by Sylvia Plath
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Sunday 25 September 1955
TLS (aerogramme),
Indiana University
(continued)
Dear mother . . .
To go on . . . once I begin it is almost impossible to stop, as memories keep crowding into my head. The saddest reception was the one for English Lit. students, as I had no way of knowing the illustrious men who were there as guests until afterward (the hostessing was atrocious, and none of us had any idea of the nature of the visitors . . . they all looked very much like respectable professors). I only met David Daiches,* who will be lecturing at Cambridge and is a well-know critic. Imagine my chagrin when I found out that Stephen Spender* (the poet), John Lehmann* (Brilliant head of BBC and editor of the London Magazine, a literary review) and C. P Snow* himself (!) had been in the crowd! It was terribly frustrating not to have been introduced to them, but I swallowed my anger at the inefficiency of the hostess and determined to meet them after I’d begun writing at Cambridge. It might be better that way, anyhow. Even T. S. Eliot had been invited, but couldn’t make it at the last minute.
The last reception was given by the American Ambassador* at the Embassy in Regent’s Park, formerly Barbara Hutton’s palace.* Never have I seen such a palace! We had cocktails and hors d’ouevres on the wide marble steps overlooking one of those enormous rolling green lawns that must have been growing at least a hundred years! Such elegance. It has rained a good deal here, and I carry an umbrella as part of my costume. My gray coat is ideal, dressy enough for evening, very warm, and of course my suit is perfect (several people have commented on it). I have never lived in so many places for such a long time (the Moores, the Smiths, the ship, Bedford, YWca, and next Cambridge), and I feel more and more capable. The money is fun, and I am getting used to it fast. I’ve walked for absolutely miles, looking and looking: Picadilly Circus recalls Times Square with all the neons; the statue of Eros and the fountain in the center is a landmark now. Trafalgar Square at night is awe-inspiring, with the national Gallery lit up, the exquisite church, St. Martin’s in the Fields, and the lighted fountains and flowerbeds and regiments of pigeons. The theater is very early here (7:30) and out by 10:30, so London is really all in bed long before midnight, it seems.
Oh, mother, every alleyway is crowded with tradition, antiquity, and I can feel a peace, reserve, lack of hurry here which has centuries behind it. After every theater performance everyone stands at attention while they play “God Save the Queen” and I am already beginning to feel strong stirrings of loyalty. Statues are everywhere, and I had a picnic yesterday with Carl (we bought meat pies and cheese pies at a miraculous delicatessen near Hyde Park) and ate under the statue of Roosevelt.
One of Sue’s little boys* (all very thin and tubercular-looking) brought me in an ancient car from Bedord with my cases yesterday and is taking me to the National Gallery this afternoon. The days are generally gray, with a misty light, and landscapes are green-leaved in silver mist, like Constables paintings.
The ship was wonderful, made more so by Carl, who had tea with me and long bull sessions on deck. Weather was half-and-half, but I took no pills, danced every night in the midst of great tilts and rocks, and communed with the sea, by sun, rain and stars. Hot broth on deck every morning, afternoon tea (after one cold rainy day in London, I became an addict), roast beef cold for breakfast, an hysterically funny cockney waiter, and sun and sky. Now I know I’ll never get seasick, although the others were taking dramamine by the pail.
Best of all: my first land was France! We docked at Cherbourg, and Carl and I went ashore for the most enchanting afternoon of my life. I can see why the French produce painters: all was pink and turquoise, quaint and warm with life. Bicycles everywhere, workers really drinking wine, precocious children, tiny individual shops, outdoor cafes, gray filigree churches. I felt I’d come home. We wandered in a park full of rare green trees, fountains, flowers and hundreds of children feeding goldfish and rolling hoops. Babies everywhere. I even got up courage and stammered out a bit of French to several vibrant, humorous old ladies on a bench, and fell in love with all the children. My first vacation, and I shall fly to France! Such warmth and love of life. Such color and idiosyncrasy. Everything is small and beautiful and individual. What a joy to be away from eightlane highways and mass markets to where streets are made for bicycles and young lovers, with flowers on the handlebars and around the traffic lights!
It was good to get your letter. I do feel so cut off from home, especially since I am not* at my final address yet. But if I am happy now, at the most disoriented stage of my journey, I imagine once I put down roots at Cambridge, there will be no end to joy. Do write, and I shall piece by piece, write all my thankyou notes. Will write from Cambridge. Much love to you, Warrie and the grandparents.
Sivvy
TO Gordon Lameyer
Tuesday 27 September 1955
ALS (picture postcard),
Indiana University
BRITISH MUSEUM. OA 21. HEAD OF AMIDA BUDDHA. Wood; formerly painted. Japanese: late 12th century. ht. 38½ inches.
Whitstead, 4 Barton Road, Cambridge
Sept. 27,
Dearest Gordon . . .
am now living in London cultivating buddha’s calm directly opposite Ionic columns of Br. Museum which I see as I walk daily. You’d love it here – have seen 5 plays this week* – best “Waiting for Godot” – an intriguing symbolic tragicomedy by Samuel Beckett – James Joyce’s secretary! the bookstalls at Charing Cross (especially Foyle’s*) are more seductive each day. have walked miles – queen’s park – london bridge (not yet fallen) – picadilly circus with statue of eros as in the center of a navel. No Osmond yet but then I’m still in Garden Court.* Will write in detail from Cambridge. Meanwhile, write!
Much love,
Sylvia
TO Elinor Friedman Klein
Wednesday 28 September 1955*
ALS (picture postcard),
Smith College
BRITISH MUSEUM Page from The Codex Zouche-Nuttal a Pre-Columbian Mixtec pictographic manuscript from Mexico, painted on deer skin. The scene probably represents the creation of the Mixtec people.
Whitstead, 4 Barton Road
Cambridge, England
Dearest Elly . . .
GREETINGS from London!
Have been living by your great card & bending elbows madly. London is great – all theater (5 plays in a week I’ve seen) art (from Nat. Gallery to sidewalk chalk artists) and bookstalls. Have walked miles through green queen’s parks, historic streets, discovered sin & shashlik in Soho and had a tragic shipboard romance with a young Jewish nuclear physicist – turned out he’d been married just 8 weeks ago – but we discovered France together – there the men know how to look at one – I take off for Paris my 1st vacation – will write more from Cambridge –
Love,
Sylvia
P.S These mad Mexicans reminded me of you. People from Tangier are called Tangerines.
Love,
Hercule Poirot*
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Sunday 2 October 1955
TLS (aerogramme),
Indiana University
Sunday afternoon, Oct. 2,
Dearest mother . . .
By now I hope my two-installment letter of last week has caught up with you. I am most heartily sorry if you were at all worried, but life was coming at me so fast that I had no sense of time elapsing at all. Before I left London, I sent off a slew of postcards to all the people who had been most dear: Crocketts, Cantors, Freemans, Prouty, et. al. Amazing what dreams do to fill up absences: I’ve dreamt of you and Warren every night since I’ve been away; sometimes the two of you are very wicked, conspiring to get rid of me forever. Which I suppose i
s an indirect way of saying that basically I miss you both.
I don’t know how I can begin to tell you what it is like here in Cambridge! It is the most beautiful spot in the world, I think, and from my window in Whitstead on the third floor I can see out into the Whitstead garden to trees where large black rooks (ravens) fly over quaint red tiled rooftops with their chimney pots. My room is one of three on the 3rd floor, and while it is at present bare of pictures and needs a bit of decorating, I love it dearly. The roof slants in an atticish way, and I have a gas fireplace which demands a shilling each time I want to warm up the room (wonderful for drying my washed hair by, which I did last night) and a gas ring on the hearth where I can warm up water for tea or coffee. I shall draw you a little map so you can see the layout. My books overflow everywhere and give me the feeling of color and being home (spent all morning carrying loads of them up the staircase). I want to buy a low coffee table if I can find one to bring the room together a bit and give more surface space.
Small, but capable of warmth and color after I buy a tea-set and a few prints* for the bare walls. I love the window-sofa: just big enough for two to sit on, or for one (me) to curl up in and read with a fine view of tree-tops.
Breakfasts are in Whitstead, in a lovely old-fashioned dining room with dark paneling looking out on the garden. We are given a hunk of butter once a week (!) but of course can supplement by buying margerine downtown. I get a small bottle of milk a day (it costs a bit extra but is worth it) which I can use for tea, coffee, or just drinking and plan to put a store of jam, cheese, and crackers in my tea cupboard. We eat lunch and dinner at Clough Hall (one of the four at Newnham) and I have been ravenous each time, so the food doesn’t bother me, although it has an amazing amount of starch all at once; two kinds of potatoes, cauliflower, yorkshire pudding, pie and custard sauce, for example accompanied a small piece of roast beef for lunch. Breakfasts have the advantage of being made for only the 12 of us, and this morning I had cornflakes, a fried egg, two pieces of toast and marmalade and coffee, so shall not starve.
Most of the girls are not here yet, so Whitstead is very quiet this afternoon. The few girls here have all gone off to tea and reunions with various friends.
Yesterday was most hectic. I left London and managed to get on the train early in the morning, where a very nice elderly man in my compartment (guessing that I was reading for English at Cambridge probably by my suitcase labels and poetry book in hand) talked to me most of the way up, as he had read English there many years ago under the famed I. A. Richards. He ended up by saying he and his wife* in London would be happy to see me for a few days around Christmas time if I found myself homeless. Which was a pleasant introduction to English hospitality. (His name was of French Huguenot origin, which perhaps accounts for his generosity).
Our dear Scottish housekeeper, Mrs. Milne,* met me at the door and showed me to my room, giving me much helpful advice on the way. After lunch a nice South African girl from Capetown* (they’re all white and very civilized . . . 4 South Africans in Whitstead*) took me with a boyfriend of hers* who gave us a walking tour of Cambridge. I can’t describe how lovely it is: I walked through countless green college courts where the lawns are elegantly groomed (not a stray grassblade anywhere), formal gardens, King’s chapel with the lace-like ceiling and intricate stained glass windows, the bridge of sighs, the backs, where countless punts, canoes and scows were pushing up and down the narrow River Cam, and the shops on the narrowest streets imagineable where bikes and motorcycles tangled with the little cars. Best fun of all was the open marketplace in the square where fresh fruit, flowers, vegetables, books, clothes and antiques are sold side by side in open air stalls. Then tea with the two south africans, and supper at 7:15 in Clough Hall.
(continued in next letter)
Love,
sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Sunday 2 October 1955
TLS (aerogramme),
Indiana University
Opus 2
Dearest mother . . .
Hello again. It was so nice to receive your letters. Until I get oriented here, with my lectures and daily routine of life which involves growing friendships, I shall no doubt be feeling a bit strange and lonely. Naturally I miss the constants I had at home: the intuitive understanding of custom, the feeling of warm, deep friendships, the assurance of academic creativity. Here all is to begin again, and probably will be a bit slow and creaky at first due to the very lack of restraints and organization which will make it possible for me eventually to have a rich private social and intellectual life. No official “big sisters” come up to one here, but a pleasant American girl at Whitstead, Elizabeth Kimber,* kindly treated me to tea in the garden this morning, and informed me about miscellaneous items before going off with her last year’s friends.
Probably I shall meet with Miss Burton,* my academic adviser, some time tomorrow to discuss my program: everything here is so lackadaisical and de-centralized that it will be a relief to have some definite commitments. After I get my academic schedule underway, I want to begin writing again (I always have to digest experience first, before re-forming it) and join a few clubs: to find out about politics, and religion and see if I can dig up a French tutor. I feel that after I put down roots here, I shall be happier than ever before, since a kind of golden promise hovers in the air along the Cam and in the quaint crooked streets: I must make my own Cambridge, and I feel that once I start thinking and studying again (although I’ll probably be a novice compared to the specialized students here) my inner life will grow rich enough to nourish and sustain me.
I was glad to leave the American group in London, and discovered the bohemian section of Chelsea with an old beau of Sue Weller’s* in my last days. Had rum and cold meat sandwiches in a fascinating Dickensian pub called “The Doves” at night in a court overlooking the dark, low-tide Thames,* where in the moonlight, pale swans floated in sluggish streams that laced the mudflats. It was a mystical evening. Also drank great foamy mugs of hot chocolate (really chocolate) in an avant garde coffee house* where I ate the best spaghetti in the world amid white stucco walls, black corduroy booths, and gay pink and blue and yellow chairs and tables in a little court. Also saw the “King and I” at the Drury Lane theater, and afterwards walked up Bow Street and stared in delight at the wholesale fruit and flower and vegetable markets and trucks.
Here I received a surprise visit from Dick Wertz, Sassoon’s old roommate and Nancy Hunter’s former alter ego: he’s here to study theology. Also ran into the boy from Columbia* (who competed in the Glascock contest last spring) at the train station. Not to mention the news that Mike Lotz is studying medecine at Oxford! Seems everyone I knew is stationed somewhere in Britain. As far as I’m concerned, I want to start meeting British men. We’ll see.
I appreciate your considerate news about the multitude of rejection slips and will be glad to get back the poems so I can reassemble them and try to get leads on the British Lit. magazines. Can’t wait till I get established and can really start writing again. I feel this spring should be most fruitful. An acceptance now, of course, would be most kind to my morale. I’ve been living, acting and being so much lately that it will be pleasant to grow contemplative and gestate again, “recollecting in tranquillity.”
I am so happy to hear the lovely news about Warren: the linguistics and math combination. I miss him very much, and only hope that I may show both of you a Cambridge which I have made mine come next summer. In a sense, you and I are generally faced with similar problems: meeting challenges for which we are as yet a bit limited. It is easy to get impatient at t
he beginning, especially if we have a vision of ambitions and achievements which will, of course, take time to attain. I do hope that gradually work will become less taxing for you. I’m very proud about the driving, and am eager to hear whenever you try for your license. Glad you had such a nice time at Mrs. Lameyer’s. I was so sorry to hear about Aunt Hazel, and, even at this far remove, felt a sense of loss.
Can’t wait to get shoes, as they’ll be of use as warm winter slippers with stockings. You were very clever to wear them. If you ever send any clothes, just wash them first, and send them rough-dried only. Naturally, while I know it is a bother to wrap, I would welcome any cookies (oatmeal or molasses) to remind me of home. I shall probably sound quite homesick these first few weeks; I always enjoy giving love, and it is slightly painful to have it shut up in one until deep friendships develop with fruitful reciprocal confidences involved. Do bear with me. It really helps to write you and will be nice to establish a regular correspondence where we answer each other instead of talking in a sort of vacuum. I have to begin life on all fronts at once again, as I did two years ago, but I have all that experience behind me, and so I’m sure everything will be for the best. Remember I love you very very much, and give my dearest love to my favorite brother and the grandparents.
Your own loving,
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Wednesday 5 October 1955
TLS (aerogramme),
Indiana University
Wednesday morning,
October 5
Dearest mother . . .
It is a clear (!) blue morning, and I am sitting in my room by an early gas fire (to take off the damp chill of the night) and warming my fingers by typing. Thought I’d follow up my rather tristful Sunday letter with news of the cheerful days following. Honestly, I love it here. I spent most of the time yesterday and the day before downtown, going in and out of the shops, browsing, and pricing things. The open market place is heaven: such color, flowers, fruit, vegetables, all in little stalls from nearby farms. The bookstores have some good art prints and frame pictures most inexpensively, so I am shopping around for a couple to brighten up my walls. I ordered a lovely long oblong coffee table yesterday for (4 guineas, roughly $12) in light natural oak which will hold plants, magazines and tea things and really draw the room together.