by May Sarton
On deck they talked of many things: Mussolini, Maurice Chevalier’s songs, Josephine Baker and Helen Morgan at their night clubs, of Irving Berlin and Cole Porter, of Henri de Montherlant’s novels, of D’Annunzio and Mistinguett and Yvonne Printemps, the philosophy of Orage and the portraits of Bernard Boutet de Monvel, whether Lonsdale was better than Coward, of Gertrude Lawrence and Beatrice Lillie, and the magnificent Gladys Cooper.
What a lot of reverberations that list makes in my mind!
* Random House, 1986, pp. 20–21.
Sunday, September 14
Edythe came for lunch and we splurged by going to The Whistling Oyster, perfect on this brilliant day as the scene for a good talk but I was horrified by how undistinguished the very expensive food was—even the croissants which were doughy, not flaky, and not really cooked. Only the dessert was good—ice cream on fudge cake with thick hot fudge sauce! Oh dear.
But I felt so queer and shaky all afternoon I got really anxious and called Edythe to ask her to give me a ring this morning. It seemed very lonely here with no one due to come till Nancy on Monday—and all this held in the image of Mary-Leigh and Beverly off to a cocktail party as I went out to do some gardening alone. Without the animals it would be too desolate. I am not and never have been a part of this community. There is no Unitarian church and even if there was I am not a churchgoer. I had somehow imagined when I came here, well-known as a writer—I was sixty then—that I would have occasionally been invited out. That has not happened. People come from outside the area to see me. The exceptions are Janice, Nancy, the Simon family who used to live down the road, and of course Susan and George Garrett who are now based in Charlottesville and are rarely here these days. Finally, as the Mercedes Benz went down the road, I went out into great emptiness and did some clipping of perennials—and that was the cure for a moment of dread and loneliness.
But the fact is I am always an outsider—we were in Cambridge; I was in Nelson; and now here. It has its advantages. Solitude is better than being bored, after all. I am never bored, only in some sort of existential pain now and then—and who is not?
Monday, September 15
Crab meat salad all ready to go, and strawberries hulled, and I’m off to see Keats and Marguerite and bring lunch for the first time since before Christmas—such a festive day at last! Cloudy, but I don’t care.
In spite of the two thousand amps sound that is supposed to terrify them, red squirrels are back in the house in the wall opposite my desk—and elsewhere. It is maddening.
Yesterday afternoon Tamas barked in his special “asking” way. It was not water or food or to go in or out, I discovered, but to go for a walk—and in the beautiful late afternoon light we walked slowly down to the sea, and I sat there on the edge of the cliff and drank in the marvelous deep blue, setting off the snow-white of the breakers—the coming and going of gulls. It has been so long since I have been able to do this, it was a great breath of life—and Tamas, too, rarely goes that far. Pierrot meanwhile got terrified halfway down and raced back to hide in the safe bushes on a small knoll. When we got near him on the way back he meowed his desperate “I’m lost” mew, but finally emerged like a thunderbolt and raced through the stubble of the new-cut field at about sixty miles per hour! I envied him. Then in the house he was totally exhausted and slept right through my supper.
The walk was a gift from life—how I enjoyed it!
Tuesday, September 16
It was wonderful to see Keats and Marguerite both looking remarkably well and the lunch was a great success. But I was too keyed up when I got back to rest. I had to read the mail and papers to quiet down, and then it was after four. I slept badly, waking from strange dreams. The medicine is in one of its harder stages when it affects the digestive system and I feel rather exhausted by it. Today I am very shaky indeed. A materialistic day as I went to get a skirt widened which I hope to wear on the afternoon readings—a soft gray and white plaid—it will go with several jackets. It’s awfully long but that is the fashion this year.
There were loud downpours in the night.
Thursday, September 18
A splendid clear cool day and I was happy, for my old friend Phil Palmer was coming at three for our yearly exchange of what has been happening to us. He had a heart attack last year which put him out of circulation for months and ended in his having to resign from a position he had hoped to be given and had been given a year before. Fate has been really cruel in this. Now he is back as pastor to a small church not far from Waterville. Luckily his wife can drive the twenty-five miles to her job in Augusta. He has been told by his doctor not to overdo but finds it impossible to relax. We talked a lot about what it does to be faced suddenly with extreme weakness, to lose one’s power. He feels it is a gift from God, but I can feel this is a rationalization which he wants to believe but has not yet accepted.
I have been in the same state of “not being able”—and the frustration and depression it causes.
I was tired I think—at any rate I found I was stumbling over words in a strange way—substituting one word for another. That is surely an effect of the stroke.
What I envy Phil for is his seeing once a month three other pastors in fairly nearby Methodist churches—two are in their first ministries, one a young woman. Phil and the fourth member have been at it for years. For someone not married, like the young woman, the life of a pastor can be dreadfully lonely.
It’s lovely to hear that Phil’s son and daughter-in-law, who is also ordained, have six churches between them! Sunday must be an exhausting day.
I lay awake thinking about Phil and how he could learn to rest, instead of feeling he must read a book, or answer a letter when what he clearly needs is to lie down and let everything go for a half hour. It’s interesting that I do not have that problem. I can sit for an hour in the chaise longue contemplating the changing light and relax completely. I have also discovered long ago that when I do that, it often becomes a fertile time when ideas for poems or novels pop into my head like those magic Japanese paper flowers in tight bundles which open in a glass of water. Perhaps it has something to do with stretching out on a chaise or bed?
When Phil left after an hour and a half, I was awfully exhausted, but felt I must pick flowers as frost was predicted. Then when I was getting my supper the phone rang twice, and I called Lee Blair and Peg after supper. So I went to bed frazzled.
But there were the Yeats letters, the first volume is just out. These are the 1890’s. None of his later arrogance is there and, much to my delight, he hammers at “clarity and simplicity” as what the good poem demands. With them and Pierrot, very affectionate, beside me, I gradually felt centered again.
The new heart drug is poisoning me just as the old one did and I have awful cramps day and night, but there is nothing to do but “bear and grin it,” as my father said when he had a gall bladder attack in the middle of the night.
Sunday, September 21
On Friday I was really in great pain. It makes me so cross to find myself back in this syndrome. But it was a rather full day and I managed it somehow. At ten a publisher of Greek descent, Stathis Orphanos, who had written me a few weeks ago to ask if he could take some photographs, came with a Hungarian friend. I had dreaded it, and was afraid it would rain but there was a sort of pearly gray light which may have been better than full sunlight. Stathis is an enthusiast, and worked for an hour, his friend moving furniture around, with great concentration. I do need a new publicity photograph, although Anne Tremearne’s are good and I was pleased with what she showed me. I felt very at home with these two men. They had just come from photographing Richard Wilbur and William Kennedy, the novelist from Albany, and I was glad to know how handsome Dick still is at sixty or so. But as I watched Stathis and his friend walk down the grassy path to the sea, I realized that I felt at home with them in that special way because they are Europeans. What is the bond? A Hungarian, a Greek, a Belgian—what could be more different in landscape,
culture, history, etc. I don’t really know. It is some recognition of a common soul, perhaps—not definable anyway in rational terms.
Just after they left, Vicky Simon came. I have not seen her for months and could at last tell her what the pot of lavender freesias that I found in my room at the hospital after those six hours in limbo, had meant. She brought lunch, chicken salad, and a box of ginger cookies for Eleanor Blair whom she knew I would be seeing the next day—which was yesterday as I write this. When Vicky called I knew it was a little risky as I was bound to be overtired after the photographing, but then I think except for Janice and Nancy, she is one of my very few real friends in York—and I wanted to see her so I said come along—and we did have a good catching-up talk. The Simons are now in their own house, which her husband designed, and both children in school. Vicky works about twenty hours as a social worker with abused children. She spoke of how badly she needs her women friends, the three with whom she shared everything and who are still in Minnesota—an awful wrench to part from them. I understand this perfectly as my mother, too, felt in exile here in America since her intimate friendships were all in Belgium. Many women who have to uproot because of their husbands’ job must feel this leaving of intimate friends as irrevocable.
