[No surviving envelope]
I wrote to you yesterday, as well as twice on the 10th; but your letter of January 4th arrived this morning, so I shall write something tonight as well. It seems to me that I have pelted you with letters. And it is hard to accustom myself to the slowness of communication. I am now checking my letters, so that each will give you the dates of the last one or two previous.
Your present letter of information and discussion of the future is welcome and was longed for, though it reminds me that I too have been living on an ecstasy, and not preparing myself for even the immediate future. It is less difficult for me, I dare say, because I have simply to accustom myself to the same world as before, only without you – the same faces, the same routine and the same routes of Kensington, Bloomsbury and Pall Mall – whereasScripps College, Claremont;e9 you have to adapt yourself to new and unsettled conditions – it is ever so much harder than if you were back at Scripps. At bottom, of course, the struggle is just the same for both of us. Butfinances (TSE's)TSE's desire to pay for EH;b2 my first feeling, when you tell me of your present problems, is a bitter resentment that these problems should exist at all. IHale, Emilyfinances;w5;a6 shouldn’t even mind your having a very very meagre income, if it was one meagre income that we were sharing – though I am grateful to you for telling me exactly what your income is, and I think I have a right to know – and though I do want you, for your own sake, to have a job, while we are not together – it seems to me a wholly unreasonable and wrong convention that I should not be able to share my income with you. (But some things I should insist upon: if for instance I were very ill and cabled for you to come, I should feel it my right to pay the cost: and if my play is put on in New York and you can come to it, I shall feel that you ought to let me pay your expenses).
ISt. Catherine's School, Richmond, Va.EH and possible short-term post at;a1 rememberBrackett, Jeffrey Richardson;a1 hearing Ada mention the name of Dr. Brackett long ago; though I cannot remember exactly what her relations with him were, or what she thought of him.1 SheHale, Emilyas teacher;w1possibly, temporarily, at St. Catherine's, Va.;b8 could tell you herself. Well: firstNoyes, Penelope Barkeroffers EH employment;d2 of all, what Penelope has proposed is what I expected. I should be inclined to accept, provided that you had a real salary for it, and were not merely getting board and lodging, which your relatives owe to you anyway; and also on the condition that the arrangement could be terminated whenever you got a proper job. One would not want to be in that position with anybody, but I should trust Penelope wholly. AndAmericaVirginia;h7and the South;a4 now the position in Virginia.2 IAmericaSouth, the;h3TSE's prejudices concerning;a2 must try to discount (or beg you to discount) my prejudice against Southerners, whom I regard as an inferior race like the Welsh and the Irish, and my probably quite silly feeling that the South is not a safe country to live in – a place where women can not walk about alone at night etc. I should much prefer for you to be in a college, too, and in a college where the staff was not exclusively female. On the other hand, I can see advantages in the South, especially the more ancient and relatively civilised part, over Boston. Several advantages. Once in a school, would it be more difficult to get back into a college? After all, you are an Associate Professor. One thing I do think is, that you ought to have older women to consult, who have had to earn their own living. My experience is, that there is a great gulf between men who have had to earn their own living, and struggle for it, and those who have not: and a fortiori I think there must be a greater gulf between women of the two kinds. YouSheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister)her struggles for independence;e7 couldSheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister)as sounding-board for EH's career;e8 always consult Ada, among others: she knows what earning one’s own living means (and had to fight her family for the right to do it) and what being quite alone in the world means.
I am more distressed than I can say about the disappearance of the Portrait. I really had hoped to be able to have it and preserve and cherish it: I hate to think of its being in the possession of people who will not know or care who the sitter was.
I am missing you terribly now, and I live from letter to letter, and I want you to tell me each time that you do love me; because now that you have given me your love, after all my elaborate attempts to do without it, I have become utterly dependent upon you to an extent that I realise more and more, and now if your love was withdrawn I should be utterly broken. But don’t think that I doubt it: for I think of us as one person divided in space, and I live for the moment when we shall have our arms round each other once more.
I am happiest on these evenings when I can be in my room alone (and how cold it is tonight, I have both gas fires going) and think of you and write to you. I shall write again on Friday.
I like your goldy sealingwax.
1.JeffreyBrackett, Jeffrey Richardson Richardson Brackett (1860–1949), pioneer in charity and social work; Head of the Boston School for Social Workers (later the Simmons College School of Social Work).
2.EHBrackett, Louisa hoped for a position at St. Catherine’s School, Westhampton, Richmond, Virginia (a girls’ school, est. 1917). Louisa Brackett, wife of J. R. Brackett, was headmistress, 1924–47.
1.JeffreyBrackett, Jeffrey Richardson Richardson Brackett (1860–1949), pioneer in charity and social work; Head of the Boston School for Social Workers (later the Simmons College School of Social Work).
2.EHBrackett, Louisa hoped for a position at St. Catherine’s School, Westhampton, Richmond, Virginia (a girls’ school, est. 1917). Louisa Brackett, wife of J. R. Brackett, was headmistress, 1924–47.
12.PenelopeNoyes, Penelope Barker Barker Noyes (1891–1977), who was descended from settlers of the Plymouth Colony, lived in a historic colonial house (built in 1894 for her father James Atkins Noyes) at 1 Highland Street, Cambridge, MA. Unitarian. She was a close friend of EH.
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.