by Sylvia Plath
I will stay in England, because I love it here. This winter I hope to rent the house for 3 months & go to a cottage I found in Ireland with the babies where I could take long walks by the wild sea, milk cows, churn butter & live by savory turf fires---I adored Ireland, it gave me back my health after the flu, if not my happiness. Then in spring I shall return here & try to write my way back to a flat in London in the fall & winter, so the children can go to good free schools, saving this place for the holidays & the summer. You can imagine what memories every handmade curtain and hand-painted table have for me now! The hard thing is realising that Ted has gone for good. I loved the man I have lived with 6 happy years with all my heart, but there is nothing of this left, there is only a cruel & indifferent stranger. Luckily Dr. Beuscher & my stay at McLean’s gave me the strength to face pain & difficulty. It will take time to mend, & more time to begin to feel there is any other life possible for me, but I am resolute and shall work hard. I am so glad you have seen the dream I have made---as far as it got. Do write me. I live for letters & value you as a kind of second, literary mother.
With much love,
Sylvia
TO Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse Beuscher
Saturday 29 September 1962
TLS (aerogramme), Smith College
Saturday night: Sept. 29
Dear Dr. Beuscher,
I am sorry to write so much, but it is my one hope, I think I am dying. I am just desperate. Ted has deserted me, I have not seen him for 2 weeks, he is living in London without address. Tonight, utterly mad with this solitude, rain and wind hammering my hundred windows, I climbed to his study out of sheer homesickness to read his writing, lacking letters, and found them---sheafs of passionate love poems to this woman, this one woman to whom he has been growing more & more faithful, describing their orgasms, her ivory body, her smell, her beauty, saying in a world of beauties he married a hag, talking about “now I have hacked the octopus off my ring finger.” Many are fine poems.* Absolute impassioned love poems---and I am just dying. I could stand tarts. She is so beautiful, and I feel so haggish & my hair a mess & my nose huge & my brain brainwashed & God knows how I shall keep together. He has spent all the money, left me with nothing. I have almost the equal of my novel grant in our small savings, and the bit I’ve earned since then---nothing else. The solicitor has told me to draw out the money from our savings (joint) since he’s left me with nothing. I am just frantic.
If I had someone living with me, I would not break down & talk to myself, cry, or just stare for hours. But I have no-one---no friends, no relatives. I feel like begging my well-offish aunt to come---just till I rent the house for the winter, if I do, and go to Ireland. I hope the Ireland idea is a good one---it is all I can think of, I just can’t cope with a foreign language & can’t drive the babes to Spain all myself. I shall try to hire a nanny to make the Ireland trip. And there is no money, just my savings, but I feel I’ve got to invest in some move. I’ve got to keep the house, which is in both our names, for later, for when I’m human. It is our one security & such a fine place, it would fetch nothing, no-one but us would have liked it. By sleeping pills I sleep a few hours. I force an egg down with Frieda. I have a woman help 3 mornings a week & try as many days as I can to flog myself out to tea with my few neighbors & the babies. Then the terrible evenings settle in. The shock of this has almost killed my heart. I still love Ted, the old Ted, with everything in me & the knowledge that I am ugly and hateful to him now kills me. He has kept this affair a rabid secret, although seeing my intuitions. Once I asked if he wanted a divorce and he said no, just a separation, he might never see me for 50 years but might write once a week. I am drowning, just gasping for air. I have written Mrs. Prouty whom we entertained here about it, but the laws here horrify me---a woman is only allowed 1/3 her husband’s income, if I have the house it would be next to nothing, then if he doesn’t pay it is a long & costly suit to get it. If I earn anything I am penalized by having it counted as part of his income & in effect pay my own way! I think Ted will not now settle out of court, as I’d hope---for even to run the place (cheaper than living in a one-room flat in London) & eat, nothing for me, would cost £800---he made twice that this year. And will make more & more & I have nothing.
