The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2
Page 90
We have been consumed by this long drought, lifting anxiously the lolling heads of our otherworldly plants and begging them to hang on. Cars with loudspeakers have announced it is an offense to water the garden by hose from the tap. You have to cart it out in buckets and pretend it is your used bath-water. I get homesick for you just writing to you. If you could afford the hotel now you could have all the meals here so it wouldn’t be too bad, and I’m sure you’d get on with mother. If this is not feasible, how about some time in August?
Ted too sends love,
Sylvia
TO Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse Beuscher
Wednesday 11 July 1962
TLS, Smith College
Court Green
North Tawton
Devon.
July 11, 1962
Dear Dr. Beuscher,
I honestly hope you feel you can answer this letter by return, as I am suddenly, after all that happy stuff I wrote you some while ago, at sea, and a word from you I could carry around with me would sustain me like the Bible sustains others. I didn’t say in my last letter how ghastly that sounded to have gone through, about your father.* It sounded so close in its way to my own trouble that I was astounded. I still credit you, I think, with some vestige of supernatural powers which can transcend the factual lumps of experience and make them harmless, or at least, not seriously or permanently wounding. What I wanted to say, without knowing quite how, is that I am very very sorry.
What I need some good wise word on is the situation between Ted & me.* As you can tell from my last letter, I thought I had at last stepped into the life that would be the growing-pot for us both---the alternation of outdoor work in the garden & fishing for Ted, with each of us writing more and better than ever in our separate studies, and the two beautiful babies and nothing to worry about but fallout, I felt Life Begins at 30. Then everything went queer. Ted began to leap up in the morning & intercept the mail. He began to talk, utterly unlike him, of how he could write & direct film scripts, how he was going to win the Nobel Prize, how he had been asleep all the time we were married, recoiling, as the French say, so he could jump the better. How he wanted to experience everybody & everything, there was a monster in him, a dictator. Und so weiter. He would come out with these things after spurts of lovemaking as in our honeymoon days, asking me like a technician, did I like this, did I like that. Then round on me for holding hands & being jealous of other women.
I just felt sick, as if I were the practise board for somebody else. I get these semi-clairvoyant states, which I suppose are just diabolic intuition. I picked up the phone & a nasty man’s voice asked if Ted could take a call from London.* Ted always wants me to find out who it is, so I asked, & the man said he was sorry, the person didn’t want to say. I felt thick with my own dumbness & called Ted. It was a woman, saying “Can I see you?” He said she didn’t say her name & he had no idea who it was. I was pretty sure who it was. A girl who works in an ad agency in London, very sophisticated, and who, with her second poet-husband,* took over the lease on our London flat. We’d had them down for a weekend, and I’d walked in on them (Ted & she) Tête-a-tête in the kitchen & Ted had shot me a look of pure hate. She smiled & stared at me curiously the rest of the weekend. She is very destructive---had so many abortions when she was young she only miscarries now, wants to die before she gets old, tried to kill her first husband with a knife when he married another woman, after she herself had deceived him; now she thinks her second husband is ‘Past his best, poor thing’. Calls her first husband on the phone (getting a man to ask for him, to get round the wife) and meets him for lunch. She kept calling a while, for no apparent reason, seeming almost speechless when she got me. Then, it seems reasonable to believe, she repeated her usual trick to get through to Ted. And when I got up to his study, to clean up as I do, empty envelopes in her hand were lying round, dated during all the time he’d been leaping up for mail. Ted said “No,” she couldn’t see him, over the phone. But I was standing there, stunned. Then the next day, after a night of no sleep & horrid talk (me asking him for god’s sake to say who it was so it would stop being Everybody), he took the train to London for a “holiday.” He assured me, in a flash of his old self, that me & the children were what he really loved & would come back to & he was not going to London to lie about & had not touched another woman since we were married. I have discontinued the phone, for I can’t stand waiting, every minute, to hear that girl breathing at the end of it, my voice at her fingertips, my life & happiness on her plate.
