[35A School St., Andover, Mass.]
[19 Carlyle Mansions]
YourAmericaWashington, Connecticut;h8EH recuperates in;a1 welcome letter of March 23, received just before Easter, was surprising. IHale, Emilyhealth, physical and mental;w6recuperates in Washington, Conn.;c1 hope that your solitary rest cure in Washington Connecticut was satisfactory; it sounded a sensible thing to do with the little time at your disposal, and I trust that it did you good. I sincerely hope that your muscular trouble is not sciatica, or any of those nerve troubles, which are so very painful and which come and go at their pleasure without the doctor being able to do very much for one. IPerkins, Edith (EH's aunt);m4 am surprised that you speak as if I had not written to Aunt Edith for a long time, as I wrote to her at the same time that I wrote my last letter to you. WhatGeorge, Ruth;a7 I have failed to do is to write to Ruth George, and that I must do.1 IEliot, Theresa Garrett (TSE's sister-in-law);g3 amEliot, Marion Cushing (TSE's sister)tethered to Margaret;h2 distressed to hear from you, what I had not been told, that Theresa should be going to St. Louis and not Marian. I shall be very disappointed. OfEliot, Margaret Dawes (TSE's sister);d9 course there should be someone to keep an eye on Margaret, but if Marian is never able to leave Cambridge for that reason, it is most unfair, and worries me considerably. And I had been so looking forward to having Marian with me in St. Louis. Of course Marian is too self-sacrificing. The trouble is too that Margaret doesn’t want to be looked after, and I am afraid she would not consent to any stranger being about. I shall write to both Marian and Theresa.
Buttravels, trips and plansEH's 1953 trip to England;i2EH's Alnwick plans;a1 the most remarkable news is that you are coming to Britain. IfConfidential Clerk, The1953 Edinburgh production;b2;a2 however you propose to visit Edinburgh and see the play, I am sorry that you should tie yourself up at Alnwick during just the week that I shall be there.2 It opens on the 25th; I expect to go up on the 23d for rehearsals. I was thinking vaguely of taking another week somewhere in Scotland, if I could find a quiet hotel, but I don’t want to be in Edinburgh more than the one week, it is too public. Perhaps you could break the course for a night or so, as Alnwick is near Newcastle, and Newcastle is not a long journey from Edinburgh. Let me know if I can help with accommodation. I have not yet had any programme of events for Edinburgh, so I do not suppose that they are selling tickets yet, but you had better enquire of your travel agency. InSmith, Theodora ('Dodo') Eliot (TSE's niece)1953 visit to England;d6in Edinburgh for Confidential Clerk;a1 Edinburgh I shall have Theodora on my hands: she will be at the same hotel (the Beresford).3 That is a responsibility I must accept. When do you expect to be in London? I am here from the date of my return from New York (the 1st July) until I go to Edinburgh. If you are to be in London for any part of September I should like to know, so as to make my own arrangements.
IAnouilh, JeanAntigone;a4 sawAnouilh, Jeanas playwright;a3 a performance of the Anouilh ‘Antigone’ in French (not very Greek!) an effective stage play, and I suspect his best:4 his output is said to be deteriorating, and he is not now so much thought of in Paris. HisAnouilh, JeanMedée;a5 most recent ‘Medée’ is not highly praised.5
IConfidential Clerk, TheTSE finalising;b1 am putting the finishing touches to the Confidential Clerk, after which I hope it will be ready for duplication. MartinBrowne, Elliott Martin1953 Edinburgh Confidential Clerk;f9;a2 is in Dorset, but I shall meet him next week to run through the text. I am most curious to know what you will think of it: it seems to me my best built play so far, and I don’t think the characters will be at all reminiscent of any of my previous characters. BesidesLeighton, Margaretin The Confidential Clerk;a3 Margaret Leighton, weElliott, DenholmColby in The Confidential Clerk;a1 have one Denton [sc. Denholm] Elliott,6 andThorndike, Sybilagain, ideal casting for Confidential Clerk;a5 Martin was hoping that he might get Sybil Thorndike to play Lady Elizabeth Mulhammer, andLacey, Catherinepossible Mrs Guzzard;a4 Catherine Lacey7 for Mrs. Guzzard.8 All of the characters in the play are very lovable people, except perhaps Mrs. Guzzard (though I like her). TheyOld Vic, Theto produce The Confidential Clerk;c5 haveConfidential Clerk, The1953 Edinburgh production;b2casting for;a3 alsoRogers, Paulin Murder in the Cathedral;a1 got aMurder in the Cathedral1953 Old Vic revival;h1TSE on;a2 good actor from the Old Vic, who plays the First Knight in ‘Murder’.9 ThatBenthall, Michaelhis revival of Murder;a1 was revived last week at the Old Vic, aHelpmann, Robertrevives Murder at Old Vic;a2 wholly new (and superior) production by Benthall10 and Robert Helpmann, withDonat, Robertas Becket;a4 Robert Donat (a good actor) in the main part. I was on the whole delighted with it: Helpmann is well-known as ballet dancer and choreographer, and his arrangement of the chorus (a much better mixed chorus than at Canterbury and the Mercury, with some older women, and suitably attired too) was admirable. TheMurder in the Cathedral1935–6 Mercury Theatre revival;d8;b1 knights perhaps a little too comic (but the Old Vic audience is delighted) butMercury Theatre, London;d5 still less out of hand than the Mercury knights, who fell into a most deplorable clowning after a time. Helpmann is aware that they must be checked from overdoing the humour.
