The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2

by Sylvia Plath

  *Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1869); SP quotes from the preface: ‘. . . culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world . . .’ (viii).

  *British poet Matthew Arnold (1822–88).

  *American poet Robert Frost (1874–1963).

  *Frank Schober (1880–1965); maître d’hôtel at Brookline Country Club; SP’s maternal grandfather.

  *SP uses ‘cot’ here probably to mean a plain, narrow collapsable (movable) bed.

  *Louise Bowman Schober (1920–2002); married SP’s uncle Frank Richard Schober (1919–2009) on 27 June 1942; SP was flower girl at the wedding.

  *Date supplied from internal evidence.

  *Date supplied from internal evidence.

  *Christmas card produced by K. J. Bredon.

  *Ruth Prescott Geissler (1933– ); B.A. 1955, University of Massachusetts at Amherst; SP’s childhood friend from Winthrop, Mass.; married Arthur Geissler, Jr (1932–2013); degree in Business Administration 1954, University of Massachusetts at Amherst; SP was maid of honour at their wedding on 11 June 1955. Ruth and Arthur Geissler had four children: Susan (1956– ); Joan (1957– ); William (1958– ); and David (1960– ).

  *Peter Hubert Davison (1928–2004), American poet, assistant editor at Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1953–5; assistant to the director at Harvard University Press, 1955–6; editor at the Atlantic Monthly Press, 1956–85; dated SP in 1955. Davison married SP’s Smith housemate Jane Truslow in 1959; father of Edward Angus and Lesley Truslow.

  *Date supplied from internal evidence.

  *Christmas card produced by K. J. Bredon.

  *Ann Hopkins; resident of Cambridge, Mass.; summer resident of Martha’s Vineyard; friend of Peter Davison and SP.

  *American intellectual historian Howard Mumford Jones (1892–1980).

  *Elinor Linda Friedman Klein (1934– ); B.A. 1956, Smith College; SP’s friend.

  *Christmas card produced by K. J. Bredon.

  *Paddy Chayefsky, Television Plays (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1955); SP’s copy held by Lilly Library.

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘Two Sisters of Persephone’, ‘Metamorphosis’, ‘Wreath for a Bridal’, ‘Strumpet Song’, ‘Dream with Clam-Diggers’, and ‘Epitaph for Fire and Flower’, Poetry 89 (January 1957), 231–7.

  *Early education specialist Marcia Brown Stern (1932–2012); B.A. 1954, sociology, Smith College; M.A., early childhood education, Lesley University; SP’s friend and roommate at Haven House during her sophomore year. Only child of Archibald L. and Carol Taylor Brown. Marcia Brown married Davenport Plumer III in 1954 (divorced 1969) and later married Ernest Stern in 1971. Corresponded with SP, 1951–63.

  *On Gaberbocchus Christmas card designed by Franciszka Themerson.

  *The article and drawings are no longer with the letter.

  *Gordon Ames Lameyer (1930–91); B.A. 1953, Amherst College; dated SP 1953–5; travelled with SP in Europe, April 1956. Gordon Lameyer was encouraged to date SP by his mother Helen Ames Lameyer (1894–1980); B.A. 1918, Smith College. Lameyer’s father, Paul Lameyer (1885–1960), was an artist; during World War II he was interned by the FBI at a camp for German-born US citizens.

  *Davenport Plumer III (‘Mike’; 1932– ); B.A. 1955, Dartmouth College; married SP’s friend Marcia Brown on 15 June 1954 in Dartmouth, New Hampshire; SP served as bridesmaid; divorced 1969.

  *Carol Pierson Ryser (1932–2012); B.A. 1954, sociology, Smith College; SP’s friend and housemate at Haven House.

  *Aurelia Greenwood Schober (1887–1956); SP’s maternal grandmother.

  *Robert Gorham Davis (1908–98); English professor, Smith College, 1943–58. Davis taught studies in style and form (English 247), a creative writing course completed by SP, 1952–3. SP also served on Honor Board with Davis, 1952–3. Married to the writer Hope Hale Davis (1903–2004).

