by Sylvia Plath
Do write soon – much love to you & dear Warren –
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Tuesday 29 January 1957
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Tuesday morning
January 29, 1957
Dearest mother . . .
It is just about 9.30, and I am waiting for the butcher delivery before biking off to the University library to study. Your two letters came this morning, & thank you for the addresses (the grocery box & vitamins have come). I was terribly distressed to hear about your large devastating bout with the dentist & the coming work: why didn’t you know about it sooner---you mentioned you had that other dentist while Dr. Gilmore* was ill---was he worse or better? And why should you have infections? I only hope they will give you the proper anesthetics---insist on that, and that it will not be painful. You must look at it as an investment to your own peace of mind & safe future. We all love you so & Ted & I are concerned only that you get completely fixed up. Don’t regard your teeth as an indication of age, as if less teeth put you in another age group! Just imagine: when Ted’s mother was a blooming young girl working in the wool mills, she overhead someone saying: “If Edith only had straight teeth, she’d be the prettiest girl in the factory.” Well, Edith went right to the dentist, had all her teeth extracted, and a set of straight, artificial teeth put in! From what you say, you won’t have to have everything extracted: but do what’s best. I can sympathize so keenly: if you’d had your braces put in in this day and age, you no doubt wouldn’t have this trouble. But you must grit your teeth (on the dentist’s fingers, if necessary) & go through with the ordeal. You will feel so much better when it is done. Keep me posted. Plan little treats for yourself after each time---a play, or reading a new book---the way you did for Warren & me when we were little. Ted is so understanding & concerned, too; he says the dentist that saved his mouth last spring told him for a “perfect job” he’d have to make a bridge to fill Ted’s 3 noticeable cavities where teeth are missing, & that the price was a few hundred pounds for such work; as it is, he knocked £5 or £6 off Ted’s bill & saved 3 teeth no British dentist would have saved. So you are in the best hands, in America. I’m taking Ted at the end of the term to London & having both our teeth seen to by this man; the expense now will save it later. We will be home in less than 5 months, & see that you have some fun with us to make up for this ordeal; I only wish I were home now, to make things easier: lay off entertaining while you go through your extractions & don’t expect to feel in top form---I know how groggy gas made me when I had my 4 teeth out. And be glad you had Europe! If Ted & I get to Italy in a couple of years, we will expect you to come & visit us, so don’t consider it your last fling by any means.
My coffee session with Miss Chase yesterday took several black loads off my mind. First, about my worries over competing with people who have doctorates: “You & Ted would be crazy to get doctorates!” were her very words. She said they figured grad school grind in America would kill me, so “they sent me to Cambridge.” I gather “they” feel some control over my life which explains Miss Chase’s shock when I told her about my coming marriage last spring. They hadn’t allowed for love, evidently, and no doubt didn’t want to waste their efforts. Well, she said I shouldn’t ever think of getting a doctorate: I wasn’t going to be a scholar or academic; nor Ted either. Also, wifes & husbands are often hired on the same faculty. They would rather have me have poems & essays published in the Atlantic than a Phd. The indefatigable Miss Chase is finishing a new novel “The Edge of Darkness”* about---guess what: life in a Maine fishing village. Well, she claims to have no illusions about being a good novelist, modestly mentioned she could count on at least 75,000 in sales, judging from her White Gate which evidently sold like hotcakes---her two former novels were London Book-of-the-Month club selections, so she covers dear Mrs. Prouty’s field. She’d evidently interviewed my tutor & director of studies & instructors here (no doubt to see if marriage & studies went together) & told me not to apply anywhere now until she’s written the head of the dept. at Smith---Mr. RG Davis. My main rival, I gather is the other American girl here, Jane Baltzell* from Pembroke, a very good-looking blonde who has made a fine impression on the British faculty. But Jane is undecided about whether she’ll marry an old flame in Japan, so I don’t know how it will work out. There will be A Place at Smith next year (a highly-recommended but “dull” Radcliffe-Harvard girl* is being dismissed--so much for Radcliffe) & of course the faculty would be concerned, as I am, ironically, about my being “too close” (Jane, you see, would be new to Smith). But my attitude about teaching there has changed. The freshman English program is ideal---only 3 sections, 9 teaching hours a week, and arranged to cover only 3 or 4 consecutive days! Beginners salaries are only about $3,000. But I could write & it would be a terrific chance. They even said, Miss Chase did, that If they offered me an appointment (still dubious, so don’t mention it) Ted might very well get one the next year. This year will be hard for him as several interviews are necessary anywhere for a “foreigner.” But she suggested various boys prep schools. If Smith falls through, I’m relatively sure she will help us get jobs elsewhere, & her word wields tremendous influence. Forget Babson. BU, et. They want women at Smith, amazingly enough; the faculty is over balanced with men. I want to dazzle the British here with my exams---my only real way of matching them---they ignore writing altogether but still I’m turning in a book of poems as a supplement to my exams.* Wish us luck & look in* this summer over dentists & all
xxx
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
c. Sunday 3 February 1957*
TLS, Indiana University
55 Eltisley Avenue
Cambridge, England
Dearest mother . . .
