Write me about Harriet’s summer. I keep trying to stir Henshaw.
Love, Cal
Cal/
256. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[Castine, Maine]
May 30, 197398
Dear Cal: I’m still in Maine and will be here two more days. Rain, storms, tornadoes, utterly dead, silent weekend. What a ghastly chore all of this has been. I write this, early morning, to say that I hope you sent off the notarized deed yesterday. I signed a contract in the fall to sell on May 31st and they to buy. Of course that won’t be possible and I have a horror of the people backing out because of the delay—and all the furniture in storage at great expense. Having been here completely confirms me in the wisdom of my move. The house is impossible, much more activity at the school, yard a mess, fence destroyed, house so cold and damp. In a way I wish I didn’t have to have anything here, because it is so far away, only practical for at least a three-month summer stay which I don’t necessarily consider I will be sure to want, hideously expensive to fly up and back for chores, opening. However, Castine is very beautiful and I will persevere with it. Harriet is very much in favor of what I am doing, at least in getting rid of this house. I expect she will love Castine at some later period in her life. I hope so.
A special evening with the Coris and the Thomases, most of it spent talking about Gilgamesh—or listening to Carl C. Went to Frank Kneisel’s funeral Saturday at the Trinitarian Church; little voices in the choir, organist (Mrs. Coombs) playing “Going Home” and Liebestraum;99 very cold, grey day, all the old folks there. Came out into the gloom utterly melancholy and so drove to Bucksport and bought a copy of The Village Voice. Restored to urban idiocy as against rural spiritual blight. Today a memorial service for Bishop Scarlett. The Booths are here for a few days; had a drink with them yesterday. Leah and Clark haunt the town still. A sort of wasteland up there. Old Mrs. Fitzgerald dazed and lonely as a crippled eagle; all the rest gone into a world of light.100
I can’t wait to get back home. Nine days for this! Why was I born a woman I asked myself once or twice. I want to shed as many burdens as possible and a lot of things have no meaning for me now and the effort seems unreal. New York is a struggle, but I do like it. It is the present for both Harriet and me, very alive, happy. Maine is a tomb. Perhaps it is only the weather, the anguish of this packing, moving, the anxiety of making the barn, the expense. I don’t really know just what is involved in my present state of feeling about it here. I truly wonder if I will ever be eager to spend a whole summer here again. I have no clear picture right now of this coming summer. I want to spend August at the Rockefeller villa in Lake Como, but I thought of it just a few weeks ago and of course it is full. However they are trying to work something out and I should have word soon.
Meanwhile, this is a sort of adieu to Castine from me, dour and foggy and final. I hope the deed, executed as they asked, has gone off to Mr. Veague. Be in good health. I send my love as always
Elizabeth
257. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Elizabeth Lowell
Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent, England
June 1, 1973 [but postmarked May 31, 1973]101
Dearest Lizzie:
It was miraculous to have your letters and pictures. It always seems to have been an unfulfilled craving in my life to have a scrapbook—as the drawers overflowed with unsorted photos. I had just bought one, and now it’s filled, artfully arranged pages, sequences, like my long poems, full of profundity for me if no one else. Way back, I have Allen and Mrs. Ford Madox Ford, Peter and me and Jean in New Orleans, looking hung over, except unbelievably for Jean. I have no old ones of you because two and a half years ago I left my billfold in a restaurant or taxi—early in the evening going home—and lost about eight small snapshots and a hundred dollars (?) in Per’s Norwegian money. What I miss is that wonderful wild one of you smoking, taken on the Loire (?) by Robie. Please send me more. We can call it Notebook’s Scrapbook and sell it [to] the Sunday Observer like Waugh’s Diaries102 … No, I really want more. Do send lots of you!
My books? I’ve written Bob to send you all three and just History to Harriet, so as not to force them on her. They’ll be out June 20, almost three weeks late due to some unaccounted delay by Farrar—tho they may have had to because of Frank’s drawings.103 They please me very much. I mustn’t write of your feelings about the book. I wish the publication and reviews were over; I seem to be a mark for all sorts of dissimilar people in both America and England. The books are so many and they cost more so much, less here than in America.104 It would have been slovenly to have brought them out in one volume, though cheaper.
The sale of the commons house is a kind of death, but I think it was unavoidable. If you are willing, since you write the house is mine to use, we might make some sort of access agreement, something less binding than with children and really meaningless except psychologically. I would be too shy to live there until after my death. Maybe Sheridan could come as a visitor. I don’t think he and Harriet are likely to become intimate—if he were five years younger he could easily be her son. When you write me, I’ll sign the dower. It came too quickly and undescribed.
I am having a hell of a time with Henshaw. First he didn’t call back, then came the long weekend bank holiday. Now he is incommunicado somewhere in Europe till the week end. You must feel everyone in America is a Nixon bugger; we feel everyone here must have a title and sordid photographed sexual orgies, a long suffering wife and a thousand acres105—Somehow aided or hindered by Henshaw. I’ll try again to get some one else.
Don’t tell me about house decay. In the last month we’ve had two flooded cellars, the remov[al] of a partition, leadshallows stolen from an outbuilding, a dog lost, an unfindable fuse, a skylight leak, the disappearance of all our napkins and handkerchief, a plastering job done by Dixey’s husband’s brother,106 a three days’ cook with a son who went insane—the mother, Dean Crooks of Harvard’s marvelous daughter married to a hippy107 buying a donkey without asking us—the donkey had a bad cold and had the vet for six pounds, the dryer stopped, and so on. Houses really ail more than we do, they never cure themselves. I watch time go too, and love thinking about you and writing.
All Love, and H. All day I’ve lived thru her life in your pictures./
Cal
258. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
June 3, 1973
Dear Cal: This goes off in great haste. I really must urge you to send the properly executed deed to Mr. Veague immediately. The house is empty. It took me nine, lonely, cold days, with bones and heart aching; all has gone to storage in Bangor for the year. Your eagle, your fish, your father’s pearl-handled sword, everything. It will be sent back, all the furniture, everything to the completed barn this time next year. I have spent $2,000 just on that. I have great fear that this delay will cause my people to back out. They will not sign until the deed comes and they have had a chance to go up to inspect the premises, which alas seemed to me full of flaws and fears. I have grave doubts about the practicality of Maine for me; the expense, the distance—the fact that I can only make it practical by spending at least three months there. But I can not, never will, let the barn go. I am making a very rentable, salable, valuable property for Harriet. As it is, just keeping all of it would be impossible for us and this is at least the proper getting in order. It will also be smashingly beautiful … As for the deed, that has nothing to do with Harriet Winslow, but with the amazingly backward State of Maine. It is only that since we are still married (there!) you have under Maine law the rights to half anything of mine, but I also have the right to anything of yours (England, elsewhere). I am doing something about all of that, but the signing of the deed, the only thing that concerns Maine law now,/ is the first thing. I have been grieved and worried about it for sometime, since I knew you didn’t understand. If I lost my sale and had an empty house there it would be a disaster! I cannot go up,
at vast expense, to wait for another sale.… Please have it properly executed, as they asked, and sent to Veague immediately. I thank you. What a bore and a sadness.
I enclose the pictures I had around. There are almost none of me here, and I have only one nice one of the three of us taken in Santa Fe and one of you and me on Fred Dupee’s steps a few months after we were married. I’ll try to get a copy sometime because I somehow want to keep the ones I have.
I cannot do anything further about your filing a tax return for 1972. This is a thing that will go on until you die and so I guess this year is the time to get in touch with it. No one, Cal, writes you about filing income taxes; you have to ask an accountant to do it. Nat agreed, but it is not the sort of business where they check to see if you have paid, if you have filed or not filed. They simply take the figures, sit down with the person, talk it over, do the computing, filling the forms. It is immensely expensive for me—over $600 last year to the accountant. I think you will have to meet with him in September, set up something for the future. I don’t say this in any kind of criticism. It really has nothing to do with me. I am always saddened to hear of any practical problems, a sadness deepened and sharpened by my own never finished practical problems.
I hate these business letters, hate writing them, as if I were a truant officer, which indeed I am not. I have just come home from what seemed like a lonely, breaking year in a house, dark and cold, and what a joy to see Harriet, to be back in the security of New York. Watergate starts up tomorrow. I go out to vote for some losers in the city Democratic primary, my desk is stacked with mail, my back hurts, my hands are cut (so much rusty iron in Maine) and I cannot sleep until the deed is with Veague and the thing done!
Here, to think on:
All things fall and are built again,
And those that build them again are gay.108
I went to a memorial service for Bishop Scarlett. A mad evening with Carl Cori telling me about Gilgamesh! He has a new hearing aid, but we all discovered that he has no intention of learning to listen. Greetings from one home to the sullen streets109 after the sullen north.110
Elizabeth
259. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Elizabeth Lowell
Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent, England
June 7, 1973
Dearest Lizzie***
Heavenly day, blue, gold, green and shadows. Till recently, a man downstairs vibrantly taking out pipes; poor Sheridan steadily crying with chickenpox of the mouth, now on the mend we hope, though his trouble was prolonged by the breezy local doctor, more or less prescribing the same cures for all diseases.
I am waiting for your reply to your111 letter to sign the dower—I do have the rather desolate feeling of staring at the bare floor of a once furnished house, but I don’t intend to hold you up. Finally got Henshaw, first his phone was busy an entire day, then came the bank holiday, then he was incommunicado in France or Turkey, resting from overwork; now he promises to have [the] income off to you on Monday. The catch is that it has to be accurate and identical with my British returns.
I feel your seduction mounts and gains when both parts are read.112 Also that one should not take them as exactly a critical essay, but a sort of reverie or monologue on the “situations.” I had many of my own to write you—reflections, rambles, but now they flee me113—the sadness of putting off writing when one is full of it. Bob S. is coming here Saturday with the Grosses—I’ve seen several Americans, the Rosenthals, the Cowleys … and many more in letters. We still have no house in Cambridge. I resolve to see movies, but somehow have seen none except an atrocious Maidstone Western. What sticks most in my mind is one part of/ Shirer’s book on the fall of France,114 General Gamelin, when all was falling, infinitely solicitous (tenderly) that he get eight hours sleep, and that everyone else get them, and eat unhurriedly—that his incompetent subordinates be fired only by hints they could never hear. The French were as bad as Nixon’s staff in betraying and blaming each other. Are real books being written any more, are there any more we haven’t read?
Love to Harriet and to
you,
Cal
260. Robert Lowell to MRS. ELIZABETH LOWELL
[Telegram]
Milgate Park Bearsted Maidstone Kent
[Received] June 11 4 25 PM ’73
MRS ELIZABETH LOWELL 15 WEST67THSTREET
NEWYORKCITY
SORRY FOR MORE DELAY LAWYER WANTS TO KNOW MEANING OF DESCENDANTS RIGHTS BEFORE NOTARIZING WITH GODS SPEED THIS WILL BE OVER IN A WEEK WISH IT WERE NOW LOVE
CAL
261. Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Hardwick
Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent Eng.
June 11, 1973
Dearest Lizzie:
When we went to Caroline’s lawyer to look over the quitclaim and have it notarized, he was unable to decide what she was signing, what rights of the descendant. I suppose this is all nothing, but I can’t very well sign what I don’t understand. I will have to consult the divorce statement which for some reason I don’t have on hand here. No one’s rights seem worth a hassle with Maine law, and I don’t exactly see how the Maine property could be usefully divided between Harriet and Sheridan.
I think everything could be cleared in about a week. Maybe O’Sullivan could get in touch with King through Iseman who has a copy of the divorce. I’ve thought about this business with desultory heat and confusion. I assume it’s all air and nothing is at stake, and nothing is worth keeping you from selling the house and getting on with your plans. Giving Harriet some share in it makes me happy. But just as I’d like to give her some independence at 21, I can’t sign away something that might be Sheridan’s inheritance—I can’t sign it away without even knowing if I am.
We have the best of talks and I’ve worried for hours about this thing. I’ve no excuse for not acting a month ago, except that the quitclaim came without warning and unexplained . to me. Iseman sent the quitclaim without interpretation.
Let’s trust the whole thing will be settled before the month is out.
Love,
Cal
* * *
PS Sheridan has just emerged from chicken pox and everyone in the house has had a sort of mild almost poxless pox. I am infected with a rambling mind. I think the crux of the matter, what I wished to say, was that Mr. King can’t tell what the quitclaim means, and I can’t tell him because I don’t know.
(Kelley, Drye
350 Park Ave. N.Y.C.)
Mr. Conway at the firm is the person to get in touch with
262. Elizabeth Hardwick to ROBERT LOWELL115
[Telegram]
[New York, N.Y.]
[Received June 12, 1973]
MR ROBERT LOWELL MILGATE PARK BEARSTEDMAIDSTONEKENT
RIGHTS OF DES/CENT116 MEAN AS MY HUSBAND IN MAINE YOU COULD CLAIM 1/3 MAINE PROPERTY AT MY DEATH STOP WOULD NOT STAND UP IN COURT BECAUSE OF SEPARATION AGREEMENT STOP YOUR BOOKS LEAVE THE HOUSE TOMORROW I BEG YOU
ELIZABETH
263. Elizabeth Hardwick to ROBERT LOWELL
[Telegram]
[New York, NY]
[Received in Kent June 19, 1973]
ROBERT LOWELL MILGATE PARK BEARSTEDMAIDSTONEKENT
=DO YOU FEEL WE ARE MARRIED? DO YOU AND CAROLINE CONSIDER SHERIDAN MY SON? IF NOT YOUR TREATMENT OF ME IS STUPID STOP NOT EVEN HARRIET HAD LEGAL RIGHT TO THE HOUSE STOP YOU HAVE RIGHTS ONLY AS MY HUSBAND BUT WE ARE NOT MARRIED THE SIGNATURES ARE A TECHNICALITY PLEASE SEND SIGNED DEED
= ELIZABETH +?? +
[The Dolphin, For Lizzie and Harriet, and History were published on June 21.]
264. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
June 21, 1973
Dear Cal: Harriet and her friend will not be coming to London for the first visit in early July—just as well, since it was only for a few hours and to accommodate the bicycles. They are going with bicycles direct to Amsterdam. They plan to be coming to London and Kent around the 19th of Ju
ly to stay until they meet their group in London on the 29th. They will call or write you or cable from Amsterdam, where they will be with Cathy’s parents. I am assured by Harriet that they will in England look after themselves[,] cook for themselves, help with the house. They want to hike around in Kent and wander around London and both are very responsible, but I agree that they shouldn’t stay in the house alone in London. They understand that their plans are real only in so far as they are easy and convenient for you and Caroline. They leave New York with the Grads for Amsterdam on July 6th. So if you feel the 19th is out you can let her know here, or if she is gone I will relay it on to Amsterdam. I don’t have the Amsterdam address yet. They will probably come from Holland to England by train, but I don’t know. In any case, after they join their group that will be the end for you since they will fly back to New York with [the] group and I will be here waiting.
I have to believe that by the time this letter reaches you the deed, signed, will be in the airmail to Mr. Veague. It is mid-summer, I have spent hundreds and hundreds of useless dollars on lawyers, calls, special insurance, etc. The people naturally want the house, which they have to furnish. There has never been anything at stake in this matter. The only reason you are required to sign is Maine “custom” and also you agreed to sign documents about this in the separation agreement; but that was all a technicality since this was the only thing in the agreement that was incontestably mine. Mr. O’Sullivan will be writing you—I have had to hire him along with Mr. Veague, an unbelievable situation to me. His letter will say nothing that I haven’t said all along. There is nothing to say. I guess we can ultimately get some sort of Maine court order but that goes into the fall, the empty house, the withdrawn sale, the whole thing utterly bewildering and breaking to me.
The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979 Page 35