Activity

When they travelled to Rome that spring of 1964, she found Francis introspective and self-absorbed. On May 30, recalling how she had the previous year so much imagined their “combined presence” there, she recorded her disappointment, her sense of prospects thwarted:

Borghese Gardens. Here I sit …

In their arguments, she was distressed to find her behaviour echoing her mother’s:

Lean on sink, after days of feigning unawareness or of showing concern; think “I could always die.” Comes, is furious to find tears. We sit down, on floor and sofa. “I asked you if you would look after me” (Hars…

They were back in New York at the end of January, and Francis decided, “even after Fez and Meknes,” not to proceed with Delacroix. Shirley moved into Manhattan House and, as spring approached, sat through the day in the building’s elegant garden, working on her novel. In February she heard of the d…

The uncertainty continued after they returned to New York. “He leaves books, letters, a lock of hair, an Augustus John reproduction that looks like me—phone calls … He doesn’t know what he wants.” Shirley joined him in Connecticut on the first day of summer, they had lunch with his old high school …

Francis was at pains to explain his situation to her. Shirley summarised this later to Muriel:

A lot of remarks about not getting serious, I mustn’t think of this as love, etc. interspersed with displays of emotion, and passionate attention. I not knowing where I was in all this. Constant talk…