[41 Brimmer St., Boston]

T. S.Eliot
EmilyHale
TS
The Criterion
8 March 1932
Dear Lady,

Your little letter of the 19th Feb. arrived yesterday (Monday) three days after your letter of the 25th which I have answered; so you may have been wondering what happened to the first. The mails are unfathomable. And the photographs have NOT arrived yet. I am glad that mine reached you eventually, but none too pleased to hear that you like it; I wish you would write on the margin as a reminder ‘He thinks that he is much handsomer than that’. But your liking it is a check to my vanity.

I shall be rather rushed in writing, I fear, for the next week – I mean this week; these'Modern Dilemma, The'being composed;a3 dreadful broadcast talks are bothering me extremely, taking up time, and what [is] worst, I don’t feel that I am doing very well. Perhaps the subject is impossible anyhow; perhaps it is simply that I am too tired and have too little time to do justice to it. Number'Christianity and Communism'sent to EH;a1 One enclosed, so that you may judge for yourself. AndEliots, the T. S.;c6 this evening theFabers, the;a4 Fabers to dinner; andGrant, Duncandue at the Eliots';a1 tomorrow Duncan Grant,1 andCattaui, Georges;a6 afterMaritain, Jacques;a4 dinner Cattaui and Jacques Maritain, who is over from Paris to lecture at Oxford. TodayDouglas, Major Clifford Hugh ('C. H.');a4 lunchedCharlton, Air Commodore Lionel;a1 with Major Douglas and General Charlton2 (two of our authors); tomorrowRowse, Alfred Leslie ('A. L.');a1 with Rowse, my young communist friend of All Souls’ College;3 and ThursdayHobhouse, Christopher;a1 withWoodruff, Douglas;a1 Cattaui and Christopher Hobhouse4 and Douglas Woodruff,5 whom I do not know. And so on. And I wish that you were not so tired and run down, or else that I could look after you. Good bye, dear Dove.

Yr Tom.

1.DuncanGrant, Duncan Grant (1885–1978), artist and designer; lover of Vanessa Bell and David Garnett.

2.AirCharlton, Air Commodore Lionel Commodore Lionel Charlton, CB, CMG, DSO (1879–1958), military officer during the Boer War and WW1, rising to be brigadier general. In Feb. 1923, while serving as Chief Staff Officer for the RAF’s Iraq Command, he resigned in protest against the policy of bombing Iraqi villages with a view to quelling possible unrest. Later, children’s author and autobiographer. His reminiscences were published by F&F in 1931.

3.A. L. RowseRowse, Alfred Leslie ('A. L.') (1903–97), Cornish historian and poet: see Biographical Register.

4.ChristopherHobhouse, Christopher Hobhouse (1910–40), author of Oxford.

5.DouglasWoodruff, Douglas Woodruff (1897–1978), Catholic journalist and author; editor of the Tablet, 1936–67; chairman of the Catholic publishing house Burns & Oates, 1948–62.

Cattaui, Georges, at OM's, again at OM's, translates Murder badly,

3.GeorgesCattaui, Georges Cattaui (1896–1974), Egyptian-born (scion of aristocratic Alexandrian Jews: cousin of Jean de Menasce) French diplomat and writer; his works include T. S. Eliot (1958), Constantine Cavafy (1964), Proust and his metamorphoses (1973). TSE to E. R. Curtius, 21 Nov. 1947: ‘I received the book by Cattaui [Trois poètes: Hopkins, Yeats, Eliot (Paris, 1947)] and must say that I found what he had to say about myself slightly irritating. There are some personal details which are unnecessary and which don’t strike me as in the best taste.’

Charlton, Air Commodore Lionel, attends Harold Monro's funeral, at Alida Monro's,

2.AirCharlton, Air Commodore Lionel Commodore Lionel Charlton, CB, CMG, DSO (1879–1958), military officer during the Boer War and WW1, rising to be brigadier general. In Feb. 1923, while serving as Chief Staff Officer for the RAF’s Iraq Command, he resigned in protest against the policy of bombing Iraqi villages with a view to quelling possible unrest. Later, children’s author and autobiographer. His reminiscences were published by F&F in 1931.

'Christianity and Communism', sent to EH,
Douglas, Major Clifford Hugh ('C. H.'),
see also economics

5.C. H. DouglasDouglas, Major Clifford Hugh ('C. H.') (1879–1952), British engineer; proponent of the Social Credit economic reform movement. Noting that workers were never paid enough for them to purchase the goods they produced, Douglas proposed that a National Dividend (debt-free credit) should be distributed to all citizens so as to make their purchasing power equal to prices. Major works are Economic Democracy and Credit-Power and Democracy (1920); Social Credit (1924).

