The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 1
Page 178
*According to SP’s calendar, this was John Whiteside.
*The Dove is a Thames-side pub at 19 Upper Mall, Hammersmith, London.
*According to SP’s calendar, this was Sa Tortuga, a coffeehouse owned by former Sydney, Australia, radio and stage actor Peter Bathurst, on King’s Road, Chelsea, London.
*Donald Lehmkuhl.
*Winthrop Dickinson Means (1933– ), American; A.B. 1955, Harvard College; Fulbright fellow, research student, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, 1955–6; Ph.D. 1960, geology, University of California, Berkeley; friend of SP.
*Lois Marshall; B.A. 1955, biology, Bryn Mawr College; Fulbright scholar, anatomy, 1955–6, Newnham College, Cambridge.
*According to SP’s calendar, this was Barry Edward Sales; B.A. 1957, French and German, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
*‘In the afternoon Monday Tuesday’ appears in the original.
*Margaret Roberts (1933–2007); B.A. Rhodes University; B.A. Newnham College, Cambridge.
*Guy Shepherd, Varsity Handbook: The Undergraduate Guide to Cambridge (Cambridge: Varsity Publications, [1955]).
*Based on notes made to the typescript by London Magazine editors, Plath submitted, among other poems, ‘Ice Age’ and ‘Danse Macabre’.
*Austrian-born British studio potter Dame Lucie Rie (1902–95).
*French dramatist Jean Racine (1639–99).
*Marie-Henri Beyle, known by his pen name Stendhal, Le Rouge et le Noir; SPs copy held by Lilly Library.
*French poet Pierre de Ronsard (1524–85).
*Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal; SP’s copy held by Smith College.
*Frank Raymond Leavis (1895–1978); lecturer, Downing College, Cambridge University.
*Basil Willey (1897–1978); lecturer and King Edward VII Professor of English, Cambridge University, 1923–64.
*‘19th century and 20th’ appears in the original. SP has encircled ‘century’ and drawn an arrow indicating it should be after ‘20th’.
*A replica of Italian painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio’s ‘Putto con Delfino’. See Sylvia Plath, ‘Stone Boy with Dolphin’.
*The Amateur Dramatics Club (ADC), founded in 1855 and located on Park Street, Cambridge.
*Varsity, published since 1947.
*Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, opened the new University of Cambridge Veterinary School, Madingley Road.
*Joseph Mallory Wober (1936– ), British; B.A. 1957, natural sciences, King’s College, Cambridge; dated SP, 1955–6. Wober lived at 7 Peas Hill, Cambridge.
*Date supplied from internal evidence.
*The letter is not postmarked and was probably hand-delivered, likely by the University’s internal mail service.
*Date supplied from postmark.
*It is likely SP is referring to a small infirmary that was at one time located in Sidgwick Hall, Newnham College.
*Possibly Dr Edward Vaughan Bevan (1907–88); his surgery was at 3 Trinity Street, Cambridge.
*‘all but except one hour’ appears in the original.
*French tragedian Pierre Corneille (1606–84). Sylvia Plath, ‘Four Tragedies of Corneille: The Conflict of Good with Good’, dated 26 October 1955; held by Lilly Library.
*Date supplied from postmark.
*Jane Baltzell Kopp (1935– ), born in El Paso, Texas, 1935; B.A. 1955, Brown University; B.A. 1957, Newnham College, Cambridge; Ph.D. 1965, University of California Berkeley; associate professor of English, University of New Mexico, 1964–70; married American poet Karl C. Kopp, 1969. Jane Baltzell Kopp read English on a Marshall Scholarship at Cambridge and was SP’s housemate at Whitstead, 1955–6.
*Rosalind is the heroine of As You Like It. SP underlined Rosalind’s speech in her copy of The Complete Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1942), 235; SP’s copy held by Smith College.
*SP annotated Marguerite Gautier’s speech to Jacques Casanova in her copy of Camino Real (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1953), 96–7.
*The ADC performed excerpts from Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare; The Epidemic by Octave Mirbeau, and Three Hours After Marriage by John Gay, Alexander Pope, and John Arbuthnot, ADC Theatre, Cambridge University, 22 October 1955.
*SP played the part of Mrs Phoebe Clinket in Three Hours after Marriage.
*According to SP’s calendar, this was Richard Charles MacKenzie; B.A. 1958, economics, history, Jesus College, Cambridge.
*John Webster, The White Devil, ADC Theatre, Cambridge University, 14 October 1955.
*A reference to American stage actress Katharine Cornell (1893–1974).
*According to SP’s calendar, her tutor was Miss A. Barrett.
*As a senior in high school, SP performed the role of Lady Agatha Lasenby in a production of J. M. Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton (1902).
