[No surviving envelope]
ITrouncer, Margaret;a4 amLeslie, Sir Shane;a1 replying this morning to your delightful letter of July 4th; because tonight I have to go to Mrs. Trouncer’s to meet Shane Leslie (whom I have no great desire to meet),1 and because I have to see my doctor at 11.30 so it isn’t worth while going to my office first. (Heappearance (TSE's)baldness;b6reasserts itself;b2 is going abroad to some medical convention soon, and I thought it would be as well to have myself looked over first, especially because of a new little bald spot on my head).
YesSheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister);d9, I should have mentioned that I read your charming letter to Ada and posted it at once. I am all the more grateful to you for writing because I have not had time or energy to write to her myself, beyond sending a few cuttings. TuesdayHeard, Geraldcompared to Colonel Sebastian Moran;a1 wasDoyle, Sir Arthur ConanTSE's personal Colonel Moran;a4 a busy day – I had Gerald Heard2 to lunch and Morley to help me deal with him – an amusing event which would take too many words of explanation to make amusing in a letter – I succeeded in manipulating the conversation so as to elicit just the aspects of Heard which I wanted Morley to see – I was more pleased with myself than usual – the incident if properly recorded should take a high place in the annals of crime – Morley muttered after we left ‘the second most dangerous man in London’.3 Heard is very quickwitted [sic], and I think the battle was as good as what we had seen the day before on the centre court of Wimbledon. InBussys, thehost pack of Stracheys;a2 the afternoon to a party of the Bussys (Dorothy Strachey) – a large gathering of Stracheys which was pleasant, butde Margerie, Henriette 'Jenny' Jacquin (née Fabre-Luce)lion-huntress-in-chief;a1 IHayward, Johnon Jenny de Margerie;d3 was appalled at falling plump into the clutches of Jenny de Margerie,4 the lady whom John calls The Margerine, and I fear she is going to prove troublesome – one of the most formidable lionhunters going. In the evening dined with John andJennings, Richarddescribed for EH;a1 his friend Richard Jennings, a quiet, humorous, cultivated collector of first editions who looks an old tabby and whom no one would suspect of editing the Daily Mirror5 – hisJennings, Gertrude E.;a1 sister is the author of the Young Person in Pink!6 And the next morning the Margerine rang John to say ‘I have met him, as I said I would, in spite of your efforts to keep us apart’.
Westfield College, yes, that is on the agenda, but I have to be careful. I try to keep all my lecture giving etc. within the Michaelmas Term, but if I am not careful I accumulate too many engagements, and I have now three or four already. And'Should there be a Censorship of Books?';a1 nextGreen Quarterly;a1 Tuesday I have to speak for twenty minutes at a lunch of the Green Quarterly on ‘The Censorship of Books’.7
IMcPherrin, Jeanette;c4 am sorry that the shipping people have been playing fast and loose with Jeanie, we can only wait and hope that things will fall out well. I hope there is no danger of her visit to London falling within the week for which I am booked for Campden? InFabers, the1935 summer holiday with;c5 that case, Itravels, trips and plansTSE's 1935 Faber summer holiday;b9;a1 hope you will ask me down after the Fabers instead. Noah noted.
IAuden, Wystan Hugh ('W. H.')The Dog Beneath the Skin (with Isherwood);d5 agree with your criticisms of the Dog beneath the Skin – it might be much better as a cinema scenario than on the stage – large lumps would have to come out for acting. It is too episodic for the stage – I agree that the Asylum scene is brilliant, though I should put the scene in the operating theatre highest. IAuden, Wystan Hugh ('W. H.')collaborative efforts lamented by TSE;b1 think it was a mistake for Auden to take a collaborator – I think it is better to try to find out what one can do and what one can’t and then work by oneself.
WhileMurder in the Cathedral1935 Canterbury Festival production;d7and EH's response;a5 I cannot help being ‘pleased’ by what you say at the end about ‘Murder in the Cathedral’ – yet it gives me some sense of responsibility and anxiety too. Is this comprehensible? Whenever one feels that one has set in motion something bigger than one was aware of, it is like that. One is rather like a child playing irresponsibly with the dynamite there is in words, sometimes. Being aware of myself as a person who has gone only a little way, and has still such great and stupid faults to contend with, I don’t want anybody to confound what I stand for with what I am. With the young people, for instance, I always feel it so important to convey if I can a sense of things I believe in, without putting over on them my own personality; for if one does the latter, they are bound to find out in time that one is quite an ordinary person, and their disillusionment may bring everything down with it.8 It is a very delicate task in life to keep the love of a cause, or of what one believes to be the truth, untainted by the love of power. Also, I am always afraid of your taking your own struggles too hard and too sadly, and being overdistressed at not being all that you would like to be – a temptation which only comes to noble minds, but a dangerous one nevertheless.
<I am rather frightened of the word ‘teach’!>
[Enclosure]
—— Cape'Cape Ann'copied for EH;a2 Ann.
