Rough Magic Page 11

  For the most part, Sylvia ignored Eddie’s angry letters, not only because she assumed no responsibility for his coming to Northampton but because she was overwhelmed with schoolwork. She could barely eke out time to date Dick, with whom she enjoyed anything but an even-tempered relationship. In mid-April, while Dick visited Northampton for the weekend, Sylvia became, according to Dick, “very queer and lightheaded” on Saturday night and did something, which remains unclear, that disturbed him greatly. The following morning, he telephoned her from his room and told her coolly that he would not see her before dinner. Then, after dinner, he left—early—for New Haven. Days later, they had made up enough for Dick to write a—for him— typical letter to Sylvia.

  At the end of April, Dick returned to Northampton for a date that went more smoothly. “From a very me-ish point of view,” he later wrote in language that revealed his odd personality, “our get-together . . . was extraordinarily pleasant. . . . I cannot so much say: thank you for your hospitality to me, as say: the visit was mutually stimulating and you were a dear to plan it so for us.” Then, on May 11, on her way to New Jersey, Marcia dropped Sylvia off in New Haven. Over the weekend Sylvia and Dick sunbathed, read Hemingway, and went to the theatre one night to see Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth.

  While she dated Dick, Sylvia tried to deal with society’s double standard about sex. She longed for a male “organism” to understand her, she told her journal, but had concluded that most American men regarded a woman as a “sex machine with rounded breasts and a convenient opening in the vagina.” She had decided, what was more, that being a young woman meant that she had to “pour my energies through the direction and force of my mate"—a prospect that led her to question whether she even wanted to many. On the subject of men, she could not help wondering if her father’s death had produced in her a “craving for male company.” It would be ironic if it had, since she did not wish to be treated like a “sex machine,” especially if she could not treat men the same way in return.

  Interpersonal relationships is one issue addressed in “Den of Lions,” Plath’s story that appeared in Seventeen in May. Of all the letters she received from friends and family who had read the story, Eddie’s disturbed her most. “You are good, Syl—mighty good. You have the eyes and ears of a great writer. Personally, though, I wonder whether you have the heart of one.” Sylvia liked much better letters from Dick and Nancy Rule, a fan in Nashville, Tennessee. “May I be the first to tell you that you can expect wonderful things of Sylvia Plath,” Rule told Seventeen’seditors. “The marvelous figures of speech in her story . . . prove that she can, and should, develop into a well-known writer. Although her story shows some immaturity, in the sense of being ‘too-flowery,’ her well-applied imagination makes up for it!”

  Because she and Sylvia had begun to wonder how they would earn money over the summer, Marcia registered in Smith’s Vocational Office for possible employment. In the office’s job listings, Sylvia ran across an advertisement for two friends to baby-sit for two families who lived in houses near each other in Swampscott, Massachusetts. When the girls applied for the jobs, each of which paid twenty-five dollars for a six-day week, the woman in the Vocational Office hired them on the spot. Her summer plans in place, Sylvia devoted all of her energies to finishing the semester, but she worked so hard on classes and extracurricular activities (Studio Club and Freshman Prom Decoration Committee were two she had signed up for in the spring) that she came down with a severe cold and landed in the infirmary. A life pattern had begun to emerge. During periods of intense stress, Sylvia’s body weakened so badly that she became physically ill, which then brought on a depression. Soon she had recovered enough to check out of the infirmary and finish the term, for which she earned the following grades: English, B +; French, A; Botany, A; Art, A; European History, A –; and Physical Education, C. She could accept the low mark in Physical Education (in school she had never really excelled in organized sports), but the B + in English bothered her. Granted, the course had been hard; but what did it indicate if, among all her academic courses, she made lowest in the subject in which she had now decided to major?

