Can’t wait to get Birds and to see, whole and plain, you and Jim. I look forward to the summer because of you two enormously—and of course I like Castine itself, and wish it were nearer. Much, much love
Lizzie
142. Robert Lowell to Miss Harriet Lowell
80 Redcliffe Sq., [London SW 1]
May 4, 1971
Dear Little Harriet—
Little, for so I think of you through all the years since the day when I carried you a limp almost boneless lump from the maternity hospital to Aunt Sarah’s car and the long times when I could carry you a squat-nosed snubbles refusing to walk home from our walks in Central Park. Now you are not small at all, though I think I can call you young. It breaks my heart that you are so far away so hard to get to. Sometimes when I am thinking a little absentmindedly and sadly, it seems almost as though I were a clay statue and part of my side had dropped at my feet like a lump/. My dearest joy is picturing how you might someday, sooner or later, spend a long time with us. You wouldn’t be sorry. You could remind me that I am a great American moral leader, and not a reactionary sybarite.
How was the Washington Demo? Will the War ever end? It’s now dragging toward the end of its second ten years. How will things be when you enter college, if you so choose? Quieter? Unhappier? Or maybe better? I can’t see ahead.
Happier things. I’ve been to see two performing dolphins, Baby and Brandy, in a tank on Oxford St. They can jump twenty feet, bat a ball back to their trainer, pretend to cry for a fish. Smart as Sumner, bigger-brained than man and much more peaceful and humorous. It’s like summer outside today. Glorious, though for some time I’ve been troubled with a low virus. Little shivers. I am taking antibiotics, and it will go. It’s mainly why I decided not to fly to America. We have many pets. A hideous large white rabbit, Snowdrop, a beautiful small black rabbit, Flopsy, a tiny gerbil named Gertrude Buckman, two kittens. So, a zoo. Wish I had you with me to talk to and laugh with. Give Nicole my love, and most of all Mother.
Love,
Dad
143. Robert Lowell to Miss Harriet Lowell
[80 Redcliffe Sq., London SW 10]
May 5, 1971
Dearest Harriet:
I have been thinking all day about writing you since getting your wonderful postcard. I could perhaps zip over to New York before you fly to Mexico, but it is difficult. My play is coming out on the twenty-fourth of June, and Jonathan Miller who is directing it has come down with chickenpox (!) and won’t be/ able to go to the first four or five rehearsals. I can hardly skip the opening night. The last days in June mightn’t be a very good time for me/ to drop on your excited household, marshalled for your trip. This isn’t the best time to leave Caroline who is five months pregnant but looks nine. Still? Another time is September, when you would have more leisure, but this is even closer to the birth of our child.
Could you come here at any time, now or September before school? We would so love having you, and could promise an unrushed varied stay for you—unplagued with churches and heavy sights. The children aged ten, seven and five await your coming like Elvis Presley. The oldest, Natalya, particularly, who treats her youngest sister with the same stern smiles that you gave Angela, the marvelous fat little Spanish girl who stayed with us in Castine. How I would love to see you!
Our two cats, Tabby and Tiger, sisters, have nervous troubles when either is in the room with the other, but each sends her love to Charles, so sure she would be his favorite.
(If you came here in June, I am sure you’d enjoy seeing my Prometheus, a play in which a man is tied to a rock and talks/ for two hours.)
You know I am a very unresponsive, humorless, conventional man, seldom giving voice to my emotions, so you can guess what it costs me to tell you I more or less wept with joy reading your card. It was at the end of a long day’s journey home from Italy—to/ your letter the one letter in a pile of complimentary books, bills, requests to do things I didn’t want to do—to Tabby and Tiger too stupid even to/ talk like Sumner at his most unwilling. Dear Heart, my Love,
Dad
* * *
P.S. This is the longest letter I’ve written on this kind of paper.80
144. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell
[80 Redcliffe Sq., London SW 10]
May 6, [1971]
Dearest Lizzie:
Radiant report from Stephen on you and Harriet. Or rather he found you both radiant. Nothing could be more consoling to me. The air is full of returning Englishmen and American visitors. Yesterday I heard Poirier in a labored perverse lecture blast Saul Bellow at the embassy. I don’t think going to the embassy would have made your trip, a small familiar audience of the local critics. I’m doing something in Rome at the end of the month, some sort of Fulbright symposium. I’ll speak on American poetry of the sixties. I won’t try to cover it and will just read people I like, such as Wallace Stevens, Randall etc. It pays planefare and lodging, nothing—but the trip will be fun and I’ll take my long planned trip with Rolando81 to Ravenna and Urbino.
I had a letter from Bob Giroux about my royalties etc. I think I will for the moment put them in a savings account but in my name alone. If you are desperate I can give you something. We aren’t flush and the child brings on all kinds of expenses. By the way, is there some way of getting the trust fund to pay for the hospital. I seem to still owe Faber over a thousand pounds, which means I won’t get a cent of royalties from them during my lifetime. The Blue Cross payed, I think, less than a third. And then what can we do about the manuscript? I delay because I hate the idea of people pawing through it. The other day I got a letter from a guy at Harvard writing a doctors on Ted Roethke. He enclosed three of my letters to Ted that I forgot having written82—also requested that I return them in the next mail.
