by Sylvia Plath
We loved you in THE DAY THE MONEY STOPPED,* Marvin. Ted & I kept poking each other: That’s Marvin. You did a terrific job. That’s what I call Drama. I only pray you get the grant. Ted will do all he can, but feels a bit shy of his own power as he applied and didn’t get it. But then he had nothing like the professional experience & works you have.
Suddenly we have an antique beehive, given us free by one of the many local beekeepers. O you would have laughed. We went to the North Tawton beekeepers demonstration this week. The rector was there, & the midwife. All donned those funny screen hats. Then we went out & stood while one Charlie Pollard* made 3 hives out of one & Ted & I stood like dummies trying not to get stung, feeling agonizing sting-like itches as billions of bees zinged against our veils. Now we have this old hive which Ted will scrub & I paint white & green with maybe a few pink roses on to hearten the bees. When you see us this fall we may well have home-made honey to offer you with apples. Provided the Queen doesn’t scorn our ignorance & Swarm.
Please keep us posted on all your BBC things, Marvin, & things with you in them. We love hearing them. Much love to you both, & forgive our farmhandish manners. We are lousy correspondents & keep a kind of inner monologue going in our heads which we count as sort of phantom letters!
Love,
Sylvia
TO Gerald & Joan Hughes
Sunday 10 June 1962
ALS* (aerogramme), Indiana University
June 10: A week of hot blue days has arrived & I can hardly uncrook my back. Ted is a marvellous planter but does not see weeds. I see weeds. I have been happily browning in the dirt of our lovely vegetable garden uprooting gigantic nettles, dock, dandelions etc. etc. from pathetic thread-thin leeks, spinach, lettuce & so on. The babies are very brown & juicy. Six laburnum trees drip gold everywhere: my favorite tree. We still manage to work hard turning out BBC stuff. I’ve just had a long dramatic poem accepted which is three women thinking to themselves in a maternity ward. One has a son & lives in the country, one has a little illegitimate daughter & one has a miscarriage – all very emotional, but fun to do & a sort of wage that is nice. After a long string of spring guests, my blessed mother is coming now for 6 weeks to babysit, help & generally free us for a few jaunts. We are both getting piles of exercise, impossible in the city, & working & wrestling with our land. Our latest acquisition is an old bee-hive we are cleaning & painting in hopes of supplying our own daffodil-apple blossom honey. We keep discovering odd gems of people buried here – tea today with a retired Major* & C.I.D* man from British Guiana.
Love to all,
Sylvia
TO Alfred Young Fisher
Monday 11 June 1962
TLS, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire, England
June 11, 1962
Dear Alfred,
After all these years, finally, a Book. I hope you will like some of it. I got to remembering those fine afternoons in my senior year at Smith under your office gable. The book is your due. Those afternoons are at the deep root of it.
We are committed to the country---only in England could two poets & a line of infants enjoy such worrilessness as we do on our ancient smallholding---thatch, acres of apple trees, daffodils, laburnum, owls, bees. We write in shifts, balancing babies in between, & the great vegetable garden on which we live. I do a lot for the BBC, am on a 2nd book of poems, much freer than this, & have had a first novel accepted over here. It is wonderful to discover one’s destiny.
I have a crazy favor to ask. Ignore it if it seems unusually crazy. I got so used, at Smith, to scribbling poems on the back of those big pink Smith College Memorandum sheets I have a fetish for them. Do you think I could send a check to someone & buy about a dozen of those pink pads???* My Muse is mad for them!
Seven year’s-worth of gratitude for helping to make these poems possible.