  For two weeks in Wellesley, Sylvia relaxed; she played tennis with Philip, chatted with Mr. Crockett on the telephone, and dated Dick. At one point, a letter from Eddie arrived. “I do question whether you have often, or ever, cast off those restraints which mean the difference between living and living right up to the ultimate,” he declared. “Anyone with any sensitivity can have a good share of those moments which one calls living. But tearing down those last restraints entails something of a gamble, for there is always an element of risk involved, a chance to get smacked in the teeth as well as gain the ultimate. . . . Why this sudden deluge of words? It arises from one line in your last letter— 1 won’t say I’m in love. I don’t believe in the word.’ “ Naturally, Sylvia had been referring to Dick, though she did not name him. On June 18, Sylvia escaped (to a degree) her ambivalent feelings about Dick: she reported for her mother’s-helper job at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Frederick Mayo at 144 Beach Bluff Avenue in Swampscott. On that first day, Mrs. Mayo told Sylvia that she would be responsible for the care of the Mayo children—Freddy, six; Pinny, four; and Joey (a girl), two. Sylvia would oversee their daily schedules, fix some of their meals, and launder their clothes. The job description did not sound too demanding, so Sylvia felt hopeful as, following her meeting with Mrs. Mayo, she went upstairs to unpack. Once she had arranged her clothes in the bureau in her bedroom, which seemed to her as big as the whole first floor of 26 Elmwood Road, Sylvia stared out the roonTs windows at the Atlantic, which, as it stretched out before her, intrigued her with its color and beauty. Later, when she ventured outside the eleven-room house, Sylvia discovered a vegetable garden, a fruit orchard, and a huge backyard featuring a children’s playhouse—all of this atop a wooded hill that gradually descended to the ocean. Sylvia also learned that only a short walk away, in Marblehead Harbor, the Mayos’ yacht Mistral was anchored alongside a sixty-foot yacht owned by the Blodgetts, the family for whom Marcia would be working when she arrived from Long Island on July 5.

  Sylvia realized immediately that her duties for the Mayos were going to be more demanding than they had sounded. This was a typical day: rise at seven; cook the children’s breakfast (eggs, bacon, and toast); wash dishes, make beds, launder clothes while the children play indoors; oversee the children as they play in the neighborhood or on nearby Prescott Beach; fix a hot lunch; rest when the children nap; in the afternoon, oversee more outside playing; then, following supper, which she did not have to cook, bathe the children and put them to bed. Finally, after working almost nonstop for thirteen hours, Sylvia had an uninterrupted hour or two alone in her bedroom. Throughout July, she kept this grueling pace. On her weekly day off, or during the evenings when the Mayos took care of the children themselves and she could steal an extra hour of free time, she strolled the beach or swam in the ocean. After her arrival at the Blodgetts’ in July, Marcia dropped by regularly. During that.month, Sylvia also saw Dick, who was waiting tables close by at the Latham Inn.

  In August, Sylvia’s schedule did not change appreciably. She minded the Mayo children during the day, a task that became easier as she began to feel more a part of the household; visited after work with Marcia, who was dating John Hodges, Sylvia’s old boyfriend; and, when she had time, read. As of August 8, she was deep into J. D. Salinger’s recently published The Catcher in the Rye, a book that left such a lasting impression on her that years later, as she wrote a novel of her own—The Bell Jar—she turned to it as a model. But perhaps Augusts most memorable date was the 20th, which she spent with Dick. On that date, they had to cancel their picnic because of a thunderstorm, so they visited a friend instead. They ate most of the picnic, which Sylvia had prepared, while sitting in Dick’s car. Despite the rain, they were entertained by their conversation (one topic was Dick’s recent acceptance into Harvard Medical School for the fall), and Dick in
vited Sylvia to the Cape following her baby-sitting job. Later that night, back at the Mayos’, Sylvia felt restless and anxious. Deciding that the ocean, which appeared angry and gray, was too alluring to pass up, Sylvia slipped into her bathing suit, left the house, and tiptoed across the dewy yard and down the hill to the shore. As she waded out into “her’ ocean and started to swim, the water warm from the morning’s rain, she occasionally glanced up the hill to the Mayos’ enormous house, its lights bright against the darkness.

