[No surviving envelope]
Letter 52.
I did not write to you last weekend. IRichmonds, theTSE's Netherhampton weekends with;a7 went from London to Salisbury on Friday, returned to Guildford via Woking on Monday, andSt. Anne's Church House, Soho'Culture Class';a4 spent the afternoon and evening preparing to meet the ‘Culture Class’ at St. Anne’s Soho the next afternoon. Next weekend will also be disturbed: by my having to go back to town on Saturday afternoon, spendCheetham, Revd Erichis testimonial;f5 theSt. Stephen's Church, Gloucester Roadchurchwarding at;a5 night with Cheetham in order to be present on the first Sunday of the Dedication Festival of the Church, on which occasion, after High Mass, he is to be presented with a cheque, representing the proceeds of the collection made for a present on the 25th anniversary of his coming to that church (first as a curate). LordSankey, John, Viscount Sankey;a1 Sankey1 will make the presentation on behalf of the congregation; but the wardens are expected to be present, and there is a rumour that I may have to say a few words to open the proceedings. It will be a great day for Cheetham, so I must be there. I shall then spend Sunday night at the club, as I have to be in town now on Mondays for this class; then Monday and Tuesday nights at Russell Square, and return to Shamley on Wednesday, asMoot, The;d2 I have to go off again on Friday for a weekend conference of ‘the Moot’. So I do not know on which day I shall be able to write next. Afterde la Mares, thegive TSE wartime refuge;a6 that, my only other excursion between now and the end of the year will be to the De la Mares for the weekend of November 20.
BesidesSheffield, Alfred Dwight ('Shef' or 'Sheff')writes from Ada's deathbed;b6, I could not give my mind to writing until I had written a letter to Sheff, which I have now done.2 I got his cable during the week, before going to the Richmonds, and cabled back. IEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother);h5 shall no doubt hear more from Henry in due course. ISheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister)her place in the Eliot family;j5 am very sorry that you could not have seen Ada again – perhaps you did, but I should think unlikely, as I had gathered that there were fewer and fewer hours in which she could talk to people. Sheff had lately spoken of her being a little confused in mind first thing in the morning, which he attributed to the drug: she must have had to have very strong doses latterly; but for a part of the day she seems to have kept her intellectual interests going to the end, or nearly to the end. This was certainly no sudden shock to me, as I had been expecting to hear, from day to day. I think the immediate effect is simply to make the barrier between life and death seem much thinner than before. Their house always meant ‘home’ to me, or the nearest substitute for a home of one’s own. She had far more intellect than any other of the family – indeed, as powerful a mind as I have ever known in a woman – and I am afraid that my parents would have been more likely to appreciate it in a son than in a daughter. ThisEliot, William Greenleaf (TSE's grandfather)Ada's quarrel with;a4 warped her a little: but in later years she thought with more sympathy of our grandfather, who – in spite of having founded a co-educational university – was opposed to ‘higher education’ of women in his own family. IEliot, Marion Cushing (TSE's sister)easiest Eliot in Ada's absence;d9 think that the one left with whom I feel the most at ease is Marian. She is a very simple, undistorted nature; andEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother)tries TSE's patience;h6 I do not have to make the effort of patience that is necessary with Henry.
I have your letter of the September 7 from Chestnut Hill. It sounds a pleasant, indeed luxurious setting: but I suppose you are now back again at Commonwealth Avenue. IChurchill, Sir Winston Leonard SpencerEH attends his Harvard address;a7 am glad that you were present to see Churchill: he made a good speech, though I am not happy about Basic English!3 But he is a great man, and has just the right balance of aristocracy and vulgarity to be a leader of the present age.
I am far from surprised at your difficulty in putting ‘the world before yourself’ in your present circumstances; you would be something more than human if you could. ItSecond World Warits effect on TSE's work;e1 is possible to do this when one has a job which takes one’s best attention and exercises one’s best powers; it is easy when one’s job has something to do with the world’s affairs and one can make a difference to them – though the danger then, for the public man, is to imagine that he is identifying himself with his country when he is merely identifying his country with himself – the difference of doing one a little more than the other is perhaps the mark of the difference between the politician and the statesman: but, my dear, it is fearfully hard to do anything of the sort when one is unoccupied, thwarted, and conscious of energies and abilities which are [not] finding any outlet and expression. Let destiny find you the work before I urge you to be less concerned with your own life! Meanwhile, it is the consciousness, and the struggle to put ‘the world’ first, that does you credit; and so long as you have that, no one has less cause to reproach herself with being self-centred.
