The House by the Sea (27 page)

For me it was delightful to be with these eager, responsive, curious, active beings … I long to see children and feel a particular joy when I can open the house to their needs for a change. Whatever the price now, Ed and Susie are magnificent parents and it shows in the freedom and lovingness with which these children meet adventures. After that long day and another treasure hunt on the beach (Jamie found a splendid cane with a crook, perfect to hold in one's hand) they insisted on doing “the walk through the woods” in the pouring rain. Ed swung Ann Morrow up onto his shoulders, her head bobbing over his, and Jamie ran on ahead with Tamas—all of us carrying bunches of bracken to beat off the deerflies.

Tuesday, August 10th

T
HE HURRICANE
did not reach the coast; it got deflected to the west of us, where it has been far less dangerous than had been feared. What we experienced all night, and still today, was a big gale, the sea all churned up and bursting against the rocks, and the trees, as limber as dancers, tossed this way and that. I remembered as I looked out at them that French motto, “Tout m'agite, rien ne m'ébranle” that I used as my own devise for a time. The ability to “give,” as great thick branches wave and toss, is quite amazing, but, of course, had the wind been at hurricane force, they would have been toppled. How lucky we were to escape!

The meeting to terminate Norma Watkin's doctorate has been put off till this afternoon; so I have had, after all, a few hours at my desk and feel exhilarated and peaceful … a little breather!

Thursday, August 12th

Y
ESTERDAY
a real event. Cathy Beard, who has been writing me for years and sending homemade candies and plum pudding at Christmas but whom I had never seen, came for lunch and a good four hours of talk. When she first wrote, she and John, her husband, were living in Washington, D.C., and now they are on a farm in Vermillion, South Dakota. “My sons,” she says, speaking of her two boys, Felix and Benjamin, a year apart. They adopted Benjamin, a half Black first, deliberately, so that the adopted child would be the only child at the beginning, and a year later they had Felix, their own little boy.

I was eager to hear why they had moved so far away. Cathy told me that after a year in Washington they both felt they must get away from cities, so they looked up various states in the Almanac and chose five that might be possible—five states where there was little immigration, where life would not change radically in their lifetime, where they would not be crowded out. Then John, a lawyer, looked for a job and when one turned up at the University of South Dakota, where he is specializing in agricultural law, that was it—they moved out.

It was good to see this remarkable young woman at last, so much prettier than in the snapshots she had sent, so sure of her values, so wise in the way she and John are planning their lives. She told me she had learned one thing in the month visiting their families in the East, a month is too long away from home! I could feel the tug of that land as she talked about it, her eyes shining, and about the neighbors and friends they have made. I felt the tug too and must somehow get out to see them while the boys are growing up.

I felt when she left that we had had a real exchange on every level, and all so natural and easy because we really know each other well through letters. When something like this visit happens—there have been several this summer—I recognize that, for all my complaints about correspondence, my life has been immensely enriched through all these friends of the work, who end sometimes by becoming friends of my life and I of theirs.

Tuesday, August 17th

I
T IS TIME
to close this journal. I need to stop recounting days, one by one, and to begin to think about and make notes for a new novel. I am longing to live in an imaginary world again, with people about whom I can know everything and tell the whole truth. That is not possible in a journal intended for publication.

August always is, for me, a becalmed month. There is a pause in the demands of the garden before bulb planting begins in autumn. Today the air is still, and the sounds, a steady hum of insects, and a few chirps of crickets, all speak of the moment before change.

In a few weeks
A World of Light
will be out. I am happy about this book, as I pack it up to send to friends. For a week or so it will be pure joy, before the inevitable shredding as the reviews appear. Let me end here, on a plateau of happiness, rejoicing in my world as it turns inward once more toward creation.

A Biography of May Sarton

May Sarton (1912–1995) was born Eleanore Marie Sarton on May 3 in Wondelgem, Belgium, the only child of the science historian George Sarton and the English artist Mabel Eleanor Elwes. Barely two years later, Sarton's European childhood was interrupted by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the onset of the First World War.

Fleeing the advancing Germans, the family moved briefly to Ipswich, England, and then in 1915 to Boston, Massachusetts, where her father had accepted a position at Harvard University. Sarton's love for poetry was first kindled at the progressive Shady Hill School, a period she wrote about extensively in
I Knew a Phoenix
, published in 1959.

At the age of twelve, Sarton traveled to Belgium for a year to live with friends of the family and study at the Institut Belge de Culture Française. There, she met the school's founder, Marie Closset, who grew to be Sarton's close friend and mentor, and who was the inspiration for her first novel,
The Single Hound
(1938).

On returning to the States, Sarton graduated from Cambridge High and Latin School in 1929. Although she was awarded a scholarship to Vassar College, Sarton joined actress Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre in New York instead, much to the dismay of her father. However, while learning the basics of theater, Sarton continued to develop her poems, and in 1930, when she was just eighteen, a series of her sonnets was published in
Poetry
magazine.

In 1931, Sarton returned to Europe and lived in Paris for a year while her parents were in Lebanon. In large part, Europe provided the backdrop for her encounters with the great thinkers of the age, including the novelist Elizabeth Bowen, the famed biologist Julian Huxley, and of course, Virginia Woolf. After Sarton's own theater company failed during the Great Depression, she turned her full attention to writing and published her first poetry collection, entitled
Encounter in April
, in 1937.

For the next decade, Sarton continued to write and publish novels and poetry. In 1945, she met Judy Matlack in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the two became partners for the next thirteen years, during which she would suffer the deaths of several loved ones: her mother in 1950, Marie Closset in 1952, and her father in 1956. Following this last loss, Sarton's relationship fell apart, and she moved to New Hampshire to start over. She was, however, to remain attached to Matlack for the rest of her life, and Matlack's death in 1983 affected her keenly.
Honey in the Hive
, published in 1988, is about their relationship.

While the 1950s were a time of great personal upheaval for Sarton, they were a time of success in equal measure. In 1956, her novel
Faithful Are the Wounds
was nominated for a National Book Award, followed by nominations in 1958 for
The Birth of a Grandfather
and a volume of poetry,
In Time Like Air
; some consider the latter to be one of Sarton's best books of poetry. In 1965, she published
Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing
, which is frequently referred to as her coming-out novel. From then on, her work became a key point of reference in the fields of feminist and LGBT literature. Strongly opposed to being categorized as a lesbian writer, Sarton constantly strove to ensure that her portraits of humanity were relatable to a universal audience, regardless of readers' sexual identities.

In 1974, Sarton published her first children's book,
Punch's Secret
, followed by
A Walk Through the Woods
in 1976. During the seventies, Sarton was diagnosed with breast cancer—the beginning of a long and arduous illness. However, she continued to work during this difficult period and received a spate of critical acclaim for her literary contributions.

In 1990, she suffered a severe stroke that reduced her concentration span and her ability to write, although she did continue to dictate her journals when she could. Sarton died of breast cancer on July 16, 1995. She is buried in Nelson, New Hampshire.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Lady Huxley for permission to quote “The Old Home” by Sir Julian Huxley; to Ruth Pitter for permission to quote an excerpt from “The Lost Tribe”; and to the Houghton Mifflin Company for permission to reprint a poem from
A Glimpse of Nothingness
by Janwillem van de Wetering, copyright © 1975 by the author; and to quote from the poem “Spindrift” which appears in
The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World
by Galway Kinnell, copyright © 1964 by the author.

Copyright © 1977 by May Sarton

Cover design by Mimi Bark

ISBN: 978-1-4976-4635-3

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com

FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA