[1418 East 63d St., Seattle]
I am starting a letter to-day (Thursday) as I fear I shall not have very much time tomorrow: HarryCrofton, Harry C.;a5 Crofton is lunching with me at 12 at the United Universities Club; andappearance (TSE's)teeth;c2'nothing but chalk';a2 in the afternoon I must go to the dentist. Yessummerin London;a5, in all this heat – I envy the children who can go about in bathing suits, and the young women (very sensibly and economically) without stockings. I had hoped to postpone my dentistry for the comparative leisure of Harvard, but a tooth-ache has given me warning. My teeth are a shocking sight (what there is of them) even when I have attention twice a year; but my dentist says they are nothing but chalk and all I can do is to hang on to the stumps and defer a false set as long as I can.
I was very dissatisfied with my last letter. I was pressed for time when I got towards the end, and I am sure that nothing I said will read as I meant it, so will you please disregard it? I hope that not only the style (as I suggested) but also the matter of my letters to you will improve when I am, as I trust shall be, more master of my own time. (To escape hospitality without giving offence seems to me the chief of my problems, but I do not want you to think that I am not taking my lectures seriously).
WhatChristianityasceticism, discipline, rigour;a9more possible during Harvard year;a8 IAmericaBoston, Massachusetts;d1possibly conducive to TSE's spiritual development;b1 am really interested to find out, while I am in Cambridge, is what I shall be able to do in the way of spiritual and intellectual life when I am completely my own master. When one has been accustomed, for so many years, merely to do what one can in the circumstances, has one lost the ability to make the most of relative freedom? I feel that I must make the most of my opportunities of this kind, and instead of the compulsory discipline impose upon myself a rigorous voluntary discipline. ToSociety of Saint John the Evangelist, Cambridge, Mass.;a1 begin with, there will be the Cowley Father’s house quite near me,1 and I hope I may go to Mass there nearly every morning, and to most of the other offices of the week. Thenwritingand 're-creative thought';a5 ICoriolanTSE hopes to finish;a3 must try to spend a regular amount of time in private meditation and thought: re-creative thought, rather than the expense of thinking merely to produce an article or a lecture; and lastly, I must try, if I can in that atmosphere, to finish my poem. So I hope that after three months of this I may be a better regulated person by the time you see me than I am now – hot, dusty and bothered extremely.
I am quite aware that none of this will be easy. InCharles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetryattendant social obligations dreaded;b4 fact the Norton Professor ought to be a man who has had all of this in his normal life, and who is prepared (both physically and morally) for a holiday of social engagements among new acquaintances. And also it will be more difficult for me than for other Norton Professors, in that there are so many relatives and friends of whom I shall have to see a good deal, as well as new people. AdaSheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister);a5, in her letter, says that they want to arrange a party for me to meet the Wellesley Faculty; MargaretEliot, Margaret Dawes (TSE's sister)wishes to arrange TSE's birthday party;a6 says that she wants to arrange a birthday party for me at once. NoneEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother)sibling most attuned to TSE's needs;a5 of my family, except perhaps Henry, knows enough about me to perceive what I really need (Ada will, I am sure, after I have seen something of her and talked frankly to her). ButEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother)witness to the Eliots in 1926;a6 HenryEliots, the T. S.in 1926;f1 was over here for some months on his honeymoon in the disastrous year 1926; heEliot, Theresa Garrett (TSE's sister-in-law)witness to the Eliots in 1926;a1 and Theresa were here in London for a considerable time, and we spent a month with them in Rome, atEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)drug habits;e71926 bromidia delusions;a3 a time when V. was soaked in bromidia and thought the police were pursuing her from country to country (one of the most frightful hours of my life was spent in the railway station in Milan – and again a few weeks later in Lausanne); and has a pretty intelligent grasp of the situation, though there is much, before and since, that he does not know. But no one knows better than I do what a poor substitute correspondence is for word of mouth.
IHale, Emilycorrespondence with TSE;w3compared with talking;d3 am increasingly conscious of that – it made me feel after my last letter – if I hadn’t been going to see you, I should have taken much more time over saying what I meant – and as I am going to see you, I had better have postponed it. But on the other hand, how much can one say in two or three days or perhaps four? It is a very odd situation: I know you, I believe, far more intimately than I have ever known anyone – and yet we have never really had a talk – with all of those whom I call my friends I have had so much of this, and known them so much better by intonation, by gesture, by their expression as they spoke or as I spoke to them; and with you, none. For when we were children we were both too shy and reserved to have real conversation. I don’t believe in ‘saving up’ things to say, but in letting a meeting take its course naturally: but I do look forward to seeing you as of the utmost significance for me, in establishing in private talk the same relation which we have in correspondence. (It is incorrect to say ‘none’ – for I was intensely aware of all these things the last time I saw you – but there was no conscious ‘correspondence’ in it, then. ButHale, Emilyrelationship with TSE;w9TSE dates first meeting to 1905;b5 just as in one way I feel that I have known you since long before I ever actually met you (the date of meeting was, I think, 1905);2 so in another way our meeting in January will be like the meeting of two people who have only just, full grown, come into existence.
OnMorley, Susannaher baptism;a2 Saturday I go to Lingfield (Surrey) for the baptism of my god-daughter, whom I have not yet seen, Susanna Morley.3 (IMorley, Susannasilver mug as christening present;a3 sent her a little silver mug with chickens and rabbits engraved upon it). It is possible that next week, or if not the week after, I may have to go away with V. to the country for four or five days; but in any case I expect to be here on Monday and will write a line then. I do not expect to get more than one, or perhaps two letters more from you; so you should imagine how keen an appetite I shall have for your handwriting by the time I reach Montreal.
IHale, Emily Jose Milliken (EH's mother);a9 hope that your last meeting with your mother was not a painful one. Has she understood, I wonder, how long you are like to be away?
1.The Society of Saint John the Evangelist, 980 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, Mass.
2.FrancesHale, Emilyrelationship with TSE;w9whereas EH dates to 1915;b6n Dickey, ‘May the Record Speak’, 445: ‘[Emily Hale’s] narrative dates their first meeting to 1911–12 “or a little earlier,” when she was twenty … Contradicting both Hale’s memory and the accounts of his biographers, Eliot’s dating of their first meeting is not implausible. A photograph of Hale and Hinkley at the Berkeley Street School in 1904 or before shows that the two girls already knew each other by the time Eliot, only seventeen, was at boarding school [Milton Academy] nearby … In 1905, Hale was fourteen: not as young as Dante’s Beatrice (nine), but not yet a woman.’
3.Susanna Morley, daughter of TSE’s colleague Frank Morley, was born on 12 May 1932.
Frank Morley, in ‘Notes on Sencourt’s T. S. Eliot: A Memoir’: ‘As to V’s health in 1932 she was sometimes in quite equable form – TSE and V. visited Pikes Farm together for Susanna’s christening in August 1932, were there for lunch and tea (TSE driving his small Morris) and happy day for all’ (Berg).
Two years later, on 3 Sept. 1934, Vivien would recall in her diary ‘the day when Morley came, in his car, with his Mother & Father, (who came from Maryland U. S. A. (Baltimore)) to 68 Clarence Gate Gardens to fetch Tom & me to his little baby daughter’s christening [on 28 Aug.]. It was a hot August morning, & my poor Tom had great difficulty in getting me up & dressed & ready to start. My poor boy kept gently reminding me that I was keeping 2 old people wating, & that old Mrs Morley had been very ill & had only come out of the London Clinic & Nursing Home that very day. At last we started, Tom driving me & following the Morley’s car’ (Bodleian).
Seymour-Jones relates further, (Painted Shadow, 479–80): ‘At last they made their rendez-vous: Tom driving Vivienne in their tiny Morris Minor, following Morley’s car, a second-hand American Ford V-8, which blazed the trail, at 20 mph, for the Morris Minor to follow through the twisting lanes. Morley came to a hill, which the Ford breasted with ease. Tom “missed his gear-change, pressed everything pulled everything, stalled, began to roll back – I draw a veil,” remembered Morley, “Another thing I had forgotten was that in the back of the Morris there would be the heaviest of suitcases – Tom never journeyed without the heaviest of suitcases. Another thing I remembered was that Tom would intensely dislike any notice taken, any assistance. I went on waiting … At a third attempt and with unexampled gallantry Tom with the heart of a lion did charge to the top of the mountain. Vivien’s nerves withstood the strain better than mine.”’ (Frank Morley in T. S. Eliot: A Symposium, ed. Richard March and Tambimuttu, 104.)
1.HarryCrofton, Harry C. C. Crofton (d. 1938), was the senior of the four managers of the Colonial and Foreign Department. HisCrofton, Harry C.TSE remembered by his son;a2n son John told the Archivist of Lloyds Bank, 1 Aug. 1980: ‘I have memories of my father inviting T. S. for several week-ends to our home. My mother … used to speak of him and of how much they enjoyed his visits. (If I may add that in those days it was a little unusual for the Chief Foreign Manager to invite “a clerk” for week-ends!!!) I do know that the object of the visits from my father’s side, was to persuade T. S. to give up the Bank and devote himself to his obvious real calling.’
3.HenryEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother) Ware Eliot (1879–1947), TSE’s older brother: see Biographical Register.
6.MargaretEliot, Margaret Dawes (TSE's sister) Dawes Eliot (1871–1956), TSE's second-oldest sister sister, resident in Cambridge, Mass. In an undated letter (1952) to his Harvard friend Leon M. Little, TSE wrote: ‘Margaret is 83, deaf, eccentric, recluse (I don’t think she has bought any new clothes since 1900).’
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.