The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979

by Elizabeth Hardwick

  I am swamped with work of all kinds, but I am trying to fit in first some tedious stuff the lawyer wanted me to draw up for him. I fear if I wait a week it will not set the tone of speed I wish to impress upon him. Otherwise, let’s see. Harriet starts school at last next week, but has a really horrifying schedule of six full academic courses, also required art and dance (exercise). On Fridays she doesn’t even have lunch. This is not the school’s fault. In the high school there everyone is taking his own schedule just as if it were college. But she is getting off her requirements in science, math, and what with two languages, English (now also an elective and for her “Greek Tragedy and Comedy[”]) and History—ach! Poor little creature.

  Esther Brooks’ brother died in a drowning accident and she has been back in America—stayed with me325

  227. Charles Monteith to Mr. Robert Giroux

  Faber and Faber Ltd Publishers, 3 Queen Square,

  London WC1N 3AU

  September 21st, 1972

  Dear Bob,

  ROBERT LOWELL

  Last week I went down to Maidstone to see Cal and Caroline and to stay the night with them. Cal handed over what he optimistically describes as the “final” version of his three new books: HISTORY, FOR LIZZIE AND HARRIET, and THE DOLPHIN.

  As you’ll see from this, NOTEBOOK has now been split into two: 1) HISTORY—which in its present form consists of 155 pages of typescript. It includes 80 new poems which didn’t appear in any of the previous/ versions of NOTEBOOK, and in addition, of course, he’s reworked quite a number of the poems that have already been published.

  2) FOR LIZZIE AND HARRIET. The title is self-explanatory. It’s a short book—34 pages of typescript; and all the poems have already appeared in NOTEBOOK.

  THE DOLPHIN. 61 pages of typescript—a sequence of love poems written to Caroline. None of these have yet appeared in book form anywhere.

  All three have now been handed over to our production department, and our very approximate production schedule is as follows:

  Galleys: early December

  Page proofs: early February

  Shee[t]s (and repro pulls): early April

  Publication date: it looks as if the very earliest we could publish would be mid or late June. We fully appreciate of course that you must publish before we do; so when we get nearer the time, perhaps you could fix your publication date and let me know what it is to be. We’ll then fix ours.

  I do stress that this timetable is extremely approximate. Mr Peter Moldon—who’ll be looking after all three books in our production department—will keep in touch with you when dates become more definite.

  Format. As agreed with Cal, we’ll be following the format of the earliest Farrar Straus edition of NOTEBOOK for all three volumes.

  Proofs. We’ll be sending you galleys and page proofs when they’re ready—but these of course will simply be for your information. Cal warned me that he would probably rewrite quite a bit in galley—I’ll be very surprised indeed if he doesn’t—but he promised to be a good boy about page proofs. Let’s see what happens! We’ll arrange of course for Cal to read proofs here and they’ll also be read by our own proof-reader.

  I expect you’ll be seeing Cal very shortly—if you haven’t done so already. He’s going over to the States for six weeks or so, mainly I think to see to the divorce proceedings.

  Robert Sheridan Lowell, whom I met for the first time, was in fine form. He’s walking already—and walking very expertly too—though he’s still not quite a year old.

  With all best wishes,

  Yours ever

  Charles Charles Monteith

  * * *

  P.S. I suppose we shall have a separate contract for LIZZIE AND HARRIET. Would the same terms as those we agreed on for THE DOLPHIN be all right? They were: a royalty of 12½% to 2500, 15% thereafter, and an advance of £200 on publication.

  If these are agreeable to you, perhaps you could ask Gerald Pollinger to send me a contract.

  228. Robert Lowell to Miss Harriet Lowell

  Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent

  Sept. 28, 1972

  Dearest Harriet:

  I’ll be seeing you very soon, on the 9th of October. Never has time moved so fast. I’ve been writing rather steadily all summer, and now when I look up the tops of trees are yellow, and it is cold to get up sometimes in the morning. Sheridan is now one. He surpassed himself at his party. The birthday cake with its one candle was unwisely put on the floor, soon he had rammed into it with his musical lawnmower. Almost every inch of the mawner326 was sticky with cake and its music had stopped. Then he was given a large ball and sent to a far corner of the room. Suddenly through three large women, he dropped the ball on the middle of the cake. But there is worse. Last he met his first girlfriend-guest, Olivia Pearson, age eight months. He was gently patting her hair (his own is tangly now and rather better) then suddenly she was blushing red and alas crying. There’s such a thing as being too healthy, as you will see when you see him.

  Ah me, it seems unimaginable to be back again in New York, but it always did from Maine, and I guess in a few hours I’ll feel I never left. Or will I?

  Caroline sends her love. Mine to Mother. Rather an awful visit, but it must be.

  all my love,

  Cal

  229. Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop

  [Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent]

  [October 31, 1972]

  Dearest Elizabeth—

  I’m so glad you wrote because I didn’t think we parted on the right note—so much so I didn’t quite know how to write. The trip has left us bone-tired, not in spirit so much as physically—I could use one of Mailer’s irritating metaphors, a boxer who has been punished for ten rounds.

