Steepletop - Home of Edna St. Vincent Millay

August 10, 2013

When we head South, we sometimes try to build in stopovers along the way to break the monotony of the drive. This trip included a stop in Austerlitz, NY at the home of former Pulitzer winner, poet Edna St Vincent Millay. I downloaded about four collections of her poetry to read before our visit to get a better sense of who Millay was ... at least in a literary sense.



Austerlitz is definitely a small town and represented Millay's need escape the hustle and bustle of New York. The large property that she purchased there served her needs for privacy and the increasing need for reclusive and eccentric behavior.

As we approached, the home we noticed several doors standing around the garden area. After moving to "Steepletop", Vincent (as she liked to be called) worked on developing about ten garden areas.  The doors served as the entryways to each of these garden areas. They say that there was never  a problem getting locals to work on the farm or gardens due to Vincent's propensity to weed in the nude.









                         

Vincent never wrote in the house we were told. Her writing was done in a small cabin near the house. Her husband definitely served as her muse in addition to being her husband. He commented once that there was nothing he would not do in order to provide what she required in order to produce a significant work of literature. It seems that Vincent, a confirmed bi-sexual, returned to Steepletop from a workshop to and informed her husband that she wanted him to move our of their bedroom to an adjacent bedroom so her new lover cold move in with her. Her husband agreed and maintained a separate bedroom from then on. Later, when she had developed an addiction to morphine following serious injuries from a wreck, her husband recognized that she would not be able to beat the addiction on her own. He intentionally addicted himself to match her level of daily usage and then gradually reduced his own and her usage gradually until both were clean of the addiction. Now that is what I call a muse.



Vincent may have overcome the addition to morphine, but not so for the partying and drinking lifestyle she had developed. We wondered what the locals of a small town must of thought of her. It is said that the rule for parties at the home was " If you went swimming in the pool, you had to be nude ... but you had to be clothed to have a drink. "



We finished our visit strolling the garden areas and checking out the cabin. As the Millay Society grows more will be done to restore the gardens to the splendor they had when Vincent was there.  Our guide, on entering the house said, "Vincent, it's just us visiting the the house" and went on to tell us that were some definite indicators of a presence that had been observed in the house on occasion. Clearly, he believed what he said.

I haven't made up my mind about the spirit of Edna St. Vincent Millay residing on the property, or not.

                      

Mayyyyybe!