Do rest, and don’t get up too early. The labor was not easy. You have given birth to a world and you are bound to have a reaction. And it will take some time to get back to your usual strength. The day you go home is the worst, even though it’s a joy. Even joy is exhausting. Be careful, darling.
XOXOXOXO
Mother
Planorbe
Saturday, July 10th, 1971
Dear Helen [Wolff],
Your letter of July 6th (on the jacket designs* and containing the November 15th, 1921, letter to ERM† about wanting to go to Vassar) has just come. It is unfortunately Saturday, and the Swiss post offices close at noon (now past).
However I will write you immediately and mail it in Lausanne tonight (I am going in to go to a ballet with Monica.* Monica will know if there is—or where there is—a Sunday pick-up, and also how much to put on for special delivery in New York. You remember all her letters are always sent express!)
Now, to get to question (1) The Jacket. I have no objection to a photograph of me, of the period the volume covers, on the cover. I’d like to see the photographs, of course. I think it’s rather a good idea, as it is self-explanatory. I am trying to think of what else would be better—the homes we lived in? No, rather dull. I think snapshots, family, pictures, group or action pictures would be better than the posed studio portrait kind of thing. But this we can all mull over. (Charles writes that he has found thousands of new photographs.) Anyway, for now, in principle, I am not opposed to this suggestion.
Now, on the new letter, which I remember very well. I think you have a good point, it does show a sense of independence trying to assert itself. And the letter comes into a period (Chapin School) where we have very little material and cut a lot out. The main problem I see is where to put this letter. It is dated November 1921, before the opening letter to Grandma Cutter from Scotland. The Scotland letter sounds much younger and is a far better entrance to the volume, I think, introducing everyone in the family, as you once remarked. I think the best place is after the Sunday, September 17th, 1922, diary insert. Elisabeth is at college and I am writing from New York (or Englewood). I don’t think it should go after the 1923 letter to ECM because it makes too abrupt a volte-face with the succeeding letter to ECM from Smith College freshman year (September 23, 1924). Could you omit the date of the Vassar letter entirely?
As for the cuts, I have cut more heavily than you, as I think it is quite long and rather repetitious. I am returning the photostatted letter. I think my cuts are quite clear on the text itself. The only thing I suggest putting back in is the P.S. because I think it ends the letter better. It sounds less like a wail (an impossible wish). The P.S. is stronger and shows I was, sometimes, strong with E. Actually, in the end, of course, I did give in—chiefly, as I remember, because E. wrote me back rather a sermon about how selfish I was being (“When you think of all that Mother has done for you, you could do this little thing to make her happy”!) and I backed down. I never could resist a “moral” argument.
Please don’t ever say anything about “forgiving” you for a “business letter.” You are doing all this to make my book a better one, and I can only be grateful for such continued and painstaking concern about it. Charles says in his letter to me: “Helen Wolff is a wonderful woman: extraordinary ability, tact, skill, and consideration.” I feel the same way. What you are doing certainly seems “beyond the call of duty.” This is all for now—much love—
Anne
Planorbe
September 5th, 1971
Dear Betty,*
Your letter of late June was forwarded to me here by boat mail (six weeks) and when I recovered it, I was deep in last details of a manuscript due to be published next spring of Diaries and Letters. (The kind of thing one finds oneself occupied with at the end of one’s life—going over old records, cutting, destroying and deciding what may be worth publishing.) I was much moved by your letter and wanted to answer it right away—though you generously and thoughtfully said not to—and here I am, three months later, trying to set down some of my thoughts about it.
I think my strongest feeling was that of wanting to argue with you about your statement that “sometimes you think” that “the gods have decided” to balance your “happy, varied and adventurous life” so far with “a stretch of the opposite.”
