I am very well. Spoke to Philip R. on the phone and I found him almost unintelligible. He is unbelievably eccentric, isn’t he? I told him Commentary was running in the next issue an entire article against the N. Y. Review,349 the culmination of their obsessions, or Podhoretz’s obsession. Philip grunted: Norman is Captain Ahab and Bob is Moby Dick!
Not a very interesting letter, but I just wanted to write to explain about the ad. I have done a bit of work for the Goodell campaign and Republicans are astonishing, just the office staff, the regular people. They are strangely ignorant, unimaginative, square. I must say I found it interesting, but—as we New Lefters say—“frustrating.”
All my love to you both
Lizzie
100. Robert Lowell to Mary McCarthy
[33 Pont Street, London SW 1]
November 2, 1970
Dearest Mary—
I’ve put off writing because I draw back from seeing what I am going to say in typed/. It’s a kind of decision which I haven’t yet talked about to anyone. It looks as I think/ I’ll end up by returning to Lizzie and Harriet. I’ve done great harm to everyone and bemused myself. To go on seriously toward marriage with Caroline against the grain, the circumstances, our characters etc. is more/ than can be got away with. We don’t think we can, and are in accord. Still—
I won’t go on much. I do find though that even for such a careless person as me one is cemented in habits beyond belief. I had to come to England and live with practically a new wife to learn/ my whole being is repetition of things once done. I don’t mean quite that. With time we build up an organism, an artifact, that is mysteriously complex, quite beyond our intelligence. You most350 have found that. Still, it seems nothing merely to know what one can do. As if that were ever enough, as if one ever did.
Well, I’ll see you on the sixth. Maybe we’ll see you. I love the idea of your naturalistic check-up in Rome. I’ve been writing furiously too. It’s too far from publication for me to be pierced/ with acute discontent, and good enough to engage grip/ the day. Dying to see you, and love to Jim and you. I’ve talked on the phone to Lizzie and I suppose know/ we can make up. I feel a little someone like a Russian/ who has lost his own fortune and his uncle’s at Baden Baden. Other OK, pardon all this.
Love,
Cal
* * *
P.S. Excuse the pencilling.
101. Robert Lowell to Miss Harriet Lowell
[Postcard: Joshua Reynolds—The Strawberry Girl, Wallace Collection]
[London]
[n.d. November? 1970]
Darling Harriet—
Here is a small girl who might take the little dog351 you sent me out for walks. I’ll do that with you or something as delightful. Sometimes life isn’t life without you and Mother. I’ll be back about two weeks before Christmas with an offensive British accent.
Love
Dad
102. Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Hardwick
33 Pont St., London SW 1
November 7, 1970
Dearest Lizzie:
I wonder if we couldn’t make it up? It’s hard to put this in a letter, and no doubt will be far harder in fact. I have thought this might be for about ten days now, and people have noticed, and thought I was more like my once self, what I must have been.
A cold way of putting it is that long burned-in and accepted habits never leave us. One can make out with the family he has long endured, which has a long time suffered him and his ways. Maybe you could take me back, though I have done great harm. Maybe now that the possibility is really possible, you will quite rightly draw back, happily rid of your weary burden.
I don’t know. I’ll be back around the fourteenth of December, so soon we can almost reach out hand[s] and touch it. If we should come together, there’s one hard problem, among many I would like you to consider. I don’t think I can very honorably drop my Essex appointment which lasts into March—more self-inflicted messiness and alteration than I can face in myself. That would mean I would have to return etc. Things have reached a kind of tolerable balance for me here, that will continue, I think, but not conceivably forever.
