, 68991;
Encounter, TSE contributions, 398n history of Scientific Press, 700n; and
The English Review, 393 Wortham, 726n; and Ludovici, 731; TSEs
Erigena, Johannes Scottus, 793n office, 762; see also Faber, Geoffrey
Esame, 29 Fabian Society, 732n
Esprit, 338n, 649n Fagan, J. B., 307n
LEsprit Nouveau, 29 Falla, Manuel de, 457n
Etchells, Frederick, 415n Falls, Cyril, 530n, 558, 568
Euripides and Professor Murray, 206n Fargue, Lon-Paul, 474n
Europe, 462 Fassett, Irene Pearl: and TSE, 8; book
Ezra Pound, 430n reviews for Criterion, 491n, 577n;
Ezra Pound, His Metric and Poetry, 7567 secretarial work at Criterion, 51920,
5612, 567n, 577, 580n, 6612, 674n,
Faber, Enid, 593n4n 742n, 772, 7812; and Selfridges, 569;
Faber, Geoffrey, 823; first overtures to TSE, and VHE, 805n, 806; Mrs Pilkington,
543, 547, 5523, 555, 562, 565; discusses 31112, 507n, 510n, 526n
NC with TSE, 598602, 607, 60811, Faulkner, William, 310n
61318, 61925, 6534, 66970, 6912, Fausset, Hugh LAnson, 528n
694, 698, 707, 709, 716; poetry by, 615; Fernandez, Ramn, 377n; TSE solicits
862
Criterion contributions from, 3778; Criterion, 576; The Novels of Virginia
TSE on, 542, 610; and Hulme, 602; and Woolf, 23n, 576n; Pan (repr. as Adrift
F&G Foreign Men of Letters, 717 in India), 23, 40, 174n, 512n; A Passage
WORKS: Le Classicisme de T. S. Eliot, to India, 23n, 491n, 577n
603, 617, 623; The Experience of The Fortnightly Review, 24
Newman, 215, 378, 4001, 450, 4923, Forum, 774n, 801n
507, 514n, 530, 567n, 655n; La garantie Four Elizabethan Dramatists, 223n, 245n,
des sentiments et les intermittences du 254, 268, 281n, 289, 294, 308, 323, 337,
coeur, 375, 377; Lintelligence et M. 425n
Maritain, 680, 695 Four Quartets, 754n
Le Figaro, 46n France, Anatole, 129n, 721n
La Figlia Che Piange, 42, 436, 557 Franklin, John, see Waterlow, Sydney
The Fire Sermon, 411n, 475n Frasers, 511
Fishbourne, 65n, 889, 110, 11516, 142, Frazer, Sir James, 127n, 156n, 186, 603,
4445 609
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 226n, 310n, 638n, Freud, Sigmund, 684n
813n, 81314 Frisch, Efraim, 144n
Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice, Frding, Gustav, 656n
Baron (Lord Kerry), 204, 220n, 323 From Anne to Victoria: Essays by Various
Flaubert, Gustave, 237n Hands, 529n
Flanagan, Hallie, 162n, 209n Frost, Robert, 596n, 765, 768
Fletcher, John Gould, 25n, 256,171n, 541, Fry, Joan Mary, 606n
743, 758 Fry, Roger, 15n, 19, 146n, 166n, 415n,
Flint, Frank Stuart, 824; translations for 433, 606n, 729n
Criterion, 15, 16, 17, 130, 142, 147, 300, The Fugitive, 765n
313, 326, 523, 532, 6689; and The Function of a Literary Review, 122n,
Criterions Notes on Foreign Periodicals, 197n, 252n
267, 32, 5960, 143, 147, 189n, 245n, The Function of Criticism, 198n, 206n,
326, 3623, 462, 523, 6689, 7756; 254n, 286n, 295, 314, 417, 514n, 561n
Monro invites to party, 392n; and Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis, 717n,
Curtius, 402; and Criterion regular 785
lunches, 459n, 523; book reviews for
Criterion, 470, 491, 576; photo in RAs Galantire, Lewis, 576n
Vogue article, 744n; Spring Ode, 675 Gallimard, Gaston, 51n
For Lancelot Andrews: Essays on Style and Gallup, Donald, 164n, 556n
Order, 190n, 214n Galtier-Boissire, Jean, 462n
Forbes, Mansfield, 676n, 6767 The Game of Chess, 803n
Ford, Ford Madox (Ford Hermann Garman, Douglas, 579n, 760n
Hueffer), 824; Criterion contributions, Garnett, Constance, 727
345, 37, 128, 141, 168, 188, 234, 236, Garnett, David, 208n, 294n, 696, 708n
512n; and EP, 34, 50, 134n, 141, 226n; Garnier, Robert, 506
and Rothermere, 188; and Transatlantic Garrett, Theresa, see Eliot, Theresa
Review, 226, 236n, 239, 486n, 5034; Garrod, H. W., 470n
TSE on, 234, 236; TSE writes to about Gaselee, Stephen, 243n, 2434, 36970,
Transatlantic Review and TWL, 23940, 515
2513; and The English Review, 393n; Gaultier, Jules de, 668n
HR on, 512; and Taylor, 772n George, Stefan, 25n
Foreign Exchanges, 254, 476n Gerhardie, William, 294n, 777
Forster, E. M., 8245; visits Woolfs, 23; Germany, 230, 232
socialising with TSE, 40; and Cavafy, Gertler, Mark, 9
3389, 341; VW on, 430n; HR on, Gide, Andr, 14n, 129n, 135, 187n, 237n,
51112; complains about review in 630n, 717
863
Gilbertson, Fanny, 800 Viscount
Gillie, D. R., 409n, 40910 Harmsworth, Harold Sidney, see
Gleize, Albert, 371n, 383 Rothermere, Viscount
Glover, Dr James, 651n, 702n, 705 Harpers, 363n
Gmez de la Serna, Ramn, 15, 16, 17, Harris, Joel Chandler, 799n
50n Harrison, E. J., 770n, 7701
Gngora y Argote, Luis de, 711n Harrison, G. B., 340n
Gontard, Susette, 24 Harrison, Jane, 159n, 15960, 161n
Goold-Adams, B. M., 48n, 50n, 100n, 146, Harvard University, 209n, 212, 229n,
161, 2078 240n, 349, 689n, 774n
Gordon, G. S., 232n Harvey, H. B., 438
Gorky, Maxim, 155, 157, 653 Hauptmann, Gerhart, 133n, 135n, 208,
Gorman, Herbert S., 107n, 736n 339, 717, 721n, 785
Gosse, Edmund, 509n, 531n, 786 Hussermann, Hans, 556n
Gourmont, Rmy de, 129n, 130n, 295n, Hawkesworth, T. A., 783
315n16n, 712, 717, 721 Hawley, Zoe, 507n, 526, 543n, 544
Grandgent, Charles Hall, 91n, 262, 382 Hayward, John, 754n, 826
Grant Hague, W., 124 Hazell, Watson & Viney Ltd, 145, 3656,
Grant Watson, E. L., 306n, 602 381, 395, 424, 5434, 549, 5567
Graves, Robert, 173, 176n, 249, 41415, Head, Henry, 645n, 698
525, 710, 762, 7645, 7689 Heap, Jane, 486n, 5045
Greene, Edward J. H., 576n, 644n Hecht, Ben, 745, 83n, 1045, 113
Greene, Graham, 754n Heimann, Moritz, 133n, 184n
Gregory Smith, G., 715n Heine, Heinrich, 657n
Grenier, Jean Charles, 383, 419n, 436 Heinemann, 425
Gribble, George Dunning, 542n Heller, Otto, 242n
Guggenheim, Peggy, 129n Hemingway, Ernest, 71n, 207n, 464n,
Guignebert, Charles, 206, 244 504n, 630n, 813n
Guinizelli, Guido, 786n Henderson, Alice Corbin, 42n
Gurdjieff Dancers, 4389 Heretics Society, 444, 754
Gurdjieff Institute for the Harmonious Hesse, Hermann, 133n, 1956, 230
Development of Man, 439 Higgins, Bertram, 579n
Gwyer, Alise (ne Burdett), 700n Higgins, Dr Hubert, 94, 108, 232, 628,
Gwyer, Maurice, 700n 771n, 772, 7834, 7878, 7901, 799
800, 804, 8056, 811
H. D., see Doolittle, Hilda Hinkley, Eleanor Holmes, 286, 627n
Haigh-Wood, Charles, 90, 200, 7025, Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 12, 37, 133n,
72930, 825 195, 2478, 441, 717, 826
Haigh-Wood, Maurice, 200, 702n, 705, Hogarth Press: and Aiken, 696n, 708; and
8256 Ainslie, 503n; and The Common Reader,
Haigh-Wood, Rose, 90, 140, 200, 257, 635n; and Graves, 176n; and HJD, 414n,
321, 72930, 771 4834, 499, 537; HR lost to F&G, 748,
Haigh-Wood, Vivien, see Eliot, Vivien 763, 764; and International Library of
Hale, Emily, 212n, 628n Psychoanalysts, 702n; and Lucas, 814n;
Halvy, Daniel, 18n, 19, 47 and MacGreevy, 6067; and Muir, 674n;
Hall, Alice Wadhams, see Seldes, Alice pamphlets series, 716; and Plomer, 661n;
Wadhams and Ransom, 176, 249, 525; and
Hamlet and His Problems, 34n, 208n Rylands, 694, 708, 713; TSE lost to
Hammersley, Violet Mary, 166n F&G, 671, 710, 738; TSE prose
Hamsun, Knut, 717 pamphlet, 606; and TWL, 22n, 201n,
Hardy, Thomas, 345n, 557, 610, 756 2023, 213, 387, 450; and Valry, 21, 26,
Harmsworth, Alfred, see Northcliffe, 278, 61, 1523
864
Hlderlin, Friedrich, 24, 500, 674 acquaintances, 776n
The Hollow Men: EP consulted about, WORKS: Breughel, 5789; Crome Yellow,
758; publishing history, 32n, 54n, 451n, 75; The Defeat of Youth, 241n; The
472n, 474n, 498n, 5667, 607, 676n, Monocle, 5734, 578n; Those Barren
692; TSE on, 504n, 546, 5667; TSEs Leaves, 577n, 579n, 587, 696
allusions in letters, 318, 554 Huxley, Maria, 114
Holms, J. F., 7001 Hydraulic-Press Brick Company, 1n, 106,
Holroyd, Michael, 204n 200, 272, 2856, 421, 4768
Homage to John Dryden, 34n, 54n, 414n, Hysteria, 241n
499, 537, 541, 561n, 572, 584, 666 Hytier, J., 144
Honegger, Paul, 403n
Hopkins, Franklin, 666n Ibsen, Henrik, 713
Horne, H. S., 812 Ilford murder trial, 7
Houghton Mifflin, 270, 286, 337, 382 In Memoriam Marie Lloyd, 15n
Housman, A. E., 591n, 776n Indice, 144, 189, 462
Howarth, T. E. B., 815n The Influence of Landscape upon the
Hudson, Stephen, see Schiff, Sydney Poet, 743n
Hughes, Langston, 310n Intentions, 46
Hugo, Jean, 484n, 485n International Journal of Ethics, 487n, 693n
Hugo, Valentine, 484n Inventions of the March Hare, 187n, 209n
Hugo, Victor, 276, 416 Ireland, political situation, 200
Hulme, T. E., 283, 287, 3556, 425, 602, An Italian Critic on Donne and Crashaw,
605, 649n, 659, 695, 744n, 765 786
The Humanism of Irving Babbitt, 774n, Italy, Fascist government, 7, 2445
801n
Hume, David, 139 Jacob, Max, 371n, 383
Hunt, Robert, 765n Jacobi, Hermann, 163n
Hutchinson, Mary (ne Barnes), 827; letter Jacobsthal, Paul, 499n, 780
from VHE about health, 656; lover, 66n; James, Henry, 119n, 127n, 186, 525n,
and Eliots, 889, 11415, 119, 121, 583n
1823, 184, 212, 2589, 516, 528, 545, James, William, 795, 796
577, 589, 6045, 6678, 670, 708, 783, Jefferson, Thomas, 401
807; TSEs family visits, 90n; TSE sends Jepson, Edgar, 44n, 445
verse RSVP to, 1656; London address, Jesuits, 786
166n; VHE on her cottage, 168; helps Joachim, Harold, 219, 297, 4956, 515,
Eliots find London house, 1989; reading 518, 695n, 8278
list for VHE, 278, 281; Christmas John Donne, 111n, 146n, 1645, 198n
presents to TSE, 292; and The Apes of John Dryden (book review in TLS), 572n
God, 412n; party, 463; new house, 577; John Dryden (essay), 484, 541, 561n
helps Eliots look for country retreat, 602, Johns, W. G., 769n, 76971
618; on TSEs love of Dante and Virgil, Johnson, Miss, 652
657n; gives up Eleanor House, 807 Johnson, Lionel, 216n, 401, 518, 561,
Hutchinson, St John (Jack), 90n, 354, 670, 6523, 655, 739, 746
708, 827 Johnson, Samuel, 626
Huysmans, Joris-Karl, 315n Johnston, W. L., 6412
Huxley, Aldous, 827; TSE solicits Criterion Jolson, Al, 442n
contributions from, 1367; LW on AH Jones, Isabel, 171n
and Jonson, 169n; and Vanity Fair, 226n; Jonson, Ben, 16970, 527n, 536, 543n,
TSE on, 241; and Brooks, 334n; and 715n
Vogue, 569n; and Eliots, 579; and F&G Joost, Nicholas, 347n
Foreign Men of Letters, 717; in Paris, Joyce, James, 828; Saintsbury declines to
747; TSE and Graves discuss, 765; write essay on, 38, 3940, 523, 54; on
865
Saintsbury, 38n; TSEs essay, 39, 54n, 157; Tolstoi translations, 495, 53940;
198n, 214n, 254, 267, 289, 319n; and Adelphi, 573n; Tchehov translations,
publishers, 71n, 397, 630n; Larbauds 727
essay, 137n; TSE makes allusion to, 165n; Kreymborg, Alfred, 41n, 412, 1923,
sees TSE during visit to England, 1712, 4712, 6656
175, 180; and Larbaud, 297n; and Svevo, Khlemann, Johannes Theodor, 186n
323; Macleans essay, 348; JMM on,
402n; Scotts borrowing from, 427n; VW Laforgue, Jules, 241n, 407, 560n, 644,
on, 430n, 556n; on EP and Dunning, 657n
557n; serious eye problems, 595, 6301, Lane, John, 340n, 425, 600
728; TSE on, 611; and Shakespeare & Lanman, Charles Rockwell, 163n
Company bookshop, 630n; friends, 665n; Larbaud, Valery, 126, 1378, 202, 2978,
holiday in Arcachon, 728n; Gormans 410, 466, 474n, 795n, 828
books on, 736; photo in RAs Vogue Lardner, Ring, 475, 475n
article, 744n; The Linati Schema, 752n Lasserre, Pierre, 243n, 611, 774n, 785
WORKS: Fragment of an Unpublished The Last Twenty-Five Years of English
Work (from Finnegans Wake), 207, Poetry, 65
588n, 595, 6301, 728; Portrait of the Laurencin, Marie, 489n
Artist, 149n; Ulysses, 38, 39, 523, 54n, Lausanne conference (19223), 8n
198n, 214n, 254, 267, 289, 319n, 556n, Lawrence, D. H., 544n; friends, 9n, 765n;
630n, 752n publishers, 71n; Curtius on, 296n; TSE
Joyce, Lucia Anne, 595n on, 306, 768; VW on, 430n; TSE solicits
further Criterion contributions from, 544;
Kahn, Otto H., 73n, 99, 117 and F&G Foreign Men of Letters, 717;
Kegan Paul, 425 Verga translations, 717n; Italian
Keith, Arthur Berriedale, 154, 162n, translator, 752n
1623, 518 WORKS: Fanny and Annie, 571n; Jimmy
Kellond, Ellen, 3n, 4, 170, 199, 257, 264, and the Desperate Woman, 461, 463,
271, 272, 667, 772, 8034, 805n, 806 4867, 507n, 519, 526, 567, 574; The
Ker, W. P., 42, 82n, 1278, 156, 180, Plumed Serpent, 765n; Saturday, 7301;
2034, 221, 244, 250, 470 The Woman Who Rode Away, 544,
Kerry, Lord, see Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmund 566, 588, 731n
Fitzmaurice, Baron Lawrence, W. J., 221n, 2278
Kessel, Joseph, 475n, 485n, 490, 507, 508, Le Corbusier, 415n
532, 668n Le Roy, douard, 302n
Keynes, John Maynard, 85n; offers TSE Leon de Valry, 265n
post of literary editor of the Nation, 56n, Lehmann, Wilhelm, 109n, 1323, 184,
74, 856, 88; VHE mentions in letter, 212, 404
168; on HJD, 584 The Lesson of Baudelaire, 276n, 372n
Keyserling, Count Hermann, 701, 759 Lethaby, William Richard, 211n, 253
King, Bishop Henry, 393n Letters from London, 3, 12n, 204n, 206n,
King, Willie, 649 629n
Kipling, Rudyard, 186, 197, 610 Lettres dAngleterre, 35, 612, 84, 1012,
Kipling Redevivus, 197n 1267, 133, 186n, 187, 214n, 235, 254,
Knopf, see Alfred A. Knopf Inc. 269, 388
Knowledge and Experience in the Leverson, Ada, 344n, 345, 3512, 357,
Philosophy of F. H. Bradley, 139n, 506n, 3745, 629, 659, 7289, 739, 747, 790
514n Levett, Lady Margaret, 213n, 367, 4067
Kojecky, Roger, 7n Levi, Anthony, 795n
Koteliansky, S. S. (Kot), 9n; Dostoevsky Lvy, Sylvain, 163n
translations, 910, 456, 108, 154, 495, Lvy-Bruhl, Lucien, 191n, 206, 218, 339
53940, 641; Gorky translations, 155, Lewis, Sinclair, 310n
866
Lewis, Wyndham, 8289; pencil portrait of 397n, 4512; The Values of the Doctrine
TSE, 10, 13, 102; TSE on, 13n, 760; and behind Subjective Art, 582n, 612n
TSE, 97, 3212; affair with Barry, 132n; Linati, Carlo, 752n
trip to France, 1789; TSE solicits Lindsay, Vachel, 765n
Criterion contributions from, 207; and Listener, TSE contributions, 265n, 674n
EP, 219, 597n, 700n; TSE discusses own Literary Digest International Book Review,
work with, 2234, 227; TSE offers to 107, 736
publish book of essays by, 224, 2256, The Literary Review, 365
280, 2901; new London address, 226; Die Literatur, 462
TSE on pleasure of helping, 236; and Literature, Science and Dogma, 289n,
Macchiavelli, 243n; copy of Criterion 347n, 578n, 589n
sent to, 258; and Tyro, 280n; Apes of The Literature of Fascism, 245n
God rumpus, 344n5n, 3567, 364, The Little Review, 223, 486n, 505
3923, 414, 429n, 432; Art Chronicle Liveright, Horace, 712, 73n, 912, 190,
for Criterion, 347n, 437, 495, 507n, 574n, 829
511n, 523, 582, 586; and Egoist Press, Lloyd, Marie, 15
398n; book reviews for Criterion, 426n, Lloyds Bank: TSEs position and salary,
