I have not yet adverted directly to your words about my poetry – or about my work in general – and what my friends would like to hope of it for the future. I am quite sensible of this, and agree with the implied criticism. Atwritingdevelopment and development in the writer;a4 the same time I believe that progress and improvement of the work, in all but the increase of just technical skill – must be to a great extent a by-product of progress and development of the writer. I mean that sincerity requires that when one writes one must write faithfully to what one is at the moment, and not in loyalty to what one inspires to be. In the writing, one must consent to one’s fundamental imperfections; one can only write the precise stage of the journey reached; and artistic sincerity, though intimately related to and inseparable from, moral sincerity, is not identical with it. And an exact embodiment of an inferior stage of development is worth more artistically, and in the end worth more morally where the effect aimed at is the effect of art, than a not wholly deeply realised in feeling expression of a higher stage. Is that at all intelligible, I wonder. SurelyBlake, Williamquoted by way of nostrum;a1 one can only write as one is, but at the same time strive day by day, in ‘minute particulars’ as Blake says somewhere,2 upwards. The moment one is solidly established on a higher step of the stair,3 the difference will inevitably be manifest on the work.
ToChristianityasceticism, discipline, rigour;a9and TSE's daily exhortation;a2 have daily a little more control – not in the sense of suppression, but in the control of the lower by the higher within one self, so that one’s ordinary stream of consciousness is directed and purified; to desire and love more the higher, and to do so more fully and passionately; to reduce pettiness, idleness, purposelessness.
It was a delight to get your letter of January 3d yesterday; after an empty week I have this week two letters; so I must not complain if next week I must fast again. Ten or eleven days seems the normal time. As for moods, I fear that I am often as clumsy in responding immediately to yours; but to some (a diminishing) extent, we must put up with this as inevitable in the circumstances of communication. Please, I apologise for sending that hideous photograph twice. I remembered perfectly well sending before, in 1927; but I thought that on that occasion I had reflected that this pose was too haggard, and that I had at the last moment slipped in a different one instead. The one in France looks a little gross; but I was not at all well then either. I hope that as you have so much work to do at present you are being better paid for at least some of it. AndHale, Emilyhealth, physical and mental;w6admits to breakdown;a1 if you had to have a little breakdown I am glad that you were at Penelope’s: for she, I imagine, would take the best of care of an invalid.
ICharles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetryofficial notice finally received;b2 have at last received this morning the official notice from Harvard: evidently one did go astray; andMurdock, Kenneth B.;a2 a very pleasant letter from Murdock.
Tuesday was my busiest day this week; marked also by a violent headache and hernia pain caused perhaps by helping to move a piano about on Monday. LunchedBell, Cliveusual lunch marred by Lady Colefax;a5 with Clive Bell: notColefax, Lady Sibyl (née Halsey)TSE's dislike for;a1 so pleasant as usual, because Lady Colefax was there – but I am sure Clive does not know how I dislike her.4 PartlyWhibley, Charlesdisliked Lady Colefax;a5 because when she sees me she always gushes about ‘dear Charles Whibley’ and he disliked her I know. She is a chattering lionhunter, married to a grave retiring barrister who is so vague and unobtrusive at her parties that he couldn’t possibly be the butler; but what I really dislike about her is a love of gossip verging on scandal (‘I could tell you a most amusing story about what happened, but I am really fond of dear Harold and so I won’t’ or ‘I heard a story about the … which was so shocking that I did not even dare to tell it to my husband’). VirginiaWoolf, Virginiaapparently drained by Lady Colefax;b2 seemed rather dispirited and tired by it too.
The[n] in the evening our party, which went off very well, and was really well organised by Vivienne.5 PoetryMonro, Alida (née Klementaski)reads at the Eliots' party;a2 reading by Alida Monro – pianoCulpin, Mary ('Mollie') Johannaplays piano at the Eliots' party;a1 by Mollie Culpin – HungarianCulpin, Rexiplays Hungarian songs;a1 songs by her Hungarian sister in law6 – readingGeorge, Robert Esmonde Gordon ('Robert Sencourt')recites chapter from new book;a7 by Robt. Sencourt etc. IWagner, RichardTristan und Isolde;a3retains private resonance for TSE;a4 had to read an unpublished fragment of my own; itThorp, Margaret (née Farrand)TSE's Tristan references lost on;a4 was odd to think that there was one person present who had been at a certain performance of Tristan and was quite ignorant of its significance7 – I think the Thorps enjoyed themselves; they staid to the end and we are to go to tea next week at Lincolns Inn. And now I must stop. OnlyScripps College, Claremontstill a possibility;a6, you won’t allow me to think, I hope, that you [will] be taking a teaching post in some remote place in order to make things easier for me. You must not, of course, be influenced by any but the considerations which would hold if there [were] no prospect of my coming. And please allow me to hope, as long as I can, that I may see you once.
