[22 Paradise Rd., Northampton, Mass.]
As I have had no letter from you since that of Dec. 17 (no. 17) I am beginning to think that it is my turn to cable anxiously. I allowed for the possibility of missing one week through your being on the move and visiting; and I wanted you to have as restful a vacation as possible. And also, as my letters seem to have been delayed, it seems likely that yours may have been also; so I may receive two at once: but if I do not get one by the end of this week, I shall cable on Monday. You said in your cable that the last received from me was of December 8, which must be my no. 18. After that I wrote on the 14th, the 28th (missing one week when I was in bed just before Christmas), on Jan 4th and this one.
I am beginning to get rid of my catarrh after the cold; but that is always a slow process with me. ITandys, thehost TSE in Dorset;b3 had to go to the Tandys, as I told you, and last weekend to a theological conference at Jordan’s: these weekend conferences are always very tiring, however profitable; and I am looking forward to several weekends in London for a rest.
TheSecond World Warrationing;b7 rationing has begun, but does not seem to make much difference. According to Elizabeth, we are entitled to as much butter as we ordinarily use; andCheetham, Revd Ericindifferent to rationing;e2 there should be no difficulty about sugar, as Cheetham’s diet does not permit him to take it!1 OneOxford and Cambridge Clubunder rationing;c4 doesn’t get but small quantities at restaurants and clubs, but there is plenty of good margarine – ever so much more palatable than in the last war. Meat, when it is rationed, may make eating out a little more complicated, but there does not seem to be any likelihood of a shortage. And I don’t think I want to take a holiday until the spring: the weather has been very cold – though for the last few days clear and dry.2
MyChristian News-Letter (CNL);a9 work for the News Letter consists chiefly of criticising other people’s contributions – an obscure but useful task: I succeeded, as I think I mentioned, in scotching an article on Federal Union, and I think I have just done the same by an article on Education which struck me as very unsatisfactory. InMairet, Philipoften editorially opposed to TSE;b4 this sort of task I am not likely to see eye to eye with Philip Mairet: andSmith, William Henry, 3rd Lord Hambledenand CNL;a3 Hambleden usually agrees but is too shy to take much initiative. MairetDemant, Revd Vigo Augusteas CNL editorial collaborator;a9, andMannheim, Karland CNL;a2 Demant, and Karl Mannheim are the best minds I have to do with in these tasks: theanti-Semitism;c7 last, being a Jew (though an extremely nice one) is of course not quite so active on a Christian News Letter. OurBaillie, Very Revd JohnOur Knowledge of God;b2 conference discussed John Baillie’s last book ‘Our Experience of God’ – a very interesting book, I think, though it does not seem to have much concern specifically with Christian knowledge (I beg pardon, the title is ‘Our Knowledge of God’). Baillie has just left, I think, to start a work of considerable importance in France: to initiate a system of lectures and classes for the troops – something that is badly needed in a sit-down war, and which he had a good deal to do with in the last war.
IRodrigues, Agostinhosculpts bust of TSE;a2 wonder what you will think of my bust by Senhor Agostinho Rodrigues – the voluble young Portuguese. He has promised me photographs, but I do not know whether they will enable you to distinguish the shark-like aspect of my physiognomy. He is very pleased with the work himself: I can never judge. HeGaselee, Sir Stephen;a4 certainly has energy and push: I gave him an introduction to Stephen Gaselee, and within twentyfour hours he had called at the Foreign Office, interviewed Gaselee, got him to his studio, and made him promise to sit for him. Then Gaselee wrote to me in alarm and asked whether I thought he was bound to buy the bust. I said no, emphatically, unless he wanted it. But it makes me a little shy of giving him further introductions: he is said to be um puoco [sc. pouco] persistente! IHastings, Donald Pierrewhich proves inferior to Rodrigues's;a4 will say for him that he took less time over it than the other sculptor I had a few years ago – and the result strikes me as at least less repulsive.3
TheSecond World Warevacuation;b8 problems of Evacuation have rather dropped into the background, because London tends to forget about them, though people living in the country do not.4 What does appear, I think, and what people do not like to face, is the fact that in a modern industrial society of enormous towns a large part of the population is living in a state of dark barbarism and ignorance of the most elementary laws of health and sanitation. What proportion of the children who are getting opportunities of healthy lives for the first time, will remain to grow up in the country and will want to stay there, I am curious to know – that will take a long time to find out. The revelations are an odd commentary on the great sums that have been spent, for a generation or so, on Education and Health. The adults, I fear, cannot be changed: and it seems desirable that a large proportion of the childhood of the country should be separated permanently from their parents. And I don’t believe that these conditions are wholly peculiar to Britain. Thereanti-Semitism;c8 have been racial clashes too, and religious friction: where low class Irish from Glasgow or Liverpool have been put upon strict Protestant villages in remote parts of the Highlands and North Wales; or where too many Jews have been settled on one English village. I do wish that Jews could learn to behave in such a way as not to provoke anti-Semitism! But it remains true that it is very difficult to reconcile one’s friendship for a few whom one likes, with the general behaviour of the race.
