245. Lowell: “we stop uncomfortable, we are humanly low” (“Wall-Mirror” [Summer 17] 14, Notebook70). See footnote 3 on page 82.
246. The Athens Olympia Restaurant on Stuart Street in Boston’s Back Bay.
247. Theodora Jay Stillman, Rahv’s second wife, was killed in a fire at their house at 329 Beacon Street in Boston on September 25, 1968.
248. Lowell: “In Maine, my country as I loved to boast, where I hoped wished to die,/|each empty sweater and vacant idle/ bookshelf hurts,|the pretex[t] for their service gone” (“Notes for an unwritten Letter” [The Farther Shore 3] 8–10, “The Dolphin” manuscript; see poem on page 98); and “Letter” [Hospital II 2], The Dolphin.
249. See especially Thomas Hardy, “The Going” (quoted by Hardwick in Sleepless Nights, p. 151); and Hardwick to Lowell, May 24, 1973, footnote 2 on page 337.
250. In 1970, a three-minute telephone call from New York City to the United Kingdom cost $3.60 (approximately $23.33 in 2019 dollars, according to the Consumer Price Index Calculator [CPI]) (“Table 13: AT&T Residential Rates for Calls Lasting 3 Minutes to Selected International Points, 1950–1997” in Linda Blake and Jim Lande, Trends in the U.S. International Telecommunications Industry [Washington, D.C.: Federal Communications Commission, 1998]).
251. Robert Boyers, “On Robert Lowell,” Salmagundi, no. 13 (Summer 1970), pp. 36–44.
252. Edward A. Soper, handyman.
253. Castine neighbors: Sarah Austin (“Sally”); Patricia (“Pat”) and Robert (“Bob”) Bicks; Philip and Margaret Booth.
254. State Street Trust Company.
255. Enclosure now missing.
256. Handwritten.
257. Ian Hamilton, quoting Blair Clark’s notes, July 21–26, 1970, gives the following account of this period: “R. Silvers phone conv. with B.C. 21/7/70—worrisome situation: Cal was at Caroline’s in London, got cleaning woman to let him in—he was drunk—Car. can’t stand it yet doctors say he can’t be told. They won’t answer for consequences. E. Hardwick conv. with B.C. 21/7/70—‘I talked to Cal about 2:30 and he said she’d had a nervous breakdown just like [him] and will be in hosp. for 2 weeks.’ B. Silvers conv. with B.C. 22/7/70—Caroline is closing house in London—vanishing concerned that he not track her down—Car. quotes ‘I can’t take responsibility’ but ‘hasn’t thought through what ought to happen ultimately’ […] E. H. phone conv. with B.C. 27/7/70—(Cal) said as if saying he had a cold—‘Trouble is that Caroline had had a nervous breakdown’” (Robert Lowell: A Biography, p. 401). In Clark’s notes taken during a telephone conversation with Jonathan Miller on July 21, Miller says that everyone whom Lowell knows in London “is vanishing, including himself,” and he is “troubled by the idea of Cal emerging” from the hospital “with no point of real contact” (Blair Clark Papers, HRC).
258. July 27, 1970, was Hardwick’s fifty-fourth birthday, and July 28th was the Lowells’ twenty-first wedding anniversary.
259. Booth.
260. See footnote 2 on page 146 (Lowell to Harriet Lowell, January 6, 1970 [1971]).
261. A derelict house in Castine. See footnote 5 on page 422 (Hardwick to Mary McCarthy, January 29, 1976).
262. Handwritten.
263. Ian Hamilton: “On July 29 Hardwick […] decided she would go to London […] She telephoned Blair Clark: ‘—made up my mind—Bill Alfred going with [me]’” and reported the gossip she had heard from London, that Lowell was “‘allowed to go out—in pyjamas—out to pubs—steals from handbags […] they don’t understand—he drinks—I’ll talk to doctors […] —Car. thing is secondary: he can marry her if he wants —He might keel over dead, with drugs and beer —Bill will go to pub, cut his hair, buy him shoes—until they can control him—sit there with him. Cal is really a marvelous person, not this detached idiot—not in emotional contact with his real personality’” (Robert Lowell: A Biography, p. 402; Ian Hamilton’s source is “Blair Clark’s notes, July 29, 1970”).