I simply cannot believe that suffering and joy are meted out that way by fate or the gods. In any case, it seems to me you have had your share of suffering even before these last anguishing months, with your arthritis, your trouble with your eyes, your sister’s harrowing death, etc. I don’t think one earns or deserves suffering—or even that “suffering teaches.” If suffering taught, all the world would be wise.
I do believe suffering, like joy, can open certain doors—if one is ready to walk through them or open one’s eyes and see what is there. Joy does this very easily. It seems to me the heart is opened by joy, and then perhaps one is better able to accept pain. And I am glad for all of the joy that you and Pitney have had, for I think it does help one to see life whole. And suffering certainly opens certain doors that joy cannot open, inasmuch as it brings some understanding, or opportunity for understanding. I can, with difficulty, see some use for it, but not as rewards and punishments. (I know you said this perhaps lightly, and it is what we all feel at times—I often—but I think it is Puritan and unhelpful.)
If you have learned to live from day to day, you have learned what the saints and holy men have always told us was the only way to live. But we don’t listen, and find it impossible to do, and never learn. I think of Amey who, approaching ninety, had a very serious operation for cancer, and who said when convalescing from the operation, “For the first time in my life I am learning to live from day to day.”
You and Pitney both have given the world of your time a great deal: books, thoughts, inspiration, comfort, gaiety, love of beauty and poetry. But perhaps the example of courage, acceptance, and the ability of living from day to day is one of the most important gifts you could give to your children and those friends who know you—just what you are giving now.
I get back in another month and will go on working on the letters and diaries (second volume).* This will go on, I suppose, until I die. There are often lovely things in them about Elisabeth—and also you and Pitney.
Much love and many thoughts to you both,
Anne
November 30th, 1971
Dear Ansy,
Here it is, November 30th. Reeve is two days late—and maybe two weeks late, who knows?—and very restless. However, when I called her night before last, she said they were glad the baby didn’t come on Thanksgiving day as they couldn’t possibly have gotten out. (The roads are plowed in Vermont, even driveways, but not immediately.) There was a real blizzard. Reeve said she had decided, if they got caught, to ski down to the neighbors (about a mile) on her cross-country skis, stopping for pains. They are on a main road and can always get out with a Jeep or tractor. I was somewhat aghast. “Don’t you have a toboggan?” I asked. “Richard could pull you.”
“Oh, Mother,” Reeve protested, “that would be much more dangerous.” And I had memories of those poor skiers with broken legs, being pulled down the mountain by the ski-patrol boys!
It seems, though, that they could call the State Police, who would come in a ski-mobile (if their telephone is not cut by a storm). The vision of Reeve in the middle of the night, with a flashlight, skiing down to the next farm for her first baby is something awesome. It must be the Scandinavian blood.
We have had a great deal of rain here (snow on Thanksgiving), which is snow in Vermont. But today the weather is clearing and supposed to be clear for the next few days. I hope the baby chooses a clear night.
The White House called to get hold of your father because Admiral (Jerry) Land had died.* He was ninety-two and a marvelous man all his life: gay, warm, and witty—as well as a great head of the Merchant Marine. He was not ill long and had been to a football game th
e week before. He had a stroke, and everyone was relieved he did not live to be paralyzed. He did not apparently suffer. Your father will miss him, though; it is a last link with his mother. And he and Jerry used to tease each other. I again said I could not go to the service—though in this case I would like to pay my respects to such a gallant man.
I’m afraid I won’t get into town again to shop and have no presents for anyone, including your two enchanting children—though I might get to Burch Books.
XOXOXO
Mother
Vermont
December 1971
Dearest Ansy,
Reeve came home yesterday from the hospital (called the “Bright Look” hospital! Rather nice small brick building like a New England hotel). Richard and I went to get her with the carrying basket. The baby† looks rather like Richard with Reeve’s nose. Lots of dark hair (which may not last, of course), a turned-up nose, eyes wide apart (like Reeve), rather a wide mouth like Richard’s, dimple in the chin—ditto. The shape of the head and the general coloring of the skin are like Richard, a ruddy look—not pale like Reeve.
The baby is quite calm and happy, nurses well, and sleeps contentedly—“looks” around quite alertly when awake, cries heartily for her meals right on the dot. I think she won’t be too difficult a baby.
Still lots of snow all around the house, which is just as well as it’s warmer in the house. There is really no heat upstairs except what comes up through registers from the floor below, but Reeve has a heater in her room and I have one in mine. I think the bedroom can be kept quite warm. But it’s the kitchen where one lives, cooks, eats and sits. It opens into a sort of utility entrance room to the back door, where the washer, dryer, freezer are—and everybody’s snow boots, coats, etc. hanging on hooks.
There is a living room (and a front door), but it’s still full of cartons of unopened books, records, old furniture left by the former owner, sawdust, planks, etc. This room opens onto the front veranda (now banked with snow), has a fireplace and a big bay window. It will be quite nice when they clean it out and fix it up, as it gets the sun most of the day. (The kitchen gets none and faces northeast.) I can do the cooking (such as it is), washing, shopping, and cleaning up. Reeve does everything for the baby and has her right next to her bed. She has Richard change and burp her! I keep thinking of your saying, “Any way you can get a diaper on a baby is all right.”
I must stop now—Heavens! It’s after one and I must get lunch for everyone, and go to Peacham and mail letters, etc. Reeve says she misses you terribly. If only she could see you and talk to you. “There’s no one else like her—no one.” Richard was quite impressed by your mushroom pictures.
Much love darling—
Love—love—
Mother
Peacham, Vermont
December 14th, 1971
Dear Monica [Stirling],
I have had this letter addressed for weeks, but it has been a crowded period. Helen came out for the weekend with the first draft of Volume II of my Diaries and Letters—and wanted me to get onto it so we could have a new typewriter draft before I go to Maui. Helen—poor woman—worked on it all summer to get it in first shape—not to hurry me, but to give me more time to think about it. It is very hard to go over from many points of view and I won’t know what I really want to publish—or feel it’s right to publish—until I start writing the introduction. I won’t know what I think until I start to write about it, and this will take real solitude and uninterrupted concentration, not to be had until Maui, I fear. (Late January?)
Helen seemed in surprisingly good form for not having had any vacation really this summer. Of course, she works much too hard and, I guess, has to, for her peace of mind as well as the outer pressures of publishing. We walked a little and fed my wild ducks in the cove, but mostly it was just going over the material.
At one point, going out to feed the ducks, I lent her a “hot pink” raincoat of mine and, looking at her, I was struck with how nice it was on her: “That’s a lovely color on you,” I said. And she answered (a little apologetically): “I guess it’s a part of my widowhood that I don’t wear bright colors.” (However, at supper that night she put on a Thai silk blouse, a lovely muted Chinese-red color, that Kurt had given her.) I tell you this only to give you a picture of what she carries all the time without saying anything about it. It is this pall of loss which, I feel, makes her work herself to death. I do not know what any of us can do about it.
I have been very busy. Not with the baby—Reeve does everything for her—but doing all those things that make a house go: shopping, cooking, washing up, doing the baby clothes (in a washer and dryer), and feeding family as well as the cats, dogs, and birds at the window. After I have cleared up the breakfast dishes, I take the scraps and a can of cat food and some milk out to the big red barn where the cats live. This means putting on socks and snow boots and parka and scarf, as there is snow on the ground and it is sometimes very cold (20 degrees below zero the other morning). Five cats come prancing out over the snow to meet me! My favorite is a black cat: very furry and elegant with green eyes. She is the mother of one tigerish kitten. There is another big gray mother with two gray tigery kittens (same father?). Except at feeding time, they are all very wild. There is also a cart-horse (a Belgian) in the barn, but Richard feeds him. He is very sweet, enormous, and furry.
