Which brings me to this great, enormous problem I must discuss with you or explode. More and more I doubt the wisdom of being apart from Ted in this tense, crucial year of our lives. At first, I thought I could study better away from him and domestic cares and that the Fulbright might cancel my grant if I were married and Newnham disown me. Also, I wanted a wedding, a gala social ceremony. However, one by one, these motives are exploding in front of my eyes. Both of us work and write immeasurably better when with each other. I, for one, waste more time away from Ted in dreaming about him, writing him, brooding on my absence from him than I’d ever use up cooking us three meals a day. I looked up the Fulbright lists, and they have three married women on grants. Dr. Krook, my philosophy professor, is most sympathetic about Ted’s and my work together, and I am sure would testify to Newnham that I could do my work better while living and studying with my husband. All of this revolves around the question—to reveal my secret marriage and live with Ted in Cambridge for the next two terms or Not? … If we decided to reveal our marriage, we would decide it of necessity this week … Ted hates much about Cambridge and I don’t know if he’d consider living and trying for a teaching job here or not. It would certainly be better qualification for teaching than in Spain—I am thinking of his teaching children or at an American Air Force base. We would save greatly if I didn’t have to travel back and forth to Spain twice, not to mention how much more time and energy I would have to work at the library here during terms and long vacations….
I have perfect reasons for both Fulbright and Newnham authorities—I can say we thought Ted would be working in Spain and the job fell through (which is true) and that he can’t support me but must earn ship fare, so I should still keep my grant. Dr. Krook can testify, I’m sure, to my keeping up and increasing the quality of my work.
… I am living for Ted, and Ted before all else, and if he would think it good to reveal our marriage and go through the official red-tape, I would move out of Whitstead into no-matter-what lodging to work and write and study with him. I feel it is wrong to live apart for six of the best months of our lives; we are very miserable apart … also, even when together, the need for separation subtly blights our joy.
Now I would like to know how you feel about this. I will decide things with Ted this weekend. You could … say to friends, Ted got a job in Cambridge or London, and we felt it ridiculous not to get married here and now … Do help me through this with advice and opinions. I feel sure I could go through the difficulty of red tape here if you back me up.
All my love,
Sivvy
OCTOBER 23, 1956
Dearest Mother,
This will be an installment letter, coming so soon after the last. It is chiefly to tell you another bit of good news … I got a beautiful check for over £9 this morning (that’s about $26) from guess who! THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR!!
At their pay-rates, this seems like a rather glorious sum. You will be awe-struck, I think, when you see what they bought: a short little article on Benidorm (that lovely little Spanish town where we spent five weeks on our honeymoon) and four of the best sketches in pen-and-ink I’ve ever done. I think that these drawings will also amaze you. It shows what I’ve done since going out with Ted. Every drawing has in my mind and heart a beautiful association of our sitting together in the hot sun, Ted reading, writing poems, or just talking with me. Please get lots and lots of copies of each article. The sketches are very important to me. The one of the sardine boats is the most difficult and unusual I’ve ever done…. The castle rock and houses for design is a favorite; the stairway is my least favorite, but not too bad. I hope you love them; send them to Mrs. Prouty, please; show her how creative Ted’s made me! …
… When Ted and I begin living together we shall become a team better than Mr. and Mrs. Yeats—he being a competent astrologist, reading horoscopes, and me being a tarot-pack reader, and, when we have enough money, a crystal-gazer. Will let you know of our decision after this weekend … It is ridiculous for us to separate our forces when it is such a magnificently “aspected” year—I’m typing a book of his poems (an impressive 50 pages) for a contest at the end of November … I’d love Cambridge so if he were here. There’s no question of his supporting me, either, since all he’ll earn will have to go for ship fare to America. I write and think and study perfectly when with him; apart, I’m split and only can work properly in brief, stoic spells….
