American Isis

by Carl Rollyson

  I am indebted to Nanci A. Young, College Archivist at Smith, for information about the college’s posture exams and photographs.

  “Initiation”: JP.

  AP’s letter to Dick Norton is at Lilly.

  Chapter 3: Robert Gorham Davis’s letter to AP is at Lilly, and SP’s letters to Gordon Lameyer are at Maryland. For Davis’s and George Gibian’s impressions of Plath, see George Gibian’s letter in EBP.

  SP’s letters to Warren and Olive Higgins Prouty’s letters to AP are in LH and at Lilly.

  See SPWW, for Laurie Levy’s recollections of SP’s Mademoiselle month.

  SP’s listing of her extracurricular activities at Smith is reprinted in a 1/5/53 letter sent to her from Mademoiselle, now at Lilly, as are other correspondence and materials relating to Plath’s guest editorship.

  “In the Mountains,” “Tongues of Stone,” and “The Wishing Box”: JP.

  “much of a commitment”: Jane Anderson, Smith.

  “Anyone who did not know”: 2/9/82, Emory.

  Wilbury Crockett’s impressions of Sylvia: WC to AP, 26/7/74, Maryland.

  I’m grateful to Karen V. Kukil for making available to me a photocopy of SP’s senior thesis, “The Magic Mirror: A Study of the Double in Two of Dostoevsky’s Novels.”

  SP’s description of Alfred Kazin jibes exactly with the man I knew. His letter of recommendation is at Smith.

  I am indebted to Helen Lane for her memoir, Constance Blackwell, Kathleen Knight, Judy Denison, Marilyn Martin, Ellen Ouelette, Barbara Russell Kornfield, Anne Mohegan Smith, CB Follett, Barbara Schulz Larson, Darryl Hafter, and Ravelle Silberman Brickman for speaking to me about SP’s years at Smith and for answering my email inquiries.

  SP’s mention of her “very attractive, but nervous mother” is in an undated letter (c. December 1954) at Smith.

  Constance Blackwell says that Sassoon’s friends called him “Dick,” but since SP refers to him in her journal as Richard, I have adopted her practice.

  Chapter 4: SP’s letters to Elinor Friedman Klein and Marcia Brown are at Smith. SP’s letters to Mallory Wober are at Kings College, Cambridge, and Wober’s letter to Edward Butscher is in EBP. An excerpt from Elinor Friedman Klein’s memoir of Plath appears in SPCH. Wendy Campbell’s memoir is included in Newman.

  See SPWW for Jane Baltzell Kopp’s memoir and Dorothea Krook’s reminiscences, including Krook’s description of SP’s girlish clothing. For more on Kopp, see SP to AP, 5/3/56 in LH.

  Edward Butscher could find no one in the amateur theater group who had a distinct impression of Plath, but then she belonged to the club for only one term and appeared in just a few minor roles.

  SP to AP: 24/3/56, LH.

  Selling matches on the Place Pigalle: SP to Elinor Friedman Klein, 10/2/56.

  TH’s description of the “large fine room”: THL.

  OH had a characteristically benign gloss on the first encounter between Sylvia and Ted. On 11 March 1987, she wrote to scholar Marjorie Perloff to say that Ted’s own recollection of the meeting was that he “accidentally dislodged an earring and the headband in the embrace—when Sylvia was rather drunk. One has to read this description in the context of her then Baudelairean, Grande Amoureuse image of herself—heavily under the influence of Sassoon”: ECS.

  “biggest seducer in Cambridge”: TH’s friends have complained about this comment, made by Hamish Stewart, who, Daniel Huws claims, hardly knew TH. Lucas Myers and others insist TH had very few girlfriends. Huws can only remember two and is certain Sylvia was far more experienced than TH. Huws may well be right, but as he acknowledges, that is not what Sylvia wanted. Perceiving TH as a seducer was in keeping with the kind of danger and risk taking she seemed determined to pursue.

  For Marilyn Monroe’s quest for a “white knight,” see my biography of Marilyn Monroe.

  See PA for a discussion of Olive Higgins Prouty’s letter to SP about TH.

  TH’s 7 July letter to his brother, Gerald, is at Emory and is not included in THL.

  SP’s response to the bullfight: PA, EB, AS.

  Sassoon’s letter to SP: Lilly.

  “The Widow Mangada”: JP.

  OH’s letters to Diane Middlebrook: Emory.

  Fragments of “Falcon Yard”: Emory.

  Chapter 5: “She was very amusing”: 8/7/57 BL.

  “tall, thin”: TH to OH, 8/7/57 BL.

  The Roches’ response to SP’s journals is included in the TH archive at Emory.

  Grace Schulman’s remarks stem from my brief conversation with her in the corridors of the Baruch College English department, where she gave me a copy of her book, First Loves and Other Adventures, which includes her essay on SP and TH at Yaddo.

