by Sylvia Plath
Love
Sivvy & Ted
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Sunday 2 July 1961
ALS (picture postcard),* Indiana University
Sunday: July 2
Dear mother . . .
We are sitting in a little “crêperie” in Douarnenez, a lovely fishing port in Finisterre* waiting for our crepes – a lacey thin pancake served with butter or jam or honey & cider to drink, for our Sunday supper. We have been swimming in clear Atlantic water, eating mussels, cockles, lobster & giant crayfish – 5 course dinners for less than $3 for the 2 of us. We have spent today – our first cloudy one – exploring two rocky points at the very west of Brittany. Have bought two little presents for Freda. If for any reason you need to, use our doctor’s – you can use them free as a guest.
We hope to be at Merwins Wednesday – I’m dying to hear how our angel is.
Lots of love to you both –
xxx
– S.
Don’t forget to hear my BBC program this weekend – (Saturday 9:30 pm I think)
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 6 July 1961
TLS with envelope, Indiana University
Thursday: July 6
Dear mother,
I am delighted by your 2 good letters so full of Frieda. I loved hearing every word about her: already she seems like a different child, she is growing so fast, and while I am having a wonderfully restful time I miss her immensely. The Merwins farm is idyllic, with a superb view, plum trees country milk, butter & eggs, a billion stars overhead, cow bells tinkling all night softly, and Dido is the world’s best cook. They made the whole place over from a pile of bramble-covered stone and it is full of antique furniture salvaged from peasants barns, stripped of varnish & waxed to a satin finish. Ted is so rested it does my heart good. I am tan at last from sunbathing on the geranium-lined terrace and relieved for a time to be completely free of mail, phone calls and London. Today we are going to a local market fair. Dido’s cooking is better than any we’ve had yet.
I am glad to hear you are taking in a play. Do ask the red-haired Doris Bartlett* at the Express (or is it United?) dairies just opposite the foot of St. George’s Terrace to babysit next Thursday afternoon or any evening after 7 if you want to got shopping downtown Thursday. I hope you aren’t having too strenuous a time with Frieda, who sounds ten times livelier now that she’s walking. Do take it easy. How & where are you sleeping? Yorkshire should be a nice rest for you. I am so renewed I am dying to take care of Frieda again. We’ll be home in time for supper Friday the 14th, I imagine, and plan to leave for Yorkshire very early the following Tuesday for a good week. Then after we come back to London Ted & I may go to Devon for a day or so to look at houses. I would so like to have a place lined up before we go to Italy this fall. I’m very glad my nice neighbors have been so good. Katherine Frankfort’s little boys* are very sweet especially the youngest & Lorna Secker-Walker’s little Joanna a doll. Frieda enjoyed her 2nd birthday party very much. I’ve got a lovely deep blue wool sleeved Blue Riding Hood cape & hood with white embroidery for her in Quimper* which should be wonderfully handsome for a winter coat.*
See you in a week. Keep us posted.
Rest yourselves!
Love,
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Monday 10 July 1961
ALS (picture postcard), Indiana University
Monday – July 10
Dear mother . . .
We saw these small vivid caves yesterday with the prehistoric paintings. Your good letter came about Frieda’s new teeth. I dote on every word about her & now am so brown & fat & rested (thanks to Dido’s celestial cooking – she won’t let me wash a dish) I am ready & eager to come home. Dido & a Spanish duchess friend* of hers are brewing up a banquet for a famous French tapestry-maker – Jean Lurçat* – who is coming tonight. Only 4 days till we’re home! Haven’t felt so fine for 5 years. I bought 2 cheap French cotton smocks for her (Frieda) at the fair & a handsome dress for me (needs the hem let down) at a fancy shop for only $5.50.
XXX-XXX to you & F.