  I am sore about my alimony, though it’s quite bearable and more or less what I outlined in my mind two and a half years ago. I keep what I make: salary, manuscript sale, royalties, I lose everything inherited, all trust interest, NY apartment,327 Maine house and barn—I thought they were Lizzie’s in Cousin Harriet’s will, but as I had forgotten, they were half mine by Maine law—all this is OK, but it’s the small things, the difficulty of getting personal or family things, my books, silver spoons etc. I have no need of furniture, but all of ours I paid for, and some pieces were in my parents’ house when I was five, or seven or eight. Well, I want little, not even many books; there’s a clause in the alimony agreement saying we should agree on what should be mine—and doubtless when emotions are less keen we will agree, since not more than a couple of thousand dollars at most is in question. What really bothers me though is that Harriet will receive nothing of consequence from me—the alimony provides for her tuition through graduate school and further, but to be handled by Lizzie. I feel Harriet has been stolen from me like the dozen silver spoons. Of course, there are provisions for mutual consultation on her life and education—unenforcible if we are in a temper, as we are now, and mustn’t be later when our blood cools—for everyone’s good. So it will be, God willing—today I am enjoying the luxury of steaming.

  Frank’s dedication328—here’s what happened (but no one concerned can tell the same story about something even as simple as this). I think I said to Frank last winter that I ought to dedicate History to him, but that this seemed odd because he was really a collaborator. Anyway I totally forgot and dedicated it to Kunitz, who had written me a powerful letter about it,329 had recently nearly died, to whom for ages I had wanted to dedicate a book, etc. Frank was so upset, I made a double dedication, a solution like splitting a Bollingen, that no one quite relishes, but the only possible way out for me. I haven’t dared tell Kunitz and meant to if I had had a chance to see him, not just talk to. Now I will. It’s hard to express how much Frank’s work with me was worth, and is—without giving an immodest evaluation to my poem. There’s no other book to dedicate—the For Lizzie and Harriet is itself a dedication, and the Dolphin must be to Caroline. I’m so glad you really like her—I assumed so somehow—perha
ps Frank has copies of some of her things.330 He must have. We’re so bad about parcelling and mailing, and only have one copy of most things.

  Oh God, Dear one, I do feel you must have security. I don’t think I’ve undermined you, cannot remember not being open about my return—somehow Bloomfield assumed I had resigned when I hadn’t.331

  If I weren’t still tired I’d tell you humors of our San Domingo days—I’d say with my whole heart, we (you & I) are together till life’s end,

  All my love,

  Cal

  230. Robert Lowell to Harriet Lowell

  Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent, England

  November 3 6/, 1972

  Dearest Harriet:

  This letter is dated wrong because somehow I got an idée fixe that the election day was November 4 instead of 7. The last days are an agony to read about, it will be merciful when it’s all over.332 McGovern must feel that he is living a waking nightmare that he can’t stop. It’s strange to be writing you such things. I remember when my letters were all jokes. Better that way.

  Yesterday a herd of twenty very handsome and very stupid cows got into our grounds. I think they are dumber, more harmless and stupider than guinea pigs.333 I would chase them away from the garbage cans, then they’d slowly shuffle away and attack what was left of the roses. The worst was when they leapt a barb wire fence, putting one hoof on the top wire and bending it down. After a while, and slow as glue, I got them all uninjured back to their pasture. Cows are the same as little animals, only less bright. Size doesn’t mean anything unless it sits on you.

  We went through our divorce and marriage on schedule—a few errors such as not having any passports or identification when we stood before the divorcing judge. Santo Domingo where it all happened is much like Porto Rico, only the Spanish speaking people are at least half negro, and the blessing and disadvantages of America are hidden. Also hidden is the body of Christopher Columbus buried there. Miles of beaches but unswimmable because of barracudas and sharks pursuing sewage.334 I quite enjoyed the swimming pool; actually cooler than the air.

  Somehow I miss you even more than ever, and brood about it, and even wake up brooding. You must (I mean we invite you) to come here Easter. Maybe bring a friend and see more movies in London. Or all kinds of things that aren’t movies. We plan to be at Harvard beginning in September, in the country if possible. I’ll only be an hour or so away from you.

  A miracle happened with Sheridan at Bill Alfred’s. You know how every inch of his house is covered with reachable breakables. This was doubled by the Brooks’s using his house as storage for part of the furniture [from] the Cambridge house they just sold. Sheridan somehow got interested in doing vaudeville with Bill’s hat, a carrot-grater and a milk bottle. Just as we were leaving, the last hour, he realized what a chance he had missed and rushed for the dishes on low shelves. We stopped him. So much stronger are years than youth.

  But what is strong? I miss you so. All my best to mother.

  Love,

  Daddy

  231. Robert Lowell to Harriet Lowell

  Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent, Eng.

