Read Robert Lowell: A Biography Online
Authors: Ian Hamilton
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Personal Memoirs, #General
Robert Lowell: A Biography (71 page)
Lowell arrived in New York on the afternoon of September 12, and took a taxi from Kennedy Airport. When the driver reached West 67th Street, he saw that Lowell had slumped over in his seat; he was holding a large brown-paper parcel and he seemed to be asleep. Elizabeth Hardwick was called from the house and rode in the taxi to Roosevelt Hospital: “But I knew that he was dead.”
56
Hours afterwards Hardwick opened the parcel Lowell had been carrying—it was a portrait of Lady Caroline. He had brought it over to be “valued” in New York.
57
Lowell’s death was described in the newspapers the next day as the result of a heart attack, and the obituaries unanimously mourned him as “perhaps the best English language poet of his generation.” At his funeral on Beacon Hill there were six hundred mourners; the pallbearers included friends from five chapters of his life: Blair Clark, Frank Parker, John Thompson, Peter Taylor, Robert
Fitzgerald
, Grey Gowrie, Robert Giroux and Frank Bidart. After the requiem mass there was a private burial at Dunbarton, and ten days later a memorial tribute in the American Place Theatre in New York.
“He was resigned to dying. He knew he was going to die,” says Lowell’s Cambridge friend Bill Alfred, and there are other friends who would agree. Lowell had often said that he did not expect to live beyond sixty; both his parents had died at sixty, he would point out (although they didn’t), “and it was as if he felt that he should too.” Caroline Blackwood calls his death a “suicide of wish”: there were “various things he said” at Castletown during his last week which made her think that he did not expect to live. And in Frank Bidart’s view: “There was an intense sense that spring and summer that things were building up to some crunch, that something had to give. I didn’t think it was going to be Cal that gave, but it was.” Peter Taylor simply felt “angry with Cal,” as if Lowell had
voluntarily
elected to walk out on his old friend.
58
Certainly, in many of the formal tributes that appeared just after Robert Lowell’s death, there was just this sense of both grief and grievance: a feeling that the world had been robbed of a
phenomenon
. But there was also an acknowledgment that Lowell had
perhaps
properly completed both his life and his life’s work. Bidart, in a
Harvard
Advocate
issue in honor of Lowell, wrote that “Valéry’s words about Mallarmé come irresistibly to mind: ‘Near him while he was still alive, I thought of his destiny as already realized.’”
59
And Christopher Ricks quotes words that I myself was privileged to read out at Lowell’s memorial evening in New York on
September
25, 1977. On Lowell’s death, Ricks says, “there came to me the words of Empson on King Lear”:
The scapegoat who has collected all this wisdom for us is viewed at the end with a sort of hushed envy, not I think really because he has become wise but because the general human desire for experience has been so glutted in him; he has been through everything.
We that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
1
. Caroline Blackwood, interview with I.H. (1979).
2
. Jonathan Raban, interview with I.H. (1979).
3
. Ibid.
4
. Caroline Blackwood, interview with I.H. (1979).
5
. This and the ensuing quotations are from the nurse’s day book, January 1976.
6
.
Day
by
Day
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1977), p. 114.
7
. R.L. to Frank Bidart, February 15, 1976 (Houghton Library).
8
. R.L. to Peter Taylor, March 4, 1976.
9
. R.L. to Blair Clark, March 4, 1976.
10
. “The Downlook,”
Day
by
Day,
p. 125.
11
. R.L. to Elizabeth Hardwick, April 29, 1976.
12
.
Day
by
Day,
pp. 44–45.
13
. R.L. to Frank Bidart, April 15, 1975 (Houghton Library).
14
. R.L. to Elizabeth Hardwick, July 2, 1976.
15
. Ibid., September 4, 1976.
16
. R.L. to Blair Clark, March 4, 1976.
17
. R.L. to Peter Taylor, September 4, 1976.
18
. R.L. to Frank Bidart, September 4, 1976 (Houghton Library).
19
. Caroline Blackwood, interview with I.H. (1979).
20
. Blair Clark’s notes, October 21, 1976.
21
. R.L. to William Alfred, October 30, 1976.
22
.
Day
by
Day,
p. 103.
23
. Blair Clark’s notes, November 25, 1976.
