[No surviving envelope]
After your wan little note of the 9th, which made me feel very miserable because of your not having had a letter for so long – and I know quite well how difficult it becomes, to write, when one has had no response for too long a time! – I was very happy this morning to get your letter of April 13th; I wish that in each letter I could give some momentary feeling of peace and satisfaction – or perhaps enough to last throughout the day – that would be a substitute, however poor, for each other’s company. Springspringthe cruelties of April;a4 is more tiresome than ever, in spite of the long bitter cold of this month of April (there was a flurry of snow on Easter day); andtravels, trips and plansEH's 1934–5 year in Europe;b4TSE reflects on;f5 somethingEnglandCotswolds;e3sacred in TSE's memory;a1 inside me, so to speak, is always facing in the direction of the Cotswolds, as if there [is] a house to go to, at some near weekend, and a lady to walk the roads and by-paths with, and stop under a tree with in a shower, and the high clouds passing endlessly the whole day, and stars over a yew tree in the evening. Well, there isn’t; what will there be, I wonder, for September or October?
ITandys, thecompared to the Morleys;a5 spentMorleys, thecompared to the Tandys;h1 Sunday with the Tandys at Hampton. That is more lazy than with the Morleys, and the children are quieter (thoughPike's Farmdaily life at;a5 it’s largely the farm life that makes such a bustle at the Morleys – I am sure that life on a farm can never be peaceful and restful, there’s always so much going on, and always animals and fowls to be fed and let out and shut in[)]. On the other hand the Tandys are very poor, crowded and uncomfortable, and Polly has very much the life of a working woman, with three children and no nurse. But highly trained scientists in museums are not expected to have three children, in this country – very few have more than one: so that part of the population is gradually being killed off – though it’s partly their own self-indulgence – a large part of the middle-class to-day (and class distinctions are economic nowadays) would prefer a bigger motor car to another child. TandyTandy, Geoffreyin poor spirits;b1 had had a bad attack of influenza, and was still suffering from acute melancholia, and the head of his museum had been down on him for being slow about his report on the Great Barrier Reef Expedition, because he is so very meticulous and insistent on perfect accuracy (Tandy I mean);1 and he was depressed and talking about seeing a psychologist, which is a bad sign in anybody. AnyoneMorley, Frank Vigornaturally projects strength;f6 like Morley, who radiates strength and gives support to everybody round him without ever seeming to need it himself, is rare in these days. TheFaber and Faber (F&F)TSE as talent-spotter and talent-counsellor;d3 most tiring part of my job is interviewing the young writers – from the formal interviews in my room to the informal and more social meetings for a meal or a drink: it’s like a blood transfusion each time. The number of people who need to borrow vitality (and can’t pay it back) is immense. IncidentallyQuennell, Peter'cadaverous deathshead';a1, I was amusedQuennell, Peterreviews Collected Poems;a2 by the accusation of lack of vitality in the enclosed review of Poems by Peter Quennell2 – if you had ever met that cadaverous deathshead of a young man not so young as he was and not so mature as he ought to be, you might be inclined to agree with my conjecture that it is apt to be people of low vitality themselves who accuse others of that defect.
However, I am pretty well, thank you; and there is no temptation to take even a short holiday under [sc. until] the spring really comes; for in cold weather one is never really comfortable except at home; and the English climate in the country in winter is a very pleasant one if you live in the country – but it takes some time to get used to it if you have been living in town. (It really is winter temperature still, though the country is budding and flowering on time as usual).
This week there are three boats sailing, one on the 22nd, one on the 23d, and the Europa on the 25th (in May I presume there will be the Queen Mary) and I shall try to get a letter onto each – but how I wish I could be giving my strength (such as it is) to you instead of to others: but in any case – what I give you (if I do) I get back, and I only wish indeed that my letters could be such help to you as yours to me – though it is only with my arms round you that we can both give and receive at the same instant of time: let us try to think of them so at the end of each letter we write.
AAll Souls Club, Thediscussion vague at second dinner;a3 dinnerPeel, Albert;a1 of the All Souls Club last night, but not so good as the last, because our Congregationalist, Dr. Peel, who was the host, had chosen a rather vague subject for discussion.3
1.Great Barrier Reef Expedition 1928–29 (British Museum (Natural History), 1930–40).
2.PeterQuennell, Peter Quennell, ‘Mr T. S. Eliot’ – review of Collected Poems 1909–1935 and Essays Ancient and Modern', New Statesman & Nation 11 (18 Apr. 1936), 603–4.
Peter Quennell (1905–93), biographer, essayist, editor. Though rusticated from Balliol College, Oxford, he was to become a noted man of letters (encouraged by figures such as Harold Monro, Edward Marsh and Edith Sitwell). Works include Baudelaire and the Symbolists (1929); Four Portraits (1945); Alexander Pope: The Education of Genius 1688–1728 (1968); Samuel Johnson: His Friends and Enemies (1972); and works of autobiography including The Marble Foot (1976) and The Wanton Chase (1980). He edited The Cornhill Magazine, 1944–51; co-edited (with Alan Hodge) History Today, 1951–79. See too Quennell, Customs and Characters: Contemporary Portraits (1982): ch. 6, ‘The Poet’s Friend’, 108–25.
3.AlbertPeel, Albert Peel (1887–1949), Congregationalist preacher and historian.
4.FrankMorley, Frank Vigor Vigor Morley (1899–1980), American publisher and author; a founding editor of F&F, 1929–39: see Biographical Register.
2.PeterQuennell, Peter Quennell, ‘Mr T. S. Eliot’ – review of Collected Poems 1909–1935 and Essays Ancient and Modern', New Statesman & Nation 11 (18 Apr. 1936), 603–4.
2.GeoffreyTandy, Geoffrey Tandy (1900–69), marine biologist; Assistant Keeper of Botany at the Natural History Museum, London, 1926–47; did broadcast readings for the BBC (including the first reading of TSE’s Practical Cats on Christmas Day 1937): see Biographical Register.