by Sylvia Plath
My typing is getting worse, a sure sign of relapse: my coordination always goes off during these sinus-colds, along with my taste, sense of smell, vision & equilibrium. Ted each day says “If you really want to cure yourself . . .”: each day the cure is different: no food (he specializes in this cure!) & orange juice & lukewarm water. Or honey & vinegar (I found a dead fly in his potion of this today). Or lots of brandy. I have been following this one. Ted joins me in sending much love to the two of you.
Sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 13 October 1960
TLS, Indiana University
Thursday: October 13
Dear mother,
Well, the god of Britannia has sent us two consecutive days of October’s bright blue weather. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to have the baby out as she is still snuffly-nosed and I want her to be completely better before I expose her to the cold air. Did I ever tell you her surprising passion for ice cream? A couple of weeks ago on a Sunday Ted & I walked out to a pleasant Regents Park open-air coffee house and got some vanilla icecream. As a joke I held it up to the baby’s mouth and she started to eat it, mooshing it over her face, but really liking it. She is very good in the day with her cold, but fussy at night, waking us up a couple of times or so.
I am almost all better, with the little cough in the morning and left-over lassitude I always have after a cold, but in good spirits. Ted is using the Merwin’s study this month till Bill comes home while our lady upstairs makes up her mind if she’ll let him use her place while she’s out. She has portly gentlemen come up with her on occasion & a leaning toward untidiness which I think she would prefer to have kept private. If she says no, we’ll advertise around the square: I’m sure some working person would be glad to have a little money for use of their room while they’re out. I had a rather nondescript story accepted by the London Magazine today, called “The Fifty-ninth Bear”*---a fictionalized account of our bear episode last summer. It will mean between $50 to $75. I also should have poems out in the Kenyon Review & Hudson Review (although the latter may not be out till winter) & a story in the autumn Sewanee Review. Look them up among the BU periodicals & tell me if they’re there. I’m curious. * I’m enclosing the check for $25 from the Kenyon for deposit in our Boston account, plus a little check made out to you to very partially go toward the Smith dues & pressure cooker plugs. Also a couple of snapshots* of the baby taken by Marcia Momtchiloff, not very good as they make her look much fatter than she is, but quite recent.
*Also inserting a $140 check from Sewanee Review which just arrived.
Dr. Gulbrandsen sent us an awfully sweet letter with some poems he’d written. Not poems, really, but little essays. I miss him. Do tell him so. And say on our return to America for a visit we will see him first off to have the ravages of English dentists repaired! We’ll write him when we get a moment. Also a sweet birthday card from Aunt Frieda. I’m going to have that set of snaps I sent you last made up for her: evidently she and Walter as selling their cosy little home. She sounds happy about the move to a big trailer.*
Do secretly check up on Ted’s play at the Poets Theater. They may be only going to give it a reading. But if it is going to be performed this month, find out at which theater and for how long.
Marcia is coming this Friday---I’m going to make some Vienna tarts in appreciation---with her portable sewing machine, so I can sew up the nightie & dress I have cut out & learn the few snaggy things like collars & bias binding at the back opening. I am going soon to compare Singers & Pfaff machines (a German make) for price & performance---after I learn how to work Marcia’s & treat myself to a table model when I have written & sold a story or two. Ted just bought the inside of a very expensive radio (no box) for under $30 & will make a wood box for it. I got lots of French & German stations on it last night & was very excited---could understand almost all the French & some of the German. Hope to hear his ‘Rain Horse’ story this week.
xxx
Sivvy
PS: would Warren like to be godfather to Frieda? Ted’s already asked Olwyn as godmother & she needs a scientific godparent!
TO George MacBeth
Wednesday 19 October 1960
TLS, BBC Written Archives Centre
3 Chalcot Square
London N.W.1
October 19, 1960
Dear George,
You are the soul of patience. I am just sending along these four most recent ones* which I like better than the ones I last sent you, although you alas may not. Then I shall give you a rest.
