[No surviving envelope]
I9 Grenville Place, Londonas repository for TSE's books;b1 am now sitting in considerable disorder, as I have got my books out of the warehouse, with three bookcases, and there are not nearly enough shelves for the books, and I have had to dispense with one cupboard in order to get all the cases in, and the tables are piled. I shall have to get some sort of small cabinet table which will have a compartment for sherry and glasses and the tea set underneath. The books are of course almost unusable until they are set in order – and they are in complete chaos – and I shan’t have time to put them in order until the Archbishop is not only dead but polished off. TheEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)separation from;f1efforts to retrieve TSE's property;c5 vexatious thing is that none of my French books – of which I had a considerable number, and some of which were useful and hard to replace – have turned up! She must have secreted those in some closet or other where they were overlooked by the bailiffs. And there is a box at Martin’s Bank to which I have not yet got access.1
WellMurder in the CathedralTSE on writing;a4, I have rewritten – since I last wrote – all the dialogue after the opening choruses, and I hope to finish the first draft of Part I in the new style by Monday. ItEverymaninfluences metre of Murder;a1 is not nearly so realistic, I have used a more formalised (from the point of view of speech) metre or metres, partly in rhyme, and some of it in alliterative middle-English verse, going rather on the model of ‘Everyman’. The point being not so much to find an ideal verse for the subject, but to find a form which will best exploit my abilities and conceal my weaknesses – or rather; dispense with the things in which I am weak. I won’t say any more about it until I have tried it on Doone – BrowneBrowne, Elliott Martin1935 Canterbury Murder in the Cathedral;a5;a3 being in York, and very busy with his Repertory (INichols, RobertWings Over Europe;a3 think he is doing ‘Wings over Europe’2 at the moment). The poor Archbishop is being exposed like St. Anthony to all sorts of temptations (in different symbolic colours) and is now having a frightful wrestle with Spiritual Pride but he gets the upper hand you may depend upon him. I know that anything allegorical-like sounds very fusty and poetical, but please suspend judgement for the present. The four Temptations double conveniently with the four Murderers in Part II, in fact I want them to have the same make-up, but different costumes. Everybody wants me to have the murder on-stage, I expect you will agree.
IPlunket Greene, Gwendolendescribed for EH;a2 have no very particular news. IPlunket Greene, Oliviasubsists on alcohol, mysticism and Dickens;a1 went to dine with the Plunket Greenes, mother and daughter, last night, and had some very queer impressions. Mrs. G., you know, is the niece to whom Baron von Huegel wrote those wonderful letters.3 The atmosphere is definitely maladive.4 I can’t quite get the hang of why they want to see me. Mrs. G. is certainly not a lion-hunter, and they always ask me alone. I feel as if they wanted some kind of spiritual support and sustenance, but I don’t make out what or why. They both seem ill, and Mrs. G. lies on the sofa and looks suffering, while the daughter talks.5 Much too intense. I think the girl is trying to build a spiritual life on the wrong foundations; I think I can understand girls who are devout, and girls who drink, but I am worried by a girl who drinks a little too much whisky and talks all the time about St. John of the Cross, and is perfectly sincere. TheSt. John of the Crossand Miss Plunket Greene;a1 conversation always gets round to St. John of the Cross. St. John is pretty intoxicating unless you know a good many other things as well. AndDickens, CharlesMiss Plunkett's dependence on;a3 this girl can’t read anything else but Dickens, can’t concentrate in the ordinary way. I felt awfully sorry for them.
Itravels, trips and plansTSE's 1935 tour of Scotland;b8attempts to coordinate with EH;a2 amtravels, trips and plansEH's 1934–5 year in Europe;b4TSE coordinating with EH's return;c8 sorry that your French tour cannot coincide with my tour of Scotland, but I can’t go away during Holy Week – and I am glad that your tour should be coming off. Of course, the Scottish tour may fall through. But I hope that your plans will not mean (or the Perkins’s plans) being in London directly after your return, because I do so much want you to be in London later. FirstMurder in the Cathedralabandoned Mercury Theatre premiere;d6EH requested at;a4, IAuden, Wystan Hugh ('W. H.')The Dog Beneath the Skin (with Isherwood);d5 should like you to be here not only for the Archbishop’s murder, but for Yeats’s play and Auden’s play (the latter very interesting) in the end-of-May three week season (Canterbury no longer matters, except that the Fogerty chorus should be worth hearing); and then there will be the Russian Ballet in June–July, and I DO want to take you to two or three of those. ConsiderScripps College, Claremont;e5 that it is your duty toward Scripps to keep up with the most modern developments of theatre and ballet while you are here! I look forward eagerly to your next letter, though I do not expect to get every week so long a letter as the last! and still more to seeing for myself, what difference the Roman experiment has made, when April’s here.6
I enclose a small exercise in Italian translation for you.7
DOAbyssinia CrisisTSE asks EH for news of;a1 tell me any local news about the Abyssinian Adventure!8 MyWaterlow, Sydneyon Abyssinia;a2 old friend Waterlow was Minister in Abyssinia once, and he couldn’t stand it.9
I do pray for your health.
1.TSE to Henry Eliot, 2 Feb. 1936: ‘She has a big box of letters to me deposited at Martin’s Bank, and it would cost me more than it is worth to get them.’
2.Wings over Europe (1928), play by Robert Nichols and Maurice Browne; first produced in the USA.
3.Letters from Baron F. von Hügel to a Niece, ed. Gwendolen Greene (1928). In 1926 Gwendolen Plunket Greene converted to the Roman Catholic Church under the influence of her uncle Baron Friedrich von Hügel (1852–1925).
4.Maladive (Fr.): sickly.
5.OliviaPlunket Greene, Olivia Plunket Greene (1907–58), Gwen’s alcoholic daughter – one of the ‘Bright Young Things’ of the 1920s – was fruitlessly pursued by Evelyn Waugh (who is said to have depicted her in Vile Bodies, 1930). See further D. J. Taylor, Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation: 1918–1940 (2007).
6.‘April is the cruellest month’ (The Waste Land). Robert Browning, ‘Home-Thoughts, from Abroad’: ‘Oh to be in England, now that April’s there.’
7.Not identified.
8.Mussolini had begun to build up troops in Italian Somaliland in pursuit of Italy’s claim to additional territory in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia); open conflict was no longer to be avoided.
9.Sir Sydney Waterlow.
10.W. H. AudenAuden, Wystan Hugh ('W. H.') (1907–73), poet, playwright, librettist, translator, essayist, editor: see Biographical Register.
4.E. MartinBrowne, Elliott Martin Browne (1900–80), English director and producer, was to direct the first production of Murder in the Cathedral: see Biographical Register.
1.RobertNichols, Robert Nichols (1893–1944), writer; war poet; author of Wings Over Europe (play, 1928).
3.GwendolenPlunket Greene, Gwendolen Plunket Greene (1878–1959), younger daughter of the composer Hubert Parry, was married to the Irish baritone Harry Plunket Greene (1865–1936); they had two sons and a daughter, but had separated in 1920.
5.OliviaPlunket Greene, Olivia Plunket Greene (1907–58), Gwen’s alcoholic daughter – one of the ‘Bright Young Things’ of the 1920s – was fruitlessly pursued by Evelyn Waugh (who is said to have depicted her in Vile Bodies, 1930). See further D. J. Taylor, Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation: 1918–1940 (2007).
3.SydneyWaterlow, Sydney Waterlow, KCMG (1878–1944) joined the diplomatic service in 1900 and served as attaché and third secretary in Washington. TSE met him in 1915, when Waterlow invited him to review for the International Journal of Ethics (Waterlow was a member of the editorial committee). In 1919 Waterlow served at the Paris Peace Conference (helping to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles), and in 1920 he was re-appointed to the Foreign Office, later serving as Minister to Bangkok, 1926–8; Sofia, 1929–33; Athens, 1933–9. See further Sarah M. Head, Before Leonard: The Early Suitors of Virginia Woolf (2006).