The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2
Page 88
Got a dear sweet letter from Margaret which I will answer very soon. I have been dashing round so madly with spring planting, mowing, babies & letters & projects & reviews that I seem to fly. Blessed Nancy is back, after burying her mother-in-law last week & I am so grateful. It was awful without her. Now it is spring, it is just heaven here. I never dreamed it was possible to be so happy.
I am also enclosing two checks to deposit. Did you get the two checks in your birthday letter to deposit? Or was it one check? Anyway, the last two I sent were one for my poems from Harper’s & one of about $12 for Ted from Harper’s* (mine was about $136). I enclose two Texas checks now, any way, totaling $135. The New Yorker just accepted a short poem* about the old man Percy Key walking on our hill among the narcissi & the poetry editor wrote “I have heard nothing but the most extravagant praise of TULIPS. Everyone I know thought it extraordinary. So do I.”* This sort of thing is immensely warming & encouraging.
We have the Sillitoes here now---Alan, his American writer-wife Ruth & their month-old son David. They are marvelous guests---Ruth helps cook, Alan washes up, they take walks on their own & our life proceeds as usual. I don’t feel a drudge because they chip in & I work in my study as usual in the mornings. I don’t know if I mentioned how I appreciate the Bendix each time I use it! It makes washing just no chore at all.
Our daffodils are waning, but our cherry trees are coming into bloom---better than Washington! Bright red leaves, and fluffy round pink blossom. It is like a little garden of Eden. I hope Do & Betty Aldrich both got my notes of thanks for their presents. Betty’s little-boy suit is just darling, & Do’s package was crammed with kind & wonderful things, everyone just right.
Lots of love to everybody.
xxx
Sivvy
TO Judith Jones
Friday Saturday 5 May 1962
TLS (aerogramme), University of Texas at Austin
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire, England
May 5, 1962
Mrs. Judith B. Jones
ALFRED A. KNOPF
501 Madison Avenue
New York 22, New York
USA
Dear Mrs. Jones:
I am appalled to see a month has passed since I got your letter* & THE COLOSSUS. All I can say is that the sudden arrival of our very very late English spring had Ted & me almost flattened (quite pleasantly) by our first ambitious spring planting (optimistically intended to supply us with vegetables for the rest of the year) and we are only now surfacing from our mute weeks of sticking little black specks into the earth and scattering Slugdeath and Slugit to annihilate that vast subterranean population of night-eaters.
I am perfectly delighted with THE COLOSSUS. I think the production is wonderful, love the colors of the cover & jacket & the splendid size of the print (Ted & I have a horror of tiny print). To my mind it is the “final” first book. The English one being a trial run. I am so happy with what you have done with it. A long, long time ago when I had my first story published in Mademoiselle, Alfred Knopf wrote* & said he hoped Knopf could publish a book of mine someday, & I have always wished to have a book right for Knopf & am so delighted with this one.
I’d be immensely grateful if you’d send on any or all clippings, as I never see such things here, & thrive on criticism of all sorts, especially the adverse sort. I find it very helpful & stimulating to get fresh slants.
Do give my regards to Marybeth Weston* & say I’d be happy to send her any information she needs if she does an article.
It is like a little Eden here now, with our thousands of daffodils, narcissi, six very pink fluffy cherry trees and 70 apple trees about to break into bloom. Gardening is a wonderfully pacifying alternate to writing, which is also going beautifully, Nicholas being an extremely agreeable individual.
