by Ann Hulbert
24 “the vision of suffering”: Wimsatt and Brooks, Literary Criticism: A Short History, p. 746.
25 “his mind was heavy”: Steven Gould Axelrod, Robert Lowell: Life and Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 16.
26 new order and direction: JS letters to James Robert Hightower, JS Collection, U. of Co.
27 “My mission had not”: JS, “An Influx of Poets,” The New Yorker 54 (Nov. 6, 1978), p. 49.
28 “Like Father Strittmater” to “which was blind”: Ibid.
29: “Cal is to make”: JS to James Robert Hightower, Oct. 31, 1940, JS Collection, U. of Co.
30 “I can’t bear”: Evelyn Scott to JS, Sept. 1, 1940, JS Collection, U. of Co.
31 “As for myself”: JS to James Robert Hightower, Oct. 31, 1940, JS Collection, U. of Co.
32 twenty-seven-page manuscript: JS, untitled MS, JS Collection, U. of Co.
33 “Theron once told me”: JS, “An Influx of Poets,” p. 49.
34 “It would be” to “no one can stop”: from The Way of Perfection, quoted in Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), p. 14.
35 “To judge by”: Ascent of Mount Carmel, vol. 1 of Complete Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. and ed. E. Allison Peers (London: Burns and Oates, 1964), p. 317.
36 “our soul to be”: from The Way of Perfection, quoted in Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, p. 20.
37 “the expert of experts”: William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: New American Library, 1958), p. 313.
38 “I refer to”: Ibid., p. 297.
39 “a gifted woman” to “while retaining sanity”: Ibid., pp. 301–302.
40 “Time was passing”: JS, Autumn Festival MS, JS Collection, U. of Co.
41 On a trip to New Orleans: Hamilton, Robert Lowell; Blair Clark interview with author, Jan. 30, 1987; Frank Parker interview with author, Nov. 23, 1990.
42 “She fancied the consummation”: JS, untitled MS, JS Collection, U. of Co., p. 5.
43 “The room was”: Ibid., p. 8.
44 “tranquil mortal melancholy” to “This she knew”: Ibid., pp. 10, 12.
45 “made on her”: Ibid., p. 13.
46 “Though the room”: Ibid., p. 12.
47 “Doing our own will”: Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, p. 65.
48 “Because her nose”: JS, untitled MS, JS Collection, U. of Co., p. 19.
49 “Her solitude was pyramidal”: Ibid., p. 25.
50 “Her solitude was a sustained shriek”: Ibid., p. 26.
51 “She was so loving”: Ibid., p. 27.
52 “Now she lay”: Ibid.
53 “essential aspect of fiction” to “his own self-division”: Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, Understanding Fiction, rev. ed. (New York: F. S. Crofts and Co., 1943), p. xvi.
54 “The steadfast plant”: JS, untitled MS, JS Collection, U. of Co., p. 2.
55 “As the unworldly creature”: Ibid., p. 24.
56 “The surgical second” to “precipitate of section two”: Evelyn Scott to JS, Jan. 19, 1941, JS Collection, U. of Co.
57 “My life has”: JS to James Robert Hightower, Nov. 15, 1940, JS Collection, U. of Co.
58 “Cal is becoming”: JS to James Robert Hightower, Feb. 10, 1941, JS Collection, U. of Co.
59 “My particular brand” to “great compensations”: JS to James Robert Hightower, Mar. 4, 1941, JS Collection, U. of Co.
60 With customary hyperbole: JS to James Robert Hightower, Aug. 6, 1941, JS Collection, U. of Co.
61 “I have some new opinions”: JS to James Robert Hightower, Mar. 4, 1941, JS Collection, U. of Co.
62 “turnabout as this may sound”: JS to James Robert Hightower, Apr. 9, 1941, JS Collection, U. of Co.
63 “State some plan”: JS to James Robert Hightower, Apr. 17, 1941, JS Collection, U. of Co.
64 “I never, of course”: JS to James Robert Hightower, May 4, 1941, JS Collection, U. of Co.
65 “I think I can”: JS to James Robert Hightower, May 12, 1941, JS Collection, U. of Co.
66 “Oh Lord … I cannot” to “always be in alien corn”: JS to James Robert Hightower, Aug. 6, 1941, JS Collection, U. of Co.
67 “You would not recognize”: JS to James Robert Hightower, Mar. 4, 1941, JS Collection, U. of Co.
68 “which is religious”: JS to James Robert Hightower, Apr. 9, 1941, JS Collection, U. of Co.
69 Lowell’s short list: Hamilton, Robert Lowell, p. 79.
70 “Proust outstrips everyone” to “a comparison between them is precarious”: JS to James Robert Hightower, Mar. 4, 1941, JS Collection, U. of Co.
71 “Having been reading” to “much admire him”: JS to James Robert Hightower, Aug. 6, 1941, JS Collection, U. of Co.
