[41 Brimmer St., Boston]
Your letter of November 22nd, which I should have had on Monday or Tuesday, arrived yesterday, Thursday; and I suppose that from now on for several weeks the mails will be quite chaotic with the Christmas flood. IChristianitythe Church Year;d8Christmas, dreaded;a2 wish that I could think of anything cheerful in connexion with Christmas, or even support it with equanimity: it means bustle, expense and worry and forced geniality. AtChristianitythe Church Year;d8Easter, better observed than Christmas;c4 least, at Easter, people go away for a holiday and leave you alone, so that Easter can be observed in a religious atmosphere; but everything about the Anglo-Saxon Christmas is unfavourable to observing the occasion which it is supposed to commemorate.
IHale, Emilyreading;w8All Passion Spent;a3 haveSackville-West, VitaAll Passion Spent;a4 not read ‘All Passion Spent’ but have heard well of it, and was interested by your comments upon it.1 ISackville-West, VitaTSE on;a1 did not read her earlier book either, and her poetry I find very dull indeed. She is a charming person – I have just met her once or twice at the Woolfs’; not beautiful at all, but strikingly handsome, with a rather lovely deep voice. Her misfortune was to be an only child and not a boy, so that the peerage passes to her cousin; I mean that she may have been aware of being a disappointment in the matter of sex. SheNicholson, Haroldcompared to his wife;a2 is much more interesting as a personality than her husband, Harold Nicolson, who seems to me rather a silly fellow, with very little real taste in literature at all.
YouHale, Emilyas actor;v8in Berkeley Square;a9 seem to be extremely busy. I like to buy and read every play you act in, and speculate about the suitability of the part: but pardon my ignorance: Who wrote ‘Berkeley Square’?2 I shall try to find out, but please tell me in case I don’t.
AndBaillie, Very Revd John;a1 I confess I wonder who is Mr. Baillie of Scotland whom I am supposed to know!3
Now my dear I am sure that you will be very displeased with me for such a short and feeble letter; but on Monday I shall try to explain and reinstate myself in your good graces if possible.
1.All Passion Spent (novel, 1931), by Vita Sackville-West (1892–1962), daughter of the 3rd Baron Sackville.
2.Berkeley Square, by John L. Balderston (with J. C. Squire), premiered in London in 1926.
3.VeryBaillie, Very Revd John Revd John Baillie (1886–1960), distinguished Scottish theologian; minister of the Church of Scotland; Roosevelt Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Seminary, New York, 1930–4; and was Professor of Divinity at Edinburgh University, 1934–59. In 1919 he married Florence Jewel Fowler (1893–1969), whom he met in service in France during WW1. Author of What is Christian Civilization? (lectures, 1945). See Keith Clements, ‘John Baillie and “the Moot”’, in Christ, Church and Society: Essays on John Baillie and Donald Baillie, ed. D. Fergusson (Edinburgh, 1993); Clements, ‘Oldham and Baillie: A Creative Relationship’, in God’s Will in a Time of Crisis: A Colloquium Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Baillie Commission, ed. A. R. Morton (Edinburgh, 1994).
3.VeryBaillie, Very Revd John Revd John Baillie (1886–1960), distinguished Scottish theologian; minister of the Church of Scotland; Roosevelt Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Seminary, New York, 1930–4; and was Professor of Divinity at Edinburgh University, 1934–59. In 1919 he married Florence Jewel Fowler (1893–1969), whom he met in service in France during WW1. Author of What is Christian Civilization? (lectures, 1945). See Keith Clements, ‘John Baillie and “the Moot”’, in Christ, Church and Society: Essays on John Baillie and Donald Baillie, ed. D. Fergusson (Edinburgh, 1993); Clements, ‘Oldham and Baillie: A Creative Relationship’, in God’s Will in a Time of Crisis: A Colloquium Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Baillie Commission, ed. A. R. Morton (Edinburgh, 1994).
3.HaroldNicholson, Harold Nicolson (1886–1968) relinquished in 1930 a thriving career in the Diplomatic Service to work as a journalist for the Evening Standard. In Mar. 1931 he left the Standard to join Sir Oswald Mosley’s New Party, and became editor of the New Party’s journal Action.