6. Nathaniel Tarn, 19 July 1962, diary notes. M1132, Nathaniel Tarn Papers, Stanford.
7. William Trevor, Excursions in the Real World (London: Penguin, 1993), 118.
8. Ibid., 117.
9. Ibid.
10. Jonathan Bate notes that Capriccio, which contained “Chlorophyl,” was published in very limited quantities and was the one Trevor “is most unlikely to have known.” Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), 188.
11. HC interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, May 2016, Cornwall.
12. J, 670.
13. J, 672.
14. J, 673.
15. J, 671.
16. Anne Stevenson, Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath (London: Penguin, 1989), 249.
17. Gail Crowther and Peter K. Steinberg, These Ghostly Archives: The Unearthing of Sylvia Plath (Croydon, UK: Fonthill, 2017), 33.
18. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 11 July 1962. L2, 791.
19. TH to Gerald Hughes, 2 July 1962. 1.3, MS 854, Emory.
20. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Winifred Davies, 1970. Courtesy of Kenneth Neville-Davies.
21. The poem was first titled “Mannequin”; its penultimate title was “The Other One.” 12.188, SPC, Smith.
22. 12.188, SPC, Smith.
23. HC interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, May 2016, Cornwall.
24. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, 1973. 4.10, MSS 1489, Emory.
25. Elizabeth Sigmund and Gail Crowther, Sylvia Plath in Devon: A Year’s Turning (Croydon, UK: Fonthill, 2012), 75.
26. AP, 1962 travel diary. 6.39, Hornbake Library, Frances McCullough Papers, University of Maryland.
27. Ibid.
28. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 11 July 1962. L2, 791–92.
29. AP, 1962 travel diary. 6.39, Hornbake Library, Frances McCullough Papers, University of Maryland.
30. EF interview with Keith Sagar, Jan. 2000. EFP.
31. EF interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, Sept. 1999. EFP.
32. HC interview with Suzette and Helder Macedo, May 2016, London.
33. Ibid.
34. Video footage of Aurelia Plath, Nov. 1986, in Poets of New England: Sylvia Plath and the Myth of the Monstrous Mother. University of Massachusetts, Amherst, AIMS Video Services. Courtesy of Richard Larschan. 2001.
35. AP, 1962 travel diary. 6.39, Hornbake Library, Frances McCullough Papers, University of Maryland.
36. EF interview with Suzette Macedo, Oct. 1999. EFP.
37. TH to Elizabeth and David Compton, summer 1963. Add MS 88612, BL.
38. AP, 1962 travel diary. Frances McCullough Papers, University of Maryland.
39. Elizabeth Sigmund, “I Realized Sylvia Knew About Assia’s Pregnancy,” Guardian (22 Apr. 1999). G2, 4.
40. SP to Marvin and Kathy Kane, 15 July 1962. L2, 795.
41. HC interview with David Compton, May 2016, Bowdoinham, Maine.
42. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 11 July, 1962. L2, 790–95.
43. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, 1973. 4.10, MSS 1489, Emory.
44. Harriet Rosenstein interview with David Compton, 1973. 1.18, MSS 1489, Emory.
45. HC interview with David Compton, May 2016, Bowdoinham, Maine; Harriet Rosenstein interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, 1973. 4.10, MSS 1489, Emory.
46. HC interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, May 2016, London.
47. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Winifred Davies, 8 Aug. 1970. Courtesy of Kenneth Neville-Davies.
48. SP to Clarissa Roche, 11 July 1962. L2, 789–90.
49. EF interview with Suzette Macedo, Oct. 1999. EFP.
50. Ibid.
51. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Edward Lucie-Smith, 1970. 2.17, MSS 1489, Emory.
52. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Helder Macedo, 1973. 2.18, MSS 1489, Emory.
53. HC interview with Suzette Macedo, May 2016, London.
54. AP, 1962 travel diary. Courtesy of Richard Larschan.
55. Ibid.
56. TH to Olwyn Hughes, summer 1962. Add MS 88948/1/2, BL.
57. Ibid.
58. Nathaniel Tarn, 19 July 1962, diary notes. M1132, Nathaniel Tarn Papers, Stanford.
59. Bate, Ted Hughes, 190.
60. Ibid.
61. EF interview with Suzette Macedo, Oct. 1999. EFP.
62. Jillian Becker, Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath (New York: St. Martin’s, 2002), 35.
63. Nathaniel Tarn, 19 July 1962, diary notes. M1132, Nathaniel Tarn Papers, Stanford.
64. A. Alvarez, The Savage God: A Study of Suicide (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971; New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), 29.
