The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 2: 1956-1963

How good it was to have your happy letter. You sound in wonderful spirits and I hope you keep them and your health through the longish winter drag till springtime. Ted and I came back from Yorkshire Saturday & had the misfortune to be on a train whose steam-pipe was broken so it was absolutely unheated & freezing cold all the long trip down & we could do nothing about it. Luckily I could bundle the baby in her carrycot (which she has just about outgrown) under two blankets & she wore the lovely pale blue blanket-snowsuit I got her with Dot’s money. Nevertheless, I came down with the worst case of flue I’ve had yet, and the baby caught a cold, so after my week-long cold in Yorkshire plus the baby waking us for hours every night cutting her two top teeth, I have been pretty oppressed. I hope that we can reserve you a nice room at Sutcliffe’s, a fine old-farm house Inn about 15 minutes walk from the Hughes, and stay up in Yorkshire for one week out of your (I hope) at least 6-week stay. Then you could take long moor-walks with us, I could take you to Haworth and so on. I don’t think we will plan to spend Christmas in Yorkshire again. In the first place, winter is an awful time to travel with babies---colds simply spoil everything, and then the Hughes house is too small to take us all. In addition, Olwyn made such a painful scene this year that I can never stay under the same roof with her again. She has never hidden her resentment of me, & her relation to Ted is really quite pathological---I think they slept in the same bed till she was 9 years old & probably this is one of the reasons she never married. In any case, she has never spoken to me, asked me one personal question or done anything but ignore me & make it plain she has come to see Ted. Naturally, this hurt me very much, but I never crossed her, because I knew Ted was fond of her. Evidently one of the things she finds hardest to take is that I have opinions & ideas which Ted respects---she has been used to dominating him in their childhood---and this Christmas my book happened to have a surprising spate of rave reviews (I’ll send you some)---over the radio, in the Sunday papers & so on. Olwyn seemed to have some chip on her shoulder & all at once, when I asked her to please stop criticizing Ted & me, which she had been doing since she arrived, she turned on me with an hysterical outburst of fury, in front of her mother & Ted accusing me of being a “nasty bitch”, eating too much Christmas dinner, acting as if their house was my home, daring to say I didn’t like a particular poet she liked (she has no qualms about criticizing poets I!like) & what seemed worst to her, not putting her up at our place last spring when I was expecting Frieda at any moment. Well, we all sat astounded as this kept on and on---full of venom she had been storing up since I married Ted. I tried to explain I wouldn’t want my own mother living with me in such cramped quarters when having a baby---I think she dimly wanted it to be her baby---but she kept on saying how she was the daughter of the house & I wasn’t & actually calling me by my maiden name “Miss” . . . which I think shows how horrified she was at Ted’s marriage.

It was so apparent that she resented my existence as Ted’s wife---the fact that I had thoughts, a career, a child & had been treated lovingly like a daughter by dear Edith and as one of the family by the aunts and uncles---that this break can never be mended. The insult and venom she let loose---while saying, imagine, that I was intolerant, selfish, inhospitable, immature & I don’t know what else---is something that can never be mended, at least not until she gets married herself. Luckily Ted is mature enough & loves me enough to see what an impossible situation this is and agrees that someone who sees me only as a nasty bitch shouldn’t be Frieda’s godmother and won’t be. Nevertheless, I am rather heartsick about the whole mess, especially at the sorrow all this caused poor Edith, whom I am very fond of. We’ll just plan to stay in Yorkshire in summer instead of winter, because I refuse to be ousted from my “family abroad” through Olwyn’s furies. Evidently she said such awful things to Gerald’s Australian wife when she was staying with them, that poor Joan packed her bags and headed to the train station in tears. So I feel it’s not just me, but the image of a rival in Olwyn’s warped mind that makes her try to annihilate her brother’s wives---and of course her relation to Ted is a rather obvious Freudian one, and quite horrifying.

Well, Frieda luckily is too young to absorb such things & I’m determined she’ll never be in a situation to do so again. I am, as you may imagine, delighted to be back in our little flat & to feel the world come back in proportion. I’m eagerly awaiting word about my two ladies’ magazine stories (which my agent, at least, is delighted with) and working on a longer third. I’ve also been asked to edit an American supplement of modern poetry^* by a critical magazine here and to allow two poems from The Colossus to be published in a British anthology of modern British poetry^* because I “live in England, am married to an Englishman, & the editor admires my work”. All of which is very nice, & probably my good reviews will bring more such little offers my way. In spite of the oppressions, illnesses & nagging bills of the last six weeks I am happy as I have ever been, & Ted and I are finding continuous & amazing joy in our little Frieda who is, we are forced to admit, getting prettier every day. She has four teeth now, stands & sits down vigorously, walks round her pen holding on to the side rail & bangs her little chicken to make it squeak. Ted’s aunt Hilda & cousin Vicky (a young art teacher) gave her a big brother to little Bunzo Bear and a pair of red rompers & a marvelous brightly painted abacus. She has a nice little family of animals & dolls & we are dying for her to get to the stage of coloring books. Dido sent a collection of children’s poems by Robert Graves^* (a friend of hers) to start her book collection.

I do hope you can manage to stay here at least six weeks. When you make reservations definite, do let us know. I wish you could stay past July 31 by a few days, as Ted is giving the speech at his old Yorkshire school at graduation^* & it would be convenient to be up there then, but even if you couldn’t stay on, we would. I thought I’d tell you that what we hope---in addition to having you ensconced in a room near here---is that you & Frieda get along so well that we could go to the Merwins wonderful farm in France for a week’s holiday (children are taboo there!) while you live here & care for Frieda. Would that be too much for you? There are all the stores you could want two-minutes around the corner & you’d be comfy in our flat with fridge, stove etc. Then we would also like to plan a few days in Cornwall by some sea-beach, probably with you and Frieda. Maybe we could all rent a cottage for a week. Ted wants to look round for possible houses there. That is about all we’ve planned---we can work out details when you come. I’d like to do a bit of touring London with you while Ted babysits, as I’ve seen so little of it!

We are planning an absolutely unsocial, quiet hardworking winter here now. I have been bothered lately by what my doctor calls a “grumbling appendix”---occasional periods of sharpish pain which then go away, but my appendix is extremely tender to touch. I am thinking seriously of asking him to let me have it out at some convenient (if that’s ever convenient!) time this spring, as I have nightmares about going to Europe on our Maugham grant, getting a rupture and either dying for lack of hospital or being cut up by amateurs, infected, ad infinitum. Don’t you think it would be advisable to have it out now? I feel I’m living with a time-bomb as it is. Have you any idea how long one is hospitalized, how painful it is, etc? Naturally one is reluctant to get oneself in for an operation like that if one isn’t forced to it, but I don’t want to worry about rupture in Europe, or during pregnancy. Encourage me, & I’ll have it out with my doctor. I’d wait, of course, till Frieda was fully weaned & I was in good health.

I’m glad you’re going on with your reading course now that you’re so far with it. What’s the position about the life of your department now at BU? It must be nice to think that you can get good-paying part-time work in Wellesley after you’re retired. What was that job Marion said you were offered? Tell Betty Aldrich how much her marvelous family photo meant to us. That’s my favorite sort of Christmas card. Keep well & much love to you & dear Warren . . .

PS – The date of Ted’s Yorkshire speech is July 18th so that would make our stay there earlier.

Thanks very much for your good letter. I think the supplement of recent American verse is a highly exciting idea and should be delighted to edit it. I already have an embryo list of poems by young poets I know or know of who are too new to be at all familiar here, and of new poems by better-known poets . . . probably the hardest thing will be putting a tight lid on this and keeping the number from growing too great!

Could you give me some idea of a deadline? I want to look through some books that will probably be hard to get hold of over here, and it may take some time to locate them.

I wonder if I could write you about an old and ugly problem that reared its head with renewed vengeance this last week---namely Ted’s sister. I’d appreciate it immensely if you could drop me a few helpful and commonsensical words on the subject as you did four years ago when she was endeavouring to send a sequence of her female Hungarian friends to live with us.

We all went up to Yorkshire for Christmas: Ted, me, the baby & Olwyn fresh from Paris dressed completely in black with her hair dyed bright red. She has always had a cold, and what I call for lack of a better word “sophisticated” control of her emotions in relation to me: treating me with a definite, yet civil dismissal, rather like an obtuse piece of furniture that somehow got in her way. She never talks to me, but through me, around me and to Ted, and never in all the years I’ve know her has she asked me a personal question or made a comment on anything involving me. I felt, and foolishly it now seems, that she would grow to accept Ted’s marriage and forgive me for being a person with marked opinions, feelings and “presence”, but this Christmas some small spark touched off the powderkeg & she made obvious to Ted & his mother what I’ve known all along: that her resentment is a pure and sweeping and peculiarly desperate hatred. Curiously I was very relieved: her total & patronizing snubbing of me was not pleasant (she always calls me “little”, although I’m a good inch taller than she is). You remember “little” was also a favorite word of mine! – diminishing to innocence & harmlessness emotions I deeply feared!^* Anyway, we had been living in the same small house for a week and I felt that the “surface” between us was better than usual, but on the last day of our stay---Ted’s and mine---the outburst came. Olwyn had been nagging at us for being too critical of people ever since she came up & finally I asked her to lay off & said she was as critical as the two of us put together. This is the first time I actually confronted her in the open & the transformation was astounding. She started to fume and shriek and the stream of words ran more or less “youre a nasty bitch, a nasty selfish bitch, Miss Plath” (she calls me by my maiden name as if by that she could unmarry me) “you act as if our house were your palace, I watched you eat Christmas dinner & you certainly stuffed yourself, you think you can get away with everything, you’re trying to come between Ted & me, you bully me and my mother and Ted. I’m the daughter in this house. You criticized a book I bought last year (this being a nice enough poet whose poems neither Ted nor I like), you criticized a friend of mine (this being a dull Dutchman Ted & I found dry & boring) you’re a bitch, an immature woman, inhospitable, intolerant . . .” and on and on. Earlier on, on returning from shopping with Ted, she said to me with one of her inimitable smiles “All the people on the bus thought Ted had a new redheaded wife.” And Ted’s mother did say blandly that the two of them slept in the same bed till Olwyn was 9 and Ted 7. So she does have a five year lead on me.

I said very little & Ted & his mother sat stunned. The main thing she seemed to resent was my existence as Ted’s wife, not just me. She of course criticizes poets and people with a vengeance, but my disagreeing with her she couldn’t take, nor my own writing, either. It so happened that at Christmas my book had a whole spate of very good, even rave, reviews in Punch,^* the weeklies, the Sunday papers & over the radio---with Ted reading a story on the radio one day, & me reading a poem in a review on the next & maybe this public recognition of me as Ted’s wife & a poet in my own right also irked Olwyn.

The oddest thing is that the main crux of her fury stemmed from a visit she paid us last spring, just as I was expecting to go in to labor any day. She came to London for a weekend (I had visions of a sisterly interest in my feelings, confinement etc. etc. & projected my desire for a comforting woman relative onto her) & instead of coming alone, brought two friends---one of them a total stranger. They sat round & smoked & Olwyn talked to Ted about astrology. I served them all lunch; they stayed on, obviously expecting me to serve them all dinner. I suggested we go out for fish & chips. Olwyn, it turned out, wanted to live with us---in our two rooms (“you had plenty of room” she cried last week). I tried to explain that I wouldn’t want my own mother sleeping on the couch in the livingroom when I went into labor at home & at that point didn’t feel like waiting on houseguests, worried as I was about the hereditary possibility of having a mental defective like Ted’s two cousins. I have an odd feeling she wanted my baby to be her baby. Ted asked her to be godmother & I didn’t object, when the baby was born, although both of us agreed after this Christmas blowup that it was silly to have a godmother & spiritual guide for Frieda who honestly thought her mother was nothing more than a nasty bitch.

As you may imagine my old Wicked Witch trauma came into action again. All the bright right answers about my also being a daughter in the house, if only by law, and the suggestion that Olwyn marry and have a few babies before she lecture me about the meaning of womanhood---said themselves later in my head. She acted like a jealous mistress, down to the red-dyed hair---as if by treating me like dirt & Ted like Prince Charming, we must fall apart by sheer disparity. She also said I’d driven her from her own house, she’d never come home from Christmas again, now wouldn’t I be happy etc. The morning we left---neither Ted or I having slept & his mother having cried all night---she threw her arms around me, smiled, said “I’m sorry” & ran back to bed. I don’t quite know what she was sorry for: surely not for hurting me, or for saying the truth, but perhaps for showing herself in the open before Ted.

That evening, as Ted & his mother just sat round (much as they do when Ted’s idiot cousin comes for tea, greeting everything from her new diamond ring to her yowling “Shut up, damn you” or “I’m going to put my head in the gas oven” with smiling nods & “Now, now, Barbara”.) I put the baby to bed and went for a long walk in the full moon over the moors, utterly sick. What upset me most was that neither Ted nor his mother said anything. I simply said “Go on, Olwyn, tell me all of it.” Ted appeared with his nice sane art-teacher cousin in a car as I was nearing Scotland. He had evidently hit his sister & told her off after I’d gone. Later, he said what we’d just witnessed was a pathological case & that we’d better steer clear of Olwyn till she got married. Luckily I remembered your wise advice that the woman who shouts her head off most seems in the wrong regardless of who’s right & I was glad I hadn’t retorted to Olwyn in kind.

My question is: now what do I do? I honestly don’t feel I can “forgive & forget” & go back to that fake relation of entertaining Olwyn while she talks to Ted through me & lets me wait on them both. I think that next Christmas we’ll stay here at home: I don’t want to live cramped under the same roof up there with Olwyn again, nor do I want her to get one-up on me by staying away and having all the relatives blame me for it, nor do I want to run into the round of double-flu the three of us came down with coming & going. I hope we can visit Yorkshire with mother this summer & continue our pleasant & happy relation with Ted’s parents & aunts uncles & cousins at nicer times of the year. Yet we are between Paris & Yorkshire & I half-expect Olwyn to turn up here & start more trouble. The thing I dont want is what I think she dimly wants: that by my refusing to see her I drive her & Ted to having clandestine meetings, where I would then obviously appear a mean, domineering figure. I think that if she wants to come here or for Ted to come there that the baby & I should go along, although my presence is intolerable to her. Yet as long as Ted thinks we should steer clear of her I’m perfectly happy. Luckily he isn’t in doubt about who he’s married to, although he’s deeply hurt by the whole situation. Do you agree I should just shut up about it, never refer to it or try to underline Olwyn’s hatred---since I deeply feel Ted is with me and for me? What attitude should I take when we meet again? Generous, I suppose.

Earlier, I would have been seriously threatened by all this. As it is, I feel sickened enough, but somehow quite steady. My role as Ted’s wife, Frieda’s mother, a writer, me---is beginning to flower into what I always dreamed of. I think Olwyn would “take” me if I were, like most of Ted’s previous girlfriends a “mealymouthed little princess” (which is what she called them, scornfully). I may have gone through just this goody-goody stage with my series of pseudo-mothers---Mrs. Prouty, Mary Ellen Chase, Mrs. Cantor ad inf, but I am not prepared to regress & efface myself with Olwyn. She has a queer way of trying to judge and bully our marriage: “You’re unhappily married, why don’t you buy a house in the country, London is so ugly . . .” and so on. If I felt worried by this, I would be worried about being worried. We want a town house, a Cornwall seaside house, a car & piles of children & books & have saved about $8 thousand simply out of our writing in the past five years toward these dreams & feel in the next five years we may nearly approximate them. This is our business, & the lord knows our life together since Frieda’s arrival has been full of fun & happiness . . . as if she, by her droll, adorable otherness opened a whole new world for the two of us. She’s like a sort of living mutually-created poem who will, of herself, find a shape, a rhythm & who seems to thrive on the love and games and words we share with her. I think at last that I may break into the women’s magazines over here with stories---I have a very encouraging agent (my ultimate aim is the good old LHJ and SatEvePost) and that this four-hour-a-day stint I put in is utterly consistent with being a good mother: I have a career which is fun & which I respect myself for having & which is a home-career: I’m always on hand for crises, meal-making and child-care and flexible enough to dovetail these with my own work. I also think my whole mind is more lively and inquiring and interested in other mothers and other people because of my new direction (as distinct from the slice-of-life arty story I used to try to do). And the LHJ seems a lot healthier to me than the I-remember-when-I-was-a-child-in-Westchester-county/Bangok/Tibet etc. that one finds in the estimable New Yorker.

Anyhow, my first American ladies’ magazine story will be dedicated to you: it was you started me reading the LHJ. Please excuse the single-spaced rant & write if you’ve a minute.

PS. One small footnote that made me feel I wasn’t quite alone in Olwyn’s black book. Ted told me that she was “even worse” (god save her) to her other sister-in-law, a bouncing, blond extrovert Australian who married her other brother (older by eight years). Evidently she so dug in to this poor girl during her first visit to England & her husband’s family that Joan packed her bags in tears & Ted just rescued her from the railway station as she headed back to Australia. As Ted said, “if she did that to Joan, not caring much about Gerald & never writing him, you can imagine how much more she resents you.” I certainly can. She writes Ted a voluminous, loving, intimate letter once a week and goes desperate if he doesn’t reply in kind. I remember your saying when I spoke of their childhood intimacy that this sort of thing never ends or undoes itself. I’m willing to accept this, as I would not be if Ted seemed more ambivalent in his emotional ties. But what about the future? I can quite imagine Olwyn marrying a man she hates, or committing some other symbolic suicide---her outbreak in Yorkshire was a form of self-mutilation: I forced her into her ugly temper, her exile from her own house & so on.

Anyhow, enough of that. I would appreciate a straightforward word from you. I feel I’ve come a long way since the last bout with Olwyn, but have a long way to go yet before I become the wise wife I’d like to grow into.

You should see Frieda: four teeth, two top & bottom, she stands & walks round her crib and pen holding on, plays with her tub-duck, squeaky rag chicks & bears & has a huge appetite. People still stop in the street to exclaim over her big blue eyes which is heartening as I think she is doomed to straight-as-a-stick brown hair like Ted & me. She shows a marked liking for books---even if her interest is mainly crumpling the crackly pages.

Your lovely New Years letters have arrived and meant a very great deal to me. I’m so glad you like the blouse. I just had vision of you in it & it was the only one of its kind & color in the store so I felt fortunate at finding something I thought would suit you so well. I hope Warrie forgives the unimaginativeness of Ties as a gift & likes the color & patterns which I felt would look distinguished on him. I got his dear letter the other day. You are a genius to locate a Speedwriting book! I don’t know what ever could have happened to the one I had! In any case, I’ll guard these with my life---they will probably come in handy more than once. I’m really an awful correspondent this Christmas, I’ve felt so blue with these repeated sinus colds. I just got over a two-week bout at Christmas to come down on an unheated train & got laid up worse than ever & am just now feeling slightly better after 10 days of misery when to cook a meal seemed a superhuman effort. In addition, the sickenly unpleasant scene Olwyn staged at Yorkshire bothered me more than I can tell & the thought that she’s up there poisoning her mother against me is very sad---Mrs. Hughes wrote us a tart letter very unlike her---something to the effect that we should expect to get flu when traveling on a Saturday in holiday season etc. etc. Naturally she would take Olwyns side right or wrong, but the Olwyn has always bossed that house shamefully & as Ted says, her outburst derived from an idiotic jealousy. I hope we can go to Yorkshire this summer for a week together because I am reluctant to give up my pleasant relation with Ted’s aunts, uncles & art-teacher cousin, but I shall see to it that our Christmasses are spent at home where my children imbibe Christmas spirit and not the venom that I had to suffer this year. I can always say that holiday travel brings on flu, which it does & have a pleasant time here. Do encourage me, I feel the lack of some relative or friend to bolster my morale. I am going to have an interview with a surgeon on Friday the 13th (I hope the verdict is more auspicious than the day) about my appendix & I suppose my job is to convince him it should come out before I go to Europe. I hope you second me in this, as I find it a bit hard to more or less volunteer for an operation of any sort that isn’t an emergency necessity.

Dido Merwin has been angelic, encouraging me to have my appendix out (saying she wouldn’t let me visit them in France if I had it in because of the dangers of sepsis, no-anesthesia, peritonitis and on and on if one gets a rupture in the country) & telling me how easy it was for her. We had her for dinner the other night---made Dot’s veal scallopini---do tell her how I think of her while making her recipes & try to pry a few more from her. Made her carrot cake for Christmas. Dido brought the first four volumes of Beatrix Potter’s classic Peter Rabbit series^* which are enchanting & plans gradually to give Frieda the whole set. She’s an ideal godmother---full of wise advice about Frieda’s education here and so on. Bill, now in America on a lecture tour, has managed to get Ted & me two reviews to do on the Nation.^* They are really the nicest people we know here.

So glad you got the Manchester Guardian review^* (how glad I am I left the Ella Mason poem out of my book!) & do by all means send Mrs. Prouty a copy. That’s what I had hoped to do if I got more than my own copy, which I have.

Frieda has settled back into her usual easy schedule now that we’re back & she is sleeping in the livingroom. Her cold has left her---luckily hers are pretty light---and she looks the picture of health & prettiness. I think I’ll probably wean her completely to the cup this month, as if I have my appendix out I shall have to do so. She drinks very nicely from the cup now, a little silver cup, although she is tempted to knock it away and be done with it every now and then. I can’t wait till you see her. I am proud to say she is very good and unspoiled. She is used to company---having us around---but plays by herself all the day and only cries when she is hungry or tired or teething. I want her to be a self-sufficient creature who can read or color or play with toys while I work nearby. Of course at mealtimes, rising & bedding we dandle her and sing to her and make little games, but none of this holding her on the lap all day as Mrs. Hughes did which was nearly the ruin of her. Could you come over mid-Junish rather than early June? If we do go to Europe after my possible operation that would give us the clear 3 months we’re supposed to spend. The other alternative is that I might get a job but that is dubious just now. In any case, we are looking forward to seeing you!

Had a very sweet British poet, Thom Gunn, who is teaching at Berkeley for lunch yesterday, passing through London on his Maugham award.^* I wish he lived near us, he is a rare, unaffected & kind young chap. Next week Ted & I are recording a radio program of 20 minutes interview called Two of a Kind----about our both being poets, & Ted’s doing a program for the Carribean services. Now he’s typing out two children’s programs^*---one about writing a novel (which he tried successfully with his Cambridge schoolboys) & the other a personal reminiscence about how catching animals turned into writing poems. He & Frieda are my two angels – I don’t know how I ever managed without them.

Well, your letters have kept coming & coming & increasing my morale immensely through a rather glum period & now that I am recovered enough to write letters I realise how long a silence I’ve plunged into. Do forgive me. I’ve embarked, with Ted’s help, on a drastic program to pull my health up from the low mid-winter slump of cold after cold, & am eating big breakfasts (oatmeal, griddles & bacon etc., with lots of citrus juice), tender steaks, salads & drinking the cream from the tops of our bottles with iron & vitamin pills. We try to be in bed by 10 & are not going out socially at all. I feel immensely homesick when you talk of white snow! All we’ve had here since October is grey rain. One day we got up in muggy greyness & it got blacker & blacker till by 10 am I had to put all the light on. Bless your snow for a change, there’s nothing drearier than a wet grey gritty winter! I’ve hardly been able to get Frieda out at all. I’ve got her down to one 6 am nursing a day & this week hope to tail that off so she’s drinking wholly from her cup. She is cutting a new tooth & very fretful, poor baby. When we let her creep without her pen, she laughs & whizzes over the rug. Her standing is a bit of a problem for she does it all the time in her crib---sometimes I have to lay her down about 10 times in a row when she is ready for a nap, she puts her finger in her mouth for a minute, breathes quietly, & then, even if I hide & don’t go out of the room, she giggles (thinking she’s given me time to leave) & whoops, she’s standing up & walking round her crib.

I’m so looking forward to next summer. Could you possibly alter your flight time to cover August 20th? (You better sit down, now, perhaps!) The reason I’m asking is that I discovered today your 2nd grandchild is due about then & I’d be overjoyed to have you there to meet Nicholas/ Megan when he or she arrives! Ted & I are very pleased at the news & have our fingers crossed that this Mrs. Waley in Chalcot Crescent will decide to sell her house (she doesn’t know yet whether she’ll sell or rent it). It is the place we’d like to move---right around the corner, & it needs no other fixing up than settling in. Of course, it would solve our space problem beautifully, but I don’t want to push her. So we’ll just wait & hope a place near here turns up by New Year’s next year. The way things look now, I will probably have my appendix out some time in February (my doctor advised an early date as I’m pregnant & says there’s absolutely no danger), rest all March, & head to Southern Europe for April, May & the larger part of June on the Maugham grant. Then here for a leisurely July with you (a week in France for us, perhaps), savoring Frieda & being together. I wish the 4 of us could manage a trip to the Scilly Isles which we hear are beautiful, but that would probably mean reservations way in advance. Do tell me you’ll try to stay & see the new baby!!!

I’ve taken on a temporary part-time job which is lots of fun to keep me from brooding about my hospital sojourn which I don’t look at all forward to! If you know anyone who’s had an appendix out, do reassure me. I have a mortal fear of being cut open or having anesthesia. I don’t know how I can stand being away from the baby 2 weeks---that will be the hardest thing of all, she is prettier & more adorable every day.

Anyhow, my job is from 1-5:30 & involves copy-editing & page layout for the big spring issue of The Bookseller,^* a trade organ which comes out weekly but has 2 big bi-annual issues full of ads & bibliography of all coming books in England + 150 pages editorial sections (fiction, biography, children’s etc.) with 400 or so pictures. I’ve been rewriting picture captions & a lot of publicity dept. biography material from all the various publishers & the editor was pleased enough to let me lay out the whole children’s section of pictures & galley proofs (18 pages)---where I had the fun of pasting the notice of Ted’s children’s book in a prominent position! I’ll be through in about 2 weeks---the office is lovely, with a red Turkish carpet on the 3rd floor overlooking a pleasant square & I’m having fun learning about printing & editing. Also, the money helps us over this bare time between grants. We pretend our writing money isn’t there & never touch it, as it is House Money. Don’t you think a downpayment of 3 thousand pounds on a 7 thousand pound house would be respectable? A 20-year mortgage at 5% would mean only about $560 + interest to pay a year, just about what we’re paying now for our flat! Does that sound reasonable to you? Salaries are so low here (the average shorthand-typist gets $28 a week!---top-executive sec. abt. $40) that Ted could easily earn by writing full-time in a quiet study what he could slaving in some 9-5 job. The BBC has accepted his children’s program^* material & wants more. Of course, all he needs is one really successful play! Oh, how I look forward to your coming! My heart lifts now that the year swings toward it---we’ll get you a comfortable room & breakfast place in easy walking distance when we know your exact dates & plan some lovely times. What fun if we could all have a week together by the sea in Cornwall or the Scilly Isles! Do tell me you’re happy about our coming baby! We already love it. A big hug for you & Warren . . .

PS: Got a lovely New England Calendar & adorable book for Frieda from dear Aunt Marion: do thank her & say I’ll write when I’ve recovered a speck more; & lovely letters from Aunt Dot & Aunt Mildred which meant an immense deal. I really am very hungry for my relations! How they would love Frieda! A nice letter too from Mrs. Prouty & a dear one from Marty Plumer to whom I sent 2 handsome hand-knit sweaters for her twins---she’s sent so much to Frieda!

I’m sorry to be letting you know so late, but I discovered at the office today that it’s my Saturday to work, so we won’t be able to come round^* tomorrow night as we had hoped since Ted will have to stay home & care for the baby till I get through.

Thanks a thousand times for your good newsy letters & the yellow shorthand (excuse: speedwriting) book which arrived this week. I’m most grateful. I’m so happy to hear of your lunches, dinners, symphonies & ballets with your good friends. I only hope you make a special effort to take things easy this next crowded semester so you will be well-rested when you come to see us. Already I am thinking of all the pleasant little things we will find to do.

I went to see my doctor this morning & he predicts August 17th for the baby’s arrival, Ted’s birthday. How I wish you could switch to a flight to cover that date! It would be such fun having you come to see one baby & go away having seen two. We had one or two clear blue days this week & Ted sent me up to Hampstead Heath one morning where I walked round over an hour through woodland & by open hilly meadows---a nice place for picnics & the baby’s rambling in good weather. I felt much renewed, & my concentrated diet & vitamin-taking is already having its effect.

My afternoon job is very pleasant & I have done about 60 pages of layout now, which I enjoy very much---balancing the pictures & photographs & jacket designs on double-page spreads, ordering the publishers according to importance & pasting the galleys into place. I get to do all the little rush jobs of typing as my speed is the marvel of the office where the few others hunt-and-peck & I sound like a steam engine in contrast. My afternoons out have helped Ted really plow into his play & I think this one will probably be really stageable. He’s full of ideas & in wonderful form. We heard our 20 minute broadcast “Poets in Partnership” this Tuesday morning, where an acquaintance of ours on the BBC asked us questions & we ended by reading a poem each^*---quite amusing. Ted has had his children’s broadcasts accepted & they want him to do more.

Patsy ONeil Pratson writes she has a little boy, Lincoln Frederick, born January 24th, & I am so pleased. We have as names the old Nicholas Farrar & the new Megan Emily (I like Meg as a nickname, don’t you? Anyway, get used to it. The Emily is a feminizing of daddy’s Emil & also for E. Dickinson and E. Bronte^*). I plan to make several brightly colored maternity smock tops with continental embroidery tapes on them for my “Italian summer wardrobe”. That simplifies everything. Now I’ve got to find some sort of bathing or sunsuit, for I want to swim this spring! If we take the travel grant in April, May & June, it should support us into the fall. Did I ask you before, by the way, to glance at the electric frypan recipe book (in the frypan down cellar?) & copy out the recipe for pineapple upside down cake (including the separate recipe for batter?) I’d like to try that in my pan here as it was always one of my spectacular deserts.

Ted & I went to a little party last night to meet the American poet I admire next to Robert Lowell---Ted (for Theodore) Roethke. I’ve always wanted to meet him, as I find he is my Influence. Ted gave me his collection “Words for the Wind” this Xmas^* & it’s marvelous. Look it up in the library---I think you would like the greenhouse poems at the front very much.

