by Sylvia Plath
Well, I didn’t want to write anything until I felt in better spirits. We have started painting the floors upstairs, preparatory to ordering our rugs, & it makes an immense difference in our morale. Living on dirtyish bare boards in very cold weather is grim. Now Ted has laid down a white undercoat in every upstairs room but one (which we won’t use till we refloor it) & is bordering the edges that will show with pale grey lino paint, as in our London flat. Everything as a result looks airy, light and spanking clean. I have looked & looked at carpets, in Exeter, London & Plymouth, & feel now that our choice is right & sensible. We ordered a lovely all-wool Indian carpet for our bedroom (10'7" x 9'3") with an off-white, rose & green border & center medallion, at just under $150, about half price of the carpet, also Indian, but larger & fancier, that I saw in London.
I am also ordering this week the rugs I saw in London---a super red one for my study, a matching red, but cheaper because shorter-piled, for the stair & hall carpet, forest green for Frieda’s room, & a handsome figured rug for the livingroom (all-wool Wilton---the rest are all-wool too), with a rich red background & green & white figured border & center medallion, all these with matching underfelts (I saw foam-rubber underlays but didn’t like it---I’m sure damp would crumble it). I hope these get to us by Christmas: the whole lot, 4 rugs & the staircarpet & underfelts should amount to about $750 which I don’t think too bad, as $325 of that is gifts from grampy, Mrs. Prouty & Dot & I’ve the rest easily with the sale of my poetry mss. for $280 & my Guinness poetry prize, both bolts out of the blue, as it were. I feel we have made a good investment. Next spring we hope to have saved enough to have cement foundations laid under the front half of the house & black & white squared linoleum on top of that in the playroom & hall. Then we shall rest a bit.
I have been sewing curtains for Frieda’s closet & odd windows here & there & have ordered enough for red corduroy drapes for our front room French windows & short curtains for the window over the windowseat, plus 3 cushions, covered in matching red cord for the windowseat, which shall do us as a sofa---there really isn’t room enough for anything like that in the front room anyway.
Piles of packages have come---the wonderful one with the nighties I liked so much for Frieda when she was little, the handsome plaid pants with the warm red lining, the wonderful cord things which will be ideal for her “gardening” this spring. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Then today came a big Xmas parcel from you with the two Ladies Home J’s which I fell upon with joy and rejoicing---that magazine has so much Americana I love it. Look forward to a good read by the wood fire tonight, & to trying the luscious recipes. Recipes in English women’s magazines are for things like Lard & Stale Bread Pie, garnished with Cold Pigs Feet, or Left-Over Pot Roast in Aspic.
A huge packet from Dotty also arrived. I’m enclosing a card for her,* if you want to put it in with anything of yours. I feel so thwarted not to be giving out anything but cards after last Christmas, especially as I just love buying presents for people, but we have felt we need to really pinch this year to weather the piles of bills for plumbers, electricians, extra heaters, coal, land tax, house tax, solicitors, surveyors, movers and all the mountaining things. As if to sanction our move, we have been very lucky in earning money this fall---my Saxton, in 4 installments is ample to live on; the enclosed cheque is part of the Atlantic Monthly fee of $125 for two of Ted poems* they just accepted (the rest will follow on our filling out tax exemption forms). Now we can afford to let our American cheques build up that account again. Each September 1st we plan to pay you & Ted’s parents back each $280 of your loan which has been such a help in saving us tons of mortgage interest. I am very pleased we will be able to meet our heap of largish expenses---nearly 2 years of English income tax which our blessed London accountant is figuring out, & back dues for Nat. Health over $2 a week which we want to catch up with now.
Our Indian carpet came & our bedroom is just beautiful with it. Ted got a lovely Chinese goat-skin rug to fill the odd empty space, long black and grey silky hairs, and that makes it very special. We ordered the remaining rugs from London today & hope they come before the baby does.
You have no idea how forward we are looking to your visit this summer! You should have a real vacation this time. Sitting out in deck chairs with your 2 grandchildren & exploring the Cornwall beaches. By the time you come the house should be in very nice shape, and all the foliage at its best. We have 2 more Pifcos, making 4, now. The cold is bitter. Even my midwife said it was too Spartan for a new baby & to warm things up. The halls are hopeless, of course, but the Pifcos do a wonderful job in closed off rooms. The cold seems to keep us healthy---none of us has been taken with a cold yet (knock on wood)---we look fat as bears with all our sweaters, but I find this nippy air very bracing & so does Frieda. Her fat cheeks bloom, even though her breath comes out in white puffs. Much healthier than the overheating we had in America. I am only sorry you have had such bad luck of getting sick over Thanksgiving & having relapses. How are you now? Aren’t you through in 6 weeks with all your remedial reading program? I will be so relieved when you get done with it.
We had a lovely time laughing over the take-off issue of Mademoiselle. And now I am embedded with the Journals, especially delighted with the apple-recipe issue.* I love all the bits of gossip & clippings you send. So glad to hear Sonia Thorguson* is married, she’s such a lovely girl. I wonder if Ruth Geisel* will ever get married?