  On September 3, her job at the Mayos’ finished, Sylvia returned to Wellesley. Throughout the month, until she left for Smith, she often visited Dick, joining him and his family for the four-day trip to the Cape they had planned. But spending time with Dick only further perplexed her. She loved him—or so she thought, despite her statement that she didn’t believe in love—and he loved her, yet something about their relationship disturbed her. She decided she had to discuss her predicament with someone, so she chose, in a perverse move, Eddie. She and her boyfriend loved each other, Sylvia confessed to Eddie in a letter—that was the problem. Eddie answered by asking, what problem? If a problem did exist, he believed it resulted from the guilt she felt since she really didn’t love her boyfriend. “If I seem a bit harsh at times, it is only because it seems to me that there are certain inconsistencies in your thinking and behavior, and that unless you come into sharper contact with reality and resolve these problems, it will become more and more difficult for you to reconcile the life you lead and the life you want to lead. And the reconciliation of these two, after all, is what makes for happiness.”

  Despite Eddie’s warnings, Sylvia continued to date Dick. While in Wellesley at the end of September, a stay during which she attended a Smith Club of Wellesley tea and ate supper with Mr. Crockett, she and Dick found themselves one night in a field, a starry sky spread out above them. In this romantic setting they engaged each other in a “truth talk.” He wished she were three years older, Dick said, but he wanted to marry her anyway. Or someone “like” her. If the wording of Dick’s statement did not escape Sylvia, it did not necessarily offend her either. In a way, his sentiments merely reflected the thinking of a certain class which evaluates a person first according to type, then according to individual traits.

  3

  Soon after Sylvia returned to Smith for her sophomore year, she and Marcia, with whom she still roomed at Haven, were invited to Maureen Buckley’s coming-out party. One of ten children—her older brother William had just published the controversial book God and Man at Yale—Maureen had grown up at The Elms, the Buckley estate in Sharon, Connecticut. On Saturday, October 6, 1951, Sylvia, Marcia, and a dozen or so other Haven girls—Maureen invited the whole house—were driven in cars supplied by the Buckleys to The Elms. After resting and freshening up in the afternoon at Stone House, guest living quarters near the main residence, Sylvia and Marcia were taken by limousine to the Sharon Inn to join the other girls for supper. When they came back to the Buckley estate, Sylvia and Marcia lay down for an hour in “their mansion"—Sylvias phrase. Getting up, they dressed and proceeded to the gala ball, which took place on the lawn behind the main house. From two bars, waiters filtered through the crowd to serve drinks. Balloons decorated tables covered with white linen. A band performed on a platform that had been constructed especially for the occasion. At nine-thirty, once all guests had been announced and received, the dancing began. Sylvia chose a number of partners, among them boys named Eric and Carl, two who did not impress her; Plato Skouras, the son of the head of production at Twentieth Century-Fox; and Constantine Sidamon-Eristoff, a Princeton senior who so captivated her that she eventually left the party with him for a night drive that did not end until he dropped her off at Stone House late in the morning. The next day, following a one o’clock brunch with the BucMeys, Sylvia and four more girls rode back to Haven in a black Cadillac. First thing, Sylvia sat down in her room and typed a long letter home in which she detailed the weekend’s fairy-tale-like events. “To have had you see me!” Sylvia said to her mother. “I am sure you would have cried for joy.” Then and later, Sylvia and Aurelia openly acknowledged that Aurelia lived vicariously through Sylvia’s experiences. Growing up as she had, Aurelia had not enjoyed luxuries like a Smith education and invitations to the coming-out parties of the daughters of wealthy families.

  The Saturday night after the Buckley party, Dick, now at Harvard Medical School, and his friend Ken Warren double-dated Sylvia and her friend Carol Pierson in Northampton. They had supper at the Yankee Peddler, then drinks at Joe’s. That night, one topic of conversation between Sylvia and Dick concerned her recently completed story “The Perfect Set-up"—the one about baby-sitters, as she referred to it—which she hoped would fare better at magazines—she had written it for Seventeen—than her latest batch of poems, which The Saturday Review of Literature had turned down. Back at Harvard, Dick wrote Sylvia: “You were your own incomparable self, sweet and generous, understanding and thoughtful. Knowing you is a warm and reassuring and exciting experience.” All of Dick’s letters of late had not been so enthusiastic. In a recent one, he rhapsodized about how lovable and kind Sylvia was only to turn the page and draw a detailed diagram of the muscles of the human back. This zaniness, which put Sylvia off, was merely one reason why she had second thoughts about marrying Dick. He felt attracted to beautiful women, Sylvia wrote in her journal, and considered a wife a “physical possession.” And, as if those two black marks did not offend her enough, she also concluded that she was really not in love with him.

