[No surviving envelope]
Letter 17.
[29 May]
ItBrownes, the Martintheir sons;c5Browne, Elliott Martin
IBooks Across the Sea;a8 did not know you knew so much about Books Across the Sea. MrsWarde, Beatrice (née Becker)'a spellbinder';a5. Warde is certainly a spellbinder. But I wonder where your Miss Newton is? I have not come across anyone of that name in the London office, and the only other office I know of outside the U.S.A. is the one in Edinburgh.
I am glad that you are leaving Bennett Junior College at least on a note of satisfaction with what you have accomplished there in the time; and that you are more confident of yourself in the matter of Shakespeare delivery (though I can’t believe that I contributed anything to your progress: I should like to know how![)]
I shall address this to Commonwealth Avenue; and presume that everything should go to that address until you move to Concord. I hope that you will be able to fit in the much needed holidays, andAmericaConcord, Massachusetts;e1EH's househunting in;a2 not have to spend too much of the summer preparing an abode in Concord. Houses, I imagine, must be much easier to find in Massachusetts than in England; and I shall be very happy to think of you on a cosy foyer of your own, whether alone or shared – where I hope you won’t have to stoke the boiler, as you seem to be doing now (thatCheetham, Revd Eric;f8 is a pastime you could discuss with Fr Cheetham). I am not sure that I shall go away for a holiday at all this year. TheBritish Council;a5 places I should ordinarily have chosen from, are all in prohibited areas; I could go to Scotland for a week, but that would involve talking to British Council foreign groups in Edinburgh, and perhaps a Scotch broadcast: so it wouldn’t be much rest to go such a distance for such a short time; andtravels, trips and plansTSE's abortive 1944 North Africa mission;f3;a4 possibly I shall go to Africa in the autumn – that depends, of course, like everything else including holidays, on ‘military considerations’. So I may only take a couple of weeks at Shamley without going to town; though recently, London has been quieter than the country. (AlidaMonro, Alida (née Klementaski)breeding poodles;c8 Monro, whom I dined with the other night, and who perseveres in breeding poodles – apparently there is still a demand for them, and some she even exports – said she found London very peaceful. But when it isn’t peaceful, it is noisier than the country. … [sic] What I like, about the idea of your taking a house in Concord, is that I can hope that I may see you in it, when the time comes that I shall be able to visit America again.
1.George Hoellering, who was working to develop the film of Murder in the Cathedral, had directed and edited a short film entitled Message from Canterbury (1944), produced with the cooperation of Archbishop William Temple.
2.‘The Responsibility of the Man of Letters in the Cultural Restoration of Europe’, Norseman 2 (July–Aug. 1944), 243–8: CProse 6, 519–26.
4.E. MartinBrowne, Elliott Martin Browne (1900–80), English director and producer, was to direct the first production of Murder in the Cathedral: see Biographical Register.
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.GeorgeHoellering, George M. M. Hoellering (1898–1980), Austrian-born filmmaker and cinema manager: see Biographical Register.
3.AlidaMonro, Alida (née Klementaski) Klementaski (1892–1969) married Harold Monro on 27 Mar. 1920: see Alida Monro in Biographical Register.
BeatriceWarde, Beatrice (née Becker) Warde, née Becker (1900–69), influential American scholar of typography; author; proponent of clarity in graphic design; publicity manager for the Monotype Corporation and editor of The Monotype Recorder and the Monotype Newsletter; associate of Eric Gill. Her works include an acclaimed essay on typography, ‘The Crystal Goblet’, which started out as a speech to the British Typographers’ Guild and has been widely reprinted. Founder and Vice-President of the cultural movement ‘Books Across the Sea’, which worked to secure a regular interchange of books between the USA and the UK during the wartime ban on the import and export of non-essential goods. TSE was presently to become chair of the formal organisation, which by 1944 had swopped up to 4,000 volumes between the two countries. See Warde, ‘Books Across the Sea: Ambassadors of good will’, The Times, 2 Jan. 1942, 5.