Not much news. I’m glad to be done with teaching for a spell. Also am throwing off a low virus. Also have a young man who trout fishes eagerly and badly.83
One grows lazy with deep spring. I read the Scarlet Letter trying to anticipate your comment, but failed[.]84 Loved the book as much as ever. He invented New England.
Hope you and Harriet weren’t on the second and rougher demo.85 I am going to my first woman’s Lib on Sunday. Kate Millett and Sonia co-chairmen!86
Love,
Cal
145. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell
[80 Redcliffe Square, London SW 10]
[May 12, 1971]
Dearest Lizzie—
Such good reports of you and Harriet. Both Jonathan and Stephen used the word radiant of Harriet, and reported you were in fine confident spirits, electric. I’m sorry to have sent you that fussy letter about money. I really can’t make out on my Essex salary. At our age it’s hard to live on nothing, taxis etc. I think the only article of clothing I’ve bought in a year is an overcoat. If you need money at any time from the Farrar royalties I’ll give it [to] you. I am keeping the fourteen thousand as a reserve. I admit this sounds like an anticlimax to my money groans, but I think you can understand the mental relief just having it gives me.
Rather homesick for America now in the heavy summer weather, Americans arriving like summer birds, returning Englishmen. I had some sort of virus without fever that made my head and bones ache. The antibiotic cure of course brought a slight nausea and depression. Otherwise all is well. I’ll go to Rome at the end of May. Then my play comes out on the 24th of June. I’ve been through it three times, brisking it up, making Zeus a little more like God or nature and less like a gestapo boss. Elizabeth Bishop is coming here I think in the second week of June. I don’t know how she has taken the boy’s suicide and dread knowing. I think I’ll spend the summer revising my imitations.87 I made two or three much better I thought by being more quiet and accurate. I am tired by so much original writing, almost four years without stop.
I think of you constantly and long in a way for America, but not just a hurried glimpse. Maybe next Christmas would be best. Or I could dash over in Septemb
er. I am beginning to get habituated to being here, really quite a job but it brings peace. I think a writer never for long feels he has done well. One of the most exciting things here has been Borges’ visit. I’ve had two nights more or less alone with him, talking about Tennyson, James and Kipling, and almost wept when he talked “without pity” to an audience about his blindness.88
I started this letter meaning to talk only about missing you, but that though true would be boring. I guess all is well as far as mortality and one’s large failings allow. Jealous of you and everyone else seeing Harriet.
Love,
Cal
146. Robert Lowell to Miss Harriet Lowell
[Postcard of two dolphins]
[London]
[May 17, 1971]
Dearest Harriet—
Here are two friends, Baby and Brandy. They can jump 20 feet and laugh at things humans don’t even know are funny. I miss you too much!
Love,
Dad
147. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
May 19, 1971
Dearest Cal: Hot summer, lovely day. I’m back from a long period with the tax man, eating a pineapple yogurt (Mary McC. could hardly forgive me) and still trembling because these tax things make me very, very nervous. Now: here is the situation. Please write immediately to Bob Giroux asking them to send me $3,750.00
With that you will be paid up on Federal, State and New York City taxes for 1971. You can then ask them to send you the rest of what they are holding and that will give you some thousands. My heart bleeds that you haven’t any clothes, and I worry foolishly. Then you should have another 7,000 from F, S & G,/ or so in the fall, around Sept. which is all yours and all the money from Janet Roberts’ office89 is yours and all the tax will have been paid. (Did I tell you before that the money from the State Street Trust, the $5400 was to pay only the capital gains on what we got from it, not the other taxes.) Our taxes are less this year because I overpaid last year, driving myself almost out of my mind. I hope you understand, dear. I mean what I am saying about the taxes. You are only paying on American money that is yours for your private, single use. I know it is hard to realize, but at the tax man’s this morning it turned out that with your English earnings you have exactly the same amount of money—in total—that I have. Our American bracket is 50% and so I pay just as much tax here as you pay to Essex. I just want you to know that and I am paying all the rent, all the tuition, clothes, doctors, vacations, everything, for your child. I don’t want any more money, but I feel you don’t realize this. Actually you will now be much better off than you have been … I am glad for you, really. The reason you are paying tax/ now is that we have to pay in advance, quarterly, or be penalized. I thought it best just to get the whole thing now instead of nagging you for it again in Sept. and next Jan.… This is for a 1971 joint return, which is cheaper I assure you by far, and seems the best thing at the moment. Please send the letter to Bob immediately. I have to finish off everything soon.
Dear Mary has been getting bad reviews. I read the book with enough pleasure. There is nothing cheap or commercial or strained about it and if it isn’t a “good novel” that doesn’t seem altogether unusual since few write good novels. She is coming to Maine in July and Hannah will be there in August. I will be there off and on.
