[No surviving envelope]
IEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)separation from;f1would necessitate TSE's sequestration;a8 think that what you say is wise and right – but perhaps you overrated my remark about withdrawing more from the world. On the one hand, it is that I shall feel my position acutely, and it is likely that I shd. never want to mix in general society so much again as in the past – I have done so more than I care about anyway – but that I leave naturally to circumstances, after the first year or so. The other motive was not a desire to escape from public responsibilities, nor an indifference to my friends. MyChristianityretreat and solitude;c9the need for;a3 intention was to continue to carry on all my activities, but from time to time to withdraw into some monastery for a fortnight or more at a time, and cultivate meditation and devotion. I hope that this does not seem to you merely an anodyne or an evasion. IChristianityasceticism, discipline, rigour;a9mastering emotions and passions;a4 don’t want to kill the painful passions that I feel, but to discipline them, by what can be really a more intense emotional life; and to fortify my life in the world, by my life out of it. Indeed, I want to grow up! For I am often so conscious of emotions twenty years old, just as fresh as ever, that I wonder whether I am not merely a cripple but an adolescent; andChristianityvirtues heavenly and capital;e1opposed to timidity;c2 whether I really have no ‘humility’ at all – the virtue which I prize so highly – but merely an adolescent modesty and timidity – a ‘natural’ virtue masquerading as an acquired one. AndChristianityvirtues heavenly and capital;e1better reached by way of sin;a2 I am more and more indifferent to ‘natural’ goodness – people who remain through life ‘naturally’ good are merely people well brought up in good habits or good conventions, whose lives have been so happily conducted that they have never experienced temptation – that is to say most of my relatives. IChristianitysins, vices, faults;d5as a way to virtue;a5 prefer a person who has committed almost any sin and had to gain virtue through suffering; and I think the Gospels confirm this. TheChristianityUnitarianism;d9as against Catholicism;a5 Unitarian religion is an easy one to live by for people who lead sheltered lives; it was allright for my father and mother (though I think the latter craved something better without knowing it); but it lets you down as soon as you are transplanted from Unitarian society. The Catholic faith expects more, and gives more; and it is there to support you when you find yourself isolated, as I have been, in the midst of pagans.
IpoetryTSE on his oeurvre;a6 assure you, I want to write more and better poetry; I don’t want to die leaving only the poor stunted fragments1 that I have produced. IHale, EmilyTSE's love for;x2TSE doubts decision to declare;c2 also feel often that I should never have appealed to you; that I should have been very grateful for the friendships I have, and satisfied myself by giving what I could in return; and not disturbed you. The next ten years are the hardest, I expect, both for you and for me. LifeCharles Eliot Norton Lectures (afterwards The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism)'Arnold and the Academic Mind' (afterwards 'Matthew Arnold');c2;a2 has so far given me three things: the Horror, and the Boredom, and the Glory.2
Also, no doubt, I have the practical desire of an old dog to prepare in advance a comfortable hole to die in.
1.‘These fragments I have shored against my ruins’ (The Waste Land, l. 430).
2.See TSE’s Norton Lecture 6: ‘Matthew Arnold’ – delivered at Harvard on 3 Mar. 1933 – CProse 4, 656: ‘It is an advantage to mankind in general to live in a beautiful world; that no one can doubt. But for the poet is it so important? We mean all sorts of things, I know, by Beauty. But the essential advantage for a poet is not, to have a beautiful world with which to deal: it is to be able to see beneath both beauty and ugliness; to see the boredom, and the horror, and the glory.’
This doxology closes the Lord’s Prayer: ‘For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever, amen.’