[22 Paradise Rd., Northampton, Mass.]
Your letter 83 of Easter Day arrived in just over two weeks, which is not bad; and once again, perhaps for the last time, I conjure you to procure some thin paper, as it distresses me to see you expending sixty cents in postage on each letter. I was glad that my cable arrived in good time. YouChristianitythe Church Year;d8missed through illness;c5 will know by now that I was not able to pray for you in church on Easter – my first absence on Easter Day for a good many years. I think that I can assure you – so far as I can speak with confidence after several lapses – that I am now restored to health; andNoel-Buxton, RufusTSE walks four miles to lunch with;a5 yesterday, being a very fine day, I walked about ten miles: counting a mile there and a mile back from church in the morning; and a four mile walk to Peaslake before lunch and the walk back in the afternoon. This was to lunch with Rufus Noel Buxton, whose wife and baby share a cottage there with some friends, while he spends most of his time in Oxford where he is pursuing agricultural studies. YoungNoel-Buxton, Rufusas poet;a6 men who want to write poetry, and who appear to have every qualification except genius, are somewhat of a strain: this is a particularly nice one, which makes things pleasanter and perhaps more difficult. At least, relations are free from that particular strain which comes from having to appear unaware of obvious social differences – a strain which is present in most of one’s dealings with men of letters.
I was glad to have a little news of such spring garments as you have invested in this year: and these similar items of personal relationships help to keep a balance of scales which are so heavily loaded on the side of world events. ThereEast Cokerreception;b5 isSecond World Warits effect on TSE;b3 one struggle to maintain belief in the value of the things one is best qualified to do – thoughDry Salvages, Thereception;b1 I must say that the reception, public and still more important by odd individuals, of my last two poems has been a great help to believing that by keeping on with such work I can make a needed contribution, small but my own. And there is another struggle to maintain a continuous animation of personal feelings – it is not that they wither, but that they become submerged and inarticulate: it is not the feelings but their expression that is numbed by the pressure of the convulsions of the whole world, the best outcome of which will be but the best of a bad job. It is no doubt emotionally right for people, in such a time, to [be] led to think of what can be done to make a ‘new world’ after the war: but from a material point of view it will be a start under heavy handicaps, and from a cultural point of view it will be a start after a dangerous break in continuity of tradition: and it will need something like a moral and spiritual conversion to make anything better of things. I am not of course speaking of Britain alone, but of the whole world – it is not only we who are in danger of contamination from an opponent entirely without moral scruples. But one must cling fast to personal relations, however speechlessly.
TheShamley Wood, Surreyhis situation as paying guest;a2 question you put about my personal arrangements is, from my point of view, a difficult one, and the outcome of consideration is usually that for the present it is best to stay wherever one is. There is also a question of honour. MrsMirrlees, Emily Lina ('Mappie', née Moncrieff)circumstances in which she offered TSE refuge;b4. M. invited me at a time when I was extremely tired and run down, and needed to get away; I should probably have got the influenza at Malvern anyway and would have been ill for some weeks wherever I was; and even if some very attractive opening appeared, I should not like to bolt on recovering health. Finally, I know that it is a support to her to have a man about the place, even though I spend two or three nights a week in town (fortunately there is now a resident gardener, though he does not quite take my place). And I am most concerned about such a lonely household during the dry weather of summer, if there is any: the chief danger here would be the danger of fire. So I must just see what the next months bring forth.
If you take a ‘refresher’ course during the summer vacation, it is all the more important that you should dispose of the rest of the holiday with the prime consideration of physical health and nervous repose: and I urge you not to undertake the former unless you can arrange the latter. AsPerkinses, theTSE encourages EH's independence from;f4 timeHale, Emilyfamily;w4EH's relations with aunt and uncle;a6 goes on, the Perkins’s will no doubt be the cause of more and more concern to you, but your work must come first, and I do not want you to slip into a position of nurse-companion from which it will be impossible to escape. This is really a matter of very serious concern to me.
TheDobrées, thereturn to London;b3 Dobrées have come to town, and it will be a pleasure to have another old friend about whom I shall see from time to time. I resumed my visits to Oxford last week – didLivingstone, Sir Richardconfers Presidency of Classical Association on TSE;a3 IClassical AssociationLivingstone confers Presidency on TSE;a2 tell you that the result of becoming friendly with Sir Richard Livingstone has been that he has had me made President of the Classical Association for the next year! – butMagdalene College, CambridgeWhitsun feast at;a6 I look forward with much more pleasure to Whitsun in Cambridge. ItEnglandCambridge, Cambridgeshire;d6less oppressive than Oxford;a1 isEnglandOxford, Oxfordshire;i2compared to Cambridge;a6 now much more restful for me than Oxford: forChristian News-Letter (CNL);c3 one thing, not having any persistent business there like the Christian News Letter; for another, not being anybody’s guest but having a college to go to; andHayward, John;k3 of course having John there.
Would you be willing to try sending another photograph???
11.JohnHayward, John Davy Hayward (1905–65), editor and critic: see Biographical Register.
1.SirLivingstone, Sir Richard Richard Livingstone (1880–1960), President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 1933–50; Vice-Chancellor, 1944–7. Author of A Defence of Classical Education (1916); The Pageant of Greece (1923); The Future in Education (1941). President of the Classical Association, 1940–1. TSE to Aimée Lamb, 16 Mar. 1948: ‘[Livingstone] is … not only one of the most distinguished men in education, but a very charming person.’
3.HopeMirrlees, Emily Lina ('Mappie', née Moncrieff) Mirrlees’s mother was Emily Lina Mirrlees, née Moncrieff (1862–1948) – known as ‘Mappie’ or ‘Mappy’ – see Biographical Register.
1.RufusNoel-Buxton, Rufus Buxton (1917–80), a scholar of Balliol College, Oxford, was to become 2nd Baron Noel-Buxton. In WW2 he was invalided from an Officer Cadet Training Unit and became a research assistant at the Agricultural Economics Research Institute in Oxford, while also lecturing to the forces. After two further years as a producer on the BBC North American Service, he joined Farmers’ Weekly, 1950–2. In later years he became famous for fording a number of perilous English rivers. His publications include Without the Red Flag (1936); The Ford: A Poem (1955); Westminster Wader (F&F, 1957).