The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979

by Elizabeth Hardwick

  26. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell124

  [15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]

  May 19, 1970

  Dearest one: I’m sorry I was so upset in my latest letters and notes, but it just seemed that you didn’t care anything for us, and each day that would go by was so distressing. Do write a real letter to Harriet when you get time. She is, as I said, quite grown-up and quite critical of both of us, as I know from some notes she left on the floor[,] notes/ that she and Lisa had exchanged. I don’t entirely take the psychiatric view that they want you to find these things, but of course I did. She said I nagged her too much and she couldn’t wait to be 18 and free forever! She said she never felt she was even your child and if you ever paid any attention to her it was just to pretend she was a baby! Please don’t say, ever, that I saw this! Lisa—amazingly—said that she had just lied when she said she was happy at camp last summer, that everyone hated her, but it was better than being at home at least! I know these are passing things, but I have been nagging Harriet all spring and I mean to quit. It had to do with that damned school work, because I felt so much was riding on these last months. Imagine making such a dumb mistake—interfering, worrying, all of that. I am trying to be better. I do think she adored Abbot and I hope that will come about, because she does want to be away from home. I went over to Dalton and Mr. Casey was wonderful. He says he will really do his best on filling out the recommendation. So, I will simmer down on all this. Our darling girl is really nice, honest, beautiful and brave. She has endured terrible loneliness here in New York with great stoicism, grown up in an essentially dreary household (for a child) with none of that young person’s bustle and excitement that brothers and sisters and their life and their friends and their interests can mean, been given a barren summer life, desolate week-ends, often alone friendless. I do want to leave her alone, give her the support and love I can and try to find a better life for her.…

  I miss you, we both do so terribly. It has been a very hard time for me. But I am eager for England. I don’t know what to do about a house. You know there will [be] four of us125—it would be nice to have it well-heated and to have books and records, and for it to be near school and more or less central. Now, about the house near Natasha, don’t know whether you mean what you wrote—3,500 pounds or 35,000 pounds. Of course 3,500 pounds would be another matter, something to consider. As for anything else I am sure Natasha or whoever would be a good guide and you could trust them and your own feeling if you found something.

  Darling I didn’t know you were in London working on the galleys of your wonderful book. I send you my love about it, and all of that. Sorry I complained about your not writing.

  I have to go.… want to get this off. Love, darling

  E.

  27. Robert Lowell to Harriet Lowell

  All Souls College, Oxford. OX1 4AL

  [May 25, 1970]

  Dearest Harriet—

  I don’t know how to describe the England I am hoping you will see and love next fall. Think of a much larger New York State, thousands of green fields everywhere, stone house villages, taxis you can almost stand up in, people having tea sometimes for breakfast and sometimes small fish—a climate neither as cold or as hot as ours, too much rain. At every moment, I feel I am in some part of America, and at every moment some often small detail of accent or architecture tells I am in England. I think you’ll find it lovely here, and less rushed. You can run about much more—more parks, fewer, almost no, thugs. The traffic in London is lousy, but nothing like Rome.

  Glad you went on the march. I miss you. There are many beautiful walks we could take at Oxford when you ha[ve] the wish. I haven’t been inside a single cathedral, except yesterday in Bristol when Mary McCarthy turned up beautifully and turned my mind to higher things. All Souls, where I live at Oxford, is like a boarding school without any students126—that is it’s filled with a group of about twenty men, ages twenty-five to ninety, doing queer things like writing a four volume history of Sicily, or bookbinding—I mean, they write, of course, about bookbind[ing], they don’t bind books.

  I miss you. You have a deep look and a clear head at times, clearer than any of us, except Sumner—the most beautiful girl, soon to be more than a girl.

  Love to Mother

  Cal (Dad)

  * * *

  P.S. I want to hear about Abbot.

  28. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell

  All Souls College, Oxford. OX1 4AL

  May 26, 1970

  Dearest Lizzie—

  What’s up? Such boiling messages, all as public as possible on cables and uninclosed postcards.127 It’s chafing to have the wicked, doddering, genial old All Souls’ porter take down your stinging cable.128 It matters not; everything must be pressing you this moment in New York.

