[No surviving envelope]
FirstHale, Emilybirthdays, presents and love-tokens;w2EH sends TSE provisions;f3 I must thank you for the parcel containing two pots of marmalade, some chocolate, and some pie crust, which arrived two days ago. Everything in the way of provisions is very welcome to us here, and it was thoughtful of you to send it. IHotsons, the;a9 have been very fortunate these last months, theClements, thesend TSE food;a6 Hotsons and the Clements having been very generous. Such additions give more variety to our monotonous diet. I fear that we shall need them much more next winter than this. YetEuropeits post-war condition;a9 however badly we fare, I remember always how much worse off is Eastern Europe. I am told that conditions in Hungary and Rumania are appalling. IGalitzi, Dr Christinewrites to TSE about husband;c8 have just had a letter from Christine Bratesco (Galitzi) transmitted apparently through a friend in the Rumanian Legation, which I have unfortunately left at the office. I will send it to you, when I have answered it in the same way, and perhaps you can find a way to get a letter to her, as of course she enquires eagerly after you. She says nothing about the living conditions, probably out of prudence; only that she hears from her husband occasionally, that she still hopes for his release from Russia, but that his conditions of life are very hard.
Thewinterof 1947;a8 weatherEnglandpost-war;b8 has been a little better: we have had several sunny days, and although still very cold, the temperature has been much more tolerable. It seems likely that some more systematic scheme of fuel rationing will be imposed – whether it will work is another matter – and that it will go on throughout this year and the next. With that, and much more severe food rationing, we may eventually come to some major political crisis, though what form it will take, I can make no guess. I am afraid that at present I see nothing to arrest the slow undeviating process of decay both here and in Europe in general.
ISheffield, Alfred Dwight ('Shef' or 'Sheff')reports on Henry's condition;c6 have lettersEliot, Theresa Garrett (TSE's sister-in-law)reports on Henry;d8 from Sheff and Theresa which seem to show thatEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother)terminal leukaemia;k7 all is not well with Henry, in spite of the fact that Theresa admits that Henry feels well and is calm and cheerful. But he is suffering from oedema (swelling of the ankles and other parts) and apparently his two doctors, Hoyt and Stetson, do not take quite the same view of it. Sheff says that Henry thinks Hoyt does not take this trouble seriously enough, and that this feeling in itself creates a strain which is bad for him. Theresa is obviously worried; but of course she is inevitably infected by Henry’s own state of mind, even if he tries to conceal it. I am left in a good deal of anxiety. I always wonder whether Henry’s illness does not come fundamentally from a chronic depression about himself, and the feeling of lifelong thwarting and disappointment, – without his having, I am sorry to say, any philosophy or religious beliefs which could help him to be indifferent to such things as success and failure. IEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother)as curator of Eliotana;e9 have always felt his intense devotion to my bibliography, to collecting anything and everything about me which he could add to the collection and catalogue, as somewhat morbid: the result is that to me it has been only a cause of distress and embarrassment. (Incidentally, it makes me feel all the lonlier [lonelier] without him – for I do feel very lonely in his company – because it reminds me that it is my reputation, rather than any enjoyment of what I write for its own sake, or any sympathy of thought and sensibility, that he has to find his satisfaction in).
ButAmericamore alien to TSE post-war;b9 at present I am feeling more and more that America is a very foreign country to me, and that the last seven years have built up a much higher and more impregnable barrier. A year ago was still soon enough after the war for me to feel, in spite of reason, that the world and oneself could start where it left off. At any rate, after those seven years, the visit to America was a wonderful holiday, in spite of the ominous nightmare feeling I had in New York. This last winter has driven home the irreparable changes that have taken place, the isolation of what is left of Western European culture from the rest of the world. So I confess that I feel only apprehension over my coming visit. ShallEliot, Marion Cushing (TSE's sister);f1 I have any communication with you, with Henry and Marion, shall I feel anything but an almost panic-stricken longing to get back here among the ruins? Your short letter of February 20 was very sweet and kind, but it leaves me wondering how much I really managed to communicate. I did not myself find my letter ‘clear’ or ‘comprehensive’; so, when you say you found it so, I cannot help wondering whether you did not find a clarity and a comprehensiveness which were not really there. I do not know whether the ‘duality’ of which you speak corresponds to anything of what I am now aware of in myself.
OfSecond World Warits effect on TSE;b3 course I am still expressing myself piece-meal. TheEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)her death;f3TSE's shifting response to;a3 part which Vivienne’s death plays is one thing, the development or change in myself brought about by the war is another. Her death did not change me, it merely made me face the necessity of taking stock of myself, and of getting towards some wholeness. At present, I no longer want anything in this world except to do the best writing I can in the ten or twelve years of some degree of creativity that I may hope for, to meet all coming external vicissitudes in a spirit of Christian fortitude and faith in the Christian hope of eternity, and I no longer feel any vitality over and above that needed to carry out those duties. I am so shaken that the thought of any life beyond that terrifies me: sometimes one has just the strength to go on the same course, whereas if one stopped for a moment, or tried to change the course, one would drop.
So the visit to America will be very different from that of last year: it will be as if I was meeting you, and my family, for the first time:1 I hope I shall not feel simply a ghost, a temporary visitant from another world. IEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)marriage to;e6as an act of self-rupture;b6 suppose I am now facing a division in myself which was created – not perhaps initiated, but brought to a head – by the sudden violent desperate rupture in 1915.
ButHale, Emilyas director ('producer');v9Richard II;b3 I don’t want to worry or perplex you too much while you have this responsibility for Richard II on your hands: I know how perfect you want to make it, and I am sure how good it will be.
1.‘Little Gidding’:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
3.HenryEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother) Ware Eliot (1879–1947), TSE’s older brother: see Biographical Register.
1.Marian/MarionEliot, Marion Cushing (TSE's sister) Cushing Eliot (1877–1964), fourth child of Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Eliot: see Biographical Register.
1.DrGalitzi, Dr Christine Christine Galitzi (b. 1899), Assistant Professor of French and Sociology, Scripps College. Born in Greece and educated in Romania, and at the Sorbonne and Columbia University, New York, she was author of Romanians in the USA: A Study of Assimilation among the Romanians in the USA (New York, 1968), as well as authoritative articles in the journal Sociologie româneascu. In 1938–9 she was to be secretary of the committee for the 14th International Congress of Sociology due to be held in Bucharest. Her husband (date of marriage unknown) was to be a Romanian military officer named Constantin Bratescu (1892–1971).
8.AlfredSheffield, Alfred Dwight ('Shef' or 'Sheff') Dwight Sheffield (1871–1961) – ‘Shef’ or ‘Sheff’ – husband of TSE’s eldest sister, taught English at University School, Cleveland, Ohio, and was an English instructor, later Professor, of Group Work at Wellesley College. His publications include Lectures on the Harvard Classics: Confucianism (1909) and Grammar and Thinking: a study of the working conceptions in syntax (1912).