Anne Sexton Read online

  Her scrapbooks are filled with literally hundreds of letters from love-struck boys; the pages bulge with pressed orchids and dance cards. It is indicative of her early sense of self that even then she carefully saved her memorabilia. Yet this popular girl would later describe herself to her children as an awkward, ugly teenager: “The boys called me Old Bag of Bones because I was so skinny.”

  She had little patience for studying; a precocious, headstrong adolescent, she passed the time in math class by writing flirtatious notes to boys. Her classmates remember her as happy, vivacious, and popular, but underneath, she later claimed, lurked exquisite pain which found an outlet in her role as the class rogue, one who laughingly braved all authority. Although her carelessness and lack of attention were the qualities most often mentioned by her various teachers, many of her report cards remarked on her verbal ability and intellectual agility as well.

  Very few of her letters survive from this period, but one, probably never sent, is revealing. At sixteen, Anne and her sister had spent a summer on a dude ranch in the West. As always there were boys to entice. But for once Anne met her match: a young man as ruthless in affairs of the heart as she was. However, she accomplished revenge in this undated letter.

  Dear Torgie,

  I promised you last night that I would write you just what I was thinking. I had not intended to do this; however, I felt so sorry for you that decided you better have the truth.

  [several words missing here] not love me in the slightest; however, upon thinking it over, I wouldn’t marry you even if you had $100,000,000.

  Undoubtedly, Torgie, your dislike for me has now reached great heights. I have proved so little and yet a great deal in this so-called play. I started it in order to prove my abilities as an actress. Perhaps at the same time I have proved to you that someone with mercenary intentions will invariably receive the same treatment. I hope that in the future you will change your philosophy, expressed by “No one or nothing stands in the way of the mighty Torginson and what he wants.” You think you are a gentleman with your effect of polished clothes and mannerisms, but a true gentleman is one that has a kind and humble heart. You may wonder at my saying this for my actions have not displayed me in a very flattering light. But you do not know me, Torgie, except to realize I have a perverse enough character to be able to show your true inferiority—in retrospect to sincere people. It is too bad, Torgie, that you know the price of everything and the value of nothing. At any rate, there have been a lot of laughs and it has been great fun co-starring with you in our little play, “There are all Kinds of People”—What you are you will find.

  Chalk it off to experience, Torgie

  Anne $ Harvey

  In the autumn of 1945 Anne’s parents sent her to Rogers Hall, a boarding school in Lowell, Massachusetts, with moderate academic standards. She smoked in the bathrooms and constantly went off campus without permission. Again her grades suffered as she composed letters to boyfriends, whom she did not hesitate to play against each other. One of her favorite tricks was to write passionate love letters to several different young men, and then intentionally mix up the envelopes. In a letter fragment to an unidentified admirer, she managed to encourage and cool his ardor simultaneously.

  P.S. I have just reread this letter—it doesn’t seem complete—It isn’t—it tells you why & how I wrote my last letter—Now I will tell you my thoughts as of now—I am a wreck mentally—the whole thing haunts me—vivid pictures of many moments of our weekend return. Last night “Night and Day” played on the radio and a dull ache seemed to descend on me. I do not feel any differently toward you than our last night at the Martinique. Except that I realize we cannot be so serious—it is a mistake when we are both so young. But I do want to see you again—and again and again—I am humbly asking you to accept me on such a basis—and trying to tell you how wrong I feel about my last letter—In it I not only over exaggerated but told you of things that could happen (But haven’t!)

  I cannot impress upon you what great heights of importance your answer to this has reached. Believe me—this is wholly sincere—I don’t care about the effect—but just an answer.

  —If this seems rather incoherent it is due to the very late hour—(3:30 A.M.)—

  Anne

  At Rogers Hall she began to write poetry. The themes were love and loss, loneliness and despair, and even then there was a disquietude over her own death. She experimented with form, writing cinquains, terza rima, sonnets, and free verse. Persistently reworking each poem, draft after draft, she showed that while she might pay no attention in math class, when interested she could spend considerable time on the smallest details. She published several of these poems in Splinters, the Rogers Hall yearbook.

  ON THE DUNES

  If there is any life when death is over,

  These tawny beaches will know of me.

  I shall come back, as constant and as changeful

  As the unchanging, many-colored sea.

  If life was small, if it had made me scornful,

  Forgive me; I shall straighten like a flame

  In the great calm of death, and if you want me

  Stand on the seaward dunes and call my name.

  SO

  I search within

  And more I know

  That strange I am

  The more I grow—

  If I should wince

  Or beg to try

  To overlook

  Then I would lie

  Now I am sure

  That habit’s mode

  Has turned me off

  the righteous road.

  Though when I lie

  I lie in soul—

  An actor’s heart

  I live my role

  If I be false

  then I be true

  To recognize

  the falseness, too.

  CINQUAINS

  Evil

  Beware!

  It lurks so near,

  Green serpent of fiery breath,

  That distorts men’s souls, warps minds, ’tis

  Jealousy.

  Soft Promise

  Gently—

  The breeze lingers there,

  Whispering promise of green life,

  Approaching spring, radiant bloom, nascent

  As hope.

