[41 Brimmer St., Boston]
I was very vexed on Friday – though also made happy by the arrival of your letter of April 9th. I had intended to have a free morning to write in answer of everything unanswered in your two previous letters – and I did not expect another letter on that day, after having a lovely letter on Monday – and I persuaded myself that it was all for the best, because if I got another letter there wouldn’t be time to answer the old and the new – but a new letter came – but also two more unexpected visitors – one of the usual young men with an introduction wanting to become a journalist or a publisher – theRoberts, Michaelsketched in thumbnail;a1 other a slightly older young man who is an intelligent critic to be encouraged, and is a lonely schoolmaster in Northumberland and needs intellectual conversation1 – andSiepmann, Charles Arthur;a1 by the time they were done with it was time to go out to lunch with Siepmann2 toBritish Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)its future discussed;a2 discuss the future of British Broadcasting – and as it was Friday I was in a particular temper, indeed. And after a tiring weekend I have two more awaiting downstairs, of the same two types – andRichmond, Bruce;a1 then must lunch with Bruce Richmond, the editor of the Times Literary Supplement,3 and'Dryden the Critic, Defender of Sanity';a1 then must hurry home to write the last of my three talks on Dryden for the Broadcasting. – I don’t think I have mentioned them – three talks on successive Sundays at 5 o’clock, got up in a great hurry; but they seem to have gone off fairly well so far, and I get twelve guineas each. I'Poet Who Gave the English Speech, The'sent to EH;a1 enclose a much abbreviated report of the first, from the ‘Listener’.4
I shall not post this to-day, but still keep it locked up and finish it tomorrow. SoVines, Sherard;a1 now I will interview Sherard Vines, Professor of English at Hull University,5 andReeves, John Morris;a1 then Mr. Reeves, who is coming down from Cambridge in June, and wants to be a publisher;6 and I shall talk to the former about poetry and criticism, and I shall question the latter and give him the usual discouraging advice; and then if I have a few minutes before going out to lunch I shall add a few more words to this letter.
It is just one o’clock, and the interviews went off exactly as expected – and this letter must wait till Tuesday morning; but I really hope to have the whole morning to myself, and perhaps use it all for this letter. Good night, my dear.
Tuesday April 21st: I believe I shall really have an uninterrupted hour. So to begin with, I shall thank you for your sweet Easter card – which shall stand on my mantelpiece here until Christmastide, when I hope I may have another to replace it for the season. Next I thank you for your gentle (but firm) admonitions – and also for those given unconsciously, and by example. You are right about ‘stubbornness of will’. Italcoholwhisky as suppressant;a5 is only within the last three years, I think, that I have learned that one cannot live on will and pride – one must subdue will and humbleChristianityvirtues heavenly and capital;e1humility, distinguished from humiliation;b6 (not humiliate, for humiliation is merely a disease of pride) humble one’s pride. So far as whisky goes! I have found lately that self-improvement, up to a point, is helped, and not so far as that goes, wrongly, by mixed motives. I mean that when [one] has arrived at a point of self control at which one is perfectly ‘respectable’ – at which one is sure that the average ordinary decent person would consider one perfectly correct – then one powerful motive has done all that it can do, and further progress depends on sticking to those ideals which are above most of the ordinary decent people one knows. The ideal, of course, is not to depend upon anything) [–] not on stimulants, not on tobacco (I don’t mean total abstinence in either case), not on drugging oneself with work or power or outside activities, but to depend upon nothing but the absolute essentials of a good life – which must always include for me my most intimate personal relations. I wonder if I shall ever get there!
As for frankness, I should have no satisfaction in my relations with you if I felt that I was creating, or allowing you to hold, an in any way flattering picture of myself. It may well be, because complete honesty with oneself is very hard and long to come by, that I do this to some extent unconsciously; but I must certainly reveal all of my faults that I am conscious of, and that helps me to become conscious of the rest. AndChristianityvirtues heavenly and capital;e1comes as relief;b7 on the other hand, there is a great relief and happiness in revealing to you all my conscious blemishes; it is a great relief to feel humble.
I doubt if I can get to Halifax’s; if I can get one week end this spring ICorpus Christi College, CambridgeTSE's friends at;a1 shall probably go to Corpus (Cambridge) where I haveHoskyns, Edwyn Clementamong TSE's Corpus 'friends';a2 severalPickthorn, Kennethamong TSE's Corpus 'friends';a1 friendsSmyth, Revd Charlesamong TSE's Corpus 'friends';a1 whom I want to see: SpensSpens, Willamong TSE's Corpus 'friends';a1 (the Master),7 Kenneth Pickthorn,8 and Charles Smyth;9 and Edwyn Hoskyns whom I have never met. But as rest and recreation, a weekend is almost more trouble than it is worth; and the important [thing] is to get away for a week or two alone into some quiet retreat. But for the present, I must only wait and wonder what will happen. However, I am not at all in bad health at present, so there is no cause for worry.
This typewriter gets very tipsy at the end of a page.
