Red Comet

by Heather Clark

  74. SP to OHP, 22 Jan. 1963. L2, 960.

  75. “ ‘Tortoise’ Thaw Is Creeping On,” Observer (27 Jan. 1963), 1.

  76. HC interview with Suzette and Helder Macedo, May 2016, London.

  77. “New Comment,” recorded with George MacBeth. Recorded and broadcast 10 Jan. 1963.

  78. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Dr. John Horder, 1970–71. 2.2, MSS 1489, Emory.

  79. SP to Paul and Clarissa Roche, c. 9 Jan. 1963. L2, 956.

  80. SP to AP, 16 Jan. 1963. L2, 957.

  81. SP to Paul and Clarissa Roche, c. 9 Jan. 1963. L2, 956.

  82. SP to AP, 16 Jan. 1963. L2, 959.

  83. Ibid., L2, 957.

  84. OHP to SP, 25 Jan. 1963. 17.43, SPC, Smith.

  85. HC interview with Suzette and Helder Macedo, May 2016, London.

  86. Suzette Macedo told me she believes that Plath was never as close to the Beckers as Jillian later implied, while Jillian has suggested that the friendship between Suzette and Plath had cooled by early February. HC interview with Suzette Macedo, May 2016, London.

  87. Jillian Becker, Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003), 27–28.

  88. Jillian Becker to Harriet Rosenstein, 18 July 1974. Provided by Jillian Becker.

  89. Becker, Giving Up, 30.

  90. Richard Murphy, The Kick: A Memoir (London: Granta Books, 2002), 229–30.

  91. Nathaniel Tarn, 3 Apr. 1964, diary notes. M1132, Nathaniel Tarn Papers, Stanford.

  92. Anne Stevenson interview with Suzette Macedo, 10 June 1987. 2.24, Houghton Mifflin Papers, Smith.

  93. Murphy, The Kick, 229.

  94. SP to AP, 16 Jan. 1963. L2, 958.

  95. Ruth Fainlight to SP, 12 Jan. 1963. 17.28, SPC, Smith. Fainlight mentions in this letter that she and Alan Sillitoe had nearly bought the property at 30 Fitzroy Road when Plath and Hughes were living in Chalcot Square. “I’ve often regretted it—now especially.”

  96. HC interview with Ruth Fainlight, May 2016, London.

  97. LH, 496–97.

  98. SP to AP, 16 Jan. 1963. L2, 958.

  99. SP to Marcia Brown Plumer, 4 Feb. 1963. L2, 965.

  100. Plath wrote that he came by to take the children to the zoo on 12 and 27 Dec. and 3 Jan., and that he came at seven p.m. on 5 Jan.

  101. TH to Gerald Hughes, c. Dec. 1962. LTH, 209–10.

  102. TH to Bill and Dido Merwin, 21 Jan. 1963. 1.23, MSS 866, Emory.

  103. TH, notebook entry, c. 1962–63. Add MS 88918/129/3, BL.

  104. TH, “Introduction” in Susan Alliston, Susan Alliston: Poems and Journals 1960–1969 (Nottingham: Richard Hollis/Five Leaves), 13.

  105. SP to AP, 18 Oct. 1962. L2, 865.

  106. Alliston, Poems and Journals, 82–83.

  107. TH, “Difficulties of a Bridegroom.” 122.7, MSS 644, Emory.

  108. TH to Olwyn Hughes, 10 Feb. 1963. LTH, 212–13.

  109. Alliston, Poems and Journals, 86.

  110. Ibid., 84; 86.

  111. HC phone interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, 27 May 2016.

  112. Ibid.

  113. HC interview with Daniel Huws, May 2016, London.

  114. Peter Hall to TH, 27 Sept. 1965. LTH, 251.

  115. CPTH, 1128.

  116. Al Alvarez, 27 Jan. 1963 broadcast of The Critics. BBC Home Service. Add MS 88562/2, BL.

  117. Suzette and Helder Macedo also recalled the ridiculous maiden-chorus, which they imitated during our interview.

  118. TH, “Trial,” section 15. Add MS 88993/1/1, BL.

  119. Anon., “Under the Skin,” Times Literary Supplement (25 Jan. 1963), 53.

  120. Robert Taubman, “Anti-heroes,” New Statesman (25 Jan. 1963), 127–28.

  121. Anthony Burgess, “Transatlantic Englishmen: New Novels,” Observer (27 Jan. 1963), 22.

  122. Laurence Lerner, “New Novels,” Listener (31 Jan. 1963): 215.

  123. The novel was also reviewed in Jan. and Feb. 1963 in the Sunday Telegraph, Time & Tide, The Guardian, Sphere, the Glasgow Herald, the Scotsman, Evening Times (Glasgow), Derbyshire Times, Express & Star, The Times of London, The Spectator, the Oxford Mail, and the Birmingham Post. See Peter K. Steinberg’s comprehensive list of Plath reviews at http://www.sylviaplath.info for specific dates.

  124. Trevor Thomas, “Sylvia Plath: Last Encounters.” 1.6, MSS 1318, Emory.

  125. The Ha-Ha was published on 18 Oct. 1961, two months after Plath finished The Bell Jar.

  126. This is according to Jillian Becker. Hughes, however, remembered that she was “halfway through The Rack,” about a group of tuberculosis patients in a sanatorium, when she died. TH to AP, Jan. 1975. 5.18, MSS 644, Emory. According to Hughes, Plath had already read The Rack in early 1960. She may have been rereading it, or he may have confused it with Dawson’s The Ha-Ha.

  127. Dr. Francis de Marneffe, deposition (1987 Bell Jar trial). Jane Anderson v. AVCO Embassy Pictures Corp. et al., in the United States District Court, District of Massachusetts, Civil Action no. 82-0752-K. Jane V. Anderson Papers, Series IV, Smith.

  128. TH, “Trial,” sections 16, 13, and 14. Add MS 88993/1/1, BL.

  34. WHAT IS THE REMEDY?

  1. Judith Jones to SP, 28 Dec. 1962. 17.20 SPC, Smith.

  2. Elizabeth Lawrence to SP, 16 Jan. 1963. 17.31, SPC, Smith.

  3. Ibid.

  4. EF interview with David Ross, Oct. 1999. EFP.

  5. SP, Lloyd’s Bank checkbook stubs, Jan. 1960–Jan. 1963. 19.5, SPC, Smith.

  6. See footnote 2 in L2, 919. Mrs. Prouty sent Plath a check in her 25 Jan. letter. After Plath’s death, Aurelia wrote angrily of the “$3000 from us you kept” in the margin of Hughes’s May 13, 1963 letter to her (Lilly).

  7. HC phone interview with Jillian Becker, 18 Apr. 2017.

  8. Linda Gates, “Sylvia Plath and I,” Plath Profiles 5 (Fall 2012): 106–108. 107.

  9. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Paul Roche, 1973. 3.14, MSS 1489, Emory.

  10. Claire Tomalin, “Everything but the Truth,” Independent (8 Oct. 1994).

  11. Jeremy Gavron, A Woman on the Edge of Time (New York: The Experiment, 2016), 246.

  12. This figure comes from the UK Office for National Statistics. Quoted in Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick, Reclaiming Assia Wevill: Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and the Literary Imagination (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2019), 108–109.

  13. Jane Lewis, Women in Britain Since 1945 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 45.

  14. HC interview with Lorna Secker-Walker, June 2017, London.

  15. EF interview with Fay Weldon, June 1999. EFP.

  16. TH, “Trial,” section 34. Add MS 88993/1/1, BL.

  17. Plath and Hughes’s copy of The Golden Notebook is at the Morgan Library in Manhattan.

  18. Suzette Macedo email to HC, 30 Sept. 2016. In 1964, Lessing would buy a cottage, Tor Down, twenty minutes away from Court Green. She and Suzette often visited Ted, Assia, and Olwyn at Court Green. Olwyn at one point lived in Lessing’s basement flat at Mornington Crescent.

  19. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Helder Macedo, 1973. 2. 18, MSS 1489, Emory.

  20. HC phone interview with Jillian Becker, 18 Apr. 2017.

  21. A. Alvarez, The Savage God: A Study of Suicide (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971; New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), 52.

  22. OHP to SP, 25 Jan. 1963. 17.43, SPC, Smith.

  23. SP to OHP, 22 Jan. 1963. L2, 960–62. Plath referred to her au pair as a “German girl.”

  24. OHP to SP, 25 Jan. 1963. 17.43, SPC, Smith.

  25. Philip French to SP, 1 Feb. 1963. BBC Written Archives. French sent her a contract to record on 2, 9, and 16 May, which Plath signed and returned. See Peter K. Steinberg’s 1
8 Feb. 2016 blog post, “After Sylvia Plath,” on http://www.sylviaplath.info.

  26. EF interview with Al Alvarez, July 1999. EFP.

  27. EF interview with Karl Miller, n.d., c. 1999–2000. EFP.

  28. EF interview with Al Alvarez, July 1999. EFP. Plath had sent Miller several poems on 9 Nov. 1962.

  29. Peter K. Steinberg and Karen Kukil note that according to Plath’s submissions list, she submitted “An Appearance,” “The Bee Meeting,” “Years,” “The Fearful,” “Mary’s Song,” “Stings,” “Letter in November,” “The Couriers,” “The Night Dances,” “Gulliver,” “Cut,” and “Berck-Plage” on 17 Jan. 1963. L2, 955.

  30. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Edward Lucie-Smith, 1970. 2.17, MSS 1489, Emory.

  31. Charles Osborne, Giving It Away: Memoirs of an Uncivil Servant (London: Secker & Warburg, 1986), 291. Quoted in William Wooten, “ ‘That Alchemical Power’: The Literary Relationship of A. Alvarez and Sylvia Plath,” Cambridge Quarterly (Sept. 2010): 217–36. 220.

  32. TH, “Full Moon and Little Frieda,” Observer (27 Jan. 1963), 23.

  33. “Sylvia Plath: Last Encounters,” unpublished memoir, privately printed, 1989. 1.6, MSS 1318, Emory.

  34. SP to Leonie Cohn, 28 Jan. 1963. L2, 962. Cohn accepted the piece but would request changes in a letter to Plath dated 8 Feb. 1963, saying the piece was rather “verbless.” Leonie Cohn to SP, 8 Feb. 1963. 17.25, SPC, Smith. It was read by June Tobin on the BBC in Aug. 1963.

  35. SP to AP, 4 Feb. 963. L2, 964. SP to Elizabeth Compton, 4 Feb. 1963. 4.10, MSS 1489, Emory.

  36. SP, draft of “Sheep in Fog.” 12.222, SPC, Smith.

  37. Peter K. Steinberg suggests Roethke’s influence in his 29 Oct. 2013 blog post, “Sylvia Plath Collections: Theodore Roethke Papers,” http://www.sylviaplath.info.

  38. SP, “New Poems,” 13 Dec. 1962. 1.16, SPC, Smith.

  39. SP, draft of “Sheep in Fog.” 12.222, SPC, Smith.

  40. In a 1998 letter to William Scammell, Hughes said the poem also referred to his uncollected poem “Lines for a Newborn Baby.” He mentioned that Plath’s reference to the hare may have been based on a dinner of jugged hare that he prepared for friends, including Alvarez, who had told her about it. TH to William Scammell, 29 Apr. 1998. Add MS 88918/137, BL.

  41. Jillian Becker to Harriet Rosenstein, 16 July 1974. Provided by Jillian Becker.

  42. CPTH, 182.

  43. CPTH, 1119. Steven Axelrod maintains that the image came from a passage in King Lear that Plath had underlined in her edition of the play: “It is the stars / The stars above us, govern our conditions” (4.4.34–37). Sylvia Plath: The Wound and the Cure of Words (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 75.

  44. TH, notebook entry, Feb. 1963. (The entry begins “Last Sunday 3 Feb”). Add MS 88918/129/2, BL.

  45. SP to AP, 4 Feb. 1963. L2, 964.

  46. SP to Marcia Brown Plumer, 4 Feb. 1963. L2, 964–65.

  47. This letter has not survived. It is quoted in HM, 43.

  48. SP to Elizabeth Compton, 4 Feb. 1963. 4.10, MSS 1489, Emory.

  49. Michael Carey to SP, 28 Jan. 1963. 17.26, SPC, Smith.

  50. SP to Michael Carey, 4 Feb. 1963. L2, 966.

  51. “Big Thaw Brings Biggest Stoppage,” Observer (10 Feb. 1963).

  52. HC interview with Ruth Fainlight, May 2016, London.

  53. Susan Alliston Moore to SP, 4 Feb. 1963. 17.36, SPC, Smith.

  54. Dr. John Horder to Harriet Rosenstein, 1970–71. 2.2, MSS 1489, Emory.

  55. SP to Dr. Ruth Beuscher, 4 Feb. 1963. L2, 967–69.

  56. HM, 40.

  57. Dr. Ruth Barnhouse to Linda Wagner-Martin, 3 Dec. 1985. Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse Papers, Smith.

  58. Anne Stevenson interview with Jillian Becker, 10 July 1987. 2.24, Houghton Mifflin Papers, Smith.

  59. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Nancy Axworthy, 1973. 1.5, MSS 1489, Emory.

  60. Anne Stevenson interview with Jillian Becker, 10 July 1987. 2.24, Houghton Mifflin Papers, Smith.

  61. Kenneth Neville-Davies email to HC, 21 Oct. 2016.

  62. Kenneth Neville-Davies email to Peter Steinberg, 8 Feb. 2016. Quoted with permission.

  63. TH, notebook entry, Feb. 1963. Add MS 88918/129/2, BL.

  64. SP, draft of “Edge.” 8.77, SPC, Smith.

  65. Ibid.

  66. Helen Vendler, Coming of Age as a Poet: Hilton, Keats, Eliot, Plath (Cambridge; Harvard University Press, 2003), 146.

  67. Jillian Becker, Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), 36–37.

  68. Trask appeared as a Classical heroine dressed in a toga on a medal prominently displayed in the Yaddo mansion. See also Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath’s Art of the Visual, Kathleen Connors and Sally Bayley, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 134.

  69. J, 359.

  70. LH, 36.

  71. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, V.ii.238–41. Quoted in Judith Kroll, Chapters in a Mythology: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath (New York: Harper & Row, 1976; Gloucestershire: Sutton, 2007), 153.

  72. D. H. Lawrence, The Complete Poems (London: Heinemann, 1957). SP’s library, 825P696L, Smith.

  73. Kroll, Chapters in a Mythology, 151.

  74. Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems of Sara Teasdale (Digireads.com Publishing, 2012), 85.

  75. Robert Graves, The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, 2nd ed. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1948; 1975), 446.

  76. See HC, The Grief of Influence, for more details about these poems’ influence on “Edge.”

  77. W. B. Yeats, Collected Poems, Richard Finneran, ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 72–73.

  35. THE DARK CEILING

  1. John Richardson to SP, 7 Feb. 1963. 17.45, SPC, Smith. I am grateful to Gail Crowther for confirming Richardson’s presence in London in 1963.

  2. See Robin Peel, Writing Back: Sylvia Plath and Cold War Politics (Vancouver: Fairleigh Dickinson Press, 2002), 250, for a detailed account of the events recorded in this letter.

  3. Leonie Cohn to SP, 8 Feb. 1963. 17.25, SPC, Smith. Plath probably received this letter if it was posted on the eighth; her own letter to Hughes, also mailed on the eighth, had arrived on the same day she posted it.

  4. TH, notebook entry, Feb. 1963. Add MS 88918/129/2, BL.

  5. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Lorna and David Secker-Walker, 1970. 4.7, MSS 1489, Emory.

  6. HC interview with Lorna Secker-Walker, June 2017, London.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Jillian Becker to Harriet Rosenstein, 28 May 1974. 1.8, MSS 1489, Emory.

  9. TH, notebook entry, Feb. 1963. Add MS 88918/129/2, BL.

  10. CPTH, 1154–55.

  11. TH to AP, 12 Jan. 1975. 16.3, MSS 644, Emory.

  12. Dan Carrier, “Obituary: Dr John Horder, ‘father of modern general practice’ who excelled as a pianist and artist,” Camden New Journal (14 June 2012). Dr. Horder went on to become the first British doctor to be “appointed as a consultant to the World Health Organization.”

  13. HC interview with Lorna Secker-Walker, June 2017, London.

  14. Ali Haggett, Desperate Housewives: Neuroses and the Domestic Environment, 1945–1970 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012), 102. Such practice was typical of the time in Britain, where there existed, according to Haggett, “a more informal and unofficial practice of supportive therapy that took place during regular surgery consultations.”

  15. Dr. John Horder told Elizabeth Hinchcliffe he “specifically” prescribed Plath Parnate. Elizabeth Hinchcliffe email to HC, 5 Jan. 2017. He told Harriet Rosenstein, however, that he prescribed Plath Nardil.

  16. HM, 46; SP, 5 Jan. 1963. 1962–63 Letts Royal Office Tablet Diary. 19.2, SPC, Smith.

 
17. Haggett, Desperate Housewives, 98–99.

  18. TH, draft introduction to “Sylvia Plath and Her Journals,” Grand Street 1.3 (Spring 1982): 86-99. 143.3, MSS 644, Emory. Hughes did not include this passage in the published version.

  19. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Dr. John Horder, 1970–71. 2.2, MSS 1489, Emory.

  20. HM, 45. Hinchcliffe interviewed Dr. Horder for her biography in the 1970s.

  21. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Catherine Frankfort, 1970–71. 1.27, MSS 1489, Emory.

  22. HC interview with Lorna Secker-Walker, June 2017, London.

  23. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Jillian Becker, 1973. 1.8, MSS 1489, Emory.

  24. Jillian Becker email to HC, 19 Apr. 2017.

  25. Jillian Becker, Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), 3.

  26. Jillian Becker, “Chronology,” c. 1974. 1.8, MSS 1489, Emory.

  27. Jillian Becker to Harriet Rosenstein, 5 Mar. 1974. 1.8, MSS 1489, Emory.

  28. Becker, Giving Up, 5–6.

  29. HC interview with Suzette and Helder Macedo, May 2016, London. Jillian barely mentions Suzette’s presence in Giving Up, except to call her “quite an artist with gossip,” p. 8.

  30. HC interview with Suzette and Helder Macedo, May 2016, London.

  31. Anne Stevenson interview with Suzette Macedo, 10 June 1987. 2.24, Houghton Mifflin Papers, Smith.

  32. Jillian Becker, “Chronology,” c. 1974. 1.8, MSS 1489, Emory.

  33. Becker, Giving Up, 8.

  34. HC phone interview with Jillian Becker, 18 Apr. 2017.

  35. Anne Stevenson interview with Suzette Macedo, 10 June 1987. 2.24, Houghton Mifflin Papers, Smith.

  36. Becker, Giving Up, 9.

  37. Jillian Becker, “Sylvia Plath: Jillian Becker on the Poet’s Last Days,” BBC News, Magazine, 10 Feb. 2013, http://www.bbc.com/​news/​magazine-21336933.

  38. Becker, Giving Up, 10–11. The program was probably The Poet’s Voice, broadcast on 24 Aug. 1962.

  39. HC phone interview with Jillian Becker, 18 Apr. 2017.

  40. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Jillian Becker, 1973. 1.8, MSS 1489, Emory. Anne Stevenson interview with Jillian Becker, 10 July 1987. 2.24, Houghton Mifflin Papers, Smith, and HC phone interview with Jillian Becker, 18 Apr. 2017.