Rough Magic Read online

  In July, after earning all A’s for the year, Sylvia went back to Camp Helen Storrow, this summer with Betsy and Ruth. There the girls swam, took arts-and-crafts classes, and put on a minstrel show in which, even though she had a teenager’s squawky voice, Sylvia performed as guest star—Frank Sinatra—because she had, according to the other campers, who unanimously chose her, the “perfect” build. Though she may have found Storrow’s cuisine awful, Sylvia ate heartily anyway, normally overindulging herself like a glutton. One day at lunch, she finished two bowls of vegetable soup, one slice of bread, two portions of raisin-and-carrot salad, two portions of potatoes and cabbage, a slice of cake, and seven cups of milk.

  At Storrow, Sylvia was frugal. In all four weeks of camp, she spent only three dollars, most of it on crafts, stamps, and writing supplies. Indeed, one of the memorable episodes of the summer involved money. On July 17, Sylvias unit hiked two miles to a blueberry farm whose owner paid the girls ten cents for each quart they could pick. Taking off only for lunch and a brief rest period, the girls picked berries from the fruit-laden bushes all day. Sylvia and Ruth worked in tandem and picked twenty quarts, which netted one dollar for each of them. Sylvia felt anxious about earning extra money to help pay for camp—or so she wrote to her mother that night in a letter she signed “Sylvia,” a break from her recent practice of employing the nicknames “Siwy” and “Siv.” The day had been, according to Sylvia, her best yet at camp.

  Following Storrow, which concluded on July 27, Ruth and Sylvia visited each other—first in Wellesley, then in Winthrop. When she was not discussing her newest fascination—boys—Sylvia thought about her true love—writing. In August, she sifted through a sheaf of poems she had written over the past nine years and decided to select, order chronologically, and copy by hand in a composition notebook those she considered to be her best. Illustrating many poems with crayon or ink drawings, she called her anthology Poems by Sylvia Plath. After she read A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, and David Copperfield in early September, she started the ninth grade. Coming home on the first day, September 16, 1946, Sylvia found her mother and brother chatting with a stranger—a cute, athletically trim, expressive boy about Warren’s age. He introduced himself—his name was Philip McCurdy—and Sylvia became intrigued. On that day and over the next several weeks, Philip told her much about his young life.

  Philip had grown up in a household consisting of his grandmother, his mother, and two older sisters. He believed his father had died by falling from a ladder while painting the house. But in sixth grade, he examined his permanent-record card and learned that his sister was actually his mother. Confronting his family, Philip was told that, as she worked as a waitress at the Belmont Hotel in Bermuda in the summer of 1934, his mother/"sister” had become pregnant. She had moved with her mother from their home in Brookline to West Roxbury, and it was there that she gave birth to her baby—Philip. Afterwards, the three of them returned to Brookline, where Philip’s grandmother claimed the baby as her own. Life remained fairly normal until Philip discovered the truth. The man who had fallen to his death while painting—this episode did occur—was actually his grandfather. Philips father was still very much alive, although through the years he had maintained no contact with Philip’s family. To make matters even more complicated, Philip’s mother had married soon after Philip’s discovery. At present, his mother, his stepfather, and Philip all lived together in a house in Wellesley, on Durant Street, having moved there just days before school started. In a manner of speaking, Philip had three fathers—a stepfather, a “ghost” father (his real father, whom he had never met), and a “dead” father (the man who fell from the ladder). Sylvia became fascinated. As she struggled with her own father’s death, a subject about which she spoke to Philip but never freely, Philip’s story reassured Sylvia. Here was someone with a father situation more complicated than hers.

  Soon Sylvia and Philip became close friends. Often, after school, they went on hikes or long bike rides. On clear nights, they would sneak out, climb up to the top of Honeywell Hill, and, lying on their backs on the damp ground, study the constellations. Before long, they were asking obvious questions. Were they “brother” and “sister”? Boyfriend and girlfriend? Simply soul mates? And, in the end, did it matter?

