The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2
Page 77
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Sivvy
TO Marion Freeman
Thursday 26 October 1961
TLS (aerogramme), Smith College
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire, England
October 26, 1961
Dear Aunt Marion,
A thousand thanks for the lovely birthday hankie and the housewarming cheque! With the latter I shall buy one of the small brightly gleaming pieces of copper or brass I see so often at country auctions and hanker after. Its lustre will remind me of your kind thoughts.
Ted and I are so happy with our new home. It is just exactly right for us, one of those mystical appearances which makes one believe in destiny. Our thatch is full of robins and wagtails and birds which wake us in the morning chirping, and I love looking out and seeing no houses, just the church spire and our own grassy acres, trees and flowers. We have fine shops just around the corner, so I have all the advantages of real country (sheep baas and cow moos!) with civilization, too. It will be a place to visit when you come to England! I am just dying for mother to see it, after our cramped flat last summer, which she managed with such angelic fortitude.
Best of all, we have all the time for writing we want---me in the morning, when I’m fresh, without time yet to get muddled with grocery lists & cooking recipes, & Ted in the afternoon & evening when he works best. He is finishing a radio play & I just had my first little story come out in a women’s magazine over here---a very amateurish thing, maybe someday I’ll get one in the Ladies’ Home Journal, a much more advanced and professional magazine than any of the women’s weeklies over here. I get homesick for it now & then!
Frieda is blooming with all the fresh air and room. She runs round from front garden to back fearlessly, carrying whichever of her toys is her current favorite in a little basket.
Had a darling letter & photo from Ruthie. Thank her for me & give my love to all the Geisslers & to Dave. And keep a good bit for yourself!
Lots of love from us 3,
Sylvia
TO Ruth Fainlight
Thursday 26 October 1961*
TLS, Ruth Fainlight
Court Green
North Tawton
Devon.
Thursday
Dear Ruth,
A small note to ask if I could possibly cadge a 2nd night with you---Wednesday. I’m treating myself to a ticket to the Royal Court* that night on the grim principle that you never know which fling is your last. At least I don’t know when I shall be seeing the beloved crapulous face of my dear London again, so I am trying to cram all that is possible into my brief time. Be sure & tell me if you are planning parties or resting I’ll louse up. Don’t bother to answer, you can say what is what when I come.
Love to both,
Sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thurs.–Mon. 26–30 October 1961
TLS, Indiana University
Court Green
North Tawton, Devon.
October 26, 1961
Dear mother,
I’m enclosing a statement to the postoffice about the broken dishes. I think I’d almost rather have you deposit what money you collect in our Wellesley account, as we really aren’t pressed for a set of 8. All 44 pieces were there. I’m also enclosing a $5 check from dear Aunt Marion for deposit in the Wellesley account. I’m depositing this one here on 2nd thought. I’ve written to thank her, and to Mrs. Pulling for the lovely pink blanket (babies’) she sent.
I can’t understand our Boston bank total. You say with the little $12 check it is $1,788.44, but I only have two deposits recorded after we withdrew our housemoney, making the low of $1,231.31---Ted’s $275 for his story, and this $12.31, making $1,518.44. What’s this extra $260?* I can’t think of any writing money I’ve sent since August.
Ted has written a lovely poem about the Loch Ness Monster for Vogue (a children’s poem) over here, the British edition, & has got a pile of children’s books on animals coming from the New Statesman for him to review. They are sending me a pile of bright children’s picture books to review as well (since I modestly said that was my level at present)---all free & to keep. I am quite pleased, because I think I can judge the art work pretty well, & am delighted to tuck these away to bring out later for Frieda, about $15 worth. We got our copy of Harper’s Bazaar today. Isn’t it amazing, Robert Lowell,* Marianne Moore* & Ted in the middle of all those fancy corsets! Lucky for us they have piles of money. The “sophisticated” audience thus has fashion, plus cocktail party gossip talk---“name writers”, usually only a 2-page spread you’ll notice, so it doesn’t strain the brain. The editors are generally very brainy women & the fashion blurbs written by Phi Beta Kappa English majors. Poor things.
