Savage Beauty

by Nancy Milford

  When they told the Fickes they had just bought an island with a small shack on it, Arthur grumpily noted in his diary, “suppose we shall have to go there with them someday, but … I know who will have to do all the work: Gene and Gladys and I!” Arthur was not usually so peevish. He loved Steepletop. He even loved the icy, spring-fed pool they’d built in the old stone foundation of the barn where they would laze about, naked, drinking cocktails, talking poetry, and swimming.

  I don’t think I’d like naked bathing with a lot of strangers, but we four have done it together for so many years that I like it very much. Don’t let anyone try to tell me that it’s a perfectly pure, innocent performance, though! It has its own delicately voluptuous quality. Anybody who can play around with a naked Vince and pretend to himself that it is the same as talking with his grandmother is merely lying to himself. Her breasts are the most curiously “naked” breasts I have ever seen. I suppose it is because they are rather large in proportion to her small body, and because their centers are so prominent and pink. Her middle, with its scanty golden hair, is exceptionally beautiful—and so deceptively innocent-looking.

  In August, Millay’s diary faltered and began to peter out. By December, in letters to both her aunt Susie and Allan Ross Macdougall, she describes being ill. Here they’d gone and bought an island intending “to spend August there, but I had to go and get flu or something like it, and have had it all summer,—and I haven’t set eyes on my island since we bought it!” But she had been able to write, “and what little strength I had, has been used up in this most arduous of occupations.”

  However immersed she was in her own work, she did manage to take time to do the Guggenheim recommendations. In March she’d wired Mr. Moe from Florida that the Guggenheim Foundation should grant a fellowship to Mr. E. E. Cummings. If he needed it.

  I put it this way because I know nothing of Mr. Cummings’ circumstances, and because I do know that both Miss Bogan and Mr. Middleton are without exaggeration desperately in need of help, and that Mr. Dillon cannot possibly continue with the work which he is now doing in France unless he receives an extension of his Fellowship.

  That was pretty helpful to a lover she’d parted from. She realized that for her to be helping Cummings was, as she put it, “really funny. For if ever I disliked a man without ever having laid eyes on him, it is this same E. E. Cummings.”

  She characterized his personality as “fetid.” But about one thing she was abundantly clear:

  … here is a big talent, in the hands of an arrogant, peevish, self-satisfied and self-indulgent writer. That is to say, here is a big talent in pretty bad hands.…

  I am not one of those who stand for the untouchable holiness of the capital letter and traditional typography. So far as I am concerned, Mr. Cummings may do anything he likes with the alphabet, the English grammar, and the multiplication table, provided only the result of his activities be something interesting, and, after a reasonable period of application, comprehensible, to a reader of culture and brains. Mr. Cummings may not, however, I say, write poetry in English which is more difficult for me to translate than poetry written in Latin. He may, of course, write it. But if he publishes it, if he prints and offers for sale poetry which he is quite content should be, after hours of sweating concentration, inexplicable from any point of view to a person as intelligent as myself, then he does so with a motive which is frivolous from the point of view of art, and should not be helped or encouraged by any serious person or group of persons.…

  But, unfortunately for one’s splendid hate which had assumed almost epic proportions, by no means all of Mr. Cummings poetry is of this nature. In these books which I have just been reading there is fine writing and powerful writing (as well as some of the most pompous nonsense I ever let slip to the floor with a wide yawn), and that this author has ability I could not deny; that he has more than that I gravely suspect.

  Mr. Cummings in love, for instance, his arrogance for the moment subdued, his spirit troubled and humbled, can produce such beautiful poems as are to be found in parts IV or V of “Is 5.”

  If we could only trust this author to proceed along these lines, and along the line of the thrillingly lovely “Paris; this April sunset” in Part III, nothing would be clearer than that Mr. Cummings must be given anything he asks for, if it can possibly be arranged.…

  What I propose, then, is this: that you give Mr. Cummings enough rope. He may hang himself; or he may lasso a unicorn. In any case it is high time we found out about this man Cummings. Let us give him every opportunity to show us at once whether he is a genius, a charlatan, or a congenital defective,—and get him off our minds.

