[5 Clement Circle, Cambridge, Mass.]
It was dear of you to cable to me, and I am very glad you did, but I shall be anxious until I get your next letter; because I thought you were to stay at Cataumet until you went to your theatrical engagement; andHale, Emilyreturns abruptly to Cambridge;i6 hereHale, Emilyhealth, physical and mental;w6suffers crisis body and soul;b3 you are back in Cambridge ‘resting’ which seems to indicate that you broke down at Cataumet; and if you can’t rest there I am wondering what sort of rest you will get in Cambridge – and Cambridge in midsummer – and whether you should undertake that acting job at all when you are not fit, and with an arduous winter before you. So I am on tenterhooks until I have more news. FromFabers, the1936 summer holiday with;c8 thetravels, trips and plansTSE's 1936 Faber summer holiday;c3;a5 31st to the 10th August I shall be at Ty Glyn Aeron, Ciliau Aeron, near Lampeter, Cardiganshire, S. Wales, as usual; and I shall not have any letters from you while I am there. Your letter of July 9th (but you make a 9 very like a 2, but it read 10 on the postmark, so that must be a 9) arrived afterwards; and I was very much touched and wrung by it. You are very vague about your health, but it seems that you have been sleeping badly. Now all that you tell me of your spiritual struggles I treasure, and this is all of the greatest importance – it may be that you are bursting, or else pushing gradually and imperceptibly, into a fuller life – and it is not even for you to say that ‘the heights are not for you’, but just to be ready to accept whatever stage you get to, because you may get to heights, and it isn’t for you to say that you can’t, though you won’t know it if you do get there. But I don’t like your having spiritual struggles and physical (or nervous) ailments at the same time. Try to reserve the spiritual effort for the time when you are physically well, and try to be physically well to prepare for it! Surely when one is ill or run down, in body or mind or the mixture of both, the thing is to be very patient with oneself, and learn to wait for health and not to worry about oneself but just to put up with what one is, until such time as one is strong enough to make the next effort. You do say something to this effect yourself, so I am only trying to confirm that part of what you say. I think one should always be aiming at something just a little beyond oneself – neither being slothful nor striving too hard. One shouldn’t be distressed because one isn’t a saint and one shouldn’t say ‘I can never be a saint and that’s that’; but just go on taking the next step and being grateful for any glimpse of something a little better that helps one to become it.
IElsmith, Dorothy OlcottTSE and EH to stay with;a2 am very happy for the news about the Ellsmiths [sc. Elsmiths], and very grateful to them for my part. I look forward so eagerly to those seven or eight days.
ThePerkins, Palfreyimproved on further acquaintance;a4 Palfrey Perkins’s came to tea with me to-day, and were charming. I am prepared to revise my impression of Palfrey – which was really the prolongation of the impression he made upon me many years ago when I first knew him when he was in the Divinity School – but he is a much more manly and positive person now; and I thought his wife extremely pleasing. IKing's Chapel, Boston;b4 had a talk with them about King’s Chapel, among other things, and thought his aims admirable.
DidHavens, Paulcongratulated on appointment;a3 I tell you that I did write to Paul Havens to congratulate him. IMcPherrin, Jeanette;d8 must try to write quite soon to Jeanie, to whom I have owed a letter for a very long while.
I shall write again next week, and shall scribble a line or two once or twice in my crabbed hand from Wales, and after that there will only be time for one letter again before I wire to you from Montreal. Howtravels, trips and plansEH's 1934–5 year in Europe;b4EH and TSE's final farewell;f2 strange it will all be, because I have before me the picture of you in this room when we said good bye, and then disappearing down the street behind the tree which I can see now.
My neuritis is much better to-day – the weather warmer and dryer, andtravels, trips and plansTSE's 1936 American trip;c4possible excursions;a4 if this keeps up I should be allright by next week and ready for sea-bathing. PerhapsAmericaWoods Hole, Falmouth, Massachusetts;i2TSE and EH arrange holiday at;a1 there will be bathing at Woods Hole also. ThisTandys, theTSE's Hampton weekends with;a1 weekend I have to go to stay with the Tandys, as I have not seen them for a long time. AndIovetz-Tereshchenko, N. M.his financial woes;a2 oh dear, Dr Jovetz-Tereschchenko [sic] is coming to see me in the morning, and I don’t see that there is anything more I can do for him, unless I could give him £100, which I can’t.
My dear Love, I try to enfold you and give you rest, my dear,
4.TSEElsmiths, theseminal Woods Hole stay with;a1Elsmith, Dorothy Olcott
2.N. M. Iovetz-TereshchenkoIovetz-Tereshchenko, N. M. (1895–1954), B.Litt. (Oxon), PhD (London): Russian exile; Orthodox Catholic Christian; university lecturer in psychology: see Biographical Register.
2.JeanetteMcPherrin, Jeanette McPherrin (1911–92), postgraduate student at Scripps College; friend of EH: see Biographical Register.
18.PalfreyPerkins, Palfrey Perkins (1883–1976), who graduated from the Harvard Divinity School, was Unitarian Minister in Buffalo, New York, 1926–33; later of King’s Chapel, Boston, 1933–53.