After two weeks I am quite used to my routine, although in the snow and cold all ordinary chores take on a kind of challenge (can I get up the slippery hill to the general store? Or through the snow to the mailbox?)
This is not a well-organized letter, written in bits and patches, and it will not get to you before Christmas as I hoped. Although I am desperately busy and active here, it is a happy life in this beautiful snowy country, and in a family that is happy with the new baby. I enjoy my work and though I drop into bed every night dead tired, it is satisfying to be needed and helpful—and it is very positive to be with the young who are gay and warm and compassionate and hopeful. Life in Vermont is not so unlike life in Switzerland and I feel less “homesick.” I think of you often as I walk out to meet the prancing dancing cats with my basket of scraps. (I will be back soon in Darien—after Xmas.) DO give my amitiés to Nesta* and Mme Christen† (whom I bless for the exercises that I do each morning and evening, which keep me going).
Much love to you from Anne
Bainbridge Island [Puget Sound]
Monday, January 10th, 1972
Darling Reeve,
We are safely here. Dick‡ met us at the airport and took us straight to the hospital. He was very cheerful and said how much better Jon and Barbara looked—and were—but it was still a shock to see Barbara (first) and Wendy in wheelchairs in the visiting hall. (A friend of Barbara’s had brought all the boys in to see their father and mother for the first time—a relief to all of them.)
Barbara is thin and drawn and pale and looks as if she were in pain, but she isn’t in much. Her neck is stiff as a board and she looks like that. She has been under great strain and worry about Jon. But nothing is wrong with her seriously—the broken ribs will heal, and the tension lessen in the stiff back. Wendy, also in a wheelchair, looked pretty; the scar will hardly show when healed. Her arm is also cut and bandaged.
We then went in, one by one, to see Jon, still in the intensive care room. He was sitting up and, except for a bandaged chin, looked very natural. He talked and understood and responded to all I said, hesitating only once or twice over names (as I do all the time with no concussion!). He was terribly happy to see us (I almost wept at that), all the defenses down. And I just held his good hand (the other arm is broken), and told him how happy I was to be there. We also saw the doctor, who again remarked on his rapid improvement and said the slowness of remembering names would disappear completely. He will have to be perhaps two weeks more in the hospital, but today they have moved him out of intensive care (where all the crash victims are put and are moaning and groaning), into a room near Barba
ra. She can go in and see him whenever she wants.
They are taking more tests today to be sure there are no clots in the brain. He will have to take medication for a year or two and will not be able to drive for a while, but all this is normal recovery for a bruise on the brain. He is now reading and rather bored and likes visitors. His broken arm and kneecap do bother him a bit but he is not in pain. He can’t move much but they don’t want to set them (i.e., give him a deep anesthetic) until they are sure the anesthetic will not threaten the healing process of the brain.
He asked me about you and the baby. (I told him how worried you were about him and how I had been reporting his progress to you.)
Krissie has been carrying on here like a pioneer woman. She was the only one who can remember anything about the accident. They were hit by a car without lights, on the wrong side of the road, driven by a man without a license who was drunk and who hid in the woods afterwards! Krissie was on the side of the car that was hit; the door flew open and she climbed out and pulled her mother and Wendy out. She could not extricate Jon, who was caught in the crushed car; she thinks they had to use an axe. She went with them in an ambulance to the clinic and then to the hospital (Jon and Barbara were both knocked out completely), then back to the house and carried on with the children and has been doing it ever since! A neighbor came in for the first days, but Krissie has organized all the driving, planning, etc., and is now, I hope, going to bring us in it.
I am obviously very much needed here, though how I wish I were as experienced a cook as you are! What I need is a manual on feeding an army! Do send me any easy recipes you have, including the applesauce meatballs that I left behind (if you have any time—which you won’t—it isn’t important). I must now get to the washer and dryer. This afternoon Krissie takes me to Winslow to learn the shopping technique. Jon would love a letter, I think.