Con and I will now pedal up to the post office and collect groceries (Margot has just left). We look like a French bicycle race in our shorts and shirts and jockey caps, pumping down the road against the wind. I have the new Koestler book but I feel it’s too intense to read here. Did you see Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech? Very beautiful and positive (“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail”). I thought of you and Bill.*
July 14th, 1951 [DIARY]
I have been for six weeks to Dr. Rosen†
—the beginning of analysis. I cannot go back to the weeks of despair beforehand—my inability & sense of hopelessness of working it out with Dana. Margot’s urging me to R. and my final decision—to go tentatively.
What has happened since is just indescribable. The first week or two can only be described as a kind of “shock treatment”—though not in the usual sense—only through the deep & penetrating & therefore shocking probing. I felt violently shaken & couldn’t sleep or eat. Everything & everyone got dim and far away except C. & the children.
I continue to have a personal relationship with Dana but of course he is not The Doctor any more. So it is very different. Every relationship is different. D. has been magnificent about it and the greatest possible help to me & to C. His faith, his steadiness, the warmth of his affection, his understanding—without explanations—without words. His simply being there—a shoulder.
I feel quite sad that I should have broken through to him at last in a personal relationship at a moment when I am so unsteady. So unsure and so empty—with so little to give. Will I ever feel creative again? With hands full?
It is very hard on C. in every way. I can see it & feel it & it is another burden to bear. I feel so convinced that it is for C. Also for us—for the children and that we will all gain from it. But even so—.
Outside of that basic sureness I have nothing—no steadiness—no sense of who I am or where I am going. I am adrift & rather blind & frightened to be so disconnected.
The experience can only be described in terms of myths or fairy stories—or a symbolic phrase such as “The bird fights its way out of the egg which is its world. Whoever would be born again must just destroy a world.”
I feel like the little mermaid who has sacrificed her tongue to the Sea-Witch—& lost her tail for human stumps of legs. Every step was as if she were treading on sharp knives.
I feel like Psyche who had to light the candle & then was banished from her love, from her kingdom, only to come back after trudging around the world barefoot.
I feel like the moth, just fighting its way out of the cocoon, crawling out—a blind grub, dragging its useless atrophied wings after it—unable to fly—or see—or do anything but cling helplessly to a twig.
Who I am or who I will be I do not know. I feel completely disconnected from myself—the plug pulled out. And yet faith that there is only one way out—to go ahead. I cannot go back. Yet it takes so much courage to go ahead—esp. with C. feeling as he does about it. (He has backed me up magnificently but he does not understand & it troubles him so terribly.)
At the moment (R. is away) I can only return to the bed-rock of being a woman—my body—to keep well—exercise—sun—swim—sleep (I am gaining back the weight I lost & sleeping again)—my husband—my children (but the children are away & C. is away half the time or more)—my house—housework & gardening—cleaning—arranging the flowers (this is the only creative thing I can do)—for I have no job (I cannot write at the moment. There is no base—no personality—no me to write from). With all relationships removed from me (partly because it’s summer & they’re away & partly because I have told no one about the analysis—but C. & D.) & all work removed. I feel adrift—what justifies my existence? Who needs me? I write the children—fill the bird bath—let C. talk to me of all that is on his mind. Write D.
The other day—lying down on the couch in the trailer—feeling I had no justification for living (“The Shells” seem superficial & outgrown—I cannot work at them)—I looked out of the door & found the birds feeding on the crumbs from my lunch & it gave me a spurt of joy. I felt connected again to life—through the birds eating my crumbs. And I felt like that talking to Betsey* one afternoon—putting my finger on her pain—a point she hadn’t analyzed—& it seemed a relief to her. (“Yes, that’s why it’s so terrible—I hadn’t put it that way—yes you’re right.”) And when I get those joyous overflowing letters from Ansy from camp—I feel if I can be here for Anne’s joy—for Anne’s expression—the recipient—even the encouraging audience for her expression—that is enough.
If I can be the responsive & understanding friend to Betsey at this moment of trial—it is enough.
If I can send a joke or a note or a poem or my love to Dana—& it gives some light to his day.
