[No surviving envelope]
I was glad to get your letter of July 15. I thought I had written since the middle of June at least once! but life has been very crowded and the weeks have hurried by. And the last week of June I spent mostly in bed with bronchitis – the third attack that month: but since then the weather has been really hot – a drought in fact, and I bathe conscientiously in two inches of water – and I think I am pretty well. IEliot, Marion Cushing (TSE's sister)1949 visit to England with Dodo;g1visit to Cambridge;a7 tookSmith, Theodora ('Dodo') Eliot (TSE's niece)1949 visit to England;d1taken to Cambridge;a5 Marion and Theodora to Cambridge for three days, which I think they enjoyed, in good weather; andEnglandSouthwold, Suffolk;i9TSE visits with family;a1 onEnglandSuffolk;j3TSE visits with family;a1 Monday (to-day is Saturday) we go to Southwold, Suffolk, for ten days. TomorrowCocktail Party, The1949 Edinburgh Festival production;d1'reading' for;a5 (Sunday) IBrowne, Elliott Martin1949 Edinburgh Cocktail Party;e7arranges reading;a8 spend the afternoon in a first ‘reading’ of the play with Martin Browne and such players as he has got together – onNesbitt, Cathleen (née Kathleen Mary Nesbitt)in Cocktail Party reading;a1 lastLivesey, Rogerin Cocktail Party reading;a2 hearing IJeans, Ursulain Cocktail Party reading;a1 was assured only of Kathleen [sc. Cathleen] Nesbitt,1 but a likelihood of Roger Livesey and Ursula Jeans2 – andGuinness, Alecat Cocktail Party reading;a6 Alec Guinness still not wholly impossible. To-day (except for an afternoon walk in Battersea Park) has been spent in revising one short passage, of which I have produced five new versions. It’s interesting, that the parts which give me the most trouble are simply the joints (the ins and outs) and the places where the characters have to make the most every-day remarks. The more intense or poetical parts I can manage for myself; but when it comes to the commonplace remark in the words in which most of us would say it, I find I need help. Then there will be the cruel business of cuts: the play is going to be too long, but I’m afraid it can’t be cut without mutilation, or without leaving out some of the bits that will amuse the audience most. Of course I can print it at full length. But I don’t see any one big cut that would not cause me a pang for the production.
IBland, Mary;a1 found that Mrs. Bland3 (who is leaving, by the way, and I am in the agony of selecting a new secretary, but Mrs. B. was not really satisfactory) did not send you the typescript when I thought she had, but you should have received it by now. I want to say at once that I hope and believe that some of the things that you will criticise have <already> been put right. For instance, Act I has now been reorganised already so that it can be run as one scene, without the two ‘curtains’ or ‘dim-outs’ which figure in your copy. The dialogue in Act II has been considerably shortened. The final Curtain is now a little different, because Martin pointed out to me that ‘what a relief’ might find too responsive an echo in the breasts of the less appreciative members of the audience.
WithMurder in the CathedralHoellering film;g1non-actor found for Becket;a9 all this, I have also have to have [sic] some business in connection with the choice of an actor for Becket in the film: our choice has fallen on one person – who will have to be released from other work for six weeks if he is to play it, and the person who ultimately has the right to decide whether he can be released or not seems to be Queen Mary!4 So that is doubtful: but, as Hoellering said very rightly I think, the face of the Archbishop in this film should not be recognisable as that of any well known film actor. Alsotravels, trips and plansTSE's October–November 1949 trip to Germany;g8;a3, I am having to correspond with a certain Lord Henderson, of the Foreign Office, about my tour of Germany, which I am trying to postpone until the latter part of November, as the German universities do not start their term until the end of that month.
OfHillyer, Robertattacks EP's 1949 Bollingen Prize;a4 course I know all about the Saturday Review, Mr. Hillyer, and the mendacious abuse poured upon my head – I should hardly apply the term ‘sharp lancet’ to a form of vilification to which I am accustomed from Moscow.5
IHale, Emilysummers between Boston, Woods Hole, New Bedford and Grand Manan;s5 am so glad you have had a happy and healthful fortnight at Woods’ Holl [sic], in congenial society, and got browned. I wonder whether I should ever venture to bathe again, in these cold waters, certainly not in the North Sea. And, as you can’t get to Seattle, I am glad you will have Grand Manan again.
