by Sylvia Plath
How many ounces are there in an American tomato soup can you use for tomato soup cake? I didn’t think to question, but our cans seem to be bigger than yours, as my cake was a bit “wet”. Thanks for the pound cake recipe. I’ll use it soon. I love new recipes. We went blackberrying with Warren* & got about 13 cups full. Devon is one big blackberry hedge now.
Frieda adores her singing doll. It’s moving scared her at first, but now she puts it down to watch it move & cuffs it fearlessly & laughs. She trails her wooden beads around, both strings, like two tails, and can put the thread in, but hasn’t yet got the knack of pulling it through the bead, although she works hard at it. Her red sweater is our very favorite. It looks gorgeous with her red plaid wool pants you got. Her latest feat is picking the black blackberries: you should have seen her doing this from Ted’s shoulders as he picked below her!
After a Saturday-Sunday visit from a very sweet young Portuguese couple we knew in London this week, things should quiet down. Ted has the most wonderful attic study, very warm under the peak of the thatch and over the hot water boiler. He looks happier and better every day. I never have known such satisfaction just seeing him revel in this place and leading at last exactly the life he wants. I adore my own study, and after I get my great plank table, paint the woodwork white, get a rug & maybe an upholstered armchair, it will be heavenly.
The 3rd package of our china set came before Warren left, the only one with anything broken. I noticed it was insured & wondered if we could claim anything on it---one dinner plate & two bowls were broken, due to packing, I think. The top & bottom were thickly padded, but the two packages inside not padded from each other, so the 8 dinner plates must have acted as a battering ram on the 2 bowls. Also, we only got 6 bowls in all (I think we had glued one broken one which didn’t come), 7 small butter plates & 7 dessert plates. Is that what you sent? Let us know if we should do anything about the broken stuff. I’ve kept the insurance number. In any case, it’s wonderful to have the china with us, especially the glass decanter and the lovely teapot Warren so kindly brought. Now we hope to pick up a few nice bits of furniture at the multitudinous sales (auctions at houses) around here. They are great fun to go to.
Oh, saw my doctor---a young Perry Nortonish type whose surgery is 3 houses up across the street(!) and his marvelous midwife-nurse* whom I liked immediately. I look forward to my home delivery here now, these 2 people being very important in my life---I couldn’t be better pleased with them. I just love it here, & look so forward to you coming over and enjoying it with us next summer.
Much love from us 3,
Sivvy
TO Jennifer Hassell
Saturday 16 September 1961
TLS (fragment),* Smith College
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire
September 16, 1961
Miss Jennifer Hassell
A. M. HEATH & CO. LTD.
35 Dover Street
London W.1
Dear Miss Hassell,
I’m sending along the manuscript of THE BEDBOOK, verse for a children’s picture book, and my husband’s book for children MEET MY FOLKS! in case you think they’re worth passing on to your office mate* in charge of Children’s Books on the chance of selling my ms. in either or both England and America, and my husband’s book in America. His book has been rejected over there by the Atlantic Monthly Press, Harper’s and Athenaeum, but no
TO Aurelia Schober Plath & Warren Plath
Tues.–Fri. 26–29 September 1961*
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Tuesday: September 27
Dearest mother & Warren,
How nice to get letters from the two of you this week. I am so glad the return plane flight went off well. The days have just flown since I last wrote, and we have established a very pleasant rhythm here. Right after breakfast I go up to my study to work at the marvelous six foot natural wood table (which you helped finish, Warren!) while Ted carpenters or gardens in the back, with Frieda. He gives her lunch & puts her to bed about noon, & I come down & make our lunch & by the time I am finished picking up the house & doing dishes Frieda is up and out front with me gardening or mending or whatever, and Ted is in his study. Thus both of us get half a day out-of-doors and half a day writing (which is all either of us wants!) and Frieda is out all the time.
