[No surviving envelope]

T. S.Eliot
EmilyHale
TS
B-11 Eliot House
3 April 1933

ThisClement, JamesWayland weekends with;a3 weekend at Jim’s – tranquil, except that they had an informal dinner party on Saturday night – social pressure compels people to give dinner parties for me; friends become unpopular unless they entertain a little ‘for me’. GuestsSeabury, Mortimer;a1, aSeabury, Frida Semler;a1 Mr. & Mrs. Mortimer Seabury,1 and the music master from Croton, one Twyning Lines, and his Swiss wife. A bottle of bogus whisky tasting as I said like Listerine, for which Jim apologised much. Slept well. Got up for breakfast, and to save Jim trouble, letChristianityliturgy;b9Roman service in Wayland;a9 him take me to the local Roman church, as he had to convey the cook there anyway. The first time I had been to a Roman service sinceFranceParis;b7TSE's 1910–11 year in;a1 I used to go to the Madeleine2 in 1911, except once at Westminster Cathedral. A little local church in Wayland. I noticed the tawdriness; cheap gaudy high altar, Holy Family in colours, – like a valentine of a birthday cake – saints about in colours – St. Anthony of Padua and others; atmosphere stuffy and haliotic; common Irish priest; lack of intensity and piety. ButEnglandthe English;c1as congregants;a9 I am used to an English congregation (of all ranks) bred to it, whereas this was an Irish congregation born to it; and it is surely as much the real thing. They had Benediction after Mass, and turned on some dreadful concealed pink lights in the altar to illuminate the Holy Family etc; and choir squawked untunably throughout and the priest mumbled; but this is all irrelevant; and one must not associate necessarily spiritual truth with personal refinement.

To-day returned and revised my talk; lunched in the crypt of St. Paul’s on cafeteria, with the clergy (no bishop). After lunch, twenty minutes of Clerical Association finances (finances deplorable). ISperry, Willard Learoydexcoriated by TSE;a2 laidFarmer, Herbert Henry;a1 into Dean Sperry and Professor Farmer,3 and received a salvo of applause, and numerous individuals grasped me by the hand to tell me how much they liked it. (Including young Kinsolving). You would have thought that I had responded to a Need. It was like punching a Tar Baby.4 What can one do? I hope that the Unitarian clergy will prove to have more resistance.

ReturnedSargents, thehost TSE and Maritain;a1Sargent, DanielSargents, the for a nap, then to dinner in Boston at the Sargents (whom I have mentioned). IMaritain, JacquesBoston reunion with;a7 found that with Maritain I could again talk French pretty fluently; it is easier with someone you know already. It seemed extraordinarily odd to talk to Maritain in Boston. You see, my past life in America and my past life in England have been two different lives that never have come to fit. Of course the Sargents, being Papists, do not quite fit Boston, which made things easier; but all my associations with Maritain (withMassis, Henriassociated with Maritain;a1 MassisMaurras, CharlesTSE associates with Maritain;a15 and Maurras6 and so on) are so very incongruous to the Fenway that it seemed a little dreamlike. I am still of the opinion that Maritain is as near a Saint as anyone I have known.

1.MortimerSeabury, Mortimer Seabury (1886–1968); FridaSeabury, Frida Semler Semler Seabury (1887–1974).

2.L’église de la Madeleine: Catholic church in the 8th arrondissement, Paris.

3.Herbert Henry Farmer (1892–1981), Presbyterian minister, taught at the Hartford Seminary, 1931–5. Barbour Professor of Systematic Theology at Westminster College, Cambridge (UK), 1935–49; Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity, 1949–60, and Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, 1950–60.

4.See Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus: His Song and His Sayings (1881).

5.Henri MassisMassis, Henri (1886–1970), right-wing Roman Catholic critic; contributor to L’ Action Française; co-founder and editor of La Revue Universelle: see Biographical Register.

