The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2
Page 107
It is now snowing very prettily, crisp & dry, like an engraving out of Dickens.
Lots of love to all,
Sylvia
TO Daniel & Helga Huws
Wednesday 26 December 1962
TLS, Helga and Daniel Huws
23 Fitzroy Road
London N.W.1
Boxing Day
Dear Danny & Helga,
You have no idea how your two good letters cheered me, & how Frieda loves the little toy village you sent---she keeps pointing to the church & then to a church steeple she can see in the distance & saying “Go in there some day soon.” I hope it simply means she may be very spiritually inclined!
By a very wierd combination of luck & hard work I am sitting in an unfurnished flat in Yeats’ house (plaque & all!) in Fitzroy Road around the corner from our old place, the babies playing with snuffly Xmas colds, & a fine white snow falling on the 18th-century-engraving houses opposite. I have a 5 year lease. It happened like a miracle, Danny, shortly after I saw you---I had been looking at fantastically expensive furnished places & in utter despair decided to walk my dear, old haunts round Primrose Hill. A board advertising flats to let in Yeats’ house---which I’d always looked at longingly---was out. I flew in a taxi to the agents & was first to apply for the maisonette on the first & top floor---3 beds, lounge, kit & bath. When I got back to Court Green I told my nurse I’d get a “message” from Yeats, shut my eyes & opened to the quote “Get wine & food to give you strength & courage & I will get the house ready.” And you can imagine how hard it was, with my utter lack of references & a steady job! In the end I had to bluster about being an American & offer the year’s rent in advance, going quietly into debt for that amount on the side. In the next week I hope to paint the rest of the floors upstairs & lure in an au pair so I can write mornings & try to earn some money. It is the luckiest thing that has happened in a bad very bad year. Oddly enough, out of the blue, all sorts of people have decided I need praying for, or that they want to pray for me---from a Roman Catholic priest-poet at Oxford to an Evangelist from Sweet Home, Oregon, who saw a picture of me at 19 in some magazine or other & has since been sending me Guitar records of spirituals! I just accept the prayers with thanks.
I am so relieved to get out of North Tawton I just sit back & breathe heavily---it seemed so impossible for the last half year, left alone there as I was without help with the babies after I almost died of flu this summer. It was only this darling young nurse home on vacation from a London children’s hospital who worked for me about 6 weeks & made me eat etc. who enabled me to come up & scout out a place. I am going to the doctor this week to see if he can help me get off these sleeping pills I’ve been taking every night & am now addicted to. I think I’ll keep on smoking a little while longer, I’m actually alas beginning to like it! You can imagine how the small town gossip went---I actually had to stop going to some shops to escape the leering questions about where my husband was, wasn’t it lonely all alone in such a big house, etc. The fouler gossip was that I wasn’t married anyway as I got mail under my maiden name!
I am so happy to be back among Frieda’s old playmates---most mothers have babies Nick’s age now, as she is slowly coming out of the awful regression she went into after Ted’s desertion---she was always his little pet. I try to take her out to tea with other children almost every afternoon & hope to start her at a little nursery school here next week, if she likes it. She keeps saying in a delighted treble “Look at all these people.” You ask about divorce, Helga---Ted wants one, & since marriage gave him no sense of obligation to the babies it will make no difference what he has. It was inconceivable to me at one point & very hard to come to, as I never believed in it myself, but it is better to be free of him. Your letter moved me very much, Danny---it helped me a lot to hear your feelings of Ted, & I think you are right about him. His guilt alas makes him very hard & cross & hurtful, and you can imagine the public humiliations one has to face, being in the same work & Ted being so famous. But I think he will come round about once a week & take the children to the Zoo. Probably you know the woman he is with is on her third husband & has had so many abortions she can’t have children. She is part of this set of barren women, which includes Dido Merwin, that I am so glad to get rid of. I guess I am just not like that. I had a terrible experience calling Dido Merwin as Frieda’s godmother when I was in London---as Frieda had been diagnosed as a latent schizophrenic as a result of this, & she was the only person I thought could advise me about doctors & a flat. She knew I was calling on her as a godmother, but because she was so glad she at last had Ted living at her place* she made it clear she was home but refused to speak to me.
