by Sylvia Plath
Love to Warren & Maggie
Sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Monday 24 September 1962
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire, England
Monday: September 24
Dear mother,
I feel I owe you a happier letter than my last ones. Now that I have come to my decision to get a legal separation, and have an appointment with an immensely kind-sounding lawyer in London tomorrow (recommended to me by my equally kind accountant) I begin to see that life is not over for me. It is the uncertainty, week after week, that has been such a torture. And of course the desire to hang on to the last, to see if something, anything could be salvaged. I am just as glad the final blows have been delivered. Ted’s lying to me about Nick & having him strapped in the pram & letting him fall on the concrete, deserting me in Ireland & other foul stuff I won’t go into, and spending, I now find on checking our bank statements, checks he never entered in the book in addition to the large sums listed,* plus his insistence on coming home about once a week & making life utter hell & destroying my work, plus living off my novel grant till it was too late for me to do the cottage over & get a nanny with it, have just finished everything. He is not only infantile, but dangerously destructive, and I feel both the children & I need protection from him, for now & forever. The woman I gather he is with---I have no notion of where in London he is or when he will come home---has done charming things like attacking her first husband with a knife and slashing up the inside of his car & so on, and I think Ted’s desire to “show the doctor I was unstable” by telling him I thought I had canine influenza (!) is prompted by her---they would one day I think like to get Frieda. Well, I shall get the law on my side.
It is a beautiful day here---clear and blue. I got this nanny back for today & tomorrow, she is a whiz, and I see what a heaven my life could be if I had a good live-in nanny. I am eating my first warm meal since I’ve come back---having an impersonal person in the house is a great help. I went up to Winifred’s* for 3 hours the night I realized Ted wasn’t coming back, and she was a great help. She more or less confirmed my decision. And since I have made it, miraculously my own life, my wholeness, has been seeping back. I will try to rent Court Green for the winter & go to Ireland---this is a dream of mine---to purge myself of this awful experience by the wild beauty I found there, & the children would thrive. Quite practically, I have no money to go farther. I have put all my earnings this summer in a separate account, the checking account is at zero, and there is £300 I have taken from our joint savings just about the last of them! as Ted said at one point I could, as some recompense for my lost nanny-grant, to build over the cottage. This is a must. Also getting TV for a nanny. I can’t have one live in this house---or I could have no guests, & I do want to entertain what friends and relatives I have as often as I can. I dream of Warren & Maggie! I would love to go on a skiing holiday in the Tyrol with them someday. I just read about it in the paper.* And then if I do a novel or 2 I might apply for a Guggenheim to go to Rome---with nanny & children. Right now I have no money---but if I get the cottage done this winter while I’m away, I might sink all my savings in a nanny for a year. My writing should be able to get her the next year, and so on. If I hit it lucky, I might even be able to take a London flat & send the children to the fine free schools there & enjoy the London people (I would starve intellectually here), renting Court Green for the winter, & come down on holidays & in the spring, for the long summer holiday. I feel when the children are school-age I want to be able to afford this. Some lucky break---like writing a couple of New Yorker stories in Ireland, or a play for the BBC (I’ve got lots of fan mail* for the half hour interview I did on why I stayed in England---many advising me about special brands of corn to grow!)---could make this life a reality. But first the cottage, then the nanny. I’ll have to do this out of my own small pocket, as I imagine Ted will only have to pay for the children. It is incredible what resources & hope I find now I see I have got to get Ted legally out of my life. I have to pay the price for his “cowardice” in not telling me he didn’t want children etc. Oddly, though I loved him, what I saw he could be, I don’t like him now at all. I despise wantonness & destructiveness. He has chosen to be like this, and he has no notion of what he is losing in me & the children. Well he is a bloody fool. Took Frieda to the playground again today. She is talking wonderfully, says names. I’m getting her two kittens from Mrs. Macnamara next week & trying to go somewhere, on some visit, every afternoon with them, to keep very busy.
Lots of love to you, Warren & Maggie,
Sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Wednesday 26 September 1962
TLS with envelope, Indiana University
Court Green
Wednesday, Sept. 26
Dear mother,
I went up to London to the solicitor yesterday. A very harrowing but necessary experience. No knowing where Ted is, except in London, I got a numb utterly dumb letter from him with no address. I think he is possessed. The solicitor said he was worthless & to get clear. They are trying to trace him. I hope he will have sense enough to settle out of court & agree to an allowance, but I think whoever it is is driving him to spend everything may well prevent this. He is utterly gutless. Lies, lies, lies.
