Savage Beauty

by Nancy Milford

  Darling, Darling, Darling. I could kiss you now,—and now I could kiss you,—and now, and now! … Dear, I think if I once saw you I could write and write and write! If I once could just hear you over the phone wire—and know it was you.—I could work and work and write and write!

  For the first time she linked loving and writing—if she had him she could work, she could write. But no man had come to rescue her from Camden, Maine—she had rescued herself through her poetry. Now she took her tarnished ring and, pricking her finger for “a drop of red, red blood,” she sealed the book into a small white box with the hot wax from a candle. It was her last vigil. Her life in Camden was over.

  RENASCENCE

  All I could see from where I stood

  Was three long mountains and a wood;

  I turned and looked another way,

  And saw three islands in a bay.

  So with my eyes I traced the line

  Of the horizon, thin and fine,

  Straight around till I was come

  Back to where I’d started from;

  And all I saw from where I stood

  Was three long mountains and a wood.

  Over these things I could not see;

  These were the things that bounded me.

  And I could touch them with my hand,

  Almost, I thought, from where I stand!

  And all at once things seemed so small

  My breath came short, and scarce at all.

  But, sure, the sky is big, I said:

  Miles and miles above my head.

  So here upon my back I’ll lie

  And look my fill into the sky.

  And so I looked, and after all,

  The sky was not so very tall.

  The sky, I said, must somewhere stop …

  And—sure enough!—I see the top!

  The sky, I thought, is not so grand;

  I ’most could touch it with my hand!

  And reaching up my hand to try,

  I screamed, to feel it touch the sky.

  I screamed, and—lo!—Infinity

  Came down and settled over me;

  Forced back my scream into my chest;

  Bent back my arm upon my breast;

  And, pressing of the Undefined

  The definition on my mind,

  Held up before my eyes a glass

  Through which my shrinking sight did pass.

  Until it seemed I must behold

  Immensity made manifold;

  Whispered to me a word whose sound

  Deafened the air for worlds around,

  And brought unmuffled to my ears

  The gossiping of friendly spheres,

  The creaking of the tented sky,

  The ticking of Eternity.

  I saw and heard, and knew at last

  The How and Why of all things, past,

  And present, and forevermore.

  The Universe, cleft to the core,

  Lay open to my probing sense,

  That, sickening, I would fain pluck thence

  But could not,—nay! but needs must suck

  At the great wound, and could not pluck

  My lips away till I had drawn

  All venom out.—Ah, fearful pawn:

  For my omniscience paid I toll

  In infinite remorse of soul.

  All sin was of my sinning, all

  Atoning mine, and mine the gall

  Of all regret. Mine was the weight

  Of every brooded wrong, the hate

  That stood behind each envious thrust,

  Mine every greed, mine every lust.

  And all the while, for every grief,

  Each suffering, I craved relief

  With individual desire;

  Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire

  About a thousand people crawl;

  Perished with each,—then mourned for all.

  A man was starving in Capri;

  He moved his eyes and looked at me;

  I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,

  And knew his hunger as my own.

  I saw at sea a great fog bank

  Between two ships that struck and sank;

  A thousand screams the heavens smote;

  And every scream tore through my throat.

  No hurt I did not feel, no death

  That was not mine; mine each last breath

  That, crying, met an answering cry

  From the compassion that was I.

  All suffering mine, and mine its rod;

  Mine, pity like the pity of God.

  Ah, awful weight! Infinity

  Pressed down upon the finite Me!

  My anguished spirit, like a bird,

  Beating against my lips I heard;

  Yet lay the weight so close about

  There was no room for it without.

  And so beneath the weight lay I

  And suffered death, but could not die.

  Long had I lain thus, craving death,

  When quietly the earth beneath

  Gave way, and inch by inch, so great

  At last had grown the crushing weight,

  Into the earth I sank till I

  Full six feet under ground did lie,

  And sank no more,—there is no weight

  Can follow here, however great.

  From off my breast I felt it roll,

  And as it went my tortured soul

  Burst forth and fled in such a gust

  That all about me swirled the dust.

  Deep in the earth I rested now.

  Cool is its hand upon the brow

  And soft its breast beneath the head

  Of one who is so gladly dead.

  And all at once, and over all

  The pitying rain began to fall;

  I lay and heard each pattering hoof

  Upon my lowly, thatchèd roof,

  And seemed to love the sound far more

  Than ever I had done before.

  For rain it hath a friendly sound

  To one who’s six feet under ground;

  And scarce the friendly voice or face,

  A grave is such a quiet place.

  The rain, I said, is kind to come

  And speak to me in my new home.

  I would I were alive again

  To kiss the fingers of the rain,

  To drink into my eyes the shine

  Of every slanting silver line,

  To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze

  From drenched and dripping apple-trees.

  For soon the shower will be done,

  And then the broad face of the sun

  Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth

  Until the world with answering mirth

  Shakes joyously, and each round drop

  Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top.

