by Sylvia Plath
A very strange thing: three times now, I have had extremely vivid dreams: about Mrs. Cantor,* and Warren; the third wasn’t a dream, but a peculiar compulsion to tell Ted one evening why I hated my month in New York at Mlle so much; the very next morning: a letter from Mrs. Cantor, Warren’s birthday card (whose message was intricately related to the dream!) and a questionnaire from Mlle asking me to describe my reaction to New York; all my horoscope points to my psychic, occult powers, & certainly if I give them play, I should at least, with my growing “woman’s intuition” be able to join Ted in becoming a practising astrologist. The latest is the Ouija board we made; listen to this: we made a simple board by cutting out letters of the alphabet and arranging them in a circle on my coffee table, with a “yes” and “no” at opposite points, and put our fingers on a wine glass; we got the strangest answers, and worked & worked; all the heat went out of my arm---it must take terrific heat energy to move the glass from letter to letter; we got the most unusual spirits---named Keva (very infantile, who swore a good deal; said she lived “in core of Nerve”,* both our nerves & belonged to both of us), then Pan, who told us there was a life after death, that he lived in “God-head” and claimed “Iv world enough”. The best was Jumbo. I’m telling you this so that If it happens, you will witness it was foretold. We asked Jumbo if he could tell the future & which of our manuscripts would be accepted. Well! He said, or rather, spelled out “Multiply”, which we interpreted to mean several; then we asked particulars; I’m telling you, because if it doesn’t come true, we can just toss if off: he said the first ms. accepted would be a story, spelled out “New Yorker”, said the acceptance would come this Tuesday! Before any others. Well, we had 3 batches of poems sent out long before my New Yorker story (“Remember the Stick Man”) and it seemed strange that the story should come back first. Then Jumbo spelled the name of the poem of Ted’s the London Magazine would accept:“The Martyrdom of Bishop Farrar”; said Poetry would accept 4 of his: “Law in the Country of Cats”, “The Man Seeking Experience,”“The Man Going Away”, “Six Young Men”, and that the Atlantic would accept Ted’s “Whenever I am got under my gravestone”* & “Casualty”. Now even if these spirits live “in core of nerve”---our nerve, they plumb our subconscious depths & powers of clairvoyance, which is of value: I have prayed no envelopes come back before Tuesday---we did this Thursday night: only one more day to go; we wait in curiosity & awe; neither of us would predict a NY story acceptance – but IF it should come, think how likely it would be for the rest to be true! Then we’d teach Jumbo to forecast the football pools & win a fortune!
Cross your fingers
xxx
SYLVIA
ps – am wearing your lovely warm plaid jacket over sweater & skirt – love sleeves & pockets – if it’s not asking for too much, could you send me either or both red & black ballet shoes – a year of continuous wear has worn mine out & they simply dont make them here – pappagallo – 7B or some such
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 1 November 1956
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Thursday: November 1, 1956
Dearest mother . . .
Well! Between my private crisis and the huge crisis aroused by Britain’s incredible and insane bombing of Egypt, the universe is in a state of chaos! You have no idea what a shock this bombing caused us here---the Manchester Guardian, my favorite British paper, called this armed aggression by Britain “a disaster”* and I cannot understand what Eden* hopes to gain by it other than such a loss of face, aid and support among Britain’s colonies, allies, and, of course, growing enemies as can never be remedied. The crass materialistic motives of this attack on the Suez are so apparent as to give Russia food for propaganda for years to come; I shall be eager to hear Cambridge student opinion about this---letters of horror have deluged 10 Downing Street from all over Britain; the eloquence of Gaitskell* in the Opposition is heartening.* To think I literally rubbed elbows with Eden at that Claridge reception!* The British arrogance---that old smug commercial colonialism---alive still among the Tories, seems inexcusable to me; I think the British policy in Cyprus has been questionable enough. This is the last. All the newspapers look to American foreign policy in a way which makes me hope fervently that Washington lives up to the UN and not its old loyalty to Britain. What joy there must be in Moscow at this flagrant nationalism and capitalism! This aggression by force, which has always been the cry of the Western Allies against totalitarians. The invasion of Egypt by Israel, followed by this bombing, stinks to high heaven. Even Budapest has been thrust to the back page by this; the Russians are leaving. What a world! I remember that Persian diplomat who interviewed me about the job teaching in Africa* saying that the western powers were like children in their ignorance about the immense force and manpower on tap in Arabia and Africa. The editorial in the Manchester Guardian was superb: this attack is a disaster from every angle: moral, military, political! Britain is dead; the literary and critical sterility and amorality which I long to take Ted away from is permeating everything. God Bless America. How I long to come home!
