The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979
Page 21
My life is coming back together again. In many ways I feel my marriage to Alf was still unfinished when he died & there are/ all kinds of pain connected with that. But I like being a separate woman—though I wish it had come about differently. Alone, one allows oneself to see clearly many things one dared not look at when one was tied to another life. And it’s a different relationship, altogether, one has with the world. I don’t think I could ever live with a man, in the old way, again.
How are you? What are you doing? Whom do you see? Your Norwegian friend Per-?—wrote me he was coming to NY but I leave for California the same day.
I’ve been cleaning the house & swimming & lying in the sun and feel an almost sensual tiredness such as one doesn’t get in New York. Goodnight—and love—
Adrienne.
151. Robert Lowell to Miss Harriet Lowell
[80 Redcliffe Sq., London SW 10]
June 23, 1970 [1971]
Dearest Baby—
I am thinking of a/ moment six or seven or eight years ago, when you were having some sort of difference with Mother, and she threatened to let you do the cooking, order the groceries and answer the school report, and you suddenly collapsed and said, “I’m just a bay-bee.” You are not; but I don’t know how to order suitable presents for you. If I send you jewelry, it arrives with import duties for you to pay, duties higher than what I originally paid here. Then there are clothes, but the mistakes I might make terrify me, something small enough for a doll, or big enough for an elephant, or worse something tacky. So I have cabled you twenty-five pounds, about sixty dollars. Not very much, but something to stretch your pocket-money, and to be spent on something delightful and colorful and absolutely useless.
I worry a little about Mexican diseases, though I’m sure the camp takes all precautions. When I was in Mexico, I was never sick to my stomach, and only suffered two or three rather purifying, stunning days of fever. I think about Mexico, the volcanoes, the old Aztec temples (better than European churches)[,] the flowers,99 the awful, wonderful Spanish language/ and Indian faces. You’ll lose Nicole’s Castilian accent. Will you see our friend, Ivan Illich? And will you give him my love?
Tomorrow, my play opens, the one you saw four years ago at Yale—Jonathan Miller directing as before, the same lead actor, all the same almost, only it’s being done in a former warehouse called the Mermaid theater on the muddy Thames River, and we are doing without scenery, except for a bucket and a rag. It’s about the half-god Prometheus chained to a rock. I saw a God-awful woman’s Lib avant garde, all woman cast play last month which you might have enjoyed more. Do you remember Mrs. George Orwell from three years ago in Castine? She presided, and couldn’t keep the women in the after-play discussion from talking all at once and shouting obscenities at each other.100 Aren’t you glad you are a lady?
Dearest, bless you through the Mexican summer and always. I die to see you. I am writing Mother, but please give her my love personally.
Love,
Dad
152. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell
[80 Redcliffe Sq., London SW 10]
June 23, 1970 [1971]
Dearest Lizzie:
I’ve just cabled Harriet a small sum of money, an unadventurous, impersonal gift, but I couldn’t face the disaster of import duties, delays, choosing the wrong thing. At least this can’t wholly miss fire.
Tomorrow Prometheus opens at the Mermaid, once more beautifully directed by Jonathan. The Wernicks (!) went last night to the preview and liked it. I’ve only seen the dress rehearsal, very finished, except Ocean improvised his lines—maybe he should, but we hope he won’t. Io very good, but less than Irene, and young.101 Hermes better.102 Gulls better. Kenneth the same. Reading the text and speeding it with little changes, I kept coming on suggestions of yours like a hailstorm of gifts.103 This happened many times because I was following with the lines to see that the actors got my emendations. Feelings of tender and lonely gratitude to you. I can’t judge the play. How did I get into so much Greek? And I may finish up the Oresteia. Jonathan says Sir Bernard Miles who runs the Mermaid Theater is like old Cronus. Quite a change from Bob Brustein.
I think strangely about Harriet’s summer, and the sublime, probably arid, Cuernavaca scenery. Hope she gets none of the Mexican diseases. I imagine the camp is extremely careful. Will she be at sea and alone? I think she’ll love it. The new Harriet. Still this moment of departure must make her shiver a little.
