The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2

by Sylvia Plath

  It was wonderful to hear your voices Sunday. Ted shouted “Many happy returns” into the phone, but I guess it was after you had been cut off. I am always sad at what little can be said on the phone . . . the main thing is hearing voices. You sounded so close. I had Rebecca in my arms all the time I was talking. How I wish you were here to admire her! To other people she must just be an ordinary baby, but I would love to have an admiring grandmother & uncle appreciate her unique and absolutely marvelous qualities! I shall send the snapshots, if any come out, as a belated birthday token. It is the morning of your birthday, mother, but I suppose you are still sleeping, as it is only 10 am here. And tomorrow, your day, Warren. And my half-day. I am so sorry if you had a long wait getting us Sunday. I have no calendar & both our watches need their straps repaired, so in the confusion of going out walking with Danny & Helga & Madeleine & serving them tea, & dropping over to say goodbye to Bill Merwin, who sets off by car for their farm in France ahead of Dido by a week, & their opening a bottle of champagne, I completely lost track of the day, time and all & was truly appalled to find it had got so late. I don’t know how I can wait till next summer for the prospect of seeing you! Hearing your voice makes me feel your absence more: you feel so close it seems you should be able to drop right over.

  The baby is staying awake much more, makes a really successful effort to hold her head up straight when we carry her on our shoulders, turns her face to a voice & seems to regard us with increasing intelligence. She seems also to be on the way to learning to sleep longer at night. I fed her a little later last night, about 11 pm instead of 10: she slept till after 5 am (which I counted as a 6 am feeding) & then till almost 10 am, so she actually skipped the night feeding as far as count goes. Her time of fretful crying is between 6 pm & 10 pm as Dr. Spock says is most common. Other than that she is a little angel. The two times I had two different baby-minders come last week reassured me immensely. They bring their own sandwiches (I leave out things for tea or coffee), knitting, & are very calm & expert, reporting on the baby’s crying, gas bubbles etc. The last one I had works in the day at the Child Guidance Clinic under the London County Council & I enjoyed a little talk with her about her work while Ted & Lee Anderson had a glass of beer before we went out to a delicious dinner at The White Tower in Soho,* a Greek place. The charge after 6 is only 50 cents an hour & subway fare home (10 cents at most). By day, the charge is 60 cents. It seems very reasonable for such guaranteed expert service. I’m going to try a “relief bottle” for the baby one evening this week preparatory to our dinner at T. S. Eliot’s May 4th, so I won’t have to rush home then. Just us, the Stephen Spenders & the Eliots! The Faber cocktail party was great fun. The first time I had really dressed up for ages: everyone marveled I had had a baby just 3 weeks ago. I met a lively American girl* on a 2-year fellowship to Cambridge whose path crossed mine often in America: Faber’s are doing her first novel, & I invited her & her Indian poet friend* to a spaghetti supper in early May. Met an old college-mate of Ted’s now a TV producer of arty programs, drank champagne & felt very grand & proud of Ted.

  Got a very nice letter from Edward Weeks at the Atlantic & have finally by doggedness broken through the Iron Curtain raised by Peter Davison’s coming into power as Advisor on Poems & they accepted two*---the best of the sheaf I sent, gratifyingly enough, one of them the first in my book & written to the baby while I was at Yaddo: I’ll get $75 for each, which is nice. Knew Peter was behind my rejections, oddly enough---he fancies himself as a poet, as you know---but felt once he thought he’d show-n off his power & glory he would find it difficult or pointless to keep rejecting my good things. & so it has come to pass.

  We are caring for the Merwins garden in their absence & told to keep picking everything: roses, lilies etc. What a lovely chore: I am eager to get familiar with hollyhocks, peonies delphiniums and their seasons again. We’ll water & fertilise the little lawn & Ted will mow it.

  I am furious at BU’s unheard of tactics! What cowardice, to omit the department from the catalogue without facing up to announcing it to you first! Are they just washing their hands of you thus mousily then? What are the prospects of your working into this remedial guidance then? Do keep us posted on all this. Ted joins in sending lots of love to you both. He’s wonderfully good with the baby.

  xxxxx

  sivvy

  TO Aurelia Schober Plath

  Friday–Saturday 29–30 April 1960

  TLS with envelope, Indiana University

  Friday: April 29

  Dear mother . . .

