[41 Brimmer St., Boston]

T. S.Eliot
EmilyHale
TS
Faber & Faber Ltd
19 January 19321
Dear Dove

ICharles Eliot Norton Lectures (afterwards The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism)weekend spent meditating;a1 have not very much to-day in the way of wits. I'Modern Dilemma, The';a2 spent the week end chiefly in a state of torpor, trying to think about my broadcast talks and about my Harvard lectures, but without much outcome. They have suggested that as well as the six public lectures I should take a half year course in Contemporary English Literature. I shall have to think this over pretty carefully and offer them an alternative: one difficulty is that as editor & publisher, as well as friendly relations with a variety of authors, I might find it very difficult to be quite frank in all of my opinions; andJoyce, JamesUlysses;e6modern literature undiscussable without;a1 unless one is allowed to talk freely about ‘Ulysses’ such a course would be, from my point of view, futile. Perhaps Criticism is a better subject, unless Richards has given them a bellyful of that. SundayCulpin, Johanna ('Aunt Johanna', née Staengel)described;a1 Mrs. Culpin came to lunch and won two games of chess from me. She is an old German lady, whoseCulpin, Karl Henryremembered;a1 elderMerton College, Oxfordand Karl Culpin;a1 son was with me at Merton; he was killed later in the war.2 Her husband was a Yorkshireman, a brilliant self made railway employee; Carl was very brilliant too and got a first in history. She lives in England again now, because her two children live here, being English, theCulpin, John ('Jack') Reibeldescribed;a1 second son JackCulpin, Rexi;a2, whose wife is Hungarian, and Mollie who is unmarried. (All this is mere description for further reference, if I shall at some time care to discuss their personalities). To-dayEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood);b2 an unusual thing occurred: Vivienne and I went out to lunch at a German restaurant in Charlotte Street with Mrs. Culpin and Mollie. Unusual, because I can hardly remember how long ago V. last lunched or dined in public; she has steadily refused for years. SheEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)mental state;e8and dining in public;a6 said she did not enjoy it, but that is a small matter; what matters is that she did it and got through without panic or any abnormality. SheEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)her driving;b3 got rather confused in arriving back and thought that Cavendish Square was Russell Square, but that is characteristic of her driving. I suppose she is fairly well, considering; but I never know, and must largely trust other people’s judgment. She shows her abnormal side much more to me than to others (except her mother); and it is only when she behaves oddly to friends, and finally in public, that I am really alarmed. All this took rather a large bite out of my day, but I suppose it was a good thing to do.

How do you feel, I wonder, when you get up in the morning? I always feel more tired then than at any other time; I believe I could always sleep till eleven; I always could sleep after lunch; and it is only in the evening, when I must go to bed, that my brain is really active. If it were the other way about I could get much more done.

Towritingdevelopment and development in the writer;a4 add one thought to what I said about writing poetry and self-improvement: is it not true that most of the time one is not, and cannot be except perhaps at a much higher stage of development, quite self-conscious? IChristianityspiritual progress and direction;d6versus automatism;a3 mean that from day to day one merely goes through a routine, and does almost mechanically what one believes in doing: even my prayers, my state of awareness at the church offices, vary greatly, and often are nearly mechanical. Only now and then come more lucid moments of consciousness, when one can guage [sc. gauge] the extent of progress or perhaps deterioration. It is better to take this state of affairs hopefully, I think, and believe in general that for days or weeks or months when one seems to one['s] self hardly more than an automaton, some development may be going on – as indeed it may – of which one may be vouchsafed one moment of surprised awareness, before plunging under the surface again.3 And I do not believe in over self-searching, either; as the soul develops so it can stand more consciousness; but a conscientious person can easily worry his soul to illness.

A poor sort of letter I knew this would be. But on Friday I may have a letter from you to brighten me. TomorrowMaclagan, Eric;a2 I lunch with Maclagan to ask him for tips as to how to behave as Boston professor.

à toi de tout mon coeur
Tom

1.Misdated ‘1931’ by TSE.

2.Johanna (‘Jan’) Culpin was mother of Karl Culpin, whom became TSE’s closest friend at Oxford in 1914. Brand Blanshard, another friend, was to recall: ‘Culpin was in his final year for a BA in history. He came from a tragically mixed parentage, his father being English, his mother, with whom he lived in England, being German. His own sympathies were British through and through. He wore spectacles for a weakness of sight that kept him for a time out of active service, though he was accepted later, and, like so many other of the best young Oxonians, was killed in France.’ (T. S. Eliot: Essays from the ‘Southern Review’, ed. James Olney [1988], 31).

