Red Comet

Home > Other > Red Comet > Page 143
Red Comet Page 143

by Heather Clark


  31. Diane Johnson, “Being Green,” Vogue (Sept. 2003): 200; 208; 216.

  32. “Jobiographies,” Mademoiselle (Aug. 1953): 252.

  33. BJ, 100–101.

  34. SP to AP, 3 June 1953. L1, 631.

  35. BJ, 26.

  36. SP to AP, 3 June 1953. L1, 631.

  37. Ibid., L1, 632.

  38. Ibid., L1, 633.

  39. Levy, “Outside the Bell Jar,” 44.

  40. SP, “Mlle’s last word on college, ’53,” Mademoiselle (Aug. 1953): 139.

  41. Margaret Shook, “Sylvia Plath: The Poet and the College,” Smith Alumnae Quarterly 63.3 (April 1972): 4–9; 7.

  42. SP to AP, 13 June 1953. L1, 637.

  43. SP to AP, 8 June 1953. L1, 634.

  44. DN to SP, 4 June 1953. Lilly. DN quotes SP’s words in this letter.

  45. SP to AP, 13 June 1953. L1, 637.

  46. Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 85.

  47. “Mademoiselle’s Editors and Departments and What They Do,” 28 May 1953. 12.7, Lilly.

  48. HC phone interview with Laurie Totten Woolschlager, 27 Oct. 2014.

  49. J, 187.

  50. Cantwell, Manhattan, 14.

  51. SP to AP, 3 June 1953. L1, 632.

  52. HC phone interview with Laurie Totten Woolschlager, 27 Oct. 2014.

  53. HC phone interview with Margaret Affleck Clark, 27 Oct. 2014.

  54. Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 89.

  55. HC phone interview with Laurie Totten Woolschlager, 27 Oct. 2014.

  56. Cyrilly Abels reference for SP, 15 Nov. 1954, Vocational Office Records, Smith College Archives.

  57. Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 88.

  58. Postwar European Photography Exhibit, 1953. Museum of Modern Art Digital Archive.

  59. Photographs of a mannequin standing against a bombed-out background and a black telephone with its long cord hanging recall “The Munich Mannequins,” for example.

  60. Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 108.

  61. SP to WP, 21 June 1953. L1, 643.

  62. Elizabeth Bowen to SP, 9 June 1953. Lilly.

  63. Mademoiselle Memo, Jane Mayberry to All Guest Editors, c. May 1953. 12.7, Lilly.

  64. SP to AP, 13 June 1953. L1, 636; SP to AP, 8 June 1953. L1, 634.

  65. SP to AP, 8 June 1953. L1, 634.

  66. DN to SP, 10 June 1953. Lilly.

  67. SP to AP, 13 June 1953. L1, 636.

  68. Ibid., L1, 635.

  69. Ibid., L1, 636.

  70. Ibid., L1, 635.

  71. SP to AP, 13 June 1953. L1, 635.

  72. BJ, 207.

  73. SP to AP, 13 June 1953. L1, 636.

  74. Ibid., L1, 638.

  75. Ibid., L1, 637.

  76. HC phone interview with Laurie Totten Woolschlager, 27 Oct. 2014.

  77. Ibid.

  78. SP to AP, 13 June 1953. L1, 637.

  79. HC interview with Mel Woody, Sept. 2018, Lyme, Conn.

  80. Ibid.

  81. BJ, 9.

  82. BJ, 17.

  83. HC phone interview with Laurie Totten Woolschlager, 27 Oct. 2014.

  84. BJ, 23.

  85. Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 246.

  86. Ibid., 136.

  87. Levy, “Outside the Bell Jar,” 46.

  88. Ibid., 47.

  89. SP to WP, 21 June 1953. L1, 642.

  90. Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 139.

