Please share this letter with Dotty and Mrs. Prouty. I am all right. … Could either Dot or Margaret spare me six weeks. I can get no good nanny sight unseen; I could pay board and room, travel expenses and Irish fares. I am as bereft now as ever … I must have someone I love … to protect me, for my flu with my weight loss and the daily assault of practical nastiness—this nanny sounds as if she will leave in a day or so … has made me need immediate help. Know my only problems now are practical: money and health back, a good young girl or nanny, willing to muck in and cook, which I could afford once I got writing. The strain of facing suing … for support, with the cruel laws here, is something I need to put off just now.
I’m getting an unlisted phone put in as soon as possible so I can call out; you shall have the number.
The babes are beautiful, though Frieda has regressed; the pussies help. I cannot come home. I need someone to cover my getting to Ireland. I can’t rely on any nanny at this short notice—I just can’t interview them. Do let me know what you all think. The life in Ireland is very healthful; the place, a dream; the sea, a blessing. I must get out of England. I am … full of plans, but do need help for the next two months. I am fighting now against hard odds and alone.
x x x Sivvy
OCTOBER 16, 1962
Dear Mother,
Mention has been made of my coming home for Christmas, which, alas, this year is impossible from every angle, psychological, health, babies, money. I gathered from Dot’s letter you might ail chip in to do this. Do you suppose instead there is any possibility of your chipping in and sending me Maggie? By next spring I should have my health back, the prospect of visits from friends … Could she come now instead of then? I already love her; she would be such fun and love the babies. We could go to Ireland together and get me settled in, and she could fly home from Dublin well before Christmas. Do I sound mad? Taking or wanting to take Warren’s new wife? Just for a few weeks! How I need a free sister! We could go on jaunts, eat together; I have all the cleaning done and someone who’ll mind the babies nine hours a week.
I need someone from home. A defender…. I have a fever now, so I am a bit delirious. I … work from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. On the next few months depend my future and my health …
… I dread the nanny who is coming tonight; she sounded such a bitch over the phone, so snotty, wanting a “cook,” etc. I simply can’t afford these high fees and a bad, lazy nanny. It’s the worst thing for the children, these changes. If only Maggie could come for six weeks, then I could get settled in Ireland and look around for an Irish girl. I would have a blood ally … Do see if Maggie and Warren could make this great and temporary sacrifice. I am fine in mind and spirit, but wasted and ill in flesh. I love you all.
Sivvy
[On receiving the above letter, I cabled Mrs. Winifred Davies, Sylvia’s midwife and friend: “Please see Sylvia now and get woman for her. Salary paid here. Writing.”]
OCTOBER 18, 1962
Dear Mother,
Do ignore my last letters! I honestly must have been delirious to think I could uproot other people’s lives to poultice my own. It was the bloody fever that just finished me. I went to the doctor—no medication, of course—then to bed at 8 p.m. Yesterday I was much better. The Health Visitor came to see Nicholas and gaped at me: “My, Mrs. Hughes, you’ve lost weight!” I told her I was up at 4 a.m. every morning, writing till the babies woke, and she looked concerned. I guess my predicament is an astounding one, a deserted wife knocked out by flu with two babies and a full-time job!
Anyhow, Winifred, bless her, came round last night with some hopeful news—a young, 22-year-old nurse nearby would “love” to live in till mid-December, visit home one day a week, etc. I could propose the Irish trip after she’d settled in; she thought she’d be game. She’d want to be home for Christmas and have to go back to London as staff nurse in January, but it’s this limbo through to Ireland I’ve got to settle. Evidently they’ll invite me round to tea to discuss business—about 5 guineas a week ($15) plus board and room should be okay, Winifred thinks. Half of the fee for the bastardly nanny who arrived last night. She’s an old, snobby snoop, and I can’t wait to get rid of her. It’s cost $10 just to hire her through this fancy agency, which in desperation I’ve had to use—I just don’t have time to shop around … Hilda, Ted’s aunt, wrote today about coming down soon, so I shall tell her I’ve been ordered to have a live-in nurse … since I’ve been flattened by influenza … no hurt feelings.
