The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 by T. S. Eliot Read Free Book Online Page A
Authors: T. S. Eliot
vacation?
Today has been typically April – showers and sunshine. We have a wood fire in the study. Father has had a little cold. He seems to tire easily. We are hoping Ada will come on in May to the Conference of Charities. 6 She thinks she must be at the Hotel several days. I hope then she will stay with us as long as possible – until we go.
I will not enclose the card – Please let me know without.
Your loving Mother
Hope the trip to New Haven will be pleasant. Father thinks before long you can take your deposit from Bank if you are to leave Cambridge.
1–None of TSE’s letters to his parents from Milton Academy, Harvard or Paris has been
preserved. After their mother’s death, TSE told his brother on 25May 1930 that he was ‘glad
to have the letters to make ashes of’.
2–He was about to become an instructor in rhetoric and composition at Wellesley College.
3–As Class Odist, TSE recited his tribute to ‘Fair Harvard’ in Sanders Theater on Graduation Day, 24 June ( Poems Written in Early Youth ).
4–Edward Little (1881–1905), who died of tuberculosis, was co-illustrator with Frederick Hall of Harvard Celebrities. His brother Clarence (1888–1971), known as ‘Pete’, was a classmate of TSE.
5–After the ‘Ode’, TSE did not contribute again until 1934.
6–Ada was a member of the Massachusetts State Board of Charities, 1909–14. As a probation officer in New York City’s prison, 1901–4, she had been known as ‘the angel of the Tombs’.
Henry Ware Eliot to Thomas Lamb Eliot 1
MS 2 Reed College
[St Louis]
12 May 1910
Dear Bob,
The world wags and the end draws nigher.
Laus Deo.
I have not seen your Tom 3 lately but he is well and busy. My Tom is in hospital at Cambridge – probably scarlet fever which is epidemic in Boston. We have so much difficulty in getting information that Lottie goes to Boston tonight. Why don’t folks think more of the feelings of absentees and give them the whole story! It is unfortunate just now as Tom is working so hard for his A.M. which is just in sight. 4
Tis a parlous world.
Yr
H
In the autumn of 1910, TSE went to Paris for the academic year to attend the Sorbonne, and to hear the weekly lectures at the Collège de France by the philosopher Henri Bergson. Nearly fifty years later he said, ‘I had at that time the idea of giving up English and trying to settle down and scrape along in Paris and gradually write French.’ He left France in July 1911 to visit Munich and northern Italy, before returning to Harvard to work for his doctorate in philosophy.
1–Thomas Lamb Eliot (1841–1936), brother of TSE’s father, was Pastor of the First Unitarian Society of Portland, Oregon, 1867–93; author of The Radical Difference between Liberal Christianity and Orthodoxy. See Earl M. Wilbur, Thomas Lamb Eliot, 1841–1936 (Portland, 1937).
2–From a copy made by the recipient’s granddaughter.
3–Thomas Dawes Eliot (1889–1973), who was to become Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University, 1924–54.
4–Although his illness was not serious, he was unable to sit his final examinations.
TO Theodora Eliot Smith
MS Houghton
[Postmark 23 December 1910] [Paris]
1911
TO Theodora Eliot Smith
MS Houghton
[late February? 1911]
Paris
My Dear Theodora,
Thank you very much for the nice letter that you sent me, and the Valentine of Puss in Boots. Have you the puss in the green boots still, and do you remember the story about him?
You must have been studying hard in order to be able to write so nicely. I have been studying too. But I often go out and walk in the Luxembourg Gardens, which is a sort of park like the Boston Public Gardens, or the park back down the hill from your home in Brookline, where you used to go. There is a pond there too, and the children play boats when it is not too cold. There are lots of boats and they sail right across the pond and right through
Today has been typically April – showers and sunshine. We have a wood fire in the study. Father has had a little cold. He seems to tire easily. We are hoping Ada will come on in May to the Conference of Charities. 6 She thinks she must be at the Hotel several days. I hope then she will stay with us as long as possible – until we go.
I will not enclose the card – Please let me know without.
Your loving Mother
Hope the trip to New Haven will be pleasant. Father thinks before long you can take your deposit from Bank if you are to leave Cambridge.
1–None of TSE’s letters to his parents from Milton Academy, Harvard or Paris has been
preserved. After their mother’s death, TSE told his brother on 25May 1930 that he was ‘glad
to have the letters to make ashes of’.
2–He was about to become an instructor in rhetoric and composition at Wellesley College.
3–As Class Odist, TSE recited his tribute to ‘Fair Harvard’ in Sanders Theater on Graduation Day, 24 June ( Poems Written in Early Youth ).
4–Edward Little (1881–1905), who died of tuberculosis, was co-illustrator with Frederick Hall of Harvard Celebrities. His brother Clarence (1888–1971), known as ‘Pete’, was a classmate of TSE.
5–After the ‘Ode’, TSE did not contribute again until 1934.
6–Ada was a member of the Massachusetts State Board of Charities, 1909–14. As a probation officer in New York City’s prison, 1901–4, she had been known as ‘the angel of the Tombs’.
Henry Ware Eliot to Thomas Lamb Eliot 1
MS 2 Reed College
[St Louis]
12 May 1910
Dear Bob,
The world wags and the end draws nigher.
Laus Deo.
I have not seen your Tom 3 lately but he is well and busy. My Tom is in hospital at Cambridge – probably scarlet fever which is epidemic in Boston. We have so much difficulty in getting information that Lottie goes to Boston tonight. Why don’t folks think more of the feelings of absentees and give them the whole story! It is unfortunate just now as Tom is working so hard for his A.M. which is just in sight. 4
Tis a parlous world.
Yr
H
In the autumn of 1910, TSE went to Paris for the academic year to attend the Sorbonne, and to hear the weekly lectures at the Collège de France by the philosopher Henri Bergson. Nearly fifty years later he said, ‘I had at that time the idea of giving up English and trying to settle down and scrape along in Paris and gradually write French.’ He left France in July 1911 to visit Munich and northern Italy, before returning to Harvard to work for his doctorate in philosophy.
1–Thomas Lamb Eliot (1841–1936), brother of TSE’s father, was Pastor of the First Unitarian Society of Portland, Oregon, 1867–93; author of The Radical Difference between Liberal Christianity and Orthodoxy. See Earl M. Wilbur, Thomas Lamb Eliot, 1841–1936 (Portland, 1937).
2–From a copy made by the recipient’s granddaughter.
3–Thomas Dawes Eliot (1889–1973), who was to become Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University, 1924–54.
4–Although his illness was not serious, he was unable to sit his final examinations.
TO Theodora Eliot Smith
MS Houghton
[Postmark 23 December 1910] [Paris]
1911
TO Theodora Eliot Smith
MS Houghton
[late February? 1911]
Paris
My Dear Theodora,
Thank you very much for the nice letter that you sent me, and the Valentine of Puss in Boots. Have you the puss in the green boots still, and do you remember the story about him?
You must have been studying hard in order to be able to write so nicely. I have been studying too. But I often go out and walk in the Luxembourg Gardens, which is a sort of park like the Boston Public Gardens, or the park back down the hill from your home in Brookline, where you used to go. There is a pond there too, and the children play boats when it is not too cold. There are lots of boats and they sail right across the pond and right through
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