The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979

by Elizabeth Hardwick

  E.

  17. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell

  [15 West 67th Street, New York, N. Y.]

  May 4, 1970

  Darling: Can you answer the enclosed?88 I suppose you could go, if you liked. We will be going by boat, H & I & Nicole & I hope Sumner! Of course there is a lot to do.

  Mary McCarthy here for a day from Japan—coming to dinner tonight.

  Elated over England! More happy by the minute!

  We’re going up to Abbot-Andover next Wednesday.

  Cal it is very sad and disturbing here. It’s a matter of fundamental indifference to human destruction—and everything follows from that. Nixon & Mitchell like to think of thousands of N. Vietnamese killed in a single day, of “sanctuaries” bombed.89 Every moral distortion seems natural, even good when you have crossed the field90 and reached the other side without revulsion. What can we hope for?

  Bill Alfred just called, they want you to name a winner of The S A Prize91 for poetry immediately. Send to Warren House92 immediately.

  I love you, miss you. Will write soon.

  E.

  18. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell

  [All Souls College, Oxford. OX1 4AL]

  May 5, 1970

  Dearest—

  What delightful letters you write! Your little jokes and Mr. Menzies (whatever the papers man is). I’ve seen the Carolyn McCullough movie,93 and found it surprisingly good, tho I can follow myself always in print or picture with a certain suspension of disbelief and even of boredom. Everyone feels a strange feminine person, at first unseen and merely a Southern voice, crowns the show, or is the darling of the show. Mary is very good and I think about half the movie is that long wine dinner at Castine. It’s like life, only I’m allowed to talk enormously more./

  I have accepted Essex and will receive confirmation in a day or so from the Vice-provost, or what ever the queer anomalous title of the head of the university is.94 I get 4000 pounds about 8000 dollars, but much/ more in buying power. A minimum this, but it will be more and go up. Appointment for two years, but I can make it one, or permanent—but then the taxes would be much higher. Apparently for two years it does not/ have to be taxed (?)

  Not [much] news since calling. I gave my first student reading last night, of me and others. In a little while I have dinner with Sir Maurice Bowra, very affectionate, loud and deaf. The Berlins have him for a guest each summer, and have two plans: to persuade him that the Hunta, Junta, is becoming liberal so he can go back to Greece95 or marry him to Sonia96 (my idea)[.] But he is very nice and distinguished. People shower me with offprints, nevertheless I’ve found time to walk under Arnold’s Cumner Hills.97 Everyone is keeping an ear open for a house or flat for us, if possible on one of the parks.

  All love,

  Cal

  Dear Harriet, this is me at the end of a dinner. Hope your eyes are forever O.K. Dad (DAD)/

  19. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell

  [15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]

  Friday, May 8, 1970

  Darling: It has been a week like no (none?)/ other here. I am sorry you missed it because of the intensity, the peculiarities, the national shifts which one could almost feel like a violent rain storm, letting up, then crashing down again. Tears, radio on all night, new alliances, suddenness of reversals. They did not get by with it … The killing of those Kent State Students98 (that’s the place I went for the Arts Conference, where Ed McGehee teaches and all the students are in home ec or business or elem. educ.) and the escalation of the war was too much. What a monstrous error, all built on the ugly, selfish vanity of stupid men. Nixon, as you read in the paper, had to call in students, college Presidents, and it ended up with a crazy promise not to speak ill of students any more, to tone down Agnew, to get out of Cambodia in a matter of weeks, to have a volunteer army!99 Secretary Wally Hickel wrote a letter denouncing the tone of the Administration, people are quitting in various posts …100 Now, if the students don’t blow it tomorrow in Washington.101 I am going, as of now, with Harriet, who insists, Barbara and Francine and Cleve Gray. I stood out in the street on Broadway for the funeral of one of the people killed in Ohio and thousands stood in utter silence crying. It was very beautiful. Spock spoke inside; Lindsay and his wife were there and Sen. Goodell.102 I was wrong about Kingman Brewster … Everything worked there, the students seem to understand that they can only lose by being “revolutionary” and one of the interesting things is that the faculties, administration, and students are all united at last. Stephen S.103 says it is like what happened in Czechoslovakia … Now, we will see. But what a strange, strange week it has been.

