by Sylvia Plath
Salute! / Skoal! / cheerio! / prosit! / Here’s how! / in any language . . . / here’s a toast / to wish you / HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
With lots of / love – / Sivvy / & / Ted
April 22, 1958
Dearest Warren . . .
It seems a long time since my last writing, but I have been in a bit of a daze. A bad cold which sneezed & ran for a full week knocked me out before Ted’s reading, but I taught in spite of it so I could give my classes free cuts of grace on April 11th. Imagine – we drove into a horizontal blizzard of sleet all the way to Harvard! In spite of the appalling weather, Ted had a loyal audience – among them many old troupers – Marty & Mike Plumer, Gordon – his eyes glowing with dollar signs, his mouth tongued with million-dollar deals relating to his new project – a Framingham Music Circus – Mrs. Cantor, dear Mrs. Prouty (who said in loud, clear tones: “Isn’t Ted wonderful?!”). He was – a very good hour of poems, old & new & talk in between. I met the young poet Philip Booth (who just received a Guggenheim) & we had a lovely dinner at Felicia’s Café* near Hanover (?) Street with Jack Sweeney (whom we dearly love – he remembers your A’s in some humanities course) & his lovely wierd Irish wife & (at last) Adrienne Cecile Rich & her husband* (she’s the girl whose poetry I’ve followed from her first publication) The excitement tolled the end of my cold & I feel much better with the approaching spring – tulips, daffodils & magnolia now out in “our” park next-door. Were you joking about what Clem’s girlfriend said about a new Faber anthology? I thought de la Mare* was dead. We take these things very seriously. Ted & I met a very strange & endearing poet of middle age – Lee Anderson* – who called & asked us to come to Springfield so he could make recordings of us both for the files of the Library of Congress.* He has a queer grey goatee, is shy & kindly & has an 80 acre farm in Pennsylvania.* I drove Ted over & raced back for my 3’ oclock, rushed back to the Springfield hotel, & we recorded. I was especially glad that Anderson, who’d never heard or read any of my poetry, was immensely impressed with the six or seven new poems I wrote this spring vacation. I do hope to have a poetry book finished sometime this fall!
An amusing & lucrative note – sent some old sentimental poems written at Smith to the Ladies’ Home Journal – they promptly bought a sonnet* for $140. That’s $10 a line! Very welcome. We love hearing about your adventures. Do try to look up Ted’s beautiful blonde sister in Paris – she is golden-eyed, golden-haired & very delicate & tall as I am – looks about 18, although 28. She works for Nato – c/o the English Pool, Palais de Chaillot – Paris 16eme. Very worth your while – if you get this too late, try to make a side trip. DO write about England. Did you have a suit made? or see Cambridge?
Write soon –
love,
Sivvy
TO John Sweeney
Sunday 27 April 1958
TLS, University College Dublin
Apartment 3 rear
337 Elm Street
Northampton, Mass.
April 27, 1958
Mr. John Sweeney
51 Beacon Street
Boston, Mass.
Dear Jack,
A small note to say how nice it was to see you again that evening with Adrienne at Holyoke,* a very good postscript to the lovely time, amid all that fury and mire of April 11th, at the aptly named Felicia’s.
Our year has been much the finer for our knowing you and Maurya (I am never sure how to spell this & am sure there is an accent, and an e somewhere!)---and our meeting with the Merwins & the Conrads. We do look forward to the chance of seeing you once more before you set sail for Ireland.
I’m enclosing, as promised amid the turkey and rye-bread two weeks back, a few of the poems* I read for Lee Anderson.* Most of these---except “Black Rook . . .” and “The Earthenware Head”---were written quite recently, in the past month. I do hope you like some of them, parts of them. I am eager & more than eager to stop all other work, except sun-and-moon-gazing, while I work on finishing my book of poems which I hope to complete by next fall.
Our best to you and your wife,
Sincerely,
Sylvia Plath Hughes
TO Lee Anderson
Sunday 27 April 1958
TLS, Washington University (St Louis)
Apartment 3 rear
337 Elm Street
Northampton, Massachusetts
April 27, 1958
Lee Anderson
Glen Rock
Pennsylvania
Dear Lee,
I am enclosing copies, as promised, of the poems I read for your tapes two weeks ago: some carbons which I hope are legible, making up, I’m afraid, a rather vulgar motley of type-faces, or smudges.
One of the nicest things that happened to us this spring was our meeting you: as I said, after the student reading that night, we feel, perhaps a bit presumptuously, that we know you with that knowing which makes us think of you as a friend, not just an acquaintance.
We imagine you on the farm: 80 acres? and the great barn with the roof stove in by the snow. When we are able to travel, and travel for us means any arrow however short pointing away from Northampton, we shall appear on the edge of your acreage asking to see a cow, a field of wheat, and to hear you, and some of the recordings.
Meanwhile, our thanks for the pleasant surprise of that fair Friday ending an April week.
With all good wishes,
Sylvia Plath Hughes
TO Edith & William Hughes
Monday 28 April 1958
ALS, Family owned
April 28th
Hello there!
It is a rainy puddly Monday after a lovely clear sunny month. I just learned that my American literature professor isn’t having class today, so I’m staying in bed cozily reading poems & Henry James – a novel called ‘The Bostonians’* – very good & funny about the ‘blue-stocking’ women working for emancipation of women after the Civil War. Our house is cold – pleasantly reminiscent of England: Our landlady is most frugal & evidently turns off the heat for the year on the first warm day. Did you get the little ‘petits fours’ – or frosted tiny cakes we sent in the box? We want to be sure the grocer got the order right.
Ted has written some very good poems lately: he seems to be keeping up his gift in the midst of teaching – one about a pig, one about a cat & mouse, and one about the cat o’nine tails used in the British Navy.* He eats a lot of steak & salad & is in fine health. He has a very loyal & increasing following of admirers here in America – his children’s story is coming out in Jack & Jill in July (and they are interested in more) so we’ll be sure to send you a copy. In three weeks we’ll celebrate our finishing teaching by a week’s trip to New York City where we’ll go to plays, art museums & up the Empire State Building & visit all the poets we can find. Then a whole summer of writing: what other job beside teaching pays for a 3-month summer vacation? I am hoping to finish a book of poems & start a novel by next fall.
We have borrowed the lovely green park* next door as our private garden for daily walks. It is made up of grassy stretches, pink flowering trees, a little wood of elms & a tall wood of pines, and a formal garden. The red, pink & yellow tulips are up, and daffodils, bluets, grape hyacinths & phlox. We found a pheasant lives in the wood, & the grass is covered in big red robins & the trees full of squirrels. I hope to have more publishing news soon.
Meanwhile – much love to you both –
Sylvia
TO Oscar Williams*
Tuesday 10 June 1958
TLS,* Indiana University
Apartment 3 rear
337 Elm Street
Northampton, Mass.
June 10, 1958
Dear Oscar . . .
We packed up & left New York days earlier than we planned and are now back in the green glooms of Northampton with the parkful of rabbits and mange-tailed squ
irrels and no sun in sight, all rain, but a peaceable Smith-girl-less Smith and stacks of folk and fairy tales from the library.
Before leaving the city we managed a day at the Bronx zoo regarding with special pleasure the gorillas, chimpanzees, polar bears and pigheaded turtles. Your garden in the air over the bay revolves in mind with all the bright light blue of the interior sky and the multicolored portraits and animals. A fine afternoon, and we are entrenched here among the good anthologies.
I hope you like the poems.* And we hope to see you again when we return. When does the new & Ted-ending anthology* come out?
With good wishes,
sylvia plath
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Tuesday 10 June 1958
TLS with envelope on Department of English, Smith College letterhead, Indiana University
June 10: Tuesday
Dearest mother . . .
