[41 Brimmer St., Boston]
I am starting this letter today to finish tomorrow (Tuesday) for the mail; as my time is so cut up that I never can be sure when I am going to have a whole hour free: and when I write to you in a hurry I have so much to say that some of the most important things even are forgotten. I want to hear about the trip to Providence and what your lecture was about. IHale, Emilywritings;x4'A Play from Both Sides of the Footlights';b5 now return your short paper on the drama – though in future will you please send me copies of things for me to keep. I like it very much, though knowing that anything is by you throws me into a delighted but uncritical state of mind. I have only one fault to find with it, then: that it seems to me that your subject was impossible to deal with in the limits you had; therefore, for the space at your disposal, I think it opens a little slowly. You ought to rewrite it at two or three times the length! After all, writing for periodicals is I think largely a matter of practice, in acquiring ease and seeing what one can do in the space; so you must keep on and write wrte [sic] constantly.
IEliot, Marion Cushing (TSE's sister);a1 do hope you will be able to call on Marion.1 I am sure she would be pleased. SheEliot, Marion Cushing (TSE's sister)described;a2 is over-modest about her mental abilities and about herself in general; and it never occurs to her that anyone ever cares to see her. Her friend Elizabeth Wentworth who lives very near to her in the same building is a very charming person.
And I want a bookmarker made by you.
I want to revert to the thought of seeing you again. It is the most wonderful thing to have this new privilege of writing to you, just as I feel; and even if one could see the person one wants to see, and see as much of her as one wanted, there would still and always be the separate satisfaction of writing, of cutting down, what one feels, just because it is there on paper for always; yet I feel often – if I could see her for even one or two minutes, some time or other, and put these words, still so strange to me even on paper, into my voice – it would be another wonderful new experience. Perhaps I should be too timid, just as I always was before.
Continued: Shrove Tuesday
IHale, Emilyrelationship with TSE;w9its susceptibilities envisaged by TSE;a7 am sure you are right, dear, and wise to foresee, the probability of our wanting each other more and more as time goes on; and I have meditated that. WellChristianityresignation, reconciliation, peace;c8;a2, I think I can face resignation fairly; for after all, I had been for many years resigned to having nothing; but of course the new life demands a new resignation. I don’t want the false resignation of make believe; of presenting that what one can have is all one wants, or merely deadening one’s feelings; for it seems to me that true resignation involves seeing and feeling quite acutely all that one has missed and misses, but making the mind dwell rather on what one has and what is possible; and for me, certainly, that is a very rich and happy life. And in this relationship we shall I think belong to each other more and more completely.
I am sending'Thoughts After Lambeth'proof sent to EH;a5 you the proof copy of my poor pamphlet which has given me so much trouble, and will send a copyCharles Whibley: A MemoirEH promised copy;a1 of my Whibley memoir which I am to give on Friday. ItWhibley, Charlesas friend;a1 was odd that my closest friend was a man thirty years older than I. OfBarrie, Sir James Matthew ('J. M.')and Whibley;a2 course IKipling, Rudyardfriend of Charles Whibley's;a1 could not be friend to him on the same terms as his contemporary friends, like Barrie and Kipling and Lord Brabourne;2 but on the other hand, he was a lonely man, and I filled somewhat the place of a disciple. He was very good to me. We had much in common; reactionary views in politics, and a knowledge of FranceFranceTSE's Francophilia shared by Whibley;a1, though not of the same generation. HisWhibley, Charleshis marriages;a3 first wife (whom I never knew) was a sister in law of Whistler, which carries one back a long time!3 When at 68 he married the daughterWhibley, Philippa (née Raleigh);a1 of his friend Sir Walter Raleigh, who was 26, some people were displeased, but I think they were very happy during the last two years of his life.4
I am sending you the little frame for the round photograph. It is a poor little frame, but it is the frame in which it stood on my mother’s mantelpiece always.
This is not as long a letter as I like to write. But as I said, I shall have to write twice a week in order to catch up. I wonder if I shall have another letter on Friday. I am sorry about the CAPE. But hats are like caps now, though I did not see why the queen should be sitting in the parlour in the evening writing a letter to me in a cap!
1.Marian/MarionEliot, Marion Cushing (TSE's sister) Cushing Eliot (1877–1964), fourth child of Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Eliot: see Biographical Register.
2.Edward Knatchbull-Hugessen (1857–1909), Liberal Party politician and peer: succeeded his father as 2nd Baron Brabourne in 1893.
3.Ethel Whibley, née Birnie Philip (1861–1920): her sister Beatrix had married the artist James McNeill Whistler in 1888.
4.PhilippaWhibley, Philippa (née Raleigh) Raleigh, daughter of Walter Raleigh, Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford, became Charles Whibley’s second wife in 1927. She was his god-daughter.
5.SirBarrie, Sir James Matthew ('J. M.') James Barrie, Bt, OM (1860–1937), Scottish novelist and dramatist; world-renowned for Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up (1904).
1.Marian/MarionEliot, Marion Cushing (TSE's sister) Cushing Eliot (1877–1964), fourth child of Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Eliot: see Biographical Register.
7.CharlesWhibley, Charles Whibley (1859–1930), journalist and author: see Biographical Register.
4.PhilippaWhibley, Philippa (née Raleigh) Raleigh, daughter of Walter Raleigh, Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford, became Charles Whibley’s second wife in 1927. She was his god-daughter.