The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 by T. S. Eliot Read Free Book Online Page B

the fountain and never upset. They spin tops and roll hoops. You would like the French children. I don’t think they have as many playthings as the American children, but they seem quite happy. I see lots of them in the Champs Elysées (which is a long wide street) on Sunday afternoon, riding in little carts behind goats. But it is hard to talk to the little ones, because they don’t talk French very well yet, and I don’t either.
    When they are older and go to school you see them walking out two by two, very quiet and proper, in a long line, with their teachers. They all wear black capes, and carry their schoolbooks on their backs underneath the capes, so that they all look as if they had big bumps on their backs. And they wear black pinafores, and have their legs bare all winter. But it is never very cold in Paris. It has not snowed here all winter, and the little steamboats go up and down the river like black flies: ‘fly-boats’, they call them.
    Just about now you are having supper in America, and here, it is my bed time. Isn’t that funny?
    – With love to mother and father and all the dolls
Your
Uncle
TOM

    TO Eleanor Hinkley 1
     
    PC Houghton
    [Postmark 24 March 1911]
    [Paris]
    Dear Eleanor, I have been meaning to write a letter to thank you for your Christmas card, and I don’t think that I did. I am not sure that this card will go through the American post. I have not seen this costume 2 on the street and I don’t think it will be a success. Is the Cambridge season agreeable this year? I have no news from there.
Ever sincerely yours
T
    Give my regards to Aunt Susie and Barbara 3
    1–Eleanor Hinkley, TSE’s cousin; see Glossary of Names.
    2–It showed a model wearing la jupe-culotte (divided skirt) at the Auteuil races, where it continues, according to the caption, ‘à égayer les habitués … qu’elle intrigue par la nouveauté de ses mystérieux dessous’ [‘to amuse the race-goers … intriguing them by the novelty of the mysterious under-garments’].
    3–Eleanor’s mother (sister of TSE’s mother) and Eleanor’s sister, Barbara (1889–1958), who in 1909 had married Edward Welch (1888–1948).
     
    TO Eleanor Hinkley
     
    MS Houghton
     
    26 April [1911]
    151 bis rue Saint Jacques [Paris]
    Dear Eleanor,
    I just came back from London 1 last night, and found a pile of letters waiting for me, with yours sitting on the top. I mounted to my room to read them; then my friend the femme de chambre burst in to see me (after two weeks absence). She tells me I am getting fat. Also she had a store of news about everyone else in the house. Monsieur Dana 2 has gone to the Ecole Normale, where he has to rise every day at seven. This is a prime joke, and lasted for ten or twelve minutes. Monsieur Verdenal 3 has taken his room, because it is bigger than M. Verdenal’s room, and gives upon the garden. Had I been out into the garden to see how the trees poussent [are growing]? So then I had to go into M. Verdenal’s room to see how the garden did. Byplay at this point, because M. Verdenal was in the garden, and because I threw a lump of sugar at him. And a Monsieur americain named Ladd has taken M. Verdenal’s room. He does not speak French very well yet. He speaks as Monsieur spoke in November. (And I shortly heard Monsieur Ladd bawling through the hall ‘ A-vous monté mes trunks à l’attique?’ 4 – I settle the affair by crying out ‘les malles au grenier!’
    But finally I read the letters, and enjoyed yours more than any. In fact I must compliment you on it – you have a gift for letter writing. This was quite different from any I have had all year. I have no news equally amusing to repay with. I feel rather guilty about that, I do: for Paris has burst out, during my absence, into full spring; and it is such a revelation that I feel that I ought to make it known. At London, one pretended that it was spring, and tried to coax the spring, and talk of the beautiful weather; but one continued to