  91. BJ, 48.

  92. J, 149.

  93. Ibid.

  94. SP to WP, 21 June 1953. L1, 643.

  95. HC phone interview with Laurie Totten Woolschlager, 27 Oct. 2014.

  96. BJ, 78.

  97. BJ, 74.

  98. Andrew Wilson, Mad Girl’s Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted (New York: Scribner, 2013), 207.

  99. SP to WP, 21 June 1953. L1, 642.

  100. BJ, 1.

  101. Robert D. McFadden. “David Greenglass, the Brother Who Doomed Ethel Rosenberg, Dies at 92,” New York Times (14 Oct. 2014).

  102. The Rosenberg Letters: A Complete Edition of the Prison Correspondence of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Michael Meeropol, ed. (New York and London: Garland, 1994), xxxi.

  103. Neva Nelson email to HC, 26 Oct. 2014. Paul Alexander erroneously attributes this story to Janet Wagner Rafferty in his biography of Plath, Rough Magic.

  104. HC phone interview with Laurie Totten Woolschlager, 27 Oct. 2014.

  105. Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 148.

  106. HC interview with Laurie Totten Woolschlager, 27 Oct. 2014.

  107. Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 148.

  108. HC phone interview with Margaret Affleck Clark, 27 Oct. 2014.

  109. J, 541.

  110. BJ, 99.

  111. J, 541–42. SP’s ellipsis.

  112. Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture 1830–1980 (London: Virago, 1987), 218.

  113. SP, 20 June 1953, Jan.–Aug. 1953 calendar. 7.5, Lilly.

  114. Wilson makes this claim in Mad Girl’s Love Song. The reference to the “East side apt.” in Plath’s calendar may refer to a pre-party as presumably one of the men would have driven Plath and Janet to Queens.

  115. SP to WP, 21 June 1953. L1, 642; J, 187.

  116. Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 178.

  117. Wilson, Mad Girl’s Love Song, 209.

  118. Neva Nelson email to HC, 18 Nov. 2014.

  119. Ibid. Neva writes, “And, that Sat. after the St. Regis ball, I had a date with my escort, John Appleton (the textbook publisher), and we scouted out the White Horse Tavern half expecting to see Sylvia there, too. But I learned from her later that she’d spent the night sitting outside his hotel room trying to get to see him. (Whether she really spent the whole night there is probably questionable).”

  120. Voices and Visions, PBS documentary, “Sylvia Plath,” South Carolina Educational Television and New York Center for Visual History Production, 1988.

  121. SP to WP, 21 June 1953. L1, 641–43. SP’s ellipsis.

  122. Neva Nelson email to HC, 9 Nov. 2014.

  123. Carol LeVarn McCabe email to HC, 4 Dec. 2017.

  124. Ibid., 6 Dec. 2017.

  125. Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 200.

  126. Neva Nelson email to HC, 9 Nov. 2014. Ann Burnside Love and Janet Wagner Rafferty also remembered hearing about Plath’s escapade.

  127. Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 200.

  128. Ibid., 192.

  11. THE HANGING MAN

  1. J, 187.

  2. LH, 123.

  3. HM, 33.

  4. Ibid.

  5. J, 544–45.

  6. J, 544.

  7. J, 543.

  8. SP to Director of Graduate Schools, Columbia University, 3 July 1953. L1, 644.

  9. J, 185.

  10. Draft copy, “Letters from Sylvia.” 27.66.1, SPC, Smith.

  11. J, 187.

  12. AP to Marcia Brown, 23 July 1953. 2.90, EBC, Smith.

  13. SP to Gordon Lameyer, 23 July 1953. L1, 646.

  14. DN to SP, 7 July 1953. Lilly.

  15. DN to SP, 8 July 1953. Lilly.

  16. J, 543.

  17. BJ, 122.

  18. LH, 124.

  19. AP, undated handwritten notes on back of letter from Dr. Nancy Andreasen, 30 Aug. 1973. 29.1.2, SPC, Smith.

  20. SP, “James Joyce Notebook.” 10.10, Lilly.

  21. Nora Johnson, Coast to Coast: A Family Romance (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 157. Quoted in Amanda Golden, Annotating Modernism (New York: Routledge, 2020), 35.

  22. BJ, 124.

  23. BJ, 126
.

  24. SP to Gordon Lameyer, 23 July 1953. L1, 646.

  25. DN to SP, c. 21 & 30 July 1953. Lilly.

  26. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (New York: Penguin Classics, 1992), 220.

  27. Ibid., 268; SP, “James Joyce Notebook.” 10.10, Lilly.

  28. Joyce, Portrait, 269.

  29. BJ, 72; 83.

  30. LH, 123.

  31. Andrew Wilson, Mad Girl’s Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted (New York: Scribner, 2013), 211.

  32. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Pat O’Neil Pratson, 1972. 3.12, MSS 1489, Emory.

  33. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Marcia Brown Stern, 1972. 4.16, MSS 1489, Emory.

  34. LH, 123.

  35. J, 187.

  36. Gail Crowther and Peter K. Steinberg, These Ghostly Archives: The Unearthing of Sylvia Plath (Croydon, UK: Fonthill, 2017), 71.

  37. Voices and Visions, PBS documentary, “Sylvia Plath,” South Carolina Educational Television and New York Center for Visual History Production, 1988.

  38. W. H. Mikesell, ed., Modern Abnormal Psychology (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950); Catalog, Sotheby’s Fine Books and Manuscripts Sale 4833Y, 6 Apr. 1982, at York Avenue Galleries.

  39. LH, 124.

  40. Plath’s Jan.–Aug. 1953 calendar reveals that the appointment with Dr. Racioppi was at nine a.m. on 15 July. 7.5, Lilly.

  41. SP, 16 July, Jan.–Aug. 1953 calendar. 7.5, Lilly.

  42. BJ, 161.

  43. SP to Gordon Lameyer, 23 July 1953. L1, 645.

  44. Dr. Ruth Beuscher interview with AP, 15 Sept. 1953. 3.10, MSS 1489, Emory. Dr. Thornton died in Massachusetts in 1976. Dr. Francis de Marneffe, director emeritus of McLean Hospital, has no recollection of Dr. Thornton.

  45. LH, 124.

  46. BJ, 129–31.

  47. Harriet Rosenstein interview with AP, 1970. 3.10, MSS 1489, Emory.

  48. HC interview with Dr. Francis de Marneffe, Dec. 2014, Westwood, Mass.

  49. LH, 124.

  50. Alex Beam, interview with Dr. Ruth Barnhouse (formerly Beuscher), 9 Aug. 1997, Nantucket, Mass. 24.10, SPC, Smith.

  51. Luke Ferreter, “ ‘Just Like the Sort of Drug a Man Would Invent’: The Bell Jar and the Feminist Critique of Women’s Health Care,” Plath Profiles 1 (2008): 136–58. 143.

  52. Ibid., 143.

  53. Ibid., 145.

  54. Golda M. Edinburg, “Home, Hospital, Home Again,” Boston Sunday Globe (17 May 1964), 4.

  55. Ali Haggett, Desperate Housewives: Neuroses and the Domestic Environment, 1945–1970 (London: Routledge, 2012), 115.

  56. HC interview with Dr. Francis de Marneffe, Dec. 2014, Westwood, Mass.

  57. S. B. Sutton, Crossroads in Psychiatry: A History of the McLean Hospital (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press, 1986), 229.

  58. Ibid., 227; HC interview with Dr. Francis de Marneffe, Dec. 2014, Westwood, Mass.

  59. Sutton, Crossroads, 229.

  60. SP, handwritten notes on fictional and real aspects in a later draft of The Bell Jar, and requests for changes, fall 1961 (probably preparation for her response to James Michie’s concerns about libel). SP’s “Venus in the Seventh” on verso. 4.25, SPC, Smith.

  61. BJ, 143.

  62. Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830–1980 (London and New York: Penguin, 1985), 210.

