[Grace Toll Hall, Scripps College, Claremont]
I have been writing letters all day, exceptArnold, Matthewdiscussed with student;a1 for an interview interval when a graduate student came to discuss with me his thesis on Matthew Arnold; and I wisely postponed writing to you until after the afternoon Post, 8 days after the last one. (You don’t really expect to be thanked for a little Scrap like that, do you? The signature was very comforting, to be Sure, but the letter itself very Unsatisfactory, as it merely aggravated my anxiety about your doing too much work). However, this letter of the 15th was the standard large size paper, and was warmly welcomed. I am Vexed about that Photograph. IHale, Emilyphotographs of;w7;a7 know the one kneeling was You, because I saw it quite Close, and I do not think that my agitation was enough to blur my eyes. The other was on the mantel half behind a lampshade, and I did not see it properly, but I assumed it must be you. How was I to know you had a cousin? IHale, Emilyfamily;w4TSE desires family history of;a3 should like to have a Proper look at the photograph and also at that Cousin. Does she look like you at all? and if so, where is she? I wish you would draw up for me a map of your family for 3 generations, indicating your cousins. YourHale, Edward Everettmistaken for EH's grandfather;a1 grandfather was Edward Everett Hale,1 wasn’t he? and your father hadHale, Philiphis programme notes;a1 one brother, Philip Hale (his account of the 7th symphony on the last programme was a masterpiece, it was entirely about a man named Maelzel2 in 1836 [sc. 1926] who had a panharmonicon and an automatic chess player).3 ThenHale, Matthew;a1 I once met a cousin (1st, 2nd, 3d?) named Matthew Hale at your house who was a Rhodes scholar and lived in Portland Maine. WhenThorp, Margaret (née Farrand);a9 I first met Margaret Farrand at your house I thought that she was some sort of cousin.
(Please devote not less than 5 minutes to the questions above).
IPerkinses, the;b7 am to dine with the Perkins’s next on Dec. 6th but that I do not look forward to so much, as Mr. & Mrs. Bliss Perry will be there – I have never met them, but that will rather disturb the feeling: when I have been there alone I have felt as if you must feel a kind of telegraphic communion with three people who were certainly thinking about you, whatever they talked about. MrPerkins, Dr John Carroll (EH's uncle);a6. (Dr. I should call him) Perkins walked in here on Wednesday when my students’ teaparty was going. I pressed him to stop and have a cup of tea, which he did. He had been to see the Merrimans. I especially did not want him to feel that he had come at the wrong time; but I fear that I failed to convey what I really felt, that I was only disappointed that his visit should be partly wasted by the presence of the hobbledehoys, and that I would have preferred to be alone with him. IKing's Chapel, BostonTSE undertakes to attend monthly;b1 shall go to King’s Chapel as often as I can: that is to say, once a month; IChurch of St. John the Evangelist, Bowdoin Street;a3 feel that my presence at St. John’s Bowdoin Street is really obligatory most of the time, and that the clergy here could feel hurt if I did not, and perhaps scandalised. People might think that I was reverting to type!
IHale, Emilyas director ('producer');v9La Locandiera;a1 suppose you are feeling the reaction after the play which cannot be escaped.4 But I am so glad that you like and are happy with the girls, and you may be sure if this is so that they are happy with you too; and I have no doubt that some of them are already trying, as far as they can, to model themselves upon you. One always influences young people the most, I believe, when one is least conscious of it; and always, in the end, it is not what one tries to be or to appear but what one is that matters. I think these girls are to be congratulated. But for my part, I am thankful that the play is over, because it means that Emily is not working so hard (at this point I was rung up by a professor who wanted me to come in for cocktails, I declined) (atwritingto EH;a2 the same time I was also wishing that I could so easily write on and on when I am composing a lecture as when I am writing to you. IWomen's Republican Club, BostonTSE and Marion dine at;a1 shallSpencer, Katherine;a3 not be able to finish this letter until after dinner, because I have got to dress, fetch Marian, and go to dinner at the Women’s Republican Club in Boston with Katie Spencer. Iftravels, trips and plansTSE's 1933 westward tour to Scripps;a8TSE's itinerary;a4 I arrive say on January 1st (I trust an auspicious moment) I wonder in what duties you will be engaged? in shepherding the few girls who have not gone home for Christmas? But I suppose that they nearly all live quite near.
