The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 1

by Sylvia Plath

  Am I excited, blubbering, unable to eat? Hell, no. That’s why I wish you were here, or were in some position in which you could judge me and the situation. I wonder very calmly and calculatingly – Do I love him? I know him and his family too well to experience the young romantic exhilaration that I did when I first dated him last spring. But I am afraid that if I eventually did settle down to be a Doctor’s wife, I would be sinking deeper into the track I was born in, leaving the world untried, as it were. I mean, Ann, it’s the same old thing. I realize in my head that a girl’s period of attraction lasts only eight years or so, and that she better make out while the sun doesn’t show up her wrinkles, but hell, I keep thinking of how long men can wait – till they’re forty (and still handsome and eligible) before picking a young pretty female and settling down. I’m just not the type who wants a home and children of her own more than anything else in the world. I’m too selfish, maybe, to subordinate myself to one man’s career – I want to share many and various ones, and yet I would kick myself afterwards, when I got old, and saw pretty young innocent things crowding in my place.

  All this is no doubt an incoherent mess, Ann my girl, but it is a rather absorbing problem. After all, it’s got to do with disposing of the rest of your life, and you just don’t laugh that one off. What do you think about the whole thing?

  Oh, I was aghast with delight at the person Ray Moore.* Ann, I knew something fascinating like that would walk in your front door! You are so cosmopolitan, now . . . I can just see you with this creature. Tell me how you met the boy – and more about him, including your physical, mental, and emotional relationships, if you care to. I get a vicarious excitement just hearing about him. I didn’t know the world made such men!

  By the way – if you know any young males who want a personally conducted tour of Smith, send ’em my way!

  Give my best to Jim, and keep the home fires burning. That guy is really solid, and I love the way he speaks of you as “my Ann.”

  Oh, Davy, I die at the thought I missed your trip East. Do write and tell me about it!

  Your admiring,

  Sylvy

  TO Aurelia Schober Plath

  Thursday 27 September 1951*

  ALS, Indiana University

  Thursday

  Dear Mother –

  You should see our room now, mummy! Even though we haven’t got our curtains and bedspreads, I would like to show it to you. After much to-do we finally got a desk – not the same size or color, but a desk, free to use for the year from a kindly upperclassman. As befits, Marcia has the pretty maple bureau, I have the good maple desk – we have Marcia’s victrola, and Mrs. Brown is dying the old spreads dark green and getting some sort of white curtains. We’ve got white lampshades and blotters, and will maybe get a long narrow print of Georgia O’Keefe to point up the color scheme of the room -- green, blue, accented with white. We have colorfully filled bookcases and hope to get plants . . .

  Yesterday we registered in chapel, heard Pres. Wright’s address and got our schedules in sophomore meeting. In between I deposited $70 in the bank, making a total of $130 there, and bought some notebook paper at the Bookshop.

  Patsy, Louey, and I all had our names read on Dean’s list – a long, long list, by Miss Schnieders. After lunch, and another meeting, Marcia and I took a long walk across that beautiful countryside in the autumn afternoon, lay in the grass in the sun, listening to the cows mooing, and staring in a blissful collegiate stupor at the Holyoke range of hills.

  Lisa Powell has a single room next to ours, and the second floor is so much more convenient.

  Do please develop the negatives enclosed* & send them along – get two prints, if you please of the picture of me lying on the rocks and with the kiddies – the only ones I will have to prove I took care of infants . . . this summer.

  I sincerely hope I will have something definite to tell you about the mental hospital* – I am hoping to join Press Board,* rather than a newspaper (perhaps also a newspaper if my schedule works out.) As for jobs, one rather unprofitable but hopeful thing just dropped in my lap. I am to represent a new section of the “Stocking Selling & Delivering” idea started by one of my friends on campus. At 10¢ a pair (10% commission) I don’t know if I’ll get rich, but I should earn a few dollars in the course of the year.

  Courses* started today, with a Religion lecture at 10 am and a Religion section at 2 pm. It looks like a fascinating, but complicated course. Do send up a Bible from home as soon as you can. I’m using Marcia’s in the meantime. We will visit synagogue’s, attend masses, and end up the year by reading Schweitzer’s “Out of My Life & Thought.”* Got a paper due Saturday, plus reading.

