[35A School St., Andover, Mass.]
NO! Please address me as Esquire, even if you omit the O.M. In any case, an O.M. is an esquire, as my patent from the King is addressed to his trusty and well-beloved servant Thomas Stearns Eliot Esquire. Theoretically, it is only barristers, I think fellows of Oxford and Cambridge colleges, heads of landed gentry families, holders of certain orders and perhaps a few other categories, but in practice nowadays one puts it on a letter to anybody one is addressing as an equal, in this country. I am glad to be reassured that your silence is due to beginning of term obstacles and not so far to ill health – which would be very disappointing after your exhilarating circular tour of America. I am also interested in your new method of tuition – it seems to give the girls a sort of responsibility for teaching themselves something, and to make them less passive learners. AndHale, Emilyas director ('producer');v9Holy Night;d2 it’s also interesting that your play girls want to do something so serious as the play you describe.1
It would be my intention, on my next visit to the States, to try to arrange just enough readings in the near vicinity of Boston to cover expenses, and not travel at all widely – perhaps avoid any sojourn in New York and visit to Washington. Then stay a little longer in Cambridge and refuse more than one engagement a day. ItHinkley, Eleanor Holmes (TSE's first cousin)as 1956 hostess;f4 is difficult, of course. Eleanor only let me into one heavy engagement – dinner with the Constables – butPickmans, thehost TSE at country estate;a2Pickman, Edward Motley
AsPrinceton Universityand EH's bequest;e8 for theHale, Emilycorrespondence with TSE;w3TSE reiterates 50-year prohibition;j1 letters despatched to Princeton (it makes me feel as if I was already dead, or ought to be!) areThorps, the;f2 they being read by the Thorps and perhaps others, or are they sealed up? If any current letters are to be added year by year, I shall have to think of things to say which might interest future researchers. You don’t refer to my comment on the question of the length of time during which they should remain inaccessible – I wonder if one letter of mine has gone astray?
I’mPrufrock and Other ObservationsTSE owns no copy of;a2 afraid IFor Lancelot Andrewes;a2 can’t supply the ‘Prufrock’ volume or the Lancelot Andrews volume – I have never bothered about keeping copies of any books of mine except those in print. IAbbot Academy, Andover, MassachusettsTSE offers signed books to;b6 would gladly send anything you want for Abbott [sic] that is wanted, if it is something that we keep in stock.
Alas, I’m afraid my visits to the United States can never be ‘a rest’. If I did not have to earn money while there, and could come as I did in 1936 – in the summer – that would be within the bounds of possibility.
1.The Advent production of the Senior Drama Class of Abbot Academy was to be EH’s production of Holy Night: A Christmas Miracle Story in Three Scenes, by Gregorio Martinez Sierra, trans. Philip Hereford (1928). (‘The story takes place within a Cathedral and outside the walls of a Spanish city.’)
2.Edward Motley Pickman (1886–1959) and his wife, Hester Marion Pickman, née Chanler (1898–1989), were descended from an affluent and cultivated New England trading family: they had homes on Beacon Hill, Boston, and at Old Farm, Bedford, MA. They had six children. See Hugh Whitney, ‘Edward Motley Pickman’, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3rd series, 72 (Oct. 1957–Dec. 1960), 364–70.
3.TheSignet Society, TheTSE's association with;a3n Signet Society, which TSE had joined as a student, was founded in 1871 by students who resolved to boycott the Hasty Pudding Club and its rival sophomore society, Pi Eta.
4.TheSociety of Fellows, Thedescribed;a2n Society of Fellows, founded in 1933 by A. Lawrence Lowell (President Emeritus of Harvard), facilitated research across departments and fostered interdisciplinary contacts.
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.