1971
JANUARY—Lowell celebrates Harriet’s fourteenth birthday on January 4 and leaves the same day, arriving in London on the morning of January 5. Hardwick publishes a review of Edward Bond’s play Saved in Vogue and the essay “Militant Nudes” in The New York Review of Books. Lowell teaches again at Essex. Hardwick resumes teaching at Barnard College. FEBRUARY—Hardwick serves on the jury of the PEN Translation Prize awarded to Nadezhda Mandelstam’s Hope Against Hope. Publishes a review of a play about the Manson murders and a meditation on the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Parsifal in Vogue. She begins to write about Ibsen for The New York Review of Books. MARCH—Lowell turns fifty-four. Lowell tells Hardwick that he and Blackwood are expecting a baby. Lowell travels to Norway. Hardwick and Harriet travel to South Carolina. Genocide in East Pakistan begins on March 26. Lieutentant William L. Calley, Jr., is convicted by court martial of murder for his role in the 1968 My Lai massacre on March 29. APRIL—Lowell gives up his studio in Pont Street and moves in with Blackwood at Redcliffe Square. MAY—Lowell visits the London Dolphinarium and buys stone dolphins, his behavior increasingly hypomanic, but manages to avert an episode. JUNE—Hardwick publishes “The Ties Women Cannot Shake and Have” in Vogue. She and Harriet go to Castine. JULY–AUGUST—Hardwick drives Harriet back to New York, and Harriet leaves for camp in Mexico on July 5. Hardwick returns to Maine. Lowell travels with Jonathan Raban to the Orkney Islands, home of his Traill and Spence ancestors. Moves with Blackwood and her daughters (Natalya, aged eleven; Evgenia, aged eight; and Ivana, aged five) to Blackwood’s house Milgate Park, Bearsted, in Kent. Blackwood turns forty. Hardwick turns fifty-five. Lowell publishes “Excerpt from The Dolphin” (fourteen poems) and an interview in the Review. Hardwick writes about Sylvia Plath in The New York Review of Books. SEPTEMBER—Harriet begins the ninth grade. Hardwick teaches at Barnard, publishes an article about Edith Wharton in Vogue. Robert Sheridan Lowell born on September 27. OCTOBER—Lowell teaches at Essex. Hardwick publishes “In Maine” in the Review. NOVEMBER—Hardwick writes about Carson McCullers and Flannery O’Connor for Vogue. Gives the Christian Gauss Seminar at Princeton University. DECEMBER—Mary McCarthy and James West visit Lowell, Blackwood, and family for Christmas.
1972
JANUARY—Frank Bidart comes to England at Lowell’s invitation to work with him on assembling History, For Lizzie and Harriet, and The Dolphin. Harriet turns fifteen. Death of John Berryman on January 7. British coal miners begin strike on January 9. Lowell teaches at Essex. Hardwick teaches at Barnard. British soldiers kill fourteen unarmed protesters on “Bloody Sunday,” January 30, in Derry, Northern Ireland. JANUARY/FEBRUARY—Ivana, six years old, accidentally turns over an electric kettle of boiling water on herself; her life is saved by the burns unit at Queen Victoria Hospital in West Sussex. On the night of the burn, Lowell “found a small towel and spread it out on the cold hospital corridor floor outside my door,” Ivana recalls, so that Blackwood and he could sleep near her.2 MARCH—Lowell turns fifty-five. Harriet visits Lowell and Blackwood in England for the first time. Time publishes a special issue on “The American Woman” to which Hardwick contributed, including an unsigned piece on “The New Woman, 1972.” APRIL–MAY—Hardwick publishes “Scene from an Autobiography” in the spring issue of the journal Prose, “Working Girls: The Brontës” in The New York Review of Books, and a review of Simone de Beauvoir in The New York Times Book Review. JUNE—Five men are arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate building in Washington, D.C. JULY—Hardwick publishes “Is the ‘Equal’ Woman More Vulnerable?” in Vogue. Goes to Connecticut for the summer. Bidart returns to England to work with Lowell on revisions to the manuscripts of The Dolphin, History, and For Lizzie and Harriet. Blackwood turns forty-one. Hardwick turns fifty-six. AUGUST—Hardwick begins publishing a six-part series of articles on “One Woman’s Vote” in Vogue, with updates through to the November election. SEPTEMBER—Harriet begins the tenth grade. Hardwick teaches at Barnard. Sheridan turns one. OCTOBER—Lowell and Blackwood travel to New York, then to the Dominican Republic where Lowell divorces Hardwick and Blackwood divorces Israel Citkowitz; later the same day they marry each other. NOVEMBER—Death of Ezra Pound on November 1. Richard Nixon reelected; Hardwick writes about the election in The New York Review of Books. NOVEMBER–DECEMBER—Hardwick writes about Dorothy Wordsworth and Jane Carlyle in The New York Review of Books and an article on “Suicide and Women” in Mademoiselle.
