Robert Lowell: A Biography Read Online Free PDF Page A

from his steadily deteriorating relations with his parents. His year at Harvard had not been a success; he was contemptuous of most of the English faculty, he had had poems rejected by the Harvard Advocate ,and he had been patronized by Robert Frost. The Advocate rejection was particularly wounding: Lowell was an applicant for a position on the magazine’s literary board, but when he went for an interview “he was asked to tack down a carpet in the sanctum and, when he was finished, told that he needn’t come round anymore.” Frost seems to have been more subtle. Lowell had sought him out (Frost was the Norton Lecturer that year) and asked for his opinion on an epic he was writing on the subject of the Crusades. Frost read a few lines and commented that it “goes on rather a bit,” then recited Collins’s “How sleep the brave,” as a model of conciseness.
    Both rebuffs were to be recalled by Lowell in later years and no doubt hurt him at the time. By the end of his first year he was in a mood to reject Harvard rather than give it another chance to rejecthim, and most of his quarrels with his parents seem to have centered on his future at the university. Lowell wanted to drop out at the end of his freshman year; Charlotte made it clear that if he did drop out he would have to survive without help from the family:
    Neither Daddy nor I wish in any way to force you into our way of life or behavior. You are now practically a man and free to do largely as you choose, only if you choose to be independent you must also be responsible and self-supporting…. We have thought this all over very carefully and this is a final decision. We will help you when we approve of what you do but we will not help you to do things of which we do not approve. 6
    Lowell already planned to spend a second summer in Nantucket, and his mother and father had arranged to go to Europe. Each side sensed that the other ought to be avoided for a time, and Lowell was now holding an important card. There could be no doubt that Charlotte would share Boston society’s opinion of Anne Dick. Even so, just before Lowell set off for Nantucket, Anne wrote hopefully to Mrs. Lowell:
    Bobby has decided to go back to college—he is leaving here Monday and spending that night with the Swifts on his way to Nantucket. We are happy about this final decision as I am sure you are….
    Bobby and I are planning to announce the engagement—Saturday. This seems best considering all things—unless for some reason you do not wish it. 7
    At the end of June 1936 Lowell left for Nantucket with Blair Clark, knowing that he had constructed the beginnings of what might turn out to be a complete break with his parents. In the meantime he was anxious to consolidate the gains of the previous summer. This summer’s reading program was to include Elizabethan drama, and Clark and Parker (Parker joined them later) were given seventy-five plays to read before the end of “term.” Anne Dick was instructed to read Troilus and Cressida and to mail him her comments, which he would then return with his tart annotations (“I loved being mocked so wittily. I adored it. The more he criticized me, the more I adored it”). Lowell’s “campaign” style is well captured in this letter to Frank Parker:

    Dear Frank:
    I suppose I am the goat and write first. Of course I don’t dare to affirm positively that you have not written. Perhaps you wrote a letter and forgot to mail, perhaps you mailed and forgot to stamp, perhaps you stamped and forgot to envelope, perhaps you dreamt your epistle ect. ect. ad infitum. With this off my chest I can begin.
    I have written two fairly long poems and a mass of scrap work. Extracts are hardly worth while, you will see what I have done when you arrive here. When do you think you can join us? I am looking forward to seeing you tremendously.
    Anne wrote me about the 25th and her day with you, and your bewitching. I swear Ipswich has the weirdest power: