[No surviving envelope]
84 Prescott St.,
Cambridge 39, Mass.]
I do not type very well on an unfamiliar typewriter. I intended to telephone at 6 p.m. and hear your voice, butEliot, Margaret Dawes (TSE's sister);d8 I couldn’t get away from Margaret until 6.15, and I was afraid to ring you up except at the exact hours you had given me. FirstPerkins, Edith (EH's aunt)visited in Boston;l5, I wanted to let you know that although Aunt E. did begin to talk about your plans for next year, she never got to the point of my having to mention, or not, what you told me; becauseLavorgna, Elvira Giovanna;a1 Miss Lavorgna telephoned; and that distracted my [sc. her] attention to telling me about Miss Lavorgna; and later Miss L. herself came in.1 After that we drove out to Cambridge and I dropped her at Lakeview Avenue.
I am disappointed in not telephoning, and I do not know whether I shall be able to telephone from New York at any hour that is possible for you. I was happier with you, and less unhappy, than eighteen months ago. Fundamentally it is the same happiness and the same unhappiness. I shall hope to wear your beautiful necktie and socks in Washington.
I will write over the weekend on my return to London – assuming that all goes according to plan and I reach London on May 30. IHale, Emilyas director ('producer');v9Prunella;c5 shall think of Prunella2 on the Saturday – just before midnight in London you will be giving your final instructions. I hope it will be a great success, and nobody will realise how much you have put into it, except perhaps one or two of the girls themselves.
1.ElviraLavorgna, Elvira Giovanna Giovanna Lavorgna (a devout Christian) was for some while a nurse-companion to Edith Perkins. ‘Mrs Perkins and Miss Hale both dislike my name Elvira – and worse, my nickname, Vee,’ as she was to tell TSE on 5 July 1953. ‘I don’t mind and I like having them use Giovanna! I would have taken it as my name in religion.’
2.EH was directing a production of Prunella, or Love in a Dutch Garden (1906), by Laurence Housman and Harley Granville Barker.
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.ElviraLavorgna, Elvira Giovanna Giovanna Lavorgna (a devout Christian) was for some while a nurse-companion to Edith Perkins. ‘Mrs Perkins and Miss Hale both dislike my name Elvira – and worse, my nickname, Vee,’ as she was to tell TSE on 5 July 1953. ‘I don’t mind and I like having them use Giovanna! I would have taken it as my name in religion.’