264. Thomas A. Traill: “previous medical history included treatment in 1968–69 for hypothyroidism. There was thyroid swelling, and his condition eventually seems to have improved (thyroid hormone was discontinued in March 1969), so one imagines he had thyroiditis” (in Kay Redfield Jamison, Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire; A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character [2017], p. 420).
265. Hardwick and William Alfred.
266. Lowell: “Your clowning makes us want to vomit” (“From My Wife” [The Farther Shore 1] 4, “The Dolphin” manuscript; see poem on page 260); “your clowning makes visitors want to call a taxi” (“Voices” [Hospital II 1] 4, The Dolphin).
267. Before she went to London, Hardwick told Blair Clark that she had heard (probably from Sonia Orwell) that while in the hospital, Lowell was “allowed to go out—in pyjamas—out to pubs—steals from handbags”; see footnote 2 on page 91.
268. Handwritten.
269. Lowell: “your suit is/ laziesd/ to grease” (“From my Wife” [The Farther Shore 1] 8, “The Dolphin” manuscript; see poem on page 260); “Your trousers are worn to a mirror” (“Voices” [Hospital II 1] 8, The Dolphin).
270. Patton, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner (1970).
271. Mary McCarthy, “Thanksgiving in Paris—1964,” Atlantic Monthly, August 1970.
272. Hardwick and Harriet Lowell went to Quebec from Maine for a brief visit in August 1970.
273. Handwritten.
274. Hardwick stamped and pre-addressed the postcards and envelopes to Harriet Lowell, but she left the postcards blank and the envelopes empty for Lowell to write his own messages or enclose his own letters. See “Notes for an unwritten Letter” [The Farther Shore 3], “The Dolphin” manuscript (see poem on page 98); and “Letter” [Hospital II 2] 4–12, The Dolphin.
275. Lowell: “You have left two houses, two thousand books,|a workbarn by the ocean, and a woman slave/|who to/ kneels and waits on upon on/ you hand and foot—” (“From my Wife” [The Farther Shore 1] 10–12, “The Dolphin” manuscript; see poem on page 260); and “You left two houses and two thousand books,|a workbarn by the ocean, and two slaves|to kneel and wait upon you hand and foot—” (“Voices” [Hospital II 1] 10–12, The Dolphin).
276. Thomas Wyatt: “And wylde for to hold, though I seme tame” (“Who So List to Hunt” 14).
277. Handwritten on a paper postcard bag from the National Gallery.
278. Valerie Eliot (T. S. Eliot’s widow), who lived at 3 Kensington Court Gardens, London.
279. Handwritten.
280. All typos in this letter are given as in the original. Addressed to “Mrs. Robert Lowell, Castine, Maine U!S!A!”
281. Dated by Lowell October 9, 1970 (the correction “August” is written in Hardwick’s hand). Addressed from R! Lowell.
282. Postcards now missing. Lowell: “Horseguard and Lifeguard, one loud red, one yellow,|colorful and wasteful and old hat.…|Americans can buy them on a postcard—” (“Walter Raleigh” [Hospital 5] 1–3, The Dolphin).
283. Thus. Cf. Lowell: “my hand tingled|to burst the bubbles|drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish”; “Colonel Shaw is riding on his bubble,|he waits|for the blessèd break” (“For the Union Dead” 6–8 and 61–64).
284. Addressed to “Mrs. Robert Lowell, Castine, Maine U!S!A!”
285. Cf. “Letter” [Hospital II 2] 4–12, The Dolphin.
286. Lowell’s London hospital bills were covered by Faber & Faber as a loan until he could be reimbursed by Blue Cross Association, his U.S. health insurance company. See Lowell to Hardwick, May 6, [1971], below.
287. United Press International, “Fugitive Priest Is Seized by F.B.I.; Berrigan, Draft File Burner, Arrested on Block Island,” New York Times, August 12, 1970; Special to The New York Times, “Father Berrigan Begins 3-Year Sentence for Burning Draft Re
cords,” New York Times, August 13, 1970.
