Rough Magic Read online

  Sylvia would spend the summer of 1949 struggling with issues of sexuality. At the local tennis courts in early June, when Bob Reidemann, a friend, introduced her to Denison University student John Hodges, she and Hodges played tennis for hours. Hodges’s tendency to yell at her for missing a ball did not seem to bother her; the next day, when she bumped into Hodges again at the courts, she engaged in a conversation that resulted in their dating the rest of the month. The breakup of their brief courtship started with Sylvia’s trip to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for a week-long Unitarian conference in late June. While staying at the Oceanic Hotel, with a friend named Ginny, Sylvia dated several boys; two were a bellhop from Wellesley to whom Ginny had introduced her and a boy from Kentucky with whom she spent an afternoon lunching, strolling the beach, and watching basketball on television. On July 6, after she had returned to Wellesley, and was ready to play the field, Sylvia went with Paul Hezlett to the King Philip, a club in Wrentham. A pleasant sprawling one-stoiy building approached by a manicured driveway, the club featured, out back overlooking a lake, a polished-stone terrace on which Sylvia and Paul danced. The evening’s denouement occurred as the couple bumped into Bruce Elwell and Rod Leavell, both with dates. After the three couples had retired to the bar, and Bruce, by speaking French, convinced the waitress to serve him a Tom Collins—at eighteen, Bruce was well below the state’s legal drinking age of twenty-one—Sylvia vowed to herself that she would go out with him eventually.

  Which she did, two days later—Bruce took her to the stock-car races—and then for the rest of the summer. Of all the boys she had dated so far, Bruce was the most worldly. At a party at Rod’s in mid-July, he offered Sylvia a sip of his bourbon and ginger ale, her first taste of alcohol. Afterwards, outside on Rod’s terrace, as they lay on a lounge chair and looked up into the black sky, Sylvia and Bruce kissed until Sylvia felt tempted to go further, although she did not. Ten days later, on yet another date with Bruce, she was tempted again. While they sat in their seats at the stock-car races, the brightly painted cars barreling around the speedway below them, Sylvia said cryptically to Bruce that she hoped to see a thrilling wreck, whereupon, in the second turn, a car spun out of control and crashed over the guard rail and high-wire fence into the crowd. Ambulances arrived to take away the injured—seven all together. Following this, Bruce drove Sylvia home; with the crash only miles behind them, they necked wildly in his car. Again Sylvia thought about the—now—familiar question: how far should she go? Even if she wanted to explore her sexual emotions to the fullest, she knew that she should not. Only days before, her relationship with John Hodges had ended because, according to Hodges, Sylvia had “forced” the issue.

  It had been a dreary, rainy day. After John called on her in the morning, they drove around that afternoon until they stopped at Fell’s Playground. Once Sylvia had told him about the playground’s history, John said, “I’ve run out of conversation.” She agreed and they suddenly embraced. Her face buried in his shoulder, Sylvia said that she thought he was nice. Then John whispered, “I think you’re wonderful,” and kissed her. Later, dropping her off at home, John implied that Sylvia had staged the whole scene just to trick him into kissing her. His accusation made Sylvia admit, to herself but not to him: this morning she had decided she did want to kiss him—today. And now she had. Perhaps subconsciously she had staged the scene. At what price, though—the risk of John’s breaking up with her because she was easy? Frustrated, Sylvia went on a date that night with Paul Hezlett (they saw the Ann Blythe movie Red Canyon in Boston) but could hardly kiss him good night. Days later, on that night in Bruce’s car, Sylvia did not make another mistake. They went only “so far,” and then at his instigation.

  In August, Sylvia dated several boys besides Bruce. One was John Hall, whom she met through a friend. In the month they spent together—he returned to Williams College in mid-September—they played tennis, scaled Dean’s Tower, went to the nightclub Totem Pole, and cruised in John’s car. The day Sylvia would remember all winter was August 30. That morning, Sylvia and John drove to John’s friend Hoka’s house in West Falmouth. In the afternoon, Sylvia went swimming with John and Hoka, remarked on John’s body (she considered it perfect), and then later, with John alone, drove into town. Here they ran into friends of John’s, one of whom, a girl, purred to him, “Oh, you big, handsome brute!” Hearing the comment, Sylvia shot back, “Isn’t he, though?” She felt pleased, as she told her diary, that he belonged to her. The next evening, Sylvia and John cuddled in the front seat of his car at the drive-in in Dedham. As the movie flickered before them on the screen, they discussed various subjects. At one point, even though they had known each other only a matter of days, they actually touched on marriage.

  Then summer ended. Over the last year Sylvia had dated some twenty boys. None compared to John Hall, who believed, he told Sylvia, that “love is more than just a physical attraction” (he knew a couple who “had intercourse” almost weekly—"like a couple of dogs”) and that a tender kiss, the kind they shared, “doesn’t mean passion or emotion— just love.” So, when she began her senior year, in September 1949, the same month Warren started Exeter on scholarship and she finally had a bedroom of her own, Sylvia struggled to force John from her thoughts. With college approaching, she had to commit herself to this year’s classes: world literature, college biology, United States history, French III, advanced art (painting), and gym.

  Soon after school started, Sylvia began considering the colleges to which she would apply. Naturally, she would approach Wellesley College, since she seemed to be a shoo-in for a town scholarship. Also, Sylvia had decided to try Smith College, one of the premier women’s colleges in America. In her letter of application, dated November 7,1949, Plath stated that she wanted to attend Smith because the school provided an excellent faculty, generous offerings in art and English, and a large number of scholarships. However, she did not mention one underlying reason that Smith appealed to her: its location in Northampton, Massachusetts, one hundred miles—and a lengthy train ride—from Welles-ley. If she hoped to mature as a person, she had to cut the apron strings, she believed—a conclusion with which Aurelia agreed.

  In her letter of application, Plath stressed her achievements and prizes; her membership in organizations such as the Unitarian church’s Young People’s Association, the high-school yearbook staff, the girls’ basketball team, and the World Federalist Organization; and her commitment to a study of world literature. To exemplify her reading habits, she provided a selected bibliography of works she had finished recently. It included Plato’s Republic, Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, Ruskin’s Sesame and Lilies, Emerson’s essays, A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad, Eliot’s The Waste Land, Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks and Doctor Faustus, Hardy’s Return of the Native, Wharton’s Ethan Frome, Undset’s Kristen Lavransdatter, Huxley’s Point Counter Point, Willa Cather’s My Antonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop, and Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street and Arrowsmith. Along with her letter, Plath submitted a standard application form. She also requested for Smith the results of her Scholastic Achievement Test. On it, she had scored respectably—700 in the verbal and 567 in math, for a total of 1,267—if not as well as IQ tests, which consistently categorized her as a genius.

  To support her application, Plath lined up references from Wilbury Crockett, Mrs. Duane Aldrich (a neighbor), and Bradford Principal Samuel Graves. In his letter, which he did not write until February 1950, Graves wrote:

  Sylvia is a superior candidate for college. She has a keen, analytical, well-disciplined mind and her intellectual interests and power reflect a superior family background as well as her own high standards of academic achievement. In English and in Art she has shown creative ability; in science, mathematics, and language, her capacity for thoroughness is clearly evident; in history her work shows outstanding analytical ability and grasp of principles. . . . She is [someone] who contributes greatly to the morale of a group and
uses her talents in serving the group—as editor of the school’s newspaper, poster committee and decorating committee, yearbook art staff, and the orchestra. In school, in her home, and in her church, she has shown to a marked degree the ability to direct her own work. Following her father’s death and her mother’s becoming a college instructor, Sylvia has carried many home responsibilities and has taken care of children whenever she could be spared from her own home duties. . . . She will gain much from college and no one could be more eager for a college education. May college mean some “fun” for her as well as intellectual accomplishments.

  That fall of 1949, besides studying, Sylvia maintained an active social life, the center of which remained John Hall—at least until Thanksgiving. Before Thanksgiving, all seemed well. On October 28, the day after her seventeenth birthday, Sylvia took the train to Williamstown for a college weekend, her first. John had carefully planned their activities, which included a Friday-night pep rally, the “big” game on Saturday (which Williams lost to Union, 14-6), and a house party following the game. Back home, Sylvia remembered the weekend with pleasure, but, for reasons she could not easily identify, she sensed she did not love John. So, when two boys asked her for dates over the long Thanksgiving weekend, she accepted, even though she knew that John would be in Wellesley. Out of courtesy, Sylvia wrote him about the dates. John’s arrival at 26 Elmwood Road for supper on his first night home, an evening they had scheduled well in advance of her letter, was not without tension. After supper, Sylvia finally broke the news to him: though she admired him as a person, she did not love him, and never would. Because of this, she believed that they should break up. John left Sylvia’s house, the tears in his eyes belying the smile plastered on his face. Later, she wrote in her journal that, not hearing his car drive off, she cracked the front door open and spotted John sitting in the car slouched over the steering wheel, crying. Peeking out, she could hear his hoarse, throaty sobs. Slamming the door, she rushed upstairs to her bedroom. The next day, Thanksgiving, after she attended a football game with him, she made it clear to John that she meant what she had said about their breaking up. Again they said good-bye, now for the last time.

  During the fall, Plath produced a steady stream of poems, completing, among others, “Adolescence,” “Lonely Song,” “Question,” “White Phlox,” “Gone Is the River,” “The Farewell,” and “City Streets.” Over the last two years she had submitted her work to various magazines. In eight separate batches, she mailed at least thirty poems to Seventeen. To Ladies’ Home Journal, she tried one batch; to The Atlantic Monthly, the poem “The Invalid.” And to Mademoiselle she had sent the story “East Wind.” None was accepted. Yet Plath was not deterred. As she anticipated 1950, she planned to mail her work to other publications. And she did. In the weeks following Christmas, she submitted four poems to The Christian Science Monitor and several stories and poems to Seventeen. Again, none was accepted.