Now, for the private crisis. What a week! The Ouija board was “misinterpreted” about the New Yorker which remains adamant as ever. I am really emotionally exhausted by the rapid practical developments in my own state: I went to London yesterday to make my announcement of marriage to the Fulbright.* As I expected, they raised no question of continuing my grant; I did not expect, however, the royal welcome I got! Congratulations from the handsome young American head who told me my work, both social and scholastic, in Cambridge was so fine they wished they could publicize it (!) and much more in the same vein; one of their main qualifications of the grant, I discovered, is that you take back your cultural experience to America, and they were enchanted at my suggestion that I was taking back double, in the form of Ted as a teacher & writer. We had a rather gruelling day in London, me being very tired & feeling the usual blueness the day before my period; Ted being tense about his own prospects & ours. By a stroke of luck, we were accepted as tenants for a flat just 5 minutes away from Whitstead* nearer Granchester & the country, but still convenient to here. To my chastened eyes, it looks beautiful; we share bathroom with a Canadian couple upstairs & have the whole first floor: living room, bedroom, large sort of dining room, antique but sturdy gas stove & pantry; I met the landlady today who, pleasantly lives in another town; she assured me we could paint the walls (now a ghastly yellow) as long as we didn’t have them purple or orange. Well, no doubt she’d be only too happy for free improvements; but what a change in my attitude. Nothing I’d rather do than paint it all a lovely blue-gray! Ted and I will really feel we “make” a home, then. The rent is £4 a week plus expenses for gas, light, phone and coal. We’ll keep the place extravagantly warm! It even has two apple trees in the ragged little back yard, & a bay tree; it’s got pots & pans, old kitchen silver, & a few old sheets for the double bed. I’ll make it like an ad out of house and garden with ted’s help. He is in London today, doing a second reading of Yeats for the BBC. He is trying simultaneously for a job teaching two nights a week at the American Air Base program (very very lucrative, if possible) as well as combining it with getting a teaching diploma from Cambridge: if only both worked out! The hardest part, seeing my tutor at Newnham,* came this afternoon. When I realize what ease I’d have had in arranging this, I’d never have contemplated keeping my wedding secret here; the secret part was hardest to explain. My tutor, whom I dreaded approaching, was heavenly; she scolded, of course, for not coming to her in the first place, and the one problem now is getting another affiliated student to come to Whitstead for the next 2 terms, but I think that will work out; she’s invited Ted & me to sherry Sunday. I’m not going to tell anyone else until I actually move on December 7th, the end of the term; Ted will start living in our new home tonight, & we’ll fix it up gradually. It would simplify matters if you’d announce it about
December 7. That would give me time to write friends & coincide with my moving & informing people here whom I don’t want on my neck now. We will fight a good life out of this: now, of course, is the hardest time. Only 5 weeks! Until we’re officially living together in our own apartment. Have tentatively reserved places for us on the Queen Elizabeth leaving here June 20 & getting us to NYC on June 25th or so! Cross your fingers that reservations go through. When I write Mrs. Prouty* & ME Chase,* shall I tell them when I was married – or just say I am? It will leak out anyhow – the date – I mean.
xx
Sivvy
PS Who are you & Warren voting for this week??? I suppose your silence means Eisenhower!*
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Tuesday 6 November 1956
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
November 6: Tuesday
Dearest mother . . .
Received your letter today---I look so forward to them. About the wedding announcements first: yes, it would so simplify matters for me to have you engrave them---all the people I’d like to have know, but couldn’t spare time to write to separately could thus be informed. Our home address will be: 55 Eltisley Avenue, Cambridge; Ted’s living there now.
I am so emotionally exhausted after this week, and the Hungarian and Suez affairs have depressed me terribly; after reading the typed last words from Hungary* yesterday before the Russians took over I was almost physically sick. Dear Ted took me for a walk in the still, empty Clare gardens by the Cam, with the late gold and green and the dewy freshness of Eden, with birds singing as they must have for centuries; we were both stunned and sick; the whole world, except us, we felt was utterly mad, raving mad. How Britain’s crazy hope for quick success (after which most nations would be too lazy to do anything about it) covers the real cry of the Hungarians is disgusting; it makes the west have no appeal against Russia in the hungarian case; Eden is, in effect, helping murder the Hungarians. There have been riots in London;* even though a lot of commercially-interested Tories uphold Eden, Oxford and Cambridge are sending delegations & petitions against him; the horror is, that with time and enough propaganda yelling about Americas danger of becoming a bedfellow with Russia, America will no doubt support Eden too. A prospect which will make it insupportable for me; if only we would act as the Suez situation demands & stop Britain & France, who are agressors; it is all, Ted says, churned up by the oppositions of the planets. So, it seems is our own private life. We will come to work in America and then want to find some corner of the world where it is not strategic, some island or other, if we can get money enough, and go there & try to live a creative honest life; if every soldier refused to take arms & did this, there would be no wars; but no one has the courage to be the first to live according to christ & socrates, because in a world of opportunists they would be martyred. Well, both of us are deeply sick; the creative forces of nature are the only forces which give me any peace now; and we want to become part of them; no war, after these mad incidents, has any meaning for us. All I think of are the mothers & children in russia, in egypt, and know they don’t want men killed, & we refuse to fight & kill. I wish Warren would be a conscientious objector; it is wrong to kill; all the rationalizations of defense & making peace by killing & maiming for decades are crazy. I hope Eisenhower gets in and keeps up whatever policy he has against the British; rumors go that Stevenson* would support the British; they are all crazy.
Anyhow, in addition to this, my week has been spent in appearing before every necessary official at Fulbright & Newnham, which has involved tutor, director of studies,* college principal,* etc. With each one, I had to begin all over; naturally the secret part was hardest to explain. They fired questions at me ranging from wouldn’t cooking take time & why didn’t I wait a year but in the end every one said it seemed to be a good thing in my case (I felt like some lawyer defending my marriage) & the official council will give me their official decision about me continuing my studies this Saturday: I don’t think there will be any trouble; I put up with scolding day after day, thinking: only 5 weeks, & I move into the apartment with Ted.
