Red Comet

by Heather Clark

  41. Jillian Becker to Harriet Rosenstein, 17 Apr. 1976. Provided to HC by Jillian Becker.

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

  43. Ibid.

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

  45. Becker, “Sylvia Plath: Jillian Becker on the Poet’s Last Days.”

  46. Jillian Becker to Harriet Rosenstein, 19 Feb. 1974. 1.8, MSS 1489, Emory.

  47. Becker, Giving Up, 14.

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

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

  50. The quotes come from Ted Hughes’s notes, which he showed to the scholar Judith Kroll when she visited Court Green in 1974. Judith Kroll, Chapters in a Mythology: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath (New York: Harper & Row, 1976; Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2007), xxxi.

  51. Ibid.

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

  53. Becker, “Sylvia Plath: Jillian Becker on the Poet’s Last Days.”

  54. Eric Walter White to Jack Sweeney, 22 Feb. 1963. LA 52/348, Jack and Máire Sweeney Papers, UCD.

  55. Anon., “Tragic Death of Young Authoress,” St. Pancras Chronicle (22 Feb. 1963), AA 33.

  56. HM, 49; 54. Elizabeth Hinchcliffe quoted Dr. Horder from the inquest, which is no longer available.

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

  58. “Friern Hospital,” www.asylum projects.org.

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

  60. The postmark on the Feb. 4 letter Plath mailed to Dr. Beuscher on Friday, 8 Feb., from the Fitzroy Road post office area (NW 1) reveals that Plath mailed her letter to Beuscher at 12:45 p.m. She probably mailed her letter to Hughes at the same time.

  61. TH, draft of “Last Letter.” Add MS 88918/1/2–8, BL.

  62. Ibid.

  63. Ibid.

  64. Anne Stevenson interview with Suzette Macedo and Olwyn Hughes, 10 June 1987. 2.24, Houghton Mifflin Papers, Smith.

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

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

  67. TH, “Last Letter,” New Statesman (7 Oct. 2010).

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 Trevor Thomas, “Sylvia Plath: Last Encounters,” unpublished memoir, privately printed, 1989. 1.6, MSS 1318, Emory.

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

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

  71. Judith Flanders to Corin Hughes-Stanton, 13 Oct. 1987, forwarded with handwritten note to Peter Davison. 1.7, Houghton Mifflin Papers, Smith.

  72. SP, Letts Royal Office Tablet Diary, 19.2, SPC, Smith.

  73. Anne Stevenson interview with Jillian Becker, 10 July 1987. 2.24, Houghton Mifflin Papers, Smith; Judith Flanders to Corin Hughes-Stanton, 13 Oct. 1987. 1.7, Houghton Mifflin Papers, Smith.

  74. Anne Stevenson, Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath (London: Penguin, 1989), 295.

  75. Visitor’s book belonging to Patricia Ehle Goodall, 1958–1963. Plath’s entry is dated 8 Feb. 1963. 42.6, SPC, Smith.

  76. Jillian does not mention the story of the bus ride in Giving Up, but she told Harriet Rosenstein, in a 17 Apr. 1974 letter, that “Suzette took the child out” on what she remembered as Friday, 8 Feb. That was the day Jillian remembers Plath speaking about her mysterious appointment—not Saturday, 9 Feb., as Suzette remembers. However, Suzette held a full-time job at a local library and would not have been able to take Frieda for a long bus ride, nor enjoy a theater matinee, on a weekday. Jillian says in her 1974 “Chronology” that Sylvia spent all day Saturday at home with her, but provides no details at all about what they did or spoke about. She wrote nothing about that Saturday—indeed she seemed to skip the day entirely—in Giving Up.

  77. HC interview with Suzette and Helder Macedo, May 2016, London. In Giving Up, Jillian misremembered the night Plath saw the Goodalls as Saturday, rather than Friday.

  78. Patric Dickinson to Harriet Rosenstein, 1973. 1.24, MSS 1489, Emory.

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

  80. Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev, Lover of Unreason: Assia Wevill, Sylvia Plath’s Rival and Ted Hughes’s Doomed Love (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2007), 119–20.

  81. Jillian Becker to Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, 27 Mar. 2002. William Sigmund Papers, Smith.

  82. Jillian Becker, “Chronology,” c. 1974. 1.8, MSS 1489, Emory, and Stevenson, Bitter Fame, 295.

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

  84. Jonathan Bate, Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), 211.

  85. Becker, Giving Up, 15–16.

  86. HC interview with Suzette and Helder Macedo, May 2016, London. Nathaniel Tarn’s notes at Stanford confirm that Plath had spoken to Suzette Macedo on that Sunday.

