The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979
Page 15
LIZZIE
89. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell
33 Pont Street, London, SW 1
October 18
(Shortly after our phone-talk)
Dearest Lizzie:
I don’t know whether I’ve said or written that I feel like a man walking on two ever more widely splitting roads at once, as if I were pulled apart and thinning into mist,334 or rather being torn apart and still preferring that state to making a decision. Is there any decision still for me to make? After all I have done, and all that seven months have done, can I go back to you and Harriet? Too many cuts.
Time has changed things somewhat since we met at Greenways, I am soberer, cooler. More displeasing to myself in many little ways, but mostly about you. A copy of my new book came the other day, and I read through all the new and more heavily revised poems. A sense of the meaning of the whole came to me, and it seemed to be about us and our family, its endurance being the spine which despite many bendings and blows finally held. Just held. Many reviewers saw this; though it was something I thought pretentious and offensive if claimed to push/ in my preface, I saw it too. I have felt as if a governing part of my organism were gone, and as if the familiar grass and air were gone.
I don’t think I can go back to you. Thought does no good. I cannot weigh the dear, troubled past, so many illnesses, which weren’t due to you, in which you saved everything, our wondering, changing, growing years with Harriet, so many places, such rivers of talk and staring—I can’t compare this memory with the future, unseen and beyond recollection with Caroline. I love her very much, but I can’t see that. I am sure many people have looked back on a less marvelous marriage than ours on the point of breaking, and felt this pain and indecision—at first insoluble, then when the decision has been made, incurable.
I don’t think I can come back to you, but allow me this short space before I arrive in New York to wobble in my mind. I will be turning from the longest realest and most loved fragment of my life.
I’ll arrive mid-day or so on Thursday. I’ll probably stay with Blair. We won’t feel tied together at all hours, but all my time will be yours. I don’t expect to see anyone except Blair and probably Stanley.
I don’t want to scrap over details.
My love to you both,
Cal
90. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[Telegram]
[New York]
1970 OCT 19 03:45
ROBERT LOWELL
33 PONT STREET LONDONSW1ENGLAND
CALL ME IMMEDIATELY SERIOUS335
ELIZABETH
91. Elizabeth Hardwick and Harriet Lowell to Mr. Robert Lowell336
[Postcard: Vittore Carpaccio—St. Augustine in His Study (detail)337—Venice]
[New York, N.Y.]
[Postmarked Oct 20 AM, 1970, but written Oct. 19?, 1970]
Be lovely to see you. I am not tense about it or expecting anything. Don’t worry. Just want a pleasant visit. Lizzie.
I can’t wait to see you. Love,
Harriet
92. Elizabeth Hardwick to Mr. Robert Lowell
[Postcard: Greenwich Village, New York City: “One of the most colorful districts in New York, a Bohemian atmosphere pervades this part of the city where artists, writers, sculptors, composers, actors and beatniks make their homes. Here will be found off-Broadway shows, nite-clubs, a great variety of restaurants, exciting Espresso shops and friendly people.”]
[New York, N.Y.]
[Oct 20 PM, 1970]
H. just fine today. Her conversation with you cheered her up … and I don’t think any of these crises will come again. The Conrad thing was horrible and everyone was in agony.338 Dearest love & hope this didn’t upset you. We are O.K.
E.
93. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell
[33 Pont Street, London SW 1]
[October 21, 1970]
Wednesday
Dearest Lizzie—
I phoned you just before leaving for Essex, and now am writing just after returning and reading your letters. Alf’s face was with me most of the time, large in the foreground, and what was nearer, you and Harriet and of course thoughts of Adrienne were peeping out behind, as if behind a poster. He always seemed in such full health and discipline, that nothing pointed this way. It’s as abrupt as Randall’s death, and these last days hits me with the same force, though we weren’t close and my real friend was always Adrienne.
You have written so much and so many things, the same repeating contradictory things since last summer. Poor thing, what else could you do under the circumstances? The last letter is relaxed, more relaxed, and ends with more of an up-note. And the last sentence is “hell and damnation … Life is so terrible.”339 Even if I returned for good, if that has meaning, almost all would be unsolved. I realize all three of us (crushing realization) have lived a depression, lived through our darks, at more or less the same time. Mine, waking up pricked through with my guilt and hollowness; the same ache you have felt has hurt me, but with time the feeling lifts. It’s the usual, once annual depression, lighter than most, but enough to make me peculiarly indecisive and useless to you now. I suppose I’ve made my choice, I and my seven months absence have have chosen, and you are right to say you wouldn’t have me back. I feel whatever choice I might make, I am walking off the third story of an unfinished building to the ground. I don’t offer this as good description, it’s too vague and grand, but to show you why my useless, depressed will, does nothing well. Just the usual somberness after mania, jaundice of the spirit, and yet it has so many absolutely actual objects to pick up—a marriage that was both rib and spine for us these many years.
