Into the World’s Great Heart: Selected Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 9780300271669

Citation preview

In to the World’s Great H eart h

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Into the World’s Great Heart Selected Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

h Edited by

Tim ot h y F. J ackson With a Foreword by

H o l ly Pe ppe

Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Amasa Stone Mather of the Class of 1907, Yale College. Copyright © 2023 by Yale University. Foreword copyright © 2023 by Holly Peppe. All rights reserved. Edna St. Vincent Millay material reprinted with the permission of Holly Peppe, Literary Executor, The Edna St. Vincent Millay Society, www.millay.org. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in Adobe Garamond type by Integrated Publishing Solutions. Printed in the United States of America. isbn 978-0-300-24560‑8 (hardcover : alk. paper) Library of Congress Control Number: 2022943859 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Foreword by Holly Peppe vii Note on the Editorial Method xi h

Introduction 1 Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 7 h

Millay’s List of Poems to Memorize 409 Correspondents and Sources of Letters 413 Acknowledgments 441 Index 443

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Foreword

“Th i s i s j ust a s n ow - b al l at your window,—I can’t write letters,” Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) wrote to the literary critic Edmund Wilson. “I simply can’t write letters,” she complained to another former lover, Witter Bynner. “I am at present under the influence of hashish, gin, bad poetry, love, morphine and hunger,—otherwise I could not be writing you even this. I have made a name for the disease from which I suffer: I have named it epistophobia.” Contrary to her claim, Millay could and did write letters, hundreds of them, and together they create a remarkably colorful tapestry of her complex inner life. Even as a child she possessed an uncanny degree of self-­ awareness and a drive to excel far beyond anyone’s expectations, except perhaps her mother’s and her own. In a 1912 letter, she wrote: “When I was a little girl, this is what I thought: Let me not shout into the world’s great ear Ere I have something for the world to hear; Then let my message like an arrow dart And pierce a way into the world’s great heart.” This longing to be heard fueled Millay’s desire to see her poems in print, and from age twelve to eighteen, she delighted in publishing them in a popular children’s magazine. Soon after, thanks to her mother’s urging, she submitted her now iconic poem “Renascence” to a national poetry contest, signing it with the gender-ambiguous name of “E. Vincent

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viii  Foreword Millay.” The saga of the poem’s dazzling reception is raucously told in her correspondence with male editors and readers who praised the poem but refused to believe “a lassie o’ twenty” could possibly have written it. Their disbelief enticed the precocious young woman—whose disdainful attitude toward male chauvinism previewed her unapologetic, female-centric poetry— to toy with their male egos and throw them off balance in a series of flirty, irreverent letters. (“Renascence” ended up putting Millay on the literary map, assuring her acceptance into New York’s elite literary circle, and winning her a full ride at Vassar College.) Until now, scores of Millay’s letters have languished in libraries; the only previously published collection, Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay edited by Allan Ross Macdougall, appeared in 1952 and is now out of print. In this volume the editor, Timothy Jackson, reprints letters from that book to provide context for the new selections. Enriched by the details and back stories in his thoughtful introduction and notes, the poet’s correspondence—letters, notes, and telegrams—make a lively and engaging read. Jackson is well acquainted with Millay, having written about her work since 2008 when he was doing doctoral research into the revisions and publication history of her lyric poetry, and I was able to assist him. In 2016 he edited and annotated Millay’s Selected Poems collection, and I had the pleasure of working with him again and contributing the book’s introduction. Along with Millay’s recently published diaries, this new book of letters opens windows into the poet’s personality; her bonds with family, friends, and lovers; and correlations between her life and work. Unfortunately, no known letters by Millay document her romantic and sexual experiences with women: her friend Ella Somerville in Maine; her classmates at Vassar including Katharine Tilt, Catherine Filene, Isobel Simpson, and Elaine Ralli; or the women she met in France, Thelma Wood and Lois Hutton in Pourville and Margot Schuyler in Paris. Instead, we must rely on references to their close relationships with the poet in their personal letters and diaries, or in the diaries of their friends. What we do find here is evidence of Millay’s dramatic depth of emotion in passionate letters to her male lovers and her women friends expressing her deep love for them.

Foreword ix

Millay’s writing voice can be intense and steamy, as in her love letters, or playful and chatty, as in letters to her mother and sisters, or focused and even strident, as in letters to editors about her poems. In other correspondence, when she detects sexism or injustice of any kind, she doesn’t hesitate to take the perpetrators to task. She admonishes the chancellor of New York University for gender discrimination when she is treated differently from the seven men who were receiving honorary doctorates along with her, and refuses to accept a seat on the board of the Academy of American Poets, accusing the organization of treating recipients of its fellowships like “prisoners on parole.” Millay’s letters are also marked by a dry, ironic, self-deprecating humor. “Well, I hear the postman,” she writes to an editor, “and must hurry this off. (The postman being my husband in oilskins, carrying a pair of oars).” In letters to friends, she shamelessly enjoys the literary spotlight—“I find myself suddenly famous . . . and in this un-looked-for excitement I find a stimulant that almost takes the place of booze!”—and revels in the joy of female autonomy and sexuality: “No man could ever fill my life to the exclusion of other things,” she writes; “I am one part brain, one part soul, and three parts flesh and blood.” Probably the most fascinating letters in this collection expose details about a secret Millay managed to hide from her adoring readers during her lifetime and that, miraculously, stayed buried for decades after her death: her obsession with horse ownership and horse racing. Jackson shares several excellent samples of her rambling, often emotional letters to her business partner, William L. (“Bill”) Brann, a thoroughbred horse breeder, that showcase her in-depth knowledge of the costly enterprise of buying, breeding, training, and racing horses. To complete the deception, which lasted nearly a decade, she borrowed Brann’s initials and signed her letters with a fictitious name: “W.L. Millay, Owner.” As life would have it, the light-heartedness in Millay’s early letters gives way to stoic attempts to deal with her grief after the death of her husband in 1949, when she insisted upon living alone, “avoiding every stab of extra pain that I can possibly dodge.” She was determined “not to be a baby,” she wrote to a neighbor, and perhaps even to revive her writing career. But her poetic reputation had lost its shine, and her health was

x  Foreword failing. In a typed letter to her old friend Gladys Ficke, she couldn’t quite bring herself to face the uncertainty of what might lie ahead. “I am doing very well,” she typed, shifting from double to single-spaced, “but I have put the lines close together, so that you can’t read between them.”

Holly Peppe Literary Executor Edna St. Vincent Millay

Note on the Editorial Method

Th e se l e c te d co r re s p o n d e n ce in this edition comprises letters, telegrams, notes, and inscriptions from more than twenty institutions. While including some letters from Allan Ross Macdougall’s edition of Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1952), this collection further expands our knowledge of Millay’s world. There is additional attention to her sense of social justice and the notion of a poet speaking her political mind. What we have learned from recent biographies—including a wider range of friends and her ownership of racehorses—are accounted for. We also learn more of her writing craft and her enjoyment of other works of literature. Further, retrieving archival material helps to enlarge a reader’s understanding of Millay’s work. That said, there remain many unpublished poems and prose manuscripts by Millay. Most of this correspondence does not appear in Macdougall’s collection. Further, nearly half of the letters here are transcribed from handwritten documents, and Millay’s letters are presented in full. In most instances, her typewritten letters are produced as they stand; corrections are made where it seems apparent she typed a wrong word, or in instances where her typewriter “jogged” a space or duplicated a keystroke. For example, she wrote “Kindly furnish furnish . . .” in an early letter where she is quoting an editor; one “furnish” has been deleted. Spelling is kept as written: examples include “oweing,” “checque,” “sha’n’t,” and “shan’t.” Millay was not consistent in placing punctuation before or after a closing quotation mark: letters have been standardized to show commas and periods before a closing quotation mark. A few of her letters and telegrams contain writing by

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xii  Editorial Method someone else. For instance, one letter to her sister Kathleen begins with a note by her Vassar College friend Elaine Ralli, and others contain notes from her husband, Eugen Boissevain. She did add to letters composed chiefly by Eugen, and he also added to letters written primarily by her. One postscript by her is printed here, where she comments on her support for C. F. MacIntyre for a Guggenheim Fellowship. Material enclosed in brackets [ ] has been inserted by the editor, unless otherwise noted. Where an address appears inside brackets at the beginning of a letter, this means the address was printed on the stationery she used. Any wording considered illegible is marked thus: [illegible]. Any instance of a question mark inside parentheses is from her letter. For ease in reading, most of the letters are presented as fair copies, without notation to indicate drafts. Occasionally, symbols are used to show revisions that Millay made in her letters. For instance, angle brackets, such as

mean she crossed out the text between the brackets. Slashes, such as \word/ mean she inserted the text between the slashes above the line. The horizontally ruled lines that appear between sections of letters were included by Millay throughout her correspondence, to break up parts of a letter. Following the letters, the section titled “Correspondents and Sources of Letters” lists the recipients of each letter, and shows the institutional repository (physical or digital) where the copies reproduced here are found.

Introduction h

Th e se l e t te r s re p re s e n t Edna St. Vincent Millay’s written correspondence from 1900, when she was eight, until 1950, the last year of her life. Readers of these letters will discover endearing and revelatory insights about this prolific though often underappreciated literary figure, who was a bestselling poet in her day. We learn about the vast range of Millay’s interests—music, gardening, cooking, fashion, visual art, world literature, travel, horse racing, and astronomy, as well as her strong commitment to social justice. Recipients of her letters include family, friends, lovers, other writers, publishers, and politicians. In the beginning we meet her mother Cora and her sisters Kathleen and Norma. Other early correspondents include the poets Jessie B. Rittenhouse, Arthur Davison Ficke, Witter Bynner, the editor Arthur Hooley, and the critic Edmund Wilson. She wrote love letters to Ficke, Hooley, Wilson, and the poet George Dillon, among others. She expresses deep appreciation for her friendships in correspondence with the poet and novelist Elinor Wylie; Sister Ste. Hélène, dean of the College of St. Catherine when they first met; her Latin professor from Vassar College, Elizabeth Haight; the composer Deems Taylor and his wife Mary Kennedy; the poet Robinson Jeffers; and the horse trainer Bill Brann. She also wrote to Georgia O’Keeffe, whom she’d met at one of O’Keeffe’s art exhibitions, and Walt Kuhn, whose painting Mario she and her husband Eugen Boissevain purchased in 1939. Paying attention to politics, she sent telegrams to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, including one “in favor of the Costigan-Wagner anti-lynching bill.” Her letters are frequently marked by endearing and playful language

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2  Introduction in her closing lines and signatures: “your loving daughter,” “[one of ] three very interested sisters,” “your friend,” “your hbl. svt.” [your humble servant], “lenox avenue moll,” and “Sefe” (her childhood nickname; her sisters Norma and Kathleen often were called “Hunk” and “Wump,” respectively). Her closing salutations alone illuminate the many different ways she engaged with others. Millay’s literary output was one of collaboration: she genuinely and regularly asked Ficke, Bynner, and Wilson for feedback on her writing, often exchanging drafts of poems. Her correspondence with editors, including thoughts relating to her upcoming books, reflects careful attention to the look of her publications. When publishing the co-translation of Charles Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal with George Dillon, for example, in a letter to her editor Eugene Saxton (at Harper & Brothers), she expresses her concerns about her readers’ reception of the poems if they were to appear too crowded on the pages (November 18, 1935). And indicative of her ability to weave humor into her correspondence, she lists among her enclosures “two aspirins” for her publisher. Sometimes she sent recent poetry or drafts of poems to her family, and one can sense her excitement in presenting a new composition, either finished or in progress. Accompanying a seven-page letter to Kathleen, for example, is a copy of an early draft of “Recuerdo,” here titled “The Ferry ­Voyagers” (February 25, 1918). Archival evidence shows that Millay habitually reviewed her letters. She revised paragraphs as she wrote and marked up drafts to improve them. Some of the typed letters are marked with pen or pencil corrections; she also added accent marks where needed. The time and care she put into her correspondence truly reflect her concern about how she presented herself in writing, even if it was not originally intended for public reading. Given Millay’s financial hardships while young, it is no surprise that financial concerns and commitments often occupy her thoughts. While living at 135 East 52nd Street in New York City, she details her recent expenses in a letter to her sister Norma: her attendance at the International Art Exhibit of 1913 stands out for costing a quarter for admission. In a later letter, she mentions the cost of the apartment she shares with Norma in Greenwich Village ($6 a week), which contrasts with her modest rent in Vienna several years later: “Last month my bill here at the Zwiauer’s, for a

Introduction 3

month’s beautifully furnished big room, with heat and electric light, breakfast, tea, and luncheon every day, beautiful service, shoes cleaned, veils pressed, etc.—cost me just exactly $7.50” (January 20, 1922). One of the delightful rewards of engaging with Millay’s letters is enjoying her language at play, perhaps more readily than in her poetry, plays, and additional writing. At times, in her early letters home, she speaks as a tough streetwise kid. Later on, she weaves in her pleasure in languages other than contemporary English, a testament to the courses she took at Vassar College: Old English, French lyric poetry, French prose, German language, German literature, Greek, Latin, Spanish, and Italian.1 She shows her clear preference for Latin in her communication with her former Latin professor, Elizabeth Hazelton Haight, and with her friend the classicist poet Rolfe Humphries. One of the last works she read before she died was a galley of a translation by Humphries of Virgil’s Aeneid. Asked to comment on the translation, she responded by telegram, which Humphries references in his letters.2 It may be that her knowledge of comparative literature aided her in pushing the boundaries of English itself: in addition to relying heavily on dictionaries—known well enough by friends that George Dillon teased her for it—she used words that were not found in the Oxford English Dictionary, including “orgify,” “whereasinine,” “pifflous,” and her own term for the fear of letter-­writing: “epistophobia.” In her correspondence, she also displays her expansive knowledge of literature. In her love letters to Arthur Hooley, for instance, she quotes and comments on Yeats’s words from the character Cuchulainn on “great passion” (December 27, 1915). Later, in 1946, writing to Edmund Wilson— addressed as “Bunny” in these letters—she details the act of memorizing poetry by Matthew Arnold, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Her joy is evident in tackling Hopkins: “Have you ever tried to learn him by heart?—It is great fun, very exciting, difficult.” Among her handwritten files at the Library of Congress are small scraps of paper with lists of poems to memorize. These papers are transcribed following the letters at the end of the book. Millay’s reading tours were a vital part of her publication activities; moreover, through these events, she met Sister Ste. Hélène, and also George Dillon. Letters account for her public readings; still, this is one area where one might wish she had written more about her public performances. There

4  Introduction is no explicit definition of poetry in these letters, for instance, although she did say, during a reading at Bryn Mawr College on Monday, December 18, 1933: Avoiding weighty dictums, she replied to the inevitable undergraduate query, “What is your definition of poetry?” with the answer she had given to a similar question on a Vassar final examination: “Poetry,” she said on that occasion, “is something reverently written by great men and blasphemously defined by undergraduates in female institutions.” —The College News [Bryn Mawr College], December 20, 1933, page 1 Allan Ross Macdougall’s selected edition Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1952) remains invaluable for insights into Millay’s life. The papers that form the background of his edition, which also contain proofs at various stages, are in the Albert & Shirley Small Library at the University of Virginia. Comparing proofs with the finished product, one can see where Macdougall elided or modified wording in the letters. That said, he worked very quickly in the two years after the poet’s death to collect letters from numerous recipients. Some replies to his queries for letters stated that her letters were lost or destroyed. Those letters that were shared with him appeared in various forms, such as Photostats, copied passages, and copied letters. Macdougall was friends with Edna’s sister Norma, who aided him with the 1952 edition through her correspondence. He had also been friends with Millay. Their letters to each other echo the comic-strip language of George Herriman’s Krazy Kat. Macdougall was another editor-friend, who helped her with publications. For instance, he published some of her poems in his column “A Line O’ Type or Two” in the European edition of the Chicago Tribune printed in Paris. Between May and November of 1921, more than thirty of Millay’s poems appeared in this daily newspaper.3 Millay often draws attention to the physical aspects of her letters or the process of writing—commenting on the paper, page margins, her typewriter, and her pen. At times she also directs the reader with advice about how to approach the gift of her letters. One lengthy epistle to Norma and Kathleen begins, “(This is such a big letter that I have put it in two enve-

Introduction 5

lopes. Read your letters together, as they come. Read this first)” (August 9, 1909). More than anything else perhaps, what we find in the correspondence of Edna St. Vincent Millay are the musings of a spirit relentlessly seeking goodness, beauty and truth for herself, her readers and listeners, and her times. 1. The classes she took are listed in “Vincent Millay, courses at vassar college, A.B. 1917,” from Vassar’s Special Collections (Millay 4.1). 2. Comments from Humphries on Millay’s feedback appear in a letter dated November 7, 1960 (Poets, Poetics, and Politics: America’s Literary Community Viewed from the Letters of Rolfe Humphries, 1910–1969, edited by Richard Gillman and Michael Paul Novack [University Press of Kansas, 1992], 251). 3. In an undated letter to Frances Blum, Macdougall copies “To Any Man with Serious Intentions” and “To a Certain Rich Man,” with his comments: “These two 1920 poems were printed in my Paris Chi. Tribune column in 1921. I don’t think they appear in any of Edna’s published works” (page 43).

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Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay h

To Mrs. Cora B. Millay Rockport, Me. Nov. 7, 1900. Dear Mama: I thought I would write to you and tell you how I am I am getting along all right in school but in my spelling-blank I had 10 and 10 and then 9 and I felt auful bad because I thought I would have a star I am getting along all right and so is Norma and Kathleens cold is better now I went to practice and a boy called me a little champion and I asked him what he meant and he said because I was the best singer and I thanked him. When teacher1 and I were alone I said you have not called on mama yet and she said she is away and then she asked me how you knew her and of course I had to tell her and I said I guess you used to go around with George Keller2 and she blushed red as a June rose and then she asked me If I had ever rode in [h]is tire wagon an[d] I said I knew she had and she said oh yes. here I will write you a peace that I am going to speak Thanksgiving3 On Thanksgiving Day little Dorothy said, With many a nod of her wise curly head, The cook is as busy as busy can be, And very good to for ’tis easy to see She gives us our Thanksgiving Dinner

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8  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Oh no little Dorothy answered the cook Just think of the pains your dear mother took In planning the dinner and getting for me The things that I cook so ’tis mother you see Who gives us our Thanksgiving Dinner Of course it is mama I ought to have known Said Dorothy then in a satisfied tone But mama said smiling you’re not right yet ’Tis father who got me the money to get the things fo our Thanksgiving Dinner But father said I earn the money ’tis true But money alone not a great deal can do The grocer the butcher whose things we must buy Must not be forgotten for they more than I Will give us our Thanksgiving Dinner

I do not know the other verses so good. lots of love to you your loving daughter Vincent 1. Possibly Grace Fiske, who is named as the primary school teacher for Camden, Maine, in the local newspaper, the Camden Herald, on June 28, 1901. 2. Identified as “Mrs. Millay’s cousin” in Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay, edited by Allan Ross Macdougall (1952), p. 3. 3. The words “auful,” “peace,” and “fo” (below, in the poem) are spelled thus in the typescript. The lines that follow are from the poem “Who Gives Us Our Thanksgiving Dinner?” by Emile Poulsson (1853–1939).

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 9

Edna’s letter to the St. Nicholas League, asking for “three badges of membership” for “three very interested little sisters.” (Library of Congress)

To Harper & Brothers Salisbury, Mass. Feb. 12, 19021 Harper & Brothers 322 Pearl St. New York. Gentlemen: I wish to subscribe for “Harpers Young People” and here enclose $2.00 for that purpose. I wish to begin with the next number

10  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay and so have written, as soon as I found your residence by reading one of your books. Respectfully yours. E. Vincent Millay 1. In a letter to Norma, Macdougall suggested that this letter could have been “a school exercise,” since the magazine “ceased publication in Oct. 1899” (letter from November 25, 1951, UVA.)

To the Editor of St. Nicholas League Newburyport, Mass., Feb. 20, 1904. To Editor of St Nicholas League— Dear Sir: My mother has given my sister Norma, the St. Nicholas magazine1 for 1904, as a birthday present. We have just been reading your interesting stories and poems and Norma, Kathleen, and myself wish to join your League. We think you are very kind to devote so much valuable time and space to your readers. Norma was ten years old last December. Kathleen, seven last May, and I shall be twelve Washington’s birthday. Please send three badges of membership to three very interested little sisters, Vincent, Norma and Kathleen Millay 1. St. Nicholas: An Illustrated Magazine for Young Folks, edited by Mary Mapes Dodge (1831–1905) and published by the Century Company, was a popular children’s magazine. Before her writing was published in the magazine, Millay made the Roll of Honor for Prose two times (June 1904 and November 1905) and the Roll of Honor for Verse two times (February and September 1906). The Roll of Honor for Prose and for Verse were divided into two categories: “a list of those whose work would have been used had space permitted,” and “a list of those whose work entitles them to honorable mention and encouragement” or “a list of those whose work entitles them to encouragement.” Her first publication with St. Nicholas, “Forest Trees,” under the name “Vincent Millay,” appeared in October 1906. She published seven more poems there under the name “E. Vincent Millay”: “The Land of Romance,” which earned her the Gold Badge (March 1907), “After the Celebration (As Told by the Fire-cracker)” (July 1907), “Vacation Song” (August 1907), “Life” (April 1908), “Day’s Rest-time” (November 1908), “Young Mother Hubbard,” which earned her the Silver Badge (August 1909), and “Friends,” for which she won a cash prize (May 1910). “Friends” was followed by a paragraph commentary championing this final publication by Millay in St. Nicholas. The praise begins: “This bright bit of verse is placed at the head of the League this month because it is a fine example of clever

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 11 rhyming, as well as of a very ingenious setting for the subject” (582). In addition to these publications, and her farewell letter published in October 1910, Millay was listed on the Roll of Honor for Verse no fewer than eight times after “Forest Trees” was accepted. Millay pasted her badges in her scrapbook (titled “Rosemary”); her Silver Badge is addressed to “Master E. Vincent Millay” (LC 14, 9). She was not the only one in the household to submit her work to the magazine; the April 1908 issue named her sister Kathleen to the Roll of Honor for Drawing. The Camden Herald celebrated Millay’s successes: the newspaper announced her prizes from St. Nicholas and republished her prize-winning poems.

To Cora B. Millay Chelmsford, Aug. 5, ’09. Dear Mama,— You will see by the heading that I am at Aunt Georgia’s.1 What you can not see but will be very glad to know is that I am perfectly delighted with the people and the place and am having lovely time. I go with Wallace every morning when he delivers the milk. It is a lovely drive. Wallace calls me at 5 every morning and we harness Kit—I can harness him all alone now, I think, though I haven’t done quite yet—and get started somewhere around six. Wallace has to take the milk to only three customers but one of them lives about two miles off so we have a beau­ tiful drive with few stops. Wallace is smarter than lightening—he can harness and drive Kit all alone and he’s only eight—and Randolph is a darling. He did something pretty cute yesterday at table. He had been teasing for a doughnut and Aunt Georgia had told him that she was afraid she wouldn’t have enough left for breakfast. But he kept teasing and at last she said “Well Randolph, we’ll draw lots. I’ll break two tooth-­picks in different lengths and I’ll hold them and you can draw. If you draw the long one you can have the doughnut and if you don’t you can’t.” So she held the two sticks in her hand and waited. Randolph looked at them a minute. They stuck just exactly the same and, so, as there seemed to be no choice whatever he calmly reached out and took them both. Then, selecting the long one he held it up triumphantly. Aunt Georgia let out a howl that could have been heard in Lowell— permit me to say that her laugh is exactly like yours—and said, after she had caught her breath, “Randolph, you’ve won your doughnut.” And I ran out to get it for him. He is only five and not tall enough to reach the

12  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay jar. The baby is as healthy as can be and as brown as a nut. He plays out in the dirt all day long except when he is asleep. There is a great big elm tree in the front yard and under it’s shade an a hammock, a chair-swing, a great big rope swing, Wallace’s canvas tent, and a number of rocking-­ chairs. It is lovely and cool out there. I lie in the hammock a great part of the time. Aunt Georgia is determined I shall fat up. She makes me drink milk at every meal. They have a nice garden, plenty of string beans, cucumbers and lettuce. It is almost time for their new potatoes and green corn. You will be up here in fruit time although I have already had some Astrakhans. Uncle Curt is lovely. He swung me a long time last night in the rope swing. He is going to take me into Boston some day. I shall ride on the elevated and the subway and go up in an elevator and on the moving stairs. Won’t it be splendid? Aunt Georgia looks a lot like you and she is a lovely mother. I called on Mrs. O’Brian & Mr. Brown & Miss Frost my ex-school-ma’am. I saw Rosannah & Irene Miller one day but had not time to call. Write when you get time. I should think the girls might write once in a while. Love from us all to you all, Vincent P. S. Aunt G. says she wishes you were here for the string beans. V. M. 1. Millay was visiting her aunt, Georgia Holt (born 1877), and her family in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. Millay’s cousin Wallace was no older than eight.

To Norma and Kathleen Millay (This is such a big letter that I have to put it in two envelopes. Read your letters together, as they come. Read this first.) Chelmsford, Mass., Aug. 9, 1909 Dear old girls— It is too hot to get my hands all ink and have to wash them. I intended to write you yesterday—Sunday—but it was even hotter than it is today, hotter than I ever saw it before. The thermometer was 96° in the

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 13

shade yesterday afternoon and not a breath of air anywhere. Aunt Georgia made some dandy ice-cream and it tasted just about right. We all went to Lake View Park last Friday and saw King and Queen, the same diving horses that we saw at Salisbury Beach and whose pictures were once in St. Nicholas. Uncle Curt and the two boys and I rode on the flying horses,1 the ones that rear up and buck down, you know. Oh dear, they were almost real. We also had a ride on the roller coaster. Did you ever see one? It must be something like the shoot-the-chute, and the loop-the-loop. I will try and tell you what it is. There is a space cleared for it about as big around as a circus tent. Around this space is built a track just big enough for the car to run in with a little room on each side. There is a fence and railing all the way. Above this is another track and so on for four stories. Each track is far enough above the one below so that it seems quite a distance looking up. The whole thing is made of white-washed boards and all open in through. The four stories are arranged cork-screw fashion. You start at the bottom in a bright red plush and gilt car—bright enough to look very pretty as it whirls along the white-washed track. The car has two seats and will hold four. Uncle Curt and the boys and I went at one time. The man behind gives you a push—the car slides around a curve and starts to climb—by machinery—a steep straight track to the very top of the whole business. All the way you will see these signs—Hang on to your hat!—Sit still!— Don’t stand up! etc. When you get to the top—whoosh!—you go down the other side a little way—whish! up again! spin along about a second lickety larrup—then—bang around a corner—hold your breath & down—gasp and you’re up—whack! round a corner and up against the side of the car—and all the time screeching and laughing with your hair pins falling out, your hat over one ear—every now and then catching a glimpse down through the trees of people walking around eating popcorn and ice-cream—and over through the trees the flying horses going at full tilt. And so you go slamming down the track,—whirr—whizz— bang—slam—whack—spud—whisk—thump—tumble—holler— screech—yell—laugh—with your feet banging through first one side of the car and then the other. At last you get down to the ground floor and are beginning to think it is all over—just when you have hauled in your

14  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay feet and have adjusted your hat—then—whackety—bangety—slam!!! you bump into the side of the railing once more and worse than ever before. Then before you have time to catch your breath the car glides serenely down the track to its starting place and delivers its passengers to the gaping crowd,—any side up—with no care whatsoever. So much for the joys and sorrows of roller-coasting. I expect you’ll be whizzing through space on a shooting star in your dreams tonight. Did you ride in the “Lovers’ Tub” before the merry-go-round left? Or did you decide it was too sticky? I am anxious to know. We are all going to Canobie Lake some day. That is the biggest summer amusement park around here. I expect to have some more thrilling experiences. One more Lake View surprise I’ll tell you about. It wasn’t very thrilling but it was rather odd. While we sat on the bench by the flying horses waiting for the boys who wanted to ride forever, I noticed a little girl sitting two or three seats away. In one hand she held a dark blue cone—something like the ice-cream cones, only larger. Wound loosely around this was a great, soft, cloud-like ball of something which I would have sworn to be pink absorbent cotton. It looked absolutely like pink absorbent cotton. While I was watching her curiously—wondering whether the poor child had a broken leg or a tooth-ache, I was much surprised to see the young lady pull off a piece of the cloud and eat it. For a moment it seemed to me that the little girl must either shoot up to the ceiling or dwindle down to the floor, like Alice in Wonderland after eating the funny cake.2 But nothing happened, and I made up my mind that, although Revere Beach was quite a way off and I was certainly not in “Wonderland” still Lake View might have something in it I had never seen before. So I turned to Aunt Georgia and inquired very calmly, “Excuse me, mum,”—sez I—”Is there anything the matter with my lamps?”3 —sez I—”or is that kid follerin’ after the instincts of its kind . . . (This is the second part of Norma’s letter—put the two together and read them as they come.) and chewin’ up the inside of a bed quilt?!!”—sez I (mebbe that wa’nt jest ’zactly whot I sez, but anyhaow it’s near enuff). Aunt Georgia replies very cool-like, much as if she was sayin’ as haow the little gal was eatin’ a ’lasses cooky her granny jest baked—“Why, the

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chee-ild is merely eatin’ sea-foam.” “Holy Smut!” sez I to me. I didn’t dast to say it out loud seein’ as how they wuz a cop on the corner with an eye on me. “Holy Smut!” I sez again and then I laffed kinder weak-like jest to cover up the fact that the perspiration was a runnin’ down the spine o’ my back and my knees was a wobblin’ somethin’ shameful. “Te, he!” I laffs, “Te-he—ain’t it—he-he-he-he-he-oh-Lord, course it is.” And with I got to laffin’ so hard I fell over side-ways and stuck my head right into that little girl’s batting lunch. When I found out where I’d run ashore I let out one unairthly yell that brought everybody runnin.’ Then I riz up with them Waves o’ the Ocean and Pearls o’ Foam a’stickin’ out all over my head, flopped my hands around wild-like and began to sing in a sweet, girlish voice—“Who would be a mermaid fair?”4 And I knowed no mo.

To come back to earth. The pink absorbent cotton cloud is really nothing but tinted sugar spun by electricity. I went down and watched the thing work. There is a kettle about the size of a dish-pan with a tube standing up in the middle making it look like a big doughnut-cutter upside down. The pink sugar is put into the tube—the electricity is started underneath it and gradually as the tube turns faster and faster until at last you can’t see it at all, a pink mist arises in the pan. As this rises it is taken out one cloud at a time and wound around the blue cone. I had some. It was just nothing but a sweet browned sugar taste and if you should put a great big piece in your mouth and leave it in a minute there would be nothing left in it but a sweet taste. I am beginning to believe that it’s “the stuff that dreams are made of.” Norma and Kathleen, take the front seats and recite your lesson. Norma, where is situated the city of Tease-Your-Sister? Ans. In Norma’s head.—Correct—Kathleen, where is the unpleasant valley called Raiseyour-Sister’s-expectations-only-to-let-them-drop? Ans. In Kathleen’s head. Correct. Question. Who are the two most provoking little brats in the world? Ans. Hans and Fritz Katzenjammer5—alias—Norma and Kathleen Millay. In other words, girls, aren’t you just too mean to exist? Why under the vaulted heavens did you say anything about any old

16  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay prize? Why under the azure canopy can’t you send it to me? Why under the celestial firmament don’t you tell me what it is? Why under the arched dome of the sky does mama let you two run around loose???? Answer me that, young man!!!!!!! I wonder how many green peas you have eaten, Wump,6 since you got well. What a little fool you were! I hope you are all of you well now. It will be lovely for you to have a chance to earn some money, Norma. Now I’m going to answer questions. 1. I am very well, thank you. I haven’t eaten any green peas. 2. We have had some blue-berry pies. 3. I think it very likely that I may come home although it is not decided. If I could plan to come home on a day when Uncle Curt was going to Boston it would be very simple. 4. Papa sent me $2.00. 5. Howard has not wet my brown suit at all. He doesn’t require much holding and when he does I’m not the holder. 6. I don’t expect to go to Uncle Charlie’s. If I go home by boat I couldn’t but if by train I might possibly stop over. 7. I don’t know when I’m coming home. 8. I don’t have any idea when I’m coming home.

Now for Items. 1. I am awfully sorry Wump has been sick. 2. I saw Percy Buzzel at Salisbury Beach.7 He sends love. 3. I’ve been to two plays, or rather musical comedies, “The Brinkley Girl” and “The Crazy House.” 4. Give my love to Aunt Ida and Benitz. 5. It is too bad the three cases had to all come on one day. 6. I hope Wump will have lots of fun at Mrs. Sherman’s. 7. I am glad Bonny Boy is such a favorite and I am sure he deserves it. 8. I am glad Kitty is fat and cunning. 9. I am glad mama is not sick. 10. I am glad you have such a nice chance to ride in the auto.

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11. I’m glad you’re not here, Norma, so that I’d have to show you I’m neither a pickled lime nor a pants-button. 12. I’m glad this is the last page. 13. I’m glad that instead of being two hectors like Norma and Kathleen I am just Your loving sister, Vincent. 1. “Flying horses”: Merry-go-round. 2. In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Alice grows tall after eating the cake (chapters 1 and 2). As an adult, Millay was one of twelve contributors to an article titled “My Debt to Books” in the journal Books Abroad (Spring 1938, 164–170), where she wrote: “In reply to your letter of June 24, I will give you an off-hand list of books which I read when I was very young, and which presumably influenced me as a writer. . . . Before I was ten years old, I had read almost every word of Shakespeare—many of the plays several times. I had also read Don Quixote, Christopher Marlowe’s Hero and Leander, a great deal of Alexander Pope, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Alice in Wonderland, the poems of Tennyson, Jean Ingelow, and Milton” (165). 3. “Lamps”: eyes. 4. The first two lines, minus the question mark, from “The Mermaid” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892). 5. Mischievous protagonists from the Katzenjammer Kids, a newspaper cartoon strip drawn by Rudolph Dirks (1877–1968). 6. “Wump” is the family nickname for Kathleen, the youngest of the three Millay sisters; Norma is “Hunk”; and Vincent is “Sefe.” 7. Percy Buzzell (b. 1889) was a half-brother of Millay’s mother. He lived with Charles Buzzell (b. 1869), Cora’s brother, and Jennie Buzzell (b. 1876), Charles’s wife, in Salisbury, Massachusetts, in 1910.

To St. Nicholas Magazine Camden, Me. [Summer, 1910] Dear St. Nicholas: I am writing to thank you for my cash prize and to say good-by, for “Friends” was my last contribution. I am going to buy with my five dollars a beautiful copy of “Browning,” whom I admire so much that my prize will give me more pleasure in that form than in any other.

18  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Although I shall never write for the League again, I shall not allow myself to become a stranger to it. You have been a great help and a great encouragement to me, and I am sorry to grow up and leave you. Your loving graduate, Edna Vincent Millay

To Dodd, Mead & Co. Camden, Me. Dec. 29, 1911. Dodd, Mead & Co., Gentlemen,— Can you give me the address of Jeffery Farnol, author of “The Money Moon,” and “The Broad Highway”?1 I enclose a stamp for reply. Yours very truly, Vincent Millay 40 Chestnut St. Camden, Me. 1. The Money Moon and The Broad Highway, novels by Jeffery Farnol (1878–1952), were first published in 1910 and 1911, respectively.

To Gladys Niles Camden, Maine, Aug. 9, 1912 Dear Gladys,—1 You will remember that I promised to write, but didn’t say when. This is when. And I’m sure you’ll think that what I write now is worth having waited for. You know the contest that Mother wrote about while I was up there, crazy to have me try for it because Mr. Wheeler of Current Literature was one of the judges.2 Well, Gladys, dear, my poem is accepted and I’m going to be in the book, one of one hundred American authors, with a biographical sketch, in “The Lyric Year”! You’re glad, aren’t you? And, Gladys, I’ve got two personal letters from the Editor himself, that are just

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 19

like drama to read. Of course he thought I was a man, and the first letter—in his own hand-writing—was like this:— E. Vincent Millay, Esq., Sir: I feel bound to refrain from stating how tremendously I like your “Renascence.” Kindly furnish material for a biographical sketch of yourself for “The Lyric Year.” Etc. Etc.— Yours faithfully, The Editor. Well, I was mildly insane,—not violent, just out of my head. And I wrote telling him what he wanted to know about my writing, and that I was a girl, and twenty. I told him of the several prizes I have won and how when I was fourteen Edward J. Wheeler received a poem of mine in Current-Literature, saying “The poem which follows seems to us to be phenomenal.” And, do you know, I think it may be Mr. Wheeler himself who is writing me. He signs himself just “The Editor” but in his last letter he says, “you are not corresponding with Mr. Kennerley, publisher of—but with—?—Editor of—“The Lyric Year.” He is actually teasing me! The idea of trying to make me guess who he is! The Mr. Kennerley he speaks of is the one who is holding the competition and the publisher, also, of “The Forum.” But I must tell you what he said about my poem. You will remember it, I think; it was the one a part of which I said aloud to you and Sophie3 that day,—the down-under-ground one, you know. I worked it over and finished it—it is seven and a half typed pages long—, I will send you a copy. The second letter, somewhat cut, is as follows:— Dear and true Poetess! You have indeed astonished me through and through—a lassie o’ twenty—is it possible? I am not alone in thinking that your poem is very fine, original, strong, impressive. (Ah, Gladys, read those words again!)———Sometimes I think that Renascence is the most interesting poem in the selected Hundred of

20  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay The Lyric Year. And now that I have a slight acquaintance with its surprising authoress (that’s me) my estimate is no whit the less stable.——But surely I may preserve the photograph (I had sent one in case they should want a cut, and had asked him to return it) along with other interesting documents from the more distinguishable contributors, among whom figure our grandest poets? I have set my heart on keeping it. (Fancy!)——Any further details—Etc.—would be of interest. Yours faithfully, The Editor. He said there had been over 9,100 manuscripts—and mine is the most interesting, of the hundred then of all! Keep us a’!4 Tell Mrs. Dunton that I delivered all her messages, to Cora Pullen for her mother, to Wilder Irish for his wife, and to Annie Mero herself.5 They were very glad to hear from her and want to see her very much. Give her my love,—“real love,” as she once said to me for papa. Have you been out driving often behind Peggy and Polly, those beautiful horses that I didn’t see? And does the “Modoc-ewando”—if that’s the way you spell it—still make your dinners late, and you vexed with Mr. Dunton, and his wife apologetic for him?6 Did Mrs. Dunton fry doughnuts Monday while Mrs. Briggs washed? And is Curly still petted and abused? What a lot of foolish questions people ask in letters! But at least I haven’t talked about the weather. Please write soon, even if I didn’t,—I’ll promise to answer it right off—and tell me what you are doing this summer. Tell Sophie that I was haunted for weeks by strains from the “Melisandra” song she sang, and have paid her the compliment of not trying to sing it myself. However, I’ve composed a new rag-time song that beats the “Little Rag Doll” all “holler.” What plays have you seen lately, and are you going to the Festival this fall? Did you know that Mme. Rappold spent last summer here?7 I have a friend who is just married and gone to Bangor to live. Mrs. Philip Conley she is now. You probably haven’t met them, but if you do, why—why you will! There’s a study in climax for you!

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Give my “luf to all der peoples” and to the pink geraniums in my room. It is absolutely imperative that I eat my dinner. Love, Vincent. (Just “Camden, Me”) 1. Gladys Niles (1890–1941) was a friend from Bangor, Maine. 2. In her diary titled “Sweet and Twenty,” Millay wrote: “About May 27 [1912]. Sent Renascence into verse competition.—(Held by Mitchell Kennerley, New York, Publisher of Forum. 100 poems by different American poets to be chosen and brought out Nov. 1st in book called ‘The Lyric Year’; $1000 to be awarded in three prizes. Judges;—William Stanley Braithwaite of Boston, and Edward J. Wheeler of Current Literature, who had in March, 1907 reviewed my ‘Land of Romance’ with the following criticism:—‘The poem which follows seems to us to be phenomenal.’ It was encouraging to find him one of the judges.)” [The quotation marks for Wheeler’s sentence have been added here.] (LC 95, 3). 3. Sophie is an aunt of Gladys, thirteen years older than her. 4. “Keep us a’!”: A Scottish phrase that Millay sometimes writes as “keep ’s a’,” meaning “May God keep us all,” and used to express surprise or dismay, according to the Dictionaries of the Scots Language. 5. Cora Pullen was on the editorial staff of The Megunticook, the Camden High School newspaper. Wilder Irish, Sr., and his wife Lousanah lived in Camden. Anne Mero is possibly a neighbor (born 1845) from Camden. 6. “Modoc-ewando”: she means Madockawando (ca. 1630–1698), a sagamore, or chief, of the Penobscot Indians. Gladys Niles lived with her grandparents, Charles R. Dunton and Mary E. Dunton, along with an Irish servant, Delia Gardiner, according to the Census of 1910. 7. Marie Rappold (1873–1957), an American opera singer, debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in 1905.

To Ferdinand Earle Editor “The Lyric Year,”

Camden, Me. Aug. 9, 1912.

Dear ? :— I wish that for a long time you might be as glad as I have been since I got your letter. I am “that” grateful I have studied your letter until it is a blur in mind and I can no longer read it intelligently. But there! I

22  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay mustn’t let you see just how glad I really am. It is so young to be enthusiastic; and surely I am grown-up now. Was there ever before such a mix-up! These are some of the words you used in describing it:—vague and suspicions—forgery—palmed off—attorney—detect—clue—mystery—discovered traces. Why not also:—Scotland Yard—Sherlock Holmes—Alias Jimmy Valentine?1 Is it for a Rogues’ Gallery you want my photograph? Bethink yourself! It is not I who am hiding behind an alias, it is you. Editor “The Lyric Year,”—alias?, alias Monsieur X. There is incognito for you. Retain my photograph? Assuredly not! It is dreadful enough as it is, to be corresponding with an interrogation-point; it is—if I may be allowed the pun—a questionable proceeding. But would I rest nights with my photograph in the possession of an Alias “Guess”? Why, I would not dare leave my gate without first leaning over it to look for a mark on the other side. No; you must tell me who you are. You aren’t a girl, too, are you? You can’t be Edward J. Wheeler, can you? Please tell me. Aren’t you going to let me call it “Renaissance” in the French way? I see you use the Anglicized Renascence. And is it too late for me to make a tiny correction? I find by my carbon copy that I changed one word in the typing, using a synonym. It is in this part:—Then fled my soul in such a gust That all around me swirled the dust. I intended the around to be about. Also one of those despised “other poems,” or perhaps one that you did not see at all, is lost. It is simply unthinkable, I know, to ask an editor if he “remembers” a certain rejected manuscript. But you spoke of hunting the “E. Vincent Millay style”—keep ’s a’!—and it seems to me you must have found it in this one if in any. Also you proved by your quotation that you have a good memory. The piece was longer even than the one you accepted, and was called “Interim.” It was in blank verse. Perhaps it never reached you, or perhaps I forgot to enclose a stamp and it got waste-basketed. It seems so impossible to me that anyone like you should be interested in my “career, ambitions, education” that I don’t know what to tell you. The ambitions are, of course, all wound about the education and the career; and both education and career are yet for me among “things hoped for.” I am to some extent self-educated, having read ever since I could read at all everything I could find. And I have been honorably

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graduated from the Camden High School. And that is all. I could almost say with Simple Simon, “Please, sir, I haven’t any.” I want, and have always wanted—dreadfully—to go to college. And I want to write, more than ever now,—see for what you are accountable! To think that I am in “The Lyric Year,” a part of it. I wish you could know how glad I am. Will it be a pretty book? But I mustn’t ask any more questions. You can scarcely be expected to answer those I have already written. Editors! I have always been incredulous about them. But you—if you will pardon the personality— are different. When, in my old age, I compile my real autobiography, entitled “Wild Editors I Have Met,” you, a rare type, and strangely tame, will have a chapter all to yourself; and the frontispiece will be your photograph,—if I can get it. Very truly yours, 1. Alias Jimmy Valentine was a play written by Paul Armstrong in 1909. The Camden Herald serialized parts of the story: it was “novelized” by Frederick R. Toombs; the February 3, 1911, issue contains the prologue and chapters 1 and 2. At least by 1913, the Camden Opera Company was performing the play, according to an advertisement in the August 15, 1913, issue.

To Ferdinand Earle [after September 14, 1912]1 You misunderstood me a little in my last letter; or perhaps,—my poor, poor scrawl! (I am glad you scratched back)—perhaps you misconstrued me. The query I intended to convey was this:—What do you mean by betting on my Pegasus? I know now, of course, that you meant I have a big chance to win. But I hadn’t told you how very little I knew about the rules of the contest, or you would have understood how impossible such a thing seemed to me at first. The only announcement of it that I saw was in a copy of the Magazine Maker2 which my mother, a veritable fiend for all that is new or old in magazines, had rescued from the waste-­ basket of a friend. It was a very meager announcement, and somehow gave me the idea that the prizes were to be awarded the very first thing. Of course I have been perishing all summer to know who got them; but you didn’t seem to want to tell me, and I simply would not ask. It is

24  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay consistently feminine, I suppose, that now I am almost sorry I know. For the disappointment, if I am disappointed, will be terrible. I take things so hard, both kinds of things; it seems to me no one is ever so glad or so sorry as I. And I do think Torrence is a horrid name. Still, if his poem is the Dream-one I’m not sure but that, I think, myself, he ought to have first place. Oh dear! I’m sure it wouldn’t make half so much difference to him! But his poem is wretchedly perfect. And mine is (sometimes I really think it) perfectly wretched. O, dear! If it was only paintings, now; so that I might slash his canvas. And yet I’m sure I couldn’t, ’twould be such a wonderful picture. The only thing I think of that I can do, is weep,— and that is so unbecoming! Could you drop me a tear or two, you nice, kind editor-man? And yet,—pass the salt, Terence! (as Helbert Ubbard would say).3 I’m surely not out ’till I’m down, and I have as good a chance, as least, as Mr. Lawrence, or Terence, or whatever he calls himself, (when you don’t like anybody you must always pretend to forget his name). “May come to New York”? Why, bless yuh heart, suh, I shall come to New York! The roads are good, I’m sure, from here to there; and if I thought I’d never get there without walking, why—what would you bet, (if you were a sport) that I couldn’t walk from here to New York with a little money and a stout pair of shoes? The distance is nothing but miles, after all, and I’m young yet. I could swim from here to London if there were only islands enough, and if it were not anatomically impossible, I am sure that I could walk from me to you. And I shall accept your invitation to Vindeholm, you may be sure. (Is there the wee-est little corner of it in the snap? And what does the name mean?—It looks like Windyoak.) How I do love to stick in the parentheses! Was it the fat major [mayor] in Brand, who, with his hands in his hip-pockets, looked like “a bracketed parenthesis”?4 Well, I write like it. Do you know, by the use of a hand-mirror, I can read the most of your last letter right through the envelope? The signature is particularly clear. You are not half so careful as I. Suppose the postman, an inquisitive fellow who of course knows your writing by now and who is so vain of his moustache that he very likely stops on the step to peep in the glass of his comb-case ere ringing the bell, suppose—well, suppose! And I haven’t even told my best friend! But then she’s just gone and got mar-

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ried, and I’m so disappointed in her, that perhaps I shouldn’t have told her anyway. Did you enjoy almost signing your initials to all your editorial letters?—your capitals F. E. and T. E. are so alike! Of course I shall send for the Forum which contains your—what is it, a poem, or an essay? I know I shall like it, and I hope I shall understand it. Your “big clumsy venture”! Say, rather, your big, splendid venture. O, but it’s great to be a man! You have made this year so different to so many people, so miraculous to me! It is a great privilege, 1. This sheet begins with an editorial comment typed by a librarian, presumably: “[Copy of first draft of letter to Earle, undated, or possibly dated on the first page, which is missing; this begins her page 2.—Vincent’s page 2, that is.]” A letter in this folder, on stationery “from the editor of ‘The Lyric Year’  ” and signed “The Editor,” begins: “Dear Contributor: Were I a sport, I should wager odds on Renascence for first honors.” 2. As announced in the journal The Editor and Publisher and Journalist from New York, “Homer Croy, the magazine editor and writer, has launched the Magazine Maker, a journal for writers and editors. . . . It is a modest looking periodical, consisting of 32 pages and cover, printed in clear type on good paper” (volume 11, number 5, July 29, 1911, p. 22). 3. Millay’s spoonerism for the American writer Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915). 4. Reference to Brand: A Dramatic Poem (1865) by Henrik Ibsen. In C. H. Herford’s translation, the character Brand identifies the mayor as such: See there—! No, it is but the Mayor, Well-meaning, brisk, and debonnaire, Both hands in pockets, round, remiss, A bracketed parenthesis. (The Works of Henrik Ibsen: Brand, Peer Gynt, translation of Brand by C. H. Herford [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911], Act 3, page 123).

To Gladys Niles Camden, Oct. 1912 Dear Gladys,— Your letter of the second, received on the third, I am answering on the fourth. There’s promptness for you! (Don’t mind such trivial details as the month, etc.) To add to the good impression this early reply must give, I will proceed at once to answer your questions, (which you

26  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay have probably forgotten you ever asked.) In the first question, as you will perhaps perceive, are two unpardonable insults:—“Couldn’t you write something decidedly immoral (!) and, provided the verse was lovely, (!!) be just as fond of it as you are of this?”—that is of Renascence. “Couldn’t I write something decidedly immoral?” Certainly not, you shameless wench! “Provided the verse was lovely”—Gr-r-r-r!!! Yip!! Wow!!! Oh, Gladys Niles, you perfect dear! Yes, I could. Someday I probably will, and I shall be even fonder of it, I am sure. I love poetry in three different ways:—intellectually, (the skilful rhymes of Browning and the clever satires of Pope); spiritually, (the Ode on Immortality and the wonderful psalms of the Old Testament), and sensuously, (Swinburne, and Browning’s love poems, and the sonnets of Shakspere.)1 And this last love, a love of rhythm and color and music, is the most intense, which is the same as to say,—I am one part brain, one part soul, and three parts flesh and blood. That is the way with a great many people who wouldn’t admit it even to themselves. You ask me what I am reading.—The letters of my editor! Which are not infrequent, and not wholly editorial, and not at all uninteresting. We are quite well acquainted by now. I know his name (which I am under oath not to reveal), and I have three snap shots (which are well worth a second glance), and I have been invited to visit him and his people at their perfectly beautiful place just out of New York. There, there! My child, there, there! He is thirty-four, and married and the snaps are of his wife and baby. Not that his advanced age would really matter, for he is in one of the pictures and is—er—not unattrac­ tive. But seriously, isn’t it wonderful, the way it has happened? I little thought when I sent my manuscript away last spring that to-day I should be on such intimate terms with the editor that I could quiz him about his spelling, and he me about my scrawl! Yet such is the case. Isn’t it lovely to make new friends? I’ve made so many this year:—you and your grand-mother and Sophie, and Ella Somerville and her people.2 And my editor and his wife, and—oh, some delightful people I met last month at a summer-hotel here! I’ll tell you all about them sometime. One family is interested in my songs and has taken three of them away, with purpose of publication. Of course, nothing may come of it; but then—something might! One woman was a first cousin to Ethelbert

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Nevin, the composer.3 One man was a friend of Henry Van Dyke.4 There was a Bangor woman too—Mrs. Ezra Lunt Sterns (perhaps you know who she is) who wants me to visit her.5 Oh, it was wonderful, that whole thing! Some day I’ll go into details. The Lyric Year is to come out the first of next month. Judge if I count the days! I imagine it will be a very artistic book. It’s that kind of a publishing house. What an egoist I am! I have spread my incoherent self over more than two sheets of note-paper. But I know you are interested in what I am doing and am trying to do and am going to do! And it’s really all I can think of or talk of now,—the things that have happened to me. It’s like a fairy-tale! And truly, I have been very, very busy,—typewriting, and writing out music (the most exasperating task) and—ahem—keeping my numerous appointments with the upper-crusters. Someday I will astonish you by answering a letter promptly, and by filling it with experiences, aspirations, and anticipations other than those of Your friend,     Vincent Millay 1. When Millay mentions Browning, often she means the English poet Robert Browning (1812–1889), who was married to the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861). Pope is the English poet Alexander Pope (1688–1744). The English Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770–1850) wrote Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. Swinburne is the English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909). Millay later studied Swinburne at Vassar; in the spring of 1917 she took a course titled English Q (Later Victorian Poetry): “A study of the poets from Clough to Kipling, with emphasis upon the poetry of Arnold, Morris, Rossetti, Swinburne, and Meredith, and some consideration of their activities in other fields of art” (Vassar Library: Vassar College Bulletin: 1916–1917, 72). 2. Ella Somerville is the daughter of Dr. Somerville, who cared for Millay’s father (Krystyna Poray Goddu, A Girl Called Vincent [Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2016], 65). 3. Ethelbert Nevin (1862–1901) was an American composer and pianist. 4. Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) was a popular American author; his works include The Story of the Other Wise Man (1896). 5. Lucia Mandeville Sterns (1839–1915), born in Brewer, Maine, and married to Ezra Lunt Sterns.

28  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

To Caroline Dow Camden, Me. Nov. 18, 1912. Dear Miss Dow,—1 I am writing to ask your help in a difficulty in which, through no fault of myself or anyone else but through the great kindness alone of a friend, I now find myself. I am sorry to trouble you, but this is really the only thing for me to do. You will remember Mrs. Esselborn, who was at Camden Me Whitehall with you this summer. Perhaps you will remember, too that she was interested in the idea of a college education for me. But you probably do not know that, wishing to feel such an education certain, even in case you should be unsuccessful at Vassar, Mrs. Esselborn has now negotiated that there is now more than the possibility of a chance for me at Smith. Which is quite as wonderful as it sounds, and a great deal more complicating. For this reason:—the Smith people, from whom I have just heard, seem to have no knowledge of any other plan, and wish me to answer as soon as possible with information concerning my high school courses such as I have already given you. But of course I can not, in fairness to them, to you or to myself, tell them anything at all until I know first what my chances are at Vassar. I have always wanted dreadfully, and until now hopelessly, to go to college. I would far rather go to Vassar than anywhere else. I have always liked it best, and now I truly love even the name of it—whenever I think of college lately it somehow always has a V on its sweater; but even more than I want to go to Vassar,—I want to go to college! So that if anything should happen that I couldn’t go to Vassar, I wouldn’t want to have spoiled my chances at Smith. I am sure you quite understand the position I m in. And will you write me as soon as you can so that I may have something definite to tell Mrs. Esselborn’s friends? I hope you won’t be obliged to say, “By all means, Smith.” For I am already, at heart at least, a Vassar girl. Very sincerely, V. M. 1. Caroline B. Dow (Vassar, class of 1880), a member of the board of the Young Women’s Christian Association, heard Millay recite her poem “Renascence” in Camden at Whitehall Inn during the summer of 1912, and made up her mind to become a benefactor for the young poet

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First page draft of a letter to Louis Untermeyer. (Library of Congress) and find a way to send her to Vassar College (Nancy Milford, Savage Beauty [New York: Random House, 2001], 77).

To Louis Untermeyer Camden, Maine, Dec. 5, 1912. Dear Mr. Untermeyer,—1 I was especially glad to get a note from you. Your verses are among the first in the book to me. There is a twist to them, whimsical, daredevil and pathetic combined, which particularly appeals to me. Please don’t think I am just “hitting back.”

30  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay I am glad you like Renascence so well. If you do indeed review the book as you spoke of doing, will you send me a copy of the paper, please? I should not be likely to see it otherwise, and I shall wish to. Very truly, Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Louis Untermeyer was an American poet and anthologist (1885–1977). In 1913 he sent Millay his first collection of poetry, First Love: A Lyric Sequence (1911), and he began anthologizing her poetry in 1919, in Modern American Poetry: An Introduction.

To Arthur Davison Ficke and Witter Bynner Camden, Maine, Dec. 5, 1912. To Mrs. and Mr. Arthur Davison Ficke and to Witter Bynner:—1 You are three dear people. This is Thanksgiving Day, too; and I thank you. Very truly yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay To Mr. Ficke and Mr. Bynner: Mr. Earle has acquainted me with your wild surmises. Gentlemen: I must convince you of your error; my reputation is at stake. I simply will not be a “brawny male.” Not that I have an aversion to brawny males; au contraire, au contraire. But I cling to my femininity! Is it that you consider brain and brawn so inseparable?—I have thought otherwise. Still, that is all a matter of personal opinion. But gentlemen: when a woman insists that she is twenty, you must not, must not call her forty-five. That is worse than wicked; it is indiscreet. Mr. Ficke, you are a lawyer. I am very much afraid of lawyers. Spare me, kind sir! Take into consideration my youth—for I am indeed but twenty—and my fragility—for “I do protest I am a maid”2—and— sleuth me no sleuths! Seriously: I thank you also for the compliment you have unwittingly given me. For tho I do not yet aspire to be forty-five and brawny, if my verse so represents me, I am more gratified than I can say. When I was a little girl, this is what I thought and wrote:

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Let me not shout into the world’s great ear Ere I have something for the world to hear; Then let my message like an arrow dart And pierce a way into the world’s great heart. You cannot know how much I appreciate what you have said about my Renascence. If you should care to look up the April, 1907 number of Current Literature, you would find a review of my Land of Romance, (near a review of Mr. Bynner’s Fair of my Fancy.) And you might be interested in Mr. Edward Wheeler’s comment: “The poem which follows (by E. Vincent Millay) seems to us to be phenomenal. The author, whether boy or girl we do not know, is but fourteen years of age.”3 E.St.V.M. P.S. The brawny male sends his picture. I have to laugh! 1. Arthur Davison Ficke (1883–1945), was an American poet and lawyer, and Witter Bynner (1881–1968) an American poet and playwright; both were important figures in Millay’s life, especially in her early career. 2. In Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, Helen declares: “I am a simple maid, and therein wealthiest That I protest I simply am a maid” (2.3.66–67). 3. Millay paraphrases and condenses the editorial preface before the publication of her poem “The Land of Romance” (456–457). She means Bynner’s poem “The Face of My Fancy” (458).

To Arthur Davison Ficke Camden, Me., Dec. 15, 1912. My dear Mr. Ficke: Ever the “dulcet phrases”! You deserve them. And I make it a point always to “gie the deil his due.”1 I can with impunity, since you have called me “the limit,” say that you are a ridiculous thing;2 and I will add that your home-life is mild in comparison to what I had imagined it, and that Mr. Metcalf ’s portrait of you is no doubt a flattering likeness,—but I must, out of justice, admit that I love the little book.3 Indeed, I cannot tell you how much! But I can and will tell you the things in it that I love best: first of all what The Other Sculptor says. That is one of the very

32  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay finest things I ever read. It seems to me quite perfect. And its simplicity is breath-taking. Then the shepherd’s song. Did you ever herd sheep, Mr. Ficke? I do not see how otherwise you could have done it.—“This year winter was not bad,” and “Such a pair as thee and me,” and this, loveliest of all “Many a day and many a day.” I truly do not see how I ever got along without the Shepherd-song! And I love the page beginning “I will remain till my last line is writ.” And, oh, the first stanza of that “Monody in April”! You need not wish to be a painter, my friend; you are one. And truly a poet. I am very glad you wrote me. And very, very glad to have “The Earth Passion.” The earth passion! I have always had that. Perhaps that is why I love the book so well. I thank you for it—and for the scribble on the fly-leaf. If by, “Do you read Coleridge?” you mean, “Is Renascence done in imitation of The Ancient Mariner—no, it is not. I have read Coleridge, of course; but not for years.4 And I never even heard of William Blake. (Should I admit it, I wonder?) As to the line you speak of,—“Did you get it from a book?” indeed! I’ll slap your face! I never get anything from a book. I see things with my own eyes, just as if they were the first eyes that ever saw, and then I set about to tell, as best I can, just what I see. And I have an idea that there are vastly fewer “accidents of composition” than one might think. But I will answer honestly, as you bade me. I did see it, yes. I saw it all, more vividly than you may suppose. It was almost an experience. And it is one of the things I don’t talk about easily. All of my poems are very real to me, and take a great deal out of me. I am possessed of a masterful and often a cruel imagination. All this is just the wee-est confidential, you know, and just because you asked me to be honest. When I bring out a volume (save the mark!) you shall certainly know. I was interested in your book’s dedication, “Cambridge days and nights!” T.N.M. is of course Mr. Metcalf. And is Witter Bynner H.W.B. or W.H.L.B.?5 If the former, I am convinced that his first name is Hezekiah. If, as you predicted, you fail to get back the snap, I will send you another.

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I wonder if I may be remembered to Mrs. Ficke? Sincerely, Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. The phrase “gie the deil his due” (give the devil his due) may be found two times in The Gentle Shepherd, A Pastoral Comedy; also Songs and Scots Proverbs, With Memoir of the Author (1891), by the Scottish author Allan Ramsay (1686–1758). The Gentle Shepherd and Scots Proverbs contain the phrase. Millay’s interest in Scots was fostered by her mother. Cora kept a notebook that bears the following handwritten cover: “Cora Buzzell Millay. / Scotch Dialect Dictionary / June, 1890. Rockland, Me” (LC 110.) 2. Millay is quoting from Ficke’s letter of December 9, 1912, which begins: “If you pardon my saying so, you are the limit!” After saying he will send Witter Bynner her letter and snapshot, and thinking that Bynner will keep her picture, Ficke asks for a second photograph: “I know his pterodactylic nature; and it seems,—does it not,—as though it would be a matter of mere justice for you to send me another when, in dulcet phrases, you write to thank me for the book I am sending you” (LC, 77, 1). 3. Ficke had sent her a copy of his book The Earth Passion, Boundary, & Other Poems (1908). “The Other Sculptor” and “the shepherds’ song” refer to sections of his poem “Boundary: A Study in Desire”; these sections are titled, respectively, “There speaketh An Other Sculptor” and “A Shepherd singeth.” “The Other Sculptor” begins, “Blow out the candle. For I fain would sit / Here in the shadow by the firelight, / And watch the ashy logs a little while.” The “shepherd’s song” begins, Now the Spring’s begun to bloom, And the flowers hide the hills. Hark! it’s like a merry tune, This white dashing of the rills! Millay quotes lines 5, 12, and 16 from “A Shepherd singeth.” Following is the first stanza (out of five) from “A Monody in April.” Were I a painter I would paint these marshes With the sad mist upon them: the low shore Of palest green beyond the mirror water— A green thread on the grey of lake and sky. And then, touching the brush most delicately, I would add the mystery of the cold white rain That falls at moments. And I think one bird— A heron, or a wild-duck from the north, Should hover like a leaf along the sky. 4. As Holly Peppe has noted, “Both the theme and some of the imagery in ‘Renascence’ are reminiscent of Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (Edna St. Vincent Millay: Early Poems, edited by Holly Peppe [New York: Penguin, 1998], 153). The English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) first published The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (as The

34  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, in Seven Parts) in Lyrical Ballads (1798), his collaboration with William Wordsworth (1770–1850). 5. Ficke’s dedication page lists nine abbreviated names “In Memory of Cambridge Days and Nights.” Ficke and Thomas Newell Metcalf, both class of 1904 from Harvard, were on the editorial board for The Harvard Advocate.

To Arthur Davison Ficke Camden, ME Christmas, 1912 Dear Mr. Ficke,— I am christening in your honor a Christmas fountain-pen and a Christmas box of note-paper. (Just by accident I had three boxes of Crane’s Linen Lawn, and you have no idea how super-swell I feel. Aren’t these envelopes sweet?) And I christened a paper-knife in the pages of The Happy Princess.1 I wonder if you are duly inspired. All this honor is heaped upon you just because you have been so very nice to me. I haven’t had time yet to read the books you have sent but I’m sure you have no idea how pleased I am to have them. I received the enclosure from Illinois,—how you Harvard men do bounce around! I have never been out of New England. But then, of course, Springfield isn’t far from you. When I have had time to read things I will tell you what I think of them. I imagine you’re dying to know. But I am prejudiced in your favor, anyway, by the first one you sent. (I cannot conceive of a man as successful both as a poet and as a lawyer; and I have about decided that you must be a poor lawyer. Is not the compliment subtle?) I will send you some manuscripts as soon as I get them back from (ahem!) from the Poetry Society of America, where they are to be read Friday night.2 (I shake in my shoes.) If you please, I have been elected to membership in the aforesaid Society. I could hardly believe it; but it’s true. If you play Hedda Gabler with my manuscripts it will do you no good, for I shall always have an extra copy.3 (If you have to look up that allusion, be honest and confess. It will even up about William Blake,— and I shall be delighted. Won’t it be great about Mrs. Ficke’s sister? I feel as if I’d made another friend already. I’ll write you a real letter soon and send the snap I promised. But this is all the paper that goes with the

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envelope and I simply can’t begin to waste the envelopes yet. — S­ incerely, Edna St. Vincent Millay N.B. This pen doesn’t balk because it isn’t a very nice pen,—for it is. It’s just that I wield it amateurishly, being a novice in fountain pens. (Another shameless confession.) P.S. I thank you for the book. I am very, very pleased. E. St. V. M. 1. That is, she used a letter-opener to open the uncut pages of Ficke’s book. Her next letter contains more comments on his book. 2. The Poetry Society of America began in New York City in 1910. When “Renascence” was published in The Lyric Year, Edward J. Wheeler was president of the society and Jessie B. Rittenhouse was the secretary. 3. In Henrik Ibsen’s play Hedda Gabler (1890), Hedda burns Ejlert Lövborg’s only copy of his manuscript. Edmund Gosse translated the play in 1891.

To Arthur Davison Ficke Camden, Me. Dec. 27, 1912. My dear Mr. Ficke,— The little book of Blake has come.1 And I take it all back, just as you said I would, about slapping your face. I haven’t the heart. I am going to like him as well as even you could wish. And, strangely enough, I find that I have always known and liked one little song of his without ever knowing that he wrote it. It is the first of the Songs of Innocence, the one that begins “Piping down the valleys wild,” you know. And the music is by a Mr. Gilchrist who is, I suppose, that very Mr. Gilchrist who is spoken of so often in the introduction.2 Now isn’t that interesting? Did you know it had been set to notes? The lines I like best in it so far, (in the book, I mean), even better than Sunflower, are these, the fourth stanza of The Birds:— “Dost thou truly long for me? And am I thus sweet to thee? Sorrow now is at an end, O my lover and my friend!”

36  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Now I truly and absolutely love that. Do you? And I love the little song in the front of the book beginning “How sweet I roamed from field to field.” Especially the last:—he “stretches out my golden wing, and mocks my loss of liberty.” Can’t you see that? The picture is perfect in my mind. I have had very little time to read since the books came. But I have, of course, skum them. (Forgive me! That isn’t just the way I do it; but the word is so expressive). There are two and a half lines in The Happy Princess3 that I wish to speak of right this minute. “____ ____ ____ I will not press On you one breath of its great tenderness If thus it stirs your pitiful sweet tears.” I think you have said that wonderfully well. It is so simple, yet somehow so big. You might have dedicated to me The Poet Yôshi, for indeed your songs have found in me a heart that loves them. But then of course a great many people must do that, despite your suggestions to the contrary.

You may have another sheet of paper this time. This isn’t Christmas stock. I am enclosing two or three manuscripts that I happened to have on hand. Don’t hesitate to tell me you don’t like them; there is every possibility that you won’t; they are very unlike Renascence. But don’t be afraid to tell me. I shall bear up wonderfully well under the shock. That word is “shock”—mercy, I can’t write it. I always want to put a “c” in the first part. Shock; Shock; an electric thrill. There. Please criticize frankly. I want you to. They’re not my best things. They’re just “something I wrote”. . . . This letter is a sight. I’m scribbling terribly and can’t seem to stop. Please tell me the top-notch line that owes that quality to an accident. And please reassure Mrs. Ficke as to her doubt as to my doubt as to your sanity,—(example of a periodic sentence!) I am sure that you are quite, quite sane,—in so far, that is, as a poet can be sane, for the poetic temperament is a kind of monomania, I think. The “unspeakable gifts,” even, caused me nary a shiver,—I could understand so perfectly the

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mood which caused you to send them. You are unconditionally forgiven. But are you seized often by those spells? For I imagine that people who did not understand might be very much offended, and then you would get your face slapped. I do not go to school, old man. I was honorably graduated from the Camden High School nearly four years ago. It is only because you are so very old that I seem to you a child, old man. But even if I were still attending, and should be late subsequent to the perusal of your epistle, (keep it up, dear, you’re doing fine!) even then you need feel no compunctions, for I should without the slightest doubt have been late anyway. I have been registered at Vassar for next fall. I do hope I get in. I shall look up Miss Blunt one of the very first things I do.4 I am awfully glad you told me about her. I am even crazier than ever now about going. Does she look like Mrs. Ficke? This letter is too incoherent even for the fact of me to excuse it. I am nevertheless, Sincerely yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay P.S. This very minute the P.S. of A. is vivisecting my verses!5 Happy thought to go to bed on. “Sleep well, sweet angel”!6 1. Allan Ross Macdougall identifies the copy of Blake: “The ‘little book of Blake’ which Ficke sent was one of the small pocket volumes of the Walter Scott Company’s ‘Canterbury Poets’ which the poet cherished all her life and finally took to Ragged Island, Maine, to be part of the small library there” (Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay, ed. Macdougall, 24). The poet Joseph Skipsey provided the introduction to this book first published in 1885. 2. William Wallace Gilchrist’s (1846–1916) musical setting of Blake’s “Introduction” to Songs of Innocence appears in W. L. Tomlin’s Laurel Song Book (1901); W. W. Gilchrist titled the poem “The Piper.” The other “Gilchrist” is Alexander Gilchrist (1828–1861); his Life of Blake first appeared in 1863. 3. Ficke’s book The Happy Princess and Other Poems (1907), which contained the eight-line poem “The Poet Yôshi.” 4. Katharine Blunt (1876–1954), Vassar class of 1898, was the elder sister of Ficke’s wife, Evelyn Bethune Blunt (1880–1954). Katharine was an instructor in chemistry at Vassar, and as Millay notes in subsequent letters, earned her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. 5. Poetry Society of America. 6. Echo of lines and the title of the German composer Franz Abt’s (1819–1885) “Sleep well! Sweet angel! (Schlaf wohl, du süsser Engel du)” (1864).

38  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

From Kathleen’s Good Times Book, where Kathleen wrote: “This is a picture by Arthur Rackham of Vincent’s and Norma’s personalities. I took it about a week ago, when we were cleaning up the house for a week-end spree, out on the big rock in back of the house. I love it to death. Vincents chin and Hunk’s gaze, as though down all the ages—oh! I adore it!” The photograph was taken by Kathleen; she is referring playfully to the English artist Arthur Rackham (1867–1939), whose works included illustrations for Grimm’s Fairy Tales in 1900 and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1908. (New York Public Library)

To Arthur Davison Ficke [Camden, Maine Dec. 29, 1912] Saturday night. Dear Sir: Behold me walking into your parlor for legal advice. I am in receipt of a letter from a lunatic who wishes my autograph on the one-eighty-eighth page of his copy of The Lyric Year. Keep ’s a’! Are you in receipt of a similar request, and if so what are you going to do about it? They won’t do it, will they? He seems quite sure of my acquiescence— perhaps because he thinks I will be flattered by his request—and he

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encloses a stamp and a somewhat premature thank-you. Do you remember, in the Mikado, “the literary nuisances who write for autographs”?1 I never got a letter just like it before. Is it usual? Do be indulgent and explain, There are more things than William Blake that I never heard of. I am a dreadful bother, I know. If your other clients clamor too clamorously postpone me, do. But don’t waste-basket me, please, for I am in earnest, (I am not so afraid of lawyers as I used to be. They are lambs in wolves’ clothing).2 —E. St. V. M. 1. In the Mikado (1885), the light opera by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, Ko-Ko (Lord High Executioner of Titipu) sings of “the pestilential nuisances who write for autographs.” 2. An inversion of the popular expression “wolf in sheep’s clothing”; possible allusion to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “sheep in wolves’ clothing” in “Luther’s Warfare against Rome” in Biographia Literaria (1817).

To Aunt Susie Camden, Me. Jan. 6, 1913 1 Dear Aunt Sue,— I want to thank you for being so nice to us at Christmas time. The things were awfully pretty, especially that dear bow with the Irish crochet,—do you do that work yourself? It is lovely. We had a nice Christmas. I had three boxes of Crane’s Linen Lawn (this is one kind. Isn’t it dear?) a fountain-pen, a paper-knife (brass, and a beauty), and quite a number of books. See how people humor my literary taste!— Mother wrote you about It, didn’t she? I’ve truly been too busy to write anybody anything for a long time, and I’m awfully busy still,—I have an astonishing amount of mail to attend to—and I’m all the time receiving notice of the most interesting reviews,—and gratifying, too! This month’s Forum (Jan.) has a long article about the Lyric Year, copies almost the whole of my poem, and says nice things about it, too. I thought that perhaps you might like to get it. Probably they sell it there. If you do get it, notice a poem in it by Louis Untermeyer, who gave me a forty-line comment in his column in the Chicago Evening Post, and with whom I am corresponding.

40  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Mother is nursing now in Rockland at Dr. Hanscom’s hospital. Norma is in the telephone office, did Mother tell you? Kathleen is a Junior in High, and manager of the girl’s basket-ball team. A boy who was in my class in school and who now goes to Bowdoin, Henry Hall, says he knows George quite well, and that he is awfully smart.2 Dear Aunt Susie, I hope you getting well awfully fast. Love from us girls, Vincent 1. Aunt Susie is Mrs. Frank L. Ricker, of Portland, Maine. 2. Henry Leyenseller Hall (1891–1957), was one of twenty-one students who graduated from Camden High School in 1909 with Millay. The Camden Herald notes that this class was “the largest in the history of our High School” (June 18, 1909: 3). Hall wrote the class poem. He was in Bowdoin’s class of 1914.

To Arthur Davison Ficke Camden, Me., Jan. 12, 1913. My dear Mr. Ficke,— Your unstinted admiration of my Escaped-Nun stationery has led me to submit to you a second specimen.—You described the other as “a nun in a diamond dog-collar.” Very well, I raise you one. This severe white envelope with its brazen border represents the Mother Superior— with “an edge on”! (Don’t let anyone who’s the least bit respectable know that I said that, will you?—As far as yourself is concerned,—after that comic-Valentine episode of our early correspondence, you are not in a position to say a word!) It is quite true that I have yet to learn the ABC’s of my art. I am hoping that college will help me;—but if I should come back a suffragette instead of a poet wouldn’t it be dreadful? (I am not sure whether it is Vassar or Smith to which I am going. If I were your grand-child, say,—now which do you think you would prefer for me?) Potpourri belongs in that division of my verse which I classify as “bull-doggerel”; that is to say, “I was determined to write a sonnet.” “The

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 41

Little Bush” needs pruning. (But I am much too busy in another part of my garden to bother with it now. It will doubtless die for want of attention.) “Tiny Bird” was pure inspiration.—I had no typed copies on hand, you must remember, of the things I would have liked best to send you. They have not even yet been returned from the P.S. of A. (You didn’t really think, did you, that I, myself, was going to read them aloud to the assembled deities? Keep’s a’!—O, my fluttering heart! I am quite content for a while yet to be nothing but just “The Littlest Member.” I imagine it will be some time yet before I get right up and “speak in meetin’.”) When I get them back, I am, with your august permission, going to send you something else. I have gratefully absorbed into my system all you said about the others.—And I hope they didn’t spoil your smoke! I thank you very much for sending me Mr. Untermeyer’s review in the Chicago Evening Post. My appreciation of your kindness is in no wise dimmed by the fact that I had already—and now don’t be getting jealous, will you?—had already received a copy from Mr. Untermeyer himself, with whom also I am also corresponding. I saw your little mark under Blake. It is funny. I see, too, that Wm. Marion Reedy and Miss Rittenhouse (Secretary of the P.S. of A.) have both likened my style to that of John Masefield.1 And that’s funny. Dead funny. Do you suppose he would feel even—even mildly amused if he knew it? (You were disappointed in my manuscripts, weren’t you? I knew you would be. And I don’t know why I sent them,—I knew they were inferior. But think of the atrocious puns and the ungrammaticisms of Shakspere, and the many, many times when Browning stoops to vaudeville stunts—and don’t quite lose faith in me!) “Queen Mab in the Village” is indeed charming.2 Somehow, I can’t tell why, the lines I like best in it are these two, near the end, “Bowing to a maiden in a pansy-velvet gown.” Somehow that—that just “gets me”! The whole thing is bewitching,—I wouldn’t dare to read it on Hallowe’en just before going to bed! So it was Mr. Lindsay’s thumb-print on the envelope,—not yours! I wondered.—I have found Miss Blunt in my Vassar Bulletin,—Miss Katherine Blunt, Ph.D.—Dr. Blunt! What is Mrs. Ficke’s name,—please tell me? It’s not Helen, is it? Please tell me. Sincerely, Vincent Millay

42  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. William Marion Reedy (1862–1920) published Reedy’s Mirror. John Masefield (1878– 1967) was an English poet. One possible connection with Millay is Masefield’s popular poem “Sea-Fever,” which begins, “I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and sky, / And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by”—from his collection Salt-Water Ballads (1902). 2. Vachel Lindsay’s “Queen Mab in the Village” was published in Lindsay’s Rhymes to be Traded for Bread (1912).

To Sara Teasdale 135 E. 52nd St. Monday [February 11, 1913] My dear Miss Teasdale,— “A cup of tea together”? By all means,—and soon, please! You are an old friend of mine, tho I am one of your newest acquaintances. It is always fine to meet old friends, and it is nothing less than thrilling to meet old friends for the first time! Lo I shall await eagerly a second note from you suggesting a date. Most sincerely, Edna St. Vincent Millay P.S. In justice, but with considerable reluctance, I confess that there is no real necessity for haste as I expect to be here till June.—E. St. V. M.

To Arthur Davison Ficke New York City, Mar. 6, 1913. Dear Mr. Ficke, I think you are very, very nice. And I wish very much that you were here in New York and that some of the people who are here were out in Iowa. I am not being a Bohemian. I am not so Bohemian by half as I was when I came. You see, here one has to be one thing or the other, whereas at home one could be a little of both. And whereas heretofore I have amused myself in idle moments by the diffusing of indiscreet letters which I would now give the half of my kingdom to recall, I am at present (unless indeed that confession has made this letter also indiscreet) prudent to the point of Jane Austen. I left all my bad habits at

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 43

home,—bridge-pad, cigarette-case, and cocktail-shaker. I brought with me all my good habits,—diary, rubbers, and darning-cotton. This is not intended to be humorous. So please believe that this whole page is true, and take it seriously. Tuesday, at the luncheon given by the Poetry Society to Alfred Noyes, I met, among others, our friend Witter Bynner.1 He was one of the speakers, and he spoke very well. What do you think of Anna Hempstead Branch (if that’s the way to spell it)?2 Miss Rittenhouse is to have a Literary Evening (don’t I hate the expression!) Sunday. I’ll tell you about it later perhaps,—it may be a lot later, you understand. I am sure that no one in New York has time to write letters. This is quite an effusion for me now. I hope you didn’t ask me any questions. I am quite settled down. I run in my rut now like a well-directed wheel. Sometimes, it is true, I feel that I am exceeding the speed limit. But I seldom skid, and when I do there is very little splash. Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it. Very sincerely, Vincent Millay P.S. That wasn’t an indiscretion that I expurgated. I am really sensitive on the subject and I was afraid you might think so. It was a repetition.—V.M. 1. Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) was an English poet and academic. In the fall of 1913, he delivered the Lowell Lecture at Harvard, titled “The Sea in English Poetry.” 2. Anna Hempstead Branch was an American poet (1857–1937), who had published three books of verse by 1910.

To Kathleen and Norma Millay March the Twelfth [1913] Dear Girls,— Is this not swell? I mean to say,—is not this swell? You can buy it here in the Training School, I mean to say,—I can buy it here in the Training School. And I just did, so I’m trying it on you! I haven’t got my

44  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay wax yet. New York is the unhandiest place on earth, honestly, unless you live right down town. That’s a new thought for you. I have got a post-­ office located, but Lord knows where there’s a sealing-wax joint. Someday, probably, when I’m hunting for collar supporters, I’ll rush wildly into a sealing-wax joint. Haven’t a doubt of it. Love, Vincent

To Arthur Davison Ficke [135 East 52nd Street New York City] Friday, Mar. 14 ’13. Dear Mr. Ficke,—You are making fun of me, which is wrong, because I really wasn’t spoofing1 you at all. I did write you a queer letter, I know, but I didn’t do it, to use your own phrase “out of cussedness.” Someone had said something nasty about me, and I just took that way to work it off. Which perhaps wasn’t fair to you. But it is preferable to “going out & killing a man,” isn’t it? The next time you feel in that mood, write a letter to me. I sha’n’t mind at all. (Now don’t you feel bad?) I am using this card because I am all out of plain paper and daren’t risk the giddy kind on you again. I like Witter Bynner very much indeed. What light does that throw on me?—Please, the light of your favorable glances! You were so distinguished with me I am not going to ask you to tell me what he says about me, if he says anything, for I know you’d be just mean enough to tell him that I asked you. You’ll probably be mean enough now to tell him why I’m not going to ask you. You mustn’t let my crazy letters bother you. (I forget your profession; you have probably seen through & through me long ago.) But I am really very nice. You’d like me. (When I get some different paper I’ll write you; but not until you answer this.) Sincerely, Vincent Millay P.S. Your letter goes beautifully on the pianola.

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 45 1. Millay includes the word “spoof ” in “Song to Men,” which she sent to Edmund Wilson: “Song to Men, Composed and sung in very close harmony by The Millay Trio. Kathleen, soprano; Vincent, baritone; Norma, tenor.” Norma, as tenor, sings “Let them spoof us / For they love so / To beguile.” In George Herriman’s Krazy Kat comic for May 11, 1919, Ignatz the mouse tells Krazy Kat, “ ‘May’ is a Maid,” and Krazy replies “Now, you’re spoofing me—‘May’ is a month, aint it?” (George Herriman, Krazy & Ignatz, 1919–1921: A Kind, Benevolent and Amiable Brick, edited by Bill Blackbeard [Fantagraphics Books, 2011]).

To Kathleen and Norma Millay [135 East 52nd Street New York City March 15, 1913] Dear Girls,— Notice the seal. It is my first one. I have just got my wax. Mr. Munroe calls tonight. I’m in such a flutter. We had baked beans for luncheon today, the first I’ve had since I left home. Some times I just get starving for them.—If you eat from a fare table at breakfast & luncheon you must remember to put on the cloth at dinner. Otherwise,—awful. At least, that’s how we eat it here. Why don’t you write? —Vincent

To Norma Millay [135 East 52nd Street New York City March 20, 1913] Thursday morning. Dear— Have just got your letter. I wish I hadn’t said a word about coming home. I didn’t know you’d think I really could. I wouldn’t ask to for anything. It isn’t as if the Vanderbilts were sending me to college, you know. There’s quite a lot of money, but it’s not unlimited. My opera cloke isn’t new. It was somebody’s else I don’t know whose and was fixed over for me. But it is lovely, just the same. The dress with the train hasn’t been made over yet. You see I have to wait till Miss Dow gets ready to have

46  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay the dressmaker. My yellow chiffon I have worn a few times and it’s all gone again, for good, I guess. My brown dress with the Irish collar is purely for afternoons (the sleeves are long and I can’t wear gloves with it), and if it were not for your yellow dress which I have washed & which looks lovely, I would be quite destitute for an evening dress. Kathleen’s pink I’m going to send back to her. It is really too babyish & too short for me. And she probably needs it. The tan dress, tho, dear, I really don’t need at all. I was piggish about that. I didn’t think. And I have more shirt-waists than I know what to do with. If you need your shirt I will send it to you. Or I will send you one I bought here, which has longer sleeves, and if you like it you can have that and swap with me. Tell me which to do. You could send it back if you didn’t like it, and have your own. My white gloves were $1.95 a pair, and they are very nice, real long & with three cunning little pearl balls at the wrist to button them. You want, I think, a quarter size smaller than you wear in other gloves. My first pair was 5 ¾ and they are a little large for me. They are out now being cleaned. I wore them perhaps four times. If you want me to I’ll send you those and if they fit you can have them for a dollar & a half, and I’ll get me another pair of 5 ½ like my last. You must answer this letter at once, dear, and tell me what to do about all these things. On the 22nd of February when my birthday money came Miss Dow was in Atlantic City. When I reached New York I had had $10 left of the $25. That was all I had from the 5th of Feb. to last me for luncheons at Barnard, carfares (which count up dreadfully), text-books (French grammar (second-hand) and Mlle de La Seigliere1—1.00; Horace Odes—1.26; Latin Dict.—1.80; Latin Grammar—1.12; Les Miserables—1.13; etc.), stamps, and all the other little things one has to get. Of course I couldn’t possibly get all those things with the $10. But I had to have them. I would have spoken to Miss Dow about it but all of a sudden she went off to Atlantic City, and when my birthday money came she was gone and I was broke. So of course I did the only thing. I used it up in carfares, luncheons, stamps, books, and laundry bills. On the eleventh of March I came home from Barnard with three cents & three subway tickets in my purse. Miss Dow was still away. So I did the only thing again. I went to Mrs. Caldwell & asked her if she knew how I could get some money to last me until Miss Dow should get back. And Mrs. Caldwell told me that

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 47

there had been money in the safe for me all along, if I’d only asked for it. So I got her to get me some & she gave me five dollars. This is the 20th and I have just fourteen cents left, besides three red stamps and two green ones. I am very much afraid that if I told Miss Dow about it she would say that I ought to be willing to do what I could to help. And of course I am. So we’ll say that I got with my birthday money: Money order to P.S. of A $1.03 Honey & Almond Cream .45 Orange Wood Sticks .10 Rexall Hair Tonic .50 ½ lb. Huyler’s .40 Gloves 1.95 Two collars ) Before Mrs. .25 ″ ″ buttons ) Caldwell took .25 Gray tie ) me shopping .37 Moving Pictures & Carfare .20 Post Cards .10 Telephonings .20 Contributions at Church .15 International Art. Ex. .25 & carfare .10 Lecture here in Training School .10 To Miss Hedges for Smith .05 Express from home .55 Peters Chocolate on Train .15 Carfare to Philharmonic Concert .10 Ride on ’bus top .10 Tooth Paste & Brush .30 Emery Boards .10 Mentholated Vaseline .15 Sealing Wax & Candles .15 _____ (Probably only approximate) $8.65

48  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay The rest you’ll have to just let go for carfares. Makes you kind of sick, doesn’t it?—Does me too. But if you have anything better to suggest I’m ready to listen. This letter may seem sort of grumpy. I was sick abed all day yesterday—all three meals in bed—and I ought to be in bed today but I have 1000 pages of outside reading to make up for Prof. Trent and it’s time I got started on it. That is really what vacations are for. When you get so crammed and crowded that you’re perfectly hysterical about ever coming out even they give you a vacation, a short one, to catch up in. Voilà!—John Milton was born on the 1st of April, 2000 b.c., in Camden, Me. Love, Vincent 1. Mademoiselle de la Seiglière by Jules Sandeau (1848).