If I can feed crumbs to the birds—then perhaps there is reason for my existence through this desert.
T. S. Eliot:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.†
[From a letter to Alan Valentine]*
Saturday night, June 13th, 1953†
This has been a long rainy day full of small duties: children’s camp trunks, lists, name tapes, interruptions, telephone calls, plans, all the children in the house, plus children’s guests, children’s quarrels, and contracts to read and sign for C. And through all of it, the sense that I must get alone to communicate anything, even though they must be “mental letters, torn up mentally.”
The sense of loss is terrific and yet not, curiously, at the same time. I felt this, driving from the station to my appointment—terrific void and silence and then, with the incredible deviltry-humor of life, a large truck bearing your name made us stop as it crossed our path. And I laughed secretly. And then I began to feel better.
Perhaps “better” is not the word. It is something quite new and different from what I would imagine: a sense not of flurry and distraction, of pressure, but of calmness and quiet and strength. It seems to last. I am astonished. I am even efficient, more pulled together than usual! Do you know the George Eliot quotation: “Those children of God to whom it has been granted to see each other face to face and to feel the same spirit working in both can never more be sundered, though the hills may lie between. For their souls are enlarged for evermore by that union, and they bear one another about in their thoughts continually, as it were a new strength.”
Life seems to me suddenly to have quieted, as if I had come to rest, as if I believed “we have years.” I am in a new country. I do not know my way but I am not pressed. I am not even worried. I am sustained. I had the immense and unexpected joy of finding your ink marks on the things I had given you to read. Such communication.
Now I must sleep.
Sun. p.m., sitting on a rock
After a morning of driving Land to La Guardia and having a long educational talk on marriage with Judy‡ (Heavens, she knows nothing. Do they still bring up people this way?), I slipped away and came out here “to sunbathe.” It is raining now, intermittently and delicately, but it is so wonderful to sit alone and think. I did sunbathe too, in what sun there was.
I feel something else new. I want suddenly and very positively to be strong, to stay well, to stay young and alive and rested. I want so much to live those years we have. This is new. The nearest thing to it I have ever felt was when I was carrying and nursing Reeve. I must tell you about this. I learned with the last child how marvelous this process of living for another, with joy in the thought of another. (The rain is increasing. The spots will look like tears but they are not. I felt ashamed afterwards of my tears. At the time I could not feel shame, for it was only that I could not act unnaturally, or be other than what I was feeling.)
When you are carrying or nursing a child and really drenched in the act, everything you do in life is transfused with the thought
of this other life: the sun on one’s hand, the honey on one’s toast, the milk one drinks, the sleep, the air one breathes. One is grateful for it all. One says to oneself, “How wonderful! This is for my child. This sunshine—this air—this sleep—this milk—this honey!” Every act has meaning, is transformed. One has a sense of direction, of dedication all day long, all night.
I tried once to describe this to Ned Sheldon,* whom I saw a lot of in the last year of his life, and the first year of Reeve’s life. He listened from his bed (he was blind and paralyzed) and then said, in his beautiful voice, “But that is love, you are describing. That is love; it is what the poets have been trying to describe for thousands of years.” I was startled, but I thought of it again today as I lay in the sun.
It is 5:30. I must go back to the house. Dwight† is coming for supper. The routine starts tomorrow again. How refreshed I feel for this hour and a half!
Thursday—sitting up in bed—early morning
I slept and woke early, my thoughts going on in all that I want to say to you, in answer to the letter and more. You told me just what I wanted and needed most to know: of the happy tenor of your family life. This was a help and strength to me. What you said about the facets—so beautifully said. Yes, it is true. I had almost realized it too (and this has been troubling me underneath as deeply as anything). It comes to me again as confirmation.
How beautifully you write. I did not realize this, but then, so much I did not realize. I really do not know you very well, and I want to so much, although so much of it seems, on discovery, not to be surprise but confirmation. There will be some time tonight to be quiet. I will walk through the day toward it.
Yesterday was long, tiring and picayune. But I swam when I came back, alone. Wednesday’s swim was so wonderful after your letter (curiously mingled in my mind). I swam in this new element: a slight shock, surprising, releasing, restoring, freeing. And then lay on the sunny stones of the wall in utter peace and content. (Yes, I can repose on this. Yes, this is solid earth.)