My book is out and has had gratifying, and more than that, reviews from Alvarez and Connolly in the Sunday papers, not like Benito.352
Dying to see you and Harriet,
Love,
Cal
103. Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop
33 Pont Street [London]
November 7, 1970
Dearest Elizabeth:
You are cheerfully grumpy about Harvard. You should see Essex. Queues for the only cafeterias, often no sitting space, long tan, narrow, uniform corridors, only manageable by eccentric numbers that go up to six figures—my room 603,113. It was built in the late thirties, the time of some sensational failure in architectural design, all asbestos-white without a red brick in sight.353 My students, minute classes, small to the point of insult, are polite and inaudible. They would make yours seem like roughs from Seattle. Still, I like it at [that], wake up to thank myself for being in England.
I know Atlas354 and Rizzi;355 Miss Rizzi wrote quite sensitive, low-keyed poems for me, then met Robert Bly and wrote a flaming, eloquent lead-article in the Crimson, rather decently denouncing me/. I lacked a feeling for large spaces—like your eastern seaboard students.356 I think your students will brighten up, at least you will find two or three people you like to talk to—maybe out of class, I found my best were older and not even enrolled often.
I think Lizzie and I may come back together. It’s impossible to give up my child and some one/ I’ve loved most of my life, in my life that gave me most of habits and limits. Now that I am far away and detached here, they all come back, a creature of habit, as if my body were only spine and ribwork. Still, I can’t think of America without shuddering. Have I grown allergic?
My book is just out with good reviews from Alvarez and Connolly, particularly from Alvarez. Too good maybe. I’ll see you I hope when I come back in December, around the 14th through Christmas, a trial trip.
All my love,
Cal
104. Mary McCarthy to Robert Lowell
141 rue de Rennes, Paris
November 8, 1970
Dearest Cal:
I can’t write much. I’m just back from New York. Heinrich is dead.357 He died a week ago yesterday—suddenly, of a heart attack; Hannah will be writing you. Having gone over, when we got the news, to be with her, I still feel somewhat dazed and numb. The funeral was Wednesday, very affecting and in a not altogether somber way; his students and colleagues talked about him so as to almost make you believe in immortality.
I don’t know what to say about your news. I saw Lizzie briefly while I was at Hannah’s. She seemed agitated by letters and calls she’d had from you. I don’t think she understood what they portended but feared more grief and torment at a time when she was finally in balance. Whether she will want you to come back now, I don’t know. She had so firmly closed her mind against entertaining this possibility as a hope that it may not be easy for her to open it again. The coincidence of Women’s Liberation with what she’s been through, over Caroline, has played, I’d guess, quite a role. But probably you sense more of her feelings than I can.
As for Caroline, I’d already come to the conclusion that it couldn’t work between you. I mean marriage. In fact, looking back, I’m astounded that I thought it could. Too much romantic faith in the power of the will for transcendence. Maybe what I think of as love can only transcend death and is not much good about life.
Anyway, however it comes out, I wish you will.358 And I count on seeing you the weekend that ends the 6th.
Much love,
Mary
* * *
P.S. I can’t make up my mind whether to tell Lizzie that I’ve heard from you or not. Jim too finds this a hard question to decide. Perhaps for the moment I won’t write her anything, though I feel she ought to know soon what is in your mind.
1
05. Robert Lowell to Mary McCarthy
[33 Pont Street, London]
November 15, 1970
Dearest Mary:
Heinrich’s death seemed on the horizon so long that one forgot. At least I did being out of touch. Poor Hannah! I suppose crossing bridges beforehand may make the final thing a little less jolting, less jolting anyway than the suicide of our friend though mostly his wife Adrienne/, Conrad. Friends dying comes now like increasing raindrops.
Thanks for your remarkably clear letter. You rather sharpen the horns of my dilemma. Everyone has vacillated, though I the worst.359 I hope you will write Lizzie. There’s nothing you can tell her that she doesn’t already know from me, but your sympathies and views would help. I think the jag that hit Caroline and me was whether to get married, she not wanting to and I not wanting to go on in perpetuum unmarried. Or maybe this was just the surface manifestation of some deeper unsurmountable gap. Pray God it all washes out.
