by Sylvia Plath
I do wish Betty hadn’t said she was a friend of the family at the Poets Theatre. We wanted to find out about this in absolute secrecy, which you could have done by simply asking for their fall program. The whole point was to have them not know we were inquiring about it or telling anyone. Well, better let the affair drop now. We made out the last little $4 check to you because we don’t like to feel our requests are slowly bleeding you for money & it is very helpful for you to do small things for us which keep us from the pother of getting international money orders, etc. Thus we’re enclosing another check (we don’t want to pollute our writing account with things not from writing) made out to you to cover Ted’s application for a renewal of his reentry permit. Could you enclose the permit, a check for $10 made out to the Immigration Office (it says exactly the words for this on the back of the permit) and the witnessed application in an envelope & get it to the address in Boston (or whatever---Ted has the blank at the moment so I don’t know exactly) by the Nov. 4th date? Sorry to trouble you about this. And thanks so much for the big sheet of 4¢ stamps.
Ignore this – we’re sending the forms to Germany, as the Consul told Ted to*
Keep the check for past & future expenses
My main desire now is to get a sewing machine. I have set myself the task of getting it by some commercial means---not just by literary poems and stories. Well, I should have $50 for my reading & recording 2 new poems at the BBC and possibly the same amount for recording poems for the Lamont library, so maybe will put that toward it. I hate the new plastic-looking singer models & will try to get a second-hand, electric run table-model (one you put on a table) of the old black gilt-trimmed variety which I like. When that money comes in. They have lots of good secondhand machines here.
Tuesday night we are going to the annual Guinness Awards champagne party (the award Ted got while in America) which should be fun. Hope you get my book in good order. Tell me what you think of it.
Lots of love to you & Warren,
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Sunday 6 November 1960
TLS with envelope, Indiana University
3 Chalcot Square
London N.W.1
October (excuse me,
November 6: Sunday)
Dear Mother,
I’m enclosing two of the latest shots of the Pooker, alias Bunzo Bun.* She is patiently playing with the old toys---rattles, teething ring, plastic spoons---but eager for new things, especially anything with pictures on it. For treats she has her little Bunzo Bear, who she knocks about and hugs, and her silver cup and a cowrie shell. She sings now, a little high voice and funny look, and talks and answers us by making Brr noises. I found out that the girl on the first floor, expecting a baby any day now, had borrowed a sewing machine, so took advantage of her generosity and nipped down a few afternoons this week to sew my second venture for Frieda---a brilliant blue linen dress with a trimming of continental embroidery on the hem and waist (I made this up, taking my clue from Helga, who also uses these tapes---they ensure an absolutely original dress) of pink and yellow flowers on the same blue ground. It is very handsome and styled like this:
I gather you are going to the reading of Ted’s play. Do let us know what you think of it and just how they do it. He is now working on the rewriting of the libretto of the Tibetan Book of the Dead for that Chinese composer. He is very encouraged about it and really mastering it now. I think we’ll go up to Yorkshire over the weekend, as he has been asked to be present at a literary luncheon in Leeds about northern writers which will be put on television, with John Betjemann’s* program. I hope he gets his face into the screen! Then he has a lecture at the University of Hull. We both feel to need a weekend holiday.
Last week we went to the annual Guinness awards at the famous Goldsmith’s Hall* in the City---drank lots of champagne, heard who got the money this year (Ted got the $850 first prize two years ago) and the poets read their poems. Quite pleasant and amusing. Had Helga and Danny over for a big dinner last night. I made a delicious cream of mushroom soup out of Rombauer, pork, parsley carrots, rice pilaf and a delectable pudding out of Italian chestnuts cooked in milk and brandy, sieved and topped with whipped cream and grated german chocolate. Helga’s 2nd baby is due this month, so I wanted them for a little feast beforehand. Thanks very much for the chocolate blancmange recipe. Had a lovely dinner the other night with a young couple* around the corner in Chalcot Crescent---where we’d love to live if only a house came up, quiet, pretty, with nice professional families---and neighbors of theirs, a lively older couple* on the BBC. I am immensely fond of this neighborhood!
Love to all
xxx
Sivvy
PS – Got a Press ticket from Stephen Spender for the last day of the Lady Chatterley trials* at the Old Bailey – very exciting – especially with the surprising verdict of ‘not guilty’ so Penguin books can publish the unexpurgated edition – a heartening advance for DH Lawrence’s writings!