  Except for the arrival of Philip, the fall of 1946 resembled any other autumn. Outside of school, Sylvia wrote and saw boys; principal among them was Wayne Sterling, her Winthrop friend, whom she described in her diary as (oddly enough) extremely boring. The spring term, her last in junior high, began on a low note. On January 17, 1947, she lost in her attempt to become class secretary. Five days later, a boy defeated her for first place in a spelling bee; she was appeased somewhat since, as she wrote in her diary, she believed it was always better for a boy to be ahead of a girl. After this, the semester turned around. At a series of assembly dances, she was as popular as any girl there. The semester’s most eventful dance, however, was March 7’s, an event to which she was escorted by Wayne Sterling.

  Before the dance, Sylvia and Wayne, who took the bus over from Winthrop to spend the night at the Plaths’, listened to “The Anniversary Song.” Following supper, Wayne put on his tuxedo, Sylvia her black dress, and they went to the school. In the dim light of the gymnasium, Wayne and Sylvia danced for hours. Later, at home, Warren rose to join them for a snack and a chat which lasted until bedtime. The next morning, when Sylvia came down for breakfast, Wayne would hardly speak to her—much to her surprise. After breakfast, Sylvia confronted him and forced him to reveal that, before he and Warren had gone to sleep in Warren’s room, Warren had shown him Sylvias diary. The section in which Sylvia described him as being boring had hurt him badly. Deeply concerned, Sylvia tried to explain the affront: she often wrote passages in her diary that she did not mean moments later, she said. Regardless of Sylvia’s efforts, the damage was done. Their day, which included walks to Wellesley College and to Morses Pond, remained tense. As Wayne boarded the late-afternoon bus for Winthrop, Sylvia concluded that she would never hear from him again. So, when he called at seven-forty-five to apologize for reading her most private thoughts, Sylvia felt relieved. All’s well that ends well—this is what she wrote in her diary for that day.

  On April 13, Sylvia started a correspondence with Hans-Joachim Neupert, a Ruckersdorf, Germany, teenager who would become her pen pal. In her first letter, she revealed that she hoped to grow up to become a foreign correspondent, a journalist, a writer, or an artist. To this end, she continued to read and write, besides maintaining a demanding academic schedule that once again culminated with excellent grades. At final assembly, she won a fifth and a sixth school letter; a school pendant and a commendation card for being the only student in the school’s history to earn enough credits to win a sixth letter; a copy of Robert Penn Warren’s Understanding Poetry for being a “special student”; an achievement certificate for winning first place in a national art contest sponsored by the Carnegie Institute; and commendation cards for punctuality and for earning all A’s and B’s during her three years of junior-high school. On June 17, her last day of school, seventy-five friends autographed her yearbook.

  Hoping for a change this summer, Sylvia attended—alone—the Vineyard Sailing Camp, but its activities ended up duplicating those of other camps. On the Vineyard, she seemed truly to enjoy only one function—eating. She consumed such enormous meals that, at five feet eight inches in height, she might have been expected to weigh more than 119 pounds. On July 10, after just two weeks, Sylvia went home to Wellesley, where she would remain for the rest of the summer.

  4

  On September 8, 1947, the first day of classes at Gamaliel Bradford High School, Wilbuiy Crockett, compact in build, soft-spoken, bespectacled, stood before his students in Room 216 and, using his trademark grammar-perfect sentences, listed the demands he expected of them for the coming academic year. In sophomore English, students would cover American literature—Melville, Hawthorne, Faulkner, and so on
. British literature would come junior year; world, senior. This year, students would read forty-five major works—novels, long poems, plays. There would be no tests. Instead, each student would write four five-thousand-word essays that, standing before class, he would read and defend. In short, since Crockett considered it his duty to prepare students for college (in fact, many former students matriculated at Ivy League schools), he would run his course like a college seminar. Among the thirty or so students who had gathered at the U-shaped table to listen to Crockett’s opening lecture was Sylvia. She had never heard a teacher speak with such inspiration about literature. Because of this, she looked forward to the year—indeed, the next three, for Crockett taught all advanced English at Bradford. Yet not every student did; many considered Crockett too demanding. These shied away from (or were awed by) the “Crocketteers,” the students who admired Crockett’s challenging, probing brand of instruction so much that they revered him almost like a guru.