Sincerely yours,
Sylvia Plath
George MacBeth
Producer: Talks Department
The British Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcasting House, London W.1
PS: I shall send along a couple of stories to Owen Leeming* in a few days.
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 20 October 1960*
TLS with envelope, Indiana University
Thursday: October 21
Dear mother,
Many thanks for sending the license on to me with the check. You must have all sorts of expenses because of us, & I hesitate to add one more by wondering if you could send me a sheet of 4¢ stamps some time, as we need them for the return-mail envelopes we send with mss. to America. I’ll see that as soon as I get a check not sacredly dedicated to our writing account (such as from critical or ladies magazine extracurriculars) that you receive it made out to you & your Hughes expense account! I’m enclosing a $75 check for my four poems in this autumn Hudson Review for deposit in our account, which much be slowly creeping up toward the $6 thousand mark now. I’m dying to know what the interest is! Do tell us as soon as you know. You’re an angel to do this bankclerk work for us.
Very mucky weather here. All of us are over our colds, Frieda clear-nosed & merry & no longer waking us up during the night. She is so adorable I hug her & kiss her a hundred time a day. How did you make those little chocolate blancmanges we used to turn upside down on a plate & dig holes in? I am going to try out some milk & egg custards & things for her. She has a fine, unfinicky appetite & seems to like chilled puddings---I made her a maple cream (according to Rombauer) which she enjoyed. Her voice range is extending & she seems to be talking to herself now, with a great variety of sounds, daas and laas and maas.
My Italian lessons go well, although the office girls simply don’t look at their books & forget during the week what they learned in the last lesson. Now we are in changing verb endings (I-you) they are floored, confused, stumped. The Berlitz books have no word of English in them & no grammar explanations, just the questions & answers we learn in class. I am supplementing by listening to a series of 40 Italian lessons over the BBC* & have sent for the booklet of lessons that goes with the series. Ted is writing an absolutely marvelous story set in London called “Sparrow Desert”, chock-full of description, about a man following a strange girl. I think it is the best thing he’s done & am dying to send it out, as although it is quite long, it should sell like a hotcake. Have you found out anything about his play at the Poets’ Theatre?
Do vote for Kennedy! I am disappointed in much of the way he carries on his campaign and absolutely against his program for increased armament expenses, but in his criticism of America, instead of the deaf imbecilic “God’s in his Heaven here” attitude of Eisenhower & Nixon, he seems to me well-meaning. And more realistic.
So Sappho is a mouser! She should visit us & she would have a feast. After the six mice we caught & liberated in the most sumptuous gardens we could find around here we have been less troubled.
Had a nice dinner with Danny & Helga Huws last night---she served stuffed red & green peppers & rice & a marvelous apple strudel. We always feast each other. She’s expecting a second baby in a month. I finished sewing the details on my first nightie for Frieda & it’s exquisite. I can’t wait till that girl leaves her sewing machine with me. I did it with no trouble at all.<
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Love to you & Warren & Sappho . . .
Sivvy
TO Owen Leeming
Friday 21 October 1960
TLS, BBC Written Archives Centre
3 Chalcot Square
London N.W.1
October 21, 1960
Owen Leeming, Esq.
THE BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION
Broadcasting House
London W.1
Dear Owen Leeming,
George MacBeth suggested I send along some stories to you, so I’m enclosing these three---THE FIFTEEN DOLLAR EAGLE, JOHNNY PANIC AND THE BIBLE OF DREAMS, and THE FIFITY-NINTH BEAR. The last story has just been accepted by the London Magazine, but I don’t imagine they will get around to printing it for a long time.
The first two stories are written in a very slangy and colloquial idiom, with the dialogues in the first meant to be read in a kind of musical or poetically rhythmical interchange. I don’t know what your subject taboos are, but have a suspicion they may include much of JOHNNY PANIC, a sort of mental hospital monologue ending up with the religious communion of shock treatment. I’d be very happy to have your criticism of these.
