[No surviving envelope]

T. S.Eliot
EmilyHale
TS
Faber & Faber Ltd
24 September 1931
My dear Lady,

I have twenty minutes this afternoon which I did not expect to have – IMurry, John Middleton;a1 lunched with Middleton Murry,1 early, as he had to catch a train at 2:30 from Liverpool Street to Norfolk where he lives now; and my usual Thursday committee is not till 3 o’clock. I hope you may observe, my dear, though you will not have observed so clearly as I have – that I am no longer so fretful when I do not hear from you exactly on the day on which I might expect to hear from you – I feel now that we are always near together even when communication lapses – which is very glorious for me: still, I do feel a normal worry when I am not sure when [sc. where] you are – merely because you may miss your train or may be in a railway accident or subject to any of the vicissitudes of anything that may happen to a precious article in transit – so I shall emit a sigh of relief when I get a letter from you from Boston. – And now I must go to my committee – because my 15 minutes have been interrupted twice – and if I have time I shall write a little more after the committee, and finish the letter tomorrow morning.

I have five minutes more this afternoon! and hope to have time to finish this tomorrow morning – whenThorp, Willard;a3 I have no engagements except that I have asked Prof. George Williamson of the University of Washington2 and also Willard Thorp to lunch with me. ThisSaerchinger, César;a1 morning I interviewed Mr. César Saerchlinger [sc. Saerchinger] of the Columbia Broadcasting Inc.3 and after some haggling over the price – I think he got the best of it – finally agreed tentatively to broadcast for American stations on Dec. 6th at 5:30, that is 12:30 Sunday morning New York time, fifteen minutes on John Dryden at a guinea a minute – I believe that I agreed largely because it amused me to think that any of my friends in America who have radio sets will be able to hear me if they want to. Do you know anyone who has a wireless?

IMurry, John MiddletonTSE's peculiar relationship with;a2 only see Murry about once a year. We have a peculiar intimate relationship which is not exactly friendship in the ordinary sense; more a consciousness, on both our parts, that the patterns of our lives are in some inscrutable way interwoven.

FRIDAY Sept. 25.: He is a strange mixture of sincerity and insincerity, of consciousness and unconsciousness, of humility and inferiority, of envy and hero-worship. ILloyds Bank;a3 met him first in 1918-19, when I was still in Lloyds Bank; heAthenaeum, TheTSE's decision not to assist Murry;a1 wrote and asked me to be his assistant editor on ‘The Athenaeum’ which was just being revived. I almost accepted; on the whole, I am not sorry that I did not. Anyway, the Athenaeum lived only a few years; but for the most of that time I wrote regularly for it; three weeks out of every four, and saw a good deal of Murry. KatherineMansfield, Katherineas recalled by TSE;a1 Mansfield4 was very little in London; usually abroad or at sanatoriums, I think. I never saw much of her, and I do not think I liked her very much. Later, after he founded ‘The Adelphi’ and I had got involved in ‘The Criterion’, our ideas began to diverge more and more. After Katherine’s death he went to live in the country, and has never lived in London since, and I only see him two or three times a year. Hele Maistre, Violet;a1 is now again a widower, with two small children by his second wife, whom I never met.5 I do not think he has quite a firstrate [sic] mind; I never felt quite sure that his loyalty would be always unquestionable.6 ButMaritain, Jacqueson Cocteau;a3 his insight, at times, is great; andCocteau, JeanMaritain on;a3, as Maritain once said to me when speaking of Cocteau, ‘if he is not sincere, he has a sincere desire to be sincere’; and he is one of the very few people – how few there are! – who are seriously concerned about the most serious things. I sympathise very much with his preference for remote and isolated country life – he tells me that he may often see no one for a week or more at a time, to talk to, except the local vicar – though that too, like living in town, has its intellectual dangers; butEnglandLondon;h1contrasted to country life;a4 in the present state of the world there can be few lives preferable, for the person who feels, than living in an old country district and seeing children, animals, trees and vegetables grow. To be uprooted, to have no very strong ties in a place, to have only what one has managed to erect by one’s own individual skill or intellectual superiority of some kind – as one gets older this kind of life is very very tiring, exhausting. ThereAmericaNew England;f9more real to TSE than England;a2 are times when NewAmericaTSE's sense of deracination from;a4 EnglandEnglandat times unreal;a4, or my memories of it, seem more real than old England; and when I feel that if I were suddenly translated elsewhere, the whole of my life in England would become a dream: for nothing is quite real when one never quite relaxes. And the craving for one’s own flesh and blood, and a world in which one’s own people have lived, which they have helped to form, a countryside or shore steeped in ancestral lives: all this asserts itself. But I am only a case of one type; and the whole modern world, more or less, seems to suffer from displacement, restlessness. And now I must go and behave as a correct clubman.

