Letters of T.S. Eliot: 1898-1922

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

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

  9–IMH, 54.

  TO Conrad Aiken

  MS Huntington

  25 February [1915]

  Merton College

  My dear Conrad,

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

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

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

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

  Affectionately

  TSE

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

  SUPPRESSED COMPLEX2

  She lay very still in bed with stubborn eyes

  Holding her breath lest she begin to think.

  I was a shadow upright in the corner

  Dancing joyously in the firelight.

  She stirred in her sleep and clutched the blanket with her fingers

  She was very pale and breathed hard.

  When morning stirred the long nasturtium creeper in the tawny bowl

  I passed joyously out through the window.

  AFTERNOON

  The ladies who are interested in Assyrian art

  Gather in the hall of the British Museum.

  The faint perfume of last year’s tailor suits

  And the steam from drying rubber overshoes

  And the green and purple feathers on their hats

  Vanish in the sombre Sunday afternoon

  As they fade beyond the Roman statuary,

  Like amateur comedians across a lawn,

  Towards the unconscious, the ineffable, the absolute.

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

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

  TO J. H. Woods

  MS Professor David G. Williams

  2 March [1915]

  Merton College

  Dear Professor Woods,

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Yours very gratefully

  Thomas S. Eliot

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

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

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

  TO Eleano
r Hinkley

  MS Houghton

  21 Mars [March 1915]

  [London]

  Dear Eleanor

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Always affectionately

  Tom

  1–He had confused his host with Ernest Rhys (1859–1946), the editor of Everyman’s Library. Sir John (1840–1915) was Principal of Jesus College and Professor of Celtic. His daughters were My fanwy and Olwen.

  2–Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910), American poet and social reformer; author of ‘The Battle-Hymn of the Republic’.

  3–Charles Dickens, Pickwick Papers, ch. xv: ‘Can I view thee panting, lying / On thy stomach, without sighing; / Can I unmoved see thee dying / On a log, / Expiring frog!’

  4–Samuel Slater (1768–1835), English-born founder of the American cotton manufacturing industry.

  TO Mrs Jack Gardner1

  MS Gardner Museum

  4 April [1915]

  Merton College [Oxford]

  My dear Mrs Gardner,

  I wonder if you would care for a brief word from London. I have been meaning to write to you for some time. Quite two months ago I think it may have been (or six weeks) I made the acquaintance (at a meeting of the Buddhist Society!) of a man who attracted me by a certain serenity of manner, and by mentioning Mr Okakura.2 His name was Henry Furst,3 and as he said he was about to write to you, I asked him to write of me and my intentions. I am sorry not to have seen anything of him since; he said he was going to live at Marston, outside of Oxford; I was unable, during the time I remained in Oxford, to get out to him; and though I have written to him, (at a not very definite address), I have not had a reply. I breakfasted with him once. He showed me a photograph and a letter of poor Matt Prichard, of whom I had heard nothing whatever.4 I did not realise that we had been so near to each other when the war broke out, he at Freiburg and I at Marburg. As I seem to have lost contact with Furst, and am not in touch with any other of Matt’s friends, I should be more than indebted to you if you would let me have word about him: if he is eventually released, especially. Furst spoke of him as very happy, in being able to help other people in the camp. I can imagine its bringing out exclusively the best in his restless spirit; and now that I know that he is there, it seems to me the happiest and best and most appropriate thing for him at such a time as this: a certain curious symbolism about it.

  The war is very real and very frightful to me, as I know the country and the people so recently. On the 14 Juillet I was in Brussels, having come from Ostende, Bruges, Ghent, and Antwerp. Two days later I was in Germany, and in a fortnight I wished myself well out of Germany. Not that the people were not very kind to me – the Germans have that hospitality and cordiality which characterises the less civilised peoples. And not that I wish the Germans to be crushed – but France is so important, and defeat would do the French so much harm! This alone outweighs any consideration of right and wrong in my mind. I found that Santayana takes a similar view. At Cambridge, where he has been living, (in hideous lodgings), I discovered him writing an article for the New Republic on Spanish feeling toward the war.5 To turn from these dismal topics; I have been having a very interesting time in London – which grows upon me more and more: – there are at least a dozen people whom I like in London, and that is a
great deal. I have been seeing a good deal of some of the modern artists whom the war has so far spared. One of the most interesting of the radicals – Gaudier-Brzeska6 – do you know of him? – is in the trenches, (as is the interesting T. E. Hulme);7 cubism is still represented by Wyndham Lewis, by Jacob Epstein,8 and a man whose work I like exceedingly, Edward Wadsworth.9 There has been an exhibition – a very ill-assorted one – at the Goupil gallery:10 Lewis had a fine canvas, Wadsworth two good woodcuts, Brzeska an interesting small marble, and nothing else of the slightest merit; unless one excepts Epstein’s four things, which are certainly extraordinarily habile [clever], but did not please me, though once or twice his wood statues (one is painted red) give something suggesting the vigour of a central African image.

  I do not know whether you have heard of a certain infamous soi-disant quarterly called Blast,11 only one number of which has so far appeared. If the second ever does appear – it has been impending for two months – I am thinking of sending you a copy, on the supposition that you would not in America see it otherwise; because it might at least amuse you and incidentally because it promises to contain a few things of my own. There will be some poems by a girl named Jessie Dismorr,12 which I think might interest you.

  I see the charming Bertie Russell from time to time; having in fact been to Cambridge recently … Of my work in Oxford there is little to say; it is satisfactory, but London is infinitely more attractive, and since I am in London now, I talk of that instead! The last time I was here I had the pleasure of meeting Yeats: he is now in Ireland, I believe because a play of Lady Gregory’s is coming on at the Abbey.13 I am hoping for his return – he is a very agreeable talker.