by Sylvia Plath
We plan, roughly, to spend two years in America (Ted is even thinking, just thinking, of changing his citizenship for the simple purpose of becoming eligible for all the writing awards America offers) and then both of us hope to get writing grants to Italy for a whole year.
This note brings you birthday wishes from both of us. I am never sure even of my own, but I think it must be about your 22nd. But anyway, we are both delighted that the first day occurred.
much love to you & do write when you can,
sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Friday 26 April 1957
ALS with envelope,* Indiana University
A very happy birthday for you and your pale blue diningroom
With love –
Sivvy & Ted
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Sunday 28 April 1957
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Sunday afternoon, April 28
Dearest mother . . .
Well, you and Warren have just completed your birthdays & I hope my little cards arrived in time & that my small blue gift to you came.
In four weeks my exams begin: I am living at the university library from morning to night, which is the only place I feel complete peace & immunity from domestic bothers, tradesmen, passers-by, etc. I am enjoying my work, really, steadily reading tragedy now, the Greeks, then on through 2000 years up to Eliot, concentrating on several major figures: Corneille,* Racine,* Ibsen,* Strindberg,* Webster,* Marlowe,* Tourneur,* Yeats, Eliot: there are so many. This tragedy paper (only a 3 hour exam for all that) is a fine help on my reading: I’d never read any of the plays before, really. This summer I must devour crucial novels: Ted & I have read hardly any prose!
We have decided to leave this house for good on June 5th and spend our last two weeks before sailing in Yorkshire with Ted’s parents without returning to Cambridge as we had planned to cover the May balls. We’ll pack & get our stuff crated in the few days after we finish work & be off for the therapeutic Wuthering Heights country, when I hope to begin writing again: I feel seething when I’m not writing daily & am forced now to give it up for these next 5 weeks. But my novel becomes more & more exciting to me & I hope to work on it all summer. We are already sending our manuscripts with the Wellesley address on return envelopes, so open anything that looks official to either of us & communicate the contents.
Your package of blessed food came this week in the nick of time, just as my most difficult period begins: what a relief: the soups & rice & piecrusts will save me precious time & cut marketing to a minimum. Ted is so understanding & helpful: dries dishes with me, hypnotizes me into relaxing deeply, walks in the country, bolsters my morale & is generally just the dearest person imagineable. What fun we’ll all have this summer! These exams serve to put the lid on my pressure-cooker & I can feel stories, poems & novel just bursting to come out the minute I’m free: I know I have the talent, as Ted knows he has it: both of us are dedicated to deepening our imaginations & work, work, work. We are our own best safeguards against fame going to the head or outside distractions.
Ted’s visa seems to be for residence, with all that implies. I think he might be willing even to change citizenship, although I will not try to persuade him, because America is uniquely the country which gives its poets a kind of “patronage” at the universities. You should have seen him eat up that chocolate pudding you sent! He is so delighted by the simplest good food, that I really adore cooking for him. He has just written one of his best poems today (after a long dry spell) on the recent auto death of Roy Campbell* & is generally happy: one more week of vacation for him, & then only 4 more weeks of the wicked teaching. 4 weeks of solid study for me & one of exams: then we are free for a more creative happier life in a wonderful country. How I long to be at home with you & Warrie & Ted, cooking good meals & learning so much about cooking & sewing (mending) etc. from you & doing laundry in our own machine to hang out in our own lovely sunny green yard. And to write. We plan, after 2 years, definitely to get writing fellowships to Rome. I hope you’ll brave the seas on a bigger ship then & spend at least the summer with us in a nearby villa!
Ted enjoys your letters so much & says he is so happy I have such a lovely mother! I do think his parents are dear & we both have in common coming from good solid stock where the sole endowments are talent & intelligence & health: name & money we’ll make ourselves, step by step, together.
Already I’ve mentally packed my trunk a hundred times, sailed to NYC, taken the train, eaten dinner at home & begun living on the Cape! I really live in that future now, & long to get out of this dark, gloomy house, where the livingroom is the only living-room. Both Ted & I feel our best life beginning now & are so very happy together, more so each day. I couldn’t have dreamed up a more perfectly wonderful husband than he if I’d tried every minute of my life. Nothing I ever vaguely imagined could equal his simple dearness in every respect & perfect intellectual, creative & emotional understanding! And how many poets does one find who are healthy, brilliant, articulate, handsome & intransigeantly faithful to the purpose & ideal without being vain or seeking public adulation? I’m sure the adulation will come, for both of us, in its way, but our work & love for each other’s potential stands above all.