I suppose this all sounds very naive to you. It is, after all, what seems to happen to everybody. Only I am not, as Ted says, blasé enough. I care to a frenzy. I could never satisfy myself by “getting even” with other men: other men mean nothing to me---they are repulsive. This is one thing I want you to see: Ted is so fantastically unique---beautiful, physically wonderful, brilliant, loving, eager for me to do my own work, without (as I thought) a lie or deceit in his body. It is the lying that kills me. I can face nasty truths, unpleasant facts. I am sure a possessive wife would have driven most men mad before this. But I just don’t have the ability to care nothing about other women chasing Ted. He is very famous over here, and a real catch. Women are always writing him, drooling about his poems etc., begging him to tell them about his life, etc. As you may imagine, movie stars have nothing on a handsome male poet. He seemed to want to flee all big publicity---TV & so on, & was furious when I let any cameramen into the house. But now it is different: I have been a jinx, a chain.
Well, if he would tell me the truth about the letters & phonecalls & his flying off, I would be in some way purged. But now it balloons up before me like a great fantasy which I sense, but cannot limit to reality. I am not generous. His being with another woman, especially a woman who spites me & is dying to stop my creative work, like this one, makes me retch. I cannot sleep. I cannot eat. It is because I feel I can never trust him again, and have been perhaps a fool to be so happy and trusting in the past.
If I could carry on normally, I might be more rational. But I keep having to run off to cry and be dry-sick as each image of that girl assaults me, and her pleasure at hearing me nonplussed on the phone, of taking my life and joy. I can’t imagine a life without Ted. But I am not like other wives who tolerate all---marriage to me is a kind of sanctity, faithfulness in every part, and I will not ever be able to love or make love again in happiness, with this looming in front of me. It is his wanting to deceive me that is so like this girl & unlike him.
What can I do? I would never in my life think of divorce, because I married till death and am his wife till death. He can have tarty women & bastards, but only one wife and her children. And that’s me. I am simply not cool & sophisticated. My marriage is the center of my being, I have given everything to it without reserve. Worst, my writing is killed by this mess. I write, not in compensation, out of sorrow, but from an overflow, a surplus, of joy, & my ability to criticize my work & do it well is my objectivity, which stems from happiness, not sorrow. The day after Ted left, I got the proofs of my first novel.* It saved the day for me: I roared and roared, it was so funny and good. But then there is the big empty bed & I am like a desperado, & take the baby in with me. Then all night it is visions of that woman with Ted, her delight. I imagine idiocies---her coming to live here, me breaking her nose & knocking her teeth out. I think if she killed, or tried to knife, her first husband, she would quite like to kill me. And she is so outwardly sophisticated, so mocking. I have never learned the art & never will. I break up in pieces, cry, rave.* I am proud. I will not be made a fool of. Let me learn the true things, not be diddled & betrayed. I think I am not good in the part of wronged wife. A wronged wife is at such a disadvantage because she feels so right, and this is my desperation. I hate the thing in Ted that can jeopardize and ruin everything like this and expect to have a wife-secretary-mother-dishwasher-housekeeper waiting to take him back, refreshed. Until the next letter, the next come on. I have nothing to refres
h me. I am left here, with the evidence of the phonecall, the evidence of the oddly coincidental departure, the evidence of my each sense. I can never forget or forgive this. I suppose people would tell me I am lucky---he seems to want us as homebase still. Well, I can’t be any sort of sweet homebase for stuff that makes me gag. I feel ugly and a fool, when I have so long felt beautiful & capable of being a wonderful happy mother and wife and writing novels for fun & money. I am just sick. What can I do?
To make things worse---or better---my mother is here for six weeks. She has taken over some of the meals & babyminding & freed us both to do our work & go off on day-jaunts. I was so happy. I get on pretty well with mother now, because I keep off the great controversies, and she is a real help & I make her feel this. But you can imagine how images repeat themselves---here I am, alone with my mother & the children! I am so numb I am only glad she looks after Frieda, because I am hollow as a zombie inside & without motion. My milk has soured or something, because the baby has been having diarrhea day and night since this bloody phonecall.
