by Ann Hulbert
36 “I was at the castle gates” to “I had never heard”: Ibid.
37 “The trip was”: JS to James Oliver Brown, Sept. 22, 1959, James Oliver Brown Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
38 “My weekend in the bosom”: JS to Nancy Flagg Gibney, n.d., courtesy of Eleanor Gibney and Charlotte Margolis Goodman.
39 “Really, when I come back”: JS to James Oliver Brown, James Oliver Brown Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
40 called the Griffin: Roberts, Jean Stafford, p. 339.
41 “It’s been so long”: JS to Peter Taylor, May 2, 1961, Vanderbilt University Library.
42 “for a number of reasons”: JS to Albert Erskine, May 31, 1962, Random House Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
43 Later that spring: Roberts, Jean Stafford, p. 344.
44 “Robert [Giroux] is”: James Oliver Brown to JS, June 27, 1962, James Oliver Brown Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
45 “from the spectacle”: JS, “The Tea Time of Stouthearted Ladies,” Collected Stories, p. 227.
46 “For the first time”: Sokolov, Wayward Reporter, p. 319.
47 “I can show you”: A. J. Liebling to JS, May 25, 1963, Dept. of Rare Books, Olin Library, Cornell University.
48 He had in mind a “Wayward Press” column: Sokolov, Wayward Reporter, p. 319.
49 “Jean, I am now”: John Stafford to JS, Dec. 26, 1963, JS Collection, U. of Co.
50 “Please forgive me”: John Stafford to JS, n.d. JS Collection, U. of Co.
51 “You and I might as well”: JS to Ann Honeycutt, n.d., JS Collection, U. of Co.
52 JS’s symptoms: Dr. Thomas Roberts’s files; and Dr. Thomas Roberts to JS, June 1, 1964, courtesy of Dr. Thomas Roberts.
53 “I’m so very glad”: James Oliver Brown to JS, Jan. 7, 1964, James Oliver Brown Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
54 “like a bear”: JS to James Robert Hightower, Dec. 14, 1964, JS Collection, U. of Co.
55 “It was interesting”: Ibid.
56 “we learn”: Robert Lowell, “Jean Stafford, a Letter,” in Day by Day, p. 29.
57 “In the spring”: JS, Parliament of Women MS, JS Collection, U. of Co.
58 “My disappointment” to “distressful secret”: Ibid.
59 “I tried to recite”: Ibid.
60 “I was a sick”: JS, State of Grace MS, JS Collection, U. of Co.
61 “Within such cul de sacs”: Ibid.
62 “This is not bilocation”: Ibid.
63 “I wish” to “unfathomable mystery”: JS to Mary Lee Frichtel, Aug. 1964, JS Collection, U. of Co.
64 “There’s no possible way” to “cherish that”: JS to Robert Lowell, May 6, 1964, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
65 “Cal is at work”: JS to Peter Taylor, May 26, 1964, Vanderbilt University Library.
66 “All is well”: JS to Peter Taylor, July 6, 1964, Vanderbilt University Library.
CHAPTER 13: Long Island
1 “I’m well and restless”: JS to Robert Lowell, n.d., Houghton Library, Harvard University.
2 “I should be forced”: JS to Mary Lee Frichtel, n.d., JS Collection, U. of Co.
3 “not a word”: JS to Nancy Flagg Gibney, Aug. 1, 1965, courtesy of Eleanor Gibney and Charlotte Margolis Goodman.
4 “There’s something inimical”: Helen Dudar, “The Subject Would Not Sit Still,” New York Post, Mar. 27, 1966, p. 27.
5 “for a magazine”: JS to Allen Tate, n.d., Princeton University Library.
6 “Jean Stafford is surely”: Gene Baro, “Breaking Out of Isolation,” The New York Times Book Review, Oct. 11, 1964, p. 4.
7 “While autobiography”: JS, “Truth in Fiction,” Library Journal 91 (Oct. 1, 1966), p. 4560.
8 “Let me change”: Ibid., p. 4564.
9 “What I wanted”: Ibid.
10 “It seemed to me”: Ibid., p. 4565.
11 “I was tired and headachy”: JS, A Mother in History (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966), p. 30.
12 “I’ll write a book”: Ibid., p. 12.
13 “Now maybe Lee Harvey Oswald”: Ibid.
14 “Perhaps Miss Stafford”: Martha Gelhorn, “American Mom,” Books and Bookmen 12 (Oct. 1966), p. 59.
15 “I had come to Texas”: JS, A Mother in History, pp. 4–5.
16 “in a winter mope” to “to live this completely alone”: JS to Peter Taylor, Jan. 20, 1966, Vanderbilt University Library.
17 “I wear pants”: Whitman, “Jean Stafford and Her Secretary ‘Harvey’ Reigning in the Hamptons,” p. 78.
