" Prentice praised 'Alba 2' as "superb," but felt it was not "so important or
significant
as these two other poems.
Samuel Beckett
1
Dear Sir
I wish to apply for permission to use the Reading Room of the
British Museum. I have read in the Library ofTrinity College Dublin, the National Library, Dublin, the Library of the Ecole Normale
1
Superieure, Paris, Ste-Genevieve, and the Bibliotheque Nationale. Generally speaking, I have need of original texts in French and Italian in greater detail than is available in other collections. My immediate concern is with the minor pre-Revolutionary writ ers of the 18th century. I have been obliged to interrupt a study of Giambattista Vico and Vittorio Alfieri, on which I have been engaged in Paris for some months past, in the absence ofvarious original texts: notably, Vico's Misogallo and Diritto Universale,
and Alfieri's Autobiography. 2
109
22 July 1932, [Hill]
I enclose a letter ofintroduction from my publishers, Messrs Chatto and Windus. 3
4
I trust you may be pleased to approve this application. Yours faithfully
sf
(Samuel Beckett)
The Director British Museum W. C. 1
Enc.
TLS; 1 leaf; 1 side, and enclosed TLS from Charles Prentice, Chatto and Windus, 21 July 1932; Archives, British Museum; copy UoR, MS 5047.
1 TheBibliothequeSainte-GenevieveisthelibraryoftheSorbonne,UniversityofParis.
2 Italian philosopher of history and social theorist Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) addressed the subject of universal law in his Diritto universale (Universal Right) in 1720-1722. The Italian poet and dramatist VittorioAlfieri {1749-1803) was the author of n Misogallo {1799; The Francophobe), a satire in verse and prose, and Vita di Vittorio Alfieri scritta da esso (1804; The Autobiography ofVittorio Alfieri). SB misidentifies Vico as the author of n Misogallo.
3 Charles Prentice wrote to the Director of the British Museum: "We warmly recommend Mr. Samuel Beckett for the issue of a reader's ticket at the British Museum Reading Room. We have known him personally for the last two years or so and have published a book by him on Proust; we consider that he would be a very fit recipient. He has taught at Trinity College Dublin, where he also took his degree, and at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. He wishes to study XVIIIth century literature" (22 July 1932, British Museum Archives).
SB's Professor ofltalian at TCD, Walter Starkie, later wrote on Alfieri in The Waveless Plain: An Italian Autobiography ([New York: E. P. Dutton and Co. . 1938] 16).
4 On 23 July 1932 British Museum communication no. 3398 informedSB that he would be issued a reader's ticket for six months; at the top ofthis communication is noted the number: B 51078, dated 28 July 1932 (British Museum Archives); this was renewed in September 1934, and again in October 1937.
THOMAS McGREEVY TARBERT, CO. KERRY
4thAugust [1932]
110
4Ampton St [London] WC. 1
4 August {1932}, McGreevy
My dear Tom
Glad things went so well between here and Tarbert. That was
nice ofJack Yeats. But they are not. Still, ifFather was impressed -
I don't know what has become of Frank. I write him for his
birthday send him papers and hear nothing. Got a friendly letter
from Mother, day after you left I think, written in Switzers: 'Come
home. '1 And here I am, perfecting my methodol[og)y ofsleep, and
little else. No courage for galleries or palaces. I went into St Paul's
and thought it was hideous. And circumambulated the enceinte
2
little steamers dipping their funnels to get under the bridge, and
it opening for a big boat to go under. Tres emouvant. 3 That's all
I do now -go out about 2 and find some place to sit till the pubs
open and get back here about 7 and cook liver and read the
4
Plato & Aristotle & the Gnostics finished me. 5 I bought the Origin
of Species yesterday for 6! :l and never read such badly written
catlap. I only remember one thing: blue-eyed cats are always
6
forgotten by this day week is Spandrell flogging the foxgloves. I bought Moby Dick to-day for Gd. That's more like the real stuff.
8
at a stretch. I wish it were 20. I haven't opened my mouth except
in bars & groceries since you left this day week: to haughty bar
persons and black-souled grocers. About going where I don't
know. I suppose I must go home. I haven't tried to write. The
idea itself of writing seems somehow ludicrous. I spilt a bottle of
9
ofthetower,andkeptmy6d. Isatonthewharfandwatchedthe
Evening News. I couldn't stand the British Museum any more.
deaf(correlationofvariations). IfinishedVanityFairandCunt Pointercunt. A very painstalling work. The only thing I won't have
7
Whitewhales&naturalpiety. Isleepmoreandmore-10hours
inkinsteadoverthepoorLadywithFan. IwentroundlastFriday to Tavistock Square to the Hogarth Press with letter, Dream, poems and your letter of introduction. But Mr Woolf was away
111
4 August {1932}, McGreevy
in the country, not expected back till September. The Secretary said she would forward the whole caboodle. She may have for all
I know. I have heard nothing since. 10 I rang up the foul fucker Maccarthy about 50 times before getting him at last. He appears to have done nothing. That was last Friday also. I asked him would he write me a chit for Grayson and send it. Yes, he would dictate it that very morning. He would propose Alfieri, he would propose Vico, he would propose me with my book, he would do all that first thing and send it. Since when nothing at all. 11 I left copies of three testimonials chez Truman & Knightley & filled in an enor mous form, in which I was asked if I was musical. My qualifi cations looked really remarkable when I had thought of them all and got them all down. I walked out of the place expecting to be offered the Provostship ofJohannesberg [forJohannesburg] or somewhere by the first post next morning. 12 Since when (last Friday: all these demarches were taken in a kind offever last Friday) nothing. I wonder would my Father take me into his office. That is what Frank did. He went home after 3 years in India and went into the office. 13 And now look at him. With a car and a bowler-hat. I see by the Evening News this evening that Nancy is back in Harlem after 3 weeks in the West Indies, where, in Jamaica, she was wel comed by the King of Kingston and feted by the Marcus Garvey negro Association. 14 Nothing from Titus, nothing from Gilbert, nothing from Jolas. 15 Your letter this evening is the first for a week.
If I could work up some pretext for writing a poem, short story, or anything at all, I would be all right. I suppose I am all right. But I get frightened sometimes at the idea that the itch to write is cured. I suppose it['Js the fornicating place & its fornicat ing weather. Lethal thunder and torrents of rain.
This afternoon I sat in St James's Park in a 2d transatlantic and was appropriately moved almost to eyedew by a little boy
112
4 August {1932}, McGreevy
playing at 'empty buses' with a nurse that had exactly the same quality of ruined granite expression as mine had before she married her gardener and became polypara, and calling her Nanny. I had to run away for a piss to the Circus Underground and when I came back to the same chair they were gone. 16 I wanted to get off with Nanny. Soon I will be cabling for my Mother to come and kiss me to sleep. Fall in love to write a lot of poems: have a child to engage a Nanny. She must have a straw berry nose and suck cloves, or at least peppermints. She carried his big ball in a net bag and they shared a green apple.
Perhaps I will screw a free drink from Charles when I bring him back his book. A note accompanied the poems . . 'A new & strange experience . . if only he would escort me on longer flights: so sorry, very very sorry. '17 Perhaps I will get proofs of poems & Dream from Woolf to-morrow morning, or an offer to instruct the Princess Elizabeth in the Florentine positions. To-day is her mother's birthday. I hope the Duke got back from 'under canvas' all right. I'm well up in Social news. Britannia's truck is 171 feet above her water-line & carries £3000 worth of canvas: only 8 ft lower than the Underground offices! Grandi is here. The pound is at 89. 18
Well, dear Tom, forgive this Jeremiad. I'm depressed the
way a slug-ridden cabbage might be expected to be. I hope
something turns up for you in Dublin. And that you get going
19
with Talky. Love Sam
And all the best always. And write soon again.
