The New Yorker rejected my Bulganin article as too late, which, of course, crushed me as it was a damn good, neat, funny article.
… I was awfully pleased to get the Oxford assignment, as you may guess, for it is an honor to contribute, especially as representative of the women at Cambridge!
In your letter you didn’t say where and from when to when Warren will be in Austria. I am dying of curiosity, for I want Ted to meet him very much. I think those two will get along fine.
Oh, mother, I only want you to have time to get to know Ted. In a few years the world will be marveling at us; we both have such strength and creativity and productive discipline. (Ted’s poems are like controlled explosions of dynamite when he really writes full tilt.) … We are capable of the most scrupulous and utter faithfulness in the world, demanding the most from each other, caring intensely for bringing each other to full capacity and production … Our energy is something amazing. I only want you to come into the light of this and share our humor and love of life, which is almost impossible to convey the least speck [of] in words. We definitely want to get married in Wellesley next June after I graduate, and naturally I am just dying to talk over plans.
By the way, if you think it might help grampy to fix on something special for him, tell him … very privately as a secret that I want him to know he should begin preparing for his granddaughter’s wedding, where there will be at least one bottle of champagne and one small dish of caviar [for him]! I want it to be … small and intimate, with all those I love and who know what life means to me: Cantors, Crocketts, Freemans, Mrs. Prouty, neighbors, Marty, Patsy—everyone I love.
I was so happy to hear about your plans to come to Italy in 1958; hope Ted and I might be working there that year. What fun to have you come visit us! We plan on seven children, after each of us has published a book and traveled some, so the seventh child of that child might be a rare white witch!
Cambridge is a lovely green Eden, and to have an English spring and the dearest, most brilliant, strong, tender man in the world is too much to keep alone; do come, share with us!
Much, much love, sivvy
SATURDAY
MAY 26, 1956
Dearest Mother,
May has turned chill and grey these last days, and I am writing from the midst of a wet, snuffly spring cold, but very happy. I’m enclosing the clippings from my latest article in Varsity on which I appeared as a cover-girl (!), showing how hard up they are! and my article inside, with more pictures. At least I look healthy, don’t I? …
All this experience will be wonderful for my Cambridge novel. Varsity is my key to the town and all the people in it. Needless to say, Ted is very proud of me, especially [of] the poems I’m doing now. He just wants me to develop every talent I have, to do well in exams, and is very helpful and encouraging, and my best critic.
Most amazing is the way all my faculties are flourishing in my daily happiness and joy. I had the best philosophy supervision yesterday and neither Dr. Krook nor I could believe it when the bell rang for her next pupil. She told me to come again this morning for an extra hour as we “hadn’t finished talking,” and I am just blazing with intellectual joy and keenness. She is very very pleased with my work, especially my last papers on Plato, and she is going to become my mentor in the poetic and philosophic realm just as Dr. B. is in the personal and psychological. At last I have discovered a woman on the Cambridge faculty for whom I would sweat my brains out. This philosophic discipline will be invaluable for me, and I’m so happy I can continue it next year with her; she is just alight, and we are temperamentally most compatible.
Ted is staying with his poet-friend, E. Lucas Myers (my next favorite poet after Ted), through May Ball week, and I generally meet him after lunch for an afternoon of study while he writes, and cook dinner here (Cambridge food in restaurants is probably the worst in the world) and talk and read aloud. Our minds are just enraptured with words, ideas, languages. I took out my Rilke poems and my dear Märchen der Brüder Grimm to read aloud my favorite German pieces to him (he doesn’t know German) and translated on the spot, getting very excited. I’ve definitely decided to take German all next year, concentrating on Rilke and Kafka, and some Thomas Mann. Ted likes hearing it, gets intrigued by my rough, impromptu translations. He is now applying for a job teaching English in Madrid … to earn us some money for next year.