6.Charles MaurrasMaurras, Charles (1868–1952), French poet, critic, political philosopher and polemical journalist; founding editor and moving spirit of the monarchist paper, L’ Action Française (1908–44) – which was ultimately to support Pétain and Vichy during WW2. Building on ‘three traditions’ – classicism, Catholicism, monarchism – Maurras’s ideology was to become increasingly right-wing, authoritarian and anti-democratic. In 1925 TSE had planned to write a book about Maurras; and he later wrote ‘The Action Française, M. Maurras and Mr. Ward’, Criterion 7 (March 1928). In a later essay, TSE cited Whibley, Daudet and Maurras as the ‘three best writers of invective of their time’ (Selected Essays, 499). Eliot to William Force Stead, 19 Mar. 1954: ‘I am a disciple of Charles Maurras only in certain respects and with critical selection. I do owe Maurras a good deal, and retain my admiration for him, but I think he had serious errors of political judgment – in fact, he should have confined himself, I think, to the philosophy of politics, and never have engaged in political agitation at all.’ See further James Torrens, SJ, ‘Charles Maurras and Eliot’s “New Life”’, Publications of the Modern Language Association 89: 2 (Mar. 1974), 312–22. TSE on Maurras in Christian News-Letter 44 (28 Aug. 1940), 2; CProse 6, 122–3.

Christianity, and human isolation, and modern economics, Ada on TSE's personal piety, scheme for 'Pro Fide' bookshop, among the Eliot family, and beauty, its sects like different clubs, Anglo-Catholicism, TSE's conversion to, which he dates to Eccleston Square meeting, Anglican Missal sought for EH, but unfortunately out of print, discussed at Boston Theological School, and the Petrine Claims, apostolic succession, over Roman Catholicism, as refuge from VHE, and the Reformation, asceticism, discipline, rigour, the necessity for, and TSE's daily exhortation, making and breaking habits, mastering emotions and passions, as salubrious, only remedy for a prurient culture, confession and communion, more possible during Harvard year, the case for unattainable ideals, in time of war, gets TSE up before 7 o'clock, hereditary with TSE, belief, and good poetry, faced with Second World War, and conversion, antidote to TSE's skepticism, Christendom, TSE ponders the decline of, TSE on his prominence within, its ruin, the Church Visible and Invisible, and TSE's war work, the Malabar Church, prospect of total reunion within, confession, helps to objectify sin, more dreaded than dentist, harder in the morning, death and afterlife, the struggle to prepare for, consoles TSE in life, and cremation, Requiem Mass, gives meaning to life, and what makes a desirable burial place, the nature of eternal life, divorce, unrecognised by Anglo-Catholic Church, which TSE regrets, in church law, would separate TSE from Church, evil, TSE's belief in, and moral percipience, guilt, and the New England conscience, hell, TSE's 1910 vision of, and damnation, according to TSE, liturgy, TSE's weekly minimum, Mass of the Pre-sanctified, Requiem Mass versus Mass of Good Friday, and whether to serve at Mass, Imposition of Ashes, at Christmas, High Mass over Mattins, aversion to Low Church Mattins, Roman service in Wayland, Tenebrae, in country parish church, as guest at Kelham, remarkable sermon, over Christmas, Tenebrae and Family Reunion, during Holy Week, Mass of Charles King and Martyr, love, loving one's neighbour, marriage, TSE's need for privacy within, mysticism and transcendence, interpenetration of souls, intimations of life's 'pattern', 'doubleness', arrived at through reconciliation, orthodoxy, only remedy for contemporary culture, and pagans, sets TSE at odds with modernity, necessarily trinitarian, 'Christian' defined, iniquities of liberal theology, and creed, authority, Transubstantiation, TSE disclaims 'self-centredness' in maintaining, politics, the Church and social change, how denomination maps onto, need for working-class priests, church leaders against totalitarianism and Nazism, Christianity versus Fascism and Communism, Papal Encyclical against Nazi Germany, the 'Dividend morality', Presbyterianism, TSE quips on the meanness of, Quakerism, resignation, reconciliation, peace, TSE's love allows for, 'peace that passeth all understanding', the struggle to maintain, following separation from VHE, retreat and solitude, EH at Senexet, the need for, a need increasing with age, and TSE's mother, Roman Catholicism, TSE's counter-factual denomination, Rome, sacraments, Holy Communion, marriage, sainthood, TSE's idea of, the paradoxes of, susceptible of different sins, sins, vices, faults, how to invigilate, the sense of sin, the sinner's condition, bound up with the virtues, as a way to virtue, TSE's self-appraisal, when humility shades into, when unselfishness shades into, among saints, proportionate to spiritual progress, daydreaming, despair, lust, pride, perfection-seeking pride, spiritual progress and direction, TSE's crisis of 1910–11, EH's crisis, versus automatism, TSE's sense of, towards self-knowledge, in EH's case, as personal regeneration, temptation, to action/busyness, the Church Year, Advent, Christmas, dreaded, happily over, TSE rebuked for bah-humbugging, church trumps family during, season of irreligion, thoughts of EH during, unsettling, fatiguing, in wartime, Easter preferred to, Ash Wednesday, Lent, season for meditation and reading, prompts thoughts of EH, Lady Day, Holy Week, its intensity, arduous, preserved from public engagements, exhausting but refreshing, excitingly austere, Easter, better observed than Christmas, missed through illness, Unitarianism, the Eliots' as against EH's, the prospect of spiritual revival within, as personified by TSE's grandfather, regards the Bible as literature, as against Catholicism, divides EH from TSE, and whether Jesus believed himself divine, according to Dr Perkins, in England as against America, over-dependent on preachers' personality, TSE's wish that EH convert from, outside TSE's definition of 'Christian', the issue of communion, baptism, impossibly various, virtues heavenly and capital, bound up with the vices, better reached by way of sin, charity, towards others, in Bubu, TSE's intentness on, delusions of, as against tolerance, chastity, celibacy, beneath humility, TSE lacks vocation for, faith, and doubt, hope, a duty, TSE's struggle for, humility, distinguished from humiliation, comes as relief, greatest of the virtues, propinquitous to humour, not an Eliot virtue, opposed to timidity, danger of pride in, is endless, TSE criticised for overdoing, theatre a lesson in, most difficult of the virtues, possessed by EH, possessed by EH to a fault, TSE compares himself to EH in, the paradox of, distinguished from inferiority, self-discovery teaches, possessed by Dr Perkins, patience, recommended to EH, its foundations, possessed by Uncle John, purity, distinguished from purification, temperance, with alcohol, beneath humility,
Clement, James, Wayland weekends with, conversation limited to grandchildren,
see also Clements, the

2.JamesClement, James Clement (1889–1973), Harvard Class of 1911, marriedClement, Margot Marguerite C. Burrel (who was Swiss by birth) in 1913. In later years, TSE liked visiting them at their home in Geneva.

England, TSE as transatlantic cultural conduit for, discomforts of its larger houses, and Henry James, at times unreal, TSE's patriotic homesickness for, which is not a repudiation of America, TSE's want of relations in, encourages superiority in Americans familiar with, reposeful, natural ally of France, compared to Wales, much more intimate with Europe than America, TSE on his 'exile' in, undone by 'Dividend morality', in wartime, war binds TSE to, post-war, post-war privations, the English, initially strange to TSE, contortions of upward mobility, comparatively rooted as a people, TSE more comfortable distinguishing, the two kinds of duke, TSE's vision of wealthy provincials, its Tories, more blunt than Americans, as congregants, considered racially superior, a relief from the Scottish, don't talk in poetry, compared to the Irish, English countryside, around Hindhead, distinguished, the West Country, compared to New England's, fen country, in primrose season, the English weather, cursed by Joyce, suits mistiness, preferred to America's, distinguished for America's by repose, relaxes TSE, not rainy enough, English traditions, Derby Day, Order of Merit, shooting, Varsity Cricket Match, TSE's dislike of talking cricket, rugby match enthralls, the death of George V, knighthood, the English language, Adlestrop, Gloucestershire, visited by EH and TSE, Amberley, West Sussex, ruined castle at, Arundel, West Sussex, TSE's guide to, Bath, Somerset, TSE 'ravished' by, EH visits, Bemerton, Wiltshire, visited on Herbert pilgrimage, Blockley, Gloucestershire, tea at the Crown, Bosham, West Sussex, EH introduced to, Bridport, Dorset, Tandys settled near, Burford, Oxfordshire, EH staying in, too hallowed to revisit, Burnt Norton, Gloucestershire, TSE remembers visiting, and the Cotswolds, its imagined fate, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, less oppressive than Oxford, TSE's vision of life in, possible refuge during Blitz, Charlbury, Oxfordshire, visited by EH and TSE, Chester, Cheshire, TSE's plans in, TSE on, Chichester, West Sussex, the Perkinses encouraged to visit, EH celebrates birthday in, TSE's guide to, 'The Church and the Artist', TSE gives EH ring in, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, Perkinses take house at, shockingly remote, TSE's first weekend at, likened to Florence, TSE jealous of memories associated with, its Arts & Crafts associations, its attractions to Dr Perkins, forever associated with TSE and EH, sound of the Angelus, without EH, treasured in TSE's memory, excursions from, EH on 'our' garden at, Stamford House passes into new hands, EH's fleeting return to, Cornwall, TSE's visit to, compared to North Devon, Cotswolds, sacred in TSE's memory, Derbyshire, as seen from Swanwick, Devon ('Devonshire'), likened to American South, the Eliots pre-Somerset home, its scenery, Dorset, highly civilised, TSE feels at home in, TSE's Tandy weekend in, Durham, TSE's visit to, East Anglia, its churches, TSE now feels at home in, East Coker, Somerset, visited by Uncle Chris and Abby, TSE conceives desire to visit, reasons for visiting, described, visited again, and the Shamley Cokers, now within Father Underhill's diocese, photographs of, Finchampstead, Berkshire, visited by TSE and EH, specifically the Queen's Head, Framlingham, Suffolk, visited, Garsington, Oxfordshire, recalled, Glastonbury, Somerset, Gloucester, Gloucestershire, Gloucestershire, highly civilised, its beautiful edge, its countryside associated with EH, TSE at home in, its domestic architecture, Hadsleigh, Suffolk, visited, Hampshire, journey through, TSE's New Forest holiday, Hereford, highly civilised, Hull, Yorkshire, and 'Literature and the Modern World', Ilfracombe, Devon, and the Field Marshal, hideous, Knole Park, Kent, Lavenham, Suffolk, visited, Leeds, Yorkshire, TSE lectures in, touring Murder opens in, the Dobrées visited in, home to EVE's family, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, TSE's visit to, especially the Bishop's Palace, Lincolnshire, arouses TSE's curiosity, unknown to EH, Lingfield, Surrey, Little Gidding, Cambridgeshire, TSE's long-intended expedition to, London, in TSE's experience, TSE's isolation within, affords solitude and anonymity, contrasted to country life, its fogs, socially freer than Boston and Paris, eternally misty, its lionhunters, rain preferable in, more 'home' to TSE than America, socially more legible than Boston, its society compared to Boston's, TSE's desire to live among cockneys, South Kensington too respectable, Clerkenwell, Camberwell, Blackheath, Greenwich scouted for lodging, its comparatively vigorous religious life, Camberwell lodging sought, Clerkenwell lodging sought, and music-hall nostalgia, abandoned by society in August, the varieties of cockney, TSE's East End sojourn, South Kensington grows on TSE, prepares for Silver Jubilee, South Kensington street names, Dulwich hallowed in memory, so too Greenwich, during 1937 Coronation, preparing for war, Dulwich revisited with family, in wartime, TSE as air-raid warden in, Long Melford, Suffolk, Lowestoft, Suffolk, Lyme Regis, Dorset, with the Morleys, Marlborough, Wiltshire, scene of a happy drink, Needham Market, Suffolk, Newcastle, Northumberland, TSE's visit to, Norfolk, appeals to TSE, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, dreary, Nottinghamshire, described for EH, Oxford, Oxfordshire, as recollected by TSE, past and present, EH takes lodgings in, haunted for TSE, in July, compared to Cambridge, Peacehaven, Sussex, amazing sermon preached in, Penrith, TSE's visit to, Rochester, as Dickens described, Salisbury, Wiltshire, in the Richmonds' company, Shamley Green, Surrey, TSE's ARP work in, its post office, Pilgrim Players due at, Somerset, highly civilised, TSE at home in, Southwold, Suffolk, TSE visits with family, Stanton, Gloucestershire, on TSE and EH's walk, Stanway, Gloucestershire, on EH and TSE's walk, Suffolk, TSE visits with family, Surrey, Morley finds TSE lodging in, evening bitter at the Royal Oak, TSE misses, as it must have been, Sussex, commended to EH, TSE walking Stane Street and downs, EH remembers, Walberswick, Suffolk, Wells, Somerset, TSE on visiting, Whipsnade, Bedfordshire, EH and TSE visit, Whitchurch Canonicorum, Dorset, delightful name, Wiltshire, highly civilised, TSE at home in, Winchelsea, East Sussex, visited, Winchester, TSE on, Wisbech, Lincolnshire, TSE on visiting, Worcestershire, TSE feels at home in, Yeovil, Somerset, visited en route to East Coker, York, TSE's glimpse of, Yorkshire,
see also British General Election
Farmer, Herbert Henry,

1.HerbertFarmer, Herbert Henry Henry Farmer (1892–1981), British Presbyterian minister, philosopher of religion, noted preacher, taught at the Hartford Seminary foundation in Connecticut, 1931–5. Thereafter he was appointed Barbour Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster College, Cambridge, 1935–60. His works included The Healing Cross (sermons, 1938); The Servant of the Word (1941); Towards a Belief in God (1942).

France, TSE's Francophilia shared by Whibley, TSE dreams of travelling in, synonymous, for TSE, with civilisation, the Franco-Italian entente, over Portugal, TSE awarded Légion d’honneur, subsequently elevated from chevalier to officier, TSE describes a typical French reception, Switzerland now favoured over, French cuisine, French culture, Exhibition of French Art 1200–1900, French painting, compared to English culture, French language, tires TSE to speak, TSE hears himself speaking, TSE dreads speaking in public, and TSE's false teeth, French politics, French street protest, England's natural ally, post-Versailles, post-war Anglo-French relations, French theatre, the French, more blunt than Americans, as compared to various other races, Paris, TSE's 1910–11 year in, EH pictured in, its society larger than Boston's, TSE's guide to, Anglo-French society, strikes, TSE dreads visiting, post-war, the Riviera, TSE's guide to, the South, fond 1919 memories of walking in, Limoges in 1910, Bordeaux,
Maritain, Jacques, and de Menasce's conversion and ordination, responsible for Cocteau's reconversion, on Cocteau, approaching sainthood, Boston reunion with, TSE appreciates his spiritual inferiority to, introduced to Jeanette McPherrin, on The Use of Poetry, writes to Jeanette McPherrin, TSE chairs talk by, which EH attends, thanks TSE for hospitality, and TSE's Paris itinerary, dinner for,
see also Maritains, the

