by Ann Hulbert
94 “The chief recent tendency” to “fiction and personal history”: Ibid., p. 413.
95 “It is probably needless”: Ibid., p. 414.
96 “The day I came”: JS to Robert Lowell, n.d., Houghton Library, Harvard University.
97 “the last familiar face”: JS, “Children Are Bored on Sunday,” Collected Stories, p. 379.
98 “Eisenburg’s milieu” to “laughed at”: Ibid., p. 374.
99 “cunning” set, “on their guard”: Ibid., p. 373.
100 “the cream of the enlightened”: Ibid., p. 375.
101 “These cocktail parties”: Ibid., pp. 374–375.
102 “opinions on everything” to “calling in itself”: Ibid., p. 377.
103 “she was not even”: Ibid., p. 378.
104 “had never dissuaded her” to “apologetic fancy woman”: Ibid., p. 379.
105 “Neither staunchly primitive”: Ibid., p. 378.
106 “the months of spreading” to “art and religion”: Ibid., p. 381.
107 “To [Emma’s] own heart”: Ibid., p. 383.
108 “never knew where”: Ibid., p. 378.
109 “in the territory of despair”: Ibid., p. 382.
110 “If you think your snide remarks”: Peter Taylor to Robert Lowell, May 1, 1952, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
111 “John Berryman came”: JS to Peter Taylor, Mar. 8, 1948, Vanderbilt University Library.
112 “he announced that”: JS to Peter Taylor, Jan. 17, 1950, Vanderbilt University Library.
113 “Please consider it”: JS to Peter Taylor, Mar. 8, 1948, Vanderbilt University Library.
CHAPTER 11: Peace and Disappointment
1 signed a contract: memo on In the Snowfall, Nov. 28, 1947, Harcourt, Brace, JS Collection, U. of Co.
2 allotting her $6,500: JS and Robert Lowell, divorce decree, March 1948, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
3 “good friends”: JS to Mary Lee Frichtel, Apr. 10, 1948, JS Collection, U. of Co.
4 “I want us both” to “at a low pitch”: JS to Robert Lowell, n.d., Houghton Library, Harvard University.
5 “I am now divorced”: JS to Edward Joseph Chay, July 3, 1948, JS Collection, U. of Co.
6 “was a triumph”: JS to Mary Lee Frichtel, April 10, 1948, JS Collection, U. of Co.
7 “For the three”: Nancy Flagg Gibney, “People to Stay,” Shenandoah 30, no. 3 (1979), p. 67.
8 “Pull yourself together”: Dr. Mary Jane Sherfey to JS, Apr. 28, 1948, JS Collection, U. of Co.
9 “He is an altogether”: JS to Peter Taylor, June 28, 1948, quoted in Hamilton, Robert Lowell, p. 133.
10 “stifled by the terrible rush” to “without ever maturing”: JS to William Mock, Oct. 24, 1948, Dartmouth College Library.
11 “Alas, alas”: JS to Edward Joseph Chay, July 3, 1948, JS Collection, U. of Co.
12 at least not to his friends: Frank Parker interview with author, Nov. 23, 1990.
13 At a later stage: Hamilton, Robert Lowell, p. 155.
14 “Cal is in a sanitarium”: JS to Paul and Dorothy Thompson, Apr. 25, 1949, courtesy of the Thompsons.
15 “It is an awful irony” to “that poor boy”: JS to Mary Lee Frichtel, postmarked Apr. 12, 1949, JS Collection, U. of Co.
16 Les Maudits: from “For John Berryman,” Robert Lowell, Day by Day, p. 27.
17 “Is it wrong”: JS to John Berryman, May 17, 1948, John Berryman Papers, University of Minnesota Libraries, Minneapolis.
18 “analysands all”: “The Lightning,” John Berryman, in The Dispossessed (New York: William Sloane Associates, 1948).
19 “There’s a strange fact” to “book of the age”: Robert Lowell to Theodore Roethke, July 10, 1963, quoted in Hamilton, Robert Lowell, p. 337.