24
. Frank Bidart, interview with I.H. (1981).
25
. Ibid.
26
. Ibid.
27
. R.L. to Caroline Blackwood, February 28, 1977.
28
. Frank Bidart, interview with I.H. (1981).
29
. Helen Vendler, interview with I.H. (1981).
30
. R.L. to Caroline Blackwood, January 31, 1977.
31
. Edgar Stillman, “Robert Lowell Revisiting,”
Soho
Weekly
News,
March 3, 1977, p. 53.
32
. R.L. to Caroline Blackwood, March 2, 1977.
33
. Ibid., March 18, 1977.
34
. Helen Vendler, interview with I.H. (1981).
35
.
Day
by
Day,
p. 107.
36
. Blair Clark, “The Lowells … notes for a never-to-be-written ‘memoir,’” May 8, 1977.
37
. R.L. to Caroline Blackwood, July 17, 1977.
38
. William Styron, letter to I.H., July 1, 1981.
39
. Ibid.
40
. Nathan Scott, letter to I.H., March 27, 1981.
41
. William Styron, letter to I.H., July 1, 1981.
42
. Frank Bidart, interview with I.H. (1981).
43
. R.L. to Caroline Blackwood, n.d.
44
. Frank Bidart, interview with I.H. (1981).
45
. R.L. to Caroline Blackwood, n.d.
46
. Elizabeth Hardwick, interview with I.H. (1982).
47
. Helen Vendler, interview with I.H. (1981).
48
. Frank Bidart, interview with I.H. (1981).
49
. Uncollected.
New
Review
4, no. 43 (October 1977).
50
. Helen Vendler, “The Poetry of Autobiography,”
New
York
Times
Book
Review,
August 14, 1977.
51
.
Day
by
Day,
p. 127.
52
. Ms (Houghton Library).
53
. Caroline Blackwood, interview with I.H. (1979).
54
. R.L. to Caroline Blackwood, n.d.
55
. Mrs. Dignam, interview with I.H. (1979).
56
. Elizabeth Hardwick, interview with I.H. (1979).
57
. The painting of Caroline Blackwood is by her first husband, Lucien Freud.
58
. Quotations in foregoing paragraphs from interviews with I.H. (1970–81).
59
.
Harvard Advocate
,
November 1979, p. 18.
- Abrantès, Laure Junot, Duchesse d’,
1 - Accent,
98 - Adams, Charles Francis, III,
1 - Adams, Henry,
1 - Adams, John Quincy,
1 - Adams, Leonie,
1 - Adden, Ann,
1
,
2 - “Adolf Hitler von Linz (Siegfried)” (Lowell), as parody of Pound,
1 - Aeschylus,
1
,
2 - “Afterlife, The” (Lowell),
1 - “After the Surprising Conversions” (Lowell),
1
,
2 - Agrarian movement,
1
,
2
,
3 - Aiken, Conrad,
1 - Albee, Edward,
1 - Alberti, Rafael,
1 - Alfred, William,
1
,
2
,
3 - “Alfred Corning Clark” (Lowell),
1 - Allen, Donald M.,
1 - All Souls College, Oxford,
1
,
2 - Alvarez, A.,
1
,
2
,
3 - American Academy of Arts and Letters,
1
,
2 - American
Dream,
An
(Mailer),
1 - American Place Theatre, New York City:
- American
Poetry
Review,
1 - American
Scholar,
1 - American University of Cairo,
1 - Ames, Elizabeth,
1 - Ames, Van Meter,
1 - Anderson, Sherwood,
1 - Arendt, Hannah,
1
,
2
,
3
,
4 - Armies
of
the
Night,
The
(Mailer),
1 - Arnold, Matthew,
1
,
2 - “At a Bible House” (Lowell),
1
,
2 - Atlas, James,
1 - “At the Fishhouses” (Bishop),
1 - “At the Indian Killer’s Grave” (
Lowell
),
