[c/o Sylvia Knowles, New Bedford; forwardedHale, Emilytravels to stay in Seattle;b6 toAmericaSeattle, Washington State;h1EH summers in;a2 1418 East 63d St., Seattle]
Your note of July 29th arrived yesterday, the 8th; I had had nothing for ten days, your letter of the 21th having arrived on the 29th very quickly. I am vexed that I do not seem to catch the fast boats; I should like my letters to arrive regularly twice a week – although, with your movements and grumbusking (in the children’s language grumbusking means ‘moving rapidly from place to place, like Genghis Khan’ – thus I teach history) I cannot expect that. IFaber, Geoffreymislays key to Hale correspondence;b6 am also vext this morning because, goingWilberforce, Pamela Margaret (TSE's secretary);a4 to Faber’s cupboard where I keep my tin box, I found the key gone. Miss Wilberforce, when interrogated, said that Faber had mislaid his own key some time ago and borrowed hers, and must have taken that to Wales with him; so as she might need access to the cupboard (closet) herself, I told her to wire him to send it. But meanwhile I cannot get at your letters to look up the Seattle address (there are other papers I need also before I go but they can wait); and I am doubtful whether this will reach New Bedford before you leave. I am annoyed, because I wanted to have a letter waiting for you in Seattle on your arrival: but perhaps I shall send a brief cable.
MyCanadaMontreal;a3TSE due to arrive at;a1 sailingtravels, trips and plansTSE's 1932–3 year in America;a7TSE's itinerary;a8, again, is AUSONIA (Cunard Line) due at Montreal on September 25th or 26th. I expect to stop one night at the Queen’s Hotel, Montreal, and go on to Boston. ISheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister)to host TSE on Boston return;a4 shall spend one night with my sister, Mrs. Sheffield, at 31 Madison Street, Gray Gardens, beforeEliot House;a2 settling at Eliot House, if she will have me.1
Itravels, trips and plansEH's 1932 summer holidays;a3;a8 am glad that you have so many good friends to visit, though this is not quite the holiday I should have chosen for you, my dear; I should have preferred your being able to spend most of the vacation settled in one place; but I know that cannot be.
IHinkley, Susan Heywood (TSE's aunt, née Stearns)retails TSE with ex-son-in-law's adulteries;a6 had a strange letter from Mrs. Hinkley yesterday (from North East), recounting all the sordid details of Sohier’s adulteries: which I did not need to know or want to know.2 She did not mention the name of the lady in the case (whomPearmain, Margaret;a1 I knew perfectly well as Margaret Pearmain – at least I knew her family, who were very nice people) but referred to her throughout as ‘the woman’.3 What on earth makes her bring all that up, to me, now? Is it an uneasy conscience, or just the craving for social justification? IHinkley, Barbara (TSE's first cousin)speculations on her failed marriage;a5 hadWelch, Edward SohierBarbara Hinkley justified in leaving;a1 quite understood that Barbara had every reason and necessity for putting Sohier away, and didn’t want to know any more about it. I never could abide the man anyway. But Aunt S. seems perfectly complacent and happy about the only part of the affair that does reflect (from my point of view) upon Barbara; the remarriage. (I believe that Wolcott also had divorced a previous wife, so it is rather a tangle). And at the same time, I reflect that Barbara married too young; and that possibly she never was very much in love with Sohier; and that she is pretty brainless and perhaps not very passionate, and that she may have been a trial to live with. That doesn’t extenuate Sohier’s actual conduct in the least, of course; but it may go towards explaining it – a man of no very deeply rooted principles, more or less unconsciously dissatisfied, suddenly busting out. AnywayHinkleys, thebemuse TSE;c1, I don’t want to hear any more about it, and I don’t want to see much of Barbara, and I feel (this is what matters) that I don’t quite understand the Hinkleys and probably never will.
OnLittles, the Leondine chez Eliot;a1 SundayEliots, the T. S.;e8 evening we had Leon Little andLittle, Eleanor (née Wheeler);a1 his wife (Eleanor Wheeler)4 to supper at short notice; they were only here for a few days and have gone again. I had never met her before. She seems quite likeable: she is extraordinarily like Penelope in appearance! She is much more aged in appearance than Leon (I hope you take better care of your skin than she does – I should say she never massaged her face at all. I am glad that your face does not tan). But Leon is as lovable as ever and I am sure is a very good husband; he was always one of the most virtuous of men and is very domestic & devoted to his children.
