by Sylvia Plath
I’m so looking forward to next summer. Could you possibly alter your flight time to cover August 20th? (You better sit down, now, perhaps!) The reason I’m asking is that I discovered today your 2nd grandchild is due about then & I’d be overjoyed to have you there to meet Nicholas/ Megan when he or she arrives! Ted & I are very pleased at the news & have our fingers crossed that this Mrs. Waley in Chalcot Crescent will decide to sell her house (she doesn’t know yet whether she’ll sell or rent it). It is the place we’d like to move---right around the corner, & it needs no other fixing up than settling in. Of course, it would solve our space problem beautifully, but I don’t want to push her. So we’ll just wait & hope a place near here turns up by New Year’s next year. The way things look now, I will probably have my appendix out some time in February (my doctor advised an early date as I’m pregnant & says there’s absolutely no danger), rest all March, & head to Southern Europe for April, May & the larger part of June on the Maugham grant. Then here for a leisurely July with you (a week in France for us, perhaps), savoring Frieda & being together. I wish the 4 of us could manage a trip to the Scilly Isles which we hear are beautiful, but that would probably mean reservations way in advance. Do tell me you’ll try to stay & see the new baby!!!
I’ve taken on a temporary part-time job which is lots of fun to keep me from brooding about my hospital sojourn which I don’t look at all forward to! If you know anyone who’s had an appendix out, do reassure me. I have a mortal fear of being cut open or having anesthesia. I don’t know how I can stand being away from the baby 2 weeks---that will be the hardest thing of all, she is prettier & more adorable every day.
Anyhow, my job is from 1-5:30 & involves copy-editing & page layout for the big spring issue of The Bookseller,* a trade organ which comes out weekly but has 2 big bi-annual issues full of ads & bibliography of all coming books in England + 150 pages editorial sections (fiction, biography, children’s etc.) with 400 or so pictures. I’ve been rewriting picture captions & a lot of publicity dept. biography material from all the various publishers & the editor was pleased enough to let me lay out the whole children’s section of pictures & galley proofs (18 pages)---where I had the fun of pasting the notice of Ted’s children’s book in a prominent position! I’ll be through in about 2 weeks---the office is lovely, with a red Turkish carpet on the 3rd floor overlooking a pleasant square & I’m having fun learning about printing & editing. Also, the money helps us over this bare time between grants. We pretend our writing money isn’t there & never touch it, as it is House Money. Don’t you think a downpayment of 3 thousand pounds on a 7 thousand pound house would be respectable? A 20-year mortgage at 5% would mean only about $560 + interest to pay a year, just about what we’re paying now for our flat! Does that sound reasonable to you? Salaries are so low here (the average shorthand-typist gets $28 a week!---top-executive sec. abt. $40) that Ted could easily earn by writing full-time in a quiet study what he could slaving in some 9-5 job. The BBC has accepted his children’s program* material & wants more. Of course, all he needs is one really successful play! Oh, how I look forward to your coming! My heart lifts now that the year swings toward it---we’ll get you a comfortable room & breakfast place in easy walking distance when we know your exact dates & plan some lovely times. What fun if we could all have a week together by the sea in Cornwall or the Scilly Isles! Do tell me you’re happy about our coming baby! We already love it. A big hug for you & Warren . . .
xxx
Sivvy
PS: Got a lovely New England Calendar & adorable book for Frieda from dear Aunt Marion: do thank her & say I’ll write when I’ve recovered a speck more; & lovely letters from Aunt Dot & Aunt Mildred which meant an immense deal. I really am very hungry for my relations! How they would love Frieda! A nice letter too from Mrs. Prouty & a dear one from Marty Plumer to whom I sent 2 handsome hand-knit sweaters for her twins---she’s sent so much to Frieda!
xxx
s.
TO Eleanor Ross Taylor*
Friday 27 January 1961*
ALS with envelope, Vanderbilt University
3 Chalcot Square
NW1
Friday
Dear Mrs. Taylor,
I’m sorry to be letting you know so late, but I discovered at the office today that it’s my Saturday to work, so we won’t be able to come round* tomorrow night as we had hoped since Ted will have to stay home & care for the baby till I get through.
I do hope we’ll be seeing you both again though, in the near future.
