The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 1
Page 51
Yesterday p.m. I swam a lazy & talkative mile out to sea with a beach boy life guard.* A motor boat with a friend of his came along and towed us back in. More fun! At least I’ll learn how to swim if I go down at least once a day for 2 months. Dick biked over last night & from 10-12 we walked leisurely along by a river, I, learning some constellations I’d long forgotten how to find, talking casually, and stopping for big vanilla icecream cones on the way back. I really managed to enjoy myself.
As for sidehall – they’ve done the best they can for me as far as station is concerned, and I figure I deserve a “bad break”, what with all my good fortune winning prizes & going to Smith. My different hours give me an excuse for not hanging around with some of the more snobby cliques, and well, I just don’t care what people think about me as long as I’m always open, nice, & friendly.
So happy about Warren’s job –
Love to you all,
Sivvy –
your Sidehall philosopher
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Monday 23 June 1952*
ALS on The Belmont letterhead,
with envelope, Indiana University
Monday
Dear mother . . .
From the beach once more I am saying hello. At this point I could use some sleep. They say one never gets completely rested around here. One sure thing, the chance for taking naps is fine once you get used to the noise in the dorm. But I haven’t gotten around to it lately. This morning it was too nice to resist the beach, and Polly, my roommate, whom I like very much, went for a swim at 9:45 when we got through. It’s so nice to have someone to do things with. Our hours are different from the other waitresses, and we are on a different “scale”, so we don’t get to see them as much.
Last night I went on a “gang” Birthday party at the “Sand Bar”* – where we sang and talked for a few hours. There were about forty of us kids from the hotel. In spite of the fact that there was a slight preponderance of girls, I managed by some magic to get myself seated next to a fellow in his first year at Harvard Law – and he was just a dear. Funny thing, but I managed to keep him around for the evening. We yelled conversationally across the din, and I nursed a Tom Collins he bought me, ate coconut cake, talked with a bar boy who majors in English at Tufts, and generally had a great time. I don’t expect to get asked out more than a few times this summer so I’ll have fun when I can get it. The best part was when we came back – it was a beautiful clear starry night and Clark went in to get me two of his sweaters to wear because it was cold and brought out a book of T. S. Eliot’s poems. So we sat on a bench where I could just barely read the print, and he put his head in my lap and I read aloud to him for a while. Most nice!
The only thing is, I am so inclined to get fond of someone who will do things with me like that – always inclined to be too metaphysical, and serious conversationally – that’s my main trouble. And around here dates are so ephemeral – you go out with a boy one night, see him the next day with one of the other adorable waitresses, and at first are crushed, and then think, heck, I’ll get casual about life yet.
Mon. afternoon
Well, anyway, even if I did get in after one, I managed to take a 12 mile bike trip with Perry and Dick this afternoon to Long Pond where we went rowing for an hour, picking waterlilies, and generally having a lot of fun. Needless to say, tonight I am going to bed “early” – about 10:30. And shall take a nap tomorrow if I am stiff after my spurt of exertion – a mile biking in about six minutes is pretty good time for me!
So glad to hear the check from Mlle is real. I hardly could believe it. Just now, I am mentally so disorganized that I can’t retain knowledge or think at all. The work is still new enough to be tiring, what with 3 changes a day into uniforms, and I am so preoccupied by mechanics of living & people, that I can’t yet organize & assimilate all the chaos of experience pouring in on me.
In spite of everything, I still have my good old sense of humor and manage to laugh a good deal of the time. Even in spite of the fact I got not quite $20 in tips for the last two weeks of waitressing. Yet I will see how I feel August 10 – I figure slaving myself to death for a bare $100 isn’t worth it at this stage – and of course I may decide to stay if I’m rested & having fun & get into main hall. But by Aug. 10, the summer will be well on the way to a finish, and in spite of the fact I’ll miss the beach & the Nortons, I don’t think I’ll miss much else. And 2 months is a good summer’s work, wot?