I have a feeling, when I try to look at what is I am sure my unique predicament (unique because I am unable to swallow this behavior as if it never was, unable to accept clean breaks, like divorce, because I am in spirit and body married forever to this one person, unable to forget), that people or you or anybody would say---let him go, let him get It out of his system. Well, what about my system? How do I get this other It out? This jealous retch, this body that comes, laughing, between my body & his body.* If he would only say who & what it was. Then It would have limits. But this intangible, invisible, infinitely possible thing is killing me. How can I live without him? I mean, if I could write & garden & be happy with my babies, I could survive. But I am so sick & sleepless & jumpy all is a mess. I suppose it might be good if mother could go---she has just over 3 more weeks. I tell her nothing: ‘Ted is on a holiday in London, to do some radio programs.’ She is good, doesn’t pry, makes herself scarce. She said the other day “I am so glad to see you so happy,” Well, that was the death knell. I have been trying to start a 2nd novel & said laughingly to Ted: Now if I can just keep happy & peaceful for 6 weeks I can do it. Later he flew at me “Why should I limit myself by your happiness or unhappiness?”
Well, that’s it. I feel you, having been once divorced and being a psychiatrist, not an Anglican rector, will feel I am a dog-in-the-manger about divorce (which has not, by the way, really entered our talk, except that Ted says it would be a good thing if his older brother,* whom he idolized, should get divorced---a stand-in for his own wish?). I simply would never do it. I honestly do believe I am wedded to Ted till death. Other men seem ants compared to him. I am physically attracted to no-one else. All the complexities of my soul & mind are involved inextricably with him. And I do feel I lead an independent life---I work, write, have my own art & reputation, my babies. Yet this is dirt in my mouth if I can’t trust and love him.
O I would be so grateful if you would sit down and send me some word. I can talk to no-one about this---mother, of course, least of all. She does not even know I have written a novel. She is in almost utter bliss. Please, please, do write me. I have got nothing but the bloody empty envelopes secreted by Ted in stupid places, and would like some word of my own. What can I do about the bloody lying? his refusal to come out & say: this is the way it is---I have seen so-and-so, it is she, not everybody, and you can bloody-well lump it. That would be salutary as a slap in the face. And then, how can I be, if he comes back? When I am full of hate, resentment, a wish to kill this bloody girl to whom my misery is just sauce. And how can I stop being miserable? I hate myself like this. I do need word!
Please write, right away, if you can.
With love,
Sylvia
TO Marvin & Kathy Kane
Sunday 15 July 1962
TLS, Indiana University
Court Green
North Tawton
Devon.
July 15, 1962
Dear, dear Marvin & Kathie,
It was great to get your letter. We have been up in a heaval with my mother here (she stays way into August) as with no matter what good will & fortitude mater’s turn to witches after a certain amount of days if left in the sun. And I have a ghastly suspicion I have broken my toe. Which I shall see about tomorrow.
Our whole search for cottages ended up in only the two we said---both without bits & pieces or electricity (could you use a battery wireless?). Anyhow, we keep reading the ads. The cottage of the dead man’s* next to us is up for sale furnished for 2,500 pounds (ha!!) any takers?
I am excited about being on a program all to myself Marvin, you are very good. Will it mean money? We are very broke now having sunk all into the house repairs & payment. Ted told me he had sent back “We’re just not practical”* before I read it, but that was not true as I found it this week in the midst of huge angst & dolor & laughed like crazy. If it could make me laugh then, in the grave of a great deal, it is genuine grand comedy. The grant people sound hopeful. I think the poetry-popularanthology reading is a great idea and much fun and would love to do it some time latish fall when I’ve weaned Nicholas which should be about then.
Ted says he will drive up definitely to move you down or what if you want. Wish me mother-fortitude!! And a not badly broken toe.
