[No surviving envelope]
I9 Grenville Place, Londonsanctified by EH's presence;b4 was very much relieved to find the sweet note you left for me – together with a faint odour of sanctity – in my rooms – or your rooms, if you please. I HAD rather worried that you did not telephone, and although reason told me that you probably had been too rushed (and I hope you were buying something nice for yourself in Bond Street) yet emotion suggested that you had, as I feared, been crushed to death in the crowd, and I should probably have wired to ask if you were dead, and then I should have been of no use to anybody for the rest of my life, just thinking that I might have come with you and saved the situation. IWilliams, Orlo;a3 suppose you read Orlo’s postcard.1 I am so glad you had a good view. Yes I wish indeed I were in the country with you. IHale, Emilyshares open taxi with TSE through Parks and Whitehall;f3 did enjoy last night so much: particularly sitting on the back of the taxi with you peeping over the roof. There is a peculiar delightful intimacy in doing something rather childish like that together. My Memory took several Snap Shots which I shall preserve always. I think that for two people meetings may have a seriousness and value not measurable by surface values – I mean that a heart-to-heart talk, an impersonal discussion of politics or philosophy, or a larking ride in an open taxi in a crowd, may all have an equal value in one’s inner history. I shan’t forget last night, ever; yet there was nothing particular about it, superficially: just a taxi ride and a walk through Whitehall and the Parks. IMcPherrin, Jeanettegiven introduction to the Maritains;b9 haveMaritain, Jacquesintroduced to Jeanette McPherrin;a9 just written to Jean and to Jacques Maritain about her, and I hope they will ask her to come to see them.2 NoGalitzi, Dr Christine;c2, not to Christine Galitzi tonight: toSheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister);d8 AdaSpender, Stephen;b2 and to Stephen Spender; but I shall be at home tomorrow and Saturday night for letter writing. LunchedRosenberg, IsaacTSE courted to preface his poems;a1 withParsons, Ianbeseeches Rosenberg preface;a1 Ian Parsons who wants something from me – a preface to a book – but he won’t get it – however highly I think of Isaac Rosenberg’s poetry3 – andHerbert, Fr Gabriel;a1 then had an interview with Father Gabriel Hebert about his book that we are publishing4 – his mother has just died – whichMonro, Alida (née Klementaski);b6 reminds me that for the same reason I must next write a letter to Alida Monro. Elizabeth again says what a nice lady you are, and again marvels that you get up so early in the morning. GeoffreyFaber, Geoffreyforgives TSE and Morley's prank;d5 hasMorley, Frank Vigorand TSE drink GCF's whisky;d9 returnedalcoholGCF's pillaged whisky;b3 from Wales and was really very amiable about Frank and me having got into his cupboard and drunk his whisky and filled up the bottle with water – theHaig, Lady Dorothylooms over F&F;a1 only cloud on the business horizon is Lady Haig5 – but that is a close secret – weFaber and Faber (F&F)and Duff Cooper's Haig;c8 are publishing Duff Cooper’s life of Lord Haig6 – andCooper, (Alfred) Duff, 1st Viscount Norwichand Lady Haig;a2 LadyCooper, Lady Diana (née Manners);a1 Haig dislikes Duff Cooper, or perhaps his wife Diana Manners7 – this is all very secret. ICheetham, Revd Eric;b1 am to lunch on Sunday with the Vicar! andSeymour, Revd Lord Victor;a2 with the late vicar, the Revd. Lord Victor Seymour, a testy old fellow who looks like an irritated Santa Claus. AndHayward, John;c9 supper with John.
I have another letter to write to you soon, meditating your plans for next winter. ButSt. Paul's Cathedral, LondonTSE and EH's taxi-ride round;a2 at the moment I prefer to think of our taxi ride round St. Paul’s! Take care of YOUR self, my dearest.
IMorrell, Lady Ottoline;e9 will write to Ottoline as you bade me do.
