[No surviving envelope]
Your dear letter of the 27th arrived this afternoon – I found it in my tray after coming out of the Book Committee – and it was correctly addressed and it had Personal on it as well as your own address correct, so it was unopened. I am glad that you have understood quickly why I sent the wire, else I should have been chiding [sc. chided] for extravagance. IHale, Emilybirthdays, presents and love-tokens;w2EH's present to TSE goes amiss;b6 have written to the Vicar (enclosingCheetham, Revd Ericinvited to Sweeney Agonistes;a7 3 tickets for Sweeney on Sunday night, which he wanted, but he hasn’t the ghost of a notion what the play is like, and I wonder what he will think about it) explaining that I am not for a moment accusing anybody, but as there was a parcel left here for me at 4 p.m. on November 29th without my name on it, it seems possible etc. and will he enquire whether anybody has had a mysterious present. As for the letter, I grieve over it but can do nothing. A priori, I cherish letters in your writing more than letters typed, other things being equal; but I also regret that you have not been able to repeat everything that was in the letter. I should have valued your comments upon Rome: but perhaps you have others to make later. But first of all
YouHale, Emilycorrespondence with TSE;w3TSE worries about burdening EH with;g1 know as well as I do that when the possibility of your being angry, or vexed, or several other varieties of unpleasing emotion, with me, comes to mind, it never bears with it any implication of a criticism of yourself. It doesn’t seem to me that I am doing you any injustice – and I do not consider you vindictive or unforgiving etc. Apart from the possibility of a misunderstanding, for which you would not be to blame, I assure you that I should assume that you were right to be angry etc. with me! However, I am very very sorry that I have entertained such a thought, which however comes from the conviction of my own unworthiness and not at all from a belief in your angriness, as it gives you pain; and I will promise never to make that conjecture again. And you must know that I would so much prefer you to explode violently at once than nourish resentment in silence, that I am sure you would do the former. On the other hand, I beg you not to let me be a burden to you. I don’t want you to write except when you want to and when you have time to; and in one way you have less time now than I have: I mean you have less time to yourself, which is what matters. Please rely upon me to understand in advance everything that may prevent you from writing. It might be easier for you, as well as for me, if you remembered that I meant Post Card literally; and that you are not to write as often as once a week except when it comes easily, but that a picture post card between times, or for a long time, will keep me quiet. I sometimes postpone writing to people indefinitely simply because I have not time to write as long and full a letter as I feel I ought: but remember the post card.
YouScripps College, Claremontencouraged by TSE to return;e2 sayAmericaCalifornia;d3the lesser of two evils;b7 that you wanted my views about Scripps – you do not give any fresh reasons one way or the other – I should gather that the situation was the same only more so. So I have only the same views to repeat. I see no point in a compromise. I should, as you know, be sorry for you to have to be in California indefinitely; but for the moment, I think it would be better to go there than find a place in the East. ThatPerkinses, theTSE encourages EH's independence from;f4 you must be independent I am convinced: and this must be all the more complete because of this year in Europe. If, after a year at Scripps, you can get a position in the East, well and good. There are certain kinds of strain and sacrifice which it is one’s duty NOT to put up with. INoyes, Penelope Barker;c8 am sure Penelope would agree with me: and there is NO analogy between her position and yours. And you know that from my point of view, the East has advantages!
There are two small points to mention before I forget them. OneRay, Mantakes TSE's 'best portraits';a1 is, that although I am not vain enough to want to be photographed (or to sit to indigent young artists who want to collect portraits for exhibitions) I was asked to sit to a photographer as a favour, and his room was round the corner in Bedford Square, and in consequence I have I think the best portraits I have ever had. The photographer is a young American Jew named Man Ray, very well known in Paris, rather quiet and likeable. I have three poses, any or all of which you may have, onappearance (TSE's)'pudding-faced';a1 condition that you destroy the pasty pudding ones framed together.1
Thetravels, trips and plansTSE's 1935 tour of Scotland;b8proposed by Blake;a1 other is thatBlake, Georgeand TSE's 1935 tour of Scotland;a8 George Blake wants me to accompany him on a week’s motor tour to Inverness, John O’Groats, and the western shore of the Highlands, visiting some out of the way spots, during the week after Easter. I am much tempted. Shall you be in Touraine with Jeanie at that moment, or where?
