[1418 East 63d St., Seattle]
[Pike’s Farm, Crowhurst,
near Lingfield, Surrey]
IfHale, EmilyTSE fears accident befalling;b5 there is no word from or of you on Monday I think I shall send a reply wire with my address of the moment: I think I have managed very badly not to have arranged some certainty of at least getting bad news when any. I should not mind so much if I were sure that you had ever arrived at Seattle; but your announcement that you meant to motor from Portland only came at the last, and your letter was rather disquieting anyway. I am not worrying because of not having heard from you – in any case my last letter from New England was dated only July 9th – I am just worrying.
ISheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister);c8 hear pretty frequently from Ada, and have heard from Henry and my other sisters; andHinkley, Susan Heywood (TSE's aunt, née Stearns)sympathises with TSE over separation;b3 I have had an unexpectedly sympathetic note from Aunt Susie1 – probably under Ada’s influence. IBabbitt, Irvingdies;a5 was depressed yesterday to hear from Paul More of Irving Babbitt’s death.2 ItMore, Paul ElmerTSE's two days in Oxford with;a8 must be a great, though not unexpected blow to More; and I am going to spend two nights with him at the Isis, in Oxford, after my performance at Keble on Monday. (I'Catholicism and the International Order'composed without enthusiasm;a2 have finished my address on Catholicism and International Order, which took me a whole week, wholly without inspiration, and I am not proud of it. PerhapsEnglandthe English weather;c3relaxes TSE;a5 the return to the English climate is relaxing at first; I can easily sleep for an hour and a half every afternoon, not quite so well at night). I think I have told you of my plans so far as formed, and very little has happened during the past week. IEameses, theand their wireless;a1 have been quite alone, except for Mr. and Mrs Eames playing the wireless in their kitchen, and the Morley’s [sic] servants playing theirs in the garden; and in my present state I find the solitude welcome. TwiceBird, ErnestTSE's consultations with;a2 I went to London, onceFaber, Geoffrey;c2 to see Bird and once to lunch with Faber. I do not think that I could be better off anywhere than here, for the moment; the weather has been oppressive and thundery, and I am glad to be out of London. I have not felt much like exercise, or there are pleasant walks to be taken hereabouts. EnglandEnglandEnglish countryside;c2distinguished;a2, or parts of it, still seem to be for the pedestrian; if they ever try to straighten out the roads the country will be ruined. What is delightful is its intimacy, the different aspects of beauty which appear within a hundred yards, only possible when the landscape is small and near. And the constant changes of light and shade, the endless procession of cloud; the beauty of solitary old trees on the hills, forms equally lovely from every side.
I wish I knew how you would be spending your time for the rest of the summer. I do not suppose there are many congenial people in Seattle. Will you get any bathing I wonder (I must buy an outfit to bathe in Wales); motoring I am sure you will get. Will you have to work to prepare for your courses in the autumn. I know my letters are being awfully dull. I did so wish that you might spend this summer in Europe; it would have been a comfort even to know that you were in Italy or France. I wish that I could ever feel wholly at home in one place; but how can I when you are so far away. Perhaps I can write a more interesting letter after Oxford; so until Thursday, GoodbyeHale, EmilyTSE's names, nicknames and terms of endearment for;x3'Raspberrymouth';b7 Raspberrymouth.
1.Eliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)separation from;f1TSE describes going through with;b3nTSE responded on 19 July (Letters 6, 608) to Hinkley’s letter of 9 July: ‘No action of this sort, of course, is worth taking until one is prepared to take it whatever anyone thinks (except of course for ecclesiastical advice) but après coup it is a help to know that one’s relatives are not censorious. But once such a train is started, one has to carry it out to the end in a kind of anaesthesia. At the moment I am fortunately able to feel very little.’
2.Irving Babbitt died on 15 July 1933.
2.IrvingBabbitt, Irving Babbitt (1865–1933), American academic and literary and cultural critic; Harvard University Professor of French Literature (TSE had taken his course on literary criticism in France); antagonist of Rousseau and romanticism; promulgator (with Paul Elmer More) of ‘New Humanism’. His publications include Literature and the American College (1908); Rousseau and Romanticism (1919); Democracy and Leadership (1924). See TSE, ‘The Humanism of Irving Babbitt’ (1928), in Selected Essays (1950); ‘XIII by T. S. Eliot’, in Irving Babbitt: Man and Teacher, ed. F. Manchester and Odell Shepard (1941): CProse 6, 186–9.
11.GeoffreyFaber, Geoffrey Faber (1889–1961), publisher and poet: see Biographical Register.
4.PaulMore, Paul Elmer Elmer More (1864–1937), critic, scholar, philosopher: see Biographical Register.
2.AdaSheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister) Eliot Sheffield (1869–1943), eldest of the seven Eliot children; author of The Social Case History: Its Construction and Content (1920) and Social Insight in Case Situations (1937): see Biographical Register.