The House by the Sea (14 page)

Tuesday, September 2nd

S
UCH A TIGHTLY
packed weekend … I shall never be able to sort it all out today. But there are things I must try to capture here this morning … a soft gray morning, well-suited to a quiet think.

Lee arrived Friday afternoon, a round joyful bundle of energy and excitement as she set out to try to find a house near here. We saw three or four that afternoon, ranging from a gloomy Spanish stucco house, lost in the woods (I could see it affect her like a pall) to Helen Jones' exquisite one in the woods also, near here—a house I have admired and that I hope she can have. It is hard to describe how good it will be, if it works, to have a real friend so near by. Lee is wonderful in all ways I am not. Besides being a fine artist in mosaics, she knows how things work and loves to mend and make-go again, as she did with the cuckoo clock while I was gone. What fun to have a companion with whom to play! One of the few things I mind about living alone is having no one with whom to go to the movies, and I haven't seen one for two years.

I left Saturday morning to drive to Connecticut to meet Irene Morgan at a motel and then go together to see Eva Le Gallienne in the play she has so wanted to play in,
The Dream Watcher
, being briefly tried out at the White Barn Theatre. One of the haunting woes of these past ten years has been to know that her genius was locked up for lack of a play. It has been real anguish, for time is running out. Le G. is seventy-six now, though one would not guess that. She is in full command of her powers and has more to say, perhaps, than she ever has; so that the immense technical expertise is simply there to be used for a great end. How I had hoped the play would prove worthy! But I did not feel it was.

It suffers from being a novel turned into a play … the author, Barbara Wersba, did the dramatization herself, and perhaps this was a mistake. The play depends on two actors, the old woman and a sensitive boy who is doing badly at school and needs “motivating,” as they say. Their conjunction is the action. Unfortunately, the boy, handsome in a plump little-boy way, did not have the necessary intensity. So the magic the play might have had simply did not happen. Le G. herself was magnificent, in a part that I felt almost
too
fitted to her—and that raised many thoughts in my mind. It seemed a kaleidoscope of bits and pieces of her great performances from Juliet to the Madwoman of Chaillot.

We went backstage for a moment and Le G. said, “But you're white!” I had quite forgotten that she has not seen me since my hair turned from gray to white—and it made me laugh, as she used to call me “Granny” when I was seventeen and an apprentice at the Civic Repertory and spent hours in her dressing room while she made up. Now I am a real Granny!

The next day I went to Joy Greene Sweet's to talk about Rosalind. Oh, what a rich time we had over that twenty-four hours! Long quiet talks, and then little visits with Gordon, her husband, who was in bed as the emphysema had flared up after some rather grueling days they had spent closing Rosalind's house in Cambridge. Memorable meals—supper was trout caught by Gordon, New Zealand spinach (ineffably delicious), tiny potatoes just dug, these from the garden, and elderberry pie which Joy had made in memory of our summers at River Houslin in Rowley when we were children. The house is full of peace and light; every window looks out on long perspectives of lawn and magnificent trees.

After my nap we went for a walk around the place. They have worked for forty years to make wide paths through the woods (how rare in America, to be able to walk miles through woods in perfect comfort!), woods of white oak, maple, hemlock, and pine with wild dogwood and laurel below. All the way down I had been in a state of great praise for trees … wondering how I could ever live without them, thinking of their comfort, how they nourish and sustain us with their beauty and coolness, their steadfastness, the fact that they will outlive those who plant them. And I understood why old men plant trees.

Joy looks ten years younger than she did at R.'s funeral … of course, that was a dreadful time as she had flown back from California, leaving Gordon very ill. She said, among many things I want to remember, one thing that struck me where I live—that at our age (she is ten years older than I) what one needs and often lacks are “emotional peers.”

I got home to a warm welcome from Lee and Tamas … to find the house full of flowers she had picked and arranged, and all sorts of small jobs accomplished, and then we sat and talked and dreamed about the house she loves and hopes to buy, and the new life ahead.

