The House by the Sea Read online

  I slept badly, a night of flotsam and jetsam moving around in my head. At one point I had such a clear vision of Rosalind that it is still vivid. I was really too tired after David left … all I could manage was to pick a few flowers (any night now we’ll have the killing frost).

  It is not that I work all day; it is that the work needs space around it. Hurry and flurry break into the deep still place where I can remember and sort out what I want to say about my mother. And this is a rather hard time, because it is still hard to write about her, so I was more than usually vulnerable and exposed.

  Tuesday evening, October 7th

  A MARVELOUS DAY here … and now the most perfect Fra Angelico blue sea, no wind, the sunset just touching the end of the field. Perfectly still, except for the cry of a jay far off.

  I must try to note exactly what happened, for it was such a great day. First I finished the portrait of my mother. On my walk with Tamas we ran into Mary-Leigh and Bev mowing the far field in the woods … and Bev pointed out to me a huge owl, sitting on a dead branch, looking down at us. The owl was wide awake—unusual for an owl in daylight and turned dark eyes on us … and then, much to my dismay, on Bramble! (Bramble had not seen this awful presence over her head!) We made our escape, and Bramble is now home, thank goodness. I think I have seen the owl once before, not really seen, but have been aware of the silent passage of great wings just above my head in the woods. I have always dreamed of seeing an owl here; this one was a barred owl, I think.

  The mail brought plants—twelve primroses, three Shasta daisies, three stokesia, and six of the small blue campanula. They looked rather dwindled and sad after their journey, but I got them all in and covered the primroses with plastic pots, as frost is announced for tonight. I had it in mind not only to pick the last flowers, just in case, and that I did too, but also (madness!) to make jam from green cherry tomatoes … there are dozens of them, so I picked four cupfuls and have just now got them all ready under a layer of lemon, cinnamon, and ginger, mixed with two cups of sugar, and shall cook them before I go off on my expedition tomorrow.

  Wednesday, October 8th

  I DID have a marvelous “holiday” day but it seems a month ago … As I got near to the mountains, so beautiful (purple) across Lake Winnipesaukee, all my love for New Hampshire came back. I always forget how marvelous the beech leaves are in autumn … I remember the shout of color of the maples, but I never quite remember the strange Chinese yellow and sharp green and then bronzy gold, later on, of the beeches. I enjoyed seeing Huldah Sharp again … she is cool and deep and a pleasure, because there is no emotional tension. With such people I too feel mature and able to cope with things and to be at ease.

  But after that day of holiday the rest of the week was Hell, and I wish to forget it. I should have learned long ago—and thought I had in Nelson—that when people insist that they have to see me because they love the work, what they really want is to talk about themselves. They never look at the flowers, or even the sea … and I feel jangled and uncentered after their visits. So much guilt and woe ensues, I feel mean-spirited. Basta!

  I went to fetch Judy for the weekend, hoping for translucent days, but it rained both on Saturday and Sunday … it was balm to be with her after the experiences of the week; she comes so fresh to the flowers, exclaims about their beauty over and over, says, “I want to scream!” when we see a marvelous tree all lit up against the sunlight, but stays very quiet and looks. How happy we are together in spite of her loss of mind!

  Mary-Leigh and Bev are away this week. Strange how absolute the silence feels when they are not here! I am all alone in this huge space of sea, sky, and trees … At first I feel a little frightened, for if I were attacked no one would hear a scream or cry. Then I feel the new dimension of not having to be aware, as I am, despite their discretion toward me and mine toward them.

  Thursday, October 16th

  I’M TROUBLED about the book, tired, and these beautiful autumn days feel wasted because I am only half there. The only thing is to work along day by day and try to concentrate on making one page, one paragraph, better.

  I have been meaning to note something Charlotte Zolotov said in a letter the other day. When we met in New York I mentioned that I have it in mind to write a cookbook for the solitary person someday. She says, “A lot of poetry of living, especially alone, takes place in the kitchen.” I thought of this yesterday when I was cutting up green cherry tomatoes to make a second try at jam (the first turned out too runny because I was rushed). I looked down on Raymond far below cutting out brush to frame the dogwood we had just put in (and lovely they look … their red leaves catching the evening light!) and felt calmed by the domesticity, cutting up, finding cinnamon and ginger, enjoying the smells of the kitchen, and looking out into the autumn woods. It was, as Charlotte said, a moment full of poetry. The poetry, perhaps, is in making something quietly without the anguish and tension of real creation. Often I am very tired when I have to cook my dinner, especially on these days of fierce work in the garden. But always, once I get started, I feel peace flow in, and am happy.

  Wednesday, October 22nd

  AMAZING that we have had no hard frost yet! Last evening I picked more large pink dahlias, three of the annual lupine, scabiosa, and marigolds … so there are still bunches of flowers in the house. That was after I put in more than two hundred small bulbs. It was so warm I was pursued by mosquitoes under the bushes.

