[41 Brimmer St.; forwarded to 1418 East 63d St., Seattle]
I am beginning my letter this afternoon, having a quarter of an hour after a short committee; but I hope that I may have a letter from you tomorrow, to say exactly when you are returning from Seattle to Boston. I guess, that if I send this to Seattle it will only be delayed a few days; but I should like to have a letter waiting for you on your arrival. And I am waiting to hear whether you will be in Boston straight on from the middle of the month, or go to West Rindge, or visit, and exactly how you will be placed.
ThisNoyes, Penelope Barker;a5 morning a very cheerful letter from Penelope, from Cotuit (heredogsAlsatian;b5bites F&F sales manager in Cheltenham;a1 I was interrupted by our Scotch sales-manager who has just been bitten by an Alsatian Dog in Cheltenham but wanted to consult me about the French Book of the Month Club) describing a typical New England summer. Apparently she has been sailing and bathing, and her father is very well etc. How difficult it is to adjust the past to the present, and other people’s present to one’s own. I mean that it comes as a
TUESDAY 8 Sept.: What was I saying? Oh yes … as a surprise to me always and a kind of shock when I realise for a moment the continuity of most people’s lives. EleanorHinkley, Eleanor Holmes (TSE's first cousin)un-deracinated, compared to TSE;a4, andPeters, Haroldun-deracinated, compared to TSE;a2 Penelope, and Harold Peters andLittle, Leon M.un-deracinated, compared to TSE;a1 Leon Little,1 are all older, of course; but they have grown and flourished in the same soil, surrounded always by the same other trees. TheEnglandthe English;c1comparatively rooted as a people;a3 same is true, of course, of most of my English friends; they have grown up and gone on continuously, in the same environment, in continuous contact with the same friends and with their relatives; whereas for me, and I think to a large extent for you, life has been discontinuous. The only people I know who quite understand this difference are a few Colonials: those who have been to an English university and practically never returned – for the Australian or New Zealander as a rule is more completely cut off from his native land than the ordinary American resident of Europe. But it is hard to put oneself in the place of those people, the majority, who have never had to stand quite alone; who have always had that support of relatives and old friends with similar early memories, about them. Isn’t it?
Now your dear letter of the 28th has arrived and made me very happy; so long it is, and shows you so much in command of yourself. I am glad to have my mind settled about where to write – this goes to Brimmer Street, where in all probability it will await you on the hall table for several days – so now I can throw away my blue air slips. There2635 Locust Street, St. LouisTSE's childhood in;a1 is much to say. IHale, Emilyfamily;w4her childhood compared to TSE's;a2 do understand the difficulties of an only child; I had rather analogous handicaps myself. MySheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister);a1 oldest sister, Ada, is nearly twenty years older than I;2 theEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother);a2 nearest to me, Henry, is eight years older;3 so that I was somewhat like an only child in a large household. InAmericaSt. Louis, Missouri;h4TSE's childhood in;a1 a way I was spoilt; in a bustling houseful of sisters just coming out or going out and having much society, I was allowed to indulge my tastes for solitary dreaming and reading all sorts of odd books in a library corner, unnoticed. I never talked, for who was there to talk to? And I had no playmates. We continued to live in a [sc. an] old quarter of the town, which had originally belonged to my grandfather;4 for the reason that my father took particular responsibility for his mother; her house was close by, and she did not want to move away from the scene of so many associations, and father did not want to be far from her – she depended upon him far more than upon any of her other children. So that we lived practically in a slum: it harmed me only in starting me with a rather drab image of the world, and in isolating me from other children of my own class. I never met little girls at all, except at the dancing classes, of which I was terrified; and I very much envied the other little boys who apparently played more or less with the same girls – or at least saw them frequently on other occasions than dancing classes – and who to my perpetual amazement seemed as much at ease with the girls as with each other. I became both conceited and timid; independent and helpless … But how I run on about my childhood, quite too garrulous. I'Animula'and TSE's childhood;a1 tried to put some of this into a little poem called ‘Animula’.5
I don’t want to think of you as perfect, for what companionship could I have with a person too superior to myself; it means much more to me that you too should have had to struggle against difficulties and defects of temperament; and because of that struggle you will go much further than most people, my dear. You see, I do know and recognise in you exceptional spiritual capacities; the greater the capacities the longer and harder the road, and perhaps the more lonely. And it is a long long time before one has conquered any one fault so completely as never to be in danger of being surprised by it unprepared – that is my own experience. But what an assurance of life it is to me, to find all these potentialities in one person, just when I needed it most!
