The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 1
Page 96
am applying in a splurge of optimism for a fulbright to oxford or cambridge next year, but understand they aren’t hospitable to lady-suicides. so am also trying for harvard scholarships. only I long for england, with long vacations in italy and france. always did want to go to africa and egypt, too! enough of this for now, and PLEASE WRITE someday.
much much love from all of us americans,
sylvia
1955
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Monday 3 January 1955*
ALS with envelope,
Indiana University
monday night
dearest mother . . .
just thought I’d write you a note before the deluge of the next three weeks, which will be the busiest in my life and won’t give me time for socializing! The trip back was long, but I had a nice dinner of pizza & wine to send Gordon off. The day early being back has made all the difference: never have I accomplished so much – had about 10 appointments & got much settled – also had wonderful pick of january clearance sales with no other girls to compete! Got wondrous wool dress, long sleeved, gray, brown & green – ann fogarty,* of course, for $21 off! also got great gold necklace, originally $22 for only $4! Also a white satin blouse exactly what I dreamed of, for under my jumpers – not transparent! I feel most successful and happy with my purchases. January is the time to buy!
My conference with Mr. Gibian was heartily encouraging and amusing. Except for rewriting one paragraph, he approved of my 8 page conclusion verbatim, which is, of course the most difficult part of the thesis. So it is ready for the typist. I spent the evening typing up footnotes (which I’m putting at the end of each chapter) & bibliography – must spend tomorrow morning at libe checking them. Friday it goes to the typist, who will do it very reasonably in 10 days! I am glad you won’t have to set aside any of your precious vacation for this – I feel guilty enough asking you to type those two stories! This plan will work out best in the long run, and the typist is one of the secretaries* to President Wright! Because mine is done early, I’m beating the mob!
Mr. Fisher, my new poetics professor, was very exciting today. (The Honors Committee approves highly of my special studies with him!) He is assigning me one long monograph on the Rhetoric of the Elizabethan poet & playwright John Ford* which I’ll be doing on a graduate level – he is also doing research on Ford, aided by other of his graduate students & spoke of the possibility of “publishing a study” of essays. As you may imagine this is a challenge of the utmost scholarship! It will be invaluable. My regular assignment is to hand in a “batch” of poems each week! Fun, what!
I love all my professors, and feel that my work is so intriguing & so well rewarded – cross your fingers that I make it to the 21st with success have a fabulous amount to do till then – feature article on Smith social life* looms among them – with interviews for it – College Dean, etc. – everybody is so wonderful up here – know that I’m well & happy even if I don’t write till after exams – Hope you are the same
xxx
sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 6 January 1955*
ALS with envelope,
Indiana University
Thursday
Dear mother . . .
Never thought I’d be writing you so soon again, but I wanted to tell you, before the officials did, that I’m up at the Infirmary as of today. I have been feeling miserable all week because of a searing sore throat, cough & cold. Nose drops & gargles at the house helped not at all, and I didn’t feel well enough to do any work, so I came up here to recuperate quickly & completely before exams, when I shall need every bit of extra energy, to top it off, I started my period unexpectedly early too, so I am really a mess. The reason for this cold is, I am sure, the unhealthy hot temperature at Lawrence House. It has been from 80° – 87° (!) on our floor, and although I keep my radiator turned off, it is always scalding hot. Of course I have a humidifier, but even that doesn’t help the intolerable hot stuffy atmosphere (I work best at 70°). Naturally the contrast to my cold room at home played havoc with my health. However, although Mrs. Kelsey said airily “nothing could be done” about my radiator, I complained to the Doctor, & they are going to try to fix it.
I handed my thesis and my last creative writing paper today, so at least all I have to worry about is the big article due at Yale next week and my German & Shakespeare courses in which I will be drastically behind as I was going to catch up concentratedly this week and haven’t been able to do a thing.
It is a treacherous slushy day, with glare ice and awful rain, so I’m glad I’m here where I’ll get good food & medicine & sleep. Many thanks for the welcome $5 – I indulged in the luxury of a taxi up to the infirmary. Am delighted about the Sheldon book* & would really appreciate your sending it here as soon as possible. I’ve been dying to read a few Chapters in particular & should have time after exams –
I expect to be all better soon. Meanwhile, take care of yourself.
xxx
Sivvy
p.s. Delighted about car! Trust grammy to get a good bargain any day! Hope Warren’s happy!