523, 580, 582, 586; TSE discusses 13; TSEs desire to leave, 55; and TSEs
Criterion with, 468; TSE discusses future offer of Nation post, 856, 92, 116; TSE
Criterion contributions with, 497; HR on, moves to Colonial and Foreign
511n; financial problems, 5356, 537, Department, 210, 236, 255; TSE decides
575, 581n; socialising with TSE, 5378, to leave, 2712; TSE on security of
555; VW on, 556; publishers, 574n; TSE working at, 284; TSE made head of
writes reference for, 575; evicted from department, 319; TSE postpones
studio, 575n, 612; quarrel with TSE, resignation, 31920, 474; advertising,
57982, 5867, 597, 606, 612; and 3801; HWE discusses with TSE whether
Macmillans, 582, 597, 693, 699; TSE can afford to leave, 421, 428, 476; TSEs
approaches about F&G, 597, 699700; underground offices, 583; TSE resigns,
quarrel with TSE over Criterion 76971
payments, 737, 742, 750 Lloyds Bank Financial Monthly, 254, 476n
WORKS: The Apes of God, 280n, 328n, Lloyds Bank Extracts from the Foreign
330, 342, 344, 346, 355, 3567, 364, Press, 254, 271n
3923, 414, 429n, 432, 511n; The Apes Loerke, Oscar, 133, 184n
of God, 1789, 207n, 218, 223, 233, Loewenthal, Mr, 438
322, 328n, 330n, 342, 344, 346, 355, Loisy, Alfred Firmin, 717
3567, 364, 3923, 412, 414, 429, 432, London: Burleigh Mansions, 6n, 8n, 198n,
700n; Archie, 574, 581n, 687; The Art of 386, 433; Chester Terrace, 701n;
Being Ruled, 529n, 581n, 760n; The Clarence Gate Gardens, 95, 967, 198n
Caliphs Design, 280, 397n, 4512; The London Letters, see Letters from London
Foxes Case, 760n; Joint, 581n; The Lion London Mercury, 240n, 249n, 393
and the Fox, 529n, 581n, 597n, 760n; London University, 3767
The Man of the World, 273n, 328n, 529, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, 42n,
548, 581n, 597; Mr Zagreus and the 241n, 644, 657n
Split-Man, 214n, 221, 2234, 226, 233, Loving, Pierre, 674n
234, 2734, 277, 27981, 28990, 342, Lowes, John Livingston, 90n, 91, 262
344, 406n, 511n; The Perfect Action Loy, Mina, 765n
(The Dithyrambic Spectator), 536, 543, Loyson, Charles (Le Pre Hyacinthe), 295,
5489, 574, 57980, 610n, 612; The 3012, 394
Politics of Philistia, 597n; The Politics of Lubbock, Percy, 509n
the Personality, 597n, 693n; The Shaman, Lucas, F. L., 528n, 814n, 81415
597n; The Strategy of Defeat, 597n; Sub Ludovici, Anthony M., 731n
Persona Infantis, 597n; Tarr, 149n, 280, Luizzi, Fernando, 724n
867
Lynch, John Gilbert Bohun, 306n Martinenche, E., 46n
Lyric America, 42 Marvell, Andrew, 34n, 198n, 213, 254n,
484n, 541n, 561, 763
McAlmon, Robert, 207n, 597n, 700n Massine, Lonide, 109n, 473, 485n, 489n
MacCarthy, Desmond, 559n, 55960, 829 Massis, Henri, 668, 672
Macchiavelli, Niccol, 243 Materer, Timothy, 529n
McCourt, Mrs Walter Edward, 13 Mathews, Charles Elkin, 600n
MacDonald, George, 521 Matthew Arnold, 514n
MacDonald, Hugh, 415n Matisse, Henri, 347n
MacDonald, Ramsay, 2n Mauriac, Franois, 130n
MacGreevy, Thomas, 6067, 665n, 673, Maurice, Beck and Macgregor, 626n
748, 753 Maurier, Gerald du, 527n
Mackail, J. W., 448 Maurois, Andr, 187n, 630n
McKnight Kauffer, E., 392n Maurras, Charles, 42n3n; TSE suggests as
MacLagan, Eric Robert Dalrymple, 165n subject to CW, 423, 147, 204, 219, 238,
Maclean, Catherine M., 3489 243, 514n; TSE on, 43n, 514, 605, 611,
Macmillan publishers, 148 717n; in prison, 219n; TSE solicits
Macrobius, 248n Criterion contribution from, 2378; and
Maistre, Joseph de, 795n Massis, 668n; and F&G Foreign Men of
Maistre, Violet le, see Murry, Violet Letters, 717; Benda on, 795
Mallarm, Stphane, 795n May, Pierre-Andr, 46n
Mann, Thomas, 12n, 133n, 608 Menasce, Jean de, 307n, 338n, 3389, 403,
Manning, Frederic, 82930; TSE discusses 455, 642, 649, 795n
Criterion with, 21516; and TSE, 2956, Mencken, H. L., 310n
394; book reviews for Criterion, 4467, Le Mercure de France, 29, 46n, 315n
4489, 454, 469, 491, 526n, 549; health, Meredith, George, 601, 662
449, 454; discusses Garrod and Ker with The Metaphysical Poets, 34n, 484n, 541n
TSE, 470; and Fernandez, 492; TSE on, Methuen & Co, 103, 4278
515, 610; and Lionel Johnsons letters, Middleton, Ian C., 1516, 30, 3734
6523, 655, 739n, 746; and F&G Foreign Middleton, Mrs S. A., 15n, 1516, 36,
Men of Letters, 717 131n, 3734, 437
WORKS: Critic and Aesthetic, 302, 315; Middleton, Thomas, 222, 223, 254, 437
A French Criticism of Newman, 215n, Migne, Jacques Paul, 246n, 793n
655n; Le Pre Hyacinthe, 295, 3012, Milhaud, Darius, 489n, 508n, 779n
316, 394, 470, 515n Miller, Dr Raymond, 806
Mansfield, Katherine, 9, 9n, 17, 18, 24n, Mirrlees, Hope, 159n
100, 155n, 167, 556, 573n Miss Harriet Weaver, 398n
Marburg University, 136, 186 Miss Sylvia Beach, 630n
Mardrus, Joseph Charles, 508n, 539 Modern American Poetry, 42n, 173n
Les Marges, 46n The Modern Quarterly, 3267, 365
Marianne Moore, 54n, 198n, 233, 247n, Monnier, Adrienne, 630n, 644n
254, 267n, 289 Monro, Harold, 831; and Chapbook,
Marichalar, Antonio, 16, 36, 478, 108, 312, 151, 496n, 498, 5023, 5089,
131n, 18990, 300, 313, 326, 744 6978; Criterion contributions, 151, 164,
Marino (or Marini), Giambattista, 711n, 191, 2923, 329, 443, 460, 464, 469,
712 486, 538; and Graves, 249; and RA,
Maritain, Jacques, 680, 795n, 7967, 801 319n, 568, 793n; party at Poetry
Marsden, Dora, 397n Bookshop, 392; discusses Criterion with
Martin, Dr Karl Bernhard, 123, 1756, TSE, 3923, 538; book reviews for
184, 213n, 232, 236, 264, 271, 321, 367, Criterion, 444, 446n, 460, 464, 469,
4067, 408, 430, 628, 6989, 703, 8301 491n, 497, 508, 549, 568; and Criterion
Martin du Gard, Roger, 187n regular lunches, 458, 460, 507n, 523;
868
and Prentis, 4634; and WL, 612n; and 8001
TSE, 673 Murder in the Cathedral, 632n
Monroe, Harriet, 42n, 152, 831 Murray, Gilbert, 161n, 206
Moore, Edward, see Muir, Edwin Murry, John Middleton, 832; and
Moore, G. E., 776n Koteliansky, 9n; wifes death, 17, 24;
Moore, George, 345, 665n, 753n friendship with TSE, 45, 70, 11011,
Moore, Marianne, 8312; TSEs essay on, 118, 11920, 121; moves to cottage at
54n, 198n, 233, 247n, 254, 267n, 289; Boxford, 109n; TSE asks for help in
and Egoist Press, 149, 398n, 481n; and finding a country cottage, 110; VHE on
Dial, 269, 666; Williamss essay on, 316; his cottage, 168, 170; VHE corresponds
wins 1925 Dial award, 566, 637; TSEs with, 170, 714, 718, 7223; TSE on,
note in Criterion on, 607; rejects story by 206n; copy of Criterion sent to, 258; and
VHE for Dial publication, 6823, 688; The Adelphi, 286, 573; attack on Moore,
and Secession, 774n 345; controversy with TSE over classicism
WORKS: Observations, 426n, 494n, 533 and romanticism, 345; 375, 377, 394,
4, 566n, 608n, 649n, 666; Selected 402, 41718, 561, 61011; second
Poems, 682n marriage, 310, 432; on Proust and JJ,
Moore, Thomas Sturge, 518, 776n, 7767 402n; Whibley on, 406n; and The Apes of
Morand, Paul, 363n, 371, 443, 447 God, 412n; Williams on, 509n; on
More, Paul Elmer, 774n Proust, 402, 510n; HR on, 512; DHL on,
Morley, John, 664n 526; visit to London, 554, 555; friends,
Morrell, Lady Ottoline, 832; and Bel Esprit 573n; nominates TSE for Clark lectures,
scheme, 6, 73n; writes reference for 5914; TSE discusses his marriage and
Burleigh Mansions flat, 6, 8n; health, 64, VHEs health with, 6279, 6312, 636;
120, 167, 175, 176, 232, 408; and Eliots, daughter born, 632, 636, 712n; and
65, 1078, 112, 114, 120, 123, 140, 480, Gorky, 653; TSE asks for news, 71112;
5456, 6345, 6489, 72930, 7467, and RA, 722
781, 8067, 80910; TSE asks for WORKS: Christ or Christianity, 733; The
nominal offer of a salary for Criterion Classical Revival, 611n; Keats and
work, 667; tea with TSE and JJ, 171; Shakespeare, 510n, 591n, 722, 7778;
looks for Oxford position for TSE, 213, The Life of Jesus, 554n; Mans Faith in
232; to Freiburg to Dr Martin, 232; and Man, 723; More About Romanticism,
BR, 257n; and Brooks, 334n; and 286n, 314, 611n; On Fear; And on
Menasce, 338n; TSE writes to about Romanticism, 561n, 632n; The
Martin, 408; depression, 5901; BR talks Romantic Fallacy, 643; Romanticism
to about Eliots, 639n; VHEs literary and Tradition, 18n, 110n, 282n, 394n,
portrait, 729n 402n, 41112, 417, 512n, 561n; Round
Morrell, Philip, 546 and About Sincerity, 734; Wrap Me Up
Morris, R. O., 194n, 210 in My Aubusson Carpet, 345
Mortensen, Johan, 302n, 3023, 449 Murry, Violet (ne le Maistre), 380n, 432
Mortimer, Raymond, 59n, 208, 569n Music & Letters, 194
Mouton Blanc, 144 Mussolini, Benito, 7n, 2445
Mr Appollinax, 241n Myers, Jeffrey, 179n
Mr Lucass Webster, 223n Myers, Rollo Hugh, 522n, 699, 746n, 779
Muir, Edwin (Edward Moore), 465n, 674n; 80
TSE on, 465, 468, 515, 674n; WL on,
468n; TSE solicits Criterion contributions Nast, Cond, 11n, 226n
from, 533; book reviews for Criterion, Nathan, George Jean, 310n
533n, 579n, 701; and Hlderlin, 674; and Nation (later Nation and Athenaeum): TSE
F&G Foreign Men of Letters, 717, 758, offered literary editorship, 56n, 60n, 64n,
785 6970, 72, 73n, 76, 856, 88, 116, 118;
Munson, Gorham B., 540, 774n, 7745, Keynes as chairman, 85n; TSE
869
contributions, 34n, 11112, 146n, 164n, On Poetry and Poets, 657n
189, 198n, 213n14n, 226n, 254, 490n; On the Eve (and VHE), 556
TSEs reply to LWs mention of his ONeill, Eugene, 71n
opinion of Jonson, 16970; possible ONiel, Colette, 640n
reason for TSEs rejection of post, 204, Orage, A. R., 674n
255; Bells article about TSE and review Ortega y Gassett, Jos, 189n, 457, 466n,
of TWL, 224, 226n, 228, 232, 240n; 475n
TSEs unpopularity with, 320; Criterion Others, 42
exchange copy dropped, 462; TSE on, Ovid, 72n
496; and MacGreevy, 673; review of Owen, Wilfred, 765n
Poems 19091925, 8012, 803 Oxford: TSE lectures at, 65, 111, 112, 120,
The Nation (US newspaper), 144, 596n; 122, 169; TSE seeks position, 213, 232,
TWL review, 39 236; OUDS productions, 307n, 338n;
Le Navire dArgent, 644n TSE as student at, 496n; TSE unsuccessful
A Neglected Aspect of Chapman, 546n, in application to All Souls, 670, 774
608 Oxford Poetry, 249n
Nesbitt, Cathleen, 171n
Der neue Merkur, 27, 59, 144 Pachmann, Vladimir de, 260n
Neue Rundschau, 27, 144, 147n Paine, W. W., 771n
The New Poetry; An Anthology, 42n Palgrave, F. T., 480n
The New Republic, 144, 462 Palmer, Herbert E., 3078
New Statesman, 554, 55960, 6223, Parker, Dorothy, 226n
795n, 815n Pascal, Blaise, 265, 267, 276
New York Globe, 1045 Pater, Walter, 185
New York Herald, article on TSE, 368n Pguy, Charles, 243n, 741n, 795n, 797
Newman, Bertram, 655 Le Pre Hyacinthe, see Loyson, Charles
Newman, John Henry, 514 Prez Galds, Benito, 717
Nicoll, Allardyce, 749n The Perfect Critic, 275
Nicolson, Harold, 584n Perkins, Maxwell, 813n
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 717 Perry, W. J., 4278
Nijinska, Mlle, 508n Peter Jones, Messrs, 7012
1 9 2 4, 540, 774n Phillips, Sir Perceval, 7n
North American Review, 365n, 462 Philosophies, 41920, 462, 523n
Northcliffe, Viscount (Alfred Harmsworth), Phoenix Society, 171, 342, 3602, 366n,
3n 424, 429, 4323, 527n, 536, 543n, 633
Norton, Harry, 6 Picabia, Francis, 208
Notes on Current Letters, 276n, 280n Picasso, Pablo, 347n, 403n, 489n, 638n
La Nouvelle Revue Franaise: Proust Picavet, Franois, 609n
memorial issue, 14, 47; and Criterions Pickthorn, K., 220n
Notes on Foreign Periodicals, 29, 46n, Pirandello, Luigi, 15n, 16, 19, 161, 694n,
501, 62, 144; allows Criterion to publish 717
Proust extract, 51, 62n, 84, 101, 122, Pius II, Pope, 168n
142, 218, 2878, 34950, 489; TSE Plomer, William, 661n, 6612
contributions, 198n; and TWL, 405, 413; Poe, Edgar Allan, 472
Fernandezs essay on TSE, 603, 618, 623; Pome (later The Hollow Men I), 32,
Rivire tribute issue, 650n; see also 472n, 474n, 498n, 566n, 676
Lettres dAngleterre Poems 19091925: content, 498n, 567n,
676n, 757n, 758n; reviews, 8012, 803;
Ogden, C. K., 754n UK edition (F&G), 671, 716, 739, 785;
Oliphant, E. H. C., 5478, 563n US edition, 71n
Oliver, Frederick Scott, 197n, 204n, 220, Poetry, 150n, 430n
435 Poetry Bookshop, 151n, 392n
870
The Poetry Review, 393n Quia Pauper Amavi, 149n, 767n;
Pontigny literary conference, 187, 4989 Ripostes, 7667; Selected Poems (TSE
Pope, Alexander, 166n intro), 557n, 757n, 7667
Il Popolo dItalia, 245 Praz, Mario, 711n, 786n, 7867
Porter, Nancy, 261 A Prediction in Regard to Three English
Porterfield, Alexander, 418n, 41819, 448, Authors, 127n, 156n, 187n, 191n, 269,
487, 5001, 567n 332n, 566n
The Portrait of a Lady, 42, 241n, 813n A Preface to Modern Literature, 127n,
Pound, Dorothy (ne Shakespear), 169, 268n, 269n
171, 264, 468, 714, 833 Prentice, L. H. C., 6401
Pound, Ezra, 833; TSEs relationship with, Prentis (writer), 4634
11; and Ford, 34, 50, 134n, 141, 226n; Priestley, J. B., 530
and Jepson, 44n; financial support for Prior, William, 796n
TSE, 49, 1334, 139, 178; and Vivante, Professor H. H. Joachim, 496n
49n, 50n, 139, 217n, 481n; and Quinn, Prose and Verse, 31
71n; US publishers, 71n, 135n, 398n, Proust, Marcel: NRF memorial issue, 14,
464n, 481; on Hecht, 83n; sent copies of 47; extract published in Criterion, 51,
Criterion, 108, 181; Paris address, 108; 62n, 84, 101, 122, 142, 218, 233, 2878,
and Barney, 129n; friends, 132n, 316n; 3467, 34950, 369, 425, 453, 489, 490,
discusses Criterion with TSE, 2079, 214, 507; friends, 132n; Curtius essay for
219, 2334, 5578; TSE discusses own Criterion, 296, 314, 402; TSE on, 356,
writing with, 215; TSEs nickname for, 507, 510; JMM on, 402, 510n; Rivires
215; Bell on, 224n; and RA, 236; TSE on suggested lecture, 405; English tribute
his Criterion contributions, 236; and volume, 510; and F&G Foreign Men of
Schloezer, 269; CCE on, 286; Gourmonts Letters, 717
influence, 316n; and Buss, 334; rates paid Prudentius, Marcus Aurelius Clemens,
for Criterion work, 386; and Jefferson, 793n
401; TSEs essay on, 430n; HR on, 511; Prufrock and Other Observations, 71n,
and Dunning, 5301, 557; and WL, 149n
597n, 700n; and Shakespeare &
Company bookshop, 630n; and VHE, Quaritch, 759
633n, 6846, 781, 7989, 805, 808; TSE The Quarterly Review, 393, 511, 599, 623
plans publications for, 6889; photo in Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur, 431n, 594n
RAs Vogue article, 744n; TSEs book on, Quinn, John, 834; buys TSE MSS, 70,
7567; TSE consults about The Hollow 187n; and TSEs US publisher, 71;
Men, 758; and Williams, 765n; financial support for TSE, 73n, 99100,
publishing history, 7667; TSE stays with, 117, 236; TSE copies letter to, 104n; TSE
782n, 787, 7912, 799, 805 writes to about business and personal
WORKS: Antheil 19241926, 386n, 808n; matters, 2357; patronage of
