[22 Paradise Rd.; forwarded to c/o Perkins, 90 Commonwealth Ave., Boston]

T. S.Eliot
EmilyHale
MS
Magdalene Cambridge
Letter 82.
2.vi.41
My dear

As you will understand by the heading, I am reduced to this painful means of communication, so this letter will be short, dull, badly expressed and becoming illegible. ButMirrleeses, the;a7 on a tour including Cambridge, Oxford, London and Hindhead, I have too much else to carry – but am now wishing that I had brought a typewriter. ThisHayward, Johnexcursions to Cambridge to visit;k1 has been a pleasant visit, in spite of not the most favourable weather: I have seen a good deal of John, who is just as good company as ever, and most, though not all, of the people I hoped to see, besidesMagdalene College, CambridgeWhitsun feast at;a6 partaking of a modest, but good, small college feast. InBritish Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)Eastern Service broadcasts East Coker;c6 London IEast Cokerbroadcast by BBC Eastern Service;b9 did my broadcast of ‘East Coker’ to India, and lunched with the man in charge, a lively Pathan. And afterwards the BBC with unexpected generosity raised my fee from five to eight guineas.

I am pleased to say that in spite of the weather I do not appear to have caught a cold so far, having been rather careful to avoid chill and fatigue. This is a change, and a very welcome one, rather than a holiday: I hope I may get that later.

WhenChristianityhell;b8and damnation;a2 you suggest that if I thought any of my friends ‘lost’ I ought to feel it my duty to see them rather than avoid them, I think you are simply failing to consider the literal meaning. As one cannot possibly know one is not justified in treating anyone as ‘lost’; but supposing one did know, what would be the use of seeing him? You could, by hypothesis, do him no good and might do yourself harm. You would not, of course, abandon a friend merely because of some irreclaimable vices: but you should if you thought him completely & hopelessly turned to darkness & evil will. And I say one has no right to believe that of anyone.

ThereWalpole, Hughfailed by his Times obituary;a6 is another ungracious obituary in The Times today1 – this time of Hugh Walpole, & I am wondering whether I ought to try to reply. But I can’t write more now – my hand has given out, & I must do a legible envelope!

Lovingly
Tom

1.‘Sir Hugh Walpole’, The Times, 2 June 1941, 6: CProse 6, 173–4.

