The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 1

by Sylvia Plath

  The widow was furious at first, obviously wishing she hadn’t told us until she actually got someone for the rent, never thinking we were clever enough to act immediately and so decisively (she evidently figured she could take advantage of us at her place by calling us “friends”, and treating the other lodgers as paying customers). Finally, when she realized we were still in the same town and it would be to her advantage to be nice & uphold her reputation, she was all sweetness & light. We moved the next day, exhausted from the emotional strain of packing & traveling. How can I tell you how wonderful it is here?

  For the first time in a year, I have come to rest. Two rich, potential summer months still lie ahead. All the change and furor of this past year, in which I don’t think I’ve really ever rested, going from a tiring term to even more tiring traveling vacations---are melting into one. Our house is cool as a well, stone tiled, quiet, with a view of blue mountains and even a corner of the sea. Our front porch is shaded by a grape arbor, pungent with geraniums. Our furniture is dark heavy walnut which is pleasant against the white plaster walls. We don’t see a tourist from morning till night.

  Ted and I are just coming into our own. We have figured out a rigorous schedule which is at last beginning to be realized: here is a day in the life of the writing Hughes’: We wake about seven in the morning, with a cool breeze blowing in the grape leaves outside our window. I get up, take the two litres of milk left daily on our doorstep in a can and heat it for my cafe con leche and Ted’s brandy-milk which we have with delectable wild bananas and sugar. Then we go early to market, first for fish, which must begin about six: it is fascinating, because every day brings a different catch: there are mussels, crabs, shrimp, little baby octopusses, and sometimes a huge fish which they sell in steaks. I generally make egg & lemon mixture, dip them in that and flour and fry them to a golden brown. Then we price vegetables, buying our staples of eggs, potatoes, tomatoes and onions (I see we each have an egg and a good portion of meat a day). If only you could see how fantastically we economize: we go to the one potato stand that sells a kilo for 1.50 instead of 1.75 pesetas and have found a place that charges a peseta less (about 2½ cents) for butter! I hope never again in my life I will have to be so tight with money. We will one day have a great deal, I am sure of it, but this summer’s flock of unexpected expenses with the wedding and all our un-budgetable travels has knocked us down so that neither of us will have a shilling or a cent when we return to England at the end of September. I so appreciated your generous help this spring, and only hope you have enough to get about with comfortably now!

  Any advice you have about what to do with summer squash and zucchini (is that the purple squash-looking thing that seems a cross between an eggplant look and a cucumber shape?) and carrots, etc. would be appreciated. I have one frying pan, and a large boiling pan, and fry most everything in olive oil. Ted is quite pleased with the tasty little tortillas and battered things I make, out of my Rombauer book, but almost every recipe has a few crucial ingredients I don’t have, or the tantalizing end: “bake or broil,” which, of course, I can’t do. I have a one-ring petrol burner on which I cook everything, no hot water, and straw tangles to clean dishes; no icebox, so milk must be boiled if it is kept a full day. Yet no modern bride was as happy with her modern kitchen as I am with my first own place; even the Longueways in Maine wasn’t so primitive: my main dishes are potato salad, mashed potato cakes, fried potatoes & onions, deviled eggs, tomato & egg tortilla, string beans & tomatoes, string bean salad; fish hot & fish cold with mayonnaise. You see there is a limit to the permutations & combinations. But we do eat healthily. Bread, butter & cheese, plenty of milk & eggs. But how I long for a good american kitchen. I almost cry with longing when I read the beautiful recipes in Rombauer, my favorite book now.

  Ted and I write, he at the big oak table, me at the typewriter table by the window in the diningroom (our writing room) from about 8:30 till 12. Then I make lunch and we go to the beach for two hours for a siesta and swim when the crowds are all gone home and have it completely to ourselves. Then two more hours of writing from 4 to 6, when I make supper. From 8 t0 10 we study languages, me translating “Le Rouge at Le Noire” and planning to do all the French for my exams this summer, Ted working on Spanish. Then, if there is time, we walk through the moonlit almond groves toward the still purple mountains where we can see the Mediterranean sparkling silver far below.

  I am just beginning to get the feel of prose again, going through that very painful period of writing much bad uneven prose to get back in story form as I was when I was doing the Mintons and those for Seventeen. I am working on the bullfight one now, and have a terrific idea for a humorous Ladies Home Journal story called “The Hypnotizing Husband” which, alas, I won’t be able to finish till this fall at Cambridge, because I want to read up on a lot of hypnotism stunts to make it ring true. It is a great idea, and keeps coming at me while I’m cutting beans, etc. Ted is now doing the last chapter of the most enchanting children’s book ever! Every day he reads me a new chapter or two. It is 10 chapters long, about how different animals became, and just marvelous: clear, lucid, with that pure fable style which is uniquely his. He has absolutely enchanting tales about the Donkey, Owl, Whale, Tortoise, Bee, Hyena, Fox and Dog, Elephant--- you would love them. They are so beautiful I just laugh and cry. I am sure it will become a children’s classic.

