And then supper which was gay. A children’s table. A bride & groom table. Relatives & Friends table. A cake decorated by the oldest Miller boy (made by his mother) with lobsters, fish & seahorses around the bottom of it! Also, Jon’s chocolate frosted pemmican cake. A wonderful sense of relief—joking—family ease & joy. I looked around at Mrs. R.’s serenity, Mother’s happiness, Reeve’s shining face at the other table—imagining what it meant to all of them—how they would remember it.
And then it was over—& very quickly it seemed to me. B. & Jon were upstairs. Then an expectant hush & down they came ducking under a rain of rice from all the children—& out the door. Jim R., the children & Reeve last (oh I wish I had gone!) ran out after them—we watched lights out of the window silently. And then Reeve came back & threw her arms around my neck & burst into tears: “I don’t want them to go.” “I know. I know—but you’ll see them again.”
What comfort is there to give? I felt the same way myself. And Jim relaxed on the sofa & said a few minutes later with complete honesty, “How dead the house seems now Barbara & Jon have gone!”
I blessed him for saying what we were all feeling—as if a light had gone out of the room. But the young people grouped around the fire & sang—Kent Garland talked to me about religion in the colleges—Scott & Jimmy were in a corner together & a pile of books fell on Jimmy’s head while he was reaching for a porcelain duck! Duck was smashed but Jimmy survived. Scott helped to put up the books.
And then gradually the goodbyes. Mother & Aunt A. were taken back to the hotel—we went off with Janey.
Exhausted—speechless—but somehow still full of the warmth & joy of—what? Not exactly of a wedding but of the strength & solidarity of family—the sense of life, perhaps it is, the continuity of life—going on through a family (two families, but we both had the same kind of family spirit).
Is that what one feels about a wedding? Is that the strongest thing? The real sense of joy—just life going on—its richness & variety & renewal & its eternity & continuity. Was it that I caught at supper—Barbara & Jon—Reeve & Tommy—Mrs. Robbins and Mother? Was that the flame that warmed us—that we carried away?
Little House
May 7th, 1954 [DIARY]
I wrote the last entry almost a month ago. “One must withdraw!” Yes, but there are times when one cannot—if one is a conscientious wife & mother—not to speak of daughter—sister—friend, etc.!
Ten days of the children’s Easter vacation followed my excited ten days of writing on the new idea. I have not been able to do anything at that since. C.’s return, the children’s vacation—which means all of them are around all the time. More noise, more planning, more interruptions, more quarrels, accidents, mess, picking up, a disrupted schedule—less peace, and practically no solitude. The time has not been wasted—& I foresaw—somewhat—what the vacation would be, so planned to do necessary things away from home—like seeing publishers, etc. (Mina—Kurt Wolff—Denver Lindley)* & also doing the things at home that could be done there. C. & I going over & over “The Shells” for small picayune details, rough places—etc. This is hideous work—so uncreative, so myopic. You go through with blinders on looking only for the faults (how often you say “merely” or “inevitably”!) & missing the meaning completely. But we have cleared it up a great deal.
I have also been through a long period of indecision as to whether or not to change publishers—to go to Kurt Wolff whom I think I can work with more creatively & helpfully than anyone in Harbrace. But it is always so difficult to change—especially when C., at least at first, made it seem to be an act of infidelity to change—almost promiscuous! I have finally made the decision & have told Kurt that I am giving him the book. I feel sorry in many ways to leave Harcourt Brace & it may be unwise in certain respects. But the overwhelming need for me at this moment is to work with someone who sees, feels & makes me feel the validity of my writing & my kind of vision. Kurt Wolff always does this for me. Denver Lindley might do it & I hope rather to go back to him if he is still at Harcourt in the future. But just now I need something firmer & stronger (an older person—who is way over on my side—as a counter-balance to the other forces in my life).
I also spent one night away from home (I ought to do this more often, it is such a help). Margot, Dana, Jack* & I motored, D. driving, to Princeton to hear Rosen give a seminar on Transference.
Scott’s Cove
June 18th, 1954
Dear Kitty,†
I am certainly a hopeless correspondent, and especially in June, when the season of reconversion from winter routine to summer is going on: children’s last recitals, plays, camp trips, dentist’s appointments, doctors, etc., to be dealt with.
However CAL and two children go off tomorrow, another next week. By July 6th I shall be all alone and feel first desperately lonely and then, after a day or two, wonderfully released!
… We saw the Kennans,‡ who stopped by on their way to Radcliffe. I was terribly pleased that they called and stopped. Charles had some good talks with him and was very much impressed by his mind—as I have always been. She was very easy and understanding. I enjoyed the conversation which I fed but did not enter between the men, but somehow did not feel it was nearly as good as the times I met him before, with you. (Evidently we need your ambiance.) Or maybe I was so anxious to have it go well and worked too hard. They arrived on a sizzling afternoon and the water had been turned off—a break in the main! And I worked too hard at getting supper—flowers, etc.—ready (Martha§ was off, and Judy out). Because I do this badly I always over-estimate its importance and feel it has to be perfect.
