by Sylvia Plath
xxx
Sivvy
TO Leonard Baskin
Monday 16 April 1962
TLS (aerogramme), British Library
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire, England
April 16, 1962
Dear Leonard,
I am sitting at our mammoth recently-acquired heavy oak reputedly-Elizabethan table overlooking our acre of shivering daffodils under the churchyard wall on this black & frigid day & thinking very hard of you & Esther. Ted is in London for the day, seeing your show at the Hon Erskine’s* so he may do something as nearly worthy as possible. Both of us were thrilled at your thinking of Ted to do the introduction. I am newly involved with our new Nicholas Farrar, a wintry Capricorn, which Ted says serves him right for studying astrology & casting aspersions. O Leonard I have so many times thought of writing & written in thought: it incredible what wounds & damages a few silly hours can do. I can only say, not in explanation or apology, but simply in fact, that when you came Ted & I were as near to desperate as possible, only he shows such things less & is of a more open & unfrantic nature. Anyhow, I was very much worried at being in the middle of a first novel & living in that tiny hole with no place or time to finish it & having to forgo the art galleries & green breathing space & time to write which is my life blood & makes it possible for me to be domestic & motherly, which latter is my nature only some of the time, & only when I have the other consolations & reprieves. As Ted has told you, almost immediately after, we made a radical break with our frenzies & sunk everything into Court Green.* An ancient, loving, amiable white farmhouse with 70 apple trees, miraculous daffodils of which I pick 500 a week with no sign of diminishment, and enough land to, we hope, eventually support us on vegetables when we learn enough, and flowers for the spirit. I have a study all my own, where I retire mornings; Ted has a study under the thatch, very dark & secret. There is ample room. We are, at last, in a place which does not cramp & confine us & bleed nonreturning rent monies, and are expanding with the blessedness of it. Our one wish is that you visit us when you come over for the show & enjoy a slice of the Devon spring & erase those sour memories which grieve us both. We are very lucky, this year, that I have a relatively small Saxton grant to finish the novel which enables us not to worry about the rather awesome expenses in this first year of making the house livable & babyproof. I had put your name as a character reference for this ages ago, & if you could possibly have been this after last summer I can only think you had more faith in my fearsome nature than I had myself. Frieda has responded miraculously to our space & greenness; she is very luminous & blue-eyed, with a language all her own & a very tremulous quick spirit. Nicholas is dark, Farrarlike, like Ted, quiet & smiley & utterly lovable. We are only 4 hours by express from Waterloo & could meet you at the North Tawton station whenever you could come. Do say you will, & when. I would mean an immense lot to both of us. Please let us know of Esther, to whom much, much love, and of Tobias, whom I imagine as a great blond & leonine giant.
I shall leave some space for Ted, when he returns.
With love,
Sylvia
TO Ruth Fainlight & Alan Sillitoe
Monday 16 April 1962
TLS, Ruth Fainlight
Court Green
North Tawton
Devon.
April 16, 1962
Dear Ruth & Alan,
We are so so delighted to hear about the arrival of David!* Baby boys are wonderful beings & he and Nicholas should be able to coo & gurgle at each other companionably when you come down. We’re glad to hear you have a car (that must mean you passed the stiff & military British tests, Alan!) because it is so easy to travel with a little baby when you have a car. Just sit yourselves on the A30, will you!
The weather here is horrid. Black, with Siberian east winds. Our daffodils are out in force, shivering wildly, & very wonderful among the taciturn black twigs. I pick over 600 a week for market & friends & twice as many pop open right away. Do let us know when you think you can come. We would so love to see the three of you & could give you a quiet place to work, Alan, if you felt like it. We are lousy with studies!
How I loved Ruth’s poem in Encounter!* It is a real White Goddess poem,* and a voice on its weird fearsome own. I think it is a rare thing. O please do say you can come, & when. May should be a beautiful month, simply because this blasted April glowering can’t hold out that long.
Ted joins me in sending love & healthful wishes to all 3,
Sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Saturday 21 April 1962*
TLS in greeting card* with envelope, Indiana University
Happy Birthday / If it comes true – / This wish for you, / There’ll always be a share / Of each good thing / That life can bring / For you – and some to spare. / Best Wishes / and Many Happy Returns / of your Birthday
with love / from / Sivvy & Ted & / Frieda & Nicholas
Dear mother:
These pictures* do not, of course, do Nicholas justice, but we think they are very nice. I wish you could be spirited here now. Our daffodils are in full bloom and they are the most beautiful flowers in the world---big hothouse blooms, the starry jonquil sort, some with vivid orange centers, some with white petals & yellow trumpets. They are massed in circles and swatches from our front gate to the house side; there is a big patch in the vegetable garden, but my favorites are those strewn on the hill at the back under the apple trees. Ted and I picked 40 dozen in a beautiful pink twilight yesterday for market today, & you simply couldn’t tell where we’d picked them. The birds were singing, and a big yellow moon was coming up in our great elm tree. It is like a fairytale here. More beautiful than the Cambridge backs. If I have any luck with planting, I should have heavenly cut flowers all summer. I pick daffodils for anyone who comes at a shilling a dozen & love it. As Ted says, you really get acquainted with the plants, picking them. We’ll try to get some color pictures this week. It is still raining, but lovely silvery rains. I wish I could send you a cartload of these daffodils for your birthday, knowing how you love them! We are so pleased, the New Statesman must have liked our children’s book reviews last fall, for they have asked us to do the same for the spring supplement. As they only review children’s books twice a year, we get stacks---and I am about to pick up my lot of pictures books at the post office. Did you see “Tulips” in the April 7 New Yorker? It was fascinating to also see the odd & revealing lyric by W. S. Merwin*---we think he must be parting from poor Dido, whose facelift was a last, desperate measure. We are immensely happy in North Tawton. In five years it should be a bower of flowers.
