The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979

by Elizabeth Hardwick

  tack/ Dad

  hammer/ felt/

  34. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell

  All Souls College, Oxford

  June 2, 1970

  Dearest Lizzie:

  I am off to London to do a translation reading at something called ICA.155 Fairly intelligent audiences I’m told. Then I go for a few days with Grey to the Lake Country, mostly to see the Wordsworth scene but also to call on one of Grey’s idols, Basil Bunting. Ford156 used to suggest that Pound must have made up such a name, but he is actually quite good, and it helps to know someone in a region.

  I’ll be in London in a few hours and will check on Harriet’s school. Also will keep in touch with Bingo about the flat. There’[ll] be no trouble I’m sure.

  I’ve been through “eights” week here, and am glad to be off.

  Love to you both,

  Cal

  * * *

  Hope Maine was lovely./

  35. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell

  [Telegram]

  [London]

  [n.d. May 1970]

  MRS ROBERT LOWELL 15 WEST67THSTREET

  NEWYORKCITY

  SEND SCHOOL RECORDS WHN YOU CAN HARRIET ALMOST CERTAINLY ACCEPTED

  CAL

  36. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell157

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

  June 3, 1970

  Dearest Cal: I am crushed by the news that you won’t be coming back until nearly the end of June. I somehow thought you would [be] coming home any day now.

  Thanks for the cable about the school. Yes, I know they are waiting for the grades, but Dalton has been late getting out this year.

  The manuscript expert is coming from Harvard today. I guess he will go back and report and they will make you an offer, I hope. Yes, the thought of Stony Brook is grey. But, I suppose all this will have to be put aside. As I see it the negotiations, the study, by you, of the material, the final statement by you of what is to be done with various things, will take a good while. Then lawyers conferences, tax accountant conferences the money not all at once/. It is quite an undertaking. I will ask about copying at Harvard, but of course everything can’t be copied, nor would you wish it. I will have to see about how the files can be put—where—while we are gone? In any case, I know that I am relieved the manuscript and letters have at last been ordered. Only you or I could have done it, identified, pointed out significance, etc. So, that is behind us at least.

  We are broke. The income tax this year was enormous. The withholding first quarter is now due and paid, rent and maintenance goes on, Harriet’s camp, expenses. I wonder if how you are holding out. Perhaps you have some royalties at Faber you can use to get your ticket back.

  Very disappointing that an ad will have to go in The Times. Incredible running down of answers, etc. I had hoped a writer or painter or someone would turn up, leaving. You see, we are very well set up here with the work of 12 years in our arrangements. It will be hard without books, records, pictures, studios, dishes, space. I want you to stay as long as you like, but please don’t make the arrangement for more than one year now. There is all this damned space here to rent again, all the things to be looked after.

  I will see about the studio, yours I mean, right away. First an ad in the review,158 but I fear it will be out too late to help. Don’t know just what H. and I will do between now and the time you get back. Maine was glorious. I have your studio ready, all is ready, and it was exhausting but fun. The political situation changes so frequently, slightly this way, slightly that—not much point going into it.

  I worry about your teeth.

  Much love. I don’t know where we will be when you finally get back, but I’ll let you know. I’ll write Stony Brook and Harvard and say you will be later than I thought. I had planned to go over by boat around Sept. 1st. People will be wanting the apartments and, as I wrote you, that will mean coming back from Maine on August 20th at the latest. Just now I am trying to get together the tax things I have to take with us.…

  All of this is very tedious, I realize, and it is boring to write about, worse to read. So I’ll just carry on as best I can. Love again

  E.

  37. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell

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

  June 3, 1970

  2nd letter today

  Darling: Harvard is going to make an offer of $90,000! Can be paid in 10,000 and 15,000 lumps! Or however you like it. This is just for what you have to sell now. Later work will be bought as you collect it! Isn’t this wonderful? They have just finished buying Cummings.

  I’m so happy. I haven’t done a lick of work since I got back to N.Y., but I have made $90,000 for you. That will help us next year over the hump of nothingness described in my letter!

  Must stop immediately. Love.… You will be very interested to look over all of this when you get back and to make your decision.

  In haste, with love,

  E.

  * * *

  They will copy things as you need them, all very nice. Librarian ecstatic, thinks the material is so interesting and important. It is interesting and alas there is never anyone to write well about anyone. Sending off in haste, after calling Oxford to learn you are gone until Sunday! Have a good time wherever you are. Italian tv just called to ask for a statement about Ungaretti, on his death.159

  If you felt you could make a basic decision now before your return, at least I could get Stony Brook off the fire. Harvard doesn’t seem to care about restrictions, and even though the offer is less it is so much more in tune with the other work writers they have, and you can go there yourself to use any of your papers.

  Shall we keep your studio? The rent for the 9 months Sept–June would be

  If you do decide to stay longer, you can rent it then, or if someone comes up really suitable, or a truly reliable visitor, could be done now. I could leave the key and terms with Barbara and if some writer needed it, and could pay, something like Naipaul did …160 we would come out a little better.

  Love,

  Elizabeth

  38. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell161

  [Card: Wm. J. Bennett—South Street from Maiden Lane, New York, ca. 1828, Aquatint]162

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

  [June 3, 1970]

  I misread your letter this morning to say you weren’t coming home until June 25th. I was distressed & surprised. Now I have read it over & I learn you are only going to London on the 25th!

  I feel I have to write this, after my two other letters today, to say I am very much hurt & deeply upset. I will just have to think about it for a while.

  Elizabeth

  39. Frank Bidart to Robert Lowell

  383 Harvard St., Apt. 508, Cambridge, Mass.

  June 4, 1970

  Dear Cal,

  I just heard you won’t be back this fall. Cambridge will be a forlorn place without you, but I’m glad England has worked out so well. Perhaps this forms the only natural conclusion to writing Notebook. Even if sections do keep coming, their character will change … Perhaps this will provide the new subject, new departure, you mentioned this spring. But you’ll be missed!—

  I have some news. Several weeks ago I sent my poems163 to Richard Howard at “New American Review,” and I just got a letter saying that he wants to publish them as a book. He’s directing a new poetry series for Braziller, and wants me to be third on his list. I said in the original covering letter that there was a possibility Farrar, Straus may do them, and he understands this. In any case, it was incredibly encouraging to find someone so enthusiastic about the volume (which is still not quite finished)—he’s the first person not a friend who has reacted so decisively, unequivocally. Of course, I’d rather have it published by Giroux.

  Perhaps we’ll see each other or talk this summer (are you going to Maine?), we can discuss what I should do about the offer. I don’t think Howard has to know right away.

  I�
��m anxious to see anything new you’ve written, and the final revisions of Notebook.

  Give my best to the Gowries.

  Bill Alfred says that Elizabeth Bishop may come next fall, which is fantastic, but won’t make up for … Well, if you see an aerial photograph of Cambridge, and it has a great big hole in the center, know that it’s because Mr. Robert Lowell is no longer at Quincy House.164

  Best,

  Frank

  40. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell

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

  Thursday, June 5, 1970

  Cal, dearest: Hate to load you down with all this mail from me, but there is no other way with so many things to be discussed, changes of plans and feelings from the last letter. Actually a complete exchange of one letter, one answer, wait for an answer is almost ten days. I called, as I told you in letter two, but they said you were away for a week.

  I am coming to London on June 29th, BOAC flight 594 arriving there at 9:50.P.M. I will somehow get Harriet up to her camp on the 28th and drive back and then take off the next morning. I have nothing else to do; it is very hot and dreary here and lonely. I will not under any circumstances, pack up, drive all the way to Maine, unload and settle, drive Harriet way back to Connecticut, and then drive back to Maine again. It is not possible and I never considered Castine a happy and possible way of life for me alone. I’ve had nightmare trips all spring, driving, managing alone. Actually, my one worry is what on earth Harriet and I will do for the more than two weeks she has here before camp. I hope she’s invited somewhere, but otherwise it will be unbearable. It is full summer here. She also does not want a great trek to Maine and back with just us alone and feels it is too hard on me. If you were here and we all went together, stopping to see Aunt Sarah,165 it would be different.