72 “It has been a dreadful”: Ibid.
73 “We must avoid”: JS to Paul and Dorothy Thompson, July 30, 1941, courtesy of the Thompsons.
74 “I came to feel”: Irving Howe, A Margin of Hope (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), p. 181.
75 “We are both excited”: JS to James Robert Hightower, Sept. 9, 1941, JS Collection, U. of Co.
76 Allen had been hired: Ann Waldron, Close Connections: Caroline Gordon and the Southern Renaissance (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1987), p. 184.
77 “both of whom are”: JS to Peter Taylor, Oct. 1941, reprinted in Shenandoah 30, no. 3 (1979), p. 33.
78 “nothing but ideas”: Howe, Margin of Hope, p. 130.
79 “Your poetic style”: Allen Tate to Delmore Schwartz, Jan. 5, 1939, quoted in Atlas, Delmore Schwartz, p. 129.
80 Frank Sheed, the founding editor: Wilfrid Sheed, Frank and Maisie: A Memoir with Parents (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), p. 135.
81 “I should tell you”: JS to Peter Taylor, Oct. 1941, reprinted in Shenandoah 30, no. 3 (1979), p. 30.
82 “We went to look”: JS, In the Snowfall MS, JS Collection, U. of Co.
83 “I remember the translation”: JS notes, JS Collection, U. of Co.
84 “a rather exhausting joy” to “kind of fun”: JS to Peter Taylor, Oct. 1941, reprinted in Shenandoah 30, no. 3 (1979), p. 33.
85 “We met Blackmur”: Ibid., p. 29.
86 “said it came”: Ibid., p. 32.
87 “It’s a conscious imitation”: JS to James Robert Hightower, Sept. 9, 1941, JS Collection, U. of Co.
88 “It is well written”: Robert Giroux, “Hard Years and ‘Scary Days’: Remembering Jean Stafford,” p. 29.
89 “not the twaddle”: JS to Paul and Dorothy Thompson, June 10, 1942, courtesy of the Thompsons.
90 two hundred and fifty dollars on signing: Harcourt, Brace and Co. contract for The Outskirts, Apr. 30, 1942, JS Collection, U. of Co.
CHAPTER 7: The Tates
1 “We always start working”: Caroline Gordon to Léonie Adams, n.d., quoted in Waldron, Close Connections, p. 208.
2 “We will just hole up”: Caroline Gordon to Malcolm Cowley, n.d., Ibid., p. 206.
3 “the winter of four books”: Robert Lowell’s diary, 1974, quoted in Hamilton, Robert Lowell, p. 82.
4 “formal, difficult poems” to “achieve such a life”: Axelrod, Robert Lowell, pp. 36–37. See also Robert Lowell, “After Enjoying Six or Seven Essays on Me,” Salmagundi no. 37 (Spring 1977), p. 113.
5 “Consorting with the Tates”: Hamilton, Robert Lowell, p. 50.
6 “how often we”: Caroline Gordon to JS, n.d., McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
7 “for the millionth time”: JS to Peter Taylor, Nov. 1942, Vanderbilt University Library.
8 “Cal was very right” to “grossness of their lives”: Peter Taylor to JS, Aug. 29, 1944, JS Collection, U. of Co.
9 “There is not”: R. P. Blackmur, Kenyon Review 7 (Spring 1945), p. 348.
10 “much more interested”: Axelrod, Robert Lowell: Life and Art, p. 46.
11 “abstract-minded, sharp-witted”: Allen Tate, “Remarks on the Southern Religion,” in I’ll Take My Stand: The
South and the Agrarian Tradition (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), p. 170.
12 “Thank God for being”: Caroline Gordon to Dorothy van Doren, April 6, 1937, quoted in Waldron, Close Connections, p. 170.
13 “We had this statement”: JS to Peter Taylor, Mar. 1943, reprinted in Shenandoah 30, no. 3 (1979), p. 37.
14 “passionate pilgrim” to “worldly world”: Philip Rahv, Essays on Literature & Politics, 1932–1972, ed. Arabel J. Porter and Andrew J. Dvosin (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), p. 46.
15 “On a clear morning”: JS, Boston Adventure (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich/A Harvest Book, 1971), p. 3.
16 “With its first page”: Alfred Kazin, “Art and Resistance,” The New Republic, 111 (Oct. 23, 1944), p. 539.
17 “become the master”: copy of Harcourt, Brace editorial report on Boston Adventure MS, JS Collection, U. of Co.
18 “all are sick”: Edmund Wilson, Axel’s Castle: A Study in the Imaginative Literature of 1870–1930 (New York: Norton, 1984), p. 134.
19 “My mother believed”: JS, Boston Adventure, p. 28.
20 “infamous beyond pardon” to “utterly improbable”: Ibid., p. 77.
