[Grace Toll Hall, Scripps College, Claremont]
I was grateful and relieved to get your letter of the 20th this morning upon my return from Wayland. OfHale, Emilycorrespondence with TSE;w3EH importuned to write more;d6 course I must not expect to have more than one long (sic) [sic] letter a week; but you must remember how grateful and appreciative I shall be of any tiny bits that you might have time to scribble between times – however unreasonable the demand, I cannot help hoping to have a little more frequent communication from you than I can expect in London – and the long letters needn’t be so long, if only they will be regular. A week’s silence here seems as long as a fortnight’s in London. IHale, Emilyas director ('producer');v9La Locandiera;a1 do hope you are really restored, and not slaving too hard over La Locandiera.1 Are you taking part also or only directing?
I have a good deal of information to make up, as my last letter was so brief. I enjoyed a fairly quiet twentyfour hours at Wayland; theClements, thetheir marriage;a1 house and the country there are pleasant, and the Clements live very quietly. I don’t feel that it is altogether a happy atmosphere; or that the Clements are wholly contented with each other or with their life. I can see considerable divergence between the easy-going Bostonian and the rather austere Geneva Calvinist. MargotClement, Margottoo Swiss for America;a1 has never really reconciled herself to America, and longs for Switzerland; Jim has never really reconciled himself to a humdrum business life in a provincial community, and seems to crave he doesn’t know what. As the boy (an only child) was absent mountainclimbing (he is a freshman) I could not quite complete the picture. Perhaps two or three children of both sexes would have been better for such a couple than one boy – there may be an unconscious struggle as to whether the boy should be American or Swiss; I suspect Jim would prefer him to be an Englishman, but that is out of the question. I don’t think Jim’s mother ever quite reconciled herself to life either – she had mildly aesthetic tastes, and wanted to live in the south of France; and that may have been a handicap to him; butEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother)his aura of futility;a8 his early yearning for things Gallic has turned in middle age to a nostalgia for things English; he sees the limitations of his environment, but is not quite robust enough either to have got out of it or to have come to terms with it; and he has something of the aspect of futility that my brother Henry has. I feel that there was never, perhaps – though these are very obscure regions – been any profound sexual adjustment between him and Margot. They are both good as gold – but I felt the necessity of behaving with alert formality, as if there might be on her part some slight prejudice against his friends, which I must overcome in order to be a really welcome guest. I must add that I don’t see that either of them could have had a better life than they have, as lives go; there is nothing really tragic about either. I think however that people who nourish a vague discontent with their lives always remain a little arrested in development: it is another thing to have missed one or two quite definite things that one wanted – more than anything else: those losses you can face and fight. But it was on the whole a restful weekend. OnHall, Richard ('Dick') Walworth;a1 Sunday night Dick Hall and his wife AmyHall, Amy Gozzaldishares theatrical reminiscences with TSE;a1 Gozzoldi [sc. Gozzaldi]2 turned up rather unexpectedly and stayed to supper; very likeable people they are, Dick much more charming and sympathetic than I remembered him as being when he was a college athlete and I never knew him well. Amy is now a great friend of Margot – possibly her mixed foreign origin makes her sympathetic. Amy and I talked amiably about old times and her present dramatic activities – she asked me whether I remembered you, and I said I did – told me that you had gone to the West and were a great loss to the Club.