IHarvard UniversityEnglish 26 (Modern English Literature);a7;a1 have to try to shape myself into a teacher too, as well as a public lecturer, and an after dinner speaker. Did I tell you that during the second half year I am to give a course – with a number – English 26! Modern English Literature, byElliott, William YandellTSE confused with;a1 Professor Eliot (who has been recently confused with Professor W. Y. Elliott of the Government Department,5 Tuesdays & Thursdays, and Saturdays at the option of the lecturer, at 9 a.m. Theodoreanti-Semitism;a4 Spencer is to select from among the 40 or so applicants, fifteen braves as nearly as possible after my own heart (I want as few graduate students as possible, a number of men specialising in other subjects than English, preferably scientific, a few oarsmen and football players, and a quota of not more than 20% Jews).6 Now I must dress for dinner.
Now I have said goodbye to Katie Spencer and come back again. Now I must look at my diary and see what I have been doing. I have not written since Tuesday night when I dined at Mrs. Day’s (but I still don’t remember her in connexion with the Hinkleys’ at all, but I do remember her as an acquaintance of Abby’s at Radcliffe, and I think she was rather popular at dances) with Professor and Mrs. William Yandell Elliott – a very pleasant southerner, one of the former Nashville literary group with Allan [sc. Allen] Tate,7 and two other people whose faces and names have both vanished. Mrs. Day is quite likeable. TheRadcliffe Club, Wellesley CollegeTSE recounts lecture to;a3 hall'Experience of Poetry, The'at Wellesley;a1 at Radcliffe was quite crowded; and I think my lecture (which I read, as usual) was quite good & suitable for the occasion; and Ada poured out coffee afterwards and I was introduced to a good many women one after the other and I am afraid that it all sounds very flat. ThereSt. Botolph Club, Bostondreaded poets' dinner at;a2 was something very touching about the St. Botolph dinner – they were so very hospitable. ItGreenslet, Ferrislays on poets' dinner;a3 was Ferris Greenslet’s dinner, of course; why he should pay me such attention I don’t know, as I have nothing to do with his firm (Houghton Mifflin) but he has been most attentive. ProfessorLowes, John Livingstonat St. Botolph poets' dinner;a5 Lowes was there – a most lovable little man he is – andMorison, Samuel Eliotat St. Botolph poets' dinner;a2 Sam Morison, who, I thought, looked the only really distinguished man present. ThereFrost, RobertTSE respects without liking;a2 was Robert Frost, a good soul I have no doubt, but to me not very interesting; I think that he is sincere and truly interested in poetry, but I do not feel that I should ever really take to him.8 TheMacLeish, Archibalddoesn't show at poets' dinner;a2 otherRobinson, Edwin Arlingtonbut doesn't show;a2 principal poets, Robinson and Macleish, did not turn up; I should like to have met Macleish. ThereWheelwright, John Brooksstrikes TSE as pathetic;a1 was a very strange creature named Jack Wheelwright,9 who read a poem of his, and was quite pathetic; theHillyer, Robertat St. Botolph poets' dinner;a2 (Professor) Hillyer whom I mentioned, and others of less importance. There was something a little schoolboyish about it all; I suppose I shall find that in all the dinners of men alone; I suppose the geniality and hailfellowship amongst them, which to me seems a little forced, has something to do with it. YetArnold, Matthewpoets' symposium on;a2 it was not at all an objectionably convivial occasion; and afterwards a few talked for some time, quite intelligently, about a poem of Matthew Arnold’s.
