SATURDAY [JANUARY 27]
Interrupted by a nasty bout of milk fever—a temperature of over 103 for two nights—much worse than that I had with Frieda…. They are shocked if you take your own temperature here. Finally the doctor came across with some shots of penicillin—I’m sure if I’d had them immediately, I’d not have got so burned out, but this is not London. Now, at last, I am cool again, if a bit spent. Believe me, I shed some tears for our “grammy” [me]. Ted’s been a saint, minding Frieda all day, making me mushrooms on toast, fresh green salads and chicken broth. I hope when you come, we can give him a 6-week holiday from any baby care. He needs it—and we both need a few day excursions off on our own, fishing or boating.
Margaret’s exquisite sweater set arrived; I think it’s the sweetest I’ve seen. If Warren makes her anywhere near as happy as Ted has made me, she will be the second happiest girl in the world.
x x x Sivvy
JANUARY 31, 1962
Dearest Mother,
… The two enclosed checks are part of this incredible yearly contract I have with The New Yorker, not for any special poem. The smaller is the “cost-of-living adjustment” for the last quarter, and the larger, the adjustment of the cost-of-living adjustment for the whole year (for which I’ve already had some checks). I think this must be some marvelous scheme on their part to avoid income tax. If I get all this for the few old poems I send, I imagine the fiction writers must be able to buy penthouses! I just hope I can get back to writing poems soon again….
… Ted is brimming with ideas for plays, books, etc. And getting interesting books to review from his friend at the New Statesman—one on the six great snakes of the world, for example….
… I have got awfully homesick for you since the last baby—and for the Cape and deep snow and such things. Can’t wait for your visit.
Love to all,
Sivvy
P.S. My book should be coming out from Knopf on April 23, in time for your birthday. And I should have six poems in a paperback anthology there in May by Meridian Books—New Poets of England and America: 2nd selection. Ted’s in it, too.
FEBRUARY 7, 1962
Dear Mother,
Thank you a thousand times for sending the bras and briefs; you got just what I wanted. I suppose it seems silly to ask you to go downtown for me on another continent, but you have no idea how much it meant. I won’t be able to shop for weeks yet, when the baby is on a more fixed schedule, and small things still loom very large. I get so impatient with myself, chafing to do a hundred things that have piled up and barely managing one or two. Nicholas is very good during the night at last, waking like clockwork at 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. with no crying in between … Tell Warren to get a big house with a soundproof bedroom before he has a baby; I’m sure the night waking and crying would knock him out.
… Perhaps at the end of the month I shall be back in my study again. Ted is still taking the brunt of Frieda, who needs watching every minute. Her favorite trick is peeling our poor wallpaper off the wall—there are so many cracks she can get her fingernails in—and then running and pointing to it, saying, “Bah Poo!” in outraged tones, as if somebody else has done it. She has, since I was down and out with the baby, discovered how to throw things down the toilet, tear up minute bits of paper or cotton and sprinkle them over the red hall carpet, uproot bulbs from flower pots, draw on the walls with coal … Now that the baby is getting toward a four-rather than a three-hour schedule, I should be freer to keep an eye on her.
I am still delighted with my foresight at getting all the quarterly assignments for my grant done and packaged ahead. I do hope to get back to writing soon, though.
I am taking all those bottles of vitamins you sent and wonder if it isn’t the combination of them, especially the Vitamin C, which has kept me without a cold so far this winter (knock on wood). Oh, how I look forward to your visit! How I envy girls whose mothers can just drop in on them. I long to have a day or two on jaunts with just Ted—we can hardly see each other over the mountains of diapers and demands of babies….
Ted’s play was beautifully produced and he is so full of ideas for others. He is also reviewing animal books fairly regularly for the New Statesman and going on with his broadcasts for children, which have been very enthusiastically received.
I am so longing for spring. I miss the American snow, which at least makes a new, clean, exciting season out of winter, instead of this six months’ cooping-up of damp and rain and blackness we get here—like the six months Persephone had to spend with Pluto.
… You and Warren will just have to come over here often enough to keep me from getting too homesick and get to know the babies as they grow up….
x x x Sivvy
FEBRUARY 13, 1962
Dear Mother,
… I seem to need to sleep all the time, so drop back after feeding Nicholas at six and don’t get up till after nine, then the day is a whirlwind of baths, laundry, meals, feedings, and, bang, it is time for bed! … I seem to need twice as much sleep as normal people and [am] unable to function efficiently if [I] have a bad night …
Nicholas is absolutely darling. He seems so far advanced as a baby … lifts his head and turns it from side to side when lying down. He has great, very dark blue eyes, which focus and follow your face or the light … He has a real little-boy look, and his fuzz of brown baby hair looks like a crewcut. His eyebrows are strange—a quite black curved line over each eye, very handsome. I imagine he will have a rather dark, handsome, craggy face, although now he is soft as a peach. You’ll enjoy seeing him still at a real baby stage when you come …
… We have gorgeous big double snowdrops in bloom, a scattering of primroses, and countless daffodil sprouts. When the apple trees bloom, I am just going to take Frieda and Nicholas and lie in the orchard all day! …
Much love to all,
Sivvy
FEBRUARY 24, 1962
Dear Mother,
The bitter cold of winter has descended upon us again, after a longish lull … yet, our first daffodil bloomed this week—we keep puffing out to look at it and admire it. Ted has planted several nut, plum, pear and peach trees he ordered this week, and yesterday Frieda and I went out for a brisk hour to pull up the dead annual shoots in the garden … I find being outdoors gardening an immense relaxation and hope we have some success with our fruit, vegetables, and flowers.
I am feeling in fine shape again, having made a much more rapid recovery than when I had Frieda, partly because Nicholas is so little trouble. He only cries when he is hungry and loves being sat up and talked to. He smiled a few times at me this week and is so sweet—a little sweet-smelling peach. I feel I really enjoy him—none of the harassment and worry of Frieda’s colic and my inexperience. I love playing with him, and I also am rested enough to find energy to play with Frieda in the second half of the day, concentrating my attention on her then…. She is very radiant now….
I am immensely grateful for the BBC Third Programme and have sent for two booklets for two language courses that begin this week, one in German and one in French. They have exercises and pronunciation, and I find them excellent….
Do thank Aunt Marion for me for the check for the baby and the Woman’s Day magazines…. I am looking so forward to your coming. I have Nancy a third morning a week now for two hours of ironing, so I am free of most drudgery except that of cooking, washing up, and baby tending, all of which I more or less enjoy, so we should be free to sit in the garden and play with the babies much of the time. Love to all.
x x x Sivvy
MARCH 4, 1962
Dear Mother,
… I am managing to get about two and a bit more hours in my study in the mornings and hope to make it four when I can face getting up at six, which I hope will be as soon as Nicholas stops waking for a night feeding. The day seems to just fly by after noon, though, and I am lucky if I get a fraction of the baking or letter writing or reading or studying done that I want to … In six more weeks th
e time will change, and we’ll have the lovely long days again….
I am hoping the next installments of my grant in May and August carry us over the first year’s hump of major expense for furnishings and repairs; it couldn’t have come at a better time. I am getting very excited about the possibilities of our garden and hope we can conquer our nightly enemies, the snails.
I am beginning work on something amusing which I hope turns into a book (novel), but may be just happy piddling. I find long things much easier on my nature than poems—not so intensely demanding or depressing if not brought off. Luckily the English will publish almost anything in the way of a novel, so I have hope. It’s almost April! Take care.
Lots of love,
Sivvy
MARCH 12, 1962
Dear Mother,
… I was so touched to think I shall have your lovely Bavarian china—that’s the set with the dark-green background on the border, isn’t it? One feels a girl is the one to appreciate the domestic things, for she is the one who uses them. I know I shall reserve my treasures for Frieda. I am getting very sentimental about family things. For instance, someday I hope to be well-off enough to send for grammy’s desk. I’d like it to be Frieda’s little desk. I have such happy memories of it and could never find anything with such associations—it’s close to priceless.
… I look so forward to your visit this summer, I can hardly sit still. It is a red-letter occasion for me, because for the first time I shall be sharing my house, which you were so instrumental in enabling us to find last summer and to buy! I just adore the place. I picked our very first bouquet of daffodils yesterday and put them in a glass and brought them up to Ted’s study with his tea.
I’m sure you’ll find us very rough, still, although we are wonderfully civilized compared to when Warren was here…. The playroom (where I am typing) is a fun room. I look forward to filling it with handpainted furniture, chest for toys and the like. I want to paint them white with a design of hearts and flowers, have an old piano and so on. A real rumpus room. Now it’s just bare boards and deck chairs and a welter of Frieda’s toys….
We’re arranging to have the children baptized on Sunday afternoon, March 25, by the way. Although I honestly dislike, or rather, scorn the rector. I told you about his ghastly H-bomb sermon, didn’t I, where he said this was the happy prospect of the Second Coming and how lucky we Christians were compared to the stupid pacifists and humanists and “educated pagans” who feared being incinerated, etc., etc. I have not been to church since. I felt it was a sin to support such insanity even by my presence. But I think I shall let the children go to Sunday School. Marcia Plumer sent me a copy of a wonderful sermon on fallout shelters by her local Unitarian minister, which made me weep. I’d really be a church-goer if I was back in Wellesley … —the Unitarian Church is my church. How I miss it! There is just no choice here. It’s this church or nothing. If only there were no sermon, I could justify going to the ceremony with my own reservations. Oh well.
As I say, we are still rough—very creaky floors, leaky faucets, peeling paper and plaster and so on. But the house has a real, generous, warm soul to it, and responds so beautifully to any care we take. I so enjoy sitting here, watching the sun set behind the church. I think I will go just wild when our trees start blooming. There are fat buds on the lilac. I think the most exciting thing to me is owning flowers and trees!
Nicholas is immensely strong. He holds his head up for ages, like a Sphinx, looking round—the result of my keeping him on his stomach. I think his eyes may be hazel, like Ted’s—they are a deep slate-blue now. I love him so dearly. I think having babies is really the happiest experience of my life. I would just like to go on and on.
… I am enjoying my slender foothold in my study in the morning again. It makes all the difference in my day. I still get tired by tea time and have spells of impatience for not doing all I want in the way of study and reading. But my mornings are as peaceful as church-going—the red plush rug and all and the feeling that nothing else but writing and thinking is done there …
I have the queerest feeling of having been reborn with Frieda—it’s as if my real, rich, happy life only started just about then. I suppose it’s a case of knowing what one wants. I never really knew before. I hope I shall always be a “young” mother like you. I think working or having any sort of career keeps one young longer. I feel I’m just beginning at writing, too. Doing prose is much easier on me; the concentration spreads out over a large area and doesn’t stand or fall on one day’s work, like a poem.
… Well, I must get supper for my family. Lots of love from us all.
Sivvy
MARCH 27, 1962
Dearest Mother,
So nice to get your happy springy letter! I have been suffering from the March megrims—we seem to have had nothing but a horrid, raw, damp east wind (which blows around our antique back door and straight through the house) for the last month. March is the worst month when it is mean; it seems one has used up all one’s resistance to winter and is left vulnerable. Just when I was most dismal, we had one glorious sunny day when I had the babies out and ate out and gardened from sunrise till sunset. We all got little sunburns and felt wonderful. Then the cold and grey closed in again.
I am becoming a devout gardener—knowing nothing about it. It is so soothing and kindly to work in the earth, pruning, digging, cutting grass. Ted is doing wonders with the back, which will be our vegetable garden, digging and fertilizing it….
… I am thinking of learning to ride horseback at one of the local riding schools about here. I anticipate Frieda and Nicholas learning to ride, or wanting to, and would like to be practically grounded myself. But this is as yet just a notion. I mean straight riding—no jumping or hopping or skipping. Life begins at 30!
Keep me posted on all the wedding plans. Is there any chance of Warren and Maggie ever getting over here?
Lots of love to all,
Sivvy
APRIL 8, 1962
Dear Mother,
Honestly, the reason I have been so slow in writing is that I have said to myself, “I will write tomorrow; then it is sure to be a sunny day and how cheerful I will be.” Believe it or not, we haven’t seen the sun for three weeks … At least, it is supposed to have been the coldest March in over 70 years. We are also having our floors done … workmen hacking about. They have cemented the playroom and this week will cement the floors in the downstairs hall. I just learned that it will take two weeks for the cement to dry properly before the lino can be put down. So by your birthday, I expect things will be settled. I have been painting odd bits of grubby wood furniture—a table, a chair—white, with designs, very primitive, of hearts and flowers, which cheers me up and should look gay in the playroom….
Now that the weather is going to be supposedly more springlike, we shall have some friends down from London, so I shall have some company. A young American boy and his wife are coming Tuesday, he to do a BBC interview with me for a series on why Americans stay in England. It better be sunny by the time he comes, or I won’t have so many reasons! … I have just got winter-tired these last days—don’t want to see another dish or cook another meal.
My poetry book is officially due out May 14. It is very handsome, as I believe you’ll think when you see it—no errors in this one. Knopf seem very enthusiastic about it. Ted’s children’s programs are so wonderfully received, he has a running request for as many as he can provide …
Well, I hope by the time I write again I may have all my seeds planted and be out with my babies. Our daffodils and jonquils are wonderful. I’ve picked about 300 these last two weeks and they’re only beginning. Once a week I pick for myself and once a week to sell at the stands. Lots of love to you and Warren.
Sivvy
APRIL 16, 1962
Dearest Mother,
… I am now awaiting Ted’s return from a day-trip to London where he is making a BBC broadcast, a recording, and seeing Leonard Baskin’s sh
ow of engravings, for which he has been asked to write the foreword—an honor we think. I have a nice big Irish stew ready, with cheese dumplings, which he likes …
I never dreamed it was possible to get such joy out of babies. I do think mine are special. We had a young American I know and his British wife down last week, and they brought an acquaintance with two of the most ghastly children I’ve ever seen—two girls of five and six. They had no inner life, no notion of obedience, and descended shrieking on Frieda’s toys, running up and down through the house with mucky boots … they kept sneaking up to peer in the rooms and at the baby, though they’d been told repeatedly not to. They almost knocked us out. How I believe in firm, loving discipline! … Now we are planning to have several couples we like down in the next month. Honestly, I wish you knew how much I miss Warren and Margaret! I already love Maggie sight unseen from what I’ve heard of her, and think of what lovely times we could all have together. I have such lovely children and such a lovely home now, I only long to share them with loving relatives …
So glad you liked the poems in Poetry. I don’t feel they’re my best, but it’s nice to get the “exercises” published, too. The “News from Home” is, of course, your letters, which I look forward to above all …
How I wish you could see us now with all the daffodils. I pick about 600 a week for market and friends and notice no diminishing. They are so heavenly. We even had an antiquarian come to visit our Ancient Mound last Sunday!
x x x Sivvy
APRIL 25, 1962
Dearest Mother,
How I wish you could see us now! I am sitting out in a deck chair in shorts in heavenly hot sun, smelling the pungent box bushes at our door and the freshly mown and plowed tennis court; Baby Nick (as Frieda and, therefore, we now call him) asleep among the daisies in his pram; Frieda so excited she can hardly nap; and Ted out back, beaming among the few strawberry plants that survived the late frosts. On Easter Sunday the world relented and spring arrived. Our daffodils are in full bloom; we picked about 1,000 this week, and I look out over a literal sea of several thousand more. I keep finding new treasures: little yellow and pink primroses and grape hyacinths opening in a grassy tangle by the lilac hedge, the spikes of lily-of-the-valley poking through a heap of dead brambles. I think I would like nothing better than to grow flowers and vegetables. I have such spring fever, I can hardly think straight. I am dying for you to come and to see it all through your eyes. I got your room all fixed up and cleaned yesterday. Two months seems such a long way away!