by Sylvia Plath
The check for $50 should have reached you from my bank. Don’t put a thing of it to the Nicholas/Rebecca account. Pay for the bed pads & some of the postage you’ve squandered on forwarding our mail. I’m curious to know what the pads cost: they should be a perfect fit. A bill from Brownlee may come, too. IF there is something left, we’d like a subscription to THE NATION (333 Sixth Avenue, New York) to keep up with American liberal politics.
Most of the story manuscripts we were looking for have come now, very battered & having taken about 8 weeks, I judge. The only ones I haven’t heard from are my 3 Atlantic stories. It would help a lot, if you send any more over by sea, if you’d just look in, see what they are, & tell us by air mail what’s coming: so we could go on sending things out. Do you remember sending an envelope back from the Atlantic?
My obliging editor at Heinemann said to tell him my birthday & he will try to get my publication date as close to that as possible! The gallantry of the British! My midwife came again yesterday with another health visitor: checked the bedroom, where I said I wanted to be delivered, took urine sample, blood pressure & felt the position of the baby & listened to its heart & pronounced me in excellent health.
Ted & I are sending off two copies of his book to you & Warren tomorrow. I am so proud of it. He is always mentioned here & there in articles now, coupled with Thom Gunn, a contemporary at Cambridge teaching in California, as “our best youngest poets” & will have his picture in a magazine THE QUEEN,* a sort of Harper’s Bazaar here, as the only poet among 4 young writers: the photographer comes tomorrow. Next week we lunch Tuesday with Charles Monteith from Faber (TSEliot would be there if not in S. Africa, more’s the pity) & the next day meet John Lehmann, British man-of-letters & editor of the London Magazine, which has been so hospitable to us. In two days N-R will be 8 months on & starting on the 9th. I am at last finding some leisure to read & Bill Merwin is supplying me with American history books. Hope to be writing soon again, too. I feel much freer (and appreciated, by publishers at least) here to write than I ever did in America. I hope our mail-to-be-forwarded is lessening! We look forward now to living & writing in seclusion, & skimming the cream off London periodically. Eye-shopped at Liberty’s the other day: oh, the teak furniture & copper, glass & steelware! So pacifying to see & feel beautiful things. Now we are “at home”, London is a delight.
xxx
Sivvy
PS Please do keep one copy of Light Blue, Dark Blue* – we were going to send you one anyway! How lovely of you to send diapers – tell me how much they are – I’m curious to compare prices – & take them out of the $50 too! If there’s anything left of it by now! ‘Rosmersholm’ last night was excellent – we had sky-high balcony seats at 75¢ each & could hear every word clearly. KEEP RESTED: your program sounds Herculean & I don’t want it to wear you down
xxx
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 3 March 1960
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Thursday evening
March 3rd
Dear mother,
I am sitting up writing this before turning into bed. This has been a very busy week: starting with the trip to Oxford a week ago we have been going about a good deal, paying official visits etc. as if trying to get as much as possible in well before the baby arrives. Ted’s friend Luke Myers arrived on the weekend, and after one night with us, sleeping on the divan in the livingroom, went to stay with Danny & Helga Huws. I had all three of them over for dinner on Sunday night as a kind of housewarming---made Dot’s veal scallopini, rice, salad & an orange cake. I really put my foot down about visitors now---I get tired easily & like the house to myself so I can cook, read, write, or rest when I please. I have really been strained living out of suitcases on shipboard, at Ted’s crowded home & then in & out of boarding houses in London & with the Huws, so that I have no desire for people sleeping in my living room or causing me extra cooking or housework. Ted’s sister is also coming to London this weekend, but she will stay with a girlfriend. I feel most like walking, reading & musing by myself now after three long months of enforced external, exerting & extrovert living.
Monday we went to a buffet with David & Barbara Ross* at which Luke, Danny & Helga & others were present---most of the crowd that published the one & only issue of the BOTOLPH’S REVIEW, where I first saw Ted’s poems & at the celebration of which I first met him. David Ross, the editor, has a son (David is very young, 24, a stockbroker & diabetic: quiet & nice); Luke is to sail for New Orleans March 18th after his wife* who will have a baby in May (her mother, ominously called Big Cynthia,* has maneuvered him home, probably, I think, never to return: he is a very weak soul) & of course the Huws have their Madeleine & we are about to have our Nicholas/Rebecca. Amusing to see what paternal & familial fates have, 4 years later, fallen on such once confirmed bachelors! Tuesday we had lunch with two of Ted’s editors from Fabers (after my relaxation classes at my Clinic) & dined sumptuously in a Soho Greek restaurant, blissfully ignoring prices---on chicken liver & salmon roe pate, a Moussaka concocted of cheese, aubergines, rice & chicken, Greek resinated wine, & a heavenly bowl of magnificent fresh fruit & cream for me---the men had shrove pancakes with rose-petal jam. They are working on getting an illustrator for Ted’s children’s book & we have our fingers crossed: they’ve written to our First choice & if he did it, it should sell marvelously. I won’t breathe his name until we hear definitely: he may, of course, refuse to do it as he has no end of assignments. Wednesday evening we went for cocktails with John Lehmann, editor of the London magazine, who reminisced about his memories of Virginia Woolf et. al---I met the popular British Oxford-graduate poetess Elizabeth Jennings,* a Catholic who reads for a London publishing house & lives in a convent while here, returning to her rooms in Oxford on weekends to write (she has three volumes out---we got along very well. And a lawyer-poet-novelist, Roy Fuller* & lady novelist-reviewer, Christine Brooke-Rose.* I must get them all in my diary. Very pleasant time. Lehmann is publishing my “Daughters of Blossom Street” (changed from “This Earth Our Hospital”) sometime this spring, May or so. I just got the proofs. He’s also taken 2 more poems.* I went shopping on my own yesterday, too---took the bus just across the Hill at the Zoo & it dropped me right at Selfridge’s,* that marvelous department store off Oxford Street---did you go there? I went straight to the baby department, sat in a chair, & was shown things & got my own first purchases (!)---practical things like rubber sheeting, Harrington towels & facecloths (used in the royal nurseries!), a couple of little undershirts, a receiving blanket & one “Present”---a beautiful white knit wool shawl-type blanket made in Scotland, very light & good for crib, carriage or just arm-bundle. Ted & I are going out to order a crib tomorrow & eagerly await the diapers you are so good to send: roughly when should they come? & do say how much they are---I’d like to compare. The cheapest pram I saw here is 15 pounds (and a handsome one): most run from 20 to 30 pounds (up to $90!) & are styled like royal carriages. A social-competing thing, really: the poorest mothers have the highest canopied prams---instead of cars. Babies are wheeled late: no cars again. We’ll wait till the baby is here, & then probably settle for the $40 pram & count on it to last our 100 infants. After all, I have no other birth expense! Went to my doctor again to-day & he let me listen to the baby’s heartbeat! I was so excited. He said the baby is in fine position; I like him much better than any doctor I had in America. All shots--whooping cough, scarlet fever, diptheria, polio, are given free & Health Visitors tell you when to get what. I won’t go to a Clinic, but will have my doctor give them. I couldn’t have kinder or better care. Happy to see our bank total: we can’t wait to break the $5,000 mark! We hope to get our phone in next week, & will call you as soon as the baby is born to announce your Grandmotherhood. Having my book accepted here is very consoling at this time of change & anticipation. Ironically, two other British publishers (one the Oxford U. press)
have asked to see a book since I signed my contract. I hope some American press will see fit to take it eventually!
xxx
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 10 March 1960
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Thursday
March 10
Dear mother,
I was very glad to get your letter today telling how you weathered the snowstorm. There were little accounts of it in the newspapers here,* and both of us were hoping you escaped being caught in it. That drive to and from BU must have been exhausting, but I am glad you got such good accomodations for the night. Here there has been not a whiff of snow all winter, and I am homesick for it: the last four months seem like a grey-brown drawnout November. Ted and I went for a walk on Primrose Hill this noon after lunch, and the air was mild and damply springlike, the sun almost warm, and green buds out on all the lilac bushes; the forsythia looks about to open.