ALS; 3 leaves, 3 sides; year added by AH in ink; TCD, MS 10402/28. Dating: year confirmed by Evening News of 4 August 1932.
1 McGreevy traveled from Paris to his family home in Tarbert, at the end ofJuly, stopping in London, and then in Dublin, where he saw Jack Yeats. McGreevy's letter to SB has not been found, and so what McGreevy relayed about the Beckett family is not known.
113
4 August {1932}, McGreevy
Frank Beckett's birthday was 26 July. Maria Jones Roe Beckett• (known as May, 1871-1950), SB's mother.
Switzer's department store was located at 92 Grafton Street, Dublin.
2 TheupperportionsofSt. Paul'scathedralinLondoncouldbereachedbystairs; admission to the Whispering Gallery within the lower dome, the exterior Stone Gallery around the base of the dome, and to the Library, cost 6d (Findlay Muirhead, ed. , Short Guide to London [London: Ernest Benn, 1933] 119).
3 "Tresemouvant. "(Verymoving. )
4 Evening News[London] (1881-1980, 1987).
5 Plato (c. 428 - c. 348 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC), and the Gnostics (Middle Eastern thinkers, 2nd century BC - 4th century AD). For SB's reading notes on pre-Socratic philosophy: TCD, MS 10967; Everett Frost and Jane Maxwell, "TCD MS 10967: History ofWestern Philosophy," Notes Diverse Holo, Special issue SBT/A 16 (2006) 67-89; Ackerley and Gontarski, The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett, 18, 229-230, 442-443.
6 Charles Darwin (1809-1882) wrote: "Some instances of correlation are quite whimsical: thus cats with blue eyes are invariably deaf; colour and constitutional peculiarities go together" (On the Origin of Species: A Facsimile of the First Edition [1859],
[Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964] 11-12).
7 Vanity Fair (1847-1848) by English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1865). In Point Counter Point (1928) by English novelist and essayist Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894-1963), the character Maurice Spandrell flogs foxgloves in a reaction of outrage against a conventional assumption about God and nature (Point Counter Point [Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, Doran and Co. , 1928] 343-344).
8 MobyDick(1851)byHermanMelville(1819-1891).
9 SB may refer to a reproduction of Lady with Fan (c. 1640-1642) by the Spanish painter Velazquez (ne Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez, 1599-1660) from the
Wallace Collection, London.
10 Neither SB's covering letter nor the letter of introduction from McGreevy has been found. The Hogarth Press, located at 52 Tavistock Square, was directed by English writer and publisher Leonard Sidney Woolf (1880-1969) and Virginia Woolf (nee Adeline Virginia Stephen, 1882-1941).
SB sent Dream of Fair to Middling Women to Chatto and Windus on 29 June 1932 (Charles Prentice to Richard Aldington, 1 July 1932, ICSo Aldington 68/6/7). On 5 July 1932 Prentice sent SB his personal response to the novel:
It has been some experience reading the "Dream". But it's a strange thing, and I don't know how to react to it from a publishing point of view; we shall have to sit on it in conclave. [. . . ] The party, the P. B. and the shipboard bit out from Caxhaven [for Cuxhaven] are entrancing. You're at your best there, right away from Joyce, and on your own, and the beauty and precision of the language moved me from the feet up. (UoR MS 2444 CW letterbook 39/478)
114
4 August {1932}, McGreevy
SB reported further on his conversation with Prentice, while the novel was with a second reader: "Charles seemed somehow embarrassed in speaking of it, though he said all the nice things he could lay his tongue to. I think it is as good as rejected" (SB to McGreevy, 14July 11932], TCD, MS 10402/27). On 19July 1932, Chatto's response was negative (UoR, MS 2444 CW letterbook 140/164). SB next took the novel and his poems to the Hogarth Press.
SB's timing in respect of the poems was not propitious. John Lehmann (1907-1987) abruptly left his position with the Hogarth Press during August 1932; it was he who had proposed the Hogarth Press modem poetry collection, New Signatures, published in February 1932, ed. Michael Roberts (ne William Edward Roberts, 1902-1948). In addition, Leonard Woolf and Dorothy Violet Wellesley (nee Ashton, 1889-1956), the latter the patron of The Hogarth Living Poets series, had serious differences. As a result, the Hogarth Press published no poetry fromJuly 1932 to March 1933 Uohn Lehmann, Autobiography, I, The Whispering Gallery [London: Longmans, Green and Co. , 1955] 194-206, 260-261; Leonard Woolf, Downhill All the Way: An Autobiography of the Years 1919-1939 [London: Hogarth Press, 1967] 176-177).
Normally, fiction submitted to the Hogarth Press was screened by Leonard Woolf or John Lehmann before being given to Virginia Woolf for final approval; from the fact that she was very ill that summer, and in the absence of any record of submission or rejection, John H. Willis (Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press, 1917-1941, 1992) conjectures that SB's novel and poetry were rejected by Lehmann "without involving the Woolfs or Wellesley" Uohn H. Willis, 16 November 1993).
11 English journalist Desmond Maccarthy {1877-1952) was Literary Editor {1921-1927) of New Statesman; Editor {1928-1933) of Life and Letters {1928-1935); and senior literary critic (from 1928) ofThe Sunday Times. Charles Prentice had sent a copy of Proust to Maccarthy following his meeting with SB on the previous evening (Prentice to SB, 21July 1932, UoR, MS 2444 CW letterbook 140/181).
Cyril Connolly wrote of Desmond Maccarthy: "He was, in every sense, the most generous of men. When he helped young writers, he really did help them, he found them work, lent them money and studied the particular originality through which each could best distinguish himself . . . His laziness, however, like his unpunctuality, was proverbial" (Desmond Maccarthy, Memories, foreword by Cyril Connolly ! London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1953] 10).
Grayson and Grayson Publishing Company, 66 Curzon Street, Mayfair, London Wt, had just established itself as a family firm; prior to 1932, the firm had been Eveleigh Nash and Grayson.
12 The testimonials were from William Duff Gibbon (1890-1955), Headmaster of Campbell College (1922-1943), Rudmose-Brown, and Jean Thomas (the latter two were enclosed with 29 July 1937; Archives of The University of Cape Town). Truman and Knightley Ltd. , Scholastic Agents, 61 Conduit Street, London Wl, published Schools and theJournal ofCareers.
SB refers to the University of Witwatersrand, founded in 1922 inJohannesburg, South Africa.
13 "Demarches"(steps).
Frank Beckett was in India from 1927 to 1930, and then entered the firm of Beckett and Medcalf, Quantity Surveyors.
115
4 August {1932}, McGreevy
14 The paper announced Nancy Cunard's return to New York following a three week journey to the West Indies: "In Jamaica last month she was welcomed by the chief magistrate of Kingston and feted by the Marcus Negro Association . . . When Miss Cunard was last in New York she lived for a time in a hotel in Harlem to collect material for a book she is writing about Negroes" ("Miss Nancy Cunard: In New York after Another 'Colour Question' Trip," Evening News 4 August 1932: 7). Alamont E. Decosta, OBE, Custos of Kingston, greeted Cunard at the reception given by the Universal Negro Improvement Association at Edelweiss Park ("Miss Nancy Cunard Welcomed at Colourful Function," The Daily Gleaner 29 July 1932: 18, 23; Anne Chisholm, Nancy Cunard: A Biography [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979] 203).