  *Date supplied from postmark.

  *Cf. SP’s poem ‘To A Refractory Santa Claus’, which features similar imagery: ‘Where teeth / Don’t chatter, where breath / Never puts on the white disguise / Of freezer air.’

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘Pursuit’, Atlantic Monthly, January 1957, 65.

  *On Gaberbocchus Christmas card designed by Franciszka Themerson.

  *The photographs are no longer with the letter.

  *Lettice Ramsey (1898–1985). SP and TH had at least thirteen photographs taken by the firm Ramsey & Muspratt. Ramsey maintained her studio in Cambridge; Helen Muspratt (1905–2001) was based in Oxford.

  *SP and TH’s Oxford Shorter Dictionary (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1955), appeared at auction via Bonhams on 21 March 2018.

  *Unitarian Universalist minister William Brooks Rice (1905–70) and his wife Elizabeth Lindsey Rice.

  *Margaret Wendy (Campbell) Christie (1921–2009); friend of Dorothea Krook and SP from Cambridge. Christie lived at 8 Harvey Street, Cambridge.

  *Sarah Christie Bellwood and Jonathan Christie.

  *Stuart Murray Heys Christie (1917–54); married on 31 July 1943 in Johannesburg, South Africa.

  *‘Warren J. Plath, Harvard Senior, A Phi Beta Kappa’, The Townsman (29 November 1956): 3.

  *Myrtle and Lester Spaulding; proprietors of Hidden Acres, a cottage colony on McKoy Road in Eastham, Mass. SP and TH stayed in one of the Spauldings’ cabins during the summer of 1957.

  *Susan Weller Burch (1933–90); B.A. 1956, economics, Smith College; B.A. 1958, philosophy, politics, and economics, Somerville College, Oxford; SP’s housemate at Lawrence House.

  *The Elizabeth Mason Infirmary, 69 Paradise Road, Northampton, Mass.

  *W. F. (Whitney French) Bolton (1930– ); B.A. 1951, Bard College; Ph.D. 1954, Princeton University. Bolton and Weller married on 18 August 1957.

  *Bolton’s biological mother was Frances Schiff Bolton.

  *Whitney Bolton (1900–69).

  *American actress Nancy Coleman (1912–2000).

  *Ira O. Scott, Jr (1918–2002), American; instructor at Harvard University, 1953–5; dated SP, summer 1954.

  *S. S. Pierce was a grocery store in Boston and Brookline, Mass.

  *Possibly Helen M. Corcoran, whose address appears in SP’s 1955 calendar. Corcoran lived at 52 Weld Hill Street, in the Forest Hills district of Boston.

  *The Jackson College for Women was established in 1910 and affiliated with Tufts University; it integrated with the College of Arts and Sciences at Tufts in 1980.

  *Nathaniel D. LaMar, Jr (1933– ), American; A.B. 1955, Harvard College; research student on a Henry Fellowship at Pembroke College, Cambridge, 1955–6; dated SP, 1955–6.

  *Nathaniel LaMar, ‘Miss Carlo’, Atlantic Monthly, January 1957, 61–4.

  *There are no publications of TH’s poems in Nimbus listed in his bibliography. No Hughes poems were found in the issues consulted by the editors.

  *According to SP’s calendar, on 9 January she memorised ‘The Equilibrists’ by John Crowe Ransom.

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘The Laundromat Affair’; an incomplete copy held by Emory University.

  *Nancy Hunter Steiner (1933–2006); B.A. 1955, history, Smith College; SP’s friend and roommate at Lawrence House, 1954–5.

  *Higginson Professor Emeritus of English literature at Harvard University Herschel Clay Baker (1914–90).

  *Probably Sylvia Plath, ‘The Snowman on the Moor’ and ‘Sow’.

  *A. Kingsley Porter University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University Walter Jackson Bate (1918–99).