SaturdayHinkley, Eleanor Holmes (TSE's first cousin)takes TSE to football match;b3 was a full day – I wrote a few letters, then had to lunch early in order to fetch Eleanor for the football match, for which she had tickets. I was much interested in that, and in the people attending it. The day was fine. The young women are often very pretty, but very much of a type, and no interesting faces; they are smartly turned out, in contrast to the youths escorting, who are almost affectedly sloppy, in battered old clothes – but they don’t seem to affect the shabbiness in the right way, somehow. And as the girls’ faces look as if stamped out by a pattern, the boys’ look as if they had been carelessly moulded out of dough. Soft they look (even when tough, they are still soft) and lacking both the hard precision and the ferocity of the best English undergraduate types; conventional, but a soft convention. EleanorHinkley, Eleanor Holmes (TSE's first cousin)Dear Jane;g5consumes her;a2 chattered continuously – I must admit that she often bores me a little – but made a few acute remarks – was a little too consciously uninterested in the game. Of course she is absorbed in her play to the exclusion of everything else. AfterwardsHinkley, Eleanor Holmes (TSE's first cousin)dances with TSE;b4 I took her back to Eliot House, showed her my rooms, and then we went to a tea dance held by the undergraduates in the college Hall. They seemed very decent fellows, serious and uncouth, and pleasantly unaffected and unconscious; and I think these college dances must be a very good thing. We danced too, a little – Eleanor said she had not danced for many years, and neither had I except on the boat, once – the style of dancing is of course quite different; we managed to get through a few old steps, and I think she really enjoyed herself almost pathetically. She is very young, isn’t she. After I had seen her off I had to dine quickly, in order to be at the Faculty Club, where the graduate students of philosophy assembled with their wives, heard little speachesLovejoy, Arthur O.;a3 [sc. speeches] byWoods, Professor James Haughtonchairs Philosophy Faculty Club dinner;a5 Hocking,3 Lovejoy and myself (Woods in the Chair) and stood about for ices and coffee afterwards. I think my little speech went off rather well, if I say so. As the announcement had been ‘to meet’ Lovejoy and myself, I felt obliged to stop for some time and talk to various people – anybody who wanted to talk to me – and that was very tiring. IPerrys, the;a1 saw Mrs. Ralph Perry,4 and had to accept an invitation to dinner with them on Wednesday; was introduced by Woods to various people, both faculty and students; andWhitehead, Alfred North ('A. N.')TSE makes Bertrand Russell connection with;a1 a dear little old man whose face I just recalled came up and said ‘may I introduce myself; my name is Whitehead’.5 SoRussell, Bertrandonce introduced TSE to A. N. Whitehead;a6 I reminded him of our previous meeting – years ago Bertie gave me an introduction to him; and we had a pleasant talk. GotClement, James;a2 to bed dog tired about twelve, and up at seven thirty for Mass; afterwards being fetched by Jim in a car.
TheLe Gallienne, Evaher Camille;a4 Le Gallienne evening was also very tiring.6 It was neatly done; AuntRobinson, Fredaccompanies TSE and Hinkleys to theatre;a1 SusieHinkley, Susan Heywood (TSE's aunt, née Stearns);a9 had hired a car to take us – including Fred Robinson7 – to the theatre; and made the very best that could be done nowadays of that very antique play – her casts did well too – notablyTerry, Beatricesingled out in Camille;a1 one Beatrice Perry [sc. Terry] in a minor part – the men somewhat less polished, as French men of the world, than the women – but very good – SchildkrautSchildkraut, Josephsingled out in La Gallienne's Camille;a18 excellent – they seem more at ease with the tragic than with the comic. Eva La Gallienne seems to me both a very intelligent and a very conscientious actress-manager. Afterwards we repaired to the Ritz! where we waited in a private drawing room, and I could hardly keep awake. There was something rather comic about the Hinkleys and Professor Robinson waiting for an actress to appear, and somewhat [out] of their element, but quite excited.
IHutchinson, Josephineappears at the Ritz;a2 saw my prospects of getting to bed at a decent hour disappear. EvaLe Gallienne, Evaappears after midnight at the Ritz;a5 appeared about twelve or a little later, withPerkins, Edith (EH's aunt);a5 Josephine Hutchinson (whom your aunt tells me you know!) andCameron, Donald;a1 one Mr. Cameron who is in the company. Eva not quite knowing how she should deal with Cambridge Society, and very anxious to please. Eva very tactful and correct – not insisting on Eleanor taking more than a sip of whisky, and not insisting on my taking as much as in my failing state of spirits I felt I needed; MissHutchinson, Josephineon her leading role in Dear Jane;a3 Hutchinson very much the lady – a little too much, in fact the only adverse criticism I could make of her is that she is too much and too obviously ladylike – Mr. Cameron very decorous; and all really very simple and likeable souls. Miss Hutchinson really very earnest in having her first leading role as Dear Jane – serious about making the most of it – and not, I should say, possessed of any vast sense of humour. (It might be a good part for you if it was worthy of you). Eleanor very apprehensive lest Eva should not know how important I am – for that was the whole point of bringing me – as she naively made evident; and I do hope that I was useful, as otherwise I should have much preferred to be in bed. Into which I crept exhausted at 2.40 a.m.
