[1418 East 63d St., Seattle]

T. S.Eliot
EmilyHale
TS
Faber & Faber Ltd
23 June 1931
Dearest Lady,

It turns out that I have a little time this afternoon, but, not to disappoint you, Isummerennervates;a2 will say at once that I am feeling very stupid, tired, and lifeless to-day; I suppose it is partly the hot summer weather, and not having been out of London for a single night since November last, and no prospect of getting away either. Butautumnquickens;a1 I always feel more lively again in the autumn; springspringunsettles;a3 is unsettling, and summer is restless, andAmericaCasco Bay, Maine;d5TSE remembers;a1 onAmericaJonesport, Maine;f1remembered;a1 aAmericaMaine;f6its coast remembered by TSE;a1 beautiful hot day I think I should like to have a look at Casco Bay1 or Jonesport Maine from the cockpit of a small sloop, again.2

My life has not been very eventful. LastMonro, Haroldcomes with Flint to supper;a2 week I had Harold Monro andFlint, Frank Stuart ('F. S.')sketched for EH;a4 Frank Flint to supper. FlintEnglandthe English;c1contortions of upward mobility;a2 is one of the most lovable men I know; and, what is rare in England, a man who has made his way up from the bottom and yet retained his simplicity and not been touched by the slightest inferiority feeling. ForOxford Universityand English intellectual hierarchy;a3 inUniversity of Cambridgeand English intellectual hierarchy;a4 England, any man who has not been to Oxford or Cambridge gets a slight social twist in his nature, and is always a little self-conscious and defensive among university men (with the exception, of course, of men from the better public schools who have gone into the army instead of to a university). But Frank was born in Islington and was a postoffice clerk; taught himself Latin and Greek and most modern languages; and is now rather an important official in the Ministry of Labour; and withal the most modest of men – so modest that one can never get him to write anything. HaroldMonro, Harolddescribed for EH;a3 is a melancholy Scot, who was originally rich but imprudent. He spends his life in hopeless attempts to revive a life that came to an end in 1914, and his great interest is Poetry – a pretty indiscriminate interest too. He keeps trying to have parties of men for intellectual conversation; and somehow one is never able to forget that the purpose of the party is really to cheer Harold up – which has a depressing reflex effect upon oneself, and is exhausting. But some of his poems are very good, I think.

HaveTimes Literary Supplement, The'Thomas Heywood';a1 you ever read any of the Elizabethan dramatists? I'Thomas Heywood';a1 am trying to do a leading article for the Times Literary Supplement on Thomas Heywood, and am finding it difficult because on rereading his plays they seem to me to be very bad – the poetry very inferior and the drama badly constructed, though I can see a few scenes here and there which would be effective on the stage.3 He is about the most overrated of all of those dramatists, and I cannot see why. Ireading (TSE's)The Witch of Edmonton again;a7 haveDekker, ThomasThe Witch of Edmonton;a2 justMiddleton, ThomasThe Witch of Edmonton;a1 read ‘The Witch of Edmonton’ again (by Dekker and Middleton) and there are several superb passages in that – a wonderful tirade by the Witch herself, Middleton at his best. One of the pitfalls in writing about Elizabethans is that you never can be quite certain who is the author of what plays; having'Cyril Tourneur'and Tourneur's identity;a1 done an essay on Tourneur some months ago4 I am beginning to feel uneasily that perhaps, as some maintain, Tourneur is Middleton after all!

I cannot, of course, help just hoping that I may find a letter from you this week – but if not, I shall be resigned to it. What a dull epistle this one is! but however dully I chatter, you know that the undertone is always, always the same.

Your apologetic
[Unsigned]

[Letters enclosed]

1.Casco'Marina'and Casco Bay;a1n Bay, Maine, is the setting for TSE’s poem ‘Marina’.

2.TSEAmericaJonesport, Maine;f1remembered;a1 to Leon M. Little, 11 Aug. 1956: ‘I wish I could see North Haven again, but how? I should also like to put in to Jonesport (another generation of Dyers and Carvers no doubt – I shall never forget Pete leading the Grand March at the Jonesport Summer Ball with Mrs Willie Carver, you never saw anything more respectable)’ (Houghton).

