[41 Brimmer St., Boston]
No letter has come from you this week yet; the thought of the envelope on Monday always cheers me over Sunday, and the week starts drearily enough without it; but it is some consolation to observe that I have had no American mail at all since Friday; so I shall hope for tomorrow. I have been rather anxious about you lately, in connection with your care of your mother. ButHale, Emilyas actor;v8in The Footlight Club;a8 I am glad that there is to be a Footlights [sc. Footlight] Club performance;1 but who are the ladies, and what is the Play? You see I am very ignorant, for I am sure that I ought to know.
Since I left you on Friday – I mean, since I posted my letter to you, I have had to see a number of people. I lunched that day at the International Sportsmens’ Club in Grosvenor House, which I had never heard of before. The Sportsmen appeared to be mostly ladies, but my own party was International enough, for it consisted of EdouardRoditi, Edouard;a1 Roditi, a young Spanish Jew of financial connections who is a naturalised Englishman,2 GeorgesCattaui, Georges;a1 Cattaui, another Jew from Alexandria (a cousin of Jean de Menasce, who is now Brother Pierre de Menasce O.P.) who is secretary of the Egyptian Legation,3 andAlport, Dr Erichlunches with TSE, Cattaui and Roditi;a3 Erich Alport, a wealthy young man of Hamburg who is up at Oxford. They are all Jews, I think, and accordingly cosmopolitan, accomplished, and very much up in all contemporary intellectual affairs. OnCaetani, Marguerite (née Chapin);a1 Sunday, Marguerite de Bassiano arrived with her daughter4 who is to be a bridesmaid for her cousin Anne Lindsay, and she came to tea yesterday, and is coming again to-day as I have arranged to have Virginia whom she wants to meet. MargueriteCaetani, Marguerite (née Chapin)described for EH;a2 is the best type of international American. She has lived in France nearly all her life, her husband is a brother of the Duke of Sermoneta and his heir, they seem to have a great deal of money, but she is perfectly simple and unspoilt, and has a heart of gold as well as a good mind. She has been very kind to me, and was much help when Vivienne was in the Malmaison sanatorium. (Her husband is rather an odd fellow, half Scotch and a quarter Polish, and except for a passion for writing operas, and travelling about Europe to get them produced, seems about as little Italian as could be.) She runs a review in French called ‘Commerce’ which must cost her a good deal; she is extremely modest about her own part in it, but as she has three editors – PaulValéry, Paulonly nominally editor of Commerce;a1 Valery,5 ValeryLarbaud, Valeryas 'editor' of Commerce;a1 Larbaud6 andFargue, Léon Paul;a1 Leon Paul Fargue,7 and as they do no work and never agree about the review, you may say that she edits it herself. SheWoolf, Virginia;b1 pretends to be very frightened of Virginia and Virginia pretends to be very frightened of Princesses, so I trust they will get on well.
YesterdayOldham, Josephlunches with TSE;a1 I lunched at the Athenaeum with J. H. Oldham,8 who is a great authority on Christian Missions and subject races in Africa, andMacDonald, J. Ramsayspotted at the Athenaeum;a1 saw Ramsay Macdonald9 there, looking extremely well and hearty, I thought.
AndMonro, Haroldstill in nursing home;a7 on Wednesday I must go to see Harold Monro in his nursing home, andDouglas, Major Clifford Hugh ('C. H.');a2 then lunch with Major Douglas. It is Armistice Day: thirteen dreary years since then. The rain is pouring down at this moment and I can hear artillery being fired, I suppose for the opening of Parliament, and not for the arrival of a new servant who is to sleep in – a strange experiment. AndWilberforce, Pamela Margaret (TSE's secretary);a1 Miss Wilberforce is away with a cold, and I can’t find anything I want.
My third portrait is actually being finished for you and I shall grudge it to you, because you wrote when you were in Seattle to say that I was to have a portrait at last, and it’s never come.
AndChristianityliturgy;b9Requiem Mass versus Mass of Good Friday;a3 the last ten days, from All Saints; to Armistice Day, have been filled with Requiem Masses, as always at this time of year: a sombre but impressive ceremony – not terrible like the Mass of Good Friday, but sadness and hope.
Je t’embrasse respectueuesement [sic], chère madame la duchesse, aux deux mains.
OneHale, Emilyappearance and characteristics;v7TSE begs a slip of hair from;b2 day – do you think I might have just a tiny slip of hair?
1.The Footlight Club is the oldest community theatre in the USA; set up in 1877, the group has made use since 1899 of a theatre happily called Eliot Hall, in Jamaica Plain, Boston.
2.EdouardRoditi, Edouard Roditi (1910–92), poet, critic, biographer, translator: see Biographical Register.
3.GeorgesCattaui, Georges Cattaui (1896–1974), Egyptian-born (scion of aristocratic Alexandrian Jews: cousin of Jean de Menasce) French diplomat and writer; his works include T. S. Eliot (1958), Constantine Cavafy (1964), Proust and his metamorphoses (1973). TSE to E. R. Curtius, 21 Nov. 1947: ‘I received the book by Cattaui [Trois poètes: Hopkins, Yeats, Eliot (Paris, 1947)] and must say that I found what he had to say about myself slightly irritating. There are some personal details which are unnecessary and which don’t strike me as in the best taste.’