WhenHale, Emilygoes horse-riding;c1 you say you had a long ride the other day was it on a horse; I hope you are keeping up your riding, I should love to see you on a horse. Try to get me a snapshot of yourself on horseback; but I must say I don’t think any woman looks graceful astride. (I know there was something I was going to say when I had to leave off to dress for dinner, but I can’t remember what it was). AreScripps College, Claremont;c6 you feeling more at home in Scripps now, or are you still homesick and heartsick all the time? I have no photograph of you here, and I used to see your photographs every day. The Magi hang over my desk, about at the level of my eye when I am sitting. (No, I can’t remember what I wanted to say, and probably it was not very important: OHinkley, Eleanor Holmes (TSE's first cousin)Dear Jane;g5TSE happy to dodge premiere;a3 yes, I remember now, you took for granted that I was going to New York to Eleanor’s first night. My dear Bird, I should not have dreamt of such a thing; and I had the excuse of my Radcliffe lecture the next night. I could not afford to go to New York just for that, and I would not accept Barbara’s offer to take up with them – one can’t accept favours of that kind – and it would have been too tiring, and I did not have the time, and it must be a painful business watching a first night when you know the author. INoyes, Penelope Barkerreports favourably of Dear Jane;b8 hear however from Penelope – whom I saw at Radcliffe the next night, andHinkley, Barbara (TSE's first cousin)reports on Dear Jane;a8 from Barbara, that it went off extremely well, and Barbara says that the reviews were favourable. So I hope that it will have a really good run. At any rate, I gather that the family are pleased, so far; and I expect Eleanor is getting a little very pleasant celebrity. IfHinkley, Eleanor Holmes (TSE's first cousin)Dear Jane;g5but hopes to catch over Christmas;a4 it is still running I shall try to spend a few nights in New York with my brother Henry on my way West at Christmas, and see it then.
Iappearance (TSE's)baldness;b6'as a bat';a4 am bald as a Bat on the right side of my head, but can just keep it covered with my hair in place – otherwise, it gives me a most comical Look; and I am having electric treatment from Marian’s hairdresser-masseuse, and have to go over to Wendell Street twice a week for it. The treatment is inexpensive and extremely soothing anyway.
I will now subscribe myself, ma chère Emilie,
1.EdwardHale, Edward Everett Everett Hale (1822–1909), esteemed author, biographer, historian; Unitarian minister at the South Congregational Church in Boston (where EH’s father had assisted him). Though a member of the extensive Hale family, he was not in fact directly related to EH.
2.Johann Nepomuk Mälzel (Mälzl).
3.For Hale’s notes on Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, in A Major, Op. 92, see Philip Hale’s Boston Symphony Programme Notes: Historical, Critical, and Descriptive Comment on Music and Composers, ed. John N. Burk (New York, 1935), 29–33.
4.EHHale, Emilyas director ('producer');v9La Locandiera;a1 had directed the Siddons Club of Scripps College in a production of La Locanderia (The Mistress of the Inn), by Carlo Goldoni (1707–93), on 18 Nov. 1932. Her young friend Marie McSpadden played the Cavalier of Ripafratta.
An unidentified cutting in the Scripps archive extols the renaissance of the club: ‘The Siddons Club experienced a new birth during the last year, and arose as did the Phoenix from its own listless ashes. Miss Emily Hale, director of drama and the theatre, arrived from Boston with a bag full of dramatic tricks. One by one she pulled them forth, and the Siddons Club soon became an active organization. Urged on by the patron saint of Scripps drama, Dr Stephenson, [*] a new constitution was written, and new enthusiasm developed.
‘The first card played from Miss Hale’s hand was “La Locanderia,” otherwise known as “The Mistress of the Inn,” written in the eighteenth century by the Italian playwright, Carlo Goldini. On November 18, the curtains parted to reveal a romantic old Inn, where anything could and did happen. Moonlit balconies, popping corks, grandiloquent bows, and Italian oaths combined to write the name of Mirandolina’s Inn on the pages of Scripps history.
‘ThereScripps College, ClaremontEH's all-arts theatrical workshop at;c7n followedHale, Emilyas teacher;w1establishes drama workshop at Scripps;a8n a brief period of calm before the resourceful Bostonian presented her second plan – a workshop of the allied arts, wherein all phases of the theatre might be combined. At the monthly meetings of the club, various authorities on the drama spoke to the members.
‘In February, the club was enlarged. After an evening of trying-outs, nine new members chosen from the upper classmen were admitted. Costumes and artists of make-up and of stage-setting joined the ranks in time to witness the first workshop production, the scenes from two Greek plays.
‘AHale, Emilyas director ('producer');v9Lady Gregory's The Dragon;a2 few weeks later, the last of the 1932–1933 program went into operation. Lady Gregory’s “The Dragon” was chosen and cast. The drama was set in the palace of a medieval Irish King. There was an attempt made toward actualities. The world of today was forgotten …’
([*] Nathaniel Wright Stephenson (1867–1935) was Professor of History and Biography at Scripps; author and journalist. See obituary in the New York Times, 18 Jan. 1935, 24.)
Another unidentified cutting at Scripps, ‘Drama’, records further: ‘OnHale, Emilyas director ('producer');v9Dust of the Road;a3n December ninth, several members of the Freshman class gave a finished interpretation of “Dust of the Road,” by Kenneth Goodman. The cast was directed by Miss Hale.’
5.WilliamElliott, William Yandell Yandell Elliott (1896–1979), historian, taught at Harvard for 41 years; he also worked as a political advisor to six US presidents.
6.TSE is perhaps making an ironic, albeit disquieting, joke. During the 1920s, Harvard revised its admissions policy with the aim of reducing the number of Jewish students. Lamenting the fact that the Freshman class numbered over 28% of Jews, A. Lawrence Lowell, Harvard’s President at the time, sought to institute a discriminatory policy of limiting Jewish admissions. The Jews, as Lowell made it known, fell short of his requirement for ‘character and fitness’, and he determined to solve what he specifically termed the ‘Jew problem’. Accordingly, the enrolment of Jewish students was for twenty years deliberately held down to 15%. TSE may be seen to be implicitly questioning Lowell’s prejudicial ruling by allowing that the proportion of Jews in his classes might rise to 20%. (Thanks to Timothy Materer.)
7.AllenTate, Allen Tate (1899–1979), poet, critic, editor, attended Vanderbilt University (where he was taught by John Crowe Ransom and became associated with the group known as the Fugitives). He became Poet-in-Residence at Princeton, 1939–42; Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress, 1944–5; and editor of the Sewanee Review, 1944–6; and he was Professor of Humanities at the University of Minnesota, 1951–68. His works include Ode to the Confederate Dead (1930), The Mediterranean and Other Poems (1936), Reactionary Essays on Poetry and Ideas (1936); The Fathers (novel, 1938).
8.‘[Robert Frost] attended a dinner in honour of Eliot in November [1932], at the St Botolph Club in Boston, and was enraged by [Eliot’s] condescending attitude towards the young men who clustered around him: he was “taking himself so seriously”. Somehow the conversation turned to Scottish poetry, and Eliot declared that no good poetry had been written in Scotland except William Dunbar’s “The Lament for the Makaris”. Frost asked if an exception might be made for Robert Burns. No, Eliot replied. But was he not at least a good song-writer? “One might grant,” he said, “that modest claim”. It was not, for Frost, a pleasant occasion.’ (Ackroyd, T. S. Eliot, 194; citing Laurance Thompson, Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph [1971].)
9.JohnWheelwright, John Brooks Brooks Wheelwright (1897–1940), architect from Boston Brahmin background; poet; editor; socio-political activist (founder-member of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party). Author of Rock and Shells (1933), Mirrors of Venus (1938); Political Self-Portrait (1940).
5.WilliamElliott, William Yandell Yandell Elliott (1896–1979), historian, taught at Harvard for 41 years; he also worked as a political advisor to six US presidents.
2.RobertFrost, Robert Frost (1874–1963), celebrated American poet and critic, spent three years (1912–15) with his wife in England, where he was influenced by friendships with Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves and Ezra Pound. His poetry – rooted in the vernacular of rural life in New England, and with a deep sensitivity to marital and domestic strain and conflict – won immediate critical and popular success. Noted publications included A Boy’s Will (1913), North of Boston (1914), Mountain Interval (1916) and New Hampshire (1923). He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry four times; and in 1962 he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. See The Letters of Robert Frost, vols 1–3, ed. Donald Sheehy et al. (2014–21); Jeffrey Meyers, Robert Frost: A Biography (1996); Jay Parini, Robert Frost: A Life (2000).
1.FerrisGreenslet, Ferris Greenslet (1875–1959), author and literary advisor; director of Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston. His books include James Russell Lowell: His Life and Work (1905); Under the Bridge: An Autobiography (1943); and The Lowells and Their Seven Worlds (1946).
