by Sylvia Plath
I must admit that my heart is with the French! The contrast coming back to England was really painful: my compartment of 8 on the day-train up from Nice to Paris Sunday was like a specially selected cross-section of the French race. Lively, talkative, everybody joined in together and the 13 hour trip flew: besides me, there was a charming professor of French literature in high school going home for a funeral (I enjoyed talking to him, and he helped me with my rapidly improving French), two rather non-descript working class parents with an amazingly ugly baby of 4 mos. named Chantelle, with huge fat cheeks, peculiar blue eyes and strangely-shaped body tightly packed into a knitted white suit; a big humorous woman in black, reading “A L’Est D’Eden” by Steinbeck; a simple strong peasant woman with a bag full of bread and cheese and oranges; a fat, soft, effeminate Corsican who made himself the host of the carriage, talked about a little of everything to all; and a witty young apprentice in radiology from Marseilles. Well, there were all kinds of conversations, from “how to relax”, to “what to eat for breakfast”, to “disagreeable Paris landladies”. The baby was slung in an ingenious hammock between the baggage racks and was resurrected periodically to be fed milk, to be dandled and cooed over, to which it responded with stupid smiles and droolings, or wettings, as it chose. The Corsican and the Marseillan taught me how to play Bellotta,* or some such, game of cards, and so I learned the French terms for suits, etc. At the end of the trip, everybody shook hands, wished each other good luck, and smiled all around. I was amazed at how my ear had improved during my stay: I’ve had to deal with all kinds of situations: pharmacies (where I bought marvelous nosedrops), hotels (asking around for cheap rooms), garages (motor bike repairs & renting: even know word for “sparkplug”, because that’s what always goes wrong!) theaters, and everything on the french menu! Everywhere, even the smallest officials have hearts of gold, and will do everything to help. Universally, I felt at home with the exuberant “joie de vivre.” Everybody in Europe thought I was Swedish!
Stayed overnight in Paris, up early to catch the boat train to Dieppe. Seemed so strange to see dampness & snow after orange trees and blue sunny seas! Never have I seen such a rough crossing! The trip was 2 hours longer than the one coming over from Folkestone to Calais, and the sea was an angry ugly green. I stood on the spray splashed deck, unable to go below because of the hot, stagnant, foul air; everywhere people lay about, vomiting in the orange basins placed conveniently every few yards for this purpose. I passed the trip without being sick, but really felt tremendously precarious, and will take dramamine next time. Kept my mind off the sloshing basins at my feet by talking with several very interesting people: an elderly American woman, married 30 years to an Englishman, with sons graduated from Yale and MIT, a Polish man living in Belgium, a British teacher formerly at Cambridge. What I love here is the international atmosphere: every instruction on the French trains is in French, German, English, Italian.
You would have been proud of me on the train to London. I was the unifying force this time, speaking French with a delightful Spaniard from Madrid and a charming young boy from Vietnam, both of whom could speak no English & spoke French with the accents of their own countries, and a convenient Canadian* from the Cambridge ski team (who carried my heavy suitcase all about) who could speak no French. I am going to study French like mad this term, to crystallize verbs & idioms (the hardest). My ear is excellent, and all the French say my pronunciation is perfect. So now I have to work on correct details & the eternal vocab building. Could hardly understand the harsh Cockney of London, the bored, impersonal, dissatisfied faces of the working class, the cold walls between people in train compartments. But Cambridge is selling daffodils and tulips in the snow, and I bought an armful of bananas, apples, grapes, and oranges at market today. Am looking forward to a term of writing & work.
Love to all –
Sivvy
PS. Please thank Dot for $5 & dear Grammy. Aunt Helen* sent $2, Mrs. Prouty $25. Will write them soon – enjoyed Warren’s letter so! Tell him best thing is to live in place long time – I know Paris & Nice for this reason. Loved your descriptions of Xmas – better than Cinerama! Felt there.
