[No surviving envelope]
You wrote this evening – and I hope as it was a L E T T E R, you wrote after breakfast – yes of course you did if it was 9.15 when you began – and if mine was a surprise letter so was yours as so in turn must be this, as yours arrived just before dinner. But pray why should an Immediate Reply from me be a surprise letter? call it rather a surprise letter when I leave a letter unanswered for two days, which always means either long evening engagements or a weekend. At any rate thank you for your surprise LETTER, and may we continue to surprise each other in exactly the same way. WhatHale, Emilycriticised for flower-arranging;g2 shall I talk about first? Your convincing arguments about the flower cutting? Those I shall not attempt to answer; and of course I don’t know whether cutting and arranging flowers is a more fatiguing occupation <than writing a 5 page letter to T.S.E.> I will only answer one point – thatHale, Emilyappearance and characteristics;v7EH encouraged to tan;a9 the cutting of flowers seemed to keep you largely in the shade, and you have not that sunburn you brought back from the coast of Guernsey – and that the arranging of flowers seemed to keep you indoors.
Eliots, noted – they are coming to tea with me at Russell Square tomorrow, andSmith, Theodora ('Dodo') Eliot (TSE's niece)1935 visit to England;b3;a3 Dodo (final week of Dodo, returned tonight from cycling); as I couldn’t get down to Oxford to see them. I am sorry that you were retained by a guest, but trust it was at least your personal guest. They are nice people, those Eliots, so I am sorry.
ThorpsThorps, the;c5, noted – but no letter received so far from Margaret: But – couldn’t come Thursday because that is Dodo’s last night and I must take her out to dinner and if possible to the ballet (last week) as she sails the next day; and I have to be on duty at the office on Saturday morning, andTandys, theTSE's weekend in Newhaven with;a2 have promised to go to the Tandys at Newhaven on Saturday afternoon till Monday.1 If you were staying for the weekend I might waver over the Tandys – I would throw them over – but in any case I can’t change Thursday and I can’t change Saturday morning. It would have been very pleasant I am sure and I am very sorry not to be able to visit the Thorps. But all the more reason, from my point of view, for your taking a night in town. Elizabeth is back: Mary has gone for only a week’s holiday – more later.
YesShaw, George BernardThe Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles;b4, I do not envy you going to Malvern for Shaw’s latest, from what is said about it – still, it will be a satisfaction to have seen it – and I don’t believe it will be done again elsewhere.2 TheBrownes, the Martin;a6 Martin Brownes, by the way, are at 8, Mayfield Avenue, Stratford on Avon, till Friday, and then at 41, Allesbury Road, Dublin S.E.2. I had a note from him this morning.
ClaytonClayton, Joseph ('Joe');a3 is of course a better man and more of a man than Greene – the latter is not a type I am especially proud of – he is timid and not very strong; but I think he is pious within the limits of his narrow frightened little mind, and on the whole good, and generous minded.
IHale, Emilyfamily;w4EH encouraged to keep younger company;a4 am glad that you have had some congenial friends about – and not too old for you. I have never been inspired with an interest in folk dancing myself. IGough, Revd E. P.;a1 am so glad that you have kept in touch with the Goughs.3 IChandlers, the;a1 remember your pointing out Hidcote House and the Chandlers.4
I don’ttravels, trips and plansEH's 1934–5 year in Europe;b4prospect of EH spending month at Blomfield Terrace;e5 know whether I ought to think of the possibility of your having a month in Blomfield Terrace, with delight, or not – it depends on what you want, and how your lingering on in England will affect the rest of your winter, and still more your next year: but of course the possibility does give me a great thrill. And it is only a few minutes away from here (S. Ken.) by Underground. I will not say more, but will wait to hear more.
PoemPerkins, Edith (EH's aunt)TSE's occasional poem for;b6 for Mrs. Perkins – I will try to do my best for the occasion – a Toast I take it.5 Mrs. Hale: may she keep her illusions, embarrassing as they are. Iappearance (TSE's)eyes;b7dark;a1 am sorry I have dark eyes, as I especially dislike black and brown eyes myself – and the latter are all too common in the Eliot family – I believe the swarthiness of my branch comes from the Dawes’s – however they are black but not hairy – but I am comparatively light – hazel like the Stearns’s, though not as light as Ada. However, the testimonial as a whole is very agreeable – I have some sense of humour – but no MIND at all, only intuitions. I will keep in mind to write to her, but surely some other occasion must be found or invented than this Testimonial? Suggest one.
