Teasdale, Sara (1884–1933). The selected poems of Sara Teasdale. Holograph manuscript in the hand of Margaret Conklin (1903–1984), [New York?], 1937. 17 x 23 cm / 104 pp. Written in clear black ink in a blank notebook of fine paper bound in patterned boards.  Stationer’s label (Dante Gambinossi, New York) to front pastedown. Some light foxing to gutters; light wear to boards.

Inscribed “August 1937 / With my admiration and love / For / Naomi Jacob / From Margaret.”

A manuscript notebook collecting 91 poems from the published work of Sara Teasdale, selected, arranged by her closest companion and most ardent champion, and copied out for the British novelist Naomi Jacob (1884–1964). A wonderful association between these three literary women.

Sara Teasdale, 1927 by E. O. Hoppé (www.eohoppe.com)

Margaret Conklin was a 23-year-old student in 1926 when her fan letter drew the reclusive poet out of a thicket of solitude and depression. Their rapport was immediate. As Teasdale wrote in a poem dedicated to Conklin, she awakened a lost sense of youth, beauty and fresh promise:

I knew

The self I was

         Came home with you.

“After [Teasdale] thought she had irrevocably closed that door on her emotional life,” writes her biographer William Drake, “Margaret opened it again.” By the summer of 1927 the two had become intimate and were traveling together to London. When Teasdale ended her life in 1933, she named Conklin as an heir and appointed her literary executor. The memory of their relationship would forever haunt the younger woman. After her death, Drake wrote:

The impact of Sara Teasdale's life and death upon Margaret Conklin was enormous. Margaret, having served a need she only partly understood, broke down and could not work for months after Teasdale's shocking death. Out of fierce loyalty and gratitude, she devoted herself to protecting Teasdale's interests, extending for decades after her death the mantle of privacy that had covered the poet's life. “Sara would have wanted it,” was reason enough. It was only late in life that she was able to free herself from the spell of Teasdale's wounded personality. Helping this writer gather material for a biography in the 1970's was, she said, ''therapy.'

Margaret Conklin, 1931 (Beinecke Library, Yale University)

The dynamic between Teasdale and Conklin was chaste, according to Drake, based upon “Sara’s quest for a vicarious youth and Margaret’s … heroine-worship.” Drawing on his conversations with Conkin, Drake intimates that Teasdale’s reservations precluded their relationship from ever having a physical dimension:

[Conklin’s] final assessment was that Teasdale was too intensely self-preoccupied - though not selfish - too passionate yet virginal, too desirous of love yet unable to give or accept it, too crippled by her Victorian upbringing.

But many queer writers have accepted Teasdale as one of their own, and pointed to their dynamic as an example of a passionate friendship offering a sustaining love that neither woman found elsewhere.

Naomi Jacob, 1939 (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Whatever ambiguity there might be about Teasdale’s sexuality, there was never any about Naomi “Micky” Jacob, who was never coy about her political convictions or her erotic preferences. Conklin worked at Macmillan, Jacob’s publishers, and likely met her in a professional context, though at the time she received this manuscript the Yorkshire native was living in in northern Italy. Conklin presented the manuscript to Jacob in August 1937. The following month would see publication of her edition of Teasdale’s Collected Poems. Given the dates, copying out Teasdale’s poems must have represented for Conklin a remarkable act of love and devotion.

Selected References

Bailey, Paul. Three queer lives: an alternative biography of Fred Barnes, Naomi Jacob and Arthur Marshall. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2001.

Drake, William. Sara Teasdale: woman & poet. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.

-----. “Sara Teasdale: poet of love reborn in friendship,” New York Times, 26 August 1984, 7:3.

Greif, Martin, The gay book of days. New York: Carol Publishing, 1989.

Norbury, James. Naomi Jacob: the seven ages of “me”. London: William Kimber, 1965

r/GaylorSwift, Parallels between Taylor and poet Sara Teasdale. https://www.reddit.com/r/GaylorSwift/comments/1akwci8/parallels_between_taylor_and_poet_sara_teasdale/