… Ted joins me in sending you lots of love. Is there really a chance of Warren’s coming to England this fall? I’d like to make sure of being here if there is!
Love,
Sivvy
SUNDAY
FEBRUARY 26, 1961
Dear Mother,
By the time you get this letter, I shall probably have had my appendix out and be well on the road to recovery. I got my “invitation” to come to hospital this afternoon, so I imagine I shall be operated on sometime tomorrow. It’s the 27th [her birthday was October 27th] so I hope it’s a lucky day for me. I’ve had this hanging over my head for almost two months now and shall be very glad to get rid of it.
I’ve got all the house in order, supplies in for Ted; and yesterday I baked banana bread, Tollhouse cookies, and today am making apricot tarts and griddle batter, so he shall have something to go on with….
As if to cheer me up, I got an airmail special-delivery letter from the Atlantic, accepting a 50-line poem I did as an exercise called “Words for a Nursery,” spoken in the person of a right hand, with 5 syllables to a line, 5 stanzas, and 10 lines to a stanza. Very fingery. I imagine that will bring in about $75. I have started writing poems again and hope I can keep right on through my hospital period. I’m bringing a notebook in with me as you (and Ted) suggested to occupy myself by taking down impressions….
I probably told you about Ted and me doing a recorded interview for a BBC radio program, called “Two of a Kind,” a couple of weeks ago … Well, they broadcasted part of it again on the Sunday following on the weekly roundup program, and evidently it was used as a “model” for the Talks producers, for they decided to give it a full rebroadcast after that on the weekend … which doubles the $75 fee. We got some funny letters, among them one offering us a big house and garden (I’m not quite clear under just what circumstances) since I had said our dream was to have a place big enough so we could yell from one end to the other without hearing each other….
Lots of love,
Sivvy
ST. PANCRAS HOSPITAL
LONDON, ENGLAND
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1, 1961
Dear Mother,
I am writing this to you propped up in my hospital bed less than 24 hours after my operation, which I had Tuesday about 11 a.m., instead of Monday as I thought. I must have really been secretly worried about my appendix a good deal of the time, as now that it is gone, I feel nothing but immense relief and pleasant prospects ahead. The worst part was coming in Sunday night and finding I had to wait a day longer than I thought, being “under observation” Sunday night and Monday. The progress they’ve made since I had my tonsils out in anesthetics is wonderful. I had an injection in my ward bed which dried up all my saliva and made me pleasantly drowsy. A very handsome young lady anesthetist introduced herself to me and said I’d see her later. She gave me an arm-shot in the anteroom which blacked me out completely. I drowsed pleasantly the rest of the day after I had the shot of painkiller and was ready to see dear Ted when he came during visiting hours in the evening, bearing a jar of freshly squeezed orange juice, a pint of milk, and a big bunch of hothouse grapes—none of which they’ve let me touch yet…. The food is pretty awful, but Ted brought me two huge rare steak sandwiches … and a tin of Tollhouse cookies, which I’ll eat later on.
He is an absolute angel. To see him come in at visiting hours, about twice as tall as all the little, stumpy people, with his handsome, kind, smiling face is the most beautiful sight in the world to me. He is finishing his play and taking admirable care of little Frieda.
… On my first night here (Monday), Ted was able to bring me an exciting air letter from The New Yorker, offering me one of their coveted “first reading” contracts for the next year! This means I have to let them have the first reading of all my poems and only send poems elsewhere if they reject them. I had to laugh, as I send all my poems there first anyway. I get $100 (enclosed) for simply signing the agreement, 25 percent more per poem accepted, plus what they call a “cost-of-living” bonus on work accepted, amounting to about 35 percent more per year, plus a higher base rate of pay for any work they consider of exceptional value. The contracts are renewable each year at their discretion. How’s that! As you may imagine, I’ve been reading and rereading the letter, which came at the most opportunely cheering moment.