1.Misdated ‘1931’ by TSE.
2.William Blake, ‘Jerusalem the Emanation of the Giant Albion’:
Labour well the Minute Particulars: attend to the Little Ones;
And those who are in misery cannot remain so long,—————5
If we do but our duty: labour well the teeming Earth. …
He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars.
General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer;
For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars …
3.Cf. ‘La Figlia che Piange’, 1–3:
Stand on the highest pavement of the stair –
Lean on a garden urn –
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair –
4.SibylColefax, Lady Sibyl (née Halsey), Lady Colefax (1874–1950), socialite and professional decorator; was married in 1901 to Sir Arthur Colefax, lawyer. John Hayward called her (New York Sun, 25 Aug. 1934) ‘perhaps the best, certainly the cleverest, hostess in London at the present time. As an impresario she is unequaled, but there is far too much circulation and hubbub at her parties to entitle her to be called a salonière.’ See Kirsty McLeod, A Passion for Friendship (1991); Siân Evans, Queen Bees: Six Brilliant and Extraordinary Hostesses Between the Wars (2016).
5.Cf. OM's journal: BL Add. MS 88886/4/29:
IMorrell, Lady Ottolineon the Eliots' old-fashioned party;b6n […] found Vivienne waiting outside in the street with Alida – she having forsaken her guests – found the small room stiflingly hot – & several rows of people to whom I was introduced all very mousey & motheaten except one exotic lady – a Hungarian – Mrs Culpin. They all sat in rows of chairs like a Prayer Meeting.
Alida got up at the desk & recited some poems beginning with Coleridge … & going on to Keats & C. Bronte … For my taste they were too dramatically recited. It interposed between me & the poems. […]
Neither Tom nor V. seemed to talk to their guests. […] Mr Sencourt read a chapter of his book Empress Eugenie. [The Life of Princess Eugénie (NY, 1931).] - & Tom read his new poem about Politicians.
It was really very pathetic – or very comic – Pathetic I think. I wonder what the others thought of it. - , being asked for an elevating evening. – It was very queer to think that the […] Modern Poet T.S.E. gave a party which one would have imagined was of the 1870 date – No talk – only – Readings, Pianoforte Playing & Recitations –
Luckily – No drinking! –
6.For the Culpin family, see next letter.
7.TSE presumably recited the unpublished poem ‘Opera’ (quoted in full above: note to letter of 21 July 1931): see Poems I, 236. TSE had taken EH to a performance of Tristan und Isolde by the Boston Opera in its 1913–14 season..
12.CliveBell, Clive Bell (1881–1964), author and critic of art: see Biographical Register.
4.SibylColefax, Lady Sibyl (née Halsey), Lady Colefax (1874–1950), socialite and professional decorator; was married in 1901 to Sir Arthur Colefax, lawyer. John Hayward called her (New York Sun, 25 Aug. 1934) ‘perhaps the best, certainly the cleverest, hostess in London at the present time. As an impresario she is unequaled, but there is far too much circulation and hubbub at her parties to entitle her to be called a salonière.’ See Kirsty McLeod, A Passion for Friendship (1991); Siân Evans, Queen Bees: Six Brilliant and Extraordinary Hostesses Between the Wars (2016).
3.RexiCulpin, Rexi Culpin, wife of Jack Culpin (surviving son of TSE’s old friend Jan Culpin).
3.RobertGeorge, Robert Esmonde Gordon ('Robert Sencourt') Esmonde Gordon George – Robert Sencourt (1890–1969) – critic, historian, biographer: see Biographical Register.
3.AlidaMonro, Alida (née Klementaski) Klementaski (1892–1969) married Harold Monro on 27 Mar. 1920: see Alida Monro in Biographical Register.
4.LadyMorrell, Lady Ottoline Ottoline Morrell (1873–1938), hostess and patron: see Biographical Register.
1.KennethMurdock, Kenneth B. B. Murdock (1895–1975), Associate Professor of English, Harvard University, 1930–2; Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, 1931–6; Master of Leverett House, 1931–41. Works include Increase Mather (1924), Literature and Theology in Colonial New England (1949); The Notebooks of Henry James (with F. O. Matthiessen, 1947).
16.MargaretThorp, Margaret (née Farrand) Farrand (1891–1970), author and journalist – see Margaret Thorp in Biographical Register.
7.CharlesWhibley, Charles Whibley (1859–1930), journalist and author: see Biographical Register.
1.VirginiaWoolf, Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), novelist, essayist and critic: see Biographical Register.