Caroline isn’t (if you really want me to be free to talk to you about her) one of my many manic crushes, rather this/ and everything more, just as you were at Yaddo and after.340 She is airy and very steady and sturdy in an odd way. She has been very kind to me. I think we can make out.341 I love her, we have been together rather a long time—often and intensely. I have fears doubts/ that I by myself, or anyway, can make out/, that dear you and Harriet can make out. I think somehow that Christmas will help us all, great troubles but no/ longer everyone unreal to everyone, and Christmas is the season to lighten the heart.
All my love to both—
Cal
* * *
Hold on my Dears. Making out is so much stiffer than making it.
94. Robert Lowell to Adrienne Rich
[33 Pont Street, London S. W. 1]
Wednesday, October 21, 1970
Dearest Adrienne:
I heard about Alf’s death last Monday from Lizzie on the telephone and then went off to my teaching at Essex carrying the wound and a sort of composite picture of him, now short-haired now long and a gay green or blue turtle-necked sweater—accurate thoughts and figures and an ardent moonlight glow. His death seems to me the most tragic I have known since Randall’s. In both, the end seems so unproportioned to the previous lives, full of health and promising its renewal. We knew him less well than you, but Lizzie and I have felt we lost part of ourselves, a part of our old lives of the last fifteen years.
You’ve heard of course from Lizzie about our situation. I am with another girl, Caroline Citkowitz. I love her and we’ve been/ together a long stretch by now. Still, it’s all somber and unreal. Both Lizzie and Harriet are disturbed, and so am I. Hard to tell what is right or even possible. There’s an old picture somewhere, mostly as frontispieces, where Dante stands against an elaborate tapering tower with galleries342—it is Purgatory, and it seems to lean. That’s how the last twenty-one years seem to me now. This week especially with its many letters. I’ll be home for two or three weeks at Christmas. Perhaps things will [be] better and flatter then. Meanwhile the useless inescapable time of the two mutually exclusive choices. I imagine I’ll get divorced, and all may be well, but the loss will never go.
I am talking for you in a way in your much greater trouble. I have thought of you muc
h when I heard of your separation, and felt my ignorance was too great to express itself in a letter. Terrible things happen, that have causes of course, but which can’t be answered. Maybe you’ll try not to, as is best, and your marvelous courage will carry through these new obstacles as it has through so many of the old. At Christmas, I pray that we may have more of our vodka or saki luncheons. My love to the children and all to you.
Love,
Cal
95. Robert Lowell to William Alfred
[33 Pont Street, London S. W. 1]
October 21, 1970
Dear Bill:
I’ve just gotten back from Leicester and read your caring letter. Telling Elizabeth plainly and without ambiguity in a letter what I am going to do is hard. It’s hard for me to be that certain even in my quietest thoughts. I am coming to New York over Christmas and stay two weeks or so. Then we can talk at leisure, then we can talk it out, which can’t be done by letter or long distance phone. This helps no one I have said, and you more or less say. Still such an old and passionate love cannot be ended like slicing pie. The time hasn’t been very long after all considering how much is still hanging. I have written Lizzie several times that I felt we would get a divorce, but that we should decide when w[e] met.
Oh yes, you are right about Harriet, I lie awake about her. Jewelry is a good idea. We talked the other day on the phone and things seem less frantic.
Love,
Cal
96. Elizabeth Hardwick to Blair Clark
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
Friday, October 23, 1970
Dear Blair: I felt after I talked to you yesterday that I wasn’t sure you understood what I meant.343 I really do not want this unreal Christmas visit from Cal, but I have asked all my friends, thought about it day and night, and I don’t see how he can possibly get in touch with Harriet or she with him unless he sees her. I can’t send her there, where she would be on unfamiliar ground—and I haven’t the confidence in Cal at this point that would make me able to let a 13 year old go to him. But in re-establishing things I hope and expect to work out something for them/ and even had in mind something about the spring vacation, if we can afford it. For my business with Cal a visit is not necessary. I do not expect that any of us, even Harriet, will get anything out of it really and I will be glad when it’s over … Caroline would never come. That is his fantasy and his need to keep a sense of our competing over him going. She has never competed for anyone in her life and I do not want Cal back under any circumstances. But I don’t see his coming here, supposing Caroline would, and having a honeymoon visit when the whole purpose of the trip was to spend a bit of the Christmas with Harriet, to make arrangements for the future. This is the last time he will see me—something I don’t think he realizes, since he is reluctant just to face the lack of drama that the end of this would mean. Also I have the idea that he is afraid to budge one inch from Caroline—she might not be there when he got back. I don’t think he is really well, and he is kept going on this false sense of people competing for him.
I could not put Harriet and me through the giddy unreality I know Cal would be sunk in if he came over with Caroline. I feel it would be the end of her Caroline’s/ feeling for him too, because she would see how he has to exploit and boast or else things aren’t real. In a way I doubt he will come. In all the months he has been gone I’ve heard from him a lot and he has never answered one question that I have put to him, or discussed really anything, me or Harriet or practical things or Caroline—except himself.
I am not withholding Harriet from Cal. My aim is to get him to acknowledge her. He has to come home in a manly way, for only/ a few days, settle up things, make arrangements and then leave forever. That is the only decent thing to do. Any other path of celebration would be disastrous for his own reputation with those of his friends I know, and I think immoral for his daughter.