Marcus Garvey (ne Moziah, 1887-1940) founded this group as the Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation Association and African Communities League in 1914; Garvey was deported in November 1927 from the United States, and tried to carry on his mission from Jamaica (E. David Cronon, ed. , Marrns Garvey, Great Lives Observed [Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973] 17, 24).
15 SB had submitted "Dante and the Lobster" (later the opening story in More Pricks Than Kicks) to Edward William Titus• (1870-1952), an American publisher then living in Paris, and Editor of This Quarter. SB had submitted "Home Olga," an acrostic poem on James Joyce, to Stuart Gilbert, editor of Contempo (1931-1934). SB may have expected payment from Eugene Jolas for the publication of his story "Sedendo and Quiescendo. " Although SB may have given Jolas something further from the manuscript of Dream of Fair to Middling Women, transition did not publish anything more by SB until number 24 Uune 1936).
16 "Transatlantic"(Gallicismfor"deckchair"). ThenannyseeninSt. James'sPark, London, is compared to SB's nanny, Bibby. By "Circus Underground," SB refers to Piccadilly Circus station.
17 Charles Prentice wrote to SB: "I wish I could follow you for longer flights. " He admired "the beauty and terror of 'Spring Song', and the horror of 'There is a Happy Land'.
" Prentice praised 'Alba 2' as "superb," but felt it was not "so important or significant as these two other poems. " Finally, he wrote with regret, "I don't see that Chatto's could do anything with the poems," although for him they meant "the beginning of a rare and strange experience. " Prentice apologized: "I am worried at being a disappointment to you again; I am very, very sorry" (27 July 1932, UoR, MS 2444 CW letterbook 140/274). "Spring Song" remains unpublished. "There was a Happy Land" is the first line, and probably the working title, of the poem published as "Sanies 2"; "Alba 2" is the early title of "Enueg 1" (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 648, n. 80; John Pilling, 21 April 1995; see 7 August 1931, n. 1).
18 The 32nd birthday of Elizabeth, Duchess of York (nee Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, 1900-2002), consort of Prince Albert, Duke of York {1895-1952) was 4 August 1932; their daughter Princess Elizabeth (b. 1926, later Queen Elizabeth II) was then six years old. The Royal racing cutter Britannia concluded a week of racing at Cowes, The Royal London Yacht Club regatta, on Saturday 6 August 1932 (The Times 8 August 1932: 6).
Dino Grandi (1895-1988) was Italy's Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1929 to 1932 and Italy's Ambassador to England from 1932 to 1939; Grandi arrived in London on the
116
18 {August 1932}, McGreevy
evening of 3 August 1932 to present his credentials to the King (The Times 4 August 1932: 10; The Times 10 August 1932: 13).
The French franc was 89 to the pound on 4 August 1932 (The Times 5 August 1932: 16).
19 McGreevyhopedtointerestLennoxRobinson,producerattheAbbeyTheatre,in his translation ofAlexander Pushkin's "Boris Godunov" (Lennox Robinson, 11 September 1932; TCD, MS 8026).
McGreevy's "Talky" is not identified; SB mentions it again, as "talkie," in his letter to McGreevy, 30 August 1932 (TCD, MS 10402/30).
THOMA S McGREEVY TARBERT, CO. KERRY
18th [August 1932)
4Ampton St [London) W. C. 1
Dear Tom
Glad to hear the book is on the move again, and hope to
1
undercurrent of communism is surprising. Or I suppose one
ought to be surprised. I think the only thing that would surprise
me about Ireland, or any other land, would be to have it estab
lished as a more unpleasant site wherein to serve one's life than
3
for my fare home. Write to Cooldrinagh. There is no use my
insisting further here. This month of creeping and crawling and
sollicitation has yielded nothing but glib Cockney regrets. The
book came back from the Hogarth Press, and the poems, with
merely the formal rejection slip. Nothing from L. W. He was out
of London as I told you when I brought it round. I have good
reason to believe that the MS never left London and that in all
probability he never saw it. But he must have got my letter. Or
4
117
have good news of it in your next. What you write about an
2
thiscoreofallfaex. Andtheheat. . . Iwrotehomethisevening
perhapsitishistumfortheasylum. Anyhowtantpiss. Ithen brought it to Grayson and Cape. It came back yesterday from Cape. Their reader's report "did not encourage them to make me
18 {August 1932}, McGreevy
an offer for publication rights". It would be interesting to see
some of these readers' reports. 5 So far no reply from Grayson.
I saw Rupert Grayson when I went round, the "author son of
Sir Henry". And a proper pudding he appeared. He assured me
at least that if they did not take the thing they would tell me the
6
see Derek Verschoyle, Literary Editor of Spectator, he was dis
guised as a student in T. C. D. while I was still functioning, and
7
had no books for review. But he received me very kindly and
gave me a cigarette. I went round yesterday to see Mr Ellis
Roberts, gaga in chief of New Statesman. He had no books for
review. He thought he might possibly be interested [in] a state
ment of [for on] Gide, covering all that artists's [sic] vicissitudes
from Andre Walter to Oedipe in the space of not more than 1800
8
reasonwhy. Thatwillmakepleasantreading. Iwentroundto
gavehimthethreelastpoems. Gotthembackthisevening. He
words, or one of similar length of [for on] the modernity ofVico.
I promised to do my best. But of course it can't be done. I don't believe I could put a dozen words together on any subject what soever. But Mr Roberts received me kindly too, and gave me a cup of tea. My Father very generously sent me a five pound note which I received last Saturday morning. I put it in my drawer, and went yesterday to get it. It was gone. And a temporary lodger was gone also. Whether he took it or whether Mrs Southon or the cretinous Heep it is impossible to know. Mr. S. produced a really superb condition of Cockney distress yesterday evening. Such a thing had never happened before, never in all these years, as the lodger who appears to have his being in the kitchen could testify. Mr S would rather have lost his lower testicle than have such a catastrophe occur. That finishes this villeggiatura. I think I may stay in bed till more comes from the "blue eyes of home". 9 I have not been to see Prentice. I will bring him back his
118
18 {August 1932), McGreevy
book to-morrow, and start clearing the scuppers. 10 T. & K. sent
me notices ofjobs in Cornwall, Devon, Derbyshire, here, Sussex,
and Basel: this last as English instructor in Berlitz School, 275
francs monthly, 40 hours per week! Still [sic], ifI were not so tired
and eviscerate at the moment, I would apply. Better Basel where
love is not than D. D. D. with sentimental salmagundis and other
11
on the mat.
[. . •] I really dread going back to Dublin and all that,
but there is nothing else for it at this stage. I was not serious
when I said about going into the office. There is no room for
another clerk in the office, and even ifthere were I simply could
12
home. If I could even mend a puncture.
The heat is frightful, culminating to-day in 92 in the shade.
I met Arty Hillis, you remember the big-hearted musical mor pion at the Ecole, and he lent me a quid and offered to put me up
13
TLS; 2 leaves, 2 sides; TCD, MS 10402/29. Dating: month and year added, possibly in AH, confirmed by description of the weather, and SB's move from London to Dublin (see SB to McGreevy, 30 August 1932, TCD, MS 10402/30); Prentice wrote to Richard Aldington, 5 September 1932, that SB had left for Ireland about ten days before (ICSo, Aldington 68/6/8).
1 McGreevyhadresumedworkonhisnovel(CharlesPrenticetoRichardAldington, 1 July 1932, JCSo, Aldington 68/6/9; see also 20 December 1931, n. 7).
