Mr. Frost was slapping the flyswatter lightly against his knee. “If it becomes too damp, my dear, please tell me—we’ll find another place for your—for you.”
With mock primness the poet smiled. Wanting me to understand how he’d refrained from saying for your tender little bottom.
Embarrassed, I was about to turn on my tape recorder and ask my first question, when, as if he’d only now thought of it, Mr. Frost said,
“And who are the ‘Fifes,’ my dear?”
My heart sank in dismay. I’d never thought of my family and relatives as the Fifes—it was rare that I gave them much thought at all.
The poet’s faded-icy-blue gaze seemed to be pressing against my chest. I could not breathe easily. I managed to stammer a weak reply:
“My family and my father’s relatives live in Maine, mostly in Bangor.”
“Bangor! Not a hospitable place for the cultivation of poetry, I think.” Mr. Frost smiled at me, tapping the flyswatter lightly on his knee. “And your mother’s relatives, Miss Fife?”
“She—they—there were ancestors who’d lived in Salem, Massachusetts . . .”
Gleefully Mr. Frost said, “Ah, there’s a history, my dear! Were your mother’s Salem ancestors witch-hunters, or witches?”
“I—I don’t think so, Mr. Frost . . .”
“If you don’t know with certainty, it’s likely that your ancestors were witches. The witch-hunters were the ruling class of the Puritan settlements, and no one is ashamed of being descended from any ruling class.”
None of this made sense to me, entirely. Mr. Frost chuckled at my look of incomprehension. It would seem to have been an old, much-loved ploy of the poet’s—confounding an interviewer with questions of his own.
He’d folded his large hands over his belly, that strained the white cotton shirt above his belt. I had a glimpse of the elderly poet’s exposed navel, a spiraling little vortex of hairs around a miniature knob of flesh quaint as a mummified snail. Like a New England Buddha the poet reclined, a figure of complacent (male) wisdom.
Even as I asked Mr. Frost if we might begin our interview, he said, ignoring me, slapping the flyswatter against the palm of a hand, “‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’—the Americans understand this admonition, deep in their killer-souls. All that remains for our fellow citizens is to locate the ‘witch’ among us—for that, like the most vicious hunting dogs they require guidance.” Mr. Frost smiled with a strange sort of satisfaction. “‘I have a lover’s quarrel with the world’—but I would not really like it, if the ‘world’ had any sort of quarrel with me.”
In the way of a bull who is both rambling and aggressive, prone to whimsical turns the observer can’t predict, Mr. Frost reminisced at length on the subject of witch-hunting and witches and the “witchery” of the poet, for poetry must always be “a kind of code”; by this time I’d switched the tape recorder on, and had begun to take shorthand in my notebook as well, for I did not want to lose a single, precious syllable of Mr. Frost’s. I thought of Frost’s bizarre poem “The Witch of Coös”—the bones of a long-ago murder victim hiking up the cellar steps of a remote old farmhouse in New Hampshire, nailed behind the headboard of a marital bed in an attic—like an ancient curse stirring to life. If the poet had written only this singular poem—along with one or two other poems spoken by deranged New England narrators—the reputation of Robert Frost would be that of a master of gothic.
“Do you believe in witches, Mr. Frost?”
It was the bold desperation of the timid, such an awkward query, made when Mr. Frost paused for breath; and met with a disdainful frown such as an impertinent child might receive from an elder. With a sneering smile Mr. Frost said, “Poetry isn’t in the business of believing, Miss Fife. Believing is a crudeness that is the prerogative of other, lesser beings.”
These words were a sort of rebuff to my naïveté but I was eager to transcribe the startling aphorism, which was entirely new to me. If Robert Frost had uttered it previously, or committed it to writing, I was unaware of it.
Poetry . . . not in the business of believing.
Believing . . . a crudeness the prerogative of other, lesser beings.
(Very different from the “homespun” Frost so beloved by people like my grandmother!)
As Mr. Frost spoke, his faded-icy-blue eyes darted shrewdly about, and with sudden alacrity he wielded the flyswatter—crushing a large fly that had come to rest on a porch post nearby. The black, broken body fell into the grass.