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), TSE's committee service for, its future discussed, TSE working on autumn programme for, TSE on educational broadcasting in general, Barbara Burnham production of Murder, lobbies TSE for next play, 'The Need for Poetic Drama', Metaphyical poet broadcasts for, 'The Church's Message to the World', Christmas Day 'Cats' broadcast, dramatic Waste Land adaptation, which is censored for broadcast, repeats 'Cats', plays Parsifal on Good Friday, broadcasts Hawkins interview with TSE, 'Towards a Christian Britain', 1941 production of Murder, Eastern Service broadcasts East Coker, broadcasts Webster talk, Tennyson talk, Dry Salvages, Poe talk, Dryden talk, Joyce talk, European Service broadcasts TSE's talk, TSE declines Christmas broadcast for, wants to record 'Milton II', broadcasts TSE's personal poetry selection, broadcasts Gielgud's Family Reunion, marks TSE's 60th birthday, Gielgud Family Reunion repeated, solicits TSE post-Nobel Prize, TSE's EP broadcast for, records TSE reading Ash-Wednesday, floats Reith Lectures suggestion, approaches Marilyn Monroe to star in Fitts's Lysistrata,
Christianity, and human isolation, and modern economics, Ada on TSE's personal piety, scheme for 'Pro Fide' bookshop, among the Eliot family, and beauty, its sects like different clubs, Anglo-Catholicism, TSE's conversion to, which he dates to Eccleston Square meeting, Anglican Missal sought for EH, but unfortunately out of print, discussed at Boston Theological School, and the Petrine Claims, apostolic succession, over Roman Catholicism, as refuge from VHE, and the Reformation, asceticism, discipline, rigour, the necessity for, and TSE's daily exhortation, making and breaking habits, mastering emotions and passions, as salubrious, only remedy for a prurient culture, confession and communion, more possible during Harvard year, the case for unattainable ideals, in time of war, gets TSE up before 7 o'clock, hereditary with TSE, belief, and good poetry, faced with Second World War, and conversion, antidote to TSE's skepticism, Christendom, TSE ponders the decline of, TSE on his prominence within, its ruin, the Church Visible and Invisible, and TSE's war work, the Malabar Church, prospect of total reunion within, confession, helps to objectify sin, more dreaded than dentist, harder in the morning, death and afterlife, the struggle to prepare for, consoles TSE in life, and cremation, Requiem Mass, gives meaning to life, and what makes a desirable burial place, the nature of eternal life, divorce, unrecognised by Anglo-Catholic Church, which TSE regrets, in church law, would separate TSE from Church, evil, TSE's belief in, and moral percipience, guilt, and the New England conscience, hell, TSE's 1910 vision of, and damnation, according to TSE, liturgy, TSE's weekly minimum, Mass of the Pre-sanctified, Requiem Mass versus Mass of Good Friday, and whether to serve at Mass, Imposition of Ashes, at Christmas, High Mass over Mattins, aversion to Low Church Mattins, Roman service in Wayland, Tenebrae, in country parish church, as guest at Kelham, remarkable sermon, over Christmas, Tenebrae and Family Reunion, during Holy Week, Mass of Charles King and Martyr, love, loving one's neighbour, marriage, TSE's need for privacy within, mysticism and transcendence, interpenetration of souls, intimations of life's 'pattern', 'doubleness', arrived at through reconciliation, orthodoxy, only remedy for contemporary culture, and pagans, sets TSE at odds with modernity, necessarily trinitarian, 'Christian' defined, iniquities of liberal theology, and creed, authority, Transubstantiation, TSE disclaims 'self-centredness' in maintaining, politics, the Church and social change, how denomination maps onto, need for working-class priests, church leaders against totalitarianism and Nazism, Christianity versus Fascism and Communism, Papal Encyclical against Nazi Germany, the 'Dividend morality', Presbyterianism, TSE quips on the meanness of, Quakerism, resignation, reconciliation, peace, TSE's love allows for, 'peace that passeth all understanding', the struggle to maintain, following separation from VHE, retreat and solitude, EH at Senexet, the need for, a need increasing with age, and TSE's mother, Roman Catholicism, TSE's counter-factual denomination, Rome, sacraments, Holy Communion, marriage, sainthood, TSE's idea of, the paradoxes of, susceptible of different sins, sins, vices, faults, how to invigilate, the sense of sin, the sinner's condition, bound up with the virtues, as a way to virtue, TSE's self-appraisal, when humility shades into, when unselfishness shades into, among saints, proportionate to spiritual progress, daydreaming, despair, lust, pride, perfection-seeking pride, spiritual progress and direction, TSE's crisis of 1910–11, EH's crisis, versus automatism, TSE's sense of, towards self-knowledge, in EH's case, as personal regeneration, temptation, to action/busyness, the Church Year, Advent, Christmas, dreaded, happily over, TSE rebuked for bah-humbugging, church trumps family during, season of irreligion, thoughts of EH during, unsettling, fatiguing, in wartime, Easter preferred to, Ash Wednesday, Lent, season for meditation and reading, prompts thoughts of EH, Lady Day, Holy