  63. Mary Jane Ward, The Snake Pit (New York: Random House, 1946), 43.

  64. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Margaret Cantor, 1972. 1.16, MSS 1489, Emory.

  65. In her Jan–Aug. 1953 calendar, Plath wrote, “ShockT” on 29 and 31 July. 7.5, Lilly.

  66. Dr. Ruth Beuscher interview with AP, 15 Sept. 1953. 3.10, MSS 1489, Emory.

  67. SP to Eddie Cohen, 28 Dec. 1953. L1, 655.

  68. Ibid., L1, 655–66.

  69. SP, “Progress Report on The Bell Jar,” 1 May 1962. 5.47, SPC, Smith.

  70. OHP to Dr. Thornton, 26 Sept. 1953. Quoted in Paul Alexander, Rough Magic: A Biography of Sylvia Plath (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 130.

  71. Dr. Thornton to OHP, 29 Sept. 1953. Quoted in ibid.

  72. OHP to AP, 24 Sept. 1953. Lilly.

  73. HC interview with Elinor Friedman Klein, Oct. 2015, South Salem, N.Y.

  74. Wilson, Mad Girl’s Love Song, 214–15.

  75. HC phone interview with Peter Aldrich, 4 Nov. 2014.

  76. Ibid.

  77. In The Bell Jar, Dodo Conway is an amalgam of Betty, who had nine children, and Plath’s neighbor Dorinda “Do” Cruikshank. HC interview with Richard Larschan, May 2017, Manhattan.

  78. HC phone interview with Peter Aldrich, 4 Nov. 2014.

  79. SP to Myron Lotz, 18 Aug. 1953. L1, 648. Plath’s ellipsis.

  80. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Marcia Brown Stern, 1972. 4.15, MSS 1489, Emory.

  81. Dr. Ruth Beuscher interview with AP, 15 Sept. 1953. 3.10, MSS 1489, Emory.

  82. Other biographers have mistakenly identified this man as Mel Woody. Mel was in Ohio that summer. Mel Woody email to HC, 19 Sept. 2018.

  83. Gordon Lameyer, Dear Sylvia (unpublished memoir). Lameyer MSS, Lilly.

  84. SP to Eddie Cohen, 28 Dec. 1953. L1, 656.

  85. Dr. Ruth Beuscher interview with AP, 15 Sept. 1953. 3.10, MSS 1489, Emory.

  86. LH, 125.

  87. SP to Eddie Cohen, 28 Dec. 1953. L1, 656.

  88. 24 Aug. 1953, Wellesley police records, procured and shared by Peter Steinberg.

  89. LH, 125.

  90. “Wellesley Woods Searched: Police, Boy Scouts Hunt Missing Smith Student,” Boston Evening Globe (25 Aug. 1953).

  91. “Sleeping Pills Missing with Wellesley Girl,” Boston Herald (26 Aug. 1953).

  92. 25 Aug. 1953, Wellesley police records.

  93. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Pat O’Neil Pratson, 1972. 3.12, MSS 1489, Emory.

  94. “Day-Long Search Fails to Find Smith Student,” Boston Daily Globe (26 Aug. 1953).

  95. “Smith Student Found Alive in Cellar,” Boston Evening Globe (26 Aug. 1953).

  96. HC conversation with Don Colburn, 12 Jan. 2017, Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

  97. HC interview with Louise Giesey White, Aug. 2014, Jamestown, R.I., and HC interview with Betsy Powley Wallingford, Feb. 2013, Sudbury, Mass. The quote comes from Louise, but Betsy also remembered Pat spending her days at the house while Sylvia was missing.

  98. Max D. Gaebler, “Sylvia Plath Remembered,” delivered to the Madison Literary Society on 14 Mar. 1983. 2.22, Houghton Mifflin Collection, Smith.

  99. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Pat O’Neil Pratson, 1972. 3.12, MSS 1489, Emory.

