by Sylvia Plath
Tell Hilda I just got the curtains sewn for the bedroom in the nick of time & the green cord looks beautiful – wonderful for protecting the baby from drafts – our windows are full of cracks & the cord is fine insulation.
You must come down later this spring when I am all recovered to admire the flat, Ted’s masterful carpentering & the beautiful Rebecca.
Love to all,
Sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 7 April 1960
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Thursday: April 7
Dear mother,
Well, if I hadn’t heard from you today I was seriously thinking of disowning my nearest kin! Ted said you’d probably be so busy informing half of America of this event that you’d not get around to writing me for at least a month. Anyhow, your letter was so cheering it made up for the days of waiting. I actually had a dream during my nap yesterday that Ted & I were waiting for you & Warren in the Wellesley kitchen. You both came in with huge armloads of groceries (this was before I read of your forgetting the groceries last weekend). “Well, what do you think of it!” we called out to you. Whereupon you handed us two letters, unstamped, that you had been about to send. I still haven’t heard a word from Warren, so get him to write in person, even if it’s only a little. The one infuriating thing about the general euphoria around here is that I have no relatives or friends of my own to admire the baby in person. Ted’s people & friends are dear, the room is full of flowers, telegrams & cards & well wishes, but it isn’t the same. Dido Merwin has been supplying us with delicacies off & on: blanquet de veau, trout in aspic, with eyes turned to pearls & lemon slices arrayed about, and when Ted went over to dessert & to meet Bill’s publisher last night she gave him some beans in a pot & another stew to heat up. Such goodness is beyond thanks. Bill came over yesterday: my first visitor & the first to see the baby. He brought daffodils, a silver thimble for the baby & a pile of old New Yorkers for me, figuring with exact intuition I was ready for nothing more concentrated than first the jokes & cartoons, then the poems, then stories . . . short, amusing & something easy to pick up & put down.
The baby is sleeping sweetly after her 2 pm feeding, her little hands in the most delicate attitudes: her ballet-like gestures with her hands are one of the loveliest things about her. I have begun changing her diapers myself now & enjoy it immensely. She is very good & quiet & seems to like waving her legs about & being bare. Her navel cord dried up & fell off a few days ago & she has a perfectly lovely body. Last night she did her stint of crying before 10 pm which was very easy to take & she slept straight through till she woke me at three when I fed her, & slept again till 7. So I had my first good night’s sleep for a week. When I bathe her at night she will probably sleep even more soundly. She seems to be taking our lead & waking a lot more in the daytime now. For the first few days, when she just had colostrum to suck, I fed her every 4 hours and then, as my milk started to come in, on demand about every 2 hours for a day & night so she’d get enough, & now she gets enough to last her exactly 4 hours after 20 minutes of energetic feeding. They put the baby to the breast at birth here, feed it nothing supplementary & the baby obligingly sleeps through the early days & its demand seems magically to produce the right amounts of milk. I never feed her from the bottle, but from the spoon, if I give her anything else, like water, & hope to wean her straight to the cup. My Indian midwife has been so encouraging & helpful about all this. I am going to make her Dot’s carrot cake this weekend: she said she doesn’t like bakery goods so I thought that would be a gift only I could give her & not something impersonal like candy or flowers. Dido Merwin came over this afternoon with one of her own christening presents: a little gold heart with 3 stones: they seem a pearl, turquoise & a pink stone. She does this out of love & loves only special certain people. She & Bill will be our godparents when the baby is christened, probably next winter when they come back from France: I’ll make a feast & will investigate now about having the minster who married us do it in his church.*
No more words about hormones & growth-stopping please! I’m surprised at you. Tampering with nature! What an American thing to feel measuring people to ideal heights will make them happier or not interfere with other things. Whatever height Frieda Rebecca is, I shall encourage her to be proud of it. My own height, 5'9" which so depressed me once is now my delight: & I have a handsome tall living documentary of a husband to prove a tall girl need be nothing but fortunate in that line: once married, let other men be all short squat toads. Enough of that.