Antheil and the Treatise on Harmony, Transatlantic Review, 236n; death, 237n
530n; The Bellaires, 767n; Cantos, Quintilian, 248n
558n; Canzoni, 766; Cathay, 767;
Catholic Anthology, 42n; Eight Cantos, Radiguet, Raymond, 484n
11n, 135n, 142; Exultations, 766; Ramsay, Mary Paton, 786
George Antheil, 219, 233, 234, 386, Randall, Sir Alec, 24n, 245, 459, 462, 542
425, 511n; Horace, 386n; Hugh Selwyn Randall, A. W. G., 339
Mauberley, 767; Lustra, 767; Malatesta Ransom, John Crowe, 176n, 191, 249,
Cantos, 122, 135n, 139, 141, 145, 154, 525, 765n
168, 174n, 178n, 183, 244, 250, 386, Rapallo, Treaty of (1922), 23
511n; Moeurs Contemporaines, 767; Ray, Man, 375n
On Criticism in General, 15, 48, 49, Read, Herbert, 8345; and Criterions
511n; Personae, 766; Provena, 766; Notes on Foreign Periodicals, 29, 57, 64,
871
150, 3267, 365, 462, 505, 540, 742; and Richard of St Victor, 793n
RA, 86, 688n, 713, 742n3n, 781n, Richards, I. A., 431n, 578, 583n, 587, 589,
793n; Hulme book edited by, 283; and 649, 650
Criterion regular lunches, 458, 459n, Richmond, Bruce, 67n, 835; and Criterion
507, 523; book reviews for Criterion, finances, 67; correspondence with TSE,
491, 528n, 578, 587, 602, 701, 759; 122, 626, 784; suggestions for Criterion,
discusses Criterion with TSE, 51016, 193, 194, 210; and Russian Ballet, 552;
6056, 64950, 668, 680, 7001; offers gives TSE reference, 553, 590; and TSEs
to help at Criterion during TSEs illness, F&G negotiations, 594, 630
587; TSE writes to about Richards, Rickword, Edgell, 240n, 576n, 579, 743,
5889; TSE on, 610; TSE consults about 760n, 803n
running Symposium-style review, 6878, Riding, Laura, 173n, 764n
6956, 701, 713, 741, 742; TSE tells Rimbaud, Arthur, 166n, 407n, 576
about NC, 713, 762; and F&G Foreign Rittenhouse, Jessie B., 538n
Men of Letters, 717, 742, 748, 758, 777, Rivers, W. H., 426, 431, 523, 580n
785, 794; TSE takes to F&G, 748, 749, Rivire, Jacques, 8356; and NRF, 14, 29;
750, 7623, 764; TSE discusses Calendar discusses allowing Criterion to publish
of Modern Letters with, 760; discusses Proust extract, 51, 62n, 84, 101, 142,
TLS article with TSE, 784; and Routledge 218, 288, 346, 34950, 489; and
Republic of Letters, 792, 794; TSE Criterions Notes on Foreign Periodicals,
discusses various writers and VMP with, 612; sent copy of Criterion, 109;
7958 suggested Proust lecture, 405; death,
WORKS: Charlotte and Emily Bronte, 489n; NRF tribute issue, 650n
680n; Collected Poems, 777, 796; Hulme WORKS: La crise du concept de littrature,
commentary, 602, 605, 649n, 659, 695; 375, 418; Note on a Possible Generalis-
In Retreat, 748n; Mutations of the ation of the Theories of Freud, 35, 84,
Phoenix, 136, 138, 748n; The Nature of 130, 142, 147, 172, 174n, 181, 350
Metaphysical Poetry, 30, 48, 108, 135, Roberts, Michael, 658n
680n; Psycho-Analysis and the Critic, Robertson, J. M., 836; and Bloomsbury,
135n, 327, 518, 578n, 680n; Reason and 208; influence on TSE, 208n; TSE solicits
Romanticism, 668, 749, 750, 7623, 764, Criterion contributions from, 240; TSE
777, 785, 796; T.S.E. A Personal on, 255, 511, 515, 610; TSE consults
Memoir, 513n about possible Criterion contributions,
Reinhardt, Max, 459n 5478, 563; gives reference to TSE, 553,
Renan, Ernest, 717, 785n 5856; book reviews for Criterion, 565n
Renouvier, Charles, 795n WORKS: The Evolution of English Blank
Rtif de la Bretonne, 30n Verse, 40, 218, 2278, 370; Gustave
La Revista de Occidente, 189, 457, 462, Flaubert, 15, 126; Hamlet Once More,
466n 41; The Naturalistic Theory of Hamlet,
La Revue Blanche, 795 518, 521, 548, 567n
La Revue de Genve, 19n, 144 Robinson, Edward Arlington, 151n
Revue de lAmrique Latine, 46 Rodker, John, 308, 3578, 415n, 464, 508,
La Revue de France, 522, 523 836
La Revue de Paris, 46 La Ronda, 29
La Revue des deux Mondes, 46 Ronsard, Pierre de, 325
La Revue des Ides, 315n Rootham, Helen, 325n
La Revue Hebdomadaire, 46, 265 Rose, William, 792n
La Revue Juive, 642, 795, 795n Rosny, J.-H., 570
La Revue Musicale, 46n, 246n Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 557n
Rhapsody on a Windy Night, 241n Rothermere, Viscount (Harold Sidney
Rhythmus, 64, 150n Harmsworth), 3n, 56, 60, 188, 320, 421,
Rice, Stanley, 81n, 174n, 180, 22930 552
872
Rothermere, Viscountess (Mary Lilian Sackville West, Vita, 584n, 585
Harmsworth, ne Share), 837; The Sacred Wood: Ben Jonson, 170n; on
estrangement from husband, 3n; and Blake, 734n; Euripides and Professor
Criterion, 3n, 32, 601, 77, 92, 142, 143, Murray, 206n; Hamlet and His
145, 14950, 165, 211, 212, 2212, Problems, 34n, 208n; Introduction,
2945, 30910, 366, 3701, 381, 3835, 514n; Monro on, 31; sales, 103; and
395, 419, 464, 473, 4845, 48990, Spingarn, 399; on Symons, 560; UK
5078, 512, 513, 5512, 560; asks for edition, 190n; US edition, 190n, 493n;
TSEs photo to be sent to Vogue, 11; TSE Williams on, 506n
asks about possible opening in husbands Sadleir, Michael, 330n
papers, 556, 60; considers offering TSE St Louis, 13, 743n
salary, 667; and freeing TSE from St Louis Post-Dispatch, 242n
Lloyds, 12930; offers TSE salary if Saintsbury, George, 38n; declines to write
leaves Lloyds, 14950; and Cocteau, 207, about Ulysses for Criterion, 38, 39, 523,
331, 485; suggests her sister send book 54; book reviews for N&A, 189; TSE
extract to TSE, 216; and Mussolini, 244; solicits further Criterion contributions,
and Hofmannsthal, 248; WLs suspicions 243, 248; TSE declines to write about for
of, 2901; New York trip, 3835, 3902; Dial, 268; Williams on, 509n; TSE on,
TSE asks HWE to visit in New York, 60910, 786; Dullness, 39, 512
38992, 4201, 423, 428, 43840; TSE Salisbury, James Edward Hubert Gascoyne
on, 390, 761; and Rivires suggested Cecil, fourth Marquess of, 234
Proust lecture, 405; and Diaghilev, 473n, Samojiloff (academic), 557n
484, 48990; and Transatlantic Review, Santayana, George, 240n
486n; TSE visits in Paris, 521, 530, 537 Satie, Erik, 489n, 779n
8, 545n; and F&Gs takeover of Saturday Review, 248n9n
Criterion, 654, 66970, 694, 698, 707, Saurat, Denis, 619, 715n, 750
716, 71821, 727, 7323, 738, 742, 760, Sayers, Dorothy, 7n
761, 762, 773, 812; TSE warns against Schiff, Sydney (nom de plume Stephen
Lucy Thayer, 6834; TSE stays at her Hudson), 8378; and Eliots, 6870, 92,
London home, 771, 772, 790; TSE stays 97, 1034, 285, 287, 31011, 3223,
in La Turbie apartment, 782n; and 32930, 3501, 3557; and WL, 179,
Higgins, 784, 790; VHE on, 798, 799; 226; Hesse translation, 230n; and The
contribution to VHEs medical expenses, Apes of God, 179n, 364n, 412; and Muir,
799 465, 533; TSE sends Criterion Oct. 1924
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 30, 759n to, 51617; financial support for WL,
Routledge, 340n, 425, 792, 794, 802 5356, 537, 581n; recommends doctor
Rowe, P. N., 5289 for VHE, 704; visits VHE in nursing
Ruhr occupation, 205 home, 800, 805, 806, 8078
Ruz, Jos Martinz, see Azorin WORKS: Cleste, 177, 309, 322; Myrtle,
Russell, Alys, 591n 619; Prince Hempseed, 177, 180, 285;
Russell, Bertrand, 837; and VHE, 257, The Thief, 15n, 68n, 161; Tony, 285,
63940; TSE writes to about TWL, 287, 32930
2578; return from China, 257n; TSE on, Schiff, Violet, 70n, 989, 179, 180, 2878,