TO Richard Sassoon
Wednesday 11 January 1956
TL (excerpt),* Smith College
January 11*
The crossing was terrible. It was fantastically rough and everywhere people lay in insular agony, retching into the bright orange basins which sloshed with curded vomit as the angry green sea smashed against the bow.
Below it was impossible, with stagnant, sweet fetid air and the stench of regurgitated slop, and people lying about groaning. I stayed above, while about 20 little girls, clad exactly alike in camel’s hair coats, argyle socks, plaid kilts and scotch berets with double feathers that made them look like a crew of human turkeys, ran about giggling and vomiting as the fancy took them.
dagenham pipers
TO Richard Sassoon
Sat.–Sun. 14–15 January 1956
TL (excerpt),* Smith College
from letter january 15*
it is saturday night, turning as I write into sunday morning. the dark world balances and tips and already I can feel the dawn coming up under me.
outside it is raining and the black streets are inky with wet and crying with wind. I have just come back from a film: die letzte brücke.*
It was a german-jugoslav film about the war, and the partisans fighting the germans. and the people were real people with dirty shining faces and I loved them. they were simple. they were men and both sides were wrong and both sides were right. they were human beings and they were not grace kelley, but they were beautiful from inside like joan of arc, with that kind of radiance that faith makes, and the kind that love makes.
the kind of radiance too that suddenly comes over you when I look at you dressing or shaving or reading and you are suddenly more than the daily self we must live with and love, that fleeting celestial self which shines out with the whimsical timing of angels.
that confident surge of exuberance in which I wrote you has dwindled as waves do, to the knowledge that makes me cry, just this once: such a minute fraction of this life do we live: so much is sleep, tooth-brushing, waiting for mail, for metamorphosis, for those sudden moments of incandescence: unexpected, but once one knows them, one can live life in the light of their past and the hope of their future.
in my head I know it is too simple to wish for war, for open battle but one cannot help but wish for those situations that make us heroic, living to the hilt of our total resources. our cosmic fights, which I think the end of the world is come, are so many broken shells around our growth.
sunday noon: very stingily blue whipped to white by wind from russian steppes. the mornings are god’s time, and after breakfast for those five hours somehow everything is all right and most things are even possible. the afternoons however slip away faster and faster and night cheats by coming shortly after four. the dark time, the night time is worst now. sleep is like the grave, wormeaten with dreams.
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Monday 16 January 1956
TLS (aerogramme),
Indiana University
monday morning
january 16, 1i56
dearest of mothers . . .
before I forget, right away, could you please possibly send me a large sheet of 3¢ stamps? I will be needing them for my return envelopes when I send manuscripts to the united states, as I just found out. thank you in advance.
now, about the wonderful letter I received from you this morning! aunt hazel certainly is a fairy godmother! her benevolent spirit is operating in the world even now, and I am sure that the magnificent possibilities opening up for you this summer---and the relaxed sense of financial strain---were all in her mind. june 10, by the way, could be an ideal time for you to come to cambridge: it is the day after our classes & academic term ends, and I will be able to live on at whitstead for two more weeks, so you can see my beloved room and have t
ea with me, and I will get you a special place to stay in cambridge, if you tell me how long you want to stay. of course you must let me know exactly when the ship you finally take will dock at southampton, for I want to be there, waving to meet it!
oh, mummy, I am so happy that you are coming there are tears in my eyes! I would love to show you london, too, as I can get around rather well, now, and perhaps together we could take a trip to the parts of england you want most to see, as I have seen nothing but cambridge and london, and have been saving the rest for the summer, which will be fairer to england than any other time! your trip plans make me glow with joy: if warren gets his experiment in living fellowship, all will be perfect: what a cosmopolitan international family we shall become!