I hope that by now you will have got over fussing about whether you are ‘prying’ into my life or asking painful questions. YouHale, Emilyrelationship with TSE;w9and TSE's habitual reserve;a4 can indeed help me by asking; for I do want fervently to reveal myself wholly to you; and you are doing me a great great service by allowing me to. I wish to have no reserves whatever; only you must help a very reticent person to abandon all reticence.
IHale, Emilyas actor;v8as Beatrice, TSE hopes;a7 should like to see you in the role of Beatrice!6 ItTerry, EllenTerry–Shaw correspondence;a1 isShaw, George Bernardand Shaw–Terry correspondence;a1 odd that you should have mentioned Ellen Terry, for I have been designing to send you the Shaw–Terry correspondence as soon as the ordinary edition appears – but not very quickly – not much before your birthday – as I want to look at it myself so as to be able to comment on it and appreciate your comments. I believe a considerable part consists of Shaw’s advice about her various parts.7
Thank you again for a very satisfying letter which has made me happy. NowPenty, Arthur J.;a2 to lunch with Mr. A. J. Plenty [sc. Penty] the economist. INational Government of 1931TSE on;a1 am very much worried about the present state of Britain and not much reassured by the provisional government – but this letter is too long already to start on politics now; and I do not want to distract my own mind from what you have said to me.
1.LeonLittle, Leon M. M. Little (1887–1968), a classmate of TSE’s at Harvard (as Class Secretary of 1910 he compiled the 25th Anniversary Report, 1935), was a banker by profession: he worked for Parkinson & Barr and then, after wartime service in the Navy (Navy Cross), for W. A. Harriman & Company. From 1921 he worked in the Trust Department of the First National Bank of Boston, and in 1927 he became Vice-President of the New England Trust Company.
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.HenryEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother) Ware Eliot (1879–1947), TSE’s older brother: see Biographical Register.
4.2635 Locust Street, St Louis, MO.
5.Animula (Ariel Poems no. 23: 1929).
6.Beatrice: heroine of Much Ado About Nothing.
7.Ellen Terry and Bernard Shaw: A Correspondence, ed. Christopher St John (1931).
3.HenryEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother) Ware Eliot (1879–1947), TSE’s older brother: see Biographical Register.
5.EleanorHinkley, Eleanor Holmes (TSE's first cousin) Holmes Hinkley (1891–1971), playwright; TSE’s first cousin; daughter of Susan Heywood Stearns – TSE’s maternal aunt – and Holmes Hinkley: see Biographical Register.
1.LeonLittle, Leon M. M. Little (1887–1968), a classmate of TSE’s at Harvard (as Class Secretary of 1910 he compiled the 25th Anniversary Report, 1935), was a banker by profession: he worked for Parkinson & Barr and then, after wartime service in the Navy (Navy Cross), for W. A. Harriman & Company. From 1921 he worked in the Trust Department of the First National Bank of Boston, and in 1927 he became Vice-President of the New England Trust Company.
12.PenelopeNoyes, Penelope Barker Barker Noyes (1891–1977), who was descended from settlers of the Plymouth Colony, lived in a historic colonial house (built in 1894 for her father James Atkins Noyes) at 1 Highland Street, Cambridge, MA. Unitarian. She was a close friend of EH.
11.ArthurPenty, Arthur J. J. Penty (1875–1937), architect (he was involved in the development of Hampstead Garden Suburb), and social critic influenced by Ruskin, Carlyle, Matthew Arnold and Edward Carpenter, as well as in part by G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, was an advocate of guild socialism, anti-modernism and anti-industrialism, agrarian reconstructionism, and Anglican socialism. A regular contributor to periodicals including The Guildsman, G. K.’s Weekly, The Crusader and The Criterion, his works include Old Worlds for New (1917), A Guildsman’s Interpretation of History (1920), and Towards a Christian Sociology (1923).
6.HaroldPeters, Harold Peters (1888–1943), close friend of TSE at Harvard, 1906–9. After graduation, he worked in real estate, and saw active service in the Massachusetts Naval Militia during WW1, and on leaving the navy he spent most of the rest of his life at sea. Leon M. Little, ‘Eliot: A Reminiscence’, Harvard Advocate, 100: 3.4 (Fall 1966), 33: ‘[TSE’sPeters, Haroldas TSE's quondam sailing companion;a2n] really closest friend was Harold Peters, and they were an odd but a very interesting pair. Peters and Eliot spent happy hours sailing together, sometimes in thick fog, off the Dry Salvages. In 1932 Peters sailed round the world for two years as skipper of an 85-foot auxiliary schooner, Pilgrim, having previously participated in the transatlantic race from Newport to Plymouth, and in the Fastnet Race. In 1943 he died after falling from a motor-boat that was in process of being hoisted into a dry dock at Marblehead.
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.