JUNE 21, 1952
… I’ve got an idea for a third story for Seventeen called, of all appropriate things, “Side Hall Girl.” I even have a heroine named Marley who is, of course, me. The ending would be very positive and constructive. I hope I can get time and energy to write it. If I mull it over in my head for a week or so, trying to organize the chaotic incidents which pile on me every day, I should be able to sit down and type it up on some girl’s typewriter in a few days and send it to you to type and get notarized. Ambitious? You bet….
Would I like to win a summer at Breadloaf! But that is really a dream, because boys usually win those things, and my style needs to mature a lot yet. I’m glad to have catapulted out of the Seventeen arena, though.
JUNE 21, 1952
… As for side hall, they’ve done the best they can for me as far as station is concerned, and I figure I deserve a “bad break” what with all my good fortune winning prizes and going to Smith. My different hours give me an excuse for not hanging around with some of the more snobby cliques, and well, I just don’t care what people think about me as long as I’m always open, nice, and friendly.
Love to you all,
Sivvy, your Side Hall philosopher
JUNE 24, 1952
… Last night I went on a “gang” birthday party at the “Sand Bar” where we sang and talked for a few hours. There were about forty of us kids from the hotel. I managed by some magic to get myself seated next to a fellow in his first year at Harvard Law—and he was just a dear … The best part was when we came back. It was a beautiful clear starry night, and Clark went in to get me two of his sweaters to wear because it was cold, and brought out a book of T. S. Eliot’s poems. So we sat on a bench where I could just barely read the print, and he put his head in my lap and I read aloud to him for a while. Most nice. The only thing is I am so inclined to get fond of someone who will do things with me like that—always inclined to be too metaphysical and serious conversationally—that’s my main trouble … So glad to hear the check from Mlle is real. I hardly could believe it. Just now I am mentally so disorganized that I can’t retain knowledge or think at all. The work is still new enough to be tiring, what with three changes a day into uniforms, and I am so preoccupied by mechanics of living and people that I can’t yet organize and assimilate all the chaos of experience pouring in on me. In spite of everything, I still have my good old sense of humor and manage to laugh a good deal of the time … I’ll make the best of whatever comes my way.
JUNE 25, 1952
Just a note to let you know I’m still alive, although in a state of suspended animation. Never, it seems to me, has work worn me out so much…. I can’t think, I can just perform mechanical acts. So no more going out for me. I won’t be asked, anyway, because I’m just not the beer-brawl type, even if I do have fun now and then at those aimless soirees. I am still captain of my soul, will send you money orders of my “great intake” in cash every week or two to be safe. We slave so for every dollar that I figure I can’t take any risks.
I have definitely decided to come home August 10. It is the only reasonable way out I can see. I will have stayed two months, slaved for $200 (–$10) and will need a good month to recuperate physically and mentally. With all my important and demanding school offices, I can’t afford to crack up. …. I figure if I leave then I can get my science done at home in 30 days at the rate of 25 pages a day (in the morning) and really get continuity. Now I’m always so tired that I just can’t retain anything except what kind of eggs people like for breakfast … Well, tell me what you think of my schemes.
Your maturing Sivvy
[Sylvia suffered another deep-seated sinus infection at The Belmont; therefore she returned home in mid-July. After recovering, she read an intriguing ad in the Christian Science Monitor, advertising for a mother’s helper and companion for a teen-age daughter. Sylvia telephoned and talked with a Mrs. Michael Cantor. Each liked the other’s voice, and July 21 found Sylvia in the Cantors’ large, lovely home in Chatham. While she worked busily every morning doing housework and helping with the meals, she soon became a “part of the family.” It was a thoroughly happy experience, lasting six weeks.]
CHATHAM, MASS.