Later: October 30, Monday.
I am sitting in our “parlor” at the very sweet little bureau-type desk Ted bought at an auction last week for $15. It’s rather like yours, with 3 drawers & a slant top that opens out to write on & pigeonholes for letters. I love it. It frees our desks of business and personal letters. We were awfully lucky---it was sold at noonish in the daylong auction amid bricabrac that went for a dollar or two. Another desk like it but much uglier, went for $50 later in the day among big items bringing about $100 when there were lots more people.
I go to London tomorrow to collect my 75 pound prize and see the Woman’s Mag editor and leave my manuscripts with the bookdealer who bought Ted’s on the chance they might sell them. I am going to the theatre Wednesday on your birthday money, & shall have a nice meal beforehand: I thought you’d be pleased at my spending it that way. I look forward to the treat, as I don’t imagine I’ll have another chance at a fling till you come next summer.
Had a lovely birthday---Ted got me a lot of fancy cans of octopus & caviar at a delicatessen, two poetry books* & a Parker pen & a big wicker basket for my laundry. I wish you could see Frieda in her red jacket-hood: she looks so comically like that little red kewpie doll she carries round. The pale blue snowsuit jacket is her “best”---I am always with her when she wears it & it is gorgeous on her, very roomy. It will be lovely all this cold season. We’ve got about 50 childrens books to review in all now, a real gift, because we can’t review more than 10 apiece . . . everything from “The Cat in the Hat Comes Back”* to the story of Elsa the Lioness & her cubs.* A good $50-$60 worth. My acquisitive soul rejoices.
Well I hope the Strontium 90 level doesn’t go up too high in milk---I’ve been very gloomy about the bomb news; of course the Americans have contributed to the poisonous level. The fallout shelter craze in America sounds mad.* Well, I would rather be in Devon where I am in the country than anywhere else just now. Keep well!
xxx
Sivvy
TO Helga Huws
Monday 30 October 1961
TLS, Helga and Daniel Huws
Court Green
North Tawton, Devon.
October 30: Monday
Dear Helga,
It was wonderful to have your big, newsy letter, & it made me very homesick for you all. We have been at Court Green since September 1st, and are settling down quite happily. I find the space, the quiet, the fresh air, and the obvious joy of Ted & Frieda make up for most of my cherished London vices---sour cream & cream cheese among them---and except for occasional bouts of despair at our acres of bare boards (we haven’t been able to afford any rugs yet, what with our downpayment, rates, mortgage, repairs, moving expenses & all the lot of big bothers involved in buying a house) am in good spirits.
Of all the places we saw in Devon while my mother was in London minding Frieda this is the only one we could have lived in---the others were hideous, laughable (compared to their descriptions in the agents’ circulars---an “ornamental swan pond”, for example, proving to be a kind of open cesspit that had obviously been used for drowning children) and much more expensive. We fell in love with Court Green---It was, of course, the only place with a thatch & we had solemnly sworn No Thatches (fear of
fire, expense, rain, predatory birds, etc.). It is a very very ancient farmhouse (so old there is no knowing how old, with an old burial mound* on the property) with castle-thick walls in the original back part & about 10 rooms, yet very compact & not at all rambling, feeling almost small (except when I look at the floor-space). Downstairs there are two front rooms, one very long, which is Frieda’s playroom & my sewingroom (I hope to be able to put down lionoleum someday) and a small room with a tiny fireplace we use as our library, with our books & a little oak desk we bought at an auction. Then a hall between leading to a cobbled (!) hall in back between the big kitchen with an Aga that we use for a diningroom, and a little cooking kitchen across the hall I use for cooking, washing up, and a sort of cold larder beyond where I have my fridge & vegetables. Upstairs there are four large bedrooms & one small (for Frieda), one of which is my study, & then a lovely little peaked attic up some stairs under the thatch which is where Ted works. We have a U-shape of outbuildings around a cobbled courtyard---a big thatched barn, stables (!), and a thatched cottage which someday we would like to make into a guest house for mothers-in-law and such people. But those are all 10-year plans. The house is white, with a black trim & this primeval peaked thatch. We have just over two acres of land, mostly stinging nettle, but Ted is digging up the big vegetable garden & we’ll hope to live on them---he’s already put in strawberries, and we have about 70 apple trees, eaters & cookers---though sadly the crop this year is very poor everywhere & we are almost through ours. And blackberries everywhere in season. I have a tiny front lawn carved out of the wilderness---a laburnum tree, lilacs & a few rose bushes. We adjoin the town church, Anglican, with its own 8 famous bellringers. I’ve started to go to it, as it is a lovely church & in spite of my heathen nature, I’d like to start Frieda et. al. off in Sunday school. Sadly, the vicar is a little dull simple man. We are pretty much surrounded by our own land & Ted is planning impenetrable screens of evergreens to shield us from the few chimney tops we can see.