I hope Warren is having a peaceful and pleasant year & isn’t too overworked. I feel dreadfully lazy myself. I really write terribly little---I was like this, I remember, before Frieda came: quite cowlike & interested suddenly in soppy women’s magazines & cooking & sewing. Then a month or so afterwards I did some of my best poems.
I rely on your letters---you are wonderful to keep them so frequent in spite of your load of work & being sick.
All of us send love,
Sivvy
TO Brian Cox
Tuesday 12 December 1961
TLS, University of Kansas
Court Green
North Tawton
Devon.
December 12, 1961
Dear Brian,
I was delighted with American Poetry Now---thought the cover* handsome, and the setup of the poems worked out very well indeed. I do hope it continues to sell.
We see nothing but the Observer & The New Statesman---the rest is cows and sheep. Could you give me a notion of what the Times Lit. Sup.* said? I’d like so much to know what poets people like & what poets people miss etc.
We are stuffing our cracks against the winter blasts and readying for three months in which we should have nothing to do but write and dream of strawberries & cream, so hope to have some produce of poems by spring.
All best wishes,
Sylvia Plath
TO Judith Jones
Tuesday 12 December 1961
TLS (aerogramme), University of Texas at Austin
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire, England
December 12, 1961
Mrs. Judith B. Jones
ALFRED A. KNOPF INC.
501 Madison Avenue
New York 22, New York
USA
Dear Mrs. Jones,
Thanks very much for your good letter of November 22nd.* I’m delighted about the Saxton Fellowship too, as it comes at a specially providential time and enables me to go on writing to schedule in spite of the obligations of our recently acquired pre-Domesday farmhouse and orchard and the prospect of a second infant around New Year’s. If all goes according to plan, as I think it will, the novel should be finished by early next fall and I imagine Heinemann will send a copy along to you---they seem to be in touch with some other editor at Knopf in any case.*
I’m glad all the assignments of copyright are coming in. Milton Greenstein,* the New Yorker man, wanted to be very sure his magazine is properly acknowledged, and this is the form he gave me for acknowledging the New Yorker in my b
ook:
The poems Hardcastle Crags, Man In Black, Mussel Hunter At Rock Harbor, and Watercolor Of Grantchester Meadows, appeared originally in The New Yorker.*
I must sound an awful curmudgeon about photographs, but I am so buried in the country now that all I see is babies and cows and sheep, no photographers near, and my husband and I are so unphoto-conscious we don’t even have a camera. I know from my Smith and Mademoiselle days that the publicity photo is a great necessity, and have piles from that ancient era, but hope the public can get by without anything until I again return to civilisation. I don’t know when this will be. The YMHA have asked me* to do a reading, & I do love giving readings & did a lot in London and over the BBC, and certainly would do so if I ever made a return visit to America.
Do let me know how the book is getting on. When is it due out?
With warmest good wishes,
Sylvia Plath
TO Aurelia Schober Plath & Warren Plath
Friday 15 December 1961*
ALS in greeting card* with envelope, Indiana University
With best wishes for Christmas and the New Year
with love from / Sivvy, Ted & Frieda
Thursday, December 15
Dear mother & Warren . . .
It seems impossible that it is only ten days to Christmas – I have been so immersed in household fixing & thinking of the arrival of the new baby that I’ve done little but get off a few cards. I mailed almost everybody’s (your neighbors) sea-mail a week ago – let me know if they arrive in time! Frieda is playing at my feet with a spool of thread – she loves looking at pictures now & can say “owl” & “doddie” & “cow” & point them out. She is very sweet & good lately & a fine walker. We have been taking her out a lot on some of the pleasant roads near here & have found some lovely spots nearby on Dartmoor where we can picnic next summer when you come, mother. We look so forward to your coming & seeing us in such lovely surroundings. I hope the enclosed photographs* give you some idea of the handsome lines of Court Green.
Did I tell you our Indian carpet (off white & rose) & goatskin came for the bedroom? They make it feel like a place of luxury now. We have ordered the other rugs from London & I hope they come before the new baby. They certainly do make the house feel warmer. Frieda loves rolling on the bedroom rug.
The bank manager’s wife* – a very lively & entertaining Irishwoman – paid a “call” on us this afternoon & regaled us with all sorts of stories. I look forward to getting to know her better – evidently one couple of tenants here (before) the last shiftless lot – a fertilizer salesman who plowed up our tennis court) were a Belgian & a Cornishwoman from South America who did gorgeous handweaving they sold to Harrods & Fortnum & Mason & wealthy locals.
I can’t tell you how much we like it here. The town itself is fascinating – a solid body of interrelated locals (very curious), then all these odd peripheral people – Londoners, ex-Cockneys, Irish. I look forward to getting to know them slowly. The bank manager’s wife, the doctor & his family & the redoubtable Nurse who doesn’t miss an addition on every house visit. The bank manager’s wife has a daughter of 15* at school in Oxford & says there are no children her age here at all. But I should be much luckier. Every time I visit the doctor’s surgery I see a raft of new babies. Most of them very attractive little things.
