The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 1

by Sylvia Plath

  Academically, I have at last left the antique grotesque Victorian dons at Newnham and found a brilliant, attractive young woman whom I can admire as a whole person, not just a dry ticking brain (a problem with women dons here, not so much the men). I am taking philosophy with her, this year and next, and we get so intense and impassioned about Plato that she fits in extra hours in the week for our discussions; poetically & philosophically, she is for me what my dear psychiatrist Dr. Beuscher was personally & psychologically: a brilliant, lovely woman whom I can admire as mentor & friend both mentally & personally (the way our professors all were at Smith).

  Mary Ellen Chase, by the way, has arrived with dear Miss Duckett, who has been asked to give a series of lectures here this next winter; such a pair! In spite of a long illness this winter, Miss Chase is hardy & spare & humorous as ever. I invited the two of them for tea to which I also asked Jane Baltzell, a lovely blonde American studying English on a Marshall grant, and Isabel Murray, a charming Aberdden girl studying Celtic language & lit. Well, Miss Chase and Miss Duckett had us rolling on the floor with laughter at their tales, like an expert comedy team. I do so love them both. It was so heavenly to get all the recent news of the Smith English faculty and life back home.

  I’ve been specially happy this term getting my fingers back into printer’s ink: perhaps mother told you of this fabulous jaunt to London with 3 other Varsity reporters to a big champagne, vodka and caviar blast at the Claridge Hotel for Bulganin and Khrushchev at which I rubbed elbows with Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, myriads of mayors, and was ultimately able to shake hands with Bulganin himself & talk with many fine, friendly Russian officers & businessmen, toasting American-Russian relations cola!*

  Best news of all, and very new & secret, which I can’t resist sharing with you, is that next June I’ll be bringing home a brilliant, rugged Yorkshire poet by the name of Ted Hughes for what we plan to be a Wellesley wedding in late June; we’ve had such a time struggling out our plans for the next year (I met him most uniquely this February just after he’d given up his job as reader for a London movie studio and was preparing to leave immediately for Australia. & is now teaching in Europe instead next year.), that we can hardly believe next June will ever come! I am hoping to introduce him to mother and Warren this summer, and, if all goes well, would love you to consider being “en attendance” at what I hope will be a small, intimate festival of friends and relations some Saturday in late June. With your having shared so much of our life and hard times, I’d be so happy if you’d participate in this joyous celebration!

  I fell in love with Ted’s poems before I met him, at a very bohemian party given for a new literary review. He is big, athletic (a discus-thrower, archer, plowman, etc.) with a voice that out-roars Dylan Thomas, knows all Shakespeare & Donne & Blake & Yeats & all my favorite writers by heart (most Un-British, half Irish, half French, with a dash of Spanish); can draw magnificently, witches & animals, portraits; can tell fairytales, ghost stories, legends about Irish heroes till the birds are struck dumb on the trees; has one pair of dungarees to his name, is utterly penniless, honest, dear and brilliant. We’ll earn bread & butter by teaching English in all the countries in Europe, living simply on next-to-nothing, learning languages & living with the people & writing and writing, which is the main love for both of us. Oh, Pat, I simply can’t wait till you meet him! Do say you’ll think, even if it’s all very tentative about dates, etc., of being in a wedding next June 1957. I know it’s a year off, but it would be so perfect to have you standing by!

  Do write . . . much much love,

  syl

  TO Aurelia Schober Plath

  Monday 28 May 1956

  TLS (aerogramme),

  Indiana University

  Monday morning

  May 28th

  Dearest mother . . .

  It was so lovely to get your letter today telling of the “Bon Voyage” party and Mrs. Prouty’s garden party and all. I’m also very happy that Betty had such nice things to say about my dear Ted, because the two of us had such a fine time showing them about that we hoped it was all reciprocal; Ted wants them to have some seat of honor at our wedding because they’re really the first of my close friends he’s met. I do love that whole Aldrich family so much. Imagine, yesterday I started even making out lists of people to invite! I so long to share some of these plans with you and have your help; it is so difficult for me here without anybody knowing how I feel and no girl confidante to talk to. Sometimes I think I will just explode with plans and anticipation: there are so many families and neighbors and handsome, talented young couples I want to invite. Not really many, but a good number: people like Mrs. Prouty, Mary Ellen Chase (if she’s home), and Dr. Beuscher etc. And all the Aldriches, McGowans, Cruikshanks & Gary’s.* I want there to be a very good reason for everybody asked, so it’s a small tight group of people who really know what this means to me; sort of an apocryphal dedication to a tough, honest, creative life full of love and giving to the world of books and babies.

