You must leave that parasitic life and come home in September. I know you can work at Harvard. You cannot stay away from me and Harriet for a year and half, almost two and return, love, I am not Caroline, unreal./ You know that. The choice you have made is ludicrous and destructive and unreal. You will be destroyed by the unreality, the spoiled richness, the alien ground. I believe this and say it without regret, since I am not trying to impress anyone but tell the truth as I see it. You cannot live on Caroline, step into the sheets of Israel Citkowitz and all those weak people without diminishment. You cannot leave your responsibilities to your daughter without moral decay. You cannot continue your career as a fashionable London person,—that is all over uninteresting/—and your talent is otherwise. I feel you are a loss to American literature and to the country, as well as to us.
Be made mad if you like, arrogant and above-it-all if you like, but this is the truth, or my truth.
No gossip or mail. I wish you everything with your book, old Zeus. I wish you health and dignity and serenity and moral beauty. I wish you a long creative life and a long life just for itself. I have contempt for your present situation, but love for you.
E. Elizabeth
* * *
The mail just came. A few “My husband is away, but…” bits. Nothing from Mary. She didn’t know I gather when you saw her that I knew “it” was Lady Caroline. But I have written her, hoping to drive up with her from here … I got an unexpected $500 for something I wrote and I am so happy. I want to earn money as a writer, as a woman. Harriet does too and in all her sorrow yesterday went to the Epsteins until 12:30! I received Noel Stock’s book about Pound in the mail.206 I am starting to do the Dreiser, Crane thing.207 Can I add Pound who would fit, or do you not want me to.208 If you are not returning in September we won’t be connected except legally, but not personally, and so I can do as I would. I’m not planning an assault, but a study of what the American scene209 does to writers, what it is like. If you would rather I didn’t, I won’t, but I’m sure you don’t really care. Anyway I won’t get to him for some weeks.
Your loving wife,
E.
* * *
I have written the bank. Hope they could understand what I meant. I did it without regret & in our great need & in my relief that [you] have no need of money.
49. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.?]
[June 26, 1970]
I want to add my absolute horror that you two people have taken away something I loved and needed. My job at Barnard, which I tried to get back, but it is filled for this year and the budget is filled.
[…]My utter contempt for both of you for the misery you have brought to two people who had never hurt you knows no bounds.210
50. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
Saturday, June 27, 1970
Cal, dearest: I want to apologize for the terrible things I wrote in my last letters. My life this week has been a night-mare of inability to reclaim what I had given up, & a suffering/ of Harriet’s distress. And when I talked to you on the phone today I had just driven a rented car across town. Even there they made me write a check of $400 for the summer rental which probably isn’t good. Originally I had said we would pay with Diner’s, etc … The UN School seemed so delightful a possibility and I will still try, but everything seemed closed and ruined and I just became furious.
I am all right, Harriet is all right. It took her a few days. We just bought her an adorable, long sort of granny, old-fashioned dress, she is excited about camp, more adults are looking after her, Barbara thinks she is the loveliest thing imaginable … everyone is going to visit her at camp from Connecticut[,] Olga, Francine … Of course she can visit you. We think of say, after Christmas day with me, a visit up until school,—if there is one—convenes again. It would be about 7 or 8 days. If that isn’t good because you’ll be too busy partying, as everyone is, another time can be worked out. Camp isn’t a possible time. Not over until Aug. 15th and we are going to spend a few days with Aunt Sarah then, which Harriet very much wants, and maybe back here on the school matter, etc.
Forgive me. I am glad you don’t need money. It would be a nightmare otherwise of poverty for all of us. I do hope the bank will act soon for me. I am very puritanical and I just haven’t anything in the bank and worry when I write a check.… Then I’ll be fine. I am looking forward to Maine. I don’t feel embarrassed. I may have a friend to drive me up, if I don’t go with Mary, but if not I’ll stop in Boston. I hope the economy picks up because I would like to sell School street and using your barn as a kind of substitute for the School street barn build a small, cozy house attaching to it. But this is a bad year for selling and building costs are astronomical … Francis Goodwin’s house on the beach is a masterpiece … I have a lot of writing to do. I am going to be content. My main love and anxiety is Harriet. She didn’t have such a good year, but the odd thing is that she has suddenly really come alive and will be a superb girl and a really interesting person. You’ll know what I mean when you see her.
This is just to ask for forgiveness. Love, don’t worry, all is well here and I think you are well and I give you my hope for your happiness in England. Don’t hate New York and the USA seriously—it is hateful but we don’t really hate it. Can’t afford to I guess[.]
Elizabeth
51. Robert Giroux to Mr. Charles Monteith
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 19 Union Square West, New York, N.Y.
