The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979
Page 25
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
[January 2?, 1972]
Dear Daddy,
Thank-you for the check. I just got it cashed. I still haven’t decided what to spend it on. Christmas was very nice. I went to the country with the Browns. School starts tomorrow, back to the old grind. My Robespierre paper is due tomorrow and I am typing it on an electric typewriter. Some girls who lived in mommy’s studio left it, instead of the rent. Well, I must be getting back to work! Dalton won’t leave me in peace on my last day of vacation. Thanks again.
Love,
Harriet
184. Robert Lowell to Miss Harriet Lowell
Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent
[January 10, 1972]
Darling Harriet:
If you had consulted me on Robespierre, Dalton would have left you in peace on the last day of vacation. I transcribe my 14 line masterpiece on this subject.
Robespierre and Mozart as Stage187
Robespierre could live saying/, “The Republic
of Virtue without la terreur is a disaster;
loot the chateaux, have mercy on Saint Antoine;”
or promise Danton, “I’ll love you till I die—”
both discovered the guillotine is painless.
La Revolution, old Jacobin, kept repeating,
“This theater must remain and remain theater,
play her my/ traditional, barren audience-drama,
play back the revolution.” Ask the voyeur
what blue movie is worth a seat at the keyhole.
Even the prompted Louis Seize was living theater,
sternly and lovingly judged by his critics, who knew
Mozart’s operatic slash could never
cut the gold thread of the suffocating curtain.
There it is in my usual uneccentric and clear style, every word in need of a “footmark” except for you a recent scholar on Robespierre. Oddly enough everyone writes well on odious Robespierre (and even with sympathy)[,] Carlyle, Michelet, Büchner.188 He only killed two or three thousand, while Napoléon must have killed a million, still Robespierre knew the people he killed, he killed most of the people he knew and respected in parliament, the French Convention.
My last day of vacation is getting too near. My students are gentle but many couldn’t get into a good American high school. In the past our college has had rather pitiful little demos (for pot) and as a result, the County gives them us/ as little money as is legal; and so new teachers can’t be hired, secretaries, etc. Going back to work is a slightly wet experience.
What about Easter? I would like to fly over and get you, if you’ll come. When is your Easter vacation. I think it’s early with us, but probably Dalton doesn’t acknowledge Easter. A former principal, Dr. Abram Straus[,] asked why Dalton should celebrate the resurrection of a renegade Arab mystogogue. Seriously, I am dying to see you. You’ll meet few people of all ages here, and I’ll dictate all your history papers. Give my love to mother; I think she was gypped on the apartment.
All my love,
Daddy
185. Harriet Lowell to Robert Lowell
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
[n.d. but January 1972]
Dear Daddy,
I sent you a card earlier, but addressed it wrong. Anyway, I want to thank you for the check. I am trying to find something extravagant to spend it on. I am now fifteen, whatever that means.189 At school we are reading Donne & Johnson Jonson. Tonight I have to write a paper on anything. I am not sure I enjoy all the freedom. I saw the movie of Macbeth.190 The witch scene was done in the nude, which didn’t seem much like Shakespeare. At Christmas time I went with the Browns to a hotel on the Hudson. We had a New Year’s party here, which wasn’t very exciting. Well, bye.
Love, Harriet
186. Robert Lowell to HARRIET LOWELL
[Telegram]
[Maidstone, Kent]
[Received] 1972 Jan 18 PM 2:18
HARRIET LOWELL 15 WEST67STR
NEWYORKCITY
APPALLED I LOST YOUR BIRTHDAY I BOAST YOU ARE 15 TO EVERYONE IT MEANS THE EDGE OF WHAT IS TO COME AND GO IN LIFE GLORIOUS FOR YOU I TEACH DONNE PLEASE COME HERE LOVE
DADDY
187. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
January 23, 1972
Dearest Cal: A morning of amazement! I came in and saw on the chair a package and I looked at it and thought, quite truly, “Who in England would be sending me a gift?” Dorothy Richards? I opened it to find the astonishing surprise. A beautiful dark green cashmere which I love, which fits perfectly, and is grand and elegant and something I could never afford for myself. How happy I am with it and I thank you very much, very much.
