[35A School St., Andover, Mass.]
I arrived back on the ‘Edinburgh Castle’ on Friday, and seem to have used up all my proper writing paper and envelopes before I left. IHale, Emilyreports on Cocktail Party's opening;t1 hope you received my cable thanking you for your cable and letter to the ship – the latter received on arrival at Cape Town: the letter was the first first-hand report of the first night of the play.1 (TheresaEliot, Theresa Garrett (TSE's sister-in-law)star-struck;f2, who wrote a little later, saidBarrymore, Ethelat New York Cocktail Party premiere;a1 she wanted to speak to Ethel Barrymore: why didn’t she?)2
Nowtravels, trips and plansTSE's January 1950 voyage to South Africa;g9described by TSE;a5 I must try to summarise the expedition. AsFabers, theon 1950 South Africa trip;i1 you know, I went out with the Fabers, who were with me the whole time, saw me off (afterSmuts, Field Marshal Jandoesn't particularly impress TSE;a3 our lunch with Gen. Smuts) and who are now in Johannesburg (I am rather anxious about them, because there are very serious Native riots going on there) preparatory to flying back by way of Victoria Nyanza and Khartoum. The ‘Edinburgh Castle’ is a very comfortable ship, with a most agreeable Captain. On the voyage out, I was not feeling very sociable, and we hoped to get a table to ourselves; but (perhaps owing to not bribing the Head Waiter: libellous, do not repeat) we found ourselves sharing a table with a little Mrs. Potter. At first we took turns sitting next to her, as a kind of social duty, but in the end even Geoffrey succumbed to the innocent charms of this little person who was going out all alone to take up a post in a girls’ school in Cape Town; and when Mrs. Potter (who entered into every competition with zeal) appeared at the Fancy Dress Party as a Sunbird (tissue paper and gilt, and very ingenious) itDoyle, Sir Arthur ConanTSE dresses up as Holmes;a7Holmes, Sherlock
We were taken the next day to the Opening of Parliament. It was opened by the Governor General. Invan Zyl, Gideon Brand;a1 deference to local feeling (and the feeling of the Dutch, hereinafter called Afrikanders (because they detest the Holland Dutch about as much as they do the English) the Governor General is now always a Boer – a comic old peasant named Van der Zyl.4 The Government filed in – looking the most illiberal type of Flemish peasant which is what they are. It was obvious that England had lost the South African war. If only the Boer had won it, we should at least have preserved Cape Colony and Natal; whereas, after the Union, the whole Country is run by the Afrikanders.
SouthSouth AfricaTSE on;a1 Africa is a nightmare. It is the Country of Fear. They fear the millions of Blacks, boiling in unrest. In the country areas, these Natives live miserably, largely because their methods of farming wear out the soil, and because they will raise too many cattle (ten cows, however skinny, are the price for a bride – this custom is called lobola); in the towns (notably the poison spots of Johannesburg (gold) and Kimberley (diamonds) they live in squalor, T.B. and V.D. The younger generation of Afrikanders want to get rid of the English; they won’t have Italian immigrants (who would be desirable in that climate, and the best roads were made by Italian prisoners) because Italians are Roman Catholics and the Afrikander is a bigoted Dutch Reformed Protestant; theyanti-Semitismin South Africa;d2 would be anti-Semite (and the Semites are mostly English Jews. The ‘Coloured’ (i.e. a race of mixed Hottentot, Dutch, Portuguese, English and Malay descent) at the Cape are looked down upon, but look down upon the ‘Natives’ (Bantu and other pure Negro peoples); the Negroes and the Indians dislike each other; and the Malays disdain everybody. The business life of the country is in the hand of the English, and the political life belongs to the Afrikander: which is an unhealthy division.
This is not to say that it was not a pleasant holiday. The scenery is very fine: sometimes reminding me of New Mexico, sometimes of Provence; the summer climate is delightful – a strong Arctic wind on the coast (the bathing in some places very cold) and great dry heat inland. StellenboschMirrlees, Hopein Stellenbosch;d5 (whereClerk, Mabel Honor, Lady (née Dutton);a2 I went to lunch with Hope Mirrlees and her friend Lady Clerk of Penycuik) is a most charming little town – weMarquard, Leopold;a1 lunched there again with a nice South African whoMorley, Frank Vigor was a friend of Frank Morley as a Rhodes Scholar.5 And it is not to say that we did not meet some very agreeable people. – Hopevan der Spuy, Maj.-Gen. Kenneth;a1 had some friends, a General van der Spuy6 and his wife, living in a most beautiful house in the country near Stellenbosch, who were charming. I liked the Millins (but she is Jewish, and intelligent) and I liked Millin’s colleaguede Villiers, Drummond Louis;a1 Mr Justice de Villiers and his wife, who were on the boat coming back.7 MrsReitz, Leila (née Wright);a1. Deneys Reitz8 is charming, but then she is a product of Newnham College. As for Field Marshal Smuts, with whom we lunched on the day of my departure, I am still not quite sure that he is a great man: I may be influenced by the fact that I read a book about him on the voyage back, from which I discovered that some of the things he said to me were given almost verbatim in some previous conversation – I fear that he may be merely a talking machine.9
The Afrikans language is a barbarous deterioration of the original Dutch – so inferior to Dutch that there are only political reasons (that is to say envy and jealousy and vanity) why they should stick to it instead of adopting English. TheyShakespeare, William;a9 have no literature, butMilton, John;a8 are taught to believe that their poets are at least as good as Shakespeare and Milton. They have no music. TheyStern, Irma;a1 have no art – except that there is an interesting painter named Irma Stern – who is of course Jewish – she really is rather good.10 They have no theatre, except for the Experimental Theatre of the University (again, of course, presided over by a very agreeable English or Anglised [sc. Anglicised] Jew) which puts on four plays a year – ThorntonWilder, Thornton;a1 WilderAnouilh, Jean;a1, Anouilh etc. all European or American importations. They have nothing to talk about, for intellectual conversation, except the Native Problem.
It is indeed the Dark Continent.11
Owing to being on my own, the voyage back was more social than the voyage out. I had to sit at the Captain’s Table: with Lady Morley (I have no idea who she is, but a very sporting old lady of 72 who bathed every day before breakfast – and owing to my encouragement she appeared in the Fancy Dress as a Geisha Girl – and won a prize; Commander and Mrs. Stanley R.N. returning after four years service at the Navy Yard at Simonstown12 – andGillingham, Frank;a1 a Canon Gillingham, who seems to be a distinguished cricketer, but who had gone out for a holiday because he suffered from lapses of memory.13 ThereSutherland-Leveson-Gower, George, 5th Duke of Sutherland;a1 were also the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland – one of the Dukes whom it is not good form to know – whoMiller, Gilbertknows the wrong sort of duke;a5 are (or say they are) great friends of Gilbert Miller – and if you have ever seen Gilbert Miller that should warn you.14 ThereHarvey, Diana Blanchegives TSE painting;a1 was also the rattle-brained Diana Lady Balfour of Inchrye,15 who painted seascapes in her cabin looking out of the porthole: she invited me in to look at her work, with the result that I am to be given a painting of sunset at the equator (framed).
ICocktail Party, The1950 New York transfer;d7alarmingly successful;a9 am rather alarmed by the success of the Cocktail Party. DuringHayward, Johnhounded by Time;n3 myTimehounds JDH and Cheetham;a1 absence, JohnCheetham, Revd Erichounded by Time;h2 and Father Cheetham have been pestered by agents of ‘Time’ wanting to know how many umbrellas I have etc. Apparently there is to be a feature number about of me [sic] of the kind in which one’s private life is exposed naked. Cheetham refused to talk: John has been discreet.16 I shall not be too elated by this success: because my experience with ‘Murder’ tells me that plays always succeed for the wrong reasons. I am anxious to learn your detailed criticism of the last act.
