by Yehuda Koren
Attached to Assia’s 1963 diary is an undated page, written when she settled back in London; unable to sleep, she got up and put Bach’s Musical Offering on the gramophone, placing the needle on the Grand largo of the Trio Sonata. The serene sounds of the flute, cembalo and cello filled the living room. She stood by the window, staring at the flat opposite which was ‘strewn, animated with legitimate domesticity’. A wife was leaning over her husband, her arm over his shoulder, while he was writing in concentration. The scene hit Assia. By now, she must have understood that she had no one to rely on but herself and she vowed to better herself; she strove to become not just the wife of a writer, but a writer herself: ‘I shall will myself to write, to read with more concentration, less lasciviousness. Less promiscuity. I’ll start by willing myself back – to the earliest, darkest, most fearful bedroom in my life.’ It is unclear to what sort of childhood traumas she was referring, since no references of the kind have survived.
Assia found it difficult to face loneliness and the burden of the rent and introduced a lodger into Frieda and Nicholas’s room while she slept in Sylvia’s former bedroom. She tried to make peace with Dr Thomas, the ground-floor neighbour, but he was reluctant; he told Assia that he could not forget Sylvia’s outcries against her as ‘the evil who had come between them’. Assia exonerated herself by blaming Sylvia for giving Ted ‘a very difficult time with her moods, tantrums and sentimentality’. Nevertheless, his sons enjoyed going upstairs, finding Assia ‘a very nice lady’. Gradually Dr Thomas got over his initial dislike and complimented Assia on being ‘charming, warm and outgoing.’ She found a job for his rebellious seventeen-year-old son, but the young man soon left the office – and home – after falling in love with Assia’s tenant, who by pure coincidence was the niece of Thomas’s ex-wife.
At the end of September, Olwyn Hughes left her job in Paris to join Ted at Court Green, aunt Hilda came down to help them get settled and Elizabeth Compton popped in every day. For the past three months, Hughes had avoided writing to Mrs Plath and it was through Dr Horder, Sylvia’s doctor, that Aurelia Plath learned that he had not moved to Yorkshire after all. Dr Horder regarded the stay in Devon favourably, since it should strengthen Ted’s bond with his children, and it also meant that he was no longer ‘living with that lady of his’. Once the lovers were living apart, the hush-up involving Assia was lifted; Winifred Davies, Sylvia’s North Tawton nurse, was quick to inform Mr Plath that ‘the lady-love has gone from the picture’ and Jillian Becker wrote to her: ‘Madame Asya [sic] has the flat, though I could be wrong. I hear that she’s very unhappy, and my uncharitable soul is unable to shed a tear.’ Aurelia Plath was grateful for the information but asked her correspondents to keep their communications a secret from Ted. He demanded that Elizabeth Compton cease writing to his former mother-in-law, but had no control over Dr Horder in London, who wrote to Mrs Plath on 17 October: ‘there is at least a rumour that Ted will remarry.’
The reports were inaccurate; Assia and Ted did not break up but, at the same time, were not planning marriage. They overcame the geographical separation by an intensive exchange of letters and telegrams and frequently phoned each other knowing that there was no one to eavesdrop on them. Ted went to London as often and for as long as he wished, since his children were taken care of. He was concerned that the distance and tensions caused by his family’s objections to her might erode her feelings for him: if they did, he told Assia, they would have no future ‘but stupid friendship’.
When Ted Hughes’s archive at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, was made available to the public in 2000, it was devoid of Assia’s presence in his life: of the numerous letters that they exchanged, of all the notes, drawings and photos, none existed. Hughes admitted that he went over each piece of paper, and sorted them himself before packing and shipping the 86 crates to the United States, exercising self-concealment. In 2003, his widow sold to Emory six thousand volumes from his library and all of a sudden Assia surfaced. About eighty of the books either belonged to Assia, or were presents to Hughes from her.
Among them were five books that Ted and Assia exchanged in the month of October. The first was an English translation of Sergei Eisenstein’s screenplay Ivan the Terrible, which Assia gave Ted on 20 October 1963, and inscribed with encouraging words, ‘You’ll “beat the lot, the lot/the lot!”/d’you hear?/My darling Ted’. On 20 October 1965, she gave him Four Screenplays by Ingmar Bergman, ‘to mark the departure of Opal/and with love and love and love.’ Opal is October’s birthstone, a symbol of trust and confidence.
