[41 Brimmer St., Boston]
No letter yesterday or to-day, so I must sit patiently until Thursday or Friday, Wednesday being the one day on which no letter has ever arrived from you. INichols, RobertWings Over Europe;a3 am tired this morning (afternoon it is now) because we went to ‘Wings Over Europe’ with Hodgson last night. Itvan Volkenburg, Ellen;a1 was produced by Elisa v. [sc. Ellen van] Volkenburg1 whom you once mentioned to me, and Maurice Browne the joint author with Robert Nichols. I fear the play will not run long here, as the house was half empty. If it ran several months in New York, as I hear, that is a tribute to the New York audiences, which I suspect are much better educated, theatrically, than London audiences. LastKimmins, AnthonyWhile Parents Sleep;a1 night a huge audience was pouring out of the neighbouring theatre after the performance of a farce called ‘While Parents Sleep’2 – that is the measure of the London audience. I really thought the play very good, though not the work of a very experienced hand. But a play with no women in it and no love story whatever, which deals wholly with an idea, and in which the scene throughout is the table of a Cabinet Meeting, and yet holds the attention fixedly, has to have something very good about it. The members of the cabinet took the floor in turn, and were well differentiated; some of the humour of their characterisation must have escaped a New York audience, as there were parodies of certain men – BaldwinBaldwin, Stanleyparodied by Robert Nichols;a2, Lord Lonsdale and Lord Hailsham for instance. The plot is grim enough, and concerns the question whether an important, indeed revolutionary, but highly dangerous discovery should be made public or suppressed. But a good and serious play; and I hope that Nichols will eventually succeed.
LunchMirsky, Dmitri S.compared qua Marxist to Rowse;a3 to-day with Mirsky, who returns to Russia in August for good. He understands that he will be given definite employment when he gets there. OfRowse, Alfred Leslie ('A. L.')compared qua Marxist to Mirsky and Murry;a2 thecommunismcommunists known to TSE;a3 professed communists whom I know, Mirsky impresses me as knowing most about his subject (I did send you his essay on me, didn’t I?) (YouChristianityAnglo-Catholicism;a8Anglican Missal sought for EH;a3 shall have a Missal soon). Rowse says not, but Rowse always thinks everybody wrong but himself, and Mirsky says Rowse does not really understand Marxism, andMurry, John Middletondismissed qua Marxist by Mirsky and Rowse;a4 they both say that Middleton Murry does not understand it. IMarx, KarlTSE orders early writings of;a1 mean to try to understand what I can, and have now ordered a German edition of his early writings.3 ButMarxismChristian principle sets TSE against apartcommunismessentially antagonistic to Christianity;a4 from my aversion to Marxism, which is a matter of Christian principle, myeconomicscapitalism and Christianity;a4 own political views are in a rather fluid state. That is, beyond a conviction that the present capitalist scheme does not work properly, and works less and less well, I do not see what positive economic scheme is workable and consistent with Christianity – the present scheme being inconsistent with Christianity in its operation, and communism antagonistic in principle. AndKeynes, John Maynardrubbishes Marx;a1 then there is KeynesMarx, Karlrubbished by Keynes;a2 who tells me that Marx seems to him simply rubbish.4 It is all very confusing. Anyway, it is not my business to turn myself into a constructive economist! only one does feel the need nowadays to think and to prepare oneself to be able to recognise a genuine practical reform if it is ever put forward. MeanwhileAmericaand the Great Depression;a5 I feel increasing anxiety about the United States, and I should like you to tell me if thinking people there are seriously concerned about its future. Has the country any real coherence with its present antiquated federal system of autonomies? IAmericaits national coherence questioned;a8 know what I mean if I speak of a New Englander, or a Virginian, or a Californian (perhaps); but I do not know what I mean if I speak of an American.
WhenHale, Emilycorrespondence with TSE;w3TSE hopes to telephone;b5 I get to Boston, will it not be possible for me to ring up and speak to you for three minutes on the telephone? If that is possible, I shall, with your permission, do so: I understand that long distance telephoning is quite perfect in America; and damn the expense. Something to look forward to.