  My greatest hope is that in spite of the distance, Warren will come for a couple of days. I’d give anything to see him. We could put him up and feed him for about 75 cents a day, which is a fraction of what board and room would be in any city. I await eagerly to hear from him.

  Ted and I have decided to go stay with his family* for the week before I go back to Cambridge, and tell them we are married. I have been feeling very badly about his writing them as if he were alone, and he was sorry he hadn’t told them when we were married, if I wanted to tell them now, so he is writing them, and I will go meet my new parents-in-law in September. In spite of the discouraging rejections which arrive daily (we can’t afford stamps to send stuff out Spanish airmail to America now, so are piling up manuscripts till this fall), Ted has had one more piece of good news: The Nation has enthusiastically accepted his poem “The Hag”,* so that is two poems, and we share one magazine! Next year will be most fruitful, I feel; I should write 10 stories this summer, & Ted, two short books at least: the animals and O’Kelley and a few more. We are very happy even in these lean times. How I look forward to America and my friends and the Cape next year! My life has been like the plot of a movie these past years: a psychological, romance & travel thriller. Such a plot. Do write & take care of yourself.

  Love from us both –

  sivvy

  TO Warren Plath

  Monday 30 July 1956

  TLS (photocopy),

  Indiana University

  July 30: Monday

  Dearest Warren . . .

  It was wonderful to get your letter and card and hear what a fine time you’re having in Feldbach; you will probably have equally marvellous fun in Italy; I loved Venice, with the queer water streets & barber-shop striped poles at the mossy green entrances to the houses, even though it was frigid cold when Gordon and I stayed there in April. Also, I envy you Florence, which I missed because I was so tired of traveling that I wanted to stay longer & rest in Rome. What a traveled family we have become! Between us, we’ll have covered about nine countries this summer!

  Your letter was a good thing, in quite an unexpected way. It made Ted & me sit down having a realistic discussion about finances which had been bothering us more and more without our talking about it: when you feel you have to look around endlessly for 1 peseta differences in the price of butter (about 2½ cents), and feel hungry all the time, in spite of regular meals, it gets constricting. Ted’s older sister Olwyn, who works in Paris, owes him about $150 which we had counted on to feed us for the rest of the summer. Well, a letter from her, arriving in the same mail, made us realize we cou
ldn’t go on expecting her to come through in time: she is evidently extravagant, always overspending, and extracting money from her is a painful job of nagging. Which Ted will have to do during this year so he can get the money for his ship passage over.

  Well, the upshot of all this is that we see perfectly how absurd it would be for you to make such a long, arduous trip down for only one day, and have decided to cut our stay in Benidorm to August 23rd or 24th when we shall pack bag and baggage to join you for your four days in Paris, then proceeding to the home of Ted’s parents in Yorkshire, on the wild Bronte moors, where we shall write and study for the month of September---Ted has just written his parents about our being married secretely, so I hope they take it well. I look really forward, in spite of losing this blessed azure ocean, palm & almond trees, an d white Spanish sun---to living with Ted’s folks in his boyhood home.

  We discovered that the train-trip up for both of us will come to about $50 (making our return here & trip up again impossible, since we’d be paying double for lodging while we were away)---so IF you could please send that much to us by money order, it would be much much appreciated. When we are wealthy with published novels, you can come vacation with us in our Spanish villa!

  I am so happy and excited about seeing you in Paris and having you meet Ted! We’ll have enough time to cover the city (and can get you a good simple steak dinner for under a dollar---we are forced to eat always at the same place because of our continued near broke-ness). You must make Ted read you some of his animal stories about the whale, owl, polar bear, etc. I have great faith that they will sell as a classic children’s book in America. We have not yet got Ted’s checks from Poetry magazine and The Nation, but the Poetry proofs for “Bawdry Embraced” have arrived (most impressive, long sheet) and we hope that the checks will come early this fall. We have several large bills outstanding: About $60 for Ted’s teeth---I sent him to an American-trained dentist who really saved his mouth---the English dentists on the socialized medecine just pull out teeth---it’s less work, & cheaper, so Ted already had two gone and hadn’t been for ages. Almost every English boy your age has his appearance ruined by missing teeth; it’s simply scandalous neglect, which is all over England: they let things decay, and then grudgingly try to repair or get rid of them. How I miss our American hygiene, preventative and wise. And also, bills for his new gray flannel suit, in progress, and a tweed sports jacket being made at a Cambridge tailors: much cheaper in England, to have a tailor & a perfect fit, and dear Ted had absolutely nothing to wear. And I mean nothing. All of which we hope to pay for with these coming poetry checks.

