His humor is the salt of the earth; I’ve never laughed as hard and long in my life. He tells me fairy stories, and stories of kings and green knights, and has made up a marvelous fable of his own about a little wizard named Snatchcraftington, who looks like a stalk of rhubarb. He tells me dreams, marvelous colored dreams, about certain red foxes …
The reason why you must be at ease and not worry about my proud growing this time is because I have learned to make a life growing through toleration of conflict, sorrow, and hurt. I fear none of these things and turn myself to whatever trial with an utter faith that life is good and a song of joy on my lips. I feel like Job and will rejoice in the deadly blasts of whatever comes. I love others, the girls in the house, the boys on the newspaper, and I am flocked about by people who bask in my sun. I give and give; my whole life will be a saying of poems and a loving of people and giving of my best fiber to them.
This faith comes from the earth and sun; it is pagan in a way; it comes from the heart of man after the fall.
I know that within a year I shall publish a book of 33 poems which will hit the critics violently in some way or another. My voice is taking shape, coming strong. Ted says he never read poems by a woman like mine; they are strong and full and rich—not quailing and whining like Teasdale or simple lyrics like Millay; they are working, sweating, heaving poems born out of the way words should be said….
Oh, mother, rejoice with me and fear not. I love you, and Warren, and my dear suffering grammy and dear loving grampy with all my heart and shall spend my life making you strong and proud of me!
Enclosed, a poem or two [“Firesong,” “Strumpet Song,” and “Complaint of the Crazed Queen”]. I don’t remember whether I sent you these.
Your loving
Sivvy
PART FOUR
May 3, 1956–June 17, 1957
These are radiant letters, when love and a complete sharing of hope and dreams acknowledge no limits. Sylvia and Ted were eager to dedicate themselves to a life of discipline for their mutual creativity.
Sylvia modeled and wrote for Varsity, the collegiate magazine; her studies and writing flourished.
To my complete surprise, three days after landing at Southampton on June 13, 1956, I found myself the sole family attendant at Sylvia’s and Ted’s secret wedding in the Church of St. George the Martyr, London. From Paris I saw them off for “a writing honeymoon on a shoestring” in Spain. Sylvia produced many articles, sketches, and poems in spite of having to cope with primitive living conditions. In her writing only the affirmative, strong, maturing voice was evident at this time.
In the fall the return to student life and separation from her husband was traumatic. Therefore, the two decided to risk everything and announced their marriage, a situation finally accepted by both the college and the Fulbright Commission. They found a small flat and set up housekeeping on an extremely modest scale. Sylvia completed her courses for her Cambridge degree, while Ted taught in a school for young boys. Their plans for coming to America in June buoyed their spirits through this strenuous period.
In spring news that Ted’s first book of poetry had been accepted was followed by the welcome announcement that Sylvia had been appointed to teach Freshman English at Smith College for the academic year 1957–1958.
WHITSTEAD, BARTON ROAD
CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND
MAY 3, 1956
Dearest of Mothers,
No doubt this is the most difficult of times for you; know that I feel this; and that from the sorrow at one end of your scale, I want you to turn to the joy and love growing day by day at this young green end. I really must share with you the miracles of the last days.
I am coming into my own; I am becoming at one with myself, growing toward the best in me … how best I can be for a woman, even with my past wastes and squanderings of energy….
For the first time in my life, mother, I am at peace. Never before, even with Richard, did I cease to have little opportunist law courts in session in my head, whispering, look at this flaw, that weakness; how about a new man, a better man? For the first time, I am free. I have, ironically, been exposed this term to the handsomest, most creative and intelligent men in Cambridge (writers, artists, etc.) and in the midst of this, I am at peace, able to enjoy them as people, but utterly invulnerable. Even with Richard I had my eye out for a strong, healthy man. This is gone for the first time.