My number here is 235-2270. Please let me know your plans. I hope we can do more or less as we intended to on your ghost visit last month. My love to you, hope your book is off. I almost have a new one, a small scale sequel to Notebook. It will probably be ages before it goes off to the publisher.
Love again to you both,
Cal
* * *
P.S. I have [been] puzzling on/ your mysterious sentence about Lizzie and Woman’s Lib. What’s that? Do you mean it’s in the air or something closer?
106. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell
33 Pont St.
November 16, 1970
Dearest Lizzie:
I didn’t write sooner because I didn’t want to go fly/ off into crossed letters.360 I will do all I can to make things work; I think we/ can,—we have after all for more years than I have the wits to count, tho all remains remembered. Perhaps everyone involved will get in the end what was most deeply and secretly desired. I’m no better than I was, unless it’s better to discover the hardness of old habits. I won’t put you through more.
I have been/ pouring out poems, and almost have a little book, in the same form as Notebook, but much smaller. I’ve even anticipated my landing in New York. You see I am back home.
I still don’t get what happened with Alf and Adrienne, there must be some crude fact. You don’t go off and leave all your children with someone going mad. Poor Adrienne!
I have a vague idea I knew what about “groupies,” it’s like some Greek or archaic English word, I once knew and forgot.361 I guess the new idiom is here to stay; it keeps seeping in in tiny trickles when I try to write. You and Harriet seem to have been having a week of pre-Thanksgivings. Give my derelict love to Sarah and Cot.362
My classes are small and quiet, the Poetry Writing rather retarded after Harvard, a good one in Shakespeare, where I have twice spent two hours reading one act of Antony and Cleopatra aloud. The college looks like Brandeis, if Brandeis had been built on a fiftieth the money, and with no Jews. The people are young and lively, most of my colleagues being just beyond graduate student age.
I think about you and Harriet. I am jealous. Let me into your circle again, but not to see the groupies.
Love,
Cal
107. Robert Lowell to Blair Clark
[33 Pont Street, London SW1]
November 21 [1970]
Dear Blair—
It must be like migraine getting stuck with all my affairs, from all sides. Here’s what’s going on in me. I am haunted by my family, and the letters I get. There seems to be such delicate misery. Lizzie’s letters veer from frantic affection to frantic abuse. Then somehow she and Harriet are fused as one in her mind. It’s not possible, but I get the impression they really are in Lizzie’s mind. It’s crazy, yet I can’t from a distance do anything about it, perhaps less on the spot.
The thing is I am really much perfectly/ happiery with Caroline. At first I was frightened of not being married—old feelings of being outlawed. But I see it doesn’t matter much. We can go on permanently as we are. We are permanent no matter what our status. Caroline has always been afraid of legal marriage. Not being married, somehow loosens the bond, man and woman’s mutual, self-killing desire to master the other. Then we might get married anyway when we knew we didn’t have to. I don’t yet know what will happen, but I increasingly fear the blood I’ll have to pay for what I have done, for being me. Anyway, I’ll be coming to you around the 14th alone.
I want to hear all about you, and your heart if you wish. Long deep talks.363
Love,
Cal
108. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell
33 Pont St.
November 28, 1970
Dearest Lizzie:
I’m back from reading at Cambridge, and tomorrow it’s a reading at the Mermaid, scene of Benito’s triumph.364 All went well enough at Cambridge and I was told I had a record small audience. Somehow it leaves one with a feeling of tarnish and fraudulence. Two lunches a breakfast and a dinner at various faculty tables and high tables—too much like St. Mark’s, too much like college. Still good conversation, warmth of a kind. Essex on the other hand is in great disgrace, a protest with bonfires, then the next day/ by accident, a long-prepared Daily Telegram365 attack on our leniency. The protest was what is talked of a[s] pitifully non-political: pot. Not much to arouse the demons, or amuse them.
