[1418 East 63d St., Seattle]
I cannot deny myself this rainy Monday afternoon, the pleasure of starting the letter, in the ten minutes I have left, which I expect to finish and despatch ‘par avion’ tomorrow. I should like to write to you a little bit every day, though there is no point in posting more than twice a week. I have been surprised how quickly your letters have reached me, but of course, particularly as I did not have the wit to think of air mails, it is a very long time for replies.
I should like you to get my last letter very quickly. Yes, I am, and have always been, extremely ‘old-fashioned’, and perhaps that is why I was puzzled. And I hope you will proceed to ask your other questions, if I have answered that. And, though I naturally feel that I know you far far better than I have ever known anyone else, man or woman, I think that mutual understanding is something that can go on increasing to the end of life, don’t you?
TUESDAY. Now I can get on a bit, and shall post this, however short. I always seem to have more time for writing towards the end of the week than at the beginning. I am looking eagerly for your next letter, because surely you will have had my first answer to your first from Seattle. I do pray that the air mail West is as reliable as the air mail east seem to be. YesterdayWilliams, Orlo;a1 I had to lunch with Orlo Williams1 atOxford and Cambridge Clubthus becomes TSE's new club;a2 myRoyal Societies Clubinferior to the Oxford and Cambridge;a1 new club, the Oxford & Cambridge, which certainly has a much better kitchen than my old one; withFrancethe French;b6;a1 a voluble French Civil Servant2 – it is always restful to me to have a chance to talk French with a Frenchman, because they are so much alike – superficially – underneath they vary just as we do, but they have a stereotyped form of behaviour, speech and thought, so that they are much easier to get on with at first meeting than any other people. Williams I must remember to tell you of another time – not at all an intimate, but a distinct English type. TodayBell, Cliveanother Bloomsbury lunch with;a3 I have to lunch with Clive Bell – not, this time, the Woolfs also, I am sorry to say, but HaroldNicholson, Haroldlunch in Bloomsbury company with;a1 Nicolson3 andBirrell, Francisat Clive Bell's Bloomsbury lunch;a1 Francis Birrell.4 ThenHinkleys, the;a5 theUnderhill, Evelyn;a5 Hinkleys come to tea andWeaver, Harriet Shawinvited to tea;a1 Evelyn Underhill and good Miss Harriett [sic] Weaver.5
TheHinkleys, thecheerful but somehow stunted;a6 Hinkleys came to tea on Sunday, and were their same selves. <You were not mentioned.>
We were very happy to have them; and they always seem particularly happy people, as the world goes: most people I know use cheerfulness or gaity [sic] as a correct social dress – and it is correct and admirable – but seem sad enough underneath. I cannot help feeling, as I may have said before, that the life they lead does not seem to me to have developed Eleanor’s spiritual and emotional capacities as fully as one’s should be – but how little one knows about other people.
I hope to understand human beings in general better, by gradually understanding one adored person better. It is wonderful to be convinced that whatever more there is to learn, about one person, I shall only admire her the more, and feel the nearer to her.
Now I must stop to post this in Holborn in the blue pillar box,6 and then to Clive’s in Gordon Square.
1.Orlando (Orlo) Williams (1883–1967), Clerk to the House of Commons, scholar, critic.
2.Not identified.
3.HaroldNicholson, Harold Nicolson (1886–1968) relinquished in 1930 a thriving career in the Diplomatic Service to work as a journalist for the Evening Standard. In Mar. 1931 he left the Standard to join Sir Oswald Mosley’s New Party, and became editor of the New Party’s journal Action.
4.FrancisBirrell, Francis Birrell (1889–1935), critic; owner with David Garnett of a Bloomsbury bookshop. He wrote for New Statesman and Nation, and published two biographies: his life of Gladstone came out in 1933.