I have amnesia about what I wrote in my last letter, mother. The red sweater is wonderfully roomy & should fit for a long while. It’s our very favorite. Now I have so much space everything is much easier & I find myself washing Frieda’s sweaters almost every day. She alternates those wonderful wool pants. She gets very dirty here, as when we garden, she must come out with her little pail and shovel & scoop up dirt all over herself. What’s the smallest size USA dungarees??? I am going to make a bunch of little cotton smocks to go over her wool sweaters & pants which I can wash every night to save dirtying them too much. She is in her element here---plays more & more by herself in the giant playroom, running in and out; plays with my pots & pans. I got her a little bell-ringing imitation lawnmower to push today, as she loves to see me mow the lawn & she’s overjoyed. She wears her sunhat you bought for Italy all the time & has loved that musical doll to such distraction it is a bit grey---I simply can’t get it away from her. Do you think washing it with warm soapsuds & a nail brush would hurt the musicbox? I mean not putting it in water, of course, but lightly washing the fur. She adores this doll also, I think, because it has a real mouth, which she is always trying to feed. You should see her cradling it and kissing it and putting it to bed in a piepan! She says: all gone, more milk, egg, eye, car, etc., still not a lot, but she understands very involved directions like Feed some apple to baby. It is amazing how easy she is to take care of here.
Did I say the check for the Bendix came, & a thousand thanks? My life will be much easier when it finally arrives. My cleaning woman is a blessing. She does the upstairs Tuesday & the downstairs Thursday, plus almost all the ironing. I don’t know what I’d do without her! I look so forward to the “day-after” neatness of her floorscrubbing. I have just been to Exeter for the day, shopping for bits and pieces. Did you say you knew of a 2nd hand rug place in London? I don’t know why this occurred to me, but I thought you might have said something about it. Rugs is the main thing now.
Friday: Wonderful clear blue weather. I have my front garden all weeded & trim & mowed. Could you find out what name the True Boston Magnolia has? We want to order a couple of bushes. Ted has planted winter lettuce & is digging a big strawberry bed: he has made my desk, a sewing table, a baby gate for the stair---is a natural carpenter! We are so happy. 72 apple trees! For Christmas do you think our American Santa might dig up some seeds for real American corn (I hear Country Gentleman is good---the Merwins have it in France) and Kentucky wonder beans, or some good thin green pole bean. Nothing like that here---only thick, broad beans & corn for pigs. So glad to get your new letter & hear the hurricane passed off safely for you.* Had a lovely letter from Peg Cantor, to whom I’ll write today.* Had also a wonderful letter from Mrs. Prouty enclosing a check for $200! I had been feeling a bit blue because I just didn’t feel I could go out and get a really fine rug or two (bedroom & living room are the two places I need them for most) with our mountain of moving-in expenses, including a bill of close to $300 from our lawyers for a multitude of fees. But now I can add her check to grampy’s & get something really good. Ted has been driving 35 miles to the BBC station at Plymouth to record 4 small programs for the Woman’s Hour.* I am immensely relieved there are recording stations here, for we shall start some income again. He is finishing a radio play for the 3rd programme,* & Vogue wants a children’s poem* for $50, & there is the series of the Times Children’s Pages,* so no lack of assignments. I am very encourage by selling my first woman’s magazine story;* my 2nd hasn’t sold yet, but the fiction editor of one of the two
big women’s weeklies here wants to see me & talk over their requirements on the strength of it. So I shall push this. I’ll get into the Ladies’ Home J yet! Yes, I will get a complimentary New Yorker subscription the minute mine expires. Frieda is in fine health, Ted taught her to feed herself. I have a potty chair which she plays with but how does one get her to pee in it???
Lots of love,
Sivvy
TO Ruth Fainlight
Friday 29 September 1961
TLS, Ruth Fainlight
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire
September 29, 1961
Dear Ruth,
I am desperate for apple recipes. Let me know the lot. Have you anything for Stinging Nettles? Surely they have some nutritive value!