  I have, recently, more or less cut down on our travel plans in England, and, I hope you will agree, for the best. With the few days left for the Wales trip, all became rushed and crowded, and I don’t know about you, but I’m getting old, and like to just rest and drink in scenery in languid peace. So I cut out the Wales trip, giving us 4 days and 3 nights in London; I’ve left the first night perfectly free, as I thought you’d be maybe a bit tired, and anyway, I selfishly just want to talk to you over a long, leisurely dinner. Thursday I’ve reserved seats for a new Anouilh play “Waltz of the Toreadors”,* and Friday I thought I’d go over the entertainment page with you to pick something you fancied; of course the days will be full with parks and Thames and Trafalgar Square, etc. Saturday we leave for Cambridge, where I’ve reserved you rooms at the Garden House Hotel, where Mary Ellen Chase is staying now, so you may be sure it’s the finest; I’ve signed up for bed & breakfast, but would enjoy coming over to take several other meals there with you; had lovely dinner there with M. E. Chase and two couples:* British father, American mother, of sweet young American girl who had followed family pattern & married a young British doctor. Charming company, most auspicious for my own international marriage!

  Then I’ve just planned us to stay in Cambridge from Saturday the 16th to Thursday the 21st, on which I want to leave for London early, meet Elly Friedman, take her out with us and leave for Paris the next day, 22nd. I thought you’d love to stay in Cambridge, punt up the river, go to evensong at King’s chapel, to a play or so perhaps, depending what’s on, and to read and talk leisurely with me at Whitstead where I’ll even cook a sample dinner for you on my one gas-ring. I figured you’d probably welcome four or five days to learn about currency, French phrases (I have a phrase book I’ll give you) and to plot out details on your trip with such a seasoned traveler as your daughter. I also do hope Ted will join us for as much of our trip as possible, for I’d like you to get to know him well. He is the dearest, sweetest man alive, and when I walk down the streets beside him, I feel if the whole sky caved in in a blast of thunder & lightning, he’d simply hold it up with one arm to keep the least bit from falling on my head!

  In Paris, I’m planning to reserve a room for you for a week from the 22nd on, and one for me from the 22nd to the 26th, when I’ll be leaving for Spain, having shared a full 2 weeks with you; I plan to hitchhike up to London in August for our rendez-vous with Mrs. Prouty, then to wherever my dear darling brother is in Germany, because, please tell him, I want to spend a good week with him, living where he is, or traveling, or whatever. Do please let me know where he’ll be! He must meet Ted, and I think they’ll be great friends; they are my two favorite men in the world. I feel so happy to bring such a grand man into our family, such a great surge of strength to our line. He is penniless, and all the considerations of cars & clothes become meaningless to me; I hope that in the 2 weeks or 10 days we are home before our wedding (can he stay in Warren’s room?) that we’ll mana
ge to gather enough wedding gifts to start us on a home, but I’ll probably have to store most of them in Wellesley for some while, until we are earning enough to move about on a little larger scale; I want to talk much of this over with you: even down to the stainless steel patterns! I’ve got about a hundred candidates for bridesmaids: Marcia Brown Plumer for maid matron!-of-honor, and then definitely Patsy (whom I couldn’t resist writing) & Ruth Freeman Geissler (if she can make it) and Joan Cantor & Elly Friedman as runners-up. Oh, do forgive me for going on & on, but this is the most wonderful plan in my whole life, and I’m just skipping about in it and want to share it with the neighbors & all & have it as right and warm & hearty as can be; do hope Bill Rice will officiate, as he & Ted should get along fine. Yesterday Ted & I went outdoor sketching in the sun in the Cambridge garden allotments where I did a chicken-coop & detailed grass & plant line drawings & he drew a good sketch of my head and lots of little weasels & cows smiling. We both can’t wait to see you when you come! Tell me when & where in Waterloo to meet you. I’ll be in London from Sat. 9th so send any last minute note to me c/o American Express, 6 Haymarket, London.

