[No surviving envelope]
Yourflowers and floraroses;c7left by EH in TSE's Grenville rooms;a4 flowers are fragrant and bright in a large bowl which Elizabeth has provided, as my own vase is still occupied by the last of the roses, and so is the DOG, and was too small anyway. It is a lovely bow-pot, and I only regret that there are too many for me to keep and press them all, and I shall have to choose a representative. It was sweet of you to think of it and take all that trouble, I had no idea you were out in the garden. ElizabethHale, Emilyphotographs of;w7set 'Elizabeth' giggling;c3 full of giggles and said Miss Hale she says those photographs are her but I couldn’t believe it, I says she turned them round because she was jealous, now is it her or not? So I says, yes it is her. Well she said, I’d never believe it, they make her look much older than what she is, and Miss Hale (Hyle) is ever so much ansomer than the photographs no they don’t do her justice reely they don’t I’d never ave dreamt it was her. So that’s what Elizabeth thinks. Well I thinks true enough but I wouldn’t have those photographs if I could have better ones but they are much better than nothing.
VicarCheetham, Revd Erictaken ill;b3 improving only very slowly, won’t be out for days. I must write to him. AfterSt. Stephen's Church, Gloucester Roadvestry goings-on;a2 coming back with flowers IPrewitt, W. H.;a1 went to the vestry to see Prewitt the verger (a character you ought to meet)1 and to deal with a lot of letters containing Whitsun cheques and notes, which I must acknowledge. LunchOldham, Josephhearing improved;b1 with Joe Oldham pleasant, he’s not so deaf as he was. TimeRoberts, Richard Ellispresses religious dining-club on TSE;a2 at office partly taken up by Ellis Roberts who wants me to join a dining club for Anglo-Catholics and Non-conformists, and then to Church House for a boring meeting. My notion of a boring meeting, of course, is one at which I don’t find anything I want to say. But the whole project [is] so in process of change that I felt like waiting till the smoke had settled. ItChristianitypolitics;c5church leaders against totalitarianism and Nazism;a4 mayNazismand the Church;a2 end in vapouring or it may be more important than it seemed at first. IfOldham, Josephspearheading anti-Nazi Church movement;b2 itParsons, Rt Revd Richard, Bishop of Southwark;a3 iscommunismthe church's case against;a8 to be a general campaign against totalitarianism – communist or nazi – then it has got to be for something pretty definite as well. MoberleyMoberley, Sir Walterat anti-totalitarian church meeting;a1,2 OldhamBell, George, Bishop of Chichester (earlier Dean of Canterbury)at anti-totalitarian church meeting;b3, LordKerr, Philip, 11th Marquess of Lothian;a1 LothianGarvie, Alfred Ernest;a1,3 Principal Garvie,4 the Bishops of Chichester and Southwark, and the terrifying Miss Iredale,5 as well as a few others. I must write to Oldham when I have thought about it. I find he was the spirit behind the recent letters to the Times, of the Bishops of Durham and Chichester, about German paganism,6 and has been informing the Archbishops too. OldhamGermanyOldham reports on religious resistance in;a9 has been in Germany recently, and finds things worse than ever. He says that the moderate elements among the Nazi leaders have been privately urging the Lutheran pastors to stand firm, because they are afraid of the extremists in their own party; also, what is interesting, that the Catholic bishops have received private instructions from Rome, as to the attitude to adopt, which are framed in such a way as to make them insist on universally Christian, rather than peculiarly Roman, principles. That is all to the good. IOldham, JosephChurch, Community and State;f2 shallPerkins, Dr John Carroll (EH's uncle);c1 send Dr. Perkins a copy of Oldham’s pamphlet ‘Church Community and State’ which I think is very good.7
IHale, Irene (née Baumgras);a4 have written to Mrs. Hale (on club notepaper) and shall post it in the morning, so that she will not be able to reply, and have said that I will ring her up on Sunday afternoon, and if she is out or doesn’t feel like coming to the telephone – I suggested that one did hate the telephone – would she leave a message. So I hope she will let me come on Monday afternoon, and that it will be fine.
IHale, Emilytaken to Tovaritch;f8 will see about tickets for ‘Tovarisch’.8 We shall at least learn how to pronounce it. Wednesday.
