The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979

by Elizabeth Hardwick

  Will call you as soon as I make a beach-head at WEA152 again—love to you & to H.—

  Adrienne.

  285. Mary McCarthy to Elizabeth Hardwick

  191 rue de Rennes, Paris 75006

  October 12, 1973

  Dearest Lizzie:

  This has to be a fast note. The New York Review came finally this morning, and I plunged into the pages of your novel.153 Or toward your novel? Will there be a real, i.e. an old-fashioned, one or will it continue this way with multiple approaches? Talking to oneself. It is something new—fresh and exercising a kind of fascination. It isn’t the same as the old Quaker Oats box of the novel in which someone is writing a novel in which someone is writing a novel, with infinite regression. Jimmy Merrill used that once more and in parts very brilliantly in The Diblos Notebook.154 But this is different. I loved the ending, not being able to decide whether to call “myself” I or she.155 Charming and poignant. And there are so many true and delightful things in it. I like least the “she” novel you reject but assume you intend one to be a bit cloyed by it.

  “M.” You spoke of that to me this summer. But “M.” of course isn’t me. It isn’t anybody. It’s you. I thought that was wonderfully done: I started thinking to myself “But, Lizzie, this doesn’t sound like a letter. More like a diary or thinking aloud.” And then it turns out that’s what you were doing with it. “For the archives.” It is not even like a diary, either, nor like thinking aloud or onto paper exactly/. You are very much alone throughout this, my dear. Well, that pain or that predicament is the originality of it. Persevere and brava!

  I have to go and cook. Maria156 is away in Poland on her month’s vacation, and I’m much at the stove or in the markets. How much time it takes. I think I must move more slowly than I used to.

  One point I take issue with you on. Just as a factual matter. For me, in a memoir the problem isn’t myself; it’s other people.157 Perhaps I delude myself but I don’t find it so hard to be honest about myself. But to be honest about others or one’s feelings toward them is too cruel. This wasn’t a problem in Catholic Girlhood, because the people I might have been hurting were far away in the past and the only ones I cared about, really—my grandparents, Preston—were dead. Yet even there I had some twinges of pain for them, for instance when I wrote about my grandmother’s face-lift operation: she wouldn’t have liked that. If you are cruel to yourself, you can make it right with yourself. And your thoughts hurt you a lot anyway. Shame, remorse. You’re used to that. The reason I bring this up is that I have been thinking of doing something that would have elements of a memoir in it, and the point, in that particular work (for reasons too long to go into) would have to be absolute honesty. And as soon as I start thinking of the other people who would be involved in the utterly honest bits of personal history, I immediately start saying to myself: “But you can’t write that. You’ll have to leave that out.” Excision after excision. Fiction is different, at least for me.

  Now, are you coming up for Thanksgiving? You promised. Or all but. Bring Harriet, if she’d like to come. Hannah is definitely coming, and the DuViviers. I don’t know yet about Kevin.158

  With love and pleasure,

  Pseudo M.

  Mary

  286. Elizabeth Bishop to Elizabeth Hardwick

  Sixty Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

  October 16th, 1973

  Dear Elizabeth:

  I saw Aileen Ward last night & she told me she had just heard you give a very good (“lively”, I think she said) talk at Smith. Also yesterday I sent a permission to F,S, & G for your quotation from the poor old “Fish” in your piece on Sylvia Plath—about to be published in a book, I gather.159 I don’t believe I ever told you I liked that piece very much, and the agreeable things you said about me in it, too.160 And also yesterday I read the 1st chapter of a new novel by you in the NYRB, and I liked that. I especially liked the very last sentence!161—and the apt. that looked like “Edinburgh”162—many of the bits about places and abodes are awfully good, I think … I am waiting for the next installment …

