[No surviving envelope]
I am afraid that your letter of the 23rd, which arrived yesterday evening, gave me a considerable shock. And the worst of it is that I do not believe that I can make you understand why it is a shock, or sympathise with feelings which you will, I fear, quite misunderstand. ISheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister)invoked against EH;k8 canEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother)invoked against EH;m2 onlyEliot, Marion Cushing (TSE's sister)invoked against EH;h9 say that I am sure that my brother and sisters, Ada and Henry and Marian who is still living, would feel exactly as I do in this matter.
InPrinceton Universityand EH's bequest;e8 the first place, I had assumed that the letters of mine which you are giving to Princeton University would be sealed up at once, and not examined until 50 years after my death. JudgeDix, William Shepherdsuspected of reading letters;a5 therefore of my surprise on reading the letter addressed to you by the Librarian, in which he says complacently: ‘as I gain a progressively clearer idea of its bulk and richness I grow more and more happy at the prospect of having it in our possession’.
My God! does this mean that a complete stranger, a professional librarian, is already reading letters which were composed for your eye alone? I seem to have heard of dying travellers in a desert, with the vultures starting to dismember them before the end. I feel somewhat like that. Even if Mr Dix is the ‘finest type of gentleman’.
It also seems to me an impertinence for the gentleman in question to ‘express disapproval’ of my stipulation that the letters should not be accessible to readers until 50 years after my death. That is quite a normal term, and surely the writer of letters, rather than the ultimate beneficiaries, should be the judge of that. As'Frontiers of Criticism, The'invoked against EH;a5 for those ‘many now living’ who are ‘fine students of my poetry and place in the world now’, whom you suggest would suffer by the prohibition, these are just the people to whose activities I object in the lecture The Frontiers of Criticism delivered in Minneapolis of which I sent you a copy.1
I must remind you that, although the letters cannot be printed and distributed without the consent of my Literary Executors until fifty years after my death, they would none the less be public. The librarian could give consent for ‘approved researchers’ to study the letters; the researchers would quote from them, <in paraphrase, of course, not in inverted commas,> publish outlines of their contents, and psychoanalise [sic] me to their hearts’ content.
There is only one justification for preserving my letters at all, and making them ultimately available: that they should constitute a record of the place you have occupied in my life. I feel that this is due to you.
Meanwhile, I gather, the letters are being ‘catalogued’!
I can only say – and I am very very sorry to have to tell you how this affair has horrified me – that any diminution of the period I had set (and you had agreed to before you talked to the people at Princeton) will be utterly in opposition to my own feelings and wishes.
And I fear – and this is my greatest grief in the matter – that my feelings will be so incomprehensible that you will assign quite different reasons and causes for them than the true simple one. I only feel as any of my family would feel about any really private and intimate correspondence.
Try to forgive the brusque tone of this letter. ButSuez Crisis;a2 I have other worries and concerns on my mind at the moment – not the least of which is Suez – so that when your letter arrived it was almost more than I could bear without physical nausea.
1.‘The Frontiers of Criticism’, Sewanee Review 64: 4 (Oct.–Dec. 1956), 525–43; CProse 8, 121–38.
1.WilliamDix, William Shepherd Shepherd Dix (1910–78): Librarian, Princeton University, 1953–75. Having gained first degrees (BA and MA) at the University of Virginia, he earned a doctorate in American literature at the University of Chicago. After working first as a teacher and English instructor, he became Associate Professor of English and Librarian of Rice Institute, Houston, Texas (now Rice University), 1947–53. Resolutely opposed to censorship and intellectual constraint, he served as chair of the Intellectual Freedom Committee of the American Library Association (ALA), 1951–3; chair of the International Relations Committee, 1955–60; and President of the ALA, 1969–70. In addition, he was Executive Secretary, 1957–9, and President, 1962–3, of the Association of Research Libraries. Recognised as one of the topmost figures in librarianship, he was honoured by the American Library Association with the Dewey Medal, 1969, and the Lippincott Award, 1971.
3.HenryEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother) Ware Eliot (1879–1947), TSE’s older brother: see Biographical Register.
1.Marian/MarionEliot, Marion Cushing (TSE's sister) Cushing Eliot (1877–1964), fourth child of Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Eliot: see Biographical Register.
2.AdaSheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister) Eliot Sheffield (1869–1943), eldest of the seven Eliot children; author of The Social Case History: Its Construction and Content (1920) and Social Insight in Case Situations (1937): see Biographical Register.