[22 ParadiseHale, Emilyreturns to Northampton;k5 Rd., Northampton, Mass.]
Your letter of the 22nd by the Queen Mary arrived last night, so that I have time to reply by the same boat leaving tomorrow. That is, as a rule, the advantage of a fast British boat, at this end: a longer period elapses between the arrival and departure of the French or German vessels.
ILewis, WyndhamTSE sitting for;b3 am still rather tired as the result of continual long sittings: a portrait, if carefully done, is no light undertaking even for the sitter. It seems to me a very fine piece of work: of course I am not able to judge altogether of the likeness, or how it will please my friends, but it seems to me to be good. Lewis said he would have it photographed yesterday morning, and when I get some copies I will send you one. It is a modern portrait, sitting informally in an arm chair. I wish portraits were still done in the grand style: seated in a kind of throne, your hand resting on the head of a greyhound or brachet wearing a jewelled collar, the other hand poised in the air holding a scroll from which hangs a seal; in the background an Iconic [sic] column, with a couple of Cupids drawing aside some billowy hangings, to disclose a trim sylvan scene1 with some little equestrian figures galloping across country with hawks and hounds. But that kind may have been still more fatiguing for the sitter. LastHayward, John;i6 nightFoster, John;a1 IFaber, Geoffrey;g4 dined with John and Geoffrey, to meet John Foster – considered one of the most brilliant of the young barristers, and a well known man about town:2 ISimon, Sir John;a2 thought him completely empty and uninteresting, rather like a young Sir John Simon.3 So the evening was rather wasted, but was not tiring. TonightDukes, Ashley;e6, at last, I have Ashley Dukes to dinner, and hope we shall finally come to some agreement as to what shall and shall not be done to the play. TomorrowGaselee, Sir Stephen;a1 I drop in before dinner to see Stephen Gaselee, who is the Librarian of the Foreign Office, and professes to know a good deal about Portugal.4
Itravels, trips and plansTSE's 1938 trip to Lisbon;c9TSE advised on;a3 have had another letter from Lisbon, telling me everything except what I want to know. I want to know the date of the meeting and when I can get a sailing, and whether anybody will meet me at the dock. Trend, the Professor of Spanish at Cambridge, tells me that Lisbon is systematic and efficient, the porters have a fixed tariff and give you a receipt. ICamoens Prize;a3 have been sent a huge parcel of the books proposed for the Prize, but according to the letter I only have to give an opinion of the English ones; there seem to be only two, so I have read these and decided which is the more suitable. The French, Italian, Swiss and German do the same; and the Portuguese members decide between the choices. The book has to be about Portugal and by a foreigner; the prize is rather a valuable one, 20,000 escudos (not quite £2000) and a trip to Portugal for the winner. It has only just been founded.
I was to have gone to the country last weekend, but had to stay so that the portrait could be finished. ThisOldham, Josephinitiates 'Moot';c1 weekendMoot, Thefirst meeting;a1 I go to a weekend group for a religious discussion, arrangedBaillie, Very Revd Johnat inaugural Moot meeting;a9 byMurry, John Middletontaking orders;a7 J. H. Oldham somewhere in Hertfordshire (Broxbourne – perhaps it is in Essex, I think it is on the way to Colchester): Johncommunismand Middleton Murry;b5 Baillie will be there, and Middleton Murry, whom I have not seen for many years, but who, after all sorts of original and eccentric philosophies and his own varieties of communism, has finally decided to study for Anglican orders and become a country parson. So that will be talk and talk and talk: not a retreat at all.5
TheAnschluss, theresponse to;a1 political situation has relapsed for the present into the normal dark muddle in which no one knows what is going on or what it means. IHitler, Adolfpost-Anschluss;a3 should say that the fate of Czechoslovakia was a matter of time only, andStalin, Josephpost-Anschluss;a2 couldMussolini, Benitohis usefulness to Hitler;a5 only be averted by Hitler’s eventually doing a deal with Stalin – as Mussolini may not have much to offer him now that Austria is occupied.6 Whileanti-Semitismand Nazi persecution in Vienna;c4 I am distressed for the fate of the Jews in Vienna, I do hope that all the university professors will not come and settle here: there are enough Jews in the English universities as it is.
