Red Comet
Page 155
56. J, 664; 631.
57. JP, 108.
58. TH, draft of “Error.” Add MS 88918/1/2-8, BL.
59. SP to Ruth Fainlight, 4 Mar. 1962. L2, 737.
60. JP, 108.
61. J, 651.
62. J, 635.
63. J, 631–32.
64. J, 634.
65. J, 635; Anne Stevenson, interview notes with Nicola Tyrer, 14 Oct. 1987. 2.24, Houghton Mifflin Papers, Smith.
66. J, 635.
67. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Winifred Davies, 8 Aug. 1970. Courtesy of Kenneth Neville-Davies.
68. SP to AP, 7 Feb. 1962. L2, 728.
69. J, 632.
70. J, 638; 642.
71. J, 641.
72. Anne Stevenson, Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath (London: Penguin, 1989; 1998), 240.
73. J, 641.
74. Anne Stevenson, interview notes with Nicola Tyrer, 14 Oct. 1987. 2.24, Houghton Mifflin Papers, Smith.
75. HC interview with David Compton, May 2016, Bowdoinham, Maine.
76. SP, 1962 Letts Royal Office Tablet Diary. 19.2, SPC, Smith.
77. Stevenson, Bitter Fame, 241.
78. TH to Olwyn Hughes, summer 1962. Add MS 88948/1/2, BL.
79. SP to AP, 12 Mar. 1962. L2, 739.
80. The poems in Poetry were “Stars Over the Dordogne,” “Face Lift, “Widow,” “Heavy Woman,” and “Love Letter.”
81. SP to AP, 4 Mar. 1962. L2, 735.
82. Robin Peel, Writing Back: Sylvia Plath and Cold War Politics (Teaneck, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002), 127.
83. JP, 92.
84. Archival evidence suggests that Ted Hughes misdated this poem when he included it in the late-1960 section of Plath’s Collected Poems. It is written on the backs of pages of the third draft of The Bell Jar. Hughes wrote in Plath’s Collected Poems that “Waking in Winter” and “New Year on Dartmoor” were salvaged from a tangle of manuscripts and must be considered unfinished. See Peel, pp. 125–26.
85. All drafts are held at SPC, Smith.
86. SP, “Fever.” 9.96, SPC, Smith.
87. SP to AP, 7 June 1962. L2, 777. The play was rebroadcast on 13 Sept. 1962.
88. Plath mentioned attending a twelve-week series of Ingmar Bergman films in a 26 Feb. 1961 letter to Aurelia. She later told Aurelia in a 7 June 1962 letter that Three Women was “inspired by a Bergman film.” L2, 777.
89. Stevenson, Bitter Fame, 234.
90. In Jan. 1958, Plath wrote that “abortion” was something she had “known,” like “suicide,” something she should draw on in her writing. She was probably talking about a Smith friend, whose abortion she mentioned in her journal. J, 307; 404.
91. The proofs of The Bell Jar are dated 1962, and we know Plath made some changes to them before the novel was released on 14 Jan 1963. See Peter K. Steinberg, “Textual Variations in The Bell Jar Publications,” Plath Profiles 5 (2012): 134–39. Plath’s May and August 1962 progress reports to the Saxton foundation are held at SPC, Smith. Steinberg notes that Plath likely submitted two other reports in February and November 1962. As she worked on these reports and the proofs, Plath was revisiting the themes of the novel throughout 1962.
92. Anne Sexton would publish “The Abortion” in 1962’s All My Pretty Ones, yet that poem is full of self-blame.
93. J, 374.
94. Sexton would use a similar image to describe a newborn baby in “For God While Sleeping,” from All My Pretty Ones, but the reference also suggests Hughes’s poem “Death of a Pig,” an unsentimental piece about butchery.
95. SP to AP, 27 Mar. 1962. L2, 744.
96. SP to AP, 24 Feb. 1962. L2, 731.
97. SP to AP, 13 Feb. 1962. L2, 730.
98. SP to AP, 24 Feb. 1962. L2, 732.
99. SP to AP, 12 Mar. 1962. L2, 739.
100. SP to George MacBeth, 4 Apr. 1962. L2, 754.
101. SP to AP, 12 Mar. 1962. L2, 739.
102. Ibid., L2, 738.
103. SP to Marvin Kane, 23 Mar. 1962. L2, 743.
104. “What Made You Stay?,” BBC Home Service broadcast. Recorded on 14 Apr. 1962; broadcast on 7 Sept. 1962. The Spoken Word: Sylvia Plath. British Library/National Sound Archives/BBC Audio Compilation (2010).
105. J, 668.
106. SP to Joan and Gerald Hughes, 9 May 1962. L2, 772.
107. SP to Helga Huws, 29 Mar. 1962. L2, 753.
108. SP to AP, 8 Apr. 1962. L2, 755.
109. According to Ted Hughes, the elm tree Plath wrote about was knocked down during a 1992 storm. Gail Crowther and Peter K. Steinberg, These Ghostly Archives: The Unearthing of Sylvia Plath (Croydon, UK: Fonthill, 2017), 56.
110. This image was originally a reflection of the speaker’s own face in the windowpane in several earlier drafts, held at SPC, Smith. (“In it am reflected, your face / Hung white & blank in my branches”; “my gilded image at the dawn hour.”)
111. SP to Howard Moss, 31 Aug. 1962. L2, 815. The New Yorker would initially reject it in late June but accept it in September.
112. SP to Ruth Fainlight and Alan Sillitoe, 16 Apr. 1962. L2, 762.
113. SP, draft 3b of “Elm.” 9.81, SPC, Smith.
114. Fainlight was intrigued by these connections, which she had never considered, when I pointed them out to her in 2016.
115. SP, draft 2b of “Elm.” 9.81, SPC, Smith. The line “as a woman with no children” has been excised in the draft and replaced with “like a childless woman.”
116. J, 668.
117. HC interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, May 2016, Cornwall.
118. Harriet Rosenstein interview with David Compton, 1973. 1.18, MSS 1489, Emory.
119. Elizabeth Sigmund and Gail Crowther, Sylvia Plath in Devon: A Year’s Turning (Croydon, UK: Fonthill, 2014), 19.
120. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, 1973. 4.10, MSS 1489, Emory.
121. Justine Picardie, “The Toxic Avenger,” Independent (30 Sept. 1995).
122. HC interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, May 2016, Cornwall.
123. Sigmund and Crowther, Sylvia Plath in Devon, 19.
124. Plath would send them a handmade quilt from Mytholmroyd for their wedding present.
125. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, 1973. 4.10, MSS 1489, Emory.
126. Harriet Rosenstein interview with David Compton, 1973. 1.18, MSS 1489, Emory.
127. HC interview with David Compton, May 2016, Bowdoinham, Maine.
128. Ibid.
129. SP to AP, 25 Apr. 1962. L2, 764–66.
130. SP to AP, 21 Apr. 1962. L2, 763.
131. SP to AP, 25 Apr. 1962. L2, 765.
132. Ibid.
133. J, 670–71.
134. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Ruth Fainlight and Alan Sillitoe, 1970. 1.25, MSS 1489, Emory.
135. HC interview with Ruth Fainlight, May 2016, London.
136. Ruth Fainlight, “Jane and Sylvia,” Crossroads (Spring 2004): 8–19. 14.
137. HC interview with Ruth Fainlight, May 2016, London.
138. Ibid.
139. Fainlight, “Jane and Sylvia,” 14.
140. TH, notebook entry. Add MS 88918/128/1, BL.
141. HC interview with David Compton, May 2016, Bowdoinham, Maine.
142. TH to AP and WP, 1 May 1962. LTH, 196-97.
143. Sylvia Plath, “Oblongs,” New Statesman (18 May 1962), 724; review of Peter Hughes, The Emperor’s Oblong Pancake; Tomi Ungerer, The Three Robbers; Wanda Gág, The Funny Thing; Benjamin Spock, Dr. Spock Talks with Mothers; Elizabeth and Gerald Rose, The Big River; and Joan Cass and William Stobbs, The Cat Show.
144. SP to AP, 4 May 1962. L
2, 769.
145. TH to AP and WP, 1 May 1962. LTH, 196–97.
146. SP to Judith Jones, 5 May 1962. L2, 770.
147. TH to AP, 14 May 1962. Lilly.
148. It was not reviewed in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, or The Boston Globe.
149. J, 643.
150. SP to AP, 4 May 1962. L2, 769.
28. ERROR
1. CPTH, 1122.
2. TH to Ben Sonnenberg, 10 Oct. 1961. 1.1, MSS 924, Emory.
3. TH, draft of “Error.” Add MS 88918/1/2-8, BL.
4. Ibid.
5. TH, notebook entry, 11 Oct. 1961, p. 50. Add MS 88918/129/2, BL.
6. TH to Olwyn Hughes, summer 1962. Add MS 88948/1/2, BL. Ted’s remark echoes almost exactly what Assia told Nathaniel Tarn in July.
7. D. H. Lawrence, Selected Poetry, Keith Sagar, ed. (London: Penguin, 1972; 1986), 67.
8. TH to Olwyn Hughes, late summer 1962. LTH, 204.
9. TH to Anne Stevenson, autumn 1986. LTH, 519; 518.
10. TH, notebook entry, 29 Mar. 1960. Add MS 88918/129/2, BL.
11. CPTH, 1124.
12. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Winifred Davies, 1970. Courtesy of Kenneth Neville-Davies.