Helga, Danny & little Madeleine came this afternoon to bringing two sweet knit little German dresses for Rebecca when she’s older. The baby sleeps with the light on, me typing, us talking. I’ve written Mrs. Prouty (havent heard from her for a long time: hope she’s all right), Marcia, Aunt Frieda. Will spread out to others as I get more energy. I hope your myriad friends won’t expect letters in answer to cards! Oh, also wrote Aunt Mildred her letter moved me so much & it so excited me they were thinking of retiring here: I wonder if they know how deeply fond of them I am. If they come, would you consider retiring to an English country house nearby? Warren will be the wealthy one of us two & be able to visit you in England, while we would only come to America on a paid-for reading tour or possible resident-poet year much later. I’m becoming more & more anglophile – watch out!
Love,
Sivvy
I’m going to have all my babies at home: I’ve loved every minute of this experience!*
TO Gerald & Joan Hughes
Thursday 7 April 1960*
ALS,* Indiana University
Hello everybody! LUPERCAL preceded Frieda Rebecca by exactly two weeks but she arrived in a hurry to make up for it. Both productions have been well-received by the world at large & are, we hope, destined for brilliant futures. My first book of poems is coming out here next fall, & 3 of Ted’s stories in a Faber anthology & his first children’s book next winter, so we are thriving in London air & very happy with all things
xxx Love to all
Sylvia
TO Peter Davison
Wednesday 13 April 1960
TLS (photocopy), Yale University
3 Chalcot Square
London N.W.1, England
April 13, 1960
Dear Peter,
It was good to hear from you, and good to hear that you and Jane* will be spending the spring in Europe. One of the consolations of my in-themain happy and probably permanent exile is that London is such a usual stopping place for American friends: a sort of ideal ambush.
We’d be happy to see you & Jane for dinner May 2nd---why don’t you call beforehand and check with us. Our number is PRImrose 9132.
The bambino---Frieda Rebecca Hughes (to be called Rebecca)---arrived at the crack of dawn on April Fool’s Day. I am now a strong advocate of the British Medical System, which gave me cold shivers when I first came over. I’ve had wonderful, exceptional doctor’s care, home nursing for two weeks, cheap milk, vitamins & orange juice, and all free. A year ago if anyone had told me I’d have my first baby at home, delivered by a five-foot high Indian midwife without any anesthesia I would have called them mad. But as it happened, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
One small bit of business. I wonder if you could tell me roughly when those stories I sent in to the Atlantic early last fall were sent back. I haven’t received them yet & feel they may have gone astray at one of my many forwarding addresses (there were 3: A Prospect of Cornucopia, The Fifty-Ninth Bear, and Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams).
Ted joins me in sending best wishes to you & Jane. We both look forward to seeing you two again.
Sincerely,
Sylvia Hughes
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Friday 15 April 1960
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Friday night: April 15
Dear mother,
It was good to get letters from you & Warren yesterday. I am sitti
ng down for a few minutes over Ovaltine after Rebecca has been bathed, fed & bedded. I love to dress her in a fresh nightgown (the ones you sent: I have to roll up the cuffs, but they are ideal, easy to wash & dry) every night after her bath. She wears all the things you sent her: diapers, nighties, the rubber pants. I took a nap this afternoon & felt much renewed this evening, reading, typing a bit for Ted & so on. The baby still has her wakeful crying interval around her two o’clock feeding, although one night she slept through from an earlier feeding at one a.m. till I woke her just before 7. So we have been piecing together 2 & 3 hours of sleep these last two weeks which is tiring to people so addicted to 9 solid hours as we are. A nap in the afternoon though, & a hot bath on getting up in the morning, are marvelously renewing.