Yours sincerely,
Sylvia Plath
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Wednesday 26 October 1960
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Wednesday, October 26
Dear mother,
Well, I sent off a heavy packet of two books---one for you and one for Warren---by surface mail yesterday. I would have sent them by air, but the price, even bookrate, was prohibitive as the books are fat and weigh a good deal. I am touched that my publisher got them out in my birthday week after I told him how superstitious I was. I hope the two printing errors* toward the end don’t upset you as much as they did me! I’ve marked the corrections in your books and am appalled that after several proofreadings I was guilty of letting them get through, but Ted has reassured me about them & you do too. I am delighted with the color of the cover---the rich green oblong, white jacket & black and white lettering, and the way the green cover inside matches, with the gold letters. It is a nice fat book which takes up 3/4 of an inch on the shelf and I think they did a handsome job of it. Of course it isn’t officially out here yet, but it should be in a week or so. I’ve ordered some more copies to send to friends & mailed one to Mrs. Prouty when I mailed yours, and will send to Marcia Plumer, Mr. Crockett etc. when I get the next lot---an expensive business, for after the first free 6 we have to pay a percentage of the price, but it’s one of the few times one can be generous in an original way.*
I had a card from Mrs. Cantor saying she would call between planes this afternoon, but will have to let Ted be my message bearer, as I am scheduled to go to the British Broadcasting Company to record two of my new poems (post-book) which they finally accepted after rejecting two groups* from my book. I am very pleased about this. One poem is a monologue from the point of view of a man about the flowers in the lady’s room upstairs (where we aren’t working any more---her visitors are something she wants to keep secret. Luckily for us, Ted has started working in the windowless box of our little hall which has just room for a chair and bureau and is doing wonderfully there---unlike me, he is better off without windows.) The other poem is about candles & reminiscences of grammy & grampy in Austria spoken while nursing Frieda by candlelight at 2 am. I’m very fond it.
Last night Ted & I went to dinner at Stephen Spender’s house with an artist, the poet Louis MacNiece & one of his girlfriends, the novelist, ageing, with violet-white hair, Rosamond Lehmann* (one of the wellknown Lehmann family---her brother John being editor of the London Magazine & her sister Beatrix* being an actress.) Their conversation is fascinating---all about Virginia (Woolf), what Hugh (Gaitskell) said to Stephen in Piccadilly that morning, why Wystan (WH Auden) likes this book or that, how Lloyd George* broke Spender’s father’s heart, and suchlike. Rosamond Lehmann’s childhood was spent among such house-visitors as Browning, Schumann, or at least among memories of their visits---that whole old world surrounding them like a vision.
I received the lovely package with Frieda’s things & the thoughtful pressure-cooker rim inclusion. Dot’s pink sweater is lovely, & I’ll write her about it,* as well as Mrs. Spaulding.
Frieda looks very well in pink, yellow & white, as well as blue. Mrs. S’s sweater is lovely, only I do wish it were another color! The pajamas are wonderful. I put her in a pair of them, and although they are big, they are perfectly fine for her to start wearing now in this chilly weather. The builtin feet are good, too, as she always kicks off her booties. She’s marvelous, better than ever, going Lalala and dadada to her bear, whom she loves to pummel and dance about over her head. She is just beginning to creep, a sort of combined on-all-fours rock with squirms and pushes. She loves books of all sorts. Ted taught her to beat on them like a drum and he does it three times & she does it three times and bursts out laughing. I think she will very soon enjoy cloth books. If I want to keep her quiet a minute while I change her I give her an envelope or card and she is immediately engrossed---of course she always ends up trying to eat it!
Ted & I are thinking of dividing up our trip abroad by 6 weeks in Italy & six weeks in Austria (which would be about Mayish if we do go this year). Where would you recommend? What’s that Inn like you spoke of my relatives having? Of course we would pay! What parts are most beautiful in Innsbruck? What time do the Alpine flowers bloom? Do tell us if there is anything you’d recommend!
