[1418 East 63d St., Seattle]
My dear, I hate to be forever writing in some ‘mood’ or other, but I am afraid it must incline still to be either exaltation or depression when I write to you. And you see, to-day is Friday, and no letter from you has come all this week; and there has been an American mail these two days, andHinkley, Eleanor Holmes (TSE's first cousin);a1 INoyes, Penelope Barker;a3 have had letters from Eleanor and Penelope, which made the deficit more painful. I suppose that you are either at West Rindge,1 or visiting somewhere else, and either have had no time to write, or else your letter has taken longer and just missed the mail. I wish that this, my first letter to Seattle, might be a brighter one; but whenHale, Emilycorrespondence with TSE;w3TSE's dependence on;a6 I have not heard from you I fall into such an arid and costive state that my little bits of diary news seem too flat and unprofitable2 to be worth mentioning. Perhaps I am rather a vampire! Anyway, when I have my nourishment from you my brain works actively; and when I haven’t, I feel an empty husk.
IEnglish Review;a3 shall send you the English Review, and possibly other periodicals, but nothing that you cannot throw away where you are – the English Review, because I told you of my association with it. ActuallyEnglish Reviewperks of TSE's association with;a4, Jerrold runs it to please himself; itSquire, Sir John Collings ('J. C.');a2 is merely that Jack Squire and myself are given a very good lunch at Eyre and Spottiswoode’s once a month, overHerbert, Sir Dennis;a1 which Sir Dennis Herbert3 presides like a duenna, and little towheaded Lord Iddesleigh4 darts in and out like a rabbit, and afterwards we discuss review books and reviewers. I don’t think much of his first number: allWolfe, Humberta poetaster;a1 Humbert Wolfe’s verse is paste jewellery;5 OsbertBurdett, Osbertduff English Review contribution;a1 Burdett’s story seems to me flat and a very doubtful selection to start off with;6 AmeryAmery, Leoin English Review;a17 and BennBenn, Sir Ernest;a18 say the same things they have always been saying, and Squire as Peter Piper chats in his usual way.9
My dear, I haven’t the heart to write more now, or until I have some news of Emily. You are, if possible, more incessantly in my mind when I write briefly than when I write at length.
1.WareWare, Mary Leeat West Rindge;a4n Farm, West Rindge, New Hampshire: country home of Mary Lee Ware.
2.Hamlet I. ii. 134–5: ‘How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable / Seem to me the uses of this world!’
3.SirHerbert, Sir Dennis Dennis Herbert, later 1st Baron Hemingford (1869–1947), Conservative MP for Watford, 1918–43.
4.Henry Stafford Northcote, 3rd Earl of Iddesleigh (1901–70).
5.HumbertWolfe, Humbert Wolfe (1885–1940) – originally Umberto Wolff (the family became British citizens in 1891, and he changed his name in 1918) – poet, satirist, critic, civil servant. The son of Jewish parents (his father was German, his mother Italian), he was born in Bradford (where his father was in a wool business), and went to the Grammar School there. A graduate of Wadham College, Oxford, he worked at the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Labour, and spent time as UK representative at the International Labour Organisation in Geneva. He found fame with Requiem (1927), and in 1930 was mooted as a successor to Robert Bridges as Poet Laureate. He edited over forty books of verse and prose, and wrote many reviews. See Philip Bagguley, Harlequin in Whitehall: A Life of Humbert Wolfe, Poet and Civil Servant, 1885–1940 (1997).
6.OsbertBurdett, Osbert Burdett (1885–1936), author of works including The Idea of Coventry Patmore (1921), William Blake (1926), W. E. Gladstone (1928), The Brownings (1928), The Two Carlyles (1930).
7.LeoAmery, Leo Amery (1873–1955), distinguished Conservative Party politician and journalist.
8.Sir Ernest Benn (1875–1954), British publisher and writer on politics and economics.
9.The English Review 53: new series no. 1 (June 1931): Humbert Wolfe, [two sonnets] I. ‘Arnold Bennett’; II, ‘Robert Bridges’, 79. The Rt Hon. L. S. Emery, M.P., ‘The Budget: Failure and Fraud’, 7–18. Sir Ernest J. P. Benn, ‘Both Ends of the Candle’, 32–8. Osbert Burdett, ‘An Original Sinner’, 40–50. Peter Piper, “Literary Notes’, 108–11. TSE, untitled review of Lawrence Hyde, The Prospects of Humanism, 118, 120.
10.‘que dieu te bénisse’: ‘may God bless you.’ Et que Dieu tout-pouissant vous bénisse, le Père, le Fils, et le Saint Esprit’ (St François de Sales).
7.LeoAmery, Leo Amery (1873–1955), distinguished Conservative Party politician and journalist.
6.OsbertBurdett, Osbert Burdett (1885–1936), author of works including The Idea of Coventry Patmore (1921), William Blake (1926), W. E. Gladstone (1928), The Brownings (1928), The Two Carlyles (1930).
3.SirHerbert, Sir Dennis Dennis Herbert, later 1st Baron Hemingford (1869–1947), Conservative MP for Watford, 1918–43.
5.EleanorHinkley, Eleanor Holmes (TSE's first cousin) Holmes Hinkley (1891–1971), playwright; TSE’s first cousin; daughter of Susan Heywood Stearns – TSE’s maternal aunt – and Holmes Hinkley: see Biographical Register.
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.
9.J. C. SquireSquire, Sir John Collings ('J. C.') (1884–1958), poet, essayist and parodist, was literary editor of the New Statesman; founding editor, 1919–34, of London Mercury – in which he was antipathetic to modernism; he sniffed at The Waste Land: ‘it is a pity that a man who can write as well as Mr Eliot does in this poem should be so bored (not passionately disgusted) with existence that he doesn’t mind what comes next, or who understands it’ (23 Oct. 1922). Evelyn Waugh mocked him – as ‘Jack Spire’, editor of the London Hercules – in Decline and Fall (1928). Knighted 1933.
3.MaryWare, Mary Lee Lee Ware (1858–1937), independently wealthy Bostonian, friend and landlady of EH at 41 Brimmer Street: see Biographical Register.
5.HumbertWolfe, Humbert Wolfe (1885–1940) – originally Umberto Wolff (the family became British citizens in 1891, and he changed his name in 1918) – poet, satirist, critic, civil servant. The son of Jewish parents (his father was German, his mother Italian), he was born in Bradford (where his father was in a wool business), and went to the Grammar School there. A graduate of Wadham College, Oxford, he worked at the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Labour, and spent time as UK representative at the International Labour Organisation in Geneva. He found fame with Requiem (1927), and in 1930 was mooted as a successor to Robert Bridges as Poet Laureate. He edited over forty books of verse and prose, and wrote many reviews. See Philip Bagguley, Harlequin in Whitehall: A Life of Humbert Wolfe, Poet and Civil Servant, 1885–1940 (1997).