  Cummings got his Guggenheim. And Dillon got his extension.

  3

  On December 18, 1933, Millay gave a reading at Bryn Mawr College, the last of the year. “And it was just perfect,” said a woman who had been in the audience. “After the talk—no, perhaps during it—I noticed a man sitting on the sidelines. He was very protective of Millay. But there was this strange, small, russet creature. Not pretty, mind you. Something better than pretty—an exciting creature. We wanted to meet her. So I asked, ‘How would you like to come for a little drink?’ And she said, ‘We’d love to. But I must ask Uge.’ That’s exactly what she called him. Then I knew the man sitting there was her husband.

  “We came back to the house, all full of her talk. And they came in our car with us. The bottles came out, and the silver, and the crystal.” Why did she go to perfect strangers? “I have no idea. I think she was keen to get away. That’s all. And, too, we were not perfect strangers,” the woman said.

  “There was more drinking. Again and again their glasses were refilled. She drank whiskey and soda, I remember, until about three o’clock. During this time Uge would hold her. He adored her—in the sense of worshiping her—he would hold her shoulders, trying to kiss her, and putting his arms around her knees. He finally got so drunk that he couldn’t do anything. When we saw that he was helpless, Edna got on one side, and I on the other, and we took his arms and pulled and dragged him up to his bed. We just dumped him in like a sack. He was out. And then we descended into our living room.…

  “During all of this drinking she never showed anything at all. She was what I would call cold drunk; there was a chill about her. She was very controlled, very. But she would say something and laugh, she recited parts of poems—her own and others’, I think. She just sat there, drinking. And so controlled, no fumbled words, no slurred speech. I remember that she had a most special way of talking. Yes, it was a quality to her voice, and a care in her choice of words as well. I’m afraid the only way to describe it is to call it a poetic way of talking, which is a disservice to her.”

  The woman who recalled this looked down at her tasseled loafers and for a moment seemed unable to speak. Then she said that the drinking and talking must have gone on another two hours. “I do not exaggerate. We went upstairs, finally. I said good night to her. She went into her room. And I into mine. I undressed quickly and got into bed. Right after I was in my bed, she came into the room. She did not knock. She entered. She stood at the side of my bed and undid the clasp on her evening dress. It slipped down from her shoulders to the floor. She stood there absolutely naked. I was astonished. I didn’t know what to do. She stood looking at me and said—I’ll never forget her voice at that moment—‘Oh, don’t you like good old Elizabethan lovemaking? Oh, I like it!’ There was no question of what she meant. She said it almost coarsely.

  “Of course, it was the drink. She would never have behaved like that, on the first night, I think, without the drinking. I was startled. She looked so small then. She just stood there like a statue, and I—I evaded her. I tried to talk to her. I didn’t want to make love to her, and we did not. I said she had to get up early for her lecture in the morning at the college tomorrow. Something like that. And I asked when she would like her breakfast. I must have sounded addled. I sort of led her back to her room. She said, ‘I
’d like a bottle of whiskey, please,’ very politely.

  “In the morning I did bring in, or saw that the maid did, the coffee and the whiskey. Uge was snoring. He was not in bed with her. And I’ve just now remembered that she was sitting up in bed, writing.… I can see her sitting there, looking down at her paper in the morning light.

  “Uge had a cup of black coffee.… He was, I think a sort of buffer. From life, from her life, from life itself.”

  Millay was losing control, and Eugen, who had provided it and protected her, could no longer do so.

  CHAPTER 30

  In January 1934, Eugen and Edna set sail for Marseille aboard the S.S. Excalibur. Just before they left, she wrote to a friend that they’d rented Eugen’s brother’s house in Antibes, “right out on the end of the Cape, a perfectly lovely place.” She wanted to be where it was warm and beautiful, “and I shall be able to keep all my energy for my work.”

