by Sylvia Plath
Fondest regards to you both.
Sylvia
TO Michael Carey*
Tuesday 23 October 1962
TLS, Assumption College
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire
October 23, 1962
Dear Reverend Carey,
Please do forgive me for not answering your letter sooner, but I have been laid low by influenza on my small farm with two very small children, so my correspondence has suffered as a result.
I should be very happy to have a look at your poems. The one thing I can’t promise is to tell you whether or not to go on writing! If you enjoy it, do it, and fine! “Success” or publishing should be no guide as to whether you should write or not, your own feelings must tell you that. I shall certainly tell you frankly what I think is good and less good in your work. But do go on drinking with the gods and goddesses at Pieria in any case!
And if you ever care for lesser fare, in the form of a cup of tea, while in England, do feel welcome at the above address (half an hour from Exeter by train) until December at least, after which date I shall be trying to finish a novel in the wilds of Western Ireland.
Yours sincerely,
Sylvia Plath
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 25 October 1962
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Thursday: October 25
Dear mother,
Thank you for your last letter. This time I shall accept the much-traveled $50 as a birthday present! I shall buy a dress, have my “fringe” cut & get a copper hair thong instead of my elastic!* I shall try & do this in London next week, so you can imagine me having fun. I have a lovely 2 days planned---recording at the BBC in the morning Monday, an afternoon reading all my new poems to the famous critic & Observer (big Sunday paper) poetry editor,* probably an evening party at a Literary Society to celebrate an anthology I’m in* & of which Ted was one of the 3 editors. I have to get used to seeing him---and whoever is with him---at literary affairs, so may as well start now. The next morning, a meeting about the Royal Court Theatre American Poetry Night next summer, then lunch & a recording* for the Harvard Poetry Library, then home. Susan O’Neill-Roe will be staying over those nights, the children love her. Since she has come, my life has been a joy.
For goodness sake, stop being so frightened of everything, Mother! Almost every other word in your letter is “frightened”! One thing I want my children to have is a bold sense of adventure, not the fear of trying something new. I have a beautifully furnished, cosy cottage in Ireland, near the sea, but very secluded, & the woman is a friend of the poet we visited this summer. Too, I have a young couple with 2 children within driving distance, he a painter & she a lovely American. So I shall be as well off as here. The winter couldn’t be any worse than here, & if I chained myself to my Bendix I would never see the world. So do forget all your nervous worries. I hope to get an Irish girl to help me days over there, and, if I like one, to take her back with me. Susan will make the trip over with me, so that will be fun. So do stop dreading everything. I am having a wonderful time. You better get some sleeping pills if you’re up at 2 a.m. Now Susan comes, I get up at 7. I eat an egg for breakfast every day, or bacon & bread, a big hot meal at lunch, and nourishing soup & sandwich at night. Probably a lot more than you do!
My health, with this young girl here, is rapidly returning. I have no cough at all, and no fever. I hope, when I am in London next fall, to get a German “au pair” girl from an agency recommended by that sweet Catherine Frankfort---do you remember her? I had a letter from her today, telling me about her German au pair girls, and she asked to be remembered to you, she says she remembers you so vividly. I look very forward to trying, through various friends, to get a London furnished flat next fall & taking up old friends & making new. I could get all sorts of free lance jobs if I lived in London during the school year & vacationed here in summer. I have quite a reputation over here, my whole professional life is here. The nice local woman I had in 9 hours a week before Susan, comes now on Susan’s day off---very convenient.* On my birthday, if it’s nice, I’ll be at my horseback riding lesson---I’m “rising to the trot” very well now, tell Dotty & Nancy, they’ll know what I mean! My riding mistress thinks I’m very good.
Forget about the novel & tell no-one of it. It’s a pot-boiler & just practice.
I am immensely moved by Warren & Maggie being willing to uproot themselves to help, and so glad this won’t in any way be necessary! They are just darling, & I hope they’ll come for a holiday next spring. Do let me know as soon as possible when & how long I can plan on it!