The weather has been heavenly. Fog mornings, but clear, sunny, blue days after. I have a bad cough and shall get my lungs x-rayed as soon as I can and my teeth seen to. Up at 5 a.m. today. I am writing very good poems. The BBC has just accepted a very long one which I’ll go up to record … I need time to breathe, sun, recover my flesh. I have enough ideas and subjects to last me a year or more! Must get a permanent girl or nanny after this young nurse (whose father writes children’s books and whose mother is the secretary of the local bee-keepers’ club). She sounds nice. Everybody here very good to me, as if they knew or guessed my problem … I shall live on here and eventually in London, happy in my own life and career and babies … I love it here, even in the midst of this. I see it is imperative to have a faithful girl or woman living in with me, so I can go off for a job or a visit at the drop of a hat and write full time. Then I can enjoy the babies. It is lucky I don’t have to work out….
… being utterly cut off from culture, plays, libraries, people, work, resources, my writing stopped and my grant gone … I shall never forget and shall commemorate in my next novel.
… I love and live for letters.
x x x Sivvy
OCTOBER 18, 1962
Dear Warren,
Your welcome letter arrived today, together with a very sweet and moving letter from Clem [Warren’s Exeter and Harvard roommate]. I certainly want to see his father [an executive in London at this time]. As it happens, the BBC has taken a long, gruesome poem of mine, so I can go up to record it during his stay, expenses paid, and a good local temporary nanny is imminent, thanks to the efforts of blessed Winifred Davies, our midwife. I have a horror now (don’t tell mother) whom I shall fire tomorrow—she is a snobby, snoopy old bitch and has upset my faithful cleaner, Nancy, and the babies and me and is terribly expensive. I got her from the same agency as my young dream-nanny who came while I was in Ireland; have resolved never to get someone sight unseen again … I know just what I need, what I want, what I must work for. Please convince mother of this. She identifies much too much with me, and you must help her see how starting my own life in the most difficult place—here—not running, is the only sane thing to do. I love England, love [this place] for summers, want to live in London in fall and winter so the children can go to the fine free schools and I can have the free-lance jobs and cultural variety and stimulus which is food for my year-long culture-starved soul.
I fear I wrote two worrying letters to mother this week when I was desperate … Do try to convince mother I am cured. I am only in danger physically, mentally I am sound, fine, and writing the best ever, free from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. each day. I did not tell Mother that I almost died from influenza, that is why I begged to see Maggie. I thought a loving … sister-in-law whom I already love dearly would protect me from further assaults while I got back my weight, my health. But now I am better and if this local nanny comes through and covers my trip to Ireland, I should be safe for a while.
… I am a writer and that is all I want to do. Over here I can earn quite a bit from the radio, live on little, get free medical care, and have had my first novel accepted (this is a secret; it is a pot-boiler and no one must read it!) and am ready to finish a second the minute I get a live-in nanny …
I must have someone live in or otherwise I don’t eat and can go nowhere. By next fall I hope to have earned and written my way to a flat in London where my starved mind can thrive and grow. My God, Warren, imagine yourself on an endless potato farm, forever deprived of your c
omputers, friends, relatives and only potato people in sight. I am an intellectual at heart. This will be a fine summer house for the children, but the schools are awful; they must go to school in London. Do reassure mother. I hope my new nanny will want to manage Ireland.
x x x Sivvy
OCTOBER 21, 1962
Dear Mother,
Will you please, for goodness sake, stop bothering poor Winifred Davies! … She is busier than either you or I and is helping me as much as she can and knows and sees my situation much better than you can … she came over this afternoon and said you sent her some wire to tell me to “keep the nanny” … Please do understand that while I am very very grateful indeed for financial help from people who have money … and while I should be glad for the odd birthday and Christmas present from you, I want no monthly dole, especially not from you. You can help me best by saving your money for your own retirement …
I am even enjoying my rather frustrating (culturally and humanly) exile now. I am doing a poem a morning, great things, and as soon as the nurse settles, shall try to draft this terrific second [third] novel that I’m dying to do. Don’t talk to me about the world needing cheerful stuff! What the person out of Belsen—physical or psychological—wants is nobody saying the birdies still go tweet-tweet, but the full knowledge that somebody else has been there and knows the worst, just what it is like. It is much more help for me, for example, to know that people are divorced and go through hell, than to hear about happy marriages. Let the Ladies’ Home Journal blither about those.