  Well, here are the first snapshots of your granddaughter.* We hope you can get some idea of her from these muzzy pictures, although you really can’t see how she looks with her eyes shut & her head bonneted. We’ll investigate a flash-bulb. She looks so beautiful when she’s awake & her head held up . . . no double chin then, but very slender & thin.

  I’m enclosing two checks for deposit: the $19 one into the Boston 5cent savings account (shouldn’t there be some interest by now? How much) and the little 4 dollar one into our Wellesley Account: I’m enclosing the book for the latter. There should be interest due there, too. Let us know what the totals come to.

  Did Warren & I cry at all as babies? Frieda Rebecca no longer cries during the night, but from about 6 pm to 10 pm she yells bloody murder & won’t be consoled by anything. Dr. Spock calls this very common “irritable crying” or periodic colic,* & she does have a hard time getting up her bubble after feedings, but I find it difficult to listen to her yell, really scream, without being able to do anything to make her feel better. She is very regular about her period of crying: the rest of the day she is placid & quiet as a clam.

  Aunt Frieda sent me a lovely white lace bordered handmade smock for the baby. Very pretty & dainty. I shall write & thank her. I think it pleases her to have a namesake.

  Tomorrow I am going with Dido to see Laurence Olivier* in Ionesco’s play “Rhinoceros”,* which I have luckily read in the original French: I suppose it will be translated, very modern & amusing. I look forward to the change.

  Well, it is getting late. Ted should be home from an evening with Lee Anderson, the poet-recorder from Yale, soon & then I’ll bathe & feed the baby & turn in. Ted has started working in Bill’s study, & today I took the baby over in the carriage & mowed the little lawn, which we shall take care of all summer. The first iris are out, & the lilac beginning to open.

  Lots of love to you, Warren & Sappho,

  Sivvy

  Saturday: April 30

  PS: Just about to go off to laundromat. Got your good letter today: isn’t it curious about Dot buying the Goodall’s place* . . . you gave such a good impression of her funny reluctance to come out with the information as she answered your gradually involving questions. I wonder why they keep everything from you? It gives a very queer sense of their plotting this & that. And the ominous sense here of “If anything happens to Frank . . .” Can’t he just clear out, take a year off? Sell his Philadelphia place & rest for a year at the Weston house? Crazy to wait until Fate steps ominously in & commands. I feel very badly about him.

  A Lovely blue spring day. Very excited about the Olivier play, to see him on stage in the flesh, & in such a delightful play. About a whole village that turn into rhinoceroses except one last man.

  Miss Warren immensely. I don’t know how I can bear his not coming over with you. I have a very comfortable cot in the livingroom you could make up & sleep on. Presumably if our relations with the Merwins continue so amiably Ted can again have the study next summer & so he could go to the Office while you & I played about with the baby.

  Oddly enough, Mrs. Pullings lovely spoon & fork arrived the morning as you mentioned it in your letter. Thank her warmly for me. I’ll write a note soon.

  Ted records his first BBC program*---a 20 minute reading & talk on various poets’ poems about Creatures, including one of his own---next Thursday, for which he gets $75. They pay very nicely & he has one or two other program idea
s on his mind.

  Wish we could share this wonderful spring with you.

  Lots of love,

  TO Janet Burroway

  Tuesday 3 May 1960

  TLS, Janet Burroway

  3 Chalcot Square

  N.W.1

  May 3, 1960

  Dear Janet,

  Please do you & Zulfi come to dinner on Saturday about 7 pm. I’ll do a very simple spaghetti as I said, or think I said.

  Chalk Farm is the tube station nearest us, on the Northern line. Ask for Regents Park Road. You’ll walk up over a railroad bridge, cross a Gloucester Road & keep straight on Regents Park Road till the next little street to your left* after Gloucester Road which will lead you soon into the Square. We’re the grey house with white trimmings among other squalidia.

  Looking forward to seeing you both then, (Our phone, by the way, is PRImrose 9132.).

  sylvia

  TO Aurelia Schober Plath

  Thursday 5 May 1960

  TLS, Indiana University

  3 Chalcot Square

  London N.W.1

  Thursday, May 5: 2 pm

  Dear mother . . .