Now about yourself for a change. As for the ‘certain incidents in the past’, I know you don’t want to refer to them again, but I must say two things. Firsthomosexualityconsidered as sin;a4, what you add in your letter of the 9th was perfectly obvious to me from the first letter, and there is nothing at all repellant [sic] about it – you are mistaken, and are I think confusing the natural (perfectly natural) feelings of human beings with conscious cultivation of them in the wrong direction. Of course to find out anything about oneself, even to find out one’s normal human nature, is ‘terrifying’; but how can one make any spiritual progress without this understanding? Of course the things that one is ashamed of go to make up one’s development. But at the same time, even with the things one is rightly ashamed of, one must get to the point at which one ceases to feel shame – at which one can look back on them without a twinge, because one has wholly detached them from oneself. I have ceased to feel any emotion of shame whatever about certain discreditable incidents in my past; I think it is quite right that I should profit spiritually even by my sins. TheLittle Giddingthings 'done to others' harm';a1 only regrets that still torment me are the regrets for errors of mine which have inflicted permanent injury upon others: and I don’t see how I can dispose of such regrets, this side of eternity.
NowEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)marriage to;e6its torments providential on reflection;a6 and again I perceive fairly clearly, that if circumstances had protected me against my own weaknesses and faults and folly, so that I had had an ordinary successful life like many men I have known, I should have gone through my whole life without any real self-knowledge or any real development. I refer to myself only, not to any others; for me it was perhaps necessary to find out that life really can be as infernal as the worst nightmares of a Dostoyevski novel.10
I must confess that now I have one new struggle with myself, but one worth having and worth winning; I know I must not think much about you in the way of daydreaming; but I am perfectly conscious of that, and that consciousness is the first thing.
Your comments on the teaparty suggest to me a long comparison between BarbaraHinkley, Barbara (TSE's first cousin)TSE's antipathy to;a1 and one of my friends, to the advantage of the latter – it’s partly that I want to work out of myself a certain aversion that I feel, and don’t like to feel, towards Barbara.
IHale, Emilyfinances;w5;a1 am worried about your finances, you speak of them so stoically. I wish you would let me know if you can what your ultimate position will be: I mean, will you always have to earn a living, or is there any eventual prospect of even a modest competence to free you completely from anxiety?
IHale, Emilyas actor;v8as Judith Bliss in Hay Fever;a4 shall think of your play on the 6th of May and the following days. I don’t know ‘Hay Fever’, but I shall get a copy; ICoward, NoëlTSE's dislike for;a1 have a dislike of Noel Coward – ICoward, NoëlThe Queen was in the Parlour;a8 saw one play called ‘The Queen was in the Parlour’ which seemed to me a piece of rather repulsive and unedifying sensationalism.11 All the more reason for finding out what you are playing.
And I shall get you the other photographs which you were to have had. Iappearance (TSE's)nose;c1the Eliot nostril;a1 don’t like it (it exhibits the Eliot Nostril, which looks as if it was trying to take in twice as much air as other people’s) but some thought it the best.
INoyes, Penelope Barker;a1 shall write to Penelope, but without mentioning the appendicitis.12
1.MichaelRoberts, Michael Roberts (1902–48), critic, editor, poet: see Biographical Register.
2.CharlesSiepmann, Charles Arthur Arthur Siepmann (1899–1985), radio producer and educator, was awarded the Military Cross in WW1. He joined the BBC in 1927, and became Director of Talks, 1932–5; Regional Relations, 1935–6; Programme Planning, 1936–9. He was University Lecturer, Harvard, 1939–42; worked for the Office of War Information, 1942–5; and was Professor of Education, New York University, 1946–67. Works include Radio’s Second Chance (1946), Radio, Television and Society (1950), TV and Our School Crisis (1959). See Richard J. Meyer, ‘Charles A. Siepmann and Educational Broadcasting’, Educational Technology Research and Development 12: 4 (Winter 1964), 413–30.
3.BruceRichmond, Bruce Richmond (1871–1964), editor of the TLS, 1902–37.
4.TSE, ‘The Poet who Gave the English Speech’, The Listener, 15 Apr. 1931, 621–2.
5.SherardVines, Sherard Vines (1890–1974), poet and academic, taught at Keio University, Tokyo, 1923–8; and was G. F. Grant Professor of English at University College Hull, 1929–52. Publications include The Kaleidoscope (1921), Triforium (1928), Tofuku: or Japan in Trousers (1931).
6.JohnReeves, John Morris Morris Reeves (1909–78), who published as James Reeves, was at this time a final-year student of English at Jesus College, Cambridge (where he edited Granta and collaborated with Jacob Bronowski in founding the periodical Experiment). He was a schoolmaster and lecturer in teachers’ training colleges, 1933–52. A prolific poet, author, writer for children, and critical anthologist, his publications included Collected Poems, 1929–74 (1974); Complete Poems for Children (1973); Understanding Poetry (1965). See also ‘A conversation with James Reeves’, the Review (Oxford) no. 11–12 [no date], 68–70.
7.WillSpens, Will Spens (1882–1962), educator and scientist; Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: see Biographical Register.