Well, no other news – except I’ll make the best of whatever comes my way. What fortitude. (Wish Phil Brawner would give me a call – does he know I’m a waitress---didn’t think he associated with the proleteriat!)
Goodnight dear,
XXX
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Wednesday 25 June 1952*
ALS on The Belmont letterhead,
with envelope, Indiana University
Wednesday
Dear Mother –
Just a note, to let you know I’m still alive, although in a state of suspended animation. Never, it seems to me, has work worn me out so much. When my Smith friend, Jan Salter, told me all she did in her hours off was lie down & rest, I laughed, thinking – what a waste of time. But really, that is just about all we have energy to do. I can’t think, I can just perform mechanical acts. So no more going out for me. I won’t be asked, anyway, because I’m just not the beer-brawl type, even if I do have fun now & then at those aimless soirées. I am still captain of my soul – will send you money orders of my “great intake” in cash every week or two to be safe. We slave for every dollar that I figure I can’t take any risks.
I have definitely decided to come home August 10. It is the only reasonable way out I can see. I will have stayed two months, slaved for $200 (-$10) and will need a good month to recuperate physically & mentally. With all my important & demanding school offices, I can’t afford to crack up. So I’ll have 6½ weeks more of swimming, the Norton’s & slaving. How much notice should I give – ? isn’t a week enough for side hall – They can get a girl any time?
I figure if I leave then, I can get my science done at home in 30 days at the rate of 25 pages a day – (in the morning) – and really get continuity. NOW I’m always so tired that I just can’t retain anything except what kind of eggs people like for breakfast!
Dick just called – is rather sick in bed with a cold, poor guy. I wish I could go over & take care of him – fruit juice, salads, etc. I really am awfully fond of both those boys as people. Well, tell me what you think of my schemes.
XXXX
Your maturing Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Friday 27 June 1952
ALS with envelope,
Indiana University
Friday, June 27
Dear mother . . .
Wow! The heat wave sure has hit. These last three days have been hellish. While the other girls go tripping around in light shortsleeved green nylon dresses we swelter in our heavy longsleeved black cottons. I didn’t even have the energy to go swimming this morning, but just lay and rested in my room and dozed. Although I’ve gone to bed at 10:30 for the last two nights, I still have felt very tired. The fatigue may be due to the fact that I haven’t had a meal off since two weeks ago this coming Sunday . . . and to add to the routine monotony, I have had continuous dreams about waitressing whenever I go to sleep, and often can’t tell lunch from supper when I wake up from a nap because I feel I’ve been “working” all during my sleep.
To top it off, Mr. Driscoll must have been touched indirectly by your letter because he came up to me today with a very curt and rather unorthodox proposition. They are further complicating our sidehall troubles by building a linen closet where one of the two doors is, so with 30 people & 3 busy waitresses running in and out of the one door, it will be horrible. Mr. Driscoll stalked up to me, shot off in glib quick sentences – “You-say-you’re-in-the-market-for-extra-money-well-you-can-have-the-job-of-giving-
out-linen-after-meals-for $30 a-month-let-me-know-right-away-now-or-tomorrow.”
I was completely taken off guard. $30 a month sounded like a wonderful sum, but I shot the pros & cons quickly through my head – giving out linen for the main hall would mean an extra hour after breakfast & lunch & two hours after dinner,* plus till about midnight on Wednesday & Saturday after the big dance & cocktail parties. Well! I figured I’d be working over 30 extra hours a week with definitely no time off at the mere pittance of about 25¢ per hour. No social life, no relaxation, no nothing! I mean, I appreciated the opportunity as I felt Mr. Driscoll meant well. But I feel there is a definite limit to what I will do for money. And when I considered the work I’d be doing for the amount involved, I felt very angry. I started to tell him very politely that I appreciated his considering me but I couldn’t undertake the extra time physically – and he just shrugged and walked off in disgust in the middle of my explanation. I could have slung a dish after him. There is something so nigardly & unscrupulous about these people – in spite of the money pouring through their hands. Imagine me working over 70 hours a week! God! And those girls in main hall don’t work any harder than we do – & get 5 times as much pay. In other words, I have been offered the chance to kill myself for the opportunity to earn as much as they earn with hardly any effort at all. Boy, was I burning! I’m leaving here by August 9th come hell or high water – maybe you could persuade the norton’s to strap my bike on their car when they come down at the end of July – if they do. They’re so nice and understanding about things like that. I would like the bike as long as possible, but I don’t care in the final analysis. It’s funny how one’s feelings fluctuate. After the heat & rush of today, I feel that I am slightly crazy to be slaving (that’s what it amounts to) for two months to get not much more than $175.