June 29, 1970
PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL
Dear Charles:
Many thanks for your great help in the Lowell matter, and for your cable. Cal phoned Elizabeth some hours after your call here, obviously as a result of your calling him. Elizabeth learned the worst, but at least she knew where she stood. It was the uncertainty and the worry about Harriet that was the hardest for her to take. The next day she learned (from friends of theirs in London) the name of the person with whom he is staying. “I had to burst out laughing,” she said.211 She thinks from this and other evidence that Cal is probably ill, and she is consulting his doctor. She called him next day and described his telephone manner as low-keyed, “not vindictive and even solicitous.” The previous day she was planning a divorce, but I would gather that this is not now her plan. At any rate, as you cabled, Cal is not returning this summer. I’m glad you persuaded him to phone, and Elizabeth is grateful to have escaped from the unreality and frustration of last week’s limbo.
As I told you on the phone, I’ve just completed plans to visit London in August. I’ll arrive from Paris on Wednesday, August 12th. Would it be possible to see you and Peter212 and Matthew213 on Thursday the 13th or Friday the 14th? I’m not sure at this moment whether I’ll be staying at the Connaught or with a friend on Mount Street. But I’ll have nine days in London, my first visit in five years, and I very much look forward to seeing all my friends at Faber.
With best wishes,
Yours ever,
[Bob]
Robert Giroux
52. Elizabeth Hardwick to Mary McCarthy
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
June 30, 1970
Mary, dear: I just got your letter and it was sweet. I don’t know what I wrote you before because I was writing so many letters that day, like Herzog.214 But I am well, resigned, and working day and night to pick up the pieces, which are terribly complicated. Harriet is very upset, because Cal spoke with all that detachment and gaiety you know so well, not meaning to, about Harriet/ flying over, etc. She has gone off to camp without a school, having given up Dalton, hating it last year, saying goodbye. No place will even interview you, all filled, long waiting list, closed to September. However, I feel I will work something out and have decided not to worry and H. seems better, since I just talked to her on the phone at camp.
I will stay here—or so I think—until the 18th of [July] because then the first visitin
g day for camp comes,—it’s in Connecticut—and I can stop there on my way to Castine and then not have to drive all the way back to camp until August 15th, when I’ll be bringing H. up to Maine. I am going to visit Connecticut this weekend, visited the Carlisles last weekend and so I am not alone in the hot city too much. I will have all my affairs in shape here, getting at least one of the studios rented, and ready—getting things back.
I look forward to Castine very much and am so glad I spent a weekend in the Hamptons. That told me that I didn’t want to go there—like a retired couple leaving their little town and taking a trailer to Florida for life—and really want my own place.
I thought Cal seemed well when I last spoke to him.215 Everything is cooling down. It will be all right. Will see you in Maine or you can call me here in New York if I am not there when you arrive. If there is anything you want to know. Much love to you both,
Elizabeth
* * *
Beautiful Darby Betts house on [Route] 166 was for sale when I was in Maine on May 30—with the beautiful meadow, the pillars on the lawn. Let’s get someone to buy it. We’ll make a new community. Or Commune.
53. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell
[Telegram]
[London]
[July 1, 1970]
MRS ROBERT LOWELL 15 WEST67THSTREET
NEWYORK CITY
THANKS FOR YOUR SWEET LETTER AFTER CHRISTMAS OUR BEST TIME216
LOVE
CAL
54. Elizabeth Hardwick to Mary McCarthy
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
July 1st, 1970
Mary, dearest: Foreign communication … What a confusion it is. I wrote you yesterday and then I got your letter today and learned your plans had changed or might change. Now mine are a bit changed.
I think I will also be driving up about the 10th or 11th or 12th. I don’t at all need anyone to drive up with me and I plan to take some bits of furniture if I can. I have been in a nightmare of driving recently and ought not to be a road-menace by then. I am going tomorrow to spend the 4th with Francine Gray and I will pick up Harriet from her camp and bring her back to New York on Sunday, the 5th. After the most exhausting time I have gotten an interview at the United Nations School for Harriet on Tuesday, July 7th, then I drive her back to camp three hours up in Connecticut, then back here to fix my studio to be rented, pack up and go to Castine as soon as possible. It will be such a relief to have these unending practical problems over for a while. I won’t know about the UN School until late August, because it is entirely filled and they have to wait for a cancellation, if it should come. Poor Harriet. It will be a difficult adjustment, but she is rather excited and hopes it comes off. I can’t have her going back to Dalton, upset, not liking it, having said goodbye. They are also filled up. The UN School is much better and I think she will feel glamorous and proud of herself if she gets in.
She’s fine, I think, and I was of course furious with Cal for all our problems and for what seemed to be brutal ways of handling things. But I have cooled down and pain can’t be avoided and there is no way to do these separations without disruption and exhausting efforts to re-establish yourself. Naturally all of this fell to me since Cal is still, in a certain sense, right here in the house, all his things, his books, his mail, his business, his taxes, his clothes. He made a plaintive remark: “I’d write you and Harriet but I can’t find any stamps since I left Oxford.”
