Jay to Bee. Janet Frame
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and around.
Already I’ve begun my ‘count-down’ of dinners—only so many left! They’re an ordeal. I just can’t bear dining in the presence of authorities—in this case the new director and his wife. Everything is so formal, everybody so bloody well-behaved, and after dinner we seem to be expected to go to the small room off the diningroom and sit and make conversation. So far I haven’t said a word—oh yes I said one or two last night and regretted them immediately. I almost spoke at dinner when the discussion was about repairing cars and washing machines and so on, the cost, the shoddy workmanship . . . and everyone had spoken—after all, the topic is not intellectually demanding and even MacDowell babies might be expected to speak a line . . . and I had in mind my experience of inserting a new ball-cock into my plumbing at home, and so, with heart beating fast at the contemplation of my daring, I framed, mentally, my opening sentence—‘I once spent all day putting in a new ball-cock’, but every time an opportunity came for me to contribute I panicked and said nothing and so the Yaddo meal-table never heard of my indelicate experience. Later, as we sat staring at each other in the anteroom, with everyone talking except me, I spoke a sentence. The topic was Marisol whom someone described as a disconcerting person because she would go to a party and sit and never speak all evening. I had been reading an article on the (socalled) ‘Tenth Street Painters’ and I murmured, too softly for anyone to hear, ‘There’s a description of her in that article on the Tenth Street Painters’.
‘What? What? What did you say? What? What? What?’
Oh my God! I didn’t have the courage to speak another sentence so I just mumbled and blushed and resolved never to speak again . . .
(Dinner: Pork chops, apple sauce, whipped creamed potatoes, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, carrots. Indian pudding and Ice cream. Coffee and cream.)
Two composers are arriving soon. Douglas Addenbrooke (?) and ?? Rorum which means they will have to open the front library where the grand piano is as the only other piano is in the Pink Room where one composer will live and work. (There are grand pianos of course in the mansion and two other studios which are all closed for the winter.) The Pink Room is Katrina Trask’s former bedroom and overlooks the line of yew trees (I think they’re yew) that lead to her grave.
How does it feel, Bee,
now you’re immortalized,
so prized
by Emily?
A ‘burnished carriage’ put by.
‘Delirious’ incense.
A mad correspondence
with Fly?
A poetic fling,
Clover, Capitals,
Peeps at pistils,
two wings and a sting?
How does it feel, Bee,
to bed a lily?
We of Saratoga Springs and formerly of MacDowell are glad you’re Billy.
Bee! Your photos two
arrived. Was saying yesterday
to myself at Yaddo
that they were due—
I arrived here this week—
I’m settled and at work—
I’m an Awful Hack
– Not only your sweater’s warm and thick—
You’ll get this letter, say,
next week. Reply,
Bee, over rose-hip tea—
Yours, Jay.
I’m shameless.
(Dinner: chicken, cranberry sauce, rice with mushrooms, olives, asparagus, salad and hot rolls. Cream puffs. Coffee and cream.)
I was saving this for my photos but they haven’t arrived.
Goodbye for now & el mismo to you and all at 131 H. Drive.
More again soon!
17. Yaddo January 9
Bee, bear with me—you’d better—
for writing you another letter.
(How’s your ‘burnished carriage’, by the way?
Did you get to visit Fly?)
Alas my battery’s not in its prime
and I can’t keep up this rhyme
—perhaps another time.
I’m sending two scruffy photos—what a bad bargain you’re getting after your own magnificent photos. The one of me in the mirror’s the only one that turned out O.K., and that’s because I’m in shadow. The other is one I took early early in the morning on Grand Central Station after leaving Elnora’s and while I was waiting for the train and I’m still half asleep. At least the MacDowell photo gives you a reminder of Bill Brownia, with sweater and cake-tin and monkey. The flower drawing on the extreme right was made by the fifteen-year old son of the poetbb who wrote the ‘Tom Cat’ poem.
James K. Baxter
To try to make up the difference I’m sending you a few pages I don’t want from the proofs of my new novel which I’ve been correcting. Just a taste.
Now.
Now.
I’m preparing my dedication for this book Intensive Care, and I’m thinking of dedicating it to the person who made possible my visit to this country, and the person who will farewell me when I leave. I’m writing to the two people to ask if they mind and whether they want to be initials only or first names or full names.
If the people approve the dedication will read,
If you would be pleased rather than embarrassed or unpleasantly apprehensive do let me know how you would like to appear—as one or two initials or in name? Or what?
I want to get you into a dedication withour embarrassing you (or do I mean without embarrassing myself?) and I think this is the way to do it.
Or I could say something like (if you’d rather not be named) To Sue who made my visit possible, and the live oaks who sheltered me . . . and then you would have to explain now and again to the few people who might read my book that you are actually a live oak!
Any objections, ideas, etc?
(Dinner last evening, pot roast, horseradish sauce, green peas; salad and hot rolls (the salad and hot rolls appear every evening; sometimes it is cornbread); apricot whip which is apricots folded into whipped cream and other riches.)
Ned Rorem the composer arrives today. He has been quoted as saying that Yaddo is a luxurious concentration camp where he could neither camp nor concentrate.
I like also his quote about Beethoven and his wife (though I’m sure Beethoven didn’t have a wife).
Beeth: