[Grace Toll Hall, Scripps College, Claremont]
ICourtfield RoadTSE reconnoitres;a1 went up to town yesterday and investigated Miss Bevan’s boarding house for gentlemen in South Kensington.1 ItBevan, Freda;a1 is a little more than I want to pay and has one other disadvantage – itGeorge, Robert Esmonde Gordon ('Robert Sencourt');c1 is run by a Gentlewoman – knows something about me from our friend Gordon George or Sencourt – knows just what church I ought to go to and knows the priest there – has a resident uncle of literary tastes – large theological library – motherly interest, though she can’t be much over 50 – and talks about all she does for her ‘young men’ – says they are all Public School Men ugh. But its allright otherwise, and is the only place I know of at the moment; soEnglandLondon;h1South Kensington too respectable;b5 I have agreed to go there in two weeks time and take up my quarters for a month – while I look for something humbler, with two rooms, in a seedier part of town. I rather dread the plunge into London, and just as in childhood I always dreaded the conspicuousness of the first day at school after an illness, so I dread my office. But it must be done; and I hope that by about that time I shall have a separation agreement signed. SoOxford and Cambridge Club;b1 my address from now on is the Oxford & Cambridge Club, though any letters to Pike’s Farm would reach me.
NoPage-Barbour Lectures, The (afterwards After Strange Gods)rewritten for publication;a6 other news – Virginia lectures finished – not a very good job – but must get straight at my choruses and dialogues. Busytravels, trips and plansTSE's 1933 tour of Scotland;b2;a3 clearing up urgent business before leaving for Inverness. I shall probably not be able to write again for a week, unless postcards (do you mind my sending you postcards on such occasions?) IF I get a letter from you before I leave I will answer it – but I don’t expect it. DreamtHale, Emilyappearance and characteristics;v7in TSE's dreams;c5 of you last two nights running (a) in a not very becoming brown tamoshanter [sic] (but I admired it at the time, it seemed hideous in retrospect) (b) in a lovely white sort of muslin summer dress with pink and light blue edging, and a white hat with pink and light blue feathers in it.
1.ValerieCourtfield Roadas described to EVE;a2n Eliot (1926–2012), who became TSE’s second wife in 1957, to Helen Gardner, 24 July 1973: ‘I think [Tom] was at Courtfield Road in 1934 for a matter of months only, or at most a year. He told me that the owner prided herself on having only public school men!’ (EVE). The ‘owner’ was actually an eccentric character named William Edward Scott-Hall, who had been ordained a bishop in the ‘Old Catholic’ Church; butBevan, Freda the real proprietor of the boarding house, which lay quite near the Gloucester Road tube station, wasBevan, Fredarecalls TSE from 1934;a3n a Miss Freda Bevan, who was to recall of TSE: ‘He would come in and sit in the garden listlessly. “I wonder,” he would keep repeating, “I wonder”’ (Sencourt).
1.ValerieCourtfield Roadas described to EVE;a2n Eliot (1926–2012), who became TSE’s second wife in 1957, to Helen Gardner, 24 July 1973: ‘I think [Tom] was at Courtfield Road in 1934 for a matter of months only, or at most a year. He told me that the owner prided herself on having only public school men!’ (EVE). The ‘owner’ was actually an eccentric character named William Edward Scott-Hall, who had been ordained a bishop in the ‘Old Catholic’ Church; butBevan, Freda the real proprietor of the boarding house, which lay quite near the Gloucester Road tube station, wasBevan, Fredarecalls TSE from 1934;a3n a Miss Freda Bevan, who was to recall of TSE: ‘He would come in and sit in the garden listlessly. “I wonder,” he would keep repeating, “I wonder”’ (Sencourt).
3.RobertGeorge, Robert Esmonde Gordon ('Robert Sencourt') Esmonde Gordon George – Robert Sencourt (1890–1969) – critic, historian, biographer: see Biographical Register.