[No surviving envelope]
To have two cables from you in a week is decidedly an event. IShakespeare, William'Sonnet CXXXII';c8 lookedHale, Emilybirthdays, presents and love-tokens;w2EH remembers TSE's birthday with reference to Shakespeare;e9 up Sonnet CXXII at once: and again in London in a newer edition, just to make sure that there was no difference in the numbering.1 Part of the meaning, perhaps, is a bit ambiguous: another part is clear, and the essential of it gave me joy. MyCheetham, Revd Ericremembers TSE's birthday;d9 birthdayTandy, Pollyremembers TSE's birthday;a2 (55) was remembered by the usual people: Fr. Cheetham, Polly Tandy & her children, andNason, Margaret ('Meg') Geraldinesends TSE birthday letter;a1 Meg Nason – who apologises for not sending a cake, and deplores that it would not be an iced one – I enclose her letter. MrsMirrlees, Emily Lina ('Mappie', née Moncrieff)spoils TSE on his birthday;d5. Mirrlees also remembered, or keeps a birthday book – she found out originally from a wire from Cheetham being telephoned: and presented me with a box of cigars (a very precious gift nowadays) and the best dinner that could be provided, as well as the nearest possible imitation of a sponge-cake for tea. (Sponges are scarce, but spongecake is ever scarcer). Your second, and equally welcome, and more surprising, cable arrived this morning. I wish I had known that yesterday was being observed in that way in America: I should have thought of you in that context on Sunday morning. YesterdayChrist Church, Shamley Greenat Harvest Festival;b1 was also the local Harvest Festival here, and the church was decorated in the usual way, with coloured leaves, dahlias, Michaelmas daisies, and giant vegetables.
I have no letter from you since I last wrote: I assume from the cable that you are at Commonwealth Avenue. (PerhapsEliots, the Henry;b6Eliot, Henry Ware, Jnr (TSE's brother)
I am rather tormented by speaking engagements at present. Last week I had to entertain, and discourse to, my religious dining club, about ten members present; andRoyal Central School of Speech and DramaTSE's speech to;a1 on Thursday I address the Central School for Dramatic Art, on what I know about Verse Speaking. I think that I speak more fluently from notes than I used to, but I don’t like it. And the day after my return from Salisbury (I can come back by way of Woking, instead of going to London) ISt. Anne's Church House, Soho'Culture Class';a4 have to start this terrifying set of ‘discussions’ on Culture and Religion in Soho. I only have to conduct four meetings, but it is formidable not knowing what sort of people will come, and hoping that they will not be so many, and so passive, that I shall have to do all the talking myself. And'Des Organes publics et privés de la coopération intellectuelle';a1 a few little articles to write – one for ‘The British Ally’, published in Russian in Moscow, andFouchet, Max-Pol;a1 for ‘Fontaine’ a French review published in Algiers,2 the editor of which, an energetic young man named Fouchet,3 has just been over here. IBaldwin, Stanleyreminisces with TSE;a6 had a few words with Lord Baldwin4 the other day, at a lunch of the Dining Club to which he turned up, and remembered the last time I had seen him – when we went to Tewkesbury, and I had to be motored over to Pershore to catch a train to town – do you remember? Meg’sNason, Margaret ('Meg') Geraldine;a6 letter gave me a wave of nostalgia, remembering the picnic, somehow, especially.
The weather reminds me that it is definitely autumn, especially when I go out at 7.40 on Sunday morning. I have prudently gone into heavier clothing, instead of trying to wear my summer clothes, which do not get so much wear, a little too long as I did last year: and am also taking serocalcin (a preventative of colds) yeast-vite (to increase blood pressure) andMoncrieff, Dr AgnesMappie's homeopathic cousin;a1 Agnes Moncrieff’s homeopathic pills (which cover everything, including arthritis in one toe). You will say that, with all this, it is high time I went to see my doctor: and indeed I have been intending to do, as well as a visit to the dentist (just to be sure) andCheetham, Revd Erichis testimonial;f5 a visit to Kensington: FrSt. Stephen's Church, Gloucester Roadvestry goings-on;a2. Cheetham is to receive a testimonial on completing twenty-five years in the same church, on the Dedication Festival, October 24 (you might drop him a line!) and'Twenty-Five Years in Gloucester Road';a1 the good ladies of the committee have been making me help draft the appeal form etc.5 (I have to be rather careful, because they are inclined to consult me and not the other warden, whom they consider not quite genteel – though before the war he had three Rolls Royces, paid for apparently out of the profits of spraying people’s telephones with mild disinfectant).
