[41 Brimmer St., Boston]
I hope that I am not going to fatigue you overmuch with all my fragments of letters. But, as things are with us, and as they can only be, it seems necessary to say ever so much more than would be necessary if we were together; because words are the only form of expression (only you must not distress me by worrying ‘if you would be right’, you must know in your marrow how perfectly right) whereas in continuous contact so much is expressed without words – even in the little menial tasks I should love to perform for you.
InEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)separation from;f1out of the question;a2 reply to your question: I do not see that anything can be done to improve matters – from my point of view, nothing except to gain more time and rest and occasional opportunities to go away alone; and that would be a great deal; and from her point of view, nothing except to keep her moderately well and sometimes amused. I do not think that she suffers, most of the time, in the way that an adult does, who looks before and after, and I don’t think she is capable of any great happiness. I sincerely wish that there was ‘some other man’ – not cynically, but so to speak catholically from the point of view that the good life must in practice be considered relatively to the capacities of the individual. ThereEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)relations with Charles Buckle;a3 is one thing in the past that I take account of; although I can by no means rely upon her own accounts of things, and she can hardly repeat a telephone conversation without getting it a little wrong; but I believe that she was very much in love, in her way, with a man she knew before she knew me.1 ApparentlyBuckle, Charlesas described to TSE;a1 he was as neurotic as herself, and seems to have behaved abominably; after hanging about for the two years and dancing together always, so that during that time all other men were more or less out of it, and having induced her to break an engagement with a better man than himself, they were finally engaged; and he broke it off without giving any reason, after the wedding had been fixed – and the presents had to be returned. I believe, whatever the exact facts may be, that this put the finishing touch to an inferiority complex from years before. IEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)marriage to;e6TSE on his own incapacity;a5 cannot help thinking, however, that possibly she might have become really in love with me if I had been the sort of man who could have been really in love with her – but obviously what she had to give was not what could ever have satisfied me.
You are not the only woman who finds hats off the face trying, or imagines they are: I have heard the same complaint from several! But they are going to have wide floppy brims this summer, aren’t they?
ButHale, Emilyappearance and characteristics;v7TSE begs EH to describe her clothing;a5 of course you have various garments for various occasions and times of day – but do describe at least one of them.
YesHale, Emilyencouraged to write for periodicals;a5, I do want you to keep up writing. Itwritingand routine;a1 is a good thing if one is forced to write regularly, say something in connexion with a periodical, and sometimes even to have to pass writing one knows isn’t all it should be; nothing but constant practice can give flexibility and remove the traces of stiffness. I never write anything now except a few pencil notes of headings – the actual composition (even of verse) direct on the typewriter. You ought to have a portable typewriter – not that I want you to write to me on it – I love your handwriting too much – you cross your t’s differently now, that is the only change. Now then, what are you starting to write now?
Resignation is only a stage, I think; the better stage is reconciliation, perhaps. It is dear of you to insist that if we met I shouldn’t and mustn’t be timid with you. And as you say it would be so it would be so. But I am overwhelmed at times by my consciousness of unworthiness: much pain and struggle, and I have got such a little way; and you started such a long way ahead of me anyway! NoChristianityasceticism, discipline, rigour;a9the necessity for;a1 doubt, it is because of my weakness that the discipline and routine of Catholicism is necessary for me, though circumstances prevent my practicing and meditating all that I should; butChristianityliturgy;b9TSE's weekly minimum;a1 communion twice a week and Sunday High Mass have become the minimum essential to support me. You, my dear, I recognise perfectly well, are naturally in a much higher state of grace (if there are degrees – if not – much more near to a state of grace) than I am, and so I feel that you do not need, for this world or the next, the detailed precise beliefs that I need.
Meanwhile I am glad that you continue to lecture and read, and I'Journey of the Magi'admired by EH;a2 am glad you like the Magi2 and QUESTION: how do you get engagements in England? and can you get more? I often get asked to give lectures or read papers, but very seldom am offered payment for them!
I want to send you another book soon – not, this time, one of my own compositions or for use in your lectures and readings – though I shall send you anything from time to time that I think might be useful in that way – and some book just because I have liked it.
ThenEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)drug habits;e7sleeping draughts;a1, when you have to begin with a naturally frivolous though not bad nature, damaged by mistakes of this sort, and an unformed character further undermined by over twenty years of sleeping drafts draughts, there can be very little left of something which was not much to begin with. Of course I was in every way the wrong man. BeingEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)marriage to;e6TSE on entering into;a1 undeveloped myself, and being a foreigner knowing almost no one, I took it for granted that she knew more about most things than I did. So I was utterly at sea. GraduallyEnglandthe English;c1initially strange to TSE;a1, as I came to know and understand English people, I came to see that many things I supposed to be English were merely neurotic, that English people were not nearly so different from myself as I had thought, and that what seemed strange to me seemed strange to them too. AndEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)mental state;e8childlike;a1 very strangely too, as time went on, the superficial appearance of maturing faded away, and she came to appear more and more just a child – sometimes a very precocious and intelligent child (which she had been when quite small), sometimes a good child and very often a naughty one. And it’s only in the good child flashes that I can really like her – though of course like her only as one likes a child. And yet now and then, though rarely, she will talk in quite a mature and very intelligent way, for a few moments, about some impersonal topic. How baffling and mysterious the human soul is! and this type of abnormality seems to me to spring from a deeprooted [sic] fear: fear of growing up, fear of the responsibility of being adult and having adult responsibilities. If she had married an older man, an Englishman and a man of the world, who should have been moreover contented with prettiness and dependence and demanded no deep emotion, she might be in a different case now.
And that’s all I want to say about the subject now. But indeed on any subject, if I wrote volumes, it would not do; because every subject has to develop slowly and out of our correspondence, our conversations. Only remember, Emily dear, that you owe it to me not to let me tire you or strain you too much, because your own health and all possible happiness is more than the whole world to me, and without it everything in my world would collapse.
1.The lover in question was a schoolmaster named Charles Buckle: see Ann Pasternak Slater, The Fall of a Sparrow: Vivien Eliot’s Life and Writings (2020), 7–15.
2.The Journey of the Magi, illus. by E. McKnight Kauffer (Ariel Poems no. 8: 1927).