The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2
Page 98
Sivvy
PS: We have two kittens – Tiger-Pieker & Skunky-Bunks.
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Tuesday 16 October 1962
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Court Green: Tuesday October 16
Dear mother,
I am writing with my old fever of 101° alternating with chills back. Two things: I must have someone with me for the next 2 months to mind the babies while I get my health back & try to write. I have got to get to Ireland by December 1st. Write nothing to any of the Hughes. I stupidly told Edith in a letter this morning that Ted had finally deserted & you would appreciate a word* that they care for me & the babies, although Ted does not. This noon I got, from Hilda, the “Family position”. The materialistic, appalling Yorkshire-Jew skinflint: “Forget Ted, count myself lucky to have a house, car, two babies & the ability to earn my whole living at home instead of having to go out & work for a boss!” When they hear that Ted has pledged, or was going to, £1,000 for heat, light, food & the children’s clothes---my rock-bottom expenses, I fear they will try to torture me to death. I have been advised to have nothing to do or say to Ted’s relatives till the custody of the children is decided & the divorce final. Nothing will matter to them. Words will only make them turn their full fury on me. They have utterly no imagination, no notion of our standard of living. I see clearly Ted will as soon as he goes home this fall, utterly justify to them his actions by saying he will “support us”. £1,000 is fantastic to them, insanity. Olwyn will return. I have got to get to Ireland. I need Dotty, or Margaret---just for 6 weeks, two months, to protect me. Ted & his woman (he will have the distinction of being her 4th husband, thank god I think she is barren) have already wistfully started wondering why I didn’t commit suicide, since I did before! Ted has said how convenient it would be if I were dead, then he could sell the house & take the children whom He likes. It is me he does not like. I need help very much just now. Home is impossible. I can go nowhere with the children, & I am ill, & it would be psychologically the worst thing to see you now or to go home. I have free doctor’s care here, cheap help possible though not now available, and a home I love & will want to return to in summer to get ready to leap to London. To make a new life. I am a writer. I hate teaching. I am a genius of a writer, I have it in me. I am up at 5 writing the best poems of my life, they will make my name.* I could finish the novel in six weeks of daylong work. I have a gift of an inspiration for another. Got a $100 “Birthday present” from Dotty today. $300 from Mrs. Prouty. Thank God. Very bad luck with nanny agency, a bitch of a woman is coming tomorrow* from them, doesn’t want to cook, do any breakfast or tea, wondered if there was a butler. £10 a week. If I had time to get a good nanny, possibly an Irish girl to come home with me, I could get on with my life. Ted is dead to me, I feel only a lust to study, write, get my brain back & practice my craft. I have, if you want to know, already had my 1st novel finished & accepted---it is a secret, & I am on my 2nd. My 3rd – the idea – came this week. After Ted left with all his clothes & things I piled the children & 2 cats in the car & drove to stay with a horrid couple I know in St. Ives Cornwall---the most heavenly gold sands by emerald sea. Discovered Cornwall, exhausted but happy, my first independent act! I have no desire but to build a new life. Must start here. When I have my 2nd book of poems done, my 3rd novel, & the children are of age, I may well try a year of creative writing lecturing in America & a Cape summer. But not just now. I must not go back to the womb or retreat. I must make steps out, like Cornwall, like Ireland.