  November 21, 1972

  Dearest Harriet:

  I sharpened the brown pencil for about five minutes in order to do my first Sumner, though you may not recognize him. Then confident with failure, I tried my second in blue ink. I see that though I hate non-representation in all the arts, I will never be a lifelike painter. However, the purpose of my drawings is to make it easy for you to write me a letter. It’s hard to write; it’s harder for your father not to have an answer, not ever to hear.

  For some crazy reason, we have had five sunny days out of six here, a record for southern England. On the sixth, a heavy rain fell blown by winds that bent large trees double. It left a lake on the flat roof over my study, and for twenty hours a steady heavy drip, caught by six dishpans and a rubber wastebasket. Then a man who knew came and the leaks stopped.

  The Academy of American Poets is putting on a small memorial for Ezra Pound on January 4, and will pay my passage.335 I plan to come (if I can get my passport back from the Home Office). I particularly promise myself that I will see you.

  My teaching has turned out to be rather fun this year. The sun is setting now at four, and soon I’ll be setting off on my longish dark drive to Essex. I dare not tell you or even myself how short my teaching hours are. Nothing like your daily homework, but think of the great mind, the courageous modesty etc. I put into it.

  Caroline is still losing things right and left, and writing reams, and sends her love. I send mine to you and Mother.

  Love,

  Daddy

  PART III

  1973

  232. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Elizabeth H. Lowell

  Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent

  [January 10, 1973]

  Dear Lizzie:

  Back at last to teaching, my sixth term of teaching Modern North American Poetry. How different it seems than the poets of Philip Larkin’s Oxford Book of 20th Century1—even when Eliot and Auden are in both lists. I’m doing a review of the Larkin because it might give me an opening to write unpretentiously about the poetry of the century—some of it, all British, Americans only used to point up differences.2 I suppose we all thought of ourselves as more modernist than we really were, our tastes were more experimental than our own chosen styles. But in Larkin (a felt anthology, in no way defiant, but a sign of the times) modernism might never have been.

  Why have I gone on this way? It was good to see so much of you and Harriet.3 Sad, too because at best nothing is repeatable for us. in time. I felt when Harriet came here a year ago, that this would never be again—I mean that no matter how many times she came, and how happy the visit was, we would be different persons, at a different moment in our lives. I felt that with you. What did Peter Ross Taylor say after we left Columbus so long ago?

  I am out of work now. No more of my old—6 or 7 years,—can be written. Nothing much new comes even as a desire. Maybe my prose bits. They’ll need more—small stuff and too hard to do, but probably better than play or verse at the moment. Could I call my few essays Men. I see to my embarrassment, they all are.

  Give all my love to Harriet, and tell her I’ll write soon—very. Liked Mary’s using Stalin, almost no one who is against Vietnam violently makes this qualification.4

  Love,

  Cal

  * * *

  P.S. (writing with Edel’s pen)5 Has Harriet’s check arrived. If not, I [will] write another./

  233. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell

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

  February 2, 1973

  Dearest Cal: Your Christmas check arrived for Harriet. She was well pleased with it and felt, coming by ship, it had traveled a long way to arrive just when it was needed … As for me, I have not done any of your bidding. Not out of will, negative, but willessness, positive. I called energetically to a packer and shipper soon after you left and they were surly, disconnected. I looked long in the yellow pages and then retired never to take it up again. But I will do so. I have about a hundred pages to write this month and then I will turn my head to housekeeping, arranging, shipping.

  Let me see, what from the tens of explosions, the dozens of gossips, the real and false events—what to pass on to you? A lovely banging rain today, dark at midday.… Last week I was on a program at the Y about Sylvia Plath; rows of radical lesbians, screaming something about Robert Lowell. I gathered it had to do with your introduction and laughed, southern syllables into the cracking mike, “Why are you’all against that—uh? I think it’s kinda good, you know.”6 Chaos!

  I need very quickly the name of the accountant who has your earnings from last year. I guess you want it done here by Mr. Hoffman. We won’t (can’t)/ sign a joint account, but all of the money we have from you is in your name still—and still!—and so it goes to the govt. under Robert Lowell but those taxes will have to be paid by me. Y
ou will have to pay some. It is sheer horror, thinking about it. I hope this will be the last year for me and that I shall be utterly only on my own, but they are still having trouble getting “opinions” on putting the money in my name. Lawyers fees (and I do not mean the rest of Mr. O’S) are mounting. In heaven there is no marriage,7 hence no divorce.

  Otherwise we are altogether fine here. Harriet is very happy and busy and has just taken her mid-terms and done a paper on Alcestis.8 Adrienne spent two nights with me and then drove Miss Bishop back to Cambridge. I did not see E. Adrienne is all over the place, very much in vogue, lots of poems, a new book coming out.9 Pablo10 was with her one night and he is a beautiful boy, quite won our H.’s approval and liking. There is a review in Commentary which says John Ashbery’s new book, Three Poems,11 (long prose poems) is one of the dozen or so of the century, can stand with the Four Quartets.12 So the moving finger writes.13

  Reading “Visions of the Daughters of Albion” this a.m.14 Strange poem that fell upon me like some wonderful cloud—obscure, heavy, soft. He—Blake—knows things we do not know.