  After twelve days at sea, they arrived at Jan Boissevain’s villa, the Petite Villa Hou’zée on Cap d’Antibes, where she made this diary entry:

  Furious yesterday because they wouldn’t let us off for half an hour at Mallorca … and sat at the bar all afternoon, scolding and getting tighter and tighter. Last night and this morning terrible wind blew up suddenly, and the ship pitched and shuddered like anything.… Had the most awful hangover this morning, and all our packing to do, and in that sea! I must have been darned drunk last night. I don’t remember leaving the bar and going to my cabin at all. But apparently I came down just before dinner and got into bed and fell asleep like a shot. I awoke about midnight when Ugin came in. I remembered nothing, but my clothes were all over the room, and I never do that. Disgraceful. Got to cut it out. Not only that the doctor says so but that I’m getting a tummy.

  The following morning, with the seas still high, she forgot her resolutions and packed “with the help of seven gin-rickeys.”

  The Petite Villa Hou’zée sits on the rocks at the edge of the Mediterranean, where the sea is the color of fresh blue paint. Jan and his wife, Charlotte, owned two villas, the larger one just above the Hôtel du Cap, the smaller a cottage built at the edge of the sea. Beneath it, blasted into the rock, was a sort of cave with a table chiseled from the rock. The water could be heard splashing against the stone steps that fell into the Mediterranean from the tiny terrace of the cottage. The house rose from the rocky coast, with bamboo shades across the terrace and bright striped canvas awnings to keep the interior cool.

  On Cap d’Antibes they began a healthy regimen: no smoking and no drinking; they got up at sunrise and went to bed early. They bought a badminton set in Cannes and played before breakfast, which they had outdoors, and took long walks, ambling along the quiet dusty lanes that bordered the sea and picking up pinecones for the open fires they made each night because the days were still wintry and overcast. Playfully they wired Jan to come for a visit in his own cottage. Within the week he was there, “bringing presents of roggebrood and a yellow cheese with aromatic seeds in it.”

  Then the violent north winds of the mistral began to blow so hard they couldn’t play badminton anymore. “Had the curse and felt awful—a week overdue.” In the afternoon Edna pulled herself together and they went to the casino, where “Ugin’s system,” she wrote, worked like a charm and he made 820 francs. Three days later they were “drinking again.… But my God, you have to do something to fight off the mistral.” The weather stayed foul. “Haven’t seen the sun for over a week, except for about an hour on Thursday. This morning icy wind blowing from the east, grey sky. Sea pale greenish blue and very handsome surf on our rocks. But I have a headache and feel nervous and irritable. Think I’ll get drunk.”

  On February 18, they motored over to Cap Ferrat to have lunch with Somerset Maugham,

  just the three of us, Dr. Fairfield—who is a sister of Rebecca West—Mr. Maugham and the man who lives with him, his secretary, et cet, Gerald Hexton, I believe his name is. Beautiful place, up on the hillside overlooking the water, delightful gardens with the most succulent-looking green grass here and there in tiny lawns and lanes. They get the grass-seed from England, and they have to dig up the lawns and re-seed them every year. I must say it is worth it.

  I liked S but somehow it was not very much fun, something wrong somewhere.

  February 22.

  My birthday.—Didn’t think anybody would know about it. But this morning before I was up Ugin and Jan stood outside my door and sang “Happy Birthday.” And then they came in, Ugin with a beautiful bouquet of mauve stock and pink geraniums from the garden, and Jan with a great spray of almond blossoms from his little proprieté on the hill.

  The next day, her vacation was over. “I’m working like fury now on my Guggenheim Fellowship applicants. I’ve read them all by now, and thought about them a lot; but now I want to re-read them, and collect my notes on them, and then I must write my report.—It’s a terrible job, all right. But I knew it would be.”