We had a particularly tiring weekend, as Ted’s sister came to London for three days---she stayed with a friend, thank goodness---and his friend Luke is here till the 18th staying with the Huws while his poor 7-month pregnant wife calls him long distance from New Orleans asking if she can fly over to have the baby in London. Ted is, if anything, too nice to his relatives and friends, and I got weary sitting for 8 hours at a stretch in our smokefilled rooms waiting for them to leave---impossible to nap or relax with so many people around. I feel very unlike entertaining anyone just now, simply “in-waiting”, wanting to read, write in my diary, & nap. Luckily we have no more prospective visitors (knock on wood) & I have been able to lie down in the afternoons which rests me enough to sleep at night. The baby has been growing by leaps and bounds & the doctor said when I saw him today that it seemed to have very long legs, which accounts for the surprising occasional bumps & visible kicks which appear on my right side.
Tuesday I made a little informal supper for the Merwins---a chicken tetrazini, salad & lemon cake-pudding---that & cleaning house took me the whole afternoon. Then we went to see Marie Bell’s famous French company* at the Savoy Theatre do Racine’s Phedre in French. It was absolutely magnificent: my favorite Racine play. I didn’t have time to reread the whole play before I saw it, but knew the plot well & understood enough of the marvelously spoken French to enjoy it thoroughly. I wanted to have the Merwins over at least once before the baby came, for they are going to France at the end of April & I may not want to cook dinner for anyone till after that. Ted’s given them a copy of his book. which is officially out here next Friday, March 18th. We sent 2 copies off to you & Warren: do tell us in what condition they arrive: we had to leave one end open.
The Nation & Good Housekeeping came---did you specially want me to see the bank account story? * I saw you underlined it. All I can say is, it must have been an awful lot of money; and poor Morrie, for not enjoying it with his wife before he died! The sheets & bed pads came today, too: lovely! The pad just fits. We had to pay about $3 duty on it---was that because it was a gift over $10? I’ve never had to pay any duty before on anything you sent. I’ll let you know when the diapers come. I have an odd feeling the baby may come any day now, although officially I have 17 days grace. We ordered a nice pale pink crib with safety lock-side & lead-free finish & a good crib mattress to come this Monday. I’ve got 2 nice pram blankets from Ted’s aunt Hilda & from Luke’s sister,* who lives in Surrey. And plenty of cot bedding. I am hoping that the dilatory workmen keep their promise to come tomorrow & fix the wallpaper the damp has spoiled on the outer kitchen & bathroom walls. Leakage from the attic windows, which theyve fixed. “Damp” disappears eventually, Ted says. And mend a broken windowcord & fix a few bedroom floorholes. The phoneman came today: the 3rd in a line: division of labor. Still the phone isn’t working, for our other party has to be connected at the same time & they weren’t home today. Our number, in case you have occasion to use it, is PRIMROSE 9132. Nice, what? It should be working by the time you get this, & about our first call should be to tell you when the baby comes. We’re listed under Edward James Hughes. The phoneman was charming, a regular philosopher, who had been in America during the war, is a born Londoner & regaled us with accounts of his clients: Eleanor Farjeon (Fargeron?)* among them, a neighbor of ours, evidently. Our books made him think us cultured, or writers, & he got off on the poets & playwrights & duchesses he has serviced. “Buckingham Palace is outside my route, unfortunately.” I’m glad to hear Sappho is surviving the cat-covering weather. I’m thinking of investing in a vacuum-cleaner as sweeping these rugs is a poor substitute & raises a lot of dust, & when we at last get our own place, we’ll have rugs, hopefully, of our own. Any advice on the subject? Do keep well, now, especially in this fickle winter-spring season! Ted joins me in sending love to you & Warren.