Don’t regard this as a letter, but as a necessary bulletin. At least, it is a much fuller bulletin than anyone else will receive. After Germany, I thought I would write a kind of report which would do for everybody, but I never did – I can only write to one person at a time – so please accept this for what it is worth and remember that none of my remarks about S. Africa are for publication – and await a letter when I have got back into my routine.
1.In Apr. 1950, The Cocktail Party was to win an Antoinette Perry Award – a ‘Tony’.
2.EthelBarrymore, Ethel Barrymore (1879–1959) – legendary American star of stage and screen; hailed as the ‘First Lady of American Theatre’ – was present at the first night of The Cocktail Party in New York.
3.TSE was to inscribe a copy of the first edition of Four Quartets (1944) ‘to Sarah Gertrude Millin, from T. S. Eliot, in memory of Fish Hoek: January 1950’.
4.Gideonvan Zyl, Gideon Brand Brand van Zyl (1873–1956): Governor-General of the Union of S. Africa, 1945–50.
5.LeopoldMarquard, Leopold Marquard (1897–1974): politician, educator, publisher and author. Editorial manager for Oxford University Press in S. Africa, 1946–60. After studying at Oxford, 1920–3, he was founding president of the National Union of South African Students, 1924, and worked for some years as a teacher. In addition, he was co-founder of the South African Institute of Race Relations, of which he was President, 1957–8, 1968. In 1953 he became a founder member of the Liberal Party of South Africa. His works include The Story of South Africa (1966). TSE to Hope Mirrlees, 31 Mar. 1950: ‘If you should come across some people in Stellenbosch named Marquard, I found them agreeable and not uncultivated – they are I think Natives (i.e. whites of Huguenot–Dutch extraction) but he was a RHODES SCHOLAR IN HIS TIME (I did not intend capitals, but this typewriter surprises me that way from time to time) and is the Representative of the Oxford University Press in Cape Town.’ Geoffrey Faber, in his report on a second trip to S. Africa in 1954, noted of the ‘liberal minded Afrikaner’: ‘These intelligent “Dutch” are the salt of South Africa, and give points to all but a very few English men and women. They are apt, perhaps, to be a bit over serious. Alas, that there are not more of them!’
6.Major-Generalvan der Spuy, Maj.-Gen. Kenneth Kenneth van der Spuy, CBE, MC (1892–1991): South African Air Force officer.
7.Drummondde Villiers, Drummond Louis Louis de Villiers (b. 1907) was married to Nicolette Gray.
8.LeilaReitz, Leila (née Wright) Reitz, née Wright (1887–1959), South African politician, social reformer, advocate of women’s rights and suffrage – the first woman elected to Parliament in S. Africa, she served in the House of Assembly, 1933–43 – was married to the lawyer and politician Deneys Reitz (1882–1944), who had served with distinction in the Boer Wars and enjoyed a prominent career culminating in his appointment as South African High Commissioner to the UK, 1943.
9.Mary Trevelyan, ‘The Pope of Russell Square’: ‘On Remembrance Sunday [1956] we drove to Westminster, where we spent a happy time inspecting the statue of Smuts which had just been erected … The Smuts statue was in a bronze of vivid green – “Goodness me,” said Tom, “I hope he weathers! But it is like him – a little man in stature. I once dined next to him and he made a profound remark to me – as though it was new – but I had just read it in his book. Still, Smuts was a great man. I used not to think so, because he was so garrulous and verbose. But perhaps that is a characteristic of all Afrikaners.”’
10.IrmaStern, Irma Stern (1894–1966): celebrated South African artist, of German-Jewish descent.