65. Ibid., 33–34.
66. Suzette Macedo to Harriet Rosenstein, c. 1973. 2.18, MSS 1489, Emory.
67. Nathaniel Tarn, 28 July 1962, diary notes. M1132, Nathaniel Tarn Papers, Stanford.
68. The poems published in the column, from top to bottom, were Plath’s “Finisterre,” Keith Barnes’s “The Madman,” Hughes’s “Mountains,” David Wevill’s “Clean Break,” D. J. Enright’s “Virtue of a Vice,” and David Wagner’s “Watching.” “New Poems,” Observer (5 Aug. 1962), 14.
69. AP to WP, 17 July 1962. Lilly.
70. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Winifred Davies, 8 Aug. 1970. Courtesy of Kenneth Neville-Davies.
71. Ibid.
72. Stevenson, Bitter Fame, 252.
73. Brian Cox, “Ted Hughes (1930–1998): A Personal Retrospect,” Hudson Review 52.1 (Spring 1999): 29–43. 36.
74. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 20 July 1962. L2, 797.
75. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 30 July 1962. L2, 803.
76. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 20 July 1962. L2, 797–98.
77. Ibid., L2, 798.
78. Ibid., L2, 799.
79. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 30 July 1962. L2, 803.
80. Ibid., L2, 804.
81. Ibid., L2, 804–805.
82. Ibid., L2, 805–806.
83. Ibid., L2, 805.
84. Ibid., L2, 807.
85. Ibid., L2, 806–807.
86. SP to Al Alvarez, 21 July 1962. L2, 800.
87. The anthology was published by Penguin in April.
88. Al Alvarez to SP, 24 July 1962. 17.21, SPC, Smith.
89. Plath had won this contest in 1962. The other judges were George Hartley and John Press.
90. SP to Richard Murphy, 21 July 1962. L2, 801.
91. HC interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, May 2016, Cornwall.
92. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Winifred Davies, 8 Aug. 1970. Courtesy of Kenneth Neville-Davies.
93. Clarissa Roche, “Sylvia Plath: Vignettes from England,” Sylvia Plath: The Woman and the Work, Edward Butscher, ed. (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1977), 89.
94. SP to AP, 27 Aug. 1962. L2, 814.
95. LH, 458.
30. BUT NOT THE END
1. JP, 11.
2. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Al Alvarez, 1970. 1.2, MSS 1489, Emory.
3. SP to AP, 17 Aug. 1962. L2, 810.
4. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Marvin Kane, 1973-74. 2.8, MSS 1489, Emory.
5. OHP to AP, 25 Aug. 1962. Lilly.
6. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 22 Sept. 1962. L2, 828.
7. Ibid.
8. SP to OHP, 29 Sept. 1962. L2, 842.
9. SP to Richard Murphy, 17 Aug. 1962. L2, 811.
10. Peter Davison to Judith Flanders, 22 Oct. 1987. 1.7, Houghton Mifflin Papers, Smith.
11. Peter Davison to Judith Flanders, 28 Oct. 1987. 1.7, Houghton Mifflin Papers, Smith.
12. Andrew Wilson, Mad Girl’s Love
Song (New York: Scribner, 2013), 310.
13. Peter Davison to Judith Flanders, 22 Oct. 1987. 1.7, Houghton Mifflin Papers, Smith. Davison recalls in this letter that Brinnin learned Plath had crashed the car before their arrival.
14. TH to Anne Stevenson, autumn 1986. LTH, 519.
15. SP to AP, 27 Aug. 1962. L2, 813–14.
16. Ibid.
17. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, 1973. 4.10, MSS 1489, Emory.
18. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Suzette Macedo, 1973. 2.18, MSS 1489, Emory.
19. Ibid.
20. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Clarissa Roche, 1973. 3.14, MSS 1489, Emory.
21. Harriet Rosenstein interview with David Compton, 1973. 1.18, MSS 1489, Emory.
22. Ibid.
23. Elizabeth and David also found “morbid” newspaper clippings Plath had tacked onto her study wall. One was about a woman who had received a face-lift, another about a railway accident, and a third about a son who kept his dead mother’s body in his bedroom and tried to bring her back to life with electric shocks. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, 1973. 4.10, MSS 1489, Emory.
24. SP to George MacBeth, 15 Aug. 1962. L2, 809.
25. SP to AP, 27 Aug. 1962. L2, 813.
26. SP to Ruth Fainlight, 8 Sept. 1962. L2, 822.
27. SP to AP, 27 Aug. 1962. L2, 813.
28. The lesson took place at Lower Corscombe Farm, Corscombe Lane, on 27 Aug. Her riding teacher was Miss P. B. Redwood. L2, 813.