AUGUST 2, 1952
… I can hardly believe it’s August already, and that my magazine is reposing in my closet, well read…. On Wednesday, my day off, Grammy and Grampy called for me, proudly bearing the First Copy I had seen [Mademoiselle story, “Sunday at the Mintons’”]. I drove them to Brewster where Dick met us at the cabin … spent a half hour talking before he left for work … I left Grammy and Grampy at the cabin because they were comfortable reading and had had enough of the beach, and took the car alone for a blissful two hours at the Brewster beach with a bag of cherries and peaches and the Magazine. I felt the happiest I ever have in my life. I read both stories and already feel that I have outgrown mine, as I saw a great many errors, artistically, and am already beginning to think out about the tremendous job I’ll do on the next one. I read it … chortled happily to myself, ran out on to the sand flats and dog-trotted for a mile far out alone in the sun through the warm tidal water, with the foam trickling pale brown in fingers along the wet sand ridges where the tide was coming in, talking to myself about how wonderful it was to be alive and brown and full of vitality and potentialities, and knowing all sorts of wonderful people. I never have felt so utterly blissful and free.
Yesterday … I stopped at the Bookmobile that stops once a week in Chatham to sell books. I got talking to the most fascinating little, sallow, cynical, brilliant woman who runs it. When she asked where I went to college, she said, “Oh, Smith. That’s a great handle. Snob appeal. You’ll be using it all your life. It does things for you.” … I was at her feet with questions pouring out. She has written Western pulps, Western love stories, and will have a “dowager story” in the Ladies’ Home Journal this fall. She also writes juveniles and had a blurb up on the wall advertising her latest for 12–14-year-old boys. Her name is Val(erie) Gendron, and she lives in a little ramshackle house in South Dennis. I plan to haunt her every Friday if I get a minute. Boy, would I like to bike over to her house on some day off and talk with her for hours. She really has been through the mill, I guess.
Love, Sivvy
AUGUST 21, 1952
Dear Mummy,
… After supper Mrs. Cantor kindly drove me over to South Dennis for my evening with Val Gendron. I don’t know when I’ve had such a wonderful time in all my life. It was like a dream of an artist’s Bohemia.
Val lives in a rickety old “half house” (one door, two windows), painted barn red with a white trim … and has carved a flower garden and vegetable garden out of the pine woods around her … When I arrived, she came to greet me, slouching slender and fragile in the doorway in her old plaid lumber shirt and paint-stained dungarees.
… Val ground some savory-smelling coffee and made a pot, got out a mound of grapes and a … cake, put the whole feast on a tray and led the way up a steep narrow flight of stairs to her “workshop.”
… I just stood on the threshold and gurgled in fatuous delight. She had erected the walls, made the door and bookshelves, painted and done everything herself.
… Well, we got talking … Val telling me about her job in New York, regaling me with anecdote after anecdote of her skyrocketing position in a bank and why she quit—all hilarious.
… She got out her outline of her latest Western novel, not yet accepted, and let me read a short story and lots of her correspondence with her two agents—both her letters to them and theirs to her—all neatly dated and filed. And she told me so much in the course of the evening, we didn’t stop talking till midnight … She drove me back in her old jalopy—us yelling to each other all the way, over the noise of the engine.
She knows lots of people: Rachel Carson and she are friends as of this summer, and she went to school with Hemingway’s sister—all sorts of tales. I learned so much, so very much from her, and I
agree with all she says about writing. [Val inspired Sylvia’s self-imposed “discipline,” 1,500 words every day—“like doing scales and exercises.”] I must tell you in detail when I see you.
I left her at 12:30 after five of the most wonderful hours I have ever spent—completely fond of the dear, skinny, dark-haired woman. She had been so tremendous to me—“criticized” my story and all, and been so generous with herself and her work.
x x x Sivvy
Turning down invitations to stay with the Norton group in the Brewster cabin or with grandparents in Falmouth, Sylvia returned home, hoping to plunge into the study of a required physical science course, to prepare herself for an examination in it in order to be freer in the fall semester to elect courses in English and art that appealed to her more. She discovered she had set herself too difficult a task in the short time remaining and decided to give up the attempt, which meant taking the course in the fall term. The prospect worried her a great deal.
Sylvia returned to Smith, but not to Haven House, where she had been so happy for two years. She went to a co-op, Lawrence House, to room with Mary, a studious and brilliant girl. No very close relationship developed between them. Sylvia waited on table at lunchtime and had one hour of “watch” a week, plus occasional weekend duties.
SMITH COLLEGE
NORTHAMPTON, MASS.
