The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979
Page 39
Nothing much with us. I write without much steam on me—quite a few free verse poems now, redrafts of some of my perversely wild translations (it’s a mistake to invent something of one’s translating only if faithfulness does better; the trouble is a faithful may do nothing, be undistinguishable from another of the kind). And then I have a prose book (Occasional Criticism and Reviews, like poor Philip’s last magazine)[.]2 All the youthful stuff would have to be not just revised but re-imagined. It never ends.
Have I thanked you for the relief of my visit?3 I had that settled-in fever-cold that’s run through all my family, and psychologically and through physical weakness could hardly make my trip. Through physical complication and pinchedness Brookline was like one of these vexing dreams where innumerable little objects will never stay in place. All to disappear. I hope so I didn’t leave my cold behind. How much briefer letters are than words.
Love,
Cal
* * *
I like best almost Philip not being particularly autobiographical, and his refusal to accept his friends[’] versions of their actions being complete.4 I am bugged about “provincial.”5 Almost no English or American intellectuals (except sometimes Jews and the foreign-born) have ever tasted another country or culture. It’s not a matter of dipping in other languages, though this could help—it’s their spirit which can’t be ours, and isn’t.
291. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
March 6, 1974
Dear Cal: Harriet is arriving Saturday night March 23 at Heathrow, 9:40 P.M. Flight BOAC 594[.] She is coming back on Thursday April 4, BOAC Flight that leaves at 11 A.M.—that in case you want to book the same flight if you are coming with her for your readings.
I am off to Rio the same day6 but will return here a few days before Harriet’s return. I don’t see how I can possibly write anything. What a large, brilliantly imperfect subject for such a small, “perfect” talent.7 I have met two delightful, engaging Brazilians and will stay in Rio with one of them & his family. I will have my own room and bath (section I think where Elizabeth’s Rio apt. was) and when I enquired about the condition of the beach he said, oh, that doesn’t matter, we have a pool. I was pleased I admit. I understand Lacerda is immensely rich and immensely fat from drinking it up, but I intend to try to see him.8 The people I will see are part of the legal opposition, pressing censorship as far as it will go, etc. They seem, Brazilian style, quite exhilarated, joyfully predicting a collapse of the celebrated economic growth. Apparently there are so many cars in Rio and St. Paulo that you have, literally, five hour waits. People get out of their cars and shoot each other!9
Let me know if you are not returning with Harriet and I will meet her—no, I have to teach that day and she will take a cab home. Let’s see—I am saving a little stack of blows and kisses for you (printed ones) of little importance but alive to the curious ego I guess.10 Blows such as L.W.’s Castle no good, L. Studies better.
I know my darling’s visit will be lovely for all of you. She is very much looking forward to it. I will not write again I guess and so you can put the arriv[al] time in the band of your hat.
Love,
Lizzie
292. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Elizabeth Lowell
Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent
May 1, 1974
Dearest Lizzie—
Here I am in the country half-frozen and out of touch with Mayday. Tomorrow I start a final performance of reading, & discussion of translation at Essex, amid the dying embers of a month-old strike.11 I’m still tired from travelling about America.12
Sorry things blew up with us just at the very end last Thursday—I can’t believe almost a week has passed. I’m sending the Clive James13 to Michael Rubinstein my lawyer—still unread. I suppose only a lawyer knows what is libel and what isn’t.
Letter from Wynn Handman wanting to do the whole Old Glory on some kind of grant.14 Also someone here wanting to do Phèdre at Edinburgh. Ah, the old flowers of last year!
Except for the end, nothing could have been more tender and considerate of old “patriarchal” than your treatment of me—your treatment and Harriet’s[.]
What do you think turned up here from Paris? A letter from Giovanna Madonia,15 taking her ten years child to Glyndebourne. Oh where is Sidney Nolan who used to go there this time of year?
Love to you both,
Dad-Cal
* * *
My first day I slept 18 (?) hours.
293. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell16
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
May 6, 1974
Dear Cal: I’m glad you got back safely and I am just now, after all these weeks, finding the time to write you and to say that I am sorry the misunderstanding about various things in print occurred.17 I had no idea I was the bearer of bad news, but I do remember the wisdom of the ancients in regard to those things … Aside from that, life has just been horrible. I had to fly last weekend to Lexington because my brother Robert, younger than I am, died;18 now I fly back again this weekend for the long-arranged honorary degree.19 We learned of Israel’s death yesterday20 and Harriet expressed the desire to send a cable and did so. Then yesterday news that Hannah had had a heart attack in Scotland. Jovanovich was there at the very moment and Mary soon arrived. But we are all in tears over it. That whole generation and its learning, the kind of thinking it did, the greatness of the lives and the persons. I cannot bear to think of the loss, cannot bear to have Hannah sick in this way.
My little book is out and got a huge review with a huge picture in the N.Y. Times.21 The review was very boring I thought but I suppose I should be happy. Having a small dinner in its honor tonight—or a dinner is being had. Harriet and Devie as my escorts.
I haven’t written my piece on Brazil22 because of all the aching interruptions. Death and loss everywhere around us. So I write in that spirit of forgiveness and honor of all we have touched in our lives. Harriet is very well.
Love,
Lizzie
294. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
July 20, 1974
Dear Cal: I’m sorry not to have written for such a long time. There is actually not all that much to say, or much that can’t somehow get thrown into your occasional calls. Harriet is fine I think, even if she and all her friends often, at home at least, seem weighed down by adolescent torpor. In spite of that they will be off on August 1st to bike around Holland, through Germany to Copenhagen. Some of the trip by train, I hope. I naturally have some misgivings about something so vague, about Cathy and Harriet sweating out thirty miles a day on the roads of Europe, alone. I tell them to give up if it isn’t altogether pleasant. The probability is that it will be great fun, with lots of people like themselves in hostels, in the public parks, etc. She is still a wonderful companion and delight to me when she is at home and was a brick about our time in Maine, when of course there wasn’t a soul her age to be seen with a telescope.
I love my new house absolutely. Somehow the site is even more splendid and encompassing than we knew since it now opens in all directions, the windows are wider and in many ways the barn idea has disappeared although the dear structure is still there. My bedroom is overwhelming. The first night there I fell on the bed in exhaustion; there was a full moon, high tide, and the water seemed to be at the foot of the bed. It is indeed not just a view, but true living on the sea.
I saw Jack T.23 the other night, the first time in nearly a year. He is in better shape, looked rather beautiful after so many homely, drunken years. And what a nice friend. He went to Robie and to Peter, in their troubles.24 The description of Peter as he came home from the hospital, weeping, too weak to move, was awful. However he improved quite strikingly in a few days. The pain and the weakness of these attacks are fearful I understand. Poor Peter. The change is inevitable and great, the inner change. But people do get stronger
, live quite well and for many years. I am in New York with Harriet and left Castine just as Mary got there. But I talked to her by phone and will see her this week. She said Hannah was quite surprisingly well—and so that can be.
Bob told me you had written some poems or a poem about Israel.25 And of course I thought he was talking about the beleaguered state and puzzled over it. Was later told it was about the deceased person. I haven’t seen the work.
There is not much news. New York is not unpleasant and I have been in and out a lot but I look forward to the month of August in Castine. My number there is 207 326-4856.
