Sara Fitzgerald is the author of the new biography The Silenced Muse: Emily Hale, T.S. Eliot, and the Role of a Lifetime. Her other books include the novel The Poet's Girl, which also focuses on the relationship between Eliot and Hale. Fitzgerald is also a journalist.
Q: What inspired you to write The Silenced Muse, and how was the book’s title chosen?
A: I was first inspired to write a novel about the relationship between Emily Hale and T. S. Eliot when I learned that some Eliot scholars believed she was the woman he secretly loved between his two marriages.
I was further intrigued when I learned that in just a few years, the thousand-plus letters that Eliot wrote Hale over their lifetimes were going to be opened after a 50-year embargo. On the day those letters were opened, in January 2020, the Harvard Library released a letter Eliot had sent the library in the early 1960s, disavowing Hale and their relationship.
In the meantime, I had learned many details about Hale and her life and became determined to tell her side of the story and to try to set the record straight. I titled my book “The Silenced Muse” because in his letter to Harvard, Eliot confirmed that he had arranged for Hale’s side of their correspondence to be destroyed. He had, in a sense, robbed her of her voice—and robbed biographers from hearing it.
Q: Did you need to do much additional research for this nonfiction work, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
A: In a novel, you can “make things up.” In a biography, you can’t. The main new source of information was, of course, the letters that Eliot sent Hale. These letters totaled more than 1 million words.
In some of them, Eliot shared memories of some of their times together—although not as much as I might have liked. He recalled how he had first fallen in love with her and later described some of their most romantic, face-to-face encounters.
But there were many unanswered questions about Hale’s life that I still needed to try to answer as best I could. She resigned from good jobs at certain points in her career. Why had she done that? Fortunately archivists at those colleges turned up documents that helped to explain her decisions.
A nice surprise was that Hale had saved copies of some letters she wrote as well as some letters from close friends who knew about her relationship with Eliot. She deposited them at the Princeton Library with the letters she received from Eliot.
They provided insights into Hale’s mindset at key points in their relationship, such as when she learned that Eliot had remarried his much-younger secretary 10 years after he had told Hale he could not bring himself to marry again.
We also discovered that Hale and one of her college students had had some sort of romantic attraction. That was something that required some more exploration.
Q: The Publishers Weekly review of the book says, “Eliot comes across as by turns pitiful and detestable... and though Fitzgerald succeeds in reconstructing Hale’s career as an amateur actress and director, it’s the riveting, star-crossed love story that steals the show.” What do you think of that description?
A: I was happy with that review, and thought it was an accurate description. I did as much research as I could to flesh out Hale’s career as an actress, director, and teacher. I hope that will help Eliot scholars appreciate her intellectual substance.
But the more dramatic story is, in fact, their love story. I was pleased that the reviewer said my book could serve as a complement to Anna Funder’s Wifedom, which describes how the contributions of Eileen O’Shaughnessy, George Orwell’s first wife, were minimized by Orwell and overlooked by most of his biographers. More and more women biographers are turning up stories like these.
Q: How would you describe Emily Hale’s legacy today?
A: Hale would be the first to admit that her only claim to fame was that T. S. Eliot fell in love with her. I think she remained puzzled why he had idolized her so when he was young.
Nevertheless, I think she is important to the study of Eliot’s works because the poet described specific references in his poems that she had inspired. Eliot turned to play-writing in the 1930s, and his letters also revealed how much Hale’s experience as a director and actress inspired that work.
Eliot made a disastrous first marriage, out of which some of his greatest poetry was written. But Hale served as a sort of sympathetic wife, who provided a period of stability to his life, even if Eliot did not fully appreciate it.
I spoke to some of Hale’s last high school students, women who were close to 80 when I interviewed them. It was clear that she left a strong legacy as a teacher and director to the students she had taught. That is an equally important legacy, even if it doesn’t make someone into a celebrity, worthy of a published biography.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Most authors are responsible for most of the promotional and marketing efforts for their books, so I’m still mostly focused on speaking and writing about Emily Hale—and the topics of my previously published books.
I have an idea for a group biography around a particular theme, one that might incorporate elements of memoir. But I also have an appreciation for the time and energy it takes to write any kind of book, particularly a biography. As much as I enjoy the research and writing process, I’m weighing that against other things I enjoy doing in life.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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