Newbattle Abbey 1950–1955

Abstract 1950–1955. Newbattle Abbey, a grand house and estate, was gifted to the nation as a ‘second chance’ college, without formal exams, for men and women who missed the usual route to education. Edwin settles in well and organizes a Collected Poems 1921–1951 for Faber and Faber (1952). He starts work on an extended version of his autobiography (1954) and continues with the poems that will appear as One Foot in Eden (1956). Left to herself, Willa starts a novel based on 1940s Prague to be called ‘The Usurpers’, but it is rejected by three publishers. Her spirits are low and she begins a journal of their daily life at Newbattle. There are problems with Gavin, now graduated from St Andrews and living with them. Seemingly unable to find a job and suffering from incipient deafness, he is moody and determined to pass a performance diploma from the Royal Academy of Music, despite repeated failures to do so. Edwin is keen to sustain a residential focus on the liberal arts, but the college’s executive committee, and pressure from the trade unions, prefer a curriculum more suited to weekly courses for workers on release. These tensions are exacerbated by Willa’s suddenly urgent need for further surgical procedures. Edwin experiences chest pains, and a traffic accident in Edinburgh suggests a problem with his heart. When Edwin is invited to be the next Charles Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard (1955–56), the Muirs gladly decide to sail for the United States.