Eliots, the T. S., receive Aldous Huxley, give tea to Nora Joyce, give dinner-party for Joyces, Fabers and Osbert Sitwell, described by Osbert Sitwell, give dinner for Philippa Whibley, host the Morleys, Joyces and Hutchinsons, take tea with OM, who describes their appearance, invite OM to meet Mrs Joyce, introduce TSE's nieces to Lucia Joyce and Barbara Hutchinson, host the Joyces, host the Thorps to tea, host Dorothy Pound to supper, again to OM's, have the Huxleys to tea, more harmonious for Gordon George's stay, host Maurice and Ahmé to dinner, host Ralph Hodgson, Aurelia Bolliger, Gordon George and Scott Moncrieff, to OM's tea-party for Yeats, host Ralph Hodgson despite his dog's behaviour, have the Hodgsons for the weekend, attend Derby Day with the Hodgsons, host the Faber children to tea, host OM and D'Arcy, host Mark Gertler and wife, at James Stephens's party, have fifteen to tea, Evelyn Underhill and Force Stead to lunch with, spend weekend with VHE's mother, join farewell dinner for the Hodgsons, in 1926, holiday in Eastbourne, where they dine with the Morleys, then visit the Woolfs at Rodmell,
Fabers, the, model of happiness and respectability, their domestic situation, Faber children to tea chez Eliot, visit TSE at Pike's Farm, compared to the Morleys, closer to TSE than to VHE, 1933 summer holiday with, Ty Glyn Aeron described, request TSE to write play, too absorbed in their children, at the Morleys' party, give anti-Nazi party for author, host poker party, 1934 summer holiday with, take TSE to lunch in Oxford, 1935 summer holiday with, for which the children are bought tent, give party, 1936 summer holiday with, at Morleys' Thanksgiving Day party, sail model boats with TSE, and TSE's foggy adventure, cinema-going with TSE, take TSE to Witch of Edmonton, and Morleys take TSE to pantomime, and TSE attend opening of Ascent of F6, 1937 summer holiday with, and the Bradfield Greek play, School for Scandal with, take TSE to pantomime again, 1938 summer holiday with, 1939 summer holiday with, offer possible wartime refuge, 1940 summer holiday with, host TSE in Hampstead during war, TSE makes bread sauce for, brought vegetables from Shamley, move to Minsted, and TSE attend musical revue, 1941 summer holiday with, Minsted as substitute for nursing-home, trying to sell Welsh home, take TSE to International Squadron, invite TSE to Wales for Christmas, host TSE at Minsted, away fishing in Scotland, mourn TSE's post-war independence, 1947 Minsted summer stay, 1948 Minsted summer stay, host TSE for weekend, on 1950 South Africa trip, on TSE's 1951 Spain trip, 1951 Minsted summer stay, 1952 Minsted summer stay, 1953 Minsted summer stay, on 1953–4 South Africa trip, 35th wedding anniversary weekend,
Grant, Duncan, due at the Eliots', at Charleston, at Clive Bell's lunch-party, at Bishop Bell's conference,

1.DuncanGrant, Duncan Grant (1885–1978), artist and designer; lover of Vanessa Bell and David Garnett.

Hobhouse, Christopher,

4.ChristopherHobhouse, Christopher Hobhouse (1910–40), author of Oxford.

Maritain, Jacques, and de Menasce's conversion and ordination, responsible for Cocteau's reconversion, on Cocteau, approaching sainthood, Boston reunion with, TSE appreciates his spiritual inferiority to, introduced to Jeanette McPherrin, on The Use of Poetry, writes to Jeanette McPherrin, TSE chairs talk by, which EH attends, thanks TSE for hospitality, and TSE's Paris itinerary, dinner for,
see also Maritains, the

5.JacquesMaritain, Jacques Maritain (1882–1973), philosopher and littérateur, was at first a disciple of Bergson, but revoked that allegiance (L’Evolutionnisme de M. Bergson, 1911; La Philosophie bergsonienne, 1914) and became a Roman Catholic and foremost exponent of Neo-Thomism. For a while in the 1920s he was associated with Action Française, but the connection ended in 1926. Works include Art et scolastique (1920); Saint Thomas d’Aquin apôtre des temps modernes (1923); Réflexions sur l’intelligence (1924); Trois Réformateurs (1925); Primauté du spirituel (1927), Humanisme intégral (1936), Scholasticism and Politics (1940), Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (1953). TSE told Ranjee Shahani (John O’London’s Weekly, 19 Aug. 1949, 497–8) that Maritain ‘filled an important role in our generation by uniting philosophy and theology, and also by enlarging the circle of readers who regard Christian philosophy seriously’. See Walter Raubicheck, ‘Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, and the Romantics’, Renascence 46:1 (Fall 1993), 71–9; Shun’ichi Takayanagi, ‘T. S. Eliot, Jacques Maritain, and Neo-Thomism’, The Modern Schoolman 73: 1 (Nov. 1995), 71–90; Jason Harding, ‘“The Just Impartiality of a Christian Philosopher”: Jacques Maritain and T. S. Eliot’, in The Maritain Factor: Taking Religion into Interwar Modernism, ed. J. Heynickx and J. De Maeyer (Leuven, 2010), 180–91; James Matthew Wilson, ‘“I bought and praised but did not read Aquinas”: T. S. Eliot, Jacques Maritain, and the Ontology of the Sign’, Yeats Eliot Review 27: 1–2 (Spring–Summer 2010), 21; and Carter Wood, This Is Your Hour: Christian Intellectuals in Britain and the Crisis of Europe, 1937–40 (Manchester, 2019), 69–72.

'Modern Dilemma, The', and educational broadcasting generally, being composed, receives unlikely praise, TSE against turning into book, approved by EH, earns TSE 60 guineas,
Rowse, Alfred Leslie ('A. L.'), compared qua Marxist to Mirsky and Murry, at risk of assaulting Smyth, as 'Cornishman', at heavy Criterion gathering, at All Souls dinner, takes issue with Spender,

3.A. L. RowseRowse, Alfred Leslie ('A. L.') (1903–97), Cornish historian and poet: see Biographical Register.

Woodruff, Douglas,

5.DouglasWoodruff, Douglas Woodruff (1897–1978), Catholic journalist and author; editor of the Tablet, 1936–67; chairman of the Catholic publishing house Burns & Oates, 1948–62.