A note to announce our return from a week in New York city: the details must wait till we arrive home Thursday, the 12th, and we will barter them with you for news of Bermuda. We were very tired, but managed an amazing lot of fun, meetings and walkings for miles in our 5 days. We just caught Ted’s two publishers* before they sailed & had a posh pink-table-clothed dinner with them at the Biltmore.* Went to the tar-roofed top of a business building in Wall Street to the famous anthologist Oscar Williams’ little crow’s nest full of oil paintings & flowering plants made and grown by his dead poet-painter wife,* & mementoes of their dearest friend Dylan Thomas. A fine afternoon overlooking the bay & sniffing mint leaves, and we went to two parties with him afterwards to strange people he’s published in his anthologies: one a rich 5th avenue party where we rode up in the elevator with Lionel & Diana Trilling:* the place was full of publishers, editors & Columbia professors. The novelist Ralph Ellison,* old Farrar* of Farrar, Strauss, Cudahy, the editor of the Hudson Review* & suchlike. Then a late & sumptuous bouffet at the home of Hy Sobiloff,* owner of Sloane’s 5th Avenue Furniture store & very dull wealthy business people but a fine negro cook whose food & artistry in table arrangement of cakes & strawberries & melons & praised to her pleasure.
We spent a whole day at the Bronx zoo & happened by chance to sit on the train next to Clyde Beatty’s brother* who works in a lion’s cage there & is very happy & a charming person, telling us much about the animals. A beautiful zoo, with wide open spaces for most of the animals, not jail cells.
We took Patsy out to a little candle-lit cave in Greenwich Village for dinner to equate rent for the apartment she generously let us use* which of course saved us all living fees & made the trip possible. Then we went to a play by Garcia Lorca, “Blood Wedding.”* I didn’t tell anybody, but I thought you’d be amused at the coincidence that dogs my steps: coming down in the subway afterwards I almost ran into Dick Wertz,* Nancy Hunter’s old flame, who was at Cambridge when I was and is marrying a Smith girl* from my class who is teaching with me this year. I was about to speak to him, as his back was turned to me, when talking to him I saw Richard Sassoon.* I kept quiet & passed by & probably only I of all the 5 people knew about it. Of all the people in NYC!
We walked miles, lunched with our editor friend at World Publishing Company & they are still interested in seeing my poetry book as it is early this fall. We strolled through Central Park, Harlem, Fifth Avenue & took Ted up to the top of the Empire State Building & had my fortune told by a summy subway gypsy whose card, ironically enough, showed a picture of a mailman & said I’d get a wonderful letter soon that would change my life for the better. We saw the Bowery bums & the Harlem negroes and the Fifth Avenue tycoons & best of all, Marianne Moore who was lovely at her home in Brooklyn* & admires Ted very much & served us strawberries, sesame seed biscuits & milk & talked a blue streak. Can we reserve tickets & take you to see her this Sunday?* Our last night after Marianne Moore was lovely too: two experimental Ionesco plays* & a good dinner in the Village.
We hope to come home for supper Thursday: my reading-recording is Friday afternoon* & we’ll go to dinner with Jack Sweeney that night. Mrs. Prouty has asked us (Ted & me) for dinner Sunday noon, but I thought maybe you & grampy & Ted & me could have a special dinner Monday the 16th to celebrate our 2nd anniversary. How about it? And then we must return to Hamp & get to work. We also hope to look at Beacon Hill apartments while at home.
Much love,
Sivvy
PS – Many thanks for the magazines–
TO Warren Plath
Wednesday 11 June 1958
TLS (photocopy), Indiana University
June 11, 1958
Dearest Warren . . .
It was fine to get your good letter. I am so happy you are coming home in only two months. Life here for the past month has been such a holocaust that I lost all sense of timing and have been a frightful letter writer as my work began to go round faster & faster like a merrygoround. Which, at last, has stopped, & Ted and I are just beginning to recover, teaching over & done with for the present. I realize, as I start to write, how many letters I’ve written you in my head & how much I’ve missed you. There are so very few people in the world I really care about, & I guess you and Ted are the closest of all. Perhaps we can go for picnic & swim at the Cape to celebrate your return. I want so much, over the course of this next year, when I hope we’ll be very close & you coming over to dinner often (we’re going to look for a Boston apartment this weekend) and visiting us much, to hear, bit by bit, about your ideas and experiences in Europe and of your work at Harvard. You know I’ve always had a secret desire to go to Harvard, & the next best thing is your going. I have that horrid habit mothers get of being secretly determined all my sons will go to Harvard.
