by Sylvia Plath
*SP’s picture appears on pp. 54, 235, 252 and 284.
*Italian composer Gioacchino Rossini (1792–1868).
*German composter Felix Mendelssohn (1809–47).
*German composer Paul Hindemith (1895–1963).
*English composer Benjamin Britten (1913–76).
*Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith (1925); SP refers to the character of Max Gottlieb.
*The Yankees hosted and defeated the Detroit Tigers, 6–2.
*American sportscaster Mel Allen (1913–96). Allen was the play-by-play announcer for the New York Yankees, 1940–64.
*James R. Biery (1929– ).
*Janet Ellen Wagner Rafferty (1932– ). Biery and Wagner did not marry. Wagner became a model after her experience at Mademoiselle.
*Barton, Durstine and Osborn, then at 383 Madison Avenue, New York.
*According to SP’s calendar and Smith College scrapbook, this was Mark von Slosmann; both held by Lilly Library.
*According to SP’s calendar, she met ‘Jose Antonio La Vias’ on 20 June 1953. The full calendar entry for that day reads: ‘Yankees vs. Detroit / Forest Hills Dance – Jose Antonio / La Vias – East Side apt. – Latins – / Lima Peru x’. According to papers held by United Nations Archives, the names of the Peruvian delegation for 1952–3 were: Victor Andres Belaunde, Juan Bautista de Lavalle, Fernando Berckemeyer Pazos and Carlos Holguin de Lavalle. There is a listing for ‘Jose A de Lavelle’ at 142 E. 49th Street in the 1953 New York City directory. A 1954 newspaper prints: ‘Dr. Jose Lavalle of the Peruvian delegation to the United Nations still hasn’t recovered from Ava Gardner. He was her offbeat date while she was in New York—handsome, single, and glamourously latin.’ Dorothy Kilgallen, ‘On Broadway’, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 26 October 1954, 26.
*D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love (1920); SP slightly misquotes from chapter 9: ‘Good enough for the life of today. But mankind is a dead tree, covered with fine brilliant galls of people.’
*Draft typed on verso of SP’s June–July 1953 ‘Letter to an Over-Grown, Over-protected, Scared, Spoiled Baby’; see ‘Appendix 5’, The Journals of Sylvia Plath.
*English literary scholar and translator Stuart Gilbert (1883–1969). SP may be referring to Gilbert’s James Joyce’s Ulysses: A Study (1930).
*On this day, SP had the first of her shock treatments at Valley Head Hospital, Carlisle, Mass.
*Frank B. O’Neil; B.A. 1951, Dartmouth College.
*References to James Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake (1939).
*Lotz advanced in the minor leagues from the Durham Bulls (North Carolina, Carolina League) to the Jamestown Falcons (New York, Pennsylvania–Ontario–New York League).
*Date supplied from internal evidence.
*Probably Gordon Lameyer to SP, 30 August 1953; held by Lilly Library. SP attempted suicide on Monday 24 August 1953 and was found two days later on Wednesday 26 August 1953. Between 26 August 1953 and 29 January 1954, SP received treatment at Newton-Wellesley Hospital; Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston; and McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. SP returned to Smith College on Saturday, 30 January 1954, and graduated with the class of 1955 on 6 June 1955.
*Date supplied from internal evidence.
*Gordon Lameyer to SP, 31 August 1953, and 1, 2, 3 September 1953; held by Lilly Library. The ‘Amherst letter’ was included with 1 September 1953.
*According to SP’s calendar, she went with the Lameyers to New Hampshire on 5 July 1953.
*Shakespeare, Hamlet.
*Date supplied from postmark.
*Offered as part of Sotheby’s New York sale on 6 April 1982, Lot 107. The lot was withdrawn, passed, or unsold. Transcribed from catalogue which reads: ‘PLATH, SYLVIA. Autograph postcard signed (“sivvy”), 22 lines, {McLean Hospital, Belmont, Mass.}, “Thursday”, postmarked 18 December 1953, to Aurelia Plath. Written when Sylvia Plath was in hospital recovering from her first breakdown and suicide attempt, at the end of her Junior year at Smith, she writes that she will be able to come over for tea on Saturday and come home for two days at Christmas.’
*Edmund Wilson, Axel’s Castle: A Study in the Imaginative Literature of 1870–1930 (New York: Scribner’s, 1931). SP’s copy held by Smith College.
*American writer Gertrude Stein (1874–1946).
*French novelist and critic Marcel Proust (1871–1922).
*There are fourteen letters from Gordon Lameyer to SP between 30 August and 2 December 1953. See Lameyer’s unpublished memoir Dear Sylvia; held by Lilly Library.
*SP moved from Codman House to South Belknap House.
*Probably Eddie Cohen to SP, 1 November 1953; held by Lilly Library.
*Articles on SP’s disappearance and recovery, largely sent out over the news wire, appeared in more than 200 newspapers across the United States, including ‘Missing Co-ed Found’, Chicago Tribune, 27 August 1953, 5.
*This was SP’s name for Richard Norton in her letters to Cohen.