I want to hear all about Alan’s sitdown story.* The New Statesman and Observer are our only source of World News, and down here they sound curiously watered and otherworldly. After a month of hard labor---carpentering, painting, weeding, mowing, and feeding my terrifying enormous brother who came for a week, we are at last writing something, me in the mornings, and Ted afternoons & eves. We take turns minding Frieda and hacking and pasting at the house. Do you know anything about good carpets? Right now I am morbid about acres of bare floorboarding full of dead death-watch beetles.
I should arrive at Waterloo at about 3:30 pm & come straight to you. Then leave just before 6 for the Guinness thing, then have supper with my publisher & come in early. I’ll probably shop a bit the next morning & take an afternoon train home that day. I most miss good movies. I can barely stand to read the reviews of them, I get so movie-mad. It will be terrific seeing you both.
Love,
Sylvia
TO Margaret Cantor
Saturday 30 September 1961
TLS (aerogramme), Private owner
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire, England
September 30, 1961
Dear Peg,
It was wonderful to get your lovely letter here. It felt very natural to hear your voice, and I wanted to sit right down and say hello. I wonder if you know how much we think of you! Ted and I are always so eager to hear news of you through mother or Warren, and both of us look forward to catching up with you annually through your wonderful newsy Christmas letter. You are one of Ted’s very favorite American families, and I think he enjoyed being at Kathy’s wedding* as much as about anything we did on our visit.
Our home is a dream---white plaster under its peak of straw thatch. The thatch is a home for countless birds who come and sing and preen before slipping in their special crevices every night. All I can see from my study window is great trees, clouds and blue sky. We have had some fine blue September weather, crisp and clear, and I have been out weeding my front flower garden, while Ted digs up the large vegetable garden at the back to make room for a strawberry patch.
The house has a lovely feel to it---as if it had been full of warm fires, and flowers, and happy children. And indeed it was the boyhood home of Sir Robert Arundell, the Governor of the Bahamas,* who sold it to us. Frieda is in her element, toddling about and imitating all we do---spooning dirt over herself, which she thinks is digging the garden, and eating endless apples. After being so long cramped in two city rooms with no garden, it is heaven to lose ourselves on our green acres. I work in my study every morning, while Ted carpenters or gardens with Frieda at his side. Then he works in the afternoon and evening while I cook and sew and pick flowers. It is a lovely rhythm. I feel I learned so much from you in that beautiful summer in Chatham---the real joy of creative homemaking. I think back on that as the happiest summer of my teens---it just glows gold, the color of the Chatham sands.
Do know that we think of you very, very often! Ted joins me in sending best love to all,
Affectionately,
Sylvia
TO Peter Davison
Saturday 30 September 1961
TLS (photocopy), Yale University
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire, England
September 30, 1961
Dear Peter:
I am writing in answer to your good letter to Ted.* He was very pleased with the review, and is sending a copy on to Bill Merwin at his address in France.*
We also have just bought a house---in Devon, so the above address should be our permanent one for, we hope, a long, long time. It is a wonderful, ancient (how ancient nobody knows) old farmhouse, white, with a great peaked thatch, surrounded by its own 2½ acres, apple orchard, flower and vegetable garden, on the edge of a small, but surprisingly thriving town with bank, butchers, chemists, all the conveniences, and the bluegrey outlines of Dartmoor just to the South. With our 12 rooms we can at last think of putting people up, so you and Jane must think of staying with us on a return trip to England. We are only 4 hours from London by express train, so Ted can go on easily doing his freelancing for the BBC.
I am enclosing a group of poems by Ted* which we were going to send on just about the time your letter arrived, with Wodwo in for good measure, in case you would like to publish it in America.
We are delighted to hear about Angus (what a fine name!) and tell Jane she must send me a gossipy letter someday, all about the baby, and Smith news, and news of her own self. Frieda loves it here, after the cramping two-room no-garden London flat. She rushes in and out, spoons dirt over herself, which she thinks is gardening, and eats endless green apples from our orchard, which don’t seem to affect her adversely.
