[No surviving envelope]
ThisCharles Eliot Norton Lectures (afterwards The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism)'The practice of Shelley and Keats' (afterwards 'Shelley and Keats');c1TSE on giving the lecture;a1 may be a very short note – I can’t tell at the beginning – there are three reasons why I should write tonight: I am very tired after a Norton lecture,1 IHarvard UniversityEnglish 26 (Modern English Literature);a7on Shaw and Chesterton;a4 have to give a lecture on Shaw & Chesterton tomorrow morning at 9;2 and my programme for the coming week is full. IBrown Universitypoetry reading at;a1 go on Sunday to Providence to read poetry, return that night; onHarvard UniversityEnglish 26 (Modern English Literature);a7on Hardy;a5 Tuesday lecture on Hardy at 9, lunchChristianityAnglo-Catholicism;a8discussed at Boston Theological School;a5 at the St. John’s Theological School and talk to them about Anglo-Catholicism; onYale Universityand 'English Poets as Letter Writers';a2 Thursday go to New Haven to lecture, onSmith CollegeTSE's speaking engagement at;a1 Friday to Smith College; onMount Holyoke Collegelecture promised pro bono to;a1 Saturday to Mt. Holyoke. Brown, Yale and Smith, will pay well (altogether 425 dollars) Mt. Holyoke can’t pay, but they were touching. Return sometime Sunday. Concert Sunday night at Chamber Music Club, but I may be too tired. There are two reasons for writing; that I dined with the Perkins’s on Wednesday, and that I want to.
I have no letter from you to-day – the first Norton lecture without a letter to support me; but I try not to repine or worry. No, I believe that if any real disaster happened to you Mrs. Perkins would let me know; but when I don’t hear – I try to put away the thought that you don’t want to bother, because I don’t want to bother you – I imagine that it means that you are overworking, undertaking some new play, or nursing invalids. I do think that you give yourself too lavishly to the girls – perhaps you do to everybody – perhaps you do in writing to me at all regularly – but I don’t believe that anything I or anybody said would alter you in that way.
AsPerkinses, theTSE confides separation plans to;c5 I told you, I saw the Perkins’s on Sunday, just long enough to give them outline information. On Wednesday they were, as always, sweet and kind. Astravels, trips and planspossible EH 1933 summer in England;a9;a1 the conversation got onto their (and your) plans for this summer, and as one of the possibilities was that of their coming with you to England, I thought it an occasion (also observing your lecture) to be less reserved, to tell them something of my designs. I told them that I wanted to tell them now, because it was more difficult in writing, and to explain that if you all came to London next summer it seemed to me best that I should not see you. I added that they were not to think that I did not want to see them, or you, or that I should be glad if they & you did not come; that it would on the contrary be a kind of sad pleasure to me to think that you were there; and that there would not be the slightest embarrassment in explaining our not meeting, becauseEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)separation from;f1would necessitate TSE's sequestration;a8 I should naturally be living a retired life and seeing no one but business acquaintances, relatives, and the people I had to see. (ThatNoyes, Penelope Barker;c1 is true, I shd. not see even Penelope for instance if she came). They were very patient and kind with me; but I left somewhat sadly; for I began to feel that perhaps they did not consider me a very desirable acquaintance for you. Perhaps it is merely that that thought had occurred to me anyway. They spoke to me tonight very kindly indeed however. IHale, Emilyphotographs of;w7;b4 gave them the photographs which they did not have; except the Beautiful one; and WHERE is the film? It wd. really be dishonest of you to withhold it, for you only were allowed to have them on the express understanding that I shd. have the photographs FILMS.
Many relatives at the lecture, including the Lambs (they are not Unitarians after all, I find). CousinLamb, Annie Lawrence (TSE's cousin);a3 Annie is quite a dear, and so are the girls – I remember them as tiny things, and they have grey hair. Her dinner was pleasant: theSpencers, the;a5 Spencers, theHillyers, the;a2Hillyer, Dorothy Hancock Tilton
MyHarvard UniversityEnglish 26 (Modern English Literature);a7positive feedback on;a6 undergraduate lectures so far are said to be successful, so they may become easier to me, but [I] have been in a deadly funk. Must not, cannot, spend more than three hours preparing each, so can do no reading. TwoPeel, Robert;a1 students, Walcott and Peel,5 told Spencer how much they enjoyed them (but that’s only four so far). They are a drain, though. Perhaps I shall get to like talking; I hope not; if I do, shall just have to go into politics when I get back. In any case, one person will have learned something from my visit, and that is something to be thankful for; itSpencer, Theodorelearns to tie tie from TSE;b2 is Ted Spender <Spencer! not to be confused with my Stephen Spender!>, by observing me, he says he has learned how to tie an evening dress tie. It is like him to pick that up, and like him to confess it with a little humour at his own expense.