Dotravels, trips and plansTSE's 1933 westward tour to Scripps;a8and TSE's need to lecture;a2 you think that the best places to try to fix lectures near to Claremont are Pomona, Southern California University, and Leland Stanford?9 ILeland Stanford Junior University (Stanford);a1 am not quite sure whether Leland Stanford is at Berkeley or whether that is another university. Iffinances (TSE's);a6 I should collect $300 altogether I should think that should pay my fares from St. Louis and back. Even the University of Michigan only offers $100 for a lecture now.
This, I think, might be called a long letter, by stretching a point; but I shall write again on Wednesday. Soigne-toi10
Eleanor said to Fred Robinson on the way home: ‘I don’t think anyone could say I was too Bar Harbour now!’ (triumphantly). Little Fred (the great authority on Celtic languages) assured her that no one would.
I am glad you hate my Montreal photograph. I wonder what you will think of the Crimson one.11 Please destroy any that you dislike.
1.La Locandiera: three-act comedy by Carlo Goldoni (1751).
2.RichardHall, Richard ('Dick') Walworth Walworth Hall (1889–1966), who graduated from Harvard in 1910 and gained his LL.B from Boston University in 1913, was a lawyer. He shared TSE’s passion for small boat sailing. Hall and hisHall, Amy Gozzaldi wife Amy Gozzaldi Hall (d. 1981) lived at 11 Hawthorn Street, Cambridge, Mass. Both of them greatly enjoyed amateur dramatics: see Richard W. Hall, ‘Recollections of the Cambridge Social Dramatic Club’, The Proceedings of the Cambridge Historical Society 38 (1959–60), 51–66. InHall, Amy Gozzaldiplaying opposite TSE in 1912–13;a2n 1912–13Cummings, Edward Estlin ('E. E.')Second Footman to TSE's Lord Bantock;a1n, Amy had played the part of Fanny – new wife to TSE’s Lord Bantock (of Bantock Hall, Rutlandshire) – in the Cambridge Social Dramatic Club production of Jerome K. Jerome’s The New Lady Bantock or Fanny and the Servant Problem (1909): see letter to Eleanor Hinkley, 3 Jan. 1915. The Second Footman in that production had been played by E. E. Cummings (1894–1962), poet, novelist, playwright and artist.
TSE to Henry Sherek, 25 May 1960: ‘In the play in which E. E. Cummings was the second footman, I played a charming young man, of course, but in the lowest order of the peerage. I was merely Lord Bantock and a Jerome K. Jerome peer at that.’ For his part, Cummings, who was a contemporary at Harvard with TSE, remembered that the hero had been brilliantly played by a ‘cold and aloof’ individual whom he did not identify. In Dec. 1949 EH was to advise TSE that she had undertaken to direct at her school a production of ‘The New Lady Bantock’: see TSE’s letter of New Year’s Eve 1949 for his response.
3.WilliamHocking, William Hocking (1873–1966), philosopher; Allord Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy and Civil Polity, Harvard University. Works include The Meaning of God in Human Experience (1912); Living Religions and a World Faith (Hibbert Lectures, 1938).
4.RachelPerry, Rachel Berenson Berenson Perry (1880–1933), wifePerry, Ralph Barton of Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957), Chair of the Philosophy Department at Harvard University, 1906–14; from 1930, Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy; author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning study The Thought and Character of William James (1935).