8.KennethPickthorn, Kenneth Pickthorn (1892–1975), historian and politician; Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: see Biographical Register.
9.RevdSmyth, Revd Charles Charles Smyth (1903–87), ecclesiastical historian; Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: see Biographical Register.
10.TSE to Paul Elmer More, 18 May 1933 (Letters 6, 581–5): ‘One side of life suffers from dullness, the other from nightmare – the last 18 years like a bad Dostoyevski novel.’ TSE on Marston (1934): ‘We sometimes feel, in following the words and behaviour of some of the characters of Dostoevsky, that they are living at once on the plane that we know and on some other plane of reality from which we are shut out; their behaviour does not seem crazy, but rather in conformity with the laws of some world that we cannot perceive.’ (Elizabethan Essays, 173; see Ronald Bush, T. S. Eliot: A Study in Character and Style, 94, 169–73; James Longenbach, ‘Uncanny Eliot’, in T. S. Eliot: Man and Poet, vol. 1, ed. Laura Cowan [University of Maine: National Poetry Foundation, 1990], 47–69.)
11.The Queen was in the Parlour (1926), a romance, which opened in London in 1926, did not much enhance the reputation that Coward won with The Vortex (1924) and Hay Fever (1925).
EH was to take the part of Judith Bliss in a production of Hay Fever.
12.PenelopeNoyes, Penelope Barker Barker Noyes (1891–1977), who was descended from settlers of the Plymouth Colony, lived in a historic colonial house (built in 1894 for her father James Atkins Noyes) at 1 Highland Street, Cambridge, MA. Unitarian. She was a close friend of EH.
6.BarbaraHinkley, Barbara (TSE's first cousin) Hinkley (1889–1958) was married in July 1928 to Roger Wolcott (1877–1965), an attorney; they lived at 125 Beacon Hill, Boston, and at 1733 Canton Avenue, Milton, Mass.
8.EdwynHoskyns, Edwyn Clement Clement Hoskyns, 13th Baronet (1884–1937), theologian; Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he was successively Dean of Chapel, Librarian and President. His works in biblical theology include The Fourth Gospel (1940) and Crucifixion-Resurrection (1981); and he published an English translation of Karl Barth’s Epistle to the Romans (1933). See Gordon S. Wakefield, ‘Hoskyns and Raven: The Theological Issue’, Theology, Nov. 1975, 568–76; Wakefield, ‘Edwyn Clement Hoskyns’, in E. C. Hoskyns and F. N. Davey, Crucifixion-Resurrection (1981); and R. E. Parsons, Sir Edwyn Hoskyns as Biblical Theologian (1985).
12.PenelopeNoyes, Penelope Barker Barker Noyes (1891–1977), who was descended from settlers of the Plymouth Colony, lived in a historic colonial house (built in 1894 for her father James Atkins Noyes) at 1 Highland Street, Cambridge, MA. Unitarian. She was a close friend of EH.
8.KennethPickthorn, Kenneth Pickthorn (1892–1975), historian and politician; Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: see Biographical Register.
6.JohnReeves, John Morris Morris Reeves (1909–78), who published as James Reeves, was at this time a final-year student of English at Jesus College, Cambridge (where he edited Granta and collaborated with Jacob Bronowski in founding the periodical Experiment). He was a schoolmaster and lecturer in teachers’ training colleges, 1933–52. A prolific poet, author, writer for children, and critical anthologist, his publications included Collected Poems, 1929–74 (1974); Complete Poems for Children (1973); Understanding Poetry (1965). See also ‘A conversation with James Reeves’, the Review (Oxford) no. 11–12 [no date], 68–70.
3.BruceRichmond, Bruce Richmond (1871–1964), editor of the TLS, 1902–37.
1.MichaelRoberts, Michael Roberts (1902–48), critic, editor, poet: see Biographical Register.
2.CharlesSiepmann, Charles Arthur Arthur Siepmann (1899–1985), radio producer and educator, was awarded the Military Cross in WW1. He joined the BBC in 1927, and became Director of Talks, 1932–5; Regional Relations, 1935–6; Programme Planning, 1936–9. He was University Lecturer, Harvard, 1939–42; worked for the Office of War Information, 1942–5; and was Professor of Education, New York University, 1946–67. Works include Radio’s Second Chance (1946), Radio, Television and Society (1950), TV and Our School Crisis (1959). See Richard J. Meyer, ‘Charles A. Siepmann and Educational Broadcasting’, Educational Technology Research and Development 12: 4 (Winter 1964), 413–30.
9.RevdSmyth, Revd Charles Charles Smyth (1903–87), ecclesiastical historian; Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: see Biographical Register.
7.WillSpens, Will Spens (1882–1962), educator and scientist; Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: see Biographical Register.
5.SherardVines, Sherard Vines (1890–1974), poet and academic, taught at Keio University, Tokyo, 1923–8; and was G. F. Grant Professor of English at University College Hull, 1929–52. Publications include The Kaleidoscope (1921), Triforium (1928), Tofuku: or Japan in Trousers (1931).