[41 BrimmerHale, Emilysummers in Seattle;a7 St.; forwardedAmericaSeattle, Washington State;h1EH summers in;a2 to 1418 East 63d St., Seattle, Washington]
I have just posted the book of drawings to Boston – I hope it may arrive before you leave, and not give you the nuisance of following you to Seattle – don’tRothenstein, Sir Williamhis drawings sent to EH;a3 be deceived at seeing me in such eminent company: WillRothenstein, Sir WilliamTSE on his drawing;a4 Rotherstein [sc. Rothenstein] had eleven drawings which we were to publish, and wanted a twelfth, and so, being one of the firm, I was impounded in a hurry: most people consider the drawing Dreadful; I wonder what you will think; you can send the book to a secondhand shop. Rothenstein is at his best in drawing Jews – his Melchett1 and Einstein are very good, Beerbohm not quite so good, as he does not look quite so Jewish. IMoberly, CharlotteAn Adventure;a1Jourdain, Eleanor
Asreading (TSE's)in general;a5 for reading, I must add that I have found grandiose schemes for reading, outlines for months ahead etc, and plans for improving my mind, always failed. They are too artificial. Actually, I don’t have any more time for what I call ‘reading’ than you do. I mean I don’t count reading done in preparation for a piece of writing, or for any purpose of the moment, only ‘disinterested’ reading. I try always to have something going which has no immediate practical purpose – for instance, Ide Sales, St. FrançoisL'Amour de Dieu;a1 keep St. Francois de Sales’ Traité de l’Amour de Dieu4 on my table and potter at it. But I am not a believer in reading widely or omnivorously, only in soaking in a few things; and one essential for that is never to go on with anything that bores me. (MyEliot, Marion Cushing (TSE's sister)her reading habits;a3 dear sister Marion used always to be reading with indefatigable industry, whole works – Parkman’s complete histories etc. – I never could do that).5 Inreading (TSE's)the Bible;a6 fact it takes a good part of one’s spare time to read a little of the Bible at all regularly – the New Testament, and a few books of the Old, such as Isaiah and the Psalms. And by the way, Madam, if it is not an impertinence – do you ever read the Bible? and do you say prayers at bedtime? It’s a great satisfaction to me to be able to pray for the people I care for, and for some of those whom those I care for care for, both living and dead.
Here I am in the role of Uncle Tom: but that’s all of that for the present. And there is what I care for disappearing into a wild wild West that I know nothing about; and I alone sit lingering here, interviewing MrBrace, Donald;a1. Brace of Harcourt Brace & Co (Inc.),6 lunchingAlport, Dr Erichdescribed;a2 tomorrow with Dr. Erich Alport of Hamburg (a dapper young cosmopolitan with a Balliol manner) to discuss Scheler, Heidegger, Türel7 and other German writers; andEliots, the T. S.;a3 tomorrow Miss Spencer8 of Concord Avenue is coming to tea, andHutchinson, Mary;a2 Mary Hutchinson andBarnes, James Stratcheyto dine chez Eliot;a1 her brother Jim Barnes9 are coming to dinner. TheHutchinsons, the;a1 Hutchinsons are old friends. St. John Hutchinson is a barrister10 ……
TUESDAY. What an incoherent letter. IPenty, Arthur J.described;a1 have a few minutes before Mr. Arthur J. Penty comes to see me; he is an obscure economist who seems to me to have some interesting ideas, and who might possibly be useful.11
What an extraordinarily long business it is, growing up! (This is reverting to your last letter). I suppose one grows up in spots, here and there, and never all over at once; yet is inclined to assume that one is as mature as one’s maturest part of the mind – I know that I for one am always being pulled up with a start to find how very childish I am! I imagine however that any more or less conscious person always seems more mature to others than he does to himself; but I cannot conceive of anyone growing up more slowly and painfully than I. But I won’t talk any longer about myself: thespringbittersweet;a2 spring is beautiful and painful, and the hawthorn and red may and white may are out in bloom and the country is scented; but to-day is rather showery, and
PollicledogsPollicle;a2 Dogs andOld Possum’s Book of Practical Cats;a1 Jellicle Cats
Must put on their Boots & their Waterproof Hats
And when they come in, Wipe their Feet on the Mats12 ……
Toujours à la princesse lointaine13 –
And will you not begin a little writing again, this summer?14
1.The Rt Hon. Lord Melchett of Landford: fig. viii.