  The pressure mounts these days, and, as always when I need to concentrate on my own work, more and more demands pour in—this week recommendations to do two batches of mss which I am obliged for different reasons to read carefully and comment on. The result is that I feel ill and have nervous indigestion. I would give almost anything not to have to respond to anyone or anything for three weeks—impossible dream!

  The beech leaves are still glowing in a great arch over the road at one interval of a hundred yards or so. I look forward to arriving there each day when I walk Tamas. Because of the rain, the brooks and little ponds are full, and the startling beauty now is brilliant leaves floating on their shiny black surface, and at last yesterday reflecting a blue sky.

  The journal will have to wait, I guess, till I am through this tunnel.

  Monday, October 27th

  THE MARVELOUS WEATHER goes on, and still no hard frost. I came back from a reading at Dartmouth, two nights away, yesterday afternoon and was able to pick some last bunches of flowers for the house … such joys! Now it is a windless day, a glittering ocean, so brilliant one cannot see the blue for the dazzle.

  At Dartmouth, though all went well and I find Noel Perrin just as oddly charming as I did when we met at Yaddo I felt all my old horror at the academic atmosphere, the tremendous hazards involved, because an effective professor must be a performer, I suppose. A college is a closed world, a breeding ground for prima donnas. Noel is not like any of that, thank goodness. And the next day he, Ed Kenney, and I had a solemn walk up a steep field to converse with some cows and then along an old millrace, rich tumbling waters because of the deluge the day before.

  On the drive home I had a brief glimpse of the Warners (heartwarming like a tonic) and then stopped at Lotte Jacobi’s for lunch. The best thing of the weekend was a bowl of salad—the small dark-green lettuce leaves, strewn about with brilliant orange nasturtiums and two marigolds … it tasted as delicious as it looked. Lotte is just back from a show of her photographs in Philadelphia and must have been tired, but as always we had a long good talk. She always manages to set everything in proportion for me again.

  I’m dreadfully anxious about the book and must get to work now. The reward will be planting lily bulbs this afternoon.

  Thursday, October 30th

  AN END to the radiant days … they have been wonderful. I forget how beautiful it all becomes when the leaves are gone. I have a far wider expanse of ocean, and from my bed can even see waves breaking on the distant rocks. The sun is slowly moving southward and will soon rise in th
e exact center of my three bedroom windows. The maple has shed its almost last leaf, so the ground for yards around it is blood-red. Down in the vegetable-annual garden I am engaged in a herculean task, trying to get out all the crabgrass and witchgrass so I can pile hay on to be a permanent mulch. It is fun, really, to drag out those long roots and clear out space.

  Heard two thunderous shots early this morning—someone getting a pheasant or a duck. I never hear it without feeling depressed, all joy gone for a while. And tomorrow the deer season begins. Luckily it gets dark before five! Then for a night there will be no terror in the woods.

  I’m dead tired, so tired last night that I didn’t cook, just opened a can of soup. Maybe it is partly relief, for I have decided, at Carol Heilbrun’s suggestion, to omit the piece on Rosalind and I think this lightens the whole book.

  Thursday, November 13th

  YESTERDAY I picked a few marigolds, a tiny blue primrose, and some bachelor’s buttons—the very last of the garden. I don’t remember an autumn when hard frost held off so long, but now we are in for it. In a way I am glad, as I was afraid the tulips would think it was spring.

  I have been in limbo because of a scare about possible cancer. I was in the hospital for three days for a biopsy, and yesterday, home again, heard that all is well. The small lump proved to be only basal cell carcinoma, a kind that does not spread. These three days in the hospital I was in such mental anguish over a misunderstanding with Anne Woodson that I went through the whole thing floated somewhere above it, hardly caring what they did to me. I had insisted on a spinal anesthetic so that my head would stay clear, and it worked. I have had none of the queer sensations I had after the anesthetic when my tonsils were removed. Now I can finish the book. There is only the preface.

  I have thought a lot about differences of temperament. I react too fast often, and blow off steam. My tempo is very fast about everything. I start the day very early and at full speed and collapse by eight P.M. Anne reacts with a slow burn, buries anger. Her silence can be as punishing as my anger. Our misunderstanding grew acute because I needled, and the more I did, the more silent she became. There is no black and white in such situations. Everyone gets hurt. Anne starts the day slowly and goes to bed late, and so on. It is as though we were on different tracks. But this whole thing has been brewing for ages and in the end facing it will make our relationship better than it has been for a long time. There is no growth without pain, I guess.

  In the hospital I thought of other things too, of course. I realized that I am not afraid of dying, but what made me feel awful was what a mess it will be when I do, and what a lot of work involved for those who will have to take care of things here. I felt, “I simply cannot die and leave all this to be taken care of!”

  It was wonderful to come back here day before yesterday to the shining dark blue sea, to the wide arc of the ocean, now that the leaves have gone.

  Friday, November 21st

  I FINISHED the preface yesterday and sent it off. Early in the week, after revising it several times, I suddenly had a moment of hope and trust in this book. Perhaps it is good enough, after all. I have been in such an anxiety about it for weeks that I am low in my mind and feel rather frail and exhausted.