1973
JANUARY–FEBRUARY—Harriet turns sixteen. Hardwick teaches at Barnard, writes about Virginia Woolf in The New York Review of Books. Lowell teaches at Essex. MARCH—Lowell turns fifty-six. Harriet visits England. MAY—Watergate hearings begin on May 17. MAY–JUNE—Hardwick publishes a review of Doris Lessing in The New York Times Book Review. Travels to Castine to empty the house on School Street for sale. Publishes “Seduction and Betrayal” essay in two parts in The New York Review of Books. JULY—Lowell publishes History, For Lizzie and Harriet, and The Dolphin. Harriet visits England. Blackwood turns forty-two. Hardwick turns fifty-seven. AUGUST—Hardwick goes to the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Italy and writes fiction. SEPTEMBER—Lowell moves with Blackwood and family to Brookline, Massachusetts, to teach at Harvard. Harriet begins the eleventh grade. Hardwick teaches at Barnard. Sheridan turns two. Hardwick lectures at Smith College. OCTOBER—Hardwick publishes “Writing a Novel” in The New York Review of Books. Lowell begins writing new poems. NOVEMBER—Lowell gives reading at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. Harriet visits Lowell and Blackwood in Massachusetts. Blackwood publishes For All That I Found There. DECEMBER—Hardwick publishes “When to Cast Out, Give Up, Let Go” in Mademoiselle. Lowell visits New York. Lowell, Blackwood, and the small children return to Milgate at the end of Harvard’s fall term. Death of Philip Rahv; Hardwick delivers a eulogy at his funeral on December 24.
1974
JANUARY—Harriet turns seventeen. Hardwick teaches at Barnard. She publishes “Philip Rahv (1908-1973)” in The New York Review of Books; and she serves on the jury that unanimously recommends Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, which the Pulitzer board will reject in May when the prizes are announced. MARCH—Lowell turns fifty-seven. Harriet visits England. APRIL—Lowell goes on a reading tour of the South. Wins the Copernicus Award. Lowell returns to England. MAY—Israel Citkowitz dies on May 4. Hardwick publishes Seduction and Betrayal. Lowell wins Pulitzer Prize in poetry on May 7 for The Dolphin, recommended by a divided jury consisting of William Alfred, Anthony Hecht, and Gwendolyn Brooks. JUNE–JULY—Hardwick summers in Maine. She publishes “Sad Brazil” in The New York Review of Books. Death of John Crowe Ransom on July 3. Blackwood turns forty-three. Hardwick turns fifty-eight. AUGUST—Richard Nixon resigns on August 9. SEPTEMBER—Harriet begins the twelfth grade. Hardwick teaches at Barnard. Busing to desegregate Boston schools begins. Sheridan turns three. OCTOBER/NOVEMBER—Hardwick travels to Paris. She publishes an essay about Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure in The New York Review of Books. DECEMBER—Hardwick writes about Peter Brook’s production of Timon of Athens at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in The New York Review of Books.
