[1418 East 63d St., Seattle]
I am feeling very tired this morning, having been very busy in every way during the last fortnight, and shall be for the next week. I hope August will be very quiet. WeSitwells, thethe Eliots dine with;a3 dined with Osbert on Tuesday; theSitwell, Osbertthe Eliots dine with;a3 company beingSitwell, Edithshockingly altered;a5 Osbert, Edith, SachieSitwell, Sacheverellthe Eliots dine with;a1 and his Canadian wife,2 whom I had never met before and who is much nicer than I expected, andStokes, Adrianat Sitwell dinner-party;a1 Adrian Stokes, a very brilliant young art critic who has written a book on the Renaissance which we are about to publish,3 and RobertByron, Robert;a1 Byron, another young man who writes about Byzantine art.4 I was shocked by Edith’s appearance: she not only does not look like your photograph but does not look at all as I remember her. I knew that she had fallen out of bed, about a year ago, and had concussion, but I fear the consequences are serious – she is unhealthily fat, which does not suit anyone so tall, and seemed to me a little ‘simple’ and wandering, and Vivienne found out that she has taken to giving money away foolishly to unworthy applicants – altogether, she was dreadfully pathetic. (All of this is extremely confidential of course). They are the most unfortunate family; theirSitwell, Lady Ida (née Denison)as mother;a1 mother, Lady Ida, was not only intemperate but was sent to gaol at one time for swindling;5 and I admire very much the brave front they put up in making the best of a bad job; and they are extremely kindly and well bred people. Otherwise, the dinner party went off extremely well.
Otherwisefinances (TSE's)TSE's Income Tax;a1, I have been busy with private financial worries – Income Tax is my chief nightmare there – and with theJoyce, James'Work in Progress' (afterwards Finnegans Wake);e7negotiations over;a1 negotiations for obtaining Joyce’s new work for publication – but that I hope is nearly completed.6
ITriumphal March;a2 send herewith, with some diffidence, the first proof of my Ariel poem.7 ItTriumphal Marchoriginal typesetting disappoints TSE;a3 is to be reset in better type, and the statistics – whichTriumphal Marchand the Armistice;a4 areGermanyand Triumphal March;a2 the figures of the war material handed over by Germany at the Armistice – are to be spaced closer together, as they are not meant to count as lines of verse. ItCoriolanTSE's conception of;a2 is the first movement of ‘Coriolan’. Why Coriolan? not so much because of any resemblance to Beethoven as to hint that it is not meant to be quite the same conception as Shakespeare’s! My Coriolanus is not to be essentially the man of action – but the man who essentially seeks to be something – first through the pride of action and public activity – the ‘hero’ – then through the pride of asceticism – the wrong aspiration to saintliness which is no better really than the aspiration to heroism – and finally the complete surrender of self as the most intense form of being. Of course I very likely shall never manage all this, or it may become something else. TheTriumphal Marchits allusions explained;a5 first part is what the title indicates, only the anachronisms and mixtures of place are intentional – so that it should [not] be in any way reconstruction of a Roman triumph, and I did not want to localise it in London or America or anywhere, so I mixed French references in – reference to the typical absurd medley of straggling organisations that take part in processions in France. The dust and light refers to the Nicene Creed (Light of Light)8 a theme to be used later; and unless young Cyril turns out to be of use later – he may be Arthur Edward Cyril Parker, a telephone operator later on – he shall be cast out. It would be an impertinence to try to explain any other allusions to You; but I only ask you to reserve judgment on this as merely a draft of one part of perhaps too ambitious a poem.
As I am uncertain of tomorrow, I think I had best send this off and post it to-day, and write a few words tomorrow if there is time. I have been thinking a great deal about your affairs, my dear, and I wish I could do more than think. But I sometimes write to you, and insist on being about to write to you, about problems of mine about which there is so little to be done that there is nothing for you to say in reply; and I shall want you to keep on telling about all your difficulties about which I can do nothing. To me the confidences are so precious in themselves; and certainly I worry less if I think you tell me all your troubles (instead of thinking ‘why worry him with that? he can’t do anything about it’) than if you tried to be bright and cheering – that would rob the whole thing of true intimacy, wouldn’t it, dear?
1.‘Au revoir, mon Émilia! ma bien-aimée’ (G. de Pixerécourt, Le Belvéder, ou La Vallée de l’Etna [1848], sc. xix).