What kills me is that I would like so much to be friends with him, now I see all else is impossible. I mean my God my life with him has been a daily creation, new ideas, new thoughts, our mutual stimulation. Now he is active & passionately in love out in the world & I am stuck with two infants & not a soul, mother has lost her job, I have no-one. The part about keeping my personal one-ness a real help.* I must. But my god I can’t see to thinking straight. I’d ideally like to earn my way to a flat in London in fall, winter & spring & rent this place, then come here in summer. How can I tell the babies their father has left them. How do you put it? Death is so simple. Where shall I say daddy is? I had my life set as I wished---beautifully and happily domestic, with lots of intellectual stimulus & my part-time writing. I have no desire to teach, be a secretary---and god knows how I can write. I feel Ted hates us. Wants to kill us to be free to spend all his money on her, and English laws are so mean, I have no hope of even subsistence if I go to court. And small hope of earning my way out of it as I would like. I feel so trapped. Every view is blocked by a huge vision of their bodies entwined in passion across it, him writing immortal poems to her. And all the people of our circle are with them, for them. I have no friends left except maybe the Alan Sillitoes who are in Morocco for the year. How and where, O God do I begin? I can’t face the notion that he may want me to divorce him to marry her. I keep your letters like the Bible. How should I marshal my small money? For a nanny for a year, O God, for what. And how to stop my agony for his loved body and the thousand assaults each day of small things, memories from each cup, where we bought it, how he still loved me then, then when it was not too late. Frieda just lies wrapped in a blanket all day sucking her thumb. What can I do? I’m getting some kittens. I love you & need you.
Sylvia
PS:* Bless you for your advice about a divorce which arrived this morning – just in time as Ted arrives too, for the last time.* There is a dignity & rightness to it. I was clinging to dead associations. I do not want people to think I am a dog-in-the-manger – “poor man, she won’t let him marry.” I do know he’s a lousy husband & father – to me at least. And I may, at 50, find a better. I am writing from 5-8 a.m. daily.* An immense tonic. Before the babies wake.
P.S. Much better. The divorce like a clean knife. I am ripe for it now. Thank you, thank you.
TO Richard Murphy
Sunday 7 October 1962
TLS, University of Tulsa
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire, England
Sunday: October 7
Dear Richard,
The review* was lovely, it was fine to see it there in the middle of everything, and so spacious. Only Ted says they were jackdaws.* As far as I’m concerned every black bird is a rook. It was like a brilliant enamel, your account of the place, & made me homesick for it, the first pure clear place I have been for some time.
Please let me know you got my note & if the ticket was any use. I shall be coming to Moyard with Ted’s aunt as a companion & hope to get an Irish girl to live in & accompany me back, if I have the luck of the Irish. I shall try for a good Catholic, and maybe she can convert me, only I suppose I am damned already. Do they never forgive divorcées? I am getting a divorce, and you are right, it is freeing. I am writing for the first time in years,* a real self, long smothered. I get up at 4 a.m. when I wake, & it is black, & write till the babes wake. It is like writing in a train tunnel, or God’s intestine. Please make me happy & say you do not grudge me Moyard. I shall be well & eternally chaperoned & only the cows shall see me. It would hurt me terribly to think of you with clenched teeth in Cleggan.
And tell me about Cheltenham.
Regards,
Sylvia
&nb
sp; TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Tuesday 9 October 1962
TLS with envelope, Indiana University
Court Green
North Tawton
Devon.
October 9, 1962
Dear mother,
I don’t know where to begin. I just can’t take the $50. I don’t need it. I want to be sure you drew the $500 from my savings. For God’s sake, give me the feeling you are tamping down, taking care of yourself. Just sold a long New Yorker poem.* I’ll get by. Ted has agreed to give us £1,000 a year maintenance. This will just take care of rates, heat, light, food, with £200 for the children’s clothing & upkeep expenses. I want nothing for me. I’ll pay the upkeep & gas & taxes on the car, Ted’s life insurance, which is made out to me, & will be a kind of pension, if he doesn’t die, and for nannies. Right now I get up a couple of hours before the babies & write. I’ve got to. I want no loans, no mercies. If Mrs. Prouty feels like any concrete help, fine. She can afford it, you can’t.