  When the news of the seven-year persecution of Martin Luther King by the FBI came out yesterday and the day before, I felt rather sick. We live in such a dirty world, and as individuals seem more and more helpless to change it. When I am tired, it all becomes overwhelming like a dismal fog that never lifts. Of course, Franco’s death the other day had reminded me of the idealism, the lifting up of so much courage thirty-six years ago in the rallying of youth from all over the world to help the Republic—long, long ago. Then there was still hope and now there is not. Then, before the Nazi camps, we could still believe in the goodness of man. Now man looks more and more like the murderer of all life, animals too—he is the killer of whales and of his own species—the death bringer. Under everything I do there is this sense that there is no foundation anymore. In what do we believe? can we believe? On what to stand firm? There has to be something greater than each individual—greater, yet something that gives him the sense that his life is vital to the whole, that what he does affects the whole, has meaning.

  Wednesday, December 10th

  TOO MUCH happening! I have been out to Minnesota and back, had Judy here for a few days before Thanksgiving, and now am deep into Christmas … I’ve baked cookies every afternoon for a week.

  Before I forget, this from Janwillem van de Wetering’s A Glimpse of Nothingness (Houghton Mifflin, 1975):

  You meet someone.

  The other.

  You meet the other.

  You are polite. The other is polite.

  You eat each other a little.

  After his departure you are slightly damaged.

  And what do you do then?

  Do you repair the damage and do you become again what you were?

  Or do you go on as you are?

  Damaged, but lighter.

  There have been quite a few encounters here lately—people I had put off because of the book. They have been interesting, but I feel the effort more and more, feel empty when such a guest has left. I am hungry now for a period of retreat, for myself, for poetry. I look forward to the drive to North Parsonsfield to see the farm Anne and Barbara will move into in two years—to be passive and see trees and poor little houses. I have long felt that one of the great appeals of New England, what tugs the heart, is the dignity of poverty in the rural areas.

  I felt it very much when I looked at a house deep in the interior in Wells … a house that might be the one Lee is looking for. For the first time I knew a pang of acute nostalgia for “the sweet especial rural scene,” for Nelson. The land around this Merrifield place is among the most beautiful pieces I have ever seen, rolling open fields with here and there a grove of great trees, white pines, and around the house huge old maples, an ash, and a lovely elm. It is spacious and varied, and all of a sudden over a small rise one comes upon a small deep pond, steep banks, a secret place, surrounded by pine—a trout pond, the agent said. The house is not so beautiful as mine in Nelson, but it is in apple-pie order—one could move right in! But Lee is going through such pain and anxiety (the grafted bone in her shin is not healing properly; the retraining of the knee muscles is agony) that I doubt if she can get into the frame of mind of hope and conviction necessary to make such a big decision. I got agitated and upset by taking even as much responsibility as trying to persuade her.

  We had a southwest storm last night, warm, floods of rain, high wind … the seas are turbulent this morning, and soon I shall walk down with Tamas and take a deep draught of that crashing of waves on rocks. Mrs. Horton (I met her the other day at the first meeting of the board of Elderhostel at Durham) lives in Randolph and she—such a delightful woman!—said that she loves the mountains more than the sea, because the sea is “always in motion” and the mountains are still. I do not think of the sea as motion so much as a great openness.

  Monday, December 22nd

  WE ARE in the middle of the worst storm I have seen in my three years here … the seas a rocking dark gray undulation that shatters in breaking waves, high wind, and about seventeen inches of snow. It let up a little yesterday for a while; now it is sleeting. Shoveling, which was easy yesterday with twelve inches of light snow, has now become hard work, as it is wet and heavy with a frozen inch on top. Poor Tamas! His legs are too short and even though I make a path out to the garage, he does not use it for the intended purpose! Perhaps today we shall be ploughed out and I can get the mail and also take him for a walk. I had to put off fetching Judy till tomorrow.

  Last night I decked the tree alone, a big fire in the fireplace, and it was lovely and quiet, doing it slowly … it’s the first time in thirty years, I suppose, that I have done it without Judy … this time she will find it lit and shining when we get in tomorrow afternoon.

  Very lucky that I set out on my
Santa Claus expedition last Thursday to deliver cookies and presents in Peterborough and Nelson, to Brattleboro to see Marynia, and finally Wellesley.

  Marynia, sitting in a wheelchair in the sun porch at the Eaton Park home, looked me straight in the eyes for the half hour I was there, and recognized me at once when I arrived. But she is not really there anymore, stroked my sleeve compulsively the whole time, as though I were a cat or dog. In the wheelchair beside her a very old lady wept. It was excruciating to witness this unassuageable grief, and I finally fled. How much stamina and grace of heart it takes for the nurses who see all this every day, knowing that none of these patients can get well, only worse day by day, for their illness is old age!

  So it was a particular blessing to be with Eleanor Blair, where I spent the night in her cozy nest in Wellesley, the house full of plants and flowers and books, and her interests as wide as ever, and the same with Marguerite and Keats. I have to remember that senility is not always a threat to the old. Old age can be magnificent.