‘Waiting for Horace to come home. The hours drag. I wait for his footsteps - his breathing - this long day at the college must be very exhausting. I feel ready to burst into tears with loneliness and worry.’ This is an extract from the diaries of the Russian-born American poet Marya Zaturenska about her poet husband Horace Gregory. She died 40 years ago in January (see The Diary Review), and he died just a couple of months later, 40 years ago today.
In 1933, Gregory published Pilgrim of the Apocalypse, a study of D. H. Lawrence; and in the late 1950s, he would also write biographies of Amy Lowell and James McNeill Whistler. Together with Zaturenska he compiled A History of American Poetry, 1900-1940. He taught modern poetry and classics at Sarah Lawrence College until 1960. He was awarded the Bollingen Prize in 1965. His collected essays, Spirit of Time and Place, were published in 1973. Over the decades his work appeared in many magazines, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Contemporary Poetry, and Poetry Magazine. He died on 11 March 1982. Further information can be found at Wikipedia, The Poetry Foundation and Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Gregory does not seem to have been a diarist but Zaturenska kept diaries throughout her life. A selection of her diary entries - replete with references to her husband - were published in 2002 as The Diaries of Marya Zaturenska 1938-1944. This can be previewed at Googlebooks and borrowed digitally from Internet Archive. See also Diary Review article on Zaturenska - Obsessed by new poems.
Here’s a few sample extracts in which Zaturenska is close to obsessing about her husband.
14 December 1938
‘Endless days in which the tension lifts when dear Horace comes in the house again after a hard day’s work. Count the days when the Christmas holidays will begin and we can be together. I feel safe and secure when he is near me.’
19 January 1939
‘Horace exhausted with overwork. When he returns he talks over and over again of the difficulties and strains at the school. It’s as if he couldn’t shake off the load from his shoulders.’
13 April 1939
‘Horace went to a dinner at the Oxford University Press for Auden, Isherwood and MacNeice. He had a very good time, the crowd, as is usual in these things, was diverse and curious. Freddy Prokosch, who H. says has gotten very fat in the behind, was a sort of social hostess or master of ceremonies. Auden, says Horace, was very gay and witty and Isherwood, utterly delightful. He thought that Auden bore the most amazing resemblance to the portraits of Oscar Wilde. The Boys were surrounded by fawning satellites so Horace, his curiosity satisfied, left early, having had a pleasant enough time. This must have impressed the Boys, for the next day Isherwood phoned and said they all wanted to see him again. Would he come this Sunday to a small party at Selden Rodman’s? Selden, who had been chilly for a long time, phoned too to tell Horace how much the Boys liked him and would I come to the party too. Horace said that no doubt he may have pleased them by talking lightly and cheerfully about nothing in particular and avoiding “shop” and “politics.” ’
13 May 1940
‘A rainy Saturday - closing a difficult week. Work on my book, overcome with dissatisfaction at it - do not dare to lean too heavily on Horace for criticism on it, since I feel he resents my taking his time. When he drinks nowadays I prepare for torment. He is not unjustified. I have become a complete parasite on him and my looks are going. He is nerve-wracked, overworked - no time for his own writing - isolated (and as a good wife I should build some social life around him - and I don’t seem to be able to do it). My only excuse is that I too am far from well - but my ill health has lasted so long that I may as well learn to adapt myself to it. Have had more infected teeth pulled recently. An ordeal.’
16 August 1940
‘Left for Europe on the eleventh - a hot day. Helen McMaster and my brother Max seeing us off. Excited and trembling with joy. Even Horace worn out with last-minute work at Columbia lightened up as the boat came in view. We shall never get over the delight, the joy of traveling.
Horace and I working on our poetry history book, and I’ve just finished a piece on Lizette Reese and am almost through with a piece on Adelaide Crapsey. Though Horace’s critical pieces are sounder than mine, yet I do think my little essays are well written and with a fine narrative sense and a real feeling for the form of the thing. I’m enjoying doing prose very much. And if only Horace had more time for collaboration our book would be going along at a great rate.’
15 December 1940
‘Horace turned in the manuscript of his selected book of verse, Poems, 1930-1940. Have much hope and fear for it. It’s a beautiful and powerful book.’
10 April 1941
‘Dear Horace’s birthday and the first day of real spring weather. The gold, the brightness of the green utterly astonishing. One is taken by surprise every year.
Muriel is giving a birthday party for Horace today. Dread facing people. Wish only to be with Horace. The rest of the world is full of horror, murder, poisonous spirits; the air drips blood, the ground is wet with it and the streets smell like a jungle.
Took a bus ride to town with Joanna, very lively, pretty and gay. We met Horace in front of the Forty-second Street library looking a little guilty because he had bought a new English ash walking stick at a sale. My poor dear, he needs a stick badly and he has bought almost nothing for himself.
Waiting for Horace to come home. The hours drag. I wait for his footsteps - his breathing - this long day at the college must be very exhausting. I feel ready to burst into tears with loneliness and worry.’
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