I may go to Russia to see Madam Mandelstam who wrote me a touching letter in reply to mine on her book.104 But O the filthy Russian regime and the maddening precautions one must take, such as not writing her before I arrive. I’ve conferred with such Russian authorities as Gaia, Weidenfeld and Mary. They all agree, but of course no one knows what the government intends to do with Madam M.
I keep looking for your Scarlet Letter. I like almost all of it, tho perhaps the non-fictional historical shadowing most. I see I learned all I know about the Puritans from Hawthorne. I’m reading Hogg’s Justified sinner,105 a similar very Scotch book, only the women are in the background, Chillingworth is the hero-fiend. No use to say how much I think of you. My blood-pressure is down.
Love,
Cal
* * *
Could you mail me Ivan’s address and Harriet’s. I expect to give my stuff to Stonybrook by the end of the month[.] They offer more and show more interest, a man is coming here next week. Do you want to be secretary?106
153. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Alfred Conrad107
80 Redcliffe Sq., London SW 10
June 23, 1970 [1971]
Dearest Adrienne:
I wonder if this will reach you before you leave for California? I trust it will trail you there. O I think you might want to live somewhere else this summer, and then return to Vermont in the cool of another year.
I mustn’t advize108 or judge you, but I feel an air of relief in your letter, as if you had emerged from a very long fever. As indeed you have. The loneliness and freedom of a new life. We are never born again I think, nor would want to be. Yet there are new starts. A marriage ends, and nothing stays unchanged. We face the freshness and fears and release of looking at what we really are. (What is THAT?)/ And the awful pains of improvisation and invention.
It wouldn’t be correct for me to defend myself to you, but you may/ be able to see that we are in somewhat the same position, by different paths. You know a lot about me but nothing about my situation. You hold half the broken eggshell and see things thru Lizzie, not exactly through Lizzie’s eyes. The only important thing wrong with marriage with Lizzie was our unending nervous strife, as tho a bear had married a greyhound.109 We were always deeply together and constantly fascinated and happy together, and constantly sadly vexed. When you talk about romantic sexual love, Dear, you are surely talking through your hat. I doubt if you are through with it. And anyway, it is only very partially true of me. No one sees a woman steadily for over a year and remains only romantically in love. I think you are thinking of people like Sandra.110 This has nothing in common with that. It’s not for nothing that in the old days I always came back to Lizzie. Sometimes I think your sense of justice/ wants/ Lizzie to be happier and me to be unhappier. But you can’t wish that—and I do think she will be happier, tho to say so sounds like cant. I think you will be happier, and now are. These are hard sayings and life is hard, but only fatal in the end.
I see the people you can imagine and a few you can’t. Our weekends are much like yours—sun, grass[,] children. Sometimes I go trout fishing and fail to land them. God go with you on your summer. I wish you weren’t so far.
Love,
Cal
154. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
June 28, 1971
Dear Cal: I am enclosing Harriet’s addresses, as you asked, and will sometime, when I get it, send Ivan’s. Yes, I do worry about dysentery, but the camp, the group (Experiment in Inter
national Living) are very experienced and first-class. Harriet has never seemed to waver in her wish to go. The idea gives her a feeling of self-esteem and adventure; I have heard nothing but good things from children who have done the thing. I pray it will be well and feel no worries beyond the same awful Mexican sicknesses you mention. She was pleased with your 60 dollars, very unexpected and nice. I hope she will write you this week, but don’t be disappointed if she doesn’t. She finds writing letters very difficult and puts them off and I have resigned myself/ to not hearing from her in Mexico even though I have made both stern demands and tearful pleas. How I will miss her! She is an enchanting companion, witty, brave, very firm about how she feels, sulky in the morning, quiet in the afternoon, and talkative, gay, fascinating by dinner-time. At the moment she wants to go to law school! (But I wouldn’t mention it because it might embarrass her to have her parents talking about her. And no doubt that will change.[)] She isn’t a child at all any longer—going into high school, 9th grade, in September. I think her grades will be quite good for the past year—we don’t seem to get them until mid-summer … We’ve been up to Castine—Lisa Wager with us—and it was warm and beautiful. I will be on my way back up there soon after this reaches you. However, when Harriet comes back on August 24th I’ll meet her and we are going to have Francine Gray’s house in Conn. until Sept. 7th—with swimming pool, Olga, the lovely countryside. I rather think we won’t go to Castine next summer and I am planning to rent my house in advance … When we got back from Castine yesterday the usual “surf” of mail, a lot of it stuff for you—waves from every old shore still quietly lapping tiding in and out. The Newman Press (Catholic), Peace Groups, Common Cause (McCarthy)[,] Boston College (Father Sweeney), a strange, repentant, religious note from the guy who wrote that fatuous piece in Esquire …111