  I’m enclosing my schedule* so far . . . of course they can louse it up with gym – 3 hours worth, but my pride and joy is NO SATURDAY CLASSES. Got a lovely letter from Dick today,* you too. If all goes well, I shall come home early Friday evening, October 19 – to stay till the 21. See you then.

  If you don’t mind, I shall write you informatively at least twice a week – plus postcards, if I get time. I had forgotten how full a college day was, and how important every minute.

  Do send me Mary Ventura’s address, also Ruthie’s. Also Warren’s.

  Marcia is also going to the party October 6 – a coming out party. Boys supplied, I guess. If possible beg Mrs. D.* to work on black dress – also send slip. Merci.

  After your tea on Objectives for Stunted Students Growth, and a subsequent rest period – puleeze start pounding out more about your sordid friends & relations. Anna and her buddy Sandra will ennoble the Peters Clan yet!

  See you soon – love –

  your Smith Girl

  TO Aurelia Schober Plath

  Monday 1 October 1951*

  ALS (postcard), Indiana University

  Mon night.

  Dear Mum . . .

  What a hectic life! Friday afternoon Marcia and I biked out into the lovely pioneer valley, got dried corn to decorate our room. Saturday I took another bikeride with a transfer student* – a best friend of Ann Davidow’s. The afternoon and early evening were devoted to freshman day – to which I conducted my advisee.* Saturday night I went to bed at 10 after talking with my actress pal Sydney Webber. Sunday I went to the unitarian church – found a good minister. I met a great guy* by chance Sun. night as I was innocently walking to supper. He’s the most handsome thing I ever laid eyes on – a Junior & DEKE* at Wesleyan. So I had supper, conversation & a movie with him . . . The most amazing bit of chance fun I’ve had in years. He’s an amazing creature – makes up his own lyric songs, has his own car, & sang his lyrics to me all night. Will never see him again no doubt, but loved every minute – classes gruelling, exciting – love Art $20 for supplies!

  XXX

  Sivvy

  TO Aurelia Schober Plath

  Monday 8 October 1951*

  ALS with envelope,

  Indiana University

  monday a.m.

  Dear Mother . . .

  How can I ever ever tell you what a unique, dreamlike and astounding weekend I had! Never in my life, and perhaps never again will I live through such a fantastic twenty-four hours. Like years, it seems – so much of my life was involved.

  As it is, I’ll start out with an attempt at time sequence. Saturday afternoon, at 2 p.m. about 15 girls from Smith started out for Sharon. Marcia and I drew a cream-colored convertible (with 3 other girls and a Dartmouth boy.) Picture me then, in my navy-blue bolero suit and versatile brown coat, snuggled in the back seat of an open car, whizzing for two sun-colored hours through the hilly Connecticut valley! The foliage was out in full tilt, and the hills of crimson sumach, yellow maples and scarlet oak that revolved past, the late afternoon sun on them, were almost more than I could bear.

  At about 5 p.m. we rolled up the long drive to “The Elms.” God! Compared to the Buckley’s,* the Blodgett’s are merely offensive & bourgeois. Great lawns and huge trees on a hill, with a view of the valley, distant green co
w pastures, orange and yellow leaves, receding far into blue-purple distance. A cater’s truck was unloading champagne at the back. We walked through the hall, greeted by a thousand living rooms, period pieces, rare objects of art everywhere. On the 3rd floor (every room was on a different level) most of the girls slept. Marcia & I and Joan Strong (a lovely girl, daughter of a former headmaster of Pomfret) had the best deal. We lived across the way at “Stone House”, a similar mansion. Marcia & I had a big double bed & bath to ourselves in a room reminiscent of a period novel, with balconies, gold drapes, and another astounding view. We lay down under a big quilt for an hour, in the graypurple twilight, conjecturing about the exciting unknown evening fast coming. Joan, Marcia, & I were driven in a great black cadillac by one of the Buckley chauffeurs to the Sharon Inn where a lovely buffet supper was prepared for the 20-30 girls. After supper, Marcia, Joan, and I skipped and ran along the lovely dark moonlit road to our mansion. Another hour of lying down (reminding me of Scarlett O’Hara before the ball) and then the dressing. I struck up a delightful conversation (while ironing my black formal) with the Phillipino houseboy.

  Again the chauffeur. Up the stone steps, under the white colonial columns of the Buckley home. Girls in beautiful gowns clustered by the stair. Everywhere there were swishes of taffeta, satin, silk. I looked at Marcia, lovely in a lilac moiré, and we winked at each other, walking out in the patio. Being early, we had a chance to look around. The Patio was in the center of the house, two stories high, with the elm treetops visible through the glassed-in roof. Remember Mrs. Jack’s patio?* The same: vines trailing from a balcony, fountains playing, blue glazed tiles set in mosaic on the floor. Pink walls, and plants growing everywhere. French doors led through a tented marquee built out on the lawn. There, on the grass, a great tent was erected. Two bars and the omnipresent waiters were serving champagne. Balloons, japanese lanterns, tables covered with white linen, leaves, covered ceiling & walls. A band platform was built up for dancing. I stood open mouthed, giddy, bubbling, wanting so much to show you. I am sure you would have been supremely happy if you had seen me. I know I looked beautiful. Even daughters of millionaires complimented my dress.

  About 9:30 we were “announced” and received. There was a suspenseful time of standing in fluttering feminine groups, waiting for the dancing to begin, drinking the lilting bubbling, effervescent champagne. I began to wish I had brought a date, envying the initial security of the girls that had, wondering if I could compete with all the tall lovely girls there.

  Let me tell you, by the end of the evening, I was so glad I hadn’t hampered my style by a date and been obligated, like the girls who did.

  I found myself standing next to a bespectacled Yale Senior. (The whole Senior class at Yale was there – it was just about All-Yale to All-Smith! Maureen’s brother* is a senior. 10 children in the Catholic family, all brilliant, many writers!) I decided I might as well dance instead of waiting for a handsome man to come along. The boy was Carl Bradley,* a scholarship Philosophy major admitting a great inferiority complex. We got talking over champagne, and I had just about convinced him that he should be a teacher, when we went back to dance. Darn, I said. I can see me bolstering inferiority complexes all night.

  At that point a lovely tall hook-nosed freshman named Eric Wilson* cut in. We cooled off on a terrace, sitting on a couch, staring up into leaves, dramatically lighted. Turned out we both loved English. Great deal in common.

  Back to floor with Carl, who asked me to Cornell weekend. I refused: nicely. Eric cut in.

  Next I had a brief trot with the Editor of the Yale News. No possibilities there.

  About then, the Yale Whiffenpoofs sang, among whom: one of Dick’s old roommates, who grinned & chatted with me later.

  NOW. Suddenly a lovely grinning darkhaired boy cut in. Name? I asked. The result was a sort of foreign gibberish. Upon a challenge, he produced a card bearing the engraved “Constantine Siedamon-Eristoff.”* (sp?) I subsided. He was a wonderful dancer, and twirled so all I could see was a great cartwheel of colored lights, the one constant being his handsome face. Turned out his father* was general of the Georgian forces in the Russian Caucasus mts. He’s a senior at Princeton.

  I was interrupted in a wild Charleston (champaigne does wonders for my dancing prowess. I danced steps I never dreamed of . . . and my feet just flew with no propulsion of mine) by a tall homely boy who claimed his name was Plato. By that time, I was convinced that everyone was conspiring against me as far as names were concerned. Turned out he really was – Plato Sigouras (or Skouras)3 whose father is a Greek*---head of 20th cen. FOX productions. Plato did the sweetest thing anyone has ever done. In the midst of dancing on the built-up platform, amid much gay music, he said, “I have a picture I want to show you.” So we crossed through the cool, leaf-covered patio, the sound of the fountain dripping, and entered one of the many drawing rooms. Over the fireplace was a Boticelli Madonna.

  “You remind me of her,” he said.

  I was really touched. Ugly, compelling, as he was – I enjoyed conversation infinitely. I learned later that he has traveled all over the world, speaks several languages, including Greek and a little Latin. A devout Catholic, I learned that he believes in the Divine Revelation of the Bible, and in Judgment Day, etc. You can imagine how much I would like to have really gotten into an intense discussion with him. As it was, I had a lovely dialogue. Imagine meeting such fascinating, intelligent, versatile people! At a party, too.

  From there followed a few more incidental people, and, saving best to last, my Constantine. Again he cut in, and we danced and danced. Finally we were so hot and breathless that we walked out on the lawn. The night was lovely, stars out, trees big and dark, so guess what we did – Strauss waltzes! You should have seen us swooping and whirling over the grass, with the music from inside faint and distant.

  Constantine and I really talked. I found that I could say what I meant, use big words, say intelligent things to him.

  Imagine, on a night like that, to have a handsome, perceptive male kiss your hand and tell you how beautiful you were and how lovely the skin was on your shoulders!

  I would have taken it all with several grains of salt had we not gone farther. I came out with my old theory that all girls have lovely hair, nice eyes, attractive features – and that if beauty is the only criterion, I’d just as soon tell him to go and pick someone else and let me out.

  He said he’d take me home, and so we drove and drove along in the beautiful night. I learned a great deal about him, and he said the most brilliant things. I learned about Jason & the Golden Fleece – the legend having been written about the Georgian peoples – who were a civilized culture, like China, while the Russians were “still monkeys”. I learned about his ideas of love, childbirth, atomic energy, . . . and so much more.

  I asked him what happened when a woman got old, and her physical beauty waned, and he said in his lovely liquid voice, “Why she will always be beautiful to the man she marries, we hope.”

  He told me that I was lovely inside, as well as outside, and when I asked him what I should call him, he told me three names.

  “I like Constantine best,” I said. “I like to say it, because of its good sound.”

  “I have a dear Grandmother who is ninety-two years old,” he said, “and she always calls me Constantine. I do believe its because she likes the feeling of the name rolling from her tongue.”

  He sang for a while, and then the bells struck four o’clock in a church tower. So I asked if I could tell him my favorite poem. I did, and he loved it.

  Oh, if you could have heard the wonderful way he talked about life and the world! That is what made me really enjoy the dear remarks he made about me.

  Imagine! I told him teasingly not to suffocate in my long hair and he said, “What a divine way to die!” Probably all this sounds absurd, and very silly. But I never expressed myself so clearly and lucidly, never felt such warm, sympathetic response. There is a sudden glorying in wom
anhood when someone kisses your shoulder and says, “You are charming, beautiful, and, what is most important, intelligent.”

  When we drove into the drive at last, he made me wait until he opened the door on my side of the car, and helped me alight with a ceremonial “Milady . . . ”

  “Milord . . . ” I replied, fancying myself a woman from a period novel, entering my castle.

  It was striking five when I fell into bed beside Marcia, already asleep. I dreamed exquisite dreams all night, waking now and then to hear the wind wuthering outside the stone walls, and the rain splashing and dripping on the ivycovered eaves.

  Brunch at Buckley’s at 1 p.m. on a gray, rainy day. About 30-40 of the girls (and a few men) had the most amazing repast brought in by colored waiters in great copper tureens – scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, rolls, preserves, a sort of white farina, coffee, orange juice! Lord, what luxury! Marcia and I left, went back to our mansion, and lay snuggled side by side in the great double bed under a warm quilt in the gray afternoon, talking and comparing experiences, glowing with happiness and love for each other & the world!

  At 3 pm the chauffeur picked us up. Five girls drove back in the big cadillac. I sat up front, beside the driver, and wrapped myself in silence for two hours of driving through rain & yellow leaves.

  Back here. I can’t face the dead reality. I still lilt and twirl with Eric, Plato, and my wholly lovely Constantine under Japanese lanterns and a hundred moons twining in dark leaves, music spilling out and echoing yet inside my head.

  To have you there in spirit! To have had you see me! I am sure you would have cried for joy. That is why I am spilling out at such a rate – to try to share as much as I can with you.

  I wonder if I shall ever hear from Constantine again. I am almost afraid he was a dream – conjured up in a moment of wishful thinking. I really loved him that evening, for his sharing of part of his keen mind and delightful family, and for listening to me say poetry and for singing . . .