  On September 9, when he walked into Room 216 to see that after his opening-day lecture a good third of the class had transferred to a less demanding section, Crockett said with a smile, “It seems we’ve had quite a desertion.” Along with the other remaining students, Sylvia laughed at Crockett’s joke. The last thing she would do, she thought, was transfer out of this class. For all of her academic career, she had been waiting for a teacher who, through his wit and intelligence, could push her to live up to her abilities. Now she had found him. She took other interesting courses, which were a part of the college-preparatory curriculum track for which she had signed up at Bradford—Latin, math, French, art, orchestra, gym—but she truly savored only one class, English. To Sylvia, Crockett was, as Sylvia would describe him, “the teacher of a lifetime.”

  From the start, Crockett rewarded her enthusiasm. One day near the beginning of the term, he made students read aloud paraphrases they had written the night before. When the last paper was read, he asked which one the students thought was the best. “Sylvia’s,” John Pollard said immediately. “I decidedly think so,” Crockett added. Indeed, Crockett encouraged Sylvia so much that during the initial week of school she wrote her first poem since May. Later, in early October, she handed in four new poems. After he read the group aloud, Crockett told the class that he believed Sylvia had a natural lyrical gift. Also, “I Thought That I Could Not Be Hurt,” one of his two favorites (“Alone and Alive” was the other), displayed a quality rare to a poem written by a fourteen-year-old—a deeply felt sense of anguish. Based on an actual episode in which Grammy accidentally blurred one of Sylvia’s pastel still-lifes when she tossed an apron on a table, the poem’s meaning hinges on the pivotal lines in which the narrator responds to the mundane occurrence—the blurring of a pastel—by revealing that it left her in a “dull and aching void.” The use of these words seems hardly fitting yet represents an early window into Plath’s potentially extreme emotional states. The narrator’s solipsism notwithstanding, the poem impressed Crockett with its technical skill and strong, if peculiar, sentiments. Sylvia was thrilled over Crockett’s comments, the only inspiration she needed to write even more poems.

  In the fall, while she studied diligently, Sylvia also developed a social life. In junior high, as she passed through that awkward physical stage and became interested in boys, she had placed importance on being accepted by her contemporaries. Now, in high school, she tried even harder to fit in. She attended Saturday football games; joined the staff of The Bradford, the newspaper for which she wrote feature articles; and participated in basketball and orchestra. Early in the year, she had waited for the school’s two sororities, Sugar ‘n’ Spice and Sub-Deb, to extend membership invitations. When Sub-Deb asked her to pledge, Sylvia accepted and submitted herself to an initiation week that required her to serve as slave to a Big Sister, embarrass herself publicly when a sister told her to (by hanging from a tree limb or insulting a stranger), and refrain from washing or combing her hair and from wearing makeup. (Later, offended by the condescending manner with which members treated nonmembers, Sylvia resigned the sorority.)

  As the fall progressed, Sylvia attended other social functions. In early November, dressed in a peach gown and accompanied by her friend Prissy Steele, Sylvia went to her first high-school formal, an occasion on which she danced with numerous boys. Three weeks later, wearing a velvet dress and joined this time by Perry Norton, Sylvia took in another formal. Again she danced with many boys, although the high spot of the evening took place as Sylvia, Perry, and another couple stole a picture of a football player, which had been positioned among the decorations on a table, so that they could give it to him at school on Monday morning. After this, Sylvia and Perry danced the last dance together. Then, his arm clutched firmly around her, Perry walked her home.