To Martha Knight New York City, Mar. 22, 1913 Dear Mart,— There wasn’t a sign of a hole in either of ’em till yesterday, and then yesterday a wee one appeared,—and I darned it right up! I have worn them and worn them and worn them, with the dearest pair of black satin slippers with French heels & rhinestone buckles. They have stood before some wonderful paintings, they have sat crossed through some wonderful music, and they have kept step with some wonderful people. Long may they wave! (Not that I really wave them, dear. I don’t; at least, not often.) We are having a few days of vacation. Don’t think I wasn’t dying to come home. Instead, I am trying to get caught up in my outside reading for an English lecture course I’m taking. I have about a thousand pages to do. I read Paradise Lost in two afternoons and an evening. You try it sometime. When I got through with it my head felt exactly like an English bag-pudding. Next I must do P. Regained & Samson Agonistes.1

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Then a big fat life of Milton. “O, Pity Me!” Do you remember how beautifully John Barnes Wells sang that?2 It is really impossible to write much about everything, it takes so long and I’m so awfully busy. —But this is better than nothing, isn’t it? just to sort of say “Hello” to you. When I get home, tho! —I’m keeping my diary up religiously, so there won’t be a thing I can’t remember to tell you about. There are so many things I’m dying to tell you! Tomorrow I’m going to try to write little letters to some of the other girls. Send me a line when you can. I know you’re busy too. With much love, Vincent 1. Three works by John Milton: Paradise Lost (epic poem from 1667), Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes (an epic poem and a tragedy, from 1671). 2. John Barnes Wells (1880–1935) was a popular American tenor; his songs included Robert Burns’s “Red, Red Rose.”

To Norma Millay New York City, Mar. 27, 1913. Dear Lovèd,— If the Barker dress is fit to wear you wear it. Even if I needed it very bad, that is, needed a dress very bad, it would be silly to have that one, because people are beginning to wear ginghams here. The open cars are on and it is oppressively hot. In a day or two I am going to send home Wump’s pink dress & one of my tailored waists for you to try (you can wear it once on me (!!) even if you don’t like it well enough to keep it, which, however, I think you will) and the white gloves I spoke of. They ought to be just right for you. I’ll look around in Franklin Simon’s for some kind of an opera cloak. It’s a Fifth Avenue shop & you would probably as I now have your cloak say—“Fifth Avenue” in it as anything else. I got a perfectly darling dress there Tuesday, to wear to the Macdowell Club with Miss Dow.1 (We went

50  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay in a taxi and took Sara with us, because she’d had an invitation but hadn’t anyone to go with). This is the kind of dress it is, (I quote from my diary)— “The sweetest thing. Makes you think of summer & iced tea on the lawn & men & girls and once in a while a breeze. I am languorous in it.” It really is more for afternoon wear in summer than for evenings. But too lovely really to wear in the afternoon. Sara is mad about it & is going right down to Franklin Simon’s (where she got her suit) to try and get one exactly like it to take back with her to St. Louis. On the next page I will draw it. This is a sight. But never mind. It is the thinnest white voile stuff. The zig-zaggy trimming is pillow-sham lace, you know the kind, coarse & creamy, the [illegible] front is net, the buttons are small & globular & covered with bed-spread, it is very & loosely long-waisted, (all the models are) the belt is black velvet with a flat bow in the back, the way it comes in around the bottom the least bit and then flows out the least bit is enough to break your heart. It just clears the floor. It’s clingy, you know, not all pudgy like this. You wait till you see it. It was $15.75. I won’t be able to get you anything under that, dear. Between sixteen & eighteen I can do pretty well, I think. But New York at the first of the season is not bargainish, you know. I saw two pale green clip-furs at Franklin Simon’s for 18.50. The shade is beautiful, but they’re trimmed with silver fringe and a lot of rather cheap looking stuff under the chiffon. I don’t think you’d like them. There really is almost no green in New York. Those two dresses were all the green that we saw anywhere. I could get you something lovely in pink. Why don’t you have a pale pink, you haven’t for a long time?—Tell me the date of the Colby Prom so I’ll know how much time I have. Be sure. Don’t keep the gloves if they’re too tight. Because that wouldn’t pay at all. White gloves stretch like everything. I haven’t sung any since I’ve been here. Except in the bath tub, where I never could keep still. Alice Jacobs heard me & later I heard her say “Who was that singing in the bath-room?” Nobody knew. And when we were going up to dinner she said to me “Was that you singing in the bath-room?” And when I said “Yes” she said “It was perfectly lovely.” Witter Bynner sings in the bath-tub, too. He told me so. I’m glad you did that to Robie.

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Photostat of part of Edna’s letter to Norma of March 27, 1913. (Library of Congress)

It’s been pouring and has just cleared off. The sun is glorious. It’s cooler, too. I must try to get a little nap before dinner. If I have asked any questions in this letter be sure & answer them right off.

52  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay How are you feeling, Hunk? How are Wump’s teeth? How is Mother? Love Vincent P.S. Don’t dare say “dance” to me again.

O, yes, tell me all about ’em. 1. Caroline B. Dow was the secretary of the MacDowell Club of New York, which was one of the many MacDowell Clubs throughout the United States honoring the composer Edward MacDowell (1860–1908) and created to encourage music and other arts.

To Arthur Davison Ficke New York City. April 12, 1913. Dear Spiritual Advisor,— O, thank you!—such a beautiful, beautiful book, inside & out!1 You are very nice, I think, Mr. Ficke; doesn’t your family think so? I must tell you some of the things I like especially; some, not all— because to tell you all of the things I like especially I should have to send back the book. And that would be a mess. But just a few things that I notice in skimming through—“To strew with little waves the deep,” “the boon of manifold Small joys that never can grow old,” “Lightning of unleashed desires”—that is simply terrific; so too is this, “A fury tracking toward some shaken mind.” (If you will excuse my saying so, there are four reels of moving-pictures in that last.) In the first two lines of your “Two Women” on page seven, I get a wonderful picture, tho perhaps not the one you intended:—a wide, wide marble court, and, out beyond, the widest bluest sky that ever was, with swallows not too small, and very black. Of course the women are in the court, but I cannot seem to make them Japanese. In my picture they are Greek. “Some thin branch where the Spring is green.” That is perfect. Tho of course it is more beautiful because of the “tall form” behind it—a white form, I am sure—and the “wistful eyes,” that, I am sure, are gray.

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Right here, and apropos of “The Birds and Flowers of Hiroshige,” which I love best of all, and with which I am drunk at this moment, right here let me say that you are the only person I know whose poems about flowers & birds and skies and things, filled as they are with your own so evident Earth-Ecstasy, quite satisfy my Earth-Ecstatic soul. The colors in that poem make me fairly stagger. And, oh, your wonderful birds! The pheasant with its “snow-clogged feet,” the “wild geese that rush across the moon,” the kingfisher “over the reeds of the lagoon,” the crane under the sunset! There, there. This is a debauch. I must read a nice cool little poem. Where is the “Grecian Urn”?2

I have two poems coming out in the Forum soon.3 I don’t know just when. I hope you’ll like them.

Heavens! The dinner gong! Ten minutes to dress. And my hair!—if only I hadn’t torn it so feverishly. Really, in places like this, one shouldn’t take time to orgify.



Honorable sir, I am as ever your unworthy slave, —The Spirituelle Advised

1. Ficke’s book of poems titled Twelve Japanese Painters (Chicago: Ralph Fletcher Seymour, 1913). Millay quotes from half the poems: “Figure of a Girl by Harunobu,” “Portrait of an Actor in Tragic Role by Shunsho,” “Dramatic Portrait by Sharaku,” “Two Women by Kitao Masanobu,” “The Pupil of Toyokuni,” and “The Birds and Flowers of Hiroshige.” Preceding the poems, Ficke notes that “The Ukioye School of Japanese painting, best known of all Japanese schools, but still too little known, is the theme of this group of poems.” 2. A reference to John Keats’s poem Ode on a Grecian Urn—which fits in with Ficke’s poems about art. 3. “Journey” and “God’s World” appeared in Forum in 1913, in May and July, respectively. On the “Contributors to the May Forum” page, one reads of Millay that “Renascence, her contribution to The Lyric Year, excited general interest and appreciation. It was specially referred to in the article on The Lyric Year in the January number of The Forum” (no page number).

54  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

To Arthur Davison Ficke New York City, May 7, 1913. Dear Mr. Ficke,— You speak of my recklessness in telling you which of your poems I like best quite as if I had chosen those for which you do not care at all. Now that’s a bluff, and I call it. There is no doubt at all that every poem I like you like, because you were pretty well satisfied with the whole book before you ever let it go to press. Go to! Get thee to a hermitage!1 Can you change your mind to the extent of thinking that Witter Bynner’s “Tiger” in the last Forum is good?2 I think it tremendous. And if you say it’s because I’m young that I like it, I’ll say it’s because you’re young that you pretend not to. And you might tell me what you think of my “Journey” in the same number. It is neither sublime nor rotten, so there is a middle ground. But you needn’t try to get out of it by saying “Fair-to-middlin’.” It isn’t eccentric never to tell a poet which of his poems you like best, it’s just plain lazy. I beg your pardon if I’ve said anything rude and hope I have. For goodness’ sake send me the photograph you spoke of. Have you no personal pride? Just recollect the hideous images you sent me as a prologue to our correspondence, and fancy, if you can, the horrible picture of you I am carrying in my mind at the moment. You owe it to yourself. As for me,—please. (And isn’t there a weeny snap of Mrs. Ficke and Stanhope I might have?3 I want it awfully bad.—I suppose if I told you I want that more than the other you would be mean and not let me have either. The masculine mind moves in a straight line; it is easy to track it.) I am learning Russian. There are one hundred copecks in one rouble, and Anna Karenina isn’t pronounced that way.4 If the prophecy contained in your last letter has been fulfilled you are by now lying stark. If so, peace be to your ashes. But if not, “Serus in caelum redeas.”5 Sincerely, Vincent Millay 1. Gendered for Ficke, in place of Hamlet telling Ophelia: “Get thee to a nunnery” (Act 3, Scene 1).

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 55 2. Bynner’s one-act play Tiger appears in the May 1913 issue of The Forum. The play’s significance is argued in the “Editorial Notes” section in the September 1913 issue. The note begins: “Some discussion has occurred with regard to the publication of Tiger, by Witter Bynner, in the May number of The Forum. It was reported in the daily papers—no communication was sent to the editor of The Forum—that some purity league had taken exception to the morality of Mr. Bynner’s remarkable little drama” (415–416). 3. Arthur and Evelyn Ficke’s son Stanhope was born November 15, 1912. 4. The Russian novel Anna Karenina (1875–1877) by Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910). 5. From Horace’s Odes, 1.2.45, translated by Chris Childers as “Hold off a while your return to heaven,” “Literary Matters, (ALSCW)” October 2018.

To Kathleen Millay May 18 [1913] Darling,— Binnie can’t give him any birfday present. Binnie ain’ got no money. Will he understand, I wonder? It’s horrid to have a sister in New York and not get a birthday present from her. I’ve got the sweetest little doll-­ hammock I got for a dime at Sailors’ Snug Harbor (the sailors make them) and when I get home you shall have that for one of those immodest ladies that hang around your room. But I feel dreadfully not to be able to really do something. Please write & tell me you understand & forgive me, honey. You know every single cent I spend has to be set down in a little book & submitted to Mrs. Caldwell before I get a cent more. But I’m sending more love than I could possibly e’spress. And I’ve kissed your picture seventeen times & one to grow on—only don’t grow much more or I shan’t be able to reach you when I get home. I’ve got to get ready now to go out to the Kennerley’s. I have some darling new tan shoes, ties. Love to my Mother, please. And bless your heart, Wump. Vincent

56  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

To Vassar Dean Ellen McCaleb Camden, Me., July 12, 1913. Dear Miss McCaleb,— You wrote me a nice, understandy letter! I didn’t know Deans did. But I’m so encouraged that I’m not even afraid of the Algebra any longer; at least, not very. I shall have just about all I can do, I think, but I think I can do it. American History will be simple,—all I’ll have to do is just to learn the book. Will a Myers Ancient History be all right to read? That’s what we had in school. I don’t know who there is here that could help me with the Latin Prose so I’m going to do as you said and do the others. This sounds dreadfully mixed, I’m afraid, but I really have a very clear idea of it and know just about what I’ve got to do. I’d rather not have a room-mate the first year. And about my room,—Miss McCaleb, my room at the Training School was just exactly like all the rest except for one thing. It had one distinct advantage over all the other rooms in the building, and it was this,—the hot water came out of the cold water faucet. Perhaps that doesn’t seem to you much of an advantage, but it seemed that way to me. Sometimes it was the only thing that could keep me from being home-sick. When I turned on the water for the first time and found out about it I thought to myself, “Well, here’s where you belong,” it was that comfy. You see the room was so absolutely perfect in every way that you’d hardly believe anything like that could happen in it. And every time it did it I’d grin. You see, one said “Hot” and the other said “Cold”—and they both were liars. It was beautiful. If there’s a room in Vassar that sort of reminds you of me I’d really like to have it. But that’s all. I wouldn’t care much about the rest. You’ll think I’m crazy when I assure you that I’m quite in earnest about this. I really would rather have a smashed lamp-shade if only it said on it “Absolutely Unbreakable.” You see, it’s things like that that keep me going. I have to have ’em. This letter is a sight, but I’m in an awful hurry. I’ve got to get a lot of fun into tomorrow and Sunday, for Monday I begin to dig. I’m going to reckon up just how many bones, loans and logarithms per day I’ve got to

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exhume, and then start in to work every morning just like all the other common laborers. Very sincerely, Vincent Millay

To Arthur Davison Ficke “My Native Heath”1 July 12, 1913. Dear Mr. Ficke, Your letter got stuck in the box and I have just found it. Of course by this time you know that I am back in Camden and that it is “all off” but I thought you would appreciate a word of condolence. This is it. I have been back and forth about New York so much for the last few months that it doesn’t seem possible I’m really not to see you, that I can’t just run in and be there, you know. It would have been fine to see you. I’m sorry. But why on earth didn’t you come on a little sooner? I’ve only been home about two weeks now. I have a fearful amount of study ahead for this summer. I must pass examinations in mathematics and American History, and I always just— just—skun, as you might say, through algebra, and all I know about American History is one verse of the Star Spangled Banner.2 It’s really horrible, when you stop and think, which I’m taking pains not to do. I’m stealing time for this letter. I hope you appreciate it. Fannie Stearns Davis has just written me.3 Do you like her stuff?—I love it. Now I really must stop. Write me when you get in New York. It’s a lot different from Iowa to me now,—just across the yard, you know, in everything but distance. Sincerely, Vincent Millay 1. Allusion to Sir Walter Scott’s Rob Roy: “How fell that, sir?—Speak out, sir, and do not Maister or Campbell me—my foot is on my native heath, and my name is MacGregor” (chapter xx).

58  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 2. The verb “skun” antedates OED’s use of it in a letter by Robert Frost in 1917. 3. Fannie Stearns Davis (1884–1966) had published several poems in a recent issue of Poetry (March 1913).

To Sara Teasdale Camden, Maine July 14, 1913 Dear Sara,— I don’t feel so very bad about not seeing Dugle, but I did want to see your new suit. And did you get a dress like mine?—Very likely not, or you would have told me. But you should have; it was a good investment. It washes. Yes, my dear; Ivory soap; it floats. Against your advice I am going to Vassar in the fall. Provided I pass my examinations in algebra and American history, that is. Sara, if you know anything about algebra, for cat’s sake write and tell me. I don’t. I couldn’t tell a radical from a radish. And if I can’t vote what do I care about American history? There’s a flaw in the curriculum, that’s all. (And please don’t scan that word too closely or you may find it!) Tell me, why, instead of spending all your winters in New York, don’t you spend some of your summers in Camden?—Most everybody does. And it would be sort of fun to have you around. You have such nice brown eyes. You really have, you know. Alfred Noyes is going to be here this summer, or very near here, and I’m here, and if only you’d come we’d all be here. I have been visiting the Kennerleys and having a wonderful time. Also, I am in love at this minute with three different men. However, none of them knows it, because I’m being good. (And, by the way, it really isn’t so bad, you know, being good. Try it sometime.)— Sincerely, Vincent Millay

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To Arthur Davison Ficke [December 15, 1913] Go to!—Would you have me write you an improper letter?—Upon my soul I half believe you would! And I am not yet so Vassarized but that such a thing is still possible. But I should never send it, you know,— so what would be the use? Let me tell you something: Don’t worry about my little songs with wings; or about any of my startling & original characteristics concerning which you ought to worry, an you be my friend, for quite a different reason. I hate this pink-and-gray college. Did you know I would? It’s a joke of a college. If there had been a college in Alice in Wonderland it would be this college. Every morning when I awake I swear, I say, “Damn this pink-and-gray college.” It isn’t on the Hudson. They lied to me. It isn’t anywhere near the Hudson. Every path in Poughkeepsie ends in a heap of cans and rubbish. They treat us like an orphan asylum. They impose on us in a hundred ways, and then bring on ice-cream.—And I hate ice-cream. They trust us with everything but men,—and they let us see it, so that it’s worse than not trusting us at all. We can go into the candy-­ kitchen & take what we like and pay or not, and nobody is there to know. But a man is forbidden as if he were an apple. Oh, dear. I said that if I should write an improper letter I should never send it, but I’m going to do just that thing. And it’s your own fault. Mr. Ficke, are you fond of truncated prisms?—If you are I will ship you a box. This is where they grow. I don’t wonder Miss Blunt went to the University of Chicago. I am thinking seriously of going to the University of Moscow, and taking a course in Polite Anarchy & Murder as a Fine Art.1 But, there!—You will wish you hadn’t stirred me up. I am, if you prefer an unseemly abandon to a “seemly reserve,” Yours irrevocably, Vincent Millay P.S.—That you should see any “reserve” in my signing myself “Yours truly” is a matter of interest.

60  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Allusion to Thomas De Quincey’s essay “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts” (1827)

To Kathleen Millay [Vassar College] [April 27, 1914] Dear Kathleen,— Can you ever forgive me for not writing you a letter on your birthday?—I have been expiring with tooth-ache, hon, & you know what that means. I have had to stay away from classes for two days, in spite of my good resolution not to cut this spring. Yesterday I went down to my dentist’s twice, & last night, after this awful old tooth had ached all day & the only thought in his mind was to relieve the pain, he found, after putting in one drug after another, that he couldn’t relieve the pain, that oil of clove, & laudanum, & cocaine, & everything else he could pour into the cavity actually did not help one bit. And it had ached so long & I was so tired & he hurt me so that I just sat there & wept & wept & wept, & wiped my eyes & begged his pardon, & then wept some more. And then he called in the other dentist, (his superior, sort of, they work together, but the first one is just a boy) & asked him to look at the tooth, & so dear old Dr. Patterson came in & they both bent over me & put in one thing after another, & nothing helped one atom, not even their strongest drug, & I was just crazy.—There they stood, & behind them two assistants, maids, dressed like nurses, & at my side behind Dr. Patterson, dear Becky, who’d come down with me. It seemed there was some clotted blood caught somewhere so that it pressed down into the nerve & it was so near the nerve that they couldn’t get it out without killing me, & of course the drugs could do nothing. But at last Dr. Patterson said that if I’d take gas he’d get what he called “the pulp” away from the nerve & then the drugs would have a chance. He said he was afraid I wouldn’t take it well, I was so unstrung, but he wouldn’t give me enough to make me wholly unconscious, & anyway it was the only thing. So I said all-right, go ahead. I was so tired that I thought maybe I’d not have the ambition to crawl out from under

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it at all,—you see I’d never taken anything to put me to sleep. But I breathed it in like a good child until I was limp & then he put the buzzer in & let out that pulp stuff. And it hurt terribly, even tho I was supposed to be unconscious. And when I came out of it I put my head on his shoulder & wept some more, & he said “There, there,” & then I sat up. And then he began to put in some more dope, & after he’d put in a few big drops, he said, & smiled sort of queer, “These are heroic doses. We very, very seldom have to use so much.—’Pon my word, for a little bit of a girl you can get up the worst tooth-ache I ever saw.”—(So you see it really wasn’t just an ordinary one.) And all of a sudden it began to let up, & in a few minutes there was just enough left to remember it by, & then I had him call a taxi, & we went home & put me to bed. Went down again this morning, & theyr still at work on it, getting ready to fill it, but it doesn’t hurt now. So please forgive me, ’cause you can understand. Now ’Sephus ’ll stop talking ’bout hisself.

Do you like your pendant? It’s a perfectly good one. Everything that looks like gold on it is solid, you know. And the 14k. made inside is not of my scratching. If you don’t like the design you send back the pendant part & I’ll get you another. You can have plain pearls or one something like the one you have, but with a forget me not where your green leaves are. I sort of thought you’d like the green. The enameling in that shading on pendants is something quite new. I can do it all right out of my allowance, dear, & I hope you’ll love it. Please let me know as soon as you have time. Only six days more of classes, & the examinations. From now on I have to cram my head off. But never mind. We’ll have some fun this summer, between Latin Prose & American History. (Think of doing it all over again, just ’cause I was so stupid.) I’ll send Hunk’s cape Monday, the 25th. It’ll get there in plenty of time. And will you ask her if she’d mind sending it back for a few days.

62  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Mrs. Kennerley may not remember what she said a week ago Sunday about wanting me out after exams, but if she does, & really invites me, I’d sort of like to have it for a little tiny while. Must get to work now. Lots of love to Mother & Nor & your old silly self. —Vincent

To Millay Family [Vassar College Fall Semester, 1914] Dear Family,— I passed everything. Absolute. And I’ve been put into a special section in Latin where only the real sharks go. It’s called the honor section. Just think of that!—It means of course that I’ve been getting A’s in Latin right along. I haven’t a condition in the world. The doctor accepted my excuse from gym, and I’m all clear there. So I can be in French play if I get the part. Also I can be on Sophomore Tree Ceremony Committee, the biggest thing Sophomore year. I was nominated Chairman of the committee but I didn’t get that. But the girl who got it chose me or a half dozen others—peaches—to serve on the committee with her. So there’s that.—Went home with Elaine mid-year weekend. Had the best time yet. Friday night was Vassar Alumnae Play. Victor had the leading part, I told you, I think, and Elaine & I were ushers,—the only undergraduate ushers. You will find our names on the program I’m sending you under separate cover. Victor’s perfectly great in the play and when the play comes to Po’kips & all the girls go crazy about him & see me trotting around campus with him—Elaine & Dave going to give him a party—I think I shall die gloating. Our new president, Henry Nobel McCracken, was in a box there. I didn’t meet him but I saw him, and he’s a dear. A young man with an adorable wife who loves to entertain. And whom should I usher in all of a sudden but Aunt Calline! 1— Back from the west & come to her college alumnae play. Sat with her in an extra seat all through the first act & arranged to have breakfast with her Sunday—the only meal I had free—and stay with Elaine & Victor & Hick Raven should call for me to go to walk. Had a wonderful time with

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her. And when they came we showed them all over the building and they were crazy about it. They know she’s not my really truly aunt but that’s all. She was darling to me while they were there—of course when we were alone, too—but when I’d say things like—“O, Aunt Calline, don’t let them see the Auditorium until I get the lights on!” she’d say, “Very well, my dear, you shall have it just as you want it.” She was darling. She spoke of Kathleen. She said she thought the pictures were very good— she thought the coloring was unusually good. But she thinks that if Kathleen should ever get to be a real artist she would want the education behind her that art school alone could not give. She doesn’t know if she can do anything right now because of war times & all that but she’s going up to see Mrs. Giggett & the rest of ’em & see what they all think. She is really very interested. But she thinks it won’t do Wump any harm to wait a while at home & do some systematic reading. I told her I’d make her out a list. And the thought occurs to me that Wump never has read anything to speak of but The Little Colonel books & Tess of the Storm Country.2 (over) All she’s really informed on is baby-talk & cheap sensationalism. I’m enclosing here a list of disagreeable classics all of which she will probably find in the C.P.L. & which she is to read without skipping & report to me on.3 Kathleen has no excuse for not being at least well-grounded in reading. To begin with: Ibsen—A Doll’s House Thackeray—Vanity Fair Barrie—Sentimental Tommy H. G. Wells—Marriage William James—Pragmatism (or anything) (read something of William James & understand it, if you can).4

All right.—This is a very varied list, so it isn’t yet monotonous.

(Will send Wump’s dress right off.) If you can find out from Miss Hosmer which of the late magazines—

64  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay December, probably—contain Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion by all means read that. It’s rare. It may be in the December Everybody’s. I’m pretty sure it’s Everybody.5 I’m going to spend Easter vacation with Aunt Calline. She’s planning to give me the time of my life. A Mr. Chilton, whose photographs she has & who’s handsome & who has just returned from abroad where he’s spent most of his life, is to call on me. So is Parker Fillmore, who writes kid stories and whom I met that awful night at the Macdowell Club. He wrote a story in a late Everybody’s that we all read. A little girl teaches a big boy who loves her sister how to treat a girl & then loses him of course to her big sister & weeps in loneliness. Their names were Rosie & Guggie, it seems to me.6 Anyway, he is to be asked to call. And I told Aunt Calline that Percy Mackaye wants me to come see them when I’m there at Easter & she said all right. Then, of course, I’ll see the Rallis and Mitchell Kennerley. It will be very pleasant. O, whom do you suppose I saw in the Plaza the other day?—Mrs. Ralli took Elaine & me there to tea & as we were waiting for our check a woman followed by three other women,—sort of sporty swells—came in & went past us to another table & I gasped & gazed at the first woman & after a while when we had our things on ready to go I went over & spoke to her.—Mrs. Rutherford!—She was so glad to see me, & asked after us all, & especially for Norma, & wanted me to come & take luncheon with her but I was going back the next day & couldn’t. She wants me to call her up the next time I’m in town. Wasn’t that the strangest? I must get to studying. This new Latin section will be hard at first because I must start out writing startling translations to get me a rep. Miss Haight said my examination paper was very good.7 Think of that. Prose, too. And I taught it all to myself. Well, I must write Aunt Calline & tell I passed everything & when Easter vacation begins—Mar. 26 to April 7.—10 days. How’s Mother’s cold & Wump’s face & Hunk’s feeble mind? Love, Vincent. Monday [in corner:] Elaine printing the envelope.

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 65 1. “Aunt Calline” is Caroline B. Dow, Millay’s financial benefactor; Dow graduated from Vassar College in 1880. 2. The Little Colonel books, a series of titles for young girls, were written by the American author Annie F. Johnston, a pseudonym of Annie Fellows (1865–1931). The first novel, The Little Colonel, appeared in 1895. Tess of the Storm Country (1909) was written by the American author Grace Miller White (1869–1957), born Mary Esther White. The popular Canadian actress Mary Pickford (1892–1979) starred in the 1914 film of the same name. 3. C.P.L. is the Camden Public Library. 4. Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House (Et Dukkehjem, 1879, first translated from Norwegian into English, titled Nora, by Henrietta Frances Lord in 1882); William Makepeace Thack­ eray’s (1811–1863) novel Vanity Fair (1847–1848); J. M. Barrie’s (1860–1937) novel Sentimental Tommy: The Story of His Boyhood (1895); H. G. Wells’s (1866–1946) novel Marriage (1912); William James’s (1842–1910) lectures titled Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907). 5. Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts appeared in the November 1914 issue of Everybody’s Magazine. 6. Fillmore’s short story “The Rosie Morrow” was published in the September 1914 issue of Everybody’s Magazine. 7. Elizabeth Hazelton Haight (1872–1964) was a professor of Latin at Vassar College who trained Millay and remained in correspondence with her.

To Kathleen and Norma Millay [Vassar College] Monday, Nov. 9, 1914 Dear Girls,— This is just a note,—just to let you hear from me, you know. There’s no special news. First Hall Play is over, and hordes of last years Seniors were back for their reunion. I saw beautiful Martha Tipton & all the others that I liked so much & told you about. The play was The Piper, by Josephine Preston Peabody, (my friend, J. P. P.!) & a Sophomore, Anne Thorpe, played the lead.1 She was wonderful. When I get my condition off if I ever do—and I’m beginning to study up for that exam—I’ll try out for Hall Plays, too. I shall probably be with Aunt Calline Thanksgiving, tho she hasn’t really asked me yet, and its really an awfully good chance to get caught up on back work & stay here. Lots of people do and its really not bad. Kathleen must let me know as soon as she hears from Aunt Calline. I told her to write K. even if she hadn’t time to write us both. It may

66  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay be some time of course before she can know what she could do. I used to get crazy waiting, you know. It’s terribly cold here now. When I’m home Christmas I must have some thick dresses made. I honestly would adore to have new clothes! But “larnin’ ”s what I’m here for, so I should worry. And people like me all right anyway. Tho what I could do if I had some clothes is an interesting question. I might even make Daisy Chain. Agnes Rogers said to me the other night, “You’re one of the prettiest girls I ever saw.” And Kim broke out with this at the dinner table the other day, “O, Pinky, I know a girl who thinks you’re very beautiful.” There really is, you see, no accounting for tastes. And, out of justice to them, I must confess that I never doubt others see how unspeakably ugly I can be. Mary and Graham said, that “Nancy More”—a Senior— “said to me today, ‘O, is that Vincent Millay?—She certainly is a pretty little thing.”—Dear Sisters, don’t tell ’em the drift, will you? They may never, actually, find it out.—O, such a silly, such a gossip!—Write more silly gossip soon. Love, Vincent. P.S. About three mornings ago, or nights I distinctly heard Kathleen call me, & I awoke saying “Yes, dear,” right out loud. Does she talk in her sleep any more?—It’s strange anyway. She didn’t seem frightened or anything. Just called to me for some reason. Is Moth home? Hope so, you poor kiddies. 1. The Piper was first staged in 1910.

To Kathleen Millay [December 2, 1914] Dear Kathleen,— [In Elaine’s hand] Vincent should have written long ago, but as she never yet has done what she should she probably won’t begin now. However, ‘take it from me’ (Excuse the colloquial) she’s ‘all to the good’ (Excuse again). I really can talk straight, and if she wasn’t pursuing Greek with such a vengeance she might (?) be writing this herself—

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Au revoir— I’ll leave the rest to her E.P.R. Wump & Hunk,—Elaine saw this sheet of paper on my desk with just “Dear Kathleen” on it & the spirit moved her to write you. I spent Thanksgiving with her in New York except for one day while I was out at the Kennerleys. I had told Elaine I would go home with her before I got the Kennerley telegram asking me to spend the holidays there. Had a wonderful time. Elaine has a brother about twenty-six, a dear, named Victor. (I didn’t tell him that was the name of Mrs. Kennerley’s chauffeur!) And a darling old Auntie who speaks French & German. And Mrs. Ralli gave a tea Saturday & there was a German man there & I talked with him for an hour about & he says—I have the best accent of any American girl he has met. Isn’t that nice? And Victor came to the tea after he’d swore he wouldn’t, just to see me again. And Christmas I shall spend a day there on my way home & another day with Catherine Filene on my way back. I couldn’t take the drawings down to Aunt Calline because I didn’t want her to know I was down there, but I’m sending them to her. I didn’t have time before I went because the dress & card came just as I was getting ready to go but I’ll dress up once now. (Elaine has a cup of hot chocolate ready for me—it’s ten o’clock— and I must refresh myself.) Now—O, I have so much to tell you!—For one thing I don’t know how I’m going to get home Christmas. I have just got my December allowance & I owe half of it when I ought to pay it. I don’t see how I can manage it unless I get some more money. But of course, I must. Only sixteen days more. Love, Vincent Wednesday Dec. 2, 1914

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To the Millay Family Wed. Feb. 10, 1915 Dear Family,— This is just a note because this is my in-bed day & I mustn’t write much. I don’t know if I’ve told you that I made the lead in French play. It’s doubly interesting because it’s the only petticoat part in it. Also the committee of Second Hall Play has sent me first a note and then a member of itself to urge me to try out for the boy in Candida. He is eighteen and small & a poet and in love with C., who’s married. It’s a very difficult part & nobody who’s tried out has been any good for it, they say. The play’s by Bernard Shaw. I should love to do the part. Prof. Sanders told me yesterday that I am to be congratulated on my Physics examinations. He said I had done wonderfully, that at the first of the year I hated it so and did it so abominably and felt so terribly about it. That they were all worried about me, but that I had got hold of it and worked very hard and climbed & climbed & passed an admirable exam & got through the course itself very nicely.—(I think I must have got a B.)—And do you know I never handed in that note-book?—never even finished the problems. I don’t know how I ever got this horrible envelope into my things. It was one of Non’s fads,1 wasn’t it?—Why doesn’t one of you tell me how you all are?—I haven’t heard from you for ages. I’m going to send home some poems soon for Wump to typewrite some Saturday if she will. I’ve been trying to finish up some. Here’s my last one: (Someday I shall write a book of children’s verses & this will be in it.)

Forgiveness Where you hurt me on my arm, Though at first, ’twas awfully sore, Didn’t do me any harm, Doesn’t hurt me any more. Isn’t even black & blue; If you’d like me to forget,

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I will make believe that you Haven’t even done it yet. Isn’t it cunning?—O, I know a joke. Hope you haven’t heard it.—Man goes into Pullman late at night. Finds old woman asleep in his berth. Doesn’t want to disturb her. Asks Porter for another berth. Isn’t any. Sits up in day-coach all night. In morning sends telegram to wife: “Spent a very uncomfortable night. Gave berth to an old woman of eighty.” It’s better told than written, of course. Agnes Rogers thinks she may come to Camden next summer. She and Ann Almy!—I shall bring the whole college home with me yet. Never mind. I sha’n’t have any exam to work for next summer, God willing, and I’ll write poetry all summer and sell it. Much love, Vincent

1. “Non” is one of her nicknames for Norma.

To Kathleen Millay [late September 1915?] Dear Wump,— You certainly sent me a tome!—I enclose the notice from the post-office, asking me to pay two cents excess postage. Kindly notice the name they so gravely copied from your envelope. The trunk is packed and goes this afternoon, Saturday. I am sending the key, incidentally. Elaine is sending on ahead a dress & a suit you might use. Also a corset-cover & night-gown. The talc powder’s some she had & stuck in for fun. She forgot to stick it in. And is opening the trunk again. You don’t need my black vest & it wouldn’t fit you anyway. Too short. Elaine says Good God are you going to be dressing all the time. She says people don’t have time on house-parties. I would wear the white crepe de chine at the reception, I think, as Hunk suggests. Or you might wear the rose dress Elaine sends. You can not wear colored stockings with black shoes. Get black satin slippers without any buckles whatsoever,

70  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay perfectly plain. Be sure. And wear black stockings. And do your hair like this if you can & it looks goods with a black narrow band. [drawing]—? —Don’t wear Vassar pin. It would be the sure way to show that you don’t go to any college. Of course I haven’t one myself. I would be hanged if I wore one here. Also if I had a Vassar banner in my room or wore anything rose & gray. See?—They’re cute to have away from college but not at college. The snaps are great. The one of you with is perfectly adorable. The one without is cute but not so darling. I just love the one of you with him. Norma’s Don is one of the handsomest men Elaine or I ever saw, we agree. And Non is sweet in that picture. But in the snap where they’re back-to & seem to mean so much to each other (!) she is the most graceful thing I’ve seen for a long time. Elaine said so first. I’ll send you a funny snap of us in a little while. The dirty curtains are some I bought at the Exchange for my room & never used. Mother can use ’em if she wants to. The wooden box full of excelsior contains a framed picture of me under the magnolia tree like the one I had at home Christmas. Mr. Kennerley had it done & sent to me. I sent some poems to the Century & they weren’t returned for ages & when they were I got a personal note from Mr. Benéy,1 saying he was sorry they couldn’t take them & that they would always be glad to see any poems by me. So I think if I keep trying I have a chance in the Century. Two weeks from next Thursday, God willing, we’ll be home. We leave New York Wednesday night. Elaine has to stop a while in New York to get her clothes fixed up & of course I stay with her. Kathleen, you have enough to wear. Don’t worry. Surely take a bag besides the suit-case. One suit-case wouldn’t be enough, even a beautiful new one!—I’m glad you liked the ties, you and Non. They are beautiful I think, very unusual. I have one myself something like Non’s. I had to. Aren’t they just like fairies’ wings,—the elvey kind of fairy?—I knew you’d love them. How soon must you have your paintings?—Or have you given that up for a while? A woman who is an art collector & has a studio on Fifth Avenue was up here with Mrs. Ralli & said they are really lovely,—the colored ones you know.

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I hope you have a glorious time, dear, & I know you can’t help it. I wish dear old Hunk could go too, but she’s had her turn. (I’m the only one that hasn’t!—Isn’t that funny?) But if her boy has another girl you’ll be in a position to tell on him, won’t you? I’m so glad Moth can wear the gray suit.—Is she pretty well?—Thank her for her little scribble in your other letter. Don’t be afraid of hurting anything I’m sending you. You needn’t do a Sir W. Raleigh strut with my velvet cloak but have a good time & if you have to spill anything, spill it. Elaine says she’s ashamed to send her dress so messy, but you can clean the white part if you want to. She sends her love to you all. Much love from me, Vincent. I shall see you very soon, kids. 1. “Benéy” is Millay’s typo for William Rose Benét, who wrote her a rejection note dated September 22, 1915. Norma responded to her sister in a letter three days later, addressing the subject by starting the letter in a large hand: “damn!!!”

To Arthur Davison Ficke April 11, 1915 Dear Arthur Ficke,— How do you do?—What in the world ever made you think of me again?—It was nice to hear from you. You addressed me at Camden. You must have forgotten that once I went to Vassar. Stanhope, your son, is,—let me see—a sophomore now at Harvard. I shall invite him to a prom. Your Modern View of Poetry delights me. Especially since someone said to me, “Please say that beautiful little thing of yours about Contentment. I can’t help it; I do like Contentment.” Of course the poem was really about discontentment. But she didn’t know that. So I said it aloud with relief. I know a great deal. I can take apart an electric bell and put it together again. And it will ring. And I know more about Greek aorists than they do.1

72  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay How do you do? —Sincerely, Vincent Millay 1. Greek aorist: “relating to or denoting a past tense of a verb (especially in Greek), which does not contain any reference to duration or completion of the action” (New Oxford American Dictionary, 2005). Millay took two Greek courses during her sophomore year, in the fall of 1914 and spring of 1915.

To Vassar Dean Ellen McCaleb Camden, Maine, July 5, 1915 To Miss McCaleb,— The college treasurer has sent me last semester’s bill which he says must be paid before the fifteenth of next month. Of course, as my allowance is not continued during the summer, I have no money with which to pay it. Can it not be carried over until my autumn allowances begin to come? Otherwise I must forfeit my right to my room, it seems. I would have written to the treasurer, but I was afraid he would not understand as well as you would do. This is the first summer for four years when I have not had to study. And I am resting. It seems so good. It will be all right about the bill, wont’ it? Sincerely,     Vincent Millay

To Arthur Hooley [September 6, 1915] 1 Dear Arthur,— This is not an answer to your last letter. I shall never try to answer that. But I shall never forget that you wrote it. Do you remember once asking me if I wrote interesting letters?— And I said,—“Not any more.”—I thought then that I should never write you.—But what’s the use?—I do now exactly as I please in all minor mat-

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ters, and as nearly as possible what I please in matters of importance. My letters to you are a minor matter;—I write what & when I please.—You yourself are a matter of importance; I do with you as nearly as you will let me what I please. Arthur, dear, it would be so much nicer to say these things to you!— My voice is so much pleasanter than my hand-writing.



Tell me,—if you have not been well,—are you better now?

Arthur, I have the most beautiful blue cape with a hood on it,— bright light blue. You would love it. It was bought in London,—at Liberty’s—& given to me.—Do you remember my princess slippers?

Do you wish I wouldn’t chatter to you so?—I used always to be running in & bothering you when you lived in the little house with the big fire.—This letter is like one of those unsolicited calls.—But you seemed sometimes so very glad to see me that I was always of a mind to come again.

I have read the sonnet by Rupert Brooke that you asked me about so long ago.2 It is so beautiful that it is not like a sonnet, but like a man speaking.—It would be like that, too, if you should die, would it not?— The place where you would be would be “forever England.” —I told you once that if I were a fairy I would take you to the Derby races.—If I were an angel you should not be sorry any more for your country, my dear.—For humanity I would do all that I could,—but for a few people I would do more than that. The Spanish boy who wrote the Tale from Faerieland in the July Forum has written me.3—Do you know him?—If you have seen him,— tell me, is he as good-looking as he ought to be?

74  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay I have a perfectly beautiful joke to tell you when I see you. It is scarcely decent,—but you would enjoy it so much!

Did I ever write you such a long letter before?—I promise you I never will again.

If you should have anything to say to me before the 17th of this month—I shall be at The Wyandotte, Bellport, Long-Island. But if you are busy don’t bother. Of course you are busy anyway. I am perfectly happy & can live without you. With much love, nevertheless. —Edna. P.S.—Sometime, instead of writing merely Personal on the envelope, I shall put Damned Personal. You may read that letter in the dark.—E. 1. Arthur Hooley (1874–1928), one of Millay’s lovers, was an English-born author and editor, who wrote under the pseudonym “Charles Vale.” His New York Times obituary—which only calls him Charles Vale—states that he “was widely known among writers and collectors through his activities as literary adviser to Mitchell Kennerley from 1908 to 1918” (March 26, 1928, 21). 2. Rupert Brooke’s poem “The Soldier,” one of the poems from “Nineteen-fourteen” appeared in the April 1915 issue of Poetry. The first sentence reads, “If I should die, think only this of me: / That there’s some corner of a foreign field / That is for ever England” (1–3). 3. Salomón de la Selva, who wrote “A Tale from Faerieland.” He was actually from Nicaragua.

To Witter Bynner [September 26, 1915] Dear Mr. Bynner,— I want to tell you how beautiful I think your Tent Song. When I read it I thought “Why do people ever take more than six lines to write a poem in?”1 Sincerely, Edna St. Vincent Millay Sept. 26, 1915.

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1. Bynner’s six-line poem “A Tent Song” appears in the October 1915 issue of The Forum.

To Arthur Hooley [Vassar College October 6, 1915] My dear,— Do not think that I am sorry for anything that I have ever said to you, or for any mood of mine that I have ever let you see. I am not sorry for anything at all that has to do with you. Indeed, if you love me, it is your own affair. I shall never try to make it mine, Arthur.—But if my letters sometimes hurt you, I am glad. You shall not have me vaguely with you,—but clearly.—I want to be all that I can be to you, in a letter. But more than that I do not wish to be.—It would be really so much less than that,—not always,—but for us. Since this is true, why are you afraid to let me grow up?—I will be a child, to you, always, if you like me better so. But are you quite sure that you do?

You said once that there are so many beautiful possibilities in me that you would be loath to leave with me any memory that I could wish to obliterate. God knows, I wish no such memory of you.—But no memory that any man could leave me could really touch me.—I am sure of this. And why I am so sure, is because none has.

Yet, of course, I could not be so sure of what I have just said, unless my memories were memories that I could wish to obliterate. I have many such,—of things before I knew you.—And of things since, too.— Although “I have been faithful to you—in my fashion.”1 (Not that you have desired my faithfulness; Or that faithfulness is in any way a virtue,— It is oftener a stupidity, I think.) But nothing has ever hurt me. Nothing can. In that respect, surely, I shall always remain a child.) Herbert Kaufmann once said to Mrs. Kennerley, watching Muriel

76  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Rice and me together, that if Muriel should marry she would stop writing,—but that under the same circumstances I would not.2 As far as I am concerned, that is true. No man could ever fill my life to the exclusion of other things.—Of course I don’t know how true it is of Muriel. I don’t know anything about her, anyway, except that I have always been jealous of her, and that I dislike her because she is so much better-looking than I am.

Dear, this is such a long letter!—Do you mind? Do you think you would know me if you saw me?—Not in the woods,—or in the dark,—you would know me in the woods or in the dark—but in a house in the daytime,—or on the street?—Fancy, you might meet me on the street, for I often go by the office, and you might be coming out.—It has been almost two years, Arthur, do you know that?—I am nearly twenty-four.—Someday I shall just naturally come to see you—and I shall find you, too—and I shall say, “How do you do, dear? Isn’t it nice to have me back again?” Then what will you do?—Will you dust off a chair for me, like a gentleman?—Probably you will say, “Really, Edna, you are most disconcerting. I wonder how you got past the janitor.” Is the janitor’s name John? Or William?—Once I knew what his name is. He was very nice to me once, carried my bag to the car, when I was on my way to call on Arnold Genthe.3

I sometimes think the strangest thought, Arthur;—that if we ever meet again our letters will have made us so much better acquainted than we were when we parted, that we shall be complete strangers.

Edna October the Sixth 1915

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 77 1. Ernest Dowson’s poem “Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae” contains the line “I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! In my fashion” (6), in Modern Love: An Anthology, published by Mitchell Kennerley, 1906. 2. Muriel Rice (1888–1947) published two collections titled Poems (1906 and 1910), the latter with Mitchell Kennerley. Herbert Kaufman (1878–1947) was an American author whose book publications by 1913 included The Clock that Had No Hands, and Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising (1912) and Poems (1913). 3. Arnold Genthe, German-born American photographer (1869–1949), photographed Millay in 1914. An iconic photo from this session shows her looking away from the camera while standing beneath a magnolia tree. The photo appears on the cover of Jean Gould’s biography of Millay, The Poet and Her Book (1969).

To Kathleen Millay [October 8, 1915] Dear Kathleen,— I have something dreadful to tell you; and I don’t know how to say it. I cannot find your drawings anywhere, & I am sure now that the maid must have destroyed them during the summer. They were all together in the lavender paste-board thing, and she must have thought there was nothing but the pasteboard there.—I shall never get over it. I feel perfectly terribly about it. I have lost a lot of my music, too; some that I valued very highly, and I know that all that, too, is gone forever. But it is nothing to losing your lovely drawings. I could just kill myself. If I ever get any money, besides paying you what I owe you, I am going to get something lovely and give it to you,—though of course that won’t really help things any.—I can’t tell you how I feel about it. ——Vincent

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To Arthur Davison Ficke [Vassar College] October the Nineteenth 1915 Dear Mr. Ficke,— So you went through Poughkeepsie & didn’t come to see me!— How could you?—The thought that I was probably not here at the time does not lessen my grief, or my annoyance. I am not a forward miss, and since you yourself are so retiring,—I fear we shall remain strangers. Mr. Bynner, if he remembers me at all, will not give you a glowing account of me. But never mind. Although I would have chosen somebody else to “put you wise” to me.1

I love the little Japanese picture. It gives me a want-to-be-there feeling.

I don’t know if I shall ever get out a book—If you have, as you say, issued three in twelve months, and do not stop forever, you should be forced to. Although I do like the things you write. I don’t know what has happened to my handwriting.—I cross my hands differently, too,—with the right thumb outside, now, instead of the left.—I don’t know whether it means a change of character, or simply an increase of it.—What do you think? Is it Mrs. Ficke who writes like me?—the one that you say came, to a bad, esoteric & delightful end?

I have to go to a class now.—Does that strike you as silly?—Sometimes it seems to me very silly indeed,—not the fact that there is a class,— or that I go to it,—but that I have to!

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I am glad you didn’t return my letter unanswered. Sincerely, Vincent Millay 1. Possible allusion to Witter Bynner’s use of the phrase in his play Tiger (1913). Millay could have also read the expression in Zane Grey’s The Short-Stop (1909).

To Kathleen Millay [Vassar College October 27, 1915] [The body of the letter begins with a hand-drawn monogram image] Dear Kathleen,— Elaine did this beautiful monograph—I mean monogram—of me—I mean for me—(the reason I can’t write straight is because I am in philosophy lecture & Prof. Riley is talking like a train of cars—he is really very gently—but, somewhat continuous—evidently he doesn’t know I’m trying to write a letter home)—Someone has been taking a bath in Djer-Kiss—oh, smell, oh stink—Elaine told me to write home on this paper, & I thought you might like to have it, the beautiful monogram, I mean—I sit on the end,—an aisle-seat, you know, & I got Jack to change seats with me so I can’t be seen writing,—people don’t take notes on note-paper, you see,—although I should think they ought to. Just got another letter from Read Bain—he writes rather often—i.e. this is the third letter since I left home.1 He’s a nice boy. When Salomón gets to Spanish I write to Read & when Read gets to Yankee I write to Salomón. Had a wonderful long, long letter from Salomón a day or two ago—he’s really a wonderful boy—& Read is a dear—but neither of them writes very good verse very often.—Had a nice letter from Arthur Ficke yesterday. He had written to me a little while before, saying, “What has happened to your hand-writing?—The only other person I know who writes like that came to a bad, esoteric, and delightful end.”—In my next letter I asked him if that person were Mrs. Ficke.—He seemed to appreciate that all right. Told me in the letter I got yesterday how much

80  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay he liked it. I can imagine him chuckling over it.—He says, tho, that he has an idea that I write much more amusingly than I look.—He is very anxious to know what I look like. Shall I send him a page and snap?—I think I will. Love, Vincent 1. Read Bain (1893–1972) published poetry early in his career. In the fall of 1915, he was a senior at Willamette University. Starting in 1927, he became a sociology professor.

To Arthur Davison Ficke [Vassar College] November the Third 1915 Dear Mr. Ficke,— Why you should be so curious as to my personal appearance, I can’t for the life of me guess. But if you will have it,—no, then; I am not so funny-looking as I am funny-sounding. People do not, as far as I can tell, say of me, “Vincent Millay?—Oh, you know Vincent Millay,—that awfully homely Junior!” Sometimes, in dry weather when my hair won’t wave, or when I am colorless for lack of sleep, or when I just feel ugly,— then I am ugly,—but then I cancel all my engagements. And sometimes, when I am very happy, oweing to an A in German, or flowers from Saltford’s, or a letter from yourself,—then I am exceedingly beautiful.

Yes, I room alone.—God, yes. But I have no fireplace. I wish I had.— My room is rather nice, though. It doesn’t look like a bedroom at all.— Except, of course, when I forget to make the bed.

If Harvard doesn’t want you,—why don’t you come to Vassar?— They’ll let you, I’m sure.—I’ll tell them you’re a friend of mine.—But I won’t take any of your courses. ——Vincent Millay

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To Vassar President Dr. MacCracken [Vassar College] November the Seventeenth 1915 My dear Dr. MacCracken,— I have written to my mother, telling her what you said to me yesterday about the possibility of Kathleen’s coming here. Kathleen herself is not at home now, and unless Mother is able to get together the information you want, I may not be able to get it to you until some time after Thanksgiving. It may be that yesterday you made it seem quite too possible to me, for I find that my heart is set upon her coming here next year—my last year here—and it seems to me now that if she doesn’t come back with me then, I shall not care if I don’t come back. If the entrance requirements are made as sympathetic to my sister as they were made to myself—then there will be no doubt about her preparation to enter next fall. I had my arms full of conditions when they let me in,—but they are all gone now—except that I flunked gym last spring!—If they will only be as nice to her—after she is once in here there will be no question about her suitability—as her high school record will show you. I am neglecting my Spanish to write this—just one thing more to interfere with my lessons, Dr. MacCracken! Very truly, Edna St. Vincent Millay P.S.—I do so hope it may come true.

To Arthur Hooley [Vassar College December 15, 1915] Wednesday Night Dear Arthur,— Tomorrow night I shall again be in New York.—I shall think of you and long to be with you.—Indeed, it seems absurd and impossible to me that the second year will go by and I not see you!—Two years is

82  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay such a long, long time.—If I had known when I left you that night—do you remember?—that I was not to see you again for two years—why, just think, dear, I could have turned in the door and looked at you again!—

I could have seen you again—and I didn’t,—that seems so strange to me now.

This is all very silly. There is no sense in it at all;—I know that. But sometimes I can’t help thinking in this way. And it is a very real small sorrow to me now, in spite of my Irish pleasantry and my illogic, that I didn’t turn & look at you again.— I laugh when I think how you said I would scarcely expect you to write on the first page & then on the third or fourth;—you would scarcely expect me—now would you, dear?—to write on the first page and then by any chance on the second?—

So you lay one night with my letter under your pillow!—My dear, one night I went to sleep with a letter from you pressed hard against my heart,—I found that only so, that night, could I get to sleep at all.—But my letter, it seems, did not help you go to sleep.—Perhaps if you—but no, not if you were ill—and, anyway, it was presumptuous of me. I marvel sometimes at my own temerity.—Arthur, it is extremely silly to take letters to bed with one.—Don’t you know that?—Of course you do.—So do I.——Tomorrow evening I shall be with another man and I shall want to be with you. I hope you will be miserable all the evening. Love and merry Christmas, Edna On the other side is a post-script. P.S.—It seemed so strange for you to want the other letter, the letter I destroyed.—Once you would have said, “Hush. Child!—You must not!” And now—oh, Arthur Hooley,—you are such a thorn in my flesh!—E.

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To Arthur Hooley [December 27, 1915] My dear friend,— I have learned from you to write letters at night and destroy them in the morning.—Yesterday was the fourth day I had been ill in bed, and the letter I wrote last night—is destroyed. I am very glad to have the book you said—yes, I remember the line— I have not been able to forget it. I have been reading the poem today. It is an unusually beautiful thing, I think.—Do you remember the sonnet about the swallows in the osiers?1

Friday night Mother noticed that there were three envelopes addressed to me in the same hand.—“Who are these letters from?” she asked,—and I said, “From Arthur Hooley, Mother.”—Last night when she saw another letter from you she said, “Are you going to marry that Englishman?” And I answered, “No, Mother.—I love him,—but I don’t want to marry him.”—It is such a pleasure to say things that are quite true so that others will think them false—in such a way, I mean, that others will think them false.—(I have a feeling that you once remarked the same thing to me.) Arthur, was your birthday Thursday, a week ago?2—Please tell me.— Be good to me, my dear, because I am ill.—Are you not sorry I am ill?

Let me tell you something—(with my head against your knee)—I did not really want you to be miserable.—— The little picture I am sending is a snap of me as Marie de France in the pageant we gave this year at college.3 I had a photograph for you, and I almost sent it.—At the last minute I could not, somehow.—I thought you might not like it.—And I gave it to someone else. But I will send you one, before so very long.—— It was most courteous—not to say cordial—of Charles Vale to send his love to Vincent Millay.—“God rest you, Merry gentleman.”

84  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Arthur, do you know who said, “I sometimes think that all great passion is like a kiss in mid-battle,—a difficult peace between oil and water, between candles and dark night”? Do you not think it very beautiful?—“a difficult peace”!4

Was it the night of the 5th or the 6th of January—two years ago— that I last saw you?—Do you remember?—

I am asking you many questions, but they are not questionings of the soul,—so you must not give me “dusty answers,” dear. —Edna. I thought today, “How strange if I should be very ill, and die.”—It would show you, Arthur, would it not?—I wish I were going to see you the night of the 5th—or 6th,—I forget which.—(I could stand it both!)—E. 1. George Meredith’s Sonnet 47 from Modern Love (1862), which begins “We saw the swallows gathering in the sky, / And in the osier-isle we heard them noise.” 2. According to his World War I draft card, Arthur Hooley’s birthday was December 9, 1874. 3. Millay played Marie de France (a twelfth-century French poet who wrote while in England) in Vassar’s Pageant to Athena, in October 1915. According to Vincent & Vassar: An Exhibition, “Vincent’s most vivid performance may have been that given as part of an elaborate dual observation on October 10–13, 1915, of Vassar’s 50th anniversary and of the inauguration of its fifth president, Henry Noble MacCracken” (Published by The Edna St. Vincent Millay Society and the Vassar College Library, [2017], 25.) 4. A close quotation from an early edition of On Baile’s Strand, a Play, by W. B. Yeats. Cuchullain (Cuchulain in later editions) says these words: “I think that all deep passion is but a kiss / In the mid battle, and a difficult peace / ’Twixt oil and water, candles and dark night . . .” (The King’s Threshold: and On Baile’s Strand: Being Volume Three of Plays for an Irish Theatre [London: A. H. Gullen, 1904], 82.) At least by 1906, Yeats modified the wording, such as replacing “peace” with “truce.”

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To Arthur Hooley [January 1, 1916] Arthur, dear,— Your little notes have been so lovely lately.—I love to have you talk to me of your home—and the green gate—and the church—and “the vicar still unshaved.” —It just occurred to me that you might not know how much I do love it.— I am sorry you have been ill.—Do not laugh at me if I suggest that possibly you do not eat when you should.—Were you not in better condition at Mamaroneck?1

Do you live now at about 56th on Lexington? Tell me—I have a reason for wishing to know.

I shall be glad to get back to work again at college,—to work, and to my dear Balzac, and my sweet Catullus, and my belovèd Chaucer,2— who are my play, when I am too tired to work.—I do not read Latin as easily as—as French, for instance, or even as easily as German—or even, perhaps, as easily as Spanish,—but I thank God not infrequently that I can actually enjoy Catullus & Horace—even with the dictionary across the room.—This year, for a course in philosophy, I read the Descartes Second Meditation in the original Latin—from pure vanity, Arthur, and a passion, which is strong in me, for intellectual adventure.3—I know what Browning meant when he said, “The need of a world of men for me,”—I have felt so after, after a little too much of men at first hand, the need of a world of men’s thought, men’s doubt, men’s difficult Latin meditation!4 I don’t know why I have seen fit to bore you with all this.—If your grief and astonishment at me is very great—I promise never to do it again!

There are some things that always make me think of you,—eau de cologne—and Italian vermouth—and crossing my hands about my knees.

86  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay I remember how one night in the library at Mamaroneck you had me smell your handkerchief—saturated, it must have been, with eau de cologne,—and you said “One can get on without women, if he has perfume.”—an unpleasant but characteristic remark.—And vermouth— there was that night in the dining-room when I wore a dress so near the color of the wine, and said aloud to you the poem I called Sorrow,—and kissed your hand where it rested on the arm of my chair.—I was very troublesome, was I not, dear?—Are you not relieved and glad that now I am grown up and over all such folly?

Whenever I start to cross my fingers about my knees I inevitably stop, and flush, remembering how you said to me, “Don’t do that, Edna,—it makes your hands look ugly.”

Indeed, you come often into my life, in little, absurdly unimportant ways.—I shall not forget you for a long time yet. There are other things that always make me think of you,—dogwoodblossoms, for instance. —Edna. P.S.—I love, I simply love envelopes with colored linings like the St. Regis one you sent.—E. 1. Mamaroneck is a town in Westchester County, New York, where Mitchell Kennerley lived. 2. Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), the French author of La Comédie Humaine; Catullus (ca. 84–ca. 54 b.c.e.), Roman poet; Geoffrey Chaucer (1342–1400), English poet. Millay refers to Catullus frequently in her letters; her poem “Passer Mortuus Est” is based on a poem by Catullus (Selected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay: An Annotated Edition, edited by Timothy F. Jackson, with an introduction by Holly Peppe [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016], 28). 3. Millay quotes from this work in one of her notebooks; on the other side of the page is a draft of her poem “Elegy Before Death” (LC). 4. The quotation is from the last line of Robert Browning’s poem “Parting at Morning.”

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To Arthur Hooley Vassar College January the Twelfth 1916 Yes, I am back at college.—Why? —What difference does it make, where I am?— (“To either of us,”—I almost added.)

Have you read North of Boston?1—If you haven’t, don’t go and get it now or read it & then say, “Yes, Edna, I have—,” (or “I have done,” rather, I suppose.)—But tell me.

I should be doing (an \a/) history clipping topic or reading up on enclosures in England in the 16th century,—but neither of these has the power to tear me from you—it would take at least a Spanish poem to do that.

Arthur, what are you doing now?

Did I ever tell you that I am not able to destroy a scrap of your handwriting?—At least, not yet able.—Before the year is out I may have burned all your letters—but I shall not do it today, or tomorrow,— or over the week-end.—There is something about your handwriting, Arthur—but then, of course, there is something about yourself,—otherwise you would never have been able to hold for so long a time the vagrant interest of a fickle girl like me. With my true love, Edna

1. Robert Frost’s second collection of poetry, published in 1914.

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To Arthur Hooley [February 3, 1916] For twenty minutes I have been sitting here thinking of you, and wondering what I should write on the page. I have nothing to say to you,—though I fancy that if I were with you that might be different.—It is only that I do not wish you to wonder why I do not write—which perhaps you had not noticed at all.

We have just finished with our mid-year examinations.—I “got through everything,” as we say here—if you are interested to know.— But I am tired to death.—Also I have been “making up a gym condition,” as we also say here,—which means that last fall I did not climb the required number of ropes or leap the required number of bars,—or something to that effect, so that now, if I wish to play the part of Deirdre in Synge’s Deirdre of the Sorrows, I have to spend all my time in the gymnasium apparatus room.1 I have been over there very often lately, and I have trained myself down to ninety-six & a half pounds,—which is almost equivalent to disappearing altogether, don’t you think?—I am so little, Arthur,—you could lift me quite easily now,—and hold me over the railing of the stairs, in a small house with a large fireplace,—on a rainy day.

“The fire is out, and spent the warmth thereof.”2—It is true.—The fire is out by which you stood & said aloud those lovely verses—and your voice shook at the end.—The fire is out by which we sat while I read to you—the Triumph of Time or Anactoria.3—The fire is out which burned that first night in your little house, when you said to me, “Don’t sit there, Edna.—I might want you there always.”—and again, “It’s great fun living alone, sometimes.”—You did not really love me then.—But I think you do now.—Now that the fire is out.

I have been writing almost in the dark,—I mean to say, “writing in the almost dark.” Now I have turned on the light,—light is an excellent

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Millay performing in J. M. Synge’s Deirdre of the Sorrows, at Vassar College, March 1916. (Library of Congress)

thing—& I find that it is nearly time to dress for dinner.—I have a dress that you would love, Arthur. Next Saturday, a week from tomorrow, is Junior Prom. Do you know what that means?—It is a ball, an affair of surpassing magnificence, attended only by the Juniors & an equal number of men. I am having up a very nice man,—with whom you would not get on at all,—and I shall wear a dress of pale yellow chiffon, with butterflies on the shoulders, and fur around the bottom—(which is about eight inches from the floor!)—and gold slippers—pure gold, truly, Arthur, I think they must be,—they shine so! (And no line from Shakespeare which an unpleasant Englishman might choose to quote, could possibly shake my condition!)

However, it was another dress that I meant,—the one you would like.— I shall have such a beautiful time at the Prom!—I shall be—oh, ravishing to behold—or else I shall not go a step. And I shall appear to be only about seventeen,—who am actually—but there!—we will not

90  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay discuss it!—and I shall be tireless, & vivacious, & no one will ever guess that I have a secret, eating sorrow,—by which I mean to say yourself, my dear.

Your letters have been so dear to me! Do not let my silliness ever obscure for you for one moment the fact that I love you.—It does not, does it?—I wish you wished to send me the third sonnet.—Not because I am curious, for I am not.—A man whom you know well once told me that I could never be an exceedingly evil person, because I am not sufficiently curious.—It is because I know, as you yourself know, that it would not really amuse me at all.—And because the others were so beautifully sad.

(Wouldn’t you just love to see me again for a minute, sometime?—I should think you would. I would you.) ——Edna. P.S. It is blizzarding tonight. But I am not deceived. I know that spring is coming.—And the reason why I know why I know is because there are curls in the back of my neck.—E. 1. Play by John Millington Synge (1871–1909), first performed in 1910. Millay acted in the role of Deirdre in March 1916 at Vassar College. 2. The first line from the poem “Dregs” by Ernest Dowson. 3. Both poems appear in Poems and Ballads (1866) by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909).

To Arthur Hooley [Vassar College] February the Twenty eighth 1916 It really isn’t necessary that I should be a man, Arthur, in order to know what the word girl sometimes means to you.—What do you sup-

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pose the word man sometimes means to me?—In a place like this?—It is silly, I think, to say that man & woman cannot understand each other.— They can understand each other quite as well as they can understand themselves.

This is a strange place. I had known, but I had not realized, until I came here, how greatly one girl’s beauty & presence can disturb another’s peace of mind,—more still, sometimes, her beauty & absence.—There are Anactorias here for any Sappho.—And I am glad, whenever I think of it. That I have never felt moved to say harsh & foolish things about an ancient Greek philosopher or a modern English poet, whom the world has condemned & punished. It might better have been said, not “let him who is without sin among you”1 but “let him among you who has sinned all sins, cast the first stone.”—But perhaps a poet does not need to sin at all, except in the heart, in order to know that it is no question of stonethrowing at all. And it often happens that I am very, very sorry for everybody.

Since this is an observation, & not a confession, it is not irrelevant. For up here, while some of us are thinking of the rest of us, the rest of us are thinking of you, & men like you,—I mean to say, unlike you.



1. John 8.

To Arthur Hooley [March 10, 1916] Indeed,—I will be very careful from this day,—for of course you must not really love me.—That would spoil it all,—& we have had such a beautiful game.—It is “no fair,” as we say, to love me.

92  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay As for myself.—God forbid that I should give my heart to a dyspeptic Englishman!

Edna

To Arthur Hooley [March 13, 1916] Arthur, promise me that you will not go away—you know what I mean—without seeing me.—I am not willing to bear such grief as that would give me. Promise me.— —Sometimes as it is, with you there, & myself here, I want you very much,—want just to feel you touch me again, you know.—I am not willing to have the sea between us and not have been very near to you, just once more.

I am glad that you have wanted me terribly. I am very glad that sometimes you think of me at night, and suffer. You have made me suffer, too.

My dear, do you know that in a little while the dog-wood trees will be in blossom? What shall we do then?

Last night you gave the play of which I once spoke to you, Deirdre of the Sorrows. It was very real to me, as always. In the last act I stood beside the grave of the man I loved, who had been killed in battle, and with his knife killed myself.—I did it with all my heart,—and when they picked me up from the floor after the fall of the curtain, I found that I had actually driven the knife right through my little leather jacket.—That is amusing, don’t you think?—(To use one of your favorite words.)

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Why would it be absurd for me if you should really love me?—The absurdity would be, would it not, for me to really love you?—Edna.

To the Millay Family Vassar—Wednesday Night [Spring 1916] Dear Family,— This is laundry night in North,—I have just stuck outside my door the beautiful brown bag Mother made for me.—And I’ve been up to Charlie’s room & had some chocolate & other things.—One gets so hungry at about ten o’clock!— I am getting some extra copies of the miscellany that has my Suicide in it,—and will send you one later.—1 I have three poems in the May Forum for which Mr. Kennerley has not paid me.2 I think he has not forgotten it.—At this time of year in college one needs money. I have been posing for the art class, and earning a little money that way. It is pleasant, but very hard work.—I will send you a copy of the words of my victorious Contest Song, as soon as they are printed. Today I was speaking with Prof. Bracq, the head of the French department.3 He happened to mention Renan, as a very much abused & misunderstood man. I told him that my mother was very fond of Renan, and his Life of Jesus.4 (I myself have not read it.)—He then said that he had studied with Renan,—as a principal, I suppose,—and was his friend.—I thought Mother would be interested.

Why not send me back my picture of Salomón?—I’ll try to acknowledge it by returning some of your snaps & things.

Did I tell you about the old English gardener & what he said about how to get a good lawn?—I think I have, but perhaps I haven’t, & you must miss it. When asked how to get a good lawn, he said, in all serious-

94  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay ness, “Why, you just keep at it & keep at it & keep at it, & then, in two or three hundred years, you get a good lawn.”—This is my favorite story.

I am sending Wump the regular application blank.—She is to send it back to me,—without the ten dollars, needless to say—Miss McCaleb said to never mind the money. (Notice) I have many things to tell you, but I simply can’t take the time. I shall see you all soon anyway, and it is so near exam time I have to work.

You would laugh if you could hear me say to people who ask me if I like Camden very much, “—Why, I can just sit up in bed & see six mountains, & without even sitting up in bed I can see the bay!”—(!)—



I have a basket of growing yellow violets that Fran digged for me.

If you can ever manage to get two more face-to photos of me finished up, for goodness’ sake give them to Mary & Corinne, before I get home.5 They are their last Christmas presents.

I must go to bed. Love, Vincent 1. Millay’s poem “The Suicide” appeared in The Vassar Miscellany Monthly (April 1916), along with an editorial note: “Miscellany entry in the Association of Northern College Magazines’ Competition.” 2. The Forum for May 1916 began with Millay’s three poems, “If You Were Dead” [“If I should learn in some quite casual way”], “Blue-Beard,” and “Witch-Wife.” 3. Professor Jean Charlemagne Bracq (1853–1934); he “served Vassar College with distinction from 1891 to 1918, at first as John Guy Vassar Professor of Modern Languages, afterwards as head of the Department of Romance Languages and Professor of French” (Vassar Quarterly, May 1, 1935).

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 95 4. Ernest Renan (1823–1892); his first volume of Vie de Jésus appeared in 1863. 5. Mary and Corinne are likely Millay’s childhood friends Mary Pendleton and Corinne Sawyer. The Maine Memory Network contains a photograph of Millay with friends, in Camden, from 1909 (www.mainememory.net/artifact/72952).

To Arthur Hooley

[May 2, 1916] Tuesday night

My dear,— I know, of course, that any one of a dozen things might be the reason why you do not write.—That you have forgotten me, or have even ceased to care for me, I cannot believe, somehow,—although this might be.—I am so sad tonight that I could almost bring myself to accept it as a possibility.

Are you ill?—If you had died, I should not know. No one would think to tell me.

I think that I have never wanted you so much as I want you tonight.— And yet, perhaps it is not you at all that I want, but my mother. I have seen many ugly things lately, and I am becoming so fearful and sensitive as I was when a child.—And I am unspeakably sad. That you should have stopped writing to me just when you did was almost too much to bear.—Although of course one bears everything. The only happiness I have just now is reading Lavengro.1 I have a tremendous affection for it.

Arthur, where are you?—Are you near to me or far away? I am so cold, somehow, and I cannot feel you at all. Goodnight, Edna. Would you care if you knew that I am weeping?

96  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Lavengro: The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest, by George Borrow, first published in 1851.

To Arthur Hooley [May 12, 1916] Friday Arthur, dear,— This is such a beautiful day that I cannot walk about soberly on my two feet, but find myself every once in a while giving a little hop, like a robin.

I wish you were here to play with me. We would have such fun!—We would go hunt for yellow violets in the woods.—And there would be so many things to say to each other that I am sure we would almost never say a word. —Indeed, Arthur, I do wish that you were here.

So you thought your letter did not mean very much to me;—my New England up-bringing will not permit me to tell you how much they have meant, sometimes.

“Child,” you called me again in your last letter.—You have not done that for a long time.—I love it.—If you were here, I would rub my cheek against your hand.—And you would like that, would you not?—

Do not ask me what are the ugly things that I have seen;—let me forget them, if I can.

Perhaps it is true that your letters are not always quite sensible.— Does that disturb you?—It seems to me that it would be a pity if you

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should not write me what is in your heart, however unreasonable it may be,—since that is all of you that I have.



Arthur, I miss you so sometimes!

Edna

To Eleanor Morgan (Patterson) Dear L’il’ Elner,—

Camden, Maine June 15, 1916

This is the letter I started to write you nearly two weeks ago—and if it were not for a temporary indisposition I should not be finishing it even now—so am I driven for time.—I have been getting my little sister ready to take her college entrance exams,—she is to be a Freshman next year, you know.

Eleanor, how sweet you were to make that sweater for me.—I remember the day you asked me if I ever wore that color—I had no idea that you had anything in mind.—It is lovely with my [illegible] with the pink collar, and with a half-dozen other things I have. Tell me sometime, L’il Elner, how you came to do it for me,—I loved you when I saw it there.

It seems a long time since we left college; doesn’t it?—So long that I can begin to think how pleasant it will be to see people again.



I wonder if you are engaged to Harris today.

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Remember me to your mother and little sister,—and to your father, if he has not forgotten me.—I hope he is well.

With my love, ——Vincent

To Arthur Hooley [July 25, 1916] This is a night that belongs to you, Arthur, my dear, my almost love. I cannot take it from you,—it is yours. Why are you not here?—I have been thinking of you for an hour.

I do not think of you so often this summer as I am accustomed to do.—My time & my thoughts & nearly all my love have been given to a boy of my own age—the sweetest boy in the world.—He is so sweet that I cannot think what to do with him. And he is adorably stupid.—We never converse. Of course I shall not marry him.—I am too tragically wise. We haven’t a thing in the world to build a life on—he cares for none of the things that are dear to me—but when I am with him I forget all that for a time and am quite happy.

Tonight, however, I would much prefer to be with you. Did you know that Helen & I came to see you one night—straight up all the stairs to your door, slipping in like cats when a man was entering?—I have never wanted to see anyone more than I wanted to see you that night. If you had only loved me a little more, Arthur, you could so easily have kept me all for yourself.

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To Arthur Hooley [October 2, 1916] Arthur,— Do not go from me utterly—I need you.—I do not know what I would not give if for one moment tonight you might hold me quiet with your hands and look at me. I do not know why it is that I want you to look at me—it wouldn’t matter whether I saw you or not. But it is difficult to lie, when you are looking at me—difficult to blaspheme—do you see what it is that is troubling me, Arthur?—I have lost my viewpoint—I am on the road to hell. Arthur, do not let me go from you—hold me—I swear to you that no one else can bring me back to myself—whatever myself may be—a child that you loved, I think. If only you could look at me for a minute! —Edna.

To Harriet Monroe [October 31, 1916] Dear Miss Monroe,— When you wrote to me this summer you said you had regretted the fact that I sent no poems to Poetry.—I send very few poems anywhere—but here are a few which I hope you will like.

Is the Anthology out yet?1—I have not heard.—But then—I hear nothing.

Sincerely,     Edna St. Vincent Millay Vassar College Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Oct. 31, 1916

100  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. The New Poetry: An Anthology (1917), edited by Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin Henderson, contained “God’s World,” “Ashes of Life,” and “The Shroud” by Millay. Monroe and Corbin’s later editions of this volume (1923, 1927 enlarged, and 1932) republished additional poems from Millay.

To Arthur Hooley [Vassar College October 31, 1916] Tuesday My dear,— I do not want to see you tonight!—It is too bad that I do not ever touch you, Arthur, when we are such good friends.—We are good friends, aren’t we?—Of course, I do not really need to touch you to be good friends with you—but I did so love your hands—they were always so warm.

Do you remember the night you made me read a passage in The Dark Flower? 1 I found the same place the other night—and it startled me—I really must have been very like that girl Nell—but I was angry with you then a little— I don’t know what to say to you—or even what I want to say—I only know that I desire quietly to speak to you, Arthur, tonight.—You would be interested in the change in me, & in the incomprehensible lack of change—I look very little older—I sometimes wonder if, like Dorian Gray, I shall grow old suddenly & fearfully.

I remember sweet things about you, Arthur—and no bitter things. That was the way you meant it to be, I know.

You did not tell me if you read or liked my poem Blue-Beard in the May Forum. I thought that you would like that.

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Arthur, you should be glad that I love you so sweetly, without troubling you at all.—If you were here tonight I would rub my head against you. ——Edna

1. A novel from 1913 by John Galsworthy (1867–1933).

To the Millay Family vassar college February 17, 1917 Dear Family: I am making a carbon copy of this letter, so that I can send it both to my Camden family and to Wumpus. Please don’t mind; it’s done in the best of families. I was terribly ashamed not to write you Sunday, but I couldn’t very well; I was working very hard on some work left over from last semester which made me incomplete in one course. I was writing a play. In fact, I was writing two plays. I shall send you each a copy,— that is to say, each family; but perhaps not today. It has to be read in class first, the one I especially want to send. Please don’t mind if some of the things I say for the benefit of my Camden family don’t seem to hit my Hartridge family,1 and terra firma. Tomorrow I shall write you each a personal letter. I suppose I told you that I drew three A’s and a B this semester, and one Incomplete that will perhaps be an A later. I am anxious to hear from Kathleen, who had so many exams to take,—I had only three exams, because they don’t give exams in writing courses, and one other course was Spanish conversation, in which I inadvertently skipped the examination, but which did not hinder me from drawing an A, so that I didn’t feel so badly as I might have done to miss a perfectly good exam all prepared for me with such care and thought! (I shall be sparing of exclamations in this letter, and shall endeavor to put in their stead full stops, which are only half as expensive, typewritorically speaking.) Wump, did you get through any of your exams?—Norma, how is Wuzzy?—Mother, were you interested in the fact that Mr. John Masefield wrote me a beautiful, bona fide, Opened by Censor letter? I think

102  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Wuzzy is exceedingly clever to jump four feet in the air. (I told my roommates about that, and they loved it. Norma is a nawful gnut.) So, you did look nice in my black velvet dress, did you Normie?—Well, I’m sorry you can’t keep it, because I’m grown to be such a harried and haggard old hag that I don’t look nice in anything except in disguise. But I have to dress in clothes, most all the girls do here, even the ugly ones this year, and I want velvet sleeves in it, and I want it just as soon as I can have it otherwise I shall not be able to wear it very much,—two of my roommates have already bought their straw hats. I am crazy to have it,—it ought to look fairly well even on little old me, with the aid of a little vivacity and some bureau-drawer. Today is the Junior prom, the Juniors are so excited they are almost objectionable, to the people whose Junior prom came last year. Of course there is Senior dance, but that doesn’t come till May. (I have just got your letter, Kathleen. I am sorry, dear, this time I am quite unable to help you. It is quite possible that I should have some of my allowance left—through2 rather improbable on the 17th of the month—except for the fact that my February allowance never came; and I’m not going to write for it. I have been without a cent for so long that I don’t mind any more. I have no money to buy text-books with, so I no longer even sign for them; I just borrow, and spend my time racing from one hall to another and back, so that I won’t be borrowing from the same girl all the time, and they won’t get on to it. I owe about seventy dollars in Poughkeepsie, for things that I couldn’t help having. Heaven knows I haven’t bought many clothes. I wear exactly the things I’ve been wearing all winter. And I don’t care about that; but if my bills aren’t paid before commencement I can’t graduate, so I’m trying hard to get a little money. Harriet Monroe has not yet sent me the check for those poems, and I’m writing to her to-day. That will be $16. It is possible that one of my plays will get the $10 prize in the Minor Hall Play Contest here, but of course I can’t reckon on that. I owe $10 to Hilda Strouse for the money to send to Clem, which I sent directly on my return here. I owe a tremendous amount for laundry,—which no lady can very well help. My photographs were something over $14, but I had to have them, or be the only girl in the Senior class without her picture in the Vassarion. And everybody who had pictures taken had enough to give her friends besides, you

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know. And I have had to buy food, because I couldn’t be the one in the alley-way not to, and so I have run a big bill at Carey’s for chocolate and condensed milk and crackers and innumerable cans of condensed heat, while my room-mates with ready cash have kept the fruit-basket filled with grape-fruit and tangerines, etc. It’s been sort of terrible,—I’ve had to borrow money for everything: stamps, type-writing paper, everything. I just haven’t had a penny in months, except that dollar which you sent me, and which I almost wept to see. You see, Wump, I owe $2.75 still for the stockings I sent you, and I’ve had to have stockings myself, one does. And I owe $8 for my boots, which also I had to have, because one can’t wear white rubber-soled sports shoes all winter. I am very sorry, dear. If I had the money at all I would send it to you, although it would be a very foolish thing to do, because no matter how much you may want the dress, and no matter how much of a bargain it may be, you cannot really be said to need it, as I need, for instance, to get my bills paid before commencement. However, if the money comes to me in a few days I will try to get some of it to you, because I know that it makes a great difference down there how you look. As for me I don’t much care, as long as I have clean underclothes and my feet look well. You are a wonderful little girl to have passed six examinations—if spelling really counts as one—and I should think Miss Hartridge would be proud of you. And you were ill, too, dear; I don’t see how you did it. You must have been so anxious. I have been very anxious about you myself, because you told me you hadn’t had time to cram for them, and if I didn’t have time to cram for my exams it would mean a speedy evacuation on my part of these precincts. I am very pleased about my own exams. The mark A means more this year than it ever did before, it is very fine to get it. I am going to read over some of your late letters to me, and see if I can’t answer up some of the questions which I know I must have disregarded in my eternal hurry. But first I want to tell you about the Valentine I got, the most beautiful box of flowers I have ever seen, I think: I don’t know who sent them, there was no sign of a card, but they came from Saltford’s, so it looks as if it were some girl here. I am crazy to know, of course, because she certainly ought to be thanked. It is an enormous corsage of English

104  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay violets and orchids, it completely covers the front of me,—it is beautifully made up with some lovely tan-green leaves, and there are baby orchids attached to the long ribbon streamers. I can’t help thinking of the tremendous cost,—these things do hit me now! You see, there are three great orchids, and orchids are two dollars apiece, and then there are about a peck of English violets, besides the little orchids, and the wonderful making of the corsage. When Fran, my room-mate first looked at it she said,—“Well, I hate to think of the pair of boots you could buy with that.” I don’t see how it could have been much under ten dollars, and it may have been more. Just think of being able to do that,—and to send no card! I wish you could see it. It is still perfectly fresh,—I keep it sprinkled and in its box—a foot square!—covered with oiled paper. The combination of shades is exquisite,—the deep purple of the violets, and the orchids, shading from palest lavender, somehow, into crimson on the tongues. Oh, just think of having a Valentine like that! Frances said, “It’s really almost too bad to get such wonderful flowers at college. Nothing that your fiance could possibly give you in the way of a corsage would give you much of a thrill after that.” And it’s true. Except that one always gets a thrill over flowers. I am enclosing to Kathleen today—not before, I’m sorry—the programme of the installation in which Norma starred, and the letter from the Rockland gentleman. It was wonderful, Norma. I am so proud of you. I wish I could have seen you.3 You must have been amused and tickled to begin in Rockland—you are so much fonder of Rockland than of Camden anyway,—the scenery, etc., excepted, of course. Yes, I wrote Mrs. Townsend and to all the other people you told me to write to,—except to Hazel Todd, and, God forgive me, I just plain forgot all about her, poor little thing. It is terrible the things that one can just plain forget. You see, I have been working every minute almost for a long time, night and day, although lately I do get a bit more sleep, and I just can’t keep everything on my mind at once, I find. I used to think I could. I wrote the other people a long time ago, and I will write to Hazel today. I’m very sorry, mother. But it isn’t so bad as if Norma hadn’t written, for instance,—you see, I don’t really know her at all. I haven’t seen her since she was a little girl. Nevertheless, I am very sorry. Your letter was so cute, mother, in which you kept spelling aloud to

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Non. You are so cute, anyway. I always read parts of your letters aloud to people, you write so much more cleverly and in a so much more cultured way than anybody else’s mother here, as far as I have been able to see. You do write just wonderfully, dear. Wumps, I don’t know just what you mean about being with me at vacation time. Of course I shall want to see you. But I’m not going to be here. I shall be with Aunt Calline. As for coming up here with the girl and her mother,—dear, don’t you see that you mustn’t? You have been up here twice already, and it’s very expensive. It’s not consistent, dear, and you must be careful. I know, as well as anybody that in an environment like ours it is the easiest thing in the world to believe that we have all the money in the world, and are only temporarily strapped, because we have bought too many riding-habits, or something,—but you must be careful. You can’t afford it. You mustn’t think of it again, much as I would like to see you. I get on without seeing mother and Norma, whom I want to see just as much, so I guess I can stand it, dear, and so can you. However, if I had had any money at all I think I should have sent you a Valentine,— not just like mine! but with this point of similarity: that they would both have been flowers. Explain to me what you mean about seeing me at vacation time. Perhaps we could meet in New York and bat around a bit if we had a farthing between us. We could go to the movies, and feed at Child’s, and have a regular time, like a couple of regular guys. I don’t know when our vacation comes, and probably shan’t until the maid shakes my shoulder some cold morning and says, “Get up, miss,—vacation! We gotta clean the closets,—and gimme yer sheets.” I must close. This paper costs half a cent a page. Will write tomorrow. Love. As ever, your friend. Vincent. 1. Kathleen was a senior at the Hartridge School in Plainfield, New Jersey. 2. She typed “through.” 3. Possibly a reference to Norma giving a reading at the Masonic Temple in Rockland on February 2.

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To Harriet Monroe [February 1917] Dear Miss Monroe,— I have not yet seen my poems in Poetry;—& it may be that you do not pay for contribution until their publication; but since you say in your small circular that payment is made promptly upon acceptance, it is more probable that the affair of the sixteen dollars which you were to send me & did not send, has merely slipped your mind.—But I can’t get it out of my mind!—Will you please see about it;—I don’t know what to think.—I haven’t written before because it was my first contribution and I was waiting to see how you did things. But it seems to me now that you must simply have over-looked it.1 Yours very truly Edna St. Vincent Millay

Your card was dated Nov. 27—the sixteen dollars was for three poems.

I am sorry.

E. St. V. M. Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N. Y. 1. Monroe sent a reply letter (March 3, 1917), where she clarified that the magazine pays upon publication; her letter states in part: “I shall be very glad to send you the promised $16.00. Evidently I omitted to inform you, as I usually take pains to do, that we pay upon publication. I regret very much that the matter has bothered you, and wish you had written before.”

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To Arthur Hooley [1917?] It would be quite easy for you to remember my birthday if you were an American, because it is the same as that of George Washington. But I will forgive you if you forget it.—And if you really wish to die before the next one, or the one after, why, I hope that you may. Only I would like it to be myself that killed you. For somehow I cannot bear it at all that any other presence should come nearer to you, should affect you more directly, than I have ever done.—Do you think that I love you, Arthur?

I am glad the picture pleased you.—You may kiss it if you like.—It is really too small though, to create a great illusion.

Edna

To the Millay Family [Vassar College Poughkeepsie, N.Y. May 21, 1917] Saturday. Dear Family,— Do you remember Mrs. Crane?—She has been here this week-end. I had dinner with her tonight. It was so nice to see her. Virginia Geria was here with her. We talked & talked & talked, over old times.—Willard (is that her boy’s name?) is taller than she now.— A week from next Thursday our exams begin!—Whoops, my dear!— All to the merry! It’s beautifully warm here at last.—We wear thin things.—As all my things are in that condition by now it’s fine weather for me. Had a beautiful motor trip yesterday & today,—50 miles today— don’t know how far yesterday. Beautiful.—Some friends of Charlie’s—

108  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay girls. Four of us in a little Saxon—stayed all night at the house of one of them,—dinner today at the house of the other—such good food. Norma,—I am crazy about that black hat.—It is exceedingly becoming to me. What is it?—I recognize the white cemetery-wreath sea-weed decorations; but what is the hat itself?—Is it new?—Tell I!—I love it.—It is stunning.

I must go to bed.—Excuse this for not being in the afternoon. I was motoring. Much, much love, Vincent.

To Vassar President Dr. MacCracken [Vassar College Spring semester, 1917] You told me once that if I ever needed a friend to let you know.—I need one now. And I want to see you. May I?—If you don’t want to see me, I shall understand. But there is nobody else I want to go to. Mayn’t I see you this evening.——Sunday?—If not, don’t tell me that it is because you are too busy; I shall know quite well why it is. But you must know that I wish very much to see you.