I am in a modern wing of this hospital—all freshly painted pink walls, pink and green flowered bed curtains and brand-new lavatories, full of light and air—an immense improvement over that grim ward at the Newton-Wellesley where Ted and I visited you! The nurses are all young, pretty, and cheerful … I am in a big ward, divided by a glass and wood partition with about 17 beds on my side. The women at my end are young and cheerful. One has a T.B. knee; three had bunion operations; a couple are in plaster casts. I’m really as serious a case as any of them—a great relief to me, for I dreaded a ward of really sick people lying about and groaning all the time.
Later: Now Teddy has come, so I shall sign off. With much love to you and Warrie—
Sylvia
MONDAY, MARCH 6, 1961
Dear Mother,
I am writing propped up in my hospital bed, six days now after my operation. My stitches are “pulling” and itching, but the nurses say that’s a sign I’m healed … I’m hoping I may get rid of them today. Actually, I feel I’ve been having an amazing holiday! I haven’t been free of the baby one day for a whole year, and I must say I have secretly enjoyed having meals in bed, backrubs, and nothing to do but read (I’ve discovered Agatha Christie—just the thing for hospital reading—I am a who-dun-it fan now), gossip, and look at my table of flowers sent by Ted’s parents, Ted, Helga Huws, and Charles Monteith, Ted’s editor at Faber’s. Of course, before my operation I was too tense to enjoy much and for two days after, I felt pretty shaky since they starve you for about 40 hours before and after; but I was walking around the ward on my third day and gossiping with everyone.
The British have an amazing “stiff upper-lipness”; they don’t fuss or complain or whine, except in a joking way, and even women in toe-to-shoulder casts discuss family, newspaper topics and so on with amazing resoluteness. I’ve been filling my notebook with impressions and character studies. Now I am mobile, I make a daily journey round the 28-bed ward, stopping and gossiping. This is much appreciated by the bedridden women, who regard me as a sort of ward newspaper, and I learn a great deal, for they are all dying to talk about themselves and their medical involvements. The nurses are very young, fresh, sweet as can be; the Sister (head nurse), lenient, wise and humorous, and all the other women and girls wonderfully full of kindness and cheer. The ward … overlooks, on my side, a pleasant park with antique gravestones … so aesthetically I feel happy … The food is pretty flat and dull, but each day Ted brings me a jar of fresh orange juice, a pint of creamy milk, and a steak sandwich or a salad, so I’m coming along fine. I feel better than I have since the baby was born, and immensely relieved to get rid of this troublesome appendix, which has probably been poisoning me for sometime. The ward doctor said I’m fine inside—perfectly healthy in every way, so that’s a relief. I’ve been on a strong diet of iron and vitamin pills and haven’t had a cold since that ghastly Christmas interval.
… Ted has been an angel. I sense he is eager for me to come home and little remarks like “I seem to be eating a lot of bread” and “Doesn’t the Pooker make a lot of dirty pots” tell me he is wearying of the domestic routine. Poor dear! I’d like to know how many men would take over as willingly and lovingly as he has! Plus bringing me little treats every night.
Fortunately there seem to be only two “serious” cases now—a brain operation, who still is in a coma after half a week with tubes in her nose and a skull-sock on her head, and an old lady run over by a car with both legs broken, who keeps shouting, “Police, policeman, get me out of here” and calling the nurses “devils who are trying to murder me” and knocking the medicine out of their hands. Her moans, “Oh, how I su
ffer,” are very theatrical; and as she is shrewd all day, picking up the least whisper, and as they give her drugs for pain, I think most of this is an act for attention. I find all of us are more entertained than annoyed by this as our days are otherwise routine, and she adds a good bit of color with her curses and sudden crashes as she flings glasses of medicine about.
Anyhow, I shall be glad as anything to get out….