Luckily I don’t require the intimacy of other people to keep me happy---our family circle is very tight and pretty self-sufficient, because although these Devon villagers are friendly (they greet you in the street and so on) they are all inter-related in intricate ways, and we are quite outlandish. All sorts of curious enquiries as to what we (or Ted) do, and if we plan to stay and so on. There’s a nice lively retired couple next-door in a little cottage---pub-keepers from London, and a great booming wife of a dead tea-plantation owner in India at the bottom of the lane, and a very pretty (but dumb) mother of 3 little girls also named Sylvia* whom the vicar sent “to be my friend”, but no soul-mates. We actually bought the place from a Sir Robert Arundell (he had been made a Sir, not born one), it was his boyhood home, and so we are in a way lords of the manor, although it is a very ancient manor, with plaster crumbling ominously behind the wallpaper which obviously holds it on, and a billion birds living in our thatch, and nettles overall. But it has all sorts of curious advantages---water, electricity and gas, 2 minutes from 2 banks, 3 grocery stores, 3 butchers (one quite good), a fine chemist & one mile from a railway stop that is 4 hours express from Waterloo---it seems odd, that we should be embedded in such deep country, with cows and sheep heard all the time (Frieda points out the window and goes “Baaa” when she wakes each day), yet not utterly isolated. It is an ugly town, but I am quite perversely fond of it.
I even have a cleaning woman---a robust blond Devon mother in her 40s named Nancy Axworthy who 2 mornings a week, for 2/6 an hour (that’s what Lady Arundell paid her!) does all my floors & scrubbing & cleaning & even some ironing when she has time. She is wonderful & has taken care of the place for 11 years, so is more at home than I.
Frieda has blossomed here---her learning to walk really drove us out of London. Now she trots round after Ted in the morning when he’s gardening, and after me in the afternoon when I’m baking and sewing (I got an old 2nd hand handwind Singer before leaving London, rickety, but I love it), copying everything we do & in general being good-tempered. I have trouble feeding her for the first time---she must have instinctively picked up my dislike of eggs & cereal because she wants all meat and cheese and potatoes, for breakfast and supper as well, and she is a terrifying perfectionist, getting very upset when she can’t fit all her blocks in one small basket, or pick up all her Russian doll parts at once. And she is still in nappies: how did you train Madeline? Frieda will sit on her little plastic pot, but has absolutely no idea she’s to pee in it. She has only a few words yet and it’s impossible to communicate this very strange notion to her. I was hoping she’d be miraculously trained by the time January 11th & this new baby arrives. Hoho.
You must come visit us. It would be a drive through lovely country---couldn’t Danny drive you all down some weekend? We’re 22 miles beyond Exeter, 7 miles from Okehampton. We were given a double bed before we left out of someone’s mother’s stuff, and if you came before January I could have a cot for Madeline, or even after---the baby could sleep in our carrycot. We have so much room & it’s a good place for the children to play. Do say you could come for a weekend! I’d really love having you around again---it would be such fun. You haven’t let us have your new address. Ted will probably put in a note to Danny.
Lots of love,
Sylvia
Much later – he’s so lazy I’m sending this off without!
