[No surviving envelope]
Letter 50.
Your letter of August 6 has arrived – not quite within the month, as you were assured, but in something over five weeks. It follows its successor, but contains the extra bit of information about Miss Briggs’s niece and Vermont College, mentions a dog and identifies the baby you have been looking after. Grand Manan had to start again on indefinite peregrinations. IPerkinses, the;k9 am glad that the P.’s have got to the seaside, and that there is not room for you. Who, by the way, is my ‘old crony E.F.P.?’ IPeters, Harold;b3 thought at first you meant Harold Peters, but that was many months ago; thenPound, EzraTSE on his indictment;d1 I decided that you must mean Ezra (Loomis) Pound. As for the latter, he has made his bed and no one can unmake it for him. His situation has been sufficiently picklish all this time, with his wife and his mother there, to say nothing of the poor little boy here, whom they don’t seem to have bothered about much. It comes from vanity and from not understanding, or really being interested in, human beings. He thought this was a war of ideologies, not of nations. And now, to have been more fascist than the Italians (few of whom, I imagine, except those who were profiting by it, took that regime very seriously) is hardly an advantage where he is.
NoShamley Wood, Surreyits melodramas;b2 particular news of Shamley, except that the Parrot has died. Nobody knew where the Parrot came from, anyway: it was evacuated to Shamley at the beginning of the war by Aunt Etta, who didn’t remember how she came by it or how long she had had it. It was a disagreeable Parrot, which bit, and its only accomplishment was to scream ‘Hooper!’ which was the name of the previous chauffeur. But the household seems to have become attached to it, and strolling in the garden yesterday I came upon a small grave, with a jam jar of dead marigolds in it. There is a bright and cheerful Christian Scientist stopping here at present: she used to run a Christian Science school for little children: I never heard of such a thing before. Her only interests seem to be films and cross word puzzles. AnywayFabers, the1943 Minsted summer stay;f8, I am off to Minsted House this afternoon, to stay (Sunday this is) till Tuesday morning. TheseRichmonds, theTSE's Netherhampton weekends with;a7 visits have to be paid once a year: like the visit to the Richmonds in three weeks time, andde la Mares, thegive TSE wartime refuge;a6, I fear, a weekend with the De la Mares later. TheCripps, Sir Richard Staffordmakes TSE's cold worse;a3 last time I went there, a year ago, I got a bad cold and then had to hear Stafford Cripps make a speech at the Albert Hall, so that I was in bed for ten days, andRoyal Central School of Speech and DramaTSE's speech to;a1 failed to speak at the annual opening of the Central School of Dramatic Art, which consequently I must do in a fortnight’s time from now. IReads, thehouse TSE's possessions;b1Read, Herbert
ThePoetry Reading for Chinarecounted;a3 second Poetry Reading went off well, thoughSitwell, Edithat Poetry Reading for China;b5 Edith Sitwell told me afterwards that she thought she was going to faint: IWellesley, Dorothy, Duchess of Wellingtonat odds with Edith Sitwell;a4 don’t know why, except that she had to sit near Dorothy Wellesley. MrsOei Hui-lan;a1. Wellington Koo in the front row, looking very handsome and distinguished.1 Fourteen poets, including two Chinese who read in Chinese and in English (it sounded exactly the same either way). NobodyShort, Dorothy Field;a1 knew Mrs. Short, the organiser;2 and as she was assisted by an active cousin, it was impossible to be sure which was which. ThereMacCarthy, Desmondmistaken for electrician;b2 was at first a little confusion because they mistook Desmond MacCarthy, who had been asked to take the Chair, for the electrician who had been ordered to come to put the microphone right. TheEmpson, Williamreads 'Bacchus';a8 great success was William Empson’s reading of one of his most unintelligible poems: the audience liked the way he read it.3 IMorley, Christopher;a3 had arrived straight from Louise Morley’s wedding reception, which took place in a very small flat in Mayfair: so it was rather tiring. I escaped a Chinese dinner afterwards on the pretext of firewatching.