  Now, for business. We’ll greatly appreciate the money-order for $50 to get us up to Paris. NB* Let me know immediately what day you’ll arrive in Paris and I’ll write reserving you a room at our hotel, which you must remember the address of:

  HOTEL DES DEUX CONTINENTS*

  25 Rue Jacob

  Paris 6

  We’ll reserve the room in your name, under aegis of Mr. & Mrs. Ted Hughes, so you can go right to it as soon as you come. We’ll plan to get up on the same day. We’ll wait, or you wait, in the hotel till the others (you or us) arrive. I simply can’t wait to see you! We’ll be able to show you around Paris for next to nothing: you decide what you want most to see and we’ll walk around the Seine, Notre Dame, Sainte Chapelle stained-glass, Tuileries park and see the puppet show, Place de la Concorde, Champs-Elysees & Arc de Triomphe at night; Sacre Coeur & Monmartre (now rather spoiled by tourists). and so on. You speak, we’ll take you.

  I do feel sorry you can’t see our palatial mansion, the palms, the view of purple hills, white pueblos, donkey carts, azure sea which we bathe in daily; it’s utter heaven, and for two poverty-stricken (but brilliantly promising!) writers to have their own white house, complete with fig tree, grape arbor, & kitchen & studio on the Spanish riviera is a freak mark of fortune: we have all the wealth of life, spiritual, intellectual, love, etc.---except money. Oh, well, that’ll come too. Just wait. WRITE SOON. HAVE FUN.

  Till Paris –

  Much love

  from Ted & Sivvy

  TO Aurelia Schober Plath

  Thursday 2 August 1956

  TLS with envelope,

  Indiana University

  August 2, Thursday

  Dearest mother . . .

  Another installment. It was so fine to get your long letter and lovely cards! I envy you the mountainous scenes and only hope that some day Ted and I may visit our relatives in Austria, too.

  We have come to another change in plans, this week. Warren wrote a nice long letter (dated the 23rd of July) in which he sounded very happy. I quote: “I’m having a great time swimming, playing tennis, drinking great wine and getting heavier with black bread and dark beer.” What stories we shall have to exchange next year, the three of us; or, rather, the four, because my dear Ted is as close to me as any blood relation ever could be, now. Warren would only be able to stay here one day, if he came, and would be exhausted from the long train trip, so we did a detailed and disquieting survey of our finances, Ted & I. He’ll be lucky if he gets the $150 his sister owes him throughout next year, and we are planning to use it for his ship fare, so we simply don’t have enough to stay on here. Warren, bless his heart, has offered to send us the $50 he has saved as a wedding present so we can come up to Paris to see him. We have decided to do this, as we could have four wonderful days with him there. Then we shall go immediately to Ted’s home in Yorkshire and live and write there for the month of September on the Bronte moors. I really look forward to living with him in his boyhood home and wandering about on the wuthering moors.

  So you can write us here till about August 14th. We shall leave Benidorm about the 21st, meet Warren in Paris about the 24th till 28th, and get to Ted’s home about August 30th. So write to us, after August 14th:

  c/o The Beacon

  Heptonstall Slack

  Hebden Bridge

  Yorkshire, England

  I was so sorry you caught cold; I hope it didn’t ruin much of your trip. I myself am just recovering today from the most devastating case of fever & diarrhea I’ve ever had; Ted & I think it’s food poisoning from a queer red sausage we ate the other night. I was racked by fever so that my skin actually burned, my joints ached, & I felt peeled raw. I couldn’t sleep, or even have the energy to open my mouth & drink water, I was so utterly wasted. Ted was an absolute angel, making me vegetable broth & eggnog & feeding me watermelon & holding my head so I could drink water. The siege lasted about 24 hours, which seemed eternity. Today I am cool, & slowly regaining strength & by tomorrow should be my old self again.

  Probably you will feel really grateful to get home. There is actually nothing so exhausting as traveling, and one only learns by experience. Notice that in my vacations now, I only want to be in one place, and that for at least a month. I am at home now in Benidorm, as I am in Paris, and Cambridge; but these are the only three places in all my travels which aren’t a strain on me. It is a blessing here not to have to go out to eat, but to cook when and what we feel like. Eating out is the biggest tedium when you have no money; if you have money, travel & eating out can be a joy.