2 Anti. Communist articles appeared in the Dublin press at this time, for example: "To Check Communism," The Irish Times 16 August 1932: 7; "Mr. Cosgrove and
119
It will have to be private school or training college or else unhandy Andy in the garage and back garden at
not do the work.
free at Hampstead as from next Monday.
my while changing now. Ifthey don't reimburse me here I won't pay any more rent and I'll clear out as soon as I get my fare. Is there a chance ofmy seeing you soon in Dublin? I thought ofmaking a dash for Paris, but I am too unbelievably gutless to do anything and my Mother would throw a fit.
So. Write to Cooldrinagh. Love ever s/Sam
But it won't be worth
18 {August 1932}, McGreevy
'Communism,"' The Irish Press 5 August 1932: 1-2; and a report on the effect of Communist propaganda on theatre ("Before the Footlights," The Irish Times 11 August 1932: 4).
3 London was experiencing a heat wave, with a high of 90° on 18 August. "Faex" (Lat. , the dregs).
4 LeonardWoolfhadmadenocommentonDreamofFairtoMiddlingWomen,oron the poems, nor did he respond to SB's letter (for further information, see 4 August 1932, n. 10).
"Tant piss" (SB's adaptation of "tant pis" [too bad]).
5 The letter to SB from London publishing house Jonathan Cape has not been found, but a reader's report is in the Cape archives. On 13 August 1932, Edward Garnett (1868-1937) wrote of Dream of Fair to Middling Women: "I wouldn't touch this with a barge pole. Beckett probably is a clever fellow, but here he has elaborated a slavish, & rather incoherent imitation of Joyce, most eccentric in language & full of disgustingly affected passages - also indecent; this school is damned - & you wouldn't sell the book even on its title. Chatto was right to turn it down" (UoR, Cape; published in edited form in Michael Howard, Jonathan Cape, Publisher: Herbert Jonathan Cape, G. Wren Howard [London: Jonathan Cape, 1971] 137).
6 SirHenryGrayson,Bt. ,KBE(1865-1951),andhissonBrianGrayson(1900-1989) were Directors of Grayson and Grayson; another son, novelist Rupert Stanley Harrison Grayson (1897-1991), was Literary Advisor.
7 DerekHugoVerschoyle(1911-1973)wasLiteraryEditorofTheSpectatorfrom1932 to 1940; he matriculated at Trinity College Dublin in 1929, but did not take a degree. It is not known which poems SB submitted.
8 Richard Ellis Roberts (1879-1953) was Literary Editor of the New Statesman from 1930 to 1932; he continued as a regular contributor when he became Literary Editor of Time and Tide (1933 to 1934) and Life and Letters (November 1934 to 1935).
Andre-Paul-Guillaume Gide (1869-1951) wrote Les Cahiers d'. Andre Walter (1891; The Notebooks ofAndre Walter); among his later works was the prose playOedipe (1931; Oedipus).
Giambattista Vico.
9 Mrs. Southon was SB's landlady. The person to whom SB refers has not been identified, although "Heep" alludes to Uriah Heep in Dickens's David Copperfield (1849-1850). Mr. S. is Mr. Southon.
"Villeggiatura" (holiday).
For possible sources of the "blue eyes ofhome," see John Pilling, A Companion to "Dream ofFair to Middling Women" (Tallahassee, FL: Journal ofBeckett Studies Books, 2004) 78.
10 PrenticehadlentD. H. Lawrence'sApocalypsetoSB(15August1931,n. 5),butSB may be referring to another book.
11 TrumanandKnightley(see4August1932,n. 12). "D. D. D. "(DearDirtyDublin).
12 FrankBeckettworkedintheirfather'squantitysurveyingfirm,BeckettandMedcalf.
13 Arthur Henry Macnamara Hillis• (1905-1997), lawyer and international econo- mist, had been in SB's year at Trinity College Dublin. He may have visited SB at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris.
"Morpion" (literally a crab louse, but here a mild form of student abuse).
120
THOMAS McGREEVY TARBERT, CO. KERRY
13th [September 1932]
Cooldrinagh Foxrock, [Co. Dublin]
13 [September 1932}, McGreevy
My dear Tom
I will do all I can to raise the two quid when I go into town
this morning on my father's bicycle. I don't think Frank would refuse me. Anyhow I owe you about 25/-for transition, and I wish
I could have paid you before, but I have found no work here and
depend on my father for everything. There is a prospect of a few
grinds turning up at the end of the month. Ruddy has been very
1
No news from Grayson, and I hesitate to write them a stinger. But
now it is a good three weeks since they promised me their deci
2
Nothing seems to come off. I made a desperate effort to get
something started on Gide but failed again. 3 I began a poem
yesterday, the first since Home Olga, a blank unsighted kind of
thing, but looking at it it is clear that it can never tum out to be
more than mildly entertaining at the best. The old story - ardour
and fervour absent or faked so that what happens may be slick
4
time in the National Gallery, looking at the Poussin Entombment
and coming stealthily down the stairs into the charming toy
brightness of the German room to the Brueghels and the
Masters of Tired Eyes and Silver Windows. The young woman of
5
good recommending me and I wish there were no P. B. in Dream.
sion immediately. Rickword never acknowledged the poems.
enough verse but not a poem at all. I seem to spend a lot of
Rembrandtissplendid. Ihopewemaymeanderthroughsome time together. Cissie lucky woman has gone back to Germany with Deirdre leaving Sally here on the job. We managed a good
121
13 [September 1932}, McGreevy
afternoon together before she left, in the gallery and then the
6
Moira and then pubs.
I met R. N. D. Wilson last Sunday chez
Percy Ussher, and he was full of enthusiasm about your Eliot.
I thought there was not much to him and felt vaguely uneasy
with him. He read or declaimed acres of his verse, and to be sure
there were odds and ends of agreeablenesses here and there. He
has nice thick shining black hair and his little prose-poem dia
pason seems to be keyed toA. E. 's. A. E. & W. B. playa lot of croquet
together at Riversdale, Rathfarnham, and the former always wins
by a mile. I suppose James Starkey holds the stakes. Austin Clarke
7
seems to be the usual rubbish. 8 I set out on Saturday afternoon to see Jack Yeats, and then en route changed my mind and went for a ride along the coast instead. Pretending to like fresh air and salt water I got the old intercostal rheumatism back, this time on the left side. But it is going away and I am denied even the excitement of a little dry pleurisy in safe surroundings. For me also the alter native seems to be here or Paris, and not having heard anything from Titus, though there are a number of counts on which he might write, I have no idea how I stand with him. Won't the Copulation Intellectuelle be functioning? 9 Anyhow be sure and let me know if you are passing thorugh [sic] and in the meantime alles gut and the quiet unfurling of your book that I know you want. 10
Love ever s/ Sam
TLS; 1 leaf, 1 side; TCD, MS 10402/32. Dating: SB's meeting with Grayson is reported in his letter to McGreevy 18 IAugust 1932J; this meeting "a fortnight ago" is recounted in SB's letter to McGreevy of 13 September 1932J (TCD. MS 10842/31). The present letter indicates that it has been over three weeks since SB has seen Grayson about Dream of Fair to Middling Women, and SB's letter to McGreevy of8 October 1932 mentions that it has been "over 6 weeks. "
122
and Monk Gibbon seek on the bank a definition of obscenity. I wish I had seen "Things that are Caesar's"[. ] "Temporal Powers"
1 "Grinds"(colloq. ,tutoringjobs). SBhadrepresentedRudmose-BrownasthePolar Bear in Dream ofFair to Middling Women.
2 SB wrote on Saturday [3 September 1932] to McGreevy: "I saw the Brothers G. a fortnight ago now in London and they promised me a speedy decision. I don't know whether to think the delay good or bad. " In the same letter, SB said of the poems: "I don't expect them to be taken on by Wishart, but I wish I had sent them earlier and that I had seen Rickword in London.