“If only the ignorant ‘poetry-haters’ among us could be dealt with so readily!”—Mr. Frost chuckled.
I was about to ask Mr. Frost if he felt that there were “poetry-haters” in the world, and who these individuals might be; I’d prepared to ask him about Shelley’s bold remark that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, but had not a chance to speak for Mr. Frost then reverted, with the air of an elder teasing a captive child, to the previous subject of the Fifes—as if he were suspicious of my identity, or pretending to be so. Asking me when the Fifes had emigrated to the United States, and from where, so that I told him that, so far as I knew, the Fifes had come to America in the 1880s, from somewhere in Scotland.
Mr. Frost seemed just slightly disappointed. “Ah well—so ‘your Fifes’ are not guilty of persecuting witches, at least not in the New World! And ‘your Fifes’ obviously were not slave-owners, nor did they profit from the robust slave trade of pre–Civil War United States—as so many did, whose descendants are canny enough to change the subject when it comes up.”
“Yes, sir. I mean—no. They did not.”
“And where in Scotland did they come from, Miss Fife?”
My tongue felt clumsy in my mouth. For my mouth was very dry.
The poet’s perusal of me, the fixedness of his gaze, was making me feel very self-conscious; for it seemed to me that this was the way he’d been looking at the flies that buzzed obliviously about beyond his reach to swat. “I think—Perth, Inverness . . .”
Sharply Mr. Frost said, “Indeed! But not Leith?”
I had not dared claim this port of Edinburgh, for I knew that Frost’s mother had been born there.
“No, sir.”
“But have you visited Scotland, Miss Fife? Are you any sort of ‘Scots lass’?” The poet’s mouth twisted in a smiling sneer with the words Scots lass.
I told Mr. Frost that I was no sort of “Scots lass,” I was afraid, and that there wasn’t money for that sort of lavish travel in my family.
“Ah, a rebuke! Let me assure you, dear, there wasn’t money for anything like that in the Frost family, either. We were all—very—as my poems indicate—very poor, and very frugal.” But Mr. Frost was laughing kindly, seeing the abashed expression in my face. “D’you like the verse of Robbie Burns? ‘O my Luve’s like a red, red rose That’s newly sprung in June; O my Luve’s like the melodie That’s sweetly play’d in tune.’” Mr. Frost recited the lines with exaggerated rhythm, sneering. “Gives doggerel a bad name, eh? All dogs might sue.”
Feebly I laughed at this joke. If it was a joke.
A bully is one who forces you to laugh at his jokes, even if they are not jokes. That is how you know he is a bully.
A knitted-look came into the poet’s forehead. The mocking eyes relented. “Though I will have to concede, Burns has written some decent verse, or rather—lines. ‘Ev’n you on murd’ring errands toil’d, Lone from your savage homes exil’d . . .’ The man felt strongly, which is the beginning of poetry.”
(A ripple of panic came over me: at this rate we would never get to the poet’s life, still less to the substance of the interview which was the poetry of Robert Frost. This, the man seemed to be hiding behind his back as one might tease a child with a treat the child knows is behind the back, and out of reach.)
Daringly I decided to counter with a question of my own:
“And where are your people from, Mr. Frost?”
But this was a blunder, for Mr.
Frost did not like such contrary motions. Coldly he said: “That sort of elementary ‘biographical information’ you should already know, Miss Fife. In fact, you should have memorized it. I hope you’ve done some homework in your subject and don’t expect the poor subject to provide information that is publicly available.”
But for a moment I could not speak. I thought He will send me away. He will laugh at me, and send me away.
“Oh, Mr. Frost, I’m sorry—yes, I do know that you were born in San Francisco, and not in New England—as most people think. And your background isn’t rural—you lived in San Francisco until you were eleven, your father was a newspaperman—”
Irritably Mr. Frost said, “That is but literally true. In fact I have a considerable ‘rural background’—I was brought back east by my mother after my father’s untimely death and soon—soon I was farming—my paternal grandfather’s farm in Derry, New Hampshire. It was clear from the start that ‘Rob Frost’ was a natural man of the soil . . . a New Englander by nature if not actual birth.”
