by Anne Sexton
I have shown your pictures to fifteen people so I guess I haven’t forgotten you at all. Our table for six is nice, interesting lot of people. Our stewardess, arrives with smiles in morning (noon really) with lots of french and cute and brings us croissants and coffee and juice and a huge bowl of fruit. She said, today, good day to sleep all morning for it is dark and she is rolling (she’s telling me!) She is a doll. However, I think this will be my last ocean voyage, but I am glad to have had one … or else how would I know! Sandy, right now is washing our undergarments and sends her love and says we are going through a period of adjustment and don’t quite know where we are. We are, maybe, unwinding, she says (I say ship IS winding)
I still love deck chair, Kayo, as in Canada and look much same with blowing hair (straight) peeking over kerchief, all wrapped in two big wool rugs. Saw a movie 1st night, Sophia Loren, good movie. Helped me get my mind off my stomache [sic].
I miss you all … must go for Sandy is now all dressed for deck and I’m in pajamas and it is two thirty in afternoon and have yet to see daylight (even if gray and cold) …
My love, my love
Anne – Mom
[To the Sexton Family]
Paris
Friday August 30th. [1963]
Dearest Kayo (and Linda and Joy) …
We are so busy here that there is literally not time to write letters home. I still don’t really KNOW I have left or that I’m really in Paris. We still sleep so late that we waste half a day right there and each day vow to get to sleep early … or earlier but don’t[.] We talk, walk to a cheap cafe for a glass of wine, lean out window, wash clothes or talk. I feel guilty that I am not writing better or more letters. Paris is just too much. I would have to be here for five months to explain its beauty and write of it or even make notes … it is overwhelming … and the thing I just didn’t expect was the sudden sense of history …! Oh, if I only knew more! Napoleon! And the buildings, the windows, the colors, the cobblestone streets, the, the …
Yesterday, with really sore feet, we set out to look up a writer friend of Nolan Miller. Just for the fun of it, didn’t expect to find him, he had no phone, and it turned out to be only a block away … and the craziest top of a building with a French landlady who took us up six stories in an all open elevator to a thin dark corridor and down it, dark, to bang on his door, and call to him (just like a movie, her gestures etc) and Peter (his name) opens door to us (to strangers from U.S.) and he was most charming, an American writer who has lived here for 15 [years] and is married to a French girl (she works all day at Pan Am while he writes and does dishes) … We stayed all day talking and drank wine all day (but with never the effect of the predinner martini … which I don’t miss, haven’t found time to miss) […]—his wife charmingly cooked while we (another writer came too, a beatnik type) sat and shouted about writers and who was good. For years James Baldwin came to Peter’s twice a week for dinner in Paris because Baldwin was starving … now he makes about one million a year (and is not really a very good writer tho he is indeed in the headlines, even here, daily) … Poor Jimmy (they call him) … and yet, such luck, to be negro at that right time. We stayed late, drinking bottles of IMPORTED (15 cents a bottle) french wine.
Today we are going on a bus tour of historical Paris (save the feet it is called) … we go without lunch to afford bus trip … Your letters sound so sad … so nostalgic … ah, I feel guilty, but I do, very, want to be missed. I dream of you at night. Last night I dreamt you got a raise (what does that mean?) and we celebrated together. I think I am too busy to be myself except in dreams. Certainly no time to get depressed, but I already wish we had a house or apt. to settle into. Maybe we will in Italy or somewhere. I think that it is harder to be left than to leave, home without the other gets so alone, and here I have Sandy (who is swell) but more important a thousand things to see … I wish I were a movie camera, I can’t hold it in and I can’t even write it out. Also we are rather busy trying to save money as we pay about 14 bucks for this room with breakfast, but lovely with bath. Have cashed travelers checks DA31-348-790,791,793. Will write license of car when get, haven’t even gone there yet, figure it is free parking until we up and leave. To drive in this city would be madness, and no place to park either. To walk is the charm, shanks mare (is this Anne?) miles and miles, as bad as walking yourself into Boston, I think. Nana used to walk twenty miles a day in Paris with my grandmother. If they can, we can. They could not afford a carriage, but perhaps tonight we try subway … I am your Button, your Anne, your Mom
[To the Sexton Family]
Brussels, Belgium
Wed. Sept 4th, 1963
10:30 A.M.
