The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2

by Sylvia Plath

  I am so relieved mother is through her courses, and hope she finds time now for relaxing and visiting and knitting. We are dying to have her come over here this summer. I get really homesick for her---it must be so nice to be able to drop in on your children and grandchildren whenever you feel like it.

  Ted joins me in sending best wishes for your health. Pass on my love to Ruthie.

  Lots of love,

  Sylvia

  TO Olive Clifford Eaton*

  Thursday 1 February 1962

  TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University

  Court Green

  North Tawton

  Devonshire, England

  Thursday: February 1st

  Dear Mrs. Eaton,

  Mother tells me you are responsible for making the absolutely beautiful blue blanket with the pink embroidery and the handsome potholders which we received in our wonderful Christmas package from America. I did want to tell you how much I am enjoying both of these things. Our new baby, a boy---Nicholas Farrar Hughes---was born on January 17th, at home, delivered by the local midwife, and is now sleeping cosily upstairs wrapped in the blue blanket. I’m so glad to have “something blue” for him. And the potholders came just as I was about to throw away an old pair of pot-holding gloves that were all worn out, so fitted in beautifully and cheered up my country kitchen.

  Mother says the delicious carrot cake recipe I got from Aunt Dot came originally from your files, through grammy. I like the cake so much I make it as a Christmas cake, and gave the midwife one after she had delivered the baby.

  The weather here is very grim and English---grey and rainy, none of the white American snow I love so much. But Ted has found our first snowdrops and primroses, so we look forward to spring not too far off, when our acre of daffodils and our 70 apple trees and several cherry trees will be in bloom---a lovely sight we have not yet seen, we are so new to the house.

  I hope this letter finds you well. Ted joins me in sending best wishes and in admiring the lovely blanket and potholders.

  A very happy New Year,

  Sylvia Plath Hughes

  TO Judith Jones

  Friday 2 February 1962

  TLS (aerogramme), University of Texas at Austin

  Court Green

  North Tawton

  Devonshire, England

  February 2, 1962

  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 letter,* and for the proofs of THE COLOSSUS* which arrived today. There are just three minor corrections I have to make.

  1. In “A Note About the Author” it should say that I taught at Smith after the Fulbright to Cambridge (not before).

  2. In “A Winter Ship” (p. 44) the first line should read “At this wharf there are no grand landings to speak of.” (instead of “no grand lands”).

  3. In “Man in Black” the two lines beginning “Snuff-colored sand cliffs . . .” should be lined up with the rest of the lines and not set to the left.

  I thought the proofs looked very fine. Our daughter Frieda, by the way, was joined by our first son Nicholas two weeks ago. Now all is peaceful again, I am back at my novel.