3.Cf. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse : ‘When life sank down for a moment, the range of experience seemed limitless. And to everybody there was always this sense of unlimited resources, she supposed; one after another, she, Lily, Augustus Carmichael, must feel, our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by. Her horizon seemed to her limitless. There were all the places she had not seen; the Indian plains; she felt herself pushing aside the thick leather curtain of a church in Rome. This core of darkness could go anywhere, for no one saw it. They could not stop it, she thought, exulting. There was freedom, there was peace, there was, most welcome of all, a summoning together, a resting on a platform of stability. Not as oneself did one find rest ever, in her experience (she accomplished here something dexterous with her needles) but as a wedge of darkness. Losing personality, one lost the fret, the hurry, the stir; and there rose to her lips always some exclamation of triumph over life when things came together in this peace, this rest, this eternity.’

Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (afterwards The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism), weekend spent meditating, a task for Lent, contemplated, stimulated by Mirsky, preoccupying TSE, hard-going, outlined, TSE yet to begin, unsatisfactory, 'The Relation of Criticism and Poetry' (afterwards 'Introduction'), TSE preparing, and the Charles Norton references, hard-going, a week's toil over, TSE on giving the lecture, EH promised copy, 'Poetry and Criticism in the Time of Elizabeth' (afterwards 'Apology for the Countess of Pembroke'), so far promising, finished, TSE on giving the lecture, 'The Classical Tradition: Dryden on Johnson' (afterwards 'The Age of Dryden'), TSE on the lecture itself, 'The Theories of Coleridge and Wordsworth' (afterwards 'Wordsworth and Coleridge'), TSE immersed in, TSE wonders at audience for, finished, TSE's jokes lost on audience, 'The practice of Shelley and Keats' (afterwards 'Shelley and Keats'), TSE on giving the lecture, 'Arnold and the Academic Mind' (afterwards 'Matthew Arnold'), unprepared with less than two weeks, completed the morning of lecture, 'The Modern Mind', as yet unfinished, TSE on giving the lecture, 'Conclusion', TSE on giving the lecture, TSE's immediate reflections on, being revised for publication, improved by Sheff's criticisms, in proof, copy inscribed to EH, Maritain on, seem intemperate on further reflection,
see also Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry
Christianity, and human isolation, and modern economics, Ada on TSE's personal piety, scheme for 'Pro Fide' bookshop, among the Eliot family, and beauty, its sects like different clubs, Anglo-Catholicism, TSE's conversion to, which he dates to Eccleston Square meeting, Anglican Missal sought for EH, but unfortunately out of print, discussed at Boston Theological School, and the Petrine Claims, apostolic succession, over Roman Catholicism, as refuge from VHE, and the Reformation, asceticism, discipline, rigour, the necessity for, and TSE's daily exhortation, making and breaking habits, mastering emotions and passions, as salubrious, only remedy for a prurient culture, confession and communion, more possible during Harvard year, the case for unattainable ideals, in time of war, gets TSE up before 7 o'clock, hereditary with TSE, belief, and good poetry, faced with Second World War, and conversion, antidote to TSE's skepticism, Christendom, TSE ponders the decline of, TSE on his prominence within, its ruin, the Church Visible and Invisible, and TSE's war work, the Malabar Church, prospect of total reunion within, confession, helps to objectify sin, more dreaded than dentist, harder in the morning, death and afterlife, the struggle to prepare for, consoles TSE in life, and cremation, Requiem Mass, gives meaning to life, and what makes a desirable burial place, the nature of eternal life, divorce, unrecognised by Anglo-Catholic Church, which TSE regrets, in church law, would separate TSE from Church, evil, TSE's belief in, and moral percipience, guilt, and the New England conscience, hell, TSE's 1910 vision of, and damnation, according to TSE, liturgy, TSE's weekly minimum, Mass of the Pre-sanctified, Requiem Mass versus Mass of Good Friday, and whether to serve at Mass, Imposition of Ashes, at Christmas, High Mass over Mattins, aversion to Low Church Mattins, Roman service in Wayland, Tenebrae, in country parish church, as guest at Kelham, remarkable sermon, over Christmas, Tenebrae and Family Reunion, during Holy Week, Mass of Charles King and Martyr, love, loving one's neighbour, marriage, TSE's need for privacy within, mysticism and transcendence, interpenetration of souls, intimations of life's 'pattern', 'doubleness', arrived at through reconciliation, orthodoxy, only remedy for contemporary culture, and pagans, sets TSE at odds with modernity, necessarily trinitarian, 'Christian' defined, iniquities of liberal theology, and creed, authority, Transubstantiation, TSE disclaims 'self-centredness' in maintaining, politics, the Church and social change, how denomination maps onto, need for working-class priests, church leaders against totalitarianism and Nazism, Christianity versus Fascism and Communism, Papal Encyclical against Nazi Germany, the 'Dividend morality', Presbyterianism, TSE quips on the meanness of, Quakerism, resignation, reconciliation, peace, TSE's love allows for, 'peace that passeth all understanding', the struggle to maintain, following separation from VHE, retreat and solitude, EH at Senexet, the need for, a need increasing with age, and TSE's mother, Roman Catholicism, TSE's counter-factual denomination, Rome, sacraments, Holy Communion, marriage, sainthood, TSE's idea of, the paradoxes of, susceptible of different sins, sins, vices, faults, how to invigilate, the sense of sin, the sinner's condition, bound up with the virtues, as a way to virtue, TSE's self-appraisal, when humility shades into, when unselfishness shades into, among saints, proportionate to spiritual progress, daydreaming, despair, lust, pride, perfection-seeking pride, spiritual progress and direction, TSE's crisis of 1910–11, EH's crisis, versus automatism, TSE's sense of, towards self-knowledge, in EH's case, as personal regeneration, temptation, to action/busyness, the Church Year, Advent, Christmas, dreaded, happily over, TSE rebuked for bah-humbugging, church trumps family during, season of irreligion, thoughts of EH during, unsettling, fatiguing, in wartime, Easter preferred to, Ash Wednesday, Lent, season for meditation and reading, prompts thoughts of EH, Lady Day, Holy Week, its intensity, arduous, preserved from public engagements, exhausting but refreshing, excitingly austere, Easter, better observed than Christmas, missed through illness, Unitarianism, the Eliots' as against EH's, the prospect of spiritual revival within, as personified by TSE's grandfather, regards the Bible as literature, as against Catholicism, divides EH from TSE, and whether Jesus believed himself divine, according to Dr Perkins, in England as against America, over-dependent on preachers' personality, TSE's wish that EH convert from, outside TSE's definition of 'Christian', the issue of communion, baptism, impossibly various, virtues heavenly and capital, bound up with the vices, better reached by way of sin, charity, towards others, in Bubu, TSE's intentness on, delusions of, as against tolerance, chastity, celibacy, beneath humility, TSE lacks vocation for, faith, and doubt, hope, a duty, TSE's struggle for, humility, distinguished from humiliation, comes as relief, greatest of the virtues, propinquitous to humour, not an Eliot virtue, opposed to timidity, danger of pride in, is endless, TSE criticised for overdoing, theatre a lesson in, most difficult of the virtues, possessed by EH, possessed by EH to a fault, TSE compares himself to EH in, the paradox of, distinguished from inferiority, self-discovery teaches, possessed by Dr Perkins, patience, recommended to EH, its foundations, possessed by Uncle John, purity, distinguished from purification, temperance, with alcohol, beneath humility,
Culpin, Johanna ('Aunt Johanna', née Staengel), described, TSE's South Kensington neighbour, weekly chess opponent, 'tiring', reports Nazi horrors, her German refugees, whom TSE helps, quarrels with VHE, leaving for Germany, departure toasted with champagne, returned from Germany, taken to Murder, and TSE watch Show Boat, returns again to Germany, taken to the movies, and company taken to Escargot,
Culpin, John ('Jack') Reibel, described,
Culpin, Karl Henry, remembered,
Culpin, Rexi, plays Hungarian songs, introduces fellow-Hungarian to the Eliots,