1 - Auden, W. H.,
1
,
2
,
3
,
4
,
5
,
6
,
7
,
8
- Babel, Isaak E.,
1 - Baldpate Hospital,
1
,
2 - “Banker’s Daughter, The” (Lowell),
1 - Barnard College,
1
,
2 - Barrett, William,
1 - Baudelaire, Charles P.,
1 - Baumel, Judith,
1 - Bay of Pigs episode,
1 - Beat poets,
1
,
2
,
3
,
4 - Bedient, Calvin,
1 - Beer, Patricia,
1 - “Before We Are” (Lowell),
1 - Bellitt, Ben,
1 - Bellow, Saul,
1
,
2 - Benalek murder trial,
1
,
2 - Benito
Cereno
(Lowell),
1
,
2
,
3
,
4
,
5- see
also
Old
Glory,
The
(Lowell)
- see
- “Benito Cereno” (Melville),
1
,
2
,
3 - Bennett, Joseph,
1 - Bent, Martha,
1 - Bentley, Eric,
1 - Berenson, Bernard,
1 - Berlin, Isaiah,
1
,
2 - Bernard, Viola, as Lowell’s therapist,
1
,
2
,
3
,
4
,
5
,
6
,
7 - Berryman, John,
1
,
2
,
3
,
4 - Bettman, Elizabeth,
1 - Bettman, Gilbert,
1 - “Between the Porch and the Altar” (Lowell),
1
,
2 - “Beyond the Alps” (Lowell),
1
,
2 - Catholic Church as viewed in,
1 - Biala, Janice,
1
,
2 - on Benfolly,
1 - Bible,
1 - Bidart, Frank,
1
,
2
,
3
,
4 - Bing, Rudolf,
1 - Bishop, Elizabeth,
1
,
2
,
3
,
4
,
5
,
6
,
7
,
8 - Bishop, John Peale,
1 - Bit
Between
My
Teeth,
The
(Wilson),
1 - Black Mountain,
1
,
2 - Blackmur, R. P.,
1
,
2
,
3 - death of,
1
,
2 - Blackwood, Lady Caroline,
1- background of,
1 - on “Beatnik Movement,”
1 - drinking of,
1
,
2 - on Lowell at Harvard,
1 - in Lowell’s autobiographical
writings
,
1
,
2
,
3 - Lowell’s breakdowns and,
1
,
2
,
3
,
4
,
5
,
6 - Lowell’s child with,
see
Lowell, Sheridan - Lowell’s correspondence with,
1
,
2
,
3
,
4
,
5
,
6
,
7
,
8
,
9 - on Lowell’s death,
1 - Lowell’s estrangement from,
1
,
2 - Lowell’s first meeting with,
1 - Lowell’s marriage to,
1 - nervous depressions of,
1
,
2 - in non-traditional medical
treatments
,
1 - pregnancy of,
1
- background of,
- Blake, William,
1 - Blunden, Edmund,
1
,
2 - Bogan, Louise,
1
,
2
,
3 - Bollingen Prize for Poetry,
1
,
2
- Booth, Edwin,
1 - Booth, Philip:
- Boston
Adventure
(Stafford),
1
,
2- success of,
1
- success of,
- “Boston: A Lost Ideal” (Hardwick),
1 - Boston Arts Festival (1960),
1 - Boston
Post,
1 - Boston Psychopathic Hospital,
1
,
2 - Boston
Sunday
Globe
,
1 - Boston University,
1
,
2 - Botsford, Keith,
1 - Botteghe
Oscure,
1 - Bower, Anthony,
1 - Bowles, Kitty,
1 - Bowling Green
Sentinel
,
1 - Bowra, Sir Maurice,
1
,
2 - Breit, Harvey,
1 - Brimmer Boys and Girls’ School,
1 - Broadwater, Bowden,
1
,
2 - Brook, Peter,
1 - Brooks, Cleanth,
1
,
2
,
3 - Brooks, Esmé,
1 - Brooks, Esther,
1 - Brooks, Shepherd,
1
,
2
,
3 - Brown, George Mackay,
1 - Brown, Harry,
1
,
2 - Browne, Gareth,
1 - Browning, Robert,
1
,
2
,
3 - Brownjohn, Alan,
1 - Bruner, Jerome,
1 - Brustein, Robert,
1
,
2 - Büchner, Georg,
1 - Buckman, Gertrude,
1
,
2
,
3 - “Buenos Aires” (Lowell),
1 - Bullock, Alan,
1 - Bundy, McGeorge,
1 - Burke, Edmund,
1