by Sylvia Plath
I’m glad your talk with Kelly was positive in favoring your German. Hard work in it now will pay dividends in the end & I’m sure you’ll love it & be glad for the intensive reviewing & study later. Do work on planning your summer in Germany in 1961! Let us know the latest developments. Have you talked with Peebles yet? Or that young man who has the friendly wife?
Keep your spirits up & get more of those pills you gave me for nights when sleep is extra important. Treat yourself well – have naps & relaxings, hot milk & honey & don’t walk out in the rain. Don’t forget to mail my Christmas cards. I’m mailing the rest from here.
Love,
Sivvy
TO Rachel MacKenzie
Friday 18 December 1959
TLS, New York Public Library
c/o Hughes
The Beacon
Heptonstall Slack
Hebden Bridge
Yorkshire, England
December 18, 1959
Miss Rachel MacKenzie
THE NEW YORKER
25 West 43rd Street
New York 36, New York
Dear Miss MacKenzie,
Here are the proofs of “The Net Menders”. The suggestions for commas and hyphens are fine. I’d like “madonna” without a capital m, and would prefer “bride-lace” or “bridelace”, to “bride’s lace”, if that is all right.
I’m sorry not to be able to be any help about Tomas Ortunio, one of the main back streets in Benidorm. At the time, someone suggested the street might be named after a local hero, but I don’t have any Spanish histories handy and am quite curious to find out the origin of the street’s name myself.
With all good wishes.
Sincerely yours,
Sylvia Plath
P.S. For the next half year or so I shall be living at the Yorkshire address above.
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Saturday 26 December 1959
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Saturday night
December 26, 1959
Dearest mother,
I am sitting, about to go to bed, in the little second parlor downstairs by a roaring coal fire with the rain swatting against the triple window in front of me, very comfortable, after a light supper of creamed turkey and mushrooms on toast I made. Olwyn is out for dinner; Ted’s parents are dozing in the front parlor after admiring the lovely book on America you sent them (you couldn’t have chosen better), and Ted upstairs in our bedroom at his desk, copying out the manuscript version of his first book which he hopes to sell to a man in London who is scouting for an American University out West.
It scarcely seems possible we have been here two weeks. I have spent most of my time eating and sleeping, and typing some things for Ted and the new manuscript of my poetry book (about 86 pages). It has rained and blown almost constantly (reread Ted’s poem Wind, it’s perfect), but we have gone out for brief walks. Now we are pretty much rested up and in very good health. Next Sunday, right after new year’s, we go to London to stay a few days, as long as we need, to locate a good comfortable apartment within easy walking distance of a big park, shops, a laundromat, etc. in Central London. We look forward to the trip and hope to spend our evenings going to plays. We have had tea at each of Ted’s relatives: an Aunt Hilda and an Uncle Walter (the wealthy one), and taught Ted’s sister and Hilda’s daughter Vicky (21, an art-teacher in grammar school, and very nice) how to play Tarock, and we play a great deal. I would like a refresher course with you experts, however, as I am sure there are many conventions we do not know---various ways to reveal yourself to your partner, etc. Anyway, your Tarock pack is in good use.
We loved your big package: opened it Christmas Eve. Ted looks handsome in his shirt, it fits perfectly. Oddly enough, I was just going to write you and ask you to get the pink version of that wonderful blue nightgown the day before! It is the warmest, lightest gown I have & the front opens far enough for me to nurse the baby in it. Imagine my surprise to open my package and find you had answered my thoughts! You also couldn’t have gotten me anything more attractive and comfortable than those tights. I am wearing the black ones now. They look striking as stockings with my high heels, and of course go into my flat shoes and provide a much-needed warmth for my thighs, a real blessing. My wool knee socks didn’t do this, and were too clumsy for any dressup occasion. Also, the elastic waist and pants’ top fits me perfectly, even in my 6th month, and is a restful support on my legs. If you could possibly get me another black pair, just like these, I’d be most grateful. The red is lovely, for casual wear, but the black I can wear anywhere: it’s amazing how smart they are with my red & black heels. The scarf for Olwyn was lovely, very chic. No other packages or letters have come: just the last bundle of letters in your airmail envelope: DONT send anything airmail, unless its a thin New Yorker letter, because it’s outrageously expensive!