1975
JANUARY—Harriet turns eighteen. Hardwick teaches at Barnard. FEBRUARY—Lowell and Blackwood move back to Brookline, Massachusetts, and Lowell teaches at Harvard for the spring term. MARCH—Lowell turns fifty-eight. APRIL—Fear of an impending manic episode causes Lowell to take too much lithium. He checks into Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City for observation and to reduce lithium toxicity. Fall of Saigon on April 30. MAY—Lowell publishes three poems in The New York Review of Books. JUNE—Harriet graduates from the Dalton School. Hardwick summers in Maine. Lowell and Hardwick contribute to a symposium about “The Meaning of Vietnam” in The New York Review of Books. JULY–AUGUST—Hardwick publishes “Thomas Mann at 100” in The New York Times Book Review. Blackwood turns forty-four. Hardwick turns fift
y-nine. Lowell spends the summer at Milgate, travels to Ireland for a festival organized by Seamus Heaney. SEPTEMBER—Harriet attends Barnard. Hardwick teaches at Smith. Sheridan turns four. Lowell prepares Selected Poems for publication and begins to work on a collection of his prose. Hardwick publishes “Reflections on Simone Weil” in Signs. NOVEMBER—Lowell suffers an acute manic episode and is hospitalized at the Priory in Roehampton. Discharges himself. DECEMBER—Lowell is hospitalized again at Greenways Nursing Home in London. Death of Hannah Arendt on December 4.
1976
JANUARY—Harriet turns nineteen, and Lowell is released from Greenways on 4 January. From January 4–20, Lowell receives twenty-four-hour nursing care at home in Redcliffe Square, London. In late January he is committed to St. Andrew’s Hospital in Northampton. Hardwick teaches at Barnard. FEBRUARY—Lowell returns to Milgate in mid-February, writes more poems for Day by Day. MARCH—Lowell turns fifty-nine. Hardwick writes about Billie Holiday in The New York Review of Books. Lowell publishes Selected Poems. APRIL—Lowell and Blackwood travel to New York City for American Bicentennial production of The Old Glory. MAY—Lowell writes about Hannah Arendt in The New York Review of Books. Blackwood publishes The Stepdaughter. JUNE–JULY—Lowell attends the Aldeburgh Festival to hear Benjamin Britten’s setting of Phaedra. Lowell and Blackwood summer at Milgate. Hardwick summers in Maine, writes about Jimmy Carter in The New York Review of Books and the election in Vogue. Blackwood turns forty-five. Hardwick turns sixty. AUGUST—Hardwick travels to London for a PEN International conference. SEPTEMBER—Hardwick writes about Maine in Vogue. Harriet returns to Barnard, where Hardwick also teaches. Lowell and Blackwood prepare to spend the fall semester at Harvard. Lowell suffers a manic episode; he is hospitalized at Greenways Nursing Home on 15 September. Blackwood leaves for Cambridge, Massachusetts, with Sheridan and Ivana. Sheridan turns five. OCTOBER—Lowell is released on October 27 and follows Blackwood to Cambridge, staying at the house on Sacramento Street that they have rented. NOVEMBER—Lowell removes himself to Frank Bidart’s apartment on 63 Sparks Street. Jimmy Carter elected president. Hardwick publishes “The Sense of the Present” in American fiction in The New York Review of Books. DECEMBER—Blackwood returns to Britain on December 3 with Sheridan and Ivana. Hardwick visits Lowell in Cambridge. Lowell returns to Britain. Lowell, Blackwood, and the small children spend Christmas in Scotland.
