[22 Paradise Rd.; forwarded to Apt. 17, 90 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, Mass.]
I was glad to get your letter no. 40 of June 1st yesterday. ItConant, James B.;a1 had not been opened, but you mentioned an address by President Conant which was not enclosed.1 I should like to see what he said. IRoosevelt, Franklin D.and Italy's declaration of war;a6 listenedSecond World WarItaly's declaration of war;c4 to President Roosevelt at Charlottesville the other evening, and thought he spoke well 2 – with a pleasant voice which sounded more like a certain type of New England voice than a New Yorker: but perhaps the N.Y. State (as distinguished from the City) accent is more like New England. Events have moved very fast in the last days, and naturally absorb all free attention. WeSt. Stephen's Church, Gloucester Roadtwo days' continuous prayer at;a8 have had another two days of continuous prayer at St. Stephen’s and I took, as usual the hour from 4 to 5 in the morning, going to bed again afterwards. My'Yeats'TSE enjoying;a2 chiefYeats, William Butler ('W. B.')and 'Yeats';c3 occupation, apart from office hours, has been the preparation of my speech about Yeats for the Irish Academy. I have quite enjoyed this task, and'Poetic Drama Today and Tomorrow';a1 as soon as I have finished (I have only the peroration to write) I must prepare a short broadcast talk for Dublin on Poetic Drama in general.3 Ittravels, trips and plansTSE's 1940 visit to Dublin;d9itinerary;a3 will be rather impressive, speaking in the Abbey Theatre, where I have never been – it was closed during my previous visit to Dublin. I think that my transit to Dublin is assured, with the help of the Ministry of Information and the Irish High Commissioner; of course, in these times, I shall not prolong my visit beyond the two days necessary. I shall leave on the 28th or 29th, and return on the Tuesday.
Iflowers and florasweet peas;c9the essence of summer;b1 am sitting with a large vase of beautiful, and scented sweet peas in front of me, part of a lot brought to the vicar by a woman whose husband is missing. That is very stirring, of course, and for me is the essence of summer; yet it is strange to read in your letter of final examinations, graduation exercises, and preparations for the summer: I feel that it should still be March and your annual visit still three months away. Several people have asked me to spend a week with them during the summer, and I may take my holiday in this form, as I feel little stomach for planning any holiday by myself anywhere. IncludingRobertses, theto where they invite TSE;a2 the Roberts’s at Penrith, but that seems rather a long distance to go – not really farther than Cardiganshire, but less familiar. (MyFaber, Thomas Erle ('Tom', TSE's godson)win scholarship but splits infinitive;b4 god-son [sic], by the way, has won a scientific scholarship to Oundle School. I wrote to congratulate him and enclose a pound, but had to reprimand him for splitting an infinitive). AreCanadaGrand Manan Island, New Brunswick;a2in TSE's recollection;a1 youElsmiths, the;a4 thinking of visiting the Ellsmiths [sc. Elsmiths] at Grand Manan (not Monhegan!).4 I have seen it in the distance but never landed there; it used to be very primitive in my time; but I suppose that now it has a summer colony and a regular services from Calais Maine or Portobello. The tides are very great there, and there are swift currents, so that you should assure yourself that anyone who takes you out in a boat knows the coast; I don’t suppose you will do any bathing anyway. It is rather alarming to hear that you have been bitten by a dog, and I shall feel anxious until it is healed; you must be careful not to walk too much or too fast, especially in hot weather. And I imagine that the weather is getting pretty hot by now. But I am glad to hear that you have some new summer clothes. But perhaps the first new clothes of yours that I see will be winter ones – and your old winter clothes will be new to me. ItAmericaCalifornia;d3winterless;c3 is a very long time since I have seen you in winter dress – for California cannot be counted as winter, even up in the mountains.
I'Defence of the Islands';a1 enclose a copy of a script which I have just written to adorn an exhibition of war photographs at the N. Y. Fair5 – should you go through New York in the summer you could see it. There are phrases I do not feel sure about, but they do not want any changes. Writing a thing like this is not like writing a poem: you do not feel the same confidence in your own instinct for phrasing. Please do not show this or mention that I wrote it, because I want it to be, at first, completely anonymous.
IReads, the;a6 go on Saturday to Monday to Herbert Read’s near Jordan’s [sc. Jordans]; the following weekend I shall stop in London, as I leave for the weekend after that in Dublin. IEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother);f3 hopeEliot, Theresa Garrett (TSE's sister-in-law);b3 that you will see Henry and Theresa if you have any time in Boston. You are increasingly in my thoughts, or behind them.
1.JamesConant, James B. B. Conant (1893–1978), chemist; 23rd President of Harvard University, 1933–53.
2.Italy declared war on Britain and France on 10 June 1940. Roosevelt in his speech at the University of Virginia later that day expressed deep regret that Italy had chosen to enter the war on the side of the Axis and pledged to ‘extend to the opponents of force the material resources of this nation’ – i.e., to supply aid to the UK. See further Hans L. Trefousse, Germany and American Neutrality, 1939–1941 (1951); Robert A. Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent: American Entry into World War II (1965); Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (1979).
3.‘Poetic Drama To-Day and To-Morrow’, Radio Éireann, 1 July 1940: CProse 6, 91–5.
4.EulogyHale, Emilyholiday destinations;n1n for EH (Concord Players), 1969: ‘There was a range to her holidays; from Vermont to Seattle, from Maine to Grand Manan Island in the Bay of Fundy, from New Hampshire to North Carolina. She spent several summers in England, especially in the Cotswolds where she felt very much at home. One year she joined a theatre workshop to a castle in Scotland. She enjoyed very much a trip to Scandinavia and two years ago ventured a South American cruise.’
5.Enclosed'Defence of the Islands';a2n: a draft of ‘Defence of the Islands’, for Britain at War, ed. Monroe Wheeler (New York, 1941), 8. In a letter of 22 Feb. 1945 to Sheila Ritchie – who applied to reprint the piece in No Mean Heritage: An Anthology of the English Spirit (Melbourne, 1946), 52–3 – TSE stated that he wished the ‘following explanation’ to be printed together with the work: ‘These lines were not intended by the author to be either poetry or verse. They were written to accompany an Exhibition of Photographs of National Defence Work, which was exhibited in New York in 1940. The “we” of the lines is, therefore, the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Civil Defence forces, accompanying the appropriate group of photographs.’ He noted too, in the same letter to Ritchie: ‘These lines … were written on request in the course of an afternoon, and I do not wish any literary pretence to be made for them.’
1.JamesConant, James B. B. Conant (1893–1978), chemist; 23rd President of Harvard University, 1933–53.
3.HenryEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother) Ware Eliot (1879–1947), TSE’s older brother: see Biographical Register.
4.ThomasFaber, Thomas Erle ('Tom', TSE's godson) Erle Faber (1927–2004), TSE’s godson and principal dedicatee of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, was to become a physicist, teaching at Cambridge, first at Trinity, then for fifty years at Corpus Christi. He served too as chairman of the Geoffrey Faber holding company.
4.W. B. YeatsYeats, William Butler ('W. B.') (1865–1939), Irish poet and playwright: see Biographical Register.