What is so dreadful is the whole world of mental collapse—in different degrees, I hope. Caroline, Israel, Bingo (Grey’s lovely young wife, who had one previous breakdown). A world in which literally only Sonia is able to function. I find that very sad for Cal’s future, no one ever really hits the point of anything.
Cal is quiet, much too tired to drink more than a pint of beer; trying to write. He still can only speak in terms of jokes & has no real notion of the efforts people have made, etc., but sometimes a look of unutterable depression flashes across his face for a moment & I want to weep—then he pushes it back with a careless joke.266 But he has turned many corners, even if he has some left. That homely image is really the way getting over this seems to me. The “stealing” was all wrong—part of the telephone horror. Books from Sonia, a map of London she “thought” was in her handbag, later found on his bed!267 I said, “Books! they don’t count.” There is a nightmare quality here I hate & Bill feels it too, less in Cal now than in the hapless, helpless, unhelpful circle about him. God help him, I can’t stay long enough—as I estimate it—to see him through this period & of course I haven’t spoken to him anything about C. or “coming home.” I don’t even know what all the “telling him about Caroline” fear means, neither Bill nor I got the idea from Sonia’s ravings of just what there was to tell Cal about Caroline or not to tell. I feel she will be an awful disaster for him with her own deep unbalance. Cal seemed so helpless, so needing love & openness & wifely care (indeed). But that is all for now. Will wire you when I am coming back.
Dearest love to you both
E.
66. Elizabeth Hardwick to Mary McCarthy268
Clive Hotel, Primrose Hill Road, Hampstead, London, N W 3
Aug 4, 1970
Dear Mary: I miss Castine. It is depressing here with so much illness & neurasthenia. I will not see Sonia, who is returning tomorrow. I think her hysterical reporting has done damage to Cal & I have no wish to hear her ideas. Cal is not well, but is certainly on the way. He is quiet, sober, honest. The hospital is charming & right for him, the doctor is good. I do not know what his future is, but I do know that by some odd good fortune I realized when I got here that I had no wish to start over again. One thing—not to do with Caroline, whom we have not mentioned—has quite released me. My only desire is to come home to my house & friends but the doctor wants me to stay as long as I can. I have said 14th at the latest. Have cut Cal’s shoulder length hair, had his shirts washed, his trousers cleaned.269 He is very weak & trembling & rather frail & needs help even to get around & is quite exhausted after an hour or so—even though we had a good time at Patton,270 an extraordinarily interesting 3 hour oddity.
Love “Thanksgiving”271—not unlike “Patton” in a way. I hope to feel free to come home/ earlier, but have a seat on the 14th. I may have to go to Harriet’s camp from Boston, but may not if she has remained firm in her interest in the Canada trip.272
London is nice. Hampstead enchants me. I will not call anyone—too tired & also do not want to talk about Cal. I hope to stop all that by my own silence. Bill Alfred is dear, patient & infinitely helpful. We are like two old nuns running errands, doing washing, taking the air for a pint of beer with Cal. He accepts our efforts like an invalid Archbishop, seeing nothing extraordinary in the service.
But we will both be glad to get home.
dearest love,
E.
67. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell273
Clive Hotel, Primrose Hill Road, Hampstead, London, N W 3
Aug. 5, 1970
Dearest Cal: Here with a rubber band are some stamped post-cards & envelopes for airmail.274 Please don’t erase Harriet! A child can destroy herself over that, I get the feeling that with you she is like a cottage that once was near but has been lost to memory when a new building went up.
Are you prepared, happy to give us up for the rest of your life? Do you remember, actually, our apt, your studio, with its bed, its books, your phone. Do you remember Maine, the fire in School Street, friends, wine, music? Do you remember your barn & your seals & your long, lazy days.
Do you want to kiss Harriet’s cheeks again, hear her laugh, hear the guitar in her room?
