[41 Brimmer St., Boston]
Your letter of June 21st arrived the next day (Wednesday) to confute me: but I am superstitious enough to hope that if I protest that no letter from you will come, it is much more likely to come; and so accept my humble apologies, and for such scrappy letters as some that I have written of late. But June, and up to the middle of July, is a very busy period, with meetings and committees as well as social engagements, and young men just down from Oxford and Cambridge wanting jobs, or literary work. And I know that some of my longer letters may be very unsatisfactory, because they seem to be nothing but a sketchy chronicle of events and names of people; but even that, I think, has some value, if it helps to give some continuous impression of my daily existence.
Your letter sounded very tired to me; but I can imagine how the end of the year, and the breakup of one mode of life, must affect you; andHale, EdwardEH goes through possessions of;a2 goingHale, Emily Jose Milliken (EH's mother)a strain on EH;a8 through old possessions, of your own and of your mother and father, must be painful; and then you have had the pain and strain of arranging about your mother. You speak as if your mother were also in physical suffering; I am afraid that I had assumed that the suffering was solely mental, and that her physical health was unimpaired. I have not wished to ask questions, or to seek to know more than you care to tell; taking for granted that you know that everything to do with you is of more importance to me than anything else is. Will Mrs. Perkins be able to visit her from time to time during the winter? it is perhaps more important to visit the doctors than the patient. (YouPerkins, Edith (EH's aunt)her relationship to EH queried;a1 have never told me, but I presume Mrs. Perkins is your mother’s sister, not Mr. P. her brother).
I was so certain already that you meant September 19th and not October 19th, that the assurance that I could not possibly see you before you left came as no shock: I could not believe in any such good fortune as that. And I suppose that you will not be released until sometime in June, after I have left. FrederickEliot, Revd Frederick May (TSE's first cousin)invites TSE to lecture in St. Paul;a1 has written to ask me if I could lecture at St. Paul on January 12th, but I will not make any appointment there definite, lest it should interfere with my visit to California; I must leave myself a little scope, and room for a little holiday. IAmericaNew Bedford, Massachusetts;f8EH's holidays in;a1 am sending this to Brimmer Street as usual, and [?as] you have not made your address quite legible; I take it to be: 47 Morelands Terrace. In the possibility of that being wrong, I shall put my address on the back of the envelope. I think that after you leave for Seattle, it will be too late for you to write to me again; it would be a pity to write any letter which would arrive after my departure; and I may not come in to the office for the last few days before the 17th. So I shall reconcile myself to two or three weeks without news of you; butHale, Emilycorrespondence with TSE;w3TSE hopes to telephone;b5 I hope that I may find a letter awaiting me at Eliot House on the 27th September, giving your telephone number, and I shall wire for an appointment to ring you up: I suppose there is three hours difference in time.
IdogsBull Terrier;b8home found for 'Picky';a2 believe that IMorleys, the;a2 have found a home for Hodgson’s bull terrier with the Morleys in Surrey.
1.‘Dear Emilie, I kiss your shoes: see you soon.’
2.RevdEliot, Revd Frederick May (TSE's first cousin) Frederick May Eliot (1889–1958) – first cousin – Unitarian clergyman and author: see Biographical Register.
1.EdwardHale, Edward Hale (1858–1918), Unitarian minister, father of Emily Hale: see Biographical Register.