  How wonderful Sappho is going to have kittens. Oh, I wish we could somehow have one of them. You must describe each one in detail & note the day of their birth. We are very excited about this. So proud Warren has a scholarship next year.

  I am about to take the baby out in the warm May weather to the Clinic* for weighing. My first visit there. A very nice Health Visitor dropped in yesterday, answered my little questions about this & that. Her name, ominously, is Mrs. M. A. Reckless! But she is pleasant & kindly. I really feel immensely well taken care of & looked after. The Health Center advises one about diet, weaning, weight . . . all really non-medical problems.

  A really exquisite yellow sweater & darling yellow flowered sunsuit with plastic lining in the pants came today from dear Madeline Sheets: I’ll write her. But they were just the sort of things I’d pick myself & should fit the baby later on.

  This has been a full week. Ted’s off this afternoon to record his BBC program on “Creatures” which will be broadcast Sunday. Also Sunday his book is to be reviewed over the BBC by the editor of the Times Literary Supplement.* I’m going to ask the lady upstairs if we can listen in on her radio.

  Yesterday the proofs of my book THE COLOSSUS came in a paper binding. We are so excited. The book will look handsome. 88 pages long. The poems look so beautifully final. The printers-publishers page says: William Heinemann Ltd. London Melbourne Toronto Cape Town Auckland The Hague. © Sylvia Plath 1960 All rights reserved. And of course says For Ted on the dedication page. I can’t get over it.

  The Ionesco play I found wonderfully amusing. Olivier was magnificent as the stupid, human little clerk who remains a man while the village turns to a herd of rhinoceroi. Orson Welles directed the play,* & the chinless executioner of “Kind Hearts & Coronets”* was in it, a fine supporting cast. Dido & I enjoyed the whole thing immensely.

  Had dinner at an excellent Indian restaurant with Peter & Jane Davison Monday, at the expense of the Atlantic. Peter is worse than ever. He was furious (although he tried to conceal this) that I’d sent my stories & poems directly To Edward Weeks & not through him. I figured he’d been behind the rejections of my things, as since he came on, not one of my pieces had been taken & he is very jealous, as he now considers himself a real poet. Evidently his job is furthered by “bringing writers in”. But I was there before he came.

  He also bragged about his work in the most puerile way. Said he read Ted’s story in Harper’s “the issue before the issue with a poem of mine* in it”, and as we left them on the bus he yelled desperately after us: “Look for the Hudson Review, I have a long poem* coming out in it.” Pity & shame compelled me from yelling back “I have four coming out in it.” A very unpleasant person. They have a child due in autumn, which should prove his manhood to himself. But is so mean he defeats his own purpose as an editor. He can’t bear to hear about our work, so of course we tell him nothing.

  Last night at Eliot’s was magnificent. By a miracle I got the baby bathed & fed, me bathed & dressed, Ted bathed & dressed & the babyminder instructed about the baby’s relief bottle (she takes all 6 ounces beautifully: Ted tried her out on her first bottle while I was at the Olivier play, to see if it would work.) We took a taxi, as it was rush hour & the place a hard one to get to. A beautiful green May evening. Passed through streets I’d never seen: Little Venice, houses mirrored in a still green canal. Palace Gardens, streets of large pastel stucco houses with gardens & the street lined with pink & white flowering trees. We saw a For Sale sign & promised ourselves we’d make a symbolic effort to inquire about it. Oddly enough, the more we set our sights on, the more good fortune occurs. No harm in dreaming. I see a lawn full of babies & descendants of Sappho. And a bookcase full of books.

  The Eliots live in a surprisingly drab brick building on the first floor.* A comfortable, lavish apartment. His Yorkshire wife Valerie* is handsome, blond & rosy. He was marvelous. Put us immediately at ease. We exchanged American travel experiences. Had sherry by the coal fire. I felt to be sitting next to a descended god: he has such a nimbus of greatness about him. His wife showed me his baby & little-boy pictures in their bedroom. His was handsome from the start. Wonderfully wry & humorous. Then the Spenders arrived, he handsome & white-haired, and she very reminiscent of Do Cruikshank: lean, vibrant, talkative, lovely. Her name is Natasha Litvin,* & she is a concert pianist. Talk was intimate gossip about Stravinsky, Auden, Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence . . . I was fascinated. Floated in to dinner, sat between Eliot & Spender, rapturously & got along very well. Both of them, of course, were instrumental in Ted’s getting his Guggenheim & his book printed.