The following year, Hughes gave Assia the just-published anthology of the London Magazine Poems, 1961–1966, selected by Hugo Williams, which included poems by him and by Plath.
In October 1967, Hughes gave Assia the first bound copy of the American edition of Wodwo, inscribed ‘to sweetest Assiake, from Permanence’. And, in October 1968, Assia gave him The Letters of William Blake. The presentation inscription reads, ‘For you, for you, for you, forever.’
There is no other instance in the entire collection that books were given repeatedly on the same month, year after year – except for May – which was Assia’s birthday, and August, which was Ted’s. The October gift-exchange therefore indicates some kind of intimate anniversary. Were they marking a new phase in their lives, when Ted left Court Green and Sylvia Plath in October 1962?
On 31 October 1963, Assia received a telegram from Madrid: ARRIVE SATURDAY EVENING WILL PHONE DAVID. It was obvious that Wevill regarded the separation as over, and Assia, still loving her husband, had no intention of slamming the door on him. Upon his return David moved in with her, not probing into her affairs and Assia continued her relationship with Hughes, only lowering the profile. It seems that the return of his rival aroused his jealousy and made his heart grow fonder: he told her that he loved her ‘more now than any time yet’. Only too late, he expressed remorse for squandering the opportunity they had while David was away. Wishing to regain control over her life, he asked her to keep a journal and send it to him. In the many poetry readings that he was giving all over the country, he made a point of passing through London and stealing a few hours with Assia. She, however, did not make it easy for him, and tried to stick to her own agenda, making him change his schedule to fit hers.
Sylvia’s suicide had plunged Assia and Ted into a commotion that left little time for intimacy and forced them to skip essential stages in the build-up to their relationship. Reverting to an affair rather than family life, they could pick up where they left off and restore their conjugality. He ached for her in his sleepless nights, and missed their long stimulating conversations. Their love life prospered in letters (‘you onlyest’, he called her). He sometimes made a doodle in the shape of a sun coming out from the letters of her name. But their correspondence was double-edged: mellow and romantic, laced with bickering possessiveness. They scrutinised each other’s words with lynx eyes, reading in between the lines, analysing ever sentence and checking each other’s emotions. Invariably, their misinterpretations ignited a row, and he was quick to appease her. As far as Hughes was concerned, he was striving towards a joint future: working hard to earn money and cutting expenses. He urged Assia to do the same.
From the beginning of December 1963 to late March 1964, Lucas Myers stayed at Court Green. He recalls that Assia never came for a visit and that Ted saw her on his frequent trips to London. Myers joined him once, meeting Assia in The Lamb, a magnificent pub in the heart of Bloomsbury, made famous in the 1920s and 1930s by the Bloomsbury circle. The green-tiled interior of The Lamb had wood-panelled walls, decorated with a display of Hogarth’s prints and sepia photographs of long-forgotten stars of the music hall and theatre. The horseshoe bar still had the original etched ‘snob screens’; those rotating screens that shielded the pillars of Victorian society, when they were drinking in the company of women of dubious reputation.
Once again, Hughes had to rely on his friends’ generosity to have a foothold in London.
David Ross, who lived in Great Ormond Street, just by The Lamb, gave Ted the keys to his flat on the third floor, while he, Ross, stayed with his girlfriend in her first-floor flat. Ross used to go with Assia to the pub, to keep her company until Ted’s arrival. ‘It was always packed full with men, but when I entered with Assia, they all moved aside,’ he recalls. ‘She was stunningly beautiful, and had a strong likeness to Elizabeth Taylor. I felt very masculine in her presence, and it added a few feet to my height. She was great to be with, totally focused on her companion, until the moment that Ted appeared.’ Ross had disliked Plath – he knew her from Cambridge – and thought that Ted was happier and more relaxed in Assia’s company: ‘I don’t think Sylvia ever realised the importance of our gang for Ted, while Assia tried to make friends with us and fit into our group.’ Ben Sonnenberg, Ted’s friend and publisher of the literary journal Grand Street, was impressed by Assia’s ‘feral beauty, feral eyes, feral touch and feral movements. There was a feral purr in her voice and something feral in the arrangement of her hair. What a seductive animal,’ he recalled.