What I am afraid of is that when Ted’s working class family & sister get hold of him they will tell him £1,000 is enough for me to go to Paris on. I have made out accounts, & it is a scrape. They take no account of the kid’s growing up, of us being three growing adults. I pray he will sign the maintenance before they get him to Jew us. The courts would give me nothing. They are bastards in England.
The reaction of Ted’s friends & relatives will be---she’s got everything, house, car, pay her nothing! The Yorkshire-Jew miserliness will try to screw me yet. I’m sitting here till the end of November when I go to Ireland. Every one in town knows, suspects. I had to call the police after a storm because I thought someone had broken in---a window was smashed. Ted was gone, & this husband actually did try to get him with a knife & I was scared he might come down here & do us in if Ted wasn’t found. But that’s over. Ted is in love, humming, packing, leaving this week. He’ll live with the woman, I think marry her, though he won’t admit it. To hell. Every time he wants to hurt me, or pay me back for having to pay maintenance, he can just not pay, or hurt through the children.
I am getting a divorce. It is the only thing. He wants absolute freedom, and I could not live out a life legally married to someone I now hate and despise. Ted is glad for a divorce, but I have to go to court, which I dread. The foulness I have lived, his wanting to kill all I have lived for six years by saying he was just waiting for a chance to get out, that he was bored & stifled by me, a hag in a world of beautiful women just waiting for him, is only part of it. I am sure there will be a lot of publicity. I’ll just have to take it; my one worry is that Dotty, being Catholic, will turn from me because of the divorce. Can she seethat I want to be free from his hate & grudge against me, that there is no honor or future for me, chained to him? If I am divorced, he can never be unfaithful to me again, I can start a new life. It is the hardest 30th birthday present I could envision. I am fighting on all fronts, I have to stand my ground.
I should say right away America is out for me. I want to make my life in England. If I start running now I will never stop. I shall hear of Ted all my life, of his success, his genius, his woman, his women. I must make a life as fast as I can, all my own. He has been brutal, cruel, bastardly, cowardly and the flesh has dropped from my bones. But I am stubborn. I am a fighter. Money is my only way to fight myself into a new life. I know pretty much what I want.
I have got to get a woman here for the next two months, which will be the worst. My old nanny is with the Astors, but I’ve written the agency for another. I hope Ted’s aunt Hilda will come down then, when she’s trained a secretary to take her place, and make the trip to Ireland with me. I shall try to get an Irish girl there to live in & come back, have her live in the guest room till the cottage is ready. Ted has put my life two years back. A year here hand-hemming my own grave, then a year to get out. I want to have a flat in London, where the cultural life is I am starved for, and use this place as a country-house for holidays & the long summer. Frieda & Nick need the stimulus of the fine free London schools, and the country in between. America is out. Also, as you can see, I haven’t the strength to see you for some time. The horror of what you saw & what I saw you see last summer is between us & I cannot face you again until I have a new life, it would be too great a strain. I would give heaven & earth to have a visit from Aunt Dot, or Warren & Margaret. Can the latter come in spring.
The shock to me is an enormity. Ted has lied to the end, and only on the last days has he had the courage to tell me what I believed was a delusion. I was very stupid, very happy. I found Ted has been building a secret London life all this summer*---a flat, a separate bank account, this woman, who I am sure will now leave her second husband & marry Ted. He gave me no time, no inkling, to make any plans of my own. As you may imagine, the court case is for me to appear in, not him. A necessary evil.