Now stop trying to get me to write about “decent courageous people”---read the Ladies Home Journal for those! It’s too bad my poems frighten you---but you’ve always been afraid of reading or seeing the world’s hardest things---like Hiroshima, the Inquisition or Belsen. I believe in going through & facing the worst, not hiding from it. That is why I am going to London this week, partly, to face all the people we know & tell them happily & squarely I am divorcing Ted, so they won’t picture me as a poor, deceived country wife. I am not going to steer clear of these professional acquaintances just because they know I am deserted, or because I may meet Ted with someone else. I am now so glad to get rid of him I shall just laugh.
Mr. Moore wired that he is leaving London before I come, but my life is working out so well, & my solicitor is helpful, so I really don’t need him now. I look forward to the directions of the Taroc pack. Frieda wore the new little plaid skirt today with a red sweater & red tights---she looked adorable! She loves her crayon book & scribbles in it happily. “Grammy send crayons,” she says.
Now don’t you all feel helpless any more. I am helped very much by letters, the birthday checks. If Ted gives me £1,000 I shall manage very well, with just an “au pair”, the car & his insurance to pay. And my holidays. The insurance, if I pay, will come to me at the end, like a pension, so I think it’s wise, if high. About 25 thousand $ I think at the end of 30 years counting the interest! & 15 thousand $ if Ted dies before this.
Love to all,
Sivvy
TO Clarissa Roche
Thursday 25 October 1962
TLS, Smith College
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire
October 25, 1962
Dearest Clarissa,
Your sweet letter arrived today, & this is just a note to say things are calming down here, with a temporary darling children’s nurse coming in days to help with the babes, & life has been heaven since she started coming. She’ll be with me through my trip to Western Ireland in early December, where I am wintering with the children. She is going on holiday from November 15-20, so could you & Paul come for a couple of days in about then? Looking forward to your company is a great treat. I am in fine spirits, if understandably furious to be left in the lurch with the little babes just after I almost died of flu. I think you’re quite right about ego, Clarissa. Ever since I wrote my novel for example (which Ted never read) Ted has been running down the novel as a form---something “he would never bother to write”. It seems so stupid to me, because he is undeniably a poetic genius. I am delighted to hear about Paul’s novel!* Furious criticism is just the thing to make it sell. Please bring a copy! And of the poems!* And any Sappho* you’ve got in trans. I must read her---a fellow lady poet! You are an angel, Clarissa, just write & say when you can come! We’re (North Tawton Station*) 4 hours from Waterloo & I’ll meet you in the car at our station.
Love to all,
Sylvia
*It’s half an hour beyond Exeter.
TO Olive Higgins Prouty
Thursday 25 October 1962
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire, England
October 25, 1962
Dear, dear Mrs. Prouty!
How I appreciate your great
kindness and concern! And your letters, they are best of all. I only hope mother did not worry you too much. I was at what I truly believe was a nadir when I wrote her---with a fever, a terrible agency nanny, an old snoopy grumbly woman who scared the children into screaming fits by her crossness & whom I had to dismiss almost immediately, and then the news that Ted’s family is all behind him & considers me & the babies a bother! Since I wrote, my blessed local midwife has found me the dearest local girl, a 22-year-old children’s nurse, who is coming in from 8:30 a.m to 6 p.m. daytimes and taking complete charge of the children, who love her, and going to Ireland with us before she returns to be staff nurse at a famous children’s hospital in London in mid-December. This is a godsend to me, I have been working hard & happily since her coming, cooking a big, hearty dinner at noon which she & little Frieda & I eat in the playroom . . . you remember, where we ate when you were here.
