[35A School St., Andover, Mass.]
I was very glad to get your letter of the 9th (it seems to have taken rather longer in transit than usual) and to know that your travels had been wholly successful.1 It is true that you were obviously enjoying your halt in the Canadian Rockies, but I feared that your whistle-stop programme might be very exhausting.2 Obviously the change and the new scenes, congenial company and inaccessibility to the friction of Boston more than made up for any fatigue. I am very glad.
Ittravels, trips and plansTSE's 1956 visit to America;i9TSE reflects on;a4 was also a good letter for which I thank you. YouEliot, Theresa Garrett (TSE's sister-in-law)hosts TSE in 1956;h4 are quite right in your advice, however difficult it be to carry out. I must however, put in a word for Theresa, who has been very considerate. TheSheffield, Alfred Dwight ('Shef' or 'Sheff');d1 onlyEliot, Revd Frederick May (TSE's first cousin);b4 peopleEliot, Elizabeth (TSE's cousin);a4 she has asked to meals have been people whom I felt obliged to see anyway (Sheff and Frederick and Elizabeth). She did hint that she would like me to sit for a friend of hers who is a painter, but that I should decline – sitting is more tiring than artists always realise, apart from the fact that it would be absurd of me to come to Cambridge and spend my time sitting to a portrait painter. ThereEliot, Margaret Dawes (TSE's sister)TSE's final visit to;e4 was, actually, moreHinkley, Eleanor Holmes (TSE's first cousin);f3 social activity while I was at Eleanor’s. Another time I should not have the fatigue of visits to poor dear Margaret (though this time, you know, she kept putting me off so that I only saw her once). But my best plan for the future, I think, would be to make speaking (reading) engagements only in Boston and vicinity (such places as Brandeis I had in mind). Certainly the western trip was fatiguing, and having to stop in Chicago.
Itravels, trips and plansTSE's 1956 Geneva rest cure;j1recounted;a4 did not have a very successful holiday. The weather in Switzerland was cold and very rainy. I cancelled my week at Chardonne. And I had not been in Geneva long before I got an abscess on my hip (some injection had gone wrong) which kept giving me little temperatures. So I was a week in the clinic having it syringed out. ButClements, thein Geneva;a8Clement, James
I was glad to know that you got my letter in Berkeley, as otherwise we were out of communication for so long. I shall probably think of things I have omitted to mention after I have closed this letter. ICheetham, Revd Ericleaves affairs in a mess;h8 hear that Cheetham is back – he has not communicated either with me or my fellow warden since February. AndEley, Revd Stanley;a1 he is probably still unaware of the frightful mess that he left behind for us to clear up – but fortunately now the Rural Dean of Kensington3 has become aware that he also is a sequestrator and is taking things in hand. We can’t get a vicar until we can get somewhere for him to live! And as the vicarage is no business of the churchwardens until the incumbent dies or retires, we were completely ignorant of the muddles he had made.
P.T.O.
ThisFitts, Dudleyhis Lysistrata;a4 letter reads like only the fragment of a letter…. IMonroe, Marilynand Dudley Fitts's Lysistrata;a1 hearAristophanesLysistrata;a3 thatBritish Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)approaches Marilyn Monroe to star in Fitts's Lysistrata;e6Siepmann, Charles Arthur
15 September 1956
I felt sure that I should think of something I had forgotten to say. But Never before had I forgotten to write
at the top!
1.EH's letter of 9 September has not survived.
2.Abbot Academy Bulletin 24: 1 (Oct. 1956), 7: ‘Miss Hale travelled by train through the Canadian Rockies, then down the West Coast to Berkeley, returning home with a glimpse of the American Rockies near Estes Park.’
3.RevdEley, Revd Stanley Stanley Eley (1904–90); later Bishop of Gibraltar, 1960–70.
4.On 10 Aug. 1956 the BBC announced that it had invited Marilyn Monroe to play the title role in a Third Programme radio production of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, in a translation by Dudley Fitts. A press agent responded on her behalf, ‘Miss Monroe is thinking it over.’
4.RevdCheetham, Revd Eric Eric Cheetham (1892–1957): vicar of St Stephen’s Church, Gloucester Road, London, 1929–56 – ‘a fine ecclesiastical showman’, as E. W. F. Tomlin dubbed him. TSE’s landlord and friend at presbytery-houses in S. Kensington, 1934–9. See Letters 7, 34–8.
3.RevdEley, Revd Stanley Stanley Eley (1904–90); later Bishop of Gibraltar, 1960–70.
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).’
2.RevdEliot, Revd Frederick May (TSE's first cousin) Frederick May Eliot (1889–1958) – first cousin – Unitarian clergyman and author: see Biographical Register.
3.DudleyFitts, Dudley Fitts (1903–68), American poet, translator and literary critic, won especial praise for his translations of Euripides’ Alcestis (1936) and Sophocles’ Antigone (1939), King Oedipus (with Robert Fitzgerald, 1949), and Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (1954), Frogs (1955) and Birds (1956). Other work includes Poems 1929–1936 (1937).
5.EleanorHinkley, Eleanor Holmes (TSE's first cousin) Holmes Hinkley (1891–1971), playwright; TSE’s first cousin; daughter of Susan Heywood Stearns – TSE’s maternal aunt – and Holmes Hinkley: see Biographical Register.
8.AlfredSheffield, Alfred Dwight ('Shef' or 'Sheff') Dwight Sheffield (1871–1961) – ‘Shef’ or ‘Sheff’ – husband of TSE’s eldest sister, taught English at University School, Cleveland, Ohio, and was an English instructor, later Professor, of Group Work at Wellesley College. His publications include Lectures on the Harvard Classics: Confucianism (1909) and Grammar and Thinking: a study of the working conceptions in syntax (1912).