*ASP was at the Exeter Theatre, 26 Exeter Street, Boston, watching A Queen Is Crowned. She was most likely at the 2:10 p.m. showing.
*Massachusetts General Hospital, 55 Fruit Street, Boston. SP was in Ward B-7.
*The wards at McLean were Wyman (lowest), Codman (middle), and South Belknap (highest). SP modified the names in The Bell Jar to Wymark, Caplan, and Belsize.
*Mary Jane Ward, The Snake Pit (1946); film version released in 1948.
*Mademoiselle was owned by Street & Smith Publications until 1957 when it was sold to Condé Nast Publications. This memorandum paper was collected by SP when she was a guest managing editor at Mademoiselle in June 1953.
*Gordon Lameyer to SP, [1953–4], postmarked 5 January 195; held by Lilly Library.
*Sylvia Plath, ‘Admonitions’.
*The Captain’s Paradise (starring Alec Guinness) played at the Astor Theatre, then at 176 Tremont Street across from the Boston Common.
*Pieter Bruegel the Elder, ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’.
*On 13 June 1954 (the Sunday after her Smith College graduation), Enid Lois Epstein married Eugene L. Mark (1923– ); A.B. 1947, Harvard College; M.B.A. 1949, University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business.
*Mervin M. Jules (1912–94); art professor, Smith College, 1945–70; director of Art 13 (Introduction to Art), a studio art course in basic design completed by SP 1950–1.
*Sally Rogers (1937– ); B.A. 1957, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa.
*Date supplied from postmark (Boston); probably typed at McLean Hospital.
*Gordon Lameyer to SP, 11 January 1954 and 20 January 1954; held by Lilly Library.
*American writer Henry James (1843–1916); mentioned in Gordon Lameyer to SP, 11 January 1954.
*Washington Irving, ‘Rip Van Winkle’.
*T. S. Eliot, The Confidential Clerk; SP saw a performance of Eliot’s play at the Colonial Theatre, 106 Boylston Street, Boston, on 22 January 1954.
*Michael MacCoby, ‘The Confidential Clerk at the Colonial’, Harvard Crimson, 15 January 1954, 2.
*T.S. Eliot, The Confidential Clerk; in Act Two, Lucasta says to Colby:
‘Oh, it’s strange, isn’t it,
That as one gets to know a person better
One finds them in some ways very like oneself,
In unexpected ways. And then you begin
To discover differences inside the likeness.
You may feel insecure, in some ways—
But your insecurity is nothing like mine’
(New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1954: 61–2).
*American poet Marianne Moore (1887–1972).
*Dylan Thomas, ‘Under Milk Wood’, Mademoiselle, February 1954, 110–22, 144–56.
*Under Milk Wood © Dylan Thomas (1952). Extract reprinted by kind permission of New Directions Publishing Corp and David Higham Associates Limited.
*When SP returned to Smith College, she completed English 321b (American Fiction) taught by Newton Arvin (1900–63), English professor, Smith College, 1922–60; SP’s colleag
ue, 1957–8. SP completed this course as a student in 1954 and corrected papers for it as an instructor in 1958; History 38b (History of Europe) taught by Elisabeth Ahlgrimm Koffka; and Russian 35b (Tolstoy and Dostoevsky) taught by George Gibian (1924–99); associate professor of English and Russian literature, Smith College, 1951–61; SP’s thesis adviser, 1954–5; SP’s colleague, 1957–8. SP’s thesis, ‘The Magic Mirror: A Study of the Double in Two of Dostoevsky’s Novels’, was awarded the Marjorie Hope Nicolson Prize in 1955. SP audited English 417b (The Twentieth Century American Novel) taught by Robert Gorham Davis. SP completed this course in 1955 with Alfred Kazin.
*Art 33b (Medieval Art) taught by Phyllis Williams Lehmann (1912–2004); art professor, Smith College, 1946–78, Dean 1965–70; SP audited Art 33b, spring 1954.
*Elizabeth Olmstead Null (1935– ); B.A.1957, art, Smith College; SP’s housemate at Lawrence House. Olmstead was also from Wellesley.
*Estella Culver Kelsey (1891–1991) was Head of House at Lawrence House, 1953–7, and at Ziskind House, 1957–9.
*Gordon Lameyer to SP, 20 January 1954; held by Lilly Library.
*Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hawthorne’s Short Stories (New York: Vintage Books); SP’s copy held by Smith College.
*Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (New York: Modern Library, 1917); SP’s copy held by Lilly Library.
*Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1956); SP’s copy held by Emory University.
*Sheila Orton Saunders (1933– ); B.A. 1954, English, Smith College; SP’s housemate at Lawrence House.
*Oscar Schotté (1893–1988), professor of biology, Amherst College, 1934–66; in 1953–4, Schotté taught ‘Embryology: A description of developmental processes in the vertebrates, with an introduction to the physiology of development.’
*Thomas Andrew ‘Tom’ Lehrer (1928– ), American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, and mathematician.