Vincent Millay

To Kathleen Millay New York, June Something [June 19, 1917] Tuesday Dear Wumps: Something tells me that I shall be going home with you Friday,— or Saturday, if you wait till then. Write me if you have time at 322 West

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4th Street, care of Miss Frances Smith. I shall be there probably until I leave for home. I haven’t been intending to go home at all until I should find a job of some kind, but it’s going to be so doggone hot before long, and I haven’t a clothe to my back, as the saying goes, and it would be rather a good idea to get home where I could make things over and wash and iron and sew on buttons. I hope you will have all the best luck in the world with your exams, dear; I shall think of you Thursday. You will feel very much as I did when I was staying up all night for three nights in one week and getting no sleep in the daytime, either, and taking my finals, on which my commencement and degree from college depended. I was simply dead,—but I am as good now as if it had never been. I have been spending the last week-end with Miss Haight, who will be your Latin instructor when you come to Vassar. I don’t know if anyone has told you, but your first year at Vassar is assured,—you just can’t help going if you get through a sufficient percentage of your exams. And I suppose the next year will depend on your work for the first. I am in one of Mitchell Kennerley’s office rooms now on East 40th right off Fifth Avenue, and living extremely down town with Cutie Smith. It is great fun hunting for a job, but nothing has turned up yet. I may be glad to get the job of walking someone’s German police dog by next fall. I hope you got the things I sent you all right, and liked them. I think myself that the pyjamas are swell,—I almost wished that I wore the things myself. They must be becoming to you, dear. Try to drop me a line as soon as you get this—if you aren’t right in the middle of exams, which you probably will be,—because I’d like to reserve our section for Friday if you can get ready by that time. Write and tell me if you can be packed by Friday. All the luck in the world to you, baby; I am so anxious about you because I know how tired you must be. It will be so nice to go home; and much more fun if we go together. I think it will be the most sensible thing for me to do. I can write there this summer and perhaps sell something. I just sold a poem to the Yale Review.1 No pay as yet, because they pay on publication; and no one knows when they are going to publish; but I should lost sleep.2 Much love,—and try to write me at once. I will do all the dirty work

110  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay about the tickets, etc. If you need me very badly to help you pack, I can come out. But I really ought to have as much time as possible in the city while I’m hunting for a job. However, if you feel too tired to do it alone, just tell me, and I’ll come out. 1. The Yale Review Records in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, contains letters to Millay, including from the following dates: June 9, 1917; December 10, 1921; December 31, 1921; January 6, 1922; February 6, 1922; and May 4, 1923. The Yale Review Records in the Beinecke also contains a letter from Millay to Mr. Wilbur Cross (a professor of English at Yale University, editor of the Yale Review, and later governor of Connecticut), dated May 2, 1923. Millay received a letter from the Yale Review (June 9, 1917, addressed to her at Vassar College) accepting “When the Year Grows Old,” rejecting her other submissions, and also encouraging her to send more poetry. A later letter (December 31, 1921, addressed to her in Vienna) begins: It was a pleasure to receive the other day the little group of poems. We have enjoyed reading them all, and we should like to keep two for The Yale Review. For our purposes, “Autumn Chant” and “Song for The Lamp and the Bell” seem best,—the latter to be published in either April or July, and the “Autumn Chant” to be held, if you do not object, until the October number, suggested by its title. Herewith we are enclosing our honorarium of thirty dollars. A week later (January 6, 1922), Millay received another letter—addressing the honorarium. Our banker has informed us, much to our chagrin, that the cheque which he sent us for you the other day was by a mistake for only three dollars instead of for thirty as we had requested. Our honorariums are at best lamentably small, but we have never done anything quite as bad as this before. Herewith we are enclosing for your poems a New York draft for thirty dollars, which we hope you will have no trouble in cashing in Vienna. We are sorry that the mistake was made. The Yale Review sent Millay another letter about the mistaken check (February 6, 1922), still apologizing. The letter begins sympathetically and cordially: You must have been flabbergasted—there is no other word—to receive the cheque. However, it will make a good story. When The Yale Review has become rich and popular—which will not, I fear, be in our generation—some future editor will be able to amuse his dinner guests by telling how the magazine in its youth once paid a poet of international fame, then also in her youth, the munificent sum of thirty cents each for her poems. The writer (“G.”) added: The other day Bruce Simonds, of whose music we New Haveners are very proud, told me that he had met you in Paris last winter, and I have just had the pleasure of

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 111 lending him my copy of The Lamp and the Bell, which, along with the Poetry Book Shop edition of your Aria da Capo, is among my most cherished plays. The American Bruce Simonds (1895–1989) graduated from Yale in 1917; starting in 1921, he was a faculty member of the Yale School of Music. In the letter of May 4, 1923, G. acknowledged Millay’s letter from earlier that month and stated a “hope that arrangements can be made to have you visit the Elizabethan Club [in New Haven] before the month is over.” 2. She typed “lost sleep” rather than “not lose sleep.”

To Professor Elizabeth Haight Camden, Maine, July 26, 1917. Dear Elizabeth, I am sorry but not ashamed that I have not written you before— I haven’t had time! Of course that sounds like a prom broken leg but lend an ear and harken unto the enormity of my negotiatory obligations and didactic obligations and other things obligatory. I am tutoring twenty-four hours a week except for a few lessons in Ancient History administered by my sister Kathleen (the reason being no less valid than delicate why I do not administer these particular lessons myself ). In addition to this very exacting work I am become a public stenographer and typewriter1 (my sister Kathleen here again relieving me of a certain percentage of toil by taking the stenography off my hands—the reason in this case being no less valid and delicate than in the former). I received your letter and the check from that funny jolly girl. She must be a darling. I wish I knew her. The check is still intact, but the money I earn tutoring and typewriting, a not inconsiderable amount, is speedily requisitioned here at home—girls need so many gol-darned things; so I am not getting ahead very fast, and am too busy to be getting much dress-making done. This all will bring home to you rather forcibly the fact that I shall have to “touch you for another loan,” as they say, before I can get back to New York or get to Mrs. Kennedy’s.2 I hope that she has not lost interest because I have stayed down here so long and that you are not out of patience with me. I am not in any way to blame. I can’t help it. My family is terribly hard up and even though one can dispense with many of the necessities

112  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay of life the luxuries are still indispensable, and it costs fierce to keep in cream and melons. I am sorry not to have done more toward filling your mail box while you were up there alone and lonesome maybe but I think you will understand how it has been. I know how interested you are and that probably you have been very anxious at not hearing from me but I just haven’t had time to keep you posted. Besides there wasn’t much to post about. Please tell me you are not angry with me. I haven’t given up. I am coming back just as I planned, only not quite so soon. With love, Vincent 1. Millay advertised her typing services in the Camden Herald in 1917. “Edna St. Vincent Millay / Typewriting / 12 Limerock St., Camden / Telephone 328-6” (this example from July 6, 1917, 7). 2. Mrs. Kennedy is the actress Edith Wynne Matthison (1875–1955), married to Charles Rann Kennedy.

To Professor Elizabeth Haight Camden, Maine, August 8, 1917. Elizabeth, dear,— Will you please help Kay [Kathleen] a bit with her Latin prose?—The poor kid feels all at sea about it, and doesn’t know what Miss McCaleb wants or expects of her. She really knows a great deal more than I did about Latin prose when you were tutoring me, and I don’t think it will be as fully hard for her to pass off the condition, if you will help her a little. I feel like an awful bum, seeking you all the time to do things for me, but sometimes I certainly do feel that you are one of my very few friends on earth, so of course I impose on you. Will you send her a sentence or two to translate into the classic script? I am going to visit Mrs. Kennedy the last of this month. She is going to be at Kennebunkport [Maine], not so very far from here, and I am going to meet them and go home with them when they go. I am very much excited. Yes, I did say that I would do the readings for the lady. I haven’t yet had the opportunity to finish up The Princess Marries the

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Page.1 God knows I hope the time may come soon when I shall be able to get at it. But I shall in some way, surely, get it done in time to practice it up and be ready to do it when she wants me. Also of course I have to do it for Mrs. Kennedy. Yesterday sweet Burges Johnson sent me the Century’s check for ten dollars for a sonnet of mine he had prevailed upon them to take, bless his heart.2 Me in the Century! Did I tell you I am probably letting Mitchell Kennerley bring out my book this fall—Renascence and Other Poems? Are you mad or glad or indifferent? I think I am indifferent. There are two sweet boys here this summer from Philadelphia. They are very young—one of them especially so—and I love ’em young, as you know,—but somehow this summer I am continually in such a practical mood that I can’t fall in love, or even fool myself into thinking that I am. It’s almost appalling. Such lambs of boys, too. Write me soon, please, and do tell me what to do to get my adored kid sister out of her perplexity and on the right side of Miss McCaleb. As ever, Pyrrha3 P.S. Show me how to spell her in Greek—is it Πύρρα—or sumpin sim’lar? 1. The Princess Marries the Page was a one-act play Millay had written for a playwriting class while she was a student at Vassar, and was revising. It was published in 1932, at which point it had been produced four times previously, at Vassar College (May 12, 1917), the Bennett School in Millbrook, New York (October 22, 1917), the Provincetown Playhouse (New York City, November 22, 1918), and the Cosmopolitan Club in Philadelphia (December 22, 1930). Millay acted as the Princess in the performances at Vassar College and the Provincetown Playhouse; the married couple Charles Rann Kennedy and Edith Wynne Matthison produced the play at the Bennett School; and Deems Taylor provided the music for the Cosmopolitan Club production. 2. Burges Johnson (1877–1963) was an academic and poet; he was one of Millay’s English professors at Vassar College. 3. Pyrrha is a character in visual art and classical literature, such as Horace’s Ode 1.5. A recent translation by Jeffrey H. Kaimowitz begins: “What slight young man awash with fragrant scents / pursues you, Pyrrha, on a rosy bed, / within a charming cave?” The name “Pyrrha” is “from the Greek word for fire” (The Odes of Horace [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008]); “the name suggests a girl with reddish-yellow or auburn hair” (R. G. M. Nisbet and Margaret Hubbard, A Commentary on Horace: Odes, Book I [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970]).

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To Henry Seidel Canby Camden, Maine, August 27, 1917. Dear Mr. Canby:1 You wrote me when you accepted my poem When The Year Grows Old that you would detain its publication in The Yale Review until I should have sent some other verses to publish with it—is it altogether too slight to be printed by itself? You see, I am in a difficulty. I have no other verses on hand just now in which I think you would be very interested, and I am in a great hurry to have you publish When The Year Grows Old, so that there will be no trouble about its being published in the collection of my poems which Mr. Mitchell Kennerley is to publish later this fall. I very much want it in my book. But even more than that I want it in your magazine,—so please don’t do such a tragic thing as to send it back to me rather than publish it at once! But will it be impossible for you to arrange for it to appear so that it might be copied late in November or early in December in my own collection? I do not know enough about your business to know just how presumptuous of me this is, but instinct tells me that it is something requiring to be delicately done. Forgive me if I am too greatly trespassing, but please do not disregard me utterly; I want very much to know. It is to be my first book of poems, you see. Yours very truly,      Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Henry Seidel Canby (1878–1961), an American scholar and editor, was assistant editor of the Yale Review from 1911 to 1920.

To Arthur Hooley [September 17, 1917] Monday I was in Mamaroneck yesterday & wrote you a letter,—which I have subsequently given the lift-boy for light reading.

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My address for a few days is 257 W. 86th.—I suppose you will call?—No? E.

To Kathleen Millay [October 18, 1917] Dear Baby,— Just a note, so that Isobel & Violet won’t have anything on you. I have just written them. Next week I shall be at the Bennett School in Milbrook, very near you, coaching the students—alumnae—in the production of my two plays—The Princess & The Slatterns & also to give a reading of my poems.1 I shall doubtless get over to see you.— You are making a mistake, dear, which I wish you would not make,— playing too much with the few people you already know there, & not getting sufficiently acquainted with new people.2 It is a serious mistake & one that you will regret all the next three years.—You should avoid whenever it is possible making the mistakes I made, & make mistakes of your own; the more you follow after me the more stupidly & unpleasantly people will talk.—I know. Be sensible, while you have time. I have heard that you are too tied up with one crowd.—Don’t do it—at least not Freshman year—not until you are quite sure what you really want. Write me, please, The Bennett School Milbrook, N. Y.—Halcyon Hall & give an account of yourself.

Sweet sing, I have my ring now just like yours, & love it. How are you getting on with your classes?—I am anxious to hear. You have not written for a long time. Please be a good girl, Wumps.—I can set you the best of examples— “The Horrible Example”!

116  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay With much love, Your sister, Vincent. 1. Millay was at the Bennett School in October 1917. Miriam Gurko notes that “she spent a week there helping with the production of her plays, The Princess Marries the Page, and Two Slatterns and a King, and giving a reading of her poetry one night. She received another fifty dollars for her week’s work” (Miriam Gurko, Restless Spirit: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay [Thomas Y. Crowell, 1962], 75). 2. Kathleen had begun studies at Vassar in the fall of 1917.

To Kathleen Millay [New York City] December the Fifth 1917 Old Wumps: I am sending you up a coat and a muff; hopes as how you likes ’em. If the coat is too big or you don’t like it or you have got your little fool self another already or anything, and if you will send the coat back to me in a day or two I can change it for you. So please don’t neglect this; if it doesn’t suit, be prompt about returning it. Much love to us, I mean from us—Non just spoke to me and made me do that. Our new diggings is fine; We can’t pronounce our landlady, so we call her Salome, for a quite obvious reason. Love, Sefe. Tell Simpson I don’t know just when I shall appear—give her my love. V.

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To Harriet Monroe 30 West 9th Street, N. Y. C. Dec. 15, 1917. Dear Miss Monroe: Salomon tells me you want some more of my poems. Will you like these, I wonder? I am deeply attached to them, myself; they are my especial pets and darlings. Yours very sincerely, Edna St. Vincent Millay

To Mitchell Kennerley Christmas Day [1917?] Dear Mitchell Kennerley,— I have not infrequently thought that you are one of the best men in the world. Today I am quite sure of it,—although it may be that many people who know nothing about it know better.—You have been just now so ever especially good to me in turning yourself into a Santa Claus for the indulgence of my vanity and my vice and my deathless childhood that I have a hurt in my heart to do something to please you. I want this letter to make you know just how much my friend I feel you to be,—my friend at all sorts of times, when I’m a little girl and when I’m a big girl and when I’m not sure just what it is that I am. I don’t believe anybody else ever felt quite the same towards you or about you as I do. I mean so much what I say that my hand-writing is cramped. It means to me that this is the first letter I’ve written you for a long time when I’ve used the inside as well as the outside of the sheet. It is a long letter, you see.—It really is. I have been a long time in writing it, which is not much with me. And before I began it I sat for sometime thinking it, wondering what I should say, and what I should not say, and what I should on no account forget to say. I suppose you are a very busy man,—your desk always cluttered.— Yet you are never too busy to think of other people. You are not like anybody else I ever knew.

118  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay I wonder whether more people love you or hate you. You could probably be quite perfectly hateable. But I don’t know anyone who does hate you. And I do know people, besides myself, who love you very much. Is this letter funny?—Does it make you laugh?—Or do you understand it?—If you do understand it, then, out of the-hurt-that-I-have-inmy-heart-to-please-you, I have at least given you something nice to think about. —Edna St. Vincent Millay

To Kathleen Millay [January 30, 1918] Dearest Kathleen,— All the things you called me I am. And I can’t explain it all in a letter the whole awful mess, but sometime when I see you I’ll try to. Norma & I have decided that one birthday is conventional & insignificant, so for this year at least you are to have two birthdays,—the first will be on the 19th of February.—You must be looking forward to it.

Your little poem about the squirrel is corking, Kathleen,—I liked it very much. The last line simply took my breath. Heavens, what a thought!

Norma is getting a new job,—she is really being taken right along into a new shop by a woman who is leaving Mr. Jones’ place where they both are working.—The woman’s way up in the business & likes Norma very much.—Poor old Hunk has been getting skinny, getting only six dollars a week.—From now on she will get ten, until she gets a raise.— Isn’t that fine?—She is tickled to death.

My play—that is to say, Floyd Dell’s play, in which I am now starring, is making a great hit,—& I am succeeding in getting a great deal of

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favorable attention from managers, etc.1 It may mean a great deal.—And it is marvelous practice.

Tell me what they are going to do about your mid-years; dear.— Though I shall understand if you don’t write, how very busy you are. With much love from us both. Vincent. 139 Waverly Place N. Y. C. 1. In December 1917, Millay played Annabelle in The Angel Intrudes, by Floyd Dell. At the time of this letter, she was playing She in Dell’s Sweet and Twenty. Millay and Dell were also lovers who later became longtime friends.

To Harriet Monroe [February 5, 1918] Dear Miss Monroe,— Did I ever tell you that yes, one title would do?—Of course it will, & probably you don’t want to hear from me anyway, but just go ahead with things,—which is quite right. I am living now at 139 Waverly Place—I move about a bit—but I shall never leave New York,—unless, of course, I come to Chicago to live. Yours very sincerely,     Edna St. Vincent Millay

To Kathleen Millay 139 Waverly Place Tuesday, Feb. 25, 1918 Kathleen, darling sister,— Norma & I do nothing but think about you, & talk about you, & wish we were with you. I was coming up Saturday,—I mean to say Sunday, but I was very ill, & yesterday I was worse, & today I am just

120  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay able to write a letter,—grippe, I think, & I took too much rhinitis, & was so weak I couldn’t move. We both felt terribly about my not going.— Dear Isobel is keeping me informed of how you are. Everybody always asks for you.—Ted was here with two other soldiers a few nights ago & was very distressed for you. He was so cute, wanted to gloat a bit, evidently, for he asked for my book the first thing, & showed it to the others,—isn’t that sweet? Wumps, we are crazy about the curtains,—& the other hanging, & everything,—& the cups are the loveliest things with the blue cup.—We have eight little orange shelves,—did you know that?—and the cups are on one of them.—Just now the room is very beautiful. Norma has not come back yet from her job—where, just by the way, she is adored & petted & allowed to quite as she likes, & spoiled, generally—& I have the house all cleaned up. Between the two windows—we hung the curtains the very day they came—is the head of the bed, you know, & I roll the pillows up round, like a long bolster, & then cover them with the orange moons & tree cloth you sent, & stick the gold pillow up against the bolster. It looks stunning. Also my trunk, covered with what was left of the curtains, makes a window-seat under the window where the radiator isn’t,—you know, & in the table where I am writing is a big pot of primroses that Floyd bought me on my birthday, & on the bureau, in the silver sugar-bowl you stole, are the orchids & friegia that Isobel sent me,—the room is wonderfully fragrant with them.— There’s a mouse playing around here, too,—We have a great name; I think this one is Wee-Sleekit, though I really have no reason for supposing so,—especially since it was probably he that we caught in the trap last week.1 If it’s not Wee-Sleekit, then I’m pretty sure it is Mousushka Ratovitch, who is one of our most interesting & cultivated visitors.

Kathleen, here is some real news for you: Hunk has had her hair cut. It’s been done over a week now, & we thought at first we’d wait & surprise you with it, but it’s really too exciting to keep any longer. She is the cutest looking little devil I ever saw,—simply ravishing. I am sending you a couple of my newest poems. I am writing night & day now. Never wrote so much, & a lot of it is rather good, too.

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Wumps, no less a person has been here since you were here than Arthur Davison Ficke,—you know we used to correspond at one time very feverishly & fast,—well, he was in New York for three days last week & played around with us all the time, & he is a major in the army— that’s one above a captain, you know—(at least, you may know—I’m darned sure I didn’t) & he’s exceedingly handsome, tall & curly-headed & with a lovely voice &—oh, my lord, everything!—he’s gone to France!— Wumps, I am crazy about him, & he’s gone, he’s gone, & there’s no comfort left me on earth except one beer on top of another all night long at the Hell-Hole!2 I gave him a copy of my book, & he gave me a copy of his latest book.—& I gave Witter Bynner a copy of my book & he gave me a copy of his latest book, & Percy Mackaye says that if I’ll give him a copy of my book he’ll give me a copy of his latest book—& pretty soon I’m going to start a lending library.

Don’t let it out to Mother yet that Hunk has had her hair cut.— Mothers are always a bit sentimental about their little boys’ curls.

Sweetheart, don’t worry about anything. Norma ought to get her automobile money very soon, & I’ve written a good deal of stuff which I’m pretty sure I can sell, & Harriet Monroe of Poetry will be sending me a check soon,—so don’t you worry about that.—Of course right now we haven’t a cent, which is one reason why my cold has hung on so long— “stuff a cold,” they say,—but, damnit, I was in no position to!— Norma gets paid off tonight, so we’ll have a meal today, but she’s been out sick & doesn’t get full money,—which has its inconvenient side. Bill Sykes will have to either wait for the rent or sic the bull-dog on us.—By the way, we don’t speak of “paying the rent” now; we say, “Dear, dear, I do believe we haven’t the money to buy the house this week.— We’ll have to buy it twice next week.”

122  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Bennet is sailing soon,3 or has already gone. Norma & I had dinner with him & the other officers aboard his boat one night.—It was very secret & thrilling, & we mustn’t even tell the name of the boat!

Goodbye, darling.—If I can borrow some money somewhere I am coming up to see you—I am crazy to see you, poor love, poor suffering sweet old dearest love!—We feel so terribly for you, Kathleen.—We think about you all the time—& we’re quite sick about it. I wish we could both come up. It’s disgusting & vulgar & cruel to have no money at a time like this.—It makes me choking mad. None of your family near you during this awful time,—& everybody else would have had the campus cluttered with all his near & far connections!— I can’t tell you how ashamed I am of my futility.—It’s inexcusable.

Thank you, dear, for my sweet little birthday card, & for the Valentine.

If Norma is not too very tired, she, too, will write you. With all my heart’s love, beloved sister, Yours,     Vincent.

The Ferry Voyagers We were very tired, we were very merry,— We had gone back & forth all night on the ferry; It was bare & bright & smelled like a stable, But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table, We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon, And the whistles kept blowing, & the dawn came soon. We were very tired, we were very merry. We had gone back & forth all night on the ferry;

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And you ate an apple & I ate a pear From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere, And the sky went wan & the wind came cold And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold. We were very tired, we were very merry, We had gone back & forth all night on the ferry; We hailed “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head. And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read, And she wept “God bless-you” for the apples & pears, And we gave her all our money but our subway fares. ——E. St. V. M.

1. From the first line of “To a Mouse, On Turning Her Up in her Nest with the Plough,” by Robert Burns (1759–1796): “Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie.” 2. The Hell-Hole was an Irish pub in Greenwich Village. 3. Bennet Schauffler (1893–1979) was introduced to Millay by Salomón de la Selva while Bennet was a student at Williams College. “According to a letter he wrote to his fiancée, Bennet resisted Edna’s advances” (Peter Hulme, The Dinner at Gonfarone’s: Salomón de la Selva and His Pan-American Project in Nueva York, 1915–1919 [Liverpool University Press, 2019], 202).

To Harriet Monroe 139 Waverly Place, New York City. March 1st, 1918. Dear Harriet Monroe,— Spring is here,—and I could be very happy, except that I am broke. Would you mind paying me now instead of on publication for those so stunning verses of mine which you have? I am become very, very thin, and have taken to smoking Virginia tobacco. Wistfully yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay P. S. I am awfully broke. Would you mind paying me a lot?

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To Kathleen Millay [May 9, 1918] Dear Wumps,— Norma & I are going to motor up to Vassar Saturday afternoon with Paul & Ted or maybe Charlie Young (Charles T). When we get up there—probably about seven o’clock—you must take chapel-cut—I shall go play with some of my old friends & leave you with Hunk & the boys until time to go home. At least, this is the way it looks now, & it probably will turn out just about in this way. So watch for us.

Norma is just returned from Washington, D.C.—where she has been for a little while on business. (!!!)—She has gone into a sort of partnership—hats & gowns—with a wonderful dressmaker & will probably make money.—Went to Wash. to deliver some dresses. Went all alone. I may be going to San Francisco this summer with the Washington Square Players. Don’t know. We are moving into the apartment—two rooms, kitchenette & bath, roof & yard—of the woman with whom Norma is in partnership.—We shall be moving in about a week. It will be 25 Charlton Street. (Just this minute, Norma is after me to go out & eat,—so I must leave you. Expect us Saturday. Much love, bèbè, Sefe

To Kathleen Millay [Spring 1918?] Monday Oh, Poor Sing! Sister feels terribly for you, sweet, brave baby. It made me almost sick just reading your letter. Wumps, dear, you do have the worst luck of any kid I ever knew. And I thought I was hard up living in an unheated room without food for a couple of days,—why that was comfort compared to the plagues that are visited on you! Norma has not yet come home from work, so she knows nothing

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about it as yet. She is working very hard, and has a very long day, but it is work that she likes. As for me, I didn’t get that job that I thought I should get, so I’m doing nothing but acting and trying to get my affairs straightened around. I’ve made a little list (you remember how I never could do anything without making a list) and now I am going to get everything all caught up. Went to another Webster Hall ball the other night with Floyd Dell. It was a beautiful ball, but poorly advertised, and the man who gave it is said to have gone in the hole to the extent of $2000. Salome has just sprung it on us that she wants a dollar more for the rent because we use so much gas, and I can’t pay six dollars a week for a room, and if I could I wouldn’t pay it for this room in which I now am discovered seated, so your milliner sister and I are like to be on the move again in a minute or two. Mr. Dell says he thinks he knows of a place on Greenwich Avenue that we could get. I’d be glad to get most anywhere where I could dare to take a bath without putting so much sulpho-napthol in that I smell like a sick puppy all the rest of the day. This sure air a mucky and stinkous lodging-house, and I shall be glad to get out before spring, for, just between us two and your nurse I suspect vermin. That would be the Vital Urge, (consult the philosophers). We are rehearsing all the time for the new bill at the Provincetown Players; I am playing only one part, but that is enough; it takes up about half of my waking time, and in my sleep I dream of the playwright,—so there you are! By the way, there is an honest to Jove chance of Norma’s getting that automobile, or the money equivalent. She is first now, and there are only a few days more; Paul has taken up a subscription among the men out at the school and sent ten dollars to Mr. Boynton for her and some other people have done the same thing. Of course she probably will not get it, because it will be all bought up at the end,—but my word! think of three hundred hard pine simoleons! Dear Kathleen, I must get to work upon more important and less sentimental things than writing to one’s sister. Good luck and good courage to you, sweetheart. With my deepest love and sympathy, Vincent

126  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

To Anna Scull [August 11, 1918] Saturday Dear old girl,1 It’s a dirty lie I didn’t write you; but as a matter of fact I didn’t do it till last week some time, so of course you haven’t got it yet,—sent you a batch of new stuff, too. I’m going out to New Rochelle today and am to spend the next two weeks on a boat cruising about the sound,—but I want very much to see you, and I will see to it that in some way I get into town Tuesday, to play with you all. Also tell Stoutie2 that I accept heartily her kind bid of a night’s shelter. No,—hold on a minute!— How would you like to come out on the boat Tuesday night, you and your brother Fran?—You see, my sister and I have this craft, a big motor boat, for two weeks, just us two all alone; we’re not going to move about much, use it mostly as a house boat and a float to swim from—do you swim? We could supply you with bathing suits of a sort, but you would best tell Fran to bring anything she may have in the way of an Annette.3 We could put you up for the night,—all of you I mean, and should love to have you out there. Also, and especially if you swim, you would like it a lot, I know. My sister, Kathleen, whom I think Stoutie has met and will recognize, will be coming out Tuesday evening about five. You could come out with her. Call up the house—Spring 9493—as soon as you get this, and tell my mother or Kathleen if you will come out, and they will let you know where and when to meet her. Please do that, dear. Otherwise, if you have a complex against the water, or any reason why you would rather be in town, I will come in and do something urban with you,—just leave word with my family. I am very keen to see you. Goodbye, Vincent. Just tried to get you on the wire,—but the hotel doesn’t answer.—Has it burned down, or anything?

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1. Anna Scull was a fellow classmate of 1917 at Vassar College. 2. Possibly Frances Stout, also in Millay’s class of 1917 at Vassar. 3. A bathing suit, named after Annette Kellerman.

To Kathleen Millay [October 12, 1918] Darling Wumps,— We haven’t even sent the box yet!—Who’s sending you parcels? Gr-r-r!

Awfully glad your room is so sweet—are sending things very soon, but express companies are awful.

I didn’t read to Mother about the Ada girl. Thought she would worry. Awfully glad you are all right, dearest. You must be very much better this winter.

Hilda is here. Had driven with us & is taking us tonight to see Tea for Three.1 Bennet & I have been playing around a little, & we have tracked the cigarette-case mystery to the point where I think I shall get the indemnity for it,—actually.

Heard Carmen the other night with Bennet. Marguerita Sylva sang it beautifully.2

Albert Jay Nock, my darling Bertie, has gone to Wisconsin, after giving me all the cigarettes in the world. He writes me, but alas!—it is not the same. Otto has been sick with the Flu, but, is recovering.

128  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Kno more knews toknight, knymph. Sefe 1. Play by Roi Cooper Megrue. 2. Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen was first performed in 1875. Marguerita Sylva, (1875– 1957, first name also spelled Marguerite) was popular in the title role of Carmen, which she sang for more than six hundred performances.

To Harriet Monroe [Hotel McAlpin, New York October 22, 1918] Dear Harriet Monroe,— “Figs from Thistles” came appallingly near to making me ­famous,—did you know that? —Here are a couple of things not so entirely different which I thought you might like.

Do you ever do things like this? [Millay drew an arrow to a blot on the page.]—I frequently,—& yet I bathe; one invariably connects such casualness, doesn’t one?—with poets who do not bathe.

Yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay 25 Charlton Street September

To Mrs. Charlotte Babcock Sills [December 18, 1918] 1 Charlie, dear sister,— Of course I couldn’t do the right thing like a Christian girl & write to you the minute I heard your wonderful news—I never have stamps— or else I don’t have paper—or else I have just tipped over the ink—you

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remember me—Vince, the ne’er do well of college days—but I’m terribly glad just the same & probably a person that has a new baby doesn’t even notice, anyway, who’s written & who hasn’t.—Well, I’m the one that hasn’t, darling,—forgive me, can you?—I really care—& love you very much.—I enclose a letter I wrote you ages ago & the poems I didn’t enclose then. Much love to you, dear. Vincent. Dec. 18 P.S.—The other letter was long before it happened, you see. “The three of you” was a little joke!—V. 1. Charlotte Noyes Babcock, Mrs. Richard Sills, was a classmate (1917) and roommate of Millay at Vassar.

To Harriet Monroe [March 22, 1919] Dear Harriet Monroe: This is to remind you that if you don’t find a place for these poems of Edna’s very soon, you gotta return ’em to her. There are two of them—Recuerdo; and She is Overheard Singing; stunning things both.1 You are committing a bitter and a presumptuous folly in thus long keeping them from the world. If you don’t look out I’ll just tell the world all about it, and then where will you be? Lovingly, Edna St. Vincent Millay 449 West 19th St. N. Y. C.

1. Both poems appeared in the May 1919 issue of Poetry.

Portrait by Henrietta Seitner Krohn, 1919. (Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Charles A. Krohn in memory of Henrietta Seitner Krohn)

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To Jessie B. Rittenhouse 449 West 19th Street New York City [July 7, 1919] My dear Miss Rittenhouse,— By all means. I am glad you are bringing out a second Book of Modern Verse.1

It is true I never see you. And I am sorry. I never see anybody lately, because I am working very hard on my second book of poems, trying to get the darned thing together!

July the Seventh 1919

Sincerely yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay

1. Second Book of Modern Verse: A Selection from the Work of Contemporaneous American Poets (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1919), edited by Jessie B. Rittenhouse, contained Millay’s poems “Afternoon on a Hill,” “God’s World,” and “When the Year Grows Old.”

To Walter Adolphe Roberts [July 12, 1919] 1 Dear Walter,— I have made good my escape with two petty thefts,—one, the little picture you gave me of the Shakespearean theatre, which I forgot to take when I was here before; the other, the cigarette-case of Salomón de la Selva.2 As to this latter robbery,—if you can give me any satisfactory explanation as to its presence in your apartment, that is to say, if Sal simply forgot it & left it there, or if he has given it to Mrs. Roberts, very well—, I will return it. But on no other grounds, that is to say, you cannot have it, my friend. Sal gave it to me first, a long time ago, except that I wouldn’t take it, because it was new, & I thought he must want it himself;—but if he’s around giving it away, la la! that’s a different matter!—

132  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay The little bijou which was inside I’ve put beside your ink-well on the writing-table.— I’ve not finished the ode,—though I’ve done a good bit on it, & some other things besides.—You bum, the people downstairs do play the piano!—It’s as bad as 19th Street for a truly music-loving population.— “I shall hate sweet music my whole life long”!3 I have read Bubu-de Montparnasse—why did he call it that?—Seems to me little Berthe was the principal actor in the little commedia del arte.—I don’t like your Charles-Louis Philippe so darned much. He’s such a self-conscious cuss—loves to think he’s a stylist,—makes me sick, you bum. Though some of the stuff is quite fine in spite of his panting efforts,—& on the whole, it’s a very pathetic little tale.4 Also I read Le Journal d’une Femme de Chambre. There’s an amazing book—a lovely book!—So much better than Le Jardin des Supplices.5— Though he neglected to clear up what gave the lady such a pain in the upper leg & lower intestine during the first part of the story. I couldn’t make out for a long time whether she had swallowed a pin or been careless in some other way,—& Mr. Mirbeau forgot to explain. Perhaps he thinks he’s going to get the beanless public to pay itself a sequel! I learned no end of disgusting French expletives that Pete won’t let me use—he said: “How would you like to have me going around saying: “___ __ __,” & “___ ___ __,” & “___ __ ___,”? etc. __ the dashes indicating atrocious English expressions which every nice girl would pretend she had never even overheard,—whereupon I swooned, saying, “Oh, damnitall, have it your own way, camel!” This isn’t to say that Pete has been living up here with me—I came up here to work—but I have permitted him the dubious pleasure of taking me out & feeding me up once in a while. Thanks a heap for letting [me]have the place, Walter—I haven’t smashed anything, or torn anything, or spilled the ink.—I have merely slightly stolen, as I said. Edna 1. Stephen Vincent Benét provides context for Walter Adolphe Roberts in a letter he wrote in 1939: “W. Adolphe Roberts was poetry-editor of Ainslee’s and buying poems by Millay, myself and a lot of others. The stories in Ainslee’s were very run of the mine, but the verse, if I

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 133 do say so myself, was pretty good. And they paid cash” (Selected Letters of Stephen Vincent Benét, edited by Charles A. Fenton [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960], 328). Roberts had been on vacation, letting Millay use his apartment while he was away; she left this letter in the apartment for him on his return (Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay, ed. Macdougall, 90). 2. Salomón de la Selva (1893–1959) was a Nicaraguan poet and a professor at Williams College who courted Millay. 3. From the poem “The Triumph of Time” by Algernon Charles Swinburne. 4. In this 1901 novel by Charles-Louis Philippe (1874–1909), “Bubu” is the given nickname of the pimp Maurice Bélu, and “little Berthe” is a prostitute. 5. Novels by Octave Mirbeau (1848–1917) published in 1900 and 1908; they were translated into English as The Diary of a Chambermaid and Torture Garden.

To Arthur Davison Ficke [October 1919] Arthur, you sweet old thing,— You were quite right about your sonnet sequence having become a weight on my chest. But only because I cannot parcel-post parcels! The very thought of it prostrates me for days.—As for the poems themselves,— I have loved them—not all of them, but, oh, so much of them—& I am reluctant to return them to you.—I had read & re-read them many times before you ever even began to think I was keeping them a rather long time. When are you coming on to New York?—You said “January,”—but I am afraid you have changed your mind, oh, cherished friend, & I have so wished to see you.—I am right in believing, am I not, that you will not be in town without at least calling me up?—I am in the telephone directory.

My prose name is Nancy Boyd. I have a story, I think, in the present, in the immediately preceding, & in the about-to-appear, issues of Ainslee’s magazine.—No, I am not getting rich,—but I could, if I had the slightest iota of business sense.—Some of my stories are good, some are bad,—­ almost invariably they are beautifully written, after a flippant fashion. No, I have not read the book of de Gourmont that you mention,— mebbe I will.—Have you read Barbusse’s L’Enfer?—a beautiful, terrible book.1

134  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay I am sending you a clipping in which you may be interested. If I can find a copy of the play I will send you that,—in which case: you need never return it.—(in testimony whereof witness my hand & seal, whatever that may mean.)—with love Vincent.— I marked the sonnets all up. I hope you meant me to. The remarks, footling as you may think, were not appended thoughtlessly to impress you with my serious interest. I have really thought about the doggone pomes.—V. 1. A novel by Henri Barbusse (1874–1935) published in 1908 and translated into English as Hell.

To Kathleen Millay [November 20, 1919] Dearest Wumps,— Us has no time for anything, on account of the play! You see, my Aria da Capo, the play of Pierrot & Columbine & the shepherds, is finished, & is wonderful,—& the Provincetown Players are going to produce it in the next bill, in about three weeks.1 I am directing it, & Norma is acting Columbine, Harrison Dowd Pierrot, Charlie & Jimmie Light the two shepherds, & Hugh Ferriss, if we can make him stick to it, the Tragic Spirit.—It is going beautifully so far, but it takes all my time & all my life out of me. I am crazy to have you read it, dear, but have no extra copy at this moment. You must come down one of the two weekends during which it is playing. I have written mother that she must be home by then. If the thing gets over big, dear, as I think it must do, it will be a sensation. I feel, of course I do, very conscience-stricken because I haven’t written you. I’ve written mother only once. But you see, up to last Thursday we were acting,—& by the way, we expect to receive $30 apiece from the last bill. Which will come in handy, as we’ve been, especially myself, naturally, too busy with the play to write a story for Ainslee’s, “agin tomorrer’s ironin’ ”!

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Margaret Rohn just called me up & I gave her lots of messages to you.2 She wanted me to come up this week-end—my God!

Dear, (Not that this is of secondary importance to me, but just that first I had to give my excuses for abusing you so), how are you feeling?— just how?—low down & high up?—what are they doing to you? Ask Margaret Rohn, if you aren’t feeling well enough, to write me & tell me exactly how you are. Will you, dear? Hugh Ferriss inquired for you. The little kids in this street continually inquire for you. And Normie & I wish we knew how you feel, dear Sister. With very much love, Vincent. Norma is conversing over the play with Charlie, who sends you his love & says he will see to it that the $2 you sent by Fitz shall be well-earned by Norma.—V. 1. Aria da Capo premiered December 5, 1919. The cast for the original Provincetown Players performance included Harrison Dowd as Pierrot, Millay’s sister Norma as Columbine, Hugh Ferriss as Cothurnus, Charles Ellis as Corydon, and James Light as Thyrsis. An early book publication (New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1921) includes a two-page author’s note and thirteen pages of “Suggestions for the Production of Aria da Capo”—Millay attends to setting, properties, costumes for each character, and descriptions of each character. Of Columbine she states in part: “Her expression, ‘I cannot live without’ this or that, is a phrase she uses in order to make herself more attractive, because she believes men prefer women to be useless and extravagant; if left to herself she would be a domestic and capable person” (51). 2. Margaret Rohn was a Vassar classmate, class of 1920. Her married name is Corfield.

To Mitchell Kennerley New Year’s Day [1920] Dear Mitchell,— Your letter “interests me strangely,” as the saying is.—I have a book all ready for publication, have had for some time.—Boni & Live­ right are very anxious to publish it.—And I have shown the manuscript,

136  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay part of it, to a man in McMillan’s, who suggested my making some changes in it which I have been considering doing. You, dear, I thought, were entirely out of the publishing business forever. Everybody says so, at least. And you told me, you know, that Renascence was to be the last book of poems you would ever publish.

However, if this is not the case, my friend,—and apparently you are perfectly serious about publishing the book, I will bring you the manuscript in a few days. I will call you up first to make sure you will be in. Mitchell, aren’t you going to get out another edition of Renascence?— There’s not a copy to be had in town; everybody has been complaining to me about it, & I want some myself.—Please tell me about this.

I am dutifully making use of the envelope you so kindly enclosed, sir.

P. S. Why are you in the office day & night? P. S. Why are you indifferent to everything?

Mitchell, dear, you were very sweet to send a little girl so many Christmas goodies. A Happy New Year to you! Edna

To Arthur Davison Ficke [April 4, 1920] Arthur, dear,— I am indulging in a nervous break-down, a little one. I shall be myself again soon—whatever that may be—but for several weeks I have been somebody else. I don’t refer to a temporary madness, but rather to a temporary anaesthesia. You know how it is, old dear. Too much City,

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I dare say. I spell it with a capital now, like the Juggernaut, and other oppressive things. Sweetest Love, you wouldn’t lie to li’l’ Edna, would you? Of course, I believe in fairies, and all that. But I hear that you are very fur-lined lately. And I wonder. ’Twould be like you to be drawn towards a most unsuitable child. Yet, of course, I believe in fairies; I can’t deny that. And many old ladies have been young to me. It doesn’t make any difference, either way. But you wouldn’t lie to me, would you, Sweetest Love? I have sent the proof of my book to Hal in California. Somebody said he was in New York a few days ago. Could that be? I wanna go to China, too. Arthur, dear, whoever it was that was so sweet to me, was terribly sweet. I shall go into the country a little while, and get all rested. Tell her that. Or keep it to yourself. You must have known, even if I am entirely wrong, that I would think this, as a possibility. Yours (very lovingly), Vincent. I am sending you a copy of my latest poem. spring

To what purpose, April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness Of little leaves opening stickily. I know what I know. The sun is hot on my neck as I observe The spikes of the crocus. The smell of the earth is good. It is apparent that there is no death. But what does that signify? Not only under ground are the brains of men Eaten by maggots.

138  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. It is not enough that yearly, down this hill, April Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers. edna st. vincent millay

To Mitchell Kennerley [1920?] Dear,— I am sending you the dedication for my book, and a copy of the letter which I am sending to Horace Liveright. I am sure that in your heart you dislike me, for being such a baby, and so absurd. Someday I must talk to you about the Figs from Thistles, but probably you won’t want to bring that out till fall, so there is time enough. I have a great many clippings, dealing with both Renascence and Aria da Capo, which you might use to advantage either on the jackets or in the circulars of the new books. There is something else we must talk about,—the jacket and circulars; I don’t much like the one Arthur suggested. Would you object to using clippings for the jacket? Or is this considered very bad form? I don’t know. I know nothing at all. If you will send me circulars, and envelopes and things,—things meaning stamps!—I will mail them to thousands of people, about two thousands. In two poems in City Trees—Song of a Second April and Pastoral— there occurs the word “mullen,” which should be spelled “mullein.” But of course if you haven’t time to bother with that, I can fix it up in the proof.1 Do you want me to give you some clippings? I am very unhappy today. I am sure that you dislike me. Edna.

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 139 1. Based on a proof dated April 1, 1920, City Trees was an early title of the book Second April (1921) [LC]. When Millay read at Vassar College on Friday, December 3, 1920, she “explained that City Trees referred to a little group of trees on Forty Second Street” (The Vassar Miscellany News, December 8, 1920, page 1).

To Jessie B. Rittenhouse 449 West 19th Street, New York City April 7, 1920 Dear Jessie: If your bulletin of which you spoke to me is not already gone to press, and you wish to include therein any information as to my recent illustrious activities, then these are um! I went out to Cincinnati in February and gave a lecture and reading from my own published and unpublished poems before the Ohio Valley Poetry Society. (Last year they had Amy;1 wherefrom I deduce the system as being: one year a fat girl, next year a thin girl; however, this is not official and need not be included in the bulletin.) I went out there just to read for this one society, because they wrote me last summer and urged me to, setting the date way ahead. It never occurred to me before to do things like that, but I find it is rather nice to do,—people are lovely to one, aren’t they? And this spring I have read before the Macdowell Club here, and at the Sunwise-Turn, and made my first real after-dinner speech,—at the dinner given by the Society of Arts and Sciences in honor of John Drinkwater and St. John Ervine.2 But the most interesting thing I shall have done this year is to have three books of poems published: one, named, after fearful imaginative struggles, simply poems, which will be out in about two weeks; the second, my one-act play aria da capo, also in about two weeks; and the third, figs from thistles, sometime next fall. Mitchell Kennerley is publishing all three. aria da capo has already been produced by several little theatres among them the Provincetown Players of New York, the Community Players of Boston, and the Vagabond Players of Baltimore, and published in the March 18 issue of Reedy’s Mirror. Probably the extremely favorable review of the play in the New York Times, in which Mr. Woollcott spoke of it as being the most beautiful and the most

140  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay interesting play in the English language at that time being played in New York, accounts for the wide publicity which has been given it; at any rate, the amount of my correspondence has been about doubled this year, all due to the letters, etc., which I receive concerning aria da capo, and there is scarcely a little theatre or literary club in the country, so far as I can see, that isn’t going to produce it or give a reading of it. Somebody gave a reading of it at Columbia University a few days ago.3 I find myself suddenly famous, Jessie, dear, and in this un-lookedfor excitement I find a stimulant that almost takes the place of booze! “Land, how I do run on!”—as they say in the little stories of real life. Forgive this expansiveness. Would I had time to convert it all into an epigram. Affectionately, Edna Millay 1. Amy Lowell (1874–1925) was an American author; her first book of poetry, A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1912. 2. John Drinkwater (1882–1937) was an English poet and playwright. His poetry appeared in all five of Edward Marsh’s anthologies titled Georgian Poetry, published from 1912 to 1922. St. John [Greer] Ervine (1883–1971) is the pen-name of John Greer Irvine, an Irish playwright and novelist. Both Drinkwater and Ervine contributed to Vanity Fair in the early 1920s. 3. Gertrude Workman, on Friday, March 26, 1920 (Columbia Spectator, March 29, 1920, p. 3).

To Witter Bynner 449 West 19th Street New York City [Spring, 1920?] Hal, dear,— You have by this time, I think, the proof of my two books. But I am not sure that you have a copy of Aria da Capo, so that I send you this, clipped from Reedy’s Mirror of March 18. It is an unconscionable bunch of stuff to be wishing on a man, but it’s your obsequies,—I hope you were not intoxicated when you wired.

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My heart is breaking with envy of you. The day you sail I’m going down to Chinatown & get a job in the Oriental, scrubbing chow-main off teak-wood tables with Old Dutch Cleanser.—Ah, me.—and if Arthur goes with you there is only one thing left: I shall asphyxiate myself in Pell Street punk-smoke.

Good friend, write me sometime. It would afford me no end of innocent girlish pleasure. And forbear to let the yaller petticoats & little green eyes crowd me entirely from your heart.— And yet perhaps my dearest wish for you would be that you might forget all of us here, & everything, & rest.—Because you told me you are very tired.— Wherefore, for a year, dear Hal, be faithless as a god to all mortals! ——Edna

To Allan Ross Macdougall 449 West 19th Street, New York City April 7, 1920 Dear li’l’ Alling: I didn’t get my proofs until about two weeks after you sailed, so all the mean things you’ve been thinking about me aren’t true at all. Also, I’m having a sort of nervous break-down, which interferes a bit with my keeping my promises and getting my business attended to on time. I hope you have got the manuscript long before this; and that you didn’t need it too badly before I could get it to you. I sent the first page-proofs back to Mitchell Kennerley yesterday; and the book, which I call simply poems, ought to be out in two or three weeks. Mr. Kennerley is going to bring out my aria da capo in a little book, too, this spring. And I have decided to let him have the figs from thistles,—thus confining my publishing to one publisher, which I have decided is the best thing to do. What do you think, I wonder, of finding my little pome to your own se’f in the Personalities?

142  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Best of luck to you, dear boy. Keep a list of all the folks that sass you, and I’ll come over there and beat ’em up. Lovingly, Edna

To Arthur Davison Ficke [May 16, 1920] Arthur, dear, Where is Hal? And is he really going to be in this country until the first of May? I haven’t got the proof of my book yet myself, the bestial printers are so ornery; but when I get it I’ll send it on to him, if you can tell me where he is. Weren’t you cute, sliding off to Iowa without calling me up again?—Ah, well! Iowa is a good place for ex-lawyers, and middle-­ aged poets, and other landed gentry! (Now will you be bad!) You knew darn well I was in Cincinnati when you wired me,—­ honestly, when you and Hal get together you are perfectly ridiculous. But you are both nice and tall; which is something. I have to give a reading up-town tonight, in place of Robert Frost, who has the flu, God save him. If you were here, I should ask your advice as to just what to wear, although I suppose I can’t make them think me Robert Frost, no matter what I wear. Besides, you are never here, somehow. That’s all, I guess. As ever,—as far as I remember, Vincent

To Edmund Wilson Old King’s Road, Truro, Mass. [June 15, 1920] 1 I believe I swore, dear Mr. Wilson, that you should be untroubled by me all summer, but Mr. Nathan of the Smart Set importuning me for metrical manuscript, it occurs to me that did I know which of my Figs from Thistles had not insinuated themselves into the affections of Mr. Crowninshield, I might e’en ship same to Mr. Nathan.2 If you see what I

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mean? I for my part have no aversion to selling the same manuscript to two magazines at the same time, but editors are very dyspeptic about these matters. I shall never forget how sweet to me you were the day I left New York. And I am still ashamed that I was forced to trouble you so much. It obtrudes itself upon me at times that I am after all a weaker vessel. Edna Millay 1. Edmund Wilson (1895–1972) was an American author, editor, and literary critic. Some of Millay’s letters are written to him while he served as an editor of Vanity Fair and later for The New Republic. Wilson, known as “Bunny,” had proposed to Millay earlier in the summer; she did not accept his proposal. 2. Frank Crowninshield (1872–1947) was editor of Vanity Fair from 1914 to 1936. George Jean Nathan and H. L. Mencken co-edited the literary journal The Smart Set from 1914 to 1923.

To Mitchell Kennerley Truro, Massachusetts June 22, 1920. Mitchell, dear,— You are behaving disgracefully to li’l’ Edna, whom you love.— All the time her mother keeps asking her questions which it is impossible for her to answer, & it is all very awkward & horrid, & you ought to be ashamed. Write me at once, giving me some nice, plausible, mendacious-as-hell reason why you have not yet published my pretty book.

Edna

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To Charlotte Babcock Sills Old King’s Road, Truro, Mass. June 24, 1920 Dear silly old thing,— So you thought I didn’t love you any more, or hadn’t even any memory of you and so forth. You’re a bright girl, you are. Who am I or was I ever to say “Write me reggerlar, see, or it’s all off!”? You may write or not write, lie or tell the truth, cheat, plot, deceive, and otherwise betray, but I shall luv yuh jest the same. Get me? My family and I are spending the summer at the top of the page. It is a grand spot, much nicer than any place in Mount Vernon,—so don’t fuss about that! The book isn’t out yet. When it is, you shall be advised of same. You looked awful pretty the last time I saw you,—up at the class reunion, it was; you had pink rose-buds on your hat, or some darned thing. So if you feel yourself more and more unattractive as the months drag by, be comforted a little. Good luck to you, darling, and not too much discomfort, and a cute, pretty, kind o’ fat, li’l’ blue-eyed daughter, in every respect exactly like yourself, and oh, so much love from me! Vince

To John Peale Bishop [Summer 1920] 1 John,— I have gone & taken the children with me,—I mean the chocolates.— Sorry not to have seen you again, but jooty calls me. ——E. 1. John Peale Bishop (1892–1944) was an American author and editor; he and Edmund Wilson were co-editors for Vanity Fair during the summer of 1920. Millay’s short story “The Key” begins on the same page as Bishop’s poem “Portrait For a Background of Flat Gold” (December 1922); his poem may be seen as a comment on Millay’s sonnet “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed” (which was published in Vanity Fair in November 1920) with lines from a female speaker such as these: “Although I can no longer count / What lips of lovers I have kissed” (lines 25–26).

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To John Peale Bishop [Summer 1920] Dear John,— Didn’t you get my letter? Or are you just being onery?1 Or can’t you tell yet whether or not you can get the 4th of July off? Surely you can,—and I’d like very much to have you come up here then. But perhaps you and that light-minded Bunny Wilson have planned a mad spree for this date. Do let me know at once whether or not you can come. And what about Susan Glaspell’s photograph?—It is altogether too late for that by now. Damn it, gimme a little information, boy. Edna Thursday

1. Millay typed “onery,” a variant for “ornery” in the OED.

To Walter Adolphe Roberts [Summer 1920] Dear Walter,— Heavens! An issue of Ainslee’s without a pome by me?1 I feel that if such a calamity should come to pass it would be necessary to run a blank page in that number, with my name signed to it—don’t you? I hasten to send you several. I can get no information as to people in this vicinity who let rooms, and so forth, but a very good place to put up, they tell me, is the Gifford House in Provincetown. The Atlantic House is also possible; and the Red Inn is the grandest, swellest and most expensive. The only place in Truro is a horrible place one passes on the way to the railway station, to which I would ship blindfolded not even my woist enemy. I’m awfully glad you like “Mr. Dallas”2 I was sure you would. Some blurb about me for the August number! And I got the slick little knock, too, about my promising to do the darned thing and “evading the issue.” Walter, I swear ta Gawd I meant to do it. But you know how it is. Life, and all that sort of thing, does take up one’s time so! As ever, Edna.

146  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Highland House, near Highland Light, North Truro, Isaac Small.—bungalow.3 1. Roberts wrote to Millay on August 15, 1918, stating: “I have long admired your work, and would like to welcome you as a contributor to Ainslee’s” (LC). She began publishing in Ainslee’s in November 1918. 2. Millay’s short story “Mr. Dallas Larabee, Sinner” appeared in Ainslee’s, October 1920, under her pseudonym Nancy Boyd. 3. Isaac Small (1754–1816) “lived in a house on the west side of present-day South Highland Road” (Regina Binder, Highland House Historic Structure Report, Cape Cod National Seashore, North Truro, Massachusetts, with historical background and context by Larry Lowenthal, National Park Service, npshistory.com).

To Edmund Wilson [August 3, 1920] I don’t know what to write you, either,—what you would like me to write, or what you would hate me for writing.—I feel that you rather hate me, as it is.—Which is false of Bunny.

The note you sent to 4th Street was forwarded to me here. Otherwise I should surely have seen you again before I left. Twice I started to call you up, anyway, but thought that perhaps you would not want me to.

I don’t know just when I shall be in New York again. I am going to the Adirondacks a week from today to spend about a fortnight, & after that to Woodstock for a few days, & on my way back from Woodstock I may stop in New York a day or two.—But that won’t be for a month, or nearly.

I don’t suppose you can get away from the office during the week, & especially now that John is away. But could you get away Thursday or Friday of this week, do you think?—Then you could go with me Sunday or Monday as far as Boston, on my way to Lake Placid.—If you can make it, please do come.

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I have thought of you often, Bunny, & wondered if you think of me with bitterness. Edna. (over)

My sister is amused & disgusted by my lewd portrait of myself. At her suggestion, which I now feel to be a wise one, I beg you not to circulate it. If you have not shown it to Mr. Crowninshield, please don’t. If you have, it doesn’t matter, but do shatter at once, in that case, any illusion he may have as to publishing it. E.

E. St. V. M. Hair which she still devoutly trusts is red. Colorless eyes, employing A childish wonder To which they have no statistic Title. A large mouth, Lascivious, Aceticized by blasphemies.1 A long throat, Which will someday Be strangled. Thin arms, In the summer-time leopard With freckles. A small body, Unexclamatory, But which, Were it the fashion to wear no clothes, Would be as well-dressed As any.

148  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. “Aceticized” is not in the OED. Jules Laforgue (1860–1887) uses the verb “ascéticiser” in his poem L’imitation de Notre Dame la lune (1886): “L’amour, l’amour, qu’on rêve ascéticise et fornique.” “Leopard” as a verb is not in the OED.

To Allan Ross Macdougall 77 West 12th Street, New York City. September 14th. 1920. Dearest li’l’ Alling, Long time ago I wrote you a big big lovely letter, but it never got mailed at all, because in it I told you exactly what to do about Mr. MacDermott and Aria da Capo, and immediately afterwards I was advised by Susan Glaspell not to sign his contract, as she was not going to do so and Gene O’Neill had not done so,—so that put me all off again and I didn’t know what to say, so I never said nuthin.’1 And there you is. The letter is all lost now, I suppose, and it was a pearly letter. I am back in New York again, as you see, and have a lovely room at this address which Gawd he knoweth how I am to pay for. You must have had a most beautiful time walking and motoring about France. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we, you and I, could go back there next year, and go to those places you spoke of ? Oh, Lud! Have you noticed how Vanity Fair is featuring me of late? They just can’t seem to go to print without me. And the New Republic is writing to me in longhand begging for a crumb of verse. Aint it wondafil? Allan, I do wish Mr. Macdermott would see the light and send me a more reasonable and decent contract, asking for only one year instead of three years monopoly on my play. I want him to play the play, but I hate to sign such a doggone document, so learned and legal and whereasinine, generally. (Isn’t that a lovely silly joke? It just occurred to me!) Yon damfool contract, Alling, is almost as long as the play, which don’t seem reasonable nor fitting. When you get back to England, if you get in touch with him, can’t you put the fear of Moloch in his heart? Rollo is here in town, they tell me, but I just got back, so I haven’t yet seen him, the Lord bless and keep him, the darling.2 I have met a handsome and perfidious Don Giovanni of an Italian baritone and am learning to speak Italian. He sings the solo baritone parts of the Metropolitan Opera Company in Boheme and Butterfly and Faust and Pagli-

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acci, etc. From the point of view of character and personality, he is just a sweet and friendly fellow, not so deep as a well nor so broad as a churchdoor, but oh, how he doth sing! He was spending three weeks in Woodstock while I was spending three weeks in Woodstock. And I learned a lot of Italian. His name is Luigi Mario Laurenti,3—possibly you have heard him sing. (The important part of the preceding disquisition being that I am actually learning a new language. I can read it, I find, almost as easily as French, which is to say, almost as easily as English. And in a short time I could speak it, were I in Firenze, let us say, or had I an uncle that kept a fruit store.) Did you know, li’l’ wisdim toot, that li’l aingil had had her hair bobbed?4 ’Sawful cute. I look, when I am blessed with health, approximately twelve years old. Don’t cry, Alling, for Edna’s pretty hair. She was so tired of putting the pins in. I’m wondering what Rollo will say. He will think he is sorry, but he won’t be, really. I have enjoyed the Victrola so much! I can whistle almost the whole of the Fifth Symphony, all four movements,5 and with it I have solaced many a whining hour to sleep. It answers all my questions, the noble, mighty thing, it is “green pastures and still waters”6 to my soul. Indeed, without music I should wish to die. Even poetry, Sweet Patron Muse forgive me the words, is not what music is. I find that lately more and more my fingers itch for a piano, and I shall not spend another winter without one. Last night I played for about two hours, the first time in a year, I think, and though most everything is gone enough remains to make me realize I could get it back if I had the guts. People are so dam lazy, aren’t they? Ten years I have been forgetting all I learned so lovingly about music, and just because I am a boob. All that remains is Bach.7 I find that I never lose Bach. I don’t know why I have always loved him so. Except that he is so pure, so relentless and incorruptible, like a principal of geometry. Did you know I had written a sonnet to Euclid?8 Does it strike you as funny? It isn’t funny, really. Unless, perhaps, I am funny,— which is just possible. Allan, that letter which went astray and was returned to you, was it returned to Mr. Wisdim Toot? I thought I should expire when I looked at the return address. How funny that that particular letter should be the one which went astray!

150  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Well, li’l’ Agint, this is a long letter when one considers that it is single-spaced. Is you lonsim, Ignatz? Nivva mindt, youse will be home in the swit bye end bye, end will tell Krazy all youse edvintures, end thet will be wondafill! I bet you know some new songs, the wedding ceremonial chants of the Igaroots, or some such darned thing, ol’ dear. Lots of love, li’l’ Alling, till I see you again, which will be soon now. Edna. P.S. I know “rue” should be written with a little r—but wot the ’ell— you’ll get it just the same. 1. Norman MacDermott (1890–1977) was director of the Everyman Theatre in London. Millay knew the playwrights Susan Glaspell (1882–1948) and Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953) through the Provincetown Players. She and her sister Norma performed in Tickless Time (1918), a comedy by Susan Glaspell and George Cram Cook. 2. Rollo Peters (ca. 1892–1967) was an actor and designer; he and Millay were in the Provincetown Players together, and they both acted in Rita Wellman’s The String of the Samisen. 3. Mario Laurenti’s first performance with the Metropolitan Opera was as the Innkeeper in Puccini’s Manon Lescault on January 16, 1916 (Metropolitan Archives); he also appeared in Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème and Madama Butterfly, Charles Gounod’s Faust, and Ruggero Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci. Millay means “Don Giovanni” in the figurative sense of a Don Juan, a player—Laurenti did not appear in Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. 4. Allan Ross Macdougall notes Millay’s interest in the comic strip Krazy Kat by George Herriman (1880–1944). Much of the language, such as “wondafil,” echoes the comic. The two main characters are Ignatz (a mouse) and Krazy (the cat); Krazy at times refers to Ignatz as “L’il Ainjil.” 5. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. 6. Psalm 23, verse 2: “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters” (King James Version). 7. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), the German composer and organist. One of Millay’s musical performances in Camden included “Bourree” and “Sarabande” by Bach. “On Friday evening, June the second, Mrs. Leila Bucklin French entertained her pupils and a few friends at a piano recital given by her pupil, Miss Edna St. Vincent Millay. The program was varied and exacting for a young student and was played entirely from memory.” (Camden Herald, June 16, 1911, 5.) 8. The sonnet beginning “Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare” first appeared in Reedy’s Mirror (May 20, 1920) as part of her “Twenty Sonnets.” Macdougall published the sonnet in his column “A Line O’ Type Or Two” in the Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune (August 4, 1921). A draft title was “To Euclid Master of Poets” (LC, 114.7).

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To Witter Bynner 77 West 12th Street, New York City October 29, 1920. Dear Hal,— When are you two boys coming back here? Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the day-time, and falling into at night. I miss you like hell. But aside from that, I’m having a terribly nice time. I met a member of the Metropolitan Opera Company this summer, an Italian tenor, a thin one,—and now I can speak Italian. The absurdities of life are not without their little compensations. Also, I am becoming very famous. The current Vanity Fair has a whole page of my poems, and a photograph of me that looks about as much like me as it does like Arnold Bennett. And there have been three reviews of something I wrote, in New York newspapers in the last week alone. I am so incorrigibly ingenuous that these things mean just as much to me as ever. Besides, I just got a prize of a hundred dollars in Poetry, for the Bean-Stalk.1 And I’m spending it all on clothes, I’ve the sweetest new evening gown you ever saw, and shoes with straps across them, and stockings with embroidery up the front. I wish you were here. We’d all go on a swell party together. My book isn’t out yet. It’s dreadful. I write Mitchell all the time, and he won’t answer my letters; and every time I call up the office they tell me he is out, and I know dam well he is so near the telephone all the time that I hear his breathing. I have had no communication from him whatsoever since the last of May. Isn’t it frightful? This is one big reason why I wish you were in town. You are both so much bigger than he is, it would be a great comfort to me, somehow, even if you should think it advisable not to beat him up. And besides, Arthur used to be a lawyer, he always told me. I am going to see Knopf about it, I think.—Although I don’t see what he could do. Maybe there’ll be a law-suit, ’n everything. I wish I’d taken it to Knopf in the first place, as you advised me to do, Hal. I know better now. Henceforth I am wax in your hands. I am reading the poems of Leopardi, in the Italian. Beautiful, some of them; do you know them? Like Heine, sometimes.2

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Here is a little poem I just wrote. “Spring rides no horses down the hill, But comes on foot, a goose-girl still. And all the loveliest things there be Come simply, so, it seems to me. If ever I said, in grief or pride, I tired of honest things, I lied, And should be cursed forevermore With love in laces like a whore, And neighbors cold, and friends unsteady, And spring on horseback, like a lady.”3

I’m getting awfully tired of James Branch Cabell, sentimental old cock!4 His books are all alike,—the pent-up drool of a long and timorous adolescence. Page after page after page of “Whereupon he knelt upon the ground and busied himself for a few moments with . . . . . . . . .” and “At night upon retiring it was her curious custom . . . . . . . . .”—page after page of “droll practices” chucklingly contrived and recorded, to tickle the fishy blood-circulation of the amorously introspective and intro-active. Bah! It bores me to death, lascivious old impotent! I started out to like him, you see, for some passages of real beauty. And I’m so irritated. Such a cheap trick to use to stir up nervous tension among one’s readers. Anyone can cut a sentence in two and string along a row of periods at the end of it. And the result is almost automatic. Cheap vaudeville trick. But there, my dear friends! A great deal of what Arthur wrote on the margins of the Ode to Silence is perfectly true. But it’s too late to change it now. You see, I can’t get in touch with Mitchell. And when he gets ready to print it, he’ll go ahead and print it, without consulting me at all. However, the most of those poems you advised me to leave out, Hal, were not going into the book, anyway. I just happened to send them along. Many of them will be collected, eventually, into the volume I am going to call Figs from Thistles. I am going to call this book “Second April,” if I can get the change made. I am enclosing some new poems. Hal, dear, when you and Arthur come back, you must each bring me

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a whatever is the Chinese equivalent for kimono. Not a nice one, just a sort of cheese-cloth one, you know. But you mustn’t forget to. And you mustn’t neglect it till you get back here, and then try to fool me with some batiked dish-towelling from Vantine’s. I love kimonos. I just adore them. I would like to wear them all the time. I’ve made me two, myself,— and really made them right, too, studying the Japanese ones very carefully. Now please, old Hal and old Arthur. This is the very first thing I ever asked of either of you. And don’t you go scorning my childish request just because I don’t happen to be your idiot cousin or your divorced wife or somebody else with a rightful claim. Thank you, Hal, for the little snap of Arthur. But isn’t there one of you, too? Are you trying to lead me on? Tell Arthur I visited Florence Mixter at Lake Placid for two weeks this summer, and enjoyed it very, very much. We wished often that you both were there. And Florence wished that Mrs. Ficke, too, were there. The Poetry Society of America is raising its dues. I dare say many people are indignant. But as for me, I take it in a very equable frame of mind. Big or little, it’s all the same to me, since I don’t pay them anyway. The people of this country are just electing a new Sacred Goat. I have a lovely place to live in now, a big room and everything, just not quite a block from Fifth Avenue. I have my own furniture and stuff, and it is beautiful, almost as Chinese as China. This is my way of following you out there. Oh, if you were only here at this moment, how nice it would be! Wouldn’t it? Love to you both, my dears. [signed]——Vincent. It is a very silly letter I have written, I see now, reading it over. It is not at all what I want to say to you, my cherished friends. But you will not be angry with me?—Perhaps you would as soon have me silly as sad— and I am sad so much of the time, no matter what sort of letter I write. Of the poems you sent me, Hal, I like particularly the Mountain in China (though not the close of it so much)5 & The Dragon-Fly. The Dragon-Fly is beautiful. And it is very impressive. It gets into one.—Tell Arthur I am particularly keen about the Marcia sonnet—the final couplet is exquisite. Goodnight.—and forgive my chattering. ——Edna

154  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. “The Bean-Stalk” was published in the May 1920 issue of Poetry. The November 1920 issue of Poetry announced award winners for three categories, as selected by Poetry editors. In the category won by Millay, former recipients of the award included H.D. for “Poems” (1915) and Robert Frost for “Snow” (1917). (“Announcement of Awards,” Poetry, November 1920, pp. 105–114.) 2. Both Romantic period poets: Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837), an Italian, and Heinrich Heine (1797–1856), a German. 3. The poem was titled “The Goose-Girl” when it was first published in Vanity Fair (April 1921). 4. James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) was an American writer; his novel Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice (1919) was suppressed in January 1920. “The publisher was charged with violating Section 1141 of the Penal Code of the State of New York, in publishing Jurgen, ‘a certain offensive, lewd, lascivious and indecent book’ ” (Jurgen and the Censor, Report of the Emergency Committee Organized to Protest Against the Suppression of James Branch Cabell’s Jurgen, New York, 17). Bynner and Ficke were among a group of authors who signed a letter protesting the suppression of the novel. 5. Published in Lyric (August 1923) as “From a Mountain in China (to Edna St. Vincent Millay).”

To Arthur Davison Ficke 77 West 12th Street New York City. October 29, 1920 1 Arthur,— I love you, too, my dear, and shall always, just as I did the first moment I saw you. You are a part of loveliness to me.—Sometimes at night, when you were in France, I would read over the sonnets you had sent me—just as you have been doing with mine—& long for you in an anguish of sweet memory, & send all my spirit out to you in passion.—It seemed incredible you were not in the room with me, you were so much nearer than anything else, nearer than the dress that I was wearing.—It doesn’t matter at all that we never see each other, & that we write so seldom. We shall never escape from each other. It is very dear to me to know that you love me, Arthur,—just as I love you, quietly, quietly, yet with all your strength, & with a strength greater than your own that drives you towards me like a wind. It is a thing that exists, simply, like a sapphire, like anything roundly beautiful; there is nothing to be done about it,—& nothing one would wish to

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do.—There are moments, of course, when I am with you, that it is different. One’s body, too, is so lonely. And then, too, it is as if I knew of a swamp of violets, & wanted to take you there, & share them with you, because you are my friend.—But all that is the least of it, my dear.—And you must never think that I don’t understand.— You will never grow old to me, or die, or be lost in any way. —Vincent 1. Ficke wrote on the letter: “(Editorial note.—I received this letter at a time when Bynner and I were living at Mokanshan, amid the heights and bamboo groves of southern China. It shook me like an earthquake—and shakes me still. It seems to me the most beautiful letter ever written . . . But who am I, to judge?)”

To Edith Wynne Matthison Kennedy 449 West 19th St. Monday [1920?] Edith, dear,— I so much wish that you & Rann would come to see my play, Aria da Capo, at the Provincetown Players theatre on Macdougal Street either tomorrow, which is Monday, or Wednesday, or Thursday. I am enclosing a review of it, which you may have seen. If you will call me up on the telephone—Watkins 2202—(if you lose this, the number is in the book, any way, in my name) I will have seats for you either of these three nights, which are the last nights of the bill. You would like the play, whether you like me or not, & I wish with all my heart you would come to see it.—I don’t know what you are doing. Perhaps, of course, you couldn’t come.—I shall always love you. —Edna St. Vincent Millay

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To Mr. Koehler 77 West 12th Street, New York City November 17th 1920. 1 Dear Mr. Koehler: As far as the date is concerned I think I could make it. But do you mean that you want me to speak?—because I sha’n’t have a minute between now and then to think of anything to talk about, and I am an extemporaneous speaker only when infuriated. I will read you two or three poems if you wish, but perhaps you would not be interested in that. Please let me know soon just what you wanted me to do. Very sincerely yours,     Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Likely Joseph M. Koehler, from the Theatre Lovers Association of New York City, who wrote to Millay earlier in the year asking her to speak at a meeting.

To Millay Family [On board the Rochambeau] 9 Janvier 1921 Dearest Kids,— This is the sixth day out at sea. The old boat is rolling so I can hardly write, as you see, & a great many people have been very sea-sick,— Lawrence1 rather bad for half a day,—but not little Edna, what lived on the good old rolling coast-line all his childhood. I am the marvel of all who know this is my first voyage. The steward & chamber-maid speak of it every morning, asking (in French, of course—nobody speaks anything but French) if I am still all right. And then I say, “Oui, ça va très bien, merci,” or they say, “Mademoiselle, vous êtes solide!”—The rougher it is the better I like it,—you know how it is, kids, when the spray comes over the side & the decks are wet, & the sea drops way out of sight & then comes up & hits you in the eye, you know how you love it. I walk the decks when very few people walk the decks, & excepting for my “petits déjeuners” which I have every morning in bed, I have taken all my meals in the dining room, no matter how she rocks. I may get it yet, of course,

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but we have done nearly six days now, & there are only four to go before we reach le Havre. (Lawrence, who is sitting near me in the library, reading, just turned to me & said, (in French, we talk nothing but French) “You’d better hurry,”—& when I said, “Why?” he replied,—“Because the first post goes Thursday,”—It being now Sunday, & we being bored to death & longing for Havre, you can imagine how funny such a thing would strike me,—Thursday seeming four years away.—The most beautiful gulls in the world have followed our ship since we left America,— Lawrence keeps saying every day, “Demain ils seront partis,” but tomorrow comes & they are still with us. When the wind is strong they seem to be blown like white leaves, through the air. (I shall put that in my Journal, maybe.) All the servants on the boat, & all the officers, & most of the passengers are French people, & it is necessary to speak French all the time. My French is really getting very good, I am happy to say, & I speak it now almost without thinking. By the time I arrive at Paris & am alone I shall not be afraid at all to talk to the people,—in a month I shall speak very beautiful French, everybody says so.— One bathes here in hot salt water, it’s very funny,—the only soap they lather is that green & horrible Lava soap made especially for blacksmiths, which feels like pumice & smells like Trailing Arbutus,—oh, the whole life on ship-board is so funny—we sit in the smoke a great deal & drink a lot of different kinds of booze—we have fallen in with a very interesting person, a Spanish Turk from Salonica, so far as I can make out, who looks like an older & much bigger brother of Salomón de la Selva,—same beautiful mouth, almost, & wicked green Spanish eyes. I am not in love with him. If I were I should not mention him in this letter. But Lawrence & I walk the deck with him quite a bit & talk. He speaks no English, so I am obliged to talk French with him, which he speaks perfectly, or for fun at times a wee bit of Spanish.—It is wonderful, being obliged to speak French. I knew that was what I needed.— The ship is beginning to roll so that my chair which is fastened only by a cord is slipping all about the carpet. It is terribly funny. It is wonderful, not being sea-sick. There are three people with cabins near mine who are vomiting all the time. It is rather trying.—By the way, I have the cabin all to myself, rather a big one, the other berth isn’t being taken, & my wardrobe trunk is right with me in the cabin, no fuss at all.—The Fir

158  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Tree Inn sent me some beautiful carnations, the darlings, Leah James a telegram, one each to me & to Lawrence, the nice girl, John & Bunny sent me some beautiful books, & Mr. Crowninshield one, & Mr. Crowninshield has sent me a wireless to the effect that he has seen my book & that it is beautiful.—Wasn’t that wonderful of him?—Good night, dear sisters & brother—I was sorry not to see Normie. I saw lil’ Howid & kissed my hand to him. Will write later. Vincent. 1. Either Lawrence Langner, the playwright, or Laurence Vail, the writer, who married Peggy Guggenheim in 1922.

To Witter Bynner [early January 1921?] Dear Hal,— Here is the little poem I promised to send you, wedged in my own cryptic cuneiform.1—You need not trouble to acknowledge it, which will wear one burden less on your burdened mind.

Bon voyage forever;—if I never see you again! ——Edna

1. Millay plays off of the Latin for “wedge”: cuneus.

To Walter L. Fleisher Hotel des Saints-Pères 65 rue des Saints-Pères Paris [February 14, 1921] Dear Walter,— I was so glad to get your letter.—I have thought of you often,— just as you said I would—every time I packed & unpacked my little suit-case, than which there is no sweeter, & lately, while I have been

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making my brown kimono.—Do you remember how you helped me cut it?—It is all done now. And really, it is rather beautifully made,— when you consider that I did it all by hand, except the first big seams, which were done in New York,—& that I did it all without a thimble— because I had forgotten the French word for thimble, & was determined I wouldn’t ask for one until I could think of it.—I came upon the word finally in a novel I was reading “un dé,” in case you want to know—but it was too late then to do me any good. The garment was completed— Walter, it is perfectly stunning. I wish you could see it.—It weighs a ton, is warmer than your so-very warm heart, my dear,—& looks like a million dollars.—It will still be alive when I come back to the States—& then we will have a tea-party, to which I will wear it.

I am not coming back for a long time, though. Everything is fine so far.—Except that nights like Mardi Gras, which last Tuesday, do cut into one’s steady routine of work. I didn’t get to bed till seven o’clock in the morning.—The fact that after all this is Paris, & not a training-school for indigent maiden-aunts, is in spite of myself being constantly thrust upon me.—However, I’m getting a lot of work done.—and everything is all right so far.—I don’t have to holler yet, ol’ Walter!—But its nice to know that if I had to, someone would hear me.—(If you write me again, please tell me some little thing about my sisters. Neither of them has written me a word.) Affectionately, Edna

To Witter Bynner Hotel de l’Intendance 50, rue de l’université Paris [1921?] Dearest Hal,— I am sick to see you.—And God knows when I am ever coming back.—I know as well as you do that Second April is not all there. Most

160  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay of it was written ages ago—particularly all of it over two years ago. If I could have had it this spring to look over it would have been a different book. But Mitchell has had it over a year & a half, you know.—Never mind, my cherished friend, the next book is going to be good! I like very much the poem you sent.—Send me some more. Let me know what you are doing.

When I see you again; Hal, let us talk together forty-eight hours without sleeping. Shall we?

I suppose you will never be coming over here now,—now that you have adopted that bastard brat, the P.S. of A.—However, I shall perhaps come back sooner than I think.—I long to see you. With love,    Edna.

To Edmund Wilson Hôtel des Saints Pères 65, rue des Saints Pères Paris [January 20, 1921] Dear Bunny,— I can never thank you enough for the beautiful Verlaine.—The Manon hurt me a little, of course, but it doesn’t matter.—Such a lovely book,—what does it matter?—I am not really like that girl,—but I can understand that it seems so to you.—Poor Bunny—it will never be right between us, will it, my dear?—I have wronged you greatly. I know that. Whatever my motives may have been, as far as you are concerned it is all a great wrong.—However, I shall try to do better in the future,—(as the wits have it).

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I wrote a little poem today, of which I send you a copy. It is not for publication, because I may want to change it, when I look it over later.—It is of no importance, of course, anyway.

It is beautiful here even now. What will the spring be?— —Edna. sheep

I am a shepherd of those sheep   That climb a wall at night, One after one, until I sleep,   Or the black pane goes white. Because of which I cannot see   A flock upon a hill, But weariness comes over me   And thoughts I cannot still; And childish griefs I have outgrown   Into my eyes are thrust, Till my dull tears go dropping down   Like lead into the dust.1 Jan. 20, 1921   Hotel des Saints Peres, Paris 1. The poem was titled “Nuit Blanche” (“a sleepless night”) when it was first published in Vanity Fair (November 1922).

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To Arthur Davison Ficke Hôtel Raynaud 20, rue d’Antin Paris [April 27, 1921] My dear,— “I haven’t a word to throw to a dog”—But I must write you.—If only to tell you that the picture is safe with me—if anything may be said to be safe with me—& that I spent the money, as you knew I would do, on riotous clothing. —Oh, if you were only here—I need you so, to talk with.— —Are you ever coming to Paris?—Or London?—or Rome?—I will go anywhere to meet you, except back to America.—But of course I understand that a thousand things will be keeping you where you are.

As for what you write about me in your next book—you surely cannot care less than I care what the world thinks.—Do what you like.—(I will send you a snap-shot for a frontispiece!!)

Some day when you are thinking of me, write me a wise letter,—will you, my love & my friend? —I must see you again, some time.—It might be that I would find peace for a moment, just sitting beside you, that I find nowhere, beside anybody. —Vincent April 27, 1921

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To Edmund Wilson Les Algues. Pourville. Dieppe. [1921] Dear Bunny,— Can you send me six hundred francs?—You told me that if I got into desperate straits you could raise some money for me. Well, I am there now. That’s just where I am.—I will pay it back very soon,—that is to say, in a month’s time.—If you can’t do it, will you please wire me that you can’t.

I am sending you the song Mon Homme which you wanted to see, also a parody on it which I heard at the Chat Noir.—I shall want them back sometime, as I got them, along with a lot of other junk, to take home to Kay and Norma.

You would hate it here.—Except that the swimming is good.—It is an ugly place, & there are too many people under foot, though some of them are exceedingly interesting & the food is impossible.—I have a wonderful time in the sea,—oh, I love it so!—I am in it all the time.

Goossens,1 the English composer & conductor is here, and has given us some very interesting talks on modern music. Sometimes he plays for us, too.—And there is a man here who studies singing, & listening to him I have learned most of Ravel’s L’Heure Espagnole.—All this you would enjoy tremendously, but the awful thing is that one isn’t alone a minute.

Everybody is going in swimming now,—& so am I.

Edna.

164  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Sir Eugene Aynsley Goossens (1893–1962), whose arrangements included songs based on writings by the English Renaissance authors John Fletcher and Sir Thomas Wyatt.

To Edmund Wilson Pourville August 31 [1921] Dear Bunny,— I am ever and ever so grotesque to you.

I am glad that she1 is coming. Perhaps when you are together you will be able to find some way out of whatever it is you are in. In consideration whereof I send you some more sincere good wishes for you to scoff at, my friend.

With gratitude, & the serious intention of reimbursing you in the near future. I remain Your old sparring partner, Edna P.S.—No, I haven’t seen the Dial.—What is it all about?—E. 1. Likely Mary Blair, an actress with the Provincetown Players (David Castronovo and Janet Groth, Critic in Love: A Romantic Biography of Edmund Wilson [Emeryville, Calif.: Shoemaker and Hoard, 2005], 12–14).

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To Max —— 37, Broadwater Avenue Letchworth, Herts, England Sept. 20, 1921 1 My dear son,— I loved your letter.—and I am glad Second April is selling. The reviews have been very good.—I am not yet accustomed to the fact that the book is really published.—But I know it is, for I have some copies of it.

Dear Max, how I should love to see you! It seems long ago we went driving together in Cincinnati, & parked the machine on a bluff overlooking destruction, & sat shivering in the cold of a February day, staring at one another.

My Paris address is Hôtel de l’Intendance, 50, rue de l’Université.—I am here until the first of October, then a week in Paris, then several weeks in Rome, then to London for the winter.—Write me at the Paris address, if you have time. So much love,— Vincent

1. Max is unidentified; possibly Max Seeger.

To Cora B. Millay Scutari, Albania Nov. 1, 1921 Dearest Mother,— Here is an Albanian posy for you. It is very beautiful now, a lovely shade of violet, but of course will be withered by the time it reaches you.—Last night was Hallowe’en, & we had a Hallowe’en party,—made a Jack o’Lantern of a native melon, there being no pumpkins, & ate

166  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay apples & roasted chestnuts.—Tomorrow we leave for a day or two in Montenegro, & then take the boat which goes for two day & three nights along the Dalmatian coast in among the islands to Trieste, & so back to Rome.—It has been a wonderful trip,—Albania is a country which very few Americans have seen. I shall have to wait until I see you to tell you all about it, there is far too much to write. The first evening I was in Rome I came upon a man sitting on the pavement selling something in little cones made of twisted newspaper,— dried pumpkin seeds, if you please,—such as I had not seen since I was a child! I bought some, & intended then to send you one, but mislaid them. I have just found them in the tray of my suitcase & am sending you one each for you three & Howard & Charlie. Much love to all, Vincent

To Frank Crowninshield Palace Hotel, Rome November 14, 1921 Dear Mr. Crowninshield I was pleased to get your letter, and am answering it at once,—this, possibly, because I was going to write you anyway. You see, the Vanity Fair office in Paris, in a statement of my account with them which they have just sent me, subtracts from the total amount of $1100 which I have earned from the magazine this year the sum of $300: $100 for Red Riding Hood, which was not published; $100 paid by the New York office to my mother; and $100 “loaned to Miss Millay by Mr. Crowninshield in New York.” Now of course I know all about the Red Riding Hood and the money paid to my mother, but if you loaned me $100 besides I have entirely forgotten it, and it was a dreadful shock to me, as you may imagine. If you did loan me $100, apart from the money loaned me for my mother, please write me about it and recall to me the date and the circumstances, because I haven’t the vaguest recollection. Now that I am no longer in Paris I shall send my articles direct to you instead of through the Paris office. And will you do this for me?— Every time I sell you an article, will you send me $75 of it, care of the

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American Embassy, Rome; and then send the other $25 to my mother, Mrs. C. B. Millay, care of Mrs. Howard Young, 184 West Fourth Street, New York. The Nancy Boyd articles have been a success, haven’t they? I have had several letters about them myself, and many people have told me how much they enjoy them. I am doing some more. About the poems. I have very few on hand. Because I am writing a novel now and not writing very much poetry until the novel is done.1 And it seems to me that every magazine I ever heard of, magazines that five years ago I was proud to get a rejection slip from, is now writing me for poems, now that I have none to send. I have sent you several, or at least I have sent you one and you have several which you had when I left New York and have not used. If you are not going to use them, send them back to me and I will send them to other magazines and try to find some more for you. There was one called The Dragon-Fly; one which begins, “Now the autumn shudders in the rose’s root”; one which begins, “I am a shepherd of those sheep,” (or perhaps I told Bunny not to give you that, as it was not quite the way I wanted it, I suddenly remember); one which begins, “This I do, being mad”; very likely that is all. Also I sent you some poems of Harrison Dowd; did you like any of them? Please let me know if you are going to use any of these things. The reviews of Second April have been very good; I suppose you have seen them. I am very pleased. Speaking of Central Europe,—do you know where I’ve just been?— I’ve been to Albania. Also to Montenegro. Did Ships and Sealing-Wax amuse you?2 I thought that a rather nice one. Please write me soon again. I am terribly mixed up. Affectionately yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Millay was working on Hardigut, a novel that she did not finish. It appears she met Sinclair Lewis while in Rome. In a letter to Alfred Harcourt on November 18, 1921, Lewis wrote: “Edna St. Vincent Millay is here, and I’m trying to decide whether, as an agent of the firm [Harcourt, Brace and Company], I want to tie her up with a contract. . . . Her poetry is splendid and much worth having, and she is planning a novel. But the devil of it is that she

168  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay quite definitely plans to make this a novel that would be sure to be suppressed—and she wants enough advance to live on for four months while writing it!” (From Main Street to Stockholm: Letters of Sinclair Lewis, 1919–1930, edited by Harrison Smith [New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1952]). One month later, Lewis commented further: “Nothing more doing re Edna Millay’s novel; she’d already offered it to Liveright, & he probably accepted” (91). 2. Millay published “Ships and Sealing-Wax: Likewise Einstein, Liquor, and Sex—a Suggested Apocrypha to ‘The Looking Glass’ ” under her pseudonym Nancy Boyd, in the March 1922 issue of Vanity Fair.

To Tom Smith Palace Hotel, Rome Nov. 14, 1921 Dear Tom Smith,—1 I am glad you like the sonnet, & very glad you like Second April & the Figs so much. I don’t know whether I am ever coming back to the States, but I suppose I shall. There are still a great many nice people left over there that I shall want to see again some day. No, I have not read Punch.2 If you will send it to me I shall be very pleased. I trust my kid sister & brother conducted themselves in my absence with their usual modesty & decorum. Sincerely yours,     Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Tom Smith edited Poetica Erotica: A Collection of Rare and Curious Amatory Verse, volume 2 (1921), which contains “The Betrothal” and the sonnet “I, being born a woman and distressed.” 2. Millay did read the English journal Punch at times, but here she means Conrad Aiken’s (1889–1973) book of poetry titled Punch: The Immortal Liar; Documents in His History (Knopf, 1921). In a letter written from Budapest in March 1922, Millay asked her sister for the book: “Darling, if you ever see Tom Smith, I wish you’d jog his memory that he promised to send me a copy of Conrad Aiken’s “Punch, the Immortal Liar”; and make him give it to you so that mother can bring it over to me when she comes” (NYPL).

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To Elinor Wylie Palace Hotel, Rome November 27, 1921. Dear Elinor Wylie: I have read with keen delight your beautiful Nets to Catch the Wind, of which I am writing a review for the New York Evening Post.1 Not since I discovered Ralph Hodgson have I had such happiness in a new volume of poems. Keep well and strong. Do not suffer your foot to be moved.—A thousand people will be waiting, as I shall be waiting, with assurance, for your next fine book. Wishing you all good things and the success which you so unquestionably merit, I am, Most heartily yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Elinor Wylie (1885–1928) was an American poet and novelist. Millay’s favorable review in the New York Evening Post on January 28, 1922, begins: “The publication recently of Elinor Wylie’s ‘Nets to Catch the Wind’ is an event in the life of every poet and every lover of poetry. The book is an important one. It is important in itself, as containing some excellent and distinguished work; and it is important because it is the first book of its author, and thus marks the opening of yet another door by which beauty may enter to the world.”

To Anne Gardner Vienna, Dec. 23, 1921 1 Anne, darling,— I have just got your letter. Oh, if I could just get my arms around you!—And stay with you like that for hours, telling you so many things, & listening to all that you must have to say.—I love you very much, dear Anne, & I always shall.—Ours was a perfect friendship—I knew it at the time—and it is still just as true. I would do anything in the world for you, & I know that you would for me.—And it doesn’t matter if we never write, and never see each other, it is just the same.—Except that it would be so nice to see each other! I have thought of you a thousand times, & wondered, wondered

170  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay acutely, with anxiety, & such deep well-wishing!—how you were getting on. A dozen times I have started to write you. The little card that came with your wedding announcement & had your New York address on it, has traveled with me everywhere, because I was always on the point of writing & I wanted your street & number where I could lay my hand on them.

