by Sylvia Plath
We felt unaccountably happy after visiting the place, just to smell fresh paint & see everything (except the floorboards which are 100 years old & all chewed up & which I have just finished giving a 3rd coat of lino paint in the bedroom) new---tub, sink, toilet. The thought of investing all the money & energy in bed, stove, refrigerator etc etc. gave us pause, also the Feb. 1st moving-in date which seemed very late on, with the baby due in late March. In the last 15-minutes of our ghastly 2 weeks we signed a 3-year assignable lease & crawled back to Yorkshire to lick our wounds. (We’d meanwhile moved in with the other couple we know who live in a condemned slum very cosily---a dear german girl, Helga, & her Welsh husband & their 2 year-old cherubic girl & felt a bit better---warmer at least). Our place is a room short of what we wanted, but the Merwins have offered Ted Bill’s superlative study for the summer while they’re at their farm in France, so he’ll have a place to work, which makes me feel easy about that. We have a bedroom with one window looking over the square & the baby will sleep with us regardless of what Freud, Spock* et. al. have to say about the matter, a north-light livingroom (Ted’s just finished painting the walls white over a pebbled liner-paper & put up twin huge bookcases in the little alcoves) with two big windows also overlooking the square---very like a Utrillo,* cream, grey & white plaster houses about 3 stories high opposite, full of birds & children. And a lovely sunny kitchen at the back, a tiny bathroom & small hall big enough for a bureau. We’ve invested in a great double bed a gas stove & a refrigerator & the Merwins have loaned us tables, chairs, china etc. out of their attic till we pick up some we like at 2nd hand shops.
(I’ll continue this on another sheet! There’s too much to say here!)
TO Marcia B. Stern
Monday 8 February 1960
TLS (aerogramme), Smith College
Installment 2:
Monday: after tea
Hello again. You’ll know the feeling I mean when I say I’ve been absolutely brainless simply from physical chores---for you must get days like that with the twins* where to read even a newspaper requires superhuman effort. Yesterday & today I have just begun to recover---we have been on the move for 6 months since leaving Boston last June & neither of us want to move for years, & then only to a larger, more permanent house. Just now the sun is setting---it’s been marvelously clear for two straight days, very cold, no snow at all---over my view of chimney pots & bare treebranches, a lovely shade of rose & lilac. I am snug in the kitchen, the first room we did up---they put in (we bought) marbled black linoleum for the kitchen, bathroom & hall floors to cover the ghastly boards, be washable & keep out drafts---we’re on the 3rd floor, by the way, only a rather sweet antique Bohemian lady-artist in the grubby attic above us, a rent-control tenant who can’t be got rid of & who lives, apparently, on gin & pineapple juice among 20 years of dust & dozens of pots of multicolored hyacinths.
Anyhow, here we are. Day by day things get better as I get the routines under control. At first we were too tired to cook or even sleep, the hot water took half a week to come on (heated by a big efficient gas Triton on the kitchen wall) & as I sit here the builders & landlords are coming in & out arguing about the peculiar stains & spots (“DAMP” is the word for it) that appear in the kitchen & bathroom outer walls. It is quite fun to see them going on---the suave blond landlord who promises to fix it all & really does, & is very shrewd with his builders, “Charlie, you’re giving me the business, what’s this, what’s that,” etc. Mornings at seven we’re wakened by the songs & whistles of the Irish boys on the scaffolding outside the windows, painting the house a delightful grey. “It’ll be just like Chelsea,” our landlord assures us. I think he’s even pleased we’re writers, something we’ve had to disguise elsewhere, for he does so want to produce an arty dwelling! Now that I’m resting I can be amused. Oh, in another week I shall feel human again. I may even read a book.
