ROBERT LOWELL ON FORD MADOX FORD

Abstract

No one admired more of his elders, or discovered more of his juniors, and so went on admiring and discovering till the end.Robert Lowell, On Two Poets'Near the end of his life, Ford met Robert Lowell, a twenty-year-old aspiring poet who would become one of the most important figures in twentieth-century American poetry. Like many of 'les jeunes' ', Lowell's life and work would read rather differently without the influence of Ford.The following is a collection, in chronological order, of Lowell's statements and poems about Ford.1937I [first] met Ford at a cocktail party in Boston and went to dinner with him at the Athens Olympia. He was going to visit the Tates [Allen Tate and Caroline Gordon] and said, 'Come and see me down there, we're all going to Tennessee.' So I drove down [to their house, Benfolly, Clarks ville] . He hadn't arrived, so I got to know the Tates quite well before his appearance.2With 'keen, idealistic, adolescent heedlessness', Lowell 'offered' himself 'as a guest':The Tates' way of refusing was to say that there was no room for me unless I pitched a tent on the lawn. A few days later, I returned from Nashville with an olive Sears, Roebuck umbrella tent. I stayed three months.Ford Madox Ford, the object of my original visit, was now installed with his wife [sic; Janice Biala] and secretary [Wally Tworkov, Biala's sister-in-law]. Already, their trustful city habits had exhausted the only cistern. On the lawn, almost igniting with the heat, was a tangle of barked twigs in a washtub. This was Ford's Provencal dew pond.The cistern was not the only problem:The Fords are spending two months with the Tates and there is a certain amount [of] buried conflict. Water is supplied by a cistern, toilets must hardly ever be flushed, French as opposed to Tennessee cooking.I am not on speaking terms with Mr. Ford, the explanation given, being that he is afraid I will write memoirs 30 or 60 years from now, in which I will describe him as an ever stout, gouty old gentleman deluded by the poetry of Christina Rossetti and potentialities of the ideograph, as opposed to the alphabet which [belongs?] with the printing press.4In his journal that summer, Lowell wrote ? Month of Meals with Ford Madox Ford', which contains the lines:I crouched at board next to the grumpy manAnd scarcely dared look upon his spanOfsleepful, swollen flesh, rolling in line . . .[He] had immortalized himself in oneClear-written book, deathless in style and tone. . . .In July, Ford, Biala, the Tates and Lowell drove to Olivet College, Michigan, for a conference beginning on the 1 8th; then at the end of the month, Ford and Biala took a train to Boulder (Lowell followed), so that Ford could deliver a lecture, The Literary Life', on 3 August at the University of Colorado.6 Lowell recalled:His voice, always sotto voce, and sometimes a muffled Yorkshire gasp, made him a man for small gatherings. Once I watched an audience of hundreds walk out on him, as he exquisitely, ludicrously, and inaudibly imitated the elaborate periphrastic style of Henry James. They could neither hear nor sympathize.7They returned to Olivet, and on 23 August, Lowell wrote to his mother:I am at Olivet College and will be until about the 12th, serving as a sort of conscripted secretary to Mr. Ford, taking dictation in the mornings and typing it out afternoons. As he is a very great master of English prose the training is very valuable, and I would not miss the opportunity.8In a 1960 interview with Frederick Seidel for the Paris Review, Lowell was more open about his job:I [. . .] took dictation from [Ford] for a while. That was hell, because I didn't know how to type. I'd take dictation down in longhand, and he rather mumbled. I'd ask him what he'd said, and he'd say, 4Oh, you have no sense for prose rhythm,' and mumble some more. …