[c/o Revd J. C. Perkins, D.D., 90 Commonwealth Ave., Boston]
Letter 27.
Your cable had to be forwarded from Shamley to Cambridge: ISheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister)in reportedly critical condition;i5 found it in my room after returning from a busy day and an evening of ‘The Family Reunion’. I was of course very much disturbed, and needed time to think it over: I was also disturbed to think that if such a grave report had reached you in Carolina, no word should have reached me direct from those in Cambridge. IEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother)condition worries TSE;g7 finally cabled to Henry merely to ask for a report, andMorley, Frank Vigor;k5 to Frank Morley to ask him to try to find out – this because of what you said about Henry himself: I am worried also wondering whether the condition of which you speak is because of the bad news of Ada, or that he has had a break-down himself.1 ‘Criticallytravels, trips and planspossible wartime transatlantic crossings;d7given Ada's impending death;b2’ usually means a matter of days; and I want to know whether it is worth while even trying to set machinery in motion. It is extremely unlikely that I could get exit permission, and that alone might take several weeks; at the same time I should have to find out whether it is possible to get the Treasury to release any of my money, either here or in America, for use in America. Otherwise, I should arrive, if I arrived, with hardly a penny, and should be dependent upon my relatives (who cannot afford the expense, either) both for support while there and for the price of my return fare. If I could get to America at all, it might be six weeks or two months from the time I started trying. If I were the ‘next of kin’ it might be more possible: but to say that I was needed, when my sister’s husband and brother and sisters are all about her, would not carry conviction to the official mind.
Oftravels, trips and plansTSE's 1942 British Council mission to Sweden;e4;a7 course, when people go on official missions, their expenses are cared for by the local Embassy or Legation: I did not take a penny of my own to Sweden, but was given pocket money, for cabs, local fares etc. while there.
If the situation is really critical, it is likely that I should arrive, in any case, too late.
Your letter of the 19th January, speaking of your departure almost at once for Tryon (where I see from your cable that you arrived) was very welcome.2 (Incidentally'Rudyard Kipling'approved by EH;a9, I was immensely pleased that you should have liked the Kipling essay). IAmericaTryon, North Carolina;h6;a1 am very glad indeed that you have gone South – though letters will now take longer than ever – and do hope that it will prove satisfactory in every way – better than Grand Manan – and that there will be pleasant people – of whom you may be able to have just enough and not too much – at the hotel there. I have never been so far South as that. It will be lovely in the early spring. Even here the birds are now in song, and one expects an early cuckoo at almost any moment.
IFamily Reunion, The1943 ADC production;h6described;a3 could normally have written at some length about Cambridge – the performance, by undergraduates of both sexes, seemed to me a very good one: perhaps intelligently trained, educated amateurs, are better for a play by an amateur than professionals – they are more appreciative of the things that I can do well, and less put out by the faults, which are of a structural and theatrical nature.3 The weekend was arduous: in addition to the play, the college, and the people I had to see – theHugh Inneses, thevisited in Cambridge;a3Innes, Hugh McLeod
1.TSESheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister)in reportedly critical condition;i5 to Hayward, 20 Feb. 1943: ‘On returning to my room I found a cable (forwarded from Shamley) to the effect that my favourite sister’s condition is critical. To be attacked by a mysterious and very painful ailment in the back, which involves an operation called “clipping out” a nerve, after two operations for cancer within a year, at the age of 74, is not a small matter, and I am prepared for the worst. The cable was from Emily Hale, and not from my brother (she said he was ill too), and I should prefer a masculine opinion: I have cabled to Frank to ask him whether he can find out anything. I think it would be futile for me to attempt to get over there: I do not set so much value on deathbed meetings as some do …’ (King’s).
ForSheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister)TSE's intimacy with;i7n TSE on Ada Sheffield, see a letter to Hayward, also dated 20 Feb. 1943: ‘Being nearly twenty years older than I, and having no children of her own, she came to occupy a quasiparental relation with me (my mother would be 100 this year!) Also she and I have always had more in common than with the rest of our family. She has far more brains than any of the others, and with my grandfather’s organising and executive ability combined a more reflective mind, and a capacity of abstraction, coming from the other side of the family. Without being “masculine” in any way to suggest psychological distortion, she has a capacity for impersonal thought, and for detaching herself from emotion and prejudice, which I have never found in any other member of her sex. So I have always felt a tacit understanding with her, and a more satisfactory relationship, than I have ever found in those of either excitement or friendship with women – in the long run’ (King’s).
2.EH was staying at Thousand Pines Inn, Tryon, North Carolina, a business run successfully for fifty years by a woman named Selina DuBose Lewis (1899–1987) – a fine cook who compiled several cookbooks – and her sister Anna ‘Lesesne’ Lewis Meegan (1877–1964).
TheAmericaTryon, North Carolina;h6EH's interest in;a2n eulogy for EH by the Concord Players Trust records: ‘Her personal interest in a negro school in the south was recalled. Her gifts over a number of years to the Laurenburg [sc. Laurinburg] Normal and Industrial Institute in North Carolina, led to the naming of Hale House.’ (The Institute was founded in 1904 by Emanuel Monee McDuffie and his wife Tiny, who journeyed from Alabama to set up the school in Scotland County at the request of the African-American citizens of the community.)