Please do write me at least once a month! I’d like to write about once every two weeks, just because things pile up so & I like to feel casual about talking back & forth. It means so much to me to have you to write to. I think what I’ll miss most when the baby comes is you to drop in & any other relatives or friends to be about. Ted’s won’t stir out of Yorkshire. Dido Merwin also introduced me to her doctor (John Wigg, of all names) & his young assistant, very kind & attractive & capable, is my obstetrician. I am going to have the baby delivered at home---I’m too late to register at any hospital under the System & am taking this chance to have the baby perfectly free after paying to make sure of conceiving it! I shuddered at the word “midwife”, but that’s the way they do things here---a local midwife & her assistant covers a certain area. I hope to meet mine some time this week when she will come to the house & give me a list of things to have on hand – she brings the rest.
I’ll go to her relaxation classes---it’s all natural childbirth & Grantly Dick Read* over here. I’m sceptical, & was advised not to consider natural childbirth by my Md. in America, at least for the first, but they do give whiffs of gas & sedatives & my Dr. here has promised to stand by. Also, with Ted by my side I’m sure I shan’t feel left & miserable as I would in a labor ward---I’ve never liked the idea of them, & in England they keep you in hospital 12 days! As is, Ted can cook what I like, be with the baby from the start, & the midwife will come each day to help care for it. Do tell me what you think about all this. In spirit I am all for home births with the father there. I just wish you were around to visit with afterwards. I’ve got all the lovely babythings you gave me waiting for the bureau coming this week, which I’ll paint myself.
Neither Ted or I have written a line for so long we are slaving on the housework to get it done & some quiet hours free. His 2nd book, Lupercal, should come out here this spring & I’m not sure when Harper’s will import it in America. We’re excited because Faber is doing an anthology of six short-story writers for next fall & are including 3 of Ted’s stories---one of them came out in Harper’s this January, his first prose. Of course, nothing makes any money. We will try to stretch the Guggenheim out till Sept. 1st, a large order, but I get a pint of free milk a day & a free baby on the NatHealthService, so that helps. Do write soon, & I will too. Tell me all about the twins, I love hearing everything.
Best love to you & Mike & Cary & Douglas,
Syl
TO Olwyn Hughes
Monday 8 February 1960*
ALS* on pink Smith College Memorandum paper, Washington University (St Louis)
Dear Olwyn –
Only a note at the end of a Monday (the second) full of builders whistling & singing at our bedroom window on precarious scaffolding at 7 am, hammering & sawing & scattering curlycue shavings in the bathroom which as yet is useable only for the toilet & yet all grinding & groaning & promising completion this week – And for this we are grateful, happier as the place responds – painting the shocking chewed floorboards 3 times, the walls, the shelves (elegant) Ted is in the process of making & carrying, each of us, his one chair about as if we were enacting the immortal “Snow” (to appear next fall with two other masterpieces in prose in a Faber anthology by a wellknown . . . etcetera).
Your tip about the little Critical Quarterly contest acted upon, turned out well as Ted has said. In desperation the judges lumped the three prizes into one large one & split it between some other fellow & me – amounting, my share, to some interesting, uneven sum like £7. 7. 9d or some such.
I am in surprising good health for the ordeal of the last month – I don’t think either of us has sustained such a prolonged period of crammed exhaustion & despair before – & physical cold, hunger & all the misères. By contrast – life seems heavenly here, better every day, & especially with the prospect of at least a 2-year stay in this place we’re coaxing to shape with our bare hands. My one prayer is that the saws, nails & sawdust are out of the tub tomorrow, along with the workmen. One begins to feel leprous after an interval. After this week
, we hope to read, take up pens & perhaps feel as if we had brains, psyches, yea, even good genies.
