T.S. Eliot’s letters became increasingly terse and humorless after 1915, the year that marks his marriage to Vivienne Haigh-Wood. Virginia Woolf noted that “she almost vomited” after meeting Mrs. Eliot—”so scented, so powdered, so egoistic.” Woolf probably exaggerates, but there is no doubt that Vivienne’s medical treatments and frayed nerves wore on her husband’s health. In the letter below, Eliot addresses his mother in a harried tone, demanding details of her imminent visit to London. In a few months Eliot would suffer the emotional breakdown that led him to write “The Waste Land.”
13 February 1921
9 Clarence Gate Gardens, N.W. 1
London
My dearest mother,
I think that I wrote and thanked you for the dividend in my last letter, and for the insurance policy…
…Vivienne has had a severe attack of influenza lately, which is the reason I have not found time to write for some days, and is very weak. The worst of anything like this is that it retards very much the course of treatment for her stomach, and sets her very far back.
I want however to put only one matter in this letter, so that you may consider it and give me a thought-out reply at once. You should now decide on the time at which you wish to come, and should reserve a passage immediately. Please let me know
1. When you are coming.
2. How much you are willing to pay (per week) for board and lodging.
3. Whether you wish lodgings, or as I strongly advise, two bedrooms and a sitting room in a hotel.
4. How much of your food requires to be specially prepared. I must know this in order to decide what is the best form of habitation for you.
5. Whether you would consider taking a small furnished flat, if we got a reliable woman to come in and cook for you. I believe that this arrangement might be made no more fatiguing, and perhaps really less troublesome, for Marion, than a hotel or lodgings. I might be able to secure one in our block of flats, which is a very large one.
Please think these over and answer them as soon as you possible can. I will say no more in this letter, except to thank you for yours…and to send my devoted love.
your son,
Tom.
P.S. IMPORTANT
Please let me know also whether it will be only you and Marion or whether there is any chance of Henry coming too. I am not only very anxious to see him (I am always worried about his health and happiness and future) but I know it would do him a world of good, and it might be very important to him. Also, I think he could manage to get away for long enough to be worth while, and I believe he would if you urged him to do so. The poor fellow has never been abroad; he ought sometime to get at least a peep far outside of the commercial life of Chicago among the people he has to mix with there. Do try to make him come, for his own sake.
Tom.
From The Letters of T.S. Eliot, Vol. I. Edited by Valerie Eliot. London: Faber and Faber, 1988. pp. 436–437.
Note: Eliot’s brother Henry did end up coming on the trip after all.
FURTHER READING
Eliot’s work as a bank clerk at the time.
The doubts from which his “daemonic language” stemmed.