IDobrées, theengaged for the ballet with EH;a6 have written to Major Dobrée to engage him and Valentine (herDobrée, Valentineher unfortunate real name;a3 real names is Gladys, but she prefers to call herself that, and indeed anything is better than Gladys) for Tuesday the 18th, which night please note, for the ballet. IDobrée, Bonamyshilling life of;b3 think you will like him immediately. He has charm which is not only on the surface but underneath. He comes of a Guernsey family, and was in the regular army for three years (Gunners) before the war. Served under Allenby. Then after the war he retired, and, being already married, went to Cambridge, took a degree, lived three years in the Pyrenees, and then adopted the literary life. It is a great pity that his private means are not what they were, because he makes an ideal country squire – public-spirited and responsible. ValentineDobrée, Valentinedescribed for EH;a4 is not so easy to like at once. Her peculiar darkness of complexion, and queer husky voice, and rather portentous manner, put people off, but in spite of her foreign-seeming formality she is very intelligently friendly after a little. She is a freak in a commonplace family. HerBrooke-Pechell, Sir Augustus Alexandersketched for EH;a1 father is a retired Colonel in the the R.A.M.C. [Royal Army Medical Corps], who is now slightly feeble-minded, and lives with them (he won’t be there on the 18th) and talks irrelevantly about tiger-shooting, drives a baby Austin at five miles an hour, explaining all the time how dangerous the road is, goes to church regularly, is highly respected by the villagers, and who had the misfortune to be the heir to an old baronetcy, which he came into late in life, only to find that the fortune that went with it had been left direct to his son. So he is Sir Alexander Brooke-Pechell with a small pension, and another drain on Bonamy’s resources.9
Itravels, trips and plansEH's 1934–5 year in Europe;b4TSE attends Dr Perkins's birthday;d9 thought the Birthday Party went off very nicely, but should like to know. It was very pleasant; and I was quite honest when I said that I considered it an honour to be asked – all the more substantial, somehow, because it could only be for one night, instead of a long weekend. But I need not tell you that what gave me the great and unique thrill was simply taking a railway journey alone with you. It was lovely.
1.W. H. PrewittPrewitt, W. H., verger of St Stephen’s.
2.SirMoberley, Sir Walter Walter Moberley (1881–1974), Professor of Philosophy, University of Birmingham, 1921–4; Principal of the University College of the South West of England, 1925–6; Vice-Chancellor, University of Manchester, 1926–34; Chairman of the University Grants Committee, 1935–49. Keith Clements, Faith on the Frontier, 367: ‘Combining the academic and man of affairs, (Sir) Walter Moberley was perhaps the nearest anyone ever attained to Oldham’s ideal of the theologically aware and responsible Christian layperson … Since 1935 he had been chairman of the University Grants Committee, the most powerful and politically influential position in higher education in England. His close association with Oldham already long-standing …’
3.PhilipKerr, Philip, 11th Marquess of Lothian Kerr, 11th Marquess of Lothian (1882–1940), politician, diplomat, newspaper editor; Private Secretary to P.M. David Lloyd George, 1916–21. Advocate during the 1930s of appeasement of Nazi Germany (which he claimed did not harbour expansionist ambitions).
4.AlfredGarvie, Alfred Ernest Ernest Garvie (1861–1945), Congregational minister, theologian and author; Principal of New College, Hampstead. Works include The Christian Ideal for Human Society (1930) and The Christian Belief in God (1933).
5.EleanoraIredale, Eleanora Iredale, Secretary of the Student Christian Movement (SCM); collaborator with J. H. Oldham; assistant editor of the Christian Newsletter; participant in the Christian and political society ‘The Moot’, 1937–48. See Keith Clements, Faith on the Frontier: A Life of J. H. Oldham (1999): ‘Iredale, a product of the SCM and a member of the council of Life and Work, was not only a voluble and forceful character with forthright views on social ills and their remedy: she also had a persuasive gift for finding and tapping sources of money for good causes.’
6.‘HerrBell, George, Bishop of Chichester (earlier Dean of Canterbury)on Hitler's Germany;b4n HitlerHitler, AdolfBishop Bell on;a1n and Britain: Desire for Friendship: The Neo-Pagan Spirit’, by George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, The Times, 3 June 1935, 15: ‘Your Berlin correspondent has frequently called attention to the neo-pagan spirit with which some of the highest leaders of the German National-Socialist State seek to infect their schools and their youth. To-day he draws an inference of the gravest significance. The issue, he says, is bound to be of extraordinary importance in international affairs as well as in the internal development of the German people.
‘There is a strong desire in this country for peace and friendship with Germany. There is a great longing to respond to the hopeful proposals of Herr Hitler’s Reichstag speech. But the very people who desire friendship most earnestly are deeply disturbed by the forces to which Herr Hitler allows such terrible freedom in Germany itself. They are profoundly moved by the internal war within that great country, the war which some of the prominent members of the National-Socialist party are waging against freedom and against Christianity. What is this Germany with which we are asked to make friends? Is it the Germany in which the National-Socialist authorities submit Christian pastors and others to the cruelty of the concentration camp and place every kind of restriction on the liberty of the Christian Church?
‘In his speech on May 21 Herr Hitler as Führer and Chancellor made a great point of his strong desire for the friendliest relations with the British people. But the British people are lovers of freedom, and loathe and abhor religious persecution. Their friendship cannot be won while freedom is denied and religious persecution prevails.
