x x x Sivvy
[UNDATED; WRITTEN ABOUT DECEMBER 17, 1960]
Dear Mother and Warren,
I am writing this on the eve of our departure to Yorkshire. Both of us are dying to go, recharge our batteries and come back ready for intense work by New Year’s Day, brimful of energy to carry out our projected ideas. I am writing in a litter of BBC contracts, Christmas cards, and Frieda’s winter clothes, having just read a poem for a book review of my book over the radio (which will be broadcast next week, a day after Ted’s story, “The Harvesting”)….
Don’t take his elaborate metaphysical explanations too seriously and don’t show them to anyone. He is so critical of the play—which I think reads perfectly as a symbolic invasion of private lives and dreams by mechanical war-law and inhumanity such as is behind the germ-warfare laboratory in Maryland—that he feels a need to invent elaborate disguises as a smokescreen for it.
Both of us have emerged with heads above water after a deeply demanding year and are eager to plunge into our “new” lives of writing and private forays on London’s wonders…. I’ve sent lots of [Christmas] cards and in many enclosed my poem about a “Winter Ship” off T-Wharf …
We got a long, marvelous letter from Mrs. Prouty and have sent her off a card with letters and poems from each of us. I am so pleased her reaction to my book has been so enthusiastic. I only hope I get a women’s story or two published in time for her to see them [Mrs. Prouty died in 1974], as I think that would please her most of all.
… I am very excited that children seem to be an impetus to my writing, and it is only the lack of space that stands in my way. As soon as I start selling women’s magazine stories, I could afford a half-day babysitter or something equivalent to do the drudge-work. I think Ted and I will probably decide to appear on a radio program called “Two of a Kind,” an interview series with husbands and wives who have the same profession.
(Keep after that Speedwriting book. All sorts of queer part-time jobs crop up here.)
Oh, how I’m longing for the deep dreamless sleeps of Yorkshire! We’re both so tense we need to unwind for weeks. We’ll be back here by New Year’s Day.
I’ve got my first two New Yorkers already and revel in them. It’s like getting a fresh present from you every week!
Much, much love to you and a thousand Christmas wishes.
Your own Sivvy
HEBDEN BRIDGE
YORKSHIRE, ENGLAND
DECEMBER 24, 1960
Dear Mother and Warren,
Happy Christmas Eve. Ted and I have been up here in Yorkshire for a week now, and I am writing in the calm before the crowded 3-day holiday. The sun has burned through the mists, and grey sheep are grazing on the field in front of my window…. Ted looks ten years younger. His decision to refuse speaking engagements and cumbersome commissions has relieved both of us. He refused a request to appear on TV as “poet of the year,” much to his mother’s disappointment, but I understand very well how public life appalls him. He is upstairs now working on his full-length play.
I hope you enjoyed that Sunday Observer review about my book … I was very encouraged by it. We enjoyed listening to Ted’s story Saturday and my book reviewed Sunday along with Pasternak, E. E. Cummings, Betjemann, and others and I reading one of the poems. I hope I can persuade the BBC to accept a program about young American women poets which I am drawing up, now that they seem willing enough to record my odd accent.
I’ve had a very heartening letter from my young agent, who liked my second women’s magazine story very much and has sent it out. I probably won’t hear about either of these first two for weeks, but am beginning a longer, more ambitious one today about a girl who falls in love with a beautiful old house and manages finally to possess it…. I’ll have a story in the LHJournal or SatEvePost yet.
Ted and I wrote out the plot for a romance set up here on the moors, and we have two more coming up—a suspense story about an art gallery (I’ll do research on forgeries, lost old masters and quiz our artist-gallery-owner friends on this) and one about a lady astrologer for which Ted is going to work out horoscopes. The wonderful thing about these stories is that I can do them by perspiration, not inspiration—so I can work on them while Frieda is playing in the room … My agent wants me to come in and talk to her again—she knows all the editors and magazines, and her practical know-how is extremely helpful. As soon as I am good enough, she’ll send my things to their New York counterpart. I’m heartened she thinks my first two real attempts are good enough to send around here.
Ted and I have had some wonderful moor walks, 10-mile or so hikes, and the air here is superb. Do plan to stay in England at least a month this summer. Ideally, we’d like you and Frieda to get acquainted by your staying near us and having lunch and suppers with us, then maybe we could go off to Ireland or France for a week while you lived at our place with Frieda … Then, later, we could all go up to Yorkshire for a week, where you could stay at a nearby inn … I wish I had some of my own relatives to admire Frieda. Is there any chance of Warren’s coming to that conference in London?
Do make a final search for that bright yellow paperback Speedwriting book! … I am so frustrated without it as in a few days I could get my speed back and apply for one of these part-time jobs as secretary to a woman journalist or architect or such that come up on occasion. I just feel if I walked into the house I could put my hand on it.
In future years, if you want an easy solution for presents to us, you might send on, piece by piece, my favorite children’s books—that big orange “Cuckoo Clock” for one and my beloved Red books—Mary Poppins, I’d love her books, too.
Hope your packages arrived all right.
x x x Sivvy
CHALCOT SQUARE
LONDON, ENGLAND
JANUARY 1, 1961
Dearest Mother,
… I’m eagerly awaiting word about my two ladies’ magazine stories (which my agent, at least, is delighted with) and working on a longer third. I’ve also been asked to edit an American supplement of modern poetry by a critical magazine here and to allow two poems from The Colossus to be published in a British anthology of modern British poetry, because I “live in England, am married to an Englishman, and the editor admires my work.” …
We are planning an absolutely unsocial, quiet, hardworking winter here now. I have been bothered lately by what my doctor calls a “grumbling appendix”—occasional periods of sharpish pain, which then go away, but my appendix is extremely tender to touch. I am thinking seriously of asking him to let me have it out at some convenient time (if that’s ever convenient!) this spring, as I have nightmares about going to Europe on our Maugham grant, getting a rupture and either dying for lack of hospital care or being cut up by amateurs, infected, ad infinitum. Don’t you think it would be advisable to have it out now? I feel I’m living with a time-bomb as it is. Have you any idea how long one is hospitalized, how painful it is, etc.? Naturally, one is reluctant to get oneself in for an operation like that if one isn’t forced to it, but I don’t want to worry about rupture in Europe or during pregnancy. Encourage me, and I’ll have it out with my doctor. I’d wait, of course, till Frieda was fully weaned and I was in good health …
x x x Sivvy
JANUARY 10, 1961
Dearest Mother,
… You are a genius to locate a Speedwriting book! I don’t know whatever could have happened to the one I had. In any case, I’ll guard these with my life—they will probably come in handy more than once. I’m really an awful correspondent this Christmas, I’ve felt so blue with these repeated sinus colds…. I am going to have an interview with a surgeon on Friday, the 13th (I hope the verdict is more auspicious than the day) about my appendix, and I suppose my job is to convince him it should come out before I go to Europe. I hope you second me in this, as I find it a bit hard to more or less volunteer for an operation of any sort that isn’t an emergency necessity. Do encourage me, I feel the lack of some relative or friend
to bolster my morale! …
Had a very sweet British poet, Thorn Gunn, who is teaching at Berkeley, for lunch yesterday, passing through London on his Maugham award. I wish he lived near us; he is a rare, unaffected, kind young chap. Next week Ted and I are recording a radio program of 20 minutes’ interview, called “Two of a Kind”—about our both being poets—and Ted’s doing a program for the Caribbean services. Now he’s typing out two children’s programs—one about writing a novel (which he tried successfully with his Cambridge schoolboys) and the other a personal reminiscence about how catching animals turned into writing poems. He and Frieda are my two angels—I don’t know how I ever managed without them.
x x x to you, Warrie and Sappho—
Sivvy
JANUARY 27, 1961
Dearest Mother,
Well, your letters have kept coming and coming and increasing my morale immensely through a rather glum period and now I am recovered enough to write letters, I realize how long a silence I’ve plunged into … I’ve embarked, with Ted’s help, on a drastic program to pull my health up from the low midwinter slump of cold after cold, and am eating big breakfasts (oatmeal, griddles, bacon, etc., with lots of citrus juices), tender steaks, salads, and drinking the cream from the tops of our bottles, along with iron and vitamin pills … I feel immensely homesick when you talk of white snow! All we’ve had here since October is grey rain….
I’m so looking forward to next summer. Could you possibly alter your flight time to cover August 20? (You better sit down, now, perhaps!) The reason I’m asking is that I discovered today your second grandchild is due about then, and I’d be overjoyed to have you there to meet Nicholas/Megan when he or she arrives!
… The way things look now, I will probably have my appendix out sometime in February (my doctor advised an early date as I’m pregnant and says there’s absolutely no danger), rest all March, and head to Southern Europe for April, May and the greater part of June on the Maugham grant. Then here for a leisurely July with you (a week or two in France for us, perhaps), savoring Frieda and being together. I wish the four of us could manage a trip to the Scilly Isles, which we hear are beautiful, but that would probably mean reservations way in advance. Do tell me you’ll try to stay to see the new baby!!!
I’ve taken on a temporary part-time job which is lots of fun to keep me from brooding about my hospital sojourn, which I don’t look at all forward to. If you know anyone who’s had an appendix out, do reassure me. I have a mortal fear of being cut open or having anesthesia. I don’t know how I can stand being away from the baby two weeks—that will be the hardest thing of all; she is prettier and more adorable every day.
Anyhow, my job is from 1-5:30 and involves copy-editing and page layout for the big spring issue of The Bookseller, a trade organ which comes out weekly but has two big biannual issues full of ads and bibliography of all coming books in England, plus 150 pages [of] editorial sections (fiction, biography, children’s books, etc.) with 400 or so pictures. I’ve been rewriting picture captions and a lot of publicity department biographical material from all the various publishers. The editor was pleased enough to let me lay out the whole children’s section of pictures and galley proofs (18 pages), where I had the fun of pasting the notice of Ted’s children’s book in a prominent position! …
Oh, how I look forward to your coming! My heart lifts now that the year swings toward it … Do tell me you’re happy about our coming baby! We already love it. A big hug for you and Warren.
x x x Sivvy
FEBRUARY 2, 1961
Dear Mother,
… I went to see my doctor this morning, and he predicts August 17 for the baby’s arrival, Ted’s birthday. How I wish you could switch to a flight to cover that date! It would be such fun having you come to see one baby and go away having seen two.
… My afternoon job is very pleasant and I have done about 60 pages of layout now, which I enjoy very much—balancing the pictures and photographs and jacket designs on double-page spreads, ordering the publishers according to importance and pasting the galleys into place. I get to do all the little rush jobs of typing as my speed is the marvel of the office where the few others hunt-and-peck, and I sound like a steam engine in contrast. My afternoons out have helped Ted really plow into his play, and I think this one will probably be really stageable. He’s full of ideas and in wonderful form.
We heard our 20-minute broadcast, “Poets in Partnership” [“Two of a Kind” show] this Tuesday morning, where an acquaintance of ours on the BBC asked us questions, and we ended by reading a poem each—quite amusing….
We have as names the old Nicholas Farrar and the new Megan Emily (I like Meg as a nickname, don’t you? Anyway, get used to it. The Emily is a feminizing of daddy’s Emil and also for E. Dickinson and E. Brontë)….
Ted and I went to a little party last night to meet the American poet I admire next to Robert Lowell—Ted (for Theodore) Roethke. I’ve always wanted to meet him, as I find he is my influence. Ted gave me his collection Words for the Wind this Christmas and it’s marvelous. Look it up in the library. I think you would like the greenhouse poems at the front very much. He’s a big, blond, Swedish-looking man, much younger-seeming than his 52 years … Ted and I got on well with him and hope to see him again.
I should probably go into hospital at the end of this month. My doctor says it’s the best time, after my first 3 months [of] pregnancy, and perfectly safe.
… I’m looking most forward to Italy and practicing my Italian … I’m in much better spirits with the promise of spring and summer and your coming. You will be mad for Frieda; she’s the prettiest little girl I’ve ever seen and sweet as can be. I want a house big enough for at least four!
Roethke said any time Ted wants to teach at Washington State to give him a nod, so in a few years we’ll, no doubt, make another American year! Lots of love to you and dear Warren.
x x x Sivvy
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1961
Dearest Mother,
I feel awful to write you now after I must have set you to changing your plans and probably telling Warren and your friends about our expecting another baby, because I lost the little baby this morning and feel really terrible about it.
The lady doctor on my panel came about nine after Ted called in and will come again tomorrow, so I am in the best of hands, although I am extremely unhappy about the whole thing.
I looked so forward to sharing a new little baby with you and felt that some good fate had made this one to coincide with your visit. I am as sorry about disappointing you as anything else, for I’m sure you were thinking of the birth as joyously as I was.
The doctor said one in four babies miscarry and that most of these have no explanation, so I hope to be in the middle of another pregnancy when you come anyway. Luckily I have little Frieda in all her beauty to console me by laughing and singing “Lalala” or I don’t know what I’d do. I’m staying in bed, and Ted is taking wonderful care of me. He is the most blessed, kind person in the world, and we are thinking of postponing our Italian trip till next fall as Frieda will be walking by then, and perhaps giving ourselves a two-week holiday in the Scilly Isles this April, if we get some of the money that Ted’s applied for from the Royal Literary Fund, which is supposed to aid “distressed authors” with family difficulties.
All weekend, while I was in the shadow of this, he gave me poems to type and generally distracted me … I have, as you may imagine, an immense sympathy for Dotty now [my sister, who had had three miscarriages and could have no children of her own], and as I grow older feel very desirous of keeping in touch with my near kin. When you come this summer, we shall have lovely times with Frieda, and I hope I’ll be safely on with another Nicholas/Megan.
I’ve been commissioned to write a poem for the summer festival of poetry here, which is an honor as only about a dozen are invited to contribute, so I’ll try to plunge into work too, now, as it is a good cure for brooding.
Do keep in to
uch with Mrs. Prouty. I wouldn’t mind your mentioning this to her in a casual way; it would probably be better for her to hear of it from you than me. I always make it a point to sound cheerful and wanting for nothing when I write her.
Do write and cheer me up.
Lots of love,
Sivvy
THURSDAY
FEBRUARY 9, 1961
Dearest Mother,
I do hope the sad news in my last letter didn’t cast you down too much. I foresaw how you’d enjoy sharing the good news with all our friends and relatives and only hope it hasn’t been too hard to contradict our optimistic plans. I hadn’t told anyone over here, thank goodness, so I don’t have to suffer people commiserating with me, which I couldn’t stand just now. As the doctor said, it will probably just mean having a baby in late autumn instead of late summer. All I can say is that you better start saving for another trip another summer, and I’ll make sure I can produce a new baby for you then! … Megan isn’t pronounced Mee-gan, by the way, but Meg’-un, with a short “e.” Forget about King Lear!
… I’m feeling pretty well back to normal now, and my daily routine with Frieda and Ted keeps me from being too blue. Ted’s been extravagant and bought us tickets to The Duchess of Malfi, Webster’s wonderful play, starring Dame Peggy Ashcroft, tomorrow night, so we’re looking forward to that … He’s writing magnificently on his full-length play, and it is the best thing he’s done. Probably good enough to get a full production at the Poets’ Theater [Cambridge, Mass.] and, we hope, to be staged somewhere here. If all goes well, he should finish it in a month or so. He’s also writing a lot of very lively, amusing, colorful poems and has ideas for stories and another children’s book. I feel so proud, coming on reviews of him here and there, “Ted Hughes, the well-known poet” and so on. We have just heard from Yale that they are going to produce a full record of Ted reading his poems in their new series, with his picture on the jacket. They’ve only about twenty poets on their list so far, so this is very nice. Get your friends to buy copies when it comes out! …