Meanwhile'American Literature and the American Language';a3 IWashington University, St. LouisTSE's address to;a3 am grinding out an address for Washington University. It proves to be slow hard work; it is hard to turn from a play to grinding out occasional addresses. NextUniversity of St. Andrew'sawards TSE honorary degree;a1 week ILindsay, David Alexander Robert, 28th Earl of Crawford (styled Lord Balniel);a2 go to St. Andrew’s for an honorary degree, the weekend from April 16th when I am to be a guest at Balcarres.11
INason, Margaret ('Meg') Geraldine;c7 have an Easter letter from Meg12 (who has had ’flu twice, she says). I thought best, in replying, to say nothing about your plans, but leave that to you.
You don’t say where you expect to be during the second half of June.
1.TSEGeorge, Ruthfor which TSE congratulates her;a6n to Ruth George, 7 Apr. 1953: ‘I am writing very tardily to thank you for the second volume of poems, “Is the Seed Yet in the Barn”. […] I have really enjoyed your poems – I am sent so many books of verse, and the experience of enjoying one is very rare! and I think you have a genuine lyric gift, a musical ear, and something to say. So few writers of verse know what they can do and what they can’t; you have these gifts and you have used them well.
‘My last direct news of you was from Emily after she had visited California last summer. She spoke warmly and happily of her visit to you’ (Denison Library, Scripps).
2.EHHale, Emilyattends British Drama League summer school;t4n was to attend a summer school run by the Training Department of the British Drama League, at Alnwick Castle, Northumberland, 21–8 Aug. 1953. She received a certificate of attendance signed by J. Francis Mackenzie, Principal of the School.
3.‘Theodora thought that Emily should not have come: she was “a pale shadow of her former self”’: Gordon, Imperfect Life, 415 – citing Mary Trevelyan’s diary, 25 and 28 Aug. 1953: PRS.
4.The Abbot Academy Dramatic Society and the Brooks School Dramatic Association (North Andover) had put on a co-production of Jean Anouilh’s Antigone, in translation: directed by EH and George Chychele Waterston, a Scottish semanticist and language teacher, and father of the actor Sam Waterston, b. 1940 – the young Sam took part in the play.
Chychele Waterston wrote with enthusiasm to EH, 3 Mar. 1953: ‘It is almost certainly obvious to you and to the Abbot Academy cast of Antigone that all the Brooks boys (in which category I include myself) found it extremely pleasant to work with the Abbot girls.’ Indeed, he felt throughout the production an ‘understanding cooperation’: ‘I wish there were some way of conveying to the girls, without mentioning personalities, how very valuable it is when ladies know how to use their powers as a civilising influence …
‘Your own helpful hints to the boys were accepted and acted upon much more immediately than mine. They accepted your advice unhesitatingly – quite rightly.’
5.Anouilh’s Medée, written in 1946, was premièred at the Théâtre de l’Atelier by André Barsacq (director) on 25 Mar. 1953.
