Meanwhile, mysterious beyond belief, you have given extraordinary time and concentration to this matter which can only, after all, remain where it is since there is truly nothing at stake for you and Sheridan—and you have not been able to get a simple paper about your income tax for last year sent here. A deed every citizen has to do every year of his life. I am bewildered.
The books117 go out next week they say. I found a few more after I sent them. It is not easy to find these things, all confused after years. The bill will come next week to me and I will send it. (I have just heard from the shipping office and the bill coming to me will be $140.20. That gets the books to London. They will bill you for from London to Maidstone. There are two hundred books. You can send the $140.20 as soon as possible because I am very low, what with Harriet’s expensive summer and our terrible expenses.[)]
Elizabeth
265. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Elizabeth Lowell
Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent
[June 23, 1973]
Dearest Lizzie:
The point of the delay is this that Caroline has no idea what she is signing. away. I’M sure the whole is merely formal, and would have signed long ago, but Caroline can’t renounce what looks like (tho no doubt just for the moment) Sheridan’s legal rights. I wired Iseman over a week ago and haven’t heard. Maybe you can get in touch with him. Henshaw promised me to have off the information to you a week ago today. Apparently your figures have to be precisely the same as [those] I turn into the British collectors. Everything sticks—we still don’t have a place at Harvard, despite everyone’s efforts.
Sorry not to see Harriet sooner, tho I dreaded the bikes. I long for her so much, and am vaguely planning for the girls’ country and city visit. I should think they could do anything they wished in London, if I were in the house. Can’t they let us know, at least the day of their arrival from Amsterdam before they leave New York—just for my ease.
Just back from a visit to Rotterdam for the poetry festival. The old center of the city, just a messy, grassy open space in 1951 instead of the miles of old 17th century city destroyed by bombs[,] is all sleeplessly new, very pleasant, tho inhuman, of its kind, yet one felt that after the festivals and conventions it would be carted away like the world fair. High point of incongruity, meeting of Ginsberg and Günter Grass on a poetry barge. Grass, “Why he doesn’t even have cymbals.” Judith very distraught and active, but within hours receiving invitations to visit both Grass and Mali. MacDiarmid looking and drinking like Allen Tate. Isn’t poetry terrible? Note my tactful avoidance of an Exclamation mark.
Brookses here for two nights now off to Ireland and Dixey. Melanie is studying. I’ve never seen Peter better or more fun to be with.
It’s been too hot to have a fire at night, and really greasy during the day. I dread to imagine America.
Could you call Iseman and see if he can send us an exact definition of what Caroline is signing? Her lawyer advised her not to do so/ in ignorance. She is not interested in sabotaging your sale.
Look forward to the books, those old friends in their hard backs of another age. I do feel I have nothing more of the past than I can hold in my hands. The photos are all in a photobook.
We do so want Harriet. Are you going to Lake Como?
Love,
Cal
266. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
June 29, 1973
Dear Cal: Your letter saying Caroline didn’t understand what she was signing away has driven me nearly to the brink of suicide. I have written, cabled, done all I can. Please read this to Caroline:
You have rights at my death as my husband. (Descent means descending, the property, from wife to husband. Nothing in the world to do with descendants.)
If Caroline is your wife you are not my husband.
If you are not [my] husband you have no rights at my death and Caroline has no rights either.
The complications are with Maine law, mostly about the Dominican Republic. Had I known you and Caroline would hold me up on this I suppose I would not have agreed to the Dominican divorce without everything cleared up, and all of that. But you did agree, as every separation agreement does, that my property was mine, and if you find the agreement you will see that it is usual to sign a document. Speed prevented O’Sullivan from getting it from Maine and so you went off without it, my assuring him you would not ever think Maine was yours. It never occurred to me that Caroline and her lawyers would enter into it.
There won’t be any Maine property after you all are through with me. I believe this has cost about $10,000. The people tell me I must make the basement dry, something you and I could never face financially. I have stopped work on the barn and suppose I will never take it up. I can’t afford it, perhaps never could. Mary McC. Harriet, anyone will corroborate what I am saying.
I will have one more business letter to write you next week about what we have decided on the taxes since Mr. Hoffman is going off for sometime. I will write that, then I will be entirely out and will never take part in it your taxes/ again.
Harriet thinks they will be coming from Amsterdam about July 18th or 19th. Probably by train, with odious bikes, from the Hook.118 She is very excited; I showed her your welcoming letter. She likes London, looks forward to seeing you very much, likes Kent. Maybe she and Cathy should be encouraged to take those day trains to Bath, Cambridge. Anyway I know they will have a marvelous time with you.
Will write the tiresome letter next week.
E.
* * *
Mr. O’S. by way of Iseman has sent off new documents. They require consul, alas. It would have been better to sign the first, but they are no good now. I have three lawyers in my employ on this small transaction. But when O’S. got on the case he then wanted it done correctly.
267. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Elizabeth Lowell
Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent
July 4, 1973
Dearest Lizzie—
Fourth of July—the only sign of it here was an article in the London Times by Ralph de Toledano explaining that the Declaration of Independence was not revolutionary, but that George III was the revolutionary.119 Maybe there’ll be banners for Red George and Red Mao. The two lost/ American Holidays, This and Thanksgiving, leave a funny sort of present-absence here.
I’ll take the deed to the consulate and mail it off probably Friday,120 not later. We have guests coming and the trip to London and back in one day is somehow too much. Harriet is on the verge and by the time you get this she’ll be in Amsterdam. You had better send me her address and phone number. Everyone is turning up, Jean Valentine, the Eberharts, Mac Rosenthal. Are you going to Lake Como?
Love,
Cal
* * *
Good summer!/
268. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
July 5, 1973121
Dear Cal: I have no heart for this letter and it appears to me that lack of communication is literal and complete, but I am deeply grieved by your accusations. I answer for the last time and beg you to desist in your defamation, but I have little hope that you will.
About all of the past possessions. They are here, they are yours, a truck could arrive tomorrow and I would feel that were everything in the house out by nighttime that you would be acting properly. I do not wish an answer on this, but I cannot figure out what I could have done except keep your things for you until you came or sent for them. I very much feel everything is yours; care has been taken to preserve them for you. I sent the books when you told me what you wanted. The entire house, apt. contents are yours.
About not building the barn. I have stopped everything. I told you that I have no deed and it is midsummer; the people are making me fill in the basement. Caroline’s objections, all answered in my first letter and many times over and over, have caused me to hire new lawyers, take on expenses which I know
are over $5,000, maybe more. There was never anything to all of this. I sold the house because it was an expense, terrible work every year, falling apart, the school expanded next door; the barn was deteriorating. I felt only one could be preserved and I thought the barn the most practical for us. Just what I will now have the money to do I don’t know. On the 14th Mary McC. and I are going up for a few days and I will make the decision.
Taxes: for the hundredth time. I have never in a million years wanted you to pay taxes on the trust funds. You naturally would not. I have said a thousand times over and over until I am in tears that you must file, file that you gave the money to us, file so that I can pay, file even if you had no trusts. If you remember you have not paid anything since you left the country. I paid on the 15,000 from FS&G in 1970 and 1971. I have this year for you/ only the $7,900 or so from FS&G, but I will pay that and pay all the accounting fees in order to get out. Also I do not want the money for the shipping of the books, since you seemed not to notice that the shipping order was a bill to me. I have gone into all my savings, my only desire now is to be free of all this business and I will, or indeed am now, if you have sent O’Sullivan’s deed and if indeed Henshaw has sent the English figures and they arrive before tomorrow afternoon when the accountant is going away.
I cannot write all of this again. I have not taken everything from the past; it was left here and I didn’t throw it out. I have very little money each year; about $12,000 after taxes and Harriet’s school comes to nearly $4,000. I am working very hard. We both wish you didn’t have to give us anything, but that would simply mean starvation. In no way whatsoever do you need the fantastic defenses of leaving me. I feel that our marriage has been a complete mistake from the beginning. We have now gone down in history as a horridly angry and hateful couple. A review is coming out in which Harriet is called “the fictional Terrible Child” …122 She knows nothing of all this. I am near breakdown and also paranoid and frightened about what you may next have in store, such as madly using this letter. I do not wish to write you again. Your life is your own and has nothing to do with me.
Elizabeth
* * *
I would be grateful if you would show this letter to Caroline so that she could know what the situation is. I have written it many times, each part. I will not write it again. Do, say, feel what you wish.
One more possibility. If you send a list of furniture, objects, whatever you want, clock, desk, sofa, beds, anything[,] they can be sent to England or put into storage here under your name. Please never accuse me again over this!/
269. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Giroux
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
July 5, 1973
Dear Bob: I am writing you to give my thoughts on the publication of The Dolphin and will send a copy of this letter to Mr. Monteith at Faber. I am deeply distressed that both of you would have seen this book through to publication without asking my permission for the prodigal use of my letters, for the use in the most intimate way of my name and that of my daughter. I have since the publication been analyzed under my own name in print, given some good marks as a wife and person by some readings, general disparagement and rebuke by other readings. I know of no other instance in literature where a person is exploited in a supposedly creative act, under his own name, in his own lifetime. The facts are not in the nature of facts because of the disguise as poetry and so cannot be answered. My young and shy daughter is also quoted under her own name, spoken of in a most unnerving way.
