Page 32 of Letters Home


  The master said Ted can use any methods he wants in teaching, no matter how unconventional. The main thing is energy and enthusiasm: the boys will like what he likes. Ted is very happy about this as it has been a difficult time for both of us with no money coming in and the double expenses of Newnham and the new flat this December. Too, the job is just what he’ll be terrific at. We’ll manage all right now, I’m sure of it; as soon as he starts drawing a regular salary, the acceptances will begin coming in….

  Thanks for the money; we’ll have a good picture taken this vacation, you may be sure….

  Olwyn, Ted’s sister, stopped by this weekend on her way from a stay at home to her job in Paris. She is 28 and very startlingly beautiful with amber-gold hair and eyes. I cooked a big roast beef dinner, with red wine and strawberries and cream. She reminds me of a changeling, somehow, who will never get old. She is, however, quite selfish and squanders money on herself continually in extravagances of clothes and cigarettes, while she still owes Ted 50 pounds. But in spite of this, I do like her.

  … Much much love to you and Warrie.

  Your own Sivvy

  NOVEMBER 29, 1956

  Dearest Mother,

  … I am so proud of Ted. He has just walked into this job, and the boys are evidently just fascinated by him. He says he terrifies them and then is nice. With his natural sense of the dramatic, he can interest them and have them eating out of his hand. He brings home their compositions and exams to correct and reads them aloud to me. I get such a touching picture of those individual, simple little minds. Ted says they loved some ballads by W. H. Auden he read to them, yelled for him to do them over, and then he told them to write eight lines of a story ballad. They did, and very enthusiastically…. Ted teaches math, social studies, English, dramatics, art, and just everything—on a very simple level, of course, but thus even more demanding for a brilliant intellect like his. He seems very happy about the job and will get paid over vacation. You should see him—he gets books on Russian history, on the Jews, on the Nazis out of the library. The boys are very interested in these topics, and Ted can absorb knowledge in no time. I am convinced he is a genius.

  We have such lovely hours together … We read, discuss poems we discover, talk, analyze—we continually fascinate each other. It is heaven to have someone like Ted who is so kind and honest and brilliant—always stimulating me to study, think, draw and write. He is better than any teacher, even fills somehow that huge, sad hole I felt in having no father. I feel every day how wonderful he is and love him more and more. My whole life has suddenly a purpose….

  Much, much love—

  Your own Sivvy

  CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND

  JANUARY 9, 1957

  Dearest, darling Mother,

  … As I write, the living room is lovely and warm with the coal fire, which I’ve kept going all day…. It has been a very happy day-Ted got his first acceptance from a British magazine, Nimbus, this morning, of one or two poems—they haven’t selected the exact titles yet. It has a very impressive format, like the Atlantic, but, the editor says, was on the brink of failure. Naturally, we hope and pray it sticks together long enough for Ted’s poems to come out. But the very interested acceptance gave us both a gay mood. We work really hard, and the British magazines have hitherto ignored us both continually. However, the planets point to a magnificently successful year for us both, and we will work to make it come true.

  Ted has me memorizing a poem a day, which is very good for me, and we are working out a schedule of going to bed at ten, getting up at six and writing two hours steadily before Ted bikes off to work…. This way we accomplish much, and Ted feels his job isn’t taking all his writing time. We’re both “early morning” people and need about the same amount of sleep. Term starts for me next week, so I am cramming, reading for it.

  I didn’t have a chance to write all last term, so am working on two love stories for the women’s magazines; one set, I hope originally, in a laundromat; the other, a college-girl story…. I will slave and slave until I break into those slicks. My sense of humor should be good for something. This next week I hope to type the revision of Ted’s children’s fables, and my poems I will send off to the Yale Series of Younger Poets.

  Sue Weller has been in Cambridge a week, just left today, so I have been feeding her cheese omelets, roast beef, sherry, etc., trying to cheer her up. She is very lugubrious … about her boyfriend’s being on duty in the Navy this year and having had to postpone their intended marriage indefinitely. I feel so happy, I was almost feeling guilty talking to her. Ted and I sometimes have violent disagreements, to be sure, but we are so very joyous together and have such identical aims and expectations of our lives that we never have conflict over any serious issues. I really don’t know how I existed before I met Ted…. he is so kind and loving and appreciative of my cooking that I delight in trying new things for him. He is also very strictly disciplining about my study and work. It couldn’t be better…

  Love,

  Sivvy

  JANUARY 19, 1957

  Dearest Mother,

  … What you must understand is that Ted does not want to be a university professor for a career. He wants to write now and for the rest of his life. And in marrying a writer, I accept his life. For teaching, it is plainly necessary to have a Ph.D. to teach at a university level, unless you are rare, like Alfred Kazin, and have written a mountain of critical work. Ted has no desire to do any more academic work … he’ll only teach if they’ll take him on the basis of his publishing and his Cantab. [Cambridge] M.A. So the American dream of a secure sinecure writing on campus seems out for our future life. I find it best not to argue—Ted is so understanding about my need to get a self-respecting teaching job in America and “give out” and is eager to teach anywhere he can himself for a year or two … Writing comes first with both of us, and although Wilbur and other writers find their plums in the academic world, Ted just doesn’t want to spend years getting necessary degree qualifications when he should be writing hardest. And my faith in him and the way we two want to live understands this … I know Ted’s mind is magnificent, not hair-splitting or suavely politic, but employers may find Ph.D.’s more convincing. Whatever, we’re together and that and writing makes our joy….