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Sunday 9 January 1955
ALS (postcard), Smith College
sunday night
dear mother . . .
seems I just can’t stop writing to you! but I do enjoy chatting over the latest tidbits of news! It was so nice to get your last letter, especially the phone call – I always feel so “out-of-touch” at the infirmary, even though they are all so dear up there & all know me well. I got out today – much better – still a little shaky, but “dried up” inside. Very fortunately I have no classes till Wednesday – but I do have a lot of appointments at college hall. Called my typist tonight & she said she’s just begun work on my thesis, which is most comforting – also got notes from both Southward & Coonamessett Inns* & plan to schedule interviews there in the late spring (if enough fellowship’s come through, maybe I can afford an interesting job with “spare time!”) An encouraging note came from Fulbright committee today: my application passed National selection & is now in the finals! This is, as they say, no assurance of a grant, but still, a nice bit of news. The wait now is longest – Am. Comm. in England must decide. Wrote 5 poems* at Infirmary under influence of codeine – mostly gay love lyrics or scene descriptions & optimistically (as always) sent them off to NYorker. At least they won’t keep me waiting like the Atlantic! Will keep you posted
xxx
S
TO Gordon Lameyer
Sunday 9 January 1955
TLS in greeting card,*
Indiana University
As you embark upon life’s stormy seas / With gaze fixed firmly on your pilot-star / May fate ne’er send you aught but fairest breeze / Nor wreck your vessel on some treacherous bar
Dear Gordon . . .
Somehow when I found this card I thought immediately of you, and so here it is. I am afraid that this will be about the last missive for two weeks, until my dantean inferno of exams and articles is over, for I just got out of a nasty week in the infirmary today and have twice as much to catch up on, which makes life complicated, as I what I had previously was impossible enough. So I’ll write you an enormous letter now, hoping that by the time you get it, I’ll be through with my monstrous schedule. I’m enclosing, by the way, two shots for John Stamper, which Dee took long long ago. The squibs, as you may guess, are mine. Just couldn’t resist.
Sunday night
January 9, 1955
Dear Gordon . . .
(I might as well begin over again in good style in here . . . always enjoy the chance of saying: “dear Gordon” twice, you know!) Since I have been back, life has been fantastically complex. I can’t believe it was only a week ago that we were down at Joe’s imbibing wine and pizza and rambling on about the world!
Monday was a gift from God. On
ly Nan Hunter and I were back, so I spent the whole day at faculty appointments and January clearance sales. My luck at the latter was phenomenal. May I brag to you? I replenished my whole wardrobe (that was stolen) and did a much better job than I had done in the first place: got a divine charcoal-gray long-sleeved wool dress with subtle brown and green square designs embroidered in it, very thick and rich ($20 off), a full-skirted caramel-colored jumper that can be worn as a dress ($12 off) but which I like best with a black shirt with brown-and-gray stripes (sounds wierd, but is terribly exquisite), a necklace, heavy gold, marked down from $22 to $4, a miraculous white satin blouse, the kind I’ve been looking for for years, with a simple jewel neckline, puffy pushup sleeves, a pink party nylon nightgown that makes me feel I’m going to a prom (you know: I dreamt I went to Guantanamo Bay in my Maidenform nightie!) All in all, darling, I must have saved about fifty dollars, according to my woman’s logic. Now that you think I am clothes crazy, which I am, once or twice a year, I shall proceed to more esoteric things. (If you think I’m bad, you should see my roommate! She got three new coats and suits for Christmas, and God knows, about six new dresses!) Such crass materialism!
Monday I checked over my thesis with Gibian, and except for revising one paragraph in the conclusion (which I thought would be the hardest part!) he said it was ready to go to the typist! I spent a day checking bibliography and re-tying footnotes, and managed to secure one of the secretaries to the President (Wright, not Eisenhower) to type it for about 25¢ per page, including two carbons, so I’m very relieved about that: she’s extremely efficient, and began typing it today.
So, except for the ultimate proof-reading, that is off my mind. The honors committee was all behind my project to take a private course in the Theory and Practice of Poetics (I thought up that title myself: pretty classy, wot?) with Alfred Young Fisher, who is no longer young, but the handsomest elderly man I’ve ever seen, very British, with keen blue eyes, white hair and mustache, and most tweedy clothes. I do hope he propositions me by the end of the year, (but perhaps, after his 3rd wife, he’s wearied of that.) At any rate, our conference this week was most enchanting, and I’m going to be doing a “scholarly monograph” on the rhetoric of an Elizabethan poet and playwright, John Ford, whom Mr. Fisher himself also happens to be working on with some of his graduate students. Someday, he suggested, we may all publish a little study together. La! And I don’t even know what the word rhetoric means in its true sense! This shall be a semester of learning. Also am turning in a “batch” of poems weekly to him, which will be a rather fantastic challenge. Like prospecting for gold: you know the raw nuggets are there, but you have to sift through a hell of a lot of sludge to get at them!
Then bang, the infirmary with the worst sinus infection yet. Thought I’d never get back from my miserable codeine stupor, but here I am, still slightly dazed, but at the typewriter. While at the infirmary, since last Wednesday, all I did was read the Thesaurus and write five poems, which as always are the favorite ones I’ve written, (being the newest!) and which I’ve sent off to the New Yorker, as always, in a splurge of optimism today. They are the most varied forms and tempos I’ve ever done at once, mostly invented. Some slow and pompous, some shallow and dancing, some erotic and lyrical. Naturally the last are my favorites. I am so erotic and lyrical.