O quick quick quick, quick hear the song-sparrow
Swamp-sparrow, fox-sparrow, vesper-sparrow,
At dawn and dusk. Follow the dance
Or the goldfish at noon. Leave the to chance
The Blackburnian warbler, the shy one. Hail
With shrill whistle the note of the quail, the bobwhite
Dodging by baybush. Follow the flight
Of the dancing arrow, the purple martin. Greet
In silence the bullbat. All are delectable. Some are archaic. Sweet sweet sweet
But resign this land at the end, resign it
To its true owner, the tough one, the sea-gull.
The palaver is finished.
1.SirLeslie, Sir Shane Shane Leslie (1885–1971), diplomat and author. Born into the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy – first cousin on his mother’s side to Winston Churchill – he read classics at King’s College, Cambridge, where he became a Roman Catholic for life (though christened John Randolph, he styled himself ‘Shane’ – the Irish form). He also resigned the Irish estates entailed upon him and was for several years committed to Irish Nationalist affairs (he stood for Parliament in the 1910 election, unsuccessfully). In 1907 he went to Russia and visited Lev Tolstoy, and for a while he studied Scholastic Philosophy at Louvain University. He edited the Dublin Review, 1916–26, and published works including The End of a Chapter (1916); Henry Edward Manning: His Life and Labours (1921); Mark Sykes: His Life and Letters (1923); The Skull of Swift (1928). He succeeded as third baronet on the death of his father in 1944.
2.GeraldHeard, Gerald Heard (1889–1971), historian, science writer, educator and philosopher.
3.Colonel Sebastian Moran is an accomplished assassin – a marksman – in the employ of Professor Moriarty, in Conan Doyle stories including ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’ (1903), whom Sherlock Holmes keenly dubs ‘the second most dangerous man in London’.
4.Henriettede Margerie, Henriette 'Jenny' Jacquin (née Fabre-Luce) ‘Jenny’ Jacquin de Margerie, née Fabre-Luce (1896–1991), wife of the French diplomat Roland de Margerie.
5.RichardJennings, Richard Jennings (1881–1952), leader writer and literary editor of the Daily Mirror; noted bibliophile. He lived at 8 The Grove, London S.W.5; later at 8 The Little Boltons, S.W.10.
6.GertrudeJennings, Gertrude E. E. Jennings, The Young Person in Pink: A Comedy (1921).
7.TSE, ‘Should there be a Censorship of Books?’, The New Green Quarterly I: 4 (Aut. 1935), 197–200: an address given at the Green Quarterly Luncheon Club, 9 July 1935: CProse 5, 263–7.
8.Cf. ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ (1919): ‘The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality … Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things’ (CProse 2 [104–14], 108, 111).
10.W. H. AudenAuden, Wystan Hugh ('W. H.') (1907–73), poet, playwright, librettist, translator, essayist, editor: see Biographical Register.
4.Henriettede Margerie, Henriette 'Jenny' Jacquin (née Fabre-Luce) ‘Jenny’ Jacquin de Margerie, née Fabre-Luce (1896–1991), wife of the French diplomat Roland de Margerie.
11.JohnHayward, John Davy Hayward (1905–65), editor and critic: see Biographical Register.
2.GeraldHeard, Gerald Heard (1889–1971), historian, science writer, educator and philosopher.
6.GertrudeJennings, Gertrude E. E. Jennings, The Young Person in Pink: A Comedy (1921).
5.RichardJennings, Richard Jennings (1881–1952), leader writer and literary editor of the Daily Mirror; noted bibliophile. He lived at 8 The Grove, London S.W.5; later at 8 The Little Boltons, S.W.10.
1.SirLeslie, Sir Shane Shane Leslie (1885–1971), diplomat and author. Born into the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy – first cousin on his mother’s side to Winston Churchill – he read classics at King’s College, Cambridge, where he became a Roman Catholic for life (though christened John Randolph, he styled himself ‘Shane’ – the Irish form). He also resigned the Irish estates entailed upon him and was for several years committed to Irish Nationalist affairs (he stood for Parliament in the 1910 election, unsuccessfully). In 1907 he went to Russia and visited Lev Tolstoy, and for a while he studied Scholastic Philosophy at Louvain University. He edited the Dublin Review, 1916–26, and published works including The End of a Chapter (1916); Henry Edward Manning: His Life and Labours (1921); Mark Sykes: His Life and Letters (1923); The Skull of Swift (1928). He succeeded as third baronet on the death of his father in 1944.
2.JeanetteMcPherrin, Jeanette McPherrin (1911–92), postgraduate student at Scripps College; friend of EH: see Biographical Register.
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.
2.MargaretTrouncer, Margaret Trouncer (1903–82), author of A Courtesan of Paradise: The Romantic Story of Louise de la Vallière, Mistress of Louis XIV (F&F, 1936). See http://archive.thetablet.co.uk/article/18th-december-1982/23/obituary-margaret-trouncer