5.A. N. WhiteheadWhitehead, Alfred North ('A. N.') (1861–1947), mathematical logician and speculative philosopher; Fellow and Senior Mathematical Lecturer, Trinity College, Cambridge (1880–1910); Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University (1924–37). Collaborated with Bertrand Russell on the three-volume Principia Mathematica (1910, 1912, 1913).
6.TSE’s aunt Susie Hinkley treated TSE and some other friends to a performance (at an unknown venue) of a touring production of Camille (The Lady of the Camellias) – using an English translation by Henriette Metcalf of Alexander Dumas’s own stage version of his novel – put on by the Civic Repertory Theatre of New York, under the direction of Eva Le Gallienne (1899–1991). TheTerry, Beatrice touring company included Le Gallienne herself; Beatrice Terry (1890–1970), a niece of the legendary actress Ellen Terry (1847–1928); and Donald Cameron (1888– 1955), a reputed Canadian actor.
7.FredRobinson, Fred Robinson (1871–1966), distinguished Celticist and scholar of Chaucer – his invaluable edition of The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer was to appear in 1933 – Gurney Professor of English, Harvard.
8.JosephSchildkraut, Joseph Schildkraut (1896–1964), Austrian-American actor, was to win an Oscar for his performance as Alfred Dreyfus in The Life of Emile Zola (1937); and he would be nominated for a Golden Globe Award for his Otto Frank in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959).
9.Stanford University, originally Leland Stanford.
10.Soigne-toi (Fr.): ‘Look after yourself’: lit. ‘Heal yourself.’
11.Not found.
2.JamesClement, James Clement (1889–1973), Harvard Class of 1911, marriedClement, Margot Marguerite C. Burrel (who was Swiss by birth) in 1913. In later years, TSE liked visiting them at their home in Geneva.
2.JamesClement, James Clement (1889–1973), Harvard Class of 1911, marriedClement, Margot Marguerite C. Burrel (who was Swiss by birth) in 1913. In later years, TSE liked visiting them at their home in Geneva.
3.HenryEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother) Ware Eliot (1879–1947), TSE’s older brother: see Biographical Register.
2.RichardHall, Richard ('Dick') Walworth Walworth Hall (1889–1966), who graduated from Harvard in 1910 and gained his LL.B from Boston University in 1913, was a lawyer. He shared TSE’s passion for small boat sailing. Hall and hisHall, Amy Gozzaldi wife Amy Gozzaldi Hall (d. 1981) lived at 11 Hawthorn Street, Cambridge, Mass. Both of them greatly enjoyed amateur dramatics: see Richard W. Hall, ‘Recollections of the Cambridge Social Dramatic Club’, The Proceedings of the Cambridge Historical Society 38 (1959–60), 51–66. InHall, Amy Gozzaldiplaying opposite TSE in 1912–13;a2n 1912–13Cummings, Edward Estlin ('E. E.')Second Footman to TSE's Lord Bantock;a1n, Amy had played the part of Fanny – new wife to TSE’s Lord Bantock (of Bantock Hall, Rutlandshire) – in the Cambridge Social Dramatic Club production of Jerome K. Jerome’s The New Lady Bantock or Fanny and the Servant Problem (1909): see letter to Eleanor Hinkley, 3 Jan. 1915. The Second Footman in that production had been played by E. E. Cummings (1894–1962), poet, novelist, playwright and artist.
2.RichardHall, Richard ('Dick') Walworth Walworth Hall (1889–1966), who graduated from Harvard in 1910 and gained his LL.B from Boston University in 1913, was a lawyer. He shared TSE’s passion for small boat sailing. Hall and hisHall, Amy Gozzaldi wife Amy Gozzaldi Hall (d. 1981) lived at 11 Hawthorn Street, Cambridge, Mass. Both of them greatly enjoyed amateur dramatics: see Richard W. Hall, ‘Recollections of the Cambridge Social Dramatic Club’, The Proceedings of the Cambridge Historical Society 38 (1959–60), 51–66. InHall, Amy Gozzaldiplaying opposite TSE in 1912–13;a2n 1912–13Cummings, Edward Estlin ('E. E.')Second Footman to TSE's Lord Bantock;a1n, Amy had played the part of Fanny – new wife to TSE’s Lord Bantock (of Bantock Hall, Rutlandshire) – in the Cambridge Social Dramatic Club production of Jerome K. Jerome’s The New Lady Bantock or Fanny and the Servant Problem (1909): see letter to Eleanor Hinkley, 3 Jan. 1915. The Second Footman in that production had been played by E. E. Cummings (1894–1962), poet, novelist, playwright and artist.
5.EleanorHinkley, Eleanor Holmes (TSE's first cousin) Holmes Hinkley (1891–1971), playwright; TSE’s first cousin; daughter of Susan Heywood Stearns – TSE’s maternal aunt – and Holmes Hinkley: see Biographical Register.
3.WilliamHocking, William Hocking (1873–1966), philosopher; Allord Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy and Civil Polity, Harvard University. Works include The Meaning of God in Human Experience (1912); Living Religions and a World Faith (Hibbert Lectures, 1938).
1.JosephineHutchinson, Josephine Hutchinson (1903–98), stage and screen actor.
7.EvaLe Gallienne, Eva Le Gallienne (1899–1991), British-born American actor, director, producer; director of the Civic Repertory Company, New York. In 1932 Le Gallienne staged Eleanor Holmes Hinkley’s Dear Jane, with an intimate friend, Josephine Hutchinson, playing Jane Austen.
1.ArthurLovejoy, Arthur O. O. Lovejoy (1873–1962), Berlin-born philosopher; Professor of Philosophy, Washington University, St Louis, 1901–8 – where he became acquainted with the Eliot family – and Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, 1910–38; editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas. Author of The Great Chain of Being (1936).
4.RachelPerry, Rachel Berenson Berenson Perry (1880–1933), wifePerry, Ralph Barton of Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957), Chair of the Philosophy Department at Harvard University, 1906–14; from 1930, Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy; author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning study The Thought and Character of William James (1935).
4.RachelPerry, Rachel Berenson Berenson Perry (1880–1933), wifePerry, Ralph Barton of Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957), Chair of the Philosophy Department at Harvard University, 1906–14; from 1930, Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy; author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning study The Thought and Character of William James (1935).
7.FredRobinson, Fred Robinson (1871–1966), distinguished Celticist and scholar of Chaucer – his invaluable edition of The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer was to appear in 1933 – Gurney Professor of English, Harvard.
6.TSE’s aunt Susie Hinkley treated TSE and some other friends to a performance (at an unknown venue) of a touring production of Camille (The Lady of the Camellias) – using an English translation by Henriette Metcalf of Alexander Dumas’s own stage version of his novel – put on by the Civic Repertory Theatre of New York, under the direction of Eva Le Gallienne (1899–1991). TheTerry, Beatrice touring company included Le Gallienne herself; Beatrice Terry (1890–1970), a niece of the legendary actress Ellen Terry (1847–1928); and Donald Cameron (1888– 1955), a reputed Canadian actor.
5.A. N. WhiteheadWhitehead, Alfred North ('A. N.') (1861–1947), mathematical logician and speculative philosopher; Fellow and Senior Mathematical Lecturer, Trinity College, Cambridge (1880–1910); Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University (1924–37). Collaborated with Bertrand Russell on the three-volume Principia Mathematica (1910, 1912, 1913).
2.JamesWoods, Professor James Haughton Haughton Woods (1864–1935), Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University, 1913–34. He gave courses in Indian philosophy, and his Yoga System of Patanjali (1914) was the first American scholarly study of Indian philosophy. TSE studied Greek Philosophy with Woods in 1911–12, and ‘Philosophical Sanskrit’ in 1912–13. After TSE submitted his thesis, Woods told him he wanted to create a ‘berth’ for him in the Philosophy Department at Harvard. TSE was later to record that ‘a year in the mazes of Patanjali’s metaphysics under the guidance of James Woods left me in a state of enlightened mystification’ (After Strange Gods, 40).