  Can you borrow a flat for us, so that we can save money while I’m there. Then I can apt. hunt, visit the School, even bring over a few things. When we will be coming back? I want Harriet to know at camp and also to know where we are will be, for emergencies/. Also, I really do, honey, need some ideas about the papers. We are flat broke and I will hope to write something for Vogue, whom I am calling this morning, to pay for the air trip.

  Much love, dearest.… Also, shouldn’t I try to get a prescription from Dr. Platman [f]or pills.166 Also, here is the name of a dentist, from Harriet’s dentist. (Can’t find it right now, but will send it in an envelope when I do.)

  Dear heart, so sorry to bother you. Can’t wait to see you. It has been very lonely for both of us and we miss you sorely. I’m still sorry you aren’t coming back before Harriet goes to camp, but I know you would if you could. Anyway I am so happy that I’ll be seeing you just after she has gone because there wouldn’t be any point in being here after that.

  I won’t write so much again. Just if something you need to know comes up.

  Love, always

  Elizabeth

  * * *

  P.S. I’m doing a 600 word review of Francine’s book167 which was slaughtered by a rat Jesuit in the NYTimes,168 and a 600 word of Mary’s.169 This will more than pay for my trip. For Vogue. Of no importance, but still they do have a lot of short critical things in the mag. and it will be a chance to say a few good words on both—and give me the means to come to see you! Must get to work. Much love, darling.

  41. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell

  All Souls College, Oxford

  June 14, 1970

  Dearest Lizzie:

  Lovely to hear your voice, clear as tho it were across the yard quad/. I’ll reserve passage on the 24th or possibly the 23rd. This is a day or two later than I said on the phone. The reason is I plan hope/ to go to Poland with Blair next Tuesday, or Wednesday. He is going to see his friend,170 now separated from her husband. This is a stand-in trip for our age-old “ancestral” tour of Scotland.

  I am going this morning to see Huyck and Judith at the Wains’.171 Everyone I know knows someone else I know fortunately. Then on to Cambridge driven by Omar172 to see D. P.173 Not too much fun really, but something decided more than a month ago, and a debt to old times.

  Wonderful drive through Cumberland, Lancashire and Northumberland and a visit to Basil Bunting. A Wordsworth fan and a Pound disciple. (This trip to Europe seems to circle around Pound[.]) I told you about Empson, “I now find the glare at the end of the tunnel to the afterlife (his retirement) oppressive.”174 And “the afterlife is now assuming almost Egyptian proportions.” About art critics writing catalogues, “a steady iron-hard jet of absolutely total nonsense.”175

  I think my study better be rented. We can’t pay over a thousand dollars for storage. I trust Harvard will make out a catalogue so I can get hold of (know) what I have or want. I wonder if there are old lost poems, salvageable? Perhaps not.

  You’ve had a terribly chafing stint of schools, Lowell “material.” Inavertently Tastelessly/ I used this word in my first letter to Allen, and each letter of his sends it back to me in quotes.176 I wonder if colleges will have to buy this kind of stuff by weight rather than interest. It seems horrible to think of warehouses stuffed with papers and papers. When machines do all, pedants can spend lifetimes listing and living variants. Or will computers do this too?

  I guess I’ve taken it easy. This is almost the first time since lithium177 that I’ve am/ mostly unemployed—take leisure to be wise.178 I’m not quite what I was when one groping and reaching summer I began Notebook.

  Give all my love to Harriet, tell her I am bringing you both nice but modest presents.

