The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979

by Elizabeth Hardwick

  (Don’t be alarmed. I’m not talking about the whole poem—just one aspect of it.)

  Here is a quotation from dear little Hardy that I copied out years ago—long before DOLPHIN, or even the Notebooks, were thought of. It’s from a letter written in 1911, referring to “an abuse which was said to have occurred—that of publishing details of a lately deceased man’s life under the guise of a novel, with assurances of truth scattered in the newspapers.” (Not exactly the same situation as DOLPHIN, but fairly close.)

  “What should certainly be protested against, in cases where there is no authorization, is the mixing of fact and fiction in unknown proportions. Infinite mischief would lie in that. If any statements in the dress of fiction are covertly hinted to be fact, all must be fact, and nothing else but fact, for obvious reasons. The power of getting lies believed about people through that channel after they are dead, by stirring in a few truths, is a horror to contemplate.”231

  I’m sure my point is only too plain … Lizzie is not dead, etc.—but there is a “mixture of fact & fiction,” and you have changed her letters. That is “infinite mischief,” I think. The first one, here, is so shocking—well, I don’t know what to say.232 And here233 … and a few after that. One can use one’s life as material—one does, anyway—but these letters—aren’t you violating a trust? IF you were given permission—IF you hadn’t changed them … etc. But art just isn’t worth that much. I keep remembering Hopkins’ marvelous letter to Bridges about the idea of a “gentleman” being the highest thing ever conceived—higher than a “Christian” even, certainly than a poet.234 It is not being “gentle” to use personal, tragic, anguished letters that way—it’s cruel.

  I feel fairly sure that what I’m saying (so badly) won’t influence you very much; you’ll feel sad that I feel this way, but go on with your work & publication just the same. I also think that the thing could be done, somehow—the letters used and the conflict presented as forcefully, or almost, without changing them, or loading the dice so against E. but you’re a good enough poet to write anything—get around anything—after all—/ It would mean a great deal of work, of course—and perhaps you feel it is impossible, that they must stay as written. It makes me feel perfectly awful, to tell the truth—I feel sick for you. I don’t want you to appear in that light, to anyone—E, C,—me—your public! And most of all, not to yourself.

  I wish I had here another quotation—James wrote a marvelous letter to someone about a roman à clef by Vernon Lee—but I can’t find it without going to the bowels of Widener, I suppose … His feelings on the subject were much stronger than mine, even.235 In general, I deplore the “confessional”—however, when you wrote LIFE STUDIES perhaps it was a necessary movement, and it helped make poetry more real, fresh and immediate. But now—ye gods—anything goes, and I am so sick of poems about the students’ mothers & fathers and sex-lives and so on. All that can be done—but at the same time one surely should have a feeling that one can trust the writer—not to distort, tell lies, etc.

  The letters, as you have used them, present fearful problems: what’s true, what isn’t; how one can bear to witness such suffering and yet not know how much of it one needn’t suffer with, how much has been “made up,” and so on.

  I don’t give a damn what someone like Mailer writes about his wives & marriages [—] I just hate the level we seem to live and think and feel on at present—but I DO give a damn what you write! (Or Dickey or Mary…!) They don’t count, in the long run. This counts and I can’t bear to have anything you write tell—perhaps—what we’re really like in 1972 … perhaps it’s as simple as that. But are we? Well—I mustn’t ramble on any more. I’ve thought about it all I can and can’t reach any more lucid conclusions, I’m afraid.

