[Grace Toll Hall, Scripps College, Claremont]
I did NOT receive my due letter this afternoon before my lecture, and so I had to lecture considerably handicapped; and I am left late tonight (I have just put in a new ribbon, as you notice) wondering whether to begin to worry again about You, or whether just to feel Peevish. Tomorrow will Tell; or if it doesn’t, then there will be a wire of enquiry. FirstPerkinses, thewho repents of seeming ingratitude;c1 of all, I am wondering whether I gave you the wrong impression in my report of your aunt’s dinner party. (That however is not the reason for my having no letter, as you could not have received my letter in time). I felt after writing, however, that you might think (for misunderstandings are still possible) that I was ungrateful and overcritical. But I do like to be able to sit down and write to you just what comes into my head, and you once said yourself that you like to be able to do that with me, and the letter is still preserved, and means to be preserved for posterity; and I want you to take anything I write in that way, and not too seriously. IPerry, Blissbut TSE repents of dismissing;a2 did like Perry, and that has nothing to do with whether I like his works or not; and I liked his wife & daughter; andSherrill, Henry Knoxcompared to English bishops;a2 I liked Bishop Sherrill – only you see, he is the first American Bishop I have met, and it seemed as if American Bishops were more different from English Bishops than ordinary New Englanders are from Englishmen. (AfterTemple, William, Archbishop of York (later of Canterbury);a2 allBell, George, Bishop of Chichester (earlier Dean of Canterbury);a6, I only know three English bishops, and they of course are the three most intelligent of the numerous English Bishops – Chichester, York and Durham; so I have no basis upon which to judge; only I did find Sherrill a little bluff & breezy; but I believe he is really a very decent sort). MissWare, Mary Leefor gilded unworldliness;a8 Ware was perhaps the victim of my spleen; perhaps it had struck me that if she was going to spend the winter in Italy (a year ago) she might have pressed you to come with her; but she is no worse than many others. OnlyAmericaBoston, Massachusetts;d1its society;b3 I have a rooted objection to these rich old conservatives in Boston who seem to have no understanding whatever of what is really happening in the world: but people who have never had to earn their living don’t know much. (IJames, Henrytoo wealthy to understand England;a6 am apt to tell young Americans, in London, thatEnglandand Henry James;a3 Henry James never understood England for the reason that he never had to earn his living there. AsLowell, Abbott LawrenceTSE's dislike for redoubled;a5 for Lowell, I am adamant: he seems to me a cipher; and I observe that when he is present the conversation is always reduced to an anecdotal level. I am ready to admit his accomplishment for Harvard; but that cannot affect my feeling towards him as a man. I am ashamed of him. I felt that I could have had a serious conversation with either Perry or Sherrill, and enjoyed it, had Lowell not been present; but he introduces an important element of frivolity which corrupts all serious conversation. But I was quite aware that your aunt and uncle were superior to all this, though they didn’t know it – which made it all the more charming on their part; and I assure you that I was all the more touched by the compliment they paid me by inviting me in such distinguished company.
And damn it all, why should you be shocked by anything that I say? And if you are, then I prefer to shock you; you are the only person with whom it is worth the trouble.
RestGrahams, the;a2Graham, Gerald S.
TonightHall, Amy Gozzaldihosts TSE and old friends;a4, after the lecture, went to Amy’s (Gozzoldi–Hall, in Hawthorn St.) only old Friends: theLittles, the Leon;a4 Halls, the Leon Littles, andClements, the;a2 the Jim Clements. On Sunday I go to Clements to stay until Monday morning. MondayLovejoy, Arthur O.;a5, dine with Professor Lovejoy.
No news about California lectures: perhaps they don’t want me. Neverthelesstravels, trips and plansTSE's 1933 westward tour to Scripps;a8TSE's itinerary;a4, I intend to go straight out to Claremont, directly after Christmas, to see Emily, (the only Emily).
1.WilliamGreene, William Chase Chase Greene (1890–1978) taught at Harvard from 1920: Associate Professor of Greek and Latin from 1927, later as full professor. Head of the Department of Classical Philology, 1946–51.
2.Schrod: small cod or haddock.
3.‘Yeats to be Lunch Guest Tomorrow’, Harvard Crimson, 9 Dec. 1932: ‘William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet and dramatist, will be the guest of the members of Leverett House at luncheon in the house at one o’clock on Saturday, December 10th. Following the lunch Mr Yeats will meet and talk with some of the students and their friends, who are interested in discussing his works.’
4.PollyThayer, Polly Thayer (1904–2006), Boston painter; daughter of Harvard Law School Dean Ezra Ripley Thayer and Ethel Randolph Thayer.
4.RtBell, George, Bishop of Chichester (earlier Dean of Canterbury) Revd George Bell, DD (1883–1958), Bishop of Chichester, 1929–58: see Biographical Register.
5.GeraldGraham, Gerald S. S. Graham (1903–88), a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, was Instructor in History at Harvard, 1930–6, where he was befriended by TSE. After a period as Assistant Professor of History at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, he was a Guggenheim Fellow, 1940–1; and during WW2 he served in the Canadian Army. Rhodes Professor of Imperial History at King’s College London, 1949–70; Life-Fellow and Vice-President of the Royal Commonwealth Society; general editor of the Oxford West African History series. An authority on naval power and the British Empire, his works include Sea Power and British North America, 1783–1820: A Study in British Colonial Policy (1941) and The Politics of Naval Supremacy (1967). See further Perspectives of Empire: Essays presented to Gerald S. Graham, ed. J. E. Flint and Glyndwyr Williams (1973). TSE told Mary Trevelyan, 15 June 1949, he was ‘giving dinner to Professor Graham, the very meritorious Professor of Canadian History at London University whom I knew when he was tutor at Eliot House’.
1.WilliamGreene, William Chase Chase Greene (1890–1978) taught at Harvard from 1920: Associate Professor of Greek and Latin from 1927, later as full professor. Head of the Department of Classical Philology, 1946–51.
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.
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.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).
1.AbbottLowell, Abbott Lawrence Lawrence Lowell (1856–1943), educator and legal scholar; President of Harvard University, 1909–33.
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.
8.JosephOldham, Joseph (‘Joe’) Houldsworth Oldham (1874–1969), missionary, adviser, organiser: see Biographical Register.
7.BlissPerry, Bliss Perry (1860–1954), critic, author, editor, editor of the Atlantic Monthly, 1899–1909.
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.
5.HenrySherrill, Henry Knox Knox Sherrill (1890–1980), Episcopal clergyman; Bishop of Massachusetts, 1930–47. Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, 1947–58.
10.WilliamTemple, William, Archbishop of York (later of Canterbury) Temple (1881–1944), Anglican clergyman, Archbishop of York and later of Canterbury: see Biographical Register.
4.PollyThayer, Polly Thayer (1904–2006), Boston painter; daughter of Harvard Law School Dean Ezra Ripley Thayer and Ethel Randolph Thayer.
3.MaryWare, Mary Lee Lee Ware (1858–1937), independently wealthy Bostonian, friend and landlady of EH at 41 Brimmer Street: see Biographical Register.
4.W. B. YeatsYeats, William Butler ('W. B.') (1865–1939), Irish poet and playwright: see Biographical Register.