174. J, 567; 570.
175. SP to AP, 3 Mar. 1956. L1, 1120.
176. CPTH, 1052.
177. TH interview with Drue Heinz, “The Art of Poetry, LXXI,” Paris Review 134 (1995), in The Paris Review Interviews, vol. 3 (London: Picador, 2008), 56–92; 76.
178. HC interview with Elinor Friedman Klein, Dec. 2017, South Salem, N.Y.
179. SP, 25 Feb. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
180. CPTH, 1051–52.
181. J, 213; 210.
182. Huws, Memories of Ted Hughes, 34.
183. J, 213–14.
184. JP, 315.
185. J, 214.
186. Wyatt-Brown, “Neither Priest nor Poet,” 83.
187. Levenson, Not One of the Boys.
188. TH, draft of “St Botolph’s.” Add MS 88918/1/6, BL.
17. PURSUIT
1. SP, 26 Feb. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
2. JP, 321.
3. SP to AP, 3 Mar. 1956. L1, 1120.
4. J, 214.
5. SP to AP, 9 Mar. 1956. L1, 1133–34.
6. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Kay Burton, 1973. 1.14, MSS 1489, Emory.
7. SP to AP, 9 Mar. 1956. L1, 1133–34. The Yeats quote is from his play The Resurrection (1931).
8. J, 225.
9. SP to Richard Sassoon, 6 Mar. 1956. L1, 1129.
10. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Iko and Felicity Meshoulam, 1973. 2.22, MSS 1489, Emory.
11. SP to AP, 6 Mar. 1956. L1, 1124.
12. Ibid.
13. J, 229–30.
14. SP, 9 Mar. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
15. J, 233; 235.
16. SP to AP, 10 May 1956. L1, 1193.
17. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Jane Baltzell Kopp, 1974–75. 2.11, MSS 1489, Emory.
18. SP to AP, 18 Mar. 1956. L1, 1142–43.
19. See SP’s 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
20. SP, 13 Mar. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
21. SP to WP, 18 June 1956. L1, 1208.
22. Jim Downer, “Afterword,” Timmy the Tug, by Jim Downer and Ted Hughes (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2010).
23. Michael Boddy email to EF, 15 Mar. 2001. EFP.
24. SP, 23 Mar. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
25. TH, draft of “18 Rugby Street.” Add MS 88918/1/6, BL.
26. CPTH, 1057–58. In the poem, Hughes misremembered the date as 13 Apr., “your father’s birthday.” This was the day Plath flew back to London from Rome.
27. Michael Boddy email to EF, 15 Mar. 2001. EFP.
28. SP, 23–24 Mar. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
29. J, 552.
30. Jonathan Bate, Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), 109.
31. Michael Boddy email to EF, 15 Mar. 2001. EFP.
32. CPTH, 1058.
33. Emmet Larkin, a graduate student at the London School of Economics. Plath had arranged for him to give her and his friend Janet Drake a ride to Paris.
34. J, 552.
35. J, 570.
36. J, 554.
37. J, 553.
38. Ibid.
39. J, 559.
40. J, 566.
41. J, 569.
42. TH to SP, 31 Mar. 1956. LTH, 37.
43. SP to AP, 5 Apr. 1956. L1, 1158.
44. Richard Sassoon, “The Diagram,” Chicago Review 17.4 (1965): 111.
45. SP to AP, 17 Apr. 1956. L1, 1160.
46. J, 565.
47. Ibid.
48. Plath owned both a Royal (likely left behind in Wellesley) and a Smith-Corona around this time. She sold the Smith-Corona in 1957.
49. SP, 6 Apr. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
50. SP to AP, 17 Apr. 1956. L1, 1160.
51. Gordon Lameyer to SP, 1 May 1957. Lilly.
52. SP, 9 Apr. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly; SP to AP, 17 Apr. 1956. L1, 1160.
53. SP, 10 Apr. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
54. SP to AP, 17 Apr. 1956. L1, 1160.
55. Gordon Lameyer to SP, 1 May 1957. Lilly.
56. SP, 13 Apr. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
57. TH to SP, c. 9 Apr. 1956. Lilly.
58. SP to AP, 17 Apr. 1956. L1, 1161.
59. SP, 13–14 Apr. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
60. SP, 14 Apr. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
61. SP, “Venus in the Seventh.” 140.11, MSS 644, Emory. I found this fragment, misfiled, at Emory in 2007.
62. SP’s ellipses.
63. SP, 15 Apr. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
64. Ibid.
65. SP, 17 Apr. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
66. SP, 18 Apr. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
67. SP to AP, 17 April 1956. L1, 1161.
68. SP to Richard Sassoon, 6 Mar. 1956. L1, 1127.
69. Ibid.
70. SP to Richard Sassoon, 18 Apr. 1956. L1, 1164.
71. SP, 21 Apr. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
72. The first four poems’ variant original titles in Plath’s calendar were, respectively, “Metamorphosis,” “Poem for Pan: Under Crunch of My Man’s Boot,” “Through Fen and Farmland Walking,” and “Mad Queen’s Song.”