I know just what I want and want to do. I made a roast beef, potato and corn dinner with apple cake today; had the bank manager’s handsome 14-year-old son and a school friend in—they had Ted’s poems in class. They were charming.
I dearly love the people I know in town, but they are no life. I am itching for museums, language study, intellectual and artistic friends. I am well liked here, in spite of my weirdness, I think, though, of course, everybody eventually comes round to “Where is Mr. Hughes?” …
I adore the babies and am glad to have them, even though now they make my life fantastically difficult. If I can just financially get through this year, I should have time to get a good nanny … The worst difficulty is that Ted is at the peak of his fame and all his friends are the ones who employ me. But I can manage that, too.
Had a lovely afternoon out with the children, mowing the lawn, Frieda playing with the cats and a stick, and Nick laughing wildly at them all. He is a sunshine; Frieda gets awfully whiney, but that is because of the big changes. Let me know roughly when and for how long Warren and Maggie can come next spring, so I can start planning a rota of guests! Love to all.
Sylvia
OCTOBER 23, 1962
Dear Mother,
Please forgive my grumpy, sick letters of last week. The return of my fever, … [and] the hideous nanny from whom I expected help, … combined to make me feel the nadir had been reached. Now everything is, by comparison, almost miraculous. I hardly dare breathe. Winifred found me the prettiest, sweetest local children’s nurse, age 22, who lives in the most gorgeous house at Belstone, just overlooking Dartmoor, who is coming in days until she goes back in December to be staff nurse at a famous children’s hospital in central London. She has been here two days, from 8:30 to 6, and the difference in my life is a wonder. I think she will go to Ireland and see me settled in. With her it would be a lark. I see now just what I need—not professional nannies (who are snotty and expensive) but an adventurous, young, cheerful girl (to whom my life and travel would be fun) to take complete care of the children, eat with me at midday—an “au pair” girl, as they say here, “one of the family.” … I love Susan O’Neill-Roe, she is a dear with the children. I come down and cook us a big hot lunch and we and Frieda eat together in the playroom. Then I lie down for an hour’s nap. I make a pot of tea in midafternoon and chat over a cup. O it is ideal. And Nancy does the cleaning. I am so happy and doing so much work, just in these two days, I can hardly believe it. My study is the warmest, brightest room in the house. After Susan goes in the evening, I come up with a tray of supper and work again, surrounded by books, photos, cartoons and poems pinned to the wall.
I have put my house deeds in our local bank under my name with Ted’s life insurance policy and the fire insurance policy…. I am having a heater put in the car and shall now start all my arrangements for the formidable trip to Galway through the AA.
Susan is coming up overnight while I go to London for a few days next week to record a poem for the BBC … and, hopefully, to see the head of the British Arts Council who has just put an exciting job in my way. There is to be another big Poetry Festival in London this July at the Royal Court Theatre (a big, famous, adventurous theater) for a week. I’ve been asked to organize, present, and take part in the American night! It means I’d have to be an actress-hostess of sorts. A fantastic challenge—me, on the professional stage, in London. But I think I shall undertake it. By next spring I should have managed to come up with a live-in girl, and this Arts Council man I think will help throw a few jobs my way when he knows my predicament and sees I am willing to tackle everything. Don’t you think I should do it?
