Dido Merwin has been supplying us with delicacies off and on: blanquette de veau, trout in aspic, with eyes turned to pearls and lemon slices arrayed about; and when Ted went over to dessert and to meet Bill’s publisher last night, she gave him some beans in a pot and another stew to heat up. Such goodness is beyond thanks. Bill came over yesterday—my first visitor and the first to see the baby. He brought daffodils, a silver thimble for the baby and a pile of old New Yorkers for me, figuring with exact intuition I was ready for nothing more concentrated than first the jokes and cartoons, then the poems, then stories—short, amusing and something easy to pick up and put down.
The baby is sleeping sweetly after her 2 p.m. feeding; her little hands in the most delicate attitudes. Her ballet-like gestures with her hands are one of the loveliest things about her. I have begun changing her diapers myself now and enjoy it immensely. She is very good and quiet and seems to like moving her legs about and being bare….
No more words about hormones and growth-stopping, please! [I’d shared an endocrinologist’s report on work in this field with her.] I’m surprised at you. Tampering with nature! What an American thing to feel measuring people to ideal heights will make them happier or not interfere with other things. Whatever height Frieda Rebecca is, I shall encourage her to be proud of it. My own height, 5’9”, which so depressed me once is now my delight; and I have a handsome, tall, living documentary of a husband to prove a tall girl need be nothing but fortunate in that line … Enough of that.
… Warren will be the wealthy one of us two and be able to visit you in England while we would only come to America on a paid-for reading tour or possible resident-poet year much later. I’m becoming more and more anglophilic—watch out!
Love,
Sivvy
P.S. I’m going to have all my babies at home; I’ve loved every minute of this experience!
APRIL 15, 1960
Dear Mother,
… These last weeks, in fact, the last month or so, have slipped by with my hardly noticing the dates, and I am eager to begin writing and thinking again. The most difficult thing is the idea of leaving the baby with a sitter. We are invited to cocktails at Faber’s next Thursday from 6–8 and shall presumably meet Eliot; yet I am so reluctant to leave the baby…. They don’t believe in bottles here at all, nor do I, and I wouldn’t miss feeding her for the world….
x x x Sivvy
APRIL 21, 1960
Dearest Mother,
… I am sitting in our sun-flooded kitchen, waiting for a pan of hash to finish cooking, planning to feed Frieda Rebecca (we are oddly enough starting to call her Frieda!) at two and then go out to Regent’s Park for a walk and sit in the sun … I am just getting over my tiredness from getting up at night. During the day the baby (known informally as The Pooker, or Pooker-Pie) wakes on the clock four-hourly and at night she shows reassuring signs of sleeping for five and even an occasional 6-hour interval. She eats like a little piglet.
3:15 p.m.: I am now sitting on a bench, facing the sun in Regent’s Park. They are mowing the lawns everywhere and the smell of cut grass, plants, and warm earth is delicious. Nothing is so beautiful as England in April. I only wish you were here to walk out with me—by the time you come, the baby should be toddling! I can’t wait till she does laugh and communicate with us. She is so tiny still when she curls up, she almost disappears … Tonight I am employing the Babyminder Service for the first time from 6 to 9-ish so we can go to Faber’s for cocktails, and again tomorrow at the same time, so we can go to dinner in Soho with Lee Anderson. He looks like a white-bearded Civil War general, is a poet and has a farm in America, and is over here to record British poets for Yale. Tuesday we went to lunch with two ex-Cambridge people—a girl who works for the BBC and is interested in Ted’s writing a verse drama for them, and Karl Miller, literary editor of the Spectator …
Last Sunday … I had an immensely moving experience and attended the arrival of the Easter weekend marchers from the atomic bomb plant at Aldermason to Trafalgar Square in London. Ted and Dido had left at noon to see Bill Merwin, who was with the over 10 thousand marchers come into Hyde Park, and I left later with the baby to meet a poet-friend of Ted’s, Peter Redgrove, and go to Trafalgar Square with him. He brought a carry-cot, which he is loaning us, and we carried the sleeping baby easily between us, installed the cot on the lawn of the National Gallery overlooking the fountains, pigeons, and glittering white buildings. Our corner was uncrowded, a sort of nursery, mothers giving babies bottles on blankets …
I saw the first of the 7-mile-long column appear—red and orange and green banners, “Ban the Bomb!” etc., shining and swaying slowly. Absolute silence. I found myself weeping to see the tan, dusty marchers, knapsacks on their backs—Quakers and Catholics, Africans and whites, Algerians and French—40 percent were London housewives. I felt proud that the baby’s first real adventure should be as a protest against the insanity of world-annihilation. Already a certain percentage of unborn children are doomed by fallout and no one knows the cumulative effects of what is already poisoning the air and sea.
