[No surviving envelope]
I was going to write anyway over this weekend, so I was all the more glad to have your good letter of February 4 (a very quick delivery for this time of year) yesterday. It is just about a month since I have written: a month in which no events, external or interior, call for special remark. The weather has been mild this year, and I have had no colds or bronchitis; IFaber, Richard ('Dick')TSE speaks at Chatham Club to oblige;b2 spent a night in Oxford (IChrist Church, Oxford'Chatham Club' addressed at;a2 went, to oblige Richard Faber, whom I am fond of, to talk to the ‘Chatham Club’ at Christ Church; and in spite of a cold dismal bedroom in the college I was none the worse for it); there are a ham from my niece and a flitch of bacon from the Lambs in the larder; and while I tire easily, I am I believe very well. There has been the drudgery of answering complimentary letters, some of which I have had to write myself, instead of dictating; andBrowne, Henzie (née Raeburn)marks TSE's OM with party;b3 IBell, George, Bishop of Chichester (earlier Dean of Canterbury);b9 haveNewtons, the;a2Newton, Eric
WhatNotes Towards the Definition of Culture;b1 is more important is that I have at last completed revising my small prose book and it has gone to the printer; soCocktail Party, Theat last begun;b4 that I have been able to devote my mornings this week to thinking about a play, and even writing two or three pages of rough draft of dialogue for the opening scene. I am not sure that the subject is what I want; but the important thing, I feel, is to get started on something and not be dismayed if after some weeks, or even at a later stage, I have to scrap it. In fact, not to take it too seriously but to regard the work as warming up the engine which has been laid up (so far as theatre is concerned) for nine years. I shan’t tell anybody what it is about, for that would fortify my own doubts of it. It is, at present, an exercise: IFamily Reunion, Theits deficiencies;i5 want to give my mind to its being good theatre, something that will move towards a definite climax, and in short avoid all the weaknesses of ‘The Family Reunion’. If I have chosen a suitable theme for myself, the poetry and the depth will come easily. The plot requires very few characters – indeed, only three throughout – but I am at present rather worried, from the point of view of practical utility, by the fact that my first scene requires half a dozen actors (with light dialogue for a party) who are not required on the stage again. I feel that having several characters who make only one appearance, and who can remove their make-up and go home after the first twenty minutes or half an hour, is a drawback: for one thing, they have to be paid, and such small jobs are not very attractive? Am I right? Should I either try to get rid of them or give them another scene at the end?
To get down to work of this kind again, is I think the one thing I ought to do; and it will help me to overcome the feeling of having come to the end, and being put in a coffin with golden nails. It doesn’t matter, I say to myself, whether this is good or not: it will start something. Of course it isn’t only, or even primarily, the ‘honours’ that are the obstacle to be overcome; it’s far more everything that has happened during the last year, and the necessity of a new start after bankruptcy, or losing all one’s goods and chattels in a shipwreck, re-adapting oneself to oneself, ceasing to live on capital but living only on what one can dig out of the earth and pluck from the branches with one’s own fingers. But as for the ‘honours’, you have written sympathetically and understandingly of that, and I thank you for it. And at a time like this, there are always two alternatives possible – a vegetative end, or a new beginning.
IPrinceton Universityand TSE's Institute for Advanced Study position;e3 thought I had acquainted you fully with the Princeton fixture. The Institute of Advanced Studies (or whatever it is called) at Princeton invited me to spend some time simply living there as its guest. Itravels, trips and plansTSE's 1948 trip to America;g5;a3 accepted for two months only, and am to be in Princeton, I trust, during October and November. No doubt I shall be called upon to give readings, and perhaps prepare a lecture or two, while there; as well as having to see many people and meeting many undergraduates; but there is the inestimable advantage of not have [sc. having] to prepare lectures in advance – and it is the time spent in preparation, rather than the time spent in America, that presents difficulties to my visits. I shall hope to come up to Cambridge for several long weekends; and by giving one well-paid lecture somewhere I ought to make enough money to spend a whole week or two about Boston towards the end. So I shall look forward to seeing you first in October. ApparentlyDirac, PaulInstitute for Advanced Study reputedly graced by;a1 oneEinstein, AlbertInstitute for Advanced Study reputedly graced by;a1 lives in aOppenheimer, J. RobertInstitute for Advance Study reputedly graced by;a1 sort of community, with most eminent scholars and scientists – chiefly, it would seem, some of the great atom-bomb physicists like Dirac,5 Einstein6 and Oppenheimer.7 Rather sinister, and no doubt charming and gentle souls.
