[No surviving envelope]
Perhaps this letter will arrive conveniently for you to answer it! orHale, Emilyas director ('producer');v9Christmas pantomime;b5 you may well be too busy, just before the holidays, and too tired, just after your Lower School play. I hope to have one more letter from you before Christmas: andappearance (TSE's)hernia;b9deferred operation for;a2 of course what I should like would be a letter at University College Hospital, Private Patients’ Wing, Gower Street, W.C.1 on about the 4th or the 5th January: let us say just a wee note, as I know how little time to yourself you have during the so-called holidays. I shall write again before Christmas, and address you at Commonwealth Avenue; and again after Christmas, at Concord.
AfterTucker, J. Josephine;a2 what you say in your letter of December 8, IConcord Academy, MassachusettsTSE's Commencement Address to;a4 confess I feel little inclined to put myself out for Miss Tucker.1 She should at least realise that if I made the commencement address, it would be because you asked me to do so and for no other reason. Incidentally, I think it would have been more polite of her to have written to me, in good time, instead of merely sending a brief cable: one does not invite a stranger who has only been formally introduced and to whom one has never spoken, so informally as that. I should overlook this lack of taste, of course; but it is an additional irritation, on top of her behaviour towards you. To prepare and deliver such an address is, as I know from experience, as worrying a task as giving a lecture, if not more so; and even if I did accept payment, which I should not, I could get a larger fee more easily elsewhere. IHavens, Paul;b2 can only reply to her, in any case, as I did to Havens (who was not only polite, but most kind). Itravels, trips and plansTSE's 1947 summer in America;g1itinerary;a7 have put myself down for the Queen Elizabeth in April, and also for a Priority Passage, which would be on some small ship. I find that the prospect of lectures constitutes a stronger claim on priority than ‘compassionate’ grounds: they say so many people pitch stories of sick relatives which cannot be substantiated, whereas a lecture engagement can be proved by one’s correspondence. At the same time I have made enquiries about air passage, should I be called sooner.
I was very touched, my dear, by your offer of financial assistance, in case of need. ISheffield, Alfred Dwight ('Shef' or 'Sheff')offers TSE financial assistance;c7 have had a similar offer from Sheff; and if I have declined his offer, I certainly would not accept yours: for Sheff at least is financially in moderate comfort, whereas your finances are a source of anxiety to me. The point is that it might be difficult to arrange re-payment: it would probably involve a special appeal to the First Lord of the Treasury! NoHarcourt, Brace & Co.advance TSE money;a7: if I need extra funds I shall call upon Harcourt Brace & Co.: there will be some accrued royalties, and they could also give me an advance upon my next book; then they could deduct the payment from their next remittance, and I could clear matters up with the Treasury as best I might, knowing at least that the people who advanced the money would not be out of pocket.
IAmericaand post-war cost of living;b8 have indeed been worried for you – as many people in your position, and retired gentlefolk living on annuities and small incomes from savings, must be worried about themselves in America – because of the prospect of inflation and as the newspapers say ‘soaring prices’, of which rumours appear in our press. Such a situation could pretty confidently have been predicted. IndeedSecond World Warits long-term economic consequences;g1, aGermanyTSE diagnoses its totalitarian slide;b9 war such as we have been through was sure to bring about at least one kind of social revolution: suddenly, a different class of people come into money, and a class less responsible, more extravagant because of the novelty of money. The middle and upper middle classes are impoverished: all this happened in Germany after the last war, and the result was totalitarian. So we are only at the beginning of immense social changes, which will be, as far ahead as we can see, disruptive and destructive of civilisation. All I can hope is that the people I most care about will be able to live out the normal rest of their lives without being reduced to complete destitution. I really do not know how you manage on your small income: and there is nothing whatever that I can do about it. As for myself, I think that the gradual increase of my income during the last twenty years has so far just about kept pace with the increase in prices and taxes; so that in 1946 my real income is just about the same as it was in 1926. So I am comparatively well off: but for everybody (in our class of society) there is the discouragement that nothing one can do will give any assurance of security for old age, no prospect of a really comfortable retirement as the reward of industry or ability. Those who prosper are the speculators, and they too can only live from year to year. For those who have a family, and want to leave their children with settled prospects, the outlook is most discouraging.
