by Sylvia Plath
Here is the new order. I like it much better & I hope you do. I am enclosing several extra poems. I mean some of these to be put in definitely, not as extras. The four “extras”* which can be left out or in as space permits I have enclosed in parentheses on the Contents sheet. (A Late Afternoon in Western Minnesota, Almanac, The Five-day Rain, Love Fast,).*
The dinner was lovely & I delighted in my annual corn-on-the-cob. If all goes well, we move August 31st to Court Green, North Tawton, Devon. Let me know if you have any questions.
Best wishes,
Sylvia Plath
TO Aurelia Schober Plath & Warren Plath
Friday 25 August 1961
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
August 25, 1961
Dear mother & Warren,
It was lovely to get your letters---especially yours, Warren, telling us about probably coming to Devon on the 9th of September! Drop us a note when you get to London letting us know the hotel you are definitely staying at with its street address, & we’ll write & tell you our phone number so you can let us know what time your train will get in and so on. If all goes as planned, we should be moving into Court Green on Thursday, August 31st. The owner is having the whole house treated and guaranteed for woodworm as he had promised, & this is written into the contract, which we shall sign this weekend. We shall still no doubt be in a pretty primitive state by the time you come with no rugs or curtains or extras---our furniture will barely fill 2 of our 8-odd rooms, but we hope to add to it bit by bit through country auctions and so on. And a surplus of empty rooms will be heavenly for a while. I am so glad you’ll have a chance to see the place so soon, though, Warren, & can carry firsthand tales of it back to mother, who we hope will be seeing it next summer in a more advanced state.
Thanks for all your multitudinous transactions, mother. How much was the china sending & wrapping??? I’ll settle with you on that from our Wellesley account if you’ll let me know. I have put aside the money for Ted’s sweater & grampy’s wonderful gift with which I shall, regardless of all other expenses, buy myself a rug. Naturally this immense deposit and all the expenses of moving out and in and fixing up will require us to camp out more or less for the first year. But we hope to recoup our funds soon on writing. Ted’s children’s broadcasts on the BBC have been very enthusiastically received and he has an open ticket there to do as much as he wants, plus an invitation to do occasional editing on the Children’s Page of the Sunday Times (whose Childrens Editor he lunched with and liked very much), and several other editing jobs, not to mention his wanting to finish a story collection which Faber’s is eagerly awaiting. I have never seen him so happy. Both of us feel a wonderful deep-breathing sense of joy at the peaceful secluded life opening up for us, and delighted that our children will have such a wonderful place to live and play in. That check you deposited, by the way, was for Ted’s story Snow, which was accepted by Harper’s Bazaar. Isn’t that nice!
Do tell Betty & Do I’ll be dropping them a line as soon as we’re settled mother, for I want to send them belated thanks for the box of clothes on Betty’s part, & the yellow pajama set on Do’s. Right now it seems a miracle that we shall ever get packed and moved. I have dozens of lists of this and that to do and pack. It will be heavenly not to have to move our stuff for indefinite years!
Frieda is wonderfully good-humored. Her teething seems to have let up. She says “I-see” for Isis & points to the picture, sniffs at all pictures of flowers, however tiny, added “cook-ee” to “ap-pee” to mean food of all kinds & feeds and talks to her dolls and bears in a funny squeaky voice.
I had a very nice letter* from Alfred Knopf (my lady editor there) saying my book of poems (40 poems, a much more concise, tight book) is due out in Spring 1962. I feel very excited filling out the Knopf Author’s forms, after all these years of wishing I could get a book published by them!
My next letter should be written from Court Green! I can’t wait to see what it feels like to live there. I shall investigate about a Bendix, mother, as soon as may be, as it would be absolute heaven to get one before the new baby comes. It is really the only make I’m interested in. What a dream it would be to have one. I’m really sick of lugging great loads to the laundromat each week--usually two a week now, for some reason.