Saturday, September 6th

W
HERE TO BEGIN
? I ask myself each day. I do the chores slowly, try to start out at least on a good steady slow rhythm. Today got up at 6:30 to a subdued autumnal light, the sun diffused through gentle clouds and haze. I changed the sheets on my bed and got the laundry together, then went down and cooked my breakfast—a good one of bacon and some of the small tomatoes Raymond brought yesterday from his garden. (My mother loved this breakfast and I always think of her when I cook it.) Then I went out in rubber boots over my pajamas and picked a few flowers to perk up the bunches. A great joy now, because it's the first time I have sowed them among the annuals, is the scabiosa, every shade of white, purple, and lavendar, and also the annual lupine. Yesterday I picked two sprays of that, the most astonishing brilliant blue. Any day now we shall have a hard frost and it will all go.

Susan Garrett called yesterday to ask whether I would like to see some gardens that afternoon, and off we went at half past three with two young women who had kindly wanted to do this for me because they liked my books. It
was
a delightful expedition, to three gardens, each very different from the other. Mrs. Howells at Kittery Point gave us two night-blooming cereus to watch open after we got home (and they did open at precisely nine—a poignant glory because it comes and goes so fast). I enjoyed the gardens and the delightful women who created them, but my hackles rise always at the attitudes of garden club members. I fear I am unregenerate, or perhaps simply old-fashioned, for I do not really like “arrangements” where too often a kind of ingenuity (using strange leaves or lettuce or a cabbage to be “interesting”) replaces the simple joys of just plain old-fashioned bunches of flowers, which is what I love. I was pleased to note that nowhere did I see such a variety of annuals as I have in my wild, untidy, weedful picking garden here.

Today young Charles Barber from Ohio comes for lunch. He is on his way to study in England. I do look forward to showing him my habitat, as we met in a strange house (though lovely) when I was out at Ohio Wesleyan.

So much for the surface of life these past days. But always in the back of my consciousness is terrible woe and anxiety about the death of the spirit in our inner cities. I was grateful to find a moving account about this by Joshua Resnek, a sportswriter from Lynn on the Op-ed page of the
Times
yesterday. He described a drive through the worst of Brooklyn.

“We passed row after row of gutted tenements and street upon street of decaying buildings. Each time we looked at a face it was black and there weren't any smiles, not anywhere. The most noticeable expression was one of a stonelike quality; the steel-fisted, hardened gaze of a people who have, with great difficulty, given up.” And later he says, “The black people we saw in Brooklyn are living in Hell. The system that accommodated the first generation of immigrants and that assimilated the second during the last fifty years is not, today, equipped to perform the moral task of dispensing equality.

“There is no equality of mind or the spirit, or of the soul in this place. No lingering sense of satisfactions over anything. Not birth. Not the living of life. Not death.”

Friday, September 12th

C
HARLES BARBER
arrived with a huge paper bag containing a melon from his grandfather's garden in Weston, a squash, peaches, pears, and got off the bus looking well and brown. We had a good day's talk before I took him to Portsmouth for his bus back, and now he is on his way to England. With so much grief and hard luck around, it is lovely to be with someone on the brink of a great adventure, bursting with joy … and it does seem a miracle that he found a way of getting to college in England, after all.

I looked at his lovely, but unformed, face, the face of a very young man (he is nineteen) and wondered what life would do to tauten and shape it. He is so open and full of sweetness now, but thought has not yet written anything on his smooth face, nor pain tightened his mouth. I just pray that all goes well for him this year. He earned the money for the flight by being a lifeguard this summer and had a good dose of how most people live. He was teased for bringing books to the pool!

The splendor of the autumn light is beginning, the sea that dark blue (almost purple one evening), the air like champagne. One day I sat out on the terrace for almost an hour, listening to the silence, watching an occasional monarch butterfly float past, and then the birds on their way to their evening feed at the feeders. Here and there swamp maples are turning, the woods are lit up by these subtle changes, a single bright leaf here or there, the ferns beginning to pale, the bush-blueberries already bright red in leaf. There is still goldenrod everywhere, and the asters are beginning.