I shall write again after August 4th, when we return, and shall be busy with rehearsals from then to the 20th when we go to Edinburgh. ItFurness, Lauraapproaching death;b1 was goodPerkins, Edith (EH's aunt);j1 of Aunt Edith to write to me about Cousin Laura: IEliot, Theresa Garrett (TSE's sister-in-law);e8 had a more reassuring letter from Theresa, but I fear that Cousin Laura will not be there when I come again next year. No, the Nobel Prize money is not taxable, and is intact except for the tithe which I have of course devoted to charity. I hope your teeth are comfortable; it was about a year before I felt really at ease with mine; and I don’t expect ever to be able to eat stewed figs or stewed raspberries, or celery, again. And it isn’t easy to smoke a pipe, but that won’t bother you.
1.CathleenNesbitt, Cathleen (née Kathleen Mary Nesbitt) Nesbitt, née Kathleen Mary Nesbitt (1888–1982), English actor of stage, screen and TV (she was encouraged to take up acting by Sarah Bernhardt, a friend of her father’s). Educated at Queen’s University, Belfast, and at the Sorbonne, she first acted in a revival of Arthur Wing Pinero’s The Cabinet Minister (1910). In 1912 she became the fiancée of the poet Rupert Brooke (who was to die in the war). She starred as the mischievously perceptive Julia Shuttlethwaite in The Cocktail Party. Later best known for her roles in film, she starred as Mrs Higgins in My Fair Lady (with Rex Harrison, 1956); as Cary Grant’s grandmother in An Affair to Remember (1957); as Lady Matheson in Separate Tables (1958), and in Alfred Hitchcock’s final film Family Plot (1976). Appointed CBE for her services to drama, 1978.
2.RogerLivesey, Roger Livesey (1906–76), Welsh stage and screen actor, was marriedJeans, Ursula to the English stage and film actor Ursula Jeans (1906–73) – Lavinia Chamberlayne in The Cocktail Party.
3.MaryBland, Mary Bland worked for a while as TSE’s secretary: she was the wife of David Bland (1911–70), printer and publisher, who ran the Production Department at F&F from 1937.
4.GeorgeHoellering, George M.discovers Father Groser of Stepney;b8n Hoellering to TSE, 20 Apr. 1949: ‘AsGroser, Fr St. John B. you know I have searched for a long time to cast the part of the Archbishop for “Murder in the Cathedral”. I have seen many actors and found no one who genuinely look [sic] like an Archbishop. I then looked amongst non-actors, and at last I think I have found the right man. He is Father Groser of Stepney. I have spoken to him and he is already taking a great interest in the film. He has studied the script, and this morning I screened your recording for him for two hours.
‘In principle he is interested in playing the part subject to three things:
———1. That you approve of him;
———2. That I make tests of two or three scenes with him and that these tests show that he will really satisfy you and me;
———3. That he gets permission from the Church Authorities to do this work.
‘As the next step I would ask you to lunch on Monday, April 25th at the Etoile at 1 o’clock to meet Father Groser. I telephoned your secretary this morning; she was not in, but her colleague told me that you would be free on that day.
‘I very much hope that you can come and shall be glad if you will get your secretary to telephone me this afternoon as I have to confirm the appointment with Father Groser.’
Father St John B. Groser (1890–1966) was Rural Dean of Stepney and Warden of the Royal Foundation of Saint Katharine, Butcher Row, Ratcliffe, London E.14. 61 years of age, he was ‘discovered’ by Hoellering at St James’s Church, Piccadilly, where he happened to be preaching. The movie was to be filmed in the bombed church of St Stephen, St John’s Wood. See obituary of Groser in Church Times, 25 Mar. 1966.
