The House by the Sea Read online

  Tuesday, May 4th

  THE WHOLE DAY was lovely yesterday in spite of strange weather. Judy and Phyllis arrived in fog and we walked through wet grass to look at the daffodils and down to the sea, which moved Judy to exclamations of joy as the great combers came in and curled over into foam. But suddenly after they had left an icy wind blew in, the whole downstairs chilled by the blast from a slightly open window in my bedroom. It was frightening. Then a violent cold shower with thunder and heavy straight rain, and finally when Heidi arrived with a basketful of bright pink geraniums and alyssum, it had blown over, so we too walked down through wildness and wet to the sea. (Later, on the news, I heard a report that scientists believe we are in for forty years of terrible weather, drought in Europe and Asia, and God knows what everywhere else!)

  Anyway, it was a wonderfully peaceful birthday and the happiest I remember … Muriel Rukeyser telephoned, Eugenia (from London!), and Charles Feldstein. I found myself saying to everyone, “Sixty-four is the best age I have ever been.” And that is exactly what I feel.

  As I lay in bed after breakfast at around six I was thinking that I forget to note the small delights that make life such heaven here … for instance, the grass is thick with white and blue violets; the wood anemones shine in the woods; I saw a phoebe yesterday, and late in the afternoon what I imagined at first to be a huge sea monster gliding along turned out to be a flock of eider ducks!

  Helen Bevington’s Journal of the Sixties is a perfect book for reading in bits and pieces. In it I found Montaigne’s list of the advantages of a bad memory:

  1. One cannot be a good liar.

  2. One cannot tell long stories.

  3. One forgets offenses.

  4. One enjoys places and books a second time around.

  Thursday, May 6th

  THE REAL BIRTHDAY was yesterday when Anne and Barbara came for our yearly celebration of Anne’s and my birthday—they come close together—a warm windy day with everything looking absolutely enchanting, the daffodils singing out against the evening light, and lots of tulips out as well. They brought the stone phoenix I had commissioned from Barbara … Bev came over to take photographs, and Raymond turned up too to help us lift it from place to place under a yew tree until we could find a sheltered place where it would still take changing light. This morning early the rising sun tipped its wings in fire … what a thrill! It is exactly what I dreamed, something that would suggest the strong upward wing thrust as the bird rises out of the flames. “My Dream most fabulous and meaningful, / Stand guard, stand guard.”

  After we had stood around for a while admiring the phoenix and A. and B. drove in the long steel spikes that will keep it upright, we were able to sit out on the terrace for a drink … the first time it has been warm enough. A wren sang and sang. Suddenly we saw two pairs of tree swallows veering back and forth across the field—so they are back.

  Finally we felt the chill and went in to sit by the fire in the library, and talk while the lobsters boiled. But, best of all, a long quiet talk about our lives and where we all are now.

  I woke this morning thinking about The Well, my friend (a friend by letter only) who is battling cancer and has been in great pain. She has had a long series of cobalt treatments, can only sit up in a chair for an hour a day. “The world is sharply alive through pain,” she says. I want to find the right words for her, and that is what I must do this morning.

  Friday, May 7th

  I SEE THE DAFFODILS best from this third-floor window … for from here I get the whole design, irregular garlands that make a nearly full circle as they weave around big rocks and clumps of bushes, and at the road gather into thick rich lines of mostly white narcissus … shining on a gray day like this one.

  Yesterday I had a lovely slow walk through the woods with Tamas and Bramble, slow because Tamas limps a little (I can’t find any thorn or pebble to explain it) and also because so many birds are singing in the treetops, I have to stop to listen and try to discover who it may be. I saw a black-and-white warbler and a wood thrush yesterday and heard wrens and vireos, but didn’t catch sight of either. Driving home with the mail two days ago I came to a dead stop without frightening a woodcock, busily eating something in the road. So rare to see this shy bird close and unafraid … funny delightful bird with its no-tail, long beak, and eyes set in the top of its head!

  In the afternoon I worked hard in the garden, taking a half-dead rose down to the “hospital,” planting the white rose B. gave me for my birthday in its place. Then I arranged all the birthday plants, the blue marguerites, impatienses that Anne brought, and Heidi’s pink geraniums and alyssum in the border along the terrace.

  Sunday, May 9th

  IT’S HARD to settle down there is so much happening all the time. The day began with the oriole singing loudly in the big maple, and I ran down to see him … there is no thrill like that flaming orange and black. Since then I’ve washed the breakfast dishes, made my bed, shelled peas, set the table, got the cushions out for the terrace chairs, picked chives for the new potatoes, parboiled onions, and put the roast (with them) in the oven, and somewhere along the line made a tiny bunch of blue and white pansies, periwinkles, and primroses for the center of the table. It couldn’t be a more perfect day for Anne Thorp and Agnes to be coming for Sunday dinner. Everything shining and perilous, for it will last only a minute. The daffodils are almost over now, the fruit trees just beginning.