18 “a Westerner” to “keep my company”: JS, “East Hampton from the Catbird Seat,” The New York Times, Dec. 26, 1971, p. 1.
19 “I can be a grasshopper”: Ibid., p. 13.
20 “I’m a compulsive housekeeper” to “staring-into-space depressions”: Fern Marja Eckman, “Adding a Pulitzer to the Collection,” New York Post, May 9, 1970.
21 “I give presents”: JS, “East Hampton from the Catbird Seat,” p. 13.
22 “the cultivation” to “thinness”: Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady (New York: Penguin Books, 1963), p. xvii.
23 “I know enough” to “in her garments”: Ibid., p. 93.
24 “sufficiently outré”: JS to Peter Taylor, June 8, 1974, Vanderbilt University Library.
25 “would undergo” to “saints on high”: Ann Honeycutt to Henrietta Stackpole, in James Oliver Brown Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
26 “this so-called 20th Century”: Wilfrid Sheed, “Miss Jean Stafford,” p. 94.
27 “Things grow grimmer”: JS to James Oliver Brown, Jan. 1967, James Oliver Brown Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
28 “There is a markedly passive” to “severity of her depression”: Dr. Jacques M. Quen to Dr. Thomas Roberts, Mar. 8, 1967, Dr. Thomas Roberts’s files, courtesy of Dr. Thomas Roberts.
29 “intense, beautiful”: “The Second Chance,” Time 89, no. 22 (June 2, 1967), p. 72.
30 “I was, to tell the truth”: JS to Peter Taylor, n.d., Vanderbilt University Library.
31 “It has been a most”: JS to James Oliver Brown, Sept. 7, 1967, James Oliver Brown Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
32 “I am so rustic”: JS to Nancy Flagg Gibney, Jan. 3, 1967, courtesy of Eleanor Gibney and Charlotte Margolis Goodman.
33 Edward Dahlberg, who, though not: The Edward Dahlberg Reader, ed. Paul Carroll (New York: New Directions, 1967).
34 “I have nothing”: JS, “Intimations of Hope,” McCall’s 99 (Dec. 1971), p. 118.
35 “I am out of my element”: JS to Peter Taylor, n.d., Vanderbilt University Library.
36 “It is not entirely” to “within a form”: JS, “Love Among the Rattlesnakes,” McCall’s 97 (Mar. 1970), pp. 145–146.
37 “The direct appeal”: JS to Peter Taylor, n.d., Vanderbilt University Library.
38 “Peter Taylor and I”: JS to Frank McShane, Aug. 4, 1968, courtesy of Frank McShane.
39 “I have it in”: JS to East Hampton Star, Aug. 9, 1968.
40 “public persona achieved”: Hamilton, Robert Lowell, p. 374.
41 “It is a little hard” to “mythology of the Wuberts”: JS to Peter Taylor, Apr. 24, 1968, Vanderbilt University Library.
42 “I doubt that I will”: JS, “Why I Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” Esquire 83 (Mar. 1975), p. 132.
43 “compulsively I accept” to “made me undemocratic”: Ibid., p. 134.
44 Cora Savage: Charlotte M. Goodman suggests that in naming her protagonist, perhaps Stafford was recalling Miss Savage from the West in Richard Eberhart’s verse play, The Mad Musician, about Robert Lowell. She also points out that Lowell linked a character in The Mills of the Kavanaughs to Persephone or Core, who is abducted to Hades by Pluto. See p. 295 of Jean Stafford: The Savage Heart. Stafford’s
own work on her Samothrace MS suggests her interest in Core.
45 “Once Cora lost control”: JS, “The Philosophy Lesson,” Collected Stories, pp. 364–365.
46 “A darkness beat her”: Ibid., p. 369.
47 “her first”: “The Year of the Novel,” Time, 93, no. 1 (Jan. 3, 1969), p. 66.
48 “Everything that we desire”: The New York Times, Feb. 14, 1969, p. 56.
49 “an event in our literature”: Guy Davenport, The New York Times Book Review, Feb. 16, 1969, p. 1.
50 “And if Jean Stafford’s”: The New York Times, May 6, 1970, p. 42.
51 “I find it awfully heartening”: Al Cohn, “For Fiction: A Gentle Woman,” Newsday, May 5, 1970.
52 “For a few days”: JS to Mary Lee Frichtel, May 12, 1970, JS Collection, U. of Co.
53 “I’m now getting”: JS to Allen Tate, Mar. 18, 1970, Princeton University Library.
54 “None of them”: JS, “On Writing,” unpublished MS, JS Collection, U. of Co., quoted in Roberts, Jean Stafford, p. 372.
55 “I could wish”: JS, “the good life is indeed now,” McCall’s 97 (Jan. 1970), p. 30.