5.HarrietWeaver, Harriet Shaw Shaw Weaver (1876–1961), English editor and publisher, and political activist, whom Virginia Woolf described as ‘modest judicious & decorous’ (Diary, 13 Apr. 1918). In 1912, Weaver offered financial support to the Freewoman, a radical periodical founded and edited by Dora Marsden, which was renamed in 1913 (at the suggestion of Ezra Pound) The Egoist. Weaver became editor in 1914, turning it into a ‘little magazine’ with a big influence in the history of literary modernism. Following in the footsteps of Richard Aldington and H.D., TSE became assistant editor in 1917 (having been nominated by Pound) and remained so until it closed in 1919. When Joyce could not secure a publisher for A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Weaver in 1917 converted the Egoist into a press to publish it. She went on to publish TSE’s first book, Prufrock and Other Observations (1917), Pound’s Quia Pauper Amavi, Wyndham Lewis’s novel Tarr, Marianne Moore’s Poems, and other notable works. (She played a major role as Joyce’s patron, served as his literary executor, and helped to put together The Letters of James Joyce.)
TSE was to write in tribute in 1962: ‘Miss Harriet Shaw Weaver … was so modest and self-effacing a woman that her generous patronage of men of letters was hardly known beyond the circle of those who benefited by it … Miss Weaver’s support, once given, remained steadfast. Her great disappointment was her failure to persuade any printer in this country to take the risk of printing Ulysses; her subsequent generosity to James Joyce, and her solicitude for his welfare and that of his family, knew no bounds … [Working for her at the Egoist] was all great fun, my first experience of editorship. In 1932 I dedicated my Selected Essays to this good, kind, unassuming, courageous and lovable woman, to whom I owe so much. What other publisher in 1917 (the Hogarth Press was not yet in existence) would, I wonder, have taken Prufrock?’ See further Jane Lidderdale and Mary Nicholson, Dear Miss Weaver: Harriet Shaw Weaver, 1876–1961 (1970).
6.Special blue air mail boxes were introduced in London from 1930: TSE’s nearest such box was on the north side of High Holborn, opposite Staple Inn Buildings – a brisk half-hour’s walk to and from his office at 24 Russell Square.
12.CliveBell, Clive Bell (1881–1964), author and critic of art: see Biographical Register.
4.FrancisBirrell, Francis Birrell (1889–1935), critic; owner with David Garnett of a Bloomsbury bookshop. He wrote for New Statesman and Nation, and published two biographies: his life of Gladstone came out in 1933.
3.HaroldNicholson, Harold Nicolson (1886–1968) relinquished in 1930 a thriving career in the Diplomatic Service to work as a journalist for the Evening Standard. In Mar. 1931 he left the Standard to join Sir Oswald Mosley’s New Party, and became editor of the New Party’s journal Action.
1.EvelynUnderhill, Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941), spiritual director and writer on mysticism and the spiritual life: see Biographical Register.
5.HarrietWeaver, Harriet Shaw Shaw Weaver (1876–1961), English editor and publisher, and political activist, whom Virginia Woolf described as ‘modest judicious & decorous’ (Diary, 13 Apr. 1918). In 1912, Weaver offered financial support to the Freewoman, a radical periodical founded and edited by Dora Marsden, which was renamed in 1913 (at the suggestion of Ezra Pound) The Egoist. Weaver became editor in 1914, turning it into a ‘little magazine’ with a big influence in the history of literary modernism. Following in the footsteps of Richard Aldington and H.D., TSE became assistant editor in 1917 (having been nominated by Pound) and remained so until it closed in 1919. When Joyce could not secure a publisher for A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Weaver in 1917 converted the Egoist into a press to publish it. She went on to publish TSE’s first book, Prufrock and Other Observations (1917), Pound’s Quia Pauper Amavi, Wyndham Lewis’s novel Tarr, Marianne Moore’s Poems, and other notable works. (She played a major role as Joyce’s patron, served as his literary executor, and helped to put together The Letters of James Joyce.)
1.OrlandoWilliams, Orlo (Orlo) Williams (1883–1967), Clerk to the House of Commons, scholar and critic; contributor to TLS; Chevalier, Légion d’honneur. His works include The Clerical Organisation of the House of Commons 1661–1850 (1954); Vie de Bohème: A Patch of Romantic Paris (1913); Some Great English Novels: The Art of Fiction (1926).