Dear Sir
I wish to apply for permission to use the Reading Room of the
British Museum. I have read in the Library ofTrinity College Dublin, the National Library, Dublin, the Library of the Ecole Normale
1
Superieure, Paris, Ste-Genevieve, and the Bibliotheque Nationale. Generally speaking, I have need of original texts in French and Italian in greater detail than is available in other collections. My immediate concern is with the minor pre-Revolutionary writ ers of the 18th century. I have been obliged to interrupt a study of Giambattista Vico and Vittorio Alfieri, on which I have been engaged in Paris for some months past, in the absence ofvarious original texts: notably, Vico's Misogallo and Diritto Universale,
and Alfieri's Autobiography. 2
109
22 July 1932, [Hill]
I enclose a letter ofintroduction from my publishers, Messrs Chatto and Windus. 3
4
I trust you may be pleased to approve this application. Yours faithfully
sf
(Samuel Beckett)
The Director British Museum W. C. 1
Enc.
TLS; 1 leaf; 1 side, and enclosed TLS from Charles Prentice, Chatto and Windus, 21 July 1932; Archives, British Museum; copy UoR, MS 5047.
1 TheBibliothequeSainte-GenevieveisthelibraryoftheSorbonne,UniversityofParis.
2 Italian philosopher of history and social theorist Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) addressed the subject of universal law in his Diritto universale (Universal Right) in 1720-1722. The Italian poet and dramatist VittorioAlfieri {1749-1803) was the author of n Misogallo {1799; The Francophobe), a satire in verse and prose, and Vita di Vittorio Alfieri scritta da esso (1804; The Autobiography ofVittorio Alfieri). SB misidentifies Vico as the author of n Misogallo.
3 Charles Prentice wrote to the Director of the British Museum: "We warmly recommend Mr. Samuel Beckett for the issue of a reader's ticket at the British Museum Reading Room. We have known him personally for the last two years or so and have published a book by him on Proust; we consider that he would be a very fit recipient. He has taught at Trinity College Dublin, where he also took his degree, and at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. He wishes to study XVIIIth century literature" (22 July 1932, British Museum Archives).
SB's Professor ofltalian at TCD, Walter Starkie, later wrote on Alfieri in The Waveless Plain: An Italian Autobiography ([New York: E. P. Dutton and Co. . 1938] 16).
4 On 23 July 1932 British Museum communication no. 3398 informedSB that he would be issued a reader's ticket for six months; at the top ofthis communication is noted the number: B 51078, dated 28 July 1932 (British Museum Archives); this was renewed in September 1934, and again in October 1937.
THOMAS McGREEVY TARBERT, CO. KERRY
4thAugust [1932]
110
4Ampton St [London] WC. 1
4 August {1932}, McGreevy
My dear Tom
Glad things went so well between here and Tarbert. That was
nice ofJack Yeats. But they are not. Still, ifFather was impressed -
I don't know what has become of Frank. I write him for his
birthday send him papers and hear nothing. Got a friendly letter
from Mother, day after you left I think, written in Switzers: 'Come
home. '1 And here I am, perfecting my methodol[og)y ofsleep, and
little else. No courage for galleries or palaces. I went into St Paul's
and thought it was hideous. And circumambulated the enceinte
2
little steamers dipping their funnels to get under the bridge, and
it opening for a big boat to go under. Tres emouvant. 3 That's all
I do now -go out about 2 and find some place to sit till the pubs
open and get back here about 7 and cook liver and read the
4
Plato & Aristotle & the Gnostics finished me. 5 I bought the Origin
of Species yesterday for 6! :l and never read such badly written
catlap. I only remember one thing: blue-eyed cats are always
6
forgotten by this day week is Spandrell flogging the foxgloves. I bought Moby Dick to-day for Gd. That's more like the real stuff.
8
at a stretch. I wish it were 20. I haven't opened my mouth except
in bars & groceries since you left this day week: to haughty bar
persons and black-souled grocers. About going where I don't
know. I suppose I must go home. I haven't tried to write. The
idea itself of writing seems somehow ludicrous. I spilt a bottle of
9
ofthetower,andkeptmy6d. Isatonthewharfandwatchedthe
Evening News. I couldn't stand the British Museum any more.
deaf(correlationofvariations). IfinishedVanityFairandCunt Pointercunt. A very painstalling work. The only thing I won't have
7
Whitewhales&naturalpiety. Isleepmoreandmore-10hours
inkinsteadoverthepoorLadywithFan. IwentroundlastFriday to Tavistock Square to the Hogarth Press with letter, Dream, poems and your letter of introduction. But Mr Woolf was away
111
4 August {1932}, McGreevy
in the country, not expected back till September. The Secretary said she would forward the whole caboodle. She may have for all
I know. I have heard nothing since. 10 I rang up the foul fucker Maccarthy about 50 times before getting him at last. He appears to have done nothing. That was last Friday also. I asked him would he write me a chit for Grayson and send it. Yes, he would dictate it that very morning. He would propose Alfieri, he would propose Vico, he would propose me with my book, he would do all that first thing and send it. Since when nothing at all. 11 I left copies of three testimonials chez Truman & Knightley & filled in an enor mous form, in which I was asked if I was musical. My qualifi cations looked really remarkable when I had thought of them all and got them all down. I walked out of the place expecting to be offered the Provostship ofJohannesberg [forJohannesburg] or somewhere by the first post next morning. 12 Since when (last Friday: all these demarches were taken in a kind offever last Friday) nothing. I wonder would my Father take me into his office. That is what Frank did. He went home after 3 years in India and went into the office. 13 And now look at him. With a car and a bowler-hat. I see by the Evening News this evening that Nancy is back in Harlem after 3 weeks in the West Indies, where, in Jamaica, she was wel comed by the King of Kingston and feted by the Marcus Garvey negro Association. 14 Nothing from Titus, nothing from Gilbert, nothing from Jolas. 15 Your letter this evening is the first for a week.
If I could work up some pretext for writing a poem, short story, or anything at all, I would be all right. I suppose I am all right. But I get frightened sometimes at the idea that the itch to write is cured. I suppose it['Js the fornicating place & its fornicat ing weather. Lethal thunder and torrents of rain.
This afternoon I sat in St James's Park in a 2d transatlantic and was appropriately moved almost to eyedew by a little boy
112
4 August {1932}, McGreevy
playing at 'empty buses' with a nurse that had exactly the same quality of ruined granite expression as mine had before she married her gardener and became polypara, and calling her Nanny. I had to run away for a piss to the Circus Underground and when I came back to the same chair they were gone. 16 I wanted to get off with Nanny. Soon I will be cabling for my Mother to come and kiss me to sleep. Fall in love to write a lot of poems: have a child to engage a Nanny. She must have a straw berry nose and suck cloves, or at least peppermints. She carried his big ball in a net bag and they shared a green apple.
Perhaps I will screw a free drink from Charles when I bring him back his book. A note accompanied the poems . . 'A new & strange experience . . if only he would escort me on longer flights: so sorry, very very sorry. '17 Perhaps I will get proofs of poems & Dream from Woolf to-morrow morning, or an offer to instruct the Princess Elizabeth in the Florentine positions. To-day is her mother's birthday. I hope the Duke got back from 'under canvas' all right. I'm well up in Social news. Britannia's truck is 171 feet above her water-line & carries £3000 worth of canvas: only 8 ft lower than the Underground offices! Grandi is here. The pound is at 89. 18
Well, dear Tom, forgive this Jeremiad. I'm depressed the
way a slug-ridden cabbage might be expected to be. I hope
something turns up for you in Dublin. And that you get going
19
with Talky. Love Sam
And all the best always. And write soon again.
