Lizzie
* * *
After June 15th—Washington, Connecticut 06793 Phone 203 UN 8-2545
219. Robert Lowell to Miss Harriet Lowell
Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent
June 28, 1972
Darling Harriet:
I am up early this morning to write you. I have been working like a steamshovel, if a steamshovel works, for the last month and have been too slothful, unversatile or self-indulgent to do anything else, I mean to write letters, I mean to write you. Devie299 was here yesterday for the night. [She] reminded me of you, too much so that it was painful to me, and I knew how terribly I miss you. I could have given the money for your trip to Europe.
How are politics? It’s hard for old Eugene McCarthyites to rave about McGovern—it’s the sentimental Irish lost cause passion that’s somewhere in all of us. I suppose, I know McGovern is all we’ll get, and maybe that even isn’t likely. I wonder what Miami will be like. In the last Democratic Convention, I never left my Chicago hotel, but police and demonstrators were all about us. This won’t be that way.
Today we set off for Norwich to get, for me to get a doctor’s degree.300 It’s a lot of trouble getting training/ there and the degree has no money value, of course, and not much honor—but here in this far country, away from so much, I am rather touched.
Devie thinks you have your head screwed on—I wonder where you inherited that, not from Cousin Natalie or the Winslows. But what has Sheridan inherited? He is now so overnordic looking that he makes Willi Brandt look like Jason Epstein. And he has devoled301 alarmingly, can crawl wide rooms and long halls in seconds, and also loves to destroy—the more irreplaceable the object destroyed, the better it pleases him—a dear unanswered letter on a window seat. He is very beautiful. Yesterday he stuck his tongue out all day, with a meditative profound, or stupid expression. H[e] has redgold hair now and dark questioning eyebrows, like Devie’s. I am at the end of the page, I think. Goodbye. Caroline sends all her love, give mine to Mother.
All my love,
Daddy
220. Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop
[Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent]
July 8, 1972
Dearest Elizabeth:
We’ve been working like steam-engines; no, very hard but/ like human beings. Pardon me for not answering. I think of you every day, and of course Frank is a constant reminder of you.
The work is rather peculiar and sounds302 almost insane. We’ve gone over almost 400 old Notebook poems, with an average I suppose of 4 changes a poem, tho often the whole poem torn up trying to get rid of muddy lines, dead lines etc. I dictate the changes to Frank. Often there are many alternates, and more come to me as I talk. He remembers everything, and keeps me from throwing out/ silver spoons. Notebook was such a wilderness, now I think you’ll [like] it better. Kunitz thinks it’s transformed. Why boast? But I do think Frank will stay here a little longer. We just can’t get through by the 15th. That’s why I’ve given you this formidable account of my methods. I do feel guilty about his not going to Brazil, but think he wants badly to finish what’s so largely done.
Not much news. Caroline is off to an all-day school picnic and circus with Ivana, the little girl who was burned. I think we’ll go/ to Ireland for two weeks or so in August. When are you coming to Europe? I gather it will be early August. We do so wish you’d stop off here with us/ on your way. I could time the Ireland so as to be here. You and Kunitz are the only close American friends we haven’t had. I want you to meet Caroline. She has gotten as bad as I about revising and sits on her bed all day with long foolscaps in front of her. She almost finished a book of short stories this winter—along with looking after, with help, three children, and in vacations four.303 The nicest more or less new person I’ve met is Angus Wilson. Met when I got a degree at Norwich, as beautiful in its way as Ouro Preto, at least when we came on it from a distance, and saw it during the long English twilight.
I like all your poems—most the Night Flight,304 another of your best and one I might just not have known was by you. Very directly grim. Moose305 has lovely moments, but others maybe too close to light verse. The midnight prose poem306 is eerie, hard to compare with the others, because it couldn’t have been written in verse. Then the marvelous RA painting poem.307 You’re sailing! I can’t send you anything quite finished. I’m trying to be simple sensuous and garceful308 bad word for a typo/. My new poems, about four are additions to the long poems. I’m sure you’ll find/ Dolphin less excruciating; it can’t I’m afraid entirely come clear of that. The new order, due to you, helps everything.
All my love,
Cal
* * *
Ps. I haven’t read your anthology really,309 but have gone over the Drummond religiously and find him one of the best living poets—a quieter Montale.
221. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[Washington, Conn.]
July 25, 1972
Dearest Cal: Did you receive a copy of the letter I wrote to Mr. Henshaw soon after he left? I have a great many business matters, some very pressing, that I wish to write to whatever person is representing you. Is it Mr. Henshaw? Do you have a lawyer there in England who knows your affairs. You will probably need an American accountant and perhaps your representative could write the one we have been using, who does know your business pretty well. As I told Henshaw I have not paid any of your quarterly/ 1972 American taxes, only my own.
I want to get our divorce over/ as quickly as possible. I will start the minute I get back to New York and hope it will go through smoothly/. It will not be what it has been in the way of money. The only reason I can say now that I am glad I waited before filing is that I have had two years in which to straighten things out, two years in which I have worked constantly. I haven’t enough to live on and can’t pay Harriet’s tuition this fall. But I do not wish to go into all of this with you, by mail. It just isn’t a good idea. Also there are many things about the Harvard papers that disturb me. The papers themselves, some very damaging to both of us, my own work on them, the fact that I included everything of my own except your letters to me—my correspondence with Mary McCarthy is a good example—and a great deal of other material. I should have had my own arrangement with Harvard, but the actual selling, the removal from the house came about so quickly—and in some funny way I just wasn’t able to take a stand on my rights and was a bit too sentimental I fear.… But, as I said, I just can’t deal with you personally about this in letters. Please let me know with whom I can communicate, and it must be someone who will answer promptly and efficiently. I need $1600 right away for the FIRST HALF of Harriet’s yearly/ tuition. All of this will be written into the separation of course. Also I think I should remind you that you will have to pay the lawyer’s fee in total—that is usual—and this is not a simple case. Thank heaven, your situation is so extraordinarily good financially that you won’t have to suffer at all. I would hate it otherwise—and indeed I see no reason why you should be bothered about any of this. The only thing that I want to be sure of is that you know what is ahead. I will ask for $10,000 as my part of the Harvard papers, my work on them, selling them, looking after them, all of that goes in. Actually I am still in correspondence with the library and I imagine they will confirm/ my idea of what my contribution has been in this.
Sorry to have to write this, but I am very eager to go ahead and I know that makes you and Caroline happy. I do not want any disagreement or resentment. It would be bad for Harriet and I feel nothing at all right now except that Harriet and I must be dealt with fairly because we are very vulnerable. Otherwise I’d say we had survived very well and no one need feel guilty.
I have had a nice summer, but very busy. I don’t like Connecticut much and I am glad to know that. Actually I haven’t been here all the time, far from it. In late August I will go up to Maine for ten days or so. I love the community there, but I plan, as a part of my reorganization to keep from
going broke, to sell the house and keep the barn for renovating into a small, easy place for whatever part of the summers I will spend there. It probably won’t be all summer any longer. I long, though, for the tennis, the Thomases, Mary, Ken’s Market, Phil Booth.
Harriet is fine. She has been in Choate Summer Program for three weeks and will be back with me in about four days. I was at Harvard last week, saw Bill Alfred, Bob Gardner, went to Manchester310 for a few days, past the gray “terminal days” in Beverly Farms house,311 talk of Rock, Dunbarton, Grandpa.312 It seems like a century ago, doesn’t it. In a way it was a little bit like going back to Kentucky for me; I mourn the loss sudden diminishment/ of nostalgia and sentiment for the loss of the place. What is sad is that finally things are just as if they had never been. Of course if it were otherwise we couldn’t live I suppose. Much love, dear, and good health.
Lizzie
222. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Elizabeth Hardwick Lowell
[Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent]
[July 28, 1972]
CARPACCIO’S CREATURES: Separation313
To Elizabeth
From the salt ages/, aye from the salt age,
courtesans, Christians, they filled the barnyard close.
The tree with a skull for a cap is a silly swelled tree;
Carpaccio’s Venice is broader by, the world, soured saint/
than the life Jerome wc/ould taste and pass.
And honeyed lion mutter to work unfeared./
In Torcello, venti anni fa,314
the lion, snapped behind you, has poodled hair,
whernever you move, no sooner he has moved.
Lion marblewhiskers. Priest and beast
leap in Carpaccio’s tea-leaf color. Was he
the one in the trade who wished to tell tales?…
You are making Boston alone in the early A.M.,
having left Harriet
having left Harriet at camp.… Old Love,
Eternity, Thou, mothbitten time!
Dearest Lizzie—I really was going to write, and thinking of some enclosure to fill out the letter because I am too/ groggy with mental health/ pills to write much. Will you like it? This is an awful new Czech machine that bites my fingertips each [time] I touch it. The poem? As I descend/ deeper in reality and age I seem to write with Mallarmean simplicity. I really didn’t/ know what [day] or month it was. Happy birthday, happy anniversary.315 What I feel most is your writing about me/ etc.316 I’ve thought always known/ it was one [of] the things you do best. Why not publish, then I could read a copy? Or can I any way. All my [love] to les deux
Love,
Cal
223. Robert Lowell to Miss Harriet Lowell
Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent
August 2, 1972 (?)317
It’s the day, not the year I’m
Unsure of.
Darling Harriet:
I guess you’re just beginning your vacation at last. I hope you love it. I can’t pity you too much, a writer works like a woman, not just from sun to sun, his work is never done. Just last night when half asleep two inspired lines came to me:
“The monologuist tries to think something out
while talking, maybe thinks fine things, yet fails.”
Oddly enough I was writing about myself.