He’s a big, blond, Swedish looking man, much younger seeming than his 52, with a brassy, superficially goodlooking ex-student wife^* about as nice as nails. Ted & I got on well with him & hope to see him again.

I should probably go into hospital at the end of this month. My doctor says it’s the best time---after my first 3 months pregnancy---& perfectly safe. Dido Merwin gave us a great shock, returning from a “week in the country” to whip off her scarf & show us a bandaged head & no more jowls---she had a face-lift in secret & came to encourage me about the new anesthesias & cutting etc., since she’s about as morbid as I about them. We were sorry she did it in a way & wonder what Bill’s reaction will be---he’s in America earning $$$ on a reading tour. She’s slimmed drastically & of course the plumpness just hung in wrinkles & she said she didn’t want people thinking Bill had married his mother (she’s 40ish & he 32, only he looks under 20). I have a very moral attitude that one should earn good wrinkles & face up to them & I’m sure catty women will find more nasty things to say (“She’s scared to lose him, had her face lifted” etc.) than they have already. Well, we love them both dearly & couldn’t have nicer godparents for Frieda. I look so forward to our visit to their farm & vineyard in France which your visit will make possible for us! I’m looking most forward to Italy & practicing my Italian! If only that lady around the corner would sell us her house we’d be really well settled! I’m in much better spirits with the promise of spring & summer & your coming. You will be mad for Frieda: she’s the prettiest little girl I’ve ever seen & sweet as can be. I want a house big enough for at least four! Roethke said any time Ted wants to teach at Washington State to give him a nod – so in a few years we’ll no doubt make another American year! Lots of love to you & dear Warren.

Your card, forwarded by my mother, arrived while the beginnings of a letter to you still stuck in my typewriter, the occasion being my reading & re-reading of To Bedlam,^* with its fine red, purple & black on white & the beautiful words of Lowell^* which put you up there along with Pasternak. It was terrific having my favorites back again together with the newer ones you were doing when I left (“Elegy in the Classroom”^* among them!).

We thrive so in London we’ll probably stay forever & my children will no doubt talk back to me with clipped Oxford accents till I knock their jaws into proper shape for the old broad A. Our first is a marvelous blue-eyed comic named Frieda & has convinced both of us we want to found a dynasty.

I’d love to hear news of you, your poems, local literary gossip (especially about the House of Lowell) & suchlike. Please tell Maxine^* I much admired her featured Fräulein poem^* in the recent New Yorker---I think its about my favorite of hers, partly, perhaps, because I’m devoted to the horrors of Struwelpeter.^*

I’m delighted to have your reactions to my book^* which has been received with great hospitality by reviewers over here & only hope someday I can find an American publisher who agrees with you! We’ve met, in passing, Stephen Spender, Louis MacNeice, Auden, Thom Gunn etc. & this week Roethke whom (as you can no doubt see by my book) I admire immensely. Our big surprise was dinner with Mr. & Mrs. T. S. Eliot at their house, together with the Spenders which was aweinspiring. Valerie Eliot is a Yorkshire girl & very fine.

I feel awful to write you now after I must have set you to trying to change your plans & probably telling Warren & your friends about our expecting another baby, because I lost the little baby this morning & feel really terrible about it. The lady doctor on my panel came about 9 after Ted called in & will come again tomorrow so I am in the best of hands, although I am extremely unhappy about the whole thing.

I looked so forward to sharing a new little baby with you & felt that some good fate had made this one to coincide with your visit. I am as sorry about disappointing you as anything else, for I’m sure you were thinking of the birth as joyously as I was. The doctor said one in four babies miscarry & that most of these have no explanation, so I hope to be in the middle of another pregnancy when you come anyway. Luckily I have little Frieda in all her beauty to console me by laughing and singing “Lalala” or I don’t know what I’d do. I’m staying in bed & Ted is taking wonderful care of me. He is the most blessed kind person in the world & we are thinking of postponing our Italian trip till next fall as Frieda will be walking & well on by then, & perhaps giving ourselves a two-week holiday in the Scilly Isles this April---if we get some of the money that Ted’s applied for from the Royal Literary Fund which is supposed to aid “distressed authors” with family difficulties.

All weekend while I was in the shadow of this he gave me poems to type & generally distracted me, & I couldn’t wish for a better nurse & comfort. I have, as you may imagine, an immense sympathy for Dotty now & as I grow older feel very desirous of keeping in touch with my near kin. When you come this summer we shall have lovely times with Frieda & I hope I’ll be safely on with another Nicholas-Megan. I’ve been commissioned to write a poem for the summer festival of poetry^* here which is an honor as only about a dozen are invited to contribute,^* so I’ll try to plunge into work, too, now, as it is a good cure for brooding. Do keep in touch with Mrs. Prouty---I wouldn’t mind your mentioning this to her in a casual way---it would probably be better for her to hear of it from you rather than me. I always make it a point to sound cheerful & wanting for nothing when I write her. Do write & cheer me up.

I do hope the sad news in my last letter didn’t cast you down too much. I forsaw how you’d enjoy sharing the good news with all our friends and relatives and only hope it hasn’t been too hard to contradict our optimistic plans. I hadn’t told anyone over here, thank goodness, so I don’t have to suffer people commiserating with me which I couldn’t stand just now. As the doctor said, it will probably just mean having a baby in late autumn instead of late summer. All I can say is that you better start saving for another trip another summer & I’ll make sure I can produce a new baby for you then! Ted & I think seven is a nice magical number & both of us feel our true vocation is being father & mother to a large brood. Megan isn’t pronounced Mee-gan, but the way, but Meg-un, with a short “e.” Forget about King Lear!

We have had a sprinkling of clear invigorating blue days this week & I’ve had Frieda out in the park while I sat on a bench & read my weeks New Yorker (you have no idea what pleasure the weekly arrival of this magazine gives me!) and let the sun shine on her sleeping face. I’m running a hot tub now & preparing to spend the best of the day out in the park again with her. I’m feeling pretty well back to normal now & my daily routine with Frieda & Ted keeps me from being too blue. Ted’s been extravagant & got us tickets to “The Duchess of Malfi”,^* Webster’s wonderful play, starring Dame Peggy Ashcroft^* tomorrow night, so we’re looking forward to that. He’s an angel & has made breakfast for me all week & done the washing up & heavy work & so on. He is writing magnificently on his full-length play & it is the best thing he’s done. Probably good enough to get a full production at the Poets’ Theatre &, we hope, to be staged somewhere here. If all goes well, he should finish it in a month or so. He’s also writing a lot of very lively amusing colorful poems. And has ideas for stories (he wants to get out a volume) & another children’s book. I feel so proud, coming on reviews of him here & there, “Ted Hughes, the well-known Poet” and so on. We have just heard from Yale that they are going to produce a full record of Ted reading his poems in their new series, with his picture on the jacket & so on---they’ve only got about 20 poets on their list so far, so this is very nice. Get your friends to buy copies when it comes out!

If you haven’t already gone to the bother of changing your plane flight, do keep the earlier date as the weather will no doubt be best then & since we won’t go to Italy till fall now, we’ll be here to greet you. I feel easier taking Frieda later in the year, as she’ll be toddling & eating pretty much what we eat by then, & it would be a pity to miss the English spring, which is the only really sure good weather of the year. She looks adorable in those dress-panty outfits you sent & I look forward to her wearing them this spring in the sun---she’s a chubby little girl-butterfly in them, such a darling.

Friday: The marvelous Santa Claus package arrived this morning! I wish you could see what a merry time we had with it---Ted had to show Frieda the marvelous teething necklace right away & I was amazed by your clairvoyance---I was hoping to go out next week & get Frieda some deep blue tights to go with the dress I made her as Helga is having a birthday party for her 3-year-old next Saturday! Imagine my surprise & joy when I saw just what I’d wanted in your packet! And the smock-top with blue embroidery is adorable. I love the blue sweater & extravagant snowsuit: I imagine that will be ample for her next winter. And the Mary Poppins books which I plan to take to hospital with me for light reading when I go! You are an angel!

We hope to see the poet Theodore Roethke again this week. He teaches at the University of Washington (Seattle, I think) & mentioned that Ted should let him know if he wants a job there for a year. We hope to take a return-year in America some time within the next 5 years & finance it by Ted teaching on the West Coast at Berkeley (where his friend & co-English poet Thom Gunn teaches) or Washington, & perhaps summer-school for 6-weeks in New England---a friend just asked if he’d take $1,000 for doing 6 weeks at Worcester at Clark University^*---I’m sure when the time comes something will work out. In any case, I am looking immensely forward to seeing you this summer. Thanks for all the speedwriting books. When the children are in school I’d like to work into an editing job & an easy way to start is by being part-secretary. I tried on the blue tights & white smock last night to see if they’d fit for Helga’s birthday tea this weekend & they’re perfect! We’ll try to get some color pictures of her soon. I had her weighed at the clinic this week & she’s 19 pounds 1 ounce. She’s more cuddly every day. Ted joins me in sending you lots of love. Is there really a chance of Warren’s coming to England this fall?^* I’d like to make sure of being here if there is!

By the time you get this letter, I shall probably have had my appendix out & be well on the road to recovery. I got my “invitation” to come to hospital this afternoon, so I imagine I shall be operated on sometime tomorrow. It’s the 27th, so I hope it’s a lucky day for me. I’ve had this hanging over my head for almost two months now, & shall be very glad to get rid of it!

I’ve got all the house in order, supplies in for Ted, and yesterday baked a banana bread, tollhouse cookies, & today am making apricot tarts & griddle batter, so he shall have something to go on with. By the way, whenever you do send a packet, do you suppose you could pop in a package or so of chocolate bits? I can’t get them here, & tollhouse cookies are our very favorite. The ones I made this weekend, I made with bits brought back by a friend of Marcia Plumer’s, from her Christmas visit in America.

I dressed Frieda in her blue tights & white top for the Huws birthday party for Madeleine & she looked wonderful. The blue sweater is especially beautiful on her, & I love the needlecord overalls with the feet in (which I also can’t get here) which come out of the washmachine daisy-fresh. Sweaters & things-with-feet are what I appreciate most in this climate! Her favorite toy now is that little world-shaped round rattle with the cat-face on it. I shall miss her immensely these next two weeks, but am somewhat consoled, because Ted is an expert at taking care of her, and full of loving attentions, songs and games. Any mail you send here, he’ll bring into hospital; my address there is Ward 1, St. Pancras Hospital, 4 St. Pancras Way, London N.W.1. It’s only about a 15 or 20 minute walk away & less by bus, so Ted will be able to visit me in the meagre evening hours.

As if to cheer me up, I got an airmail special-delivery letter from the Atlantic, accepting a 50-line poem I did as an exercise called “Words for a Nursery”,^* spoken in the person of a right hand, with 5 syllables to a line, 5 stanzas, & 10 lines to a stanza. Very fingery. I imagine that will bring in about $75. I have started writing poems again^* & hope I can keep right on through my hospital period. I’m bringing a notebook in with me as you (& Ted) suggested, to occupy myself by taking down impressions.

Ted has just heard that 4 of his 8 poems will be published, with illustrations, on the Children’s Page of the Sunday Times^* in mid-March, for about $120. The book is due out at the end of March, just in time for Frieda’s first birthday, and this should help the sales a great deal, I think. The Times photographer came round to the house to take pictures of Ted last week. He will be really cloistered for the next two weeks with plenty of time to write, so we hope he’ll get through with his play, called The Calm (it’s a sort of dark opposite to Shakespeare’s Tempest.)

I probably told you about Ted & I doing a recorded interview for a BBC radio program called Two of a Kind a couple of weeks ago. It was about 20 minutes long & ended with each of us reading a poem. Well, they broadcast part of it again on the Sunday following on the weekly-roundup program & evidently it was used as a “model” for the Talks producers, for they decided to give it a full rebroadcast after that on the weekend, & add five minutes more or so, which doubles the $75 fee. We got some funny letters, among them one^* offering us a big house & garden (I’m not quite clear under just what circumstances) since I had said our dream was to have a place big enough so we could yell from one end to the other without hearing each other.^*

Dido Merwin is flying by jet tomorrow to rejoin Bill in America where he’s been getting rich by giving a tour of readings. She treated us to two plays this week---“The Devils”,^* a dramatizing of Huxley’s “The Devils of Loudon”^* by a modern English dramatist John Whiting, a friend of Dido’s Ted has met, and then Middleton’s “The Changeling”,^* a fantastic & marvelous resurrection of the Restoration play with Goya sets & costumes. We’ve also been slipping up the subway line once a week for the series of 12 Ingmar Bergman^* films in Hampstead,^* so I’ve been beguiling the time. I do love London. I had a gallery-going spree & went to five in one afternoon.

Well, I’ve just finished baking the half-moons & am off to hospital with my kit-bag.

PS: No duty to pay on the package. The vitamins are much appreciated---I cant have too many!

I am writing this to you propped up in my hospital bed less than 24 hours after my operation – which I had Tuesday about 11 am, instead of Monday as I thought. I must have really been secretly worried about my appendix a good deal of the time, as now that it is gone I feel nothing but immense relief & pleasant prospects ahead. The worst part was coming in Sunday night & finding I had to wait a day longer than I thought – being ‘under observation’ Sunday night & Monday. The progress they’ve made (since I had my tonsils out) in anesthetics is wonderful. I had an injection in my ward bed which dried up all my saliva & so on & made me pleasantly drowsy. A very handsome young lady anesthetist introduced herself to me & said I’d see her later. She gave me an arm-shot in the anteroom which blacked me out completely. I drowsed pleasantly the rest of the day after they’d given me a shot of pain killer & was ready to see dear Ted when he came during visiting hours in the evening bearing a jar of freshly-squeezed orange juice, a pint of milk & a big bunch of hothouse grapes – none of which they’ve let me touch yet. I had a slight attack of nausea in the evening & promptly threw up a mug of ovaltine I persuaded them to give me. The food is pretty awful, but Ted brought me two huge rare steak sandwiches (we’ve discovered a marvelous tender & flavorful cut with no bone or fat which I think corresponds to the tenderloin of a T-bone steak) & a tin of tollhouse cookies – which I’ll eat later on.

He is an absolute angel. To see him come in at visiting hours, about twice as tall as all the little stumpy people with his handsome kind smiling face is the most beautiful sight in the world to me. He is finishing his play & taking admirable care of little Frieda.

I am enclosing a check for $100 for deposit in our Boston account – On my first night – Monday – here Ted was able to bring me an exciting air letter from The New Yorker^* offering me one of their coveted ‘first reading’ contracts for the next year! This means I have to let them have the first reading of all my poems & only send poems elsewhere if they reject them. I had to laugh, as I send all my poems there first anyway. I get $100 (enclosed) for simply signing the agreement, 25% more per poem accepted plus what they call a “cost-of-living” bonus on work accepted amounting to about 35% more per year, plus a higher base rate of pay for any work they consider of exceptional value. The contracts are renewable each year at their discretion. How’s that! As you may imagine, I’ve been reading & re-reading the letter which came at the most opportunely cheering moment.

I am in a modern wing of this hospital – all freshly painted pink walls, pink & green flowered bed curtains & brand-new lavatories – full of light & air – an immense improvement over that grim ward at Newton-Wellesley where Ted & I visited you! The nurses are all young, pretty & cheerful – no old crochety hags or anything. I am in a big ward, divided by a glass & wood partition with about 17 beds on my side. The women at my end are young & cheerful. One has a T-B knee three had bunion operations – a couple are in plaster casts. I’m really as serious a case as any of them – a great relief to me, for I dreaded a ward of really sick people lying about & groaning all the time.

I am writing propped up in my hospital bed, 6 days now after my operation. My stitches are ‘pulling’ & itching, but the nurses say that’s a sign I’m healed & they want to come out. I’m hoping I may get rid of them today. Actually, I feel I’ve been having an amusing holiday! I haven’t been free of the baby one day for a whole year & I must say I have secretly enjoyed having meals in bed, backrubs & nothing to do but read (I’ve discovered Agatha Christie^* – just the thing for hospital reading – I am a whodunit fan now), gossip & look at my table of flowers sent by Ted’s parents, Ted, Helga Huws & Charles Monteith, Ted’s Editor at Faber’s. Of course before my operation I was too tense to enjoy much & for two days after I felt pretty shaky since they starve you for about 40 hours before & after, but I was walking around the ward on my 3rd day & gossiping with everyone. The British have an amazing ‘stiff upper-lipness’ – they don’t fuss or complain or whine – except in a joking way & even women in toe to shoulder casts discuss family, newspaper topics & so on with amazing resoluteness. I’ve been filling my notebook with impressions & character studies.^* Now I am mobile I make a daily journey round the 28 bed ward stopping & gossiping – this is much appreciated by the bedridden women (most of them are) who regard me as a sort of ward newspaper & I learn a great deal. They are all dying to talk about themselves & their medical involvements. The nurses are very young, fresh & sweet as can be, the Sister (head-nurse) lenient, wise & humorous & all the other women & girls wonderfully full of kindness & cheer. The ward is modern, freshly-painted pink-peach, with pink & green flowered curtains round the beds, good reading lights & overlooks, on my side a pleasant park with antique gravestones – so aesthetically I feel happy – your ward at Newton-Wellesley was the grimmest I’ve ever seen! And my stay at Cambridge hospital little better.^* The food is pretty flat & dull, but each day Ted brings me a jar of fresh orange juice, a pint of creamy milk & a steak sandwich or salad so I’m coming along fine. I feel better than I have since the baby was born & immensely relieved to get rid of this troublesome appendix which has probably been poisoning me for some time.

The ward doctor said I’m fine inside – perfectly healthy in every way, so that’s a relief. I’ve been on a strong diet of iron & vitamin pills & haven’t had a cold since that ghastly Christmas interval. Saturday & Sunday visiting hours are from 2-3:30 instead of at night, so I persuaded the Sister to let me meet Ted & Frieda out in the park both days. It was utter heaven – I hadn’t seen the baby for 5 days & missed her a lot, so I hugged her & fed her her bottle of juice. Luckily both days were balmy & sunny as summer, all the crocusses & daffodils out. I felt immensely lucky & happy to be sunning on the 4th & 5th days after my op, feeling fine except for itching stitches. Ted has been an angel. I sense he is eager for me to come home & little remarks like ‘I seem to be eating a lot of bread’ & ‘Doesn’t the Pooker make a lot of dirty pots’ tell me he is wearying of the domestic routine. Poor dear, I’d like to know how many men would take over as willingly & lovingly as he has! Plus bringing me little treats every night.

Fortunately there seem to be only two ‘serious’ cases now – although one youngish woman did die while I was too drugged to notice much of it – a brain operation who still is in a coma after half a week with tubes in her nose & a skull-sock on her head & an old lady run over by a car with both legs broken who keeps shouting ‘Police, policeman, get me out of here’ & calling the nurses ‘devils who are trying to murder her’ & knocking the medicine out of their hands. Her moans ‘O how I suffer’ are very theatrical & as she is shrewd all day, picking up the least whisper, & as they give drugs for pain, I think most of this is an act for attention. I find all of us are more entertained than annoyed by this as our days are otherwise routine & she adds a good bit of color with her curses & swears & the sudden crashes as she flings glasses of medicine about.

Anyhow, I shall be glad as anything to get out – the Sister just came back & said she never took stitches out till the 7th or 8th day so I’ll have to wait some more & am getting very impatient. I hope, if all goes well, to be home by Friday, March 10th.

Well, this is the 6th day after my operation & I am feeling much better than I have for the last 3 months. Your beautiful spring bouquet came last week and your nice newsy letter which cheered me up immensely. As Ted probably told you, I had to go into hospital a week ago Sunday two days before my operation & was so nervous waiting I hardly ate a thing. The nurse’s here are wonderful – very kind & efficient – and I am in a big ward of about 28 women divided in two parts by a partition. It has just been painted, with little green & pink flowered curtains up round each bed & is light & airy, so very cheerful – not old & grim like the ward I was in at Cambridge when they thought I had appendicitis before. I was drugged all Tuesday so felt no pain & Wednesday & Thursday felt a bit sore & pale – they starve you for 40 hours or so before & after appendicitis so your intestines will be empty – but after that perked right up. Ted saw me every night & I looked forward to his visit all day. Now I am waiting for my stitches to come out, which I hope will happen in the next few days as I want to get home. The other women & girls here are wonderful – full of good spirit & fun – there are only two really sick ones. One had a brain operation & is unconscious all the time with tubes up her nose & looks quite gruesome & the other is an old lady who was run over & both her legs broken. She yells a lot – it sounds like playacting but may not be – calls “Police, help, police, get me out of here!” & calls the nurses devils who are trying to murder her & knocks all the medicines out of their hands & won’t take them. I must say it is entertaining as little else happens, though I hope she isn’t really in pain – they’re so good about giving drugs I don’t think she is.

It has been like spring here the last days & Saturday & Sunday afternoon during visiting hours I got permission to sit out in the sun with Ted & little Frieda – he pushed her down in the baby carriage – & we sat in the pretty park in back of the hospital. I hadn’t seen Frieda for five days & missed her so much I couldn’t stop hugging her. Ted is so sweet & thoughtful & brings me milk & orange juice each day which we dont get here.

I have your good fat blue air letter to hand here, my writing board propped on my stitches (which are still In) & so much to tell you of – bits & pieces – I hope the paper holds out. You are both Angels & your benevolent influence (in the classic astrological sense) floats around you, behind you & over even the great green Atlantic. I’ll get my ‘op’ story over first. I took the bus to Camden High Street in the rain Sunday night – hours late for my appointed arrival as I spent the day baking breads, pastries & all sorts to last Ted the week & also just plain didn’t want to go. I took out the map the St. Pancras Hospital (Branch of UCH^* in NW1) sent me, hefted my cases & started in the wet Sunday blankness of C-Town in what seemed to me the right direction. Half an hour later I was ingeniously lost in the backstreets – the only people in sight rushed toward me with what I thought odd haste. They asked piteously where they were. By this time I wanted a policeman, an ambulance, any damn thing. My 2-weeks hospital-reading felt like a bricklayers kit. Finally, in some obscure dank quarter, I found a ‘sweet old lady’ & asked her ‘Where is St. Pancras Hospital’. She took one look at me, called her husband who was pottering under his car & they insisted on driving me there. I sat in the back among oil cans & promptly started bawling. The old lady obviously hoped I was an unwed mother, but was consoled when I told her I was to be cut open. I had managed to get several miles away from the hospital & it was a long drive. My sister coolly informed me I would not be operated on till ‘some time Tuesday – probably late afternoon’. When my jaw dropped & hung she asked wonderingly what I’d expected. I did, by dint of much self-expression, manage to be done Tuesday morning & sat like a deep-frozen rabbit all Monday while they extracted blood, nostril-germs & samples of everything I had to give . . . never saw the doctor whose name hung over my bed & two housemen – one a ‘Registrar’ – which sounded ominously like a highup office boy ‘did me’. I’m done up with Black Silk. The funny thing is, I’m having more fun here than I have in months. You were absolutely right about the anesthesia, Dido – just my thing. I went out Plonk. A handsome lady anesthetist came in & told me just what she’d do ahead of time – and after it they gave me heavenly pain-killing injections which caused me to ‘float’ over my inert body feeling immensely powerful & invulnerable. Let me tell you though that Monday night, the worst because of waiting, the blessèd New Yorker form came through. O Bill you don’t know how it sustained me & you are an angel to have nudged the Mossy stone into action. As I blacked out I thought of it with great joy & it was signed soon after, under the influence of morphia, but genuinely. I am in a sunny airy modern ward of about 28 beds – yes, there’s a diabetic with a leg off – a superb antique Jewess from Hackney – but no one complains, whines or acts ill. I thought it was a ladies tea party when I first came in. I know more about England from this visit than I’ve learned in 5 years – there’s the lot here & I am one of the few walking patients & so have become ward newspaper & the repository of superb anecdotes & life-stories.

My diary is brimming with notes – we’ve got an old crone who hits doctors with her purse & calls for the police out her window – she broke 2 legs in a car accident & hurls her medicine jars about & seems to have colorful DTs – very theatrical. A doll from RADA^* with suspected appendicitis who lives in Welling Garden City^* – one of those synthetic Suburbias & after pressing confessed she was born in Yorkshire. Several magnificent Camden-Town originals with bunions – one Daisy, opposite me, a born marvel ‘I got to break wind dont I’. A suicidal Scorpio secretary who didn’t have enough bobs for the gas meter – she’s my pet. A real Country lady with paddocks in South Devon in plaster up to her neck who reads ‘Horse & Hound’ & is visited by hideous chinless nieces – just like your superb poem^* about people with fancy family ancestors, Bill. Ted comes rushing in each day during visiting hours – loaded with creamy milk, fresh squeezed orange juice, V-8 & steak sandwiches – dying to hear the latest tales. I’m having my first real rest for a year & piling up a huge book of anecdotes, quotes & notes. My side hurt like hell but I am so goddam cheerful that when I say ‘God, the codeine!’ In a noble whisper, I get it without a murmur. I eat all the food & ask for the scrapings of the pot (they’re very niggardly) which has permanently alienated the Country lady. The night your letter arrived, Dido, I had just refused a monstrous Rice Pudding. The sister thought I was suffering a relapse. Ted is incredible . . . he works & manages Frieda & brings me stuff. My 4th & 5th day I wangled a full afternoon in the dear green antique Park in back of the hospital full of Jane Grundy & William Godwin^* & other relicts with Ted & Frieda – he pushed her down in the pram as babies aren’t allowed in ward. She beamed & punced my nose. I think my stitches may come out today – if so, I’m home Thursday. My mother writes her dates for flight are set: June 18 to Aug 4 – so you name 10 days in July. I dream of you both & your farm like some plummy Eden we all deserve very much. Bill – get well! Dido’ll see to it.

A thousand apologies for this great gap between my letters. I have been so heartened by yours, & say with great pleasure “in three months from tomorrow” you will arrive over & over. I have been in a kind of grisly coma these last 10 days & fit for little but vegetating. As you know, I had my appendix out on Tuesday the 28th, then my stitches came out Tuesday the 7th (the worst bit of all---I hated the niggling twinges of each of the 9, plus the pulling off of a large plaster bandage much more than the actual operation experience) & I was let go home Wednesday the 8th, with strict orders not to do any lifting or heavy work for 2 weeks but to behave “like a lady” or I’d feel as if run over by a small bus etc. etc. Well, ironically, I enjoyed my hospital experience immensely, especially my springlike afternoons in the hospital park & garden every day from my 4th post-op day on as the weather was mild & sunny. The most difficult part has been this home convalescing. Poor Ted insists he likes doing all the baby-lifting & laundry-bring & so on, but he’s been at it over a month now since my miscarriage & I do think it bothers me more than him. I’m a model convalescent if I’m waited on by anonymous people whose job it is, but very bad at sitting loosehanded about our own small rooms. I also found it awfully depressing to rise on a sunny day & think: now I’ll bake some tea-bread, wash my hair, write some letters, & then feel unlike lifting a finger. And poor Frieda decided to teethe some more the minute I got back, so we’ve been sleeping in fits & starts. I must say that the last 6 months I have felt slapped down each time I lifted my head up & don’t know what I’d have done if Ted hadn’t been more than saintly & the baby adorable & charming. I write you about this now it’s over & not in the midst of it. Luckily, for all my misfortunes, I have a surprising resilience & today, 2½ weeks after my op feel very close to a self I haven’t been for sometime & full of hope. The weather is amazing: real June days. I’ve been up on the Hill each day with Frieda out on the grass on a blanket lying in the clear sun & tomorrow start going over to the Merwins study in the morning again. I hope to be able to use these 3 months, until you come writing. Well, I have sat round “like a lady” & this Tuesday go back for a checkup. After my appointment at the main hospital with the surgeon whose name was over my bed, I saw no more of him & was “done” by his deputies in the annexe hospital who checked up on me. I didn’t care: I was admirably treated & the nurses & other patients were sweethearts & my 3-inch herringbone very neat.

One thing this experience has pressed on me is our very definite need for a house by 1962. Then Ted could work off in a study while I had temporary help do house-drudging during baby-confinements & any illness that comes up & not feel guilty at using Ted’s noble kindness. A house & a car. We have everything else & that’s all we need to make the fullest life possible for both of us. We are seriously thinking of getting a car before we go on the Maugham thing in September---a station-wagon---so we would travel easily with Frieda with none of the ghastly trouble of luggage train schedules & meals out---take it to Europe with us, you see. Then we could ferret out little fishing villages & so on & do a bit of looking around. If Ted had free scope for his writing, he’d earn much more than we could here at any job.

Actually, the most wonderful thing you could do for us would be to live here with Frieda for 2 weeks while we had our first real vacation in France with the Merwins (who don’t allow children!) We have also a chance at staying with a philanthropist friend of theirs in South Spain afterwards & if you & Frieda got on well & it wasn’t a strain on you, we’d love to go there for a week. This would enable me to have a 2½ week worriless lie in the sun which I need above all. We have all the conveniences here: a 3-day a week diaper service to the door, shops literally around the corner---a fine butcher etc., the park across the street & cheap baby sitters I’ll introduce you to so you can shop downtown & go to what plays you like. I thought we’d plan to go off 10 days to 2 weeks after you came to give us time together & you to get used to your lovely grandchild. She’s getting amazingly pretty. Our doctor is also around the corner.

I so appreciated your $10: Ted got me, on my orders, a stack of DH Lawrence---novels & stories & travelbooks, which I’ve been reading: the only diet I felt like. I’ll use the remains to buy a fine art-book when I take my 1st trip downtown. I was most touched by your taking up knitting, having wistfully said often that neither of F’s grandmothers knit. I’d rather have handknit sweaters than anything & welcome the Wedgewood blue one. I’ll take her measurements when she wakes up. I’d love to have it to keep admiringly till she grows to fit it. Dot sent me a sweet letter & recipe for which thank her & explain my slowness in answering. Her letters mean a great deal to me. Is there still a possibility of Warren coming over this fall???

Ted’s Times poems will be out Sunday March 26th – a week later than we thought.