*
Later: WELL, HERE IS THE LATEST BULLETIN: Ted came up from London tonight …
Both of us have been literally sick to death being apart, wasting all our time and force trying to cope with the huge, fierce sense of absence. SO: Spain is out. Ted is coming to live and work in Cambridge for the rest of the year. In the next two weeks we are going on a rigorous campaign of making our marriage public; first, to my philosophy supervisor; next, to the Fulbright; next, Newnham. We are married and it is impossible for either of us to be whole or healthy apart…. I can write and do good exams if my Teddy is with me. Do write and stand by. We will be so happy together from December 7 on. Wish us luck with the authorities.
Your own loving Sivvy
OCTOBER 28, 1956
Dearest Mother,
… Ted came up to Cambridge after his recordings at the BBC Thursday and has been here since. I wish you could see his pay rates! It is probably the most lucrative free-lance work there is; he gets paid again each time they rebroadcast…. They liked his recording of Yeats so much they are asking him back this Thursday to do some more. And these two days should amount to well over $150! I am so very proud….
… Ted is amazingly struck by my “book” (all the poems I have together, very few “old” ones—only those which have previously been published, in fact) and claims that it will be a best-seller because it is all song, but also logic in music … We shall see.
We celebrated my birthday yesterday; he gave me a lovely pack of Tarot cards and a dear rhyme with it. So, after the obligations of this term are over, your daughter shall start her way on the road to becoming a seeress and will also learn how to do horoscopes, a very difficult art, which means reviving my elementary math …
x x x Sylvia
NOVEMBER 1, 1956
Dearest Mother,
Well, between my private crisis and the huge crisis aroused by Britain’s incredible and insane bombing of Egypt, the universe is in a state of chaos! You have no idea what a shock this bombing caused us here. The Manchester Guardian, my favorite British paper, called this armed aggression by Britain “a disaster” and I cannot understand what Eden hopes to gain by it other than such a loss of face, aid and support among Britain’s colonies, allies, and, of course, growing enemies as can never be remedied. The crass materialistic motives of this attack on the Suez are so apparent as to give Russia food for propaganda for years to come. I shall be eager to hear Cambridge student opinion about this. Letters of horror have deluged 10 Downing Street from all over Britain. The eloquence of Gaitskell in the Opposition is heartening. To think I literally rubbed elbows with Eden at that Claridge’s reception! The British arrogance—that old, smug, commercial colonialism—alive still among the Tories, seems inexcusable to me. I think the British policy in Cyprus has been questionable enough. This is the last.
All the newspapers look to American foreign policy in a way which makes me hope fervently that Washington lives up to the U.N. and not its old loyalty to Britain. What joy there must be in Moscow at this flagrant nationalism and capitalism; this aggression by force, which has always been the cry of the Western Allies.
… Even Budapest has been thrust to the back page by this; the Russians are leaving. What a world! I remember that Persiandiplomat who interviewed me about the job teaching in Africa saying that the western powers were like children in their ignorance about the immense force and manpower on tap in Arabia and Africa. The editorial in the Manchester Guardian was superb: this attack is a disaster from every angle—moral, military, political.
Britain is dead; the literary and critical sterility and amorality which I long to take Ted away from is permeating everything. God Bless America. How I long to come home.
Now for the private crisis. What a week … I went to London yesterday to make my announcement of marriage to the Fulbright [Commission]. As I expected, they raised no question of continuing my grant. I did not expect, however, the royal welcome I got! Congratulations from the handsome young American head who told me my work, both social and scholastic, in Cambridge was so fine they wished they could publicize it (!) … One of their main qualifications of the grant, I discovered, is that you take back your cultural experience to America, and they were enchanted at my suggestion that I was taking back double in the form of Ted as a teacher and writer.