I am wondering if, when I shall get back, I shall have the time to write less about events and more of thoughts. The enclosures show the only way in which I can manage to write of thoughts and feelings at present. But I have the more and very sombre thought that perhaps when I get back you will prefer not to hear from me at all.
TheDyer, Peterwrites to TSE from prison;a1 enclosed is interesting, and I think rather touching. The man is interested in my writing. He has no axe to grind. He is thirty-four. He has been in prison 8 months. He is serving a life sentence. I did not ask Brother Frederick what for; I do not want to know. But I have written to the Professor, and I want to see Peter Dyer.6
A ‘notre Emilie’ (disait Mme Galitzi à qui mes sentiments les plus distingués) de son
I hope that you got the letter enclosing the photographs, as well as the subsequent.
1.TSE gave his fifth lecture in the Norton series, on ‘The practice of Shelley and Keats’.
2.See ‘Lecture Notes for English 26: English Literature from 1890 to the Present Day’ – specifically, Lecture IV and Lecture V [Shaw and Chesterton] – in CProse 4, 763–7.
3.Revd Arthur Lee Kinsolving (1899–1977), Rector of Trinity Church, Boston. Educated at the University of Virginia and Virginia Episcopal Theological Seminary before becoming a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, he was ordained in 1924. He subsequently ministered to Trinity Church, Princeton NJ, and at St James’ Church, Madison Avenue at 71st Street, New York.
4.Spence Burton, SSJE, St Francis’ House, Society of St John the Evangelist (The Cowley Fathers), 990 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA. Educated at Harvard, Burton worked for thirty years for the Society of St John the Evangelist, ultimately becoming Father Superior of the American Congregation. From 1939 he was Suffragan Bishop of Haiti and the Dominican Republic; and finally at Nassau, 1942–62.
5.Robert Peel was to writePeel, Robertenthuses about English 26;a2n to TSE from Cambridge, Mass., 6 July 1933: ‘May I say … what a great pleasure it has been knowing you personally and being a student in English 26. The last half-year has been one of the most stimulating that I have had and will sooner or later, I hope, bear fruit in writing that has something positive to say – with a core of spiritual conviction, that is, in addition to outward sensitiveness. That is what I particularly appreciated about your lectures and criticism: even where one disagreed with the judgments, one recognised them as three-dimensional and was consequently led to question all sorts of values other than purely literary ones. I don’t know that my fundamental convictions have changed at all, but at least I know my reasons for them better than before, and that’s somethink [sic]!’ (TSECRI23). See Peel, ‘Virginia Woolf’, Criterion 13 (Oct. 1933), 78–96.
PeelPeel, Robert (1909–92), who was born in England and lived in Brookline, Mass., had published his undergraduate dissertation, The Creed of a Victorian Pagan (on George Meredith), in 1931; a Christian Scientist, he went on to publish Christian Science: Its Encounter with American Culture (1958) and a 3-vol. life of Mary Baker Eddy – the fruit of twenty years of research – The Years of Discovery (1966), The Years of Trial (1971), The Years of Authority (1977). He taught English and Philosophy at Principia College and was Chief, Editorial Section, Christian Science Committee on Publication.
6.Peter Dyer asked TSE (12 Feb. 1933) to visit the penitentiary in order to talk with him about poetry.
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.
35.AnnieLamb, Annie Lawrence (TSE's cousin) Lawrence (Rotch) Lamb (1857–1950) was married to Horatio Appleton Lamb (1850–1926).
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.
PeelPeel, Robert (1909–92), who was born in England and lived in Brookline, Mass., had published his undergraduate dissertation, The Creed of a Victorian Pagan (on George Meredith), in 1931; a Christian Scientist, he went on to publish Christian Science: Its Encounter with American Culture (1958) and a 3-vol. life of Mary Baker Eddy – the fruit of twenty years of research – The Years of Discovery (1966), The Years of Trial (1971), The Years of Authority (1977). He taught English and Philosophy at Principia College and was Chief, Editorial Section, Christian Science Committee on Publication.
2.TheodoreSpencer, Theodore Spencer (1902–48), writer, poet and critic, taught at Harvard, 1927–49: see Biographical Register.