[22 Paradise Rd., Northampton, Mass.]
Tomorrow is your birthday, and you may be sure that I shall be thinking of you all day. Your last letter to arrive was that of Oct. 7th (posted Oct. 9), No. 7, last week: I hope for another to-day or tomorrow. It bore no evidence of having taken any particular route.
ITandys, thehost TSE in Dorset;b3 was rewarded for going to the Tandys’ by two perfect autumn days. There are ardours about a four hour journey in a small car, especially as it meant getting up at 6 on Saturday, and again at the same hour on Monday to return, so as to make the journey during the best hours of the day. ButEnglandBridport, Dorset;d3Tandys settled near;a1 they have found a cottage in one of the most beautiful situations in England, a few miles inland from Bridport,1 looking north and west across a lovely valley (inEnglandWhitchurch Canonicorum, Dorset;j9delightful name;a1 the middle of which is a village with the delightful name of Whitchurch Canonicorum) towards the hills on the Somerset border; a country still perfectly rural and agricultural, with nice people in it – by whom I mean, of course, not the upper middle class, who are much the same the country over, but the gaffers in the parlour of the Five Bells, in which we spent an hour each afternoon. TheTandys, thetheir situation in Dorset;b4 Tandys have a houseful with their three children, andGottfried, Hanna;a1 a German Jewish child whom they have taken on: aanti-Semitism;c6 rather nice child, not at all objectionably Jewish to look at – after a year it talks English exactly like the other children, and is determined to forget that it ever spoke any other language: in fact, difficulties arise, when its parents, who are refugees here, come to see it, because it refuses to talk German with them.2 And there are the usual difficulties of crowded small cottages: you can’t get to any room without going through some other, in which somebody may be sleeping, and the conveniences are on the other side of the kitchen, and you are lucky to get bath and shave at hours like 11.30 a.m. But the children are evidently flourishing on it, and Tandy is having his naval uniform made in Bridport.
MondayChristian News-Letter (CNL)first number;a4 night the C.N.L. committee, andFaber, Geoffrey;g8 onPickthorn, Kenneth;a8 Tuesday I had Faber and Pickthorn to dinner to discuss quite another project; soSociety of the Sacred Mission, Kelham Hall, NottinghamshireOctober 1939 visit;b9 I am glad to have last night, and tonight and tomorrow night at home before going off to Kelham on Saturday – you remember what it is like, but as they have been ploughing up their playing fields for cultivation, there may be more green vegetables than usual. Or perhaps they will only appear next year.
I hope you will have that photograph taken soon, before the summer wears off. I thought of you among the maple colours in Massachusetts, while I was enjoying a particularly good brown and yellow autumn here: but you know how quiet the autumn colours are at best.
IHale, Irene (née Baumgras)in Northampton;c3 hope thatAmericaNorthampton, Massachusetts;g3Aunt Irene visits;b2 you are managing your aunt Irene without too much cost to yourself: it ought in a way to be easier in Northampton than elsewhere, because one’s obvious work, which people can be compelled to respect, is a certain protection. I am glad to hear of your reading, which I must say is more regular than mine. If you can keep that standard up throughout the winter you will have done well indeed. Henry, I understand, is now to have, or perhaps has just had, his operation – it was delayed by his catching cold – and I shall be glad when that excitement is over and they can settle down again. I sometimes think that I do not understand my relations at all; at any rate, with the wide differences of experience and environment during all these years, and the profound differences of philosophy of life, there arise more opportunities of bafflement than with outsiders. HenryEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother)his immaturity;b8 andEliot, Theresa Garrett (TSE's sister-in-law)her immaturity;a6 Theresa are in some ways children; and of course one has to remember that deafness is a great hindrance to communication and understanding. Henry, like Eleanor, has always been content with the intellectual second-best – or rather, does not see that the great difference is between the second best and the best: it sounds perhaps rather unkind to say that I have sometimes felt that his interest in my work was rather an interest in collection, like butterflies or stamps, rather than an interest in, still less a sympathy with, what I have ever been trying to say. AndSheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister)her intellectual orbit;g9 even Ada’s orbit is pretty restricted, though within that orbit her mind shines very brightly.
ISwing, Raymond Gram;a1 like Gram Swing very much, and I wish I could hear him oftener, but he is usually on of a Saturday night.3 Speaking'Marching Song of the Jellicles, The'and The Queen's Book of the Red Cross;a1 of'Billy M'Caw: The Remarkable Parrot';a2 Saturday night, did I say that I had given Bill M’Caw, and the Marching Song of the Jellicles, to the Lord Mayor’s Red Cross Book? I will send a copy when it is out.4
I will only put in, my dearest love on the eve of your birthday.
1.Hope Cottage, Ryall, Morcombelake, Bridport, Dorset.
2.Mick Patrick, email to Haffenden, 8 Oct. 2020: ‘My late mother, Hanna Gottfried, was fostered between early 1939 and early 1942 by the family of TSE’s friend Geoffrey Tandy. She was a refugee from Vienna and was with the Tandys while her mother Rosa was working as a domestic in London, and her father Adalbert Bela was seeking to get to the UK and then to get established.
‘In July 1940 ABG was interned. RG wrote to Polly Tandy on 07/07/40 and PT replied on 09/07/40 saying:
I have written just now to Mr T S Eliot asking him to use his influence at the Home Office to try and get Mr Gottfried out of internment. I am sure he will do his best. This may turn out better than we now expect.
‘ABG was released from internment in November 1940, but I have no idea whether this was in any way speeded by an intervention from TSE.’
3.RaymondSwing, Raymond Gram Gram Swing (1887–1968) – newspaper journalist and radio broadcaster – was especially valued for his anti-Nazi radio commentaries beamed from London during WW2.
4.‘The Marching Song of the Pollicle Dogs’ and ‘Billy M’Caw: The Remarkable Parrot’, in The Queen’s Book of the Red Cross (1939), 51–4.
3.HenryEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother) Ware Eliot (1879–1947), TSE’s older brother: see Biographical Register.
11.GeoffreyFaber, Geoffrey Faber (1889–1961), publisher and poet: see Biographical Register.
3.IreneHale, Irene (née Baumgras) Hale, née Baumgras, widow of Philip Hale, celebrated as the prolific and influential music critic of the Boston Herald. Irene Hale, who was herself an accomplished pianist, had studied at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, where she gained the Springer Gold Medal 1881, and continued with her studies in Europe under Raif and Moritz Mosckowski: she later wrote music under the name Victor Rene.
8.KennethPickthorn, Kenneth Pickthorn (1892–1975), historian and politician; Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: see Biographical Register.
2.AdaSheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister) Eliot Sheffield (1869–1943), eldest of the seven Eliot children; author of The Social Case History: Its Construction and Content (1920) and Social Insight in Case Situations (1937): see Biographical Register.
3.RaymondSwing, Raymond Gram Gram Swing (1887–1968) – newspaper journalist and radio broadcaster – was especially valued for his anti-Nazi radio commentaries beamed from London during WW2.