Affectionately,
Sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Friday 15 June 1962
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Court Green
Friday: June 15
Dear mother,
Well, this is the last letter I will be writing before you come! I hope you get it before you go: I don’t even know when you’re leaving home! I have been working so hard physically out in the garden that I am inarticulate and ready for bed by evening, hence my long silences. I don’t know when I’ve been so happy or felt so well. These last few days I have been weeding our strawberry patch & setting the runners, just as I did on Lookout Farm, and at night I shut my eyes & see the beautiful little plants with the starry flowers & beginning berries. I love this outdoor work and feel I am really getting in condition. The amount of weeding this place needs is phenomenal. I have completely neglected my flowerbeds at the front for the pressing needs of the vegetables. How huge the back garden seems from weed-level! And now Ted is spreading his planting onto the plowed tennis court. I get such pride in eating our produce! The strawberries are very few---I figure if all ripen we (you too!) should have a saucer of about 20 each! But next year I should have trebled our plant supply from my set runners. We had the first cuttings of spinach tonight---absolutely delectable. And rhubarb & radishes. Every day we walk out together and take in the progress of our rows.
Today, guess what, we became bee-keepers! We went to the local meeting last week (attended by the rector, the midwife & assorted bee-keeping people from neighboring villages) to watch a Mr. Pollard make three hives out of one (by transferring his queen cells) under the supervision of the official Government bee-man. We all wore masks & it was thrilling. It is expensive to start bee-keeping (over $50 outlay), but Mr. Pollard let us have an old hive for nothing, which we painted white & green, & today he brought over the swarm of docile Italian hybrid bees we ordered and installed them. We placed the hive in a sheltered out-of-the-way spot in the orchard---the bees were furious from being in a box. Ted had only put a handkerchief over his head where the hat should go in the bee-mask & the bees crawled into his hair & he flew off with half-a-dozen stings. I didn’t get stung at all, & when I went back to the hive later, I was delighted to see bees entering with pollen sacs full & leaving with them empty---at least I think that’s what they were doing.* I feel very ignorant, but shall try to read up & learn all I can. If we’re lucky, we’ll have our own honey too! Lots of people are really big keepers in town, with a dozen to 20 hives, so we shall not be short of advice. When we have our first honey, I think we shall get half a dozen hens.
Luckily I have lots & lots of work to do like painting furniture & weeding, because I am so excited about your coming I can’t sit still! I wish now you had seen the house in its raw state so you would see how much we have done! Of course there is still an immense deal to do, and my eyes are full of five-year-plans.
Got an absolutely enchanting letter from Warren in Bermuda on an anniversary card---the first I’ve ever got from him full of vivid color & discriptions of things---Margaret must be a real tonic for him! You must tell me their address when you come & I’ll write a long over due letter. I can’t wait to see the two of them here---Warren will really appreciate all the improvements since his time!
We went to tea in a neighboring town with a marvelously doughty woman we met at the bee-meeting. Her husband is a Major, a retired C.I.D. inspector from British Guiana, and her amazing 89-year-old father* a retired police inspector too. She has 12 hives, a huge hennery & vegetable garden & a giant grapevine filling her greenhouse. Showed me all her albums---of her shooting jaguars & making a locomotive & railway in the wilderness. We’re going to tea this week to see the estate of a friend of the midwife’s whose husband is in TV.*
Frieda & Nicholas are getting brown & are so wonderful I can’t believe it. They are such happy healthy babies, I adore every minute of them. Ted & I are arranging a day in London about a week after you come to do a broadcast* see an art exhibit & maybe a foreign movie. It’s excit
ing as a safari to Africa to me to think of a day away!
Did I tell you I’ve just had a long (378 line) dramatic poem for 3 voices accepted for the BBC THird Program---three women in a maternity ward, each soliloquizing in poems. When you come I really must sit in my study in the mornings! Six weeks seems such a short time. I realize how terribly much I have missed you (and Warren too!) now that the time draws close to see you again.
Lots of love, & a smooth trip!
Fond wishes from us all,
Sivvy
TO Philippa Pearce*
Friday 15 June 1962
TLS, BBC Written Archives Centre
Court Green
North Tawton
Devon.
June 15, 1962
Miss Philippa Pearce
Producer – The World of Books
THE BBC
Broadcasting House
London W.1
Dear Miss Pearce,
I am enclosing a copy of my talk.* As you can see, it is a comparison of some few aspects of the poem and the novel from a poet’s point-of-view. I hope it is all right, and the right length.