  xxx

  sivvy

  TO Elinor Friedman Klein

  Monday 18 June 1956

  TLS, Smith College

  Monday night

  Dear dear Elly!

  welcomewelcomewelcome! to green isle set in silver sea and all that. to rain, custard sauce and yorkshire pudding.

  mother, ted hughes and I will be waiting for you at 5 p.m. to go to dinner at mother’s hotel: CLIFFORD’S INN, FETTER LANE, just off Fleet Street where are all the printersink smelling newspapers. very very London.

  we all love you.

  room 140, sixth floor. we have phone, but I don’t know number. just come.

  ted is now my financé,* as we say in france, and mother is very happy, and we are all very happy. wellesley wedding planned for next june.

  we all love you and are dying for you to come and have dinner and good talk.

  much much love

  sylvia

  TO Warren Plath

  Monday 18 June 1956

  TLS (aerogramme, photocopy),

  Indiana University

  Monday, June 18th

  Dearest Warren . . .

  It was so wonderful to hear from you about your marvelous summer plans. Suddenly the world has shrunk to travelable size and all becomes possible. My fingers are so full of amazing news to type that I hardly know where to begin. First of all, you better stop what you are doing and be very quiet and sit down with a tall glass of cool lager and be ready to keep a huge and miraculous secret: your sister, as of 1:30 p.m. June 16th in London at the 250 year old church of St. George the Martyr is now a married woman! Mrs. Sylvia Hughes, Mrs. Ted Hughes, Mrs. Edward James Hughes, Mrs. E. J. Hughes (wife of the internationally-known poet and genius): take your pick. It is really true. And it is a dead secret between you and mummy and Ted and me. Because I am going to have another wedding at the Unitarian Church in Wellesley next June with you (I hope, if you’re willing) as Ted’s best man, and Frankie giving me away, and a huge reception for all our friends and relations who will be informed by mother this fall that Ted and I are engaged.

  This all seems so logical and inevitable to me that I can hardly begin to answer the questions which I know will be flocking to your mind: why two weddings? why a secret wedding? why anyhow? Well, it so happens that I have at last found the one man in the world for me, which mother saw immediately (she and Ted get along beautifully, and he loves her and cares for her very much) and after three months of seeing each other every day, doing everything from writing to reading aloud to hiking and cooking together, there was absolutely no shred of doubt in our minds. We are both poverty-stricken now, have no money, and are in no position to have people know we are married. Me at Newnham, where the Victorian virgins wouldn’t see how I could concentrate on my studies with being married to such a handsome virile man, the Fulbright, etc. etc. Also, he is getting a job teaching English in Spain next year, to earn money to come to America with me next June, so we’ll have to be apart while I finish my degree for 3 long 8-week periods (I must do very well on my exams). I’ll fly to be with him for the 5-week-long vacations at Christmas and Easter. So this marriage is in keeping with our situation: private, personal, legal, true, but limited in its way. Neither of us will think of giving up the fullest ceremony, which will be a kind of folk festival in Wellesley when we proclaim our decision to the world in another ceremony, very simple, but with a wonderful reception: then, too, we can really start our life of living together forever. So this seems the best way. I have never been through such fantastic strenuous living in my life! Mother and I are here in Cambridge now for 5 days, Ted having gone off to his home in Yorkshire for 2 days to take all his stuff from the condemned London slum where he lived (and, thank God, will never return to). The three of us leave for London early Thursday, the 21st, fly to Paris (I wouldn’t risk mother on a channel crossing) the 22nd where we will stay for a week, Ted and I seeing mother off, after showing her Paris for a week, on her flight. Ted has been simply heavenly: mother came Wednesday (I haven’t been able to eat or sleep for excitement at her coming) and Ted took us to supper at Schmidt’s,* a good cheap German restaurant that night, and we decided to get married while mother was in London. Our only sorrow was that you weren’t there. When Ted & I see you in Europe this summer we’ll tell you all the fantastic details of our struggle to get a license, (from the Archbishop of Canterbury,* no less), searching for the parish church where Ted belonged & had, by law, to be married, spotting a priest on the street, Ted pointing: “That’s him!” following him home & finding he was the right one.