I shall write again on Monday. God bless you, my dove. Where are you now, I wonder? 7

Tom.

1.JohnMurry, John Middleton Middleton Murry (1889–1957), English writer and critic; editor of the Athenaeum, 1919–21; The Adelphi, 1923–48. In 1918, he married Katherine Mansfield. He was friend and biographer of D. H. Lawrence. His first notable critical work was Dostoevsky (1916); his most influential study, The Problem of Style (1922). Though as a Romanticist he was an intellectual opponent of the avowedly ‘Classicist’ Eliot, Murry offered Eliot in 1919 the post of assistant editor on the Athenaeum (which Eliot had to decline); in addition, he recommended him to be Clark Lecturer at Cambridge in 1926, and was a steadfast friend to both TSE and his wife Vivien. See F. A. Lea, The Life of John Middleton Murry (1959); David Goldie, A Critical Difference: T. S. Eliot and John Middleton Murry in English Literary Criticism, 1919–1928 (1998).

2.GeorgeWilliamson, George Williamson (1898–1968) taught at Pomona College, Claremont, California, 1925–7; then at Stanford University, and at the University of Chicago (1936–68), where he was Professor of English from 1940. His works include The Talent of T. S. Eliot (University of Washington Chapbooks no. 32, 1929); The Donne Tradition (1930); and A Reader’s Guide to T. S. Eliot: A Poem-by-Poem Analysis (New York, 1953). F&F was to bring out The Senecan Amble: A Study in Prose Form from Bacon to Collier (1951).

3.CésarSaerchinger, César Saerchinger (1884–1971), American broadcaster and writer; Director of European Service, Columbia Broadcasting System; author of Hello, America! Radio Adventures in Europe (1938), The Way Out of War (1940) and Artur Schnabel: A Biography (1958).

4.Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) was born in New Zealand. Her first stories were published in A. R. Orage’s periodical The New Age and collected in In a German Pension (1911). She met John Middleton Murry in 1911, and became friends with writers including D. H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda, and Virginia Woolf (who published Prelude in 1918), and hovered on the fringes of the Bloomsbury Group. She married Murry in 1918, and went on to publish Bliss (1920) and The Garden Party (1922). After her death from TB at the Gurdjieff Institute, Fontainebleau, Murry published two collections of her stories, her Journal (1927) and Letters (1928). See Claire Tomalin, Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life (1987).

5.Inle Maistre, Violet 1924 John Middleton Murry married Violet Le Maistre; they had two children: Katherine Middleton Murry (who was to publish Beloved Quixote: The Unknown Life of John Middleton Murry, 1986) and John Middleton Murry, Jr., who also became a writer.

6.See TSE’s Foreword to J. Middleton Murry, Katharine Mansfield and Other Literary Studies (1959).

7.Final paragraph written by hand.

