[c/o RiceHale, Emilyholidays in Woods Hole;o5 SchoolAmericaWoods Hole, Falmouth, Massachusetts;i2;a5, Oak Bluffs, Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.; forwarded to 22 Paradise Rd., Northampton; and then to c/o Mrs Leonard Elsmith, Woods Hole, Mass.]
Letter 3.
I have your letter 125 of the 23d May. Judging from the time that has taken on the way, I think it is best to reply to your summer address. You don’t say what you are there for – whether to teach or to learn! – and as I have never heard of it before I have no basis for conjecture. But I trust that it will mean hot sun and sea breezes, and perhaps sailing and sea-bathing (have you given that up for good?) At least it sounds more healthful than a university in the middle west. TheDavis, Herbert;a3 notionSmith Collegeplaces staff under assessment;c6 of getting a specialist from another university (and a state university at that) to come and ‘value’ the staff of Smith seems to me fantastic: and I think the faculty ought to strike unanimously. A college is not a business firm – and even there, it is the business of the heads of a firm to know what the staff are worth – you only call in accountants to advise about methods, not men. It makes me wonder whether this Englishman you have now at the head of the college is a competent person to be in such a position. You have never really expressed an opinion about him.
I have had a busy week of engagements of no importance – such as giving a lunch party for a Swedish publisher – which I will not bother about: I will only mention such things in detail when they are interesting in themselves, or amusing, or tell something really new about my life. IUnderhill, Evelynher correspondence surveyed for publication;c5 have just gone through a sample selection of letters of Evelyn Underhill, which her friends want me to edit, or write an introduction for, or somehow put my name to. But I shall not have time; and reading the letters only has the advantage of confirming my expectation of the amount of time that an editor would have to give. If these are fair samples, I am rather disappointed in them. The ‘directional’ ones (letters of spiritual advice and instruction) may have been extremely useful to the particular persons, but do not seem to me always self-explanatory, and not rich enough in impersonal wisdom to be of use to outside readers. IChapman, Dom John, OSBSpiritual Letters;a4 don’t feel that she was enough of a theologian, though a very devout and spiritual minded person with a lovely character. TheyHügel, Friedrich von;a5 do not compare with those of her master Van Huegel, orChapman, Dom John, OSBcompared to other spiritual letter-writers;a3 with those of Dom John Chapman which I may have given you once.
IChristianityspiritual progress and direction;d6;a8 know that spiritual direction is a very difficult task, which very few are competent to give, either by native gifts or training. But I rather envy those who are only called upon to give such advice to believe [sc. believing] Christians who are prepared to accept the teaching of the Church though they may not know it very well. The question with which I am sometimes faced is that of giving advice to people who are not Christians at all! I have had such a case recently with a young man and his wife: I was drawn into it because I was the only person available to both. To refuse to help at all, on the ground that I can only apply rigid Christian principles, seems unkind to people who are in a mess, and may make them antagonistic to Christianity instead of severely indifferent and ignorant: to accept their own premises fully is a surrender of principle. Such people would not consult a clergyman anyway: and I can only think of one who I think could advise at all. Perhaps the best one can do in such cases is not to advise, but by interrogation and discussion to try to elicit in the persons a clearer consciousness of their own fundamental feelings, and of such sentiments of conscience as they possess.
Of course, one learns a good deal from experience of such cases: but I wish that I could learn to spare myself strain in the process – it is very exhausting! To be able to say, beyond this point I can do no more, and it is my business to think of other matters and stop feeling anything where one’s possible usefulness stops, would be a great help. ThereIovetz-Tereshchenko, N. M.his woes;a6 is the perennial case of the unfortunate Russian exile Tereshchenko, whose only desire in life is to be a Professor of Adolescent Psychology – and there is nothing else that he can do – when nobody wants a Professor of Adolescent Psychology! OneChristianityvirtues heavenly and capital;e1charity, towards others;a3 of the faults of the human heart is that after you have tried to help people again and again, and (even through no fault of their own) they are in just as bad a pickle as ever, it is very difficult not to feel utterly exasperated with them. Perhaps it is partly that one wants one’s own applause – which is not forthcoming unless one’s efforts for another person really succeed. ToPound, Omarhis situation;a3 pass from one case to another is a relief: there is the little Pound boy at Charterhouse. I gather that the Custodian of Enemy Property (who has charge of his mother’s property in this country) will only release enough funds just to pay essentials, and he is short of extras – I am waiting to hear from his housemaster about this. It is difficult not to feel very angry with his parents for their irresponsibility towards him; but perhaps if I knew more about them I could understand and forgive.
YouHale, Emilycorrespondence with TSE;w3TSE apologises for;h2 see, my dear, I am practising trying to write less costive letters. I think that I have been very tired all this winter, though I have had much less illness than a year ago: not so much from work as from not having learned how to rest with the world in this preposterous condition. And when I am tired my letters become, I notice, merely a chronicle of events – without extracting any interest of significance from the events. I hope for your sake that I shall improve.
8.DomChapman, Dom John, OSB John Chapman, OSB (1865–1933), Spiritual Letters (1935). A posthumous publication.
2.N. M. Iovetz-TereshchenkoIovetz-Tereshchenko, N. M. (1895–1954), B.Litt. (Oxon), PhD (London): Russian exile; Orthodox Catholic Christian; university lecturer in psychology: see Biographical Register.
1.OmarPound, Omar Shakespear Pound (1926–2010), author, editor and poet; son of Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakespear, he was born in Paris and brought up in his early years by his maternal grandmother, Olivia Shakespear; he met his father for the first time only in 1938. During 1940–2 he was a boarder at Charterhouse School, where TSE took a proactive avuncular interest in the progress and well-being of ‘the unfortunate Omar’: ‘I make a point of trying to see him about twice a quarter. The whole situation is difficult and I am afraid that the future is not going to be easy for him. I like the boy who at the present moment thinks that he would like to make hotel keeping his profession.’ On leaving school, Pound undertook to study hotel management and worked in a London hotel; but in 1945 he enlisted in the US Army and served terms in France and Germany. Subsequently he studied at Hamilton College, New York (his father’s alma mater); at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London; and at McGill University. Later he taught in Boston; at the American School of Tangier; at the Cambridgeshire School of Arts and Technology; and at Princeton. He brought out Arabic & Persian Poems (1970) and volumes of his own poetry, and was co-editor (with Philip Grover) of Wyndham Lewis: A Descriptive Bibliography (1978). Other editions include Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakespear: Their Letters 1908–1914 (1984), and Ezra and Dorothy Pound: Letters in Captivity, 1945–1946, edited with Robert Spoo (1999).
1.EvelynUnderhill, Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941), spiritual director and writer on mysticism and the spiritual life: see Biographical Register.