Your sketch of your daily life was what I wanted. I can well imagine that merely the care of your rooms takes a good deal of your time. I am glad that you have interests that take you to Boston (though you say nothing of the class I thought you were to take, as before) because I imagine that Concord society is not such as you would take to, even if it sought you out. I should expect that poetry-reading would be an activity that could only be slowly built up, after not having been free to do much in that way for so long; and that you would find demand for your services growing gradually as you got known through individuals who heard you. Ipoetryand varieties of audience;c6 am sure that there are many people who can get profit and enjoyment from listening to poetry (if they only knew it) who do not know how to read poetry to themselves, and that such readings could do a great deal of good. One should gradually acquire, I should suppose, a pretty wide repertoire, and learn by experience what kinds of poetry to read to what kinds of audience. Very simple people, I think, can enjoy somewhat difficult poetry properly read, better than the half-educated – which is the majority – who are bothered by notions of what they ought to like and how they ought to like it.8 The person who listens to poetry, or to music, or who looks at pictures, with the idea fixed in their mind that they must say something intelligent about it afterwards – and what they say afterwards matters more to them than the experience itself – makes the most difficult audience to deal with.
I thank you, my dear, for explaining more explicitly your reason for asking me to write only once a month: which I think I understand perfectly, and I think at present it is best. And I shall gradually, I think, write more naturally, from myself as I am, with the pressure behind it of having refrained from writing for so long as that. But I do not promise to keep exactly to that time-table if the pressure becomes too strong! I thank you humbly and gratefully for this letter, which makes up for weeks that have passed without news.
It is Sunday evening, so I shall now go and get the cold supper that Mrs. Thomson will have left (on her half day out). AndPakenham, Frank, 7th Earl of Longford;a1 then IGermanyTSE urges renewed cultural relations with;c1 must answer one or two more letters of congratulation and write a letter to Lord Pakenham9 about the desirability of inviting distinguished German men of letters to visit this country.10
1.RenéMassigli, René Massigli (1888–1988), diplomat: French Ambassador to the United Kingdom, 1944–55.
TSE to Polly Tandy, 12 June 1948: ‘life doesn’t get any simpler, and things happen, and I have been kissed on both cheeks by the French Ambassador, but it’s only a diplomatic kiss not a real smack and anyway I have washed since […] With much affection, and I hope none of you mind being kissed by a bloke who has been kissed by a man named Massigli’ (BL).
2.OnPerkins, Edith (EH's aunt)which TSE does;i1 2 Mar. 1948 TSE addressed the Royal Horticultural Society at the presentation of 465 coloured lantern slides of famous English and Scottish gardens collected by Edith Perkins. See Elizabeth Bennet-Clark, ‘A Generous Gift: Unique Slides for Britain’, Evesham Journal and Four Shires Advertiser, 13 Mar. 1948: ‘Mr Eliot spoke in moving terms of Mrs John Carroll Perkins as one who loved beauty that was visible to the eyes, and yet who had lost all sight beyond power of recovery. It was her great love for England that prompted her to give this collection of her own making to be kept in England and for England. He then formally asked Lord Aberconway to accept the gift.’ See TSE’s letter to Edith Perkins, 3 Mar. 1948: CProse 7, 103–5; Royal Horticultural Folder RHS/P3/4. Graham Pearson, ‘Mrs Edith Carroll Perkins and Chipping Campden Gardens’, Signpost: The Journal of the Chipping Campden Historical Society no. 8, Spring 2018, 12–15.
3.‘A Sermon Preached in Magdalene College Chapel’ – on 7 Mar. 1948 – CProse 7, 111–16.
