Read Robert Lowell: A Biography Online
Authors: Ian Hamilton
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Personal Memoirs, #General
In September 1943, though, came the event that Lowell describes in this same speech as “the most decisive thing I ever did, just as a writer”—although, at the time, “it was not intended to have anything to do with that.”
*
America had entered the war in December 1941. Lowell in that year had registered for the draft and throughout 1942 had
attempted
to enlist: “so that he can go to officer’s school.”
28
During his time in Louisiana and with Sheed and Ward he had never known for certain if he would be called up: at one moment, there is talk of his being permanently deferred because of his eyesight; at another (November 1942), Jean Stafford resolves to give up drink because she doesn’t want him “to worry about me when he goes into the army.”
29
By March 1943 Lowell was still assuming that he would be
accepted
for military service. He filled out “an employment
questionnaire
” for the army and it was probably genuine absentmindedness that led him to list himself as having “one
dependent
under 18, and one not living with him but deriving its whole support from him.” Lowell also claimed “that he was a graduate of a trade school to which he had gone for four years, that his surname was Robert and that he could read ‘forig’
languages
.”
30
(Stafford corrected this testimony before mailing it.) And in July 1943 he wrote to his mother:
The other day I got a notice from my draft board and expect to be examined (the 7th time) some time in the next ten days. The chances are that I will be rejected on account of vision. However there is no telling.
31
Shortly after this, Lowell was given a date for his induction:
September
8, 1943.
During July and August, Lowell took lodgings in New York and idly looked for jobs (“there are plenty of jobs but the problem is to get the right one”)
32
while Jean Stafford went off to Yaddo, the writers’ colony at Saratoga Springs, to complete
Boston
Adventure.
For some weeks before, Jean had been suffering from a recurrence of her mysterious low fevers, and at Yaddo these seem to have suddenly got higher and more worrying. In July she writes to Peter
Taylor that she has “either a tubercular or a streptococchic infection of the kidneys” and that she has lost “13 pounds in a month.”
33
A fortnight later, the symptoms were diagnosed as “nervous
exhaustion
,” but the diagnosis didn’t stop them:
I continued to lose weight and I grew weaker and weaker…. I suppose I’m on the verge of some kind of nervous crack-up which the fever isn’t helping any…. I’ll be in bed somewhere within a week. This time, Peter, you’ll be glad to know that I am really and truly scared to death. Write to me and think of me and pray for me.
34
It is noticeable that Lowell receives no mention in these outcries: Stafford doesn’t appear to expect his help or even his concern. In August, though, Caroline Tate approached Lowell’s mother for money to arrange a thorough diagnosis. Lowell was “taken aback” by this intrusion, but it does seem to have shocked him into a more active interest in the matter. He writes to his mother agreeing to the expenditure:
Jean has been having these fevers off and on for three years. No one has been able to cure her or tell her what the matter is. I worry about this night and day and can’t resign myself to the army with her illness still unsettled.
35
During the first week of September, Jean Stafford—her illness still “unsettled”—joined Lowell in New York. On September 7, Lowell wrote a letter to President Roosevelt:
Dear Mr. President:
I very much regret that I must refuse the opportunity you offer me in your communication of August 6, 1943, for service in the Armed Forces.
I am enclosing with this letter a copy of the declaration which, in accordance with military regulations, I am presenting on September 7 to Federal District Attorney in New York, Mr. Matthias F. Correa. Of this declaration I am sending copies also to my parents, to a select number of friends and relatives, to the heads of the Washington press bureaus, and to a few responsible citizens who, no more than yourself, can be suspected of subversive activities.
You will understand how painful such a decision is for an American whose family traditions, like your own, have always found their fulfillment
in maintaining, through responsible participation in both the civil and the military services, our country’s freedom and honor.
I have the honor, Sir,’ to inscribe myself, with sincerest loyalty and respect, your fellow-citizen,
Robert Traill Spence Lowell, Jr.
Attached was the
DECLARATION OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY
, which read as follows:
ORDERS FOR MY INDUCTION INTO THE ARMED FORCES ON SEPTEMBER
EIGHTH 1943
have just arrived. Because we glory in the conviction that our wars are won not by irrational valor but through the exercise of moral responsibility, it is fitting for me to make the following declaration which is also a decision.
Like the majority of our people I watched the approach of this war with foreboding. Modern wars had proved subversive to the
Democracies
and history had shown them to be the iron gates to totalitarian slavery. On the other hand, members of my family had served in all our wars since the Declaration of Independence: I thought—our tradition of service is sensible and noble; if its occasional exploitation by Money, Politics and Imperialism is allowed to seriously discredit it, we are doomed.
When Pearl Harbor was attacked, I imagined that my country was in intense peril and come what might, unprecedented sacrifices were necessary for our national survival. In March and August of 1942 I volunteered, first for the Navy and then for the Army. And when I heard reports of what would formerly have been termed atrocities, I was not disturbed: for I judged that savagery was unavoidable in our nation’s struggle for its life against diabolic adversaries.
Today these adversaries are being rolled back on all fronts and the crisis of war is past. But there are no indications of peace. In June we heard rumors of the staggering civilian casualties that had resulted from the mining of the Ruhr Dams. Three weeks ago we read of the razing of Hamburg, where 200,000 non-combatants are reported dead, after an almost apocalyptic series of all-out air-raids.
This, in a world still nominally Christian, is
news.
And now the Quebec Conference confirms our growing suspicions that the bombings of the Dams and of Hamburg were not mere isolated acts of military expediency, but marked the inauguration of a new long-term strategy, indorsed and co-ordinated by our Chief Executive.
