Dispatches from the Millay Colony

"Of two sisters one is always the watcher, one the dancer."
– Louise Glück

Edna's house at Steepletop

Edna St. Vincent Millay, the wildly famous American poet, cultural icon and sexual pioneer, died in 1950 — not from a heart attack as was reported at the time, and maybe not even by accident, though this is never talked about: she pitched backwards down a flight of stairs after first carefully setting her glass of white wine on a ledge.

Edna’s will left her estate, Steepletop, to her older sister, Norma Millay Ellis, who moved into the house and lived there until her own death in 1986. For thirty-six years, Norma treated the house as a museum, carefully preserving all of her sister’s things — every book, paper, picture, article of clothing, even Edna’s toiletries — exactly as Edna had left them. Norma allowed nothing to be disturbed. She became, literally, her sister’s keeper.


"What lips these lips have kissed" -- 
Edna's bed, shared sometimes with her husband,
sometimes with a lover; her bedjacket and bell.

Edna

In her later years Norma established the nonprofit organization that continues to preserve the house. Norma also established the Millay Colony for the Arts.

Throughout Norma's years at Steepletop, the only part of the estate she claimed for her own was a small outbuilding, to which she added a screened porch.

Norma's cabin

We are told, the artists and writers and composers who come to the colony to work, that Edna was a generous woman. Of that I have no doubt. But it is Norma I want to thank.