  Love from your soul among the “Souls,”

  Cal

  42. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell

  [Telegram]

  [Maidstone, Kent]179

  [Received 1970|June 20—Sat|10:40-P.M.]180

  MRS ROBERT LOWELL 15 WEST67STREET

  NEWYORKCITY

  PERSONAL DIFFICULTIES MAKE TRIP TO NEWYORK IMPOSSIBLE RIGHT AWAY LOVE CAL

  43. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell

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

  June 23, 1970

  Dear Cal: I have no idea where you are, but I will just send this off to Faber and if it doesn’t reach you it doesn’t matter too much. I got your cable when I came home after a week-end. When I saw it lying there on the floor I knew what it would say.

  I will take Harriet to camp this Sunday. She has had periods of saying she didn’t want to go and I hate to have her away because I can hardly bear it but I know it is best for her and I will just count the days until she comes back to me. I will spend the night with Olga after taking Harriet and then back here and face the decision of what to do with myself.

  I must say I feel rather like a widow. Your things, you, your life, your family, your clothes, your work, your old shoes, ties, winter coats, books, everything seems sitting about at every turn. Thinking you were coming back I had your typewriter over-hauled and took it up to your study for you and it was just as if you were there[,] all your little objects, papers, books, your desk just as you left it, your bed. I suppose just as you left it isn’t accurate since it is a lot cleaner waiting to be dirtied “creatively.” And I was spraying mothballs on your clothes, and looking about our living room, your family, your past everywhere. I feel you have totally forgotten us as with an amnesia, but we have not forgotten you.

  I am sending this review by Cathy Spivack181—very sweet, if not interesting.

  I sit here answering your mail, saying “my husband is away and will be so indefinitely. I do not think he would like to write on his concept of style, since this isn’t exactly what he likes to do, but I will send along your kind letter.” And so it goes. Anthologies pile up, telephones ring.

  I don’t know why I am writing this. There are so many absolutely pressing practical problems with Harriet and me. I have written them all to you I think and have no answer or even mention of them and so I suppose it would just be vexing to go into it all. And these are of course worrying but not my real gri
ef and anxiety. Soon after the man was here from Harvard I wrote that I thought their offer would be agreeable to you, but you would get in touch with them when you came back. I haven’t written Stony Brook, but I guess I will. I cannot proceed on my own with Harvard and they would not like it, nor can it be done in a casual way. The restrictions would need to be quite specific and thought out, for your own ease I think. Also the material—(ugh!) is very interesting and you will want to see it to know what you want to have copied and so you will certainly need to come back here one of these days. Strange old manuscripts you will be interested in./

  Did I tell you I sent Allen a second batch and I think now I have found one of his books he sent you.182 I will send that to Allen—it is not a poetry book, exactly. I saw it a week or so ago and forgot about it and will wait yet I felt it was his not yours.

  The end of Dalton was somehow just a catastrophe for our beautiful girl. She was so happy to say goodbye to it and to feel something new and hopeful ahead of her. If it is ahead of her. I have had to raise her and so I couldn’t come to England with you as I so wanted to and to share all of that. And perhaps you would have kept your love for us if we hadn’t been separated.

  I will do the best I can. This is just to send undying love to you, a great sense of loss—from me and from your daughter.

  Elizabeth

  * * *

  P.S. Dr. Annie tells me Elizabeth has signed a contract to do poetry reviews for a year for the New Yorker.183 Isn’t that marvelous? For poetry, if not for her,—a dog’s life it is. But there is no one saying anything about poetry here and so I feel good about it. I hope she can review your new Notebook and will write give it the attention it truly deserves. One wants serious criticism, not just vague praise. When I was organizing your life’s accumulation I read very few things except Randall and I feel more and more what a great man he was. Curiously, with his death something in the culture came to an end, something I can’t define beyond just the obvious rare conjunction of great powers of mind and utter devotion to literature. But that isn’t good enough. I feel, reading the English press, that they are even worse off than we are, since they have a longer tradition. No, they are not worse, but reviews, the weekly and monthly cultural scene is just as mediocre. Of course the old people are beautiful, here and there too. But I feel as if they were all dead, and also came out of a world never to be had again, like that world of housemaids downstairs. (It is not the maids I mean but the lost cultural depth.) Did it come from some bustling downstairs?