I don’t want you to be my emissary. I have no position. I just wanted you to understand what I mean. If Caroline should come with him I am sure Harriet would still want to see him and they would have a few afternoons I guess, but that would be something. I think it is very cruel as a method and quite unnecessary, but there is absolutely no chance, I believe, that Caroline would consider such a thing. As I told you they can move in next door for all I care after this is settled. Cal should have come in June before Harriet went to camp, talked to her, arranged things with me. Then it would have been done and over with.
Love,
E.
97. Robert Lowell to Harriet Lowell
[33 Pont Street, London SW 1]
[October 26, 1970]
Dearest Harriet:
I am mailing you a small arrow covered with diamonds[.] At first I was going to send you a gold love-knot which would have meant I love you forever, but the knot was only a copy and not as pretty as the really/ old arrow. I don’t know quite what it means; both arrows and diamonds are something that goes to the heart like truth. Let it be our love.
I’ll be back Christmas. Whatever happens between Mother and me, you must never think of me as gone. Wherever I am you must come and stay as long as you wish. I haven’t made the last months happy for you or Mother. I did the best I could and promise better.
Love from your forgetful, not forgetting
Father.
Love,
Dad
98. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell
[London]
[October 26, 1970]
Dear Lizzie:
I have had letters from Blair and Bill, rather different letters. Bill’s was about Harriet and making my intentions absolutely clear.344 Blair was about Caroline’s coming to New York.345 From both/ I see I must be more open and certain. This was hard for me to do and seemed rough. I merely wrote out of my feelings, which was probably unkind and without purpose. I must say now that I definitely want a divorce whenever arrangements can be made. I don’t see why you should veto Caroline’s coming to New York. There wouldn’t be much sense in my coming if you and Harriet were in the Caribbean. Harriet should meet Caroline sometime then, though this would have to be awkward, she would feel less bewildered by the possibility of visiting us.
Oh dear, these sentences seem stiff and unreal to type out.
I’ve sent you a charming little present along with one to H.
Love,
Cal
99. Elizabeth Hardwick to Mary McCarthy
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
October 29, 1970
Dear Mary: No advertisement for Senator Goodell and I don’t suppose there will be one. One ad alone cost 8,000 and the Goodell people just don’t have it. We had, the Arts and Letters Committee had, a party ten days ago at someone’s town house to raise money but it didn’t do much good. Now the polls have Goodell trailing badly—and Buckley ahead by seven points two weeks in a row and the election almost here. I gave money for G., everyone did, and I suppose I will still vote for him although the Ottinger-Buckley business is very perturbing.346 An unusually miserable thought to think of New York with the first Conservative Party senator, and old Bill Buckley half out of his mind with “wit” and hysterical crowing. However, perhaps one should do when he can what he would like or think right for everyone to do. In that case I think it would be Goodell who has quite literally been purged by Nixon and Agnew. I’m having some people in for dinner on Nov. 3rd to watch the returns—one couldn’t go through it alone I guess … This is just a note since I have your contribution on my mind.… I have just written a short story of normal length, my first in over ten years. Golly, they are hard! as Randall J. would say in a high whine.347 Worst was to break the junkie habit of rushing through, sending it off to Bob and having it in print the next morning … Indeed I can’t see where this will find print since the possible places are so few. A gratuitous act, or so it will probably turn out to be although I hope not. Saw Edmund last night at the Epsteins. He has just finished a book on “Upstate”348 and was worried.
Shawn was reading it over the weekend but E. thought the N. Yorker most likely wouldn’t take it. He says he fears they are trying to change their “image.” Actually they have been advertising all over the place, even TV. And such peculiar unbeckoning ads they are.
I remember that I wrote very testily, or actually sadly, about Cal and Harriet. Someone got to him I suppose because he has been corresponding with her and will come Christmas—with Caroline—as a sort of honeymoon, I suppose reckon/, coupled with his visit to his daughter, the first it will be then in 9 months. I was annoyed when I heard Caroline was coming from Blair and wondered why Cal who has been writing very weirdly about this trip for weeks to me (“much trouble, but Christmas is the time of joy”) didn’t tell me/ and said I would vanish, but I changed my mind the next day and I don’t care at all. Cal is a terrible show-off and just couldn’t come home, see Harriet quietly, settle up with me in a few days and then go away. (I am assuming Caroline wants to do this unlikely middle-class thing of coming here with him, meeting his “child” bit…)[.] He is such a childish torturer—that little side look of malice he gives you—and so spooky, more and more. I feel glad to be out of the torment and I am not at all frightened or upset about his visit and look upon it as a step along the way to the ending of my business with him as soon as possible. Harriet is all right, too, really marvelous, not expecting too much, saying quite sensibly they will get on better when she is older. I think maybe that is true and if Caroline is really going to marry Cal, as his idea goes, I think the sooner Harriet can add the Citkowitzes to her life the better. The only trouble is that I don’t have any real confidence in Caroline—that isn’t what one has “in” her—as a step-mother!