I hope, by the way, that neither you nor Warren will vote for Nixon. His record is atrocious from his California campaign on—a Machiavelli of the worst order. Could you find out if there is any way I can vote? I never have and feel badly to be deprived of however minute a participation in political affairs. What do you think of Kennedy? The Sharpesville massacres are causing a great stir of pity and indignation here.
… The days of the three last weeks have just flown without my seeming to really accomplish anything except feeding the baby and us and writing a few letters. I really long for a house here near the park and must learn from you how one sets about committing oneself to a house. I want lots of rooms so we can have more children; I would so like about four. I hate to be limited by money and space!
x x x Sivvy
APRIL 26, 1960
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
Dear Mother and Warren,
It was wonderful to hear your voices Sunday. Ted shouted “Many happy returns” into the phone, but I guess it was after you had been cut off. I am always sad at what little can be said on the phone—the main thing is hearing voices. You sounded so close. I had Rebecca in my arms all the time I was talking. How I wish you were here to admire her! To other people she must just be an ordinary baby, but I would love to have an admiring grandmother and uncle appreciate her unique and absolutely marvelous qualities! I shall send the snapshots, if any come out, as a belated birthday token…. I don’t know how I can wait till next summer for the prospect of seeing you! Hearing your voice makes me feel your absence more; you feel so close it seems you should be able to drop right over.
… I’m going to try a “relief bottle” for the baby one evening this week preparatory to our dinner at T. S. Eliot’s May 4th, so I won’t have to rush home then. Just us, the Stephen Spenders and the Eliots! The Faber cocktail party was great fun. The first time I had really dressed up for ages. Everyone marveled I had had a baby just three weeks ago. I met a lively American girl on a 2-year fellowship to Cambridge whose path crossed mine often in America. Faber is doing her first novel, and I invited her and her Indian poet friend to a spaghetti supper in early May. Met an old college-mate of Ted’s, now a TV producer of arty programs, drank champagne and felt very grand and proud of Ted.
Got a very nice letter from Edward Weeks at the Atlantic and have finally by doggedness broken through the Iron Curtain raised by Peter Davison’s coming into power as Advisor on Poems. They accepted two—the best of the sheaf I sent, gratifyingly enough, one of them the first in my book and written to the baby while I was at Yaddo. I’ll get $75 for each, which is nice. Knew Peter was behind my rejections, oddly enough—he fancies himself as a poet, as you know—but felt once he thought he’d shown off his power and glory, he would find it difficult or pointless to keep rejecting my good things, and so it has come to pass….
Ted joins in sending lots
of love to you both.
x x x Sivvy
MAY 5, 1960
Dear Mother,
How wonderful Sappho is going to have kittens. Oh, I wish we could somehow have one of them. You must describe each one in detail and note the day of their birth. We are very excited about this. So proud Warren has a scholarship next year….
Yesterday the proofs of my book The Colossus came in a paper binding. We are so excited. The book will look handsome, 88 pages long. The poems look so beautifully final
Had dinner at an excellent Indian restaurant with Peter and Jane Davison Monday at the expense of the Atlantic. Peter is worse than ever. He was furious (although he tried to conceal this) that I’d sent my stories and poems directly to Edward Weeks and not through him. I figured he’d been behind the rejections of my things, as since he came on, not one of my pieces had been taken and he is very jealous, as he now considers himself a real poet. Evidently his job is furthered by “bringing writers in,” but I was there before he came. He also bragged about his work in the most puerile way. Said he read Ted’s story in Harper’s, “the issue before the issue with a poem of mine in it,” and as we left them on the bus, he yelled desperately after us, “Look for the Hudson Review; I have a long poem coming out in it.” Pity and shame kept me from yelling back, “I have four coming out in it.” … He can’t bear to hear about our work, so of course we tell him nothing.
