Bob Thornell was home cooking steaks, a charming, virile, 34-year-old chap, like a kind of woodland Mr. Crockett, a wonderful grin and easy-going disposition. I liked him immediately … Well, after dinner they [he and his wife] left for the hospital to visit their little girl and told me sternly to read or walk in their apple orchard and not touch the chaotic kitchen till they came back. I figured they would be worn out, what with all the confusion, and so spent an hour doing the enormous day’s stack of dishes with the bright, talkative help of the oldest girl, red-haired Colleen. We must have heated five kettles of water in the course of our work, but I felt really proud when everything was all straightened up and went out to play baseball with Russell, the 8-year-old boy.
When the Thornells came back, Bob asked me if I wanted to go up to the school with him as he supervised the students who were fixing up the displays and signs for the next day, so he could show me around. I was glad for the chance to talk to him alone about the program …
… Bob took me for a long drive up through Woodstock, the artists’ colony, and to the enormous reservoir, which was like an ocean of silver in the moonlight. I saw my first porcupine and countless rabbits …
The day itself was a revelation. Seven hundred students came from all over New York State. I spent the morning reading about 20 stories and 20 poems for the two contests I was judging, and out of the general collection of vague echoes and lilied spiritualists, was excited to find two excellent poems and several original stories, and learned a great deal in my reading and analyzing the subjects and form. No names were on the entries, only numbers, so I didn’t know till the end of the day that my choice for 1st in poetry went to my favorite boy, Wallace Klitgaard, son of a now-dead Danish author, with a famous artist for a mother.
… They asked me to read aloud my own poetry and discussed it, and also two of the student poems. I was so stimulated by the groups, and several came up afterward, including a dear little man teacher from Middletown, to say how they enjoyed the discussion. I was really amazed by my diplomacy, my sudden ability to remember quotes to illustrate points, and to smooth differences into an acceptance of paradox. We had excellent discussions, and I realized that a moderator can guide a class to make conclusions and draw the whole thing together. I was happiest to see how they responded to challenge, humor, and figured that I would really like teaching after this session which elated me no end.
Met several publishers, artists, etc., either from NYC or Woodstock, also Mickey Spillane, a friend of Bob Thornell’s, up from Florida, looking like a dear, tan, innocent kid, rather than the author of countless best-seller murder mysteries …
Bye for now,
Your own Sivvy
[At this time, I was in the Newton-Wellesley Hospital, getting intravenous feedings to build me up for a subtotal gastrectomy later. Sylvia telephoned, telling the nurse that the news she wished to impart would help me more than anything else could. The nurse wheeled me to the telephone in the corridor, and Sylvia told me she had been awarded a Fulbright grant to study at Cambridge University. Such joy!]
MAY 21, 1955
Dearest of Mothers,
I am up here on the sun roof in halter and shorts, basking in the pure blue air under a tall, waving tree of white dogwood and green leaves, while the leaves of the beech tree are coppery dark red. You have no idea how wonderful and reassuring it was to talk to you yesterday! That, plus the Fulbright, has made me able to face exams with equanimity, and now MORE GOOD NEWS! (if that seems possible!) I just got a wonderful letter from Editor Weeks of the Atlantic Monthly after my first exam of three (four hours long) this morning.
He said they all agreed with me that my original poem “Circus in Three Rings” was better than the revision they asked for and so it will definitely appear in the August issue of the Atlantic as you read it and liked it—what good fortune for the title poem of my embryonic book!
Best of all, he said they were “charmed” by my long 3-page poem “The Princess and the Goblins” (whose length deterred them at this time) and asked me to send it back with some new work this summer! Such bliss! That fortress of Bostonian conservative respectability has been “charmed” by your tight-rope-walking daughter! Do tell Mr. Crockett and Mrs. Prouty about this and the Fulbright.
