[22 Paradise Rd., Northampton, Mass.]
I now have two letters to acknowledge: no. 16 of Dec. 10th and no. 17 of the 17th enclosing your very charming and tasteful Christmas card. Your cable, and one from the Perkins’s, arrived on Saturday: I did not get any others. I was vexed not to be able to send off my cable on Saturday – you had not said that you would be with the Perkins’s for Christmas Day, but I naturally assumed that. The fact is that I found myself with a heavy cold in the head on Friday, so took to bed and did not get up and out until Christmas Day, when I got to church only at 11 o’clock. I went to the Charing Cross Road post-office after church and sent you a direct cable, which I hope arrived the same day, otherwise you will have been anxious. It was just an ordinary cold due to being over-tired, as one is apt to be just before Christmas; and I think I could have stopped it sooner if I had not relied too much on the inoculations, or if I had found time for a day in bed during the previous ten days. Perhaps also I should return to wool underwear during the winter: some places are not so well heated as they used to be – not that there is any difficulty in getting fuel, but as a measure of economy. We have had also a spell of cold weather, though no sign of snow yet this year. ButSecond World Warthe 'Winter War';b4 the more severe the weather the better for the Finns, apparently.1
WhileSecond World Warits effect on TSE;b3 I seem to see as many odds and ends of people as ever, especially in a business way, I find that I miss a few people very much indeed, which makes the vacancy of the winter contrast all the more emphatically with the happy communion of the summer. ItEnglandLondon;h1its fogs;a5 is somewhat as if a dense London fog had descended, bringing that queer silence and solitude that is peculiar to such fogs. Warwritingthe effect of war on;c7 not only breaks up the normal little groups of people, but makes one feel as if all audiences for written work are dispersed too: that is not altogether the case, of course, and certainly I have no reason to complain of a lack of sale for my books. But it makes correspondence all the more important, though more difficult and slow.
I must thank you very much for both letters: but first of all I must say that I am rather alarmed by the account of your numerous activities, apart from your heavier academic work; and with the extra work that you are taking on next term, I rather fear that you will suffer for it in the spring. I can’t tell, from such a brief summary, what is unavoidable and what you could omit; but I do pray you to be severe with yourself in declining tasks which, however worthy and even pleasant to perform, are not absolutely unescapeable [sic]. Just remember that as I could not get to you in any sudden illness, it is so much the more important to avoid the risk of such illness. Thattravels, trips and planspossible wartime transatlantic crossings;d7in case of EH being ill;a3 is one great reason why I should like to have a winter in America at a university: not that I should expect to see you very often, or often in easy circumstances, but that I should be able to visit you if you were ill.
ByEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother)as curator of Eliotana;e9 the way, if there are any of the reviews of my book that you do not want to keep, you could send them on to Henry, who would be delighted to have them. IEliot, Theresa Garrett (TSE's sister-in-law);b1 hope you have spoken to Theresa on the telephone, because I do not feel assured about Henry’s health yet: as I have said before, he is always likely to endanger a convalescence by some imprudence, usually quite silly and unnecessary.
ISmyth, Revd Charlescriticises Christian Society;a7 wrote to Smyth that I thought his criticisms of the one-sidedness of my book quite just,2 but that I had deliberately dealt with one side of things, as a way of bringing home my views about the contemporary world. But his point about the dangers of Pharaiseeism [sic] is a very good one. It seems to me, of course, that the reason why (in such writings as this, and indeed in a good deal of purely literary criticism) I stress the intellectual aspect of things, is that I am naturally an emotional, rather than an intellectual person – I can state insights, but I am not gifted for reasoning. So that my ‘intellectualism’ is rather more a symbol of a particular emotional attitude, than something existing in its own right. But one’s own account of oneself is not necessarily the true one!
I will not now go into your letter in detail: but I can tell you that it is very helpful. It persuades me that we can and do go on growing together. LastHale, Emilyrelationship with TSE;w9as perpetual progress and revelation;c1 summer was very lovely in itself; but I should feel it a kind of impiety to regard anything as an ‘episode’: therefore it can only hold its beauty in the light of a further growing relationship of which all that can be asked is, that it should at every period be the best possible under those conditions, and that it should be – not always, of course, proceeding at the same pace or even quite in a straight line – always progressing so that something new and precious in the way of mutual understanding and devotion is always developing; something that one could not surrender even in order to get back to a golden phase. We shall certainly be maturing in the interval, and surely maturing towards each other more and more. Meanwhile I shall try to rest with you, in spirit.
There will be a gap, as my cold prevented me from writing last week: so I hope that this will reach you quickly. ToSeaverns, Helendisburdens herself over tea;d7 return to news, I had tea with Mrs. Seaverns on Tuesday at her hotel: I was to have dined with her on Saturday. She is restless and utterly bored in Hove, and very home-sick for Millbank, but not fretful. She does not seem to have many friends, and those are now scattered; she has not many resources, and I am very sorry for her. I wish I could cheer her up a bit: perhaps I can take a few days at Brighton later! She was much troubled, and so am I, becausePerkins, Dr John Carroll (EH's uncle)his Pastor Emeritus position endangered;d5 she had heard from a friend in Portland that Dr. Perkins’s post as Pastor Emeritus at King’s Chapel had been abolished – with, I presume, the pension. You have said nothing of this. I wish you would let me know the facts, and tell me what to tell her.
PleaseHale, Emilyas director ('producer');v9chorus work at Smith;a6 tell me more about ‘the Electra work of the spoken chorus’ that you did.
1.The Soviet Union (USSR) invaded Finland on 30 Nov. 1939. At first, through the ‘Winter War’, the Finns were successful in repelling the invaders; but in time they had to yield to the Moscow Peace Treaty, 13 Mar. 1940, which ceded some 10 per cent of Finnish territories to Russia.
2.Charles Smyth, ‘Church, Community and State’ (on Idea of a Christian Society), Spectator 163 (17 Nov. 1939), 687; repr. in T. S. Eliot: The Contemporary Reviews, ed. Jewel Spears Brooker, 415–16. See TSE to Smyth, 17 Nov. 1939 (Letters 9, 331–2).
3.HenryEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother) Ware Eliot (1879–1947), TSE’s older brother: see Biographical Register.
3.DrPerkins, Dr John Carroll (EH's uncle) John Carroll Perkins (1862–1950), Minister of King’s Chapel, Boston: see Biographical Register.
3.HelenSeaverns, Helen Seaverns, widow of the American-born businessman and Liberal MP, Joel Herbert Seaverns: see Biographical Register.
9.RevdSmyth, Revd Charles Charles Smyth (1903–87), ecclesiastical historian; Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: see Biographical Register.