Love,
Sylvia
TO Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse Beuscher
Friday 20 July 1962
TLS, Smith College
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire, England
Friday: July 20
Dear, dear Dr. Beuscher,
First of all, please charge me some money. I feel a fraud and a heel to be cadging time and advice out of you for nothing. If I were in America, I would be asking you for a few sessions for which I’d want to pay, and right now, a few airletters back and forth could do me a powerful lot of good. You are a professional woman whose services I would greatly appreciate, and as a professional woman, I can pay for them what anyone else would. No need for cut rates or student’s fees. My last New Yorker poem earned me $270,* so I can afford the luxury of a good psychiatrist which is you. Let me know what would be best. Maybe a letter from me & an answer from you we could count as a session. Bill me, huh? Right now, I need some good talk to carry me on.
I wrote you in the middle of my agony-week, when I hadn’t come to the climax of it & been freed to see what I had to see, & so was half begging you to reassure me that at least my old dream-idyll was a right one even if it worked out wrong. The virginity, as it were, of our marriage ended Friday the 13th (O we are very superstitious in our house) & I went to a friend’s* with the baby leaving mother here with Frieda & went through the whole bloody thing minute by minute, surrounded by 4 cats (one of which produced 3 kittens), a dog, and many hens and pigs. At first I thought, why couldn’t Ted just go away & find freedom this way? Why did he have to fuck this woman in this nasty way, almost killing me & her husband & Frieda etc. by the upset of the shock. Then, after I had got over the nausea, got the doctor to knock me out for 8 hours after a week of no eating or sleeping, I thought: Thank God. I am free of so much. And this was probably the most economical way to do it, although at the time of my misery I thought it the cruellest.
I think you could do me some more good now, because I think I am willing to see a lot more than I could or would when I last saw you. I remember you almost made me hysterical when you asked me, or suggested, that Ted might want to go off on his own. This was heresy to me then, the Worst. How could a true-love ever ever want to leave his truly-beloved for one second? We would experience Everything together. I began to worry about the purity & strength of my love when I found myself thinking: Why doesn’t the bastard leave the house & let me put my hair up & dust & sing. I think obviously both of us must have been pretty weird to live as we have done for so long. Of course I suppose any husband of mine would have a large flow of my feeling for my father to complicate our rela
tionship. And Ted has as I think you will admit, a rather large dose of mother-sister worship in him. And hate of course.
I was always having nightmares about Ted dying or being in accidents & for this reason could hardly bear to let him out of my sight. For fear he would desert me forever, like my father, if I didn’t watch him closely enough. And he must have had enough desire for womb-comfort to stick it out. Well, we are 30. We grow up slowly, but, it appears, with a bang.
Anyhow, Ted came back. It occurred to me almost immediately that he felt a lot worse than I did. Not sorry-worse. He just wasn’t purged, because he hadn’t had my particular wild agony. And the bloody girl wasn’t very sensual. She complained a lot about her abortions & what a bad hostess I was, going off on my own to my study etc. etc. Well you bet I went off. All she wanted was for me to sit on the bed while they fucked. No thanks. Yes, she is the Sister. This occurred to me on the train down from London where I did a job yesterday.* She is the barren & frigid symbol of sex. (I honestly think Ted’s sister may be a virgin. She is beautiful, smart, but absolutely uncreative & cold.) When I was at my lowest, thinking grimly: What has this Weavy Asshole (her name is actually Assia Wevill) got that I haven’t, I thought: she can’t make a baby (and really isn’t so sorry), can’t make a book or a poem, just ads about bad bakery bread, wants to die before she gets old & loses her beauty, and is bored. Bored, bored, bored. With herself & her life. She literally moved into our London flat (after we left!). She came down here & wanted to move into my life. Well, the old girl has done me a big favor. The funny thing is, I don’t think she must really enjoy sex, except in her head. One of her many odd gimmicks is that she calls up her old first husband and goes ga-ga because “It sounds as if we were in bed together.” That is another difference between us. Believe me, I would have the bloody man in bed. I am that shameless. I hate mental titillations that don’t come off in reality.