So many times I think of my grammy and grampy, and how nobody in the world could have dearer grandparents than I do! One takes so much for granted when one is living at home, and I want you to know now how often I think back with love at all the dear things that mean home to me: gramp’s whistling and gardening, grammy’s marvelous cooking, and sour cream sauces, and fish chowder, and those feathery, light pastry crescents filled with hot apricot jam—our wonderful lobster dinner under the pines at the Cape last summer—all these things we have shared. I feel unusually rich having such a dear family. Give my love to everybody….
Love to all,
Sivvy
Sylvia’s maternal grandparents, 1953.
JANUARY 25, 1956
Dearest Mother,
… Do keep me informed of grammy’s progress. I only hope it is nothing serious, but as you have always understood, I would much rather know what is going on than be surprised later; so please don’t keep anything from me, thinking I might worry. I have the right to be concerned, which is different from worry.
… I am writing at least a few hours every day … have written the first draft of a 25-page story about the Matisse Chapel in Vence; you have no idea how happy it makes me to get it out on paper where I can work on it, even though the actual story never lives up to the dream. When I say I must write, I don’t mean I must publish. There is a great difference. The important thing is the aesthetic form given to my chaotic experience, which is, as it was for James Joyce, my kind of religion, and as necessary for me … as the confession and absolution for a Catholic in church.
I have no illusions about my writing any more; I think I can be competent and publish occasionally if I work. But I am dependent on the process of writing, not on the acceptance; and if I have a dry spell, the way I did last term, I wait and live harder, eyes, ears, and heart open, and when the productive time comes, it is that much richer. This Vence story has my heart and love, and I am going to polish and polish now.
About the marriage question, please don’t worry that I will marry some idiot, or even anyone I don’t love. I simply couldn’t. Naturally, I am sorry that none of the “nice” boys who’ve wanted to marry me have been right … I shudder to think how many men would accept only a small part of me as the whole and be quite content. Naturally, all of us want the most complete, richest, best parts of us brought out, and in turn will do this for another. Actually, as you probably know, Richard Sassoon is the only boy I have ever loved so far; he is so much more brilliant, intuitive and alive than anyone I’ve ever known. Yet he pays for this with spells of black depression and shaky health which means living in daily uncertainty and would be hard over any long time. But he is the most honest, holy person I know. And, in a sense, I suppose I will always love him … Ironically enough, he “looks” not at all like the kind of man I could be fond of; but he is, and that’s that.
My dearest friend in Cambridge is Nat LaMar. I had a wonderful coffee session with him Sunday and met a stimulating married friend of his who works for Time and gave me a lead on some lucrative summer jobs, which I shall write for. Nat is a blessing; the true friend, warm, dear, and emotionally very much like me: sunny and extroverted, but with a profoundly serious, creative side. He had Archibald MacLeish; I, Alfred Kazin. We both have to write and live richly. So I rejoice in knowing he lives in Cambridge and love seeing him.
Tell Warren I have always envied his ability to work and do so much. I have always felt inferior in this way. Funny, how things sound so much easier than they ever are.
Love,
Sivvy
JANUARY 29, 1956
Dear Mother,
… It was such a relief to meet Nat’s married friend … It is this rich, active kind of life I miss in the vague, abstract, immature boys surrounding me. I must always have my fingers in the world’s pie and be doing as well as talking; creating, as well as analyzing. It is so true what you said about the relief of engaged girls. I am too weary of wasting time to run around to parties any more for “opportunity”; I have a greater faith that if I work and write now, I will have a rich, inner life which will make me worth fine, intelligent men, like Sassoon, and Nat, and his friends, rather than only an empty hectic fear of being alone. I believe one has to be able to live alone creatively before being ready to live with anyone else. I do hope someday I meet a stimulating, intelligent man with whom I can create a good life, because I am definitely not meant for a single life.
You have no idea how exciting it is to live here on the brink of the Continent. Even when I am not thinking directly of my coming travels, I feel that latent joy of possibility. All lies over the Channel; all the variety of the western world is so close. I can study Italian in Italy; German, in Germany, and find, at such close range, a rich variety of temperaments and settings. I actually feel smothered at the idea of going back to the States! Cambridge, wet, cold, abstract, formal as it is, is an excellent place to write, read and work—near the theaters of London and the vital, moving currents of people and art in Europe. I don’t know how I can bear to go back to the States unless I am married. Here there is the chance to meet people living “on the edge” of the world’s politics and art; there is so much more choice. I really think I would do anything to stay here. If only I could get a few things published in this next year, I would like so much to apply for a Saxton Fellowship (or even a Guggenheim) and go to live in Italy and write for a year, combining it with some kind of reporting job part time … I have finished rewriting my Vence story and look forward to typing it and sending it off this coming weekend….
If you only knew how hard it is to know I’m not a career woman or going to be more than a competent small-time writer (which will make me happy enough) and to have so much love and strength to give to someone and not have yet met anyone I can honestly marry. It would be easier if I either wanted a career or had no great love for people; but waiting is so hard. Enough of this….