Week, its intensity, arduous, preserved from public engagements, exhausting but refreshing, excitingly austere, Easter, better observed than Christmas, missed through illness, Unitarianism, the Eliots' as against EH's, the prospect of spiritual revival within, as personified by TSE's grandfather, regards the Bible as literature, as against Catholicism, divides EH from TSE, and whether Jesus believed himself divine, according to Dr Perkins, in England as against America, over-dependent on preachers' personality, TSE's wish that EH convert from, outside TSE's definition of 'Christian', the issue of communion, baptism, impossibly various, virtues heavenly and capital, bound up with the vices, better reached by way of sin, charity, towards others, in Bubu, TSE's intentness on, delusions of, as against tolerance, chastity, celibacy, beneath humility, TSE lacks vocation for, faith, and doubt, hope, a duty, TSE's struggle for, humility, distinguished from humiliation, comes as relief, greatest of the virtues, propinquitous to humour, not an Eliot virtue, opposed to timidity, danger of pride in, is endless, TSE criticised for overdoing, theatre a lesson in, most difficult of the virtues, possessed by EH, possessed by EH to a fault, TSE compares himself to EH in, the paradox of, distinguished from inferiority, self-discovery teaches, possessed by Dr Perkins, patience, recommended to EH, its foundations, possessed by Uncle John, purity, distinguished from purification, temperance, with alcohol, beneath humility,
East Coker, its Kensington origins, and TSE's cousins' visit, TSE's own plan to visit eponymous village, which he does, TSE returns to East Coker, TSE on writing, and Yeats's Purgatory, needs polishing, ready for printer, EH sent, decision to print in NEW, TSE on its mood, sales, reception, EH yet to receive, EH promised shilling edition, broadcast by BBC Eastern Service, draft inevitably bought by Gallup, TSE recites for Czechs, EH recounts recitation of, TSE's recording of,
Hayward, John, in TSE's thumbnail description, his condition and character, what TSE represents to, VHE complains about TSE to, TSE's new chess-playing neighbour, meets EH over tea, hosts TSE, GCF and de la Mare, on EH, on EH (to TSE), gives TSE cigars for Christmas, calls EH TSE's 'sister', and the Dobrées on Boxing Day, and TSE play a prank on guests, backstage at The Times, taken for walk, on Jenny de Margerie, Empson, TSE and Sansoms call on, evening with Spender, Jennings and, exchanges Christmas presents with TSE, exchanges rare books with TSE, sends luxuries to convalescent TSE, TSE's only regular acquaintance, dines with TSE and Camerons, lent Williams's Cranmer, accompanied to the Fabers' party, hosts discussion about Parisian Murder, inspects French translation of Murder, and TSE's Old Buffers' Dinner, gives TSE bath-mitts, given wine for Christmas, one of TSE's dependents, at Savile Club Murder dinner, Empson takes TSE on to see, possible housemate, in second line of play-readers, walked round Earl's Court, and Bradfield Greek play, and TSE drive to Tandys, and TSE give another party, corrects TSE's Anabase translation, watches television with TSE, Christmas Day with, introduced to Djuna Barnes, meets Christina Morley, walk round Brompton Cemetery with, Hyde Park excursion with, moving house, at his birthday-party, honoured at F&F, displaced to the Rothschilds, where TSE visits him, among TSE's closest friends, his conversation missed, the prospect of Christmas without, excursions to Cambridge to visit, 'my best critic', gives TSE American toilet-paper, helps TSE finish Little Gidding, possible post-war housemate, protector of TSE's literary remains, foreseeably at Merton Hall, discusses plays with TSE, flat-hunting with, and Carlyle Mansions, his furniture, installed at Carlyle Mansions, further handicapped without telephone, undermines TSE's aura of poetic facility, irritates except in small doses, helps with adjustment of TSE's OM medal, at the Brighton Cocktail Party, hounded by Time, quid pro quo with TSE, arranges first-night party for Cocktail Party, arranges Confidential Clerk cast dinner, and TSE's Selected Prose, and TSE entertained by Yehudi Menuhin,

11.JohnHayward, John Davy Hayward (1905–65), editor and critic: see Biographical Register.

Magdalene College, Cambridge, claret discussed at, annual Pepys Dinner, makes TSE an Honorary Fellow, feast of St. Mary Magdalen at, Whitsun feast at, TSE's guest rooms at, repository for Eliotana, sermon preached at, houses Lewis portrait of TSE, which TSE pays for,
Mirrleeses, the, pre-war weekend in Surrey with, host TSE during Blitz, subsequently issue standing invitation, six days a week with, set their hearts on the Riviera, mourn prospect of TSE's departure, invite TSE for Christmas, nurse TSE post-operation, their family estate in South Africa,
Walpole, Hugh, in thumbnail, to be knighted, qua toaster, failed by his Times obituary, his memorial service, Times obituary protested by TSE,

7.NovelistWalpole, Hugh, man of letters, bibliophile and generous patron, Sir Hugh Walpole (1884–1941) became first chairman of the selection committee of the Book Society and of the Society of Bookmen. His novels include The Cathedral (1922) and the Herries saga (1930–3).