  *Alfred Kazin (1915–98); William Allan Neilson Research Professor, Smith College, 1954–5. Kazin taught short story writing (English 347) and the twentieth-century novel (English 417), completed by SP 1954–5.

  *Now Buckingham, Browne & Nichols, a day school in Cambridge, Mass.

  *The Plaths had an upright piano, manufactured by Roberts & Co. of Boston, in their living room.

  *American cookbook author Irm
a von Starkloff Rombauer (1877–1962), her The Joy of Cooking (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1953). SP’s copy, with numerous annotations, appeared at auction via Bonhams on 21 March 2018.

  *Clarence E. Lovejoy edited Lovejoy’s Career and Vocational School Guide published by Simon & Schuster.

  *American poet Richard Wilbur (1921–2017).

  *American poet Philip Booth (1925–2007).

  *The poetry editor for The Nation at this time was American poet and critic M. L. (Macha Louis) Rosenthal (1917–96).

  *Dr George Gilmore.

  *Mary Ellen Chase, The Edge of Darkness (New York: W. W. Norton, 1957).

  *Jane Baltzell Kopp (1935– ), born in El Paso, Texas; B.A. 1955, Brown University; B.A. 1957, Newnham College, Cambridge; Ph.D. 1965, University of California Berkeley; associate professor of English, University of New Mexico, 1964–70, 1975–81; married American poet Karl C. Kopp, 1969. Jane Baltzell read English on a Marshall Scholarship at Cambridge and was SP’s housemate at Whitstead, 1955–6. The Kopps were ordained and taught in Advaita Vedanta (an ancient spiritual psychological/philosophical tradition of India).

  *Probably Betty Isobelle Bandeen (1929–2006); M.A. 1950, Ph.D. 1958, Radcliffe College.

  *SP’s manuscript of ‘Two Lovers and Beachcomber’ was submitted as part of her English tripos, II. It was found in early 1969 in the English Faculty Library. A fair copy is held in the Add MS 88589, Alvarez papers, British Library.

  *It is unclear what this word is.

  *Date supplied by ASP.

  *The photographs are no longer with the letter.

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘The Wishing Box’, Granta 61 (26 January 1956): 3–5.

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘Spinster’ and ‘Vanity Fair’, Gemini 1 (Spring 1957): 6–8.

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘All the Dead Dears’, Gemini 2 (Summer 1957): 53–9.

  *Sylvia Plath, review of C. A. Trypanis, Stones of Troy, Gemini 2 (Summer 1957): 98–103. C. A. (Constantine Athanasius) Trypanis (1909–93) was a Greek classicist.

  *Middle English scholar and university professor Elizabeth Zeeman (later Salter, 1925–80). According to SP’s calendar, the Zeemans lived at 7 Grange Road.

  *Mathematician and university professor Sir Erik Christopher Zeeman (1925–2016). The Zeemans divorced c. 1959–60.

  *Middle English scholar and university professor Nicolette Zeeman (1956– ).

  *Mary Bailey Derr Knox (1932– ), B.A. 1954, art, Smith College.

  *George Thornycroft Sassoon (1936–2006), British; B.A. 1958, natural sciences, King’s College, Cambridge; son of Siegfried Sassoon and distant cousin of SP’s former boyfriend Richard Sassoon. In 1957, George Sassoon and his wife Stephanie Munro Sassoon (1938– ) lived above SP and TH at 55 Eltisley Avenue.

  *English poet Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967).

  *Date supplied from postmark.

  *A brand of erasable typing paper.

  *See John Bleibtrau to TH, 22 February 1957; held by Emory University.

  *American novelist and story writer Sarah-Elizabeth Rodger Moore (1909–85); B.A. 1931, Barnard College. Married Clement Sulivane Henry, Jr, 6 April 1933; divorced 1942. Married chemistry researcher Leonard Patrick Moore (1908–83) on 5 May 1945.

  *English writer D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930).

