[No surviving envelope]
I was thankful to get your first cable, presumably in answer to mine to meet you at the boat, and still more pleased to get the dear one which arrived on Christmas afternoon – so it must have crossed mine which I hope you received on the same day. I have wondered how every day has passed since your arrival, in this first (I imagine) most difficult week, andHale, Emily Jose Milliken (EH's mother);b7 have thought much of your mother too. I wonder where you were on Christmas Day, and whom you have seen. I hope towards the end of next week to get my first letter from you, and then the gap will be closed as well as it can be under the present conditions. Yourflowers and floraviolets;d1left by departing EH;a4 violets lasted, growing more and more fragrant as they faded, over Christmas Day! They are still in the glass on the window sill, with a little touch of colour left, but they smell no longer. It will take me a little time yet to accustom myself to these conditions, and my thoughts turn impatiently towards a visit to Boston, though Boston can never be so satisfactory a meeting-place as London, can it?
IHale, Emilybirthdays, presents and love-tokens;w2EH gives TSE silk handkerchiefs;c6 saved all my parcels up and laid them out on my table to open before breakfast on Christmas morning. Your handkerchiefs are lovely, and must have been very expensive, they are so large (the right size for a nose like mine[)]. I have not made any noises with them yet, because I do not want to begin to sport them until more in public. You know that I like bright handkerchiefs, and ninepenny cotton ones cannot be draped from the pocket with anything like the effect of these opulent silk ones. They are the most splendid I have ever had, and again I compliment you on your taste. AndDonne, Johnand EH's Christmas card;a3 I liked the post card of Donne, and still more the card with the so appropriate words on the front, and the four moving words in your writing on the back.
IPerkinses, thebuy TSE gloves for Christmas;f6 was also touched by having such a fine pair of gloves from the Perkins’s – much better than I should buy myself. They do fit, and my only question is whether being so light they will not get dirty very quickly, though I am loth to change them for a darker pair. I will write to Mrs. Perkins before the week is out. This Friday morning I write to you in the hope of catching a mail.
The Christmas ceremonies have passed off very beautifully and with a very strong feeling of corporate devotion. Midnight Mass, of course, Christmas Eve: afterSt. Stephen's Church, Gloucester Roadchurchwarding at;a5 I had counted and sorted the money I got to bed a little before three, and up again at nine for the 11 a.m. Then to Janes’s to dinner, withMrs Webster (Ada Janes's sister)monologues over Christmas dinner;a1 him and his sister-in-law who cooked it, Mrs. Webster. IJanes, W. L.singing and reminiscing;a4 think it cheered him up a bit, as I tried to get him talking about his boyhood and youth, to take his mind off the present; and towards the end he was moved to sing a couple of old songs which had been favourites of his father, who was a wheelwright near High Wycombe. Mrs. Webster managed to get in two or three monologues, one extolling the merits of her departed sister, ‘pore soul’, and one of course on the vicissitudes of her own life, and how she had been left £13,000 by her husband who died when she was 24, and how it all went to a brother, gradually, who had expensive tastes and no scruples about borrowing, and about her wealthy relatives the Jacobs’s the market gardeners of Covent Garden, and mother she was from Somerset and apparently she gave away things to a rascal because he came from Somerset too, etc. etc. I wish that I did not have such an imaginative stomach, I cannot really enjoy eating with the poor, and I don’t like their pickles and horseradish soaked in vinegar, but I managed to clear my plate. I feel ashamed of being so dainty. IJanes, W. L.retirement anniversary dinner for;a5 told Janes we should have another dinner on the 21st of February, to celebrate the 60th [sic] anniversary of his retirement from the police force. (Not that I trust Janes’s memory for dates, he has already got it fixed that he has been with me for 15 years, adding I think four years onto the number). Then back for evensong, and then a late tea at the club, and late supper at home. Yesterday I did a good deal of dozing, for which I feel the better, and was glad of a whole day without society – IStout, RexThe League of Frightened Men;a1 enjoyVan Dine, S. S.The Garden Murder Case;a1 a good go of wasting time, andreading (TSE's)The League of Frightened Men;e3 havereading (TSE's)The Garden Murder Case;e4 readreading (TSE's)The Luck of the Bodkins;e5 threeWodehouse, P. G.The Luck of the Bodkins;a3 books, ‘The League of Frightened Men’ by Rex Stout, ‘The Garden Murder Case’ by S. S. Van Dine, and ‘The Luck of the Bodkins’ by P. G. Wodehouse. TonightHayward, Johnexchanges Christmas presents with TSE;d8 I dine with John Hayward (who gave me a pepper mill for Christmas; I gave him a small jar of caviar and a bottle of dry Sherry). I have asked Ada to look at your overcoat, and let me know if she thinks you are warmly enough dressed, but I forgot to put that into my first letter. AsGalitzi, Dr Christine;c5 luck would have it, I had no sooner written to Miss Galitzi than I got another letter from her, so I am always in arrears.
I hope you do not get impatient when I write light and rambling letters like this; for there are times when the deep things are too poignant to speak of, and I must relieve myself by chattering. I only hope that you are not unaware of the undertones that are always there. On the other hand, I keep having moments when the beauty and wonder of it all comes over me in a fresh flood and makes me tremble with ecstasy that such a thing should come to me. Surely no man was ever better equipped by life for appreciating what you give me than I am! I would have you remember that I am constantly visited by such thoughts, as well as by feelings of deprivation (when I walk along the street I suddenly miss the feeling of your arm tucked under mine, and your shoulder touching me); and that your image, the image of the real you, is always with me, as is the new and strange feeling (still new and strange) of no longer being the same person that I was only such a few brief weeks ago.
I am a very jealous person, by the way; I grudge you to all the people you see. Not that I don’t want you to be happy with them!
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).
11.JohnHayward, John Davy Hayward (1905–65), editor and critic: see Biographical Register.
4.W. L. JanesJanes, W. L. (1854–1939), ex-policeman who worked as handyman for the Eliots. Having been superannuated from the police force early in the century, he worked for a period (until about 1921) as a plain-clothes detective in the General Post Office. TSE reminisced to Mary Trevelyan on 2 Apr. 1951: ‘If I ever write my reminiscences, which I shan’t, Janes would have a great part in them’ (‘The Pope of Russell Square’). TSE to Adam Roberts (b. 1940; godson of TSE), 12 Dec. 1955: ‘I … knew a retired police officer, who at one period had to snoop in plain clothes in the General Post Office in Newgate Street – he caught several culprits, he said’ (Adam Roberts). HisJanes, Ada wife was Ada Janes (d. 1935).