Love from your own
Sivvy
FEBRUARY 2, 1956
Dearest Mother,
Naturally I was very moved when I read your letter this morning about Grammy. I only wish I could be there to take the double load of work off your shoulders, to do driving and take care of dear grammy. I can’t believe anything could happen to her so I mightn’t see her again. I love that dear woman so, I feel saddest that I, too, can’t be there to help her feel that she is loved and joyously cared for. Please, every day, let her know how much she has meant to me; her strength and simple faith and presence have always been so much a part of my life: always meeting me when I came home, driving me, feeding me, all those family things. I can’t imagine our home without her presence….
Please, please, dear mummy, don’t tense up and strain yourself (as is so easy to do in crisis), because no matter what happens, I want you to remain strong and well. Tell me if I can write to grammy or do anything. I would love to send her frequent little cards and notes if it would make her days brighter … I think of her with such tenderness….
… (My two poems in the Cambridge magazine got lousy reviews; there are 10 critics to each poem, and although I think they are bad critics, using clever devastating turns of phrase to show off their own brilliance, I still was sorry, but the deep parts of me are not affected, and I cheerfully go on writing) …
I got a nice letter from Gordon [Lameyer] this morning. It seems he is coming over to Germany around the first of April to look for a university at which to study, and I hope to see him and maybe travel about a bit in Germany with him then. Anyone from home will look quite angelic to me. I shall perhaps spend the last of March in Italy and then maybe go up to see him in Germany. He would be lots of fun to travel with, I think … I do wish I could take some kind of short trip with Warren next summer. Let me know whatever happens about his Experiment [in International Living] applications.
I had a nice tea yesterday with Chris Levenson, editor of one of the Cambridge little magazines and “Cambridge poet,” alt
hough his poems get scathing reviews, too. It seems this is an age of clever critics who keep bewailing the fact that there are no works worthy of criticism. They abhor polished wit and neat forms, which, of course, is exactly what I purpose to write, and when they criticize something for being “quaintly artful” or “merely amusing‚” it is all I can do not to shout, “That’s all I meant it to be!”
… Also enjoy my lectures by David Daiches on the modern novel (Virginia Woolf and James Joyce), which are sheer pleasure. (He wrote a very bad article for the latest New Yorker called “The Queen in Cambridge,” which infuriated me, because I could have done better. It was all secondary reporting, from posters and newspapers, and I had so much first hand. Well, I’ll learn better next time.) England can be exploited for merely being England, and I want to do a few humorous skits about college characters, especially the grotesque Victorian dons.
Well, dear mummy, keep well and strong, and remember I think of you always with much much love and only hope dear grammy recovers and that you will come over here this June …
Your own
Sivvy
FEBRUARY 6, 1956
Dearest of Mothers,
… In the last two years, we have certainly had our number of great tests (first my breakdown, then your operation, then grammy’s), and we have yet been extraordinarily lucky that they were timed in such a way that we could meet them.
I am most grateful and glad that I banged up all at once (although I am naturally sorry for all the trouble I caused everyone else), for I can’t tell you how my whole attitude to life has changed! I would have run into trouble sooner or later with my very rigid, brittle, almost hysterical tensions which split me down the middle, between inclination and inhibition, ideal and reality. My whole session with Dr. B. is responsible for making me a rich, well-balanced, humorous, easy-going person, with a joy in the daily life, including all its imperfections: sinus, weariness, frustration, and all those other niggling things that we all have to bear. I am occasionally depressed now, or discouraged, especially when I wonder about the future, but instead of fearing these low spots as the beginning of a bottomless whirlpool, I know I have already faced The Worst (total negation of self) and that, having lived through that blackness, like Peer Gynt … I can enjoy life simply for what it is: a continuous job, but most worth it. My existence now rests on solid ground; I may be depressed now and then, but never desperate. I know how to wait….
My best love to all of you; keep well and happy for me!
Your own loving
Sylvia
FEBRUARY 10, 1956
Dearest Mother,
I am so happy and bubbly today that I just had to share some of it with you! Guess what! Just heard by telegram from Sue Weller that she has been awarded a Marshall scholarship for Oxford next year! I am overcome with joy. That means we shall go to London on weekends, to see plays, go skiing in the Alps, travel together: all so perfect, because she is the ideal companion. That girl really deserves this and has a marvelous career ahead of her, I’m sure.
Another, more tentative bit of news, which I want you to keep strictly to the family, is that I heard from the Fulbright Commission that my application for renewal has passed the first stage and I’ll hear finally in mid-April.
So I wait! …
Love, Sivvy
FEBRUARY 18, 1956
Hello again, dearest Mother,
… Chris Levenson and I took the train to London late in the afternoon … and dashed off to the Arts Theatre of which we’re both members to see W. S. Merwin’s verse play, Darkling Child, something that Christopher Fry’s experiments made possible, no doubt, about the Puritans and witches, with an intriguing play on the double theme, which I enjoyed (plus lots of contrast of light and dark in the verse, flame and sun, versus dark and grave metaphors). As always, in verse, it is difficult to make it “move” (the way Shakespeare’s did) and Christopher Fry often makes his blazing language take the place of action, but here there was a certain fluidity of action, seasoned humor, and an interesting movement through ideas of Puritanism, love, and darkness which must be accepted on this earth.