America, TSE on not returning in 1915, and TSE as transatlantic cultural conduit, dependence on Europe, TSE's sense of deracination from, and the Great Depression, TSE a self-styled 'Missourian', as depicted in Henry Eliot's Rumble Murders, its national coherence questioned, its religious and educational future, versus Canadian and colonial society, where age is not antiquity, drinks Scotland's whisky, and FDR's example to England, underrates Europe's influence on England, redeemed by experience with G. I.'s, TSE nervous at readjusting to, and post-war cost of living, more alien to TSE post-war, its glories, landscape, cheap shoes, its horrors, Hollywood, climate, lack of tea, overheated trains, over-social clubs, overheating in general, perplexities of dress code, food, especially salad-dressing, New England Gothic, earthquakes, heat, the whistle of its locomotives, 'Easter holidays' not including Easter, the cut of American shirts, television, Andover, Massachusetts, EH moves to, Ann Arbor, Michigan, TSE on visiting, Augusta, Maine, EH stops in, Baltimore, Maryland, and TSE's niece, TSE engaged to lecture in, TSE on visiting, Bangor, Maine, EH visits, Bay of Fundy, EH sailing in, Bedford, Massachusetts, its Stearns connections, Boston, Massachusetts, TSE tries to recollect society there, its influence on TSE, its Museum collection remembered, inspires homesickness, TSE and EH's experience of contrasted, described by Maclagan, suspected of dissipating EH's energies, EH's loneliness in, Scripps as EH's release from, possibly conducive to TSE's spiritual development, restores TSE's health, its society, TSE's relations preponderate, TSE's happiness in, as a substitute for EH's company, TSE's celebrity in, if TSE were there in EH's company, its theatregoing public, The Times on, on Labour Day, Brunswick, Maine, TSE to lecture in, TSE on visiting, California, as imagined by TSE, TSE's wish to visit, EH suggests trip to Yosemite, swimming in the Pacific, horrifies TSE, TSE finds soulless, land of earthquakes, TSE dreads its effect on EH, Wales's resemblance to, as inferno, and Californians, surfeit of oranges and films in, TSE's delight at EH leaving, land of kidnappings, Aldous Huxley seconds TSE's horror, the lesser of two evils, Cannes reminiscent of, TSE masters dislike of, land of monstrous churches, TSE regrets EH leaving, winterless, its southern suburbs like Cape Town, land of fabricated antiquities, Cambridge, Massachusetts, TSE's student days in, socially similar to Bloomsbury, TSE lonely there but for Ada, TSE's happiness in, exhausting, EH's 'group' in, road safety in, Casco Bay, Maine, TSE remembers, Castine, Maine, EH holidays in, Cataumet, Massachusetts, EH holidays in, Chicago, Illinois, EH visits, reportedly bankrupt, TSE on, TSE takes up lectureship in, its climate, land of fabricated antiquities, Chocurua, New Hampshire, EH stays in, Concord, Massachusetts, EH's househunting in, EH moves from, Connecticut, its countryside, and Boerre, TSE's end-of-tour stay in, Dorset, Vermont, EH holidays in, and the Dorset Players, Elizabeth, New Jersey, TSE on visiting, Farmington, Connecticut, place of EH's schooling, which TSE passes by, EH holidays in, Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire, EH recuperates in, Gerrish Island, Maine, TSE revisits, Hollywood, perceived