With best wishes,
Sylvia Hughes
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 2 February 1961
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Thursday: February 2
Dear mother,
Thanks a thousand times for your good newsy letters & the yellow shorthand (excuse: speedwriting) book which arrived this week. I’m most grateful. I’m so happy to hear of your lunches, dinners, symphonies & ballets with your good friends. I only hope you make a special effort to take things easy this next crowded semester so you will be well-rested when you come to see us. Already I am thinking of all the pleasant little things we will find to do.
I went to see my doctor this morning & he predicts August 17th for the baby’s arrival, Ted’s birthday. How I wish you could switch to a flight to cover that date! It would be such fun having you come to see one baby & go away having seen two. We had one or two clear blue days this week & Ted sent me up to Hampstead Heath one morning where I walked round over an hour through woodland & by open hilly meadows---a nice place for picnics & the baby’s rambling in good weather. I felt much renewed, & my concentrated diet & vitamin-taking is already having its effect.
My afternoon job is very pleasant & I have done about 60 pages of layout now, which I enjoy very much---balancing the pictures & photographs & jacket designs on double-page spreads, ordering the publishers according to importance & pasting the galleys into place. I get to do all the little rush jobs of typing as my speed is the marvel of the office where the few others hunt-and-peck & I sound like a steam engine in contrast. My afternoons out have helped Ted really plow into his play & I think this one will probably be really stageable. He’s full of ideas & in wonderful form. We heard our 20 minute broadcast “Poets in Partnership” this Tuesday morning, where an acquaintance of ours on the BBC asked us questions & we ended by reading a poem each*---quite amusing. Ted has had his children’s broadcasts accepted & they want him to do more.
Patsy ONeil Pratson writes she has a little boy, Lincoln Frederick, born January 24th, & I am so pleased. We have as names the old Nicholas Farrar & the new Megan Emily (I like Meg as a nickname, don’t you? Anyway, get used to it. The Emily is a feminizing of daddy’s Emil & also for E. Dickinson and E. Bronte*). I plan to make several brightly colored maternity smock tops with continental embroidery tapes on them for my “Italian summer wardrobe”. That simplifies everything. Now I’ve got to find some sort of bathing or sunsuit, for I want to swim this spring! If we take the travel grant in April, May & June, it should support us into the fall. Did I ask you before, by the way, to glance at the electric frypan recipe book (in the frypan down cellar?) & copy out the recipe for pineapple upside down cake (including the separate recipe for batter?) I’d like to try that in my pan here as it was always one of my spectacular deserts.
Ted & I went to a little party last night to meet the American poet I admire next to Robert Lowell---Ted (for Theodore) Roethke. I’ve always wanted to meet him, as I find he is my Influence. Ted gave me his collection “Words for the Wind” this Xmas* & it’s marvelous. Look it up in the library---I think you would like the greenhouse poems at the front very much.
He’s a big, blond, Swedish looking man, much younger seeming than his 52, with a brassy, superficially goodlooking ex-student wife* about as nice as nails. Ted & I got on well with him & hope to see him again.
I should probab
ly go into hospital at the end of this month. My doctor says it’s the best time---after my first 3 months pregnancy---& perfectly safe. Dido Merwin gave us a great shock, returning from a “week in the country” to whip off her scarf & show us a bandaged head & no more jowls---she had a face-lift in secret & came to encourage me about the new anesthesias & cutting etc., since she’s about as morbid as I about them. We were sorry she did it in a way & wonder what Bill’s reaction will be---he’s in America earning $$$ on a reading tour. She’s slimmed drastically & of course the plumpness just hung in wrinkles & she said she didn’t want people thinking Bill had married his mother (she’s 40ish & he 32, only he looks under 20). I have a very moral attitude that one should earn good wrinkles & face up to them & I’m sure catty women will find more nasty things to say (“She’s scared to lose him, had her face lifted” etc.) than they have already. Well, we love them both dearly & couldn’t have nicer godparents for Frieda. I look so forward to our visit to their farm & vineyard in France which your visit will make possible for us! I’m looking most forward to Italy & practicing my Italian! If only that lady around the corner would sell us her house we’d be really well settled! I’m in much better spirits with the promise of spring & summer & your coming. You will be mad for Frieda: she’s the prettiest little girl I’ve ever seen & sweet as can be. I want a house big enough for at least four! Roethke said any time Ted wants to teach at Washington State to give him a nod – so in a few years we’ll no doubt make another American year! Lots of love to you & dear Warren.