So happy to hear you liked our poems---we’ve garnered a huge batch of rejections this month---many “letters from the editor”, but nonetheless causing chagrin, so it’s pleasant to see even the revival of old things. Get a copy of the February Poetry: Ted has a poem in it! Isn’t it strange the way the Atlantic & Poetry both printed me in January & Ted in February. We look forward to the day we both publish in the same magazine. I’m enclosing Ted’s check for $14 for the “Drowned Woman” to be deposited in my account, which we’ll change to a dual account when I come home.
I’m also enclosing two pictures* of Teddy taken on the morning of his graduation from Cambridge---we had them enlarged from a group photo, so they’re a little blurry but make him look almost handsome as he really is.
We got the affadavits & thank you a thousand times. I can understand by reading the many various letterheads & signatures just how much time & effort it all must have cost you, but it should bring you home a handsome brilliant wonderful strong son-in-law. I love Teddy more & more each day & just can’t imagine how I ever lived without him. Our lives fit together perfectly. He is so helpful and understanding about my studies & has made a huge chart of the English writers & their dates (dating & knowing styles is necessary here and I had nothing of that unfortunately at home) and stuck it up all over one wall of the bedroom where I can learn it.
One more request---I do hate to always be asking things. But we need more / 3cent stamps. It will pay off in the long run, I hope---your 3 cent stamps have got us in the Atlantic, the Nation & Poetry so far. Maybe more before we come home. I had a recent story of mine “The Wishing-Box” published in Granta here this week,* very nicely set up---I’ll send you a copy when the pictures of Ted & me come back & I send them. I’m also having two rather good poems coming out in March in the new first issue of the Oxford-Cambridge magazine Gemini* which has another story of mine scheduled for the May issue* and has asked me to review a book of poems* by a Classics don at Oxford. I was rather amazed, but will try to do my best.
My Chaucer supervisor is lovely---the 2nd young woman I’ve really liked at Cambridge:* she looks very much like Betty Aldrich, very small & pretty with vital blue eye
s---married to a math prof* here & just had a baby,* and is also a university lecturer---quite versatile & rare for Cambridge. She’s invited Ted & me to cocktails next week---with a bunch of other students.
In spite of my grim feeling I must read all of English literature in the next 4 months, Ted keeps me calm & stoically working & in spite of the rejections, I am very happy and alive and writing better poems---a big one about a Sow, about 45 lines & one about “The Lady and the Earthenware Head” which has the best verse I’ve ever written. Hope I can find a good berth for them somewhere.
It is often infuriating to read the trash published by the Old Guard, the flat, clever, colorless poets here (in America there is, with much bad, much color, life & vigor). I have my fingers crossed that Ted will come to associate America with the growing acceptance and publishing of his writings. England is so stuffy, cliquey and plain bad bad.
