[41 Brimmer St., Boston]
(Because I did not put your Name at all into my last letter, if it is so beautiful to me as to be almost an incantation).
What have I to add first to what I wrote yesterday? Oh, first that I agree with you wholly about the qualification of ‘abnormal’ so far as my life and health is concerned, and that your reassurance about yourself is always of great help to me. One ‘qualification’ however – my friends say that I am always qualifying and ‘precising’ everything – (thereLawrence, David Herbert ('D. H.')piece of faux-Eliotana concerning;a2 is a wholly false story about me – that a lady said to me at a party ‘Oh Mr. Eliot, don’t you think that D. H. Lawrence’s new book is so amusing?’ and that after pondering heavily for several moments I replied ‘But what precisely do you mean by so?’ – the story isn’t true, but I wish it was) – there is only one qualification – in the way the World would think, it is not abnormal – but a fulfillment – butHale, EmilyTSE's love for;x2the strangeness of not broadcasting;a6 there is a more superficial, not physical abnormality – which I must state in order to reduce it to its proper proportions: that when anyone feels as I do he wants to tell everyone publicly, and idolise openly, and impress upon everyone how honoured and distinguished he is to love such an exceptional object – and he may not. That is the great abnormality in my mind: that what is, and is what I am proudest of, what I can tell my confessor in good conscience, and receive approval of, I must keep from the world – until long after I have started the longest journey.1
WellStead, William Forcedescribed for EH;a1, I am writing to you at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, because I have been lunching at 12.30 with my friend William Force Stead, Fellow and Chaplain of Worcester College, an American and a Virginian2 – of whom I shall tell you more at another time – heStead, William Forceand TSE's baptism;a2 baptised me andGeorge, Robert Esmonde Gordon ('Robert Sencourt');a1 arranged my confirmation by the Bishop of Oxford in 1927 – who was in a tearing hurry as he was catching the train to go out to Hyères to stay with our good Papist friend Gordon George,3 whom you met, and of whom also I shall tell you more. Stead’sStead, Anne Frances (née Goldsborough)leaving marriage for nunnery;a1 wifeStead, William Forceleft by wife for nunnery;a3 has just become a Papist (she is an American from Washington) and wants to annul their marriage and become a Nun: it is doubtful as they have a small boy to whom he is much attached, but whom she doesn’t like.4
IEliots, the T. S.receive Aldous Huxley;a1 missed Aldous Huxley on Tuesday by mistake – butHuxley, Aldousdrops in on the Eliots;a3 he ran in to see us on Saturday afternoon – after paying his condolence to Mrs. Arnold Bennett – IBennett, Arnoldcommemorated by TSE;a1 am sorry too that Bennett is dead5 – he was very kind to me on two or three occasions, though I never found him congenial – he was certainly vulgar – whenArlen, Michael;a1 oneKnoblock, Edward;a1 dined with him there were people like Michael Arlen6 and Edward Knoblock,7 and too much champagne, and too big cigars – but he was a kind man – I think that he rather exploited his commonness as a social asset to make him an eccentricity. AldousHuxley, Aldousthe man versus the writer;a4 is an uncommonly bad writer, I think, with a pernicious ragbag of ideas, but as [sc. is] a person of great charm and sensitiveness – quiteHuxley, Julianinferior to Aldous;a1 different from his common brother Julian8 – andHuxley, Maria (née Nys)TSE on;a1 his Belgian wife Maria is very good and sensible.9 IWoolfs, theat Clive Bell's for lunch;a2 lunchedBell, Clivelunches TSE and the Woolfs;a1 with Clive Bell on Wednesday, and Leonard and Virginia Woolf were there: I always feel very happy with those three people, though on some vital matters of principle we are poles apart. IStracheys, theEngland's Bostonians;a1 thinkStephens, theEngland's Bostonians;a1 theAmericaCambridge, Massachusetts;d4socially similar to Bloomsbury;a2 Stephens (Virginia was a daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen, and her sister Vanessa is Mrs. Bell) and the Stracheys are mutatis mutandis more like our Cambridge (Mass.) society than anyone I know here – the hereditary literary background, the sense of humour and sensitiveness and refinement, the number of things that don’t have to be said, the things to be taken for granted – I think you would like these people. They seem much more civilised in their way than the Bentincks and the Cecils and such great political notables. ItEliot, Georgeancestor of Bloomsbury;a1 isRuskin, Johnfathered Bloomsbury;a1 theSpencer, Herbert;a1 inheritance of all the George Eliot, Ruskin, Herbert Spencer world. TheyWoolf, Virginiaher snobbery;a3 are snobs in their own way – for instance, the first time I met Virginia I remarked, in a simple effort to place myself in response to enquiries – thatNorton, Charles Eliotand Virginia Woolf;a1 I was a cousin of Charles Eliot Norton10 – this humble fact to my astonishment seemed to effect a reorientation – becauseStephen, Sir Leslie;a1 it happened that Norton was a friend of her father’s11 – but don’t people in Boston and Cambridge behave in just the same way when they learn that a nobody is a cousin of a somebody? CliveBell, Clivedescribed for EH;a2 comes from a different origin – his father was a country squire in Wiltshire, and he was brought up to horses and hounds – but he has assimilated himself successfully to the intellectual world, at the same time retaining a charming John Bullishness. – Now I see that my book committee is at hand, and I must stop. This letter is only a bundle of notes from
[Enclosed: carbon copy of letter to Madame Helene Magret, 42 rue St. Patrice, Rouen, Seine Inf.]
L m’a fallu beaucoup de temps pour arrive a consacre a votre article interessant et si flatteur l’attention qu’il merite, et j’espere qu vous m’excuserez la retard inevitable. Je vous rends l’article sous ce mem pli.