To Atlantic Monthly
Monday 7 November 1960*
TLS,* Yale University
Four poems and two versifications,* the latter (Words for a Nursery and Home Thoughts from London) meant to be submitted to Accent on Living.
sp
TO Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse Beuscher
Monday 7 November 1960
TLS, Smith College
3 Chalcot Square
London N.W.1
November 7, 1960
Dear Dr. Beuscher,
I’m enclosing a picture of our Frieda,* together with her pet Bear, whom she likes to hug, pummel and sing to. She is the most exciting thing that’s happened to us---very bouncy, healthy, full of chuckles and a lovely responsive sense of humor. She has conversations with us---going variously Brrr or Dadada or simply opening her mouth and singing Ahhh when we sing to her. Both Ted and I are converted to little girls and have names for at least a couple more, in addition to our list of boy’s names. I’ve found myself surprisingly fascinated by Singer sewing machines---one of those formerly unnoticed objects---and by sniffing out one or two in the homes of friends, have made Frieda a nightgown and a smashing bright blue linen dress bordered with those handsome continental embroidered tapes and have material and ideas for a whole wardrobe. It’s almost impossible to get handsome solid-color clothes for little girls, or good patterned clothes, unless you buy expensive imported things---all the year-old gift dresses waiting in Frieda’s drawer are white nylon or orlon or such with candy-pink or baby-blue smocking. Ted’s promised me money for a 2nd-hand Singer from his radio play so I hope to be sewing in earnest by Christmas. I love the chance to do original dresses for very low prices & look forward to dressing Frieda’s dolls & extending my range.
I’ve sent along to you by snailpace sea-post, a copy of my book of poems THE COLOSSUS---many of which, especially the father ones, I wrote while seeing you that year we lived in Boston.* I’m very pleased with the way they produced it, and hope someday it may come out in America, although the firms my publisher has sent it to have proved adamant so far. I haven’t written much at all this last year---mainly a few light things for the New Yorker & Harper’s & two poems I’m reading over the BBC, but I now feel to be emerging from my cowlike six months of amaze over Frieda and able to abstract myself enough to write half a day. I’m still nursing her, which pleases me very much: it’s been one of the happiest
experiences of my life. I didn’t know what I was missing, really, in not having children, & now only look forward to buying a house big enough to hold as many as we want, with enough rooms so I can shout to Ted in his study from the nursery or kitchen and he be far off and in such peace he can’t hear. He now valiantly works in our windowless hall which is womblike and utterly without distraction, and gets an immense amount done, which makes me happy---he likes the comfort of working at home, being slipped cups of tea and so on. This week he is going to Leeds to be on John Betjemann’s program---a literary luncheon stressing northern writers. I hope he gets his face on the screen! To Ted’s mother, appearing on television with that best-selling nonpoet Betjemann would be the height of Ted’s career. Oh, I’ll also stick in a copy of a clipping* that I’m proud of, taken at a Faber party---Ted where he should be. TS Eliot is quite fond of him & we had a wonderful dinner at his place last spring, which I may have mentioned to you. I honestly felt in the presence of a holy being. (The bit in the article about the baby is a quote from me, by the way.)*
Ted & I are very tentatively thinking of going to Corsica this spring to spend his travel grant, if I don’t get an interesting enough part-time job beforehand & if the baby is in good health. Do you have any practical advice about travel or living abroad with a one-year-old? Most of my friends groan when I suggest it & say babies are into everything & very difficult & transitional at that stage. We could, of course, wait half a year, but ideally would like to go this spring, partly because we need to draw the money & partly because it’s such a nice time of year. My doctor says “don’t trust Italian doctors” and promises to fit me up with a medical kit. I am most moved and admiring of the medical treatment Frieda & I have been getting for free over here and particularly in favor of socialized medicine for old people---the doctors I’ve been to are also very much in favor of it. It’s ideal for Ted & I not to have a looming bill for each baby we want---I’m sure we’ll have more here than we would have in America!
Both of us are enjoying London a great deal; we’ve winter-season tickets to the zoo and go at least once a week. Frieda and the owls eye each other in amaze; I do think she outstares them. Ted’s just done a story set mainly in the zoo which we hope to sell in America. I wangled a press pass from Stephen Spender the other night to the last day of the Lady Chatterley trials at the Old Bailey. I was delighted to be there, only sorry I’d missed the days of famous witnesses---stayed from about 10:30 to 3, when the surprising verdict of “not guilty” came from the unpromising prosperous middleclass looking jury after a very biased, sneering summing up by the judge* who tried to influence the jury against the “egghead” witnesses. The court (the famous Number One) was small and jammed. I had lunch in a lovely little dark Fleet Street pub with a girl reporter and an American free-lance journalist, listened to the cases of arson, rape, etc. sandwiched in before the jury returned, and enjoyed my day-out immensely. Ted is an angel about my excursions, feeds Frieda lunch and so on. The main thing we miss is going out together as much as we used to. We do have babysitters, but not as often as we’d like. However, we’re together so much that it’s probably a good thing for us to explore London separately.
I’ve been taking lessons in conversational Italian two nights a week at the Berlitz school here in preparation for our trip and hope to really develop my reading knowledge of Italian, French and German, while practising speaking in trips to the continent. I’ve always wanted to be able to read these languages and now have a good chance, living so near to the countries in question.
You’ll be getting a copy of Ted’s MEET MY FOLKS! sometime this spring---it should be out around Frieda’s first birthday, and probably one or more of your boys will be of an age to be amused by it. Do tell me about your fifth---boy or girl, name and so on. Does your housekeeper, by the way, do all the things like laundry, dishes, cooking and so on? Looking ahead into the far future when we may have managed a house, I would probably want someone at least to take over for 4-5 hours in the morning do chores & mind babies. I find I don’t need a full day---only the first half and a quiet evening---to feel I am leading my own mental & creative life. Then I am absolutely unfazed by domesticalia.
