Girl Called Vincent: The Life of Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay
A baby photo of Edna St Vincent Millay Her mother chose the name Vincent to honor St Vincent's Hospi tal in New York City Edna St Vincent Millay Papers Man uscript Division Library of Congress Washington DC Cora's younger sister Clem who had witnessed Vincent's birth wrote to their beloved brother Char lie to announce the news and to share the baby's name Cora had chosen Vincent in gratitude to St Vincent s Hospital in New York City where Charlie had been nursed back to health after a traumatic physical ordeal just days before the baby's birth Not long after Vincent s arrival Cora Henry and Clem moved inland to Henry's hometown the village Page 15
of Union where his parents still lived They invited Charlie who remained weak to stay with them until he was completely well That summer Charlie came to live with the young family Surrounded by loving comfort Vincent rested in a low hammock in the yard as the adults sang away the warm days filling the baby's ears with melodic tunes and harmonious ballads Sometimes her babbling tones joined in Some of the first sounds Vincent heard that sum mer mixed with the voices making music would have been those of the natural world resonating around her sounds she later put into her poems the rising of the wind In the trees before the rain the woodcock's watery call the grey wood pecker taps and bores noisy and swift the small brooks run She was the only child for just a short time and couldn't remember life without her sisters Vincent wasn't even two when Norma Lounella was born in December 1893 and the youngest Kathleen Kalloch arrived in May 1896 The sisters looked very different from each other dark haired Kathleen was always called the prettiest Norma was blonde and sang beautifully while Vincent had hair the color of fire and a personality to match From her earliest years she was a girl of strong emotions exuberant laugh ter and intense rage There was never anything calm about Vincent her sisters used to say that she had a bee chasing her In her fury she could be terrifying Once Norma and Kathleen watched in horror as Vin cent overtaken by sudden anger ran outside with a Page 16 7 pages left in this chapter
kitchen knife and thrust it into a tree trunk The sisters were each other's best friends calling each other for decades to come by silly nicknames that came from one of their favorite childhood songs an old college tune Cora liked to sing to them There was a man who had two sons and those two sons were brothers Josephus was the name of one and Bohunkus was the other For the rest of their lives Vincent was Sefe and Norma was Hunk Kath leen became mysteriously Wump It's no surprise that all three sisters learned to sing play the piano perform and write poetry when they were very young these were Cora's passions and she shared them with her daughters as naturally as she breathed Cora's poems had appeared in New England publications and before she married she had given concerts locally advertising them as Miss Buzzell's Concerts In fact she had met handsome Henry blonde blue eyed and broad shouldered at a dance where she was one of the musicians Page 17
Even as a young child Vincent was a girl of strong emotions Edna St Vincent Millay Papers Manuscript Division Library of Congress Washington DC Cora continued to play and perform after becom ing a wife and mother and it wasn't long before her daughters started appearing with her When she sang in a quartet at the town hall in Union one February evening Vincent a few weeks shy of her fifth birth day performed a solo The little maid milking her Cow Page 18 5 pages left in this chapter
