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I'Edward Lear and Modern Poetry'repeated gratis at Wellesley;a2 must take another nibble at answering your letter – havingWellesley CollegeTSE obliges Sheff by lecturing at;a5 just returned from giving a gratis lecture at Wellesley – which came at an inconvenient moment – but I wanted to make myself as agreeable as possible there on account of Sheff. It is odd, but for the past three weeks I have had twinges of a kind of neuritic pain on the under side of my left upper arm. Where is yours? if it is in the back it is lumbago. It is an odd thing to afflict anyone in California, & I suppose due to your being nervously debilitated at the end of the term. I have not been able to see the Perkins’s lately; duringChurch of St. John the Evangelist, Bowdoin Streetduring Lent;a6 Lent I went steadily to St. John’s of course; and since then have been away every Sunday, but hope to get to King’s Chapel at least once before I leave. WhenPerkinses, the;c9 I last saw Dr. Perkins he seemed to think that they would have to spend the summer in Seattle instead of going abroad; & in that event I suppose you will be in Seattle too. WillScripps College, Claremont;d3 you please let me know When you leave Scripps (and whither) as I want to treat myself to Ringing you up before we leave our respective domiciles.
IPage-Barbour Lectures, The (afterwards After Strange Gods)two lectures to be written in two days;a3 have to write two more lectures for Virginia in two days; and deliver my last lecture in my course on Saturday morning; thenSweeney AgonistesHallie Flanagan's Vassar production;a7 leaveVassar Collegeand Sweeney Agonistes;a1 for Vassar to hear the young ladies declaim Sweeney Agonistes under the direction of Mrs. Flanagan at the Experimental Theatre (that is where you ought to be be); thenEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother);b5 on to spend a night in New York with my brother, makeBarnard College, New YorkTSE makes recording at;a1 another gramophone record at Barnard College, andAmericaVirginia;h7and the Page-Barbour Lectures;a2 thence to Charlottesville Virginia, return here on Saturday or Sunday (week) and then the worst is over. So I may not be able to write from now for 10 days, as I shall be away from Cambridge.
IWaste Land, TheTSE on his recording of;a8 madeAmericaNew York (N.Y.C.);g1TSE's visits to;a2 a record of The Waste Land in New York last Friday; they played it to me afterwards; and you have no idea how strange it was to hear a voice which I could not in the least identify as my own or anything like it. However, it sounded so much better than my voice sounds to me when I hear myself talking, that I was distinctly pleased. It sounded Lazy and Powerful – whereas it ordinarily sounds to me as Bustling and Shrill! IBryn Mawr College, PennsylvaniaTSE lectures and reads at;a1 have been to Bryn Mawr too to read poetry; that was very pleasant, andPark, Marion Edwards;a1 I liked Miss Park the President;1 andBaillie, Very Revd Johnand Union Theological Seminary discussion;a3 on Saturday back to New York to stay with Baillie at the Union Theological Seminary – a Scot, quite intelligent; his wife English; an English Presbyterian, Professor Farmer of Hartford Theological College staid the night there too; ProfessorMontague, William Peperell;a1 Montague2 andNiebuhr, Reinholdtalks theology for seven hours;a1 Professor Reinhold Niebuhr3 came in, and we discussed theology from 4 to 11 p.m.
OneHale, Emilyrelationship with TSE;w9as perpetual progress and revelation;c1 reason why your letter made me happy – you must know what I mean in the context of ‘happiness’ – pain as well – is that it made me feel that there might still be something more in this world than ‘more of the same things’. I mean that it made me feel more keenly that intimacy & understanding are not simply states to be acquired and then maintained, but that they are degrees of a knowledge which can and should increase through the whole of life. Your letter marked a new stage, it seemed; and why should there not be many further stages to be reached, further discoveries to be made, further understandings to be unfolded from time to time? Things may seem to stand still for a long time, and then suddenly move. I hope for a progression of revelations.