  That spring term, Sylvia attended assembly dances, had a crush on Tom Duggan, and went to her first junior prom, to which her friend John Pollard was her escort even though she preferred Perry Norton. Also, she fostered new friendships with girls her own age, among them Patricia O’Neil and Louise Geisey. Meanwhile, she continued to chalk up academic and creative successes. R. H. White presented her with a certificate of merit to mark the inclusion of her artwork in a student exhibition at Carnegie Institute. She finished more poems, many of which Crockett admired. In particular, in March, she wrote “Youth’s Appeal for Peace,” her most ambitious effort yet. The poem’s first section, “The Storm Clouds Gather,” paints a picture of a desert—its loneliness is defined by a solitary plant—on which a storm forms in the distance. The second, “The Approach of the Horsemen,” depicts four horsemen riding across the desert as bombs explode and a wind echoes four words—war, famine, sickness, death. The third, “The Appeal,” documents the plant’s plea for the horsemen to turn back so that the youth of the world will have a chance to mature, a plea with which the horsemen comply. Its statement marred by a naive idealism, the poem does represent another step in her evolution as a serious, if still somewhat innocent, poet.

  On July 1, 1948, after she received for her sophomore year all A’s save for a B in orchestra, Sylvia returned to the Vineyard Sailing Camp, joined this summer by Betsy Powley and Ruth Freeman. Once they had unpacked by flashlight on their first night there, “The Three Musketeers,” as they called themselves, spent the following days swimming, sailing, and visiting with friends. A week into her stay, Sylvia concluded that she had become too old for camp. She would return next year only as a counselor, she decided, although even that idea did not excite her. Next summer she would concentrate on art and writing.

  In early September, Sylvia started her junior year, perhaps the most academically challenging in high school. Taking English, Latin, French, American history, math, and art, she performed effectively in the fall term; she also worked hard in the spring. In March, the month when she won an achievement key in the Scholastic Art Awards Competition from R. H. White, she and Jeanne Woods, speaking on behalf of the members of English 31, composed a letter to Columbia University’s Irwin Edman. In that month’s issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Edman had published “A Reasonable Life in a Mad World,” an article in which he suggested that modern man should rely on his own ability to reason logically in order to further society. Distressed by the idea, the Crock-etteers contended that in order to live fully—and not just survive— man also should embrace the universe’s spiritual element and celebrate “the inner compulsion of every man to seek beyond himself for guidance.” If we accept divinity and grow spiritually, Plath and Woods wrote, then and only then will we understand the nature of human life. (“Your letter states very well some of the traditional beliefs about the nature of the universe,” Edman later replied in a curt note, “but these beliefs have often been questioned, and I must ask you to wait until you get to college to hear them discussed more thoroughly.”) Finally, near the end of the term, The Bradford selected next year’s co-editors—Plath and Frank Irish. In ‘Bradford’ announces incoming editors, an article that ran in June, the staf
f predicted that, because of her “exceptional ability as a writer’ and because she had “not only . . . a keen critical eye, but also the noteworthy reputation of sticking to a task until it is done—a quality that will stand her in good stead in next year’s work,” Plath would be “an exceedingly able editor.” In June, Plath also received a year-end report card of straight As plus such additional accolades as an honorable mention in The Atlantic Monthly’s annual student-poetry contest, a distinction she had now earned two years’ running.

  Too old to go to camp, even, she decided, as a counselor, Sylvia remained in Wellesley during the summer of 1949. For employment, she baby-sat for neighborhood families, earning about seventy-five dollars in spending money. In her free time, she worked on poems and stories, several of which she submitted to magazines. She saw her friends—Philip McCurdy, Pat O’Neil, Louise Geisey. But mostly she filled her summer by dating a dozen different boys. In fact, during this summer Sylvia experienced her true sexual awakening, which in the late forties could only spell confusion. Over the past couple of years, as she felt attracted to boys, she became anxious. If she was drawn to a boy physically, she dared not act on her desires for fear of being labeled “easy.” On the other hand, society’s standards allowed—one might even argue, encouraged—boys to “have intercourse,” as she called it. Confronted with this hypocritical double standard, Sylvia did not know what she should do. Though emotionally mature and sexually curious, she would never permit herself to move beyond kissing and hugging. Nonconsummative clitoral experimentation was so exotic as to be foreign. Having intercourse was out of the question. Not that Sylvia did not want to; the subject seemed to hover in the back of her mind all the time. During the past year, she had written about sex in her journal, once meditating on her own virginity. In one particular passage, she described how she longed to be dominated by a man, for only then, she said, did she feel she could be dominant.