Please share this letter with Dotty & Mrs. Prouty. I am all right. I know I sound insane, but could either Dot or Margaret spare me 6 weeks. I can get no good nanny sight unseen, I could pay board & room easily & travel expenses & Irish fares. I am as bereft now as ever. I am terrified of the Hughes family. Now is their most “sympathetic time”---wait till they hear about the money! I must have someone I love who is of course not you, to protect me, for I fear they will by more torture try to get me to the wall. When Ted left I felt a peace and joy I have not known for a year at bottom half a year on the surface. He has squelched me, I need no literary help from him. I am going to make my own way. Next fall I must get to London, & the children to London schools. Know my only problems now are practical: money health back, a good young girl or nanny willing to muck in & cook which I could afford once I got writing. The strain of facing suing Ted for support, with the cruel laws here, is something I need to put off just now. Could Margaret fly over, get a new job when she comes back? Or Dot? My flu with my weight loss & the daily assault of practical nastiness---this nanny sounds as if she will leave in a day or so & the fees are fantastic for over here---has made me need immediate help. I’m getting an unlisted phone put in as soon as possible so I can call out, you shall have the number. The babes are beautiful, though Frieda has regressed, the pussies help. I cannot come home. I need someone to cover my getting to Ireland. I can’t rely on any nanny at this short notice---I just can’t interview them. Do let me know what you all think. The life in Ireland is very healthful, the place a dream, the sea a blessing. I must get out of England. No word to the Hughes, no answer if Edith writes. I cannot see Hilda---it would be insanity. I am happy, full of plans but do need help for the next 2 months. I am fighting now against hard odds & alone.
xxx
Sivvy
Please have a family powow & answer this as soon as possible!
Lots of love.
S.
Be “careful” on telegrams!
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Tuesday 16 October 1962
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Court Green
October 16, 1962
Dear mother,
Mention has been made of my coming home for Christmas---which alas this year is impossible from every angle, psychological, health, babies, money. I gathered from Dot’s letter you might all chip in to do this. Do you suppose instead there is any possibility of your chipping in and sending me Maggie? By next spring I should have my health back, the prospect of visits from friends like the Sillitoes & Marty & Mike, good weather. Could she come now instead of then? I already love her, she would be such fun and love the babies. We could go to Ireland together & get me settled in & she could fly home from Dublin well before Christmas. Do I sound mad? Taking or wanting to take Warren’s new wife? Just for a few weeks! How I need a free sister! We could go on jaunts, eat together, I have all the cleaning done & someone who’ll mind the babies 9 hours a week.
I need someone from home. A defender. I am terrified of what will happen when Ted goes home this fall & they find out I need & expect some financial support. They are inhuman Jewy working-class bastards. There is no hope or help in them. I must have nothing ever to do with them. You see what I am up against from Hilda’s letter! I have a fever now, so I am a bit delirious. I live on sleeping pills, work from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. On the next few months depend my future and my health. I must get to Ireland, away from the Hughes malice. Ted almost killed me the 10 days he was home for not giving him the last installment of my novel grant “for a nanny” which we lived off all year to help his writing. If he had any honor, any soul, he would have told me he was planning to desert us & for God’s sake to take my novel grant & use it for a nanny. I hate & despise him so I can hardly speak.
I dread the nanny who is coming tonight, she sounded such a bitch over the phone, so snotty, wanting a “cook” etc. I simply can’t afford these high fees & a bad lazy nanny. It’s the worst thing for the children, these changes. If only Maggie could come for six weeks, then I could get settled in Ireland & look around for an Irish girl! I would have a blood ally. I fully expect Ted’s family will put me through the gruelling tedium of having to sue for any support at all, & then the courts will only allow a pittance & penalize me for anything I earn! Do see if Maggie & Warr
en could make this great & temporary sacrifice. I am fine in mind & spirit, but wasted & ill in flesh.