3.RylandsRylands, George ('Dadie')which production he remembers to EVE;a3n to Valerie Eliot, 23 Apr. 1978: ‘In 1943 I produced the undergraduates in The Family Reunion – it was the second production. Tom came up for it and was (I think) very pleased because all the jokes went over strongly – it was a good cast – and Martin Browne’s production had been rather solemn and pi’ (EVE).
4.LeonLittle, Leon M.reports Harold Peters's death;a5 M. Little to TSE, 1 Feb. 1943: ‘HaroldPeters, Haroldhis death;b2n Peters died today, I do not know what you have heard about him recently. About two or three months ago, after working his head off to get into the Navy, he finally gave that up and went into the Coast Guard, as a chief boatswain’s mate. He was going off on one of the off-shore patrol boats. The day after Christmas, he went over to Marblehead on a comparatively small motor boat to haul out, and the next day, about eight o’clock in the morning, he fell off the stern down on to the ways, a distance of about twenty-five feet. When they got him to the hospital in Marblehead, they found that he had a very bad fracture of the skull, his collar-bone was broken and two ribs were broken, puncturing his lung. Gordon and Anna Prince got over to the hospital very soon and arranged for a consultation of specialists and for blood transfusions, so that he pulled through that night. Then they took him to the new Marine Hospital in Boston. For a time, he appeared to improve; but about ten days ago he contracted pneumonia – which they had been fearing all along. They did everything possible for him in the way of medical and nursing care and the doctors said that if he had had only the lung injury or only the head injury he might have pulled through. They could not operate on either because of the other.
‘Several of us – Chick Cobb, Don Starr and I principally – went out to the hospital frequently and for the last little while almost every day, for Pete seemed to enjoy having us come, although many of the times we went he was not at all rational. About ten days ago, it became quite obvious that he was not going to pull through. Saturday afternoon, Chick and I were there and for a moment he recognized us both and spoke to us, but immediately faded off again. Yesterday he was unconscious and he died at one o’clock this morning. A little while ago, the doctors told us that if he survived he would not be competent mentally, anyway, and perhaps physically. So that we cannot be sorry. The one reason I have for being glad that he did not die immediately is that these intervening weeks have given me a much deeper appreciation than I ever had before of the numbers and the great loyalty and the diversification of his friends.’
3.HenryEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother) Ware Eliot (1879–1947), TSE’s older brother: see Biographical Register.
11.JohnHayward, John Davy Hayward (1905–65), editor and critic: see Biographical Register.
1.LeonLittle, Leon M. M. Little (1887–1968), a classmate of TSE’s at Harvard (as Class Secretary of 1910 he compiled the 25th Anniversary Report, 1935), was a banker by profession: he worked for Parkinson & Barr and then, after wartime service in the Navy (Navy Cross), for W. A. Harriman & Company. From 1921 he worked in the Trust Department of the First National Bank of Boston, and in 1927 he became Vice-President of the New England Trust Company.
4.FrankMorley, Frank Vigor Vigor Morley (1899–1980), American publisher and author; a founding editor of F&F, 1929–39: see Biographical Register.
4.LadyMorrell, Lady Ottoline Ottoline Morrell (1873–1938), hostess and patron: see Biographical Register.
2.PhilipMorrell, Philip Morrell (1870–1943), a scion of the Morrell’s Brewing Company, was a Liberal MP, 1906–18.
6.HaroldPeters, Harold Peters (1888–1943), close friend of TSE at Harvard, 1906–9. After graduation, he worked in real estate, and saw active service in the Massachusetts Naval Militia during WW1, and on leaving the navy he spent most of the rest of his life at sea. Leon M. Little, ‘Eliot: A Reminiscence’, Harvard Advocate, 100: 3.4 (Fall 1966), 33: ‘[TSE’sPeters, Haroldas TSE's quondam sailing companion;a2n] really closest friend was Harold Peters, and they were an odd but a very interesting pair. Peters and Eliot spent happy hours sailing together, sometimes in thick fog, off the Dry Salvages. In 1932 Peters sailed round the world for two years as skipper of an 85-foot auxiliary schooner, Pilgrim, having previously participated in the transatlantic race from Newport to Plymouth, and in the Fastnet Race. In 1943 he died after falling from a motor-boat that was in process of being hoisted into a dry dock at Marblehead.
1.GeorgeRylands, George ('Dadie') ‘Dadie’ Rylands (1902–99), literary scholar and theatre director, was from 1927 a Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. Early publications included Russet and Taffeta (verse, 1925), Poems (1931) and Words and Poetry (1928) – all published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press (for which he worked for six months in 1924). As director of the Marlowe Society, he became famous for his productions of plays by Shakespeare; he taught generations of talented students including Peter Hall, Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellen; and in 1946 he became chairman of the Arts Theatre, Cambridge. He was appointed CH in 1987.
2.AdaSheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister) Eliot Sheffield (1869–1943), eldest of the seven Eliot children; author of The Social Case History: Its Construction and Content (1920) and Social Insight in Case Situations (1937): see Biographical Register.