I am so relieved to have the tax thing clear in my mind. I have written something for Vogue saying everything I know I have learned from books and from worry.90 But what a price the latter is. I would like to sail the Greek islands today or do something daring. Oh, to be young and free as we once were. But still I like being what I am, at least today, unwillingly liberated, going to a concert this evening, thinking of you, still with pain, but believing it will grow less some day. Goodbye, my dear one.
Lizzie
* * *
Did Janet Roberts reach you?/
* * *
If you sell your papers, get it all cleared up this year, but start payment in 72 because of Capital gains (agency account) this year already having sent us soaring. That is a suggestion. Nat Hoffman91 said he thought Véra Nabokov was the world’s greatest tax expert, but he saw that I was second only because of having far less money to deal with!/
148. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell
[80 Redcliffe Square, London SW 10]
May 20, 1971
Dearest Lizzie:
Thanks for writing Harvard. I’ll wait till I hear from Stonybrook before deciding. The protection given such collections seems rather vague. A few weeks ago I got a letter from a young man writing a PHD on Roethke. He enclosed zerox’s92 of three of my letters to Ted, and asked me to mail them back to him at once, with an OK for quoting them. The letters mostly critical, had things about breakdowns.93 I had so forgotten them, they seemed like someone else’s. I don’t want mine open during my lifetime.
Your letter to Harvard made me very sad,94 more than your letters to me. An air of aristocratic poignance and distance. I can understand your not wanting your letters mingled with the pile, but if you’d like to, & take that part of the money, or more, do. I don’t think my early notebooks are more interesting. Please don’t wish to erase our long dear years from the blackboard.
I go to Italy Sunday for my Fulbright conference. It feels like our old “CIA” days.95 Americans come. I had an evening with Hannah and another tonight at the Spenders. It will be pleasant for you to have her in Maine. Quite a different presence than Sonia.
Please tell me about Harriet, if you are in the mood. I am. Everyone says she is radiant, and that you are writing like Dreiser.
Love to you both,
Dad
149. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell
[80 Redcliffe Sq., London SW 10]
May 22, 1971
Dearest Lizzie:
I am falling in love with these one page stamped air mail letters.96 Now that I’ve almost mastered the mechanics, they are so easy.
I’ve written Bob about the 3750 dollars. You describe my finances of course accurately, more than I could. Whenever you think I can afford it, have some of my money. I have a man here named Henshaw supposed to be even better than Vera Stravinsky. He manages William Burroughs, and can deduct money for shoes and penknives.
O to be young! I was reading a review by Pritchett of the Magny dinners.97 The people were young when they began, and ten years later dead or very old. I’ve been seeing the old lately. Two delightful almost alone evenings with Borges. A long afternoon in the hospital with David Jones. Hannah has been here and seems on the verge of old and frail. Oh dear. Life is much too short.
I yearn for your letters, and hope you won’t give up the habit. I have always prayed I were two people (one soul) one here, one with you.
I rather dread Mary’s book. Hannah feels it’s a new sympathetic Mary. She is a lovely person, or a “corker” as David Jones said about Shakespeare. Some of the reviews of her Essays were venomous. I’ve only seen one of birds, in Newsweek, I think, not venomous, but disheartening.98
Something that will half-amuse you—Allen wrote me volunteering as a godfather. I miss you always to joke with, reason with, unreason with. Do you think you could dictate a postcard to me from Harriet? I’ve a notice to wire her in my datebook.
Love,
Dad
* * *
You’re writing like the wind. Lovely. I’m written dry, after about four non-stop years. Or is it ten? Now nothing, except maybe translation.
150. Adrienne Rich to Robert Lowell
W. Barnet. Vt.
June 17 [1971]
Dear Cal, I feel we are losing touch with each other, which I don’t want. Perhaps part of the trouble is that the events of my own life in the past 4 or 5 years have made me very anti-romantic, and I feel a kind of romanticism in your recent decisions, a kind of sexual romanticism with which it is very hard for me to feel sympathy. I guess I could have written nothing or written only about
“ideas” etc but I feel we would then be completely out of touch. Also my affection and admiration for Elizabeth make it difficult to be debonair about something which—however good for her it may ultimately be—has made her suffer.
Still, I really do care about you—we have had a long friendship with many problematical & mysterious aspects but one which I would not surrender easily to indifference or misunderstanding. There is a certain depth in simply having cared about someone’s existence for a number of years.
I’m in Vermont now, with the kids & 2 of their friends & a former Columbia student of mine who has become a kind of brother to us all. It’s very beautiful here, lush & green & still. It was painful coming back the 1st time but the pain has drained away & we are all terribly glad to have this house. Last winter, thinking I wouldn’t want to be here all summer, I rented it for July & August, now I am almost sorry. But we are going to the West Coast for July and part of August. I’ve rented an apt. in San Francisco for July & in August we’ll drive or bus down the coast to L.A. where I have old friends.
The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979 Page 20