288. Lowell: “I was a fire-breathing Catholic C.O.” (“Memories of West Street and Lepke” 14, Life Studies).
289. See Joel Kovel, “In the Service of Their Country: The Young Men Who Say No to the Government,” New York Times, July 5, 1970; and Homer Bigart, “Prison Denies Berrigan Is Mistreated,” New York Times, July 30, 1970.
290. Dr. Benjamin Spock.
291. See the portrait of Mary McCarthy in “1940,” the final part of Alfred Kazin’s Starting Out in the Thirties (1965), pp. 154–59.
292. Bernice and David Hall.
293. Caroline Blackwood’s London address.
294. Caroline Blackwood to Ian Hamilton: “I told him he must get a flat of his own. Which he minded terribly—he was very wounded. But it was like it always was—he wasn’t all right: he was terrified of being alone […] But Israel said rightly, was saying, ‘I really don’t want a madman with the children.’ I had to tell Cal that. Because Israel could have taken the children away from me” (Robert Lowell: A Biography, p. 403).
295. Location of Blackwood’s house Milgate Park.
296. Lowell: “You must be strong through solitude, said Fate,|for the present this thought alone must be your shelter— this in your yearbook by your photograph” (“In Harriet’s Yearbook” 1–3, The Dolphin). There is no such page in Harriet Lowell’s 1970 Dalton yearbook, though it may have been a yearbook from the Cornwall Summer Workshop. The quotation, which, according to Harriet Lowell, was chosen not by her but by a yearbook editor, is from Paul Klee: “You must grow strong through solitude, spoke fate. For the time being let thought alone be my shelter” (The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898–1918, ed. Felix Klee, trans. Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary, and Max Knight [1968], p. 54).
297. “Ulysses and Nausicaa,” “Marching,” “Romanoffs,” “Robespierre and Mozart as Stage,” “Saint Just (1767–1793),” “Death and the Bridge” [The Revolution I-VI], Modern Occasions (Fall 1970). Cf. with the titles and order of poems in Notebook70.
298. Unsigned.
299. T. S. Eliot: “He passed the stages of his age and youth|Entering the whirlpool” (“Death by Water” [The Waste Land IV] 6–7).
300. Buckman, with whom Lowell had a love affair in 1946–48; see The Letters of Robert Lowell, pp. 53–86.
301. 33 Pont Street, owned by Desmond FitzGerald.
302. Unsigned.
303. William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespear’s Plays (1817); Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, ed. T. S. Dorsch (1964).
304. Hardwick: “Here is the opening of an essay on Ivy Compton-Burnett: ‘A Compton-Burnett is a reliable make, as typical of British Isles workmanship as a tweed or Tiptree or an Agatha Christie. The styling does not change greatly from year to year; production is steady.’ This is immediately arresting. It strikes one as true, well-said, as the phrase used to be. But just as Mary McCarthy has moved beyond the fashionable, so she has in her style gradually sloughed off the need for novelty and with it certain staccato, epigrammatic effects” (“Books: The Writing on the Wall,” Vogue, September 1, 1970, p. 306). McCarthy: “I’m pleased and touched by your Vogue piece … One thing puzzles me about what you say. You quote from the opening of the Compton-Burnett piece, and I can’t figure out whether you mean this as an example of the ‘staccato, epigrammatic effects’ you think (or hope) I’ve outgrown. Or the opposite” (to Hardwick, September 14, 1070 [1970]).
305. McCarthy: “Just to keep my stock down, he [Philip Rahv] made the following marvelous remark, shortly after arrival: ‘I read your chapter in the Atlantic. People tell me the one in Playboy is better.’ Total comment. He had the appropriate bane for everyone” (to Hardwick, September 14, 1970; also quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, p. 644).
306. On September 16, 1970, at Kansas State University. See Robert B. Semple, Jr., “President Urges End to Violence and Intolerance; Makes a Strong Appeal for Restoration and Civility in American Society,” New York Times, September 17, 1970.