Shutting his eyes, leaning back to make the swing creak, Mr. Frost began to recite poems from A Boy’s Will and North of Boston, with perfect recall. These were: “Mending Wall,” “The Wood-Pile,” “After Apple-Picking” . . .
I am overtired of the great harvest I myself desired.
The poet spoke in a soft, wondering, lyric voice. There was great beauty in this voice. The New England drawl with its spiteful humor had quite vanished. Now, it was possible to discern the young Robert Frost in the flaccid and creased face—the young poet who’d resembled William Butler Yeats and Rupert Brooke in his dreamy male beauty.
The poet ceased abruptly as if he’d only just realized what this final line from “After Apple Picking” meant.
Quickly I asked, “What does that line mean, Mr. Frost? ‘I am overtired . . .’”
“A poem’s ‘meaning’ resides in what it says, Miss Fife.”
The poet cast a look in my direction that, had it been a swat from the dingy red flyswatter, would have struck me flat in the face. As it was, I couldn’t help recoiling.
Frost’s second book, North of Boston, contained another of his early masterpieces, “Home Burial.” This poem, the poet never read to audiences. I asked him if the “man” and the “woman” in the poem were himself and his wife Elinor at the time of their first son’s death, in 1899, at the age of three; a death that might have been prevented except for the mother’s Christian Science beliefs. I quoted the powerful line, of the woman: “I won’t have grief so/If I can change it.”
Mr. Frost stared at me for a long moment, with something like hatred. His eyes were narrowed, his face contorted in stubbornness. There was no mistaking the man for the kindly New England bard. But he did not answer my question. As if this were an issue that had to be set right he reverted to his previous subject: “Only a poet who knew rural life intimately could have written any of my ‘country’ poems. There is no other poetry quite like them, in American poetry. In England, perhaps the poetry of John Clare, and Wordsworth—but these are very different, obviously.”
“Yes, sir. Very different.”
“You see that, do you? Miss Fife?”
“Yes, sir. I think so . . .”
Mr. Frost tossed the flyswatter onto the table and was rubbing his large hands. I thought how curious, the backs of his hands were creased and elderly, but the palms smooth. A sly light came into the faded eyes. “I am wondering, Miss Fife—”
“Please call me ‘Evangeline,’ sir.”
“But you must not call me ‘Rob,’ you know. That would not be right.”
“Mr. Frost, yes. I would not presume.”
“I have been wondering, Evangeline—are you comfortable in that chair?”
I was not so comfortable. But quickly I smiled yes.
“You’ve not become just slightly—damp?”
My bottom was in fact damp, for the cushion was damp and had eked through the skirt of my dress, my silk slip, and my cotton panties. But I did not care to betray my discomfort.
“Your bottom, dear? Your delightful little bottom? Your white cotton panties—are they damp?”
I hesitated, stunned. I had no idea how to respond to the poet’s teasing query.
So shocked! My notebook nearly slipped from my fingers.
Seeing that he’d so discomfited his interviewer, Mr. Frost laughed heartily. He apologized, though not very sincerely: “I’m very sorry, my dear. My late wife chastised me for my ‘coarse barnyard’ humor. She was very sensitive—of course. But there are females drawn to such humor, I believe.” Mr. Frost paused, gazing at me. The faded-blue eyes moved along my (bare) slender legs another time to my (bare) slender ankles, lifted again to my legs, my (imagined) thighs inside the flaring skirt, and the cloth-covered belt cinching my small waist so tight, a man might fantasize closing his large hands about it.
“You might want to change your panties, Evangeline. And take another seat here on the porch, one without a damp cushion.” Again Mr. Frost patted the swing seat close beside him, and again I pretended not to notice.
I knew that Mr. Frost was teasing me. Yet, I had no other recourse than to say, with a blush, that I couldn’t “change” my panties since I didn’t have another, dry pair to put on.