Assia and Ted spent Christmas apart. Her husband’s gift was the newly published Ottoline – the Early Memoirs of Lady Ottoline Morrell. This English socialite was a friend and patron of many artists, including Siegfried Sassoon, Aldous Huxley and D H Lawrence. Married to Liberal MP Philip Morrell, Ottoline was dallying with Bertrand Russell and other men and was portrayed – though grotesquely – in several novels, including Women in Love. Under the circumstances, it seemed a rather odd choice of a gift from a betrayed husband to his wife. Wevill declared his unconditional love against all odds, endorsing the book ‘For Assia … in sickness & in health … /in bed or up, in a dressing gown – Christmas 1963’. Like Assia’s previous husbands, David was still acquiescing in his wife’s affair. ‘She was very frank about this business of loving two men. And as much as it may sound strange, she was loyal to each one of us. We never had an argument of the Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? type.’
While Assia and David were celebrating Christmas in London, Ted had two female guests at Court Green: Susan Alliston who had been an early visitor to 23 Fitzroy Road on Plath’s death, and Tasha Hollis. Hughes had first heard of Susan in the late 1950s, when he and Sylvia were living in the United States. A poem of hers was published in the Nation and he was told that she was a ‘gorgeous English girl with extraordinary hair’. Two or three years later, visiting Faber and Faber, Hughes was sharing the lift with one of the secretaries at the publishing house. They stood in silence and he missed the opportunity to learn that she was Susan Alliston. He remembered her face when he saw her again in The Lamb a year later, after leaving Court Green. By then, she was divorced from American Clem Moore, and was sharing a flat with her friend Tasha, also a fresh divorcee. Rumours travelled as far as Court Green and, from Plath’s letter to her mother on 22 November, it is clear that she knew that Ted was meeting Susan, who expressed a wish to meet her but Sylvia had no intention to comply. Ted and Susan kept in touch after Plath’s death, and Lucas Myers recalls that ‘their relationship was not essentially sexual, but one of intellectual and artistic sympathy and friendship, and Ted thought well of her poetry.’
Apparently, upon returning to London, Alliston bragged about the delightful Christmas she spent with Hughes. Now the rumours hit Assia; she was livid with jealousy, accusing Ted of entertaining the young poetess ‘practically every weekend’. Ted was quick to blame Assia’s women friends for distorting the nature of his acquaintance with Alliston, in order to set him and Assia apart: He vowed to Assia that as far as he was concerned, no other women existed: she was all he had got, all he wanted, and all his thoughts and plans were for her. Denying any improper relationship with Susan, Hughes repented that Christmas invitation. A year earlier, when Sylvia confronted him with details of his affair with Assia, Ted showed no remorse, nor did he promise to put an end to the affair. Now, in order to appease Assia, he assured her that it was the last he had seen of Susan and he would never speak to her again. He begged Assia to trust him, otherwise there was no future for them. His conclusion was rather radical: to get away from England and the Nosy Parkers, and live abroad.
But, in fact, and in spite of his promises to Assia, he did not severe his relationship with Alliston. Two years later she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease and Hughes admitted, ‘our friendship took on new life, under that horrible cloud.’ After her death, he collected Susan’s manuscripts from her flat at 18 Rugby Street, with his sister Olwyn and friend Daniel Weissbort, hoping – in vain – to find a publisher for them. The unpublished poems, with a touchingly intimate introduction by Hughes, entitled ‘a close friendship of six years’, are kept in his archive at Emory University.
The Alliston affair ignited Assia’s wrath, and on 22 January she wrote Hughes a letter, declaring that as much as it was hard on her, she had decided not to see him again:
My future is blanked with you … I want to wind everything up, sell everything I possess, move, start from scratch … I’m convinced you have mayhemed my life. You’ve left me with a rubbishy life, with nothing to salvage. Absolutely nothing. The only revenge I can take on you is to go to bed with any attractive man who asks me. To hurt your sensations out of my body, if not out of my mind or blood.