Ted’s income from the BBC this year has been as good as a salary---we’ve about $1,600 in the bank here from our English writing & he has an exciting prospect of doing broadcasts for school children which would go all over England with no paper-correcting or the personal drag of actual classroom teaching, which I hope he takes up. Love to you and Warrie from Ted, Frieda & me. Our names for our next 3 children by the way, are Megan (for a girl, nickname Meg) Nicholas & Jacob. How do you like them?
xxx
Sivvy
TO Olwyn Hughes
Thursday 27 October 1960*
ALS,* British Library
Dear Olwyn –
I’ll just add a note. I’ve been having a lovely birthday week to console me for catapulting so swiftly towards thirty. Woke this morning surrounded by lumpish brown packages each with a rhyme attached, a candle burning in the middle of a german coffeecake, Frieda sitting up, helped by Ted, on the bed holding the morning’s mail & a bar of chocolate. We’re immensely happy just now – not a fleeting thing but a sense of slowly getting toward what we want & knowing what we want. Ted’s hall study is a life saver, reproducing womb-like isolation, darkness & regular infusions of tea. I’m very excited about this story he is doing, ‘Sparrow Desert’ & I think he ‘gets’ London better than any other words about it I’ve read, masters it & serves it up. We’re happy with my fat book in spite of 2 typographical errors we let slip which appalled me at first. You’ll have an inscribed copy the minute I get the extras I ordered – in a few days, I hope. You have a fingerprint in the book – that verse you suggested I omit from ‘The Ghost’s Leavetaking’ being junked to the poem’s advantage, I think. I’m more tolerant of Spender than Ted – or corrupt enough to be amused by him & a bit fond of him – I very much like & admire his wife Natasha – a handsome & keen creature. We’re looking forward already to Xmas & seeing you.
Love,
Sylvia
P.S. I think Janos’* play superb & he a very dear fellow. Frieda says La la la & agrees
xx
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Friday 28 October 1960
TLS, Indiana University
October 28, 1960
Dear mother . . .
I think this birthday has been the best of all. I woke yesterday morning to find myself lying surrounded by interesting knobbly brown parcels, a german coffeecake with a candle lit in the middle of it, and Frieda sitting at my side, supported by Ted, holding the morning’s mail and a bar of
my favorite German chocolate. Ted really knocked himself out: I have a new badly needed pair of red plush slippers lined with white fuzzy wool, two pairs of plastic overshoes, one for heels, as Ted wanted me to have something easily carried about for this showery London weather, a Fortnum & Mason chicken pie (our standby for special occasions), a bottle of pink champagne, the Tolkien Trilogy Lord of the Rings* (the adult version & extension of my beloved Hobbit)---this for Frieda & me, and three wonderful slabs of strange cheeses for us to test. A gooey ripe brie, a superbly mouldy blue stilton & a fat round Wensleydale in a cloth sack all its own. I loved the cards & letters from you & Warren. I consider the load of pajamas for Frieda my present from you---I’d so much rather get something for her. Betty A’s suggestion of wearing pj’s in the day is something I’m already doing---she’s draft-tight then.
Frieda had her second polio shot this week & my kind doctor said he’d fit me up with a medical kit & advice when we go to Europe. I am happier living in London than anywhere else in the world, particularly in this corner, and we have our eye on Chalcot Crescent, a quiet attractive & utterly unique street around the corner from us for a house. We are both so pleased even with our too-small flat that a house in this neighborhood would be wonderful. We are using our winter-season passes to the Zoo to good advantage. The owls look at Frieda and she looks at them. I think she would love cloth books. She crawls all the way down to the bottom of her crib to pat Little Boy Blue’s face (he is painted at the foot), while smiling & cooing, and adores playing with the labels sewn on her blankets.