[No surviving envelope]
ThankPrinceton Universityand EH's bequest;e8 you for your letter of December 3d. I am of course relieved to learn that my letters to you are not being read by the Librarian at Princeton.
IHale, Emilycorrespondence with TSE;w3which TSE refuses;j6 am however distinctly puzzled. I returned to you the letter addressed to you by the Librarian; but I kept a copy of my letter to you of November 27th (this is the first time I have ever made a copy of a letter to you) and I can quote the exact phrase he used. He wrote ‘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’.
Please consider his words in a calmer and cooler mood than that in which you wrote to me. What does ‘progressively’ imply? That he has opened the parcel and is sorting out the letters. The notion of ‘bulk’ he could gain merely from inspection of the size of the parcel. It may have been larger than he expected. I fail to see, however, how he could get a ‘progressively clearer idea’ of the bulk: I should have thought that the bulk would be obvious at the first glance. But what does ‘richness’ mean? Such a term can only apply to the contents of the letters.
Furthermore, you yourself spoke of going to Princeton after the letters have been ‘catalogued’. If it were merely a question of ‘cataloguing’ a parcel, that could hardly be a matter of more than a few minutes.
I should like to know how the Librarian’s words could be interpreted otherwise than I interpreted them, except by admitting that the Librarian’s English was very slipshod, and that when you said ‘cataloguing’ you meant something different from what the word implies to me.
It is true that when you first wrote and proposed your design of presenting the letters now to Princeton (in itself a somewhat unusual thing to do, but I raised no objection, as you seemed so well pleased to do so) you stated that the letters would not be read. But In your following letter you agreed to a compromise (for that was what it was in effect) with my desire that the letters should be kept unopened until fifty years after my death (at which moment they fall out of copyright) by saying that you would give instructions that they should not be opened until fifty years after 1956 – a trifling difference which I was prepared to overlook. But And as you were so readily persuaded to accept the view of the authorities at Princeton, and as the wording of the Librarian’s letter seemed so clear, it was natural to suppose that they had persuaded you in that respect also.
As for the suggestion that my letters from 1949 should be made immediately available, I say emphatically NO. These letters are the least interesting and the least valuable; and I do not see what right the ‘many now living who are fine students of my poetry’ have to learn my privately expressed remarks from day to day. They have as good a right to ask for copies of every personal letter that I write.
I must also confirm what I said in my letter of the 27th November as follows: ‘It also seems to me an impertinence for the gentlemen in question to “express disapproval” of my stipulation that they [sc. the] letters should not be accessible to readers until 50 years after my death’. In fact, what you said was: ‘Now, Tom, both men most strongly express disapproval of the very long term of years we placed on the letters’.
I do not propose to dispose of your letters to me until my death.
I feel finally that it is for you, not for me, to communicate with Princeton. If they want to write to me they can.
I am particularly sorry, my dear, that such a storm should have arisen at Christmastide. What I should like would be an explanation of what the Librarian meant his words to mean, while I insist that interpretation I placed upon them was reasonable and natural. I am also puzzled by your phrase which you put in inverted commas ‘I am very very sorry for you’. I can understand your being annoyed with me for crossing your wishes, not why you should be, in such a situation, ‘sorry’ for me. It sounds perhaps more superior and condescending than you realise! But alas, the whole problem is perhaps simply one of a difference between us as to what is Good Taste. That is the way it looks to me.
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.