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I must thank you for your sweet telegram, and your letter received this morning. TheEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)her funeral;e3 funeral took place at Pinner, where her mother is buried; on a very cold day. ThereHaigh-Wood, Mauriceat VHE's funeral;b3 were onlyHaigh-Wood, Emily ('Ahmé') Cleveland (TSE's sister-in-law, née Hoagland)at VHE's funeral;a6 Maurice and his wife, myself, andFaber, Enid Eleanorat VHE's funeral;c4 Enid Faber, who has been the most loyal of beings. It was private, of course; no announcement of the place and time was made.1 TomorrowEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)Requiem Mass for;e4 I have the Requiem Mass which I have asked Father Cheetham to say: that will be private, and only Maurice and his wife and myself present.
IEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)her death;f3TSE's shifting response to;a3 shall not write a long letter at present, but often. I do not feel that there is anyone to whom I can explain the disturbance that has taken place in me: and to anyone who might conclude that it was due to a recrudescence of any past affection or passion I should not wish to speak of it at all. It is rather the contrary – indeed, completely the contrary: what has surged up in me is the suffering of the past, the bad conscience, and the horror, with an intense dislike of sex in any form. IHale, Emilyrelationship with TSE;w9following VHE's death;f8 cannot, at this moment, face or think of any future except just going on. The worst of it is that you will think it is something personal to yourself, and I can’t even attempt to reason it out to you. How ignorant of ourselves we all are – yet we only can learn in each new situation or crisis as it arises. ISheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister)wished for on VHE's death;k6 wish that I had Ada to talk to: and yet I suspect that that is illusory, and that if she were alive I should find communication just as difficult as with anybody else. On the one hand, as you cannot share my present sufferings, all I do by mentioning them is to inflict suffering, as I have always done in my life. Yet if I didn’t speak of them, I should (as with any trouble of which one can see no way out) simply be guilty of deception. So it is unhappy either way.2
1.Vivien Haigh Wood Eliot was buried on 29 Jan. 1947.
EnidFaber, Enid Eleanoron VHE's death and funeral;c5n Faber, ‘Recollections of Vivienne Eliot’ (10 Nov. 1950): ‘Maurice Haigh Wood her brother came back after the war, & was very nice to her, & did all he could to make her happier. I fancy he must have been relieved when she died. The Haigh Woods, Tom & I were the only mourners in a funeral chapel with blasted windows on a freezing day, & Tom’s flowers were missing. A very unhappy end to a rather miserable life. I shall never know what caused her mental breakdown or whether there was any insanity in her family. One thing I feel fairly sure of is that the seeds of it must always have been there’ (Faber Archive K44/2).
Peter du Sautoy, ‘T. S. Eliot: Personal Reminiscences’: ‘I did not of course know Vivien Eliot … I do remember, though, Enid Faber (Geoffrey’s wife) coming back to 24 Russell Square after Vivien’s funeral in 1947 and reporting that it had been a rather trying ceremony, in a church that had been bombed in the war. It was in January and the weather was cold’ (T. S. Eliot: Essays from the ‘Southern Review’, ed. James Olney [1988], 82).
2.TSETrevelyan, Marysignificance of VHE's death explained to;a9n to Mary Trevelyan, 27 Apr. 1949: ‘AsEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)her death;f3TSE's shifting response to;a3 for myself, I realised – with a shock – several years ago and in quite another context, that I was burnt out, and that I could no longer feel towards anyone as I once had, and up to that moment believed I still did. This was a tragedy of which I cannot say more, but which has made me feel, ever since, a haunted man. I realised too, that I had become fixed in one mode of life although for years I had rebelled in spirit against it; and that the thought of trying to share my life with anyone had become a nightmare. I went through a kind of psychological change of life; and now I feel that I am merely living against time with my eye on the clock, to accomplish the best I can in creative work – or if not that, in some usefulness – and in making some progress on the Way before the gong is struck and the last round is over. <mixed metaphor> It may be just a somewhat premature ageing; it may be partly that what I went through in a good many years of agony had exhausted and crippled me more than, during the five or six years before the war, I had recognised’ (Houghton).
