[No surviving envelope]
First of all, what needs Answering by you. The ‘GroupSweeney AgonistesGroup Theatre production;b3 Theatre’ is going to produce ‘Sweeney Agonistes’ on Sunday November 11th;1 andHale, Emilyinvited to Sweeney Agonistes rehearsal;d7 there is to be a rehearsal on Friday afternoon next, to which I am asked to come (at 2.30) with any friends. Now I thought it would be helpful to have your criticisms, especially as I am not sure of the capacities of this company; and a good deal hangs on that, asGroup Theatreand Auden;a1 theyGroup Theatreand Spender;a3 mayGroup Theatreangling for Yeats's plays;a4 getYeats, William Butler ('W. B.')discusses theatre companies;a6 future work of Yeats, Auden, Spender and myself, if they are any good – ISavile Club, Londonlunch with Yeats at;a1 had lunch with Yeats to-day (suddenly) at the Savile to discuss it – Yeats is anxious that we should find a good company which should do all our dramatic work.2 SoHuxleys, theand Sweeney Agonistes;a3 IHutchinson, Maryoffers EH lunch before rehearsal;b3 just make the suggestion – that you should lunch with me beforehand, and attend the rehearsal – and I would try to get either the Huxleys, orSpender, Stephenand Sweeney rehearsal;a9 alternatively Mary Hutchinson and Spender <who should be interested in seeing what this company can do>, to lunch too. TheHale, Emilyattends Richard II with TSE;d8 out about it is, that you are coming to Richard II in the evening; and I don’t want you to get too tired. You would just have time for a cup of tea and then go back and rest before dressing for dinner. I wish these were not on the same day, but I can’t help that. It is just a question of how much you can do in one day, and also of what you are doing on the previous and succeeding days. If you feel, as you well may, that this is too much, would you care to lunch with me alone somewhere on Wednesday (theCriterion, TheRussell Square gathering for;a9 committee is on Thursday this week, because of the Criterion evening on Wednesday – the housekeeper can’t manage both the same day). But you see, I should like you to meet as many people as possible as soon as possible, so that you could say whom if any you would like to meet again. Although I am looking forward to your meeting again any whom you like, in the spring.
I should never dream of asking yourself to the telephone to a person like me in answer to any enquiry; but I will just remind you that before 10 a.m. I am always to be got at Western 1670 and after 11 a.m. at number at letterhead, Museum 9543; but please let me know as soon as you can.
I want to hear the physician’s report. It occurred to me, thatHale, Emilyappearance and characteristics;v7EH encouraged to gain weight;a8 unless he gives you a diet and things to take, I recommend VIROL for fattening. It is just a plain malt etc. sticky stuff in a bottle like Bovril; you take a spoonful after meals; it is harmless and non-stimulant; but some years ago I put on weight with a course of it; and especially at this time of year, what you need is to fatten. It could do you no harm, but you have to take it regularly for at least a month.
IUnderhill, Evelynon TSE's Perkins tea guest-list;b3 have written to Mrs. Stuart Moore, and will let you know as soon as the tea date is fixed.
Itravels, trips and plansEH's 1934–5 year in Europe;b4weekend in Sussex for EH's birthday;b8 had a very happy weekend. Last night I slept very well, better than for a long time, because without any sedative whatever – perfectly natural sleep. And its so lovely to come back from a weekend like that, and realise that there is nothing to write to you about – because I was in your company all the time! SomewhatEnglandBosham, West Sussex;d2EH introduced to;a1 as at Bosham – it means a great deal to me to bring the threads together – IHale, Emilyrelationship with TSE;w9potentially richer for meeting TSE's friends;d8 shall feel much more intimate with my friends here because of their knowing you, even if they don’t know what you mean to me.
IBird, ErnestTSE's consultations with;a2 had an interview with Bird this afternoon, but that will keep till next time.
OttolineMorrell, Lady Ottolineinvites EH and TSE to tea;d8 Nov 8th .
IHale, Emilyappearance and characteristics;v7her black dress/red jacket outfit;c7 particularly like the black dress with the red jacket (which of course requires a ruby – coral necklaces go very well with black too) but I hope you will be able to do some shopping – unless you are going to stop over in Paris – as I should think you would – where Lanvrin [sc. Lanvin] or Molynoo will do you better. You may nor may not have observed that your presence in England, apart from other benefactions, has caused a slight revival of trade amongst tailors and haberdashers.
1.TheGroup Theatreand Sweeney Agonistes;b4 Group Theatre presented a private performance of Sweeney Agonistes on Sun. 11 Nov., at 9 pm. A repeat performance was to be given on 25 Nov. (prompt copy, Berg), and on two further occasions. The third performance was attended by Yeats and Brecht. Michael J. Sidnell, Dances of Death: The Group Theatre of London in the Thirties (1984), 324: ‘Yeats had enquired from Margot Ruddock about “the Eliot dance play” in November. See R. McHugh (ed.), Ah! Sweet Dancer: W. B. Yeats–Margot Ruddock: A Correspondence, 1970, 24: ‘BeforeYeats, William Butler ('W. B.')on Sweeney Agonistes;a7n Yeats saw a performance of Sweeney Agonistes, on 16 December 1934, he was inclined to think that Eliot had thrown out the poetic baby with the dirty bathwater in SA’ (ibid., p. 27).’
