[22 Paradise Rd., Northampton, Mass.]

Your letter of Christmas Day arrived only three days ago, though by the Normandie, stamped ‘Special Delivery’ and also ‘Not in Special Delivery Mail’ whatever that means: anyway, it has taken a long time to reach me; and this, by an unknown Dutch boat may take a long time to reach you. ItHale, Emilyvacations in New Bedford;l5 was very welcome, as it was of course the first letter for over a fortnight; I do not expect another soon, because you will have been visiting, and it is difficult to write while one is a guest. I am glad that you have been in New Bedford, as I feared that conscientious duties to the Perkins’s, looking after your mother’s affairs, and dentistry etc. might consume most of your vacation. IPerkinses, thedescend on EH in Northampton;i5 am a little worried about your having the Perkins’s to look after for a month in Northampton: but as I can do nothing about it, there is no point in mentioning it further. I do think that your trustees should have kept records, or at least advised you to do so, when you were in Milwaukee years ago. Your Christmas was evidently spent in giving, rather than receiving: aLyman, Elizabeth Van Cortlandt Parker;a2 family party at the Lymans’ sounds to me very dolorous; andHale, Emily Jose Milliken (EH's mother);c4 as for your visit to your mother, I think I understand so well what that would be, that I cannot bear to speak of it further.

NoFamily Reunion, The;f6 more about the play: I shall be seeing Ashley next week and shall write to Martin.

YesCriterion, Thereflections on ending;b4, I regret now that I did not speak of my decision about the Criterion as soon as I had made it, and it had been ratified. My first impulse was naturally to do so; and I think that my not doing so was due to a shrinking from disentangling and displaying to myself all the motives and reasons. I can hardly do it now, without grave risk of conveying a false impression. AllCriterion, TheJanuary 1939;d8'Last Words';a2 the feelings, both personal and about the public situation, which I laid bare in the last Commentary (you don’t speak of having received the January number) were there, and I cannot accuse myself of any disingenuousness in the statement. Yet, tired as I was of the task, and doubtful as I was of my being able to give to it my best after so many years of it – and uncertain as I was of its usefulness in a world which had so much changed since I started it – yet I believe that if I thought my colleagues had believed in it, it would at the same time have been easier to give up or easier to continue. I have had some more comforting words from contributors – the best of which I have sent you – and a few very strengthening letters from unknown subscribers; butFaber and Faber (F&F)and closing The Criterion;d9 I have felt that my colleagues in Faber & faber [sic] have simply felt relief that a superfluous adjunct had been removed. I may be doing them an injustice, and yet I feel that I am not, because their point of view, if it is what I believe it to be, is so extremely natural and reasonable. ButMairet, Philiptakes Criterion closure symbolically;b1 it would be easier for me if I thought that any of them took the view – not about the Criterion itself, that doesn’t matter – but about the disappearance of the Criterion as a symbol – that for example Philip Mairet takes. For me, the Criterion had become something in which I no longer felt conviction, because there was no one to assure me about it, for while it went on the people to whom it mattered merely took it for granted: most of them were young enough to think of it as having been going on before their time, and therefore as something that could be taken for granted to go on indefinitely. I am sure that my colleagues thought of the problem from what they considered, and in a sense quite rightly, as my interest: that with the other work in the house that I had to do, the cessation would relieve me, if not from my already acquired young encumbrances, at least from an increasing number. I think that what I should have liked them to feel, was the seriousness of the collapse of the civilisation of the last four hundred years … I should have liked people to feel (as some of the contributors have felt) that my stopping the Criterion meant that I wanted people to face the fact that if people wanted civilisation they must do something more about it than support a literary review. Not that people did support it: I had long since been bitterly aware of the fact that none of my supposedly intellectual friends who could afford to pay 30s. a year, ever took in the Criterion or read it or acknowledged its existence: the supposed intellectuals are all damned Liberals and don’t like what I stand for, and on the other hand the Tories are all stupid, and the Christians are mostly stupid. ItNew English WeeklyTSE's natural post-Criterion home;a9 was too reactionary for the Liberals and too revolutionary for the Conservatives, and after this I shall write chiefly for the N.E.W.1 when I write at all.

Now I have relieved my mind, in a quite mad and chaotic way, and I don’t know what they will make of it: but please realise at least that I would not let myself go to this extent to anyone else but you. Perhaps you will consider this chat, but I assure you, my dear, it means more to me to talk thus wildly to you – not even worrying whether I may give you a wrong impression – than to say the things that I like to take for granted, or which I cannot express in words at all. I should like, after this, to hold you in my arms and be quiet for half an hour. And after that there is a fresh chapter of conversation … but I MUST catch the post.

I am not going to read this letter over before sending it: so try to read it as if I was speaking to you, make your objections and qualifications, and I will respond and reassure you.