Dear Family,
(In her letters from Europe my Nana always wrote “dear home folks”. So, I feel the same way. It means, dear “all”, “All my loved ones” “all my home” … I don’t have time to write separate letters because my news is the same and the love, though differing in meaning is just as big for each of you … However, your news is different sometimes and I’d love a letter from each if you have time and feel like it.
… Enclosed is our first traffic ticket gotten in Paris, not traffic but for parking in front of France & Choiseul. We are ignoring it (which is the custom for TT plates) and have skipped the country!! I drove us out of Paris and onto the ROAD. I drove for 2 and one-half hours and Sandy the rest. Drove from noon until seven so Sandy did the most and the worst. The drive thru France was delightful! All farm lands, a miniature Grant Wood all the way, with tall tall trees planted along the road (like in a french movie) and the land mostly flat …[…]the roads not crowded, two lane or sometimes three lane with the old bother of when to pass. There were trucks, but not the largest variety that we have at home. Many of the streets were made of cobblestones, stretching for miles, all laid in by hand. Cobblestones do not make the easiest driving. We ate lunch at a small cafe which was fairly okay, beef, smoked ham sandwich. The toilet there was my first one with the footprint and not real toilet. It is like going outdoors because you just squat over it and hope you are aiming correctly. It flushes tho. But you must get all the way off as it flushes like mad all over the footprints. (Kayo I hope you have a good time explaining these footprints to the girls!) When we crossed the border (with an extra six packs of Salems, bought on boat for 20 cents a pack) more than we are allowed per custom regulation we were slightly nervous) they just asked for passport, driving paper that shows we are insured and asked if we were carrying “spirits” and we said yes an open bottle (Billie’s [Anne’s mother-in-law] martinis) and he waved us through. If only we had known we would have brought all the cigs allowed into France (5 cartons each and we only bought 7 in all having looked up regulation in Belgium) … Into Belgium we drove thru miles of bicyclists coming home from work. The Factory had just let out and there were everywhere, Berets and lunch boxes. They dominated the street. Belgium became one long city into Brussels and almost all of it cobblestones. We were certainly in the “industrial” (as John [Woulbroun, a family friend] said) part of the country. At times it looked like home, a worst of Waltham, with on many corners a plate glass store, or anyhow much more commercial than the part of France we had left and not many painted shutters, in some parts miles of T.V. antennas stretched for miles and then in one section that strange black mountains that rise in their ugly fashion out of the flat land. These are the unusable parts of the coal that has been heaved out of the ground by men for years … a coal mountain … very ugly for it makes you think of the sweat that brought it up … and of the deep caves it left underground. I tried to take a picture but got mostly Sandy’s face for we were driving along at the time … Now that we are in Brussels I would say we got here by way of Dorchester. The city itself has long miles of this … although we are in the heart, near The Grand Place (one of the most famous squares in Europe). The Place is a square of buildings that date back to the 15th century, they were the guild buildings. The outside of them is painted in gold and beautifully
lit up at night. Our hotel (found in Europe on 5 Dollars a Day) is on a tiny winding street, the street is about as big as a sidewalk, we were afraid to drive into it until we spied another car (all cars being foreign and tiny. Your car, Kayo, would scratch its fenders on both sides! In we walked NO Sandy walked. I stayed guarding the car which looks like the Grapes of Wrath with all our stuff in it, but which is fondly called “the blue jewel” (pronounced the bloo jool) … Entrance to hotel is a very quiet and plain bar with food. Rooms (two adjoining) are 6 dollars a day. The John is down two flights (we are up three). I haven’t seen a bath but there may be one, washbowl in room, but I note no hot water coming out of hot water faucet. We will heat our own with Eleanor’s thing. And to get warm I plugged in last night, with extension cord (Billie, please note) but am not sure what voltage I should be