by May Sarton
I must go back to Monday because I got back a little of the magic of this place when all was ready, champagne on ice, glasses, a plate of cookies, for Bill Heyen and Han and Bill Ewart who brought one of their boys. I sat down as I have not done lately, watching the light dancing in the leaves of the lilac, and feeling happy and at peace, glad that friends would soon be here. And such good friends. Bill Heyen is one of the very few poets I know now. I admire his work, tender, deep and authentic as it is, and I love him, great blond man. And of course Bill Ewart is the magician who imagines and prints the Christmas poem for me and once a little book of poems—and will do another tiny book next year. So all was festive for their arrival, even to a blue sea—and we had a good talk. I’m afraid Han, slight and shy, was disappointed in the garden—there is so little to see these days. But the Japanese iris are coming out!
And suddenly this afternoon a huge bunch of flame-colored roses arrived from Laurie Shields way off in San Francisco at the Older Women’s League.
Bill’s son, who has a sheltie, was dear with Tamas, stroking and talking to him just as though he were a person, as indeed he is.
Lucy just called from Dr. Petrovich’s office—he is going to get hold of Dr. Ruskin, the “guru” for this operation, so at last I may get well soon! Unbelievable!
Friday, July 11
But now it seems Dr. Ruskin is away until the end of August—and Dr. P. is trying to get in touch with his assistant, Hasan Caran. I meanwhile feel awfully sick and abandoned this week end, still having to take the infernal medicine. And it is an almost perfect July day, warm and dry, the air so clear everything is in sharp outline.
How can I ever tell all the people who have sent flowers? Today a charming blue and white arrangement in a basket, very pale yellow lilies, iris, some little soft flowers in button-shaped branches that look like a wild flower, and harebells! The latter seem like magic in a florist’s bouquet—this one from Dorothy Peck whom I have never met, but we talk occasionally on the phone.
Flowers and the telephone have kept me from despair. Jabber called from St. Louis yesterday. Pat Keen calls every morning from Los Angeles.
I have forgotten to speak of the good night sounds, the steady pulse of the crickets and gentle sea murmurs in the distance—and the other night I was kept awake by a mockingbird who sang the three songs he had learned without stopping from midnight to three! It was a mixed pleasure although one of the songs, a curious chuck-chuck between arias, reminded me of a nightingale.
[And where and when did I get to know the nightingale’s song? At Grace Dudley’s in Vouvray. Her house was called Le Petit Bois, and in that little wood we once walked out in moonlight and heard six nightingales. That was just after World War II in the forties, an eon ago.]
Wednesday, July 16
A lot of days without a word here. The word would have been simply nausea, day after day, seven or eight hours of it, lying around waiting for the operation to be scheduled at Massachusetts General. They promise this will be done today. I can hardly wait as the possibility of feeling well again hovers in the air. Meanwhile it was a tremendous fillip to see Royce Roth and Frances Whitney, settled in at Dockside for their yearly holiday—my second dinner “out” in seven months. It was great fun and the good talk as always. I have been starved for that.
Now at last Lucy called and the Massachusetts General operation is scheduled for August third (my mother’s birthday)—the seventeen days to wait feeling so ill really did come as a shock two hours ago. Now I have thought it over, I see that I must take it as a challenge, to use these days for some really life-enhancing things. It is a great help that Frances and Royce will be here the whole time. Maggie Vaughan will come Friday and bring our supper.
Thursday, July 17
Now all these days I am close to rage instead of tears, the two sides of depression, but rage may be healthier.
I feel sad that Pierrot is such a selfish, greedy cat—beautiful, of course, but a little affection would go a long way. Last night when I was pretty desperate and also exhausted by all the calls I had had to make, he never even came upstairs. He is heavy for me to carry up and sometimes he does come.
I am reading Peter Taylor’s stories. He is compared to Chekhov on the jacket; in a way it is the same meager and comfortless, in a spiritual sense, life that is depicted, but C. is shot through with compassion. I think also about a lot of things that never get into this journal. Why? Because of the letters, a vast chaotic heap. Why? Because I do not have the psychic energy to write with any pith. And that is why I feel I have lost control of my life, look forward to nothing, live the days through like a zombi, and long for sleep, oblivion.
Saturday, July 19
Friends, true friends, are life savers. Maggie Vaughan came yesterday, looking lovely and summery in a dress with a lily of the valley pattern—and as always laden with dear homemade things: a dozen fresh eggs, three small veal meat loaves, spinach from the garden, heavy cream from her Jersey cow, eggs in aspic for my lunches, raspberries for dessert and a whole set of plastic envelopes full of thin delicious cookies. I had felt rather sick all day, but just seeing Maggie’s bright eyes and all those loving provisions revived me.
For once it was a gentle July evening with a little breeze to keep the mosquitoes away, and we sat out on the terrace and had ginger ale and cookies with Tamas, of course, eager for all the cookies he could wheedle, and Pierrot emerging from and disappearing into the bushes like a genie.
It is such a soothing open-ended way to talk, to be outdoors, yet sheltered, with the great ocean out there and an occasional yawl floating by. So Maggie and I caught up with ourselves. She is working with Hospice in Augusta and has been taking a course to that end.
After a while we went in to have a Scotch and look at the news—and have our wonderful supper. What Maggie had in mind was to recreate the pain de veau I mention in a chapter of I Knew A Phoenix, the pain de veau my father remembered—and Maggie’s creation was absolutely delicious and must have been an exact replica, in my view perhaps even better.
Today it is foggy and rainy and I felt so tired I got up late, but Maggie sat on the end of my bed with her coffee and we talked in a homey way.
Sunday, July 20
I guess the fast heartbeat inevitably makes me feel tired all the time—so everything is an effort in the morning—again cold and gray—there seemed little motivation to get up at all. What pulled me up finally at nearly seven—I had let Tamas out at five-thirty—was knowing that Pierrot must be waiting outside, hoping for breakfast to appear—and there he was. Then I did a wash of shirts, pajamas and such, and had a bath. Now I have just called Juliette Huxley in London to catch up with her. She had been for a long walk on the Heath. How nostalgic I felt hearing that—and that at nearly ninety she can do it! Whereas I can walk only a few yards without losing my breath. It is now fourteen days to what I hope will be my emancipation.
I forgot to note here the marvelous changes outside: now the field is a strange pinkish color, the tall grasses ripple in the wind, and the thread of the path through it is bright emerald green. It is more than six months since I have walked down to the sea but I listen to it more than ever, great presence that is never still.
I also forgot to note how much I enjoy my daily drive to the post office, about four miles, first through the woods on this place, then out to salt marshes, and there I watch every day for a small inlet where two geese, two brown ducks and a white one swim about together. If I see them my heart leaps up and I feel happy—and can’t help saying what I remember of William Allingham’s:
Four ducks on a pond,
A grass-bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing:
What a little thing
To remember for years,—
To remember with tears!*
Later on, once in town, I observe the very few cared-for small gardens and what is blooming there. Here the only glorious thing to see is
New Dawn, a cascade these days of pale pink roses over the fence—at least they have flourished in this summer when nothing else has.
* In Come Hither, comp. by Walter de la Mare (Knopf, 1960), p. 517.
Monday, July 21
Driving slowly to pick up Royce and Frances last evening, I looked at all the wild flowers along the road, the summer crop just coming into bloom—meadow rue, goldenrod, herb willow—their names taste of summer days and evenings. I had felt really ill all day, but so looked forward to what we had imagined would be a gala dinner at Arrows, one of the few Maine restaurants in Gourmet, Royce said. We had been there before, enjoying sitting in the wide porch looking out on a garden. But it has changed hands—the maitre d’ a young man in open shirt and trousers, very casual, said he had no note of a reservation for Roth, though Royce had called the day before. He was so high and mighty that we were tempted to leave, but he finally deigned to seat us and then we were confronted with a ridiculously expensive menu—that we suspected would not be worth the fortune involved. Quite right.
