[Grace Toll Hall, Scripps College, Claremont]
Tomorrow I go up to London for two days, so I want to write you a line tonight, though I have no news to relate, since I wrote last (can I remember to buy a new typing ribbon?) and no thoughts of any importance to impart. I have a good deal to get in – a visit to the doctor and another to the dentist, lunchBrowne, Elliott Martinproduction of The Rock;a2meets TSE with Martin Shaw;a3 tomorrow with Martin Browne (the play producer) and Martin Shaw (the musical director);1 dinnerChild, Maurice;a3 at eight with Maurice Child; lunchBrace, Donald;a2 on Thursday with Donald Brace (my New York publisher) andRichmond, Bruce;a7 tea probably with Bruce Richmond; andHayward, John;a6 ifSpender, Stephen;a4 Brace can’t lunch, there are John Hayward and Stephen Spender, both of whom ought to be seen. IRock, Thefour choruses drafted;a6 have drafted four choruses, out of a probable eight: I am not wholly displeased with them; but how the performers, to say nothing of the churchpeople [sic] in charge, will feel about them is a different matter. I am anxious not to produce anything goody-goody or pretty-pretty, so the upshot is rather on the grim and ironic side, instead of being a cross between Gilbert Murray 2 and Gilbert and Sullivan. I am afraid it is more suitable for a group of Cambridge undergraduates than for nice suburban parishioners; and I dread having anything to do with the sort of excellent ladies who usually run parish affairs – you know what they are like. AndBrace, Donaldpressuring TSE for After Strange Gods;a3 Brace isPage-Barbour Lectures, The (afterwards After Strange Gods);a7 pressing me to get the Virginia lectures done; at least I have had the fortitude to decline two invitations to write articles for reviews. One of the contemporary curses for a man like me is being called upon to produce contributions to a ‘symposium’ volume – usually for causes with which one is in warm sympathy, which makes it more difficult to refuse: the financial reward is negligible, if any, and the contribution doesn’t attract much attention, and is a lot of trouble to write. IEnglish Church Unionand Christendom;a6 shall probably have to join in an English Church Union volume of this kind on Christian Sociology;3 andTate, Allenpresses TSE for contribution to book;a1 the Tennessee agrarians (Allen Tate) are begging me to contribute to a new statement of their policy – and I like Tate and sympathise with his aims.4 But those matters, and the Encyclopaedia, must wait till towards Christmas. I do hope, by the way, that you will be able to go to Seattle for Christmas. What I shall do I don’t know: IJaneses, theChristmas dinners with;a2Janes, Ada
A la fin de la semaine, et à toujours
1.MartinShaw, Martin Shaw (1875–1958), composer of stage works, choral pieces and recital ballads: see Biographical Register.
2.Gilbert Murray (1866–1957), Australian-born British classical scholar and translator; humanist. He was Professor of Greek, University of Glasgow, 1889–99; Regius Professor of Greek, Oxford University, 1908–36. Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer, Harvard University, 1925–6: his lectures were published as The Classical Tradition in Poetry (1927). His verse translations of dramas by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes were renowned and popular in their day – though TSE deplored them: see ‘Euripides and Professor Murray’ (1920) – and he was elected to the Order of Merit in 1941. His critical writings include The Rise of the Greek Epic (lectures, 1924) and Five Stages of Greek Religion (1913, 1925).
3.TSE, ‘Catholicism and International Order’, Christendom: A Journal of Christian Sociology 3: 11 (Oxford, Sept. 1933), 171–84: the text of TSE’s address at the Summer School held at Keble College, Oxford (CProse 4, 534–46).
4.WritingTate, Allenstates his beliefs;a2n to TSE, 3 Oct. 1933, Tate sought to explain that his proposed symposium was to ‘support the need of what I called a Conservative Revolution’: ‘This kind of revolution seems to me to depend solely upon restoring the land to something of its old autonomy: if this is to happen in “western civilization”, it will have to happen here, because we are the only people left who have an abundance of land … We shall probably have to say somewhere that society in modern times is a focus of interests that cannot be served equally; that somebody has got to suffer; that it is time for concentrated capital to suffer; that, in short, the liberal pretense of serving all interests in the end serves none, but rather paves the way of communism, etc.’
6.DonaldBrace, Donald Brace (1881–1955), publisher; co-founder of Harcourt, Brace: see Biographical Register.
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.
7.MauriceChild, Maurice Child (1884–1950), Anglican priest; librarian of Pusey House, Oxford; General Secretary of the English Church Union.
11.JohnHayward, John Davy Hayward (1905–65), editor and critic: see Biographical Register.
3.BruceRichmond, Bruce Richmond (1871–1964), editor of the TLS, 1902–37.
1.MartinShaw, Martin Shaw (1875–1958), composer of stage works, choral pieces and recital ballads: see Biographical Register.
12.Stephen SpenderSpender, Stephen (1909–95), poet and critic: see Biographical Register.
7.AllenTate, Allen Tate (1899–1979), poet, critic, editor, attended Vanderbilt University (where he was taught by John Crowe Ransom and became associated with the group known as the Fugitives). He became Poet-in-Residence at Princeton, 1939–42; Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress, 1944–5; and editor of the Sewanee Review, 1944–6; and he was Professor of Humanities at the University of Minnesota, 1951–68. His works include Ode to the Confederate Dead (1930), The Mediterranean and Other Poems (1936), Reactionary Essays on Poetry and Ideas (1936); The Fathers (novel, 1938).