debauchery of its movies, TSE's dream of walk-on part, condemned by TSE to destruction, TSE trusts Murder will be safe from, Iowa City, Iowa, TSE invited to, Jonesport, Maine, remembered, Kittery, Maine, described, Lexington, Massachusetts, and the Stearns family home, Lyndeborough, New Hampshire, visited by EH, Madison, Wisconsin, Aurelia Bolliger hails from, Ralph Hodgson sails for, EH summers in, as conceived by TSE, who eventually visits, Maine, its coast remembered by TSE, TSE recalls swimming off, Minneapolis, on EH's 1952 itinerary, TSE lectures in, New Bedford, Massachusetts, EH's holidays in, TSE's family ties to, New England, and Unitarianism, more real to TSE than England, TSE homesick for, in TSE's holiday plans, architecturally, compared to California, and the New England conscience, TSE and EH's common inheritance, springless, TSE remembers returning from childhood holidays in, its countryside distinguished, and The Dry Salvages, New York (N.Y.C.), TSE's visits to, TSE encouraged to write play for, prospect of visiting appals TSE, as cultural influence, New York theatres, Newburyport, Maine, delights TSE, Northampton, Massachusetts, TSE on, EH settles in, TSE's 1936 visit to, autumn weather in, its spiritual atmosphere, EH moves house within, its elms, the Perkinses descend on, Aunt Irene visits, Boerre's imagined life in, TSE on hypothetical residence in, EH returns to, Peterborough, New Hampshire, visited by EH, TSE's vision of life at, Petersham, Massachusetts, EH holidays in, TSE visits with the Perkinses, EH spends birthday in, Edith Perkins gives lecture at, the Perkinses cease to visit, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, TSE on, and TSE's private Barnes Foundation tour, Independence Hall, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, surrounding countryside, Portsmouth, Maine, delights TSE, Randolph, New Hampshire, 1933 Eliot family holiday in, the Eliot siblings return to, Seattle, Washington State, EH summers in, EH's situation at, TSE prefers to California, EH repairs to post-Christmas, EH visits on 1952 tour, EH returns to, Sebasco, Maine, EH visits, South, the, TSE's first taste of, TSE's prejudices concerning, St. Louis, Missouri, TSE's childhood in, TSE's homesickness for, TSE styling himself a 'Missourian', possible destination for TSE's ashes, resting-place of TSE's parents, TSE on his return to, the Mississippi, compared to TSE's memory, TSE again revisits, TSE takes EVE to, St. Paul, Minnesota, TSE on visiting, the Furness house in, Tryon, North Carolina, EH's interest in, EH staying in, Virginia, scene of David Garnett's escapade, and the Page-Barbour Lectures, TSE on visiting, and the South, Washington, Connecticut, EH recuperates in, West Rindge, New Hampshire, EH holidays at, White Mountains, New Hampshire, possible TSE and EH excursion to, Woods Hole, Falmouth, Massachusetts, TSE and EH arrange holiday at, TSE and EH's holiday in recalled, and The Dry Salvages, TSE invited to, EH and TSE's 1947 stay in, EH learns of TSE's death at,
see also American Presidential Election
Athenaeum, The, TSE's decision not to assist Murry, stepping stone to TLS, TSE's experience of weekly reviewing,
Cocteau, Jean, TSE on, his conversion to Catholicism, Maritain on, an amusing bore, as interpreter of Greek drama, La Machine infernale, Orphée,

