[No surviving envelope]
Letter 29
Your good letter of August 5 has arrived, giving a very seductive account of The Anchorage, which seems to be a perfect combination of rustic simplicity and urban comfort – and no noise but that of waves, wind and birds, and the prattle of twenty-four Canadians. It made me long to be there, but I judge that already you may have flown. IHale, Emilyvisits Woods Hole;q4 amAmericaWoods Hole, Falmouth, Massachusetts;i2;a5 glad that you should be able to fit in a visit to Woods Holl [sic], but I am very sorry that having to be at Nahant for Labour Day is what takes you back. You never get long enough in one place for your vacation. Yet what you say of your health and appearance is reassuring, though I should like to see for myself. Did none of the twenty-four possess a kodak? or is photographic film as unobtainable with you as it is here?
Now I understand better about the house. Of course, a house for which you have to go on paying for twelve years is a pretty serious burden to assume; and I don’t wonder that, considering that you don’t want to root yourself to that extent in Concord, you decided not to. (DoesEliot, Abigail Adams (TSE's cousin);a7 Abigail Eliot actually live there? or do you prophesy that she will? if it is Abigail’s spiritual home it does not sound very stimulating). I wish that your terms did not start so early in the autumn, for you are always likely to get at least a week of extreme heat after the middle of September, and I don’t believe the girls settle down to work till cooler weather. (I have a theory that the climate is a great handicap to American scholarship, because there is a stretch of three months in the year when the weather is too hot and too pleasant for any brain work; and on the other hand the Christmas and Easter holiday have to be too short. IHale, Emilycorrespondence with TSE;w3constrained by war;g8 wish one was allowed to mention the weather in letters, because a touch of weather would often make my accounts seem more real: but since the beginning of the war the only weather that may be mentioned here is that in the straits of Dover, and I never know what that is until I see it in the paper the next day. The weather in Normandy is public property, but not that in Surrey).
IPerkins, Edith (EH's aunt)sight affected in one eye;g3 am sorry to hear about Mrs. Perkins’s eye: please give her my sympathy. But many people seem to see very well for all purposes, with one eye almost useless: it must take time to get used to it, however. TheWavell, General Archibaldhis one eye;a5 Viceroy has only one eye,1 and seems to do very well with it both for war and for peace. ISeaverns, Helen;e5 did write to Mrs. Seaverns at Buxton, and put ‘please forward’ on it, but have heard nothing. IFowler-Seaverns, James;a4 will look up Jim’s wife in the telephone book, but if they have not been very long where they are, I shan’t find it; and I don’t know the name of his company, through which I might reach him. I should be surprised, however, if Mrs. S. were in London now.
IFaber and Faber (F&F)fire-watching duties at;e6 think I mentioned that I now fire-watch on Wednesdays instead of Tuesdays, andFaber, Geoffreyas fire-watching companion;j8 asKennerley, MorleyTSE's fire-watching companion;a2 I now have Faber and Morley Kennerley regularly as my companions, that is pleasanter than having an unknown member of the packing department (the latter usually play the wireless in the fire room the whole time until they go to bed, and then sleep heavily). AndFabers, the1944 Minsted summer stay;g6 this week, I have got to go down to Minsted for two nights, Thursday and Friday:2 this is short for the annual visit, which always takes place during Tom’s holidays: butMackworth, Margaret Haig, 2nd Viscountess Rhondda (née Thomas);a4 unfortunatelyBosanquet, Theodoravisits Shamley;a1 theTrevelyan, Mary;a3 Roundabouts (Lady Rhonnda [sic] and her chum Theodora Bosanquet, who run ‘Time and Tide’ together) are bringing Mary Trevelyan over to tea at Shamley on Sunday, and I have to be there. Then, I hope to take the following week off; and if possible, the following week too, as my blood pressure is extremely low (I am otherwise well) and it makes me stupid and sleepy. ThusAssociation of Bookmen of Swansea and West Wales;a2 I shall be fitter to go to Swansea on Sep. 26, addressVirgil Society, TheTSE's Presidental Address for;a3 the Virgil Society in the middle of October, and ) [sic] buttravels, trips and plansTSE's abortive 1944 North Africa mission;f3;b1 I hope the last will no longer be necessary) go to Morocco.
1.Field Marshal Wavell, now Viceroy of India, had lost an eye in WW1.
2.TSE visited the Fabers at Minsted House, 24–6 Aug.
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.
2.RevdEliot, Revd Christopher Rhodes (TSE's uncle) Christopher Rhodes Eliot (1856–1945) andEliot, Abigail Adams (TSE's cousin) his daughter Abigail Adams Eliot (b. 1892). ‘After taking his A.B. at Washington University in 1856, [Christopher] taught for a year in the Academic Department. He later continued his studies at Washington University and at Harvard, and received two degrees in 1881, an A.M. from Washington University and an S.T.B. from the Harvard Divinity School. He was ordained in 1882, but thereafter associated himself with eastern pastorates, chiefly with the Bulfinch Place Church in Boston. His distinctions as churchman and teacher were officially recognized by Washington University in [its] granting him an honorary Doctorate of Laws in 1925’ (‘The Eliot Family and St Louis’: appendix prepared by the Department of English to TSE’s ‘American Literature and the American Language’ [Washington University Press, 1953].)
11.GeoffreyFaber, Geoffrey Faber (1889–1961), publisher and poet: see Biographical Register.
1.JamesFowler-Seaverns, James Fowler-Seaverns, adopted son of Joel and Helen Seaverns. TSE to Theodore Spencer, 9 Nov. 1938: ‘You may be presented within a month or two with a letter of introduction from me for a man named Jim Fowler, or he may call himself James Fowler Seaverns. He is a very nice lad (Harrow and Magdalene) not a bit literary, runs a business in London and Australia which has some mysterious connexion with Needham, Mass. Amongst other things he is marketing the Iron Lung. He has adoptive parents from Portland Maine but has never been in America before. He married a girl named Roper who is some collateral of St. Thos. More, she died this summer, and he is a widower with two small children. You will find him a nice innocent fellow who will appreciate anything convivial.’
2.MorleyKennerley, Morley Kennerley (1902–85), an American director of F&F.
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).
3.HelenSeaverns, Helen Seaverns, widow of the American-born businessman and Liberal MP, Joel Herbert Seaverns: see Biographical Register.
2.MaryTrevelyan, Mary Trevelyan (1897–1983), Warden of Student Movement House, worked devotedly to support the needs of overseas students in London (her institution was based at 32 Russell Square, close to the offices of F&F; later at 103 Gower Street); founder and first governor of International Students House, London. Trevelyan left an unpublished memoir of her friendship with TSE – ‘The Pope of Russell Square’ – whom she long desired to marry. See further Biographical Register.
5.GeneralWavell, General Archibald Archibald Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell (1883–1950), Commander-in-Chief Middle East in the early phase of WW2. He was later Commander-in-Chief in India and finally Viceroy of India until not long before Partition.