  Grey and Bingo,129 but mostly Bingo, are flat or house hunting. She is in touch with three or four agencies. I think something near Regent Park or Hampstead would be best for Harriet. Not too far from the center of the city, yet parkish. I crave not to look out on traffic, even here at Oxford, it goes on like the ocean.

  I’ve just given a reading at Bristol for Christopher Ricks; Grey drove me over and Mary McCarthy took a train from London to arrive with a guide book of Gloucestershire. Lovely day of Bristol strolling and supper in the country.130

  I’ve written Harriet a letter without funny pictures and animal jokes.

  What else? Bingo thinks it will be perfectly possible for us/ to find a place without forcing you to come over. They have three. Things can be found, nice places, tho probably their main heat will have to be supplemented with plug-in heaters.

  About letters—I can’t pour them out, Dear. Every mail alas brings in a new tide, and some must be answered. Today, a nice one from Desmond Harmsworth with a translation of Valéry’s Cimetière.131 Also letters from All Souls seem to arrive four or five days after mailing.

  Miss you both—Luv,

  Cal

  29. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell

  [15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]

  May 27, 1970

  Dear Cal: There are so many things I don’t know what to do about, but I hesitate to go on with so much to be done. The bare minimum facts I need:

  Your return date.

  Your studio. The rent is $160 per month and it is not actually so easy to find someone. Several people I knew thought they might use it, as you have, for writing, but the money is just too much. I am arranging to rent mine to two Juilliard girls, nieces of a friend of Chuck Turner’s.132 I’m not anxious to have the little places used full time, for cooking, etc., but the money is very important—I mean the fact that we won’t have to pay the rent. I need to know about your studio because of the difficulty of renting anything in August when we come back, with no one around.

  Money is very low here at home, home being America and here with us.

  Facts on Stony Brook: they would want you to decide when you come back. Offer of $100,000 (not payable all at once). They also want to give me if I want it a good, high-paying one day a week job as curator of these papers and also as a person to suggest others to go with them … Many more details. You can be pondering it. No word from Harvard, not even an answer to my sending the inventory they asked for. If you don’t want to sell them, we’ll have to find some sort of storage or vault.

  I wonder if you can call the American School in London. Ask if Harriet will be able to be placed in the 8th grade. Might speed up her admission. Mrs. Murdoch Admissions dept. The telephone in London is 01-486-4901[.] Also you might ask when school starts. The catalogue says middle of Sept. That would mean leaving here about the 1st of Sept., leaving Maine no later than the 20th. Or at least I would have to leave the 20th of August to get things ready for tenants. Carlos Fuentes wants me to write him in Paris telling him when the apt. will be free.

  Harriet goes to camp on June 28th. We’ll leave her off there, Cornwall, Connecticut and spend the night with Olga. Of cours
e, if you wish.

  This is a boring letter. I don’t have much gossip. Stanley133 is well. B. Meredith134 called with the news that he had heard you were going into exile. Not so much “repression” as to follow in the steps of the Master, TSE.135 I said the reason was much simpler—you were having a good time in England.

  Sorry to have “crowded” you about letters. I have been frantic since we got home from Italy—flying to Boston, renting cars, visiting schools, driving back to airport at the rush hour. Visits to Dalton, letters of recommendation, mail, bills, shopping for camp, dentist appointments (braces off!).… Just now I am feeling better. I’ve been with Harriet almost every night trying to see her through at least some of the ridiculously hard school work, so that the end will not be catastrophic for her future. We’ve had rather a good time. Now on “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”136 She’s been reading it aloud to me at night. I’ve been sneaking into Jack Bate137 by day in order to write—ugh—or help her to write a “precis”.

  Man coming now to look at my studio. We are going to Castine for the long memorial day weekend, with Lisa. Called Mrs. Wardwell,138 who is opening up for us now, and she said all was “luuvelly”.