We have a noisy disturbed life. Sheridan managed to do something to a light connection that instantly short-circuited a third of the house. Frank Bidart is here and a great comfort to me, but the other day he came quite shaken into my study holding up a thick black sock, one of mine that had mistakenly been put in his drawer—and one of his was missing. To my nearsighted eyes there was no difference, but to his it was a tragedy. Also he has gained 12 pounds from drinking four thermos bottles of bitter black coffee and eating two icecream and cake cobblers a day. We had our car stolen again, now recovered. Genia and Natalya have just gone off to camp, much missed but leaving with the feeling of an army evacuating. We have two minute childish dogs named Sonnet, and Nerva. I went to a party in London and met a man who knew Kay Meredith, but not Susie Keast, or Bill Meredith.318
Gosh I miss you. Though somehow after your visit you seem so closer, I can almost talk out loud to you—even when you don’t answer. O, trivia again, last week I got a manly bluejean suit and four leather slippers, the first unsleazy man’s clothes I’ve found in England.
What happened to Devie Meade, she was supposed to come back here? Sheridan has her eyebrows. He can crawl about as well as a small puppy now, and follows better, and has one intelligible word: Dada. I’m the only man he has ever seen except for Peter Taylor and Frank Bidart, Caroline handles him like a fish-puppy.
My dearest love to mother and
You.
Daddy
224. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Elizabeth Hardwick Lowell
Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent, England
[August 11, 1972]
Dear Lizzie—
Here’s the check. It was lovely talking to you the other day. Will write more later.
Love,
Cal
* * *
I’ve cancelled the Harvard till [I] can talk with you in October. It’s like willing one’s gristly bones to posterity.
225. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[Card: “Warrior in the Costume of the Dog Dance,” from Wied-Neuwied’s Travels in … North America. London, 1843–44. Rare Book Division. The New York Public Library.]
[Washington, Conn.]
[n.d. summer 1972]
Am leaving Connecticut. Will be off and on in New York until August 24, then up to Maine until Sept. 4. I wish we could stay longer in Castine—can hardly wait for Mary who is offering dinner when [we] arrive, the courts at four, cocktails and music. Harriet is off visiting a friend in L. Island; I enclose Choate “Film Institute” report as a nice joke.319 She is going to [the] Republican Convention with me—just for the Miami Beach fun, if such it can be called.320 The Democratic was rather gay because every writer you knew in the world almost was in the Doral Bar all day, where waitresses in black leather hot pants and plastic boots look about twenty years from the back and prove to be their authentic seventy when they turn a sun-tanned, dentured, fantastic taste face toward you with the bloody Mary. The Fountain Blue (Fontaine-bleu Hotel) is a Jewish brothel fantasy, beefy Cubans, for Wallace, drive all the cabs. I hope the “kids”—Dave Dellinger!—do not insist on some sort of confrontation with Nixon, but I fear they will. I have been working hard all summer at sundry “free lance” unnecessary articles,321 but I have made enough money to turn down everything I don’t want to write for a while … Am watching a scruffy, seal colored woodchuck graze on weeds, then lift a greedy snout, listening, then back to the speedy feeding. He weighs a ton and alas has the human aspect in certain munching profiles.322 Am reading Clive Bell’s Virginia Woolf;323 gets fairly good toward the middle, but why must they recreate the nursery, the early scenes, when they never seem the least bit like what a rare person could be as child. I find contemporary biographies really trapped in a bad tradition. It is so hard to take this when you’ve been reading Rousseau all summer. The only thing contemporary I like in this vein is my beloved Bob Craft’s work. This intense, rare gift of his, the daring of it—that is what is necessary to bring a life into being on the page. Then the egotism of Bloomsbury weighs a little. Somehow it makes you think back with pride on the frontier intransigence, the eccentric provinciality that made Randall’s aesthetic snobbishness so passionate and valuable.
No more! I’ve had a good summer; the best part of it going in and out of New York where, as usual, you find everyone you thought was away. And what a relief to know that I do not want to live in Connecticut. Can’t see the point of it for me, nothing to do, although there have been many friends about. I like Castine, at the moment, but want to simplify it and not feel so much committed, to use it when I feel like it. Goodbye fer now, as Mrs. Farley used to say.
see
note below.324 Love,
Elizabeth
* * *
Please write asking him to give material to me, my lawyer or your lawyer. Otherwise they won’t.
Creighton Gatchell
State St. Bank & Trust
Boston, Mass. 02101/
226. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
September 16, 1972
Dear Cal: I tried to get Blair in Princeton, where he lives now, so that he could pass on my progress to you about legal matters, but he has been in Washington working for McGovern and I guess has muchas problemas on that score. I have my lawyer, Mr. Ben O’Sullivan, and have had a long talk with him and am getting all the material together. Next step—you and I will talk, then you will talk about what you have talked to me about with your lawyer, then they will talk, then B.O’S. will draw up a separation divorce agreement, then it will go back and forth from there. These are not easy matters, the lawyers are busy, but I will do everything possible to keep them at it. I hope Blair will find someone for you not too high-powered and bitchy because that will hold things up. I plan to present not outrageous demands but exactly what I will not budge from. Anyway, when you all get here call me and we will talk over all of it, which I will have clearly in my mind by then.
The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979 Page 30