The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 1
Page 119
By now I am used to biking at least ten miles a day, to and from town& classes; to seeing my breath come out in frosty white puffs while taking a bath; to the college diet of cold mashed potatoes & ubiquitous yellow custard; to men making tea; to muddy coffee; to butter that keeps hard as a rock in my room for weeks. And I love it all.
Honestly, this is the loveliest town in the world. The sleepy little river Cam (about as wide as Linnean Street) winds through the “Backs” of the colleges, under weeping willows & apple trees & gothic spires of King’s Chapel, afloat with white swans. I have been punted up the river to Rupert Brooke’s Granchester for tea, scones, & Cambridgeshire honey, where the clock is always set at 10 to three, and tea is served in the apple orchard in the spring. I’ve eaten at avant garde Cafe Expresso houses where inter-national crowds congregate: Indians, Arabs, Negroes, South Africans, plus a crew of Scandinavian girls who come to study English; learned to like mango chutney, bindhi gusht, prawn pelavi at the Indian “Taj Mahal”; the main problem with life here is to choose between the fantastic fanatically demanding activities: there are clubs for everything from puppetry to piloting, communists to heretics, wine tasters to beaglers! Indifference is the cardinal sin.
The short terms (3 of 8 weeks) are mostly for “living” & classes, the long vacations for reading, thinking . . . and traveling. I’ve spent most of my energy “adapting” to the texture of life here, choosing between greater of goods with much difficulty. I joined the powerful Amateur Dramatic Society here (the only one of the many Cambridge acting groups with its own theater) after an audition and have taken part in two plays so far, the most exciting being: Ben Jonson’s hilarious “Bartholomew Fair”, the A.D.C. centenary production which ran for 9 nights & was reviewed in the London Times! There’s always theater here, and the amateur is as demanding and professional as can be: one Cambridge actor signed a contract for the lead in Samuel Beckett’s lovely, controversial, symbolic play in London, “Waiting for Godot,” which they thought would flop. Now he cant come back! (Beckett, by the way, was James Joyce’s secretary, which perhaps accounts for some of his tragi-comic ambiguity).
O Marty, just seeing, hearing, & being alive in the town is a dream. You would love the open market, full of fresh fruits from the colonies (apples, pineapples, figs & dates in midwinter), fresh flowers, vegetables from neighboring farms, antiques, parakeets, old book bargains, everything! There are foreign films, avant garde surrealist films, debates. Even the Queen & Duke came to visit us at Newnham, and I stood within a few feet of the handsome wise-cracking Duke, while the Queen radiated quietly. Even though it was pouring rain, every person in Cambridge turned out to cheer the Royal procession. We stand at attention to “God Save the Queen” at the end of movies, dances & plays (once I made the fatal mistake of thinking it was a new dance!) & I must say, I am beginning to feel loyal!
I am getting to know some magnificent people: there’s friendly, vital Nathaniel LaMar (whose story “Creole Love Song” was in the Atlantic) the negro writer who knew Warren at Harvard & Exeter. He’s getting me a place to stay on the Left Bank in Paris over Christmas, & is good for simple, frank, “American talk.” My favorite man is a tall, raven-haired, scarlet-cheeked Jewish boy from Darjeeling, India, who has introduced me to the world of music: carried an organ to my room, & now I have afternoons of Bach, Beethoven, Scarlatti, even “Greensleeves.” His name is Mallory Wober, and he looks exactly the way I always imagined Dmitri Karamazov would. Will visit his family in London (he is, unbelievably, only 19, but much older than the “older” men I know in every way.) Sort of an Old Testament Hercules. You should see!
Have heard much about dear Peter Davison via others: evidently as Alceste in Wilbur’s translation of the “Misanthrope”* he was fine. All the friends he had me look up in London were, alas, homosexuals. And his sister* was quite mad. I felt most disgustingly normal.