I finished teaching on May 22nd & felt honestly sorry to say goodbye to my girls. I was amused at my last day of classes to get applause in the exact volume of my own feelings toward every class: a spatter at 9, a thunderous ovation at 11 which saw me down two flights of stairs, and a medium burst at 3. Now that it is over, I can’t believe I’ve taught 20 stories, 2 novels, 10 plays, and countless poems including the Waste Land. But I have. And I’ve done more than I thought or hoped for those first black weeks of teaching which upset me very much: I think I have chosen excellent works, won over my most difficult pupils & taught them a good deal. But on the whole, my colleagues have depressed me: it is disillusioning to find the people you admired as a student are weak and jealous and petty and vain as people, which many of them are. And the faculty gossip, especially among the men, over morning coffee, afternoon tea, and evening cocktails is very boring: all about the latest gossip, possible apointments, firings, grants, students, literary criticism: all secondary, it seems: an airtight secure community, with those on tenure getting potbellies. Writers especially are suspect if they don’t place academic life first, & we have seen one or two of our writing acquaintances given very raw & nasty deals. Of course, we have been at an advantage, both having resigned in face of requests to stay. But it has been impossible for either of us to get any work done & we feel that if we drifted into this well-paid security we would curse ourselves in ten years time for what might have been.
I am sure, for example, that Ted has the makings of a great poet, and he already has some loyal supporters like Marianne Moore (whom we visited at her Brooklyn flat this week in NYC) and TS Eliot, whom we hope to see when we go to England: Ted is better than any poet I can think of ten years his senior & I feel as a wife the best I can do is demand nothing but that we find workable schemes whereby we both can write & live lives which are dictated by inner needs for creative expansion & experience.
Of course there are very few people who can understand this. There is something suspect, especially in America, about people who don’t have ten-year plans for a career or at least a regular job. We found this out when trying to establish credit at a local general store: we fitted, amusingly enough, into none of the form categories of “The Young American Couple”: I had a job, Ted didn’t; we owned
no car, were buying no furniture on the installment plan, had no TV, had no charge accounts, came as if literally dropped from foreign parts. The poor secretary was very perplexed. Anyhow, I can talk to you freely about our plans, if not to mother: she worries so that the most we can do is put up an illusion of security: security to us is in ourselves, & no job, or even money, can give us what we have to develop: faith in our work, & hard hard work which is spartan in many ways. Ted is especially good for me because he doesn’t demand Immediate Success & Publication, and is training me not to. We feel the next five years are as important to our writing as medical school is to a prospective surgeon. Ted says simply to produce, work, produce, read not novels or poems only, but books on folk lore, fiddler crabs & meteorites: this is what the imagination thrives on. The horror of the academic writer is that he lives on air & other peoples’ second-hand accounts of other peoples’ writing.
We have a friend named Stanley Sultan who has published several stories* & teaches writing here: he is very young & very academically inclined (wrote PhD. thesis on James Joyce)* and he showed us a story he’d just finished & obviously liked. It was written in the person of the wife of a Coney Island dwarf who had been killed as a kind of game by being forced to drink a six-pack of beer in a crowd who were angered at his trying to hinder a cat’s killing a rat stuck in a drain-pipe. Well, the story seemed grey to us, & dull, but the point of view was good. What bothered us was the possibility of a cat killing a rat (rats being very strong, Ted having seen them kill cats & wound dogs seriously) by a few cuffs of the paw, and also the unlikelihood of a couple of young men being able to kill a dwarf by flooding his small stomach with six cans of beer on a main street in a crowd of people: simply to get down a sip of beer would be difficult enough, and all this wasn’t described. But the reality of the story seemed very questionable. Anyway, this writer wasn’t at all concerned with these problems, & surprised at our raising them: what mattered was: did we get the symbolism? the parallel between dwarf and rat? the rat stuck in the drainpipe and the round shape of beercans paralleling this. Well, you see what I mean: the writer is cut off from life & begins to think as he analyzes stories in class: very differently from the way a writer feels reality: which, according to many teachers, is too simple as such & needs symbols, irony, archetypal images & all that. Well, we will try to get along without such conscious & contrived machinery. We write, and wake up with symbols on our pages, but do not begin with them.