[41 Brimmer St., Boston]
Glory glory the photographs have arrived – late yesterday afternoon just before I left. And they are very good indeed (I wonder if this assertion will annoy you as yours about mine annoyed me?) ThePraxitelesand EH's nose;a1 one with the earrings (I suppose they are screwed on?) doesHale, Emilyappearance and characteristics;v7her Praxitelean nose;b4 not do justice to your Nose (which is a Greek nose – it has that form rarely seen in life which is broad at the base as noses should be and accords with the arch of the eyebrow – seeAmericaBoston, Massachusetts;d1its Museum collection remembered;a3 two little Greek heads, both very good and one attributed to Praxiteles, in the Boston Museum), but does well by the neck and the ear. The other one is wholly admirable, and the expression too is better – more ethereal; and seems to me to do you as much justice as a photograph can. I adore it. And it means so much to me to have a really recent portrait; & I am sure that to me you will be increasingly beautiful year by year. There is a great serenity and spiritual depth in it – of which you may be quite unaware yourself, but which is certainly there as a gift to others who see it.
Of course there is pain as well as happiness in seeing these portraits. I shall look at them every day.
But I am appalled by the price you had to pay, according to the customs declaration; my poor portraits only cost half a guinea each! And I was amused – as an illustration of what the Protective Tariff is doing for Britain – to have to pay 8s.11d. – not for deficient postage, but as DUTY!
YouHale, Emilycorrespondence with TSE;w3TSE begs EH that it be preserved;c1 areBodleian Library, Oxfordintended repository for Hale correspondence;a1 very patient with me over the Bodleian. But if you will look up the early letter in which I mentioned it (or confess that you have destroyed it!) you will see that I meant much more than merely mentioning an anonymous friend. Not that I should dream of holding you to your word given then, if you stand firm in your wishes. IHale, Emilycorrespondence with TSE;w3less exciting to EH than at first;c2 scrutinise your letters closely enough, you may be sure, to have perceived the change of mood you speak of – you are now able to write without the ‘excitement’ you spoke of then – (it is equally natural, too, that I should not have had to feel any change in myself except deepening and intensification). But what I do not yet understand is what motive of delicacy, modesty or what, is in your mind now, that you should wish your name erased from my history. Of course, if you wish my name erased from yours (or if you come to wish that later), that is a different thing altogether and if you give me to think that, then there will be no papers for the Library at all, only a blank. But pray consider, from the point of view of reticence or delicacy, how little that can count in nearly a hundred years from now: and it would be so long as that before the papers were opened: when there could be no one hurt, and no feeling possible except that of greater pity for all concerned. As for my selfish motive, please believe that I care little about posthumous fame; but that it does canker to feel that so long as there is any interest in me at all, if there is, my life and work will be misunderstood to the end of time.
It is good of you to be willing to defer the matter until it can be talked over. Thinkingtravels, trips and plansTSE's 1933 westward tour to Scripps;a8TSE's itinerary;a4 over that, it seems to me that if, as I firmly intend, I spend a few days in St. Louis after Christmas, I could easily hop off to the far west – IAmericaCalifornia;d3TSE's wish to visit;a2 should like to cross the continent before I die; and perhaps spend a night in Los Angeles, which is so near to you. I should prefer you not to take any long journey to any place which you had no other pretext for visiting, in order to talk to me; there is no reason why I should not go the whole way, and it would be more suitable. Itravels, trips and plansTSE's 1933 westward tour to Scripps;a8and TSE's need to lecture;a2 hope for some invitation to the Pacific coast. ItKrauss, Sophie M.offers to put TSE up in Seattle;a1 wouldtravels, trips and plansTSE's 1933 westward tour to Scripps;a8possible stopover in Seattle;a5 be very kind of your friend Mrs. Krauss1 to have me, and I should like that: butAmericaSeattle, Washington State;h1;a5 Seattle is a very long way from Claremont, is it not? If I went to Seattle, I could visit my cousins in Portland, or vice versa (I mean if I went to Portland I could go to Seattle). IWilburs, the;a2Wilbur, Earl Morse
IfMaclagan, Eric;a6 I did not feel sure that Maclagan was a man of the utmost probity you would have made me feel that I had given him away! But he told me that his wife did not go, and I remember hearing at the time that she had gone to Egypt with Princess Mary instead. Oh now I have it I think. He told me that he went again on a visit to America two years afterwards with Mrs. M.; so that was the occasion on which you met them! How lucky I thought of that before closing this letter.