Please keep me posted about the work on your teeth: will it be done by the time we come home? Be sure to have a thorough complete job, no matter what the cost. Demand best care. We love you so & will be wishing you to get through this quickly and painlessly as possible. Much much love from us both. Let us know as soon as anything comes through about dearest Warrie. . . .
your own
sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Friday 8 February 1957
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Friday morning
February 8, 1957
Dearest mother . . .
It is just 10:30 and I am fresh from a morning walk through the meadows to Granchester. The sun is flooding into our livingroom, the birds chirruping, and all is wet, melted, and spring smelling. We still have had no snow here! I wish I could describe the beautiful walk---I set off after Ted left & I had cleaned up the house, and met not a soul. I tramped over a mud-puddled path, through a creaky crooked wooden stile, and strode along---meadows shining bright silver-wet in the sun, and the sky a seethe of grey clouds and egg-shell blue patches, the dark bare trees along the river framing brilliant green meadows. On my right was a knotty, gnarled hawthorn hedge, red haws bright; and behind the hedge, the allotment gardens of cabbages and onions rose to the horizon, giving way to bare plowed fields. I found a squirrel tree---I saw a bushy-tailed grey squirrel clamber up and vanish in a little hole; I started flocks of great hook-beak black rooks wheeling, and watched a glistening slim pinkish-purple worm stretch and contract its translucent coils into the grass. There was a sudden flurry of rain, and then the sun shed a silver light over everything and I caught a passing rainbow in a pastel arc over the tiny town of Cambridge, where the spires of King’s chapel looked like glistening pink sugar spikes on a little cake. I kept smelling the damp sodden meadows and the wet hay and horses, and filling my eyes with the sweeps of meadow rises and tree clumps. What a lovely walk to have at the end of the street! I felt myself building up a core of peace inside and was glad to be alone, taking it all in. I went to visit my head, too. Remember the model head MB Derr* made of me? Well, it’s been knocking about, & I didn’t have the heart to throw it away, because I’de developed a strange fondness for the old thing with passing years. So Ted suggested we walk out into the meadows and climb up into a tree & ensconce it there, so it could look over the cow pastures and river. I returned there for the first time today, and there it was, high up on a branch-platform in a gnarled willow, gazing out over the lovely green meadows with the peace that passes understanding. I like to think of leaving my head here, as it were. Ted was right: every time I think of it now, I feel leaves and ivy twining around it, like a monument a rest in the midst of nature. I even wrote a rather longish poem about it (only ending differently) which I’ll type out in an adjoining letter & send you.
Somebody at last has decided to take the flat upstairs. We really put ourselves out, as the landlady lives in another town, to show people the flat in the evenings & I’d gotten fed up trying to excuse its barren discomforts to people who complained to me, so Monday when another couple called up to see it, I said to myself it was the last one I’d show around. Where we have to share the bathroom upstairs, I hoped it wouldn’t be some mad, suspicious assassin-type couple, like some that came. Well it was a rather sickly looking pair---the boy still in University studying natural sciences & a rather stupid pallid thick-ankled Scots-girl wife who had left highschool to get married. Ironically enough the boy’s name was George Sassoon.* “Any relation to Siegfried Sassoon?”* I asked idly. It turned out that the boy was his son. And a pale, sick looking runt of a wealthy stock he is, too. They move in sometime next week.
Ted is so much happier about his teaching. I have never seen such a change. He doesn’t come home utterly exhausted the way he used to, and proudly tells me how he’s learned to make his discipline work, & how his psychology of treating them works out. He has become interested in one or two of the boys & given them extra reading etc. I feel he is mastering his work now, not letting it sap all his energy & letting the boys run all over him. They must really admire him, he is such a strong fascinating person, compared to the other sissy teachers they get. He told me how he had them shut their eyes & imagine a story he told them---very active & vivid---& when the bell to end school rang, they all groaned & wanted him to finish the story. So I am glad that he is literally making the best of a very hard job.