68. See L2, 357, for a full list of guests who overlapped with Plath and Hughes.
69. SP to AP, 13 Oct. 1959. L2, 365.
70. “May Swenson on S.P.,” 3 Oct. 1987. Included in Peter Davison to Judith Flanders, 9 Nov. 1987. 1.7, Houghton Mifflin Papers, Smith. Plath’s eyes, of course, were brown.
71. HC phone interview with Howard Rogovin, 21 Jan. 2017.
72. Ibid.
73. Howard also painted two portraits of Hughes. He lost track of the portraits when he moved to his aunt’s house after his stay at Yaddo.
74. Jeremy Treglown, “Howard’s Way,” Times Literary Supplement (30 Aug. 2013), 13.
75. HC phone interview with Howard Rogovin, 21 Jan. 2017.
76. J, 506.
77. J, 501.
78. May Swenson was a guest at Yaddo from Nov. 2 to Dec. 3. Plath admired her second book of poetry, A Cage of Spines (1958).
79. J, 516.
80. Ibid. The poet Grace Schulman stayed at Yaddo in 1973 and remembered finding Roethke’s The Waking and Radin’s African Folktales on a bookshelf outside her West House studio. Grace Schulman email to HC, 2 Jan. 2019. See Schulman, “Sylvia Plath and Yaddo,” Ariel Ascending, Paul Alexander, ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1984), 165–77.
81. J, 502.
82. J, 509.
83. J, 517.
84. J, 510–11.
85. J, 509.
86. J, 514.
87. The story survived after Plath’s death—Olwyn remembered reading it along with Plath’s last journal.
88. J, 514.
89. C. G. Jung, The Development of Personality (New York: Pantheon, 1954), 74. Yaddo Library copy.
90. Ibid., 78–79.
91. SP, notes on Carl Jung, c. fall 1959. 19.23, SPC, Smith.
92. J, 514.
93. Jung, Development, 78.
94. In the same dream, she was shaving her legs under the table while a Jewish father told her not to bring her “scimitar to table.” The next night she dreamed, famously, of Marilyn Monroe “as a kind of fairy godmother….I spoke, almost in tears, of how much she and Arthur Miller meant to us.” Monroe gave her a manicure and invited her to visit her at Christmas, “promising a new, flowering life.” J, 513–14.
95. Jung, Development, 173.
96. Ibid., 176.
97. J, 515.
98. J, 514.
99. J, 515.
100. J, 517.
101. J, 518–19.
102. J, 518.
103. “Medallion” would be rejected by Harper’s and The Atlantic Monthly and published in the Critical Quarterly Poetry Supplement in 1960. “The Manor Garden” was published in The Atlantic in Sept. 1960. The New Yorker rejected “Yaddo: The Grand Manor,” which was published in The Christian Science Monitor on 21 Oct. 1959.
104. J, 519.
105. J, 525.
106. J, 461.
107. J, 525.
108. See Helen Vendler, Coming of Age as a Poet: Milton, Keats, Eliot, Plath (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003).
109. J, 520–21.
110. During my 2017 Yaddo residency, I saw that the old greenhouse had been replaced by a modern artist’s studio, though the footprint is the same.
111. J, 520.
112. TH, list of poem subjects, annotated by SP, fall 1959. 149.13, MSS 644, Emory.
113. J, 521.
114. Ibid.
115. Ibid.
116. Sylvia Plath, The Living Poet. BBC Third Programme. Recorded on June 5, 1961; broadcast on July 8, 1961.
117. TH to Olwyn Hughes, n.d., Oct./Nov. 1959. Add MS, 88948/1/1, BL.
118. SP, Collected Poems, Ted Hughes, ed. (London: Faber and Faber, 1981), 289.
119. J, 521.
120. TH, Winter Pollen: Occasional Prose, William Scammell, ed. (New York: Picador, 1995), 184. The Sewanee Review would reject the sequence in May 1960.