20 “It is not news”: JS to Paul and Dorothy Thompson, Feb. 13, 1947, courtesy of the Thompsons.
21 “is impolite” to “memory by writing of it”: JS, “Truth and the Novelist,” pp. 187–189.
22 “very hard at work”: JS to Peter Taylor, Apr. 26, 1949, Vanderbilt University Library.
23 “I feel that I have”: JS to Mary Lee Frichtel, June 10, 1949, JS Collection, U. of Co.
24 “hidden pathological tortures” to “writer you’ll be”: Dr. Mary Jane Sherfey to JS, n.d., JS Collection, U. of Co.
25 Alfred Kazin: Alfred Kazin interview with author, Oct. 1, 1986.
26 “I so terribly want”: JS to Peter Taylor, Dec. 6, 1949, Vanderbilt University Library.
27 “When the whole thing”: JS to Oliver Jensen, Jan. 19, 1950, JS Collection, U. of Co.
28 “all of life”: JS to Oliver Jensen, n.d., JS Collection, U. of Co.
29 “Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Jensen”: JS Collection, U. of Co.
30 “it was fitting”: JS, “A Modest Proposal,” Collected Stories, p. 68.
31 “To be quite frank”: JS to Cecile Starr, n.d., courtesy of Cecile Starr.
32 “I think Tommy”: JS, “Polite Conversation,” Collected Stories, p. 131.
33 “fascinating and poetic”: Katharine White to JS, Oct. 20, 1948, JS Collection, U. of Co.
34 “From every thought”: JS, “A Country Love Story,” Collected Stories, p. 140.
35 “Sometime, he said”: JS, In the Snowfall miscellaneous, JS Collection, U. of Co.
36 “Jean Stafford’s ‘The Nemesis’ ”: Granville Hicks, “Selected Stories—Told with Integrity,” The New York Times Book Review, July 15, 1951, p. 5.
37 “fat to the point” to “arrogant self-possession”: JS, “The Echo and the Nemesis,” Collected Stories, p. 37.
38 “No doubt remains” to “and so of course also one”: Dr. Alfred Cohn to JS, Dec. 17, 1950, JS Collection, U. of Co.
39 “ ‘I am exceptionally ill’ ” to “Most people do”: JS, “The Echo and the Nemesis,” Collected Stories, p. 52.
40 “Are you afraid”: Ibid., p. 53.
41 “with her hands locked”: Ibid., p. 145.
42 “As you described”: Katharine White to JS, Aug. 4, 1951, JS Collection, U. of Co.
43 “empty ecstasy”: JS, Collected Stories, p. 105.
44 “a horrible fear”: James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 135.
45 “In that hideous grin”: JS, “Life Is No Abyss,” Collected Stories, p. 105.
46 “who can’t take anything” to “state of grace”: Ibid., p. 112.
47 “The fact is”: Ibid., p. 418.
48 “I, who never act”: Ibid., p. 420.
49 “penetrate at last” to “something to eat”: Ibid., p. 422.
50 “I think maybe”: JS to Oliver Jensen, Aug. 15, 1951, JS Collection, U. of Co.
51 “I don’t want to go”: JS to Mary Lee Frichtel, Sept. 23, 1951, JS Collection, U. of Co.
52 “the three big topics”: Oliver Jensen letter to author, May 12, 1991.
53 “I feel a desperate fatigue”: JS to Oliver Jensen, July 29, 1952, JS Collection, U. of Co.
54 “I cannot give you”: JS to Oliver Jensen, Aug. 9, 1951, JS Collection, U. of Co.
55 Her reluctance: Alex and Marie Warner interview with author, Dec. 17, 1986.
56 “concluded at last”: JS, “An Etiquette for Writers,” p. 2.
57 “the private-made-public life”: Ibid., p. 7.
58 “In recent years”: Ibid., p. 8.
59 “Writing is a private”: Ibid.
60 “I am all”: JS to Oliver Jensen, Aug. 9, 1952, JS Collection, U. of Co.
61 “Her pessimism”: Oliver Jensen to Mary Lee Frichtel, Nov. 18, 1952, JS Collection, U. of Co.
62 “I will soon be”: JS to Robert Lowell, n.d., Houghton Library, Harvard University.
63 “All I ask”: JS to Mary Lee Frichtel, Sept. 23, 1952, JS Collection, U. of Co.
64 “Please do not read”: JS to Caroline Gordon, n.d., Princeton University Library.
65 “I only refurbished”: JS to Oliver Jensen, Mar. 1954, JS Collection, U. of Co.
66 “I don’t know what”: JS to Robert
Lowell, n.d., Houghton Library, Harvard University.
67 “It deals with people” to “kindly and uninhibited”: JS, “Truth and the Novelist,” p. 189.
68 “was looking right” to “everything written there”: JS, The Catherine Wheel (New York: Ecco Press, 1981), p. 150.
69 “fuse the two manners” to “leisurely … embroidered”: JS interview with Harvey Breit, “Talk with Jean Stafford,” p. 18.
70 “He waited”: JS, The Catherine Wheel, pp. 15–16.
71 “Once Andrew had”: Ibid., p. 27.
72 “These fine long faces”: Ibid., pp. 66–67.
73 “in her rarefied world”: Ibid., p. 43.
74 “It struck her”: Ibid., p. 84.
75 “Man’s life is”: Ibid., epigraph.
76 it even made it: Roberts, Jean Stafford, p. 370.
77 “At other times”: “ ‘Parsifal’ in Modern Dress,” The New Yorker 27, (Jan. 12, 1952), p. 78.
78 “Miss Stafford’s prose”: Irving Howe, “Sensibility Troubles,” Kenyon Review 14 (Spring 1952), p. 348.
79 “You need to get”: JS interview with Harvey Breit, “Talk with Jean Stafford,” p. 18.
80 “gifts for language” to “all the paraphernalia”: Peter Taylor, jacket blurb, The Catherine Wheel.
81 Lowell was struggling: Axelrod, Robert Lowell: Life and Art, p. 81.
82 At the end of her life: Robert Giroux, “Hard Years and ‘Scary Days,’ ” p. 29.
83 “I’m very happy”: JS to Peter Taylor, Apr. 19, 1954, Vanderbilt University Library.
84 “I see almost no one”: JS to Blair and Holly Clark, n.d., courtesy of Blair Clark.
85 “spinsterish, rural life”: JS to Paul and Dorothy Thompson, Jan. 13, 1954, courtesy of the Thompsons.
86 “The depression has”: Apr. 8, 1953, JS diary, JS Collection, U. of Co.
87 “writing like crazy”: JS to Blair and Holly Clark, n.d., courtesy of Blair Clark.
88 “an example of emotion”: Mary Louise Aswell, ed., New Short Novels (New York: Ballantine Books, 1954), introduction.
89 “I am at peace”: JS, “A Winter’s Tale,” in New Short Novels, ed. Mary Louise Aswell, p. 226.
90 “an ascetic Boston Irishman”: Ibid., p. 230.
91 “It was not love”: Ibid., p. 262.
92 “a lack of talent”: Ibid., pp. 259–260.
93 “I haven’t any politics” to “best of all”: Ibid., pp. 272–273.
94 “There had always been”: Ibid., pp. 275–276.
95 “I am exalted”: Ibid., p. 276.
96 dispute with Harcourt, Brace: Roberts, Jean Stafford, p. 314.
97 “It’s mainly indolence”: JS to Albert Erskine, n.d., Random House Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
98 “I’ll tell you”: Alden Whitman, “Jean Stafford and Her Secretary ‘Harvey’ Reigning in Hamptons,” The New York Times, Aug. 26, 1973, p. 104.
99 “I do hope”: Katharine White to JS, July 14, 1955, JS Collection, U. of Co.
