The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2

by Sylvia Plath

  Money should reach them in a week.

  *Did you send Mrs. Prouty a copy of “The Rain Horse” in HARPER’S??

  TO Lynne Lawner

  Thursday, 18 February 1960

  Printed from Antaeus 28, Winter 1978

  3 Chalcot Square

  London N.W.1, England

  Thursday: February 18, 1960

  Dear Lynne,

  On rereading your letter (which did reach me) I find a marked if unintentional irony in your “Coming? I’d never have believed it . . .” The last three months have been the most hectic & unsettled in our lives, with a Dickensianly grim & chilblain-ridden January hunt for a flat in central London near a big park (at which request the agents burst into hysterical laughter: no, we have no television connections). Our plans have markedly changed & Ted is finishing his grant in England (after our round-America-with-the-bears travels this summer & the suitcase-dwelling after Yaddo we are glad of it) mainly because we are desirous of settling & waiting for the arrival of the imminent Nicholas or Rebecca Hughes due at the end of March. I haven’t even had time to fully take in the fact I’m pregnant & find it amazing that I’m to produce a child in 5 weeks. After traipsing all over the great areas of London & seeing filthy, cheerless, lightless, bathless places for $25 and up a week, & having the two places we liked snatched up minutes before we came, or barred because the fairy decorator owner couldn’t abide children, Negros or dogs, our friends, the poet W. S. Merwin & his older, very energetic, very British, very thrice-married wife found us an unfurnished flat – one room too small, but right where the grass is greenest, on the north rim of Regent’s Park. Last Sunday I paid a visit to the Park with Ted, to Bedford College (did you stay there?) & thus recalled the wide circle of my Fulbright arrival with my now-matronly return.

  We’ve invested in a marvelous bed, stove & refrigerator, & the Merwin’s have furnished us with tables & chairs out of their Victorian attic until we have time to browse about in the second-hand shops here. We’ve just finished an exhausting 3 weeks of floor painting (the boards are 100 years old, very chewed, full of nails & mouseholes, & imbibe 3 coats of paint), wall & table painting, scrubbing, waxing, sandpapering – except for the floors the place is new, renovated from a warren-brothel of Irish laborers into a posh little Chelsea-type house (our landlord’s dream: he’s actually pleased we’re writers) on the slummy-elegant border of Regent’s Park Road. We have 3 rooms & a bath overlooking a green square, trees, pigeons & seagulls & a Utrillo landscape (which in certain lights is very Italianate!) of yellow umber & white houses. In summer, they say, we can hear the lions roaring from the zoo across the Park. And we’re two minutes from Charing Cross et. al. by bus or tube. Very light & airy on the 3rd floor. My aim is a London house eventually, in this very district, although a month ago I was cursing blue & black at everything Londonian.

  Neither of us have written a thing for 2 months & are blue with the enforced nonwriting mess of dealing with Thingness. But now all is opening up & this weekend promises the end of our worst labors. Ted’s second book of poems LUPERCAL (after the Roman festival) is due out here (at Faber) at the end of March along with the baby. His first children’s book should come out here next winter, & 3 of his stories are to be in a Faber anthology next autumn. No money, of course, in any of this, but his writing is amazing – I’ve been especially excited about the prose (his first story “The Rain Horse” is in the Jan. Harper’s).

  My best news came last week: the British publishers William Heinemann have just accepted my first book of poems with what can only be called enthusiasm: I say “first”, but of the 50 poems in it one-third were written this fall. Nothing is pre-Cambridge & over 50 have been weeded & let fall in spite of their claim of publication. It’s been a long hard book in coming. To be called THE COLOSSUS after one of the father-worship poems in it. They say they’ll look around for an American publisher, but I’ve had nothing but cold shoulders from them myself. After losing out in the Yale to old cold gold George Starbuck last year (“By a whisper”) I got thoroughly grim & bloody-minded about it all. I think I shall be a very happy exile & have absolutely no desire to return to the land of milk & honey & spindryers.

  PLEASE do write in answer: how are you doing so long in Rome??? What plans for return? Graduate work? Writing? Send some poems? Now we are really only a day apart by air – say something. About you, men, the Tiber, the color of things.

