Read Robert Lowell: A Biography Online
Authors: Ian Hamilton
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Personal Memoirs, #General
Robert Lowell: A Biography (64 page)
On April 10 Lowell wrote to Frank Bidart that he intended to modify
Dolphin;
principally, he had decided to move Sheridan’s birth forward in the narrative, so that it would appear that the new child was a factor in his Christmas, 1970, dilemma. He had also made other, softening alterations:
I’ve read and long thought on Elizabeth’s [Bishop’s] letter. It’s a kind of masterpiece of criticism, though her extreme paranoia (for God’s sake don’t repeat this) about revelations gives it a wildness. Most people will
feel something of her doubts. The terrible thing isn’t the mixing of fact and fiction, but the wife pleading with her husband to return—this backed by ‘documents’. So far I’ve done this much: 1) most important—shift
Burden
before
Leaving
America
and
Flight
to
New
York.
This strangely makes Lizzie more restful and gracious about the “departure.” I haven’t changed a word to this effect, but one assumes she knows about the baby’s birth.
Burden
now begins with
Sickday
and I think gains much by the baby’s birth not being the climax. 2) Several of the early letters, From my Wife, are now cut up into Voices (often using such title) (changing mostly pronouns) as if I were speaking and paraphrasing or repeating Lizzie. Most of the later letters I haven’t been able to change much or at all. 3) Changes for my style, not to do with this business.
Now the book must still be painful to Lizzie, and won’t satisfy
Elizabeth
. As Caroline says, it can’t be otherwise with the book’s donnee. However, even fairly small changes make Lizzie less a documented presence. A distinct, even idiosyncratic voice isn’t the same as someone, almost fixed as non-fictional evidence, that you could call on the phone. She dims slightly and Caroline and I somewhat lengthen. I know this doesn’t make much sense, but that’s the impression I get reading through the whole. Then Sheridan is somewhat a less forced and
climactic
triumph; as E’s problem of the getting back to England and into pregnancy is gone, and the very end of
Flight,
with the shark is less Websterian and Poeish.
48
Bidart was against the proposed change of structure, feeling that “it blurred the dramatic movement of the poem. You know, the
Christmas
thing does feel different if you imagine him coming back to America having already had a child with Caroline. There was much more sense in the original that it was a real crisis, a real question of whether he might stay.”
49
Lowell, though, was firm on this point: “The thing is,” he wrote on May 15, “I
must
shift the structure and somehow blunt and angle the letters.”
50
He had promised Faber, he said, that he would have the manuscripts of all three books
(History,
For
Lizzie
and
Harriet
and
Dolphin)
by August, and he again asked Bidart to help with the final revisions.
when I got to England in June, he still wanted to make this structural change but also, he had done an enormous amount of rewriting. And I felt that the structural change, when I read it with all these revisions, was possible. It did change the book, but it didn’t wreck it. And in the earlier version, which ended with the birth of Sheridan, it had come out a little bit like a happy ending, and that was somewhat of a problem. On
the other hand, it did make the book less a drama. The emotional movement is somewhat murky.
51
In September, Lowell wrote to William Alfred that baby
Sheridan
had learned to walk and was destructive, “even to books, and even after Milton appeared to him in a vision saying: ‘If you kill a man you only kill a body, but if you destroy a book you destroy an immortal soul.’”
The
Dolphin,
muted and “written much better—both for art and kindness,” was scheduled for publication in
summer
, 1973.
52
1
. R.L.,
The
Dolphin
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1973), p. 72.
2
. R.L. to Elizabeth Hardwick, November 28, 1970.
3
. R.L. to Frank Bidart, September 11, 1970 (Houghton Library).
4
. R.L. to Elizabeth Hardwick, November 28, 1970.
5
. Ibid., November 30, 1970.
6
. Frank Bidart, interview with I.H. (1981).
7
. Ibid.
8
. Ibid.
9
. Blair Clark to R.L., March 17, 1971.
10
. R.L. to Blair Clark, April 1, 1971.
11
. R.L. to William Alfred, March 20, 1971.
12
. R.L. to Peter Taylor, May 13, 1971.
13
. R.L. to Blair Clark, May 15, 1971.
14
. Ibid.
15
. Jonathan Raban, interview with I.H. (1979).
16
. Ibid.
17
. Ibid.
18
. Ibid.
19
. R.L. to Blair Clark, July 25, 1971.
20
. R.L. to Philip Booth, August 19, 1971.
21
. Jonathan Raban, interview with I.H. (1979).
22
. Ibid.
23
. R.L. to Elizabeth Hardwick, March 9, 1972.
24
. Philip Edwards, letter to I.H., January 28, 1982.
25
. Dudley Young, letter to I.H., January 27, 1982.
26
. Ibid.
27
. Gabriel Pearson, interview with I.H. (1980).