Last night at Eliot’s was magnificent. By a miracle I got the baby bathed and fed, me bathed and dressed … and the baby-minder instructed about the baby’s relief bottle (she takes all 6 ounces beautifully; Ted tried her out on her first bottle while I was at the Olivier play to see if it would work). We took a taxi, as it was rush hour and the place a hard one to get to. A beautiful green May evening. Passed through streets I’d never seen: Little Venice, houses mirrored in a still green canal, Palace Gardens, streets with large pastel stucco houses with gardens, and the street lined with pink and white flowering trees. We saw a FOR SALE sign and promised ourselves we’d make a symbolic effort to inquire about it. Oddly enough, the more we set our sights on, the more good fortune occurs. No harm in dreaming: I see a lawn full of babies and descendants of Sappho—and a bookcase full of books!
The Eliots live in a surprisingly drab brick building on the first floor—yet a comfortable, lavish apartment. His Yorkshire wife, Valerie, is handsome, blond and rosy. He was marvelous. Put us immediately at ease. We exchanged American travel experiences; had sherry by the coal fire. I felt to be sitting next to a descended god; he has such a nimbus of greatness about him. His wife showed me his baby and little-boy pictures in their bedroom. He was handsome from the start. Wonderfully wry and humorous.
Then the Spenders arrived; he handsome and white-haired, and she … lean, vibrant, talkative, lovely. Her name is Natasha Litvin, and she is a concert pianist. Talk was intimate gossip about Stravinsky, Auden, Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence. I was fascinated. Floated in to dinner, sat between Eliot and Spender, rapturously, and got along very well. Both of them, of course, were instrumental in Ted’s getting his Guggenheim and his book printed.
Much love to you, Warren, Sappho and embryos.
x x x Sivvy
MAY 11, 1960
Dear Mother,
Ted is starting to work regularly over in Merwin’s study, which is a great relief for both of us. It is impossible for him to work in this little place with me cleaning and caring for the baby, and when he is out, I have the living room and desk to myself and can get my work done … I find my first concern is that Ted has peace and quiet. I am happy then and don’t mind that my own taking up of writing comes a few weeks later …
… Ted got a very touching letter from Somerset Maugham at his Riviera villa in answer to his thanks for the award. Maugham said he was “thrilled” at Ted’s response. The award has been going on for many years, and Ted is only “the third person nice enough to write him”! He hopes to meet Ted when he comes to London in October. We were very excited and moved by this. As Maugham says, he is an old man. How easy it is to underestimate the needs of the great to be appreciated. I rather hope Ted can strike up a relationship with him like mine with Mrs. Prouty.
Perhaps the happiest evening we’ve spent in ages was Monday night. I had Ann Davidow and her fiancé, Leo Goodman, for dinner. Remember Ann? She would have been my dearest friend at Smith if she hadn’t left … She and I took up where we left off ten years ago. She graduated from the University of Chicago and has had her first children’s book (she’s primarily an artist) accepted by Grosset & Dunlap: Let’s Draw. I have so missed a good American girl friend! Leo was a wonder: handsome, blond, blue-eyed and Jewish, on a Guggenheim at Cambridge, to be visiting professor at Columbia next year in mathematical statistics, very warm-hearted—that unique combination of the intellectual and loving-lovable Jew. He’d just been visiting his family in Israel and had fascinating and moving stories to tell. He was at Cambridge on a Fulbright in Ted’s time, though they never met. Oddly enough, astrologically, Leo (his middle name means Lion in Hebrew, too) is a Leo, as Ted is—a very powerful and successful sign, and Ann, with her birthday on October 26, is practically my Scorpio twin. We all got along marvelously and hope to see more of them before Ann returns to America….