  Much love,

  Sivvy

  JANUARY 28, 1957

  Dearest Mother,

  It is just after 8:30. Ted’s biked off to work, and I am preparing for a day of intense Chaucer reading. At 11 I have coffee with Mary Ellen Chase—the first chance I’ll have had to talk with her since her arrival about two weeks ago, and I hope to get a reliable picture of teaching prospects, at least in New England. From the reception of the few letters I’ve sent off to Radcliffe, Tufts, and Brandeis, I don’t believe America needs any teachers at all; they all “have no positions open next year,” but will keep letters on active file, which, no doubt, means as penwipers or something equivalent … My hands are tied until I hear from you and get a list. I feel so cut off from everything—unable to arrange interviews, etc. I would rather be an office typist in New England than teach in Michigan … brilliant and rare as we are, how can we hope to compete either with the regulation Ph.D.-experienced people or the 10-books-of-poetry-published people? Heaven knows. I feel it would be a very great strain for me to try teaching at Smith this very first year, even if the miracle happened and they wanted to employ me … When you think of the years it takes to make a doctor, expecting success posthaste in writing “or I’ll give it up” is ridiculous. Both Ted and I depend on writing and could never give it up, even if we never published another line all our lives. Ted is so magnificent and understanding about my writing and study and needs and I, too, feel so close to his, it is a blessing…. I am so gloriously glad to find a rugged, kind, magnificent man, who has no scrap of false vanity or tendency to toady to inferior strategic officials that I am only too willing to accept the attendant temporary uncertainties. Only I feel that in America, of all co
untries, there should be a place for us both. Our rejections make, by contrast, people like Editor Weeks and the editors of Poetry and The Nation seem like large, worthy guardian angels….

  Much love to you and dear Warren—

  Sivvy

  JANUARY 29, 1957

  Dearest Mother,

  … My coffee session with Miss Chase yesterday took several black loads off my mind. First, about my worries over competing with people who have doctorates. “You and Ted would be crazy to get doctorates,” were her very words. She said they figured the grad school grind in America would kill me, so “they sent me to Cambridge.” I gather “they” feel some control over my life, which explains Miss Chase’s shock when I told her about my coming marriage last spring. “They” hadn’t allowed for love, evidently … Well, she said I shouldn’t ever think of getting a doctorate; I wasn’t going to be a scholar or academic, nor Ted, either. Also, wives and husbands are often hired on the same faculty. They would rather have me have poems and essays published in the Atlantic than have a Ph.D…. My attitude about teaching there [at Smith] has changed. The Freshman English program is ideal—only three sections … Beginners’ salaries are only about $3,000; but I could write, and it would be a terrific opportunity. They even said, Miss Chase did, that IF they offered me an appointment (still dubious, so don’t mention it), Ted might very well get one the next year. This year will be hard for him as several interviews are necessary anywhere for a “foreigner.” But she suggested various boys’ prep schools. If Smith falls through, I’m relatively sure she will help us get jobs elsewhere, and her word wields tremendous influence.

  Forget Babson, B.U., etc. They want women at Smith, amazingly enough; the faculty is overbalanced with men.

  I want to dazzle the British here with my exams—my only real way of matching them—they ignore writing altogether, but still I’m turning in a book of poems as a supplement to my exams. Wish us luck and dream with us about this summer.

  x x x Sivvy

  FEBRUARY 3, 1957

  Dearest Mother,

  So happy to hear you liked our poems [in Poetry, Chicago]. We’ve garnered a huge batch of rejections this month—many “letters from the editor,” but nonetheless causing chagrin, so it’s pleasant to see even the revival of old things….

  … I love Teddy more and more each day and just can’t imagine how I ever lived without him. Our lives fit together perfectly. He is so helpful and understanding about my studies and has made a huge chart of the English writers and their dates (dating and knowing style is necessary here and I had nothing of that, unfortunately, at home) and stuck it up all over one wall of the bedroom where I can learn it.

  … In spite of the rejections, I am very happy and alive and writing better poems—a big one about a Sow, about 45 lines, and one about “The Lady and the Earthenware Head,” which has the best verse I’ve ever written. Hope I can find a good berth for them somewhere.

  It is often infuriating to read the trash published by the Old Guard, the flat, clever, colorless poets here (in America there is, with much bad, still much color, life and vigor). I have my fingers crossed that Ted will come to associate America with the growing acceptance and publishing of his writings. England is so stuffy, cliquey, and plain bad, bad …

  Much much love from us both. Let us know as soon as anything comes through about dearest Warrie.