London (10 days) was a heaven of plays (very cheap, with tea in interval on little trays), bookstalls outdoors, large flurries of pigeons around the rainbow fountains and spouting dolphins in Trafalgar Square. Regal parks, most international & wicked Soho: will pay return visit this week on way to Paris, which I still can’t believe will come true. I’ll be hanging tinsel & colored baubles on the Eiffel Tower.
Do write; I so long to see you again. Meanwhile, much, much love to you.
From the Other Cambridge: and your wandering
Syl
TO J. Mallory Wober
Thursday 15 December 1955*
TLS with envelope,
Cambridge University
Thursday evening
5: 45 p.m.
ITEM: I like your third thoughts. My room now is looking more and more like a picture gallery (rogue’s gallery?) or a kind of photographic shrine. I like it this way; sometimes I can hardly believe you really look these ways. The photographs constantly reassure me: yes, they affirm silently, it is possible.
FLASH: although Golder’s Green Tube Station is not on my map of central London, I shall continue to act on faith and be there at 3 o’clock Sunday. I can’t believe it will happen: my being in London again; you being there too. But, as I say, I shall act on faith.
I just finished my last Christmas letter: 13 pages. I am amazed that I can still form words. I wrote 20 long letters, and 10 short messages. I never realized quite so intensely what wonderful people I have known: relatives, professors, writers, vital girls & philanthropists who have adopted me: each time I wrote a letter, I chose either a special art-reproduction card or witty pen & ink drawing (those we saw at the crafts shop) chosen particularly for that person, re-read their letters, reminisced about the past life we’d shared, and really “talked” to them: never did one person’s descriptions of Cambridge have so many personal, different slants! I now feel a pleasant sense of communication with those back home: like, metaphorically, sending slices of my self by air mail in Christmas wrappings. It is, Confucius says, the thought that counts.
Please let me tell you a few things: re beard: I would not mind in the least if your face was clean-shaven when I meet you in London! I happen to think you look fine either way. I just also happened to enjoy the rugged, prophetic, appearance your beard gave you, which surprised me, as generally I dislike beards on men: they usually hide a weak chin or pallid complexion or something unpleasant. Yours is the first beard I have actively admired, because it outlines the strength of your bone structure & color. So there. Do what you wish with it. I shall be perfectly happy either way.
Also: realize that for once and for all, it is the essential you that matters most to me: and whether you stop carrying up organs, writing letters, or whatever, I still will feel this way. In other words, my feelings don’t depend on the external manifestations of your personality, although I naturally find them most pleasant. It is that inner strength and potential and sensitivity which is impossible to completely express in words, that intangible “self” of yours which I am drawn to admire. So be true to your highest self, and I will be happy, because that is what I want you to be, even if it means eventual growing away from me in the unforseeable future.
Now I will stop, because when I philosophize, you sometimes think I am lecturing, which I am not really. It just sounds that way. I am really only trying to talk to you and with you to try to share the ways I feel and think.
Most of my time here has been spent in writing letters, reading a little Strindberg (you were right), talking with Dick Wertz (the boy who rode beside our organ caravan) over two long teatimes, because he needed someone to listen about this girl at home he is in love with. (English majors never get their prepositions in the right place!) and doing last minute errands. I am evidently eager for vacation: my suitcase has been packed for a whole day already, although I don’t leave till late Saturday afternoon. (I will probably just make “Salad Days”* by the way, without time for supper!) It will be frustrating to see so little of London, especially so little of you. I’d love to browse in Charing Cross, watch th
e pigeons & dolphin fountains in Trafalgar Square, window-shop on Christmas-lighted Regent Street, see “La Strada”* at the Curzon, and on and on!
But no. By the way, if you and your mother are really serious about having me stay over-night sometime, how about right when I return from Paris on the evening of the 6th? It would be so wonderful to look forward to meeting you in London & spending a couple of days with you before heading back to the stoic life at Cambridge. That would be the best part of my whole vacation!