But we had a wonderful talk, partly about what the perfect marriage is if there is such a thing, and all agreeing that the end is friendship, the desideratum, it must begin and end there. Any such talk always sends me back to Homer as quoted by Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson in their anthology Another World Than This:
For there is nothing more potent or better than this: when a man and a woman, sharing the same ideas about life, keep house together. It is a thing which causes pain to their enemies and pleasure to their friends, but only they themselves know what it really means.
Wednesday, July 23
Yesterday I felt so ill I almost called off lunch with Huldah who drove over from Center Sandwich. Today I have written a few letters and set the table very happily for Anne and Barbara, and feel better. I saw Lucy, Dr. Petrovich’s assistant, yesterday afternoon, and much to my amazement the EKG showed a perfectly synchronized heartbeat which she attributes to the medicine—Amiodoroni—which has to accumulate in the system to do its work. Terrified that Dr. Petrovich will now want me to cancel the operation, I insisted that my heart might be normal but my intestinal tract was not. For I could not undertake a lecture trip in my present state. Also Lucy thinks the irregular heartbeat will slide in and out, no certainty that it will stay normal.
A perfect summer day here—the ocean absolutely calm, that Fra Angelico blue with a lighter band all along the horizon.
It was good to see Huldah after more than a year, looking just the same, although her deafness is a problem. But we had a really good “catching up” talk, nevertheless.
When we came back here there was a tiny exquisite mouse sitting on the rug in the porch—Pierrot was out. I screamed for help and Huldah, after several tries, managed to capture it in a paper towel and took it far off in the garden, near Bramble’s tombstone. Pierrot must have brought it in alive earlier on. Will it live after such trauma?
I love mice but it is the sudden motions, the fear of picking it up, that scares me so. I was awfully grateful for Huldah’s help.
She is very good—in Brentwood, Tennessee, too—about feeding household scraps to wild animals and told me she is now feeding a small fox and has seen him. I have not seen a fox here for a long time. There is so much building going on, the wilderness, here as everywhere, is literally losing ground. There are fewer birds also, no grosbeak this year at the feeder.
Friday, July 25
I lay in Dr. Petrovich’s office in a johnny for forty-five minutes yesterday afternoon, waiting and crying with fear and tension. He finally got there. I said firmly, “I have two possibilities, the operation or suicide, for I can’t go on feeling so ill, unable to work.” He still asked if I had not felt better since Tuesday—when the heart began a normal beat—but Tuesday was the worst day for nausea in a long time. Then, the bombshell, “They may refuse to do the operation if your heart is normal when you go on August third. They are academics,” he said, “you have to realize that.” So I go in to Boston on August third and may be sent right back here! It is so preposterous after this long agonized wait that the only thing to do is curl up inside and sit it out.
Monday, July 28
Where have the days since Friday gone? Very depressing, foggy, humid awful weather for one reason, plus the fact that I feel worse rather than better and have a dull pain in my heart all the time—worse nausea than before. But Saturday morning I had the great joy of seeing Susan Garrett who came with strawberries to sit down and catch up a little, especially on my problems lately. She is such a sensitive, compassionate person. How I wish she were still director of the hospital here! But of course George is a professor at Charlottesville and they are here to inhabit her father’s dear old house on the river only for a few summer days. Seeing Susan was like an infusion of love and caring. “A piqüre,” Edith Kennedy used to call that.
That afternoon Royce and Frances for champagne—and in all the heavy heat there came a saving waft of air from the ocean and we sat outside for a while, then inside, for some reason got off on a passionate political argument, and I felt ill when they left after only a little more than an hour and could not eat anything. That meant that Pierrot and Tamas had a feast—the half-cold tenderloin steak!