All the best from us three to you three,
Sylvia Hughes
Mr. Peter Davison
Executive Editor
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
8 Arlington Street
Boston, Massachusetts
USA
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Friday 6 October 1961
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire, England
Friday: October 6
Dear mother,
It is just past ten, and I am sitting downstairs in the big kitchen this morning, with the Aga cooker (coal-burning) Ted stoked earlier warming the place cosily and Frieda running to and from her playroom with new toys to potter about with at my feet. Ted is off for most of the day to have the car checked, do the laundry and shop in Exeter & join the libraries there, so I have a day to catch up on baking and mending. It is lovely and cosy here now, and I have been working in my study till noon every morning. Ted and I are dreaming up plots for women’s magazine stories and I have just finished the 3rd since we started this & my 1st here, and will be seeing the Fiction Editor of one of the women’s magazines who is interested in me when I go to London at the end of the month to pick up my 75 pounds poetry prize at the Guinness party & see my publisher.
Ted had a day in London this Tuesday---leaving the house at 5:30 am, catching the 6:30 express from Exeter and getting in in time for a long day of recording at the BBC* from 10:30 to 4, with a posh lunch in Soho with the head of the Arts Council, for whom he will be co-judge* of the next two years’ Poetry Book Society Selections (at about $150 a year). Ted is almost through with his new radio play, and we feel we are really beginning to produce things.
Had a lovely letter from Dotty this week, enclosing $25 as a housewarming gift. Wrote her thanks last night. Our bank manager informed us that Mrs. Prouty’s check was dated 1962! I told him I simply couldn’t write her & ask her to change it, so the bank is sending a note about it to her bank, & I guess they’ll take care of it officially. Lucky for us she didn’t date it 1970!
I am enjoying my handwind Singer sewing machine very much. It is just my speed, and I am making Frieda a series of gay cotton smocks to go over her woolens---I can wash the smocks much more easily. Yesterday I had the plumbers in from 9-5, fixing the indoor toilet up with a new cistern, installing a modern sink unit in the kitchen & laying the pipes
for the Bendix, a lot of work as they had to go through a 3-foot stone wall from the kitchen into the larder where the machine will be, but amply worth it for me! Now all I have to do is pester the Bendix people to deliver it!
Nancy Axworthy, my cleaning lady, is more and more indispensable. She, of course, is more accustomed to the house than I as she has worked here 11 years. Her husband is a carpenter and evidently a town figure---one of the church bellringers, assistant head of the fire brigade, woodworking teacher at a night class, and so on. She is a sweet, fresh-faced healthy person & the midwife said that when the new baby comes she’d probably be happy to come for a few more hours a week & help with washing up and so on. I feel very lucky!
Did I tell you that Ted is having a selection of poems from his 2 books come out in a Faber paperback jointly* with selected poems by Thom Gunn, another Faber poet Ted’s age?
We are being deluged by flower and fruit catalogues Ted has sent for, full of tantalizing colored pictures & descriptions. Do find out the official name of the Boston magnolias! I hope we can get their twin here. All of us are very healthy with our wholesome diet. I have 30 Vitamin A & D pills a month for 6¢ from the Welfare service, and Frieda has A & D drops which she takes every day, so don’t worry about us in that respect. The one person I wish we could import is Dr. Gulbrandsen! My midwife has told me a good dentist in Exeter who does scrape teeth, but evidently only in London do they Xray, so I’ll simply have to plan a trip there once or twice a year to an Xraying dentist, probably as a private patient.
Frieda responds more & more to her life here. She is delighted with her big playroom, the bay window of which I use for my sewing table, and Ted is going to build some shelves in an alcove for her toys, so she can have them all arranged in full view instead of jumbled together. She is incredibly neat---picks up every little crumb she drops & gives it to us & tries to sweep up anything spilt with a dust pan or sponge.