xxx
Sivvy
TO Edith & William Hughes
Friday 11 March 1960*
ALS,* Private owner
Hello there. Until yesterday it’s been raw, windy & bitter cold here, but our two Pifcos are ample to keep us warm. We went for a walk yesterday on Primrose Hill – it was mild & sunny & felt like spring. The lilac buds are green & the forsythia almost out. We got a nice letter from Hilda with the most beautiful pram blanket. I’ll write her about it & send her our order for green cord. All the Captains & Kings have departed – for the time being at least – & Ted & I are trying to rest up from the last exhausting months so we have energy to slowly begin writing again. I just heard my book of poems should be out sometime next September, which is nice to look forward to. I am in good health, though I get tired easily – and need a nap every afternoon. We have been turning in early. Saw a wonderful French play – Phèdre by Racine – in French with a French troupe with the Merwins this week. We’re looking forward to a peaceful spring of working, & the baby, who should be here by the 27th or so
Love to all –
Sylvia
PS – I think the pile of letters is in the top bureau drawer on the nightstand side –
TO W. Roger Smith
Friday 11 March 1960
TLS, Random House Group Archive & Library
3 Chalcot Square
London N.W.1
March 11, 1960
W. Roger Smith, Esq.
WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD.
15-16 Queen Street
Mayfair, London W.1
Dear Mr. Smith,
Thank you for your letter of March 8th. I very much appreciated your advice about copyright lines and shall certainly ask to have them printed with any poems of mine that may be accepted from now on.
Yes, I am an American citizen, although I expect to be resident in England from now on, as far as I know. I hope this doesn’t cause you any inconvenience.
Sincerely yours,
Sylvia Plath
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 17 March 1960
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Thursday
March 17
Dear mother,
It was good to get your letter today: I do look forward to them. Our phone is at last in, thanks to Ted going round to the other party on the line down the street & explaining our reasons for being eager to have the phone right away, so they kindly arranged to have one of them home from work about 4 to open the house, and I am very relieved the phonemen got the phones working: PRImrose 9132. So we will be able to call you. Officially the baby is due in 10 days, but right now I feel to have been waiting so long I can’t imagine it ever coming. When I look at the pink crib (2'x4') I keep wondering what it will be like to see a breathing infant in it. This seems an enormous milestone to pass: three of us instead of two.
I’ve just come back from my weekly visit to the doctor & he says I’m in fine shape. Luke left at last on his tanker to New Orleans last night & I am relieved Ted can settle down to work. The Merwins---who visit us regularly, & Bill loans me books from his huge library: I’m starting to read French again: Ionesco,
Sartre, Camus*---are planning to go to France at the end of April, which means the study will come free for Ted just as I’m recovered enough not to need his help substantially with cooking & housework, which is ideal. I think Bill may dedicate his book of translated Spanish ballads* to us: this moves us very much. Our whole very comfortable livingroom, down to the marvelous Victorian nursing chair, has been furnished out of their attic. Now slowly, out of secondhand shops, I hope we can start looking round for a few things of our own---china, chairs etc.
How much are good vacuum cleaners in America? I was shocked to get a glimpse of the prices here: up to $100. I feel I really must get one, as sweeping these carpets is a poor substitute & raises dust, & the area is rather sooty, like Boston, so once-a-week thorough scrubbing-down is a must. What sort of cleaner should I look for? And by the way, what size is that marvelous frying pan with the lid you have? I haven’t been able to locate anything like it here yet & wonder how much yours cost. I really need one of those to take the place of my big electric frying pan. As far as I can see, everything you’ve sent has come except the diapers & I have faith they will come before the baby does. We are still after the builders to fix our fallen & damped wallpaper, broken windowcord & last floorholes, but they are irresponsible as mules, promise & no action. Yet we are so lucky to have this place, & the rent is low compared to anything so bright & new & in such a good district, that I don’t mind the delay too much. We have yet to paint & fix up our little hall alcove. Hot water & heating---those two British bugaboos---are no problem. I can have a 9 lb. laundry done at the laundromat around the corner for about 45cents in the morning, hung up on my wooden rack in the tub, with one pifco on in the small bathroom, & completely dry by evening, which is convenient. Ted’s got me a sturdy plain wood 4-legged stool for my kitchenwork---a great saving of energy: no more long standing.