3.TSE, ‘Thomas Heywood’ – on Arthur Melville Clark, Thomas Heywood: Playwright and Miscellanist – TLS, 30 July 1931, 589–90; repr. in Selected Essays: see CProse 4, 327–37.

4.‘Cyril Tourneur’, TLS, 13 Nov. 1930, 925–6; CProse 4, 197–208.

America, TSE on not returning in 1915, and TSE as transatlantic cultural conduit, dependence on Europe, TSE's sense of deracination from, and the Great Depression, TSE a self-styled 'Missourian', as depicted in Henry Eliot's Rumble Murders, its national coherence questioned, its religious and educational future, versus Canadian and colonial society, where age is not antiquity, drinks Scotland's whisky, and FDR's example to England, underrates Europe's influence on England, redeemed by experience with G. I.'s, TSE nervous at readjusting to, and post-war cost of living, more alien to TSE post-war, its glories, landscape, cheap shoes, its horrors, Hollywood, climate, lack of tea, overheated trains, over-social clubs, overheating in general, perplexities of dress code, food, especially salad-dressing, New England Gothic, earthquakes, heat, the whistle of its locomotives, 'Easter holidays' not including Easter, the cut of American shirts, television, Andover, Massachusetts, EH moves to, Ann Arbor, Michigan, TSE on visiting, Augusta, Maine, EH stops in, Baltimore, Maryland, and TSE's niece, TSE engaged to lecture in, TSE on visiting, Bangor, Maine, EH visits, Bay of Fundy, EH sailing in, Bedford, Massachusetts, its Stearns connections, Boston, Massachusetts, TSE tries to recollect society there, its influence on TSE, its Museum collection remembered, inspires homesickness, TSE and EH's experience of contrasted, described by Maclagan, suspected of dissipating EH's energies, EH's loneliness in, Scripps as EH's release from, possibly conducive to TSE's spiritual development, restores TSE's health, its society, TSE's relations preponderate, TSE's happiness in, as a substitute for EH's company, TSE's celebrity in, if TSE were there in EH's company, its theatregoing public, The Times on, on Labour Day, Brunswick, Maine, TSE to lecture in, TSE on visiting, California, as imagined by TSE, TSE's wish to visit, EH suggests trip to Yosemite, swimming in the Pacific, horrifies TSE, TSE finds soulless, land of earthquakes, TSE dreads its effect on EH, Wales's resemblance to, as inferno, and Californians, surfeit of oranges and films in, TSE's delight at EH leaving, land of kidnappings, Aldous Huxley seconds TSE's horror, the lesser of two evils, Cannes reminiscent of, TSE masters dislike of, land of monstrous churches, TSE regrets EH leaving, winterless, its southern suburbs like Cape Town, land of fabricated antiquities, Cambridge, Massachusetts, TSE's student days in, socially similar to Bloomsbury, TSE lonely there but for Ada, TSE's happiness in, exhausting, EH's 'group' in, road safety in, Casco Bay, Maine, TSE remembers, Castine, Maine, EH holidays in, Cataumet, Massachusetts, EH holidays in, Chicago, Illinois, EH visits, reportedly bankrupt, TSE on, TSE takes up lectureship in, its climate, land of fabricated antiquities, Chocurua, New Hampshire, EH stays in, Concord, Massachusetts, EH's househunting in, EH moves from, Connecticut, its countryside, and Boerre, TSE's end-of-tour stay in, Dorset, Vermont, EH holidays in, and the Dorset Players, Elizabeth, New Jersey, TSE on visiting, Farmington, Connecticut, place of EH's schooling, which TSE passes by, EH holidays in, Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire, EH recuperates in, Gerrish Island, Maine, TSE revisits, Hollywood, perceived debauchery of its movies, TSE's dream of walk-on part, condemned by TSE to destruction, TSE trusts Murder will be safe from, Iowa City, Iowa, TSE invited to, Jonesport, Maine, remembered, Kittery, Maine, described, Lexington, Massachusetts, and the Stearns family home, Lyndeborough, New Hampshire, visited by EH, Madison, Wisconsin, Aurelia Bolliger hails from, Ralph Hodgson sails for, EH summers in, as conceived by TSE, who eventually visits, Maine, its coast remembered by TSE, TSE recalls swimming off, Minneapolis, on EH's 1952 itinerary, TSE lectures in, New Bedford, Massachusetts, EH's holidays in, TSE's family ties to, New England, and Unitarianism, more real to TSE than England, TSE homesick for, in TSE's holiday plans, architecturally, compared to California, and the New England conscience, TSE and EH's common inheritance, springless, TSE remembers returning from childhood holidays in, its countryside distinguished, and The Dry Salvages, New York (N.Y.C.), TSE's visits to, TSE encouraged to write play for, prospect of visiting appals TSE, as cultural influence, New York theatres, Newburyport, Maine, delights TSE, Northampton, Massachusetts, TSE on, EH settles in, TSE's 1936 visit to, autumn weather in, its spiritual atmosphere, EH moves house within, its elms, the Perkinses descend on, Aunt Irene visits, Boerre's imagined life in, TSE on hypothetical residence in, EH returns to, Peterborough, New Hampshire, visited by EH, TSE's vision of life at, Petersham, Massachusetts, EH holidays in, TSE visits with the Perkinses, EH spends birthday in, Edith Perkins gives lecture at, the Perkinses cease to visit, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, TSE on, and TSE's private Barnes Foundation tour, Independence Hall, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, surrounding countryside, Portsmouth, Maine, delights TSE, Randolph, New Hampshire, 1933 Eliot family holiday in, the Eliot siblings return to, Seattle, Washington State, EH summers in, EH's situation at, TSE prefers to California, EH repairs to post-Christmas, EH visits on 1952 tour, EH returns to, Sebasco, Maine, EH visits, South, the, TSE's first taste of, TSE's prejudices concerning, St. Louis, Missouri, TSE's childhood in, TSE's homesickness for, TSE styling himself a 'Missourian', possible destination for TSE's ashes, resting-place of TSE's parents, TSE on his return to, the Mississippi, compared to TSE's memory, TSE again revisits, TSE takes EVE to, St. Paul, Minnesota, TSE on visiting, the Furness house in, Tryon, North Carolina, EH's interest in, EH staying in, Virginia, scene of David Garnett's escapade, and the Page-Barbour Lectures, TSE on visiting, and the South, Washington, Connecticut, EH recuperates in, West Rindge, New Hampshire, EH holidays at, White Mountains, New Hampshire, possible TSE and EH excursion to, Woods Hole, Falmouth, Massachusetts, TSE and EH arrange holiday at, TSE and EH's holiday in recalled, and The Dry Salvages, TSE invited to, EH and TSE's 1947 stay in, EH learns of TSE's death at,
see also American Presidential Election
autumn, quickens, disturbs, irritates, at Pike's Farm, in Kensington versus Massachusetts, at Shamley,
'Cyril Tourneur', and Tourneur's identity,
Dekker, Thomas, The Shoemaker's Holiday, The Witch of Edmonton,
England, TSE as transatlantic cultural conduit for, discomforts of its larger houses, and Henry James, at times unreal, TSE's patriotic homesickness for, which is not a repudiation of America, TSE's want of relations in, encourages superiority in Americans familiar with, reposeful, natural ally of France, compared to Wales, much more intimate with Europe than America, TSE on his 'exile' in, undone by 'Dividend morality', in wartime, war binds TSE to, post-war, post-war privations, the English, initially strange to TSE, contortions of upward mobility, comparatively rooted as a people, TSE more comfortable distinguishing, the two kinds of duke, TSE's vision of wealthy provincials, its Tories, more blunt than Americans, as congregants, considered racially superior, a relief from the Scottish, don't talk in poetry, compared to the Irish, English countryside, around Hindhead, distinguished, the West Country, compared to New England's, fen country, in primrose season, the English weather, cursed by Joyce, suits mistiness, preferred to America's, distinguished for America's by repose, relaxes TSE, not rainy enough, English traditions, Derby Day, Order of Merit, shooting, Varsity Cricket Match, TSE's dislike of talking cricket, rugby match enthralls, the death of George V, knighthood, the English language, Adlestrop, Gloucestershire, visited by EH and TSE, Amberley, West Sussex, ruined castle at, Arundel, West Sussex, TSE's guide to, Bath, Somerset, TSE 'ravished' by, EH visits, Bemerton, Wiltshire, visited on Herbert pilgrimage, Blockley, Gloucestershire, tea at the Crown, Bosham, West Sussex, EH introduced to, Bridport, Dorset, Tandys settled near, Burford, Oxfordshire, EH staying in, too hallowed to revisit, Burnt Norton, Gloucestershire, TSE remembers visiting, and the Cotswolds, its imagined fate, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, less oppressive than Oxford, TSE's vision of life in, possible refuge during Blitz, Charlbury, Oxfordshire, visited by EH and TSE, Chester, Cheshire, TSE's plans in, TSE on, Chichester, West Sussex, the Perkinses encouraged to visit, EH celebrates birthday in, TSE's guide to, 'The Church and the Artist', TSE gives EH ring in, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, Perkinses take house at, shockingly remote, TSE's first weekend at, likened to Florence, TSE jealous of memories associated with, its Arts & Crafts associations, its attractions to Dr Perkins, forever associated with TSE and EH, sound of the Angelus, without EH, treasured in TSE's memory, excursions from, EH on 'our' garden at, Stamford House passes into new hands, EH's fleeting return to, Cornwall, TSE's visit to, compared to North Devon, Cotswolds, sacred in TSE's memory, Derbyshire, as seen from Swanwick, Devon ('Devonshire'), likened to American South, the Eliots pre-Somerset home, its scenery, Dorset, highly civilised, TSE feels at home in, TSE's Tandy weekend in, Durham, TSE's visit to, East Anglia, its churches, TSE now feels at home in, East Coker, Somerset, visited by Uncle Chris and Abby, TSE conceives desire to visit, reasons for visiting, described, visited again, and the Shamley Cokers, now within Father Underhill's diocese, photographs of, Finchampstead, Berkshire, visited by TSE and EH, specifically the Queen's Head, Framlingham, Suffolk, visited, Garsington, Oxfordshire, recalled, Glastonbury, Somerset, Gloucester, Gloucestershire, Gloucestershire, highly civilised, its beautiful edge, its countryside associated with EH, TSE at home in, its domestic architecture, Hadsleigh, Suffolk, visited, Hampshire, journey through, TSE's New Forest holiday, Hereford, highly civilised, Hull, Yorkshire, and 'Literature and the Modern World', Ilfracombe, Devon, and the Field Marshal, hideous, Knole Park, Kent, Lavenham, Suffolk, visited, Leeds, Yorkshire, TSE lectures in, touring Murder opens in, the Dobrées visited in, home to EVE's family, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, TSE's visit to, especially the Bishop's Palace, Lincolnshire, arouses TSE's curiosity, unknown to EH, Lingfield, Surrey, Little Gidding, Cambridgeshire, TSE's long-intended expedition to, London, in TSE's experience, TSE's isolation within, affords solitude and anonymity, contrasted to country life, its fogs, socially freer than Boston and Paris, eternally misty, its lionhunters, rain preferable in, more 'home' to TSE than America, socially more legible than Boston, its society compared to Boston's, TSE's desire to live among cockneys, South Kensington too respectable, Clerkenwell, Camberwell, Blackheath, Greenwich scouted for lodging, its comparatively vigorous religious life, Camberwell lodging sought, Clerkenwell lodging sought, and music-hall nostalgia, abandoned by society in August, the varieties of cockney, TSE's East End sojourn, South Kensington grows on TSE, prepares for Silver Jubilee, South Kensington street names, Dulwich hallowed in memory, so too Greenwich, during 1937 Coronation, preparing for war, Dulwich revisited with family, in wartime, TSE as air-raid warden in, Long Melford, Suffolk, Lowestoft, Suffolk, Lyme Regis, Dorset, with the Morleys, Marlborough, Wiltshire, scene of a happy drink, Needham Market, Suffolk, Newcastle, Northumberland, TSE's visit to, Norfolk, appeals to TSE, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, dreary, Nottinghamshire, described for EH, Oxford, Oxfordshire, as recollected by TSE, past and present, EH takes lodgings in, haunted for TSE, in July, compared to Cambridge, Peacehaven, Sussex, amazing sermon preached in, Penrith, TSE's visit to, Rochester, as Dickens described, Salisbury, Wiltshire, in the Richmonds' company, Shamley Green, Surrey, TSE's ARP work in, its post office, Pilgrim Players due at, Somerset, highly civilised, TSE at home in, Southwold, Suffolk, TSE visits with family, Stanton, Gloucestershire, on TSE and EH's walk, Stanway, Gloucestershire, on EH and TSE's walk, Suffolk, TSE visits with family, Surrey, Morley finds TSE lodging in, evening bitter at the Royal Oak, TSE misses, as it must have been, Sussex, commended to EH, TSE walking Stane Street and downs, EH remembers, Walberswick, Suffolk, Wells, Somerset, TSE on visiting, Whipsnade, Bedfordshire, EH and TSE visit, Whitchurch Canonicorum, Dorset, delightful name, Wiltshire, highly civilised, TSE at home in, Winchelsea, East Sussex, visited, Winchester, TSE on, Wisbech, Lincolnshire, TSE on visiting, Worcestershire, TSE feels at home in, Yeovil, Somerset, visited en route to East Coker, York, TSE's glimpse of, Yorkshire,
see also British General Election
Flint, Frank Stuart ('F. S.'), and Hulme, in Criterion inner-circle, sketched for EH, at Monro's funeral, and Dobrée give TSE farewell lunch, accompanies TSE to music hall,