Much love to you and good health,
Lizzie
295. Robert Lowell to Harriet Lowell
[Telegram]
[London]
[July 31, 1974]
HARRIET LOWELL 15WEST67ST
NEWYORKCITY
MAY MY LOVE GO WITH YOU ON YOUR ADVENTURE IVE TRIED TO PHONE THROUGH TO YOU REPEATEDLY LOVE
DADDY
296. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell26
[Castine, Maine]
Saturday, August 9 [August 10, 1974]
Dear Cal: I have written Harriet about the lovely telegram you sent her, which just missed her departure. She seems to be having a good time in Holland and I hope the bicycle trip to Denmark won’t be hard. Anyway, the long summer waiting was not good for the spirits. She came up with me in June to get my house settled, but Castine was a desert. The house is utterly beautiful. Incredible views on all sides, very bright colors, quite special and exhilarating. The grounds were like the entrance to a motor court but the grass is struggling up and the joy of life here is very great. Mary and Jim are wonderful. All of us, with Frankie FitzGerald, watched the incredible exit of Nixon.27 For two or three days here the tension and excitement were like being drunk.
Cousin Natalie died in New York this week—of cancer. She had been quite ill all winter, but still rather the same “girl” and very hopeful and cheerfully distant from what was happening to her. I do not have further passages forward or backward to report.
I have done nothing but get the house ready for months and now will try to proceed with a few things. I have to see if I can indeed go forward with my novel, because I must recover having spent every penny in the world on this barn. I suppose it was worth it, but can one be self-esteeming enough to know that he deserves such as this. I do know I mustn’t get sick until I have put some “capital” back in the bank. In the long run I think Harriet will like and use the house—actually she adores it, even if the town isn’t alive enough for her … How nice it must be in Kent. I haven’t seen any of your new work, but I hope it goes along to your liking. Much love from here.
Elizabeth
297. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Elizabeth Lowell
Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent
August 16, [1974]
Dear Lizzie:
I am so happy you liked and sent off my cable to Harriet; I wanted it to be in the nick of time, if I failed to get her on the phone. By the time you get this the girls’ trip will be largely over I suppose. Lovely and slightly scary to think of them orbiting without directors through northern Europe.
My feeling about Nixon is that a great pollution has been removed from our country, almost in a Biblical or Greek classical sense. Wasn’t Nixon good on au revoir, the smallest citron ranch, and his mother who was a saint?28
Sad about Natalie. I just failed to write her a note at Alice’s suggestion. Hope her cancer wasn’t the unbelievable torture it can be. I pray to have suicide pills near when the hours come.
It makes me so happy the barn makes you so happy. Three people, you and I and Cousin Harriet made it as it is. A tradition. I have about half a book of “short” poems,29 and have stopped for time—more or less at desire, though nature must help in these things.
Much love back from me.
Love,
Cal
298. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
September 23, 1974
Dear Cal: Your Ransom elegy is absolutely beautiful.30 No one does these things as sweetly, oddly, brilliantly as you. I don’t know why the magazine included the two other additions.31 In fact I don’t in general understand the magazine and its way of seeming to be made up of the most provincial gossip. The deadly bore of the old poetry festival; academe or journalism. Two pieces on Boston. (Ehrenpreis and Raban.)32 I slipped and broke a bone in my foot and have been miserable, impatient, exhausted, helpless, bored, pained. It is now better and by the time this reaches you the cast will be off and I expect to be free, gliding, smiling. Do not break anything! Especially in your foot.
It is fall, rather nice after a long imprisonment in hot city humidity. Harriet’s summer was good, she is quite thin, very nice, back in school reading Don Quixote33 in Spanish, the Odyssey in English. It can’t all be damaging I tell her.
I don’t have this morning any great news or gossip for you. Mr. Alfred34 died, as you probably know. The story of Donald35 is worse and worse, now guns and a hideous (true) rape charge. Bill does not seem quite to understand that this last is the crossing of a barrier into hell. The sadistic, prolonged assault on another person is another a different/ thing from car thefts. Donald is in jail after an escape, and Bill is at last free of his presence. But I feel he will still hang on to the idea of redemption, will remain responsible for the boy, true to him. It would not be right to wish it otherwise I suppose because one can’t ever hope that anyone will be utterly abandoned. And yet I worry about Bill himself and the punishment of the entanglement. Right now he is all right, especially with the relief of jail.