… I am so happy, so encouraged…. I hope to visit [Sarah Elizabeth Rodgers] sometime this summer early for advice about plotting—I’d love to get that “indefinable Journal quality”!
Now, just so you can remember it all, I’ll give you a list of prizes and writing awards for this year:
$30 Dylan Thomas honorable mention for “Parallax,” Mile
$30 For cover of novel symposium, Mile
$5 Alumnae Quarterly article on Alfred Kazin
$100 Academy of American Poets Prize (10 poems)
$50 Glascock Prize (tie)
$40 Ethel Olin Corbin Prize (sonnet)
$50 Marjorie Hope Nicholson Prize (tie) for thesis
$25 Vogue Prix de Paris (one of 12 winners)
$25 Atlantic for “Circus in Three Rings”
$100 Christophers (one of 34 winners)
$15 Mile for “Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by Real Sea”
$470 TOTAL, plus much joy!
Now can pay all debts and work toward coats and luggage. Get well fast—can’t wait to see you Wednesday.
All my love,
Sivvy
[I had permission to leave the hospital to attend Sylvia’s commencement, and made the trip flat on a mattress in a friend’s station wagon. Adlai Stevenson gave the commencement address, Marianne Moore was one of the honorary-degree recipients, and Alfred Kazin waved to Sylvia as she returned from receiving her degree, I was in full accord with her as she later whispered in my ear, “My cup runneth over!”]
[WELLESLEY, MASS.]
TUESDAY NIGHT
JULY 19, 1955
Dearest Mother,
… Saturday, best of all, I’m going out to dinner and a play in Cambridge with Peter Davison, who is in town for good and called tonight …
I’d really forgotten how nice and Britishy and tweedy his voice sounded. When I said I had hundreds of questions to ask him, he promised to be a Mr. Anthony and answer them all …
I am working in the daytime now at my typewriter. Today I finished the Prouty article, about seven pages, and will send it off. [Reader’s Digest turned this down with a routine rejection slip. It was sent in to be considered for the Digest’s “First Person” story.]
Tomorrow I begin my story “Platinum Summer” (I changed it from “Peroxide,” and think the tone is better) and hope to have it done by the time I see you next Tuesday [I was convalescing on Cape Cod]. Once I get rid of my inhibitions with the typewriter, I’m golden.
Signing off for now with much love to you all.
Sivvy
P.S. What news from Warren?
JULY 28, 1955
Dear Warren,
… You know how I am: always get homesick before I go anywhere. Well, evidently before a two years’ siege, my attacks set in early, and I have been wandering around with a blue streak of incredible nostalgia for je ne sais quoi. Paradoxically, I feel the desire to be intensely close to my friends … however, the closer I get, the sadder I feel to go away and leave them. Once I get on the ship, I will be fine, as I’ll have something tangible to work with, but already I feel sort of rootless and floating, with nothing actual to bite my teeth into. Intellectually, I know the Fulbright is the best and only thing for me; staying in New England or even New York would suffocate me completely at this point. My wings need to be tried. O Icarus …
But listen: I want you to have some idea of your potential. It is great. Like me, when you’re good (as a person, versatilely), you’re very very good, and when you’re bad, you need rehabilitation; ergo: we both have a great deal of growing (maturing) to do, and it is by our relationships with other people (after all, what is life but people) that we will grow to ripe stature. In other words, th
e self-examinations that are induced by our problems and disappointments in relation to others are paradoxically the best incentives to growth and change we have. And it does take guts to grow and change, especially when your horizon is lighted up by what looks like the very best of good things …
… It is rare to parallel someone else’s growth and meet needs for a sustained period when we are so flexible.
What I am rambling around and trying to say is, How Much I think you have to work with and how much I want you to have the sure, positive, creative feeling of the one or two men I’m lucky enough to know: that your security and love of life don’t depend on the presence of another, but only on yourself, your chosen work, and your developing identity. Then you can safely choose to enrich your life by marrying another person, and not, as e e cummings says, until.