I wait eagerly to know how your holidays passed, and whether you are starting the new term in fairly good health and spirits. It is not so hard during the winter – we shall find the situation harder to bear as the spring begins to promise summer. But I hope for an opportunity to get to America, and we must not worry about that yet.
IHale, Emilysends TSE selected American plays;m7 thinkreading (TSE's)Twenty Best Plays of the Modern American Theatre;h2 I have to thank you for a huge (and expensive looking) book of 20 Modern American Plays.5 It seems to contain a very good selection: there are several I have heard of and am anxious to read. If I can get time to read one before next week I will tell you what I think: I suppose you have seen some of them. And thank you very much for sending them – I hope the book did not cost a great deal. Even if I don’t like them, the provocation will be a stimulant – and the book will be a document in the genealogy of our next play!
I do miss you every day and at all times.
1.Rationing (per person per week) of butter (4 ounces), sugar (12 ounces), bacon and ham, began on 8 Jan. The range of items rationed would be extended and the quantities allowed reduced as the war proceeded.
2.On 17 Jan. 1940, the River Thames was to freeze over for the first time since 1888.
3.The plaster bust by Donald Hastings, made in 1934, has not been found; but a photo of it accompanied TSE’s address ‘Saving the Future: Mission of the Save the Children Fund: Practical Service at Home and Abroad’, The World’s Children 16: 6 (Mar. 1936), 85: CProse 5, 349–54. AdaSheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister)on Hastings's bust of TSE;h1n Sheffield to TSE, 4 Mar. 1934: ‘The photos of your bust have arrived. They are very good. The more I look at them the better I like them. At first I had to grow accustomed to the appearance of whiteness. It made the face seem unalive. But now the expression stands out. In bronze (Mr Morley says the bust is to be bronze) it will be a fine head, I should think. The expression does the family credit! Only a good background produces a face like that.’
4.Beginning on 31 Aug. 1939, more than 1.5 million children had been evacuated from cities to the countryside to avoid potential German air raids.
5.Twenty Best Plays of the Modern American Theatre, ed. John Gassner (New York, 1939).
3.VeryBaillie, Very Revd John Revd John Baillie (1886–1960), distinguished Scottish theologian; minister of the Church of Scotland; Roosevelt Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Seminary, New York, 1930–4; and was Professor of Divinity at Edinburgh University, 1934–59. In 1919 he married Florence Jewel Fowler (1893–1969), whom he met in service in France during WW1. Author of What is Christian Civilization? (lectures, 1945). See Keith Clements, ‘John Baillie and “the Moot”’, in Christ, Church and Society: Essays on John Baillie and Donald Baillie, ed. D. Fergusson (Edinburgh, 1993); Clements, ‘Oldham and Baillie: A Creative Relationship’, in God’s Will in a Time of Crisis: A Colloquium Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Baillie Commission, ed. A. R. Morton (Edinburgh, 1994).
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.
4.RevdDemant, Revd Vigo Auguste Vigo Auguste Demant (1893–1983), Anglican clergyman; leading exponent of ‘Christian Sociology’; vicar of St John-the-Divine, Richmond, Surrey, 1933–42: see Biographical Register.
4.SirGaselee, Sir Stephen Stephen Gaselee (1882–1943), librarian, bibliographer, classical scholar; Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge; Pepys Librarian, 1909–19; Librarian and Keeper of the Foreign Office from 1920; President of the Bibliographical Society, 1932; Hon. Librarian of the Athenaeum Club; President of the Classical Association, 1939; Fellow of the British Academy, 1939. Works include The Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse (1928); obituary in The Times, 17 June 1943, 7.
12.DonaldHastings, Donald Pierre Pierre Hastings (1900–38), English sculptor; son of the sculptor William Grenville Hastings (1868–1902); noted for ecclesiastical, architectural and portrait commissions.
8.PhilipMairet, Philip Mairet (1886–1975): designer; journalist; editor of the New English Weekly: see Biographical Register.
3.KarlMannheim, Karl Mannheim (1893–1947), Hungarian–Jewish sociologist: see Biographical Register.
1.AgostinhoRodrigues, Agostinho Rodrigues (?1912–95), sculptor, was born in Madeira; worked for a while in London before leaving in 1940 to study in the USA, where he passed the rest of his life.
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.
1.WilliamSmith, William Henry, 3rd Lord Hambleden Henry Smith, 3rd Lord Hambleden (1903–48), Governing Director of W. H. Smith.