Naturellement, un auteur trouve toujours difficile de faire la critique de ses critiques; mais je ne puis entrevoir dans ce que vous avez ecrit que tres peu qui no soit pas juste et conforme a ma pensee. Il est certain que exacte l’abime que vous creusez entre l’idee de Babbitt et les humanistes americains et l’idee de Fernandez; et il est certain que mes objections contre celle la portent peu contre Fernandez. J’ai lu attentivement les deux livres de Fernandez, et j’ai parfois discute avec lui des questions de detail; mais jusqu’ ici, je n’ai jamais tente de faire face a son position integrale. C’est plutot ceci, que je trouve (ai-je tort?) que Fernandez n’a pas encore donne que des ebauches d’un systeme qui ne manquera pas, a la longue, d’estre parmi les plus vivants; par consequent, le temps n’est pas venu pour le soumettre a une etude definitive – definitive, je veux dire, pour moi.
Neanmoins, toutes reserves faites, je ne veux pas etre trop prudent, et je ne veux pas dissimuler ma certitude que nos idees seront enfin opposees. Je n’y vois pas encore clair, mais je crois que le critique de la pensee de Fernandez y trouveront au font un bel ‘acte de foi’, quoique bien cache. Mais j’affirme toutefois une grande admiration pour cette pensee qui des plus hardies et des plus originales de notre age.
Je vois prie d’accepter, chere madame, avec me reconnaissance, l’expression de mes salutations tres distingues.
[TSE annotated the copy in pencil: ‘Apart from accents not put in you can discover all the errors of French – I have not spoken it for so long that I can no longer write it.’]
1.‘Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way […] and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets’ (Ecclesiastes 12: 5). The journey to the long home is to meet one’s destiny in death.
2.WilliamStead, William Force Force Stead (1884–1967), poet, critic, diplomat, clergyman: see Biographical Register.
3.RobertGeorge, Robert Esmonde Gordon ('Robert Sencourt') Esmonde Gordon George – Robert Sencourt (1890–1969) – critic, historian, biographer: see Biographical Register.
4.W. F. Stead was married in 1911, in Baltimore, Md., toStead, Anne Frances (née Goldsborough) Anne Frances Goldsborough (1886–1959), who became a Catholic in 1930 and chose to live a conventual life in Birmingham. Their elder son, Philip (b. 1913), had learning disabilities and was institutionalised for life; the second son, Peter (b. 1926), remained close to his father.
5.Arnold Bennett had died on 27 Mar. 1931.
6.MichaelArlen, Michael Arlen (1895–1956) – born Dikran Kouyoumdjian, in Armenia – was a naturalised British writer of novels, short stories, plays, screenplays. For some reason, TSE disliked him.
7.EdwardKnoblock, Edward Knoblock (1874–1945), American-born British playwright, screenwriter and novelist. He collaborated with Arnold Bennett on the plays Milestones (1912) and London Life (1924), and helped Bennett to dramatize The Good Companions (1931).
8.Julian Huxley (1887–1975), zoologist, biologist, eugenicist, author; secretary of the Zoological Society of London, 1935–42. His works include Essays of a Biologist (1923).
9.MariaHuxley, Maria (née Nys) Huxley, née Nys (1898–1955), bisexual wife of Aldous Huxley, was born in Belgium.
10.CharlesNorton, Charles Eliot Eliot Norton (1827–1908), author, social critic and translator; friend of artists and writers including Carlyle, Ruskin and Leslie Stephen; Professor of the History of Art, Harvard.
11.SirStephen, Sir Leslie Leslie Stephen (1832–1904) – first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, 1885–91 – became fast friends with Charles Eliot Norton during a trip to the USA in 1863.
6.MichaelArlen, Michael Arlen (1895–1956) – born Dikran Kouyoumdjian, in Armenia – was a naturalised British writer of novels, short stories, plays, screenplays. For some reason, TSE disliked him.
12.CliveBell, Clive Bell (1881–1964), author and critic of art: see Biographical Register.
3.RobertGeorge, Robert Esmonde Gordon ('Robert Sencourt') Esmonde Gordon George – Robert Sencourt (1890–1969) – critic, historian, biographer: see Biographical Register.
10.AldousHuxley, Aldous Huxley (1894–1963), novelist, poet, essayist: see Biographical Register.
9.MariaHuxley, Maria (née Nys) Huxley, née Nys (1898–1955), bisexual wife of Aldous Huxley, was born in Belgium.
7.EdwardKnoblock, Edward Knoblock (1874–1945), American-born British playwright, screenwriter and novelist. He collaborated with Arnold Bennett on the plays Milestones (1912) and London Life (1924), and helped Bennett to dramatize The Good Companions (1931).
10.CharlesNorton, Charles Eliot Eliot Norton (1827–1908), author, social critic and translator; friend of artists and writers including Carlyle, Ruskin and Leslie Stephen; Professor of the History of Art, Harvard.
4.W. F. Stead was married in 1911, in Baltimore, Md., toStead, Anne Frances (née Goldsborough) Anne Frances Goldsborough (1886–1959), who became a Catholic in 1930 and chose to live a conventual life in Birmingham. Their elder son, Philip (b. 1913), had learning disabilities and was institutionalised for life; the second son, Peter (b. 1926), remained close to his father.
2.WilliamStead, William Force Force Stead (1884–1967), poet, critic, diplomat, clergyman: see Biographical Register.
11.SirStephen, Sir Leslie Leslie Stephen (1832–1904) – first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, 1885–91 – became fast friends with Charles Eliot Norton during a trip to the USA in 1863.
1.VirginiaWoolf, Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), novelist, essayist and critic: see Biographical Register.