  “laughter and even tears”: BL.

  Daniel Aaron’s impressions of SP’s teaching are quoted in Davison, The Fading Smile.

  slapping Sylvia out of her rages: Frances McCullough to David McCullough, 7/7/74, Maryland.

  “Hardcastle Crags”: The place is identified in TH’s notes to CP.

  a “tense and withdrawn SP”: Davison, The Fading Smile.

  “clumsy irony”: Davison, Half Remembered.

  “very deferential”: Davison, The Fading Smile.

  “willowy, long-waisted”: Quoted in Davison, The Fading Smile.

  “The Fifty-Ninth Bear”: JP.

  Chapter 6: SP’s calendar and letters to Marcia Brown and Lynne Lawner are at Smith.

  “craggy Yorkshire handsomeness”: quoted in Leeming.

  OH’s hectoring letters: Several example of OH’s riding herd on Stevenson are in Stevenson’s papers at Smith and in Frances McCullough’s papers at Maryland.

  “virtuoso qualities”: SPCH includes important reviews of The Colossus.

  “the white of human extinction”: See Marjorie Perloff, “Angst and Animism in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath,” Wagner, Critical Essays on Sylvia Plath.

  “Mothers”: JP.

  “dutiful” and “hardworking”: SP to James, Smith, 14/11/61.

  “to great effect”: See the notes section of CP.

  Chapter 7: Letters to SP from Dr. Beuscher and A. Alvarez are at Smith, as are SP’s letters to Clarissa Roche and OH. TH’s last week of visits to SP, recounted in diary notes he wrote up about a week after her death, are in BL. Winifred Davies’s letter to Aurelia, and Aurelia’s description of a letter Ted’s mother sent to her, are at Maryland.

  Assia as a Jezebel: Trevor Thomas recalls SP called Assia such. SP’s reaction may seem melodramatic, but as Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev report, Assia had a reputation as a femme fatale. Edward Lucie-Smith, a friend to Assia, later called her “devious,” although he did not explicitly relate this trait to her seduction of TH. On the contrary, both Lucie-Smith (two of his letters are included in EBP) and OH, as she later told Butscher, thought Sylvia’s jealousy had driven TH into Assia’s arms. Assia later told OH that she had asked a man to call Court Green on her behalf. Was it Lucie-Smith? He worked in the same office as Assia. He told Butscher he was writing on OH’s request and that Butscher was not to quote him. OH gave her account of how her brother’s affair with Assia began in letters to Anne Stevenson that are now in the Smith archive.

  pouring out of the phone like mud: “Words heard, by accident, over the phone,” dated 9/9/62, CP.

  “The blood jet is poetry”: “Kindness,” CP.

  “little man”: To Gerry Becker, one of the last people to see SP alive, she confided that she and Ted made love “like giants.” See Jillian Becker’s memoir, Giving Up.

  “He says”: SP’s letter to Mrs. Prouty, 29/9/62: Lilly. The letter to AP, dated 26/9/62, was published in AP’s edition of Letters Home, but TH insisted that AP excise the portion of the letter quoted here. Previous biographers have treated SP’s versions of what TH said to her warily, but much of what she writes about his manner, behavior, and even the wording of his comments is replicated in Assia Wevill’s accounts of his treatment of her. See Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev.

&
nbsp; an excursion to Ireland: Accounts of the Irish episode vary widely—and rightly so, since SP’s views of TH were in flux, and Richard Murphy’s version, included in Stevenson, reads like a soap opera. SP’s letters to Murphy are in ECS.

  “A story”: This and subsequent quotations are taken from journal entries Plath wrote when she was eighteen. Nothing changed in her later years concerning her views of eternity, suicide, and writing. SP often mistakenly confused it’s and its.

  “scare you off”: the exchanges between OH and Alvarez are at the BL.

  “It has always seemed to me”: Peter Porter, “Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath: A Bystander’s Recollections,” Australian Book Review, August 2001: http://www.australianbookreview.com.au/past-issues/online-archive/153.

  “She is the phoenix”: BL.

  On destiny’s doorstep: the details about SP’s discovery of the Fitzroy Road flat are from her letter to Olive Higgins Prouty 20/11/62, Smith.

  Emily Hahn: I experienced Hahn’s generosity and high spirits when I interviewed her for my biography of Rebecca West. She took an immediate interest in my work and helped to arrange interviews with others. Lessing was also helpful to me, but, like SP, I encountered a temperament much cooler than Hahn’s.

  By 2 January: The details in this paragraph are drawn from SP’s essay, “Snow Blitz,” in JP.

  “If she felt any qualms”: Alexander, Ariel Ascending, prints the fullest version of TH’s introduction to SP’s journals.

  SP’s last wracking weekend: My account corrects earlier biographies. Becker has expressed dissatisfaction with previous biographers’ accounts, saying they “suppressed” her information “or distorted it, not only with inaccuracies but also by tailoring it to make a point.”