Much love to you & do write soon –
Sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath & Warren Plath
Thursday 11 February 1960
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Thursday
February 11, 1960
Dearest mother & Warren,
A little middle-of-the-week letter to pass on some very pleasant news: picture (yesterday) your daughter/sister, resplendent in black wool suit, black cashmere coat, fawn kidskin gloves from Paris (Olwyn’s Christmas present) & matching calfskin bag (from Italy), shining from her first bath in two weeks (having wangled the repairmen to get done at last with the bathroom cardboard tiling) and of enormous & impressive size, sailing into the notorious York Minster pub on Dean Street* in Soho, just off Shaftesbury Avenue about 12:15 & up to the bar to meet a pleasant half-American, half-Scots young editor* for the wellknown British publishers William Heinemann (publishers of Somerset Maugham,* Evelyn Waugh,* DH Lawrence, Erskine Caldwell* etc. etc.) & taking out a pen thereupon & signing on the counter the contract for her first book of poems, namely THE COLOSSUS.*
Which is to say, the first British publisher I sent my new collection of poems to (almost one-third written at Yaddo: 48 poems in all, after countless weedings & reweedings) wrote back* within the week accepting them! Amaze of amaze. I was so hardened to rejections that I waited till I actually signed the contract (with the usual 10% royalties, which, of course, will amount to nothing) before writing you. They do very few, very few poets at Heinemann & will do a nice book. It should come out late next fall, or at New Year’s. It is dedicated to that paragon who has encouraged me through all my glooms about it, Ted. That means in our small family of soon-to-be three every member will have a book dedicated to him/her & written by some other member! Maybe the baby itself will inspire a children’s book, or several!
THE COLOSSUS and Other Poems, by Sylvia Plath. For Ted. That is what the book is, named after the title of the 9th poem in it, one written at Yaddo.
Ted waited in a pub nextdoor for me to come in after seeing my editor (who now become my agents for America & will work on getting the book published there, if it doesn’t get the Yale prize this year)* & we went to a pleasant, second-floor Soho Italian restaurant for veal & mushrooms to celebrate, having sat in the same restaurant in misery a month back, homeless & cold & very grim. Of course I shall write Mrs. Prouty of it.
I’ve just written, by the way, to our Weston Road checking account, closing it as the last check has come in & asking that a check for the remainder (just over $50) be made out to you & sent to you. Let me know that they do this. Could you pay the Music Box bill out of it & Dr. Brownlee’s, if they come? And keep the rest to cover postage & perhaps the quilted bedpad. Will that be enough for all that? The Music Box is just for the little record & Brownlee for one office visit. We don’t want to sully our 5 cent bank account with anything other than writing money. We also have, by the way, $1,037 in a savings account at the Newton Wellesley bank, which should be gaining interest---we have that book here. That is the account we will draw on if & when we need it: the 5 cent account is untouchable!
Our apartment is daily more comfortable & attractive. The livingroom is still without furniture of any sort with the crude floorboards unpainted---we’re saving that, those 3 coats, till last, for we have yet to paint a table, chair, chest of drawers. However, the two matching bookcases are up in the alcoves against a beautiful nubbly-textured white wall, the shelves white too, & brimming with our colored books. And Dido Merwin loaned us the curtains she had in Boston---a gay striped red & white which draws across the 2 windows in one bright swash at night to form one wall of the room. The bedroom needs only bureau & crib, & if we can pick one up, a rocking chair for me to nurse the baby in. The kitchen is still our center & the 2nd Pifco heater has come today---a neat mushroom shape & two are ample to warm the whole place & each about a penny a day to run. Made a banana bread, very good. My midwife is due to come visit today---I missed her yesterday. My md. sent round a very bright, nice mother of 2 who lives around the corner & had my midwife for a home-delivery of her 2nd baby & is very enthusiastic about her: I’m going to tea with the girl (a former nurse) today. So you see how very extra-thoughtful my doctor (Christopher Hindly) is.
Much love to both of you, & the ineffable Sappho!
Your new authoress,
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath & Warren Plath
Thursday 18 February 1960
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Thursday morning
February 18, 1960*
Dearest mother & Warren,
How good to get your two letters this morning & have you share my good news! It is wonderful how fast mail travels between Boston & London & makes you both feel so much closer. I am just about to go out for my every-other-week visit to my doctor, around the corner & to buy a few of the very few things on my list that my midwife gave me---the wonderful plastic pants came too, this morning, with Mrs. Spaulding’s exquisite silver-white baby sweater set. I will write her today---how much that lovely set means to me: we must surely have the baby christened in a little ceremony now: I’m thinking of looking up the nearest Episcopal church & finding out about it.