13. Hughes and Thom Gunn were coeditors, and they intended to include Nemerov, Bowers, Stafford, and Simpson. Hughes asked Alvarez for more suggestions. See LTH, 191.
14. TH to Nicholas Hughes, n.d., 1986. LTH, 512.
15. See HC, The Grief of Influence: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 52.
16. TH interview with Drue Heinz, “The Art of Poetry, LXXI,” Paris Review 134 (1995), in The Paris Review Interviews, III (London: Picador, 2008), 56–92. 76.
17. Gerald Hughes, Ted & I: A Brother’s Memoir (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2012), 165–66.
18. HC interview with Suzette Macedo, May 2016, London.
19. Susan Alliston, Poems and Journals 1960–1969 (Nottingham: Richard Hollis/Five Leaves, 2010), 87.
20. Richard Murphy, The Kick: A Memoir (London: Granta, 2002), 229.
21. Yehuda Koren and Eliat Negev, Lover of Unreason: Assia Wevill, Sylvia Plath’s Rival and Ted Hughes’s Doomed Love (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2007), 136.
22. HC interview with Suzette and Helder Macedo, May 2016, London.
23. Jillian Becker to Harriet Rosenstein, 21 Mar. 1974. Provided to HC by Jillian Becker.
24. EF interview with Mira Hamermesh, July 1999. EFP.
25. Koren and Negev, Lover of Unreason, 12.
26. Ibid., 18.
27. Ibid., 58.
28. William Trevor, Excursions in the Real World (London: Penguin, 1993), 116.
29. Koren and Negev, Lover of Unreason, 41.
30. Ibid., 53.
31. HC interview with Suzette and Helder Macedo, May 2016, London. Suzette told me it was their mutual friend, Marisa Martinelli, who had gotten Assia into advertising. Assia had been Martinelli’s secretary at another agency. Martinelli was struck by Assia’s intelligence, and she wrote her a recommendation letter that paved the way for her to work as a copywriter.
32. David Wevill said that Hughes and Plath “weren’t involved with the Group during the time I attended the meetings,” although archival evidence shows that Hughes contributed poems to Group meetings even in his absence. David Wevill email to HC, 13 Apr. 2016.
33. Koren and Negev, Lover of Unreason, 68.
34. Ibid., 69.
35. Ibid., 66.
36. Ibid., 85.
37. Ibid., 79.
38. Ibid., 74.
39. HC interview with Suzette and Helder Macedo, May 2016, London.
40. Assia Lipsey to Michael and Pat Mendelson, 21 May 1960. M1132, Nathaniel Tarn Papers, Stanford.
41. Koren and Negev, Lover of Unreason, 79.
42. David Wevill email to HC, 13 Apr. 2016.
43. The Plath poems included “All the Dead Dears,” “Black Rook in Rainy Weather,” “Miss Drake Proceeds to Supper,” and “Epitaph for Fire and Flower.” The Hughes poems included were “Thrushes,” “The Good Life,” “The Historian,” “Dick Straightup,” and “Crow Hill.” David Wevill had four poems, Lucas Myers three. Plath’s undergraduate college was listed incorrectly as Brown. Poetry from Cambridge 1958, Christopher Levenson, ed. (London: Fortune Press, 1958).
44. Trevor, Excursions, 117.
45. Koren and Negev, Lover of Unreason, 82.
46. SP to AP, 14 May 1962. L2, 773.
47. Koren and Negev, Lover of Unreason, 86.
48. HC interview with Suzette and Helder Macedo, May 2016, London.
49. Koren and Negev, Lover of Unreason, 88.
50. Anne Stevenson, Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath (London: Penguin, 1989; 1998), 243.
51. Koren and Negev, Lover of Unreason, 45.
52. Julia Matcham to Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, 17 Jan. 1987. William Sigmund Papers, Smith.
53. Nathaniel Tarn, 3 Apr. 1964, diary notes. M1132, Nathaniel Tarn Papers, Stanford.
54. Jillian Becker to Harriet Rosenstein, 5 Mar. 1974. Courtesy of Jillian Becker.
55. My account of this weekend relies on David Wevill’s firsthand account in Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev’s biography of Assia Wevill, Lover of Unreason (2006), pp. 87–90. Koren and Negev are the only biographers to whom Wevill has spoken extensively about Assia.
