[No surviving envelope]
Iappearance (TSE's)hernia;b9recovery from;a3 returned to town on Thursday afternoon, and reported to my doctor, who expressed satisfaction with my progress, though the second side is slower than the first. I have now to make an appointment to see the surgeon; and have all the odd jobs that accumulate after seven weeks inaction: barber, dentist, tailor, shoe-repairer etc. I have been to church for the first time (11 o’clock only, as 8 o’clock involves twentyfive minutes walk) and experienced the adventure of travelling on a bus for the first time. In spite of the exercise of standing and kneeling at most of the appointed places, I feel no worse for it; and shall now try a half day at my office. I still feel lassitude and inertia, and aversion to any mental concentration beyond reading; and naturally I realise after being out that my muscles are relaxed. I shall continue to take things easily for another week. ItUniversity of Aix-en-Provenceeventually confers degree on TSE;a1 would be easier to get down to work if I were not faced with the obligation to prepare some sort of lecture for the university of Marseilles. This, as I have explained, is unavoidable, as it is a task imposed in connection with the honorary degree at Aix, and one can hardly refuse an honorary degree, if it is possible to take it.1
On the other hand, though I dread this formal visit, one now welcomes any opportunity to get abroad. The recent prohibition by the Treasury of all private expenditure abroad means that no one can get out of Britain unless he is officially sent or officially invited. This prohibition, so quietly introduced, may well mark an epoch. For all the educated classes, from those who have social connexions or intellectual interests, or a love of art, down to those who only want to go abroad for ‘a change’ or for winter sports or summer bathing, this will impose a growing sense of claustrophobia and aggravate the feeling of being in a concentration camp. The mass of the population, of course, will not feel it at all; and some may get a momentary satisfaction from the thought that other people’s lives are interfered with. For them, the concentration camp feeling will be brought about by the lack of fuel, the diminishment of food, and the general lack of goods to buy which is to be expected this winter.
OnePrinceton Universityand TSE's Institute for Advanced Study position;e3 of my first tasks now must be to write to Princeton and ask them to renew their invitation to spend a couple of months there next year.2 Every visit to America must now be carefully planned, under the right auspices. That to Princeton is the most attractive, as it will not involve previous preparation: INef, John Ulric;a1 haveUniversity of Chicagoinvites TSE to lecture;a1 an invitation to Chicago which I hope may be repeated in the following year, but that is to give a series of lectures3 – which means three or four months of work beforehand.
I was distressed, but not surprised, by your last letter: both by your reporting that no place for you to live in this winter has yet presented itself, andPerkins, Edith (EH's aunt)sight failing;g8 by your report of Aunt Edith’s failing eyesight. IHale, Emilyfamily;w4EH's relations with aunt and uncle;a6 think you are quite right, so far, in refusing that to allow you to resign your own plans for a separate way of life: since it is certain you would be bound to the one task of care for the rest of your aunt and uncle’s lives. And that is so alien to your temperament that it should not be contemplated if there is any alternative: and there obviously must be an alternative. (IHale, Irene (née Baumgras)indifferent to hardships of relations;d2 have just had a long and rambling letter from your Aunt Irene,4 but although she recalls at length her memories of times spent with the Perkins’s and you in England, she shows no awareness of them and you, and their and your problems, at the present time. It is curious how immune she seems to be from any need of relatives, though only by marriage – though I imagine that she has no near relatives living of her own – except when they can be of use to her. But one must not judge this simple sort of egoism too harshly, as one’s own may be merely more subtle). TheHinkley, Eleanor Holmes (TSE's first cousin)turned carer;d5 case of Eleanor Hinkley is altogether different: forHinkley, Susan Heywood (TSE's aunt, née Stearns)dependent on Eleanor;d3 although I always thought her earlier dependence on her mother unwholesome, she is now experiencing simply the inevitable reversal of roles. One now dreads for Eleanor the moment when her release comes, for one cannot imagine what sort of life she can make for herself alone.
I shall write again towards the end of the week.
1.TSE was expected to give a speech on receiving the degree of docteur ès lettres honoris causa at the University of Aix-en-Provence, Apr. 1948. SeeFluchère, Henri;a4n too ‘Edgar Poe et la France’: lecture given (in English) at Aix, and then in French (in a translation by Henri Fluchère) in Marseille, CProse 7, 130–64.
2.OnAydelotte, Frank;a1 26 Nov. 1946, Frank Aydelotte – Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies, Princeton University, 1940–7 – had invited TSE to ‘come to the Institute for Advanced Study for a period of two or three months with no duties except to go on quietly with your own work and to engage in such discussion with Members of our group here as may seem interesting and profitable to you.’
3.JohnNef, John Ulric Ulric Nef (1899–1988), Professor of Economic History, invited TSE to visit Chicago to offer a series of seven or eight lectures, under the auspices of the Committee on Social Thought (a high-level interdisciplinary department which he co-founded in 1941).
4.Letter not traced.
3.IreneHale, Irene (née Baumgras) Hale, née Baumgras, widow of Philip Hale, celebrated as the prolific and influential music critic of the Boston Herald. Irene Hale, who was herself an accomplished pianist, had studied at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, where she gained the Springer Gold Medal 1881, and continued with her studies in Europe under Raif and Moritz Mosckowski: she later wrote music under the name Victor Rene.
5.EleanorHinkley, Eleanor Holmes (TSE's first cousin) Holmes Hinkley (1891–1971), playwright; TSE’s first cousin; daughter of Susan Heywood Stearns – TSE’s maternal aunt – and Holmes Hinkley: see Biographical Register.
3.JohnNef, John Ulric Ulric Nef (1899–1988), Professor of Economic History, invited TSE to visit Chicago to offer a series of seven or eight lectures, under the auspices of the Committee on Social Thought (a high-level interdisciplinary department which he co-founded in 1941).