[Grace Toll Hall, Scripps College, Claremont]
If I had written in the middle of the week I could probably have caught an earlier boat; but on Wednesday I found that I had no stamps, and on Thursday I had to be in London. And as I could not be sure of getting a letter to you on your birthday anyway, it doesn’t matter so much. OnBrowne, Elliott Martinproduction of The Rock;a2meets TSE with Martin Shaw;a3 Thursday I had to meet this Martin Browne the play producer – and am to see him again with the musical director next Wednesday – thenGwyer, Lady Alsina;a2 toBrowne, Wynyard;a1 lunch at Lady Gwyer’s1 – theHenderson, J. F.;a1 reason why she wanted me was that she has a friend named Henderson2 in the home office who has a protegee a young man named Wynyard Browne3 ISquire, Sir John Collings ('J. C.')as boss;a3 think who is working for Jack Squire on The Mercury and wants to get some other job because Squire drinks too much or rather drinks all the time and so they hoped that I might be able to put something in his way – thenappearance (TSE's)teeth;c2'stumps';a4 to my Dentist, and my stumps are doing as well as could be expected after a whole year in fact rather better I may be able to peg along for four or five years before I need any false ones – andJaneses, the;a1 then to tea with my old servants Mr. and Mrs. Janes4 of Lumley Buildings Pimloco [sic] Road, and then caught the train back.
ForRock, Theoutlined for EH;a4 the last few days I have been working on this Building Play5 – we will call it as it has no name yet and it is something between a play and a pageant. It is more like a Revue. There will be historical scenes of course (I urged leaving out Dick Whittington and his Cat, as being too like a Christmas Pantomime) which thank goodness I shall not have to bother with, and which will be done by contingents from various parishes under Browne’s direction; one or two of them could be rather good, if it [is] possible to do anything with the dramatic material available. I have five choruses to compose totalling 20 minutes of delivery – and you have no idea how much verse you have to write to fill 20 minutes, this will be almost as long as my Complete Works; two dialogues between the Chorus (male and female) and St. Peter, two or three prose scenes with London workmen (comic) and a little conversation in other scenes, as well as a Builder’s Song. I do not propose to show you any of these compositions until the whole thing is ready, because I hardly expect them to be very distinguished poetry. ButAsh WednesdayTSE's last uncommissioned poem;b1 since Ash Wednesday I have not written any verse except from outward compulsion – i.e. the Ariel Poems were all written because the firm insisted on a Christmas poem from me for five years; IRock, TheTSE's motivation in undertaking;a5 am interested in seeing what can be done to order in poetry, especially for the stage; and I thought too, if I let myself in for this it will have to be done and perhaps it will get me in the way of writing poetry again. I am always very diffident about my own work, and depressed about it in advance as well as in retrospect, and it takes some tremendous explosion to force anything out of me – andcommitteesas a form of evasion;a1 as one gets older the family temperament asserts itself and I would far rather potter about with committees than do serious work of my own. Yet in my prose writing I always feel terribly handicapped by my imperfect education: there is really nothing that I have more than dabbled in, nothing on which I can speak with authority.
The weather has been beautiful up to to-day; yesterday I took a walk across country and the day was as beautiful as any in the summer, andbirdschaffinch;a9at Pike's Farm;a1 thebirdsblue tits;a6at Pike's Farm;a1 garden is full of chaffinches and blue tits now. The trees seem hardly to have lost a leaf.
I hope that I may have a letter on Monday – it is a fortnight since I heard from you. Even if it is just a little impersonal information it is a great consolation to me; and if you produce a play, or still more act in one, I always want a good deal more information about it than I in fact get. This is all the news that I have this week. InMorleys, thereading Dickens aloud to;b1 theDickens, Charlesread aloud to the Morleys;a2 eveningDickens, CharlesThe Pickwick Papers;b1 we have been reading Pickwick Papers aloud, but last night had an evening of Swinburne instead. Havetravels, trips and plansEH's 1934–5 year in Europe;b4;a1 the Perkins’s made any plans for going abroad? I rather hope not, for it is some assurance to have them in Seattle while you are in Claremont. I hope they will come to Europe next summer and induce you to come with them; because after two years of it you ought to have the greatest change possible: and still more, I wish that you may be able to travel abroad next summer with younger friends of your own age.
I seem to have little to say to-day; but I will write again in three or four days nonetheless.
EnclosedFabers, the;b6 photographs of Enid, Ann and myself, evidently taken by Geoffrey on the grouse moor in Wales. I haven’t had occasion for taking any photographs lately.