One more winter is approaching rapidly: five months of darkness, I hope the last winter of the European part of the war. Itravels, trips and planspossible post-war American visit;f6;a2 wish I could believe that the cessation of hostilities would enable us to move about freely: but I fear that there will be no shipping available for ordinary citizens for some time after that; and perhaps my only hope, for some time, will be the slender one of a mission of some kind. I wish that I got more regular news from Cambridge: I know that there is probably nothing new for them to write, but it would make my writing easier. I shall depend upon you on your next visit there. I should feel less restless if your own winter was settled.
1.OeiOei Hui-lan Hui-lan (1889–1992), Chinese-Indonesian celebrity and regaled socialite, was the wife of V. K. Wellington Koo – Koo Vi Kyuin (1888–1985) – statesman and ambassador (and participant in the founding of the League of Nations and the United Nations), who had served the new Republic of China as acting premier and briefly as President, Oct. 1926 to June 1927.
2.MrsShort, Dorothy Field Dorothy Field Short (b. 1886), writer, editor, journalist, musician and activist – from 1930, Local and National Officer of the National Council of Women of Great Britain – was married to the artist and caricaturist Norman Dudley Short (1882–1951).
3.SeePoetry Reading for Chinarecounted to JDH;a4n too TSE to Hayward, 25 Sept. 1943: ‘The Poetry Reading? It went off very well, considering that Mrs. Dudley Short (not Ward) had never undertaken such an enterprise before, that nobody knew who she was, and nobody can identify her even now, because she was assisted by a bustling cousin, and it was impossible to fix in the mind which was which. SomeMacCarthy, Desmondmistaken for electrician;b2 diversion was created beforehand, by the arrival of Desmond MacCarthy to take the chair, and by the confusion arising out of Mrs. Short (or her cousin) thinking he was the electrician come to mend the microphone. Desmond made a neat speech; once or twice during the proceedings he fell into a reverie and forgot to introduce a poet; andMacNeice, Louisintroduced as T. S. Eliot;a7n he introduced Louis McNeice [sic] as me, andSitwell, Osbertmis-introduced;a7n he introduced Osbert as Mr. Sitwell; but the poets and p.-esses all spoke out loud and clear, andRidler, Anne (née Bradby)presented to Edith Sitwell;b6n Anne Ridler andRaine, Kathleenpresented to Edith Sitwell;a2n Kathleen Raine made a pleasing impression. I introduced these young ladies to Edith, who received them as the last Empress of China might have done: I told Anne afterwards that she ought to have curtsied, but she said she couldn’t with a glass of water. TheEmpson, Williamreads 'Bacchus';a8 hit of the afternoon was Bill Empson’s reading of BACCHUS (the more obscure Bacchus of the two, with that stuff about the Arkitekt): the house reverberated with applause. I escaped (with some difficulty) from a dinner with Mrs. Short (and her cousin) at the Chinese Restaurant. AlsoYeh, Georgeaddresses Spender as 'Steve';a3n present Dr. George YEH (who delighted me by addressing Stephen Spender as STEVE) and your wee friend HSUING, who read some poems in Chinese and then in English, and produced exactly the same noises in both languages. I somehow suspect Hsuing of being something very important in the Chinese Secret Service: he is subtler, I suspect, than Old George’ (King’s).
8.SirCripps, Sir Richard Stafford Richard Stafford Cripps (1889–1952), lawyer and Labour Party politician; co-founder in 1932 and leader of the Socialist League, he was at this time opposed to rearmament.
4.WilliamEmpson, William Empson (1906–84), poet and critic: see Biographical Register.
1.DesmondMacCarthy, Desmond MacCarthy (1877–1952), literary and dramatic critic, was intimately associated with the Bloomsbury Group. Literary editor of the New Statesman, 1920–7; editor of Life and Letters, 1928–33; he moved in 1928 to the Sunday Times, where he was the chief reviewer for many years. See Desmond MacCarthy: The Man and His Writings (1984); Hugh and Mirabel Cecil, Clever Hearts: Desmond and Molly MacCarthy: A Biography (1990).
7.LouisMacNeice, Louis MacNeice (1907–63), poet, radio producer and playwright: see Biographical Register.