11.Geoffreytravels, trips and plansTSE's January 1950 voyage to South Africa;g9recounted by Faber;a6n Faber, ‘South African Visit’ (Faber Archive):
We – G.F., E.E.F., and T.S.E. – left Southampton in the Edinburgh Castle on Thursday, January 5, 1950. The voyage was pleasant and uneventful, after some initial rough weather […]. We saw porpoises and flying fish and a lot of sea. We consumed considerable amounts of gin and played a great many games of patience. None of us took any part in the deck sports; but G.F. won a prize in the fancy dress parade as a pirate. It was rather unpleasantly hot and humid for a day or two round about the equator. The only land we saw was Funchal by night, with the harbour full of boats trying to sell us teacloths and boys diving for coins by the light of flares, and next day the peak of Teneriffe sticking up out of cloud […]
We arrived at Cape Town early in the morning of Thursday, January 19. The view of Table Mountain at dawn, while we were some miles distant, was unforgettable. We were met by Mr Justice and Mrs Millin […] by Ray Hardingham (the senior of our representatives in South Africa), and by a number of reporters, who fastened avidly on T.S.E. The latter’s visit to the Cape caused greater interest, even excitement, than any of us had quite expected.
TheMillin, Sarah Gertrude;a4n Millins drove us to Fish Hoek, in False Bay, 20 miles or so from Cape Town; and we stayed there, as their guests, in a small house they were renting for a month’s holiday from the South African journalist-author Eric Rosenthal, until the following Monday, January 23. On the day after our arrival we went into Cape Town to attend the opening of Parliament – an agreeably ceremonial affair, with the Governor in a cocked hat and the Speakers of the two houses wearing robes and wigs. The Speech from the Throne read first in Afrikaans and then in English; outside, the military band played the Dutch (i.e. South African) National Anthem before the proceedings began, and the British ditto when they ended – or the other way round, I don’t remember exactly. I sat in a side gallery with an elderly Cape doctor, an ardent Nationalist, who pointed out to me all the members of the Government with pride, and also, quite politely, the leading members of the Opposition. He had the most beautiful manners – as, they say, most Afrikaners have. He said that his family had been intimate with the Smuts family for some generations but that ‘we feel that he no longer belongs: to us, he is no longer a South African’. He complained that the Nationalists’ views are not fairly represented in the British Press. WeSmuts, Field Marshal Jan;a4n were to find, later, that there is much criticism of Smuts up and down the Union outside the ranks of the Nationalist Party. He is thought to have spent too much time on the world stage and too little on the South African; and to have failed to encourage the emergence of political talent in his own party. All say that J. H. Hofmeyr’s premature death in 1949 was a tragedy for the Union, and that there is no outstanding figure, except Smuts himself, on the opposition benches […]
On Monday, January 23rd, we all three removed from the Millin household to the Robin Gordon Hotel at S. James, a mile or two away from Fish Hoek. This remained our base for the next ten days. During this time I made the round of the leading Cape Town bookshops with Ray Hardingham. We were taken by various friends on long drives into the country […] WeMarquard, Leopold;a2n also spent a day at Stellenbosch with the Marquards. Marquard is the Oxford University Press educational publishing representative in Cape Town – an able, liberally minded, man of Dutch descent, whoMorley, Frank Vigor;l9n was at New College with Frank Morley et hoc genus omne, at the same time as his wife (also Dutch) was studying English Literature at Somerville. Marquard is much more of a figure in Cape Town than this account of him suggests. He is a prominent spokesman for the minority of anglicized Afrikaners who would give the franchise to coloured and even to native persons; and what he says is reported at length in the Cape newspapers.
But the main event in this period […] was the Cocktail Party given by all three visitors (T.S.E. functioning as host with G.F. and E.E.F.) at the Mount Nelson Hotel in Cape Town on Tuesday, January 31. This party covered all the Cape Town booksellers, all the literary folk we could get hold of, and a lot of the University people […] It was much photographed and publicized; and I think it made quite a considerable dent […]
It was during our stay at the Robin Gordon Hotel that news began slowly to come through about the success of T.S.E.’s other Cocktail Party in New York.