We’ve been having farewell dinners with our closest friends here. We know a few quite marvelous couples---a Portuguese poet and exile & his wonderful vital wife* & Alan Sillitoe, the young & famous author of the novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (made into a movie) and his American wife,* and of course our nice neighbors. Fortunately we are on the holiday route to Cornwall, so stand a chance of seeing them about once a year. I shall look forward to the solitude.
I am going out tomorrow to look for a 2nd hand sewing machine like the one I’ve borrowed from Dido. It is wonderful, paradoxically, not to have the strain of going to Italy on top of us any more. The money we hoped to save out of it just wasn’t worth it to us. Now we will be able to write all fall in peace, before the new baby arrives, and get a lot done. We’ll probably set you to minding Frieda in the mornings, Warren! I imagine baby sitters will be harder to get in the country.
Lots of love from us 3,
Sivvy
TO Frank Schober
Friday 25 August 1961
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
3 Chalcot Square
London N.W.1, England
August 25, 1961
Dear Grampy,
Ted and I were overwhelmed and delighted by your wonderful gift of $100! I have put it aside to buy a nice red rug for our livingroom after we move into our new house. We are so happy to have a place of our own at last, with land and a garden and an orchard and plenty of room for your great-granddaughter to run around in. Ted & I hope to get a lot more writing done this way as each of us will have a quiet study.
Already we are planning on planting beans and peas and tomatoes and spinach and lettuce and asparagus and corn and heaven knows what else next autumn. Probably we shall turn from writers into market gardeners! Or apple growers---we’ve lots of fine apple trees. I do wish you could magically fly over and see our place. We are delighted with it.
Thanks again for your generous and thoughtful housewarming gift, and lots of love to you from Ted, Frieda and myself,
With love,
Sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Monday 4 September 1961
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Monday: September 4
Dear mother,
Well, I am writing this from my big back kitchen (not really a kitchen, for I cook & wash up in a small room across the hall) at Court Green, surrounded by my copper saucepan and copper whatdoyoucall it (that Frank gave me) and Dutch teaset that you brought, all displayed in the various lovely nooks and crannies. A large coal stove warms this room and keeps all the water piping hot (although we can switch on hot water independently of it in the electric immersion heater upstairs), and at last I have all the room I could want, and a perfect place for everything. My pewter looks beautiful in the parlor, where Ted is building bookshelves.
We moved without mishap on Thursday, our furniture just fitting in the small movers van (the move cost just under $100), and had a fine hot sunny blue day for it. Ever since a fog has shrouded us in, just as well, for we have been unpacking, scrubbing, painting and working hard indoors. The house surprised us---everything seemed so much better than we had remembered it: new discoveries on every side. The Arundells had left it clean-swept and shining. The woodworm people were just finishing work, so there is the fading aroma of their disinfectants. The place is like a person: it responds to the slightest touch & looks wonderful immediately. I have a nice round dining table we are “storing” for the couple who have moved into our London flat, and we eat on this in the big back room with light green linoleum, cream wood paneling to shoulder height, & the pink-washed walls that go throughout the house which I love---there’s
lots of space for Frieda to run about & play & spill things----really the heart-room of the house, with the toasty coal stove Ted keeps burning. Across the back hall---finely cobbled stone, one of the best touches---is my compact work kitchen: my gas stove (I had gas brought up to the house for this), loads of shelves & a low ancient sink which I am going to have changed to a modern unit immediately. Off this small room is a cool whitewashed larder where I have my fridge & hope to have my Bendix. The only self-service Launderette is 20 miles away in Exeter, so I searched round for a Bendix shop Saturday & plan to go in this week & order a machine. I will have to have a plumber install my new sink unit & run pipes into the larder, but we need a plumber anyway to fix the toilet upstairs. That is really the only major work that needs doing now. I am dying for a Bendix!