I do so appreciate your generous offer to take care of her salary, but she is only $15 a week, and I can easily manage that from my latest New Yorker poem. If Ted gives us the £1,000 a year he promised, my own earnings should take good care of the rest. I am going to London for two days this next week to do some work, while this young nurse stays overnight with the babies. I have some very exciting projects, I’ll tell you what they are.
Monday morning I am recording a long poem for the BBC (they will pay my expenses going & coming). That afternoon A. Alvarez, the top poetry critic in England and poetry editor for the Observer (the big Sunday paper here, twin to the Times) will hear me read all my new poems aloud at his home! He is a great opinion-maker & says I am the first woman poet he has taken seriously since Emily Dickinson! That evening I shall go to a literary party to celebrate a poetry anthology I am in, & which Ted was one of the 3 editors of. He will probably be there, and with someone else, but I must get used to meeting him at these literary gatherings & braving it out, or I shall lose all sorts of professional opportunities. Luckily my love for him has been completely killed by his actions this last year, so it will only be hard “socially”, not emotionally. Tuesday I shall meet an official on the British Arts Council who has invited me to organize & produce an American Poetry Night next summer at the Royal Court Theatre, one of the biggest theatres in London. I would have to be “produced” like a professional actress, but think I should take up the challenge. Then I make a recording of poems for the Harvard Lamont Library. Then Home!
I shall let you know as soon as my phone is in! I would love to hear the voices of my dear ones & feel a bit closer a bit faster than on these air letter forms! I see now I need not a nanny---they are very snobby & status-seeking here, always after Majors & Royalty---but a “mother’s help”, a cheerful, intelligent girl who isn’t above doing dishes & who will be like a lively younger sister for me. I am feeling so much better since this young nurse has been coming---eating with appetite, managing all the mountains of business letters, organizing my coming London trip. My cough and fever are quite gone. I feel, with health, I can face anything, and am in excellent spirits. This nurse is so capable & sweet!
My study has become a haven, a real sanctuary for me! I have late poppies, bright red, & blue-purple cornflowers on my desk now, & plan to make curtains of a kind of rich red-purply stained glass pattern to match the rug. Here is my hearth, my life, my real self. I have never been so happy anywhere in my life as writing at my huge desk in the blue dawns, all to myself, secret and quiet.* I know you will understand this---this quiet center at the middle of the storm. If I have this, the rest of my life will settle into pleasant lines. Now I have 40 children’s picture books to review! I shall forge my writing out of these difficult experiences---to have known the bottom, whether mental or emotional is a great trial, but also a great gift. That is why I feel that when writing to you, I am writing to a sort of literary godmother, a person who will really, deeply understand. I know you will feel as proud of my independence as I am. Do keep writing! I love your letters.
With love,
Sylvia
TO Warren & Margaret Plath
Thursday 25 October 1962
TLS (aerogramme, photocopy), Indiana University
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire, England
October 25: Thursday
Dearest Warren & Maggie,
Just a short letter to say how immensely grateful I was to feel you both so thoroughly behind me that you would consider uprooting your lives for our sake! Thank goodness it won’t in any way be advisable or necessary! My main setback was having this awful shock---of Ted’s desertion---come the week after my influenza with no time or energy to do all I had to do to keep going on a day-to-day basis, let alone cope with the endless practical ruins that ass left behind him. Ever since the 22-year-old children’s nurse Susan O’Neill-Roe has been coming days from 8:30 to 6, my life has been heaven. I get up about 7 a.m., have an egg for breakfast, then go up and work, coming down at noon to make a big hot meal for Susan, Frieda & me, which we eat sitting in the cheery playroom. Then work, after an hour’s rest, a cup of tea with Susan, and before I know it the babies are in bed & I feel wonderful. I see now what I need is known as an “au pair” girl over here, they are very cheap---and a London friend of mine recommends Germans as, she says, they are usually plain, fat (thus on a diet!) and studious, thus in a their rooms a lot! I want to apply for one so I can also speak, or practise, German with her. Nannies are out. They are snob-status-seekers of the worst sort here, very expensive, & won’t touch “domestic” work, i.e. dishes etc. My trouble, of course, is living in the country. I’m sure summer in the country might appeal, but young girls want London, education etc. So do I! I would like an educated girl---they charge so little because they want to be “one of the family”, & my life should be exciting enough, if I could get a furnished flat for the school year in London, to keep such a girl happy. So at least I know what I want (I didn’t, before) and at what agency I can get it! I would never hire a girl without a careful extensive interview. This last sight-unseen nanny was the end, my Lord, of almost all of us, including my faithful Nancy Axworthy! And the one before her, good as she was, found the post “unsuitable” because of no cook, butler, TV etc. etc. & went from me to the Astors, so you can imagine what sort of a house she wanted!