When Ted’s two stories (The Caning & Miss Mambrett And The Wet Cellar) come back from the NYorker, let us know, & send them on to the Atlantic in the envelopes I’ve left you. When my big poetry ms. comes back from Farrar, Straus (they must have sent it by now) just keep it for scrap-paper:* I’ve typed up my large and new version of the book here.
So far, I’ve made fish soup, Dot’s meatloaf, oatmeal cookies, apple kuchen, your bread stuffing (for the Xmas turkey which Ted & I cooked: a 7½ lb. turkey for $6! Isn’t that an awful lot? Meat here is as expensive as at home, and cosmetics, too) . . . all of which makes me feel less homesick. Olwyn is very nice, a beautiful blond slim girl, my height & size, with yellow-green eyes and delicate graceful bone structure: looks 21, not 31. I get along with her much better now that she’s really accepted me as Ted’s wife & like her immensely. She has a long vacation from her job as sec./translator for a French theater agency in Paris, her most interesting job yet.
Dot’s present to “Junior Hughes” was a pair of exquisite green bootees all laced with white ribbon. Ted & I wore our twin shirts on Xmas day; they are handsome. I’ll write her tomorrow to thank her. Hope your record came, and that you like the pajamas, or get some you like in exchange! Do the gloves fit Warren? Ted’s mother got him some good English gloves. I forgot your size-slips, yours & Warren’s: do send them on. Olwyn gave me a marvelous pair of cinnamon-colored paris kid gloves which fit like a second skin: Vicky & Hilda gave me a perfume & talcum set; Ted’s mom, two baby sweaters & two prs. of nylons; Ted’s dad a 5 pound note. No tree, which I missed. But Ted & I will have a little one next year for our Nicholas/Katharine (do you like Katharine Frieda Hughes as a name?) DO WRITE. I miss you & Warren & Sappho immensely & look for letters.
Ted joins in sending love,
Sivvy
PS: Weren’t you the secretive one when we went running about looking for our big blue Turkish bath towel! Did you remember you had padded our presents with it?
TO Joseph & Dorothy Benotti
Sunday 27 December 1959
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Sunday
December 27, 1959
Dear Dotty and Joe,
Ted & I are still up here in Yorkshire, and after New Year’s this week will go down to London to look for an apartment there within easy walking distance of the city’s big parks, shops and so on. Ever since we’ve come it’s poured rain and been wildly windy: Ted’s parents’ house is on top of a hill and gets all the rough weather going. No snow for Christmas, just about a foot of water. I wonder if you had snow: we read about blizzards in America, but the papers didn’t say just where.
We celebrated Christmas on the Eve, and were delighted with the beautiful presents. The warm slippers, Bobby and Nancy, are just the thing for this cold weather where there is no central heating (at least not in this house) and your breath stands out in white puffs when you’re a few feet away from the fireplace. Ted & I wore the handsome twin shirts all Christmas Day: we made the turkey and stuffing, as Ted’s mother’s not a good cook: she boils everyt
hing, including steak, and her pastries which she makes without any recipe, would sink like a battleship. I’ve made your meatloaf, Dot, which everybody ate as if it were roast beef, and am eager to get to my own kitchen again, where I can try out the carrot-fruit cake, the lemon sponge cake and all. I do love to cook & just can’t understand how anybody can be a bad cook when the recipes are so simple and easy to follow. Of course I try to make as much as I can, while I’m here, but it’s a battle in a tiny, messy kitchen with no supplies. We remember with joy the superlative feast you made for us before we left, & I must say I come from a family of wonderful cooks, a tradition which I hope to keep up as soon as we find a place in London. Ted will finish the next half-year on his grant and then look for a job in London.
I just loved the baby’s bootees! They are so delicate and pretty, really among the very “special” things I am getting together. I plan to get a doctor and hospital lined up in London the week after this, after investigating maternity plans on socialized medicine. Do call up mummy now & then & be optimistic and cheer her up---I know she’d love to be around when the baby’s born, and want to help: and of course there’s noone like your own mother. Mrs. Hughes is a very simple, but nervous woman, who can’t imagine that hospitals in the city are better than drunken country doctors & it will be a relief to get away from her worrying. Luckily Ted will be free to help me through all this & is very strong, sensible and kind, a real support.
A hundred thanks again for the perfectly lovely presents (I’ve never seen shirts I like so much, just the right color & pattern for us) & Ted joins me in sending our best love to you all.