  Your own Sivvy

  FEBRUARY 8, 1957

  Dearest Mother,

  It is just 10:30 and I am fresh from a morning walk through the meadows to Granchester. The sun is flooding into our living room, the birds chirruping, and all is wet, melted, and spring smelling. We still have had no snow here. I wish I could describe the beautiful walk. I set off after Ted left and I had cleaned up the house, and met not a soul. I tramped over a mud-puddled path, through a creaky crooked wooden stile and strode along—meadows shining bright silver-wet in the sun, and the sky a seethe of grey clouds and eggshell blue patches, the dark bare trees along the river framing brilliant green meadows. On my right was a knotty, gnarled hawthorn hedge, red haws bright; and behind the hedge, the allotment gardens of cabbages and onions rose to the horizon, giving way to bare plowed fields. I found a squirrel tree—I saw a bushy-tailed grey squirrel clamber up and vanish in a little hole. I startled flocks of great hook-beak black rooks wheeling and watched a glistening, slim, pinkish-purple worm stretch and contract its translucent coils into the grass. There was a sudden flurry of rain, and then the sun shed a silver light over everything. I caught a passing rainbow in a pastel arc over the tiny town of Cambridge, where the spires of King’s Chapel looked like glistening pink sugar spikes on a little cake. I kept smelling the damp, sodden meadows and the wet hay and horses and filling my eyes with the sweeps of meadow rises and tree clumps. What a lovely walk to have at the end of the street! I felt myself building up a core of peace inside and was glad to be alone, taking it all in.

  I went to visit my head, too! Remember, the model head M. B. Derr [Smith roommate, junior year] made of me? Well, it’s been knocking about, and I didn’t have the heart to throw it away because I’ve developed a strange fondness for the old thing with passing years. So Ted suggested we walk out into the meadows and climb up into a tree and ensconce it there so it could look over the cow pastures and river. I returned there for the first time today, and there it was, high up on a branch-platform in a gnarled willow, gazing out over the lovely green meadows with the peace that passes understanding. I like to think of leaving “my head” here, as it were. Ted was right: every time I think of it now, I feel leaves and ivy twining around it, like a monument at rest in the midst of nature. I even wrote a rather longish poem about it (only ending differently), which I’ll type out in an adjoining letter and send you.

  … Ted is so much happier about his teaching. I have never seen such a change. He doesn’t come home utterly exhausted the way he used to and proudly tells me how he’s learned to make his discipline work and how his psychology in treating them works out. He has become interested in one or two of the boys and given them extra reading, etc. I feel he is mastering his work now, not letting it sap all his energy and letting the boys run all over him. They must really admire him; he is such a strong, fascinating person, compared to the other sissy teachers they get. He told me how he had them shut their eyes and imagine a story he told them—very active and vivid—and when the bell to end school rang, they all groaned and wanted him to finish the story. So I am glad that he is literally making the best of a very hard job.

  I do wish we could win the pools. Pan (our Ouija imp) has been getting better and better about it and tells us more and more accurately. Last week we got 20 points out of a possible 24 (which would be a fortune of 75,000 pounds, given out every week). We keep telling Pan we want it so we can have leisure to write and have lots of children, both … If we won, we could deposit the money and live off the interest and write when and wherever we wanted and not get desperate about jobs. I feel I could write a good novel if I had a year off. I need time and peace. Oh, well, it’s a nice dream. Wish us luck, anyhow.

  x x x Sivvy

  FRIDAY MORNING, LATER

  Dear Mother—Here is a copy of the poem I said I’d send. It is called “The Lady and the Earthenware Head.”

  THE LADY AND THE EARTHENWARE HEAD

  Fired in sanguine clay, the model head

  Fit nowhere: thumbed out as a classroom exercise

  By a casual friend, it stood

  Obtrusive on the long bookshelf, stolidly propping

  Thick volumes of prose—

  Far too unlovely a conversation piece,

  Her visitor claimed, for keeping.

  And how unlike! In distaste he pointed at it:

  Brickdust-complected, eyes under a dense lid

  Half-blind, that derisive pout—

  Rude image indeed, to ape with such sly treason

  Her dear face: best rid

  Hearthstone at once of the outrageous head.
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  With goodwill she heard his reason,

  But she—whether from habit grown overfond

  Of the dented caricature, or fearing some truth

  In old wives’ tales of a bond

  Knitting to each original its coarse copy

  (Woe if enemies, in wrath,

  Take to sticking pins through wax!)—felt loath

  To junk it. Scared, unhappy,

  She watched the grim head swell mammoth, demanding a home

  Suited to its high station: from a spectral dais

  It menaced her in a dream—

  Cousin perhaps to that vast stellar head

  Housed in stark heavens, whose laws

  Ordained now bland, now barbarous influences

  Upon her purse, her bed.

  No place, it seemed, for the effigy to fare