56. CPTH, 1146.
57. Jonathan Bate, Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), 186–87.
58. J, 301.
59. HC interview with Suzette and Helder Macedo, May 2016, London.
60. EF interview with Suzette and Helder Macedo, Oct. 1999. EFP.
61. CPTH, 1145. Hughes has been much criticized for lacing this poem with lines that demonize Assia (“slightly filthy with erotic mystery,” “gaze of a demon,” etc.), and for indulging in gratuitous Holocaust imagery.
62. CPTH, 1145.
63. This detail was provided to Koren and Negev by David Wevill, as well as by Suzette Macedo to Anne Stevenson. Suzette said Assia told her the story herself.
64. Koren and Negev, Lover of Unreason, 87.
65. Stevenson, Bitter Fame, 242–43.
66. Koren and Negev, Lover of Unreason, 87.
67. Ibid., 90.
68. HC interview with Suzette and Helder Macedo, May 2016, London.
69. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Suzette Macedo, 1973. 2.18, MSS 1489, Emory.
70. HC interview with Suzette and Helder Macedo, May 2016, London.
71. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Suzette Macedo, 1973. 2.18, MSS 1489, Emory.
72. HC interview with Suzette and Helder Macedo, May 2016, London.
73. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 11 July 1962. L2, 791.
74. Koren and Negev, Lover of Unreason, 90.
75. HC interview with Suzette and Helder Macedo, May 2016, London.
76. Nathaniel Tarn, 19 July 1962, diary notes. M1132, Nathaniel Tarn Papers, Stanford.
77. TH, draft of “The Minotaur, 2.” Add MS 88918/1/2–8, BL.
78. TH to Bill and Dido Merwin, 24 May 1962. LTH, 199.
79. TH to Olwyn Hughes, late summer 1962. LTH, 203–204.
80. TH to Bill and Dido Merwin, 24 May 1962. LTH, 199. He mentioned the play to Luke Myers on 2 July, calling it “a semi-dramatic sort of up-to-date Bawdry Embraced.”
81. Assia Wevill to SP, 22 May 1962. Add MS 88612, BL.
82. SP to AP, 7 June 1962. L2, 777.
83. A. Alvarez, The Savage God: A Study of Suicide (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971; New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), 28.
84. HC interview with Al and Anne Alvarez, May 2016, London.
Al and Anne remembered her as “very beautiful” but a “femme fatale.” “We saw a lot of them after” Plath’s death, Anne remembered. She and Assia would occasionally go out for drinks; she remembered Assia trying to weaken her confidence when she began her psychotherapy training. “She had a way of undermining whatever you were.”
85. David Wevill email to HC, 29 Sept. 2016.
86. Nathaniel Tarn, 22 June 1963, diary notes. M1132, Nathaniel Tarn Papers, Stanford.
87. Ibid., 3 Apr. 1964.
88. Bate, Ted Hughes, 190.
89. SP to AP, 7 June 1962. L2, 776.
90. SP to Joan and Gerald Hughes, 10 June 1962. L2, 780.
91. SP to AP, 7 June 1962. L2, 776.
92. Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices was broadcast on the BBC’s Third Programme on 19 Aug. 1962 and rebroadcast on 13 Sept. 1962. Plath recorded her talk, “Sylvia Plath Speaks on a Poet’s View of Novel Writing,” for The World of Books on 26 June 1962 (broadcast 7 July 1962, on the BBC Home Service; rebroadcast on 13 July 1962). This talk was later published in JP as “A Comparison.”
93. Eric Walter White to TH, 19 Aug. 1962. 116.9, MSS 644, Emory.
94. SP to AP, 7 June 1962. L2, 778.
95. SP to Alfred Fisher, 11 June 1962. L2, 781.
96. SP to Gerald and Joan Hughes, 10 June 1962. L2, 780.
97. J, 656.
98. SP to Marvin and Kathy Kane, 9 June 1962. L2, 778.
99. SP to Olwyn Hughes, 18 June 1962. L2, 786.
100. HC interview with David Compton, May 2016, Bowdoinham, Maine.
101. SP to Olwyn Hughes, 18 June 1962. L2, 786.
102. Ibid., L2, 785.
103. SP to AP, 15 June 1962. L2, 784.
104. SP to Olwyn Hughes, 18 June 1962. L2, 786.
105. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 11 July 1962. L2, 791; 794.
106. TH, notebook entry, June 1962. Add MS 88918/129/2, BL.
107. Ibid.
29. I FEEL ALL I FEEL>
1. SP to Olwyn Hughes, 18 June 1962. L2, 786.
2. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Winifred Davies, 8 Aug. 1970. Courtesy of Kenneth Neville-Davies.
3. AP to WP, 17 July 1962. Lilly.
4. SP to Marvin and Kathy Kane, 30 June 1962. L2, 789.
5. HC interview with Suzette Macedo, May 2016, London.