6.DenholmElliott, Denholm Elliott (1922–92) – Colby Simpkins in The Confidential Clerk – was a great character actor: his scene-stealing, award-winning appearances included parts in The Cruel Sea (1953), Alfie (1966), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989); and as the insidious Philip Neville in the TV adaptation of Anita Brookner’s Hotel du Lac (1986). CBE, 1988. Sherek to TSE, 13 Jan. 1953: ‘He is an excellent young man and is also a musician. Luckily his instrument is the piano.’ TSE to Elliott, 10 May 1954: ‘I particularly … want to thank you for all you did with the role of Colby. I realize that it was the most difficult part in the play, and in a sense, the most thankless, because I know what you did with it, and so few amongst any of the audiences could, I think, have realised what a difficult part it was. I am afraid that it is the one part in which the author did not succeed in finding the “objective correlative” (a phrase which I have come to dislike intensely, but which is the only one for what I want to say here). My grateful thanks and best wishes.’
7.TSE to Violet Schiff, 27 Feb. 1950: ‘I was familiar with Katherine [sic] Lacey’s very fine Agatha on the stage.’
8.‘MrsLeggatt, Alisonas Mrs Guzzard in Cocktail Party;a1 Guzzard’ was in fact to be played by Alison Leggatt (1904–90). TSE to Sherek, 15 July 1953: ‘Oddly enough I had myself thought of Alison Leggatt as a possibility for Mrs Guzzard. That excess of acidity which she put into the second act of The Cocktail Party and which was so impressive that it made the reconciliation of Edward and Lavinia appear anything but plausible, ought to stand her in good stead for this part where she can maintain the same attitude throughout’ (Texas). TSE to Anne Ridler, 18 Sept. 1953: ‘Alison Leggatt did very well I thought in fusing Pallas Athene with the shabby genteel suburban lady.’
See too Alison Leggatt, ‘A Postscript from Mrs Chamberlayne and Mrs Guzzard’, T. S. Eliot: A Symposium for his Seventieth Birthday, ed. N. Braybrooke (1958), 79:
Our producer had advised us not to ask our dramatist to explain any lines that we might find obscure. However, one member of the cast, splendidly daring, disregarded this advice and asked: ‘Please, what does this mean?’ – to receive the reply: ‘My dear child, don’t ask me, I don’t know!’
When I was rehearsing for The Confidential Clerk I ventured to seek a little guidance over the part of Mrs Guzzard, which I was playing. ‘She is a mixture of Pallas Athene and a suburban housewife,’ Mr Eliot told me!
TSE duly signed a copy of the play for Leggatt:
————‘For the suburban Pallas Athene
————Alison Leggatt – in gratitude.’
9.Paul Rogers (1917–2013) had played one of the Knights in the Old Vic production of Murder in the Cathedral, and was to take the leading role of Sir Claude Mulhammer in The Confidential Clerk.
10.MichaelBenthall, Michael Benthall (1919–74), partner of Robert Helpmann; artistic director of the Old Vic, 1953–62.
11.TSELindsay, David Alexander Robert, 28th Earl of Crawford (styled Lord Balniel) was the guest of David Lindsay, 28th Earl of Crawford (1900–75) – politician, landowner, and patron of the arts – who was Rector of St Andrews University, 1952–5. Educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford, Lindsay had been a Unionist MP, 1924–40; a Trustee of the Tate Gallery, 1932–7; National Gallery, 1935–41, 1945–52, 1953–60; British Museum, 1940–73; and a member of the Standing Commission on Museums and Galleries, 1937–52. In addition, he was Chair of the Trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland, 1952–72; the Royal Fine Arts Commission, 1943–57; and the Trustees of the National Gallery of Scotland, 1944. His seat was Balcarres House, nr. Colinsburgh, in the East Neuk of Fife.
12.Meg Nason.
10.MichaelBenthall, Michael Benthall (1919–74), partner of Robert Helpmann; artistic director of the Old Vic, 1953–62.
4.E. MartinBrowne, Elliott Martin Browne (1900–80), English director and producer, was to direct the first production of Murder in the Cathedral: see Biographical Register.
3.RobertDonat, Robert Donat (1905–58), stage and screen actor; starred in Alfred Hitchcocks’s The 39 Steps (1935); and won an Academy Award for Best Actor in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939).
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.
