[No surviving envelope]
DidTempest, Marietribute matinée sold out;a1 I tell you that I found tickets for the Marie Tempest matinée had been sold out weeks ago.1
IDunhill & HerbertTantivy Towers;a1 hope you will write tomorrow in response to my wire, as I can’t find any evidence that Tantivy Towers is to be performed.2 IfHale, Emilyand TSE attend 1066 And All That;f7 that is not on, I will get tickets for 1066.
Now for your kind p.c. of this morning. I could come to Campden on the 6th if it would give pleasure – but I should have to return the next day, becauseUniversal Christian Council for Life and Workmeeting to discuss;a2 IOldham, Joseph;a8 have to lunch with Joe Oldham and go to a meeting of the 1937 Council that afternoon, and go to Canterbury for that evening. FridayMurder in the Cathedral1935 Canterbury Festival production;d7in rehearsal;a1 turns out to be the only evening that week that Bobby Speaight can rehearse (for the first time) in Canterbury; the 5th is of no use. InRichmonds, the;a3 any case, I have already refused an invitation for the weekend from the Richmonds becauseSt. Stephen's Church, Gloucester Road;a3 I feel that I ought to be here at St. Stephen’s for the four major festivals of the year, of which Whitsun is one. It is a nuisance being churchwarden, because I should like to spend the long Whitsun holiday, including Bank Monday, with you in Campden; but there it is.
IfPerkins, Dr John Carroll (EH's uncle);b8 you care to have me for one night for Dr. Perkins’s birthday – I should feel rewarded if we might journey down together on the Thursday.
I keep forgetting to raise the question of the scent spray.
IMirrlees, Hopeand mother taken sightseeing;a8 amMirrlees, Emily Lina ('Mappie', née Moncrieff)taken round the Tower;a1 rather fatigued after taking Hope Mirrlees and her mother3 to the Tower this afternoon, and I thought the old lady’s heart would give out on the stairs of the White Tower, but she struggled on manfully – andMendonça, Antonio S. de;a2 then another interview with my Portuguese diplomats afterwards – but I have had my hair cut. AndLawrence, Colonel Thomas Edward ('T. E.')gives the laurels to TSE;a2 I had a nice letter from a perfect stranger in Cambridge quoting a letter he had had from T. E. Lawrence in 1925, when he was writing his book, saying that I was the most important poet living, and that my style belonged to the future and his own to the past!4
There is much in your letter to reply to, after deliberation.
1.A matinee organised by the Daily Telegraph as a tribute to Marie Tempest on the occasion of her Jubilee, 28 May 1935. Marie Tempest – Dame Mary Susan Etherington (1864–1942) – was an English soprano and actor.
2.Tantivy Towers (1931): three-act comic opera, with music by Thomas Frederick Dunhill and libretto by A. P. Herbert.
3.HopeMirrlees, Emily Lina ('Mappie', née Moncrieff) Mirrlees’s mother was Emily Lina Mirrlees, née Moncrieff (1862–1948) – known as ‘Mappie’ or ‘Mappy’ – see Biographical Register.
4.OnLawrence, Colonel Thomas Edward ('T. E.')gives the laurels to TSE;a2 26 May, Sir Sydney Cockerell (1867–1962) – Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge – sent TSE this extract from a letter (dated 29 Dec. 1925) he had received from T. E. Lawrence (1888–1935): ‘at Cranwell this year I have been very fortunate. The rest of “B” flight went on leave, so that I have the hut to myself […] Still it is very pleasant to have a solitary bedroom & quiet, & lack of talk. I even lent away the gramophone, so that there should be no disturbance, & passed my spare time reading T. S. Eliot’s Collected Poems (he is the most important poet alive) …… It’s odd, you know, to be reading these poems, so full of the future, so far ahead of our time; and then to turn back to my book [The Seven Pillars of Wisdom], whose prose stinks of coffins and ancestors & armorial hatchments.’ See Letters of T. E. Lawrence, ed. David Garnett (1938), 488, no. 278.
7.T. E. LawrenceLawrence, Colonel Thomas Edward ('T. E.') (b. 1888) – ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ – had died on 19 May, six days after a motorcycle accident. See The Times, 20 May 1935, which includes an obituary plus a long tribute by Capt. B. H. Liddell Hart: ‘Lawrence of Arabia: A Genius of War and Letters’, 15.
1.PresumablyMendonça, Antonio S. de Antonio S. de Mendonça, Manager of Casa de Portugal (Portuguese Information Bureau), London.
3.HopeMirrlees, Emily Lina ('Mappie', née Moncrieff) Mirrlees’s mother was Emily Lina Mirrlees, née Moncrieff (1862–1948) – known as ‘Mappie’ or ‘Mappy’ – see Biographical Register.
2.HopeMirrlees, Hope Mirrlees (1887–1978), British poet, novelist, translator and biographer, was to become a close friend of TSE: see Biographical Register.
8.JosephOldham, Joseph (‘Joe’) Houldsworth Oldham (1874–1969), missionary, adviser, organiser: see Biographical Register.
3.DrPerkins, Dr John Carroll (EH's uncle) John Carroll Perkins (1862–1950), Minister of King’s Chapel, Boston: see Biographical Register.