  A few practical details: Carlos Fuentes, wife,104 baby105 and Mexican maid will take our apt. from Sept. to June. He is teaching at NYU and doesn’t have much money. I thought it would [be] better to let him pay just what we pay $350 a month and of course all their expenses than to try to make another one hundred by renting to someone we don’t know. Jack Ludwig’s house was destroyed by “nice” tenants he let it to … J. Thompson has taken over the car and all the expenses of that. I have told Barnard, Dalton … Harriet is delighted and is a “heroine” at school. She has, like the national scene, taken a sudden turn in another direction and is going well in school, is suddenly quite astonishingly more confident, out-going, sure of herself, interested. She’s looking forward to camp, serious about the boarding school possibility.

  Darling, please, please right now look in the London Phone book for the address of the American School in London.

  Loved your letter which just came. I must run for more agitation! I’m longing to see the McCullough film … All our love, my darling one … We’ll write soon. I’m so happy to be going to England! Nicole is going, and that makes four.

  Love, love, and oh you are so missed,

  Elizabeth

  20. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell

  [15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]

  May 8, 1970

  Darling: International telephone is not very satisfactory. My own voice kept echoing back in my ear and I kept screaming louder as a result. I had the feeling you were in a crowded hall, talking to two people at once. Anyway, I loved talking to you, even if the sense of it was muffled.

  I can’t believe I heard correctly about 75,000 pounds, which would be about $150,000–200,000. But I assume I misheard you. Maybe you said $75,000. Can you imagine what the mortgage rates would be on that? It would be way out of our range. Also the buying and selling of an expensive house for a 9 months stay is crazy. How would I sell it, except through very expensive brokers. Furnishing even Azuma style106 would be $5,000 and we would be very uncomfortable and also it takes months to get curtains and things and minimal furnishings. Beds, lamps, tables, desks, rugs, chairs, curtains, dishes, pots and pans, knives and forks, equipment, sheets, towels, sofas, chairs, dining room … all very homely and uncomfortable would cost a fortune and take months to assemble. I am sure we can find some kind of furnished house or large flat for the winter.

  True we may decide to stay on and we may not. That I can imagine, but we are much too deeply in here to make a decision like that after a few lovely spring-time weeks in England. You may want to come back after the long winter, or you may not … Anyway it is a big decision and why make it before we have to?

  I thought of coming over for a week or so around June 12th at the latest. That is “Arch Day,”107 and since it may be Harriet’s last at Dalton I might want to be here with her. She can visit Lisa until we come back about the 20th. I don’t particularly want to come to London unless I have to, to find a place for the fall.…

  This is just to say that I don’t myself think it would be a good idea to buy anything. We will really be a bit hard up for ordinary expenses as I see it since neither of us will earn as much, but I think we will manage.… Anyway, darling, I will sign off.… Much love

  Elizabeth

  21. Elizabeth Hardwick to Mr. Robert Lowell108

 
[Postcard: Bernini—The Rape of Proserpina, Borghese Gallery, Rome]

  [New York, N.Y.]

  [Postmarked May 9 AM 1970 but written on May 8]

  My third letter today

  The American School is in Regents Park, very near Jonathan.109 Remember our dream of H. being near school to make friends, to bring them home! The Spenders are far away—no?

  Love, E.