5.ChristopherMorley, Christopher Morley (1890–1957), noted journalist, novelist, essayist, poet. Educated at Haverford College, Pennsylvania, and as a Rhodes Scholar at New College, Oxford, he made his name as a journalist with the New York Evening Post, and he was co-founder of and contributor to the Saturday Review of Literature. A passionate Sherlock Holmesian, he was to be co-founder in 1934 of ‘The Baker Street Irregulars’. Works include Kitty Foyle (novel, 1939).
1.OeiOei Hui-lan Hui-lan (1889–1992), Chinese-Indonesian celebrity and regaled socialite, was the wife of V. K. Wellington Koo – Koo Vi Kyuin (1888–1985) – statesman and ambassador (and participant in the founding of the League of Nations and the United Nations), who had served the new Republic of China as acting premier and briefly as President, Oct. 1926 to June 1927.
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.
3.Ezra PoundPound, Ezra (1885–1972), American poet and critic: see Biographical Register.
3.KathleenRaine, Kathleen Raine (1908–2003), poet and scholar, read Natural Sciences and Psychology at Girton College, Cambridge, graduating in 1929. Briefly married in 1929 to Hugh Sykes Davies, she then married Charles Madge, though that marriage was almost as short-lived. She was a Research Fellow at Girton College, 1955–61; and Andrew Mellon Lecturer at the National Gallery of Arts in Washington, DC, in 1962. Her early poetry was published by Tambimuttu (founder of Poetry London): her first volume was Stone and Flower (1943), with illustrations by Barbara Hepworth; other collections include The Year One (1952) and Collected Poems (1956, 2000). Critical works include Blake and Tradition (2 vols, 1968–9) – ‘It makes all other studies of Blake obsolete,’ said C. S. Lewis – Thomas Taylor the Platonist: Selected Writings (1969); William Blake (1970), and Yeats, The Tarot and the Golden Dawn (1972); and she published four volumes of autobiography: Farewell Happy Fields (1972), The Land Unknown (1975), The Lion’s Mouth (1977), India Seen Afar (1990). In 1968 she failed to win the Oxford Chair of Poetry; and in 1991 she turned down an invitation from the Royal Society of Literature to become one of its ten Companions of Literature. She won the W. H. Smith Literary Award 1972, and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry 1992; and in 2000 she was appointed both CBE and Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 1980 she launched Temenos (‘Sacred Enclosure’), a review ‘devoted to the arts of the imagination’ and stressing ‘the intimate link between the arts and the sacred’; and in 1990, with patronage from the Prince of Wales, she founded the Temenos Academy of Integral Studies, which she styled ‘a school of wisdom’.
3.AnneRidler, Anne (née Bradby) (Bradby) Ridler (30 July 1912–2001), poet, playwright, editor; worked as TSE’s secretary, 1936–40: see Biographical Register.
2.MrsShort, Dorothy Field Dorothy Field Short (b. 1886), writer, editor, journalist, musician and activist – from 1930, Local and National Officer of the National Council of Women of Great Britain – was married to the artist and caricaturist Norman Dudley Short (1882–1951).
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).
4.DorothyWellesley, Dorothy, Duchess of Wellington Wellesley, Duchess of Wellington (1889–1956) – known as Lady Gerald Wellesley (in 1914 she married the 7th Duke of Wellington, but they separated without divorce in 1922) – socialite, author, poet, editor; close friend of W. B. Yeats, who published her work in the Oxford Book of English Verse; editor of the Hogarth Living Poets series.
2.GeorgeYeh, George Yeh (1903–81) – Yeh Kung-chao (Ye Gongchao) – son of a cultivated Cantonese family, gained an MA in Indo-European linguistics at Cambridge, after taking a first degree in the USA, where his gifts brought him to the attention of Robert Frost. From 1935 he taught in the Department of Western Languages and Literature at Peking University. After the overthrow by the Communists of Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang government in 1949, he became Minister of Foreign Affairs for the government of Nationalist China; and in 1958–61 he was Taiwanese Ambassador to Washington; later an adviser to President Chiang Kai-shek. He wrote several books on literature and culture, and won a number of medals and citations.