29. SP to AP, 27 Aug. 1962. L2, 813–15.
30. Plath and Hughes’s surviving British checkbook stubs for 1962 run from 30 June to 5 Sept. Withdrawals in Hughes’s handwriting, or labeled “Ted”—usually for £10, £15, or £20—are recorded on 2 July, 9 July, 18 July, 21 July, 10 Aug., 15 Aug., 18 Aug., 27 Aug., and 31 Aug., though the mid-August withdrawal would have paid for their train fare to London to stay with Mrs. Prouty. Between 30 June and 22 Aug., the amount of money in their checking account floated between £75 and £193. SP and TH, Lloyd’s Bank checkbook stubs, Jan. 1960–Jan. 1963. SPC, 19.5, Smith.
31. If Hughes outlived the term, the policy would be paid out as a pension in future years. SP and TH, Lloyd’s Bank checkbook stubs, Jan. 1960–Jan. 1963. SPC, 19.5, Smith.
32. SP to AP, 17 Aug. 1962. L2, 810.
33. SP to Anne Sexton, 21 Aug. 1962. L2, 812.
34. TH and SP to Eric and Edith White, 3 Sept. 1962. L2, 816. Hughes’s section is not transcribed. Original letter is held at McMaster University.
35. SP to Elizabeth Compton, 8 Sept. 1962. L2, 820.
36. Judith Jones to SP, 30 Aug. 1962. Alfred A. Knopf Papers, 362.2, HRC.
37. Marianne Moore to Judith Jones, 7 Apr. 1962. Alfred A. Knopf Papers, 359.10, HRC.
38. SP to Judith Jones, 5 Sept. 1962. L2, 818.
39. SP to William and Edith Hughes, 27 Feb. 1957. L2, 77.
40. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 4 Sept. 1962. L2, 816; 818.
41. Ibid., L2, 816–17.
42. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 22 Sept. 1962. L2, 830.
43. Ibid., L2, 827–32.
44. HC interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, May 2016, Cornwall.
45. SP to Elizabeth Compton, 8 Sept. 1962. L2, 820.
46. Richard Murphy, The Kick: A Memoir (London: Granta Books, 2002), 223.
47. Mark Wormald email to HC, 23 June 2017. Mark asked Richard Murphy questions on my behalf during a Skype interview on 23 June 2017.
48. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Richard Murphy, 1974. 2.25, MSS 1489, Emory.
49. Murphy, The Kick, 223.
50. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Richard Murphy, 1974. 2.25, MSS 1489, Emory.
51. TH to Olwyn Hughes, Sept. 1962. LTH, 208. Richard Murphy’s father was the last British mayor of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Murphy himself had attended Oxford.
52. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Richard Murphy, 1974. 2.25, MSS 1489, Emory.
53. Ibid.
54. Murphy, The Kick, 225.
55. Anne Stevenson, Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath (London: Penguin, 1990), 351.
56. Murphy, The Kick, 224–26.
57. HC interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, May 2016, Cornwall.
58. HC conversation with Robert Jocelyn, earl of Roden, 10 Sept. 2015, Sheffield, UK.
59. Jack Sweeney had known Cooke when he had studied at Harvard before moving to Ireland in 1954. Sweeney facilitated an introduction between the Hugheses and Cooke, who was a great admirer of Hughes’s poetry. Barrie told Mark Wormald that he and his wife, Harriet, had met the Hugheses in London in 1960. (Mark Wormald email to HC, 17 June 2017.) In May 1961, Cooke wrote to Sweeney that Plath and Hughes had written to say they were “definitely” coming to Ireland that summer. Cooke and Hughes were contemplating collaborating on a book of poems and drawings and had agreed to put out a joint Christmas card in 1962. The correspondence between Cooke and Sweeney is held in the Jack and Máire Sweeney Papers, UCD.
60. Barrie Cooke, “With Ted Hughes,” The Epic Poise: A Celebration of Ted Hughes, Nick Gammage, ed. (London: Faber and Faber, 1999), 214.
61. For more details about this trip and Hughes’s relationship with Ireland, see Mark Wormald, “Irishwards: Ted Hughes, Freedom and Flow,” Ted Hughes Society Journal 6.2 (2017): 58–77.
62. Barrie Cooke to Jack Sweeney, c. mid-Oct. 1962. LA52/69, Jack and Máire Sweeney Papers, UCD.
63. TH to Nicholas Hughes, 20 Feb. 1998. LTH, 710.
64. Barrie Cooke to Jack Sweeney, 25 Apr. 1969. LA52/69, Jack and Máire Sweeney Papers, UCD.
65. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Richard Murphy, 1974. 2. 25, MSS 1489, Emory.
66. Murphy, The Kick, 227.
67. SP to Richard Murphy, 21 Sept. 1962. L2, 825–26.
68. SP to AP, 23 Sept. 1962. L2, 833. The nanny, Sheena Cartwright, lived in South Devon.
69. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Anthony Thwaite, 1973. 4.17, MSS 1489, Emory; Murphy, The Kick, 266.
70. SP to Kathy Kane, 21 Sept. 1962. L2, 825.
71. SP to AP, 24 Sept. 1962. L2, 836.
72. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Suzette Macedo, 1973. 2.18, MSS 1489, Emory.
73. Dr. Beuscher replied that Plath’s “previous distress letter” had not reached her “at once,” as she had been away on a month’s vacation.
74. Dr. Ruth Beuscher to SP, 17 Sept. 1962. 17.24 SPC, Smith.
75. Though Dr. Francis de Marneffe told me that he thought there had been phone calls between the two, Plath makes no mention of a phone call in any of her letters to Dr. Beuscher. Beuscher’s later claim to a biographer (HM) that she told Plath to get help in England does not appear in her surviving letters.
76. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 22 Sept. 1962. L2, 829–30.
77. Ibid., 828.
78. SP, 21 Sept. 1962. Letts Royal Office Tablet Diary. 19.2, SPC, Smith.
79. SP to AP, 23 Sept. 1962. L2, 833.
80. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 22 Sept. 1962. L2, 831–32.
81. Winifred Davies to AP, 22 Sept. 1962. Lilly.
82. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Nancy Axworthy, 1973. 1.5, MSS 1489, Emory.
83. TH to Olwyn Hughes, late summer 1962. LTH, 203–206.
84. TH to Olwyn Hughes, Sept. 1962. LTH, 208.
85. TH to Olwyn Hughes, late summer 1962. LTH, 203.
86. TH to Olwyn Hughes, May–June 1958. Add MS 88948/1/1, BL.
87. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Suzette Macedo, 1973. 2.18, MSS 1489, Emory.
88. SP to AP, 26 Sept. 1962. L2, 837.
89. Ibid.
90. Suzette Macedo to Harriet Rosenstein, c. 1973. 2.18, MSS 1489, Emory.
91. Anne Stevenson mist
akenly dates Plath’s first visit to Alvarez as 29–30 Oct. Bitter Fame, 273–74.
92. Alvarez lived then at 74A Fellows Road, London NW3. The description of his flat comes from Linda Gates, “Sylvia Plath and I,” Plath Profiles 5 (2012): 106–108.
93. A. Alvarez, The Savage God: A Study of Suicide (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971; New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), 29–30.
94. A. Alvarez, “Poetry of Loneliness,” Observer (14 June 1964), 26. See also A. Alvarez, “Poetry in Extremis,” Observer (14 Mar. 1965), 26. Plath and Sexton were not included in the first 1962 edition. They were added in the revised 1966 edition.
95. SP’s copy of The New Poetry (1962). Bonham’s catalog for Plath and Hughes auction, 21 Mar. 2018.
96. Alvarez, Savage God, 40.
97. HC interview with Daniel Huws, May 2016, London.
98. As recounted in Dennis O’Driscoll, Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); Michael Longley, in response to a question from HC about the significance of Alvarez’s anthology in Northern Ireland in the early ’60s. “Room to Rhyme: Poetry in Crisis 1968–1998” conference, Belfast, Northern Ireland, May 2018.
99. TH to Olwyn Hughes, June 1962. LTH, 200.
100. Book 1 featured Lawrence Durrell, Elizabeth Jennings, and R. S. Thomas; Book 2 featured Kingsley Amis, Dom Moraes, and Peter Porter. Will Wooten, The Alvarez Generation (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015), 87.
101. Wooten, Alvarez Generation, 67. Harold Rosenberg, The Tradition of the New (New York: Horizon Press, 1959), 26.
102. The New Poetry, A. Alvarez, ed. (London: Penguin, 1962; 1966), 29.
103. Ibid., 25; 27.
104. Ibid., 26.
105. Peter Porter, “Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath: A Bystander’s Recollection,” Best Australian Essays 2001, Peter Craven, ed. (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2001), 396–412, 399.
106. Philip Hobsbaum, review of Ted Hughes’s Wodwo. BBC Third Programme, 14 July 1967.
107. Wooten, Alvarez Generation, 23–24.
108. Ibid., 25.
109. While he had been present for the first meeting in Oct. 1955 in Hobsbaum’s Edgware Road flat, his departure from England in 1957 meant that he missed two years of meetings. Yet Hughes sent Hobsbaum poems for discussion even when he did not attend meetings. Wooten, Alvarez Generation, 23.
110. HC interview with Al Alvarez, May 2016, London.
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