Just as she was sealing the envelope, she heard the key turning in the front door. She quickly pushed the letter under the sofa but David caught the quickness of her move. There was a short, sad scene and she was furious that with her clumsiness, she caused anguish to her husband.
Later that evening, she re-opened the envelope and added a few more lines: ‘Now I begin to think, superstitiously, that when I’m possessed with you, you magically have dispossessed me, and vice versa. When I feel free of you – then surely, you want me most – if only there was a way of testing it. It’s Thursday, 8.30 p.m., and you are in total possession.’ What began in defiance, ended in total surrender.
Hughes’s letters were usually addressed with terms of endearment such as ‘My sweet Assia, sweetest, sweetnessest, sweetnessest’. He constantly invented pet names for her like ‘my fox’, ‘little pod’, ‘ovenfox’, ‘my lovely owl of halva’, ‘Chocolate Halva’, ‘honey pot’ and the biblical fragrances of myrrh and cassia. While he was very flamboyant in his inscriptions, trying to woo her with his words, Assia was very sombre and straightforward. She addressed him as Ted, Teddy, or ‘most darling Ted’, and simply signed Assia or even AW.
Hughes encouraged Assia to keep herself occupied and resume painting, and send her work to him when she could not write a letter. At Ted’s request, Assia taught him the Hebrew alphabet, and he used to transcribe English phrases in hesitantly drawn Hebrew letters and occasionally flawed grammar, for example ‘to love in you and copulate for ever’. To disguise his Valentine’s Day gift, Hughes suggested that she tell David that it was from her uncle Grisha Gutmann in Australia. When Ted fell ill, Assia sent him a ‘get well’ telegram but he was alarmed and warned her to be discreet next time, since the postmaster in North Tawton and his wife were opening his letters and reading her telegrams.
Lucas Myers remembers that there were times that Ted received communications at what must have been a post office box in the nearby town of Okehampton. Hughes was disturbed that Assia was saving his letters: he argued that he would have written much more openly and affectionately, but had reason to believe that she was showing his letters as well as her diary to her friends, who were meddling in their affairs. He urged her to burn them all. However, Assia kept Ted’s letters. Most of her letters to him, though, have not survived.
He was at his desk twelve to fifteen hours a day, and reported his progress regularly to Assia. On 31 January 1964, he almost finished typing his play in verse Gaudete. The protagonist was Nicholas Lumb, an Anglican clergyman who was abducted to the underworld, the evil spirits replacing him with an exact duplicate, who brought chaos to the parish: fornicating with the married women, making them cheat on their husbands
and eventually causing the death of those who loved him.
He shared with Assia the books he was reading – recommending Bashevis Singer and advising her to give John Cowper Powys’s Wolf Solent a miss. He recounted his dreams: they were walking together in the woods where he used to go shooting and he was selecting baby birch trees and beeches, which were only a few inches high, to plant in the garden. Giant pike continued to pop up in his dreams. Once he dreamt that he was the president of the English Literary Society at some grand university and managed to persuade Kafka to come and read to the students and staff. Kafka arrived and read for two hours. But Hughes woke up feeling inadequate for his presentation of Kafka to the plenum. Another time, waking up from a terrible dream about Assia, he was quick to phone her and breathed a sigh of relief when he heard her voice.
The odd writing jobs that Hughes undertook for the sake of money were distracting him from his true vocation. In mid-February he finished a film treatment of a farce about an American birdwatcher on a Hebridean island – admitting that it was banal. Together with Assia, he was writing another film script, which he referred to as ‘our saga’: it budded over a year earlier, during their Spanish escapade. The first scene takes place in a bar in a small mountain town in Spain. The protagonist is attracted to the local beauty and excited by her attention. She flirts with him for a while but leaves him for another man. The next scene takes place in Venice, when a clowning mob of prostitutes chases the protagonist out of the street. At the Acropolis in Athens, he chances upon an attractive Parisian art student, who sketches the ruins and asks him to pose for her, but ignores his attention. Hughes sent Assia the rough draft, and she developed some of the scenes. He praised her for the originality of her comments and suggested that they use the script as a pretext to travel abroad to the sites described, to check them out.