All good wishes,
Sylvia Plath
TO Gerald & Joan Hughes
Wednesday 9 May 1962*
ALS,* Indiana University
Dear Gerald & Joan & everybody –
I am sitting in my plushy little study overlooking a corner of our beautiful fluffy pink cherry blossom & eating one (or more likely two) of Ted’s trout. It is wonderful: I open one eye about 4:30 a.m. & see this shadowy figure rise up & vanish. Then when I wake up in earnest & go down to make breakfast at 8 there is Ted beaming over a plate of bright gleaming red-spotted trout. I can’t wait till my mother comes this summer so I can have the babies safely with her & go off with Ted to fish. I adore fishing & have a sort of perpetual beginner’s luck because I guess I am always a nitwit beginner. We both just finished reviewing some children’s books* for the New Statesman. It is such fun – they only review children’s stuff twice a year so we get a great accumulation of stuff (which we can keep or sell). Ted gets animal books & I get picture books. I get so excited to see all these brightly-colored stacks of free books. I pretend Frieda can understand them, but of course she can’t yet. It is really me I await them for. I must have a child mind. Nicholas is gorgeous. Very well-behaved & full of smiles & dark, handsome & Farrar-looking – everybody says he looks like you Gerald, when you were an infant. He is certainly a Hughes & a relief I must say it is to see his calm little face after one of Frieda’s passions. She is beautiful but of a rapid, hysterical temperament. We are thrilled at the possibility of your coming over & as near as Wales. We hardly dare talk of it, but walk with crossed fingers.
Love to all,
Sylvia.
TO Ruth Fainlight
Saturday 12 May 1962
TLS, Ruth Fainlight
Court Green
North Tawton
Saturday: May 12
Dear Ruth,
Thanks very much for your letter. It was heavenly having you and Alan and David here, and like a vacation for me. Ted who usually claims I am killing him by offering him a potato now daily urges me to make scalloped potatoes just like yours because that is the way he loves them best. I have sent off for the Brer Rabbit bottles* & await their arrival armed with all my molasses recipes.
Could I dedicate my elm tree poem* to Ruth Fainlight? (Or would you prefer your maternal & wifely self, Ruth Sillitoe? I had thought of the poet-self first). I’d like to very much. I feel very involved & admiring of your imagery.
We ate our first miniscule radish this week, in a ceremony, with butter. If Ted is as eager to pull our stuff up as with this, we shall be living like midgets on infantine vegetables. You must make your coming down a ritual too, like the Rites of Spring.
Lots of love from all of us,
Sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Monday 14 May 1962
TLS with envelope, Indiana University
Enc: 2 checks for $27 & $45
Court Green
Monday: May 14
Dear mother,
I hope by now you have received the color photos & have some idea of our lovely daffodils that have now vanished. We earned about $17 or so by selling them, very small in amount, but we are proud of it because it makes it seem as if the place is “earning.” If we have a good apple harvest we should earn some more. The cherry petals are just beginning to blow down like pink snow, & the laburnum & lilac are just opening a few buds, and a few apple trees are blooming in the orchard. There are bluebells everywhere, a lovely thundery purple, and a few beautiful “pheasant’s eye” white narcissi are opening on the back hill, alone among the daffodils in being delicately scented, with a short, bright yellow trumpet ringed with red. I prowl about the place daily for little bouquets of this and that.
Did Dotty get her birthday card all right? My book officially comes out in America today. Do clip & send any reviews you see, however bad. Criticism encourages me as much as praise.
I know you have drastic luggage restrictions, but I thought I would mention a few items we would love to have, in case Warren & Margaret might bring something too sometime. We would adore our victrola, as we now have room & money fo
r any needed transformer. Also, would it be at all feasible to take apart our fishing rods (especially my little spry one) & wrap them in paper & send or carry them?* Maybe they could be sent.
I would also love a little bottle of aniseed flavoring for springerle which I can’t find anywhere here. I have luckily, courtesy of Ruth Sillitoe, found a London store which will send on Brer Rabbit molasses & mazola is everywhere, so I am set pleasantly on these things. We have a nice young Canadian poet & his very attractive, intelligent wife coming down for this weekend---they’re the ones who took over our lease for the London flat. Then Ted’s parents will probably be driven down by his Uncle Walter for the next weekend. I shall be glad to get them over. I honestly think Edith is terribly lazy---she stays in bed till noon & has nothing to do but worry about her arthritic knee & eats such a stupid diet---all starches & sweets. And of course she’s no help at all with babies (they exhaust her) or cooking or anything. Well, she has a good heart, I guess. I’m just glad I have the mother I have!
Nicholas has for some reason been crying at night, so I am rather weary. I think, my firm resistance to the long hard winter has hit me now that it is nicer & I can relax. I just don’t want to do a thing, or rather, I want to, but don’t feel like it---I have had mending stacked up for months & am tired of my own cooking with no energy to try any of the exotic recipes I get in my beloved Journal. O pooh. We have huge amounts of wonderful legendary rhubarb which we inherited. Have you any canning advice? Maybe you will supervise some of my canning this summer. We have a fine dark “winecellar” which asks to be crammed with bright glass jars full of good things.* How did you & grammy can? When did you sterilze the stuff? My cookbook is very confusing about this. Did I tell you the lino was down by Easter & is ideal? Has Maggie got the blanket yet? How big is their new bed? Will it fit?
xxx to all, Love,
Sivvy
PS: Did you get any refund for my broken pottery? The British postmaster checked up in person here ages ago.
TO Howard Moss
Monday 21 May 1962
TLS, New York Public Library
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire, England
May 21, 1962
Mr. Howard Moss
THE NEW YORKER
25 West 43rd Street
New York 36, New York USA
Dear Mr. Moss:
Just to be on the safe side, I am enclosing THREE WOMEN, a poem for three voices which the B.B.C. Third Programme is producing, in case you think any of the lyrics, perhaps towards the end of it, might be suitable for publication on their own. I am also sending along three* other new poems with it.
I was very happy indeed to hear that people liked TULIPS.
Sincerely,
Sylvia Plath
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 7 June 1962
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Court Green
Thursday, June 7
Dear mother,
Forgive me, forgive me for what must seem a huge silence. The days slide by so fast here that we seem to be living out of Time in a kind of country eternity. I have reached, I think, the last of my “guests” with 6 days of Ted’s mother, father & Uncle Walt. That is partly why I have been so quiet. They were the end of a long string, and the only people who really were no strain but a great help were the wonderful Sillitoes & their month-old baby. But that’s partly because Ruth is a poetess herself & Alan a writer like Ted---pitching in & not needing to be formally “entertained”. Ted’s mother stayed with us & the men stayed up at the Burton Hall hotel much to my relief. I made a few big meals for everyone & we ate at least half of our dinners out. Mrs. Hughes is very sweet & did a whole pile of darning on Ted’s socks (!) which I have no patience for. As she sends him these big wool things, she is an expert at doing it, & I felt it was a good way for her to feel useful with no real strain. They went on car-jaunts with Walt & were immensely impressed & proud of our place. I am glad they, like you, have had a part in helping us get it.
This is the fourth day in a row of absolutely halcyon blue clear hot weather. I took off from my study the last 3 days & had a little Lookout Farm. I weeded all our onions & spinach & lettuce, out in the garden from sunrise to sunset, immensely happy, with Frieda digging in a little space “helping” & Nicholas in the pram sunbathing. This is the richest & happiest time of my life. The babies are so beautiful. Yesterday afternoon went to the local playground* with Sylvia Crawford, a very lovely-looking dark-haired girl twin in age to Warren, with 3 little girls, one named Rebecca just a little older than Frieda. The playground is set high up with a lovely view of Dartmoor. Just now the two laburnum trees are in full bloom & sit right in front of my study window. Isn’t it odd that I’ve written about Golden Rain Trees in my book* & now have six---2 out front & on at the side of my study & the rest about! I am praying some apple bloom hangs on till you come! We are enjoying our own lettuce & radishes. Two weeks from today you come! I can’t wait to see the place through your eyes. Work inside the house has come to a standstill with the demands of the big gardens, so I hope you’ll overlook minor cracks & peelings!