I can see that Mr. Driscoll’s attitude now is probably that he’s given me my chance at money, I wouldn’t take it, so I can stew in my own juice. Oh, well.
Do remind grammy & Grampy to bring those 3 big suitcases (empty) when they come down so I’ll have space to put things in!
Well, I’ll work on the sleep angle – there’s only one boy here I really like a skinny brilliant guy at Columbia Med who goes mainly with the most beautiful waitress here – in her first year at Johns Hopkins Med. Anyway, Ray Wunderlich* & I took a two hour walk Wednesday from 8-10 p.m. as no one else was off that early, got icecream & sat down the beach & had great discussions on everything under the sun. He is a dear boy, but if I see him even a few times during the season I’ll be lucky – and quite glad. So you don’t have to worry about my going out too late and all.
And once a week or so, I’ll see Dick & thereby help save my sanity. If I can stick this out for two months I’ll be proud of myself. The only thing I’m afraid of is – if I give him 2 weeks notice, he might kick me out on the spot – but now that I think of it, I wouldn’t complain!
So, dear mummy, thanks for all your lovely frequent letters, and don’t worry about me. I hope you feel as I do, that my refusal of that “proposition” today was a mark of my maturity!
Love to you and Warren & my dear grandparents. What would I do without you all behind me!
Love,
Sivvy
TO Richard Norton
Friday 4 July 1952
TL (incomplete), Indiana University
July 4, 1952
Dear Dickie . . .
Well, worlds do sometimes tumble and even when one is neither mouse nor man the best laid plans can dissolve. Leaving one rather dazed in the backwash. The phone rang early this morning, and it was of course the Belmont wanting to know, very sweetly, how I was and when I would be coming back. They said they wanted to hire a girl part time if only mother would give them a definite date of my return so they could make a contract and all. Whereupon mother took the bull by the horns and said that she didn’t know when I’d be through with these sinus complications and that the doctor wanted to keep me here until I was definitely sound and sane again . . . and that maybe it would be best and most convenient to hire someone for the rest of the summer as my situation is so indefinite. The woman who called was just a dear, saying how they missed me, and liked me, and wanted me back . . . all of which touched me no end. So that is that.
At this point I am in no position to say how I feel about the whole business. I have just gotten my voice back after three days of enforced silence, and although the dear old speaking mechanism sounds a few octaves too low still, I get by with pretending I’m just naturally very husky and sultry. My sinus still is a bother, though, and they just let me outside for the first time today . . . the whole week passed by in sort of a penicillin coma. I will be overjoyed when I shake off this persistent lethargy of convalescence.
TO Harold Strauss*
Tuesday 8 July 1952
TLS, University of Texas at Austin
26 Elmwood Road
Wellesley 81, Massachusetts
July 8, 1952
Mr. Harold Strauss
Editor-in-Chief
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
501 Madison Avenue
New York 22, New York
Dear Mr Strauss:
As you may imagine, I was delighted to receive your encouraging letter* and to learn that you approve of my story, “Sunday at the Mintons.” It was very kind of Miss Abels* to send the proofs to you.
Next fall I shall be a junior at Smith College, where I am majoring in English and getting journalistic experience as Smith correspondent for the Springfield DAILY NEWS. As I am working my way through Smith on scholarship, it is necessary that I take on a rather rigorous working program during the summers in order to meet the remainder of the year’s expenses. Thus I am not in the position to concentrate on any sustained writing project as yet.
My plans after graduation are indefinite at present, as I do not know what opportunities the next two years will bring, but I hope to get a fellowship for graduate study here or abroad. It may be that then, at last, I shall have the opportunity to concentrate completely on writing.
Should I feel, in the future, that any of my work is of sufficient scope and merit to be of interest to you, I shall be very happy indeed to submit it for your approval. As it is, I deeply appreciate the confidence you have expressed in my writing, and I hope within the next few years to justify your encouragement.
Thank you for your great kindness in writing to me.
Sincerely yours,
Sylvia Plath
TO Marcia B. Stern
Tuesday 8 July 1952
TLS with envelope, Smith College
Tuesday, July 8
Comrade . . .
Life has a sudden way of turning somersaults and spitting in one’s face. Here I am, of all places, sitting in Wellesley and cursing myself. All very strange and about to be explained. No, I wasn’t fired. It happened this way. Last Saturday (I mean a week and a half ago . . . time evaporates so fast) I started coming down with the typical and prophetic sore throat. After all, one can work and play twenty-four hours a day for just so long. So I was feeling like merrie hell all Saturday, until the phone rang, and it was Phil Brawner, a veddy nice guy from Wellesley who will be a senior at Princeton next year. Seems he’d come down to visit the Cape, and mother had thoughtfully told him where I was staying. So I figured I’d have one real fling to get my mind off my condition. At eight, when I got through slinging hash at a particularly fussy bunch of Belmont employees, I leapt back to the room, tore off my proletarian black uniform and got all swish in my aqua cotton we bought in Boston last summer. Phil was suitably impressed, and we had a delectable evening at a marvelous place called the Mill Hill Club,* with great entertainment . . . and expert banjo player, superb vocalists, dancing, etc. The Cape was really roaring. I foolishly made an arrangement to play tennis with Phil and his friends the next afternoon, and went to bed wondering if I was going quite mad. Sunday morning I went to the doctor in Harwich who advised me to go home for a few days and see
my infection through in peace and quiet. So when Phil drove up dressed for tennis that afternoon (luckily it started to rain five minutes later) I met him and his friend with a little black suitcase and asked very sweetly if he’d mind company on the drive back to Wellesley. He and his friend thought it was the funniest thing in years, and we picked up another Princeton boy* who is the chauffeur for that senile millionaire I wrote you about that Art Kramer* (He says he knows Betsey James very well) is night nurse for at $100 per week. Anyway, because I looked very flushed and healthy, having both a tan and a temperature of over 100, the four of us went for a long drive in the rain, sat overlooking the ocean drinking beer and being very merry, the boys thinking that I was just tired of work and wanted a vacation or something. Well, on the way home I started losing my voice, and by the time I hit Wellesley, I was ready for bed and the penicillin shots. I spent three days, sans voice, in a penicillin coma, when the Belmont called up wanting to know when I’d be coming back, as they planned to hire a girl for the interim. Mother, who thought I was working and living much too hard, and had figured that basically I really didn’t want to go back to side hall, said maybe they’d better hire someone in my place as she didn’t know just when the doctor would let me return. End of job.
Now that I’m my hideously healthy old self again, I feel that I’ve been hit over the head by a nasty black jack. I still can’t get over feeling sorry for myself, and need very badly someone like you around to talk me out of my depression. All I do is think what a wonderful time I was having, how I could see Dick once or twice a week in the most idyllic settings, how I was meeting all kinds of fascinating young people, and how I was away from the warm, stagnant calm of a deserted Wellesley. I have been trying to think up all sorts of wild schemes to get back there at the Cape . . . as a laundress of sheets or a companion of anybody who’d pay for conversation but the chances are negligible. I’ve been reading help-wanted adds and so on. But the letters from the friends I made at the Belmont are so sweet and I was really getting to like some of the girls terribly, that I just sit here acting like a Greek chorus and beating my bloody head against the suburban woodwork. Aiyee!