xxx
Sivvy
TO Anne Sexton
Sunday 5 February 1961
TLS (aerogramme), University of Texas at Austin
3 Chalcot Square
London N.W.1, England
Sunday: February 5th
Dear Anne,
Your card, forwarded by my mother, arrived while the beginnings of a letter to you still stuck in my typewriter, the occasion being my reading & re-reading of To Bedlam,* with its fine red, purple & black on white & the beautiful words of Lowell* which put you up there along with Pasternak. It was terrific having my favorites back again together with the newer ones you were doing when I left (“Elegy in the Classroom”* among them!).
We thrive so in London we’ll probably stay forever & my children will no doubt talk back to me with clipped Oxford accents till I knock their jaws into proper shape for the old broad A. Our first is a marvelous blue-eyed comic named Frieda & has convinced both of us we want to found a dynasty.
I’d love to hear news of you, your poems, local literary gossip (especially about the House of Lowell) & suchlike. Please tell Maxine* I much admired her featured Fräulein poem* in the recent New Yorker---I think its about my favorite of hers, partly, perhaps, because I’m devoted to the horrors of Struwelpeter.*
I’m delighted to have your reactions to my book* which has been received with great hospitality by reviewers over here & only hope someday I can find an American publisher who agrees with you! We’ve met, in passing, Stephen Spender, Louis MacNeice, Auden, Thom Gunn etc. & this week Roethke whom (as you can no doubt see by my book) I admire immensely. Our big surprise was dinner with Mr. & Mrs. T. S. Eliot at their house, together with the Spenders which was aweinspiring. Valerie Eliot is a Yorkshire girl & very fine.
Please sit down one day between the poem & the stewpot & write a newsy letter.
Love,
Sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Monday 6 February 1961
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Monday: February 6
Dearest mother,
I feel awful to write you now after I must have set you to trying to change your plans & probably telling Warren & your friends about our expecting another baby, because I lost the little baby this morning & feel really terrible about it. The lady doctor on my panel came about 9 after Ted called in & will come again tomorrow so I am in the best of hands, although I am extremely unhappy about the whole thing.
I looked so forward to sharing a new little baby with you & felt that some good fate had made this one to coincide with your visit. I am as sorry about disappointing you as anything else, for I’m sure you were thinking of the birth as joyously as I was. The doctor said one in four babies miscarry & that most of these have no explanation, so I hope to be in the middle of another pregnancy when you come anyway. Luckily I have little Frieda in all her beauty to console me by laughing and singing “Lalala” or I don’t know what I’d do. I’m staying in bed & Ted is taking wonderful care of me. He is the most blessed kind person in the world & we are thinking of postponing our Italian trip till next fall as Frieda will be walking & well on by then, & perhaps giving ourselves a two-week holiday in the Scilly Isles this April---if we get some of the money that Ted’s applied for from the Royal Literary Fund which is supposed to aid “distressed authors” with family difficulties.
All weekend while I was in the shadow of this he gave me poems to type & generally distracted me, & I couldn’t wish for a better nurse & comfort. I have, as you may imagine, an immense sympathy for Dotty now & as I grow older feel very desirous of keeping in touch with my near kin. When you come this summer we shall have lovely times with Frieda & I hope I’ll be safely on with another Nicholas-Megan. I’ve been commissioned to write a poem for the summer festival of poetry* here which is an honor as only about a dozen are invited to contribute,* so I’ll try to plunge into work, too, now, as it is a good cure for brooding. Do keep in touch with Mrs. Prouty---I wouldn’t mind your mentioning this to her in a casual way---it would probably be better for her to hear of it from you rather than me. I always make it a point to sound cheerful & wanting for nothing when I write her. Do write & cheer me up.