I am glad to think of you enjoying balmy summer weather in Carolina (which is nicer, Charleston or Savannah?) and a thorough change.7
OfHale, Emilyrelationship with TSE;w9its unsatisfactions;f3 course, while there are moments when public affairs are so insistent that it hardly seems right to think of private affairs, one has to keep a balance, surely, between the personal, the public and the eternal: and the personal can and should touch and be involved with the eternal – as it is not by putting aside private attachments and intimacies, but by taking them up with one in one’s reach after the eternal, that one proceeds. And the compelling anxieties of public affairs must, as you suggest, be balanced; and make our personal relations all the more precious and necessary. IChristianityresignation, reconciliation, peace;c8;a9 cannot conceive preferring things as they are! and indeed I am sure there is something most precious and valuable about unsatisfied desires – if they are taken in the right way. Unsatisfied desires can play a most important part in keeping the soul alive and urging one higher – anything is better than just deadening feeling – and can persist and at the same time be combined with a kind of resignation which makes it possible to extract the full value and significance out of what definitely is in our mental and spiritual intimacy. But of course it must actually be always a struggle – there isn’t any definite state that one just reaches and then stops – not in this life. IChristianitydeath and afterlife;b4the struggle to prepare for;a1 have no such thing as any premonition of death – I suppose I am as likely to have a long life as anybody – but I like to keep the thought of Death constantly before me, and be as nearly prepared for it as [at] any time? as one can be: to think, if one died tomorrow, how excellent in the sight of God would one’s life be up to that point. Full of imperfections, at best.
Will you celebrate Good Friday and Easter in a church in Charleston, I wonder.
Didtravels, trips and plansEH's 1938 summer in England;d1;a4 I say, about the summer, thatUniversity of Bristolhonorary degree in the offing;a1 my last official engagement is on July 2nd, when I go for another Litt.D. to Bristol? AfterFabers, the1938 summer holiday with;e4 thatRichmonds, theTSE's Netherhampton weekends with;a7 theretravels, trips and plansTSE's 1938 Faber summer holiday;d2;a1 will be, probably, at some time a weekend with the Richmonds, and a week in Wales must be spent with the Fabers’ – my usual fixtures. As for your coming, I now think the prospect of war this summer unlikely – and my chief anxiety (responsibility!) is that you should get enough country or sea air, and rest; and I should worry if your only holiday were a visit to London – as a preparation for the next winter. (You might get someone to photograph you in that coat, by the way). So I cannot help hoping that there will be some, but not too much, Campden for you.
1.Cf. The Waste Land, 97–9: ‘Above the antique mantel was displayed / As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene / The change of Philomel …’ For ‘Silvan scene’: Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 140.
2.Geoffrey Faber’s diary, Mon. 28 Mar.: ‘Dined w. John Hayward – TSE & John Foster.’ JohnFoster, John Foster (1903–82), barrister and legal scholar; from 1924, Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford; Recorder of Oxford, 1938–51, 1958–64. Army officer; humanitarian; and Conservative MP.
3.Sir John Simon (1873–1954), Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1937–40.
4.SirGaselee, Sir Stephen Stephen Gaselee (1882–1943), librarian, bibliographer, classical scholar; Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge; Pepys Librarian, 1909–19; Librarian and Keeper of the Foreign Office from 1920; President of the Bibliographical Society, 1932; Hon. Librarian of the Athenaeum Club; President of the Classical Association, 1939; Fellow of the British Academy, 1939. Works include The Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse (1928); obituary in The Times, 17 June 1943, 7.
5.KeithOldham, Josephand the Moot;c2n ClementsMoot, Thefirst meeting;a1, Faith on the Frontier: Faith, Freedom and Society 1938–1947 (2010), 363: ‘Twelve people, including Joe and Mary Oldham, met for the first meeting of the Moot from 1 to 4 April at High Leigh in Hertfordshire. It was … a highly eclectic group’ – including TSE, John Middleton Murry (Christian pacifist and communist); John Baillie, Professor of Divinity at New College, Edinburgh; H. A. Hodges, Professor of Philosophy at Reading; Sir Walter Moberley, sometime Professor of Philosophy at Birmingham, then Principal of University College London, and Vice-Chancellor of Manchester University, and since 1935 Chair of the University Grants Committee; and Adolf Löwe.
6.Germany annexed Austria in March 1938.
7.EH was staying at 51 Church Street, Charleston, S. Carolina.
SeeHale, Emilyas patron of school;k4n EH to Jane Sullivan, Alumnae Office, Abbot School, 10 Apr. 1961: ‘I visited in April a small school for colored boys and girls (High School age) in North Carolina, in which I have been interested, as well as a modest patron, since 1938.’ Because of EH’s long-term interest, the school had decided to name a dormitory ‘Hale House’. The school was impressive in ‘every detail of courtesy and hospitality,’ she reported in her letter to Sullivan, leaving her ‘much impressed by the high standards of education taught there by a devoted small band of teachers’ (Archives & Special Collections, Phillips Academy).
3.VeryBaillie, Very Revd John Revd John Baillie (1886–1960), distinguished Scottish theologian; minister of the Church of Scotland; Roosevelt Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Seminary, New York, 1930–4; and was Professor of Divinity at Edinburgh University, 1934–59. In 1919 he married Florence Jewel Fowler (1893–1969), whom he met in service in France during WW1. Author of What is Christian Civilization? (lectures, 1945). See Keith Clements, ‘John Baillie and “the Moot”’, in Christ, Church and Society: Essays on John Baillie and Donald Baillie, ed. D. Fergusson (Edinburgh, 1993); Clements, ‘Oldham and Baillie: A Creative Relationship’, in God’s Will in a Time of Crisis: A Colloquium Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Baillie Commission, ed. A. R. Morton (Edinburgh, 1994).
4.AshleyDukes, Ashley Dukes (1885–1959), theatre manager, playwright, critic, translator, adapter, author; from 1933, owner of the Mercury Theatre, London: see Biographical Register.
11.GeoffreyFaber, Geoffrey Faber (1889–1961), publisher and poet: see Biographical Register.
2.Geoffrey Faber’s diary, Mon. 28 Mar.: ‘Dined w. John Hayward – TSE & John Foster.’ JohnFoster, John Foster (1903–82), barrister and legal scholar; from 1924, Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford; Recorder of Oxford, 1938–51, 1958–64. Army officer; humanitarian; and Conservative MP.
4.SirGaselee, Sir Stephen Stephen Gaselee (1882–1943), librarian, bibliographer, classical scholar; Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge; Pepys Librarian, 1909–19; Librarian and Keeper of the Foreign Office from 1920; President of the Bibliographical Society, 1932; Hon. Librarian of the Athenaeum Club; President of the Classical Association, 1939; Fellow of the British Academy, 1939. Works include The Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse (1928); obituary in The Times, 17 June 1943, 7.
11.JohnHayward, John Davy Hayward (1905–65), editor and critic: see Biographical Register.
7.WyndhamLewis, Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957), painter, novelist, philosopher, critic: see Biographical Register.
1.JohnMurry, John Middleton Middleton Murry (1889–1957), English writer and critic; editor of the Athenaeum, 1919–21; The Adelphi, 1923–48. In 1918, he married Katherine Mansfield. He was friend and biographer of D. H. Lawrence. His first notable critical work was Dostoevsky (1916); his most influential study, The Problem of Style (1922). Though as a Romanticist he was an intellectual opponent of the avowedly ‘Classicist’ Eliot, Murry offered Eliot in 1919 the post of assistant editor on the Athenaeum (which Eliot had to decline); in addition, he recommended him to be Clark Lecturer at Cambridge in 1926, and was a steadfast friend to both TSE and his wife Vivien. See F. A. Lea, The Life of John Middleton Murry (1959); David Goldie, A Critical Difference: T. S. Eliot and John Middleton Murry in English Literary Criticism, 1919–1928 (1998).
8.JosephOldham, Joseph (‘Joe’) Houldsworth Oldham (1874–1969), missionary, adviser, organiser: see Biographical Register.
11.SirSimon, Sir John John Simon (1873–1954), Conservative politician, with the unusual distinction of being Foreign Secretary (at the date of this letter), then later Home Secretary and Chancellor. A barrister in his earlier life, he was to serve as Lord Chancellor in Sir Winston Churchill’s wartime government.