“Really, my dear! You came to Bread Loaf to interview the revered Mr. Frost, with but a single pair of panties.” Mr. Frost laughed heartily, seeing how embarrassed I was. “Risky, my dear. Reckless. For you must know that the notorious womanizer Untermeyer is on the premises—and the young, dashing John Ciardi.” Mr. Frost peered at me, to see how I interpreted this ambiguous remark. (Of course, I had heard of Louis Untermeyer and John Ciardi, who were both poet-friends and supporters of Robert Frost; the poet was fiercely loyal to his friends, as he was said to be fiercely loyal as an enemy.) “And you are a poet—poetess?—yourself, I believe.” Mr. Frost lay back against the porch swing at an awkward angle, as if inviting another to lie back with him; the old swing creaked faintly. His fingers were stretched over his belly as over a ribald little drum. “Or is it the lack of foresight of an innocent virgin?” The words innocent virgin were lightly stressed.
Seeing that his coarse jesting was meeting with a blank expression in his wanly blond young-woman interviewer, Mr. Frost sighed, in an exaggerated sort of disappointment, and may have rolled his eyes to an invisible audience, that reacted with near-audible laughter. With a wink he said, “Well! You must be the judge, dear girl, of the degree of dampness of your panties. No one else can make that decision, I quite agree.”
Panties! What did the great man care about panties! I’d resolved to ignore these lewd remarks, as they were unworthy of a poet of such distinction; though of course, my tape recorder was recording everything Mr. Frost said.
My notebook was opened to the first page of questions, carefully transcribed in my neat schoolgirl hand, and numbered; but before I could begin, the mischievous old man peered at me again and said, “You are a ‘good’ girl, it seems, Evangeline! I should hope so. And what blue eyes! Of the hue of the New England ‘heal-all’—has anyone ever told you?”
Did Mr. Frost expect me not to know to which of his famous poems he was alluding? Shyly I said, “Except if the heal-all is white, Mr. Frost.”
“Eh! You are quite correct, my dear.”
The oblique flirtatiousness of the virgin poetess had taken Mr. Frost somewhat by surprise.
An ideal opportunity! The poet was gazing at me as if hoping to be surprised further. And so in my low, thrilled, schoolgirl voice I recited that brilliant chilling poem that begins—“I saw a dimpled spider . . .”
Yet, if you had ears to so hear, you could detect, in the interstices of the schoolgirl breathlessness, something very far from school, or girlishness.
At the conclusion of my recitation Mr. Frost laughed and took up the flyswatter. He struck the porch railing in raucous applause. He couldn’t have been more delighted if a small child had recited his poem w
ithout the slightest idea of its meaning.
“That is my most wicked sonnet, my dear. I’m frankly surprised you would have memorized it.”
I responded that “Design” was a perfectly executed Petrarchan sonnet which I’d memorized as a schoolgirl years ago—“Before I understood it.”
“And d’you feel that you understand it now, dear Evangeline?”
You little fool, trained in poetry by spinster schoolteachers, what do you know of me?
I was reluctant to take up this challenge. In my dampened undergarments I sat with meek-lowered eyes, turning over a page of my notebook, while on the table the alarm clock continued its relentless tick, tick-tock, tick-tick-tock—that would have been distracting except for the intensity of our conversation.
In a more serious tone Mr. Frost said: “In great poetry there is always something ‘signatory’—a word, a phrase, a break in rhythm, a stanza break—that is unexpected. No ordinary versifier could come up with it. In Emily Dickinson’s work, virtually every poem contains the ‘signatory’ element. In Robert Frost’s work, it’s to be hoped that many poems do. For you see, my dear, in reciting the poem, you blundered with one word—‘wayside.’ Instead, you recalled the more commonplace ‘roadside.’”
Was this so? I tried to recall, confused. Roadside, wayside?
The poet said, more kindly than chiding, “If you can’t sense the difference between the two words, you are not sensitive to the higher calculus of poetry.”
“Mr. Frost, I’m sorry! It was a silly mistake.”
“It was not a silly mistake, but a mistake of the sort most people would naturally make, trying to recall a ‘perfect’ poem. Of course, you could not recall, my dear Evangeline, because you could not have written the poem. As you could not emulate the conditions that give rise to the poem, originally: ‘a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.’”
The poet seemed satisfied, now. Mr. Frost was the sort of bully, very familiar to girls and women, who is fond of his victim even as he is contemptuous of her; whose fondness for her may be an expression of his contempt, like his teasing. He lay back in the swing, fingers folded over the Buddha-belly.
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