[Grace Toll Hall, Scripps College, Claremont]

1.John Drinkwater, Bird in Hand (1927).

2.CalvertMagruder, Calvert Magruder (1893–1968); Professor of Law, Harvard, 1925–39; later a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals.

3.Stark Young reviewed Eleanor Holmes Hinkley’s play Dear Jane – produced at the Civic Repertory Theatre, New York, with Josephine Hutchinson as Jane Austen; Eva Le Gallienne as Cassandra – in New Republic, 30 Nov. 1932, 72.

4.KarlBoston Evening Transcriptprofiles TSE;a2 Schriftgiesser, ‘Mr. T. S. Eliot Wants to Know What Is This Americanism He Has Repudiated’, Boston Evening Transcript, Weds., 7 Dec. 1932, 8: ‘Mr. T. S. Eliot, poet and critic, whose tri-partite creed of royalism, Catholicism, and classicism has made him a target for such a critic as Rebecca West and has won him the warm-hearted defence of Paul Elmer More of Princeton, sat yesterday in his room in Eliot House, Harvard, and gave his first newspaper interview since his return to his native land after several years of exile in England.

‘He was wearing a checked shirt and plaid tie, the latter loosely looped. His tan low shoes, his thin, black-rimmed glasses, the brown checked suit he was wearing carelessly, were all reminiscent of St John’s Wood in London where he makes his home. HesmokingChesterfields;a6 looked the part of the literary man, his long, white fingers toying with a Chesterfield cigarette as he sat in a comfortable chair in [a] room where an almost painful orderliness was the rule. His English accent his carefully chosen words, his hesitant phrases all added to the feeling that Mr Eliot lives a life as carefully arranged as the form of his own precisely right essays on Dryden or Donne.

‘A small book case at one and [sc. end] of the room was filled with new books. The couch at one side was covered with neat piles of letters. On a desk was a portable typewriter and a telephone. On another table, where he had been working just before the interview, were proof sheets of a new assay [sic] bearing his by line [sic] and a book he had been reading, “Our Concern with the Theology of Crisis,” by Walter Lowrie.

‘Asked, naturally, if he was enjoying his return to Harvard, of which he is a graduate, the visiting Norton lecturer of poetry said “Very much, indeed. But,” with a smile, “It is not a life of leisure and seclusion.” Leisure was “lessure,” as he said it.

‘Almost immediately after the interview started he began a defense of himself, and his alleged attitude of negation towards modern life.

‘“I am aware,” he said, choosing his words as carefully as a diplomat in the presence of a foreign inquisitor. “I am aware of being accused of adopting an attitude of retreat from, or evasion of, modern problems. But I do not see that there is any deliberate repudiation of my Americanism involved, although I have been accused of repudiating America, also. What is Americanism? I would that critics might be able to formulate a definition of Americanism universally agreed upon by Americans. Several things that have been said about my repudiation have nothing to do with Americanism one way or another. Youroyalism;a2n must remember that many of my essays were not addressed to New York but to an English public. MyEnglandwhich is not a repudiation of America;a6n affirmation of royalism is not directed against the form of Government here. What I have said about ecclesiastical affairs is only directly applicable to England. There is no more reason to say I have repudiated America by living in England and writing for Englishmen than there is in saying it about any writer who chooses to live abroad.”

‘“My essays, however, require a good deal of reinterpretation for American readers,” Mr Eliot modestly admitted.

‘When he was asked for some statement regarding the America he has found since his return after exile he said, “I knew America well enough before I went to England to know that I cannot make any rash generalizations from what I have seen in one locality – especially eastern Massachusetts!”

‘It was suggested that perhaps his visit might inspire him to write another “The Waste Land,” a poem generally accepted as an indictment of modern American life and written shortly after he was graduated from Harvard.

‘“You mustn’t take it for granted that anything will produce a poem,” was his answer to that.

‘Talking about modern poetry Mr Eliot, who has been credited by many critics, including Max Eastman and Edmund Wilson, with having had untold influence on modern versifiers, said: “I think that there is much more interesting verse being written in both countries, England and America, than there was twenty-five years ago. There is a wider and more intelligent interest in poetry. Up to the time I left Harvard very little poetry had been written that had any influence at all. If you take the most eminent poets you will find that they have done some fine work recently. But of course you never get a steady upgrade. Poetry is being kept alive, though, and that’s the main thing. There are poets now beginning to write who are doing different kind of work from that done by myself and my contemporaries.”

‘Asked to name some of these poets, he refused. “It might be unfair,” he said, “to those omitted and it might give a false valuation to those I named.”

‘A Precarious Age

‘Would be [sc. he] predict the immediate future of poetry? “No. This is an interesting and precarious age in which most predictions have proved wrong about everything.”

‘On his bookshelf were some new books, including “The Liberation of American Literature” by V. F. Calverton, a book of criticism and literary history approached, according to the critics, from the point of view of a thorough-going Marxist.

‘“A very interesting book,” said Mr Eliot, whose comments on his contemporaries are rare. “I am very much interested in books of that type. But I feel that Calverton has written about American literature before he has thoroughly digested it. He gives the impression of being interested in literature to prove a thesis rather than for literature’s own sake.”

‘Asked if he felt such a book had dangerous implications in its insistence that literature of the future must, to survive, spring from the working class, the royalist–classicist said, “I don’t care if it is dangerous or not if it is true. I don’t believe it is true.”

‘EdmundWilson, Edmund 'Bunny'as critic;a1n Wilson, he said, he felt was a better critic. Whether this author of “Axel’s Castle,” a book in which there is a long and acute estimate of Mr Eliot as poet and critic, is sound in his economic and sociological theories, he having recently become a noted leader of the leftward movement in American criticism, Mr Eliot did not know nor care.

‘“He had proved himself a highly intelligent critic in the past. His background is sound,” he said.

‘And then Miss Rebecca West was mentioned. When Mr Eliot sailed for America this eminent English anti-humanist critic, who is noted for her outspoken criticism of her contemporaries, issued a blast against him. She warned America that he was a dangerous man, that his negative qualities were insidious, and she feared for American letters if he were listened to too closely.

‘Unfortunately only echoes of her blast had been heard by Mr Eliot. “I have not seen it,” he said, “but I deprecate any insistence on self-consciousness in literature. If Americans have to try always to be as American as possible that will only end by spoiling the fruit.

‘I trust Miss West is not apprehensive of my attempts to overthrow the Constitution of the United States. In any case, whatever she said, she misunderstands my intentions and over-estimates my power.”’

5.HenrySherrill, Henry Knox Knox Sherrill (1890–1980), Episcopal clergyman; Bishop of Massachusetts, 1930–47. Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, 1947–58.