[22 Paradise Road, Northampton, Mass., forwarded to c/o Revd John C. Perkins, 90 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston]
Letter 9
I found, just before I left for Scotland, that I should have to be away from here for about a month. TheMirrleeses, the;b1 Mirrlees’s are going to Hindhead for a change, CockieMoncrieff, Constance ('Cocky');a8 is despatched to a hotel in Bournemouth, and the principal reason appears to be that the servants need a holiday – which I do not doubt. This would have been more convenient for me earlier or later: forFabers, themove to Minsted;f2 the Fabers have all three children with them, and are rather camping in their house than living in it, while awaiting occupation of their new house in Minsted. The23 Russell Square, Londonunready for occupation;a2 flat, which we are to share, at 23 Russell square, is not yet quite ready; andFaber, Enid Eleanor;b6 Enid will not have the time to complete preparations and secure a charwoman until after the moving. MyOxford and Cambridge Club;c6 club is shut, but re-opens next week. I could just sleep in the flat, looking after myself, and going out for bath and breakfast: that does not appeal to me. SoRussell Hotel, TheTSE's week at;a1 I shall go for a week to the Russell Hotel, and then to the club, visiting friends at two weekends, and having a conference on another. I hope that the postoffice will forward letters properly. But you might as well address letters to 24 Russell Square until the middle of September. I hope to be able to work in London: IMurder in the CathedralHoellering film;g1TSE adapting for screen;a3 shall retire to the flat every morning to work at ‘Murder’. I dare say it will be a good change: there are disadvantages here as well as advantages, as you may imagine. But for this winter I shall probably continue as before; with the short days of midwinter the blackout is more tolerable in the country; and I hope that the spring will give some indications of what to do in the future.
Stilltravels, trips and planspossible wartime transatlantic crossings;d7TSE's reasons for and against accepting lectureship;b1 thinking about your question of my coming to America if invited: I assumed that if any invitation came it would be for 1943–44 and would not come until the spring. YouSecond World Warand TSE's decision to remain in England;d5 will understand, IEnglandwar binds TSE to;b7 am sure, that with the war situation as it is at present, I should not like to leave England except for some definitely wartime commission (under which head I include lecturing in Sweden!) I should not like to go anywhere to perform some job wholly unrelated to the war. At least, in England, I can feel that I am helping to carry on a business which it is important to carry on, for the future of our civilisation and also taking part in various schemes of national service, with a view to the post-war world. ThePrinceton Universityextends wartime invitation to TSE;b6 job at Princeton, as I understand it, consists primarily of helping and criticising young writers. I have always a great deal of that to do here (without being paid for it!) and at a time like this the aiding of young American poets should be done by American writers, and no one else can take my place here (however unimportant the work may seem). And however difficult it is to write poetry here, it would be still more difficult elsewhere. Of course it seems possible that the war might some time just settle down into a ten or twenty years affair, with lulls: that would be quite different. I think of a visit to America as something to be done immediately the present crisis is over, say within a couple of years. I belong to England; and I should have been very sorry to have been elsewhere during 1940. But I want to come just as soon as I can.
Itravels, trips and plansTSE's 1942 week in Scotland;e6recounted;a3 had a pleasant week in Scotland, quiet; weScotlandthe Lowlands;c5;a1 went by bus and train to visit several places in that central Lowland country which I hardly know. StirlingScotlandStirling;c2;a1 (especially fine), Dunfermline Abbey, Culross, and minor beauty spots Rumbling Bridge and Castle Campbell. IRobertses, theTSE's second Penrith visit;a4Roberts, Andrew
SinceLittle Giddingfurther redrafting;b5 my return I have re-written one section of ‘Little Gidding’, the section I was most dissatisfied with, but do not know yet whether I like my revision. Now I have to go through various papers to make sure that I shall leave nothing here that I may want in the next four weeks. One thinks ‘the next two months and then we shall know better where we are’; and perhaps this thought always at the back of the mind interferes with everything else. Itravels, trips and plansTSE's 1942 British Council mission to Sweden;e4as war-work;a6 have had to struggle against a certain slump since returning from Sweden. The excitement of doing a special job keys one up; there is even a certain pleasure in some physical risk when it is associated with vanity, the thought that one is running it in doing one’s particular job. The hard kind of heroism is that shared with everybody else, the things one might have to do which others could do better (if they were there to do them) and which are an interference with the things one is especially fitted to do. AndShamley Wood, Surreyhis situation as paying guest;a2 on the one hand it is soothing to spend part of one’s time in a household like this in which, because of comfort (so far), isolation and lack of imagination the actual world seems remote: on the other hand, it is at times exasperating. So I am glad to be away in London for a month. Many people do not see that after all the difficulties to which they have to adjust themselves to now, we shall only have to make a fresh start to adjust ourselves to what the world will be after this is over.
No letter from you for a fortnight, and if I get none now I shall not know whether to worry about you or whether merely to think that something has not been forwarded. You were at Wood’s Holl [sic], that is all I know; and the thought of how you are to spend this coming winter is much on my mind. But in default of further information, I cannot offer counsel!
The cable from Emily Halax to Thomas Elio was forwarded to Scotland. ‘Plains [sic] very uncertain’ it told me.
1.Helen Sutherland (1881-1965): art collector and patron, who lived at Cockley Moor, Docksay, Penrith, Cumberland, high on the fells above Ullswater.
1.TSE was mistaken here. EnidFaber, Enid Eleanor Eleanor Faber (1901–95) was the daughter of Sir Henry Erle Richards (1861–1922), Fellow of All Souls College and Chichele Professor of International Law and Diplomacy at Oxford University, and Mary Isabel Butler (1868–1945).