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

  88. Jillian Becker to Harriet Rosenstein, 17 Apr. 1974. 1.8, MSS 1489, Emory.

  89. Becker, “Sylvia Plath: Jillian Becker on the Poet’s Last Days.”

  90. Becker, Giving Up, 17.

  91. HM, 49. Elizabeth Hinchcliffe interviewed Dr. Horder in the 1970s.

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

  93. Becker, Giving Up, 21.

  94. “Plath—Hughes: One of Us Had to Die,” unpublished memoir by Gerry Becker, quoted in Ronald Hayman, The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath (New York: Birch Lane Press, 1991), 12. Jillian Becker told Harriet Rosenstein that Gerry stayed with Plath in the flat for “an hour or so” after he dropped her off. 1.8, MSS 1489, Emory.

  95. Jillian Becker email to HC, 30 Apr. 2017.

  96. Becker, “Sylvia Plath: Jillian Becker on the Poet’s Last Days.”

  97. Thomas, “Sylvia Plath: Last Encounters,” 1989. 1.6 MSS 1318, Emory.

  98. Richard Larschan email to HC, 28 Nov. 2018.

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

  100. TH, “Last Letter.” Daniel Huws told me Susan’s flat was above the one where Plath and Hughes spent their wedding night.

  101. According to Plath’s autopsy report, she died between seven and eight a.m. SP, University College Hospital autopsy report, 11 Feb. 1963, signed by Dr. Peter M. Sutton, overseen by Dr. Wigglesworth. Warren wrote Aurelia in his 17 Feb. 1963 letter to Aurelia (at Lilly) that the children were “each left with a bottle.”

  102. The pen seems to have run out as she was writing “Horder,” so she stopped writing mid-note to find a new pen. There is a photocopy of Plath’s suicide note in HM (no page number). She may have put the first pen down to look up Horder’s phone number, then picked up a different one.

  103. Dr. Horder told various sources over the years about how Plath had taped and stuffed the cracks in the doors of her flat. See, for example, Plath biographies by Linda Wagner-Martin and Paul Alexander, and Jane Feinmann, “Rhyme, Reason and Depression” (interview with Dr. John Horder), Guardian (16 Feb. 1993).

  104. The sun rose at 7:23 a.m. on 11 Feb. 1963.

  105. TH, draft of introduction to SP’s abridged journals. 143.3, MSS 644, Emory.

  106. TH to Keith Sagar, 18–19 July 1998. Poet and Critic: The Letters of Ted Hughes and Keith Sagar, Keith Sagar, ed. (London: British Library, 2012), 272.

  107. Hughes felt that she had written angry “responses” to his poems in her own late work. TH to William Scammell, 29 Apr. 1998. Add MS 88918/137, BL. The letter goes into some
depth on the topic of mutual influence between himself and Plath.

  108. Frieda Hughes, “Foreword,” Ariel: The Restored Edition (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), xx.

  EPILOGUE: YOUR WIFE IS DEAD

  1. TH, “Last Letter,” New Statesman (11 Oct. 2010).

  2. Notes, Harriet Rosenstein interview with Winifred Davies, 1970, provided by Kenneth Neville-Davies.

  3. Jane Feinmann, “Rhyme, Reason and Depression” (interview with Dr. John Horder), Guardian (16 Feb. 1993).

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

  5. This account is drawn from Metropolitan Police Statement of Witness, No. 992, 14 Feb. 1963, given by John Jones; Anon., “Tragic Death of Young Authoress,” St. Pancras Chronicle (22 Feb. 1963), AA 33; and Elizabeth Hinchcliffe’s unpublished biography. Hinchcliffe interviewed the coroner and Dr. Horder in the early 1970s.

  6. Metropolitan Police Statement of Witness, No. 992, 14 Feb. 1963, given by John Jones. Provided to HC by Jillian Becker.

  7. Several previous Plath biographies have stated that Myra Norris came to Plath’s flat at nine a.m. that morning. This timing does not square with Dr. Horder’s arrival time of eleven thirty a.m. Even if Myra Norris had to wait in line to make a phone call at a public phone booth, it is unlikely that she waited nearly two hours. Norris was, as Hinchcliffe reported in her unpublished manuscript, likely over an hour late.