Here I am, already planning: we’ll telephone you from NYc as soon as we get through customs & tell you what train to meet at Route 128:* the best place, I think. All my woolens, by the way, must go to the cleaners: cashmeres & all: two years of wear, & they must be renewed. Do tell me how much we have in bank & checking account (I’ve just drawn $8 from the latter to get the copyright for 2 poems).* We should be getting $150 more from Poetry mag. for the 4 poems each they recently bought. Do write as much as you can--even with your exam correcting – I look so forward to your letters & so does Ted. Love to Warren & congratulations on the Harvard scholarship.
xxx your own
Sivvy
TO Gerald & Joan Hughes
c. Wednesday 1 May 1957*
TLS,* Indiana University
Dear Gerald & Joan,
Hello:
You won’t be able to distinguish the typescript, or perhaps even the tone of voice, but this is Sylvia speaking. Ted kindly left me some of this green space & so I’m taking it up. Perhaps he’s already told you about the acceptance of his poem (called “Famous Poet”---which he’ll be before summer’s out) in the London Magazine: we both got poems accepted by this holy pamphlet the same day: our luck seems to run in the same stream; all I need now is to get my book accepted: I’m still waiting to hear word of it, but probably won’t till we get home to America.
I am living, these next 4 weeks, with nose worn to the nub on the academic grindstone. I really love the stuff I’m reading: tragedies, modern plays, French novels & plays & poems, etc., etc., but the pressure of crystallizing all my immortal knowledge in six 3-hour exams tends to zap some of the fun. Also, I dread sudden paralysis of my right hand which may well rebel at writing with a pen after so many years of pampering on the typewriter keys, I live in the future, thinking of the two weeks we’ll spend at The Beacon wandering the moors & gazing blissfully at the moor sheep, etc., before sailing. We’ll both deserve a total rest: after my exam grind & Ted’s last 4 weeks knocking in the bullet-heads of those devils.
I loved the pictures of you both, & Ashley. By the time we get to see him he will no doubt have dozens of pale, tear-stained, adoring women languishing in his wake: he is a handsome fellow, all right. I’m really convinced that in case of any such horror as H-bomb warfare, our two families: you both, Ted, me, Olwyn, my brother Warren & appropriate mates, could re-people the world to its own advantage. O for an island. We want to get wealthy & buy one someday.
I am dying to show Ted Cape Cod (where mother has got us a little cottage for a summer of writing, swimming, sailing, etc.): scrub pines, lakes, sand cliffs & tons of icy green-blue Atlantic ocean pounding 20 miles of almost deserted shoreline: have spent my happiest days bur
nt darker than an Indian by the hot sun, racing the gulls & terns in and out of the breakers & daring the waves to smash me. They do, more often than not, & can send a reckless swimmer up on the shore in a shower of sand, pebbles & stones, sputtering & wind knocked out of him. Also hope we can explore the rest of my country too, which I’ve never seen: New Orleans, Grand Canyon, west coast, etc.
Do keep writing to us often & send pictures: until we can actually meet that will have to do. We’ll send some pictures taken in America as soon as we get some.
Well, will sign off for now, & walk out with Ted for a bit to clear my head of Greek tales of incest & blood revenge.
Love to you both, & also the boys,
sylvia
TO Edith & William Hughes
c. Sunday 5 May 1957*
ALS, Family owned
Sunday afternoon
Dear Ted’s mother & dad –
I am still here in the kitchen watching my Yorkshire pudding bake in the oven to go along with our Sunday roast and looking so forward to our coming up to stay in Yorkshire around June 5th until we sail the 19th. Ted starts work again tomorrow after a 3-weeks vacation & he has been writing some more very good poems. I’ll be up to my eyes in work until exams are over on June 3rd – am now studying at the library from 9:30 to 6:30 pm everyday & it seems I have to read every play & every bit of philosophy written in the last two thousand years! Fortunately I love my work, which makes this routine bearable & Ted takes me for lovely walks along the river in Granchester Meadows to look for water-rats & owls when my eyes get tired of reading print. At least our work will all be over in a month’s time & the new life will begin – I can’t wait to start writing again –
You have no idea how forward I look to living at the Beacon again. I catch myself daydreaming about the moors, with the mad-eyed moor sheep, & then the wonderful view from your livingroom windows over the green fields which always makes me think of living on top of the world – and I can’t wait to come back up there with Ted for a restful two weeks with you both: your dear house has come to be “my home away from home” and I really miss it.