While up in the realm of white sheets and nose drops, I had a charming guest sent over by Alfred Kazin: a young assistant editor* at Harcourt, Brace, who was visiting Mr. K. for the day and came over to talk and to say he’d like to be the first to see any novel I come up with in the next year or two (!) A Harvard graduate, winner of a Fulbright to Cambridge. he had a lot of intriguing things to say. Speaking of Fulbrights, darling, I just got word that my application has passed the preliminaries and is in the finals! This obviously means nothing at all, except that I haven’t been ruled out yet and won’t find out till spring what the American officials in England decide. But it is nice to know the dice may still shoot in my favor. I’ll probably be going to Cambridge, Mass., the weekend after my exams if I’m in the finals for the Woodrow Wilson fellowship. Cross your fingers for me!
Here I sit, with that damn German paper to do which I’ve postponed for a month now, a hundred notes to catch up on, interviews for the social life article this week, and I gossip my little head off to you.
Oh well, perhaps you’ll be kept busy reading all this garbled jargon until you come home, what with shells and mock invasions interrupting you all the time.
Do take care, darling, because I want you to come back whole and hearty so we can maybe take off for skiing once or twice before the snow is gone. I do miss you, although my activities are (as ever) so thick and fast I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. Oh, pray for England!
Love to you, angel, be good, and ignore that thriving Gitmo industry! You are a dear guy!
Much love, from your own,
Sylvia
A Souvenir of your visit to exquisite Smith College in the Heart of the Pioneer Valley . . .
Suitable for framing: a must for eager friends and relatives.
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Saturday 15 January 1955*
TLS with envelope on Smith College
Press Board letterhead,
Indiana University
Saturday night
Dear mother . . .
I have just finished washing my hair and performing my thorough weekly ablutions, and so feel most clean, but most prosaic and businesslike. I haven’t stopped “work” since getting back, and yet most of this work is love for me, so it is the medium of my being. I just wanted to write you a note before the deluge of this coming week, when I have two months to catch up in Shakespeare and about one in German before the exams, which both fall on Thursday. I can’t believe that in five days I shall become so intelligent as I will be when I take those exams!
Fortunately, I will have a good week to spree between semesters, and I really feel I deserve it. I may very well come home next Friday afternoon if I have to be interviewed for the finals on Saturday and Sunday at Cambridge for the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship (they still haven’t let me know whether I am to come yet, which is very inconvenient, as all other plans hang on it). Anyway, do tell Warren I hope to have at least one meal with him that weekend if I come. He has to eat anyway, and it shouldn’t take any extra time to say a few words between mouthfuls!
I TURNED MY THESIS IN TODAY! Yes, my typist had it all done, and I was so excited that I cut classes to proof-read it. It is 60 pages of straight writing, with 10 more for notes and bibliography. I had her make 2 carbons, so the total cost was $17.50, a big sum for me, but well worth it, for the professional results! I was so proud, it is an excellent thesis, I know it in my bones, and already two girls have told me that Mr. Gibian thinks it’s something of a masterpiece! I am really pleased with it.
Another note: I hoped I could save it till I was sure one way or the other, but it’s too exciting to keep, so I’ll let you in on it. The JOURNAL rejected my “The Smoky Blue Piano” story,* but with the following wonderful personal letter: “Although your story is not quite right for the Journal, it has some appeal and we want you to know that it is being returned with more than ordinary regret, and of course our thanks. We feel the diary method of narration, certainly for this story, is awkward and makes the telling too limping. If you should ever decide to rewrite it as a straight story, keeping the nice sparkle
it now has, we will be glad to see it again. Congratulations, anyhow, on a good first try.”
Well, usually they say they’d like to see your next story or poem, but this offer to consider a rewrite stimulated me to my typewriter today, and I was amazed at the validity of their criticism! I did the story over in direct form (I knew inside the diary wasn’t right) and the whole thing drew together and incandesced! Naturally I took them up on their offer and sent it back immediately, tonight, after spending a whole day typing the 20 pages. It is the best short story I have ever written of its kind (the kind is the “Initiation” kind, written to meet certain specifications, while being true to my own humor and ideas.) I Know it in my bones, again, and somehow felt that their letter to me would be exactly this, only I never expected them to say they’d consider it again after I rewrote it! I thought, like the New Yorker, they’d just criticize, so I could profit by it, and then sell to Harper’s, or something! But even if they don’t take it rewritten, I know now, in my intuition, that it will Sell somewhere!
You, I am sure, would like it, to show your friends, for it is as funny as anything, very frivolous and light (no profound philosophizing in it anywhere) and all ends happily, with the heroine going to marry the man of her choice in the most magnificent dialogue I’ve ever done, really hysterical. I am so happy about it, and so grateful for their criticism, that I can hardly walk on the ground! Forgive my exulting!