ALS; 3 leaves, 3 sides; year added by AH in ink; TCD, MS 10402/28. Dating: year confirmed by Evening News of 4 August 1932.
1 McGreevy traveled from Paris to his family home in Tarbert, at the end ofJuly, stopping in London, and then in Dublin, where he saw Jack Yeats. McGreevy's letter to SB has not been found, and so what McGreevy relayed about the Beckett family is not known.
113
4 August {1932}, McGreevy
Frank Beckett's birthday was 26 July. Maria Jones Roe Beckett• (known as May, 1871-1950), SB's mother.
Switzer's department store was located at 92 Grafton Street, Dublin.
2 TheupperportionsofSt. Paul'scathedralinLondoncouldbereachedbystairs; admission to the Whispering Gallery within the lower dome, the exterior Stone Gallery around the base of the dome, and to the Library, cost 6d (Findlay Muirhead, ed. , Short Guide to London [London: Ernest Benn, 1933] 119).
3 "Tresemouvant. "(Verymoving. )
4 Evening News[London] (1881-1980, 1987).
5 Plato (c. 428 - c. 348 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC), and the Gnostics (Middle Eastern thinkers, 2nd century BC - 4th century AD). For SB's reading notes on pre-Socratic philosophy: TCD, MS 10967; Everett Frost and Jane Maxwell, "TCD MS 10967: History ofWestern Philosophy," Notes Diverse Holo, Special issue SBT/A 16 (2006) 67-89; Ackerley and Gontarski, The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett, 18, 229-230, 442-443.
6 Charles Darwin (1809-1882) wrote: "Some instances of correlation are quite whimsical: thus cats with blue eyes are invariably deaf; colour and constitutional peculiarities go together" (On the Origin of Species: A Facsimile of the First Edition [1859],
[Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964] 11-12).
7 Vanity Fair (1847-1848) by English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1865). In Point Counter Point (1928) by English novelist and essayist Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894-1963), the character Maurice Spandrell flogs foxgloves in a reaction of outrage against a conventional assumption about God and nature (Point Counter Point [Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, Doran and Co. , 1928] 343-344).
8 MobyDick(1851)byHermanMelville(1819-1891).
9 SB may refer to a reproduction of Lady with Fan (c. 1640-1642) by the Spanish painter Velazquez (ne Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez, 1599-1660) from the
Wallace Collection, London.
10 Neither SB's covering letter nor the letter of introduction from McGreevy has been found. The Hogarth Press, located at 52 Tavistock Square, was directed by English writer and publisher Leonard Sidney Woolf (1880-1969) and Virginia Woolf (nee Adeline Virginia Stephen, 1882-1941).
SB sent Dream of Fair to Middling Women to Chatto and Windus on 29 June 1932 (Charles Prentice to Richard Aldington, 1 July 1932, ICSo Aldington 68/6/7). On 5 July 1932 Prentice sent SB his personal response to the novel:
It has been some experience reading the "Dream". But it's a strange thing, and I don't know how to react to it from a publishing point of view; we shall have to sit on it in conclave. [. . . ] The party, the P. B. and the shipboard bit out from Caxhaven [for Cuxhaven] are entrancing. You're at your best there, right away from Joyce, and on your own, and the beauty and precision of the language moved me from the feet up. (UoR MS 2444 CW letterbook 39/478)
114
4 August {1932}, McGreevy
SB reported further on his conversation with Prentice, while the novel was with a second reader: "Charles seemed somehow embarrassed in speaking of it, though he said all the nice things he could lay his tongue to. I think it is as good as rejected" (SB to McGreevy, 14July 11932], TCD, MS 10402/27). On 19July 1932, Chatto's response was negative (UoR, MS 2444 CW letterbook 140/164). SB next took the novel and his poems to the Hogarth Press.
SB's timing in respect of the poems was not propitious. John Lehmann (1907-1987) abruptly left his position with the Hogarth Press during August 1932; it was he who had proposed the Hogarth Press modem poetry collection, New Signatures, published in February 1932, ed. Michael Roberts (ne William Edward Roberts, 1902-1948). In addition, Leonard Woolf and Dorothy Violet Wellesley (nee Ashton, 1889-1956), the latter the patron of The Hogarth Living Poets series, had serious differences. As a result, the Hogarth Press published no poetry fromJuly 1932 to March 1933 Uohn Lehmann, Autobiography, I, The Whispering Gallery [London: Longmans, Green and Co. , 1955] 194-206, 260-261; Leonard Woolf, Downhill All the Way: An Autobiography of the Years 1919-1939 [London: Hogarth Press, 1967] 176-177).
Normally, fiction submitted to the Hogarth Press was screened by Leonard Woolf or John Lehmann before being given to Virginia Woolf for final approval; from the fact that she was very ill that summer, and in the absence of any record of submission or rejection, John H. Willis (Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press, 1917-1941, 1992) conjectures that SB's novel and poetry were rejected by Lehmann "without involving the Woolfs or Wellesley" Uohn H. Willis, 16 November 1993).
11 English journalist Desmond Maccarthy {1877-1952) was Literary Editor {1921-1927) of New Statesman; Editor {1928-1933) of Life and Letters {1928-1935); and senior literary critic (from 1928) ofThe Sunday Times. Charles Prentice had sent a copy of Proust to Maccarthy following his meeting with SB on the previous evening (Prentice to SB, 21July 1932, UoR, MS 2444 CW letterbook 140/181).
Cyril Connolly wrote of Desmond Maccarthy: "He was, in every sense, the most generous of men. When he helped young writers, he really did help them, he found them work, lent them money and studied the particular originality through which each could best distinguish himself . . . His laziness, however, like his unpunctuality, was proverbial" (Desmond Maccarthy, Memories, foreword by Cyril Connolly ! London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1953] 10).
Grayson and Grayson Publishing Company, 66 Curzon Street, Mayfair, London Wt, had just established itself as a family firm; prior to 1932, the firm had been Eveleigh Nash and Grayson.
12 The testimonials were from William Duff Gibbon (1890-1955), Headmaster of Campbell College (1922-1943), Rudmose-Brown, and Jean Thomas (the latter two were enclosed with 29 July 1937; Archives of The University of Cape Town). Truman and Knightley Ltd. , Scholastic Agents, 61 Conduit Street, London Wl, published Schools and theJournal ofCareers.
SB refers to the University of Witwatersrand, founded in 1922 inJohannesburg, South Africa.
13 "Demarches"(steps).
Frank Beckett was in India from 1927 to 1930, and then entered the firm of Beckett and Medcalf, Quantity Surveyors.
115
4 August {1932}, McGreevy
14 The paper announced Nancy Cunard's return to New York following a three week journey to the West Indies: "In Jamaica last month she was welcomed by the chief magistrate of Kingston and feted by the Marcus Negro Association . . . When Miss Cunard was last in New York she lived for a time in a hotel in Harlem to collect material for a book she is writing about Negroes" ("Miss Nancy Cunard: In New York after Another 'Colour Question' Trip," Evening News 4 August 1932: 7). Alamont E. Decosta, OBE, Custos of Kingston, greeted Cunard at the reception given by the Universal Negro Improvement Association at Edelweiss Park ("Miss Nancy Cunard Welcomed at Colourful Function," The Daily Gleaner 29 July 1932: 18, 23; Anne Chisholm, Nancy Cunard: A Biography [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979] 203).
Marcus Garvey (ne Moziah, 1887-1940) founded this group as the Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation Association and African Communities League in 1914; Garvey was deported in November 1927 from the United States, and tried to carry on his mission from Jamaica (E. David Cronon, ed. , Marrns Garvey, Great Lives Observed [Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973] 17, 24).