This coming two-day London trip has set me up like a tonic. I’ve not had a treat to myself for over a year! As I’ve written mother today, I’m recording for the BBC Monday & Harvard Lamont Library Tuesday, have an interview about this American Poetry Night at a London theatre next summer, which I’m considering organising & presenting---a terrific challenge, I’d have to be “produced” like an actress, but I don’t think I should let such chances slip, & then the critic of the Observer is giving me an afternoon at his home to hear me read all my new poems! He is the opinion-maker in poetry over here, A. Alvarez, & says I’m the first woman poet he’s taken seriously since Emily Dickinson! Needless to say, I’m delighted.
Now can you possibly get mother to stop worrying so much? Her letters are full of worries, & to hear she can’t sleep after 2 a.m. etc. etc. is no help to me, only an additional worry. I do think I have adjusted to very unpleasant circumstances very fast, considering I was ten down with flu, & am now very busy, but fine, knowing just where I want to go. I have a gorgeous plush house hired in Ireland, much cosier, smaller & easier to manage than this, sheltered, with a lovely woman, the owner, in a cottage next door & willing to babysit & help shop etc. She is a long acquaintance of this poet we sailed with. And also a couple with 2 babies within driving distance whom I like very much, the wife an American, the husband a successful painter & friend of Jack Sweeney, who took us out for oysters & Guinness in Dublin. Mother is so anxious about new steps she is always after me to stay put & be safe. It is very important for me to make new discoveries now, & I am very stable & practical & cautious & thoroughly investigated this house & surroundings before hiring it. I need to get away from here for a change, after the he
ll of this summer, and am lucky to have such a delightful place fall into my lap. As I said to mother, winter can’t at the North Pole be worse than here! Do let me know roughly when & for how long you both can come next spring. I’d so love to leave the babies with a girl, if I’ve got one, & go to Austria or somewhere with you. I’ve not had a holiday on my own for two years, & as you may imagine, after these events, the court trial ahead heaven knows when, & Ted able to be sticky or “forget” about money whenever he feels like it, I shall need a holiday on my own, preferably with two lovely people like you! I adore you both, have the gorgeous wedding picture on my desk where I can see it as I work. Do write.
Lots of love,
Sivvy
PS: Hope my letters to you at “Bauks” Street arrived! It sounded like a sort of odd squawky place to live! Is Banks right?*
TO Eric Walter White
Friday 26 October 1962
TLS, University of Texas at Austin
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire
October 26, 1962
Dear Eric,
You and Dodo are perfectly wonderful to take me on Monday night. I am so eager and excited about coming up to my beloved London after my more or less enforced purdah in the West Country, and very much intrigued by your new move.* I love Islington, and I think it must be heaven to live there. I know I would greatly wish to live there.
I am jamming all sorts of literary business into Monday and Tuesday, so should not be bothering you till probably early Monday evening. I will call you Monday afternoon to make sure all is well. I’m hoping to do a BBC recording, a recording for the Harvard Library at Albion House,* and to see Patric Dickinson.
All my best to you and Dodo, and I’ll be ringing you Monday afternoon.
With much gratitude,
Sylvia