Lots of love,
Sivvy, Ted, Frieda & Nicholas
TO Warren Plath
Saturday 21 April 1962*
ALS in greeting card* (photocopy), Indiana University
Dear Warren –
We think so often of you & Maggie & only hope you will let us know you will soon come to visit us. I hope you get your great carnation blanket soon. Take it easy & send us pictures of the wedding.
xxx
Ted, Sivvy
Freda & Nicholas
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Wednesday 25 April 1962
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Wednesday: April 25
Dearest mother,
How I wish you could see us now! I am sitting out in a deck chair in shorts in heavenly hot sun, smelling the pungent box bushes at our door & the freshly mown & plowed tennis court, Baby Nick (as Frieda & therefore we now call him) asleep among the daisies in his pram, Frieda so excited she can hardly nap, and Ted out back beaming among the few strawberry plants that survived the late frosts. On Easter Sunday the world relented & spring arrived. Our daffodils are in full bloom. We picked about 1000 this week and I look out over a literal sea of several thousand more. I keep finding new treasures: little yellow & pink primroses & gr
ape hyacinths opening in a grassy tangle by the lilac hedge, the spikes of lily of the valley poking through a heap of dead brambles. I think I would like nothing better than to grow flowers & vegetables. I have such spring fever I can hardly think straight. I am dying for you to come & to see it all through your eyes. I got your room all fixed up & cleaned yesterday. Two months seems such a long way away!
Hilda & Vicky stayed with us over Easter. We were very surprised they did not bring Ted’s parents, but hope Uncle Walter may bring them later. Evidently the long winter, arthritis & the prospect of the day’s trip put Edith off. I am so glad you aren’t a stayathome like that! Hilda & Vicky pitched right in with dishes & cleaning, so were no extra work. They are both very lively & nice. But then we made the mistake of letting a young Swedish lady journalist* invite herself the day they left---I had found out the time of the last train back to London that day so we would not be stuck with her, but she was after the personal, & hinted around about staying. At the same point the Tyrers called & wanted to know if they could “read in our garden”. We were very glad to have the excuse of company. The Tyrers are really, on the eve of their departure, becoming impossible---pushing their very silly, snobby 16 year old daughter on us to the point of suggesting we have her come & stay with us (!) all because, I think, they have seen Ted & me in the Sunday papers lately.* They have really been “friends” out of a necessity, not out of any kindred spirit (Marjorie & Nicola are so malicious about everybody & everything here I can’t help wondering what they say about us the minute our backs are turned). As Ted said, it is so beautiful here we have to be careful people don’t use us as a public promenade. We moved here for privacy, and are just learning the lessons of having possessions. I am so glad you are coming for I can simply say we have you with us all summer. We are also getting used to having people fit in with our schedules. I work in the morning & let guests get their own breakfasts when they wake up, so I don’t hang around all morning waiting. Then I come down for lunch, & Ted goes up & works in the afternoon. I think you will find us very peaceful. You can sit out in the garden all morning, with Frieda & Nicholas, reading or knitting or sunning. The house is so big there is really no crowding. Do bring any recipes, or advice for preserving things you can---I’m hope to learn to bottle all our garden surplus, like our famous rhubarb. Also any advice & figures about life insurance: I do want Ted to take out a policy this summer & we know nothing about it. O it is so heavenly here I can hardly speak. Little Frieda is always picking daffodils & arranging them in bowls of water. “Pick daffdees” & “Out with Baby Nick oodleoo (lawnmower) she says.