I may have been short about Jack’s well-meant cable366—I was worried, unknown troubles for you in New York, and then I hate having friends tilt my hand. I have enough tangles now to occupy me for years, on top of my pills, a delicate matter to keep one from scumming up another. Nothing new though. Only new thing is I notice spreads in my teeth, rather like Mary’s before her patching.
Not much that might interest you. Most [of] the people I see wouldn’t even be names to you, my colleagues. Once [a] week I have lunch with Sidney, and come away with lines for poems. Poems at a great rate, even scribbling lines down during a dinner. I suppose I may have a book, a little notebook, ready by next fall. Then a new tune, a new meter, a new me. The last never, I guess[.] The surroundings here are not disappointing, I mean for the eye, but perhaps mostly humanly, the famous more mumbled and muffled pace.367 Well, it will be very soon. All my love to you and Harriet.
Love,
Cal
109. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell
33 Pont St., London, SW 1
November 30, [1970]
Dearest Lizzie:
A line before I set off for Essex. The Mermaid reading was as good as I could make it and went over. Somehow, it’s a show I can stage too easily. But why shouldn’t it give the satisfaction of a well-played tennis game? I don’t [know] what that would be, just a very occasional ace serve. I guess, reading gives more satisfaction than tennis. But who could face it daily, or weekly. I’m through for this year.
I still do nothing much but bury my indecisions in many many poems. I think I have ninety now and a tall house of draft and discard. I am very bad company because I am so removed. You won’t enjoy me. However I am coming to see you and dear Harriet, not Blair. So you’ll hear from me at once. If I’m not hung up in red tape. The Home Office still has my passport, and my bank account is an impenetrable mist. No, I’ll be there.
I thought you were better informed than I on my reviews, but later in the day, clippings came from Faber, the one new to me Elizabeth Jennings.368 She is a sad, touching person, rather like Claude-Edmonde in appearance and habits—but shy, poor and poetic.
I dread the Review circuit and the buzz of American politics. An American isn’t expected to follow/ issues. He can miss the papers for days without being pulled up and informed. But even for Englishmen, all’s mumbled and distant. Can’t see us as Mary and Bowden,369 even with my lack of engagement.
Love to both dear ones,
Cal
110. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell
33 Pont St., London SW 1
December 3, 1970
De
arest Lizzie—
My pay seems to be mostly old-age deductions, something that demands more optimism in me than in the government. I think I had 333 pounds a month, that is 666 pounds in all with another 333 pounds at the end of December, or more likely early in January. From this so far 191 pounds has been deducted with half as much again when I next receive my monthly pay. The whole salary is spread out over 12 months. I feel the government owes me money. Readings bring amounts like sixty dollars or unexpectedly nothing. In addition the Home Office still has my passport, necessary for acquiring a work certificate. A Mrs. McGlashan at Essex is trying to retrieve it for me[.]
I went to a great Vanderbilt game with Ben370; Caroline’s371 dachshund was lost; I think permanently, a tragedy Ben didn’t rise to, nor did Caroline rise to the dangers she had put Ben in by letting me drive him back to Clarksville. I remember Allen and Ben yelling when the girl band came on, “Get those women off the field.” O blessed old days before Woman’s Lib. I liked some of John’s poems in some British or Irish magazine; he had gotten rid of Henry, and good and tender things made up for show-off obscenities.372 Can’t believe it’s all bad; it isn’t. Folly to answer, even in a single sentence. I got a rather sour review from Denis Donoghue, who seems to think the book is about the breaking and final break up of our marriage.373 That’s not in the text. I wouldn’t trust Carruth too much, tho he has a gnarled integrity.374
I’ll be seeing people this weekend, Mary, Gaia,375 Francis Bacon and Sidney.
I’ll be with you both soon, if I can leave England.
Love to you both,
Cal
* * *
P.S. I was a little testy about politics last letter. I feel like someone naked under his raincoat—though I guess that’s always a girl376—coming back to be inspected.377 I think Bob Silvers and I have become too entangled to meet with shared joy.
The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979 Page 16