[41 Brimmer St., Boston]

T. S.Eliot
EmilyHale
TS
Faber & Faber Ltd
31 December 1931
My dear Bird

I am fortunate in finding no committee this Thursday afternoon, and so have time for a line to you; forCrofton, Harry C.lunches with TSE on New Year's Day;a3 I shall have but little time tomorrow morning as I have to lunch with Harry Crofton at 12 o’clock at the St. James’s Club; andSitwell, Edithto tea on New Year's Day;a8 Edith Sitwell is coming to tea in the afternoon. So I send you my ‘Happy New Year’ wishes on New Year’s Eve, wondering platitudinously what it will bring, for you and for me and for others. I find the transit from one year to the next, the simple changing of one figure at the end of the date, a rather terrifying movement. The past has done so much to one – of course with some blessings as well as with agony – that was the last thing one expected in life. And often the good as well as the bad was the last thing that one would have desired, at some time or other in the past. NowChristianitymysticism and transcendence;c3intimations of life's 'pattern';a2 and then, but rarely, I get flashes of perception of a kind of ‘pattern’ in life, in my life, which are like mystical moments; flashes which do not give peace ‘as the world gives’1 but which, while they last, reconcile one to all the mystery of fault and suffering the past. Just as still more rarely, at other times, I have had a kind of flash of anticipation of my future, in a very general way, and in a way which neither makes possible, or even desirable, that we should alter our course in any way. What a cumbrous and confused sentence. But I do take such feelings seriously.

Well, my dear, this is a poor note; please accept it in the knowledge that my short scraps convey with them all the emotion of my longer, and of my apparently more personal and emotional letters. The Year is at hand.

Tom.

– à la bonne année à Emilie.

1.‘Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid’ (John 14: 27).