It is a chill blue March day: our summer warmth has left us for a while, and I enjoy the long light we have since the time changed this week---it’s so gloomy to have it dark at teatime! We are coming along very well. I am resting and resting---whenever I feel overtired I take the next day off, so to speak, & sit about reading & relaxing, even though I do often feel very lazy!

Ted’s children’s poems came out in the Time’s yesterday (3 of them) & I’m enclosing a clipping.^* We are delighted at the advance publicity for his book which should be out within a month. He also had a letter from Lord David Cecil^* saying he’d been awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Lupercal for 1960---it’s a very prestigeful fiction and/or poetry award here---gold medal and, I think, 100 pounds---Dom Moraes^* the young Indian poet got it some years ago, & the young writer Alan Sillitoe^* whose first novel was made into a movie. The presentation is around the end of May, so it should get into the papers about then & is a very good way to keep up his book sales. We figured he’s earned about $1,500 from the BBC alone this year, which we hope to keep up---he’s had the outline of another hour-drama accepted and they seem eager to take anything he does.

You gorgeous sweater arrived! It is the most divine shade of blue---not that “baby-blue”, but the exact color of her eyes. I’m sure she’ll be into it in a year or so. I am more pleased about your knitting for her than anything. In England “a sweater a day keeps the doctor away”---she’s always wearing sweaters. She has a 5th bottom right tooth out & more showing. She is a little girl suddenly and amazingly wild & pretty-looking. She stands up barely leaning back on her pen with no hands, flies round the outer rail hand over hand. I dreamed she started toddling last night, but I just let her do what she wants when she feels like it. The thing that fascinates her most is paper: she doesn’t tear books, but when I give her a New Yorker after I’ve read it, she sits down in such a comical way with it on her lap, opens it, holds it up as if reading & crows with surprise & delight over each new page, pointing to the faces or emblems & hitting them. She imitates our faces now, claps her hands & is really enjoying her bear and raggedy Ann as other beings to pummel and talk to. We are very happy, looking forward to getting a small station wagon hopefully before you come. Then we can really take advantage of our life: going on country & Cornwall trips when other people have to work, avoiding traffic & holidayers & being portable with babies. We want to take the wagon when we go to Europe on the Maugham which we are seriously thinking of postponing until next spring---the latest time possible. Ted brought me a little bouquet of yellow primroses yesterday with a handsome edition of the Oxford Book of Wild Flowers^*---the remains of that kind $10 you sent. He is the sweetest most thoughtful person in the world. I have had a rather glum winter & he has tirelessly stood by & cheered me up in every conceivable way.

A sweet note & yellow pajama set came from Do Cruikshank & some picture books from Aunt Marion. I’ll write them within the week. Could you tell me: the names of the Cruickshank children, the names of the Aldrich children (from Duane down), & the names of Ruthie Freeman’s children in order from the oldest to youngest?

I’m enclosing two checks for deposit in our account. I think there’s also April interest isn’t there? Did you get the 2nd $100 check I sent you---both the New Yorker $100 and the Atlantic Monthly $100?

I’m delighted to hear Warren is so well. Oh I hope he can come over this fall! I hope this Easter brings a real rest for you. For heaven’s sake don’t knock yourself out & come over exhausted! I’m sure the plane flight will be restful & brief compared to the ship. You must let us know where in London to meet you. I’ll start looking around for a bed & breakfast place.

Well, I’ll say goodbye for now. I had my checkup at the hospital last week & I am pronounced fine. They said my appendix showed “adhesions” which meant it was inflamed inside. It’s wonderful to be rid of it, to know there’s only one appendix & I’m quit of it & the worry about it for the rest of my life.

I have been writing you a letter in my mind for months, but what with my rather hectic life lately I’ve had to put off most of the things I wanted to do, and am just now getting round to saying how lovely the “Pat the Bunny” book^* and New England calendar were at Christmas, and what fun the picture books that came this week! I’m sending mother some color photos of Frieda for her birthday (don’t tell her!) and you’ll see one there of Frieda pointing to her face in the mirror of the Bunny book which she loves. She takes after us---she’s mad for books, and turns the pages & laughs at the pictures in an adorable grownup little way. She is such fun now---she seems to have turned into a little girl overnight & looks so cute in her little dresses.

I am feeling immensely better after having had my appendix out a few weeks ago, about a month to be exact. I looked forward to a grim time after a glimpse of a British hospital ward the last time I was here, but the hospital I was in had a new surgical wing painted pink with flowered bed curtains & cheerful washrooms & absolutely darling young nurses, and overlooked a green park where I was allowed to sit out with Frieda and Ted every afternoon from my 4th post-op day on. In addition, the 28 bed ward was full of interesting people, young and old, so I had quite a sociable time as I was one of the few people who could walk around, and I felt actually sorry to go home.

Ted’s children’s book had a few poems printed in the London Sunday Times this week as a preview & will be coming out this month---funny jingles about odd relatives called “Meet My Folks!” Ruthy will be getting a copy for her brood about then. How I’m looking forward to seeing mummy this summer. I’m already counting the days!

Hearty apologies for the great silences over here. We have all sorts of excuses, mainly a manic-depressive winter full of flu, miasmas, near bankruptcy, nights full of teething yowls from our changeling, topped off by my grateful departure from my very nasty tempered appendix several weeks ago. Why is it when things go bad, they always get worse? Ted has admirable explanations for all the megrims by way of planetary influences and starry malevolences. At any rate, we’ve had an early English spring & a resurge of health, hope & pound-notes, so are feeling much better. And I am again back to my American plateau of fearsome health (knock on wood, please.)

As a kindred insomniac, Philip, I very much liked your poem.^* Ted is only one-third editor of this book into which a few Americans sometimes sneak, so he’s sent the poems off on the rounds to the others & they will fight together about what’s what later this spring. I’ve appreciated immensely your helpfulness about my book & did have a letter from the North Carolina press (a very nice one) about simultaneously with a drunken note^* from my charming young British publisher in New York saying that somebody there might well want the book if I changed one or two slight things. So I’m crossing my fingers that when he comes back to London to roost, he’ll have a definite contract. If so, I’ll let you know when & where it’ll come out & you can do me the kind favor of writing an enormously long review interspersed with exhortations to run out & buy the book immediately written between the lines in invisible onion juice. I am particularly sorry the Boston publishers (you know who) won’t take it, as every damn poem in it’s been published in some fine magazine by some fine upstanding responsible American editor. I am obviously not fashionable.

We hear great burbles of success from Boston---Adrienne with a 3rd book^* & Amy Lowell Grant^* on top of the Guggenheim^* (I hope she’ll manage to see us over here), Maxine Kumin with a baker’s dozen of children’s books,^* Starb. & Sext. best-sellers. O heaven. I understand Cal’s interned again (via Dido Merwin’s news). If my book does get published by a reputable place in America, Philip, I wonder if you would be so good as to be a reference for me for a Guggenheim? I don’t suppose I have much chance for one in England, but they do odd things & I’d give anything for Nanny-money so I could get a half-a-day’s solid peace to work each day. And you, as a previous winner,^* I could touch for luck.

It’s been wonderful having your good letters, and I’m just getting round to answering as I have been very lazy (doctor’s orders!) this last month & put everything off. It’s just a month now since I had my appendix out, & I’m feeling better than I have since before Frieda was born---all my old energy coming back. Hospital (on the National Health Service---for free) was actually fun. I was in a 28-bed ward, partitioned in half, in a newly painted wing, pink walls, flowered bed curtains & modern bathrooms, with sweet young nurses. I had the best of care & since I was one of the few cases allowed up immediately I had great fun walking round visiting with everyone & heard several interesting life stories. Of course having Ted standing by meant everything. He got a local babysitter & didn’t miss one day of visiting hours: each time he came he brought a glass bottle of freshly squeezed orange juice, a pint of cream & a big steak sandwich. From my 4th post-op day on I was allowed to sit out in the green park behind the hospital in the afternoons (which were luckily like spring---balmy & sunny---the whole time) with Ted & Frieda: he’d wheel her several miles in her carriage to get there as babies aren’t allowed to visit in hospital and I would have been miserable if I hadn’t seen her at all. I had my 9 stitches out 8 days after my op (the worst part, I thought!) & was home on the 9th day. I found it depressing for a week or two having to let Ted do all the lifting of the baby & laundry & so on, because I kept wanting to take charge, but he wouldn’t let me do a thing & as a result I’m very fit now. All the women in the hospital thought it was amazing he would take care of a baby so willingly & well & so do I! It makes up a bit for not having any of my own relatives around to cheer me up. Ted dotes on Frieda & is wonderful with her.

Oh, she’s so cute now. She’s been fussy with 2 new teeth, making a total of 6, but she’s suddenly become a little girl---her hair’s just long enough & I dress her in little dresses which she immediately gets dirty. She loves to play with magazines & opens them like a book, pointing at the pictures & laughing. Ted’s children’s book “Meet My Folks!” is coming out in time for her first birthday & is dedicated to her.^* We’ll be sending along a copy to you when we get our orders---I think it’ll amuse you---8 funny poems & drawings about silly fictitious relatives.

I love hearing all your news about Nancy & Bobby. I made the orange tea bread yesterday & it was terrific, so moist & fruity---don’t forget a recipe each time you write. You make such good things!

Thanks very much for your note, but I’m afraid Ted and I won’t be able to make the publication day^* this week. All good wishes to you and the magazine in any case.

Thanks a thousand times for the enchanting blue-smocked Polly Flinders^* dress for Frieda! I dressed her up in it today with the matching light blue tights Dotty sent (together with a beautiful blue corduroy & romper set!) and a new pink coat her great Aunt Hilda in Yorkshire sent & took her out for her first day at the playground. They have little cage swings for babies so they can’t fall out & you should have seen Frieda! She looked marvelous, her blue eyes matching her little blue outfit, & she hung on & laughed & laughed as I pushed her back and forth & she was fascinated by all the other children & the dogs. You’ll have a wonderful time with her---it’s like playing with a live sweet-tempered adorable doll.

I have so many people to thank for things! Tell Dotty I’m delighted with the rompers & blouse & especially the gorgeous tights (which I can’t get here). Do Cruikshank sent a lovely yellow pajama set, Ted’s mother a pink sweater handknit by a traveling nun (!) & red cotton rompers & an easter egg & Hilda the pink coat & an easter egg & Marty Plumer a homemade light blue denim dress that looked wonderfully Martyish. Luckily Ted’s book comes out this month, so we’re blowing ourself to a great stack of copies^* and sending them to all these good people we’ve been wanting so much to do something for. We may not have much money, but we’ll always have plenty of books!

I’m enclosing Ted’s half-yearly royalty check from Harpers for deposit---$168. I’m puzzled about your statement of our account: there’s $125.85 more in it than I thought should be in it. Now this queer figure looks like interest, but you wrote me in March, so the April interest couldn’t have been added yet, could it? My last figures are from October, when $97.14 interest made the total up to $5,907.21. Then the total of $266 I sent this month makes $6,173.21. When and what is the $125.85???

We’ve been very hectically busy lately---a spate of seeing people, poets paying Ted pilgrimages, movies, plays, teas. Tomorrow we do a joint broadcast over the BBC for America (it’s called “The London Echo”)^*---reading poems & talking about our childhoods. It’s supposed to come out over a lot of networks in America. Next week Ted goes on the BBC television for about 7 minutes talking about his children’s book---probably they’ll flash a drawing on the screen while he reads the poem to go with it. I’m glad he’ll do this as I think it may magnify the book sales considerably & the reason he consented is because it’s not a “literary pose”. He wouldn’t go on TV as a poet of the year before, & I guess it’s a good sign. I’ve asked to come along & see it as we don’t have a set, so it should be fun.

Best of all, he’s just been commissioned by Peter Hall^* (Director of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre & husband of Leslie Caron^*) for a play for their London company. This is an incredible stroke of luck, as only very wellknown playwrites have been commissioned so far & it means the play Ted is working on will have the best reading & if it’s good enough to produce, the best cast & production it could have.

We are thrilled by this---we have yet to hear just how much money it is---because it means that Ted’s plays will go straight to the best director in England for a reading & even if this one isn’t accepted (we have to keep telling ourselves this, to calm down, because we think it’s a superb play---we’ll be sending to the Poets’ Theatre as well, so you may have a chance to see it too!) the next ones no doubt will be. Oh you wait, we’ll be wealthy yet.

Frieda’s birthday was lovely. We sang to her on getting up in the morning & let her play in bed with us. Then we presented her officially with her books (Ted’s among them), her picture (by our neighborhood artist whose exhibit we’re going to next week), a lovely blue fairytale landscape with Japanese lantern-like plants, her clothes (quite a mound), and five great balloons---one a big green one with zoo animals printed all over it and a long cylindrical orange one with a face and blue ears. The balloons scared her to death at first & I was sorry I got them, but the next day she woke up & rushed over to them & batted them around fearlessly. When they broke because she insisted on biting them she didn’t even exclaim & she’s still playing with the two that are left. I’d made a little cupcake with a pink candle which we lit and give her at teatime & she ate most of it sitting up in her little party dress. She is still playing with your birthday card. Tear them up, the idea! She loves paper cards above all (the rag books count no longer)---crows with delight at the pictures, points to the faces, opens them, pretends to read them and really has a fine time. She is mad for books---probably because we read all the time.

Thanks so much for the $5. You mustn’t go on lavishing things on me!! I’ll wait till I think: oh, I wish I could have that, or do this, & then take it out & get it or do it.

Ted requests that if you ever send any more packages in addition to the hundred you’ve just sent, could you please add a few Crest toothpastes. I believe they have fluoride in them or something.

I am delighted to have your letter^* and to know that Knopf is interested in bringing out THE COLOSSUS.

I am very much in agreement with you about the greater part of “Poem for a Birthday”. It is the only poem in the book written under the undiluted influence of Roethke, and I now feel it is too obviously influenced. There are, however, two sections of the poem I wonder if you would reconsider and perhaps be willing to publish on their own---“Flute Notes From a Reedy Pond” and “The Stones”. These poems were written separately and much later than the other five in the sequence and have been published as separate poems in America where the others have not.^* I think, particularly in “The Stones”, that the verse form and cadence is like nothing in Roethke. “Flute Notes” I feel is also stable and quite formal and a poem on its own, but I am most concerned about the chance of ending the book with “The Stones”. The whole experience of being broken and mended, together with the ending “Love is the uniform of my bald nurse” etc., seems to me the way I would like to end the book. I’d be delighted to unburden myself of the other five.^* Do let me know what you think of this.

I admire Stanley Kunitz^* and his work immensely and am particularly glad to have his opinion on my book. Here are the poems I would be willing to cut out: POINT SHIRLEY, METAPHORS, MAUDLIN, OUIJA and TWO SISTERS OF PERSEPHONE. If you would consider keeping “Flute Notes” and “The Stones” at the end as two separate poems, that would make a total of 40 poems in the book (instead of 50) which seems to me a good and reasonable number.

There are also two misprints in the book^* I’d like to correct: In “Mussel Hunter at Rock Harbor” on p. 73, verse 3 line 4 on the page, it should be “airy thatching” (not air thatching) and in the last line of “Sculptor” on p. 79 it should be “solider repose” (not soldier!)

I’m eager to hear what you think of these suggestions. As for the rest, I couldn’t be more in agreement with you and Mr. Kunitz.

Here is the book^* you were meant to have while you were here. I hope you won’t hate me for the last sequence of 7 poems which show me so far under your influence as to be flat out. I’m negotiating with Knopf (bless them) now for an American edition of the book and they’ve made me promise to leave the Birthday sequence out since they think I’m too in love with your work as it is. But I couldn’t wait for the American edition, I wanted you to have this.

It was wonderful seeing you in London though for not long enough & Ted & I hope we may manage a year teaching on the West Coast somewhere within the next couple of years & hope we can see a lot more of you.

If you think any of these are any good or that I should be allowed to write any more would you be a reference for the Guggenheim I’m applying for this year? I’d rather have you than anybody so I ask you first. Please don’t forget to ask your publishers to send on I AM SAID THE LAMB.^*

For Theodore Roethke from Sylvia

Sylvia Plath

3 Chalcot Square

London N.W.1, England

Tulips

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here,

Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in.

I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly

As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.

I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.

I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses

And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons.

They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff

Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut,

Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.

The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,

They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,

Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another,

So it is impossible to tell how many there are.

My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water

Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.

They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep.

Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage---

My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,

My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;

Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.

I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat

Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.

They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.

Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley

I watched my teaset, my bureau of linen, my books

Sink out of sight and the water went over my head.

I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.

I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted

To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.

How free it is, you have no idea how free---

The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,

And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.

It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them

Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.

The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.

Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe

Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.

Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.

They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down,

Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color,

A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.

Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.

The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me

Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,

And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow

Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,

And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself.

The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.

Before they came the air was calm enough,

Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.

Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.

Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river

Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.

They concentrate my attention, that was happy

Playing and resting without committing itself.

The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.

The tulips should be behind bars, like dangerous animals;

They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,

And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes

Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.

The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,

And comes from a country far away as health.

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Friday 14 April 1961

TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University

3 Chalcot Square

London N.W.1, England

April 14, 1961

Dear mother,

Your absolutely beautiful second sweater arrived this week & I tried it right on Frieda and it fits wonderfully and roomily over her little dresses and looks marvelous! I can’t tell you how pleased I am with it. I love the style with the deep bottom turn-up at the waist and she looks a tiny schoolgirl in it! The other sweater you sent is a real party sweater with all the openwork at the top but I think this sort is even handsomer in its way for everyday wear. The nun-knit one isn’t a patch on these---the style is like an old man’s button-down vest, but of course I don’t say so!

It has been real April weather---showery and moist. I have been working like mad in Merwins study every morning and find if I just have five hours to write from 8-1 I can do all my housework and business during the rest of the day with a serene mind. I hope to heaven we’ll have found a place here by next New Year! It’s amazing the change that’s coming over this neighborhood. It’s been a real slum and the lovely houses let go terribly, rented out as rooms for laborers. Now piles of young professional couples our age are moving in, doing the houses over into family residences & planning to settle in with their children near the good state-supported free schools (which even teach Greek in some places!) and parks. I have asked Ted to go off and find out about mortgages this week because I have an awful feeling that nobody will give a free-lance writer a mortgage although our income equals that of most of the people around us in regular jobs. It would be awful to have a good house come up & then find we couldn’t get any mortgage. A couple of our friends who have bought houses have bought them outright, but as most of them cost about 7 thousand pounds now we’d only have about a third to put down. I’m going to ask Ted to try and ask his uncle for a thousand pound loan when we finally do have a house to buy. But I’m skeptical. It’s sad to know in five years we’ll have the money but by then it will be too late. We really need one in the next year. I’m full of this because two houses are coming up for auction^* this week in the neighborhood (I could never bring myself to bid for a house!) & I’m going along for the fun of it with a new Oxford-graduate neighbor^* of mine whose husband is a financial-page journalist, both lovely, with a darling little girl. I am happier in this neighborhood than I have ever been anywhere in my life and the thought of ever having to move away from my marvelous midwives, doctors, friends, butcher & baker and parks and plays and all I enjoy so much is unbearable. I’d like to live here the rest of my life. Of course as soon as we got a house settled we could negotiate for a teaching year in America as we’d have a place to leave all our stuff here and could easily rent it for a year. I know I’m boring about this, but it’s the main big step ahead and somehow it seems the one problem: we have all the rest: love, work we love & that supports us, a wonderful baby etc. etc.

Aunt Frieda sent a darling light blue dress made in the Phillipines this week. She and Walter have moved to a trailer camp which they seem wonderfully enthusiastic about. I’ve got a pass to Ted’s TV show which will be broadcast live this Wednesday & I’m fascinated to see it. Thanks a million for the research into our deposits. Wish I could think what the $71 was. Ted’s being featured in the Observer this week,^* a livelier rival to the Times (Sunday papers), with 6 poems and a little article by our friend and critic A. Alvarez. We’ll send clippings.

We’re mailing off a whole load of Meet My Folks today to friends and neighbors in America by sea mail, Aldriches, Cruikshanks (do they have a c in Cruick???), Ruthie Geissler etc. We have our eye on a small station wagon that seats 5 & has two back doors that open for loading luggage and a back seat that folds forward to make lots of room for babies’ beds and so on. We could buy it outright with the money we’ve saved in our account here writing in the last year & probably will. Hardly anybody garages cars. There’s no snow & acres of parking room in front of these houses in our end. Ted is dying for a car (!) because he wants to go off to Cornwall & the country & I think it wise to get it now though it means a big dent in our savings. It will cost about $1,876 new & we’ve decided to get a new one as neither of us knows a thing about cars & we mistrust all 2nd-hand dealers & have no wise car-machine-minded people who could test a 2nd hand one. Ted’s radioplay was broadcast a 3rd time this week bringing his earnings on it up to over $900 this year.^* He’s almost finished this huge 5-act play^* called ‘The Calm’. You’ll be getting photos of Frieda in good time. “Isn’t April coming soon?” Her birthday picture isn’t of her but a painting of a magical blue landscape an artist friend did & we gave her for her birthday. What’s with Warren & Margaret?^* Are they getting married? I hope she’s not too dull, I get no real picture of her at all. Hope I have some good literary news for you soon.

A millions XXXs

Sivvy

PS – Have you ever thought of knitting any booties? Or are they too hard? I’d dearly love some to go with these sweaters! F’s foot is just about 4 inches long from toe to heel

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Saturday 22 April 1961^*

TLS in greeting card^* with envelope, Indiana University

With Happy Birthday Greetings and Best Wishes / from

from Sivvy & Ted & Frieda start here→

Dear mother,

Here are your Birthday pictures.^* I hope you like them. Frieda’s much prettier than the colored ones show (taken at 10 months) because she has more hair, as you can see in the one with the two of us together. She is a marvelous child & I’m sure in no time you & she will be very close. She is so outgoing & after the first few minutes of getting used to someone very friendly. I take her up on Primrose Hill every fine afternoon & she crawls in the grass, laughing and waving at babies and dogs and standing up, holding on to her pram. I have such fun with her, I’m just dying for a house and room for lots of babies.

I am working fiendishly at the Merwins study 7 mornings a week, as they are coming home at the end of May and I’ve a lot I want to finish before then. I have found that the whole clue to my happiness is to have 4 to 5 hours perfectly free & uninterrupted to write in first thing in the morning---no phones, doorbells or baby. Then I come home in a wonderful temper and dispatch all the household jobs in no time. Thank goodness the Merwins are going to France shortly after they come home, so I hope to have the study till next fall. When we do get a house, I’ll get a morning nanny I think. I find I enjoy all the little niggly jobs like ironing & floor scrubbing when I’ve had my Morning.

Business: I’m enclosing $200 of checks to deposit. What does that make, with the April interest??? I hope when we come to withdraw most of this to pay for a house you won’t feel too lonely! We hope to get our station wagon in a month or so, we’ve put down a deposit, and Ted is taking driving lessons preparatory to getting a British license. They are much stricter here, & I’ll want lessons as well before I venture on the other side of the road. It will be a small black wagon with light wood frame, red upholstery & goes 40+ miles to the gallon which I gather is rather wonderful. I’m enclosing a little picture^* of it. This will mean ease in all of us going to Yorkshire---we’ll probably go for a week from July 17th on (after we’ve come back from Europe) as Ted is going to be guest speaker the next day at his old school and has to read at a poetry festival here in London that day. Roughly, this is what we plan: 10 days to 2 weeks together in London with you on your arrival, our leaving for France the last few days in June, 28th or so, & returning about 2½ weeks in time to leave with you & Frieda for Yorkshire the 17th, then back to London, with maybe a jaunt to Cornwall or Devon before you go. I’m trying to get the bulk of my writing done before you come, but even if I work in the mornings we’ll have the whole rest of the day together & you could take Frieda to the park in the mornings, or see things you wanted to see in London. Less than two months! I am looking so forward to showing you everything & having you see your beautiful granddaughter!

I got a pass to the rehearsal and production of “Wednesday Magazine”,^* the hour-long TV show Ted appeared on last week. It was fascinating---a big barn of a studio full of lights & little groups of participants---a famous pianist & her collection of elephants & a grand piano in one corner, an actor & actress in bathrobe & slippers at breakfast in another, Romeo & Juliet going on in Arabic on a balcony in another & a street lamp & pushcart full of artificial fruit with a lavender seller in another & Ted & his interviewer & a huge blown-up drawing of the Owler out of his book in another. The cameras wheeled from one group to another & snippets of movies filled in the intervals. I watched the TV monitor screen at the same time as the real studio. First they did a run through, then criticized it, then broadcast “live”. Ted looked marvelous, so handsome & sweet, & read his Owler poem while the camera moved from his face to the big drawing. I was very proud. I do hope it sells some copies of his children’s book! The minute we got home another TV man called up wanting to do a feature program of him reading poems in Yorkshire, but Ted says this is his first & last TV program. He’ll get another avalanche of publicity on May 31st when he’s presented with the Hawthornden prize, so wants to keep as quiet as possible. I’m enclosing the poems & article^* on him that came out in last Sunday’s Observer---the Times’ rival & a far livelier paper. It is so marvelous having married Ted with no money & nothing in print & then having all my best intuitions prove true! Our life together is happier than I ever believed possible and the only momentary snags are material ones---our lack of a house is the one thing we want to change. I want Ted to have a study where he doesn’t have to move his papers or be bothered when there are visitors, and where I can have an upstairs room in peace in the morning while someone minds the children in the basement nursery. Then, too, we’ll be able to plan a year in America, because we’ll have a place to leave our furniture and books and gear. Anyhow, the station wagon will make this summer and our Maugham trip to Europe a joy instead of a burden. It is so easy traveling in a car with a baby when you can feed them when they want, or have them nap on an improvised bed. Ted & I will bring a portable camp stove to Europe too, so we’ll be able to see a lot more than we would if we were carless & stuck in some one town.

I feel so fine now this appendix worry is over and Frieda is safely a year old, I want to consolidate my health and work in the coming year. We have good friends here, most of them our age, and as Ted says, in positions of power, and the older people we know are influential and benevolent, so I feel very much at home. The BBC really supports us. Our income from them in the past year has bought us our car.

Do keep in good health, now, mummy, & have a Happy Happy Birthday!

Lots of love,

Sivvy

PS – Did you & Warren get your Birthday Present Books?

TO Warren Plath

Saturday 22 April 1961^*

TLS in greeting card^* (photocopy), Indiana University

Dear Warren . . .

With great effort I have figured you must be 26. I say with great effort because I always figure your age from mine and I am having increasing difficulty in remembering mine. I get vague reports of you from mother. I half expect to hear from her that you are married & have ten children one of these days. Who is this Margaret? Give me a picture of her. Verbal or actual. All I can conjure up is somebody sitting in a rocker and singing “Mein ruh’ ist hin. . .”^*

I hope these pictures,^* which I scrupulously divided between you & mother and which mother will probably appropriate, give you some idea of your neice & godchild (niece?) She is much better looking than the colored ones, as they put a funny yellow cast on them---the transparencies I have of those are better. You will notice Little Bunzo Bear and Raggedy Ann in her animal & people family. She loves them.

When will you know if you can come to the conference in England this fall? I’m dying to see you. Somehow I feel we say nothing by letter & I do wish you could visit us. We’re getting a little station wagon---we’ve put down the deposit & hope it arrives well before mother comes, so we’ll be more mobile now. It makes traveling with Frieda seem possible & we’ll probably take it to Europe with us.

Please write now & then,

Lots of love,

Sivvy

TO Elizabeth Kray^*

Wednesday 26 April 1961

TLS (aerogramme), Academy of American Poets

3 Chalcot Square

London N.W.1, England

April 26, 1961

Miss Elizabeth Kray

THE POETRY CENTER

YM and YWHA

Lexington Ave. & 92nd Street

New York 28, New York

USA

Dear Miss Kray:

I was happy to have your letter and your kind invitation to read on the Poetry Center “Introductions” series.^*

I’m not planning to come to the United States next year, but do hope to make a return visit a year or so after that, so I’ll let you know in advance when I eventually plan to come, and perhaps we can arrange for a reading then.

Ted joins me in sending best wishes,

Sincerely yours,

Sylvia Plath

TO John Lehmann

Wednesday 26 April 1961

TLS, University of Texas at Austin

3 Chalcot Square

London N.W.1, England

April 26, 1961

John Lehmann, Esq.

31 Egerton Crescent

London S.W.3

Dear John,

I’m applying for a Eugene F. Saxton fellowship (an American grant for youngish creative writers) in order to complete a novel I’m working on,^* and I wonder if you would be willing for me to list you as a literary reference.

You’ve been so encouraging about my short story ventures I thought you would be a good person to ask, and I’d be honored to have your name on my list.

With warmest good wishes,

Sincerely,

Sylvia Plath

TO Leonard Baskin

Wednesday 26 April 1961

TLS (aerogramme), British Library

3 Chalcot Square

London N.W.1, England

April 26, 1961

Dear Leonard,

Ted and I await your arrival---at any time of the day or night and for one meal or a dozen---with great joy.

Our phone number, not listed in the book, is PRImrose 9132.

Best love to you, Esther and Tobias, from the three of us.

Sylvia

TO Ann Davidow-Goodman & Leo Goodman

Thursday 27 April 1961

TLS with envelope, Smith College

3 Chalcot Square

London N.W.1, England

April 27, 1961

Dear Ann and Leo,

It was lovely to have your letter and Frieda is very pleased to have two such goldenly constellated godparents. You made yourselves godparents, whether you knew it or not, by your heavenly solicitude last spring. Now that the green and sunny season is come round again it underlines our missing you. Our only consolation is that Leo will probably be flown to England periodically to jack up their statistical flat tires, and you, Ann, will fly with him.

How marvelous the job offers sound. I wish, selfishly, that you would settle in New York which is so near visiting distance from Boston, but if you insist on going back to Chicago we shall just have to track you out there when we finally get round to coming back for a year’s stay, which we hope to do soon after we manage to locate and buy a house in the immediate neighbourhood. We are treating ourselves to a small versatile Morris station wagon this spring which is supposed to do over 40 miles to the gallon and have space for innumerable babies.

