[c/o Sylvia Knowles, 47 Morelands Terrace, New Bedford]
ICharles Eliot Norton Lectures (afterwards The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism)hard-going;a7 am finding it very difficult to get the time, or to concentrate sufficiently when I have any time, to do any work upon lectures. (ILondon Library;a2 looked in at the London Library to-day afterRichmond, Bruce;a6 lunching at the club with Richmond, to see if they had any biographical material about C. E. Norton, so that I might make a ‘graceful reference’ in the first lecture, and found nothing at all. IJames, Henry;a4 am sure that I have read an essay by Henry James somewhere).1 TheEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)and TSE's departure for America;e9possible arrangements in TSE's absence;a8 trouble is that until V.’s arrangements are definite I feel very unsettled. SheThayer, Lucy Ely;a2 has heard from Lucy Thayer, who seems to be very uncertain about coming, and cannot get here until October anyway, so that some one else will have to be provided for an interim at best.
I am not quite sure that I quite understand all of your admonitions, though the general trend is clear. Do'drugs'activity ('being useful');a1 you think that I have allowed myself to get into a wasteful round of fatiguing and not wholly congenial activity, which is spoiling my general usefulness? Got into it either to drug myself, or avoid a greater effort, or from a gentle weakness of purpose? As for past years, I am quite aware of having, through weakness, strangeness, and slowness to mature, wasted time in the activities of a frivolous society; I do not regret that now, because the past, once one is conscious of it and detached from it, can be material of experience of which one can make use towards wisdom. But what is much more important than that, I admit that for the last few years I have been dissatisfied with the life I live – I am no longer young enough to profit by acquiring and accumulating experience of society – any society; andChristianityretreat and solitude;c9a need increasing with age;a4 have reached a mental age when more solitude, more opportunity for meditation and continued thought becomes vital. ICharles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetrya break with present existence;b3 certainly welcomed the invitation to America – and the inevitability of accepting it – because I had been searching for some compromise in a way of life which might enable me to satisfy the minimum of spiritual needs; and this seemed to promise a very positive break with the past. MyChristianitytemptation;d7to action/busyness;a1 problem while I am there is to insist on keeping the demands, and the pleasant temptations, of the external world – the temptation of social activity and immediate ‘usefulness’ – in their place; and so begin to build up a habit of life which will make it impossible to live in the future exactly the same life that I have been living in the immediate past. It seems to me, as a practical detail, that I shall have to be able to retire from time to time, pretty often, by myself – either in monasteries, or in foreign sojourns – I also need to visit friends by myself, so as to be able to retain a normality of attitude towards other human beings. ItEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)mental state;e8benefits from active social life;a3 must be confessed that the strain of living with anyone, and in their constant company, who feels no need for solitude or any internal life, but rather only the need to escape from it among varied people – for whom solitude and internal life can mean only self-centred brooding in contrast to which social activity and dissipation (in the mildest sense) means health – this is very great.
But after all, I am compelled to admit that my important difficulties, I know, are not in my circumstances so much as in my own nature. IfHale, EmilyTSE's love for;x2and the torment of resignation;b6 you knew, my dear, theChristianityresignation, reconciliation, peace;c8the struggle to maintain;a4 daily struggle with myself, the hard struggle towards the resignation which makes for cheerful contented activity, against day-dreams, sloth, the torment of the body, against the torpid temptation to believe that I am merely living in a prison cell and can do nothing except to watch one day and one night pass into another. I had already my notions of what I should aim at; you have helped me very much in strengthening my desire towards that end; I should so much like to become a man whom you could unreservedly admire!
All about myself. Theflowers and florasweet peas;c9effect of their scent on TSE;a2 sweet peas in England say nothing to me, because they have lost their scent, if they ever had it; and the scent of sweet peas is the loveliest in the world. But I am glad they have it not, for it would be too disturbing to me; I shall imagine it from the sweet peas which you put ‘upon my desk’ the other day.
A la bonne heure, et à prochaine fois.
1.HenryJames, Henryon Charles Eliot Norton;a5n James, ‘An American Art-Scholar: Charles Eliot Norton’, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 14: 170 (Jan. 1909), 201–4.
3.BruceRichmond, Bruce Richmond (1871–1964), editor of the TLS, 1902–37.
1.LucyThayer, Lucy Ely Ely Thayer (1887–1952) – a cousin of TSE’s old friend Scofield Thayer, and a friend and confidante of Vivien Eliot – had been a witness at the Eliots’ wedding on 26 June 1915.