Both Ted & I have agreed to write off the Merwins as Frieda’s godparents & wonder if you would be her godparents instead. I take this as a very serious thing, & it almost killed me for Frieda’s sake, to think of the heartlessness & hypocrisy behind Mrs. Merwin’s refusal to answer when she knew I was worried about the babies going into hospital. But then, she has always disliked children & devoted her life to herself. I find now that this breakup has occurred I am free of many such people who courted Ted for his fame, & of course it has hurt me deeply that he has more or less sold out to them. But now I am here the desperate mother in me, which is so saddened at losing the children a father, can see Ted as a great poet & wish him his own brand of happiness & that he write well. It is also hard to have undergone, all summer, his new practise in lying which this woman has taught him, as she has enjoyed lying & being faithless to all 3 of her husbands & came into my house & wanted all I had & took it. Ted has always seemed so straight to me, brutal if he wanted, but not lying, so that I can hardly believe he thinks it sophisticated & grownup & crafty. But I guess I’m just simple-minded.
It is heaven to have people to talk to after 6 months of solitary confinement in the country. I hope to rent this place furnished by the week to wealthy Americans or something in the summer & return summers to Court Green. Please say you will all come for a visit with me next summer! I miss you very much & would give anything if you would drop by if & whenever you are in London. I have, as you may imagine, more or less ignored Christmas this year, but send my dearest love to you both & the beautiful babies! Do write.
Love,
Sylvia
TO Ruth Fainlight
Wednesday 26 December 1962
TLS (aerogramme), Ruth Fainlight
23 Fitzroy Road
London N.W.1
Boxing Day
Dear Ruth,
Your good letter about your flat was waiting for me the night I got back to Court Green after signing the 5 year lease for Yeats’ place in the brain-stopping smog, & I am sure it helped me get it. I am now sitting in the first floor lounge with the snuffly babies, who both have Xmas colds, watching a beautiful frosty snow fall on the 18th-century-engraving housefronts opposite & thanking God & Yeats & whoever that I got out of the Devon pig fields before the real cold set in. How I look forward to your return at the end of February! It is my plan to return to Court Green in spring, Aprilish, for the summer & try to let out this place by the week furnished at fabulous rents to American tourists to recoup on the debt I got in by offering sanguinely to pay the year’s rent in advance---my last card in overcoming objections to my lack of references, steady job etc. Please plan on coming back to Devon with me! It would be such fun to open the place up in spring there with you, and after my experience alone there this fall & winter, with all the villagers coyly asking where my husband was & wasn’t it lonely living all alone in such a big house, etc., with Dartmoor convicts escaping* etc., I want lots of company & lots of babies around when I get back! I adore Fitzroy Road & would like by hook or crook to write such an obscene or merely good novel that I made some money & could tempt the widow who owns this very house. The Yeats “aura” is very calm & benevolent---everybody looked mesmerized & delivered all my straw mats & Hong Kong furniture before Xmas. I am slowly getting the floors painted, & hope to ma
ke one final push & get the upstairs ones & 3 whitewood bureaus done before New Years. Then five guaranteed years of no more floor painting! I’ve done it every year it seems, usually 7 months pregnant, now not so, & what a relief it will be to stop. I have been out round Regents Park & Primrose Hill each day with the babies, drinking in the old scenery which I love so, & taking the babes to tea with the very charming children who live round & are Frieda’s old playmates---Frieda has regressed terribly after Ted’s departure, she was his little pet, & I became very worried, as she had shrieking tantrums and so on & it was difficult not to be furious, as she was obviously trying me, but then she was also so obviously miserable. Now I am going to send her to a little nursery school mornings around the corner, as seeing other children seems to do her a lot of good & bring her out of herself.
I hope to get the au pair’s room ready by the New Year & lure in one then so I can try to finish my 2nd novel. My first comes out next month under a psuedonym & I’ve finished a 2nd book of poems which I’ll slowly sell one by one & then try to get printed. Do hurry back & then maybe I can persuade you to go to some movies & plays with me & to get Nick & David wrestling again. Christmas was a bit of a large gap & I very glad to get rid of it & eager to get an au pair & to work, which does all sorts of salutary things for one!
Love to all & very eager for your return!