73. SP to AP, 29 Apr. 1956. L1, 1181.
74. SP to WP, 23 Apr. 1956. L1, 1173–74.
75. Ibid., L1, 1174–75.
76. SP to AP, 10 May 1956. L1, 1194.
77. SP to WP, 23 Apr. 1956. L1, 1174; SP, 19 Apr. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
78. SP, 1 May 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
79. SP to AP, 29 Apr. 1956. L1, 1179.
80. Ibid., L1, 1181.
81. SP, 23 Apr. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
82. SP to AP, 3 May 1956. L1, 1185.
83. SP to AP, 4 May 1956. L1, 1187.
84. SP to AP, 26 May 1956. L1, 1201.
85. SP to AP, 29 Apr. 1956. L1, 1181.
86. CPTH, 1061. Hughes later told Plath the same story in 1962, which Plath relayed to Dr. Beuscher.
87. SP, 28 Apr. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
88. SP, 29 Apr. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
89. Ibid.
90. SP to AP, 6 May 1956. L1, 1189.
91. SP, 5 May 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly. Dr. Beuscher said she destroyed all of Plath’s pre-1960 letters.
92. SP, 10 May 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
93. Luke Myers to EF, 25 Nov. 2001. EFP.
94. SP to AP, 3 May 1956. L1, 1184.
95. SP to AP, 4 May 1956. L1, 1188.
96. SP to AP, 9 May 1956. L1, 1192.
97. SP to AP, 18 May 1956. L1, 1196.
98. SP to AP, 10 May 1956. L1, 1194.
99. HC interview with Elinor Friedman Klein, Oct. 2015, South Salem, N.Y.
100. Jane Baltzell Kopp remembered a member of the Saint Botolph circle remarking, “I never, never thought that Ted would marry an American girl.” “ ‘Gone, Very Gone Youth’: Sylvia Plath at Cambridge, 1955–1957,” Sylvia Plath: The Woman and the Work, Edward Butscher, ed. (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1977), 76.
101. Daniel Huws, Memories of Ted Hughes, 1952–1963 (Nottingham: Richard Hollis/Five Leaves, 2010), 35.
102. EF interview with David Ross, Oct. 1999. EFP.
103. TH to Olwyn Hughes, summer 1956. 1.4, MSS 980, Emory.
104. SP to AP, 9 May 1956. L1, 1193.
105. SP to AP, 28 May 1956. L1, 1204.
106. SP, 11 May 1956, 1955–56 calendar.
7.6, Lilly.
107. SP to AP, 18 May 1956. L1, 1196.
108. Elizabeth Sigmund, “Sylvia in Devon: 1962,” Sylvia Plath: The Woman and the Work, Edward Butscher, ed. (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1977), 104.
109. SP, 11 May 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
110. SP, 14 May 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
111. Philipa Forder Goold in Memories of Whitstead, 30. Privately printed by Rhoda Dorsey, 2007. 20.29, SPC, Smith.
112. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Jane Baltzell Kopp, 1974–75. 2.11, MSS 1489, Emory.
113. SP, 24 May 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
114. SP, 12 May 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
115. SP to AP, 3 May 1956. L1, 1184.
116. SP to WP, 23 Apr. 1956. L1, 1173.
117. SP to AP, 26 Apr. 1956. L1, 1177.
118. Dorothea Krook, “Recollections of Sylvia Plath,” Sylvia Plath: The Woman and the Work, Edward Butscher, ed. (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1977), 50.
119. Ibid., 55.
120. SP to AP, 29 Apr. 1956. L1, 1179.
121. The dates of composition come from Plath’s 1955–56 calendar.
122. SP to WP, 23 Apr. 1956. L1, 1173.
123. SP to AP, 26 Apr. 1956. L1, 1176. Plath was mentioned in the article “ ‘Varsity’ Goes to Meet B & K and Has Vodka and Caviar,” which appeared on 28 Apr. 1956. She wrote up her own article about the evening, “B. and K. at the Claridge,” which was rejected by The New Yorker but eventually published in the Smith Alumnae Quarterly in Nov. 1956.