  *Myrtle Spaulding.

  *American poet and translator John Ciardi (1916–86). Ciardi published a number of articles in the Saturday Review including ‘What Every Writer Must Learn’ (15 December 1956): 7–8, 37–9; ‘Verse to Remember’ (22 December 1956): 15; ‘A Close Look at the Unicorn’ (12 January 1957): 54–7; ‘The Reviewer’s Duty to Damn: A Letter to an Avalanche’ (16 February 1957): 24–5.

  *English poet and editor Rudolf John Frederick Lehmann (1907–87).

  *Notes on SP’s letter in unknown hands comment on ‘Spinster’ and ‘Black Rook in Rainy Weather’ only.

  *Date supplied from internal evidence.

  *SP and TH met on 25 February 1956 at a launch party for a journal called Saint Botolph’s Review at Falcon Yard, Cambridge.

  *Marianne Moore, Collected Poems (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1953); SP’s signed and inscribed copy held by Smith College.

  *TH’s uncle Walter Farrar (1893–1976); married to Alice Horfsall Thomas Farrar (1896–1968). Their children were Barbara Farrar (1928–91), Edwin T. Farrar (1931–52), and James M. Farrar (1932–43).

  *TH’s cousin Victoria Farrar Watling (1938– ).

  *TH’s aunt Hilda Annie Farrar (1908–2003); sister of TH’s mother Edith Hughes.

  *Gerald Hughes (1920–2016), TH’s brother, married to Joan (Whelan), 1950; father of Ashley (1954– ) and Brendon (1956– ).

  *The American Magazine was a monthly magazine that published until August 1956.

  *Collier’s was a weekly magazine that published until 4 January 1957.

  *Woman’s Home Companion was a monthly magazine that published until January 1957.

  *Sarah-Elizabeth Rodger Moore published nearly two dozen stories in The American.

  *Clement Moore Henry (1937– ); Warren Plath’s roommate at Phillips Exeter Academy; A.B. 1957, Ph.D. 1963, Harvard University; M.B.A. 1981, University of Michigan.

  *Michael Frayn (1933– ), British playwright; B.A. 1957, modern languages (French and Russian) and moral sciences, Emmanuel College, Cambridge; guest editor of Granta, Summer 1957.

  *See Daniel Curley to TH, 2 March 1957; held by Emory University. Ted Hughes, ‘The Little Boys and the Seasons’ and ‘Billet-Doux’, Accent 17 (Spring 1957): 82–3.

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘Black Rook in Rainy Weather’, The Antioch Review 17 (June 1957): 232–3.

  *Stephen Spender, ‘Oxford and Cambridge Poetry’, Gemini 1 (Spring 1957): 3–5.

  *Possibly Nicholas Monck (1935–2013), guest editor of the 18 May 1957 issue of Granta.

  *Ted Hughes, ‘Famous Poet’, ‘Wind’, and ‘Macaw and Little Miss’, Gemini 2 (Summer 1957): 3–4, 15.

  *Sylvia Plath, ‘Mad Girl’s Love Song’ and ‘Soliloquy of the Solipsist’, Granta 61 (4 May 1957): 19; Ted Hughes, ‘Bartholomew Pygge Esq.’, Granta 61 (4 May 1957): 23–5.

  *See J. Lebowitz to SP, 21 February 1957; see SP’s publications scrapbook held by Lilly Library.

  *The Garden House Hotel was at Little Saint Mary’s Lane, Cambridge.

  *Elvis Lucas Myers (1930– ), American; B.A. 1953, University of the South; B.A. 1956, archaeology and anthropology, Downing College, Cambridge; friend of TH and contributor to Saint Botolph’s Review.

  *SP’s letter is at the end of a letter begun by TH, which has not been transcribed.

  *Probably a reference to the Statue of Liberty in New York and a plaque inscription which concludes ‘I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’ The inscription is commemorated in the poem ‘New Colossus’ by Emma Lazarus.