2.Charlotte A. E. Moberly and E. F. Jourdain, An Adventure, with intro. by Edith Oliver and Note by J. W. Dunne (4th edn, F&F, 1931; first published 1911) – ‘about a spook experience at Versailles’, as TSE later put it. Blurb in Faber & Faber Spring Announcements 1931: ‘An Adventure originally appeared in 1911, and was from the first a famous book. Even now, there are few people who have not heard of the two English ladies who, while taking an afternoon walk in the Gardens of Versailles at the beginning of the twentieth century, found themselves transported to the Trianon of 1789, and taking part in the life of that day.
‘In the present edition the true names of the two ladies appear for the first time. Many people have long known that they were Miss Anne Moberly, whose father was successively Headmaster of Winchester and Bishop of Salisbury; and the late Miss Eleanor Jourdain, a Doctor of the University of Paris. Miss Moberly was the first Principal of St Hugh’s College, Oxford, where she was succeeded by Miss Jourdain in 1914. This edition has a long Preface, written by Miss Edith Olivier, which describes a collection of documents relating to the book in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. These papers constitute a month-by-month record of researches made during a period of nine years, which resulted in establishing the historical foundations of the story down to its smallest and (at first) its most unstressed details. The new edition also contains maps showing the Trianon Gardens as they are to-day, and as they were laid out for Marie-Antoinette by Mique, whose plan of his alterations was not discovered till two years after Miss Moberly and Miss Jourdain had put on record what they saw. Some interesting reproductions of old prints add to the beauty of this definitive edition, which is issued under Miss Moberly’s supervision.’
3.PhilipJourdain, Philip Edward Bertrand Edward Bertrand Jourdain (1879–1919), mathematician and logician; a student of Bertrand Russell; British editor of The Monist and the International Journal of Ethics; author of The Nature of Mathematics (1912) and The Philosophy of Mr. Bertrand Russell (1918).
4.St François de Sales, Traité de l’amour de Dieu (1616).
5.France and England in North America (1865–92): a 7-vol. study by Francis Parkman (1823–93).
6.DonaldBrace, Donald Brace (1881–1955), publisher; co-founder of Harcourt, Brace: see Biographical Register.
7.Max Scheler (1874–1928) and Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), German philosophers; Adrien Turel (1890–1957), Swiss writer.
8.Possibly Katherine ('Katie') V. Spencer of Cambridge, Mass. (who had been elected in 1915 to the Council of the Dante Society of America).
9.JamesBarnes, James Stratchey Strachey Barnes (1890–1955), son of Sir Hugh Barnes. Brought up in Florence by his grandparents, Sir John and Lady Strachey, he went on to Eton and King’s College, Cambridge. During WW1 he served in the Guards and Royal Flying Corps. TSE to Sir Robert Vansittart, 12 Jan. 1939 (Letters 9, 16–17): ‘Barnes is the younger brother of an old friend of mine, Mrs St John Hutchinson … He wrote two books on Fascism … and was one of its earliest champions in this country. He was brought up in Italy (before going to Eton: he was subsequently in the Blues, then a Major in the Air Force, and at King’s after the War), has an Italian wife, and is the most convinced pro-Italian and pro-Fascist that I know. He is a Roman Catholic convert, and has or had some honorary appointment at the Vatican; but manages to combine this with a warm admiration for Mussolini, from which it follows that he has disapproved of British policy whenever that policy did not favour Italian policy … In private life he is rather a bore, and talks more than he listens, somewhat failing to appreciate that the person to whom he is talking may have other interests and other engagements.’ See too David Bradshaw and James Smith, ‘Ezra Pound, James Strachey Barnes (“the Italian Lord Haw-Haw”) and Italian Fascism’, Review of English Studies 64 (2013), 672–93.