I am happy with your report of your health: but I fear for the winter unless you can be settled. I am very well too: I think yeast-vite has helped, and perhaps sero-calcin andMoncrieff, Constance ('Cocky')dispenses fragment of Lourdes grotto;b4 a fragment of the grotto of Lourdes which Cockie gave me. LadyBosanquet, Theodoravisits Shamley;a1 RhonddaMackworth, Margaret Haig, 2nd Viscountess Rhondda (née Thomas);a3, MissPeake, Catherine Marie (née Knight);a1 Bosanquet and Mr. and Mrs. Charles Peake4 are walking over to tea tomorrow: I have a suspicion that they want something of me (as they invited themselves) for ‘Time and Tide’. ButBooks Across the Sealetter to The Times for;a5 I shall probably be composing letters to the Times, one on behalf of ‘Books Across the Sea’ (President)5 and'Homage to Virgil';a1 anotherVirgil Society, Theletter written on behalf of;a2 on behalf of the Virgil Society (President):6 and the culture class is going to keep me busy. Difficult to tell what it will amount to: it appears to be about 28 women and 2 men: but they did seem interested in discussion, spoke intelligently, and I think most of them will keep it up.
Wheredogs'Boerre' (Norwegian Elkhound);b7;d8 is Boerre? I shall think of him at a small dinner to take place to bring together English and Norwegians, intellectuals – IRead, Herbertwheeled out at Norwegian dinner;c5 am toSpender, Stephenpart of British contingent at Norwegian dinner;c5 produceRoberts, Michaelat Norwegian diplomatic dinner;b6 Herbert Read, Stephen Spender and Michael Roberts andGrieg, Nordahl;a1 they will have Nordahl Grieg (a grandnephew of the composer)7 whom they consider their best younger poet.
‘UnderHardy, ThomasUnder the Greenwood Tree;a3 the Greenwood Tree’ is one of those I liked better; but I remember it as pretty grim. ThereHardy, ThomasTSE on;a1 is a touch of cruelty about Hardy – anyway, everything of his leaves a bad taste in my mouth. LetTrollope, AnthonyBarchester novels recommended by TSE;a1 me recommend Trollope’s Barchester novels: they are first-rate, and you would appreciate the society he describes.
1.JohnSankey, John, Viscount Sankey Sankey, Viscount Sankey (1866–1948), Labour politician, was Lord Chancellor, 1929–35. Anglo-Catholic.
2.LetterSheffield, Ada Eliot (TSE's sister)dies;j6n not traced. Ada Eliot Sheffield had died on 2 Oct.
3.OnChurchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencerremarks on Basic English;a9n 3 Sept. 1943, Harvard President James B. Conant conferred on Winston Churchill the degree of Doctor of Laws. Churchill addressed a crowd of about 12,000 in Harvard Yard (one of them was EH; and Henry and Theresa Eliot were also there). Churchill’s remarks included:
The great Bismarck – for there were once great men in Germany – is said to have observed towards the close of his life that the most potent factor in human society at the end of the nineteenth century was the fact that the British and American peoples spoke the same language […]
This gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance, and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship. I like to think of British and Americans moving about freely over each other’s wide estates with hardly a sense of being foreigners to one another. But I do not see why we should not try to spread our common language even more widely throughout the globe and, without seeking selfish advantage over any, possess ourselves of this invaluable amenity and birthright.
Some months ago I persuaded the British Cabinet to set up a committee of Ministers to study and report upon Basic English. Here you have a plan. There are others, but here you have a very carefully wrought plan for an international language capable of a very wide transaction of practical business and interchange of ideas. The whole of it is comprised in about 650 nouns and 200 verbs or other parts of speech – no more indeed than can be written on one side of a single sheet of paper.
What was my delight when, the other evening, quite unexpectedly, I heard the President of the United States suddenly speak of the merits of Basic English, and is it not a coincidence that, with all this in mind, I should arrive at Harvard, in fulfilment of the long-dated invitations to receive this degree, with which president Conant has honoured me? For Harvard has done more than any other American university to promote the extension of Basic English. The first work on Basic English was written by two Englishmen, Ivor Richards, now of Harvard, and C. K. Ogden, of Cambridge University, England, working in association.
The Harvard Commission on English Language Studies is distinguished both for its research and its practical work, particularly in introducing the use of Basic English in Latin America; and this Commission, your Commission, is now, I am told, working with secondary schools in Boston on the use of Basic English in teaching the main language to American children and in teaching it to foreigners preparing for citizenship.
Gentlemen, I make you my compliments. I do not wish to exaggerate, but you are the head-stream of what might well be a mighty fertilising and health-giving river. It would certainly be a grand convenience for us all to be able to move freely about the world – as we shall be able to do more freely than ever before as the science of the world develops – be able to move freely about the world, and be able to find everywhere a medium, albeit primitive, of intercourse and understanding […]
We have learned from hard experience that stronger, more efficient, more rigorous world institutions must be created to preserve peace and to forestall the causes of future wars. In this task the strongest victorious nations must be combined, and also those who have borne the burden and heat of the day and suffered under the flail of adversity; and, in this task, this creative task, there are some who say: “Let us have a world council and under it regional or continental councils,” and there are others who prefer a somewhat different organisation.
