470
PARTISAN REVIEW
Harkness went in for tiresome, tasteless harangues against Amy
Lowell, which he seemed to believe necessary for the enjoyment of
his after-dinner cigar. He would point a stinking baby stogie at
Mother. "'Ave a peteeto cigareeto, Charlotte," he would crow. "Puff
on this whacking black cheroot, and you'll be a match for any reeking
senorita
femme fatale
in the spiggotty republics, where blindness from
Bob's bathtub hooch is still unknown. When you go up in smoke,
Charlotte, remember the
Maine.
Remember Amy Lowell, that cigar–
chawing, guffawing, senseless and meterless, multimillionheiress,
heavyweight mascot on a floating fortress. Damn the
Patterns !
Full
speed ahead on a cigareeto!"
Amy Lowell was never a welcome subject in our household. Of
course, no one spoke disrespectfully of Miss Lowell. She had been
so plucky, so
formidable, so beautifully and unblushingly immense,
as Henry James might have said. And yet, though irreproachably
decent herself apparently, like Mae West she seemed to provoke inde–
corum in others. There was an anecdote which I was too young to
understand: it was about Amy's getting her migraine headaches from
being kept awake by the exercises of honeymooners in an adjacent
New York hotel room. Amy's relatives would have liked to have
honored her as a
personage,
a personage a little
outde
perhaps, but
perfectly within the natural order, like Amy's girlhood idol, the Duse.
Or at least she might have been unambiguously tragic, short-lived, and
a classic, like her last idol, John Keats. My parents piously made
out a case for Miss Lowell's
Life of Keats,
which had killed its
author and was so much more manly and intelligible than her
poetry. Her poetry! But was
poetry
what one could call Amy's
loud, bossy, unladylike
chinoiserie-her
free verse! For those that
could understand it, her matter was, no doubt, blameless, but the
effrontery of her manner made my parents relish the remark that
"writing free verse was like playing tennis without a net."
Whenever Amy Lowell was mentioned Mother bridled. Not dis–
tinguishing, not caring whether her relative were praised or criticized,
she would say, "Amy had the courage of her convictions. She worked
like a horse." Mother would conclude characteristically, "Amy did
insist on doing everything the
hard
way. I think, perhaps, that her
brother, the President of Harvard, did more for
other
people."
Often Father seemed to pay little attention to the conversation
of his guests. He would smack his lips, and beam absentmindedly