2.JeanCocteau, Jean Cocteau (1889–1963), playwright, poet, librettist, novelist, film-maker, artist and designer, was born near Paris and established an early reputation with two volumes of verse, La Lampe d’Aladin (Aladdin’s Lamp) and Prince Frivole (The Frivolous Prince). Becoming associated with many of the foremost practitioners of experimental modernism, such as Gide, Picasso, Stravinsky, Satie and Modigliani, he turned his energies to modes of artistic activity ranging from ballet-scenarios to opera-scenarios, as well as fiction and drama. ‘Astonish me!’ urged Sergei Diaghilev. A quick collaborator in all fields, his works embrace stage productions such as Parade (1917, prod. by Diaghilev, with music by Satie and designs by Picasso); Oedipus Rex (1927, with music by Stravinsky); and La Machine Infernale (produced at the Comédie des Champs-Elysées, 1934); novels including Les Enfants terribles (1929); and the screenplay Le Sang d’un poète (1930; The Blood of a Poet, 1949).

England, TSE as transatlantic cultural conduit for, discomforts of its larger houses, and Henry James, at times unreal, TSE's patriotic homesickness for, which is not a repudiation of America, TSE's want of relations in, encourages superiority in Americans familiar with, reposeful, natural ally of France, compared to Wales, much more intimate with Europe than America, TSE on his 'exile' in, undone by 'Dividend morality', in wartime, war binds TSE to, post-war, post-war privations, the English, initially strange to TSE, contortions of upward mobility, comparatively rooted as a people, TSE more comfortable distinguishing, the two kinds of duke, TSE's vision of wealthy provincials, its Tories, more blunt than Americans, as congregants, considered racially superior, a relief from the Scottish, don't talk in poetry, compared to the Irish, English countryside, around Hindhead, distinguished, the West Country, compared to New England's, fen country, in primrose season, the English weather, cursed by Joyce, suits mistiness, preferred to America's, distinguished for America's by repose, relaxes TSE, not rainy enough, English traditions, Derby Day, Order of Merit, shooting, Varsity Cricket Match, TSE's dislike of talking cricket, rugby match enthralls, the death of George V, knighthood, the English language, Adlestrop, Gloucestershire, visited by EH and TSE, Amberley, West Sussex, ruined castle at, Arundel, West Sussex, TSE's guide to, Bath, Somerset, TSE 'ravished' by, EH visits, Bemerton, Wiltshire, visited on Herbert pilgrimage, Blockley, Gloucestershire, tea at the Crown, Bosham, West Sussex, EH introduced to, Bridport, Dorset, Tandys settled near, Burford, Oxfordshire, EH staying in, too hallowed to revisit, Burnt Norton, Gloucestershire, TSE remembers visiting, and the Cotswolds, its imagined fate, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, less oppressive than Oxford, TSE's vision of life in, possible refuge during Blitz, Charlbury, Oxfordshire, visited by EH and TSE, Chester, Cheshire, TSE's plans in, TSE on, Chichester, West Sussex, the Perkinses encouraged to visit, EH celebrates birthday in, TSE's guide to, 'The Church and the Artist', TSE gives EH ring in, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, Perkinses take house at, shockingly remote, TSE's first weekend at, likened to Florence, TSE jealous of memories associated with, its Arts & Crafts associations, its attractions to Dr Perkins, forever associated with TSE and EH, sound of the Angelus, without EH, treasured in TSE's memory, excursions from, EH on 'our' garden at, Stamford House passes into new hands, EH's fleeting return to, Cornwall, TSE's visit to, compared to North Devon, Cotswolds, sacred in TSE's memory, Derbyshire, as seen from Swanwick, Devon ('Devonshire'), likened to American