Sylvia
1963
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Wednesday 2 January 1963
TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University
23 Fitzroy Road
London N.W.1, England
January 2, 1963
Dear mother,
I am so glad you got the pictures safely. I got a nice letter from Marty & am so glad she & Mike plan to come briefly alone early this spring. For goodness sake do tell people I am separated from Ted &, if you feel like it, divorcing him! It is odd to get cards from people like the Aldriches to us both, there’s no point in you keeping up any pretence. I see they’re expecting a 9th baby! Do congratulate Betty for me & send my love. The babies & I have just got over very nasty Xmas colds & are now fine. Probably you have heard we’ve had fantastic snow here---my first in all my years in England. I heard Devon was completely cut off by 20 foot drifts & they were dropping bread & milk by helicopter!* Well, I just got out in time! The English, being very English, have of course no snow plows, because this only happens once every five years, or ten. So the streets are great mills of sludge which freezes & melts & freezes. One could cheerfully use a dog sled, & I wish I had a sled for Frieda for they are sledding on Primrose Hill, it looks so pretty! I am trying her at the little nursery school around the corner where Catherine Frankfort sends her boys, 3 hours a morning 5 days a week for just over $4. They drink cocoa & play. Some mornings she is more tearful than others, but she does need to be free of mummy for some time, & I need desperately to have time to work---I put Nick down for a nap which he’s ready for by then, having been up & playing & shaking his cot since 6! I have a BBC assignment to do ‘live’ next Thursday night, reviewing a book of American poems on a weekly New Comment program,* so my being back is already getting round. It takes months to get a phone here, but once I get all these things done I’ll be set for 5 years & one can do a lot in that time! Garnett came for a dinner & a lunch & did help paint the border of one floor in the children’s room, which I will make into their playroom when the mother’s help comes---the rug for that has come & it is now very cosy up there. I have to finish the floors in the mother’s help’s room & in the upstairs & downstairs halls, give 3 bureaus 2 coats of paint each, & then I should be able to take a rest---except for sewing some curtains! The car is really snowed up. I don’t want to use it until some of this Arctic is thawed.
The wonderful package from Dot & you came the day after Boxing Day which is the holiday the day after Christmas. Much better then! I was astounded at all the toys & beautiful clothes! Nick loves the baby doll which he seems to think is another of his own sort, & chews the little mouse Warren sent as a cat would! All I had to pay was about 60 cents for the package being forwarded from North Tawton. Margaret’s package arrived before Xmas & the sweater was lovely---is the hood for Frieda or me! It is very large, I think it must be me! I am so glad Grampy could spend Christmas Day with you, and do give my love to Frank & Louise---I believe I wrote them thanking them for their $25 cheque but thank them again for me anyway.
It is such a relief to be back with my wonderful and understanding Doctor Horder. He has given me a very good tonic to help me eat more, is checking my weight---I lost about 20 pounds this summer---& has sent me to have a chest xray after hearing of my 103° fevers,* so I am in the best of hands. He will tend to the business of Nick’s eye as soon has he has got me straightened out. You talk about ‘the problems at BU’. What are they? What is your position there and what will it be in the future? Tell me. I want to know these.things. Also, could you give me some idea when Warren & Maggie are coming over? I probably won’t go to Court Green till about Mayday this year, as I have had such a fore-shortened stay in London & part of it taken up by much manual labor.
Now here is something you could help me on---ask the Nortons etc. I want to send a blurb to the big universities advertising this maisonette to let from roughly May--Sept at about $75 a week and Court Green from Oct---April at about $35 a week (plus some care-taking) for people on sabbatical leave who have families (better no families in London, or only grown children!). I thought this would be a good way of making my rent as having to pay this year in advance has been a large whack. Also, people like places arranged ahead of time, & this is ideal for Parks, the West End, Universities, etc., while Court Green, very convenient to London, would be fine for a professor’s family & he finishing a book. I’ll make up a blurb & send you it, if you think you could post it at BU and maybe Warren at Harvard. I would take lets for years ahead, too, as I plan to stay here for the school year & be in Devon for the summers. See if the Nortons have any advice! Or customers! Do pass on love to Warren & Maggie & Dot & Joe.