3.RexiCulpin, Rexi Culpin, wife of Jack Culpin (surviving son of TSE’s old friend Jan Culpin).

Eliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood), takes a liking to EH, EH urged not to blame, relations with Charles Buckle, unbearable to holiday with, takes to Margaret Thorp, accompanies TSE to Poetry Bookshop, and 57 Chester Terrace, on TSE's religion, TSE declines invitations excluding, her driving, hosts various writers to tea, considers flat in Gordon Square, arranges large tea-party, as theatregoer, declares desire to make confession, taken to Eastbourne, recalls the Eliots' visit to Rodmell, Alida Monro reports on, in Alida Monro's opinion, falls out with Lucy Thayer, meets TSE for last time at solicitors, seeks TSE's whereabouts, haunts TSE in London, such that he forgoes the theatre, news of, inquires after Man Ray portrait, harries F&F office, on Mosley Albert Hall rally, dies, her funeral, Requiem Mass for, Theresa remembers, marriage to, TSE on entering into, alleged affair with Bertrand Russell, sexual relations, its morbidity, TSE on his own incapacity, its torments providential on reflection, in OM's opinion, its lessons, humiliating, TSE's father's reaction, unrecognised by TSE, to outsiders, TSE reflects on, painful yet stimulating, as an act of self-rupture, drug habits, sleeping draughts, in TSE's absence, 1926 bromidia delusions, mental state, childlike, benefits from active social life, compared to EH's mother's, at the Malmaison sanatorium, and dining in public, TSE's influence on, post-separation, the prospect of institutionalising, prompts institutionalisation crisis-meeting, and TSE's departure for America, against TSE going, adjusting to the prospect, might coordinate with a return to Malmaison, in denial as to, threatens to come, from which TSE tries to dissuade her, aggrieved at being left, possible arrangements in TSE's absence, still in denial as to, TSE dreads scene of departure, possibly beneficial to VHE, TSE describes the moment of departure, separation from, TSE, for and against, out of the question, obstructed by self-deception and responsibility, reasons for not having happened, Dr Miller's opinion on, contemplated, plotted, would necessitate TSE's sequestration, TSE encouraged in his determination, Alida Monro independently suggests, communication with solicitors on, TSE describes going through with, VHE's response before and after meeting at solicitors, impasse over financial settlement, which VHE misrepresents to friends, VHE in denial over, separation deed drawn up, which is yet unsigned, delayed by death of lawyer, general impasse, financial settlement put into force, complicated by VHE renewing lease on flat, efforts to retrieve TSE's property, which is eventually recovered, financial consequences, the possibility of divorcing, TSE's objections to, against what TSE symbolises, likened to Newman's conversion, in common and canon law, in Ada's opinion, how TSE's attitude might seem, would involve permanent division from Church, inimical to future TSE's happiness, her death, and Theresa on TSE remarrying, TSE's shifting response to, formerly wished for, EH reflects on,
see also Eliots, the T. S.
Joyce, James, appears suddenly in London, admired and esteemed by TSE, takes flat in Kensington, lunches with TSE at fish shop, gets on with Osbert Sitwell, GCF on, consumes TSE's morning, dines in company chez Eliot, obstinately unbusinesslike, bank-draft ordered for, indebted to Harriet Weaver, writes to TSE about daughter, his place in history, evening with Lewis, Vanderpyl and, TSE appreciates loneliness of, TSE's excuse for visiting Paris, insists on lavish Parisian dinner, on the phone to the F&F receptionist, TSE's hairdresser asks after, defended by TSE at UCD, for which TSE is attacked, qua poet, his Miltonic ear, requires two F&F directors' attention, anecdotalised by Jane Heap, part of TSE's Paris itinerary, in Paris, strolls with TSE, and David Jones, and EP's gift of shoes, his death lamented, insufficiently commemorated, esteemed by Hugh Walpole, TSE's prose selection of, Indian audience addressed on, TSE opens exhibition dedicated to, TSE on the Joyce corpus, TSE on his letters to, Anna Livia Plurabelle, Joyce's recording of, Dubliners, taught in English 26, Ulysses, modern literature undiscussable without, Harold Monro's funeral calls to mind, its true perversity, likened to Gulliver's Travels, F&F negotiating for, 'Work in Progress' (afterwards Finnegans Wake), negotiations over, conveyed to London by Jolas, 'very troublesome', new MS delivered by Madame Léon,
see also Joyces, the

1.JamesJoyce, James Joyce (1882–1941), Irish novelist, playwright, poet; author of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922), Finnegans Wake (1939).

Maclagan, Eric, contrasts Chicago and Boston society, preferred to his Charles Eliot Norton successor, at The Literary Society,
see also Maclagans, the

3.EricMaclagan, Eric Maclagan (1879–1951), Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1924–45, had been Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer at Harvard, 1927–8. Distinguished as scholar and lecturer, and an expert on early Christian and Italian Renaissance art, his works include Catalogue of Italian Sculpture (with Margaret Longhurst, 1932) and The Bayeux Tapestry (1943), translations from poets including Rimbaud and Valéry, and editions of the works of William Blake. His offices included Vice-President of the Society of Antiquaries, 1932–6; President of the Museums Association, 1935–6. A devout Anglo-Catholic, he served too on the Cathedrals Advisory Council and the Central Council for the Care of Churches, and as a member of the Church Assembly. Knighted in 1933, he was appointed KCVO in 1945. In 1913 he married Helen Elizabeth Lascelles.

Merton College, Oxford, and Karl Culpin, Edmund Blunden visited at, TSE recognised by college porter, TSE on his time at, makes TSE Honarary Fellow, Gaudy at,
'Modern Dilemma, The', and educational broadcasting generally, being composed, receives unlikely praise, TSE against turning into book, approved by EH, earns TSE 60 guineas,
writing, and routine, to EH, like talking to the deaf, development and development in the writer, and 're-creative thought', TSE's pace of working, correspondence, and Beethoven, and whether to keep a notebook, dialogue, and loving one's characters, and the necessity for reinvention, to someone as against speaking, plays written chiefly for EH, prose between poems, poetry versus prose, and originality, poetry three hours every morning, plot, and obscurity, blurbs, letters of rejection, requires periods of fruitful latency, on new typewriter, TSE's 'old Corona', the effect of war on, and reading, as taught by the book, prize-day addresses, weekly articles, concisely, from imagination, from experience, for broadcast, out of doors, rewriting old work, and public-speaking, by hand,