5.TheBollingen Prize for Poetrydecision to confer on EP;a1n Fellows of the Library of Congress in American Letters – Léonie Adams (US Poet Laureate and Chair), Conrad Aiken, W. H. Auden, Louise Bogan, Katherine Garrison Chapin, T. S. Eliot, Robert Lowell, Archibald MacLeish, Katherine Anne Porter, Karl Shapiro, Theodore Spencer, Allen Tate, Willard Thorp, Robert Penn Warren, William Carlos Williams – formally announced on 20 Feb. that they had agreed to award the 1949 Bollingen Prize for Poetry to Ezra Pound for The Pisan Cantos.
Robert Hillyer (1895–1961), Professor of English at Kenyon College, launched a highly personalised two-part attack on the decision: ‘Treason’s Strange Fruit: The Case of Ezra Pound and the Bollingen Award’, Saturday Review of Literature 32 (11 June 1949), 9–11, 29; ‘Poetry’s New Priesthood’, Saturday Review of Literature 32 (18 June 1949), 7–9, 38.
(See too ‘Pound, in Mental Clinic, Wins Prize for Poetry Penned in Treason Cell’, New York Times, Sunday, 20 Feb. 1949, 1.)
TSEHillyer, Robertto which TSE responds;a6n to Léonie Adams, 5 July 1949: ‘It seems to me that individual and un-coordinated public statements by Fellows are hardly what is called for at present. There was some of that in The Partisan Review; I myself declined the editors’ invitation to express my opinion […] In any case, with regard to Mr. Hillyer and the Saturday Review, I think that I am the last person who ought to throw himself into the fray at this moment, inasmuch as I am almost the principal object of attack […] There is another point, which is rather for other Fellows to make than for me to make on my own behalf: the idea of proposing Pound for the prize did not originate from me; there was no question of my trying to influence other Fellows, nor did I do so. In fact, as the one non-resident and non-citizen fellow, I do not consider that it is my place to take such initiative or to exert such pressure.
‘These are minor points; the personal integrity of any of the Fellows is a minor point. Mere denial of charges will not accomplish much; for the sort of charges that Mr. Hillyer makes will be believed by the sort of people who want to believe them, whatever denial is made. I should like to know, first of all, what is the ultimate object of attack in the Saturday Review campaign. It seems to me that Mr. Hillyer, and the editors of the Saturday Review, are unconsciously lending themselves to political aims of a kind with which they may have no sympathy. This is a very much larger question, much more important than the individual reputations of the Fellows.
‘AllPound, EzraThe Pisan Cantos;e1n Ianti-Semitismand EP;d1n have to say in justification of my casting my own vote in favour of “The Pisan Cantos”, is that I was convinced that this was the best volume for consideration, and to the best of my knowledge and belief the best published by an American poet during the period in question. I am convinced also that this was the conviction of the other Fellows; I have no reason to believe that any one of the Fellows has the least sympathy with Fascism; I am sure that not one of us does not deplore Pound’s way of referring to Jews. There are, I have become aware, people who wish to believe that I am myself an anti-semite; and I am afraid that it is hopeless to try to convince such people that I am not. I have – sometimes wanted to point out that I myself am a Christian and an Englishman, and that some of Pound’s remarks about Christianity and about England have been very offensive to me. But this is not the occasion for pointing out in public how antithetical to Pound’s philosophy my own is.’
TSE to Olga Rudge, 27 Oct. 1953: ‘You may remember that Mr. Robert Hillyer in his infamous articles which appeared in The Saturday Review of Literature, after the award of the Bollingen Prize, more than suggested that it was I, together with a few satellites and accomplices, who had manoeuvred the whole thing, and as a good deal of mud was smeared on me at the time, it was in Ezra’s interest much more than my own, that a statement was made to the effect that while I had supported this award, the whole movement to give the Prize to Ezra had been fully started before I was consulted’ (Beinecke).
See further The Case against the ‘Saturday Review of Literature’ (Chicago: Modern Poetry Association, 1949); ‘Statement of the Committee of the Fellows of the Library of Congress in American Letters’, in CProse 7, 849–67.
3.MaryBland, Mary Bland worked for a while as TSE’s secretary: she was the wife of David Bland (1911–70), printer and publisher, who ran the Production Department at F&F from 1937.
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.
1.Marian/MarionEliot, Marion Cushing (TSE's sister) Cushing Eliot (1877–1964), fourth child of Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Eliot: see Biographical Register.
6.RebekahFurness, Rebekah ('Rebe') (‘Rebe’) Furness (1854–1937) andFurness, Laura Laura Furness (1857–1949) – born in Philadelphia, daughters of James Thwing Furness and Elizabeth Margaret Eliot (a descendant of Sheriff William Greenleaf, who had declaimed the Declaration of Independence from the balcony of the State House in Boston in 1776) – had lived since 1920, with their brother Dawes Eliot Furness, in Boston’s Back Bay neighbourhood and in Petersham, New Hampshire. Rebekah, a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, was an artist.
4.GeorgeHoellering, George M.discovers Father Groser of Stepney;b8n Hoellering to TSE, 20 Apr. 1949: ‘AsGroser, Fr St. John B. you know I have searched for a long time to cast the part of the Archbishop for “Murder in the Cathedral”. I have seen many actors and found no one who genuinely look [sic] like an Archbishop. I then looked amongst non-actors, and at last I think I have found the right man. He is Father Groser of Stepney. I have spoken to him and he is already taking a great interest in the film. He has studied the script, and this morning I screened your recording for him for two hours.
5.AlecGuinness, Alec Guinness (1914–2000), distinguished English actor: see Biographical Register.
12.RobertHillyer, Robert Hillyer (1895–1961), poet, taught from 1926 at Harvard, where he became Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, 1937–44. Collected Verse (1933) won a Pulitzer Prize. He became notorious when he published in the Saturday Review of Literature in 1949 a condemnation of the award of the Bollingen Prize to the ‘fascist’ Ezra Pound for Pisan Cantos.
3.GeorgeHoellering, George M. M. Hoellering (1898–1980), Austrian-born filmmaker and cinema manager: see Biographical Register.
2.RogerLivesey, Roger Livesey (1906–76), Welsh stage and screen actor, was marriedJeans, Ursula to the English stage and film actor Ursula Jeans (1906–73) – Lavinia Chamberlayne in The Cocktail Party.
2.RogerLivesey, Roger Livesey (1906–76), Welsh stage and screen actor, was marriedJeans, Ursula to the English stage and film actor Ursula Jeans (1906–73) – Lavinia Chamberlayne in The Cocktail Party.
1.CathleenNesbitt, Cathleen (née Kathleen Mary Nesbitt) Nesbitt, née Kathleen Mary Nesbitt (1888–1982), English actor of stage, screen and TV (she was encouraged to take up acting by Sarah Bernhardt, a friend of her father’s). Educated at Queen’s University, Belfast, and at the Sorbonne, she first acted in a revival of Arthur Wing Pinero’s The Cabinet Minister (1910). In 1912 she became the fiancée of the poet Rupert Brooke (who was to die in the war). She starred as the mischievously perceptive Julia Shuttlethwaite in The Cocktail Party. Later best known for her roles in film, she starred as Mrs Higgins in My Fair Lady (with Rex Harrison, 1956); as Cary Grant’s grandmother in An Affair to Remember (1957); as Lady Matheson in Separate Tables (1958), and in Alfred Hitchcock’s final film Family Plot (1976). Appointed CBE for her services to drama, 1978.
3.Ezra PoundPound, Ezra (1885–1972), American poet and critic: see Biographical Register.
2.TheodoraSmith, Theodora ('Dodo') Eliot (TSE's niece) Eliot Smith (1904–92) – ‘Dodo’ – daughter of George Lawrence and Charlotte E. Smith: see Biographical Register. Theodora’sSmith, Charlotte ('Chardy') Stearns (TSE's niece) sister was Charlotte Stearns Smith (b. 1911), known as ‘Chardy’.