by Sylvia Plath
There is Nathaniel LaMar, a warm, friendly Negro boy from Harvard who knew Warren at Exeter & who had his first story “Creole Love Song” published in the Atlantic last year. We get along very well, having the same interest in writing & living abroad, & he is getting me a cheap place to stay in Paris and offering to be a sort of protector-escort in those places women can’t visit safely alone.
Then there is, strictly on a very platonic basis, a nice, shy Botany student named John Lythgoe, who has a dear, vivacious grandmother, Lady Tansley (of the scientific Tansleys) in Granchester who had me to tea, scones & honey; we got along so well that I’m invited to a family wedding in Granchester this saturday and for a stay at the Lythgoe’s home in London. John’s mother is doing scientific research in color vision, and his sisters are both studying music; it should be fun to see the “inside” of an English home & get a personally conducted view of London again.
My favorite man is a tall, handsome, raven-haired, red-cheeked Jewish boy named Mallory Wober. I must tell you about him. He looks like a young Hercules, or like the “giants in the earth” in the days of the Old Testament prophets, and is as strong and peaceful as the Rock of Gibraltar with an astounding originality and sensitivity. (Very healthy comparison with the pale, delicately beautiful Englishmen, who would probably fracture if touched without extraordinary care).
The tragedy of Mallory is that he is only 19! (Born on Warren’s birthday, by coincidence). It is impossible for me to believe this, because in his philosophy of life, his actual daily living, and his maturity and balanced perspective he is older by far than all the “older” men I have known! When I was in a sort of delirium with the flu, he carried an organ over here to my room which he played on during the long feverish afternoons: Bach, Beethoven, Scarlatti: new worlds of music opening up under his fingertips. He was always there: strong, reassuring & comforting, through my weakest, most depressed hours. When I was strong enough, I cooked a steak he had brought on my one gas jet & managed to throw together a candle-light dinner for two with salad, fruit compote, red wine, cheese & crackers.
We have been together almost constantly of late: not running off on gala sprees, but leading a healthy, sharing day-to-day existence: reading aloud, going punting, biking to see the “Glass Menagerie”, or “The Country Girl”* with Grace Kelley, studying, eating at our favorite restaurant, the “Taj Mahal” where Mallory orders Indian food in Hindustani (he lived for nine years in Darjeeling) & we eat mangoes.
Last Sunday we went to the advent service at the famous King’s Chapel (his college), where I really had a mystic experience, seeing the myriads of candles throwing flickering lacy shadows on the walls and ceilings of exquisite fan-vaulting, hearing the clear, crystal voices of the choir boys singing 15th century carols, & remembering, as I sang the triumphant “Adeste Fideles” the countless happy Christmasses at home with my family, caroling with friends, & sharing gifts. This year, I will be in Paris, hanging tinsel on the Eiffel Tower perhaps. I am, especially at this time, seized with flashes of keen nostalgia and longing, although, of course, happy with my new friends.
I am going to visit Mallory’s family in London this weekend, too: all the relatives are gathering about to meet this “Christian girl”, for evidently they are generally tabu in these closely knit Jewish societies, and so I shall really be up for examination. It is so sad Mallory isn’t chronologically older: he is in every other way such a magnificent person: both in mind, spirit & body, vital, growing & strong & so dependable, which I really need in a man.
I didn’t realize how much I had been longing to talk to you until I actually began! Again, I have decided that I would like to combine writing (which I hope to be doing in my long vacation, & especially this summer) of simple short stories about people I know and problems I have met in life with a home & children. I love cooking and “homemaking” a great deal, and am neither destined to be a scholar (only vividly interested in books, not research, as they stimulate my thoughts about people and life) nor a career girl, and I really begin to think I might grow to be quite a good mother, and that I would learn such an enormous lot by extending my experience of life this way!