  Dr. Horder: see http://www.camdennewjournal.com/feature-literature-could-i-have-done-more-sylvia-plath-poets-doctor-john-horder-his-role-her-final-d.

  our mothers: I vividly recall speaking with Becker about her mother, who was also a writer, while researching my biography of Rebecca West. Jillian had very hard feelings about a demanding parent that would have helped form the bond with SP.

  “all one’s energy”: Alvarez, The Savage God.

  thrust her head as far as she could: Jillian Becker learned this detail from a police officer attached to the London coroner’s office.

  In “The Descent of Ariel: The Death of Sylvia Plath,” a manuscript deposited in both the British Library and the University of Maryland, Elizabeth Hinchliffe concludes that Plath did not put her head in the oven until perhaps 7:30 or 8:00 a.m. Plath had asked Trevor Thomas the night before her death what time he would leave for work; 8:30, as usual, was his reply. Plath, Hinchliffe surmises, expected Thomas to smell the gas before he departed for work and come to the rescue. Sylvia did not anticipate that her pacing back and forth would keep Thomas up much of the night, or that he would take a sleeping pill, which then combined with the gas seeping into his apartment. Thus knocked out, Thomas could not save her. The reconstruction of Plath’s last hours hinges, however, on knowing exactly when Plath turned on the gas. Dr. Horder believed that Sylvia had gassed herself at about 4:00 a.m., and he told Stevenson that even if Plath had been found alive, her mind would have been destroyed.

  Chapter 8: AP’s correspondence with Frances McCullough is at Maryland.

  “she had free and controlled access”: quoted in Clark.

  “that hate”: SP’s marks, annotations, and underlining in her books are at Smith, as are the two letters from Dido Merwin to Linda Wagner-Martin, and correspondence to and from AP. My account of Edward Butscher’s research is drawn from EBP, which includes the letters from Olwyn Hughes. The letters to Anne Stevenson from OH and Peter Davison are also at Smith, as are Stevenson’s letters to Davison and OH.

  “Please don’t”: BL.

  “reincarnated Cleopatra”: to OH, BL.

  “very nice”: BL.

  it “became increasingly difficult”: Holder.

  “Notes Toward a Biography”: reprinted in Newman.

  “I am so sick”: Smith.

  “Plath or her publisher”: email from Frances McCullough to Beth Alvarez, 8/2/12, forwarded to me.

  “Ted told me”: Maryland.

  “Miss Rosenstein seems”: ECS.

  Poor Clare Court: interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund.

  “so insensitive that”: quoted in Malcolm.

  “English authors”: SPWW.

  “If you wrote”: Elizabeth Compton to EB, 24/1/74.

  Butscher’s request for an interview: “In Search of Sylvia,” SPWW.

  “For me”: Smith.

  “Olwyn, of course”: Emory.

  the “mob”: THL does not include the entire correspondence between AP, TH, and Frances McCullough, but it is available at Emory and at Maryland, College Park.

  Reviews of Letters Home: SPCH.

  “You reify”: 4/2/75, EBP.

  “If it was just”: 11/2/75, EBP.

  “There was a very real chance”: 30/4/91, Maryland.

  “the effect of”: Emory.

  “no mention of Assia”: ECS.

  “a Soviet view of history”: interview with A. Alvarez.

  “rampant” feminism: Emory.

  “spilling the beans”: TH to Victor Kovner, the attorney defending him in the Jane Anderson lawsuit, Emory.

  “central figure”: Emory.

  “I have had the work in question”: Emory.

  “hot copy”: BL.

  “bad as well as the good”: 26/8/92, BL.

  Eschewing much biographical speculation: Emory.

  “It’s so deterministic”: Emory.

  “excessively vituperative”: Bayley.

  “Sylvia suicide doll”: Frieda’s comments are quoted in Jamie Wilson, “Frieda Hughes Attacks BBC for Film on Plath,” Guardian, 3/2/03.

  In “Nicholas Hughes, Sylvia Plath’s Son, Commits Suicide,” Huffington Post, 23/3/09, Frieda is quoted as saying her brother had been depressed.

  “wildly inaccurate”: ECS.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Alexander, Paul. Rough Magic: A Biography of Sylvia Plath. Viking-Penguin, 1991. Kindle edition, new introduction, 2003.

  ______, ed. Ariel Ascending: Writings about Sylvia Plath. Harper & Row, 1985.

  Alliston, Susan. Poems and Journals, 1960–1969. Richard Hollis, 2010.

  Alvarez, A. The Savage God: A Study of Suicide. Random House, 1972.

  ______. When Did It All Go Right? William Morrow, 2000.

  Axelrod, Steven Gould. Sylvia Plath: The Wound and the Cure of Words. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.

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