1.EdwardHale, Edward Everett Everett Hale (1822–1909), esteemed author, biographer, historian; Unitarian minister at the South Congregational Church in Boston (where EH’s father had assisted him). Though a member of the extensive Hale family, he was not in fact directly related to EH.
6.PhilipHale, Philip Hale (1854–1934), journalist, celebrated as the prolific and influential music critic of the Boston Herald, 1903–33, who also wrote a multitude of programme notes for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, 1901–34: see Jon Ceander Mitchell, Trans-Atlantic Passages: Philip Hale on the Boston Symphony Orchestra 1889–1933 (New York, 2014).
12.RobertHillyer, Robert Hillyer (1895–1961), poet, taught from 1926 at Harvard, where he became Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, 1937–44. Collected Verse (1933) won a Pulitzer Prize. He became notorious when he published in the Saturday Review of Literature in 1949 a condemnation of the award of the Bollingen Prize to the ‘fascist’ Ezra Pound for Pisan Cantos.
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.
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.
1.JohnLowes, John Livingston Livingston Lowes (1867–1945), American scholar of English literature – author of the seminal study of Coleridge’s sources, The Road to Xanadu: A Study in the Ways of the Imagination (1927) – taught for some years, 1909–18, at Washington University, St. Louis, where he was known to TSE’s family. He later taught at Harvard, 1918–39.
3.ArchibaldMacLeish, Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982), poet and playwright, studied at Yale and at Harvard Law School (he abandoned the practice of law and took up poetry in 1923), then lived in France for a while in the 1920s. Conquistador (1933) won a Pulitzer Prize; and for his Collected Poems, 1917–1952 (1953) he won three awards: a second Pulitzer, the Bollingen Prize and the National Book Award. His verse play J.B. (1957) won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a Tony Award. During WW2, at President Roosevelt’s bidding, he was Librarian of Congress, and he served with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. He was Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, Harvard, 1949–62.
2.SamuelMorison, Samuel Eliot Eliot Morison (1887–1976), American historian and a cousin of TSE, was for thirty years from 1925 Professor of History at Harvard. In 1922 he became the first Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford. His works include The Maritime History of Massachusetts (1921), the history of Harvard University (5 vols, 1930–6), History of United States Naval Operations (15 vols), the Oxford History of the American People (1965), and The European Discovery of America (1972). A Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the American Philosophical Association, he served too as President of the American Historical Association; and his awards included the Bancroft Prize (twice), the Pulitzer Prize (twice), the Alfred Thayer Mahan Award of the Navy League, the Gold Medal for History, National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. See also ‘The Dry Salvages and the Thacher Shipwreck’, American Neptune 25: 4 (1965), 233–47.
12.PenelopeNoyes, Penelope Barker Barker Noyes (1891–1977), who was descended from settlers of the Plymouth Colony, lived in a historic colonial house (built in 1894 for her father James Atkins Noyes) at 1 Highland Street, Cambridge, MA. Unitarian. She was a close friend of EH.
3.DrPerkins, Dr John Carroll (EH's uncle) John Carroll Perkins (1862–1950), Minister of King’s Chapel, Boston: see Biographical Register.
1.EdwinRobinson, Edwin Arlington Arlington Robinson (1869–1935), Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.
7.AllenTate, Allen Tate (1899–1979), poet, critic, editor, attended Vanderbilt University (where he was taught by John Crowe Ransom and became associated with the group known as the Fugitives). He became Poet-in-Residence at Princeton, 1939–42; Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress, 1944–5; and editor of the Sewanee Review, 1944–6; and he was Professor of Humanities at the University of Minnesota, 1951–68. His works include Ode to the Confederate Dead (1930), The Mediterranean and Other Poems (1936), Reactionary Essays on Poetry and Ideas (1936); The Fathers (novel, 1938).
16.MargaretThorp, Margaret (née Farrand) Farrand (1891–1970), author and journalist – see Margaret Thorp in Biographical Register.
9.JohnWheelwright, John Brooks Brooks Wheelwright (1897–1940), architect from Boston Brahmin background; poet; editor; socio-political activist (founder-member of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party). Author of Rock and Shells (1933), Mirrors of Venus (1938); Political Self-Portrait (1940).