Perhaps the hardest thing I have to accept in life is “not being perfect” in any way, but only striving in several directions for expression: in living (with people and in the world), and writing, both of which activities paradoxically limit and enrich each other. Gone is the simple college cycle of winning prizes, and here is the more complex, less clear-cut arena of life, where there is no single definite aim, but a complex degree of aims, with no prizes to tell you you’ve done well. Only the sudden flashes of joy that come when you commune deeply with another person, or see a particularly golden mist at sunrise, or recognize on paper a crystal expression of a thought that you never expected to write down.
The constant struggle in mature life, I think, is to accept the necessity of tragedy and conflict, and not to try to escape to some falsely simple solution which does not include these more somber complexities. Sometimes, I wonder if I am strong enough to meet this challenge, and I sincerely hope I will grow to be responsible not only for myself, but for those I love most. These thoughts are some of the intangibles I’ve been working out here, in the midst of the outer active, stimulating life. One doesn’t get prizes for this increasing awareness, which sometimes comes with an intensity indistinguishable from pain.
I wanted to share my inmost thoughts with you as well as the bright texture of my active days. Do you know how very much I think of you: how I remember our wonderful long discussions over tea and sherry in your living room (which has become a second home to me) and at the Brookline Country Club that lovely evening last summer!*
Christmas has always been for me the time of reunion with those dearest people one carries in one’s heart through the separation and work of the year. At this time, I want you to know that in spirit I am very close to you, loving you dearly, more than words can tell.
Mother is looking so forward to playgoing with you! I know that your friendship is most cherished by her. Aren’t you proud of her getting her license! I feel so happy about her expanding life, and hope very much to share some of it with her this summer.
I’ll be writing again after the holidays. Meanwhile, my very best love to you . . . .
your loving
Sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Wednesday 14 December 1955
TLS (aerogramme),
Indiana University
wednesday evening
december 14
dearest mother . . .
I feel about as exhausted verbally as a literary santa claus! I have just got through the most colossal job of writing my christmas letters: a huge project involving sending long letters with christmas cards to about 20 people and cards with short messages to about 10 more. I made an effort to choose special art cards (like the one I sent you) and witty line drawings (like Warren’s) to suit the individuals, and each time I wrote a letter, I took out the last letter from them, read it, thought about them, and about my sharing of life with them, and wrote a really particularly personal letter to them all: including, to name only a few: mr. crockett, the cantors, mary ellen chase, all three freemans, the lameyers, patsy, mrs. prouty, marty & mike, alison smith, sue weller, elly friedman, mr. fisher & mr. kazin! I also sent little art postcards to about 5 neighbors, just to show I was thinking of them. the one letter remaining is dr. beuscher’s, which, since I haven’t written her before, will be especially long and full. just thought I’d tell you, so you’d know these people would be hearing from me! I simply can’t maintain a continuous correspondence with anyone but you during term, and will probably write them all once a term. I want to plan to write on my own for a good two hours a day this term, no matter what, and really can’t throw forth all my creative verbal energy on a project like this more than two or three times a year. spent about $15 on the air mail stamps and art postcards! but it was more than worth it. I re
ally felt I was communicating in a deep sense with all those I wrote to, and let them know it.
I am making out my re-application for a fulbright this week, and feel sorry that it will be judged completely on what I have done this term, as I just feel my head above water now, and my roots taking firm grip. all this term has been “living”, experiencing life widely so I can select a disciplined program for the rest of this year without that tantalizing distracting sense of the “untried.” I am giving up the ADC for writing regularly a few hours a day, cutting my class schedule so I can do more reading & meditating, and narrowing my social life down to mallory and one or two good friends. but I had to try everything to be able to choose with such sureness: “you can never know enough without knowing more than enough,”* as blake says: “the road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”*
I am really sure the fulbright won’t be renewed and so am writing smith to see if it would be possible to re-apply for the fellowship I was offered last year. by certain subtle illegal money-changing among friends, I will probably be able to live and travel abroad in these two long winter & spring vacations, but lord knows what about the 3 month summer. my one hope is that in my writing later this vac (I’m coming back here 10 days early before term) and during next term something salable may turn up. but I am rather pessimistic about it. with the return of my borestone mountain ms., all my pigeons are home to roost. gone are the days where I got prizes for everything. this mature market-competition demands constant writing, so instead of waiting for a whole bulk of time, which I come to rusty and paralytic, I am going to do an hour or two every day, like czerny exercises on the piano. I want to get enough written so I can have several things out and get rid of this sense of a financial deadend: even intangible hope is a better state!
I must remember, too that I owe good Dr. Beuscher at least $50. I will try to trace her old friend and buy something for her little son when I come back, after Paris.
Speaking of Paris, I shall be flying there on next Tuesday, December 20th, and the surest mailing adress will be: c/o American Express 11 Rue Scribe, Paris V. Until Thursday, jan.5, when I return to England, perhaps to stay with Mallory’s family in London a day or two before going back to Cambridge.
So Ruthie is expecting a baby? That is lovely. I was also very happy to hear about Dick Norton and Joanne Colburn:* they should be very happy, but I must admit I thought Dick would never settle for someone so quiet and delicate. He has fortunately changed from the old days when he was so arrogantly demanding of health, so critical of looks. I still feel Perry has by far the best combination of all this in vital, intelligent, beautiful Shirley. Perhaps we will run into the Nortons in Europe. Do tell me, by the way, what time roughly you plan to come over next summer! I look so forward to showing you Cambridge.
These two weeks have ended up by being mostly for rest, business affairs, and Christmas shopping & letters. I think they will stand me in good stead in the three weeks to come. Saturday is the wedding, and I leave with John Lythgoe right afterwards for London, where we will go to plays & look at the Christmas windows. I opened one present in my stocking every night before bed, and could practically put each thing immediately in my Paris suitcase: so thoughtful! I must admit that it is fortunate I shall be “having a whirl” in London & Paris with John, Nat & Sassoon, & Mallory, for it will take my mind off feeling sorry for myself at missing you so! I really feel it at this time.
My dearest love to all . . .
Sivvy
p.s. reveled in your magnificent description of grampy’s DAY.
PS: overjoyed by your account of grampy’s Day. have read it over & over again. just regretfully finished the last of grammy’s wonderful cookies. such a lovely package that was! every present was wrapped like an objet d’art!
Got lovely pre-Paris pageboy trim here for only 50¢!
TO Jon K. Rosenthal
Wednesday 14 December 1955
TLS in greeting card (photocopy),*
Smith College
With all Good Wishes / for Christmas / and the Coming Year
sylvia / → / (see inside)
December 14th, 1955
Dear Jon . . .
It was so great to get your letter and all the news. I haven’t stopped running, like Alice trying to keep in the same place, since I boarded the Queen in NYC. At present, I wisely decided to stop, recheck batteries for two weeks after our term ended, and store up sleep and contemplation for a while before venturing to Paris. Because that’s where I’m spending Christmas. I can’t believe it yet, but that’s what the ticket says. It says that.
To begin to sum up life here is like trying to put a camel caravan through the proverbial needle. First, Cambridge is the most divine town to live in: a daily open market with booths of flowers, tropical fruit from the colonies in midwinter, vegetables, antiques, old books; the lazy narrow river Cam up which we punt, under the Bridge of Sighs, the spires of King’s Chapel, Newton’s Bridge, weeping willows, through flurries of white swans; wedding-cake architecture; green velvet lawns; the unique feeling of centuries and centuries of history and tradition everywhere; narrow cobbled streets, ancient black cabs, two story red busses; tea drunk by work men even, leaden pastry & custard sauce; my room in a tremendous house for 12 grad students, a kind of attic studio with my favorite art reproductions, a gas fire that eats up shillings like mad, a single gas ring on which I have managed to create a steak dinner complete with sherry, hors d’oeuvres, salad, etc. in rebellion versus English cooking. All this, and classes too.
The three terms are short, made mainly for classes & “living”; vacs are very long, made for sustained reading as well as travel. I have been mainly living. Theater everywhere: joined Amateur Dramat Club and have been in two plays, including Ben Johnson’s hilarious “Bartholomew Fair”, the ADC centenary production which ran 9 nights & was reviewed by London Times. Great experience. Dan Massey, Raymond Massey’s son, was hero. “Amateur” here means as close to pro as you can get. Foreign films, surrealist films, concerts: the hardest thing is to choose, to limit, to discipline.
Am giving up theater to read & write more next semester. As for travel, I feel so much like you do about it. When everything was hypothetical & very distant in the States, I could dream with great confidence. Now I feel like a starving woman facing a smorgasbord of delicacies with the terrible problem of choice! You have to begin somewhere, so I’m starting with Paris and leaving some days open the first five days in January. I have varying & passionate desires to go to Spain, Italy & Greece. Also, this summer, want to use that map to Africa. How to choose? It’s really more frustrating that I ever thought possible: I want both to “see the world” and to live for long enough in each place to really be simpatico, to be permeated with the atmosphere; yet how can I decide where I’d like to stay best if I haven’t seen a lot? I’d love to know what you’ve decided to do, & my address in Paris from Dec. 20 on, for at least a week or 10 days, will be simply: c/o American Express, 11 Rue Scribe, Paris V. Write me there if you get any inspirations. Hope I’ll have learned to speak French by that time!
I also have great longings, after this damp, gray, English atmosphere, to find the sun on the Med. Having no money to speak of, this is a problem, & I am seriously thinking of trying to find a patron in Paris. Spent 10 days in London, by the way, & really like it: went to a play every night, very very cheap; 50 good theaters, small, intimate. Walked miles from avant garde cafe espresso houses in Chelsea to international dives in Soho, from Trafalgar Square, with its dolphin fountains* & squadrons of pigeons to Picadilly Circus & the fountain of Eros; it’s a great, impressive place, with lots of exquisite parks, swans, flowers (on every corner, fruit carts, barrel organs, & chalk artists) and countless public monuments. But I look to Paris for that intense emotional rapport which I simply don’t feel for the delicately boned frosty-eyed, terribly proper English. My best friends here are Jewish or negro. FLASH:
just got your very appropriate & witty card: if you want a cook, girl friday & news correspondent & part-time driver to scandinavia or turkey in april, let me know!
Do write me in Paris!
Love,
Syl
TO Marcia B. Stern
c. Wednesday 14 December 1955
TLS in greeting card,* Smith College
With all Good Wishes / for Christmas / and the Coming Year from
and much love / Sylvia / ↓ / (see inside)
Dear Marty & Mike . . .
A Merry Christmas to YOU! It was so great to get your newsy letter: I now know how our fighting armed forces must have appreciated the smallest details about people and affairs at home! The new job, Marty, sounds at last really worthy of you: what a tremendous double-perspective you must have on Cambridge life: pink Brooks Bros. shirts versus tattered diapers! I like to visualize you in that apartment, which appeals to me natively from color & texture to content.
How to begin? I am now sitting in my room by a whistling gas fire (which scalds the side nearest it & leaves the other as cold as the back of the moon) looking out over my Cambridge vista of bare, mottled sycamore trees, orange-tile rooftops with chimneypots around which hover enormous back rooks (or ravens, if you like Edgar Allen Poe) which have an unquieting habit of eyeing one with more than casual intensity: I am sure they eat small children after dark! I’ve had a tremendous time decorating this kind of attic-studio room: two tall bookcases spilling over with all the old & new volumes (bought on my lush book-allowance: for once I can afford art books!), the indispensable black-and-white earthenware & enamel teaset from Holland, piles of fresh fruit from the daily open market in the center of town, great bouquets of Van-Gogh-type yellow chrysanthemums, vivid postcard reprints of Picasso from Nat. Galleries from NYC to London; candles in wine bottles, and a gas ring on which I have produced a steak dinner complete with salad, wine, in sherry-soaked fruit compote. It’s like having an apartment of my own, & I love having “salons” at tea and dinners for two.