Well, be in good health and courageous sobriety. I’ll send this off now. It is a mere toast to your Ransom remembrance.
With much love,
Elizabeth
299. Elizabeth Hardwick to Robert Lowell36
[15 West 67th Street, New York, N.Y.]
October 2, 1974
Dearest Cal: I am sure you are all right by now, but I would like to know for a certainty and also what the doctor said. After I talked to you I began to think that the antabuse, and an inadvertent whiff of alcohol, were the real causes. But what a violent reaction.37 It makes one wonder about the drug, just as one wonders a little about all of them. Do take care, although you have indeed spent the last year in a state of great prudence and courage.
Life in New York is violently expensive and worrying. I feel very tired after my siege with the broken bone in my foot. It was only a two-week thing, but I felt such impatience that even now, recovered, I seem exhausted and still impatient.
Harriet is fine, I think. It is a hard time for her. The college applications, worries, inevitably descend, but she seems to push them away. She won’t make a special effort as many people do to prepare for the exams, or take the tutoring seriously the school offers. She feels that she can get into Barnard. I hate for her to stay in New York and, as you realize, one never approves of anyone you love engaging in anything you know well. Still it will be all right. I think we must wait a little for the final marks on the college boards to see if there is a remote possibility about Radcliffe. Harriet, as everyone I know truly believes, is terribly smart and wonderfully skeptical, observant, witty. I am pleased with her and I think of the college business because I believe in education and also because I can’t see that society has another plan for an 18 year old. Oh, God, I saw Alida White somewhere who reported that Dixey was “radiant!” Will leave you on that & what I pray is good health. Dear love,
E
300. Robert Lowell to Harriet Lowell
Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent
October 9, 1974
Dearest Harriet:
I haven’t written because nothing is harder for me than starting letters out of no where, unless it’s speaking at dinner to a girl I’ve just been introduced to. “Do you really come from Wales?” or “What does your father do?” or “Do you ha
ve five children?”
I gather you are approaching your College Entrances, very tense and scary, even if you’re somewhat unconcerned. I can’t say between Harvard and Barnard, either could be much better for you. At Harvard you would not only be a little way from home, but you would be much more in a college world. It would be more of a new experience, new sights new sounds, more the [life] your life would be. Or would it. I think with the help of Bill Alfred I could get you in. There are so many quite good colleges, and Barnard would might/ be best. It would be pleasant to be near Mother.
As she probably told you, I fainted briefly at a party ten days ago—probably from accidentally drinking on top of antabuse, but not necessarily. I’m going to a very big expert Friday, and dread having to stop smoking and taking restorative walks. I have two things to finish 1) a book of poems about half done, to come out in about two years, and 2) a book of essays and reviews written since 1943, and mostly done except for arranging and making small changes and notes. Shouldn’t I make some remarkable discoveries and predate them 1945?
I’ll be back in midJanuary, and see you then.
I love you very much—
Daddy
301. Robert Lowell to Mrs. Robert Lowell38
Milgate Park, Bearsted, Maidstone, Kent
October 13, 1974
Dearest Lizzie:
I just had an examination by some very great heart-expert (they all look like sons-in-law to me now)/, and was cleared of any heart-trouble, as earlier of lung-trouble. So now I am pushing crates and carrying buckets of coal upstairs.
Your description of Harriet is about what mine would be—I’d add a master of chaffing argument. Can she really get into Barnard with reasonably good grades? I don’t know if Harvard would be better. We are upset by the riots, which tho they’ll of course die down will remain smoldering in the air. I wonder if the negroes are pro Ulster Protestant. It’s horrible: I think the busing in the such an/ atmosphere is criminal.39 We decided not to take our family to Cambridge—3 or 4 big difficulties—new schools for the children, the hell of finding a house for four or even six months, the rough feeling everywhere, cost./