Mark Sainsbury on W. S. Merwin

An Interview with Mark Sainsbury

by STEPHEN ENNISS

W. S. Merwin (1927–2019) was one of the leading American poets of his generation, a poet who in verse and in his manner of living engaged in a life-long reflection on our relationship to the natural world. During a highly productive career, he twice won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry and was the recipient of a National Book Award and the prestigious Tanning Prize from the Academy of American Poets. He twice served as United States Poet Laureate.

The Harry Ransom Center has acquired more than 600 letters W. S. Merwin wrote to his wife, Dido Merwin, between 1952 and 1970. After W. S. (Bill) and Dido Merwin’s divorce, Dido gave the letters to Mark Sainsbury for safekeeping. Now, more than 45 years later, Sainsbury, a professor of classics at The University of Texas at Austin, has placed this highly important literary correspondence at the Ransom Center, where it will be available for researchers interested in the life and career of this major American poet and the role Dido Merwin played in his formative years.

In the following interview, Sainsbury recounts how he first met Bill and Dido Merwin and shares his memories of their meeting and friendship.

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STEPHEN ENNISS: When and under what circumstances did you meet W. S. and Dido Merwin?

MARK SAINSBURY: It was in France in 1964. I was 20, had just finished finals at Oxford, and was staying in a hotel in Carennac, a small town on the river Dordogne in the department of the Lot in the rural southwestern corner of the country. I needed to go to a bank to change money and discovered the nearest bank was about nine miles away, so I decided to hitchhike. A vicar stopped for me and insisted, despite my reluctance, on taking me to meet “other English” who lived nearby. Bill came to the roadside of his property and was polite but clearly did not want the vicar to make a habit of bringing arbitrary English people to their house. The next evening, Dido came to the hotel in Carennac, said they were so sorry to have seemed inhospitable the previous day, and insisted on taking me back to dinner. That was the first of many dinners over the years. Dido was a magnificent cook, and the vegetables came from Bill’s kitchen garden.

The friendship that began in 1964 continued with my trips to the region every year for many years and Dido’s visits to London, though I lost contact with Bill after their separation. My correspondence with Dido continued until her death in 1990. My friendship with her was strengthened by her love for Victoria, who came into my life in 1979, and whom Dido regarded as co-trustee of the letters.

SE: Much less is known about Dido. She had studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and had a career in the theatre and as a playwright before her marriage. I imagine there were fewer opportunities to pursue her creative interests in rural France. How did they manage to make a living during these years?

MS: Dido was indeed involved in the theatre before she and Bill moved to Lacan de Loubressac in France. Her play (Always Afternoon) was put on in the West End by Frith Banbury (his archive is at the Ransom Center), and she and Bill co-wrote a play, also produced by Frith (Darkling Child). She worked on a movie with Jean Renoir (La Règle du Jeu), and later she contributed to a screenplay for a film version of Wild Duck (1983).

From the 1960s, she worked with the founders of Diptyque to create potpourri and other fragrances. She cared for the roses through the year, dried the petals, and added aromatics in late summer. She told me that the Diptyques (the two men who founded the company) told her, in their early negotiations: “Quant aux prix, les vôtres seront les nôtres”*.

Dido owned a house in St George’s Terrace, London, (at one point she lent it to Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, and it is where, Dido said, The Bell Jar was written). She sold the house in the mid-’60s and bought a house in the small village of Barrade, about 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) from their own house in Lacan.

Dido is now best known for her essay about Sylvia Plath: “Vessel of Wrath” in Anne Stevenson’s Bitter Fame. She told us that writing this extended her life: She was suffering from cancer but knew she had to keep going to finish the piece. She explained that the main point she wanted to make was that we should not infer from the fact that someone is a wonderful poet that they are a wonderful person.

Bill earned money from giving talks and from grants and fellowships. The talks were mainly in the U.S., so he spent a great deal of time away from Lacan. His frequent letters to Dido, almost daily at some points, show the strength of his love for her.

SE: I understand you returned to France during the summers for several years. How would you describe your friendship during that period?

MS: After my initial meeting with them in 1964, I saw them quite often the following year. Dido had secured me a position as assistant to an anthropologist near Figeac (about 19 miles away), Julian Pitt-Rivers, and I stayed with him and his wife for several months. During that time, there were many interactions between the two households.

Starting (I think) in 1966, I spent summers in the house Dido had bought at Barrade, so although she and Bill were 20 kilometers away, we met often. This came to an end in 1970, when Dido said that she needed the house back so that she could lend it to Bill. Although they were by then living apart, she wanted their separation not to separate him from the Lot. Later, we met on Dido’s increasingly frequent visits to London. Dido would choose plays and ballets, and Victoria and I would go with her. We were her house guests at Lacan a couple of times in the ’80s.

SE: Tell me about W. S. Merwin.

MS: I was in awe of his extraordinary range of knowledge and admired the deep engagement he had with his surroundings. He esteemed local peasant farming practices (summed up in the anti-monocultural phrase “On fait un peu de tout”**). A keen composter, he would take their donkey, Coquette, with her two Spanish side paniers, out on the lanes after the verges had been mowed to collect grass for his own heap.

He suggested that one could take either a theoretical or a more poetic approach to understanding life, but that only the poetic approach could address the hardest and deepest issues and give the clearest insight.

Almost everything Victoria and I know about theatre and ballet came from Dido, and she gave us a deeper understanding of all the things that matter in life. It comes as no surprise to learn from the letters that she was an important influence on Bill’s poetry and general outlook.

SE: Can you tell me the circumstances of Dido entrusting these letters to you?

MS: By the early 1970s, Bill and Dido were living apart, Dido at Lacan, Bill mostly in the States. In 1978 Dido received a letter from a New York lawyer, saying that Bill was divorcing her and she needed to leave the house in Lacan before some specified imminent date. This came as a total surprise and shock: the first she had heard of divorce. The case went on for some years and was eventually resolved within the French legal system, giving Dido the right to reside at Lacan for her lifetime. One of the things that seriously upset her was that the Bill she had known had become a stranger, responding to her as the unfamiliar “William.”

With the threat of divorce, the future seemed uncertain to Dido. She even imagined that Bill might come to Lacan and empty the house. This prompted her to make long-term arrangements for the letters she had received from him, and which she knew could be significant in the future. She brought them to me in Oxford in a steel box, and I kept them first in Oxford, then with Victoria in London, and we brought them with us when we moved to Austin.

She gave me the letters saying they needed to go to a library that would care for them and grant scholarly access, since they revealed a lot about Bill’s creative process. I suspect she was also anxious that her part in his life should not be erased. The letters show how important she was to his thinking and development in his formative years. She frequently expressed the fear that if Bill got hold of them, he would destroy them, and she several times made Victoria and me swear that if he asked for them, we would not give them to him.

SE: Why did you choose to place them now at the Ransom Center?

MS: The Harry Ransom Center is world-renowned for its collection of manuscripts, for the welcoming way it grants access to visiting scholars, and for its curatorial expertise. As for timing, Dido said the letters should not be available to the public until after Bill’s death.

On a more personal note, we have been living in Austin for 24 years, and after keeping the letters safe for 45 years, it is reassuring to think of them still so close at hand. We also like the idea of Dido’s and Frith’s archive being under the same roof. Frith was one of her great supporters: putting on her plays early on, helping financially in later years, and being an unwavering friend.

* “As for the prices, yours will be ours.”

** “We do a little bit of everything.”