[No surviving envelope]
I have time for a few lines this morning, and to thank you for your letter of January 22, withHale, Emilyphotographs of;w7carrying lamp;f2 the snapshot of you carrying a large lamp (which I remember) to or from the school and your house – I regret that it was taken from such a long distance – the lamp is much more recognisable than yourself. To-dayPusey House, OxfordTSE engaged to speak at;a1 opened with a heavy fog, which is now apparently burning away, of which I am glad, as I have to take the 4.45 train to Oxford in order to speak at Pusey House (the forgotten engagement imprudently entered into over a year ago!)1 sleep there, attendChristianityliturgy;b9Mass of Charles King and Martyr;b8 a Mass of Charles King and Martyr, lunchSumner, Humphrey;a1 with the Warden of All Souls’2 and return to town on Sunday afternoon. After this I intend not to go away again for a weekend until March, as Saturday is a precious day for work, and on Sunday I can write letters.
TheCocktail Party, TheTSE rewriting;c6 Cocktail Party (MartinCocktail Party, Thealternative titles;c7 prefers my first title ‘One-Eyed Riley’: I had thought of ‘The Intruders’, butMaeterlinck, Maurice;a1 he says it is too suggestive of Maeterlinck,3 and I think myself it sounds rather Scandinavian and heavy) has got to suchBrowne, Elliott Martin1949 Edinburgh Cocktail Party;e7approves first act;a4 a stage, in its second draft, that Martin is satisfied with Act I – I have had my Mrs. Bland for two days typing out a fair copy for him to show to some theatrical promotor [sic] who is interested. I am now struggling with the revision of Act II, which is more difficult. My opinion is that anybody can write a good first act – the first part of ‘The Family Reunion’ is quite good. And I don’t think that Acts III and IV (eventually to be telescoped into three acts) are going to present insoluble problems: Act II is I think the toughest to deal with. Some of the characters have to come in for one reason at one moment, who for another reason would come in more effectively at another moment. In other words, if Julia came in before Celia, it would give the light touch which is needed there: but unless Celia comes in first, how is she to have the short conversation with Edward which is necessary for the plot? Well, Celia first this time, and see how it looks; and then perhaps re-write it the other way round. This is the sort of dilemma that real dramatists never seem to get in to.
I think that the public engagements must abate – that is, the ones that can’t be avoided: though the business of refusing takes up time too. TheAlliance Françaisehonours TSE with dinner;a6 dinner in my honour by the Alliance Française was achieved almost by a trick, certainly by force: MonsieurChailley, Claude;a1 Chailley4 (on the telephone) said that my secretary had committed me to it – she says certainly not, but as she was away with a cold on the day he rang up I had to take his word for it.5 Anyway, he assumed that she had; so he said the invitations had gone out, and the Ambassador had agreed to make the speech in my honour, and in effect that there would be the devil to pay for M. Chailley if I didn’t come. So of course I went. It was preceded by a long meeting of the Executive Council, at which I had to take the chair, in the absence of the President who was conveniently in South Africa: and a committee of Frenchmen all talking at once – and then M. Chailley’s grievance because he was called Secretaire Administratif instead of Secretaire Générale like his predecessor: and then a radio interview in French for the French Service, and finally the dinner – but there I insisted on speaking in English. TheAnglo-Swedish SocietyStrindberg Centenary formalities at;a4 other engagement, next week, is truly obligatory: it is merely to take the Chair at a Luncheon of the Anglo-Swedish Society in honour of the Strindberg Centenary.6 At this moment, that could hardly be refused. AsStrindberg, Augustas influence on TSE;a1 I have remarked, the Swedes believe that I have been deeply influenced by Strindberg. So I have just skimmed through a new biography, and re-read several of the plays, which I don’t think I had looked at since I was nineteen or twenty, and which I have never seen – and I think if I read much Strindberg I should go mad.
The play must be finished by the end of June. ThenEliot, Marion Cushing (TSE's sister)1949 visit to England with Dodo;g1June arrival anticipated;a1 it looks as if Marion and Theodora really would get here; sotravels, trips and plansTSE's October–November 1949 trip to Germany;g8;a1 my visit to Germany will have to be in October (assumed that the play is performed in September), and I shall have to write a couple of addresses for it in July and August.
ISpencer, Eloise (née Worcester);a1 hadSpencer, Theodoredies of heart attack;d2 a cable from Mrs. Ted. Spencer the day after, butRichards, Ivor Armstrong ('I. A.');c5 have not yet heard from Ivor.7 It was a great shock: I was very fond of Spencer; even his weaknesses were loveable. And he looked so well, and happier than I had ever seen him. The morning after I dined with them, he trotted round a couple of packets of a kind of cigarette he thought less harmful to the throat, some lozenges, and a bottle of penicillin – because he thought I was coughing too much. That was characteristic. He was over-social, and at the same time over-worked. It is a great loss.