Dear, by the time you get this letter your baby will be so very near to life. If you want to know how I am feeling about you, & all I am wishing for you, or how my heart will be with you from this time on until I hear from you again, you have only to imagine yourself just how, in the same circumstances, you would be feeling about me.

Also, may its sex, temper, & general topography be what you prefer! Also, may it wait & be born on the 22nd of February, which is my birthday, & I will be its god-mother.

I suppose you would like to know something about me. I have been over here about a year now, racing through England, France, Switzerland, Italy, Albania, Montenegro & Austria at the rate of an air-plane making a record flight, seeing a great deal of some places & very little of others, of course. It has been wonderful beyond words, & has done things for me that nothing else could have done. I have had several little love affairs & one big one—but now there is something on my mind which is something else again. And someday I may have something to tell you about that, but not now. Part of the time I have worked like the devil, & part of the time not at all. But of course you know that without my telling you. Probably you have seen Nancy Boyd in Vanity Fair from time to time. Nancy had a little story in the Metropolitan, too,—not much of a story.—I just got a cable from Horace Liveright of Boni & Liveright, who is drawing up a contract for me concerning his publication of my first novel, which I am beginning—and which, if anybody should be

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interested, is not about Vassar, & not about Vincent!—He is in London now & wants to see me. I shall cable him in the morning, asking him to come here & talk it over with me. He is willing to give me a big advance royalty on it, & the whole thing looks pretty good. This news is not to be let out yet, because of course as yet the contract is not signed.—Oh, I have a thousand things in my head that I want to do!—Did you see The Lamp & The Bell, I wonder?

Dear, there’s no room here for more than a word. All that you told me is in my heart & on my mind. And I shall go through it all with you as surely as if you were clinging to my hand.—Your Vince 7 Floragasse, Vienna, Austria

1. Anne Gardner was a classmate from Vassar who graduated with Millay in 1917.

To Witter Bynner 7 Floragasse, Vienna Dec. 23, 1921. Dearest Hal,— I never received your letter of which Arthur speaks.—So that his crazy card-index note, & your post-script, are all I have to tell me what is in your mind.—Do you really want me to marry you?—Because if you really want me to, I will.—I have thought for a long time that someday I should marry you.

Of course I can’t write to you about it, you must see that, my dear, not knowing what was in your letter. Whatever I say would be perhaps the wrong thing to say.—And perhaps you will understand that I would give much if you were here at this moment.



You have known me since I was a little girl. It is curious to think of

172  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay that. As little as we have seen of one another, yet you are bound in the memories of my childhood.

Dear Hal, there are thoughts in my head that I must not tell you now, particularly one of them. Because all this may not be true at all, may be just a dream that you had a month ago, & that I am having tonight.— Yet this I will say, that if it is a dream, I am sorry.

I wish you could come here. It is not so very far, & I feel I must see you, and I can’t come there. But I suppose you have duties now from which you cannot be released—even for me. (It is amusing & pleasant to say to you: even for me.) In any case, I wish you could come, & wanted to.

You will let me hear from you at once, Hal, won’t you?—Oh, if you knew the comical state my mind is in! What a ridiculous person you are! ——Edna

To Witter Bynner Floragasse 7 Wien IV Jan. 23, 1922 Hal, dear,— I have just got your note, with the poems, which are lovely—especially Web,—that is very beautiful, my dear—and the one about Moonlight & the Chinese Scholar.

As for your note itself—well, you have by this time received my letter, which seems to you, perhaps, a silly letter, and you know, if not how I feel about you, at least how I feel about us, as possible companions.— You wrote me once, “We are too much alike, you & I, for any earthly marriage.” I believe that to be nonsense,—not as regards you & me,

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particularly, but as regards everybody. Why it should be thought a good thing for people to spend their lives, which might otherwise not impos­ sibly be used to some purpose, in a series of disagreements, misunderstandings, adjustments, ill-adjustments, & readjustments, I have never been able to see. But Hal, if there is something else, if you are sorry now that you asked me to marry you; if you have changed your mind, & don’t want to marry at all; if you have suddenly decided that you would prefer to marry somebody else; if for some reason you were not yourself when you wrote me—if some unhappiness or disappointment had weakened you & made you lonely, or if you were intoxicated at the time—(always a possibility, which people too seldom take into account!); or even if it was all just a roaring joke, which I for the moment was too earnest & stupid to see—oh, my dear, if for any reason at all you feel you made a mistake, that it is not I, after all, that you need & want—why then, you must just write & tell me so, quite plainly, & I shall understand; & you & I will be just friends again.

At any rate, I am glad you are coming to Europe.—I was always happy to be with you; and shall be no less so now, no matter what we do, or don’t do.

Of course, I see from your note one thing which troubles you. And I want to speak to you about that. It is true that I love Arthur. But we have all known that for some time,—haven’t we?—I shall love him always. He is something to me that nobody else is. But why should that trouble you, Hal? Don’t you love him, too? Don’t you love several people?—If you loved me, I should not want you to love only me. I should think less highly of you if you did. For surely, one must be either undiscerning, or frightened, to love only one person, when the world is so full of gracious & noble spirits. Besides, I should not wish to marry Arthur, even if it were possible.— So it is not because you are free & he is not, Hal, as may have come into your mind.

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As for you,—if I loved you more than the apples at the end of the bough, I should not tell you; for I have shared too much with you already, & you with me nothing, saving your misgivings.

Oh, well—why be so serious, about a trifle!—You’ll think I’ve lost my sense of laughter,—but it’s not so.—If you think for a moment I don’t see the idiotic side of this nefarious business—just wait till you see my quivering smile.

Oh, Hal, do come soon, darn you!—And write me a word when you get this letter—if it’s nothing but a cuss-word. Edna. Your little note hurt, hurt, hurt me, my dear, I don’t mind saying.— I had been waiting for it—don’t you see at all?—But it doesn’t matter. Bless you anyway, mad sweet thing.

To Arthur Davison Ficke 7 Floragasse, Vienna IV January 24, 1922 Dear Arthur: I am writing you on the type-writer, because I want to write you a long letter, and I hold a very nervous pen lately. Does your hand get that way sometimes, so that you want to dig in the earth with it, or whittle it, or thrust it into a broad fat back,—anything but write with it? Your letters of December the 19th and 27th have just reached me, forwarded from Rome. The others came some time ago; I believe I have received them all. You do not know how much they mean to me, my dear friend. You must never tear them up. Sometimes they have thrust loveliness back into my life, where there seemed almost no place for it. I am living curious and difficult days in this grey city where there is never a shred of sunlight. Outside my window is a great grey wall flattened

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against it like a hand; it is so near the window it is almost in the room; I have to keep the light burning all day long. I smoke too many cigarettes, and the German food nearly kills me—hot bread and cabbage and grease, when what I want is a bowl of plain rice and an apple. Fortunately I have to exercise, because I can’t afford taxis, and I loathe street-cars. And set against this environment is the following dramatic situation: I am living, chastely and harshly, with a man with whom I once had a love affair, a man whom I breathlessly and ruthlessly abandoned for somebody else, and whose consciousness of the wrong I did him is always boiling in his mind.1 We do not want to be together; we are thrown together by the most ignominious circumstances; we have almost no tastes or opinions in common; but except for each other we are entirely alone in a strange city, so that we are constantly forced back into each other’s society; he is irascible and sarcastic; I am hard and pugnacious; we spend all the day and half the night in quarreling, or in abstaining from quarreling with an effort which whitens his face and makes my back ache; then we separate, either with a make-shift amiability or with the sublime insult of the encounter, and go to bed; I lie awake until four o’clock in the morning, at times desperately getting up and turning on the light, smoking a cigarette, trying to read, then lying down again and making another try of it; finally I fall from entire exhaustion into a succession of little dozes, from each of which I am slowly, chokingly awakened by a glimmering and malevolent nightmare. Well, so much for that. But when I tell you that I am lonely, and want a friend to talk with, you will believe me. I am not getting much work done. I might as well try to work on a ship-wrecked raft, in sound of the dice which are to determine which is to be et.2 My dear, I knew all about the girl in New York, long before you told me. At least, of course I knew nothing at all about her, but I knew what had happened. I knew when you were to be in New York, and while you were there I thought of you, and I said to myself, “He is falling in love with some girl there.” Then, you see, you didn’t write me while you were there, and after you went back to Davenport your letters were different, a little, little bit. Anyway, I knew. It doesn’t matter. Except that if she is hurt, it is too bad. How fortunate she was to be with you, to be where

176  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay she could talk with you. But as for the rest, it doesn’t matter with whom you fall in love, nor how often, nor how sweetly. All that has nothing to do with what we are to each other, nothing at all to do with You and Me. Arthur, dear, I think I am going to marry Hal. He is coming over here in the spring. Of course we may do nothing about it. But I rather feel we shall. Would you be sorry or glad if I did? Tell me seriously, dear, what you feel about it. Of course, there is every geometrical reason why I should. We should make such a beautiful design, don’t you see,—Hal and you and I. Three variable and incommensurate souls automatically resolved into two right angles, and no nonsense about it. Of course, it’s not so simple as that. But there’s something very pleasing about that aspect of it. Do you remember when I said I was going to wait for you and Hal? How funny it all is. Hal, poor fellow, is very much troubled about my feeling for you. At least, I don’t think he would mind, except that he feels I care more for you than I do for him. I just got a note from him, in which I saw that plainly. That letter of mine to you, which he opened by mistake, was the devil, wasn’t it? Well, there’s no denying that I love you, my dear. I have never denied it for a moment, since the first time I saw you, whether to myself or to anybody else who seemed interested. When people ask me if I know you I say, “Yes, I know him.” Then if they ask me if I like you, I say, “I love him.” And that’s all there is to that. And they can shut up, or go on asking questions, or talk it over among themselves. You, best of all, know how I feel about you, and always shall. No one can ever take your place to me. We know each other in such a terrible, certain, windless way. You and I have almost achieved that which is never achieved: we sit in each other’s souls. But that’s no reason why I couldn’t marry Hal, and be happy with him. I love him, too. In a different way. Well, enough of that,—It was like you, generous and comical, to send me your reverend father’s impeccable paternal checque. I accept it quite humbly and gratefully, in spite of all my man-sized talk. (Oh, Arthur, you are so sweet, so sweet!) But as for your getting Florence Mixter involved in my unregenerate book-keeping, I forbid it. I am going to write

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her, in answer to some sweet and human little notes she has sent me— that is, if you will please send me her address which I have lost—that all is very well with me, that I am having the time of my life in Vienna, and that I shall soon be coming home. As a matter of fact, I shall be quite all right now, really, I swear it. I am glad you like the Lamp and the Bell. I know it has beauty in it. Someday, perhaps, I shall take it apart and make a really fine play of it throughout. I wrote it last February, under pressure of great hurry, and of course there are holes in it. I heard they produced it magnificently at Vassar. The copy you have is full of little typographical slurrings and misunderstandings which make it a little muddy in places, but which will be corrected in the next edition. The sonnets about me in Seven Years are beautiful. I have just been reading them over again. And you must by all means add the one which begins, “In times hereafter.” But I think you should not say “flee to worlds where only shadows move.” For surely people as proud as the people you tell of do not flee from anything; they move, they turn, they go,—but they do not flee. (Now tell me to mind my business. I shall bend my glance downward and reply with serene arrogance that it is my business, I am one of the people.) The first Girl Beside Pool is very, very lovely. I hope the public will know it is I,—I shall be happy to have them know, to have everybody know, when they read your book, that you love me like that. Almost everybody, to be sure, is mortal, but the gods should worry. I am sending you some new sonnets of mine.3 Arthur, dearest, I feel quite gay and risible having got all this pifflous bunk off my chest and onto yours. Next best to talking with you, after all, is writing to you. This dam letter seems to be full of after alls. Makes me think of a little French poem I wrote once, and had forgotten: Et après tout qu’est-ce qu’on a fait Pour la beauté, qu’on aime tant?— Tout simplement, un cri ou deux; C’est tout ce qu’on peut, pour la beauté, Well, goodbye. I shall now issue forth and fodder my bewildered Muse on Wiener schnitzel, Brussels sprouts and beer.

178  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Here’s to crime. May the lowliest live to commit it. With love, Vincent. Write me and do not tear them up. For God’s sake, post them.—I am suffering in this place. 1. Nancy Milford identifies the man as Griffin Barry (1884–1957), an American journalist (Milford, Savage Beauty, 225). 2. Millay portrays a cannibalism scene where the roll of the dice determines who will be eaten, “et” being a slangy pronunciation of “ate.” 3. With this letter she sent four typed sonnets: “I know I am but summer to your heart,” “Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!” “I, being born a woman, and distressed,” and “Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find.” All were later published in The Harp Weaver and Other Poems.

To the Millay Family 7 Floragasse Wien (IV) Osterreich January 30, 1922 Dearest Family: I feel that I have not written to you for a long time. I suppose you feel the same way. I haven’t any excuse. I haven’t been sick. I have been writing, working on my novel, carrying on an involved cable correspondence with Horace Liveright concerning the publication of it, and hearing a great deal of music,—and neglecting my darlin’ family. However, here’s a long letter now. I just got Mother’s and Kathleen’s letters telling about John Carter’s Santa Claus stunt, and your New Year wake with me. I stayed up with you twice on New Year’s too, just as you thought I would do,—at midnight, and again about six in the morning, thinking of you all so hard. I was up all night anyway, went to the New Year ball here which was so insufferably dull that Griffin, who is still here, and Bobby Dunn,1 an extremely nice boy who is doing relief work here—has just gone to Warsaw, however—and I, slid out of the ball, leaving our friends to dance and drivel as much as they pleased, and went to a near-by café and talked till dawn, then Griffin and I saw Bobby off on the train for Berlin. And all night I kept thinking of you every little while.

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I have closed negotiations with Liveright about my novel. It will not be ready for publication till fall, but he is forwarding me $500 on it now, which will keep me going for ages, permit me to buy a winter coat, and to pay up a few bills. I should like to tell you about the novel, but it would take me two hours if I once got started on it. It is not autobiographical. It is as serious and as satiric as Aria da Capo; and Liveright is publishing it privately in a limited edition of 1500 copies, in order to avoid the loss of having it suppressed; because I am reasonably sure that it would be suppressed. You are right that it is time I had some poems in magazines. I have just sent a page of poems to Vanity Fair. And the Yale Review has taken two little poems of mine and sent me a very welcome thirty dollars. (And little Normie’s beautiful sisterly hand stretched across the ocean to little Sefe,—well, I can’t talk about it; my emotion unmans me.) I have been sailing pretty close to the wind, but that is nothing, we have all always done that. And now things are straightening out very nicely. I have sent some more articles to Vanity Fair, too. Do you ever see them? Some of them are pretty good in their way, I think. I had a letter from John Bishop the other day. He says my stuff—Nancy’s, I mean—is quite the best they have published this year. I have a short story nearly done, to which I am going to sign my own name. I shall try the Metropolitan with it, and also with my Albanian article. Otto Liveright, I believe, is over here now, or coming. I shall just have to tell the magazines to which I send things to return them to some of you; then you will have to try to place them for me. Because it is too far away here. It takes six weeks or more for me to get a reply to a letter. The Harp Weaver is among the poems I sent to V. F. I don’t know what you mean in your reference to Frank Shay apropos of this poem. I cabled him to publish my child poems if he wanted to; do you know if he ever got the cable? It’s devilish hard doing business so far away. Kennerley sent me the new Aria da Capo. It is beautiful, except that of course the occasion for those notes in the back is long since gone by, and the notes are silly and tiresome as hell, anyhow and he might at least have had the sense, even without me to read the proof, not to translate “buskin” into “buckskin”! I nearly died of apoplexy when I saw that. Well, Now for another thing. And I wish you were all here, or I

180  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay there, for I’d much rather talk to you about it than write to you about it. But here goes. You remember that I promised you I would get married on my thirtieth birthday. Well, I’ve done my best. I’ve accepted a proposal of marriage. I’m what you might call sort of engaged. Of course, nothing may come of it at all. The poor misguided fellow is now in America, and conversation about the matter is very difficult and unsatisfactory. He is coming over here in the spring to talk it over with me. Of course, we may both change our minds about it. But such as it is, there it is. You mustn’t breathe it to a soul, really; I don’t want anybody to get even the faintest rumor that I’ve thought of such a thing. I trust you all to keep it absolutely dark. And I don’t want to tell you even who he is just yet; I don’t feel free to, somehow, until I’m surer about it. But I’m sure you’d quite approve. I felt I had to tell you this much for a special reason, apart from the fact that of course I wanted to. You see, this may mean postponing mother’s coming over. In my heart I’d almost rather take a solemn vow never to get married, than to postpone seeing mother. But I suppose that’s foolish. Because the question of my marriage is an important thing, too. It may not interfere with it at all. Especially if we decide not to do it. But you can understand that it upsets my plans a little. I felt I must share with you this particular problem, which is bothering me quite a lot, because I had set my heart and soul on having mother come over in the spring. (Mother, darling, forgive me if I have to postpone it, or change it in some way—it breaks me all up to think of it—I know you will be terribly disappointed—oh, if I could only see you! If I only had the money to have you come over right now! I know you will understand, sweetheart,—but isn’t it disgusting?) The trouble is that when mother is here I want every minute just for her. She would be entirely lost without me, not speaking the language, nor knowing another soul, perhaps, Perhaps I shall think of some way of swinging it. But I wanted to feel that you were sharing my perplexities with me. Darlings, you want me to do that, don’t you? You see, you are all together; and I am all separate! Well, that’s that. It’s one reason, the chief, why I haven’t written to you. I haven’t known just what to say. I am so happy you kids, Normie and Wumps, liked the things I got

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you in Rome. They are pretty, aren’t they? Yes, Kathleen, I know that the scarf is beautiful with your black skirt, and that with some things you wear it with it comes down below the hem. Also, it should be lovely with your black taffeta dress you wore at that wild Apache wedding of yours. You see, I tried it on myself, and I imagined myself taller, and much handsomer, and brown-haired, and sort of proud and sweet and hateful and gracious and bright,—and then I knew quite clearly just how it would look on you, my lovely thing, and that it would hang below some of your dresses, and that you would wear it with every last blessed thing you possess, pyjamas and aprons included. I was crazy about the ear-rings. I wore first one pair and then the other, and then the third, all the time that John was in Rome waiting for his boat to sail. I had the grandest time with them, three pairs of ear-rings at once,—four, really, because I have a very lovely old-fashioned pair of carved ebony ones that Harrison Dowd brought me from Berlin. The only trouble with them is that they are meant for pierced ears and I can wear them only by attaching a string to them and hanging them over my ears, so that I can never wear them until just when I’m beginning to need a hair-cut pretty bad! I shall get them changed some day. Speaking of hair-cuts, the Viennese barbers are simply the frontier. (I was going to say “limit,” but I remembered just in time that I am a distinguished writer, and that it is incumbent upon me to say everything just a little differently from the way other people say it.) They cut straight enough, but they haven’t caught onto the trick of weeding me out underneath,— so all the time I turn out instead of turning in, and give the impression generally of Lady in Rather Soiled Ruff. Oh, how gratefully, dear sisters, I would accept an offer of a coup from your curling-tongs! Normie, get hold of the January Vanity Fair and read the article on the Music of Anton Bruckner.2 ’Member the time we went to a concert and went perfectly mad about a wonderful symphony by a man we had never heard of? That man was Anton Bruckner. I think it was the fifth of his symphonies, I am not sure. He is—or was; he died about eighteen years ago—a Viennese. I passed a street the other day that was named for him. Just two blocks below the street where I am living is a little street named for Mozart, and a tiny square, with a lovely statue representing two of the characters from the Magic Flute, Tamino and Pamina, a

182  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay beautiful graceful youth playing a flute and a girl with her arm about his shoulders. In another house here, which I frequently pass, is the house where Mozart as a tiny boy, eight or ten, I think, played his own compositions for some learned musicians and struck them dumb with admiration and amazement,—another little Jesus. This letter will not get to you for nearly three weeks. So I am going to cable you a Valentine. For I am afraid you will be worried about me if you don’t hear from me for three weeks longer. Maybe I’d better cable you before Valentine’s day, ’cause even that’s over two weeks off. Well, by the time you get this letter you will have got the cable, and will know which I have done. I just this minute got the sweetest note from Harrison and Allan Macdougall. They are in Paris, and wrote me sitting across from each other at a table in the Café de la Rotonde, my old hang-out, where the loveliest people (and of course also the messiest and pifflingest) used to congregate last spring and summer,—their letter made me home-sick for Paris. I don’t suppose it’s possible to get as homesick for any place as one gets for Paris. But Vienna has its points. Last month my bill here at the Zwiauer’s, for a month’s beautifully furnished big room, with heat and electric light, breakfast, tea, and luncheon every day, beautiful service, shoes cleaned, veils pressed, etc.—cost me just exactly $7.50. All that I had to pay for outside that was my dinners and laundry. Of course one’s one extravagance is music. Yesterday there were seven excellent concerts in this city. Griffin and I attended two of them. Griffin has a room in this same house, not so good as mine because very small, but with this advantage over me, that Paula, pronounced Powla, the daughter of the family, has to go through my room to get to hers, and always when I’m tearing my [illegible] and don’t want to see a human face for about a week, or am taking a bath, standing up on a mat in front of a wash-bowl (the only kind of bath this place affords!) she comes prancing through like the entire Austrian army. Of course she knocks first and waits for my “Herein!” And she’s a very cultured and lovely person. They are a beautiful and very high-class family, ruined, like so many others, by the war, and even more so by the peace. It’s not as if she were not nice. And even so she comes through very seldom. Still, it’s an inconvenience. One does like one’s

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particular hole in the ground to oneself. Griffin has been expecting to get away almost ever since we came, is just waiting for developments and orders. He has left the Daily Herald, the English paper he was on, and is trying to get into an association such as Bobby Dunn is in, relief work. But everything is so slow, and tied up in red tape. Of course I shall be sorry when he goes, it makes it very nice having somebody you know to go out to dinner with and run around the town with. But the poor boy is crazy to get about his business, of course. We’ve met one or two very nice people, English, connected with the British Passport Office here, who will be very nice to me, though, so that I shan’t be really alone. I’ll write you again soon. And do write me whenever you can. I love your letters. So much love to all five of you. (I saw in the Times here—a month old or so—that Ambush was to be taken off, and was very sorry for Charlie.)3 Well, goodbye, my dears. Vincent. P.S. Mother mustn’t think for a fleeting moment that I’ve given up the idea of having her come over here!—It’s not a question of that, at all. It’s just a matter of possible postponement, you see. Of course, nothing or nobody, man or god, would stop me from bringing her over here. She must know that. P.P.S. I must always send things to Kay, because hers is the only address I am sure of without looking it up.—V. Wumps, I love the li’l’ [illegible] violet [illegible]! Thank you so much, darling. It is beautifully made too, besides being so very pretty. 1. Possibly the American journalist Robert W. Dunn (1895–1977). 2. “The Music of Anton Bruckner: A Note on the Works of the Most Neglected of Symphonists and a Plea for His Revival” by Paul Rosenfeld. 3. Charles Ellis was playing the character Harry Gleason in Arthur Richman’s play Ambush.

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To Witter Bynner Hotel Ritz, Budapest February 22, 1922 Poor boy,—did Edna write him solemn letters from German cities & frighten him almost to death?



Oh, Hal, you abysmal nut!

As I sit in my small but costly apartment looking out upon the Danube, the thought of you hits me over the head like a piece of lead pipe.

Oh, Lord—oh, Lord—Oh, Hal! Apoplectically yours, Edna. I am now going under the divan & have a fit.

To Edmund Wilson Shillingstone, Dorset, July 20, 1922. Bunny, I adored your drunken letter. Never be sober again, oh, lofty one, O Centaur with song in his heart and burrs in his tail, O half a maudlin god! The moment I heard from you, I sat down to write a canto in reply, but as it was just on the eve of my departure from Paris to London, I was obliged to defer same and pack my trunks (Eng. boxes), buy my tickets (Eng. book passage), check my baggage (Eng. register luggage), and board the Calais steamer (Eng. Dover packet), for Great Britain (Eng. U.K.). In its unfinished and formless state I enclose my immediate reaction to your letter. I am alone with my mother in this lovely town in Dorset. We live in a little thatched house in the village, board there, but I have a hut off in a field in view of the down but out of sight of everything else, where I

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can be by myself all day. That’s where I am now. The hut is white-washed and has clean straw on the floor. I have a table and chair in it and a rope hammock, and that’s all. The place is beautiful, not so barren as Truro. I love it. You would probably hate it. I have been sick as a dog for months, and so entirely convinced of the elaborate uselessness of everything, that there was nothing in the situation to get dramatic about and make a poem of, even. But little by little now I am getting back my health, and here in this quiet place somehow it doesn’t seem to matter whether it matters or not. You know what I mean. Bunny, is it only when you’re tight that you want to be friends with me? I suppose so. And I don’t complain. I have no rights in you. But I do solemnly offer this pious pagan prayer: that one of these days you’ll become a dirty inveterate souse, and bully your wife and beat your kids and kick your dog, and think of me with steadfast love. That’s all of that. What sort of person is Elinor Wylie? I think I should like her. I saw a great deal of Anna Wickham while I was in Paris this spring.1 She’s an awfully interesting person, great big jolly, untidy, scathing, tender and brilliant. She’s about thirty-eight now, and strikes you at moments in her conversation as curiously reactionary in comparison with The Man with a Hammer and the Contemplative Quarry, which she wrote ten years ago.2 She’s the most essentially motherly woman I ever met. Would you expect that? It was an astonishment to me. I like her tremendously. She’s a thrilling person. Beautiful in a way: Magnificent big head, and sweet, fine eyes. She writes ten thousand poems a day, writes them on the cafe tables, on the backs of menus, on the waiter’s apron, anywhere, many very bad, naturally, but some splendid, and all interesting. She is married to an astronomer named Hepburn, and has three boys, the oldest fourteen, and lives in Hampstead. I remember that you told me about her poetry last year when you were in Paris, and were very interested in her. Do you know the poems of Henri de Régnier?3 Probably you do. I am awfully keen on some of them. He seems to have more poetic sense, by which I mean poetic common sense, more sense of poetry as apart from oratory, than most French poets. Well, goodbye, Bunny. I’d like to see you again sometime. Edna.

186  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Thine of the pittifull occasioun4 Of John the Bishop’s triste perditioun In hand, and prayeres for hiss woful plyght Sente uppe, this Thirtieth daye of June att nyght. When thatte the sonne, aloftt in highest heaven, Aroused me from manye a softe sweven,5 Certes, hard bye my pillowe did I see A doulce billet from ye fatte Bunnye.6 And toe myne eyen the sillye dropes did lepe, Thus joyously to be y-shooke from slepe! . . . . . . . . . Syn I from love escaped am, I wisse,7 But to be wounded bye thy gentilesse, Hark my confessioun, good Sir Bunnye: Thy courteois words have sleyn me sodenly. Thy salty wit and eke thy words of silke My herde herte have fonded into milke; Now fare I forth with modest speech and kynde To beasts and briddies and the doulce blynde. . . . . . . . . . The poet synges and spylls abroad hiss breth In prayse of prettye friends brought lowe bye dethe; Ah, me!—to lose a friend bye lyfe, I gesse, Holds lesse of songe and more of bitternesse! Prithee, in future houres, cher Bunnye,8 Think on thy distant friend withe charytee, That hath of thee, I sware bye the swete sonne, No evyll thought, but manye a wystful onne.



To E. W. From E. St. V. M.

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 187 1. Anna Wickham (1884–1947), pseudonym of Edith Alice Mary Harper, was an English poet. 2. The Man with a Hammer (London: Grant Richards, 1916) and The Contemplative Quarry (London: The Poetry Bookshop) were collections of poetry; they were combined for publication in 1921 as The Contemplative Quarry; and, The Man with a Hammer, with an introduction by Louis Untermeyer (New York: Harcourt, Brace). In a review titled “The New Elizabethans,” Conrad Aiken critiqued Millay’s Second April, along with Wickham’s The Contemplative Quarry, Wylie’s Nets to Catch the Wind, and five other new poetry collections in the April 1922 issue of the Yale Review (632–636). 3. Henri de Régnier was a French poet and novelist (1864–1936). Amy Lowell’s collection Six French Poets: Studies in Contemporary Literature, noted that “Henri de Régnier is universally considered the greatest of the Symboliste poets” (New York: Macmillan, 1916), 149. Millay translated Régnier’s sonnet “La Promenade” and considered publishing it with Les Fleurs du Mal (LC, Box 106, Folder 2). 4. Macdougall notes that Wilson told Millay of Bishop’s upcoming wedding. John Peale Bishop married Margaret Grosvenor Hutchins in 1922. 5. “sweven”: “a dream, vision” (OED). 6. “doulce”: “Of a person or thing: sweet, pleasing, gentle” (OED). 7. The third edition of the OED, online, quotes from Chaucer’s Merciles Beaute for the word free: “Syn I fro loue escaped am . . . Syn I am fre I Counte hym not a bene.” The lines “Syn I fro loue escaped am so fat” appear as a chorus three times in the poem titled “Escape” in More Old Texts of Chaucer’s Minor Poems, edited by F. J. Furnivall (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1886). To match the rhythm of the line, escaped is pronounced as three syllables. 8. “cher”: dear.

To Frances Shapli Shillingstone, Dorset, England July 21, 1922 Dear Cutie:1 It was good to hear from you. The last I heard—and indirectly, from Margaret Rohn, I think—you were in Honolulu, or some such place. How long is it since I saw you? Something over four years, I believe. Not since I lived in that filthy hole in Waverly Place with my sister Norma, who now is decently married to a rising young actor and erstwhile painter named Charles Ellis,—perhaps he was around when you were around, if you remember. Kathleen, too, is married, to a charming kid named Howard Young, a motion picture producer. As for me, I am still “celibataire,” as the French put it, not too technically.2 I have been living in Paris, Rome, Vienna, Budapest, Albania, Montenegro and Lon-

188  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay don. And now here I am in the English country for the summer, with a hut in a field all to myself which nobody dares approach, not even my mother, except to bring me luncheons. My mother has been with me nearly four months now, and is having a wonderful time. She had never been abroad before. I write regularly for Vanity Fair, under the name Nancy Boyd, to keep bread in the belly, and once in a while bring out a book of poems. Just now I am at work on a novel, which is contracted to be finished in September, but will doubtless not be finished before a year from September. Boni & Liveright are publishing it. What do you mean, “characters all corpses”? You’re not getting morbid, are you, Frances? How long have you been in Japan? Have you a Japanese lover? Have you had your hair cut? Can you speak much Japanese? Do you know that I owe you ten dollars? I believe that out of ten thousand questions asked in letters, not more than six are answered. Letters should be either narrative, lyric or vituperative, and no questions asked. I was thinking the other day of Eleanor Goss’ lovely yellow legs vaulting over the pole, I don’t know why.3 It would be nice to see you again some day, old thing. I liked you a lot. Vincent 1. Frances Shapli, née Smith, from Vassar, class of 1916. 2. “célibataire”: single (The Oxford-Hachette French Dictionary, 2001). Millay did not add the accent to this typed letter. 3. Eleanor Goss was a Vassar classmate, class of 1916. Her married name is Lanning.

To Kathleen Millay my hut Shillingstone, Dorset July 21, 1922 Dearest Wumps: I just wrote Normie all about my hut, so you make her show it to you. I know it’s hard, now that you’re no longer living around the corner from each other, but it’s not so hard as writing the same thing all

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over again. It’s too darned bad you’ve not yet got your bracelet. The trouble is that neither you nor Norma were in New York when Mary Reynolds docked, so I suppose she’s keeping both your presents until you come back. Goodness knows I hope nothing goes wrong. Up on top of the down there’s a rabbit-town (poem), and sometimes when mother and I go up there we frighten away as many as ten or fifteen, see them silhouetted against the horizon on their haunches with their ears back, mama, papa, and baby, and then they all scoot. And when we come up to where they were we see the earth all thrown up and dozens of deep holes in the ground, and the town all quiet, and nobody at home at all. And the other [illegible] I found a hedge-hog, at least, I didn’t find him by hunting for him, but I heard a sound in the hedge and thought it was a snake and went back to see (though not so boldly as it reads) and it was a little funny thing. And a man came along and I said, is that a hedge-hog, and he said yes and touched it gently with his foot and it all curled up in a tiny little ball the size of a ten-cent Christmas wreath with its little bristles sticking out all over it. When I got back to the house Mr. Crawford said, why didn’t I bring it home, it eats up the slugs in the garden, but I said, how could I, goodness it’s so prickly, and he laughed. And there’s a private deer-park near here belongs to Lord Portman, and if mother doesn’t tell you all about the deer in that park, why I will. There are ducks in our back-yard, and I dig worms for them. Every day I dig worms for them, and every day I saw wood, anywhere from three to eighteen sticks, with a very dull saw, on a saw-horse that’s about as steady as a rocking-horse. Fortunately the sticks are not very thick through. I do it not because I’m a poor girl and eager to pick up a few bob where best I may, but because I need the exercise. Walking twelve or fourteen miles fails to exercise me at all. There goes the tea-bell. It’s a little bird that goes ding ding-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding-a ding Mother says it’s the tea-bell, but how can it be, because it dings all day. Mother doesn’t know that I smoke in my hut, but I do. She thinks it’s very dangerous because the floor is covered with straw. But since I

190  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay never smoke except when I’m here, I can’t see the danger. Naturally, I don’t throw the lighted butts over my shoulder, or anything like that. Pretty soon she’ll be up here to get me to come down to tea. It’s quarter to six. But it’s so sweet I can’t bear to leave it. It’s been raining, and the [illegible] sun’s out again, and the air’s all still, except for the tea-bell and the other birds. I know something mother doesn’t know. Somebody told me. There’s a pond, a great big pond, right up on top of the down. I’m going to take her up there and surprise her. We’ve been up on the top, but not in that direction. Well, goodbye. Ma’s written you oodles of letters, and she’s mad you don’t get ’em. Love and kisses. Sefe.

To Remo Bufano Shillingstone, Dorset, England July 22, 1922 1 Dear Remo,— Thank you so much for the sweet picture of your lovely little puppets.—It gives me quite a special thrill to think of a play of mine being acted by puppets. I wish I could see them do it, they must be adorable.—When I was in Rome I saw Pinocchio played by marionettes, & it was charming. No, your friend didn’t call to see me, & if she did, I was not in. Mother & I have found a beautiful place here in England & expect to be here all summer. Thanks again for the picture. And good luck to you always. Mother sends her best. Sincerely, Edna Millay

1. Remo Bufano (1894–1948) was director of the Marionette Theatre in Greenwich Village.

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To Martha Knight Shillingstone, Dorset, England July 23, 1922. Dear Martha,— I got your sweet note at Christmas, & am very much ashamed of not having answered it before. I have thought of you many times, just the same, & of our High School days, & Sunday School days, & Abbie’s Genethod.1—Mother & I have found a beautiful place to spend the summer, here in Dorset, but not more beautiful than Camden. And some day I shall have a house in Camden, & spend all my summers there. That is one of my dearest dreams.—I don’t know where Abbie Evans is now, but if you should see her, tell her I saw a lovely poem of hers in the Nation, I think, about Blind Gentians.2—— And give my love to your family, & to Corinne & Jess Hosmer, if they are still there—you see, I don’t know who is there—and to all my other old friends you see.—And much love to yourself, dear old friend. I shall see you again some day, & we will climb Battie together, & look down on the town, & have a good long talk. Lovingly, as ever, Vincent 1. “Genethod”: Welsh for girls. Geneth, the singular for girl, could also be translated as “lass, maid, damsel, maiden, virgin” (Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru, A Dictionary of the Welsh Language; A Guide to Welsh, Part 1, by Thomas Jones, revised by J. Lias Davies, in the Hughes’ Series for Day Schools, 1900), translates genethod as girls. 2. Abbie Evans was a friend from childhood in Camden. The poem appeared in the March 16, 1921, issue of The Nation.

To John Howard Lawson and Kate Drain Shillingstone, Dorset, England August 8, 1922 1 Dear old Kate and Jack: Esther told me about the motor accident, and the hospital, and all the detailed and intricate hell of your summer so far. Fate hasn’t got it in for you two, has she, the lousy bitch!

192  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay (In this delicate way I seek to express my very real sympathy, without, at the same time, losing my manhood) I am writing a novel. At least, I think it is a novel. I recall with misgiving once having made a petticoat for my doll, which turned out to be a sun-bonnet. Otherwise I am in good health. Thought not what you call glowing. I have a hut in a field, where I work, the hut handsomely furnished and at no prohibitive cost with a rope hammock, a table, a chair, a carpet of clean, loose straw, and a lockable box for my papers. I did get soaked for the whitewashing, however, a pound and a half, because the official whitewasher of Shillingstone, (who is also, I have no doubt, “By Special Appointment Whitewasher to H. M. George V”) recognized me at once as a bone-headed American tripper. Just now it rains in, and then it doesn’t rain in, and the rain spits on my typewriter, and then it doesn’t spit on my typewriter, and I am hot and giddy and closing and opening my big broad door, which is also my only window, were it not for the cracks. The place was originally designed for the occupancy of bovine brutes, not human ones; and the first day I was here my entire corporeal surface was explored and generously sampled by fleas as large as sparrows. The next day I bought myself an enormous tin of Keating’s Bug Powder, and sat in peace, amid the hoarse coughing of strangling minor carnivora. Eshter2 is beautiful this summer, with a smooth tan that I envy, my own being rather too well punctuated with freckles to give me any great aesthetic thrill. My mother and I, after having happily, with beaming smiles and wagging tails, dragged home from the surrounding downs a sufficient variety of malign-colored fungi to poison the entire population of Dorset, have at last succeeded in learning what a mushroom is, and isn’t. And now we live on them. That is all the news I have to offer at the present, except that our beloved Princess Mary, Viscountess Lascelles,3 is going to have a baby in a minute or two. My mother, having, the moment she sets eyes on the Viscount’s photograph in the paper, pronounced him an impotent, is interested, but unconvinced. Well, goodbye. And better luck, sweet things, from this moment on.

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Maybe you have had your troubles all in a bunch, instead of spread out rather thin over your whole lives, as they come to most people, so that now they are all behind you, and you are free to be happy for a long, long time. I think you know how sincerely I hope that this is true. Much love. And don’t bother to write unless you feel like it. I sha’n’t mind at all. Though if you ever do want to write, I shall be glad to get a letter. Yours ever, Edna Millay 1. Kate Drain (1894–1977), an American who had been a nurse in Paris in World War I, was working in the theater by this time and was married to “Jack,” or John Howard Lawson (1894–1977), an American playwright and screenwriter. 2. Likely, Esther (Tess) Root Adams (1872/73–1960). As Vincent Sheean notes, Esther “had grown into the habit of spending her birthday [June 4] at Steepletop” (The Indigo Bunting, New York: Schocken Books, 1973), 3. 3. Princess Mary, Viscountess Lascelles (1897–1965), was the daughter of King George V and Queen Mary; her husband was Henry Lascelles, Viscount Lascelles.

To Harriet Monroe Shillingstone, Dorset, England August 8, 1922 Dear Harriet: I thought you might like this poem by a friend of mine, an Englishman. I am sending you his own copy, so I suppose it’s all right. But the fifth line strikes me as rather queer, and to my guileless and straightforward muse it would seem that he has his adjectives twisted. If you want to use the poem, let me know, and I’ll write him saying, “Whadda you mean, ‘dark the hour’?” I would append his address to his signature and let you negotiate with him yourself, except that I mislaid it; and I’m afraid if I don’t send this to you now I never will. I think this poem has a lot of magic in it, and I hope you will like it. I am glad you like Second April. You wrote me a very nice letter

194  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay about it, which I did not stop to answer, I was in such haste to get your official post-card back to you. Yours ever, Edna St. Vincent Millay

To Edmund Wilson [September 14, 1922] Dear Bunny,— You must have received by now the three articles sent by Mr. Wood.—If the one called The Key is too long, please don’t cut it, or do anything to it, or let anybody else, but just send it back to me, & I’ll send you something else in its place.1—There were a couple of changes made in The Barrel, & I was furious. Don’t let Crownie do anything to anything that’s signed by my own name.—As for Nancy, that’s a little different.—But Crownie asked me once if, should he want to use two Nancy Boyd things in the same number, I would be willing to have him sign some other name to one of them. I replied that I should be perfectly willing. But I must have been drunk at the time, because I’m not willing at all. Don’t ever let him do that. You might reply to my sweet letter I wrote you,—but suit yourself, old thing.



I’ll bet the heading of this paper made you laugh.2

I received The Undertaker’s Garland,3 with its devilish inscription; but I refuse to say a word about it until you write me. Yours, Edna. 1. This short story, subtitled “Showing that it May Annoy Blue-Beard More to Neglect the Secret Chamber than to Open It,” appeared in the December 1922 issue of Vanity Fair, under Millay’s name, not her pseudonym of Nancy Boyd. Mr. Wood is unidentified; no one by that

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 195 name is found in Wilson’s papers or Millay’s. Crownie is Frank Crowninshield, the editor of Vanity Fair. 2. The stationery is from “The American Women’s Club, / 41, Hertford Street, / Park Lane, W.1. [London] / Tel: Grosvenor 1845.” 3. John Peale Bishop and Edmund Wilson published a collection of their writings under this title, illustrated by Boris Artzybasheff (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1922).

To Witter Bynner Letchworth, Hertfordshire September Twentieth [1922?] Dearest Hal,— It was an adorable small poem.—The Trout & the Book. You are such a silly, satisfactory person. Very lovingly, Edna

To Arthur Davison Ficke & Gladys Brown Hotel du Panorama Cassis-sur-Mer Bouches du Rhone France Dec. 6, 1922 Dear Arthur & Gladys— Be happy—oh, be very happy for a long, long time!—You are two beautiful people.—I love you both. My heart is with you.1 Vincent 1. Ficke had written Millay to say that he had recently been divorced from his wife, Evelyn, and was now free to be with his new love, Gladys Brown (1890–1973), an American artist (Daniel Mark Epstein, What Lips My Lips Have Kissed: The Loves and Love Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay [New York: Henry Holt, 2001], 164). Ficke and Brown were later married in Manhattan on December 8, 1923. Gladys’s drawing of Edna accompanies the satire (under Millay’s name) “The Woman Who Would Be Moving the Beds About” in Vanity Fair (February 1923).

Arthur Davison Ficke, Edna, and Eugen Boissevain, likely early 1923. (Courtesy of The Millay Society)

Edna, Arthur Davison Ficke, and Eugen Boissevain, circa 1923. (Courtesy of the Millay Society)

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To Edmund Wilson Mr. Edmund Wilson, Jr., C/o Vanity Fair Publishing Co., 19 West 44th St., New York.

May 2nd, 1923.

Dear Bunny: I did read the poems you left and like them very much. Who is this person?1 I never even heard of her. I was quite thrilled by some of the poems. Isn’t it wonderful how the lady poets are coming along? “Votes for women” is what I sez! If you want the manuscript back at once I shall have to arrange to have my flat broken into and the envelope stolen for you, because I left town in a great hurry, tired to death and thinking of nothing but getting away. Write me if you want the poems at once and I will arrange to have Norma or somebody get in and get them for you. I know Crowny is terribly peeved at me. He thinks, I am sure, that the reason why I have not been writing anything for Vanity Fair lately is because I am writing for the Saturday Evening Post or something. Truth is I have not put pen to paper for anybody—not even for myself—in months. Please tell Crowny that I really am very tired and ill and not to be angry with me. I will write him too. My love to Elinor. Edna. C/o Eugene Boisevain,2 Mount Airy, Croton, N.Y. 1. Pencil annotation in Edmund Wilson’s hand: “ Louise Bogan? EW.” 2. Eugen Jan Boissevain (1880–1949), an importer, was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In 1913 he married the lawyer and suffrage activist Inez Milholland (1886–1916). Eugen and Millay married on July 18, 1923. His name appears here as typed in the letter.

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To Cora B. Millay Croton-on-Hudson (still) [1923] Darling Mummie, Just a little tiny note to tell you that I love you.—Sweetheart, how are you?—Eugen & I have both had a sort of grippe—we have both had the la grippe, as they say—but are crawling out of it gradually. Write me about yourself. I have so many things to talk about with you—I have finished the English adaptation of that play of Molnar Charlie got for me from Arthur Hopkins last spring—Hopkins is mad about my rendering of it—it is in rehearsal now, & opens in about a week—& don’t tell anybody—I am to get $200 a week as long as it runs, so pray that it may run a year.1—I can’t write much, because it still tires me, but I can love you just as much as ever, sick or well. Your daughter, Vincent. 1. The Best Plays of 1923–1924 mentions Launzi, “A drama in three acts by Ferenc Molnar, adapted by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Produced by Arthur Hopkins at the Plymouth Theater, New York, October 10, 1923” (332).

To Harper & Brothers Croton-on-Hudson, N. Y. September 11, 1923 Harper and Brothers Manufacturing Department. (Attention of Mr. Rushmore) Dear sirs— I return the corrected page proofs of “The Harp Weaver.” The whole of the last two sections of the book must be repaged: for each one of the sonnets must have a page to itself. In view of the extensive nature of these changes, I fear I must ask you to send another set of proofs after the changes are made. I think it very important. Sincerely yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay by A.D.F.1

200  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Arthur Davison Ficke. Millay described his editorial assistance with her proofs for The Harp-Weaver in the letter to her mother immediately following this.

To Cora B. Millay Holley Hotel Wash. Sq. West N.Y.C. Dec. 27, ’23 Dearest Mummie,— Forgive my long silence.—I am just recovering from my annual bronchitis!—I “went up to London to see the Queen”1—that is, I went down to Washington to see the President—with a whole bunch of suffragists—also to read a poem which I had written, at a conference thingumajig in the Capitol—I enclose the poem—written a propos of Susan B. Anthony and two other women who founded the Women’s Party seventy-five years ago,2 or so—& I caught cold on the train—& here I am,—I’m all right again now—but somehow, ever since my operation, I catch cold twice as easy, & the dentist hurts me twice as much, etc.—Of course it’s just because I’m not at all strong yet.—Eugen & I are stuck here until Dec. [Jan.?]3 1, when at last we get into our house. I haven’t been able to do anything about anything,—about your poems, or about anything of my own—as you know, Arthur Ficke even corrected my Harp-weaver proofs for me. The Harp-Weaver & Other Poems is out now, and so is my English volume of selected poems that Martin Secker did. I send you three little pictures, one for you, one for Aunt Clem, & one for Uncle Albert.4 Uncle Albert is to have first choice, (& don’t you and Aunt Clem get jealous), Aunt Clem second choice, & you are just to take what’s left!—See? The big package came but is still in Eugen’s office. When our house is ready we are going to have it sent straight there. 1. Echo of the start of a nursery rhyme: “Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, where have you been? / I’ve been up to London to look at the queen.” One nineteenth-century edition is The Nursery Rhyme Book, edited by Andrew Lang, illustrated by L. Leslie Brooke (London: Frederick Warne, 1897).

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 201 2. Millay read her sonnet “The Pioneer,” which begins “Upon this marble bust that is not I”; when published in The Buck in the Snow, a note before the sonnet reads “On the Unveiling of a Statue to Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Washington, November eighteenth, 1923.” When published in Collected Sonnets, the title and note were modified: “To Inez Milholland” and “Read in Washington, November eighteenth, 1923, at the unveiling of a statue of three leaders in the cause of Equal Rights for Women.” 3. Millay wrote the date in brackets. 4. Aunt Clem was Millay’s mother’s sister Clementine Buzzell Parsons; her husband was Albert W. Parsons. They lived in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

To Edmund Wilson 75 ½ Bedford Street Jan. 8, 1924 Dearest Bunny,— Am I a swine?—Oh, but such a little one!—Such an elegant & distinguished one!—So pink & white!—A truffle-sniffer, not a troughwallower! I love you just as ever. I would go driving with you in Central Park in an open Victoria in a howling blizzard in a muslin frock. But, since there is so little snow-fall as yet, won’t you come to see me here instead—at 4 o’clock this Thursday, or at 4 o’clock next Monday?— —I will offer you a cigarette, just to be playful; and then I will give you a fine, sound, rosy-cheeked apple,—because my heart is really in the right place.

Do come, Bunny, Or suggest some other time. Wire me. Soon I shall depart this life or leave for Pittsburgh & points west on a reading-tour.1 I want to see you before I go. Let not the light tone of this communication put you off. I do want to see you. Edna. 1. Millay read in Pittsburgh on Monday, January 21, 1924 (Pittsburgh Gazette Times, Thursday, January 17, 1924, p. 8). This paper noted that her next stop was Chicago. Additional readings included Coe College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa (Coe Cosmos, January 17, 1924, p. 3), the Fontenelle Ballroom in Omaha, Nebraska (Omaha Bee, Wednesday, January 30, 1924, p. 4), the Virginia Hotel and Grace Hickox Studios in Chicago (Chicago Tribune, Saturday, February 2,

Edna St. Vincent Millay and Edmund Wilson, with Eugen Boissevain in the background, in the garden at her home at 75½ Bedford Street, in Greenwich Village, New York City, 1923 or 1924. Her friend Franklin P. Adams described the garden as “the burlesque park she had made . . . , with absurd signs about the grass and flowers and shrubbery, and some gay poems” (The Diary of Our Own Samuel Pepys, 1911–1925 [Simon and Schuster, 1935], entry for Sunday, April 5, 1925, p. 520). Photograph by Jessie Tarbox Beals. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-30740)

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Edna and Eugen on their honeymoon, 1924. (Library of Congress) 1924, p. 9), and the Deshler Hotel in Columbus, Ohio (The Lantern [Ohio State University], Tuesday, February 5, 1924, p. 8).

To Harriet Monroe [January 10, 1924] Dear Harriet Monroe,— This note, most likely, comes stumbling along too late to be of any use to you, or to the Midland Authors, or to my agent (Miss Dorothy P. Hill, 409 Crosby Bldg. Buffalo) or to myself.—However—if the Midland Authors, the honor of whose invitation I do appreciate, still want to give me a party, whether in the form of a fan-dance, a table-­ typing séance, or a baked-bean-supper—I accept with pleasure, if not with alacrity.1 —And this would be a notable single exception to my stern rule not to be entertained by anybody, in any manner, on my reading trip.—The best date would probably be Friday, Jan. 25th. I shall be in Chicago all

204  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay day that day, & shall be free in the evening until 11:30, when I take a train. Probably you are no longer interested in this—the occasion is past, etc. So I won’t enlarge upon it until I hear from you. Yours in haste, thought you mightn’t believe it. Edna St. Vincent Millay 75 ½ Bedford St. New York City. 1. On January 17, 1924, Eugen also wrote to Monroe on Millay’s behalf, suggesting January 30 or February 2 for the dinner. In two letters dated January 16, Dorothy P. Hill wrote to Monroe—the reading was set for the Arts Club on February 2; “the fee would be the minimum, one hundred dollars, since no extra railroading is involved” (UChicago, letter #23).

To John Howard Lawson [New York City] Jan. 21, 1925 We, the undersigned, after due deliberation but in a state of great excitement, hereby testify that your show1 is a hum-dinger; and that we are crazy about it; and that it’s about the best show we have seen in the last sixty years: and that we shall not sleep a wink tonight: and that we think you have a right to be slightly stuck up: and that we wish you a Happy New Year. [circle with compass lines drawn through, with lines to the right, signatures on the lines] Edna St. Vincent Millay Gladys Brown Eugen Boissevain Arthur Davison Ficke 1. Lawson’s new play Processional: A Jazz Symphony of American Life (1925), performed by the Theatre Guild at the Garrick Theatre. Ficke wrote this letter on his stationery (“Arthur Davison Ficke / 42 Commerce Street / New York City”), and the four senders all signed their names. Ficke and Gladys Brown were married by this time.

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To the Music Editor of “The New York World” New York, 4th February, 1925. To the Music Editor of the New York World1 Dear Sir: In some indignation and no little disapproval I address you concerning your criticism in this morning’s World of Mr. Deems Taylor’s “Portrait of a Lady.” “The audience,” you say, in reviewing last night’s concert given by the New York Chamber Music Society in Aeolian Hall, “prob­ ably composed of the composer’s relatives, greeted the piece with what seemed to us highly disproportionate cordiality.” Sir, I was a member of that audience. I heard with close attention and deep pleasure an unusually good program unusually well performed, not the least interesting and lovely number of which was Mr. Taylor’s “Portrait of a Lady.” Mr. Taylor combines as a musician two excellent attributes far too seldom found in combination: the art to expound a fine theme with power and clarity, and the good taste when that theme has been expounded, to stop. You reflected, you say, “a little bitterly, upon the cleverness and resourcefulness with which Juon2 had juggled the themes of his divertimento.” But cleverness and resourcefulness are the indispensable equipment of a juggler: we do not require them from a musician whose work may safely expose itself to the consideration of an unbefuddled ear and mind. I suggest in closing that last night’s audience, far from being com­ posed of Mr. Taylor’s relatives, was made up of discerning and honestly delighted strangers, and that yourself, far from being “one of Mr. Taylor’s warmest admirers,” represented the only relative in the auditorium. Yours, etc., Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Handwritten annotation by Deems Taylor: “Apropos of a review I wrote of some of my own music. DT” 2. German composer Paul Juon (1872–1940).

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To Mrs. Cora B. Millay Box 53 Austerlitz, N. Y. June 22, 1925 Dearest Mummie: Here we are, in one of the loveliest places in the world, I am sure, working like Trojans, dogs, slaves, etc., having chimneys put in, & plumbing put in, & a garage built, etc.—We are crazy about it—& I have so many things on my mind at this moment that must be done before I’m an hour older,—you know how it is—that I hardly know if I am writing with a pen or with a screw-driver.—You & Kay & Howard are all invited to come to see us when next you are in these parts again—one at a time or all at once, but the most restful time to come would be after a couple of months—just now there is a little too much mortaring & tearing down of old buildings going on, & a guest is likely to be pressed into service laying a floor or digging a hole for the septic tank.— I have written the Corn Exchange Bank to transfer one hundred dollars from my account to yours. You will probably receive a notice of it in a few days. Make it go as far as you can, darling. Our expenses are staggering just now. The furnace & bathroom alone come to a thousand dollars. It’s terrible, simply terrible. But it’s going to be a sweet place when it’s finished—and it’s ours, all ours, about seven hundred acres of land & a lovely house, & no rent to pay, only a nice gentlemanly mortgage to keep shaving a slice off. We’re so excited about it we are nearly daft in the bean—kidney bean, lima bean, string-bean, butter-bean—you dow whad I bean—ha! ha! ha!—I’m off !—(Now you understand what I have been trying to tell you, that I am very interested in & pleased with the place that Eugen & I have bought.) Please write me at the above address soon. Much love to you all three, from us, Ugin & Edner. I shall come across your little kid’s book presently & mail it to you. Just now Gawd knows where anything is. Respectfully yours, Sefe, Litt. D.

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To Anne Gardner Steepletop Austerlitz, N.Y. Aug. 23, 1925 Darling Anne: I cannot tell you how good it was to get your letter. I thought that by this time you were back in California & I felt pretty bad about it. We were just in the act of moving to the country when I heard from Charlie that you were in town, & I was helpless to do a thing. Can you come out here? We’re frightfully unsettled still—you see, we bought a farm, & are having the house done over—also, just now we are without a servant—the last one we had went crazy on us, literally, & had to be shipped off—but you wouldn’t mind the mess, would you?—& could your mother take care of Claire while you are gone?—We’d love to have you come next Friday (about the 30th, I think) & spend a week here if you could. You take a train, I think on the N.Y.C., to Chatham, N.Y. There are quite a number of trains darling, & it takes about four hours. Let me know when you arrive, & we will meet you in Chatham & drive you out here—it’s about twelve miles from us. Oh, Anne, I do so hope you can come! Let me hear from you as soon as you get this. Give my affectionate regards to your mother & father. As ever, Vince.

You probably don’t know my married name, which is splendid, because I haven’t any married name, being one of them there Lucy Stoners.1 1. Lucy Stone (1818–1893) advocated for women to keep their original names when they married (A Dictionary of Americanisms, edited by Mitford M. Mathews, 1951).

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To Deems Taylor [Typed and signed by Eugen] Austerlitz, January 5th [1926?] Steepletop. Dear Deems: Thanks for letter. Vincent says: “Postpone, Hell,” and sends you enclosed synopsis of the opera by Deems Taylor “Aetholwold.”1 It is going to be called Aethelwold, unless you can think of something better, which you probably cannot. I am sending you two copies, but please do not let Mr. Ziegler keep his copy, for his memory book.2 This is a very rough sketch and will be changed, very likely, considerably by both you and Edna, and she does not like to have unfinished work kicking around. That reminds me, will you please get hold of the synopsis of “Snow White,” and return it to Edna, when you come here to finish the opera.3 Edna intends to send you with the help of God every week a few pages to work on. You may expect the first instalment a few days after you receive this and then two days after that you will get it. Edna was playing yesterday your prince motive on the piano, and it will go beautifully for Aethelwold. Eddie Johnson would be perfect for Aethelwold, Edna says. Edna says as follows: “Errole would be alright but there is a lovely part for him in the first act, if he would be willing to take a smaller part. I would love to have him sing the Archbishop Dunstan. He uses his voice so delicately and fastidiously. He would be just the man I want. Dunstan is going to be a lovely part, though a small one. Tibbett is too darn tall to play Eadgar, if the truth were known, Eadgar being known for his small stature, but as the truth is not known, perhaps it does not matter. It is true that since they are foster-brothers, they must be about the same age, that is about 25, Dunstan too is about the same age. In fact they were all kids. There is a scene, a swell scene, for Eadgar in the last act, which Whitehill would do splendidly I think. In fact Whitehill would make a stunning Eadgar, if he could make up young enough. Bender, the fellow who sang Hagen, (and didn’t he do the Barber of Baghdad?) would make a magnificent Eadgar. But is his English good enough? Florence Easton would be lovely I think. As for Telva I cannot hand her much. If she would sing her notes instead of

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chinning herself on them, she and I would be better friends. What I want to know, why I cannot have Kathleen Howard for my Brangeane? These with Ordgar, a bass, and Kurnival, another baritone, make seven singing parts, not including the horse.—Heavens no, there is the harper. That makes eight, is that too many? If it is too many it is too bad, but it cannot be helped. But in any way let me know what you think about it.” In any way it will be necessary for you to come here pretty soon. Don’t be afraid that you’ll have to build my septic tank. It is all finished and working with the help of cascaras. You will notice there are two scenes in the second act, but that means nothing, as there is no change of scenery. The second act will seem a lot longer than the first, but that is only because she strayed from the synopsis into the book itself. Edna is not better. We cannot find out what is the trouble. It is not a nervous breakdown. She cannot use her eyes at all now, and I must do all her reading and writing. Her headache has never stopped for a single minute, and is very often dreadfully bad. Do you know of a good doctor, who will give some time to find out what is the matter, and make her well? Love from both of us to both of you. Ugin [in pencil] One copy is corrected and the other is not, but I must leave right away and walk 4 miles through snow & over the hills, to catch to-day’s mail & must leave now.— 1. Deems Taylor (1885–1966), an American composer, was writing the music and Millay was writing the book for an opera that ended up being titled The King’s Henchman. When the work premiered in 1927, the major roles were played by Eddie Johnson as Aethelwold, Lawrence Tibbett as Eadgar, Florence Easton as Aelfrida, and Louis D’Angelo as Ordgar. Paul Bender played Abul Hassan in The Barber of Baghdad. 2. Edward Ziegler, assistant manager at the Metropolitan Opera. 3. Millay drafted an adaptation of Snow White, titled Snow White à Rebours. The addition of à Rebours echoes the title of the decadent novel A Rebours (1884) by the French novelist J. K. Huysmans (1848–1907). John Howard translated the Huysmans title as Against the Grain (1922).

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To Deems Taylor Feb 4, 1926 Dear Deems,—I am sending you this with all its imperfections on its head.1—It is much too long, probably much too Dunstan, & frightfully rough in places & a little silly in other places, ’n’ everything. But parts of it are pretty good. And it’s time you should see it. Let me know your reaction at once. Then I’ll spend a week following your suggestions, & strengthening myself & my book against them.—& then go on as you suggested, to the second scene. Love, Edna. (over) Warlock is an Anglo-Saxon word, which, in its original sense, meant “a traitor, a breaker of a pledge.”—You may think this is too ancient & hidden to use, since that meaning is quite obsolete, but it’s a grand title, & we could always explain it in the Argument. E. 1. The letter accompanies drafts of the libretto for The King’s Henchman. Warlock is a draft title.

To Edmund Wilson steepletop Austerlitz, New York. March 4, 1926 Dear Bunny: This is just a snow-ball at your window,—I can’t write letters. But I did think you a darling to give me the champagne, both bottles, too. And I was awfully excited about Leonie Adams’ poems; I nearly went blind reading them that night. And after I had finished them, and read some of them to Eugen, we drank her health with the champagne. When I see you, we’ll talk about them. We have been snowed in,—I mean hermetically—four weeks today. Five miles on snow-shoes, that means, to fetch the mail, or to post a letter. And the thermometer at zero again this morning.

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I have a shanty up in the field where I work,—did I tell you? (You’ll smile at that, meaning I never told you anything.) I’m in my shanty now, and have a scorching fire at my back, in the funniest little stove. I’m getting stronger, Bunny. My head aches just the same all the time, and the nasty spots have never gone for a moment from before my eyes; but in spite of that, I’ve ever so much better than I was. And I’m working hard on my opera. How did you guess that a lacquer serpent with a ruby eye was just what I had written Santa Claus please to bring me? I didn’t have a single lacquer serpent to my name, Bunny, let alone one with a ruby eye. I have to go down to luncheon now. Yours as ever Edna

To Frank Crowninshield steepletop Austerlitz, New York March 17, 1926 Dearest Crownie: You will never know how your sweet funny little letters cheer me up. What a nice person you are! Eugen thinks so, too. The etching is lovely. As for me, I am getting stronger every day. Though my head aches still all the time, and I still look at the world through a veil of dancing dark spots, in spite of all that a thousand doctors have been able to do. All the king’s leeches and all the king’s men, Haven’t put little Edna together again! I have started to work at last on the book of an opera which I promised back in the dark ages to Deems Taylor and the Metropolitan. It will be done by the beginning of the summer. And then,—a year late!—the articles for V. F. will begin to come in. You have been a darling, Crownie, as I believe I said before. About the opera, it is supposed to be a secret; but I imagine it has begun to leak out a little. We have been snowed in here tight exactly six weeks tomorrow,—no

212  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay road to our house at all. But I saw a blue-jay yesterday. And maybe someday it will be spring. As ever, affectionately yours, Edna.

To Deems Taylor April 14 1926

tell brandt there aint no libretto yet we are wiring her stop kings messenger absolutely impossible for this reason the word messenger was brought into english by the normans and i am writing my entire libretto in anglosaxon that is to say there is not a word in the libretto which was not known in one form or another in england a thousand years ago stop i meant to spring this on you later and to keep it secret from [second telegram] everybody else until they found out for themselves if ever stop if you must tell metropolitan beg them to keep it secret stop metropolitan can choose between saxons and kings henchman stop counting on your and mary for twenty third are switching off somebody else who was to come then so please don’t fail us

edna

To Kathleen Millay Steepletop July 21, 1926 Dearest Kathleen,— It is 92° in the shade. I am sitting on the lawn under a maple. Mother is typing upstairs in her room. Gene & Harry Dowd are up in the field haying with Stanley, the hired man. Norma is hoeing the beans in the kitchen-garden—an enormous garden, with bush beans, pole beans, Lima beans, several kinds of peas (including the cute French ones), corn, potatoes, cabbage, beets, lettuce, endive, cauliflower, Brus-

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sels sprouts, broccoli, melons, pumpkins, cucumbers, turnips, celery, peppers, tomatoes, strawberries, rhubarb, etc.—some doing very well, some doing fairly well, & some doing awful. We have electric lights!!!—Our own plan, & our own little powerhouse.

Smoky has four kittens, all exactly alike, black with white spats & white weskits1—too funny & cute for words.—Altair & Jerry have tried several times to kill each other, so now they can never be out at large at the same time, which is quite a strain.2—Charlie was up here for the week-end, & is coming back for a week or so, as soon as he has read over a play somebody wants him to act in.— Dougie & Barbara Beattie motored up for a week-end a little while ago.—We are, as you see, very gay here, everybody working very hard, but having a great time. —But speaking of grand times—I am willing to bet that the grandest time, of all is being had by Wumps Millay. I can tell by the tone of your post-cards & letters that you are just rolling in it all. And darling, you are the only one, as it happens, that ever went to the races at Auteuil,3—at least the only Millay!— Ugin has been there often, but none of the rest of us. I was going once with Lawrence Langner or Curtis Moffat—(I forget which) & something happened that I didn’t.4

You just ought to see Hunk at this moment—she looks so cute— great big hat, linen knickers & man’s shirt, & bare legs pink as a hog’s from sun-burn. She’s hoping, it appears, to get a tan.

We have nasturtiums in blossom, & petunias, & geraniums, & marigolds & candle lily & cosmos & lobelia & heliotrope & mignonette,— & sweet-peas just beginning. Harry is the head flower gardener. He has planted & weeded & watered & transplanted thousands of seeds, both annuals & perennials, but most perennials,—larkspur, foxglove, holly

214  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay hocks, etc. Next year we shall have the most gorgeous garden!—I forgot to say we have lots of roses, too, all in bloom, & pansies.— I know you are so fond of flowers, I thought you would like just to imagine what it’s like here & what we’re trying to make it.—If you & Howard come back in time, maybe you will come up when you get back, before the frost gets everything,—though after your lovely place in Rutherford this will look pretty ragged. I wonder when you’re coming back. I have a feeling sometimes that you’ll just stay & stay & stay. People do sometimes.—Where the devil are you, in the south of France, anyhow?—Gene’s brother Jan & his wife Charlotte Ives are in Antibes, if you should happen to go there.5 Mother’s making lemonade for us, ’cause it’s so hot;—pink lemonade, with cold strawberries in it.—It’s wonderful,—but oh, goller, just think what li’l’ Kay & l’il’ Howard can have to drink, & nobody say a word!

Ugin is going to the post-office, so I’ll send this along just as is.— Lots of love to you & Howard. Vincent 1. That is, the kittens have white rings above their paws (“spats”) and white bellies (“weskits,” or “waistcoats”). “Weskits” appears in George Herriman’s Krazy Kat comic strip for March 23, 1919 (George Herriman, Krazy & Ignatz, 1919–1921: A Kind, Benevolent and Amiable Brick, edited by Bill Blackbeard [Fantagraphics Books, 2011]). 2. Altair is Millay’s German shepherd. Charlie is Charles Ellis (ca. 1893–1976), husband of Norma Millay. 3. Auteuil is the location of a steeplechase racetrack for horses in the Bois du Boulogne of Paris. 4. Lawrence Langner was a Welsh playwright (1890–1962) involved in the Washington Square Players and the Theatre Guild. He cast Millay in a Theatre Guild production of Bonds of Interest in May 1919 (Cheryl Black, The Women of Provincetown, 1915–1922 [Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002], 80). Curtis Moffat (1887–1949) was an American photographer, and worked with Man Ray. 5. Jan Maurits Boissevain was one of Eugen’s younger brothers (1883–1964).

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Telegram from Edna to Deems Taylor, about The King’s Henchman, 1926. (Library of Congress)

To Deems Taylor

[October 13, 1926]

chatham ny 13 deems taylor care j fischer and bros 119 west 40 st newyork ny dear deems crazy to see you crazy about act one crazy about act two why does not fischer send me rest of act three crazy about the whole show expect to be newyork tuesday can i see then we are leaving for newmexico wednesday spend my days playing act one know it almost by heart now if you know who gets neuritis in his right ark just call on me love from us both to you and mary edna.

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To Frank Crowninshield Steepletop Austerlitz, N.Y. Oct. 15, 1926 Dearest Crownie: Dear Vanity Fair: Was it Christmas?—Was it Edna’s birthday?—Was it Saint Valentine’s day?—No.—It wasn’t. It wasn’t at all. —Just a common old clean-out-your-bureau & drawers-and-copyaddresses-into-your-address-book rainy Saturday in the country.—And such a lovely gift! So charming to look at, so soft to touch, so sweet to smell, all wooly and warm and fine enough to pull through a fingerring—and just the colors I love!—Who is such a darling as you!—Think & think & think—nobody.

Eugen & I were crazy about your article on the lost arts of cooking & eating. It is indeed a barbarous time & a barbarous land we live in. Let’s all go to see the governor, & insist that he publish your article along with the Thanksgiving proclamation.

I am still correcting proofs on The King’s Henchman. You will be there surely on the opening night, won’t you Crownie?—I believe you will like it.—What a night that will be!—I must feed myself a lot of milk & eggs between now & then, to be able to stand it at all.—As it is, I know my teeth will chatter like a snare-drum, & I shall probably breathe so draughtily as to set all the plush curtains flapping.

Dear Crownie, thank you so much, so much, for my lovely shawl. Affectionately, Edna.

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To Deems Taylor Nov. 3, 1926 Dear Deems: At last I am returning you these contracts, together with a sort of corollary to them. The first change is one that we spoke of at Mrs. Mixter’s.1 The second seemed to me a good idea: a phrase like “to be determined later by mutual agreement” might much better be struck out for something more definite. If you have any objections at all, come right back. Otherwise, if you will sign one of the sheets & return it to me, that will be finally that. I am still at work on the play version for Harper’s; they must have it on the tenth of December. My only interruption & my only dissipation is the piano score, which I squirm & sigh over for several hours every day, with furrowed brow & tongue between my teeth. Why everything that isn’t in six flats had to be written in five sharps, is a question I shall take up with you later, & not without bitterness. I love the music, and I am constantly finding new beautiful things in it. And I know it pretty well enough in my head, if not in my fingers. In other words: If I only could sing it, I would sing & play it, if I only could play it. The Harper’s version has a lot of stage directions & things in it which are not in the libretto, & which might be of some interest or even assistance to Weimetal (if that’s how you spell him).2 I shall send you a copy; and will you please pass on to him? I wonder how you are getting on with the orchestration, & if Eddie Johnson is back from Italy, & if you have seen Serafin, & if so what he said

A word or two from either you or Miss Kennedy would be voraciously received by yours & hers with love, Edna. P. S. Gene sends love, too. P. P. S. Everybody in this house is crazy about your music. P. P. P. S. My hostess is learning to do the Harper’s song on the guitar!

218  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. The poet Florence Kilpatrick Mixter (1878–1949), who was married to George Mixter (1876–1947). 2. Director Wilhelm Von Wymetal.

To Elinor Wylie [1927?] Dearest Elinor: Max Eastman, who is a terribly good friend of Gene’s, has written a very interesting novel called “Venture,” which the Literary Gentry is now considering.1 Max asked me to say a word about it to Carl van Doren, but I don’t know Carl van Doren, so I pass the buck to you.2— Maybe you won’t like it, in which case, that is that. But it is a book which would be extremely interesting to the business men group of L.G. readers. It deals with, among other things, the romance of Big Business—also with love affairs—marvelously well done—also with strikes & strikebreakers.—If you are still with the Literary Gentry please read it, darling— or get Bill to read it—or read part of it. It is of course beautifully written, at least. I think Max’s prose almost always lovely.

If the above is a chore, forgive me. The book is likely to be as good as anything they are considering, & Max could use the money.—Love, Vincie. (over) Kids, you would love it here now. It has never been so beautiful.— We still have no servants, but that’s a detail. Vincie [Eugen adds] When are you & Bill coming? The weather is beautiful, so are we, so are you, so is Steepletop. Please come, beautiful thing. Gene 1. Max Eastman (1883–1969) was an American author and editor. 2. Carl Van Doren (1885–1950) was an American historian and literary critic. His chapter on Millay, “Youth and Wings,” in Many Minds (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1924) includes this praise: “The real poetical event of 1912, however, was the appearance in The Lyric Year, tentative anthology, of the first outstanding poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay” (105).

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To Alexander Woollcott Feb. 19, 1927 Dear Alec Woollcott:1 This morning, much to my disgust, I find that a letter written by me to you some time ago—in fact, shortly after I first saw La Finta at the Mayfair Theatre2—has not been posted.—I will not say whose fault it is that it was not posted; but at any rate, it was not in my coat-pocket that I found it. I do not enclose the letter in full, for since I wrote it things have changed somewhat for the Intimate Opera Company. Many discerning people have seen & heard La Finta, and, struck by its loveliness and charm, have sent their friends in ever increasing numbers to the Mayfair Theatre. This, however, was the beginning of the letter, & it still holds true. “It is of importance to you & to myself,” I wrote, “& to many people in this city, that The Intimate Opera Company, now producing Mozart’s La Finta at the Mayfair Theatre, be fostered & sustained.” Now believe me, this is precisely what I mean; it is of importance to the city. Nothing is further from my intention than to say: “These young people have worked very hard, & should be encouraged.” I am not at all in favor of hard work for its own sake; many people who work very hard indeed produce terrible things, and should most certainly not be encouraged. The Intimate Opera Company should be fostered & sustained not for its own sake, but for ours. It is giving us more than we can ever return. The exquisite Finta Giardiniera of Mozart, the beautiful Orpheus of Gluck,— where else shall we find them?—nowhere else. And there are many evenings when nothing else at all will do. As for yourself, do not be too busy to go to see & hear La Finta & Orpheus. It is not only the music that draws one back for the second time & the third time to the Mayfair Theatre. It is also the delightful voices, the sweet pretty faces, the graceful lyrics, the charming costumes & sets, & the general gaiety & fun & air of improvisation about it all. And it is all so delicate & miniature. And it doesn’t hurt your head, & it doesn’t hurt your eyes, & it doesn’t wear you out in any way. You just sit there, contented and glad you came, while one lovely scene succeeds another.— Edna St. Vincent Millay

220  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay [Written on back of last page] Dear Alec: If you can read this miserable scrawl, I’d be obliged if you’d find room for it somewhere. — Edna Millay 1. Alexander Woollcott (1887–1943) was a drama critic for the New York World and a member of the Algonquin Club. He also contributed to Vanity Fair. 2. As identified later in the letter, Millay is speaking of the comic opera La Finta Giardiniera (1775) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, produced by the Intimate Opera Company in New York, for which she and Deems Taylor served on the board; she had heard the performance a month before this letter (“Intimate Opera Again,” New York Times, February 20, 1927, x10). “Orpheus,” from the opera Orfeo ed Euridice (1762), by the Bohemian-Austrian composer Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck, was also performed the day after Millay’s letter.

To Deems Taylor Steepletop March 24, 1927 Dear Deems: I didn’t write you when I intended to because on the evening of the day we last saw you, on our way home from the station, I got mixed up in a run-away, & tried to get my left eye put out, but didn’t succeed.— Now I’m all right again.—I was just jealous of you—I wanted to be a cyclops, too!

Please come to Steepletop at once—I have a cook, and an upstairs maid, & four hired men.—and the delphinium is up, & the lilacs are budded, & we have a new song-sparrow this year named Eddie Johnson. Come at once!! And no fooling!—Enclosed find post-card, on which please write your intentions, whether honorable or not. Love to Mary. Love to Joan. Love to Deems. Please turn over:   From Edna & Ugin

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[The following is in Eugen’s hand:] There is a train which leaves Central Station daily (except Sunday) at 3.20 p.m. & arrives at State Line, Mass at 7.48 p.m.—It is a through train, with parlor car and buffet car.— We will meet you at State Line any day you say so, or if you like we will come & fetch you in New York by motor.—Now come, and get well.—E.B.

To Deems Taylor [Steepletop]1 May 7, 1927 Dear Deems: Please forgive a girl that’s had a hard spring, what with tonsilitis & all.—It’s such a beautiful book!—I cannot tell you how I shall always treasure it.—It means so much, somehow, I feel.—And the signatures gave me the strangest kick—& still do, every time I open the book to show it to somebody. I never thought autographs very interesting, but there’s something about that bunch of names all together there that brings tears to your eyes. I couldn’t for the life of me explain how it makes me feel.— The book has the most handsome back—the ridgy part that shows when it’s in the bookcase—(except that mine isn’t in a bookcase, but in a drawer of my desk done up in cotton-wool & marked High Explosive— Keep Off.)—And the picture of you is extremely good, Deems, I think. I loved the “To whom so much of it belongs”—of your inscription.— I gasped when I saw it—it is such an imposing big serious book—I suppose I had expected “To my esteemed collaboratress”—or some such thing.

Dear Deems, please, please forgive me for not writing before, & do not hate me, I implore you. I love the book.

I wonder what is happening about the Henchman on tour.—But if you are resting, as I hope, & getting well, but still very tired, don’t bother

222  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay to write me.—Perhaps Mary would send me a postcard sometime about it.—My love to you both & to Joan—lots of love, you understand.—— Are you ever coming to Steepletop? Edna

1. Millay’s stationery had “Steepletop” printed on it.

To Massachusetts Governor Alvan T. Fuller August 22, 1927. 1 Your Excellency: During my interview with you this afternoon I called to your attention a distressing instance of the miscarriage of justice in a neighboring state. I suggested that, for all your careful weighing of the evidence, for all your courage in the face of threats and violent words, for all your honest conviction that these men are guilty, you, no less than the governor of Maine in my story, who was so tragically mistaken, are but human flesh and spirit, and that it is human to err. Tonight, with the world in doubt, with this Commonwealth drawing into its lungs with every breath the difficult air of doubt, with the eyes of Europe turned westward upon Massachusetts and upon the whole United States in distress and harrowing doubt—are you still so sure? Does no faintest shadow of question gnaw at your mind? For, indeed, your spirit, however strong, is but the frail spirit of a man. Have you no need, in this hour, of a spirit greater than your own? Think back. Think back a long time. Which way would He have turned, this Jesus of your faith?—Oh, not the way in which your feet are set! You promised me, and I believed you truly, that you would think of what I said. I exact of you this promise now. Be for a moment alone with yourself. Look inward upon yourself. Let fall from your harassed mind all, all save this: which way would He have turned, this Jesus of your faith? I cry to you with a million voices: answer our doubt. Exert the clemency which your high office affords.

Millay picketing before the Massachusetts State House, August 22, 1927. (Aldino Felicani Sacco-Vanzetti Collection, 1915–1977, Boston Public Library)

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Edna St. Vincent Millay with Catharine Huntington and Margaret Hatfield (Mrs. Stuart Chase) outside of the Court House in Boston, August 23, 1927. (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University)

There is need in Massachusetts of a great man tonight. It is not yet too late for you to be that man. Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Alvan Tufts Fuller (1878–1958) was the governor of Massachusetts from 1925 to 1929. Millay had met with him to plead for clemency for Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian immigrants and political anarchists who had been convicted of murder and sentenced to death (Milford, Savage Beauty, 297). The two were executed the following day. Millay wrote the poem “Justice Denied in Massachusetts” about the case (Selected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay: An Annotated Edition, edited by Timothy F. Jackson, with an introduction by Holly Peppe [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016], 114–115.)

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To Eugene Saxton Steepletop Sept. 5, 1927 1 Dear Mr. Saxton: I should like to write a preface for the book, but before doing that I should have to find out a great many things about it: how much of it you intend to print; if you are bringing it out in a limited edition; if Mr. Bard’s preface, with its unnecessary & damning “I wrote this in five weeks,” is to remain in; & quite a number of other things.2 Will you please write me all that you can of your plans in regard to this book? If you really are in a great hurry to print, you will have to print without a preface by me. I was not able to read the book at once, the Sacco-Vanzetti case having taken up much of my time since I saw you—& I have just finished having it read aloud to me, a lengthy process. I am not sure yet just what I think of the book, beyond the obvious conclusion that it is remarkably well done & contains chapters of great beauty. In any case, I can write nothing in a hurry.—Please let me know all that you can of your plans concerning it. Sincerely, Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Eugene Saxton (1884–1943) was Millay’s longtime editor at Harper & Brothers, and later vice president of the company. 2. The book in question is Josef Bard’s Shipwreck in Europe. A two-page letter typed by Eugen to “Mr. Wells” dated July 22, 1927, begins with attention to this book: “Miss Millay asked me to write regarding the book for Joseph Bard. I believe it is called “Shipwreck in Europe.” At one time you suggested that she write an introduction to this book and as Mr. Joseph Bard is a personal friend of Miss Millay’s, she is anxious to do so, if she likes the book, but so far, she has not received a copy. If you will send her a copy, you will hear from her shortly.” Eugene Saxton replied to Eugen about the book on September 2, 1927, after having dropped off the manuscript, and also to Millay on September 9, 1927, saying in part, “If it were possible for you, therefore, to put your introduction into our hands by the end of November [1927], we should still be able to include it in the volume.”

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To the Editor of the “New York World” [October 4, 1927] [from miss millay] To the Editor of the World: Sometime ago Mr. Edmund Pearson in a letter to your paper pointed out that in an interview granted me by the Governor of Massachusetts on the afternoon before the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, I told, as being true, a story which had little foundation in reality. It happened that Mr. Pearson had recently been engaged in writing a book about the very episode which I had in mind and had gone to some trouble to look up the facts. My story was inaccurate in almost every detail. When I was a child I had heard from several people accounts of the murders on the Isles of Shoals and of the hanging of Louis Wagner in the State Prison at Thomaston. These people all believed Wagner to have been innocent. Fishermen and longshoremen had testified, it seemed, that no man could row out to the Isle of Shoals and back, a distance of twenty miles, in the time for which Wagner was unable to present an alibi. After the execution it seemed somebody had confessed, and in horror at having committed so tragic an error the State of Maine abolished capital punishment. There are many people in Maine today who still believe that Wagner was innocent. “I was not in Portsmouth an hour,” writes Mr. Pearson in his book on the subject, “nor on the Isles of Shoals half an hour before I heard repeated the doubts of his guilt.” When I spoke with Gov. Fuller I had not heard the tale in twenty years. The story, inaccurate in itself apparently, I remembered inaccurately. I recalled that Wagner and another man had been executed at the same time. I construed it as having been for the same murder. The story is that a woman confessed. I remembered it as having been a man. What I clearly recalled was that in Maine somebody had been hanged for a murder, had subsequently been found to be innocent, and that on account of this capital punishment had been abolished in that State. “This,” I said to Gov. Fuller, “is the story I heard when I was a child.” I firmly believed it to be the truth. I was mistaken. In his letter to The World Mr. Pearson, who, as I have said, had recently gone to some trouble to look up the facts, makes the following

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statement: “The last execution of the death sentence in Maine was on June 25, 1875,” that is to say, the execution of Gordon and Wagner. Mr. Pearson is mistaken. Mr. E. P. Mitchell, who had followed the Wagner case faithfully and had been present at the execution, says in his “Memoirs of an Editor,” “That was the last capital execution in Maine.” Mr. Mitchell is mistaken. Mr. Fred K. Owen in the Portland (Me.) Sunday Telegram of September 25 discusses my mistake. He also points out to Mr. Pearson his mistake, and to Mr. Mitchell his: The last execution of the death sentence in Maine was the hanging of Daniel Wilkinson, Nov. 20, 1885. Mr. Owen goes on to say: “Mr. Mitchell (in his ‘memoirs’) states that he talked with Wagner the night before the execution and had no doubt of his guilt.” I quote now from Mr. Mitchell’s “Memoirs”: “When I left the cell that night after seeing how the condemned bore himself and hearing his simple, forcible discussion of the case, there was doubt and not certainty in my mind.” Mr. Owen is mistaken. Mr. Owen further says: “During those twelve years (that is, between the execution of Gordon & Wagner in 1875 and the abolition of the death penalty in 1887) there had been but one execution of a murderer, and that was in 1885, when Daniel Wilkinson of Bath was hanged.” But in a letter to the Rockland Courier-Gazette, dated September 26, Mr. Oscar Blunt of Thomaston writes: “I have a correct record of the hangings,” and goes on to give a list of them, concluding with “Gordon & Wagner, June 24, 1875.” Again, somebody is mistaken. Sir, on the afternoon before the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti I sought an interview with Gov. Fuller because I believed that the Governor was about to make a serious mistake. I understood that he had gone carefully into the evidence and that he believed the two men to be guilty. But I questioned him: In a case where the lives of two men depended upon his decision, and where so many thoughtful citizens, although not in sympathy with the political opinions of these men, nevertheless were convinced that they had been unfairly tried, could he be so sure of his own judgment as to go forward with these executions in the face of the knowledge that human beings often err? As an illustration of the fallibility of the human mind I told him the story as I remembered it, of an instance of the grave miscarriage of justice in a neighboring State. If in the

228  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay very illustration which I used I was myself in error the force of my assertion is not lessened—that human beings with the best intentions in the world often make mistakes. Gov. Fuller, secure in his own mind against the pleadings of myself and of many other persons more eloquent and more qualified to speak, refused to intervene for Sacco and Vanzetti. That Gov. Fuller himself has made a mistake is very far from impossible. Edna St. Vincent Millay Austerlitz, N. Y., Oct. 4, 1927

To Edward Johnson

[Steepletop] Oct. 6, 1927 Dear Mr. Johnson:1 I read your article in the Musical Observer—an exceedingly good article—& it made me so happy.—That you, who knows the Henchman so well, & sings it so beautifully, should feel as you do about the work, is very precious to me. I knew, when I was writing it, that you were very likely going to sing the part, & often I would say to myself: I wonder if he will like this word to sing?—Is this too harsh in sound, perhaps?—Are there too many short vowels here?—I cared so much that it should be truly singable. —You will understand how happy I am that you feel as you do. Sincerely yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Tenor Edward Johnson played Aethelwold in the premiere of The King’s Henchman on February 17, 1927.

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To Harriet Monroe [Steepletop] [November 19, 1927] Dear Harriet Monroe: I shall not know until returns are in from St. Paul and some other places, just how many readings I shall be giving around the 24th November. I may have to leave Chicago sooner than I think. It is possible that I shall have no time there to do what I should so much like to do and meet the Chicago poets at the party you described. The best I can do about it will be to ring you up when I come to Chicago. It would be too late then to get together much of a party, I’m afraid. But we might be able to do a little informal something. In any case please be there your self; I should hate to go through Chicago without seeing you. I want my husband to meet you, too. I have told him what a lovely person you are. Sincerely yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay 19th November, 1927.

To Sister Antonia and Sister Ste. Hélène [Steepletop] [January 6, 1928] Dear Sister Antonia and Sister Sainte Hélène:1 I finished my readings about three weeks ago, & since then I have been writing furiously—not letters, as you may have remarked!— but poems. It has been impossible for anything to tear me away from my work. I have thought of you many times, & spoken severely to myself for not writing to my dear friends in St. Paul, but myself was busy writing poems, & did not hear.

I have not forgotten Helen Maley. When we go to New York in a few weeks I shall speak to some people about her. I thought that through Edward Johnson—my Aethelwold—I might get in touch with Mme

230  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Sembrich.2 I shall try. In any case, I shall not forget her, & shall do my best to stir up some interest in her. Much love to you both.—And please give my love, too, to Sister Euphermia and Sister Jeanne-Marie, & remember me to Mother Bridget, & to all the pretty little girls. Sincerely, Edna St. Vincent Millay Jan. 6, 1928 1. Sister Antonia McHugh and Sister Ste. Hélène Guthrie were the president and the dean of the College of St. Catherine, in St. Paul, Minnesota. Millay first gave a reading at the college on January 28, 1924, at the invitation of Sister Hélène. She had recently read there in November 1927. 2. Marcella Sembrich, soprano of the Metropolitan Opera.