There is so much to say about your letter. So much feeling the same in it: the untroubledness, the lack of regret. (But there is impatience in me.) Also I do get troubled at certain aspects, but you assured and helped me here (the facets).
Of “The Shells.” Yes, you are right. I long to talk to you about it. Some of this can go in a real letter. On the weekend there will be time, I hope.
I feel “at ease” tonight—I do not know why exactly. Is this faith, this kind of repose? A kind of faith in life itself: that I will let it develop, that it has something in it for me—for us. That I do not ask “what” or “how” or “when.”
Monday morning—before breakfast
My Birthday.* Yesterday I wrote you and Lucia.† But so much unsaid. I could have gone on and on. Both letters were sincere. Perhaps the one to you was the less sincere, because so much was left out. So much I could have written about Macmurray,‡ which I shall take on the train. You have marked: “The real problem of the development of emotional reason is to shift the center of feeling from the self to the world outside. We can only begin to grow up in rationality when we begin to see our own emotional life not as the center of things but as part of the development of humanity.”
I am still so desperately personal. And yet, I had to get straightened out inside first—a little anyway. But now—now, I must start the other process.
Last week the children were wild. (It is better this week.) I kept taking it to heart and wondering what I was doing or had done wrong. I know rebellion in adolescence is natural and healthy, but how much to take, and how to handle it?
Evening. Now it is late. They are all in bed. I have just been out to look at the moonlight on the water. Not brilliant—milky and soft tonight—melting. I wish I could communicate some of this to you immediately, more fully. My real letter went off today but it says so little and goes so slowly. But you will know. (So you say and I believe you.) Now it is good night. “Happy Birthnight,” as Reeve said to me sleepily tonight. “It isn’t day any longer.”
Thursday evening, June 25th, 1953
This was my first free day. Tuesday and Wednesday I was rushed in town and obsessively neat at home! A frenzy of picking up and tidying, cleaning out, and washing up, no doubt compensating for the disorder inside at the thought of ending the analysis. The end of anything is difficult. (“What have I done?” “What have I not done?”)
But today, now it is ended, I felt free. I put fresh flowers in the living room. I lay on the rock in the sun. “The Shells” came back with a wonderful bit of lobster wisdom on the envelope. (I was horror struck at the messy state of “The Shells” when I gave them to you. I should have reread it: it looked like a clean copy, but evidently wasn’t.)
I was also very busy with the children since the secretary is off. Scott stepped on his hunting knife. Reeve had a rowdy friend for lunch. Anne had her art teacher and children for tea. I was busy carrying, making beds, bandaging feet, delivering children, washing out things, etc. And yet, I felt, this is going to be all right: I will get time. I will get back to the trailer. I will manage better tomorrow. I will get back to the core in the center of me, soon. Soon.
It is hard not to press, not to want to share and talk and communicate, with the new ease—comparative ease. I find this new pressure more insistent. Is it wrong, I wonder, to want to share? Is sharing an impossibility, ever? Should one give up such a dream: sharing all the little things? Is it a falsity even to try because one never can? Only a certain number of the facets turn right! One shouldn’t pretend that they all do. (Oh, but so many do!) Or twist oneself trying to make them all turn one way. But I find this longing in me to lean all one way, like a flower to the sun. I distrust the leaning, as if one might get off balance.
[JULY 27TH, 1953, DIARY]
[CAL] has had a wonderful trip abroad—Pan American*—all over—France—Italy—Switzerland—Sweden—England. Pan Am work & talking to interesting people on his own. He is alive—open—gay—warm & very interesting on everything. On the top of the wave. The book† is going into every conceivable language—& we have a first copy—a beautiful thing—perfect in every detail—cover—end-papers—maps—pictures—set-up. Reviewers’ comments are beginning to come in—(Epic—Seven Pillars of Wisdom—Arabia Deserta—etc., etc.).
I am happy to see him so alive, so open—so active & growing—but it is hard to start clear on this level (—as we must—as we will). There is so much pain heaped up from the past. Old pain, banked up, makes for bitterness. One must try to understand it. For him, the two years of my analysis is pain & bitterness—which it is difficult for him to understand—to accept—to forgive even. Though now it is over, it is better.