My book should be out in America May 14th. Do send any clippings of reviews, however bad. How I would love Mrs. Prouty to come. We have a very fine pompous hotel in town on the hill she could stay overnight at. Do tell her! I got Do’s wonderful package the day before Easter. I’ll write to thank her today. She is a positive darling. I am delighted with everything in it. You must help me hem & shorten my winter skirts! I look so out of date with them down to my shins! Nancy’s mother-in-law died of a heart attack last week & the funeral is today. I sent an armload of daffodils via the little hunchback friend of Nancy’s who lives at the bottom of our lane. How I’ve missed her this last week! I am glad if the old woman had to go she went quickly, as I simply couldn’t do without Nancy now. A 10-room house, acres of garden, writing & two babies is work enough for three people! Did I tell you the New Statesman must have liked our children’s reviews last fall, for they have asked us both again this spring, They only review twice a year, so I have the half-year’s accumulation of children’s picture books---27, free! I just love doing this. And Ted has as many again of animal books. He has just finished another children’s broadcast. He is the star writer for the children’s programs (educational) now, & gets loads of fanmail. You must be full of plans for Warren’s wedding. How soon could they think of coming? I wish somebody could come around Easter next year to admire the daffodils. Of course, early September is lovely, with apple pie every day for breakfast! I think I was meant to be a gardener. I wouldn’t leave this place for a billion dollars. It is a miracle we found it, & you were instrumental in minding Frieda & freeing us at that time. When I met that Swedish girl at the station, how I wished it was you! The train ride is through such beautiful countryside. Frieda loves her Geegee rocker.“Getup pony” she says.
Lots & lots of love,
Sivvy
TO Alan Sillitoe
Saturday 28 April 1962
TLS, Ruth Fainlight
Court Green
North Tawton
Devon.
Saturday: April 28
Dear Alan,
It was wonderful to get your letter and hear you are coming. May 2nd couldn’t be better---you should just catch the last marvel of our daffodils which have been astounding us since Easter. I pick about 40 dozen a week for market, but it doesn’t show.
We’ll have supper waiting* for you any time you arrive. Our phone number is North Tawton 370 in case you need it. The only things I suggest you bring from London are the Royal Court and the Hampstead Everyman.
Ted joins me in sending love to all,
Sylvia
TO Marvin & Kathy Kane
Monday 30 April 1962
TLS, Indiana University
Court Green
North Tawton
Devon.
The Eve of Mayday
Dear, dear, dear Marvin & Kathy!
No no we are not dead, nor furious at air motes nor any such thing. Only exhausted. It is the sudden spring weather which has been with us since Easter Sunday, and our mad attempt to plant in one sweet week all we should have been planting since Christmas. We have been rendered absolutely inarticulate, a sort of laborer’s dopiness takes us immediately after eating uspper (you see) and we fall like great stones into bed to wake like mutes at dawn & stagger out with minute black particles which we stick into the soil. I have literally put my nose to the earth every day for the last week & am at last rewarded by a multitude of infinitesimal green shoots which I do not think are dandelions. Ted has pairs of leaves he thinks may be radishes, and little spikes of shrunken onions. We are very hopeful.
How we loved seeing you! It is incredible how we immediately feel fond & possessive of you as if we had known you years. The Cornwall trip sounds mean---Horrid. Ted says everybody down there has their eye on the summer trade, ergo money. Come in early September, he says, when the tourists are gone & the long winter stretches. We know, just recently, of a couple* with a cottage near Bideford for 25s. a week. With no electricity, of course, but a garden. Come in early September & visit us again, but bringing just pure sweet sugar Kanes, no Roses!*
I am so so glad about the BBC program. I felt very nervous that you would ask to extend it on the basis of those tapes & kept wishing I was a negro ballet artist* or something really interesting, but I had fun jabbering & I hope you can cut it into something that is fun. I am sure you will.
We had Ted’s aunt & cousin descend on us over Easter, but they are the mucking-in-with-the-dishes sort, so not much trouble. It is these long days that are so disastrous. You think you have an evening, so work in the garden till sunset & bango, time for bed, the mind lying silent like a big cabbage.
I am really looking forward to my mother coming in June! I am so scatty from my char deserting me for two weeks (her mother-in-law died) and ironing & such mountaining, floors growing lichens, & Frieda discovering worms which she calls “Oos” & drops in my coffee at dull moments that I would welcome a soul, even a maternal one, who would like to cook a meal, bath a baby & dry a dish.
Ted joins me in sending love. Write us. We love your letters. & will both write again when we have recovered somewhat from this back-breaking & mouth-shutting land reclaim.
With love to both,
Sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Friday 4 May 1962
TLS, Indiana University
Court Green
Friday, May 4, 1962
Dear mother,
These cards* (I mean photographs---Frieda calls them cards) are meant for a late birthday surprise. We took them Easter Sunday, the first day of real spring. I think you can see some of the reasons I am so happy. This is just the very smallest corner of our daffodils. Frieda is an expert at picking handsome bouquets---you simply mention the word daffodil and she is off. You will love the children. Nicholas smiles & laughs & is wonderfully responsive to attentions & kind words. Frieda thirsts for knowledge & laps up every word you tell her. We understand her, but strangers don’t.
I am enclosing a little card for Dotty’s birthday book. I’ve got a nice big birthday card I’m sending her separately. I am glad you remind me of these things. I was touched to hear Mrs. Prouty would like to see us. I shall write & beg her to come. It is only 4 hours by train. There is a nice big Inn five minutes away which serves bed & breakfast & dinner & is manorial, if she would rather stay there than overnight with us. I do wish she would consider it.