  If anyone else wants to write the baby’s name on anything, do say her whole name Frieda Rebecca: that’s the most sensible, as it gives her & us the option of what to call her. She takes marvelous notice of us now: gave Ted her first dazzling smile. Lifts her head up, looks round, & half turns over when I put her on her back to change her. She is so beautiful we can’t get over admiring her. Everybody who sees her exclaims over her big blue eyes & long lashes. We’re just madly in love with her.

  Well, I must sign off & get out. Here are two more checks for the Boston 5 cents savings account. How much is it now, with the interest?

  Much love to you, Warren, Sappho & embryos,

  xxx

  Sivvy

  TO Robie Macauley

  Thursday 5 May 1960

  TLS, Kenyon College

  3 Chalcot Square

  London N.W.1, England

  May 5, 1960

  Mr. Robie Macauley, Editor

  THE KENYON REVIEW

  Gambier, Ohio

  USA

  Dear Mr. Macauley:

  I thought I would write to let you know that my first volume of poems has been accepted for publication here in England some time late next fall or early winter, in case that might make a difference in the scheduling of the two poems (“The Beekeeper’s Daughter” and “The Colossus”) you have on hand.

  Also, my address is now changed to the above London one.

  With all good wishes,

  Sincerely Yours,

  Sylvia Plath

  TO Aurelia Schober Plath

  Wednesday 11 May 1960

  TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University

  Wednesday: May 11

  Dear mother,

  This week & next must be your very busiest. We are wishing you all the best luck on exams & hope you will make a special effort to keep in good health. The past week, with our going out for two dinners & my having two dinners (Saturday & Monday) has been so crowded I hardly remember when I last wrote you, but I think it was after the Eliot dinner. Now the 6 weeks are up since the baby’s birth, we are just getting our heads above water. Ted is starting to work regularly over in Merwins study, which is a great relief for both of us. It is impossible for him to work in this little place w
ith me cleaning & caring for the baby, & when he is out, I have the livingroom & desk to myself & can get my work done. After the Merwins come back in 6 months or so, we’ll try to arrange Ted’s getting or renting another room, perhaps even from the lady upstairs who goes to work daily. That would be most convenient. I find my first concern is that Ted has peace & quiet. I am happy then, & don’t mind that my own taking up of writing comes a few weeks later. I feel now just to be myself again. Will probably have my post-natal checkup with the doctor tomorrow.

  Frieda Rebecca has made wonderful strides this week. Her first dazzling smile was given to Ted, which delighted both of us. Now she often smiles. She still has her 6 pm to 10 pm colic, but we are calmer about it, although it is a strain. If I feed her about 11 pm she regularly sleeps through till 6 am without a peep, & no longer screams to eat on waking, but lies contentedly playing with her hands till I get up to change & feed her. She eats vigorously & fully, nonstop for half an hour, so fast she often gets hiccups & belches up a little milk. Did I say at 5 weeks she weighed 9 lbs. 4oz? She seems very healthy. I came in yesterday to find her facing a different side from the side I laid her down on, which startled me. She had lifted her head, gone onto her stomach & turned her face round. She kicked her blankets off, too. I don’t know what I would do without Ted: he adores the baby & is continually marveling, hanging over her crib, on how beautiful she is. It is wonderful he is not the kind of father who ignore babies till they can talk. I have hung the little gold wood-shaving angel you sent us from Europe over the head of her crib.

  Ted got a very touching letter from Somerset Maugham at his Riviera villa in answer to his thanks for the award. Maugham said he was “thrilled” at Ted’s response: the award has been going on for many years, & Ted is only “the third person nice enough to write him”! He hopes to meet Ted when he comes to London in October. We were very excited & moved by this. As he says, he is an old man. How easy it is to underestimate the needs of the great to be appreciated! I rather hope Ted can strike up a relationship with him like mine with Mrs. Prouty.