4.MargueriteCaetani, Marguerite (née Chapin) Caetani, née Chapin (1880–1963) – Princesse di Bassiano – literary patron and editor: see Biographical Register. LéliaCaetani, Lélia Caetani (1913–77), sole daughter, was to marry Hubert Howard (1908–87), a scion of the English Catholic House of Howard, who worked to preserve the Caetani heritage at Rome and at the castle of Sermoneta.
5.Paul Valéry (1871–1945), poet, essayist, literary theoretician: see Biographical Register.
6.ValeryLarbaud, Valery Larbaud (1881–1957), poet, novelist, essayist, translated, inter alia, Joyce’s Ulysses. Pseudonymous author of Poèmes par un riche amateur (1908) and Le Journal intime de A. O. Barnabooth (1913). In a letter of 20 Mar. 1922 (Letters 1, 659), TSE called him ‘a great poet and prose author’. Larbaud’s lecture-essay ‘The Ulysses of James Joyce’ appeared in Criterion 1 (Oct. 1922).
7.Léon-Paul Fargue (1876–1947), French poet.
8.JosephOldham, Joseph (‘Joe’) Houldsworth Oldham (1874–1969), missionary, adviser, organiser: see Biographical Register.
9.J. Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937), the first Labour Party politician to become Prime Minister, 1924, 1929–31. From 1931 to 1935, he led a National Government, though with his own party in the minority.
1.DrAlport, Dr Erich Erich Alport (b. 1903), educated in Germany and at Oxford, was author of Nation und Reich in der politischen Willenbildung des britischen Weltreiches (Berlin, 1933). In the early 1930s Geoffrey Faber often sought his advice about German books suitable for translation into English.
4.MargueriteCaetani, Marguerite (née Chapin) Caetani, née Chapin (1880–1963) – Princesse di Bassiano – literary patron and editor: see Biographical Register. LéliaCaetani, Lélia Caetani (1913–77), sole daughter, was to marry Hubert Howard (1908–87), a scion of the English Catholic House of Howard, who worked to preserve the Caetani heritage at Rome and at the castle of Sermoneta.
4.MargueriteCaetani, Marguerite (née Chapin) Caetani, née Chapin (1880–1963) – Princesse di Bassiano – literary patron and editor: see Biographical Register. LéliaCaetani, Lélia Caetani (1913–77), sole daughter, was to marry Hubert Howard (1908–87), a scion of the English Catholic House of Howard, who worked to preserve the Caetani heritage at Rome and at the castle of Sermoneta.
3.GeorgesCattaui, Georges Cattaui (1896–1974), Egyptian-born (scion of aristocratic Alexandrian Jews: cousin of Jean de Menasce) French diplomat and writer; his works include T. S. Eliot (1958), Constantine Cavafy (1964), Proust and his metamorphoses (1973). TSE to E. R. Curtius, 21 Nov. 1947: ‘I received the book by Cattaui [Trois poètes: Hopkins, Yeats, Eliot (Paris, 1947)] and must say that I found what he had to say about myself slightly irritating. There are some personal details which are unnecessary and which don’t strike me as in the best taste.’
5.C. H. DouglasDouglas, Major Clifford Hugh ('C. H.') (1879–1952), British engineer; proponent of the Social Credit economic reform movement. Noting that workers were never paid enough for them to purchase the goods they produced, Douglas proposed that a National Dividend (debt-free credit) should be distributed to all citizens so as to make their purchasing power equal to prices. Major works are Economic Democracy and Credit-Power and Democracy (1920); Social Credit (1924).
6.ValeryLarbaud, Valery Larbaud (1881–1957), poet, novelist, essayist, translated, inter alia, Joyce’s Ulysses. Pseudonymous author of Poèmes par un riche amateur (1908) and Le Journal intime de A. O. Barnabooth (1913). In a letter of 20 Mar. 1922 (Letters 1, 659), TSE called him ‘a great poet and prose author’. Larbaud’s lecture-essay ‘The Ulysses of James Joyce’ appeared in Criterion 1 (Oct. 1922).
6.Harold MonroMonro, Harold (1879–1932), poet, editor, publisher, bookseller: see Biographical Register.
8.JosephOldham, Joseph (‘Joe’) Houldsworth Oldham (1874–1969), missionary, adviser, organiser: see Biographical Register.
2.EdouardRoditi, Edouard Roditi (1910–92), poet, critic, biographer, translator: see Biographical Register.
4.Paul ValéryValéry, Paul (1871–1945), poet, essayist and literary theorist: see Biographical Register.
7.PamelaWilberforce, Pamela Margaret (TSE's secretary) Margaret Wilberforce (1909–97), scion of the Wilberforce family (granddaughter of Samuel Wilberforce) and graduate of Somerville College, Oxford, was appointed ‘secretary-typist’ to the Chairman’s office on 1 July 1930, at a salary of £2.10.0 a week. She was required to learn typing and shorthand; she asked too for time to improve her German.
1.VirginiaWoolf, Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), novelist, essayist and critic: see Biographical Register.