*Possibly Anthony Thomas Smith; B.A. 1956, English, King’s College, Cambridge.
*John Nicholas Lythgoe (1934–92), British; B.A. 1957, Ph.D. 1961, natural sciences, Trinity College, Cambridge; dated SP, 1955–6.
*English poet and Cambridge graduate Rupert Brooke (1887–1915) lived in Grantchester 1906–9 and immortalized the town in his poem ‘The Old Vicarage, Grantchester’, which ends ‘oh! yet / Stands the Church clock at ten to three? / And is there honey still for tea?’ SP had tea at the Orchard in Grantchester when she was a student at Cambridge and annotated Brooke’s poems in her copy of Louis Untermeyer, ed. Modern British Poetry (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1950), 319–29. SP’s copy held by Smith College.
*SP slightly misquotes from Brooke’s ‘The Old Vicarage’.
*According to SP’s calendar, this was probably Richard Edward George Mansfield; history, Pembroke College, Cambridge. Mansfield was director of the nursery plays.
*Camille Prior, an actress and boarding-house proprietor in Cambridge.
*Date supplied from internal evidence.
*The letter is not postmarked and was probably hand-delivered.
*Date supplied from internal evidence.
*The letter is not postmarked and was probably hand-delivered. On Panda Prints card designed by Rosalind Welcher.
*A pub on Thompson’s Lane, Cambridge.
*Date supplied from internal evidence.
*The letter is not postmarked and was probably hand-delivered.
*The Taj Mahal restaurant had two locations in Cambridge in 1955, one at 1A All Saint’s Passage and the other at 37–9 Regent Street.
*King’s College Musical Society Open Concert, Sunday 23 October 1955, at 9 p.m. in the Dining Hall. The programme for the event is held with these letters.
*According to SP’s calendar, this was Kenneth James Mayo Frater; B.A. 1956, mathematics, law, Pembroke College, Cambridge.
*The songs performed were ‘Der Atlas’, ‘Ihr Bild’, ‘Die Stadt’, ‘Am Meer’, and ‘Der Doppelgänger’.
*Brian Neal Howard Desmond Corkery (1933– ), British; B.A. 1957, history, Pembroke College, Cambridge; dated SP, 1955–6.
*Elinor Friedman played Jocasta in Sophocles Oedipus Rex, presented by The Masquers, Kirby Memorial Theater, Amherst College, 17–22 November 1955.
*Daniel Raymond Massey (1933–98), British; B.A. 1956, English, King’s College, Cambridge; fellow actor with SP in the Cambridge Amateur Dramatic Club production of Bartholomew Fair, 24 November–3 December 1955.
*Sean O’Casey, Juno and the Paycock (1924).
*Dmitri Karamazov is the eldest son in The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
*Mrs Molesworth, The Cuckoo Clock (1877).
*According to SP’s calendar, these men were David Henry Wilson; B.A. 1958, French and German, Pembroke College, Cambridge; and Peter Joseph Wilson; B.A. 1957, archaeology and anthropology, Pembroke College, Cambridge.
*Mahmud Ahmad Osman; history, Fitzwilliam House, Cambridge.
*Christopher Richard Gilling (1933– ), British; B.A. 1956, English, Trinity Hall, Cambridge; dated SP in 1955. Gilling was the producer of the play
.
*According to SP’s calendar, she saw The Little World of Don Camillo and New Faces; shown at the Rex Cinema, then on Magrath Avenue, Cambridge.
*Nathaniel D. LaMar, Jr (1933– ), American; A.B. 1955, Harvard College; research student on a Henry Fellowship at Pembroke College, Cambridge, 1955–6; dated SP, 1955–6.
*Nathaniel LaMar, ‘Creole Love Song’, Atlantic Monthly 195 (June 1955), 39–45.
*SP refers to a still life by Georges Braque (1882–1963), French painter and sculptor, throughout the first term at Cambridge in letters to her mother, Marion Freeman, Gordon Lameyer, and Olive Higgins Prouty.
*A reference to The King and I.
*According to SP’s calendar, this was the Copper Kettle, on King’s Parade, Cambridge.
*Bells of Atlantis (1952), directed by Ian Hugo.
*Scottish-born Canadian film director Normam McLaren (1914–87).
*The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920); German film directed by Robert Wiene, presented by the Film Society in the Examination School, Cambridge.
*The Union Society, Bridge Street, Cambridge.
*Shown at the Arts Theatre, 6 St Edward’s Passage, Cambridge; according to SP’s calendar, she saw this on Friday 4 November 1955.
*According to SP’s calendar, she saw I Am a Camera at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston, on 4 April 1953.
*English botanist and ecologist Sir Arthur George Tansley (1871–1955); married to Lady Edith Tansley.