For me—it is difficult to analyze, but the fact that he has not been with me (in understanding or sympathy or support) these two years of analysis is hard to bridge. Also I still find in myself when—as now—I hear paeans of praise for his book—bitterness—jealousy—sense of unfairness. I am ashamed of these emotions & when I can be quiet & think out why they are there, they vanish. But sometimes they catch me unaware as when someone called up & went off into ecstasies about the greatness of the book—an epic—smoothness of style—marvelous images—perfection of detail—etc., etc., compared it to The Seven Pillars of Wisdom and Arabia Deserta. Had no idea he had it in him—must go back & read We‡—which was just a simple story of a simple man, etc.
I am too much of a writer not to recognize this book as an epic. It is a great moment in history—greatly told—by a man of greatness. I also know that he would not have told it—could not have told it that way if he had not married me. Twenty years of living with me have gone into that book—before the man who said to me when we were engaged: “You like to write books?” (astonished and curiously condescending) “I like to live them”—before that man absorbed my values about the written word—from my books, both those I wrote & those I read, my education, my way of talking, my way of writing, my admirat
ion of writers—to such a degree that he has put it all back in this epic of a book.
The difference between We & The Spirit of St. Louis is my impact on Charles—and life’s—but life with me, as observer, as critic, as commentator at his side.
Actually—what I did on the book concretely—in cutting—transposing—criticizing—telling him where to end—where to point up—where to synchronize—weighing & analyzing paragraphs—sentences—words—commas—also tone—tone of this or that bit—changing the tone and a few good images—going over & over it with a fine-toothed comb for details—checking & rechecking everyone else’s corrections—were they valid or not? And at least ten people did an overhaul job on it.
All this—though it added to the perfection of the book—was not as important as those twenty years of living with me—slowly changing & opening, sharpening his perceptions, his articulateness, his aesthetic & spiritual sensitivities.
As his reality-action-sense of life pervaded—shaped—formed me—& my life and my early books.
But then—why the pain? Why do I mind that he has blossomed so wonderfully—that I have been the soil—the sun—the rain, a little (much!)—for his blossoming? It was all there, before—the plant, the buds—the potentialities—I only perhaps freed them a little—why do I flinch at the extravagant praises coming for this very magnificent achievement? It is his very real achievement—whether or not I helped him to it. I should be proud, happy—overjoyed—that he has achieved it & that I could help him to it.
In a way I am—and I really enjoyed the work on the book. I enjoyed making it as perfect as it could be. I forgot myself in doing it.
Then why the pain? There is so much pain. It is not simply jealousy—or simply that I want the praise. That would not be fair. He deserves it & he has worked for it. It is his epic.
But there is too much pain in connection with this book. Too much pain has gone into it for me, to face its flowering at its face value—surfacely. Too much of our life—our pain—our marriage—has gone into the maw of that book. Four books of my own have been swallowed up in it—and my adoration of St.-Ex.* & his books. And years of life—& quarrels & misunderstandings. The book means pain to me. The cost has been high. It was written—most of it—in this last painful period of lack of understanding & support & sympathy for what I was going through. Lack of understanding is a mild way of putting it. He fought tooth & nail every inch of the way. To try to give him support for what he was doing (when it was an invasion into my own field—the only field I had of my own that he had not entered & absorbed)—when he was undermining—consciously & unconsciously—what I was attempting to do in the analysis—(which I felt—rightly or wrongly—was necessary for my survival). It was a knife-edge I walked for those two years. Trying to hold my own—to carry out what I had undertaken—under active opposition. To do this at great sacrifice in time, money—energy—(those trips to NY every day—those agonies of mind & emotions & spirit—which must be masked completely from an un-understanding & hostile companion). But chiefly the time—the creative years—the years that might have made a book—poems—going to a process of self-discovery & self-acceptance I found imperative if I was to go on living as wife & mother. To keep steady as wife & mother—through all this. To protect & nourish the children—through all storms—to be quiet—to be steady.
Against Wind and Tide: Letters and Journals, 1947-1986 Page 10