Rebecca’s had a tub bath every day since she was born: first in my pyrex dish which wasn’t really big enough. Then Ted got a little plastic dishpan which we use now. Her navel cord fell off in 4 or 5 days & I simply keep her navel cleared of the drop of blood which sometimes discharges with sterile cotton & the midwife says it will heal soon. I was officially discharged from the midwife’s service yesterday, after 14 days of care. Our beloved Sister Mardi came after a week of alternation between the two other sisters, & I gave her one of the 3 carrot cakes I made which she very much appreciated, & hugged her. Today she dropped by with some free samples of “Gripe Water”, a British remedy for hiccups & wind, & to say hello. At the end of one week the baby had gained back her birthweight & was again 7 lbs. 4 oz. At the end of this week she was almost 7 lbs. 12 oz. The midwife says I have enough milk for twins. Rebecca doesn’t yell anymore once I pick her up, just gobbles away greedily. She is such a lovely baby I can’t be away from her for long, but peek into the room to see how she looks. The midwife didn’t slap her when she came: she just caught her breath, sneezed & there she was.*
I went out for my first little walks Saturday & Sunday in green & blue April weather, but felt terribly lonesome without a pram & the baby. Monday I went to town & found it takes 2 months to order a pram, so I bought the cheapest (!) one in the shop, just over $50. The rest were from about $70 to $100! I felt this was bought with Mrs. Prouty’s money, which she wanted me to put into doctor’s care (Don’t tell her my home confinement was free!) It is a lovely pram, a white body & washable interior, black hood & weather apron. Very handsome & large. As I said, prams here take the place of cars. & I hope mine will hold a good many children. Of course it rained the day it was delivered & the day after. Ted & I first took the baby out yesterday, well bundled up, to Regent’s Park. It was very cold but sunny, then, just as we got near home, it began to rain. But prams here are built for bad weather & wind & Rebecca slept warmly through it all. We took a few snapshots of us with the pram & one of Rebecca in the sunlight in the house. I shall look into flashbulbs. I wish I could get her in technicolor, her big dark blue eyes & pink cheeks.
Your work sounds so arduous. Have you had your spring vacation yet? Can you catch up then? We admire your courage & perserverance so much. I hope you sleep all right. My whole philosophy of life is dependent on getting enough sleep: without it, one gets completely demoralized. How is your work in remedial reading with Dr. Noall coming? Do tell us everything, your concerns and all.
These last two weeks, infact, the last month or so, have slipped by with my hardly noticing the dates & I am eager to begin writing & thinking again. The most difficult thing is the idea of leaving the baby with a sitter. We are invited to cocktails at Faber’s next Thursday from 6-8 & shall presumably meet Eliot, yet I am so reluctant to leave the baby. I’ve heard of a good babyminding service that guarantees its people, all expertly trained in baby-care, 50 cents an hour, which the wife of an artist in the Merwin’s house uses & shall try them. I do want to get about with Ted now & then but the 3-hour interval between her being fed & changed & starting again leaves time for little. I wish I could carry her like a papoose. I hate to think of her waking early as she sometimes does & some stranger just letting her cry. They don’t believe in bottles here at all, nor do I & I wouldn’t miss feeding her for the world. Well, I must get to bed now. Ted sends love. How is Warren’s work coming? Will he get his scholarship next year?
xxx
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 21 April 1960
TLS/ALS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Thursday, April 21st
Dear mother,
I hope this letter gets to you by Saturday to say how much we look forward to your call on Sunday. I’m not sure exactly what the time difference is now, we’ve just a week ago changed to British Summer Time which gives us lovely long light evenings till about 8 pm. We lost an hour: I am always confused about what this does elsewhere.
The weather here has been beautiful, sunny & springy the last few days. I am sitting in our sun-flooded kitchen, waiting for a pan of hash to finish cooking, planning to feed Frieda Rebecca (we are oddly enough starting to call her Frieda!) at 2 & then go out to Regents Park for a walk & sit in the sun as I did yesterday. I always walk past the outer wall of the Zoo where I can see several animals---the mountain goats on their pinnacles, a lion through a hedge, a queer beautiful panda which is new & looks on fire: maple syrup color on top, marked with white, & darkening to black paws, lots of goats, kids, shetland ponies for the children to ride & pet, & a pen of marvelous black pot-bellied hogs, wart-hogs, I think, or something outlandish, with great black many-lined gorilla faces & remarkable brisk dancing piggy steps. Primrose Hill was brilliant green, covered with children: children rolling down in the sloping grass, kicking colored balls, taking their first steps. One woman even had her baby naked on its knees in the sun although the air was cold. I walked by the bird sanctuary to the boat basin where the water was crowded with skiffs & little sailboats & sat & read the proofs of Merwins fourth book of poems.* I am just getting over my tiredness from getting up at night. During the day the baby (known informally as The Pooker, or Pooker-Pie) wakes on the clock four-hourly & at night she shows reassuring signs of sleeping for 5 & even an occasional 6-hour interval. She eats like a little piglet.