21 “so fantastic that”: Ibid., p. 7.
22 “I looked upon my mother”: Ibid., p. 164.
23 “My father was not” to “could stand alone”: Ibid., p. 172.
24 “Then he put”: Ibid., pp. 48–49.
25 “that I might”: Ibid., p. 3.
26 “It was not until then”: Ibid., p. 4.
27 “I had not read”: Ibid., pp. 119–120.
28 “Between these two”: Ibid., p. 181.
29 “I think he writes”: Ibid., p. 180.
30 “Boston was something”: Ibid., p. 285.
31 “It takes an outlander”: Ibid., p. 374.
32 “I read him constantly” to “all the triumphs”: Ibid., p. 259.
33 “literary convention” to “romantically wayward”: Elizabeth Hardwick, “Poor Little Rich Girls,” Partisan Review 12, no. 3 (Summer 1945), p. 420.
34 “Hopestill in my book”: JS to Edward Joseph Chay, Feb. 27, 1946, JS Collection, U. of Co.
35 “The eyes”: JS, Boston Adventure, p. 505.
36 “I cannot say”: Ibid., p. 425.
37 “It was a sanctuary”: Ibid., p. 449.
38 “the fear of my own mind”: Ibid., p. 459.
39 “looked again”: Ibid., p. 538.
40 “Four of us”: Caroline Gordon to Katherine Anne Porter, quoted in Veronica A. Makowsky, Caroline Gordon: A Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 124.
41 “the larger part”: T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays of T. S. Eliot, p. 18.
42 “poetry … must be”: Robert Lowell: Collected Prose, p. 60.
43 “There must be many”: Allen Tate, Essays of Four Decades, pp. 124, 126.
44 “I am so sorry”: Caroline Gordon to JS, n.d., McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
45 “I have decided”: Caroline Gordon to JS, n.d., McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
46 “I have not ever forgiven him”: JS to Peter Taylor, Dec. 13, 1946, Vanderbilt University Library.
47 “effort to deduce”: Philip Rahv, Literature and the Sixth Sense (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), p. 225.
48 “solidity of specification”: Ibid., p. 231.
49 “world of utility” to “actual being”: John Crowe Ransom, “The Understanding of Fiction,” Kenyon Review 12, no. 2, (Spring 1950), p. 201.
50 “I wished … to make”: Allen Tate, The Fathers (Denver: Alan Swallow, 1960), p. ix–x.
51 “I guess it wasn’t”: JS to Peter Taylor, Apr. 1943, Vanderbilt University Library.
52 “a little guilty” to “married to someone else”: Caroline Gordon to Katherine Anne Porter, quoted in Waldron, Close Connections, p. 209.
53 “He really has no interest”: Caroline Gordon to Josephine Herbst, n.d., Ibid., p. 76.
54 “I wonder if Caroline’s”: John Peale Bishop to Allen Tate, Ibid., p. 146.
55 “He has commenced”: JS to Peter Taylor, Nov. 1942, Vanderbilt University Library.
56 “We are hoping”: JS to Peter Taylor, Feb. 1943, Vanderbilt University Library.
57 “I have intended all week”: JS to Peter Taylor, Apr. 1943, reprinted in Shenandoah 30, no. 3 (1979), pp. 36–37.
58 “When [Cal] asked”: JS to Peter Taylor, Nov. 1942, Vanderbilt University Library.
59 “constant criticism”: Waldron, Close Connections, p. 208.
60 “Imagine the Bean Bert”: JS to Peter Taylor, July 10, 1943, reprinted in Shenandoah 30, no. 3 (1979), p. 40.
61 “Either a tubercular”: JS to Peter Taylor, July 20, 1943, Vanderbilt University Library.
62 “nervous exhaustion”: JS to Peter Taylor, Aug. 3, 1943, Vanderbilt University Library.
63 “is by no means”: JS to Peter Taylor, July 10, 1943, reprinted in Shenandoah 30, no. 3 (1979), p. 38.
64 “Mrs. Ames”: Ibid., p. 39.
65 “I could stay here”: JS to Peter Taylor, Aug. 3, 1943, Vanderbilt University Library.
66 “As the taxi brought me”: JS diary, Dec. 27, 1949, JS Collection, U. of Co.
67 “is doing something” to “too deep for words”: Caroline Gordon to JS, n.d., McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
68 “I wrote [Mrs. Ames]”: Caroline Gordon to JS, n.d., McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
69 “I wrote Mrs. Lowell”: Caroline Gordon to JS, n.d. McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
70 army employment questionnaire: Hamilton, Robert Lowell, p. 86.
71 “declaration of personal responsibility” to “propaganda and violence”: typescript in Houghton Library, Harvard University, quoted in Hamilton, Robert Lowell, p. 89.