1.LadyGwyer, Lady Alsina Gwyer (daughter of the philanthropist Sir Henry Burdett) and Sir Maurice Gwyer (1878–1952) were co-proprietors of the company that ran the joint enterprise of the Scientific Press (launched by Burdett, who had died in 1920), the Nursing Mirror, and the general publishing house of Faber & Gwyer that had become Faber & Faber. The Gwyers had been co-owners of the business and Lady Gwyer had understandably felt it her duty to be the vigilant trustee of her late father’s interests. Maurice Gwyer was a major shareholder but did not serve as a director of the company, and was otherwise fully employed in public service, as Treasury Solicitor.
2.J. F. HendersonHenderson, J. F., Home Office, was to advise TSE and Frank Morley in Jan. 1934 about the perils that could be incurred if F&F were to publish Ulysses. See National Archives, Kew: HO 144/20071.
3.WynyardBrowne, Wynyard Browne (1911–64), dramatist, playwright and screenwriter.
4.W. L. JanesJanes, W. L. (1854–1939), ex-policeman who worked as handyman for the Eliots. Having been superannuated from the police force early in the century, he worked for a period (until about 1921) as a plain-clothes detective in the General Post Office. TSE reminisced to Mary Trevelyan on 2 Apr. 1951: ‘If I ever write my reminiscences, which I shan’t, Janes would have a great part in them’ (‘The Pope of Russell Square’). TSE to Adam Roberts (b. 1940; godson of TSE), 12 Dec. 1955: ‘I … knew a retired police officer, who at one period had to snoop in plain clothes in the General Post Office in Newgate Street – he caught several culprits, he said’ (Adam Roberts). HisJanes, Ada wife was Ada Janes (d. 1935).
5.The Rock.
4.E. MartinBrowne, Elliott Martin Browne (1900–80), English director and producer, was to direct the first production of Murder in the Cathedral: see Biographical Register.
1.LadyGwyer, Lady Alsina Gwyer (daughter of the philanthropist Sir Henry Burdett) and Sir Maurice Gwyer (1878–1952) were co-proprietors of the company that ran the joint enterprise of the Scientific Press (launched by Burdett, who had died in 1920), the Nursing Mirror, and the general publishing house of Faber & Gwyer that had become Faber & Faber. The Gwyers had been co-owners of the business and Lady Gwyer had understandably felt it her duty to be the vigilant trustee of her late father’s interests. Maurice Gwyer was a major shareholder but did not serve as a director of the company, and was otherwise fully employed in public service, as Treasury Solicitor.
2.J. F. HendersonHenderson, J. F., Home Office, was to advise TSE and Frank Morley in Jan. 1934 about the perils that could be incurred if F&F were to publish Ulysses. See National Archives, Kew: HO 144/20071.
4.W. L. JanesJanes, W. L. (1854–1939), ex-policeman who worked as handyman for the Eliots. Having been superannuated from the police force early in the century, he worked for a period (until about 1921) as a plain-clothes detective in the General Post Office. TSE reminisced to Mary Trevelyan on 2 Apr. 1951: ‘If I ever write my reminiscences, which I shan’t, Janes would have a great part in them’ (‘The Pope of Russell Square’). TSE to Adam Roberts (b. 1940; godson of TSE), 12 Dec. 1955: ‘I … knew a retired police officer, who at one period had to snoop in plain clothes in the General Post Office in Newgate Street – he caught several culprits, he said’ (Adam Roberts). HisJanes, Ada wife was Ada Janes (d. 1935).
4.W. L. JanesJanes, W. L. (1854–1939), ex-policeman who worked as handyman for the Eliots. Having been superannuated from the police force early in the century, he worked for a period (until about 1921) as a plain-clothes detective in the General Post Office. TSE reminisced to Mary Trevelyan on 2 Apr. 1951: ‘If I ever write my reminiscences, which I shan’t, Janes would have a great part in them’ (‘The Pope of Russell Square’). TSE to Adam Roberts (b. 1940; godson of TSE), 12 Dec. 1955: ‘I … knew a retired police officer, who at one period had to snoop in plain clothes in the General Post Office in Newgate Street – he caught several culprits, he said’ (Adam Roberts). HisJanes, Ada wife was Ada Janes (d. 1935).
9.J. C. SquireSquire, Sir John Collings ('J. C.') (1884–1958), poet, essayist and parodist, was literary editor of the New Statesman; founding editor, 1919–34, of London Mercury – in which he was antipathetic to modernism; he sniffed at The Waste Land: ‘it is a pity that a man who can write as well as Mr Eliot does in this poem should be so bored (not passionately disgusted) with existence that he doesn’t mind what comes next, or who understands it’ (23 Oct. 1922). Evelyn Waugh mocked him – as ‘Jack Spire’, editor of the London Hercules – in Decline and Fall (1928). Knighted 1933.