  Now the absurd. Will you do me a great favor and tell me how much you earned for a half-term, or one term I guess it is, when you left Harvard? They have asked me to come back—when I was so sick I didn’t think it through very well—for the $10,000. I got last year, & last fall, and a “slight raise.” (This may be $500. I learned from Mr. Blumfield.236) Of course I shd. have insisted on some sort of definite contract then and there but I didn’t even think of it until later. I have rented this place for a year and another year—but I must plan ahead and I am getting fearfully old and have to think of what I’m going to do in the future years, where I’m going to live, etc. At present I’m afraid even to get a cold because I have no hospital protection—thank god I did have when I was sick. The Woman’s outfit—whatever it is here—has been after me, too—asking me if I am getting the same salary that you got—and I don’t know. This sounds very crass—but it’s true I could earn more at other places—but prefer to stay here if I can … but must have some sort of definite contract, obviously. Forgive my sordidness (as Marianne wd. call it).

  I had a St. Patrick’s Day dinner for Bill—a few days late—and Octavio Paz, etc—very nice. We dine off the ping-pong table … Now I have to go to the dentist and I’ll send this without thinking. Otherwise I’ll never send it.

  DOLPHIN is marvelous—no doubt about that—I’ll write you all the things I like sometime!—I hope all goes well with you, and Caroline, and the little daughters, and the infant son—

  With much love,

  Elizabeth

  [Enclosed:]

  (Later—this is all pretty silly. The only good point is on page 2.)

  1.  These will be very petty comments—but things that held me up a bit when reading or possibly one or two small mistakes—Frank & I have argued a lot about most of them!

  p.6. “machismo” is accurate for the peacock,237 of course—but it is such an over-worked word at present … a fad-word, here, at least. I thought it useful when I 1st learned it, in Brazil, about 20 yrs ago; right now I can’t bear it.

  p.10. 2. I find the lion (Torcello. I remember it, too) confusing, with C’s poodle (that little white dog?) in the Carpaccio, in Venice.—and can’t make out which one is in the snapshot (possibly). I don’t think you can mean “tealeaf” color which would be almost black after all238—or is just “strongtea color” implied? I’m fiddling & quibbling—but I am so fond of the images in this one I want to get them right—

  p.12. 1. “count”—must mean realize? or “are worth”?—no, “realize”? or both (as F wd. say, because he loves ambiguities)239?

  p.13. 3. “no friend to write to…”240 Oh dear, Cal! The poem being remarkable for its carefulness about the emotions, and its courage, etc.—I can’t quite see this—

  4. “thump”—I wonder if C likes this … but because of carpeted maybe the thumps are all right …241

  p[.]14—“vibrance”? I think you made it up—but suppose it works all right—242

  15. 1. I’d like a comma, after cows I think—because I tend to see the “huddle” of cows & leaves all together—one lump—but maybe I’m supposed to?243 Not just the cows under the autumn-leaved tree or trees?

  17. the “his” in the last line … one has to think & think & think—and then the genders don’t seem to come out right …244

  23. 5. (Mermaid) I can’t bear “grapple in the aspic of your flesh”245—Frank & I have argued at length about this … It’s supposed to be violent and jealousy is a hideous emotion, etc.—but aspic is a cold jelly—all right—but “grapple in” well, it is supposed to be horrible, too, perhaps. Frank is so totally bewitched that he even argued for an ambiguity—“aspic” suggesting also Cleopatra’s colloquial word for “asp.” Well, I pointed out to him that this isn’t possible—an “ambiguity” has to work equally well, or at least work, both ways … and you can’t “grapple in” a tiny black snake, but I couldn’t convince him.246 Perhaps I’m just prejudiced from the feminine point of view, having made eggs in aspic, etc etc.—I feel sure you’ll never change this, but it does make me feel sick.

