It is 5:30, and I have been working all night. I am going to bed.
Goodmorning—
E.St.V.M.
On the morning of Octobert 18, she wired Scribner’s that she would give them a quote for the jacket of Rolphe Humphries’s translation of the Aeneid. Then she settled down before the fire and made pages of small, clear notes in pencil, so unlike the wild, uneven hand with which all those earlier terrifying notes to herself had been written. She read late into the following morning, and, after carefully placing a glass of white wine and the bottle on the staircase, she went upstairs.
She turned the light on in her bedroom and smoked a few cigarettes. Perhaps she’d gone upstairs to take something to help her sleep, a Seconal. But although she was wearing her silk dressing gown and slippers, she didn’t go to bed. Instead she walked back to the dark staircase and stood at the top of the narrow wooden stairs in the old house. Something happened. Then she pitched wildly forward, falling, hurtling down the full length of the stairs to the landing. Her neck was broken in the fall.
All the lights were on in the house when John Pinnie came the next morning to do the chores. He put the mail on the kitchen table. “John saw the light on up in her bedroom,” Lena Reusch remembered. “He hadn’t seen her all day, and he went back into the house. I believe he said to fix the furnace, or maybe it was to lay the fire. Then John saw her. Her feet were down, and she was curled around at the landing of the stairs.
“John ran down to our house, and I sent him right down to … our neighbor below, and he called Dr. Wilcox. There was just John and I drove up to the house. And I stayed there until the doctor came. I didn’t think about it, or I would have run. Dr. Wilcox and John came, and they put her on the couch. And, oh, my, her slippers fell off.”
Dr. Oscar Wilcox, Jr., came to the house and pronounced her dead. He later wrote, “I found her at the foot of the stairway from which she had apparently fallen.… She was lying at the foot of the stairway with a sort of dressing gown around her. I did not think she was retiring for the night but coming down stairs perhaps for something.”
Her head was resting on some magazines and letters on the landing, where there was a mark of blood and one notebook with the penciled draft of a poem. She had traced a ring around the last three lines:
I will control myself, or go inside.
I will not flaw perfection with my grief.
Handsome, this day: no matter who has died.
In her bedroom at the time of her death there were only two photographs. One was a snapshot of Norma and Kathleen taken in Maine. They are hugging each other and smiling into the camera. They look young and pretty. “I sent this to her in Europe,” Norma remembered, “and she said she wanted to get right in between!” The other is in an elegant dark leather pigskin frame with a metal overlay of raised hearts and flowers. A little boy, dressed as a soldier, is standing in velvet breeches, holding a toy sword in his left hand. He is wearing a plumed helmet and a metal breastplate. His dark curls are long and fall below his shoulders, and there is lace on the wrists of his smart jacket and at his throat. He is a stocky boy with sad eyes and a mouth turned down like the rim of a cup. It is signed “Eugen Jan Boissevain.”
Edna St. Vincent Millay had survived her beloved cavalier by one year, one month, and twenty days.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe a great deal to many people, and I want to thank them here. To those beloved friends who stood by me and believed in my effort to shape this book—Dr. Ellen Reitz Conrad, the Honorable Vesta Svenson, Marga Beth Cibulka, Roberta and Donald Gratz, Shelby White and Leon Levy, who generously took me into their world with travel and laughter and play—my best thanks. And where would I be without the sustaining friendship of Paula Weideger and Henry Lessore, Emily Trafford Berges, Jay Meek, Doron Weber, Charles Ruas and Rob Wynne? Let alone my Virgil, William Josephson, who has led me through every circle of whatever inferno I was caught in, with a clear intelligence and a golden spirit that buoyed my own. Toni Morrison’s advice and support and, most crucially, her own model of a continuing literary life have meant the world to me. To Lois Gould: my world would be a lesser place if she were not writing in it.
Vartan Gregorian has been a matchless friend, and I’ve treasured his guidance. Joni Evans pulled me out of a mess with style and I remain grateful to her. To Lynn Nesbit, who helped me to believe that this biography was first-rate, if only I would finish it. There was nobody, however, who saw with more certainty or who believed in this biography more consistently than Kate Medina—I can’t thank her enough. To Pat Golbitz, who worked tirelessly in my behalf, whether I was in Michigan or Istanbul, my thanks. But it is Joy de Menil whose clear head, hard work, and editorial brilliance helped me to shape this book. She’s my wizard, and she’s tops.