NowBeachcroft, Thomas Owen ('T. O.');a2 Tom Beachcroft is waiting to take me to lunch. I hope that I shall have the closet key before Friday, when I write again; alsoKnowles, Sylvia Hathaway;a2 that Miss Knowles will know where to forward your letters. Bon soir, mon petit chou, m’amie.
1.FrankHale, EmilyFrank Morley on Ada on;b7n Morley to Helen Gardner, 28 June 1978: ‘The impression I derived from Ada was that [for] many years she had been grateful that Tom, in his first college period at Harvard, had escaped a possible marriage with Emily – nothing against Emily except the feeling that she might be “too high-strung”. Tom escaped from Boston but in London was married, alas disastrously, to high-strung Vivien […] I fancy that Emily’s interest in poetic drama (Emily was highly intelligent and articulate as well as perhaps possessive) might be a strong hold on Tom’ (Berg).
2.Letter not found.
3.EdwardWelch, Edward Sohier Sohier Welch (1888–1948), lawyer, had married TSE’s cousin Barbara Hinkley in 1909. TheyPearmain, Margaret were divorced in 1926, and he married Margaret Pearmain later the same year. See Elizabeth F. Fideler, Margaret Pearmain Welch (1893–1984): proper Bostonian, activist, pacifist, reformer, preservationist (Eugene, Oregon, 2017).
4.EleanorLittle, Eleanor (née Wheeler) Wheeler (1891–1988).
2.T. O. BeachcroftBeachcroft, Thomas Owen ('T. O.') (1902–88), author and critic. A graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, he joined the BBC in 1924 but then worked for Unilevers Advertising Service until 1941. He was Chief Overseas Publicity Officer, BBC, 1941–61; General Editor of the British Council series ‘Writers and Their Work’, 1949–54. His writings include Collected Stories (1946).
11.GeoffreyFaber, Geoffrey Faber (1889–1961), publisher and poet: see Biographical Register.
6.BarbaraHinkley, Barbara (TSE's first cousin) Hinkley (1889–1958) was married in July 1928 to Roger Wolcott (1877–1965), an attorney; they lived at 125 Beacon Hill, Boston, and at 1733 Canton Avenue, Milton, Mass.
2.SylviaKnowles, Sylvia Hathaway Hathaway Knowles (1891–1979), of New Bedford, Mass. – a descendant of a long-established merchant and business family based there – was a friend and room-mate of EH from their schooldays at Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Vermont.
4.EleanorLittle, Eleanor (née Wheeler) Wheeler (1891–1988).
3.EdwardWelch, Edward Sohier Sohier Welch (1888–1948), lawyer, had married TSE’s cousin Barbara Hinkley in 1909. TheyPearmain, Margaret were divorced in 1926, and he married Margaret Pearmain later the same year. See Elizabeth F. Fideler, Margaret Pearmain Welch (1893–1984): proper Bostonian, activist, pacifist, reformer, preservationist (Eugene, Oregon, 2017).
2.AdaSheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister) Eliot Sheffield (1869–1943), eldest of the seven Eliot children; author of The Social Case History: Its Construction and Content (1920) and Social Insight in Case Situations (1937): see Biographical Register.
3.EdwardWelch, Edward Sohier Sohier Welch (1888–1948), lawyer, had married TSE’s cousin Barbara Hinkley in 1909. TheyPearmain, Margaret were divorced in 1926, and he married Margaret Pearmain later the same year. See Elizabeth F. Fideler, Margaret Pearmain Welch (1893–1984): proper Bostonian, activist, pacifist, reformer, preservationist (Eugene, Oregon, 2017).
7.PamelaWilberforce, Pamela Margaret (TSE's secretary) Margaret Wilberforce (1909–97), scion of the Wilberforce family (granddaughter of Samuel Wilberforce) and graduate of Somerville College, Oxford, was appointed ‘secretary-typist’ to the Chairman’s office on 1 July 1930, at a salary of £2.10.0 a week. She was required to learn typing and shorthand; she asked too for time to improve her German.