If we are together nothing is impossible. If we are divided all will fail.
I therefore preach continually the doctrine of the fraternal association of our two peoples, not for any purpose of gaining invidious material advantages for either of them, not for territorial aggrandisement or the vain pomp of earthly domination, but for the sake of service to mankind and for the honour that comes to those who faithfully serve great causes.
Here let me say how proud we ought to be, young and old alike, to live in this tremendous, thrilling, formative epoch in the human story, and how fortunate it was for the world that when these great trials came upon it there was a generation that terror could not conquer and brutal violence could not enslave […]
Let us rise to the full level of our duty and of our opportunity, and let us thank God for the spiritual rewards He has granted for all forms of valiant and faithful service.
4.CharlesPeake, Charles Peake (1897–1958), British diplomat; 1939, Head of the Foreign Office News Department and chief press adviser to the Ministry of Information. In 1941 he became Acting Counsellor in Washington, DC. Knighted in 1956.
5.‘Books Across the Sea’ (letter), The Times, 9 Nov. 1943, 5: CProse 5, 480–1.
6.‘Homage to Virgil’, TLS, 18 Dec. 1943, 607: CProse 5, 814–16.
7.NordahlGrieg, Nordahl Grieg (b. 1902), poet, novelist, dramatist and journalist. While working as a war correspondent he was killed on 2 Dec. 1943 on a bombing mission over Berlin.
3.TheodoraBosanquet, Theodora Bosanquet (1880–1961) had been Henry James’s amanuensis, 1907–16. See Larry McMurty, ‘Almost Forgotten Women’ (on Bosanquet and Lady Rhondda), New York Review of Books, 7 Nov. 2002, 51–2.
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.HenryEliot, Henry Ware, Jr. (TSE's brother) Ware Eliot (1879–1947), TSE’s older brother: see Biographical Register.
1.Marian/MarionEliot, Marion Cushing (TSE's sister) Cushing Eliot (1877–1964), fourth child of Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Eliot: see Biographical Register.
2.Washington University 1857–1932: Seventy-fifth Anniversary of the Inauguration (Washington University Press, Apr. 1932) saluted WilliamEliot, William Greenleaf (TSE's grandfather) Greenleaf Eliot (1811–87), one of the founders and third Chancellor of the university. ‘He was graduated from Harvard Divinity School in 1834, and one year later was ordained as a minister. Desiring to identify himself with the West, he accepted an invitation from a group in St Louis, and organized the First Congregational Society, which later became the Church of the Messiah (Unitarian) … In 1853 he became the first president of the Board of Directors of Eliot Seminary, a position which he continued to hold after the change of name to Washington University, until 1870, when he became also acting chancellor. In 1872 he was elevated to the chancellorship’ (6). In an address given on 22 Apr. 1957, the Revd Dr W. G. Eliot proclaimed, ‘The charter under which we act is unexceptionable, – broad and comprehensive, – containing no limitation nor condition, except one introduced by our own request, as an amendment to the original act, namely, the prohibition of all sectarian and party tests and uses, in all departments of the institution, forever’ (11).
7.NordahlGrieg, Nordahl Grieg (b. 1902), poet, novelist, dramatist and journalist. While working as a war correspondent he was killed on 2 Dec. 1943 on a bombing mission over Berlin.
2.MargaretMackworth, Margaret Haig, 2nd Viscountess Rhondda (née Thomas) Haig Thomas, Viscountess Rhondda (1883–1958), writer and feminist, was proprietor and editor from 1926 of Time & Tide. See Angela V. John, Turning the Tide: The Life of Lady Rhondda (Cardigan, 2013); Catherine Clay, ‘Time and Tide’: The feminist and cultural politics of a modern magazine (Edinburgh, 2018).
4.CharlesPeake, Charles Peake (1897–1958), British diplomat; 1939, Head of the Foreign Office News Department and chief press adviser to the Ministry of Information. In 1941 he became Acting Counsellor in Washington, DC. Knighted in 1956.
3.Herbert ReadRead, Herbert (1893–1968), English poet and literary critic: see Biographical Register.
1.MichaelRoberts, Michael Roberts (1902–48), critic, editor, poet: see Biographical Register.
1.JohnSankey, John, Viscount Sankey Sankey, Viscount Sankey (1866–1948), Labour politician, was Lord Chancellor, 1929–35. Anglo-Catholic.
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.
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).
12.Stephen SpenderSpender, Stephen (1909–95), poet and critic: see Biographical Register.