[No surviving envelope]
Letter 3
December 11, the date of your most recent letter to reach me seems a long time ago: butHale, Emilyas director ('producer');v9Dear Brutus;b1 I am glad to get some account of the preparations for your play (I trust an account of the performance and its reception will follow); andPerkins, Edith (EH's aunt)gives lecture;g5 of Mrs. Perkins’s lecture. You had not made clear to me just how advanced her blindness was, and the description of her lecturing, but unable to see her lantern slides, makes it appear rather further developed than I had supposed. Is it cataract, and will she be able to have an operation later? SirGibbs, Sir Philiphis cataracts;a4 Philip Gibbs, a neighbour in the country here, was quite incapacitated until he had the operation last summer: and now sees so perfectly with one eye that he does not propose to have the operation on the other. It is sad to think that anyone who loves flowers so much as your aunt, should first have been without a garden for so many years, and now be without the vision to enjoy one fully if she had it.
IConcord Academy, Massachusettsprovides EH with rooms;a3 am glad to hear that you can have rooms (a self-contained flat, I trust) at the school for next winter, as I fear you will find the going and coming a great tax upon you in the coming months of inclement weather. How will this affect your meals? And will it involve any increase in supervisory duties? ToWycombe Grammar SchoolTSE recalls his time at;a1 be so deeply involved as that, is very oppressive, as I found during the few weeks when I had to act as a temporary house master at High Wycombe, many years ago.
I have quite recovered from that second influenza; Iappearance (TSE's)teeth;c2plate reconstructed;a9 have had my teeth photographed, and am waiting to hear the dentist’s report this week: I think he will have to extract one tooth, but even that means reconstructing my plate. IMurder in the CathedralHoellering film;g1recording made for;a6 have also done my first spell of recording ‘Murder’! a somewhat exhausting exercise, as the requirements mean a higher standard than those of the BBC. I have done all the choruses in Act I, the long verse speech, and one of the knights, to his satisfaction: I should think the whole record will take me three or four sessions. I gather that he proposes to record the actors themselves several times, and then make a mosaic of the voice-records, such that each line will be recited at their best. TheHoellering, George M.commissioned to film Archbishop's enthronement;b3 film will be partly interrupted, but to a slighter degree forwarded, byFisher, Geoffrey Francis, Bishop of London (later Archbishop of Canterbury);a4 Hollering’s having been commissioned by the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury to make a film of the enthronement of the new Archbishop (Dr. Fisher, as I expected) at Easter.1 The filming is likely to have the curious result of improving the enthronement itself, as Hollering has stipulated that he must have the best music possible! I hope to arrange through him to go to Canterbury and see the ceremony. It is of course different in nature from the consecration of a new Bishop: for the Archbishop-elect is a bishop already, so it is not strictly speaking a sacramental rite.
AsNotes Towards the Definition of Culturebeing worked up;a4 I have done all the script required up to this point (it is possible we may add another short scene of more homely life) I have been trying to work out my scheme for a small book I want to write2 (a kind of successor to the Christian Society); but I had perforce to have so many engagements last week, that I had hardly any time for dictating letters, and therefore had to give a day and a half after I got back, to writing about twenty or more letters myself.
Your landlady sounds like a bit of a vampire: I am afraid that you spend yourself too freely for such dependents.
TheSecond World WarV-2 Bombs;f3 V bombs will, I suppose, continue more or less until near the end of the war: and if one took much notice of them it would be impossible to carry on any sort of activities. But at least, under present conditions, one does not risk getting stuck anywhere for a long time, as during air raids, when anti-aircraft fire made the open air dangerous.
1.Revd Geoffrey Fisher (1887–1972), who had been headmaster of Repton School, 1914–32; Bishop of Chester, 1932–9; and Bishop of London, 1939–45, was Archbishop of Canterbury, 1945–61. He was to be President of the World Council of Churches, 1946–54.
2.Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948).
1.SirGibbs, Sir Philip Philip Gibbs (1877–1962), journalist and author; Roman Catholic; famed as one of the five official newspaper reporters during WW1: his bulletins featured in the Daily Telegraph and Daily Chronicle. His many books included The Battle of the Somme (1917), From Bapaume to Passchendaele (1918), Ordeal in England (1937), and This Nettle Danger (bestselling novel, 1939). Gibbs, who worked during WW2 for the Ministry of Information, London, lived nearby at Old Stonnards Cottage, Sweetwater Lane, Shamley Green, Surrey.
3.GeorgeHoellering, George M. M. Hoellering (1898–1980), Austrian-born filmmaker and cinema manager: see Biographical Register.