  All these reminders on one day have given me the courage to write to you about something I’d thought of asking you long ago—something very trivial, and of importance only to me—but I’ll ask you, anyway. I wonder, if, in this new collection, you’re going to publish the piece on Maine?163 (I’m not sure when it appeared; I’m convinced that teaching destroys the brain—certainly the memory.) I liked it—in fact I thought it was one of your very best pieces, evocative, poetic, even—except for two or three sentences that bothered me. I don’t have the review here so I can’t quote exactly, but (I think) you referred to the trip Lota & I made with Cal in the summer of 1957 or ’58, up the coast of Maine and to Gardners’ Island? (Unless I am completely mistaken, and you went again to Gardners’ Island with another Latin-American friend—if so, ignore all this.)

  If I am right—you maybe went by Cal’s account of our visit, or maybe Lota & I talked about it on our return, too—the sentences are about Lota, and they misrepresent her & what she said, etc.164 Actually her reactions to Maine & Gardners’ Island were even funnier. She didn’t complain of G I’s bareness or ugliness, etc—in fact she adored New England colonial architecture, Shaker furniture, and so on. But she didn’t approve of the Gs’ décor at all, & loathed things like “Harvard chairs” (there were some of those); of course she was rather a fanatic on the subjects of architecture and interior decoration. The house & buildings at G I are not beautiful or interesting—compared with Castine, for example—but I don’t think Lota commented on them—and she did appreciate New England architecture—I still have several of her books on the subject.

  What she didn’t like were the furnishings, our hostess’s inappropriate clothes, the lists pinned up telling who was to stay in the house when, etc., and the fact that everyone was expected to help. That affectation of the American rich she considered just “romanticism.” Also, she may have been the first or only guest who refused to get up for breakfast, since she never did. I felt I created a small scandal when I asked for a tray at breakfast so I could take hers up to her. If we made our own beds, or folded up the bed linen—I undoubtedly did that for her, too.

  And Lota didn’t “lisp.” (That made me think it may have been someone else you had in mind.) Spanish-speaking people seem to be lisping, of course, because of their s’s and z’s—but they aren’t pronounced that way in Portuguese and Lota wouldn’t lisp in either Portuguese or English, of course.

  On the trip we discovered that she thought all the fir trees had been planted, and she kept asking where the “beaches” were. Cal & I kept trying to make the difference between “beaches” and “coastlines” clear.

  I’m afraid, as I said, that this will seem utterly unimportant, and of course it has nothing whatever to do with your really excellent piece. And it may have been someone else—I don’t remember whether you specified Brazilian or not—if so, please disregard this. Someone else may have found things bare and ugly and someone else may really have lisped … It is just that I thought you meant Lota and I hate to have her, even incognito (a?), misrepresented. She already has been enough. I didn’t think it would harm your piece at all to change those phrases—since her actual reactions were equally amusing and even more Latin.

  * * *

  What I’m speaking of now/ isn’t the same thing at all, of course, and you are completely innocent of it—but recently it seems to be the smart thing to use inaccurate personal references—we both know two or three famous poets guilty of this—and I think we should protest whenever we can … I just received proofs of a book of poems by a supposedly very bright young poet in which he has a poem about me (I’ve never met him)—appearing in a “dream” of his, singing about “death” and doing other unlikely things, in my nightgown, no less …165 I was asked to write a “good word” for this book! When I wrote asking why on earth I should, given that poem, he was contrite, or pretended to be, and s
aid that although the poem started off with me (a real quotation) it was really about another E.B., a woman of the same name. I don’t believe this for a minute; no change of person was indicated … Again—your Maine piece has absolutely nothing to do with this kind of thing. I know you know better than I do how cruel and irresponsible it is and I think someone who can write that type of an article—(not you, probably—but an equally good journalist—) should attack it.

  As to your piece—I am probably the only person in the world who could feel disturbed by those few sentences and you mention no names, etc.—and it may be too late to change them now—but I did feel disturbed.

  I hope the novel is progressing easily. If you see Adrienne will you please tell her I’m sorry I didn’t see her before she left & I’m still waiting for the letter she said she was writing me. I hope Harriet is blooming and that you are feeling much better and up to the rigors of a New York winter—

  Affectionately,

  Elizabeth

  287. Elizabeth Hardwick to Elizabeth Bishop

  [15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]

  October 18, 1973

  Dear Elizabeth: I hasten to answer your letter about my description of Maine. It will not be in my new book of essays and I have no thoughts of republishing it, but the basic thing remains and I will definitely take out the paragraph (or the very end of a paragraph) about the rich and their love of a luxurious privation. I did certainly have Lota in mind and it was a memory of a trip all of us were on to Roque Island.166 The Brazilian only appears in two sentences at the end, but I know to my very bones what you mean. It is one of the most peculiar and terrifying sensations to have yourself or someone you have really loved and deeply known suddenly lighted up in a way that seems so far from the real, the true. I remember reading a book last year by a wife of a diplomat we must have met on our trip to Egypt and we are referred to sneeringly as not at all interested in what was going on around us but only in the past. That is calm enough, but it was hideously upsetting and untrue since we were crazily interested in everything. I can’t tell you how I dread the future with biographies and Lizzie; to say nothing of “Cal” who will never be even touched with the truth of his own being and nature. Fortunately I’ll be dead before most of them come. It is such a violation, like a wound. In the end it doesn’t matter whether these things are “true” or “unfavorable” in the usual sense; you just can’t help but weep with pain as you are tossed in someone’s work, especially creative work. Opinion, analysis, can be unfair but the reader has the right to propose his own estimate and judgment at the moment he is reading—the other is simply an appropriation. I do understand your horror at the “dream poem” and I am glad you protested. Also glad to be reminded/ that my friendly remark about the “Brazilian” and her feeling that wandering around in the dark was “not amusing” is not very interesting in itself and doesn’t get right the whole infinitely complicated attitude Lota had or might have had. I will just remove it entirely. I think something new is at hand in these appropriations of one and even/, as in the dream poem, under his own name. It must have to do with a sort of escalating need for and belief in publicity as a value and with the idea of attention. If you want it for yourself on almost any terms you cannot imagine that others would not share this. You keep saying, what’s wrong with what I said? It’s not against you! As if there were only one measure of that. I do feel Andy Warhol’s idea that everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes is at the bottom of it.167 In the end it just means that you don’t think anyone is real.

  I am sure you got the documents finally.168 I regret deeply having assembled these papers/ at one time without going over them. I know I will come to grief, more grief; but then it was simply too hard to draw back, too difficult to go over them. Well, I will not suffer future pain.… I am very well, having a good time, working, listening to music. I like my life a lot most of the time. Harriet is very well, busy smoking cigarettes and making fun of everyone. She told me that she didn’t want to apply to Radcliffe because all of those students were dreadful, “all with their interests.” Don’t repeat this to Cal because he will repeat it in front of her and she loathes that more than anything. She is coming up to Boston next weekend and perhaps you will see her. Again, be in good health and happiness—as much as you want of the latter and more than you want of the first. Love,

  Elizabeth

  288. Elizabeth Hardwick to Mary McCarthy

  [15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]

  October 28, 1973

  Dearest Mary: I was happy indeed to have your letter and I thank you for it—tremendously. I have written a little more on my new book, but like you I am sunk in housekeeping, going to the market, cooking, going downstairs to the washing machines. The saintly Nicole hasn’t been well at all, unable to work, with many painful illnesses all stemming from deafness.169 She has gone to Spain for a month or so with the hope of getting well. I have a woman who cleans a bit but that hardly helps. However, I expect to have a little more support soon, but nothing could take the place of my beloved Nicole. Harriet and I miss her, every day. And the mail, the business—if that is what it all is … Otherwise I am very well, having a good time in what has been a strangely beautiful fall here in New York, clear skies, cool and yet summery. The Nixon affair keeps one almost literally breathless. I fear he will slide by again and noted with pain that his truly abominable, meaningless press conference last night on his plight and the Middle East got some very good “notices.”170