  31. I am pretty sure it’s Ernest Thompson Seton—he used to be my favorite author. (I saw “Rolf in the Woods” at the Coop—so I’ll check on it.)
247

  33. “thirty thousand”—(Frank says it was originally forty…)248 This is the sum Fitzgerald needed annually, I remember.249 But oh dear, it reminds me of that unfortunate remark of Mary’s in an interview a few years back “Of course we’re all much richer now.”250 Well, many of us aren’t and I feel such sums not only tell against the writer of the letter but wd. be held against you.— Of course in time they’ll probably seem absurdly small, too, but they don’t now— But perhaps it is meant just to tell against the correspondent … it certainly does, to me, anyway. But it gives the sonnet—so moving otherwise—a sort of Elizabeth-Taylor-whine air …

  39. Really palate?251 I always thought that meant the small piece of flesh that hangs downaway at the back of the throat—the OED says it can be the “roof = etc of the mouth” so maybe it’s all right—252

  Somewhere—I can’t find it right now—you wrote “with my fresh wife”—and that seemed just too much, somehow—the word “fresh,” again, had a sort of Hollywood or Keith Botsford feeling that I’m sure you didn’t intend—you’ve avoided it almost completely.253

  2.  Well, I could go on, of course. Most of these are trivialities & some I forgot to mark as I read through the book—many times, now. You know I am quite fiendish about trivialities, however … But right now they don’t seem worth it. I am having trouble trying to decide how to divide this letter, but I think I’ll put all my technical remarks on these pages. This is the one big criticism I’d make:

  As far as the story goes—of course you haven’t stuck exactly to the facts, & didn’t have to. But starting about here, I find things a little confusing. here is titled LEAVING AMERICA FOR ENGLAND—obviously, about the idea of that. Then 47, FLIGHT TO NEW YORK. (I wonder if “Flight” is the right word here? (even if you do fly.) Then New York, and Christmas. “swims the true shark, the shadow of departure.”254 That’s all about that. (The N Y poems in themselves are wonderful…) (Can the line about the “play about the fall of Japan” possibly be true.?!)255 But after the “shadow of departure” comes BURDEN—and the baby is on the way. This seems to me a bit too sudden—there is no actual return to England—and the word BURDEN and then the question “Have we got a child?” sounds almost a bit Victorian—melodramatic.256 This is the only place where the “plot” seems awkward to me, and I can fill it in of course—I think it might baffle most readers—

  The change, decision, or whatever happens between here & here seems too sudden—after the prolongation of all the first sections, the agonies of indecision, etc.—(wonderful atmosphere of life’s stalling ways…)257

  You’ve left out E’s trip to London?—that’s not needed perhaps for the plot—but it might help soften your telling of it?—but I somehow think you need to get yourself back to England before the baby appears like that. (Frank took violent exception to the word bastard, I don’t know why—I think it’s a good old word and even find it appealing & touching. He must have worse associations with it than I have.)

  “From my Wife” and “Old Snapshot and Carpaccio” [The Farther Shore 1 and 2], “The Dolphin” manuscript, here; composed and revised between 1970 and January 1972.258

  203. Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop

  [Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent]

  March 28, 1972

  Dearest Elizabeth—

  Let me write you right away … thoughtlessly, casually, my first scattered impressions—my thanks. The smaller things. Most of your questions reservations/ seem likely to [be] right and useful. I can’t tell from a quick reading and haven’t checked your remarks with my lines. I think they will help; please give me more. I am talking about your brief line to line objections. 2) The transition back to London is a hard problem maybe. I’d like to do [it] in two or preferably one sonnet. The pregnancy isn’t meant to come on New York/, tho it was only a month later, i.e. when/ we knew or suspected. It’s [a] problem of finding inspiration for a link, I think I can.

  Now Lizzie’s letters? I did not/ see them as slander, but as sympathetic, tho necessarily awful for her to read. She is the poignance of the book, tho that hardly makes it kinder to her. I could say the letters are cut, doctored part fiction; I/ thought of it (I attribute things to Lizzie I made up, or that were said by someone else. I combed out abuse, hysteria, repetition.[)] The trouble is the letters make the book, I think, at least they make Lizzie real beyond my invention. I took out the worst things written against me, so as not to give myself a case and seem self-pitying. Or maybe I didn’t want to author them. I promise I’ll do what I can to answer your piercing objections thoughts/. I’ve been thinking of course these things for years almost. It’s oddly enough a technical problem as well as a gentleman’s problem. How can the story be told at all without the letters? I’ll put my heart to it. I can’t bear not to publish Dolphin in good form. I am in no hurry for time, and would love to spend the summer working if the muse lets me.