124. SP to AP, 26 May 1956. L1, 1198; SP, “Sylvia Plath Tours the Stores and Forecasts May Week Fashions,” Varsity (26 May 1956): 6–7.
125. SP, “An American in Paris,” Varsity (21 Apr. 1956): 6–7.
126. Lucas Myers, Crow Steered Bergs Appeared: A Memoir of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath (Sewanee, Tenn.: Proctor’s Hall Press, 2001), 52.
127. Michael Boddy email to EF, Apr. 2001. EFP.
128. SP to AP, 29 Apr. 1956. L1, 1178.
129. SP to AP, 26 Apr. 1956. L1, 1177.
130. SP, 19 May 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
131. SP to AP, 28 May 1956. L1, 1205–206.
132. SP to AP, 10 May 1956. L1, 1195.
133. SP to AP, 18 May 1956. L1, 1195.
134. SP to AP, 19 Apr. 1956. L1, 1165; SP to AP, 4 May 1956. L1, 1187.
135. SP to WP, 23 Apr. 1956. L1, 1175.
136. SP to AP, 26 Apr. 1956. L1, 1176.
137. SP to AP, 23 Apr. 1956. L1, 1171–72.
138. OHP to SP, 3 June 1956. Lilly.
139. SP to Gordon Lameyer, 12 Dec. 1955. L1, 1043.
140. SP to AP, 19 Apr. 1956. L1, 1165–66.
141. Middlebrook, Her Husband, 42.
142. Claire Tomalin, “Everything but the Truth,” Independent (8 Oct. 1994).
143. D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love (1920; New York: Bantam, 1996), 164. Plath even felt that Lawrence had intuited her feelings for suicide in Sons and Lovers. In her edition of the novel, now held at Smith, she wrote “cf. July 1953” next to a passage about Paul Morel’s depression.
144. J, 105–107. Plath was clearly moved by the scene in Women in Love where Birkin tells Ursula that love is “not meeting and mingling” but “an equilibrium, a pure balance of two single beings:—as the stars balance each other” (160); and, later, “He wanted a further conjunction, where man had being and woman had being, two pure beings, each constituting the freedom of the other, balancing each other like two poles of one force, like two angels, or two demons” (219).
145. SP to AP, 19 Apr. 1956. L1, 1166.
146. SP to AP, 26 May 1956. L1, 1201.
147. SP to AP, 19 Apr. 1956. L1, 1166.
148. Tomalin, “Everything but the Truth.”
149. Jane Anderson, deposition (1987 Bell Jar trial). Jane Anderson v. AVCO Embassy Pictures Corp. et al., in the United States District Court, District of Massachusetts, Civil Action no. 82-0752-K. Jane V. Anderson Papers, Series IV, Smith.
150. J, 567.
151. SP to WP, 18 June 1956. L1, 1208.
152. Elaine Feinstein, Ted Hughes: The Life of a Poet (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001), 60.
153. SP, 13 June 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
154. HC interview with Richard Larschan, May 2017, Manhattan. Larschan says Aurelia told him the suit was her own, not her daughter’s.
155. CPTH, 1064.
156. CPTH, 1065.
157. SP to AP, 20 Apr. 1957. L2, 115.
158. See, for example, SP to William and Edith Hughes, 27 Feb. 1957. L2, 77.
159. TH to Gerald and Joan Hughes. 24 Feb. 1957. 1.2, MSS 854, Emory. This sentence does not appear in the published excerpt in LTH.
160. J, 308.
161. TH to Gerald and Joan Hughes, 24 Feb. 1957. LTH, 96.
162. SP, “Suffering Angel,” review of Lord Byron’s Wife, New Statesman (7 Dec. 1962): 828–29.
163. CPTH, 1064.
164. HC interview with Betsy Powley Wallingford, Feb. 2013, Sudbury, Mass.; HC interview with Richard Larschan, Feb. 2019, Manhattan.
165. HC interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, May 2016, Cornwall, UK.
18. LIKE FURY
1. SP to AP, 8 July 1956. L1, 1216.
2. J, 249.
3. SP to AP, 8 July 1956. L1, 1216; J, 252.
4. Ibid., L1, 1216.
5. Plath had hoped to meet up with Ellie Friedman in London before she left, but the reunion did not happen. They had made vague plans to travel together to Spain and Morocco that summer.