do remember not to change any of your $$$ into pounds, for I can do this for you at the international rate (with no service charge!) and I am always in need of dollars, because the english have very limiting (almost impossible) rules about the money you can take out in cash (only 10 pounds!) and I am slowly saving $$$ for the long 3 month summer. I was very lucky to spend nothing but my fulbright funds in my 3 weeks in france, thanks to john lythgoe’s eagerness to work a confidential exchange: all the other fulbright people have enough american money to travel on, but I really feel justified in living abroad on their funds, because I couldn’t do it any other way, and they certainly want us to go abroad (it is just that the money is in pounds). so don’t tell anyone: but I will be most happy to exchange as many pounds as you need. I hope I can also do something like the lythgoe-exchange for the 3 weeks in spring.
now, blessedly, my fears of traveling are gone, vanished completely: I was so scared, really, when I started out: it is one thing to dream a panorama of international travel, and another to be faced with limited time & money and practical problems of choice & selectivity. I must say you will love europe: it is all so small, so intimate, every inch of it cultivated and exquisite: not like those long wastes of super-highway in america. here, a big car is a liability. gradually, naturally, my plans for spring emerge: I think I will devote it to italy: venice, florence, milan and rome. I would much rather live in one country for my brief 3-week vacation, and know it well, from the heart (which is the way I feel about france, even though I haven’t spent any time in the chateau country). it is amazing how plans take shape. this summer is a large question mark, but if warren is in germany, I would like to settle at least a week or so in his town, & see him as much as possible, too. also want very much to see spain and greece. we shall see. dear elly friedman writes she is coming in summer, so perhaps we can go together a bit: 2 is so much cheaper than 1.
felt extremely moved and homesick when I saw a magnificent german-jugoslav movie “die letzte brücke” sat. night: understood more of the german than I thought, missed warren and you terribly: while being temperamentally a good deal more french & southern, I instinctively love german as my “mother & father” tongue and cursed myself for dropping it over the summer and this last busy term. I want so much to pick it up again and go on reading: it is the daily process of a little reading that keeps a language alive, not monumental future projects: I do want to live in german-speaking countries this summer, too, with books & study it: the ideal way: speaking, reading, going to plays, & being surrounded with german.
here: I found it both home, and hard, coming back to the atrocious food, the damp cold, & the unsimpatico people (compared to the loving french, who are kindred spirits): you ask about girl friends: well, the english girls are impossible: intellectually brilliant in their own fields of zoology or math, but emotionally & socially like nervous, fluttery adolescent teen-agers (probably a result of being kept apart from boys in school all during adolescence). jane baltzell, a beautiful blonde marshall scholar, is as close to a “best” friend as I have (she is in english & writing too, in whitstead), but she goes around with a scotch girl most of the time & there is somehow a subtle sense of rivalry between us. I do miss my dear sue weller: close girl friends are difficult here because of the intensely individual & concentrated nature of our separate studies, but I do like jane very much. am beginning to write slowly, painfully: just finished 2 8-page reportorial essays, one on cambridge, one on paris & nice, from which stories will grow (the vence matisse cathedral one has several possibilities as article, story & essay): have detailed maps of london, paris, nice, & can verify details on them. but I can live on the golden fat of these past rich three months like a bear hibernating through the russian winter & write now.
Love –
sivvy
TO J. Mallory Wober
Monday 16 January 1956*
ALS (picture postcard),
Cambridge University
[A-19] SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST. By DONATELLO (c. 1386–1466). Mellon Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Whitstead
4 Barton Road
Cambridge
Dear Mallory . . .
Loved luminous ‘big ben’. Saw “die letzte brücke” at the arts cinema last night & was deeply moved – even to tears & a certain home-sickness. missed you to share it with – magnificent film. also an amusing russian short on a story by chekov – “illegitimate child” – excellent.
