The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2
Page 104
What happened was, I went to Yeats’ tower in Ireland in August, near dead from flu & the prospect of bringing the children up alone on next to nothing, & felt there that although I was dead in body, my soul began to wake. It was very weird, feeling this timelessness of the untouched place, its beauty, the immanence of Yeats. Then, in London, utterly desolate with unsuccessful flat-hunting, I felt compelled to walk down Fitzroy Road---remember, where you were considering a house---where I’d always wanted to live. There were builders in Yeats’ house & a sign out Flats to Let. I flew to the agent & by a miracle was first to apply for the unfurnished maisonette. But I am still waiting for my bloody references to be approved---I’m sure they’ll say I don’t have a steady income, being a writer, etc. etc. Anyhow, I came back to Devon & jokingly said to my nurse “I’ll open Yeats’ plays & get a message from him.” I shut my eyes & pointed, then read from “The Unicorn from the Stars”: “Get wine & food to give you strength & courage & I will get the house ready.” I was scared to death, but very excited. I felt oddly in touch with the old boy, who believed in spirits too. If he is really serious, he’ll inspire me to do a novel & sell it to the movies & then I shall buy the bloody house from the owner. I covet it beyond belief, with that blue plaque! O hell, the client won’t like writers. Wish me luck, though. I would have to furnish it with straw mats & pillows & live on squid stew, but I actually cried in London I was so happy to be seeing people, talking, eating out, and went to movie after movie after movie. The country is fine for holidays, but Ted’s getting me here where I can’t get help so I can write & making it so hard for me to get where I can write & be human has been hard to take. If I do a good enough novel can I dedicate it to you & Alan? David too. My life seems to be spent furnishing a new place every year! I pray, if this Yeats flat comes through, to be in by the New Year & return here with the daffodils & clement weather (& go back to it next fall.)
Which brings me to my invitation---you must come down to Devon with David while Alan is in Russia & I wish he could come too. I think I will want to return here then---for my bees & my riding & my flowers. But God knows I am so starved for London I can hardly sit still. I have, alas, no money to move farther, & it is impossible to travel in the car now with Nick able to waltz about, for I can’t drive & tend to both children. I will apply for a mother’s help, foreign, the minute I hit London, so I can write full-time. I hope to furnish an unfurnished flat for the school-year in London, then rent it by the week, furnished, at fabulous prices in spring & summer. If only I could write a selling novel & get capital I’d get a house. In Fitzroy Road. Hoho. Once I get to London, a mother’s help, & day after day to write, my life will be utter heaven.
I miss you & Alan & David very much. Agreeing where to live is a real problem. My being stuck here is a result of following Ted’s cry that London was killing him, and of course I now carry coal & ashbuckets & shovels of muck like a navvy. But I get a terrific pride out of keeping the huge old Rayburn going (my char gave me lessons), it is the heart of the house, dries everything overnight, keeps the water boiling hot. I am learning to rise to the trot & it is heaven riding under the tors of Dartmoor. To keep this as a holiday place & establish myself in London while the children are at school is my dream. I’m hoping to make over the wreck of a room Alan used as study into a bed sitter so I can entertain more in spring & summer. Dartmoor convicts* keep escaping on these black nights & I keep an apple parer ready & the door bolted. Do write again when you get this & let me know your plans. Let’s spend April as neighbors, whether in London or here---it would be fun with you here & wonderful for the babies.
Love to all,
Sylvia
TO Michael Carey
Wednesday 21 November 1962
TLS, Assumption College
I send the book under separate cover.
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire
Wednesday: November 21
Dear Fr. Michael,
Do forgive me for being so long in writing, but I have been juggling two infants, 70 apple trees, syrup-eating bees and all sorts of negotiations which may get me a flat in London for the winter---hopefully the house of W. B. Yeats, plaque and all. Now for being frank. First let me say I love your pseudonym, Michael of the Six Dreams. How many languages do you know? Your epigraphs come from several.
I see two poets in you. The first is what I would call lyrical-traditional, a bit too much given to whimsy and the fey. The second, the much more interesting one, to my mind, is the one who produces meticulously-observed phrases like “wrapped in a mouse-colored twilight”, “geraniums drenched in blood”, “corrugated sands”, “relax their boa’s hold”, “petroleum frenzy”, “black macadam altars” and passages in The Shetlands like
Day and night the ocean speaks
And rage in his breath.
Eternal: the wedlock of wave to seacrag.
These are phrases and lines of the 20th century---they have a power and vitality you must develop. How much poetry do you read, and by read I mean study. Read Thomas Wyatt* for lyrics, but tense & special ones. Read, of course, Gerard Manley Hopkins. I think you have learned much from the Anglo-Saxons, that your May Morning poem has lots of exciting things in it & shows a real development. Beware, for Heaven’s sake, the fey, the pretty, the “cute”---you know what I mean---the “butterscotch curls & marshmallow ears”. This is fun, but only fun. It is “verse”, entertainment. I think you should let the world blow in more roughly. Read Eliot, Pound* (you do dedicate a poem to him), study the assonances & consonances in Emily Dickinson (beloved of me) for a subtlety far beyond exact rhyme. And sweep out the archaicisms---“Tis”, “Opes”, “Alway”. Modern poetry has blown these out. Do read Hopkins. Have you read his notebooks? I believe Penguin has a paper edition.* Rhymes, exact rhymes, and especially feminine rhymes tend to “jingle” too much. Try more free things like Fragment XXXVIII* which I love. Speak straight out. You should give yourself exercises in roughness, not lyrical neatness. Say blue, instead of sapphire, red instead of crimson. Forget witches and elves for a bit.