I realized listening to the conversation why it was I found G.K.’s mind so sympathetic. It is not the brilliance or the enormous wealth of information or even the quickness and delicacy of perception, but basically the intensity of his dedication to the search for the truth. Not, of course, a black and white truth but truth in all its shifting subtle gradations of gray. It is an elusive, painstaking, tortuous search and exhausts one in that process, and demands—besides always honesty—agility, a kind of humility, an un-preconceived openness to the truth, whatever it may be and wherever it may turn up.
I realized that CAL also is a determined seeker after the truth but he is looking for a black and white truth—which means that he has a preconceived notion of truth, an axe to grind somewhere (though often it is hidden). I think Dana with his patients—not in his social conversations, where he is always grinding axes—has this open dedication to the truth. This alert, open watchfulness keeps you on the jump, never lets you rest or stop at a half truth or an oversimplification or pat answer. It is applying to the search for truth the precision and objectivity of a scientist and the delicacy of discrimination of an artist—also of course, the dedication of a monk.
I use it only inwardly and sometimes in my writing.
Well, I hope they come again. How difficult communication is! (I remembered, though, that you had said it was difficult to talk to both of them at once and also that perceptive people say the same of us. How difficult communication and how impossible human relations!)
[THURSDAY] July 9th, 1954 [DIARY]
Yesterday—a beautiful day—I went to town. I lost the early train & had already left the car to be serviced. So I had to kill over an hour in Darien! I did odd jobs but wasted precious time. Then off on the 11:10 & straight to the Brussels to meet Kurt Wolff. We had lunch at the King of the Sea—& talked. He was very helpful & enthusiastic about the new idea. He said I must “see the polarities,” by which he meant maintain the balance between the abstract & the concrete. He gave me marvelous suggestions & the idea took fire with him—and with me—as we talked. He also said—as we sat down—that I had the same problem in writing as St.-Ex. The problem of finding a vehicle for contemplative prose that was not fiction. Possibly being afraid of betraying one’s own life—possibly being unable to create fiction for real.…
Kurt said that it seemed to him today that t
he novel was outmoded but people went on using it in order to have a vehicle for their ideas and so often he wanted to say to them, “Just say your ideas—don’t try to make a frame for them.”
However, the end of the lunch went to discussing my wedding idea—which he said was a brilliant one (whether I can execute it or not is another matter). He was afraid I might not be vulgar enough in it. I should be vulgar too! Also said the religious point of view on marriage should be stated. “Marriage as a sacrament.” The Catholic position is that marriage is a sacramentum natural. Once two people have come together with the sincere desire & intention of being one—their marriage is consummated. It really needs no priest, civil service, etc.—and cannot be dissolved.
I felt stimulated—clarified—encouraged. The change to a good editor is paying off!
September 10th, 1954 [DIARY]
… Over the past month … C. back—the galleys* to be corrected & sent off … also negotiations with Harper’s Bazaar to take the Gift.… Quite a bit of work & many lessons about working.
Little House
September 18th, 1954 [DIARY]
This diary really starts with C.’s mother’s death, which we heard of as we landed on the dock at Rockland on Tuesday morning September 7th. The message came, telephoned by Martha to North Haven after we had left. We drove C. to the Portland airport but he had such difficulty getting through (weather) that he did not reach Detroit until late that night. I drove the children home—or rather Land drove me and Ansy and Scott; Jon drove Barbara and Reeve. Through storms and traffic.
The sense of death was very real to me all that day. But its full impact did not strike me until I flew to Detroit the next Sunday and found C. and his old uncle† struggling with the ghastly details of funeral parlors and caskets. The whole week, now I am back, seems like a kind of nightmare (though there were some very positive things in it) due to various elements that I perhaps cannot fully evaluate now. The house itself was old, gloomy, dark and dusty and they never would allow C. to change it in any way, though he wished to. Mrs. L. was buried Thursday, after a simple service in the old country church on Orchard Lake where her grandfather used to preach and where she and her brother went to church as children, in Pine Lake cemetery—a simple country graveyard nearby—on a hill with an orchard behind—old stones, old trees in the graveyard. We were able to do it quietly—no press—a few relatives—and it went well. Both C. and his uncle were pleased, and this I must remember. The other horrible steps—a modern funeral parlor and its techniques, the casket factory, the florist’s ideas, etc. I must forget. I was made really rather ill by them, although they meant to be kind.
One has only to look at a dead person to realize this has nothing to do with the real person—with the spirit. It bears no resemblance. The spirit has left. And all this attention to the body is somehow wrong. The wrong emphasis.
I felt better after the service. No one could wish her poor suffering body to live on and now one can remember her spirit—her frightened and gallant spirit that endured so much. I feel I was able—by being there, choosing her dress, some psalms for the service, talking to the minister—to do something for her and for Uncle that I was never able to do in life—or only rarely. I felt really so guilty that I had not done more but the situation had always baffled me: I had from the beginning been so afraid of doing something to offend her. This pall (created in the beginning, I suppose, by C.’s overanxiousness not to offend her and for us to get on, etc.—and her extreme sensitivity and unpredictableness) lay on our relationship, although whenever I had the courage to break through it, it was better.