HaywardSweeney AgonistesJDH on Doone's production;b4n, ‘London Letter’, New York Sun, 23 Nov. 1934: ‘If you … are interested in the more intimate activities of contemporary literature, the most important event I can record is a private performance of T. S. Eliot’s Sweeney Agonistes, which took place on the evening of Armistice Day. Originally printed in Eliot’s Criterion quarterly, these two Fragments of an Aristophanic Melodrama have since been published together by Faber & Faber of London (1932). They mark an important stage in the evolution of Eliot’s poetry as his first experiment in a new form of verse-drama […] Sweeney Agonistes was played before a small but distinguished Bloomsbury audience – including Aldous Huxley, Virginia Woolf and Lady Ottoline Morrell – in the small attic rooms of the Group Theater in Great Newport Street, round the corner from Leicester Square. All the performers, except Sweeney, wore masks, and there was no stage, the actors and audience being situated in relation to each other in such a way as to give the spectators the impression that they were minor characters in the drama, an informal setting, which has been used successfully in Russia. The complete performance lasted about half an hour – rather longer than I supposed – but it appears that the tempo was deliberately slowed up in order to create an atmosphere of suspense. Eliot, at any rate, was satisfied with it all, and particularly with the second of the two scenes. He admits, however, that Sweeney himself was conceived after a different plan from the one he imagined. If he really looked like Crippen [Dr Hawley Crippen (1862–1910), the notorious wife-murderer], as Eliot says he did, then he is not the same never-to-be-forgotten apenecked Sweeney of the early poems.’
OnSweeney AgonistesTSE on Doone's production;b5n aDoone, RupertTSE on his Sweeney;a6n newspaper cutting – ‘All the characters but one are masked. The unmasked is a real man. The masked are symbols … The suggestion is that life is a hopeless business’ – TSE wrote: ‘This production was completely the reverse of what I meant’.
See Nevill Coghill, ‘Sweeney Agonistes’, in T. S. Eliot: A Symposium (1948), ed. Richard March and Tambimuttu:
Myself : I had no idea the play meant what he [Mr Doone] made of it … that everyone is a Crippen. I was astonished.
Mr Eliot: So was I.
Myself: Then you had meant something very different when you wrote it?
Mr Eliot: Very different indeed.
Myself: Yet you accept Mr Doone’s production?
Mr Eliot: Certainly.
Myself: But … but … can the play mean something you didn’t intend it to mean, you didn’t know it meant?
Mr Eliot: Obviously it does.
Myself : But can it then also mean what you did intend?
Mr Eliot: I hope so … yes, I think so.
Myself: But if the two meanings are contradictory, is not one right and the other wrong?
Must not the author be right?
Mr Eliot: Not necessarily, do you think? Why is either wrong?
SeeDoone, Ruperthis own interpretation of Sweeney Agonistes;a7n Doone’sSweeney AgonistesRupert Doone explains his production;b6n ‘Producer’s Note’ in programme for 16 Dec. 1934, Group Theatre Rooms: ‘My production is concerned with morals as well as aesthetics. I have sought to criticize the conventionalities of modern behaviour with its empty codes and heartiness – immoral but never immoral enough – decaying but so long in dying. I see Sweeney himself as a modern Orestes (the only three-dimensional character in the play). The rest are conventionalized conventional characters – the Eumenides or Bogies of Sweeney’s persecution’ (cited in Sidnell, Dances of Death, 324).
DesmondMacCarthy, Desmondon Doone's Sweeney Agonistes;a1n McCarthySweeney Agonistesreviewed by Desmond MacCarthy;b7n, in The Listener, 9 Jan. 1935: ‘I found myself in an L-shaped room on the third floor, round which seats had been arranged, leaving an empty space in the middle, where stood a table with some drinks on it and some unoccupied chairs. It was in this space that the performance took place. We, the spectators, were in the position of Elizabethan swells; we were sitting on the stage itself … Into the darkened room, or rather into a little pool of light created by one lamp overhead, came two young women wearing masks; their masks bore a grotesque resemblance to a commonplace kind of prettiness.’
2.JournalMorrell, Lady Ottolinediscusses Yeats with TSE;e1n of Ottoline Morrell, 3 Nov. 1934 (after entertaining TSE and Gerald Heard to tea): ‘I … began about Yeats whom Tom had recently seen . & I made a few gay jokes about him . & how much more human he was --- Eliot had liked him very much.’
2.RupertDoone, Rupert Doone (1903–66), dancer, choreographer and producer, founded the Group Theatre, London, in 1932: see Biographical Register.
3.MaryHutchinson, Mary Hutchinson (1889–1977), literary hostess and author: see Biographical Register.
1.DesmondMacCarthy, Desmond MacCarthy (1877–1952), literary and dramatic critic, was intimately associated with the Bloomsbury Group. Literary editor of the New Statesman, 1920–7; editor of Life and Letters, 1928–33; he moved in 1928 to the Sunday Times, where he was the chief reviewer for many years. See Desmond MacCarthy: The Man and His Writings (1984); Hugh and Mirabel Cecil, Clever Hearts: Desmond and Molly MacCarthy: A Biography (1990).
4.LadyMorrell, Lady Ottoline Ottoline Morrell (1873–1938), hostess and patron: see Biographical Register.
12.Stephen SpenderSpender, Stephen (1909–95), poet and critic: see Biographical Register.
1.EvelynUnderhill, Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941), spiritual director and writer on mysticism and the spiritual life: see Biographical Register.
4.W. B. YeatsYeats, William Butler ('W. B.') (1865–1939), Irish poet and playwright: see Biographical Register.