I am myself, ironically, an atheist. And like a certain sort of atheist, my poems are God-obsessed, priest-obsessed. Full of Marys, Christs and nuns. Theology & philosophy fascinate me, and my next book will have a long bit about a priest in a cassock. Did you ever live in Boston? That is my birth-city. I think I will send you a poem of my own, very rough, but about the Christ-ness in all martyrs, and written by a mother of a son.
Warmest good wishes,
Sylvia Plath
PS: What does Fr. stand for? Frère? Friar? Do say God bless. I need it, God Knows!
Mary’s Song
The Sunday lamb cracks in its fat,
The fat
Sacrifices its opacity---
A window, holy gold.
The fire makes it precious,
The same fire
Melting the tallow heretics,
Ousting the Jews.
Their thick palls float
Over the cicatrix of Poland, burnt-out
Germany.
They do not die.
Grey birds obsess my heart,
Mouth-ash, ash of eye.
They settle. On the high
Precipice
That emptied one man into space
The ovens glowed like heaven, incandescent.
It is a heart,
This holocaust I walk in,
O golden child the world will kill and eat.
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 22 November 1962
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University*
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire, England
Thanksgiving Day
Dear mother,
It is perfect Thanksgiving Weather---how I miss that holiday! I’ll have chicken fricasee today. Susan comes back tonight after a week off, Thank God. It has been absolute hell---my local babysitter out with flu, Nan
cy moving to another house & having hemhorrages, me with a bad cold unimproved by having to lug coal buckets & ash bins. I hope you haven’t written the Hughes. I want no more communication with them whatsoever---I told them you had been ill as a result of this last summer, & were faced with losing your job. I have had a big juicy book from the New Statesman today called “Lord Byron’s Wife” which they want me to do,* along with one of the lot they sent last week & I haven’t a minute to sit down and read. It is enough to drive me up the wall.
I am desperate to get this flat. I called up today & found they were boggling over my “recent” references---only good for the last 18 months. So I gave your name (Professor A. S. Plath) as a guarantor and security. And offered to pay the year’s rent in advance out of sheer impatience. I hope you don’t mind & will put on a good front for the agents if they write you. I have so much against me---being a writer, the ex-wife of a successful writer, being an American, young, etc. etc. This was my one lucky break---finding this flat, & I’ve got to get it. I simply can’t get help here in the country, & the minute they sense they are really needed, like this week, they desert. Besides, they are lazy bastards. I work like a navvy day-in day-out without rest or holiday, & they sit & watch telly. I am dying to be able to work at writing, & now I am just up to my ears with this coming move & haven’t time to write at all. I have written Mrs. Prouty yesterday enclosing a copy of my children’s book review, telling her about the lovely Jaeger clothes I bought with her first cheque, and asking if I may dedicate this second novel I am desperate to finish this winter to her, as she has been such a great help and knows what I am working against.
Now f
I don’t care how much of a poetic genius he is, as a father he is a louse & as a husband a no-good, utterly vain, utterly irresponsible. Granted, he tried for six years & pretty much succeeded in being kind, faithful & loving, but the strain was too much & it didn’t work. He had absolutely no right to have children. All the women who surround him now, including his sister & Dido Merwin, are barren, either because of abortions or choice. This is the “smart” way with them, utter devotion to self. I despise this sort of life & want the children to have nothing to do with it. Ted is now seeing Clem Moore’s ex-wife* among others & evidently she wants to meet me, but that is a pleasure she’ll have to forgo.
It is so frustrating to feel that with time to study & work lovingly at my books I could do something considerable, while now I have my back to the wall & not even time to read a book. So anything I may turn out just now is merely potboiling. Boy, when I get to be 50 & if I’m famous, there will be no tributes to “The loving husband without whose help I would never have succeeded etc. etc.” Everything I have done I have done in spite of Ted. And against the malicious obstacles he has, wittingly or unwittingly, put in the path of my writing.
I’ll send some authorizations to close my accounts at the banks.* Love to Warren & Maggie. How are they? O, I forgot, the absolutely marvelous dress for Frieda came---it will just go with my Jaeger red skirt & black sweater! It is adorable. The kitty balloons lasted 2 days & were marvelous fun, Frieda kicked them all about. She is always picking up something & saying “Grammy sent it.” I am taking the vitamins. Do send your “Gift” cheque as soon as may be. Shouldn’t it be just about $900 ($706.95 plus $193.10).*
Love,
Sivvy
TO Clarissa Roche
c. Wednesday 28 November 1962*
TLS, Smith College
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire
cWednesday
Dearest Clarissa,
It was heavenly having you & the babe to cheer me in the midst of that howling weather. Frieda still says “See little baby on toot toot”. The hedgehog sounds a dear. After rattling my American mother & offering madly to pay a year’s rent in advance, I seem to have the owner’s ‘approval’ & hope to get my solicitor to drum through the bloody contract so I can have a London Christmas. Keep up those pagan prayers!
Lots of love to all,
Sylvia
Will call Paul Wednesday, though that’s the day I probably go home!
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 29 November 1962
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
Court Green
Thursday: November 29
Dear mother,
I was so glad to have your letter saying you got my last letter. I think I will get the flat & hope to move in about December 17. They are at the “draft contract” stage: it is all so slow & Dickensian. The owner’s solicitor sends a draft to my solicitor, who checks with me, then back to the other, then back to mine! They were sticky, the estate agents, about my “recent” references & lack of a steady job. So I offered you as “guarantor” (don’t worry, I shan’t need you!) & stressed your long job with BU. If they write, sign yourself Professor! I also offered to pay a year’s rent in advance. The chance at this place (I’ll take a 5 year lease) is fantastic. It is like a weird dream come true. My dream is to sell a novel to the movies & bribe the owner to sell me the house; I want that house. I am sending back your Lombard Bank book; I shall have no need for it, & no need to use it as security for the flat. You can imagine how silly it is to have something like that around which Ted might see if he comes to visit the children, etc. And for goodness sake don’t say “unless you are safe & reasonably happy, I can’t live anyway”! One’s life should never depend on another’s in that way. Why do you identify so with me? That sort of statement only makes one chary of confiding any difficulties in you whatsoever, as I am sure you will see if you think of it.
My thumb is fine now. I shall have Nick’s eye seen to in London when I am back with my panel of blessed, excellent doctors. I can’t wait. I have been culture-starved so long, utterly alone, that these last weeks are a torture of impatience. Winifred has been wonderful. I had her & Garnett over for a very special dinner last night, Sue here as well.* Everybody had a lovely time---my chicken with orange, honey & wine sauce, rice, corn, fried bananas, apple cake, date-nut bars & coffee. I had Susan’s parents over for dinner Saturday night, & a nice Irishman & his wife & 3 children for tea Sunday.* When I get safely into this flat I shall be the happiest person in the world. I shall apply immediately for a live-in mother’s help & get cracking on my novel---I hope to finish it by the date of that contest you sent information of, even if I don’t win, which I won’t, it will be an incentive. This experience I think will prove all for the best---I have grown up amazingly. Did I say I was taking out the policy on Ted’s life because if I pay, I get about 10 thousand pounds at the end of 30 years if he lives. I’ll need a pension of some sort, & this is the only way I can think of doing it. It is a “with profits” policy. 5 thousand pounds on his death only, but about twice that, with accrued interest if it matures. Winifred advised me to see a local truck man about moving, very nice, & he will take all my stuff up on the Day for under $50! I am only taking the babies’ stuff & will furnish slowly so I can rent it at high rates, furnished, in the summers. Stunned to get a check for about $700 from Aunt Dot today. I will write her. I just burst into tears at her sweet letter, I was so moved, by that & the story of the check. Shall put it to the flat rent. This year is of course the hardest, but once I am in London falls & winters, working, I expect to b
e self-sufficient. Frieda & Nick are crawling happily about the study as I write. They are so cute together.
I was amused to find out both Susan & her mother were going to my hairdresser on Sue’s afternoon off! Well, imitation is sincerest flattery. I am up to London again this week to arrange a stove, straw mats, phone etc. for the flat & see a man for lunch* about a reading at an Arts Centre in Stevenage---the man I am working with for the Royal Court Theatre Night put him onto me. Once I get started, I should be able to get lots of speaking engagements. It will be lovely to have both Susan & Garnett in London & coming to tea! Susan’s boyfriend,* a free-lance journalist, lives right round the corner from me & Garnett’s police beat* is within five minutes! I am so fond of both.
My solicitor is gathering the evidence necessary for a Divorce Petition. I think there should be no trouble, as Ted is very cooperative. I hope to go to a local seamstress in London & get her to take up all my old skirts etc. I have sent Mrs. Prouty a copy of my big children’s book review & asked her to show it you (I am sure you will understand my sending it her first!) I am very smug at a review of the most fascinating book I’ve just done! LORD BYRON’S WIFE! I am very lucky to get it, it costs $6.50, a fortune here, & all the big papers have already given it full-page treatment.* I’ve been asked to do it for the New Statesman by a friend of ours who is literary editor* & who knew I’d love to get my hands on it! Incredibly, the portrait of Augusta, Byron’s sister, is the dead spit of Olwyn! Only she sounds immensely nicer & had lots of children. Shall send this to Mrs. Prouty too. Thought it a good way to please. Have asked if I can dedicate my 2nd novel to her---the one I hope to finish this winter. Hope she agrees. Don’t worry about my paying bills. I pay them immediately, always have.