I feel that all my life, all my pain and work has been for this one thing. All the blood spilt, the words written, the people loved, have been a work to fit me for loving … I see the power and voice in him that will shake the world alive. Even as he sees into my poems and will work with me to make me a woman poet like the world will gape at; even as he sees into my character and will tolerate no fallings away from my best right self.
… I have no fear, only a faith: I am calm, joyous, and peaceful as I have never known peace. And, fantastically, I am keen mentally as I have never been; my supervisor is delighted, I can tell. I told her this week, at the best supervision yet on Plato, that I was not taking this as a “course” but as a fight to earn my humanism through the centuries of philosophy and religion in this world. It is a voyage of the mind, to true knowledge and not just opinion and belief. She, in turn, said she had been so stimulated by my questions last week that she had revised some lecture notes.
Oh, mother, on May Day Ted and I went up a green river in a punt and, miraculously, there was not another boat on the river! I learned to punt, so I can take you the same way, and saw baby owls, cows, and even a water-rat. We had tea, honey, and sandwiches under the apple tree in Granchester…. Ted has written many virile, deep banging poems…. We love the flesh of the earth and the spirit of that thin, exacting air which blows beyond the farthest planets. All is learning, discovering, and speaking in a strong voice out of the heart of sorrow and joy. Oh, mother, I shall be so happy to have you come. I have never had so much love to give before. Do be strong, bear what is to be borne at home, and come to me to be loved and cared for.
Your own loving sivvy
FRIDAY MORNING
MAY 4, 1956
Dearest Mother,
It was with a sense of rest and peace at last that I received your letter yesterday telling me of Grammy. Strangely enough, I have been living in tense wait long distance, and often, every day, talked with Ted about grammy and grampy and my home. He was with me when I read your letter, and we felt we sort of consecrated our May Day to grammy. Before I got your letter yesterday, we were shopping together for mushrooms and steak and wine for dinner and had the impulse to go into a cool, lovely little 15th century church in the heart of Cambridge and just sit together in peace and silence and love. I gave a prayer in my heart then for grammy, and for my own family, and for my dear Ted. We are so very happy together.
I can’t tell you with what joy I read of Warren’s Experiment [in International Living] fellowship to Austria! I am as proud as proud; if any boy deserves it, he does. I want very much for Ted to meet him as Ted, at last, is a man worthy of my brother, and I want Warren to know Ted. I hope you will have the chance to meet Ted in Paris where his older sister is living and working.
… I have the most blazing idea of all now. Out of the many vital, funny, and profound experiences as an American girl in Cambridge, I am going to write a series of tight, packed, perfect short stories which I shall make into a novel, and this is what I shall apply to the Saxton Fund for money to do. I shall begin it in Spain this summer and hope to finish it at the end of the year following graduation. All the notes I’ve taken on socialized medicine, British men, characters, etc., will come in. Ted is with me all the way, and we are rather excited about this. It is “my own corner” and his criticism as it is in progress, from the British slant, with his infallible eye, will be invaluable. What a product of the Fulbright! My work on Varsity next year will take me into the heart of Cambridge, and I can really make a fine thing of this: starting with the voyage over and having about
a year’s time covered. Will try to sell the stories separately in The New Yorker and Mademoiselle.
Yesterday I discovered another wonderful thing about Ted and me together: he sat on the couch all afternoon and read my copy of Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye while I wrote a bright, witty 10-page article on the Bulganin reception which I’m sending, on a long chance, to The New Yorker, and I rewrote my Paris article and sent it with sketches to the Monitor. Never before have I composed and worked with a man around….
You will definitely meet him this summer. He may shock you at first, unless you imagine a big, unruly Huckleberry Finn. He hasn’t even a suit of clothes, … and wears new dungarees and an old black sweater which I must mend at the elbows this week….
The hardest thing for me now is not to share all this with a rich community of friends; I hope Sue will be able to help me take a little pressure off next year. It is like having discovered the one only biggest diamond mine in the world and having to sit inside alone full of radiance and not tell anyone. But I can tell you, if you will sit tight on it, that within a year, after I graduate, I can think of nothing I’d rather do than be married to Ted…. He is signed up to go [to Australia] on a kind of British program which pays the way of the men who will work over there….
Statistically, by the way, he will be twenty-six this August; served in the RAF as radio mechanic two years before Cambridge, graduated from Cambridge in 1954, and has worked at everything from grafting roses to reading for a movie studio. Now, this summer, he will be writing and waiting for his ship to leave for Australia.
Oh, mother, take this to your own secret heart and share it with me….
Much love from your own sivvy
SUNDAY NOON
MAY 6, 1956
Dearest Mother,
… From despairing of ever being able to use our whole selves, our whole strengths, without terrifying other people, we have turned into the most happy, magnanimous, creative pair in the world…. I have new power by pouring all my love and care in one direction to someone strong enough to take me in my fullest joy. (It is interesting to know that most Cambridge boys preferred me when I was sick with sinus and they could take care of me, because that was the only time they were stronger.) … I am utterly at peace and joyously my best when with him.
I do hope you can meet him in Paris, mother; he is the dearest, kindest, most honest man that ever lived….
Much much love, Sivvy
MAY 9, 1956
Dear Mother,
… Had a wonderful supervision with dear shining Doctor Krook yesterday morning on Plato again. I do a paper every week, read it and discuss violently. I know she has fun and feel that by the time I am through with this course in the middle of next year, we will be good friends. Already we are communicating about our own private feelings and opinions; everything relates. Had the most moving discussion of the idea of the Trinity with her, a revelation to me of the blind, stupid ignorance I had in not even listening to such conceptions. I am standing at the juncture of Greek and Christian thought now, and it is significant to see what the mind of man has made, the significance of the development from the dialectical inquiries of Socrates to the Epistle of St. Paul, which will be my next port after Aristotle. Never has my mind been so eager, so keen, so able to make leaps and sallies into new understanding!
… Ted is probably the most brilliant boy I know. I am constantly amazed at his vast fund of knowledge and understanding: not facts or quotes of second-hand knowledge, but an organic, digested comprehension which enriches his every word…. My most cherished dream, which you must think of only as a dream so far, is to bring him home with me next June for a sort of enormous barbeque in Wellesley to which I will invite all the neighbors, young couples, and dear people like Mrs. Prouty, Dr. B., et al., just to meet him before we set out on our world-wandering; not really wandering, but living and teaching English in country after country, writing, mastering languages and having many, many babies.
Oh, mummy, I have never been so calm and peaceful and happy in my life; if it is this way, with all the awkward limitations of our separate positions now, me studying, he having to work, it will be incredible to fight out a life side by side. We are both ripe and mature, sure, because of so much experience in the world, so much waste of our true energies, of our wish to have one undeviating faith and love our lives long and to commit every fiber and dream to forging this life: always growing straight in the light of each other.
I am so glad you and Warren are coming this summer, so you can meet him. If only you both will just take him for what he is, in his whole self, without wealth or a slick 10-year guarantee for a secure job, of a house and car—just for his native dearness, story-telling, poem-making, nature-loving, humorous, rugged self—I am sure you will be as drawn to him as I could wish. To find such a man, to make him into the best man the world has seen: such a life work!
… I know I was not meant to be a single woman, a career woman, and this is my reward for waiting and waiting and not accepting all the lesser tempting offers which would have betrayed my capacity for growing beyond thought into the fulness of my middle and late years.
I am beginning my novel in Spain this summer, working on it next year, and using Varsity to get in every nook and cranny of Cambridge. It is my corner and such a salable subject! I’ll try to sell the stories to Mlle and The New Yorker and get some grant to finish it and rewrite it to unity the year following graduation, along with a book of poems. Honestly, my whole being just sings straight with purpose and projects. You must come and share this joy! You’ll be a proud grandmother yet! Probably quadruplets when the time comes: statesmen, scientists, artists and discus throwers!