I know of the existence of these poems using my name and my letters because they are not a spontaneous act, coming suddenly and with the indiscretion of haste, into print. They have been shown to many, many persons, but never to me. I felt it was undignified for me to insist before. When I actually received the book, anxious as I had been from reports, the reality was disturbing far beyond anything I could have imagined. Had I seen the poems, the letters of mine, those using my name, I do not know what I would have done. I do hold you and Mr. Monteith, as distinguished publishers, in dismay for your heartlessness in concealing this from me. I do not think the decision was rightly left altogether up to Cal. He is the author, but publication is an intricate action, involving many other considerations and one of those was certainly, from the publishers[’] view, the effect upon persons exploited. I have always understood that publishers had lawyers to advise them about the indiscretions of authors. There are so many wrong impressions in the book—nothing about my willingness to divorce, my acceptance of the separation, the good spirits of myself and the utterly gratifying contentment of my daughter. I have found in the book letters from the very early period of my distress, attached to a sestet written long after.123 I am very eager to go on record with you as saddened and deeply resentful of not only one, the use of my letters without permission, but many, many ill-effects upon me of your consent to publication without any consultation with me.
Yours truly,
Elizabeth Hardwick
270. Robert Lowell to ELIZABETH LOWELL
[Telegram]
[Maidstone, Kent]
[Received] Jul 8 12 24 PM ’73
ELIZABETH LOWELL 15 WEST67STREET
NEWYORKCITY
CONSULATE CLOSED WEEKEND CANT GET TO LONDON TILL TUESDAY124 THINK OF DEED AS NOW SIGNED SORRY FOR VEXING DELAY LOVE CAL
271. Robert Lowell to ELIZABETH LOWELL
[Telegram]
[Maidstone, Kent]
[Received] 1973 Jul 10 PM 6 42 Jul 10 PM 6 50
ELIZABETH LOWELL 15 WEST67STREET
NEWYORKCITY
DEED MAILED TO MAINE THE REVIEWS FRIENDLY OR UNFRIENDLY ARE MORE OR LESS ONLY CRUEL PUBLICITY POSTERS GOD HELP US AND SPARE US LOVE CAL125
272. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell
Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent
July 12, [1973]
Dearest Lizzie,
I think of you all through these five/ sultry days, and haven’t called again lest I further trouble things. I swear I never in all this business have wanted to hurt you—the very opposite. The gloomy picture of us in Newsweek126 is due to Richard Howard and his friend Victor who took pictures here for some poetry anthology, and must have sent this one to Newsweek without our knowledge. Ivana’s not at her best; nobody is,… a family from Utah.
Most of the hurting reviews are flashed up for news and will look very dim by September. Miss Perloff I would guess to be an instructor or young professor, earnestly, waspishly, pursuing her career, too stiff to be much of a critic. The Hopkins comparison is so eccentric, one thinks someone wrote it into her paper when she wasn’t looking. I suppose one shouldn’t blame her for stupid cruelty that mistook itself for truth.127 I’m sorry I brought this on you, the ghastly transient voices, the lights.
Love,
Cal
273. Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop
Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent
July 12, 1973
Dearest Elizabeth—
I suppose you’ve seen some of my American reviews, a lampooning! I think they all have a jarring effect on Lizzie, but one by a Miss Perloff in the New Republic has been a calamity for Lizzie—what it says about her and Harriet. Her The/ distortion of the “fictional” characters becomes a kind of slander on the people themselves. I have been talking to people who are seeing her and to Lizzie herself. Last weekend she seemed to be suicidal, and people friends/ had to drop in and telephone to see that she didn’t take too many pills. All was confused and increased by her having total insomnia. Now her mood has quieted, but I have no certainty. We dread the telephone.
In Newsweek, in an otherwise discreet review, an unflattering photo of Lizzie was published, and above it a family portrait photograph (taken by Victor when he was here and given without our knowledge to Newsweek)[,] Caroline, I, a wild/ Ivana (labeled Harriet) and Sheridan looking like a secret polygamous poor white family. This was so grotesque that Lizzie seems to have thought it funny. Unfortunately, she re
ads all the reviews, though no possible one could be pleasant to her.
The weather for the last three days has been close and sultry. My study is a very long room with a view of cows, fields, trees—all becalmed. If I stroll up and down, I can feel Lizzie with me, and no escape but arguing, though the past all in all gives a more joyful picture … and the future is only dread of what will happen. My intuitions hope, but what is that?
Your old letter of warning—I never solved the problem of the letters, and there and elsewhere of fact and fiction. I worked hard to change the letters you named and much else. The new order somehow makes the whole poem less desperate. And the letters, as reviewers have written, make Lizzie brilliant and lovable more than anyone in the book. Not enough, I know. And then I didn’t want to imagine reviews in magazines with big circulations that would treat reduce/ my plot as to/ news or scandal, politicians or actors.
My immorality, as far as intent and skill could go, is nothing in my book. No one, not even me I/, is perversely torn and twisted, nothing’s made dishonestly worse or better than it was. My sin (mistake?) was publishing. I couldn’t bear to have my book (my life) wait hidden inside me like a dead child.128
All the while I’ve been writing, I’ve thought of you in the heat, and been happy to think of Alice’s room among the air-conditioned trees.129 We could use air-conditioning here in the middle of the day, but at night it’s pleasant cool.
The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979 Page 36