SEPTEMBER 25, 1952
Physical Science shouldn’t be too bad—Mr. Sherk gave me a friendly grin when he saw me, so the initial sheepishness has worn off me. Mr. Davis, my creative writing teacher, I adore. He is the sort that can make you feel the urge to think and work and create until it kills you. I want to do so much for him. And Mr. Patch, my Medieval Lit Unit prof., is the most imposing literary lion I have ever seen—a great 6’5” gray-haired man, who seems to live in the ruddy vitality of the Middle Ages. He is terrifying and magnificent. The ten of us taking the unit meet in his library and sit around on chairs, comfortably…. I feel at once pitifully stupid, inadequate and scared—and determined to succeed in the enormous intellectual honesty, ambition and discipline that honoring requires.
{Postcard}
SEPTEMBER 29, 1952
It is amazing what a difference a good night’s sleep can make in my psychological outlook on life. From the lonely, scared, bewildered creature I was for the first few days, I am now sure that everything will work out for the best. I have decided to drop Art II as much as I hate to, because I want to do as well as possible at my work, while getting to know the girls in the house, and concentrating on Press Board and Smith Review. My creative writing and Patch unit promise to be wonderful and demanding.
OCTOBER 6, 1952
Dear Mummy,
Wow! Speak of appropriate psychological moments for getting unexpected good news, this was one. I wandered lazily downstairs just before lunch today and glanced casually in my mailbox. Two letters from you. I opened the little one first, looked at it, puzzled for a few minutes before it suddenly dawned on me what the contents were. I never even cherished the smallest hope of getting one of the third prizes [from Seventeen for “Initiation”] this year—as you know, I figured out the relative deadline for their decision by my other story and had long since given up thinking about it.
This news makes me feel that I am maybe not destined to deteriorate, after all.
I have been too busy getting used to the routine of the house and doing the pile of beginning work on Press Board to really plunge into my studies, and, as a result, I have been feeling very far behind and scared about my courses. Sort of a beginning paralysis…. I never realized how important doing well in studies was to me until I got behind this last busy week….
Your last big morale-building letter was most appreciated. You are the most wonderful mummy that a girl ever had, and I only hope I can continue to lay more laurels at your feet. Warren and I both love you and admire you more than anybody in the world for all you have done for us all our lives. For it is you who has given us the heredity and the incentive to be mentally ambitious. Thank you a million times!
Your very own Sivvy
[Written on back of envelope of letter of October 6]: So your old favorite idea “Heather-birds’ Eyebrows” worked out after all! I am amazed, but strange are the ways of the world, especially publishing. [“Heather-birds’ Eyebrows”: Sylvia, carrying out orders during high school sorority hazing, asked people on the bus what they ate for breakfast. When she told me of the delightfully imaginative reply given by an elderly gentleman, I exclaimed, “There! You have a story!” And from this incident developed the plot for “Initiation,” which won second prize ($200) in Seventeen’s short-story contest and was published in the January 1953 issue.]
OCTOBER 11, 1952
Dear Mother,
… I have written a thank-you and sent a snapshot to Seventeen. That magazine has really been awfully good to me, and I am really aghast at this last fling of mine. I still can’t believe it is true, and I have completely forgotten the plot and detail of my story. I was most interested to hear your quotes. It was as if someone else had written it.
… The house is really lovely—very attractively decorated downstairs and closer to everything. The girls are all wonderful—they work, get good marks in general, and hold extracurricular offices. There is a delightful atmosphere of economy, and everyone understands the words, “I can’t; I’m broke.”
NOVEMBER 5, 1952
… I hope, by the way, that you are feeling better, able to sleep, and aren’t letting finances or Grampy’s retiring bother you. I really wish you would give up teaching Sunday School [brief, simplified course in comparative religion]. You work like a fiend all week teaching, and Sunday should be a day of rest. You should pamper yourself, have a long late breakfast, read, listen to music, lounge a little. I also hope you are wise about the extent and lateness of your baby-sitting. Do feel free to tell me any problems that are bothering you. It takes my mind off myself to think of other people.
NOVEMBER 6, 1952
Dear Warren,
… My [Princeton] date was the perfect example of the absolute sheep, and I thought I could have fun with him, and it was all right until he started talking. He was by all means the most pathetic specimen of manhood I have ever met…. As much as I tried to conceal my brilliance, he guessed I was not as neutral as I seemed. His confession of his own inadequacies, in an attempt to be serious, was not only pitiably revealing of his lack of thinking and values, but was evidently quite a strain on his mental powers, and I use the word loosely….