The morning mail, also there alone191 with the sweater, brought sounds from another long silent voice. Fred Seidel, a long poem, dedicated to me and Norman Mailer! I think it is very, very brilliant except for the part within that mentions me and Norman Mailer—not “together” but just as names.192 How strange. I will write him and ask to have my name out of the poem because I think it sort of ruins it for Fred, as a poem I mean. I haven’t seen him for ages.
Ah, ages. Well, I have been reading/ Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in bed and I love it and Renaissance poetry this a.m. to help Harriet study for an examination Harry Levin couldn’t pass. But I mutter to myself, “Gosh, that’s good!” as if it were all sprung new from a Village pen and going off to Poetry.193
Harriet is marvelously well. I sort of gave up writing before and after Christmas and find it hard to start again and instead do housekeeping. However, I am back, of various necessities. “The Wife of Bath”—isn’t that the very best ever? I am using it in a lecture I have to give this week-end on men and women, a subject like the air if I ever heard of one.194
All is well here, rather busy. I went to a party at William Phillips’ this past Saturday,—depressing and distressing. I never saw so many looking so awful. Dwight195—the first time in over a year—simply fallen apart, or so I felt, terrible color, vague; faces, blown up, of Will Barrett and his wife Julie—remember—also blown-up and silent. Years of suffering and calories and spirits seem to have taken their toll. Judy Feiffer, shrunken, but all right. Adrienne and Hannah the only joys intact.
Blair is married,196 but I haven’t seen him. N. Chiaromonte died. And John Berryman’s death was simply awful.197 I just couldn’t try to find out details, if there are any. The desperation stands for itself, without any footnotes being needed. And where did it come from and why did it stay forever? We never know much I guess. I met him in 1945 and knew him a little better than I ever told anyone. He was beautiful and dear and brilliant and afraid.
Again my thanks for the staggering gift, coming truly from the blue.
With dearest love,
Lizzie
* * *
I shall go out in my new green sweater & my winter dunce cap to mail this and—guess what?—buy the New York Post. So doth habit keep us happy./
E
188. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
January 31, 1972
Dear Cal: I am sorry we got cut off on the phone, but I think most of the information from both sides got through. However, I do want to write a few new ideas. There is no necessity for you to come to/ get Harriet. She has no hesitation about going off alone. I’ve just talked with her at length about it. And in addition just to get the picture a little bit clarified I called BOAC. Things are very crowded at that time. I am assuming that you understand that you will have to pay Harriet’s fare because I cannot in the most literal sense. Well, youth fare round trip, which she is eligible for is $190 and the other fare is $452—almost $260 more/! But each flight only allots a few for youth fare and so I went on and made a reservation; it had to be Qantas, BOAC filled. She feels that a week, actually about 8 days it is, would be about right. I made her reserv
ation for March 25, returning April 2. Her actual vacation starts as yours does on March 20 and ends April 4th. We don’t need to go into the details; this is just a quick note to say that it is not necessary for you to make a trip here in order to have Harriet go to England. The reservation is very tentative, but at least I have it.
I feel very sorry for Ivana; the first blow of pain never leaves you as long as you live.198 However I am encouraged from what you said and what I have read about the new methods of treatment.
This is in haste, and I will probably hear from you about how all of this appears to you and then we can correspond further about the plans.
Love from both of us,
Lizzie
189. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell
Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent
Feb. 5, 1972
Dearest Lizzie:
Just a note of delight about Harriet’s trip. I enclose the check (in another envelope)/. Of course I would be glad to come and escort her here, but plane trips kill me—two in about two days! Also this isn’t a moment when I feel like a swift, a rapid motion glimpse/ of all my dear New York friends. So I sigh with relief. I’ll be at Heathcliff199 airport with a car at the exact hour.
I can’t write much. This week was hell, just ending. Ivana’s case was and is very grave; doctors’ reports conflicted; no point was reached when we could feel she was out of danger. Then difficult drives through one of England’s worst snow storms (nothing to ours, but looking like Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow to the English eye). Then the skin-stripping operation; then next the plastic surgery. I think she [is] out of danger (but for the unforeseen) but will be two more months in the hospital—one of the best in England and with manners like Miss Elsemore.200
I will write Harriet either today or tomorrow. Tell her/ the thought of her coming has been to me the happiest of all happy thoughts. (Do I sound like Wordsworth?[)]201 I am Thrilled and half-marveling that you and Harriet are reading poetry. To me poetry means poetry written before 1906.
I appreciate your accommodation.
All my love,
Cal
190. Robert Lowell to Miss Harriet Lowell
Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent
February 6, 1972
Darling Harriet:
The best news on earth you are coming. I would have loved the Gallantry of flying over to escort you here, but I find in my green old age such trips are murder; especially one within days of another. Last time I sat between a Canadian insurance man/ and a woman from Newark. For about fifteen minutes, I found each more interesting than the other. Then they were both death. I waited in a line for an hour to get to the toilet and then gave up. Something had gone wrong with the lighting, so that at times when things were meant to be dimmed for sleep, the lights were so brightly blazing they gave me a sunburn. All the while I heard the voices of the electricians by some error amplified like rock and roll, while they conferred on repairs. I won’t comment on the TV movie. Dearest, don’t come on a super-jet and if you do sit by a window or the aisle. What a handsome sacrifice you are making to see us.
I’ll be waiting at the London/ airport and won’t let you dawdle about there lost for 8 days. I plan to make your visit unplanned. Six country days here with children and animals (not more than one church a day—or at all)[.] Then a couple of days in London. The children want you to bring your guitar even more than Caroline does. Bring it. Bring your poetry book; your lessons were the first poetry written before 1900, except for mine, that Mother has read. I’m sure I can add to her very expert teaching.
Ivana, our six year old, has made a wonderful turn for the better in the last day or so, though she still must have plastic surgery and may well be in the hospital when you arrive. The plasma-intravenous feeding has ended. She is free from the plastic tubes that Caroline called her rosaries. Her life is no longer in danger. We had eight days without a sky but now it’s just gruelling.
Dear Heart, I can’t wait. Give my love to Mother, and thank her.
Love,
Daddy
191. Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop
Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent
Feb 6(?), 1972
Dearest Elizabeth:
You seem to have been here during Frank’s visit, both by voice and reference (if Caroline had met you, you would have been as here as we are). (Change in type caused by my disastrous stopgap of putting an Olympia ribbon on a Hermes, meaning rolls stop rolling every five minutes and have to be exhaustingly switched.[)]
You are so here that I started to phone you about Marianne.202 The end of her life already ended by infirmity—she was a star in my sky 35 years ago when I first read Dick Blackmur’s essay.203 Last week I was teaching her to my poor dim students, along with Cummings whom they of course liked and got much better. For you, tho, it’s losing the person. What can I say? Maybe you’ll write a little book of memory and thoughts. I have never heard anyone describe her so well—or anyone else. Her death has made little stir, unlike Berryman’s—on whom each English week or arts page has a bad elegy. This is right, tho I thought him doomed too ever since I ate with him last year but then it was drink, later he must have died from not drinking. She was much more inspired—his heroism was in leaping into himself in the last years, amazingly bravely/.
I think Frank and I revised 405 poems in a month. That’s no way to write, but it was made more sensible by Frank’s amazing filing code and total memory for my lines. Even for rejected versions. The three books are my magnum opus, are the best or rather they’ll do. Are they much? Read Dolphin when you have leisure. I’ll send the other two fairly soon. I am going to publish, and don’t want advice except for yours. Lizzie won’t like the last. What else can I offer her? There’s something creepy about deliberately writing something posthumous. (Love, Cal)/
I have no heart to write about Ivana’s accident. We have been a lost ship.