To Sister Antonia [Steepletop] [January 19, 1928] Dear Sister Antonia: If Helen Maley is still interested in becoming a singer—and if no complications have arisen, such as elopements, etc.—here is something that might be of interest to you. I would make an appointment for her, but I do not know, of course, when she would be able to come.1 So it is better if you will make the appointment with Mr. Petri.2 I will gladly pay Miss Maley’s railway expenses to New York, & if she is admitted to the school, I will give you something towards her living expenses—unfortunately I could not do what I should love to do—just set her up in business all by myself on a magnificent scale!—Let me know, dear Sister, what you think of this.—With love to all my friends at the college. Affectionately, Edna Millay Jan. 19 1928

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 231 1. Helen Maley is listed in the April 1927 issue of The Alumnae News (for the College of St. Catherine) as a sophomore. 2. Edoardo Petri was at the Metropolitan Opera’s choral school.

To Elinor Wylie March 12, 1928 Dearest Elinor: I adore “Mr. Hodge & Mr. Hazard”!1 I think in many ways it is quite the loveliest thing you’ve done in prose—particularly books II & III. There is something in Mr. Hazard which isn’t in any of your other books, something which is not simplicity, but which, having been sent through your prism, is not broken up into colours, but rather is seen through the colours, a simple white light dressed in colours. Perhaps what I mean to say is this—and please don’t think I’m trying to be clever— that in Mr. Hazard more than in any other book you’ve written, your humanity shines through your humanities. Such perfect bits as “Plenty of Cream for the Strawberries”; the maid bringing him back from death every morning by setting down the tea; the shop-keeper who sold him the stale buns; his first meeting with Hodge, after which he goes home to finish his sonnet (that was almost more than I could stand); the description of the soap-bubbles; the picture of his spirit sitting on the window-sill with its hair over its eyes; and the superb close, where he decides to let Hodge pack his books for him,— enormous, that!—all these became to me as I read them something very specially precious.—Oh, well, it’s impossible to write it all to you. I must see you to talk about it. We must go down for the mail now. I want to send this off to you at once.—We were two days without the mail, so I did not get Mr. Hazard as soon as I should have done. Thank you for your beautiful book, my dear. Vincent. 1. Mr. Hodge and Mr. Hazard, a novel by Elinor Wylie, was published in 1928 by Alfred A. Knopf. In the posthumous Collected Prose of Elinor Wylie (1933), Isabel Paterson contributed a preface to the novel titled “The Last of the Romantics.”

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To Mitchell Kennerley [Steepletop] April 9, 1928 Dear Mitchell: Please send the letters to me.— It is hard to believe that he is dead.1—I hope with all my heart he did not suffer greatly. Perhaps someday you will tell me how it was. Edna 1. Kennerley had written to Millay on March 27 to say that Arthur Hooley, her former love interest, had died. “The letters,” likely, are her love letters to Hooley.

To Felix Frankfurter [Steepletop] April 9, 1928 Dear Mr. Frankfurter: This is tardy thanks for your letter of December.—But it is very sincere thanks. I am proud that you, who did so much, should see fit to give praise to me, who did so little.—I wanted to meet you when I was in Boston; once you were in the next room, but I did not know it until afterwards. Sincerely yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay

To Witter Bynner greatbarrington mass jul 7 1928

witter bynner santafe nmex slightly under influence of poetry we all four agree that tuckerman is grand and vincent says she will give you thirty years to edit him after that she will feel free to do it herself 1 eugene gladys a millay

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 233 1. Bynner edited and wrote an introduction for The Sonnets of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (New York: Knopf, 1931).

To Elinor Wylie [Steepletop] Sept. 19, 1928 My darling Elinor: I have just read in the Saturday Review of your dreadful accident.—There was a silly story in the papers namely in the summer— I didn’t see it, but someone mentioned it—that you had tried to kill yourself, or some such rot; naturally I paid no more attention to that than I pay to the annual drivel of myself & Gene.—Now it seems that you really did fall & were frightfully hurt.—I can’t tell you how I feel, to realize that you have been ill & in pain for months, & I haven’t written you a word.—I should have answered your letter long ago, except that you asked for those two poems about you, & I wanted to finish them before I wrote again. I worked over them, particularly the one beginning, “Seeing how I love you utterly,” for ages, but have not yet been able to finish them to my satisfaction. Which means that they won’t be included in The Buck in the Snow.—But here are the lines about you in the other poem: Yet look to her that enters now,— A silver maiden leading a silver faun; Her eyes are fixed on you with bright intent Behold her, how she shines!— Her brow is lit with all the jewels of the mines, Her legs are lashed with the chilly grasses of the dawn.

I have spent the last few evenings reading aloud from Trivial Breath, to Gene & Arthur & Gladys.—I am not sure if Address to my Soul is not my favourite of all the poems in this book. I remember when you first read it to me in 9th Street; I loved it then.; but I am more struck by its beauty every time I read it. The perfection of its form, compared with

234  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay the deep gravity & simplicity of its content, gives me a particular thrill of expectation.

My dear, I am so grieved to think of what happened to you this summer.—I can see you coming down the stairs—your beautiful nearsighted eyes—for whose sake long ago I made Myopia a goddess,—do you remember?—It sickens me to think of your falling & being hurt. [written up side] If you don’t feel like writing me, are too busy, or too ill, can’t you have somebody let me know how you are doing?—V. With much love to you as always, Vincent.

To George Dillon [Four Hundred and Twenty Park Avenue, New York City] Saturday December 15 [1928] 1 My darling, You must never doubt me again. Truly, that is the one thing I could not bear. For indeed that is the only ugly thing that ever could be between us. I remember that just for an instant once I questioned something you said: I said, “Is that really true?”—and you said in such a strange way. “You don’t believe me.”—And your face was just as if somebody had blown out the candle there. You were right to feel like that. For we have two precious things that we share: that we love each other; and that we have told the truth about it.—How easily could I say with John Donne: “I am two fools, I know: For loving, and for saying so.” I am two fools, my dear. And I am so very happy & proud that I neither fought against this love when once I had caught a glimpse of its grave face, nor ever for a moment thought to keep it from you.—I tell you now,—and you must never doubt it again—that I shall love you always, and that I shall never let you go out of my life.—What will come of all this none of us can tell, I think. And by that I mean,—none of us three.

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The situation is a strange one truly: I am devoted to my husband,* I love him more deeply than I could ever express, my feeling for him is in no way changed or diminished since I met you; but whenever I think of you, and I think of you all day and half the night, an enchanted sickness comes over me, as if I had drunk a witch’s philtre, and if I should never see you again, I believe that I should waste or dwindle in true fantastic style until I snapped in two. [Written up the side of the letter, cued to the asterisk] * This sounds so false—like something said on the stage—ugly, too. But I didn’t mean it so.

Let me add to the strangeness of it all, this: that you like and admire Eugen, and that he likes you extremely, is fond of you. What will come of all this I can’t see. But I feel sure I shall not lose you. Once I wrote, “After the feet of Beauty fly my own.” This is the fact: I have never once turned my back on the beautiful thing. And surely the goddess is not offended.—Surely I shall see you again, and kiss you again.—(Oh, my darling, I must be careful how I write such words!—It sets me to remembering you too keenly. What sweet agony it is to remember kissing you, to imagine the sound of your voice.) I am writing this just having received your letter and the poem. That you should now be writing your lovely lines to me is almost too great happiness. 1. George Dillon (1906–1968) was an American poet and editor. He met Millay after she gave a reading at the University of Chicago on November 27, 1928, and their affair was the background for her sonnet sequence Fatal Interview (1931). In 1937, Dillon became the editor of Poetry.

To George Dillon [Four Hundred and Twenty Park Avenue, New York City] December 17 1928 So you will kill the dragon for me, will you, my St. George?1—Oh, I am sure you will!—For have you not this moment slain with that blade

236  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay whose name is Mightier-Than-The-Sword that most noble & imposing monster, two-headed scaly doubt, that has been steaming at me for so many hours now with his great mephitic breath?—— Oh, lord, what fun it is to be happy again, & to be writing romantic ardent nonsense to the only infant dragon-killer since Hercules wore didies!—And oh how proud I shall be in a month or so, stepping the streets of Paris, the only woman in the whole fashionable town with shoes & hat & hand-bag of genuine dragon-skin!

I have just received your second letter, my dear, and am as you see, dithering with relief and happiness.—Of course by this time, too, you have received mine, such a wicked letter, saying perhaps I might better never have known you. Forgive me, darling, this heresy. [Separate sheet] Since I wrote you the letter which will come in the same mail with this, I heard of the death of Elinor Wylie. I am so destroyed by it.—My letter to you was such a gay & happy letter, I couldn’t bear to send it without an added word.—Write me, my dear,—will you? 1. Patron saint of England, associated with the Red Crosse Knight, who kills a dragon in The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599).

To George Dillon

[December 24, 1928]

Sunday Darling You—I have just a moment to write you—it seems that I have so little time for writing you—for I can’t write you unless I am alone. But as for thinking of you, that I can do all day long, & nobody knows. Eugen, of course, does know sometimes, that I am thinking of you. He dreamed of us three night before last, the most beautiful dream; he said I might tell you, & I will, when I have more time. He has dreamed of you several times—we are at a theatre, & meet you in the lobby, something like that. I am so envious of him, for you never come to me in my

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dreams at all. If only I could see you in my dreams, that would be a comfort to me. I do so long to see you. I know how you felt, that if you could just leap aboard a train & come to me, everything would be all right. It would, too, somehow, I think. We are to sail on the 19th of January, if everything goes through. But we are being held up by several things, & I am hoping very much that it will be later. How fantastic to be taking all this trouble to get to Tripoli,— when where I really want to be is Chicago!—I feel that I must see you before I go.—I remember how I said to you that night you drove me to the theatre, “I am sailing for Europe in January”—how suddenly you turned & asked, “For how long?”—I knew then that I should never be able to forget you.

I shall try to see you before I go. What I mean is, I cannot bear it, & I will not have it, to go without looking at your face once more.—Oh, lord, what would I not give to have you here at this moment—it does not get easier, it is harder every day. I am glad that I love you truly, glad that I am in for it, glad that I have no choice, glad that I am up to my mouth in love with you, and that the sand is dragging at my feet. Edna.

To William Rose Benét [Steepletop] December 28, 1928 Dearest Bill:1 You were so sweet to write me. You are so sweet anyway. Eugen & I both think so. Yesterday we were in the cellar, sampling the new wine which Pierre our cook has made, and there on a shelf we saw the tiny bag labelled Seven Shires which we had been keeping for Elinor. It was that wine you had that she liked so much, you remember. We were keeping it for her; nobody was allowed to touch it. When you come here we will give the little bag to you, and we will all drink to our beautiful, brilliant, adorable one. She is not out of our minds or off our tongues for very long. We

238  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay talk of her for hours at a time, just as we used to do. The other day we were with Arthur & Gladys, & we talked of her, and Arthur showed us a marvellous letter she wrote him, in answer to a letter from his about The Orphan Angel, or Mortal Image as she preferred so much to call it.2 Such a thrilling letter it is. I have still, of course, her five letters to me, & I am so happy that I have. Bill, dear, don’t torture yourself with thinking if only you had been better to her. It was you just as you were that she loved, & loved so truly. She was so wise, and though she was often hurt by thoughtless or tactless words not meant to hurt her, I think that a few moments later she understood & forgave, as she did once with me when I had wounded her deeply without of course wishing to wound her at all. People always torture themselves in this way; I could do it too, remembering that I hurt her, but instead I remember the happy times we had together, & how delightful she was, & how funny, so gay & splendid about tragic things, so comically serious about silly ones. Oh, she was lovely! There was nobody like her at all. I am so grateful for all she gave me. You must forget, dear friend, the little things that made her cry, or if you would rather remember everything about her, as I would, too, then be sure to remember oftenest the great things that made her laugh. ——With so much love from Eugen & from myself. — Vincent 1. William Rose Benét (1886–1950) was an American poet and the editor of magazines including Century and the Saturday Review of Literature. He was married to Elinor Wylie from 1923 until her death in 1928. 2. Wylie’s third novel, The Orphan Angel (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926), was titled Mortal Image when it was published in England (London: Heinemann, 1927).

To Eugene Saxton [Steepletop] December 28, 1928 Dear Mr. Saxton: Nothing that Harpers could have done for me could have persuaded me more than the gift of Thomas Hardy’s books. I cannot tell you how happy I am with them now. I cannot thank you enough.

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A very happy New Year to you and Mrs. Saxton. And please give the good wishes of Mr. Boissevain and myself to Mr. Wells & Mr. Brigg and Mr. Parmentier, and to the others of your big family. Sincerely, yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay

To Margaret Cuthbert [Steepletop] Dec. 28, 1928 Dear Margaret:1 It was lovely of you to write me about that night in Brooklyn.— I will treasure your little note.

The most sad & terrible wind is howling in this house, free of life & death—but beautiful, oh, so beautiful, like life itself. ——Edna 1. Margaret Cuthbert was the director of women’s and children’s programs for the National Broadcasting Company.

To Robinson Jeffers [Steepletop] December 28, 1928 1 Dear Mr. Jeffers: I want to say to you what I so often say to other people: how greatly I admire you, how there is nobody to be compared with you, what deep joy your beautiful books have given me. Sincerely yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay I do not expect you to answer this, and I shall be distressed if you trouble to do so.

240  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) was an American poet championed by Millay. She and Eugen later visited him and his wife Una at their home, Tor House, in Carmel, California, in January 1930.

To Edmund Wilson [Steepletop] [February 6, 1929] Dear Bunny: No, I’m not offended. I just have so many things I want to say about your book that I couldn’t seem to get time to write them. I’ll do so soon.—In the meantime, if you value my opinion at all, please be persuaded not to publish your book this spring. It is really not ready to be published, & I swear that you will do yourself a great injury if you publish it just as it is—it is very uneven—I like much of it tremendously—but it is not a whole—it needs a whole lot of working on still. Please don’t have it published this spring—no matter what your publisher says—your reputation is the principal thing,—& it really isn’t good enough yet, Bunny, I swear it isn’t.—You can make a grand book of it, but it’s not finished. You’ll probably be mad as hell with me—but I can’t help it.—I want to talk it over with you. I’ll write about it later—unless in the meantime you write asking me to mind my own business. Affectionately yours, Edna

To Deems Taylor [February 8, 1929] Dear Deems: I didn’t have a thing for you when you wrote, and I haven’t a thing now, not a poem to throw to a dog. I wish I had. Because, although I am not swept off my feet by your cheque (which, by the way, I will return as soon as I can find it) your sex appeal is quite a different matter, and I had never thought that it could find me unresponsive. I am not, as a matter of fact, unresponsive; I am just impotent. I have been writing a lot, but mostly sonnets belonging to one

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sequence, which I wouldn’t want to split up. If I have something for you later, I’ll send it along; I’m darned sorry I have nothing for this number. (What number? You snarl? many numbers having been gathered to their fathers since you wrote.) I told Arthur Ficke about it. You may hear from him. I am awfully excited that you have at last found the right libretto. I suppose you are off by now, hard at work on it. I wish you a success that will lift the rafters right off the old Met, and leave the diamond horseshoe cheering and sobbing for hours, oblivious of the ensueing draught and the blowing splinters, and the unfamiliar countenance of the sky. I am sending you those songs by Harrison Dowd that I spoke to you about. (Oh, hell!) Yes, I know. It’s the first dirty trick I ever played on you. But it’s not because I like Harry Dowd,—for as far as that goes, I like you, too. I am sending the songs because I like the songs; I think them lovely; and I can’t imagine that you won’t like them, too, and agree with me that they should be published. It seems to me that somebody like Tibbett would be glad to get hold of them. Harrison Dowd has permission from Housman to use the poems. Nevertheless I imagine he has misspelled Housman on the songs, as he did on the first copies he sent me some time ago, which my maid Susanne put in a safe place. Harry’s address is: care of the Jitney Players, Madison, Conn.1 (Will you please change the spelling if necessary?) And will you please tell your wife that her note was one of the sweetest things I ever read? And give her my love? And the love of my consort? And please give my respectful greetings to Joan.* I say respectful advisedly. For it occurs to me that by this time, if you should say to her, “Edna sends you greetings,” she will reply, “And from me, dear father, kindest greetings to our friend.” Which makes me feel, besides a little creepy up my spine, very respectful. Much love, Edna * aetat 2 yrs & 1 mo. Feb. 8, 1929

1. The Jitney Players was a theatrical stock touring company founded in 1923.

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To Edmund Wilson [Steepletop] Saturday [Feb. 10, 1929] Dear Bunny: We’re motoring into New York Tuesday, & shall be there several days. Can’t I see you? Can’t we do something together,—have tea, or take in a cock-fight or something? I’m dying to see you. I’ll bring your manuscript with me. When I was reading it I took a lot of notes—mostly little things, places which I think you could easily polish up—not so much in the character of Rita as in other characters,—just general remarks, really.—It was horrid of me to keep the manuscript so long. I might have known you’d think I was offended. Yet it hadn’t occurred to me that you would think so, since I wasn’t a bit.—I’m so keen to talk with you about it. I imagine that from my note you’ll think I hate the guts of it. For of course I neglected to tell you that I think it contains much of the loveliest stuff I ever read.—But anyhow, I’ll go into that when I see you.—I’ll call up the New Republic when I get in town, & we’ll decide where to meet. I’ll bring you in a bottle of the loveliest red wine you ever tasted, & not until you’re a little tight on it will I confess that it was made right here on the premises by my French chef Pierre.—Could you have dinner with me Tuesday?—If not, you think up something bright. We shall be at the Vanderbilt, but probably shan’t get in until about five o’clock Tuesday. You might call up & leave a message for me.—I’ve got some new sonnets to show you, but first I want to talk about your book—so maybe I’ll just send them to you later. It’ll give you a swell chance to get back at me for whamming your book the way I did in my last letter.—In any case I’ll call you up as soon as I get in. I never thanked you for the flower-seeds you brought me from California. I shall plant them with ceremony in April, & doubtless by August I shall have a forest of redwoods on my hands. With love, Edna

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To Edmund Wilson [The Vanderbilt Hotel Thirty-Fourth Street East at Park Avenue New York] March 2, 1929 Dear Bunny: I would have sent you the notes at once, but I’ve been working terribly hard trying to write something for the jacket of Elinor’s Angels & Earthly Creatures.1 Finally I had to give it up, everything I wrote was so rotten.—We are going right back to Steepletop & I will send you the notes right off.2 This is a horrid scrawl to assure you that I haven’t forgotten about it. —I hope fervently that you are feeling better & are getting rested. Love, Edna 1. Angels and Earthly Creatures was Elinor Wylie’s last book of poems (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1929). Similar to Millay’s Fatal Interview (1931), the book includes an epigraph from John Donne: “But, because Angels could not propagate, nor make more Angels, he enlarged his love, in making man, that so he might enjoy all natures at once, and have the nature of Angels, and the nature of earthly Creatures, in one Person.” 2. Millay sent a letter dated March 5, 1929, along with all her notes for improvement to Wilson’s novel I Thought of Daisy (1929)—with specific comments on more than twenty-five pages. She wrote: “The most serious fault in the book, I believe, is with Rita’s conversation, particularly the long speeches where she dictates upon the economic status of women, or something. . . . You describe her very vividly—the moment she opens her mouth she doesn’t exist, she dies on your hands. She talks like a page out of Queen Victoria’s girlish diary—so old-fashioned & banal.”

To Sister Antonia and Sister Ste. Hélène steepletop Austerlitz, N. Y. Sept. 24, 1929 Dear Sister Antonia and Sister Ste. Hélène: I am writing this on the typewriter so that you will be able to read it. My handwriting is getting worse all the time; at the moment it is practically undecipherable.

244  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay You think me the most dreadful creature in the world, I know, for never having written you in answer to your letter of last winter. As a matter of fact, the really dreadful part of it is that I haven’t written you in the last two months, when I have had the leisure to do it. Your letter came at the most impossible time for me. I was writing, furiously, concentratedly, day and night, working harder than I have worked for years. I kept this up for several months, not interested in anything but my work, and not daring to let myself become even for a moment truly interested in anything else, for fear my mood might be broken in upon and I might never get it back. At times like this I don’t even read my mail; Eugen attends to everything for me; however he did give me your letter. And here was the trouble: if it had been just a question of sending Helen Maley the money to come to New York and live there for a while, I should have done this at once with the greatest happiness. But when I realized that she understood I was to make all the arrangements for her, which would have meant my going to New York, finding out what people were the right ones for her to see, trying to get in touch with them, trying to make appointments for her to have her voice tried—and I am very likely even more ignorant than Helen herself as to how one goes about all this!—why, I simply put the letter aside, and didn’t allow myself to worry about it. You will think, of course, that I should at least have written you, saying that—oh, saying all the things that I am saying now—but, dear Sisters, I assure you that that was just what I couldn’t do; it wasn’t a question of the few minutes it would take to write the letter, it was a question of how many months it might take to get back into my interrupted mood, if indeed I ever succeeded in getting back into it at all. I do hope you will understand this somewhat. I feel very bad about it, and have for a long time. I have had this letter on my mind for ages. I could, of course, have written you from Europe, where Eugen and I spent April and May, motoring. And the fact that we were whirling about so fast that I didn’t even find time to write to my mother more than half a post-card, doesn’t let me out at all as far as this particular letter is concerned. As for all this summer,—well, there’s just no excuse for me at all. I hope you will forgive me enough so that if there still is any chance

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of my helping Helen Maley, you won’t keep me from doing it. I have always been pretty much in the dark as to how she feels about it herself; I never heard from her at all, you know, even after my first letter to you on the subject, when I was terribly interested in her. The fact that she didn’t take me up on my offer at once, in fact showed no interest in the matter at all, chilled me a little. It seemed to me then that a girl who would make so little effort, if indeed she made any, to come to New York at that time, had not much of the stuff of a serious artist in her. Voices grow old so quickly; a singer has so much less time to wait than most other artists. Yet she seemed quite content to let the time go by. All this bothered me about her quite a bit. But you know her very well, and it may be that she had very weighty reasons which I couldn’t know. One thing I am sure of, however. If she does come to New York, she should take a room somewhere, and start out by herself to find the people she must see, and make her own appointments with them. I will see Deems Taylor and find out from him as much as I can that would be of help to her. Beyond that she should be left to find out things for herself. This is the way that almost everybody has started, and if it is too difficult for her right at the start, then the many difficult things which are bound to come from time to time later on, would be insurmountable for her. But if you think she is really interested, and is willing to help herself, then I will do my utmost to help her. All this sounds very didactic and preachy, and comes badly enough on the end of my apology, but I feel sure you will understand me in this. My dear friends, I am going to send this letter off now, just as it is. Much that I wanted to say I haven’t said at all, and I haven’t at all conveyed to you how dreadfully, dreadfully bad I’ve felt about having gone back on you like that, after all your sweet kindness to me. But I’m going to send it just as it is, with my love. Edna St. Vincent Millay

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To George Dillon [Steepletop] [January 14, 1930] Thursday Yes, I really mean it—what’s the use? This seeing you for a day or two every year or two—it’s no good—it makes me too unhappy.—I love you and I want to be with you—it’s as simple as that. I want to be with you day & night, and no questions asked, do things with you, see things with you, without compromise, without strain.—I have no plans beyond just that—I can’t see very far ahead. But who can?

I feel pretty sure you’ll get the Guggenheim.—If not—what of it?— But I imagine you will.—As you say, it doesn’t matter where or how we are together—but oh, darling, let me meet you in Paris—it would be such fun!

It is so beautiful here today, warm & muddy & sunny, like spring. I hope it is beautiful today in Chicago, too, & that you are all well again, and walking along the shore, or if you’re not yet quite strong enough for that, sitting alone somewhere, looking at the lake. Sweetheart, please be careful, please don’t get sick again. Yes, I’m just as silly as anybody: “Button up your overcoat—keep away from bootleg hootch—take good care of yourself ”!—Of course you don’t “belong to me,” or to anybody but yourself—but you belong to me as much as it is proper that you should—enough to make me happy—so do be a good boy & don’t get sick again.



Write me three of the million things you’ve been thinking about.

I’ll write you the one thing I’ve been thinking about:—In the spring I shall be with you.

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To Mary Kennedy [Steepletop] June 10th, 1930 1 Dear Kids: This is to invite you to a grand house-party to be thrown at Steepletop July 21st to 24th or as long as everything—meaning hosts, guests and liquor—holds out. On the evening of July 22nd we are having the Jitney Players here to give a show for us: Gilbert’s “Haste to the Wedding,”2 I believe it will be, but we may decide on something else. In any case it will be something silly and amusing and very well presented and a hell of a lot of fun,—at least, if all the nice people we are inviting arrive on time and get filled up with punch on time. We expect to have about fourteen house-guests. Then Arthur Ficke will fill his house with people; and our friends the Branns and the La Branches whose new houses will just about be ready to be moved into by that time, and to smooth whose ruffled plumage we suddenly decided just like that to give this here party, will also fill their houses with people, so that there will very likely be about fifty or sixty souls, poets and musicians included, to see the show. Please tell me at once that you will come. Thanks for the cheque. It came in lovely. And say. We want to do our hall in slate like your drawing-room; you said you didn’t mind; and we thought it might be nice to have a hall-floor for the party. Will you have Joan write me information on the subject, what the slate is called, besides slate, and where you get it, and if there is any special way it must be laid, et cetera? We have no servants. But we have a new colt, born this morning. And our other mare, Molly, expects to be brought to bed at any moment. Hoping you are the same, I am, as ever, Yours, Edna. P.S. If you want to come up before July 21st, we don’t mind. p.p.s. deems, is it finished? (sh-sh-sh—, meaning hush, not what you think) 1. Mary Kennedy (1896–1987) acted in film and theater and wrote plays, novels, short stories, and poetry; she was married to Deems Taylor from 1921 to 1934. 2. A comic opera by W. S. Gilbert and George Grossmith, first performed in 1892. The

248  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay opera is listed as part of the Jitney Players’ repertoire for this season (“Jitney Players to Open on Monday,” New York Times, June 6, 1930, 26).

To James Weldon Johnson [December 1930] We have been wanting to see you and Mrs. Johnson,1 but always something seemed to prevent us.—Let us try to meet in 1931.—If you come here, I can promise a bottle of good wine. A merry Christmas to you both! Eugen Boissevain And a Happy New Year! Edna Millay 1. James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) was an African American poet, novelist, and critic. In addition to his famous poem “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” he edited The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922). He and his wife Grace Nail Johnson lived in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The couples did meet eventually: in an undated letter, Eugen wrote to James that he sent Good Housekeeping a photograph of Millay working in the Johnson’s garden at Five Acres, a photo taken by James. Johnson replied on May 17, 1938 (Yale, JWJ MSS 49, Box 14, Folder 323).

To Kathleen Millay Steepletop Austerlitz, N. Y. Feb. 18, 1931 Darling Sister: This is the poem about the mountain-laurels. Perhaps mother told you, but more likely not, I think—at least, her letters to me for the last eight months were always hasty and contained very little of such information as this, she was so very busy—that Ugin and I motored up to her cottage the end of last August and set out for her in a row in front of the cottage about halfway to the road four very small mountain-laurel bushes. They were as large as we could take in the back of the car without running the risk of their being seen and yanked out by some stateline policeman,—not that there was any danger of their carrying disease;

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the reason is, I believe, that the state wishes to hang on to them because they feed the deer in the winter. Also, they were about as large as we felt we could safely transport for their own sakes. But although they were small, they had blossomed this summer, the cunningest little things you ever saw,—(and will probably blossom again next summer, although that is a thought hard to bear.) Mother was mad about them. You know what mountain-laurel meant to her, memories of that happy day with her mother, when she was a tiny little thing, and they walked along the mountain-laurels together. All that is in the poem. In the letter which accompanied the poem, dated January 30th, she wrote: “I am sending the rough copy of a poem I did today. I never thought out one line of it till after I went to bed last night, and it is just as it came to me. It is just because you gave me the “Little Mountain-Laurel-trees” that I am sending it to you as it is.” She enclosed some other poems, too, and further on she wrote, “I sent the poems, because I am so happy that I am at work again, doing I think as good work as I ever did.” I received this letter Monday evening, February 2nd. When I read the last stanza of the mountain-laurel poem I suddenly burst into tears; it seemed I could hardly bear it. Ugin tried to comfort me, saying that I mustn’t take it like that, that it meant nothing, her writing in that way; and he was quite right, for she was feeling, as you see, very happy. But I could not keep from crying. Two nights later, on Wednesday, just as we were at dinner, a taxi drove up from Chatham with the following telegram: come mother very sick answer immediately to me, and signed uncle bert.1 We sent a wire right back by the taxi-driver, saying that we would leave for Boston by the next train from Chatham, also wiring Norma at the same time; but when we realized that the train would not leave Chatham till an hour and a half after midnight, we decided to go at once by motor instead, a risky decision to make, as the starter of the Cadillac didn’t work, and the hand-throttle was stuck so that we could give her no gas by hand—I was terrified that the engine would stall, in the woods somewhere, perhaps on the Jacob’s Ladder, where there wouldn’t be a soul to help us at that time of night—it was eleven o’clock before we got started, because we had to send two miles for the farmer to come and drag the car out of the garage with the horses, but finally we got off, and Ugin swore he wouldn’t stall the engine, and he didn’t.

250  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay (Darling, I am telling you all these foolish details, not because they are of the slightest importance, but because I can’t seem to assemble my thoughts very clearly yet, and when I think of that awful drive through the night and until eleven o’clock the next morning, I can’t seem to separate one thing from another at all.) As we drove up the coast of Maine the sun came up, a most beautiful morning. I felt sure that she would never see the sun again. We came into Camden from Rockport by the back road, around the Lily Pond. And as we came down Chestnut Street I began to watch out for the house, just above Uncle Bert’s I knew it was, although I didn’t know just which one. And then suddenly I saw the door, and there was crepe on it. Well. I suppose if they had known I was coming by motor, they mightn’t have done that, somebody might have had the imagination to know what it would do to me to be told in just that way. Uncle Bert was coming down to meet the train, you see, and tell me about it. Still, you never can tell; nobody might have thought; and things have to be done just so. Anyway, that’s how I learned she had died. I can’t go on with this, sister. I’m so exhausted, writing it. I’ll write again, as soon as I can. From the moment we got there, everything was done for her as if she were a queen, which of course she was. Thinking of the poem she had sent me, I thought of having her taken up to the cottage where the little mountain-laurels were of which she had written, but it wouldn’t have been right, there so near the road. I thought, too, of the cemetery in Newbury where her mother was buried; but there was nobody who could be spared to go to Newbury and see about it, and when Aunt Susie came, the next day, she told us that all the land near their mother’s grave was all filled in and it would have been impossible to get a place anywhere near. She is in the most beautiful place here, Kathleen. You will think so, when you see it. If only she could know! I will write you again, as I think of things to tell you. If any question comes to mind, write and ask me. She was not sick, you know, dear; she was quite well. Then suddenly she felt sick in her stomach, and before she could know it was anything more serious than a little indigestion, she just sank off to sleep, and never woke up again. I am glad Howard is with you. Love to you both. Vincent

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P.S. (Feb. 19) We couldn’t get through to the post yesterday; the car got stuck in a drift, and we had to get the horses to get it out, and by then it was too late. We may get stuck today, in which cases we shall leave the car and continue on foot. I thought of some more things I wanted to tell you. When we left Steepletop the night of February 4th to motor to Camden, Ugin took along two bottles of beer for mother, and a bottle of champagne to celebrate her getting well. I also put in my bag at the last moment—and came upon it here a few days ago when I got enough energy to unpack my things—a tube of Baume Analgesique, to rub her with in case she should ache anywhere. But she didn’t ache anywhere at all, darling, by the time I got there; she was so peaceful and at rest, there was no doubt of that. I don’t know why I write you these things; they hurt you as much to read as they do me to write; but I can’t seem to stop. One night in Camden—I think it must have been Saturday night after she had died Thursday—we thought we would have a wake for her, we thought she would like that. Norma and I wanted to watch up with her all night, but Charlie and Ugin wouldn’t let us, we were so worn out; so they told the nurse to come back at midnight. Norma and I went up at about five o’clock in the afternoon from the little inn called Green Gables where we all were staying—it used to be a lunch-room, Norma says, belonging, I think, to George Allen, near the old grammar-school—I tell you this so you can sort of place us, where we were. We went up to Chestnut Street at about five, and relieved Mrs. Hart—who was wonderful, Kay, and stayed there all the time every day, just to help us. At about eight Charlie and Ugin came in with sandwiches and things for supper. We set places for you and Howard, too, and pretended that you were there. And we had two glasses for you and Howard, and poured into the six glasses the champagne we had brought for mother, and drank to her, and you and Howard drank to her, too. We always pretended that you were with us. And everything we did we did for you, too. Every time we went to look at her—and it was hard to keep away, she looked so beautiful, so peaceful and asleep—we would look at her for you, too; and when we would stroke her lovely hair, we would do it for you, too, and say, “This is for Kathleen.” That night, Saturday night, when nobody was looking, we cut off three little locks of her hair; and I am keeping yours for you.

252  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Norma and Charlie went home to New City 2 Sunday. It is Thursday now. I think that I shall go to New York for a while, as you suggested. It is pretty desolate here. It snows all the time, and the sky and trees are all a dirty grey. We had the beautiful weather before, the most clear sparkling winter weather, but—this is funny, but it’s a fact—ever since mother left us, we’ve had nothing but storms and snow. We drove home in a blinding blizzard, and it’s been like that ever since. It seems strange to think of leaving her here,—but she never minded being alone. We must leave for the post-office now, if we want to get back before dark. It was sweet of you to say that your canaries were singing. We have chickadees here, that come and eat the suet we put out. I know she wouldn’t want us to be unhappy. As soon as I get everything attended to I’m going to New York and have a swell time. Love, Sefe camden maine january 30, 1931  (Morning)      my little mountain-laurel-trees My little Mountain-Laurel-trees So sturdy, in a row; I love the ones who set you out And wanted you to grow; Of course I love my other trees So stately and so tall— But I loved some Mountain-Laurel trees When I was very small. My little Mountain-Laurel-trees In unfamiliar land, I hope you will be happy here, That you will understand; My Birches help to dress the Spring— My Oaks inflame the Fall— But I loved some Mountain-Laurel-trees When they seemed most as tall.

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Millay’s directions to the printer for reproducing John Donne’s lines for the epigraph to Fatal Interview. (Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia)

My little Mountain-Laurel-trees You are my joy and pride. Right there beside the pansy-bed, You look so dignified! My friendly Ash-trees whispering to The tiny waterfall, I loved some Mountain-Laurel-trees When they seemed most as tall. You little Mountain-Laurel-trees Are beautiful, I think; You are so lovely when you bloom— So waxy and so pink. I love my trees that screen the nests Where hungry babys call;— But I loved some Mountain-Laurel-trees When they seemed most as tall.

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Autographed portrait for Aunt Susie, by an unidentified artist. (Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution)

My little Mountain-Laurel-trees I feel your quickening start. My little Mountain-Laurel-trees, Your roots are in my heart. And this is not so wonderful, Not wonderful at all, For I loved some Mountain-Laurel-trees When I was not as tall. My little Mountain-Laurel-trees If you should ever grow Where I was very sound asleep, I think that I should know. Then I needn’t dream of Cypresses Where cold their shadows fall,

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But of Mountain-Laurel-trees I loved When I was very small. 1. Herbert Alton Millay (1866–1946) and his wife Mary lived at 97 Chestnut Street in Camden. 2. In Clarkstown, New York.

To Llewelyn Powys Steepletop April 20, 1931 1 Dearest Lulu: I am sending you your manuscript. (Whether under separate cover or not remains to be decided.) I am sorry I couldn’t go on to the end with it in the way I started. It was such fun. But I couldn’t. I haven’t even finished reading it. I can’t seem to read anything serious. I haven’t read anything but detective stories for ever and ever so long. Poor Lulu, what a frantic time you’re having with your mangy publishers. We were so touched to see how beautiful, Alyse dear, you left the cottage. Nothing was ever so scrubbed and so neat,—even upstairs! It must have been a big job, all those floors. What a darling you were to leave it looking so nice for us. And such sweet little dishes in the pantry. Were they yours, or were they perhaps borrowed from Phyllis?2 If they are yours, may we keep them? We want to eat our breakfast from the yellow ones every morning, they are so gay. We have been back from New York only a few days, and nothing could be more different than our life there and our life here. We get up at six o’clock every morning here, sometimes earlier. Ugin works in the kitchen-garden all day. I spend half the day cleaning house, and the rest out doors. It will be some time before I get the house clean and in order, after three months of that French slut, but I adore to do it. I adore to send everything in the house to the cleaner, and then scrub the house and hang up the clean curtains and lay down the clean rugs. We have no servants, and we’re going to keep going without them just as long as we can stick it, it’s so marvelous to be free of them. Darlings, I knew that you were sorry. But there’s nothing to say. We

256  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay had a grand time. But it’s a changed world. The presence of that absence is everywhere. Edna. [Added in Eugen’s hand:] Just back from the garden. I am dirty, brown, naked & happy. Thank you for the beautiful presents! Edna is happy with the things for her museum—We miss you like the devil. Please come soon back and inhabit the cottage again. Love & again love to both of you sweet darlings. Ugin. 1. Llewelyn Powys (1884–1939) was an English author, known sometimes as “Lulu.” He married Alyse Gregory (1884–1967) in 1924. His autobiographical book The Verdict of Bridlegoose (1926) is dedicated to Millay, “a leprechaun among poets.” 2. Phyllis is Phyllis Playter (1894–1982), companion to Lulu’s brother, the author John Cowper Powys (1872–1963).

To Georgia O’Keeffe Steepletop Austerlitz, N.Y. June 15, 1931

Dear Miss O’Keeffe: You have forgotten long ago that I promised to send you my new book.—I am sending it at last, & The Buck in the Snow as well, for I think you said you hadn’t seen that.1 Please don’t trouble to acknowledge them.—I just wanted to give you something; you have given me so much. Sincerely, Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Fatal Interview (1931) and The Buck in the Snow and Other Poems (1928). Millay had met Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), the American artist, at Lake George in 1931 (Milford, Savage Beauty, 340).

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To Eugene Saxton steepletop July 6, 1931 Dear Mr. Saxton: First let me do what I should have done ages ago, and thank you for arranging about the advance royalties for me; the second cheque has come; I am a beast not to thank you before for the trouble you took. As from the little leather edition of Fatal Interview: I am mad about it, so go ahead on your terms. About the Nancy Boyd book, there is a misunderstanding. I shall never, I think, have it brought out under my own name,1 and Mr. Boissevain knows this. I don’t at all care, however, if all the booksellers know that I wrote it and say as much to anybody who is interested; it must be something like that that Mr. Boissevain said to you, and you misunderstood him. If you should get out a new edition of Distressing Dialogues—which under these circumstances very likely you won’t do—I think it would be a good thing to abridge the book a little; there are several of the articles which were well enough at the time they appeared in Vanity Fair, but which were too purely topical and of the moment to have much interest for anybody now.2 It would make a better book, I think. Do you intend to do any of the other books in the little leather edition?—It seems to me that this format is particularly good for a collection of sonnets* When are you and Mrs. Saxton coming to have a glass of wine with us? Sincerely, Edna St. Vincent Millay * I see now that you say you mean possibly to bring out all the poems in this form. It might be a good idea: I don’t know. For the sonnets it is perfect. In any case it is a lovely little book. 1. Frank Crowninshield, editor of Vanity Fair, suggested that Millay write her satirical sketches under her own name rather than her pseudonym, at least as early as 1920, with an eye toward book publication:

258  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay this book would compare favorably with anything you have ever done,—only, I want your name on the sketches, even if you have to elevate the moral, intellectual and literary tone of them to a height level with your lofty position as an artist. Please say that you will humor us in this respect. Would you think $100 a fair price for them? It is as much as we have ever paid for a play or a Dialogue. Your name really ought to be on them, in order to make us pay you this money willingly and gladly. If your friend Miss Boyd were to sign them, I would pay this money a little grudgingly. (November 5, 1920 letter, LC, Box 76, Folder 1) 2. Distressing Dialogues by Nancy Boyd, with a preface by Edna St. Vincent Millay (Harper & Brothers, 1924).

To Georgia O’Keeffe

August 13, 1931

Dear Miss O’Keeffe: You will see by the enclosed note that the books which I am sending should have reached you long ago.—It was just that I hadn’t your address, & I couldn’t remember the number of An American Place.— Mr. Lake1 of the Reinhardt Galleries has tracked you down for me at last.

Could anything persuade you to stop off here on your way down from Lake George?—We are only thirty-five miles from Albany, where we could meet you. And it is very quiet here—not a roof in sight but our own.—I cannot tell you how I should love it. But perhaps you would think it a bore.

When I heard that you were at Lake George I thought of the green pictures with the white knees in the foreground, & wondered what had happened to it.—I was so happy that day I last saw you—even though you were very cold to me, & hurt me, rather, & I had to go back to the One White Cloud for comfort, & the apple-blossoms, & the Shaft of Light, & the one with the pool or some small body of water.2 I had been

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looking at your pictures for an hour, & they always remove at least one layer of my skin, so that I was pretty vulnerable when I saw you, & wanted to run, but my husband made me speak to you.—Goodbye. I wish you would come here.—Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. An American Place was a gallery in New York City run by O’Keeffe’s husband, Alfred Stieglitz. From January 18 to February 27, 1931, she presented “Georgia O’Keeffe: Recent Paintings, New Mexico, New York, Etc, Etc.” (www.metmuseum.org). Frederic E. Lake (1904–1974) was an art dealer. 2. Millay is referring to a number of paintings by O’Keeffe.

To Georgia O’Keeffe [Steepletop] Sept. 16, 1931 Dear Georgia O’Keeffe, your letter made me happier than I can tell you, even in a letter, much happier than I could tell you face to face.—If you feel that you would rather not ever see me, except by these infrequent accidents, why, all right.——But if you ever feel differently about it— please write me—please come here. With love, Edna St. Vincent Millay

To Sister Ste. Hélène [Steepletop] Oct. 1, 1931 Dear Sister Ste. Hélène: I know how dreadful I am, never writing, being so rude & horrid to you, who have been so sweet to me. You were such a darling, wiring me about Fatal Interview,—I know I promised you a book once, but I can’t remember what it was.—Do you think Ste.Catherine’s will like this photograph? Much love to you, and to Sister Antonia, and to all my friends there. Edna St. Vincent Millay

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To Louise Bogan [December 23, 1931] Dear Louise:1 Santa Claus is simply insistent on you taking a few music lessons—he says if you just won’t, of course you just won’t, & in that case you are to take the enclosed & do what you darned well like with it,— but he does wish you would blow it on piano lessons.—Anyway, lots of love to you, my dear. Don’t forget you’re going to write me.—And would you mind telling me where you get that excellent tea? ——Edna 1. Louise Bogan (1897–1970) was an American poet and critic who served as poetry editor for the New Yorker from 1931 to 1969. The October 1923 issue of Vanity Fair contained a page dedicated to “Distinguished American Women Poets Who Have Made the Lyric Verse Written by Women in America More Interesting Than That of the Men: Elinor Wylie, Genevieve Taggard, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sara Teasdale, Amy Lowell, Louise Bogan, Aline Kilmer, and Lizette Woodworth Reese” (46).

To Eugene Saxton Steepletop, Austerlitz, N.Y. December 30, 1931 Dearest Saxton: I was very, interested to see the page of advertising in the English weekly. I have noticed with considerable fun that many of the English women writers like “Fatal Interview” and not so many of the men.1 I don’t think you quite see what I mean about the make-up of the little play “The Princess Marries the Page.” Woodblocks won’t do at all. The play is too slight to be printed so seriously. What I really want—and if it is too expensive just now to bring it out in this way, then I would really rather wait, I think, until everybody has more money—what I really want is a big, flat book perhaps 14 by 10 with many colored illustrations, pictures of the Princess, the Page, etc., or scenes from the play done by such an artist as Mr. Paget-Fredericks.2 As a matter of fact, I heard from Mr. Paget-Fredericks a few days ago. He is very anxious to get to work again on a book of mine. I think he would be just the person for this. I want the book to be a Christmas gift book and as gaudy as a

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Christmas tree. Have you seen Oscar Wilde’s “Birthday of the Infanta” illustrated by Pamela Bianco?3 This will give you an idea of the thing I want. Well, anyway we will talk about this when you get back. I hope you have a swell time in England. Please give my regards and those of Mr. Boissevain to Mr. Hamilton when you see him. Very sincerely yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay [Address typed for Eugene Saxton The P.S. and the poem are on two separate pieces of paper.] P. S . I am enclosing a copy of the poem The Fugitive, as I remember it. It was published in Ainslee’s, but was never published, I believe, in any of my books,—although as I write this it seems to me that I did see it once in some edition of Figs from Thistles; I’m not sure about this. As you may guess, I have about two sheets of paper to write two miles of letters with. the fugitive Thanks be to God the world is wide,   And I am going far from home, For I forgot in Camelot   The man I loved in Rome, And I forgot in Kensington   The man I loved in Kew; And there must be a place for me   To think no more of you.

E. St. V. M.

1. Saxton had sent her two pages of advertisements; one, from The Week-End Review (December 19), was dedicated solely to Fatal Interview. Blurbs were from the poets Edmund Blunden and Rachel Annand Taylor, the novelists Hugh Walpole, Sheila Kaye-Smith, (Margaret) Storm Jameson, G. B. (Gladys Bronwyn) Stern, Susan Ertz, and E. M. Delafield (Edmée Elizabeth Monica Dashwood), and the novelist and literary editor Naomi Royde-Smith. 2. When The Princess Marries the Page was published by Harper & Brothers in 1932, J. Paget-­Fredericks was credited on the title page for having provided “decorations” in the book. 3. The Birthday of the Infanta by Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), illustrated by the English artist Pamela Bianco (1906–1994), was published in New York by Macmillan in 1929.

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To Mary Kennedy 5, rue Benjamin Godard, [Paris] Monday morning [June 20, 1932] Dear Mary, Can you have dinner with me tonight, or failing that, cocktails?— My purpose in asking you is twofold: to pump you of information regarding your production of The Princess Marries the Page, and to give myself the fun of seeing you.—I’ve been to see you twice—did you know that?—My child, I live just around the corner from you, in the very next street—it was as much a surprise to myself as it will be to you! 1—Walk toward the Square Lamartine & when you get to the end of your street just make a hairpin turn to the right into my street. I shall be here any time after six. Please dress in taste but soberly; I have to work all night on that damned preface, & can’t step out. I intend to get drunk, though. Please come. Love, Edna.

1. Mary Kennedy at the time was at 31, rue Spontini.

To Louise Bogan [Steepletop] November 18, 1932 Dear Louise: I am so glad, so very glad that you are better.—Be sure I will say the nicest things about you to the Guggenheims. I do hope you will get it! Yes, my dear, I got the tea. Weren’t you a good girl to remember I liked it, & to send me some?

I’m so glad you’re feeling better, dear Louise. Edna

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To Mary Kennedy Steepletop Austerlitz, N.Y. April 5, 1933 Dear Mary: Enclosed please find (a) one one-hundred-franc note; (b) my personal cheque for twenty-five dollars to the Stage Relief Fund; and (c) a cheque for five dollars destined for the same cavernous maw. The first represents fifty francs which I borrowed from you at the Grand Prix last summer, and which by now, what with interest, taxes, customs, bribes, boarding, inflation, and England’s going off the gold standard, must amount to precisely one hundred francs. And if it doesn’t, why, that’s just too bad; because I haven’t got a fifty franc note and I have got a hundred franc note. So here you are, baby, and if you’re hungry, gnaw it, and pretend it’s a dinner at the Reine Pédauque.1 Like you, and like all the rest of the poor cusses engaged upon this enterprise of relieving the stage (and would God the stage would relieve itself, and be done with it) I am having the hellovatime disposing of those pretty little blue books. I never knew money so sticky as it is this year. Money this year is just a one-man dog. And so, just to show there’s no hard feelings and that I’m still on the job, I’ve dug up (b) twenty-five gold moidores out of my own sea-chest. The cheque for five dollars (c) represents one dollar each received from Margaret Cuthbert, Norma Millay and Rollo Peters,—innocent recipients, poor things, of three of the little blue books—plus two dollars which I got one evening out of a couple of drunken friends. I had placed another of the books, a sacred fourth, with another drunken friend; but when he woke up, he remembered that he was deep in the Stage Relief Fund on another angle, so he guv me back the book, and since I had no gun on my hip, having sent my only gun to the cleaners in my other suit, I took it. If you know anybody who’s mad at you for not having let him in on this job, and who’d do it much better than I do, just wire me. No, don’t write; wire. Love, Edna.

264  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Allusion to the French novel La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque (1893) by Anatole France (1844–1924). In 1922 Emilie Jackson translated the work as At the Sign of the Reine Pédauque (London: John Lane).

To Llewelyn Powys and Alyse Gregory [Steepletop] April 11, 1933 Dearest Lulu and Alyse: Don’t hate us. We didn’t give up hope of coming to England this year until just a little while ago. We thought we would try to get over if only for a few days, just to see you. But we couldn’t make it. We didn’t write because we were never sure.—You see, we couldn’t go to Africa after all. I got a job reading my poems over the radio—eight Sunday evenings—which kept me so late into the winter & made me so tired that when it was over we just rushed to Florida to get out of the cold & into the sunshine—I needed it badly.1 We wanted to come to you afterwards. But we decided that since it could only be for such a short time— not longer than a week—since we had to be home by April this year to attend to our neglected gardens—we decided that we really couldn’t afford the trip, and would better wait until next year when we can have a long time. —So there it is, darlings.—Do you hate us?—I’m sure you do. We love you, anyway. Even if we didn’t get to England this year. Forgive this dull & horrible scrawl. I never was less in the mood for writing a letter. But I had to let you hear from us. (“And about time!” you say.) —Well, there it is.—Can we ever be friends again? Edna. 1. Millay’s scheduled radio readings were extended based on fan mail. “So encouraging has been the response to Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetic broadcast that arrangements have been made for two extra programs. Her broadcasts were to have ended last week, but she has agreed to speak over the air twice more before leaving on a trip to Africa. . . . The 700 letters she has received are considered by the broadcasters to indicate a widespread interest in poetry” (“News and Gossip of the Studios,” New York Times, January 22, 1933, x10).

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To Robert Underwood Johnson [Steepletop] May 1, 1933 1 Dear Dr. Johnson: I am distressed to learn that you never received my letter thanking you for the book you sent me. I was by no means unacquainted with your poetry, but to receive this volume from yourself was indeed a pleasure and an honour,—and I wrote you at once. I remember very distinctly that I did so, for I am always so astonished & so pleased with myself when I write a letter—either at once, or eventually!—that I never forget the circumstances.— How dreadfully rude you must have thought me!—Well, I often am, I am afraid, without ever wishing to be; but on this occasion I was not.— Let me thank you again for your poems, which I shall always treasure, most of all for themselves, but also because you gave me the book. Sincerely yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay P.S. I have a York-and-Lancaster rose-bush. When it flowers I always think of you.2 1. Robert Underwood Johnson (1853–1937) was an American poet, and the editor of Century Magazine from 1879 to 1913. 2. In Johnson’s poem “The Lost Rose,” in The Winter Hour and Other Poems (Century, 1892), the last line of each of the five stanzas includes the “York-and-Lancaster” rose.

To Mary Kennedy [July 1933] Dear Kids, Goodbye! It was a lovely theatre-party—such a good play, too!1— I’m so glad we went to the theatre that night instead of playing bridge!— If you find the fringed scarf of my tweed coat, well, it’ll be the fringed scarf of my tweed coat, dearie, so hang on to it. About the soufflé, Deems. The truth is, it was perfect. All my dirty cracks were simply part of a framed-up joke to teach you. Love, Edna

266  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. This is a handwritten note Millay wrote on the back of an opened envelope and left for Mary Kennedy. Kennedy wrote on the verso: “July 1933. Edna and Ugin came down to see Peggy Wood in my play ‘Jordan’ and stayed with us at Hollow Hall—M.K.”

To Frank Crowninshield [Steepletop] [September 24, 1933] Sometime between 2 a.m. and 2 a.m. Daylight-Wasting Night 1933 Dear Crowny: A few days ago I was talking with Efrem Zimbalist; and after he said quite a number of nice things about you, and I had said quite a number of nice things about you, I made up my mind that as soon as ever they put the clocks back, thus giving me that extra hour of which I have so greatly been in need, I would write you a letter and send you my love.1 So here I am writing you a letter. And enclosed please find my love. Edna Millay 1. Violinist Efrem Zimbalist (1889–1985) later published music to Millay’s “Three Songs from The Lamp and the Bell” (1940).

To Aunt Susie [Steepletop] \December/ the 8th 1933 Dear Aunt Susie: I thought I should be seeing you sometime this summer, but it didn’t work out that way.—Eugen & I early in the summer bought an island in Casco Bay not far from Brunswick.1 We intended to spend August there. But I had to go and get flu or something like it, and have had it

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all summer,—and I haven’t set eyes on my island since we bought it! Isn’t that too exasperating?—We are sailing for Europe in about a fortnight now, going to spend the winter on the Riviera, where it will be warm, and I can work until I’m tired, and then go out and play tennis until I get tired in a different way.—Next summer we expect to spend a lot of time on the island, so we shall probably be dropping in on you sometime. We would let you know beforehand, except that we never know ourselves!

I am sending to Aunt Clem a copy of Mother’s song, “The Good Ship Maud.” Have you a copy? If not, I have one for you. Merry Christmas and lots of love to you and Uncle Frank, Vincent 1. Edna and Eugen bought Ragged Island, in Casco Bay, Maine, in July 1933 for $750 (Epstein, What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, 240).

To Frances Shapli Steepletop, Austerlitz, N. Y. December 8, 1933 1 Dearest Frances: I was so darned happy to get your skinny little letter, and the adorable photographs! What a lovely kid! You see, my girl, I had been worried about you a bit. I wrote you a letter once, probably about a year ago, and never heard from you. Why I should expect other people to bestir themselves and answer my letters, when I so seldom do anything approaching that, myself, I don’t know. Still, I do. I was afraid you had been eaten by alligators, or sand-fleas, or something. Or that something had happened to Aziz, or to your baby. Honestly, I’m so glad to get your letter, I can’t tell you. I have a new book coming out soon, my dear. Probably next fall, but maybe as early as next spring. Just a collection of poems, lady. Not

268  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay a disquisition of The Smashed Atom, or anything like that. But I’m working just as hard. Eugen and I are sailing for Marseilles on the twenty-sixth of this month. Have taken a house in Antibes for the winter, perfectly marvelous location, way out on the end of the cape, not a soul around. And the sweet gambling-hells nice and near. When I get as far as that, you won’t be awfully far away; and if I make a pile of money at chemin de fer, and can leave my book for long enough, I shall try to get over to see you. Or are you far away? You don’t seem to be at Ein-Shems any more. Perhaps you didn’t get my letter; that’s where I sent it. Well, it’s twenty minutes past two in the afternoon, and I haven’t had a whiskey and soda yet! Something must be done about it. I wish you had been a bit thoughtful, and put everybody’s name on the backs of the snapshots. You did write “beach haircut” on the back of one; but of course I know why you did that; it was not out of consideration for me; you just were afraid I would think you were doing something much more oriental to your child’s head than cutting his hair. And that, to be sure, was more than a proud mother could stand. I really must go and have a drink. And maybe some luncheon. Aren’t we cute with our little old repeal? Of course you understand that the reason why I am so thirsty is because I haven’t had a drink for—how long is it?—thirteen years. Oh, Frances, I am so relieved about you! Vincent My address in France will be care Boissevain, Antibes, Alpes Maritimes 1. Frances Drake Shapli, née Smith, was a Vassar classmate who graduated a year before Millay.

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To Floyd Dell Steepletop Austerlitz, N.Y. Dec. 13, 1933 Dear Floyd: Thank you ever so much for “Homecoming.”1 I enjoyed it immensely. It is earnest and sincere, without ever becoming ponderous or sentimental; gay, without ever becoming frivolous; modest, without ever becoming humble (and what a straight and narrow path that was, my lad!) In fact, I was delighted with it. In addition to your corrections made in ink in the copy you gave me, I noted two other errata: on page 157 the word contemptuous is misspelled contemptious; and on page 165 there occurs “maybe for neither you nor I.” Also, I should think that “bout rimes” on page 227, must be either “bouts-rimés” or “bout-rimé.” Unless this is an Anglicization of it with which I don’t know.2 As far as the book itself is concerned; I have found only one flaw in it. And since you will deny that it is a flaw, and since probably nobody else will notice it, it cannot be considered very important. However, just for fun, I append my remarks concerning page 337 of “Homecoming,” middle of the page. Love, and many congratulations, Edna Millay I shall be at the St. Regis from the 20th to the 26th, when we sail for France. If you are in New York, do come in to see me. excerpt from an unwritten book review But on page 337 we come upon a passage which distresses us. “Pro­ hibition came,” writes Mr. Dell, “and I was glad of it, for I thought the saloon a bore . . . I had no notion, of the incredible ingenuity that would go into home-brewing, nor of the pride that respectable citizens would take in safe, popular and petty law-breaking (for which I, a law-breaker in the grand style, only despised them).” Now to the reader of “Homecoming” it can come as no shock, on page 337, that wines and spirits and their accompanying amenities have no attraction for Mr. Dell. He has not kept this \a/ secret from us. And,

270  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay while we have deplored it, we have not condemned it. Nor should we ever attempt to coerce Mr. Dell into having a drink with us. Is he not as free to refrain from drinking as we are to—but alas! we forget; he is freer. For “Prohibition came,” even as he says; and he was “glad of it, for he thought the saloon a bore.” And we remember now that there was a passage somewhere earlier in the book which disturbed us slightly; but we passed it over. We go back and look for it, and here it is. Page 256. “In Greenwich Village, though there was a very general sobriety, I saw more drinking among presumably intelligent people than I had ever seen before.” Why does the author speak of these people who drink as “presumably intelligent”—which is to say, of course, just another way of saying “actually, in this respect at least, unintelligent”? He considers these people unintelligent, because they care about something which means nothing to him. The man who was prepared to go to jail for twenty years for having written, “There are some laws that the individual feels he cannot obey,” et cetera (p. 315), is snugly intrenched in his boredom against the possibility that the “respectable citizens” who are brewing wines and distilling spirits in their own cellars, and whom he “despises” because they take pride in what he calls “safe, popular and petty law-breaking” are behaving as they do because to them the 18th Amendment, with its accompanying Volstead Act, is one of those very laws. “I disagree with every word you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” wrote Voltaire.3 “I disapprove of every drink you drink, but I will defend to the death your right to drink it,”—so should have written, or so it seems to us, Floyd Dell. But he did not. Uneasily we ask ourselves now, “Just what principle then, was our author defending, in the Masses trial?”4 Why, freedom of speech, to be sure! And freedom of the press! And very fine of him. But right here we are struck by two things, which we have known all along, but which up to this moment we have not considered in their possible relationship to Mr. Dell’s splendid behaviour in the affair of the Masses trial, namely: that Mr. Dell was a newspaper man; and that he was a man who loved beyond almost everything else in life, to talk. Here was a man who loved so to talk, that even when he was on trial for a crime which might send him to prison for twenty years, he found

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“in cross-examination the distinct excitement of a primitive sort of game of wits . . . It is a strange, stimulating, and—or so I found it—an agreeable experience.” “I was told to take the stand,” he writes in the paragraph preceding this, “and I did so with pleasure. It was not only an agreeable break in the routine, but a chance to speak after an enforced silence that had lasted for several days.” Floyd Dell was defending the inalienable right of Floyd Dell to write and to say whatever he pleased. “It was not thus (i.e. by drinking whiskey) that I liked to get drunk,” he has said on p. 257. “I preferred to get drunk on ideas, on talk, on argument . . .” Mr. Dell, who was later to be so pleased when the 18th Amendment set out to take away from so many of his friends and fellow-citizens, who preferred to get drunk in quite another fashion, the means of doing so, was defending in the Masses trial, we regretfully infer,—oh, very innocently and with the noblest of emotions in his heart!—the right of Floyd Dell to intoxicate himself in his own way. 1. Among other memories of Millay, Floyd Dell’s Homecoming: An Autobiography (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1933) spoke of bringing Edna and Norma to see her future husband Eugen, along with Max Eastman (308). 2. It may be that Dell is referring to Millay on this page in Homecoming: the sentence with the typo begins “One evening, as I sat playing bout rimes with a girl poet.” Millay is correct in suggesting the spelling “bouts-rimés” for “rhymed words.” 3. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 11th edition (1937), cited Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) as the source of this quotation, although that attribution has since been disputed, for instance in Burdette Kinne, “Voltaire Never Said It!” Modern Language (November 1943: 534). 4. Dell was managing editor of the left-wing magazine The Masses; he and other members of the magazine’s editorial board, including the editor Max Eastman, had been tried twice in 1918 for publishing articles that were allegedly seditious (Milford, Savage Beauty, 165).

To Llewelyn Powys S.S. President Roosevelt Just getting into Cobh April 20 [1934] Dearest Lulu: It occurred to me after we left Southampton, that here I am, committed for eight days to the care of a most capricious element, &

272  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay under my arm my Black Note-Book, containing the only copies in existence of many of my new poems!—so I’ve had copies made of some of them & am sending them to you from Cobh, just in case, et cetera.—As you know, some of them are still being worked on, but there is something in all of these that I do not wish to be lost.—In case anything unpleasant should happen—Harold Cook, Avon Old Farms, Avon, Connecticut, U.S.A., has the rest of the Epitaph & could help you find some other things;—he’s just done a bibliography of me.1

So much for that!—Lots of love, my darlings! —Edna. 1. Harold Lewis Cook (1897–1989) was an American poet and an English teacher at Avon Old Farms School. He contributed an essay, as well as a note before her St. Nicholas poems, for Karl Yost’s Bibliography of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1937). Cook’s essay treats individual books and selected poems and plays, from Renascence to Wine from These Grapes. He received a Guggenheim award in 1937 for creative writing, but was unable, as a result of illness, to complete the work he had planned for the grant (Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay, ed. Macdougall, 297).

To Eugene Saxton Steepletop May 12th, 1934 Dear Mr. Saxton: I am sending you enclosed sixteen poems from my two new books, of which you can use all or as many as you like for your advance publicity, or rather, for your salesmen to take out on the road with them. My idea about the books is something like this: If you print them to sell separately, then they must not be called Volume One and Two, but will be called respectively “Huntsman, What Quarry?” and “Wine from These Grapes.” If you print them boxed together and not be sold separately, then the entire collection might be called “Poems: 1934”; or some such thing; Volume One: Huntsman, What Quarry? and Volume Two: Wine from These Grapes. (By bad typing and sloppy punctuation I have succeeded in making both titles

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look awful; but as a matter of fact they are both grand titles, and will look perfectly swell) The book huntsman, what quarry?, if you use somewhat the printing and spacing arrangement you used in \second april/ will run to sixty-five or seventy pages; and under the same conditions, wine from these grapes to about forty-five. If, however, you crowd them in as closely as you did in the buck in the snow, huntsman, what quarry? will be only about forty-five pages, and wine from these grapes only about thirty-five. huntsman, what quarry? will be made up of four sections: the first a group of miscellaneous lyrics, mostly love poems, of which the longest will be not over three pages; the second a group of nature poems; the third a group of unrelated sonnets on various subjects; the fourth an elegiac group. What might be called the more personal of the new poems I have been writing, go into this volume. wine from these grapes will be made up of two sections: the first a group of miscellaneous poems in a much harder and more astringent mood than the poems in the preceding volume, but except in mood unrelated; the second section a sequence of related sonnets entitled “Epitaph for the Race of Man.” This book will be the more philosophical and intellectual of the two volumes; the poems in it are in no instance of a personal or intimate nature. I hope you will see fit to publish these two books as Volumes One and Two of “poems: 1934.” I hope you will not feel compelled to sell the two volumes separately. It seems to me that it will be an interesting and an acceptable thing to do, to publish the poems as I have suggested. But of course there may be strong reasons against this. Please let me know as soon as you can. Sincerely yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay

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To George Dillon Steepletop June 7, 1934 Dear George,— What marvelous news this is, that you are writing again! I’m so happy for your; and happy for myself, too. I want to read everything you’ll let me read. It will be a great delight to me. But you know that.— If there is anything in any of the poems I don’t understand, or don’t like for some reason, I’ll tell you, since you want me to.—Please send them soon. I’ve been wondering how you like your new home, hoping it would be just as you describe it to be. “Belleair Road” sounded rather in the country, I thought. Your invitation to visit you there sometime is most attractive; please don’t forget it; we shall both accept with alacrity. An invitation is herewith extended you from Steepletop. Please come here sometime this summer, when you need to stop working for a while, and there’s a change would be good for you. We have a swimming-pool now— a concrete one, with water in it, and a friend who has built a tennis-court mostly for us, where we play nearly every day; we’re just going down there now. Do come, if you can, & if you think it would be fun.—Of course, just now you are thinking of nothing else but your work, but you may get tired some day, and then a change will be good for you.—Also, your idea that we should get acquainted, is as charming as it is original.

Please send the poems soon. It will be such a delight to me to read them, my dear.

Please remember me to your mother and father, and tell them how glad I am that they have found such a lovely place.

This is a dull and disjointed letter. But a great deal of love to you goes with it. Vincent

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To John W. Andrews Steepletop Austerlitz, N. Y. July 15, 1934 Dear Mr. Andrews: In my capacity of semi-official adviser to the Guggenheim Foundation last winter I read your application for a Fellowship and the accompanying extracts from your aviation poem.1 I tried very hard to get them to add a Fellowship for you to the three which they gave, but was not quite able to do so. This spring I talked about you and your project to Mr. Eugene Saxton of Harper & Brothers, and he seemed very much interested. I think that if you should get in touch with him soon and make an appointment to see him, you might find him not only interested in publishing your book, but willing to help finance you to write it. Of course I can’t be sure of this. But it is not at all impossible. And I hope that you will not fail to get in touch with him. I should like to see something done about your poem. Sincerely, yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay The truth of the matter is that I found the section of your poem so engrossing that I was disappointed when it came to a stop, and I am anxious for you to finish it and get it published so that I can read it! The address of Harper’s is 49 East 33rd St., New York. 1. Millay served on the Advisory Board of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation from 1934 to 1942.

To Eugene Saxton ragged island Orr’s Island, Maine Middle of August [1934] Dear Mr. Saxton: I’m sorry I had to keep the proofs so long. It’s not that I had so many corrections to make, for I hadn’t. It’s just that I’ve had such a

276  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay fiendish headache these last days that I couldn’t even look at the galleys without wincing. All I’ve done for a week is to sit on the sand and dig for clams with a table-spoon. Did very well at it, too. Kept the house supplied,—steamed clams, fried clams, clam chowder, clam steak, curry of clams, ragout of clams, and clam goulash. About these proofs. I can’t for the life of me understand why they didn’t work from the manuscript I sent you, instead of from the copy which you wrote me you had to have made.1 Along come these proofs from the copy-room, or whatever you call it, and with them is enclosed a handsome printed scolding, telling how bad authors are, always keeping the type-setter in such a dither and the proof-reader in such a sweat, making corrections in the proof which might just as well have been made in the manuscript. And what, think you, are these proofs they send me, underlined by so much noble sentiment?—they are the proofs of my own book, set up not from my own manuscript, but from an inexact copy of it. As a matter of fact, it was an excellent copy, containing very few mistakes,—but why start out by printing these perfectly gratuitous mistakes at all? Well, it’s beyond me. But next time, I wish you’d tell them to print my book from my own manuscript, and send me my own manuscript along with the proofs. There will be, I think, a few more changes to be made in the pageproof. But not many. And nothing that will upset the book as a whole, just a word or two, possibly a line. Did you find out whether the Sacco and Vanzetti heading is accurate? Well, I hear the postman, and must hurry this off. (The postman being my husband in oilskins, carrying a pair of oars) With all good wishes as ever, I beg to sign myself As ever your hbl. svt. E. St. V. M. 1. Arthur W. Rushmore, the head of book production at Harper & Brothers at the time, wrote in the margin: “This refers to the proof of Trade Ed. which was set from a typed copy of the original ms. sent by Miss Millay which was being used at The Golden Hind Press to set the Limited Ed.” Rushmore and his wife, Edna Keeler Rushmore, started the Golden Hind Press in 1927 to print limited editions of Harper & Brothers titles, including works by Millay.

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To George Dillon [The Blackstone South Michigan Avenue & East 7th St. Chicago] Nov. 13, 1934 Dear George: I can’t tell you how much your letter meant to me. To know that you like my new book makes me happier, much happier, than I can say. And how sweet you were to write so soon.—Yes, I told Harper’s to send you the book, because I wanted you to have it right away, and I didn’t know when I should have the time to send you one myself.—I read in Richmond on the 27th of this month. We would love to stay with you. We arrive from Lynchburg on the Norfolk & Western at 3:45 p.m. Nov. 27. I hope you can meet us. Please give my affectionate greetings to your mother & father.

It will be so lovely to see you, my dear.—Thank you again for your letter. Vincent

To Walter White

[Northampton, Mass. December 8, 1934]

walter white=1 69 fifth ave nyk= thanks for your letter you are right in assuming i was mis­ interpreted stop please telephone me tomorrow sunday hotel regis= edna stvincent millay

278  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Walter White, secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, wrote to Millay on December 5, 1934, to inquire about a newspaper interview with her published that day: I read with deep interest the interview with you in today’s Herald-Tribune. I am particularly interested in your reaction to the South and the South’s reactions to your poem “The Conscientious Objector.” I am a little puzzled, however, at the words the reporter attributes to you to the effect that “the Negro’s plight is not such a sad one in the South.” Knowing your own strong feelings on injustice, and knowing from experience how newspaper reporters sometimes give inaccurate or insufficient interpretations of one’s words, I would like to hear more about your opinion on the present condition of the Negro in the South. (N.A.A.C.P. Personal Correspondence, Walter White, December 5–17, 1934, ProQuest)

To Llewelyn Powys [Wahoo Islamorada Florida]    March 9, 1935 Dear Lulu: If you wish to hurt me beyond healing, refuse my gift. I swear to you that I can afford it perfectly well, that I do not need the money; my new book has sold already more than forty thousand copies. But suppose I could not so well afford it, suppose I had meant to use this money for something which now I should be unable to buy—tell me, what could I buy with a thousand dollars so precious as the thought that perhaps I may be helping you to get well? I am ashamed of you, darling. And of Alyse, too. You are both being very naughty. I know what it is, of course. It is that dingy law-suit, and the TwoHundred-Pound-Look of Mrs. Nincom and her daughter that have made you two clear beings think about money in this smudgy way.1 You must both send your wings to the cleaner. The second cheque was from Mr. Brann,2 who admires your work enormously, and who has been made immensely happy by being able to help you. Do not write to him to thank him; he does not live in as beautiful a world as he deserves to live in; and somebody might see the letter. We have been spending the winter in the Virgin Islands, on St.

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Thomas, one of the most beautiful islands in the world. Now we are slowly moving northward,—Puerto Rico, Haiti, Santiago de Cuba, Havana, Islamorado—from here to visit Mr. Brann in Boynton Beach, Florida; from there to Charleston, South Carolina, to see the great magnolia gardens in blossom; from there to Steepletop to say hello to the dogs and pick up the car; then on to Ragged Island, where we shall be entirely alone in our little house and entirely alone on the island, to gather driftwood, and haul our lobster-traps, and make fish-chowders, and sail, and read, and sit on the rocks, all through the month of April. As Eugen would say just here, “Yes, it’s a hard life.” Our address until the first of May will be Ragged Island Post Office Orr’s Island Maine After that, Steepletop. Love to you both, my dears. Your beautiful cable made us happier than you can possibly believe. As for your letters, all about that silly money—as I said in the beginning, if you wish to wound me with a hurt I shall never recover from, persist in this drab madness. Edna 1. Llewelyn Powys and his wife Alyse “had been sued for libel because they circulated petitions against the treatment of the inmates at the Home for Delinquent Girls. The headmistress, Miss Nincom . . . had convinced the jury that the accusations were false and the petitioners were all fined one hundred pounds and court costs” (Jean Gould, The Poet and Her Book [New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1969], 230). 2. William L. Brann was a neighbor of Millay’s who owned and bred racehorses, and also managed the horses Millay owned at a farm in Maryland. Her long letter to Brann on December 8, 1937, describes numerous examples of her financial backing for the racehorses she owned. During their partnership, the Daily Racing Form named Brann as the owner of these horses.

280  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

To Joan Taylor steepletop April 12, 1935 1 Dear Joan: I just got back from a winter in the West Indies, and found your book here waiting for me. It is a beautiful book, and I cannot tell you how pleased I am to have it. With most of the poems I was already familiar, having already read them, as you know, at the St. Regis, so I need not repeat to you how much I like them; but to have them all together like this, in such a charming binding, is a delight. Ugin is just as excited about the book as I am,—and about the inscription. He swears that the drawing looks exactly like you. You may beat him for that, if you like, when next you see us, which I hope will be soon. Lots of love to you. And please give my love to Mary. From your friend of as many years as you are old, Edna St. Vincent Millay [Millay drew a line from a pen blot at “F” in “From” and wrote below:] The pen did this. It was not my idea at all. Edna [Eugen adds] I am so happy with your book!—love from Ugin. 1. Joan Kennedy Taylor (1926–2005) was the daughter of Mary Kennedy and Deems Taylor.

To President Franklin D. Roosevelt Chatham, N.Y., May 2, 1935. The President:1 Dear Mr. President: Is filibustering a necessary evil? Has this country, which has amended its Constitution, and repealed its amendments, and is consistently in a fluid state conforming to the changing times, no power whatever to rebuke and to silence these frivolous men? Must forever the time of high executives and the money of the tax-payers be

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 281

wasted in order that a person with nothing to say should be permitted to say it indefinitely, with the sole and admitted purpose of preventing from speaking a serious representative of the people with a problem to present? I am and have always been a stout believer in states’ rights. It is with dismay always that I see the rights of states, as the rights of individuals, infringed upon. Circumstances may arise, nevertheless, in which the individual, and most properly, is restrained by his neighbors from acts of violence. And similarly, circumstances may arise in which the state, and most properly, is restrained by the concerted pressure of its neighboring states, from acts of violence. I am in favor of the Costigan-Wagner anti-lynching bill.2 I am emotionally and intellectually in favor of it. I wish to see it go through. If, however, it is to be defeated, I should like it to be defeated by sound argument and in dignified assembly, and not by this out-moded, shameful, ludicrous, Alice-in-Wonderland procedure. I am, Mr. President, with deep respect, yours truly, Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. The typed page is stamped: received criminal division may 8 1935; also stamped “may 9 1935”; also stamped with “Department of Justice Mail and Files Division May 8 1935 p.m.” Walter White wrote to Millay on May 7, 1935: “Your telegram to the President is utterly superb and I am grateful” (LC, 120.1). 2. Senators Edward Costigan of Colorado and Robert F. Wagner of New York drafted the bill. The New York Times published articles about the filibustering activities, such as “Lynching Bill Foes Plan to Filibuster” (April 20, 1935) and “Filibuster Balks Effort to Speed Roosevelt Bill” (April 30, 1935).

To Witter Bynner Steepletop Austerlitz, N. Y. May 2, 1935 Dear Hal: Yes, I did get the beautiful quilt. And you were a darling to send it me, and I was a pig not to answer. And there you are. I love it; it is extremely pretty; I remember your speaking to me about these quilts

282  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay years ago when I was in Santa Fé; I am grateful to you; I think you a darling; but I simply can’t write letters. I am at present under the influence of hashish, gin, bad poetry, love, morphine and hunger,—otherwise I could not be writing you even this. I have made a name for the disease from which I suffer: I have named it epistophobia. I haven’t written a letter all winter. I wish it were socially impossible to write a letter. I wish there were no post-Office, no stamps, no facilities whatever for expediting the smug, intrusive, tedious letters that people write. We called up the Hotel Seymour, being in New York for two days to see my brother-in-law Charles Ellis’ show at the Montross Galleries.1 But you hadn’t come yet. Can you come to Steepletop sometime in May? Can you do it without bringing your mother? I know she’s grand and all that, and besides she’s your mother; but I’m going to die in a few days, and I have no time left except for people I’m crazy about. Please come. Edna How dared you get my head-ache? And why must you be ill?—Let them be ill who enjoy it—there are many. But for you to be ill—this is effrontery. 1. Charles Ellis showed his artwork in late April at the Montross Galleries in New York City. One portrait was of Millay.

To Maine State Historian Steepletop Austerlitz, N. Y. June 13, 1935 The State Historian, Rockland, Me. Dear Sir: I shall be deeply obliged to you if you will help me out of a difficulty. Last winter I received a letter from a lady whose name I forget, an officer in the Maine State Federation of Women’s Clubs. I was on tour at the time, and the letter became mislaid and lost before I could answer it. Since then I have been very hard at work and have neglected to do

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 283

anything about the matter. The writer of the letter informed me that a marker was to be placed sometime this summer on the house in which I was born in Rockland, and that it was planned to have the legend on the marker read something like this: Birthplace of Edna St. Vincent Millay, America’s Foremost Woman Poet. I am writing to you to say that I should be deeply embarrassed and distressed if these words were used. I am more pleased than I can say that the house is to be marked with my name, but I should like something like this on the marker: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Poet, was Born in this House; or: Birthplace of the Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. It is more than possible, as I realize, that the matter has already been cast. In this event, I should be more than glad to pay for a re-casting of it. I trust that it has not already been put in place. I am very anxious about this, although my long delay in attending to the matter must make it appear otherwise. Will you be so very kind as to get in touch with the proper people and explain my feeling about this? I shall be extremely grateful to you.1 Sincerely, yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Another letter written by Millay, headlined “Touched by Act: Edna St. Vincent Millay Acknowledges Tablet of the Educational Club,” was printed in the Courier-Gazette of Rockland, Maine, on July 25, 1935, on p. 1. That letter begins: “It was extremely kind of you to have the legend on the tablet changed; I am grateful to you.”

To Sister Ste. Hélène Steepletop July 9, 1935 Dear Sister Ste. Helene: I am writing to ask you to give me some help with a poem on which I am now working. It is to be a long poem, or rather a sequence of poems, some in sonnet form, some in free verse, and probably will be called something like “Conversation, Midnight to Morning.” The setting of the poem is this: eight or ten men, all with violently opposed political and religious opinions, have had dinner together, and are now in the

284  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay drawing-room talking. There will be a conservative rich business man, a Communist, a poet or painter, several other people, and a Catholic priest. Each of the characters throughout the poem will speak from time to time to one or several of the other characters in what I shall try to make a perfectly natural and sincere way and expressive of the views of that partic­ ular man. The poem will end, as I now see it, by a simple breaking-up of the party and saying goodnight, nothing will have been established, either by any of the characters or by me. I enclose two sonnets in which the Catholic priest is speaking. And here is where you can help me very much, my dear friend, if you can spare the time. You can tell me about this character of mine, Father Anselmo, if I have made mistakes in presenting him, in describing his appearance, his gown and crucifix, his playing of the piano. Would he be permitted under all circumstances to have dinner with his friends like this? And you can do something much more important to me than this, and I shall be so very grateful to you if you will. I want to give this priest one more poem, possibly two, in which to express his views, his convictions. Perhaps I will have somebody ask him what he really believes, just simply to tell them what his creed is; perhaps somebody will ask him how it is possible to hold the views that Anselmo holds, unless one has been brought up with them, if it is possible to learn to believe, how one would go about trying to do so. Am I asking too much of you if I ask you to write me a letter telling me what this character would be most likely to say in answer? I think that in the two sonnets I am sending you I have suggested him, and that, except for possible minor mistakes, I have not misrepresented him. But I want to go further with him than that: I want to know all about him. I want to be able to imagine him as a child, as a young man; I want to know where he learned to play the piano, whether or not at one time he intended to become a professional musician, why he became a priest instead. And most of all I want to know what he thinks. Is there a book that would tell me some of the things I want to know? I want to be sure of the actual phraseology that Father Anselmo would use in conversation; I should like to bring into the poem certain unmistakably characteristic expressions and turns of speech. You see the whole thing, don’t you? Please don’t tell anybody about this poem which I am writing, except

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 285

Sister Ste. Antonia. I should like her to know about it, and to see the two sonnets. Any little remark you might wish to make would be a great help to me. If you are too busy to do more, please just tell me if there is anything wrong with the sonnets. These would be the second and third sonnets about Anselmo, I think; the one in which he answers some of their questions would precede these, but would take place a little earlier in the conversation. Now I must get back to work on some of the other poems. I shall wait for your reply with the greatest interest. Please give my love to Sister Ste. Antonia and to all my friends at Ste. Catherine’s And so much love to yourself, My dear. ——Vincent

To Eugene Saxton Steepletop Austerlitz, N. Y. Nov. 18, 1935 Dear Mr. Saxton: I think the type extremely good-looking, and so does Mr. Dillon.1 The italics are the least alarming I ever saw,—usually when I first glance at a page of italics it looks to me like a page of the Odyssey. The two facing pages will look very handsome together. Unless, that is to say, you really intend to print as many stanzas on the page as these sample pages seem to indicate—six stanzas on the page that bears the title; seven, I suppose, on the other pages. In which case they won’t look handsome at all, except of course to pure artists like Mr. Rushmore, who are interested only in making up a thrillingly beautiful page, and don’t give a darn whether or not anybody is ever going to read the words on it. My first thought when I saw the sample page was, “My, what goodlooking type!” My second thought was, “Good God, can there be all that poetry on one page? How much can there be in a whole book then? How much in the New York Public Library? How much in the whole world?”

286  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay It was an awful thought. And seeing how tedious, how plodding, how discouraging and text-bookish my own poem looked, I could have cried, except that suddenly nothing seemed worth crying about any more, and I didn’t care how you printed the book, since I, for one, was certainly not going to read it. Mr. Dillon, when I first handed him the sample sheets to look at, said at once, as I had done, “Awfully good-looking type, isn’t it?” Then he said nothing for a moment. Then he said, “Well, it just makes me feel the way I feel when I’m out walking, and turn a corner, and see miles and miles of perfectly straight road ahead of me.” Consider this: in every instance the left-hand page and the righthand page are going to look almost exactly alike, the same length line, the same number of stanzas, etc. That was necessary, and it is interesting that it should be so; but at the same time, this fact will help to increase any sense of monotony, any sense of suffocation or just plain weariness, which the reader may well experience when he opens the book and sees seven stanzas of hexameter staring him in the face. If the lines were not for the most part so long, it would not be quite so bad; but hexameterfrom-left-to-right multiplied by seven-stanzas-from-top-to-bottom equals one thick page of prose; and the person who reads it at all is bound to read it as he does prose, not a line at a time, as poetry should be read, but a whole bunch of lines at a time, a paragraph at a time, a stanza at a time. Mr. Rushmore is by way of being a genius at this business of making books, I should say; he does beautiful things. But he is a hopeless Anglophile. And in this particular instance, if the sample sheet is really an indication of the way he wants to print the book, he has gone so Bloomsbury that he has almost gone Bloomingdale.2 And he may put all-the-love-of-his-deep-and-subtle-nature into choosing the type, etc; he might just as well send the whole job over to the Daily Mirror and let them print it up for him, because the book will be a flop, anyway. (At least, if I can’t read that page, who can?) All this sounds very light-hearted and cheery (or does it?), but you will observe that I have typed it double-space,—so that you can read between the lines! The authors are fully aware that they have advised the publishers at

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 287

least twice as to their preference concerning the number of stanzas to the page, even going so far as to set forth plainly in the English manuscript and in the manner in which the French original was cut and pasted on the sheet, their preference concerning the number of stanzas to the page; they are further aware that said publishers have paid not the slightest attention to said preference on the part of the authors; and the authors respectfully submit that not even those lovely bits of coloured paper which the publishers sent them to play with, have succeeded quite in taking their minds off the main issue. Now: if you will print the pages five stanzas to the page-with-title, six stanzas to the page-without-title, it will be a great improvement from the reader’s point of view over what you seem to have in mind. This will mean having somewhere between thirty to forty more pages, as I estimate it, in the book, possibly as many as forty-five. This would very likely mean that you would have to charge more for the book,—$2.75; possibly even $3.00. But it would be better to charge even as high as $3.00 than to cramp and disable every poem in the book. (I have had to pound this point even at the risk of boring you to suicide or exasperating you to murder, because you seem not to have understood our other letters!) Please give my compliments to Mr. Rushmore on the type, not only of the French and English texts, but of the page which immediately precedes the poems: “Selected Poems of Charles Baudelaire,” with its two stars or flowers, or whatever they are; it is very good-looking. (Not that he’ll care much for my opinion, after this letter!)

I am enclosing: 1. The samples of end-paper and dust-cover, with our choice marked; if you think us unwise in our choice, please tell us why. 2. A few more changes to be incorporated into my manuscript, if still possible; otherwise I can make the changes in the galleys. 3. Two aspirins.

Yours for a care-free winter, Edna St. Vincent Millay

288  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Millay and George Dillon were working together on an English translation of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, to be published by Harper & Brothers. 2. In referring to the Bloomsbury Group of early-twentieth-century British intellectuals, including Roger Fry and Virginia Woolf, and the retail store Bloomingdale’s, she is suggesting that the book designer Arthur Rushmore has moved beyond aesthetic concerns to commercial ones.

To Gladys Brown Ficke Steepletop Nov. 29, 1935 Dearest Gladdie: Here is a flock of books for Artie; I’ve read most of them, and found some of them very interesting, others gay, etc. If he wants to take any of them along with him for the winter, tell him to go ahead. I have made a list of them, so it will be perfectly easy next summer to get them back from you. Some of them I’ve not read, and can’t vouch for. Many people think Butterfield 8 very exciting.1 I didn’t; but you’d better read it yourself before letting Arthur see it. When you leave, just leave the books you don’t want in this same suit-case, or whatever I find to send them in, and write a little note to Ture Heline, Steepletop, Austerlitz, N.Y. to come and fetch them at any address you say.2 I hope both you and Arthur will find something worth reading among them. Ugin is in Florida, and has found a house for us, I don’t know exactly where, somewhere between Palm Beach and Miami. I am going down tomorrow with the servants. I wanted so much to get over to see you and our darling Artie, but I am so simply exhausted after getting the Baudelaire off to Harpers, that packing—even with somebody else to pack under my direction!—is taking all the strength I have, and there are so many things to attend to, closing up the place without Ugin. Ugin knows how tired I am, and is wiring frantically for me to get aboard the next train. So I sha’n’t see you, kids, before I go. But I’ll see you next summer; and we’ll have lots of fun, because Arthur will be well again, and more like his cute, gay old self, and I shaN’t be working so hard, so perhaps I shall be a bit more like my cute, gay old self ! Lots of love to you both, and I hope you will have as happy a winter as you both deserve, after all the hard knocks you’ve had, you poor kids. Vincie

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 289 1. BUtterfield 8, a novel by John O’Hara, was a best seller in 1935. 2. Ture Heline was a farm manager and neighbor in Austerlitz.

To Eugene Saxton (My address) Delray Beach, Florida Monday Dec. 9, 1935 Dear Mr. Saxton: I hope you can read this scrawl. My portable is at the cleaner’s.— First, I agree with you about suppressing that phrase in the Mardrus material.1 I meant to suggest that, among other things, if I had had more time in New York & could have seen you; it would be very bad to use it; it would give the whole book an undergraduate air.—Second, please send me at once a copy of the original Mardrus letter, or the original letter—(I asked Miss Herdman to do this, but apparently she did not understand). The point is: I want the French text, because there are one or two points in the translation which you sent which I should like to discuss with you. For instance, in the Valéry: I think we are perfectly justified in translating “Cette traduction” as “The quality of this translation,”—this seems to me excellent rendering; but the literal translation of “lecteur Français” does not perhaps give quite the impression intended—I mean, “the French reader” might possibly be taken as meaning any person who reads French; I think we might better translate this as “the French reading public.”— There are a few other points. Please send me the originals right away, if possible. Do you intend to use a translation of the Valéry on the dust-cover, or the original? 2—I thought that a fac-simile of the original would be very exciting,—using the translation inside the flap. Do you think this would look too scholarly, & frighten those who read no French?—I wish to God I could have talked all these matters over with you in New York, but I was so exhausted I didn’t dare stay in the North a day longer, for fear of catching cold or something and becoming really ill. (Please accept my apologies for trying to order you about as if you were an office-boy! I had so little time!)—Whatever you do about the Valéry, you will certainly, I should think, put “de l’Académie française” (or “of the Académie française”) after his name. But even that must be carefully done, so that

290  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay it will not appear that he signs himself so, but will be apparent that it is Harper & Brothers who are giving that information.—Oh, well, there are other things—but I can’t think of them at the moment. I will write you again the moment I hear from you. Sincerely, Edna Millay    (over) Mr. Dillon’s address is Westover Hills Richmond Va.

Please keep him advised of everything, & consult him as well as myself. 1. Lucie Delarue-Mardrus (1875–1945), a French poet and novelist, had written praise for Millay and Dillon’s translation of The Flowers of Evil that appeared in full inside the book’s dust cover, including: “The publication of this book is an event of importance to the world of letters. For one thing, it makes it possible for literary people both in America and England to come in contact with the true essence of one of our most illustrious French poets.” She also translated some of Millay’s poetry into French, such as “[Thou art not lovelier than lilacs,— no,]” / “[Tu n’as pas plus d’attrait que n’en ont les lilas],” Renascence, fragments—beginning “L’omniscience de mon âme,” and “Wild Swans” / “Les Cygne sauvages” (Lucie Delarue-Mardrus’ Choix de Poèmes [Paris: Libraire Alphonse Lemerre, 1951]). 2. The dust cover included three blurbs on the front: one from Paul Valéry (1871–1945), the French poet and critic (handwritten in French and signed, followed by the typed translation), one from Llewelyn Powys, and one from Lucie Delarue-Mardrus (in English).

To Eugene Saxton westpalmbeach flo dec 22 1935 eugene saxton, harper & brothers 49 east 33 st nyk have one more translation poem of twenty lines stop will get proof back on time but shall be greatly assisted if someone your office can do few chores for me public library for instance find out whether baudelaires translation of poes the

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 291

raven was in verse or prose and copy out first stanza of translation stop1 regret delay in publication but we both expected two sets of proofs as this is customary and nothing different had been suggested stop agree with dillon about striking out title page quotation changing copyright line etcetera stop overjoyed appearance of book could not be lovelier this is the way poetry should be printed edna stvincent millay 1259a dec 23 1. Pencil response written underneath, beginning “(Prose) Une fois, sur le minuit lugubre . . .” (“Once upon a midnight dreary . . .”). Baudelaire’s prose translation, titled “Le Corbeau,” appears in his essay “La Genèse d’un Poëme”—translated from Poe—in the journal Revue Fran­ çaise (January 1, 1859).

To George Dillon

[February 3, 1936]

nl=delraybeach flo 5 george dillon= westover hills rich= don’t change anything in your translation chevelure your word forgetfulness means of course forgetfulness of all but memories as for mysterious the ladys hair was no longer mysterious to him but tumultuous it always remainined stop i say let the reader guess and keep him guessing stop your initials under lefthand corner and mine under righthand would be in conformance with makeup of book and dignified stop if you have other idea wire stop think this lots of fun1 love= vincent

292  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Dillon and Millay translated “La Chevelure,” Baudelaire’s poem from Les Fleurs du Mal, as “The Fleece.”

To Lilian R. Huguenin Box 787 Delray Beach, Florida March 16, 1936 1 Dear Miss Huguenin, The delicious subtlety of this second lovely gift, following at a discreet distance the first inexcusably unacknowledged one, gave me almost as much delight as the gift itself. You not only made me happy; you made me gay! How else could you ever find out whether or not your beautiful little salt and pepper set had gone astray and never been received? You could not very well write me, “See here, did you ever get that present I sent you for Christmas? If you didn’t, all right, that lets you out; I’ll look it up from this end and see what was the trouble. But if you did, why couldn’t you have the common decency to let me know you did? You might even have thanked me for it, you so-and-so!” Now, however, if I write thanking you for the handkerchiefs and do not mention the salt-and-pepper, you will know that I never received them. If I acknowledge neither, then the next thing you send me had best be held to the ear before it is opened! I said “inexcusably unacknowledged,” yet the truth is that I have been working so hard this winter, and so many hours a day, that I have been forced to neglect everything else; and another truth is, that although you could not know it, the charming little crystal things have been before my place at dinner every night, and have given me much pleasure. If some night they should not be there, I should be seriously annoyed, and would not be able to eat a mouthful until they were brought on. And fine linen, cunningly worked by hand, is one of my most special delights. Sincerely, with these belated thanks, Edna St. Vincent Millay

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 293 1. Lilian R. Huguenin was one of Millay’s fans. This is one of several letters from Millay to her, on July 15, 1937, thanking her for handkerchiefs, and on November 16, 1938, for shells.

To Mr. and Mrs. Eugenio Lanfranchi Delray Beach April 20th, 1936 Dear Nini: It seems that I invited myself to your house to dinner on Tuesday night, and it seems that you were so unwary as to accept. That being the case, I might as well tell you what I want for dinner. spaghetti!—that’s what I want for dinner. I can’t go on wasting my life eating dinner, when it’s never spaghetti. And this is the way I want it. Just the way Nina did it last year. I forget if it had meat and cheese and tomato and things, I only remember that it was wonderful. And that it was thoroughly cooked,—the way you always expect to get it in Italy, and never do, because the Italians, though very long-suffering, are very impatient. Please don’t let any of the other guests persuade you to cut it up into three-inch strips. Perhaps they don’t like having it dangling over their chins into their corsages; but it doesn’t at all matter what they eat, whereas I practically never eat at all, and care enormously. Also, please give me a big spoon, as well as a fork, to eat it with. I have never been able to do this at all well, but I have succeeded in doing it to my own satisfaction. I have decided that the only way to eat spaghetti is to pretend that it is a stomach-pump. Often I get such a big mouthful that I wish I were a snake; but then, presently, I realize that I am a snake; so everything is perfectly all right. Also, I like it nice and hot; because usually one of the guests gives me a dirty look; whereupon I always take it downstairs and eat it on the doorstep; so it should be nice and warm to start with. If Nino can get hold of some Chianti it will be fine. If not, a very bad Bordeaux will do. But it must be very bad,—gritty, you know, and definitely sour. You need not begin the dinner with a minestrone. If the spaghetti

294  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay were going to be bad, this would be a good idea. But the spaghetti is going to be marvellous. If you have a salad, and you have garlic in it (a splendid idea) please don’t leave the garlic floating about in it like worn-down bits of Ivory soap; meeting one of these always startles me, in fact I don’t get over it for days. It is not at all necessary to conclude with zabaglione. For two reasons: first, that Ugin doesn’t like it; and second, that though I pretend to like it, I don’t either. As for that three-coloured ice-cream, give it to Nino and the other children. By that time the grown-ups will have settled down to a bit of serious drinking. With lots of love, and looking forward to a wonderful evening, I am, as ever, Objectionably yours, Edna Millay Edna

To Llewelyn Powys Delray Beach, Florida April 24, 1936 My darling Lulu: Of course you would put the most important news in the world, that you are getting better, in a scrawly marginal post-script where I might perhaps not have seen it at all! Really, you are too absurd. What do you think I care about anything else you could possibly have to say, in comparison with the fact that you are getting better? Will you be very discreet, my dear, and take no risks? Will you be rigidly scrupulous about not tiring yourself? The temptation will be so great!—you will want to see, all in one day, every polished bit of flint there is, so miraculously clean, like a cat, in spite of the mud; you will want to see the two ears of every hidden hare on the downs, all in one day. Will you please try to remember, sometimes when you want to walk just a few steps further, that Edna wants you to turn back, instead, and go quietly home?

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 295

I am so sorry about your brother. I think about it, and I say to myself, “There is nothing to say.” Yet perhaps there is something to say, only I don’t know what it is. I am the last who could teach you how to fit into the pattern of your life the death of someone you love; I have no skill at this. Of course I knew you would not like my preface to the Baudelaire translations. Sometimes when I was working on it (and I never worked so hard on anything in my life) I thought, with a wry and sad smile, “Lulu will be pained by this.” I knew that you would consider flippant and in bad taste many things which were not flippantly conceived or written, and which, if I had considered them in bad taste, I should not have printed. It is our old quarrel. It is not that you would like me to write ponderously because the subject is a weighty one, but that, naturally, you wish me to be light-hearted and human in your way, not in mine. I wonder how you can stand Shakespeare, (perhaps you can’t; I never asked you) Shakespeare, who permitted Mercutio to die as Mer­ cutio would have died, did not force upon him in the end the extreme unction of a traditional solemnity, permitted him to die cracking jokes, and with a pun on his lips,—and this, mind you, not in The Merry Wives of Windsor, or any other rollicking piece of horse-play, but in a proper tragedy. I suppose you agree with the French that the “Knock, knock” scene from Macbeth is most regrettable; unless perhaps the archaic flavour of the words and allusions makes it acceptable to you. If you had been present on the opening night of “Macbeth,” and had yourself been wearing a pair of the fashionable and very tight and scanty “French hose” for stealing from which the English tailor is sent to hell, you would have been shocked, I think, by the guffaws of your elegant neighbours.1 Not that there is anything Shakespearean about my writing—would God there were!—but that in temperament I am rather close to him. And it is my guess that you would much prefer Racine to Shakespeare, supposing that they both were bringing out their plays today. And what of your revered St. Ealdhelm, about whose “attitude to literature” there was “something debonair”?—who “carried his scholarship with lightness”!—who taught the King of Northumbria “to make Latin verses by composing a series of amusing riddles”! Alas, how frivo-

296  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay lous an approach to how serious a structure! Fie, fie upon St. Ealdhelm! And a fig, a dried fig, for St. Lulu.2 Enough of this! (Too much of this, I dare say!) But it’s such fun having a swipe at you for once,—you’ve had so many at me. Oh, God, how lovely it will be to talk with you again! I loved your Dorset essays,—I am not sure that you have ever done anything better. I do so love the way you write. (Even when you are scolding me, I love the way you scold me . . . and might, perhaps, in conversation, provoke a small scolding purposely . . . though not, of course, in a book.) Do you know what mushroom it is that is so cleverly photographed in the book you sent me? Probably you do, but you may not. It is the Lepiota procera, the “parasol mushroom.” My mother and I used to gather them on the downs between Shillingstone and Blandford. She would dry them, and make beautiful panels of them, sewing them to a dark cloth; and once she trimmed a hat for me with them . . . it was charming. Eugen and I find them sometimes at Steepletop, too. They are edible, and sometimes we broil them in butter, and eat them. But although they are said to be one of the most delicious mushrooms, we have only once had them when they tasted truly superior to others,— and ever since then we are in despair about them, because we are unable to remember just how we prepared them on that day. If you are unacquainted with them, I beg you not to eat them; I am identifying them only from a photograph. I have so many things to write you. But I have poems to write, too; and they keep teasing me. Will you please, give my love to Alyse? How you can give it her, when she already has it, and knows that she has it, I do not know. Nevertheless, greet her for me; she will know how much love is in the greeting. As for yourself, you say that you are better. Perhaps I helped to make you better, caring so much whether you are better or not. You could not know how often you are in my mind. Edna. 1. In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio is stabbed by Tybalt; Benvolio announces to Romeo that “brave Mercutio is dead” (3.1.116). The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy. The “Knock, knock”

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 297 scene from Macbeth is the start of Act 2, Scene 3, where the Porter repeatedly says “Knock, knock, knock.” Millay echoes the Porter’s line from the same scene: “Faith, here’s an English tailor come hither for stealing out of a French hose.” 2. Millay quotes from an essay on St. Ealdhelm that Powys wrote in 1934. However, “a fig . . .” echoes a vulgar gesture accompanied by the word “fig” or a variant, as found in Shakespeare. For example, Pistol tells Fluellen, “Die and be damn’d! and figo for thy friendship!” and then offers him “The fig of Spain” (Henry V, Act 3, Scene 6, Lines 57 and 59).

To George Dillon Little America Friday, August the 13th, 1948 [Delray Beach, Florida, January 1936]1 Dear George: It never occurred to me that the sons-of-bitches wouldn’t have sent you a proof of the jacket, too. What ails them?—hardening of the arteries or softening of the brain? Let’s clear out and the hell with them. Let’s send them a corrected copy of the Bronx and Queens telephone directory and skip. Let’s go to the Galapagos and gather boobies’ eggs. In the meantime I am sending on to you the jacket-proof which by mistake, instead of being mailed to Edna Ferber, was mailed to me. The time, as the feller said and was promptly crowned for it, is short. Now you’ve been in the advertising business, and I haven’t; so perhaps you know more about the advertising power of this jacket than I do; but I’ve been buying longer than you’ve been advertising; and I know that if I went to Brentano’s2 with money to buy just seven books, this book would be the eighth. Think it over. You have just one hour before Sharper and Smothers (alias Harper and Brothers) come in with the confession, a fountain-pen, and a piece of lead pipe. Think it over. Think it over. What shall the title be?—I suggest: “postcards from happy-dust charlie to his lenox avenue moll.”3 Love and all that, Vincent 1. Millay typed the 1948 date; the date in brackets was added by someone else. The 1936 date matches the publication date for Dillon and Millay’s translation of Baudelaire.

298  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 2. Brentano’s was a chain of bookstores, with its main location in the 1930s at 586 Fifth Avenue in New York. 3. “Happy dust” is cocaine. The 1989 OED includes a quote from Millay’s Conversation at Midnight, spoken by Pygmalion: “Your head’s So full of dope, so full of happy-dust . . . you’re just a drug Addict.” “Lenox Avenue” is a street in Harlem. A “moll” is “the girlfriend or female accomplice of a gangster” (OED).

To Witter Bynner [Steepletop] Sept. 30th, 1936 Dearest Hal: You were so sweet to write me in detail about Flowers of Evil. And I am such a pig not to have answered before. And a fool, too, because I do very much want your Vildrac translations; I never even saw them, for some reason.1 I hope you still have a copy for me, although I don’t deserve it, after having been so damned rude. Yes, I have seen some vicious reviews of our Fleurs du Mal translations. But I didn’t know that (as you hint) somebody had found an actual error in them. Do you remember what it was? Please forgive me, and send the Vildrac. Love, and thanks again for your letter. Edna 1. In 1923 Bynner published A Book of Love, his translations of Charles Vildrac’s Livre d’Amour.

To Alyse Gregory [Steepletop] October 6th, 1936 Dearest Alyse: I am so distressed by this bad news. Poor, poor Lulu!—Poor, poor you. Oh, my dear, who is it that is trying to kill him?—for indeed anyone who comes to see him too often, and stays too long, and excites and

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 299

wearies him, is either trying to kill him or is so profoundly an egoist that he is truly insensitive to Lulu’s condition. Is it one of those romantic and diabolical relatives of his? I wish to God he were far removed from England for a while! He wrote me that he hoped to go to Switzerland soon; I suppose now he is too sick to be moved. Oh, dear, besides being so alarming, it is so infuriating! Is there nothing that can be done to keep people from stalking, or breezing, or gliding to his bed whenever they feel like it, and remaining for interminable periods, either agitating him into a fever, or boring him to exhaustion? My God, you are not characters in a play, you and Lulu! this is life that you are living all this time, the only life you will ever have!—and a life which should have been heroic; and which is only courageous. Does nobody ever think about that? What if people have come all that way to see him? What if they crawl on their knees all the way from Dorchester, and would weep with disappointment if they must depart without a glimpse of him?—it is a matter without consequence or even meaning. Let them crawl back. Oh, my dear Alyse, I should think you would be so discouraged you could hardly drag your bones about the house. For Lulu, it is terrible; but for you, it is less and more than terrible; for you are not even in danger of dying, you are just in danger of never living any more. I think you’d better not show Lulu this letter; it is too depressed, I fear, and too depressing. It is because I am so angry that I write like this, and because I don’t know whom to hate. How I wish I could see you, and talk with you. But then, I so often wish that. Edna

To Eugene Saxton [Steepletop] October 10th 1936 Dear Mr. Saxton: Thank you for your prompt reply, and for the great help Harper’s is giving me. I believe that I can surely let you know by the first of De-

300  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay cember whether or not I can have the Conversation ready for spring publication;1 but I do not think I can have it ready for publication in February; couldn’t you bring it out in April? You see, I have an enormous amount of work still to do on it, because so much of it has to be done over; but I am working at it constantly, and I am pretty sure I could have it ready for April. I am sending you enclosed my foreword for Mr. Cook’s essay;2 I hope you will like it. As for the photograph frontispiece; this presents real difficulties. I remember that I did not much like any of the photographs done of me by Doris Ullman, certainly not enough to have one of them reproduced in such a conspicuous position.3 And of course you would prefer something that had not been used before. I can seem to find nothing suitable. I may have to come to New York in a few days (“have to” is the exact expression, it is so beautiful here now!) to get a tweed skirt and a pair of oxfords that I can walk in; you have no idea how many clothes can be packed in a half dozen suit-cases, until you see yourself coming down to dinner attired in a necklace of jumbie-beads and a bath-towel swiped from the Francis Scott Key Hotel. It seems to me sometimes that I lost about everything I had in that fire, with the exception of a handsomely-polished piece of petrified wood, and an old copy of Punch with the round mark of a whisky-glass on it.4 Anyway, if I come to New York, and you want to have me fingerprinted, or tattooed, or photographed, I suppose I’ll submit. Submissively yours, Edna St. Vincent, Millay P.S. I get a proof of these forewords, don’t I? P.P.S. In typing my foreword I discovered that I had used the word “considered” four times in ten lines; something must be done about that; I will clean it up and send it to you tomorrow. 1. Conversation is Conversation at Midnight, Millay’s book of poems that was published in 1937. 2. Her foreword and Harold Lewis Cook’s essay appear in A Bibliography of the Works of Edna St. Vincent Millay, edited by Karl Yost (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1937). 3. Doris Ullman (1882–1934) was an American photographer. The Tang Collection at Skid­ more College contains one photo by her from the mid-1920s.

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 301 4. Punch was an English weekly periodical that began in 1841; it was still in print during Millay’s lifetime.

To Sister Ste. Hélène Steepletop October 26th, 1936 Dear Sister Ste. Hélène: Enclosed are some of the new Father Anselmo poems, together with certain remarks made by other people in the course of the Conversation at Midnight, which lead up to what he says, or follow upon it. As you know, I do not wish to present in Father Anselmo a typical priest, not a photographic reproduction of a priest whom everybody would recognize as the priest of his own parish, but a rather unusually subtle and original person, who, nevertheless, will not say or do anything outside his possibility of speech and behaviour as an orthodox Roman Catholic priest in impeccably good standing. Father Anselmo is a character built up entirely out of my own imagination; nothing that he says is quoted from or in any way that I know derived from anything I have ever read or heard; he is intensely imagined by me, and what he says seems to me to be exactly what he would say; but of course, being technically so ignorant of these matters, I am aware how mistaken I may be, and that the character I have created may not fulfil at all certain indispensable obligations of an authentic Roman Catholic priest. What I want, you see, is not to have this char­ acter accepted both by the clergy and the laity as “a perfect picture of a priest”; what I want is a serious though unofficial “nihil obstat” on Anselmo’s behaviour and remarks.1 I do not know how far he would go in conversation with a group of his friends,—one of whom is an aristocratic liberal and an agnostic; one a communist and an atheist; and one an artist who is very distressed in his mind, longing to believe in something which will give him tranquillity and peace, but not knowing how to go about beginning to believe, and trying to get help from Anselmo. Would Anselmo remain in a room

302  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay where people in argument were using rather rough language (including one very bad word—this word in Latin, however?) Once having obtained permission to dine with Ricardo on this night, may he stay out as long as he wishes? I have not yet decided to what order he should belong: which would give him the most freedom?—would he have the most freedom as a Jesuit? My dear friend, I do not expect you to answer these questions: I would not put such a chore as that upon you. I merely want you to consider Anselmo in the light of these questions as you read the poems, and then telegraph me without any explanation at all which of the poems (I will number them) are wrong. I will then omit these poems entirely from the group which is to appear in Harpers.2 Later on, if they are not too hopelessly off, I will try to correct and improve them, so that they may be suitable to appear in my book next spring. Since it is impossible for me just now to come to St. Paul and talk with you—and I cannot tell you how I long to do just that!—perhaps you can give me the name and address of somebody in New York or some other place near, whom I could consult, if Anselmo is so badly off the track that he needs a major readjustment. (I am hoping fervently that he is not as bad as all that; I think him so nice—and I am so fond of him!) Please give my love to Sister Antonia; and to my other friends there, who were so kind to me, and whom I remember so well. For yourself, as always, my true love and gratitude. Vincent 1. “Nihil obstat”: Latin for “nothing stands in the way” (OED). She is using the term figuratively, to mean that the poems meet with approval from a Catholic point of view. 2. All told, Millay published twenty-eight of her Conversation at Midnight poems in Harper’s Magazine: fourteen in November 1935 and fourteen in January 1937.

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 303

To Robinson Jeffers jan 28 1937 robinson jeffers carmel cal i hope i am the first to tell you that the book of the month club committee has awarded you a twenty five hundred dollar fellowship stop i was there to fight for you but there was no need so many were for you stop please say nothing until this is official announced1 edna stvincent millay 1. Jeffers earned the Book-of-the-Month Club award for Solstice and Other Poems, published by Random House in 1935.

To Sister Ste. Hélène One Fifth Avenue New York April 13, 1937 Darling Sister Ste. Helene: I know you always forgive me when I don’t write you to thank you for your kindness, knowing how truly busy I am, how very hard I work. I rely upon your understanding, and upon your friendship. Here are some more Father Anselmo poems; you may keep them. “Conversation at Midnight” will be published in June, but I wanted you to have these now. All these new poems have the “Nihil obstat” of Father La Farge1 upon them. Eugen went to see him, and took the new poems for him to read. (I simply didn’t have time to wash my hair and find a pair of stockings without a run in them, and get up-town!) I shall go to see Father La Farge later, though; I want to meet him; I want to thank him, too. Eugen says he was really enthusiastic about the poems. He had only

304  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay one suggestion to make: that I change the “large ebony crucifix” of Anselmo to a “small ebony crucifix”! He said that Anselmo would not be likely to wear a large one when he was just going out to dine and talk with some friends. That was the only change he suggested—isn’t it too wonderful? I’m so happy! (And I’m just a little bit proud, too, I’m afraid!) Anyway, I hope you will still be fond of Anselmo, after reading the new poems. Did you know that Eugen is broadcasting now, a sort of “commen­ tator”? He is on the air at 7:45 every Thursday evening over WEAF.2 [Millay added a note in a margin: “7:45 every Thursday evening” and “He is on this coming Wednesday (not Thursday) at 7:30.”] Perhaps you’ve heard him. He’s awfully good. That’s why we’re in town instead of in the country. I shall be at the above address for several weeks longer. If you still like Anselmo, and have a moment to tell me so, please do. And if there’s something you object to, please tell me. There would still be time to change it. I am very happy about Anselmo. I think him a really beautiful person. Love, Vincent 1. Father John La Farge, S.J., who was then an associate editor for the Jesuit magazine America. 2. WEAF was the National Broadcasting Company radio station in New York, beginning in 1926; the call letters were changed to WNBC in 1946 (Eleanor Blau, “Radio City Without Radio: WNBC Is Gone,” New York Times, October 8, 1988).

To Rolfe Humphries One Fifth Avenue April 28, 1937 Dear Mr. Humphries: I am going to try to do the lovely and touching “Llegada” of Emilio Prados.1 But I sha’n’t be able even to look at it with translating it in mind for at least a week; I’m frantically busy just now correcting the proofs of my new book and trying to write a sort of preface for it. In a

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 305

week or so I will take up the poem and try to do it. If I have good luck and it comes fairly easy, I shall be able to do it. But if I find after a few days that it is going to be extremely difficult for me, then I shall send it back to you, though I should be sorry to do so. I realize that this would leave very little time for the poor translator who followed me. But I don’t dare promise it you, I am working so terribly hard as it is this spring. Sincerely yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Millay’s translation of “Llegada / A Federico Garcia Lorca” [“The Arrival (to Federico Garcia Lorca)”] by the Spanish poet Emilio Prados (1899–1962) appeared in . . . and Spain Sings: Fifty Loyalist Ballads Adapted by American Poets, edited by M. J. Benardete and Rolfe Humphries, published by Vanguard Press in 1937.

To Robinson Jeffers newyork ny may 3 1937 robinson jeffers tor house carmel point carmel, cal may i quote your line though joy is better than sorrow joy is not great in my book conversation at midnight stop i will quote correctly and state in foreword that it is yours stop1 be sure to visit us at steepletop when you come east this time do not disappoint us again stop i shall be grateful if you will wire me immediately at one fifth avenue newyork stop affectionate regards to you both. edna stvincent millay 1. Millay included the line; the source is noted in her foreword to Conversation at Midnight: “The line quoted by Carl on page six is from a poem called Joy, by Robinson Jeffers. It is in the volume entitled Roan Stallion, Tamar, and Other Poems” (ix).

306  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

To Rolfe Humphries One Fifth Avenue, New York May 17, 1937 Dear Mr. Humphries: This is bound to be a long letter, and I hope it won’t wear you out. It is not about the Spanish poem; I’ve done some work on that, and hope still to be able to finish it for you, although I’m still not sure. It’s been difficult, surrounded as I have been for the past five weeks by a pack of baying publishers and printers, and far from my own earth and my Spanish dictionary. Also, it started out by being far too typically early-­ Millay, and all that must be changed. I am writing you about your own Latin versions of the three Fatal Interview sonnets. You sent them to me, you wrote, for my amusement. It might interest you, perhaps, to know that they have been my salvation. I never, except through mischance, go anywhere, if it’s only for so short a time as a week-end, without taking with me some book of Latin poetry. When I become so exhausted by my own work that I can neither think nor see, or so twisted and entangled by anxieties, either about personal matters or about the awful mess the world is in, that it seems that if I ever extricate myself at all, it will be with at least a double curvature of the mind, the only thing that can straighten me out is to read Latin poetry. Not that I read it easily. I don’t. I read it slowly and often with extreme difficulty. Yet I read it always with delight, and with no sense of strain, so that when I lay the book down, even if I am tired, I am at the same time serene and exhilarated. All this would sound pretty phoney to most people, I know. I don’t say it to most people. Last December I came to New York to spend a few days only. I meant to bring along my Virgil, because I wanted to memorize the “Ducite ab urbe domum”; for one thing, it has so many words in it that I should like to add to my slender without being elegant Latin vocabulary.1 I left it behind. And in December I came down with the flu. And in January something else happened, and I am still here. I have been working all winter and all spring on my new book—not like a dog, not like a slave; dogs and slaves must be relieved and rested from time to

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time, otherwise they crack up; like a poet, let’s say. And not a syllable of Latin, with the exception of the few lines which I have in my memory, to click my vertebrae into place. You may think I could have gone out and bought myself a book. I couldn’t. In the first place, I was probably attired in an ancient evening-­ gown, a steamer-rug, and a pair of beach-sandals. In the second place, I didn’t want the book later, I wanted it right then. I was like the farmer in the Arkansas Traveller, who never mended the leak in his roof,—because when it rained he couldn’t, and when it didn’t rain it didn’t need it.2 Then one day I opened a letter from you, and out dropped those lovely Latin poems. I took them in my teeth and scurried under the couch with them, and nobody could tease me forth for hours. It is wonderful enough, to me who can’t do it at all, to be able to write poetry in Latin. But to be able to write Latin poetry, is quite another thing. I imagine that you are one of the very few people writing today who can really do it. The requirements are too many: you must know your Latin; you must know and love your Latin poetry, be sensitive to its music which is not our music, be so inside it that you write it from the inside out, shaping your lines and planning your effects naturally and directly in terms of Latin, not in terms of Latinized English; and besides all that, you must be a poet yourself. In illustration of what I mean, take the first of the three poems you sent me; “At, morose, dies veniet cum, murmure nullo,” (I am quoting from memory; the poems are in another room, and my typewriter is on my lap and heavy to drag about. So perhaps that’s wrong, though I don’t think so.) Your “—cui nunc in caespite verna suavia vilia sunt, concubitusque nefas” makes me think of the “desinas ineptire” poem of Catullus, of the part in the middle—I think it begins “Soles olim tibi,” though probably it doesn’t, where he says that “the girl doesn’t like it any more.”3 You are saying something quite different, of course, and the circumstances are so different, yet it has something of that feeling. Then when you say, “Nox perobscura, mea lux,”—that interpolation of yours of “mea lux” is not only beautiful in itself, set against “nox” like that but it has precisely that quality of ironic and angry tenderness which, in the very midst of his despair, Catullus often showed.

308  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay The second poem begins, I think, “Prospera gemmata mane vestita corona.” I don’t understand the “mane.” If it were “manu,” I could understand it,—“gemmata manu.” But probably you mean something which I don’t get at all; without a Latin dictionary to fall back upon, I am very insecure. In this poem you do a thing which is purely classic, not modern at all, except when consciously imitated from the classics (Elinor Wylie did it beautifully in her “The trumpeters of Caesar’s guard   Salute his rigorous bastions With ordered bruit; the bronze is hard,   Though there is silver in the bronze.”) (Again I am quoting from memory, always a dangerous thing to do.) When you describe the uproar of the men in the house and of the horses outside you do it: “Quadrupedantes gravi sonitu quatit ungula pontem”—the first word must be misquoted, never mind; in the next line where you have the word “serena” everything is serene, even the luxurious serenity of “iste fragor,” to say nothing of the line, I think the next line, which is humming like bees with domesticity and peace. I must stop this; you’ll be worn out. I want to say, though, that the “crede mihi” in the first poem, placed just where it is placed, has a charming flavour of “believe me”; also that the repetition of “languida” and of “trita” in the last poem is very effective, as is the use of “Hesperis” at the beginning and “Lucifer” at the end; and the last two lines beginning “Lente, Luna” and “Lente, Sol,” where you get your effect upon the ear, before the mind grasps that the constructions and meanings of the two are going to be different. Please forgive me for running on so. I never write letters. I just wanted to thank you for the poems. And it turned out to be this. 1. Virgil’s Eclogue 8 contains lines by two shepherds: Daphnis and Alphesiboeus; these lines are part of a refrain from Alphesiboeus. As Gregson Davis begins to comment on this poem, “When the second singer, Alphesiboeus, takes up the challenge, we are treated to a prolonged account of magic ritual (words and actions) intended to bind the beloved to the will of the lover” (Virgil’s Eclogues, translated by Len Krisak, introduced by Gregson Davis [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010], xiii). Krisak translates the refrain “ducite ab urbe

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 309 domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnin” as “Bring Daphnis home from town, my songs; bring Daphnis home.” 2. According to A Treasury of American Folklore: Stories, Ballads, and Traditions of the People, edited by B. A. Botkin (1944), “The classic of American humorous folklore is The Arkansas Traveler (1840). Local in origin and allusion, it belongs to the older and larger tradition of the saucy, riddling dialog, or cross questions and crooked answers, between a traveler and a crotchety innkeeper” (321). 3. Poem 8 by Catullus, which begins “Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire.” She has the wrong wording, but she is referencing Poem 8.

To Drake de Kay 1 Fifth Avenue New York, N.Y. May 19th, 1937 1 Dear Mr. de Kay: I cannot do what you and Mr. Van Doren ask of me: I cannot serve on this committee. I am late in replying to your letters, not through negligence, but because I have been trying to decide what to answer. You write to me, “A committee to establish a memorial to Elinor Wylie would not be truly representative lacking your name.” That on the face of it must seem true to anyone knowing my great admiration for Elinor Wylie’s work and our personal friendship. But Elinor Wylie would have been the last to wish me to associate my name for her sake with an institution devoted to the advancement of poetry, in whose judgment in matters concerning poetry I have no confidence. I was, I think, one of the first people to give my name as sponsor to the Academy of American Poets. I was in the beginning very enthusiastic about this enterprise. Having given my name as sponsor, and having heard nothing from this organization for a period of perhaps a year and a half, I wrote, asking how they were progressing, how they proposed to raise funds, what they proposed to do with the funds raised, and what their general policy was to be. I wrote them several letters; and the only satisfaction I received was this: that if I wished to come to New York, I was free to examine their books.

310  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Some time ago, the Academy of American Poets gave a ball in New York, to raise funds for their fellowships. Disliking or objecting to almost everything exemplified by this ball, and feeling sure that the methods of procedure of this organization must consistently be such that I could not approve of them, I withdrew my name from association with the Academy of American Poets. Since then the Academy has awarded, if I am not misinformed, one fellowship: a fellowship of five thousand dollars to Mr. Edwin Markham.2 (Possibly more have been awarded. I am as little acquainted with the activities of the Academy of American Poets now as I was when I was one of its sponsors.) If Mr. Markham was in need of financial help, I am very glad that he has received it. Yet the award of a fellowship of five thousand dollars to a man of eighty-five, even had the later years of that man been as productive of great poetry as the later years of Milton himself, can hardly be looked upon as anything but a gesture to honour an aged poet for past achievements, and a kindly ruse to comfort his remaining years without compromising his self-respect. There are to my knowledge now writing in America, and in my opinion writing at least as well as Edwin Markham ever wrote, several young people, who are financially in great distress. To foster American poetry, one must foster and sustain such people. Let such funds as can be raised in the cause of poetry be given not to the old and finished, but to the young and vigorous, the talented and potent and unrecognized, to encourage them, and to enable them to give their time and energy to writing. Speaking from a mind cleaned for the moment both from the desire to sympathize and the desire to reward, speaking from a mind concerned only with the creation of poetry, I say that the funds entrusted to the Academy of American Poets, and employed by them not to enable some poet to write, but to solace the dimming hours of a poet long since retired, were improperly administered. Being secure in my conviction that the cold and beautiful intelligence of Elinor Wylie must require that any memorial done in her name, and expressing itself in the awarding of fellowships to poets, should be administered coldly and intelligently, not sentimentally, and by persons eminently qualified to judge what poetry is, I must refrain from asso­

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ciating myself with an organization which, although it has arrogated to itself the scholarly title “Academy of American Poets,” is in my opinion unscholarly, sentimental, and totally unfitted to administer such funds as may be raised in Elinor Wylie’s name. Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Drake de Kay was an executive secretary for the Elinor Wylie Poetry Fellowship; he responded to Millay on May 24. 2. Edwin Markham was an American poet (1852–1940), famous for an early collection of poetry titled The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems (1899).

To the Secretary of New York University The Secretary New York University Washington Square, New York

One Fifth Avenue New York May 22, 1937

Dear Sir: This letter contains the answers to the questions which you asked me in your very clear and most considerate letter of May the fourth; it contains in addition some remarks concerning one aspect of your Commencement activities, regarding which you raised no question, but regarding which nevertheless I feel compelled to speak. First let me reply to your questions: Thank you, it will not be necessary for you to send an escort to accompany me to Mrs. Chase’s dinner. There are no gentlemen whose names I should like you to put on your invitation list for the men’s dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria that evening. My address in New York for the period of the Commencement Exercises will be the Hotel St. Regis, Fifth Avenue and Fifty-fifth Street; telephone Plaza 3-4500. My address until the eighth of June will be Steepletop, Austerlitz, N. Y.

312  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay I should be pleased if you would send to Mr. Eugen Boissevain, Austerlitz, N. Y., and to Mr. and Mrs. Charles Ellis, 323 West 112th Street, New York City, cards of admission to the Commencement Exercises. I will bring with me my own doctor’s cap and gown. I shall be pleased to attend the Commencement luncheon; Mr. Boissevain will be with me. I have just had some photographs taken, and will send you one in a few days. Having answered your questions, I come now to that aspect of your Commencement activities regarding which, I said, I felt impelled to speak. I received from Mr. Chase, your Chancellor,1 in a letter dated April 26th, the information that New York University wished to confer upon me on the occasion of its Commencement on the ninth of June, the honourary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. In the same letter Mr. Chase informed me that Mrs. Chase2 would be pleased to receive me as guest of honour at a dinner given for a small group of ladies at the Chancellor’s house on the evening before Commencement. I answered at once, accepting the award of the degree with happiness and pride, and the invitation to dinner with pleasure. In your letter, dated May 4th, I was told for the first time that on the evening of the dinner given in honour of me by the Chancellor’s wife, a quite separate dinner is to be given at the Waldorf-Astoria in honour of the other recipients of honourary degrees, that is, the male recipients. On an occasion, then, on which I shall be present solely for reasons of scholarship, I am, solely for reasons of sex, to be excluded from the company and the conversation of my fellow-doctors. Had I known this in time, I should have declined not only Mrs. Chase’s invitation to dinner, but also, had it appeared that my declining this invitation might cause Mrs. Chase embarrassment, the honour of receiving the degree as well. It is too late to do either now, without making myself troublesome to everybody concerned, which I do not wish to do. I shall attend Mrs. Chase’s dinner with pleasure; and I shall receive the degree the following morning with a satisfaction only slightly tempered by the consciousness of the discrimination against me of the night before.

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Mrs. Chase should be the last, I think, to be offended by my attitude. I register this objection not for myself personally, but for all women. I hope that in future years many women may know the pride, as I shall know it on the ninth of June, of receiving an honourary degree from your distinguished university. I beg of you, and of the eminent Council whose representative you are, that I may be the last woman so honoured, to be required to swallow from the very cup of this honour, the gall of this humiliation. Very sincerely yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay

1. American academic Harry Woodburn Chase (1883–1955). 2. Lucetta Crum Chase (born 1881).

To Rolfe Humphries Steepletop Austerlitz, N. Y. June 14th, 1937 Dear Mr. Humphries: Here it is.1 I hope you won’t hate it. I tried for a time to make a more literal translation of it, but found that for some reason in doing this I seemed unable to get any of the feeling of the original into my lines. I discovered that in some places the only way I could even approximate the mood of the Spanish poem was to soak myself in the mood and then let myself go and write my own stuff . . . that is why it is important to me to say “freely translated.” I don’t know who your editors or who your publishers are, so I am depending on you to make sure that no change whatever, not even so much as the change of a comma, is made in this poem. Of course if I have misunderstood the original in some passage and am giving a wrong impression of it, I should be grateful to you for letting me know, and anxious to make any necessary changes. Sincerely yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay

314  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay I was sorry I could not have luncheon with you and Miss Blake last Thursday. I meant to telephone you, but had no time. 1. Her translation—“The Arrival (To Federico Garcia Lorca)”—of “Llegada / A Federico Garcia Lorca,” by Emilio Prados. The typescript for the original poem includes a note in English: “(Federico Garcia Lorca was executed by the Fascists at Granada in the autumn of 1936)” (Amherst, Rolfe Humphries Papers, Box 14, Folder 16).

To David Morton [Steepletop] June 17, 1937 1 Dear Mr. Morton: I tried to find for you the manuscript of “To One who might have borne a Message,” but could not. If I ever do come across it I will send it you, for yourself, if you’d like it. This is the original manuscript of the poem “Wine from these Grapes,” from which I took the title of the book. You will see that it has a line in it which I afterwards cut out. Sorry it is not in ink, but the first draft of my poems is seldom in ink,—more likely to be done in lip-stick or with a burnt match! I hope this reaches you in time. Please be sure to let us know when you are coming this way; we spend part of our time in the summer on Ragged Island, and I should not want to miss you. Sincerely yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay Our telephone number is Chatham 232 J.

1. Poet and teacher at Amherst College.

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To Rolfe Humphries Austerlitz, New York July 15, 1937 Mr. Rolfe Humphries League of American Writers 125 East 24 Street New York, New York Dear Mr. Humphries: I just came across the enclosed letter1 which I wrote you after having first read your Latin translations of the “Fatal Interview” sonnets.2 I remember why I did not send it at the time. I remember that it sounded to me pompous and affected. But I think it is really neither, unless it is pompous and affected to love Latin poetry. So I am sending it now, just as I wrote it. Perhaps it will please you to know how much I liked your poems. Sincerely yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Millay mailed this letter with her letter to Humphries from May 7, 1937. 2. Humphries translated “Yet in an hour to come, disdainful dust,” “Whereas at morning in a jewelled gown,” and “Moon that against the lintel of the west” from Millay’s Fatal Interview.

To Witter Bynner 1937 aug 27 pm 8 05 witter bynner= dearest hal i am overjoyed that you like conversation at midnight so well stop i began a letter to you weeks ago about that and about your own book which i have been reading with great excitements eden tree is even finer that i remember1 my letter has been pushed aside by a score of less important things such as newspaper feature writers staff photographers

316  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay etc stop it was kind of you to write me you will hear from me soon love= edna.

1. Witter Bynner’s Eden Tree was first published in 1931 by Knopf.

To Arthur Davison Ficke Steepletop, Austerlitz, New York, Sept. 23, 1937 1 Arthur darling: This will be one of the most unpleasant letters you ever received, and I’m sorry. But it’s time I got this matter off my chest and onto yours, where it belongs,—for it’s all your fault, my dear, for persisting in asking such shockingly indiscreet questions. The sonnet was not written to you. When you came at me like a prosecuting attorney the other night in the La Branches’ gun-room, asking me so casually—and I at least six cocktails off my guard,—“To whom did you write that sonnet, Vince?,” I glibly and immediately countered with the only name which in the circumstances it would not be indiscreet to mention: your own. To keep my loosened tongue from folly. That’s all. Except that this is by no means the first time you’ve done that sort of thing to me. I remember your saying to me once, in exactly the same off-hand way—only with a little chuckle, too, that time, suggesting that whatever my reply might be the thing was just a joke,— “Vince, was L. . . . . ever your lover?” My only reply was to rebuke you for your indelicacy in asking such a question. But the rebuke must have been a gentle one. Knowing as you so well know, my dear friend, how reticent, both by nature and by taste, concerning my own private affairs and the affairs of other people, I am, it is wrong of you to do these things to me. But quite aside from that, and looking at it from your own angle, if you love me as you say you do, it is very foolish. For don’t you see, Artie darling, that in the circumstances it is impossible for me to feel at ease with you, and that eventually just out of self-protection I shall avoid being with you whenever possible?

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I know that I must have hurt you. I’m so sorry. But it was no good letting it go like that. Because it couldn’t stop there. Our two distinct and incompatible memories of that moment in the gun-room, would have twisted out of shape every word we ever said to each other again. With love, Vincent 1. Copied by Ficke in The Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay to Arthur Davison Ficke (From December 1912 to December 1922), copied from the originals in July, 1937, part of Ficke’s manuscript collection in the Beinecke Library at Yale. He appends a note to start: “(Note—This astonishing letter reached me at Hillsdale just three weeks after I wrote the note on the preceding page. [Millay said the sonnet ‘And you as well must die, beloved dust’ was ‘written to you (Ficke).’] Nothing about the whole matter is more incomprehensible than the length of time it took her to make up her mind.)”

To James Weldon Johnson Sept. 28, 1937 Dear Mr, Johnson: I am sending you your books by this post. I am so glad you like Conversation at Midnight. You know, I find that I like it, too, even after all the gruelling work it has given me, what with one thing and another. Nothing could please me more than the two adjectives with which you describe it, “magnificent” and “delicious.” (Of course, I’m not at all sure that’s it’s either, but your letter tempted me for a moment into that hashish dream.) We seem always to be going in opposite directions, like the two buckets in the well. This afternoon, for instance, I’m going down to New York; I suppose that when I get on my train at Hillsdale, you’ll be getting on your train at the Grand Central, coming up! I hope it won’t always be like that. This summer has been so short, so small. I think that like “Alice” it ate the cake that said “Eat Me,” and dwindled and dwindled until it was so tiny that it ran out through the crack under the door. If only just once it would nibble at the other cake! Best wishes to you both, Edna St. Vincent Millay

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To George Dillon [Steepletop] Sept. 28, 1937 Dear George: I didn’t get your letter in time to send you a poem for the magazine. I’m awfully sorry about that; I’d have loved to do it for you. It wasn’t just that I had been away and got your letter late. You say you know that I have some unpublished poems; that’s true, I have. But it’s not so easy to get at them as it was when you and I were looking through that black note-book together. You see, not only Conversation at Midnight but all my other poems, too, were burned up in that fire. And I’m so exhausted from digging Conversation at Midnight piece by piece out of my memory, that I hardly have the heart to start excavations again on another site. I’m pretty sure that I can remember most of the poems when I get around to it; I’m just bored with the whole idea. It’s a pity you’re not going to be at Bennington. It’s very near us, and you could have come here week-ends and played tennis on our marvellous new court. We have the best court anywhere around here, clay surface (clay and sharp sand and agricultural salt and calcium chloride, all the proper ingredients), very fast twenty-eight feet from base-line to back-stop and lots of room on the side, too,—almost championship size, much better than the courts at the Country Club in Bennington. Excuse this burst of enthusiasm, but we’re so darned proud of it. Perhaps you’ll play on it next summer. Please let me know what you are going to do, my dear, and where you are going to be. I have a few new poems I’d like to send you sometime, if you’re not too busy to look them over. Let me know. Have you been writing anything? If you have, I beg you to send me something. Please let me hear from you soon. Don’t be unkind, just because I’ve waited so long to answer you. I’ll be better next time. Vincent

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To Mr. and Mrs. Eugenio Lanfranchi [Steepletop] Sept. 29, 1937 Dear Anne and Nino: What perfect darlings you both are! We’ve had more fun with that mysterious and marvellous box than I could possibly tell you. We’ve had spaghetti four times now, and getting better each time; last night they were flawless, better than any we ever had, except yours. Of course the first time we did over-cook them a bit, in spite of Anne’s warning, just as she knew we would. You see, at the end of fourteen minutes we tasted them, to see if they were done, which of course was fatal, because they never taste done until they are mixed with the sauce. So we let them boil a couple of minutes longer. Well, you know. They tasted fine, but they weren’t reserved enough, they had let themselves go. Last night, however, they were very high class. We cooked them just under fourteen minutes. The big Parmesan cheese is such fun. And it tastes so much better when you grate it yourself. I’m the grater; and not the tiniest little black speck escapes my hawky eye, or the minutest little hard lump, either. The rosemary and the origan—are they for flavouring the sauce? We haven’t tried them yet, because Anne didn’t mention them in her recipe. Of course they’re marvellous in other things, soups and dressings for fowls. Herbs get me more excited than anything else that grows, I think. I’m enclosing a post-card to make it easy for you to answer whether or not we should put them in the sauce. You’re always so nice to us. We wanted to do something nice for you, too. But we have no imagination. So I’m sending you a copy of Conversation at Midnight, and my favourite photograph of myself, hoping that if you don’t like the one you’ll like the other. Love from us both, Edna

320  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

To Bill Brann

[October 30, 1937]

w l brann= hotel ambassador= my dear brann i am extremely gratified at the way the horses have been running the past two weeks. challedon ran a beautiful race yesterday and i expect even greater things from him i took as big a like to shaefer as i took a dislike to my former trainer. also seabo seems to have plenty of sense.1 please keep me posted from day to day as to which of my horses are running and where. made money on challedon and wouldnt mind repeating on him or some of my other horses. best regards to you and mrs brann= w l millay 1. Challedon was one of the horses Millay owned at the farm in Maryland managed by Brann, and the one that she prized especially. Louis James Schaefer was Challedon’s trainer. George Seabo was the jockey who rode the horse in races.

To Bill Brann \Glade Valley Farm/ W. L. Millay, Owner1 December 8, 1937 W. L. Brann, Esq. Boynton Beach, Fla. Dear Brann: I was very much relieved to get your reply to my letter and to learn that things are not, on the whole, as bad down there in Maryland as I had feared them to be. No, You had not told me of your purchase for me of the Mare Bataille. I am so delighted to know that I have her at the farm that I forgive you for your oversight in not letting me know of this purchase

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at once. Here is a great pedigree. Not only does she bring us through her sire the blood of Man o’ War, but also, the dam of Mars being by Star Shoot, the blood of Isinglass. And it seems that her second dam is out of a mare by the sire of Sysonby! (I should like to know the name of the Melton mare). (Of course, The Millay2 has Isinglass blood too, the plucky little plater! After all, having been born no bigger than a greyhound, what chances had she to be anything but a dog? She is running today at the Fair Grounds. She has been training well there and gets in light. The distance is ¾ mile. Her record for this distance surpasses that of any – other horse entered with the exception of one which bettered it by 2/5 of a second and which, today, is carrying eight pounds more. The two races which she won in October were at 7 furlongs3 and she was on top by two lengths in one and ahead of Blue Train by a length and a quarter in the second. So, it looks as though this might prove to be her distance). Have we anything out of St. Priscan still at the farm? It seems to me I remember your telling me of a very likely foal of her. Would that be Harp Weaver? I am happy, also, to know that you were present in some guise or other at the Whitney sale and that you were able to get Percent. I still don’t think you should have stopped on Peplum so soon. But I was ready to take your reason for this. As for Esposa, perhaps you are right that she has been over-run. If that is true, we certainly don’t want her. Your remark, however, that good race mares don’t make good brood mares could be (and if I had the time at the moment, would be) contested. St. Germans, while not winning the Derby, came in second, and won the Coronation Cup, and has been the sire of two Kentucky Derby winners, Twenty Grand and Bold Venture. St. Germans, except that Bold Venture bowed a tendon after winning the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, would undoubtedly have been classed the best sire of 1936 as he was of 1931. And his dam, Hamoaze, was a racer. She came in second in the Jockey Club Stakes in 1914. And am I crazy, or was not Artful the dam of Regret? However, it is probably just as well that we have not acquired Esposa, even supposing we could have done so, I am sure she would have come at a very big price and would have been a problematical investment. I am very well pleased with the

322  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay mares we now have at stud, although we lack at least one which is the one I am looking for for Challenger. Yet this might prove to be Bataille. (By Challenger II out of Bataille sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?) I am greatly relieved to hear that the accident to French Princess was no more serious than it now appears to be. As for the arrangement of the paddock for the mares at my farm, I am satisfied with the honesty of your report, and with the good intention of your procedure. But I insist and maintain that to have our own brood mares already bred to Challenger running free in the paddock with mares from outside sent in to be bred to Challenger is a bad idea and a risky thing to do. You say there was no trouble at all for two months. Why was there no trouble? Because the strange mare was quiet and not excited. It was, however, inevitable, or at least expected that she should become excited and excitable in the course of time. Otherwise, why was she there? She was pretty certain to get into a condition in which, not only would she become excited, but in which she would also excite the other mares. It could be expected that some of them would bother her and fool around with her, and although you said nothing of the manner in which French Princess became injured, my suspicion is that it was in just this way that she got kicked. You tell me this is the usual procedure on farms generally. I tell you that even if this is the procedure on all the farms in America, England, Australia and the Argentine, I don’t give a damn, it is a bad procedure. If it is necessary that our own mares should act as thermometers to register the heat of mares from outside sent in to be served by Challenger, then I suggest that we use for this purpose broken-down platers—certainly not our own best brood mares and especially not when they are in foal to Challenger. Perhaps I have this all wrong. Perhaps the mare had already been bred. You tell me nothing of the actual circumstances. Here I am absolutely in the dark about it all, tramping the floor and gnawing my fingers. I do not blame you for thinking that I am too fully occupied with other matters to be able to give much attention to my horses. In this you are both wrong and right. I am so very busy with other matters that I should not, perhaps, take the time to follow all their movements as closely as I do. Yet, I wish you to understand once and for all that nobody (and here I make no exception) is more interested in every aspect of their de-

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velopment and performance than I am, and that nobody follows their activities more closely. This being the case, will you please keep me acquainted more fully than you have done in the past with every detail of what is going on at the farm and at the tracks where they are running. You say you think we should sell, or try to sell, since these are not very good selling times, Savage Beauty.4 If she really has a bad knee, of course we ought to try to get rid of her; although we must not forget that wherever she runs, if she should win a race, she takes Challenger’s name with her, no matter how low she goes. Apart from the knee, and supposing that it could be improved, I see no reason why she should suffer from the handicappers next year any more than any other fouryear-olds must do! There must be a pretty good reason why four-yearolds are required to carry more weight than three-year-olds. It must be supposed, and accepted, that the four-year-olds are stronger, more firm, more fully developed, and better able to carry the added weight than a younger horse. Savage Beauty, you say, is small. She always has been small. She was small, when this summer, as a three-year-old, she won the New England Oaks. She would gain as much, in proportion, from this added year, as any other horse and, too, I see no reason why, unless she is really disabled, we should not run her. Naturally, as you say, we cannot run her in a claiming race. But not, my dear fellow, because somebody might claim her, but because we cannot afford, for the sake of the name of Challenger, to do so. We cannot afford to have it said of her that she is “coming down here” and therefore has a chance to win. And don’t forget that if we lose her, this is probably what will happen. I think we should consider carefully keeping her in Maryland and either running her or breeding her to a horse from outside. We could, of course, breed her to Swatter, and this might not be such a bad idea. In any case, since the foals of Challenger insist upon winning races in one class or another, and since, in this way his name is continually being seen and noticed, we must try to keep the races in which his foals win of as high an order as possible. Possibly, I think if her knee does not get worse we should keep her and run her for us next year. But I think we must not ever again try to run her in the mud. You write me that she works very well in the mud— that she does not mind it. I tell you that she does not mind, perhaps,

324  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay being untidy and disheveled in a place where there is nobody at all, or hardly anybody, at all, looking on, at an hour so early in the morning that it is almost still dark. But, I tell you, the moment the silks and the colors go up on her she knows, and she knows what the sound of the bugle means, and that the club house and grand stand are full—not empty, and that everybody is waiting to have a look at her. You might think all this a lot of sentimental nonsense. All right, supposing it were, you can’t deny that in her morning work-outs she is less likely to have mud thrown in her face than she is in an actual race where a couple of horses get started ahead of her. If you have a strong reason for wishing to sell her, give me that reason, because you have not given it to me yet. I still don’t think that Schaefer should have startled Challephen against Seabiscuit and Esposa over a fast track. You say that you expected Seabiscuit to be scratched. I say (and this is my last word on that subject) that I expected Challephen to be scratched. I have no time at the present to reply to all matters brought up in your letter but I can say that you are doing very well in your attempt to bring order out of things down there and I am very pleased by this. I can see that much of it must have been discouraging to you. I am sure that you have taken scrupulous pains to put these matters in order and I hope and I also trust that they will soon be in order to the satisfaction of both of us. I have every hope for a real success with my horses. There is one thing, and this is a matter of the greatest importance, which I must not fail to touch upon before I end this letter. After considerable thought on the subject, I have firmly decided to restrain my horses in the future from running as two-year-olds. In my opinion, and it is the opinion of many, no good has ever been done to a horse by running him as a two-year-old, and many horses have been harmed by it. The get of Challenger, which is an English horse, whose whole style and stamina were built up by English procedure would do much better, in my opinion, to take their time in growing and forming their bones and muscles without the strain of coming to race as two-year-olds, fully prepared by daily long gallops to run easily over a long track without tiring. Challenger’s colts, in spite of an occasional possible exception, are not sprinters. They are long distance runners. They are inclined to be a bit slow in

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getting started, and it is my belief that they are a bit slow in getting their growth and strength. If I should be right about this, then it is an unforgivable thing to send them out in the Spring as two-year-olds for a threefurlong or five-and-one-half-furlong test. In the Autumn, perhaps, if we see a really good prospect, we might enter a filly for the Selima Stakes or some colt or filly for the Jockey Club. Yet of the wisdom, even of this, I am not quite sure. It is extraordinary how few winners of the Jockey Club Stakes at two years have won the Kentucky Derby the following Spring. As for The Schemer, since you seem inclined toward Woodward’s attitude that the less a mare has been raced, the better brood mare she is likely to be, why consider putting her back into racing at all? Why not decide to keep her for a brood mare and breed her to the best stallion we can find? I should prefer an English stallion, but as I am not sufficiently acquainted with her bloodline on her dam’s side, I can give no advice about this. Blenheim, even if his book were not full, and even if his fee were not so fantastically high ($2,500) I think I should be a little wary of. If you will send me her bloodline I shall be able to think about this matter more constructively. Also, will you please send me a copy of the full pedigree of Challenger? I seem to have mislaid it, and though I have a great deal of it in my head, there are plenty of blank spots which at moments I would give a lot to be able to fill in. Of course, it might be remembered that if Esposa has been abused as a racer, Bataille also has been raced plenty. As a four-year-old she started eighteen times, winning only once. Since it must be that you find her now, as a six-year-old, in excellent condition, no harm will have been done. The fact that she did not win very much as a four-year-old will not, at least in your eyes, be against her. And she has a flawless pedigree, which Esposa has not; and of course, it is above all the blood that we must consider—that and the conformation. (Yet we should not forget that the sire of Esposa, Espino, defeated Display, not a great horse but by the sire of Man o’ War and himself a big money-winner, in the Saratoga cup in 1926 and in that same year won the Lawrence Realization). Schaefer seems to me to have considerable sense in choosing his jockeys. Of course, Wagner has come down considerably since two years ago when he was, I think, third in the list of riders of winning mounts. Was he suspended for a time last year? I don’t remember.

326  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay By the way, not that I want him or ever did want him up on any horse of mine, is Don Meade still on the ground?5 Yours, et cetera, Glade Valley Farm WLM:M W. L. Millay, Owner P. S. This is too important a matter to be put in a postscript, but after all, you did not think it sufficiently important at the time it was done, to impart it to me: I like very much the change in the name of the farm. It was obvious, in view of the changed conditions, that it had to be changed. I had tried to think of something good, but could decide on nothing. Your choice is excellent. P. P. S. Molasses Bob was entered at Narraganset but didn’t run. O’Hara was disqualified, so the event went to The Governor. 1. Bill Brann wrote to Millay on December 22, 1937, beginning: “Dear Miss Millay:—I am wondering if you will be a little amused that I am still amusing myself with the idea of your letter!” Daniel Mark Epstein, in What Lips My Lips Have Kissed (2001), describes her communications with Brann: “During the mid- to late 1930s, when Millay was ‘ill’ and reclusive and complaining to her literary friends of ‘epistophobia’ (the absolute incapacity to write letters), she was typing hundreds of pages of remarkable letters to William L. Brann in the utmost secrecy. She signed her letters W. L. Millay, Owner; he signed his W. L. Brann, Manager, from farms in Florida, Maryland, and Arizona” (250). 2. A racehorse owned by H. Nellor. 3. One furlong equals an eighth of a mile. 4. Savage Beauty is a horse named after a line in Millay’s poem “Assault,” from Second April: “Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass.” Attentive to reviews, Millay would likely have seen the “Briefer Mention” review of Second April, along with A Few Figs from Thistles and The Lamp and the Bell, which considers her to have “a youthful preoccupation with death and ‘savage Beauty’ ” (The Dial, September 1921, 373). 5. Don Meade, a jockey with a history of suspensions, had been suspended in Florida for “betting on horses other than those he rode” (“Jockey Don Meade Reinstated in Florida,” Los Angeles Times, August 13, 1938, A7).

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To Deems Taylor Steepletop December 30, 1937 Dear Deems: Please hear me out, before you start abusing me for not having written you before. (Or perhaps you have forgotten that many weeks ago you sent me your book, and that up to now I have not even had the courtesy to acknowledge it.1 Anyway, this letter is about that.) You see, I’ve been sick in bed for about two months,—first with a hateful silly cold that wouldn’t go away, and; second, with inoculations against colds administered by a hateful silly doctor who wouldn’t go away (That’s not true; I just said that to be hateful and silly; he was really very sensible and nice and went away immediately after having jabbed my arm full of loathsome moribund germs extracted from some utter stranger) In any case, I’m getting better now, and yesterday went outdoors for the first time and took a good long walk in the snow, at least as far as from the drawing-room to the wood-shed and back. I’m just reading your book now; I’ve got halfway through it. It takes a long time to read it, because reading it involves re-reading it, lines, paragraphs, even whole chapters, even reading whole chapters aloud to your \ones/ husband, things like that . . . it brings down your \ones/ reading-speed-average. Deems, your whole personality—your tenderness, your enthusiasm, your wit, your uncompromising compromises, your gravity, your honesty, your despair—it is all in this lovely book. I don’t know anybody who writes more truly expressively than you do. Every line of it has been a delight to me, for one reason or another reason, and I realize with happiness that when I shall have finished it, I sha’n’t be through with it at all. Thank you, and love, Edna P.S. Thinking of your chapter on Wozzeck, it occurred to me that you might be interested in the following (if I’ve told you this already, never mind, just read it): You say, “I have never heard any excerpts from the score of Wozzeck played in concert. It is quite possible that, divorced from the stage action

328  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay of which it is so eloquent an interpreter, the music might sound arbitrary and formless.”2 Well, it doesn’t. At least, to me it didn’t. I think I was one of the few people really interested in music, to be fortunate enough to hear the score of Wozzeck just as music, not seeing it as opera, not knowing that it was an opera, not knowing anything about the story, not knowing that there was a story. I heard it over the radio. I don’t know whether or not I heard the whole of it; perhaps not all of it was broadcast. At any rate, I was visiting friends in New York, and we were all going out to have cocktails somewhere. Somebody said, “Oh, that Wozzeck ought to be coming on now; let’s tune in for a minute and see what it sounds like.” “What is it?” I asked. “Oh, it’s that thing people are talking about; some people like it and some people hate it.” That was all I knew about it when I first heard it coming over the air. “Oh, for God’s sake, shut it off!” somebody said. “Leave it alone,” I growled. “Are you coming, or aren’t you?” somebody said. “I’m not,” I said; “shut up or clear out; I want to hear this.” So I heard it, all alone in the apartment. There were voices in it, only they weren’t singing; they were howling and gurgling and groaning; I hadn’t the faintest idea what they were so excited about, but I caught on right away that it was something pretty vital, or pretty lethal, or both. And as for the music—I don’t know when I’ve ever felt so obliged to listen to anything (except perhaps once to the Elektra when I heard it in Vienna); every drop of musical intelligence and receptiveness I have seemed to be recruited and mustered to listen to this thing.3 And it was no use afterwards telling me it wasn’t music. Weakness doesn’t so very easily, I think, masquerade as power, or paucity of ideas as controlled imagination, or wilful meandering as form. (I noticed with amusement that I said “as for music” just as if the voices had nothing to do with the music; they had, though. I don’t know just what. In fact, the whole experience of listening to Wozzeck would have been, I feel sure, bewildering and possibly infuriating, if it had not been exalting!) (over) If your publisher would like something from me to use in advertising, I’d

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be glad to let them have any sort of statement you like—but I suppose it’s too late now. I’m awfully sorry. 1. Deems Taylor published Of Men and Music (New York: Simon and Schuster) in 1937. In his introduction, Taylor notes that these writings are from prior radio talks and articles and reviews in newspapers and journals. The work was popular, and by 1944 the book was in its eleventh edition. 2. The quotation is from the chapter in Taylor’s book titled “A Masterpiece,” which focuses on the opera Wozzeck (1925) by Alban Berg (1885–1935). 3. Elektra (1909) was an opera by the German composer Richard Strauss (1864–1949).

To Mary Kennedy [Steepletop] January 12, 1938 Mary, darling, This is just to send you my love. I don’t know where you are, but I know that I think of you very often, and wonder how you are. Please let me know, if you have time. I want to express how sad I felt about your mother. She was so lovely. I shall never forget how sweet she was to me when I just saw her after my own mother died. (It would be hopeless to copy that & try to make it look neat—it’s not my pen, it’s I, who always trip and stammer when that subject is brought up)—My love to you, Mary. Edna

To Bill Brann [Steepletop] April 18, 1938 W. L. Brann, Esq. Boynton Beach, Fla. Dear Bill, I am dictating this letter because I want you to hear from me before you leave Florida and I am just too tired to thump it out for myself. It was sweet of you to send me the orange blossoms. There is no

330  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay fragrance like that anywhere, at least, none that I have ever smelled. I was delighted with them. I am thrilled about Challephen beating Aneroid.1 How terribly exciting! These colts of Challenger come along slowly; that’s what it is. What did you call the Simpatica filly? (I noticed that your man in Walkersville refers to her in his letter to you as the “Sun Beau filly”). Apparently, you think the Simpatica strain more important, at least, that’s the side you seem to wish to stress. I thought of Telepathy and Ugin thought of Antipathy. They are both good names I think. Ugin sent you back the pedigrees I believe, some time ago. I would have sent them back long ago but I wished to keep copies of them and had nobody at the time to copy them. No, I am not keeping very good track of the ponies anymore. I took the Racing Form nearly all winter but have let it drop and now hardly give a glance at the sporting page of the newspaper. I have been terribly busy, of course, since the end of December with the poetry of the Guggenheim applicants. You know all about that. But it was fun playing horse, wasn’t it? Perhaps we will do it again some day. Love From Vincent 1. Challephon, one of Millay and Brann’s horses, a longshot in the Southern Maryland Handicap, had recently won that race.

To Professor Elizabeth Hazelton Haight Miss Elizabeth Hazleton Haight c/o Vassar College Poughkeepsie, New York

July 9, 1938

Dear Elizabeth, Forgive me for dictating this letter. My right shoulder is all lamed up with too much tennis. Isobel Simpson was here the other day and we talked a great deal

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about Latin poetry as we always do when we are together, always reading it aloud to each other. (She was on her honeymoon as it happens, but that’s entirely inconsequential.)1 I have always wondered whether or not the Horace “Otium divos rogat in patenti” was snitched from Catullus’s “Otium, Catulle, tibi molestum est.”2 Of course, the Catullus stanza has always seemed to me merely an exercise in the Sapphic strophe, (although the “perdidit urbes” came out pretty well) anyway, it has nothing whatever to do with his translation from Sappho which precedes it. Indeed, in one edition of Catullus which I have, this stanza is separated entirely from the preceding three and numbered LIb. Yet although possibly inspired by it, somehow the Horace poem seems less light, seems to me to have more feeling in it. Still, he might have got the idea from a stanza of Catullus and then written from that start a better poem than Catullus’s poem. It is striking that both poems use the word ‘otium’ (in one form or another) three times and that both are in the Sapphic strophe. This would hardly seem to be pure coincidence. I wish someday when you are not too busy you would tell me what you think about all this. Probably you will tell me you explained it at length to me in class long ago and that I have simply forgotten all about it; in which case, refresh my memory. I am curious. After reading a great many other things together, Isobel said that her pupils at the Brearley School preferred the eclogues of Virgil to all his other poetry. I said that I preferred the Georgics. In spite of the beauty of the Aeneid, I never really quite liked it, and I think for a purely feminine, unaesthetic and ignoble reason. I have always thought that Aeneas was what is vulgarly known as a “heel,” walking out on Dido the way he did. True, he said at the end that he never had promised her anything.3

“        nec coniugis umquam praetendi taedas aut haec in foedera veni.

He’s so dumb, too, saying to her, “    si te Karthaginis arces Phoenissam Libycaeque aspectus detinet urbis quae tandem Ausonia Teucros considere terra invidia est? ”

332  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay As if he were proving a point; as if that had anything to do with it! I am all with her when she says,     “nec tibi diva parens, generis nec Dardanus auctor, perfide,” Still, it is awful how a woman can make a man want to go—go anywhere. You have no idea how much Latin poetry I still read and how much it means to me and how much of this happiness (far and above one’s everyday happiness, natural happiness because the sun is shining, etc.) I owe to you. My Latin is no better now than it ever was and you, God knows, know how bad it was. But it is still as fervent. Please write me someday. Love, Vincent Do you hate me for this? I haven’t time any more to read Virgil without a translation on the opposite page. I never in my life until last year bought or even looked into a translation of any Latin poet—that was the sin against the Holy Ghost. But last year I think I grew up about it. (Though I should, of course, have written and asked you first). I am no longer a student in college trying to pass an examination. E. ST. V. M. 1. Isobel Simpson was one of Millay’s friends from Vassar, class of 1920; after graduating, she taught Latin at the Winchester School in Pittsburgh, and in the classics department at the Brearley School in New York City. She married George Tibbits Licht on July 2, 1938. 2. Horace’s Ode 2.16 begins: “Otium divos rogat in patenti / prensus Aegaeo” (“A quiet life is what a man prays the gods to grant him when caught in the open Aegean”). “Otium, Catulle, tibi molestum est” (“Idleness, Catullus, does you harm”) appears near the end of Poem 51 of Catullus. (Horace, Odes and Epodes, translated by Niall Rudd; Catullus, Catullus. Tibullus. Pervigilium Veneris, translated by F. W. Cornish, J. P. Postgate, and J. W. Mackail, revised by G. P. Goold [Loeb Classical Library, 2021].) 3. “nec coniugis umquam . . .”: From Book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid: “I never held out a bridegroom’s torch or entered such a compact” (lines 338–339) and “si te Karthaginis arces . . .” “If the towers of Carthage and the sight of Libyan city charm you, a Phoenician, why, pray, grudge the Trojans their settling on Ausonian land?” (lines 347–351) “nec tibi . . .” “False one,

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 333 no goddess was your mother, nor was Dardanus founder of your line” (lines 365–366). (Virgil, Eclogues. Georgics. Aeneid: Books 1–6, translated by H. Rushton Fairclough, revised by G. P. Goold [Loeb Classical Library, 2021].)

To Eugene Saxton July 18, 19381 I put him first on my list of recommender/applicants; I was and am very enthusiastic about his original work. It would seem that the Faust has a good chance of being really first-class—if I were you I would grab it. It is apparently true that Rockwell Kent wants to do the illustrations.2— E. St. V. M. 1. This was a postscript that Millay added to a letter written by Eugen to express her support of C. F. MacIntyre for a Guggenheim Fellowship. 2. MacIntyre did publish his translation of Faust, with illustrations by Rockwell Kent, through New Directions (1941). Millay’s publication of “The Ballad of the Harp Weaver” in Vanity Fair (June 1922) is accompanied by a drawing by Rockwell Kent.

To George Dillon [Steepletop] September 5, 1938 George Dillon, Esq. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse 232 East Erie Street Chicago, Illinois Dear George: I am very happy that you liked the poems I sent you. Of course, particularly happy that you liked the new ones. You say you would like a group of seven. I am sending you \five/ more from which to choose the extra three. Two of these, “The Fitting” and “Fog off the Coast of Dorset” (under a different title then though) you have seen before.1 In “The Fitting” I have made two changes which I think are good. I have changed “secret eyes” to “guarded eyes” and “quiet body” to

334  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay “secret body.” The second change you yourself suggested if, perhaps, you remember. I should like very much to have you use this poem as one of the three. Possibly you will find “Sonnet in Tetrameter” a bit too early Millay for your purposes although the end, of course, is not so. \I suggest leaving this out—but let me know. I should like The Fitting to go in, if you still like it—partly because most of your readers will understand French./ I hope you will like the “Song for Young Lovers.” I rather think the fog poem is the one that really should be struck out. I hope my feeling about this does not rouse your stubborn nature to a point \where/ you wish to include this one at all costs even at the cost of sacrificing “The Fitting” which I should love to have appear in Poetry. If you have any suggestions to make, for God’s sake, make them. Does the order in which you print the poems depend greatly on the size of the page or can the poems be, up to a certain point, arranged with such things as differing metres and different themes in mind? Anyway I think the following order for the seven poems might be a good one: “Inert Perfection,” “Song for Young Lovers,” “The Fitting,” “What Savage Blossom,” “Intention to Escape from Him,” \The Road to the Past/, “Truce for a Moment.” If you prefer the fog poem to one of the others and wish to insert it instead, let me know right away so that I can think it over. I think this group of seven as I have arranged it would be not bad.2 Harpers Magazine has “The Ballad of Chaldon Down”; it will appear in the November issue. I am dismally aware that I should have kept this poem for you because I know how much you liked it. But Harpers wanted a bunch of things and as I was hard at work at the time, they were all sent off without my giving the matter much thought; all that I did was to look over them carefully to be sure that I still liked them all and off they were hustled. Harpers will print eight poems of mine in their October number, four in the November. This is a long and rather bumpy letter and I shall have hardly time to go over it before it is rushed off to the airplane for Chicago. I hope everything is clear. If not, please let me know. Please let me know anyway. It is great fun having some of my poems in Poetry again, especially now that you are its editor.

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I have been for a long time without anybody to talk with about my poetry, any other poet I mean. Most of the other poets who are my friends or good acquaintances dislike my new stuff and loathe the work of most of the new poets I think highly of. I know so well how you feel about poetry and about me as a poet and about me, that I put these things into your hands a little blindly. If you do not really think them good you will tell me. As always,     Vincent 1. “Fog at Daybreak” is a draft title of “Impression: Fog Off the Coast of Dorset”; Millay noted that she wrote it in Dorset: “Lulworth Cove” on “April 16, 1934” (Yale). 2. Millay’s ordering was followed, save for the addition of “Sonnet in Tetrameter”—to make eight poems total—prior to “Truce for a Moment.”

To Bill Brann [Steepletop] September 9, 1938 Mr. W. L. Brann Upper Hollow Farm Green River, New York My dear Brann: I am pleased about Challedon. He seems like a good colt. Of course, you neglected to tell me what he was up against so I can’t form much opinion, as up here in this neck of the woods I am pretty well out of touch with things. I wish you would time some of his workouts and let me know. And don’t just let me know the time, let me know whether he has been breezed or what? What about the Jockey Club Stakes? I feel sort of against it. If I am not mistaken, the only colt that ever won both that and the Kentucky Derby was Twenty Grand,1 and me, what I am out for is that wreath of roses—or dandelions, or what ever is cheap next Spring. As for your telegram from Narragansett on the subject of Savage

336  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Beauty’s race, if you pull one like that on me again I am going to be looking around for a new manager and I mean this, so don’t laugh. I took that telegram over the wire myself and it was exactly ten years as the snail crawls, between the phrase “little Beauty never appeared more charming” and the phrase “all the colts excepting just one.” When it came to me, when it actually dawned upon me—and I guess the sun was about an hour up that time before I saw the light—that the filly was beaten I said “Jesus God” right into the ear of the operator and he answered, “Yes, m’am” or “Yes, sir” or something. He was pretty rattled, too, I guess. He seemed to feel sorry for me. “So she didn’t win it,” I howled. “No,” he answered, sadly. And you-you, well you know better than I do what you are, didn’t even tell me what colt beat her. Now look here: I stand second to none in my love of good clean horse-play. You can pull a chair out from under me and I laugh along with the rest. But when you pull a horse out from under me—well, never mind, I am choking to death. Yours, [signed] W. L. Millay W.L. Millay P.S. Are the horses well? Are they really well? I don’t mean did the Beauty get sun-burned a bit about the brow band? I don’t even mean did Challedon shinbuck? What I mean is, have they caught anything? Do they act as if they were catching anything? I am anxious. You know what I mean. At least, you ought to. “A word to the wise,” they say, “is sufficient.” Just how many long long letters I will have to write to you on the subject is something we’ll have to find out. P.P.S. And in the near future! 1. Twenty Grand raced from 1930 to 1935, winning the Belmont Stakes and the Kentucky Derby in 1931.

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To George Dillon [Steepletop] September 21, 1938 Dear George: Herewith is the corrected proof. There are only two changes to be made, as you see. I hope you will be able to fit the closing parenthesis into the line. Through an oversight this was omitted from the typed copy sent you. I agree with you that it is too bad the last line of “The Fitting” and three last lines of the “Sonnet in Tetrameter” have to be run over to another page. But if we start playing with this arrangement we may get into even worse trouble, besides losing entirely the sequence of the poems as they are now printed which seems to be the best possible order for them; so let it go according to the dummy you sent me. As for the word “aghast” in “Sonnet in Tetrameter,” since you feel as you do about it, I would give a great deal to have more time to think the question over. I have spent several hours, since your letter reached me, trying to think of another word better or even as good, and I can think of nothing. The simple word “bereft” might be good except that I cannot, I think, use “bereft” followed so closely by “buried brief ” and I am unwilling to sacrifice the phrase “buried brief Eternal.” As I wrote the poem I did not mean the word “aghast” to give the impression of violent emotion which it conveys to you, but rather as meaning “struck with amazement” which is the second meaning given it in the Oxford Dictionary. Perhaps, after all, the violence of the emotion shown in the opening of this poem is balanced by the quiet philosophical quality of the close. In any case, I would be scared to death to make a change too quickly in a poem I have worked over so long and with so much care. I am very glad that they are to appear in Poetry. I imagine that, although you like these poems, you might very well have preferred poems less early-Millay in character; poems more concerned with, apparently, things going on in the world, outside myself today; poems more, if we may still use that old-fashioned word, “modern”; but some of your other contributors will probably supply the revolutionary element (there is no crack of any kind meant here, even supposing one could be construed

338  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay from it, but you said that Stephen Spender and Malcolm Cowley would probably be among your contributing poets for October).1 I hope the whole thing will be a great success and that your second year as editor of Poetry will start under the happiest of auspices.2 When I think of my reading engagement in Chicago, it makes me happy to remember that you will be there. I think I should feel lonely in Chicago without you. Love, Vincent P.S. If anything goes wrong, even at this late date, with these poems of mine,—I mean to say, that if even now you come across something which you urgently feel should be changed, telegraph me at once and I will see if I can help. 1. The October issue of Poetry did include Stephen Spender and Malcolm Cowley; Millay’s poems led off the issue. 2. George Dillon was editor of Poetry from 1937 to 1949.

To Sister Ste. Hélène [Steepletop] Dec. 29, 1938 Darling, darling Sister Ste. Helene, my heart nearly broke when I read your letter. It had not occurred to me that you might still be in Los Angeles. I knew of course that you were to go out there, for you had written to me that you were going, but I did not know that you were going there to stay; I thought you were just being borrowed, in somewhat the same way that Father La Farge goes from place to place; I do not know much about these things, you see, but at least it would never have entered my mind that St. Catherine’s would let you go for good— and I must say, and underscore it—that I consider it very stupid of them! The day that Brentwood Heights was on fire—the worst day—I was on the Warner Brothers’ lot with my friend Roland Young; he was making a picture there.1 We went out into the street to watch the awful smoke rolling down over the hills. Had I known that you were there I should have taken a taxi at once and gone to you; but it never crossed my mind;

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I do not remember ever having heard the name Brentwood Heights before that day. But you, my dear, how did it happen that you did not know I was to read in Los Angeles?—so many people knew! I spoke in a hall that seated—so they told me—over three thousand and two hundred people, and it was packed—I believe it was the Philharmonic Auditorium.2 (I spoke without amplifiers, too,—you would have been proud of me. I hate the horrid gadget so that I made them turn it off, much against their will and their advice. Yet it seemed that everybody could hear me; at least, I gave the people every chance to complain, if they wanted to, and have the thing turned on again, but nobody called out, “Louder!” Of course, perhaps they were just being polite; but people are not always so polite in such circumstances; and I was very pleased) And you were not there! Oh, well, very likely you could not have been there anyway, since it was in the evening,—though I must confess I think it unwise in the long run not to let people listen to poetry, or listen to music, or look at paintings at any time at all of the day or night, if they really want to; so few people really want to. And it’s not as if early Mass were so very early. (Do you remember that I went to Mass once at St. Catherine’s?— with a knotted handkerchief over my hair, to appease St. Paul?)3 You asked me about “The Ballad of Chaldon Down.” It is a true story. The lady who “came from over the sea” was I, and the man “as sick as mortal man could be” was my very dear friend Llewelyn Powys, nearly dying of tuberculosis. I cabled him, when I heard how ill he was, that I was leaving for England at once to see him. (The “green and silver frock” was in reality a very sturdy tweed suit made by a London tailor) Everything is described in the ballad almost exactly as it really happened. The names of the places are all real. Of course I am too used to living in the country to start out from Lulworth Cove for a five mile tramp “through heather and brake” by an unfamiliar path through the wildest kind of Dorset coastland without a soul to ask a question of, “ \With/ heels of slippers built for town.” Otherwise the story is quite true. And he got better. He is in Switzerland now, planning to go home to England in the spring. Darling, after I read your letter last night I took the little cross you sent me from its card and fastened its chain about my throat, and

340  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay presently I went to sleep with it still on. So that your gentle Mary Conceived Without Sin was with me all night until morning. Eugen is ever so pleased with the medal of St. Christopher; he will attach it to his car the first time he takes it out,—it is too snowy here now for us to be able to get about much. Speaking of St. Christopher reminds me of a story which I heard lately and which seems to me charming. Perhaps you have heard it, too, but I shall risk that chance and tell it you, for I want you to be sure to know it. Perhaps you read a few months ago that a big and very exciting match had been arranged between the two outstanding horses of the year, Seabiscuit, a Californian, and War Admiral, an eastern horse: they were to fight it out, just the two of them (at the Pimlico track in Maryland, I think it was) and so decide once and for all which was the greatest horse of the year.4 This was not a “race,” strictly speaking; no other horses might enter it; it was a “match” arranged for just these two. It was to be run over a fairly long distance for this country, a mile and a quarter or something like that. Those who were privileged to see it say that it was a beautiful and thrilling sight and something they will never forget ( I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, or some such place) They say they ran almost neck and neck for nearly a mile, and nobody could guess which the winner would be; but finally Seabiscuit began slowly but stoutly to draw away, and he beat the Admiral by about three lengths, a bad beating, and of course a decisive victory. Now I come to the part of my story which I find so charming. Seabiscuit belongs to Mr. and Mrs. C. S. Howard of California; Mrs. Howard is a Roman Catholic. It is well known to everybody who follows the races and race-track talk at all, that Mr. and Mrs. Howard love Seabiscuit; that they do not just prize him, as many owners do, because he is a valuable animal and wins big purses for them; that they have a genuine and very strong affection for him just for himself, for his character and personality, because he does such silly and unexpected things, such as suddenly yawning and making funny faces. Even in so supposedly matterof-fact a paper as the Daily Racing Form—the official racing sheet of the whole United States from coast to coast—I once read the phrase, quite unblushingly set down, “Howard loves Seabiscuit.”

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In the afternoon of the match, when both horses had been saddled, and their jockeys were up, and they ready to leave the paddock for the track, Mrs. Howard was seen to approach Seabiscuit and pin a small object into his saddle-cloth. Afterwards it was discovered what it was: it was the medal of St. Christopher! Of course, there is no doubt that Mrs. Howard wanted her horse to win, not only for the sake of her husband and herself, the pride they would feel, and for the big purse of money, too; but also for the sake of Seabiscuit,—for a horse always seems to know what is expected of him, and how important the occasion is, and it can just about break a horse’s heart sometimes to be beaten (poor little Admiral!). But I think that she did it also—and perhaps chiefly—to guard him from mishap and accident on his journey; for it is not infrequent at a race-track for a fast-running horse to stumble and break a leg, and in such an instance, since for some reason the fractured bones of horses do not knit and heal as ours do, the veterinarian, who is always on hand, is immediately called for, and the horse is at once destroyed. So I do not think that St. Christopher could have been so very much put out at being asked to give his protection to what was, after all, only a horse in a horse-race. This is a long letter. But since through some unfortunate circumstance I was not able to talk to you, it is fun to write to you. A happy New Year, darling, and my love, Vincent This letter was held up for a long time after I wrote it, because I did not wish to disappoint you or the girl who sent you the Christmas card—but I could not make out her first name as she signed it. Finally I thought of this way of doing it. 1. Brentwood Heights is a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, and at the time included the homes of Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, ZaSu Pitts, and Shirley Temple (California: A Guide to the Golden State, part of the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration [1939], 199). Roland Young (1887–1953) was a movie actor, popular by this time for his role in the film Topper (1937). 2. Advertised in the Los Angeles Times (December 4, 1938), Millay read at the Philharmonic Auditorium on Monday, December 5, at 8:15 p.m.

342  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 3. Allusion to Paul’s First Epistle to Timothy, 2:9: “In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array” (KJV). 4. Seabiscuit and War Admiral, both future Hall of Fame horses, raced against each other at Pimlico in Baltimore, Maryland, on November 1, 1938.

To George Dillon [Steepletop] Dec. 29, 1938 Darling: It is quaint how much I miss you. It is archaic. It should have gone out along with samplers and painting on china. (But perhaps these have come in again, together with herb gardens and uncomfortable furniture.) You asked me to send you some of my new poems to read. Well, here they are, cords of them. And you will probably not have time even to glance at them, especially if you are busy being urban, or putting the magazine to bed (do magazines go to bed like newspapers, or just sit up all night dozing in day-coaches?) Anyway, if you cannot find time to read them, particularly the two groups called Theme and Variations and Sonnets from a Town in a State of Siege, please let me know at once. I am bringing out a book on about the twentieth of May, that is, if I think it fit to print when I once get it pinned together. It will have been nearly five years since my last book of lyrics was published, not long, but a long time for me. “Une vache á écrire”—was it Chopin who called George Sand that?1—And of course I want your Imprimatur on it. (I can really type much better than this, if I go about it properly. But my sweet noisy Helen of whom I am so fond is at home with her family for Christmas, and I have been forced to do all my own clerical drudgery, carbon-papers and all; and now that I have chipped off—for ever, or so it seems—three beautifully manicured finger-nails—I have taken to striking the keys with the flat of my hand.) Harper’s Magazine wants to publish one, possibly two groups of my new poems before the book comes out. If you have time to read the two groups I am sending you and let me know fairly soon what you think of them, I shall be immensely grateful. I must also try to place a few single

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poems with some of the smooth-browed, bridal-satin periodicals, although I have estranged many of these by insulting their editors. I wrote to the editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal—to whom I twice had sent at his enthusiastic request groups of my poems, and who twice after an interminable delay had returned them, saying they would not be understood by his readers, and who for the third time had the effrontery to write saying he would like to read some of my new poems,—that I begged him to refrain in the future from troubling me with frivolous requests for poems which he had no intention of printing, and that the simplest way of getting hold of my new poems to read them would be to buy my new collection when it should appear. So I imagine that henceforth the doors of the Curtis Publishing Company are closed against me. There are other magazines, though, that pay just as well. And I must make some more money rather quickly somehow—for just guess what I have gone and done, the most outrageous thing—I have bought a painting by Walt Kuhn, one of the clown ones,2 a beauty, the terms being one million dollars down and a ball and chain about my ankle for the rest of my life. I had thought that my reading-tour was over, except for one appearance in Worcester, an old friend which doesn’t bother me much—; but now poor Ugin, much against his will (because he wants me to take it easy for a while) is entering into unsavoury correspondence with Lee Keedick, who has been anxious for a long time to sign me up for some more engagements late in January and early in February, and whom we have both turned down with a perfunctory polishing of the monocle.3 Well, so we retract our honour and imperil our health, and all for the sake of a not very bright-coloured painting on a not so very large piece of canvas, and a frame as ugly as hell made of gilt-smudged almond-paste too dirty to eat. Ugin is in despair, for it pretty well appears that I have sold myself down the river for good (or rather up the river, which is so much harder to swim); and he can’t help me out much for he hasn’t any money left, either; and I never make a penny on these tours, because although I get very big fees for each reading, I have to travel so expensively that I never have a penny left when I get home, because if I didn’t travel like that I shouldn’t be able to give the readings. Now. I have talked so much about money that you will without a doubt suppose me very rich indeed, and

344  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay try to persuade me to become the Maecenas4 of poetry: a magazine of verse. As for the other poems I enclose, several of which are among my favourites—such as Rendezvous, Anxious to the Wood,* etc. if you wish to use some of these in your magazine I should love to have you do so. And you needn’t think you must print me out in front (unless for the magazine’s sake in that particular issue I should happen to be the best name you had to advertise with) I shouldn’t mind at all being stuck between the Book Reviews and the Notes on Contributors. Well, that’s all. What a stolid yet exuberant letter, rambling all over the landscape, Tudor, Georgian and Victorian. Please read the poems if you have time. Otherwise wire me that you have no time. Love, Vincent * These two I will send later, at least the first one. This was so badly typed it is impossible. The second was so badly written, it is impossible. At least, I think it lousy. Perhaps I can de-louse it, in which event I will send it.—In fact, I don’t like any of them. If you do, for God’s sake let me know right away.—I wrote this letter about ten days ago—but then I couldn’t make up my mind whether or not to send the poems, they all seem so verminous. I am sending you a different photograph for the office. If you don’t like it, tear it up. I didn’t write my name on it, fearing you might not like it. I like it a lot. Oh, well, I might as well sign it; it will save time, in case you should want it for the office. 1. Polish composer Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) and French novelist George Sand (pen name of Lucile-Aurore Dupin, baronne Dudevant [1804–1876]) had a “nine years’ liaison” (Oxford Companion to French Literature, edited by Sir Paul Harvey and J. E. Heseltine [Oxford University Press, 1959]). Friedrich Nietzsche made the comment in his Götzen-Dämmerung (Twilight of the Idols). In Henri Albert’s French translation (Le Crépuscule des Idoles), Nietzsche calls Sand “cette terrible vache á écrire” (1899, 4th edition). More recently, Duncan Large’s translation (Twilight of the Idols) reads: “this fertile cow of a writer” (Oxford University Press, 1998). Millay could have read the French quotation in Remy de Gourmont’s popular Promenades Littéraires (the quote “la vache . . .” first appears in the second edition of 1906). 2. Following are partial quotations from the Walt Kuhn Family Papers and Armory Show

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 345 Records: “Xmas Week 1938 Edna St. Vincent Millay and her husband Eugen Boissevain came to W.K. Studio & purchased ‘Mario’ . . . Spring 1942 Miss Millay loaned ‘Mario’ to W.K.’s oneman exhibition at Columbus (Ohio) Gallery of Fine Arts. December 18, 1945 W.K. purchased ‘Mario’ from Miss Millay . . .” (https://edan.si.edu/slideshow/viewer/?damspath=/Collections Online/kuhnwalt/Box_0012/Folder_008). 3. Lee Keedick (ca. 1880–1959) was a lecture manager based in New York City. 4. “A patron of letters, so called from the Roman statesman Gaius Maecenas (d. 8 b.c.), who kept an open house for men of letters in the reign of Augustus. He was the special friend and patron of Horace and Virgil” (Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 20th edition [Chambers Harrap, 2018]).