I felt something on the day Prometheus opened, but ruthlessly kept down too much memory and nostalgia; it is for me/ so pointless and hurting. I thought of a telegram which would have said: “Zeus is the best we have.” … Mary due any moment. We are all very much concerned about Dan Ellsberg, a strange, sweet young man (a former Hawk), married to (do you remember?) Patricia Marx who used to be John Simon’s girl friend—a “hawk” in the sense that Hemingway spoke of Zelda F. as a hawk.112 Poor Dan gave himself up this morning, admitted that he revealed the Pentagon Papers.113 He is now arrested, but he had made the decision and now I believe acts on it with a whole heart and as much courage as [he] can muster. The awful thing is that these court cases go on and on, draining body and soul. The papers are fascinating, immoral, arrogant, treacherous, full of betrayals of trust. Power does corrupt absolutely, of course, and the false courtesy that allows men in power to accept the most outrageous situations without exploding. I think you were right to cut Billy Bundy at Yale114 … I am interested in your travels. Esther wrote me that you and Caroline had visited her; and now you are going to Russia. I was on the PEN Club translation prize committee and we gave it to M. Hayward for the Mandelstam book—really to her, or at least that was my idea. I can see that with all of this a short trip here in May, just before Italy, would have been too much. Fortunately I had not at all stressed the coming visit to Harriet because I thought you might change your mind and so she didn’t notice it. She would like you to come, but the circumstances of your break from us are so drastic and/ complete it leaves one numb after a while. In any case, we are both very fit, very busy. I am totally absorbed by the life here, dismaying as it is,—America I mean … I haven’t written Hawthorne yet, but am saving it for the Princeton lectures which terrify me. I am writing about Sylvia Plath.115 What an awful girl! What rage and hatred—out of sheer hate so much of that intense burst of genius came. But investigation turns me against the Hughes family too. The Bell Jar is a best seller; they are dribbling out her work, cleaning up. She would have slit Ted’s throat instead of her own! What a horrible irony it all is. I said to my informant, “But they are surely just putting all the mon[ey] in trust for the children?” Mmm … came the reply. And Lois Ames116 given a contract by Faber and Harper’s to write a biography for which she has no gifts, nothing.117 Sylvia will slit her, also. But I feel bewildered by her violence, even though vengeful feelings can unleash powerful expression. What a brilliant writer she is! What a strange “career” this was.
I hope the play was well received.… About the “papers,”—“Aspern”118—which I have not looked at since I first and last went through them. Have I the strength? I hate them and hate to let them go; the damned things are my life also. Did you write Harvard about Stonybrook’s offer? They know nothing about Stonybrook, except that they are interested. Perhaps they will meet it the offer/. I don’t know, dearest. There are your Harvard students—especially if you plan to return occasionally, who are writing about you all the time. Harriet and I had a good evening with Frank Bidart on our way to Maine. You would be teaching at Harvard—although you will probably want to can that when the time comes—but you might be teaching at Harvard and all your papers, all the things that will go into “work” on you will be at Stonybrook. I don’t want to interfere and Mr. Lusardi is desperate. Please don’t mention that I have said anything. I would feel bad and out of order. It is just that I think you could write Harvard, if you did not do so, telling them of Stonybrook’s offer. Then see what happens. Please do not arrange for any payments this year, because of our tax! Then sometime we will have to get together to talk things over at length, make our final decisions and arrangements.
Meanwhile, all is well with us, your lovely daughter is blooming and thinning and I at least am deeply blessed by her being and thank God for her and for my love of her which is the greatest thing in my life.… Off to Castine on the 5th.