10.St John ‘Jack’ Hutchinson (1884–1942), barrister-at-law.
11.ArthurPenty, Arthur J. J. Penty (1875–1937), architect (he was involved in the development of Hampstead Garden Suburb), and social critic influenced by Ruskin, Carlyle, Matthew Arnold and Edward Carpenter, as well as in part by G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, was an advocate of guild socialism, anti-modernism and anti-industrialism, agrarian reconstructionism, and Anglican socialism. A regular contributor to periodicals including The Guildsman, G. K.’s Weekly, The Crusader and The Criterion, his works include Old Worlds for New (1917), A Guildsman’s Interpretation of History (1920), and Towards a Christian Sociology (1923).
12.These lines did not appear in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1939).
13.See Edmond Rostand, La Princesse lointaine (1895).
14.Postscript added by hand.
1.DrAlport, Dr Erich Erich Alport (b. 1903), educated in Germany and at Oxford, was author of Nation und Reich in der politischen Willenbildung des britischen Weltreiches (Berlin, 1933). In the early 1930s Geoffrey Faber often sought his advice about German books suitable for translation into English.
9.JamesBarnes, James Stratchey Strachey Barnes (1890–1955), son of Sir Hugh Barnes. Brought up in Florence by his grandparents, Sir John and Lady Strachey, he went on to Eton and King’s College, Cambridge. During WW1 he served in the Guards and Royal Flying Corps. TSE to Sir Robert Vansittart, 12 Jan. 1939 (Letters 9, 16–17): ‘Barnes is the younger brother of an old friend of mine, Mrs St John Hutchinson … He wrote two books on Fascism … and was one of its earliest champions in this country. He was brought up in Italy (before going to Eton: he was subsequently in the Blues, then a Major in the Air Force, and at King’s after the War), has an Italian wife, and is the most convinced pro-Italian and pro-Fascist that I know. He is a Roman Catholic convert, and has or had some honorary appointment at the Vatican; but manages to combine this with a warm admiration for Mussolini, from which it follows that he has disapproved of British policy whenever that policy did not favour Italian policy … In private life he is rather a bore, and talks more than he listens, somewhat failing to appreciate that the person to whom he is talking may have other interests and other engagements.’ See too David Bradshaw and James Smith, ‘Ezra Pound, James Strachey Barnes (“the Italian Lord Haw-Haw”) and Italian Fascism’, Review of English Studies 64 (2013), 672–93.
6.DonaldBrace, Donald Brace (1881–1955), publisher; co-founder of Harcourt, Brace: see Biographical Register.
1.Marian/MarionEliot, Marion Cushing (TSE's sister) Cushing Eliot (1877–1964), fourth child of Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Eliot: see Biographical Register.
3.MaryHutchinson, Mary Hutchinson (1889–1977), literary hostess and author: see Biographical Register.
3.PhilipJourdain, Philip Edward Bertrand Edward Bertrand Jourdain (1879–1919), mathematician and logician; a student of Bertrand Russell; British editor of The Monist and the International Journal of Ethics; author of The Nature of Mathematics (1912) and The Philosophy of Mr. Bertrand Russell (1918).
11.ArthurPenty, Arthur J. J. Penty (1875–1937), architect (he was involved in the development of Hampstead Garden Suburb), and social critic influenced by Ruskin, Carlyle, Matthew Arnold and Edward Carpenter, as well as in part by G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, was an advocate of guild socialism, anti-modernism and anti-industrialism, agrarian reconstructionism, and Anglican socialism. A regular contributor to periodicals including The Guildsman, G. K.’s Weekly, The Crusader and The Criterion, his works include Old Worlds for New (1917), A Guildsman’s Interpretation of History (1920), and Towards a Christian Sociology (1923).
5.SirRothenstein, Sir William William Rothenstein (1872–1945), artist and administrator: see Biographical Register.