I could have done more—one can always do more. But the exigencies of life are such that it is sometimes difficult. And in the last years I was struggling with so much inner conflict myself that it was hard to make any kind of sincere gesture to her.
Looking back now, one can see her life in more proportion. The dimension death gives is not a phrase. One suddenly sees people’s lives in better proportion, not as a flower growing upward toward the final bloom of those last days; more like the length and breadth of a tree that has been felled. One sees it all of a piece: the continuous grain of the wood. The last days, the final illness (whether of days, months, or years, as it was with her) is seen in undue proportion until death gives life its perspective.
October 31st, 1954 [DIARY]
… The nicest thing this week was lunch with Alice Morris who is the fiction editor of Harper’s Bazaar, who is taking Gift from the Sea—& who likes it!
November 1st, 1954 [DIARY]
I took C. to the station last night, after getting the children to bed—washing up supper dishes—and doing themes with Land (following me about from kitchen to pantry with his definition of “Lady”) and Scott. The usual gloom descending on me as I leave him and see the lighted train go off with the big tall figure in the passage.
Why this sunk feeling always? Not just parting, I don’t think. It is more a sense of responsibility left with me—left on me by him as he leaves. Will I do it right without him? Can I deal with Harper’s Bazaar and the publicity? (C. warns me about their not doing it right, etc.) Can I deal with children? Uncle? Martha? Responsibility plus a sense of sadness that somehow the week could have gone better—why did it not go better?
C. also, I think, feels some of this regret and says he is sorry that the week has been so full of pressure and that he had to use “the fire-hose” technique, as I called it. But a great deal has been accomplished in a short time. That is true and I understand, though I am tired. I go back to bed and sleep well—except for a bad dream—and wake to a sunny crisp day and feel much better.
November 3rd, 1954 [DIARY]
Back at the Little House after a long day in town. Land and Scott also came in by train and we all came out together by car. It poured all day, sheets of rain. The parkway was flooded and traffic blocked—an exhausting drive back in the dark and rain—with that needle pain in the shoulders from tenseness (three hours in dentist’s chair as usual). I will never drive back after that session again. One is too tired, teeth ache; I was cross at the boys who squabbled, etc.
Usually I see Dana after my three hours. I am too tired to talk much, but it is pleasant and restful. Today I stopped on the way in after voting in Darien. It was very pleasant to see him when I was fresh—and he also. We ate our sandwiches together like children and compared notes on the week. We talked of Bill and Con and Christmas and of some of his problems. I told him of my bad dream (of learning I had cancer and trying to get to him). He said: “I would cure you. I wouldn’t let you die. I would take care of you and I would cure you!” It was so sweet and so human and pathetic. That is what we all want: someone we can go to in any emergency, who will straighten it all out.
I said: “But I didn’t expect you to cure me. I just wanted you to hold my hand when I died.”
“But I wouldn’t let you die,” he protested. “I would cure you. I would make you well.” And one is strangely comforted and warmed by this.
Little House
December 12th [1954] [DIARY]
The wheel has turned again—one of those complete turns one knew was coming but somehow did not anticipate so soon. Mother has had a stroke and is probably dying. I have been there since it happened and am back here only in the static interim—where she is hardly conscious of anyone and we are waiting—simply waiting for some sign of a trend. It was terribly hard to leave her after being with her constantly for two weeks, but she has now withdrawn so much from us that it is more possible to leave than I thought it could be a week or ten days ago. I have lived through so much in these two weeks and the stages have melted into each other so swiftly and so irrevocably that it is hard to recall each one as it went.
There was Thanksgiving—a warm gay family gathering. A big table piled with fruit, Mother at one end, gay in red, and Dwight at the other. It was a beautiful lunch. Mother asked Scott to collect the guesses on the weight of the turkey and Stephen won
the prize. After lunch the children played basketball; we took walks; Mother rested. In the evening, between children’s supper and adults’, Reeve put on her ballet skirt and danced for Grandma Bee.* Anne played the flute—rather briefly and reluctantly—and the children talked of a play—which did not come off.
Friday I had breakfast with Mother and started to organize the day—I took crowds of children to town for dentist’s and other appointments. Only Scott was left out. I asked him if he wanted to go with us and go to the movies. But he preferred to stay in the country with Grandma Bee and Sigee!† Such a blessing, for they took a walk together—Mother, Scott, and Sigee—up to the garden to cut the last roses. There had been a heavy frost, and were still a few. Mother spoke of it later to me with such joy. (“You must tell that dear boy what it meant to me.”) We discussed Christmas presents. Mother had them all planned. We went to bed early.
Saturday morning I went in a little later than usual to Mother’s sitting room for breakfast. She was still in the bathroom, her breakfast waiting on her table. (She had—which I did not know—been out once, tried to drink her coffee, spilled it, gone back and changed her dress.) When she came out she said she felt queer, putting her hand to her head. I asked whether she felt dizzy and she said, “No—queer.” And I urged her to go back to bed. But she said no, and sat down to breakfast. She started again to take coffee and choked on it. Then I went to her, and Gertrude* somehow was there, and we got her back through her bathroom into her bed, undressing her.