28
. Philip Edwards, letter to I.H., January 28, 1982.
29
. Martha Ritter, interview with I.H. (1981).
30
. R.L. to Elizabeth Hardwick, September 29, 1971.
31
. Elizabeth Hardwick in interview with I.H. (1982): “Re. my ‘Notebook,’ I told Cal I was writing a sort of memoir, putting it in a handsome leather book with fine paper which had been given to me as a present by John Thompson. Cal had certain grandiose ideas about this ‘Notebook,’ also known as, my title, a joking one, ‘Smiling Through.’ I did very little of it, came upon it later and threw it away. Cal, I think, hoped it would be deliciously acerb and ‘interesting.’ Instead the little I wrote was sentimental and I tore it up like many another false start.”
32
. R.L. to Elizabeth Hardwick, October 1, 1971.
33
. R.L. to Frank Bidart, n.d. (Houghton Library).
34
. Frank Bidart, interview with I.H. (1981).
35
. Ibid.
36
. R.L.,
For
Lizzie
and
Harriet
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1973), p. 21.
37
. Frank Bidart, interview with I.H. (1981).
38
. Stanley Kunitz to R.L., April 19, 1972 (Houghton Library).
39
. Ibid., August 16, 1972 (Houghton Library).
40
. Elizabeth Bishop to R.L., October 26, 1972 (Houghton Library).
41
. Ibid., March 21, 1972 (Houghton Library).
42
. R.L. to Christopher Ricks, March 21, 1972.
43
. R.L. to Alan Brownjohn, May 16, 1972.
44
. Alan Brownjohn, interview with I.H. (1980).
45
. Jonathan Raban, interview with I.H. (1980).
46
. William Alfred to R.L., March 12, 1972 (Houghton Library).
47
. R.L. to William Alfred, n.d.
48
. R.L. to Frank Bidart, April 10, 1972 (Houghton Library). In the original ms of
The
Dolphin,
the section called “Burden” comprised eleven poems. In the
published
book, ten of these (heavily revised) are placed in the section called “Marriage.” They are “Knowing,” Question,” “Overhanging Cloud,” “Gold Lull,” “Green Sore,” “Letter,” “Late Summer at Milgate,” “Ninth Month,” “
Morning
Away from You” and “Robert Sheridan Lowell.” A comparison of the ms
Dolphin
with the published text suggests that Lowell’s efforts to “depersonalize” were minor and halfhearted. Certainly nothing very “outrageous” was
suppressed
; and fairly often his revisions have slightly muddied the meaning of the
original
.
49
. Frank Bidart, interview with I.H. (1981).
50
. R.L. to Frank Bidart, May 15, 1972 (Houghton Library).
51
. Frank Bidart, interview with I.H. (1981).
52
. R.L. to William Alfred, n.d.
The winter of 1971–72 was later remembered by Lowell as one of his most momentous and chaotic. There had, of course, been Sheridan’s birth and the problems (both textual and moral) of
The
Dolphin
. In addition, there were two worrying domestic dramas. In October 1971 a general handyman at Milgate suddenly became “violent,
almost
insane, with many unpleasant side-effects. We were left with two little girls, a boy still at the breast, and a large, somewhat remote country house—all rather spooky for a week or so, but now over, I think.”
1
And in January 1972 Lowell’s stepdaughter Ivana (now aged six) overturned a kettle of boiling water and was badly burned; she spent three months in the hospital, where Lowell visited her several times and marveled at her courage. Children had always rather bored him; now, after two years of being surrounded by small girls, he found himself willing to concede that they could have an unreal kind of attractiveness—as curiosities, however, rather than as bona fide humans:
Small-soul-pleasing, loved with condescension,
even through the cro-magnon tirades of six,
the last madness of child-gaiety
before the trouble of the world shall hit.
Being chased upstairs is still instant-heaven,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Though burned, you are hopeful, experience cannot tell you
experience is what you do not want to experience.
2
Throughout this same winter, Lowell had been making the first moves towards a divorce settlement with Elizabeth Hardwick.
In October, just three days after Sheridan was born, he wrote to her:
On the will—I mean the settlement—can’t your friendly lawyer draw up what seems right, and then I without a lawyer will object to what I wish to. I’d like to avoid lawyer costs. Though I pay less than my share, my expenses for the baby are heavy, will be. Also my royalties for this half [?] were only a little over $4000—with $7000 last spring. This give [
sic
]
me only 11 or 12 thousand. A drop? Or is there some catch? On the other hand I’ll have 140 thousand in trust from Harvard. Oh I’m well enough off.