*British scientist Katharine Tansley (1904–88), married first to British ophthalmologist Richard James Lythgoe (1896–1940).
*Sylvia Plath, ‘Epitaph in Three Parts’ and ‘“Three Caryatids Without a Portico” by Hugh Robus. A Study in Sculptural Dimensions’, Chequer 9 (Winter 1956), 2–3.
*According to SP’s calendar, she met Derrick Amoore (1935–92).
*Wilbar’s was a shoe and hosiery store with several branches in the Boston area, including one at 41 Central Street, Wellesley.
*Date supplied from postmark.
*Probably a reference to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem ‘There was a little girl’: ‘She was very, very good, / And when she was bad she was horrid.’
*David Keith Rodney Buck (1933–89), British; B.A. 1958, English, Christ’s College, Cambridge; dated SP in 1955.
*SP played Alice in Bartholomew Fair by Ben Jonson, ADC Theatre, Cambridge University, 24 November–3 December 1955.
*The University Arms Hotel, Regent Street, Cambridge.
*The Eagle is a pub at 8 Bene’t Street, Cambridge.
*Date supplied from internal evidence.
*The letter is not postmarked and was probably hand-delivered.
*Date supplied from internal evidence.
*Sara Teasdale, ‘Two Songs for Solitude’; one song, ‘The Crystal Gazer’, begins: ‘I shall gather myself into myself again’.
*English actor William Miles Malleson (1888–1969).
*English actor John Gielgud (1904–2000).
*Performed at the ADC Theatre, Park Street, Cambridge, on Friday 18 November 1955.
*Probably American Sean Sweeney (1932– ); Warren Plath’s schoolmate at Phillips Exeter Academy, class of 1950.
*Date supplied from internal evidence.
*W. B. Yeats, ‘The Municipal Gallery Revisited’; SP slightly misquotes stanza VII: ‘Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, / And say my glory was I had such friends’.
*SP excerpted this letter in her journals.
*‘Excerpt from letter to Sassoon’ appears in the original.
*‘Cf. poem’ written in SP’s autograph in the margin opposite this line, possibly a reference to an image in SP’s poem ‘Dialogue Over a Ouija Board’.
*A reference to Ulysses by James Joyce. SP slightly misquotes Joyce: ‘Time’s livid final flame leaps, and, in the following darkness, ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry’.
*Edward Samuel Shire (1908–78); natural sciences scholar at Cambridge University.
*Though not underlined, definition in Plath’s dictionary reads: ‘Regard for, and devotion to, the interests of others; – opposed to egoism and selfishness.’
*Date supplied from internal evidence.
*The letter is not postmarked and was probably hand-delivered.
*Voltaire, Le fanatisme, ou Mahomet le Prophète (1736).
*Date supplied from postmark.
*Date supplied from internal evidence.
*The letter was not postmarked and was probably hand-delivered.
*American sculptor Sahl Swarz (1912–2004). Swarz had an exhibition at the Sculpture Center, then at 167 E. 69th Street, New York; his ‘Kafka’ was included.
*‘A.D.C. Theatre, Cambridge’, The Times, 25 November 1955, 3.
*John Bunyan, ‘To be a Pilgrim’, Pilgrim’s Progress (1684).
*Sylvia Plath, ‘The Destructive Power of Genius in Four of Ibsen’s Plays’; held by Lilly Library.
*Date supplied from internal evidence.
*The letter was not postmarked and was probably hand-delivered. On Panda Prints card designed by Rosalind Welcher.
*Plath may be referring to the end of the term and to the final performance of Bartholomew Fair, both of which were to occur on 3 December 1955.
*Date supplied from internal evidence.
*The letter was not postmarked and was probably hand-delivered.
*British actor, playwright, and author Robin Chapman (1933– ); Chapman was steward and junior treasurer of the ADC and played the role of Zeal-of-the-Land Busy in Bartholomew Fair.
*Isaac Meshoulem (1934– ), Israeli; B.A. 1957, economics and law, Pembroke College, Cambridge; dated SP, 1955–6.
*Samuel Wober (1898–1960) and Dina Solomon Wober (1906–98) lived at 71 Wentworth Road, Golders Green, London NW11.
*According to SP’s calendar, the Lythgoe family lived at 105 Clifton Hill, St John’s Wood, London NW8.
*Date supplied from internal evidence.
*Christmas card with image of Bridge of Sighs, Cambridge.
*See Sylvia Plath, ‘Whiteness I Remember’.
*Date supplied from internal evidence.
*Pieter Bruegel the Elder, ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’ (Pallas Card 1081, Brussels Museum).
*See SP to Gordon Lameyer, 10 January 1954; held by Lilly Library.
*SP excerpted this letter in her journals.
*‘Excerpt: December 11 Letter to Sassoon’ appears in the original.