4.TSE’s Presidential Address to ‘Books Across the Sea’ was delivered on 9 Mar. 1948: CProse 7, 119–23.
5.PaulDirac, Paul Dirac (1902–84): English theoretical physicist; Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, University of Cambridge, 1932–69; one of the discoverers of quantum theory; winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics (with Erwin Schrödinger) ‘for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic energy’. OM, 1973. He was a frequent visitor to the Institute for Advanced Study.
6.AlbertEinstein, Albert Einstein (1879–1955): German-born American theoretical physicist, renowned for the theory of relativity, and for developing the theory of quantum mechanics. He quit Germany in 1933, and was attached to the Institute for Advanced Study from 1935 to 1955.
7.J. RobertOppenheimer, J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–67): American theoretical physicist, known as the ‘father of the atomic bomb’ for his wartime work as head of the Los Alamos Laboratory as part of the Manhattan Project which developed the nuclear weapons that were deployed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1947 he became director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton; chair of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission, 1947–52.
8.‘Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood’ (Dante, 1929).
9.FrankPakenham, Frank, 7th Earl of Longford Pakenham (1905–2001), known as Lord Pakenham, 1945–61; 7th Earl of Longford from 1961; politician and social campaigner. He was a Foreign Office minister at the time of this letter, responsible for the British occupation zone in Germany.
10.TSECurtius, Ernst Robert ('E. R.')TSE intercedes on behalf of;a2n to Lord Pakenham, 8 Feb. 1948: ‘I must take the liberty […] of raising the question of the desirability of inviting suitable distinguished German men of letters and professors to visit this country. I consider the giving of public lectures a mere necessary formality – it has no doubt a greater importance in the case of Englishmen going to Germany – and believe that the important thing is the effect upon the German visitors. Primarily those who have known England in the past, speak English, and have an interest in English culture. A particular instance in my mind is my friend Professor Ernst Robert Curtius of Bonn. I should hope also that such invitations need not be limited to those in the British zone, but could include men of the same kind at least in the American zone also. As the British Council does not appear to have the power to invite German visitors, I make bold to raise the question. I feel sure that a few such invitations, judiciously extended, could do much to enhance British prestige in Germany.’
4.RtBell, George, Bishop of Chichester (earlier Dean of Canterbury) Revd George Bell, DD (1883–1958), Bishop of Chichester, 1929–58: see Biographical Register.
5.PaulDirac, Paul Dirac (1902–84): English theoretical physicist; Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, University of Cambridge, 1932–69; one of the discoverers of quantum theory; winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics (with Erwin Schrödinger) ‘for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic energy’. OM, 1973. He was a frequent visitor to the Institute for Advanced Study.
4.AshleyDukes, Ashley Dukes (1885–1959), theatre manager, playwright, critic, translator, adapter, author; from 1933, owner of the Mercury Theatre, London: see Biographical Register.
6.AlbertEinstein, Albert Einstein (1879–1955): German-born American theoretical physicist, renowned for the theory of relativity, and for developing the theory of quantum mechanics. He quit Germany in 1933, and was attached to the Institute for Advanced Study from 1935 to 1955.
4.ThomasFaber, Thomas Erle ('Tom', TSE's godson) Erle Faber (1927–2004), TSE’s godson and principal dedicatee of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, was to become a physicist, teaching at Cambridge, first at Trinity, then for fifty years at Corpus Christi. He served too as chairman of the Geoffrey Faber holding company.
1.RenéMassigli, René Massigli (1888–1988), diplomat: French Ambassador to the United Kingdom, 1944–55.
7.J. RobertOppenheimer, J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–67): American theoretical physicist, known as the ‘father of the atomic bomb’ for his wartime work as head of the Los Alamos Laboratory as part of the Manhattan Project which developed the nuclear weapons that were deployed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1947 he became director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton; chair of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission, 1947–52.
9.FrankPakenham, Frank, 7th Earl of Longford Pakenham (1905–2001), known as Lord Pakenham, 1945–61; 7th Earl of Longford from 1961; politician and social campaigner. He was a Foreign Office minister at the time of this letter, responsible for the British occupation zone in Germany.