12.Simon’s Town, near Cape Town, was the largest British naval base in S. Africa; it was to be handed over to S. Africa in 1957.
13.FrankGillingham, Frank Gillingham (1875–1953), ordained in 1899, played cricket for the Essex XI, 1903–28.
14.GeorgeSutherland-Leveson-Gower, George, 5th Duke of Sutherland Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, 5th Duke of Sutherland (1888–1963): Conservative politician and patron of the film industry. Following service in the regular army, Sutherland succeeded to the dukedom in 1913. He served in two successive Conservative administrations: as Under-Secretary of State for Air, 1922–4; Paymaster-General, 1925–8; Under-Secretary of State for War, 1928–9. In 1936 he became a Privy Councillor, and served as Lord Steward of the Household, 1935–6. He was first Chairman of the British Film Institute, 1933–6. He married Clare Josephine O’Brian (1903–88) in 1944, after the death of his first wife the previous year.
TSE’s sly reference to Sutherland as ‘one of the Dukes whom it is not good form to know’ almost certainly refers to the direct involvement of Sutherland’s forebears in the ‘Highland Clearances’ in the late 18th and 19th centuries: the enforced relocation of tenants.
15.DianaHarvey, Diana Blanche Blanche Harvey (d. 1982), daughter of Sir Robert Harvey, 2nd Bt., married Harold Harington Balfour, 1st Baron Balfour of Inchrye, in 1921: they were divorced in 1946.
16.‘Reflections: Mr. Eliot’, Time, 6 Mar. 1950, 22–6. See further Donal Harris, ‘Understanding Eliot: Mass Media and Literary Modernism in the American Century’, Modern Language Quarterly 76: 4 (Dec. 2015), 499–514.
2.EthelBarrymore, Ethel Barrymore (1879–1959) – legendary American star of stage and screen; hailed as the ‘First Lady of American Theatre’ – was present at the first night of The Cocktail Party in New York.
4.RevdCheetham, Revd Eric Eric Cheetham (1892–1957): vicar of St Stephen’s Church, Gloucester Road, London, 1929–56 – ‘a fine ecclesiastical showman’, as E. W. F. Tomlin dubbed him. TSE’s landlord and friend at presbytery-houses in S. Kensington, 1934–9. See Letters 7, 34–8.
3.LadyClerk, Mabel Honor, Lady (née Dutton) Mabel Honor Clerk, née Dutton (1880–1974), widow of Sir George James Robert Clerk of Penicuik, 9th Baronet (1876–1943).
7.Drummondde Villiers, Drummond Louis Louis de Villiers (b. 1907) was married to Nicolette Gray.
11.GeoffreyFaber, Geoffrey Faber (1889–1961), publisher and poet: see Biographical Register.
13.FrankGillingham, Frank Gillingham (1875–1953), ordained in 1899, played cricket for the Essex XI, 1903–28.
15.DianaHarvey, Diana Blanche Blanche Harvey (d. 1982), daughter of Sir Robert Harvey, 2nd Bt., married Harold Harington Balfour, 1st Baron Balfour of Inchrye, in 1921: they were divorced in 1946.
11.JohnHayward, John Davy Hayward (1905–65), editor and critic: see Biographical Register.
5.LeopoldMarquard, Leopold Marquard (1897–1974): politician, educator, publisher and author. Editorial manager for Oxford University Press in S. Africa, 1946–60. After studying at Oxford, 1920–3, he was founding president of the National Union of South African Students, 1924, and worked for some years as a teacher. In addition, he was co-founder of the South African Institute of Race Relations, of which he was President, 1957–8, 1968. In 1953 he became a founder member of the Liberal Party of South Africa. His works include The Story of South Africa (1966). TSE to Hope Mirrlees, 31 Mar. 1950: ‘If you should come across some people in Stellenbosch named Marquard, I found them agreeable and not uncultivated – they are I think Natives (i.e. whites of Huguenot–Dutch extraction) but he was a RHODES SCHOLAR IN HIS TIME (I did not intend capitals, but this typewriter surprises me that way from time to time) and is the Representative of the Oxford University Press in Cape Town.’ Geoffrey Faber, in his report on a second trip to S. Africa in 1954, noted of the ‘liberal minded Afrikaner’: ‘These intelligent “Dutch” are the salt of South Africa, and give points to all but a very few English men and women. They are apt, perhaps, to be a bit over serious. Alas, that there are not more of them!’