  We rushed about London, buying dear Ted shoes & trousers, two gold wedding rings (I never wanted an engagement ring) with the last of our money, and mummy supplying a lovely pink knitted suit dress she brought (intuitively never having worn) and me in that & a pink hairribbon and a pink rose from Ted, standing with rain pouring outside in the dim little church, saying the most beautiful words in the world as our vows, with the curate as second witness and the dear Reverend,* an old, bright-eyed man (who lives right opposite Charles Dickens’ house!) kissing my cheek, and the tears just falling down from my eyes like rain I was so happy with my dear lovely Ted. Oh, you will love him, too. He wants so to meet you. So to the world, we are engaged, and you must help us keep this an utter secret. After mother goes on June 29th we will be alone together for the first time, and go to Spain for the summer, to rent a little house by the sea and write and learn Spanish. We are meeting mother in London around August 5th & Ted is taking her (& me) to his home in Yorkshire (he wants her to rest & is very concerned about her packed tour, trying to get her to stay longer in one place, Austria, for she was very sick in London the first days, still shaky from the boat). We’ll no doubt see her off August 14th. THEN, we’d like to see you, joining you whereever would be best (we’d love to see Vienna, but would have to hitchhike, so maybe nearer, Italy, France or Rotterdam, whereever you’d be then.) We’ll travel, or stay put. We MUST be with you at least a week. Preferably more. Tell us what day to meet where anytime after the 14th & we’ll try to arrange: write me c/O Whitstead here till I write you our Spain address. Tell us when you’ll be free, where, & we’ll come. I want you so to get to know my dear new husband. By the way, his first poem* (about us in an allegorical way!) has been accepted by POETRY mag in Chicago (should bring $34 when published). Hope we’ll both be teaching Eng. at some college in New England in 1957!

  Much love –

  SYLVIA HUGHES

  (ps – write c/o my maiden name!)

  TO Elinor Friedman Klein

  Wednesday 27 June 1956

  ALS (picture postcard),

  Smith College

 

 
Paris, June 27

  Dear Ellie . . .

  Where o where are you! Ted & I waited with Yorkshire one-armed artist all Thursday, hoping for reunion dinner – got worried with all these plane crashes – am at 25 Rue Jacob, Hotel des Deux Continents till Wed, July 4 – write or come, but do either soon –

  Much Love,

  Sylvia

  TO Aurelia Schober Plath

  Wednesday 4 July 1956

  TLS with envelope,

  Indiana University

  July 4, 1956

  Dearest mother . . .

  It was lovely to get the beautiful card from Amsterdam and Ted and I wer so pleased to hear what a time you’re having. I think the rest of your trip should be a total joy; now that you’ve mastered one city, you can master them all.

  We’ve been delayed here because Ted couldn’t get his visa for Spain until tomorrow morning, and so we’re leaving on the 9 p.m. train Thursday for Madrid, a 24-hour trip which should be rather exhausting (the longest I’ve ever taken is half that). We’ve been learning the hard way about making reservations early and doing things ahead of time: the official world simply does not run to suit private schedules.

  Both of us are just slowly coming out of our great fatigue from the whirlwind plans and events of last month, and after meandering about Paris, sitting writing and reading in the Tuileries, have produced a good poem apiece* which is a necessity to our personal self-esteem---not so much a good poem or story, but at least several hours work of solid writing a day. Something in both of us needs to write for a large period daily, or we get cold on paper, cross, or nervous. Ted is doing a large detailed story of “O’Kelley’s Angel” which he will soon whittle down to about 10 pages of a simply told fable. It is a marvelous tale, and he has also another one called “The Callum Makers” which is a take-off of a civilization completely run by TV. I have never been so entertained in my life, and if by faith and criticism and giving him the opportunity to write and write I can help bring these stories into perfect being, I shall be completely happy. I really think, that with Ted’s ideas someday we’ll have best-selling novels or illustrated fables on the market. My commercial flair has been much stimulated by reading the McCall’s you left, and I have several ideas which I hope to write out in the next month. We are really happiest keeping to ourselves, and writing, writing, writing. I never thought I should grow so fast so far in my life; the whole secret for both of us, I think, is being utterly in love with each other, which frees our writing from being a merely egoistic mirror, but rather a powerful canvas on which other people live and move.