  22. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell

  [15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]

  May 14, 1970110

  Dearest Cal: Everything has been in turmoil here—indeed since we got back over a month ago. The last few weeks have of course been whirling with “crisis”—that paradoxically permanent state. We went to Washington, Harriet, Barbara and I—and heat was paralyzing and brought me nearly to a heat stroke. It was also boring and yet necessary. We rushed home as soon as we could. There are more student deaths this morning, these in a black college in Mississippi, where again the National Guard simply opened fire on them.111 All strange, student (white) riots in University of S. Carolina112 and such places for weeks! I do feel Nixon is breaking up. He is so clearly incompetent, fumbling, and now genuinely bewildered by the overwhelming devastation in front of him—stock market going lower and lower, unemployment rising, Congress balking, petitions, complaints. I think the country became conscious just in the nick of time. You could actually see someone like Nixon fumbling in his wooden, empty way to nuclear weapons against “the enemy” in Hanoi. Too bad Gene McCarthy quit, because the Senate and perhaps the leadership might have been his just now. Of course the war people will put up a terrible fight again, but I do feel Nixon, weak and empty to begin with, will never feel secure again.

  But here at home, the sense of crisis never leaves me. I haven’t been able to sleep since I got back and don’t know why—terrific neurotic anxiety about everything. It just looms up as unmanageable. I think a lot of it is a sort of climacteric113 at last reached, or hoping to be reached, in my violent love affair with Harriet. We are both anxious to get her settled in some way that will free both of us to be happy with each other again. She’s really now—and rightly—only happy with people her own age. (Washington with me was just not it, for her.) We talk late at night, but going in the park together or trying to find something to do on the weekends is awful. She’s outgrown that and yet hasn’t too many friends and is too often alone and still too young to manage on her own. Also the mounting work and confusion at Dalton really threw me and that was bad for both of us.

  She is absolutely thrilled about England, but I am determined not to let her down if possible … We can’t! This is our last year with her114 and it must be made good for her. I want to be in the center, near her school, or reasonably near so that she won’t go off alone, friendless, every day and to endless empty weekends. She will still be too young to go about London alone and to really manage her own life, but she will manage school so much better, naturally, than before. She is much more out-going and less shy suddenly.… Now for something really interesting. We went up to Abbot Academy this week. It is right next to Andover, at Andover, Mass. and they have more and more classes and meeting[s] together. I had written for the catalogue and when I got it I sensed something new and exciting. How right I was! It is the most impressive, beautiful and serious school I’ve ever been near. A new headmaster has transformed it. The girls first of all were in jeans, ponchos, afros, sandals, wearing red armbands (the present student strike insignia). The admissions officer was a young woman of thirty at the most. The place is alive, fewer rules than Putney, grown-up, serious, free and absolutely tingling with excitement. Bushy-haired boys roaming the incredibly beautiful old New England grounds, tall maples everywhere, great flowering bushes … Harriet fell in love with it. She made that step toward utter desire and longing and acceptance. I saw it in the enchanted way she looked around, her glowing eyes. I think her interview was very good, but I worry that her falling grades this year, her generally wilted record, her lack of activities will prevent her from getting in. I am going to try to speak to Mr. Casey115 about being as optimistic as possible, but they aren’t really smart. I have just filled out six or so different applications for my students this year saying that any kind of checking in the categories listed on the applications would be meaningless.… Well, you can imagine where H. would be on Leadership, Motivation, Participation.… And yet there is something so valuable and promising in her, I know it, something that really only needed to fall in love with a place, to get there on her own and find her way. She can pull up next year—up to December—in England and that will help. She means to do so I can tell you!

