Savage Beauty (82 page)

In one of the notebooks she kept during the late 1930s she made the following notes under “
Menopause,” which she described as “instability in the vasomotor nervous system and its complications.” Under “Treatment” she said the most important element was to establish confidence in the doctor by “understanding the disabling situation.” Changes in a woman’s body were described as “instability” with “complications,” and she understood the situation to be “disabling.” Her notes continued in a tone just short of patronizing:

Never belittle … reassure that all symptoms can be relieved.

it takes time—

trial & error

no change in mentality

No change in libido

Not necessary to get fat or depressed.

2. Drugs.… If patient has been to many doctors better to give hormones promptly.

This was exactly the period, in the late 1930s and early ’40s, when the beneficial effects of estrogen first became known in the medical world.
The doctor who had known Connie Guion as an intern said, “
It is not quite clear what the mechanism of the reaction is, but in many women taking small amounts of estrogen can change things around. So the patient is able to think more clearly. And it is also true that by the use of estrogens more patients were able to fight other disturbances, other addictions, even. It was called the hormone of serenity.”

But Millay was not taking small amounts. And no one knew the effect of taking estrogen with morphine. Whatever it was, Edna Millay did not become serene.

Eugen had been planning a restful holiday in the British Virgin Islands, on Tortola, where he’d found a remote cottage on Half Moon Bay. There were no cars on the island, and Road Town, the tiny capital, was about fifteen minutes away by skiff. The cottage was brand new. Every room in the house faced the sea, and only a coconut grove separated it from the bay. There were kerosene lamps for reading, candles for dining. Although it was entirely private, simple food was easy to get, and there was plenty of fish, which could be delivered to their door or caught. A cook would come with the house for the princely sum of five dollars a month plus food.

They took it eagerly, sight unseen except for a handful of snapshots showing a room with bookcases, an empty terrace, and the back of a servant with a feather duster. Eugen asked if they could bring their dog, to which the owners immediately agreed. They must also have asked about sand flies and mosquitoes, because the owner wrote that they were eliminated by the prevailing wind “except in rare instances.” The house would be ready for them the first week of December. The plan was for Edna to read and rest, regain her strength and her health. Eugen would swim and fish. It sounded idyllic.

The only record of their stay on Tortola is a bill from the small local market where Eugen shopped. Along with basic provisions such as salt, potatoes, onions, and sugar are twenty-eight bottles of gin, vermouth, and whiskey—and a case and a half of beer. They were there thirty days, and they had no guests.

In March 1940, Eugen wrote Norma:

This place has been a total fiasco. Everything is beautiful, the damnest scenery, I mean, and there are no white people on the island who can come and see us, but the house is funny, so uncomfortable, no beds … no chairs. And sandflies day AND night. So that is not very good for the back of little Edna. Morphine is the only thing which gives her a little relief.

He thought her back was getting “slowly very slowly better.” And the trade winds, which always came in December, they were assured, had not yet come, “So it may come any time, when the sandflies will disappear! When I said that to Edna she said: ‘I’m from Missouri, and I wish I had never left.’ ” Anyway, he wrote, “I am having fun. I have a little sail boat, and I swim and I am extravagantly healthy.”

Millay was getting morphine in Tortola. Six months later, Dr. Guion complained to Eugen about his not having paid her bill. Impatient with his excuses, she reminded him, “Furthermore, during January and February I received eight letters from you asking for further advice and medication.” Still receiving no payment, she wrote directly to Edna three months later, in December: “During your stay in the Virgin Islands, I cooperated with your husband … to see that you were provided with every medicine needed.”

Upon their return to Steepletop in March, the bills from their druggist in Great Barrington listed “20 Morphine ¼ gr. 65c”—along with sunflower seeds, Kodak snaps, cigarettes, and Progynon B. In April, there was more morphine. In less than one week in July, they added 125 tablets of
Nembutal, a barbiturate, which induces sleep. In high doses, it can give an effect of euphoria, comparable to that of morphine.