Affectionately,
Sylvia
1960
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Sunday 10 January 1960
ALS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Sunday
January 10
Dear Mother . . .
I have no idea when I last wrote you, but it was a long time back. Ted & I have been in London for just a week now and out of touch with everything in Yorkshire, including mail, so I don’t know what’s waiting for us there. The search for an apartment has been very tiring: London is so enormous in area, & very expensive by American standards.* We have limited our range by deciding against ‘living out’ in one of the depressing outer districts ½ hour away from the center, insisted on living near a big park, so I can enjoy wheeling the baby out. Furnished apartments are hard to get in town & to get a clean, cheerful one almost impossible. Dirty gloomy ones with kitchen, bath, bedroom & livingroom being about $21 a week & no heating or hot water. We saw one we’d have got like a shot on a newly decorated top floor in a charming (rare) street near Kensington Gardens with two bedrooms, a fridge, hot water for $24 a week but were appalled to find it had been taken half an hour before we could get there – the same with a basement flat near Regents’ Park. All the other ones we’ve seen through agents & newspaper ads after endless bus & subway trips, are impossible. Now we are considering unfurnished flats & thanks to an industrious & influential British lady,* wife of a young American poet, will look at some tomorrow with hot water, central heating, a fridge – at about 10 minutes walk from Regents’ Park & very good shops. We’d invest in a new double bed & get tables & chairs in second-hand shops slowly – a small start toward furnishing a home. But that’s tomorrow. Junk & second hand shops here are good for sturdy furniture, china, etc. We started out living in a cold, cheerless room & breakfast place for $5 a day, but hunting for the other two meals was a bore & inconvenient so now we are much more comfortable & have moved into a spare room here at 18 Rugby Street with Helga & Daniel Huws & their 2-year old daughter Magdalene. Now we can easily cook our meals & that is very restful. Helga is a real German hausfrau – scrubs, polishes, so although they live in a condemned district her two floors are clean & colorful – her German cooking is delightful & makes me feel at home. We had a Sunday dinner of bratwurst & sauerkraut with juniper berries & a dessert of yoghurt & applesauce – she makes good Christmas cookies & had a wonderful tree – fat & green tablesize with flat stars of straw she made & yellow candles & hung with fruit & nuts. She talks German to the little girl all the time & disciplines her very strictly.
Thanks to Dido Merwin (the British woman) & her husband Bill I got an appointment with their doctor* yesterday – whom I liked immediately. He examined me, weighed me (I’m 145, only 10 pounds more than usual) & referred me to his partner who is an obstetrician* & I shall go to his prenatal clinic Thursday. The procedure here is radically different from America & I’m not sure but that I shall like it better. Hospital beds are spoken for at least eight months ahead of time & except in special cases all childbirth is ‘natural’, without anesthesia (because this is less expensive, I imagine) & the hospitals keep you 12 days. Midwives do most of the deliveries, or students. My doctor said at this date I could only be got in to hospital as an ‘Emergency’ patient – no bed, or ward or such – or I could be delivered at home by him or his partner, if I preferred them to a midwife, & be given care & advice by a trained nurse. After the first baby, most deliveries here are home deliveries. This sounded much the best thing to me & if one of these unfurnished flats comes through (they are just around the corner from his office) I shall be all set, & very glad to escape the crowded labor wards & hospital food, etc. Ted will cook & care for me, I shall get good sleep & not feel lonely & cut off as I would in a hospital. The best care here is under the System (my doctor treats wealthy people) & so the baby should be perfectly free – also reductions on milk & orange juice are given new mothers. If Ted had paid health insurance I’d even be paid about $30 for getting baby things by the state! So I hope we will get an apartment set up this week. I need a good bath & a good rest. We’ll spend Mrs. Prouty’s money on a bed for us, a crib & a pram etc.
The weather here has gotten very cold & bitter. No snow as yet. My coat & those tights you sent are a blessing. Looking for a place is worst when you’ve no real home-base to set out from. If you write me here this week I’m likely to get the letter soonest & look forward to hearing from you. I am dying to get a place of my own – clean & cheerful, however bare at first. Poor Ted has had a bad cold & both of us have been tired & gloomy from this running about – the worst season of the year, of course, to home-hunt. I shall make Dot’s meat-loaf for us all tonight. Once we get a foothold in London, life will become much easier & pleasanter & I think I shall like it better than anywhere else, but I have gone through a very homesick & weary period. Mrs. Hughes has made me a marvelous wool bathrobe – warm as a coat, for Xmas.
