[c/o Perkins, 90 Commonwealth Ave., Boston]
Letter 35.
YourAmericaPeterborough, New Hampshire;g4visited by EH;a1 letter of April 17, from Peterborough, arrived and was very welcome. TheEliot family, theits Peterborough connection;b3 photograph of ‘Bleak House’ (‘BleakhouseAmericaLexington, Massachusetts;f3and the Stearns family home;a1’ on your letter paper[)] is very pleasing, and reminds me a little of Lexington, and some of the other old houses of the same type associated with my mother’s family.1 I see that you have marked the window of your room. And everything you say about the place (except the weather) is satisfactory. YourHale, Emilyas teacher;w1let go by Smith;d2 news, of course, is not happy: butSmith Collegedoes not renew EH's contract;c7 you know that in the long run you give me much more comfort by telling me frankly what the position is, in your own affairs and those of others, than by passing over the more sombre facts. It is a horrid truth that academic degrees are overrated, and consequently lead very often to the wrong people being preferred. It wouldn’t be so bad if people genuinely believed in them as evidence of ability and qualification: it is more often that people responsible for choosing candidates merely want to play safe: they think that they will be less blamed, if they choose the wrong person with the ‘right’ qualifications, than if they choose the right person and have to defend their choice. The result is that natural gifts, experience, and even character count for less than they should. It is a system of running an educational institution, not like a business (for good business folk would know better) but like a Civil Service – and even a Civil Service ought not to be run quite that way: one is always coming across the wrong type of person in the job. I could fulminate indefinitely. I am very distressed indeed, to learn that your means are now so narrow (and to think that there is nothing I can do about it) and you even have to contemplate teaching little children. You haven’t the physique to undertake any whole time war work; yet you need (temperamentally) to be fully active and employed; andHale, Emilyfamily;w4EH's relations with aunt and uncle;a6 you also need (I knew this without any hint on your own part) to live away from Commonwealth Avenue and preferably away from Boston.
AlthoughPerkins, Dr John Carroll (EH's uncle)ailing;f3 you have given me to understand that your uncle was in failing health, you have never given me any exact diagnosis: and I did not know that he was now practically confined to his flat. I think I can understand the change: not that I would have predicted it, but that being told of it, it does not seem surprising. I used to think, in the past, that you got a happier relationship and intimacy with him when your aunt was not present (though he may not have admitted it to himself) in his life, which has nothing to do with you. Charming as he always was, on the surface, I always thought that there was something better still in him, which was not so obvious, and which had to be divined sympathetically rather than observed. I may be quite wild and wide of the mark: but I know that my guesses are only guesses. But he always seemed to me a very lonely man.
YourHinkleys, thetheir family sclerosis;e7 evening with the Hinkley’s [sic] seemed just what I should expect. I haven’t felt, when with them, that I knew them less well than when I was young; but that it was a relationship which might have developed, that it wasn’t altogether one’s own fault that it didn’t, and that now there is only something external. AndHinkley, Eleanor Holmes (TSE's first cousin)cossetted;c7 one feels that Eleanor might have developed into a superior person, if she had had the strength to get out of her environment, butHinkley, Susan Heywood (TSE's aunt, née Stearns)overbearing mother;c8 her mother’s personality is stronger than hers, andHinkley, Barbara (TSE's first cousin)handicaps Eleanor;b6 Barbara was a great handicap to her too. I shared the melancholy of the visit in reading your description of it. ToEliot, Theresa Garrett (TSE's sister-in-law)TSE on;c3 be with Theresa is to be in a happier and saner and bigger world; she had smaller gifts, but she has made more of them.
IMcPherrin, Jeanette;e6 am interested, as always, to have news of Jeanie. IMorleys, the;k1 should have liked to think that Frank and Christina would have made more effort, as I think they should, without my expressly asking them to. YouBurnt Nortonas 'Cotswolds poem';b8 complain of never having had a Cotswold poem for yourself; but what else, please, is ‘Burnt Norton’? YouForbes-Sempill, William, 19th Lord SempillTSE refuses occasional poem for;a2 don’t suppose that I did write a poem for Lady S.,2 do you? Perhaps, indeed, if I had had a little time with nothing to do, and had been more amused by the notion, and if I believed that Lady S. was quite so simple as Semphill [sic], I might have done: for it is, I assure you, much easier to turn out an elegant copy of light verse to order for strangers of [or] for people with whom one’s association has definite formal limits! But'Valedictory: Forbidding Mourning: to the Lady of the House, A';a2 except for the verses for your aunt’s birthday (and'To the Indians Who Died in Africa by T. S. Eliot';a5 those'Note on War Poetry, A';a3 two sets of verses I did, not for any person, but for Red Cross books) I have never done anything of the sort.
Notravels, trips and plansTSE's abortive 1943 Iceland mission;e9;a2 further news about my projected expedition. Indeed, it seems possible that it might take more time than I can give, so that it might be postponed indefinitely.
1.‘Bleakhouse’, one of the oldest properties in Peterborough, New Hampshire, dates from 1792, and was later extended with gables and outbuildings (including a bowling alley constructed on the second storey of a shed). In 1936, the property – located on the north-east corner of Route 101 and Pine Street – was given to the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.
2.Lady Sempill.
TheForbes-Sempill, William, 19th Lord Sempill Anglo-Swedish Society was chaired by the Scottish peer and pioneering pilot William Forbes-Sempill, 19th Lord Sempill (1893–1965), whose second wife Cecilia Sempill was a cousin of Christina Morley. (Lord Sempill was later discovered to have passed secret information to the Imperial Japanese military prior to WW2, but no prosecution took place.)
6.BarbaraHinkley, Barbara (TSE's first cousin) Hinkley (1889–1958) was married in July 1928 to Roger Wolcott (1877–1965), an attorney; they lived at 125 Beacon Hill, Boston, and at 1733 Canton Avenue, Milton, Mass.
5.EleanorHinkley, Eleanor Holmes (TSE's first cousin) Holmes Hinkley (1891–1971), playwright; TSE’s first cousin; daughter of Susan Heywood Stearns – TSE’s maternal aunt – and Holmes Hinkley: see Biographical Register.
2.JeanetteMcPherrin, Jeanette McPherrin (1911–92), postgraduate student at Scripps College; friend of EH: see Biographical Register.
3.DrPerkins, Dr John Carroll (EH's uncle) John Carroll Perkins (1862–1950), Minister of King’s Chapel, Boston: see Biographical Register.