We plan to stay here only a few days after my exams to go through the huge job of packing my trunk, suitcases & our 300 to 400 books & paying bills etc. so we can come right to your place & stay till the day before we sail. We both have really worked hard this year & will feel we deserve a summer devoted to writing – you wait, we’ll produce a book each. Ted’s fable on the Pygge came out this week in the same issue of Granta as two of my poems – & our names were on the poster together: our first publication together – we’ll send up a copy – another magazine comes out next week, too, with poems by Ted & a story by me –
much love to you –
Sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Tuesday 7 May 1957
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Tuesday morning
May 7th
Dearest darling mother!
How happy your letter made us this morning with the wonderful news of Warrie’s Fulbright! I’m writing him a note this morning too before I go biking off for my routine day from 10 to 6 at the University library devouring tragedies. I ran to my map of Europe & underlined Bonn in red, and immediately began thinking of all the wonderful chances Warren will have to live with something of a “splurge” for a change. I hope he travels---Paris looks so near, direct by rail, and so is Italy & the Mediterranean! I can help him a bit, I think, in telling him what the Fulbright reports like to hear (the director in London told me I’m a model grantee) and also giving him simple hints about the money-spending & importance about a wide cultural background-sharing, which is more important (in their huge end-of-the-year triplicate form which I’m just filling out) than academic work which must, of course, be very good too! I really want to see Warrie ‘have the chance to enjoy life and the Fulbright allowances are good enough to let him take girls out etc. with “special” treats like operas & things, & he should meet lots of fascinating women & develop endless self-confidence. Elly thinks he is just marvelously handsome and dear.
It is one of those clear rare champagne-aired mornings which make me feel like a sinner against creation when I go into the huge factory-stacked library not to glimpse the sun again before it sets, but my dreams of the moors & the Cape sustain me. I will not feel at all “guilty” in indulging in sun & sea there. You know, I think that through our years of family scraping to get money for scholarships etc. we three developed an almost Puritan sense that being “lazy” and spending money on “luxuries” like meals out, or theater or travel was slightly wicked! And I think all three of us are being given the rare chance of changing into people who can experience the joys of new adventures and experiences. You are the lesson to us all: I really think you have grown, in the past year, at least 25 years younger: in the sense that you are so wonderfully open to experience! So few women manage this. Ted & I look forward to having such fun with you this summer & next year, simply picnicking on Nauset beach, & swimming & talking & taking long walks. We live very simply by nature, in our favorite old clothes & with our cheap red wine for dinner & (this year at least) no theater, movies or extras. But every now & then we believe in going out to dinner, or dressing up, like we did this last Saturday night & going to a party. The editor of Gemini* gave a cocktail party to all The Literati of Cambridge, & Ted & I had never met him, so went: I in that lovely pink knit dress I wore for my wedding, & new white heels (what a blessing to wear heels with Ted & still be “little”) and a silver head-band he’d bought me for a surprise for a time when I was depressed about exams. A most enlightening affair. The change in attitude from my last social appearances last year was a pleasant shock: I was simply chuckling inside: all the writers & editors flocked around, every remark I made was repeated as ultimate in wit, and both Ted & I left practically stifled with laughter: we are simply the literary paragons of Cambridge & our year’s absence from social affairs plus the fact that we publish in every magazine that comes out, has done amazing things to our reputations. It was fun to get an objective look at the world: we work so hard & are so demanding of ourselves that if we take a breath or sleep late one morning a week we feel Lazy. And compared to most humans, ironically, we are madly productive genii!