I am ashamed, among all this glory, of the massive weeds in the vegetable garden and am seriously considering trying the deep mulch method, eight inches of spoiled hay, so that nothing gets through except the wanted things. The flower part of the garden is also rather disorderly, but I don't mind as it is full of color. The cosmos and marigolds go on and on.

Tuesday, September 16th

I
WAS WOKEN
at six by the gentle ripple of what I think must have been an owl's cry as it flew past. It is quite unlike any other bird sound. It is wonderful to wake up now knowing I have a clear day ahead and can walk to my own rhythm, not hurrying. This afternoon I intend to put up tomatoes … I simply couldn't bear the rich accumulations yesterday lying in a flat basket on the kitchen counter; so I went to Lesswings and found the wire stand for boiling. I can use the lobster pot. I've never done this before, so it is an adventure.

Anne and Barbara came for supper … a great reunion, as we haven't seen each other for two months, and there was so much to talk about, to hear and tell, the time simply fled. We had steak for dinner,
ratatouille
I had made on Sunday, mushrooms (two immense ones I found as I came back yesterday from my walk with Tamas), little potatoes, and an American wine I wanted to try, Great Western's Chelois. It is a little thin compared to French wines, but the aftertaste is delicious.

Of course, we walked all around the garden first. Anne is one person who comes here who always notices everything I have done. Luckily the gentians are still beautiful in a little corner which has a heather and a heath in it too, and later on will have lavendar colchicum. We went to take a look at the single closed gentian Raymond noticed near the apple orchard—such a thrill! Mary-Leigh in an orange jacket came slowly creeping along on her huge mower, trying it out. It is bright orange, and she looked extremely decorative sitting on it.

But the best was after we came in and stood for minutes watching the birds at the feeder from the porch window … such a flurry of wings coming and going, and so many birds these days! We saw the two pairs of nuthatches, white- and rose-breasted, chickadees, house finches, goldfinches, a towhee on the ground, a thrush in one of the cherry trees, a vireo and a migrating warbler, greenish-yellow, jays, of course. This morning I caught a glimpse of an immature rose-breasted grosbeak in the pine tree, trying to get up courage to join the other birds at the feeder.

After supper we sat by the fire and talked about the farm they hope to buy in two years when Anne's children have left home. How lovely it will be if they are near by! They brought potatoes (rare jewels this year of a bad harvest everywhere) and left with two of the cinerarias I have been growing under lights. They are rich and sturdy with big leaves, but I expect it will be two months before they flower.

Saturday, September 27th

T
HERE DOES SEEM
to be some Fate—gremlins? furies?—at work whenever I have to read poems. In April there was a blizzard and I entered Lewiston to read at Bates in two feet of unploughed snow, visibility nil; in late July when I read at Ogunquit it was almost as hot as the day a million hens died in Maine; and now I have been away for five days of torrential rain at Cornell University and then Massapequa, Long Island—terrifying return yesterday, as our plane had to turn back to Hartford and dump us there. After a long wait and no luggage turning up, we went by bus to Boston. The rain was a deluge and there were sudden claps of thunder and lightning so at one point I thought someone had thrown a bomb! I must say that bed, at midnight with a cup of cocoa on a tray, and Tamas by my side, was Heaven!

The luggage did turn up today and was delivered, so I feel I can settle down at last.

Monday, September 29th

T
HE BLESSING
of the sun! A perfect shining blue day at last!

After I have been away even for a few days this place smites me with its beauty. When I went to fetch the paper yesterday I saw a hummingbird just outside the door stay quite still on a clematis seed … so rare to see one of these darting creatures still for once … his wings folded on his back. He made a curious little sound, tick-tick-tick-tick. Had he thought the shining whorls of the seed were a flower? He sounded quite cross. The Monarch butterflies cluster in droves on the English asters, and it's a royal sight, the orange and black on the purple flowers. There are a few autumn crocus out here and there.

Among the magazines piled up when I got back I found a
Listener
with an excellent review of the Woolf letters by Margaret Drabble. I shall copy some of it to keep hold of what she says about the changing attitude toward V. W. (
The Fortitude of V. Woolf, Listener
, 18th September):