It appears that I shall now be able to be in London on Tuesday morning, June 26th. Would it be at all possible for me to record with you some time that morning? My train gets into Waterloo by 10:30 a.m. Perhaps you could let me know by telephone whether I should plan on recording then.
With all good wishes,
Sincerely,
Sylvia Plath
TO Olwyn Hughes
c. Monday 18 June 1962*
ALS, Washington University (St Louis)
Dear Olwyn –
I am enclosing a picture* of Nicholas Farrar Hughes on his christening day (March 25) in a gown of antique Limerick lace borrowed from the Bank Manger’s wife & cut from her grandmaw’s wedding dress. I hope it is not filched by French censors, plastiquéd, or seized as a representation of Salon in disguise. Nicholas is marvellous – calm, dark, wise, full of trills at the back of the throat & a Buddha-look I find infinitely endearing. Frieda a weird tornado with large angel-inhuman pale-blue orbs; refers to self as “Fee-fah” & pees on the floor so she can demand a mop although I have painted her potty seat with pink daises to beguile her into it. I just feel to be lifting a nose & a finger from the last 3 years cow-push of carrying, bearing, nursing & nappy-squeezing. My study is my poultice, my balm, my absinthe. I’ve just done a very long dramatic poem for 3 voices (3 women in a maternity ward, miscarriages, illegitimacies & such, after Bergman) which Douglas Cleverdon, Ted’s producer, will produce. Very excited about the chance to do longer stuff. We’re having our first day in London together next week – our train fares (fantastically high now) paid by the B.B.C., each of us to do a program, Ted for the Children’s School hour on air – birds & me a guest spot on “The World of Books.” We are lucky to have such bread & butter stuff & it is a diversion – as money bleeds away so fast here – the house just devours it: everything from slug killer to thatch insurance to fire extinguishers, & as we still owe over £400 we are working like mad. How I sympathize with your electric bill! Ours is over £25 a quarter & I somehow never count on it & am always floored. The sinus business sounds ghastly. Sinus has always been my own worst illness & the only relief I ever got was with a cocaine spray which worked wonders & lifted the manic depression I usually got. Then it got so bad I had it operated on, or rather drained, with a local, day after day for a summer & it has never been so bad. You don’t want France or England with that, you want Arizona.
I agree with you about “My Sad Captains”.* I’m getting very fond of Gunn & you named some of my favorites. It’s partly, I think, because I’ve since met & very much liked him. In the same way I’m very sympathetic to Alvarez’s poems, some of them, because I like him & know something about how his wife’s knocked him about & gone off.
I am working like a black now weeding, mowing, & scything. And painting a great lot of ugly wood furniture in black gloss or white gloss with hearts & flowers all over it to make “sets” for this room or that. My mother arrives this week for the summer, a heavenly blessing, a sort of free mother’s help, babysitter & part-time cook all of which I am desperate for with this William Morris* making & designing of things, babies & incipient books. We are slowly being absorbed – tea-partied by ret’d. Majors & active midwives.
Get well fast.
Love from us 4,
Sylvia
TO George MacBeth
Tuesday 19 June 1962
TLS, BBC Written Archives Centre
Court Green
North Tawton
Devon.
June 19, 1962
Dear George,
I am delighted you are taking “The Surgeon at 2 a.m.”* and would be very happy to read a Carolyn Kizer.* Could you get her poem to me before I come up? I’d like to brood on it.
I wonder if I could come up the week after the one ending Friday June 29th and record some morning of just about any day? I have a very crammed day at the BBC Tuesday 26th and can’t really manage to arrange the infinite complications of babysitters, wipers & minders twice in the same week. The earliest train from here gets into Waterloo about 10:30 a.m., so I could be at your place about 10:45-11:00. Let me know if that next week would be all right with you, & if so, what morning.
Sincerely,
Sylvia
(Sylvia Plath)
George MacBeth, Esq.