I sure hope you take all this talk the way it’s meant and maybe drop me a line sometime to let me know you don’t think I’m talking through the top of my sun-bleached head. I want you to grow to a certainty of your identity (which I think is the most important thing in life) which will never ask for another court of appeal but your own conscience. That often means sacrificing the tempting urge to spill over All (blues, defeats, insecurities) to another person, hoping for advice, sympathy, or sometimes even scolding as punishment. It means knowing when to go off for a Socratic talk to yourself; sometimes it’s a help to have one with someone who knows you and will always love you no matter what whenever; such as me …
… a much-looked-forward-to evening over Peter Davison’s, reading aloud and talking. He’s a Harvard man, good friend of Howard Mumford Jones, once had Fulbright to Cambridge, and is delightfully in the midst of publishing, authors, and poets and editors. His father is a Scotch poet, too. A pleasant person. Remember, there will be a lot more pleasant women in the world, Warren, intelligent, beautiful, sometimes both together, sometimes not. But it is all living, preparation for the final intelligent, beautiful one you will someday marry. I’ll write again soon. Meanwhile, my best love to my favorite brother.
Your own Sivvy
PART THREE
September 25, 1955–April 29, 1956
The two Fulbright years stand out as the most exciting and colorful of Sylvia’s life. In a fairly short time, she adjusted to the multiple changes and challenges of the university environment in Cambridge, England, where she found an active social life and again set herself high scholastic goals. It was at this time, however, that she decided the specialized concentration essential for a Ph.D. was not for her and reasoned that a life of “reading widely, talking deeply with all types of people and living fully” would give her the background necessary to enrich her creative writing. Two visits to the Continent whetted her appetite for more travel. The intense anxiety she had felt over her courses at Smith disappeared at Cambridge, and she plunged into her work with confidence and a new maturity.
She was now seriously searching for an extraordinary male counterpart with whom she could share all the emerging facets of herself; in February 1956 she found him in the poet Ted Hughes. The two had read each other’s poetry before they met, each admiring the work of the other. The immediate effect of this encounter was mirrored in a flow of ecstatic poems.
[LONDON, ENGLAND]
SUNDAY AFTERNOON
SEPTEMBER 25, 1955
Dearest Mother,
… Where to begin! I feel almost smothered when I start to write this, my first letter! I feel that I am walking in a dream. Perhaps I shall start at London and go backwards. This is really the first day on my own, and since Sunday mornings in any strange city are a bit sad, I took a walk and sat in one of the little green squares to read a bit from the London magazine….
London is simply fantastic….
To go on—once I begin, it is almost impossible to stop, as memories keep crowding into my head.
The saddest reception was the one for English Lit. students, as I had no way of knowing the illustrious men who were there as guests until afterward (the hostessing was atrocious, and none of us had any idea of the nature of the visitors—they all looked like respectable professors). I only met David Daiches, who will be lecturing at Cambridge and is a well-known critic. Imagine my chagrin when I found out that Stephen Spender (the poet), John Lehmann (brilliant head of BBC and editor of the London magazine, a literary review) and C. P. Snow himself (!) had been in the crowd! It was terribly frustrating not to have been introduced to them, but I swallowed my anger at the inefficiency of the hostess and determined to meet them after I’d begun writing at Cambridge. It might be better that way, anyhow. Even T. S. Eliot had been invited, but couldn’t make it at the last moment….
Oh, mother, every alleyway is crowded with tradition, antiquity, and I can feel a peace, reserve, lack of hurry here which has centuries behind it….
… The days are generally gray, with a misty light, and landscapes are green-leaved in silver mist, like Constable’s paintings.