Sivvy
TO Dido Merwin
c. Sunday 30 July 1961*
ALS,* Pierpont Morgan Library
Dear Dido –
A small, practical PS to send along measurements for that sepia sweater (I liked the style of Ben’s* & a generous collar). I imagine I take a rough size 38, but here are the exact inches:
armpit – bottom: 14 inches
back-neck – bottom: 20½ inches
bust: 35 inches
shoulder – wrist: 22½ inches
Let me know if the estimable lady needs any other details. We’ll send a cheque as soon as you let us know what she charges.* I look forward to getting Jeanna’s remnant to patch my hem ere I get too fat for all such fripperies. Dr. Wallace* is a dear – he’s referring me to Dr. Battle.* We are returned from a glorious week of bilberrying & moorwalking in Yorkshire & planning to surfeit mother with Stonehenge & the Tower of London* before her flight home on Friday. Having her so close at hand has been a great relief & Molly has filled a gap I’m afraid I’m no good at – a sort of chatty solicitous companion – for which I’m grateful. Your cooking floats before – or rather behind – me in the guise of celestial platters & sweet dreams.
Love to you & Bill –
Sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Monday 7 August 1961*
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Tuesday: August 7
Dear mother,
Well, London doesn’t seem the same with you departed. I hope the trip back wasn’t too tiring. Did Warren meet you on time? Both Ted and I thought you looked very athletic and healthy when you left. We have been sleeping and resting, Ted taking Frieda out in the mornings and me taking her in the afternoons. Today there was a great wind, which blew down a lot of branches, and she loved it. She is learning to walk along with one now, and covers an amazing distance. I ran into that Crystal (is that her first name? Or last) and Gilbert today who spoke to Frieda very fondly and said they were sorry to have missed you the Friday you left---evidently they had hoped to see you in the park. Is she German? She seems very nice. What is her whole name?
The day after you left we had a letter that Sir Arundell* agreed on the price of 3,600 pounds for the house, so we have sent in our 10% deposit. I guess that’s just about the equivalent of $10,000. I am a bit overcome by the notion of moving everything, but our possessions will seem very small compared to the house itself. We will have to furnish one room at a time. I am a bit homesick for London, as I always am before leaving a place, but welcome the space and country peace for the next few years. Ted is in seventh heaven. We have been working, alternating my mornings and his afternoons, at the Merwins study and this works out beautifully, as neither of us wants to work the whole day at a desk.
Your presence is everywhere, and your good influence, too. I am taking about 5 vitamins a day, a long walk with F. every afternoon, and feeding her chopped meat and potato. She says Baw-pee for bottle and listens so carefully when you tell her a new word. I have made her another nightie out of the white-figured red flannel, just like her blue one, which looks adorable on her, and gotten some red Viyella (at just over $3) for a maternity blouse for me, and a pattern for a red Viyella dress for her, plus a Simplicity sewing book, from which I hope to learn how to make button holes and so on. Now I think I will look for an old Singer.
If you have the College Taxi people crate my beloved china set & send it to us at Court Green, North Tawton, Devon, we’ll be endlessly grateful & probably there to receive it, as we hope to be moved by August 31. Also, would it be possible for* Warren to bring ou
r sleeping bags rolled up with a strap round them? We think we may have a double bed given us and if he could bring the two bags he would have bedding & could stay with us. They would probably be very light. But awkward.
I bought Frieda a sturdy pair of red laced size 5 shoes today, as you instructed: they are still very big for her, but she likes playing with them.
I have taken the film of Frieda in to be developed & hope to have the snaps to you in a week. I also bought my first present for Nicholas-Megan at Selfridge’s---a handsome blue handknit Spanish-made baby sweater, for about $3, which I think quite reasonable. I had given one like it to Helga Huws for her 2nd baby and have long coveted one. I am sure all the London shops will have branches in Exeter, but am laying in a few niceties.
By the way, the paper nappies you bought are much superior to the ones I remembered using, & we’ll take that kind to Italy. I am wearing the lovely Viyella blouse which Ted likes immensely and which I rate tiefavorite to my own red and green one. I feel like a new person in it. The color is just perfect.
I will be so happy to get to the house and start fixing it up. It is basically such a beautiful place, and now you will have a lovely country house to visit next summer! I look forward to sampling our apples, making sauce (Has grammy any recipes for applesauce?) and anticipating our bank of spring daffodils. I think both of us will produce lots of work. Italy is of course something I just won’t think of until it comes, but we hope to save half of the money of the grant and certainly can use it! To get to us Warren should find out the express (I think it leaves 11ish in the morning) from London that passes through North Tawton (the station) & write or telegram us the time & day of his arrival so we can be at the station to pick us up. We’ll probably have a new phone number from what’s in now, so he might ask Information for the Hughes of Court Green if he wants to call. We look so forward to seeing him! We miss you immensely & count on seeing you next summer---thanks so much for making our trips & house-finding a possibility.
Lots of love,
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Sunday 13 August 1961
TLS, Indiana University
3 Chalcot Square
London N.W.1
Sunday: August 13
Dear mother,
A thousand thanks for the $5,880 check which arrived this week, and for your own $1,400 loan (no need to put gift on this, as loans are untaxable). I’m enclosing a check for $275 to be deposited in our 5 cent savings account to relieve the large gap there a trifle. I’d tell as few people as possible about the house till we’re actually in it (these typing eccentricities are caused by Frieda’s begging “Up!” and being taken in my lap to type for a minute). The owner agreed to have the whole dwellinghouse treated & guaranteed for woodworm as a condition of our buying it, & hasn’t done more than the roof, so unless he gets through with the whole thing we won’t consider it. I’m pretty sure he’ll end up by carrying it out, though.
Ted & I are seriously thinking of giving up the Somerset Maugham award, unless of course they’ll give us another 2-year extension. The prospect of cramming in a trip to Europe after a move to a house which will need a lot of attention and before a 2nd baby just doesn’t seem worth 500 pounds, even though we were hoping to save half of it. Both of us feel we could get enough writing done if we had a relatively peaceful fall to make up for not taking the grant & feel an immense pressure lifted not to have to go abroad. We’ve had enough of moving around to last for years.
I’m enclosing* the best shots of the baby in the last roll. There are some more on a roll we haven’t finished yet & we’ll send the best of those on too when it’s been developed.
Could Warren stick a big thick heavy comb in his luggage for me? I haven’t found anything strong enough to withstand my hair here. Ted & I had our babysitter Doris in Thursday afternoon and had a lovely time at the National Portrait Gallery and the British Museum, and only wished we’d started to take an afternoon off together every week to explore London---it’s so much more fun than going alone. I’m busy giving a couple of dinners for people we want to see before we go off.
We put an add in the paper* for our flat (with a $280 fee for “fixtures & fittings” to cover the cost of our decorating, lino, shelves & solicitor’s fees & to deter an avalanche of people---the custom here) & had 8 responses & 2 couples who arrived & decided they wanted it at the same time. Very awkward, especially as Ted & I liked one couple, the boy a young Canadian poet, the girl a German-Russian whom we identified with,* as they were too slow & polite to speak up & officially the other chill busybody man got it by sitting down & immediately writing out a check. We felt so badly we tore up his check that night & told him we were staying & then dug out the other couple & said they could have it. So I hope our Court Green move goes through. The couple are coming to supper this week.
I was so glad to hear you arrived home safely in spite of the delay. And your words to the Canadian woman were vicariously most satisfying! The sort of thing one seldom has the presence of mind to say & wishes one had said too late. Congratulations!
Keep your fingers crossed for us about Court Green!
Love to you & Warren,
Sivvy
TO Gerald & Joan Hughes
Saturday 19 August 1961
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Saturday: August 19th
Dear Gerald, Joan, Etc.,
You see what I am driven to. Separate letter paper. Leave me a space, I beg, letter after letter, but Ted slyly finishes the last inch on the quiet, mails his opus, and makes me out a silent, taciturn post, which I am not. Not in the least.