Sylvia with Frieda at Stonehenge, May 1960 (photo: Anne Davidow Goodman)
When is Sappho due for her accouchement? I do hope she has as easy a time as I did….
Lots of love,
Sivvy
MAY 21, 1960
Dearest Mother,
… Ted made his second BBC program this week, a recording of his story “The Rain Horse,” a program which should bring in over $100 or so, with its rebroadcasting payment. Very nice. He has several projects going with them now—possibly a verse play when he finishes it (he’s doing another now), a poem and talk for high school students with other poets and critics, a long poem, etc. The BBC is the one organization that pays excellently for poetry—$3 a minute for a reading, something like that. I got $70 for my story in the London magazine out this month, which I’ll send on soon. My tattooing story should be out in the autumn Sewanee Review.
I am itching to get writing again and feel I shall do much better now I have a baby. Our life seems to have broadened and deepened wonderfully with her. Yesterday Faber sent on an envelope jammed with reviews of Ted’s book, excellent without exception; all remarking how much better it is than his first, good though that was, etc. I revel in such clippings. He works mornings and afternoons at Merwin’s study now and things are settling down. I am just crawling out from under the mountain of baby notifications, thank-you letters and answers to Ted’s voluminous correspondence since his book and Maugham prize…
Ann Davidow and Leo Goodman drove us on a day’s trip to Stonehenge a week ago. It was an exquisite day, and we passed through beautiful country, all the immense chestnut trees in bloom, golden laburnum, rhododendrons banking the road like a bower. The baby was angelic: I fed her once in the car on the way and once sitting in a grassy ditch of buttercups the Druids thoughtfully provided just outside the circle of gigantic, ominous upright stones …
x x x Sivvy
MAY 30, 1960
Dear Mother,
Congratulations to Sappho via you about her triplets! Ted and I were delighted with your descriptive letter about her successful confinement and only heart-broken we can’t have one of the kittens if not the mother herself. Do keep us posted on their development. How superb the little all-black one must be! …
I hope you won’t give our number or address to any more people … because it simply puts us in the position of refusing to go out (it’s too expensive in time and money) and conspicuously not inviting anyone over because if we don’t firmly put our feet down, we will become simply a way-station for all sorts of travelers. The baby’s feedings and keeping the house clean, cooking, and taking care of Ted’s voluminous mail, plus my own, have driven me so I care only for carving out hours where I c
an start on my own writing.
… After this month we are not going to give any poetry readings unless we are paid for them, for it is too expensive to hire sitters, etc…. This may seem drastic to you, but even a modest fame brings flocks of letters, requests, schoolgirls asking for “the author’s own analysis of the symbols in his stories,” etc., ad nauseam. If Ted didn’t have his study, he’d be distracted by the phone, the mail, and odd callers so he’d get no work done at all. And as his secretary and my own, I have a personal reason for being strict. So please help us by not steering anyone our way.
… Ted’s mother and Aunt Hilda are coming on a London tour this weekend and will drop in Saturday and Sunday—the first relatives to see the baby. I am so pleased they are coming! …
x x x x x x Sivvy
JUNE 11, 1960
Dearest Mother and Warren,
I’m sure I haven’t written for ages. I’ve been going through a rather tired spell, and am just now catching up with rest again. It is now 10:30; my housework is done, and I look forward to a peaceful morning at home, reading and writing, since it is a grey, rainy day out.
Ted’s mother and Aunt Hilda came down to London last weekend on a holiday tour via bus, very nice for us, since they stayed at a hotel and had most of their meals on the tour. They came over Saturday evening and again Sunday afternoon—we went to sit in the Merwins’ garden—and stayed for dinner, Ted and I used their coming as a spur to finish up the house. I did a spring cleaning, scrubbing all the bookshelves and cupboards, etc., and he painted the little hall and one wall of the kitchen a marvelous vermillion, which just picked out the vermillion in the kitchen wallpaper and acts on me as a color-tonic. I can hardly stop looking at it, eating it up. I am so influenced by colors and textures. The red looks superb with the black-marbled linoleum, white woodwork and dark green cord curtains.