  Love,

  Sylvia

  TO Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse Beuscher*

  Thursday 18 February 1960

  TLS (aerogramme), Smith College

  3 Chalcot Square, London N.W.1

  Thursday morning

  February 18, 1960

  Dear Dr. Beuscher,

  I waited to write you until we had a London address & I a London doctor, which took a lot longer than we expected. After Christmas & New Year’s in Yorkshire with Ted’s parents, sister, assorted & continuous aunts, uncles & cousins, we came to a cold, bleak & utterly inhospitable London to look for (at first) a furnished apartment near one of the big parks & central to plays, shops, bookstores etc. We started out living in a grisly unheated bed & breakfast hotel which had the surprising advantage of being clean (very rare here) & applied at all the main agencies, starting what amounted to a 2-week trek by bus, tube, foot, & in occasional desperation, taxi, to the far-flung & dirty corners of the great city, finding flats, with 2 exceptions, dark, dank, full of coal dust & of expense that would have been laughable had the agents not kept straight faces. I felt miserable & ponderous in my 7th month, without anything resembling a nest to feather, & Ted felt equally badly & grim. We moved in with a German(she)-Welsh(he) couple & their 2-year old daughter in a condemned slum which was amazingly cosy in spite of no bathroom, where we could cook our meals, & the only other couple we knew in London, the American poet W. S. Merwin & his energetic, middle-aged, thrice-married British wife, began having us to heartening dinners, calling influential friends, agencies, etc. & ended up in introducing me to my (their) doctor, whom I like immediately, so we limited our search to the Regent’s Park area. Against all our first resolves, we took on an unfurnished flat to be “ready” on Feb. 1st (no walls, no floors when we first saw it) & the Merwins promised to set us up in most necessary furnishings out of their capacious Victorian attic.

  So here we are, 18 days after moving in, with the builders still cementing foundations, reinforcing the roof & whistling cheerfully. We are on the 3rd floor in a newly renovated house, airy, light, overlooking a green square with benches ‘Chalcot Square Gardens’, 2 minutes from my doctor’s house & office, 2 minutes from Primrose Hill (which overlooks all flat-heeled London) & Regent’s Park with its superb zoo (we can hear the lions, they say, on hot summer nights), bird sanctuary, formal gardens---play areas for children &, I feel, the ideal place for the baby. We have been painting floors, walls, making bookcases, stripping old painted cupboards & sandpapering chairs & are this weekend in sight of a halt. Have invested in a superb gas stove, refrigerator & enormous bed & are borrowing chairs, tables etc. from the Merwins attic until we can pick up things we like gradually at 2nd hand shops. My great wish now is a London house of our own, with its own garden. Its only a few minutes from here by subway or bus to Piccadilly, Charing Cross & Trafalgar Square. Now things are settling down, I can’t think of anywhere else in the world I’d rather live & have no desire to return to America at all.

  The obstetrician-half of my 2-doctor team is a young, kind & very good fellow (who trained at University College Hospital) who I am seeing free, on the System. As I am too late to register at a hospital, I am having the baby at home & very happy about it---I think hospital labor wards bothered me as much as anything, & I will have all the care here (analgesia, whiffs of gas & air etc.) I’d get in a hospital (immediate emergency squads if anything goes wrong) plus the privacy of my home, Ted’s presence, & the continued care of my midwife---a wiry, golden-haired, tough & kindly Irish woman of 40 or so, who came to see
me last week at home & assessed my cake tins for afterbirth receptacles etc. Over here it is all “natural” childbirth---making the mother do the work, with limited analgesia, in the ordinary cases, & breast-feeding for ages---I get, by the way, a half-price pint of milk (2½ cups here) a day on the System, plus no expense at all for the baby. I don’t have any GrantlyDickRead illusions, but feel I have made the best arrangements for my own odd psychic setup---the doctor’s promised to be there at the delivery in addition to the midwife & she’ll come twice a day for 2 weeks to help me learn how the baby is bathed, nursed etc. Do let me know what you think about this!

  Another nice thing: I just heard from the British publishers Wm. Heinemann (they do Somerset Maugham, Erskine Caldwell, DHLawrence etc.) an enthusiastic acceptance of my 1st book of poems (THE COLOSSUS), a third of which I wrote this fall: 50 poems in all. They’ll be bringing it out next autumn & sending it about to publishers in America. So baby & 1st book are well on the way. I’d love to hear any last minute notes or words of wisdom---Nicholas or Rebecca is due March 27th. With Ted’s 2nd book of poems LUPERCAL (Harper’s will import copies later this year).

  Love,

  Sylvia

  TO W. Roger Smith

  Sunday 21 February 1960

  TLS, Random House Group Archive & Library

  3 Chalcot Square

  London N.W.1

  February 21, 1960

  W. Roger Smith, Esq.

  Assistant, Agreements and Rights Department

  WILLIAM HEINEMANN LIMITED

  15-16 Queen Street, Mayfair

  London W.1

  Dear Mr. Smith,

  Here is a list of the poems in my book which have been published or accepted for publication in magazines and anthologies. In several cases the poems have not yet been printed; in others, they have appeared in more than one place. One or two have been printed, but I have not received copies, only cheques, so I don’t know the exact date of publication. I’m not very sure what original copyright lines are and don’t have a record of anything like that.

