[No surviving envelope]
Letter 41.
I am writing this letter several days late, and in rather different circumstances than usual. IMoot, Thewelcomes Reinhold Niebuhr as guest;c9 spent the last weekend, as I think I foretold, atOldham, Joseph;e3 Haslemere with Oldham’s group: aNiebuhr, Reinholdat the Moot;a6 discussion which I should have considered rather futile, but for the presence during a part of the time of Reinhold Niebuhr, whose conversation is always brilliant, and whose views are always stimulating and on many matters very congenial – he seems to me far and away the best theological thinker in America. Then I went to Shamley for one night, but was busy packing up for an absence of nearly four weeks; and came to town as usual on Tuesday. LunchChristian News-Letter (CNL)first number;a4 Tuesday as usual with the C.N.L. Board; dinner with a group of Conservative back-benchers, ThursdayColefax, Lady Sibyl (née Halsey);a6 dinedEliot, Thomas Hopkinsonat Lady Colefax's;a1 with Sybil Colefax to meet TomEliot, Revd Samuel Atkins, II (TSE's cousin);a1 Eliot – Sam Atkins Eliot’s son, whom I had never seen before, but who appears to be an important official in the W.O.I. [sc. O.W.I.] and much in with the Ambassador.1 He seems a pleasant, personable enough fellow; and I shall have to invite him for something when I get back. ILang, William Cosmo Gordon, Archbishop of Canterbury (later Baron Lang of Lambeth);a4 had been out to Kew in the afternoon, to have tea with the old Archbishop, now Lord Lang of Lambeth, in the ‘cottage’ given him by the King2 – backing onto Kew Gardens, so that he was able to take me out by the back gate for a stroll among the flowerbeds. TonightBrown, Harry, Jr.;a2 I went to a restaurant to dine with Harry Brown (the editor of ‘Yank’) but he did not turn up, so I dined at the club alone, andCulford School, Bury St. EdmundsTSE's Prize Day address at;a1 returned for a solitary night here before taking the early train tomorrow for Bury St. Edmunds. This sort of address, which cannot be read but must be made only from notes, is a great strain to me, and I have hardly been able to put my mind onto anything else for a week.3 I shall be thankful when I have got back on Sunday night, andtravels, trips and plansTSE's 1943 New Forest holiday;f1;a5 still more so when I have got to Buckler’s Hard, as I hope, in time for tea on Monday – and then a fortnight of solitude and no public engagement ahead until October at the moment. IMurder in the CathedralHoellering film;g1TSE adapting for screen;a3 am pretending that I will think aboutHoellering, George M.;a5 Hoellering’s film andChurch of South India controversy;a5 about South India: but I think that with a deck chair, a little sun (I hope), Johnson’sreading (TSE's)Lives of the Poets;h7 ‘Lives of the Poets’ (which I have never read from cover to cover) and a detective story, I shall consider myself fully occupied.
Letters will be forwarded to me (to the Master Builder’s House, Buckler’s Hard, near Beaulieu, Hants.[)] – I must have described the place to you when I was there last summer.
I was glad to get your cable: I imagine that one or two letters have not reached me yet. You said that you were starting your vacation; but where you may be goodness knows. The problem of getting a holiday both with the necessary intimate friends and the necessary solitude is, I find, insoluble: what I should like for you is the company of friends who would look after you and not expect too much of you for it to be restful. Oh dear, I can’t write anything sensible, or intimate, or interesting, until I have got this damned speech to schoolboys behind me. I am taking this little typewriter with me, so that I may be able to write to you and to Ada during each of the two weeks; and unless I am so oppressed by the memory of Culford as I am by the expectation, I shall write a more human and intelligent letter. ButSimon, Sir John;a3 I just hear on the wireless that Lord Simon4 has been making the prize day speech at Repton, and he doesn’t seem to have said anything brilliant.
1.ThomasEliot, Thomas Hopkinson H. Eliot (1907–91), son of Samuel Atkins Eliot (1862–1950); lawyer, politician, academic and author. Educated at Harvard, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and the Harvard Law School, he practised as a lawyer from 1933 (also lecturing on Government at Harvard, 1937–8). He was a Democratic member of Congress, 1941–Jan. 1943. In 1943 he became Director of the British Division, Office of War Information in London (where he was also a special assistant to the U.S. Ambassador); and in 1944 he did further war service with the Office of Strategic Services. For five years after the war, he was in practice as a lawyer in Boston, before taking up an appointment as Professor of Political Science at Washington University, St Louis. After a period as Professor of Constitutional Law, 1958–61, he became Chancellor of Washington University, 1962–71; and he served on various government bodies.
2.Cosmo Gordon Lang, 1st Baron Lang of Lambeth (1864–1945), Scottish Anglican; Archbishop of York, 1908–28; Archbishop of Canterbury, 1928–42.
3.TSE was to deliver the Prize Day Address at Culford School, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.
4.Lord Chancellor in Churchill’s government.
3.HarryBrown, Harry, Jr. Brown, Jr. (1917–86), American poet, novelist and screenwriter; his works include The End of a Decade (1940) and The Poem of Bunker Hill (1941). During WW2 he wrote for Yank, the Army Weekly; and he later found success as a screenwriter: his achievements included Ocean’s 11 (1960), starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr.
4.SibylColefax, Lady Sibyl (née Halsey), Lady Colefax (1874–1950), socialite and professional decorator; was married in 1901 to Sir Arthur Colefax, lawyer. John Hayward called her (New York Sun, 25 Aug. 1934) ‘perhaps the best, certainly the cleverest, hostess in London at the present time. As an impresario she is unequaled, but there is far too much circulation and hubbub at her parties to entitle her to be called a salonière.’ See Kirsty McLeod, A Passion for Friendship (1991); Siân Evans, Queen Bees: Six Brilliant and Extraordinary Hostesses Between the Wars (2016).
1.ThomasEliot, Thomas Hopkinson H. Eliot (1907–91), son of Samuel Atkins Eliot (1862–1950); lawyer, politician, academic and author. Educated at Harvard, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and the Harvard Law School, he practised as a lawyer from 1933 (also lecturing on Government at Harvard, 1937–8). He was a Democratic member of Congress, 1941–Jan. 1943. In 1943 he became Director of the British Division, Office of War Information in London (where he was also a special assistant to the U.S. Ambassador); and in 1944 he did further war service with the Office of Strategic Services. For five years after the war, he was in practice as a lawyer in Boston, before taking up an appointment as Professor of Political Science at Washington University, St Louis. After a period as Professor of Constitutional Law, 1958–61, he became Chancellor of Washington University, 1962–71; and he served on various government bodies.
3.GeorgeHoellering, George M. M. Hoellering (1898–1980), Austrian-born filmmaker and cinema manager: see Biographical Register.
3.ReinholdNiebuhr, Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971), influential theologian, ethicist, philosopher, and polemical commentator on politics and public affairs: see Biographical Register.
8.JosephOldham, Joseph (‘Joe’) Houldsworth Oldham (1874–1969), missionary, adviser, organiser: see Biographical Register.
11.SirSimon, Sir John John Simon (1873–1954), Conservative politician, with the unusual distinction of being Foreign Secretary (at the date of this letter), then later Home Secretary and Chancellor. A barrister in his earlier life, he was to serve as Lord Chancellor in Sir Winston Churchill’s wartime government.