Being resigned doesn’t turn you off immediately, but it is a state, a new one for me and I am very happy that it turned up, like a visitor at the right time. I saw Caroline last during what may have been just a low period for her … baby diapers in the living room, 40 bottles of milk and not a bit of food in the house, no maid. Bob says she is much better set up in England and I gather that is true. There is something missing, along with much there. And so who knows. And all that is not the point for me. Cal kept, as usual, the door open here, telegrams saying right up until two weeks ago, all my love and can’t come right now. But it is closed forever, now. I guess it is just that strange thing that happens to you when you know you don’t want it any longer. I am speaking of myself, and of course the same is true for him.
I look forward to Maine and know we will have a nice time. I am planning some guests too. I never thought about Jean on L. Island,217 because I was in the other end, but I hated it. Just the drive, even with someone else at the wheel, on the Long Island Expressway, taking three creeping hours even though we left the city at 10 at night—it was horrid. I hated the 100,000 dollar shacks on the beach, the publishers, the people.
Am trying to get at least one term of my Barnard job back, because I love it. All will be well I’m sure.
I forgot in my haste to say how I grieve for Jim that his children218 won’t be there. I’m going to let Harriet go to see Cal if she is ready for it next Easter—and if they will feed her and not miss the plane! It is an awful deprivation to be separated from young children and I will be counting the days until my beloved is back up in Maine with me.
I’ll see you soon, dearest one. Maybe it will be the 13th, but no later.
E.
55. Charles Monteith to Robert Giroux, Esq.
Faber and Faber LTD Publishers, 24 Russell Square,
London WC1B 5ED
3rd July 1970
Private and Confidential
Dear Bob,
Very many thanks for your letter of June 29th. I’m very glad that Cal telephoned Elizabeth—as he promised me he would when I talked to him after talking to you. I’ve met the lady in question myself a number of times and I can understand Elizabeth’s reaction! She may well be right in thinking that Cal is ill; and if there’s any way in which I can help don’t hesitate, please, to let me know. Is he, I wonder, in touch with a doctor over here with whom his own New York doctor has been in contact?
It’s most excellent news that you’re going to be in London in August; Peter, Matthew and I all look forward very much indeed to seeing you. If it’s convenient for you, could you call in here about 12.15 on Friday August 14th? We can talk about books in the office for half an hour or so and then go on to have lunch afterwards. Alas, I can’t—as I’d much looked forward to doing—suggest you come down to stay with me at Oxford for the weekend since the College219 is closed for the whole month of August. Try to plan your next visit for some other month!
Yours ever,
Charles.
56. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
July 8, 1970
My dearest one: Life being what it is in the fast set of London, I have heard that you are in the hospital.220 Sweetheart, I just want to send you my love and Harriet’s and Sumner’s, et alia. All of us here, all of your friends, who love you and treasure you. Don’t worry, baby, you’ll be all right.
If you need money, tell them to write me and I will write the bank, or whatever you want. I only want to help you, not to hurt you. I value you so much and so does your daughter. Sometimes we can’t believe you’ll never be coming down from upstairs again, never, never, never.221 Or going with pimento cheese to your studio on Water Street. But if that is your wish, never to have all of that, we will support you in any way we can.
I’ve driven back and forth along the west side highway four times over the 4th of July. I went up on that Thursday and had a lovely weekend at Francine’s, with the Millers222 for swimming, playing tennis with Bill Coffin’s wife,223 driving Jean Van den Heuvel back. (I hear your remarks in the Bobby Kennedy book are lovely.)224 Then Harriet got an interview at the UN School, but I worry so about her. She is very upset and yet, after crying the first time she spoke to you, says nothing, which is worrying. I love her so. She is so, so smart, but so, so unlike other people—dear little creature. I won’t go into the school problems. It is a sort of nightmare.
Have the apt. back o.k. Lovely note from Fuentes, saying, “I love and respect you” and I barely know him. I’m
o.k., honey. Guess what I’m doing? You had it the first time. Having a bourbon and looking at the news! I have written all those little things I planned and will start on my book. I have such good ideas for it and it will save my life.… There are, if I can do it, so many things in my past: commie stuff, women’s lib, all those horrid men I slept with, and the wonder what I have really made of myself as a woman. I think if it hadn’t been for feeling that as a woman you owe it to yourself to preserve dignity and honesty and integrity I couldn’t have stood what has happened to me. But I am really well I think and I will just write my book, started in the “going home piece,” and hope for the best, for a little prestige at least.
Thank you for the lovely poems to me and Harriet in Notebook.225 I read all of the book last night and it is really a strange, wonderful work. It would be stupid to speak of “loving it”—I don’t “love” really good books in that easy way. But I know your book is everything. And with the new ones, the additions226—Oh, God. I can’t agree with you when you said to me on the phone that you had 12 admirers in England to one here. The students at Harvard, I know, worship your book—and which twelve do you mean? It just depends on who it is … You have great love and the deepest belief in your genius here, from all of us who know what you are writing about.
Goodbye, my love.… I will always treasure you and do what you wish. Horrible book on Pound by Noel Stock, so, so boring. It just can’t be. You would never know if you didn’t look at the pictures that he was interesting.… It goes,
The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979 Page 11