Christianity, and human isolation, and modern economics, Ada on TSE's personal piety, scheme for 'Pro Fide' bookshop, among the Eliot family, and beauty, its sects like different clubs, Anglo-Catholicism, TSE's conversion to, which he dates to Eccleston Square meeting, Anglican Missal sought for EH, but unfortunately out of print, discussed at Boston Theological School, and the Petrine Claims, apostolic succession, over Roman Catholicism, as refuge from VHE, and the Reformation, asceticism, discipline, rigour, the necessity for, and TSE's daily exhortation, making and breaking habits, mastering emotions and passions, as salubrious, only remedy for a prurient culture, confession and communion, more possible during Harvard year, the case for unattainable ideals, in time of war, gets TSE up before 7 o'clock, hereditary with TSE, belief, and good poetry, faced with Second World War, and conversion, antidote to TSE's skepticism, Christendom, TSE ponders the decline of, TSE on his prominence within, its ruin, the Church Visible and Invisible, and TSE's war work, the Malabar Church, prospect of total reunion within, confession, helps to objectify sin, more dreaded than dentist, harder in the morning, death and afterlife, the struggle to prepare for, consoles TSE in life, and cremation, Requiem Mass, gives meaning to life, and what makes a desirable burial place, the nature of eternal life, divorce, unrecognised by Anglo-Catholic Church, which TSE regrets, in church law, would separate TSE from Church, evil, TSE's belief in, and moral percipience, guilt, and the New England conscience, hell, TSE's 1910 vision of, and damnation, according to TSE, liturgy, TSE's weekly minimum, Mass of the Pre-sanctified, Requiem Mass versus Mass of Good Friday, and whether to serve at Mass, Imposition of Ashes, at Christmas, High Mass over Mattins, aversion to Low Church Mattins, Roman service in Wayland, Tenebrae, in country parish church, as guest at Kelham, remarkable sermon, over Christmas, Tenebrae and Family Reunion, during Holy Week, Mass of Charles King and Martyr, love, loving one's neighbour, marriage, TSE's need for privacy within, mysticism and transcendence, interpenetration of souls, intimations of life's 'pattern', 'doubleness', arrived at through reconciliation, orthodoxy, only remedy for contemporary culture, and pagans, sets TSE at odds with modernity, necessarily trinitarian, 'Christian' defined, iniquities of liberal theology, and creed, authority, Transubstantiation, TSE disclaims 'self-centredness' in maintaining, politics, the Church and social change, how denomination maps onto, need for working-class priests, church leaders against totalitarianism and Nazism, Christianity versus Fascism and Communism, Papal Encyclical against Nazi Germany, the 'Dividend morality', Presbyterianism, TSE quips on the meanness of, Quakerism, resignation, reconciliation, peace, TSE's love allows for, 'peace that passeth all understanding', the struggle to maintain, following separation from VHE, retreat and solitude, EH at Senexet, the need for, a need increasing with age, and TSE's mother, Roman Catholicism, TSE's counter-factual denomination, Rome, sacraments, Holy Communion, marriage, sainthood, TSE's idea of, the paradoxes of, susceptible of different sins, sins, vices, faults, how to invigilate, the sense of sin, the sinner's condition, bound up with the virtues, as a way to virtue, TSE's self-appraisal, when humility shades into, when unselfishness shades into, among saints, proportionate to spiritual progress, daydreaming, despair, lust, pride, perfection-seeking pride, spiritual progress and direction, TSE's crisis of 1910–11, EH's crisis, versus automatism, TSE's sense of, towards self-knowledge, in EH's case, as personal regeneration, temptation, to action/busyness, the Church Year, Advent, Christmas, dreaded, happily over, TSE rebuked for bah-humbugging, church trumps family during, season of irreligion, thoughts of EH during, unsettling, fatiguing, in wartime, Easter preferred to, Ash Wednesday, Lent, season for meditation and reading, prompts thoughts of EH, Lady Day, Holy Week, its intensity, arduous, preserved from public engagements, exhausting but refreshing, excitingly austere, Easter, better observed than Christmas, missed through illness, Unitarianism, the Eliots' as against EH's, the prospect of spiritual revival within, as personified by TSE's grandfather, regards the Bible as literature, as against Catholicism, divides EH from TSE, and whether Jesus believed himself divine, according to Dr Perkins, in England as against America, over-dependent on preachers' personality, TSE's wish that EH convert from, outside TSE's definition of 'Christian', the issue of communion, baptism, impossibly various, virtues heavenly and capital, bound up with the vices, better reached by way of sin, charity, towards others, in Bubu, TSE's intentness on, delusions of, as against tolerance, chastity, celibacy, beneath humility, TSE lacks vocation for, faith, and doubt, hope, a duty, TSE's struggle for, humility, distinguished from humiliation, comes as relief, greatest of the virtues, propinquitous to humour, not an Eliot virtue, opposed to timidity, danger of pride in, is endless, TSE criticised for overdoing, theatre a lesson in, most difficult of the virtues, possessed by EH, possessed by EH to a fault, TSE compares himself to EH in, the paradox of, distinguished from inferiority, self-discovery teaches, possessed by Dr Perkins, patience, recommended to EH, its foundations, possessed by Uncle John, purity, distinguished from purification, temperance, with alcohol, beneath humility,
Crofton, Harry C., TSE's ease with, TSE remembered by his son, lunches with TSE on New Year's Day, in thumbnail,

1.HarryCrofton, Harry C. C. Crofton (d. 1938), was the senior of the four managers of the Colonial and Foreign Department. HisCrofton, Harry C.TSE remembered by his son;a2n son John told the Archivist of Lloyds Bank, 1 Aug. 1980: ‘I have memories of my father inviting T. S. for several week-ends to our home. My mother … used to speak of him and of how much they enjoyed his visits. (If I may add that in those days it was a little unusual for the Chief Foreign Manager to invite “a clerk” for week-ends!!!) I do know that the object of the visits from my father’s side, was to persuade T. S. to give up the Bank and devote himself to his obvious real calling.’

Sitwell, Edith, TSE likens EH's portrait to, which displeases EH, which likeness TSE presently disclaims, shockingly altered, now seems more herself, brings Pavel Tchelitchew to tea, to tea on New Year's Day, at Harold Monro's funeral, dragoons TSE into poetry reading, at which she is rated, at odds with Dorothy Wellesley, at Poetry Reading for China, sends TSE whisky in hospital,
see also Sitwells, the

2.EdithSitwell, Edith Sitwell (1887–1964), poet, biographer, anthologist, novelist: see Biographical Register.