[No surviving envelope]
This is your birthday, and as it is a Saturday, I trust that you are spending it in Boston with your family. Therefore I sent your birthday cable before yesterday,1 to assure your getting it in Concord before you left. I hope that this will be a happy enough year, for you to feel some regret at leaving when the time comes; and I hope it will be a warm, and well-fed and well-dressed and well-looked after winter. And I wish that I could be with you on your birthday, as I wish you could be with me on mine.
It seems a long time since I have heard from you. IHale, Emilycorrespondence with TSE;w3post-war frequency;i3 have not written very recently either: it is not that I have settled down to writing only once a fortnight, for I may write oftener than that, when the need seizes me; but, partly because of my slight ailment, which will take some weeks yet to cure, and partly because the adaptation to a new kind of life involves its own fatigue, I have felt very tired in the evenings. At Shamley I wrote letters either in the morning, or after tea. It is difficult to settle down to anything in the morning, in a bed-sitting room, as one is always conscious that somebody wants to come in to do the room; and I don’t get tea here. One feels very transient. Yet I know that all you have yourself is a bed-sitter. I wish I could see a snapshot of it, and of the house, and some of you in a new dress.
I19 Carlyle Mansions, Londonrefurbishments to;a5 have finally found a builder to decorate the flat, aKennerleys, the;a6Kennerley, Jean
AtFaber and Faber (F&F);f5 present, not having the incentive to private work which is afforded by a study of my own, with my books around me, I give the greatest part of my working time to Faber & Faber. Though a great deal of what I do at the office is of no value to the firm: there are now an increasing number of foreign, especially French visitors belonging to the literary world, who have to be seen and sometimes entertained. NightPoe, Edgar AllanTSE's Churchill Club talk on;a2 before last IChurchill Club, ThePoe talk for;a4 had to give a talk to the Churchill Club (a final talk, as it is to be closed down at the end of the year) on Edgar Poe – I think the best and most successful talk I have given there. There still seemed to be a preponderance of American soldiers in the audience – my favourite sergeant has returned to Davenport Iowa, and my favourite lieutenant is now occupying Germany. One is terribly worried by the prospects for the winter in devastated countries, and waiting to hear whether the American Congress will ratify the further and much needed subsidy to UNRRA.2 My'Unity of European Culture, The'intended for German audience;a1 conscienceGermanyTSE's post-war sense of duty to;b8 about Europe has made me agree to give a broadcast to Germany (in German, if my accent proves good enough, otherwise the translation will be read by someone else[)]; andGraham, Gerald S.TSE gives poetry reading to oblige;a8, to please my friend Gerald Graham I am doing a recording of 13 minutes of poetry reading for Canada. I shall try to find out the time and wave length of the actual transmission, and cable you.
My dear, I have longed to be with you, or you with me, on your birthday.
IRoberts, Janetworried about Michael's job go to tea with the Roberts’ tomorrow. Between ourselves, Janet is worried about Michael because he finds the job of being head of a theological college so very trying, and that is chiefly why I am going, in the hope of cheering him up.
1.Cable not found.
2.The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration was set up in 1943 – the founding document was signed by 44 nations – and became part of the United Nations in Nov. 1945; it sought to provide shelter, food, clothing, medicine, fuel and other necessities to victims of war. The USA provided the lion’s share of funding: $2.7 billion out of a total of $3.7 billion.
5.GeraldGraham, Gerald S. S. Graham (1903–88), a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, was Instructor in History at Harvard, 1930–6, where he was befriended by TSE. After a period as Assistant Professor of History at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, he was a Guggenheim Fellow, 1940–1; and during WW2 he served in the Canadian Army. Rhodes Professor of Imperial History at King’s College London, 1949–70; Life-Fellow and Vice-President of the Royal Commonwealth Society; general editor of the Oxford West African History series. An authority on naval power and the British Empire, his works include Sea Power and British North America, 1783–1820: A Study in British Colonial Policy (1941) and The Politics of Naval Supremacy (1967). See further Perspectives of Empire: Essays presented to Gerald S. Graham, ed. J. E. Flint and Glyndwyr Williams (1973). TSE told Mary Trevelyan, 15 June 1949, he was ‘giving dinner to Professor Graham, the very meritorious Professor of Canadian History at London University whom I knew when he was tutor at Eliot House’.
11.JohnHayward, John Davy Hayward (1905–65), editor and critic: see Biographical Register.