I am grateful to the Guggenheim Foundation for their early support; to Judith L. Pinch at the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and to the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund for sending me to teach in Arkansas and South Carolina; to Robert Weisbuch and James A. Winn, who were at the University of Michigan when they hired me; to Dr. Micaela Iovine at the Fulbright Commission in Washington and to Dr. Ersin Onulduran in Turkey for arranging my stint at Bogaziçi Universitesi in Istanbul, and to Oya Başak and Asli Tekinay for their welcome. My best thanks to Alice L. Birney, American Literature Manuscript Historian at the Library of Congress, and to Vincent Virga, photo editor, for making my life much easier during the researching of this book.
It was in the Frederick Lewis Allan Room at the New York Public Library, and later in The Writers Room, which I helped to found, that I found a refuge in which to write. Donna Brodie and el Staff know how very much I value them. Joellyn Ausanka is simply the best, most helpful and gracious person I have ever worked with; and, thank God, she spells better than I do. But in the end it is my family—Kate and Matthew and Amy and Hester and Evan Dority—whom I treasure. I don’t write for them, but they have given me the heart from which I write.
NOTES
These abbreviations are used throughout the footnotes.
ADF Arthur Davison Ficke
Beinecke Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University
Berg Berg Collection, The Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundation, The New York Public Library
CBM Cora Buzzell Millay
CP Collected Poems
EB Eugen Jan Boissevain
ESVM Edna St. Vincent Millay
EW Edmund Wilson
FE Ferdinand Earle
GD George Dillon
HM Henry Millay
KM Kathleen Millay
Ls. Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay, ed. Allan Ross Macdougall (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952)
LWF “Lest We Forget” (unpublished diary)
MK Mitchell Kennerley
n.d. No date
Newberry Newberry Library of Chicago
NM Norma Millay
n.p. No page
n.y. No year
PM Postmark
St. Coll. Steepletop Collection. The Millay collection of letters, notebooks, manuscripts, and photographs is now at the Library of Congress. During the years of research and writing of this biography, I referred to the various documents as “the Steepletop Collection.” Alice Birney, who is the American Literature Manuscript Historian at the Library of Congress, agrees that this name is the most accurate and useful.
UVa University of Virginia
VC Vassar College Library
Note to reader: If in the text I have given the date a letter was written, I do not repeat it in the note.
PROLOGUE
1. “When the Nazis razed … ”: Susan Schweik, A Gulf So Deeply Cut: American Women Poets and the Second World War (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), p. 62.
2. “I remember a swamp”: ESVM to Esther Root, Ls., p. 176.
CHAPTER 1
1. “a girl who had lived”: ESVM, Collected Sonnets, “Foreword,” p. vii.
2. “Have the bake
r leave”: CBM to ESVM, n.d., c. 1904. St. Coll.
3. “We had one great advantage”: NM, typescript, n.d., 1976. St. Coll.
4. “I’m the Queen”: ESVM, Poetical Works, pp. 53–54.
5. “At night, sometimes”: NM, typescript, n.d., 1976. St. Coll.
6. “She was supposed to be”: Henry Pendleton, interview with author, October 1976.
7. “We have just”: ESVM to St. Nicholas, n.d., c. 1906. St. Coll.
8. “When I was fourteen”: ESVM, Ls., p. 9.
9. “The Land of Romance,” Edward J. Wheeler, Current Literature, vol. XLII, no. 4, April 1907, p. 456–57.
10. “She was not like”: NM, interview with author, Sept. 8, 1976.
CHAPTER 2
1. “a driving force”: Clementine Todd Parsons, O Rare Red-Head, unpublished memoir. Much of the information in this chapter and in the next is drawn from two unpublished manuscripts by Edna St. Vincent Millay’s aunt Clementine Todd Parsons, O Rare Red-Head and Above the Salt, in which there are sometimes as many as three versions of the same incident. These manuscripts include quotations from letters written by Cora Millay, as well as from fragments of autobiographical material she sent to her sister.
2. “One unhappy day” and subsequent quotes: CBM, unpublished, undated notes. St. Coll.
3. Among her keepsakes: Cora L. Buzzell, collection of flyers, tickets, programs, 1886. St. Coll.
4. “I was sure I was going to die” and subsequent quotes: diary entries, newspaper clippings, telegrams. St. Coll.
5. But by then: Story of birth of ESVM drawn from Clementine Todd Parsons, O Rare RedHead.
CHAPTER 3
1. In the spring: Clementine Todd Parsons, O Rare Red-Head, p. 26.
CHAPTER 4
1. “Abbie … must have been”: Martha Knight, interview with author, May 4, 1976.