IFlat 3, 11 Emperor's Gatedate of TSE's removal from;b8 particularly want to get to Kensington, to rummage for my missing articles of property stored in the church hall when we gave up the flat at the end of 1940: but every week some engagement or appointment turns up every day to make it impossible.
DoPerkins, Dr John Carroll (EH's uncle);f4 let me know how Dr. Perkins is, and how you find Commonwealth Avenue on your return. I wish there had been snapshots of you on your holiday: none can be sent from this side because nobody has any film to take pictures with. My dear, your second cable gave me very particular pleasure.
1.Shakespeare’s Sonnet CXXII:
Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
Full character’d with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain,
Beyond all date, even to eternity:
Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have faculty by nature to subsist;
Till each to raz’d oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be miss’d.
That poor retention could not so much hold,
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,
To trust those tables that receive thee more:
To keep an adjunct to remember thee
Were to import forgetfulness in me.
2.TSE, ‘Des organes publics et privés de la cooperation intellectuelle’, Fontaine 6 (1943), 1–7: CProse 6, 470–9.
3.Max-PolFouchet, Max-Pol Fouchet (1913–81), poet; editor of Fontaine, a review published by the French Resistance. TSE to Spender, 16 Oct. 1943: ‘I have met Fouchet, and find him very agreeable’ (Northwestern).
4.Stanley Baldwin, former Conservative Prime Minister.
5.TSE, ‘Twenty-Five Years in Gloucester Road’, Church Times, 29 Oct. 1943, 559: CProse 6, 434–5.
4.StanleyBaldwin, Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947), Conservative Party politician; Prime Minister, 1923–4; 1924–9; 1935–7.
4.RevdCheetham, Revd Eric Eric Cheetham (1892–1957): vicar of St Stephen’s Church, Gloucester Road, London, 1929–56 – ‘a fine ecclesiastical showman’, as E. W. F. Tomlin dubbed him. TSE’s landlord and friend at presbytery-houses in S. Kensington, 1934–9. See Letters 7, 34–8.
3.Max-PolFouchet, Max-Pol Fouchet (1913–81), poet; editor of Fontaine, a review published by the French Resistance. TSE to Spender, 16 Oct. 1943: ‘I have met Fouchet, and find him very agreeable’ (Northwestern).
3.HopeMirrlees, Emily Lina ('Mappie', née Moncrieff) Mirrlees’s mother was Emily Lina Mirrlees, née Moncrieff (1862–1948) – known as ‘Mappie’ or ‘Mappy’ – see Biographical Register.
1.MargaretNason, Margaret ('Meg') Geraldine (Meg) Geraldine Nason (1900–86), proprietor of the Bindery tea rooms, Broadway, Worcestershire, whom TSE and EH befriended on visits to Chipping Campden.
3.DrPerkins, Dr John Carroll (EH's uncle) John Carroll Perkins (1862–1950), Minister of King’s Chapel, Boston: see Biographical Register.
8.AlfredSheffield, Alfred Dwight ('Shef' or 'Sheff') Dwight Sheffield (1871–1961) – ‘Shef’ or ‘Sheff’ – husband of TSE’s eldest sister, taught English at University School, Cleveland, Ohio, and was an English instructor, later Professor, of Group Work at Wellesley College. His publications include Lectures on the Harvard Classics: Confucianism (1909) and Grammar and Thinking: a study of the working conceptions in syntax (1912).