Rough Magic Read online

  Praise for Rough Magic

  “[An] exciting and satisfying book.”—Mademoiselle

  “[A] worthy addition to the Plath oeuvre.” —Choice

  “Essential reading for Plath addicts. . . . [The book] tells us more than we have heard before about the marriage between Plath and Ted Hughes, at least from her side of the relationship.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  “Of the Plath biographies to date, Alexanders is definitely the deepest and most balanced.

  —New Leader

  “Alexander is one of those rare biographers who do not stand in the way of their subjects. . . . Instead, he pays tribute by an artful restraint that allows the harrowing circumstances of Sylvia Plath s life to speak for themselves, producing a narrative of uncommon intensity.”

  —Kenneth Silverman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of

  The Life and Times of Cotton Mather

  “Challenging former assumptions, Alexander offers a well-substantiated analysis of her life. . . . [He] observes more pointedly than other biographers that Plath didn’t simply self-destruct. She had help.”

  —New York Newsday

  “[A] well-written account. . . . Alexander was able to interview several key figures not interviewed by other biographers, and he gives us information not available elsewhere.”

  —Emily Leider, San Francisco Chronicle,

  author of Becoming Mae West

  “[A] solid biography. . . . Alexander has done a fine job of describing her family background and her youth. . . . Rough Magic is well-written and carefully paced, and makes an engrossing read.”

  —Paul Roazen, author of Freud and His Followers

  PAUL ALEXANDER

  ROUGH

  MAGIC

  A BIOGRAPHY OF

  SYLVIA PLATH

  Copyright © 1999 by TXNY, Inc.

  New introduction copyright © 1999 by Paul Alexander

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.

  Designed by Francesca Belanger

  Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint copyrighted material:

  Robin Morgan for an excerpt from “Arraignment.” Copyright © 1972 by Robin Morgan. Reprinted with permission.

  Clarissa Roche for excerpts from her essay appearing in Sylvia Plath: The Woman and the Work edited by Edward Butscher, Dufour Editions.

  Ruth Barnhouse, Edward Cohen, Wilbury Crockett, and Janet Wagner Rafferty for their respective letters or portions therefrom.

  First Da Capo Press edition 1999

  Second Da Capo Press edition 2003

  ISBN-10: 0-306-81299-1 ISBN-13: 978-0-306-81299-6

  eBook ISBN:9780786730254

  This Da Capo Press paperback edition of Rough Magic is an unabridged republication of the edition first published in New York in 1991, with the addition of a new introduction by the author. It is reprinted by arrangement with the author.

  Published by Da Capo Press

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  http://www.dacapopress.com

  Da Capo Press books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the U.S. by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142, or call (800) 255–1514 or (617) 252–5298, or e-mail [email protected].

  For Garnette, Lauren, Annie;

  for Lucretia, Dallas, Lisa;

  for my sister and my mother;

  and for Amanda Vaill

  But this rough magic

  I here abjure, and, when I have requir’d

  Some heavenly music, which even now I do,

  To work mine end upon their senses that

  This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,

  Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,

  And deeper than did ever plummet sound

  I’ll drown my book.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,

  The Tempest, Act V, Scene i

  Author’s Note

  I am deeply grateful to Frances Kiernan who read a copy of this book in manuscript form. Her insights and suggestions were invaluable. I would also like to thank Martin Garbus and Maura Wogan, at Frankfurt, Garbus, Klein, and Selz; James Stein, my agent at the William Morris Agency; Carlynne Abrams; Margaret Tufts; Dona Munker; Glen Hartley and Lynn Chu; Victoria Black-Lewis; and Alexander F. Schilt, who, years ago, at the University of Houston, saw to it that I got a research grant that allowed me to do my first biographical work on Plath. For their friendship and hospitality, I would like to thank Tom and Elizabeth McBride.

  I am happy to be a member of the Biography Seminar at New York University, where a session was devoted to my work on Plath as I was writing this book. At Viking Penguin, I would like to thank Christine Pevitt, Kathiyn Court, Paul Slovak, Lydia Weaver, Kate Griggs, Scott Edward Anderson, Natasha Reichle, Francesca Belanger, Teny ZarofF, and Michael Kaye. Finally, I want to acknowledge my profound debt to Amanda Vaill, my editor, who, with intelligence, wit, and understanding, supported me through a book that was not easy to write. Without her, this book would not exist.

  —P. A.

  Introduction to the

  Da Capo Edition

  In the spring of 1983, I met Aurelia Plath, Sylvia Plath’s mother, for the first time. I had flown to Boston from Houston, where I was living, and called her from my hotel room. I was surprised to find she was listed in the telephone directory under Aurelia S. Plath at 26 Elmwood Road in the Boston suburb of Wellesley—the address at which Sylvia had spent most of her youth. “Mrs. Plath, you don’t know me,” I said nervously, “but I have long admired your daughters work and I was wondering if I could meet you.”

  There was silence on her end of the line.

  “I’ve gotten so many of these calls,” she said after a pause. “I usually say no.”

  I answered quickly, sensing if I didn’t convince her at once, I’d lose her. “But I wouldn’t take much of your time,” I said. “It’s just that your daughters work has meant so much to me through the years.”

  That comment should have sealed my fate, since, for all she knew, I was some stalker obsessed with her daughter’s poetry. Apparently, though, she was struck by the fact that it was her daughter’s work— and not her life or, as was often the case with fans, her suicide—that caused me to phone her in the first place. “Take the T out to Wellesley in the morning at eleven,” she said. “I’ll pick you up at the T-stop. I’ll be the old woman wearing the red rain hat driving the green sedan.”

  We met the next morning as planned, and she took me to her home—Sylvia Plath’s childhood home. For someone who adored Plaths work as I did, it was an odd—and disconcerting—experience being in the house where she wrote her first poems and short stories, where she spent so many nights sitting on the living room sofa and reading from the family library, where in the summer of 1953, in the throes of a life-threatening depression (worsened by poorly administered electroshock therapy she probably didn’t even need), she hid herself in a crawlspace in the basement and tried to kill herself by overdosing on sleeping pills. I could not help thinking about the ghostly quality of the place while we sat at the dining room table and ate a lunch prepared by Mrs. Plath. For her part, Mrs. Plath reminisced about the more pleasant aspects of her daughter’s life—the piano lessons Sylvia took as a child, teachers she had in the Well
esley school system, random events from her days at Smith College, the good times during her marriage to Ted Hughes. By this day in 1983, twenty years after she had finally succeeded in killing herself, Plath was one of the most famous and respected poets to emerge in America after what Robert Lowell called “the tranquilized fifties.” But to Mrs. Plath, Sylvia was still just her daughter—and whatever Mrs. Plath said about her was informed by the unfathomable pain that can only be felt by a parent who has lost a child to suicide.

  On this day I do not remember Mrs. Plath crying. I do remember her taking me, once we’d finished lunch, on a walk through Wellesley. I’ll never forget the delight she felt as she showed me the pond Sylvia skated on when it froze in the winter, the woods Sylvia explored on warm summer afternoons, or the stretch of road on which Sylvia liked to ride her bicycle. For Mrs. Plath, Wellesley was a town defined by her daughters past presence just as, in many ways, Mrs. Plaths own life was defined by her daughters current absence.

  Mrs. Plath and I hit it off so well that, following my visit, we kept in touch, although she never did explain to me why she decided to see me, or why she had taken such an interest in me once we met. That summer I contracted with a publisher to edit a collection of essays about Plath’s life and work, and asked Mrs. Plath if she would contribute an essay. She agreed, but only if I would come to Wellesley to help her with the piece, since failing eyesight prohibited her from using a typewriter. In September I went to Wellesley, and over several days Mrs. Plath wrote the essay, with me doing the typing. I included the piece, “Letter Written in the Actuality of Spring,” in Ariel Ascending: Writings about Sylvia Plath, which appeared in January 1985.

  Not long afterwards I decided to write a biography of Plath. Naturally, I wrote to Mrs. Plath to ask her to cooperate. “As for a biography,” she wrote back on August 19, 1985, “I want to remain out of print entirely. I’d bewilling to talk and not to have my name connected with anything appearing in print. I have loved—and still do love—my daughter and my memory of her as I alone knew her, and I worked for her constantly when she was alive and have continued to do so to date. But I want quiet and my own life and interests to belong to me now.”

  The “quiet” she desired, she later explained, was the absence of any discord and disappointment—with her family, with Hughes, with anyone—since she had encountered so much of both during her life. The agreement we reached, when I traveled to see her in November from New York (where I had recently moved), was this: she would cooperate with me if, while she was alive, I revealed to no one she was a source. After she died, she didn’t care who knew.

  With an agreement reached, we spent countless hours over the next few days talking about all areas of Sylvia’s life. Mrs. Plath did not dodge any subject—even the parts of her daughter’s life, and the circumstances of her death, that were painful to discuss. More than once, she broke down weeping as she discussed such topics as the senseless death of Sylvia’s father Otto, the emotional abuse she felt Sylvia suffered during her marriage to Hughes, the neglect she believed Hughes displayed toward his and Sylvia’s children (both before and after Sylvia’s death), and the way she found out Sylvia had died (Hughes, in Mrs. Plath’s view, did not even have the courage to call her himself, but informed a family member who subsequently told her). These interviews in November 1985 would be the first among many to occur over the next five years. In all, I met with Mrs. Plath for at least 25 interview sessions. It was not unusual for these episodes to end with Mrs. Plath in tears.

  Over the years Mrs. Plath also sent me a series of letters in which she made revelations about Sylvia—revelations that usually set the tone for what we discussed during our next in-person meeting. “No one yet has written convincingly that Sylvia developed a double personality as a result of her shock treatment #1,” Mrs. Plath wrote to me on August 18, 1986. “She was, when with us, the loving, joyous person we always knew. But when depressed she found relief by writing as an abused martyr, loving no one; loved by no one. Nothing could be farther from the truth.”

  On February 9, 1987 she made more—and somewhat shocking— disclosures. Such as this: “Even in her journal, she attributes comments to me that I never made (just as she did in The Bell Jar). . . . It should be noted that she was in deep depression at such times—a symptom that her paternal grandmother suffered from at periods in her life.” Or this: “The ulcers I developed during the last four years of my husbands life and illness took fifteen years to heal; then when Sylvia had her breakdown in 1953, they became active again and because of severe hemorraghing, I had to undergo a gastrectomy, losing three-fourths of my stomach. I never told Sylvia the cause, for I did not wish her to feel guilty.”

  Later that year, in December, she included in a long letter a stunning paragraph about what Sylvias life had been like while her father was still alive. “There had never been,” Mrs. Plath wrote, “a father-daughter sharing of activities. The last four years of our eight-year marriage were years of withdrawal and illness on Otto s part. [He was dying of what turned out to be a thoroughly treatable form of diabetes, but did not receive treatment.] No ‘talks’ with the children. I saw to it that when he was home, we went out on the beach—ran—they yelled and played vigorously. In the house I had fitted their big bedroom with kindergarten play materials, keeping them occupied with paints. I had an easel for them with huge sheets of paper, acrylic paints, finger paints. I also had puzzles, small square tiles which they delighted to use on the window seats, making designs with them. In this way they did not disturb their father who was in his spacious study, where there was a couch for him to rest on whenever he needed to do so—a huge double desk and bookcases. For me, it was an ‘upstairs-downstairs’ life, for the children had their little tables and chairs and ate their supper in the playroom, while I read to them. In those last four years, I served supper twice—bathing the children and then reading to them while they ate; then they played while Otto and I had dinner. They came down after that for a half hour, while ‘Daddy’ rested on the living-room divan. Sylvia would play on the piano, Warren would tell of ‘his day’ or recite some rhymes—Daddy would give each a hug and they would go off to bed. It was then that I worked with Otto on his papers, letters, writing, etc.”

  On February 19, 1988 she wrote again: “After the Mademoiselle fiasco which wore Sylvia out physically and emotionally [and led to the suicide attempt], she was given therapy, which never included me physically in the picture, so to please her therapist [she attacked me]. . . . My whole life has been dedicated to unconditional love and service to these children.”

  One of the more biting letters I received from Mrs. Plath was dated September 29, 1988: “Sylvia gave up country, friends, and family to grant Ted his wish to settle in the land of his birth. I aided every way I could to ease the change! And now this damning ‘biography’ to erase the guilt and deception.” The biography to which Mrs. Plath was referring was Bitter Fame by Anne Stevenson, a book written with the ample help of Olwyn Hughes, Teds sister. During the years I spent interviewing people about Plath, I also talked with Olwyn on numerous occasions, mostly in her home in London but once in New York when she came to the States on a trip with Ted. On that trip I also met with Ted, who would not talk about Sylvia. Bitter Fame’s defensive tone did not surprise me, given Olwyn’s unqualified love for her brother and the (to me) apparent contempt she had for many elements of Plaths personality. To her credit, however, Olwyn balanced her dislike for Plath as a person with an unwavering admiration for her as a poet, although she became testy when critics argued that Plath was a better poet than Hughes.

  Having died on March 11, 1994, Mrs. Plath did not live to see the publication of Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes. A poetry collection greeted with universal praise in England and nearly unanimous accolades in America when published in early 1998, it would have disturbed Mrs. Plath, since, as I noted in a review written for The New York Observer, it was in essence a disingenuous work. Purported by Hughes s publisher
to be a loving portrait of Plath composed over many years, Birthday Letters read as if it were a group of poems Hughes had ripped off in one several-weeks-long writing spree, borrowing from Plaths own poems as he wrote his. That he died of cancer on October 28, 1998 only proves to Hughes s admirers that he wanted to collect these poems as a testament to how he really felt about Plath—and to publish them before he died. Hughes s detractors—and there are still many of them, mostly in America—believe Hughes wanted to end his life by making a comment, or rather a kind of apologia, on the one subject he had refused to discuss since 1963—Sylvia’s death.

  Actually, in a letter he sent to Mrs. Plath in March 1963, Hughes did reveal how he felt about Plath’s suicide. Mrs. Plath deposited the letter in The Lilly Library at Indiana University and sealed it until Hughes s death; it was recently made available to the public. In the letter Hughes confesses that his “madness” played a large part in Plath’s final depression, which ended in her suicide. He also says he was hoping for a reconciliation with Plath in the form of a holiday vacation, but she died before he could arrange it. From the letters tone and subject matter it is clear Hughes felt more than slightly responsible for Plata’s death. His guilt is palpable in the letter. If there is an eternity, Hughes ends his letter to Mrs. Plath, he would be “damned in it.”

  Mrs. Plath did live to see the publication of my biography, Rough Magic, which came out in September 1991. It was, according to many critics and to Mrs. Plath, decidedly sympathetic to Sylvia Plath. My book could have received no higher praise. That’s what I believed then. That’s what I believe today.

  —PAUL ALEXENDER

  New York City

  January 1999