I hope when you come to really work mornings every day in my study---I look so forward to your playing with Frieda. She’ll love you. She’s at such a wonderful teachable stage now. I’d like to get into a long work which I’ve been unable to do with all the spring interruptions of other people. O it is so beautiful here. Bring Bermuda shorts for wear about the garden---we’re pretty private. Of course no one wears them in town! And one warm outfit. Thanks a million for the molasses! I’ve made mountains of gingerbread. I’m learning to do gros point tapestry* for cushion & seat covers. Wonderfully calming.*
I hope Warren & Margaret got our little telegram of good wishes which I sent to the New York address. Ted found we had one word extra & put in Frieda. I was very cross when I found he hadn’t put Nicholas as well, but tell them we meant to. I felt very very sorry for myself at not being at the wedding & look forward to a full account from you in the next day or so. Even to the last minute I considered squandering our savings & flying over by jet! Tell me all about it!
We’ve been doing quite well although we don’t seem to be working. I’ve had a long poem (about 378 lines!) for 3 voices accepted by the BBC Third* (three women in a maternity ward, inspired by a Bergman film)* which will be produced by the same man who does Ted’s plays & who’ll be down here* to discuss production with me! Ted did a beautiful program* on a marvelous young British poet, Keith Douglas,* killed in the last war, saying how shocking it was no book of his was in print. In the next mail he got grateful letters & inscribed books from the poet’s 75 year-old impoverished mother* & a suggestion from a publisher that Ted write the forward to a new edition of the book! Both of us mourn this poet immensely & feel he would have been like a lovely big brother to us. His death is really a terrible blow & we are trying to resurrect his image & poems in this way. I have been asked to do a short talk for a program called “The World of Books”* & Ted’s children’s programs are classics---he gets fan letters from all over the place. His radio play “The Wound” will be broadcast a third time* this summer, which means another blessed $300 out of the blue. We are trying to save a bit now while I still have one more installment of my grant. Perhaps in a couple of years we’ll do a poetry reading tour in America & earn a great pot. They pay one to two hundred a night!
Love to All the Plaths,
Sivvy
PS. Got the wedding letter today. Sounds heavenly!
S
TO Marvin & Kathy Kane
Saturday 9 June 1962
TLS, Indiana University
Court Green
Saturday: June 9
Dear, dear Marvin & Kathy . . .
Please interpret our silences as Spinach. Honestly, they are as innocuous! We are living here in a kind
of country Eternity where time has no meaning. I measure it by the length of shadows, & the spinach-silence is a real thing. I shut my eyes and see spinach. Ted, I have discovered, is a wonderful planter but does not see weeds. I see weeds. We are thus an ideal couple. The past weeks, especially with the good weather (after a huge flood of Ted’s relatives, among whom one uncle counts for three in size & appetite), I have been out in the garden from morning till night digging & hacking the huge weeds from square after square of vegetables. By evening, when I have all my pleasant hobbies lined up before me---photos to paste in album, friendly letters, gros point of gross roses etc. etc.---I am so stupid-cow-tired I just put it all off & fall into bed. Hence the silence. Please please understand our brutish ways. We are too simple to have undertones.
I really love doing the vegetable garden much more than flowers, though I do love picking & arranging flowers. Anyhow, after I saw Ted through the worst of the immediate weeding I went out front hopefully to look at my labeled flower beds. To my surprise, where I had planted neat little rows of seeds, there was nothing to be seen but a complete carpet of one particular kind of plant. I could not understand it. I felt very badly. I had planted nothing so universally. It seemed, O God, to be a Weed. On looking very close, I did spy one or two rather feeble other things. They may be the plants. Or of course they may be a rather weaker kind of weed. I wish you were here, Kathy! We could sit & talk & do a lovely Zennish plucking in rhythm of the minute ubiquitous weeds (symbolising the foul world of minutes or something). Now I have to do it all alone. It should take about a year.