[c/o Perkins, 90 Commonwealth Ave., Boston]
Letter 33.
[26 April 1943]
Well, I got back from Edinburgh without mishap, though I thought I had caught a chill, before starting, at the poetry rehearsal in the unheated Aeolian Hall: but the change of air to the North seemed to cure that. I find no letter from you, and I think I will cable tomorrow, also for Easter, also in case my letters to Tryon were not forwarded.
TheReading by Famous Poets, Aeolian Halldescribed by TSE;a2 poetry recital consisted of twelvede la Mare, Walterat which he reads;a4 poets, allMasefield, Johnat the same;a4 of us of the ‘older generation’, beginning with Masefield, each reading from our own works for six minutes. Most of them, I thought read rather badly; De la Mare, who read extremely well, yet did so in a voice which could hardly have penetrated beyond the first six rows. (Incidentally, I got high marks from the reporter of the ‘Evening Standard’).1 ItWaste Land, TheTSE reads 'What the Thunder Said' before the Queen;b5 is very difficult to read for that length of time – one needs about that to get warmed to to [sc. the] task – but the last section of ‘The Waste Land’ just fitted the time well. It would not have done to give that audience anything at all new: they came to look at us and to hear how we recited, rather than from love of poetry; andElizabeth II, Queen (formerly Princess Elizabeth of York)seated next to TSE;a2 it was a more or less fashionable audience, whatElizabeth, Queen, the Queen Motherat Aeolian Hall poetry reading;a3 with having the Queen there and all. We were presented during the interval; and in the second half of the programme I had to sit next to Princess Elizabeth. But there was no conversation; she didn’t say anything, and I thought that perhaps she was getting too old to be addressed first. I wanted to say that I was as bored as she was: but that might not have been quite the right thing. I must say they were very attentive; and as the Queen didn’t have to make a speech, it was perhaps preferable from her point of view to opening a bazaar.2 IFaber and Faber (F&F)fire-watching duties at;e6 escaped the parties afterwards by having my fire watching duties; butMonro, Alida (née Klementaski)in straitened circumstances;c7 the next day – two interviews in the morning, lunch with Alida Monro, who only comes up to town about twice a year, and therefore has to be treated when she does, she looks thin and aged, and her income I imagine is very reduced, as a house from the rent of which she drew a proportion of it was bombed in 1940; then a young captain to tea, just because he wanted to meet me, and is the son of a director of another publishing firm, then a tea party given by Edith Sitwell at the Sesame Club (a post-reading party): sotravels, trips and plansTSE's 1943 trip to Edinburgh;e8recounted;a5 that I was thankful at last to be snug in my berth for Edinburgh. TheBritish Councilhonours TSE with Edinburgh reception;a2 first day there was rather full: a lunch with the British Council, a Press Conference (a weekly event there to which any at all distinguished visitor to the City is invited) and a Reception in my honour – dined alone in the hotel and in the evening talking to the Scottish French House about my poetry and French poetry, with illustrations. ButBlakes, thevisited at Dollar;a2Blake, George
Onspringat Shamley;b1 my return Ibirdscuckoo;b4its song;a3 heard the cuckoo for the first time – a bird very pleasant to the ear at first, if he only knew when to stop, and the spring blooms – fruit trees, wisteria, lilac – fully out. ButChristianityliturgy;b9in country parish church;b2 it is strange to think that Lent is over and Easter past: I miss very much at that season a church with the full liturgy. ButReunion by Destruction: Reflections on a Scheme for Church Union in South Indiacontemplated by TSE;a1 plenty of things to think about, andChurch of South India controversy;a3 my pamphlet on South India to write for the Council for the Defence of Church Principles.3 MartinBrowne, Elliott Martinrequests Pilgrim Players' play from TSE;d6 wants me again to write a play for the Pilgrims, but how can I? And one trouble is that I know that the sort of play I want to try to write, when I can write one, is not best written by keeping in mind the limitations of the Pilgrim Players and their audiences – a troupe which, at best, is rather amateur without the freshness which is pleasing in under-graduate amateur performances.
Well, I want more news of you quickly. ISheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister)TSE's deathbed correspondence with;i8 write to Ada regularly: if there is anyone to whom one can write naturally, under her present conditions and sentence of death, it is she: but whatever I say, I feel exhausted after writing. Thenspringin wartime;b2 I am feeling the depression of spring, which is all the sadness, without the anticipation, which I felt before 1940.
1.‘The Londoner’s Diary’, Evening Standard, 15 Apr. 1943, 2:
—PoetsReading by Famous Poets, Aeolian Hallaccording to 'The Londoner's Diary';a3n in Public
The poetry reading to which the Queen took the Princesses at the Æolian Hall last evening was hardly on the whole a model of what poetic diction ought to be. Twelve senior poets read excerpts from their own works. Several junior poets were in the audience including Fireman Stephen Spender.
LikeMasefield, Johnwhere he is rated;a5n a schoolmaster I sat in judgment upon the readings. My adjudication is as follows:
TheBinyon, Laurencecommemorated at poetry reading;a4 Poet Laureate gave a prose oration on the late Laurence Binyon [who had died on 10 Mar.]. Masefield got top marks. It was finely said in a sorrowful, beautifully-modulated voice. So were his own poems, which he read later.
EdmundBlunden, Edmundat Aeolian Hall reading;a2n Blunden read three of his own poems. They were good poems, but for reading I placed Blunden at the bottom of the class. He read his verses in a flat monotone.
DrBottomley, Gordonat Aeolian Hall reading;a1n Gordon Bottomley is a magnificent figure, bearded like a cross between Tennyson and W. G. Grace. He read the first of his five poems with a fine resonance. But he became less and less audible. Five out of ten, Bottomley.
The Sitwells
ADoolittle, Hilda ('H. D.')rated at Aeolian Hall reading;a1n woman, now – H.D., the pseudonym used by Mrs Richard Aldington. She read with a nice feeling, but so quietly that she could not be heard beyond the first row.
T. S. Eliot got top marks for his piece, ‘What the Thunder Said.’
WilfredGibson, Wilfredat Aeolian Hall poetry reading;a1 Gibson read in a small voice. Dede la Mare, Walterat which he is rated;a5n la Mare was easy, confidential, but difficult to hear. VitaSackville-West, Vitarated at Aeolian Hall reading;a3n Sackville-West was one of the few who did not require to read her own lines. She had her passages from ‘The Land’ by heart, and spoke them in a rich contralto.
MissSitwell, Edithat which she is rated;b3n Edith Sitwell, cloaked in dramatic black, declaimed her books and manuscript with rapid ease. BrotherSitwell, Osbertrated at Aeolian Hall reading;a6n Osbert followed, equally competent.
Result: Bracketed first, Masefield, Eliot and Sackville-West. Bracketed second, the Sitwells. The rest pretty well nowhere.
2.‘TheReading by Famous Poets, Aeolian HallPicture Post on;a4n Queen and the Princesses Attend a Poets’ Reading’, Picture Post 19: 5 (1 May 1943), 18: ‘A distinguished dramatic critic once said that the best actors never know what they are talking about. The Poets’ Reading recently held at the Aeolian Hall made you feel that there is at least a germ of truth in this epigram. For the poems were read by the people who should understand them best – by the authors themselves. Yet few did justice to their own work.
‘The audience, led by the Queen and the two Princesses, included many distinguished faces. Cabinet ministers, society women, and more poets listened reverently to a programme of the best work of the older generation of poets. Masefield, T. S. Eliot, de la Mare, Vita Sackville West, Edmund Blunden, Arthur Waley, Osbert and Edith Sitwell were all there, MasefieldBinyon, Laurencecommemorated at poetry reading;a4 opening with a fine oration in honour of Laurence Binyon.
‘MasefieldMasefield, Johnwhere he is rated;a5n spoke and read beautifully, in a melancholy but totally unsentimental voice. T. S. Eliot, too, can read poetry as well as recite it. BothSitwells, therated at Aeolian Hall reading;a4nSitwell, Edith
‘The Queen and the two Princesses listened intently right through the two-hour programme, and the audience sat in solemn reverence. Here was an unusual opportunity of hearing good poets read good poetry. Yet it was impossible to stifle the feeling that perhaps good actors would have done it better.’
John Pearson, Façades: Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell (1978), 359: ‘It was a very grand occasion in its way, with Osbert sitting in the front row next to his friend the Queen, and the two Princesses in their seats beside them. When Denton Welch asked Edith later how they had behaved, she replied that “they sat very still in the front row and stared at one”…
‘Eliot was impressive as he read a portion of The Waste Land in that High Anglican asbestos voice of his […] and Edith was undoubtedly the star of the afternoon – as she intended from the start – with her dramatic declaration of her newly written “Anne Boleyn’s Song”. Unlike the other poets, she was a genuine performer …
‘Some of the other poets were less fortunate. Little Walter de la Mare was unable to reach the gigantic lectern Osbert had provided. W. J. Turner – once a bitter Sitwell enemy but now restored to favour – went on and on until the chairman silenced him. And, after the Queen had left, Dorothy Wellesley hit Harold Nicolson with her umbrella, and had to be restrained by Beatrice Lillie.’
HaroldReading by Famous Poets, Aeolian HallHarold Nicholson on;a5n NicolsonNicholson, Haroldon Aeolian Hall poetry recital;a6n, Diaries and Letters, 14 Apr. 1943, 275: ‘I go to the Aeolian Hall for the poetry reading organised by Osbert and Edith Sitwell for the benefit of the Free French. The Queen arrives accompanied by the two Princesses. The poets file in – Masefield, T. S. Eliot, Gordon Bottomley, Arthur Waley, Edmund Blunden, and Vita [Sackville-West]. Masefield pays a tribute to Laurence Binyon, and then the readings start. I cannot hear most of them as I am in the gallery and they are impeded by a lectern which Osbert found in the Caledonian Market and which impedes voice and sight. I am impressed by Eliot’s reading and rather moved by the Poet Laureate. Then there is an interval during which the Poets are received by the Queen in an ante-room. Then the second series begins and Vita reads her piece. She stands there looking magnificent and modest and recites The Land quite perfectly. I hear a low murmur of delight passing through the audience. She was by streets the best of the lot and I am so proud of her. She is as serene as a swan.’