  Sorry about the questions.

  We miss you, love mucho

  Harriet isn’t home from school yet, but will have your letter waiting for her.

  E.

  * * *

  P.S. Leave dress clothes, shoes, etc. with someone in London.

  * * *

  P.S. Apparently the two girls will take my studio, you suddenly realize there are no dressers, no curtains & you loathe the idea of two people there day & night. But—it’s done!

  30. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell

  [15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]

  May 29, 1970

  Dear Cal: Just a few words, nothing to be answered. Harvard is interested in your papers and will send someone to look at them soon. When you get here you can then talk to both libraries. This, just so you can be thinking about it. Don’t know what their offer will be.

  After I wrote I got a letter from [the] American School and they will hold up Harriet’s admission until the Dalton grades and SSAT scores arrive. I have written Dalton to hurry up on the grades and to be joyful about Harriet.

  In an hour or so going to Dalton to pick up Harriet and Lisa and then off to Castine for a long Memorial Day weekend. Even New York is unbelievably beautiful today, clear, lovely deep green park, rustling in a gentle wind—and Connecticut last weekend was truly as beautiful as England, green, quiet, beautiful white frame houses in the little villages, and feels fields with a mist in the distance. Can’t wait to see if the flowering crab we put in last August will have taken hold in the yard at School Street. Hope to have time to unpack your barn and get it more or less in order. Darling Nicole has to have another hernia operation. It opened up! She’s all right, but it must be done, and so she will stay here. A friend will nurse her. With Harriet away and Mrs. Wardwell to open and close it won’t be too bad for us. Also we will save Nicole’s salary for two months and that is a help. She will get unemployment insurance.

  It is expensive to go up to Maine, but Harriet is so gay about it, so eager with desire—and Lisa too is ecstatic, both of them making plans to dye T-shirts and all sorts of nonsense. I wouldn’t go of course without Lisa or some friend since it would not be so much fun for H. otherwise. Must say I am eager, also, and remember the great joy we had in the deserted little place last year. I sent three huge bags up air freight, to cut down on our problems when we go. But what a chore that was and what a bother if they aren’t in Bangor tonight.

  There isn’t too much news here. Wonderful about your book. I certainly hope something an apt/ can be found without my coming over. I am disappointed that we weren’t lucky enough to find a writer’s place with books, records, pictures, etc., and dread the thought of the usual wasteland that most people call home.

  Don’t bother to write, except a card, with the answers to my last letter: when you’re coming back, your studio, etc.

  Love from here. Everything very worrying. I think Nixon is going to get by with it all. More and more talk of “tactical” nuclear weapons. Don’t see how the N. Vietnamese can hold out in the South short of a World War … It is very distressing.

  I think I’ll go back to Coleridge. Feel “Mariner” breaks down in the end. Harriet visibly disappointed in final stanzas, but I explained they really didn’t mean that! And so you can see literary studies are still going on! What a relief to grow up and learn that things mean what you want them to.

  Off to Bangor.… love, again

  Elizabeth

  31. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell

  All Souls College, Oxford. OX1 4AL

  May 31, 1970

  Dearest Lizzie:

  Very Oxford day: in the crowds watching the bumping (8)/ boat races on the Isis,139 lunch with Iris Murdoch and her husband,140 Aline,141 Lord David Cecil, Father Peter Levi; funeral of Enid Starkie at St. Mary the Virgin; afternoon of reading Warden Sparrow’s Shakespeare books142—and yesterday an immense walk from Godstow143 to Oxford over a three mile meadow covered with buttercups, peacocks,144 cattle and skylarks. Blithe spirit145—but no, the skylark’s nagging wearied twitter like stars in the sky above us. This I did with Sidney.146 Brisk telephone conversation with Al Alvarez.

  Bingo and I (if that’s the right way to phrase it) are putting an ad in the Times for a house or less. We should hear next week. I’m steeling myself to do something about my teeth. There are now five holes I can stick my tongue in; none yet painful.