The ship was wonderful, made more so by Carl [a new acquaintance], who had tea with me and long bull sessions on deck. Weather was half-and-half, but I took no [seasickness] pills, danced every night in the midst of great tilts and rocks, and communed with the sea, by sun, rain and stars. Hot broth on deck every morning; afternoon tea (after one cold rainy day in London, I became an addict), roast beef, cold, for breakfast, an hysterically funny Cockney waiter …
Best of all: my first land was France! We docked at Cherbourg, and Carl and I went ashore for the most enchanting afternoon of my life. I can see why the French produce painters: all was pink and turquoise, quaint and warm with life. Bicycles everywhere, workers really drinking wine, precocious children, tiny individual shops, outdoor cafes, gray filigree churches. I felt I’d come home.
We wandered in a park full of rare green trees, fountains, flowers and hundreds of children feeding goldfish and rolling hoops. Babies everywhere. I even got up courage and stammered out a bit of French to several vibrant, humorous old ladies on a bench and fell in love with all the children. My first vacation I shall fly to France! Such warmth and love of life. Such color and idiosyncrasy. Everything is very small and beautiful and individual. What a joy to be away from eight-lane highways and mass markets, where streets are made for bicycles and young lovers, with flowers on the handlebars and around the traffic lights.
It was good to get your letter. I do feel so cut off from home, especially since I am not at my final address yet. But if I am happy now, at the most disoriented stage of my journey, I imagine once I put down roots at Cambridge, there will be no end to joy. Do write, and I shall, piece by piece, write all my thank-you notes. Will write from Cambridge. Much love to you, Warrie, and the grandparents.
Sivvy
WHITSTEAD, BARTON ROAD
CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND
OCTOBER 2, 1955
SUNDAY AFTERNOON
Dearest Mother,
I don’t know how I can begin to tell you what it is like here in Cambridge! It is the most beautiful spot in the world, I think, and from my window in Whitstead [students’ residence] on the third floor I can see out into the Whitstead garden to trees where large black rooks (ravens) fly over quaint red-tiled rooftops with their chimney pots.
My room is one of three on the third floor, and while it is at present bare of pictures and needs a bit of decorating, I love it dearly. The roof slants in an atticish way, and I have a gas fireplace which demands a shilling each time I want to warm up the room (wonderful for drying my washed hair by, which I did last night) and a gas ring on the hearth where I can warm up water for tea or coffee. I shall draw you a little map so you can see the layout. My books overflow everywhere and give me the feeling of color and being home … Small, but capable of warmth and color after I buy a teaset and a few prints for the bare walls. I love the window-sofa—just big enough for two to sit on, or for one (me) to curl up in and read with a fine view of treetops….
I can’t describe how lovely it is. I walked through countles
s green college courts where the lawns are elegantly groomed … formal gardens, King’s Chapel with the lace-like ceiling and intricate stained glass windows, the Bridge of Sighs, the Backs, where countless punts, canoes and scows were pushing up and down the narrow River Cam, and the shops on the narrowest streets imaginable where bikes and motorcycles tangled with the little cars. Best fun of all was the open marketplace in the square where fresh fruit, flowers, vegetables, books, clothes and antiques are sold side by side in open-air stalls….
Love,
Sivvy
OPUS 2,
OCTOBER 3, 1955
Dearest Mother,
… Here all is to begin again, and probably will be a bit slow and creaky at first due to the very lack of restraints and organization which will make it possible for me eventually to have a rich private, social, and intellectual life.
… I feel that after I put down roots here, I shall be happier than ever before, since a kind of golden promise hovers in the air along the Cam and in the quaint crooked streets. I must make my own Cambridge, and I feel that once I start thinking and studying again (although I’ll probably be a novice compared to the specialized students here), my inner life will grow rich enough to nourish and sustain me.
I was glad to leave the American group in London and discovered the bohemian section of England with an old beau of Sue Weller’s in my last days. Had rum and cold meat sandwiches in a fascinating Dickensian pub, called “The Doves‚” at night in a court overlooking the dark, low-tide Thames, where in the moonlight, pale swans floated in sluggish streams that laced the mudflats. It was a mystical evening….