[No surviving envelope]
Letter 14.
IKnowles, Sylvia Hathaway;a8 have your letter of March 18: andHale, Emilyspends holiday at Sylvia Knowles's;q7 am glad to hear that you were going to Mrs. Knowles for the vacation, and that you had issued an ultimatum to the Academy (I trust that your next letter will declare the result[)]; and very sorry indeed to hear that you had cracked a bone in your wrist. That sounds both serious and painful. IToscanini, ArturoEH hears in America;a2 presume that you have your Sunday afternoon duty at the school to yourself, with no supervision to do, otherwise I do not see how you could be listening to Toscanini. I didn’t even know he was in America. YouHale, Emilyphotographs of;w7of EH's portrait;e8 have thrown more light on the mysterious portrait, for I had been under the impression all this time, that it was the one which used to hang over your drawing room mantelpiece at Norfolk Crescent. The reproduction, of course, gives no notion of the size. That had puzzled me, as it looked different from my distant memories, and I had remembered it as looking more like you than this – hence my disappointment in it. So now where is the ‘smaller’ portrait over the mantelpiece?
TheSecond World Warprognostications as to its end;e2 war really appears to be drawing to an end, rather more quickly than I expected. That is to say, I am at the moment hopeful that the German forces in Norway, Denmark and above all in the Channel Islands (for it would be very wrong to rejoice so long as any British territory – no, the Channel Islands are English territory – and British subjects are under German denomination [sic: sentence incomplete]. AndItalypost-war;a9 I have also hopes that much of northern Italy has escaped being ravaged. And the war in the Pacific is also making great progress; andUnited Nationsits creation in San Francisco;a1 the battle ground at the moment is San Francisco.1 ISecond World Warand post-war European prospects;e9 do not look forward to a very settled epoch. But at this stage, I think that one is feeling a great sense of fatigue, faced with the prospect of the effort of re-adjustment to another phase. WeekEnglandLondon;h1in wartime;d4 before last all blackout restrictions were removed, but London looks very little different, as we have no increase in street and public lighting – I suppose, because of the shortage of coal, which will be serious next winter. I tried at first leaving my curtains undrawn, but with an odd feeling of being ill at ease: I looked out on Woburn Square, and they looked as dark as ever; so I drew the curtains again and felt more comfortable. If we have any peace celebrations, I think they will consist only of formal ceremonies, and of rowdiness by that element in the population which celebrates New Year’s Eve: I do not think anybody else will take much interest in them. AndSecond World Warconcentration camps;f4 now, the nightmare of the concentration camps (and this is what has been going on for ten years) is in everyone’s mind, having on the less literate of the population the irrational effect of making them think that they ‘just hate all foreigners’. I am prepared to expect that for a long time to come we shall have no improvement of material comforts, but rather the reverse; andEuropethe effects of war on;a7 that food, clothing and other provisions will be scarce for a long time to come (and we have the whole of Europe to look after); and I do not expect that travel restrictions, or the use of one’s own money out of the country one lives in, will be relaxed either. So it is going to be a grim time, and I expect a great deal of popular discontent everywhere.
Itravels, trips and plansTSE's May 1945 trip to Paris;f4;a6 am nearly ready (orMorley, Frank Vigorhis use of 'poised';k9 as Frank Morley said, using what seemed to me an odd phrase, whenMorley, Christina (née Innes)in Cambridge;c9 he said that Christina was coming to England, ‘poised’) for Paris. I shall pack tomorrow and go to town for the week; I leave at some time on Saturday, by the old steam packet. ItFranceParis;b7TSE dreads visiting;a7 is perhaps part of the feeling of the effort of re-adaptation being just too much for one, that I am dreading the visit; partly because one dreads seeing again a city with which one has so many and such old associations; andValéry, Paulchairs TSE's lecture in French;a3 partly'Social Function of Poetry, The'developed for Valéry evening;a8 the quite intelligible reason that I am terrified of having to deliver my lecture in French – with Paul Valéry, the doyen of French poets, in the chair (though of course I have known him for a long time[)].2 I have practised reading it aloud twice. Then having to spend a week or more talking incessantly in French, which I have not spoken for so long, will be very tiring indeed. IChevrillon, Pierreaccidentally takes TSE to nightclub;a2 hadInstitut FrançaisTSE chairs Chevrillon lecture at;a1 an evening last week dining with Pierre Chevrillon, a Frenchman who has been lecturing here, after taking the chair for him at the Institut Français (but I did it in English); the other guests were an extraordinary little man of the résistance movement, who has had some amazing adventures (and whose wife was taken to a concentration camp in Germany)[,] and a charming young woman, also of the résistance, in the uniform apparently of the French Wrens or Waves: all most intensely serious. The evening started rather badly, because Chevrillon had chosen a restaurant, unknown to me, where he had had a good lunch and which he had then found quiet, but which, in the evening, proved to be like a night club – a space in the middle for people to dance during dinner, and a small orchestra which never left off playing dance music – in fact, there were two orchestras which took turns. And a blond young woman, with a harsh wailing voice, sang, if it can be called singing, but I believe it is what is called ‘torch singing’ before a microphone – quite dreadful. Also, we were given the table bang up against the back of the upright piano. All Frenchmen hate music while they eat, and quite rightly; but I was interested to see that they felt (and especially the young woman) a kind of violent moral disapproval of such nocturnal gaity (the patrons were largely American officers). So we retired to the house of Chevrillon’s hostess, and talked until 11.30. It was interesting, but I see that I have a lot to learn, if I am to understand the French point of view now: they regard us in England, rather as we regard you all in America – as having been living in another world.
I may scribble a short line while in Paris, though I expect that a letter on my return (to my typewriter) by air mail will reach you just as soon or sooner, to judge from the length of time that correspondence with France takes still. I shall be glad to be back; but I think I must start looking for furnished lodgings in London then. Christina Morley is in Cambridge, at her mother’s, with the two little girls. WeStewart, Charleshis funeral;a7 buried Stewart at Kensal Green last Monday. Yes I am feeling very tired in spirit. Iappearance (TSE's)teeth;c2new false teeth;b2 have my new PLASTIC teeth, butMrs Millington (the blind masseuse);a9 have not yet returned to Mrs. Millington. Do be careful about your hand.
1.International negotiations at the San Francisco Conference of 25 Apr–26 June 1945 created the United Nations Charter and led to the establishent of the United Nations in October 1945.
2.TSE’s lecture on ‘The Social Function of Poetry’ – delivered at La Maison des Centraux, rue Jean-Goujon, Paris, on 11 May 1945, under the chairmanship of Paul Valéry – was written in English but delivered in a French version arranged by the British Council. In the event, it was Valéry’s last public appearance before his death on 20 July. The lecture was first published in The Adelphi 21 (July/Sept. 1945), 152–61: CProse 6, 639–52.
Cutting: ‘Les Lettres: Hommage de Paul Valéry a T.-J. Eliot’, Le Pays (Paris), 14 May 1945: ‘Vendredi, 11 mai, à la sale des Centraux, Paul Valéry, en mots émuts et amuses, présenta le grand écrivan anglais qu’est T. S. Eliot. Celui-ci, sans langue natale, exprima l’émotion que lui causait sa reprise de contact avec la France, puis, en France, parla de la poésie et de son role social. Il montra, entre autres, que l’un des buts essentiels de la poésie est <de faire Plaisir aux honnêtes gens capables de la goûter>.
‘Un public nombreux et de qualité – parmi lequel se trouvaient des poètes comme Jean Tardieu et Francis Ponge – prouva, en applaudissant ceux qui récitèrent des fragments de la tragédie, <Meurtre dans la cathédrale> et des poèmes de T. S. Eliot qu’il goûtait du Plaisir aux oeuvres d’art de la plus haute classe.’
In a brief newspaper encounter – ‘Le plus grand poète anglais contemporain, T. S. Eliot de passage à Cherbourg sur la <Queen Elizabeth>’, La Presse de la Manche, 21 Mar. 1961 – TSE remarked of Valéry as he remembered him: ‘Lorsque je l’ai revu après la guerre, il avait terriblement vielli. Il était tout ratatiné alors que Gide était un très jeune homme.’
See too Georges Le Breton, ‘T. S. Eliot et le role social de la poésie’, Action, 18 May 1945.
3.PierreChevrillon, Pierre Chevrillon (1903–75), son of André Chevrillon (1864–1957), Anglophile writer who was educated in London and Paris, fought for the British Army in WW1, and was elected to the Académie Française in 1921. Works include books on Sydney Smith and Ruskin, and Trois Études de Literature Anglaise (on Kipling, Shakespeare, Galsworthy, 1921). TSE to Hayward, 24 Mar. 1945: ‘The Chevrillon in question may well be the one you remember: he is about 45 I should say, and was certainly a little boy when I lunched at the expensive villa of his father, André C. (the French impresario of Kipling) in St. Cloud in 1910.’
2.SylviaKnowles, Sylvia Hathaway Hathaway Knowles (1891–1979), of New Bedford, Mass. – a descendant of a long-established merchant and business family based there – was a friend and room-mate of EH from their schooldays at Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Vermont.
4.FrankMorley, Frank Vigor Vigor Morley (1899–1980), American publisher and author; a founding editor of F&F, 1929–39: see Biographical Register.
4.Paul ValéryValéry, Paul (1871–1945), poet, essayist and literary theorist: see Biographical Register.