The laws, of course, are awful---a wife is allowed 1/3 of her husband’s income, & if he doesn’t pay up, the suing is long & costly, if a wife earns anything, her income is included in his & she ends up paying for everything. The humiliation of being penniless & begging money from deaf ears is too much. I shall just have to invest everything with courage in the cottage & the nanny for a year, a nanny, & write like mad. Try to get clear. I’m sure the American laws aren’t like this. I hope Ted will have the decency to give us a fixed allowance & settle out of court. Together we earned about $7,000 this year, a fine salary, I earning one third. Now it is all gone. I am furious. I threw everything of mine into our life without question, all my earnings, & now he is well-off, with great potential earning power, I shall be penalized for earning, or if I don’t earn, have to beg. Well I choose the former. I am enclosing an authorization for you to draw $500 from our Boston account. Put it in your bank. Then write me a check for that amount so I can say it is a gift. I’m sick of trying to explain our savings on income tax. The solicitor told me to draw out everything I could from our joint accounts to pay bills. Ted has left me no alternative. He owes me my novel grant back. He can pay me what my nanny got---£10 a week plus board and room.
I have written Edith I am getting a legal separation & will take it to court if necessary, although I have less to gain, if he proves obstinate. He is a vampire on my life, killing and destroying all. We had all the world on tap, were even well off, now this insanity on his part will cost us everything.
Thank God the solicitor said I could take the children to Ireland. I am hoping to let this place, but must go even if I can’t. I despise Ted & the kind of creature he has made himself, & let him be made into. He had it in him to be the finest & kindest & best father & husband alive, & now thinks all feeling is sentimental & womanish.
Do mention if you can to Mrs. Prouty the situation. It is difficult, I feel, & not my place, for I want nothing from her, but I would like her to know the truth, that I am deserted, he wants no children, nor any marriage bonds & has left me incommunicado with a pile of police & library fines to pay, & a mountain of bills. I am sorry to be so worrying at this time when your own concerns are so pressing, but I must get control of my life, the little I have left.
With love,
Sivvy
PS: The playroom rug finally came. It i
all her toys out of Nick’s reach. She is great company now---spanks me & says “Naughty mummy”. Winifred has found me a woman for 3 mornings a week,* 3 hours each, 9 hours in all. Better than nothing. Came today & said she’d come tomorrow. Very pretty & dear to the children. The nanny a marvel, 30 but looks 18. But so used to royalty!---suggested she come to Ireland with us, for the trip. If she can’t come I’ll get another.
Love,
s.
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Saturday 29 September 1962
TL (incomplete), Indiana University
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire
September 29, 1962
Dearest mother,
It is going on 6:30 in the morning & I am warm in my study, Pifco going, with my first cup of morning coffee. Winifred, for all her lack of imagination, is full of good sense & I love her for it. She is very busy, so after my on 3 hour evening session with her when deciding what to do, I only will see her briefly, for social occasions & practical questions. It was she who suggested that when I wake up early & am unable to sleep I come in and work on my novel before the babies get up & go to bed shortly after they do. Well, of course just now my emotions are such that “working on my novel” is so difficult as to be almost impossible, but I actually did do 3 pages yesterday, & hope to work into it, first numbly, then with feeling. It is the evenings here, after the children are in bed, that are the worst, so I might as well get rid of them by going to bed. I feel pretty good in the morning, & my days are, thank goodness busy. I find that by eating my meals with Frieda in the kitchen it is easier to eat something, & every day I religiously make tea in the nursery at 4, try to invite someone or take them to see some one, so each day I have a time with other people who know nothing, or at least who are darling, like the Comptons.
I do have to take sleeping pills, but they are, just now, a necessary evil, and enable me to sleep deeply & then do some writing & feel energetic during the day if I drink lots of coffee right on waking, so I shall go on taking them as long as I have to.
Ted has, quite simply, deserted us. I have not seen him for almost two weeks, since Ireland, and he has given me no London address. It is difficult to manage the telegrams, the police summonses for his traffic offenses & refusals to answer them & the questions of Nancy, the bank manager & all, but I think most, or some of them realise what has happened & I just hold my head high. It is horribly humiliating to be deserted, especially in such a foul way, with no income, nothing, but now I have faced it I feel much better. I am not hiding it from myself. I have written about this to Edith. I earnestly love her & the relatives up there & feel for them like a 2nd family. I only hope they will let me visit them with the children when this has blown over. Ted is just not going to deprive me of them, and I think they honestly love the babies very much. Edith is dear & sweet & this must upset her terribly.
The solicitor says I am within my legal rights & certainly to draw all money out of our joint accounts & put them in accounts of my own since my husband has deserted me & left me with nothing else to pay for food & bills. So do send me that $500 “gift” and another $500 at Christmas, if I need it. I have to make an outlay for the cottage this winter, & get a nanny in spring. Having the nanny here from the agency made me realize what heaven it would be. & I don’t break down with someone else around,
In Letters Home, the letter ends here with a closing ‘Love, Sivvy’.>
TO Kathy Kane
Saturday 29 September 1962
TLS, Indiana University
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire
Saturday: Sept. 29
Dearest Kathy,
Your letter was so sweet & cheering. I have been just about stunned & distracted. Quite simply, Ted has deserted us---I don’t mean gone on holiday, I mean just deserted. He left me in Ireland and I haven’t seen him since---two weeks now, and have just discovered that everything he told me about his doings in London was elaborate lies & he had been drawing out our small savings without listing them in the checkbook at the rate of £50 a week & then looking blank and saying he had spent it on a few cigarettes. I can’t tell you the terrible sadistic footnotes, they are too involved and elaborate and poetic. Of course it is this other woman, but it is also all his old drinking friends & new friends. Just now I do not see how we are going on, because of the money.
I went up to see a London solicitor on Tuesday & he is trying to trace Ted, who has left no address, to see if he will settle on a yearly sum out of court. He is berserk. He used up all my novel grant, then got courage to say he was through the marriage & never had courage to tell me he didn’t want children. I struggled all the lean years, now he is earning well, bang. Frieda lies on the floor all day & sucks her thumb & looks miserable.
I would have loved staying in London, but for Ted’s saying he hated it---there I could have friends, a job, babyminders. I am going potty with noone to talk to. I am going to try to rent the house in Ireland, where I found my health, if not my happiness, and try to heal by the wild sea there. It is very difficult to try to make a start of any sort with no job, no money & two infants. I don’t know whether I said Ted almost killed Nicholas while I had flu---I kept asking if he had him strapped in to the pram & he lied & said yes, then I heard a terrible scream & came down. He had not strapped him in, & the baby had fallen onto the concrete. Ted didn’t even bother to pick him up. He could have broken his head or hurt his little spine. Every day I try to go to tea with someone. The evenings are hell. I can’t sleep without pills. Well, if I can just live through this fall, & try to get my novel done somehow, then go to Ireland for the worst three months & come back with the daffodils, maybe the spring & summer will bring new life & new plans.
Was there any reply about the readings, Marvin? Even as late as next year I’d love to do it---maybe Kathy could mind the babes the afternoons we’re off---I could drive us. I just need something to think about. I would love to come down this next Friday* for the weekend but will wait to see what my solicitor says in the mail this next week---I’ve got to get Ted cleared up & some money in first. How do you get down by car? O, I’ll find out. I love you both. Do write, even if just a note. Frieda keeps saying “See Kathy & Marwin soon.”
Lots of love,
Sylvia
TO Olive Higgins Prouty
Saturday 29 September 1962
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire, England
September 29, 1962
Dear Mrs. Prouty,
Thank you for your dear, dear letter. I am so glad you enjoyed your dinner & visit here---it meant the world for me to have you, for reasons I was unable to say at the time. I remembered the lovely dinners you used to have at your place and tried to have clear soup & roast as you had, hoping it would remind you of home. I so much needed someone else to see all the beauty of the place, and what it had been made and could be.
Nicholas loves his little soft man toy with the lovely sweater & pants, and Frieda adores her little “tiny dollies”. I am sitting now at tea in the playroom where we had lunch, watching the grey skies of autumn. I was out this morning trying to harvest some of our enormous crop of apples.
I do have some sad news. I did not want to tell you while you were here, and the worst had not yet come, but it is so on my mind I thought I would let you know, rather than pretend. Ted has deserted us. He lived all year off my novel grant, which was to have bought me a full-time nanny, and then he “got courage” to tell me he wanted no more of marriage, and had not had the courage to tell me he never wanted children. Of course there is another woman, who has had so many abortions she can’t have children & is beautiful and barren and hates all I have created here. Ted left me in Ireland and I have not seen him since nor do I know his address. I found he had drawn out all our savings,
too, so I am having to take legal proceedings. I saw a good lawyer in London this week who is trying to trace Ted. I hope he will settle a yearly allowance on us out of court, but he has been so cruel & hurtful to me and the babies that I think I may have to go to court to get an allowance for them. He says all the kindness and sweetness I loved & married him for was mere sentimentality & he is through with living for anything but himself. I feel I am mourning a dead man, the most wonderful person I knew, and it is some stranger who has taken his name.
I suppose suffering is the source of understanding, and perhaps one day I shall be a better novelist because of this. It is the children I find hardest to face---I thought I was giving them the best father in the world. I write at my novel now from about 5 a.m. when my sleeping pill wears off, till they wake up, and hope to finish it by mid-winter. It is funny, I think. At least I hope so.
I write you, too, because I know you have had great sorrows in your life, and I have often thought that if I could be as intuitive and wise as you are when I am your age that I would be very proud. You listen to everything, and feel into people---all that time we spoke of unfaithful men that evening at the Connaught for instance it was as if you intuitively grasped what our situation was. That was the happiest night of my life for months, and I guess I will remember it as the last happy night with Ted, now happiness, the word, has ceased to have meaning for me.