With fond greetings –
sylvia
PS – Would be delighted to join you for lunch Wednesday —
Both Sylvia and I welcome you back to Cambridge.
sincerely,
John the Baptist
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Tuesday 17 January 1956
TLS (aerogramme),
Indiana University
tuesday afternoon, jan. 17
dearest mother . . .
just a practical postscript to my last letter. I’ve been heckling lloyd’s bank in cambridge about my checks ($25 from mrs. prouty and $100 from lyric) and they maintain that in order to get them cleared and converted into dollar traveler’s checks (which is what I want) they have to be converted into pounds sterling first, thus meaning my losing on the exchange, having to “buy back” the dollars, and other ridiculous things. I’ve asked and asked in my plodding logical way, but they keep saying “we want your dollars” in a most avaricious fashion.
hence, thence, wherefore and so I wonder if I sent the signed checks to you, registered mail, if you could cash them (I don’t want to hang on to them any longer, for fear “lyric” may go bankrupt before I get the precious money) and somehow make them available to me in traveler’s checks at the american express, 6 haymarket, london, or even deposit the money in my bank account and bring it over when you come in june. I am trying to save every dollar for the summer, so I most likely won’t need the money till june. do write as soon as you find about the best angle for this. since there is no hurry about the money, and I want to conserve every penny I can.
perhaps I could write a letter to my bank giving you jurisdiction to take out my money & bring some over with you? it is so awkward here, with the restrictions on my fulbright pounds which makes foreign exchange morally illegal and the absurd avariciousness of the english currency system which will do anything for dollars. I now have $75 in cash and these $125 checks. do let me know whether to send them to you for deposit. also, I should like to get $50 at least off to dr. beuscher. I must not forget that.
I so appreciated your morale building last letter: I read it over and over. with the long winter term ahead, and the ghastly food and cold, it is easy to get discouraged, especially since if I read solidly for 100 years I would still be nowhere near approaching the ever-expanding reading list. perhaps I have told you that I’ve given up the ADC for the rest of the year: a stoic but very wise gesture, I feel I would have considered more regretfully, if I had a chance at large parts, but I just don’t have the time, or desire, to work up, although I must say the people I met there are the sweetest, most creative I’ve run across in cambridge: I simply love
d our producer, and dan massey, & robin chapman and will of course miss not being in that devoted elite, which seems to be a center of vital people.
however, I found myself feeling rather desperate during “bartholomew fair”, at having no inner life to speak of. “muteness is sickness” for me, as richard wilbur* says, and I felt a growing horror at my inarticulateness; each day of not-writing made me feel more scared. fortunately, I have, two years ago, been through The Worst, and have the reassurance that if I work slowly and wait, something will happen. in spite of my occasional spells of resentment at my own blindness and limitation, (I would really like to get something in the new yorker before I die, I do so admire that particular, polished, rich brilliant style) I go slowly on, with little flashes of delight for example, at the sliver of new moon this week, outside my window, the sudden gentler blue air today, the sight of a red-cheeked blonde baby: little things. but as sassoon says so rightly: “the important thing is to love this world; if a man has loved so much as a grapefruit, and found it beautiful, god will save him.” the hardest thing, I think, is to live richly in the present, without letting it be tainted & spoiled out of fear for the future or regret for a badly-managed past.
this term, then, I plan to devote to reading for my supervisions and writing at least two hours every day, no matter what, no matter how bad it comes out. I am starting with these reported descriptions of people & places, trying for precise details, and today did the outline for a version of the matisse cathedral story which I am going to try in new yorker style first, then perhaps Ladies’ home journal style, and then as a feature article. I want to “lay in” reading and introspection this term, and feel that my health should improve with good hours, plenty of fruit & biking, and a developing spiritual calm, which comes as soon as I am writing and sending things out. I would smother if I didn’t write. I honestly feel that if I work every day, in a few years I will have begun publishing again. writing sharpens life; life enriches writing. ironically enough, I write best when I am happy, because I then have that saving sense of objectivity which is humor, and artistic perspective. when I am sad, it becomes a one-dimensional diary. so a full rich life is essential.