5.JacquesMaritain, Jacques Maritain (1882–1973), philosopher and littérateur, was at first a disciple of Bergson, but revoked that allegiance (L’Evolutionnisme de M. Bergson, 1911; La Philosophie bergsonienne, 1914) and became a Roman Catholic and foremost exponent of Neo-Thomism. For a while in the 1920s he was associated with Action Française, but the connection ended in 1926. Works include Art et scolastique (1920); Saint Thomas d’Aquin apôtre des temps modernes (1923); Réflexions sur l’intelligence (1924); Trois Réformateurs (1925); Primauté du spirituel (1927), Humanisme intégral (1936), Scholasticism and Politics (1940), Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (1953). TSE told Ranjee Shahani (John O’London’s Weekly, 19 Aug. 1949, 497–8) that Maritain ‘filled an important role in our generation by uniting philosophy and theology, and also by enlarging the circle of readers who regard Christian philosophy seriously’. See Walter Raubicheck, ‘Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, and the Romantics’, Renascence 46:1 (Fall 1993), 71–9; Shun’ichi Takayanagi, ‘T. S. Eliot, Jacques Maritain, and Neo-Thomism’, The Modern Schoolman 73: 1 (Nov. 1995), 71–90; Jason Harding, ‘“The Just Impartiality of a Christian Philosopher”: Jacques Maritain and T. S. Eliot’, in The Maritain Factor: Taking Religion into Interwar Modernism, ed. J. Heynickx and J. De Maeyer (Leuven, 2010), 180–91; James Matthew Wilson, ‘“I bought and praised but did not read Aquinas”: T. S. Eliot, Jacques Maritain, and the Ontology of the Sign’, Yeats Eliot Review 27: 1–2 (Spring–Summer 2010), 21; and Carter Wood, This Is Your Hour: Christian Intellectuals in Britain and the Crisis of Europe, 1937–40 (Manchester, 2019), 69–72.

Massis, Henri, associated with Maritain, welcomes TSE in Paris, submits Criterion article, and TSE's 1936 visit to Paris, solicits Maurras tribute,

5.Henri MassisMassis, Henri (1886–1970), right-wing Roman Catholic critic; contributor to L’ Action Française; co-founder and editor of La Revue Universelle: see Biographical Register.

Maurras, Charles, TSE associates with Maritain, honoured while imprisoned,

6.Charles MaurrasMaurras, Charles (1868–1952), French poet, critic, political philosopher and polemical journalist; founding editor and moving spirit of the monarchist paper, L’ Action Française (1908–44) – which was ultimately to support Pétain and Vichy during WW2. Building on ‘three traditions’ – classicism, Catholicism, monarchism – Maurras’s ideology was to become increasingly right-wing, authoritarian and anti-democratic. In 1925 TSE had planned to write a book about Maurras; and he later wrote ‘The Action Française, M. Maurras and Mr. Ward’, Criterion 7 (March 1928). In a later essay, TSE cited Whibley, Daudet and Maurras as the ‘three best writers of invective of their time’ (Selected Essays, 499). Eliot to William Force Stead, 19 Mar. 1954: ‘I am a disciple of Charles Maurras only in certain respects and with critical selection. I do owe Maurras a good deal, and retain my admiration for him, but I think he had serious errors of political judgment – in fact, he should have confined himself, I think, to the philosophy of politics, and never have engaged in political agitation at all.’ See further James Torrens, SJ, ‘Charles Maurras and Eliot’s “New Life”’, Publications of the Modern Language Association 89: 2 (Mar. 1974), 312–22. TSE on Maurras in Christian News-Letter 44 (28 Aug. 1940), 2; CProse 6, 122–3.

Sargents, the, host TSE and Maritain,
Seabury, Frida Semler,

1.MortimerSeabury, Mortimer Seabury (1886–1968); FridaSeabury, Frida Semler Semler Seabury (1887–1974).

Seabury, Mortimer,

1.MortimerSeabury, Mortimer Seabury (1886–1968); FridaSeabury, Frida Semler Semler Seabury (1887–1974).

Sperry, Willard Learoyd, excoriated by TSE, 'pathetic',

5.WillardSperry, Willard Learoyd Learoyd Sperry (1882–1954), Congregationalist minister; Dean of the Harvard Divinity School, 1922–53; Plummer Professor of Christian Morals, 1928–53.