I have decided to write for at least two hours every day this next term, starting by returning 10 days before to get in the habit before classes begin: like practicing finger exercises: describing events, people, scenes: keeping the typewriter hot, instead of waiting for the perfect time to write a whole story at one fell swoop: the perfect time never comes, & if it does, you’re paralysed from lack of practice. This will take the place of the A.D.C.
I also want to work (i.e. write thoughtful papers & read widely) more this term, so when I am refused my Fulbright renewal, I will at least have the bittersweet conviction that they are making a grave mistake! I think you will find me much more bearable when I am producing fruitfully in writing & academically. It will be hard at first, as is all discipline (the dreams of ideal perfection are so much more entrancing than the imperfect compromises with reality!) but I should flower with the spring!
Please send me anything you write; or feel like writing about your thoughts. It doesn’t matter a whit if anything is “merely mediocre or honestly bad”: the importance is if you had fun & enjoyed the process of writing it. It’s like climbing a mountain: even if you don’t make the peaks all the time, it’s the process that is the important, exhilarating thing.
Know that I am thinking of you. Don’t let the mere chance or frequency of letters cause you to doubt for a minute that wherever I am, you are very much in the center of my heart . . . .
with my love,
sylvia
TO J. Mallory Wober
c. Sunday 18 December 1955*
TLS, Cambridge University
FRAGILE!
HANDLE WITH EXTREME CARE!
CAUTION!
BREAKABLE!
“One little pig went to the market,
one little pig stayed home,
one little pig had roast beef,
and one little pig had none . . . ”
THIS little pig seems to have had his cake and eaten it too . . . his specially favorite fruit is pears and this is written all over him. His chief ambition in life is to Stand Among the Illustrious Company on Mallory’s Mantel. He also wishes to be quoted saying: “Love and Merry Christmas to J. Mallory Wober.”
from Piglet, Esq.
TO J. Mallory Wober
Monday 19 December 1955*
ALS in greeting card* with
envelope, Cambridge University`
Dear Mallory . . .
A copy of my favorite Old King,* who bears somehow, – because of a certain strength, a magnificent black beard, and vivid, stained-glass colors a distant resemblance to my favorite young King: to say how many other private snapshots I carry away, wrapped in cellophane of frost and spangled with Regent Street stars: pink and violet anemones in a gold basket; hymns on a mellow, versatile organ; paintings around the color wheel – calm green hills, red-brown groves of trees, blue of sea, sky & ships; malt bread for tea in violet-sprigged cups; orange japanese lanterns vivid, warm, witty aunts; wonderful supper on gay checked plates; then, dream-walk through mist, underground, – to lights, carols, hot roasted chestnuts, conversational Bobby, surrealist mushrooms in Trafalgar Square, top-story of red bus – all this is Christmas-wrapped in my heart and will be with me in Paris to sustain me till the New Year which will really begin when I am with you again . . .
Love from your own –
sylvia
sylvia
From: Somewhere above English Channel
Altitude: unknown
TO J. Mallory Wober
Friday 23 December 1955*
ALS (picture postcard),
Cambridge University
6331. Joan MIRÓ. Femmes, oiseau au clair de lune (1949). 81 x 65. Women, and bird in the moonlight. Frauen, vogel im mondschein. Donne, Uccello al chiaro di luna. Mujeres, pájaro al claro de luna. Collection Galerie Maeght.
Friday
Dear Mallory . . .
Love & greetings from me & Miro’s gay, floating people who look the way Paris makes me feel – after 3 days like a comedy of errors involving jolting across the channel in ferry & being locked out of my hotel room the 1st night by a thoughtless roommate* & having to sleep on the floor with some strange loquacious Swiss. Am just beginning to feel very happy: so far! The Louvre, lovely stained glass chapel of Ste. Chappelle,* from Marché aux fleurs* – drinks from cognac to citron pressé at hundreds of cafés – am stammering French, loving people & buildings – now settled in blue velvet room* on brink of Seine – will write more later –
much love
– sylvia
TO J. Mallory Wober
Thursday 29 December 1955
TLS with envelope,
Cambridge University
Thursday night
December 29th
Dearest Mallory . . .