Janet’sRoberts, Janetfollowing Michael's death;b3 address is still: College of St. Mark & St. John, King’s Road, S.W.10. She has gone away for a short time: I shall see her again when she gets back and discuss her prospects. She will have to earn her living, and I don’t know whether she will be able to keep all the children with her; but she is able, has connections in the publishing and journalistic world, and there are people ready to try to find work for her.
Wasn’tThorp, Margaret (née Farrand)accompanied TSE and EH to Tristan;a1 it Margaret Harris8 who was in your box at Tristan and Isolde, Or [sic] was it Margaret Farrand?
The next play seems to follow very hard on the heels of the first; and I hope they are not overworking you. And I don’t like to think of your having to shovel snow: but I suppose it now costs about ten dollars to get a man to do it, if you can get anyone at all! I think that Miss Corcoran (no that isn’t the name) or the School ought to do it for you. You haven’t told me anything about the Christmas holiday.
1.TSE spoke at Pusey House on the subject ‘Lambeth on Education’.
2.HumphreySumner, Humphrey Sumner (1893–1951): historian; Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, 1925–44; Professor of History, University of Edinburgh, 1944–5; Warden of All Souls College, Oxford, 1945–51.
3.TSE on John Marston (1934): ‘It is possible that what distinguishes a poetic drama from prosaic drama is a kind of doubleness in the action, as if it took place on two planes at once. In this it is different from allegory, in which the abstraction is something conceived, not something differently felt, and from symbolism (as in the plays of Maeterlinck) in which the tangible world is deliberately diminished – both symbolism and allegory being operations of the conscious planning mind’ (Elizabethan Essays, 173).
‘Strindbergs inflytande på T. S. Eliot betydande’ (1949): ‘The plays […] of Maeterlinck, then very much the fashion, provided a definite, though very transitory, stimulus’ (CProse 7, 320). To Joseph Chiari, 27 June 1950: ‘I sympathise with you over the tedium you have experienced in rereading Maeterlinck. His plays made a distinct impression on me when I was eighteen or nineteen, but I doubt if I could read them with any pleasure now.’
4.ClaudeChailley, Claude Chailley, secrétaire général of the c onseil of the Fédération britannique des comités de l’Alliance Française.
5.See ‘Speech at dinner of the Alliance française’, CProse 7, 313–17. TSE delivered his speech on 19 Jan. at the Maison française d’Oxford, 72 Woodstock Road, Oxford. The dinner was to salute TSE for his Nobel Prize. (He had earlier agreed, in Feb. 1946, to serve as a member of the London Committee of the Fédération britannique des comités de l’Alliance française. Subsequently, having been appointed chair of a cultural subcommittee in May 1948, he was elected Vice-President of the Fédération in June 1948.)
6.TSE attended the luncheon in company with the actors Michael Redgrave (who had acted as Harry, Lord Monchensey, in the première of The Family Reunion, 1939) and his wife, Rachel Kempson, together with the novelist, biographer and translator Elizabeth Sprigge. (Photo from the Illustrated London News available online: www.mediastorehouse.co.uk.)
7.Theodore Spencer had suffered a fatal heart attack on 18 Jan.
8.Not identified.
4.E. MartinBrowne, Elliott Martin Browne (1900–80), English director and producer, was to direct the first production of Murder in the Cathedral: see Biographical Register.
4.ClaudeChailley, Claude Chailley, secrétaire général of the c onseil of the Fédération britannique des comités de l’Alliance Française.
1.Marian/MarionEliot, Marion Cushing (TSE's sister) Cushing Eliot (1877–1964), fourth child of Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Eliot: see Biographical Register.
4.I. A. RichardsRichards, Ivor Armstrong ('I. A.') (1893–1979), theorist of literature, education and communication studies: see Biographical Register.
5.EloiseSpencer, Eloise (née Worcester) Spencer, née Worcester, had married Professor Theodore Spencer in the summer of 1948; sadly, her husband died of a heart attack on 18 Jan. 1949.
2.TheodoreSpencer, Theodore Spencer (1902–48), writer, poet and critic, taught at Harvard, 1927–49: see Biographical Register.
2.HumphreySumner, Humphrey Sumner (1893–1951): historian; Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, 1925–44; Professor of History, University of Edinburgh, 1944–5; Warden of All Souls College, Oxford, 1945–51.
16.MargaretThorp, Margaret (née Farrand) Farrand (1891–1970), author and journalist – see Margaret Thorp in Biographical Register.