As I said, she does not imagine very much of Cal but I feel that I must make definite arrangements for at least a few days with him each year and I hope you won’t mind these brief and rare occasions. The June visit seems the only sensible time. She will be out of school then and waiting to go to Mexico, where she is going to spend the summer in a Spanish language camp. The only other time would be a week in late August, but she will just have come home from a very special summer, will be getting ready for school early in September; the pregnancy will [be] very advanced by then and it might be a little tiring for all of you. So, I will take for granted that June is agreeable. If necessary only a very few and brief meetings are required. We will just see how it works when she gets there, but I feel I must arrange the meeting. I frankly don’t know what else to do and this seemed the only way to manage.
Yours truly,
Elizabeth
“Green Sore” [The Burden 6. 5./], from “The Dolphin” manuscript, here, composed and revised between 1971 and January 1972.23
126. Robert Lowell to Miss Harriet Lowell24
80 Redcliffe Square, London SW 1[0]
March 14, 1971
Dearest Harriet—
It’s hell trying to talk easily on the transAtlantic phone, and we’re not the talkative types at best. Or maybe we are.
I don’t know whether Mother has told you what I am going to write. I want anyway to tell you myself and try and keep you from feeling lonely and hurt. Caroline and I are going to have a baby. It is already visible and will be born according to the doctor (God willing) on the ninth of October. There can’t ever be a second you in my heart, not even a second little girl, to say nothing of a boy.
You are always with me, you and mother. I want you to visit us whenever you wish and can. We’re not ogres or bears. I think you may find that you will love Caroline. She has never been harsh to her own girls. You may even take delight in having a step brother or sister; one so much younger she is almost of another generation. Talking British and having my face or something of me, of you.
I’ll see you around the sixth of May, when I’ll be returning from giving a talk against technocracy in Purdue Indiana. I know nothing about technocracy, but suspect it’s bad, and would not give the talk but for wanting to come to you both.
Dear Heart, give all my love to mother and to your self—alas, we can never give all. I try.
Love,
Dad
127. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell
80 Redcliffe Square, London SW 10
March 20, 1971
Dearest Lizzie:
Overjoyed that you intend to bring Harriet here in early June. I think coming alone would be hard and perhaps impossible for her. She will be long looked forward-to and embraced with warmth. So very much by me. There are many things, good weather, sights, countryside, my play etc. to make her stay happy. And I hope yours.
I am flying to Norway in a few hours. Meticulous letter from Per,25 all numbers: every plane schedule down to the minute, how many cronin I’ll be paid 20 minutes after arrival, how many after two days, how many students in each meeting, the seven poems of mine that have been read in Bergen, and a somewhat different seven in Oslo. Norway as I approach embarkation hour seems like Newfoundland, but I liked Newfoundland, they had never seen an American poet and came with tastes uncloyed.
I think it bold and generous of you to undertake the trip. I have a feeling that you will actually enjoy yourself. So will Harriet after we both get over the first stiff, shy minutes. I mean we all will. It’s good, I think, that I will see you on the fifth or sixth of May for a few days. I think we have all gotten through the narrows of the worst. I think this, and am not saying it in a mood of callous and shallow euphoria.
Love,
Cal
128. Adrienne Rich to Robert Lowell
333 CPW,26 NYC 10025, NY, USA
New York, 21 March 1971
Cal dear: I had thought of writing you for your birthday, but here it is almost three weeks later. In the meantime I’ve been to Ohio and seen Kenyon College at last and imagined, or tried to imagine, you and Peter27 and Randall frisking like young lambs on those green and unpolluted hills.28 They have girls there now, very attractive and intelligent-looking ones, who would have done you & Peter & Randall a lot of good.
I think of you often, with a sense of loss. Even when we didn’t see much of each other, you were part of New York for me, as you were part of Boston back in those distant days when you marveled at being forty and I was swamped with infants and wearing Lizzie’s cast-off maternity clothes and you and Elizabeth were the strongest link I had with the reality of poetry, of my world, as against the domesticities and professorialities of Cambridge. I often think of you, and her, as having flung me a lifeline in those days. Well, they were simpler times; now it feels that we all have to be lifelines to each other, if we’re to be anything.
I see a lot of Elizabeth, and love and admire her very much. Women are more interesting now than they’ve ever been, and even women like E. who were always interesting have become more subtle, more searching. So many of us through one thing or another—choice, divorce, suicide or death, chance of some kind—are living more autonomous lives, and it’s like a second youth, only with far more sense of direction, of one’s real needs and longings, as opposed to the heady confusion of first youth.—I have cycles of feeling swamped, still, with grief over Alf—not just over the manner of his death but the manner of his life recently—and with a kind of anger at him for walking out on a conversation which had grown difficult.29 But on the other hand I’m enjoying my life; there’s a kind of zest in it, even the difficulties, with concerns about money, the children, etc. My book will be out in April and I’ll send you a copy. I’m writing again, after a nearly six-months’ total silence. No, longer.