  With best wishes,

  Sincerely,

  Sylvia Plath

  TO Aurelia Schober Plath

  Wednesday 7 February 1962

  TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University

  February 7: Wednesday

  Dear mother,

  Thank you so much for sending the bras & briefs---you got just what I wanted, & I suppose it seems silly to ask for you to go downtown for me as it were, on another continent, but you have no idea how much it meant---I won’t be able to shop for weeks yet, when the baby is on a more fixed schedule, and small things still loom very large. I get so impatient with myself, chafing to do a hundred things that have piled up, and barely managing one or two. Nicholas is very good during the night at last, waking like clockwork at 2 a.m. and 6 am with no crying in between. If he cries, it is in the afternoon or evening. Tell Warren to get a big house with a soundproof bedroom before he has a baby---I’m sure the night waking & crying would knock him out. I am lucky and have got in the rhythm of just dropping right back to sleep after I feed him, but I look very forward to when I can sleep 8 hours in a row. I don’t know what I would do without Nancy---she is coming about two hours a week extra now to help with my mountains of ironing. I have fallen newly in love with my Bendix. Right now I am doing about 3 full loads a week, what with all the sheets, towels and an astounding assembly line of nappies from Nicholas. We use disposable ones for Frieda, otherwise things just wouldn’t go round. It is heavenly to lie down upstairs and come down and find the kitchen floors washed, or to bake a cake and go upstairs and find all the rugs clean. Even so, I find my hands full. Did you have any household help when we were little? I seem to remember a succession of Annies and young women with red fingernails, I suppose when I am caught up on sleep everything will get done faster. I have a lot to catch up on, like clothes to be mended & cleaned & Frieda’s woolens keep me doing a daily handwash. Perhaps at the end of the month I shall be back in my study again. Ted is still taking the brunt of Frieda---she needs watching every minute. Her favorite trick is peeling our poor wallpaper off the wall, there are so many cracks she can get her fingernails in, and then running and pointing & saying “Bah Poo” in outraged tones, as if somebody else has done it. She has, all since I was down & out with the baby, discovered how to throw things down the toilet, tear up minute bits of paper or cotton & sprinkle them over the red hall carpet, uproot bulbs from flower pots, draw on the walls with coal, and today discovered a cache of candy wellmeaning people had given me for her over a longish period, which I was saving to distribute among visiting children, and had half-sucked most of it & stuck it all over her and in her own little hiding places before Ted found her out. Now that the baby is getting toward a 4 rather than a 3 hour schedule I should be freer to keep an eye on her. I am still delighted with my forsight at getting all the quarterly assignments for my grant done & packaged ahead. I do hope to get back to writing soon, though. I am taking all those bottles of pills you sent, and wonder if it isn’t the combination of them, especially the Vitamin C, which has kept me without a cold so far this winter (knock on wood). Oh, how I look forward to your visit! How I envy girls whose mothers can just drop in on them. I long to have a day or two on jaunts with just Ted---we can hardly see each other over the mountains of diapers & demands of babies. Nicholas is so cute---he weighed over 10 lbs. 2 oz.---had gained back his birthweight & more.

  Ted’s play was beautifully produced & he is so full of ideas for others. He is also reviewing animal books fairly regularly for the New Statesman & going on with his broadcasts for children which have been very enthusiastically received. I am so longing for spring. I miss the American snow, which at least makes a new clean exciting season out of winter, instead of this 6 months cooping-up of damp & rain & blackness we get here. Like the 6 months Persephone had to spend with Pluto. I get such pleasure hearing what lovely surprises your friends are planning with you. You deserve every bit of it & more, & it makes my spirit much lighter to think of you having outings instead of that deadly double-grind---that really depressed me. Do tell Dotty how much it means to me to keep in touch with her. She writes such nice newsy letters now. I do miss not having relatives to share my children with. Or my closest friends. You & Warren will just have to come over here often enough to keep me from getting too homesick, & get to know the babies as they grow up. Oh, the wonderful springerle pin & nut grinder (it is a nut grinder isnt it?) arrived today. I will try it out on a batch of springerle first thing. I find baking all my home recipes is very cheering---made Dotty’s 6-egg sponge this week, banana bread & lemon cake pudding. My regret is that I’ve found nowhere in all England that sells refined molasses! Just crude black---and my favo
rite cookies & breads are made with molasses. By the way, could I ask you to slip a tube of cocoabutter into your next packet? Resolved to try England, we asked the chemist for cocoabutter. He said it didn’t seem to come commercially, but he’d get some. The result: a packet of infinitesimal splinters. Ted & I melted it in the oven, & got a cake of the stuff, but with* a ghastly rancid smell. My first Ladies’ Home Journal came & I read it from cover to cover. Have written Mrs. Eaton, Dotty, Mrs. Freeman, Margaret & Mrs. Prouty. Everybody over there is so good to us, & you the most. Do keep telling me all about the wedding plans. How I’d adore to come.

  xxx

  Sivvy

  TO Aurelia Schober Plath

  Tuesday 13 February 1962

  TLS with envelope, Indiana University

  Tuesday: February 13

  Dear mother,

  This letter has hung around so long I am just enclosing it* in this one or it will never get off. I don’t know where the time has gone! I seem to need to sleep all the time, so drop back after feeding Nicholas at 6 and don’t get up till after 9, then the day is a whirlwind of baths, laundry, meals feedings & bang it is time for bed. Both Ted & I seem to need twice as much sleep as normal people, and are unable to function efficiently if we have a bad night. I wish I liked black coffee---it might wake me up, but I am living on bowls of eggnog and hot milk and ovaltine for beverages.