I was lucky in that Katherine Frankfurt let me have a double bed & mattress, an old greenish rug (which came out very nicely after I had it cleaned), two wood chairs & a marble-topped wine cabinet for the negligible price of moving them from her mother’s house to ours, as none of the other relatives wanted them, so Warren will have a place to sleep on when he comes. I look forward to hearing from him, & from you too! He will be our first guest & we really long for someone to confirm our affection for our wonderful home.
We have been so busy indoors that we’ve hardly had time to do more than survey our grounds (the main crop of which is stinging nettles at present, and, of course, apples). I went out with Frieda & got a big basket of windfalls for applesauce, enough blackberries for two breakfast bowls, and about five pounds of fine potatoes from a hill of them someone had forgotten to dig up. I have the place full of flowers---great peachy-colored gladiolas, hot red & orange & yellow zinnias. The front flower gardens are weedy, but full of petunias & zinnias & a couple of good rosebushes. My whole spirit has expanded immensely---I don’t have that crowded, harassed feeling I’ve had in all the small places I’ve lived in before. Frieda adores it here. The house has only one shallow step to get down from the back court into the back hall, and another shallow step into the front garden, so she can run in and out easily with no danger of falls, & loves tramping through the big rooms. She needs two naps a day again, she gets so tired with all this exercise.
What is so heavenly here is the utter peace. Very nice tradespeople, a retired couple from London* at the end of our drive who brought a tray of tea the day we moved in & curious & amiable natives. Our phone number, by the way, is North Tawton 370. I am going to a pre-natal clinic at the doctors* up the street to get myself on his panel. This is a wonderful place to have babies in. My main concern is rugs (after plumbing & Bendix) and curtains & pillows. We can’t wait for you to see it. Wish you could come in the spring---we have piles of lilac (which I hadn’t noticed before), daffodils, laburnum, cherry, apple, honeysuckle---and must be legendarily charming then. Ted has a superb attic study under the thatched eaves. I have chosen the best front bedroom for my own. Bought a lovely old reconditioned Singer sewing machine for $33.60 before leaving London – hand-wind.
xxx
Sivvy
TO Charles Osborne
Monday 4 September 1961
TLS, University of Texas at Austin
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire
September 4, 1961
Dear Charles,
Please forgive me for RSVPing a week after the event, or nearly, but September 1st also marked our moving day to this antique thatched farmhouse in Devon and all correspondence got shelved in the process.
We are here, as far as we know and hope, forever, surviving on our own apples and potatoes left over from the previous owner.
Ted joins me in sending best wishes for the LM, Australian stories, and you too.
Sincerely,
Sylvia Plath
TO Howard Moss
Monday 11 September 1961
TLS (aerogramme), New York Public Library
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire, England
September 11, 1961
Dear Mr. Moss,
Thanks very much for your letter* about The Rival.
I think the poem is most easily explained as a contrast between two women: the speaker, who is a rather ordinary wife and mother, and her “rival”---the woman who is everything she is not---who obsesses her. This woman terrifies the speaker and dominates her thoughts, seeming almost superhuman (“Spiteful as a woman, but not so nervous . . .”) and, in the third section, grows impressive and omnipresent as a sort of goddess.
This other woman seems to find a vicarious satisfaction in battening on the speaker’s life---enjoying her baby, for instance. “You sat in the next room . . .” is past tense as it refers to her presence at the baby’s birth.
In the third section the speaker tries to lose the image of her rival in the impersonal spaces of the sky and the sea, but finds it impossible to do so. She even fancies what it would be like if the other woman were dead and buried, but realizes the woman would still be present to her and that she must accept her as she is.
If you think it would help clarify and simplify the poem to omit the second section, I think this might be a possibility. Also, if you feel another title would be better I’d be glad to have any suggestions.
With all good wishes,
Sincerely,
Sylvia Plath
Mr. Howard Moss
The New Yorker
25 West 43rd Street
New York 36, New York
USA
TO Ruth Fainlight
Monday 11 September 1961
TLS, Ruth Fainlight
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire
Monday: September 11
Dear Ruth,
By now you must be out of Woolavington Wing* and safely back in Pembridge Crescent. I hope your stitches were easy and that they used the most decorative of embroidery threads. They sewed my side up with black silk after taking away my appendix last winter, which I thought too somber.