‘In the same speech Herr Hitler also maintained that he and the German Government lived in the firm conviction that “not the decline of the Occident but its resurrection will be fulfilled in our time,” and he added, “that Germany may make an imperishable contribution to this great work is our proud hope and our unshakable belief.” This also is the hope and longing of all true friends of Germany. But the resurrection of the Occident is not to be achieved by making the principle of race into a religion and attempting to substitute it for the Christian faith which has given its distinctive character to our common western civilization and been the source and inspiration of many of its highest values.’
See too ‘The New Religion in Germany: Return to Paganism: Menace to All Christian Society’, by the Bishop of Durham, The Times, 4 June 1935, 17. A note from the Archbishop of York (3 June) was published in the same issue: ‘I ask to be allowed to associate myself wholeheartedly with the letter from the Bishop of Chichester which appears in your columns to-day. I am convinced that nothing so greatly hinders this country from a policy of cooperation with Germany as the continuance there of religious and racial persecution.’
7.Church, Community and State: A World Issue.
8.Tovaritch (1935): comedy film dir. Jacques Deval, from a 1933 play by Deval.
9.Sir Augustus Brooke-Pechel, 7th Baronet.
4.RtBell, George, Bishop of Chichester (earlier Dean of Canterbury) Revd George Bell, DD (1883–1958), Bishop of Chichester, 1929–58: see Biographical Register.
11.SirBrooke-Pechell, Sir Augustus Alexander Augustus Alexander Brooke-Pechell, 7th Baronet (1857–1937).
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.
3.Bonamy DobréeDobrée, Bonamy (1891–1974), scholar and editor: see Biographical Register.
3.ValentineDobrée, Valentine Dobrée (1894–1974) – née Gladys May Mabel Brooke-Pechell, daughter of Sir Augustus Brooke-Pechell, 7th Baronet – was a well-regarded artist, novelist and short story writer. In addition to Your Cuckoo Sings by Kind (Knopf, 1927), she published one further novel, The Emperor’s Tigers (F&F, 1929); a collection of stories, To Blush Unseen (1935); and a volume of verse, This Green Tide (F&F, 1965). She married Bonamy Dobrée in 1913. See further Valentine Dobrée 1894–1974 (University Gallery Leeds, 2000); and Fifty Works by Fifty British Women Artists 1900– 1950, ed. Sacha Llewellyn (2018), 85.
4.AlfredGarvie, Alfred Ernest Ernest Garvie (1861–1945), Congregational minister, theologian and author; Principal of New College, Hampstead. Works include The Christian Ideal for Human Society (1930) and The Christian Belief in God (1933).
3.IreneHale, Irene (née Baumgras) Hale, née Baumgras, widow of Philip Hale, celebrated as the prolific and influential music critic of the Boston Herald. Irene Hale, who was herself an accomplished pianist, had studied at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, where she gained the Springer Gold Medal 1881, and continued with her studies in Europe under Raif and Moritz Mosckowski: she later wrote music under the name Victor Rene.
5.EleanoraIredale, Eleanora Iredale, Secretary of the Student Christian Movement (SCM); collaborator with J. H. Oldham; assistant editor of the Christian Newsletter; participant in the Christian and political society ‘The Moot’, 1937–48. See Keith Clements, Faith on the Frontier: A Life of J. H. Oldham (1999): ‘Iredale, a product of the SCM and a member of the council of Life and Work, was not only a voluble and forceful character with forthright views on social ills and their remedy: she also had a persuasive gift for finding and tapping sources of money for good causes.’
3.PhilipKerr, Philip, 11th Marquess of Lothian Kerr, 11th Marquess of Lothian (1882–1940), politician, diplomat, newspaper editor; Private Secretary to P.M. David Lloyd George, 1916–21. Advocate during the 1930s of appeasement of Nazi Germany (which he claimed did not harbour expansionist ambitions).
2.SirMoberley, Sir Walter Walter Moberley (1881–1974), Professor of Philosophy, University of Birmingham, 1921–4; Principal of the University College of the South West of England, 1925–6; Vice-Chancellor, University of Manchester, 1926–34; Chairman of the University Grants Committee, 1935–49. Keith Clements, Faith on the Frontier, 367: ‘Combining the academic and man of affairs, (Sir) Walter Moberley was perhaps the nearest anyone ever attained to Oldham’s ideal of the theologically aware and responsible Christian layperson … Since 1935 he had been chairman of the University Grants Committee, the most powerful and politically influential position in higher education in England. His close association with Oldham already long-standing …’
8.JosephOldham, Joseph (‘Joe’) Houldsworth Oldham (1874–1969), missionary, adviser, organiser: see Biographical Register.
3.TheParsons, Rt Revd Richard, Bishop of Southwark Rt Revd Richard Parsons (1882–1948), Bishop of Southwark, 1932–41.
3.DrPerkins, Dr John Carroll (EH's uncle) John Carroll Perkins (1862–1950), Minister of King’s Chapel, Boston: see Biographical Register.
1.RichardRoberts, Richard Ellis Ellis Roberts (1879–1953), author and critic; literary editor of the New Statesman & Nation, 1932–4; Life and Letters Today, 1934; biographer of Stella Benson (1939).