A copy of Meet My Folks! is on its way to you. It came out just in time for Frieda’s birthday and some came out in the Sunday Times and I had fun last week watching Ted appear on a “live” TV show called Wednesday Magazine, a very mixed bag of People about Town including a famous lady pianist with a collection of toy elephants, a lavendar-seller and an old-iron collector who remembered the antique cries, an actor and actress from a variety skit, Romeo and Juliet in Arabic, a film clip of spring lambs, and Ted, reading the Grandpa’s an Owler poem in front of a huge blowup of the drawing. He looked beauteous but won’t do it again.

My mother is flying over in mid-June and we are working like blacks to finish things before she comes so we can take a vacation at W. S. Merwin’s farm in mid-France for two weeks while she lives here with Frieda---which will be my first real vacation for too long. Ted is finishing a long five-act play and I am over one-third through a novel about a college girl building up for and going through a nervous breakdown. I have been wanting to do this for ten years but had a terrible block about Writing a Novel, Then, suddenly, in beginning negotiations with a New York publisher for an American edition of my poems, the dykes broke and I stayed awake all night seized by fearsome excitement, saw how it should be done, started the next day & go every morning to my borrowed study as to an office & belt out more of it. I’ll have to publish it under a psuedonym, if I ever get it accepted, because it’s so chock full of real people I’d be sued to death and all my mother’s friends wouldn’t speak to her because they are all taken off. Anyhow, I have never been so excited about anything. It’s probably godawful, but it’s so funny, and yet serious, it makes me laugh.

Frieda had a fine first birthday. I’m enclosing a picture^* of her getting acquainted with one of the family of balloons. Our bedroom, by the way, blooms under the Chinese bauble chandelier which is wonderful fun. Frieda is mad for it, and I set it twirling while feeding and changing her under it and she’s quiet as a mouse.

Lots of love from the three of us –

Syl

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Monday 1 May 1961

TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University

3 Chalcot Square

London N.W.1, England

MAY DAY

DEAR MOTHER,

GOOD NEWS GOOD NEWS GOOD NEWS!

I hoped it would come by your birthday, but here it is on Mayday instead.

ALFRED KNOPF will publish THE COLOSSUS in AMERICA! This is no doubt what Mrs. Prouty’s garbled account was about. They wrote me an optimistic letter about a month ago---and I guess I shouldn’t have mentioned it to her until it was definite, so I decided not to jinx my luck and to keep quiet until I heard definitely, which I did today.^*

Knopf wanted me to revise the book---leave out about 10 poems, especially those in the last sequence. Well, by a miracle of intuition I guessed (unintentionally) the exact 10 they would have left out, they wanted me to choose independently. I am delighted. I can correct my typing mistakes and leave out the poems that have been criticized to good purpose here, making a total of 40 instead of 50 in the book---40 being the usual length for volumes.

After all my fiddlings and discouragements from the little publishers it is an immense joy to have what I consider THE publisher accept my book for America with such enthusiasm. They “sincerely doubt a better first volume will be published this year”.^*

Now you will be able to have a really “perfect” book to buy at Hathaway House, see reviewed etc. etc. It is like having a second book come out---this one the Ideal. Ever since their first letter came I had a night of inspiration and then started writing 7 mornings a week at the Merwins study and have done better things than ever before, so it is obvious that this American acceptance is a great tonic.

I don’t know just when it will appear over there, but I’ll keep you posted.

LOTS OF LOVE,

Sivvy

TO Judith Jones

Tuesday 2 May 1961

TLS (aerogramme), University of Texas at Austin

3 Chalcot Square

London N.W.1, England

May 2, 1961

Mrs. Judith B. Jones, Editor

ALFRED A. KNOPF Inc.

501 Madison Avenue

New York 22, New York

USA

Dear Mrs. Jones:

I am delighted to have your letter and to know that “Flute Notes” and “The Stones” may end my book. I am also pleased that our opinions seem to coincide so closely.

Since last writing you, I have been having second thoughts about “Point Shirley”, and think your idea of leaving it in is a good one.^* It is a much more recent poem than the other two you mention and, I think, a more vivid and better one. Of those, I should be glad to leave out “Black Rook in Rainy Weather”. I choose to leave out this, rather than “The Ghost’s Leavetaking”, partly because the reaction to the Ghost over here has been pretty favorable, notably in Roy Fuller’s review in the London Magazine.^* Then, with “Black Rook” (and “Metaphors”), left out, the ghost is sandwiched between two very concrete descriptive poems---“Grantchester Meadows” and “A Winter Ship”, which make a better contrast I think, than the two we are going to omit.

I am happy that my book has had a trial run in England, as it has made me much more objective about the poems and will result, I think, in a much stronger and shorter book in America. I’m sorry, of course, about missing out on the Lamont^* as a result.

I look forward to hearing about publication plans.

Sincerely,

Sylvia Plath

TO A. E. Dyson^*

Wednesday 3 May 1961

TLS, University of Kansas

3 Chalcot Square

London N.W.1

May 3, 1961

Dear Tony,

A note in haste with a few recent poems.^* I only have these on hand as I’m head over ears in the middle of a long prose thing and not doing anything else right now. I hope something among them seems okay to you.

I’m enclosing the Larkin^* poem Brian sent. I was disappointed in it at first. Then I felt much as Brian did, & started to like it. I think it does what it does well, though what it is doing is not very large. I guess, in the end, I am just not sure about it.

I hope to have the anthology poems typed up by the end of the month. I still have a couple of fringe poems I am hunting down. For blurb, why don’t you say something to the effect that this sampling will include poems by lively American poets of all persuasions (from Beat Corso^* to Wilbur the Elegant),^* stressing young poets and new books (this includes Stafford,^* who is an old poet, but just has an exciting first book out & needs to be known.) About 18 poets, and over 20 poems.

The memory of that corn-on-the-cob floats in my head like a celestial relic.

All the best,

Sylvia

PS: My mother will be here in July for her first visit, so Ted & I will be spending all our time showing her round and don’t dare to make any other commitments!

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Monday 8 May 1961

TLS with envelope, Indiana University

Monday: May 8

Dear mother,

Glad to hear the details of our rising bank account and that your are as pleased about Knopf as we are. It’s as good as getting two books for one. Ted’s just had his story “Snow” accepted in America by Harper’s Bazaar,^* the very fancy fashion magazine, so we should have another check to round out our 7th thousand to send pretty soon.

We are both working very hard---Ted is typing his 5 act play and has got over the 100 page mark, and I’ve finished my commissioned poem for the summer poetry festival at the Mermaid Theatre and everybody seems very pleased with it.

I am going to a first night at the opera^* at Covent Garden tonight with the Secretary of the Arts Council, Eric White^*---a distinguished white-haired gentleman who has taken an interest in us. His wife^* is going to be out of town so he invited either one of us & Ted let me go. Last week he and his wife treated us to a box at the Covent Garden performance of Rigoletto^* which delighted us---I’m very fond of opera but know nothing about it and have hardly heard any of it, a situation which I hope to remedy.

We’ve engaged you a room at a modest but, I think, comfortable place called the Clive Hall Hotel.^* The rooms are small, but clean and freshly painted---it’s the nearest place we could find, as ours is a very residential district, a very nice 10 minutes walk away over Primrose Hill. Bed and a substantial breakfast is about $3.15 a night. I hope that’s all right. We plan to have you share lunch & supper with us.

I’m having Ted make out the other little check to you as well---could you send off $5 with the enclosed Alumnae Association blank? The $100 is Mrs. Prouty’s check for 10 copies of “Meet My Folks”---we’re to keep the leftovers! Deposit this in our Wellesley account, will you? That’s our gift and miscellaneous account. There’s still about $50 in it, isn’t there? I know just what supper you’re going to have on your arrival§

xxx

Sivvy

TO Charles Osborne^*

Tuesday 16 May 1961

TLS, University of Texas at Austin

3 Chalcot Square

London N.W.1

May 16, 1961

Dear C. O.

Our baby unearthed this shortly after your departure. I trust it belongs and will come in handy.

It was much fun having you here,

sph

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Sunday 28 May 1961

TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University

Sunday May 28th

Dearest mother,

I haven’t written for about a hundred years, due to a very huge pile of jobs & harassments. Thank you so much for the lovely booties which fit perfectly & which Frieda has been wearing daily. We loved the packet with all the good things. I have bought a featherweight pushchair (folding in one easy motion to go in the car) with a hood & weather cover so your trips to the park with Frieda will be easy & pleasant. I think Dido Merwin may let you have her room during your stay, which would be ever so much better than the rather shabby hotel (I got the best I could nearest to us). You’d have a fine view of Primrose Hill, a kitchen to cook breakfast in and be 2 minutes from us---there is also a very pleasant Australian professional woman living in another room, caring for the cat. I do hope this works out---it would save you a good bit of money & energy!

Leonard Baskin, the American artist & Smith professor, has been in London for 10 days, after opening a big show of his in Rotterdam^* which will tour Europe for a year. Ted has a proverb “Guests and fish stink on the third day” which began to apply after a while. At first I was touched that Leonard came to us---it happened that no one knew him here, & he is very famous & has crowds of followers in America. Well, he more or less invited himself to stay with us---a ghastly arrangement as each night we had to move Frieda into the kitchen, & Leonard stays up late & sleeps late, which would be fine if we had a house, but difficult with the baby & in such close quarters. Also, he does not eat fish, eggs, milk, cheese, vegetables, salad, salt, pepper, onions or liquor of any sort & I got a bit fed up trying to think of what to feed him. At least Ted went to a few museums with him & on a trip to Oxford & Cambridge (our car had just come, & Leonard used Ted like a chauffeur) but about all I saw of him was dirty dishes, unmade beds and piles of dirty shirts and socks which he left for me to do. Of course neither of us wrote for 10 days & felt exhausted by the end. We began to feel used, and now face a mountain of piled up commissions & assignments. So that’s why I haven’t written.

Dido & Bill are back from America for 10 days before going to France. Then we will have 10 days respite. We want to have all our jobs done by the time you come so we can really vacation and enjoy every minute with you. I must say I will be enormously grateful for 2 weeks free of babytending. I don’t feel to have had a holiday since I’ve been in England, and the thought of driving & gourmandizing in France with Ted, & getting tan & rested, is what keeps me going just now. The car is very snug & the back seat folds down & gives lots of storage space. Ted drives beautifully (he took 4 lessons) & has a British license. I don’t drive it yet, as I want lessons & a license first---driving on the left is against my instinct!

I hate to ask anything of you at this busy date, but I wonder if you’d look in the Hathaway Bookshop or BU Library for a book of poems by May Swenson (not May Sarton---another poetess!^*) and copy out 2 or 3 poems---the first one (I think there may be 2 books^*) is a poem about a bruised fingernail^* & I think it comes first in the book, the next “AT Breakfast” about an egg, ending “Ate a sun germ---good.”^* And one called “By Morning” about snow falling. I am making a little anthology of American poems and just can’t get hold of her book here.^*

I know you’re pressed for weight in your case but do you think you could wrap up those five black-and-white cups and saucers of my best teaset upstairs in your clothes (as I did to bring them over) and bring them? It would mean more to me than anything---they cost a lot & I have nothing nice for tea-serving & wouldnt dare to have them crated. I’m not bothered about the big pot or the pitcher & sugarbowl, just the cups and saucers.

Three weeks! What time will you be arriving? I already know what I’ll have for supper---something quite simple but very good. You will adore Frieda. She can stand up by herself now without pulling herself up, in the middle of the floor, and is so pretty and funny. I’m glad you’re seeing her at this age, because she is so responsive & will get to know you specially, unlike a new baby, who just lies about.

Ted’s just finished typing his play---about 115 pages, and I’m working on a 20 minute radio program of my poems^*---I feel we really deserve a rest and a change. I hope the weather is better when you come. May has been the coldest nastiest month of the year yet.

Lots of love to you and Warren,

From Sivvy

TO Aurelia Schober Plath & Warren Plath

Tuesday 6 June 1961

TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University

Tuesday, June 6th

Dear mother and Warren,

You have no idea how happy your wonderful letter made us! I have been hoping and hoping Warren would come, and now my wish is granted! We shall sample good restaurants in Soho and there should be some good plays on then. Should I reserve a room with a double bed for Warren? Most single beds are so short, and a double would give him room to stretch out.

Is it Monday morning the 19th you are coming, mother? I had thought it was Sunday the 18th, but of course that is probably the day you leave. You should see a lovely sunrise. I believe there is routine transportation from the Airport into London. Maybe you could call us from the airport as soon as you get in, let us know where and when you’ll be arriving in London, and we could meet you in the car. I think you’ll be a lot more comfortable at the Merwins. It is so near, and Dido’s room is so lovely, and Molly,^* the little Australian hairdresser is at work all day. I’ll be working in the study over there in the morning and Ted in the afternoon, probably, and then there won’t be a mile trek everytime you want to rest or get something. The Merwins get an indefinable something out of knowing us (Ted being a British lion in Dido’s eyes) and we have got over feeling we can’t repay them in kind, especially as it gives them a certain odd pleasure to see us living on things out of their attic.

One important thing, before I forget: could you airmail my American driver’s license to me immediately???^* I believe I did get it renewed and you kept it over there. I’m having my driving test here next week and need the license to turn in. I have very little hope of passing the test, as driving with a left-hand floor gear with 4 gears, and on the left of the road, and with all sorts of military forms to turning the steering wheel and signalling with both hand and light I find very difficult. I am having a few lessons, though. At least Ted passed his test, so we are mobile. The car is small, but roadworthy, and should make our Maugham trip to Europe with the baby a pleasure instead of a laden march. Frieda loves riding in her baby car seat in the back and is securely strapped in.

Ted went to receive his 100 pounds Hawthornden award last Wednesday, the speech given by the poet C. Day Lewis,^* who is charming. Yesterday morning I spent at the BBC recording a 25 minute program of my poems and commentary, with an American boy reader^* for some of them, for my “Living Poet” program in July. There is a Living Poet every month, and I am on a list of Americans among Robert Lowell, Stanley Kunitz and Theodore Roethke, which I find quite an honour.^* We’ll miss the program as we’ll be in France, but you must listen and tell us how it is. Got $60 for the morning’s work, and will be paid for the poems separately. We’ve taken on the Merwins accountant^* to figure our income tax as it is absolutely hopeless to do it ourselves, with all the conflicting American and UK laws. I think he’ll be well worth a fee in peace of mind to us. UK tax, unfortunately, is much worse than American!

The one thing I long for now is a house! As soon as our income tax for this year in the UK is cleared we will see how much of a mortgage the St. Pancras Council would give us and try to line a place up by winter here. As Ted says, he could treble his income as soon as he has a study where he could keep his papers and not be interrupted, and I also could afford a morning babyminder and am interested in working on a novel. Then, too, you and Warren could count on a guest room---if you have that, then everybody can lead their own lives and there is no overcrowding. Oh, it would be so nice if you could plan 6 weeks over here every summer! If you just had to save up for the round-trip fare and we had a guest room, you’d have next to no other expenses, and then Ted and I could take an annual two-week holiday in the middle of your stay while you got reacquainted with your grandchildren. I feel I haven’t had a proper holiday for 4 or 5 years! Our summer in Northampton was depressing, and our tour around America magnificent but the pace tiring, and since the baby’s come I haven’t had a day off! The thought of going off alone with Ted for 2 weeks is just heaven. We have reservations for June 30th to July 14th, and plan to take a little 5 or 6 day trip alone in France before going to the Merwins. I think you will be very comfortable here with the baby---I have a 3-day a week diaper service, a laundromat around the corner, and all shops, and she is so pretty and funny you will just adore her. Yesterday she took down a saucer from the kitchen shelf & put it on the floor. Then she took down a cup & put it on the saucer. Then she picked up the cup & pretended to sip, & put it back in the saucer & burst out laughing in pleasure at herself. This must come after a year of watching us drink tea!

Lots of love to you both,

Sivvy

TO Brian Cox

Saturday 17 June 1961

TLS, University of Kansas

3 Chalcot Square

London N.W.1

June 17, 1961

Dear Brian,

Many thanks for your letter. Here are the proofs.^* I shall have the whole anthology to you within a week, and have just received books or poems from the last few poets I’ve been waiting for. I sent a small blurb to Tony Dyson^* at the Other Place,^* saying simply that this Small Anthology of American Poets includes a selection of youngish or new (this covers the few old poets who are new, with first books) American poets ranging from Gregory Corso to Richard Wilbur (i.e., encompassing the Beats and the Elegant Academicians). Over 15 poets. Over 20 poems.

Sincerely,

Sylvia Plath

TO Howard Moss

Saturday 17 June 1961

TLS (aerogramme), New York Public Library

3 Chalcot Square

London N.W.1, England

June 17, 1961

Mr. Howard Moss

THE NEW YORKER

25 West 43rd Street

New York, New York

U.S.A.

Dear Mr. Moss,

I am very happy you like TULIPS.^* I am giving a small reading of poems here in London next month and have promised to include TULIPS among them. I wondered if it would be all right with you to have TULIPS mimeographed on the program sheet.^*

With all good wishes,

Sincerely,

Sylvia Plath

TO Brian Cox

Sunday 25 June 1961

TLS, University of Kansas

3 Chalcot Square

London N.W.1,

June 25, 1961

Dear Brian,

Here is the little anthology.^* I’ve put under the name of each poet (arranged alphabetically) the publisher and book title, or magazine, where I found the poem.^* On second thought I’ve left out any poems of my own as my own reaction to anthologists who take anthologies as opportunities for publishing their own poems is not a very kind one.^*

Let me know what you think of this, what outrages or pleases you.

All good wishes,

Sylvia (Plath) <signed>

Sylvia Plath

TO Warren Plath

Tuesday 27 June 1961^*

ALS (photocopy), Indiana University

Dear Warren –

Mother is at the moment bathing Frieda, I halfway through making a strawberry chiffon pie & Ted typing a letter to T. S. Eliot. Its taken mother about a week to recover from that sleepless night & the usual strain of getting used to a new place, but her being just about across the street in the Merwin’s grand bedroom (free too) with a corner to cook her own breakfast, & us being settled here, & the lovely Park, she is thriving, Frieda is at her best – so pretty & loving – she & mother get on wonderfully, so I shall feel relatively easy leaving them. I’ve got in a large store of food, so they should have fun. I am dying for a holiday not having been free of the baby or cooking for well over a year & no respite since our American tour. We are overjoyed at your coming & shall go off to Italy with Frieda after you depart. We’re both doing a reading of our commissioned poems for the poetry festival at the Mermaid Theatre on July 17th – then all up to Yorkshire for a week where we have mother a lovely room reserved at a nearby farm Inn. We took her to see “Ondine”^* with Leslie Caron (the play) the other night – just her thing, all magic & fairytale. We miss you & can’t wait till you come. Write mother at this address.

Love,

Sivvy

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Thursday 29 June 1961^*

ALS (picture postcard),^* Indiana University

Thursday –

Dear mother:

We are sitting under an umbrella waiting for our café au lait in Rouen, a wonderful antique town with an open market just beyond this beautiful clock bridge where we have bought a lunch of milk, bread, cheese & fruit for a picnic. A heavenly boat trip over yesterday^* – calm, bright sun. We stopped for a French lunch in a sleepy town & drove to a superb beach,^* swam, collected shells for Frieda & sunned. Drove on to Rouen through green wheat fields We find no tourists – only holidaying French people, which is very fine. Now on to Mont. St. Michel. Twenty kisses to our little angel.

Love

Sivvy & Ted

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Sunday 2 July 1961

ALS (picture postcard),^* Indiana University

Sunday: July 2

Dear mother . . .

We are sitting in a little “crêperie” in Douarnenez, a lovely fishing port in Finisterre^* waiting for our crepes – a lacey thin pancake served with butter or jam or honey & cider to drink, for our Sunday supper. We have been swimming in clear Atlantic water, eating mussels, cockles, lobster & giant crayfish – 5 course dinners for less than $3 for the 2 of us. We have spent today – our first cloudy one – exploring two rocky points at the very west of Brittany. Have bought two little presents for Freda. If for any reason you need to, use our doctor’s – you can use them free as a guest.

We hope to be at Merwins Wednesday – I’m dying to hear how our angel is.

Lots of love to you both –

xxx

– S.

Don’t forget to hear my BBC program this weekend – (Saturday 9:30 pm I think)

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Thursday 6 July 1961

TLS with envelope, Indiana University

Thursday: July 6

Dear mother,

I am delighted by your 2 good letters so full of Frieda. I loved hearing every word about her: already she seems like a different child, she is growing so fast, and while I am having a wonderfully restful time I miss her immensely. The Merwins farm is idyllic, with a superb view, plum trees country milk, butter & eggs, a billion stars overhead, cow bells tinkling all night softly, and Dido is the world’s best cook. They made the whole place over from a pile of bramble-covered stone and it is full of antique furniture salvaged from peasants barns, stripped of varnish & waxed to a satin finish. Ted is so rested it does my heart good. I am tan at last from sunbathing on the geranium-lined terrace and relieved for a time to be completely free of mail, phone calls and London. Today we are going to a local market fair. Dido’s cooking is better than any we’ve had yet.

I am glad to hear you are taking in a play. Do ask the red-haired Doris Bartlett^* at the Express (or is it United?) dairies just opposite the foot of St. George’s Terrace to babysit next Thursday afternoon or any evening after 7 if you want to got shopping downtown Thursday. I hope you aren’t having too strenuous a time with Frieda, who sounds ten times livelier now that she’s walking. Do take it easy. How & where are you sleeping? Yorkshire should be a nice rest for you. I am so renewed I am dying to take care of Frieda again. We’ll be home in time for supper Friday the 14th, I imagine, and plan to leave for Yorkshire very early the following Tuesday for a good week. Then after we come back to London Ted & I may go to Devon for a day or so to look at houses. I would so like to have a place lined up before we go to Italy this fall. I’m very glad my nice neighbors have been so good. Katherine Frankfort’s little boys^* are very sweet especially the youngest & Lorna Secker-Walker’s little Joanna a doll. Frieda enjoyed her 2nd birthday party very much. I’ve got a lovely deep blue wool sleeved Blue Riding Hood cape & hood with white embroidery for her in Quimper^* which should be wonderfully handsome for a winter coat.^*

See you in a week. Keep us posted.

Rest yourselves!

Love,

Sivvy

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Monday 10 July 1961

ALS (picture postcard), Indiana University

Monday – July 10

Dear mother . . .

We saw these small vivid caves yesterday with the prehistoric paintings. Your good letter came about Frieda’s new teeth. I dote on every word about her & now am so brown & fat & rested (thanks to Dido’s celestial cooking – she won’t let me wash a dish) I am ready & eager to come home. Dido & a Spanish duchess friend^* of hers are brewing up a banquet for a famous French tapestry-maker – Jean Lurçat^* – who is coming tonight. Only 4 days till we’re home! Haven’t felt so fine for 5 years. I bought 2 cheap French cotton smocks for her (Frieda) at the fair & a handsome dress for me (needs the hem let down) at a fancy shop for only $5.50.

XXX-XXX to you & F.

Sivvy

TO Dido Merwin

c. Sunday 30 July 1961^*

ALS,^* Pierpont Morgan Library

Dear Dido –

A small, practical PS to send along measurements for that sepia sweater (I liked the style of Ben’s^* & a generous collar). I imagine I take a rough size 38, but here are the exact inches:

armpit – bottom: 14 inches

back-neck – bottom: 20½ inches

bust: 35 inches

shoulder – wrist: 22½ inches

Let me know if the estimable lady needs any other details. We’ll send a cheque as soon as you let us know what she charges.^* I look forward to getting Jeanna’s remnant to patch my hem ere I get too fat for all such fripperies. Dr. Wallace^* is a dear – he’s referring me to Dr. Battle.^* We are returned from a glorious week of bilberrying & moorwalking in Yorkshire & planning to surfeit mother with Stonehenge & the Tower of London^* before her flight home on Friday. Having her so close at hand has been a great relief & Molly has filled a gap I’m afraid I’m no good at – a sort of chatty solicitous companion – for which I’m grateful. Your cooking floats before – or rather behind – me in the guise of celestial platters & sweet dreams.

Love to you & Bill –

Sylvia

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Monday 7 August 1961^*

TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University

Tuesday: August 7

Dear mother,

Well, London doesn’t seem the same with you departed. I hope the trip back wasn’t too tiring. Did Warren meet you on time? Both Ted and I thought you looked very athletic and healthy when you left. We have been sleeping and resting, Ted taking Frieda out in the mornings and me taking her in the afternoons. Today there was a great wind, which blew down a lot of branches, and she loved it. She is learning to walk along with one now, and covers an amazing distance. I ran into that Crystal (is that her first name? Or last) and Gilbert today who spoke to Frieda very fondly and said they were sorry to have missed you the Friday you left---evidently they had hoped to see you in the park. Is she German? She seems very nice. What is her whole name?

The day after you left we had a letter that Sir Arundell^* agreed on the price of 3,600 pounds for the house, so we have sent in our 10% deposit. I guess that’s just about the equivalent of $10,000. I am a bit overcome by the notion of moving everything, but our possessions will seem very small compared to the house itself. We will have to furnish one room at a time. I am a bit homesick for London, as I always am before leaving a place, but welcome the space and country peace for the next few years. Ted is in seventh heaven. We have been working, alternating my mornings and his afternoons, at the Merwins study and this works out beautifully, as neither of us wants to work the whole day at a desk.

Your presence is everywhere, and your good influence, too. I am taking about 5 vitamins a day, a long walk with F. every afternoon, and feeding her chopped meat and potato. She says Baw-pee for bottle and listens so carefully when you tell her a new word. I have made her another nightie out of the white-figured red flannel, just like her blue one, which looks adorable on her, and gotten some red Viyella (at just over $3) for a maternity blouse for me, and a pattern for a red Viyella dress for her, plus a Simplicity sewing book, from which I hope to learn how to make button holes and so on. Now I think I will look for an old Singer.

If you have the College Taxi people crate my beloved china set & send it to us at Court Green, North Tawton, Devon, we’ll be endlessly grateful & probably there to receive it, as we hope to be moved by August 31. Also, would it be possible for^* Warren to bring our sleeping bags rolled up with a strap round them? We think we may have a double bed given us and if he could bring the two bags he would have bedding & could stay with us. They would probably be very light. But awkward.

I bought Frieda a sturdy pair of red laced size 5 shoes today, as you instructed: they are still very big for her, but she likes playing with them.

I have taken the film of Frieda in to be developed & hope to have the snaps to you in a week. I also bought my first present for Nicholas-Megan at Selfridge’s---a handsome blue handknit Spanish-made baby sweater, for about $3, which I think quite reasonable. I had given one like it to Helga Huws for her 2nd baby and have long coveted one. I am sure all the London shops will have branches in Exeter, but am laying in a few niceties.

By the way, the paper nappies you bought are much superior to the ones I remembered using, & we’ll take that kind to Italy. I am wearing the lovely Viyella blouse which Ted likes immensely and which I rate tiefavorite to my own red and green one. I feel like a new person in it. The color is just perfect.

I will be so happy to get to the house and start fixing it up. It is basically such a beautiful place, and now you will have a lovely country house to visit next summer! I look forward to sampling our apples, making sauce (Has grammy any recipes for applesauce?) and anticipating our bank of spring daffodils. I think both of us will produce lots of work. Italy is of course something I just won’t think of until it comes, but we hope to save half of the money of the grant and certainly can use it! To get to us Warren should find out the express (I think it leaves 11ish in the morning) from London that passes through North Tawton (the station) & write or telegram us the time & day of his arrival so we can be at the station to pick us up. We’ll probably have a new phone number from what’s in now, so he might ask Information for the Hughes of Court Green if he wants to call. We look so forward to seeing him! We miss you immensely & count on seeing you next summer---thanks so much for making our trips & house-finding a possibility.

Lots of love,

Sivvy

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Sunday 13 August 1961

TLS, Indiana University

3 Chalcot Square

London N.W.1

Sunday: August 13

Dear mother,

A thousand thanks for the $5,880 check which arrived this week, and for your own $1,400 loan (no need to put gift on this, as loans are untaxable). I’m enclosing a check for $275 to be deposited in our 5 cent savings account to relieve the large gap there a trifle. I’d tell as few people as possible about the house till we’re actually in it (these typing eccentricities are caused by Frieda’s begging “Up!” and being taken in my lap to type for a minute). The owner agreed to have the whole dwellinghouse treated & guaranteed for woodworm as a condition of our buying it, & hasn’t done more than the roof, so unless he gets through with the whole thing we won’t consider it. I’m pretty sure he’ll end up by carrying it out, though.

Ted & I are seriously thinking of giving up the Somerset Maugham award, unless of course they’ll give us another 2-year extension. The prospect of cramming in a trip to Europe after a move to a house which will need a lot of attention and before a 2nd baby just doesn’t seem worth 500 pounds, even though we were hoping to save half of it. Both of us feel we could get enough writing done if we had a relatively peaceful fall to make up for not taking the grant & feel an immense pressure lifted not to have to go abroad. We’ve had enough of moving around to last for years.

I’m enclosing^* the best shots of the baby in the last roll. There are some more on a roll we haven’t finished yet & we’ll send the best of those on too when it’s been developed.

Could Warren stick a big thick heavy comb in his luggage for me? I haven’t found anything strong enough to withstand my hair here. Ted & I had our babysitter Doris in Thursday afternoon and had a lovely time at the National Portrait Gallery and the British Museum, and only wished we’d started to take an afternoon off together every week to explore London---it’s so much more fun than going alone. I’m busy giving a couple of dinners for people we want to see before we go off.

We put an add in the paper^* for our flat (with a $280 fee for “fixtures & fittings” to cover the cost of our decorating, lino, shelves & solicitor’s fees & to deter an avalanche of people---the custom here) & had 8 responses & 2 couples who arrived & decided they wanted it at the same time. Very awkward, especially as Ted & I liked one couple, the boy a young Canadian poet, the girl a German-Russian whom we identified with,^* as they were too slow & polite to speak up & officially the other chill busybody man got it by sitting down & immediately writing out a check. We felt so badly we tore up his check that night & told him we were staying & then dug out the other couple & said they could have it. So I hope our Court Green move goes through. The couple are coming to supper this week.

I was so glad to hear you arrived home safely in spite of the delay. And your words to the Canadian woman were vicariously most satisfying! The sort of thing one seldom has the presence of mind to say & wishes one had said too late. Congratulations!