121. TH, draft of “Delivering Frieda,” eventually published as “Remission.” Add MS 88918/1/2-8, BL.
122. The London Magazine would eventually publish “The Fifty-Ninth Bear,” which Plath wrote at Yaddo, in Feb. 1961.
123. J, 522.
124. J, 524.
125. TH to William Scammell, 28 Apr. 1998. Add MS 88918/137, BL.
126. J, 525.
127. J, 524.
128. J, 528.
129. The stories were “The Beggar,” “The Fifty-Ninth Bear,” and “The Mummy.”
130. J, 521.
131. J, 529–30.
132. J, 528.
133. CPTH, 1111.
134. J, 530.
23. THE DREAD OF RECOGNITION
1. The ship left New York City on Dec. 9 and arrived in Southampton on Dec. 14.
2. TH to AP, 13 Dec. 1959. Lilly.
3. TH to Stephen and Agatha Fassett, 14 May 1960. 1.1, MS Am 3133, Houghton Library, Harvard.
4. LTH, photo 2b (n.p.).
5. SP to AP, 13 Dec. 1959. L2, 372.
6. TH to AP, 13 Dec. 1959. Lilly.
7. SP to AP, 17 Dec. 1959. L2, 376.
8. Edith Hughes to AP, c. Dec. 1959. Lilly.
9. SP to AP, 17 Dec. 1959. L2, 375–76.
10. Olwyn discusses the bathrobe incident at length in Anne Stevenson’s Bitter Fame. She says Plath had left an old tattered blue bathrobe at the Beacon, whose pattern Edith had used to make an identical one, in mauve, for Olwyn. When Plath returned to the Beacon in December 1959, she began using the mauve bathrobe, which Olwyn found odd. Given its similarity to her old bathrobe, Plath may have assumed it was hers. Edith Hughes soon resolved the situation by making a new bathrobe for Plath.
11. SP to AP, 26 Dec. 1959. L2, 378–79.
12. SP to Joseph and Dorothy Benotti, 27 Dec. 1959. L2, 380.
13. Ibid., L2, 380.
14. SP to AP, 16 Jan. (#2) 1960. L2, 389.
15. TH, 28 Dec. 1959, notebook entry. Add MS 88918/129/2, BL.
16. The pub is still there, just a short walk down the hill from Heptonstall.
17. CPTH, 1111–12.
18. SP to AP, 10 Jan. 1960. L2, 383.
19. SP to AP, 24 Jan. 1960. L2, 396.
20. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 18 Feb. 1960. L2, 421.
21. SP to AP, 16 Jan. (#1) 1960. L2, 385.
22. Daniel Huws, Memories of Ted Hughes 1952–1963 (Nottingham: Richard Hollis/Five Leaves, 2010), 46–47.
23. SP to AP, 10 Jan. 1960. L2, 382; 384.
24. SP to Lynne Lawner, 18 Feb. 1960. L2, 419.
25. TH to AP and WP, 11 Jan. 1960. Lilly.
26. TH to Stephen and Agatha Fassett, 14 May 1960. 1.1, MS AM 3133, Houghton Library, Harvard; SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 18 Feb. 1960. L2, 421.
27. TH to Stephen and Agatha Fassett, 14 May 1960. 1.1, MS Am 3133, Houghton Library, Harvard.
28. SP to AP, 10 Jan. 1960. L2, 383.
29. SP to AP, 16 Jan. (#2) 1960. L2, 388; SP to AP, 10 Jan. 1960. L2, 383.
30. SP to Marcia Brown Plumer, 8 Feb. (#2) 1960. L2, 412.
31. Plath’s copy is at SPC, Smith. Grantly Dick-Read, Childbirth Without Fear: The Principles and Practice of Natural Childbirth. (London: Heinemann Medical Books Ltd., 1959), 59.
32. Ibid., 30.
33. Ibid., 11.
34. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 18 Feb. 1960. L2, 422.
