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130 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
July, Pound reported that twenty-two of the thirty subscriptions
had been pledged. By this time, Eliot had placed himself completely
in the hands of his mentor.
This sense of dedication Pound was often successful in passing
on to those around him. Eliot flung himself into his writing,
and a long poem began to take shape. He wrote, in 1946,
"It was in 1922 that I placed before him in Paris the manuscript
of a sprawling, chaotic poem called The Waste Land which
left his hands about half its size, in the form in which it appears
in print. I should like to think that the manuscript, with the
superseded passages, had disappeared irrevocably: yet, on the
other hand, I should wish the blue pencilling on it to be preserved
as irrefutable evidence of Pound's critical genius." 4
Pound had described Eliot to Harriet Monroe in a letter dated
September 30, 1914, ". . . He is the only American I know
of who has made what I call adequate preparation for writing.
He has actually trained himself and modernized himself on his
own. The rest of the promising young have done one or the other
but never both (most of the swine have done neither). It is such
a comfort to meet a man and not have to tell him to wash his
face, wipe his feet, and remember the date (1914) on the
calendar." 5
Two letters from Pound to Eliot concerning his editorship of
The Waste Land are in print. The first, dated December 24,
1921, follows:
"Caro mio:
MUCH improved. I think your instinct had led you to put
the remaining superfluities at the end. I think you had better
leave 'em, abolish 'em altogether or for the present.
"IF you MUST keep 'em put 'em at the beginning before the
'April cruelest month.' The POEM ends with the 'Shantih, shantih,
shantih.'
"One test is whether anything would be lacking if the last
three were omitted. I don't think it would.
"The song has only two lines which you can use in the body
of the poem. The other two, at least the first, does not advance