[No surviving envelope]
AnotherChristianityretreat and solitude;c9the need for;a3 justification of frequent ‘retreats’ and stays in monasteries is this; that the practice of devotion is not a drug, any more than poetry is a drug. InpoetryTSE's own reasons for writing;a7 writing poetry you just get something out of you which is a burden inside you; but that is just because you have to write. Poetry writing does not still any pain, or bring any compensation; if it is right poetry, it simply makes you face your pain. The'drugs'controversy;a3 drug – besides drug and drink in the literal sense – is Fighting. To attack ideas and practices and people who are in power; or to defend ideas or people or practices which are in disrepute, to use all the weapons of invective, irony, sarcasm and wit in the attempt to set something up or something down – that is a man’s work, it is a work to be done; but all the same, it is dangerous. It is what I might throw myself into too wholeheartedly: for it is also a drug. The triumph of wit well used in a good cause is dangerously near to Pride. PoetrypoetryTSE doubts his own;a8 never engenders Pride, if it is Poetry, the real right thing;1 because one is so aware of realness and rightness in general that one is never set up by one’s own work. The execution falls so far short of the ambition! I have so many doubts about the permanence of my own work! At 44 one is still too young to have had such success; there may be something Byronically wrong about it. But the controversialist has none of these doubts, any more than the prizefighter: you have either won or lost; there is always the referee to say so.
I'drugs'activity ('being useful');a1 think that you, like me, are tempted to wear yourself out in good works. It is for you to ask yourself: am I drugging myself with work? If so, I am doing wrong, I am evading reality. It is so easy to be dishonest, to say: This is merely my DUTY. You can do all that is your Duty without wearing yourself out. In fact, part of your Duty is not to wear yourself out. You have a Duty towards me, you know, just as I have towards a number of people.
But all this time I am simply worrying myself into horrors about you; for Mrs. Perkins rang me up (about Saturday night), and said that she had not heard from you. O my dear even when you can’t write to me, do please try to get word to her; I am much more alarmed when she has no news of you than when I haven’t. AndEyre, Mary B.;a5 Miss Eyre is not about yet, so she is of no use.
TonightSnell, Ada Laura Fonda;a1 IEnglish Teachers' AssociationTSE makes speech at;a1 had to go to a dinner – a long long dinner – with long waits between courses – 190 people all gabbling – sat between Miss Professor Snell of Mt. Holyoke2 and Mrs. Ada Russell, Amy Lowell’s Friend – a dinner of the English Teachers’ Association, and make a speech afterwards. And as so often on such occasions, my eye caught the back of someone who reminded me of you, and I looked and peeped surreptitiously until she turned: and Oh the face! One knows what will happen, and cannot prevent oneself going on looking until the Disillusionment.
YouHale, Emilyappearance and characteristics;v7her hands;c1 must take better care of the lovely hands: is there anything in the way of water softener etc. which I could obtain for you here that you can’t get in Claremont. InHale, Emilyappearance and characteristics;v7recommended skin-cream;c2 London I should suggest Cyclax Skin Food; I don’t know what the American equivalent is.
1.See Henry James’s short story ‘The Real Right Thing’ (1899): a warning to biographers.
2.AdaSnell, Ada Laura Fonda Laura Fonda Snell (1870–1972) taught English at Mount Holyoke College, 1900–38.
3.MaryEyre, Mary B. B. Eyre, Professor of Psychology, lived in a pretty frame house on College Avenue, Claremont, where TSE stayed during his visit to EH at Scripps College.
2.AdaSnell, Ada Laura Fonda Laura Fonda Snell (1870–1972) taught English at Mount Holyoke College, 1900–38.