The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 1
Page 110
To class and everywhere after dark we wear our black university gowns, and although it was rather a nuisance at first, I must admit I feel rather proud of the battered old thing now, and enjoy seeing the gowns flap out bat-like as cyclists spin past. I have a total of about 15 hours of lectures, supervisions and tutoring a week, all except one hour* are in the morning, (a 6 day week) and I find the prospects of reading exceedingly exciting. One hour a week I’ll be tutored in French by a research student, so I can catch up and eventually read for my exam paper; I need French immediately, because I have about 8 plays by Corneille* and Racine to read and write a paper on in the next two weeks (!) At present, this seems rather impossible, but my supervisor (Miss Burton) whom I saw yesterday, is very kind, and I’m sure it will work out somehow. It is almost better to be forced intensely into something you want to do, anyway! In toto, I have 12 hours of class lecture (stressing tragedy, but with moralists and critical theory too, and 17th cen. poetry just for fun), 1 hour of “practical criticism” (where we write it), 1 hour of French tutoring; and 1 hour of “supervision” in tragedy which I share with a vivacious Indian girl & calling for 1 long paper every two weeks.
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Friday 14 October 1955*
TLS (aerogramme),
Indiana University
Friday afternoon: later
Dearest mother . . .
Hello again! Now that I’ve told you the grimmer side of the week, let me tell you the lovely part. To begin with, I went with some of the girls at Newnham to a Labour Party Dance Monday night. It reminded me a little of the old dancing school days, but once I got out on the floor, I didn’t lack for partners. In particular, one tall, rather handsome dark-haired chap named Mallory Wober, caught my interest. He is a Londoner, and has lived 9 years in India (where his father is an executive of some sort), is reading for Natural Sciences, and seems extremely versatile, with a nice kind of humor, which I enjoyed. I think he “goes with” another girl here, but he invited me to tea with her and another boy Thursday (sufficient reason to make me recover and leap out of the Newnham hospital) in his “digs.” It is the habit here, I gather, to write notes of invitation (which he did) and for the girls to go to the boys’ place for tea or coffee, as the case may be. Seeing young men make tea is still a source of silent mirth to me!
Anyhow, Mallory has his own piano in his rooms, and evidently is a brilliant pianist (he had Scarlatti’s Sonatas out, and the Brandenburg Concerto, and much else that made me regret my own lack of musical knowledge and understanding). The other girl, Elizabeth somebody, was British and had just come in from “beagling” (hunting animals with beagles, I think) and was the kind of fair-skinned, rather hysterical and breathless type of English girl I’ve met so far. I must say, I am happy living in Whitstead where the girls are mature and well-rounded: I love this vital South African girl, Margaret Roberts, and the lovely blonde Marshall scholar, Jane Baltzell,* from Rhode Island, who is reading English with me.
The other boy, Adam someone, was a nice, tall skinny fellow, reading for medecine, and he said afterwards that he liked the way I was “fresh and outspoken” and promised to invite me to tea soon. I have resigned myself to meeting as many people as I can this first term, and being selective only when I have a large range to choose from. The prospect of so many “first meetings” is a bit tiring, but not too bad; I do long to get to know some few men really well, though. This, evidently, only comes with much time. So I am sailing with the wind; doing as the Romans do.
Best news of all is the next. I decided to go out systematically for several activities I was interested in, so that I would have a chance to meet people socially this way. Well, I made a mental list: theater groups, newspaper, political clubs, and decided to try from the top. I had my audition (with about 100 other people at least) for the A.D.C. (Amateur Dramatic Club) here, which is the top of the several acting groups here and is the only one to have its own theater (where all the student productions are played out). I was scared to death, as we all sat in the theater together, and I watched about 20 people have auditions before me, which was a bit gruelling. Also, I still had the ends of my sinus cold and felt a bit giddy. Well, once I got up there on stage, the natural ham in me came out, and so I did a bit of Rosalind in “As You Like It”* (we could choose from 10 set Shakespearean pieces) and the part of Camille in Tennessee William’s play “Camino Real.”* I also made a few remarks in between, describing a stage set which made them all have a seige of laughter, and this was most gratifying. Anyhow, I had no idea how I did, but one nice, ugly little boy came up to me later on the street and told me admiringly what a wonderful voice I had, that it filled the whole auditorium! Such joy!