15 SB had submitted "Dante and the Lobster" (later the opening story in More Pricks Than Kicks) to Edward William Titus• (1870-1952), an American publisher then living in Paris, and Editor of This Quarter. SB had submitted "Home Olga," an acrostic poem on James Joyce, to Stuart Gilbert, editor of Contempo (1931-1934). SB may have expected payment from Eugene Jolas for the publication of his story "Sedendo and Quiescendo. " Although SB may have given Jolas something further from the manuscript of Dream of Fair to Middling Women, transition did not publish anything more by SB until number 24 Uune 1936).
16 "Transatlantic"(Gallicismfor"deckchair"). ThenannyseeninSt. James'sPark, London, is compared to SB's nanny, Bibby. By "Circus Underground," SB refers to Piccadilly Circus station.
17 Charles Prentice wrote to SB: "I wish I could follow you for longer flights. " He admired "the beauty and terror of 'Spring Song', and the horror of 'There is a Happy Land'.
" Prentice praised 'Alba 2' as "superb," but felt it was not "so important or significant as these two other poems. " Finally, he wrote with regret, "I don't see that Chatto's could do anything with the poems," although for him they meant "the beginning of a rare and strange experience. " Prentice apologized: "I am worried at being a disappointment to you again; I am very, very sorry" (27 July 1932, UoR, MS 2444 CW letterbook 140/274). "Spring Song" remains unpublished. "There was a Happy Land" is the first line, and probably the working title, of the poem published as "Sanies 2"; "Alba 2" is the early title of "Enueg 1" (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 648, n. 80; John Pilling, 21 April 1995; see 7 August 1931, n. 1).
18 The 32nd birthday of Elizabeth, Duchess of York (nee Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, 1900-2002), consort of Prince Albert, Duke of York {1895-1952) was 4 August 1932; their daughter Princess Elizabeth (b. 1926, later Queen Elizabeth II) was then six years old. The Royal racing cutter Britannia concluded a week of racing at Cowes, The Royal London Yacht Club regatta, on Saturday 6 August 1932 (The Times 8 August 1932: 6).
Dino Grandi (1895-1988) was Italy's Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1929 to 1932 and Italy's Ambassador to England from 1932 to 1939; Grandi arrived in London on the
116
18 {August 1932}, McGreevy
evening of 3 August 1932 to present his credentials to the King (The Times 4 August 1932: 10; The Times 10 August 1932: 13).
The French franc was 89 to the pound on 4 August 1932 (The Times 5 August 1932: 16).
19 McGreevyhopedtointerestLennoxRobinson,producerattheAbbeyTheatre,in his translation ofAlexander Pushkin's "Boris Godunov" (Lennox Robinson, 11 September 1932; TCD, MS 8026).
McGreevy's "Talky" is not identified; SB mentions it again, as "talkie," in his letter to McGreevy, 30 August 1932 (TCD, MS 10402/30).
THOMA S McGREEVY TARBERT, CO. KERRY
18th [August 1932)
4Ampton St [London) W. C. 1
Dear Tom
Glad to hear the book is on the move again, and hope to
1
undercurrent of communism is surprising. Or I suppose one
ought to be surprised. I think the only thing that would surprise
me about Ireland, or any other land, would be to have it estab
lished as a more unpleasant site wherein to serve one's life than
3
for my fare home. Write to Cooldrinagh. There is no use my
insisting further here. This month of creeping and crawling and
sollicitation has yielded nothing but glib Cockney regrets. The
book came back from the Hogarth Press, and the poems, with
merely the formal rejection slip. Nothing from L. W. He was out
of London as I told you when I brought it round. I have good
reason to believe that the MS never left London and that in all
probability he never saw it. But he must have got my letter. Or
4
117
have good news of it in your next. What you write about an
2
thiscoreofallfaex. Andtheheat. . . Iwrotehomethisevening
perhapsitishistumfortheasylum. Anyhowtantpiss. Ithen brought it to Grayson and Cape. It came back yesterday from Cape. Their reader's report "did not encourage them to make me
18 {August 1932}, McGreevy
an offer for publication rights". It would be interesting to see
some of these readers' reports. 5 So far no reply from Grayson.
I saw Rupert Grayson when I went round, the "author son of
Sir Henry". And a proper pudding he appeared. He assured me
at least that if they did not take the thing they would tell me the
6
see Derek Verschoyle, Literary Editor of Spectator, he was dis
guised as a student in T. C. D. while I was still functioning, and
7
had no books for review. But he received me very kindly and
gave me a cigarette. I went round yesterday to see Mr Ellis
Roberts, gaga in chief of New Statesman. He had no books for
review. He thought he might possibly be interested [in] a state
ment of [for on] Gide, covering all that artists's [sic] vicissitudes
from Andre Walter to Oedipe in the space of not more than 1800
8
reasonwhy. Thatwillmakepleasantreading. Iwentroundto
gavehimthethreelastpoems. Gotthembackthisevening. He
words, or one of similar length of [for on] the modernity ofVico.
I promised to do my best. But of course it can't be done. I don't believe I could put a dozen words together on any subject what soever. But Mr Roberts received me kindly too, and gave me a cup of tea. My Father very generously sent me a five pound note which I received last Saturday morning. I put it in my drawer, and went yesterday to get it. It was gone. And a temporary lodger was gone also. Whether he took it or whether Mrs Southon or the cretinous Heep it is impossible to know. Mr. S. produced a really superb condition of Cockney distress yesterday evening. Such a thing had never happened before, never in all these years, as the lodger who appears to have his being in the kitchen could testify. Mr S would rather have lost his lower testicle than have such a catastrophe occur. That finishes this villeggiatura. I think I may stay in bed till more comes from the "blue eyes of home". 9 I have not been to see Prentice. I will bring him back his
118
18 {August 1932), McGreevy
book to-morrow, and start clearing the scuppers. 10 T. & K. sent
me notices ofjobs in Cornwall, Devon, Derbyshire, here, Sussex,
and Basel: this last as English instructor in Berlitz School, 275
francs monthly, 40 hours per week! Still [sic], ifI were not so tired
and eviscerate at the moment, I would apply. Better Basel where
love is not than D. D. D. with sentimental salmagundis and other
11
on the mat.
[. . •] I really dread going back to Dublin and all that,
but there is nothing else for it at this stage. I was not serious
when I said about going into the office. There is no room for
another clerk in the office, and even ifthere were I simply could
12
home. If I could even mend a puncture.
The heat is frightful, culminating to-day in 92 in the shade.
I met Arty Hillis, you remember the big-hearted musical mor pion at the Ecole, and he lent me a quid and offered to put me up
13
TLS; 2 leaves, 2 sides; TCD, MS 10402/29. Dating: month and year added, possibly in AH, confirmed by description of the weather, and SB's move from London to Dublin (see SB to McGreevy, 30 August 1932, TCD, MS 10402/30); Prentice wrote to Richard Aldington, 5 September 1932, that SB had left for Ireland about ten days before (ICSo, Aldington 68/6/8).
1 McGreevyhadresumedworkonhisnovel(CharlesPrenticetoRichardAldington, 1 July 1932, JCSo, Aldington 68/6/9; see also 20 December 1931, n. 7).
