Emily Hale to Marianne Moore
ForSmith CollegeEH approaches Marianne Moore for;d3 many years I have heard you spoken of by Mr T. S. Eliot whom I have known since his graduate days at Harvard. So vivid have been his comments on you and your work, which he so much admires, I almost feel as if I knew you also. It was my great loss that I could not hear you when you appeared at the Boston Arts Festival, but I follow you in print, whenever the opportunity comes.
I write especially for the Friends of the Smith College Library. You may know of the rapidly growing special Collection of women’s contributions to the creative life of the world as described more fully in the enclosure. MrsGrierson, Dr Margaret Grierson (née Storrs);a1 Grierson,1 the director of the Sophia Smith Collection, has asked me to inquire of you whether we might have the honor and privilege of receiving from you any correspondence, comments or biographical material relating to you and your poetry or original manuscripts. TheMendenhall, Thomas C.;a1 College is making a special effort this year to acquire valuable source material for the Collection, in honor of the new President, Mr Thomas C. Mendenhall.2
If you can favour us with any personal material and feel that Smith College is a worthy guardian for the future of whatever papers you have kept throughout your most interesting creative life, the College will indeed be greatly favored and proud.3
1.DrGrierson, Dr Margaret Grierson (née Storrs) Margaret Grierson, née Storrs (1900–97) – she taught philosophy at Smith College, 1930–6, and served as college archivist from 1940 – took on in 1942 the role of executive secretary of the Friends of the Smith College Library (EH did some voluntary work for the Friends). In 1938, to everyone’s surprise, Storrs married the Scottish scholar and academic Sir Herbert Grierson in Edinburgh; but even though the couple lived apart from Feb. 1939 – Sir Herbert died in 1960 – she retained the surname Grierson for the remainder of her life.
2.ThomasMendenhall, Thomas C. C. Mendenhall (1910–98), historian and academic administrator, served as the sixth President of Smith College, 1959–75: he was to be the last male president of the college.
3.MarianneMoore, Mariannewhich Moore declines;a8n Moore replied from 260 Cumberland Street, Brooklyn 5, 27 Sept. 1959:
Dear Miss Hale,
I feel as if I knew you, too, having often heard you spoken of by the Eliots – Theresa, Henry, and T. S. Eliot; have thought of you almost as a collaborator in some of T. S. Eliot’s plays – have heard how helpful you have been to students, at Scripps, also at Andover, and wish I were not so innocent of it all.
I do wish I could make your trouble in writing to me worth while by offering Mrs Grierson an item or items for the Smith College Library Collection (Friends of the Smith College Library Collection), but Bryn Mawr – my alma mater – has been promised data or memorabilia I may have. However, I shall carefully keep your letter and enclosure, should something that I might offer, occur to me.
My part in the Boston Arts Festival was by no means remarkable; still, I wish that you had been there, that I might have met you. I have an affection for Smith – have reason to – the College has been so very generous to me – and wish I might be present at the ceremonies in November, the inauguration of President Mendenhall, Reverses in health (of which my letter bears evidence!) hinder me and I cannot come! I shall hope to outgrow my restrictions.
————Sincerely yours
————Marianne Moore [signed]
I thank you for the Sophia Smith Collection brochure – of intense interest to me.
Miss Emily Hale – Friends of the Smith College Library, Smith College, Northampton.
1.DrGrierson, Dr Margaret Grierson (née Storrs) Margaret Grierson, née Storrs (1900–97) – she taught philosophy at Smith College, 1930–6, and served as college archivist from 1940 – took on in 1942 the role of executive secretary of the Friends of the Smith College Library (EH did some voluntary work for the Friends). In 1938, to everyone’s surprise, Storrs married the Scottish scholar and academic Sir Herbert Grierson in Edinburgh; but even though the couple lived apart from Feb. 1939 – Sir Herbert died in 1960 – she retained the surname Grierson for the remainder of her life.
2.ThomasMendenhall, Thomas C. C. Mendenhall (1910–98), historian and academic administrator, served as the sixth President of Smith College, 1959–75: he was to be the last male president of the college.
6.MarianneMoore, Marianne Moore (1887–1972) contributed to The Egoist from 1915. She went on to become in 1925 acting editor of The Dial, editor, 1927–9, and an influential modern poet. Eliot found her ‘an extremely intelligent person, very shy … One of the most observant people I have ever met.’ Writing to her on 3 April 1921, he said her verse interested him ‘more than that of anyone now writing in America’. And in his introduction to Selected Poems (1935), which he brought out from Faber & Faber, he stated that her ‘poems form part of the small body of durable poetry written in our time’. TSE told Marion Dorn, 3 Jan. 1944, that he met Marianne Moore ‘once … in New York, but I took a great fancy to her: she and Bunny Wilson were the two people I liked best of those whom I met in New York in 1933. She is a very unusual person, as well as a good poet.’