Love to you & Warren.
S.
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Saturday 16 January 1960
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Saturday, January 16th
Dearest mother,
Ted & I arrived back at the Beacon last night after two gruelling weeks in London to find three good letters waiting from you: you have no idea how much mail from you means, especially now, when I most miss having you with us. The baby’s Christmas package was waiting, too, with the three bright Carters* nighties and the beautiful set of bootees, bonnet & sweater. I just wept with joy over the marvelous little teddy bear Warren sent, which brought back our family of teddy bears we had in Winthrop & all those wonderful stories you told us about them.* I didn’t write for so long because I was unbelievably tired and grumpy about our depressing search for an apartment in London & literally couldn’t lift a pen. I really don’t remember what I said in the letter I did write.
Now I am sitting in the big warm bathrobe Mrs. Hughes made me for Christmas with a crackling coal fire at my back, overlooking a sunny (for the first time in a month) landscape of dazzling snow-covered moortops and a raft of billowing clouds racing under a blue sky. Our first snow. I had a hot bath last night, my first in two weeks (Helga puts up with the lack of a bathroom in their London flat, and a public toilet 3 flights down in a dirty open cellar with a Germanic stoicism) & am ju
st waiting till the water heats to wash my grubby hair. Now Olwyn is gone, the house is no longer overcrowded & very peaceful. No particular publishing news. I think Faber will use one or two of Ted’s stories, we dont know which yet, in the anthology they’re doing. I didn’t send any in for I only had a couple of very American slangy ones & felt it better not to send them, especially as they are doing so much of Ted’s work now, and are so polite it would embarrass them to reject anything. They sent on a copy of the papercover of Ted’s book which amazed & delighted us: a triumph as covers go.
After traveling endlessly on busses, subways & taxis, London having a terrifying area, and seeing ugly, dirty, too expensive furnished & unfurnished flats & getting more & more cold & tired, we ended up with two possibilities practically nextdoor to my doctor (an important consideration now, with my delivering the baby at home). One was an unbelievably big & beautiful furnished groundfloor flat overlooking a road and Primrose Hill (a green park across the street from Regents Park) from the big front room, and a charming garden & statues from the mammoth bedroom & glassedin kitchen & dining area, at 9 guineas ($27) a week, to be heated by electric fires (extra). We could have afforded this on the Guggenheim for a year & it would have been available right away, but the owner, who lived downstairs & was presently away doing his decorating work in the Bahamas, had said No Children. We telegrammed to see if a crib-size baby would be all right for a year, but there was & is as yet no answer. The other alternative (& a rare one) is a 3rd floor flat (unfurnished) in a 4 story (5, with basement) house in a quiet square overlooking a little green with benches & fence for mothers & children, in 5 minutes walking distance from Primrose Hill & beautiful Regents Park (with a zoo, swings, sandboxes, swans, flowers, etc.), a laundromat, shops, my doctors etc. The whole house is in the act of being all done over-over, painted, papered, a bathroom put in & would mean our starting in on buying our own things. The flat is really too small (a bedroom, livingroom & kitchen big enough for eating in, & minute bathroom) & lacks a study for Ted, but it is only 6 guineas ($18) a week (gas & electricity extra) on a 3-year lease which is sublettable or assignable. It won’t be ready till Feb. 1st, another minor problem, & we’ll need to buy a stove, little fridge & double bed & crib & two electric heaters (I’ve at last found a good model with a fan which circulates warm air) & lots of incidentals. Our marvelous friends the Merwins have tables, chairs & rugs to loan us until we pick up our own here & there in the excellent 2nd-hand shops in London. So we signed the lease this Friday* & hope now it goes through: at least we’ll have our own things & can hang our own pictures etc. And an Ideal location, like living in a village yet minutes from the center of London. Getting a foot in is the hard part. We set aside the year’s rent from the Guggenheim, have enough for 6 more months food & $650 to start with the major items of furniture. Write return mail what we should look for in a big double bed (what springs, mattress guarantee etc.). I’m going to see if London has diaper service. Will go down to London at end of next week to shop & get blood & urine test from doctor who I saw again this week. Why do they ask if any relative had diabetes? How hereditary is it?* We’ll be here till Wednesday, then at 18 Rugby Street, London W.C.1. Forward mail here.