AsMurder in the CathedralTSE on writing;a4 for my Saint. I have got him to Canterbury (after seven years absence) and find no difficulty in getting him or anybody else to TALK, but the trouble is that they don’t DO anything. They just sit and talk, and generalise drearily about the relations of Church and State. I am really worried about them. It is like a tea party when you feel that you ought to play General Post,2 and don’t know how to reassort the people. On Saturday I had an inspiration and brought in a plate of apples; but they can’t go on eating apples forever. Two of them get into a quarrel, but there is no point in bringing them to a fight, and fighting has been used so often – Romeo & Juliet for instance, and Hamlet – and besides, one of them is just going to interview the Archbishop, and it would be distracting for him to come in dripping blood, or with a bloodstained sword, because he has got to have a chat with the Archbishop about centralised authority. The second part won’t be so bad, because the Archbishop is murdered, of course; and murder always seems to mean action; but I dare say even the murder will turn out to be only talk. What I have done – 400 lines – isn’t even clear enough to send for your opinion; but I wish you could tell me what to do to get these people to move about more.
TheMercury Theatre, London;a4 action all seems to be located in the problem of the production of this play which isn’t written. RupertDoone, Rupertand Yeats's Mercury Theatre season;a9 Doone has come to me with wringing hands saying that it will make all the difference to the success or failure of the Mercury Season if they have a new play by me, andBabington, Margaret A.and pre-Canterbury Murder negotiations;a1 thatCanterbury Cathedral Festival, 1935TSE flirts with premiering Murder elsewhere;a4 it won’t hurt Canterbury if he has it for four nights by his company first; and so I have felt obliged to write to Miss Babington on his behalf. Miss Babington, or Babs, will probably go up in the air: you know what this sort of powerful elderly spinster is when she thinks she runs a parish – how much more so when she thinks she runs Canterbury; Miss Babs’s possessive instinct is so strong that you feel everything in the Cathedral belongs to her. I feel like the baby between Solomon’s wives, you know what I am alluding to.3 The irony being (a) I have never written a play before (b) that this isn’t a good play anyway.
NowHale, Emilyhealth, physical and mental;w6experiences insomnia;b1 about your sleeplessness. In 8 cases out of 10, insomnia coming on suddenly like this, is due to some kind of indigestion. Possibly the food, or water doesn’t agree with you. <Ada suffers from this.> You are not necessarily aware of indigestion by any other symptom of discomfort. So the first thing is to look to your diet, to your emotions while eating, to proper rest before and after eating. (with me, the first result of any change of environment is constipation: the bane of my weekends out of London). In 1 case out of 10, it is due to some nervous or emotional cause (I mean insomnia of course) which the sufferer knows all about. In the tenth case, it may be due to various causes. I should like to know whether the strain of this summer, which must have been very great, has ceased, or whether it abated and has come on again, or whether it has been continuous. IMcPherrin, Jeanettecauses EH difficulty;b5 wonder whether having Jeanie in Rome as well as Florence has brought back a similar situation, during her stay, and whether you are suffering from the aftereffect [sic] of that. Bromide is just a nerve sedative. It is apt to be an irritant if it has to be continued long, and after a time it affects some people’s skins. The pleasantest way to take it is to take a Swiss preparation called ‘Sedobrol’, it makes a kind of Bovril drink for bedtime.4 I believe more in good massage myself, at bedtime; it’s expensive, however. I should think, in general, that insomnia coming on as yours has, is likely to be quite transient, though it may recur at times. <Lie in a hot bath before going to bed.> MyEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)marriage to;e6 own is quite different: it took ten years before my sleep began to break down from the perfectly direct reason of having my sleep interrupted to fill hot water bottles, heat milk, get medicines etc. It will become settled again when I am settled; and, for that matter, I am not so much bothered now by not getting sleep but by bad dreams – anxiety dreams – in which I am back in the past, or in a situation like the past, with astonishing realism – the fantastic dreams which seem to delight analysts are not as unpleasant as these dreams which are so very like reality. So don’t worry about it – but remember that while you are not getting proper sleep at night you must not try to do in the daytime all that you would do, – arrange your day accordingly, but try to rest and keep your mind calm while you lie awake. It is not so much the lack of sleep that is injurious, as the way one’s mind works while lying awake. And let me know how you get on. Because I worry less, in general, as a result of you telling me these things.
You speak of the time in London being trying as well as in Campden. Do you mean all the time? because if so, is the time any less trying now?
Well, I think that’s enough for one letter! IChurch Literature Association'The Christian in the Modern World';a3 must now think out a twenty minute speech for tomorrow afternoon in order to charm money out of people’s pockets for the Book Committee of the Church Literature Association.5 I wish I were not so slow-witted. ThereTemple, William, Archbishop of York (later of Canterbury)sustains 'Intercommunion' correspondence with TSE;a6 is the Archbishop of York, with whom I have been conducting a correspondence on the subject of Intercommunion: he has I suppose a thousand things to do more than I have, yet he can answer my letters at once, and I have to wait a week to find time to answer him.6 But the length of this letter, if not the contents, my dear, will perhaps give you some notion of the happiness which your letter gave me.
A too elaborate ritual for inducing sleep defeats its own object. If one is worrying already, one only adds another worry – don’t worry about not sleeping.
1.ManRay, Man Ray (1890–1976), pioneering photographer and artist; born Emmanuel Rodnitsky, the son of a Russian-Jewish tailor who had settled in Philadelphia. He grew up in New York, where even as a teenager he adopted his redolent pseudonym, and fell under the influence of Alfred Stieglitz’s Gallery 291 on Fifth Avenue. He became one of the leaders of Dadaism and Surrealism. For most of his adult life he lived in Paris, where he built his reputation as an experimental photographer; he also made notable contributions to film.
Man Ray to TSE, 2 Feb. 1935: ‘Thank you for your letter of the 29th. I am pleased you like the pictures I did of you, and shall be glad to make up some prints for you personally at one guinea each. They will be somewhat smaller, but have better quality. I think your publisher should pay three guineas for the rights of publication. I hope this is satisfactory.
‘I left the same day the prints were delivered to you, and am sorry not to have spoken with you. But I hope to have the occasion on my next visit’.
Ray to Frank Morley, 18 Feb., ‘I have not yet heard from Mr Eliot, but any request from him will receive immediate attention.’
VivienEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)inquires after Man Ray portrait;d8n Eliot to Geoffrey Faber, 21 Nov. 1935: ‘I do hope you will send me the name of the photographer who took this latest photograph of Tom, as you promised you would, on Monday afternoon, at the Book Exhibition. Please send it on a post card. Yours, V. H. Eliot.’
Geoffrey Faber to Vivien, 21 Nov.: ‘About the photograph. It was done by Man Ray, 31 bis, rue Campagne-Premiere, Paris. It is the only copy we have, and I am afraid we can’t part with it, since we need it for “publicity”; but there is no reason why you shouldn’t write to his London agent (Messrs. Lund Humphries Ltd., 12, Bedford Square, W.C.1.) yourself, and ask him to send you one. I don’t know what his charge is, since he hasn’t sent in his bill to us; and I am told that it is very difficult to get him to answer any enquiries!’ (Faber E3/8/2).
2.General Post: a party game, a cross between Blind Man’s Bluff and Musical Chairs. The cry of ‘General Post’ triggers a frenzy of swapping chairs at the risk of being caught by the blindfolded person.
3.I King’s 3: 16–28.
4.‘Sedobrol’, marketed as a sedative for nervous conditions, contained one gram of sodium bromide.
5.‘The Christian in the Modern World’: published in the TLS, 7 July 2017, 16, 18: CProse 5.
6.See TSE to William Temple, Archbishop of York, 15 Jan. 1935: Letters 7, 472–4.
1.MargaretBabington, Margaret A. A. Babington was from 1928 Hon. Steward and Treasurer, Friends of Canterbury Cathedral; Hon. Festival Manager for the Festival of Music and Drama, 15–22 June 1935. See The Canterbury Adventure: An Account of the Inception and Growth of the Friends of Canterbury Cathedral 1928–1959 (1960): Canterbury Papers no. 10. She negotiated with F&F the terms of the production of the first (abbreviated) performance of Murder in the Cathedral in the Chapter House, June 1935, and the publication of the theatre edition.
10.GeorgeBlake, George Blake (1893–1961), novelist, journalist, publisher: see Biographical Register.
4.RevdCheetham, Revd Eric Eric Cheetham (1892–1957): vicar of St Stephen’s Church, Gloucester Road, London, 1929–56 – ‘a fine ecclesiastical showman’, as E. W. F. Tomlin dubbed him. TSE’s landlord and friend at presbytery-houses in S. Kensington, 1934–9. See Letters 7, 34–8.
2.RupertDoone, Rupert Doone (1903–66), dancer, choreographer and producer, founded the Group Theatre, London, in 1932: see Biographical Register.
2.JeanetteMcPherrin, Jeanette McPherrin (1911–92), postgraduate student at Scripps College; friend of EH: see Biographical Register.
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.
1.ManRay, Man Ray (1890–1976), pioneering photographer and artist; born Emmanuel Rodnitsky, the son of a Russian-Jewish tailor who had settled in Philadelphia. He grew up in New York, where even as a teenager he adopted his redolent pseudonym, and fell under the influence of Alfred Stieglitz’s Gallery 291 on Fifth Avenue. He became one of the leaders of Dadaism and Surrealism. For most of his adult life he lived in Paris, where he built his reputation as an experimental photographer; he also made notable contributions to film.
10.WilliamTemple, William, Archbishop of York (later of Canterbury) Temple (1881–1944), Anglican clergyman, Archbishop of York and later of Canterbury: see Biographical Register.