56 “For the next two weeks”: JS, Barnard Lectures, 1971, unpublished MS, JS Collection, U. of Co.
57 “man embattled” to “in a handbasket”: Ibid.
58 “The lectures almost seemed” to “such a pastoral life”: Linda Stern, “Jean Stafford on Writing, Language, Women’s Lib …,” Barnard Bulletin, Mar. 10, 1971, p. 7.
59 “I look back upon”: JS, Barnard Lectures, “Sense and Sensibility,” JS Collection, U. of Co.
60 “all for equal opportunity” to “bad public performance”: Stern, “Jean Stafford on Writing, Language, Women’s Lib …,” Barnard Bulletin, Mar. 10, 1971, p. 7.
61 “not opposed by any means”: Ibid.
62 “Who will carry on” to “sweetening the pot”: JS, “Plight of the American Language,” Saturday Review World 1 (Dec. 4, 1973), p. 18.
63 “Besides the neologisms”: Ibid., p. 14.
64 “I came here in fear”: JS, Barnard Lectures, “The Snows of Yesteryear,” 1971 unpublished MS, JS Collection, U. of Co.
65 “share-croppers” to “by the next day”: Sheed, “Miss Jean Stafford,” p. 95.
66 “She was cruelly funny”: Ibid., p. 99.
67 “Once again back”: JS to Mary Lee Frichtel, June 14, 1971, JS Collection, U. of Co.
68 “real or imagined need of money”: Peter Taylor, “A Commemorative Tribute to Jean Stafford,” p. 58.
69 “the fustian and the hollering”: JS, “Women as Chattels, Men as Chumps,” The New York Times, May 9, 1970, p. 24.
70 “She wrote numbers”: Taylor, “A Commemorative Tribute,” p. 58.
71 “The man revealed”: JS, “Wolfe Hunting,” The New York Review of Books 19 (May 9, 1968), p. 20.
72 “He’s not above”: JS, “Spirits,” The New York Review of Books 12 (Apr. 24, 1969), p. 28.
73 “Such whims”: JS, “Lioness,” The New York Review of Books 10, (Jan. 18, 1968), p. 22.
74 “Cherish but do not pamper”: JS, “Don’t Send Me Gladiolus,” Vogue 161 (Mar. 1973), p. 146.
75 “the Fenwick caper”: JS to Nancy Flagg Gibney, May 21, 1975, courtesy of Eleanor Gibney and Charlotte Margolis Goodman.
76 “Christmas has come”: JS, “Katharine Graham,” Vogue 162 (Dec. 1973), p. 221.
77 “the venting of spleen”: JS, “Somebody Out There Hates Me,” Esquire 82 (Aug. 1974), p. 156.
78 “I find that on April 28th”: JS to Con Ed, July 20, 1978, courtesy of Joseph Mitchell.
79 “Digression is integral”: JS to Shana Alexander, Mar. 1, 1970, James Oliver Brown Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
80 “I knew they would”: JS to James Oliver Brown, Mar. 28, 1972, James Oliver Brown Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
81 “Writers of books”: JS, “Christmas Books for Children,” The New Yorker 46 (Dec. 5, 1970), p. 200.
82 “Come if you like”: JS to Mary Lee Frichtel, May 1, 1972, JS Collection, U. of Co.
83 “I am so unproductive”: JS to James Oliver Brown, Jan. 16, 1975, James Oliver Brown Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
84 “Do you loathe me”: JS to Robert Lowell, Sept. 23, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin.
85 “One of the principal”: JS to Robert Lowell, Oct. 21, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin.
86 “Old though she is”: JS memo to Dr. Thomas Roberts, n.d., JS Collection, U. of Co.
87 “All of this valetudinarianism” to “I was born”: JS to James Robert Hightower, n.d., JS Collection, U. of Co.
88 “peevishness,… irascibility”: JS to Louis Auchincloss, Mar. 18, 1975, JS Collection, U. of Co.
89 “Since my speech”: JS to Mary Lee Frichtel, May 9, 1977, JS Collection, U. of Co.
90 “The last time”: Flagg, “People to Stay,” p. 76.
91 “This is the last review”: JS, “Mrs. Hemingway Remembers,” Esquire 86 (Oct. 1976), p. 30.
92 “passive hostility” to “linguistic grasp”: May 1977 report to Dr. Thomas Roberts from the County of Suffolk Department of Health Services, Sonia Keahon, speech pathologist, Dr. Thomas Roberts’s files.
93 “1940. Remember Chimes Street”: Robert Lowell to JS, postmarked Sept. 6, 1976, JS Collection, U. of Co.
94 “I think the ambition”: Robert Lowell to Frank Bidart, Sept. 4, 1976, quoted in John Thompson, “Robert Lowell: 1917–1977,” The New York Review of Books 24 (Oct. 27, 1977), p. 14.