2 Anti. Communist articles appeared in the Dublin press at this time, for example: "To Check Communism," The Irish Times 16 August 1932: 7; "Mr. Cosgrove and
119
It will have to be private school or training college or else unhandy Andy in the garage and back garden at
not do the work.
free at Hampstead as from next Monday.
my while changing now. Ifthey don't reimburse me here I won't pay any more rent and I'll clear out as soon as I get my fare. Is there a chance ofmy seeing you soon in Dublin? I thought ofmaking a dash for Paris, but I am too unbelievably gutless to do anything and my Mother would throw a fit.
So. Write to Cooldrinagh. Love ever s/Sam
But it won't be worth
18 {August 1932}, McGreevy
'Communism,"' The Irish Press 5 August 1932: 1-2; and a report on the effect of Communist propaganda on theatre ("Before the Footlights," The Irish Times 11 August 1932: 4).
3 London was experiencing a heat wave, with a high of 90° on 18 August. "Faex" (Lat. , the dregs).
4 LeonardWoolfhadmadenocommentonDreamofFairtoMiddlingWomen,oron the poems, nor did he respond to SB's letter (for further information, see 4 August 1932, n. 10).
"Tant piss" (SB's adaptation of "tant pis" [too bad]).
5 The letter to SB from London publishing house Jonathan Cape has not been found, but a reader's report is in the Cape archives. On 13 August 1932, Edward Garnett (1868-1937) wrote of Dream of Fair to Middling Women: "I wouldn't touch this with a barge pole. Beckett probably is a clever fellow, but here he has elaborated a slavish, & rather incoherent imitation of Joyce, most eccentric in language & full of disgustingly affected passages - also indecent; this school is damned - & you wouldn't sell the book even on its title. Chatto was right to turn it down" (UoR, Cape; published in edited form in Michael Howard, Jonathan Cape, Publisher: Herbert Jonathan Cape, G. Wren Howard [London: Jonathan Cape, 1971] 137).
6 SirHenryGrayson,Bt. ,KBE(1865-1951),andhissonBrianGrayson(1900-1989) were Directors of Grayson and Grayson; another son, novelist Rupert Stanley Harrison Grayson (1897-1991), was Literary Advisor.
7 DerekHugoVerschoyle(1911-1973)wasLiteraryEditorofTheSpectatorfrom1932 to 1940; he matriculated at Trinity College Dublin in 1929, but did not take a degree. It is not known which poems SB submitted.
8 Richard Ellis Roberts (1879-1953) was Literary Editor of the New Statesman from 1930 to 1932; he continued as a regular contributor when he became Literary Editor of Time and Tide (1933 to 1934) and Life and Letters (November 1934 to 1935).
Andre-Paul-Guillaume Gide (1869-1951) wrote Les Cahiers d'. Andre Walter (1891; The Notebooks ofAndre Walter); among his later works was the prose playOedipe (1931; Oedipus).
Giambattista Vico.
9 Mrs. Southon was SB's landlady. The person to whom SB refers has not been identified, although "Heep" alludes to Uriah Heep in Dickens's David Copperfield (1849-1850). Mr. S. is Mr. Southon.
"Villeggiatura" (holiday).
For possible sources of the "blue eyes ofhome," see John Pilling, A Companion to "Dream ofFair to Middling Women" (Tallahassee, FL: Journal ofBeckett Studies Books, 2004) 78.
10 PrenticehadlentD. H. Lawrence'sApocalypsetoSB(15August1931,n. 5),butSB may be referring to another book.
11 TrumanandKnightley(see4August1932,n. 12). "D. D. D. "(DearDirtyDublin).
12 FrankBeckettworkedintheirfather'squantitysurveyingfirm,BeckettandMedcalf.
13 Arthur Henry Macnamara Hillis• (1905-1997), lawyer and international econo- mist, had been in SB's year at Trinity College Dublin. He may have visited SB at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris.
"Morpion" (literally a crab louse, but here a mild form of student abuse).
120
THOMAS McGREEVY TARBERT, CO. KERRY
13th [September 1932]
Cooldrinagh Foxrock, [Co. Dublin]
13 [September 1932}, McGreevy
My dear Tom
I will do all I can to raise the two quid when I go into town
this morning on my father's bicycle. I don't think Frank would refuse me. Anyhow I owe you about 25/-for transition, and I wish
I could have paid you before, but I have found no work here and
depend on my father for everything. There is a prospect of a few
grinds turning up at the end of the month. Ruddy has been very
1
No news from Grayson, and I hesitate to write them a stinger. But
now it is a good three weeks since they promised me their deci
2
Nothing seems to come off. I made a desperate effort to get
something started on Gide but failed again. 3 I began a poem
yesterday, the first since Home Olga, a blank unsighted kind of
thing, but looking at it it is clear that it can never tum out to be
more than mildly entertaining at the best. The old story - ardour
and fervour absent or faked so that what happens may be slick
4
time in the National Gallery, looking at the Poussin Entombment
and coming stealthily down the stairs into the charming toy
brightness of the German room to the Brueghels and the
Masters of Tired Eyes and Silver Windows. The young woman of
5
good recommending me and I wish there were no P. B. in Dream.
sion immediately. Rickword never acknowledged the poems.
enough verse but not a poem at all. I seem to spend a lot of
Rembrandtissplendid. Ihopewemaymeanderthroughsome time together. Cissie lucky woman has gone back to Germany with Deirdre leaving Sally here on the job. We managed a good
121
13 [September 1932}, McGreevy
afternoon together before she left, in the gallery and then the
6
Moira and then pubs.
I met R. N. D. Wilson last Sunday chez
Percy Ussher, and he was full of enthusiasm about your Eliot.
I thought there was not much to him and felt vaguely uneasy
with him. He read or declaimed acres of his verse, and to be sure
there were odds and ends of agreeablenesses here and there. He
has nice thick shining black hair and his little prose-poem dia
pason seems to be keyed toA. E. 's. A. E. & W. B. playa lot of croquet
together at Riversdale, Rathfarnham, and the former always wins
by a mile. I suppose James Starkey holds the stakes. Austin Clarke
7
seems to be the usual rubbish. 8 I set out on Saturday afternoon to see Jack Yeats, and then en route changed my mind and went for a ride along the coast instead. Pretending to like fresh air and salt water I got the old intercostal rheumatism back, this time on the left side. But it is going away and I am denied even the excitement of a little dry pleurisy in safe surroundings. For me also the alter native seems to be here or Paris, and not having heard anything from Titus, though there are a number of counts on which he might write, I have no idea how I stand with him. Won't the Copulation Intellectuelle be functioning? 9 Anyhow be sure and let me know if you are passing thorugh [sic] and in the meantime alles gut and the quiet unfurling of your book that I know you want. 10
Love ever s/ Sam
TLS; 1 leaf, 1 side; TCD, MS 10402/32. Dating: SB's meeting with Grayson is reported in his letter to McGreevy 18 IAugust 1932J; this meeting "a fortnight ago" is recounted in SB's letter to McGreevy of 13 September 1932J (TCD. MS 10842/31). The present letter indicates that it has been over three weeks since SB has seen Grayson about Dream of Fair to Middling Women, and SB's letter to McGreevy of8 October 1932 mentions that it has been "over 6 weeks. "
122
and Monk Gibbon seek on the bank a definition of obscenity. I wish I had seen "Things that are Caesar's"[. ] "Temporal Powers"
1 "Grinds"(colloq. ,tutoringjobs). SBhadrepresentedRudmose-BrownasthePolar Bear in Dream ofFair to Middling Women.
2 SB wrote on Saturday [3 September 1932] to McGreevy: "I saw the Brothers G. a fortnight ago now in London and they promised me a speedy decision. I don't know whether to think the delay good or bad. " In the same letter, SB said of the poems: "I don't expect them to be taken on by Wishart, but I wish I had sent them earlier and that I had seen Rickword in London.