We had a rather gruelling day in London, me being very tired and feeling the usual blueness the day before my period; Ted being tense about his own prospects and ours. By a stroke of luck, we were accepted as tenants for a flat just 5 minutes away from Whitstead, nearer Granchester and the country, but still convenient to here. To my chastened eyes, it looks beautiful. We share a bathroom with a Canadian couple upstairs and have the whole first floor: living room, bedroom, large sort of dining room, antique but sturdy gas stove and pantry. I met the landlady today who, pleasantly, lives in another town. She assured us we could paint the walls (now a ghastly yellow) as long as we didn’t choose purple or orange. No doubt, she’d be only too happy for free improvements; but what a change in my attitude. Nothing I’d rather do than paint it all a lovely blue-gray. Ted and I will really feel we “make” a home, then. The rent is 4 pounds a week, plus expenses for gas, light, phone, and coal. We’ll keep the place extravagantly warm! It even has two apple trees in the ragged little back yard and a bay tree. It’s got pots and pans, old kitchen silver and a few old sheets for the double bed. I’ll make it like an ad out of House and Garden with Ted’s help….
… The hardest part, seeing my tutor at Newnham, came this afternoon. When I realize what ease I’d have had in arranging this, I’d never have contemplated keeping my wedding secret here—the secret part was hardest to explain. My tutor, whom I dreaded approaching, was heavenly. She scolded, of course, for not coming to her in the first place, and the one problem now is getting another affiliated student to come to Whitstead for the next two terms, but I think that will work out. She’s invited Ted and me to sherry Sunday. I’m not going to tell anyone else until I actually move on December 7, the end of the term. Ted will start living in our new home tonight, and we’ll fix it up gradually…. Only five weeks until we’re officially living together in our own apartment.
… When I write Mrs. Prouty and Mary Ellen Chase, shall I tell them when I was married or just say I am? It will leak out anyhow—the day, I mean.
x x Sivvy
P.S. Who are you and Warren voting for this week??? I suppose your silence means Eisenhower!
NOVEMBER 6, 1956
Dearest Mother,
… I am so emotionally exhausted after this week, and the Hungarian and Suez affairs have depressed me terribly. After reading the last words from Hungary yesterday before the Russians took over, I was almost physically sick. Dear Ted took me for a walk in the still, empty Clare gardens by the Cam, with the late gold and green and the dewy freshness of Eden, with birds singing as they must have for centuries. We were both stunned and sick. The whole world … we felt was utterly mad, raving mad. How Britain’s crazy hope for quick success (after which most nations would be too lazy to do anything about it) covers the real cry of the Hungarians is disgusting. It makes the West have no appeal against Russia in the Hungarian case. Eden is, in effect, helping murder the Hungarians. There have been riots in London. Even though a lot of commercially interested Tories uphold Eden, Oxford and Cambridge are sending delegations and petitions against him. The horror is that with time and enough propaganda yelling about the danger of America’s becoming a bedfellow with Russia, America will, no doubt, support Eden, too—a prospect which will make it insupportable for me. If only we would act as the Suez situation demands and stop Britain and France, who are aggressors.
… We will come to work in America and then want to find some corner of the world … some island or other, if we can get money enough, and go there and try to live a creative, honest life. If every soldier refused to take arms … there would be no wars; but no one has the courage to be the first to live according to Christ and Socrates, because in a world of opportunists they would be martyred. Well, both of us are deeply sick. The creative forces of nature are the only forces which give me any peace now, and we want to become part of them; no war, after these mad incidents, has any meaning for us. All I think of are the mothers and children in Russia, in Egypt, and know they don’t want men killed … I wish Warren would be a conscientious objector. It is wrong to kill; all the rationalizations of defense and making peace by killing and maiming for decades are crazy….
… We have two depressing rejections: Ted’s poems from London magazine and my story from The New Yorker. A Smith girl secretary there [at the New Yorker] … who admired my work told me they accept stories only from a very narrow clique of writers usually; better to send poems, which I did. BUT: one very bright note: this morning Ted got another poem, “The Drowned Woman,” bought by Poetry (Chicago) and ONE BOUGHT BY the Atlantic, “The Hawk in the Storm”! I am so very proud.
… I love you; don’t worry about us. Ted and I are together … He is wonderful and we’ll face everything that comes with as much courage as we can. Much much love to you and Warren.
Your own Sivvy
NOVEMBER 13, 1956
Dearest Mother,
… I am rather blue today, all the meanness of fate falling on me over the weekend in the form of a nasty sinus cold and a very painful slipped disc in my back … also two rejections of poems and stories from the disdainful New Yorker. If people only knew the miseries one goes through and the discouragements, they would realize how much balances out the small successes….
This last Saturday, by the way, the official council at Newnham met and decided I could go on working here. They had told me not to worry, but the ingrained English maxim that a woman cannot cook and think at the same time had me dubious enough. So my Fulbright continues and I continue.
I must say I am eager to get to America, and Ted and I can certainly do with a few parties and presents. The next two months will be very hard, having to pay bills at both Newnham and the 55 Eltisley Avenue place. Ted has not as yet got a job; he probably can get teaching jobs in January … but it is very difficult now. He may have to take a laboring job for these first months to cover coal, electricity, gas and food bills.
We have bought a huge, rather soiled but comfortable, secondhand sofa for our living room for £9.10s, which we’ll sell next spring, and a can of paint for the dirty yellow walls. How I long to get away from the dirt here. Everything is so old and dirty; soot of centuries worked into every pore. However, I managed to turn out, by utter luck, a delicious roast beef dinner in our strange gas oven, our first dinner there—rareroast beef, buttery mashed potatoes, peas, raspberries and cream. I’ll be glad to move there on December 7 … and forego this split existence….
Tell anyone-who-wants-to-send-me-gifts of a bulky or house-furnishing nature to send them to 26 Elmwood Road … I want to have some nice things waiting when I come home. I’ve given up all the ceremony and presents belonging to a new bride and would like to feel we’d have it easy for once in the near future in America. I am sick of battling the cold and the dirt away from all my friends. America looks to me like the promised land. As long as we can stay out of the appalling competitive, commercial race, I’ll be happy. I’d like New England teaching and writing years and leisurely Cape summers. Do tell Mrs. Prouty Ted has got a poem in the Atlantic, too. I love that woman so and look so forward to bringing Ted to meet her….
… I can’t believe it is only seven months till I come home. I feel like Rip van Winkle …
Give my love to everybody and write a lot.
Love from Sivvy
Sylvia at home in Cambridge after her marriage, winter 1956–57
NOVEMBER 21, 1956
Dearest Mother,
… Oddly enough, under all this pressure, I’ve written several very good poems and the more I write, the better. Yesterday I devoted to typing Ted’s first book of poems (which makes the one we sent off last spring look like juvenilia); 40 magnificent poems, 51 pages (six poems out of that already accepted—two each by Poetry and The Nation; 1 Atlantic, 1 BBC). We’re submitting it for a November deadline for a first-book-of-poems contest run by Harper’s Publishing Company; Marianne Moore, Stephen Spender and W. H. Auden will judge. I don’t see how they can help but accept this; it’s the most rich, powerful work since Yeats and Dylan Thomas.
My own book of poems (now titled “Two Lovers and a Beachcomber”) grows well, and I should have 50 good poems by the time I submit it to the Yale Series of Younger Poets in February.
Item: Do write “married recently” in our marriage announcement and say after December 7 “the couple will be at home at 55 Eltisley Avenue, Cambridge, England.” I’d rather not even have a politic untruth in print about the date….
Good news: Ted has, by the same miracle that got us a flat the day we wanted it at an impossible time of year, got a job starting this very Monday! He is too late for getting a Cambridge teaching diploma, and, as the work and people are very stuffy in that program, I’m just as glad. He’ll be teaching from now till June at a day school in Cambridge for teen-age boys; they’re not smart…. He will officially be teaching English, but also helping in athletics and drama productions and everything in general. The master told Ted a touching story about how these boys, … marking time till they get trade jobs, can be “shocked” into awareness that might make life a little richer for them. Once the master was talking about “treasure,” and took out the things in his pocket, among them a colored pebble he’d picked up on a beach. That was, he said, treasure; he could, by looking at the pebble, recall the sun, the sea, the whole day. He told the boys to bring a “treasure” to class the next day. Among them, one boy brought a fossil. The master sent him over to the nature lab to learn about it and in no time the boy had taught himself to read (some can’t even do that!) and soon had the best fossil collection in Cambridge.