William Empson tells a story about Eliot and letters:

“Ah, letters,” he said, rather as if they were some rare kind of bird, “I had to look into the question of letters at one time. I found that the mistake . . . that most people make . . . about letters, is that after writing their letters, carefully, they go out, and look for a pillar-box. I found that it is very much better, after giving one’s attention to composing the letter, to . . . pop it into the fire.”

Empson commented on Eliot’s observation of letters, that “this kind of thing was a little unnerving, because one did not know how tragically it was to be taken; it was clearly not to be regarded as a flippancy.”

Grateful as I am for letterboxes, I wish that Eliot had popped two or three of his own letters into the fire, notably a remarkably insolent letter of June 18, 1925 to Marianne Moore following her rejection of his wife Vivien’s short story:

I now know that Miss Thayer has made use of you in order to insult me and my wife for personal reasons. . . .

I have championed you in the face of derision and indifference, and I had the right to expect better treatment from you. In future, I shall take a different course, and I intend to see that justice is done and the balance righted.

I am