My midwife came for the first time to the house on Friday: a surprisingly delicate, yet wiry Irishwoman of about forty with golden hair! A lovely lilting voice: she seemed both kind & warmhearted & extremely practical & capable: I trusted her right away. Sister Hannaway is her name. She had been practicing in this area for 15 years or so & assured me that the main difference between hospital care & home care was that home care was really private care, & couldn’t be better. I look forward to receiving the bedpads---you must surely deduct them from the $50 the bank sends! I have a poncho here, which should double as a rubber sheet, a relic of our summer’s camping. Most of the other things I have, too---bowls, pots for boiling etc. I have sheets for the baby’s cot (which we have yet to buy) that Mrs. Hughes made me out of some old sheets she had, & two new blankets, pink & blue, wool, she gave me, very pretty. The main thing I need to decide about now is diapers (they are called nappies here). The diaper service costs about $1.20 a week for a 3-day a week delivery (the daily delivery is much more costly & seems unnecessary & a bother) of a total of 42 nappies, which averages about 6 a day. If I bought 4 dozen, I’d have a half dozen left over for emergencies. They also have a more expensive hire-service where they supply their own nappies---nappies are very dear here, it seems to me: over $4 for a dozen “muslin”, & over $5 for a dozen “turkish”---I haven’t seen either of these yet, so I haven’t decided what to get. Or whether to pay extra & not buy more than a dozen myself but have the service nappies. Tell me what your advice is about this.
Just back from my doctor. I am in fine health & sleeping 9 hours a night, plus a rest in the afternoon. Things are, thank goodness, quieting down a bit, although the builders are still in the house, doing the basement, 2nd floor & attic apartments---only one other couple living here, on the ground floor, & the lady in the attic. How glad I am we are entrenched! They are about a month behind schedule, but by keeping after them, we are fine.
Dido Merwin found us a marvelous kitchen cabinet (looked hideous, dirty-cream-painted), an ideal size for our kitchen, narrow & long with 2-doors & 2 very capacious shelves a 2nd hand lady let us have for $2.80. Ted has had it in the little hall, stripping the 4 layers of paint & now we will sand the good base wood & as soon as that job’s done, I’ll wash & wax the sawdusty kitchen floor & we’ll move it in. Then I can clean the hall of cartons & paint cans & relax. 4 light-wood sprightly kitchen chairs are due, made in Czechoslovakia & Ted is going to get me a tall stool so I can sit to do dishes & work at the counters. We’re going to hard-wax the bedroom & livingroom floors tomorrow & polish with Dido’s electric polisher to preserve the delicate light grey paint we’ve so labo
riously put on. Some time later we’ll paint the hall walls & 2 kitchen walls. Except for little conveniences like towel racks & lamps, we are very comfortable. The bed is a marvel---I’ve never slept so well in my life. I’m eating ravenously: lamb chops yesterday, new potatoes, escarole & lettuce salad with cheese & hardboiled eggs chopped in it; my favorite salad is your carrot, raisin & nut salad which I have often. Ted got us a marvelous roast (rolled rib, no bones) this week for about $1.50---lasted us 3 dinners.
Tonight we’re relaxing to the point of going to a movie, part of Ivan the Terrible,* with Dido & Bill. My book should come out sometime next autumn---I hope, in October, & be fat, with 50 poems in it. We love hearing about the gallivantings of Sappho, & her new rabbity escort. We saw little black kittens in a pet shop window & had to hurry past, because they only reminded us there was One Sappho & all others mere flashy copies.
Have Ted’s 2 stories come back from the NYorkr (The Caning, Miss Mambrett) or my 3 from the Atlantic (Johnny Panic, The 59th Bear & Prospect of Cornucopia)? Let us know.
Love,
Sivvy
PS: We’re having $500 transferred from our Barclay’s Bank here also a “just writing account” so the Boston account will be kept PURE!* to the 5cent savings acct. in Boston because the acct. here is a $ acct. & not pounds, so be sure & ask them to record the large addition in our book & let us know what it is after expenses are deducted---should be over $500, or just!