1977
JANUARY–FEBRUARY—Harriet turns twenty. Hardwick teaches at Barnard; publishes “A Woman of Transcendent Intellect Who Assumed the Sufferings of Humanity,” a review of Simone Weil’s biography, in The New York Times Book Review. Lowell moves back to Cambridge, Massachusetts; suffers congestive heart failure. He is hospitalized for nine days in Phillips House at Massachusetts General Hospital on February 1. Teaches at Harvard. Hardwick participates in “An Exchange on Fiction” in a letter to the editors of The New York Review of Books. She serves as Advisory Editor to and writes introductions for the eighteen-volume series “Rediscovered Fiction by American Women: A Personal Selection.” MARCH—Lowell celebrates his sixtieth birthday with Hardwick, Harriet, and Blair and Joanna Clark. Blackwood sells Milgate and moves to Castletown House, Ireland. APRIL—Lowell visits Ireland at Easter, and he and Blackwood agree to separate, at Blackwood’s instigation. MAY—At the end of the Harvard term, Lowell moves back in with Hardwick at 15 West Sixty-Seventh Street. Receives the National Medal for Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Blackwood visits Lowell in New York to attend the ceremony. JUNE–JULY—Lowell publishes a poem “For John Berryman” in The New York Review of Books. Hardwick and Lowell travel to Russia, visiting Moscow and Pasternak’s grave in Peredelkino among other places; on their return they stop in Boston for Lowell to undergo heart tests. They spend the summer in Maine. Lowell works on his prose, and Hardwick works on fiction that will become Sleepless Nights. Lowell publishes the poem “Executions” in The New York Review of Books on July 14. Blackwood turns forty-six. Hardwick turns sixty-one. AUGUST—Lowell publishes Day by Day and Selected Poems (revised edition). SEPTEMBER—Lowell leaves for Ireland on September 1 to visit Blackwood, Sheridan, and his stepdaughters. Hardwick returns to New York, begins to teach at Barnard and the University of Connecticut. Harriet begins her junior year at Barnard. Seamus Heaney recalls, of a Dublin visit from Lowell and Blackwood, “a quick coded exchange between us in the hallway before I drove them home, when Marie [Heaney] and Caroline were getting their coats. ‘Will I be seeing you soon again?’ I asked and he replied, with that high neigh that sometimes came into his voice, and one of his lightning-flicker looks over the glasses, ‘I don’t think so.’”3 On the morning of September 12, Lowell takes a plane from Ireland to New York. Harriet visits Hardwick in her Barnard office to ask “what was going on”4 with her parents and to find out about Lowell’s health. Hardwick tells Harriet that Lowell is “coming home later that day.” She says that Lowell’s heart disease and the recent recurrence of manic cycles are causes of concern. She is welcoming him back because “this is his house, and everything I have—you—is his, everything.” She also says that she feels he is “worthy of care.” Hardwick teaches her “Experiments in Writing” class from 2:10–4:00, then goes home to await Lowell’s return. Harriet joins protests at Barnard and Columbia against the death of Stephen Biko, who had just been assassinated. Lowell has a heart attack in the taxi bringing him home from Kennedy Airport, and is pronounced dead at Roosevelt Hospital at six o’clock. Lowell’s funeral is held at the Church of the Advent in Boston on 16 September. He is buried in the family graveyard in Dunbarton, New Hampshire. Blackwood stays with Hardwick. Sheridan turns six.
PART I
1970
1. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
Tuesday, April 7, 1970
Darling: Safely home, but quite tired and still not back on a schedule Americana, having waked up at 4:A.M.… However, the trip was heaven, every moment full of pleasure and interest and relief and food and good companionship, love, art, walk.… I never had a better time and thank you for it and miss you already. The apartment was beautiful and serene, clean and bright and filled with stupid mail and worthless books and bills and some good books, some communications necessary if not exhilarating. I will send off tomorrow a large envelope airmail to Oxford, all of it needing answers I fear. Also Nicole1 found some old travelers checks which I will send, hoping you will use these first since they may have been around for quite some time.
The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979 Page 4