[No surviving envelope]
I wrote this morning, in response to your sad and lonely pencilled note of December 31st, butHale, Emilyvisits Ada on Boston homecoming;h7 when I got to the office, I found your letter of ‘the last Sunday in the Year 1935’, together with a letter from Ada, Dec. 29th, and a note from her of the 1st January; so now I must sit down and write you a brief letter, lateMonro, Alida (née Klementaski)goes on about dead husband's ex-wife;c1 as it is after taking Alida Monro out to dinner and hearing all about Harold Munro’s troubles with his first wife and with his son. Your letter gave me pleasure and happiness – and amusement too. ISheffield, Alfred Dwight ('Shef' or 'Sheff');a4 ought to have known that Ada, being my sister, would be so discreet that she would not even warn her husband! yet I took it for granted that she would have communicated my letters to him before you came. You will now find that her reserve will melt rapidly; and Sheff, who is such a very loveable and generous character, will be of much help. I am so glad that you liked him. And you took it, apparently, in just the right way, when Ada telephoned, seeing the humour of it, which would be a great help to her, as she has a very keen sense of humour really. ISheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister)EH urged to be familial with;e6 am so glad that you ‘unloosened’ (sic) [sic] a little at the end, and I am rejoicing in your saying ‘Please think of me as one of the family’. That was so much righter a thing to say at the moment than you could have realised when you said it! So now all is clear, although Ada in her letter is still worried over her stupidity in excess of reticence – I know you will forgive that – too worried to be able to view the situation clearly, but ends by saying ‘I am very very glad of your happiness, and will do anything I possibly can to be of use to Emily’. So I look forward to hearing of your next visit, and I do pray and believe that you will love each other (I include Sheff ) and arrive quickly to perfectly easy and natural relations. When I can’t have you with me, I am happy to think of you with those who are nearest to me, of my own blood.
IPerkins, Dr John Carroll (EH's uncle)once again preaching;c4 am glad to hear of Dr. Perkins preaching on the last Sunday of the year, but I wish he could have been preaching on Christmas Day instead, when you first went to King’s Chapel.
WellHale, Emilyrelationship with TSE;w9TSE's chance to be frivolous;b3, so you still think of your ‘steamer letters’ as childish! Dear my dear, don’t I love you to be childish, because underneath I am equally childish; and don’t you know that I knew what was the relation of the surface to the underneath, during that voyage, and that I was glad and happy that you could expand in that way, because I felt (I admit my vanity) that it was something that I had brought about for you; and I knew also what it covered. Please, please, my darling, be childish when you can, and be childish with me, because I have a very childish side which I can only expose to you, as well as a great deal else which I cannot show to anyone but you; and don’t you know what a RELIEF it is to be able to expose oneself unashamedly to another person and know that because that other person loves and knows one’s real self it doesn’t matter!
Now, even with the people I know and like best, I only feel that I am half with them, only partially attentive to them; whereas if you were with me with them I could give them so much more. And the more I care for people the more I want you to be with me with them so that my caring for them should be complete. I haven’t myself to give to them unless you are with me. I feel very sharply how much more we could be to and give to our friends, together, than we can be and give apart.
I hope you will call her ‘Ada’ and not ‘Mrs. Sheffield’.
Dearest Love, I won’t write about anything else tonight, but will write again Sunday or Monday. Write often, even if briefly; don’t talk of silliness but be as silly as possible, without thinking about it. AndHale, Emilyrelationship with TSE;w9as consubstantial union;e3 I want to have your feeling me as a part of you, inside you, make you more BOLD and confident – so that everybody will want to flirt with you, if you would let them, and you may flirt a bit, too: I don’t want you to feel scared without me, but rather braver because I am with you and in you and you in me1 – and yet I love to think that you are dependent upon me, as I am upon you – and I do want to feel that I am a bulwark to you, and that you feel safer when my arms are round you: and nothing must happen to either of us until that happens again. And I say Good Night My Dear Love with my arm round you, sleepily.
When I don’t put my seal on, it may be simply enclosures & a note. When I do seal, you may be sure that is a letter inside.
1.‘At that day ye shall know that I am my Father, and ye in me, and I in you’ (John 14: 20).
3.AlidaMonro, Alida (née Klementaski) Klementaski (1892–1969) married Harold Monro on 27 Mar. 1920: see Alida Monro in Biographical Register.
3.DrPerkins, Dr John Carroll (EH's uncle) John Carroll Perkins (1862–1950), Minister of King’s Chapel, Boston: 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.
8.AlfredSheffield, Alfred Dwight ('Shef' or 'Sheff') Dwight Sheffield (1871–1961) – ‘Shef’ or ‘Sheff’ – husband of TSE’s eldest sister, taught English at University School, Cleveland, Ohio, and was an English instructor, later Professor, of Group Work at Wellesley College. His publications include Lectures on the Harvard Classics: Confucianism (1909) and Grammar and Thinking: a study of the working conceptions in syntax (1912).