[41 Brimmer St., Boston]
TheChristianitythe Church Year;d8happily over;a3 holidays are over, God be praised, andwinterfrom Woburn Square window;a1 I am able to sit again at my window looking out over Woburn Square – aChrist Church, Woburn Squarepart of TSE's office view;a1 bright clear day for London, sunlight on the spire of Christ Church and on the bare boles of trees round the square, and patches of snow on the green. I have felt of course extremely tired for some days; to-day, owing partly to the good weather, a little stronger. Yesterday, Monday, the office was closed; so I only came and read my letters and went away again. Severalalcoholand American Prohibition;a7 from America. OneMorris, Howardwarns TSE about American liquor;a1 from an old college friend, who has since made and lost a great deal of money in bond businesses, warning me of the bad quality of the liquor1 – that I trust, will not concern me much – it is tiresome that so many Americans now talk and think so much of drink – Ialcoholthe 'bedtime Guinness';a8 shall miss my bedtime Guinness, but, I hope, conditions will be favourable enough for me not to miss it long. AnotherEliot HouseTSE offered suite in;a1 letter from one Theodore SpencerSpencer, Theodoreoffers TSE suite in Eliot House;a12 offering me a suite in Eliot House at fifty dollars a month, which seems dear to me; anywayRichards, Ivor Armstrong ('I. A.')consulted on Harvard living arrangements;a4, IMaclagan, Eric;a1 shall consult Richards and Eric Maclagan3 first, as it is just possible that one might be more serene if less immersed in academic and undergraduate society. NothingCharles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetrybut still no official notice;a9 from the University itself, and nothing from you. But you seem to have led a very busy life yourself! too busy to chide me for overdoing. AndAmericaBoston, Massachusetts;d1TSE and EH's experience of contrasted;a5 what are these ‘social barriers’ that exist in Boston society, pray? As you know, I never knew much about Boston society; as a boy I was much too timid and awkward to make [sc. take] any advantage of the ‘Friday Evenings’; andHarvard UniversityTSE's student days at;a2 after I returned to Harvard I was quite indifferent to the more brilliant – meaning more wealthy, part of Boston. I should like to see something of it, next year, just out of curiosity. LifeEnglandLondon;h1socially freer than Boston and Paris;a6 in London is so much freer than anywhere else in the world – people gravitate into their proper circles by natural affinities; and in the end the people one does not know are the people whom one does not particularly want to know. Paris is not quite so free, but comes next; people find it so easy however to live in Paris without knowing its society that they often miss it; whereas in London it is impossible to live as an outsider. And now what is Emilia doing next, in the way of acting, speaking, or training etc? She seems to have a good deal of work in connexion with the Church. IChristianityliturgy;b9and whether to serve at Mass;a4 have been intending to apply to serve at Mass once or twice a week, but am still too diffident. IFranceFrench culture;b2Exhibition of French Art 1200–1900;a1 wish that you could see the Exhibition of French Painting which opens here next week.4 I shall try to see it and describe it to you. DoGardner, Isabella Stewarther art collection;a2 you ever get to the Art Museum or to Mrs. Gardner’s? How little I can remember of either. ThereAmericaBoston, Massachusetts;d1its Museum collection remembered;a3 are some wonderful Oriental things in the Museum, collected by the shrewd old Okakura Kakuzo (‘Hakagawa’);5 a fine wooden Buddha; some superb Tibetan kakamomos [sc. Kakemonos] with dreadful lurid gods; theMonet, ClaudeTSE's choicest painting by;a1 best Monet I have ever seen (Banks of the Rhone I think, not so messy as his later work); aDegas, EdgarTSE recalls painting in Boston Museum;a1 beautiful little Degas of some jockeys;6 a few perfectly lovely early Greek things and a head of a goddess that might as well be a Pheidias [sc. Phidias]7 and two slabs of a bas-relief affair the other part of which is in Rome – an extremely Greek representation of a naked boy playing a flute8 – and some very good Greek pottery and some good Cretan with the octopus design: that is very little to come to mind out of what is indeed a very fine collection. Of the Gardner things, except for some fine Venetian canvases, I remember a small Madonna (I think) by Gruenewald – or am I wrong? and a marvellous Vermeer of Delft. Do you know these things?