1.OrlandoWilliams, Orlo (Orlo) Williams (1883–1967), Clerk to the House of Commons, scholar and critic; contributor to TLS; Chevalier, Légion d’honneur. His works include The Clerical Organisation of the House of Commons 1661–1850 (1954); Vie de Bohème: A Patch of Romantic Paris (1913); Some Great English Novels: The Art of Fiction (1926).
Postcard not found.
2.TSE wrote a letter of introduction for McPherrin to Jacques Maritain, 8 May 1935. ‘Je me suis interessé à son sort par l’intermédiaire d’une amie commune bien-aimée. Il me ferait beaucoup de Plaisir si vous et Madame Maritain auraient l’amabilité de l’inviter chez vous un de ces jours.’
3.IanRosenberg, Isaacchampioned by TSE;a2n Parsons had invited TSE to write a preface for his edition of the poetry of Isaac Rosenberg. See TSE to Parsons, 10 May 1935 (Letters 7, 620).
Jack Isaacs reported in a letter (‘Eliot’s Friends’, The Observer, 18 June 1967) that TSE first heard of Isaac Rosenberg from Sydney Schiff – ‘and Eliot praised [Rosenberg] and spread his fame long before the bandwagon rumbled. He once said to me that no English anthology that did not include Rosenberg was worth anything.’ Isaacs added, in the same published letter: ‘I knew T. S. Eliot for 42 years and I saw no signs of anti-semitism. Very much the contrary, only kindness and understanding. The finest evidence can be found in his rich and warm obituary notice in The Times, in July, 1962, of Mrs Violet Schiff.’
4.Fr. Arthur Gabriel Hebert, SSM (1886–1963), theologian: see Biographical Register. The book in question was Liturgy and Society: The Function of the Church in the Modern World (May 1935).
5.DorothyHaig, Lady Dorothy, Lady Haig (1879–1939), widow of the eminent WW1 military commander Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, KT, GCB, OM, GCVO, KCIE (1861–1928).
6.Duff Cooper, Haig (2 vols, 1935–6).
7.DianaCooper, Lady Diana (née Manners) Cooper, née Lady Diana Manners (1892–1986), socialite and actor, was married in 1919 to Alfred Duff Cooper (1890–1954), Conservative politician, diplomat and historian.
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.
6.AlfredCooper, (Alfred) Duff, 1st Viscount Norwich Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich of Aldwick (1890–1954), since 1937, First Lord of the Admiralty.
7.DianaCooper, Lady Diana (née Manners) Cooper, née Lady Diana Manners (1892–1986), socialite and actor, was married in 1919 to Alfred Duff Cooper (1890–1954), Conservative politician, diplomat and historian.
11.GeoffreyFaber, Geoffrey Faber (1889–1961), publisher and poet: see Biographical Register.
1.DrGalitzi, Dr Christine Christine Galitzi (b. 1899), Assistant Professor of French and Sociology, Scripps College. Born in Greece and educated in Romania, and at the Sorbonne and Columbia University, New York, she was author of Romanians in the USA: A Study of Assimilation among the Romanians in the USA (New York, 1968), as well as authoritative articles in the journal Sociologie româneascu. In 1938–9 she was to be secretary of the committee for the 14th International Congress of Sociology due to be held in Bucharest. Her husband (date of marriage unknown) was to be a Romanian military officer named Constantin Bratescu (1892–1971).
5.DorothyHaig, Lady Dorothy, Lady Haig (1879–1939), widow of the eminent WW1 military commander Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, KT, GCB, OM, GCVO, KCIE (1861–1928).
11.JohnHayward, John Davy Hayward (1905–65), editor and critic: see Biographical Register.
5.Fr ArthurHerbert, Fr Gabriel Gabriel Hebert, SSM.
2.JeanetteMcPherrin, Jeanette McPherrin (1911–92), postgraduate student at Scripps College; friend of EH: see Biographical Register.