3.Reunion by Destruction: Reflections on a Scheme for Church Union in South India: Addressed to the Laity (London: Council for the Defence of Church Principles, 1943): CProse 6, 447–69.
3.VeryBaillie, Very Revd John Revd John Baillie (1886–1960), distinguished Scottish theologian; minister of the Church of Scotland; Roosevelt Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Seminary, New York, 1930–4; and was Professor of Divinity at Edinburgh University, 1934–59. In 1919 he married Florence Jewel Fowler (1893–1969), whom he met in service in France during WW1. Author of What is Christian Civilization? (lectures, 1945). See Keith Clements, ‘John Baillie and “the Moot”’, in Christ, Church and Society: Essays on John Baillie and Donald Baillie, ed. D. Fergusson (Edinburgh, 1993); Clements, ‘Oldham and Baillie: A Creative Relationship’, in God’s Will in a Time of Crisis: A Colloquium Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Baillie Commission, ed. A. R. Morton (Edinburgh, 1994).
4.LaurenceBinyon, Laurence Binyon, CH (1869–1943), Keeper of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, 1932–3; translator of Dante. In 1933 he succeeded TSE as Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard. John Hatcher, Laurence Binyon: Poet, Scholar of East and West (1995).
3.EdmundBlunden, Edmund Blunden (1896–1974), poet and critic, who won the Military Cross for valour in Flanders in 1916 – see his Undertones of War (1928; ed. John Greening: Oxford, 2015) – was Professor of English at the Imperial University, Tokyo, 1924–7; and in 1930–1 literary editor of The Nation. He was Fellow and Tutor in English at Merton College, Oxford, 1931–44; and for a year after WW2 he was assistant editor of the TLS. In 1947 he returned to Japan with the UK Liaison Mission; and he was Professor of English, Hong Kong, from 1953 until retirement. Made CBE in 1964, he received the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1956. In 1966 he was elected Oxford Professor of Poetry (his rival was Robert Lowell), but stood down before the completion of his tenure. See Barry Webb, Edmund Blunden: A Biography (1990).
4.E. MartinBrowne, Elliott Martin Browne (1900–80), English director and producer, was to direct the first production of Murder in the Cathedral: see Biographical Register.
4.Walterde la Mare, Walter de la Mare (1873–1956), poet, novelist, short story writer, worked for the Statistics Department of the Anglo-American Oil Company, 1890–1908, before being freed to become a freelance writer by a £200 royal bounty negotiated by Henry Newbolt. He wrote many popular works: poetry including The Listeners (1912) and Peacock Pie (1913); novels including Henry Brocken (1904) and Memoirs of a Midget (1921); anthologies including Come Hither (1923). Appointed OM, 1953; CH, 1948. F&F brought out several of his books including Collected Rhymes and Verses (1942) and Collected Poems (1948); and TSE wrote ‘To Walter de la Mare’ for A Tribute to Walter de la Mare (1948). See further Theresa Whistler, Imagination of the Heart: The Life of Walter de la Mare (1993).
15.SirGrierson, Sir Herbert Herbert Grierson (1866–1960), Knight Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature at Edinburgh University, was elected Rector in 1936; knighted in 1936; celebrated for his edition of The Poems of John Donne (2 vols., 1912) and Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century (1921) – which TSE reviewed in the TLS, 21 Oct. 1921. TSE’s address was delivered on Fri. 29 Oct.
3.AlidaMonro, Alida (née Klementaski) Klementaski (1892–1969) married Harold Monro on 27 Mar. 1920: see Alida Monro in Biographical Register.
3.HaroldNicholson, Harold Nicolson (1886–1968) relinquished in 1930 a thriving career in the Diplomatic Service to work as a journalist for the Evening Standard. In Mar. 1931 he left the Standard to join Sir Oswald Mosley’s New Party, and became editor of the New Party’s journal Action.
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.
2.EdithSitwell, Edith Sitwell (1887–1964), poet, biographer, anthologist, novelist: see Biographical Register.
3.OsbertSitwell, Osbert Sitwell (1892–1969), poet and man of letters. Early in his career, he published collections of poems, including Argonaut and Juggernaut (1919), and a volume of stories, Triple Fugue (1924); but he is now most celebrated for his remarkable memoirs, Left Hand, Right Hand (5 vols, 1945–50), which include a fine portrayal of TSE. TSE published one sketch by him in the Criterion. See John Lehmann, A Nest of Tigers: Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell in their Times (1968); John Pearson, Façades: Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell (1978); Philip Ziegler, Osbert Sitwell (1998). TSE to Mary Trevelyan, 16 Oct. 1949: ‘Edith and Osbert are 70% humbug – but kind – and cruel' (in Mary Trevelyan, 'The Pope of Russell Square’, 19).