[22 Paradise Rd., Northampton, Mass.]
Your two letters, 85 and 86 have arrived: the latter in very quick time indeed – so I think that air mail is now probably much quicker as well as surer. It was good to have so much news, and to have your plans for the summer in such good time. I thinkAmericaMadison, Wisconsin;f5EH summers in;a3 that Madison sounds the right thing – so long as you do not work for any test or diploma but content yourself with hearing the lectures etc. and perhaps doing a little reading, and make the most of any summer amenities that present themselves. To judge by the weather you have been having it should be a hot summer there. And also you must plan the other half of the vacation with a view to health and rest and not spend all of it with your relatives. (IPerkins, Dr John Carroll (EH's uncle)Annals of King's Chapel;j9 did receive the King’s Chapel book, I am ashamed to say; but I have been very slow in reading it. I will however write to Uncle John).1 ICurtiss, Minain Dr Perkins's book;a1 was amused by your account of Mrs. Curtis, and immediately identified her: I remember her as a hearty, uproarious sort of woman who was rather amusing and with whom it was easy, at least on an occasional meeting, to get on.2 SheKirstein, Lincoln;a1 seemed much more vital than her brother Lincoln, but he did good work for a time in publishing his Hound and Horn.3 ItAuden, Wystan Hugh ('W. H.')as pictured by TSE in America;c5 is rather depressing to think that Auden is roaming about, in these times, giving an occasional lecture about me. I have never heard him say more than a few words after a theatrical performance, but I should expect that his elocution and platform manner would be deplorable. WeAuden, Wystan Hugh ('W. H.')Letters from Iceland (with MacNeice);c8 are publishing a new book of his: a queer melange of a long poem, a great many notes, and some more poems at the end.4 The first poem is in a short rhymed metre which is almost impossible to read for more than a page or two without one’s attention wandering: some of the incidental short poems are more interesting; but the notes do not indicate that his mind has yet arrived very definitely anywhere.
I have a mixed programme for the immediate future. OnBritish Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)Eastern Service broadcasts East Coker;c6 MondayEast Cokerbroadcast by BBC Eastern Service;b9 I believe I have to go up to broadcast ‘East Coker’ to the Orient:5 I intend to come back the same night. FromMagdalene College, CambridgeWhitsun feast at;a6 London I go on Friday to spend Whitsun at Magdalene, and have a round of visits to make in Cambridge: diningHayward, Johnexcursions to Cambridge to visit;k1 one night with John, oneMannheim, Karldinner in Cambridge with;a3 with Karl Mannheim, one in Hall, andInnes, Hugh McLeoddinner at Trinity with;a1 one I think at Trinity with Mr. Innes, Christina’s father. FromChristian News-Letter (CNL)first number;a4 Cambridge I go to Oxford for the C.N.L. meeting (LastLivingstones, the;a3 week IAll Souls College, Oxfordlodges TSE;a4 arrived in Oxford to find the Livingstones both away, and was put up at the last moment by the Warden of All Soul’s); thence to London again, andMirrleeses, the;a6 I shall probably spend the weekend at Hindhead with the Mirrlees’. As they are going there for a week’s change, it would be a good opportunity to make a weekend visit elsewhere: but with so much moving about I do not feel much inclination to see more people still, and going to Hindhead will be more like going nowhere than going anywhere else would – at Shamley there will only be the servants who will be engaged in spring cleaning.
I think my energy is still rather limited. There have been several fine days, but always a tendency to revert to chilliness; on the fine days I spend some time out of doors, at present cutting dead bracken, which is rather inflammable. ILittle Giddingbeing drafted;a9 have done a draft of the first part of a new poem, but there, for the moment, I am stuck.
IfSecond World Warits effect on TSE;b3 Iwritingthe effect of war on;c7 am, a good deal of the time, in a rather depressed state, it is not due to any particular situation in the war, for the varying fortunes of that I regard without either depression or elation. There is always a combination of reasons, some of them quite personal and small: there is the difficulty of concentrating on things that one does best, and that one knows, with one’s mind, are the best things to go on doing – yet with a feeling of discontent with oneself for not being a different person engaged in something of more obvious typical importance. There is the horror of so much hatred and evil loose in the world. There is the ignorance of when I can look forward to seeing you next. Onetravels, trips and planspossible wartime transatlantic crossings;d7TSE's desire to remain in England;a9 side of me, andEnglandwar binds TSE to;b7 the one which would have the casting vote, does not want to go away from England at all at this time, and wants to see the horror through. IEnglandLondon;h1in wartime;d4 should not even like to be absent from London altogether: I do flatter myself that I am of some use, being there two nights a week; but it is more than that – I don’t want to feel afterwards that I have been wholly out of things, and I want to share something of what London and my friends there experience. The one thing that would be unendurable would be to be wholly outside of things: and I don’t imagine for a moment that there is any heroism about this. I miss you very much – but I don’t want to be in America, and I don’t want you here – I want you and peace, with a world in which it is still possible to [?do] some good and to enjoy simple things. And I want to finish my poem.
1.Annals of King’s Chapel from the Puritan Age of New England to the Present Day, vol. III: 1895–1940, by John Carroll Perkins (Boston, 1940).
2.Mina Curtiss.
3.Lincoln Kirstein.
4.TSE’sAuden, Wystan Hugh ('W. H.')New Year Letter;c9Isherwood, Christopher
5.TSE’s recording of East Coker for the BBC Eastern Service took place on 26 May, following lunch with Desmond Hawkins and George Orwell. The recording was one in a series entitled ‘Turning Over A New Leaf’, with speakers including Hawkins, Orwell and Dorothy Sayers.
10.W. H. AudenAuden, Wystan Hugh ('W. H.') (1907–73), poet, playwright, librettist, translator, essayist, editor: see Biographical Register.
11.JohnHayward, John Davy Hayward (1905–65), editor and critic: see Biographical Register.
2.ChristinaInnes, Hugh McLeod Morley’s father, Hugh McLeod Innes (1862–1944), classicist, was a Fellow and Bursar of Trinity College, Cambridge; author of Fellows of Trinity (1941).
4.LincolnKirstein, Lincoln Kirstein (1907–96), writer, impresario, connoisseur of art, was born into a wealthy, cultivated Jewish family (his father was chief executive of the Boston department store Filene’s). At Harvard he set up, with a contemporary, Varian Fry, the periodical Hound & Horn: A Harvard Miscellany – specifically modelling it on The Criterion – which ran from 1927 until 1934. Smitten by what he styled ‘balletptomaine’, he launched in 1933, with his friend M. M. Warburg, the School of American Ballet, and then the American Ballet, which became the resident company of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. In 1946, he founded, with George Balanchine, the Ballet Society, later the New York City Ballet, of which he was General Director, 1946–89. In the 1960s he commissioned and helped to fund the New York State Theater building at the Lincoln Center. In 1935 he published Dance: A Short History of Classic Theatrical Dancing. See further Martin Duberman, The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein (2007).
3.KarlMannheim, Karl Mannheim (1893–1947), Hungarian–Jewish sociologist: see Biographical Register.
3.DrPerkins, Dr John Carroll (EH's uncle) John Carroll Perkins (1862–1950), Minister of King’s Chapel, Boston: see Biographical Register.