  100. This number is as of Nov. 2019. See Peter K. Steinberg, “They Had to Call and Call: The Search for Sylvia Plath,” Plath Profiles 3 (Summer 2010): 107–32. Also, see Steinberg’s website at www.sylviaplath.info.fsa.html for the most up-to-date list.

  101. This information comes from Warren Plath. See ibid., 108.

  102. “Day-Long Search Fails to Find Smith Student.”

  103. HC interview with Judith Raymo, Apr. 2016, Manhattan.

  104. “Sleeping Pills Missing with Wellesley Girl.”

  105. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Pat O’Neil Pratson, 1972. 3.12, MSS 1489, Emory.

  106. 26 Aug. 1953, Wellesley police records.

  107. HC phone interview with Richard Larschan, 17 Apr. 2017.

  108. HC interview with Elinor Friedman Klein, Oct. 2015, South Salem, N.Y.

  109. LH, 125.

  110. SP to Eddie Cohen, 28 Dec. 1953. L1, 656.

  111. LH, 125–26.

  112. AP to OHP, 29 Aug. 1953. Lilly.

  113. Ibid.<
br />
  114. OHP to SP, 22 Aug. 1953; OHP to AP, 26 Aug. 1953. Lilly.

  115. AP to OHP, 29 Aug. 1953. Lilly.

  116. Ibid.

  117. HC interview with Dr. Francis de Marneffe, Dec. 2014, Westwood, Mass.

  118. Benjamin Wright to AP, 29 Sept. 1953. Lilly.

  119. AP to OHP, 29 Aug. 1953. Lilly.

  120. Ibid.

  121. OHP to AP, 2 Sept. 1953. Lilly.

  122. Ibid.

  123. AP to OHP, 29 Aug. 1953. Lilly.

  124. Elizabeth Drew to SP, c. 28 Aug. 1953. Lilly.

  125. Evelyn Page to SP, 29 (#1) Aug. 1953. Lilly.

  126. Robert Gorham Davis to AP, 27 Aug. 1953. Lilly.

  127. Gordon Lameyer to SP, 27 Aug. 1953. Lilly.

  128. SP to Gordon Lameyer, 31 Aug. 1953. L1, 649–50. The second ellipsis is SP’s.

  129. DN to SP, 2 Sept. 1953. Lilly.

  130. SP to Gordon Lameyer, 7 Sept. 1953. L1, 651. SP’s ellipses.

  131. Gordon Lameyer to SP, 14 Oct. 1953. Lilly.

  132. Gordon Lameyer to SP, 19 Sept. 1953. Lilly.

  133. Dr. Ruth Beuscher interview with AP, 15 Sept. 1953. 3.10, MSS 1489, Emory.

  134. BJ, 209.

  135. OHP to AP, 24 Sept. 1953. Lilly.

  136. OHP to Dr. William Terhune, 22 Oct. 1953. Lilly.

  137. AP to Paul Alexander, n.d. Courtesy of Richard Larschan.

  138. OHP to AP, 2 Sept. 1953. Lilly.

  12. WAKING IN THE BLUE

  1. SP to Eddie Cohen, 28 Dec. 1953. L1, 656–57.

  2. S. B. Sutton, Crossroads in Psychiatry: A History of the McLean Hospital (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press, 1986), 256.

  3. HC interview with Dr. Francis de Marneffe, Dec. 2014, Westwood, Mass.

  4. Alex Beam, Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside American’s Premier Mental Hospital (New York: PublicAffairs Press, 2001), 21.

  5. The original hospital was founded in 1811 and situated on a grand eighteen-acre estate in Charlestown, Massachusetts.

  6. Beam, Gracefully Insane, 49.

  7. HC interview with Terry Bragg, McLean archivist and director of staff and professional affairs, Aug. 2014, McLean Hospital, Belmont, Mass. Bragg spoke extensively about McLean’s history and gave me a tour of the grounds.

  8. Dr. Francis de Marneffe, “McLean Hospital,” American Journal of Psychiatry 154.1 (Jan. 1997): 109.

 

‹ Prev