ItalyAbyssinia CrisisEnglish public opinion on;a4, most depressing. England as a whole seems to be more angry than at any time since 1914 – perhaps more so, in a queer inverted way, because now it is the pacificists who are most angry; but I have not met any apologist in Italy, and we can’t let the Italians get control anywhere near Lake Tana.6 ThinkFranceFrench politics;b4England's natural ally;a3 that in a pinch France would choose the friendship of England rather than Italy; the French with their eyes on the Rhine can’t be expected to do anything, all they ought to do is to discourage the Italians and not lend them money – and there is so much hatred of ‘fascism’ in France that she may hesitate to do so. And the Abyssinians are savages: but I think they could be handled better by English methods than by Italian.
ADobrées, theTSE's final visit to Mendham;a7 rather sad weekend at Mendham Priory, as the Dobrées are packing up to go. And the purchaser came to lunch on Sunday and stayed all the afternoon – whileDobrée, Georginaand TSE play rounders;a2 I played rounders with Georgina – haggling with them about details and pumping them for useful information.
He is a very common fellow a stockbroker and not even an English one at that but a Russian who has made himself quite at home in England, talks fluently, and has made himself look as near like an English stockbroker with no interests but making money, spending money, and talking about money, as possible: plays bridge and tennis, likes powerful cars etc. It was painful to see the gentry abdicating. FortunatelyBrooke-Pechell, Sir Augustus Alexander;a2 Sir Alexander was away; I don’t think he could have stood it, if he had taken it all in. FurthermoreDobrée, Bonamydoomed to American lecture tour;b5, Bonamy has got into a jam with a lecture agent in New York named Colston Leigh.7 Bonamy having engaged himself a year ago for a lecture tour thought innocently that as his house-moving coincided, and also he wants to be in London in October to apply for a professorship, he could throw over the tour at the last moment without damage to anybody. I thought myself that he was legally safe; but no such thing. He came up this morning with me and saw the solicitor of the Authors’ Society and finds he has to go after all or pay heavy damages. So he has taken a passage for Sept. 21st. And apparently he won’t net more than about £50 out of it. I think it was really a help to them to have a visitor over the weekend in the circumstances. B. wasDobrées, theon their uppers;a8 so worried, and Valentine is worried about him: now she will have to do all the moving (they have taken a smaller house near Colchester) without him. When they bought Mendham, they were able to keep a man in the porter’s lodge; then they had to let the lodge and reduce the staff; andDobrée, Valentinereduced to cooking and cleaning for herself;a5 at present Valentine is cooking two meals a day and doing all of the washing <I mean laundry>, andDobrée, Bonamyreduced to doing his own gardening;b6 Bonamy most of the gardening.
Enough chattering, my dear. Shalltravels, trips and plansEH's 1934–5 year in Europe;b4TSE's Campden birthday weekend;e4 I see you before Sept. 27th, I wonder, or not. Andtravels, trips and plansEH's 1934–5 year in Europe;b4TSE's July 1935 Campden week;e1 when I do see you, whenever that is, I shall feel very strange and shy and tender and awkward and absurd – because I shall be wondering whether the last garden evening really was, and if so whether you will look at me and see me as the same person who was with you then, and whether it meant and means more to me than it ought to do etc. I shall be in rather a flutter in fact.
P.S. My ‘cruise’ becomes more and more unlikely. I'Introduction' (to Poems of Tennyson);a2 have got to clean up my Introduction to Tennyson first, and by that time it may be too near my birthday to be worth while; and in October my public-speaking engagements begin. So you may treat me as if I was to be in London consistently from next Monday.
1.TSE visited the Tandys at ‘Oakville’, Nore Road, Harbour Heights, Newhaven, Sussex
2.George Bernard Shaw’s satirical fable The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles: A Vision of Judgement (1934) was staged at the Festival Theatre, Malvern, Worcestershire, from 29 July.
3.TheGough, Revd E. P. Revd E. P. Gough, vicar and Rural Dean of Tewkesbury Abbey.
4.BenjaminChandlers, the Martin Chandler (1872–1948) – a wealthy American from Manchester, New Hampshire (son of a banker) who became a local benefactor – lived in Chipping Campden with his second wife Frances Izod Robbins (1880–1972), for a while at the seventeenth-century Hidcote Manor. An amateur craftsman who spent time working with C. R. Ashbee and purchased one of the Kelmscott presses, he was co-founder of the Chipping Campden Trust. See Paul Whitfield, Benjamin Martin Chandler, 1872–1948 (privately printed, 2016).
5.SeePerkins, Edith (EH's aunt)TSE's occasional poem for;b6 ‘A'Valedictory: Forbidding Mourning: to the Lady of the House, A';a1 Valedictory: Forbidding Mourning: to the Lady of the House’, Poems I, 292–3, 1,195–7; and TSE’s letter to Mrs John Carroll [Edith] Perkins, 28 Sept. 1935 (Letters 7, 778–9).
TSEtravels, trips and plansEH's 1934–5 year in Europe;b4where EH joins Jeanie McPherrin;e3 to Jeanette McPherrin, 3 Oct. 1935 (Letters 7, 791–2): ‘I had, of course, a perfectly delightful birthday party. Mrs. P. is (almost too consciously, malice would say) the perfect hostess – on Friday the Yeomen of the Guard at the Stratford Theatre; on Saturday evening a dinner arranged by Emily with great care in her honour – healths and tasteful speeches from and to the servants, and an Occasional Poem by myself which seemed to go down well. (I have steadily tried to make a good impression on Mrs. P., both for my own sake and thinking that I might be more useful if she thought well of me.) I wish that we might have that dinner in Paris on the 27th October.
‘IPerkinses, theTSE's private opinion on;f2n would gladlytravels, trips and plansEH's 1934–5 year in Europe;b4prospect of EH spending month at Blomfield Terrace;e5 put up with the presence of the Perkins’s in London permanently, for the sake of liberating E., but the devil of it is that King’s Chapel, Boston, is having its tercentenary early in the spring, and Dr. P. is living for that, so they are certain to go back. I should be glad to get them over again, if they can be made to move again once they have got to Boston. I do think that some place like Campden is ideal for them – a place with an olde worlde atmosphere stinking of death. The main thing at the moment is for E. to get a job, almost any sort of job anywhere, when she gets back’ (Scripps).
6.It was a common, albeit unfounded, fear that Italy, if it were to seize control of Lake Tana, could disrupt irrigation in the countries lower down the Nile, namely the Sudan and Egypt.
7.W. Colston Leigh Bureau: speakers’ agency established in New York in 1929.
11.SirBrooke-Pechell, Sir Augustus Alexander Augustus Alexander Brooke-Pechell, 7th Baronet (1857–1937).
4.BenjaminChandlers, the Martin Chandler (1872–1948) – a wealthy American from Manchester, New Hampshire (son of a banker) who became a local benefactor – lived in Chipping Campden with his second wife Frances Izod Robbins (1880–1972), for a while at the seventeenth-century Hidcote Manor. An amateur craftsman who spent time working with C. R. Ashbee and purchased one of the Kelmscott presses, he was co-founder of the Chipping Campden Trust. See Paul Whitfield, Benjamin Martin Chandler, 1872–1948 (privately printed, 2016).
12.JosephClayton, Joseph ('Joe') ClaytonClayton, Margaret, FRHistS (1867–1943). Clayton was a journalist, author and historian; editor of The New Age, 1906–7; Catholic convert. Resident in later years in Chipping Campden, where he and his wife Margaret became friendly with the Perkinses.
3.Bonamy DobréeDobrée, Bonamy (1891–1974), scholar and editor: see Biographical Register.
10.GeorginaDobrée, Georgina Dobrée (1930–2008) was to become a distinguished clarinettist; from 1967, Professor of Clarinet at the Royal Academy of Music.
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.
3.TheGough, Revd E. P. Revd E. P. Gough, vicar and Rural Dean of Tewkesbury Abbey.
2.TheodoraSmith, Theodora ('Dodo') Eliot (TSE's niece) Eliot Smith (1904–92) – ‘Dodo’ – daughter of George Lawrence and Charlotte E. Smith: see Biographical Register. Theodora’sSmith, Charlotte ('Chardy') Stearns (TSE's niece) sister was Charlotte Stearns Smith (b. 1911), known as ‘Chardy’.