35. AP to Miriam Baggett, 6 Feb. 1960. 29.2, SPC, Smith.
36. TH to AP, 11 Jan. 1960. Lilly.
37. SP to Olwyn Hughes, 8 Feb. 1960. L2, 413.
38. SP to Marcia Brown Plumer, 8 Feb. (#1) 1960. L2, 409.
39. SP to AP, 16 Jan. (#1) 1960. L2, 386.
40. SP to Lynne Lawne
r, 18 Feb. 1960. L2, 419; SP to Marcia Brown Plumer, 8 Feb. (#1) 1960. L2, 410.
41. TH to Olwyn Hughes, Feb. 1960. Add MS 88948/1/2, BL.
42. SP to Lynne Lawner, 18 Feb. 1960. L2, 420.
43. TH to AP, 11 Jan. 1960. Lilly.
44. SP to Marcia Brown Plumer, 8 Feb. (#2) 1960. L2, 413.
45. SP to AP, 16 Jan. (#1) 1960. L2, 384.
46. SP to AP, 19–22 Jan. 1960. L2, 393.
47. The other winner was Alan Brownjohn. The poem appeared in “Poetry 1960: An Appetiser,” Critical Quarterly Poetry Supplement 1 (1960): 20.
48. EF interview with Brian Cox, Oct. 1999. EFP.
49. SP to AP, 16 Jan. (#1) 1960. L2, 385.
50. SP to AP and WP, 2 Feb. 1960. L2, 402.
51. SP to AP and WP, 7–8 Feb. (#1) 1960. L2, 406.
52. SP to AP and WP, 2 Feb. 1960. L2, 403. Vivette and Jonathan Glover, who now own the building, remembered Mrs. Morton fondly. They said Plath’s description of her flat was wonderfully accurate. HC interview with the Glovers, June 2017, London.
53. TH to Olwyn Hughes, Oct. 1960. Add MS 88948/1/2, BL.
54. TH to Anne Stevenson, autumn 1986. LTH, 521.
55. Harriet Rosenstein interview with W. S. Merwin, 1974. 2.21, MSS 1489, Emory.
56. James Michie to SP, 5 Feb. 1960. 17.49, SPC, Smith.
57. TH to Olwyn Hughes, mid-Feb. 1960. Add MS 88948/1/2, BL.
58. SP to AP, 11 Feb. 1960. L2, 414–15.
59. Ibid., L2, 415.
60. TH to Olwyn Hughes, mid-Feb. 1960. Add MS 88948/1/2, BL.
61. SP to AP, 25–26 Feb. 1960. L2, 428.
62. TH, notebook entry, c. Mar. 1960. Add MS 88918/129/2.
63. SP to AP, 25–26 Feb. 1960. L2, 428.
64. Catalog, Bonham’s auction, 21 Mar. 2018, p. 23.
65. SP to AP, 25–26 Feb. 1960. L2, 429.
66. Harriet Rosenstein interview with W. S. Merwin, 1974. 2.11, MSS 1489, Emory.
67. SP to AP, 25–26 Feb. 1960. L2, 429–30.
68. SP to Marcia Brown Plumer, 1 Apr. 1960. L2, 448.
69. SP to AP, 17 Mar. 1960. L2, 438.
70. Anne Stevenson, Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath (London: Penguin, 1989; 1998), 185.
71. HC interview with Daniel Huws, May 2016, London.
72. Huws, Memories of Ted Hughes, 49.
73. SP to AP, 10 Mar. 1960. L2, 433.
74. SP to Olwyn Hughes, 2 Apr. 1960. L2, 449.
75. SP to AP, 17 Mar. 1960. L2, 437.
76. SP to AP, 26–28 Mar. 1060. L2, 444. SP’s ellipsis.
77. “Poet from the Pennines,” Daily Telegraph (14 Apr. 1960).