  The Manor Garden:* CRITICAL QUARTERLY (to appear).

  Two Views Of A Cadaver Room: TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (Nov. 6, 1959).

  NATION* (appeared recently but I don’t have the exact date).

  THE GOLDEN YEAR* (1960. Anthology.)

  Night Shift:* OBSERVER (appeared some time in 1959).

  Sow: POETRY (Chicago) (July 1957).

  NEW POEMS 1958 (Anthology.)

  The Eye-mote:* CHELSEA REVIEW (to appear).

  Hardcastle Crags: NEW YORKER (October 11, 1958: appeared as “Night Walk”).

  THE GOLDEN YEAR* (1960).

  LIGHT BLUE, DARK BLUE* (1960. Anthology.)

  Faun: POETRY (Chicago) (January 1957: appeared as

  “Metamorphosis”).

  Departure: NATION (March 7, 1959).

  The Colossus: KENYON REVIEW (to appear).

  Lorelei: LONDON MAGAZINE (March 1959).

  AUDIENCE (Spring 1959).

  Point Shirley: SEWANEE REVIEW (Summer 1959).

  The Bull Of Bendylaw: HORNBOOK (April 1959).

  All The Dead Dears: GRECOURT REVIEW (November 1957).*

  POETRY FROM CAMBRIDGE 1958 (Anthology.)

  Aftermath: ARTS IN SOCIETY (Fall 1959).

  The Thin People: LONDON MAGAZINE (October 1959).

  Suicide Off Egg Rock: HUDSON REVIEW (to appear).

  Mushrooms: HARPER’S (to appear).

  I Want, I Want: PARTISAN REVIEW (Autumn 1959).

  Watercolor Of Grantchester Meadows: NEW YORKER (to appear).

  The Ghost’s Leavetaking: SEWANEE REVIEW (Summer 1959: appeared as “Departure Of The Ghost”)

  Metaphors:* PARTISAN REVIEW (to appear, as “Metaphors For A Pregnant Woman”).

  Black Rook In Rainy Weather: ANTIOCH REVIEW (Summer 1957).

  LONDON MAGAZINE (June 1958).

  POETRY FROM CAMBRIDGE 1958.

  Full Fathom Five: AUDIENCE (Spring 1959).

  Blue Moles:* CRITICAL QUARTERLY (to appear).

  Strumpet Song: POETRY (Chicago)(January 1957).

  Ouija: HUDSON REVIEW (to appear).

  Man In Black: NEW YORKER (to appear).

  Snakecharmer: LONDON MAGAZINE (March 1959).

  The Hermit At Outermost House: AUDIENCE (Spring 1959).

  TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (Nov. 6, 1959).

  The Disquieting Muses: LONDON MAGAZINE (March 1959).

  GUINNESS BOOK OF POETRY: 3* (1960. Anthology).

  Medallion: CRITICAL QUARTERLY Poetry Supplement (1960).

  Two Sisters Of Persephone: POETRY (Chicago)(January 1957).

  The Companionable Ills: SPECTATOR (January 30, 1959).

  Moonrise: HUDSON REVIEW (to appear).

  Spinster: LONDON MAGAZINE (June 1958).

  SMITH ALUMNAE QUARTERLY* (February 1958).

  GUINNESS BOOK OF POETRY (1958).*

  Frog Autumn: NATION (January 24, 1959).

  Mussel Hunter At Rock Harbor: NEW YORKER (August 9, 1958).

  The Beekeeper’s Daughter: KENYON REVIEW (to appear).

  The Times are Tidy: MADEMOISELLE (January 1959).

  Sculptor: GRECOURT REVIEW (May 1959).*

  ARTS IN SOCIETY (Fall 1959).

  That about does it, I think. Several other poems are out at magazines now and I haven’t yet heard from them, but I will let you know if there are any more acceptances.

  If it is necessary to publish a list of acknowledgements in the book itself, or credit lines, I should prefer the shortest possible form, leaving out the poem titles. Something like this:

  Acknowledgements are due to the following periodicals where some of these poems have appeared: ANTIOCH REVIEW, ARTS IN SOCIETY, AUDIENCE, CHELSEA REVIEW, CRITICAL QUARTERLY, HARPER’S, HORNBOOK, HUDSON REVIEW, KENYON REVIEW, LONDON MAGAZINE, MADEMOISELLE, NATION, NEW YORKER, OBSERVER, PARTISAN REVIEW, POETRY (CHICAGO), SEWANEE REVIEW, SPECTATOR, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT. Anthologies: THE GUINNESS BOOK OF POETRY (Numbers 1 & 3), THE GOLDEN YEAR (1960), LIGHT BLUE, DARK BLUE (1960), NEW POEMS 1958, and POETRY FROM CAMBRIDGE 1958.

  Do let me know any other questions you may have.

  Sincerely yours,

  Sylvia Plath

  TO Brian Cox

  Monday 22 February 1960

  TLS, University of Kansas

  3 Chalcot Square*

  London N.W.1

  February 22, 1960

  Mr. Charles B. Cox

  THE CRITICAL QUARTERLY

  The University

  Hull

  Dear Mr. Cox,

  Just a note to thank you for my copy of Poetry 1960 and the cheque. I am happy to hear you will print “Blue Moles”, “The Beggars” and “The Manor Garden”.*

  I have just heard from Wm. Heinemann that they are taking my first book of poems for publication; it should be out some time next autumn. I thought I’d let you know this, in case it might make a difference in which issue you wished to schedule the poems.

  With all good wishes,

  Sincerely yours,

  Sylvia Plath

  TO Monroe K. Spears

  Monday 22 February 1960

  TLS, Sewanee: The University of the South

  3 Chalcot Square

  London N.W.1, England

  February 22, 1960

  Mr. Monroe K. Spears

  THE SEWANEE REVIEW

  The University of the South

  Sewanee, Tennessee

  U.S.A.

  Dear Monroe:

  I’m sending along this sequence of seven poems* on the chance that you might consider publishing all, or part, of it in the SEWANEE. It is the final and most recent section of a first volume of poems Heinemann will be bringing out over here sometime next year.

  Ted and I managed to extract a flat from a grim and grudging January London and are about through with the necessary scrubbing, painting & carpentering and looking forward to a spring of unbroken work. We’re two minutes walk from Primrose Hill and a few minutes more from R
egent’s Park, a pleasant area.

  Ted joins me in sending our best to you and Betty.

  Sincerely yours,

  Sylvia Plath

  TO Aurelia Schober Plath

  Thurs.–Fri. 25–26 February 1960

  TLS (aerogramme), Indiana University

  Thursday, February 25th

  Dearest mother,

  I have been having a pleasant day in bed, resting & reading. Ted & I are alternating, one day each a week, until we are fully recovered from the strain of the last months & the settling in. He had his Day Sunday: the one in bed orders what is desired for meals, reads, writes & sleeps. Now I am dressed and up and feeling much refreshed. Ted has made a beef stew which is simmering ready for our supper and we are going afterwards to the center of London to see Ibsen’s “Rosmersholm”,* something I have been looking forward to for a long time: my first Ibsen play seen staged. I find I am made much happier by tragedy, good tragedy, classic tragedy, in movies and on stage than by so-called “hilarious musicals and/or farces”. We saw Brendan Behan’s musical “The Hostage”* a while back & were both bored & depressed by what the audience lapped up as funny, very tawdry & puerile wit, no plot etc. Tragedy, on the other hand, really purifies & liberates me.

  Last night Ted gave a reading of his poems at the Oxford Poetry Society.* We left after lunch by train, a one hour & 15 minutes trip. I had never been to Oxford at all, so we went a few hours early and though it was a cold, bleak inhospitable day, walked about the black, stone antique lanes and into the little green courts of one or two colleges. The architecture is immensely impressive: much more of it than at Cambridge, the eating places superb, and the atmosphere a really awesome cloistered one. The only trouble I saw was the terrible noisy roar of traffic, out-of-town traffic, on the main crossroads---so dense I hesitated to cross the street. None of the country & open sky spilling into everything as in Cambridge, but very much a big city. Yet once in a little crooked college court, the sounds of the modern world vanish by magic. I think both Ted & I would like to have gone to Oxford Too. We had a small tea while Ted ordered the list of his poems. His book LUPERCAL, officially out March 18th (I wonder if the baby will coincide!) came the day before, his six copies, very conveniently.* They’ve changed the blue of the cover to green, which put us off, & the red on the jacket & the purple on the cover are a bit of a clash to my morbidly sensitive eye, but looking at just the jacket, or, better still, the book without the jacket, it is a handsome affair. He gave a very fine reading, a few poems from his early work & the rest from LUPERCAL, to a middling-sized, enthusiastic & devotedly quiet audience, after we’d had wine & a superb Italian dinner with the members of the Inner Circle of the literary group there, including a very awkward, nice young American Jew from Princeton* who had been at the Glascock readings as a contestant the year I was at Smith (not my judging year). We took the train home right after & were in bed shortly after midnight.