by Sylvia Plath
Tax deductions:
Service Fund $10 (includes all charitable organizations)
tb seals $1
Thanks for cookies, check.
love,
syl.
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 22 January 1953*
ALS (postcard),* Indiana University
Thursday
Dear mum . . .
A lovely sunny melting snow-day, and I have an Honor Board meeting (first this year) this afternoon. I also hope to get half of my college board assignment written (on “health hazards”) for which I interviewed Dr. Booth this morning. I only got a 90% on my last science exam which brings my average to a mere 95%. I really will study for the Exam though: I’ve been leading a luxurious life of reading modern poetry, the New Yorker, the papers, and Franz Kafka. Most surprising is a rather unexpected change of plans as of this morning’s mail! Seems I’ll be staying here midsemesters. One tall, dark and rather magnetic male is coming up to investigate communism at Smith Sat. night & Sunday, and I plan to be on hand to uphold the aristocracy of the intellect! Honestly, if that guy isn’t careful, I’ll start being rather fond of him. Really, I’m thrilled. It will be an immediate & tangible reward for slaving on science. (Last time I got a 99% before he came) I’ve decided as soon as I can walk I’ll get a new wool dress for Jr. Prom Weekend – he deserves it. Oh, I am happy.
XX
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Sunday 25 January 1953*
ALS (postcard), Indiana University
Sunday 3:30 pm
Dear mum . . .
Your appointment with Miss Mensel is at 2:30 p.m. – so I’ll have time to show you the way – can’t wait to see you! Could you please bring lots of manila envelopes (big) & lots of both good & bad typing paper. I’m all out. Still love everybody with a passion – am reading New Yorkers, etc. Told Marcia you’d love to have her visit in my place over Friday night – didn’t think you’d mind, since they’ve been so great to me and she’s such fun anyway! Have got both Mlle things done: cartoons & health article. Aren’t I virtuous. Love Lawrence more every day – girls are all great – so happy here! Mary & I are getting along just fine, and I’m sure it will keep up. I really wasn’t trying before! Can’t believe I’ll be seeing that Man in less than a week – one girl has loaned me her great navy-blue knitted dress to wear for when He comes – nice, huh! Things are really looking up. (Still exercising like mad)
XXX
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Monday 2 February 1953*
TLS with envelope,
Indiana University
monday morning
dearest mother . . .
well, the event has come and gone, and I feel amazingly eager to plunge into the next five weeks of work so that when I take the pilgrimage to Yale in March I’ll be rested, caught up and human. It is amazing how easy it is to direct oneself to slave at the task at hand if there is some definite plan for respite ahead, and not just a series of vague unsubstantial daydreams.
Tonight my modern poetry unit meets for the first time at Miss Drew’s, and I am having supper with Enid Epstein, writer-artist-and friend, beforehand. Tomorrow it will be Wiggin’s with Mr. and Mrs. Patch and the other six girls in the unit. I might even splurge and have a good dinner. Last Friday I had a lovely time at Marty’s with she and Mrs. B. Great lovely steak dinner, modern music, and reading and talking. How good those people are to me. I can never repay them for all they have done. Saturday Myron came after lunch, and we sat and talked until supper, when we took a taxi to Rahars where we had a light snack and sat and drank gallons of gingerale in the bar and sang the words to a hundred popular songs (funny but he’s the first person I’ve found who knows all the words to all the songs the way I do . . . we must just have absorbed them over the years). Sunday he came here for dinner, and we sat and read the times and listened to music all afternoon, and he stayed for supper. After supper we went across the street and sat in the coffee shop* for two hours, and he left off some of his reticence to talk about his family, and told me more than he realized about them, for which I was very glad. Also he explained the elements of organic chemistry to me, very simply. He is reverent and ecstatic about the wonders of the universe, which is nice. Do you realize that he was Elks winner in his state, and one of the 10 national ones? His story of how he got to Yale, and about his childhood is really almost unbelievable, when you look at him now. Except for traveling with the team, he has lead a most austere life. No dates in highschool, and only two in his freshman year in college. Worked all the time, studying or jobs . . . has worked in road crews, stores, and I don’t know what all else. His dislike of his older brother,* who drinks, smokes, and has no self-discipline, is most interesting. All in all, I was quite pleased that he did talk about himself and his family a little. The last time I casually asked him about his home life he shut up like a wounded clam. Seems he has lived in a neighborhood with negroes, immigrants, and all kinds of people. That’s why, he says, he talks with such a drawl. I wish terribly that I could be good for him. I do enjoy telling him how much I admire his brawn and brain. His first pride is his scholastic ability, and his second is his baseball achievement. For these he has received rewards, honor, and admiration, and, as he says, that is why he had decided his life must be a continued stimulating intellectual one, because of the early reward-conditioning. But he seems so practical and reasonable about what he wants. He knows what he wants, and that he can have it, and so he goes on and does it. As far as I can see, women are rather unnecessary in his life. Anyway, we had a very happy restful time, and I spent 12 hours with him saturday and the same amount sunday, just sitting and talking, which is rather a feat for most people. Also received a very neat white baseball, subsequently autographed. And he can carry me very easily, so I made the most of it, and traveled comfortably from taxi to doorstep and across streets without touching a foot to the ground. It was most enjoyable, I assure you. That boy’s muscles are like iron. Anyone who can lift me-plus-my-cast is, as far as I’m concerned, a minor hercules.
The only thing I’m at all discouraged about is my writing. I know inside me that Mlle will send the story back, but send it anyway. I deserve a couple of hundred rejections, now. It’ll only make me work all the madder and harder.
Dick got his WCW thing* accepted, and I am so happy. It came at such a strategic time, just after he’d heard that he couldn’t plan on going back to med school next fall but would have to stay at least until december. Now he has the thrill of publication, a tangible reward for his efforts, and renewed incentive to go on. Really, I am overjoyed that it worked out this way.
He suggested that I come up to the Middlebury Carnival the 20th and see him. For some reason I hedged, and haven’t said any verdict. I don’t know, I suppose it’s terrible, but I just don’t give a damn about going. Shirley and Perry and the Baldwins and the Nortons will be running around, and the trip would take a big chunk out of my study time. I just don’t care about being a hanger-on, either. So I shall wait and think it over carefully. But my leg will still be tender then, and I don’t want to go trotting around up there in the frigid north. Fortunately Myron hates the cold up here and likes lying out in the sun tanning. He is so beautifully relaxed, like Bob, only he is also motivated by the success-drive, wich is a nice workable combination. Well, after the leg gets normal, I’m treating myself to a formal downtown. After his standing me clomping around in rahars like this, I’ve got to make up for it by being feminine and lovely when I go down so he will be proud of me. Both of us have been so damn lucky in life, my writing being comparable in a small way to his baseball, that we get along very well. Again, I hark back to memories of work on the farm with infinite gratitude. I never want to forget the closeness to good hard labor.
This summer you will also have to teach me how to cook and to buy. Myron loves breaded pork chops and roast beef, and says abstractly that he
will live in a shack if he has to, so he can have good meat and food. One could really cook creatively if one had the money, I guess. I might as well learn to do it naturally, so I won’t have to waste time on it. Ah me. I may never see him again after this spring, who knows . . .
xxx
sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Wednesday 4 February 1953
TLS with envelope,
Indiana University
wednesday, feb. 4
dear mother . . .
I was grateful more than I can say for your understanding letter about the middlebury trip. Luckily I had not written to either dear nortons (their letter almost made me weep) or dick, so I am here reprinting the crucial part of the reply I wrote to nortons so your story and mine will jibe:
“Oh, how enticing your trip plans sound to middlebury. I would give anything (another broken leg even!) to go with you up there to see dick but smith, unfortunately, is not as generous in meting out holidays as B.U. saturday involves two performances of our class Rally Day drama, and monday has a required morning commencement exercise at which every (that, I’m afraid, includes me) Smith girl is ordered to attend. So I am inextricably and rebelliously entangled! I’d love so much to spend the weekend with you all, but this, of all weekends in the year, is decreed to be “Smith College” by our President Wright (who in this case, I think, is more appropriately called Wrong.)”
I hope that does it neatly enough. The facts are true, but the sentiments, of course, aren’t. I am becoming an expert in the polite expedient white lie. Ugh. Somehow, I just shudder at the idea of trekking up there. Losing valuable study time, and vegetating and watching Shirley swish around. I’ll have a chance to match her in March. Besides, I don’t want to run any risk of slipping on my precious ankle. By the way, a most fantastic thing: Charlotte Kennedy called last night . . . and she broke the fibula of her right leg over Midsemester weekend! Same time sunday as I did! At least I have the prospect of getting mine off in two weeks. God, I can’t wait.
Classes this week leave me tireder than I thought. Glad I have March to look forward to, and the prospects of a new dress. I’ll be so glad to get back on press board again, and seeing people . . . I really do feel a bit cut off, and every trip is a job. But I’M exercising and keeping outwardly cheerful. Don’t envy Charlotte in the least.
This semester should be a scholastic joy. I’m starting Milton this afternoon at 3, and auditing three hours of Miss Drew while she does James Joyce* . . . I’m reading “Portrait of the Artist” and “Ulysses” along with the regular class . . . a rather ambitious project, but I am enjoying it no end, since I won’t be getting Ulysses in the unit. Two papers to do this weekend . . . writing and an analysis of one of Yeats’ poems. Haven’t heard about science yet, though.
Dinner at Wiggins’ with Patch last night and the other six girls in the unit. I was most flattered; he paid almost sole conversational attention to me, and said he and mary ellen chase thought my Minton story was most excellent. How I love them both . . . so brilliant, and he has such a rich wealth of knowledge and humor. Said he thought all smith girls he knew were beautiful, compared to the other women’s colleges he’d taught in. Nice, what!
Much love to you,
sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 5 February 1953*
ALS with envelope,
Indiana University
thursday
10:30 a.m.
Dear Mother . . .
Just a note from science lecture to tell you about a rather amusing incident that occurred last night. I’d had a rather full day: audited Drew on Joyce at 10 a.m., gone to R. G. Davis at 2, and Milton at 3. Chatted with Carol Pierson for a while about Ken – seems they’re getting along admirably: I have great hopes for them – it would be so much fun to think Dick & I were responsible for a happy marriage . . . someone else’s! Well, last night, instead of being lazy & getting ready for bed after supper I went to an excellent lecture on “Protestantism in an Age of Uncertainty” by Theodore Greene,* an expert on Kant, Philosophy & Religion – also, by the way, the master of Silliman College at Yale – (Myron’s College!) I figured that since I am maybe staying at the master’s house during Prom Weekend it would be strategic for me to be able to discuss my attending the speech, etc.! I really admire the man tremendously!
Well, anyway, I came back to the house, and one of the girls came up to me with a most peculiar expression on her face: “There’s a boy in the livingroom to see you,” she said. “He’s been waiting for two hours. Say’s he’s never seen you before but was told to look you up!” Completely nonplussed, I dashed up the back stairs (you’d hardly know I was a cripple!) – changed to my red sweater & skirt and came down to the livingroom aflame with curiosity. I walked in, and the most handsome, tall, lean, curly brown-haired boy got up and said “Hello, Sylvia!” I gulped “Hello,” and sat down in a daze. What did this god want with me?!
Seems that he (Gordon)* is the son of that woman at the Smith Club last fall* who came rushing up to talk to me after my speech (just think – if I’d refused to speak, this never would have happened! Late rewards!). He is a senior in English honors at Amherst, eager, intense, working his way through, too! I only talked to him for 15 minutes, but it was long enough for me to feel an instinctive “rapport” – and we were talking heatedly about Chatham and both of us being non-smokers in units, and creative writing, when it was time to close the house. I felt rather dazed, especially when he asked me to go out with him this Saturday! “My leg . . . .” I began to explain. “Heck, we can sit around and talk . . . ” he grinned. “I’ll be over after lunch!” And he went. The girls in the livingroom all crowded around me exclaiming “Who was he!” I just stood there leaning meditatively on my crutch and musing on the peculiar workings of chance, dropping lovely English-majoring Amherst seniors from the sky at exactly the right psychological moment! Honestly – imagine him taking me out all afternoon and night! That is surely “above and beyond the call of duty!” I was feeling a bit sad at not having heard from Myron yet this week – because I felt his letter should be indicative of the sort of time he had. And I was musing upon whether or not I should ask him up for the Rally Day show on the 21st. Now I’ve decided not to even suggest seeing him again before the prom unless he mentions it first, which I don’t think he will. He’s smart enough to see I enjoy being with him and I don’t want him to feel chased. I do feel much safer with my interests spread out over a broader surface, now, and I was hoping that Attila or somebody would ask me out to relieve the single-minded intensity of my interest in Myron. So now when I go down to Yale I won’t feel (I hope) that it’s the first and last social event of the season!
Gordon looks most promising: and even if he does turn out to be engaged to somebody, I shall make the most of this Saturday! It will be such fun talking to a boy who has so much in common in the way of interests – English, travel, etc. He worked in Chatham for four summers, went to Cuba as tutor to an 8-year old boy, graduated from Choate* – and in general, I’m looking more than forward to getting to know him (and his friends –)
So wish me luck this Saturday, huh?
Much love,
Sivvy
P.S. Got a cute letter from Warren – seems he’s doing well in broad jump!
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Friday 6 February 1953*
TLS with envelope,
Indiana University
friday night
dearest of favorite people . . . .
a brief note to say that the X-ray was duly taken today and should be on the way to the great doctor tomorrow. if you feel like it, you could ask him to call up the doctor’s office here as soon as he reaches his verdict. there is a good bone man in town who should be able to take off the cast. i am, needless to say, getting more anxious to get over the learning-to-walk period as soon as possible. my bicycle excercises (200 per day) should have kept my muscles in tone a bit. wa
lking is still a slow ordeal, and rather wearing, especially as the end of the week is so heavy. got your memo today, and think that my solution was really valid, especially as I don’t know whether or not I’ll want to ask anyone for rally day.
one, thing, I have decided that my hibernation from college this past half year as far as other girls go has resulted in my fading from the view of the class, so I’m accepting supper invitations to other houses with gusto now. also am one of the finalists of this year’s electoral board, which draws up the slate for the big four college offices* . . . from our class this year. as I certainly don’t want one of the big offices (next year I’ll be doing the thesis), I will enjoy getting to know girls in the class better . . . if I do get elected to be on the board finally. one thing, I somehow seem to be popular still, for some obscure reason. I was amazed to be on the final slate.
letters today were heavy . . . you, dick,* hong kong, and best of all, a huge epistle from myron. it was five close-written pages long, which for him, like warren, is a herculean task and no doubt took hours. he wrote a most brilliant outline of his ideas of God, and the change from naive simplicity to scientific complexity in beliefs about God and the universe. I agree with him vehemently, and had to sit down right away to answer him, because I was so stimulated by his ideas. I think we are unusually alike in our approaches to like and thinking. one thing that amused me . . . he seemed apologetic for being rather quiet as far as intellectual topics this weekend went. I was wondering what the matter was, and he revealed it when he concluded his letter with the rather disconcerting remark: “Do you understand that I can think much more clearly while away from your biological magnetism.” naturally I could hardly help but smile, as I only had let him kiss me a couple of times, and his way of stating the matter was so in keeping with his desire to be rational in explaining everything including emotions. but I did suggest that we take long walks next time, and talk . . . . so much healthier than sitting around and languishing for 24 hours. hope that takes care of it. I am rather fond of him, from what I know of him, and especially appreciate his honesty . . . I can believe what he says, and it was so touching to hear him say he would like to see moonlight on my hair. When he is idealistic, he is so very idealistic.