6. SP to Marcia Brown Plumer, 15 Dec. 1956. L2, 37.
7. CPTH, 1065–66.
8. SP, 30 June 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
9. Richard Sassoon to SP, c. June 1956. Lilly.
10. See Woody and Wertz files, MSS 1489, Emory.
11. SP to AP, 4 July 1956. L1, 1210–11.
12. SP, 7 July 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
13. SP to AP, 7 July 1956. L1, 1214–15.
14. Ibid., L1, 1212.
15. SP to AP, 14 July 1956. L1, 1221.
16. A fragment of the story survives at Emory.
17. SP to AP, 14 July 1956. L1, 1217.
18. Ibid., L1, 1219.
19. They planned to leave on 29 Sept.
20. SP to AP, 7 July 1956. L1, 1216.
21. SP to AP, 10 Aug. 1956. L1, 1237.
22. J, 242.
23. SP to AP, 25 July 1956. L1, 1229.
24. SP to WP, 14 July 1956. L1, 1225.
25. SP to AP, 14 & 25 July 1956. L1, 1219; 1228.
26. CPTH, 1068.
27. The Spanish writer Federico García Lorca popularized the concept in a series of lectures in the 1930s.
28. SP to AP, 25 July 1956. L1, 1227.
29. J, 248.
30. SP to AP, 20–25 Aug. 1956. L1, 1239.
31. SP to AP, 2 Aug. 1956. L1, 1235.
32. Ibid., L1, 1234.
33. J, 259.
34. SP, 3 & 9 Aug. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
35. SP, 23 July 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
36. J, 250–51.
37. TH to Edith and William Hughes, summer 1956. LTH, 45.
38. TH, draft of “Moonwalk.” Add MS 88918/1/2–8, BL.
39. SP, 27 July & 9 Aug. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
40. SP, 9 Aug. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
41. SP, 31 July 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
42. J, 249.
43. SP to AP, 2 Aug. 1956. L1, 1234.
44. CPTH, 1072–73.
45. SP to AP, 2 Aug. 1956. L1, 1234.
46. SP to AP, 20–25 Aug. 1956. L1, 1240.
47. WP to AP, 26 Aug. 1956. Lilly.
48. SP to AP, 20–25 Aug. 1956. L1, 1240–41.
49. TH to AP, c. late Aug. 1956. Lilly.
50. I am grateful to Nick Wilding for showing me an old advertisement for William Hughes’s Hebden Bridge shop during my June 2017 stay in Mytholmroyd.
51. I am grateful to Steve Ely and Ruth Crossley for pointing out the class ramifications of a move “up” the valley during my summer as a visiting professor at the Ted Hughes Network, University of Huddersfield, 2017.
52. HC interview with Elinor Friedman Klein, Oct. 2015, South Salem, N.Y.
53. Conversation with Stuart Burne, 19 June 2017, Heptonstall, UK.
54. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Elinor Friedman Klein, 1971–72. 2.10, MSS 1489, Emory.
55. SP to AP, 2 Sept. 1956. L1, 1241.
56. She originally titled the poem “November Graveyard, Haworth,” though the striking Heptonstall cemetery in the center of the village was surely an influence.
57. SP to AP, 2 Sept. 1956. L1, 1242.
58. SP to AP, 21 Sept. 1956. L1, 1248.
59. Gerald Hughes, Ted & I: A Brother’s Memoir (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2014), 156–57.
60. SP to AP, 11 Sept. 1956. L1, 1244.
61. Ibid.
62. J, 589.
63. SP to AP, 2 Sept. 1956. L1, 1243.
64. Edward Weeks to SP, 27 Aug. 1956. Lilly.
65. SP, 4–6 Sept. 1956, 1955–56 calendar. 7.6, Lilly.
66. SP, “Afternoon in Hardcastle Crags” (incomplete MS). 139.2, MSS 644, Emory.
67. Plath sent the poem to Peter Davison at The Atlantic on 28 Sept. 1956, along with “Epitaph for Fire and Flower.” It is possible that Plath wrote the poem before September (“Epitaph” was written in Aug. 1956) but probably not before she met Hughes.
68. SP to AP, 24 Feb. 1957. L2, 72.
69. SP to AP, 11 Sept. 1956. L1, 1245.
70. TH, notebook 5. Add MS 88918/1/6, BL.
71. Ibid.
72. Heptonstall locals remembered that Plath and Hughes rented the cottage next door to the Beacon on one of their visits. Conversation with Nick Wilding, June 2017.
73. Michael Parker, interview with Wilfrid Riley, 22 July 1977, Heptonstall. Courtesy of Michael Parker.
74. OHP to SP, 12 Sept. 1956. Lilly.
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