2

In January 1939, Edna had signed another contract with Harper for two books,
Huntsman, What Quarry?
(which was being published in May) and an untitled work, with her customary $1,000 advance due on delivery of each manuscript. The higher royalty rate that she had negotiated during the surge of sales after
Wine
was published in late 1934—15 percent, increasing to 20 percent after 5,000 copies had been sold—had remained in place.

She had in the past sometimes drawn against her future royalties by taking advances of $500 or $1,000 and even $2,500 once in 1934, but never as a monthly stipend and always against substantial royalties that had already been earned and were in her account at Harper. She had, in other words, an established practice of requesting money from her publisher in advance of payment. In July 1939, she made what Gene Saxton called a sudden “
financial call”: She needed $500 immediately, with another $500 on August 1. Then $1,000 was to be paid to her on the fifteenth of August, September, and October.

Although she had already taken $1,000 in March and another $1,000 in June 1939,
Huntsman
had sold 29,000 copies within the first month after
publication (plus another 500 copies of an expensive limited edition), so she was still earning a good deal more than she was charging against her account. But then, in the spring of 1940, she asked Harper to provide her with $1,000 a month for twelve months.

In a letter dated April 12, 1940, Gene Saxton explained to her what their predicament would be if she continued to require such a healthy draw. He had gone over her royalty figures carefully.
During 1939, the older books had produced $2,426.29 in royalties.
Huntsman, What Quarry?
had earned $13,740.77, making a total for the year of $16,167.06. Coming to 1940, the royalties due from all sources as of May 1, 1940, were $1,665.39.

Harper had already paid her $1,500. In May, it would advance her another $1,000; then $2,500 on June 14 and $1,500 on June 25. She was about to place herself in debt to her publisher. The burden, Saxton told her, “rests upon the publication of a new book within each twelve months.” Her older books had had higher earnings in the past, “but practically speaking, it is the new book that carries the load.”

He said he was most likely stating the obvious; it was just that if there were no new book forthcoming, “we shall find ourselves in, say, May, 1941 with an unearned royalty debit of approximately $10,000.” That wasn’t, he assured her, of any great importance, since that debt would immediately be offset by the sales of a new book. “
What worries me, however—and I want to raise the point for your consideration—is, what arrangement can be applied beyond the twelvemonth period to furnish funds if at that time no new volume is in sight?” He was multiplying months without income, when “the problem of finances becomes a serious one, as we should, in the end, have reached a total of $18,000 to $20,000.” He suggested a $500 or $600 monthly arrangement instead. It would give her a freer hand in preparing a new volume or at least provide for the months following delivery of a new manuscript when it was not yet earning money for her.

Saxton was exceedingly courteous—deferential, even: “We want to meet you as fully as possible, and our only concern is not to have the scheme break down … by reason of the sheer weight of the advance.” Then, in what was a clear indication of Saxton’s conservative nature—he was not, after all, a writer; publishing was his business: “Perhaps I should add also that I realize that I am presenting the picture at its worst.”

A pattern was becoming established from which Millay would be unable to escape: she would be indebted to Harper until she published a new book. That book would clear away her indebtedness with a few hundred dollars to spare; then the pattern would begin all over again, just as Saxton had cautioned. From now until the end of her life her publisher would be her banker. The real question was why she needed money so
urgently in July 1939 and why she continued to require these monthly sums.

The answer was, in part, Kathleen. Even in Kathleen’s first year at Vassar, she had struck a note with her sisters that wasn’t simply plaintive, it was accusatory. “
I don’t care what you are doing!” she had written to them. “You are using me like Hell and I am too tired and too worried to stand it.… it wouldn’t do your souls any harm to help me by letting me know that you exist and that you are interested in whether I am or not.”