The days have flown over our heads in an aroma of death-watch-beetlekiller and drying paint. At last we are emerging, and taking in our estate of stinging nettle. Ted has made bookshelves, I have whitened bureaus and a kitchen cupboard we found here for a desk, and except for the barren expanse of floorboards and bare windows, we are settled. I shall scour the sales for 2nd hand Orientals.
We have apple pie, applesauce, apfel kuchen, and will have every Apple Thing in the Joy of Cooking before the fall is out. Also lots of big blackberries. Somebody left a hill of potatoes which pleased me immensely: I never saw one forked up before & it gave me a great primitive satisfaction: We Shall Survive. Ted digs all morning and plans immense vegetable plots in his dreams. We each have a study: Ted has 3 or 4 in case he wants a change.
Alan’s wonderful book* is my bedtime reading. Ted keeps pinching it. He thinks it is Alan’s best, & so do I. Ted will tell you himself how he admires it; he doesn’t usually read novels, but I can’t stop him on this. It is a huge book, in a profound sense. I love the incredible, vivid wealth of detail.
I may possibly be coming to London Tuesday October 31st for the Guinness Poetry Party. I’m not sure, but if so, would it be convenient for me to descend on you overnight? I am very reluctant to go without Ted, but somebody has to mind Frieda and I don’t think anyone local would stay overnight here and do all the bother with her. I long to go to London, even for a movie or for a play, but am notoriously bad at going to things myself, spoiling for company. Anyhow, let me know if that day would be okay, and I’ll let you know if I’m able to come later on.
Ted & I felt the best part of our latter days in London were seeing you two. You must come down for a weekend some time in the late, grim heart of autumn. We miss you very much.
Love to you both from us three,
Sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Friday 15 September 1961
TLS (aerogramme), Ind
iana University
Friday night: September 15
Dear mother,
It seems strange to think that Warren will reach you before this letter does, though both depart on the same day.* We saw him off at the little North Tawton station this morning at 11:30 after a breakfast of orange juice, fried egg & crispy potatoes & apple cake, and the house seemed very lonesome without him. He has been really a wonderful part of the family---sanding an immense elm plank* which will make me my first real capacious writing table, discovering a set of wooden blocks in the cottage attic and cleaning them up for Frieda, chopping wood, mowing the lawn, and in general making himself useful.
We’ve had a lot of fun while he was here---explored the Exeter cathedral, took a picnic to Tinagel (very commercial) and found a high cowfield nearby overlooking the sea to eat it in, drove to an auction at which we bought a little (4x6) Indian rug for Frieda’s room, and ate out at our local inn, the Burton Hall Arms* (a roast beef dinner for just over $1 a person) which gave me a welcome change from cooking. I hope Warren didn’t starve while he was here, although our meals in the evening are always late, as I have to make them after the babys supper & bath, I tried to feed him along the vast lines to which he is accustomed!
Your check for the Bendix came, mother, and thanks a million times. I have found a Bendix place (after a long search) in Exeter, and the man has come & written out what the plumber should put in. I have a nice cold white larder room off the small cooking-kitchen where I plan to put it, along with the icebox. I don’t mind at all not having a drier as I don’t like bone-dry clothes and can hang my 9-lb. load overnight in front of the coal stove & iron them the next day. I hope to have a new sink unit (my present one is about 2 feet high) and my Bendix in a month or so. Then life will be very easy. My best news is that the pleasant robust woman* who has cleaned Court Green for 11 years is going to come to me for 3 hours each on Tuesdays & Thursdays to wash my lineoleums, vacuum, dust & iron (my least favorite chore) at guess what, 2/6 an hour! (That’s what Lady Arundell* paid her!). That means just over a dollar for a 3-hour morning’s work. She seems a nice, vigorous woman, with a husband and grown daughter, and she starts work next week.