To Bill Brann Steepletop Feb. 2, 1939 Dear Brann: You’ve got something on your mind, so get it off your chest, as the fellow said. Anyway, I know what it is, though you haven’t shed a tear on my shoulder. You want, as you never wanted a woman in your life, Don Meade. Well, he can be had. I mean, if he isn’t busy with some other client. I read somewhere that he was going to Florida to ride for either Widener or Bradley,1 but he doesn’t seem to be doing it yet. He seems to be riding for Tom, Dick, and Lucky Teter, while either Wright or Yarberry2 are up on Widener’s horses, and Smith on Bradley’s. Whether or not anybody’s got hold of him for Kentucky, I don’t know; I don’t even know if he’ll be allowed to ride in Kentucky; I know that if he rides in New York again it’ll be over the dead bodies of a lot of sports-column writers, not that that means anything. He can ride in California, I suppose; anybody could ride in California. They’d let Al Capone ride in California, if he could get his weight down.3 They’d probably give him a silk ladder out of Alcatraz, if he could ride, and if he could get his weight down. But about Kentucky, I don’t know. Of course, Meade has made a spectacular come-back. But then, nobody ever doubted that Meade could ride: the only question was—would he ride forwards, or would he ride backwards? And whether or not he can stay straight through the first week of May without snapping in two, is a thing that only an osteopath or a psychiatrist can even guess at. Of course, I want to see Challedon come home in the Derby, and I

346  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay think you know how much I want it. But if I could see him come home without a horse-fly like that on his neck, I’d be happier still. What about Kurtsinger?4 Is he definitely on the ground for now that Riddle has booted him out? I’ll bet you what it would take to persuade Howard to scratch Seabiscuit in the Santa Anita (and the track fast) that Kurtsinger would love to win just one more Kentucky Derby, just one more, before he sits down on that seat of his which has never yet been sat on, which has been turned up to the burning sun of so many great racing days,—before he sits down on that tail of his still warm from sun and glory—and starts in stirring mash for barnyard fowl. Why did Riddle chuck him out? Has it ever been suggested by anyone anywhere that there was dirty work in that Seabiscuit match? How could there be?—only two horses running, and so much depending on it, and every eye and every camera trained on them? Why, if there had been even the slightest suspicion of foul play, the judges would have been down out of that stand so fast you’d think it was on fire, to feel the Admiral’s bandages for sash-weights. I suppose what really happened was this, that Riddle saw the whole thing in his dreams every night until he couldn’t stand it any more: the Admiral coming in half a city block behind the Biscuit, and always the Dutchman aboard. So that finally he simply couldn’t look at Charley without sicking up. Something like that. About Seabo. I read the other day—that’s the way I get my information, have to, because such reports as I get from you are far from satisfactory—that Seabo is on the ground for twenty days. Is that true? For if so, then your contention that Seabo is far from brainy is well supported. If he expected, or even hoped, to ride Challedon in May, what a time, what a swell time, for him to lose his temper in a race of no consequence, and start beating a horse about the head with his bat! Running the risk of even a greater and more serious penalty. But that’s not the principal thing. The principal thing is this: that in two Futurities Seabo has brought Challedon home by bringing him up suddenly from behind and putting him through with a rush along the rail. But you and Lou and I are not the only ones who’ve noticed that. Maybe in Kentucky there aren’t any rails, as far as my colt will ever know; maybe six horses ahead of him will go back to their barns with their left sides covered with paint. Will Seabo have more than this one trick up his yellow sleeve?

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Will he have the sense to take Challedon to the outside in time, in case the strip along the rail looks likely to be crowded? I don’t know. All I know is: Seabo has done damned well on Challedon so far; he knows the horse, and believes in him; he doesn’t tease him and he doesn’t make him nervous; he doesn’t shake him awake until he’s had his regular fourfurlongs’ sleep; and when he does wake him up he whispers something in his ear that makes the whole thing plain, and the horse goes thundering past the stand and wins the trophy. Perhaps it would be the same with any other jockey; I don’t know. Does he react differently to different exercise boys? Or is everything the same to him, so long as he’s running? This might be an important factor. And naturally, since you advise me of nothing, I do not know. One thing I do know, though, is this. I want to have, and right away, a full and accurate report of your conversation with Lou, not only about Seabo, and about a new man for the Farm, but about everything. If you don’t how how to write—and what way have I of knowing whether or not you even were taught to write?—then dictate your report to a stenographer and put the bill on your expense sheet. I’ve been more or less out of touch with the whole lay-out for a while, my time and much of my energy having been taken up with this extensive business trip which I had to take all over the country, Atlantic to Pacific, Canada to Texas— but please notice that I said more or less “out of touch”; I’ve got a pretty good idea of a lot of things that maybe you think I haven’t had time to go into. Because no matter how busy I’ve been with other matters, I’ve always managed to keep one eye—or at least the wicked corner of one eye—on you and Lou and the whole outfit. And what I want to know is this: what the hell do you mean by entering my mile-and-a-quarter colt—my two-mile colt, by God, if ever they’d put down two miles in front of him to run on—in a six-furlong race? You know he can’t win; you know he’s not the early-foot type; and I can’t imagine that you—I can’t imagine that even my former trainer— would consider trying to force him to break with a spurt of speed which might possibly impair his legs; he won’t win. So what are you up to? Are you trying to sweeten the odds for the Kentucky Derby by bringing down his record?—and possibly breaking his heart? He’s got into the habit of winning; he expects to be out in front at the end; he thinks that’s where he

348  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay belongs. What’s it going to do to his spirit—and only a few days before he has to line up for the Derby!—to see a bunch of smart sprinters go past him? I hope you’re crazy; I suspect you’re criminal. And I want to have an answer—not just a plausible answer, a convincing answer—to the questions I have raised in this letter, long, long before that great horse of mine goes out in April to lose a six-furlong race. Yours, 1. Joseph E. Widener (1871–1943), an American financier, owned horses, served as president of the Miami Jockey Club and the Westchester Racing Association, and was involved in horse racing for almost fifty years (“Horseman Joseph E. Widener Dies at Philadelphia Estate,” Washington Post, October 27, 1943, 20). Colonel Edward R. Bradley (1859–1946), was another owner of racehorses; he appeared on the cover of Time magazine, May 7, 1934. 2. Wayne Wright (1916–2003) and Warren Yarberry were American jockeys. “A 17-year-old apprentice jockey named Warren Yarberry, a smiling kid from a farm near Dallas, Tex., is the current riding sensation on the metropolitan New York tracks” (Grantland Rice, “Wait Until Bug’s Gone: Then Yarberry May Find It Not Quite so Easy to Win Races,” Boston Daily Globe, October 17, 1938, 10). 3. The gangster Al Capone (1899–1947) was involved in betting on horses, and would make his payments in cash for multi-thousand-dollar bets (“Bookmakers Recite Big Capone Losses,” New York Times, October 15, 1931, 48). 4. American jockey Charles E. Kurtsinger (1906–1946) “rode two Kentucky Derby winners and at one time was considered the top jockey in America” (obituary, New York Times, September 25, 1946, 26).

To Bill Brann

[February 23, 1939]

w l brann= i have decided to buy ciencia. i think that after his performance yesterday i should be able to pick her up easily in a claiming race. if impossible i have decided to resort to prayer and pray for mud up to the saddle cloths during the first week of may. i shall write you when i have time of a beautiful present i received on my arrival here yesterday. it was all red and yellow like my racing silks= w l millay

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To Lola Bronstein Miss Lola Bronstein 68 West 82nd Street

One Fifth Avenue March 5, 1939

Dear Miss Bronstein: I have been working very hard for the last few weeks getting a new book of poems off to the printer; so my answer to your letter comes late. I am sorry. It so happened that, when I took from your envelope your letter and translation into German of some of my poems, the first thing my eyes fell upon was the lower half of the page of your translation from conversation at midnight.1 The first words I read were: “Wer zoege nicht hinaus an meiner Seite ins Unbefleckte.” I read these words with interest and with an excitement which I did not for a moment quite understand. Suddenly I realized that this was a translation of some lines of my own, and a very good translation. I then went to the top of the page and read through your whole translation of this poem with pleasure and astonishment, not only that someone had so well understood this poem, but that anybody should have been able to translate it into a foreign language so faithfully, with such scrupulous attention to the rhythm of the long irregular lines which I use here, observing as well the not frequent but important rhymes, and still make of the German poem a poem in itself, as fresh as if it had been written originally in German. It is a beautiful piece of work. I wished when I read it that it would be possible for you to translate the whole of conversation at midnight into German. There came into my mind often, for no obvious reason at all, as I read your translation, lines from the “Prometheus” of Goethe, “Ich dich ehren?—wofür?” that part of his poem which begins like this, unless I am misquoting, and on through to the part where he says, “Hier sitze ich, forme Menchen nach meinem Bilde,” and to the end, “Und dich nicht zu ehren,—wie ich!” I have not read this poem of Goethe for many years and quite possibly I am getting it wrong, but the impression left on me years ago by all the last part of it was strong in my mind, as I read your, “Lasst uns zum Wahnsinn gehn, solang noch Zeit ist, unter eigner

350  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Fuehrung.” Not that you are imitating Goethe, not even that I am!—but perhaps you will understand why that poem came into my mind. I like very much also your translation of “The Penitent.” The sonnet strikes me as being not quite so successful as the others, since the original although very light in manner and informal, adheres strictly in so far as its metre goes, to the traditional iambic sonnet line. It seems to me that your lines do not run quite smoothly or gracefully enough. I should be very much interested to see any further translations from my poems which you might make. So far as I know, none of my poetry has been printed in a German translation. I am grateful to Miss Flexner for having suggested that you send these translations to me. Sincerely yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. German-born Lola Bronstein (b. 1914) responded to Millay March 8, 1939, saying in part: “Your letter has made me extremely happy, the more so as I did not expect an answer after a few weeks of waiting. Besides, I did not dare to hope that your knowledge of German would be as vast and all comprehensive as your letter proved” (Max and Lola Gruenthal Collection, Leo Baeck Institute, Box 2, Folder 11, https://archive.org). Bronstein did not publish her translations of Millay’s poetry, but she did publish translations of Emily Dickinson under her then married name, Lola Gruenthal; Emily Dickinson: Gedichte (Berlin: Henssel, 1959). She also contributed translations of German poetry to An Anthology of German Poetry from Hölderlin to Rilke in English Translation, edited by Angel Flores (New York: Anchor Books, 1960).

To George Dillon One Fifth Avenue March 23rd, 1939 Dear George: Enclosed please find a bunch of writing. Whether or not there’s any poetry in it, I have no idea. I know that whatever it is I’m curst sick of it. I remember that you didn’t much like The Snow Storm, but you didn’t actually hate it, and I think that if you use the others you ought to use that, too, for whatever else it may be, it is a lyric, and otherwise it seems to me there’ll be a sort of top-heaviness of those long loose irregular jagged lines that Edna Millay is that way about.

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My new book is off, and the galleys are corrected and returned. It’s the first book I ever got to the printer on time, and I feel pretty squirmy about that: may be a left-handed omen. Anyway, it’s going to have one good poem in it; I mean, besides “The Rabbit”—which everybody (Eastern Standard Time) is crazy about. The new poem is a sonnet called “Czecho-Slovakia.” I can’t send it to you, because it’s out walking the streets. I’m in a vile temper this morning. Ugin’s gone and contracted the flu, or something; and we can’t go to Cass Canfield’s to dinner tonight to meet John Gunther. I don’t know whether to be sorry for poor Ugin, or furious with him, or simply relieved that I don’t have to go to dinner tonight, even to meet John Gunther.1 In the sonnet you liked, which I am sending, I tried my best to get the gag out of the guy’s mouth, but couldn’t; and anyway, nobody but an exhausted editor of a poetry magazine would ever have the slightest trouble over that sestet. It is perfectly obvious, especially with all those semi-colons, that the scenes described take place at different times. The trouble with you is, you don’t like poetry and you disapprove of it; and you’re just trying to find a loophole in the law which will enable you to send it up for life. Never mind. I send you my love. Vincent

1. A journalist, who had published Inside Europe in 1936.

To Bill Brann W.L. Brann, Esq. Boynton, Florida.

One Fifth Avenue April 9, 1939

Dear Brann:  What’s the meaning of all this? Do you know? Does anybody know? Does Seabo know why Challephen lost that race yesterday?

352  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Does Schaefer know? Maybe Challephen is the only one who knows, and he can’t tell me, and the whole thing is driving me crazy. I haven’t got my copy of the Form yet—sometimes it comes in on the Sunday mail, sometimes not until Monday, just like the horse-race. But the Sunday Times and Tribune, which you will probably have seen by now but which I enclose, say something that turns me white at the temples: “Challephen was best but was weakly handled in the closing strides.” Now just what does that mean? I wasn’t at the track: I heard the whole thing from Kimball over the phone. It seemed hours before those fellows got their glasses on and had a look at the picture. I thought, “Oh, if only I’d put just a little more on his nose, his nose would have been longer, and he would have won.” Well, anyway, what does it mean that he was “weakly handled in the closing strides”? Of course, I don’t know a thing about it. All I know is what I get from my home-work plus what I get from my guess-work. All I know is what I saw in the photo which I am enclosing. It looks to me as if Seabo were lifting the bat just a little too high right there at the finish: of course I may be seeing the thing from an entirely improper angle. But can, after all, any jockey, lifting the bat so high and bringing it down with such force in the final strides, when on the left side his force is naturally just a bit eased up, the horse not being under wraps, can any jockey keep so perfect a balance under these circumstances that the horse is not ever so slightly hampered? As I said, I’m troubled, and if you know the answer, I wish you’d tell me; and if Lou knows the answer, I wish he’d tell me. And if it’s something else, what do they mean by saying that Challephen was weakly handled in the final strides? It looks to me as if just a bit more hand-riding and a little less of the bat might have done it. But as I said, and as you know, I don’t know a darned thing about it—only a few things I’ve picked up here and there, and an intense concentration on the horses. My copy of the Form has just come in, also the Telegraph I sent a boy out to get. Not that I care much for the Telegraph, but I might get another slant. Neither paper says anything against Seabo; but the Form does say, “A strong finish by Peters played a considerable part in the result”; and the Telegraph says (the same thing just changed about a bit) “A strong finish by Peters played no small part in the result.” So. What about Challedon? So. Has Challedon got to win at Chur-

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chill Downs all by himself? Could he, the rules aside win the Derby with 126 pounds of lead on his back as well as with a few pounds of lead plus Seabo? Is it possible that the solid ivory won’t enter into it at all? We say that Seabo won three Futurities aboard Challedon? But did he? Maybe Challedon would have won those races with Herb Swope on his back, supposing Swope could have stuck on. I don’t know what to think. It’s too late to do anything now. I’m darned near crazy. Perhaps if Seabo just gives Challedon a little flick with the bat just coming into the stretch and then sits comfortable down on his withers and lights a cigarette, all will yet be well. I see that Kurtsinger is in the saddle again. Just why I don’t know. But it doesn’t seem likely that he’s doing it just to get a little exercise both for himself and for Milar’s Decatur, which I believe is eligible for the Derby. And by the way, couldn’t we all chip in and buy an alarm clock for Seabo? What’s the reason he can’t get up in time to give Challedon a little work-out some morning? Maybe he’s been doing it, but I haven’t seen anything about it; and I know that other jockeys aren’t shunning their Derby mounts in quite such a snooty way. If the only thing to be said for Seabo is that he knows Challedon and believe in him, etc., what would be the harm in letting them renew an old acquaintance, and not waiting until May 6th to do it, either? As for Lou, he’s been a jockey longer than I have, and though he hasn’t been a trainer quite so long, he’s doing nicely. But it does seem to me that it’s about time to remind Challedon that a mile in 1:52/2 isn’t going to burn up anything at all on May 6th except a lot of torn tickets. Other horses are doing it in 1:39, now, it seems. That’s much too fast, in my opinion, and won’t do them any good. Still, 1:52/2—God, my wife could do it in that time herself, if she took her skirt off. Of course, Seabo rode a creditable race on Chalmac Thursday. At least, when the horse got pinned on the rail, he had the sense to take him to the outside. But Chalmac has been running all winter; he had at least eight races behind him since February; the horse must be running in his sleep by now; he had been pretty close to it at least three times lately; he was raring to go, and he was the favourite. I don’t think Seabo ran that race; although you have to hand it to him that he did get the horse from the rail to the outside, which was a sweet surprise to me.

354  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay But about Challephen’s race in the Bowie a week ago? I wasn’t the only one who knew he hadn’t been out of his red flannels since October; still he was pretty high in the betting. And the track couldn’t have hurt his feelings any, or his tendons either. Of course he wasn’t intended to win, and if Seabo didn’t know that, then Lou of course told him. The horse needed a race. But did he need to come around into the stretch four lengths in front of everything, only to finish three lengths in back of Hypocrite? Wouldn’t one length have done the trick, just enough to keep him in front of everything until something started to nose up along side, and then let out a couple of wraps? Wouldn’t it have given him a little breather to be taken in hand just there, and mightn’t he have made a better showing at the end? You wrote me that it was just about there that the horses in back started getting close to Challephen, and that Seabo had to make his move with him too soon—something like that you wrote me. OK. Keep ahead of them. Good idea. But do you have to give your mount his head and let him get four lengths ahead of them? Of course he was short at the end. But my God, to lose seven lengths right in the stretch—why you wouldn’t think the stretch was long enough. And damned if I don’t think the horse might have won both races under more skilful handling, and that in spite of the fact that he hadn’t been raced since autumn. And I’ll bet I’m not the only one that thinks so. Well, there no use continuing to tap the keys against poor little Seabo; he’s getting to be an old man now—he must be all of twenty-­ eight; and he has a family to support; and up to now he’s done it, so far as I know; and so far as I know he never got any floral horse-shoes hung around his neck for his I.Q. I’m just writing this letter to keep from crying. Because there’s nothing to be done now; it’s too late; anybody else we might get hold of would probably be worse; and certainly unacquainted with Challedon; and forty to one crooked into the bargain. No, it’s all on the knees of the gods, and the gods have rickets. I say there’s nothing to be done, but perhaps there still is: one thing. Brann, brann (if you’ve skipped reading this letter so far, maybe the sight of your own name will attract your attention, and you’ll go on from here): I want you in some way, in some way, to see that Seabo is up on Challedon every morning that he works; I don’t care what it costs—and why should you—after all, who pays the bills? What I want is to get a

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little of Challedon’s brains into Seabo’s head; and we haven’t much time. What we’ve got to do is to keep that man and that colt so close together that the two become as one; I want Seabo to eat out of Challedon’s feedbox; if Challedon gets a minor scratch, I want Seabo to be bandaged. I tell you, man, that if we win the Kentucky Derby this spring, it won’t be with a horse and a jockey—it will be with a centaur. Yours, W. L. Millay P.S. (Wednesday—wrote this Sunday—don’t know what’s the matter with that girl—if she’s alive at all, she must be living in the fourth dimension.) What about Bradley’s mare?—It looks good, her being a bit late, looks like a colt. He seems to be having bad luck with Benefactor—hope Betty Betty drops a fine colt.

To Alyse Gregory [The St. Regis, New York] [December 1939] Alyse, my dear and lovely Alyse, my heart’s friend;—if only I could be with you now, this afternoon, just for the length of time it takes to drink three cups of tea, quietly, saying hardly anything— There is nothing that I can write; there would be nothing that I could say. But oh, if only I could be with you, my dear, just for an hour or two. Edna

To George Dillon [Steepletop] Nov. 29, 1940 Dear George: Having no good news to write you, and being extremely busy myself, I simply didn’t write.—The Branns were my hope. They are the only people I know who aren’t washing their own stockings. (She does, at that.)—They aren’t living here any more. The place has been for sale for a long time. They were home about three days this summer, and I saw

356  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay them just once. They called together, which would have been fatal, even if he had been in the mood, for she would never have let him give you anything.—But anyway, all they both did was to talk about the awful experiences of keeping up a racing-stable, and the trouble he’d had with his trainer—that was all true enough, and enough to drive him mad: perhaps you saw somewhere that he’d changed trainers. Well, they went on to say that since his name had become so well-known to everybody as the owner of Challedon he was pestered all the time by persons and organizations asking for donations for one thing and the other.—So you see.—I’m sorry. I am sending you my new book of—not poems, posters; there are a few good poems, but it is mostly plain propaganda. If some bright boy reviews it for Poetry, please remind him that I know bad poetry as well as the next one, and that this book—whose sub-title is “1940 Notebook,” which I thought would make the matter plain enough to anybody, but doesn’t seem to (although almost all the reviews have been wonderful, far beyond my expectations)—that this book is a book of impassioned propaganda, into which a few good poems got bound up because they happened to be propaganda, too.—I hope you’ll like some of it. Love, Vincent

To Sister Ste. Hélène [Steepletop] December 3rd, 1940 Darling Sister Ste. Hélène: I have been working so hard that I have had no time to write a letter; and I have been very sick, too—three times in hospital—an injured nerve under my right shoulder-blade, the injury received no one knows how, but plain to the X-ray—I think it happened one very dark night when the door of the station-wagon suddenly swung open just as we were going around a curve, and I was thrown out into the darkness and rolled down a rocky gulley—I think it must have been then although nothing showed for a long time but a bad bruise on the head and a very lame right shoulder.—I have tried everything, even nerve surgery, which

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did not help, but now I have a very famous & good doctor in charge of me, and I think I am getting better.—Anyway, never mind all that. It is not important, although I have been in unremitting pain for well over a year,—it does not matter, because I have been able to work.—I am sending you my new book: “Make Bright The Arrows.” (The phrase is from Jeremiah; perhaps you recall the passage) It is sub-titled “1940 Notebook,” and that is what it really is, a piece of propaganda, acres of bad poetry, but perhaps you will forgive it, and me, for what I am trying to do, what I am trying to help to save. The lovely nun in the little play “The Crookèd Cross” is of course named for you.1 I will send you a photograph as soon as I find one I think you will like. It is disgraceful that I never gave you a photograph of me. And besides, you asked me for one in your letter, your “love letter,” you said, and, yes, it really was a love letter, darling. Merry Christmas and all my love, Vincent P.S. So is this one. 1. Make Bright the Arrows: 1940 Notebook contains this play, subtitled A Play in One Act, Done after the Manner of the Medieval Sacred Mystery Plays, with a character named Sister Ste. Hélène.

To Aunt Susie [December 1940] Dearest Aunt Susie, All my love to you at this time.—This is a Christmas Present! I hope you will be pleased to have it, even if you do not agree with me about every word I say! ——Vincent [above “Memory of England” on page 4] Specially inscribed for Aunt Susie, who has heard about this trip before, and to whom, for so she told me, this poem means so much.

358  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

To Marguerite LeHand for President Franklin D. Roosevelt Miss Marguerite LeHand.1

New York, Dec.27, 1940.

Dear Miss LeHand: You perhaps remember me as the person who once, when we were fellow guests in the house of William C. Bullitt,2 gave you a comb because you had forgotten to pack one and I had packed two. The following is a duplicate of a telegram I have just sent to the President. Most probably he will not see it. But if you should consider that in his busy day there might be a moment in which he might have time to glance at it, I should be grateful if you would call it to his attention, naturally I do not expect any reply from you to this wire. Sincerely yours, Edna St.Vincent Millay. Duplicate of telegram: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, The White House, Washington, D.C. Dear Mr. President: I most earnestly wish you all success in your design to help Britain to the utmost and in every possible way. England must not be permitted if it be within our power to help prevent it, to become just a name in a book of history—not only for the sake of what England stands for in a world in which one democracy after another seems to have thawed suddenly like a drift of snow under an unseasonable sun, but more selfishly, also, for our own sake, specifically, for if England falls, shall not we be the next objective?—not the next country to fall, but the next great objective. It would seem so. And I thank you for your courageous stand against these possibilities. I also pledge you my full support in this matter, and give you my promise to continue to do so as I have been doing since last June, all that my small power can do, to help awaken the citizens of this democracy to a realization of our grave danger. Respectfully yours. Edna St. Vincent Millay

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 359 1. Marguerite LeHand was private secretary to President Roosevelt. She responded to Millay on January 2, 1941, acknowledging Millay’s telegram, and wrote: “The President was most appreciative of your thoughtfulness in wiring him as you did, and has asked me to thank you very much.” Vassar 119, Papers of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 2. American diplomat (1891–1967), listed as Ambassador to France in Millay’s address book (LC, 14, 6).

To Charlotte Babcock Sills [400 East 52nd St., New York City] [January 2, 1941] Charlie, my dear: I am more distressed than I can tell you to learn that my Christmas gift, which I hoped might give you pleasure, gave you instead pain, hurt you and made you angry. But my dear girl, when we were at college together, were you (this is a joke) either fairly bright or pretty dumb?—­ because the reason why this book hurt you is because you utterly and thoroughly and from cover to cover misunderstood its meaning. Think back, did I ever once, so far as you can remember, do anything, even a little thing, to hurt you, even a little bit, knowingly? And don’t you realize that I know perfectly well that you have three grown boys? And if this book had really been the book you took it to be (being so convinced at the outset that you were right about this, that you were unable afterwards, no matter what you read in it, to learn that you were mistaken) would I have done the insolent and cruel thing which it would have been to send to you and Mac a book of poems trying to incite this country to send American boys into foreign lands to fight? Please read once more, I beg you to do this, and this time with a reading mind, not with a mind which is quite naturally frightened and shrinks from what it considers is trying to send your boys to war, at least the first poem in this book. I mean the small poem at the very beginning of the book; the poem which starts “Make bright the arrows.” I beg you earnestly to read this with great care, giving particular attention to the phrase, “The bowman feared need never fight,” and to the phrase further on, “O peaceful and wise.”1 See if you then cannot understand that what I am trying to do with every bit of my strength, and being very ill all the

360  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay time while I am working, is not to get this country into war, but to keep it out of war. Is it not unjust of you, my dear friend, to accuse me of trying to incite this country to send an army to fight on foreign soil just because my idea as to how best to keep this country out of war differs radically from yours? Perhaps I am mistaken in my viewpoint, which is shared as you must know, by thousands of other good United States citizens who love their country and its democratic ideals, its freedom, its individual liberties quite as much as you possibly can. If I am mistaken, and if those who think as I do are mistaken, it will indeed be a terrible, an unthinkable error to have made. But if you and those who think as you do should prove to be mistaken and this country, because we have let Britain collapse, should then be crushed between Germany and Japan with the help of certain sections of South America and of certain Nazi infiltration here, that too will be a terrible, an unthinkable error to have made. Neither of us can know which is right. Each of us can only do his utmost to further the cause which he believes to be right. You say that if I had three grown boys as you have I would feel differently about it. There is little doubt probably that I should feel differently about it, but I do not for a moment believe that I should think differently about it. And though I have no sons to be caught in this war, if we are caught in it, I have one thing to give in the service of my country,— my reputation as a poet. How many more books of propaganda poetry containing as much bad verse as this one does, that reputation can withstand without falling under the weight of it and without becoming irretrievably lost, I do not know—probably not more than one. But I have enlisted for the duration. Have you the slightest conception of what this reputation means to me, who have been building it carefully for more than twenty years, taking a long time, months, sometimes as long as several years before permitting a poem to be published because I felt that in one line of it, one syllable was not as close to perfection as I might be able to make it? You see by the dates on the poems in this book that they were written in furious haste and published as soon as they were written. They are, with a few exceptions, considered as poetry, faulty and unpolished; and what-

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ever the final verdict of our generation or the next may be upon me as a poet, there are already, I know quite well, thousands of people, true lovers of pure poetry, and who have—for I am humbly proud of this and feel no arrogance in saying so—in past years thought very highly of mine, who will, no matter what I may write in the future, never forgive me for writing this book. Thus, you see, the dearest thing in life I possess which might possibly be of help to my country, has already gone over the top, in the hope that your sons need never go to war. Affectionately, Vincent

1. The poem “Make Bright the Arrows” appears opposite the start of the contents page.

To Alyse Gregory Steepletop, June 10, 1941 Alyse, my darling,—beautiful person, belovèd friend:—all during this dreadful winter you have been constantly in my mind and heart, and oh, how often we have spoken of you, and always with deep love for you and deep anger and scornful reproach for ourselves, because we have not written you. But, Alyse, I have been very ill. And Eugen has been desperate about me. Day & night he has nursed me. He has written no word to anyone. His face has been grey with anxiety. But now, I am beginning to have moments, even hours, when I am not in pain. He will be more like himself soon.—Edna.

To Walt Kuhn copy Oct. 10, 1941 1 Dear Walt Kuhn: I’m so jealous of my husband!—going to see all your lovely paintings and drawings—what beautiful tree you probably have done this summer—in India ink—perhaps in oil, some—Yesterday I saw my

362  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay shiny black police dog drinking from the old dull not quite black halfbarrel of water in the barn from which the horses and cattle drink—the inside of it is blackish-grey and growing out of the damp wood are arrangements here and there, three, I think, near the top, of tiny fungus— brackets, one above the other very close, wavy against the straight— though three or four of them standing stiffly outward—sides of the barrel, and cream-coloured with rust-coloured wavy lines along their ridges. The big sunny rectangle where the barn-door had been slid back showed a slope of soft green grass, cropped close by many cattle just let out of the barn—I thought of you suddenly and with intensity—it was your beautiful Water-Butt, of course; but I wanted intensely to have you see just what I was seeing at that moment—I wanted to have you see the young sparkling-black dog drinking from the round half-barrel of almostblack old and roughened wood.—I told Eugen I wished you could see it.—Strange, wasn’t it, just before you called up? Signed, E. St. V. M. 1. The source here is a typed copy of Millay’s letter. Handwriting in pencil below the typed copy, not in Millay’s hand, reads: “An unpublished ‘poem’ by Edna Millay re = my painting ‘Water-Butt page _ of the Bird book’ Fifty Paintings by Walt Kuhn. Make copy & mail Wed— Mar. 21”

To Witter Bynner

[Late December 1941] The Night Before Christmas When All Through The House Not a Creature’s A-Stir But a Little Deer-Mouse

Steepletop, 1941 Dearest Hal,—I am well enough to check the copies—well enough to check a whole Nazi motorized division simply by butting at it with my forehead! (There now!—Isn’t that a nice pun for Hal’s Christmas?)

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But darling, I am so very busy,—yes, of course, writing more verses for my poor, foolish, bewildered, beloved country.—I have written four poems already since the outbreak of this war—which of course was not an outbreak at all, but simply a visible manifestation of something already in existence for a long time. A great part of the work on these poems (for I really think they are poems) was done long before the attack on Oahu,1 a fact which made it possible for me to send to Mr. Markel of the New York Sunday Times Magazine2 a poem for his Christmas number, containing obvious allusions to our entrance into the war, so short a time after war was declared. (This piece got held up in the post, though, and will appear instead in the New Year’s number, next Sunday, Dec. 28. I hope you will see it. And I hope you will like it. —I am working very hard now on the three others, in order to get them off as soon as possible and at the same time have them really poems. Make Bright the Arrows, of course, did no good at all. The American who read it didn’t even know why I had written the verses; or why, having written them, I should be in such haste to publish them.—Professor Irwin Edman, in a review of the book, expressed regret that I had not seen fit to “wait a year longer” before presenting it to the public!3—And some of the reviews were insolent to the point of being really “actionable,” I think. Not that any of this mattered at all. What mattered was that in spite of all that so many of us tried so hard to do, the Professor Irwin Edmans of the country, as well as the Charles A. Lindberghs and the Senator Wheelers, let Pearl Harbor happen. Oh, well, I suppose what the Japanese can take, the Americans can take back again, if they ever get their hands out of their pockets long enough to load a gun.—Yes, I mean this in both ways.

Anyway, in the meantime, it is all pretty nasty, and a handful of rather brave boys are now busy trying to wipe the spit off their faces of a horde of thoroughly unpleasant conquerors.

364  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay Hal, I haven’t time, just now, to read over the letters. ——Love, Edna. I am really cured of the pain under my shoulder, it seems! You are glad! 1. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, on the island of Oahu, December 7, 1941. 2. American journalist Lester Markel (1894–1977) was the Sunday editor of the New York Times. As she wrote in a letter to Arthur W. Rushmore on August 29, 1943, the New York Times Magazine did publish two of her poems in late 1941 and 1942. 3. Irwin Edman (1896–1954) was a philosophy professor at Columbia University.

To Sister Ste. Hélène 1941 dec 26 sister sainte helene= mtmarys college 12001 chalon rd brentwoodheights losa= dearest sister sthelene to the great glad tidings which this day must always bring you i want to add my own small personal glad tidings that the cause of my long suffering has at last been discovered and corrected i am cured i am without pain. i will write you all about how the doctor using only his marvelous hands straightened a twisted blood vessel so after three years of stoppage of the blood flowed through it once more, and how all the time unknown to me and to all my friends a little medal of the blessed virgin was with me in my handbag and nobody knows how she got there so this is a new miracles for you darling on christmas night= vincent.

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To Rolfe Humphries Steepletop Austerlitz, N. Y. Dec. 31, 1941 Dear Mr. Humphries: I shall be very pleased indeed to have you include in your new book your beautiful Latin translations of the three Fatal Interview sonnets. I hope this does not reach you too late. Your letter reached me about ten days ago, and I should have replied at once—for there must be some haste, if your book is to appear in February—but I have no secretary, and I was hard at work on some things of my own, which I could not then leave; one of these poems, called “Not To Be Spattered By His Blood” appeared last Sunday in the magazine edition of the New York Times.—I wonder if you saw it, and if you did, if you liked it.—I wish I had a copy to send you, but I haven’t, and I must wait no longer in getting this off to you. It is good news that you have a new book coming out. (Many of the poems will not be new to me, I think; but it is a pleasure to me always to read them again.) And I love Latin poetry. I shall be very sorry if this reaches you too late to include the Latin translations—which I think excellent, and which I half know by heart. Sincerely yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay

To Gladys Brown Ficke Thanksgiving Day 1942 Dear Gladdie:—I think I have your pen. I am not sure,—for it has a broader stub than this with which I am writing, and I would have said that your handwriting is thinner than mine—but anyway, there is a masterless pen running about the house barking shrilly, so I hope for both our sakes it will prove to be yours.—I found it yesterday, while hunting for something else, which I did not find. I will send it you as soon as I find a box to fit it. I will try to get it to you soon, for you

366  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay doubtless miss it very much—unless you have in the meantime bought yourself another pen, which I trust you have not. (Except that, for a person like me, who never write at a desk, but almost everywhere else, in the most fantastic situations, circumstances, attitudes, etc., all over the house, two pens, one upstairs and one downstairs, tend to make life very much simpler. I write an enormous amount—I think I must have discarded at least three-quarters of “The Murder of Lidice,” for example. (Very likely you think I should have discarded the other quarter, but anyway, it was what they wanted, and it seems to have done its job, which, of course, was all I cared about.) But as I was saying—chattering away to you instead of getting to work—I always keep two pens—except when one of my best friends steals one from me, as apparently I did yours—for I do a heluva lot of putting down words on paper, and pencils are all so hard, except those thick smudgy ones, I find. At least, they seem so after a very short time, to a right shoulder which is inclined to be neuriticky.— Enough, far, far too much of that.

You were sweet, and so kind, to look at all those apartments, with us, as well as yourselves, in mind, and to write describing them—the most important things about them—so carefully. Thanks a lot, my dear.

I was touched, to think of little Gladdie not being able to get to sleep, because big Artie was away in New York.—I have many times slept here on the hill all alone, Not quite alone in the house, but with the cottage empty, too, and slept like a top. (I shall at once go to the library now and try to find the real meaning of that phrase!)—But it is different when you and the person you love so much are accustomed to sleeping in separate apartments. I think in your circumstances I should have cried all night. I wanted to come over to see you, and so did Ugin,—but, oh we were so frightfully busy!—Lots of love, and lots of love to Artie!—Vincie.

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To Arthur W. Rushmore [Steepletop] [1943 or 1944] Dear Arthur Rushmore: Your letter made me very happy, and it made me very sad.—Happy—because you sounded so friendly to me, not at all as if you hated me for holding up the proofs so long—which you easily might do, and no one could blame you—but your letter sounded as if you understood in what a quandary I have been, wanting to do right by my publishers and wanting also, personally, to have my book come out this fall—for I agree with you: people do need poetry most seriously and most hungrily just now—but always being torn away from working on the proofs by the Writers’ War Board begging me to write a long piece for radio about the Lidice massacre (I spent almost four months writing “The Murder of Lidice,” when I might better, many would say, have been reading my proofs and trying to earn a little money—but I couldn’t turn down a request like that—and right after that Norman Davis himself, wrote me a letter asking me to write a long poem for the Red Cross,1 to pen their March drive—it was Alec Woollcott’s idea—he was to be M.C., Katharine Cornell was to read the poem, Queen Elizabeth of England was to speak, also President Roosevelt and General Eisenhower— I couldn’t say no—I worked on it for months—and then poor Alec Woollcott died, and the whole program was off—so many things like that which I couldn’t refuse—and then the N. Y. Times Conference of Woman, and a change to speak briefly over the air to the whole country, as to “What Kind of World I Want after the War)—well, you see, The Dutch have a marvellous expression, a sort of proverb: “Wat het swaarste is, moet het swaarste wegen”—which means: Let that which is the heaviest, weigh the most.

Well, I don’t know when I’ve written a letter to anybody. But your letter was so sad, and about the world, sad about this country.—Hold to your faith, my friend. The wind is rising, and all these fogs and malarial miasmas will be blown away. Perhaps, even, we shall live to see it.

368  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay All this time I should have been writing about the proofs which accompany this letter. I have thought that I would insert the Child-Poems “From a Very Little Sphinx” between “The Buck in the Snow” and “Wine,” to balance in a way the different, better lightness of Figs from Thistles earlier in the book—what do you think?2 They are the opening poems of The Selected for Young People book—and have never been published in book form anywhere other than there. People who hear me read them, love them. What do you think? Sincerely, Edna Millay 1. Norman Davis (1878–1944) was chairman of the Red Cross at the time. 2. Vassar friend Isobel Simpson signed at least one letter to Millay “Very Little Sphinx” (April 22, 1918, LC, 82.8). Millay had published seven short poems under the title “From a Very Little Sphinx” in Harper’s (October 1923) and in Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Poems Selected for Young People, illustrated by J. Paget-Fredericks (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1929).

To Arthur W. Rushmore Steepletop August 29, 1943 Dear Mr. Rushmore—I should like to include, after the selections from “Make Bright the Arrows,” the poem about St. George & the Dragon called “Not to be Splattered by His Blood”; follow that by the Thanksgiving 1942 poem; and then if Harper’s has no objection, finish this section (which I shall call “appendix”) with The Murder of Lidice. The St. George poem and the Thanksgiving poem were printed in the N. Y. Times Magazine,—the first in the New Year, 1942 issue, the second in the Thanksgiving issue last year; I seem to have no copies of them, but the dates of their appearance make it easy to find them. If you would be so kind as to call up Mr. Lester Markel, editor of the Times Sunday Magazine, he might be able to send you copies, or otherwise you could have a stenographer copy them (without mistakes, I pray!) and charge the bill to me. As for Lidice, if the little pamphlet is still selling at all, perhaps it would not be wise to publish in a book of—collected pieces quite so

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soon.—But probably it is not selling much any more. Also, the name “Lidice” is so well-known to nearly everybody, the inclusion of this piece might just possibly help a little in the sale of the big book. At the end of the selection from Make Bright the Arrows (and by the way, please be sure to set the sub-title 1940 Notebook in the same type, or at least in as large and conspicuous type as the upper title) I wish to re-include some of the sonnets automatically cut out—not the two already in the Collected Sonnets (“I must not die of pity” and “How innocent of me”)—but all the others, in however, a necessarily somewhat changed order,—as follows: I Peace was my earliest love, and I presume II “Gentlemen Cry, Peace!” There is no peace, had we again the choice III While London, while Berlin, two cities dear IV Where does he walk, or sit and stir his tea V The Old Men of Vichy Chafe with your maiden breasts, O Shunnamite VI You find “outrageous” this—these outraged hearts?— VII Only the ruthless now, so it would seem

Mr. Rushmore, I am terribly sorry for all the trouble I’ve been. I know how exasperated with me you are.—But, if you could see the situation here at Steepletop—Eugen sick in bed for weeks in one part of the house with a critical case of bronchitis always close to pneumonia, myself sick in bed in another part of the house—with no nurse, no secretary, no servants, nobody at all to help us, one or the other of us crawling out of bed late in the morning to wait on and try to get some food for the other, who is still sicker—then you would know that I have not been careless or casual about the book.—I feel awful about it.—This morning it is I in bed and Eugen up and waiting on me. Which has made it possible at last to get this off to you. Sincerely, Edna Millay P.S. If I am not well enough to come to New York to read the page-

370  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay proofs at the end of the book with you, then I will trust them to you, so you needn’t send them,—and endure more sleepless nights! am sending page proofs Monday or Tuesday—E.M. P.P.S. Please call me up and let me know whether everything is clear or not.

To Cass Canfield 1945 dec 30 pm 7 02 cass canfield,harper and brothers= 49 east 33 st nyk= your letter just received. under no circumstances at any time ever subject my poetry to the nayham which you now contemplate namely, that of altering, on the advice of a brash and spurious scholar, one word in one of my poems. my letter follows.= edna st vincent millay

To Cass Canfield [January 8, 1946] Dear Cass Canfield: It occurs to me with something of dismay, that, if I were dead—instead of being, as I am, alive and kicking, and I said kicking— the firm of Harper and Brothers (Est 18171—and how good is your Latin?) might conceivably, acting upon the advice of a respected friend, alter one word in one of my poems. This you must never do. Any changes which might profitably be made in any of my poems, were either made by me, before I permitted them to be published, or must be made, if made at all, someday by me. Only I, who know what I mean to say, and how I want to say it, am competent to deal with such matters. Many of my poems, of course, are greatly reduced in stature from the majesty which I hoped they might

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achieve, because I was unable, as one too often is, to make the poem rise up to my conception of it. However, the faults as well as the virtues of this poetry, are my own; and no other person could possibly lay hands upon any poem of mine in order to correct some real or imagined error without harming the poem more seriously than any faulty execution of my own could possibly have done. (I do not, of course include here such hastily-written and hot-headed pieces as are contained in “Make Bright the Arrows,” “the Murder of Lidice,” etc. I am speaking of poetry composed with no other design than that of making as good a poem as one possibly can make, of poetry written with deliberation and under the sharp eye of an ever-alert self-criticism, of poetry in other words, written with no ulterior motive, such as, for instance, the winning of a worldwar to keep democracy alive.) As for sonnet XIV from “Epitaph for the Race of Man,” let me assure you now (because I know that you are deeply troubled about this matter and in a mood to accept from a friend whose learning you respect, a suggested alteration in one of my poems) let me assure you that your friend has brashly leaped to an ill-considered conclusion, and that in this instance he has made a complete ass of himself. This particular sonnet is guilty of a serious fault, but from the point of view of sonnet-structure, not from the point of view of either fact or mythology. The octave is written in the pure Italian form, whereas in the sestet the rhyme-scheme (ccddcd) is improper. This is very bad, of course. Yet I do consider this particular bastard sestet to be sometimes, as in this sonnet, for instance, not ineffective. As to what this sonnet actually says,—well, it seems to me that any bright boy in the eighth grade, who cared for poetry, and was not too lazy to look up a few words in the dictionary, would have little difficulty as to its literal meaning. If this poem makes any statement at all, which it does, then the substitution of the word “Ixion” for the word “Aeolus” would render the whole sonnet utterly ridiculous, confusing and meaningless. Let me go back for a moment to sonnet XV which begins: “Now sets his foot upon the eastern sill “Aldebaran, . . . . . . .”

372  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay When I say Aldebaran, I mean Aldebaran; I do not mean Arcturus, and I do not mean Antares. And when I write concerning Aldebaran, that: “He tracks the Pleiades down the crowded sky “And drives his wedge into the western hill” I mean that the reddish star Aldebaran does seem, if watched through the night, to track the Pleiades; and when I say: “He drives his wedge into the western hill” I am speaking of the constellation Taurus of which Aldebaran is the principal star and which is wedge-shaped. And so I mean that Aldebaran in Taurus drives his wedge into the western hill. I do not mean that Regulus in Leo is hacking at the hill with his sickle. Likewise, also, when (in sonnet VI) I say: “See where Capella with her golden kids “Grazes the slope between the East and North:” I am speaking, not of Vega, nor yet of Spica, but of Capella. I, looking with my own eyes, see this beautifully-coloured star as followed not by two lesser stars, as she classically is stated to be, but by three stars; and so in the closing lines of the octave of this sonnet I write: “The risen She-Goat Showing blue and red “Climbed the clear dusk, and three stars follow her.” This is to say, I am speaking of something which I personally have observed, concerning which as a plodding amateur astronomer, I have some acquaintance, and with which as to the classical treatment of these subjects I am not entirely unfamiliar. Now let me advise you as to sonnet XIV, concerning which you are distressed, because some acquaintance of yours, whose scholarship you admire (although I might say that from my own one example of it, this scholarship would seem to have—although in places possibly it is profound—at mean low water, a depth of something less than half a fathom) has urged upon you the idea that not only is my own scholarship, if indeed it exist at all, a scattered and flighty thing, but also that

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in the executing of my own craft I am so careless and indolent as not to care at all whether the words I write have any meaning whatsoever, so long as they string along together in a fairly pleasant way. Has your friend ever read this sonnet? Have you?—If either of you had done so, then all this painful and tiresome balderdash and bilge would have been avoided. For in this sonnet, as in all the other sonnets of this sequence, I am not concerned with the domestic intrigues of the gods amongst each other. Their constant contriving, and deceits, their easy adulteries and capricious revenges do not interest me: I am as bored with their household concerns as they themselves are. All throughout the Iliad it is apparent that the only personages who show courage, who play fair, are mortals, not gods. Despite the great strides and the majestic proportion of the goddess Pallas Athenae, it is she who by the dirtiest trick in fiction, if not in history, delivers over Hector to his death at the hands of Achilles. But in the same book, Achilles, a Greek engaged in a desperate war against the Trojans, makes a gentleman’s agreement with Priam, the King of Troy, and sticks to it. (And if you wish to point out that Achilles, being the son of the goddess Thetis, is half god, your point would be blunt indeed, since Achilles, being half human is mortal and must die, does not want at all to die, yet is, as he says of himself, “the bravest of the Greeks.”) In sonnet XIV, I am in no way concerned with, or distressed by the plight of Ixion, who because he has been impulsive enough to commit the act of fornication with a goddess, who was not his wife, was chained hand and feet to a wheel: his torture does not interest me. I am concerned in this sonnet, with the attacks of the several gods, not against each other, but against Man, in an effort either to destroy him entirely or at least to subdue his proud spirit, a thing which, as this sonnet declares, the gods with all their force and all the weapons and disguises at their disposal are quite unable to do.—At the end of this sonnet Man does succumb, but not before the onslaught of all the might which the gods have been able to bring to bear against him; Man gives up, as the last phrase of this sonnet states: “Before the unkindness in his brother’s eyes.”

374  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay As when I said Aldebaran, I meant Aldebaran, as when I wrote Capella, I meant Capella and no other star, so when I wrote: “Whirling Aeolus on his awful wheel” I meant Aeolus, not Ixion (nor for the matter of that Catherine) meant the god of the Winds Aeolus, who has under his control all winds from the lightest Zephyr, to the most frightful typhoon and that the god of the winds has launched in vain against mankind a terrific whirlwind. After all the line does begin: “Nor whirling Aeolus.”— Now if you say you saw a man on a motorcycle, you mean that the man was riding and directing that motorcycle, you do not mean that he was bound hand and feet to the wheels of it.—Your friend being acquainted with these myths, when he looked at the sonnet, saw at once words which were familiar to him and after that cared for nothing else: if I speak of someone whirling on his awful wheel, I must of course to his mind mean Ixion, although the sonnet in that case would have no sense of any kind whatever. I would not, if I were you, in the future, pay much attention to any suggestion made to you by this acquaintance of yours on the subject of poetry, for which, it would seem, he really cares little, and concerning which, even more seriously, he knows even less. He is not, in any case, a thorough going student: he is a pouncer upon details, and his scholarship—if indeed it exist at all—is bumpy and uneven. Sincerely yours, and with every good wish for the New Year, Edna St. Vincent Millay January 8th, 1946.

1. Some advertisements in newspapers listed Harper & Brothers’ date of establishment.

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To Alyse Gregory Steepletop January 12, 1946 My very dear Alyse: How are you? I do not know the answer to this question, of course, because I never hear from you. And naturally, I do not hear from you, because you never hear from me, and you do not understand why. But I think of you many times during the day, and wish that I might be with you and talk with you. This is just a note to call Hello! and see whether my voice will carry for so long a distance after so long a time. Edna

To Edmund Wilson Steepletop August, 1946 1 Dear Bunny: It is two years now since I received your letter. You had bad news to tell me: the death of John Bishop.2 Even now, that seems unlikely. How you must have missed him that summer, and how you still must miss him, is something that I would rather not go into in my mind. For it would make me ache, only to think of it. And I don’t like aching, any more than anybody else. You told me also, in that letter, that you liked my recorded readings from my poems. That pleased me enormously. I had felt pretty sure, myself, that they were good. But your verdict was like an Imprimatur to me. Your letter reached me at a time when I was very ill indeed, in the Doctors’ Hospital in New York. I was enjoying there a very handsome— and, as I afterwards was told, an all but life-size—nervous breakdown. For five years I had been writing almost nothing but propaganda. And I can tell you from my own experience, that there is nothing on this earth which can so much get on the nerves of a good poet, as the writing of bad poetry. Anyway, finally, I cracked up under it. I was in the hospital a long time. This does not explain, of course, why, when I got out and came

376  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay home, after I got well and strong again, still I did not write you. But here, happily for me, and for you, I can save ourselves the cumbersome explaining, by reminding you of a letter of Gerard Hopkins.3 In this letter he makes apology—I forget to whom; possibly to Robert Bridges, although, somehow, I think not—for having been so slow in answering. And he states—not in these words at all, but this is the meaning of it—: that the driving of himself by himself to make the beginning of a letter, is almost more than his strength can support. When once he has forced himself to begin the letter, he says, the going is not so bad. Well, I, too, suffer from that disease. For it is a disease. It is as real, and its outlines are quite as clear, as in a case of claustrophobia, or agoraphobia. I have named it, just in order to comfort myself, and to dignify this pitiful horror with a name, epistolaphobia. I say, “I, too, suffer from that disease.” But I think I have it very much worse than he had. For after all, he did write many letters. And I don’t. It is sheer desperation and pure panic—lest, through my continued silence, I lose your friendship, which I prize— that whips me to the typewriter now. I don’t know where you are. But I think, and I think it often, “Whereever he is, there he still is, and perhaps some day I shall see him again, and we shall talk about poetry, as we used to do.” I have just finished learning by heart Matthew Arnold’s “Scholar Gypsy,”—such a lovely poem.4 I had wanted for years to know it by heart, but it had always looked a bit long to me. It is not at all difficult, however, to learn by heart, stanza by stanza; it is so reasonable. I have also learned by heart “The Eve of St. Agnes” and “Lamia.”5 Lamia, let me tell you, is a very long poem. And Keats, in both these poems, makes it as tricky as possible for you, by shifting all the time from “thou” to “you,” and by whisking you suddenly from the past tense into the present tense. To get these passages into your memory, and exact, is really quite a chore. I have learned by heart, of Shelley, not only “To the West Wind”—and surely the second stanza of that poem is as fine a thing as ever was written in English—but also the “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”—a devil to learn by heart.6 Anyway, I have them all now. And what evil thing can ever again even brush me with its wings? With love, as ever, [signed] Edna.

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Bunny: I am sending you, here-enclosed, \three/ new poems of my own.7 I hope, of course I hope very much, that you will like them, but don’t—oh, for God’s sake, don’t for one moment—feel that you must write me something about them, or, indeed, in any way acknowledge this letter at all. I would not put so great a burden upon the shoulders and upon the brain of the person that in all the world I hated the most. I do not need your answer. I am happy enough as it is. For I have at last, after two years of recurring spiritual torment, been able to flog myself into writing a very simple letter to a dear and trusted friend. E. I forgot to tell you, even though I was speaking of Father Hopkins, that I have also learned by heart at least one third of his published poetry. Have you ever tried to learn him by heart?—It is great fun, very exciting, difficult. 1. Part of her draft of this letter reads: “Your letter reached me a year ago last summer in Doctors’ Hospital in New York, where, after years of Painstaking and Pious Prostitution of Poetry & Propaganda, I was relaxing in a complete and handsome nervous breakdown.” She starts the next sheet with the final line from Catullus 76: (“O di, reddite mi hoc pro pietate mea!”) Loeb translation: “O ye gods, grant me this in return for my piety.” 2. John Peale Bishop died April 4, 1944. 3. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) was an English poet. A letter from Harper & Brothers (August 3, 1938) documents her purchase of two books from her “Author’s Account”: Life of Hopkins, by G. F. Lahey, S.J. (Oxford University Press, 1930), and Further Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins, including his correspondence with Coventry Patmore, edited by Claude Colleer Abbott (Oxford University Press, 1938). Robert Bridges (1844–1930), an English poet and critic, was a friend of Hopkins and the editor of Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918). In more than one letter, Hopkins apologized for a delay in writing to the person he addressed. He wrote to the English poet Coventry Patmore: “My Dear Mr. Patmore,—I am very sorry to have so long neglected replying to your last kind letter, but my mind is harassed with the work before and upon me”—written from “University College, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin. June 23 1885” (216). One of Millay’s notebooks, marked “ca. 1940s” on the cover, begins: “Gerard Hopkins— John Donne / Compare sonnets of Father Hopkins with those of John Donne. Did Hopkins know Donne well? / Similar constant battle, accompanied by constant torment, between Faith in God & Doubt of God” (LC 98, 7). In another notebook, she wrote Hopkins’s sonnet “Tom’s Garland,” presumably from memory, since it contains several errors (LC 101, 1). 4. “The Scholar Gypsy,” a 250-line poem by the English Victorian poet and critic Matthew Arnold (1822–1888), was published in 1853. 5. The English Romantic poet John Keats (1795–1821) published “The Eve of St. Agnes” in

378  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 1821 and “Lamia” in 1820. “The Eve of St. Agnes” is made up of 42 stanzas of nine lines each; “Lamia” is in two parts: 397 and 311 lines. 6. “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” (84 lines, 1817) and “Ode to the West Wind” (70 lines, 1820) are by the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822). The latter poem would complement her knowledge of Dante and Virgil. 7. The three poems are the sonnet “Tranquillity at Length,” “Ragged Island,” and “To a Snake.”

To Amy Reed [1946] Dear Miss Reed:1 At last, the little volume of Petrarch which you lent me from the Vassar College Library, is on its way back to you.2 It has been on its way back to you so long now, in my mind, that is, and I have been so constantly tortured by the thought that I had not yet returned it, that it seems strange to me today, to wrap it up and tie it up and send it off, quite as if it had not been returned to you long ago. It was not out of design that I kept it, nor yet out of negligence, at least, not for the first few decades. Of my three reasons for keeping it, two are not only valid but even decent. In the first place: this book has a very interesting preface, which I have found nowhere else, and which I wanted to have typewritten out for me to keep, before returning the book. I had not the time, having no secretary and no servants to attend to other work meanwhile, to type it out for myself. I tried to find somebody who both knew Italian and could typewrite, but could find no one. Finally I got the job done, by an excellent typist, who understood not one word of Italian, but typed the preface out letter by letter. Which brings me to the second place. In the second place, I had intended, as soon as the typewriting job should be finished, to send the book back to you immediately. But I found that, through much necessary handling, although it had been careful handling, the binding of the book—which had already begun to fray and break, when I first [typed over ‘first’] received it—had really begun to give way seriously. I tried then (this is in the second place) to find somebody who could [xed out letters] delicately repair the binding, so that it should seem never to have been

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damaged at all. I could find nobody to do this, whom I could trust, and I was very much afraid that by mistake a modern binding might be substituted for the old one. So I am returning the book to you just as it is. Whatever needs to be done about the repairing or re-binding of it, you will know better than I do. And I trust that you, in addition to earlier kindnesses done to me, will permit me, no matter how small the cost of the work may be, to pay for it. For it strikes me that, however great the cost of such work might be, it could be but a small repayment to you and to Petrarch. I am finishing this on another typewriter, the first one having gone on strike in the meantime—although it has no real grievance: it is just out of sympathy—and I myself having had the flu; and I do think that I shall never get over the flu, or at least that tired feeling which follows one like ones shadow afterwards, shadow seen and felt by moonlight. So I think I will close now, because I seem to have come to the end of myself. You were very kind to me about the Petrarch. Do not for one moment believe that I am not deeply grateful to you, or that I shall ever forget your kindness Very sincerely, and with \kind/ memories, yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay Sorry this is such a mess. But if I try to type it over, I shall just go to bed, instead. I have done up the precious little parcel. It is strapped with cord strong enough to hoist a concert-grand piano to an eighth-story window. But it was all I could find. 1. Amy Reed was librarian emeritus at Vassar College, based on Millay’s envelope address. 2. Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374) was an Italian poet, whose sonnets were translated into English as early as the sixteenth century. Sonnets in English are often termed either Shakespearean or Petrarchan in structure.

380  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

To Cass Canfield Steepletop October, 1947 Dear Cass: First of all, I want to thank you for your kind and thoughtful letter of last spring. I took you at your word, at the time, and did not write to thank you then. But I was deeply touched, and very grateful, and I still am. I admire you, too, for the easy manner in which you led me round that really muddy puddle, without letting me get splashed at all: it was chic, what you did.

As to your proposition that Harper’s publish my Collected Dramatic Works, I am afraid I must disappoint you here, although I hate most dreadfully to do so. The fact is, I have too much pride and too much faith in myself as a dramatist, to permit the publication in one volume of seven dramatic works of mine, of which only three—Two Slatterns and a King; The Princess Marries the Page; and Aria da Capo, are good plays, and only one of these, Aria da Capo, of any significance. Two Slatterns and a King does exactly what it sets out to do. It is very light and slender, but it is carefully constructed, and plays well. The Princess Marries the Page is romantic and sentimental. This, too, is well constructed. It is easy to act, and pretty to watch and listen to. It is a good little play, but of no importance.1 Aria da Capo, of course, is something else entirely. It has its im­ perfections, but they are not heavy enough to drag it down. A person reading it might think it too complicated for the stage, but he would be mistaken. It was written for the theatre, and on the stage all its intricacies move into place in a clear and terrible pattern: to see it well played is an unforgettable experience. (Aria da Capo is being played all the time, in little theatres, colleges, highschools, clubs, all over this country and Great Britain, and in other countries. I saw it a few years ago in Paris, done in French, of course. If you ever get a chance to see it, please go. You will be astonished at the power of it, when, actually seen before your eyes, as it was meant to be seen. Eugen, when he first read Aria da Capo, said, “I understand that this play is a great success on the stage, but I find that

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 381

hard to believe. If I were a producer, I wouldn’t touch it.” But one night he saw it played. It was at Avon Old Farms; the young boys of the school were giving a performance of it as their Christmas play.2 He was very deeply moved, as was everybody else in the audience. You have no idea how good this play is, until you see it on the stage. I hope you will see it someday.) Well, as you have gathered, I am very proud of Aria da Capo. I wish I had a dozen more, not like it, but as good. Then we could bring out a book! The King’s Henchman is a bad play. It was written in the first place as the libretto for an opera. Later, I tried to make it into a play. But it was hopelessly contaminated. It smells of libretto; and has other grave faults as well. This is a pity. For some of my very best poetry is to be found in The King’s Henchman;—to be found, that is, by a reader tough enough to struggle through acres of ostentatious and pedantic drivel in order to get to it. The Lamp and the Bell was written as an occasional piece, and shows it. It was written to be played at Vassar, on the fiftieth anniversary (I think) of the founding of the college. It was written to be played by girls, and shows it. This play is well constructed. It is not, like The King’s Henchman, diffuse, crowded with detail, and verbose (verbose in Anglo-­ Saxon!)3 But whereas The King’s Henchman, considered not as drama but as dramatic poetry, is often full and rich, the blank verse of The Lamp and the Bell seldom rises above the merely competent. Five acts of uninspired writing, with only here and there a line, or two or three lines at most, to light up the page—and by no means every page—this is not good enough. The Murder of Lidice, of course, was and is, merely propaganda. I tried to make it as good as I could in the time I had. It has some good lines, but not very many, and not very good. This piece should be allowed to die along with the war which provoked it. I only hope its death will not be so lingering as that of the war itself. Conversation at Midnight is an interesting book: I like it. But the published version is not nearly so good as the original manuscript, which was destroyed by fire. I was able to remember the greater part of it, but there were many passages which I had to re-invent, and others which I

382  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay was forced to leave out entirely, so that the result is patchy and jerky. However, if I had a half dozen or more really high-class plays to be printed in a collection, I might wish to add Conversation at Midnight to the group. I don’t know. It is not really a play, and might suffer in the reading, if the reader were tacitly instructed to consider it as a play. We are left with only Aria da Capo, one really good, serious play, and two other one-act plays, both skilfully wrought, but both inconsequential. We have nothing to work with. We have no book. I am very sorry to have to disappoint you. Naturally, Harper’s wants, and needs, to bring out another book by me. But it will do no good to me, or to Harper’s, when I bring out a book of new lyrics, good lyrics, to have this book preceded by a book of bad plays. I am writing. I have not many poems finished, but those that I have are good. The effect of writing so much propaganda during the war— from the point of view of poetry, sloppy, garrulous and unintegrated—is to make me more careful and critical of my work even than formerly I was, so that now I write more slowly than ever. But there will be a book. I am afraid even to suggest a possible date, lest I be caught again in that paralyzing nightmare of writing against time, which I so often experienced when writing for the radio during the war. If Harper’s can be patient with me still, there will be a book. Sincerely, Edna. 1. In her preface to the 1932 publication of The Princess Marries the Page, written in Paris in June 1932, Millay spoke of revisiting her play. “On reading over to myself The Princess Marries the Page, I found that I liked it much better than I had expected to do. It was unmistakably a youthful work, and very slight, but I thought it rather pretty. And I had a desire to see it among my published books” (xii). 2. American folksinger Pete Seeger (1919–2014) was in the performance: “Edna St. Vincent Millay visited the school when we put on her play Aria Da Capo, an antiwar allegory.” As a writer for the Avon Weekly Newsletter, Seeger interviewed Millay (Pete Seeger in His Own Words, edited by Rob Rosenthal and Sam Rosenthal [Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2012], 7. 3. Her emphasis plays on the general notion that Anglo-Saxon words are often shorter than Latinate words; moreover; verbose is not an Anglo-Saxon word—and Millay worked to use only Anglo-Saxon words in The King’s Henchman. A small number of words from the play are from Romance languages.

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To Arthur W. Rushmore December 16, 1947 Dear Arthur Rushmore: I am sorry to have to disappoint your friend, but the inscription in his copy of A Few Figs from Thistles was not written by me. I don’t wonder, though, that you thought it might have been. Some of the letters in this inscription—particularly the capital T (in To) and the capital F (in Future) so strongly resemble my own T and F that when I first glanced at the inscription I was more than a little startled. But most of the other letters have hardly any resemblance to my writing. I could not, for instance, to save my life, make a small f like that. My f always has a loop in it, usually two—two fast, furious, frantic, funny loops!1 It was very pleasant to hear from you again. It is too long, far too long, since you and I waded about through a surf of galley proof on the floor at Fifth Avenue, talking, exhorting, resisting, slyly yielding some small point, always superbly moving to prevail. Then prone on the rug, with scissors and paste, carefully snipping and glueing. I don’t know yet who won. But it was a goodlooking book, so the chances are that you did. (Conversation at Midnight, wasn’t it?) Don’t be too blue; don’t let it get you too much, this bloody world. I have no wisdom, and little hope, myself. But it seems to me that all this endless jockeying for position, all this guile and treachery, all the bad manners and bad debts, are things that have been lived through many times before. Perhaps it really is worse today; or perhaps it is just that today everybody can look through everybody else’s windows. That was at no time a safe thing to do, if one treasured ones illusions. Whatever the answer, the whole thing is an exasperating mess and a tarnation bore. The next time you and I meet, instead of cutting and pasting galley proof on the rug, we’ll lean out of a window above the street and “cracher sur le monde qui passe.” A Merry Christmas to you and to your family. And, yes, A Happy New Year, by gum; Sincerely, Edna Millay

384  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. The right-hand side of the first four lines of her typed letter end in an obtuse angle. She draws a line to this section and comments: “Isn’t this a beautiful margin?”

To F. O. Matthiessen [Steepletop] January 29th, 1948. Dear Mr. Matthiessen: Since it is a serious thing for a poet to refuse to help another poet when he is in trouble, I am writing this letter to the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets, setting forth my reasons for declining to serve on this board, to which with such warm pleasure I learned that I had been elected. I am sending this letter to each of the chancellors.1 The By-Laws of the Academy of American Poets, Incorporated, are not in themselves, of course, any business of mine. Nor is its Certificate of Incorporation. Since, however, my decision that I must decline to serve on its Board of Chancellors is based upon my objection to Article VII of its By-Laws as combined with the sections numbered Second and Eighth of its Certificate, I feel that I have the right to discuss these documents as critically as may be necessary in order to explain my action, and defend a position which badly needs defending. The passages I mention are quoted below, for your convenience and my own. I have underlined certain parts of them. by-laws—vii

“I. Every fellow of the corporation elected by the chancellors to receive a fellowship shall, at least three (3) times during the year of his fellowship and each time within thirty (30) days prior to the time fixed for the payment of his next quarterly installment of the stipend, communicate with the Secretary of the corporation in writing as to the general nature of his activities in connection with the purposes of the fellowship.—”

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 385 certificate of incorporation

“Second: The purposes for which the corporation is formed are: To provide fellowships for American poets of proven merit through the creation of a trust fund for the purpose, with a view to fostering the production of poetry through suitable rewards for poetic achievement as well as enabling individual poets of inadequate pecuniary means to devote themselves to poetic production; — “Eighth: The following persons shall be eligible for fellowships: poets of proven merit, either natural born or naturalized American citizens, not possessed of a regular income in excess of five thousand dollars ($5,000) lawful money of the United States of America, per annum. No holder of a fellowship shall engage in any gainful occupation for the whole or any part of his time other than such occupation as may be approved by a majority of the chancellors of the corporation as not incompatible with poetic production.” The impulse of any artist to help another artist who is in distress, is natural, and the satisfaction experienced when he feels that he has done this, is great. Therefore, and since your chief duty as a chancellor of this board is to determine whether or not a poet is worthy of the fellowship, you may not have inquired as closely as I have done into the matter of whether or not the fellowship is worthy of the poet. For I am one of those people who read with dark and heavy suspicion all contracts, deeds, affidavits, insurance policies and driving licences. And I have looked this wooden gift-horse in the mouth. It is not what it appears to be. It is not, as stated in the leaflet entitled “The Academy of American Poets,” an award “made for a term of one year”—“carrying a stipend of $5,000.” It is in fact, as a study of Article VII of its By-laws will show, an award made for a term of only three months, carrying a stipend of only one quarter of the amount stated. If the distinguished person who has gratefully accepted this award (and he must, according to the section numbered Second of the Certificate of Incorporation, in order to be even

386  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay eligible for consideration as a possible recipient of this award be a “poet of proven merit”)—if this distinguished person does not “at least three (3) times” and at stipulated intervals, during what is referred to as “the year of his fellowship,” apply for that very fellowship of which he is said to be a fellow, then the fellowship and the stipend which it carries are revoked. Three times, “at least three (3) times” during “the year of his fellowship” this “poet of proven merit” must “communicate with the Secretary of the corporation in writing as to the general nature of his activities in connection with the purposes of the fellowship.” Here is no “reward for poetic achievement.” This poet must sing for his supper. The pen with which he has written poetry of conspicuous merit, must now be employed in writing letters to a secretary of a corporation, explaining “the general nature of his activities.” Is this mature artist being treated as if he were a talented child of undeveloped capacities? No. He is being treated worse than that. For this is not the sum of his onerous and humiliating obligations. Not only three times during the year, but every day of the year, during “the year of his fellowship” he must be circumspect that he engage himself in no “gainful occupation” “for the whole or any part of his time” which might, in the opinion of a board of judges, be considered as “incompatible with poetic production.” In return for his freedom, his freedom from poverty, this “poet of proven merit” must conduct himself, throughout the period of his fellowship, precisely as if he were a prisoner on parole. My reasons for declining to serve on such a board as this, assembled for the purpose of trying to help poets who are in need of help, must be in my own opinion more than merely adequate: they must be strong. Five thousand dollars is a lot of money. But pottage is pottage, even when it is five thousand dollars’ worth of pottage. And I can have no part in seducing any poet into accepting this award, under these conditions. I think of what Shelley said, in “An Exhortation”: “Yet dare not stain with wealth or power A poet’s free and heavenly mind. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Spirits from beyond the moon, Oh, refuse the boon!”

Sincerely yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay

1. The Board of Chancellors comprised Leonard Bacon, Max Eastman, J. Donald Adams, Archibald MacLeish, Henry Canby, Witter Bynner, William Rose Benét, Robert M. Hutchins, Robinson Jeffers, John Hall Wheelock, and F. O. Matthiessen. This appears to be the same letter sent to the full board. An earlier draft is found in LC for MacLeish. Benét received this letter (with the same date) as well. There are slight variations, but not in principle, from the let­ter to Mrs. Hugh Bullock (in Macdougall’s edition), which was a few days later.

To William Rose Benét [Steepletop] February 1st, 1948 Dear Bill: Thank you for your letter. It never occurred to me when I first read it, that I might later be confronted by a reason which would force me to decline from serving on this board. But that was before I read the By-laws, and the Certificate of Incorporation, and all the other documents relating to this corporation which Mrs. Bullock sent. I don’t doubt for a minute that Mrs. Bullock, and all the others associated with her in this enterprise, are people who really care about poetry and want to help poets. The trouble is, in my opinion, they have entangled themselves, with no hope of extrication except by surgery, with a firm of musty, pettifogging lawyers who have happily gone to work and ruined the whole business. You won’t agree with me. But I hope very much, my dear friend, that the enclosed letter will make clear to you that I could not, thinking as I do, take any other action. Best wishes, always, from Eugen and me. Affectionately, Vincent

388  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

To Arthur W. Rushmore [Steepletop] May 10th, 1948 Dear Mr. Rushmore: As a result, perhaps, of the recent making-public of Max Eastman’s to-the-minds-of-some-better-kept-private affairs, is not the venerable firm of Harper & Brothers running just a few degrees of fever?1 If so, it is a fever to whose contagion I am immune. Your proposition, that Harper’s bring out a volume of “The Love Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay,” containing a “mellow Foreword in retrospect” written by their author, in which foreword she confides to the public “when, where, and under what impulsion” (the italics are mine) these poems were written, leaves me strangely cold.2 (I did get a grin out of it, though. Pretty hard put to it, weren’t you, dearie, to say it with flowers, and yet say it?) Of course, you have no possible way of knowing how very reticent a person I am, since I am far too reticent ever to have told you. You might, however, just by accident, have come across the knowledge that I am the only poet in America (at least, I believe this to be true) who consistently and in all circumstances refuses to make in print any statement whatever regarding any poem whatever that she has published. In all the years during which my poetry has been in print, there has been, I think, only one exception to this rule, and that of little importance, except that even so, naturally, I regret it. My discussion of the sonnet printed in my foreword to the Collected Sonnets does not count, of course, since this piece was merely a juvenile exercise in sonnet form, something which obviously I did not take seriously as a poem, for I had never published it.3 A glance, for instance, at the anthology entitled “This is My Best,” would show you that it was not I, but William Rose Benét, who made the selection from among my poems which this book contains, and who wrote the accompanying comments.4 I refused to have anything to do with the project. You state that, in your opinion, such a book as you describe would “make new readers” for me. I do not doubt it. People who never in all their lives, except when in school and under compulsion, have held a book of poems in their hands, might well be attracted by the erotic

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 389

autobiography of a fairly conspicuous woman, even though she did write poetry. The indubitable fact that, even as I was winning my new readers, I should be losing entirely the good esteem of the more sensitive and by me the most valued, of the readers I already have, does not seem to have occurred to you. “It would make a lovely book,” you say. In so far as your own part in it was concerned, it would, I know. But even you, with all your exquisite skill, could not make charming the indelicacy of such a foreword as you suggest. I am not saying, and of course not implying, that you yourself are insensitive: I know the opposite to be the fact. Nor do I mean to say that indelicacy is less shocking to you than it is to me. It is simply that your enthusiasm over the proposed volume from the point of view of format, paper, cover, size, etc., has pushed other aspects of the book from your mind, and you have never really once quietly considered just what it is that you are asking me to do. Is not this the truth, my friend? Sincerely, Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Rushmore was the book designer for Max Eastman’s Enjoyment of Living, published by Harper & Brothers in 1948. 2. Rushmore suggested this work in a letter from March 1, 1948. 3. Collected Sonnets appeared in 1941. Millay’s foreword, written at Steepletop, is dated August 1941. In addition to discussing her selection of sonnets, she comments on “Old Letters,” a previously unpublished sonnet she wrote when she was “about fifteen” (vi). Her final paragraph demonstrates her attention to language and nature. “The phrase ‘let slack or swell,’ in the next to the last line, is not so strained and far-fetched a metaphor as it sounds: it refers to the gradual ebbing and the gradual flooding of the tide,—an expression natural enough to a girl who had lived all her life at the very tide-line of the sea” (vii). 4. Whit Burnett edited This Is My Best: Over 150 Self-Chosen and Complete Masterpieces, Together with Their Reasons for Their Selections (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1942). In spite of the subtitle, William Rose Benét did select Millay’s poems: he chose fifteen sonnets, from Second April through Wine from These Grapes.

390  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

To Anne Morrow Lindbergh [Steepletop] August, 1948 1 Dear Anne Morrow Lindbergh: It is a fine poem, your “Second Sowing” in the August Atlantic. Please do not think of bothering to answer this brief note. Answering letters is horrible. Write poetry instead. Sincerely, Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Anne Spencer Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) was an American aviator and author, who married Charles Lindbergh in 1929. “Second Sowing” is collected in The Unicorn and Other Poems, 1935–1955 (New York: Pantheon, 1956).

To Oscar Hammerstein II [Steepletop] [Before end of April] 1949 1 Dear Mr. Hammerstein: Of course I shall be glad to be a member of the Honorary Committee to keep alive the name and works of George Gershwin.2 It occurs to me however,—and with a smile of pleasure and pride at the international reputation of this fine American composer,—that the works of George Gershwin have done much more to keep alive the name of George Gershwin, than anything which any number of honorary committees could ever do. Sincerely yours, 1. Oscar Hammerstein II sent Millay a letter (January 31, 1949) that begins: “We invite you to join, without obligation, an Honorary Committee to keep alive the name and works of George Gershwin.” The letter discusses a concert in Gershwin’s name to be held April 23, 1949. 2. The composer and songwriter George Gershwin (1898–1937).

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 391

To Miss Brigham [Steepletop] May 1, 1949 1 Dear Miss Brigham: We are late in acknowledging receipt of the herbs you sent, because it has taken both my husband and me almost all our time to keep the herbs, as well as our kitchen-garden, from freezing to death. I think that I have never seen such cruel frosts all throughout May, the grass at six o’clock in the morning, just before sunrise, still white and brittle and crunching underfoot. We saved all the herbs, first by potting them and keeping them in the woodshed at night, then, after we had set them out, by covering them almost every evening with everything we could find in the house— cartons, waste-baskets, garbage-cans. We lost all our beans and tomatoes, and the potatoes are badly browned on top, but we saved the herbs. All the herbs arrived in excellent condition, with the exception only of the Angelica and the Fennel, which for many days drooped in a most dejected way. I had to pick off so many yellowing leaves that I began to fear the plants might not have sufficient foliage left to keep them going. But now the Angelica has a fine new leaf, and the Fennel has a plume of the handsomest green one could imagine—not a nodding plume, either, upright in the full sun. The Ranunculus bicaria I do not understand (why is it not bicarius?) And why should it be bicarious at all—is it fig-bearing? I wanted it because I wanted to learn why Wordsworth so dearly loved the Lesser Celandine. But the leaf does not resemble the leaf of any Ranunculus that I ever saw: it looks much more like a violet leaf, and it is not doing well. I planted it in a shady place, which I should not have done, had it looked like a butter-cup; possibly I should transplant it. You will have no time, probably, even to read this long letter. Almost certainly you will have no time to answer all my questions concerning herbs. But I know of nobody else to whom I can appeal for instruction. I have been greatly attracted by herbs and simples ever since, years ago, in a small village in Dorset named Shillingstone, I held in my hands a first edition of Culpepper. I could have bought the book, I think, for two dollars. But I could not bring myself to buy it. There were only five

392  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay books in the house of those kind people. And they did not know the value of the book. But I wish that I had it. Enclosed you will find a second list of herbs which I wish to order from you. Among them are some which are not included in your exciting catalogue; but I thought: perhaps she can tell me where, in England or in France, I can find them. I thought, truly, that I should have to go to Mount Dicte, to find the Cretan Dittany.2 And I do very much hope that you can send me the Costmary. I ordered the Camphor-plant by mistake; I am pleased to have it; it is interesting; but I think I must have left out the word “tanacetoides” (although why the Costmary, and I remember it from my childhood in Maine, should be called tanacetoid, I have no idea; unless I am mistaken about the plant, and I do not think that I am, the shape of the leaf is greatly different. I hope, also, that you can send me the Cumin. I have tried for years to find it. The seeds have, to me, a much more delectable taste than either Caraway or Poppy. Coriander, to my tongue, has a nasty taste. I am ordering it, though, to give it one more try. Have you ever tasted the Dutch cheese called Leidsche kaas? It has cumin-seeds in it, and is delicious. I have mislaid your catalogue, which annoys me considerably now that I am making out another order. I remember that you have Skirret, and Mandrake. And I think Alkanet, but I think not Smallage. I hope I am mistaken. Also, I want the Scarlet Pimpernel. This small and charming plant used to grow wild in Truro (not the English Truro, the one on Cape Cod) where I lived one summer. Perhaps it needed to be near the sea. The Samphire which you sent me is yellowing-off in the under leaves. Perhaps it needs the sea even more than the Pimpernel does; is there any way of giving it iodine? It used to grow wild in the ledges near Chaldon Heath, in England. I gathered it there—though in a not very perpendicular place or attitude. The Sweet-briar rose, why is it not classed as a herb?—You must brush against it to smell it; it is the leaf which is fragrant. (The lavender is the only herb which I can call to mind at the moment, in which the flower is more fragrant than the leaf.) Almost nobody, I dare say, who is so happy as to have a Sweet-briar rose, would part with it for any price. But do you know of anybody who has more than one?—I will exchange

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 393

for it a York and Lancaster, which is also rare, but of which I have four, three of them now in bud. Have you noticed that the fragrance of your Pelargonium Capitatum resembles the Sweet-briar?—I suppose you have. But this, perhaps, you do not know: that the leaf of the Perforated St. Johnswort, when bruised, also smells like Sweet-briar. For years I have been yanking this up out of my flower-garden, but as I always grabbed it by its roots, I never smelled its leaves, until a few days ago, when I poulticed my husband’s infected thumb with St. Johnswort and plaintain. The poultice drew the infection from the thumb; and I learned about the smell. Sincerely yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay 1. Dorcas Brigham (1896–1986) owned Village Hill Nursery in Williamsburg, Massachusetts. The “Herb List of Village Hill Nursery” in 1948 noted that she was a former associate professor of botany at Smith College. The pamphlet includes the Ranunculus bicaria discussed by Millay in the letter. 2. Millay is playing on the etymology of a Cretan Dittany: Mount Dicte is “on the island of Crete, where (among other places) the plant [dictamnus] grew” (OED).

To Martha Knight [Steepletop] [June 8, 1949] Martha, my dear: It was wonderful to hear from you again after so many years. Of course I remember that night at the Statler. I think of Ethel, so handsome with her dark hair and rosy cheeks. I remember her wedding to Jake. I remember how we all went out to gather greens for the bridal arch; ground-pine mostly, I think, and how Ethel would not go with us, because she wanted to keep the lovely skin of her arms unscratched for the wedding. I remember my reading at the Statler Hotel, what a very hard job it was, because, as I remember it, it was in a big banquet-hall and waiters kept coming in across the back of the room and moving tables about with a great deal of noise.1 I remember afterwards, very tired but happy

394  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay that it was over, sitting at a table autographing books and suddenly I looked up and you were standing there near me, saying nothing, and I had not seen you for twenty years; but although I was preoccupied and not looking at people, looking down at my pen and the book, I knew you at once, and got up and cried: “Martha, Martha” and put my arms around you. I wish from a heart filled with happy memories of our High School days in Camden, that I might be with you all on this anniversary and I would come except that I am writing very hard and dare not interrupt myself. Give my love to Corinne. It is curious that I remember that she lived in a house on High Street, on the left hand side of the street as you walked up the hill, I think, and that she had a twin-brother who did not look like her at all. Give my love to Stella. Ask her if she remembers the corn-chowders we used to make in her house, close to the harbour. Give my love to all my class-mates who will be present. I remember them all vividly, but I’m working hard and must not take the time to name them all by name. Love, Vincent 6/8 ’49 1. Millay “read her poems on December 11 [1934] at the Statler Hotel in Boston . . . at which about seven hundred were present” (Vassar Quarterly, February 1935, 70).

To Miss Brigham [Steepletop] Aug. 3, 1949 Dear Miss Brigham: You were so kind as to say to me, in your letter which I enjoyed greatly, that you would answer any questions which I might ask you concerning herbs. (What you really said, was that you would give me the answer if you could. But I fancy there would be few instances in which you could not.)

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 395

I know that you meant what you said; but I have no intention of taking advantage of your quite possibly impulsive generosity. I have only one question which really asks for an answer; and a few words on a postcard, if you are too busy to write a letter, will suffice me and settle my truly important difficulty. I am sending you a leaf, and a small brown fig-shaped seed—one of many all up the stem—of a plant which you sent me labelled “Mimulus moschatus.” I am dearly hoping that, in all the rush and hustle of the spring shipping, a mistake was made in the labels. I am dearly hoping that this is the Lesser Celandine. Probably I am mistaken. For you said in your letter that the Ranunculus ficaria blooms extremely early in the season. And this plant continues blooming—one blossom, sometimes two, a day, one day three—until recently. I fell in love with it at once. I used to go to visit every morning, after I had finished touching and slightly stroking all the herbs which had fragrant leaves. I would start out about an hour before sunrise; but it takes a long time to smell all the herbs, because you only have two hands, and, after touching two of the herbs, you have to go into the house and scrub your fingers, if you would get the true scent of the others. Last of all, every morning, I used to go and hunker down on my heels and gaze at this lovely golden blossom for a long time—not a large blossom, rather thick petals, and “burnished,” which is the adjective you used for the Lesser Celandine. When it first blossomed, I sniffed at the flower, expecting it to have a heavy odour. It had a sweet smell, countrified and hearty, yet not strong. And I thought, “Why is this called ‘moschatus’ ”? But it was only when your letter came, telling me of the fig-shaped fruits on the Ranunculus ficaria, that I began to wonder: can two different plants be so very much alike? And I had a fervent hope that a mistake had been made, and that I had fallen in love with the Lesser Celandine, as Wordsworth did, all by myself. As I said, a postcard will answer me. And I shall love the plant, whatever it is. Sincerely yours, Edna St. Vincent Millay P. S. Please do not feel too sad for me, that I shall be disappointed. I have

396  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay only just now learned that all the plants of the Mimulus family are of the figwort family! So I suppose that’s that. But why on earth couldn’t he have said so? Why couldn’t he have called it something like Mimulus ficarius moschatus, for instance,—anything to give me a hint that it is called Mimulus because it imitates the shape of the fig, and not because it imitates the smell of musk. I am taking it for granted that it was that old devil of a Linnaeus who is the cause of all my anguish. However, as I said, I love the plant anyway. And that also is that. E. St. V. M.

To Edmund Wilson [Steepletop] [August 9, 1949] Dear Bunny: This is awful; but I can’t see you; I can’t see anybody on earth just now; I am working seventy-two hours a day; and I don’t dare run the risk of being deflected. This is an ironic and a hateful thing: I have so often longed to talk with you. I shall feel very sad about this—and I know that I shall—as soon as I am able to feel anything at all beyond the periphery of my intense occupation. I liked your longer poem; I liked it very much. But don’t use the word—if it is a word—“gals.” Not even although it makes a fine Janus-­ faced rhyme for “slag.”1 Don’t do it. “Slag” is a fine word. “Gals” is cheap, common and indecent. Don’t use it; don’t, for God’s sake, use it, in a poem which has so much elegance. Love, Edna 1. Wilson’s poem, “The Pickerel Pond: A Double Pastoral,” from Furioso, winter 1949 (Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay, ed. Macdougall, 355). The poem is subtitled “Amphisbaenics (backward rhymes)” and dated 1948 in Edmund Wilson’s Night Thoughts (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1961). Millay refers to these two lines: “Dropping off to pick blueberries, lag / Her identical twins, tiny gals” (lines 63–64).