Sometimes I come conscious of living here, in England, with a sharp jolt. Life goes so fast and there is so much to do here from week to week that, out of simple practicality, one becomes dulled to all those little detailed differences that made the first adjustment so challenging and even exhausting. I accept the cold, the perpetual shivering, the bad coffee and starchy food with a stoic amusement and walk through historic arches with familiarity and a certain regrettable ignorance about their background in time. However, I get thrills of delight every time I pass the spires of King’s Chapel or go by the fruit and flower stands in market hill, or cross the Bridge of Sighs to climb the circular stone staircase to a cocktail party in St. John’s. I enjoy walking and looking alone, and thinking. Already I am planning about walks we will take and all the things I want to show you when you come!
Occasionally, I am chastened and a little sad, partly because of the uncertainty of the coming years and the cold whispers of fear when I think of the enormous question mark after next year (which is still not finally financed)…. The political frontiers here are most interesting, and I wish I could think of some angle which would result in a job which would challenge me to learn and keep intellectually awake. I am just about through with the academic community and beginning to itch for the practicality of work. I would like so much to work for a paper like the Monitor, but, of course, don’t know how to break in. Ah, well, if you have any ideas, let me know. Meanwhile, love to all, and I hope grammy is getting much better and that you are keeping well.
Your own
Sivvy
FEBRUARY 24, 1956
Dearest Mother,
I am being very naughty and self-pitying in writing you a letter which is very private and which will have no point but the very immediate one of making me feel a little better. Every now and then I feel like being “babied‚” and most especially now in the midst of a most wet and sloppy cold, which deprived me of a whole night’s sleep last night and has utterly ruined today, making me feel aching and powerless, too miserable even to take a nap and too exhausted to read the lightest literature. I am so sick of having a cold every month; like this time, it generally combines with my period, which is enough to make me really distracted, simply gutted of all strength and energy. I wear about five sweaters and wool pants and knee socks and still I can’t stop my teeth chattering. The gas fire eats up the shillings and scalds one side and the other freezes like the other half of the moon. I was simply not made for this kind of weather. I have had enough of their sickbay and hospitals to make me think it is better to perish in one’s own home of frostbite than to go through their stupid, stupid System. How I miss the Smith infirmary … ! Here, the people have such an absurd inertia. They go around dying with flu and just plodding on and on….
Even while I write, I know this too shall pass and some day, eons hence, it may possibly be spring. But I long so much for some sustaining hand, someone to bring me hot broth and tell me they love me even though my nose is ugly and red and I look like hell … All the nagging frustrations and disappointments that one bears in the normal course of days are maliciously blown up out of all proportion simply because I am not strong enough to cope or be humorous or philosophical: my Vence story came back from The New Yorker (and now looks very absurd and sentimental to me). I can’t smell, taste, or breathe, or even hear, and these blunted senses shut me off in a little distant island of impotence … I am being sorry for myself, because there isn’t anyone here I can be deeply close to … Richard [Sassoon] will be going back to America this year to serve in the Army, and heaven knows when I’ll ever see him again. I sometimes despair of ever finding anyone who is so strong in soul and so utterly honest and careful of me. Having known him, in spite of his limitations, makes it so much more difficult to accept the companionship of these much much lesser beings.
… I a
m so appreciative of the family environment, where, no matter what, one rejoices with the success of one’s kindred and helps them through the hard places. I would take such delight in feeding and caring for my husband or children when they were sick or sad; human beings need each other so; they need love and tender care. I was so lucky to have such a bright, strong constellation of friends at home. I have friends here, too, but so much time is spent reading and studying that all we share is occasional plays and teas or a walk now and then; nothing that approaches that depth of experience when you work or live side by side with someone, sharing the daily texture of life. It is so hard not to have anyone care whether one writes or not; I miss that very subtle atmosphere of faith and understanding at home where you all knew what I was working at and appreciated it, whether it got published or not. It is the articulation of experience which is so necessary to me; even if I never publish again, I shall still have to write, because it is the main way I give order to this flux which is life. I have written one or two poems this week which I shall copy out in my next letter.
Please don’t worry that I am sad; it is normal, I think, when one feels physically shot and lousy, to feel helpless. But I am stoic, even though I feel very much like being petted and loved, and I shall weather this long, barren winter. At least it makes me feel I deserve joy and pleasure and clement weather! This summer I shall follow the sun and participate in the primary joys of life, which are all frozen up now. Do bear with me and forgive me for overflowing; but I really needed to talk to you and spew out those thoughts which are like the blocked putridity in my head…. Love to grammy and grampy and my dear Warrie, too.
Your own Sivvy
FEBRUARY 25, 1956
Dearest Mother,