With love,
Lizzie
* * *
P.S. Thinking perhaps you hadn’t written Harvard saying you had had a better offer I called Mr. Dennis. He was horrified at the thought that they wouldn’t get the papers and had assumed that if you had a better offer you would have let him know. I did this only to clear the way for you to make the choice that would really suit your heart. It is of some importance—I glanced fearfully into the pulsing grey tin drawers and felt sick. Ugh, our Lois Ames is out there waiting to say, “meanwhile Elizabeth was writing to Harriet Winslow in Washington saying that ‘Bobby’—”—Oh, F—! Please I’ll kill you if you let Lusardi know I alerted Harvard. But I knew Harvard cared very much!/
155. Robert Lowell to Harriet Lowell
[Telegram]
[n.d. but July 1, 1971]
HARRIET LOWELL 15 WEST67STREET
NEWYORKCITY
GOOD LUCK FOR MEXICO DEAR HEART
DADDY
156. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell
[80 Redcliffe Sq., London SW 10]
July 1, 1971
Dearest Lizzie:
Very rushed letter; I am off in a couple of hours for a six day trip to Edinburgh and the Orkneys (Home of the Spence negligence).119 A quick trip but it gives me a chance to meet McDiarmid, see my ancestral islands, and Edinburgh.
Spence negligence! I don’t need it. Somehow I mislaid the Harvard man’s name and wrote Bill Alfred a couple of weeks ago for it, and hadn’t heard. Harvard rang up just after I had had dinner with Lusardi, clumsy very touching type. In half a minute Harvard had upped their price to 130 thousand from 90. Then two days later Lusardi went up to 150. I’m not keen on the auction, at least I don’t admit I am. My lawyer here thinks nothing should be decided till after the divorce and birth of the baby. I suppose the bidding might have come out the same way anyway, but my heart-felt thanks for your timely intervention. I don’t think/ the colleges should be jewed up120 too much; what I want is an annual income that could replace if need be my part-time teaching, say from 8 to 12 thousand, an independence, my retirement fund. I will go on teaching, but hope not to do it steadily till sixty-five. I seem to be in excellent health for blood-pressure etc. but Oh me we well-in-our-fifties have lived so
too/ much of our lives already. Peter Taylor and I humorously mourn about this. Most writers if they don’t survive into hopeless ill-health and senility die at fifty-seven.
Thrilled about Harriet’s law vocation. Do you think law and the Supreme Court will replace Eldridge Cleaver, the Beatles, and even Jesus with the young? I’ve just wired my little cable to H. God bless you in Maine this summer. I think Conn. is a good idea for you and H. Will Mary be stranded?
Love,
Cal
157. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
July 3, 1971
Dear Cal: I am still here in New York until Harriet leaves in the morning. I got a copy of the letter Mr. Dennis of the Houghton Library sent to your agent or lawyer, with his offer, etc. Now that I have managed to do all of this for you I find, as I want to say quite frankly, that I am very disturbed. I have from the first acted as a very efficient agent and of course as someone who knows the value and meaning of all that is concerned. A lot of the stuff in the inventory is mine—not just your letters to me which I don’t want to sell, but letters to me from everyone, your parents, hundreds from Cousin Harriet, from our mutual friends. I only plan, I guess, to take out, your letters to me. Also I do not think I can make you a present of the copy of Land of Unlikeness, with my maiden name in it, which I bought before I met you. I plan to give that to Harriet instead. I really don’t know how to put into words all the strange feelings I suddenly have. It was I who set the Stonybrook price at $125,000 and who called Harvard and told them to bid on their own, etc. That and for so many other things I have never even been thanked. It worries me that I should have at this late date taken on so much for you. You and Caroline have treated Harriet and me with unremitting meanness. But then, what else has she to do with herself? She drifts about, has babies, destroys lives of both men and women who are really serious and deep by her carelessness and spoiled indifference to consequence and the feelings of others. However, with you—it is a different matter. You have been a person of the deepest moral yearnings and it was that person I loved. I hate your life and what you have done to those who cared so deeply for you. But that I feel is just the beginning of your suffering and decline. You will not be allowed to survive but will be sacrificed to the emptiness of Caroline, her shallow, narrow existence.