Please tell no one but the relatives of this divorce till it is final. I want it very much. I have to want it. I want Ted utterly out of my life. I have been so shamed and degraded it has almost killed me, and the agony I have had to get the truth is the last I will ever go through. He has been both mean and utterly brutal. He is very pleased with himself and whenever he wants to be very very pleased sort of hums & says “I think £1,000 is too much. You can economize, eat less roasts, etc., etc.” He goes Thursday. He doesn’t care about things. I have to behave carefully, so his relatives won’t turn on me. I think the divorce case may do this. I have got to have it for myself, my honor, my life. But he may pretend he doesn’t want it, just doesn’t want to live as father & husband & would pay for us out of court, the “gentleman” he has been. He is capable of anything, when after what he wants, and he says for a long time he has not wanted us.
Dot’s letter a great consolation. Reassure me she’ll accept the divorce & not stop her kindness for that. I have no-one. He has stuck me down here as into a sack, I fight for air & freedom & the culture & libraries of a city.
Got Frieda a red duffle coat, a blue wool bathrobe & two wool dresses in Exeter yesterday. The first clothes Ted has bought her. I am dying to go to Ireland. I need three months away to recover. Everybody in town leering and peering. In spring I’ll have strength to cope with the rest, the return, holding my head up. I can’t sleep without pills & my health has been bad, after the flu. I’ve had shock after shock, as Ted has fed me the truth, with leer after leer. I told him that was all I wanted of him, the truth at last, not to hear it bit by bit from others. He couldn’t even manage that. The husband chased him with a knife, then tried to commit suicide, etc. etc. No one will ever believe the Ted I know. I am sure now he is “absolutely free” he will be charming. He chose to live with this woman in the same street as the church in which we were married. Oh well, enough.
Do you suppose Warren & Margaret could go with me on a holiday to Austria & Germany next spring or summer? This may sound insane, but I have nothing, nothing to look forward to. It would be something. I would love them. And what a rest, to be among relatives. I never want to return to America, except maybe in the far future, for a Cape Cod visit. I hate teaching, hate jobs. All I want to do is write at home. And be with my kids, and see movies, plays, exhibits, meet people, make a new life.
I’ve got to do something for my morale. Ireland is the first thing. Tell me what Prouty says. Ted’s in his heaven, the world’s is oyster. He’s avenging himself for six year’s of faithfulness – “sentimentality.”
Love,
Sivvy
PS: Do you suppose either Warren or Aunt Dot could fly over to be with me for a few days when I have to face the court? I don’t know whether it will be this autumn (I doubt, alas) or next spring, but I will need protection. I look to Warren so now, that I have no man, no adviser. He was so good and sweet here. Ted is desperate for money to go off with this woman & as he has earned nothing all summer, tried by fantastic nastiness to wrench from me the last two installments of my novel grant I kept by me when I realized he was going to desert us,
by saying if I had the money I could live on it, no nanny. I hope when he gets off with her he will not be so nasty. He laughs at me, insults me, says my luck is over, etc. He goes tomorrow.
Everything is breaking---my dinner set cracking in half, the health inspector says the cottage should be demolished, there is no hope for it, so I shall have to do over the long room instead. Even my beloved bees set upon me today when I numbly knocked aside their sugar feeder & I am all over stings. Ted just gloats. Perhaps when he is gone the air will clear. I long for Warren & Margaret. I must get to London next fall. I must face the hardest thing---Ted’s probable second marriage & his fame & meeting him & his triumphant model with her exotic looks & news of them everywhere. When I have done that, I will know I am not running when I move. The humiliation of having to wait on my husband’s whim to get money to keep the house & children going is my most difficult shame just now. Please tell Warren to write & say he & Maggie will come in spring. In Ireland I feel I may find my soul, & in London next fall, my brain, & maybe in heaven what was my heart.
Love,
Sivvy
‘Got Frieda a red duffle coat . . .’>
P.S. What exactly is the 5¢ Savings Acct total now?
PS: Please send a sheet of 4¢ stamps & a glass measuring cup – mine broke!
TO Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse Beuscher
Tuesday 9 October 1962