But she did summon energy for entertaining luminaries of the literary world. Recalling a visit to the Lowells, the playwright and poet William Alfred said, “I’d never talked to people who cared that much about words. It was absolutely electric.”15 Edmund Wilson often dropped by when visiting his dentist in Boston. “A drink seems to dry his tears and his blood,” Elizabeth remarked. “He is . . . of inexhaustible interest to us because his interest in things seems inexhaustible.” Adrienne Rich often visited on Sundays with her husband and children. Elizabeth would remember her as “so alert, so intelligent, so witty.”16 Sixty-nine-year-old T. S. Eliot, now married to a woman less than half his age, was supposed to be the guest of honor at the Lowells’ dinner for eight in May, but a night of dancing with her gave him heart palpitations. He did come to dinner the following autumn, gracing a table of other major literary figures that included Wilson and his wife, Elena, and the critic I. A. Richards—a wearying evening for Elizabeth as hostess.