  Nicholas is absolutely darling. He seems so far advanced as a baby---I keep him on his stomach as I did Frieda, for she did pushups & developed her muscles early this way & I saw a 7 month baby who had lain on his back absolutely helpless when put on his stomach. Now Nicholas lifts his head and turns it from side to side when lying down. He has great very dark blue eyes which focus and follow your face or the light, unlike Frieda, whose eyes crossed alarmingly for a long time. He has a real little boy look, & his fuzz of brown babyhair looks like a crewcut. His eyebrows are strange---a quite black curved line over each eye, very handsome. I imagine he will have a rather dark handsome craggy face, although now he is soft as a peach. You’ll enjoy seeing him still at a real baby stage when you come. I have washed both your pink sweater & Margaret’s & they both came out beautifully. I don’t know whether it is the wool or whether I am just a better washer. I did rub Frieda’s at the wrists & elbows a little---she gets so black even in a day, with food snacks & coal & all the muck of our farmy place it seemed impossible to get out the dirt just by squeezing. But now I squeeze.

  The darling valentine for Frieda arrived---it seemed just made for her, and she has been carrying her handkerchief around in her pocket, she is especially delighted because there is an elephant on it. She is always running into me & lifting a finger & saying “O, baby cry” (without the r) or “Shh, beddie-bye”. Of course the baby usually isn’t crying at all. She is going through a very pretty amusing stage now---she will point to the patch she tore off her wallpaper & cluck her tongue and I say* “Who did that” and she shakes her head chidingly and says “Bah Poo” (bad girl), and I say “Who’s the bad girl” & she points to herself and says “ME” and burst into uproarious laughter. She is such a sunshiney thing. I can’t wait till she gets interested in reading. She looks at magazines & pictures a lot, picking out with great pride the mummies and daddies and bawpees and cars and shoes and spoons and things she can recognize. She is unerring---and knows the tiny bird on the New Yorker masthead is an “Ow”.

  I was fascinated to hear about Dick Norton’s* starting a practise---how perfectly Dickensian! I would love to know details about David. Why does he find his parents difficult??? How is it Perry didn’t save any money? O I love hearing all these bits of personal detail about the people I used to know. New people are never as interesting as the ones one grew up with. Local news in North Tawton---the rector is being moved down from his hill house to the empty lot directly opposite us---they are knocking down the wall across the way much to our sorrow & Ted is going to invest in a screen of trees. A man fell from his window in the town square last night (this Nancy told me in answer to my query if anything more blew down in the town in the high wind) & the wall was theatrically splashed with blood when I went to market---he was 80, & evidently suffered only head injury & shock. The bank manager & his wife dropped over this afternoon after half a week in London. Rose Key’s old husband Percy is in hospital for a fortnight checkup---he has been losing weight & feeling depressed. I came on her in tears today & will have her for a hot dinner this week.

  I hope it is not cancer or anything awful. She’s awfully sweet, with 3 daughters in London. Took Nicholas for his first visit to the redoubtable Mrs. Hamilton, the midwifes aunt, a fine old woman.

  We have gorgeous big double snowdrops in bloom, a scattering of primroses & countless daffodil sprouts. When the apple trees bloom I am just going to take Frieda & Nicholas & lie in the orchard all day!*

