[No surviving envelope]
This morning came your sweet valentine, and at the office a letter dated the 14th, but as that was only three days ago, I suspect that you were still thinking of St. Valentine, and that the real date is the 4th – the postmark looks like the 7th. Your previous dear letter was dated the 3d and numbered the 10th. The last letter of mine that you have acknowledged was mine of the 21st January. Since then I wrote on the 29th, twice on the 31st, and on the 2nd, 4th, 11th, and 13th of February, as well as sending you separately the poem, which you are not required to say anything about: but do see whether you have received all the letters mentioned. I also cabled on Saturday the 15th.
I took the last days of last week very leisurely, having breakfast in bed – Elizabeth is very good about attending to illness, always running in with fresh hot water bottles, and Bovril, and orange juice (JohnHayward, Johnsends luxuries to convalescent TSE;e3 sent in two dozen of oranges, and two peaches, and some flowers and New Yorkers) – lunching at the club, reading and having tea there and then back; didSt. Stephen's Church, Gloucester Roadchurchwarding at;a5 a full day’s church on Sunday, and to-day my first day at the office, answering innumerable letters, none of them very important or personal – followedSadler's Wells TheatreThe Friends of Sadler's Wells;b3;a6 by a meeting of the Sadlers Wells Committee at Lord Hambleden’s, withBaylis, Lilianat Sadler's Wells meeting;a4 theBonham-Carter, Lady Helen Violet;a1 usualHutchinson, Marygrumbles at Sadler's Wells meeting;b7 crowdGuinness, Bryan;a2 and usual muddle and Lillian [sic] Baylis getting her own way as usual, and a minority of Lady Bonham-Carter, Mary Hutchinson and Bryan Guinness murmuring against our subscribing £30 for new costumes for ‘Carmen’, andSitwell, Sacheverellunaminously ejected from committee;a2 a good deal of talk about who should be thrown off the committee, because they never came – Sacheverell Sitwell was unanimously ejected – and who should be put on because they would give money, and the annual party to be given, and whether and when a public appeal should be made at a performance; and then to look in at John’s before dinner to thank him for his kindness. (His cousin Humphry Rolleston was recently cut to death by some Arabs in Zanzibar).1 Otherwise'Note on the Verse of John Milton, A';a1, not much news; IRead, Herbertbegrudged contribution to Milton volume;b5 have got to try to produce an essay for Herbert Read for a volume he is editing, and which I do very grudgingly.2 IKennerleys, thewatch Modern Times with TSE;a2 amChaplin, CharlieModern Times;a5 refusing to go out in the evening this week, except that on Saturday I am to go to the new Chaplin film with the Kennerleys;3 and next week is actually Lent! I have to go to a cocktail party at Major Macgowan’s (a former churchwarden) on Shrove Tuesday. It will be Easter in no time. And I have not yet posted off to you the papers of the King’s death, though they have been waiting ever since.
I am sorry you dreamt of me in a brown suit, because I was under the impression that you did not like me in brown, and I do not propose to have a brown suit ever again – there is the country suit you don’t like to be worn out – and intend to get a new grey one to exhibit myself in when you next see me. IBurnt Nortonall but final lines please TSE;b1 did not like to send you the poem until I was satisfied with it, for which reason it went into proof first; and I am not satisfied with it yet, but whether I can give it a proper ending line before the book is ready I don’t know. I think, as I promised, it is very obscure!4
IPerkinses, theTSE encourages EH's independence from;f4 don’tHale, Emilyfamily;w4EH's relations with aunt and uncle;a6 see why you should have scruples and worries about the comparative luxury of your life with the Perkins’s, so long as your ordinary expenses take all your income, because the luxury, as you call it, is none of your seeking, – and you know I think that it is much better for Mrs. Perkins as well as yourself, that you should live apart, and I want you to continue to do so, even if you earn that princely salary of 200 dollars a month. Thank you by the way for the cuttings about the funeral obsequies at King’s Chapel.
My dear my Dove, I have felt occasionally lonely and longing for you since getting up and starting to go about my affairs again; and I think how much more worth doing everything would seem if you were there to do it, or to talk about it to at the end and the beginning of the day. I want you to help me to be more patient with circumstances than I sometimes am. I ought to realise how fortunate I am, how much less blessed I might be than I am, how happy I ought to be simply in the knowledge that you exist, and how much more in the thought of your love; but I am constantly in a fret and fury at being separated from you; and I long to be able to DO so much more for you than I can. And I feel so jealous of all your friends who can see you, who can, like your loving correspondent whose letter you enclose, rejoice again merely in your being in the same country as them. (Though on the other hand that letter gave me great pleasure, and it DOES always give me happiness to know of other people appreciating and admiring and loving you). Now I am well again, and not going away, I shall write at least twice a week.
1.TSE slightly misapprehended the story Hayward had told him. Ian Humphry Davy Rolleston (Colonial Civil Service) – younger son of Hayward’s cousin Sir Humphry Rolleston (1862–1944) – was killed in a riot in Zanzibar in Feb. 1936. (Their elder son had died in Flanders in 1914.)
2.‘A note on the Verse of John Milton’, in Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association XXI, ed. Herbert Read (Oxford, 1936); repr. in On Poetry and Poets (1957): CProse 5, 371–9.
3.Modern Times: silent movie (1936) written and dir. Charlie Chaplin
4.Burnt Norton.
2.LilianBaylis, Lilian Baylis (1874–1937), English theatre producer; manager of the Old Vic and Sadler’s Wells theatres; an opera company (subsequently English National Opera) and a ballet company that was to become the Royal Ballet. She fostered the careers of numerous stars including John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Sybil Thorndike and Michael Redgrave.
4.BryanGuinness, Bryan Guinness, 2nd Baron Moyne (1905–92), heir to the brewing fortune of the Guinness family; barrister-at-law, poet, novelist. (In 1929 he had married the Hon. Diana Mitford, but they were divorced in 1933 when she deserted him for the fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley.)
11.JohnHayward, John Davy Hayward (1905–65), editor and critic: see Biographical Register.
3.MaryHutchinson, Mary Hutchinson (1889–1977), literary hostess and author: see Biographical Register.
3.Herbert ReadRead, Herbert (1893–1968), English poet and literary critic: see Biographical Register.
2.SacheverellSitwell, Sacheverell Sitwell (1897–1988), writer, poet, art critic; youngest of the Sitwell trio. TSE thought him the ‘most important and difficult poet’ in Wheels (1918). Reviewing The People’s Palace, he praised its ‘distinguished aridity’, and said he ‘attributed more’ to Sacheverell Sitwell than to any poet of his generation (Egoist 5: 6, June/July 1918). But ‘Sachie’ was best known for idiosyncratic books on travel, art and literature, including Southern Baroque Art (1924). His wife was the Canadian-born Georgia Doble (1905–80). Valerie Eliot to Philip Ziegler, 25 July 1996: ‘Sachie was Tom’s favourite in the family.’ See Sarah Bradford, Sacheverell Sitwell: Splendours and Miseries (1993).