No doubt, some of the boys at Princeton are intelligent and nice, but all the ones I saw are spoiled, sheepish socialites, who get drunk all the time and don’t have an original or creative impulse—they are all bloodless like mushrooms inside, I am sure …
I am terribly disappointed that Stevenson lost the election. I don’t remember knowing who you were for, except for Pogo or Krajewski. But poor mother was for Eisenhower.
… My work is overwhelming. Don’t know how I have the time to goof off writing letters, but I have two papers due every week from now till Thanksgiving. I’ll have to work most of the vacation on my back work, too. Ah me, life is grim. If I live till Xmas, it will be a miracle …
Love you dearly,
Your galley slave sister, Sivvy
NOVEMBER 6, 1952
I have written to Bread Loaf [sic] to see if they have any tuition scholarships, but I doubt it … I would love to go to Summer School … to Harvard, too, perhaps. I would also like only a part-time job or one that would only last a short part of the summer, so I could read and write and work on research for my thesis. I think that it is important that I have such a chance to think and work. I plan to write my application for Mademoiselle as soon as I get home on Thanksgiving, because I won’t have a minute till then.
All for now. Keep your lovely letters coming—do so appreciate them.
x x x Sivvy
[Shortly before this letter was written, there was an account p
ublished in the papers of the suicide of one of Warren’s classmates at Exeter. Sylvia, shocked, telephoned me about it. Here in this letter is the first sign of her magnifying a situation all out of proportion.]
{At top of letter}
Brace yourself and take a deep breath—not too nice:
NOVEMBER 19, 1952
… God, will I be glad to get home for a few days of rest. I am sorry to have to admit it, but I am in a rather tense emotional and mental state, and have been tense and felt literally sick for about a week now … a physical manifestation of a very frustrated mental state. The crux of the matter is my attitude toward life—hinging on my science course. I have practically considered committing suicide to get out of it, it’s like having my nose rubbed in my own slime. It just seems that I am running on a purposeless treadmill, behind and paralyzed in science, dreading every day of the horrible year ahead when I should be revelling in my major. I have become really frantic: small choices and events seem insurmountable obstacles, the core of life has fallen apart. I am obsessed by wanting to escape from that course. I curse myself for not having done it this summer. I try to learn the barren dry formulas. Sick, I wonder why? why? why? I feel actually ill when I open the book, and figure I am wasting ten hours a week for the rest of the year. It affects all the rest of my life; I am behind in my Chaucer unit, feeling sterile in creative writing. My whole life is mastered by a horrible fear of this course, of the dry absurdities, the artificial formulas and combinations. I ask myself why didn’t I take Geology, anything tangible would have been a blessing. Everyone else is abroad, or falling in love with their courses. I feel I have got to escape this, or go mad. How can I explain the irrevocable futility I feel! I don’t even want to understand it, which is the worst yet. It seems to have no relation to anything in my life. It is a year course. I have wondered, desperately, if I should go to the college psychiatrist and try to tell her how I feel about it, how it is obsessing all my life, paralyzing my action in every other field. Life seems a mockery. I have the idea that if I could get out of this course, even for second semester, I would be able to see light ahead. But I can’t go on like this. I have a paper and two exams after Thanksgiving, too. And I will have to study and rest all the time I am home. Luckily I haven’t gotten sinus yet; that would be another form of escapism. When one feels like leaving college and killing oneself over one course which actually nauseates me, it is a rather serious thing. Every day more and more piles up. I hate formulas, I don’t give a damn about valences, artificial atoms and molecules. It is pseudo-science—all theory; nothing to grasp. I am letting it ruin my whole life. I am really afraid to talk it over with a psychiatrist (symbol of a parent, or priest confessor) because they might make me drop my activities (Press Board in particular) and spend half my time pounding formulas and petty mathematical relationships (which I have long since forgotten) into my head, when I basically don’t want to learn them. To be wasting all this year of my life, obsessed by this course, paralyzed by it, seems unbearable. I feel that absolved of it—with some sign of light ahead—I could again begin to love.