100 “absolutely on top”: JS to Paul and Dorothy Thompson, Dec. 1954, courtesy of the Thompsons.
101 “I’m still no better”: JS to Paul and Dorothy Thompson, Jan. 13, 1954, courtesy of the Thompsons.
102 “I have never had”: JS to Blair and Holly Clark, n.d., courtesy of Blair Clark.
103 “I dreamed that”: JS hospital diary, July 28, 1947, JS Collection, U. of Co.
104 “Jean, why the Sam Hill”: John Stafford to JS, Feb. 1, 1955, JS Collection, U. of Co.
105 “But each knew”: JS, “Fame Is Sweet to the Foolish Man,” childhood MS, JS Collection, U of Co.
106 “to try to pleasantly remind”: Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, ed. Paul Baender (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982), preface.
107 “people you thought”: Robert E. Kroll, ed., Weldon Kees and the Midcentury Generation: Letters, 1935–1955 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), p. 107.
108 “I do not think”: JS, “The Healthiest Girl in Town,” Collected Stories, p. 207.
109 “awful tongue”: JS, “Bad Characters,” Collected Stories, p. 263.
110 “Emily Vanderpool”: JS, Bad Characters (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1964), pp. vii–viii.
111 “possessed with a passion”: JS, “Bad Characters,” Collected Stories, p. 263.
112 “Tom was like”: Twain, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, p. 48.
113 “Yes, sir, Emily”: JS, “A Reading Problem,” Collected Stories, p. 343.
114 “I had never heard”: JS, “Bad Characters,” Collected Stories, p. 268.
115 “She felt that she was”: JS, “Cops and Robbers, Collected Stories, p. 431.
116 “life was essentially”: JS, “In the Zoo,” Collected Stories, p. 286.
117 “How lonely I have been”: JS, “The Liberation,” Collected Stories, p. 322.
118 “bamboozled into muteness”: JS, “Maggie Meriwether’s Rich Experience,” Collected Stories, p. 5.
119 “the most sophisticated”: Ibid., p. 17.
120 “They were far too young”: JS, “Caveat Emptor,” Collected Stories, p. 79.
121 “When Beatrice”: JS, “Beatrice Trueblood’s Story,” Collected Stories, p. 385.
122 “whole menagerie”: Ibid., p. 390.
123 “humiliating, disrobing displays”: Ibid., p. 401.
124 “She had not bargained”: Ibid.
125 “My God”: Ibid., p. 403.
126 “I have had two”: JS to Ann Honeycutt, n.d., JS Collection, U. of Co.
127 “If one can accept”: JS to Nancy Flagg Gibney, quoted in Nancy Flagg, “People to Stay,” Shenandoah 30, no. 3 (1979), p. 75.
128 Writer’s Newsletter: Jessyca Russell, quoted in James Oliver Brown to JS, Apr. 18, 1956, James Oliver Brown Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University.
129 “is done in such an interesting style”: Katharine White to JS, Oct. 13, 1955, JS Collection, U. of Co.
130 “one of the most beautiful women”: JS, “The End of a Career,” Collected Stories, p. 447.
131 “Perhaps, like an artist”: Ibid., p. 451.
132 “There is an aesthetic”: Ibid., p. 456.
133 “If [my gift]”: JS to Mary Lee Frichtel, June 10, 1949, JS Collection, U. of Co.
134 “If any little detail”: Peter Taylor to JS, Dec. 24, 1954, JS Collection, U. of Co.
135 To Nancy Flagg Gibney she admitted: JS to Nancy Flagg Gibney, n.d., courtesy of Eleanor Gibney and Charlotte Margolis Goodman.
136 “I thought the story”: JS to Peter Taylor, Mar. 16, 1955, Vanderbilt University Library.
137 “I’m quite sure”: JS to Paul and Dorothy Thompson, Feb. 22, 1956, courtesy of the Thompsons.
CHAPTER 12: Isle of Arran and Samothrace
1 “Your last letter” to “to please you”: Katharine White to JS, July 26, 1956, JS Collection, U. of Co.