  How can I bear it, buried here,

  While overhead the sky grows clear

  And blue again after the storm?

  O, multi-coloured, multi-form,

  Belovèd beauty over me,

  That I shall never, never see

  Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold,

  That I shall never more behold!—

  Sleeping your myriad magics through,

  Close-sepulchred away from you!

  O God, I cried, give me new birth,

  And put me back upon the earth!

  Upset each cloud’s gigantic gourd

  And let the heavy rain, down-poured

  In one big torrent, set me free,

  Washing my grave away from me!

  I ceased; and through the breathless hush

  That answered me, the far-off rush

  Of herald wings came whispering

  Like music down the vibrant string

  Of my ascending prayer, and—crash!

  Before the wild wind’s whistling lash

  The startled storm-clouds reared on high

  And plunged in terror down the sky!

>   And the big rain in one black wave

  Fell from the sky and struck my grave.

  I know not how such things can be;

  I only know there came to me

  A fragrance such as never clings

  To aught save happy living things;

  A sound as of some joyous elf

  Singing sweet songs to please himself,

  And, through and over everything,

  A sense of glad awakening.

  The grass a-tiptoe at my ear,

  Whispering to me I could hear;

  I felt the rain’s cool finger-tips

  Brushed tenderly across my lips,

  Laid gently on my sealèd sight,

  And all at once the heavy night

  Fell from my eyes and I could see!—

  A drenched and dripping apple-tree,

  A last long line of silver rain,

  A sky grown clear and blue again.

  And as I looked a quickening gust

  Of wind blew up to me and thrust

  Into my face a miracle

  Of orchard-breath, and with the smell,—

  I know not how such things can be!—

  I breathed my soul back into me.

  Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I

  And hailed the earth with such a cry

  As is not heard save from a man

  Who has been dead, and lives again.

  About the trees my arms I wound;

  Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;

  I raised my quivering arms on high;

  I laughed and laughed into the sky;

  Till at my throat a strangling sob

  Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb

  Sent instant tears into my eyes:

  O God, I cried, no dark disguise

  Can e’er hereafter hide from me

  Thy radiant identity!

  Thou canst not move across the grass

  But my quick eyes will see Thee pass,

  Nor speak, however silently,

  But my hushed voice will answer Thee.

  I know the path that tells Thy way

  Through the cool eve of every day;

  God, I can push the grass apart

  And lay my finger on Thy heart!

  The world stands out on either side

  No wider than the heart is wide;

  Above the world is stretched the sky,—

  No higher than the soul is high.

  The heart can push the sea and land

  Farther away on either hand;

  The soul can split the sky in two,

  And let the face of God shine through.

  But East and West will pinch the heart

  That can not keep them pushed apart;

  And he whose soul is flat—the sky

  Will cave in on him by and by.

  *Of their family nicknames—Sefe and Hunk—Norma said, “It was an old college song Mother used to sing:

  There was a man who had two sons

  And those two sons were brothers.

  Josephus was the name of one

  and Bohunkus was the other.”

  *Note from Norma Millay: “Copy of Vincent’s ‘Schedule’—in her writing—as to how the Millay girls were to conduct and occupy themselves throughout the days. This I remember well but don’t know the date. It must have been in summer when there was no school for any of us; since Kay is to ‘study’ she is doubtless in school still,—I wouldn’t have studied anyway so I might still be in High School. Vincent is through school,—in Camden, at least—; No, I’m through school, too, and we are at 82 Washington Street,—could this be after my graduation in 1918 and before I went to Whitehall: the lovely bathroom seems still to enchant us and the garden is the flower garden there and perhaps my little veg. garden, too. I’ll find out when for certain somewhere.”

  PART TWO

  THE ESCAPE ARTIST

  CHAPTER 9

  She arrived in pigtails at seven in the morning of February 5, 1913, having forgotten her hair combs in the rush to leave Camden. “Fancy!” she wrote in her diary. “After all these years to strike New York in braids!” She wore a brown suit and hat, with shoes, ribbons, and bag to match. She looked, she hoped, elegant.

  She looked, in fact, about twelve. Mary Alice Finney, an aide to Miss Dow who had come to meet her, never forgot Millay standing in the middle of Grand Central Terminal awestruck, like a little girl, and “wearing a broad-brimmed hat not at all in the fashion of the day, totally unaware of that fact.” Finney whisked her off to Huyler’s for an icecream soda before taking her to the National Training School for the YWCA on Lexington Avenue and Fifty-second Street, where she was promptly put to bed and told to rest. But how could she when from her eighth-floor window the entire island of Manhattan seemed to rise before her, sun-shot and shimmering? She wrote home at once that she could “see everything”:

  … buildings everywhere, seven & eight stories to million and billion stories, washing drying on the roofs.… Children on roller skates playing tag on the sidewalk, smokestacks and smokestacks, and windows and windows, and signs way up high on the tops of factories and cars and taxi-cabs,—and noise, yes, in New York you can see the noise.