  Immediately after Dick’s visit, Sylvia overworked herself, keeping up with her demanding courses—Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Literature, Introduction to Politics, Writing, Visual Expression, Introduction to Religion, and Physical Education—and contracted a case of sinusitis that became so bad she checked into the infirmary. “Sinusitis plunges me in manic depression,” she wrote at this time; however, the quicker she hit bottom the quicker she started to rebound. No doubt part of her depression, which was not so serious as past or future depressions, more an extreme example of adolescent-schoolgirl funk, stemmed from her confusing situation with Dick. As she had previously, Sylvia asked Eddie for advice. Referring to him as “Allan,” Sylvia described her boyfriend as handsome, brilliant, personable, athletic. But she feared marrying him, because—this was the reason she posed to Eddie—she doubted she could ever live up to his set of standards. Eddie replied to her letter quickly. “Doesn’t it sound just the slightest bit like a rationalization? What sounds extremely more probable to me is that Allan does not come up to your standards.” Then Eddie changed subjects, imploring her to “[t]ry not to panic too much” if he revealed that he planned to “call for the East” during Christmas vacation. “I don’t much care for a repetition of our last encounter,” he added, “but if you would like to give it another try, let me know and well see if we can’t get into contact somehow.”

  After her infirmary stay, Sylvia took a written exam in religion; had lunch with a woman from Mademoiselle who was interviewing girls for College Board, a nationwide network of students who served as quasi-correspondents for the magazine; read a fan letter from Hong Kong for “Den of Lions"; and went to Wellesley for her nineteenth birthday. Again at Smith, in a letter in which she thanked her mother for her birthday gifts and cake, Sylvia discussed, as would-be boyfriends, Eddie Cohen; Ed Nelson, a University of Massachusetts student whom she knew from Bradford High; and Constantine, her “date” from the Buckley party, who had recently invited her to Princeton for the weekend. (Although she wanted to go, the weekend had conflicted with school-work.) But her greatest source of anxiety was three upcoming writtens. To convey her state of mind, she drew on the bottom of the last page of her letter a tombstone on which she had inscribed: “Life was a hell of a lot of fun while it lasted.”

  In November, to make extra money besides the modest amount she earned from selling her creative work for publication, Sylvia began to report for Press Board, a p
ool of paid student journalists who provided area newspapers with coverage of events at Smith. Then, over Thanksgiving weekend, in Wellesley, Sylvia and Dick argued so badly that upon her return to Northampton Sylvia wrote Eddie that she and “Allan” had broken up for good. In December, as she sank into another severe depression, Sylvia struggled with her feelings about Dick. Her private life became more confused when a friend named Eric, whom Sylvia barely knew, wrote to tell her that he was falling in love with her. Sylvia decided that he had done so because of intimate conversations they had had (in one he admitted to having had sex with a prostitute). But Sylvia did not love Eric. She wanted only to take Constantine up on his latest offer—to go with him to New York. Yet, despite Eric’s overtures, her fantasies about dating Constantine, and her contention that she had broken up with Dick at Thanksgiving, Sylvia spent much of her Christmas vacation, including both Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve night, with Dick. This did not help her depression, since dating Dick aroused such conflicting emotions. Sylvia became even more confused on the day when she joined him at Boston Lying-in Hospital to witness the birth of a baby, and Dick, who had implied he was innocent about sexual matters, told her that he had lost his virginity. The revelation disgusted her, Sylvia wrote to Ann Davidow. It also infuriated her: Sylvia was jealous of men, she continued in her letter to Ann, because they did not have to worry about society stigmatizing them if they had sex indiscriminately, something for which women suffered ridicule. How could society tell boys to act on their sexual urges at the same time it denounced women for doing the same?