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Sunday 5 November 1961
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Sunday: November 5
Dear mother,
It was lovely to come home from London and have your nice letter waiting. We have been having some fine, crisp blue weather, and my day in London was fair, which is all one could ask. The train trip was very pleasant---I had lunch going up & going down, which I enjoyed immensely, about $1.60 for soup, fish, meat & vegetables, dessert or cheese & biscuits, with beautiful countryside to watch sliding by---only 4 hours in all, a seeming miracle. I stayed 2 nights with our friends, the Sillitoes. The first night I went to the Guinness party & was, to my surprise, called on to read my poem with the regular Guinness winners which included Robert Graves in the fabulous Goldsmith’s hall in the City, although my prize was for another & much smaller little contest. And I picked up my 75 pound check. Then had a little supper with my publisher, & home. The next day was all business---I typed my children’s book review* at the Sillitoe’s, saw the very nice & encouraging women’s magazine editor, had lunch with another pregnant lady poet I met at the Guinness party, dropped some manuscripts at an agents in hopes of selling them at an American university, and had a bit of tea before the two plays by the young American author Edward Albee.* London is very tiring when one doesn’t have a place of one’s own, and the getting about a Herculean task; I found myself criticizing the soot & the horrid suburbs & the exhaust and dying to get home to clear air and my own acres and two darlings. Ted & Frieda met me at the station, Thursday afternoon, my train exactly on time. None of us had been able to eat or sleep very well apart, and now we are all thriving again.
I have marked down your finishing date on my calendar and look so forward to hearing you are safely and healthfully through your courses! The next five months are grim ones---I always feel sorry to have the Summertime change, with the dark evenings closing in in midafternoon, and will try to lay in some physical comforts this month---the best insurance against gloominess for me. It’s incredible to think that carpets can create a state of mind, but I am so suggestible to colors and textures that I’m sure a red carpet would keep me forever optimistic. This month, too, should see the end of the worst bills and some income from what we’ve been working on. I’ll send you a copy of our children’s book reviews when they come out---I just got a lovely songbook* worth over $4 which I look forward to using when we can manage to buy a piano---all the lovely ones “I had a little nut tree”, carols, rounds and game songs “Looby Loo” & “Lavenders Blue”. I think I’ve had more pleasure from these brightly-colo
red free review books than anything just lately. What I particularly like is judging the color and design---something I think I can give a real feeling of.
I am just now at the stage I was when we moved into our London flat, but a lot more comfortable & with a lot less to do, although I feel very ponderous & look immensely forward to my after-lunch lie-down. Frieda too seems suddenly to have increased in weight, but I have no way of telling how much she weighs now.
Ted has just finished typing his new radio play for the BBC---a poetic drama for voices (not acting) about the delusions of a soldier with a wound, very fine. Now he is working on 6 selections from children’s books for the Times, each of which will have an introduction. We have really done a great deal since we have come, these last two months. I have to keep myself from asking that everything be done at once---the whole house, for example, needs replastering, as much of the plaster is dry & crumbly behind the paper, but except for one or two spots, we should be all right for several years yet. And I’ll be going to Exeter in the next week or 10 days to price rugs & buy curtain material.
I’m amazed to hear you’ve done a sweater for the January baby---I just don’t see how you manage! It sounds divine. Dressed Frieda in that sea-greenblue corduroy zipper suit you sent for tea with a young, pretty mother of 3 girls (one Rebecca)---she named Sylvia, oddly enough. She came over with her new baby & 2 year-old Rebecca whom Frieda bullied loudly & fearlessly, reducing her to tears by trying to snatch her cookies & teddy. Both of them made fearful wails & roars.
Went to the Anglican chapel evensong again tonight---it’s a peaceful little well on Sunday evenings, & I do love the organ, the bellringing & hymn-singing, & muse on the stained-glass windows during the awful sermons. The three windows, lit up on Sunday evenings, look so pretty from our house, through the silhouettes of the trees. Youll have a real rest & holiday when you visit us this time---sitting out on our lilac-sheltered lawn in a deck chair with the babies playing, no steps nor traffic nor anything but country noises.