[No surviving envelope]

T. S.Eliot
EmilyHale
TS
Faber & Faber Ltd
2 October 1931
My Emily

I must get a new ribbon for this typewriter – the faint ink must be trying to your eyes. I shall be happy if I get any letter from you while you are en route; but I shall not expect it; so I am prepared to hear nothing more for a week or ten days. But it will be a great relief to know that you are back in Boston. AndPerkinses, the;a4 I am so very glad that the Perkins’s will be there this winter too especially as Miss Ware will be away.

Possibly you get more news, at any rate uncensored news, though inaccurate, of British affairs, than we get in the newspapers here. ITimes, Theno longer reliable;a1 have lost faith in the reliability of The Times, it so consistently minimises all troubles and disturbances. IGreat Depression in the United Kingdom ('Great Slump')the unemployment crisis;a2 know that there have [sc. has] been bad rioting in Glasgow and Dundee – where that is to be expected – and day before yesterday one or two mild collisions between demonstrators and police in London. I noticed the march past of unemployed through Russell Square – they ‘demonstrated’ in front of the British Museum, the papers say, and a few heads were broken in Tottenham Court Road; but so far there has been no great violence in London; the only trouble arising from the natural disinclination of the mob to stop when charged by mounted police. (I hope things will not get to the point at which letters will be opened by censors!)

IGreat Depression in the United Kingdom ('Great Slump')the unemployment crisis;a2 cannot see, myself, that any of the measures being taken, or likely to be taken, are going to put things right. I don’t see how things can ever be put right without a tremendous reorganisation of national life, and even of world life. The present situation seems to me to be one which has been preparing for the last hundred years. England is worse hit at present than other countries, because England has been industrialised longer. I don’t see how England is ever again to support the population she supported in the latter part of the last century, unless there are both a considerable lowering of standards of living and a general return to small agriculture. It seems to me to be largely a result of the excessive development of machinery; and as a few people have seen for a long time, there is not enough work to go round (in consequence of machinery) and never can be under present conditions; therefore people cannot earn the money to pay for everything that actually is produced .. [sic] I don’t take to the ‘four hour day’ fancy, because even if the populace can be trained, as social utopists seem to expect, to spend its spare time listening to instructive radio lectures etc., I cannot feel that so much leisure is healthy or good for anybody. InPenty, Arthur J.like TSE, anti-industrial;a3 the October Criterion I have an essay by Penty which I like very much, though I doubt if the world is going to restrict its machinery until forced by circumstances to do so.1 IChristianityand modern economics;a2 cannot imagine that the world will be very pleasant to live in for a long long time. Also it seems to me that the whole economic scheme of life, for a good deal more than a century, has been more and more definitely un-Christian … But that is another aspect of the question to go into another time. So now, dearest Lady, I shall write no more till Monday or Tuesday.

de tout mon coeur
Tom

1.Arthur J. Penty, ‘Means and Ends’, Criterion 11 (Oct. 1931), 1–24.

TSEeconomicsand TSE's case against materialism;a1nDouglas, Major Clifford Hugh ('C. H.')economics wrote in The Idea of a Christian Society (1939) that ‘modern material organization … has produced a world for which Christian social forms are imperfectly adapted’; but there are simplifications of the problem that are ‘suspect’: ‘One is to insist that the only salvation for society is to return to a simpler mode of life, scrapping all the constructions of the modern world that we can bring ourselves to dispense with. This is an extreme statement of the neo-Ruskinian view, which was put forward with much vigour by the late A. J. Penty. When one considers the large amount of determination in social structure, this policy appears Utopian: if such a way of life ever comes to pass, it will be – as may well happen in the long run – from natural causes, and not from the moral will of men’ (New edn with Intro. by David L. Edwards [1982], 60).

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,
economics, and TSE's case against materialism, TSE opposed to economic orthodoxy, in TSE's fantasy political party, capitalism and Christianity, and TSE's ideal political economy, Social Credit, and FDR,
Great Depression in the United Kingdom ('Great Slump'), the 1931 Sterling Crisis, the unemployment crisis, unemployment conference at York,
Penty, Arthur J., described, like TSE, anti-industrial, Means and Ends discussed with,

11.ArthurPenty, Arthur J. J. Penty (1875–1937), architect (he was involved in the development of Hampstead Garden Suburb), and social critic influenced by Ruskin, Carlyle, Matthew Arnold and Edward Carpenter, as well as in part by G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, was an advocate of guild socialism, anti-modernism and anti-industrialism, agrarian reconstructionism, and Anglican socialism. A regular contributor to periodicals including The Guildsman, G. K.’s Weekly, The Crusader and The Criterion, his works include Old Worlds for New (1917), A Guildsman’s Interpretation of History (1920), and Towards a Christian Sociology (1923).

Perkinses, the, likely to be interested in An Adventure, compared to Mary Ware, enjoyable dinner at the Ludlow with, take to TSE, TSE desires parental intimacy with, their dinner-guests dismissed by TSE, who repents of seeming ingratitude, TSE confides separation plans to, too polite, questioned as companions for EH, offered English introductions, entertained on arrival in London, seek residence in Chichester, given introduction to G. C. Coulton, take house at Chipping Camden, as Chipping Campden hosts, given introduction to Bishop Bell, TSE entertains at Oxford and Cambridge Club, TSE's private opinion on, TSE encourages EH's independence from, their repressive influence on EH, buy TSE gloves for Christmas, sent Lapsang Souchong on arrival in England, invite TSE to Campden, move apartment, anticipate 1938 English summer, descend on EH in Northampton, and EH's wartime return to America, temporarily homeless, enfeebled, EH forwards TSE teenage letter to, their health, which is a burden, approve EH's permanent Abbot position,
Times, The, no longer reliable, no longer government mouthpiece, 'Eclipse of the Highbrow' controversy, reviews The Cocktail Party,