[240 Crescent St., Northampton, Mass.]
I found two letters at home yesterday morning on my return, and your earlier letter of the 4th at the office. Your cable arrived during the afternoon. It is not very clear. It reads
22 confirm London Bradford if best
which I take it means that the Aquitania will dock or land you at Plymouth on the 22nd, but that I should confirm this at the London office; and that I am to use my discretion about Bradfield. Well, I will ring up the Cunard office, or go in there; and then see about getting out of the Bradfield engagement, which I should not have got in to.
I was very glad at last to see your handwriting, as I think that your illness was much more severe than you admitted at the time. IHale, Emilyhealth, physical and mental;w6suffers neuralgia;b5 am particularly sorry to hear of neuralgia, which is both a symptom and a cause of exhaustion and debility. It is good to know that you have seen results of your efforts in the speech of your pupils, for you will start next winter with much more confidence, and I hope and trust in much better health than last autumn. I do think that you have done very well and very bravely to succeed so well against such difficulties. I should like to know just how much you will have to do, and will be able to do, before the end of term: I am only anxious lest you should plunge into work and arrears impetuously and have a relapse before you sail. You cannot be expected to do much work for the next month: the main thing is to start the summer well enough to be able to get really strong before you return to work. (I like your wrapping up letters in old sheets of diary, which I like to see: I wish you would use them oftener).
IHale, Emily Jose Milliken (EH's mother)her health;b9 am very sorry you have had such anxiety about your mother, in addition to everything else; and I hope that your visit to Boston has brought you a reassuring report from the doctors. IHale, Emilyreligious beliefs and practices;x1source of worry to EH;b1 think that one can easily worry too much about fluctuations of faith. To believe actively all of the time is I think beyond the powers of any but saints – and sometimes they are the people who are most acutely conscious of being dogged by doubt. ItChristianityvirtues heavenly and capital;e1and doubt;b3 is not doubt, but ceasing to care about doubt – sinking below the level at which belief or doubt is possible – that is what is deadly. To believe anything is a tremendous [measure] of being truly human; and most of the world, most of the time, is simply behaving. Faith is a peculiar possibility of humanity, at once a burden and a grace: for in this world it is as inextricably tangled with doubt as good is with evil. Only in a wholly supernatural life is faith and doubt transcended; and in this life, where doubt vanishes, faith vanishes too, and we live like animals, without discipline and without freedom. All we can demand of ourselves is to keep the struggle going.
Itravels, trips and plansthe Morley–Eliot 1937 trip to Salzburg;c6described;a5 am feeling very much better for my holiday. The weather was lovely, and indeed very hot for several days – we visited Berctesgaden1 (which I don’t much like) one day, and rowed a boat on the Fusslsee another day,2 and climbed the Gaisberg and lunched at the top, and went to St. Gilgen but could not get to St. Wolfgang as the boat was not yet running. We stayed with some Russian friends of Christina’s who have a pension – aristocratic emigrés – but only took breakfast there. It was a little tiring, of course, having to be out all day; and also having to adapt myself to other people all the time: almost everybody, no matter how much I like them, tends to get on my nerves under those conditions. However, it all passed off very well, though I am glad to be back. TheGermanyGermans compared to Austrians;b3 Austrians remain much more agreeable than the Germans; and they seem to be a much better favoured race in physical appearance.3
Now'Religious Drama: Mediæval and Modern';a3 for the Friends of Rochester, for whom I have to grind out a lecture. No hope of getting back to the play for a fortnight; and indeed I do not hope to make much progress until the autumn. ‘MurderOld Vic, Thepresents Murder;a9’, IMurder in the Cathedral1937 Old Vic production;f3touring production arrived at;a1 understand, is to be done at the Old Vic next week, for how long I don’t know.
I am vexed over the Bradfield muddle. I had it fixed in my head that you sailed on the 19th – so sure that it never occurred to me to look up your reference to it.
It does not appear necessary to put ‘Flat 3’ on letters, but I think it is just as well. Nothing has gone astray.
1.Berchtesgaden: town in the Bavarian Alps, south-east Germany, about thirty miles south of Salzburg; close to the Austrian border. Hitler’s holiday home, the Berghof (paid for initially by his author royalties from Mein Kampf), was on a peak overlooking the town.
2.Fusslee: lake near Salzburg.
3.TomlinTomlin, E. Walter F.on TSE's return from Austria;a3n, T. S. Eliot: A Friendship (1988), 85: ‘On 25 May [1937] I dined with Eliot at the Oxford and Cambridge Club. On meeting him again, I at once noticed that he was looking unusually well and bronzed. He told me that he had been in Austria and he mentioned how “handsome” he had found the people. Altogether he struck me as being in better spirits than usual; and I learnt later, though not from him and I cannot vouch for its veracity, that he had had himself psychoanalysed. I doubt whether this implied anything lurid; it may have been just a consultation.’
(Cf. TSE to Eva Le Gallienne, 28 Oct. 1953: ‘I am myself rather sceptical of psychological explanations and analyses – at least, of any psychological analyses I have seen of my own work, but then the psychologists always seem to discover that I am really a rather unpleasant or despicable person!’)
Seetravels, trips and plansthe Morley–Eliot 1937 trip to Salzburg;c6as relayed to OM;a6n tooMorrell, Lady Ottoline;g4n TSE to Ottoline Morrell, Corpus Christi (27 May 1937), Letters 8, 595: ‘I feel very much better – the Austrians attractive – I had not been in that country since 1911 – and the contrast between Austria and Germany (we spent a day in Berchtesgaden, and an afternoon in Munich) interesting. There is an agreeable democracy in Austria – due to the hoehere Herrshaften [upper classes] sinking (rather than other people rising) (they seem to be serving in shops and taking in lodgers) and a feeling of decayed empire that gives it a dignity over the more bustling nations.’
4.LadyMorrell, Lady Ottoline Ottoline Morrell (1873–1938), hostess and patron: see Biographical Register.
10.E. WalterTomlin, E. Walter F. F. Tomlin (1914–88), writer and administrator; author of a memoir T. S. Eliot: A Friendship (1988): see Biographical Register.