The next 5 weeks will be hardest; Ted has his applications in for a job at the American air bases (very lucrative teaching evenings), the teaching diploma course here (for which he is probably much too late) & part-time teaching at one of the language schools; we both feel tense, with his having to wait a few weeks, no doubt, till these things work through, & all our beginning expenses with the apartment which, with my present studies, I can’t begin to work at (we’re going to paint it, buy a 2nd hand couch & a few odd things like curtains, pillow covers) until the first week in December; there isn’t a comfortable thing to sit or study on yet (we saw a nice old couch the other day--faded, patterned in blue-gray & white: our living room will, I think, have pale blue-gray walls and bright red & white accents in curtains, pillows, etc.) So I study here. I have got a grocery to deliver weekly. All the nagging little things, which I would love to do in vacation, come, of course, now: electric companies, deliveries, bank changing of name & getting new account, etc. But I’ll try to be stoic. We bore two depressing rejections: of Ted’s poems from London magazine – & my story from the New Yorker (a Smith girl secretary there---they’re everywhere---who admired my work, told me they accept stories only from a very narrow clique of writers usually; better to send poems, which I did). BUT: one very bright note: this morning Ted got another poem “The Drowned Woman”* bought by poetry (Chicago) & ONE BOUGHT BY THE ATLANTIC, “The Hawk In the Storm”!* I am so very proud. We want to send dollar checks to deposit in my American account so no exchange tax will be taken off: can ted write “Deposit to the account of Sylvia Plath” & sign on the back & mail to you??? I love you; don’t worry about us; Ted & I are together & after Dec. 7 will be living together in our first “social” quarters. He is wonderful & we’ll face everything that comes with as much courage as we can.
much much love to you & Warren
your own Sivvy
TO Edith & William Hughes*
Monday 12 November 1956
ALS with envelope, Family owned
Monday
November 12
Dear Ted’s mother & dad . . .
Hello there! I did want to write and tell you how things are going myself – whatever Ted told you over the phone, I’m sure he didn’t brag enough about the two poems he got accepted this week, one by the Atlantic Monthly (the magazine that accepted my poem while I was at the Beacon – remember the blood-curdling yell I let out?) – well, it’s a fine magazine, with all the reputation the London magazine has here, and more; it’s put out by the same press where I sent Ted’s wonderful children’s animal fables* which they should be reading now. Also, Poetry (Chicago) bought a 2nd poem from him & the editor* obviously likes Ted’s work. And the Nation bought the poem “Wind”* which is a terrific one.
So I am very proud; we sent another great batch of 30 poems out to various places* this week. The Christian Science Monitor, the international newspaper, bought my article on Spain & all 4 pen & ink drawings;* in spite of regular rejections from the posh distainful New Yorker, we manage.
As for me, it seems all the wrath of heaven descended this week – I’ve spent a gruelling time telling Fulbright people & countless grave Newnham Victorians about my marriage & convincing them I could still think while cooking for Ted. The Fulbright people were lovely, treated me like Grace Kelly having just been married to a Dark Foreign Prince – my grant will continue till June, praise be! Newnham was much tougher – I felt like an orator on the creative virtues of marriage before a jury of intellectual nuns. But I won – the Council decided this week I could go on for my degree.
In the midst of these grimly-gained miracles, plain sick grief over the rebel Hungarians & rage at Eden, a violent sneeze somehow disabled me – vague murmurs over x-rays of my offending spine in the casualty ward & orders to stay in bed a week; and, just as my back felt better
, a nasty cold. I growl, I take bitter medecines; all shall pass in a week, & I really feel blissful I can continue on my Fulbright studying at prim Newnham as Mrs. Sylvia Hughes.
You should see the flat we have got, by sheer luck, at this unpromising time of year! – I move in on Dec. 7, the minute term ends. We have livingroom, bedroom, kitchen & pantry – lots of dishes, pots, & an iron & linen there already – & share bath with queer couple of chemists upstairs. 55 Eltisley Avenue, our address will be. It needs paint badly & new curtains & slipcovers, which we hope to finish fixing before I move in with my million books. We had our first “dinner” in the gas oven this last weekend – roast beef, mashed potatoes, peas, raspberries & cream. Such elegance! I can’t wait to get out of Whitstead, nice as it is, & have, for once, a place & kitchen of my own!
Well, that’s about all the news for now. Please say hello to Olwyn* for me & tell her I hope I’ll be breathing & walking properly when she comes down – she could taxi to Whitstead or 55 Eltisley Road, where Ted is staying & we would celebrate with a royal dinner, etc. I do hope to meet her before she returns to Paris –
Meanwhile – much love to you both –
Sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Tuesday 13 November 1956
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University