I liked the painting very much, Gerald. My great extravagance, bottled up with all the little ones that don’t have a chance to show in our present circumstances, would be to go around to the galleries buying the paintings I like, art being my alternate love to writing. As it is, I just go to the galleries. The friend Ted showed the painting to is fantastic, our age, but set & peculiar in his ways, and a regular art critic noted for his own finds. His latest is an original of a Van Dyck* he picked up as a “copy”. He showed us his collection of drawings by reasonably famous Italians the night we went to ask about your piece.
We are wild about the Devon place. I don’t know how much Ted told you about it in his letter, did he say we’re buying it from a Sir Robert Arundell? He almost didn’t go see it, because for some reason he is prejudiced against titles, & we only saw it for fun because of its having a thatch which we had resolved not to touch. Of course it was enchanting, made us fall in love with it---it’s white, with a black base-border & this bird-haunted-straw top. We are going to be camping out for a year or so, because we have almost no furniture or carpets, and a long list of repairs such as having up the floors in the two front rooms downstairs and getting them cemented (the wooden joists are resting on the earth “as is usual for such old places”), and then replastering all the rooms when we redecorate them, and so on. We have been plagued by dreams of woodworm & deathwatch beetles, as we said we’d only buy the place if Sir Robert had a woodworm company treat it & guarantee it for 20 years, which he is, if a bit draggingly, doing.
I shall miss London in lots of ways, but hope I can get a lot of writing done free from entertaining and people-seeing, and that both of us can earn a house here by the time schooling matters for the children of which we are due another in January, much to our joy---then we can winter in town & spend all the nice weather in the country. Of course we’ll probably be broke till 50 attending to our thatch, but I have grand dreams. Anyhow, I am trying to finish a first novel before we move & will make an effort to get it published to see if I can scare up some carpet money.
Frieda is a blue-eyed, brown-haired doll, very funny and full of jokes, and loving, kisses her toys & jabberwocks at them, kisses our manuscripts & us and everything. Says “ba” for ball & cookie and appee (apple) and bawpee (bottle) and UP UP UP. She is our great toy & keeps us in charming tempers.
Ted is wonderfully happy about this place: it is his one big dream & I am so glad it’s coming so beautifully true. Six bedrooms! Frieda gave him a bunch of seed packets for his birthday. We’ll be good gardeners. Keep writing.
Much love to all,
Sylvia
TO Eric Walter White
Tuesday 22 August 1961
ALS, British Library
3 Chalcot Square
London N.W.1
August 22, 1961
Dear Eric,
I am happy to enclose the work sheets of Insomniac* & happy to hear from the Cheltenham Festival Organiser* that sleeplessness has its own very pleasant reward.
Sincerely,
Sylvia Plath
Eric White, Esq.
THE ARTS COUNCIL OF GREAT BRITAIN
4 St. James’s Square
London SW1
TO John Sweeney
Tuesday 22 August 1961
ALS with envelope, Harvard University
3 Chalcot Square
London NW 1
August 22, 1961
Dear Jack,
Here are the work-sheets of “Tulips” which I have specially saved for you out of my weekly holocaust of draft sheets. Ted & I loved that wonderful, wonderful dinner with you after the Festival.* Frieda has appropriated Ted’s Indian.
We have plunged & bought an antique thatched house, barn, stables, orchard, vegetable garden on 2½ acres of walled land in Devon & will move in by September 1st. It is lovely to see Ted’s main dream come true – the River Taw is thick with fish.
Our new address:
Court Green –*
North Tawton
Devon
Love from us three to you and Mairé,
Sylvia →*
TO Brian Cox
Thursday 24 August 1961
TLS, University of Kansas
3 Chalcot Square
London N.W.1
August 24, 1961
Dear Brian,