Afterreading (TSE's)the Epistles of St. Paul;b7 my Advent confession I determined to go straight through the Epistles of St. Paul reading one chapter every night at bedtime; this programme was inevitably interrupted by Christmas; but I shall now resume it. ButSt. PaulTSE on reading;a2 what very stiff reading it is! His method of thought is difficult; it is so very concentrated; it is a Jew, even though a cosmopolitan citizen of the Roman Empire, who speaks, and to follow his thought is hard for westerners brought up more on the Greek dialectic. And in reading through his work carefully one gets the conviction that every sentence and phrase is very highly charged with meaning, and the phrases which one has heard glibly repeated or echoed since childhood are seen to be heavy with a significance unsuspected and consistent. I shall have to go through them again with Gore’s commentary on the Bible (the best and most up to date commentary there is) beside me.9
And now I hope, the mails will resume their normal regularity, such as it is: somehow they seemed more regular and just as quick from Seattle, perhaps because I expected less of them, than from Boston – not that I like you to be so far away! I wonder if you will go out there again next summer, or what plans you will have. It is too soon for you to know, but when the plans come I hope they will be communicated instantly to
1.HowardMorris, Howard Morris (1887–1954) – a friend at Milton Academy and at Harvard who became a successful dealer in investment bonds – forewarned TSE, 16 Dec.: ‘Better get in training for the alcoholic junk you will find here. All gin is synthetic – and of course raw. The Scotch for the most part is expensive & green – not to say something worse. The rye is all of Canadian manufacture & without mellowness. The wine is practically non-existent, & the beer horrible. I suggest a daily ration of raw alcohol to get your innards in tune with the American spirit.’
2.TheodoreSpencer, Theodore Spencer (1902–48), writer, poet and critic, taught at Harvard, 1927–49: see Biographical Register.
3.EricMaclagan, Eric Maclagan (1879–1951), Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1924–45, had been Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer at Harvard, 1927–8. Distinguished as scholar and lecturer, and an expert on early Christian and Italian Renaissance art, his works include Catalogue of Italian Sculpture (with Margaret Longhurst, 1932) and The Bayeux Tapestry (1943), translations from poets including Rimbaud and Valéry, and editions of the works of William Blake. His offices included Vice-President of the Society of Antiquaries, 1932–6; President of the Museums Association, 1935–6. A devout Anglo-Catholic, he served too on the Cathedrals Advisory Council and the Central Council for the Care of Churches, and as a member of the Church Assembly. Knighted in 1933, he was appointed KCVO in 1945. In 1913 he married Helen Elizabeth Lascelles.
4.Exhibition of French Art 1200–1900, Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, 1932.
5.Okakura Kakuzö (1863–1913), influential Japanese art critic and author: his publications include The Book of Tea (New York, 1906). From 1906 until his death he was Curator of the Division of Chinese and Japanese Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. In 1910 he had taken TSE to meet Matisse. TSE identifies him with the figure of ‘Hakagawa’ whom he depicted as ‘bowing among the Titians’ in ‘Gerontion’.
6.‘Racehorses at Longchamps’ (1871), by Edgar Degas.
7.The so-called Head of Aphrodite, dating from the Late Classical or Early Hellenistic Period, is associated with the style of Praxiteles.
8.Oval gem with Marsyas and Olympus, from the Imperial Period or Modern.
9.Charles Gore, A New Commentary on Holy Scripture (1928).
9.IsabellaGardner, Isabella Stewart Stewart Gardner (1840–1924), socialite, art collector, philanthropist; friend of artists and writers including John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler and Henry James; wife of John Lowell Gardner II (1837–98), businessman and patron of the arts. Founder of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (modelled after a Venetian palazzo), which opened in 1903. TSE came to know her well enough to exchange a few letters with her, written from England in 1915–17: see Letters 1, 100–3.
3.EricMaclagan, Eric Maclagan (1879–1951), Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1924–45, had been Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer at Harvard, 1927–8. Distinguished as scholar and lecturer, and an expert on early Christian and Italian Renaissance art, his works include Catalogue of Italian Sculpture (with Margaret Longhurst, 1932) and The Bayeux Tapestry (1943), translations from poets including Rimbaud and Valéry, and editions of the works of William Blake. His offices included Vice-President of the Society of Antiquaries, 1932–6; President of the Museums Association, 1935–6. A devout Anglo-Catholic, he served too on the Cathedrals Advisory Council and the Central Council for the Care of Churches, and as a member of the Church Assembly. Knighted in 1933, he was appointed KCVO in 1945. In 1913 he married Helen Elizabeth Lascelles.
1.HowardMorris, Howard Morris (1887–1954) – a friend at Milton Academy and at Harvard who became a successful dealer in investment bonds – forewarned TSE, 16 Dec.: ‘Better get in training for the alcoholic junk you will find here. All gin is synthetic – and of course raw. The Scotch for the most part is expensive & green – not to say something worse. The rye is all of Canadian manufacture & without mellowness. The wine is practically non-existent, & the beer horrible. I suggest a daily ration of raw alcohol to get your innards in tune with the American spirit.’
4.I. A. RichardsRichards, Ivor Armstrong ('I. A.') (1893–1979), theorist of literature, education and communication studies: see Biographical Register.
2.TheodoreSpencer, Theodore Spencer (1902–48), writer, poet and critic, taught at Harvard, 1927–49: see Biographical Register.