[22 Paradise Rd., Northampton, Mass.]
YourHale, Emilycorrespondence with TSE;w3opened by censor;g9 letter 37 of May 14 has come, and by the way is the first to have been opened by [the] censor. I should expect this to delay matters, but this letter came in remarkably quick time. Try to write fairly legibly, so as not to give overworked censors too much trouble! I shall try hereafter to write twice a week, even if more briefly, in the hope that some letters may have a better chance of just catching the transport. And anyway, in these days I am more in a mood to write often and briefly; because the expression is the main thing, andChamberlain, Nevillehis resignation;a6 one has little in one’s head except public events most of which call for no comment, when things are moving so fast. WeSecond World WarChamberlain's resignation;c3 welcome the change of government, and the more drastic measures are very tonic.1 That’s all I need to say about that. IBird, Ernestinstructed in case of death;a9 have of course instructed Bird & Bird to communicate with you and Ada in the event of my ever being unable to do so. John Hayward’s address you know (c/o Lord Rothschild, Merton Hall, Cambridge). And I should cable when desirable.
IFurness, Laura;a4 was interested and pleased by your dining with Laura Furness and meeting one of the two St. Paul Furnesses 2 – I don’t now remember their name, but I thought them very nice cousins indeed. TheirAmericaSt. Paul, Minnesota;h5the Furness house in;a3 house in St. Paul I wish you could see: it is a surprise to find it in that place, for anything more completely period early-Victorian you cannot imagine. The kind of house that has an enormous drawing room with two marble fireplaces, and all the furniture and decorations of the same period.
AsChristian News-Letter (CNL);b7 theGarrick Club, LondonLiterary Society dine at;a2 News Letter Committee did not meet on Monday, ILiterary Society, The;a9 dined with the Literary Society, andMaclagan, Ericat The Literary Society;a8 chattedKnox, E. V.at Literary Society;a4 mostly with Eric Maclagan and E. V. Knox. AfterwardsDukes, Ashley;g1 (we dine now at the Garrick) I ran into Ashley Dukes outside, and spent an hour with him. WhichBrowne, Elliott Martinwar work with Pilgrim Players;d3 reminds me that Martin is very pleased at having got a small grant from the Pilgrim Trust for the Pilgrim Players, andMurder in the CathedralBrowne's wartime Pilgrim Players' adaptation;f9;a1 that he wants to prepare an adaptation of Murder for his small troupe (he has now 5 men and 4 women). OnWoolfs, thegive dinner without mentioning war;e5 Tuesday I dined with the Woolfs – a whole evening without mentioning the war at all.3 Spring is very definite, and is a sharper reminder of what not to expect in June.
I use your rosary every night now; andreading (TSE's)Twenty Best Plays of the Modern American Theatre;h2 I have resumed reading the 20 Best American Plays. So you see that your gifts are appreciated.
1.Worsted by a parliamentary vote, Neville Chamberlain resigned as Prime Minister. On 10 May, Winston Churchill formed a coalition government, with Labour’s Clement Attlee acting as Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Halifax as Foreign Secretary. ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat,’ declared Churchill. An Emergency Powers Act, granting the government comprehensive powers of nationalisation and mobilisation, was passed into law on 22 May.
2.Laura Furness (1882–1959) – grand-daughter of Minnesota governor Alexander Ramsey – and her sister Anita.
3.VirginiaWoolf, VirginiaTSE strikes as conceited;d4n Woolf noted: ‘Tom, I thought is ossifying (after Desmond [MacCarthy’s] geniality) into that curious writers egotism. “Coleridge & I … people read only our best poems. They ignore all the rest of me. It is difficult, when lecturing, to leave out oneself .. ” Yet poor man if this complacency gives him a shell, no doubt it protects him from suffering. A very self centred, self torturing & self examining man, seen against Desmond’s broad beam, & [G. E.] Moore’s candid childs eyes’ (Diary 5, 287).
4.E. MartinBrowne, Elliott Martin Browne (1900–80), English director and producer, was to direct the first production of Murder in the Cathedral: see Biographical Register.
4.AshleyDukes, Ashley Dukes (1885–1959), theatre manager, playwright, critic, translator, adapter, author; from 1933, owner of the Mercury Theatre, London: see Biographical Register.
6.RebekahFurness, Rebekah ('Rebe') (‘Rebe’) Furness (1854–1937) andFurness, Laura Laura Furness (1857–1949) – born in Philadelphia, daughters of James Thwing Furness and Elizabeth Margaret Eliot (a descendant of Sheriff William Greenleaf, who had declaimed the Declaration of Independence from the balcony of the State House in Boston in 1776) – had lived since 1920, with their brother Dawes Eliot Furness, in Boston’s Back Bay neighbourhood and in Petersham, New Hampshire. Rebekah, a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, was an artist.
2.E. V. KnoxKnox, E. V. (1881–1971), poet and satirist; editor of Punch, 1932–49.
3.EricMaclagan, Eric Maclagan (1879–1951), Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1924–45, had been Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer at Harvard, 1927–8. Distinguished as scholar and lecturer, and an expert on early Christian and Italian Renaissance art, his works include Catalogue of Italian Sculpture (with Margaret Longhurst, 1932) and The Bayeux Tapestry (1943), translations from poets including Rimbaud and Valéry, and editions of the works of William Blake. His offices included Vice-President of the Society of Antiquaries, 1932–6; President of the Museums Association, 1935–6. A devout Anglo-Catholic, he served too on the Cathedrals Advisory Council and the Central Council for the Care of Churches, and as a member of the Church Assembly. Knighted in 1933, he was appointed KCVO in 1945. In 1913 he married Helen Elizabeth Lascelles.
1.VirginiaWoolf, Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), novelist, essayist and critic: see Biographical Register.