192. Robert Lowell to Miss Harriet Lowell
Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent
Feb. 22, 1972
Dearest Harriet:
We’ve just come out of the dark tunnel of the miners’ strike.204 You probably didn’t hear much of it in New York, but here it held the whole stage. You’d be cooking an egg or reading Shakespeare or absorbing an interesting news reel about the strike on television, when all would fold into darkness. As this continued into the second hour, a chill settled down, you went to look for your overcoat. Other resources were tried, coal fires, wood fires, oil lamps, very dangerous, but which made/ the night like day with their luminous, glowing “mantels.” Doom snowballed in the daily news, 2 Million unemployed, armed pickets, polluted water, deaths in stopped elevators, dentist drills stopping mid-tooth. Worst for me, threats of a total milk cut-off. We were nearing the dark ages, when it all suddenly stopped.205 In two days, it disappeared even from the back pages of the newspapers.
I’ll be meeting you at the London airport at ten p.m. on the March 25. We may spend the night in London, since the trip here is twice as long. I think Mother wants to prepare a guide for me, step by step with Harriet—turn left for the baggage counter with her suitcase, bring money for extra charges, see that she brushes her teeth,206 help her two hours a day with the new math, read Milton aloud, don’t make up facts imaginary/ facts about Milton’s life, that he adored buttermilk.207
Dear it’s rather a long dark journey into a blaze of new faces. I know you’ll find my Heart is warm. The little girl is better, having her last operation today and will be home in 3 weeks. She can even be funny about it now, but it wasn’t funny. Love to you and Mother,
Daddy
193. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
February 28, 1972
Dear Cal: A beautiful, warm day here. Sumner snoozing on the window sill among the begonias brought from Maine years ago and still bravely enduring … I have finished my essay on the Brontë g
irls208 and am writing something for Time Magazine for a lot of money which I hope they won’t print since they will pay me most of the money anyway.209 After Christmas I had a too long bout of not getting down to work, but that has passed and I seem to have a number of things going. There are always parties and people coming and going and Nixon and Chou210 on the telly. I am trying to think of some gossip for you, but all the good things are rather long and take too long to tell. Not that I have such a bit of news or speculation on hand just now.
Some new plans for Harriet and some “advice”—since you have already credited me with it I might as well produce it! She is coming on Thursday the 23rd of March and returning the following Friday, March 31. The change to the first Thursday is to give me a free week-end and I will be away from Friday until Sunday night. The second Thursday is to give Harriet a weekend before she goes to school; she has some plan with a friend. I will put all of the information on a card enclosed here.
I was talking to Harriet recently. Here are her wishes; you can honor them or not as you wish like/. The trip—for her—is to spend time with you after this long stretch of a year and a half. Also she is very keen to see London, go to the galleries, to restaurants. She said rather wistfully that she hoped the trip would be like her last one to Venice. She would like to stay in Kent from Friday until Monday and then come up to London and be alone with you until she leaves for home on Friday morning. You will let me know about this, will you? Is Redcliffe Square open, possible?
You and Harriet and I aren’t the same people we were last year. What kind of life one lives, who you live with, what you value—that is everything. Harriet will be a strange surprise—if you recognize her at the airport. But she is still vulnerable and shy and full of deep feelings and some hurts I imagine. Very proud, though, and sure of just who she is. I think you will have a wonderful time getting to know her, being with her alone and I want it to work well so that sometime she can go on a beautiful, far-away trip with you and learn from you and have the delight and honor of all the old experiences I still value. I know it will be a deep, lasting love for you both if you can give yourself to her. I have had a marvelous time this year with her, her wit, her sympathy and loveliness and humor give me joy every day. I truly want the same for you and, of course, for her on her part.