6.DenholmElliott, Denholm Elliott (1922–92) – Colby Simpkins in The Confidential Clerk – was a great character actor: his scene-stealing, award-winning appearances included parts in The Cruel Sea (1953), Alfie (1966), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989); and as the insidious Philip Neville in the TV adaptation of Anita Brookner’s Hotel du Lac (1986). CBE, 1988. Sherek to TSE, 13 Jan. 1953: ‘He is an excellent young man and is also a musician. Luckily his instrument is the piano.’ TSE to Elliott, 10 May 1954: ‘I particularly … want to thank you for all you did with the role of Colby. I realize that it was the most difficult part in the play, and in a sense, the most thankless, because I know what you did with it, and so few amongst any of the audiences could, I think, have realised what a difficult part it was. I am afraid that it is the one part in which the author did not succeed in finding the “objective correlative” (a phrase which I have come to dislike intensely, but which is the only one for what I want to say here). My grateful thanks and best wishes.’
2.RuthGeorge, Ruth George (1880–1959), Associate Professor of English, Scripps College, Claremont, California, had become a close friend of EH at Scripps in 1932–4. EH was to donate thirty-two inscribed books to Scripps; five inscribed items to Princeton University Library.
2.RobertHelpmann, Robert Helpmann (né Helpman; 1909–86), Australian ballet dancer and actor, director and choreographer, joined the Vic–Wells Ballet in London under its creator, Ninette de Valois, in 1932. In Feb. 1944 he starred in an Old Vic production of Hamlet, directed by Tyrone Guthrie (1900–71) and Michael Benthall (1919–74); he alternated the title role with Paul Scofield (1922–2008).
2.CatherineLacey, Catherine Lacey (1904–79): British actor who was Agatha in The Family Reunion at the Westminster Theatre in 1939 and again at the Mercury Theatre in 1946.
2.MargaretLeighton, Margaret Leighton (1922–76): British stage and film actor whose credits included roles in Henry IV (1946), with Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson; and The Winslow Boy (1948). For The Go-Between (1971), she was to win a BAFTA and an Academy Award. TSE to Polly Tandy, 10 Aug. 1953: ‘The rehearsals are going well: the females in the cast – Margaret Leighton, Isabel Jeans, and Alison Leggat – are all well cast for their parts, and I seem to be able to judge the female actresses more quickly than the male actors – partly, perhaps, because I seem for some reason to be better at writing the female roles than the male.’
11.TSELindsay, David Alexander Robert, 28th Earl of Crawford (styled Lord Balniel) was the guest of David Lindsay, 28th Earl of Crawford (1900–75) – politician, landowner, and patron of the arts – who was Rector of St Andrews University, 1952–5. Educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford, Lindsay had been a Unionist MP, 1924–40; a Trustee of the Tate Gallery, 1932–7; National Gallery, 1935–41, 1945–52, 1953–60; British Museum, 1940–73; and a member of the Standing Commission on Museums and Galleries, 1937–52. In addition, he was Chair of the Trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland, 1952–72; the Royal Fine Arts Commission, 1943–57; and the Trustees of the National Gallery of Scotland, 1944. His seat was Balcarres House, nr. Colinsburgh, in the East Neuk of Fife.
1.MargaretNason, Margaret ('Meg') Geraldine (Meg) Geraldine Nason (1900–86), proprietor of the Bindery tea rooms, Broadway, Worcestershire, whom TSE and EH befriended on visits to Chipping Campden.
2.TheodoraSmith, Theodora ('Dodo') Eliot (TSE's niece) Eliot Smith (1904–92) – ‘Dodo’ – daughter of George Lawrence and Charlotte E. Smith: see Biographical Register. Theodora’sSmith, Charlotte ('Chardy') Stearns (TSE's niece) sister was Charlotte Stearns Smith (b. 1911), known as ‘Chardy’.
9.SybilThorndike, Sybil Thorndike (1882–1976): acclaimed British actor of stage and screen, she was a dominant presence in productions of Shakespeare and the Classics – arguably the greatest tragedienne of the twentieth century. George Bernard Shaw felt such a regard for her talent that he wrote Saint Joan (1924) specifically for her. In 1938–9 there were discussions with a view to staging the premiere of The Family Reunion, to be directed by John Gielgud (who was eager to play the hero, the tormented Harry), with Thorndike as Agatha. But Thorndike is reported to have advised Gielgud, ‘You know, Eliot’s not going to let you have his play – he says you have no faith.’ In Peter Brooks’s revival of the play at the Phoenix Theatre, London, in June 1956, she was the matriarch Amy (with Paul Scofield as Harry). Thorndike to TSE, 8 June 1956: ‘My ambition is fulfilled – to be in one of your plays …’ Created a Dame of the British Empire in 1931, in 1970 she was appointed as a Companion of Honour.