You are going, irrevocably, to an emotionally crippled life, chaos, withdrawal, no support, no loving help, none of the effort made by a wife to create a life, everything for the man she loves. You are leaving private jokes, your own/ life, to lead someone else’s life, you need the reality, the energy I brought to you, the care, the humor.275
What are your values? Do they include loyalty, responsibility to those you love, since you have love for me. Sickness & shame will overcome you as your whole life sinks into that created by someone else, ruled by a new country & the English aristocracy & its helpless ways, by surrender of something beautifully old-fashioned & New England & pure in you.
Your writing will flourish I hope, but what will renew it without the sense of fresh life always there, sometimes irritating I know, me, the family/, the news? English gossip, old subjects?
Do you want to know of deaths and sicknesses at home? Do you feel no need for continuity or are you expatriated, occasionally informed by random visitors?
You could go home with us, to us, if you wished now. Essex will not buoy like Harvard. I understand it is dreary, like Stony Brook with a few good faculty.
My heart is broken, but I must make a clean break. I am strong & still get joy out of life. I do not believe in destruction, though I am often/ wild.276
Love, hope for you
Elizabeth
* * *
P.S.277
Cal: Inside is a letter from me, some envelopes & cards stamped, some cards from the National/ Gallery, I am going shopping, Bill is trying to get our tickets to leave Friday morning, day after tomorrow. Perhaps you can call me this afternoon & we could meet at 5 before I go to Valerie’s.278 I will see you as much as you like tomorrow, my last day.
Love,
Elizabeth (Lizzie)
* * *
Bill in 320/ [will?] see you for lunch, if you like[.]
68. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell279
Clive Hotel, Primrose Hill Road, Hampstead, London N W 3
[n.d. August 1970]
Cal, darling: If you need me I’ll always be there, and if you don’t need me I’ll always not be there.
Salud & happiness, I wish you.
Lizzie
Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Hardwick, August 6, 1970
69. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell280
[Greenways Nursing Home, 11 Fellows Road, London]
August 6, [1970]
August 6
Dearest Lizzie—
You have always been a gentl
courageous, couteous, witty, generous.
how I can’
August 6, the day of your departure
Dearest Lizzie—
You[r] last note and much else that you said and/ an have said/ through the years go to my heart. you couldn’t have more loyal and witty. I can’t give you anything of equal value. Still much happened that we both loved in the long marriage. I feel we had much joy and many other/ the thinkgs we had to learn. . there is nothing that wasn!t a joy and told ous something. Great jy joy/.
Love,
Cal
70. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell281
[Greenways Nursing Home, 11 Fellows Road, London]
October August/ 9, 1970
Dearest Lizzie:
Daily I send off those curious London sights photographs to Harriet.282 I wonder what her fellow campers make of them. O O, the camp is running out, the yellow leaves are coming, even here/ where I think of the climate as Norwegian. I bubble on,283 saying nothing because I am thinking more contentedly tha[n] ever of your long and yet rushed visit. A heart here thinks of you always. I expect to leave here about a week from now (nothing since the rainbow of Noah’s flood is certain) and already feel better in a way than I have
for months.
All my love to you and all,
Cal
* * *
P.S. All love to you./
71. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell284
[Greenways Nursing Home, 11 Fellows Road, London]
August 11, 1970
Dearest Lizzie:
There’s cold in the the air, enough to make me rub my feet for warmth. And then/ a colder, perhaps truer air in Maine. Illusions, surely! The true Maine is always at [a] distance. You are there. And this morning I can reach to you. O I hope I have reached Harriet Lowell, To whom I have sent many postcards, terrible things like the horseguards which you were so gracious as to buy, stamp and leave me.
Goodbye, My Love,
Cal
“Notes for an unwritten Letter” [The Farther Shore 3], from “The Dolphin” manuscript,285 composed and revised between 1970 and January 1972.
72. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[Castine, Maine]
Aug. 12, 1970
Dearest Cal: I don’t know that you will even get this, but I do want to write to say that your kind note to me meant a lot, more than a lot, more than I can say … Beloved Mary Incarnatus!/ was waiting at the boiling Bangor airport, even though it was not certain I would be there. All is serene and beautiful here, tennis, friends. I leave in a few days for a couple of nights with Francine and Olga and then back with Harriet on the 15th. That will be a joy.
All my good wishes go with you always.
Lizzie
73. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[Castine, Maine]
August 13, 1970
Dearest One: Letters, letters, letters. Now the bank calls that your signature is needed to get the money for the trip B. and I made. I dread the arrival of the bills from Faber286 and the long passage, with many regurgitations for new information, through the intestines of the Blue Cross, but will try as hard as I can. Those bills/ not taken by B.C. will be paid by the bank.
It is so much fun here. Up this morning writing a parody for the yacht club poetry contest (judges Mary McCarthy, Philip Booth, Frank Hatch). It is called Reminiscences of the Bay Poets and is a jumble of lines and moods from Lowell, Booth, Eberhart, Daniel Hoffman. Since I don’t have Booth, Eberhart and Hoffman exactly at my finger tips a little digging was necessary. Tennis games are marvelous, lasting until seven. Somehow Castine is a lot livelier and gayer than it used to be; perhaps it’s the hot summer.
Daniel Berrigan arrested last night.287 He had been underground, hiding out. Barbara called me at ten. I had just come from the dock with Mary and Jim and their nice friend, Leonard Tennyson. I cried, even though of course he would be caught. It took four months. Dreadfully worrying story in the Times recently, saying many of the gentlest Catholic C.o.’s288 and resisters have been put in maximum security prisons, where they are at the mercy of assaults, sexual and otherwise, by the most incorrigible criminals. If you complain you may be killed. Philip Berrigan has been in one such, being held there as a hostage because of Dan we think …289 It is all so sad. Old Spock290 was around the harbor the other day, sent (over) greetings to you. Ann and Alfred Kazin have spent the summer near Blue Hill, which seems odd, and are coming over this afternoon. Alfred has been unkind about M.McC.291 and so nothing communal can be planned, but I hear he is in good shape and she is predatory as ever.
Off at dawn for Connecticut. I am hoping Harriet will have a good time here and am planning reading and music evenings for the two of us/ that may just go, people are having us both to dinner and I somehow think she will enjoy that in part. The Halls292 will tune her guitar and a little solitude will be nice for her after the urban, teen-age torpor of the camp. Francine Gray visited Harriet in camp and wrote “what a stupendous beauty she is!” In a strange sense her suffering and loss have made everyone love her more and that comes at a time when she can receive it because she is older. I feel so guilty at times, because somehow I never made enough effort with the children of our friends, for her to take part in various families that she might have. But she is surrounded by love and sincere wishes for her happiness, and effort to provide pleasures and re-assurance. I am hopeful.
Olga just called with arrangements for my visit. I’m staying with Francine, because her house is bigger. I told Olga I was in the midst of writing you and she sent love.
Dearest Cal, I miss you sorely. You are loved here by me and Harriet and many others, by all of us, who have known you and who will always miss your presence. Please, honey man, sign this Sheet enclosed inside envelope. But needs stamp, Baby!/ and mail immediately.
Dearest love again,
Elizabeth
74. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell
80 Redcliffe Square, Kensington, London293
August 27, 1970
Dearest Lizzie:
Nothing worthy to answer your beautiful letters. I’ve been rambling about getting a studio,294 toying with revisions, feeling the deadest poet as so often, and getting my textbooks ordered for Essex. Very cordial department head/ who found an actually much better anthology for the one I’d ordered, also one much worse. No pressure. Also my students are already picked for me in very small numbers, so I avoid that agony. Not much else a lunch with Karl Miller, stay in Kent.295 I don’t feel very boastful, but I don’t think I’m a bastard. I rather look forward to Essex; teaching is so much easier and more dependable than writing, tho so much less.