  That first afternoon, she registered at Barnard College, where she was to prepare for Vassar because her high school courses had been woefully inadequate. She took two courses in English, one in French, and another in Latin. When asked on the application what her occupation had been since leaving high school, she wrote, “Typewriting.”

  Miss Dow had not been idle. There was more than $1,200 deposited in Millay’s account at Barnard, and she had persuaded Dr. Talcott Williams, the director of the new School of Journalism at Columbia University, to write to the registrar at Barnard presenting Vincent Millay as a nonmatriculating student in his school, so that her entrance exams had been waived. “You see,” Vincent wrote home later, “thanks to the pulls I had, I am a very, very irregular Special.” The week before her arrival, Williams had written to the dean of Barnard, Virginia Gildersleeve, “Let us by all means have Miss Millay here and handle her gently.” Earlier he had written Miss Gildersleeve that not only had Miss Dow already raised $400 toward Millay’s education, but “my experience has been that Miss Dow uniformly completes what she undertakes.” There was no doubt at all that she had undertaken Vincent Millay.

  Caroline B. Dow was stout, proper, and generous; unmarried and childless and now in her late forties, she respected order and believed in restraint and self-discipline. She cherished the arts and was deft at organizing people on behalf of the things she believed in, whether the YWCA, the Poetry Society of America, the MacDowell Club, or Vincent Millay. Having no use for disorder, extravagance, or wastefulness, she was a natural administrator.

  From the beginning, Miss Dow suspected a certain instability or wildness in her young charge, which she felt was due to her environment as much as to her immaturity. It was, she said, “in a certain sense … an asset, but it must be offset by very careful plans as to her personal surroundings.” In other words, Vincent Millay was to be cautiously nourished. Miss Dow felt that to have just missed The Lyric Year’s prize was good medicine for her character: “She will be distinctly more on her mettle to reconstruct and polish her work.… Successes are not always the best tonic for young authors or artists.”

  Within a week of Millay’s arrival, Miss Dow was writing to the registrar at Barnard with a certain proprietariness:

  I appreciate keenly the kindliness which you have shown my little protegé; she needs guidance, and I am glad to have my responsibilities shared.

  I am so anxious that she should not be spoiled of which I think there is some danger.

  Yet she had far more than she’d bargained for in Vincent Millay, who that same week was writing gleefully, “Well, here I am in New York! at last! I have heard a Philharmonic concert, I have ridden in the subway, I have bought a tie on Fifth Avenue.… I have been so very good that I haven’t yet bee
n sent home.”

  The only person Edna St. Vincent Millay was dependent on was Caroline Dow, and with Miss Dow she intended to be careful. “Miss Dow,” Vincent wrote her mother, “is going to start right in getting me everything I need.” She would provide for her charge, and she would orchestrate her introduction.

  Well, now I’ve come to yesterday. We bought everything at Lord & Taylor’s, and this is what we bought.… a pair of black satin pumps with eleven story heels (New York slippers you see) and big rhinestone buckles; rubbers to fit (it was sort of wet and I would have to cross the pavement to the cab, and back later), white kid gloves, sixteen button length way up ones, and a scarf, a beautiful soft big white silk one with pale yellow roses in it—didn’t I drape it tho!—as it wasn’t an awful dress affair, we decided that Non’s yellow would do if I wore the scarf all the time to cover where it’s too big in back.

  Then she listed and described in detail three tailored waists, two shirts, two collars, six plain linen handkerchiefs, “a perfectly heart-smashing loose coat of dark grey chinchilla with a rolling collar of a lighter plush,” a hat of grey velour, “when I get them both on I look like pictures you see of Senator Thing-umbob’s daughter”; a black leather handbag, and, for dress, two muslin waists with “Robespierre collars,” more handkerchiefs, silver cuff links, “and a silk (or near silk) umbrella, with a little silver maple-leaf on the handle, warranted sterling.”

  No wonder her mother wrote right back, “O, it seems too wonderful to be true to have Miss Dow take such a dear interest in my girl. Still,” she added cautiously, “I hope this out-put now cannot hurt the Vassar fund; but, of course she would not allow it to do that would she?”

  Miss Dow understood clearly the importance of introducing Vincent to people who could help her. She was supposed to impress them, and she did. She wrote in her diary after one such event, “I think Miss Dow may have been pleased with what they may have said of me after we had talked a little while,—for, later, she let me have two cups of tea, Russian tea, lemon tea, Samovar tea.” In her letter home she was even clearer:

  I met two of the Vassar people, a Mr. Babbott and his daughter, Miss Babbott.… They of course were not introduced as the Vassar people, but from the way Miss Dow carried me off to meet them I knew they were important. I made a decided impression on them both, I flatter myself, but more especially on Mr. Babbott, who just simply fell in love with me.… I guess you needn’t worry about the money giving out. And anyway Miss Dow knows what she’s about.