  Much love to all –

  Sivvy

  TO Aurelia Schober Plath

  Saturday 24 February 1962

  TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University

  Saturday: February 24

  Dear mother,

  The bitter cold of winter has descended upon us again, after a longish lull. Next fall I think we will invest in even two more little Pifco electric heaters---they are wonderfully satisfactory, and we really need one in each room: it’s a bore to lug them from room to room, and I am getting expert in snapping them on half an hour or so before I want to use a room, so it is cosy. I keep one on in the baby’s room all day, and we are sleeping there till the cold lets up as it is the warmest room in the house. We are looking so forward to spring. Snowdrops are blooming all over our place in shady nooks, and our first daffodil of all the multitudes of plants sprung up bloomed this week---we keep puffing out to look at it and admire it. Ted has planted several nut, plum, pear and peach trees he ordered this week, and yesterday Frieda and I went out for a brisk hour to pull up the dead annual shoots in the garden & I look so forward to sowing the brightly colored seed packets of seeds I’ve bought & seeing what comes up. I find being outdoors gardening an immense relaxation & hope we have some successes with our fruit, vegetables & flowers.

  I am feeling in fine shape again---having made a much more rapid recovery than when I had Frieda. Partly because Nicholas is so little trouble. He only cries when he is hungry and loves being sat up and talked to---he smiled a few times at me this week and is so sweet, a little sweet-smelling peach. I feel I really enjoy him---none of the harrassment & worry of Frieda’s colic and my inexperience. I love playing with him. I also am rested enough to find energy to play with Frieda in the 2nd half of the day, and concentrate my attention on her then. She is very squirmy & active, will hardly sit quiet a minute. We are teaching her to build blocks and she is getting more & more interested in picture books. Luckily when I am busiest with the baby---bathing & nursing him, Ted is downstairs with her, so her life is really very little changed, although she would cuff him if she could & gets fussy & babyish if Ted is away in the morning & she has to watch me tend to him. But this is perfectly natural. She is very radiant now---I dressed her in that very handsome openwork blue sweater you knit some time ago and her pale blue cord pants & she looked like a forget-me-not.

  All the older people here seem ill---George Tyrer, the bank manager had a mild heart attack again this week, preventing him & his wife & daughter from coming to dinner with us,* and Percy Key had some part of his lung taken out at a Chest Hospital, for what his wife still doesn’t know---TB or cancer, I wonder. It is amazing the way simple people accept medicine as a kind of miracle they never question. Ted’s radio play was repeated* this week, very nice, as it doubles the money for it, making a total of about $730 for the 2 performances. A selection of his poems is being translated into Swedish* & published there, & 2 selections are coming out in various paperback anthologies here.

  I am immensely grateful for the BBC Third Program & have sent for 2 booklets for 2 language courses that begin this week, one in German & one in French.* The
y have exercises & pronunciation & I find them excellent. Oh, I have thought of a lovely wedding present for Warren & Margaret if they would like it---how about the most beautiful blanket in the world? A Moderna Sorrento blanket. They come in exquisite single shades, or in double shades (rose & deep rose, or pale yellow & daffodil, or light green & deep green etc.) one color on each side, and are the lightest, warmest fluffiest handsomest things I’ve ever seen, guaranteed for 10 years, moth proofed etc. I got a pale rose/carnation one for our double bed & am mad about it (about $35 for this 100 x 100 inch one) and they are made, interestingly enough, in the town of Ted’s birth---Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire. I’ll get a list of colors, & if they would like one maybe they could pick a shade & tell me the best size, & whether 2 singles or a double. Do you think that is a good idea?

  I hope they aren’t piling extra duties on you in college in revenge. From now till April 1st is the most treacherous season, so take care. We have all 3 been in fine health (knock on wood) miraculously all winter, much due, I think, to those ascorbic acid Vitamin C pills you sent which I take every day, & to our bowl of orange juice every morning. We like our Court Green more & more & more. I am dying to get it all fixed up as we want. It will take years of course, especially the grounds. Do thank Aunt Marion for me for the check for the baby & the Woman’s Days. And I’ll write Dotty soon with Frieda’s size. I am looking so forward to your coming. I have Nancy a 3rd morning a week now for 2 hours of ironing, so I am free of most drudgery except that of cooking & washing up & babytending, all of which I more or less enjoy – so we should be free to sit & the garden & play with the babies most of the time.

  Love to all

  xxx

  Sivvy