[41 Brimmer St., Boston]
I am being a good deal worried about you, my Dear: not to get a letter on Friday was simply a disappointment, for I keep reminding myself that I ought not to expect a letter regularly on the same day every week; and besides, I didn’t have any other American letters on that day either. On Monday came an American mail, but nothing from you, and nothing to-day either. I know I ought to think that it is merely the vicissitudes of the post, orHale, Emilyas actor;v8in The Yellow Jacket;b1 else that you have been very busy, perhaps with ‘The Yellow Jacket’,1 as is very likely, and have had no time or strength left. But if I do not hear, as I shall not, until the end of this week, I shall have been a fortnight without news; and if there is nothing on Monday next I shall have difficulty in restraining myself from cabling. I say difficulty, because it will be, I suppose, only a selfish indulgence. But I am continually haunted by the thought of your having an illness, and of my being in the dark as to its course; and if you were ill, the thought that I could do nothing whatever about it would be maddening. An anxiety that one can confide to no one is far more corrosive than one which one can express; and the thought of having to carry on my activities and keep up appearances for the world when you were perhaps dangerously ill would be frightful.
It is difficult to chat about my little businesses, or to put down general thoughts, in the circumstances. ItChristianitythe Church Year;d8Lent;b4 isChristianitythe Church Year;d8Ash Wednesday;b3 a serious day, for tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent; andChristianityliturgy;b9Imposition of Ashes;a5 I must struggle to get up, if I can, at 6:30 for High Mass and the Imposition of Ashes. ‘Remember, O man, that dust thou art and to dust thou returnest’.2 Lent, and'Modern Dilemma, The';a2 the completion of my four talks on the world in general then Easter, and the prospect of America becoming clearer, andCharles Eliot Norton Lectures (afterwards The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism)a task for Lent;a2 the preparation of those lectures and the other preparations for the journey. I still find it incredible that I shall ever get there; still more incredible that I shall ever see you (though at least it will be wonderful to be separated only by a thousand miles or so of prairie rather than water). And of course in the present world any future seems uncertain: what, I wonder, will be the political and economic conditions everywhere in six months time? IcommunismTSE's fantasy political party conceived against;a1 haveeconomicsin TSE's fantasy political party;a3 oftenroyalismand TSE's hypothetical political party;a1 toyed with the notion of the formation of a non-Parliamentary political party with principles seriously worked out, royalist, non-communist, but otherwise, perhaps, extremely unorthodox in its social and economic views. ItMosley, Sir Oswald ('Tom')disappointingly shallow;a1 was a very great pity that Oswald Mosley, with all his cleverness and slickness, did not see farther and deeper: he attracted for a time a good many ardent youths who were dissatisfied with the regime and averse to communism; and they have been disappointed; and that only makes it more difficult to get anything better.3 HeMosley, Sir Oswald ('Tom')blunders by association with Harold Nicholson;a3 also made a mistake in taking on HaroldNicholson, Haroldand Oswald Mosley;a3 Nicholson [sic], who is a hearty booby.4
But I can’t pretend to write thus about impersonal things, when my mind is occupied with you and what is happening to you. I shall have you specially in mind during prayers and devotions.
1.The Yellow Jacket (1912): play by George C. Hazelton and J. Harry Benrimo.
2.‘Remember, man, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return’, from the Catholic liturgy for Ash Wednesday, is based on Genesis 3: 19: In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donc revertaris in terram da qua sumptus es: quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris.: ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground: for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.’
3.SirMosley, Sir Oswald ('Tom') Oswald Mosley, 6th Bt (1896–1980), founder in 1932 of the British Union of Fascists.
InMosley, Sir Oswald ('Tom')TSE repudiates connection with;a2n 1954anti-Semitismand Mosley;a3n TSE’s German translator Countess Nora Purtcher-Wydenbruck (1894–1959) mentioned in a letter that a correspondent of hers had suggested there might have been some connection in the 1930s between TSE and Mosley. TSE replied, 11 May 1954: ‘Will you please disclaim any connection between myself and Sir Oswald Mosley. I am sure that at no time did I ever have any correspondence with him, and have never met him personally. I was never in agreement with his views, and I once referred to him <by implication> in print as a kind of “Catiline”. As for what I thought of him in the Thirties, there is some evidence in the Pageant Play, The Rock, which was produced and published in 1934. This has been long out of print, but there are copies in existence … Incommunismcommunists satirised in The Rock;a2 this Pageant, I had a scene lampooning the British fascists as well as the communists, and indeed, as somebody got hold of a text and mentioned it in a newspaper before the Pageant was produced, we were in some apprehension lest there might be a demonstration on the opening night. I have no sympathy with Sir Oswald Mosley’s attitude towards the Jews.’
4.InNicholson, HaroldEH sent cutting of broadcast by;a4n Nov. 1931 TSE sent EH a cutting of Nicolson’s radio talk ‘Are Modern Writers Selfish?’, The Listener, 21 Oct. 1931, 684–6. ‘ThereTennyson, Alfred, 1st BaronTSE compared to;a1n is much more in common between Tennyson and Eliot than might be supposed. Essentially they are both mystics and pessimists, sensuous and fastidious, melancholy and virile.’ Nicolson went on to praise some lines from ‘The Hollow Men’ – beginning ‘Eyes I dare not meet in dreams’ – as ‘one of the finest passages in modern poetry’; and to compliment TSE for the high order of his ‘integrity and fastidiousness’.
3.SirMosley, Sir Oswald ('Tom') Oswald Mosley, 6th Bt (1896–1980), founder in 1932 of the British Union of Fascists.
3.HaroldNicholson, Harold Nicolson (1886–1968) relinquished in 1930 a thriving career in the Diplomatic Service to work as a journalist for the Evening Standard. In Mar. 1931 he left the Standard to join Sir Oswald Mosley’s New Party, and became editor of the New Party’s journal Action.