2. “I guess I’m going”: ESVM, diary, June 29 [1908]. St. Coll.
3. “For instance … giving parties”: “X,” interview with author, May 6, 1976.
4. “Vincent opened the front door” and subsequent quotes: Ethel Knight Fisher, “Her Girlhood Days,” The Rockland CourierGazette, June 16, 1942, p. 8.
5. “I don’t know”: ESVM, The Dear Incorrigibles.
6. 36 “Now, Muvver”: ESVM, The Dear Incorrigibles.
7. “Once upon a time”: ESVM, The Dear Incorrigibles.
8. “To live alone” and subsequent quotes: ESVM, notebook, n.d., pp. 91–94. (Norma Millay’s note: “Note Book No. 6. ESTVM. Pieces [mostly discarded] from Foreword to ‘Coll Sonnets.’ Beginning of ‘Radiance rose.’ c. 1940?”). St. Coll.
9. “In this case”: ESVM, diary, July 19 [1908]. St. Coll.
10. “I think I’ll call her”: ESVM, diary (“Mammy Hush-Chile”), c. July 1908. St. Coll.
11. “I make two cups”: ESVM, diary (“Mammy Hush-Chile”), c. July 1908. St. Coll.
12. “To My Mother”: ESVM, Poetical Works of Vincent Millay, July 10, 1908, p. 1. St. Coll.
13. “for an hour’s stay”: CBM to ESVM, March 10, 1909. St. Coll.
14. “In her class”: Stella Derry Lenfest, Yankee, September 1953, p. 20.
15. “the first big disappointment”: ESVM, diary (“Mammy Hush-Chile”), April 17, 1909. St. Coll.
16. “She was absent”: Martha Knight, interview with author, May 4, 1976.
17. “Well, she spoke”: Jessie Hosmer, interview with author, May 5, 1976.
18. “Oh, Mammy”: ESVM, diary (“Mammy Hush-Chile”), Sept. 30, 1909. St. Coll.
CHAPTER 5
1. In October, Vincent won: diary, 1910. Program of Willowdale pasted into Millay’s “Rosemary” scrapbook. St. Coll.
2. “with my sun-bonnet”: ESVM, diary 1910. St. Coll.
4. “send you some more” and subsequent quotes: HM to ESVM, Sept. 16, 22, 29, Nov. 12, Dec. 11, 1909. St. Coll.
5. “I wish I could”: HM to ESVM, Dec. 24, 1909. St. Coll.
6. “beautiful Christmas”: ESVM to CBM, Dec. 25, 1909. St. Coll.
7. “Dear St. Nicholas”: Ls., p. 9
8. “Rosemary,” a poem: Poetical Works, pp. 61–63.
9. “Mama said today”: ESVM, Feb. 24, 1910. Black leather 1910 diary. St. Coll.
10. “I am going”: HM to ESVM, March 15, 1910. St. Coll.
11. “The Hotel that was burned”: HM to ESVM, March 25, 1910. St. Coll.
12. “She was quite upset”: Robert Farr, “What Impact Did Camden Have on the Poet, Vincent Millay?” Lewiston Journal, Magazine section, June 8, 1957, p. 1a.
13. “If your father”: CBM to ESVM, July 14, 1910. St. Coll.
14. “Schedule”: NM, ESVM, KM, n.d. St. Coll.
CHAPTER 6
1. “I am … as surely”: ESVM, diary (“Mammy Hush-Chile”), April 3, 1911. St. Coll.
2. “Sometimes I’m afraid”: “Her Book,” August 3, 1911. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers, Diaries and Notebooks 33. Diary, “Vincent Millay—Her Book,” April 1911-January 1913. Library of Congress.
3. “You are strong”: ESVM, diary (“Mammy Hush-Chile”), p. 38. St. Coll.
4. “Sometimes I don’t mind”: “Her Book,” July 3, 1911.
5. “It is as if”: “Her Book,” July 27, 1911.
6. “I cannot stand it”: CBM to ESVM, Aug. 3, 1911. St. Coll.
7. “Just a few words”: CBM to “My Girls,” c. summer 1911, St. Coll.
8. “Where’d you get”: ESVM to CBM, Aug. 18, 1911. St. Coll.
9. “We have been”: “Her Book,” c. Oct. 3, 1911. 57 “I’m getting old”: “Her Book,” “Monday— 10th.”
10. “I do not know”: “Her Book,” Feb. 11, 1912.
CHAPTER 7
1. “The minute we came in”: ESVM, diary, “Sweet & Twenty,” unpaged, March 12, [1912].
2. “My dear little daughter”: CBM to ESVM, March 3, 1912. St. Coll.
3. “to enjoy his dear girls”: CBM to ESVM, March 4, 1912. St. Coll.
4. “He’s had pneumonia”: Ls., p. 13. 59 “I see Papa twice”: Ls., p. 14.
5. “I am glad”: CBM to ESVM, March 5, 1912. St. Coll.
6. “Sister Millay”: NM to ESVM, n.d., c. March 20, 1912. St. Coll.
7. “because … I don’t care”: “Her Book,” March 4, [1912].
8. “And they certainly”: ESVM to “Dear Children,” St. Patrick’s Day [1912]. UVa.
9. “Dear Vincent”: CBM to ESVM, March 21, 1912. St. Coll.
10. “Renascence was partly”: CBM, typescript, n.d. St. Coll.
11. “If I’d thought”: NM, interview with author, Jan. 23, 1979.
CHAPTER 8
1. “You inquire my Books”: Emily Dickinson to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The Letters of Emily Dickinson, vol. 2, ed. Thomas H. Johnson (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 404–5.
2. Vincent had gone: Ls., p. 307.
3. “E. Vincent Millay, Esq.”: Ls., p. 17.
4. “It may astonish you”: ESVM to Mitchell Kennerley, July 24, 1912. St. Coll. In Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay, which was published in 1952 and has never been revised, the editor, Allan Ross Macdougall, said that it had been “impossible to find the fifteen or so letters which the young poet, in her excitement over his appreciation and acclaim, wrote to Ferdinand Earle from Camden.” Before Earle’s death in 1951, the year after Millay’s, he wrote that her many letters to him had been stolen. What I have done is to reconstruct her letters from drafts that were kept in the files at Steepletop. Among them only two are in typescript and dated, suggesting they are copies of the letters she actually sent.
5. “Dear and true Poetess!”: The Editor to ESVM, Aug. 6, 1912. St. Coll.
6. “I am to some extent”: ESVM to “Editor, ‘The Lyric Year,’ ” Aug. 9, 1912. St. Coll.
7. “to reach just such budding”: FE to ESVM, Aug. 14, 1912. St. Coll.
8. “But it makes no difference”: ESVM to “Mrs. Mitchell Kennerley,” c. mid–end August 1912. Pencil draft. St. Coll.
> 9. “Isn’t it dear”: CBM to ESVM, n.d., c. August 1912. St. Coll.
10. “Mother said I could go” and subsequent quotes: NM, interview with author, n.d.
11. “If I had known”: ESVM, diary, “Sweet & Twenty,” “Being The Extraordinary Adventures Of Me In My Twenty-first Year,” largely undated, or dates guessed.
12. “I should wager odds”: The Editor to ESVM, Sept. 14, 1912. St. Coll.
13. “by betting on”: ESVM to FE, n.d., c. late September 1912. St. Coll.
14. “Dear Tom Boy”: FE to ESVM, Sept. 29, 1912. St. Coll.
15. “Bursting to learn”: ESVM to FE, n.d., c. late September 1912. St. Coll.
16. “I realize that you”: FE to ESVM, n.d., PM Oct. 4, 1912. St. Coll.
17. “Now, to be serious”: FE to ESVM, Oct. 4, 1912. St. Coll.
18. “[I]f it will make you”: ESVM to FE, n.d., fragment, c. early October 1912. St. Coll.
19. Two days later: FE to ESVM, c. October 1912. St. Coll.
20. “If you could”: ESVM to FE, n.d., fragment, c. October 1912. St. Coll.
21. “flame back into silence”: FE to ESVM, Oct. 14, 1912. St. Coll.
22. “My Editor”: ESVM to “My Editor,” Oct. 15, 1912 (draft). St. Coll.
23. “friendships, relations, acquaintance-ships”: FE to ESVM, Oct. 25, 1912. St. Coll.
24. “I am asking you”: ESVM “To the Patch-Work Letter Man—” Oct. 28, 1912 (draft, date crossed out).
25. “I say: the Prizes”: FE to ESVM, Nov. 2, 1912. St. Coll.
26. “This, then”: ESVM to FE, Nov. 5, 1912. St. Coll.
27. “What have I done”: FE to ESVM, Nov. 15, 1912. St. Coll.
28. “But it didn’t get the prize!”: ESVM, “Sweet & Twenty,” Nov. 14, 1912. She recorded Jessie Rittenhouse’s reaction, which Earle had sent her.
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