Lots of love, Sivvy (your appendix-less daughter)
CHALCOT SQUARE
LONDON, ENGLAND
MARCH 17, 1961
Dear Mother,
A thousand apologies for this great gap between my letters. I have been so heartened by yours and say with great pleasure, “In three months from tomorrow you will arrive,” over and over. I have been in a kind of grisly coma these last ten days and fit for little but vegetating … My stitches came out Tuesday the 7th (the worst bit of all—I hated the niggling twinges of each of the nine, plus the pulling off of a large plaster bandage, much more than the actual operative experience), and I was let go home Wednesday the 8th, with strict orders not to do any lifting or heavy work for two weeks but to “behave like a lady,” or I’d feel as if run over by a small bus, etc., etc.
… The most difficult part has been this home convalescing. Poor Ted insists he likes doing all the baby-lifting and laundry-bring and so on, but he’s been at it over a month now since my miscarriage, and I do think it bothers me more than him. I’m a model convalescent if I’m waited on by anonymous people whose job it is, but very bad at sitting loose-handed about our own small rooms. I also found it awfully depressing to rise on a sunny day and think: now I’ll bake some tea-bread, wash my hair, write some letters, and then feel unlike lifting a finger. And poor Frieda decided to teethe some more the minute I got back, so we’ve been sleeping in fits and starts. I must say that the last six months I have felt slapped down each time I lifted my head up and don’t know what I’d have done if Ted hadn’t been more than saintly and the baby adorable and charming. I write you about this now it’s over and not in the midst of it.
Luckily, for all my misfortunes, I have a surprising resilience and today, 2½ weeks after my op., feel very close to a self I haven’t been for sometime and full of hope. The weather is amazing: real June days. I’ve been up on the Hill each day with Frieda out on the grass on a blanket, lying in the clear sun, and tomorrow start going over to the Merwins’ study in the morning again. I hope to be able to use these three months, until you come, writing.
Well, I have sat round “like a lady” and this Tuesday go back for a checkup. After my appointment at the main hospital with the surgeon whose name was over my bed, I saw no more of him and was “done” by his deputies in the hospital annex, who checked up on me. I didn’t care; I was admirably treated, and the nurses and other patients were sweethearts and my 3-inch herringbone is very neat.
One thing this experience has pressed on me is our very definite need for a house by 1962. Then Ted could work off in a study while I had temporary help do house-drudging during baby-confinements and any illness that comes up and not feel guilty at using Ted’s noble kindness. A house and a car. We have everything else, and that’s all we need to make the fullest life possible for both of us … Actually the most wonderful thing you could do for us would be to live here with Frieda for two weeks while we had our first real vacation in France with the Merwins …
I so appreciated your $10: Ted got me, on my orders, a stack of D. H. Lawrence—novels, stories, and travel books, which I’ve been reading … I’ll use the remains to buy a fine art book when I take my first trip downtown….
x x x to you both,
Sivvy
MARCH 27, 1961
Dearest Mother,
… Ted’s children’s poems came out in the Times yesterday (three of them), and I’m enclosing a clipping. We are delighted at the advance publicity for his book, which should be out within a month. He also had a letter from Lord David Cecil, saying he’d been awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Lupercal for 1960—it’s a very prestigeful fiction and/or poetry award here—gold medal, and, I think, 100 pounds. Dom Moraes, the young Indian poet, got it some years ago and the young writer Alan Sillitoe, whose first novel was made into a movie. The presentation is around the end of May, so it should get into the papers about then and is a very good way to keep up his book sales. We figured he’s earned about $1,500 from the BBC alone this year, which we hope to keep up. He’s had the outline of another hour-drama accepted, and they seem eager to take anything he does….
We are very happy, looking forward to getting a small station wagon hopefully before you come. Then we can really take advantage of our life: going on country and Cornwall trips when other people have to work, avoiding traffic and holidayers and being portable with babies. We want to take the wagon when we go to Europe on the Maugham grant, which we are seriously thinking of postponing until next spring—the latest time possible.
Ted brought me a little bouquet of yellow primroses yesterday with a handsome edition of the Oxford Book of Wild Flowers—the remains of that kind $10 you sent. He is the sweetest, most thoughtful person in the world. I have had a rather glum winter, and he has tirelessly stood by and cheered me up in every conceivable way.
… Keep well and rested!
Lots of love,
Sivvy
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 1961
Dear Mother,
… Luckily Ted’s book comes out this month, so we’re blowing ourselves to a great stack of copies and sending them to all those good people we’ve been wanting so much to do something for. We may not have much money, but we’ll always have plenty of books!
… We’ve been very hectically busy lately—a spate of seeing people, poets paying Ted pilgrimages, movies, plays, teas. Tomorrow we do a joint broadcast over the BBC for America (it’s called “The London Echo”), reading poems and talking about our childhoods. It’s supposed to come out over a lot of networks in America. Next week Ted goes on the BBC television for about 7 minutes, talking about his children’s book. Probably they’ll flash a drawing on the screen while he reads the poem to go with it. I’m glad he’ll do this as I think it may magnify the book sales considerably and the reason he consented is because it’s not a “literary pose.” … I’ve asked to come along and see it as we don’t have a set, so it should be fun.
Best of all, he’s just been commissioned by Peter Hall (Director of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and husband of Leslie Caron) for a play for their London company. This is an incredible stroke of luck, as only very well-known playwrights have been commissioned so far, and it means the play Ted is working on will have the best reading and if it’s good enough to produce, the best cast and production it could have.
We are thrilled by this—we have yet to hear just how much money it is—because it means that Ted’s plays will go straight to the best director in England for a reading, and even if this one isn’t accepted (we have to keep telling ourselves this to calm down, because we think it’s a superb play, which we’ll be sending to the Poets’ Theater as well, so you may have a chance to see it, too!), the next ones, no doubt, will be. Oh, you wait, we’ll be wealthy yet….
Lots of love,
Sivvy
APRIL 21, 1961
Dear Mother,
… I am working fiendishly at the Merwins’ study seven mornings a week, as they are coming home at the end of May, and I’ve a lot I want to finish before then. I have found that the whole clue to my happiness is to have four to five hours perfectly free and uninterrupted to write in the first thing in the morning—no phones, doorbells or baby. Then I come home in a wonderful temper and dispatch all the household jobs in no time. Thank goodness, the Merwins are going to France shortly after they come home, so I hope to have the study till next fall….
I’m trying to get the bulk of my writing done before you come, but even if I work in the mornings, we’ll have the whole rest of the day together, and you could take Frieda
to the park in the mornings … less than two months! I am looking so forward to showing you everything and having you see your beautiful granddaughter! …
I’m enclosing the poems and article on him [Ted] that came out in last Sunday’s Observer … It is so marvelous having married Ted with no money and nothing in print and then having all my best intuitions prove true! Our life together is happier than I ever believed possible, and the only momentary snags are material ones—our lack of a house is the one thing we want to change. I want Ted to have a study where he doesn’t have to move his papers or be bothered when there are visitors and where I can have an upstairs room in peace in the morning while someone minds the children in the basement nursery. Then, too, we’ll be able to plan a year in America …
I feel so fine now this appendix worry is over and Frieda is safely a year old, I want to consolidate my health and work in the coming year. We have good friends here, most of them our age, and the older people we know are influential and benevolent, so I feel very much at home. The BBC really supports us. Our income from them in the past year has bought us our car.
Do keep in good health, now, mummy, and have a Happy Happy Birthday!
Lots of love,
Sivvy
MAY 1, 1961
GOOD NEWS GOOD NEWS GOOD NEWS!
Dear Mother,
I hoped it would come by your birthday, but here it is on May Day instead.
ALFRED KNOPF will publish The Colossus in America!
This is no doubt what Mrs. Prouty’s account was about. They wrote me an optimistic letter about a month ago, and I guess I shouldn’t have mentioned it to her until it was definite, so I decided not to jinx my luck and to keep quiet until I heard definitely, which I did today.