  The next diary entry wasn’t until March 4:

  Slaved all day in my room on my reports from the Guggenheim Foundation. Twenty-one poets I have read and re-read and thought about and finally written about, and then re-written about.… I’ve given hardly a moment to my own work for these two months—tennis, and reading and pondering on these twenty-one writers, that’s all I’ve done.—I’m recommending Kay Boyle, Conrad Aiken, Isidor Schneider, Walter Lowen-fels.…—Their own pet, for some reason, seems to be Horace Gregory, who means to me, if I except certain of the bawdier among the Catullus translations, precisely not a damn thing.

  She said her weight was down to 105, which meant she’d lost more weight sitting in bed writing her Guggenheim reports than she had playing tennis. The next day her reports went off, and although she was exhausted, she washed her hair, slipped into her shorts, and leaped out into the sunshine to play tennis. “Afterwards went to the Casino at Juan-les-Pins and drank buckets of champagne-cocktails.”

  She also danced with the professional. “He complimented me, but in a patronizing way. Thick-headed little Frenchman. I dance so much better than he does. He just knows a few little steps I’m not familiar with, that’s all—and even at that I follow him like his shadow. Stupid little beast.”

  George Dillon had remained in Paris after their time together in 1932. Although there is no correspondence from him in her files, they must have maintained some connection, for she now sent him the manuscript of her next book of poems. He responded with a twelve-page letter and very carefully told her which of the poems he liked the best and why, and which he thought less good. His tone throughout was self-conscious and oddly precious:

  Well, my dear, this is what I really think.… I spent all last evening reading them and thinking about them, and writing you this ponderous batch of notes—and now I must send it off at once, or I shall become disgusted with the idea of myself as a critic of poetry, and not send it at all.… if it makes you angry, throw it away and forget it.

  He hoped she would read it on one of the rare days when the mistral was not blowing. He sounds like a careful elderly uncle.

  Two days later she made a very simple entry: “Must go to Paris tomorrow for a few days.” On March 9 she left by train: “Very luxurious and elegant compartment, all to myself, very deluxe. I wanted to travel cheaper, we’re so poor this year.” It was raining, the mistral continued to blow, and she was testy. “I feel like the devil. And the sheets are of cotton, and I hate cotton sheets. These are particularly cheap and offensive. They feel like very old paper-covered books with dust on them—Thank heaven I have a flask of gin along.”

  When she arrived she met George Dillon for lunch at his hotel:

  A charming place in the rue Galilée.—Came back to the hotel and washed my hair—in water that was absolutely cold!—but absolutely!—No difference whatever in the temperature from the two fawcets. Took a bath in ice-cold water, too.… Had dinner with George—didn’t notice where—and went to the theatre.… Went somewhere afterwar
ds and had some drinks.

  The next day they met again, and again they lunched together at his hotel.

  Then came back to my hotel and showed George a lot of my new poems.… He made one or two extremely intelligent and valuable suggestions, which I shall at once try to carry out.—Had some whisky and sodas sent up.—Went out to dinner rather late. Came back to my hotel and talked some more, and read some more poems.

  In the morning George left to catch the boat train for Le Havre; his destination was Baltimore. Millay wrote simply, “I did not see him.” George was going home without any fresh work, and without a job.

  Eugen and Jan were awaiting her at Antibes. Their welcome was to fill the house with flowers, “and in my room sweet-peas and little daisies, and a camellia.”

  The next day she stayed in bed working on her poems as the mistral played havoc with her nerves. Eugen, she said, “gave me a marvelous suggestion about The Hedge of Hemlocks.” She was uneasy: “I distrust the mood I am in, and dare do nothing definite.” The poems seemed good to her, though maybe too much so: “They all look good. A dangerous state of mind.”

  She was still drinking too much and as a consequence had what she called “one of my old-time headaches.” They managed to play five sets of tennis all the same, and she and Eugen actually beat Jan in two of the sets. “But we all played as if we were in diving-suits.”

  The next day she received notice that she had been elected to the Cosmopolitan Club,