[S/S ‘StatendamHale, Emilyreturns to America with Perkinses;m3’, sailing 5 Sept. from Southampton]
ISecond World WarTSE discusses its outbreak with Dutchman;a9 got to Paddington at 3, which was not too bad – conversation in the train with a Dutchman, who assured me that all the trees lining the roads into Holland were mined, so that they could collapse instantly onto the road. Had a bad lunch at the station: warm tongue, warm salad, warm ginger beer; andFaber and Faber (F&F)on war footing;e2 went straight to Russell square, where we discussed such matters as Compulsory Government Insurance, paper strips for window breakage, sanitary facilities in the air raid shelter, and whether we should publish any books next Thursday or not. HadFaber, Geoffreyasks TSE to stay on during war;g7 a talk with Geoffrey afterwards: he has confided to me a difficulty concerning one of his children (not my godson) and said that he hoped very much that unless I was asked to do anything very important I would stay on to work for the firm. EverybodyEnglandLondon;h1in wartime;d4 is carrying gas masks now;1 but they will probably get bored and leave them at home by the time they are needed. The normal work at the firm is almost at a standstill; but there is a good deal of exceptional work to be done, and I may help Stewart with odds and ends. I wonder whether the standard of blacking-out in London is up to that we set at Campden, and shall look about when I post this. I gave your message and half crown to Elizabeth, who was much touched. Bought more electric torches and put a strap into my gas mask box so as to be able to carry it. AfterCheetham, Revd Ericand St. Stephen's wartime finances;d8 dinner up came Fr Cheetham and had a talk about church finance in the immediate future, and the economies to be effected at once.
WhilePerkinses, theand EH's wartime return to America;i9 I am writing all this I try to think of you reading it, because that will mean that you are safely on the Statendam and steaming out to sea. Until tomorrow night I shall think only of your getting off: after that I shall settle down to facing my loss of your presence. But I am really glad that you have had (I may say, we have had) your uncle and aunt to consider first: if they had not been here, I should have known just as clearly that you ought to go, and that I ought to insist on your going, but it would have been harder both to persuade you and to force myself to persuade you. As it has been, the duty was clear. Your uncle is a lonely man, and depends very much upon you.2
Itravels, trips and plansEH's 1939 England visit;d5EH and TSE's parting moments;b2 was glad that you did not come to the station: there was a quarter of an hour delay; seeing you last at the door of the house (with your face screwed up bravely and pitifully) was better. But yesterday was so wonderful, ending so, with the minutes in the garden and finally and surprisingly our standing together looking out on the moonlight and the yew tree shadow more beautiful than ever before – those last minutes at the window are pictured in my mind with an intensity that can never disappear – that there was a wonderful comfort in the rightness and inevitableness of it all. It will take me a long time to understand fully what has happened – there is a frightening kind of beauty. Part of the time I feel that nothing that can happen now can matter; and at present I am divided between this queer bliss and worrying about your getting to Southampton: but I do not doubt that there will come a deep rheumatic ache in the heart before very long, which will have to be accepted and mingled with the other feeling. It seems now as if I had done nothing and deserved nothing, and that this strange happiness had come to me quite in spite of myself.
The ache is there already I know, waiting to come to the surface of consciousness as soon as I get into the routine of ordinary living under extraordinary conditions. But it is easier at the moment for me than for you, because I have one detail after another to distract me and keep me busy, and you have a week with nothing to do, and the anxiety of scanty news. Let a growing realisation of what you have done for me, of the perfect rightness with which everything has fallen into place this summer, and of the growth, both of identity of feeling and of our knowledge of the extraordinary degree to which we already felt in the same way – and of how our so different experiences had left us both with the same knowledge and innocence – keep you in the radiance that we have known.
1.Germany invaded Poland on 1 Sept. and Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 Sept. Some 38 million gas masks had been distributed to British households by Sept. 1939, with the instruction that they were to be carried at all times, to cope with possible gas bombs: there was a living memory of the devastation that had been wreaked by gas during WWI.
2.See too TSE to Eleanor Hinkley, 13 Sept. 1939: ‘The problem of Emily and the Perkins’s became more serious; because the Perkins’s had not reserved any passage at all, meaning to stop until late in the year. In the end, after a good deal of feverish activity in several steamship offices, Emily managed to change her sailing and get passages for all three on the Statendam. They are now nearly in New York, to my great relief; for Dr P. is very much more infirm than a year ago, and Mrs P. could never have been a tower of strength at the best of times; and as they both leaned pretty heavily upon Emily, I was afraid that the strain upon her would undo any good effects of the holiday. They had three anxious days last week, but apparently everything went off as well as could be expected, as they were able to get a car to take them to Southampton without passing through London; but I am only now beginning to be free from anxiety. Except for the possible effect of the last ten days, I think Emily is better and stronger than a year ago’ (Houghton).
To Dorothytravels, trips and planspossible TSE 1939 visit to America;d4made impossible;a5n Elsmith, 3 Oct. 1944: ‘I had hoped to come over again that autumn [1939]: I would have come earlier but that Emily and the Perkins’s, and also one of my sisters, were in England that summer; but I felt pretty sure by the spring that it would prove impossible, though I did not realise how long the interim would prove to be. Actually, I was consumed with anxiety, all that summer, lest the people I have mentioned should be caught here, or be sunk on the way back’ (Houghton).
4.RevdCheetham, Revd Eric Eric Cheetham (1892–1957): vicar of St Stephen’s Church, Gloucester Road, London, 1929–56 – ‘a fine ecclesiastical showman’, as E. W. F. Tomlin dubbed him. TSE’s landlord and friend at presbytery-houses in S. Kensington, 1934–9. See Letters 7, 34–8.
11.GeoffreyFaber, Geoffrey Faber (1889–1961), publisher and poet: see Biographical Register.