  8. Dr. Horder was gone by the time he got to Plath’s flat.

  9. Interview with Dr. John Horder by Constable John Jones, Police Report from 11 Feb. 1963.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Jillian Becker to Harriet Rosenstein, n.d., 1970s. Provided by Jillian Becker.

  12. SP, University College Hospital autopsy report, 11 Feb. 1963, signed by Dr. Peter M. Sutton, overseen by Dr. Wigglesworth. Copy of report provided to HC by Jillian Becker, who was given a copy by an official of the coroner’s court, Mr. Goodchild.

  13. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Catherine Frankfort, 1970-71. 1.27, MSS1489, Emory.

  14. HC interview with Lorna Secker-Walker, June 2017, London. In The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath, Ronald Hayman draws on a letter Frankfort wrote Alvarez in 1981 about her experience on the morning of Plath’s suicide. The official police report suggests that some of the information in Frankfort’s letter—or Hayman’s interpretation of that letter—was inaccurate.

  15. Suzette Macedo email to HC, 20 May 2016.

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

  17. Jonathan Bate, Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), 211.

  18. EF interview with David Ross, Oct. 1999. EFP. Feinstein says this incident happened after Plath’s funeral, yet in the original interview transcript Ross dates the visit to the evening of 11 Feb. 1963. Sue Alliston does not mention visiting 23 Fitzroy Road on 11 Feb. in her journal, quoted in Bate, 211–12.

  19. Jillian Becker, Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath (New York: St. Martin’s, 2002), 23–24.

  20. WP to AP, 17 Feb. 1963. Lilly.

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

  22. TH to Olwyn Hughes, Feb. 1963. LTH, 213.

  23. TH to Daniel Huws, Feb. 1963. LTH, 214.

  24. Sam Jordison, interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, Guardian (18 Jan. 2013).

  25. WP to AP, 17 Feb. 1963. Lilly.

  26. Lucas Myers to EF, 14 Oct. 2001. EFP.

  27. TH to Bill and Dido Merwin, Mar. 1963. Add MS 88918/35/23, BL.

  28. TH to David and Elizabeth Compton, late summer 1963. Add MS 88612, BL.

  29. A. Alvarez, The Savage God: A Study of Suicide (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971; New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), 56.

  30. Anon., “Tragic Death of Young Authoress.”

  31. HM, 54. Hinchcliffe interviewed Horder and quoted from a copy of the inquest, which is no longer available.

  32. Anon., “Tragic Death of Young Authoress.”

  33. Alvarez, Savage God, 56.

  34. Ronald Hayman’s interview with Al Alvarez, Nov. 1990, is the source for this information in Hayman’s The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath (New York: Birch Press, 1991), 15.

  35. Copy of official “Inquisition,” 15 Feb. 1963, provided to HC by Jillian Becker.

  36. Feinmann, “Rhyme, Reason and Depression.”

  37. AP to Paul Alexander, Apr. 1983. Courtesy of Richard Larschan.

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

  39. WP to AP, 17 Feb. 1963. Lilly.

  40. WP to AP, 20 Feb. 1963. Lilly.

  41. WP to AP, 25 Feb. 1963. Lilly.

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

  43. TH to Bill and Dido Merwin, Mar. 1963. Add MS 88918/35/23, BL.

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

  45. Nathaniel Tarn, 12 Mar. 1963, diary notes. M1132, Nathaniel Tarn Papers, Stanford.

  46. Alvarez, Savage God, 99.

  47. WP to AP, 20 Feb. 1963. Lilly.

  48. Becker, Giving Up, 42.

  49. WP to AP, 20 Feb. 1963. Lilly. Jillian Becker writes, in her 2002 memoir, Giving Up, that the funeral reception took place in a private room above a village club in Heptonstall, up the street from the church. Warren’s letter, however, provides more accurate contemporary evidence of its location. Jillian does not mention the first service in Hebden Bridge, which Warren describes in detail to Aurelia. After the funeral, Ted drove to Halifax, where Warren and Margaret were staying with a family friend, John Spalding. There, Ted discussed the matter of Frieda and Nicholas with Warren.

  50. Becker, Giving Up, 44; 46–47.

  51. TH to AP, 15 Mar. 1963. LTH, 215–16.

  52. TH, notebook entry, spring 1963. Add MS 88918/129/3, BL.

  53. TH to AP, 15 Mar. 1963. LTH, 215.

  54. TH to Keith Sagar, 18–19 July 1998. Poet and Critic: Letters of Ted Hughes and Keith Sagar, Keith Sagar, ed. (London: British Library, 2012), 272.

  55. TH to Assia Wevill, 27 Mar. 1963. LTH, 217.

  56. Nathaniel Tarn, 16 Feb. 1963, diary notes. M1132, Nathaniel Tarn Papers, Stanford.

  57. TH, notebook entry, spring 1963. Add MS 88918/129/3, BL.

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

  59. HC interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, May 2016, Cornwall.

  60. Elizabeth Compton to AP, 27 Mar. 1963. Lilly.

  61. EF interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, Sept. 1999. EFP.

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

  63. TH to Olwyn Hughes, spring 1963. Add MS 88948/1/2, BL.

  64. Ibid.

  65. TH to Elizabeth and David Compton, summer 1963. Add MS 88612, BL.

  66. HC conversation with Pauline Mayne’s daughters, May 2015, Sheffield, UK, 2015.

  67. TH to Elizabeth and David Compton, c. 23 July 1963. Add MS 88612, BL.

  68. HC interview with David Compton, May 2016, Bowdoinham, Maine.

  69. TH to AP, 13 May 1963. LTH, 218–19.

  70. TH to Elizabeth and David Compton, c. 23 July 1963. Add MS 88612, BL.

  71. Assia recorded the details of this exchange in her diary. Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev, Lover of Unreason: Assia Wevill, Sylvia Plath’s Rival and Ted Hughes’s Doomed Love (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2006), 130.

  72. TH, “Trial,” sections 25–26. Add MS 88993/1/1, BL.

  73. Hughes asserted copyright by publishing the book in the U.S., thereby ensuring that Frieda and Nicholas would earn the proceeds from both the UK and U.S. publications.

  74. Nathaniel Tarn, 12 Mar. 1963, diary notes. M1132, Nathaniel Tarn Papers, S
tanford.

  75. TH to Olwyn Hughes, fall 1963. Add MS 88948/1/2, BL.

  76. Nathaniel Tarn, 12 Mar. 1963, diary notes. M1132, Nathaniel Tarn Papers, Stanford.

  77. Ibid.

  78. Nathaniel Tarn, 16 Feb. 1963, diary notes. M1132, Nathaniel Tarn Papers, Stanford.

  79. Nathaniel Tarn, 28 Feb. 1963, diary notes. M1132, Nathaniel Tarn Papers, Stanford.

  80. Nathaniel Tarn, 16 Feb. 1963, diary notes. M1132, Nathaniel Tarn Papers, Stanford.

  81. TH, notebook entry, c. 1963. Add MS 88918/128/1, BL.

  82. Nathaniel Tarn, 6 Aug. 1963, diary notes. M1132, Nathaniel Tarn Papers, Stanford. Ted and Assia spent the following week in Alvarez’s flat.

  83. Koren and Negev quote extensively from Assia’s diary in Lover of Unreason.

  84. TH to Assia Wevill, 3 Oct. 1963. 1.6, MSS 1058, Emory.

  85. TH, notebook entry, autumn 1963. Add MS 88918/128/1, BL.

  86. David Wevill to Nathaniel Tarn, 2 Apr. 1969. M1132, Nathaniel Tarn Papers, Stanford.

  87. Elaine Feinstein, Ted Hughes: The Life of a Poet (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001), 166.

  88. Nathaniel Tarn, 22 June 1963, diary notes. M1132, Nathaniel Tarn Papers, Stanford.

  89. HC telephone interview with Linda Gates, 13 Dec. 2016.

  90. TH, notebook entry, 9 Oct. 1964. Add MS 88918/128/1, BL.

  91. TH, notebook entry, 2 Nov. 1964. Add MS 88918/128/1, BL.

  92. TH, notebook entry, 15 Sept. 1964. Add MS 88918/128/1, BL.

  93. TH, notebook entry, winter 1965. Add MS 88918/128/1, BL.

  94. Koren and Negev, Lover of Unreason, 126.

  95. EF interview with Suzette Macedo, Oct. 1999. EFP.

  96. EF interview with Mira Hamermesh, July 1999. EFP.

  97. Assia Wevill, journal, Nov. 1966. 1.77, MSS 1058, Emory.

  98. Koren and Negev, Lover of Unreason, 122.

  99. Ibid., 128–29.

  100. HC interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, May 2016, Cornwall.

  101. HC interview with David Compton, May 2016, Bowdoinham, Maine.

  102. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, 1973. 4.10, MSS 1489, Emory.