by Sylvia Plath
What are you doing and what have you done these last five years? Persons, places, words. I look back with a kind of exhaustion at the voyagings and shifting of scenery and wonder where to begin. Much better would be seeing you in person. I have an aversion to reunions and wish very much you could manage a stop-over in Boston. We have, alas, no place to put anybody up in our two very small rooms – with a view, but you could get a room nearby & come for meals, swan-boat rides, and it would be such fun. We’ll probably be here up till the end of August, and there is an arts festival, open-air exhibits etc., sometime in June for about a week. Couldn’t you come for that, or any time?
As you can see, we have left Northampton. Ted was bothered by the extreme provincial nature of the town, seeing only one’s colleagues for morning coffee, lunch, cocktails, dinner and the evening, and the gossip over students, who supply the main course of conversation, and the petty politicking for positions, promotions, etc. I was asked back, and also for this year to teach writing, which I would much less like to teach than freshman English (I managed to fit in Dostoevsky and Sophocles along with DH Lawrence and James Joyce). However, although I loved teaching, the great conflict was with writing. I wore my eyes out on 70 student themes every other week and had no energy for writing a thing. Ironically, I could have gone on teaching without a PhD because of my writing. But we made the break, both of us turning down teaching jobs to live on a shoestring for a year in Boston writing to see what we could do, and Ted has just finished his second book of poems and I my first, which I will start sending the rounds to publishers some time this summer. Unfortunately there is no money in the poetry books, although Ted’s first book, being a prize-winner in America and a Book Society choice in England, sold more than many first novels. We have a steady trickle of little checks for magazine publications but not enough to bank on. So Ted is working on a play* and both of us plan to try our hand at children’s books this spring. I hear from reputable sources that children’s books are pleasantly lucrative, sell better and longer than most novels.
Which makes me wonder, have you tried illustrating children’s books? Your drawings are so full of verve I should think you could make a wonderful thing of it. If I ever did get a book done would you think of doing pictures for it? What fun that would be. Please do write very concrete details about who you work for, and how and all else. O do come to Boston for a visit.
We have just been “invited” to an artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs, New York, from September 9th to November 9th, a kind of great estate which feeds you and gives you a studio to finish creative work, no-talking to a soul from 9 to 4, and no organized activities, which lifts some of my suspicion of writers’ colonies. And gardens, woods and bass-ponds. After that, Ted has just got word of a Guggenheim* grant which will keep us in Boston for six months and then take us to Rome for six months. Ted is so homesick for the moortops of Yorkshire that I think we may settle in England eventually.
All the more reason for you to come visit us before we go!
Please forgive my tardy letter and chalk it up to a horrible habit of procrastination. Do write, even just a note, as soon as you can, and please say you can come to Boston for a while!
Love,
Syl
PS It was very wholesome being reminded of my five-year-ago words about the New Yorker. It gave me a healthy perspective. Now you can record me as saying it is my lifelong ambition to get a story in the darn magazine!
sph
TO Howard Moss
Thursday 23 April 1959
TLS, New York Public Library
Suite 61
9 Willow Street
Boston 8, Massachusetts
April 23, 1959
Mr. Howard Moss
THE NEW YORKER
25 West 43rd Street
New York 36, New York
Dear Mr. Moss:
I am glad to hear* you are taking WATERCOLOR OF GRANCHESTER MEADOWS* and MAN IN BLACK* for The New Yorker and in agreement with your using the sub-title Cambridge, England under WATERCOLOR.
I am dubious about altering the last line of stanza 1 in WATERCOLOR. I mean “of good color” as an adverbial phrase parallel with “nimble-winged”, the gist being “flits nimble-winged and colorful thickets”. Is this grammatically possible and understandable? I am bothered by adding “is” after “and” because it alters my meaning and, I think, holds up the movement of the line, which I hope can be read “flits nimble-winged . . . and (flits) of good color”. I very much hope it may be possible to do without adding “is”.
With all good wishes,
Sincerely yours,
Sylvia Plath
TO Alice Norma Davis
Tuesday 28 April 1959
TLS, Smith College Archives
Suite 61
9 Willow Street
Boston 8, Massachusetts
April 28, 1959
Miss Alice Norma Davis
Director
The Vocational Office
Smith College Northampton, Massachusetts
Dear Miss Davis:
Since your last letter of September 23rd I have had no word from you about jobs in Boston and Cambridge.
Now that summer is coming round I wonder whether any full-time or part-time jobs in Boston or Cambridge will be available, through your office, for the summer months. I should very much appreciate your letting me know roughly how much chance I stand of finding summer work* through the Vocational Office, if that is possible.
Sincerely yours,
Sylvia Plath Hughes, 1955
TO Esther & Leonard Baskin
Tuesday 28 April 1959
TLS, British Library
Suite 61
9 Willow Street
Boston 8, Massachusetts
April 28, 1959
Dear Esther & Leonard,
It was very good seeing you both, the Man With Owl,* and the lovely Tobias, and the Fire too, a week ago Friday.* We came back weary from our trip, mammoth stay-at-homes as we are, and are just now recovering, having slept 12 hours a night for the last week. It is so good to get back to work with no people no phonecalls no nothing.
What do you hear about the Night Animals. We are eager to get a copy of the book in our hands: tell the estimable Miss McLeod to get out her printed contracts and bind herself to something that will surpass Reid,* Shahn & Co. Ted is working on a children’s book himself tentatively called Meet My Folks, poems about various mad relatives. Also a collection of Oriental fox stories (he thinks he may put a badger or two in as he likes them immensely, but I say just foxes, and then a whole book for badgers, they’re fat enough). He is delighted with the prospect of four months more here ever since he discovered (last week) that an old red fox had made its abode under the Boston State House, tunnelling mysteriously about until unearthed by somebody from the Animal Rescue League.
Leonard, I want to ask you would you let me dedicate my poem “Sculptor” (which should be on that mimeographed sheet* we left with you) to you? It was written for you, but I felt you might not like the poem. I have not any poems dedicated to anyone, but would like to say: To Leonard Baskin under the title. Ted has given “Esther’s Tomcat” to the world & this is what I would like to do with “Sculptor”. I know parts of it are rank falsehood, for you claim to have no dreams, but let me know if you are willing, it would mean a very great deal. Rather like some lady from the Botteghe Oscure asking Michelange if she might dedicate a canzone to him, but then.
We will drive up again to see you before or after our two months at Yaddo.
Love to you both, & Tobias,
Sylvia & Ted
TO Emilie McLeod
Saturday 2 May 1959
TLS (photocopy), Yale University
Suite 61
9 Willow Street
Boston 8, Massachusetts
May 2, 1959
Mrs. Emilie W. McLeod
Editor, Children’s Books
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS
Boston 16, Massachusetts
Dear Mrs. McLeod,
I’m sending along The Bed Book.* I hope you may have as much fun reading it as I had writing it. I wrote verses about 10 beds in detail, as a kind of dialogue between Wide-Awake Will and Stay-Uppity Sue.* I think an illustrator would have a good time with it, and I tried to make it very pictorial, a few lines, or at most, a verse or so, for each possible picture.
At any rate, let me know what you think of it, and I’ll be grateful for any criticism you may have---too many beds, too few, too what-ever-it-is. I’d be happy to do more work on it if you think it might help.
Ted is in the middle of “Meet My Folks”, the book of rhymes about weird relatives, and doing research on Fox Tales of the Orient, which goes more slowly. He should have both of these done some time this summer.
With all good wishes,
Sincerely,
Sylvia Plath
TO Edward Weeks
Thursday 7 May 1959
TLS (photocopy), Yale University
Suite 61
9 Willow Street
Boston 8, Massachusetts
May 7, 1959
Mr. Edward Weeks
Editor
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
8 Arlington Street
Boston 16, Massachusetts
Dear Mr. Weeks:
I am enclosing a selection of recent poems,* set variously in Massachusetts, England and Spain, in hopes that you may like something among them enough for publication in the Atlantic. Perhaps “Alicante Lullaby” might be considered under Light Verse in the “Accent on Living.”
With all good wishes, I am
Sincerely yours,
Sylvia Plath
TO William Maxwell*
Friday 22 May 1959
TLS, New York Public Library
Suite 61
9 Willow Street
Boston 8, Massachusetts
May 22, 1959
Mr. William Maxwell
THE NEW YORKER
25 West 43rd Street
New York 36, New York
Dear Mr. Maxwell:
I am sending along to you, at the suggestion of Alfred Kazin, two stories---“Sweetie Pie And The Gutter Men” and “The Shadow”---in hopes that you may consider them for publication in The New Yorker.
Although I have had poems published in The New Yorker, I have not previously sent in any fiction. Other stories of mine have appeared in Seventeen and Mademoiselle.
With all good wishes, I am
Sincerely yours,
Sylvia Plath
TO Edith & William Hughes
Sunday 24 May 1959
TLS, Family owned
Sunday
May 24, 1959
Dear Ted’s mother & dad,
Well, it is at last cool again, after a record heat spell which had Ted & me sitting sweltering in front of our fan drinking bottles of iced beer. It is a pleasant grey Sunday and very quiet and peaceful, and from where I sit I can see the green leaves of the Public Gardens across the roofs of the red brick buildings. We have just put $1,250 in the bank, the first quarter of Ted’s Guggenheim money, and are feeling that pleasant sense of well-being which comes from knowing there is money coming in for the whole next year and nothing to worry about.
We had Herbert Hitchen* here yesterday, the Unitarian minister from Northampton, born in Yorkshire, who reminds us in many ways of Uncle Walt. He is full of stories and good humor and has done all sorts of things, farming, visiting the concentration camps on a relief mission after the war, and knows, or did know, all the poets in England & America and has an amazing collection of poetry & Irish books.* We are going to the annual New England Poetry Society “Golden Rose” meeting tomorrow as his guest at the Harvard Faculty Club---that is where Ted read the other week and was so enthusiastically received.
The prospect of driving to California and Mexico---if we can only get our apartment sublet for those two summer months---is making us work harder than ever. We have both finished books of verse-stories for children & are waiting to hear about them, both about finished a book of poems, and Ted is finishing his play, and I several stories which are better than any I have written yet. I have had a second article accepted* by the Christian Science Monitor, that international newspaper, called “A Walk To Withens” and it is about Ted & me going to Wuthering Heights. I’ll send you a clipping when it comes out.
I am finishing up my part-time job as secretary to the Chairman of the Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies at Harvard, very interesting work, as he is also the head of a wealthy family Hotel Spa in Virginia, and I write his lecture notes up about India, and letters to monks and Buddhists, and letters about ski lodges and snow-making machines. I just work two or three afternoons a week which is about right.
Did I tell you I am braiding a rug of strips of colored wool I get from Mill End Shops? It is very bright and cheerful & Ted likes it. He is fine, and I just got him a red & black wool sweater which looks wonderful on him.
Love to all,
Sylvia
TO Gerald & Joan Hughes
Sunday 24 May 1959
TLS, Indiana University
Sunday May 24
Dear Gerald & Joan,
It was so good to hear from you. We are both very relieved that the jet airport will not take your house---the thought that they might made me curse every jet I heard breaking the sound barrier overhead ‘Maybe that is one of Gerald & Joan’s jets,” thought I, “Blast them.” We are thinking at present of getting a big house in the country outside London. As if we could afford it. But this Guggenheim money will pay our fares back to England and a year’s writing, which will earn us heaven knows how much. Ideally, we’d like a house both in England & America, but we’ll start with England---and enjoy staying close to Europe, as it seems as far as the moon from here.
We plan to take a camping trip this summer, borrowing my mother’s car, to California and Mexico, through all the big national parks. I am very excited about this, and so is Ted, as we’ve never seen anything west of New York. Then we will go for September & October to this castle Artists’ Colony in New York State where we have both been invited to spend two free months writing. I won’t have to shop or cook, which will be a wonderful change, although I’ll probably be dying for a homemade cheese cake or fish chowder after a week. We plan to write up all our summer experiences there, then sail for England sometime in the winter.
Ted & I have both finished writing books of verse for children & are hoping to sell them here. His is called “Meet My Folks”, 8 very funny rhymes about a zany family. Mine is called “The Bed Book”, about ten fantastic beds this little brother & sister dream up so going to bed would be interesting: they are terrible children and would stay up till midnight if their parents didn’t give them opium or something. Ted’s finishing his play, and I am finishing a couple of short stories. My ambition at this point is to get a story in the New Yorker. They have taken two more poems, so this year I have earned over $500 from them, for only 4 poems, which is rare pay. I’ve also got a second free-lance article accepted by The Christian Science Monitor, that international newspaper, and as they pay up to $50 an article, I hope to capitalize by writing our experiences up this summer.
Ted is thriving. He is handsomer than ever. I just got him a red & black-weave wool sweater which looks marvelous on him. And a couple of hopsacking neckties. If he has any faults they are not shutting the icebox (a kind of subconscious revenge on American appliances) and knotting his clothes up in unknottable balls and hurling them about the floor of the room every evening before retiring. Oh yes, and the occasional black Moods when he pretends the cat’s ear is broken or that the air is full of Strontium 90. Other than these minor foibles he is extremely good-natured, thoughtful and almost normal. He eats well, too, although he complains that I am trying to kill him with protein diet (after he has come home from a friend’s house this is, and eat
en a 7 course dinner topped off by a layer cake saturated with brandy) and also that I hide things and secretly destroy them: i.e., mislaid papers, certain books, old coats, letters from the British tax authorities. I bear up as well as I am able.
I wish we could see you. If I ever get a Guggenheim we will come by packet boat to Australia for a visit. Couldn’t you ever ever fly to England? For a visit? I hope we won’t all be white-haired by the time we meet.
Do write us again soon. Send pictures of you & the children.
With love to all,
Sylvia
TO Olwyn Hughes
c. Monday 25 May 1959*
TLS (incomplete), British Library
2.
I have done four stories* this year which I am very pleased with, and am working on a fifth, and hope to get some response from them eventually as I send them around. I’ve been publishing a good bit in the Christian Science Monitor & they’ve accepted a second article from me about Withens, so I should get up to $50 for each article I do them, and plan to write a ream during our trip this summer. My big ambition at this point, besides, of course, getting a book published, is to have a story accepted by the New Yorker. They pay fabulously, and have much work, especially the long biographical articles and articles by AJ Liebling,* which I admire immensely. Well, in 10 years of hard work at the trade, that may come. And suddenly my typewriter will turn to solid gold and the keys play the Eroica* or something equivalent.
In my teatimes I am braiding a rug of brightly colored wool remnants which I get from a Mill End Place and cut to size, and Ted is delighted with it. I find a great peace in working on it, as if all my worries and bothers flowed away in to the fabric and turned into bright-colored patterns, and Ted reads me Shakespeare while I work, so it is much fun.