3
The Harvard money Lowell speaks of here would come as a result of the sale of his papers to the Houghton Library—all his
manuscript
material and letters up to 1968. Lowell’s American royalties during the period 1965–70 had risen from $6,500 to over $15,000 (
Life
Studies
and
For
the
Union
Dead
were his best-selling volumes): the “11 or 12 thousand” he mentions in this letter was therefore a slight falling off. Also, his income from poetry readings had necessarily declined: in Britain the fees for such appearances were tiny, and some of the grander colleges expected their poets to perform for nothing. With teaching, Lowell could probably depend on a
minimum
earned income of $20,000. He was “well enough off,” but he would have to work.
Formal divorce proceedings began in September 1972, shortly after Lowell delivered to his publishers the manuscripts of his three books. Dealings with Hardwick through the year had been “
cordial
,” and of Harriet’s visit at Milgate for eight days in the summer Lowell wrote: “We had the loveliest time, as though she were the same and a grown-up, very young and humorous and kind to her father. We exaggerate the forks made by our choices, or do we?”
4
In October, Lowell and Blackwood flew to New York. A
financial
agreement had been drawn up (with Blair Clark’s help):
essentially
, it gave Hardwick and Harriet most of the income from Lowell’s trust fund—some $20,000 a year. Hardwick would also get the New York apartment together with “all tangible personal
property
—furnishings, works of art, household goods.” As soon as the papers were signed, Lowell and Blackwood flew on to Santo Domingo for a package divorce / marriage. Lady Caroline explains:
We got married there for technical reasons. It can be done very quickly. You get divorced the same day and then they hurry you to the wedding, which is in a sort of shed. Talk about lack of solemnity. It doesn’t make you feel panic, because it doesn’t feel at all like a marriage. Blair Clark arranged the whole thing—it’s terribly expensive. You go on this
honeymoon
flight, people who don’t want to get divorced, people who aren’t going to get married to someone else. So it’s a very sinister flight, in a sense. We stayed in Santo Domingo for a couple of days. It was lovely there. It’s a place with grotesque hotels and wonderful rum punches, and the most frightening-looking men you’ve ever seen—international crooks. Cal loved it, because it was so mad. It’s so laid-on, like a package tour—a limousine meets the plane, takes you straight to the place where you get divorced—it was a double divorce, of course, because I was divorcing Israel. The limousine waits and then on to the
marriage
, which was just a shed with a lot of people typing. They typed all through our marriage. There was no pretense. The typing didn’t stop at all, deafening typing. And the ceremony is in Spanish, of course.
5
The newlyweds arrived back in England in November (they were to be known as “Robert and Lady Caroline Lowell,” he
announced
), and Sonia Orwell gave them a wedding party in London. Lowell commented on this: “I feel we should appear in black mourning the disgrace of lost alimony, like soldiers who lose a redout [
sic
]. But we’ve gained more than I can say by the divorce—more than I can say because so much of it is undefinable comfort of mind.”
6
Even so, he said he felt
taken by the divorce settlement, though there was nothing I could do about it. And perhaps anyway after the divorce I am drained of anything to say. I must keep up with her [Hardwick] to keep up with Harriet—and a thousand good memories. All cancelled? No, probably just my mood today.
7
In May 1973 Lowell was still nursing this mild sense of grievance over what he called “a barracuda settlement,” and he was resentful also that Hardwick was planning to sell the Castine house—on this, he hesitated for a time over signing a necessary deed:
I don’t intend to hold up the deed, much, but it’s naturally sad for me to have the house sold. What are you getting? Should I let it go
without worries and suggestions, as if it had only been air to me?
Also I must have things, personal things, like the eagle, country clothes etc. Not worth much but dear, if I were to see them I would recognize them. I have no legal right to ask this.
8
And again, five days later:
it’s a desolate thought that all I have from the past is grandpa’s gold watch and some fifteen books…. I am not trying to hold you up more than I have written (except why should I sign away my claim to all my Castine property? The barn isn’t being sold.) I am rather irritated about this being sprung on me suddenly.
9
Perhaps it comforted Lowell that he might have a legitimate grievance against Hardwick; he knew that in July
The
Dolphin
would be published, and that there would surely be a scandal. He hoped that for those with no personal involvement his three books (
The
Dolphin
was published simultaneously with
History
and
For
Lizzie
and
Harriet
)
would be read simply as books, and that praise of the poetry might outweigh the human blame. In fact, the books mostly
were
reviewed as books, but not with quite the warmth that Lowell seems to have expected. There was much agreement that his revisions were improvements, although Calvin Bedient in the
New
York
Times
Book
Review
was alert to “repeated reversals of meaning [which] create the sinking impression that all is
arbitrary
. ‘Often the player’s outdistanced by the game’ runs a line in
Notebook;
‘often the player outdistances the game’ runs the
revision
.”