  Not much happens. I read to the Oxford poetry society and answered questions. Much like home, only I was asked to read Marianne Moore. Oxford incredibly beautiful with all the flowers, I think, I’ve read about in English poetry—a bit too like a college. What’s happening? I read as much as I could of the last exhaustive review147—Saturday I must do something with Ronnie Dworkin148 on the unreal world./149 I must stop, my ribbon is screwy, high table dinner. I feel when I’m through here I’ll receive my sixth form degree.

  Love to both,

  Cal

  32. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell

  All Souls College, Oxford

  June 1, 1970

  Dearest—

  A cool gray day. I sit with a big light on to see my type and wait for Charles Monteith to come for midmorning coffee. The weather here is between a good Castine summer and a bad Castine summer. All Souls is elderly and stiff, yet a pleasant seat on the sidelines to watch the storm, house of space and repetition.

  To answer your questions. 1. I plan to leave here on the 25th. We have some kind of final round-up here on the 24th, then I want to be here in London to go over my pageproofs with a copy editor. As you can imagine my manuscript invites misreading. Then there’s the dentist, which I’d like to put off … O forever, but shouldn’t. 2. I guess we must rent my studio, tho it would be handy to have for a transAtlantic descent; I guess that would be above our means. 4. 100,000 dollars is unbelievable. How much would go into taxes? I feel numb about storing so much that is mine in the empty and remote Stonington. Like being buried in the Long Island Vets’ Cemetery where Bill’s mother150 is. Will they zerox151 everything for me? Will the public be kept out till long after my death—I mean will everyone be kept out? Certain personal letters will have to be subtracted—many? 5. Today is Sunday, but I’ll call the American School early tomorrow. 6. You are right, I like it here. I’m not following in the wake of Ezra Pound.152 7. I’ll store everything possible in London. Do you plan to come by air or boat? I feel sure we’ll stay two years, long enough to let the wonder dull. Did I tell you Mary will be in Maine by midJuly. Poor dear, her essays have three slams out of four.153 I know how these things hurt. I’ll write Harriet this afternoon; she seems happy to move, thank God. Tell Bob, that I could spend months here never entering a room unilluminated by one of the Mag’s contributors or admirers. One in Bristol was waiting for
the next issue to know what to think of Cambodia week, breathlessly withholding his own thoughts. Miss you/, Love,

  Cal

  33. Robert Lowell to Harriet Lowell

  All Souls College, Oxford

  June 1, 1970

  Dear Heart—

  I am thinking of you without braces; it’s like a graduation—blinding white teeth, and you can talk more rapidly because your jaws will be lighter, but never say as much in quantity as your mother and father.

  Today is cool and gray—I hope your trip to Castine on Memorial weekend was brighter, but what does it matter, it is all weather, all giving us something different to do. I am having lunch with someone really named Sir Isaiah Berlin, whom you have met and probably forgotten. The college where I am living is called All Souls, and they are very old souls, like Grace Stone you met in Rome, only all are men. A large maid gets them up for breakfast.

  I don’t know all about the American School. It’s in the suburbs, half-country and much more green and airy than Dalton. I expect it is easier. Tomorrow I’ll talk to the admission dean, and learn more. If we are lucky, we’ll live somewhere nearby—this typewriter ribbon is the worst I’ve ever used, just good enough not to change! Then you wouldn’t need a bus and could visit your friends at will. It’s much safer here for little girls and for everyone.

  I don’t know how to tell you about England—the countryside is somewhat like Connecticut and what you drove through going to Putney and Abbot. Only everything is farmed—hedges, streams, trees, gardens. London is a little like a big Boston, but not very and greener. Love, Dear—I must leave space for a picture but of what? In our corridor is a Quintin Hogg, ex-member of the Conservative cabinet. When he comes in he snortles like a seal, and slams his door so that the house shakes. When he was out, another man, Lord Lever, took a hammer, tacks, strips of felt and fixed Hogg’s door/ so that it slammed without making a sound.154