South, the Eliots pre-Somerset home, its scenery, Dorset, highly civilised, TSE feels at home in, TSE's Tandy weekend in, Durham, TSE's visit to, East Anglia, its churches, TSE now feels at home in, East Coker, Somerset, visited by Uncle Chris and Abby, TSE conceives desire to visit, reasons for visiting, described, visited again, and the Shamley Cokers, now within Father Underhill's diocese, photographs of, Finchampstead, Berkshire, visited by TSE and EH, specifically the Queen's Head, Framlingham, Suffolk, visited, Garsington, Oxfordshire, recalled, Glastonbury, Somerset, Gloucester, Gloucestershire, Gloucestershire, highly civilised, its beautiful edge, its countryside associated with EH, TSE at home in, its domestic architecture, Hadsleigh, Suffolk, visited, Hampshire, journey through, TSE's New Forest holiday, Hereford, highly civilised, Hull, Yorkshire, and 'Literature and the Modern World', Ilfracombe, Devon, and the Field Marshal, hideous, Knole Park, Kent, Lavenham, Suffolk, visited, Leeds, Yorkshire, TSE lectures in, touring Murder opens in, the Dobrées visited in, home to EVE's family, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, TSE's visit to, especially the Bishop's Palace, Lincolnshire, arouses TSE's curiosity, unknown to EH, Lingfield, Surrey, Little Gidding, Cambridgeshire, TSE's long-intended expedition to, London, in TSE's experience, TSE's isolation within, affords solitude and anonymity, contrasted to country life, its fogs, socially freer than Boston and Paris, eternally misty, its lionhunters, rain preferable in, more 'home' to TSE than America, socially more legible than Boston, its society compared to Boston's, TSE's desire to live among cockneys, South Kensington too respectable, Clerkenwell, Camberwell, Blackheath, Greenwich scouted for lodging, its comparatively vigorous religious life, Camberwell lodging sought, Clerkenwell lodging sought, and music-hall nostalgia, abandoned by society in August, the varieties of cockney, TSE's East End sojourn, South Kensington grows on TSE, prepares for Silver Jubilee, South Kensington street names, Dulwich hallowed in memory, so too Greenwich, during 1937 Coronation, preparing for war, Dulwich revisited with family, in wartime, TSE as air-raid warden in, Long Melford, Suffolk, Lowestoft, Suffolk, Lyme Regis, Dorset, with the Morleys, Marlborough, Wiltshire, scene of a happy drink, Needham Market, Suffolk, Newcastle, Northumberland, TSE's visit to, Norfolk, appeals to TSE, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, dreary, Nottinghamshire, described for EH, Oxford, Oxfordshire, as recollected by TSE, past and present, EH takes lodgings in, haunted for TSE, in July, compared to Cambridge, Peacehaven, Sussex, amazing sermon preached in, Penrith, TSE's visit to, Rochester, as Dickens described, Salisbury, Wiltshire, in the Richmonds' company, Shamley Green, Surrey, TSE's ARP work in, its post office, Pilgrim Players due at, Somerset, highly civilised, TSE at home in, Southwold, Suffolk, TSE visits with family, Stanton, Gloucestershire, on TSE and EH's walk, Stanway, Gloucestershire, on EH and TSE's walk, Suffolk, TSE visits with family, Surrey, Morley finds TSE lodging in, evening bitter at the Royal Oak, TSE misses, as it must have been, Sussex, commended to EH, TSE walking Stane Street and downs, EH remembers, Walberswick, Suffolk, Wells, Somerset, TSE on visiting, Whipsnade, Bedfordshire, EH and TSE visit, Whitchurch Canonicorum, Dorset, delightful name, Wiltshire, highly civilised, TSE at home in, Winchelsea, East Sussex, visited, Winchester, TSE on, Wisbech, Lincolnshire, TSE on visiting, Worcestershire, TSE feels at home in, Yeovil, Somerset, visited en route to East Coker, York, TSE's glimpse of, Yorkshire,
see also British General Election
le Maistre, Violet,

5.Inle Maistre, Violet 1924 John Middleton Murry married Violet Le Maistre; they had two children: Katherine Middleton Murry (who was to publish Beloved Quixote: The Unknown Life of John Middleton Murry, 1986) and John Middleton Murry, Jr., who also became a writer.

Lloyds Bank, TSE's first boss at, his work on pre-war debt, safeguards TSE's Order of Merit,
Mansfield, Katherine, as recalled by TSE, remembered at Garsington,
Maritain, Jacques, and de Menasce's conversion and ordination, responsible for Cocteau's reconversion, on Cocteau, approaching sainthood, Boston reunion with, TSE appreciates his spiritual inferiority to, introduced to Jeanette McPherrin, on The Use of Poetry, writes to Jeanette McPherrin, TSE chairs talk by, which EH attends, thanks TSE for hospitality, and TSE's Paris itinerary, dinner for,
see also Maritains, the

5.JacquesMaritain, Jacques Maritain (1882–1973), philosopher and littérateur, was at first a disciple of Bergson, but revoked that allegiance (L’Evolutionnisme de M. Bergson, 1911; La Philosophie bergsonienne, 1914) and became a Roman Catholic and foremost exponent of Neo-Thomism. For a while in the 1920s he was associated with Action Française, but the connection ended in 1926. Works include Art et scolastique (1920); Saint Thomas d’Aquin apôtre des temps modernes (1923); Réflexions sur l’intelligence (1924); Trois Réformateurs (1925); Primauté du spirituel (1927), Humanisme intégral (1936), Scholasticism and Politics (1940), Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (1953). TSE told Ranjee Shahani (John O’London’s Weekly, 19 Aug. 1949, 497–8) that Maritain ‘filled an important role in our generation by uniting philosophy and theology, and also by enlarging the circle of readers who regard Christian philosophy seriously’. See Walter Raubicheck, ‘Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, and the Romantics’, Renascence 46:1 (Fall 1993), 71–9; Shun’ichi Takayanagi, ‘T. S. Eliot, Jacques Maritain, and Neo-Thomism’, The Modern Schoolman 73: 1 (Nov. 1995), 71–90; Jason Harding, ‘“The Just Impartiality of a Christian Philosopher”: Jacques Maritain and T. S. Eliot’, in The Maritain Factor: Taking Religion into Interwar Modernism, ed. J. Heynickx and J. De Maeyer (Leuven, 2010), 180–91; James Matthew Wilson, ‘“I bought and praised but did not read Aquinas”: T. S. Eliot, Jacques Maritain, and the Ontology of the Sign’, Yeats Eliot Review 27: 1–2 (Spring–Summer 2010), 21; and Carter Wood, This Is Your Hour: Christian Intellectuals in Britain and the Crisis of Europe, 1937–40 (Manchester, 2019), 69–72.

Murry, John Middleton, TSE's peculiar relationship with, dismissed qua Marxist by Mirsky and Rowse, attacks TSE over Social Credit, TSE delighted to praise his Shakespeare, taking orders, at first Moot meeting, anointed reader of Boutwood Lectures, Shakespeare,

1.JohnMurry, John Middleton Middleton Murry (1889–1957), English writer and critic; editor of the Athenaeum, 1919–21; The Adelphi, 1923–48. In 1918, he married Katherine Mansfield. He was friend and biographer of D. H. Lawrence. His first notable critical work was Dostoevsky (1916); his most influential study, The Problem of Style (1922). Though as a Romanticist he was an intellectual opponent of the avowedly ‘Classicist’ Eliot, Murry offered Eliot in 1919 the post of assistant editor on the Athenaeum (which Eliot had to decline); in addition, he recommended him to be Clark Lecturer at Cambridge in 1926, and was a steadfast friend to both TSE and his wife Vivien. See F. A. Lea, The Life of John Middleton Murry (1959); David Goldie, A Critical Difference: T. S. Eliot and John Middleton Murry in English Literary Criticism, 1919–1928 (1998).

Saerchinger, César,

3.CésarSaerchinger, César Saerchinger (1884–1971), American broadcaster and writer; Director of European Service, Columbia Broadcasting System; author of Hello, America! Radio Adventures in Europe (1938), The Way Out of War (1940) and Artur Schnabel: A Biography (1958).

Thorp, Willard, introduced by TSE to Dobrée, at the Criterion meeting, grows on TSE, teaches Ombre to the Eliots, EH thinks of entrusting letters to, seems lifeless, has stiffening effect on TSE, requests Paul More tribute, which he delivers to More, congratulates TSE on Family Reunion, invited TSE to Princeton, due to teach at Harvard, compared to Margaret, resembles Sweden's Crown Prince, formally notified of EH's bequest, objects to TSE's 50-year moratorium, and EH's 'recordings', seeks again to shorten moratorium, but again refused, invited to petition TSE directly, but shifts responsibility to Dix, makes transcript of EH's 'recording',
see also Thorps, the

1.Margaret Thorp, née Farrand (1891–1970), contemporary and close friend of EH; noted author and biographer. WillardThorp, Willard Thorp (1899–1990) was a Professor of English at Princeton University. See Biographical Register. See further Lyndall Gordon, Hyacinth Girl, 126–8, 158–9.

Williamson, George,

2.GeorgeWilliamson, George Williamson (1898–1968) taught at Pomona College, Claremont, California, 1925–7; then at Stanford University, and at the University of Chicago (1936–68), where he was Professor of English from 1940. His works include The Talent of T. S. Eliot (University of Washington Chapbooks no. 32, 1929); The Donne Tradition (1930); and A Reader’s Guide to T. S. Eliot: A Poem-by-Poem Analysis (New York, 1953). F&F was to bring out The Senecan Amble: A Study in Prose Form from Bacon to Collier (1951).