on. The pad has two volt types you can turn to, I turn from one to other waiting to be blown up. Can’t ask as they are very saving of electricity here (everywhere) and would frown or kick us out at mention of this expensive heating pad. Lights in hall turn off automatically in 6 minutes. So you push the button, run down stairs, go to John and get back up in 6 minutes or the light is out and you are thrust into total darkness (at night) to feel your way back. The toilet paper is like a Scott towel we use in kitchen, only rougher, maybe like crepe paper. Our rooms are delightful, clean, colorful, in a very old building with some history I suspect. Only about ten rooms here in all, everyone breakfasting in bar. As we sat last night in bar, empty but for an old cat licking her paws, filling out our passport things (in great detail in every city one must do this, date of birth, etc.) in the background madame was watching the Flintstones in French! Then we parked our car (for ten francs for overnight which is 20 cents) we came back to this street (Rue du Boucher) where our hotel is and the place where we ate (following Europe on 5 dollars … it cost 6 dollars to eat because we had a fancy bottle of rosé from Luxembourg; Belgium doesn’t make their own wine, only beer). We had a wonderful meal and were very tired and glad of it. We had Tomato Crevettes (tomatoes with tiny shrimp, never so so small, they come Ostend) and were very sweet. Then we had MOULES (marvelous). Moules are mussels. They were steamed in a vegetable broth, onion and celery and eaten out of the shell. Très bien! And then we staggered down to the Place for a look at it all lit up. It is lovely but we did not sit at a cafe and drink coffee and look at it as we were too tired. And so back to bed in a deep spongy bed where I slept well. Sandy had a double bed, her room a step down from mine. I am typing in her room which looks out over roof tops …
The coffee this morning (you have to get out of bed because you have to go to the bathroom and so we do get up and breakfast—has a ten o’clock deadline too) was the first drinkable since leaving Newton Lower Falls. We have tried hard to be good frenchmen and drink the coffee without complaint but I turned to tea the last few days in France. The french coffee is bitter bitter mud. Ugh. Even where you drink it half and half with hot milk (café au lait) it is ghastly. But today, still au lait, was far better.
My mouth continually is dry and almost dusty, perhaps from wine. In France I drank gallons of water with a great unquenchable thirst. Next door to our hotel there is a small market where we bought two oranges last night. We eat an orange a day to keep up on the vitamin C. This morning we haven’t eaten it yet as we had to rush to breakfast.
The money is going fast although we are trying to hold back. Last night we switched to Belgian francs as I cashed a travelers check no. da3i-348-795. I think that 20 dollars a day is a very conservative estimate … but we will see. One thing for sure, it is certainly NOT necessary to pay 50 per day per Fran and A [family friends]. We can do this for about 25 a day I would think, going over only on special occasions or trips and extra gas. Or when we die for a Salem cig and run out of these, they cost one dollar or over a pack. But we are trying to keep it down and yet enjoy ourselves and we have been able to. The France and Choiseul was 13.40 a day (with bath you see, 8 without bath) … We enjoyed the bath, tho … and needed it as we will other times. I washed and set my own hair last Friday night and it looks pretty good, a little curly in wrong direction but passable) … I can’t wait for Amsterdam and letters again. I have made Sept 12th the deadline for letters there and Sept 16th deadline in Zurich. Course those dates are just made up, but they sound good.
I love you and miss you terribly.
Anne-Mom
[To Alfred Sexton, telegram]
September 5, 1963
OUR LUGGAGE STOLEN LETTER FOLLOWS-
ANNE
[To the Sexton Family]
[Belgium]
Sept. 4, 1963
BLACK WEDNESDAY
Dear Home Folks,
Oh, this is our day of great sadness. We are très sad, with tears flowing on all dies (interesting slip) sides. Just this morning we wrote a happy letter from Brussels and here we are, tonight, in abject sadness. I have cried into my squashy bed and we have moaned over another meal of Moules, but to no use. We have NOT been sightseeing in Brussels all day! We have not been the light-hearted Americans skipping about. No. We are the tragic pair. We have been robbed.
However, we are not starving. Sandy just found a piece of bread (with butter) that we stole from our breakfast—in France yet. We have … well, right now we feel we have nothing. But we do have some. We, in truth, have retained (with our terrible luck) the worst of the luggage. We still have the car (I mean, I haven’t looked but last time I looked we had it). It is still called the Bloo Jool. We have some toothpicks we stole. We also have the contents of Sandy’s smallest bag (plastic hair curlers, two kotex, a box of kleenex, one heating pad, two pajamas, two bathrobes, my navy coat, her black and her white coats, toilet paper—two rolls, two pairs of pants, two bottles of my sleeping pills, two books of matches, my red suit is on me, my red print nylon dress, my Navy blue sweater bought in Canada, my list of addresses and of travelers check numbers, one coat hanger, my shower cap, package of lifesavers, one lace hat for a church, sanitary belt, bottle of foot cream, clothes line with nothing to hang on it, Sandy’s sunglasses, vitamin C, News clipping about Luxembourg where we never went, two things of jewelry but one of Sandy’s missing, two toothbrushes, cleansing cream and two comb and brush and two lipstick, deodorant, nail polish and clippers. Also polish and brush for Navy shoes.)
We was robbed! We had had lunch and were on our way to Claudine and Jacque’s (John’s friends who had not heard from him … John the bum) and we went to car that had been in perfectly respectable parking lot, called Esso … where, we read today on small print ticket, they are not responsible for articles in car, and mind you the car was locked tight as a drum, windows doors etc … we found the bloo Jool in its proper spot without the two medium bags of Sandy’s in the back seat, without my books, the bag full of books all gone! Just without … not to mention the UMBRELLA … oh me. Most of our good clothes, carefully put in those two bags to wear in Knokke … are gone forever … In the front of the VW was my LARGE bag (repacked for both this time) with winter or heavy or useless clothes. It had not been stolen. But the rest was gone. They didn’t take my Harvard bag full of what we laughingly called “the kitchen” (made up by Eleanor Boylan) but the rest was gone. We are trying to make a list (but can’t remember) of what is lost. We wish to call you but feel too poor and anyhow what good would it do. Kazan told us that if we lost luggage (referring to insurance) we wouldn’t get money for months if it were stolen so don’t bother cabling him. Of course, we want you to start HAUNTING him from now on. Because lost it is … and it is up to him to take us from here. Naturally our record of slip of the bag insurance was in 2 stolen bags but he must have made a carbon. Oh Me. (Promising I’d never swear, I’ll say, Oh Suds … oh damn Suds!) …
The parking people showed us how, on last night’s stub, they weren’t responsible. So on to police … worse than T.V. in time taken up and merely official as we made a statement in french of what had been stolen (and understated in amount of $ lost as we
were in shock and couldn’t remember all that must be gone) and after we signed it he, though most pleasant, told us we’d never get it back as thief is type who steals to make a living, slowly selling things … and thus we learn … about Europe or thiefs, and thiefs we have at home, we know, but we aren’t so stupid as to leave two bags on seat at home. We cry, for home is where we live, where we can trust and believe and not lose. But. Didn’t I ask for this in Paris? Oh me, and yet they took wrong bag, for large bag in trunk was full of things, almost, we figured we didn’t need much and so wouldn’t need to carry it. Why the thief didn’t take it is, of course, clear to all. It was just too heavy to steal! (Moral—pack for an elephant to carry, elephants have trunks of their own) … Oh, at last, I made up a joke, tho not too good, still a joke, to make us laugh midst this real unhappiness and longing for safety. I cannot bear to list what is lost … it still hurts too much. […]
Are we eligible for a CARE package? All my books are gone, even the rhyming dictionary, and all books I had to have in order to write. In fact nothing left to read except Europe on $5 a Day. We have the alarm clock. I have Joan’s present (unopened). Gone the umbrellas. Still have our raincoats (liked umbrellas better with that history and so practical too) … We have the hideous clods, the two pairs of comfortable shoes from the Barn which we both wear everywhere. Slippers gone.
In the large bag, in front of VW we found. Some things.::::: my navy blue knit, my bright blue knit, my wool jumper, a blue matching blouse, my white sweater which is dirty and I hate it, my black lining for my navy coat, two pairs of wool socks, my white arnel dress with navy trim (that wore on France) minus its belt. All belts lost, in bag for Knokke for both of us which makes almost everything unwearable, my blue and white stripe, sleeveless dress that I wore in Canada so much, a navy jersey of Joan’s,—sweater type, my navy heels both size, brown and tan shoes of mine, both our overshoes, my navy clutch, two pairs of stockings, shorts, shoe polish, orange jersey blouse … of Sandy’s we found, a navy knit dress, one chileco, one pair of stockings, two handbags, a pair of shorts, four blouses, two pairs of black heels, four pairs of gloves … (she says she is really ready to go with her hands) … Sandy has lost almost everything and I, too, almost everything … all my best dresses, the navy low cut, the aqua two piece, the silk aqua print, the white arnel, the nylon aqua print sleeveless, the navy knit with white and kelly green top, slippers, all underwear except for extra pants, all hankys, two bathing suits … one aqua print Moo-moo, receipts for baggage insurance we guess cuz can’t find (for God’s sake call Kazan and make big noise! We need some American noise right now! Can’t remember what else gone. Sandy lost two wool suits, also a black knit given her with Les, plus skirts, sweaters, blouses, my harlequin sleeveless print). Well, we think and hope to make a complete list of what is lost for Kazan to start working on it. We don’t know how to do it. Sandy insured to 500 bucks, me for 1000. But we didn’t lose everything, but almost everything. The little bag was full of useless things (if I can call my heating pad useless … never! but curlers, hell, they have curlers …). We are awfully brave not to call you for advice but you wouldn’t know. Tomorrow we go back to police station and probably waste all day trying to get a copy of his report and to add my bag of books to it. At first I didn’t notice bag of books was missing … too shock[ed] over empty back seat to fully assess the loss. Books themselves must be worth 75 to 100 dollars. But money not all of it … so much a part of home is lost. Of course, we did have too much stuff but OH HOW WE WISH we could have selected what to be stolen, or even better, followed our plan to send home the big bag. We will buy a few things here to get along on knowing insurance & will come sooner or later … but things we can stuff into tiny bag and huge bag (though we are really Goldilocks who likes the middle bed) … for, in turn, what new we buy would, after all, have to be reinsured I guess. Ask Kazan. We talked to his fellow travel agent in Brussels and they were very nice and said to write Kazan a detailed report. (detailed? who remembers it all?). Whatever you do, call Kazan and keep after it. We need help! Oh, Sandy lost the lovely grecian white bathing suit. Oh well, all suits are gone and it’s cold enough around here not to ask how will thief even sell bathing suits, much less ten copies of each of my books. Oh woe. This is, indeed, part of our Experience but how sad. Très sad. We are sliced clean, undone, half ourselves … WE NEED OUR HUSBANDS! We need the faces of our offspring to answer back to our sadness. I need Billie to tell me what I’ve forgotten that I lost. (Can’t bear to think of more) … (just remembered lost one garter belt. Mine. Sandy lost her girdle.) Now don’t lecture us. It looked safe, brightly lit in a good place near Place. We didn’t know. We do now. Nowhere without HUGE bag and TINY bag. We have our cameras, this typewriter, some film (as of now) film and kitchen still in locked car, give thief a haul for second night?… Claudine came right over to hotel when we called her after police. Brought her two peppy sons and then drove us to shops where they have clothes and to her house for a scotch, and then Jacques drove us back here. Very nice, most attractive couple. Listened sadly to our woes and saw us without letter from John and was most charming.