2.SacheverellSitwell, Sacheverell Sitwell (1897–1988), writer, poet, art critic; youngest of the Sitwell trio. TSE thought him the ‘most important and difficult poet’ in Wheels (1918). Reviewing The People’s 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). But ‘Sachie’ was best known for idiosyncratic books on travel, art and literature, including Southern Baroque Art (1924). His wife was the Canadian-born Georgia Doble (1905–80). Valerie Eliot to Philip Ziegler, 25 July 1996: ‘Sachie was Tom’s favourite in the family.’ See Sarah Bradford, Sacheverell Sitwell: Splendours and Miseries (1993).
3.AdrianStokes, Adrian Stokes (1902–72), gifted and influential author, art historian and critic, painter, and aficionado of the ballet; friend of Osbert Sitwell and Ezra Pound. Works include Stones of Rimini (1935), To-Night the Ballet (1934), Russian Ballets (1935), Colour and Form (1937), Greek Culture and the Ego (1958), and Painting and the Inner World (1963). The book to which TSE refers here was The Quattro Cento: Part 1: Florence and Verona (F&F, 1932).
Frank Morley to Orlo Williams, 30 Jan. 1934: ‘Do I take it from your letter that you haven’t read his [Stokes’s] previous book QUATTRO CENTO? I found that irritating in manner, but very stimulating in conception; it made me feel, as I know Eliot feels, that Stokes might conceivably be a Ruskin of our time’.
4.Robert Byron (1905–41), British travel writer, art critic, historian; Philhellene. Works include The Byzantine Achievement (1929) and The Road to Oxiana (1937).
5.Lady Ida Sitwell, née Denison (1869–1937) – daughter of the 1st Earl of Londesborough – had been sentenced on 13 Mar. 1915 to three months in Holloway Prison for her failure to meet a debt, having been cheated by a money-lender and blackmailer named Julian Field. She had induced a woman to guarantee a loan of £6,000. She was more of a dupe than a swindler.
6.Finnegans Wake was ultimately to be published in 1939.
7.Triumphal March (Ariel Poems no. 35), with two illustrations by E. McKnight Kauffer, was published on 8 Oct. 1931: 2,000 copies.
8.Nicene Creed: ‘I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.
‘And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of Light, Light of Light …’
1.JamesJoyce, James Joyce (1882–1941), Irish novelist, playwright, poet; author of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922), Finnegans Wake (1939).
2.EdithSitwell, Edith Sitwell (1887–1964), poet, biographer, anthologist, novelist: see Biographical Register.
3.OsbertSitwell, Osbert Sitwell (1892–1969), 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 most celebrated for his remarkable memoirs, Left Hand, Right Hand (5 vols, 1945–50), which include a fine portrayal of TSE. TSE published one sketch by him in the Criterion. See John Lehmann, A Nest of Tigers: Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell in their Times (1968); John Pearson, Façades: Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell (1978); Philip Ziegler, Osbert Sitwell (1998). TSE to Mary Trevelyan, 16 Oct. 1949: ‘Edith and Osbert are 70% humbug – but kind – and cruel' (in Mary Trevelyan, 'The Pope of Russell Square’, 19).
2.SacheverellSitwell, Sacheverell Sitwell (1897–1988), writer, poet, art critic; youngest of the Sitwell trio. TSE thought him the ‘most important and difficult poet’ in Wheels (1918). Reviewing The People’s 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). But ‘Sachie’ was best known for idiosyncratic books on travel, art and literature, including Southern Baroque Art (1924). His wife was the Canadian-born Georgia Doble (1905–80). Valerie Eliot to Philip Ziegler, 25 July 1996: ‘Sachie was Tom’s favourite in the family.’ See Sarah Bradford, Sacheverell Sitwell: Splendours and Miseries (1993).
3.AdrianStokes, Adrian Stokes (1902–72), gifted and influential author, art historian and critic, painter, and aficionado of the ballet; friend of Osbert Sitwell and Ezra Pound. Works include Stones of Rimini (1935), To-Night the Ballet (1934), Russian Ballets (1935), Colour and Form (1937), Greek Culture and the Ego (1958), and Painting and the Inner World (1963). The book to which TSE refers here was The Quattro Cento: Part 1: Florence and Verona (F&F, 1932).