[35A School St., Andover, Mass.]

1.ThePeter, John ‘odiousPeter, John'A New Interpretation of The Waste Land';a1 essay’ in question was ‘A New Interpretation of The Waste Land’, by John Peter, Lecturer in English, University of Manitoba – ‘an impecunious junior professor in the Canadian middle west,’ as he was later to call himself (in 1969) – published in Essays in Criticism II (July 1952), 242–66. Peter himself sent TSE an offprint of his article. TheHigginson, G. F.issues formal reprimand on TSE's behalf;a2 piece so offended TSE that he briefed his solicitor, G. F. Higginson, to send this formal reprimand:

We have been instructed to inform you that our client read this article with amazement and disgust…

Our client has read other “interpretations” of his own work, some of which have been as absurd and as completely erroneous as your own; and had your article been nothing more than absurd, he would have ignored it. He is obliged, however, to take notice of an “interpretation” of any poem of his the purpose of which is to demonstrate that the poem is essentially concerned with homosexual passion. This is not merely wholly mistaken, but highly offensive.

Nor is this the end of the matter. Some readers may infer that the author of a poem on an homosexual theme must himself be a person of homosexual temperament, if not actually of homosexual practices. Two or three persons of some distinction in the literary world have drawn the conclusion that this imputation is implicit in your article, and have expressed great indignation that such an article should ever have been written or published.

(The wording of Higginson’s letter closely conformed to the draft that Eliot supplied. Consensual homosexual acts between adult males were to be legalised in the UK only with the passing of the Sexual Offences Act 1967.)

John Peter in his response to Higginson, dated 5 Feb. 1953, sought sincerely to explain that he ‘had spent a good deal of time puzzling over the poem’; he had certainly not been ‘merely curious or casually interested’; and he was distressed to be told that any readers ‘have been tempted to read into the essay imputations concerning the poet’s personal character.’ He offered too to publish an apology for the article, on the understanding that TSE had declared it to be ‘not tenable’.

TSEBlackwell, Basil;a1 did not require Peter to publish any sort of apology, partly on the basis that such a further publication might serve to draw even more attention to the original article; but he did insist that there should be no further ‘dissemination’ of Peter’s work – a determination immediately accepted by Basil Blackwell, publisher of Essays in Criticism. Even when the firm of Swets & Zeitlinger (Amsterdam) undertook to reprint the first ten volumes of Essays in Criticism (covering the decade 1951–60), TSE reiterated his ruling that Peter’s article should remain suppressed. F. W. BatesonBateson, F. W.and John Peter's essay;a1n (Corpus Christi College, Oxford), editor of Essays in Criticism – who had been responsible for the publication of the original issue – pointedly drew attention to the absence of Peter’s piece in the reprint edition: ‘The omission of these pages from the reprint is a tribute of reluctant respect to the memory of T. S. Eliot … Mr Eliot took the greatest possible exception to Peter’s well-meant article … And so, being very angry, I wrote Mr Eliot the most offensive apology he can ever have received … Professor Peter had naively read The Waste Land as though it had been one more of the imaginary dramatic monologues that Eliot and Pound had been writing … it had never occurred to him that we might be implicitly accusing the poem’s author of just such an emotion in real life.’

Peter’s essay was republished only after TSE’s death: ‘A New Interpretation of The Waste Land (1952). With Postscript (1969)’, Essays in Criticism XIX (Apr. 1969), 140–75. Peter concluded his ‘Postscript’ with this personal note: ‘that my interpretation caused the poet distress and annoyance is something I have had seventeen years to go on regretting.’

2.‘MrConfidential Clerk, The1953 Edinburgh production;b2negotiations over;a1n. Eliot’s New Play: Production in Edinburgh Next Year’, The Times, 19 Dec. 1952, 10:

‘Mr T. S. Eliot has written a new modern comedy in verse called The Confidential Clerk. It will be given its first production at the Edinburgh Festival. Mr. E. Martin Browne, who produced The Cocktail Party – also given its first performance at the Edinburgh Festival and Mr. Eliot’s other plays – will be in charge of the production, which will be presented by the Edinburgh Festival Society and Mr. Henry Sherek during the first two weeks of next year’s festival. It has a cast of seven and is set in the West End of London.

‘The Confidential Clerk will follow the example of The Cocktail Party by being taken from Edinburgh to New York before it is seen in London. A theatre on Broadway has in fact already been booked by Mr. Sherek for the American production next October. The play will not be produced in London until its New York run has come to an end; then it will be seen here with the original English cast.

‘There are three reasons, Mr. Sherek says, for delaying the production in London. First, in New York there is not the same difficulty as here in getting the theatre one wants – in fact, a transatlantic telephone call is said to have settled the matter; secondly, there is, Mr. Sherek says, an enormous public in the United States eager to see Mr. Eliot’s plays; and thirdly, the play is certain to earn for this country a steady flow of dollars.’

‘Mr. Eliot’s New Play’, The Times, 22 Dec. 1952, 3: ‘Mr. T. S. Eliot stated yesterday that though he understands that his new play The Confidential Clerk has been accepted for production at the next Edinburgh Festival, the statement about its subsequent production in New York and London was issued without his knowledge or authority. He has not yet entered into any contract, he says, or discussed the conditions under which the play might be presented after its performance at Edinburgh.’

‘Mr. Eliot’s New Play: London Production Next Year’, The Times, 31 Dec. 1952, 4: ‘Mr. T. S. Eliot’s new play The Confidential Clerk will, after all, be seen in London before it is produced in New York. It was announced yesterday that this change of plan has been made at the wish of Mr. Eliot himself. At a meeting between Mr. Eliot and Mr. Henry Sherek it was decided to present The Confidential Clerk in Manchester, Leeds, and Liverpool in the weeks immediately following its first production at the Edinburgh Festival next summer. The play will then be brought to London with the same cast.’

3.TheLaw, Phyllidain Murder in the Cathedral;a1 OldRogers, Paulin Murder in the Cathedral;a1 Vic production of Murder in the Cathedral, directed by Robert Helpmann and starring Robert Donat, opened on 31 Mar. 1953. The First Knight was played by Paul Rogers, who would later take the lead in TSE’s The Elder Statesman; and the Chorus included Phyllida Law. The production was to be recorded in May 1953 at London’s Abbey Road Studios; subsequently remastered and issued on CD in 2006. Donat, who suffered from severe asthma, needed oxygen cylinders to be kept to hand in the wings.