[No surviving envelope]
Committee on Social Thought.
I have been trying to write to you for days, and to thank you for your letter. My'Poetry and Drama';a3 last weekend, all the time I had to myself had to be employed in finishing the Spencer lecture, so that my secretary could make a fair copy of it this week; andNef, Elinor Castleforces Cocktail Party reading on TSE;a1 ICocktail Party, TheMrs Nef's reading-group reading;e2in which TSE reads Reilly;a2 had also the affliction of Mrs. Nef’s Drama Reading Circle, who read of course ‘The Cocktail Party’ (in which I had to take the role of Reilly): a rehearsal on Saturday afternoon, and the reading on Sunday evening in front of all the other members of the circle. Mrs. Nef is decidedly featherbrained, and is regarded as a mildly amusing and extremely fatiguing eccentric; but I had to do this out of courtesy to her husband, who has been so very kind in looking after me. And during the week, when I have had a spare hour, I have simply lain down, for I have not always slept well. So I have written no letters except those I dictate – mostly declining invitation to speak. This afternoon a broadcast reading, and this evening a dinner of the Social Thought Committee. TomorrowMaritain, Jacques;b9 Maritain turns up in the morning, I have to lunch with some friends of the Nefs in Winnetka, and then pack. OnAmericaMadison, Wisconsin;f5who eventually visits;a5 Monday I go to Madison for the night, spend two nights with the Nefs, and go to Washington for the weekend. And I shall be in Cambridge on Monday the 20th.
The most urgent thing is to give you my present list of engagements, so that you can let me know of a day to come out to Andover.
TuesdayHarvard UniversityTheodore Spencer Memorial Lecture;c8 afternoon the Spencer lecture: Nov. 21st.
ThursEliot, Marion Cushing (TSE's sister)Thanksgiving with;g5, ThanksgivingEliot, Margaret Dawes (TSE's sister)Thanksgiving with;d5 Day, with my sisters.
SundayHinkley, Eleanor Holmes (TSE's first cousin);e5 Nov. 26 I have promised to take one meal with Eleanor Hinkley.
MondayHarvard Advocate Nov. 27 dine with the Society of Scholars; possibly reception at Harvard Advocate in afternoon.
TuesFinleys, the;a2Finley, John Huston, Jr
I do not know whether you stay at Andover over the weekend after Thanksgiving Day (or what you will do on the day itself).
IClements, the;a7 must spend one night, as is the custom, with the Clements in Wayland: theyLittles, the Leon;a8 areHalls, the;a2 to try to get the Littles and Halls to dinner, as on previous occasions. AsLambs, the;a8Lamb, Aimée
IEliot, Theresa Garrett (TSE's sister-in-law);f5 hope you have been in touch with Theresa, asLevin, Harry;a2 I asked her to get tickets for you from Harry Levin.
Your letter was a help: but at present I do not know what I can say in answer to it. I hope for a line from you at the Dana Palmer house, or perhaps the Faculty Club, or c/o Theresa, would be a better address. I do not know exactly how the Dana Palmer House is run, or whether letters are delivered there.
6.MargaretEliot, Margaret Dawes (TSE's sister) Dawes Eliot (1871–1956), TSE's second-oldest sister sister, resident in Cambridge, Mass. In an undated letter (1952) to his Harvard friend Leon M. Little, TSE wrote: ‘Margaret is 83, deaf, eccentric, recluse (I don’t think she has bought any new clothes since 1900).’
1.Marian/MarionEliot, Marion Cushing (TSE's sister) Cushing Eliot (1877–1964), fourth child of Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Eliot: see Biographical Register.
5.EleanorHinkley, Eleanor Holmes (TSE's first cousin) Holmes Hinkley (1891–1971), playwright; TSE’s first cousin; daughter of Susan Heywood Stearns – TSE’s maternal aunt – and Holmes Hinkley: see Biographical Register.
5.AiméeLamb, Aimée LambLambs, theLamb, Aimée
5.JacquesMaritain, Jacques Maritain (1882–1973), philosopher and littérateur, was at first a disciple of Bergson, but revoked that allegiance (L’Evolutionnisme de M. Bergson, 1911; La Philosophie bergsonienne, 1914) and became a Roman Catholic and foremost exponent of Neo-Thomism. For a while in the 1920s he was associated with Action Française, but the connection ended in 1926. Works include Art et scolastique (1920); Saint Thomas d’Aquin apôtre des temps modernes (1923); Réflexions sur l’intelligence (1924); Trois Réformateurs (1925); Primauté du spirituel (1927), Humanisme intégral (1936), Scholasticism and Politics (1940), Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (1953). TSE told Ranjee Shahani (John O’London’s Weekly, 19 Aug. 1949, 497–8) that Maritain ‘filled an important role in our generation by uniting philosophy and theology, and also by enlarging the circle of readers who regard Christian philosophy seriously’. See Walter Raubicheck, ‘Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, and the Romantics’, Renascence 46:1 (Fall 1993), 71–9; Shun’ichi Takayanagi, ‘T. S. Eliot, Jacques Maritain, and Neo-Thomism’, The Modern Schoolman 73: 1 (Nov. 1995), 71–90; Jason Harding, ‘“The Just Impartiality of a Christian Philosopher”: Jacques Maritain and T. S. Eliot’, in The Maritain Factor: Taking Religion into Interwar Modernism, ed. J. Heynickx and J. De Maeyer (Leuven, 2010), 180–91; James Matthew Wilson, ‘“I bought and praised but did not read Aquinas”: T. S. Eliot, Jacques Maritain, and the Ontology of the Sign’, Yeats Eliot Review 27: 1–2 (Spring–Summer 2010), 21; and Carter Wood, This Is Your Hour: Christian Intellectuals in Britain and the Crisis of Europe, 1937–40 (Manchester, 2019), 69–72.
7.ElinorNef, Elinor Castle Castle Nef (d. 1953). The comic figure of Mrs Catherine Nickleby is given to digressive, unfocused chatter.