Your piece on Stanley30 was out today and by all accounts has made him very happy. I thought it was lovely on Stanley but strange on poetry. I don’t know what you really mean by obscure poetry;31 you talk as if obscurity were a trick one could pick up and lay down, a matter of choice. I think it goes to the core of where one is, what one is able to say and what one is only able to dream. Some poems are closer to letters and others to dreams. A letter is intended for someone else primarily, a dream is first of all for the dreamer, but both kinds of poem have their place, and I love best the mixture of the two.
I know from Elizabeth that you are going to be a father again, and I wonder why—having children must be a profound thing if it’s anything, and right now in history it is a strange thing to do, even though very common. Men & women are having such a hard time with the intense fragility of their own relationship that adding a complication seems foolhardy, except perhaps for the very young, who don’t know what it is like.32
Ted Hughes is here, being hailed as a kind of second Shakespeare. I haven’t read CROW,33 as Ah don’t know. I’m interested in a poetry of the future, that will be ahead of where my sensibility can take me unaided. This poetry would have to concern itself with the breakdown of language and the breakdown of sex, with politics in its most extreme sense, now & then I read a poem that seems to be doing it, but not many. Of course, I’m trying to write a few.
I realize that I don’t have an address for you, so I’ll send this to Essex. I’d love to hear from you. I think of you with a warring affection—but the affection is true.
Adrienne.
129. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell34
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
March 21, 1971
Dear Cal: Just a note to say Harriet and I are going off at noon on Saturday the 27th and will not be back until April 7th. The Adventure Inn, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina … a place Walker Percy told me about, when I happened to meet him. We fly to Savannah and during our time will go to Charlestown, S.C. I am very tired. I have been doing all this writing day and night to make a living and I begin to feel like Dwight McDonald, except that he doesn’t
do it anymore and has sort of disappeared into various colleges. I made money last week for the trip, but our finances here are acute—so, man, be prepared in May for some shocks from the tax man and from the lawyer I am seeing on Wednesday, who goes by the name of Mrs. Gentleman! Tuition, rent, clothes, dentist, everything has gone up.
Your review of Stanley appeared today and I will say as someone said about Christianity: “Important, if true.”35.… Very Calish, nice, delicious writing, but I have read Stanley’s book twice and thought it very, very thin and disappointing. Your part of the review is lovely, very good and special.
Hope you sent Harriet some cards from Norway Per-Laand!/ She will send you some poor nigger scenes …36 She is planning to take movies, with the famous camera. Harriet is in great form, looks wonderful, and is very happy about Mexico. I’m very happy with her; she is very gay, alive and busy … I hope you get the NY Review. I think my piece on Rosmersholm is the best of the three.37 Had a letter from Esther Brooks and get news of you from various people who have seen you, also from newspapers who list you along with movie stars as having abandoned the ship here. Well, perhaps you are all wise. I don’t know. It still seems to me just as it always was and the passing scene, as you know to your sorrow, means a lot to me.… Adrienne’s book is out, very good I think, especially “Shooting Script.”38 I had dinner the other night with, of all people, Richard Howard. He gave a brilliant lecture at Barnard that I attended, and I don’t think it was my lack of knowledge that made it seem better than it might have been had it been about English matters. (French criticism was the subject.)
I am playing the Dvořák Cello Concerto with Rostropovich39 and finding, such is the tyranny of taste, that I love for the moment rather second string romantic things. It’s like the revival of old forties show tunes, I guess.
I hope Prometheus is the great, splendid success it deserves to be.40 It’s a wonderful, wonderful play—with some of your greatest speeches in it. I understand Irene and Kenneth41 are both in [the] cast and so I can’t imagine you won’t be filled with glory. I hope so. This is our wish of hope, since we don’t know exactly when it is coming on … Also Harriet has a March 1st birthday present for you, held back by the strike and saved for your visit here.
Dearest, do take care. Nothing is worth destroying yourself.42 You have worked hard, led a good life and you have the right to nothing I’m afraid. But it is always nice when there is not justice but good luck and you have happiness and what you want. I don’t entirely wish you well, far from it, of course.43 But I still feel less angry with you than with those who have used you for their own childish, destructive purposes. Write to Harriet. That is very easy, just nothing, and God will curse you if you do wrong when it is easy to do right. He may just curse you anyway if He feels like it!/
Love, darling,/
Elizabeth
* * *
Heredity! Harriet’s story for school is a mad thing about a fish named Gabino (name of Spanish teacher) who likes to live in the sink. “Aside from an occasional egg on the head and bacon behind my fin and corn-pudding on my tail, life was very calm and nice.” Who does that remind you of?
130. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
March 22, 1971
Dear Cal: Don’t you hate it when letters cross? I had written you last night because Harriet and I had been talking about you and I just wanted you to know we were thinking of you. It was H. who read out that fantastic bit about the sink-fish and said, “Isn’t it just like Daddy?” Now today your sweet letter to her arrived. It took a week!/ By now you know that I had told her even before we spoke on the phone over a week ago. And I had made, with her, the plans I wrote Caroline about. We don’t talk about the baby, but we do say, “I’ll need the raincoat for England,” and that sort of thing. I will be on a program about reviewing at the American Embassy. It doesn’t pay my way, but it will give me something of an honorarium and a few days[’] room and board. We won’t stay long, but I think it must be.
What a year this has been. We will be taking off now as we took off with you last year for Italy, but this time alone and to S. Carolina. Harriet seems quite well and I think she will be all right if she doesn’t feel that you don’t care about her. I have tried to take the most optimistic attitude possible with her and while it is awful not to have a father, one who is around a little at least, I think we will all manage. When I told her you would be coming to Harvard a year and a half from now, she said, “Oh, good, then I’ll get to see him!”
Much love, dearest. We will work things out. Did you get the money from Blair, the bank, the NYTimes? May God keep you, now and for a long time. Forever is only for the world or for Him, isn’t it.
Lizzie
* * *
We look forward to May 6th. Dine here with us that night. How eager we are to see the dearest soul in the world./
131. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell
80 Redcliffe Sq., London SW 10
March 29, [1971]
Dearest Lizzie***
Letters are very slow, but this and an earlier one44 (if you haven’t got it) will be waiting when you return. I almost wept over yours. Ah we must keep it so. Our time on this earth is so poignantly short. Two additional lives would be too little to cleanse my character, to go the rounds of amends.
In Norway, someone came up to me and said that your Hedda piece had solved the problem they had been debating for a hundred years. It was at a party, and I never could discover what problem. Hedda’s soul nature, good and evil? I guess there was more.
Reed Whittemore’s letter seemed strained, pushed by something unexpressed. A nasty instance, or whatever he said my review was. I answered cordially, I think.45 Miss van Duyn writes witty and intelligent reviews/, I guess her verse is witty and intelligent. She must be better than Corso, but I haven’t read him for years.46
A haunting letter from Adrienne. Woman seems to have ousted the blacks. I thought of a made-up folk saying, A man whose profession is finding needles in haystacks will soon see them everywhere except in pin-cushions. I don’t know who this applies to.
Can I say that Caroline’s children are already planning things for Harriet? Ones a little below her age perhaps like the Hyde Park maze. She is warmly awaited.
Oh dear, Scandinavia. Per is improved by [h]is homeground, warmth under the ice. Norway is a country country, a bit of Oregon, Colorado and Vermont. Bergen partly made of wood and cliff-hung is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve seen. Oslo is one of ours, Boston in the setting of Portland. Then Copenhagen, and Amsterdam, but I was tired and knew no one, and had recommendations to people withdrawn by flu. My hotel was like a Volkswagen, efficient, uncomfortable, cheap and uncomfortablesmall/. My shower was a hole in the ceiling separated by a movable board from the basin but not from the toilet. At breakfast, a cheerful middleclass man in spectacles chanted Danish hymns.
I think you are heroic to make the trip to London. It’s you who is the dearest soul that ever breathed. Or is it Harriet. Again my eyes water. All must be for the best.
Love,
Cal
132. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Adrienne Conrad47
80 Redcliffe Sq., London SW 10
March 29, 1971
Dearest Adrienne:
How lovely to hear from you at the beginning of my 54th year of grace and pardon. I haven’t read my Stanley piece in print and forget exactly what I wrote about obscurity. I think I was putting in [a] plug for the difficult poetry I grew wise and confused on in the thirties. I don’t think obscurity can be put on like an overcoat, any more than the style of the Rape of the Lock48 can be. Still there’s always an effort of will whose other name is choice/. I’m uncertain what you mean by dream, but I am sure you don’t mean sleep walking. The poetry of the future? I’m not sure I have read any, then again I think I’ve read a lot—Rimbaud, Othello, wherever poetry is straining to its uttermost. Most art, even the best hardens
to a convention, yet the very best can’t be imitated by the future, no second Moby Dick,49 and hundreds more.
Women? Randall and Peter and I found them even in our Kenyon exile, we were all more or less engaged. I know too much about women to be entangled into an argument. We are having a child because we stumbled into it and then found we dearly wanted one, and had a moral horror of abortion—I mean for ourselves, not for others. We feel a calm and awe. I don’t think you know what you are talking about. Why shouldn’t our having a child be profound? The times are difficult, almost impossible today, yesterday, always. If one lived in East Pakistan, Biaffra either[,] Vietnam. Character and private conditions may make having children fearful, but I don’t believe/ the times make it very harder/ for anyone we know.
The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979 Page 18