The pleasant upshot of all this is that I am one of the 9 girls to become a member of the Amateur Dramatic Club this term. This coming Saturday night, we are putting on 3 one-act plays* in a “nursery” production to which influential people will be invited to see the “new talent” A.D.C. offers. All of the new members have part in a play; mine happens to be, not the feminine lead, but a rather dramatic character part in a farce by Pope about cuckoldry (!) in which I play a verbose niece* who has high-flown and very funny ambitions to write plays and poetry. I come in about four times and have a short part (as do most of the players), so it is just enough to be stimulating, and not too much. All this next week, of course, we rehearse afternoon and night! This will no doubt be the most hectic time, and then, heaven knows what will happen. There are a few attractive chaps in the group (multitudes more men, of course, than women) and one* took me out to sherry last night to celebrate both of us getting in. The dues are high (5 pounds a year), but amply worth it to me. The audition was the hardest, and now I hope to have fun! I am much happier concentrating on one thing I am intensely interested in, like amateur acting, than being a flittering dilettante and belonging to countless little clubs. I really am quite elated that I should have the chance to concentrate on my “first choice.” Now I can freely refuse the myriad little invitations to join petty clubs of “overseas students”, “liberals,” “christians”, etc. Well, I just had to spill over my little triumph. Cross your fingers for me. I think I’ll have a really good time in this Dramatic Club. Am going to see its production of Webster’s “White Devil”* with Jane Baltzell tonight.
Best love to all, your loving daughter,
Katherine Cornell*
P.S. Your letters are a constant joy! (They really capture the “spirit of home”. I love hearing news about everyone, and the “little things” count most!
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Tuesday 18 October 1955
TLS (aerogramme),
Indiana University
tuesday afternoon
october 18
dearest licensed mother!!!
I am so proud of you that I just had to sit down in the mist of the hectic lovliness of this week and write you my congratulations! I really feel ours is growing to be a kind of “renaissance family”! it seems it is never too late for any of us to learn anything, and we can help each other to expand and grow, which, in many cases, certainly takes courage; overcoming the first inertia is the worst of any undertaking. I am SO HAPPY YOU HAVE YOUR LICENSE! give warren my admiration, too, for he has been a superb teacher.
as for me, today, I think has been the “happiest” yet, just in the joyous, exuberant way I feel. now that the cold is completely gone, and the weather clear and sunny (!) though absolutely frigid, I am in a marvelous mood. I feel as if I had planted a tree in new soil, and were watching a few blossoms open slowly, lovely things, but, best of all, promising the most delectable fruit to come in the maturing sun! such wild metaphors! it is probably the influence of my absurdly verbose appearances in our coming one-act play!
instead of being snowed by the enormous amount of work and reading I must do to gain the full benefit of my academic life here, I am
sturdily doing a little at a time and feeling most happy. after I get through this initial tangle of having to read 8 french plays without being able to read french, and come into english tragedy, life should smooth out a bit. as it is; I met my french tutor* today for the first time and liked her very much: she is a bright young woman, fresh from three years in paris, and she lives nearby. to begin with, I am going to read “le cid” and do the exact translation of a long speech in it to learn the french classical style, and then I shall probably begin stendahl’s “le rouge et le noire” and continue to read modern works side by side with the older ones. after the pressure of the first month is over, I hope to start speaking french in class!
I have been going to lectures and enjoying them immensely and am quite loving wearing my black gown, which makes me feel so wonderfully a part of this magnificent place. sort of like sacramental robes! best of all, my dear, adorable play director gave me the ultimate laurel today by saying my performance was “excruciatingly funny” and doubling up with laughter. I was so happy, because the part of this mad poetess, phoebe clinkett, is rather absurd farce, and depends in a kind of double entendre slanting of words and gestures which I tried today, having just learned my part, 15 flighty, rather verbose speeches (I have 4 appearances in toto in the whole thing). our performance is saturday night, and we are the last of the 3 “nursery plays” to be put on. I just hope that I can audition for some of the larger productions after this. my voice is the main thing in my favor . . . I have, of course, never moved about on stage except in the ancient “admirable crichton”,* and I feel most audacious in just braving my way about. I ate lunch at the theater today and felt so much a “member.” Imagine, we can just order lunch or tea between rehearsals and have our term bill presented with our term dues: so much nicer than eating out downtown, and very sensible, so we don’t skip meals while rehearsing. this theater is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year and is completely student-run. I feel so lucky to be a member of this particular one!
the nicest thing about this A.D.C. is the particular group I’ve been assigned to work with on this play. as I said, the guy directing is simply a darling and hasn’t lost his temper once, but makes us all want to do what we can with it and is marvelously creative in his interpretations. the two other girls in it are very pretty and petite and sweet, and the boys are extremely nice and friendly, none of this bohemian affectation at all (which, I admit is indulged in to the hilt by other members I’ve seen around). I went out to coffee with anthony smith,* a very handsome chap with a full blond moustache (!) and had a good talk after rehearsal last night. last saturday, the lovely vital south african girl, margaret roberts, gave our house a sherry party and invited all the men she knew to meet us. one of them, a tall, skinny, rather sweet chap,* came over yesterday and took me on an exquisite walk to granchester for tea.
I can’t describe how beautiful it was to go down the little cobbled streets in the pink twilight with the mists rising from the willows along the river and white horses and black cows grazing in the pastures. remember rupert brooke’s poem?* well, we had tea by a roaring fire at “the orchard” (where they serve tea under flowering trees in spring) and the “clock was set at ten of three”* and there was the most delectable dark clover honey and scones! had a lovely tea sunday with the brother of a handsome graduate* I met at the fulbright reception in london, and enjoyed this business of at least several men to each girl. several fellows have told me how they liked my audition, and I met a vivid oldish woman, camille prior,* who played the important rôle of cornelia in the “white devil” which I saw last week. she seemed to like me, and may ask me to tea after this hectic week of rehearsals is over. wish me luck saturday! I’ll write after the holocaust.
much love to all,
your happy
sivvy
TO Gordon Lameyer
Tuesday 18 October 1955
TLS (aerogramme),
Indiana University
tuesday afternoon
october 18
dearest gordon . . .
it was so wonderful to get your long letter, rich as a plumcake with news! atlantic city sounds like quite a festival, and your work most stimulating, in spite of the mechanics of routine which beset us all in various ways.
where to begin? first, very simply, with my passionate love for cambridge! honestly, gordon, it is the dearest city in the world, with quaint cobbled streets, chimneypots and rooks flying above them, every inch of ground planted with brilliant green grass or flowers, and the unbelievable wedding cake architecture of king’s chapel, the enchanting bridge of sighs, the tudor courtyard of queens! I went punting a few days after arrival up the most narrow (about the width of linden street!) cam, where weeping willows mourned over the “backs”, and ducks and fluid white swans bobbed for apples that had dropped from overhanging fruit trees. I live in a wonderful house for ten graduate students (american, british, south african and scottish) with a dear room on the top floor, a window-seat couch overlooking gardens and treetops, a gas fire and gas ring for making tea, and all my books and handcrafts I’ve bought plus a modern coffee table, my one large purchase. here, I feel, is the place to create. it is quiet, enchanting, with all the opportunity of the richest of private lives. we can have men in our rooms till 10 at night, and are perfectly free to stay out every night till midnight, since we are all “older, and therefore more mature,” what heaven to avoid completely the large, bare, institutionalized mass living of the dormitories! my bike is my most prized possession, and I have at last become used to cars going on the “wrong side” of the street and learned my way about town after having managed to ride the wrong way down every one way street there is! we have “open market” every day; that is, a whole open air square full of tented stalls full of fruit and flowers and books and antiques. the bookstores themselves are heaven and I have already racked up a rather plump bill. after my first sinus cold last week, I have become acquainted at one fell swoop with the byways of socialized medecine. the hard way. they persuaded me to try our college “hospital” here, and I went obediently, thinking with relief of the smith college routine of penicillin and cocaine. here it was aspirin therapy, total neglect, and pasty white meals (potato, fish, bread, custard and dough). when I asked for kleenex, the nurse offered to tear up an old sheet; probably a winding sheet. well, after satisfying myself with a fair appraisal, I leapt out of bed and ran downtown to see my doctor on whose panel I’d registered (you see him free, but there’s an enormous waiting line). he was a dear and promised to xray my head if I wasn’t better in a week. evidently the national health service is fine for the very well or the very ill. If you don’t run temperatures (but sink to dangerous low subnormal levels as I do,) no doctor will come to see you. so I picked up my bed and walked out to a play audition. improved rapidly thereafter.
which brings me to the loveliest news. in a burst of audacity, I decided to try out for the top dramatic club here (Amateur Dramatic Club) which is the only one of the many theater groups to have its own theater, lunch, tea, bar and social club. in fear and trembling I listened to about 20 people try out before the auditorium full of anonymous, faceless judges. then I went up on stage in a state of rigor mortis and read a sarcastic speech on true love by rosalind in “as you like it” and, for contrast, the part of the aging camille (my cough and difficulty in breathing was a help here) in tennessee williams’ wonderful “camino real.” before doing the latter, I pattered on briefly describing the stage set which drew huge bursts of laughter from the anonymous judges, giving me a feeling of great power. damn, it’s such hellish fun to make people laugh. anyhow, I got IN, and, with all the other novices, have a part in the “nursery” productions to be given this saturday night before an invited audience of formally dressed celebrities from the other theater clubs who want to look over “new talent.” perhaps because of the laughter, I have an absurd character part as a mad young poetess in a one-act 18th century farce where the double entendres are fantas
tically ribald. in the play, fortunately, I am supposed to be flighty, verbose, metaphorical and rather insane, and innocently go around “conceiving” poems and begging young men to “father my productions” on the stage. all in utter innocence mind you. wonderful fun, and our director is a darling if there ever was one; hasn’t lost his temper once! after this debauch, I hope to audition for more serious parts. wish me luck, angel!