[No surviving envelope]
I might have tried to do the same as you succeeded in doing, and have sent a birthday letter to arrive exactly on your birthday, but35 School Street, Andover, Massachusetts;a4 I preferred my usual method of a cable – to 35 School Street. (All your recent letters have had simply the Abbott Academy address, so I have been writing there as I thought perhaps you considered it more reliable. Welltravels, trips and plansTSE's October–November 1949 trip to Germany;g8final itinerary;b1, it is on your birthday that I fly to Hamburg, and I have no address except c/o Miss B. D. Maclean, Foreign Office (German Section) S.W.1. The Foreign Office send a car at 8 a.m. to take me to the air port. IDukes, Ashleyaccompanies TSE to Germany;h3 am happy to say that Ashley Dukes (who has been supervisor of drama, you know, for the British Zone) is flying with me, and will travel everywhere with me as far as I go in the British Zone: for the last five days I am handed over to the Americans, who are to deliver me at Frankfurt by the morning of the 19th November, to take a plane for London. On the 1st November I am in Berlin for three nights; then on to Hannover, Munster, Goettingen, Bonn, Cologne, thence to Heidelberg and Munich (American). In most places, I have to deliver three lectures, and in some give a poetry reading also; and also meet religious groups in Hannover and Cologne. I will send you a copy of my official programme later.1
YouCocktail Party, The1950 New York transfer;d7fixed;a4 will know by now that The Cocktail Party is to open in New York (afterCocktail Party, The1949 Theatre Royal, Brighton run;d6;a2 a week in Brighton in December) in January. I shall not come with it – in all probability. Didtravels, trips and plansTSE's January 1950 voyage to South Africa;g9;a2 IFabers, theon 1950 South Africa trip;i1 tell you that I was intending to go to South Africa with the Fabers? This is pure holiday: ordered by my doctor for some time past – two weeks at sea, two weeks at the Cape, and two weeks return voyage. It is not quite certain, because, although we have reserved passages, we are still having difficulty in finding hotel accommodation at the Cape: we don’t want to be in Cape Town itself at the height of the summer, but at one of the seaside places nearby. I shan’t know until I get back from Germany whether we have been successful.
Anyway, a visit to New York is anything but a holiday; and while I should expect somehow to get the funds to spend a week in Boston (if I came) it would be very hurried; and I do very much need a rest, and I would rather come for a longer time when I come in October, than have a hurried visit in January.
ICocktail Party, The1950 New York transfer;d7revisions made in mind of;a5 have made still more alterations in The Cocktail Party – some of which will meet your wishes, I think. I have very much altered the intrusion of Julia into the consulting room, and I have toned down the martyrdom. Some people here have found that too merciless; and especially for New York I think the revision is better. After all, only pretty highly developed Christians can take it as it was; andAmericaNew York (N.Y.C.);g1as cultural influence;a5 I do not want to be thought to be indulging in the kind of sadistic brutality which is alarmingly common in fiction and in films (it emanates, I fear, from New York, anyway).
IMurder in the Cathedral1949 Berlin production;g7politically resonant;a1 learn that MurderBeran, Josefand the 1949 Berlin Murder;a1 in the Cathedral is being performed in Berlin – to the rage of the Russians – andMindszenty, Cardinal Józsefand the 1949 Berlin Murder;a1 that it has become a kind of political issue – Becket being identified with Cardinal Mindzenty [sc. Mindszenty]2 and Archbishop Beran:3 the literary and dramatic aspect is rather obscured. FamilientagFamily Reunion, Theperformed in Göttingen;j4 (The Family Reunion) is to be performed in Goettingen, I think.
I am very sorry to hear that your holiday at Grand Manan ended with an illness – a weakening one – and am rather apprehensive about your starting term in such a state of health. AndHale, Emilybirthdays, presents and love-tokens;w2EH loses sapphire from ring;f4 can I find you a new star sapphire to replace the lost one – and would it replace it for you if I did? Yet I should like to try.
Alsodogs'Rag Doll' (Scottish Terrier);c8EH gives up;a5, I am sorry that you are depriving yourself of Ragdoll. I fear that your circumstances are very straitened, if you cannot keep a small dog; and that mounting costs of living are pinching you and all women in your position. I should like to come over just to make you eat a beefsteak. The devaluation of the pound4 will not affect me in America, since I have to earn there in any case the money to live upon while I am there. Otherwise, it has worried me a good deal.
IPerkins, Dr John Carroll (EH's uncle);i2 shall try to write to Uncle John – a brief note – before I go. Otherwise, I shall be writing no letters for three weeks to anyone: these three weeks have been a nightmare for me for a long time, and I shall only be able to write after they are over. YouNason, Margaret ('Meg') Geraldineand sister to lunch;b9 must remind me to tell you about Meg and her sister.
ThatEliot, Esmé Valerie (née Fletcher, TSE's second wife)but exclupated by TSE;a4 was not my secretary’s fault but mine: and I thought that a newspaper cutting looked more ‘alive’ if fragments of its surroundings appeared. I have now a new secretary who is very willing and efficient.
1.Enclosed: ‘Itinerary of T. S. Eliot in the British Zone, Berlin and U.S. Zone 27 October – 19 November’.
2.Cardinal JózsefMindszenty, Cardinal József Mindszenty (1892–1975), Archbishop of Esztergom, was head of the Catholic Church in Hungary, 1945–73. A staunch anti-fascist and anti-communist, he was sentenced to life imprisonment after a show trial in 1949. After eight years in prison, he was to be released following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and passed the next fifteen years in political asylum in the US Embassy in Budapest. From 1971 he lived in exile in Vienna.
3.JosefBeran, Josef Beran (1888–1969), Catholic priest who was imprisoned throughout the war in Dachau concentration camp, being released in 1945, was elevated by Pope Pius XII to be Archbishop of Prague from 1946. In June 1949 the Communist regime of Klement Gottwald convicted him as a schismatic and placed him under a house arrest that lasted until 1951.
4.Throughout WW2 the pound sterling was kept stable against the US dollar at a fixed exchange rate of $4.03. Afterwards, the pressure on the UK’s reserves of dollars became so acute that the British government decided to reduce the exchange rate on 18 Sept. 1949 from $4.03 to $2.80 to the pound.
4.AshleyDukes, Ashley Dukes (1885–1959), theatre manager, playwright, critic, translator, adapter, author; from 1933, owner of the Mercury Theatre, London: see Biographical Register.
7.EsméEliot, Esmé Valerie (née Fletcher, TSE's second wife) Valerie Fletcher (1926–2012) started work as TSE’s secretary on 12 Sept. 1949, and became his second wife on 10 Jan. 1957; after his death in Jan. 1965, his literary executor and editor: see 'Valerie Eliot' in Biographical Register.
2.Cardinal JózsefMindszenty, Cardinal József Mindszenty (1892–1975), Archbishop of Esztergom, was head of the Catholic Church in Hungary, 1945–73. A staunch anti-fascist and anti-communist, he was sentenced to life imprisonment after a show trial in 1949. After eight years in prison, he was to be released following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and passed the next fifteen years in political asylum in the US Embassy in Budapest. From 1971 he lived in exile in Vienna.
1.MargaretNason, Margaret ('Meg') Geraldine (Meg) Geraldine Nason (1900–86), proprietor of the Bindery tea rooms, Broadway, Worcestershire, whom TSE and EH befriended on visits to Chipping Campden.
3.DrPerkins, Dr John Carroll (EH's uncle) John Carroll Perkins (1862–1950), Minister of King’s Chapel, Boston: see Biographical Register.