307. Epstein, who was an editor at Random House.
308. OED: “to put over (d) To convey or take across or to the other side; to transport: […] c1595 CAPT. WYATT R. Dudley’s Voy. W. Ind … ‘To give them a faire gale to putt them over to the maine’” (“Put, v1.” 49, Oxford English Dictionary Vol. VIII [1933]).
309. McCarthy was writing Birds of America (1971).
310. See Hardwick to Lowell, [September 3, 1970], above.
311. Lowell: “I shout into the air, my voice comes back,|it doesn’t carry to the farther shore,” (“Notes for an Unwritten Letter” [The Farther Shore 3] 11–12, “The Dolphin” manuscript (see poem on page 98).
312. (1969).
313. Typed on plain paper stationery.
314. Huyck van Leeuwen and Judith Herzberg were also friends with Adrienne Rich and Alfred H. Conrad.
315. From her husband, Alfred H. Conrad.
316. For orthopedic surgery to treat her recurrent rheumatoid arthritis (Adrienne Rich, email message to editor, 2003).
317. Adrienne Rich: “In September, 1970, on a corner in the [West] 90s [in Manhattan], two school buildings stood across from each other. One was—and still is—the sleek new brick wing of an old established boys’ preparatory school. The other, lodged in a (now demolished) storefront bordered by an empty lot full of broken bricks and glass, didn’t look like a school at all … Inside the Elizabeth Cleaners a tuition-free, alternate high school was beginning to hold classes” (“The Case for a Drop-out School,” New York Review of Books [June 15, 1972].) See also Elizabeth Cleaners Street School, Starting Your Own High-School, ed. David Nasaw (1972).
318. Enclosure now missing.
319. Giroux.
320. Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies (1930).
321. Richard Poirier.
322. Hardwick, “Dead Souls,” New York Review of Books, June 5, 1969.
323. “And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel|And shining morning face, creeping like snail|Unwillingly to school” (As You Like It 2.7).
324. “In the Waiting Room” (later published in the New Yorker, July 17, 1971).
325. Bishop: “But I felt: you are an I,|you are an Elizabeth,|you are one of them” (“In the Waiting Room,” 60–62).
326. From the St. Mark’s School Class of 1936. See Lowell, “Alfred Corning Clark (1916–1961),” For the Union Dead.
327. Ralph Waldo Emerson: “For his lips could well pronounce|Words that were persuasions” (“Threnody” 52–53).
328. Letter now missing.
329. Cf. Lowell: “They say fear of death is a child’s remembrance|of the first desertion” (“During a Transatlantic Call” 7–8, The Dolphin).
330. Cf. Lowell: “… I was playing records on Sunday,|arranging all my records, and I came|on some of your voice, and started to suggest|that Harriet listen: then immediately|we both shook our heads. It was like hearing|the voice of the beloved who had died. […]” (“Records” 1–6, The Dolphin).
331. Members of the Weather Underground destroyed a townhouse in an accidental explosion on March 6, 1970. See Douglas Robinson, “Townhouse Razed by Blast and Fire; Man’s Body Found,” New York Times, March 7, 1970. Lowell “might have had a crushed tin of something and made a joke that it came from the Weatherman townhouse” (Harriet Lowell, interview with the editor, July 5, 2016).
332. Some now missing.
333. Cf. Lowell: “You insist on treating Harriet as if she|were thirty or a wrestler—she is only thirteen” (“In the Mail” 4–5, The Dolphin); see footnote 2 on page 293. Cf. Frank Bidart to Lowell, June 4, 1970; Lowell to Harriet Lowell [April 2, 1972]; and Hardwick to Lowell [no date summer 1972].
334. Cf. Lowell: “Just yesterday we passed from the northern lights|to doomsday mornings. Crowds herd
crush/ to work at eight,|lamp-white like couples leaving a midnight show and walk with less cohesion than the mist;/” (Flounder” [London and Winter and London 43./] 1–3, “The Dolphin” manuscript). Cf. “Flounder” [Winter and London 3], The Dolphin.
335. Probably about the suicide of Alfred H. Conrad; see postcard from Hardwick to Lowell, October 20, 1970.
The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979 Page 51