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 397

To Gladys Brown Ficke

[Boston, Mass. August 30, 1949]

mrs. arthur ficke= philmont ny= dear gladdie, i know how very sad you will be to get this news. ugin died last night after a very serious operation. i have friends here in boston at copley plaza who are doing all that can be done to help love vinal. [in pencil] vincent

To Gladys Brown Ficke [Steepletop] Dec. 5th, 1949 Dear Gladdie: I have thought of you, oh, so many times. I was never much of a letter-writer, as you know. And I use the telephone only for business. But I think of you. I want to see you. But not yet. We should be not ourselves at all, just the two of us alone, missing the rest of us. And I am avoiding every stab of extra pain that I can possibly dodge. You know all about this. . . . . . Thank you for the Melachrinos, dear.1 It’s curious how, when they came, I was really dreading the moment, not far off, when I should have to open a package of Virginia cigarettes: that seemed just too much. Love, Vincent 1. Melachrino is a brand of Egyptian cigarettes. Compare her thoughts on Virginia tobacco in a letter to Harriet Monroe on March 1, 1918.

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To Bill Brann and Billie Brann [Steepletop] Dec. 11th, 1949 Dear Bill and Billie: Margaret Cuthbert writes me that you have both been ill. I am very sorry to hear that; I hope you are much better now. Margaret didn’t tell me where you are; but by now you are probably in Florida, so I am sending this note there. Everything is deep under snow here—very handsome. Zero is the coldest it has been here so far, although in the valley, in Austerlitz, they have had it fourteen below. John takes good care of the furnaces for me, and builds the open fire in the living-room and brings in enormous logs of white birch. I am taking care of myself, following Dr. Lewis’ prescriptions. I feed myself thick juicy beefsteaks, burned to a crisp on the outside and raw on the inside, and mutton chops and liver and bacon and eggs—all the best proteins. And every day I take my stinking vitamin capsules and my loathsome liver, iron and red-bone-marrow extract. (Almost every day, that is. Once in a while I come to the stern decision that it would be better for my nerves to go without these nerve-racking nerve-builders.) I am doing very well. But I have put the lines close together, so that you can’t read between them.1 Love, Vincent

1. She single-spaced the type.

To Manuel Maria Mischoulon Steepletop, Austerlitz, N.Y. Dec. 10th, 1949 1 Dear Mr. Mischoulon: You feared that I might be ill. I am far worse than ill. My husband has died. I cannot write about it, nor about anything else. And I cannot

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 399

answer questions. But I wanted to get some word to you, you were so distressed by my silence. The books came, early in November. I have not yet been able to read them. But I thank you very much. Good luck to you. Sincerely, Edna St. Vincent Millay (“Miss Edna”) 1. Mischoulon was “an Argentine poet who had translated several sonnets from Fatal Interview into Spanish for publication in a South American literary journal” (Jean Gould, The Poet and Her Book: A Biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay [Dodd, Mead & Company, 1969], 281.)

To Cass Canfield [Steepletop] April 4th, 1950 Dear Cass: I meant to write you at once, after sending you that telegram. For I realized, the moment it had gone, how abrupt and chilly it might sound, unless it were followed at once by a letter explaining it. But I have had little time for writing letters. The reason I wired you not to come that Friday, was because it suddenly occurred to me that that day would be the day after Thanksgiving Day; and I was not at all sure how I should get through that day, the first Thanksgiving Day I had ever spent all alone. I got through it all right, and all the other happy holidays, too, by simply by-passing them. (I love that expression.) The only thing I did by way of observance, was to sit at the piano on Christmas Eve, and play and sing some Christmas Carols. And on New Year’s Eve, I rang up Eugen’s family in Holland. None of them had received any word from me at all, since that one shocking cablegram. And New Year’s Eve, which they call Old Year’s Eve, is a very solemn occasion with them, not like our gay and rowdy drunken tooting. The family assembles, and talks about what has happened in the year

400  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay that has passed. And I knew that they would talk of Eugen with heavy heartache; and that they would be worrying about me. For they love me as if I were their own kin; as I do them. I should like very much to see you, and I will let you know as soon as the roads are open. The weather this winter has been phenomenally bad. Spring is at least six weeks later than usual, and the roads are just now beginning to thaw, and are like quicksand. John Pinnie has to walk here every morning, to do the chores.1 Please forgive me for not writing sooner. Affectionately, Edna. 1. John Pinnie (born 1893) was an Austerlitz native and neighbor who worked as a groundskeeper and handyman for Millay for years.

To Mrs. Mary V. Herron Steepletop, Austerlitz, New York April 5th, 1950 1 Dear Mary: Enclosed is a little Easter book-mark. Isn’t it sweet? I had a feeling you might love it. My aunt sent it me several years ago, and I kept it in a copy of Keats, so that it would open at The Eve of St. Agnes, while I was learning The Eve of St. Agnes by heart. And even after I knew the poem by heart, the little book-mark stayed there, so that the string and tassel part of it look just a bit grubby, I’m afraid. Not very, though. I’m going to write out my own cheques from now on, and attend to my book-keeping myself. You’ve been a marvellous help to me: I don’t see how I could possibly have managed all these different kinds of business without you. But it’s time I stopped being such a baby. If you will please still read my mail, though, and answer for a while still the kind of letter you have been answering for me, I shall be very grateful. You can’t have any more Steepletop butter until the roads are in

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 401

better condition. Poor John has to walk every day to and from his work here. And I can’t ask him to carry anything more than a few letters. I’ll send you a nice big piece next time. Edna 1. Mary Herron was the local postmaster, and “aided the bereaved poet at this time by answering for her the many letters of sympathy” (Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay, ed. Macdougall, 358).

To Bill Brann [Steepletop] April 19th, 10501 Dear Bill: I have written you many letters this winter. Most of them, I will admit only in my head. But some of them, at least the beginnings of some, actually on the typewriter. But something always interrupted: I would suddenly remember that this was John’s day to go to West Stockbridge and that I hadn’t made out my grocery list; or I would glance out the window and see a raccoon climbing a maple, turning to look over his shoulder; and I would get up and go to a window where I could get a better view of him, with his cute little triangular face and black mask, and his tiny hands and big handsome barred tail. Or I would notice that some of my house-plants were drooping badly, and get up to water them. (Every window in the house, downstairs, is full of house-plants. I thought that they would be company for me. Ever since I was a child I have known that there is nothing like watching something bud and blossom, to take your mind off yourself. But all winter long not a single one of them has even started to bud. I have not been angry with them, however; day after day I have watered them and cared for them and never said an unkind word; for I know that they want to blossom even more, probably, than I want them to, and that the reason why they have not blossomed is because there has been no sun.) I am enclosing a letter which I wrote you last week, and actually did finish—such as it is. The reason why it did not get posted before is

402  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay because I wanted to look up about Sir Barton and Billy Kelly,2 and was always too busy doing seventeen other things. Love, Vincent 16 years before 1066-and-all-that,—so where did I learn such words as “interrupted” and “enclosing”? I must have been out fishing for herring one day, and bumped smack into a smack from Brittany. [The enclosed, earlier letter, on the same stationery; typed, with pen corrections.] Bill: There’s no two ways about it. When a jockey gets to be thirty-two, he’s not so young as he was at twenty-two. Look at these two photographs: one of them might be the father of the other. Woolf ’s face is the face of a man, careful, calculating, suspicious, wary; he does a lot of thinking, and it’s all about Georgie Woolf.3 A man with that face takes no chances,—no chances of getting a scratch on the ugly mug of Georgie Woolf. He not only gets no excitement out of riding, he is afraid to ride; he is longing for the day when he can retire and be a trainer or something, and he intends to retire without a scratch on Georgie Woolf. Whether he is afraid of Pete, I don’t know; but he rides him as if he were; I can see no excuse for Saturday’s race. At the three-quarter pole he had two horses in front of him, the first a length and a half in front of the second and the second a length and a half in front of Pete; Pete himself was three lengths in front of the fourth horse. What was there at that time to hinder Woolf from taking Pete to the outside if he wanted to? Why wait until he had him in the stretch, and lose all that ground? It is possible, of course, that he hoped to get through along the rail, and then his courage failed him; because, believe me, it’s not Challedon he’s worrying about! And why keep him under wraps way around the stretch turn and into the stretch, and until after he’d steered him from the rail to the outside? Why give him his head just a little bit too late? At the age of thirty-two a jockey should at least have judgement! Was he afraid he’d lug out coming into the stretch? If he’s lugging out, it’s those damned blinkers with the exception of that one dog-race in Florida! Why the hell do you keep running him in blinkers? Or is your Mr. Xmas still the white-haired boy to you, and can do no wrong? OK, what about his letting Pictor leave the Excelsior on the training track last Friday, in a fast

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 403

workout before his Saturday race? It seems to me that your contract jockey is either a coward or a crook; and that either your trainer or you is an ass. That’s all for now. But I’m sizzling. Pardon me if I’ve said anything offensive, which I hope I have. Love, Vincent. April 20th, and snowing. [Typed on index-size paper, answering her own questions from the later letter.] 1919—Sir Barton (112 ½); Billy Kelly (119); Under Fire (122) No. It was Coronation Cup. (April 22nd, 1950. 9 a. m. Snowing furiously. I can just make out the shape of the barn.) 1. Millay catches herself later in the letter, when she writes “16 years before 1066.” 2. Horses Sir Barton (raced 1918–1920) and Billy Kelly (raced from 1918–1923). 3. Canadian-born George Woolf (1910–1946), nicknamed “Iceman,” was the jockey who rode Seabiscuit to victory in the 1938 race against War Admiral.

To Aunt Susie Steepletop April 30th, 1950 Dear Aunt Susie: This is just a note to say that I’m sorry you didn’t get a note from me for your birthday. One of the reasons why you didn’t get it, is because I didn’t write it. One of the more unsatisfactory things about me is, that the only dates I know are from 1066 and 1492, and I never can seem to fit them in anywhere, lately. My own birthday I should certainly never in the world remember, except that it happens also to be George Washington’s birthday, and there is always a great to-do and fanfare about it, and a national holiday and all, and so it is somewhat forced upon the attention. Last-minute-News: It hasn’t snowed today. At least not quite. At least not yet. Daylight-Saving-Time!—What daylight? Love, anyhow, Vincent

404  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

To Margaret Cuthbert [Steepletop] August 17th, 1950 Dear Margaret: When you and Alice were here early in the summer, you asked me what to do so that you wouldn’t have to put your hand down in the dish-water to lift that little contraption in the sink and let the water out. I meant to tell you then, but I don’t think I did. pliers, darling, pliers! I am sending you by parcel post the handsomest pair of pliers I ever saw in my life. Not only the best, but the best-looking. (So beautiful, indeed, that when I saw them, I had to order for myself a pair just like them, although I don’t need any more.) They are also wire-cutters. But probably you don’t go about cutting wires, the way I do. These are heavy, and you will have to get accustomed to them. But they will do either a very heavy job or a very delicate job: I use pliers about the kitchen all the time. Love, Edna

To Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Bloch Steepletop Austerlitz, N.Y. August 24th, 1950 Dear Blanche and Allie: I want to see you both at least as much as you want to see me, but I have been busy writing, and have seen nobody. Look for a poem by me in the Thanksgiving number of the Saturday Evening Post. I have done some other things, too, and worked over some old ones. Let me know how long you are going to stay up here, my dears. Love, Edna

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 405

To Cass Canfield [Steepletop] August 27th, 1950 Dear Cass: I am glad you like the Thanksgiving poem. It must have startled you to read it, and find that it was quite a different poem from the one I outlined to you here at Steepletop, and of which I read you passages. I worked very hard on that poem—the first one—and it was going along well, I thought; but as things got worse and worse in Korea, I began to see that it was not the right poem for the occasion. “What,” I asked myself, “would a few Indian war-whoops mean, and a neighbourly little scalping-party,—to a nation dreading and awaiting the atom bomb?” “Fun and games, that’s all; just good, clean fun.” So I scrapped the poem, as of that instant; and sat there, scared frozen; the deadline only ten days off; my promise to deliver the poem long ago given to the Post; and not an idea in my head. What finally happened is as follows: when I got so scared that I was fair frantic, there was nothing to do but relax, and start all over; and so I did. And almost at once the first lines of the new poem came into my head. Oh, I know that I am making a big fuss about a small piece of work,—but it is so wonderful to be writing again! (My only hope, just now; this is a bad time of year for me.) Thank you for continuing the advance payments. I was so busy writing that I did not even notice, until the August slip came in. But this is a great help to me. And it was kind of you to do it, without even speaking about it. Sincerely, Edna

406  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

To Alice Blinn [Steepletop] Sept. 20th, 1950 Dear Alice: The African violets you gave me are still in blossom, both the purple and the pink: they have been in blossom constantly for three months, and have only recently put out new flower-stalks. They will be in blossom for a week longer, I think. I wish you could come and see them. Love,    Edna

To Aunt Susie Steepletop Austerlitz, New York Sept. 21, 1950 Dearest Aunt Susie: What fun you must have had on your wonderful trip to Canada! I love to think about it. Was it the first time you have ever been out of this country? What enormous excitement if that is true! Your dear kind friend who took you with her was well repaid for her thoughtfulness, I know. Not only that you were good company, and all of that (for you are a darned nice girl—did I ever tell you?—and couldn’t help being pleasant to have along), but your enthusiasm, just like a kid’s (the way kids used to be!) must have been adorable to watch. Write me all about it when you can. I want to hear every single thing. Much love,    Vincent

Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay 407

To Esther Root Adams Steepletop (Austerlitz, N.Y.) Oct. 9, 1950 Dear Tess: I should love to see you; but (and this is one hell of an invitation, as I know) can you arrange to come after lunch and leave before dinner? (!!!) I have no time to explain now; I want to get an answer to you into this mail. No, my dear. Don’t bring me any lobsters. And don’t bring me any sea-weed. John is ready to leave for the post-office. Love,    Edna

To Allan Ross Macdougall Steepletop, Oct. 9, 1950 Yes. And of course.1 I will do my best for you; but I don’t know [how] much influence I have with them at the moment. Quite a bit, I should imagine. But the committee may have changed personnel. Can you lend me “Tyl Ulenspiegl” in the original, from which you translated it? And did you compare your translation with any other, or get help from any other? The point is: I admire your translation enormously, but don’t want to say too much about it, unless you actually did it all yourself. (I don’t see how you could have done it all yourself—it looks to me like somebody’s lifework.) Send me any information you think I should have. love,    Edna 1. Macdougall’s translation of Charles de Coster’s The Glorious Adventures of Tyl Ulenspiegl first appeared in 1934. Macdougall asked for Millay’s support while he was completing a Guggenheim questionnaire. He wrote a reply (October 11, 1950) to her postcard, with details of his translation work.

408  Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

To John Hall Wheelock [Steepletop] [October 1950] 1 Enthusiastic about Humphries’ Aeneid. Sat up all night reading it. Will write something for jacket, but please advise soonest number words wanted and deadline. Paragraph. Throughout book translator uses substantive quote ably unquote as if accent on first syllable—see for instance galley 65 last line in second stanza. In three dictionaries including Oxford this pronunciation incorrect, but possibly Webster’s sanctions it. If not, mention my name in this connection. Paragraph. Will the book have maps in it? I hope so. Always when reading adventure stories—and surely The Aeneid is one—I long for maps and charts of voyages & important places. And so few books have them. Yet many people must like them, for otherwise why do the popular-printed detective stories carry maps on back-covers? 1. Millay wrote this draft in one of her notebooks. This is a fair copy; her deletions are not noted. John Hall Wheelock had sent Millay proofs from a new translation by Rolfe Humphries of The Aeneid. She died before she could finish the letter. (The Last Romantic: A Poet Among Publishers; The Oral Autobiography of John Hall Wheelock, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli with Judith S. Baughman [University of South Carolina Press, 2002], 100.)

Mill ay’s Lis t of Poems to Memorize

On small slips of stationery from the Hotel St. Regis, New York, Millay listed authors and poems she intended to memorize. Following are economical transcriptions of these sheets: titles are placed in quotation marks, and long lists appear as running prose. Punctuation has been added. The sheets are numbered according to their order in the folder. There are more sheets than what is here. (Library of Congress, Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 114, Folder 4.) [sheet 1] Keats (learn by heart) “To a Nightingale,” “To Autumn,” “To Melancholy,” “On a Grecian Urn,” [and] “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” [A checkmark appears next to each poem.] [sheet 2] Shelley “To the West Wind” [checkmark], “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” [checkmark], “Ozymandias,” (?), “Sonnet to Wordsworth,” “The cold earth slept below,” [and] “An Exhortation” [sheet 3] Matthew Arnold “The Forsaken Merman,” “Dover Beach” [checkmark], [and] “Separation (from “Faded Leaves”) [checkmark] [sheet 4] Coleridge “Kubla Khan” [checkmark] and “Ancient Mariner”

409

410  Millay’s Poems to Memorize [George] Meredith “Woods of Westermain” and Modern Love [sheet 5] Housman Go over the dozens I already know by heart, see if I am letter- and punctuation-­ perfect—and decide which others to learn Hardy (which others) “To an Unborn Pauper Child,” “The Darkling Thrush” [checkmark], [and] look up, relearn “If we had only met In some old ancient inn” [sheet 6] Father Hopkins Sonnets: “Patience, hard thing,” “Thou art indeed just,” “My own heart let me more have pity on,” “Valley of the Elwy,” “The darksome burn,” “When will you ever, Peace,” “Carrion Comfort,” “No worst, there is none”; “Binsey Poplars”; “Margaret, are you grieving” [and] “I have desired to go.” “Learn sonnet that ends “being a father, & fond” (Elwy), also one with line “Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend” [Checkmarks next to each poem; some are repeats. She also wrote “Which others?”] [sheet 7] Songs of Shakespeare Learn as many as I can, check on those I know already. Learn at least 10 new sonnets, check on those I already know. Chaucer Learn as much as possible of Troilus & Cressida (Check on poems I think I know by heart) [sheet 8] Learn Goblin Market [Christina Rossetti] again Check on poems of Emily Dickinson that I know & learn some more Check on all of Elinor’s [Wylie] poems that I know, and learn at least ten more— (perhaps all the sonnets of Angels & Earthly Creatures) [sheet 9] Rubén Darío Check, re-learn, learn new ones [Eduard] Möricke (—So kommt der Tag heran,—Oh, ging er wieder!) [“Das Verlassene Mägdlein” Goethe —Prometheus re-learn

Millay’s Poems to Memorize 411 [sheet 10] Dante —at least 3 sonnets at least a few of my favourite passages in the D.C. [Divine Comedy]; Petrarch (Read!!) I never even read the sonnets which are the pattern for our own sonnets in the Italian form! And I never even felt ashamed of that till this moment. Pretty bad. [sheet 11] Milton Lycidas, (re-learn) “L’Allegro” [and] “Il Penseroso.” Learn at least two more of the sonnets, and try to learn to like them more than I do.

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Correspondents and Sources of Let ters

The source of each letter is noted, along with the type of material. An asterisk (* ) indicates that the letter does not appear in Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay, edited by Allan Ross Macdougall (Harper & Brothers, 1952). “1952 typescript” means that Macdougall prepared a typed transcription of the letter; that is, the source is his transcription. “Complete letter” means the letter is complete here, whereas Macdougall omitted part of the letter.

Libraries and Digital Resources Amherst Barnard Brandeis Buffalo Chicago Columbia Dartmouth Duquesne Harvard LC Maine NYPL Princeton ProQuest

Archives & Special Collections, Robert Frost Library, Amherst College Barnard Archives and Special Collections, Barnard College Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections, Brandeis University The Poetry Collection, University at Buffalo Special Collections Research Center, The University of Chicago Special Collections, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College Archives & Special Collections, Duquesne University Special Collections and Archives, Houghton Library, Harvard University Library of Congress Digital Commons, Fogler Library, University of Maine New York Public Library, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature Special Collections, Firestone Library, Princeton University ProQuest History Vault

413

414  Correspondents and Sources of Letters Rollins SIU

Archives and Special Collections, Olin Library, Rollins College Special Collections Research Center, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University Smithsonian SOVA (Smithsonian Online Virtual Archives), https://sova.si.edu St. Catherine Archives & Special Collections, St. Catherine University Syracuse Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Texas Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin Toronto Music Library, University of Toronto UVA Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia Vassar Archives and Special Collections Library, Vassar College Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University To Mrs. Cora B. Millay. November 7, 1900. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. “1952 typescript.” To Harper and Brothers. February 12, 1902. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Photographic copy. LOC. Handwritten. 2725 Box 84, Folder 8. On the back of the paper Millay wrote the date and “4 grade.” * To the Editor of the St. Nicholas League. February 20, 1904. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 84, Folder 8. Handwritten. * To Cora B. Millay. August 5, 1909. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. 1952 typescript. To Norma and Kathleen Millay. August 9, 1909. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. 1952 typescript. Complete letter. To St. Nicholas Magazine. [Summer] 1910. From St. Nicholas Magazine, October, 1910, page 1146 in “League Letters” section. * To Dodd, Mead & Co. December 29, 1911. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 84, Folder 8. Handwritten. * To Gladys Niles. August 9, 1912. Maine. St. Vincent Millay, Edna, “Letter 1: Edna St. Vincent Millay to Gladys Niles, August 9, 1912” (1912). Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers, 1912–1922. 1. https:// digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/millay_papers/1. Handwritten.

Correspondents and Sources of Letters 415 * To Ferdinand Earle. August 9, 1912. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 76, Folder 10. Typewritten copy (not by her) of her letter. * To Ferdinand Earle. [After September 14, 1912] LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 76, Folder 10. Typewritten copy (not by her) of part of a draft. * To Gladys Niles. October 1912. UMaine. Handwritten. St. Vincent Millay, Edna, “Letter 2: Edna St. Vincent Millay to Gladys Niles, October, 1912” (1912). Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers, 1912–1922. 6 https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/millay_papers/6 * To Caroline Dow. November 18, 1912. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 76, Folder 8. Handwritten. To Louis Untermeyer. December 5, 1912 Buffalo. Jean Starr Untermeyer Collection. PCMS-0034. Box 39, Folder 2. Handwritten. To Arthur Davison Ficke and Witter Bynner. December 5, 1912. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke Papers. YCAL MSS 50. Box 10, Folder 343. Handwritten. To Arthur Davison Ficke. December 15, 1912. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke Papers. YCAL MSS 50. Box 10, Folder 343. Handwritten. * To Arthur Davison Ficke. Christmas, 1912. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke Papers. YCAL MSS 50. Box 10, Folder 343. Handwritten. To Arthur Davison Ficke. December 27, 1912. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke Papers. YCAL MSS 50. Box 10, Folder 343. Handwritten. Complete letter. To Arthur Davison Ficke. December 29, 1912. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke Papers. YCAL MSS 50. Box 10, Folder 343. Handwritten.

416  Correspondents and Sources of Letters * To Aunt Susie. January 6, 1913. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Handwritten. To Arthur Davison Ficke. January 12, 1913. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke Papers. YCAL MSS 50. Box 10, Folder 344. Handwritten. * To Sara Teasdale. February 11, 1913. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Handwritten. To Arthur Davison Ficke. March 6, 1913. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke Papers. YCAL MSS 50. Box 10, Folder 344. Handwritten. Complete letter. * To Norma and Kathleen Millay. March 12, 1913. NYPL. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Handwritten. * To Arthur Davison Ficke. March 14, 1913. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke Papers. YCAL MSS 50. Box 10, Folder 344. Handwritten. * To Norma and Kathleen Millay. March 15,1913. NYPL. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Handwritten. * To Norma Millay. March 20, 1913. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. 1952 typescript. * To Martha Knight. March 22, 1913. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 80, Folder 1. Handwritten. * To Norma Millay. March 27, 1913. LC, Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 66, Folder15. Handwritten. Photostat. To Arthur Davison Ficke. April 12, 1913. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke Papers. YCAL MSS 50. Box 10, Folder 344. Handwritten. Complete letter. To Arthur Davison Ficke. May 7, 1913. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke Papers. YCAL MSS 50. Box 10, Folder 344. Handwritten.

Correspondents and Sources of Letters 417 * To Kathleen Millay. May 18, 1913. NYPL. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Handwritten. * To Vassar Dean McCaleb. July 12, 1913. Vassar. Typed, with signature. To Arthur Davison Ficke. July 12, 1913. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke Papers. YCAL MSS 50. Box 10, Folder 344. Typed, with signature. * To Sara Teasdale. July 14, 1913. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 83, Folder 10. Typed copy from LC. “Originally enclosed w/ Carpenter to N. Millay, 1 Mar 1959” To Arthur Davison Ficke. December 15, 1913. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke Papers. YCAL MSS 50. Box 10, Folder 344. Handwritten. Complete letter. * To Kathleen Millay. April 27, 1914. NYPL. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Handwritten. Stationery: Vassar seal. * To Millay Family. Fall Semester, 1914. NYPL. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Handwritten. * To Norma and Kathleen Millay. November 9, 1914. NYPL. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Handwritten. * To Kathleen Millay. December 2, 1914. NYPL. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Handwritten. Part of the letter in Elaine’s hand. * To Millay Family. February 10, 1915. NYPL. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Handwritten. * To Arthur Davison Ficke. April 11, 1915. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke Papers. YCAL MSS 50. Box 10, Folder 345. Handwritten. * To Vassar Dean McCaleb. July 5, 1915. Vassar. Handwritten.

418  Correspondents and Sources of Letters * To Arthur Hooley. September 6, 1915. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 78, Folder 9. Handwritten. Dated by Library. * To Witter Bynner. September 26, 1915. Harvard. Witter Bynner Papers. B MS Am 1589. Handwritten. * To Kathleen Millay. [late September, 1915?] NYPL Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Handwritten. Correspondence from William Rose Benét and Norma Millay, which help to place the date, in the Library of Congress. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 74, Folder 10. * To Arthur Hooley. October 6, 1915. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 78, Folder 9. Handwritten. * To Kathleen Millay. October 8, 1915. NYPL. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Handwritten. To Arthur Davison Ficke. October 19, 1915. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke Papers. YCAL MSS 50. Box 10, Folder 345. Handwritten. * To Kathleen Millay. October 27, 1915. NYPL. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Handwritten. * To Arthur Davison Ficke. November 3, 1915. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke Papers. YCAL MSS 50. Box 10, Folder 345. Handwritten. To Vassar President Dr. MacCracken. November 17, 1915. Vassar. Handwritten. * To Arthur Hooley. December 15, 1915. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 78, Folder 9. Handwritten. Dated by Library. * To Arthur Hooley. December 27, 1915. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 78, Folder 9. Handwritten. Dated by Library. * To Arthur Hooley. January 1, 1916. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 78, Folder 9. Handwritten. Dated by

Correspondents and Sources of Letters 419 Library. [It’s possible that the letter continued after the first sheet. What follows the first sheet in this folder is a letter from Hooley dated “January, 1916.” After that is the second sheet, which seems to continue the thread of the letter. The P.S. is in a different color pen; i.e., she does pick up at different times even in the same letter.] * To Arthur Hooley. January 12, 1916. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 78, Folder 9. Handwritten. * To Arthur Hooley. February 3, 1916. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 78, Folder 9. Handwritten. Stationery: Vassar College. Dated by Library. * To Arthur Hooley. February 28, 1916 LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 78, Folder 9. Handwritten. Letter ends as is. * To Arthur Hooley. March 10, 1916. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 78, Folder 9. Handwritten. Library dates. * To Arthur Hooley. March 13, 1916. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 78, Folder 9. Handwritten. Stationery: Vassar College. Library dates. * To Millay Family. [Spring] 1916. NYPL. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Handwritten. * To Arthur Hooley. May 2, 1916. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 78, Folder 9. Handwritten. Stationery: Vassar College. Dated by Library. * To Arthur Hooley. May 12, 1916. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 78, Folder 9. Handwritten. Stationery: Vassar College. Dated by Library. * To Eleanor Morgan (Patterson). June 15, 1916. The Rosenbach. Rosenbach Collection. Handwritten. * To Arthur Hooley. July 25, 1916. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 78, Folder 9. Dated by Library. Ends as is.

420  Correspondents and Sources of Letters * To Arthur Hooley. October 2, 1916. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 78, Folder 9. Dated by Library. * To Harriet Monroe. October 31, 1916 Chicago. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. Box 38, Folder 8. Handwritten. * To Arthur Hooley. October 31, 1916. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 78, Folder 9. Handwritten. Dated by Library. * To Millay Family. February 17, 1917. NYPL. Typed with signature. She numbered the sheets. Note: She spells “fiancé” without the accent in her typing. She spells “etc” without the period, after “scenery.” * To Harriet Monroe. February, 1917. Chicago. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. Box 38, Folder 8. Handwritten. Dated by Library. * To Arthur Hooley. [1917?] LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 78, Folder 9. Handwritten on Vassar College stationery. To Millay Family. May 21, 1917. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. 1952 typescript. Complete letter. * To Vassar President Dr. MacCracken. [Spring semester, 1917.] LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Handwritten. * To Kathleen Millay. June 19, 1917. NYPL. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Typed; unsigned. Envelope stamped June 20, 1917. * To Professor Elizabeth Haight. July 26, 1917. Vassar. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Handwritten. * To Professor Elizabeth Haight. August 8, 1917. Vassar. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Typed; signed and pen P.S. * To Henry Seidel Canby. August 27, 1917. Yale. Henry Seidel Canby Papers. YCAL MSS 64. Box 4, Folder 150. Typed with signature.

Correspondents and Sources of Letters 421 * To Arthur Hooley. September 17, 1917. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 78, Folder 9. Handwritten. Dated by Library. * To Kathleen Millay. October 18, 1917. NYPL. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Handwritten. Stationery: Sparkill / Rockland Co., New York. * To Kathleen Millay. December 5, 1917. NYPL. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Typed with signature and postscript. Stationery: Mitchell Kennerley, Publisher / 15 East 40th Street New York / [logo] * To Harriet Monroe. December 15, 1917. Chicago. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. Box 38, Folder 8. Typed with signature. * To Mitchell Kennerley. Christmas day, 1917. Vassar. Dated by library. Handwritten. * To Kathleen Millay. January 30, 1918. NYPL. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Handwritten. Dated by datestamp. * To Harriet Monroe. February 5, 1918. Chicago. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. Box 38, Folder 8. Handwritten. Date by datestamp. * To Kathleen Millay. February 25, 1918. NYPL. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Handwritten. To Harriet Monroe. March 1, 1918. Chicago. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. Box 38, Folder 8. Typed with signature. * To Kathleen Millay. May 9, 1918. NYPL. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Dated by postmark. Handwritten. * To Kathleen Millay. [Spring 1918?] NYPL. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Typed; signed. * To Anna Scull. August 11, 1918 Columbia. Spec. Ms. Coll. Engel. Typed with signature and handwritten postscript. Addressed to “Mr. John Scull / Hotel McAlpin, New York City/ For Miss Anna Scull.”

422  Correspondents and Sources of Letters * To Kathleen Millay. October 12, 1918. NYPL. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Handwritten. Postmark date. * To Harriet Monroe. October 22, 1918. Chicago. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. Box 38, Folder 8. Handwritten. Stationery: Stamped as arrived date. To Mrs. Charlotte Babcock Sills. December 18, 1918. Vassar. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Handwritten. To Harriet Monroe. March 22, 1919. Chicago. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. Box 38, Folder 8. Typed with signature and handwritten address. Stamped Mar 22 1919. * To Jessie B. Rittenhouse. July 7, 1919. Rollins. Jessie Belle Rittenhouse Collection. Box 3, Folder 17. Handwritten. To Walter Adolphe Roberts. July 12, 1919. Vassar. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Handwritten. To Arthur Davison Ficke. October 1919. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke Papers. YCAL MSS 50. Box 10, Folder 346. Handwritten. * To Kathleen Millay. November 20, 1919. NYPL. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Handwritten. Dated by datestamp. * To Mitchell Kennerley. New Year’s Day, 1920. Dartmouth. Ms. 918418. Kennerley/Millay Correspondence. Handwritten. In a February 23, 1938 memo from Kennerley, he dates the letter as 1920. * To Arthur Davison Ficke. April 4, 1920. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke Papers. YCAL MSS 50. Box 10, Folder 346. Typed with signature and a handwritten marginal note. * To Mitchell Kennerley. [1920?] Dartmouth. Typed, with signature. * To Jessie B. Rittenhouse. April 7, 1920. Rollins. Jessie Belle Rittenhouse Collection. Box 3, Folder 17. Typed with signature.

Correspondents and Sources of Letters 423 To Witter Bynner. [Spring] 1920. Harvard. Witter Bynner Papers. B MS Am 1589. Handwritten. To Allan Ross Macdougall. April 7, 1920. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Typed with signature. * To Arthur Davison Ficke. May 16, 1920. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke Papers. YCAL MSS 50. Box 10, Folder 346. Typed with signature. Date from envelope. * To Edmund Wilson. June 15, 1920. Yale. Edmund Wilson Papers. YCAL MSS 187. Box 46, Folder 1249. Typed with signature and handwritten correction. * To Mitchell Kennerley. June 22, 1920. Dartmouth. Ms. 918418. Kennerley/Millay Correspondence. Handwritten. * To Charlotte Babcock Sills. June 24, 1920. Vassar. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Typed with signature. * To John Peale Bishop. [Summer 1920]. Princeton. John Peale Bishop Papers. Box 21, Folder 23. Handwritten. * To John Peale Bishop. [Summer 1920.] Princeton. John Peale Bishop Papers. Box 21, Folder 23. Typed with signature and “Thursday” as postscript. To Walter Adolphe Roberts. [Summer 1920.] Vassar. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Typed and handwritten. To Edmund Wilson. August 3, 1920. Yale. Edmund Wilson Papers. YCAL MSS 187. Box 46, Folder 1249. Handwritten, including the poem. Datestamp is the date. To Allan Ross Macdougall. September 14, 1920. Vassar. Typed, with signature and handwritten postscript. To Witter Bynner. October 29, 1920 Harvard. Witter Bynner Papers. B MS Am 1589. Typed with signature and last two paragraphs in pen. Complete letter.

424  Correspondents and Sources of Letters To Arthur Davison Ficke. October 29, 1920 Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke Papers. YCAL MSS 50. Box 11, folder 369. Typed copy made by Ficke. * To Edith Wynne Matthison Kennedy. [1920?] LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 79, Folder 7. * To Mr. Koehler. November 17, 1920. Rutgers. Margaret K. Spangler Knoll scrapbook (MC 957). Typed with signature. * To Millay Family. January 9, 1921. NYPL. Handwritten. * To Witter Bynner. [Early January 1921?] Harvard. Witter Bynner Papers. B MS Am 1589. Handwritten. To Edmund Wilson. January 20, 1921. Yale. Edmund Wilson Papers. YCAL MSS 187. Box 46, Folder 1249. Handwritten. Typed poem. * To Walter L. Fleisher. [February 14, 1921] Vassar. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Handwritten. * To Witter Bynner. [1921?]. Harvard. Witter Bynner Papers. B MS Am 1589. Handwritten. * To Arthur Davison Ficke. [April 27, 1921] Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke Papers. YCAL MSS 50. Box 10, Folder 347. Handwritten. Photo with the envelope, even though the dates for the letter and envelope are different. * To Edmund Wilson. [1921]. Yale. Edmund Wilson Papers. YCAL MSS 187. Box 46, Folder 1249. Handwritten. * To Edmund Wilson. August 31, 1921. Yale. Edmund Wilson Papers. YCAL MSS 187. Box 46, Folder 1249. Handwritten. * To Max. . . . September 20, 1921. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. 1952 Typescript. * To Mrs. Cora B. Millay. November 1, 1921. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. 1952 typescript.

Correspondents and Sources of Letters 425 * To Frank Crowninshield. November 14, 1921. Columbia. Spec. Ms. Coll. Engel. Typed with signature. * To Tom Smith. November 14, 1921. Barnard. Overbury Collection SC 05. Box 4, Folder 64. Handwritten. To Elinor Wylie. November 27, 1921. Yale. William Rose Bénet Papers. YCAL. MSS 1100. Box 30, Folder 1151. Handwritten. To Anne Gardner. December 23, 1921. Vassar. Anne Gardner-Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Handwritten. Complete letter. To Witter Bynner. December 23, 1921. Harvard. Witter Bynner Papers. B MS Am 1589. Handwritten. To Witter Bynner. January 23, 1922. Harvard. Witter Bynner Papers. B MS Am 1589. Handwritten. To Arthur Davison Ficke. January 24, 1922. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke Papers. YCAL MSS 50. Box 10, Folder 348. Typed with signature and handwritten postscript. Complete letter. * To Millay Family. January 30, 1922. NYPL. Typed with pen comments, signature and postscript. Paper is “mutilated” (Library’s wording), so some small parts cannot be read. To Witter Bynner. February 22, 1922. Harvard. Witter Bynner Papers. B MS Am 1589. Handwritten. To Edmund Wilson. July 20, 1922. Yale. Edmund Wilson Papers. YCAL MSS 187. Box 46, Folder 1249. Typed with signature and corrections. * To Frances Shapli. July 21, 1922. NYPL. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection of Papers. Typed with signature. * To Kathleen Millay. July 21, 1922. NYPL. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Typed with signature and handwriting to indicate the rise and fall of the birdsong.

426  Correspondents and Sources of Letters * To Remo Bufano. July 22, 1922. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Handwritten. * To Martha Knight. July 23, 1922. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 80, Folder 1. Handwritten. * To John Howard Lawson and Kate Drain. August 8, 1922. SIU. John Howard Lawson Papers, 1905–1977 (ID: 1/5/MSS 016). Box 1, Folder 1. Typed with signature. * To Harriet Monroe. August 8, 1922. Chicago. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. Box 38, Folder 8. Typed with signature. Marked as arrived Oct 13 ’22. To Edmund Wilson. September 14, 1922. Yale. Edmund Wilson Papers. YCAL MSS 187. Box 46, Folder 1249. Handwritten. Note on stationery. * To Witter Bynner. September 20, 1922. Harvard. Witter Bynner Papers. B MS Am 1589. Handwritten. Date in pencil from Library. * To Arthur Davison Ficke & Gladys Brown, December 6, 1922. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. “1952 typescript.” To Edmund Wilson. May 2, 1923. Yale. Edmund Wilson Papers. YCAL MSS 187. Box 46, Folder 1250. Typed with signature. * To Mrs. Cora B. Millay. 1923. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 66, Folder 15. Handwritten. Photostat. Stationery: 137 Front Street / New York * To Harper & Brothers. September 11, 1923. Columbia. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Ms. Coll. Millay. Handwritten. To Cora B. Millay. December 27, 1923. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. 1952 Prepped. This manuscript, prepared for Macdougall’s book, matches the published text. To Edmund Wilson. January 8, 1924. Yale. Edmund Wilson Papers. YCAL MSS 187. Box 46, Folder 1250. Handwritten.

Correspondents and Sources of Letters 427 * To Harriet Monroe. January 10, 1924. Chicago. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. Box 38, Folder 8. Handwritten. Stationery: E St V M logo. Dated by arrival stamp. * To John Howard Lawson. January 21, 1925. SIU. John Howard Lawson Papers, 1905–1977 (ID: 1/5/MSS 016). Box 1, Folder 1. To Music Editor of “The New York World.” February 4, 1925. LC. Collection of Edna St. Vincent Millay. MMC 3829. Box 1, Folder 1. Typed with handwritten corrections and signature. To Mrs. Cora B. Millay. June 22, 1925. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Handwritten. Photostat. Stationery: E St V M logo. * To Anne Gardner. August 23, 1925. Vassar. Anne Gardner–Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Handwritten. * To Deems Taylor. January 5th [1926?]. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Typed by Eugen. Editorial corrections to spelling and punctuation. * To Deems Taylor. February 4, 1926. Yale. Mary Kennedy Papers. MSS 814. Box 41. Handwritten. To Edmund Wilson. March 4, 1926. Yale. Edmund Wilson Papers. YCAL MSS 187. Box 46, Folder 1250. Typed with handwritten closing and signature. Complete letter. To Frank Crowninshield. March 17, 1926. Rutgers. Margaret K. Spangler Knoll scrapbook (MC 957). Typed with signature. Stationery: Eugen Boissevain / 137 Front Street / New York * To Deems Taylor. April 14, 1926. Yale. Mary Kennedy Papers. MSS 814. Box 41. Telegram. * To Kathleen Millay. July 21, 1926. NYPL. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Handwritten. Stationery: Eugen Boissevain / 137 Front Street / New York * To Deems Taylor. October 13, 1926. LC. Telegram. Collection of Edna St. Vincent Millay. MMC 3829. Box 1, Folder 1.

428  Correspondents and Sources of Letters * To Frank Crowninshield. October 15, 1926. Vassar. Handwritten. * To Deems Taylor. November 3, 1926. LC. Collection of Edna St. Vincent Millay. MMC 3829. Box 1, Folder 1. Handwritten. Stationery: Arthur Davison Ficke / 922 Canyon Road / Santa Fe, New Mexico * To Elinor Wylie. [1927?] Yale. William Rose Bénet Papers. YCAL. MSS 1100. Box 30, Folder 1151. Handwritten. To Alexander Woollcott. February 19, 1927. Harvard. Autograph file, M. Box 124a: Millay, Edna St. Vincent. Handwritten. Stationery: Vanderbilt Hotel. * To Deems Taylor. March 24, 1927. LC. Collection of Edna St. Vincent Millay. MMC 3829. Box 1, Folder 1. Handwritten. To Deems Taylor. May 7, 1927. LC. Collection of Edna St. Vincent Millay. MMC 3829. Box 1, Folder 1. Handwritten. Stationery: Edna St. Vincent Millay / Steepletop / Austerlitz, New York To Massachusetts Governor Alvan Tufts Fuller. August 22, 1927. Brandeis. Also, Digital Commonwealth. * To Eugene Saxton. September 5, 1927. NYPL. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection of Papers. Handwritten. * To the Editor of “The New York World.” October 4, 1927. NYPL. Typed carbon copy. * To Edward Johnson. October 6, 1927. Toronto. Edward Johnson Collection CA OTUFM 01. Box 1. Handwritten. * To Harriet Monroe. November 19, 1927. Chicago. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. Box 38, Folder 8. Typed; signed. On Eugen’s stationery. * To Sister Antonia and Sister Ste. Hélène. January 6, 1928. St. Catherine. Correspondence from Edna St. Vincent Millay to Sr. Ste. Hélène Guthrie. Handwritten.

Correspondents and Sources of Letters 429 * To Sister Antonia. January 19, 1928 St. Catherine. Correspondence from Edna St. Vincent Millay to Sr. Ste. Hélène Guthrie. Handwritten. * To Elinor Wylie. March 12, 1928. Yale. William Rose Bénet Papers. YCAL. MSS 1100. Box 30, Folder 1151. Handwritten. * To Mitchell Kennerley. April 9, 1928. Vassar. Handwritten. * To Felix Frankfurter. April 9, 1928. ProQuest History Vault. Folder 001757-033-0612. Handwritten * To Witter Bynner. July 7, 1928. Harvard. Witter Bynner Papers. B MS Am 1589. Telegram. * To Elinor Wylie. September 19, 1928. Yale. William Rose Bénet Papers. YCAL. MSS 1100. Box 30, Folder 1151. Handwritten. * To George Dillon. December 15, 1928. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Handwritten. Unsigned. * To George Dillon. December 17, 1928. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Two separate sheets. Handwritten. First on stationery: Four Hundred and Twenty / Park Avenue. Stationery for second letter: Eugen Boissevain / Steepletop / Austerlitz, New York * To George Dillon. December 24, 1928. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Handwritten. Stationery: Edna St. Vincent Millay / Steepletop / Austerlitz, New York * To William Rose Benét. December 28, 1928. Yale. William Rose Bénet Papers. YCAL. MSS 1100. Box 30, Folder 1151. Handwritten. stationery: Edna St. Vincent Millay / Steepletop / Austerlitz, New York * To Eugene Saxton. December 28, 1928. Columbia. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Ms. Coll. Millay. Handwritten. * To Margaret Cuthbert. December 28, 1928. Vassar. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Handwritten.

430  Correspondents and Sources of Letters * To Robinson Jeffers. December 28, 1928. Texas. Robinson Jeffers Collection. Box 11, Folder 8. Handwritten. To Edmund Wilson. February 6, 1929. Yale. Edmund Wilson Papers. YCAL MSS 187. Box 46, Folder 1250. Handwritten. * To Deems Taylor. February 8, 1929. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Typed, with signature and handwritten annotations. To Edmund Wilson. February 10, 1929. Yale. Edmund Wilson Papers. YCAL MSS 187. Box 46, Folder 1251. Handwritten. * To Edmund Wilson. March 2, 1929. Yale. Edmund Wilson Papers. YCAL MSS 187. Box 46, Folder 1251. Handwritten. Stationery: The Vanderbilt Hotel . . . * To Sister Antonia and Sister Ste. Hélène. September 24, 1929. St. Catherine. Correspondence from Edna St. Vincent Millay to Sr. Ste. Hélène Guthrie. Typed with signature, and handwritten accents. * To George Dillon. January 14, 1930. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Handwritten. Unsigned. To Mary Kennedy. June 10, 1930. Yale. Mary Kennedy Papers. MSS 814. Box 41. Typed with signature. Eugen’s Steepletop stationery. * To James Weldon Johnson. Christmas season, 1930. Yale. James Weldon Johnson and Grace Nail Johnson Papers. JWJ MSS 49. Box 14, Folder 323. Handwritten. See image. * To Kathleen Millay. February 18, 1931. NYPL 1120. Kathleen Millay Collection of Papers. Typed with signature; the P.S. is also typed with signature. Following the P.S. is the typed poem by their mother. To Llewelyn Powys. April 20, 1931. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Typed with signature. Handwriting by Eugen. * To Georgia O’Keeffe. June 15, 1931. Yale. Alfred Stieglitz / Georgia O’Keeffe Papers. YCAL MSS 85. Box 203, Folder 3512. Handwritten.

Correspondents and Sources of Letters 431 * To Eugene Saxton. July 6, 1931. NYPL. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection of Papers. Typed with signature and pencil annotation. * To Georgia O’Keeffe. August 13, 1931. Yale. Alfred Stieglitz / Georgia O’Keeffe Papers. YCAL MSS 85. Box 203, Folder 3512. Handwritten. * To Georgia O’Keeffe. September 16, 1931. Yale. Alfred Stieglitz / Georgia O’Keeffe Papers. YCAL MSS 85. Box 203, Folder 3512. Handwritten. * To Sister Ste. Hélène. October 1, 1931. St. Catherine. Correspondence from Edna St. Vincent Millay to Sr. Ste. Hélène Guthrie. * To Louise Bogan. December 23, 1931. Amherst. Louise Bogan Papers. Box 6, Folder 12. Christmas Card. Handwritten. To Eugene Saxton. December 30, 1931. NYPL. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection of Papers. To Mary Kennedy. June 20, 1932. Yale. Mary Kennedy Papers. MSS 814. Box 41. Handwritten. Complete letter. * To Louise Bogan. November 18, 1932. Amherst. Louise Bogan Papers. Box 6, Folder 12. Handwritten. To Mary Kennedy. April 5, 1933. Yale. Mary Kennedy Papers. MSS 814. Box 41. Typed with signature. To Llewelyn Powys and Alyse Gregory. April 11, 1933. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. * To Robert Underwood Johnson. May 1, 1933. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Handwritten. * To Mary Kennedy [July 1933]. Yale. Mary Kennedy Papers. MSS 814. Box 60. Handwritten note. * To Frank Crowninshield. September 24, 1933. Vassar. Handwritten.

432  Correspondents and Sources of Letters To Aunt Susie. December 8, 1933. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Handwritten. * To Frances Shapli. December 8, 1933. NYPL. Typed with signature. To Floyd Dell. December 13, 1933. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Typed with pencil corrections and annotations. To Llewelyn Powys. April 20, 1934. Yale. Handwritten. * To Eugene Saxton. May 12, 1934. NYPL. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Typed with signature. * To George Dillon. June 7, 1934. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Handwritten. * To John W. Andrews. July 15, 1934. Yale. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. YCAL MSS 625. Andrews, John W. / July 15, 1934 Folder. Typed; signed. * To Eugene Saxton. Middle of August, 1934. Columbia. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Ms. Coll. Millay. Typed with signature. Year noted by Library. * To George Dillon. November 13, 1934. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Handwritten. * To Walter White. December 8, 1934. ProQuest. NAACP Administrative File, Walter White. Llewelyn Powys. March 9, 1935. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Typed with signature. Complete letter. * Joan Taylor. April 12, 1935. Yale. Mary Kennedy Papers. MSS 814. Box 41. Typed, with handwritten notes and signature; also with a note and signature from Eugen. * President Franklin D. Roosevelt. May 2, 1935. ProQuest. History Vault. Folder 101767-007-0622.

Correspondents and Sources of Letters 433 Witter Bynner. May 2, 1935. Harvard. Witter Bynner Papers. B MS Am 1589.Typed with signature and handwritten accent. There is a five-line poem after, typed, followed by “From Edna . . .” but it sounds like her early writing. * Maine State Historian. June 13, 1935. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Typed with signature. * Sister Ste. Hélène. July 9, 1935. St. Catherine. Correspondence from Edna St. Vincent Millay to Sr. Ste. Hélène Guthrie. Typed with handwritten close and signature. To Eugene Saxton. November 18, 1935. NYPL. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection of Papers. Typed with signature. To Gladys Ficke. November 29, 1935. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke. YCAL MSS 50. Box 17, Folder 576. Typed with signature. To Eugene Saxton. December 9, 1935. NYPL. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection of Papers. Handwritten. Complete letter. * To Eugene Saxton. December 22, 1935. NYPL. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection of Papers. Telegram. * To George Dillon. February 3, 1936. Syracuse. George Dillon Papers. Telegram. To Lilian R. Huguenin. March 16, 1936. Vassar. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Typed with signature. * Mr. and Mrs. Eugenio Lanfranchi. April 20, 1936. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Typed with signature. To Llewelyn Powys. April 24, 1936. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Typed with signature. * To George Dillon. [August 13, 1936.] Syracuse. George Dillon Papers. Typed; signed. * To Witter Bynner. September 30, 1936. Harvard. Witter Bynner Papers. B MS Am 1589.Typed with signature.

434  Correspondents and Sources of Letters To Alyse Gregory. October 6, 1936. Yale. Alyse Gregory Papers. YCAL MSS 163. Box 19, Folder 340. Typed with signature. To Eugene Saxton. October 10, 1936. NYPL. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection of Papers. Typed with signature. Complete letter. * To Sister Ste. Hélène. October 26, 1936. St. Catherine. Correspondence from Edna St. Vincent Millay to Sr. Ste. Hélène Guthrie. Typed with handwritten accents and signature. * To Robinson Jeffers. January 28, 1937. Texas. Robinson Jeffers Collection. Box 11, Folder 8. Telegram. * To Sister Ste. Hélène. April 13, 1937. St. Catherine. Correspondence from Edna St. Vincent Millay to Sr. Ste. Hélène Guthrie. Typed with signature and handwritten close. To Rolfe Humphries. April 28, 1937. Amherst. Rolfe Humphries Papers. Box 14, Folder 16. Typed with signature. * To Robinson Jeffers. May 3, 1937. Texas. Robinson Jeffers Collection. Box 11, Folder 8. Telegram. To Rolfe Humphries. May 17, 1937. Amherst. Rolfe Humphries Papers. Box 14, Folder 16. Typed with pencil corrections. Unsigned. * To Drake de Kay. May 19, 1937. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 120, Folder1. Typed; unsigned. To the Secretary of the New York University. May 22, 1937. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Typed with signature. To Rolfe Humphries. June 14, 1937. Amherst. Rolfe Humphries Papers. Box 14, Folder 16. Typed with signature. Complete letter. * To David Morton. June 17, 1937. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Typed with signature. The manuscript of “Wine from these Grapes,” originally sent with the letter, is now in Amherst.

Correspondents and Sources of Letters 435 * To Rolfe Humphries. July 15, 1937. Amherst. Rolfe Humphries Papers. Box 14, Folder 16. Typed with signature. [This goes with her letter of May 17, 1937. Amherst copied envelopes to go with the letters. There is no envelope close in time to May 17; and she did not sign that letter; and this letter describes that one some.] * To Witter Bynner. August 27, 1937. Harvard. Witter Bynner Papers. B MS Am 1589. Telegram. To Arthur Davison Ficke. September 23, 1937. Yale. Typed. To James Weldon Johnson. September 28, 1937. Yale. James Weldon Johnson and Grace Nail Johnson Papers. JWJ MSS 49 Box 14, Folder 323. Typed with signature. * To George Dillon. September 28, 1937. Syracuse. George Dillon Papers. Typed with signature. * To Mr. and Mrs. Eugenio Lanfranchi. September 29, 1937. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Typed with signature. * To Bill Brann. October 30, 1937. NYPL. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection of Papers. Telegram. Library dates. * To Bill Brann. December 8, 1937. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 74, Folder 16. Typed with pencil annotation and signature. * To Deems Taylor. December 30, 1937. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Typed with signature and part of P.S. in pen. * To Mary Kennedy. January 12, 1938. Vassar. Handwritten. * To Bill Brann. April 18, 1938. NYPL. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection of Papers. Typed with signature and some handwriting. To Professor Elizabeth Hazelton Haight. July 9, 1938. Vassar. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Typed with signature.

436  Correspondents and Sources of Letters * To Eugene Saxton. July 18, 1938. NYPL. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection of Papers. Handwritten. To George Dillon. September 5, 1938. Syracuse. George Dillon Papers. Typed with signature and pen annotations. Complete letter. * To Bill Brann. September 9, 1938. NYPL. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection of Papers. Typed with signature and annotations. To George Dillon. September 21, 1938. Syracuse. George Dillon Papers. Typed with signature and pen corrections. ­Complete letter. * To Sister Ste. Hélène. December 29, 1938. St. Catherine Correspondence from Edna St. Vincent Millay to Sr. Ste. Hélène Guthrie. Typed with signature, handwritten annotation, and postscript. To George Dillon. December 29, 1938. Syracuse. George Dillon Papers. Typed with signature and postscript in pen. * To Bill Brann. February 2, 1939. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 75, Folder 1. Typed; unsigned. * To Bill Brann. February 23, 1939. NYPL. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection of Papers. Telegram. * To Lola Bronstein. March 5, 1939. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Typed with signature. She signed her name above her signature. To George Dillon. March 23, 1939. Syracuse. George Dillon Papers. Typed with signature. * To Bill Brann. April 9, 1939. NYPL. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection of Papers. Typed with signature. To Alyse Gregory. December 1939. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 66, Folder 15. Handwritten. Photostat.

Correspondents and Sources of Letters 437 * To George Dillon. November 29, 1940. Syracuse. George Dillon Papers. Handwritten. Complete letter. To Sister Ste. Hélène. December 3, 1940. St. Catherine. Correspondence from Edna St. Vincent Millay to Sr. Ste. Hélène Guthrie. Typed based on handwritten draft. Complete letter. * To Aunt Susie. December 1940. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Handwritten. Dated by Millay * To Marguerite LeHand for President Roosevelt. December 27, 1940. Vassar. Typed out telegram to the White House. To Charlotte Babcock Sills. January 2, 1941. Vassar. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Typed with signature. To Alyse Gregory. June 10, 1941. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Handwritten. * To Walt Kuhn. October 10, 1941. Smithsonian. Walt Kuhn Family Papers and Armory Show Records (https://edan .si.edu/slideshow/viewer/?damspath=/CollectionsOnline/kuhnwalt/Box_008 /Folder016). Page 35. Typed copy with handwritten note—not in Millay’s hand. To Witter Bynner. Late December, 1941. Harvard. Witter Bynner Papers. B MS Am 1589.Handwritten. * To Sister Ste. Hélène. December 26, 1941. St. Catherine. Correspondence from Edna St. Vincent Millay to Sr. Ste. Hélène Guthrie. Telegram. * To Rolfe Humphries. December 31, 1941. Amherst. Rolfe Humphries Papers. Box 14, Folder 16. Handwritten. * To Gladys Brown Ficke. Thanksgiving Day, 1942. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke. YCAL MSS 50. Box 17, Folder 576. Handwritten. * To Arthur W. Rushmore.1943 or 1944. Columbia. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Ms. Coll. Millay. Handwritten.

438  Correspondents and Sources of Letters * To Arthur W. Rushmore. August 29, 1943. Columbia. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Ms. Coll. Millay Handwritten. * To Cass Canfield. December 30, 1945. NYPL. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection of Papers. Telegram. To Cass Canfield. January 8, 1946. NYPL. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection of Papers. Typed with pen corrections and signature. * To Alyse Gregory. January 12, 1946. Yale. Alyse Gregory Papers. YCAL MSS 163. Box 19, Folder 340. Typed with signature and pen correction. To Edmund Wilson. August 1946. Yale. Edmund Wilson Papers. YCAL MSS 187. Box 46, Folder 1251. Typed with signature, pen corrections, and pen postscript. * To Amy Reed. 1946. Vassar. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Date by datestamp. To Cass Canfield. October 1947. NYPL. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection of Papers. Typed with signature. * To Arthur W. Rushmore. December 16, 1947. Columbia. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Ms. Coll. Millay Typed with pen annotations. To F. O. Matthiessen. January 29, 1948. Yale. F. O. Matthiessen Papers, YCAL MSS 495. Typed with signature. A similar letter sent to Mrs. Hugh Bullock is in Macdougall’s edition. * William Rose Benét. February 1, 1948. Yale. William Rose Bénet Papers. YCAL. MSS 1100. Box 30, Folder 1151. Typed with signature. To Arthur W. Rushmore. May 10, 1948. Columbia. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Ms. Coll. Millay. Typed; signed. * To Anne Morrow Lindbergh. August 1948. Yale. Anne Morrow Lindbergh Papers. MS 829. Box 14, Folder 289. Typed; signed.

Correspondents and Sources of Letters 439 * To Oscar Hammerstein. [Before end of April] 1949. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 120, Folder 1. Typed with pencil corrections; unsigned. * To Miss Brigham. May 1, 1949. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 118, Folder 14. Typed with pen corrections; Photostat of typed letter with pen corrections and signature. * To Martha Knight. June 8, 1949. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 80, Folder 1. Typed; signed; pen corrections. Library dates “[8 June 1947”—however, the end of the typescript includes the 1949 date.] * To Miss Brigham. August 3, 1949. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 118, Folder 14. Typed; signed: Photostat. To Edmund Wilson. August 9, 1949. Yale. Edmund Wilson Papers. YCAL MSS 187. Box 46, Folder 1251. Typed; signed. * To Gladys Brown Ficke. August 30, 1949. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke Papers. Box 17, Folder 576. Telegram. * To Gladys Brown Ficke. December 5, 1949. Yale. Arthur Davison Ficke. YCAL MSS 50. Box 17, Folder 576. Typed; signed. * To Bill and Billie Brann. December 11, 1949. NYPL. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection of Papers. Typed; signed. To Manuel Maria Mischoulon. December 10, 1949. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Typescript prepared by Macdougall. To Cass Canfield. April 4, 1950. NYPL. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection of Papers. Typed; signed. To Mrs. Mary V. Herron. April 5, 1950. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Typescript prepared by Macdougall. * To Bill Brann. April 19, 1950. NYPL. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection of Papers. Typed; signed. To Aunt Susie. April 30, 1950. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Typed; signed.

440  Correspondents and Sources of Letters * To Margaret Cuthbert. August 17, 1950. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Typescript prepared by Macdougall but not included in his edition. * To Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Bloch. August 24, 1950. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Typescript prepared by Macdougall but not included in his edition. To Cass Canfield. August 27, 1950. NYPL. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection of Papers. Typed; signed. * To Alice Blinn. September 20, 1950. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Typescript prepared by Macdougall but not included in his edition. * To Aunt Susie. September 21, 1950. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Typescript prepared by Macdougall but not included in his edition. To Esther Root Adams. October 9, 1950 UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Typescript prepared by Macdougall. To Allan Ross Macdougall. October 9, 1950. UVA. Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection. Typed postcard; unsigned. Handwritten address on front of postcard. To John Hall Wheelock [Notebook Draft]. October 1950. LC. Edna St. Vincent Millay Papers. Box 101, Folder 16.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Holly Peppe for conversations and guidance about Millay and for allowing me to publish copyrighted materials owned by the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society. I am thankful for Holly’s assistance with choosing and identifying images. All Edna St. Vincent Millay material in this book is reprinted with the permission of the Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Holly Peppe, Literary Executor, the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society, www.millay.org, all rights reserved. I thank Mark O’Berski from the Millay Society and Frederick Courtright from the Permissions Company who also helped with decisions about images. I thank the University of Virginia Library’s Mary and David Harrison Institute for American History, Literature, and Culture for a Lillian Gary Taylor Visiting Fellowship in American Literature. This fellowship was foundational for much research, including research of Allan Ross Macdougall’s work. Thanks to funding provided through Rosemont College’s Professional Development Faculty Funding, I was able to visit other institutions for research. So many librarians have helped. I thank numerous librarians, including the staff at Amherst College, Barnard College, Brandeis University, the University at Buffalo, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Duquesne University, Harvard University, the Library of Congress, the University of Maine, the New York Public Library, Princeton University, Rollins College, Southern Illinois University, Syracuse University, the University of Texas at Austin, Vassar College, the University of Virginia, and Yale University. I also thank Barbara Bair at the Library of Congress, Martha Tenney at Barnard College, Amy Shaw at St. Catherine University, Emily Walhout at Harvard University, and Rebecca Shaw at the University of Toronto. For scholarly conversations, including discussions of archival and editorial matters, I thank Christopher Ricks, Lisa Dolling, and Eleanor Shevlin. From Rosemont College, I am thankful for colleagues who helped with library

441

442  Acknowledgments research, discussions of Millay, and technical support: thanks especially to Cathy Fennell, Kathleen Deeming, Joanne Campbell, Rich Leiby, Michael Thompson, and Bill Kinney. To the editors Sarah Miller, Heather Gold, Eva Skewes, and Phillip King at Yale University Press, thank you for bringing this book into being. I thank Amanda D’Orsi for her proofreading. Finally, I wish to thank my family for all their help with this book—and that includes allowing Edna to exist as part of the family conversation. While all listen, I especially thank Dale Shores, David F. Constantine (Jidu Bear), Bill Jackson, and Puck Constantine—for comedy, walking to think, and all-around positivity. And most gratefully, I thank my wife Jennifer for her loving encouragement and support.

Index

Correspondence to recipients appears in bold type. Millay’s works are listed by title, or first line in the case of sonnets, under her name. Bach, Johann Sebastian, 149, 150n Bacon, Leonard, 387n Balzac, Honoré de, 85 Barrie, J. M., Sentimental Tommy, 63 Barry, Griffin, 178n, 182, 183 Benét, Stephen Vincent, 132n Benét, William Rose, 237–238, 387, 388 Bennett, Arnold, 151 Birthday of the Infanta (Oscar Wilde, illustrated by Pamela Bianco), 261 Bishop, John Peale, 144, 145 Blinn, Alice, 406 Bloch, Mr. and Mrs. Alexander, 404 Blunt, Evelyn Bethune. See Ficke, Mrs. Arthur Davison Blunt, Katharine, 37, 37n, 41, 59 Bogan, Louise, 260, 262 Boissevain, Eugen, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 202, 203, 204, 206, 208–209, 210, 211, 213, 214, 216, 218, 220, 221, 232, 235, 236, 237, 238, 240n, 244, 248, 249, 251, 255, 256, 266, 268,

Adams, Esther Root, 191, 193n, 407 Adams, Franklin P., 202 Adams, J. Donald, 387n Adams, Leonie, 210 Aeneid (Virgil), 331, 332n, 333n, 408 Ainslee’s (magazine), 132n, 133, 134, 145, 146n, 261, Alias Jimmy Valentine (Paul Armstrong), 22, 23n Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll), 14, 17n, 59 Ambush (Arthur Richman), 183 Andrews, John W., 275 . . . and Spain Sings (M. J. Benardete and Rolfe Humphries, eds.), 305n Angel Intrudes, The (Floyd Dell), 119n Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy), 54 Antonia, Sister, 229–230, 243–245, 259, 302 Arnold, Matthew, 376 Atlantic Monthly, 390 Austen, Jane, 42

443

444  Index Boissevain, Eugen (continued ) 279, 280, 294, 303–304, 330, 340, 343, 351, 361, 362, 366, 369, 380, 387, 397, 399–400 Bonds of Interest (Jacinto Benavente), 214n Boyd, Nancy (pseudonym of Millay), 133, 146n, 167, 168n, 170, 179, 188, 194, 194n, 257, 258n Bracq, Jean Charlemagne, 93 Braithwaite, William Stanley, 21n Branch, Anna Hempstead, 43 Brand (Henrik Ibsen), 24, 25n Brann, Bill, 247, 278–279, 320–326, 329–330, 335–336, 345–348, 351–355, 355–356, 398, 401–403 Brann, Billie, 247, 355–356, 398 Bridges, Robert, 376 Brigham, Dorcas, 391–393, 394–396 The Brinkley Girl, 16 Bronstein, Lola, 349–350 Brooke, Rupert, 73, 74n Brown, Gladys. See Ficke, Gladys Brown Browning, Robert, 17, 26, 27n, 41, 85, 86 Bruckner, Anton, 181, 183n Bubu-de-Montparnasse (Charles-Louis Philippe), 132, 133n Bufano, Remo, 190 Bullitt, William C., 358 Burns, Robert, 46n, 122n BUtterfield 8 (John O’Hara), 288, 289n Bynner, Witter, 30–31, 74–75, 78, 142, 151–154, 158, 159–160, 171–174, 176, 184, 195, 232–233, 281–282, 298, 315–316, 362–364   Canby, Henry Seidel, 114, 387n Candida (George Bernard Shaw), Millay acting in, 68 Canfield, Cass, 351, 370–374, 380–382, 399–400, 405 Carmen (Georges Bizet), 127

Carter, John, 178 Catullus, 85, 86n, 307, 309n, 331, 332n, 377n Century (magazine), 70, 113, 238n, 265n Chaucer, Geoffrey, 85 “La Chevelure” (Charles Baudelaire, translation by George Dillon), 291, 292n Chicago Evening Post, 39, 41 Chicago Tribune (Paris edition), 150n Chopin, Frédéric, 342, 344n Clough, Arthur Hugh, 27n Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 32, 33n, 39n Cosmopolitan Club (Philadelphia), 113n Costigan-Wagner Anti-Lynching Bill, 280–281 The Crazy House, 16 Crowninshield, Frank, 166–168, 194, 198, 211–212, 216, 266 Current Literature, 18, 21n, 31 Cuthbert, Margaret, 239, 263, 398, 404   The Dark Flower (John Galsworthy), 100, 101n Davis, Norman, 367 Deirdre of the Sorrows (John Millington Synge), Millay acting in, 88, 89, 90n, 92 de Kay, Drake, 309–311 Delarue-Mardrus, Lucie, 289–290 Dell, Floyd, 118–119, 125, 269–271 The Dial, 164, 326n Dickinson, Emily, 350n Dillon, George, 234–237, 246, 274, 277, 285–288, 289–291, 292–293, 297–298, 318, 333–335, 337–338, 342–345, 350–351, 355–356 Dodd, Mead & Co., 18 A Doll’s House (Henrik Ibsen), 63 Donne, John, 234, 243n, 253, 377n

Index 445 Don Quixote (Cervantes), 17n Dorset Essays (Llewelyn Powys), 296 Dow, Caroline B., 28, 28–29n, 45–47, 49, 52n, 62–63, 64, 65n, 65–66, 67, 105 Dowd, Harrison, 134, 167, 181, 212, 241 “The Dragon-Fly” (Witter Bynner), 153, 167 Drain, Kate, 191–193 Drinkwater, John, 139, 140n Dunn, Bobby, 178, 183   Earle, Ferdinand, 18–20, 21–25, 30 The Earth Passion (Arthur Davison Ficke), 32, 33n Eastman, Max, 218, 271n, 387n, 388, 389n Eclogues (Virgil), 306, 308n, 331, 332n Eisenhower, Dwight D., 367 Elektra (Richard Strauss), 328, 329n Elizabeth II (queen of England), 367 L’Enfer (Henri Barbusse), 133 Epstein, Daniel Mark, 195n, 267n, 326n Evans, Abbie, 191   “Fair of My Fancy”/“The Face of My Fancy” (Witter Bynner), 31 Ficke, Arthur Davison, 30–31, 31–39, 40–41, 42–43, 44–45, 52–54, 57, 59, 71–72, 78–79, 79–80, 80, 121, 133–134, 135–138, 142, 153, 154, 162, 174–178, 195, 196, 197, 200, 204, 241, 247, 316–317, 366 Ficke, Mrs. Arthur Davison (Evelyn Bethune Blunt), 34, 36, 37n, 41, 54, 55n, 78, 79, 153, 195n Ficke, Gladys Brown, 195, 195n, 204, 232, 233, 238, 288–289, 365–366, 397 Ficke, Stanhope, 54, 55n, 71 Fifth Symphony (Ludwig van Beethoven), 149

Filene, Catherine, 67 Fillmore, Parker, 64, 65n La Finta Giardiniera (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart), 219, 220n First Love (Louis Untermeyer), 30n “Fleece, The” (George Dillon and Millay, translation of Charles Baudelaire), 292n Fleisher, Walter L., 158–159 Les Fleurs du Mal (Charles Baudelaire, translation by Millay and George Dillon, The Flowers of Evil ), 2, 187n, 285–287, 288n, 290n, 292n, 298 Forum, 19, 21n, 25, 39, 53, 54, 73, 93, 100 Frankfurter, Felix, 232 French, Leila Bucklin, 150n Frost, Robert, 142; North of Boston, 87 Fuller, Governor Alvan Tufts, 222, 224, 226–228   Gardner, Anne, 169–171, 207 Genthe, Arnold, 76, 77n Gershwin, George, 390 “The Good Ship Maud” (Cora Millay), 267 Gould, Jean, 77n, 274n, 399n Gourmont, Remy de, 133, 344n Gregory, Alyse, 296, 298–299, 355, 361, 375 Guggenheim Fellowship, 246, 262, 272n, 275, 330, 333n, 407 Gurko, Miriam, 116n   Haight, Elizabeth Hazelton (professor), 64, 109, 111–113, 330–333 Hammerstein, Oscar, II, 390 The Happy Princess (Arthur Davison Ficke), 34, 36, 37n Hardy, Thomas, 238 Harper and Brothers, 9–10, 199, 288, 382

446  Index Harper’s Magazine, 238, 288, 302, 334 Harper’s Young People (magazine), 4 Haste to the Wedding (W. S. Gilbert and George Grossmith), 247 Hedda Gabler (Henrik Ibsen), 34, 35n Hélène, Sister Ste., 229–230, 243–245, 259, 283–285, 301–302, 303–304, 338–342, 356–357, 364 Hero and Leander (Christopher Marlowe), 17n Herron, Mary V., 400–401 Holmes, Sherlock, 22 Homecoming (Floyd Dell), 269–271 Hooley, Arthur, 72–74, 75–76, 81–93, 95–97, 98–99, 100–101, 107, 114–115, 232 Hopkins, Father Gerard Manley, 376, 377 Horace, 47, 55, 55n, 65, 113n, 331 Hubbard, Elbert, 24 Huguenin, Lilian R., 292–293 Humphries, Rolfe, 304–305, 306–309, 313–314, 315, 365, 408 Hutchins, Robert M., 387n   The Iliad (Homer), 373 International Exhibition of Modern Art (Armory Show, 1913), 48 Intimate Opera Company, 219–220 I Thought of Daisy (Edmund Wilson), 243   Le Jardin des Supplices (Octave Mirbeau), 132 Jeffers, Robinson, 239–240, 303, 305, 387n Jitney Players, 241, 247 Johnson, Burges, 110 Johnson, Edward, 228 Johnson, James Weldon, 248, 317 Johnson, Robert Underwood, 265

Le Journal d’une Femme de Chambre (Octave Mirbeau), 132   The Katzenjammer Kids (Rudolph Dirks), 15, 17n Kaufman, Herbert, 75–76 Keats, John: “The Eve of St. Agnes,” 334, 366; “Lamia,” 334 Kennedy, Edith Wynne Matthison, 111, 112n, 113n, 155 Kennedy, Mary, 220, 247–248, 262, 263–264, 265–266, 280, 329 Kennerley, Mitchell, 21n, 64, 74n, 77n, 86n, 109, 113, 114, 117–118, 135–136, 138, 139, 141, 143, 151, 152, 160, 232 Kent, Rockwell, 333 Kipling, Rudyard, 27n Knight, Martha, 45–46, 191, 393–394 Koehler, Mr., 156 Krazy Kat (George Herriman), 45n, 150, 214n Kuhn, Walt, 343, 344n, 361–362   Ladies’ Home Journal, 343 La Farge, Father John, 303–304 Lanfranchi, Mr. and Mrs. Eugenio, 293–294, 319 Lavengro: The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest (George Borrow), 95 Lawson, John Howard, 191–193, 204 LeHand, Margaret, 358–359 Lindbergh, Anne Morrow, 390 Lindbergh, Charles, 363 “Llegada” (Emilio Prados), 304–305, 314–315 Lowell, Amy, 139, 187n, 260n The Lyric Year, 18–20, 21n, 22, 23, 25n, 27, 35n, 38, 39, 53n, 218n   McCaleb, Dean (Vassar College), 56–57, 72, 94, 112, 113

Index 447 MacCracken, Dr. (Vassar College president), 62, 81, 108 Macdougall, Allan Ross, 8n, 33n, 37n, 141–142, 148–150, 182, 407 MacIntyre, C. F., 333 Macleish, Archibald, 387n Maine State Historian, 282–283 “Marcia” (Arthur Davison Ficke), 153 Markel, Lester, 363, 364n Markham, Edwin, 310 Marriage (H. G. Wells), 63 The Masses, trial (1918), 270–271 Matthiessen, F. O., 384–387 Max [unidentified], 165 Mayfair Theatre, 219 Megunticook (magazine), 21n Meredith, George, 27n; Modern Love, 83, 84n The Metropolitan Magazine, 170, 179, Metropolitan Opera Company, 148, 151 The Mikado (W. S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan), 39 Milford, Nancy, 28n, 224n, 256n, 271n Millay, Cora, 10, 11–12, 18, 23, 39, 40, 55, 62, 62–65, 64, 68–69, 70, 81, 83, 93, 93–95, 95, 101, 101–105, 107–108, 121, 126, 127, 134, 156–158, 165–166, 166, 167, 178–183, 184, 188–190, 191, 192, 199, 200–201, 212, 214, 244, 248–255, 267, 296 Millay, Edna St. Vincent: works —plays Aria da Capo, 110n, 134, 135n, 138–140, 141, 148, 155, 179, 380–382 Collected Dramatic Works (book proposed by Harper’s), 380–382 Conversation at Midnight, 283–285, 298n, 301–302, 303–304 The King’s Henchman, 208, 209n, 210,

212, 215, 216, 221–222, 228, 381, 382n The Lamp and the Bell, 110n, 177, 266n, 326n, 381 The Murder of Lidice, 366, 367, 368–369, 371, 381 The Princess Marries the Page, 112–113, 115, 116n, 260–261, 262, 380, 383n Snow White, 208, 209n Two Slatterns and a King, 115, 116n, 380 —poems, books of The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver and Other Poems, 199, 200 The Buck in the Snow, 201n, 233, 256, 272–273, 368 Collected Sonnets, 201n, 369, 388, 389n Fatal Interview, 253, 256, 257, 259, 260, 261n, 306 A Few Figs from Thistles, 138, 139, 141, 142, 152, 168, 261, 326n, 368, 383 The Flowers of Evil (translation of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal ), 2, 187n, 285–287, 288n, 290n, 292n, 298 The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems, 178n, 179, 199, 200 Huntsman, What Quarry? 272–273 The Love Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay (book proposed by Harper’s), 388–389 Make Bright the Arrows, 357, 359–361, 363, 368–369, 371, Poems (British collection published by Martin Secker), 200 Renascence and Other Poems, 113, 136, 138, 272n, 290n Second April, 138, 139, 139n, 141, 152, 159–160, 165, 167, 168, 187n, 193, 273, 389n Wine from These Grapes, 272–273

448  Index —poems, individual and in small groups “After the Celebration (as told by the Fire-cracker),” 10n “Afternoon on a Hill,” 131n “And you as well must die, belovèd dust,” 292–293, 316–317 “Anxious to the Wood,” 34 “The Arrival” (translation of a poem by Emilio Prados), 305 “Ashes of Life,” 99–100 “Autumn Chant,” 110n “The Ballad of Chaldon Down,” 334, 339 “The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver,” 333n “The Bean-Stalk,” 151, 154n “The Betrothal,” 168n “Blue-Beard”/“Bluebeard,” 94n, 100 “Conscientious Objector,” 278n “The Crookèd Cross,” 357 “Czecho-Slovakia,” 351 “Day’s Rest-Time,” 10n “E. St. V. M.,” 147 “Elegy Before Death,” 86n “Epitaph for the Race of Man,” 272–273, 371–374 “Et après tout qu’est-ce qu’on a fait,” 177 “Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare,” 149, 150n “The Ferry Voyagers” (later title, “Recuerdo”), 2, 122–123, 129 “Figs from Thistles” (group of poems in Poetry), 128 “First Fig,” 128 “The Fitting,” 333–334, 337 “Forest Trees,” 10n “Friends,” 10n, 17 “From a Very Little Sphinx,” 368 “The Fugitive,” 261 “Gentlemen Cry, Peace!” 369

“God’s World,” 53, 99–100, 131n “The Goose-Girl,” 52, 154n “I, being born a woman, and distressed,” 168n, 178n “If I should learn in some quite casual way”/“If You Were Dead,” 93, 94n “Impression: Fog off the Coast of Dorset,” 333, 334, 335 “I know I am but summer to your heart,” 178n “I must not die of pity,” 369 “Inert Perfection,” 334 “Intention to Escape from Him,” 334 “Interim,” 22 “Journey,” 53, 54 “Justice Denied in Massachusetts,” 224n “The Land of Romance,” 10n, 21n, 31 “Let me not shout into the world’s great ear,” 30–31 “Life,” 10n “The Little Bush,” 41 “Make Bright the Arrows,” 359–360 “Memory of England,” 357 “Moon that against the lintel of the west” (translated into Latin by Rolfe Humphries), 315 “Not to Be Spattered by His Blood,” 368 “Now sets his foot upon the eastern sill,” 371–372 “Nuit Blanche,” 161 “Ode to Silence,” 152 “Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!” 178n “The Old Men of Vichy,” 369 “Only the ruthless now, so it would seem,” 369 “Passer Mortuus Est,” 86n “Peace was my earliest love, and I presume,” 369

Index 449 “The Penitent,” 128; translation into German by Lola Bronstein, 350 “The Pioneer”/“Upon this marble bust that is not I,” 200–201 “The Rabbit,” 351 “Ragged Island,” 377, 378n “Recuerdo” (earlier title, “The Ferry Voyagers”), 2, 122–123, 129 “Renascence,” 19–22, 26, 28n, 30–33, 36 “Rendezvous,” 344, 351 “The Road to the Past,” 334 “Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find,” 178n “Second Fig,” 128 “See where Capella with her golden kids,” 372 “Sheep” (early title for “Nuit Blanche”), 161, 167 “She Is Overheard Singing,” 129 “The Shroud,” 99–100 “The Snow Storm,” 350 “Song for Young Lovers,” 334 “Sonnet in Tetrameter,” 334, 337 “Sonnets from a Town in a State of Siege” (group of poems), 342 “The Suicide,” 93, 94n “Thanksgiving, 1950,” 405 “Theme and Variation” (group of poems), 342 “Thine of the pittifull occasioun,” 186 “Thou art not lovelier than lilacs,— no” (translated into French), 290n “Thursday,” 128 “Tiny Bird,” 41 “To One who might have borne a Message,” 314 “To a Snake,” 377, 378n “Tranquility at length when autumn comes” 377, 378n “Truce for a Moment,” 334 “The Unexplorer,” 128

“Vacation Song,” 10n “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,” 144n “What Savage Blossom,” 334 “When the Year Grows Old,” 110n, 114, 131n “Whereas at morning in a jewelled crown” (translated into Latin), 315n “Where does he walk, or sit and stir his tea,” 369 “While London, while Berlin, two cities dear,” 369 “Wild Swans” (translated into French), 290n “Witch-Wife,” 93, 94n “Wine from These Grapes,” 314, 389n “Yet in an hour to come, disdainful dust” (translated into Latin), 315n “You find ‘outrageous’ this—these outraged hearts?—,” 369 “Young Mother Hubbard,” 10n —prose The Barrel, 194 A Bibliography of the Works of Edna St. Vincent Millay (Karl Yost, foreword by Millay), 300n Hardigut, 167, 188, 192 The Key, 144n, 194 Mr. Dallas Larabee, Sinner (by Nancy Boyd) 145 “Ships and Sealing-Wax” (by Nancy Boyd) 167, 168n Millay, Kathleen, 7, 10, 12–17, 46–52, 55, 60–62, 62–65, 63, 65–66, 67, 68, 68–69, 69–71, 77, 79–80, 93–95, 94, 101–105, 107–108, 108–111, 112, 115–116, 118–119, 119–123, 124–125, 127–128, 134–135, 156–158, 163, 178–183, 180–181, 183, 188–190, 206, 212–214, 244–255

450  Index Millay, Norma, 7, 10, 12–17, 38, 40, 46–52, 61, 62–65, 64, 65–66, 67, 68–69, 69, 70, 71, 93–95, 101, 101–105, 104, 105, 107–108, 108, 118–119, 120, 119–122, 124, 125, 134, 135, 156–158, 163, 178–183, 187, 189, 198, 212, 213, 249, 251–252, 263 Milton, John, 17n, 46, 49, 310; Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, 46 Mischoulon, Manuel Maria, 398–399 Monroe, Harriet, 99–100, 106, 117, 119, 123, 128, 129, 193–194, 203–204, 229, 397n Morgan, Eleanor (Patterson), 97–98 Mortal Image (Elinor Wylie) [British title; American title is The Orphan Angel], 238 Morton, David, 314 “The Mountain in China” (Witter Bynner), 153, 154n Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 181–182, 219, 220n Musical Observer (magazine), 228   The Nation (New York), 191 Nets to Catch the Wind (Elinor Wylie), 169, 187n Nevin, Ethelbert, 26–27 New Republic, 148, 242 New York Evening Post, 169 “The New York World,” Music Editor, 205 “The New York World,” Editor, 226–228 Niles, Gladys, 18–21, 25–27 Noyes, Alfred, 43, 58   O’Keeffe, Georgia, 256, 258–259 O’Neill, Eugene, 148, 150n Orphan Angel, The (Elinor Wylie)

[American title; British title is Mortal Image], 238 Orpheus and Eurydice (Christolph Willibald, Ritter von Gluck), 219 Oxford English Dictionary, 3, 337, 408   Pageant of Athena (Hazel MacKaye), Millay acting in, 83 Peabody, Josephine Preston, 65 Petrarch, Francesco, 378–379 “The Pickerel Pond: A Double Pastoral” (Edmund Wilson), 396 Pinnie, John, 400 The Piper (Josephine Preston Peabody), 65 Poetry (magazine), 99, 106, 121, 129n, 151, 154n, 235n, 333–335, 337, 338, 343–344, 351, 356 Poetry Society of America, 34, 35n, 37, 41, 43, 48, 139, 153, 160 “The Poet Yôshi” (Arthur Davison Ficke), 36 Pope, Alexander, 17n, 26, 27n “Portrait of a Lady” (Deems Taylor), 205 Pragmatism (William James), 63 Provincetown Players, 125, 134, 135n, 139, 150n, 164n Provincetown Playhouse, 113n, 155 Punch (Conrad Aiken), 168 Punch (magazine), 300 Pygmalion (George Bernard Shaw), 63–64, 65n   “Queen Mab in the Village” (Vachel Lindsay), 41   Racine, Jean, 295 Ralli, Elaine, 62–63, 64, 66–67, 69–71, 79 The Raven (Edgar Allan Poe), translated into French by Charles Baudelaire, 290–291

Index 451 Reed, Amy, 378–379 Reedy, William Marion, 41 Reedy’s Mirror, 139, 140, 150n Rice, Muriel, 75–76 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Samuel Taylor Coleridge), 32, 33n Rittenhouse, Jessie B., 35n, 41, 43, 131, 139–140 Roberts, Walter Adolphe, 131–133, 145–146 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 280–281, 358–359, 367 Rushmore, Arthur W., 367–370, 383–384, 388   St. Nicholas (magazine), 9, 10, 13, 17 Sappho, 331 Saturday Evening Post, 198, 404 Saturday Review of Literature, 233, 238n Saxton, Eugene, 225, 238–239, 257–258, 260–261, 272–273, 285–288, 289–291, 299–301, 333 Schauffler, Bennet, 122, 123n “The Scholar-Gypsy” (Matthew Arnold), 376, 377n Scott, Sir Walter, 57n Scull, Anna, 126–127 Seeger, Pete, 382n Selva, Salomón de la, 73, 74n, 123n, 131, 157 Shakespeare, William, 10n, 89, 295; Romeo and Juliet, and The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Macbeth, 295, 296n Shapli, Frances, 187–188, 267–268 Sheean, Vincent, 193n Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 376, 386–387 Sills, Charlotte Babcock, 144, 359–361 Simpson, Isobel, 115, 120, 330–332, 368 Smart Set (magazine), 142, 143n Smith, Tom, 168

Somerville, Ella, 26 Songs of Innocence (William Blake), 35–36 “Star Spangled Banner,” 57 The String of the Samisen (Rita Wellman), Millay acting in, 150n Susie, Aunt (Mrs. Frank L. Ricker), 39–40, 133–134, 357, 403, 406 Sweet-and-Twenty (Floyd Dell), 21n, 119n Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 26, 27n; Triumph of Time and Anactoria, 88 Taylor, Deems, 113n, 205, 208–210, 211, 212, 215, 217–218, 220–222, 240–241, 245, 265, 280n, 327–329 Taylor, Joan, 220, 222, 241, 247, 280 Teasdale, Sara, 42, 58 Tea for Three (Roi Cooper Megrue), 127 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 17n Theatre Guild (at the Garrick Theatre), 204n, 214n This Is My Best (Whit Burnett, ed.), 388, 389n Tiger (Witter Bynner), 54, 55n, 79n Tuckerman, Frederick Goddard, 322 Twelve Japanese Painters (Arthur Davison Ficke), 52–53 Tyl Ulenspiegl (Charles de Coster), 407   Ullman, Doris, 300 The Undertaker’s Garland (John Peale Bishop and Edmund Wilson), 194 Untermeyer, Louis, 29–30, 39, 41   Van Dyke, Henry, 27 Vanity Fair (magazine), 148, 151, 154n, 161n, 166, 168n, 170, 179, 181, 188, 194n, 195n, 198, 216, 257, 260n, 333n

452  Index Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray), 63 Vassar Miscellany Monthly, 93, 94n, 139n The Verdict of Bridlegoose (Lleweyln Powys), 256n Verlaine, Paul, 160 Virgil: Aeneid, 331, 332n, 333n, 408; Eclogues, 306, 308n, 331, 332n Voltaire, 270, 271n   Washington Square Players, 124, 214n WEAF (later WNBC), 304, 304n Wells, John Barnes, 46 Wheeler, Edward J., 18, 19, 21n, 22, 31, 35n Wheelock, John Hall, 387n, 408

White, Walter, 277–278, 281n Wilson, Edmund, 142–143, 145, 146–148, 158, 160–161, 163–164, 167, 184–187, 194–195, 198, 202, 210–211, 240, 242–243, 375–378, 396 Woolf, Georgie, 402 Woollcott, Alexander, 139–140, 219–220, 367 Wordsworth, William, 27n, 33–34n, 391, 395 Wozzeck (Alban Berg), 327–329 Wylie, Elinor, 169, 218, 231, 233–234   Yale Review, 109, 110n, 114, 179 Yeats, W. B., 84 Young, Roland, 338, 341n