In Minnesota years ago Vicky and her two friends spent a week end in a cabin in the woods reading May Sarton, exchanging the books with each other.
Her new discovery is Anne Tyler—and in that admiration I heartily agree.
Eleanor just called to say Vicky’s ginger cookies were the best she had tasted since her mother’s, “because they are real chewable cookies,” not those elegant flat tea cookies people often bring.
All went well yesterday except for infernal traffic on Route 128. Eleanor, at ninety-two, looks rosy and says she feels better than she did last year although she has only now recovered from the broken left wrist a few months ago. Her house is always a delight to be in, the delight of being again with cherished things, with things that mean a life. She is elated—Lauriat’s called while I was there to say her book on Wellesley for which she made remarkable photographs and wrote the text is a best seller—after twenty years!
But what I meant to write about is the garden. On Wednesday I let down after Phil’s visit by cutting back perennials below the terrace. It was a serene afternoon, smelling of autumn, that particular tangy, slightly musty smell. It’s crazy how much I have put into this garden, how little has done really well.
Monday, September 22
Right now, however, the Japanese anemones are quite exquisite in a corner of the terrace so it was the right place for once. The things that have succeeded—let me look on the positive side—are five of the eight tree peonies I planted. The one in the lower terrace border is a marvelous pale gold with almost purple shadows and yellow stamens. It suffered last winter—bitterly cold and too little snow—but did offer a few marvelous flowers in June. A huge yellow pompon of a tree peony against the farther wall did well until this year, but the flower heads are too heavy so it never has the style and exquisite beauty of one of the single lemon-yellow ones at the back of the house. They are half in shade but have done well nonetheless. My favorite, a white single one, has not done well but produces one or two flowers like gods every year. So something has worked of all my attempts and failures.
The other success has been the de Rothschild azaleas, so tall and airy and brilliant, white, vermillion and pale yellow against the dark trees—one white one has a ravishing scent of cloves. The Japanese iris, too, has flourished.
But my attempts to get periwinkle to grow in front of the stone Phoenix and miniature cyclamen where the statue of Bramble now lies have failed.
Phlox did well this year, thank heavens! And the delphinium Raymond gave me for my birthday. The asters are out in the picking garden.
Wednesday, September 24
Yesterday was quite a day. First I managed to write a letter much on my mind, then at nine did a telephone interview for a Unitarian publication in Minnesota. I love the Unitarian creed: “In the spirit of Jesus, we unite for the worship of God and the service of man.” I chose to go to the Unitarian Church in Cambridge when I was ten or eleven because Barbara Runkle’s family had a pew and I could go with her. We both adored the minister, Samuel McCord Crothers, a saintly white-haired man—we imagined he had a halo!—who preached marvelous sermons, full of quiet wisdom. One made a great impression on me—and really marked me for life. I can hear him saying, “Go into the inner chamber of your soul—and shut the door.” The slight pause after “soul” did it. A revelation to the child who heard it and who never has forgotten it.
Michael Finley asked good questions, but I felt very tired at nine-thirty I must say—so much had to be compressed very fast and made clear.
Then at ten Nancy and I set forth in her car in a deluge of heavy rain and mist for Westbrook College to see the new library there where there is to be a Sarton Room, part of the Maine Women Writers Collection, which includes Sarah Orne Jewett, Millay and Bogan.
The library has been made from the old gymnasium and they were able to use some of the old beams. Even in the depressing downpour it looked most distinguished and exciting—the exterior a beautiful dark red with white trim. Inside it felt like heaven, so airy and spacious, I longed to sit right down in a carrel and be a student! The Sarton Room—what a thrill!—takes up one whole corner and looks out on a small white-pillared patio which will eventually be planted of course.