  The “evaluation”…! Mr. Metzdorf turned in his inventory, a complete listing and pricing. Conservative estimate, without Maine material, is $89,000. I have since telephoned Mr. Bond, Director of the Houghton Library and told him of the matter this far. I sent a copy of the inventory and he will perhaps send someone down next week. Also I will be hearing from Stony Brook immediately and feel very uncertain because they have gone to all this trouble and yet you probably will not want to sell to them. The inventory fee, $420.00, can always be repaid. Oh, dear. I don’t regret at all having all this behind us, but I do wish you were here to take over. Under no circumstances should it be left here now in case of fire, etc … Needless to say I am not making any decisions. You will do that when you come back and after Harvard has made a proposal. Maybe even Stony Brook won’t have the money under present circumstances.…

  Disappointing never to hear from you, but …

  I am going up to Olga’s next weekend, the 23rd, thank heavens, and probably to Castine, for Memorial Day … I wonder if you have any ideas about my coming to London. I can come and you needn’t be there if it is inconvenient. I don’t quite see that we can arrive in the fall, with a great deal of luggage, cat, all of that and no place to stay … On the other hand I am most reluctant to come, expense, etc. but suppose I must unless there is something practical before. Harriet has arranged to go to Lisa’s if I do come to London. I might leave here the night of June 12th and come back the 20th or earlier. The 20th the latest. Everything is so unsettled and so many trips to be made, Maine, back to clean out the sanctuaries of accumulation here (horrid taste in that reference!)116 and then off.

  I will enclose a few things. Hope you are having a good time. We do miss you—it is all quite strange and unreal somehow, so hard to imagine what it is like to have you with us … And you must be going to Manchester just now, or Leeds or whatever.

  Much love,

  E.

  23. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell

  [15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]

  May 16, 1970

  I guess we’ll never hear from you. I’m not even sure that you are still planning for us to come to England next year. Thinking that was the case I have been working day and night on these tedious school things for Harriet. Dalton has been cancelled, the apt. rented. Now I got an application from the American School in London today. It will be moving in Sept. to the same street Natasha lives on.…117 That still does not mean, if you are planning to bring Harriet to England, that I feel at all interested in buying a house. I just wanted you to know and thought you might tell Natasha, so that she could keep looking in her neighborhood.

  E.

  * * *

  Of course, I don’t even know H. will be accepted. So much to be done on all this. School sounds O.K. and she will not find it too hard scholastically, but it sounds also rather unimaginative.

  24. Elizabeth Hardwick to Mr. Robert Lowell118

  [Postcard: Raffaello—Portrait of a Young Woman with the Unicorn, Borghese Gallery, Rome]

  [New York 23, N. Y.]

  [May 1{6/17?}, 1970]

  It has been suggested to me that Harriet must have a relationship with her father. She is not a baby & needs the respect [of] a serious letter about you, what you are doing, what next year could mean to her. If you don’t want to write/ me, O.K, but some c
ommunication with her would be decent.

  25. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell119

  All Souls College, Oxford

  May 17, 1970

  Dearest—

  I am sorry to write in long hand but my typewriter only runs one way.—Week of galleys:120 I’ve been in London getting Grey121 to help me, then a student, then tomorrow Burton Feldman (the guy who wrote the Dissent review accusing me of being New Left).122 Next week, Manchester, Leeds & Bristol. All Souls—I can’t describe it—not my life, but interesting. Old Boston customs, beautiful countryside, villages. I love it here—England.

  The house 3500 pounds. Write the American School care of Natasha. It is near there. I do think we’ll want to stay here 2 years.

  If you’ll trust me and specify I’ll get a American house or flat. I’m enamored with the idea of something on a park, but you might rather be more central, whatever that is. I guess I can choose, guided by various experienced hands. here.

  Oh dear the last week. One boiled with it—then it boiled off. The very name of America disappeared from half the papers. Even at the height, people changed the subject to Oxford gossip. I suppose our hopes for change were heartless because callous with fact. Yet even I thought for a high moment that things might change, and just possibly for the better. How did dear Harriet take Washington? How did you, even staying out of politics is dangerous.

  Dear—I miss you so. I’ve haven’t been here or I would have tried to write. I’ve formally accepted Essex. I’ve written Harvard.

  Soon, we [will] all be together, and find, God willing, more leisure to breathe.123

  Love,

  Cal

  Harriet ma[r]ching/