[No surviving envelope]
This is the briefest of notes to acknowledge and thank you for your letter of April 25 and enclosure (that sounds a pretty extensive and difficult programme – ILowell, Amydismissed;a3 don’tMillay, Edna St. Vincentdisparaged by TSE;a2 much relish the work of Miss Lowell1 or Miss Millay! but – I should have loved to hear the other things – at a time when you had a heavy programme ahead of you). ISheridan, Richard BrinsleyThe School for Scandal;a1 am delighted to hear youHale, Emilyas director ('producer');v9The School for Scandal;c1 are doing The School for Scandal,2 and it ought to do them a lot of good, because it’s good English and needs careful speaking. But you will be very very tired when June comes.
TheLewis, Wyndhamhis portraits of TSE;c2 reason for my lack of time is that I have had to have two three hour sittings with Lewis for his portrait (but I think this one really is a portrait and I quite like it, the other was just a Portrait of an Unknown Gentleman (if that)) so that he could have it finished by tomorrow when his paintings have to be hung. AndUniversity College NottinghamHarvard depute TSE to;a1 tomorrow I go to Nottingham – a complete waste of time for me, but I felt I could not refuse Harvard’s request. (They posted off a gown and hood for me to wear, and they haven’t arrived, so I shall just have to borrow a plain gown at Nottingham!) MartinBrowne, Elliott Martin1949 Edinburgh Cocktail Party;e7receives TSE's revisions;a5 is back, andCocktail Party, TheTSE rewriting;c6 I have sent him my revisions of Acts I, II and IV: I shall try to get the revision of Act III done by the end of next week. Then I shall feel a little freer. And a morning a week with the dentist has taken time out too; but that is nearly over – it was worth while for preserving my few but important remaining teeth.
I hope the DOG belongs to you – but you don’t say who is the nominal mistress. It is a pity that you always have the vacation problem for boarding a dog out.
I shall write at the weekend. This is only to say how glad I was to hear from you at last. The letter arrived just in time to prevent my cabling.
1.Amy Lowell (1874–1925): noted American poet, critic, anthologist; promoter of Imagism. See Carl Rollyson, Amy Lowell Anew (2013).
2.Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal (1777).
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.
7.WyndhamLewis, Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957), painter, novelist, philosopher, critic: see Biographical Register.
AmyLowell, Amy Lowell (1874–1925), a scion of the Boston Brahmin family; noted Imagist poet; lesbian (the love poems addressed to Ada Dwyer Russell are among her finest works); traveller, anthologist (Some Imagist Poets [New York, 1915]). Her works include A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass (1912), What’s O’Clock (1925; winner of a posthumous Pulitzer Prize); The Complete Poems of Amy Lowell (1955). See Carl Rollyson, Amy Lowell Anew: A Biography (2013).
9.EdnaMillay, Edna St. Vincent St Vincent Millay (1892–1950), American poet, playwright and librettist; graduate of Vassar College; bisexual; feminist activist and pacifist; close friend of Edmund Wilson, Floyd Dell and Susan Glaspell – with whom she participated in the work of the Provincetown Players on Macdougal Street, New York (she wrote the anti-war verse play Aria da Capo for the Players) – and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver (1923). Other works include the sonnet sequence Fatal Interview (1931) and Murder of Lidice (1942). See Nancy Milford, Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St Vincent Millay (2001).