95 “Everything’s changed”: “The Old Flame,” Robert Lowell, in Life Studies and For the Union Dead, p. 6.
96 “Men may be superior”: Robert Lowell, quoted in Grace Schulman, “Robert Lowell at the 92nd St. Y,” record notes for Robert Lowell: A Reading, Caedmon Records, 92nd St. Y Poetry Center Archives, New York.
97 “outlines for novels”: Robert Lowell, “Jean Stafford, a Letter,” Day by Day, p. 29.
98 “Tortoise and hare”: Ibid.
99 Joseph Mitchell, who had come : Joseph Mitchell interview with author, Jan. 30, 1987.
100 “I who have least reason”: JS notes on telephone conversation with Robert Lowell, Jan. 1971, courtesy of Blair Clark.
101 In a reminiscence: Dorothea Straus, “Jean Stafford,” Shenandoah 30, no. 3 (1979), pp. 85–91.
102 During those same last weeks: Joseph Mitchell interview with author, Jan. 30, 1987.
103 “He saw nothing” to “why I married him”: JS notes on The Mills of the Kavanaughs, courtesy of Joseph Mitchell.
104 “ … Here bubbles filled”: Robert Lowell, “The Mills of the Kavanaughs,” Lord Weary’s Castle and The Mills of the Kavanaughs, p. 85.
105 “For the time being”: JS, Boston Adventure, p. 525.
PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Barnard Bulletin: Excerpt from an interview with Jean Stafford (Barnard Bulletin, 1971). Reprinted by permission.
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.: Excerpt from The Dream Songs by John Berryman, copyright © 1969 by John Berryman; excerpt from Day by Day by Robert Lowell, copyright © 1975, 1976, 1977 by Robert Lowell; excerpt from For the Union Dead by Robert Lowell, copyright © 1956, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964 by Robert Lowell; excerpt from Life Studies by Robert Lowell, copyright © 1956, 1959 by Robert Lowell; excerpts from The Collected Stories by Jean Stafford, copyright 1944, 1945, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954, © 1955, 1956, 1964, 1968, 1969 by Jean Stafford; excerpts from The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford, copyright 1947, 1972 by Jean Stafford; excerpts from The Catherine Wheel by Jean Stafford, copyright 1952 by Jean Stafford, copyright renewed 1980 by Josephine Monsell; excerpts from Bad Characters by Jean Stafford, copyright © 1964 by Jean Stafford; excerpt from The Collected Stories by Peter Taylor,
copyright 1969 by Peter Taylor. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.: Excerpts from Boston Adventure by Jean Stafford, copyright 1944 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., copyright renewed 1972 by Jean Stafford; excerpt from “The Mills of the Kavanaughs” in The Mills of the Kavanaughs by Robert Lowell, copyright 1951 by Robert Lowell, copyright renewed 1979 by Harriet W. Lowell. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. and Faber & Faber Ltd.: Excerpts from “Tradition and the Individual Talent” in Selected Essays by T. S. Eliot, copyright 1950 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., copyright renewed 1978 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Rights outside the U.S. administered by Faber & Faber Ltd., London. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.
Harper’s Bazaar: Excerpt from “Truth and the Novelist” by Jean Stafford. Reprinted by permission of Harper’s Bazaar/Hearst Corporation, 1951.
The Kenyon Review: Excerpt from R. P. Blackmur’s review of Robert Lowell’s Land of Unlikeness. First published in The Kenyon Review, Vol. 7, 1945. Copyright 1945 by Kenyon College. Reprinted by permission of The Kenyon Review.
The Kenyon Review and Russell & Volkening, Inc.: Excerpt from “The Psychological Novel” by Jean Stafford. First published in The Kenyon Review, Spring, 1948, #10. Copyright 1948 by Kenyon College. Reprinted by permission of The Kenyon Review and Russell & Volkening, Inc. as agents for the Estate of Jean Stafford.
Mademoiselle magazine and Russell & Volkening, Inc.: Excerpt from “It’s Good to Be Back” by Jean Stafford (Mademoiselle, July, 1952). Copyright 1952 (copyright renewed 1980) by The Conde Nast Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Mademoiselle and Russell & Volkening, Inc. as agents for the Estate of Jean Stafford.
McCall’s: Excerpts from “Love Among the Rattlesnakes” by Jean Stafford (McCall’s, March, 1970) and “Intimations of Hope” by Jean Stafford (McCall’s, December, 1971). Copyright © 1970, 1971 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission of McCall’s magazine.
Omni International Ltd. and Russell & Volkening, Inc.: Excerpt from “The Plight of the American Language” by Jean Stafford (Saturday Review World, December 4, 1973). Reprinted by permission of Omni International Ltd. and Russell & Volkening, Inc. as agents for the Estate of Jean Stafford.