Dorothy Healy took us around, her eyes sparkling with pride. She has been the moving spirit of the college for many years—and it is she who has created the Maine Women Writers Collection. She showed us around, then Brad Daziel came and helped Nancy take the big box of autographed poetry books I am lending for the library opening—books which will go to the library after my death with my whole poetry library.
Thursday, September 25
At last the sun! Calm glittering ocean—and my spirits rise. But I want to write to Juliette and send her an article in Newsweek on Memory which I found fascinating, including a single line which made me smile, “Snails hate turbulence”—the sort of phrase one can play around with for hours.
Here is another from Juliette’s last letter: “But the truth is a very dangerous rock on which to put your writing desk.”
Saturday, September 27
On Thursday afternoon I saw Dr. Petrovich and, thank goodness, my heart is not fibrillating as I feared it might be. The Westbrook day was exhausting and that explains why I felt so queer and dizzy on Wednesday.
Perhaps partly the relief of the good news did it, but I woke up yesterday with, at long last, the poem about the four ducks and two geese I pass every day on my way to town, beginning to form itself in my head, and in about two hours I got it down, and revised it yesterday, so it is nearly there on the page—a poem I have been contemplating for months. I jotted down what “came” in bed yesterday morning, and that makes me wonder whether I should not let that happen more often, lie there and see what comes to mind—before I get into the clutter and pressure of household, animals and finally my horrendous desk.
It’s a real autumn day here, windy and cold, with a rough ocean that glitters like molten silver. When I came back from the doctor’s on Thursday it was serene, so calm and beautiful, I went out and did an hour’s cutting down of perennials in the garden. Perfect bliss. It is hard to describe how happy I am in the garden—the smell, the occasional monarch butterfly floating over the last phlox—Pierrot rushing in and out of where I am working like a frenzied Comedia del Arte actor—and Tamas coming to lie in his place under the maple tree. When I lift my head perhaps a sail appears on the ocean. Unfortunately, as I was trundling a wheelbarrow—full, to take to the compost—I saw Tamas and Pierrot standing together—at play? No. I was amazed to see that Tamas had a baby rabbit hanging from his mouth in just the same way—the animal, limp—Pierrot carries his prey. I managed to unlock Tamas’ jaws and rescue the poor mauled baby rabbit�
��but it was going to die clearly, so I laid it on a shelf in the garage, the eye still so bright it hurt. Yesterday it was dead and I buried it under pine needles.
Tamas must have taken it from Pierrot, I think. One cannot be sentimental about the world of nature, but nevertheless, it is impossible to face such murder without acute misery.
Sunday, September 28
One of those days when nothing gets done and time runs away under my feet—I’m not running but time is! It is very cold with streaks of sun through high clouds. At this very minute I must write a letter to Annie Caldwell in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Hers is dated July ninth—hard to believe. The problem these days is not letters from strangers—there are four or five a day I often do not answer now—but letters from old friends whom I neglected while I was ill. These fine threads, the tapestry of friendship that goes on being woven every day, must be kept alive.
Tuesday, September 30
I wake up happy, longing to get at the day—and then energy gets frittered away taking rubbish down cellar, keeping things more or less in order here. That is a daily struggle.
Meanwhile every time I go out I am in a dream of wild asters these warm autumn days. They are a cloud of lavenders and whites and purples all along Godfrey’s Cove Road—such a journey into delight.
Wednesday, October 1
Warm sticky weather—over eighty-six degrees here yesterday. I ordered my tickets months ago but when I went to pick them up, found the agent had booked me to Indianapolis October first instead of the tenth! She could not get me on a plane for the tenth so I have to go a day early. But it may be a good retreat to have a silent day to myself as I have been invited to stay at the Carmelite monastery. I always feel at home among nuns, and I look forward very much to this, and am touched by the kind invitation.