  Mother’s Cry

  Hear me,

  O pounding surf!

  Lash on, you bitter wave. Glisten,

  Whitecrest, for thy briny deep holds

  My son!

  SPIRIT’S HOUSE

  From naked stones of agony

  I build a house for me;

  as a mason all alone

  I will raise it stone by stone,

  And every stone where I have bled

  Will show a sign of dusty red.

  I have not gone away in vain,

  For I have good of all my pain;

  My spirit’s quiet house will be

  Built of naked stones I trod

  On roads where I lost sight of God.

  In a heated encounter shortly thereafter, her mother, who also wrote poems, accused her of plagiarism, and Anne quickly gave up poetry. The bitterness and sense of defeat she experienced at her mother’s accusation never quite left her. Nor did her need to please her father. When in adolescence Anne developed an acute case of acne, she sometimes returned home from boarding school to see the dermatologist. On one of her visits, Ralph Harvey left the family dinner table, saying that the sight of her took his appetite away.

  But her years at Rogers Hall gave her confidence. She directed and acted in plays. She started at center on the basketball team and her ability to win the opening tip earned her the nickname “Frog Legs Harvey.” In the class yearbook she listed her life’s ambition as taking care of children, and her classmates predicted that after graduation she would publish a book entitled Advice to the Lovelorn in Poetry Form. She was famous for midnight love notes and her favorite saying was recorded as “I have a letter
to compose.” In the spring vacation of March 1947, Anne sent the following telegram to her boarding school roommate, Mary Jane Filer: PLANS HAVE CHANGED HAVE FALLEN IN LOVE WITH NED. DIAMOND DUE THIS SUMMER HOPE YOU ARE HAPPY. LOVE ANNE. The caption under her graduation portrait taken that same spring reads, “Hail to Thee Blythe Spirit.”

  In the fall she entered The Garland School, which was housed in a brownstone mansion on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. There, girls from upper-middle-class families chewed gum and exchanged gossip behind the notebooks in which they took sporadic directions for maintaining well-supervised households. In later years she would refer to Garland as “a finishing school,” often remarking that the only thing she learned there was how to make a perfect white sauce. Most of her days and evenings were spent in planning dates with boys scattered at various colleges throughout New England. Decidedly, for Anne, Garland was a holding pattern before marriage.

  Her two sisters had already married in grand style. By spring 1948 Anne was notifying friends that she was engaged to a young man from Wellesley. Then began arrangements for an elaborate wedding similar to Jane’s and Blanche’s. But in July, at the Longwood Cricket Club, she was introduced to Alfred Muller Sexton II. The handsome young man with the engaging grin was nicknamed Kayo. He had just completed his freshman year at Colgate University and wanted to be a doctor.

  Soon Kayo invited Anne home to meet his family in Chestnut Hill. Wilhelmine and George Sexton were strict, serious, and loving parents; they had raised him and his sister Joan to be reserved and well-mannered, and they expected their son to bring home young ladies of similar bearing. But the Harveys used their money to live ostentatiously; at just seventeen Anne had enjoyed the envy of her crowd with her own car, a shining black convertible. She did not conduct herself as a lady should. She smoked. She was too racy, too boy-crazy, too wild—and she was engaged to someone else. During this first meeting with Kayo’s parents, Anne wore too much bright red lipstick and stained Mrs. Sexton’s best linen napkins a gaudy crimson.

  In less than three weeks Anne and Kayo found themselves madly in love, and for once Anne confided in her mother. Mary Gray had watched her daughter break hearts and engagements, but Kayo was a person of substance. She gave her endorsement: “He will take care of you.”

  Late in the evening of August 14, 1948, Kayo dropped from his second-story bedroom window, picked up Anne in her convertible, and began the long drive to North Carolina, where the legal marriage age was only eighteen. Anne had left the following letter for her parents with a note on its envelope: “To be put on table at breakfast time.”

  Dearest Momie and Daddie—

  I don’t know how to begin this letter—So I’ll jump right in and take my chances. I am eloping with Kayo. By the time you read this you will have another son-in-law. I know that you like him—that everyone of my friends and relatives, who have met him, like him. And I love him. There would be no reason for you to oppose this marriage. Kayo is a fine person, responsible and kind. He can support me, he comes from very fine people. There can be nothing wrong in my choice.

  Please do not think that I am trying to put something over on you. I know that many people think elopement is the wrong way to get married. But I’ve gone through getting engaged and preparing for a big wedding. I sort of feel as though I don’t want to do that again. You have married two of your daughters in the grandest of style—I am the third and last. I hope I am not disappointing you in the way I choose to get married. But I know that you will be happier about this marriage than the one I planned previously, despite how I am doing it. And I want you to be pleased. I love you both so very dearly.

  Please don’t think that I am unappreciative of all the wonderful things you have done for me. No daughter could have had more done for her than I have had. No one could say that I have eloped because you wouldn’t let me marry him. You would let me make my own choice. And I have. I am so happy that you like him too—soon you will love him, I know. I feel terrible leaving my beautiful new room and gorgeous new home. When I sat at the dinner table last night I looked at you both and thought how kind and sweet and loyal you were. I love you both and you are so cute. Daddy in a good mood and mother in a good mood. “I am lucky” I thought. But everyone needs their own home and their own life. Daddy has Mother and Mother has Daddy. And now that I’ve found the man I want for all my life, to be the Daddy of my children, I just couldn’t seem to face the whole thing again. Please believe me—I would never do this if I thought you didn’t like Kayo. But you do—and will even more. Actually I’m saving you time and trouble and expense. Isn’t it Mr. Neeves who thought it was wonderful when some of his children eloped. Try to think of it that way. Think of how lucky I am to be marrying Kayo. I only hope that I will make as good a wife as he will a husband.

  Don’t think we are doing this on the spur of the moment—I’ve thought about marrying Kayo for some time. About a week ago we decided that we would do it this way. I know it seems selfish but we don’t mean to hurt you. We are being married in a little church and the only thing that will be wrong is that you won’t be there. This is a great shock to you now, we know—but soon it will seem good to you—you will see what a fine choice I have made. At first we will probably have a hard time of it financially but we can make up for it in an abundance of love. Kayo can support me I know—

  Oh please forgive me and understand—I want to be married and have a family. I love Kayo—and we both can’t see waiting while he finishes college. I guess he will work for his father—that isn’t planned so don’t mention it to the Sextons.

  When you get this we will be married—please give us your blessing—please don’t stop loving me—We love you—Soon you will be proud of me of us. We are going to have a happy marriage and lots of beautiful grandchildren for you. You will be proud.

  We will be back a week from Monday—We will be very scared to face you—so please don’t be too mad or hurt. We don’t want to hurt you. I have a sneaking feeling the Sextons are going to be the maddest as they wanted Kayo to finish college. But he doesn’t want to—he wants to marry me. I know you don’t care if I go to Garland and that I won’t let you down that way.

  We are going somewhere very nice for our honeymoon—and will be back for I have a dentist appointment. I will miss the first day of them—but will be all set for Tuesday morning. It really is sort of funny to come back from your honeymoon to go to the dentist—Daddy, that will make a good story—oh please think of it that way. Be happy for me and realize that I feel as I leave tonight that I have your consent.[…]

  I love you!

  Anne

  They arrived in the small town of Sunbury on August 16, 1948, located a justice of the peace, and were married. The hasty departure hadn’t allowed much time for packing. A wedding snapshot shows Kayo without a belt, struggling to hold his trousers up, and Anne in a lacy blue dress with heavy black shoes.

  After the brief service they drove to Virginia Beach, Virginia, and honeymooned at the Cavalier Hotel. They sent telegrams to both sets of in-laws.

  [To Ralph Churchill Harvey]

  MARRIED IN METHODIST CHURCH SUNBURY NORTH CAROLINA AT 5:30 MONDAY AFTERNOON. STAYING AT CAVALIER HOTEL WE HAD SWEETEST POSSIBLE WEDDING AND HONEYMOON SITE SEEMS MORE THAN IDEAL. WE LOVE YOU

  ANNE AND KAYO

  The Sextons threw theirs away in anger, but the one to the Harveys was carefully preserved. Anne’s parents wired their congratulations and she responded ecstatically.

  [To Ralph and Mary Harvey]

  [Virginia Beach

  August 1948]

  Dear Sweet Dad and Little Mother—

  Just a note of thanks—Everything is so perfect now. Knowing that you and the Sextons still love us and are standing by us makes such a difference. We have been getting millions of telegrams from everyone—You, Nana, Blanche—Kayo’s Aunt and Uncle and a phone call from the Sextons last night.

  Our wedding took place in the cutest little white church just before
sunset. The minister was a young man and he delivered the service in a most straightforward and succinct manner. It really seemed more truly religious than I should think a large wedding should. He gave us a little talk about the seriousness of marriage and he seemed to really like us. The three witnesses he got for us were friends of his. A woman of 40 years and her son and daughter, (about 23 I would say) They were very refined and most hospitable. We got the minister and then went to their house. They got all dressed up for the wedding and picked me flowers from their garden. He told us this was the best hotel in Virginia Beach. They certainly knew what they were talking about—it is divine. At any rate after the service they threw rice at us and they had put “just married” signs all over the car. It was so sweet and wonderful that we were both crying as we drove away—the sky was all pink and it seemed like we were pretty lucky people. We are! We are! You are so understanding and wonderful.

  This place is like a dream—But I’m afraid we are too much in love to pay much attention to the luxury around us. It seems to me, Mother, that you once told me people hardly ever enjoyed their honeymoon. Well it certainly doesn’t hold true for us!!!! This is far more wonderful than I thought anything could be! I am married to the sweetest, kindest and most loving man in the world. I love him very very much—20 times more than I did when I told him I would marry him. I am such a lucky girl—to have the sweetest husband and the sweetest parents in the whole wide world.

  We will be home Monday afternoon or night. Kayo joins me in saying we thank you and love you very much.