  I wish I had the word about Thanksgiving. I have written Aunt Sarah to say that I think they should give up the ordeal of sharing the board with Harriet and me and assorted Winslows at/in the Cotting farm. She has written back, not saying yes or no alas, just saying that if it takes place it will be because [of] the chance of another year with me and Harriet. I cannot do more to these people who have been kindness and love to me beyond my deserving. I hope you will let me come up with the New York group even if I can’t let you know too early in advance. About Harriet I don’t know either. I think I will come to Castine Friday in any case, if you can find a crash cot for me. I very much want to have Thanksgiving there, with you and Jim, with Hannah, the DuViviers. It is the most appealing engagement I can imagine. Will let you know soon.

  Last night, about 11, I got a call from Tommy—the second time I think since all of this happened.171 But this time he seemed really desperately lonely and I grieve for him. He is so vulnerable to painful feeling, always has been, and I think has always struggled with depression. He spoke of the “bleakness” and what could one say. He is coming down this weekend, a few days with Julian172 in Poughkeepsie and here in my Studio Saturday. It seemed to me good that he was moved to action of some kind and I will be happy to see him. I guess it just has to be lived through. I can’t bear the miserable years toward the end so many people seem to have to endure. Wystan, for instance, was very unhappy in many ways I think, worn, lonely, in the grip of iron habit that wasn’t especially cheering to him.173

  I have read so many rotten things recently, all of a personal nature. The Nicolson book seems to me a nothing, the letters bad, the comment by N.N. fatuous.174 I loathe it when people write: perhaps she was cruel, but magnificently.175 And then there is a boring thing by Hannah Tillich about the porn interests and sexual aberrations of herself and Himself, Paul.176 It is a shame that it should be just as hard to write about sex as about anything else. And very hard to write about your private life, no harder than anything else perhaps, but the idea of these books is that it is easier, the whole effort really sort of done for you by experience.

  I have been going to the opera, buying and playing records. My house is always crowded with people coming and going—even a recent Radcliffe graduate I know has been staying here. I feel that I would like to end up like Dr. Johnson with his crowd of paupers, but I fear their dirt. And of course Johnson had to go out every night.

  Much love to you and Jim. I am obsessed with the Thanksgiving hope
and want only to be there cracking chestnuts and washing dishes.

  Lizzie

  PART IV

  1974–1979

  289. Robert Lowell to Elizabeth and Harr[iet] Lowell

  [Telegram]

  Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent

  [no date, but January 1, 1974?]

  LOVE AND FRENCH FOR THE NEW YEAR ITS WELL THE OLD YEAR IS OUT LOVE

  CAL

  290. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Elizabeth Lowell

  Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent

  [January 18, 1974]

  Dearest Lizzie—

  Sorry about the unexpected call. I had forgotten that cable in England means “telephone.” I was caught by surprise having just telegraphed what I thought was a “cable.”

  Delighted with your Philip.1 It seems to say everything for and against imaginable in your short space—and more than what is possible in a funeral speech. Yet I don’t imagine anyone is hurt. I started a piece on him for Commentary and had actually written a little less than two pages … when I read you. I felt a great relief of not having to go on, you made it unnecessary; mine was a rambly reminiscence beginning during the War with going with the first Rahvs to hear Randall lecture at Princeton with Allen very himself presiding.

  I suppose the drop into the void is always a few weeks ahead, but for the moment we are so much more at ease than we were in Brookline that no hardship can be felt. I wonder if Harriet would like to come for a week or so at Easter. We have two, not first rate, but safe horses. And surely something more wide ranging, like London, can be arranged. When is Easter. I may come home to go to Skidmore and Vanderbilt sometime in April!