35960, 400n; and HWE, 3812, 423, 351, 364n, 633, 680, 704, 7401, 800,
438, 440, 640; TSE discusses VHE with, 805, 806
6512 Schloezer, Boris de, 269n
Russian Ballet (Ballets Russes), 491n, 508, Schnitzler, Arthur, 133n, 608
545, 546, 552; see also Diaghilev, Serge Scientific Press, see Faber & Gwyer
Rutter, Owen, 737n Scott, Cecil, 3323, 372, 427, 444n
Rylands, George Dadie, 694n, 6945, Scott Moncrieff, Charles Kenneth, 51n; as
708, 71314, 724, 760, 794 Proust translator, 51, 122, 142, 233n,
2878, 3467, 369, 453, 489; Proust
873
tribute volume, 510n; and F&G, 694; for Criterion, 3045, 3067; and TSE,
and Pirandello, 778; Cousin Fanny and 456, 467; HR on, 512
Cousin Annie, 559, 571, 694 WORKS: The Dark Night, 446, 460, 469,
Scribners, 365n 491n; The Grandmother, 3067, 308,
Seaver, Edwin, 540n 370, 446, 512n; Joness Karma, 158n;
Secession, 64, 150n, 774n The Mahatma Story, 358; The Victim,
Seillire, Baron Ernest, 796n 158, 161
Selby, F. G., 352, 359n, 425, 518 Sitwell, Edith, 325n, 328, 357n, 392n,
Seldes, Alice Wadhams (ne Hall), 461n 414n, 524, 541, 556, 806, 83940
Seldes, Gilbert, 39n, 8389; and Dial, 11, Sitwell, Osbert, 840; on Eliots marriage,
39, 81, 2678; suggestions for Criterion, 318n; and The Apes of God rumpus,
39, 523; and plans for Criterion, 77; on 356n, 364, 364n, 412n, 429, 432; and
Wilson, 83n; resigns from Dial, 2889; Monro, 392n; to theatre with TSE, 429,
New York Chronicle for Criterion, 4323; and VHE, 467, 806; on CCE,
384n, 4423, 461, 475, 540, 726n, 814; 467n; HR on, 51112; Aiken on, 525;
marriage, 461; The 7 Lively Arts, 78, and Sacheverells marriage, 747; Leverson
268, 289, 442, 455, 475n, 490n, 491, writes to about Eliots, 729n
525n, 541 WORKS: A German Eighteenth-Century
Selected Essays, 71n, 197n, 223n, 774n, Town, 301, 425, 512n; Triple Fugue,
801n 480, 490n, 491, 525n
Selfridge & Co Ltd, 56970, 5756 Sitwell, Sacheverell, 31, 392n, 429, 429n,
Seneca: His Tenne Tragedies (TSE intro), 431, 4323, 441, 549n, 617, 747, 806,
191, 1978, 331, 710 840
Serono, Cesare, 759n Smith, Adam, 139n
Seyler, Athene, 366 Smith, Charlotte Eliot, see Eliot, Charlotte
Seymour-Jones, Carole, 684n Smith, J. A., 204n, 695n
Shakespear, Dorothy, see Pound, Dorothy Smith, James, 431n
Shakespear, Olivia, 401n Smith, Logan Pearsall, 591n
Shakespeare, William: Hamlet and His Smith, Stevie, 754n
Problems, 34n, 208n; TSEs allusions to Smith Academy, 242n
in letters, 72n, 545n, 627n; Lawrences Society of Jesus, 786
essay, 221, 2278; productions, 307, 338, Sokolova, Lydia, 508n
3602 Sorel, Georges, 243n, 605n, 797
Shakespeare & Company bookshop, 630n The Sources of Chapman, 223n
Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca, Soviet Union, 230
243n Spencer, Theodore, 689n
Shand, John, 410n, 507n Spingarn, J. E., 399n, 399400
Shaw, George Bernard, 491n Spire, Andr, 795n
Shaw, Walter Hanks, 485, 489, 491, 507, Squire, J. C., 240n, 249, 307n, 315n, 393n,
559, 7556 509n, 538n
Sheffield, Ada (ne Eliot), 87, 273, 303, The Star, 246n
335 Stein, Gertrude, 226n, 486, 490, 504,
Sheffield, Alfred Dwight (Shef), 336, 839 630n, 638n, 763n, 765, 765n
Shelburne, William Petty, second Earl of, Stendhal, 416
220n Sternheim, Carl, 765n
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 34 Stevens, Wallace, 765n, 774n
Simonson, Raoul, 675n Stevenson, W. M., 771n
Sinclair, George, 244 Stewart, Charles W., 716n, 739
Sinclair, May (Mary St Clair), 839; TSE Strachey, Sir Charles, 377n
solicits further Criterion contributions, Strachey, Lytton, 153n, 201n, 204, 206,
1578; Bell on, 224n; Walpole suggests as 246, 282, 325n, 342n, 412n, 430n, 688,
Criterion contributor, 294n; suggestions 840
874
Stravinsky, Igor, 234, 473, 779n Three Dream Songs, 451n
Strong, L. A. G., 173n, 538n, 676, 689 Three Mountains Press, 135, 464
Sturge Moore, Thomas, see Moore, Three Poems, 549, 550, 566n, 676n
Thomas Sturge The Three Provincialities, 280n
Suars, Andr, 246 Three Reformers, 797n
Sullivan, J. W. N., 573n Tilden Smith, L., 726
Supervielle, Jules, 403n Tillyard, E. M. W., 763n, 815n
Supplment Litraire du Figaro, 46 The Times, 453, 531, 630n
Sskind, W. E., 672 Times Literary Supplement: Andrew
Svevo, Italo, 323n4n Marvell, 484n; article on TSEs
Sweeney Agonistes: allusions to, 264n, controversy with JMM, 417n; Ben
627n; influences, 162n; TSE discusses Jonson, 170n; Cyril Tourneur, 223n;
with Bennett, 250, 465, 471, 505, 5201, John Dryden, 484n; The Metaphysical
634, 638, 6712, 809; TSE on, 268, Poets, 34n, 484n, 541n; The Sources of
504n, 546, 802n; writing of, 192, 209, Chapman, 223n; Thomas Middleton,
214n, 223, 227, 2545, 472 223n; Three Reformers, 797n; TSE and
Swift, Jonathan, 83n, 779 HR discuss article in, 784; TSEs book
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 525n, 557 reviews, 572n, 711n, 715n, 786; TSEs
Sykes, Henry Dugdale, 222n, 2223, 565 letters to, 173; TWL review, 240n
Symons, Arthur, 14n, 248n, 275n, 560 To Criticize the Critic, 241n, 757n
Todd, Dorothy, 569n
Tagore, Rabindranath, 230n Tollemache, Mrs, 702
Taine, Hippolyte, 785n Toller, Ernst, 133n
Tate, Allen, 657n, 6578 Tolstoi, Leo, 495, 518, 53940, 549, 721n
Taylor, A. E., 496n Tourneur, Cyril, 223, 254
Taylor, Ellen du Pois, 772n Townsend Warner, Sylvia, 210n
Tchehov, Anton Pavlovich, 721n, 727 Toynbee, A. J., 446n, 448, 454n, 469
Tmoignages trangers, 650n Tradition and the Individual Talent, 75n,
Tertullian, 793n 227n
Tharaud, Jean, 797 The Transatlantic Review, 226n, 236n,
Tharaud, Jerome, 797 239, 2513, 265, 356, 486n
Thatcher, David S., 792n Travellers Club, 377
Thayer, Ellen, 6556, 666, 682, 684n, 685 Tree, Sir Herbert Beerbohm, 527n
Thayer, Lucy Ely, 656, 660, 6835 Tree, Viola, 527n, 5278, 543n, 618, 751,
Thayer, Scofield, 8401; and Dial award, 756
6n; and Hofmannsthal, 12, 247, 441; Trench, Frederick Herbert, 246n, 2467
suggests Watson purchase Dial, 53n; and Trend, J. B., 16n; TSE solicits Criterion
plans for Criterion, 77 and German contributions from, 1617, 567, 193,
literature, 133n; and EP, 135n; solicits 210, 231; TSE consults about Criterion,
TSE contributions for Dial, 347, 5667, 457, 466, 475n; Musical Chronicle for
6078; relationship with TSE, 493; Living Criterion, 4578, 507n; TSE on, 515; and
Art, 347 F&G Foreign Men of Letters, 717; as
Theresa, St, 711n musical adviser for Criterion, 724, 775;
Thibaudet, Albert, 14n The Moors in Spanish Music, 193, 277,
Thomas, Edward, 734n 512
Thomas, Helen, 411n, 734 Trevelyan, Robert, 467
Thomas Middleton, 222n, 223n Triumphal March, 7n
Thompson, Edith Jessie, 7n Trotter, W. B. L., 154, 224n, 2245
Thorogood, Horace, 734n Truc, Gonzague, 668n, 798n, 801
Thorpe, W. A., 49n, 196n, 482n, 605, 649, Turgenev, Ivan Sergeyevich, 240, 521
756 Turkey, 8
Three British Prose Writers, 514n Tyro, 276n, 280, 372n
875
Tzara, Tristan, 485n, 489n Virgil, 657
Virgil and the Christian World, 122n,
Udny, Revd S., 298 657n
Ulysses, Order and Myth, 38, 39, 54n, Vivante, Leone, 4950, 139, 196n, 217,
198n, 214n, 254, 267, 289, 319n 218, 244, 4812, 605n
Unruh, Fritz von, 459n Vlaminck, Maurice de, 347n
Untermeyer, Louis, 42n, 451n Vogue, 11, 496n, 569, 6256, 630, 688,
The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, 744, 764
90n, 514n Voorslag, 661n
Valassopoulo, G., 338n, 341n, 403n W. H. Smith, 222