I was exasperated to be unable to write on Friday – as'Modern Dilemma, The'being composed;a3 I told you, the broadcasting cut into everything – the last talk is on Easter Day; and this must do for to-day. You will be amused to see some of the letters I have had from ‘listeners’, which I will send. I am memorising your photographs. They, especially the one I like, are very very lovely. Thank you again, my dear my dear.
1.SophieKrauss, Sophie M. M. Krauss (b. 1891), wife of Arthur Jeffrey Krauss (1884–1947), Episcopalian, who had resided in Seattle since 1921. Arthur Krauss ran the Krauss Brothers Lumber Company and was to retire in 1938 when the business was wound up in the area. They lived at 128 40th Avenue N., Seattle, with Lillie Cook (49) and Lucy Williams (28) – presumably their servants. See too Lyndall Gordon, The Hyacinth Girl, 183.
2.Wilbur was due to take sabbatical leave in 1931 so as to pursue his researches in Europe into Unitarian history, but a financial crisis at the Pacific Unitarian School stopped his funding.
1.SophieKrauss, Sophie M. M. Krauss (b. 1891), wife of Arthur Jeffrey Krauss (1884–1947), Episcopalian, who had resided in Seattle since 1921. Arthur Krauss ran the Krauss Brothers Lumber Company and was to retire in 1938 when the business was wound up in the area. They lived at 128 40th Avenue N., Seattle, with Lillie Cook (49) and Lucy Williams (28) – presumably their servants. See too Lyndall Gordon, The Hyacinth Girl, 183.
3.EricMaclagan, Eric Maclagan (1879–1951), Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1924–45, had been Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer at Harvard, 1927–8. Distinguished as scholar and lecturer, and an expert on early Christian and Italian Renaissance art, his works include Catalogue of Italian Sculpture (with Margaret Longhurst, 1932) and The Bayeux Tapestry (1943), translations from poets including Rimbaud and Valéry, and editions of the works of William Blake. His offices included Vice-President of the Society of Antiquaries, 1932–6; President of the Museums Association, 1935–6. A devout Anglo-Catholic, he served too on the Cathedrals Advisory Council and the Central Council for the Care of Churches, and as a member of the Church Assembly. Knighted in 1933, he was appointed KCVO in 1945. In 1913 he married Helen Elizabeth Lascelles.
1.EarlWilbur, Earl Morse Morse Wilbur (1866–1956), Unitarian minister, educator and historian, studied at the University of Vermont and at Harvard Divinity School, and succeeded TSE’s cousin Thomas Lamb Eliot as minister of the Portland Oregon Unitarian Church in 1893. In 1898 he married Eliot’s daughter, Dorothea Dix Eliot (1871–1957); they had two children. He was Dean, President, 1911–31, and Professor of Homiletics and Practical Theology, 1931–4, of the Pacific Unitarian School for Ministry, in Berkeley, Caifornia. A dedicated scholar, he studied languages including Latin, Hungarian and Polish, and did research in countries including Poland, Italy, Spain, France and England, as well as in American archives. His crowning achievement was the publication of his two volumes: A History of Unitarianism: Socinianism and Its Antecedents (1945), and A History of Unitarianism in Transylvania, England, and America to 1900 (1952). In 1953, the American Unitarian Association awarded him the Annual Unitarian Award in Recognition of Distinguished Service to the Cause of Liberal Religion.