  Salary is complicated. I got $9500, I think eventually at my highest. After three years, I was given rooms at Quincy House free for two or three days a week[,] the expense of commuting. I think all salaries must be higher now. Every two or three years I got a little $500 raise. I may have started at $8500. Also I wasn’t around when I was teaching. I’m sure you will get more. Maybe the best thing is to have someone practical and forceful to handle it for you, but even lambs like us can kick the bucket over/.

  Harriet is with us now, and tho the weather is now suddenly wintry, think it is May with us.

  I feel like Bridges getting one of Hopkins’s letters, as disturbed as I am grateful.

  Oh, I forgot. If you can get the revised Notebook from Frank, particularly the section For Lizzie and Harriet, but also the latter part of History, you might get a slightly different slant on the meaning of Dolphin. The three books are one heap, one binding, so to speak, though not one book.

  All my love,

  Cal

  204. Robert Lowell to Miss Harriet Lowell

  Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent

  [April 2, 1972]

  Easter, 5 P.M.

  Darling Harriet:

  I meant to write you as soon as I got home, but my hand moves slowly, and my mind slower. It’s gray at Milgate, though the pastures are green, and more things have leafed out since you left four days ago. Two fields have even mysteriously managed to mow themselves.

  If you’ve slept as much as I today, you hardly need [to] go to bed at all tonight.

  I can’t write how much we, I, loved your visit. I think maybe you are all you ever were only grown up (almost). You are all I asked. Do fathers and even the most brainy mothers have blind eyes? You mustn’t trust them. I am beginning to ramble.… (The four dots are Frank Bidart punctuation)[.] When you hunt chocolate Easter eggs, you can find them by putting your ear to the ground and listening for them to cackle like chickens.

  I love you for liking both your father and mother—(another Bidart punctuation) that’s/ why they are such extraordinarily normal, healthy and modest people259—(B. punctuation) and for never talking too much except on women and politics, particularly your theories on socialism.

  Loved your being with me.

  Daddy

  205. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell

  Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent

  Easter Monday, [April 3, 1972]

  Dearest Lizzie:

  The trip, the visit, is sadly over. I am more happy than I can say to have seen Harriet in bloom, all that has been indicated for many years, all I hoped. Oddly, though now almost grown-up, she reminds me more of how she looked four or more years ago. Thinness? Or something in the character? Joy, amusement, awe and pride.

  I’d like to come over for a week near the end of May. Isn’t June tropical? I’d like to avoid that. Each year I grow less tolerant to heat. Talking about weather, we had England’s worst weather during the whole of Harriet’s stay. Today it’s beautiful, as it was the day before she arrived. People are pouring in, Peter
and Eleanor260 tomorrow; the Brookses next week.

  Thank you for so lovingly/ sending Harriet.

  Love,

  Cal

  206. Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop

  [Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent]

  Easter Tuesday, [April 4], 1972

  Dearest Elizabeth:

  Harriet has come and gone, and I’m left in a mood of wonder, so well she carried off what had to be difficult, impossible I almost thought. We talked more freely than we ever have (this is age only partly)/ yet not too much, and no sides had to be taken except humorously. And things went well with Caroline, Harriet’s brother and the other children. A m/oment not to come again, for there never can be such a moment again, but it is a promise of future happiness.

  Let me re/phrase for myself your moral objections. It’s the revelation (with documents?) of a wife wanting her husband not to leave her, and who does/ leave her. That’s the trouble, not the mixture of truth and fiction. Fiction—no one would object if I/ said Lizzie was wearing a purple and red dress, when it was yellow. Actually my versions of her letters are true enough, only softer and drastically cut. The original is heartbreaking, but interminable.