[c/o LadyHale, Emilystays with the Adam Smiths in Scotland;m2 Adam Smith, Barcaldine Castle, Connel, nr. Ballachulish, Argyllshire]
Thistravels, trips and plansTSE's 1939 Faber summer holiday;d6TSE writes from;a3 is the first opportunity I have had to write – the only time I get here is an hour or so after breakfast, and I have had three or four business letters a day to write. The beautiful weather restricts the time for correspondence still further. I hope you have been having the same, butFaber, Richard ('Dick');a4 Dick Faber, who returned yesterday from Scout Camp in Mull, told us that the weather had been fine there while it was rainy in the south, and that it had broken just before he left. I hope that I may have a note from you before you leave, though there are only four days between now and seeing you again. I am so anxious that this little venture should be a success.1
To-day we go to picnic on a beach, and bathe, returning for tea and tennis: tomorrow the weekly tennis club at Lampeter. I am getting very red, and feel very well; I wish you could be enjoying all the benefits that I have.
1.Lyndall Gordon, The Imperfect Life of T. S. Eliot (2012), 399: ‘InHale, Emilystays with the Adam Smiths in Scotland;m2 July 1939 Emily Hale went off to stay with Janet Adam Smith’s mother in an uncomfortable castle in a marvellous setting on the west coast of Scotland, where she performed in a play.’ Eulogy for EH (Concord Players), 1969: ‘One year she joined a theatre workshop to a castle in Scotland.’
TSE to Michael Roberts, 7 Sept. 1939: ‘My friend Emily Hale was visiting your motherinlaw this summer, and was enchanted by her.’
JanetRoberts, Janetremembers EH in Scotland;a3n Adam Smith to Valerie Eliot, 6 Dec. 1984: ‘Now, I have one question to put to you: have you any idea how Emily Hale came to know my mother? I remember so well Mother coming back from the evening reception after the Edinburgh graduation when Tom got his degree – I was heavily pregnant and had no evening dress so stayed behind, having instructed Mother she must introduce herself to Tom. She came in full of the meeting, his charm etc and her pleasure at meeting Emily Hale again (and amused at Tom’s chaffing her on her very flowery dress – she hadn’t realised there was to be an evening party and had hastily kitted herself out from Jenners) – then Emily stayed with the parents at Barcaldine, a castle (grander sounding than it was) in Argyllshire in the summer of 1939.’
SeeRoberts, Janether parents recalled by EH;a4n too EH to Janet Adam Smith, 14 Oct. 1966: ‘I wonder whether you will remember me from so many years ago, when I first met you at your parents’ home [at Balerno] near Edinburgh, and later saw you in London once or twice. I was a friend of T. S. Eliot, you may recall. He thought highly of your husband as well as yourself. I was a guest for a week at Barcaldine Castle – when your dear Mother did everything to give her American visitor (introduced to her thro’ my beloved niece Crombie) as full a week of pleasure and interest as she could; a never to be forgotten week, I assure you’ (National Library of Scotland).