I gather from what little you say, that you have suffered from repeated interferences and obstructions in your school work. I hope that the Christmas festival will bring you some serenity and Christian hope: thoughChristianitythe Church Year;d8Easter preferred to;b2 IChristianitythe Church Year;d8Easter, better observed than Christmas;c4 confess that for myself Christmas is so attended with duties and social interferences that I gain far less religious benefit from it than I do from Holy Week and Easter, when it is easier for me to withdraw from the world and concentrate on the religious significance of the celebrated days.
I shall think of you with your play next week. MySpeaight, Robertattends Family Reunion with TSE;e4 days will be pretty full, butFamily Reunion, The1946 Mercury revival;i2TSE attends again in company;a3 I have only to be out one evening: asLambs, theaccompany TSE to Family Reunion;a5 I think I mentioned, a visit to ‘The Family Reunion’ with Speaight and the Lambs. IBrowne, Elliott Martin1946 Mercury Family Reunion revival;e3;a2 should have gone anyway, as I feel I owe it to Martin and to the Cast to go again, and the run may be over when I am out and about again, asSaroyan, WilliamThe Beautiful People;a4 IMercury Theatre, Londonpresents Saroyan play;d1 think a date was already fixed for the Saroyan play (what a contrast!) to start at the Mercury.2 ISpainunder Franco in 1946;a1 am worried about Spain: to withdraw the ambassadors seems to me just one more act of national disgrace and turpitude in compliance with communist pressure. Of course the Spanish regime is a despotic and probably a cruel one – I imagine that both sides of the Civil War were equally cruel. But to protest against the Spanish regime, and pretend that the Jugoslav regime and the Russian regime are guiltless (and they have been far more insulting to Britain and America than Spain has) is suicidal hypocrisy. MeanwhileMallet, Victor;a1 the Mallet children3 are wondering where they are to spend their Christmas holidays – I called their grandmother yesterday.
FrankMorley, Frank Vigor;l5 says ‘don’t give any lectures – let HB look after you.’
1.J. Josephine Tucker.
2.William Saroyan, The Beautiful People (1941): produced at the Mercury Theatre, 1947.
3.Victor Mallet was now British Ambassador to Spain.
4.E. MartinBrowne, Elliott Martin Browne (1900–80), English director and producer, was to direct the first production of Murder in the Cathedral: see Biographical Register.
5.AiméeLamb, Aimée LambLambs, theLamb, Aimée
4.VictorMallet, Victor Mallet (1893–1969), diplomat and author – who had served in Tehran, Buenos Aires, Brussels and Washington, DC – was Envoy to Sweden, 1940–5; later Ambassador to Spain, and to Italy; knighted, 1944; awarded GCMG, 1952. His wife was Christiana Jean Andreae.
4.FrankMorley, Frank Vigor Vigor Morley (1899–1980), American publisher and author; a founding editor of F&F, 1929–39: see Biographical Register.
7.WilliamSaroyan, William Saroyan (1908–81): American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist; author of The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934) and The Time of Your Life (play, 1939), winner of the Pulitzer Prize (declined) and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, and adapted for a 1948 film starring James Cagney.
8.AlfredSheffield, Alfred Dwight ('Shef' or 'Sheff') Dwight Sheffield (1871–1961) – ‘Shef’ or ‘Sheff’ – husband of TSE’s eldest sister, taught English at University School, Cleveland, Ohio, and was an English instructor, later Professor, of Group Work at Wellesley College. His publications include Lectures on the Harvard Classics: Confucianism (1909) and Grammar and Thinking: a study of the working conceptions in syntax (1912).
2.RobertSpeaight, Robert Speaight (1904–77), actor, producer and author, was to create the role of Becket in Murder in the Cathedral in 1935: see Biographical Register.