1.Ellenvan Volkenburg, Ellen van Volkenburg (1882–1978), American actor, director and teacher. Invan Volkenburg, EllenEH's training with;a2n 1918, after working at the Chicago Little Theatre, she founded with her then husband Maurice Browne (1881–1955) – a Cambridge-educated English actor and director – the Department of Drama at the Cornish School (now the Cornish College of the Arts), in Seattle, WA. EHHale, Emilyas actor;v8under Ellen van Volkenburg;b3n studied dramatic interpretation and the reading of poetry with Margaret McLean and Ellen Van Volkenburg, in 1931–2.
2.Anthony Kimmins, While Parents Sleep (1932); later filmed.
3.TSE’s library now holds only Capital (a critique of political economy): vols 1 & 2 (1930).
4.JohnKeynes, John Maynard Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), economist; editor; patron of the arts; government adviser: see Biographical Register.
4.StanleyBaldwin, Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947), Conservative Party politician; Prime Minister, 1923–4; 1924–9; 1935–7.
4.JohnKeynes, John Maynard Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), economist; editor; patron of the arts; government adviser: see Biographical Register.
4.DmitriMirsky, Dmitri S. S. Mirsky (1890–1939), son of Prince P. D. Svyatopolk-Mirsky, army officer and civil servant. Educated at the University of St Petersburg, where he read Oriental Languages and Classics, he served as an army officer and was wounded during WW1 while fighting on the German front; later he served in the White Army. In 1921, he was appointed Lecturer in Russian at the School of Slavonic Studies, London (under Sir Bernard Pares), where his cultivation and command of languages brought him to the attention of a wide literary circle. His works include Contemporary Russian Literature (2 vols, 1926) and A History of Russian Literature from the Earliest Times to the Death of Dostoevsky, 1881 (1927). In 1931 he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (see ‘Why I became a Marxist’, Daily Worker, 30 June 1931), and in 1932 returned to Russia where he worked as a Soviet literary critic (and met Edmund Wilson and Malcolm Muggeridge). In 1937 he was arrested in the Stalinist purge, found guilty of ‘suspected espionage’, and sentenced to eight years of correctional labour: he died in a labour camp in Siberia. See G. S. Smith, D. S. Mirsky: A Russian–English Life, 1980–1939 (2000). Mirsky later did TSE this crude disservice: ‘The classicists led by T. S. Eliot, came forward as conscious supporters of the re-establishment of classical discipline, of a hierarchy, and as open enemies of democracy and liberalism – in short, as the organized vanguard of theoreticians of a capitalist class going fascist’ (The Intelligentsia of Great Britain, trans. Alec Brown [1935], 123).
1.JohnMurry, John Middleton Middleton Murry (1889–1957), English writer and critic; editor of the Athenaeum, 1919–21; The Adelphi, 1923–48. In 1918, he married Katherine Mansfield. He was friend and biographer of D. H. Lawrence. His first notable critical work was Dostoevsky (1916); his most influential study, The Problem of Style (1922). Though as a Romanticist he was an intellectual opponent of the avowedly ‘Classicist’ Eliot, Murry offered Eliot in 1919 the post of assistant editor on the Athenaeum (which Eliot had to decline); in addition, he recommended him to be Clark Lecturer at Cambridge in 1926, and was a steadfast friend to both TSE and his wife Vivien. See F. A. Lea, The Life of John Middleton Murry (1959); David Goldie, A Critical Difference: T. S. Eliot and John Middleton Murry in English Literary Criticism, 1919–1928 (1998).
1.RobertNichols, Robert Nichols (1893–1944), writer; war poet; author of Wings Over Europe (play, 1928).
12.PenelopeNoyes, Penelope Barker Barker Noyes (1891–1977), who was descended from settlers of the Plymouth Colony, lived in a historic colonial house (built in 1894 for her father James Atkins Noyes) at 1 Highland Street, Cambridge, MA. Unitarian. She was a close friend of EH.
3.A. L. RowseRowse, Alfred Leslie ('A. L.') (1903–97), Cornish historian and poet: see Biographical Register.