Yesterday I again felt too sick to look forward to the real event of Eleanor Blair’s coming with Elyce, bringing our lunch. I haven’t been able to get over to Eleanor since before Christmas. What a joy to see her, blooming at ninety-one, having recovered from a broken wrist in record time, and lit up by Elyce’s presence as she always is. Elyce teaches economics at the University of Indiana—where I’m supposed to be October 13–18, God willing—and knows Eleanor because she was her tenant on an exchange year at Wellesley. It has turned into a remarkable friendship.
She had made a fruit salad and a special yogurt and mango sauce—and luckily I had put a bottle of Vouvray in the fridge which tasted perfect with the fruit and the Brie.
I was amazed at how much Eleanor was able to see although she is legally blind. She noticed all the changes in the library due to the fire and remembered the little ring of Netsuke round a bowl of shells, for instance. How can she see them, I wonder?
Elyce meanwhile was fascinated by Pierrot in one of his wilder moods—what dismay when I found earlier that day an awful mess he had made in the corner of the library! I heard him scratching and rushed in—oh dear! I wish he would learn that the whole great outdoors is there for his purposes!
I wish I had something long, absorbing and rich to read! I have ordered Yeats’ letters but they haven’t come, but it adds to my feeling of being in limbo not to have anything to read. I thought I would reread V. Woolf’s The Years, but found it too depressing—the too vivid account at first of the household where the wife and mother is dying upstairs—not what I need right now.
Today a last meeting with Fran and Royce who leave on Wednesday and are coming to take me out to lunch. I’m glad to get away. My desk is a nightmare of the undone and will stay like that unless I can be well and write ten or twenty letters a day as I sometimes did on the week ends.
Tuesday, July 29
Hard to say good-by to Royce and Fran. When I got up from my nap around four I began to cry and couldn’t stop. I feel as ill or worse than ever—with the fear hanging over me that they will refuse to do the operation because my heart is—or was last week—in sync, due to the medicine. It is too ironic!
Dr. Petrovich has doubled my dose of Bumex because I pant so much.
But I did pick a funny little bunch of flowers for the house in the late afternoon: self-sown nicotiana, opium poppies, veronica, day lilies, Shasta daisies, “an artless bouquet” as the interviewer from the Times described my indoor flowers—but it was a real pleasure to do it and I must tell Karen so. She has soldiered on without enough interest or praise from me, I know, and she is so dear with Tamas, he will miss her. I shall feel forlorn when she goes back to Tucson on August fifteenth.
Thursd
ay, July 31
I lay awake a long time last night listening to the rain, and thought how badly I have handled myself lately. Loneliness has taken over what used to be a vitalizing solitude, a pause between poetry readings and seeing many friends who used to come. Now I feel abandoned and desolate—and would like to miaow in the way Pierrot does now and then to say, “Where are you? I’m lonely!”
People, especially Janice, with all her nursing knowledge and compassionate spirit, have been as supportive as they could. But Anne and Barbara are far away—everyone after all has someone important, a job—I become the extra effort in their full-to-capacity lives. And so, I must admit, I have been for years myself, the quick responder to cries of help, often from people I have never seen, but who write to me as a friend. One reason for my depression now is that I can no longer “respond” as I used to. I feel so cut off from what was once a self.
Everyone I know must be as sick and tired of this illness as I am.
People, friends, do come, and Nancy’s daily arrival at eight all week is of immeasurable comfort. She is so steady and so kind, it is a blessing—and she is very good to Tamas and the Wild Beast, Pierrot, too. On the days when she is not here, a sort of blackness takes over the house and me.
Of course what is lacking is the tangible “we” when two people live together in amity—and at seventy-four I have to admit that the likelihood of its ever happening again is slight.
In spite of the gloom yesterday I made brownies, so all is not lost!
Friday, August 1
Back from lunch with Edythe to find a note from Nancy to say “prepare to be admitted to Phillips House on Saturday.” I called them of course. “Why?” “Because otherwise you might not get a room.” They will call me between nine and eleven Saturday morning and I won’t know till then. I felt dizzy.