<Many people, I believe, make the mistake of believing – taking for granted – that they understand each other, merely because they are married.>
I think that one should also not be impatient with oneself: most of the time I feel that I am standing still; the most that I can be aware of is not falling back; and then from time to time one is aware of having made a little progress; aware that difficulties which used to be most troublesome have disappeared insensibly. It comes by just grinding on with a routine of practice and abstinence. IHale, Emilyas teacher;w1and being admired by students;b3 find – and I think you will find – that the dependence of young people can be a support. I never preach to them; I never try even to be dignified; I try to be just as sincere and even unguarded as with my contemporaries. Suddenly you find (you must have found already) that you represent for some one young person or another – perhaps someone you had not taken particular notice of – something which will seem to you ludicrously superior to yourself as you know it. However, one may not know oneself any better than one knows one’s voice or appearance; for ‘oneself’ is as much what one is to others as it is what one is to oneself. And this is an immense stimulus to Be what somebody or somebodies think you are. Does this not partly answer your question about practising what you preach? Go on preaching (I am using the word rather differently from the way in which I used it a few lines above) and you’ll become in time even for yourself, what you preach; for you are that already for them. You don’t know to what obscure and apparently not over-perceptive undergraduate you may not be the ideal of what she would like to be – some may even envy you for being what you are to them. I don’t think anything has done more to mature me (how slow!) than my relations with and responsibilities towards young people. On the other hand, it seems to me wholesome to preserve always something of this same youthful attitude oneself, and to admire others for what they seem to have and one seems to have not. And then these young people pass out of one’s life, and one feels a little sad about it: but one cannot hope to be forever important to them; it is enough to have deflected them in the right way at one moment; and they will remember it again and be grateful later.
I know quite as well as you do what sort of life is natural to you. IHale, Emilyas teacher;w1TSE sees her teaching as a kind of acting;b4 understandHale, Emilyas actor;v8and teaching;b7 your tendency towards gaity, stimulation; your capacity for playing an important role in life, and seeing it as one sees a role one has played upon the stage; I think that I see a ‘theatrical’ element in your nature as I see it in my own – I am not using the word in a derogatory way – it is just a consciousness of the dramatic in whatever one is doing – a tendency towards ‘public life’.
I still am not answering completely your letter – there is part which I must reserve for the next occasion. But I feel that in some way you have written more freely to me than ever before; and this has given me new life.
Je vous prie, chère Princesse, d’agréer l’expression de mes sentiments infiniment disgingués [sic].
AGalitzi, Dr Christine;a4 charming letter from Miss Xtine Galitzi – which I will answer – she augurs well for the Dragon ‘de nouveaux lauriers pour notre chère amie’4 etc.
1.MarionPark, Marion Edwards Edwards Park (1875–1960), President of Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, 1922–42.
2.WilliamMontague, William Peperell Peperell Montague (1873–1953), Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University, New York, 1903–47. Works include Belief Unbound: A Promethean Religion for the Modern World (Yale University Press, 1930); The Ways of Things: A Philosophy of Knowledge, Nature and Value (New York, 1940).
3.ReinholdNiebuhr, Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971), influential theologian, ethicist, philosopher, and polemical commentator on politics and public affairs: see Biographical Register.
4.‘new laurels for our dear friend’.
3.VeryBaillie, Very Revd John Revd John Baillie (1886–1960), distinguished Scottish theologian; minister of the Church of Scotland; Roosevelt Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Seminary, New York, 1930–4; and was Professor of Divinity at Edinburgh University, 1934–59. In 1919 he married Florence Jewel Fowler (1893–1969), whom he met in service in France during WW1. Author of What is Christian Civilization? (lectures, 1945). See Keith Clements, ‘John Baillie and “the Moot”’, in Christ, Church and Society: Essays on John Baillie and Donald Baillie, ed. D. Fergusson (Edinburgh, 1993); Clements, ‘Oldham and Baillie: A Creative Relationship’, in God’s Will in a Time of Crisis: A Colloquium Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Baillie Commission, ed. A. R. Morton (Edinburgh, 1994).
3.HenryEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother) Ware Eliot (1879–1947), TSE’s older brother: see Biographical Register.
1.DrGalitzi, Dr Christine Christine Galitzi (b. 1899), Assistant Professor of French and Sociology, Scripps College. Born in Greece and educated in Romania, and at the Sorbonne and Columbia University, New York, she was author of Romanians in the USA: A Study of Assimilation among the Romanians in the USA (New York, 1968), as well as authoritative articles in the journal Sociologie româneascu. In 1938–9 she was to be secretary of the committee for the 14th International Congress of Sociology due to be held in Bucharest. Her husband (date of marriage unknown) was to be a Romanian military officer named Constantin Bratescu (1892–1971).
2.WilliamMontague, William Peperell Peperell Montague (1873–1953), Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University, New York, 1903–47. Works include Belief Unbound: A Promethean Religion for the Modern World (Yale University Press, 1930); The Ways of Things: A Philosophy of Knowledge, Nature and Value (New York, 1940).
3.ReinholdNiebuhr, Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971), influential theologian, ethicist, philosopher, and polemical commentator on politics and public affairs: see Biographical Register.
1.MarionPark, Marion Edwards Edwards Park (1875–1960), President of Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, 1922–42.