I sold my beloved old Smith-Corona last week for £15. 15s---about $44. We put two adds in the paper* & only one couple came & bought it: very lucky for us. Granta came out this week with 2 poems by me & a fable “Bartholomew Pygge Esq” by Ted: our first appearance in the same mag. together: the poster had our names in the list in big black letters: I’m going to try to steal one. It is so symbolic of our life & work together. Got your packet of food, as I may have said, just in time for my exam-grind: so invaluable. What fun we’ll have making up boxes of goodies for Warrie! When Ted & I go to Italy for a year, we’ll expect you to come for the summer & take an adjoining villa! Next week the 2nd Gemini comes out with 3 poems by Ted & a story & book-review by me: we’ll send you a copy. We’ve decided to leave Cambridge June 5th, giving only a couple of days for the colossal job of packing & then spend the rest of the 2 weeks on the moors with Ted’s parents before we sail: one of our happiest thoughts is that our beloved parents can share in all our good fortune & happiness. Ted is the most understanding dear about my work: when he sees I’m very tired from studying he insists on doing the dishes or making morning coffee or some little thoughtful thing which makes me feel like the queen. I really feel I am one of those women whose marriage is the central experience of life, much more crucial than a religion or career or anything: and I have found the only perfect husband for me & so can write & work & do all the rest from a solid happy center. We look so forward to leaving this gloomy dusty house: each time I go past the landlady’s filthy junk under the stair, or beat endless dust out of blankets etc., or battle the oven, I think: only one month more, then home! every step from here will be one better for us. Can’t wait to write on my novel this summer. I really feel
I am going to do a fine one! All my love to you & our wonderful Warren. After all these years of work, sickness & death & bearing others sufferings, you must enjoy every minute of life with Warrie, me & Ted
xxx
Sivvy
TO Warren Plath
Tuesday 7 May 1957*
TLS (aerogramme, photocopy), Indiana University
Tuesday morning
Dearest Warren!
Congratulations! Mother’s letter came this morning with the marvelous news of your Fulbright grant! O, how wonderful it is for me to re-live my own excitement & picture the terrific experiences which you will have! I’ll be so interested to see how they run the program in Europe & Bonn looks like a fine location: rail to Paris, & so near (compared to Cambridge) Italy & the mediterranean. You will surely have long vacations, like I did, in which to travel to your heart’s content. Paris, Rome, etc. Is it a one-year program, & what will you be studying. I feel I’m handing the Fulbright torch to you & think it’s the best thing you could have! I feel I have found not only an exquisite little town in Cambridge, but also journeyed to find myself & certainly came through trials & triumphs to get there. Something, paradoxically, which I had to go away from America to do. Ted read mother’s letter with me & just beamed. Do count on our seeing you off from New York! & try to take a minute to write us a line about your program of study, etc. How many others will be in Bonn on the program?
I am now in the tensest time of exam study, from morning to night & there still isn’t enough time: and it is the most beautiful season of the year here, which I must forgo. But I live in dreams of the cape & our summer. You must drive down with mother every weekend to stay with us: as I remember there’s an extra bedroom with twin beds & a cot on the porch. That way we’ll get double our worth for the rent. I’ll be reading madly in preparation for my courses at Smith & writing on my novel, tentatively to be called “Hill of Leopards” about an American girl finding her soul in a year (or, rather, 9 Fulbright months) at Cambridge & on the continent. it will be very controversial as I intend to expose a lot of people & places. And start my new gospel, which is as old as native rituals, about the positive acceptance of conflict, uncertainty, & pain as the soil for true knowledge and life. How I long to begin it! Ted & I want to devote our lives to writing & travel & raising a family of at least 4. He admires you very much & hopes you can take us both fishing on one of those ships on the cape some time. Ted loves to fish & is so marvelously restful to be with. How heavenly it will be. I can’t wait to get out of this dusty dirty gloomy coal-bin of a house (except for the front room in which I am now writing) to go to the moors, then the Atlantic, then home, then the Cape. Smith scares me, but only in a healthy way. I will gain the much-needed sense of “giving” and (for once) supporting myself, which I could not live without. I will work to really interest my students (I imagine I’ll have close to 100 in all!) and feel it will be a perfect way to “share” my Fulbright experience & learning, as well as by writing. Isn’t it a relief to know you’ve got the Fulbright just as you begin taking exams? I remember my announcement came on the day of my first final exams at Smith* & I gained the confidence of knowing the exams weren’t deciding my future, & so did well on them. Mother says you’ve put up the screens & doctored the lawn. My little white house shines in my head like a small sun. You, too, I think, will know what it means, when you’ve been away a year. We must always keep 26 Elmwood road in our family, no matter what! You must think of your Fulbright year as life & experience as much as study, spend all your allowance & travel much. The allowance is very liberal, I think, & I’ll be so interested to know how yours runs.