5.GilbertMiller, Gilbert Miller (1884–1969); American theatrical producer. In 1950 he was to win a Tony Award for his production of The Cocktail Party. The Gilbert Miller–Ashley Dukes production of Murder in the Cathedral (with Miller taking a quarter-share in the enterprise, and Dukes three-quarters to secure artistic control), starring Robert Speaight, was to open at the Ritz Theatre, West 48th Street, New York City, on 16 Feb. 1938. It ran for 21 performances.
5.SarahMillin, Sarah Gertrude Gertrude Millin (1889–1968): South African novelist and writer of non-fiction and biography. Works include The Night is Long (autobiography: F&F, 1941); a six-volume diary (F&F, 1944–8); and The Measure of My Days (1955). See Martin Rubin, Sarah Gertrude Millin: A South African Life (Johannesburg and London: Ad. Donker, 1977). In Oct. 1934 F&F had offered a remarkable advance of £2,500, with royalty of 25%, for Millin’s two-volume life of General Smuts (1936). Her husband was Philip Millin (1888–1952), Judge of the South African Supreme Court.
2.HopeMirrlees, Hope Mirrlees (1887–1978), British poet, novelist, translator and biographer, was to become a close friend of TSE: see Biographical Register.
4.FrankMorley, Frank Vigor Vigor Morley (1899–1980), American publisher and author; a founding editor of F&F, 1929–39: see Biographical Register.
8.LeilaReitz, Leila (née Wright) Reitz, née Wright (1887–1959), South African politician, social reformer, advocate of women’s rights and suffrage – the first woman elected to Parliament in S. Africa, she served in the House of Assembly, 1933–43 – was married to the lawyer and politician Deneys Reitz (1882–1944), who had served with distinction in the Boer Wars and enjoyed a prominent career culminating in his appointment as South African High Commissioner to the UK, 1943.
6.FieldSmuts, Field Marshal Jan Marshal Jan Smuts, OM, CH (1870–1950): South African (Afrikaner) lawyer (he read Law at Christ’s College, Cambridge, and was called to the bar at the Middle Temple), soldier, statesman; Prime Minister of the Union of S. Africa, 1919–24, 1939–48. An internationalist, he was a proponent of the League of Nations, United Nations and Commonwealth of Nations.
10.IrmaStern, Irma Stern (1894–1966): celebrated South African artist, of German-Jewish descent.
14.GeorgeSutherland-Leveson-Gower, George, 5th Duke of Sutherland Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, 5th Duke of Sutherland (1888–1963): Conservative politician and patron of the film industry. Following service in the regular army, Sutherland succeeded to the dukedom in 1913. He served in two successive Conservative administrations: as Under-Secretary of State for Air, 1922–4; Paymaster-General, 1925–8; Under-Secretary of State for War, 1928–9. In 1936 he became a Privy Councillor, and served as Lord Steward of the Household, 1935–6. He was first Chairman of the British Film Institute, 1933–6. He married Clare Josephine O’Brian (1903–88) in 1944, after the death of his first wife the previous year.
6.Major-Generalvan der Spuy, Maj.-Gen. Kenneth Kenneth van der Spuy, CBE, MC (1892–1991): South African Air Force officer.
4.Gideonvan Zyl, Gideon Brand Brand van Zyl (1873–1956): Governor-General of the Union of S. Africa, 1945–50.