2.F. S. FlintFlint, Frank Stuart ('F. S.') (1885–1960), English poet and translator: see Biographical Register.

'Marina', and Casco Bay,
Middleton, Thomas, The Witch of Edmonton,
Monro, Harold, part of Hulme's circle, comes with Flint to supper, described for EH, visited in nursing home, obliged with Poetry Bookshop reading, now in hospital, still in nursing home, from which he returns, inveighs against Aldington, needs another operation, TSE on the death of, his funeral,

6.Harold MonroMonro, Harold (1879–1932), poet, editor, publisher, bookseller: see Biographical Register.

Oxford University, TSE's time at, and English intellectual hierarchy, TSE dreams of professorship at, refreshingly austere, how it miseducates, in TSE's memory, TSE's student literary club at, and the Nuffield endowments, TSE's Romanes Lectures nomination, awards TSE honorary degree,
reading (TSE's), The Road Back, Hay Fever, sermons of Revd Dr William E. Channing, Racine's Bérénice, in general, the Bible, The Witch of Edmonton again, letters of other authors, a life of Mohammed, a life of Calvin, R. S. Wilson's life of Marcion the Heretic, Living My Life, French detective stories, French novels, recent books on economics and finance, the Epistles of St. Paul, The Lady of the Lake, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, never deeply or widely enough, The Scarab Murder Case, translation of Dante, detective stories, Letters of Mrs Gaskell and Charles Eliot Norton, second-rate detective story, disinterestedly, for leisure, Vision of God, Faith of a Moralist, Newman's sermons, Birds of the Countryside, Modern Reader's Bible, The Face of Death, René Bazin's Charles de Foucauld, Charles Petrie's Monarchy, Thurber's My Life and Hard Times, Oliver's Endless Adventure (vol. 3), Madame Sorel's memoirs, book on French policing, detective story for committee, The League of Frightened Men, The Garden Murder Case, The Luck of the Bodkins, The House in Paris, The Life of Charles Gore, Middleton Murry's Shakespeare, Dr Goebbels for book committee, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, MS of German gunman in Chicago, Shakespeare, to replenish, Middlemarch, the Gospel, City of God, St. John of the Cross, psalm or two a day, Ibsen, Twenty Best Plays of the Modern American Theatre, poems submitted to Criterion, My Name is Million, psalms, especially Psalm 130, Edmund Burke, Lives of the Poets, Virgil,
spring, tormenting, bittersweet, unsettles, the cruelties of April, troubles, ennervates, irritates, weakens, languorous, at Shamley, in wartime, melancholy,
summer, in Woburn Square, ennervates, intolerable when hot for long, unthinkable in America, in London, and the drought of 1934, painfully reminiscent of Gloucestershire,
'Thomas Heywood',
Times Literary Supplement, The, 'Thomas Heywood', TSE on, TSE arranges EH's subscription to, intrigue over Richmond's successor,
University of Cambridge, and I. A. Richards, TSE dreams of professorship at, and English intellectual hierarchy, refreshingly austere, less painful than Oxford, confers honorary degree on TSE, King Edward VII Professorship,