Valry, Paul, 8412; Barney raises funds Wade, Allan, 360n, 424, 633
for, 129n, 130n; London lecture, 229, Walkley, Arthur Bingham, 453n
250, 2647, 276; TSE on, 265n; Monaco Waller, Edmund, 763
lecture, 265n; writes to TSE about TWL, Walpole, Hugh, 842; TSE discusses
London lecture and Criterion, 2767; and Criterion with, 2789, 2834, 305, 471;
Commerce, 474n; and Shakespeare & socialising with TSE, 420, 428, 432; HR
Company bookshop, 630n; bibliography, on, 511; gives TSE reference, 553, 572,
675n; and F&G Foreign Men of Letters, 583, 5845, 6212; and NC, 5823; The
717; and Hayward, 754n; LAme et la Old Ladies, 2934, 348, 386, 3989,
Danse, 246; Mon Faust, 754n; La soire 432, 511n
avec Monsieur Teste, 246, 675 Ward, Ned, 568
LE SERPENT: Criterion book publication Ward, Stephen, 587, 602, 649n
(TSE intro), 148, 149, 1523, 165, 181, Wardle, Mark, 21, 26, 278, 61, 108, 149,
224, 229, 250, 254, 258, 30910, 508, 1524, 165, 1801, 211, 229, 250, 265,
535, 5501; Criterion journal 535, 717
publication, 21, 26, 48, 108, 154, 180; The Waste Land: awards, 6n, 534; and
first publication, 21n; French limited Barney, 129; Baudelaire allusions, 276n;
edition, 181n; possible Hogarth Press Bell on, 224n, 226n, 228, 232, 240n; BR
edition, 21, 26, 278, 61, 1523 on, 257; and Cohen, 657n; Criterion
Van Doren, Mark, 572n, 5967 publication, 202n; dedication, 757n; EPs
Vanity Fair: uses WL drawing of TSE, 10, allusions to, 141; epigraph, 186n; first
13, 102; Bells review of TWL, 224n, UK book publication (Hogarth Press),
226n, 228, 232, 240n; Crowninshield as 22n, 201n, 2023, 213, 387, 450;
editor, 226n Fitzgerald on, 813n; Ford on, 34, 23940;
TSE CONTRIBUTIONS: Contemporary French translation, 338n, 649n; GCF on,
English Prose, 13n, 84, 1012, 126, 6623; German translation, 133, 603n;
127n, 138n, 186n, 496n; A Prediction in Gorman on, 736; Habsburg allusions,
Regard to Three English Authors, 127n, 214; Hecht on, 745, 83, 1045, 113;
156n, 187n, 191n, 269, 332n, 566n; A Heller on, 242; HWE on, 746; influences
Preface to Modern Literature, 127n, on, 156n, 603n; Jepson on, 45n; JJs
268n, 269n parody, 728; and JMM, 554n; Lucas on,
The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry (Clark 815n; Monro on, 31, 151; MS bought by
lectures): history of lectures, 591n; TSE Quinn, 70, 187n; Munson on, 540n; and
invited to give lectures, 588, 5914, NRF, 405, 413; Rickword on, 240n;
61617, 623; content, 240n, 658n, 668n, Seldes on, 38; Sinclair on, 158n; Squire
711, 711n12n, 763, 786n, 793n, 7978; on, 240n, 249; TSE on, 11, 746, 188,
publication, 671 240, 242; TSEs allusions to, 475n; TSEs
Verga, Giovanni, 717, 717n attitude to anthologising extracts, 173,
Verhaeren, mile, 657n 303; TSEs mother and uncle discuss,
La Vie des Lettres, 46n 1234; US edition, 71, 912, 202n, 494n;
Villon, Franois, 492 US popularity, 107; Valry on, 276; VHE
876
on books appearance, 9; and VHEs Williams, Orlo, 509n; book reviews for
writing, 411n; Williams on, 316n; Criterion, 167n, 591n, 722, 7778; and
Wilsons review, 11; Yeats on, 22 F&G Foreign Men of Letters, 717;
Waterlow, Sydney Philip Perigal (John Capitaine Ensorceleur, 5623, 752n;
Franklin), 573, 681, 688, 693, 843 Contemporary Criticism of Literature,
Watson, James Sibley, 53n, 534, 77 506, 50910, 530n, 542, 558, 568
Waugh, Alec, 559n Williams, William Carlos, 316n, 31617,
Waugh, Arthur, 387 464n, 515, 765, 765n, 774n
Weaver, Harriet Shaw, 39n, 175n, 226n, Wilmshurst, W. L., 7334
280, 3978, 4513, 481, 533n, 728, Wilson, Edmund, 10n; and Vanity Fair,
8434 1011, 13, 84n, 1012, 1267; on Seldes
Webb, Beatrice, 732n opinion of his writing, 83n; Criterion
Webb, Mary, 307n contributions, 697; and TWL, 813n
Webb, Sidney, 732n Wilson, Mona, 529n
Webster, John, 223, 254 Wolfe, Humbert, 314n, 31415, 433,
Weelkes, Thomas, 194n 5634, 637, 649n, 694n, 701n
West, Dr, 685, 686 Wood, Richardson, 429, 433n, 444n, 457
West, Rebecca, 154, 160n, 1601 Woolf, Leonard, 844; and Bel Esprit
Weston, Jessie L., 603 scheme, 6n; and Koteliansky, 9n;
Wharton, Edith, 187n socialising with Eliots, 23n, 146n, 445;
What Dante Means to Me, 241n as the Nations literary editor, 88n, 111,
Whibley, Charles, 844; Criterion 673; TSE submits article to, 146, 1645;
contributions, 14, 36, 423, 48, 55, 102, own contributions to N&A, 169n; return
108, 1478, 174n, 238, 245, 299, 323, from Rodmell, 214n; TSE discusses
511; socialising with TSE, 55, 76, 343, theatre reviews with, 307; TSE discusses
376, 456; and Ker, 82; health, 102n, 103, N&A contributions with, 388; and The
299, 376, 435, 456; UK publisher, 148; Apes of God rumpus, 412; asks TSE for
Tudor Translations Series edited by, 191, advice on terms to be sought for
1978, 331, 626; TSE discusses Criterion publishing a periodical, 4345; writes to
with, 197, 377, 406, 4356, 552; TSE about US rights for VW essay, 447;
obituary for Ker, 2034, 212; EPs and disagreements over TWL, 450; gives TSE
TSEs opinions of, 208; and RA, 220; reference, 606; TSE consults about
chair at Valry lecture, 229, 264; TSE on, psychoanalysts and doctors, 629n, 6457,
255, 515, 610; HR on, 511n; encourages 651, 6989; holiday in France, 635;
GCF to take on TSE, 543, 562, 6201; reviews Poems 19091925, 8012, 803;
and WL, 548, 582, 597, 693, 699; on see also Hogarth Press
Ward, 568; VHE on, 593, 718; TSE Woolf, Virginia, 8445; and Bel Esprit
indiscreetly mentions Clark lectures to, scheme, 6, 73n; and Koteliansky, 9n, 10n;
5934; in Greece with Lord Brabourne, and Hogarth Press, 21n; and Eliots, 23n,
597; GCF consults about TSE, 664; and 146n, 201, 202, 270, 413, 4445, 4723,
F&G Foreign Men of Letters, 721; TSE 483, 635, 6457, 651, 806; Forsters
on state of mind, 8023; Lord John essay, 23n, 576n; health, 28, 430, 737,
Manners and His Friends, 435 757, 759, 768; on TSE, 69n, 74n, 116n,
Why Rural Verse?, 5967 192n, 430, 483n, 556n; TSE writes to
Wickham Steed, Henry, 214n thanks, 74; on LW being made literary
Wilde, Oscar, 344n, 345, 375, 659n editor of the Nation, 88n, 111n; writes to
Wilhelm, Crown Prince of Sweden, 3056, VHE, 112; letters from VHE, 118, 182;
324 visits Garsington, 123n; on VHE and JJ,
Willcox, Sir William, 769n 180n; TSE writes to thank, 21314;
Willey, Basil, 763n return from Rodmell, 214n; on Bells
William James on Immortality, 795n journalistic talents, 232n; Walpole
Williams, Harcourt, 171n suggests as Criterion contributor, 294n; to
877
King Lear with TSE, 342; TSE solicits Worringer, Wilhelm, 605n
further Criterion contributions from, Worster, W. W., 43n, 434, 578, 678,
3889, 7345, 738; on Criterion Apr. 656
1924 and The Apes of God rumpus, Wortham, Hugh Evelyn, 726n
41112; reads to Heretics, Cambridge, Wright, Dr Maurice, 645n, 651
444, 754n; on VHE, 445n; disagreements Wyndham, Mrs Guy, 739
over TWL, 450; HR on, 51112; and
Vogue, 569n; TSE writes to about health, The Yale, 365n
5834; helps Eliots look for country Yarrow, Duncan, 361n
retreat, 598; holiday in France, 635; Yeats, George, 665n
mental health, 645n, 646n; see also Yeats, William Butler, 845; senatorship, 20,
Hogarth Press TSE on, 20n, 396n, 610; on TWL, 22;
WORKS: Character in Fiction (Mr and Shakespeare, 401; HR on, 512; and
Bennett and Mrs Brown), 203n, 411n, MacGreevy, 606, 665, 753; Italian
42930, 444, 445, 4478, 453n, 471n, translator, 752n; and Moore, 776n
490, 507, 512n, 549n, 5567, 584, 634n; WORKS: A Biographical Fragment, 22,
The Common Reader, 598n, 635n, 647, 634, 78, 812, 172, 174n, 207n; The
649n, 651, 677, 701n; In the Orchard, Cat and the Moon, 383, 396, 4034,
23, 27, 48, 108, 161, 512n; Jacobs 425, 434, 512n; The Trembling of the
Room, 388; Mrs Dalloway, 270n, 473, Veil, 22n, 3967
484n, 696, 700n1n, 708n; Notes on an Yellow Book, 600
Elizabethan Play, 598; On Being Ill, LYmagier, 315n
768; The Patron and the Crocus, 388; Younger, George, 205n
Swifts Journal to Stella, 757n
Wordsworth, William, 151, 164, 191, Zweig, Stefan, 133n
2923, 393, 697n
878