The war has entered on an unforeseen phase: one that can by no
possible extension of the meaning of the words be called defensive. By demanding unconditional surrender we reveal our complete confidence in the outcome, and declare that we are prepared to wage a war without quarter or principles, to the permanent destruction of Germany and Japan.
Americans cannot plead ignorance of the lasting consequences of a war carried through to unconditional surrender—our Southern States three quarters of a century after their terrible battering down and
occupation
, are still far from having recovered even their material prosperity.
It is a fundamental principle of our American Democracy, one that distinguishes it from the demagoguery and herd hypnosis of the
totalitarian
tyrannies, that with us each individual citizen is called upon to make voluntary and responsible decisions on issues which concern the national welfare. I therefore realize that I am under the heavy obligation of assenting to the prudence and justice of our present objectives before I have the right to accept service in our armed forces. No matter how expedient I might find it to entrust my moral responsibility to the State, I realize that it is not permissible under a form of government which derives its sanctions from the rational assent of the governed.
Our rulers have promised us unlimited bombings of Germany and Japan. Let us be honest: we intend the permanent destruction of
Germany
and Japan. If this program is carried out, it will demonstrate to the world our Machiavellian contempt for the laws of justice and charity between nations; it will destroy any possibility of a European or Asiatic national autonomy; it will leave China and Europe, the two natural power centers of the future, to the mercy of the USSR, a totalitarian tyranny committed to world revolution and total global domination through propaganda and violence.
In 1941 we undertook a patriotic war to preserve
our
lives
,
our
fortunes
,
and
our
sacred
honor
against the lawless aggressions of a totalitarian league: in 1943 we are collaborating with the most unscrupulous and powerful of totalitarian dictators to destroy law, freedom, democracy, and above all, our continued national sovereignty.
With the greatest reluctance, with every wish that I may be proved in error, and after long deliberation on my responsibilities to myself, my country, and my ancestors who played responsible parts in its making, I have come to the conclusion that I cannot honorably participate in a war whose prosecution, as far as I can judge, constitutes a betrayal of my country.
36
Although Lowell addressed the letter as from his parents’ holiday home at Manchester-on-Sea, Massachusetts, he wrote to his mother on the same day from New York:
After your touching letter about my picture and poems, I fear you will find this a rather shocking return. Please believe that I have taken the only course that was honorable for me.
I cannot ask you to support or even in any way concern yourself with my ideas. I do ask for your love, above all for Jean whose part in this is much the hardest. Don’t be too alarmed about any consequences to me, they will be within just limits.
37
He also wrote to his grandmother:
38
Dear Gaga:
I hardly know what to say in writing you and have hesitated to send you the enclosed statement. Finally I decided that writing you was my duty. You know more about American history than I do and can certainly judge whether our recent actions in this war are justifiable. I think only a Southerner can realize the horrors of a merciless conquest.
I love you immensely and want you to pray for us.
love,
Bobby
Lowell’s letter to Roosevelt was immediately handed over to the relevant U.S. Attorney, to whom Lowell repeated his refusal. By this time the case was headline news. The front-page story in the
New
York
Times
was tersely headed “To Act on Draft Evader,” but in more obscure journals there was considerable excitement: “
Member
of Famed Family Balks at Military Service” (Bowling Green
Sentinel
);
“Lowell Scion Refuses to Fight” (Providence
Journal
); and in the Boston
Post
,
September 10, the story ran:
“This would be the seventh time he would take a test for war service induction,” said Mrs. Lowell. “When he phoned me at midnight last night from New York City, he said he had acted in the conventional way and had notified the district attorney of his refusal to appear before the Draft Board. I believe it was a question of poetic temperament which had caused him to protest against the bombing, and especially of Rome. I really feel that if he had appeared for induction he would have again been turned down for poor eyesight.”
It is worth noting that Lowell did not mention the bombing of Rome in his letter to Roosevelt—for his mother, though, this was
the significant connection. Lowell himself some years later
suggested
that there was a further incentive: in a draft for the poem “Memories of West Street and Lepke” he writes of “my conscientious objector statement meant to blow the lid off/ the United States Roosevelt and my parents.”
39
On October 12, he wrote again to his grandmother “Gaga”:
I don’t [know] what to say to you except that I love you and am sorry to have caused you so much worry. That troubles me more than
anything
else.
I have talked at great length to my priest in New York and written the priest who baptized me in Louisiana. They are both very shrewd and experienced men. They are also very good men. They have told me to
follow
my
conscience
and
trust
in
God.
I have prayed for light and tried to persuade myself that I was mistaken; I cannot.
I shall be sentenced this Wednesday. I shall have to go to jail, but there is good reason to hope that in a short time I shall [be] transferred to the medical corps or to an objectors’ camp.
Please forgive me for you[r] disappointment and anxiety, and pray for us.
40
On October 13, after a month in which he was treated “with almost alarming courtesy. (No-one has questioned my sincerity),”
41
Lowell was arraigned before the Southern U.S. District Court in New York and sentenced to a year and one day in the Federal Correctional Center at Danbury, Connecticut. While waiting to be shifted there, he spent a few days in New York’s tough West Street Jail. Lowell’s famous poem on the subject is augmented by the recollections of a fellow inmate:
Lowell was in a cell next to Lepke, you know, Murder Incorporated, and Lepke says to him: “I’m in for killing. What are you in for?” “Oh, I’m in for refusing to kill.” And Lepke burst out laughing. It was kind of ironic.
42