It is a wet, rainy night in Paris, and if I pull back the dark=blue velvet curtains of my hotel room window I can look down and see red, green, yellow & pink colored lights of the foreign restaurants below, reflecting in the puddled streets. I can see through the lighted windows across the way: negroes, chinese, french faces, eating, drinking, talking. My street is never quiet: all through the night voices talk under my balcony window, taxis screech past, drunks shout and bang their heads against the pavement. It is a conglomerate oriental quarter, on the corner of the left bank between the Boul’ Mich and the Boulevard St. Germain, about a five minute walk from the Ile de la Cité in the middle of the Seine, and Notre Dame cathedral. Everywhere I walk I pass little avant garde art stores, wine & oyster shops, sidewalk booths which offer every thing from roasted chestnuts to gambling lotteries to shooting galleries. It is one enormous cosmic circus.
I went to the American Express for the first time yesterday (you have no idea how difficult it is to find practical places like that & like post offices in a strange city) and found, among about 15 christmas cards, four letters from you. Somehow I felt very frustrated, because your letters made me want to tell you so many things, face to face, immediately, and I feel so far away from everything and everybody now: time has no meaning any more, because all here is so new and strange and terrible and wonderful all at once: it is like the combination of heaven and hell in one colossal surrealistic dream and I have lost all sense of clock time or calendar dates: please, try to understand this!
In the first place, let’s talk about you. I loved your robin and fish, which I opened the first night I arrived in Paris and which gave me no end of comfort and delight: especially the robin, who is artistically all one could ask, and most cheering! I also loved your poem-ballad about London, especially the last verse with the wonderful images of light & shining London town. Now, let me scold you a little: I hope this letter arrives in time for you to know right away that I am only too happy that you are seeing Bernice and I hope you see a lot of her and that I have a chance to meet her when I come. I think it is very wrong of you to feel that any sentiments you have for me should rigidly cancel out all former feeling and make that continuing tenderness “tabu”. Please remember that it is you and not I who is apparently attempting to stifle normal feelings for Bernice: for I feel that you should accept the challenge of seeing her, with your increased maturity and see what happens. There is nothing that makes a girl appreciate the true worth of a man more than if she thinks there is another girl in the picture, and I would be only too happy to be of service to you in this situation. I beg you to see Bernice often,
to enjoy her, to feel perfectly right and not at all guilty in doing so. And don’t think I say this because I want you to stop seeing me or being fond of me or something like that, because it is not true. I love and admire you and want you to grow to be the strong, powerful, vital man I feel has awakened in you even now: this is because I truly love you beyond the pettiness of any personal jealousies or desires to limit you, like a horse in blinders, to looking soley at me! Love is not narrow and confining: it wants to grow, even at the expense of personal loss or sorrow. And that is what I want for you. If it means Bernice, I shall be very happy for you.
I ask you to understand what I say to you now, and to realize that my rather weird life in Paris has cut me off from my customary methods of regular writing and living. Today, for example, I got up and had breakfast at 5 in the afternoon, because I didn’t get to sleep till the small hours this morning, and now that it is approaching theater time I am thinking of having lunch. So, in addition, I have whole new worlds to absorb, and am constantly fighting to understand Parisian French which is almost impossible as they speak fantastically fast. Thus I shall reserve all detailed explaining till I see you next, which, I hope (barring plane crashes) will be a week from tomorrow (Friday!) at the Victoria Coach Station, about 6:15 p.m. in the evening, at the Skyways terminal (ask where that is: it’s around a sort of bus terminal, & Skyways is an airline). I sincerely hope that I will have better luck coming home than I did coming over! If there is blizzard weather here, or strikes, which might delay me, I shall telegraph you Friday morning, the 6th. Cross your fingers for me.