The Dial

The Dial was an American literary magazine edited by Scofield Thayer, known in this account for an annual literary award that combined substantial financial support with prestige. Its award to T. S. Eliot for The Waste Land became a turning point in the unsuccessful Bel Esprit effort to free Eliot from his bank job: the campaign's imagined escape gave way to recognition and support from elsewhere.

Editorial Identity and Award

The magazine's annual award recognized excellence in the practice of letters by a contributor. The narrator recalls the prize as about a thousand dollars, while qualifying that recollection; even with that uncertainty, the sum was enormous for a writer of the period. The award also carried prestige, and had previously gone to several writers whom the narrator considers deserving.

The money mattered in practical as well as literary terms. Two people, the account observes, could live comfortably in Europe on five dollars a day and travel. The Dial's prize therefore represented more than an honor: it could materially change a writer's circumstances, a fact that gave the Bel Esprit campaign its urgent premise.

The Award to T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot received The Dial's award for The Waste Land. The narrator connects the poem's publication and the award with Bel Esprit's eventual collapse, though he cannot remember precisely how or when the organization broke up. The recognition shifted the situation: not long afterward, a titled woman backed a review for Eliot, The Criterion, and the narrator and Ezra Pound no longer felt they had to worry about Eliot's financial position.

This outcome did not match the campaign's original aspiration. The narrator had pictured Eliot leaving the bank as a free man and perhaps living in the small Greek temple in the garden. He imagined visiting with Pound to crown Eliot with laurel gathered on a bicycle ride, returning with the wreath whenever Eliot felt lonely or after Pound had reviewed another major poem's manuscript or proofs. The Dial award and subsequent support made that elaborate hoped-for rescue unnecessary, but Bel Esprit had not achieved it on its own.

Literary and Material Significance

The Dial's place in the episode rests on the force of its prize: literary judgment could translate into the means to live and travel, while also providing public recognition. The contrast between the award's real assistance to Eliot and the narrator's private, almost ceremonial dream of rescuing him gives the magazine a consequential role without making it the agent of Bel Esprit's campaign. The narrator's account also marks the limits of what he knows: he remembers the award and its effects, but not the exact circumstances in which Bel Esprit finally ended.