  Yesterday too, though windy and a little cool, was marvelous … we were able to sit out for a half hour on the terrace. And I felt a great rush of love for Laurie Armstrong, who will not be here forever. She is so valiant and so alive that it is hard to realize that she is entering very old age. Ben, her husband, has been dead twenty years … is that possible? I see his dark eyes and delicate features so clearly, and remember how delightfully he laughed, the laugh of someone thoroughly enjoying his companions. Theirs was a whole marriage, a rare one. It was Judy’s first time here (Laurie’s daughter) and she noticed everything, even the five-pointed star at the center of each primrose (I had never really taken that in till she mentioned it).

  Bill had sent money to Foster’s for birthday flowers and with it I have bought a white rhododendron. I am hoping it will hide the ugly dead branches of the yew that had been overpowered by the huge one Anne pruned for me last October and now is left, straggly and bare.

  Thanking Bill, I unearthed his last letter, written at Easter. He says,

  “Once again, just on schedule, the azalea tree you gave me two years ago has come into blossom. I hope I’ll blossom soon, or is this the grand illusion? ‘Art’ being that carrot on a string in front of the donkey, and on and on we trot. Well, to be a bit more candid, there are minor breakthroughs and temporary elations in the studio to offset the doubts and incipient despair. I do feel as if I were hovering around something that is about to reveal itself. Revelation of course only coming by work, it’s never a strip-tease before a spectator for me.”

  Bill is a painter but so often we appear to be feeling the same things about our work; it’s quite astonishing. His phrase “hovering around something that is about to reveal itself”—that is exactly my state these days. And I have always known, as he does, that revelation rises up slowly if one can give it space, and if one keeps at the work, often with no apparent result.

  Monday, May 10th

  A GENTLE HAZE over the pale blue sea … the field below it looks very green, the birds sound lazy, and it will be a warm May day.

  I want to savor Anne Thorp’s presence here yesterday. It was such a blessed time, so full of light and the love that goes back so many many years and encompasses my mother and father, as well as hers. Like Judy, she lives almost wholly in the moment, but how rich a moment it is for her! She seemed to see each flower with the eyes of the newborn. We walked down to the ocean, and later, lying on the terrace in the chaise longue she closed her eyes and listened to its gentle roar against the rocks. And while we ate our lunch she forgot food
entirely in the enjoyment of the squirrels and little birds at the feeders, in the flowering cherry (its buds all pink now) just outside. Of course, none of this would be possible without Agnes Swift and her care and sensitivity to every possible need. She is the shepherd of a dear old sheep who becomes more and more lamblike now every day.

  I always think of Anne, tall and slender, playing tennis at the Longfellow house and dancing folk dances there each May Day, and it is invraisemblable to witness now the awkwardness, the difficulty with which she walks, the stooped shoulders. But she doesn’t see this change, for she lives in the eternal NOW of very old age. Her blue eyes seem more transparent than ever, and fill just as they used to with a kind of radiance whenever she is moved by anything deeply. It is not tears, but an added light and that is what has always been so extraordinary about her. None of her sisters had those eyes. I have never seen them in anyone else.

  Spring is always poignant because nothing stays. It must be caught and appreciated on the wing, for soon it will be gone. And with so many many of my friends now in their eighties it is more poignant than usual for me this year.

  Thursday, May 13th

  SUCH A MARVELOUSLY sharp-edged day … the sea sparkles. There is no wind, and for the first time this spring I have opened wide the door into the porch. When I do that the ocean comes right into the house.

  I opened to this in Jung this morning: “From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life.” I wonder if, for me, that means admitting that poetry came from a different segment and is no longer possible. Yet sometimes I feel I am on the brink, that a nearly imperceptible and quite unconscious shift is taking place that will open that door again. It is certainly true that a part of me that was too clenched toward achievement is opening like a clenched hand. This month I am “being” rather than “doing”—“doing” on the level of work, writing, at least. There is almost too much play to be dealt with, if by “play” I mean the garden. But what a lovely day! I am brimful of joy.

  Sunday, May 16th

  ANOTHER OF THESE silken days … I am in an ecstasy of birds and their plummeting flight past the terrace. It is very thrilling when a bird closes its wings and shoots along like a torpedo through the air. The elusive oriole is everywhere now, in and out of maple flowers and apple blossom. But I rarely catch sight of him. I miss the white-throated sparrow … has he not returned? The mourning doves settle under the bird feeder, half a dozen at a time, and when disturbed make a lovely rustling whirr as they fly off. But it is now no single bird but the sense of congregations everywhere in the air and in the trees that makes the thrill. Out in the field the killdeer give their sharp peep, and the tree swallows go scooting around in the evening. The air they inhabit with such grace is intoxicating in itself, cool and gentle. What days!

  Now the lilacs are coming out and the fruit trees almost over; there are still patches of glowing white and yellow narcissus in the field, but they are almost gone. It all comes and goes so fast, like a dream.

  Yesterday the four children from the Gates school in Acton and two of their teachers came for a picnic. They are eight now, and have written me and sent delightful presents since they were six and read Punch, so we are old friends. It all turned out beautifully. They rushed down to the rocky beach, took off their sneakers and were soon immersed in all that ocean maze of “finds”—smooth rocks, banded or not, mussel shells, living snails (great excitement at that). Tamas doesn’t see many people only a little taller than he and I was afraid he might feel nervous, but within a few minutes he was quite himself and looking for a hand or bare foot to lick. Bramble made a brief appearance when we did the walk through the woods, came toward me, saw what a crowd stood behind me, and fled. We didn’t see her again!

  The children noticed everything; Chris even spotted a lady’s slipper (still green) I had not seen. They loved the violets—carpets of them now in the open field. Maura made a turtle out of two stones and two little pieces of driftwood (for paws), and it all ended with some Polaroid pictures of us with Tamas. Such a good day!

  I feel the school must be quite exceptional, as these children were so free and yet so well-behaved, so full of things they wanted to do, alone and together, so independent yet responsive.

  While I was waiting for them to come I opened and then became immersed in a new book, The Very Rich Hours of Adrienne Monnier. It seems incredible that in that whole winter I spent in Paris, when I walked the Rue de L’Odéon a thousand times, I never entered either her bookshop “La Maison des Amis des Livres” or Sylvia Beach’s “Shakespeare and Co.” across the street from it. I would have felt at home in both, and those two lovers of literature would have taught me a great many things I needed to know then, and even now am ignorant of. This book has as its frontispiece Adrienne Monnier’s description of The Very Rich Hours of the Duc de Berry. I read it, thinking how much this moment in York resembles one of them:

  “Before The Very Rich Hours of the Duc de Berry I seemed to perceive as through a magic emerald the very nature of France: our land and its people dressed in bold colors; gestures of work as pure as those of the Mass; women in flowerlike dresses; fanfares of leisure; living water, branches; desires and loves; beautiful castles in the distance; a comforting sky; our animals near us; our days colored with hope and finely woven.

  “It is not without reason that the stroke of strong admiration brings tears to the eyes. The sight or sound of perfect things causes a certain suffering. In the case of these miniatures, is it not as if one were burned by a fine rain of fire? Such works are like the focus of a lens that gathers the light of all space into one intense point. With a passionate concentration they draw from the world of forms a kind of jewel, a fairy-thing.”

  Every word of this reverberates for me. I can ponder it phrase by phrase—the contrast, for instance, between “desires and loves.”

  Wednesday, May 19th

  A WILD RAIN and windstorm is upon us and I suffer to see the tall orange tulips all bent over, nearly to the ground. It’s sad because for once I have this whole day free and had planned to get in at least six rows of seeds. The rain is so fierce I am even afraid it may drown the infinitesimal poppy seeds I sowed three days ago.

  Yesterday I saw a cardinal trying to get to the feeder among all the greedy blackbirds, grackles, and cowbirds that now dominate and keep all the small birds away, “junk birds,” a friend of mine calls them. I planted two more roses (a birthday present from Raymond), and five big dahlias, and fed the hyacinths. There is so much going on now, so much to think about as well as do, I am breathless.

  I had a marvelous drive on the way back from getting lettuce and things for the Hepps, who came here for a late dinner the day before yesterday, a marvelous drive because all the way from Kittery I was among towering chestnut trees in flower. Is there anything more beautiful? Yes, the catalpas that come a little later. There is one I make a special trip each June to see on the road to South Berwick. But now it is a festival of chestnuts, stiff and ceremonial, holding up their white spires. The lilacs too are in full bloom … there are so many wonders around, I am cross to have a whole day spoiled. Rain and more rain.

  Tuesday, May 25th

  THE COLD UNSETTLED WEATHER continues to depress; 40° every night. I must admit it has kept the tulips in flower far longer than usual. There are even a few late ones just coming into bloom.

  It has been a very full and nourishing weekend with Catherine Becker here. Nothing is better for me than a painter in the house … she made two charming watercolors while I was out getting my honorary doctorate from the University of New Hampshire on Sunday. I had such a good feeling, leaving a sensitive person to explore the atmosphere here alone, and also it was lovely to come back for once to find a friend to listen to the happenings of my day. We talked at length all through the time she was here about the problems of the woman artist, and as counterpoint I have been reading Karen Elias-Button’s PhD thesis, “Medusa’a Daughters
, A Study of Women’s Consciousness in Myth and Poetry.”

  In Catherine I see a very strong woman, a woman married to an artist, bringing up two little girls (now fourteen and a half and eleven). I have the sense that she may be finding the way to gather all this into a whole human being of great power and tenderness as an artist and a woman. So in a way she is the pioneer, and like all pioneers she is finding it a hard and troubling path. Her fantasies (and they appear in her work) are all of women, women in passionate relation to each other. So for her, as for me, woman is the Muse, but she is not playing the fantasy out—and more and more I have come to believe that this is the right way. The androgynous side of C. goes into the work, is translated. For me too, I realize more and more that the best muses were the unattainable ones, the ones hence that became part of a private mythology. But can this be sustained in C.? At some point the Muse-woman will become a reality and have to be dealt with on the level of reality. And then what? At present the fantasy is being played out against and with the help of what appears to be (from what I heard from and felt in C.) a wise woman psychiatrist whom she sees once or twice a week.