*Joan Throckmorton (1931–2003); B.A. 1953, English, Smith College; Phi Beta Kappa. Married to Melvyn H. Dawson.
*Possibly from a draft or earlier version of SP’s poem ‘Ice Age’ which features similar lines and themes: ‘and so the final answer is not met / though sonnets are altered back to alphabet / again . . . ’
*English composer Sir William Walton (1902–83). The publication was Façade: An Entertainment (London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1951).
*SP slightly misquotes Sitwell’s ‘Four in the Morning’. The poem reads, ‘Cried the navy-blue ghost / Of Mr. Belaker / The allegro Negro cocktail-shaker . . . ’
*Most likely Dylan Thomas Reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales and Five Poems released by Caedmon in 1952. The five poems are ‘Fern Hill’, ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’, ‘In the White Giant’s Thigh’, ‘Ballad of the Long-Legged Bait’ and ‘Ceremony After a Fire Raid’.
*Ellen Bond worked for the ‘Personal and Otherwise’ department at Harper’s Magazine.
*Ellen Bond to SP, 29 January 1954; held by Lilly Library.
*Date supplied from internal evidence.
*Possibly Mary Wrenn Morris Baird, 1936 graduate of Radcliffe and author of privately printed Odd Poems (1931).
*Date supplied from internal evidence.
*Panda Prints Valentine card designed by Rosalind Welcher.
*American novelist Esther Louise Forbes (1891–1967); in 1954 Forbes published Rainbow on the Road (Boston: Houghton Mifflin).
*Inspired by the 1904 novel by William Henry Hudson.
*SP attended Chase’s evening lecture ‘Imagination in the Old Testament’ on 11 February 1954 in Sage Hall.
*This photocopied letter, found in the manuscript of Letters Home, has some text missing in the copy. Text appearing in < > is supplied by the editors.
*Philip McCurdy learned that his ‘mother’ was actually his grandmother, Magda Bergliot Andresen McCurdy (1892–1981), and his ‘sister’ (Betty) was his birth mother, Magda Elizabeth McCurdy Meredith (1912–2001).
*Alfred C. Kinsey, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (Philadelphia: Saunders, 1953).
*Tennessee Williams, Camino Real (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1953); SP’s copy held by Smith College.
*SP annotated these passages on pp. 55, 96 and 113 in her copy.
*Date supplied from internal evidence.
*Probably Gordon Lameyer to SP, 4 February 1954; held by Lilly Library.
*In Lameyer’s 4 February 1954 he played and punned on their names: Page 2: ‘Myth Sylphia Plath / Myster Gordian Lameyer’; page 3 ‘Silver Plate / Golden Lamb’; page 4: ‘Sylvan Path / Golden Lyre’; page 5 ‘Silvern Plume / Golden Limb’; page 6: ‘Salvia Plant / Goldenrod Lamina’; page 7: ‘Silverfish Pond / Goldfish LaMeer’; page 8: ‘Silverfish Pop / Goldfinch L’amour’; page 9: ‘Silver Age Plath / Golden Age Lamé’; and page 10: ‘Sylvanite / Godroon’.
*Christopher Fry, The Lady’s Not For Burning, 67.
*Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio.
*Fry, The Lady’s Not For Burning (New York: Oxford University Press, 1950), 53; underlined in SP’s copy. Extract © Christopher Fry (2007). Reprinted by kind permission of Oberon Books Ltd.
*Gerhard Rauscher from Stuttgart, West Germany, was a student ‘not enrolled as a candidate for a degree’ at Amherst College, 1953–4.
*Elizabeth Claiborne Philips Handleman (1933– ); B.A. 1954, history, Smith College.
*Avrom R. Handleman (1928–2015); B.S. 1951, M.S. 1953, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; married SP’s classmate E. Claiborne Philips on 7 June 1954.
*T. S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot (New York: Harcourt, Brace, [1952]); a gift from her friend Marcia Brown Stern; SP’s copy held by Smith College.
*Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground in The Short Novels of Dostoevsky (New York: Dial, 1951); SP’s copy held by Smith College.
*Baldpate Hospital, Georgetown, Mass.
*Maurice Alfred Longsworth, Jr (1932– ); B.A. 1954, Amherst College.
*Malcolm Hoyt Brickett (1933–2009); B.A. 1955, Amherst College.
*Richard DeWeese Baughman (1934– ); B.A. 1955, Amherst College; M.D. 1960, Harvard University.
*SP’s American psychiatrist Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse Beuscher (1923–99). SP was Dr Beuscher’s patient at McLean Hospital in 1953, continued private therapy in person through 1959, and by letter through 1963.
*George Washington’s Birthday is celebrated as a federal holiday on the third Monday in February.
*Brown was married in the Hanover Community Church, Hanover, New Hampshire.
*English literary critic Ivor Armstrong Richards (1893–1979) taught at Cambridge (1922–9, 1931–9) and Harvard (1939–63). SP attended Richards’s evening lecture on ‘The Dimensions of Reading Poetry’ in Sage Hall at Smith College on 3 March 1954.