The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 Read Online Free PDF

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    Ampersands and squiggles have been replaced by ‘and’, except where they occur in correspondence with Ezra Pound.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.
     
     

 
    26 September 1888
    St Louis, Missouri
    ‘Young Thomas (Stearns for his Grandfather) came forth at 7.45 this a.m. I like the name for your sake, and shall always feel as though that part of it was for you, though the prime cause was the other …’ 1
    13 April 1943
    Cambridge, Massachusetts
    ‘When you were a tiny boy, learning to talk, you used to sound the rhythm of sentences without shaping words – the ups and downs of the thing you were trying to say. I used to answer you in kind, saying nothing yet conversing with you as we sat side by side on the stairs at 2635 Locust Street. And now you think the rhythm before the words in a new poem! … Such a dear little boy!’ 2
    1–Henry Ware Eliot to his elder brother, the Reverend Thomas Lamb Eliot (ms Houghton).
    2–Ada Eliot Sheffield (1869–1943), the first-born, in her last letter to TSE, written while she was dying of cancer ( MS Valerie Eliot). She and TSE were intellectually close; he described her as the Mycroft to his Sherlock Holmes. She has in mind The Music of Poetry (1942): ‘I know that a poem, or a passage of a poem, may tend to realize itself first as a particular rhythm before it reaches expression in words, and that this rhythm may bring to birth the idea and the image.’ 
     

THE LETTERS
1898–1922
     
     

 
     

1898
     
    TO His Father 1
     
    MS Houghton
     
    Thurs. 23–24 June 1898
    Gloucester 2 [Massachusetts]
    Dear Papa,
    It is very cool here when we get up – that is, indoors, outdoors it is just right. We have no sunflowers, there were two in the rosebed, and Marion weeded them up. I found the things in the upper tray of my trunk all knocked about. A microscope was broken and a box of butterflies and a spider.
    Charlotte and I hunt for birds. She found a empty nest yesterday (23d). Marion, Margret (?) & Henry are going to Class-day. 3
Yours Truly,
Tom.
    1–Henry Ware Eliot; the other family members referred to are Marion, the fourth child and TSE’s favourite sister; Charlotte, the third child; Margaret, the second child; and Henry, the fifth child and TSE’s only brother, who was nine years his senior. See Glossary of Names.
    2–From 1896 the family spent their summers in the house built by Henry Ware Eliot on land originally purchased in 1890 at Eastern Point, overlooking Gloucester Harbor. On earlier visits they had stayed at the Hawthorne Inn.
    3–When ceremonies are held in schools or colleges to mark the graduation of the senior class.
     

 
     

1904–1910
     
    TO Charlotte Eliot Smith 1
     
    MS Houghton
     
    August [1904]
    Oliver’s Corner 2
[Province of Quebec, Canada]
    Dear Charlotte,
    Hoping you are better,
At least enough to read my letter,
Which I have twisted into rhyme
To amuse you, I have taken time
To tell you of the happenings
Swimming, rowing, other things
With which I have the time been killing.
Wednesday morning, weather willing,
We after breakfast took a start,
Four of us, in a two horse cart
Together with a little luncheon,
Including things quite good to munch on,
To climb a mountain,