Did the poet Wallace Stevens convert to Catholicism on his deathbed? The intruguing question is raised by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts in their recent book Deaths of the Poets (Jonathan Cape). The book is a fascinating if slightly ghoulish examination of poets' deathbeds, and sometimes their last words, such as Philip Larkin’s bleak remark, “I am going to the inevitable”.
Farley and Symmons Roberts describe Stevens as a “Modernist hero” and a “lyric mystic, a philosopher-poet”, but also as an atheist. And yet there are rumours of his deathbed conversion - centring on a letter seemingly written by Fr Arthur Hanley, who was “the Roman Catholic priest assigned to St Francis Hospital in Hartford, where Stevens was admitted with stomach cancer in 1955.” Written in 1977 in response to an academic questioner, the letter-writer referred to many meetings with the poet in which they talked about theology and in particular the doctrine of hell. Declaring that Stevens was “baptised absolutely”, Fr Hanley went on to explain that it was felt “that this conversion should not be made public, as it might 'cause a scene'”. Even Stevens' family were not told.