Producer, Talks Department
The BBC
London W.1
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 21 June 1962*
ALS,* Indiana University
for mother
~ welcome to Court Green ~
from Sivvy & Ted
TO Marvin & Kathy Kane
c. Friday 22 June 1962
ALS,* Indiana University*
Dear, dear Marvin & Kathy –
If you think we are trying to plan your lives for you, you are right. This Kathleen Macnamara is a minute, fiery white-haired woman with black eyes, two pekinese, a cat, a rose garden, a gardener, the most gorgeous old re-made 19-room rectory in the heart of green stillness. Of course you may not want to save money all this much – but the arrangement sounded so oddly like you – a 3rd floor sanctum under the eaves up an antique stair – 2 big rooms & a central boxroom (twin beds & bedding there), a small boxroom & possible study. Mrs. Macnamara is delighted at the idea Marvin would just write – she simply wants a woman to “do what she would do” – cook (in a fabulous red-brick-floored kitchen with aga, also a second modern stove), keep the 19 rooms in order & help entertain. A big, wandering house where you would need maps to find each other. This would amount to free room & board & a wage for Kathy’s services around the house. If you dug in for say a year & wanted a change, you’d be in the heart of cottage country, have saved all your takings & be able to pick your spot. Of course Kathy may be horrified at us putting her to work about at a house, but I remember, I think, she said she liked this sort of thing. If you did get on with this Kathleen it should be marvelous fun. I thought neither of you drove – izzat so? The big town* is about 10 miles away. We’d visit you often. We’re mad for the place. In case all this is around the bend, just say so, & we & Mrs. M. will keep on keeping our eyes out for cottages. We thought the plays* were terrific, Marvin! I never heard Ted belly laugh so. We don’t get anything but the Observer so please copy out the Times review verbatim for us.*
Our phone number is North Tawton 370 in case you want to question or confirm anything in a a hurry. Rest assured that we will keep looking for cottages if you can’t stand the notion of this business. As Ted says – if you’re interested the husband Terence could interview you in London. He works for ITV I think & is due to retire in a couple of years – goes down on weekends to Devon.
My mother is here now for the summer. She couldn’t open the train door (who could, those diabolical things) in time & jumped off
the moving train with all her belongings. At that moment we all arrived. I felt of course that it was all my fault for not arriving in time to see her knocking on the window to be let out! A bad night (Is the ankle broken? Sprained? Strained?) smoothed out. The swelling went down. All is calm. Now I shall try to manipulate mornings of writing & become an articulate beast again.
Let us know what you think –
Lots of love
Sylvia
TO Marvin & Kathy Kane
Saturday 30 June 1962
TLS, Indiana University
Court Green
Saturday: June 30
Dear Marvin & Kathy,
I enclose the clipping* (aren’t I scrupulous?) which is very fine & right. Could you give us some very practical idea about what sort of place you would like---I mean, this Macnamara woman has news of a semi-detatched cottage in the beautiful country near her place with a garden, but, I gather, unfurnished & you would need a car to get to the shops. S O what are you prepared to do? It seems there is electricity there, but you would have to get it connected up or something. There is also another place we are following up, through friends. Do you require anything? I mean, like shops. And furniture. And for roughly how long are you prepared to stick it out? If we know a few details like these we can probably be of more use. At least we can make encouraging gestures after these two places.
My mother is a blessing. We are writing again, both of us, and she gets on beautifully with the babies, minds them, bakes cookies. O it is lovely. We are writing a few poems.* And manage a mad morning at the BBC (working for train fare & a flight back so I can feed the baby) once in a great while.
Love to both & let us know,
Sylvia
TO Clarissa Roche
Wednesday 11 July 1962
TLS, Smith College
Court Green
Wednesday: July 11
Dear Clarissa,
Pardon my long silence, but my mother has arrived out of the blue to stay with us till mid-August, and things are hectic as you may imagine. I think you would probably not want to invest in our local Inn (but let us know if you would), and wonder if you could postpone your babysitter till after mother has left? Then the spare room would be free again, and the visit possible at our house.