I love you all,
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 18 October 1962
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Court Green: Thursday
October 18
Dear mother,
Do ignore my last letters! I honestly must have been delirious to think I could uproot other people’s lives to poultice my own. It was the bloody fever that just finished me. I went to the doctor---no medication, of course---then to bed at 8 p.m. Yesterday I was much better. The Health Visitor came to see Nicholas & gaped at me: My, Mrs. Hughes, you’ve lost weight! I told her I was up at 4 a.m. every morning, writing till the babies woke & she looked concerned. I guess my predicament is an astounding one, a deserted wife knocked out by flu with 2 babies & a full-time job! Anyhow, Winifred, bless her, came round last night with some hopeful news---a young 22-year-old nurse* nearby would “love” to live in till mid-December, visit home one day a week etc. I could propose the Irish trip after she’d settled in, she thought she’d be game. She’d want to be home for Xmas & have to go back to London as staff nurse in January, but it’s this limbo through to Ireland I’ve got to settle. Evidently they’ll invite me round to tea to discuss business---about 5 guineas a week ($15) plus board & room should be okay, Winifred thinks. Half of the fee for the bastardly nanny who arrived last night. She’s an old snobby snoop & I can’t wait to get rid of her. It’s cost $10 just to hire her through this fancy agency which in desperation I’ve had to use---I just don’t have time to shop around. Nancy commiserated with me this morning on her, the young nanny was so nice. I shall work this one so hard for the next few days she’ll be glad to go, & I’ll tell her I’ve a “permanent” nanny who wants to cook, which she doesn’t. Hilda, Ted’s aunt, wrote today about coming down soon, so I shall sweetly & tactfully tell her I’ve been ordered to have a live-in nurse by my doctor (close to true) since I’ve been flattened by influenza. That will put the wind up them, & keep them away, with no hurt feelings. So this is the position. Get Maggie & Warren to promise a visit & trip with me next spring.
The weather has been heavenly. Fog mornings, but clear sunny blue days after. I have a bad cough & shall get my lungs Xrayed as soon as I can, & my teeth seen to. Up at 5 a.m. today. I am writing very good poems.* The BBC has just accepted a very long* one which I’ll go up to record. I have no feeling for Ted, except that he is an absolute bastard. No word from him. He promised to see my lawyer, agree to a yearly fee, provide a witness for the divorce (I think he’ll marry this woman & be her 4th husband) & he can’t even write to say if or whether he’s done it. I am myself, proud, and full of plans. Got a darling letter from Clem today, very fond of him, like a second brother, and his mother. Shall write his father & hope to see him in London,* just for human contact & advice, as I plan to be recording up there around then. As soon as I get this young nanny I shall junk this old hag. Ted’s nasty walkout---he coolly told me it was not living in London he hated, but living with me! too bad he didn’t tell me then!---has given me no time. I need time to breathe, sun, recover my flesh. I have enough ideas & subjects to last me a year or more! Must get a permanent girl or nanny after this young nurse whose father writes children’s books & whose mother* is the secretary of the local Bee-Keepers club. She sounds nice. Everybody here very good to me, as if they knew or guessed my problem.
If Ted doesn’t agree to a decent maintenance of £1,000 a year, which he can earn by snapping his fingers (he’s offered a semester lecture post in America for £2,000, plus a reading tour & has 2 more books* taken etc.) I’ll simply sue him & his family will rue the day of their skinflintery. Even if I only get a court-decreed pittance I shall do it. This bitch of Ted’s is barren from all her abortions & has been offered an ad agency job at £3,000 a year, a fortune here, so he can bloody well afford us. He’ll just have to learn he can’t kill what he’s through with, namely me & the babies. I shall live on here, & eventually in London, happy in my own life & career & babies. As Mrs. Prouty says, he must be kept aware of his responsibilities. I think he half-hopes they can drive me to America, to be supported by my family or something! Well, I love it here, even in the midst of this. I see it is imperative to have a faithful girl or woman living in with me so I can go off for a job or a visit at the drop of a hat & write full-time. Then I can enjoy the babies. It is lucky I don’t have to work out.
I just haven’t had energy to write to Warren again, or Mrs. Prouty or Dot. I hope you share my news with them & say I’ll write as soon as things simmer down. Now the nanny is here, I hope to get into my waiting novel. I shall write Clem, too. It is the voices of friends that I miss, in my little mausoleum in the country. Ted made sure I was utterly cut off from culture, plays, libraries, people, work, resources & my writing stopped & my grant gone before he got “courage” to kick me & the children over with a hate & venom & sadism I shall never forget & shall commemorate in my next novel. As if hating me for making him “nice” & “good”. I am fine. Just need a settled nanny & to rest & write & letters. I love & live for letters.
xxx
Sivvy
TO George MacBeth
Thursday 18 October 1962
TLS, BBC Written Archives Centre
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire
October 18, 1962
George MacBeth, Esq.
The British Broadcasting Corp.
Broadcasting House
London W.1
Dear George,
I am very happy to hear you are taking “Berck-Plage” for “The Poets Voice”. I sort of had you in mind when I wrote it and did hope you might like it. Monday 29th October would be fine for me to record it. Could you make it some time in the morning? My train gets into Waterloo well before 10.30, so I could make it to the BBC by 10.45, I should think.
Let me know if this is okay. Looking forward to seeing you,
Yours sincerely,
Sylvia Plath
P.S. Ted’s story “Snow” appeared in Harper’s Bazaar in America & in the Faber edition of short stories by 6 young writers brought out some time back.*
TO Olive Higgins Prouty
Thursday 18 October 1962
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire, England
Thursday: October 18
Dear Mrs. Prouty,
Thank you a thousand times for your dear, intuitive letter and the wonderfully helpful check. What I have lived through these past three months seems like a dark dream from which I have only the desire to disassociate myself. Ted left us for good a week ago, taking all his things. He has evidently been secretly planning to desert us all along, withdrawing money from our joint account unknown to me, getting a London flat and mailing address, and leaving us with no access to him at all, and no explanation. I guess he thought we could just live here on potatoes and apples. His desertion, without a word, a week after I almost died from influenza, decided me on a divorce. On his return to get his things, after my solicitor’s agents unearthed him from London, he was furious I had not committed suicide---evidently he and his new flame had discussed this, in view of my old nervous breakdown. If I were dead, he said, he could sell the house, which we jointly own, and take Frieda---he never has loved or touched little Nicholas---as this woman has had so many abortions she can’t have children. Needless to say, my six years of absolute love and trust have been killed completely in three months. The poor 3rd husband of this woman, also a poet and a friend and a great admirer of Ted’s, tried to kill himself when he knew what Ted had done, but Ted only laughed.
I suppose it is something to have been the first wife of a genius. Ted is now on the brink of wealth, and wants us to have nothing. His family is behind him---the meanest, most materialistic o
f the English working class. I think I shall probably have to sue him to get any support of the children at all, but that is something I shall face later. Right now my one concern is to write and write and get back my lost weight and my health. My midwife has a temporary nurse up her sleeve who might live in with me for the next 6 weeks. I hope to winter in Ireland in a lovely cottage I found there, with the babies, free from the terrible memories and emptiness of this place, and to return in spring with the daffodils. Then I shall try to get a permanent live-in nanny, or an Irish girl, so I can write and go on day jobs to broadcast on the radio in London. For the time being, without help, I get up at 4 a.m. when my sleeping pill wears off and write till 8 a.m. when the babies wake, my only “free” time, and I am writing the best poems of my life. As soon as I get a live-in nanny I shall finish my novel. My dream is to get back to a London flat by next fall and use this place only as a summer house---the schools in Devon are terrible & the complete lack of cultural life---libraries, museums, theaters, films, intelligent people---is a sort of mental torture to me, a vacuum. It is ironic that Ted should have pretended that this was his dream, to get me to leave the London I loved, and then desert me to live in London himself before a year was out, but I feel I have a deeper sense of human nature now than ever in my life, and that out of grief a great strength and understanding is coming. I should be a compassionate novelist!
I feel happy and resolute now I am decided on a divorce---I have no wish to be the wife, even in name, of a person like Ted, who cannot just leave what he does not want, but wants to kill it. Like a true genius, he will live only for himself and his pleasures, and I wish him joy. I can even laugh when I think of him being the 4th husband of this woman. They are both so handsome & faithless they should be a perfect match. I am eager to begin my new life and impatient with all the legal and business tangles I have to solve. I want only to write, and feel that the children, having only one parent, need me at home most of the time, although Ted’s family would have me put them in an orphanage & work as a waitress rather than get any support from Ted, for in their eyes his fame is all, he can do no wrong.