I’ve thought much and wonderingly about Harriet’s picture. Since Venice she’s turned into a woman, or is that only the photographer’s angle? Then the profound in the second line and rather sad camp note.296 I wish I could be with her and let her let fly her random thoughts. We were good at deep jokes. When can I see you both? I thought of a trip leaving here around the 10th of December, or a little later. Would that confuse? Well, God bless you, all the sorrow in joy. Thanks for liking my revolutionary sonnet group.297 They’ll have a different arrangement in NOTEBOOK but this pleased me.
All my love,
Cal
75. Robert Lowell to Miss Harriet Lowell
80 Redcliffe Square, London
August 27, 1970
Dearest Harriet:
I don’t know/ what a father so far away can say to you. My life except for you and mother is naturally much as it always was. Writing teaching enjoying myself as much as I dare. This country is like a combination of country Connecticut and Boston, perhaps. Not much like New York maybe. I’m like myself, just as you are like yourself. But I know you are older. A girl your age must grow older and wiser, which isn’t always true of the old. I want very much for you to talk and feel at ease with me. All is as was, tho never quite. I may come to New York sometime before Christmas, if you and mother ask me.
All my love,298
76. Elizabeth Hardwick to Mr. Robert Lowell
[Postcard: Charles Osgood—Nathaniel Hawthorne (1840), Essex Institute, Salem, Massachusetts]
[Castine, Maine]
[September 3, 1970]
Sorry about that stupid phone call. Please don’t call us. I’ll write when I get time & hope all this will be better by then. I realize there is nothing on earth you can do or feel about our problems, small or grave. The call was a desperate reflex I guess. I’m looking after Harriet & time will help. I believe (this a.m.) the return to Dalton & seeing her friends was the trouble.
Lizzie
77. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell
[London]
[September 1970]
Dearest Lizzie—
I have been thinking about you most of the time and am very stirred up about Harriet, the vagueness about what happened of course making things almost ominous, though I think I know what happened, an extreme explosion of anger and tears, and sad thoughts about herself. I suppose it will pass, part of her age’s whirlpool,299 but one must never say this and rely more or less on nature, though there’s little else.
Glad to have the checks and have added a thousand dol
lars to my small account. Saw Gertrude300 two days ago, who was temporarily in the house of the man I rent from.301 Somehow fated. We had a pleasant evening. She has a little job with a little publisher, which she complains of, though bravely. Yet, miracle, she is as she was twenty years ago to my dim eye.
School begins in two or three weeks. I’ve been assembling my texts, and Essex had been helpful, a good American anthology, which costs ten pounds, more than any student can buy, and something made up of Ginsberg and the Black Mountain for the moderns. Am I a wolf in black fleece offering myself to the very advanced classes of Essex?
Not much more money will be needed; soon my salary will be rolling in. I would like what I get from royalties. Is that too much? When I come in Christmas time I’ll clean up the papers business, which should set us up better. All love to you and Harriet.
Love,302
78. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell
33 Pont St., London SW 1
September 12, 1970
Dearest Lizzie:
Suddenly after mailing my letter I realized I hadn’t thanked you properly for the checkbook and making the whole business of cashing so easy. Even if we think of ourselves (not practical) as still on the old basis of a joint account, still nothing could be done without your help.
No news here. This is one of those rainy dark European city days, pleasing at times, but at others they almost make one see touch/ eternity as Baudelaire wrote. I am reading the Shakespeare I will teach, mostly the Roman plays. I rather need a library, but I’ve always more or less gotten on without using one, except for the random, accidental offering of Quincy House. But now instead of Hazlitt’s characters, I have Professor Dorsch’s defense of the character of Julius Caesar.303 Professor Dorsch is the editor of my edition, and is too off even to effectively disagree with. Love to Dear Harriet.
The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979 Page 13