Best love to you,
sylvia
TO Owen Leeming
Friday 18 November 1960
TLS,* BBC Written Archives Centre
3 Chalcot Square
London N.W.1
November 18, 1960
Dear Owen,
Thanks for your letter. I think it would probably be most helpful for me to come in and talk when I have another batch of stories to dig into.
Meanwhile, I’m taking the opportunity of enclosing a story* Ted wanted you to see.
Sincerely,
Sylvia Plath
TO Aurelia Schober Plath & Warren Plath
Saturday 19 November 1960
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Saturday, November 19
Dear mother & Warren,
I feel I haven’t written you for ages, which is probably true. Frieda has been teething---she has her lower front right tooth through and the one next to it coming in, and cries off and on all night---great miserable yowls impossible to ignore, and the one thing that seems to comfort her is nursing. Luckily I am still nursing her, it would be ghastly to have to make up bottles. She drinks very well from a tiny cup she has when I hold it for her. I got a sort of soothing syrup from the doctor & tried children’s asprin in orange juice, but nothing seems to stop her 2 or 3 am crying bout. I’ll probably see the doctor again this week. I only hope she isn’t like this with every tooth. During the day she seems to find comfort in chewing on ovaltine rusks---at least this stops her crying. She is creeping all about now, banging on an overturned cake tin like a drum, and when we say “Kiss your mummy”, she puts her little face to my cheek and goes “Mmmmm”. This is the sweetest thing she does. I am amazed that she seems to understand what we say.
Don’t worry about the pajamas fitting her: they have tons of room yet. She’ll be growing into them for half a year yet, and they are wonderfully convenient, as I keep her in them and a sweater in the daytime. I’ve just written to Dotty today about the pink sweater thanking her. I don’t know if I said in my last letter that my book costs about $2.15 (15 shillings) here, very reasonable compared to American prices, and my publisher is Wm. Heinemann, 15-16 Queen Street, London W.1. Since I got no prize or any American publisher, they haven’t bothered to advertise it, so I probably won’t make a penny on it unless I get some award later to call it to the public’s attention---the 10 extra copies I ordered more than cancelled out my tiny pre-publication sale. Well, it’s a nice gift book. I’m glad your copies arrived safely. My publisher thought the acknowledgements were superfluous---only one or two magazines require them, and usually they are put in as a kind of courtesy to the magazines and bolstering of the writer’s ego. I’m glad they didn’t---my list was so long it would have looked ostentatious. Both of us are getting more retiring about blazoning biographies & publication-notices everywhere. Ted didn’t go to the TV dinner after all. His radio play was broadcast Wednesday night with two star actors* from West End plays now on in London in the leading roles (from “The Caretaker” and “Passage to India” respectively), and in addition to being reviewed in the next day’s Times,* the panel of Sunday critics* on the radio will review it, & it’s been reviewed already over the radio Thursday on a program called Comment.* Ted hates such a feeling that the critics are almost ready to snatch his work out of his hand, and I can sympathize with him. He has finished with his scheduled talks, lectures and commissions at last and is now free to work on his three-act play and I shall see he is kept clear of all distractions. His broadcast translation of a passage from the Odyssey was very well reviewed in the Sunday papers,* and I am going to hear myself read two poems over the radio Sunday night, so it has been a full week.
I hate to bother you about this again, but could you look around once more for tha
t yellow paperbound Speedwriting book or beg, borrow or steal another copy & airmail it to me? I have or might have a chance at quite an amusing job later this year if I brushed up my speedwriting which stood me in excellent stead with that exacting head of Harvard’s Sanskrit Department. It may be in my bookcase, drawers, closet or even down in the basement in a pile of notebooks. Could you pretend some reason for getting a copy as you did before? I never will need shorthand as this would cover all my needs. I’m dying to get hold of it.
I sprained my foot last week running for a bus in the dark on a wet night---at first I thought it was broken but the xray showed it wasn’t. It swelled alarmingly, but is ok now. My doctor (a very handsome psychiatrist also on my panel whom I hadn’t met before) told me of a house that will be coming up for sale in The Crescent, right around the corner, a charming street unlike anything around here with Primrose Hill visible at the end of it. It costs, I gather, about 7 thousand pounds & the lady may have already promised it to someone, but I’m going over to see her this week I think as part of my program of investigating everything that comes up in this district. We will really need a house of our own after our lease is up here & I’d like more room for Frieda and more babies! It seems impossible to manage at this point, but who knows what Ted will have written in a year’s time. We are thinking of postponing our months in Corsica till a year from this spring, when Frieda is talking and walking.
Much love to you both from the three of us,
Sivvy
TO Joseph & Dorothy Benotti & Frank Schober
Saturday 19 November 1960
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
3 Chalcot Square
London N.W.1, England
November 19, 1960
Dear Dotty, Joe & Grampy,