[No surviving envelope]
Your long letter of the 13th, which contains a great deal to answer, arrived on Friday; but I had very little time before the weekend, and I found no steam packet going until the ‘Ile de France’, which brought your letter, returns tomorrow. I may be able to write again by the ‘Bremen’, which sails a couple of days later – again, the boats are not well spaced out.
IBelgion, Montgomeryweekend's walking in Sussex with;b1 hadRichards, Philip S.weekend's walking in Sussex with;a1 a pleasant short weekend with P. S. Richards1 andEnglandSussex;j5TSE walking Stane Street and downs;a2 Belgion at the White Horse in Storrington, a village in the Sussex downs about ten miles from Worthing on one side and the same distance from Pulborough on the other. Long walks on the downs and along Stane Street, the Roman road, both days; which left me pleasantly sore from unaccustomed exercise, and made me sleep well. Also visited a well preserved Roman villa2 – paving in good condition and very fine of its kind – I am not a great admirer of Roman art, and in the way of mosaic much prefer the Byzantine; two or three churches including one which has the eleventh century wall paintings complete, though hard to decipher – a lovely Annunciation however and Visit to St. Elizabeth.3 RichardsRichards, Philip S.described for EH;a2 is a schoolmaster in Portsmouth, an intelligent unpretentious man, who has been a friend of Babbitt and More (that is how I knew of him) and has written a book about Humanism. TheEnglandGloucestershire;f6its countryside associated with EH;a3 weather had turned very mild; primroses and violets were blooming, and a faint pinkish mist of budding leaves over the trees in the distance: it all gave me a restless painful feeling, as the English countryside has become so associated with you; and it is hard not to be turning to Gloucestershire in the spring.
Again, I say, please don’t be so diffident about your literary criticism! EvenHale, Emilyrelationship with TSE;w9as perpetual progress and revelation;c1 if I regarded your opinions as negligible – which indeed I don’t – it would still be important to me to know what you think and feel about my writings – as well as about anything else that you read – because it would tell me something more about yourself: and there is always, and I think always would be, by the nature of things, more for me to know about you. Indeed, I think that the point at which relations between two people often begin to go wrong is when they both assume (or one assumes) that they know all about each other that there is to know; when they begin to lose curiosity about each other. That seems to me a very necessary humility in relations – the humility of recognising that there is always more to understand; and love has to be so founded that everything newly discovered may develop, and nothing can shake, the relations already in being. So, my dearest, if you persist in refusing to believe that I consider your opinions valueless for their own sake, which is a kind of imputation of arrogance to me – please realise and accept at least that part of their value which belongs to their gradually telling me more about you. BesidesChristianityvirtues heavenly and capital;e1possessed by EH to a fault;c9, I deplore a tendency in you to underrate your own mind, and the opinions you form for yourself – and the views one forms for oneself are of more use to one than more correct ones which are merely taken over from someone else.
TheGwynne, M. BrookeTSE teaches 'Usk' and 'Rannoch' for;a7 rest of to-day is taken up, and tomorrow morning I have to address Miss Brooke-Gwynne’s class, so I must break off presently to do a little preparation for it. I have only to talk for about 35 minutes, and part of that time will be taken up with explanation of two poems (‘Usk’ and ‘Rannoch’) chosen by Miss Gwynne; but I have done nothing about it yet. I will try to write again on Thursday morning. ButChristianityUnitarianism;d9outside TSE's definition of 'Christian';b3 thereChristianityorthodoxy;c4necessarily trinitarian;a4 isHale, Emilyreligious beliefs and practices;x1compared to TSE's;a5 one point I should like to touch on, because I do not like to leave you any longer than is necessary under the impression that I am intolerant and oppressive. The definition of ‘Christian’ should, I think, be kept to the problem of legitimate meaning and not be made a cause of emotional disturbance. What I mean ordinarily by a Christian is a person who believes in the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and in the literal divinity of Christ. This includes Methodists, Baptists etc. If people do not believe in these things I do not see why they should want to be called ‘Christians’ though they may be and often are more ‘Christian’ in behaviour and more devout in feeling than many who are Christians by baptism and by profession. If I were to set myself up as ‘a better Christian’ or as more Christian, than your relatives or for that matter my own, I should be guilty both of a confusion of terms and of a mortal sin of pride. In confusion of terms, itWorkman, Herbert Brook;a1 would be like calling myself a better Methodist than Dr. Workman,4 orGarvie, Alfred Ernest;a2 a better Presbyterian than Dr. Garvie. But I am not making any pretentions, but merely stating a fact about which we all agree, when I say that Workman is a Methodist and Garvie is a Presbyterian andD'Arcy, Fr Martincompared to TSE qua Christian;a8 I am an Anglican and D’Arcy is a Roman but we are all Christians: because we agree that we hold in common certain dogmas essential to Christianity. When I spoke of baptism, it was merely a statement of fact. I also was baptised as a Unitarian, but I had to be baptised again to be admitted to the Church of England: because Unitarian baptism is not in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. If I had previously been a Methodist I should not have had to be baptised again, but merely confirmed by a Bishop. This is not an ‘Anglo-Catholic’ view, but that of the whole Church. From your point of view you are quite justified in regarding the Church merely as a form of organisation; but it would hardly be fair of you to expect us who are inside it to regard it as nothing more than that. So when you speak of ‘allowing us our forms, our point of view’, it strikes me as a rather intolerant form of tolerance.
I shall speak again and again of these things, because it is impossible to make them clear suddenly to anyone. What we are concerned about here is not what I opine or what you opine: we are each expressing a body of opinion and speaking for a body of people. These are impersonal matters, which ought not to give pain or distress in any way, and I want to discuss them. And they are not without bearing even on our most private and personal feelings and mutual understanding.
1.PhilipRichards, Philip S. S. Richards, a graduate of University College Southampton, taught at a secondary school in Portsmouth and was a contributor to the Criterion; author of Belief in Man (1932); Humanism (1934); The Challenge of the Church to Humanism (1936).
2.Bignor Roman villa, at Pulborough, Sussex, dates from the third century.
3.St Botolph’s Church, Hardham, West Sussex, on Stane Street (a Roman road), to the south of Pulborough.
4.HerbertWorkman, Herbert Brook Brook Workman (1862–1951), Methodist minister and historian; from 1903, Principal of Westminster College; from 1930, President of the Wesleyan Conference.
4.MontgomeryBelgion, Montgomery (‘Monty’) Belgion (1892–1973), author and journalist: see Biographical Register.
3.MartinD'Arcy, Fr Martin D’Arcy (1888–1976), Jesuit priest and theologian: see Biographical Register.
4.AlfredGarvie, Alfred Ernest Ernest Garvie (1861–1945), Congregational minister, theologian and author; Principal of New College, Hampstead. Works include The Christian Ideal for Human Society (1930) and The Christian Belief in God (1933).
4.M. BrookeGwynne, M. Brooke Gwynne, University of London Institute of Education – ‘a Training College for Graduate students’ – invited TSE on 19 Jan. to participate in their Weds.-morning seminar: ‘Emily Hale suggested that you might possibly consent to come to the Institute to talk to our students; otherwise I should have not felt justified in asking you … The teaching of poetry is the subject most hotly discussed & the subject we should like you to choose if possible.’
1.PhilipRichards, Philip S. S. Richards, a graduate of University College Southampton, taught at a secondary school in Portsmouth and was a contributor to the Criterion; author of Belief in Man (1932); Humanism (1934); The Challenge of the Church to Humanism (1936).