Read Online Savage Beauty by Nancy Milford - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Nancy Milford
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fudge, the glow of light around the slender girl, her rich voice ringing out against the Maine night, seem more properly the stuff of sentimentalized fiction than of real life. And fiction larded with autobiographical detail is exactly what Millay was writing in a novel she called The Dear Incorrigibles . The story begins with the mother, Mrs. Randolph, hanging up the telephone after a summoning call from a sick relative:
“I don’t know what I’m going to do! I’m sure, I don’t know what I’m going to do!” … “Well, neither do we,” Margaret remarked. Margaret was fourteen and accustomed to taking things cooly.
Mrs. Randolph is around only long enough to set the scene and leave it. “Of course I’ll have to go. But who will stay with you while I’m gone?” she asks. Katharine, who at sixteen is the eldest, solves the dilemma handily:
“Now, Muvver,” she said, cheerfully. “There’s not a thing that I can see to scowl about. What got you into trouble in the first place was your supposing right off that we couldn’t be left alone. Imagine a great big sixteen-year-old girl like me not being big enough to keep house for a little while. I should be ashamed if I couldn’t. Besides it isn’t as if we were all sole alone. Aunt Cass lives right next door.… Goodness knows we’ve aunts enough.”
This is the familiar Millay family scene recast only as to motive: Mrs. Randolph must leave her daughters not to earn money but to help a family member in need. It is a slender piece of fiction with a light, domestic charm and no great urgency. Katharine, the eldest, is somewhat bossy and prim, a little unsure of herself and vulnerable to being hurt. Margaret is a good deal like Norma—pretty and vain, lazy and good-natured. She is the only person who challenges her older sister. In chapter 4 , Vincent introduces a fairy tale, the telling of which serves to bribe her youngest sister, Helen, into doing the dishes. It began:
Once upon a time there was a very beautiful princess who lived with her father in a palace surrounded by a lovely garden.
She had a gold plate to eat from, a gold mug to drink from, a gold chair to sit in and a gold bed to lie on … all the flowers in the garden to smell.
And yet she was not happy.
Why not? Because her father wants her to marry a scary old king whose kingdom “joined theirs on the left.” Stamping her foot in defiance, she refuses. Outraged by her disobedience, her father summons his wise mento decide upon a fair punishment. Her chin is to turn green. But the king, whose daughter’s beauty reminds him of his dead wife’s, cannot bear their penalty. A subterfuge is worked out. The princess is to be told her chin is green, when in fact all the mirrors in the kingdom will be broken and no one, under penalty of death, is to tell her it has remained pink. She is given a week to reconsider her defiance. When she does not relent, her father suddenly realizes that she no longer considers herself his daughter. The novel breaks off here, abandoned and incomplete.
As a child Vincent had been told fairy tales by her mother, who spared her daughters whatever was disagreeable or frightening by changing unpleasant endings to happy ones. It’s a form Millay would turn to again and again when she was grown. The power of the fairy tale is that through magic or enchantment, through trials and clever guessing, one’s life can be utterly altered. Quick as a wink, the ugly are made beautiful, the poor become rich, the stupid clever, the powerless powerful. It works transformations outside the realm of the real world.
Millay’s princess, who is motherless, is not passive as the princesses in fairy tales usually are; she does not wait, asleep or enchanted, to be rescued—she’s defiant. If the irreconcilable facts of life were glossed with the gold dust of fairy tale—green chins and gold plates, princesses and kings—nevertheless The Dear Incorrigibles was her first small act of
“I don’t know what I’m going to do! I’m sure, I don’t know what I’m going to do!” … “Well, neither do we,” Margaret remarked. Margaret was fourteen and accustomed to taking things cooly.
Mrs. Randolph is around only long enough to set the scene and leave it. “Of course I’ll have to go. But who will stay with you while I’m gone?” she asks. Katharine, who at sixteen is the eldest, solves the dilemma handily:
“Now, Muvver,” she said, cheerfully. “There’s not a thing that I can see to scowl about. What got you into trouble in the first place was your supposing right off that we couldn’t be left alone. Imagine a great big sixteen-year-old girl like me not being big enough to keep house for a little while. I should be ashamed if I couldn’t. Besides it isn’t as if we were all sole alone. Aunt Cass lives right next door.… Goodness knows we’ve aunts enough.”
This is the familiar Millay family scene recast only as to motive: Mrs. Randolph must leave her daughters not to earn money but to help a family member in need. It is a slender piece of fiction with a light, domestic charm and no great urgency. Katharine, the eldest, is somewhat bossy and prim, a little unsure of herself and vulnerable to being hurt. Margaret is a good deal like Norma—pretty and vain, lazy and good-natured. She is the only person who challenges her older sister. In chapter 4 , Vincent introduces a fairy tale, the telling of which serves to bribe her youngest sister, Helen, into doing the dishes. It began:
Once upon a time there was a very beautiful princess who lived with her father in a palace surrounded by a lovely garden.
She had a gold plate to eat from, a gold mug to drink from, a gold chair to sit in and a gold bed to lie on … all the flowers in the garden to smell.
And yet she was not happy.
Why not? Because her father wants her to marry a scary old king whose kingdom “joined theirs on the left.” Stamping her foot in defiance, she refuses. Outraged by her disobedience, her father summons his wise mento decide upon a fair punishment. Her chin is to turn green. But the king, whose daughter’s beauty reminds him of his dead wife’s, cannot bear their penalty. A subterfuge is worked out. The princess is to be told her chin is green, when in fact all the mirrors in the kingdom will be broken and no one, under penalty of death, is to tell her it has remained pink. She is given a week to reconsider her defiance. When she does not relent, her father suddenly realizes that she no longer considers herself his daughter. The novel breaks off here, abandoned and incomplete.
As a child Vincent had been told fairy tales by her mother, who spared her daughters whatever was disagreeable or frightening by changing unpleasant endings to happy ones. It’s a form Millay would turn to again and again when she was grown. The power of the fairy tale is that through magic or enchantment, through trials and clever guessing, one’s life can be utterly altered. Quick as a wink, the ugly are made beautiful, the poor become rich, the stupid clever, the powerless powerful. It works transformations outside the realm of the real world.
Millay’s princess, who is motherless, is not passive as the princesses in fairy tales usually are; she does not wait, asleep or enchanted, to be rescued—she’s defiant. If the irreconcilable facts of life were glossed with the gold dust of fairy tale—green chins and gold plates, princesses and kings—nevertheless The Dear Incorrigibles was her first small act of
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