O the package came today, too! How wonderful. I am mad for Nick’s fuzzy red pants and the blue sweater set. Thank Dot a million times. And the pastels, both sorts! O mother, I shall find time to use them, too. I must be one of the most creative people in the world. I must keep a live-in girl so I can get myself back to the live, lively, always learning and developing person I was! I want to study, learn history, politics, languages, travel. I want to be the most loving and fascinating mother in the world. London, a flat, is my aim, and I shall, in spite of all the obstacles that rear, have that; and Frieda and Nick shall have the intelligences of the day as their visitors, and I the Salon that I will deserve. I am glad this happened and happened now. I shall be a rich, active woman … I am so glad to have Ship of Fools. I have been dying to read it. I shall bring it for wild, wet nights in Ireland.
Now do write Winifred and thank her a thousand times for obtaining this girl for me at the most difficult and necessary period of my life. I feel this London trip will do me a power of good—I shall cram in every film and play I can … I should love to use your birthday check on a Chagford dress. I want some of those hair-grips—copper or wood, a curved oval, with a kind of pike through it—for the back of my hair and to get the front cut in a professional fringe, so the front looks short and fashionable and I can have a crown of braid or chignon at the back. I shall have to take all my hems up. Almost all my clothes are ten years old! Just wait till I hit London …
Love to Dot, Warren and Maggie, too.
Sivvy
OCTOBER 25, 1962
Dearest Warren and Maggie,
Just a short letter to say how immensely grateful I was to feel you both so thoroughly behind me that you would consider uprooting your lives for our sake! Thank goodness, it won’t in any way be advisable or necessary. My main setback was having this awful shock … come the week after my influenza with no time or energy to do all I had to do to keep going on a day-to-day basis, let alone cope with the endless practical ruins … Ever since the 22-year-old children’s nurse, Susan O’Neill-Roe, has been coming days from 8:30 to 6, my life has been heaven …
… the critic of the Observer is giving me an afternoon at his home to hear me read all my new poems! He is the opinion-maker in poetry over here, A. Alvarez, and says I’m the first woman poet he’s taken seriously since Emily Dickinson! Needless to say, I’m delighted,
Now can you possibly get mother to stop worrying so much? … I do think I have adjusted to very unpleasant circumstances very fast … and am now very busy, but fine, knowing just where I want to go. I have a gorgeous, plush house hired in Ireland, much cosier, smaller and easier to manage than this, sheltered, with a lovely woman, the owner, in a cottage next door, willing to babysit and help shop, etc….
It is very important for me to m
ake new discoveries now, and I am very stable and practical and cautious and thoroughly investigated this house and surroundings before hiring it. I need to get away from here for a change, after the hell of this summer, and am lucky to have such a delightful place fall into my lap. As I said to mother, winter can’t at the North Pole be worse than here! …
… I’ve not had a holiday on my own for two years, and as you may imagine, after these events, the court trial ahead, heaven knows when … I shall need a holiday on my own, preferably with two lovely people like you! I adore you both, have the gorgeous wedding picture on my desk where I can see it as I work. Do write.
Lots of love,
Sivvy
OCTOBER 25, 1962
Dear Mother,
Thank you for your last letter. This time I shall accept the much-traveled $50 as a birthday present. I shall buy a dress, have my “fringe” cut and get a copper hair thong [barette with removable pin]. I shall try and do this in London next week, so you can imagine me having fun …
On my birthday, if it’s nice, I’ll be at my horseback riding lesson—I’m “rising to the trot” very well now, tell Dotty and Nancy; they’ll know what I mean. My riding mistress thinks I’m very good.
Forget about the novel [The Bell Jar] and tell no one of it. It’s a pot-boiler and just practice.
I am immensely moved by Warren and Maggie being willing to uproot themselves to help, and so glad this won’t in any way be necessary. They are just darling, and I hope they’ll come for a holiday next spring …
Now stop trying to get me to write about “decent courageous people”—read the Ladies’ Home Journal for those! … I believe in going through and facing the worst, not hiding from it. That is why I am going to London this week, partly, to face all the people we know and tell them happily and squarely I am divorcing Ted, so they won’t picture me as a poor country wife. I am not going to steer clear of these professional acquaintances just because they know or because I may meet Ted with someone else …