[35A School St., Andover, Mass.]
I was glad to get, this week, your letter of January 4th, as I intended to write over this weekend anyway. Though it does not contain much news of yourself (IHale, Emilyas director ('producer');v9Christmas play;c6 had hoped to hear more about the Christmas play). I also should have liked to know something of your holidays, whether you had happy visits, and how your health was at the beginning of the term, before the severe weather began. ExceptEnglandLondon;h1its fogs;a5 for the peculiarly suffocating type of fog that we have had, the weather here has been tolerable, though wet. IConfidential Clerk, Thewhich TSE rewrites;a6 am still struggling over the reform of my Act III, which began to seem a more formidable problem from the moment an Edinburgh production was fixed. I do not know whether the dementi which I issued to the Press Association has appeared in the American Press: anyway, the contract will provide that the play must be produced in London first. The business side of the theatre is not a pleasant aspect, and the violent enmities that arise among managers and actors. Anyway, I have just thought of a new way of arranging that act, and shall now have a third go at it. WhatEpstein, JacobTSE sitting for;a1 with this, and sitting once a week to Jacob Epstein who is doing a Bust,1 andAlliance Française;b7 a difficult situation that arose in the Alliance Française,2 and'Introduction' (to Literary Essays of Ezra Pound);a1 the Introduction to Pound’s Essays that I have not yet written,3 andAiken, Mary Hooverwants TSE to sit for her;a1 Mrs. Conrad Aiken4 wanting me to pose for her (that is the last straw) I have my hands full; and'American Literature and the American Language';a1 then two addresses to write for St. Louis5 (I must begin to enquire about plane flights).
WhenBell, Kay;a1 I was in New York in May Kay Bell took some portrait photographs. Kay Bell is supposed to be a very good photographer, and is the wife of Eugene Reynal, who is a director of Harcourt Brace. I was surprised that among the various photographs she took, they chose that one, which is certainly one of the less flattering.6 I don’t care much for an omnibus book like that, and it will not be published here: but there seems to be a college demand for everything in one bloated great volume. I haven’t even asked them to send copies to any relatives and friends.
This is a horrid faint ribbon: my big typewriter is out of order and I must take it to the shop to be put right.
Do, when you write next, tell me more about yourself.
1.JacobEpstein, Jacob Epstein (1880–1959), American sculptor championed by Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis; naturalised British subject from 1907. He designed the tomb of Oscar Wilde in Père Lachaise, and his Rock-Drill was sculpted during his Vorticist period.
2.Details of the ‘difficult situation’ not known.
3.Introduction to Literary Essays of Ezra Pound (F&F, 1954): CProse 8, 3–10.
4.MaryAiken, Mary Hoover Hoover Aiken, his third wife.
5.‘American Literature and the American Language: An Address Delivered at Washington University on June 9, 1953’ (Washington University, 1953). The text of TSE’s lecture was first published as ‘Washington University Studies – New Series – Language and Literature – No. 23’, with an appendix ‘The Eliot Family and St Louis’ prepared by the English Dept. See To Criticise the Critic (1965): CProse 7, 792–810.
6.KayBell, Kay Bell (1905–77), an associate editor of Vogue who took up portrait photography in the 1940s, married the publisher Eugene Reynal in 1947. Her candid image of TSE appears on the cover of Complete Poems and Plays 1909–1950 (Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1952).
4.MaryAiken, Mary Hoover Hoover Aiken, his third wife.
6.KayBell, Kay Bell (1905–77), an associate editor of Vogue who took up portrait photography in the 1940s, married the publisher Eugene Reynal in 1947. Her candid image of TSE appears on the cover of Complete Poems and Plays 1909–1950 (Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1952).
1.JacobEpstein, Jacob Epstein (1880–1959), American sculptor championed by Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis; naturalised British subject from 1907. He designed the tomb of Oscar Wilde in Père Lachaise, and his Rock-Drill was sculpted during his Vorticist period.