2 Despite her health: Goodman, Jean Stafford: The Savage Heart, p. 252; and JS letters to Ann Honeycutt, JS Collection, U. of Co.
3 “I have eaten nothing”: JS to Ann Honeycutt, June 25, 1956, JS Collection, U. of Co.
4 “After the age”: JS to Joan Stillman, June 15, 1956, quoted in Roberts, Jean Stafford, p. 318.
5 “is so much”: JS to Ann Honeycutt, July 16, 1956, JS Collection, U. of Co.
6 “I have looked on myself”: JS to Nancy Flagg Gibney, Sept. 12, 1955, courtesy of Eleanor Gibney and Charlotte Margolis Goodman.
7 “As to the word waif”: A. J. Liebling to JS, July 16, 1957, Dept. of Rare Books, Olin Library, Cornell University.
8 “the abrupt lunge”: Raymond Sokolov, Wayward Reporter: The Life of A. J. Liebling (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), p. 286.
9 “I’ve been having”: JS to James Oliver Brown, Aug. 1956, James Oliver Brown Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
10 “I seem to have held”: A. J. Liebling to JS, Oct. 16, 1956, Dept. of Rare Books, Olin Library,
Cornell University.
11 “All through the last 100 pages”: A. J. Liebling to JS, Nov. 18, 1956, Dept. of Rare Books, Olin Library, Cornell University.
12 “I began to write”: A. J. Liebling to JS, Feb. 10, 1957, Dept. of Rare Books, Olin Library, Cornell University.
13 “Liebling and his set”: Wilfrid Sheed, “Miss Jean Stafford,” pp. 94–95.
14 “I want you to write”: A. J. Liebling to JS, Dec. 13, 1956, Dept. of Rare Books, Olin Library, Cornell University.
15 “The bookstore in the hotel”: A. J. Liebling to JS, Feb. 23, 1957, Dept. of Rare Books, Olin Library, Cornell University.
16 “forward to the night”: Robert Lowell, Life Studies and For the Union Dead, p. 19.
17 “On the joint Mason-Myers bookplate”: Ibid., p. 12.
18 “Well, I stand off”: Robert Lowell to Peter Taylor, Apr. 11, 1955, quoted in Hamilton, Robert Lowell, p. 221.
19 So did Liebling: Sokolov, Wayward Reporter, pp. 292–293.
20 “I was moving”: JS to Nancy Flagg Gibney, Feb. 1957, courtesy of Eleanor Gibney and Charlotte Margolis Goodman.
21 The project”: Sokolov, Wayward Reporter, p. 296.
22 “The book’s the thing”: A. J. Liebling to JS, Spring 1957, Dept. of Rare Books, Olin Library, Cornell University.
23 “It may be all”: A. J. Liebling to JS, Mar. 29, 1957, Dept. of Rare Books, Olin Library, Cornell University.
24 “I don’t understand”: A. J. Liebling to JS, Spring 1957, Dept. of Rare Books, Olin Library, Cornell University.
25 “The New Yorker married us”: A. J. Liebling to JS, Aug. 1, 1957, Dept. of Rare Books, Olin Library, Cornell University.
26 “kept getting too busy”: Sokolov, Wayward Reporter, p. 290.
27 “During our marriage”: Ibid., p. 299.
28 She told Blair Clark: Blair Clark interview with author, Jan. 13, 1987.
29 “You will have read”: JS to Peter Taylor, Feb. 3, 1958, Vanderbilt University Library.
30 “On a winter night”: JS notes, Samothrace folder, JS Collection, U. of Co.
31 “My dreams are” to “work of non-fiction”: Ibid.
32 “plain, thrifty”: Ibid.
33 “Why shouldn’t the island” to “was my husband”: Ibid.
34 “As an old student”: Karl Lehmann to JS, Samothrace folder, JS Collection, U. of Co.
35 “felt now that I”: JS notes, Samothrace folder, JS Collection, U. of Co.