10
As Jonathan Raban has observed, Lowell’s revisions were usually
a kind of gaming with words, treating them like billiard balls. For almost every sentence that Cal ever wrote if he thought it made a better line he’d have put in a “never” or a “not” at the essential point. His favorite method of revision was simply to introduce a negative into a line, which absolutely reversed its meaning but very often would improve it. So that his poem on Flaubert ended with Flaubert dying, and in the first draft it went “Till the mania for phrases dried his heart”—a quotation from Flaubert’s mother. Then Cal saw another possibility and it came out: “Till the mania for phrases enlarged his heart.” It made perfectly good sense either way round, but the one did happen to mean the opposite of the other.
11
Few reviewers seemed to mind about this kind of thing; the general line was “if the poems taken from
Notebook
are improved, they are at least more perfectly imperfect.” On
The
Dolphin,
however, the “disinterested” critics were less charitable: there was widespread impatience with the book’s “half fiction” indecisiveness. In
Poetry
Stephen Yenser wrote:
“Half fiction”: the phrase, whether intended to exculpate others or not, betrays a concern, felt throughout, that might be thought irrelevant. It makes little difference to the principals whether it happened, one would think, but only whether it were true. Just as no amount of fictionalizing could diminish the actual anguish, so no amount of such anguish can create the necessary fiction. My own doubt has nothing in common with the silly complaint lodged anonymously (in a “scouring voice of 1930 Oxford”) against Yeats and Proust in one of these poems, that some things are too “personal” to be published, but arises from the feeling that
The
Dolphin
is more gossip (fact, data, raw material) than gospel (
parable
, pattern, truth). Lowell’s sequence is so relentlessly documented (even if the documents are doctored, as the familiar style of the
quotations
from letters and conversations itself suggests) that the pattern of experience cannot emerge.
12
The
Sewanee
Review
was even more dismissive, caricaturing
Lowell’s
stance as “Here are the facts, dreams, events, whatever; I
present
them; they are unimportant, incomprehensible and boring,” and deciding that, yes, “poetically, they are”—Lowell’s “famous talent is everywhere manifested: the poems are not given a chance.”
13
And even a sympathetic reviewer like William Pritchard in the
Hudson
Review
felt obliged to concede that “one should feel uneasy about this, should say at some point, yes Lowell has finally gone too far; you can’t turn life into literature twenty minutes or a year later; many of these sonnets are almost inaudible, don’t rise above a private mumble, resist being dragged into the social
relationship
of poet and reader.”
14
The field was thus wide open for the “personal” reviews, and in this category the most savage onslaught came from Adrienne Rich, at one time a close friend of Lowell’s but they had been out of touch for years. In June 1971 Rich had written to Lowell reproaching him for his treatment of Hardwick; at that time, she probably had no knowledge of the poems he was writing, and certainly did not know of any plans to publish them:
I feel we are losing touch with each other, which I don’t want….
I feel a kind of romanticism in your recent decisions, a kind of sexual romanticism with which it is very hard for me to feel sympathy … my affection and admiration for Elizabeth make it difficult to be debonair about something which—however good for her it may ultimately be—has made her suffer.
15
In the September-October 1973 issue of the
American
Poetry
Review
Rich wrote as follows:
There’s a kind of aggrandized and merciless masculinity at work in these books….
Finally, what does one say about a poet who, having left his wife and daughter for another marriage, then titles a book with their names, and goes on to appropriate his ex-wife’s letters written under the stress and pain of desertion, into a book of poems nominally addressed to the new wife? If this kind of question has nothing to do with art, we have come far from the best of the tradition Lowell would like to vindicate—or perhaps it cannot be vindicated. At the end of
The
Dolphin
Lowell writes:
I have sat and listened to too many
words of the collaborating muse,
and plotted perhaps too freely with my life,
not avoiding injury to others,
not avoiding injury to myself—
to ask compassion … this book, half fiction,
an eelnet made by man for the eel fighting—
my eyes have seen what my hand did.
I have to say that I think this is bullshit eloquence, a poor excuse for a cruel and shallow book, that it is presumptuous to balance injury done to others with injury done to myself—and that the question remains, after all—to what purpose? The inclusion of the letter poems stands as one of the most vindictive and mean-spirited acts in the history of poetry, one for which I can think of no precedent: and the same
unproportioned
ego that was capable of this act is damagingly at work in all three of Lowell’s books.
16
Adrienne Rich’s review was the most vehement statement of the prosecution case, and Lowell was able to rationalize its intense tone as a symptom of Rich’s dogmatic feminism: in conversation, though,
he would refer to it time and again—it always unnerved him to make enemies of friends. For Hardwick, of course, these weeks of publication were acutely painful; her conduct, and her suffering, had been set up for idle public comment—the humblest of hack book reviewers was entitled to muse on the half-fiction characters of “Harriet” and “Lizzie” and to ask which bits of letters were “real” bits, which burst of scolding dialogue was “fact,” and so on. One review, by Marjorie Perloff in the
New
Republic
,
even went so far as to venture half-judgments on the half-real personalities presented in the poem: