Knopf wanted me to revise the book—leave out about ten poems, especially those in the last sequence. Well, by a miracle of intuition I guessed (unintentionally) the exact ten they would have left out—they wanted me to choose independently. I am delighted. I can correct my typing mistakes and leave out the poems that have been criticized to good purpose here, making a total of 40 instead of 50 in the book—40 being the usual length for volumes.
After all my fiddlings and discouragements from the little publishers‚ it is an immense joy to have what I consider THE publisher accept my book for America with such enthusiasm. They “sincerely doubt a better first volume will be published this year.”
Now you will be able to have a really “perfect” book to buy at Hathaway House Bookstore, see reviewed, etc., etc. It is like having a second book come out—this one, the Ideal. Ever since their first letter came (I had a “night of inspiration”), I have been writing seven mornings a week at the Merwins’ study and have done better things than ever before, so it is obvious that this American acceptance is a great tonic.
I don’t know just when it will appear over there, but I’ll keep you posted.
LOTS OF LOVE,
Sivvy
MAY 8, 1961
Dear Mother,
… Ted’s just had his story “Snow” accepted in America by Harper’s Bazaar, the very fancy fashion magazine, so we should have another check to round out our 7th thousand [writing money] to send pretty soon.
We are both working very hard. Ted is typing his five-act play and has got over the 100-page mark, and I’ve finished my commissioned poems for the summer poetry festival at the Mermaid Theatre and everybody seems very pleased with them….
… I know just what supper you’re going to have on your arrival!
x x x Sivvy
JUNE 6, 1961
Dear Mother and Warren,
You have no idea how happy your wonderful letter made us! I have been hoping and hoping Warren would come [in early fall], and now my wish is granted! We shall sample good restaurants in Soho and there should be some good plays on then …
… I think you’ll be a lot more comfortable at the Merwins’. It is so near, and Dido’s room is so lovely, and Molly, the little Australian hairdresser [roomer at the Merwins’] is at work all day. I’ll be working in the study over there in the morning and Ted in the afternoon, and then there won't be a mile trek every time you want to rest or get something….
Ted went to receive his 100 pounds Hawthornden Award last Wednesday; the speech given by the poet C. Day Lewis, who is charming.
Yesterday morning I spent at the BBC, recording a 25-minute program of my poems and commentary … for my “Living Poet” program in July. There is a Living Poet every month, and I am on a list of Americans among Robert Lowell, Stanley Kunitz, and Theodore Roethke, which I find quite an honor. We’ll miss the program as we’ll be in France, but you must listen and tell us how it is. Got $60 for the morning’s work and will be paid for the poems separately….
The one thing I long for now is a house! As soon as our income tax for this year is cleared in the U.K., we will see how much of a mortgage the St. Pancras Council would give us and try to line a place up by winter here. As Ted says, he could treble his income as soon as he has a study where he could keep his papers and not be interrupted, and I also could afford a morning babyminder and am interested in working on a novel. Then, too, you and Warren could count on a guest room … Oh, it would be so nice if you could plan six weeks over here every summer! If you just had to save up for the round-trip fare and we had a guest room, you’d have next to no other expenses, and then Ted and I could take an annual two-week holiday in the middle of your stay while you got re-acquainted with your grandchildren.
I feel I haven’t had a proper holiday for four or five years. Our summer in Northampton was depressing, and our tour around America magnificent but the pace tiring [she had started her first pregnancy] and since the baby’s come, I haven’t had a day off. The thought of going off alone with Ted for two weeks is just heaven. We have reservations for June 30 to July 14 and plan to take a little five-or six-day trip alone in France before going to the Merwins’. I think you will be very comfortable here with the baby—I have a 3-day-a-week diaper service, a laundromat is around the corner and all shops, and she is so pretty and funny you will just adore her. Yesterday she took down a saucer from the kitchen shelf and put it on the floor. Then she took down a cup and put it on the saucer. Then she picked up the cup and pretended to sip, put it back in the saucer and burst out laughing in pleasure at herself. This must result from a year of watching us drink tea!
Lots of love to you both,
Sivvy
LACAN DE LOUBRESSAC
PAR BRETENOUX, FRANCE
THURSDAY, JULY 6, 1961
Dear Mother,
I am delighted by your two good letters so full of Frieda. I loved hearing every word about her. Already she seems like a different child, she is growing so fast, and while I am having a wonderfully restful time, I miss her immensely. The Merwins’ farm is idyllic, with a superb view, plum trees, country milk, butter and eggs, a billion stars overhead, cowbells tinkling all night softly; and Dido is the world’s best cook.
They made the whole place over from a pile of bramble-covered stone, and it is full of antique furniture salvaged from peasants’ barns, stripped of varnish and waxed to a satin finish.
Ted is so rested it does my heart good. I am tan, at last, from sunbathing on the geranium-lined terrace and relieved for a time to be completely free of mail, phone calls, and London. Today we are going to a local market fair.
I am glad to hear you are taking in a play…. Do take it easy. Yorkshire should be a nice rest for you. I am so renewed I am dying to take care of Frieda again. We’ll be home in time for supper Friday, the 14th, I imagine, and plan to leave for Yorkshire very early the following Tuesday for a good week.
After we come back to London, Ted and I may go to Devon for a day or so to look at houses. I would so like to have a place lined up before we go to Italy this fall….
See you in a week. Keep us posted …
Love,
Sivvy
The following is a letter I wrote to Warren during my visit to England.
JULY 30, 1961
Dear Warren,
… [Sylvia] has been awarded first prize in the Cheltenham Festival Contest (75 pounds!).
On Thursday the two [of them] took off for Devon—southwest from London—a trip of five hours by car. They have been sending for real estate listings since early spring and had selected eight places to visit—all sounding lush. While they were gone, I lived at their apartment, of course, and Frieda decided to cut her 12th tooth. Neither of us slept much as a result, although she was not ill at all—just wakeful
Well, Sivvy and Ted returned at midnight Friday, exhausted. Seven of the eight houses were impossible. Some actually ruins. But the third place they saw on Friday morning they fell in love with, and if all is correct legally, I guess they are going to purchase it. It is the ancient (yes!) house of Sir and Lady Arundel, who were there to show them about. From Sivvy’s description, I gathered the following statistics: The main house has nine rooms, a wine cellar, and a small attic. The great lawn … in front, leading from a wall 9 feet high, is kept cut by a neighbor who uses his mower on it, getting the grass in return for his services. All one can see from the road is the thatched (honest!) roof. There is a cobblestone court, a good stable to use as garage and a “cottage” of two rooms and a toilet (used for servants’ quarters in the past) that is in great need of repair. There are three acres of land—all walled in—an apple orchard, cherry trees, blackberry and raspberry bushes, a place that once was used for a tennis court, where they are thinking of making a yard for Frieda. The land backs onto a church; the village is close by. Lady Arundel will recommend her charwoman and a midwife in the village…. If all goes through, Sivvy and family expect to be in Devon when y
ou come.
If I remember all they told me correctly, they are one hour’s drive from Exeter—a largish town—and one hour’s drive from the coast, where there are supposed to be beautiful beaches. The countryside is lushly beautiful; the climate, while there is much rain at times, is very mild and has clear sunny weather, too.
If it is all they say and dream it is, I hope they can move there soon, and will do everything I can to help make this possible….
The Arundels impressed Sivvy and Ted very favorably and seemed to be anxious to get people who would have a sense of the historic value of the site and place. (There is a Roman mound there!) As the Sir and Lady have recently bought a much larger place, they are apparently not short of cash, but they don’t want the extra responsibility of the property.
I wish I could see it, but Ted and Sylvia are glad (I sense) that the distance makes this impossible right now. They don’t mind your seeing it, but said that I would find flaws that they intend to eradicate by the time I come to visit next summer. (!)
Both Edith [Ted’s mother] and I are each loaning them 500 pounds so that they won’t be snowed under by the terrible interest rate, 6½ percent; that is, each of us is loaning $1,400. I was willing to take the whole mortgage at 3 percent, but Ted would not listen to it, and I admire him for his determination to be as independent as possible.
… Love to you and Margaret [Warren’s future wife].
Mom
CHALCOT SQUARE
LONDON, ENGLAND
AUGUST 7, 1951
Dear Mother,
… I am a bit overcome by the prospect of moving everything, but our possessions will seem very small compared to the house itself. We shall have to furnish one room at a time. I am a bit homesick for London, as I always am before leaving a place, but welcome the space and country peace for the next few years. Ted is in seventh heaven. We have been working, alternating my mornings and his afternoons at the Merwins’ study, and this works out beautifully as neither of us wants to work the whole day at a desk.
Your presence is everywhere and your good influence, too. I am taking about five vitamins a day, a long walk with Frieda every afternoon, and feeding her chopped meat and potato …
I shall be so happy to get to the house and start fixing it up. It is basically such a beautiful place, and now you will have a lovely country house to visit next summer! I look forward to sampling our apples, making sauce, and anticipating our bank of spring daffodils. I think both of us will produce lots of work. Italy is, of course, something I just won’t think of until it comes, but we hope to save half of the money of the grant and certainly can use it.
… We look so forward to seeing Warren!
We miss you immensely and count on seeing you next summer. Thanks so much for making our trips and house-finding a possibility.
Lots of love,
Sivvy
AUGUST 13, 1961
Dear Mother,
A thousand thanks for the $5,880 check which arrived this week and for your own $1,400 loan (no need to put “gift” on this as loans are untaxable) …
Ted and I are seriously thinking of giving up the Somerset Maugham award, unless, of course, they’ll give us another 2-year extension. The prospect of cramming in a trip to Europe after a move to a house which will need a lot of attention and before a second baby just doesn’t seem worth 500 pounds, even though we were hoping to save half of it. Both of us feel we could get enough writing done if we had a relatively peaceful fall to make up for not taking the grant and feel an immense pressure lifted not to have to go abroad. We’ve had enough of moving around to last for years….
We put an ad in the paper for our flat (with a $280 fee for “fixtures and fittings” to cover the cost of our decorating, lino [linoleum], shelves, and solicitor’s fees, and to deter an avalanche of people—the custom here) and had eight responses and two couples who arrived and decided they wanted it at the same time. Very awkward, especially as Ted and I liked one couple—the boy, a young Canadian poet [David Wevill and his wife Assia]; the girl, a German-Russian whom we identified with. As they were too slow and polite to speak up, officially the other chill, busybody man got it by sitting down and immediately writing out a check. We felt so badly we tore up his check that night and told him we were staying and then dug up the other couple and said they could have it. So I hope our [Devon] move goes through. The couple are coming to supper this week.
… Keep your fingers crossed for us [the house!]
Love to you and Warren,
Sivvy
LONDON N.W 1
AUGUST 25, 1961
Dear Mother and Warren,
It was lovely to get your letters—especially yours, Warren, telling us about coming to Devon on the ninth of September!
Ted’s children’s broadcasts on the BBC have been very enthusiastically received and he has an open ticket there to do as much as he wants, plus an invitation to do occasional editing on the Children’s Page of the Sunday Times … and several other editing jobs, not to mention his wanting to finish a story collection which Faber’s is eagerly awaiting. I have never seen him so happy. Both of us feel a wonderful deep-breathing sense of joy at the peaceful, secluded life opening up for us and delighted that our children will have such a wonderful place to live and play in….
I had a very nice letter from Alfred Knopf (my lady editor there), saying my book of poems (40 poems, a much more concise, tight book) is due out in Spring 1962. I feel very excited filling out the Knopf Author’s Forms after all these years of wishing I could get a book published by them!
… I can’t wait to see what it feels like to live [in Devon]. I shall investigate about a Bendix, mother, as soon as I can, as it would be absolute heaven to get one before the new baby comes…. I’m really sick of lugging great loads to the laundromat each week …
We’ve been having farewell dinners with our closest friends here. We know a few quite marvelous couples—a Portuguese poet and exile and his wonderful, vital wife, and Alan Sillitoe, the young and famous author of the novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (made into a movie) and his American wife, and, of course, our nice neighbors. Fortunately, we are on the holiday route to Cornwall, so stand a chance of seeing them about once a year….
I am going out tomorrow to look for a second-hand sewing machine like the one I’ve borrowed from Dido.
It is wonderful, paradoxically, not to have the strain of going to Italy on top of us any more. The money we hoped to save out of it just wasn’t worth it to us. Now we shall be able to write all fall in peace before the new baby arrives and get a lot done. We’ll probably set you to minding Frieda in the mornings, Warren! I imagine baby sitters will be harder to get in the country.
Lots of love from us 3, Sivvy
* The Colossus and Other Poems, London: Heinemann, 1962, has fifty poems.
The Colossus and Other Poems, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962, has forty poems.
PART SEVEN
September 4, 1961–February 4, 1963
The move to Devon delighted Sylvia and aroused all her homemaking instincts. Although there was, of course, no central heating and a great deal of work to be done, the thatched-roof house was their first real home, a place that in time could be made both beautiful and comfortable.
However, the ecstasy that followed the birth of Nicholas Farrar on January 17, 1962, and the blooming of their gardens after a long, harsh winter was completely dissipated by the end of June. The marriage grew seriously troubled.
DEVON, ENGLAND
SEPTEMBER 4, 1961
Dear Mother,
Well, I am writing this from my big “back kitchen” (not really a kitchen, for I cook and wash up in a small room across the hall) … surrounded by my copper saucepans and the Dutch tea set you brought, all displayed in the various lovely nooks and crannies. A large coal stove warms this room and keeps all the water piping hot (although we can switch on hot water independently of it in the electric immersion heater upstai
rs); and, at last, I have all the room I could wish for and a perfect place for everything. My pewter looks beautiful in the parlor, where Ted is building bookshelves.
We moved without mishap on Thursday, our furniture just fitting in the small mover’s van (the move cost just under $100), and had a fine, hot, sunny, blue day for it. Ever since a fog has shrouded us in; just as well, for we have been unpacking, scrubbing, painting and working hard indoors. The house surprised us—everything seemed so much better than we had remembered it—new discoveries on every side. The Arundels had left it clean-swept and shining. The wood-worm people were just finishing work, so there is the fading aroma of their disinfectants.
The place is like a person; it responds to the slightest touch and looks wonderful immediately. I have a nice, round dining table we are “storing” for the couple who have moved into our London flat, and we eat on this in the big back room, which has light-green linoleum on the floor, cream wood paneling to shoulder height, and the pink-washed walls that go throughout the house … There’s lots of space for Frieda to run about and play and spill things here—really the heart-room of the house, with the toasty coal stove Ted keeps burning.
Across the back hall, which is of finely cobbled stone, one of the best touches, is my compact work kitchen—my gas stove … loads of shelves and a low, ancient sink, which I am going to have changed to a modern unit immediately….
We’ve been so busy indoors that we’ve hardly had time to do more than survey our grounds (the main crop of which is stinging nettles at present, and, of course, apples). I went out with Frieda and got a big basket of windfalls for applesauce, enough blackberries for two breakfast bowls, and about five pounds of fine potatoes from a hill of them someone had forgotten to dig up. I have the place full of flowers—great peach-colored gladiolas, hot-red and orange and yellow zinnias. The front flower gardens are weedy, but full of petunias, zinnias, and a couple of good rosebushes. My whole spirit has expanded immensely—I don’t have that crowded, harassed feeling I’ve had in all the small places I’ve lived in before. Frieda adores it here. The house has only one shallow step to get down from the back court into the back hall and another shallow step into the front garden, so she can run in and out easily with no danger of falls, and she loves tramping through the big rooms. She needs two naps a day again, she gets so tired with all this exercise.