We spent a whole day out in the Whitstead gardens in the sun, me typing first copies and carbons of about 25 of his best poems, and he editing, to send off to The New Yorker, Atlantic, Harper’s and poetry magazines…. I can’t wait to see how he is received in America. He is going to be a brilliant poet; I know it with every critical fiber in me. His imagination is unbelievably fertile; our children will have such fun!
Last night while I peeled mushrooms to go with our dinner of sweetbreads, he read me aloud from a book of Celtic tales we just bought and from Dylan Thomas’ story book, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog. I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to share so completely my greatest love of words and poems and fairy tales and languages … also, the world of nature and birds and animals and plants. I shall be one of the few women poets in the world who is fully a rejoicing woman, not a bitter or frustrated or warped man-imitator, which ruins most of them in the end. I am a woman and glad of it, and my songs will be of fertility of the earth and the people in it through waste, sorrow and death. I shall be a woman singer, and Ted and I shall make a fine life together. This year of work and discipline away from each other will probably be the hardest ever, but we can both be ascetics while we are working for something as magnificent as our whole creative lives; we plan to live for at least a hundred years.
… Both of us are old enough to have our own identities and self-knowledge quite firmly shaped, but, thank God, young enough to grow and change under the love and guidance of each other….
… I want you to know him well, in all his talent and clearness; he will make us both really proud of him some day, not far off. Warren will be able to help me very subtly, I think, into weaning Ted into shopping for clothes for himself and giving him “man information” about America …
Much love,
sivvy
{Warren was now in Austria as a member of the Experiment in International Living.}
JUNE 18, 1956
Dearest Warren,
My fingers are so full of amazing news to type that I hardly know where to begin. First of all, you better stop what you are doing and be very quiet and sit down with a tall glass of cool lager and be ready to keep a huge and miraculous secret: your sister, as of 1:30 p.m., June 16, in London at the 250-year-old church of St. George the Martyr is now a married woman! Mrs. Sylvia Hughes, Mrs. Ted Hughes, Mrs. Edward James Hughes, Mrs. E. J. Hughes (wife of the internationally known poet and genius); take your pick. It is really true, and it is a dead secret between you and mummy and Ted and me. Because I am going to have another wedding at the Unitarian Church in Wellesley next June with you (I hope, if you’re willing) as Ted’s best man, and Frankie [Sylvia’s uncle] giving me away, and a huge reception for all our friends and relations who will be informed by mother this fall that Ted and I are engaged.
This all seems so logical and inevitable to me that I can hardly begin to answer the questions which I know will be flocking to your mind: Why two weddings? Why a secret wedding? Why anyhow? Well, it so happens that I have at last found the one man in the world for me, which mother saw immediately (she and Ted get along beautifully, and he loves her and cares for her very much) and after three months of seeing each other every day, doing everything from writing to reading aloud to hiking and cooking together, there was absolutely no shred of doubt in our minds. We are both poverty-stricken now, have no money, and are in no position to have people know we are married. Me at Newnham, where the Victorian virgins wouldn’t see how I could concentrate on my studies with being married to such a handsome virile man, the Fulbright, etc., etc. Also, he is getting a job teaching
English in Spain next year to earn money to come to America with me next June, so we’ll have to be apart while I finish my degree for three long 8-week periods (I must do very well on my exams). I’ll fly to be with him for the 5-week-long vacation at Christmas and Easter. So this marriage is in keeping with our situation: private, personal, legal, true, but limited in its way. Neither of us will think of giving up the fullest ceremony, which will be a kind of folk festival in Wellesley when we proclaim our decision to the world in another ceremony, very simple, but with a wonderful reception: then, too, we can really start our life of living together forever. So this seems the best way.