T. S. Eliot, Edited by Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton The Letters of T.S. Eliot Volume 2 1923-1925 2011 PDF

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T. S. Eliot, Edited by Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton The Letters of T.S. Eliot Volume 2 1923-1925 2011 PDF

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the letters of

New Haven & London

All writings by T. S. Eliot, introductions

All rights reserved.

Yale University Press books may be

Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011928725

This paper meets the requirements of

1 Pencil portrait of Eliot by Wyndham Lewis, 1922. Collection

I owe a special debt of gratitude to both Dr William H. Bond, formerly

Volume 1 of the Letters of T. S. Eliot effectively covers the years from

1923 january TSE works full-time at Lloyds Bank, where he runs an

published works by t. s. eliot

periodicals and publishers

to Henry Eliot 1 ts Houghton

1 Henry Eliot: see Glossary of Names.

1 Harold Sidney Harmsworth, first Viscount Rothermere (18681940): proprietor of the

to Richard Aldington 3 ms Texas

1 Lady Ottoline Morrell: see Glossary of Names.

to The Editor of the Daily Mail 1

to Ottoline Morrell ms Texas

from Vivien Eliot 3 ms Valerie Eliot

1 Enclosure no longer present.

to Edmund Wilson 2 ms Beinecke

1 Gilbert Seldes: see Glossary of Names.

1 Scofield Thayer: see Glossary of Names.

to Mrs Walter Edward McCourt

1 Jacques Rivire: see Glossary of Names.

1 Hazell, Watson & Viney Ltd, printers of C.

to John Middleton Murry 2 ms Valerie Eliot

1 F. S. Flint: see Glossary of Names.

to Richard Cobden-Sanderson ms Beinecke

to W. B. Yeats 1 ts Michael Yeats

1 W. B. Yeats: see Glossary of Names.

1 LW and VW had founded the Hogarth Press in 1917.

1 E. M. Forster: see Glossary of Names.

to Alec Randall2 ts Tulsa

to John Gould Fletcher2 cc

1 Stefan George (18681933), poet. Randall suggested an English translation of the

1 Wardles transl. of Paul Valry, The Serpent, for C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923).

to Richard Aldington ts Texas

to Richard Aldington ts Texas

1 Harold Monro: see Glossary of Names.

1 Monro asked whether he might have C. in exchange for The Chapbook.

1 Julien Benda: see Glossary of Names

1 Charles Whibley: see Glossary of Names.

to Ford Madox Ford ms Cornell

1 Seldes later wrote a number of New York Chronicles for C.

1 Seldes had written from Sdbahn Hotel, Semmering, Austria.

to Egdar Jepson2 ts Beinecke

to John Middleton Murry ms Northwestern

to Richard Aldington ts Texas

to Richard Cobden-Sanderson ts Texas

1 Aeschylus, The Oresteia, trans. R. C. Trevelyan (1922).

1 A short story by B. M. Goold Adams in C. 1: 3 (Apr. 1923), 293302.

1 Ezra Pound: see Glossary of Names.

from George Saintsbury ms Valerie Eliot

to James S. Watson3 ts Berg

1 Viscountess Rothermere: see Glossary of Names.