xxx
Sivvy
TO Marcia B. Stern
Wednesday 2 January 1963
TLS (aerogramme), Smith College
23 Fitzroy Road
London N.W.1
January 2, 1963
Dearest Marty,
I have been wanting & wanting & wanting to write you & have been so snowed by circumstance, outrageous fortune* & the lot that I haven’t had time to sit much less send one Xmas card this year! What has happened has been that Ted’s suddenly decided he doesn’t want any children, home, responsibility etc. & left me with the lot, after I almost died of flu this summer at Court Green. So I was alone on the small farm, too weak to even hold the baby & utterly incommunicado for some time. Then my wonderful Devon midwife got a lovely 22-year-old children’s nurse who was on holiday to come work as a mother’s help for 7 weeks (no au pair or mother’s help from any agency would come or stay with me, as it’s deep country with no TV etc. etc. & fine in spring & summer but primeval in fall & winter). I flogged myself up to London every other week, doing odd jobs on the BBC etc. & facing all the uproar that occurs when somebody as famous as Ted starts acting scandalous---especially hard as in our work we meet all the same people. At first I had thought of burying myself & the babies in Western Ireland for the winter---where I had discovered a wonderful town on the sea with an Irish poet sailing the old Galway Hookers & cooking on turf, drinking John Jameson whisky & bog water & milking cows, to avoid the inevitable small town gossip in Devon & just get the hell away from it all. But then a small miracle happened---I’d been to Yeats’ tower at Ballylea while in Ireland & thought it the most beautiful & peaceful place in the world; then, walking desolately round my beloved Primrose Hill in London & brooding on the hopelessness of ever finding a flat single-handed, furnished ones being outrageously priced & unfurnished just beyond my strength, I passed Yeats’ house, with its blue plaque “Yeats lived here” which I’d often
passed & longed to live in. A signboard was up---flats to let. I flew to the agent. By a miracle you can only know if you’ve ever tried to flat-hunt in London, I was first to apply, & got rid of all the stickiness about my not having a job, references etc. by saying poo I was an American & would they like the year’s rent in advance, & going quietly into debt on the side. Well, I am here on a 5-year lease & it is utter heaven. I have to be in London to get a live-in mother’s help, which I desperately need, jobs on the BBC & reviewing etc. & good free schooling for the children. I shall try to rent this place furnished to well-heeled Americans for about 5 months in the summer---they go at about $75 a week, and try to rent my gorgeous country house with Bendix et. al. in fall & winter, at much less. Maybe you could give me some advice about this---I thought I’d send blurbs to Smith, Harvard, etc., for it’s ideal for sabbatical year people, finishing books or with families. This flat is on two floors on a road off Primrose Hill, the Zoo & Regents Park (with playgrounds, etc.) with 3 bedrooms, a big handsome lounge, kitchen (where I eat at a counter on bar-stools) & even has a little balcony I hope to sit out on with you in spring! And Its Yeats’ house, which right now means a lot to me. I guess you can imagine what it’s like coping with two infants, free lance jobs, painting & decorating acres of floors & haunting sales for curtaining etc. Toute seule!
I am, thank God, on the panel of my old, free, wonderful doctors, who have been sending me for chest xrays (I lost 20 lbs. this summer, which I can ill afford & had these 103° fevers) & giving me tonics to make me eat, pills to sleep etc. The last 6 months have been a unique hell, but that’s finished & I am fine now. Very glad to be rid of all the bitches & bastards that dog social lions. Oddly enough, all the phonies came loose with Ted & everybody I know now is normal & nice. I think your idea of coming alone with Mike is wonderful---I have been so utterly flattened by having to be a businesswoman, farmer---harvesting 70 apple trees, stringing all my onions, digging & scrubbing all my potatoes, extracting & bottling my honey etc.---mother, writer & all-round desperado that I’d give anything for a brief week in which somebody, some dear friends, went places, ate, talked, with just me. How I understand & sympathize with your visit to your father! I feel like a very efficient tool or weapon, used & in demand from moment to moment by the babes. And Ted’s clearing off after 6 years of utter scrimp with all the money, living on brandy & not a worry in the world, as soon as real fame & money pour in, is enough to cure anyone of self-sacrifice. His manuscripts sell for over $100 for a couple of handwritten pages. Since he’s never paid a bill or figured inc. tax or mowed the lawn etc. he’s no notion of what it takes & if I’m lucky we’ll get about $2,800 a year. I’m in the process of a divorce suit now & will be very glad when that’s finished---I somehow never imagined myself as the sort! I hope to be finished with painting floors & sewing curtains etc. in a week & then lure in one of these foreign students to mind the babes mornings so I can write. Nights are no good, I’m so flat by then that all I can cope with is music & brandy & water! I am thrilled you’ll come in March or early April. Then we can go to plays, on park walks etc. here. I’d love you to see Court Green too, but am not sure when I’ll get back – around Mayday. Do write!