78. Pendennis, “Frogs and Springboks: Ted ’n’ Thom,” Observer (27 Mar. 1960), 9.
79. SP to AP, 26–28 Mar. 1960. L2, 444. SP’s ellipsis.
80. SP to AP, 24 Mar. 1960. L2, 441.
81. TH to Olwyn Hughes, late Mar. 1960. Add MS 88948/1/2, BL.
82. SP to AP, 24 Mar. 1960. L2, 440.
83. SP to AP, 26–28 Mar. 1960. L2, 443.
84. SP to AP and WP, 31 Mar.–1 Apr. 1960. L2, 444–45.
85. TH, notebook entry, 29 Mar. 1960. Add MS 88918/129/2, BL.
86. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 2 Apr. 1960. L2, 450.
87. SP to AP and WP, 31 Mar.–1 Apr. 1960. L2, 446.
88. SP to Olwyn Hughes, 2 Apr. 1960. L2, 449.
89. SP to Marcia Brown Plumer, 1 Apr. 1960. L2, 448; SP to AP and WP, 31 Mar.–1 Apr. 1960. L2, 446.
90. SP to AP and WP, 31 Mar.–1 Apr. 1960. L2, 446.
91. SP to Lynne Lawner, 30 Sept. 1960. L2, 520.
92. TH to Olwyn Hughes, n.d., mid-Feb. 1960. Add MS 88948/1/2, BL.
93. SP to Marcia Brown Plumer, 1 Apr. 1960. L2, 448.
94. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 2 Apr. 1960. L2, 451.
95. SP to Lynne Lawner, 30 Sept. 1960. L2, 519–20.
96. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 2 Apr. 1960. L2, 451.
97. SP to Gerald and Joan Hughes, 7 Apr. 1960. L2, 457.
98. SP and TH to AP, 7 Apr. 1960. L2, 455–56.
99. Ibid., L2, 455.
100. Ibid., L2, 456.
101. SP and TH to AP, 4 Apr. 1960. L2, 453.
102. SP and TH to AP, 4 Apr. 1960. Lilly. This portion of this letter is unpublished.
103. SP and TH to AP, 7 Apr. 1960. Lilly. This portion of this letter is unpublished.
104. SP to AP and WP, 31 Mar.–1 Apr. 1960. L2, 445.
105. SP to AP, 15 Apr. 1960. L2, 459.
106. SP to AP, 21 Apr. 1960. L2, 461.
107. Ibid., L2, 462.
108. SP to AP, 19 July 1960. L2, 496.
109. SP to AP, 25–26 Feb. 1960. L2, 429.
110. Stevenson, Bitter Fame, 192.
111. EF interview with Peter Redgrove, Sept. 1999. EFP.
112. SP to AP, 15 Apr. 1960. L2, 459–60.
113. TH and SP to Olwyn Hughes, c. 16 May 1960. L2, 473.
114. SP to AP, 28 Sept. 1960. L2, 515.
115. Janet published her first short story in Seventeen, and her first poem in The Atlantic in 1957.
116. Janet Burroway, Embalming Mom: Essays in Life (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2002), 12.
117. SP to Janet Burroway, 3 May 1960. L2, 467.
118. Burroway, Embalming Mom, 13.
119. Ibid., 15.
120. Janet Burroway to A. C. H. Smith, May 1960, quoted in A. C. H. Smith, WordSmith: A Memoir (Bristol, UK: Redcliffe Press, 2012), 86.
121. Janet Burroway to her parents, 10 May 1960. Courtesy of Janet Burroway.
122. Burroway, Embalming Mom, 16.
123. Janet Burroway email to HC, 30 Oct. 2015.
124. SP to Lynne Lawner, 30 Sept. 1960. L2, 521.
125. Janet Burroway email to HC, 20 Oct. 2015.
126. Burroway, Embalming Mom, 17.
127. Ibid., 7.
128. Will Wooten, The Alvarez Generation: Thom Gunn, Geoffrey Hill, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and Peter Porter (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015), 3.
129. Hall would produce poetry pamphlets, published by the Oxford-based Fantasy Press, by Al Alvarez, Geoffrey Hill, Adrienne Rich, Anthony Thwaite, and Thom Gunn in 1953.
130. HC interview with Al Alvarez, May 2016, London. Plath was, Alvarez thought, as good as Keats and Yeats. “Ted was very brilliant in the beginning, but I think he just went off. But Sylvia just went on getting better.”
131. A. Alvarez, “Poetry Chronicle,” Partisan Review 25.4 (1958): 603–609. 604.
132. A. Alvarez, “English Poetry Today,” Commentary 32.3 (Sept. 1961): 217–223. 221–22.
133. A. Alvarez, Where Did It All Go Right? (London: Richard Cohen Books, 1999), 178.
134. Ibid., 183.
135. HC interview with Al Alvarez, May 2016, London.
136. See A. Alvarez, “Something New in Verse,” Observer (12 Apr. 1959).
137. HC interview with Al Alvarez, May 2016, London.
138. Group poets like Edward Lucie-Smith and Peter Porter would write to The Spectator that May, “Mr. Lowell has burst out of the prison of an impressive but highly artificial style and has achieved a kind of fresh, immediate language which appears too rarely in current verse.” Edward Lucie-Smith and Peter Porter, letter to The Spectator, no. 7829 (15 May 1959): 702.
139. Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, Thomas Travisano and Saskia Hamilton, eds. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), 299.
140. Lowell told Elizabeth Bishop to call on Alvarez, “my friend,” when she was traveling to England in 1964. Ibid., 527.
141. HC interview with Al Alvarez, May 2016, London.
; 142. Edward Lucie-Smith, “Foreword,” A Group Anthology, Edward Lucie-Smith and Philip Hobsbaum, eds. (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), v–ix. v.
143. Alvarez, Where Did It All Go Right?, 188.
144. A. Alvarez, “An Outstanding Young Poet,” Observer (27 Mar. 1960), 22.
145. A. Alvarez, “Books of the Year,” Observer (18 Dec. 1960), 22.
146. Alvarez, Where Did It All Go Right?, 198.
147. Ibid., 201.
148. A. Alvarez, The Savage God: A Study of Suicide (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971; New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), 22; 25.
149. SP to AP, 5 May 1960. L2, 468.
150. Ibid., L2, 469.
151. TH to John Fisher and family, 31 July 1960. LTH, 167.
152. TH to Olwyn Hughes, spring 1960. 1.9, MSS 980, Emory.
153. SP to AP, 5 May 1960. L2, 469. Second ellipsis is SP’s.
154. TH to Olwyn Hughes, summer 1960. LTH, 166.
155. TH to Lucas Myers, early 1960. LTH, 157. The “sad circle” comprised other contemporary poets such as George Barker and John Heath-Stubbs.
156. SP to AP, 11 May 1960. L2, 472.
157. SP to AP, 21 May 1960. L2, 476.
158. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Jane and Peter Davison, 1973. 1.22, MSS 1489, Emory.
159. SP to AP, 5 May 1960. L2, 468.
160. SP to AP, 30 May 1960. L2, 477–78.
161. Edith Hughes to AP, 11 June 1960. Lilly.
162. SP to AP, 11 June 1960. L2, 482.
163. SP to AP, 9 July 1960. L2, 494.
164. Ibid., L2, 493. In a 9 July letter, Sylvia told Aurelia that Ted had “scrapped” his earlier play, The House of Taurus, which had an “antiquated social message.”
165. SP to AP, 9 July 1960. L2, 494.
166. They included an explanation of an anthology of animal poems, a talk about his poem “Otter,” readings of a poem about Frieda, and “The Rain Horse.”
167. Throughout this time Plath sent checks (which she received for acceptances) home for her mother to deposit in their Wellesley bank account.
168. SP to AP, 21 May 1960. L2, 476.
169. SP to AP, 30 June 1960. Lilly.
170. SP to AP, 24 June 1960. L2, 484.
171. Ibid.
172. SP to Bill and Dido Merwin, 24 June 1960. L2, 486.
173. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 7 Nov. 1960. L2, 539.
174. HC interview with Ruth Fainlight, May 2016, London.
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