I have been grandiose & ordered a turkey for our Xmas dinner. I love turkey & shall enjoy living off it cold. Is a 10 lb. turkey a good size? It is about as small as they come. And I shall stuff it with that nice stuffing you use, mother. We have a little evergreen tree waiting to be brought in which I shall hang with some German spice cookies in tinfoil I got & Woolworth’s balls & a few birds which reminded me of our lovely peacocks.
It will be our first Christmas on our own as heads of a family, & I want to keep all our old traditions alive. I wish I had a Springerle pin! We ate a batch of apricot half-moons last night – how I love them. Do explain to Dot if you can that we are being Spartan about gifts this Christmas. I hope by next year we can be as generous as our wishes! In spite of our fabulous bills, back taxes & Nat. Health, we are doing surprisingly well. My NYorker contract for poems was renewed* for another year, & I’ve been asked to be one of the 3 judges for the Guinness contest I won this year.* Ted & Frieda send lots of love & so do I.
xxx
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath & Warren Plath
Monday 18 December 1961
TLS in greeting card* with envelope, Indiana University
Merry Christmas – Happy New Year
with love / Sivvy, Ted & Frieda
Monday: December 18
Dear mother & Warren,
I hope these color shots* of Frieda arrive in time for Christmas, but if not they should make a bright postscript to it. I think they really do our blue-eyed angel justice for a change. That gnarled branch to the right of our door is an antique honeysuckle. Don’t you think we have a nice place? I’m also enclosing 2 checks for deposit in the Boston 5cent Bank. The New Yorker accepted 2 more of my poems this week,* along with renewing my year’s contract. Very encouraging. My publisher sent me Memoirs & Correspondence of Frieda Lawrence* for Christmas. Isn’t that dear of them. We are very happy, healthy, and frosty just now. I drove to Exeter today for a bit of shopping* in a lovely white frost---all the cows and sheep were pink against the white slopes of the hills. The electrician came today & put our power plugs in 4 rooms, so we can have the Pifcos all about and keep snug. I have at last got my red corduroy for livingroom curtains & windowseat; Ted’s finished the last of the floorpainting. We’ve got such lovely piles of presents from everyone---both of us are more excited at something for Frieda than anything for ourselves. Ted will make a wood cradle for her doll which I’ll paint this week, & I’ll make Dot’s carrot cakes, which are such nice holiday fare.
Do explain to Dotty that we are just sending Christmas wishes & love this year, since the house is eating up just about everything else. Next Christmas should be quite settled. Our big present to ourselves is that we are paying off our £600 mortgage this Christmas. Isn’t that wonderful! It is because the Maugham people didn’t take back the grant when we told them we couldn’t use it in the 2 year period given, but let us keep it. So we will save all that interest. I hope you have recovered from your bad cold, mummy. Do write that you are better. I hope you don’t overdo this Christmas. Give our best love to Dotty & Joe. Dotty’s letters mean a lot to me & I feel more & more close to her.
Love from us all,
Sivvy
TO Howard Moss
Monday 18 December 1961
TLS (aerogramme), New York Public Library
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire, England
December 18, 1961
Mr. Howard Moss
THE NEW YORKER
25 West 43rd Street
New York 36, New York
USA
Dear Mr. Moss,
I’m very glad to hear you are taking THE MOON AND THE YEW TREE and MIRROR TALK. By all means change the title of MIRROR TALK to MIRROR.* I think that’s much better. I consider myself, with few exceptions, a rather numb hand at titles, and am usually most grateful for any alternative suggestions.
Thanks so much for the clippings. Buried as we are among Devon hedges and livestock, we don’t get a chance to keep up on these at all.
All good wishes,
Sylvia Plath
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Friday 29 December 1961
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Friday: December 29
Dear mother,
I am sitting in our livingroom by a crackling wood fire, our mantel still gay with red candles and about 50 Christmas cards, our fat little tree with its silver b
irds and tinsel and spicecake hearts still up, and the new red corduroy curtains I have just finished drawn, making the room bright and cheerful, like the inside of a Valentine. I had 3 cushions made of foam rubber for our windowseat and covered in the same red cord (much too ambitious a job for me) and this weekend hope to finish the pleated red underfringe from cushions to floor. The stair carpets have come---a rich red, and Ted is laying them. It is a heavenly difference in feel and illusion of warmth. We have thick underfelts to go under the carpets, hair felts, so I’m sure that keeps some cold out. We just await the livingroom carpet & the one for my study & F’s bedroom. The midwife suggested I get a thermometer to see the temperature of the new baby’s room. I was amazed. The general level of the house---in halls & unheated rooms, is about 40° (38° in our bedroom in the morning!). An electric heater gets it feeling very hot at 50-55°. Now I am positively sweltering in the livingroom at 60°. It all depends on what one gets used to. We have all been (knock on wood) in excellent health---not one cold yet, and I do think this change from central heating, with the constant sharp contrasts of cold & hot, outside and in, is responsible for our healthy winter so far. Frieda blooms like a rose. I hope you have the colored pictures by now. Isn’t she a little darling?