3:15: I am now sitting on a bench, facing the sun in Regent’s Park. They are mowing the lawns everywhere & the smell of cut grass, plants & warm earth is delicious. Nothing is so beautiful as England in April. I only wish you were here to walk out with me – by the time you come the baby herself should be toddling! I can’t wait till she does laugh & communicate with us. She is so tiny still when she curls up she almost disappears. It is wonderful to feel hot in the sun again. Tonight I am employing the Babyminder Service* for the first time from 6 to 9ish (so we can go to Faber’s for cocktails – hopefully to meet TS Eliot, we’re not sure) & again tomorrow at the same time so we can go to dinner with Lee Anderson (he looks like a white-bearded civil war general, is a poet & has a farm in America – over here to record British Poets for Yale) in Soho. Tuesday we went to lunch with two ex-Cambridge people – a girl who works for the BBC* & is interested in Ted’s writing a verse drama for them, & Karl Miller,* literary editor of The Spectator. Had very good onion soup & zabaglione – a dessert concocted of warm whipped eggs, sugar & wine – tastes heavenly, wish I could find out how to make it.
Last Sunday – another still warm sunny day, I had an immensely moving experience & attended the arrival of the Easter weekend marchers from the atomic bomb plant at Aldermaston to Trafalgar Square in London. Ted & Dido had left at noon to see Bill Merwin, who was with the over 10 thousand marchers come into Hyde Park & I left later with the baby to meet a poet-friend of Ted’s, Peter Redgrove* & go to Trafalgar Square with him. He brought a carry-cot, which he is loaning us, & we carried the baby sleeping easily between us, installed the cot on the lawn of the National Gallery overlooking the fountains, pigeons & glittering white buildings. Our corner was uncrowded, a sort of nursery, mothers giving babies bottles on blankets & so on. I saw the first of the 7-mile-long column appear – red & orange & green banners “Ban the
Bomb” etc. shining & swaying slowly. Absolute silence. I found myself weeping to see the tan dusty marchers, knapsacks on their backs – Quakers & Catholics, Africans & whites, Algerians & French – 40 percent were London housewives. I felt proud that the baby’s first real adventure should be as a protest against the insanity of world-annihilation – already a certain percentage of unborn children are doomed by fallout & noone knows the cumulative effects of what is already poisoning the air & sea. I hope, by the way, that neither you nor Warren will vote for Nixon.* His record is atrocious from his California campaign on – a Macchiavelli of the worst order. Could you find out if there is any way I can vote? I never have & feel badly to be deprived of however minute a participation in political affairs. What do you think of Kennedy?* The Sharpeville massacres* are causing a great stir of pity & indignation here. How long is it before you can expose a little baby to direct sunlight? We’re dying to take snapshots of the baby. I’ve heard via cards, from Aunt Marion, Mrs. Railsback,* Dollie Beaton,* Mrs. Spaulding – thank them all for me. No word – at all from Dot & Joe, oddly enough. I’ll try to write a note to them this next week. The days of this last three weeks have just flown by without my seeming to really accomplish anything except feeding the baby & us & writing a few letters. I really long for a house here near the Park & must learn from you how one sets about committing oneself to a house – I want lots of rooms so we can have more children – I would so like about four – I hate to be limited by money & space!
xxx
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath & Warren Plath
Tuesday 26 April 1960
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Tuesday morning
April 26, 1960
HAPPY BIRTHDAY """ HAPPY BIRTHDAY """ HAPPY BIRTHDAY """
Dear mother & Warren . . .