5.JacquesMaritain, Jacques Maritain (1882–1973), philosopher and littérateur, was at first a disciple of Bergson, but revoked that allegiance (L’Evolutionnisme de M. Bergson, 1911; La Philosophie bergsonienne, 1914) and became a Roman Catholic and foremost exponent of Neo-Thomism. For a while in the 1920s he was associated with Action Française, but the connection ended in 1926. Works include Art et scolastique (1920); Saint Thomas d’Aquin apôtre des temps modernes (1923); Réflexions sur l’intelligence (1924); Trois Réformateurs (1925); Primauté du spirituel (1927), Humanisme intégral (1936), Scholasticism and Politics (1940), Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (1953). TSE told Ranjee Shahani (John O’London’s Weekly, 19 Aug. 1949, 497–8) that Maritain ‘filled an important role in our generation by uniting philosophy and theology, and also by enlarging the circle of readers who regard Christian philosophy seriously’. See Walter Raubicheck, ‘Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, and the Romantics’, Renascence 46:1 (Fall 1993), 71–9; Shun’ichi Takayanagi, ‘T. S. Eliot, Jacques Maritain, and Neo-Thomism’, The Modern Schoolman 73: 1 (Nov. 1995), 71–90; Jason Harding, ‘“The Just Impartiality of a Christian Philosopher”: Jacques Maritain and T. S. Eliot’, in The Maritain Factor: Taking Religion into Interwar Modernism, ed. J. Heynickx and J. De Maeyer (Leuven, 2010), 180–91; James Matthew Wilson, ‘“I bought and praised but did not read Aquinas”: T. S. Eliot, Jacques Maritain, and the Ontology of the Sign’, Yeats Eliot Review 27: 1–2 (Spring–Summer 2010), 21; and Carter Wood, This Is Your Hour: Christian Intellectuals in Britain and the Crisis of Europe, 1937–40 (Manchester, 2019), 69–72.
3.AlidaMonro, Alida (née Klementaski) Klementaski (1892–1969) married Harold Monro on 27 Mar. 1920: see Alida Monro in Biographical Register.
4.FrankMorley, Frank Vigor Vigor Morley (1899–1980), American publisher and author; a founding editor of F&F, 1929–39: see Biographical Register.
4.LadyMorrell, Lady Ottoline Ottoline Morrell (1873–1938), hostess and patron: see Biographical Register.
10.IsaacRosenberg, Isaac Rosenberg (1890–1918), English poet, artist and soldier (killed in action); widely recognised as one of the most important poets of WWI: one of sixteen WW1 poets to be commemorated with a stone in Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey. See further Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Isaac Rosenberg, poet and painter (1975). Jack Isaacs reported in a letter (‘Eliot’s Friends’, The Observer, 18 June 1967) that TSE first heard of Isaac Rosenberg from Sydney Schiff – ‘and Eliot praised [Rosenberg] and spread his fame long before the bandwagon rumbled. He once said to me that no English anthology that did not include Rosenberg was worth anything.’
7.RevdSeymour, Revd Lord Victor Lord Victor Seymour (1859–1935), son of the 5th Marquess of Hertford: vicar of St Stephen’s Church, Gloucester Road, London, 1900–29; immediate predecessor to Father Eric Cheetham.
2.AdaSheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister) Eliot Sheffield (1869–1943), eldest of the seven Eliot children; author of The Social Case History: Its Construction and Content (1920) and Social Insight in Case Situations (1937): see Biographical Register.
12.Stephen SpenderSpender, Stephen (1909–95), poet and critic: see Biographical Register.
1.OrlandoWilliams, Orlo (Orlo) Williams (1883–1967), Clerk to the House of Commons, scholar and critic; contributor to TLS; Chevalier, Légion d’honneur. His works include The Clerical Organisation of the House of Commons 1661–1850 (1954); Vie de Bohème: A Patch of Romantic Paris (1913); Some Great English Novels: The Art of Fiction (1926).