Keep your fingers crossed for us about Court Green!

Love to you & Warren,

Sivvy

TO Gerald & Joan Hughes

Saturday 19 August 1961

TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University

Saturday: August 19th

Dear Gerald, Joan, Etc.,

You see what I am driven to. Separate letter paper. Leave me a space, I beg, letter after letter, but Ted slyly finishes the last inch on the quiet, mails his opus, and makes me out a silent, taciturn post, which I am not. Not in the least.

I liked the painting very much, Gerald. My great extravagance, bottled up with all the little ones that don’t have a chance to show in our present circumstances, would be to go around to the galleries buying the paintings I like, art being my alternate love to writing. As it is, I just go to the galleries. The friend Ted showed the painting to is fantastic, our age, but set & peculiar in his ways, and a regular art critic noted for his own finds. His latest is an original of a Van Dyck^* he picked up as a “copy”. He showed us his collection of drawings by reasonably famous Italians the night we went to ask about your piece.

We are wild about the Devon place. I don’t know how much Ted told you about it in his letter, did he say we’re buying it from a Sir Robert Arundell? He almost didn’t go see it, because for some reason he is prejudiced against titles, & we only saw it for fun because of its having a thatch which we had resolved not to touch. Of course it was enchanting, made us fall in love with it---it’s white, with a black base-border & this bird-haunted-straw top. We are going to be camping out for a year or so, because we have almost no furniture or carpets, and a long list of repairs such as having up the floors in the two front rooms downstairs and getting them cemented (the wooden joists are resting on the earth “as is usual for such old places”), and then replastering all the rooms when we redecorate them, and so on. We have been plagued by dreams of woodworm & deathwatch beetles, as we said we’d only buy the place if Sir Robert had a woodworm company treat it & guarantee it for 20 years, which he is, if a bit draggingly, doing.

I shall miss London in lots of ways, but hope I can get a lot of writing done free from entertaining and people-seeing, and that both of us can earn a house here by the time schooling matters for the children of which we are due another in January, much to our joy---then we can winter in town & spend all the nice weather in the country. Of course we’ll probably be broke till 50 attending to our thatch, but I have grand dreams. Anyhow, I am trying to finish a first novel before we move & will make an effort to get it published to see if I can scare up some carpet money.

Frieda is a blue-eyed, brown-haired doll, very funny and full of jokes, and loving, kisses her toys & jabberwocks at them, kisses our manuscripts & us and everything. Says “ba” for ball & cookie and appee (apple) and bawpee (bottle) and UP UP UP. She is our great toy & keeps us in charming tempers. Ted is wonderfully happy about this place: it is his one big dream & I am so glad it’s coming so beautifully true. Six bedrooms! Frieda gave him a bunch of seed packets for his birthday. We’ll be good gardeners. Keep writing.

Much love to all,

Sylvia

TO Eric Walter White

Tuesday 22 August 1961

ALS, British Library

3 Chalcot Square

London N.W.1

August 22, 1961

Dear Eric,

I am happy to enclose the work sheets of Insomniac^* & happy to hear from the Cheltenham Festival Organiser^* that sleeplessness has its own very pleasant reward.

Sincerely,

Sylvia Plath

Eric White, Esq.

THE ARTS COUNCIL OF GREAT BRITAIN

4 St. James’s Square

London SW1

TO John Sweeney

Tuesday 22 August 1961

ALS with envelope, Harvard University

3 Chalcot Square

London NW 1

August 22, 1961

Dear Jack,

Here are the work-sheets of “Tulips” which I have specially saved for you out of my weekly holocaust of draft sheets. Ted & I loved that wonderful, wonderful dinner with you after the Festival.^* Frieda has appropriated Ted’s Indian.

We have plunged & bought an antique thatched house, barn, stables, orchard, vegetable garden on 2½ acres of walled land in Devon & will move in by September 1st. It is lovely to see Ted’s main dream come true – the River Taw is thick with fish.

Our new address:

Court Green –^*

North Tawton

Devon

Love from us three to you and Mairé,

Sylvia →^*

TO Brian Cox

Thursday 24 August 1961

TLS, University of Kansas

3 Chalcot Square

London N.W.1

August 24, 1961

Dear Brian,

Here is the new order. I like it much better & I hope you do. I am enclosing several extra poems. I mean some of these to be put in definitely, not as extras. The four “extras”^* which can be left out or in as space permits I have enclosed in parentheses on the Contents sheet. (A Late Afternoon in Western Minnesota, Almanac, The Five-day Rain, Love Fast,).^*

The dinner was lovely & I delighted in my annual corn-on-the-cob. If all goes well, we move August 31st to Court Green, North Tawton, Devon. Let me know if you have any questions.

Best wishes,

Sylvia Plath

TO Aurelia Schober Plath & Warren Plath

Friday 25 August 1961

TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University

August 25, 1961

Dear mother & Warren,

It was lovely to get your letters---especially yours, Warren, telling us about probably coming to Devon on the 9th of September! Drop us a note when you get to London letting us know the hotel you are definitely staying at with its street address, & we’ll write & tell you our phone number so you can let us know what time your train will get in and so on. If all goes as planned, we should be moving into Court Green on Thursday, August 31st. The owner is having the whole house treated and guaranteed for woodworm as he had promised, & this is written into the contract, which we shall sign this weekend. We shall still no doubt be in a pretty primitive state by the time you come with no rugs or curtains or extras---our furniture will barely fill 2 of our 8-odd rooms, but we hope to add to it bit by bit through country auctions and so on. And a surplus of empty rooms will be heavenly for a while. I am so glad you’ll have a chance to see the place so soon, though, Warren, & can carry firsthand tales of it back to mother, who we hope will be seeing it next summer in a more advanced state.

Thanks for all your multitudinous transactions, mother. How much was the china sending & wrapping??? I’ll settle with you on that from our Wellesley account if you’ll let me know. I have put aside the money for Ted’s sweater & grampy’s wonderful gift with which I shall, regardless of all other expenses, buy myself a rug. Naturally this immense deposit and all the expenses of moving out and in and fixing up will require us to camp out more or less for the first year. But we hope to recoup our funds soon on writing. Ted’s children’s broadcasts on the BBC have been very enthusiastically received and he has an open ticket there to do as much as he wants, plus an invitation to do occasional editing on the Children’s Page of the Sunday Times (whose Childrens Editor he lunched with and liked very much), and several other editing jobs, not to mention his wanting to finish a story collection which Faber’s is eagerly awaiting. I have never seen him so happy. Both of us feel a wonderful deep-breathing sense of joy at the peaceful secluded life opening up for us, and delighted that our children will have such a wonderful place to live and play in. That check you deposited, by the way, was for Ted’s story Snow, which was accepted by Harper’s Bazaar. Isn’t that nice!

Do tell Betty & Do I’ll be dropping them a line as soon as we’re settled mother, for I want to send them belated thanks for the box of clothes on Betty’s part, & the yellow pajama set on Do’s. Right now it seems a miracle that we shall ever get packed and moved. I have dozens of lists of this and that to do and pack. It will be heavenly not to have to move our stuff for indefinite years!

Frieda is wonderfully good-humored. Her teething seems to have let up. She says “I-see” for Isis & points to the picture, sniffs at all pictures of flowers, however tiny, added “cook-ee” to “ap-pee” to mean food of all kinds & feeds and talks to her dolls and bears in a funny squeaky voice.

I had a very nice letter^* from Alfred Knopf (my lady editor there) saying my book of poems (40 poems, a much more concise, tight book) is due out in Spring 1962. I feel very excited filling out the Knopf Author’s forms, after all these years of wishing I could get a book published by them!

My next letter should be written from Court Green! I can’t wait to see what it feels like to live there. I shall investigate about a Bendix, mother, as soon as may be, as it would be absolute heaven to get one before the new baby comes. It is really the only make I’m interested in. What a dream it would be to have one. I’m really sick of lugging great loads to the laundromat each week--usually two a week now, for some reason.

We’ve been having farewell dinners with our closest friends here. We know a few quite marvelous couples---a Portuguese poet and exile & his wonderful vital wife^* & Alan Sillitoe, the young & famous author of the novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (made into a movie) and his American wife,^* and of course our nice neighbors. Fortunately we are on the holiday route to Cornwall, so stand a chance of seeing them about once a year. I shall look forward to the solitude.

I am going out tomorrow to look for a 2nd hand sewing machine like the one I’ve borrowed from Dido. It is wonderful, paradoxically, not to have the strain of going to Italy on top of us any more. The money we hoped to save out of it just wasn’t worth it to us. Now we will be able to write all fall in peace, before the new baby arrives, and get a lot done. We’ll probably set you to minding Frieda in the mornings, Warren! I imagine baby sitters will be harder to get in the country.

Lots of love from us 3,

Sivvy

TO Frank Schober

Friday 25 August 1961

TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University

3 Chalcot Square

London N.W.1, England

August 25, 1961

Dear Grampy,

Ted and I were overwhelmed and delighted by your wonderful gift of $100! I have put it aside to buy a nice red rug for our livingroom after we move into our new house. We are so happy to have a place of our own at last, with land and a garden and an orchard and plenty of room for your great-granddaughter to run around in. Ted & I hope to get a lot more writing done this way as each of us will have a quiet study.

Already we are planning on planting beans and peas and tomatoes and spinach and lettuce and asparagus and corn and heaven knows what else next autumn. Probably we shall turn from writers into market gardeners! Or apple growers---we’ve lots of fine apple trees. I do wish you could magically fly over and see our place. We are delighted with it.

Thanks again for your generous and thoughtful housewarming gift, and lots of love to you from Ted, Frieda and myself,

With love,

Sylvia

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Monday 4 September 1961

TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University

Monday: September 4

Dear mother,

Well, I am writing this from my big back kitchen (not really a kitchen, for I cook & wash up in a small room across the hall) at Court Green, surrounded by my copper saucepan and copper whatdoyoucall it (that Frank gave me) and Dutch teaset that you brought, all displayed in the various lovely nooks and crannies. A large coal stove warms this room and keeps all the water piping hot (although we can switch on hot water independently of it in the electric immersion heater upstairs), and at last I have all the room I could want, and a perfect place for everything. My pewter looks beautiful in the parlor, where Ted is building bookshelves.

We moved without mishap on Thursday, our furniture just fitting in the small movers van (the move cost just under $100), and had a fine hot sunny blue day for it. Ever since a fog has shrouded us in, just as well, for we have been unpacking, scrubbing, painting and working hard indoors. The house surprised us---everything seemed so much better than we had remembered it: new discoveries on every side. The Arundells had left it clean-swept and shining. The woodworm people were just finishing work, so there is the fading aroma of their disinfectants. The place is like a person: it responds to the slightest touch & looks wonderful immediately. I have a nice round dining table we are “storing” for the couple who have moved into our London flat, and we eat on this in the big back room with light green linoleum, cream wood paneling to shoulder height, & the pink-washed walls that go throughout the house which I love---there’s lots of space for Frieda to run about & play & spill things----really the heart-room of the house, with the toasty coal stove Ted keeps burning. Across the back hall---finely cobbled stone, one of the best touches---is my compact work kitchen: my gas stove (I had gas brought up to the house for this), loads of shelves & a low ancient sink which I am going to have changed to a modern unit immediately. Off this small room is a cool whitewashed larder where I have my fridge & hope to have my Bendix. The only self-service Launderette is 20 miles away in Exeter, so I searched round for a Bendix shop Saturday & plan to go in this week & order a machine. I will have to have a plumber install my new sink unit & run pipes into the larder, but we need a plumber anyway to fix the toilet upstairs. That is really the only major work that needs doing now. I am dying for a Bendix!

I was lucky in that Katherine Frankfurt let me have a double bed & mattress, an old greenish rug (which came out very nicely after I had it cleaned), two wood chairs & a marble-topped wine cabinet for the negligible price of moving them from her mother’s house to ours, as none of the other relatives wanted them, so Warren will have a place to sleep on when he comes. I look forward to hearing from him, & from you too! He will be our first guest & we really long for someone to confirm our affection for our wonderful home.

We have been so busy indoors that we’ve hardly had time to do more than survey our grounds (the main crop of which is stinging nettles at present, and, of course, apples). I went out with Frieda & got a big basket of windfalls for applesauce, enough blackberries for two breakfast bowls, and about five pounds of fine potatoes from a hill of them someone had forgotten to dig up. I have the place full of flowers---great peachy-colored gladiolas, hot red & orange & yellow zinnias. The front flower gardens are weedy, but full of petunias & zinnias & a couple of good rosebushes. My whole spirit has expanded immensely---I don’t have that crowded, harassed feeling I’ve had in all the small places I’ve lived in before. Frieda adores it here. The house has only one shallow step to get down from the back court into the back hall, and another shallow step into the front garden, so she can run in and out easily with no danger of falls, & loves tramping through the big rooms. She needs two naps a day again, she gets so tired with all this exercise.

What is so heavenly here is the utter peace. Very nice tradespeople, a retired couple from London^* at the end of our drive who brought a tray of tea the day we moved in & curious & amiable natives. Our phone number, by the way, is North Tawton 370. I am going to a pre-natal clinic at the doctors^* up the street to get myself on his panel. This is a wonderful place to have babies in. My main concern is rugs (after plumbing & Bendix) and curtains & pillows. We can’t wait for you to see it. Wish you could come in the spring---we have piles of lilac (which I hadn’t noticed before), daffodils, laburnum, cherry, apple, honeysuckle---and must be legendarily charming then. Ted has a superb attic study under the thatched eaves. I have chosen the best front bedroom for my own. Bought a lovely old reconditioned Singer sewing machine for $33.60 before leaving London – hand-wind.

xxx

Sivvy

TO Charles Osborne

Monday 4 September 1961

TLS, University of Texas at Austin

Court Green

North Tawton

Devonshire

September 4, 1961

Dear Charles,

Please forgive me for RSVPing a week after the event, or nearly, but September 1st also marked our moving day to this antique thatched farmhouse in Devon and all correspondence got shelved in the process.

We are here, as far as we know and hope, forever, surviving on our own apples and potatoes left over from the previous owner.

Ted joins me in sending best wishes for the LM, Australian stories, and you too.

Sincerely,

Sylvia Plath

TO Howard Moss

Monday 11 September 1961

TLS (aerogramme), New York Public Library

Court Green

North Tawton

Devonshire, England

September 11, 1961

Dear Mr. Moss,

Thanks very much for your letter^* about The Rival.

I think the poem is most easily explained as a contrast between two women: the speaker, who is a rather ordinary wife and mother, and her “rival”---the woman who is everything she is not---who obsesses her. This woman terrifies the speaker and dominates her thoughts, seeming almost superhuman (“Spiteful as a woman, but not so nervous . . .”) and, in the third section, grows impressive and omnipresent as a sort of goddess.

This other woman seems to find a vicarious satisfaction in battening on the speaker’s life---enjoying her baby, for instance. “You sat in the next room . . .” is past tense as it refers to her presence at the baby’s birth.

In the third section the speaker tries to lose the image of her rival in the impersonal spaces of the sky and the sea, but finds it impossible to do so. She even fancies what it would be like if the other woman were dead and buried, but realizes the woman would still be present to her and that she must accept her as she is.

If you think it would help clarify and simplify the poem to omit the second section, I think this might be a possibility. Also, if you feel another title would be better I’d be glad to have any suggestions.

With all good wishes,

Sincerely,

Sylvia Plath

Mr. Howard Moss

The New Yorker

25 West 43rd Street

New York 36, New York

USA

TO Ruth Fainlight

Monday 11 September 1961

TLS, Ruth Fainlight

Court Green

North Tawton

Devonshire

Monday: September 11

Dear Ruth,

By now you must be out of Woolavington Wing^* and safely back in Pembridge Crescent. I hope your stitches were easy and that they used the most decorative of embroidery threads. They sewed my side up with black silk after taking away my appendix last winter, which I thought too somber.

The days have flown over our heads in an aroma of death-watch-beetlekiller and drying paint. At last we are emerging, and taking in our estate of stinging nettle. Ted has made bookshelves, I have whitened bureaus and a kitchen cupboard we found here for a desk, and except for the barren expanse of floorboards and bare windows, we are settled. I shall scour the sales for 2nd hand Orientals.

We have apple pie, applesauce, apfel kuchen, and will have every Apple Thing in the Joy of Cooking before the fall is out. Also lots of big blackberries. Somebody left a hill of potatoes which pleased me immensely: I never saw one forked up before & it gave me a great primitive satisfaction: We Shall Survive. Ted digs all morning and plans immense vegetable plots in his dreams. We each have a study: Ted has 3 or 4 in case he wants a change.

Alan’s wonderful book^* is my bedtime reading. Ted keeps pinching it. He thinks it is Alan’s best, & so do I. Ted will tell you himself how he admires it; he doesn’t usually read novels, but I can’t stop him on this. It is a huge book, in a profound sense. I love the incredible, vivid wealth of detail.

I may possibly be coming to London Tuesday October 31st for the Guinness Poetry Party. I’m not sure, but if so, would it be convenient for me to descend on you overnight? I am very reluctant to go without Ted, but somebody has to mind Frieda and I don’t think anyone local would stay overnight here and do all the bother with her. I long to go to London, even for a movie or for a play, but am notoriously bad at going to things myself, spoiling for company. Anyhow, let me know if that day would be okay, and I’ll let you know if I’m able to come later on.

Ted & I felt the best part of our latter days in London were seeing you two. You must come down for a weekend some time in the late, grim heart of autumn. We miss you very much.

Love to you both from us three,

Sylvia

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Friday 15 September 1961

TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University

Friday night: September 15

Dear mother,

It seems strange to think that Warren will reach you before this letter does, though both depart on the same day.^* We saw him off at the little North Tawton station this morning at 11:30 after a breakfast of orange juice, fried egg & crispy potatoes & apple cake, and the house seemed very lonesome without him. He has been really a wonderful part of the family---sanding an immense elm plank^* which will make me my first real capacious writing table, discovering a set of wooden blocks in the cottage attic and cleaning them up for Frieda, chopping wood, mowing the lawn, and in general making himself useful.

We’ve had a lot of fun while he was here---explored the Exeter cathedral, took a picnic to Tinagel (very commercial) and found a high cowfield nearby overlooking the sea to eat it in, drove to an auction at which we bought a little (4x6) Indian rug for Frieda’s room, and ate out at our local inn, the Burton Hall Arms^* (a roast beef dinner for just over $1 a person) which gave me a welcome change from cooking. I hope Warren didn’t starve while he was here, although our meals in the evening are always late, as I have to make them after the babys supper & bath, I tried to feed him along the vast lines to which he is accustomed!

Your check for the Bendix came, mother, and thanks a million times. I have found a Bendix place (after a long search) in Exeter, and the man has come & written out what the plumber should put in. I have a nice cold white larder room off the small cooking-kitchen where I plan to put it, along with the icebox. I don’t mind at all not having a drier as I don’t like bone-dry clothes and can hang my 9-lb. load overnight in front of the coal stove & iron them the next day. I hope to have a new sink unit (my present one is about 2 feet high) and my Bendix in a month or so. Then life will be very easy. My best news is that the pleasant robust woman^* who has cleaned Court Green for 11 years is going to come to me for 3 hours each on Tuesdays & Thursdays to wash my lineoleums, vacuum, dust & iron (my least favorite chore) at guess what, 2/6 an hour! (That’s what Lady Arundell^* paid her!). That means just over a dollar for a 3-hour morning’s work. She seems a nice, vigorous woman, with a husband and grown daughter, and she starts work next week.

How many ounces are there in an American tomato soup can you use for tomato soup cake? I didn’t think to question, but our cans seem to be bigger than yours, as my cake was a bit “wet”. Thanks for the pound cake recipe. I’ll use it soon. I love new recipes. We went blackberrying with Warren^* & got about 13 cups full. Devon is one big blackberry hedge now.

Frieda adores her singing doll. It’s moving scared her at first, but now she puts it down to watch it move & cuffs it fearlessly & laughs. She trails her wooden beads around, both strings, like two tails, and can put the thread in, but hasn’t yet got the knack of pulling it through the bead, although she works hard at it. Her red sweater is our very favorite. It looks gorgeous with her red plaid wool pants you got. Her latest feat is picking the black blackberries: you should have seen her doing this from Ted’s shoulders as he picked below her!

After a Saturday-Sunday visit from a very sweet young Portuguese couple we knew in London this week, things should quiet down. Ted has the most wonderful attic study, very warm under the peak of the thatch and over the hot water boiler. He looks happier and better every day. I never have known such satisfaction just seeing him revel in this place and leading at last exactly the life he wants. I adore my own study, and after I get my great plank table, paint the woodwork white, get a rug & maybe an upholstered armchair, it will be heavenly.

The 3rd package of our china set came before Warren left, the only one with anything broken. I noticed it was insured & wondered if we could claim anything on it---one dinner plate & two bowls were broken, due to packing, I think. The top & bottom were thickly padded, but the two packages inside not padded from each other, so the 8 dinner plates must have acted as a battering ram on the 2 bowls. Also, we only got 6 bowls in all (I think we had glued one broken one which didn’t come), 7 small butter plates & 7 dessert plates. Is that what you sent? Let us know if we should do anything about the broken stuff. I’ve kept the insurance number. In any case, it’s wonderful to have the china with us, especially the glass decanter and the lovely teapot Warren so kindly brought. Now we hope to pick up a few nice bits of furniture at the multitudinous sales (auctions at houses) around here. They are great fun to go to.

Oh, saw my doctor---a young Perry Nortonish type whose surgery is 3 houses up across the street(!) and his marvelous midwife-nurse^* whom I liked immediately. I look forward to my home delivery here now, these 2 people being very important in my life---I couldn’t be better pleased with them. I just love it here, & look so forward to you coming over and enjoying it with us next summer.

Much love from us 3,

Sivvy

TO Jennifer Hassell

Saturday 16 September 1961

TLS (fragment),^* Smith College

Court Green

North Tawton

Devonshire

September 16, 1961

Miss Jennifer Hassell

A. M. HEATH & CO. LTD.

35 Dover Street

London W.1

Dear Miss Hassell,

I’m sending along the manuscript of THE BEDBOOK, verse for a children’s picture book, and my husband’s book for children MEET MY FOLKS! in case you think they’re worth passing on to your office mate^* in charge of Children’s Books on the chance of selling my ms. in either or both England and America, and my husband’s book in America. His book has been rejected over there by the Atlantic Monthly Press, Harper’s and Athenaeum, but no <text missing> there has seen it. As for my ms., the l <text missing> it but w <text missing> as

TO Aurelia Schober Plath & Warren Plath

Tues.–Fri. 26–29 September 1961^*

TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University

Tuesday: September 27

Dearest mother & Warren,

How nice to get letters from the two of you this week. I am so glad the return plane flight went off well. The days have just flown since I last wrote, and we have established a very pleasant rhythm here. Right after breakfast I go up to my study to work at the marvelous six foot natural wood table (which you helped finish, Warren!) while Ted carpenters or gardens in the back, with Frieda. He gives her lunch & puts her to bed about noon, & I come down & make our lunch & by the time I am finished picking up the house & doing dishes Frieda is up and out front with me gardening or mending or whatever, and Ted is in his study. Thus both of us get half a day out-of-doors and half a day writing (which is all either of us wants!) and Frieda is out all the time.

I have amnesia about what I wrote in my last letter, mother. The red sweater is wonderfully roomy & should fit for a long while. It’s our very favorite. Now I have so much space everything is much easier & I find myself washing Frieda’s sweaters almost every day. She alternates those wonderful wool pants. She gets very dirty here, as when we garden, she must come out with her little pail and shovel & scoop up dirt all over herself. What’s the smallest size USA dungarees??? I am going to make a bunch of little cotton smocks to go over her wool sweaters & pants which I can wash every night to save dirtying them too much. She is in her element here---plays more & more by herself in the giant playroom, running in and out; plays with my pots & pans. I got her a little bell-ringing imitation lawnmower to push today, as she loves to see me mow the lawn & she’s overjoyed. She wears her sunhat you bought for Italy all the time & has loved that musical doll to such distraction it is a bit grey---I simply can’t get it away from her. Do you think washing it with warm soapsuds & a nail brush would hurt the musicbox? I mean not putting it in water, of course, but lightly washing the fur. She adores this doll also, I think, because it has a real mouth, which she is always trying to feed. You should see her cradling it and kissing it and putting it to bed in a piepan! She says: all gone, more milk, egg, eye, car, etc., still not a lot, but she understands very involved directions like Feed some apple to baby. It is amazing how easy she is to take care of here.

Did I say the check for the Bendix came, & a thousand thanks? My life will be much easier when it finally arrives. My cleaning woman is a blessing. She does the upstairs Tuesday & the downstairs Thursday, plus almost all the ironing. I don’t know what I’d do without her! I look so forward to the “day-after” neatness of her floorscrubbing. I have just been to Exeter for the day, shopping for bits and pieces. Did you say you knew of a 2nd hand rug place in London? I don’t know why this occurred to me, but I thought you might have said something about it. Rugs is the main thing now.

Friday: Wonderful clear blue weather. I have my front garden all weeded & trim & mowed. Could you find out what name the True Boston Magnolia has? We want to order a couple of bushes. Ted has planted winter lettuce & is digging a big strawberry bed: he has made my desk, a sewing table, a baby gate for the stair---is a natural carpenter! We are so happy. 72 apple trees! For Christmas do you think our American Santa might dig up some seeds for real American corn (I hear Country Gentleman is good---the Merwins have it in France) and Kentucky wonder beans, or some good thin green pole bean. Nothing like that here---only thick, broad beans & corn for pigs. So glad to get your new letter & hear the hurricane passed off safely for you.^* Had a lovely letter from Peg Cantor, to whom I’ll write today.^* Had also a wonderful letter from Mrs. Prouty enclosing a check for $200! I had been feeling a bit blue because I just didn’t feel I could go out and get a really fine rug or two (bedroom & living room are the two places I need them for most) with our mountain of moving-in expenses, including a bill of close to $300 from our lawyers for a multitude of fees. But now I can add her check to grampy’s & get something really good. Ted has been driving 35 miles to the BBC station at Plymouth to record 4 small programs for the Woman’s Hour.^* I am immensely relieved there are recording stations here, for we shall start some income again. He is finishing a radio play for the 3rd programme,^* & Vogue wants a children’s poem^* for $50, & there is the series of the Times Children’s Pages,^* so no lack of assignments. I am very encourage by selling my first woman’s magazine story;^* my 2nd hasn’t sold yet, but the fiction editor of one of the two big women’s weeklies here wants to see me & talk over their requirements on the strength of it. So I shall push this. I’ll get into the Ladies’ Home J yet! Yes, I will get a complimentary New Yorker subscription the minute mine expires. Frieda is in fine health, Ted taught her to feed herself. I have a potty chair which she plays with but how does one get her to pee in it???

Lots of love,

Sivvy

TO Ruth Fainlight

Friday 29 September 1961

TLS, Ruth Fainlight

Court Green

North Tawton

Devonshire

September 29, 1961

Dear Ruth,

I am desperate for apple recipes. Let me know the lot. Have you anything for Stinging Nettles? Surely they have some nutritive value!

I want to hear all about Alan’s sitdown story.^* The New Statesman and Observer are our only source of World News, and down here they sound curiously watered and otherworldly. After a month of hard labor---carpentering, painting, weeding, mowing, and feeding my terrifying enormous brother who came for a week, we are at last writing something, me in the mornings, and Ted afternoons & eves. We take turns minding Frieda and hacking and pasting at the house. Do you know anything about good carpets? Right now I am morbid about acres of bare floorboarding full of dead death-watch beetles.

I should arrive at Waterloo at about 3:30 pm & come straight to you. Then leave just before 6 for the Guinness thing, then have supper with my publisher & come in early. I’ll probably shop a bit the next morning & take an afternoon train home that day. I most miss good movies. I can barely stand to read the reviews of them, I get so movie-mad. It will be terrific seeing you both.

Love,

Sylvia

TO Margaret Cantor

Saturday 30 September 1961

TLS (aerogramme), Private owner

Court Green

North Tawton

Devonshire, England

September 30, 1961

Dear Peg,

It was wonderful to get your lovely letter here. It felt very natural to hear your voice, and I wanted to sit right down and say hello. I wonder if you know how much we think of you! Ted and I are always so eager to hear news of you through mother or Warren, and both of us look forward to catching up with you annually through your wonderful newsy Christmas letter. You are one of Ted’s very favorite American families, and I think he enjoyed being at Kathy’s wedding^* as much as about anything we did on our visit.

Our home is a dream---white plaster under its peak of straw thatch. The thatch is a home for countless birds who come and sing and preen before slipping in their special crevices every night. All I can see from my study window is great trees, clouds and blue sky. We have had some fine blue September weather, crisp and clear, and I have been out weeding my front flower garden, while Ted digs up the large vegetable garden at the back to make room for a strawberry patch.

The house has a lovely feel to it---as if it had been full of warm fires, and flowers, and happy children. And indeed it was the boyhood home of Sir Robert Arundell, the Governor of the Bahamas,^* who sold it to us. Frieda is in her element, toddling about and imitating all we do---spooning dirt over herself, which she thinks is digging the garden, and eating endless apples. After being so long cramped in two city rooms with no garden, it is heaven to lose ourselves on our green acres. I work in my study every morning, while Ted carpenters or gardens with Frieda at his side. Then he works in the afternoon and evening while I cook and sew and pick flowers. It is a lovely rhythm. I feel I learned so much from you in that beautiful summer in Chatham---the real joy of creative homemaking. I think back on that as the happiest summer of my teens---it just glows gold, the color of the Chatham sands.

Do know that we think of you very, very often! Ted joins me in sending best love to all,

Affectionately,

Sylvia

TO Peter Davison

Saturday 30 September 1961

TLS (photocopy), Yale University

Court Green

North Tawton

Devonshire, England

September 30, 1961

Dear Peter:

I am writing in answer to your good letter to Ted.^* He was very pleased with the review, and is sending a copy on to Bill Merwin at his address in France.^*

We also have just bought a house---in Devon, so the above address should be our permanent one for, we hope, a long, long time. It is a wonderful, ancient (how ancient nobody knows) old farmhouse, white, with a great peaked thatch, surrounded by its own 2½ acres, apple orchard, flower and vegetable garden, on the edge of a small, but surprisingly thriving town with bank, butchers, chemists, all the conveniences, and the bluegrey outlines of Dartmoor just to the South. With our 12 rooms we can at last think of putting people up, so you and Jane must think of staying with us on a return trip to England. We are only 4 hours from London by express train, so Ted can go on easily doing his freelancing for the BBC.

I am enclosing a group of poems by Ted^* which we were going to send on just about the time your letter arrived, with Wodwo in for good measure, in case you would like to publish it in America.

We are delighted to hear about Angus (what a fine name!) and tell Jane she must send me a gossipy letter someday, all about the baby, and Smith news, and news of her own self. Frieda loves it here, after the cramping two-room no-garden London flat. She rushes in and out, spoons dirt over herself, which she thinks is gardening, and eats endless green apples from our orchard, which don’t seem to affect her adversely.

All the best from us three to you three,

Sylvia Hughes

Mr. Peter Davison

Executive Editor

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

8 Arlington Street

Boston, Massachusetts

USA

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Friday 6 October 1961

TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University

Court Green

North Tawton

Devonshire, England

Friday: October 6

Dear mother,

It is just past ten, and I am sitting downstairs in the big kitchen this morning, with the Aga cooker (coal-burning) Ted stoked earlier warming the place cosily and Frieda running to and from her playroom with new toys to potter about with at my feet. Ted is off for most of the day to have the car checked, do the laundry and shop in Exeter & join the libraries there, so I have a day to catch up on baking and mending. It is lovely and cosy here now, and I have been working in my study till noon every morning. Ted and I are dreaming up plots for women’s magazine stories and I have just finished the 3rd since we started this & my 1st here, and will be seeing the Fiction Editor of one of the women’s magazines who is interested in me when I go to London at the end of the month to pick up my 75 pounds poetry prize at the Guinness party & see my publisher.

Ted had a day in London this Tuesday---leaving the house at 5:30 am, catching the 6:30 express from Exeter and getting in in time for a long day of recording at the BBC^* from 10:30 to 4, with a posh lunch in Soho with the head of the Arts Council, for whom he will be co-judge^* of the next two years’ Poetry Book Society Selections (at about $150 a year). Ted is almost through with his new radio play, and we feel we are really beginning to produce things.

Had a lovely letter from Dotty this week, enclosing $25 as a housewarming gift. Wrote her thanks last night. Our bank manager informed us that Mrs. Prouty’s check was dated 1962! I told him I simply couldn’t write her & ask her to change it, so the bank is sending a note about it to her bank, & I guess they’ll take care of it officially. Lucky for us she didn’t date it 1970!

I am enjoying my handwind Singer sewing machine very much. It is just my speed, and I am making Frieda a series of gay cotton smocks to go over her woolens---I can wash the smocks much more easily. Yesterday I had the plumbers in from 9-5, fixing the indoor toilet up with a new cistern, installing a modern sink unit in the kitchen & laying the pipes for the Bendix, a lot of work as they had to go through a 3-foot stone wall from the kitchen into the larder where the machine will be, but amply worth it for me! Now all I have to do is pester the Bendix people to deliver it!

Nancy Axworthy, my cleaning lady, is more and more indispensable. She, of course, is more accustomed to the house than I as she has worked here 11 years. Her husband is a carpenter and evidently a town figure---one of the church bellringers, assistant head of the fire brigade, woodworking teacher at a night class, and so on. She is a sweet, fresh-faced healthy person & the midwife said that when the new baby comes she’d probably be happy to come for a few more hours a week & help with washing up and so on. I feel very lucky!

Did I tell you that Ted is having a selection of poems from his 2 books come out in a Faber paperback jointly^* with selected poems by Thom Gunn, another Faber poet Ted’s age?

We are being deluged by flower and fruit catalogues Ted has sent for, full of tantalizing colored pictures & descriptions. Do find out the official name of the Boston magnolias! I hope we can get their twin here. All of us are very healthy with our wholesome diet. I have 30 Vitamin A & D pills a month for 6¢ from the Welfare service, and Frieda has A & D drops which she takes every day, so don’t worry about us in that respect. The one person I wish we could import is Dr. Gulbrandsen! My midwife has told me a good dentist in Exeter who does scrape teeth, but evidently only in London do they Xray, so I’ll simply have to plan a trip there once or twice a year to an Xraying dentist, probably as a private patient.

Frieda responds more & more to her life here. She is delighted with her big playroom, the bay window of which I use for my sewing table, and Ted is going to build some shelves in an alcove for her toys, so she can have them all arranged in full view instead of jumbled together. She is incredibly neat---picks up every little crumb she drops & gives it to us & tries to sweep up anything spilt with a dust pan or sponge.

Do be sure and take it easy now you have all this statistics testing and make Warren and Margaret cook you meals on the weekend, instead of the other way round.

Lots of love from all of us,

Sivvy

TO Ruth Fainlight

Friday 6 October 1961

ALS, Ruth Fainlight

Court Green

North Tawton

Devonshire

Friday: October 6

Dear Ruth,

A small note to say you are an angel for the terrific apple recipes & how I hope you are all right. It’s difficult & in a way impertinent to tell you how very much I am wishing things to go well for you, because noone can ever really identify deeply enough with someone else’s special predicament to make the words ‘I know how you feel’^* carry their full weight. But our sad & confusing experience of losing a baby last winter has made me feel much closer to the difficulties & apprehensions of childbearing & much more profoundly involved with them. Please tell me if I am descending on you at a lousy time. Or let me know at any time if you’d rather be left in peace. I’d love to see you in any case & will come as planned unless you tell me best not. We are liking our place more & more. When you are able you & Alan must come for a bucolic country weekend & live on apples & fat cream.

Lots of love,

Sylvia

TO Judith Jones

Saturday 7 October 1961

TLS (aerogramme), University of Texas at Austin

Court Green

North Tawton

Devonshire, England

October 7, 1961

Mrs. Judith B. Jones

ALFRED A. KNOPF

501 Madison Avenue

New York 22, New York

USA

Dear Mrs. Jones:

Thanks very much for your two letters of August 22nd and September 19th.^* I’ve been up to my ears in moving our household from London to Devon (the above address should be permanent for a long while), or I would have answered them sooner.

I have today sent off letters to the 17 or so American magazines in which my poems have appeared asking that the assignment of copyright be sent to you at Knopf. One or two of the magazines (Chelsea Review, Grecourt Review, Hornbook and Smith Alumnae Quarterly) are pretty small, so I don’t know if they are copyrighted, but I wrote them, just in case.

I had called W. Roger Smith at Heinemann to find out if the British permissions extend to American publication, but he seemed to know less about copyrights than I did, which was very little help. I guess my call was the occasion of his letter to you.^* He said he would “take care of everything”, but there seems to be a good bit of fog in the London publishing offices.

I don’t know your form for acknowledgment pages, but I’d like just to head the page Acknowledgments & list alphabetically the magazines that published the poems: ARTS IN SOCIETY, THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, AUDIENCE, CHELSEA REVIEW, CRITICAL QUARTERLY, ENCOUNTER,^* GRECOURT REVIEW, HARPERS, HORNBOOK, HUDSON REVIEW, KENYON REVIEW, LONDON MAGAZINE, MADEMOISELLE, NATION, NEW YORKER, OBSERVER, PARTISAN REVIEW, POETRY (CHICAGO), SEWANEE REVIEW, SPECTATOR, TEXAS QUARTERLY and TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT. I would also like to thank Elizabeth Ames and the Trustees at Yaddo, where many of the poems were written.^*

I’m delighted with the contents of the book as they now stand & so happy it has been pruned.

Sincerely,

Sylvia Plath

TO Copyright Department, Hudson Review

Saturday 7 October 1961

TLS (aerogramme), Princeton University

Court Green

North Tawton

Devonshire, England

October 7, 1961

THE HUDSON REVIEW

439West Street

New York 14, New York

USA

Dear Sir:

Alfred A. Knopf, publishers of my forthcoming book of poems, have asked me to obtain the assignment of copyright for my poems Moonrise, Ouija and Suicide Off Egg Rock which appeared in THE HUDSON REVIEW.

I wonder if you would be so kind as to send the assignment of copyright to:

Mrs. Judith B. Jones

Alfred A. Knopf

501 Madison Avenue

New York 22, New York.

Yours sincerely,

Sylvia Plath

TO Copyright Department, Poetry

Saturday 7 October 1961

TLS (aerogramme), University of Chicago

Court Green

North Tawton

Devonshire, England

October 7, 1961

POETRY

1018 North State Street

Chicago 10, Illinois

USA

Dear Sir:

Alfred A. Knopf, publishers of my forthcoming book of poems, have asked me to obtain the assignment of copyright for my poems Metamorphosis (now titled Faun), Sow and Strumpet Song, which appeared in POETRY.

I wonder if you would be so kind as to send the assignment of copyright to:

Mrs. Judith B. Jones

Alfred A. Knopf

501 Madison Avenue

New York 22, New York.

Thank you very much.

Sincerely yours,

Sylvia Plath

TO Edith & William Hughes

Monday 9 October 1961

TLS, Pierpont Morgan Library

Court Green

North Tawton, Devon.

Monday: October 9

Dear Edith & Willy,

I’ve been meaning to post a note every time Ted sends a letter, but he always gets them off too fast, so I’m writing one now on my own. We are wonderfully happy here. You would be so pleased if you could see Ted---he has his big dream come true, and at a very early time in life, as you say, Edith. He has a wonderful cosy attic study under the thatch, very warm, just over the immersion heater in the bathroom, and I have a study facing out front, with a view of our two laburnum trees & the sweet church.^*

Frieda is in seventh heaven. She runs round, singing and playing---none of the fussing she used to do in our crowded two-room flat. In the morning I write & Ted carpenters or gardens with Frieda to keep him company. Then in the afternoon I cook and sew (on my 2nd-hand hand-wind Singer I bought for 12 pounds in London) and weed the flower garden and play with Frieda while Ted writes, and he writes in the evenings, too. So both of us get plenty of exercise and all the time to write we want, and Frieda always has company. Next year we shall try to sell our apples & make some money on them. We are getting lots of flower & fruit catalogues & gardening books, so we shall learn all about them.

Ted has already been to London to do his BBC Children’s Broadcasts, & I will go at the end of the month to pick up my 75 pound cheque for my poem at the Guinness Poetry Awards and also to see the fiction editor of WOMANS REALM,^* you probably know it, the woman’s weekly magazine like Woman’s Own, who is interested in my short stories & wants to tell me what they want at their magazine.

I have a nice midwife & young doctor here, and we are looking forward to the new baby shortly after New Years. The woolly sheets are wonderful, Edith! They will keep us cosy through the winter. We keep the Aga going & it warms the house & heats the water nicely. The clean rags are so convenient. I always welcome them, as in a house as big as this with so much to fix up one is always wanting rags. I do have the recipe for tomato chutney you sent & shall make up a big lot now I’ve got apples in plenty.

After we get our first moving-in expenses sorted out, I shall spend some of my prize money and poem money on carpets, which will make a nice change from the bare boards. If I can get these Woman’s magazine stories going, a couple a month, I should be able to furnish the house beautifully in time!

Very best love to you both,

Sylvia

TO W. Roger Smith

Wednesday 11 October 1961

TLS, Random House Group Archive & Library

Court Green

North Tawton

Devon.

October 11, 1961

Roger Smith, Esq.

WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD.

15/16 Queen Street

London W.1

Dear Mr. Smith,

Thanks very much for your letter of October 10th. I’m glad to hear “Medallion” will be included in THE LONDON BRIDGE BOOK OF VERSE.^*

My birth date is October 27, 1932. Guard it well, because after I have reached the ripe age of 30, I shall never mention it again.

All good wishes,

Yours sincerely,

Sylvia Plath

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Friday 13 October 1961

TLS, Indiana University

Court Green

North Tawton

Devonshire

Friday: October 13

Dear mother,

Enclosed is a small check for deposit to our Boston 5¢ Savings. We are resting that account a bit & depositing $ checks here until we get over the hump of our first year with all the big initial expenses. But this check is too small to have the exchange discount deducted! I have saved about $500, half gifts, half my own literary earnings this fall, for rugs, but will wait a month or so & look around while we pile up a bit more money for food & drink. I plan a bright red rug for my study (where no children will come, so it won’t need a pattern to hide dirt!), a forest green one to go under the small flowered Indian one we bought at auction for Frieda’s room, and a light pink & green & white floral for our bedroom. The red oriental for the livingroom is something worth waiting-for; and, eventually, red stair & hall carpets.

The Bendix has arrived! Huge and beautiful. Now I await the men to install it---everything is done separately here! The plumbers did a lovely job & my new kitchen sink unit is very handsome. I have been painting shelves Ted built in the playroom alcove for Frieda’s toys and sewing things. The second blue crisp fall day after lots of rain---very invigorating. Our apples are delicious, better than any I’ve tasted.

Delighted to hear you’ve ordered dungarees! The package for Frieda arrived this week & it was the best yet---the tights are just wonderful, and the gorgeous-colored snap-in corduroy suit! She looks like a pixie in the red coat, and the pajamas are very very roomy & bunny-soft. Thank you a billion times! F. is impossible about training. She won’t sit on her seat for 2 seconds & has the habit of having her movement during her nap, or very irregularly. I’ve sat & I’ve sat & I’ve sat like Horton the Elephant,^* but still have to get her to go once. Then I’m sure she’d catch on. Oh well, there’s no rush.

Frieda’s Christmas doll sounds heavenly. I’ll get Ted to make a wooden cradle for our Christmas present & I’ll paint it.

I’ve decided the best way to grow into the community here is to go to our local Anglican church, & maybe belong to its monthly mother’s group.^* I wrote the rector^*---a Protestant Irishman with very broad background (Chicago, Africa) about this & he came & said he’d go through the creed & order of service with me, but that I’d be welcome (I’m afraid I could never stomach the trinity & all that!) to come in the spirit of my own Unitarian beliefs. I like the idea of Frieda going to Sunday school nextdoor---the church is “low” (like our Episcopal, I guess), & has a champion crew of 8 bellringers who delight us every Sunday. My cleaning woman’s husband is one of them. I’m having Mrs. Hamilton^* the wife of the dead coffee plantation owner & local power, to tea today. She is old, booming, half-deaf, with a dachshund named Pixie. I’m having Ted come to help me out! He’s just finished the radio play he’s been working on, & I’ve a couple of good poems.^*

Lots of love,

Sivvy

TO Brian Cox

Tuesday 17 October 1961

TLS, University of Kansas

Court Green

North Tawton

Devonshire

October 17, 1961

Dear Brian,

Thanks very much for your letter. I do hope you sell more copies of American Poetry Now! I’m glad most places are being reasonable about permission charges.

Ted suggests you send copies of your letters to Howard Nemerov,^* c/o The Department of English, Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont, and to Louis Simpson,^* c/o Thom Gunn, 975 Filbert Street, San Francisco, California. These may be more direct routes than via publishers. Adrienne Rich is traveling about Europe on a Guggenheim this year, so probably that’s why you haven’t heard from her. We are dropping a note to Merwin at his French address about the two poems.^* I don’t know a thing in the world about Gregory Corso, unfortunately. I hope O.U.P works out the copyright formula all right.

I’d be grateful if you could leave out all the poems not on my definite list.

Ted & I would like very much to make it to Bangor.^* Tony’s flat sounds heavenly. Ideally, my mother might be here to care of our hopefully by then 2 infants, and if so, there should be no complications.

I’ll include some brief introductory notes.

Best wishes,

Sylvia

PS: How about saying simply:

AMERICAN POETRY NOW is a selection of poems by new and/or youngish American poets for the most part unknown in England. I’ll let the vigor and variety of these poems speak for themselves.

I’m also including a new poem by Simpson I wish you could fit in.^* (It seems to me “American” in a particularly fine sense.) But I suppose you’re all set up.

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Sunday 22 October 1961

TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University

Sunday: October 22

Dear mother,

Well, the connections are connected, the gorgeous white machine works! I spent all Wednesday morning with the Bendix demonstrator, doing a sample wash (mine!) and he testing all the parts. My wash looked millions of times whiter than my usual wash, partly I think because I always cram those commercial Bendixes too full, not wanting to make the lengthy trip to Exeter more than once a week, so the clothes never had a chance to shake out and swish about. I am delighted with the machine, and look forward to starting my Birthday week with a bright white Monday wash. I’ll probably wash twice a week, or twice every other week now, so things don’t pile up. I got the man to recommend good commercial suds & am thinking of buying a 56 pound bag they sell which Bendix launderettes use. You can imagine what a lot off my mind (and back) this Bendix is! I have no worries about managing the new baby now & will probably be able to have Nancy a couple of hours extra then to do all the ironing of nappies. Thank you endlessly for this.

I have delayed my usual Friday letter because I, too, have been feeling tired this last week or so, although I have nowhere the reason you have! Ted is so good. I lie down for an hour after our lunch, now, before Frieda gets up from her nap, and he insists I do so every day. Then I can face the busywork of the afternoon. It seems impossible one can get tired doing something one loves to do, but I suppose writing is strenuous, and I should consider my mornings at my desk as work, rather than play. We do go to bed in good time---lights out by 10 or 10:30, and Frieda generally lets us sleep till 8ish. I guess the baby is getting perceptibly heavy now, too, and I am grateful for Ted’s nightly hypnotizing which put me straight to sleep.

Frieda is sweeter and more winsome than ever. She gets the best of each of us, I think---neither of us having to mind her when we want to write, but while we’re doing things she can watch and participate in. I went out to see the two of them in the garden this morning, and Ted was planting strawberries and Frieda was following him with her little shovel, religiously imitating his every gesture, looking like an elf in that wonderful cotton red coat and hood you sent. I’m awfully glad you got size 3 dungarees. I’ll be able to pad her with sweaters and so on through the winter and not fear her muddying herself.

So glad you liked “Snow”. I haven’t seen HARPERS BAZAAR yet. Hope they send us a copy. Actually, I think you’re closest to Ted’s meaning---it’s not a philosopicial equation so much as just the feeling of being lost and struggling against terrific unknowns and odds, something most people feel at one time or another. I find it the most compelling of Ted’s stories because it fits one’s own experience so beautifully. It’s incredible how moving it is, with just one character, the snow & the chair, but I feel it has a deep psychic insight into the soul’s battles.

If you happen to think of it, or ever, get a holiday or minute, could you pack me off a Ladies’ Home Journal or two? I get homesick for it (no other, Mcall’s or Womans Day will do!) It has a special Americanness which I feel to need to dip into, now I’m in exile, and especially as I’m writing for women’s magazines a small way now. I shall have fulfilled a very longtime ambition if a story of mine ever makes the LHJ.

Later: A wild, blowy night, with gusts of rain. Went to my first Anglican service with the lively retired London couple down the lane. It’s a sweet little church, and I found the service so strange. I suppose it would be very familiar to you, like a sort of watered Catholic service. The choir & congregation singing is amazingly strong and good for the small number of people there, and I do like hymn-singing. I think I will probably go to Evensong off and on and then send Frieda to Sundayschool. I’m sure as she starts thinking for herself she will drift away from the church but I know how incredibly powerful the words of that little Christian prayer “God is my help in every need” which you taught us has been at odd moments of my life, so think it will do her good to feel part of this spiritual community: so she’ll have known it. I must say I think I am a pagan-Unitarian at best! The songs and psalms and responses and prayers are fine, but the sermon! How a bad or a good sermon can determine one’s reaction! I suppose there aren’t many Bill Rices in the world. Our little Irish rector is very simple. When he talks of sinfulness, I have to laugh. It’s a pity there aren’t more fiery intellectuals in the ministry. It seems to draw meek, safe, platitudinous souls who I am sure would not face the lions in the Roman arena at any cost. And in these more elaborate services what a lot of kneeling standing and sitting there is! Like a class in bible calisthentics.///I’ll send off a statement for breakage. DO tell me what DATE your statistics courses are DONE. I want to look forward to it & count the days!

XXXXX

Sivvy

TO Marion Freeman

Thursday 26 October 1961

TLS (aerogramme), Smith College

Court Green

North Tawton

Devonshire, England

October 26, 1961

Dear Aunt Marion,

A thousand thanks for the lovely birthday hankie and the housewarming cheque! With the latter I shall buy one of the small brightly gleaming pieces of copper or brass I see so often at country auctions and hanker after. Its lustre will remind me of your kind thoughts.

Ted and I are so happy with our new home. It is just exactly right for us, one of those mystical appearances which makes one believe in destiny. Our thatch is full of robins and wagtails and birds which wake us in the morning chirping, and I love looking out and seeing no houses, just the church spire and our own grassy acres, trees and flowers. We have fine shops just around the corner, so I have all the advantages of real country (sheep baas and cow moos!) with civilization, too. It will be a place to visit when you come to England! I am just dying for mother to see it, after our cramped flat last summer, which she managed with such angelic fortitude.

Best of all, we have all the time for writing we want---me in the morning, when I’m fresh, without time yet to get muddled with grocery lists & cooking recipes, & Ted in the afternoon & evening when he works best. He is finishing a radio play & I just had my first little story come out in a women’s magazine over here---a very amateurish thing, maybe someday I’ll get one in the Ladies’ Home Journal, a much more advanced and professional magazine than any of the women’s weeklies over here. I get homesick for it now & then!

Frieda is blooming with all the fresh air and room. She runs round from front garden to back fearlessly, carrying whichever of her toys is her current favorite in a little basket.

Had a darling letter & photo from Ruthie. Thank her for me & give my love to all the Geisslers & to Dave. And keep a good bit for yourself!

Lots of love from us 3,

Sylvia

TO Ruth Fainlight

Thursday 26 October 1961^*

TLS, Ruth Fainlight

Court Green

North Tawton

Devon.

Thursday

Dear Ruth,

A small note to ask if I could possibly cadge a 2nd night with you---Wednesday. I’m treating myself to a ticket to the Royal Court^* that night on the grim principle that you never know which fling is your last. At least I don’t know when I shall be seeing the beloved crapulous face of my dear London again, so I am trying to cram all that is possible into my brief time. Be sure & tell me if you are planning parties or resting I’ll louse up. Don’t bother to answer, you can say what is what when I come.

Love to both,

Sylvia

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Thurs.–Mon. 26–30 October 1961

TLS, Indiana University

Court Green

North Tawton, Devon.

October 26, 1961

Dear mother,

I’m enclosing a statement to the postoffice about the broken dishes. I think I’d almost rather have you deposit what money you collect in our Wellesley account, as we really aren’t pressed for a set of 8. All 44 pieces were there. I’m also enclosing a $5 check from dear Aunt Marion for deposit in the Wellesley account. I’m depositing this one here on 2nd thought. I’ve written to thank her, and to Mrs. Pulling for the lovely pink blanket (babies’) she sent.

I can’t understand our Boston bank total. You say with the little $12 check it is $1,788.44, but I only have two deposits recorded after we withdrew our housemoney, making the low of $1,231.31---Ted’s $275 for his story, and this $12.31, making $1,518.44. What’s this extra $260?^* I can’t think of any writing money I’ve sent since August.

Ted has written a lovely poem about the Loch Ness Monster for Vogue (a children’s poem) over here, the British edition, & has got a pile of children’s books on animals coming from the New Statesman for him to review. They are sending me a pile of bright children’s picture books to review as well (since I modestly said that was my level at present)---all free & to keep. I am quite pleased, because I think I can judge the art work pretty well, & am delighted to tuck these away to bring out later for Frieda, about $15 worth. We got our copy of Harper’s Bazaar today. Isn’t it amazing, Robert Lowell,^* Marianne Moore^* & Ted in the middle of all those fancy corsets! Lucky for us they have piles of money. The “sophisticated” audience thus has fashion, plus cocktail party gossip talk---“name writers”, usually only a 2-page spread you’ll notice, so it doesn’t strain the brain. The editors are generally very brainy women & the fashion blurbs written by Phi Beta Kappa English majors. Poor things.

Later: October 30, Monday.

I am sitting in our “parlor” at the very sweet little bureau-type desk Ted bought at an auction last week for $15. It’s rather like yours, with 3 drawers & a slant top that opens out to write on & pigeonholes for letters. I love it. It frees our desks of business and personal letters. We were awfully lucky---it was sold at noonish in the daylong auction amid bricabrac that went for a dollar or two. Another desk like it but much uglier, went for $50 later in the day among big items bringing about $100 when there were lots more people.

I go to London tomorrow to collect my 75 pound prize and see the Woman’s Mag editor and leave my manuscripts with the bookdealer who bought Ted’s on the chance they might sell them. I am going to the theatre Wednesday on your birthday money, & shall have a nice meal beforehand: I thought you’d be pleased at my spending it that way. I look forward to the treat, as I don’t imagine I’ll have another chance at a fling till you come next summer.

Had a lovely birthday---Ted got me a lot of fancy cans of octopus & caviar at a delicatessen, two poetry books^* & a Parker pen & a big wicker basket for my laundry. I wish you could see Frieda in her red jacket-hood: she looks so comically like that little red kewpie doll she carries round. The pale blue snowsuit jacket is her “best”---I am always with her when she wears it & it is gorgeous on her, very roomy. It will be lovely all this cold season. We’ve got about 50 childrens books to review in all now, a real gift, because we can’t review more than 10 apiece . . . everything from “The Cat in the Hat Comes Back”^* to the story of Elsa the Lioness & her cubs.^* A good $50-$60 worth. My acquisitive soul rejoices.

Well I hope the Strontium 90 level doesn’t go up too high in milk---I’ve been very gloomy about the bomb news; of course the Americans have contributed to the poisonous level. The fallout shelter craze in America sounds mad.^* Well, I would rather be in Devon where I am in the country than anywhere else just now. Keep well!

xxx

Sivvy

TO Helga Huws

Monday 30 October 1961

TLS, Helga and Daniel Huws

Court Green

North Tawton, Devon.

October 30: Monday

Dear Helga,

It was wonderful to have your big, newsy letter, & it made me very homesick for you all. We have been at Court Green since September 1st, and are settling down quite happily. I find the space, the quiet, the fresh air, and the obvious joy of Ted & Frieda make up for most of my cherished London vices---sour cream & cream cheese among them---and except for occasional bouts of despair at our acres of bare boards (we haven’t been able to afford any rugs yet, what with our downpayment, rates, mortgage, repairs, moving expenses & all the lot of big bothers involved in buying a house) am in good spirits.

Of all the places we saw in Devon while my mother was in London minding Frieda this is the only one we could have lived in---the others were hideous, laughable (compared to their descriptions in the agents’ circulars---an “ornamental swan pond”, for example, proving to be a kind of open cesspit that had obviously been used for drowning children) and much more expensive. We fell in love with Court Green---It was, of course, the only place with a thatch & we had solemnly sworn No Thatches (fear of fire, expense, rain, predatory birds, etc.). It is a very very ancient farmhouse (so old there is no knowing how old, with an old burial mound^* on the property) with castle-thick walls in the original back part & about 10 rooms, yet very compact & not at all rambling, feeling almost small (except when I look at the floor-space). Downstairs there are two front rooms, one very long, which is Frieda’s playroom & my sewingroom (I hope to be able to put down lionoleum someday) and a small room with a tiny fireplace we use as our library, with our books & a little oak desk we bought at an auction. Then a hall between leading to a cobbled (!) hall in back between the big kitchen with an Aga that we use for a diningroom, and a little cooking kitchen across the hall I use for cooking, washing up, and a sort of cold larder beyond where I have my fridge & vegetables. Upstairs there are four large bedrooms & one small (for Frieda), one of which is my study, & then a lovely little peaked attic up some stairs under the thatch which is where Ted works. We have a U-shape of outbuildings around a cobbled courtyard---a big thatched barn, stables (!), and a thatched cottage which someday we would like to make into a guest house for mothers-in-law and such people. But those are all 10-year plans. The house is white, with a black trim & this primeval peaked thatch. We have just over two acres of land, mostly stinging nettle, but Ted is digging up the big vegetable garden & we’ll hope to live on them---he’s already put in strawberries, and we have about 70 apple trees, eaters & cookers---though sadly the crop this year is very poor everywhere & we are almost through ours. And blackberries everywhere in season. I have a tiny front lawn carved out of the wilderness---a laburnum tree, lilacs & a few rose bushes. We adjoin the town church, Anglican, with its own 8 famous bellringers. I’ve started to go to it, as it is a lovely church & in spite of my heathen nature, I’d like to start Frieda et. al. off in Sunday school. Sadly, the vicar is a little dull simple man. We are pretty much surrounded by our own land & Ted is planning impenetrable screens of evergreens to shield us from the few chimney tops we can see.

Luckily I don’t require the intimacy of other people to keep me happy---our family circle is very tight and pretty self-sufficient, because although these Devon villagers are friendly (they greet you in the street and so on) they are all inter-related in intricate ways, and we are quite outlandish. All sorts of curious enquiries as to what we (or Ted) do, and if we plan to stay and so on. There’s a nice lively retired couple next-door in a little cottage---pub-keepers from London, and a great booming wife of a dead tea-plantation owner in India at the bottom of the lane, and a very pretty (but dumb) mother of 3 little girls also named Sylvia^* whom the vicar sent “to be my friend”, but no soul-mates. We actually bought the place from a Sir Robert Arundell (he had been made a Sir, not born one), it was his boyhood home, and so we are in a way lords of the manor, although it is a very ancient manor, with plaster crumbling ominously behind the wallpaper which obviously holds it on, and a billion birds living in our thatch, and nettles overall. But it has all sorts of curious advantages---water, electricity and gas, 2 minutes from 2 banks, 3 grocery stores, 3 butchers (one quite good), a fine chemist & one mile from a railway stop that is 4 hours express from Waterloo---it seems odd, that we should be embedded in such deep country, with cows and sheep heard all the time (Frieda points out the window and goes “Baaa” when she wakes each day), yet not utterly isolated. It is an ugly town, but I am quite perversely fond of it.

I even have a cleaning woman---a robust blond Devon mother in her 40s named Nancy Axworthy who 2 mornings a week, for 2/6 an hour (that’s what Lady Arundell paid her!) does all my floors & scrubbing & cleaning & even some ironing when she has time. She is wonderful & has taken care of the place for 11 years, so is more at home than I.

Frieda has blossomed here---her learning to walk really drove us out of London. Now she trots round after Ted in the morning when he’s gardening, and after me in the afternoon when I’m baking and sewing (I got an old 2nd hand handwind Singer before leaving London, rickety, but I love it), copying everything we do & in general being good-tempered. I have trouble feeding her for the first time---she must have instinctively picked up my dislike of eggs & cereal because she wants all meat and cheese and potatoes, for breakfast and supper as well, and she is a terrifying perfectionist, getting very upset when she can’t fit all her blocks in one small basket, or pick up all her Russian doll parts at once. And she is still in nappies: how did you train Madeline? Frieda will sit on her little plastic pot, but has absolutely no idea she’s to pee in it. She has only a few words yet and it’s impossible to communicate this very strange notion to her. I was hoping she’d be miraculously trained by the time January 11th & this new baby arrives. Hoho.

You must come visit us. It would be a drive through lovely country---couldn’t Danny drive you all down some weekend? We’re 22 miles beyond Exeter, 7 miles from Okehampton. We were given a double bed before we left out of someone’s mother’s stuff, and if you came before January I could have a cot for Madeline, or even after---the baby could sleep in our carrycot. We have so much room & it’s a good place for the children to play. Do say you could come for a weekend! I’d really love having you around again---it would be such fun. You haven’t let us have your new address. Ted will probably put in a note to Danny.

Lots of love,

Sylvia

Much later – he’s so lazy I’m sending this off without!

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Sunday 5 November 1961

TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University

Sunday: November 5

Dear mother,

It was lovely to come home from London and have your nice letter waiting. We have been having some fine, crisp blue weather, and my day in London was fair, which is all one could ask. The train trip was very pleasant---I had lunch going up & going down, which I enjoyed immensely, about $1.60 for soup, fish, meat & vegetables, dessert or cheese & biscuits, with beautiful countryside to watch sliding by---only 4 hours in all, a seeming miracle. I stayed 2 nights with our friends, the Sillitoes. The first night I went to the Guinness party & was, to my surprise, called on to read my poem with the regular Guinness winners which included Robert Graves in the fabulous Goldsmith’s hall in the City, although my prize was for another & much smaller little contest. And I picked up my 75 pound check. Then had a little supper with my publisher, & home. The next day was all business---I typed my children’s book review^* at the Sillitoe’s, saw the very nice & encouraging women’s magazine editor, had lunch with another pregnant lady poet I met at the Guinness party, dropped some manuscripts at an agents in hopes of selling them at an American university, and had a bit of tea before the two plays by the young American author Edward Albee.^* London is very tiring when one doesn’t have a place of one’s own, and the getting about a Herculean task; I found myself criticizing the soot & the horrid suburbs & the exhaust and dying to get home to clear air and my own acres and two darlings. Ted & Frieda met me at the station, Thursday afternoon, my train exactly on time. None of us had been able to eat or sleep very well apart, and now we are all thriving again.

I have marked down your finishing date on my calendar and look so forward to hearing you are safely and healthfully through your courses! The next five months are grim ones---I always feel sorry to have the Summertime change, with the dark evenings closing in in midafternoon, and will try to lay in some physical comforts this month---the best insurance against gloominess for me. It’s incredible to think that carpets can create a state of mind, but I am so suggestible to colors and textures that I’m sure a red carpet would keep me forever optimistic. This month, too, should see the end of the worst bills and some income from what we’ve been working on. I’ll send you a copy of our children’s book reviews when they come out---I just got a lovely songbook^* worth over $4 which I look forward to using when we can manage to buy a piano---all the lovely ones “I had a little nut tree”, carols, rounds and game songs “Looby Loo” & “Lavenders Blue”. I think I’ve had more pleasure from these brightly-colored free review books than anything just lately. What I particularly like is judging the color and design---something I think I can give a real feeling of.

I am just now at the stage I was when we moved into our London flat, but a lot more comfortable & with a lot less to do, although I feel very ponderous & look immensely forward to my after-lunch lie-down. Frieda too seems suddenly to have increased in weight, but I have no way of telling how much she weighs now.

Ted has just finished typing his new radio play for the BBC---a poetic drama for voices (not acting) about the delusions of a soldier with a wound, very fine. Now he is working on 6 selections from children’s books for the Times, each of which will have an introduction. We have really done a great deal since we have come, these last two months. I have to keep myself from asking that everything be done at once---the whole house, for example, needs replastering, as much of the plaster is dry & crumbly behind the paper, but except for one or two spots, we should be all right for several years yet. And I’ll be going to Exeter in the next week or 10 days to price rugs & buy curtain material.

I’m amazed to hear you’ve done a sweater for the January baby---I just don’t see how you manage! It sounds divine. Dressed Frieda in that sea-greenblue corduroy zipper suit you sent for tea with a young, pretty mother of 3 girls (one Rebecca)---she named Sylvia, oddly enough. She came over with her new baby & 2 year-old Rebecca whom Frieda bullied loudly & fearlessly, reducing her to tears by trying to snatch her cookies & teddy. Both of them made fearful wails & roars.

Went to the Anglican chapel evensong again tonight---it’s a peaceful little well on Sunday evenings, & I do love the organ, the bellringing & hymn-singing, & muse on the stained-glass windows during the awful sermons. The three windows, lit up on Sunday evenings, look so pretty from our house, through the silhouettes of the trees. Youll have a real rest & holiday when you visit us this time---sitting out on our lilac-sheltered lawn in a deck chair with the babies playing, no steps nor traffic nor anything but country noises.

Lots of love to you & Warren

xxx

Sivvy

TO Howard Moss

Wednesday 8 November 1961

TLS (aerogramme), New York Public Library

Court Green, North Tawton

Devonshire, England

November 8, 1961

Mr. Howard Moss

THE NEW YORKER

25 West 43rd Street

New York 36, New York

USA

Dear Mr. Moss:

Thank you very much for your letter of October 27th.^* I’m glad to hear you’re taking BLACKBERRYING^* for the New Yorker.

I think I have a way out of “face” and “faces”.

How about:

“To the hills’ northern face, and the face is orange rock

That looks out on nothing . . .”^*

I like this much better myself, with the minor change in line 7 as well, and hope you think it clarifies the stanza.

With all good wishes,

Yours sincerely,

Sylvia Plath

TO Alan Ross

Thursday 9 November 1961

TLS, University of Texas at Austin

Court Green

North Tawton

Devonshire

November 9, 1961

Dear Alan Ross,

Just a note to say that Ted and I both hope to be able to manage to do something for the Poetry number.

All good wishes from both of us,

Sincerely,

Sylvia Plath

Alan Ross, Esq.

THE LONDON MAGAZINE

Doric House

22 Charing Cross Road

London W.C.2

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Thursday 9 November 1961

TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University

Court Green, North Tawton

Devonshire, England

November 9: Thursday

Dear mother,

I hardly know where to begin. Your good bonus letter came today, and all sorts of nice things have been happening. Ted woke up this morning and said “I dreamed you had won a $25 prize for your story about Johnny Panic”. Well I went downstairs and found out I had won a Saxton grant for $2,000!^* I have been waiting for over half a year to hear from them, and as both Ted & I have been rejected by them (Ted because he was published by Harper’s, & they give the grant) and I because I applied for poetry & they don’t like to give money for poetry---I had no hope. Well I applied for a grant for prose this time, & got the amount I asked for (I had it figured so I wouldn’t have to work & could have a nanny & household help, etc.). They pay in quarterly installments, as parts of a project are completed, so I should get my first lot in a week or two! It is an absolute lifesaver. I hadn’t wanted to spend my gift money on carpets right away, because I didn’t know how our expenses & income would work out for the rest of the year, & now, within the next month, I hope to have my study, our bedroom & Frieda’s & the stairs all carpeted, & possibly the livingroom. Amusingly enough, two carpet samples I’d ordered---turkey red for my study & forest green for Frieda’s room---came today! We are members of “Better Buying”^* now, an organization that you can buy all the good makes of cars, machines, carpets etc. from with a 15% discount if you pay cash in 7 days after delivery. So I am going to get the best of carpets! Naturally I wish I’d known about Better Buying before, but better late than never. All the guarantees operate as usual.

Life in town has been more & more fun. They had a Hunt Meet in the square yesterday: all the local foxhunters, in red jackets, brass buttons & velvet caps drinking whisky on horseback, all sorts of fascinating faces, & a pack of spotted, sulphurous dogs---a toot of a horn & they galloped off. We took Frieda to watch & she loved it. Oddly moving, in spite of our sympathy for foxes. We went for a long walk with Frieda first thing in the morning it was so lovely---the hedgerows a tapestry of oak leaves, holly, fern, blackberry leaves all intertwined, the green hills dotted with sheep and cows, and the pink plaster farms very antique. Frieda is a great walker, as you know.

Then, today, we had an auction to end auctions in our own town. A 17th century house with a pretty front but ghastly situation down by the river at the town-bottom was auctioned, with all the stuff in it. Warren would have enjoyed this! Ted & I & Frieda went to the “viewing” in the morning & marked down all the stuff we wanted. Then Ted spent the afternoon down there bidding. What we got was just fantastic! It wasn’t the sort of auction to attract dealers (no silver, copper, antiques etc.), so Ted walked away with everything we wanted for next to nothing. 12 cents for a table we’ll paint over, under a dollar for a lovely china “biscuit barrel” with pink cherries and green leaves on it and a wicker handle which I’d have paid piles for, I think it’s quite fine, about 60 cents for a big handsome comfortable upholstered chair with arms & a high scrolled back (the only chair that rest my rear & back, all the rest of ours are hard wood) which I’ll have re-upholstered in black corduroy for my study; an old sewing box, mirrors; a dresser for the guest room for $1. The only “expensive” things were a pile of garden tools Ted got for about $10. We had a wonderful night admiring our stuff & planning to paint this and polish that. The big chair, another nice wood chair for my typing at my desk & the cherry pot and little antique mirror I’m going to reupholster in red are my joys.

Tell Warren the New Yorker just bought a poem of mine I wrote here called “Blackberrying”, about the day we all went blackberrying together down the lane that sloped to the sea and got such a lot. I don’t know when they’ll print “Tulips”---probably in the season! I’ll send for a copy of my awful first ladies’ mag story---very stiff & amateurish. It came out my birthday week; I got a very sweet fan letter for it in which the woman, also a writer, took me for an expert on Canada & Whitby, this sailing port I visited for a day. Very flattering!

Frieda is better & better. She says “hole” (a sophisticated notion Ted taught her) and “nana” for Banana & is picking up words eagerly now. I’ve met a very pretty mother here---no soul mate, but awfully nice. Her name is Sylvia Crawford & she has 3 little girls, the middle one, 2½ years, named Rebecca. Isn’t that odd? Thanks for the bank statement. I thought we weren’t so rich! Dont buy a Britannica, however nice. I really don’t think one uses them that much, & good schools should have them in stock. I’ll send you clippings of our children’s book reviews---the editor is very very pleased. & so are we, with all the lovely books.

xxx

Sivvy

PS – That fox book sounded handsome.

TO Brian Cox

Tuesday 14 November 1961

TLS, University of Kansas

Court Green

North Tawton

Devonshire

November 14, 1961

Dear Brian,

Thanks for the proofs.^* I’m glad the permissions are coming in---I do hope Nemerov’s come, because he is a pivot of the selection, I think. And I do hope that sales continue to rise!

I wasn’t sure if you wanted the proofs back. Let me know. Here are the corrections I’ve made:^*

Barbara Guest:^* The Brown Studio:

Lower case t in line 6.

Lower case w in 7th line from end.

Comma, not period, after ‘phantom’, 3rd line from end.

Lower case t in 2nd line from end.

Anthony Hecht:^* “More Light! More Light!”

Capital A in 4th stanza, 4th line.

W. S. Merwin: The Native:

“So that one beast” (not “best”), stanza 5, line 6.

Anne Sexton: Some Foreign Letters:

“I read how your” (not “you”), stanza 4, line8.

That’s all I could find. Oh dear, I wish Hecht hadn’t changed his line---& shall probably wish the same about Adrienne’s changes. But that’s their godly privilege.^*

All best wishes,

Sylvia

TO James Michie

Tuesday 14 November 1961

TL (carbon), Smith College

Court Green

North Tawton, Devon.

November 14, 1961

Dear James,

No, I’ve not forgotten about the libel issue. In fact, I’ve thought about little else. I’ve gone through the book with great care and have prepared a list of links of fiction to fact, and a list of minor corrections which should alter most specific factual references.^*

Of course you’re right about the name of author and heroine needing to be different. I’ve decided to call the heroine Esther Greenwood, so all references to her and her family should be altered accordingly (pp. 22, 33, 41, 53, 59, 60, 61, 72, 77, 79, 127, 128, 145, 157, 188, 189, 195, 197, 203, 205, 212, 216, 221, 225, 229, 230, 232, 233, 237, 244, 250, 253, 257, 258, 261, 264).^*

The whole first half of the book is based on the Mademoiselle College Board Program for Guest Editors. I have changed the number of girls from 20 to 12, and the girls (Doreen, Betsy, Hilda et. al.) are all fictitious. I honestly don’t see that I say anything nasty or defamatory about the magazine (unnamed in the book). The ptomaine poisoning incident takes place at another magazine, fictitious, called Ladies’ Day, a made-up name. The editor Jay Cee (there are dozens of editors on this magazine) is fictitious & the only unfavorable thing about her is that Doreen calls her “ugly as sin”. Surely no present editor who is not beautiful could sue me for this? The opportunities for suing authors as mentioned under libel in my writer’s handbooks seem infinite. For example, I am aware of no “Doctor Gordon” practising as a psychiatrist on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, but how is one ever to find out if there is a Doctor Gordon, as the name is common? Presumably any old Doctor Gordon could sue me for saying he gave a bad shock treatment. Do reassure me on this point!

Next, the “big eastern women’s college” the girl attends is based on Smith, but could be any of half a dozen---Holyoke, Vassar, Bennington, etc. I don’t think I say anything defamatory about the college anyway.

Doctor Gordon (p. 137 and following) is fictitious. Mr. Manzi (p. 36) is fictitious. Irwin (p. 244) is fictitious. These are the only people I can think about who I say unflattering things about. My mother is based on my mother, but what do I say to defame her? She is a dutiful, hard-working woman whose beastly daughter is ungrateful to her. Even if she were a “suing” mother, which she is of course not, I don’t see what she could sue here. If there is anything, let me know.

Buddy Willard is based on a real boy---but I think I have made him indistinguishable from all the blond, blue-eyed boys who have ever gone to Yale. There are millions, and hundreds who become doctors. And who have affairs with people.

The Deer Island Prison^* (pp. 161-2) is a real place by its real name. I think I am very nice about it.

The “city hospital” in Boston could be one of several. I don’t think I defame it anyway. The private hospital in the counter (p. 202 and following) is based on the mental hospital in Robert Lowell’s Life Studies (“This is the way day breaks at Bowditch at McLean’s),^* but as I don’t name it and as there are lots of other hospitals like it sprinkled over Massachusetts, I think it is unidentifiable. All I say about it is laudatory anyhow.

Jane (I’m changing her name to Joan) is fictitious, and so is her suicide---I mean it isn’t based on a real one. The women at the hospital are all fictitious.

Oh yes, the Amazon hotel in New York (p. 4) is based on a hotel called the Barbizon.^* But aren’t I nice about it?

I do hope there are no grave grounds for libel in any of this. There are so few people or institutions that I can be said to “defame” in any way, and the few I criticize I certainly don’t think are recognizable. Do tell me what the lawyer says. I don’t want to get paranoid & think I can’t ever say anything nasty and foul about Mrs. Gleek, for fear thousands of Mrs. Gleeks I don’t know and never knew will rise up and drive me and my babes into the woods.

Here are the minor corrections I want to make:

p. 33: Omit “literary” in “literary editor”.

pp. 41 & 82: Change “Vee Ell” to “Ee Gee, the famous editor”.

p. 42: Omit “dried-up”.

pp. 54 & 82: Change “Plato” to “Socrates”.

pp. 62, 63; 212 & f: Change “Jane” to “Joan” throughout.

p. 90: Change “Latin and mathematics teacher” to “private school teacher”.

p. 66: Omit “Harvard” from “Harvard Medical School”.

p. 94: Change “important history lecture” to “important economics lecture”.

p. 125: Change “Radcliffe” to “Barnard”, and “Harvard” to “Columbia”.

p. 124: Change “Virginia” to “Elaine”, “eight” to “six”, “Victoria” to “Esther”.

p. 130: Change “Virginia” to “Elaine”.

pp. 146, 149, 150: Change “Carling” to “Walton”.

p. 161: Change “Point Shirley” to “The Point”.

p. 191: Change “the city hospital” to “a city hospital”.

p. 226: Change “when there was another Jane in the room” to “when she knew what my name was perfectly well”.

One last, & for me very important point: after much waiting I have at last received this American grant for the novel, which will come in 4 installments, the last, I imagine, arriving about next August. Thus it is imperative that nobody knows I’ve done this till then---I’ll let you know when the last installment arrives. I’ll have to acknowledge the grant on the book jacket, too. This will give me time to write in peace & eat complete meals, a blessing all round, so I rely on you to maintain a large Hush round the book.

Best wishes,

TO Ruth Fainlight

Tuesday 14 November 1961

TLS, Ruth Fainlight

Court Green

North Tawton, Devon.

November 14: Tuesday

Dear Ruth,

It is with some shock I see two weeks have scuttered past. I don’t know what I would have done without you and Alan & those lovely teamashings in London. That beautiful bang-out night on the double-dose of Soneril^* (sp?) sent me back to Ted in fine form. As a result of my money collecting sojourn I am going to Exeter this week to survey acres and acres of carpets. I sold some of the ton of mss. I brought to the Curly Fletchers & so feel justified for lugging round all that scrap.^*

We now have a wood fire in the livingroom every night and got our One upholstered smashing Victorian chair (in shabby genteel black horsehair)^* for 5 bob at an auction in town. So I sit in comfort for the first time in months, padded all about. Life here is very pleasant in spite of absolutely black weather & huge winds. Had a hunt meet the other day in the Square: sulphur-yellow spotted hounds, red jackets, brass buttons, lecherous-faced whipholders drinking whisky neat on horseback. A toot, & they galloped off. The fox was nowhere.

I can’t get Meima Bacha (sp?)^* out of my head. I am in my 2nd year of persuading Ted to get a radio that says something beside Bockle bockle bockle.^* Both of us send love. We are counting on you coming to us at least by spring. Daffodil-time.

xxx

Sylvia

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Monday 20 November 1961

TLS with envelope, Indiana University

Monday: November 20

Dear mother,

Very nice to get your letter today. Bitter weather has set in, and I am going to London from Exeter on a day-return ticket some day this week to order carpets at that place where I can get a 15% discount on the best makes of carpet. I have already examined carpets at an Exeter store & the red one for my study, the red for the stair & the green for Frieda’s room should present no problem---I’ll get fine quality all-wool. I know plain colors show every spot, but in my study I’ll be in slippers & no one else enters it, and in Frieda’s room the rug will be covered by a little flowered one which will take the wear. The bedroom I’ll try to get a nice floral one. The livingroom is the problem. We may just wait till you come in summer & go to London together looking for a place that sells 2nd hand Orientals---first hand ones are of course out of reach & I do want something special---figured, of course, and darkish & quite fine. We have an old rug in here to see us through the winter. I do hope I can get the ones I order in by Christmas---it is so bare & cold with just the boards. We are ordering 2 more Pifcos---those little electric heaters, to plant about various strategic rooms.

I am enclosing a New Yorker check for deposit in our Boston bank---for my poem on that day we went blackberrying with Warren. I can afford to add a bit to our American account now I have this grant---the first installment, $520, came this week. Don’t worry about my taking on anything with the Saxton. Just between the two of us (and don’t tell anyone) I figured nothing was so sure to stop me writing as a grant to do a specific project that had to be turned in at the end, with quarterly progress reports---so I finished a batch of stuff^* this last year, tied it up in 4 parcels, & have it ready to report on bit by bit as required. Thus I don’t need to write a word, if I don’t feel like it. Of course the grant is supposed to help you do writing, not for writing you’ve done, but I will do what I can and feel like, while my conscience is perfectly free in knowing my assignments are done. Guggenheims, such as Ted had, are much easier---they ask for no reports or work once you get it, you’re perfectly free. Anyhow, I’d never have applied for a Saxton unless I’d gotten something ready---I don’t believe in getting money for something you haven’t done yet, it’s too nervewracking.

Those Stanford-Binet tests^* sound very energy-consuming. How many more do you have to do? I hope you sit down to a cup of hot tea afterwards.

It is time for Frieda’s supper & tub. She is getting more & more sweet-tempered now thank goodness---she went through an awfully fussy I-want period. Ted has just finished another children’s broadcast for the radio and this winds up the load of pressing assignments he’s had over his head for the last half year---now he is perfectly free for his own work again. I’m enclosing the reviews^* we did for the New Statesman, hoping they’ll amuse you, especially as you mentioned the first of the Elsa books. A nice bookish Christmas package from you arrived today, by the way, which I’m saving to put under our tree. I’m afraid our giving this year will be pretty much limited to cards---and, hopefully, snapshots. Since we’re not going up to Yorkshire either, of course, with the baby so near, we won’t be doing more than cards with them, either.

Did I tell you I got 100 pounds (or $280) for about 130 pages of poetry manuscript of mine from a bookseller in London who is buying stuff for the University of Indiana? They’d already bought about £160 worth of Ted’s stuff, & he got £80 from some other dealer, so we’ve made a good bit off our scrap paper. Needless to say this comes in very handy just now.

Take care of yourself these grim, dark days. Love to you & Warren.

xxx

Sivvy

TO Olwyn Hughes

Monday 20 November 1961^*

ALS, British Library

Dear Olwyn –

It was very good to hear from you & to have the lovely book of Billetdoux^* – just what both of us need. I’ve been sitting in front of the wood fire Ted builds each evening & cutting the pages of “Va Donc”^* which I’ve just begun: fascinating & queerly delicate & weird. We thought ‘Tchin-Tchin’^* superb in London & I wish we could see this too when it comes on. You have no idea what a treat something like this is to us immured among cows & sheep & the amiable stump-warts, as I call the local women – (our lane in particular has odd deformities – an ancient hunchbacked lady named Elise,^* apparently born without parents of either sex, a wildly blind man^* & so on – but all very nice.)

Our move is a great & pleasant shock to both of us – it happened so fast & seemed such a gigantic thing, sinking our lives & savings into a place chosen from a two-day tour, but our instincts, which we operated on, stood us in good stead, & the place has all sorts of odd, wry, endearing advantages which emerge bit by bit. Ted has a wonderful study under the thatch – peaked, insulated by straw (which itself is crammed with birds) & up its own steep stair. I have one on the second floor overlooking the front yard & local church & graveyard which suits me beautifully. None of the old stowing of manuscripts under the carpet when the cooking pots came out. Frieda loves it & trots around boldly pointing to birds & mimicking sheep & dogs. She is very odd looking, with great blue clear eyes & feathery straight brown hair (like Ted & me), & a sort of lit expression. She’s incredibly loving & trusting – rushing up to strangers in the street & grabbing their hands & running along with them, chasing cats with little kissing noises & so on, & out-of-the-blue coming over to hug one or the other of us.

I can’t imagine living anywhere else now, nor can Ted. He’s got through a pile of commissions that have been chasing him for the last half year & divides his time between gardening & carpentering & writing & looks years younger, very vigorous & happy, this being just what he wanted. Our unique combination of seclusion on our 2½ acres, & 5 minutes distance from surprisingly good village shops; and antiquity in the house itself, but with hot water & gas & so on – is ideal for us. We are still very primitive inside – both of us being a bit morbid about our acres of bare floorboards stained & redolent with death-watch beetle killer. But now I at last have this American writing grant (for a novel) which comes in 4 installments & will provide carpet money & a lot of needed repairs – we have a sort of 5-year plan of these. But spring should see us with carpets, new house foundations, an acre of daffodils, apple trees in bloom & all the rural delights. We are both working wonderfully well & seem to have – at last – all the time in the world to do so – plus planning tons of strawberries & a great vegetable garden for next year. Winter is the real test – already it is bone cold & we have ordered more Pifcos. I hope to get carpets in to stop some of the most howling drafts. Have you read Marguerite Duras?^* Is she good? Or any of those in her group we keep hearing about over here?

Love from us all,

Sylvia

TO Gerald & Joan Hughes

Wednesday 6 December 1961^*

ALS in greeting card,^* Indiana University

With best wishes for Christmas and the New Year

with love from / Sylvia, Ted, & Frieda

Court Green

North Tawton, Devon

Dear Gerald, Joan et al.

We are undergoing genuine Christmas weather – yesterday, driving back from Plymouth where Ted did a BBC Broadcast^* & we shopped for a rug to cover some of our acres of as yet bare boards (he ended up buying a 2' × 4' Chinese goatskin on top of an Indian rug – guess whose side of the bed it will be on!) The first snow flew down at us & it was awe-inspiring driving back over the dark reaches of Dartmoor. Hail this morning – then everything clear again. I miss my crisp white 6 foot American blizzards – we used to have such fun sledging & building igloos. I suppose I’ll be telling Frieda about “the old days in the old country” where everything was just slightly legendary.

We are gradually getting Court Green into shape – a house this old needs one five-year plan, then another. Ted is now painting the ghastly floorboards upstairs which were driving us both to feel like ill-kept horses in a barn, & we hope to have carpets in by Christmas to keep out the drafts. Next spring the floors of the front downstairs should come up & the woods-joists on wet-earth foundations be changed for concrete to keep us from sinking any further into the ground. The wallpaper should hold the plaster up for a few years & the billion birds hold the thatch on for as long out of sheer self-interest – they live under it, too. I love it here, & so does Ted. He looks wonderful, very happy & is able to be relatively unbothered by his famousness which hounded him in London. I’ve an American grant to finish a novel, so we shall weather the first year of giant bills & tax inspectors all right. Loved the pictures of you. Do write – you too, Joan.

xxx

Sylvia

TO Ann Davidow-Goodman & Leo Goodman

c. Thursday 7 December 1961^*

ALS in greeting card,^* Smith College

With best wishes for Christmas and the New Year

from Sylvia, Ted & Frieda

Court Green

North Tawton

Devonshire

Dear Ann & Leo –

It seems ages & years since our wonderful summer with you & we miss you very much. We have, in one swoop, left London & bought a wonderful ancient country house, white, with a peaked thatch & its own cobbled court surrounded on 3 sides by thatched barn & stables (empty as yet, Ann!). The oldest walls of Court Green, originally a farm, are 3 feet thick & we have a historic fortress-mound under a giant elm on our property of 2 ½ acres, plus 70 apple trees. We have a spare bedroom & a thatched cottage (very dilapidated – which we hope to fix up) & are only 4 hours from London by express train. Please come back to England & visit us.

We live in the midst of a thriving & friendly Devon town, our house being more or less the ‘manor house’ the boyhood home of one Sir Robert Arundell, who sold it to us. We all three adore it. Frieda moos & baas & peeps back at cows, sheep & birds. We are again painting ancient floorboards & going to country auctions to buy odd bits for our 10 or so rooms. To my surprise, I miss cosmopolitan life very little. Devonshire people are curious, but very warm & friendly.

Please do write & tell us how you both are, what doing & all.

All the best Devonian & Cornish beaches are within an hour’s drive. Come for a little holiday.

Much love from us 3 –

Sylvia

TO Marcia B. Stern

c. Thursday 7 December 1961^*

TLS, Smith College

Court Green

North Tawton, Devon.

Dear Marty,

It was terrific having your letter and all the good news. Oddly enough, just as you wrote about your new sink I was having my sink ripped out & a new one installed: my old sink being 2½ feet high, set on two columns of rotten bricks & a kind of antique upchuck speckled color, with perpetually damp drainingboards & a drain up which enormous slugs with black horns climbed overnight to greet me first thing in the morning. I still have scars on my wall which Ted plastered after about a month & someday now will try to match the elusive shade of pale green paint, which graces our kitchen walls. The house itself though is just wonderful. I am quite used to its peaked thatch & love the millions of birds who live in it, even the blue tits who drink the cream off our milk. I don’t know just how much I told you about the place, which is right in the middle of the quite ugly, grey cementish town of North Tawton (now seeming beautiful & sweet to me). When all the foliage is out, you can’t see any houses, nothing but the 12th century Anglican church facing the house across an acre of green field. Now, though, with the leaves gone, we are surrounded by neighbours which comforts me on dark nights, as some of the desolate country places we saw gave me the creeps. And I like being two minutes walk from the shops & chemist & PO. Spring at our place is, from all accounts, idyllic, with 70 apple trees in bloom, laburnum, lilac & a field full of daffodils, but right now we are battening down for the full blast of wet English winter. Up to now we have been living on the bare, dirtyish floorboards which the British seem to specialize in, but we have just budgeted after the first staggering pile of solicitors & surveyors fees, downpayment, plumber, electrician, mover, back income tax ad inf. & have ordered carpets for the upstairs bedrooms, hall, stair and front room, which I hope may arrive by Christmas. I have been stitching curtains & snake-shaped draftstoppers on my handwind singer, & Ted is painting the floorboards, after much procrastination.

The people of the town are obviously very curious about us (and how we live), but extremely friendly & nice: everybody says Good morning to everybody in the street. We have all those small things which I depend on: a good baker, a good butcher, a good chemist. I have a robust red-cheeked woman named Nancy Axworthy come in for 2 mornings a week to clean for a total of just over $2: a lifesaver, because the house is huge. If you knew how we were counting on your coming to visit us when you come to England, you would buy your tickets right now! How soon do you think you can come? At last we have lots of room. Upstairs we have our bedroom, a small one for F, & my study facing front, & the bathroom, guestroom & an other room we won’t use till we refloor it probably, over the back. Plus Ted’s attic study up a flight of stairs. I hope someday we can make our thatched cottage into a guest cottage. But that will be after our 5 year plan of repairs, which continues this spring with laying a cement foundation in place of the wooden joists on bare earth in the front of the house, & laying lino in the children’s playroom & hall over that. Once that’s done, I shall feel we can rest a bit. And someday we’ll have to have the whole interior repapered and re-plastered, as the plaster is crumbling behind the paper in places. But not for a bit.

I find I miss London very little. My thoughts of having an eventual city house there have faded, & on my one or two visits back I was oppressed by the dirty air & crowds & got quite homesick. We are surrounded by high green pastures full of cows & sheep, which Frieda loves, & Dartmoor is just 15 minutes away. I hope we find some nice beaches this summer, as we’re under an hour from all the Cornish & Devon ones. I think the twins would have wonderful fun here---loads of space to run round, and the 4 hour express to & from London is just a mile down the road. What I miss most is (I don’t quite know how to put it) “college-educated” mothers. I got to know several nice, bright girls in London whom I miss, but there is nobody like that round here---I’ve met one very pretty local girl (named Sylvia, queerly enough) with 3 daughters whom I like, but it’s all baby talk. I find myself liking baby talk, but I miss the other things---notions, ideas, I don’t know what. Luckily Ted keeps me from getting too cowlike.

How I envy you, the Fair Housing Practices Committee & the Unitarian church! This seems to me so valuable and practical, such a satisfying way of putting abstract principles into groundroots action! I think our little local church very lovely---it has 8 bellringers & some fine stained-glass windows, but I must say the Anglican religion seems terribly numb & cold & grim to me. I started going to Evensong on Sundays as a purely community thing, having asked the Rector (a rather stupid little Irishman who knew Jomo Kenyatta^* in Africa, but is terribly dull & full of platitudes) to tell me about the service. The singing & chanted responses of the first half are fine & in an aesthetic way I can respond to them, but the sermons! All the awful emphasis on our weakness & sinfulness & being able to do nothing but through Christ etc. I am perfectly prepared to see in one’s innate laziness & faults an analogy to an original flaw, but the Trinity seems to me a man’s notion, substituting the holy ghost where the mother should be in the family circle, almost a burlesque. And I guess I am simply what the minister called one Sunday “an educated pagan” (after seeing our books, I’m sure, which apparently terrified him). But I do want Frieda to have the experience of Sunday School, & the Anglican church is the church in the community, so I may keep up the unsatisfactory practice of going, although I disagree with almost everything. I’m sure if there were simply an intelligent minister it would be better. Tell me your thoughts on this. Weren’t you at one time an Episcopalian? I know I always envied my mother’s having been brought up in the Catholic church as a child because she had a rich & definite faith to break away from, & I think that it’s better to have a child start this way, than be the only one who doesn’t go to church at an age when religious and philosophical arguments mean nothing to them, & he only feels curious and outcast.

In theory, we divide our days, so I work in my study in the morning & Ted carpenters, gardens, does odd jobs & minds Frieda. Then I take over & cook & sew & have Frieda with me in the afternoon while Ted writes. Then we spend the evenings by a crackling wood fire reading or listening to music or whatever. But I feel to do very little work. A couple of poems I like a year looks like a lot when they come out, but in fact are points of satisfaction separated by large vacancies. I’ve done a woman’s magazine story which came out here & have hopes of someday turning something out good enough for the Ladies Home Journal---this a kind of journeywork I’d like because it would be a good source of income. As it is, we have been very lucky piecing together a pleasant living from odd jobs---reviews, radio broadcasts, poems and so on. It is a relief not to have money flowing out in rent, never to return. I shall be happy when we have paid back our borrowings from our parents & our relatively modest mortgage & have only upkeep and running expenses to worry about. It isn’t accurate to say we live on writing, as we’ve been lucky with writing grants & prizes which have seen us over financial humps that the weekly trickle of earnings wouldn’t cover, but now we have space, we have all the time we need to work & none of the old worries about where we shall be next year.

We are also expecting a 2nd infant this next month, as Peter D. has probably told you (I am amazed at how he heard of it, but Ted mentioned it to some Cambridge person in London & woof! it flew). The reason I haven’t made announcements etc. is because we lost our second baby 4 months along last year (it was supposed to be born on Ted’s birthday in August), & I had started to tell family & relatives, & felt so depressed at telling them we’d lost it that I thought I’d wait this time till the event was safely upon us. The doctors gave no reason for a miscarriage, but as I had my appendix out 3 weeks later, it might have been that, or not. Anyway, I am crossing my fingers that this one will be fine, although once you lose a baby, or know about anyone else who had one born with this or that wrong, you feel what a precarious miracle the whole process is. Frieda is at last spouting words after everybody telling me they talked at 8 months etc. I just can’t get worried about walking & talking ages---after all, you do both the rest of your life, & simply let her grow as she feels like it. Now she babbles about doddies & pawbooks & dark (she runs & points & says “dark” as soon as the sun sets, because one morning we took her out when it was dark & tried to explain it to her). She is lots of fun & very dear. Still with bright blue eyes unlike either of us. Do write soon.

Lots of love from us all,

Syl

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Thursday 7 December 1961

TLS with envelope, Indiana University

Court Green

North Tawton, Devon.

Thursday: December 7

Dear mother,

It is a marvelous, crisp, clear December morning, and I am sitting in the front room with Ted & Frieda overlooking our acre of grasses which are white with frost. After a week of black, wet sunless weather, everything seems suddenly bright & Christmassy. I am trying to get off the bulk of my American Xmas cards by ordinary mail today so I will be a bit saving.

The reason I haven’t written for so long is probably quite silly, but I got so awfully depressed two weeks ago by reading two issues of the Nation---Juggernaut, the Warfare State,^* about the terrifying marriage of big business- and the military in America, and the forces of the John Birch Society etc., and another about the repulsive shelter craze^* for fallout, all very factual & documented & true, that I simply couldn’t sleep for nights & with all the warlike talk in the papers such as Kennedy saying Kruschev would “have no place to hide”, & the armed forces manuals indoctrinating soldiers about the “inevitable” war with our “implacable foe”, I began to wonder if there was any point in trying to bring up children in such a mad self-destructive world. The sad thing is that the power for destruction is real and universal, and the profession of generals who on retirement become Board Heads of the missile plants they have been feeding orders. I am also horrified at the U.S. selling missiles (without warheads) to Germany, awarding former German officers medals---as the reporter for the liberal Frankfurt paper says, coming back to America from his native Germany it is as if he hadn’t been away. Well, I got so discouraged about all this that I didn’t feel like writing anybody anything. Ted has been very comforting & so has Frieda. One of the most distressing features about all this is the public announcements of Americans arming against each other---the citizens of Nevada announcing they will turn out bombed & ill people from Los Angeles into the desert (all this official), & ministers & priests preaching that it is all right to shoot neighbors who try to come into one’s bomb shelters. Thank goodness there is none of this idiotic shelter business in England: I just wish England had the sense to be neutral, for it is quite obvious that she would be “obliterated” in any nuclear war & for this reason I am very much behind the nuclear disarmers here. Anyway, I think it appalling that the shelter system in America should be allowed to fall into the hands of the advertisers---the more money you spend the likelier you are to survive, etc., when 59% of taxes go for military spending already. I think the boyscouts & the American Legion & the rest of those ghastly anti-communist organizations should be forced to sit every Sunday before the movies of the victims of Hiroshima, & the generals each to live with a victim, like the human conscience which is so lacking to them. Well, I am over the worst of my furore about all this. Each day seems doubly precious to me, because I am so happy here, with my lovely home & dear Ted & Frieda. I just wish all the destructive people could be sent to the moon.

Well, I didn’t want to write anything until I felt in better spirits. We have started painting the floors upstairs, preparatory to ordering our rugs, & it makes an immense difference in our morale. Living on dirtyish bare boards in very cold weather is grim. Now Ted has laid down a white undercoat in every upstairs room but one (which we won’t use till we refloor it) & is bordering the edges that will show with pale grey lino paint, as in our London flat. Everything as a result looks airy, light and spanking clean. I have looked & looked at carpets, in Exeter, London & Plymouth, & feel now that our choice is right & sensible. We ordered a lovely all-wool Indian carpet for our bedroom (10'7" x 9'3") with an off-white, rose & green border & center medallion, at just under $150, about half price of the carpet, also Indian, but larger & fancier, that I saw in London.

I am also ordering this week the rugs I saw in London---a super red one for my study, a matching red, but cheaper because shorter-piled, for the stair & hall carpet, forest green for Frieda’s room, & a handsome figured rug for the livingroom (all-wool Wilton---the rest are all-wool too), with a rich red background & green & white figured border & center medallion, all these with matching underfelts (I saw foam-rubber underlays but didn’t like it---I’m sure damp would crumble it). I hope these get to us by Christmas: the whole lot, 4 rugs & the staircarpet & underfelts should amount to about $750 which I don’t think too bad, as $325 of that is gifts from grampy, Mrs. Prouty & Dot & I’ve the rest easily with the sale of my poetry mss. for $280 & my Guinness poetry prize, both bolts out of the blue, as it were. I feel we have made a good investment. Next spring we hope to have saved enough to have cement foundations laid under the front half of the house & black & white squared linoleum on top of that in the playroom & hall. Then we shall rest a bit.

I have been sewing curtains for Frieda’s closet & odd windows here & there & have ordered enough for red corduroy drapes for our front room French windows & short curtains for the window over the windowseat, plus 3 cushions, covered in matching red cord for the windowseat, which shall do us as a sofa---there really isn’t room enough for anything like that in the front room anyway.

Piles of packages have come---the wonderful one with the nighties I liked so much for Frieda when she was little, the handsome plaid pants with the warm red lining, the wonderful cord things which will be ideal for her “gardening” this spring. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Then today came a big Xmas parcel from you with the two Ladies Home J’s which I fell upon with joy and rejoicing---that magazine has so much Americana I love it. Look forward to a good read by the wood fire tonight, & to trying the luscious recipes. Recipes in English women’s magazines are for things like Lard & Stale Bread Pie, garnished with Cold Pigs Feet, or Left-Over Pot Roast in Aspic.

A huge packet from Dotty also arrived. I’m enclosing a card for her,^* if you want to put it in with anything of yours. I feel so thwarted not to be giving out anything but cards after last Christmas, especially as I just love buying presents for people, but we have felt we need to really pinch this year to weather the piles of bills for plumbers, electricians, extra heaters, coal, land tax, house tax, solicitors, surveyors, movers and all the mountaining things. As if to sanction our move, we have been very lucky in earning money this fall---my Saxton, in 4 installments is ample to live on; the enclosed cheque is part of the Atlantic Monthly fee of $125 for two of Ted poems^* they just accepted (the rest will follow on our filling out tax exemption forms). Now we can afford to let our American cheques build up that account again. Each September 1st we plan to pay you & Ted’s parents back each $280 of your loan which has been such a help in saving us tons of mortgage interest. I am very pleased we will be able to meet our heap of largish expenses---nearly 2 years of English income tax which our blessed London accountant is figuring out, & back dues for Nat. Health over $2 a week which we want to catch up with now.

Our Indian carpet came & our bedroom is just beautiful with it. Ted got a lovely Chinese goat-skin rug to fill the odd empty space, long black and grey silky hairs, and that makes it very special. We ordered the remaining rugs from London today & hope they come before the baby does.

You have no idea how forward we are looking to your visit this summer! You should have a real vacation this time. Sitting out in deck chairs with your 2 grandchildren & exploring the Cornwall beaches. By the time you come the house should be in very nice shape, and all the foliage at its best. We have 2 more Pifcos, making 4, now. The cold is bitter. Even my midwife said it was too Spartan for a new baby & to warm things up. The halls are hopeless, of course, but the Pifcos do a wonderful job in closed off rooms. The cold seems to keep us healthy---none of us has been taken with a cold yet (knock on wood)---we look fat as bears with all our sweaters, but I find this nippy air very bracing & so does Frieda. Her fat cheeks bloom, even though her breath comes out in white puffs. Much healthier than the overheating we had in America. I am only sorry you have had such bad luck of getting sick over Thanksgiving & having relapses. How are you now? Aren’t you through in 6 weeks with all your remedial reading program? I will be so relieved when you get done with it.

We had a lovely time laughing over the take-off issue of Mademoiselle. And now I am embedded with the Journals, especially delighted with the apple-recipe issue.^* I love all the bits of gossip & clippings you send. So glad to hear Sonia Thorguson^* is married, she’s such a lovely girl. I wonder if Ruth Geisel^* will ever get married?

I hope Warren is having a peaceful and pleasant year & isn’t too overworked. I feel dreadfully lazy myself. I really write terribly little---I was like this, I remember, before Frieda came: quite cowlike & interested suddenly in soppy women’s magazines & cooking & sewing. Then a month or so afterwards I did some of my best poems.

I rely on your letters---you are wonderful to keep them so frequent in spite of your load of work & being sick.

All of us send love,

Sivvy

TO Brian Cox

Tuesday 12 December 1961

TLS, University of Kansas

Court Green

North Tawton

Devon.

December 12, 1961

Dear Brian,

I was delighted with American Poetry Now---thought the cover^* handsome, and the setup of the poems worked out very well indeed. I do hope it continues to sell.

We see nothing but the Observer & The New Statesman---the rest is cows and sheep. Could you give me a notion of what the Times Lit. Sup.^* said? I’d like so much to know what poets people like & what poets people miss etc.

We are stuffing our cracks against the winter blasts and readying for three months in which we should have nothing to do but write and dream of strawberries & cream, so hope to have some produce of poems by spring.

All best wishes,

Sylvia Plath

TO Judith Jones

Tuesday 12 December 1961

TLS (aerogramme), University of Texas at Austin

Court Green

North Tawton

Devonshire, England

December 12, 1961

Mrs. Judith B. Jones

ALFRED A. KNOPF INC.

501 Madison Avenue

New York 22, New York

USA

Dear Mrs. Jones,

Thanks very much for your good letter of November 22nd.^* I’m delighted about the Saxton Fellowship too, as it comes at a specially providential time and enables me to go on writing to schedule in spite of the obligations of our recently acquired pre-Domesday farmhouse and orchard and the prospect of a second infant around New Year’s. If all goes according to plan, as I think it will, the novel should be finished by early next fall and I imagine Heinemann will send a copy along to you---they seem to be in touch with some other editor at Knopf in any case.^*

I’m glad all the assignments of copyright are coming in. Milton Greenstein,^* the New Yorker man, wanted to be very sure his magazine is properly acknowledged, and this is the form he gave me for acknowledging the New Yorker in my book:

The poems Hardcastle Crags, Man In Black, Mussel Hunter At Rock Harbor, and Watercolor Of Grantchester Meadows, appeared originally in The New Yorker.^*

I must sound an awful curmudgeon about photographs, but I am so buried in the country now that all I see is babies and cows and sheep, no photographers near, and my husband and I are so unphoto-conscious we don’t even have a camera. I know from my Smith and Mademoiselle days that the publicity photo is a great necessity, and have piles from that ancient era, but hope the public can get by without anything until I again return to civilisation. I don’t know when this will be. The YMHA have asked me^* to do a reading, & I do love giving readings & did a lot in London and over the BBC, and certainly would do so if I ever made a return visit to America.

Do let me know how the book is getting on. When is it due out?

With warmest good wishes,

Sylvia Plath

TO Aurelia Schober Plath & Warren Plath

Friday 15 December 1961^*

ALS in greeting card^* with envelope, Indiana University

With best wishes for Christmas and the New Year

with love from / Sivvy, Ted & Frieda <drawing of a star>

Thursday, December 15

Dear mother & Warren . . .

It seems impossible that it is only ten days to Christmas – I have been so immersed in household fixing & thinking of the arrival of the new baby that I’ve done little but get off a few cards. I mailed almost everybody’s (your neighbors) sea-mail a week ago – let me know if they arrive in time! Frieda is playing at my feet with a spool of thread – she loves looking at pictures now & can say “owl” & “doddie” & “cow” & point them out. She is very sweet & good lately & a fine walker. We have been taking her out a lot on some of the pleasant roads near here & have found some lovely spots nearby on Dartmoor where we can picnic next summer when you come, mother. We look so forward to your coming & seeing us in such lovely surroundings. I hope the enclosed photographs^* give you some idea of the handsome lines of Court Green.

Did I tell you our Indian carpet (off white & rose) & goatskin came for the bedroom? They make it feel like a place of luxury now. We have ordered the other rugs from London & I hope they come before the new baby. They certainly do make the house feel warmer. Frieda loves rolling on the bedroom rug.

The bank manager’s wife^* – a very lively & entertaining Irishwoman – paid a “call” on us this afternoon & regaled us with all sorts of stories. I look forward to getting to know her better – evidently one couple of tenants here (before) the last shiftless lot – a fertilizer salesman who plowed up our tennis court) were a Belgian & a Cornishwoman from South America who did gorgeous handweaving they sold to Harrods & Fortnum & Mason & wealthy locals.

I can’t tell you how much we like it here. The town itself is fascinating – a solid body of interrelated locals (very curious), then all these odd peripheral people – Londoners, ex-Cockneys, Irish. I look forward to getting to know them slowly. The bank manager’s wife, the doctor & his family & the redoubtable Nurse who doesn’t miss an addition on every house visit. The bank manager’s wife has a daughter of 15^* at school in Oxford & says there are no children her age here at all. But I should be much luckier. Every time I visit the doctor’s surgery I see a raft of new babies. Most of them very attractive little things.

I have been grandiose & ordered a turkey for our Xmas dinner. I love turkey & shall enjoy living off it cold. Is a 10 lb. turkey a good size? It is about as small as they come. And I shall stuff it with that nice stuffing you use, mother. We have a little evergreen tree waiting to be brought in which I shall hang with some German spice cookies in tinfoil I got & Woolworth’s balls & a few birds which reminded me of our lovely peacocks.

It will be our first Christmas on our own as heads of a family, & I want to keep all our old traditions alive. I wish I had a Springerle pin! We ate a batch of apricot half-moons last night – how I love them. Do explain to Dot if you can that we are being Spartan about gifts this Christmas. I hope by next year we can be as generous as our wishes! In spite of our fabulous bills, back taxes & Nat. Health, we are doing surprisingly well. My NYorker contract for poems was renewed^* for another year, & I’ve been asked to be one of the 3 judges for the Guinness contest I won this year.^* Ted & Frieda send lots of love & so do I.

xxx

Sivvy

TO Aurelia Schober Plath & Warren Plath

Monday 18 December 1961

TLS in greeting card^* with envelope, Indiana University

Merry Christmas – Happy New Year

with love / Sivvy, Ted & Frieda

Monday: December 18

Dear mother & Warren,

I hope these color shots^* of Frieda arrive in time for Christmas, but if not they should make a bright postscript to it. I think they really do our blue-eyed angel justice for a change. That gnarled branch to the right of our door is an antique honeysuckle. Don’t you think we have a nice place? I’m also enclosing 2 checks for deposit in the Boston 5cent Bank. The New Yorker accepted 2 more of my poems this week,^* along with renewing my year’s contract. Very encouraging. My publisher sent me Memoirs & Correspondence of Frieda Lawrence^* for Christmas. Isn’t that dear of them. We are very happy, healthy, and frosty just now. I drove to Exeter today for a bit of shopping^* in a lovely white frost---all the cows and sheep were pink against the white slopes of the hills. The electrician came today & put our power plugs in 4 rooms, so we can have the Pifcos all about and keep snug. I have at last got my red corduroy for livingroom curtains & windowseat; Ted’s finished the last of the floorpainting. We’ve got such lovely piles of presents from everyone---both of us are more excited at something for Frieda than anything for ourselves. Ted will make a wood cradle for her doll which I’ll paint this week, & I’ll make Dot’s carrot cakes, which are such nice holiday fare.

Do explain to Dotty that we are just sending Christmas wishes & love this year, since the house is eating up just about everything else. Next Christmas should be quite settled. Our big present to ourselves is that we are paying off our £600 mortgage this Christmas. Isn’t that wonderful! It is because the Maugham people didn’t take back the grant when we told them we couldn’t use it in the 2 year period given, but let us keep it. So we will save all that interest. I hope you have recovered from your bad cold, mummy. Do write that you are better. I hope you don’t overdo this Christmas. Give our best love to Dotty & Joe. Dotty’s letters mean a lot to me & I feel more & more close to her.

Love from us all,

Sivvy

TO Howard Moss

Monday 18 December 1961

TLS (aerogramme), New York Public Library

Court Green

North Tawton

Devonshire, England

December 18, 1961

Mr. Howard Moss

THE NEW YORKER

25 West 43rd Street

New York 36, New York

USA

Dear Mr. Moss,

I’m very glad to hear you are taking THE MOON AND THE YEW TREE and MIRROR TALK. By all means change the title of MIRROR TALK to MIRROR.^* I think that’s much better. I consider myself, with few exceptions, a rather numb hand at titles, and am usually most grateful for any alternative suggestions.

Thanks so much for the clippings. Buried as we are among Devon hedges and livestock, we don’t get a chance to keep up on these at all.

All good wishes,

Sylvia Plath

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Friday 29 December 1961

TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University

Friday: December 29

Dear mother,

I am sitting in our livingroom by a crackling wood fire, our mantel still gay with red candles and about 50 Christmas cards, our fat little tree with its silver birds and tinsel and spicecake hearts still up, and the new red corduroy curtains I have just finished drawn, making the room bright and cheerful, like the inside of a Valentine. I had 3 cushions made of foam rubber for our windowseat and covered in the same red cord (much too ambitious a job for me) and this weekend hope to finish the pleated red underfringe from cushions to floor. The stair carpets have come---a rich red, and Ted is laying them. It is a heavenly difference in feel and illusion of warmth. We have thick underfelts to go under the carpets, hair felts, so I’m sure that keeps some cold out. We just await the livingroom carpet & the one for my study & F’s bedroom. The midwife suggested I get a thermometer to see the temperature of the new baby’s room. I was amazed. The general level of the house---in halls & unheated rooms, is about 40° (38° in our bedroom in the morning!). An electric heater gets it feeling very hot at 50-55°. Now I am positively sweltering in the livingroom at 60°. It all depends on what one gets used to. We have all been (knock on wood) in excellent health---not one cold yet, and I do think this change from central heating, with the constant sharp contrasts of cold & hot, outside and in, is responsible for our healthy winter so far. Frieda blooms like a rose. I hope you have the colored pictures by now. Isn’t she a little darling?

Our Christmas was the happiest and fullest I have ever known. It is the first one we “made ourselves”, from start to finish. We trimmed the tree and set out our amazing stacks of gifts (from everybody, it seems) on Christmas Eve. Then Christmas day we started the 3 of us off with our daily ration of soup-plates of hot oatmeal (something you & grammy taught me), then led Frieda into the livingroom, which she had not seen in its decorated state. I wish you could have seen her face. She went right up to the tree and touched a silver ball. Then she saw her Baby (the marvelous one you sent) & made the funniest little gesture, put her arm behind her head and said “Oh” and rushed to pick it up. We had, for our gift to her, made a lovely cradle for it. In the wonderful Woman’s Days Aunt Marion sent (you must tell her about our using them, I’ll write too, later) we found the perfect pattern for a wood cradle.^* Warren’s package arrived just in time---suspecting their toolishness, Ted opened his early, utterly delighted, & made the cradle. I painted it white and then put hearts & flowers & birds on it in red, green, blue & yellow enamel. Then I made a red cord bedspread. That baby really looked handsome. And the ponytailed baby, & the teensy one in the carriage (which Frieda loves & persists calling a car) completed her delight. She carries them all round with her, has to sit them in her highchair. Her first words on waking are “Babies, babies”. To save myself the endless work of getting all 3 babies into her arms all the time, I thought I’d put one away for a bit till she got used to them, but she looked all round, saying “More babies, more babies” in the most plaintive voice, so I relented & got them all out again.

Then we carefully & slowly unwrapped all our presents. Really, mummy, you outdid yourself! Your pink sweater set is heavenly. (Do you expect a girl?) And the lovely blouse in my favorite colors of blue & green will hearten me immensely as soon as I get out of these shredding maternity clothes---I’ve been wearing the same sweater all winter! I just love the nighties---they came as my other simply fell from my back: I had washed it & worn it every week for over 2 years! I think Frieda’s skirt is about my favorite---the red one. She looks such a treat in it, with her tights. Tights are a godsend. I don’t know how we’d get through the winter without them! Oh, I think you’ll go bankrupt if you get any more grandchildren! And Dotty’s package was full of lovely things. She has wonderful taste---I adore the blouse she got me. And the sweaters for Frieda, just as she had outgrown all but your red one were providential. The Fox book^* Ted had to read immediately. He said it was the most beautiful children’s book he had seen---and it means so much to me, being set in New England! His very favorite presents were the Fox book & Warren’s tools, which he hasn’t put down since he got them. He’s been fitting in the staircarpet clips with them today & says they’re marvelous & “very American”---meaning streamlined.

I was so glad to hear about your feast at Dot’s & that you are accepting invitations! I spent the rest of Christmas making my 1st simply beautiful golden-brown turkey with your bread dressing, creamed brussels sprouts & chestnuts, swede (like squash, orange), giblet gravy & apple pies with our last & preciously saved own apples. We all 3 had a fine feast in the midafternoon, with little Frieda spooning up everything. Then a quiet evening by the fire counting all our hundreds of blessings & beaming. I look so forward to our doing this every year. Our house is a perfect “Christmas” house.

xxx

Sivvy

Oh yes! Three cheers for the Ladies’ Home Journal! I’ll love it.

TO Aurelia Schober Plath

Friday 29 December 1961

TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University

2nd installment

Dear mother . . .

There’s so much to say I just couldn’t fit it in to my last letter. That was our Christmas. Ted’s mother & father went to dinners at their relatives, too (Olwyn stayed in Paris translating a play for her play agency---we’ve both “written” to each other,^* a step, so the gap is bridged as I wanted it to be by this Christmas)---Aunt Hilda’s & then Uncle Walter’s. Ted called them afterwards & they seemed to have had a simply wonderful time. I think all of us descending on them was a great expense and strain, & this time they were treated & feasted. So we’ll go on like this & pay our visits in the summer when there is no competition on the roads & the weather is good & everybody doesn’t just exchange colds. I want to establish a Christmas tradition in my own home now. I hope by next Christmas, when the playroom is livable, we may have a little piano on which I can play carols. I made 3 of Dot’s delicious carrot cakes this year (plan to give one to my midwife when she’s done her job with the baby---she’s a wonderful woman, bakes her own bread). Now I have discovered I have none of the recipes for the Christmas cookies you put on your Christmas plate. I’d like all. Especially the sand tarts you cut in shapes & decorate & the chocolate flat ones you decorate with almonds. Our neighbors have been so sweet. We got cards from our Nancy Axworthy (who brought Frieda a little plastic doll in a shower bath that really squirts water! We gave her a bottle of very excellent port---the holiday drink here: she was giving dinner for 9 & her only daughter had a 21st birthday, much celebrated here) & 4 or 5 of our nearest neighbors. An old couple at the bottom of the lane brought a bouquet for me of giant chrysanthemums, & Rose Key, our nearest neighbor, a woman with 3 daughters in London & a spry lovely retired husband, made up a little box of candy for Frieda which I let Ted devour. Our house is full of nuts, tangerines, pears, figs and dates. Oh, we had a lovely time. Everybody is so warm & friendly to us.

One amusing thing: our redoubtable Nurse-midwife who was obviously measuring us sternly (as artists and outlanders) suddenly capitulated with surprising warmth. Her son^* had come home from his very good school in North London & asked if she knew a Ted Hughes. A friend of his, it seems, was a “fan” of Ted’s & had written Ted & the answer came back with a North Tawton postmark. This really Established us in the good lady’s eyes. I’m sure we’re the questionmark of the community: now Ted is “placed” as a rather famous Britisher. My doctor is very nice & good. I’ve started taking sleeping pills for my arms have been a bother---all pins & needles & often so painful I can’t lay them anywhere at all: evidently a normal symptom of some pregnancies & common locally---but these pills really put me to sleep at night, for which I’m most grateful. Otherwise I’m just fine.

All through this I’ve not said anything about Warren’s engagement. How wonderful! I wish he and Maggie would visit us after they’re married. They could stay at the local Inn we dined at if they found our place too noisy with babies, as they well might! Do send a glossy of her Bachrach picture.^* I’m sure we’ll love her & hope Warren is as happy as she must be.

What fun for you to have all the very most traditional trappings for one of your 2 children (diamonds, Bachrach &, I imagine, a very formal wedding)---especially the son (should save you the wear and tear!) Wish so much I could attend. Do you think it will be this June? You must give me some notion of what they’d like for a present. Did I tell you, by the way, that Ted’s Uncle Walter gave us £100 as a Christmas present? (He’s evidently been doing this for brother Gerald a long time who has a Jaguar & other cars). Seems we only needed to show we didn’t need it (I’m so glad we never asked him for a loan!) and he is so impressed by our house photographs & purchase that he’ll probably favor us with a visit this spring! Edith sent us a lovely pink double blanket for our bed & two blue ones for the babies. I’ve also bought the handsomest & lightest & warmest pink blanket in the world for our bed (we’re putting the 2 flimsy ones on the guest bed---fine for summer). Santa gave Ted a Jaeger sweater---fawn, cardigan, very posh & handsome to replace his tattered ones, & me a feathery warm rose mohair robe with big collar to solace me in my pre- & post confinement. All very necessary for survival, but very nice. I loved your encouraging letter & article---I’d come to the same lookout myself. We’ve had two days of storybook weather. The merest dust of snow on everything, china-blue skies, rosy hilltops. New lambs in the fields. Its the second coldest winter this century the farmers say. Took Frieda for little trots on Dartmoor & our local heights this week. She said “no” for snow. Can finish the Hi-diddle-diddle rhyme on a picture card with “poon” & thinks everything with fuzz is a “doddie”---her favorite animal. You should see her baby her babies---feed them her biscuits, hold up a clock to their ear so they can hear it tick, cover them up. They couldn’t come at a better time---to get her used to the baby idea. She is so loving---I’m sure she gets it from us! Ted is an angel – so thoughtful.

xxx

Sivvy