To Mary Trevelyan, 2 June 1950: ‘This is not the first time, in the most general way, thatHale, Emilyrelationship with TSE;w9TSE reflects on the deterioration of;f9n ITrevelyan, MaryTSE describes relationship with EH to;b1n have thought I had said enough to someone to clarify a position once [and] for all; and then found that I had left a misunderstanding. It is partly from reticence in talking about oneself and one’s past experiences; in some cases the desire not to inflict pain (but the desire to avoid inflicting pain can often approach very close to cowardice); and also the inadequacy of language to express feelings and to explain how those feelings came about – so that at times one seems faced with merely the alternative between conveying two or more different misunderstandings. I am afraid I must try to expose (as I have done to no one so far) the most agonising experience of my life.
‘For a great many years I was very much in love with some one, and would willingly have sacrificed everything for the possibility of marrying her. Then, when finally I was free, I realised quite suddenly that I was deluding myself with emotions I had felt in the past, that I had changed much more, and in ways unsuspected, than I had thought. I found that I actually could not bear the thought of it. You will of course infer at once that this was merely a particular relationship which, when it reached the possibility of completion, was found no longer to exist. But it is much more than that, and that is what cannot be expressed in any words I can find. I take it to mean that I am still, in a way, in love with her, even though I prefer not to see her, feel embarrassed and unhappy when I do, seem to have very little in common now. There is also of course the feeling, which only a man can understand, that a man, in all these situations, is somehow always in the wrong. AnywayHale, EmilyTSE's love for;x2would run to jealously but not marriage;f1n, I do care enough about her to be unable to contemplate except with horror the thought of marrying anyone else, or of any relationship except that of friendship. And I have never wanted to marry anyone except this one person.
‘No doubt I ought to have explained all this before, instead of wrapping it up in phrases which might be taken to apply to my married life. But it is something which gnaws at my liver, and the liver is an organ which one does not willingly expose. I shall never be relieved of this pain, except, I hope, at the moment of death’ (TS EVE).
1.TSE was mistaken here. EnidFaber, Enid Eleanor Eleanor Faber (1901–95) was the daughter of Sir Henry Erle Richards (1861–1922), Fellow of All Souls College and Chichele Professor of International Law and Diplomacy at Oxford University, and Mary Isabel Butler (1868–1945).
5.MauriceHaigh-Wood, Maurice Haigh-Wood was eight years younger than his sister Vivien. InHaigh-Wood, Emily ('Ahmé') Cleveland (TSE's sister-in-law, née Hoagland) 1930 he married a 25-year-old American dancer, Emily Cleveland Hoagland – known as known as ‘Ahmé’ (she was one of the Hoagland Sisters, who had danced at Monte Carlo) – and they were to have two children.
5.MauriceHaigh-Wood, Maurice Haigh-Wood was eight years younger than his sister Vivien. InHaigh-Wood, Emily ('Ahmé') Cleveland (TSE's sister-in-law, née Hoagland) 1930 he married a 25-year-old American dancer, Emily Cleveland Hoagland – known as known as ‘Ahmé’ (she was one of the Hoagland Sisters, who had danced at Monte Carlo) – and they were to have two children.
2.AdaSheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister) Eliot Sheffield (1869–1943), eldest of the seven Eliot children; author of The Social Case History: Its Construction and Content (1920) and Social Insight in Case Situations (1937): see Biographical Register.
2.MaryTrevelyan, Mary Trevelyan (1897–1983), Warden of Student Movement House, worked devotedly to support the needs of overseas students in London (her institution was based at 32 Russell Square, close to the offices of F&F; later at 103 Gower Street); founder and first governor of International Students House, London. Trevelyan left an unpublished memoir of her friendship with TSE – ‘The Pope of Russell Square’ – whom she long desired to marry. See further Biographical Register.