By 1926, Kathleen, who had begun to publish well after her sister, was inevitably being compared to her, almost always to her disadvantage: “
Were there no Edna St. Vincent Millay, then surely Kathleen Millay, the younger sister … would be considered a major poet.” This response from the Chicago
Evening Post
continued, “That she hasn’t the bravado of her well-beloved sister denotes perhaps a lesser courage.… It is delicate, exquisite verse of rare charm and with the wistful quality that characterizes her sister’s verse; it lacks, however, the brilliant futile daring that is hers.”

The title of the review of Kathleen’s first book of poetry in their home state of Maine was “The Other Millay.” “There is an apparent kinship between Kathleen’s poems and sister Edna’s,” said the
San Francisco Chronicle
. “Let us hope that between the Millay sisters we do not come to a Shakespeare-Bacon controversy in modern dress and boyish bob—trying to decide which sister wrote the poems of both.”

When Edna and Eugen had seen Kathleen in California in December, they had given her money for her divorce. In her subsequent wires and letters it had become clear that she hadn’t used the money to divorce Howard Young. In the spring, completely without warning, she moved back to New York City, pleading that there was no work for her on the West Coast. “
Look where I am! Isn’t it exciting? Just a good old ghost yanked back from the dead to her old stamping ground.” But if her letters began in a festive spirit, they inevitably ended by asking for money:

I realize Edna is not a rich woman, as Ugin continually points out—I never thought she was—and it must be hard on her to have six people dependent on her—I’m sorry she has such a hard time. Anyway, I’ll try to get some kind of job soon—no matter what—and be a burden to her no longer.

Letter after letter continued in this vein, telling them how ill she was, how she needed medication, asking for money—“
If possible, I wish you could send me sixty dollars this time as it seems I have to have a few prescriptions
filled.… There’s a bad pain setting in all over my body”—and always adding a needling comment about her effort to “not bother you anymore after another month or so,” while wishing them a lovely time wherever they had gone to to “get all rested and tanned.” Her letters were constant with complaints—it was too hot in the city, she couldn’t find work—until July 27, 1939, when she entered New York Hospital, where she remained until mid-August. She had fainted while walking and told the doctors she had had a pain in her heart. They found her story unreliable, and their diagnosis was that she was suffering from chronic alcoholism, high blood pressure, and what they called psychoneurosis.

Kathleen wrote to Edna from the hospital that she was run-down and needed a respite from the New York summer. Edna came to her from Steepletop at once. After their visit, Kathleen wrote to her:

The doctor insists the thing for me to do is to go to Maine for a month or six weeks—and I must not go alone. Them’s her orders.… It seems I came much nearer fading out of the picture than I realized—which may have been just as well at the time. Anyway, it takes a long time to get back to anything after all the long and exhausting illnesses I’ve had all my life—and trouble—trouble—toil and very little else.…

Anyway, my love to you both—Ugin was so very sweet yesterday! It was such a relief to see his smiling face—and he made me laugh!

That was August 10. They spoke on the telephone from Steepletop on the thirteenth, although a bad electrical storm made their connection sketchy and Edna could barely hear her sister. Eugen wrote telling Kathleen how much they wanted to help her and to more clearly explain what they could provide. The tone of his letter, while not unfriendly, was stern:

14th August 1939

Dear Kathleen: …

This is on my mind:

It seems to me most unpleasant for both you and us, if you are put in a position in which you are forced to have to consult us about your immediate plans. I think it would be so much better and more dignified if you knew what financial help Edna can give you and then make your plans accordingly. Now this is what Edna can do.

She will pay the hospital bill, until you leave, which I understand will be tomorrow or Wednesday. She will pay the doctor. (Will you please ask the doctor to send her bill to Edna?) She can then give you $150.—for the first month up to 15th September. This month will be the most expensive. Then $100.—up to 15th October and this will have to cover expenses finding a place in New York, and then $80.—up to 15th November. I fear we will be able to give you but very little after that.…