Much love from your own sivvy
THURSDAY MORNING
MAY 10, 1956
Dearest Mother,
You will no doubt think I have gone utterly potty to be writing you so many letters, but I am at that time when a girl wants to share all her joys and wonders at her man with those who will understand and be happy about it, and I miss your presence more now than I did in all the hard times during the winter when I was unhappy, uncreative and discouraged about the course my life was to take. Please bear with my volubility at this point! I have no girl here like Sue or Marty with whom I can share my happiness (without their feeling secretly jealous, as do all girls who do not have that strong singleness of purpose which love brings), and I really long for a woman confidante …
(Later Thursday) I’ve just come from the most marvelous 2-hour coffee session with dear Mary Ellen Chase, who came to Cambridge last weekend with her brilliant, classical-scholar companion, Eleanor Shipley Duckett (both of them making fabulous money on new books and articles and radio broadcasts!). It was absolute heaven to tell her all about my year, my writing, and to hear about my beloved Smith and all the people there. She strongly suggested that I would be asked back there to teach as soon as I graduate from Newnham. I would really like the chance to teach and get the experience of Smith, but could never imagine going back without a husband. Imagine living in that atmosphere of 2,000 young, attractive girls, without any social life of my own! I wouldn’t want “social life” either, as I’ve known it. I just want my home and my one man. I feel most honored at this prospect of their asking me, though, and if Ted and I need money, maybe he could get a job at Amherst for a year, and we could write and teach and have a home, sometime. It’s a thing to think of. But I’m so pleased about his not going to Australia but teaching in Spain next year and his apparent willingness to book passage back to America with me next June that I’m going to live the summer out before getting any more previous. If we got married (I don’t know just where or when right now, but probably sometime after I graduate next year), do you suppose it would be possible for us both to get part-time or full-time summer jobs and a cottage down the Cape for the summer … so we could travel and write all over America the next year? This is just one of the little pots cooking in my head, but you might talk to
the Cantors or anyone who has an “in” at the big hotels where we can make lots and lots of money … do think about it!
What a gala year with Warren graduating and me bringing my man home! Cross your fingers.
Much love, Sivvy
FRIDAY MORNING
MAY 18, 1956
Dearest Mother,
It was so wonderful to get your last happy letter and to think that in less than a month I shall be welcoming you at Waterloo Station! Just let me know whether it is morning, noon, or night, and I’ll take my station in the waiting room with sandwiches and a camp stool! Our hotel, by the way, is Clifford’s Inn, Fleet Street, London, in case you want to know.
I know you’re fantastically busy, but have two small desperate requests: could you please possibly send my Joy of Cooking and lots more 3-cent stamps. I’m starting to send batches of Ted’s poems out to American magazines because I want the editors to be crying for him when we come to America next June. He has commissioned me his official agent and writes prolifically as shooting stars in August. I have great faith in his promise; we are coming into our era of richness, both of us, late maturing, reaching beginning ripeness after twenty-five and going to be fabulous old people! …
I forget whether I wrote you or someone else about the Fulbright blast in London. I took Ted in his ancient gray 8-year-old suit and introduced him to the American Ambassador; then, after the Duke of Edinburgh spoke, he came down to chat, asking me where I was studying and what I was doing. When he asked Ted the same, Ted grinned and said he was “chaperoning Sylvia.” “Ah,” the Duke smiled and sighed, “the idle rich.” So international protocol is taken care of….
I am really longing for this summer in which to concentrate on writing. I feel such new power coming on me: I’ve been working up all kinds of things—poems, articles on everything from the woman-situation at Cambridge (my short, witty article on this came out verbatim today in the esoteric Isis magazine at Oxford! I’m going intercollegiate!). [Wrote] this week’s Cambridge newsletter and spring and summer fashions for Varsity. (I’m doing a survey of the dress shops tomorrow morning.)