72 “You know more”: Robert Lowell to his grandmother Mrs. Arthur Winslow, n.d., Houghton Library, quoted in Hamilton, Robert Lowell, p. 90.
73 “carried through to unconditional surrender”: typescript in Houghton Library, Harvard University, quoted in Hamilton, Robert Lowell, p. 89.
74 “You know, Jean”: Allen Tate to JS, Nov. 19, 1943, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
75 “the most decisive thing”: Hamilton, Robert Lowell, p. 86.
76 “poetic temperament”: article from Boston Post, Sept. 10, 1943, quoted in Hamilton, Robert Lowell, p. 90.
77 “whole man” to “aggressive stance”: Ibid., p. 85.
78 “I have not started”: JS to Peter and Eleanor Taylor, Oct. 10, 1943, Vanderbilt University Library.
79 “It was a rather bad winter”: JS to Paul and Dorothy Thompson, Oct. 12, 1944, courtesy of the Thompsons.
80 Two of her closest friends: Cecile Starr interview with author, Dec. 4, 1986.
81 “He is the most attractive” to “presently they left”: JS to Eleanor and Peter Taylor, Nov. 1943, reprinted in Shenandoah 30, no. 3 (1979), pp. 46–47.
82 “This morning”: Ibid., pp. 47–48.
83 “Charlotte Hideous”: Ibid., p. 48.
84 “Bobby” to “integrity of purpose”: Mrs. Charlotte Lowell to JS, Nov. 10, 1943, courtesy of Blair Clark.
85 “great trouble with”: JS unpublished memoir, courtesy of Oliver Jensen.
86 “more Catholic than the church”: Hamilton, Robert Lowell, p. 96.
87 “crazy”: Simpson, Poets in Their Youth, p. 145.
88 “It is not right”: JS to Peter Taylor, Feb. 11, 1944, quoted in Hamilton, Robert Lowell, p. 96.
CHAPTER 8: Connecticut
1 “I myself have nothing”: JS to Cecile Starr, n.d., courtesy of Cecile Starr.
2 “Our dreams are probably” to “unattractively materialistic”: JS to Eleanor Taylor, June 29, 1944, Vanderbilt University Library.
3 He had looked forward: Hamilton, Robert Lowell, p. 97.
4 “Cal … is working”: JS to Peter Taylor, July 26, 1944, Vanderbilt University Library.
5 “Cal has started writing” to “I spend my time”: J
S to Eleanor Taylor, July 31, 1944, Vanderbilt University Library.
6 “Despite the ugliness”: JS to Peter Taylor, July 12, 1944, Vanderbilt University Library.
7 “Actually I think few things”: JS to Eleanor Taylor, June 29, 1944, Vanderbilt University Library.
8 “It was as though”: JS, “The Lippia Lawn,” Collected Stories, p. 177.
9 “It’s a crime” to “now detested”: Ibid., p. 178.
10 “There ain’t nothing”: JS, “The Darkening Moon,” Collected Stories, p. 254.
11 “swarmed slimily” to “reptilian odor”: Ibid., p. 261.
12 Her novel did very well: Harcourt, Brace royalty statements for Boston Adventure, JS Collection, U. of Co.
13 “Your book struck me” to “first title best”: Philip Rahv to JS, n.d., JS Collection, U. of Co.
14 “Cal’s book”: JS to Paul and Dorothy Thompson, Oct. 12, 1944, courtesy of the Thompsons.
15 “The success of this book”: JS to James Robert Hightower, Sept. 8, 1944, JS Collection, U. of CO.
16 “It looks as if”: Caroline Gordon to JS, n.d., McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
17 “I hope it’s going”: JS to James Robert Hightower, Sept. 8, 1944, JS Collection, U. of Co.
18 “we are neither respectable nor rich”: Hamilton, Robert Lowell, p. 101.
19 “I am so glad”: JS to Mary Lee Frichtel, Oct. 1944, JS Collection, U. of Co.
20 “The shock was”: JS to Peter Taylor, Nov. 16, 1944, Vanderbilt University Library.
21 “image of a modest schoolteacher”: Pinkham, “Jean,” p. 28.
22 “It was not a very good trip”: JS to Cecile Starr, May 5, 1945, courtesy of Cecile Starr.
23 “I have bad nerves”: JS to Edward Joseph Chay, Dec. 22, 1944, JS Collection, U. of Co.
24 “The book on James” to “nothing but the symbol”: JS to Peter Taylor, Dec. 14, 1944, Vanderbilt University Library.
25 “something completely new”: JS to James Robert Hightower, Mar. 21, 1945, JS Collection, U. of Co.
26 “My new novel is”: JS to Edward Joseph Chay, Feb. 4, 1945, JS Collection, U. of Co.
27 “BETWEEN THE PORCH AND THE ALTAR” to “only at your best”: Allen Tate to JS, Aug. 5, 1944, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.