Lots of love,
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thurs.–Fri. 9–10 February 1961
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
3 Chalcot Square
London N.W.1, England
Thursday, February 9th
Dearest mother,
I do hope the sad news in my last letter didn’t cast you down too much. I forsaw how you’d enjoy sharing the good news with all our friends and relatives and only hope it hasn’t been too hard to contradict our optimistic plans. I hadn’t told anyone over here, thank goodness, so I don’t have to suffer people commiserating with me which I couldn’t stand just now. As the doctor said, it will probably just mean having a baby in late autumn instead of late summer. All I can say is that you better start saving for another trip another summer & I’ll make sure I can produce a new baby for you then! Ted & I think seven is a nice magical number & both of us feel our true vocation is being father & mother to a large brood. Megan isn’t pronounced Mee-gan, but the way, but Meg-un, with a short “e.” Forget about King Lear!
We have had a sprinkling of clear invigorating blue days this week & I’ve had Frieda out in the park while I sat on a bench & read my weeks New Yorker (you have no idea what pleasure the weekly arrival of this magazine gives me!) and let the sun shine on her sleeping face. I’m running a hot tub now & preparing to spend the best of the day out in the park again with her. I’m feeling pretty well back to normal now & my daily routine with Frieda & Ted keeps me from being too blue. Ted’s been extravagant & got us tickets to “The Duchess of Malfi”,* Webster’s wonderful play, starring Dame Peggy Ashcroft* tomorrow night, so we’re looking forward to that. He’s an angel & has made breakfast for me all week & done the washing up & heavy work & so on. He is writing magnificently on his full-length play & it is the best thing he’s done. Probably good enough to get a full production at the Poets’ Theatre &, we hope, to be staged somewhere here. If all goes well, he should finish it in a month or so. He’s also writing a lot of very lively amusing colorful poems. And has ideas for stories (he wants to get out a volume) & another children’s book. I feel so proud, coming on reviews of him here & there, “Ted Hughes, the well-known Poet” and so on. We have
just heard from Yale that they are going to produce a full record of Ted reading his poems in their new series, with his picture on the jacket & so on---they’ve only got about 20 poets on their list so far, so this is very nice. Get your friends to buy copies when it comes out!
If you haven’t already gone to the bother of changing your plane flight, do keep the earlier date as the weather will no doubt be best then & since we won’t go to Italy till fall now, we’ll be here to greet you. I feel easier taking Frieda later in the year, as she’ll be toddling & eating pretty much what we eat by then, & it would be a pity to miss the English spring, which is the only really sure good weather of the year. She looks adorable in those dress-panty outfits you sent & I look forward to her wearing them this spring in the sun---she’s a chubby little girl-butterfly in them, such a darling.
Friday: The marvelous Santa Claus package arrived this morning! I wish you could see what a merry time we had with it---Ted had to show Frieda the marvelous teething necklace right away & I was amazed by your clairvoyance---I was hoping to go out next week & get Frieda some deep blue tights to go with the dress I made her as Helga is having a birthday party for her 3-year-old next Saturday! Imagine my surprise & joy when I saw just what I’d wanted in your packet! And the smock-top with blue embroidery is adorable. I love the blue sweater & extravagant snowsuit: I imagine that will be ample for her next winter. And the Mary Poppins books which I plan to take to hospital with me for light reading when I go! You are an angel!
We hope to see the poet Theodore Roethke again this week. He teaches at the University of Washington (Seattle, I think) & mentioned that Ted should let him know if he wants a job there for a year. We hope to take a return-year in America some time within the next 5 years & finance it by Ted teaching on the West Coast at Berkeley (where his friend & co-English poet Thom Gunn teaches) or Washington, & perhaps summer-school for 6-weeks in New England---a friend just asked if he’d take $1,000 for doing 6 weeks at Worcester at Clark University*---I’m sure when the time comes something will work out. In any case, I am looking immensely forward to seeing you this summer. Thanks for all the speedwriting books. When the children are in school I’d like to work into an editing job & an easy way to start is by being part-secretary. I tried on the blue tights & white smock last night to see if they’d fit for Helga’s birthday tea this weekend & they’re perfect! We’ll try to get some color pictures of her soon. I had her weighed at the clinic this week & she’s 19 pounds 1 ounce. She’s more cuddly every day. Ted joins me in sending you lots of love. Is there really a chance of Warren’s coming to England this fall?* I’d like to make sure of being here if there is!