[Rarebooks] FS: Archive of Letters from Edna St. Vincent Millay to Lover Poet George Dillon

[Charles Agvent]

MILLAY, Edna St. Vincent. ARCHIVE OF FOUR AUTOGRAPH LETTERS (ALs) to 
Fellow Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet and Lover George Dillon. New York, 
Austerlitz and Paris, 1928-1929. Four unsigned handwritten love letters 
from Edna St. Vincent Millay to George Dillon, totaling 17 pages on 11 
sheets in ink and pencil, with 4 envelopes addressed by Millay, dated 
1928-1929. The first letter dated 17 December 1928, in part: “So you 
will kill the dragon for me, will you, my St George? -- Oh, I am sure 
you will! -- For have you not this moment slain with that blade whose 
name is Mightier-Than-The-Sword that most noble & imposing monster, 
two-headed scaly DOUBT, that has been steaming at me for so many hours 
now with his great mephitic breath? Oh, lord, what fun it is to be happy 
again, & to be writing romantic ardent nonsense to the only infant 
dragon-killer since Hercules wore didies! --And oh how proud I shall be 
in a month or so, stepping the streets of Paris, the only woman in the 
whole fashionable town with shoes & hat & hand-bag of genuine 
dragon-skin!... You must not say the poem you sent is not lovely -- For 
it is. It is I who tell you. And I know a great deal about such matters. 
The last line of it nearly took my breath away forever -- so beautiful, 
-- and about me." The second, postmarked 29 December, 1928, in part: “It 
is true that my life is full, and full of wonder and excitement, that 
every day of my life is splendid. But don’t you know, or did I forget to 
tell you, how big a part of my life you are?... My lovely thing, my 
darling, darling -- don’t be apprehensive that I am trying in 
desperation to change your passionate love for me into something less -- 
into simple friendship, I mean, -- which is less. Someday, perhaps, we 
shall be friends -- but I hope the day is far off when you feel only 
friendship for me.... I love you too much, in every possible way, to 
want to change in the slightest detail or degree what you feel for 
me.... You must come to Steepletop [in Austerlitz, New York]. And you 
must come as soon as possible, and stay as long as possible. You must 
arrange it with your employer in some way.... I don’t want you [to] run 
the risk of losing your job.... Tell him it is a matter of life & death 
-- which is the truth.... I want to show you the tiny pool we built, 
absurd, nothing at all, & the hut in the blueberry pasture where I wrote 
the KING’S HENCHMAN. I want to sit on the edge of your bed while you 
have your breakfast -- I want to laugh with you, dress up in curtains, 
be incredibly silly, be incredibly happy, be like children, and I want 
to kiss you more than anything in the world.” The third, written in 
pencil from Paris on 25 April 1929, in part: "I am writing you on a page 
of the note-books in which I write the sonnets to you. Almost all the 
sonnets are in this book. Your photograph is in it too now, darling, 
stuck in between the pages.... I think about you & dream about you & 
long painfully to see you -- but I haven’t written to tell you so and I 
am afraid I have hurt you and made you feel uncertain and upset about 
me.... How we torture each other! -- When we love each other so! -- but 
it [is] cruel not to have time to write? -- I have never been so spun 
about in my life as I have been this time. I have such a short time 
here, & I know so many people over here, thousands, particularly in 
Paris, & everybody wants to give a party, & I’m swept from Armenonville 
in the Bois to a terrifying little dive on the left bank called 
Oubliettes Rouges or some such thing, full of subterranean torture 
chambers, -- but real ones!, & real skeletons, where one drinks creme de 
menthe, awful stuff -- I hate it -- through a straw, & listens to a girl 
who sings over & over a song about Le Temps Perdu! And after that 
everybody goes some place to dance, or we all drink quarts of champagne, 
or presently I begin to sing aloud the words of all the songs the 
orchestra is playing, even when I don't know them very well, or pretty 
soon we all go for a drive in the Bois. That’s a fair sample of one 
night here. And all day long I shop, & between shops I sit at a table on 
the boulevard with my head in my hand, while somebody feeds me brandy & 
soda, & when the last shop is closed I stagger to a taxi & am wheeled to 
my hotel, entering my room just in time to hear the telephone ringing or 
explain why I’m late to something or other. -- There! -- So will you 
please forgive me & love me still & not hate me at all? -- It will be 
May when you get this letter, & in less than a month then we shall see 
each other. And then everything will be all right. The moment I see your 
face everything will be all right. But, oh, five months is a bitterly 
long time.” In the final letter, dated 8 October 1929, she expresses a 
sense of defeat with regard to their lapses in communication: “Darling, 
it’s no use, this never writing to you and never hearing from you. It’s 
no good. Letters are often cruel, but they are not as cruel as 
silence.... It is painful being out of touch with you like this. Please 
write me, my dear. Do you still love me? I still love you.” The fact 
that Millay was married, or 14 years older than Dillon, did not stop her 
from pursuing an intimate relationship with the young poet. They 
remained close friends even after their romance cooled, and in 1936 
collaborated in the publication of a group of translations of 
Baudelaire’s FLOWERS OF EVIL. Although several letters by Millay to 
Dillon are in LETTERS OF EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY edited by Allan Ross 
Macdougall (Harper & Brothers, 1952), none before 1935 during Millay's 
romance with Dillon are included. Very Good to Fine, with the pencil 
letter a bit fragile, showing trimmed edges, creasing, and fold splits. 
(#021004)        $17,500

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