I have never been through such fantastic strenuous living in my life! Mother and I are here in Cambridge now for five days, Ted having gone off to his home in Yorkshire for two days to take all his stuff from the condemned London slum where he lived (and, thank God, will never return to). The three of us leave for London early Thursday, the 21st, fly to Paris (I wouldn’t risk mother on a channel crossing) the 22nd where we will stay for a week, Ted and I seeing mother off, after showing her Paris for a week, on her flight. Ted has been simply heavenly: mother came Wednesday (I haven’t been able to eat or sleep for excitement at her coming) and Ted took us to supper at Schmidt’s, a good cheap German restaurant, that night, and we decided to get married while mother was in London. Our only sorrow was that you weren’t there. When Ted and I see you in Europe this summer, we’ll tell you all the fantastic details of our struggle to get a license (from the Archbishop of Canterbury, no less), searching for the parish church where Ted belonged and had, by law, to be married, spotting a priest on the street, Ted pointing, “That’s him!” and following him home and finding he was the right one.
We rushed about London, buying dear Ted shoes and trousers, the gold wedding rings (I never wanted an engagement ring) with the last of our money, and mummy supplying a lovely pink knitted suit dress she brought (intuitively never having worn) and me in that and a pink hair ribbon and a pink rose from Ted, standing with the rain pouring outside in the dim little church, saying the most beautiful words in the world as our vows, with the curate as second witness and the dear Reverend, an old, bright-eyed man (who lives right opposite Charles Dickens’ house!) kissing my cheek, and the tears just falling down from my eyes like rain—I was so happy with my dear, lovely Ted. Oh, you will love him, too. He wants so to meet you. So to the world, we are engaged, and you must help us keep this an utter secret. After mother goes on June 29th, we will be alone together for the first time and go to Spain for the summer to rent a little house by the sea and write and learn Spanish.
We are meeting mother in London around August 5, and Ted is taking her (and me) to his home in Yorkshire (he wants her to rest and is very concerned about her packed tour, trying to get her to stay longer in one place, Austria)…. We’ll no doubt see her off August 14. THEN, we’d like to see you, joining you wherever would be best (we’d love to see Vienna, but would have to hitchhike, so maybe nearer, Italy, France, or Rotterdam, wherever you’d be then). We MUST be with you at least a week. Preferably more. Tell us what day to meet where any time after the 14th and we’ll try to arrange. Write me c/o Whitstead here till I write you our Spain address … I want you so to get to know my dear new husband. By the way, his first poem (about us in an allegorical way!) has been accepted by Poetry in Chicago (should bring $34 when published). Hope we’ll both be teaching English in some college in New England in 1957!
Much love,
Sylvia Hughes
(P.S. Write c/o my maiden name!)
PARIS, FRANCE
JULY 4, 1956
Dearest Mother,
… Both of us are just slowly coming out of our great fatigue from the whirlwind plans and events of last month; and after meandering about Paris, sitting, writing and reading in the Tuileries, have produced a good poem apiece, which is a necessity to our personal self-esteem—not so much a good poem or story, but at least several hours work of solid writing a day. Something in both of us needs to write for a large period daily, or we get cold on paper, cross, or nervous. Ted is doing a large detailed story which he will soon whittle down … I have never been so entertained in my life, and if by faith and criticism and giving him the opportunity to write and write, I can help bring these stories into perfect being, I shall be completely happy…. My commercial flair has been much stimulated by reading the McCall’s you left, and I have several ideas which I hope to write out in the next month. We are really happiest keeping to ourselves, and writing, writing, writing. I never thought I should grow so fast so far in my life; the whole secret for both of us, I think, is being utterly in love with each other, which frees our writing from being a merely egoistic mirror, but rather a powerful canvas on which other people live and move….
Much love,
Sivvy
Sylvia and Warren in Paris, 1956
MADRID, SPAIN
JULY 7, 1956
Dearest of Mothers!
If only you could see me now, sitting in halter and shorts seven stories high above the modern tooting city of Madrid on our large, private balcony with gay blue-and-yellow tiles on floor and wall shelves, pots of geranium and ivy, and across, baroque towers and a blazing blue sky, even now, going on 8 p.m….
It is so wonderful that wherever Ted and I go people seem to love us. We are fantastically matched; both of us need the same amount of sleep and food and time for writing; both are inner-directed, almost anti-social in that we don’t like functional parties and are happiest with simple, unpretentious working people, who adopt us immediately.
… Anyway, I have never felt so native to a country as I do to Spain. First of all, the colors we saw from the train window all the way down were brighter than I thought possible … blazing yellow, tan and light-green fields under a blue-white sky, green-black pine trees, white adobe houses with orange tile roofs, and all, bless it, utterly agricultural or sheep and bull country….
Best of all, I have a light, clear head that I never knew was possible. I never knew what a load of weight I was carrying in my sinuses! For the first time in my life I feel clear-headed, vigorous and energetic in my own fashion … I am utterly delighted at the thought of coming back here for two 5-week periods during the year. Plan to learn Spanish cold this summer and study it on my own at Cambridge. It is so much faster here, in the center of Spain, where everyone is only too eager to teach us words and pronunciation….
Spain is utter heaven … With Ted and me…, all is possible. We have such fun …
We both send best love to you, hoping your trip is as wonderful as it sounded from the first card …
Much much love,
Your own Sivvy
P.S. What a lovely family we are now! All of us opening wide, new horizons, and you right up with us!
BENIDORM
PROVINCE DE ALICANTE, SPAIN
JULY 14, 1956
Dearest, dearest Mother,
At last we have found our place, our home, after a hectic month of living out of suitcases and searching for cheap restaurants. You would hardly believe it if you saw where I am sitting now! What has happened in the last two days is like a fairy tale, and I can hardly believe myself that our summer dwelling has surpassed my wildest, most exotic dreams. I feel that our real honeymoon has at last begun, with our plan for simple living, writing and studying….
As soon as I saw the tiny village … after an hour of driving through the red sand desert hills, dusty olive orchards and scrub grass that is so typical around here, and saw the blaze of blue sea, clean curve of beach, immaculate white houses and streets, like a small, sparkling dream town, I felt instinctively with Ted that this was our place. On the bus ride we’d become more and more skeptical about the feasibility of getting a furnished house with linens, cooking utensils, etc., and had almost regretfully decided a hotel room would be more likely a place for good plumbing, light, air, etc., when a little lively black-eyed woman on the bus seat in front of us turned to a
sk if we understood French. Whereupon she informed us that she had a lovely house on the sea front with a garden and big kitchen, where she was letting rooms for the summer. It sounded almost too good to be true, combining the advantages of a private house, which we couldn’t afford, with the comfort of a hotel.
Well, she led us through the bright white streets where there were burro carts, open market with fresh fruit and vegetables, gay shops—a strange mixture of clean, colorful poverty, with large, pastel hotels—everything apparently just finished … utterly new, with the modern styles blending with the simple native architecture. Very strange, because while Benidorm is just being discovered by tourists, except for the hotels, it is utterly uncommercial, built along a mile curve of perfect beach, with glassy, clear waves breaking on shore, a large rock island out in the bay, and the most incredible azure sea, prussian blue toward the horizon and brilliant aqua nearer shore.
Her house was a large brown café-au-lait-colored studio closer to the sea than grammy’s place in Winthrop, with a palm and a pine tree growing in the front yard, a back and side garden full of red geraniums, white daisies, roses, a fig tree … a backdrop of purple mountainous hills, incredibly lovely. She also had a huge, cool kitchen with all the cooking utensils one could wish. Of the four rooms for rent upstairs, Ted and I fell in love with the one we are living in now—a small pink-washed room just big enough for two new maple beds, which we pushed together facing the sea, a little dressing shelf and mirror, and a half-bookcase, half-wardrobe. The real glory, though, are the large French window-doors opening onto our balcony terrace! That’s where I’m sitting now, drying my newly washed hair, facing the whole expanse of blazing blue Mediterranean … Ted is in the inner room on the bed, studying Spanish … Our life is incredibly wonderful, and we will stay here solidly till September 29 when we’ll head back to leave me in Cambridge. There is so much to tell about our wonderful place here! …