  Early in the spring term, her final in high school, Plath and Perry Norton composed for Crockett’s English class “A Youth’s Plea for World Peace,” an essay in which the authors argue against President Truman’s recent directive to the Atomic Energy Commission to develop the hydrogen bomb further. Once Plath and Norton summarized the president’s logic (if the United States remained ahead of the Soviet Union in atomic capability, “there would be no danger of destruction . . . because a nation such as ours which follows humanitarian principles would never be the aggressor or use the bomb to kill anyone,” they wrote), they confronted the political issue. “Already we have succeeded in killing and crippling a good part of humanity, and destruction, unfortunately, is always mutual. Is it any wonder, then, that some of us young people feel rebellious when we watch the futile armaments race begin again? How much experience do we need to realize that war solves no problems, but creates them instead?” Government should “see beyond the present dilemma of nationalism” to the potential for world peace, Plath and Norton concluded. “For those of us who deplore the systematic slaughter legalized by war, the hydrogen bomb alone is not the answer.”

  At Crockett’s suggestion, Plath and Norton submitted their essay to The Christian Science Monitor, which bought it for five dollars and ran it on March 16, 1950. On that same day, Plath received more good news. After holding her story “And Summer Will Not Come Again” for months, Margot Macdonald finally accepted it for Seventeen. Mac-donald ended her letter, which stated that Plath would be paid fifteen dollars for the story, by requesting from her a snapshot and a brief biography. Around this time, Plath also tried out for the senior play, J. M. Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton—"a fantasy in four acts” that would be directed at Bradford by Crockett. To her surprise, Sylvia won a major part, Lady Agatha Lasenby, and received third billing, behind Frank Irish’s Ernest Woolley and Richard McKnown’s Crichton. On the evening of April 14, the senior class performed the play to a small but enthusiastic audience in the school’s auditorium.

  During the spring, as she worked hard—one major project involved writing a thirty-page paper on Thomas Mann (whose work, she wrote, stirred in her feelings of patriotism)—Sylvia became tired of social activities. Early in the semester, she had complained to her pen pal Hans Neupert about the meaningless parties at which she saw the same blank faces with fake smiles. Still, in February, she went to Winter Carnival at the University of New Hampshire; she attended a formal on Friday, and, on Saturday, an afternoon ski exhibition, an early dinner, and the “Stardust” dance.

  As the term progressed, the major unanswered question was her college plans. Though Wellesley College offered her a town scholarship, Plath had decided that of the two schools she preferred Smith. (She applied to only two schools.) But to go to Smith she would need substantial financial aid since her mother’s annual salary, just under $3,700, was not enough for her to cover Smith’s yearly cost of $1,600 ($850 for tuition, $750 for room and board). On May 10, 1950, Ruth W. Crawford, director of admissions, wrote to Plath to accept her at Smith. That same day, her request for residency in a “self-help” dormitory, in which a girl worked for one hour a day to reduce her yearly room-and-board fee by $250, was turned down. Despite this setback, she heard much better news from Mary Mensel, director of scholarships and student aid: Plath had won an $850 scholarship. Eight days later, Wellesley’s Smith Club, a private organization composed of Smith alumnae, granted her a scholarship of $450. Because this left only $300, a sum Aurelia could handle (though barely), Sylvia went to her high-school graduation, on June 7, in the school’s Alumni Hall, happy in the knowledge that she would be going to Smith. After a program that consisted of opening remarks by Mr. Graves; a speech, “The Best Things in Life Are Free,” given by Senior Class President William Moore, Jr.; a keynote address by Brown University Vice-President Bruce M. Bigelow; the singing of the class song, for which Plath had written words, Robert Blakesley music; and a benediction given by Reverend Robert Blakesley, Plath received her diploma. Of the 158 graduates, Plath was first in her class. She was also one of only twenty-three members of the National Honor Society. For the year, she had earned all A’s except a B in gym. In her yearbook, she was pictured in two groups, the National Honor Society and the staff of The Bradford. Under her senior portrait appeared this character sketch:

  Warm smile . . . Energetic worker . . . Coeditor of Bradford . . .

  Bumble Boogie piano special . . . Clever with chalk and paints . . .

  Weekends at Williams . . . Those fully packed sandwiches . . .

  Basketball and tennis player . . . Future writer . . . Those rejection

  slips from Seventeen . . . Oh, for a licence.

  5

  Until the summer of 1950, Sylvia had never held a “real” job. She had baby-sat and sold a handful of poems and stories, but she had generated little more than a trickle of money, nothing like the amount she now needed. After all, for her first semester at Smith, she would have to buy clothes, books, and miscellaneous materials, the cost of which was separate fr
om and above the basic tuition bill, which her scholarships did not fully cover and her mother could barely pay. As a result, that June, Sylvia sought high-paying employment. She passed over summer jobs available to teenagers—a store clerk, say, or a movie-theatre usherette—and applied for and acquired a position that could not have been more out of the ordinary: a field hand on a truck farm in nearby Natick. On June 10, just days after graduation, Sylvia started her twenty-five-dollar-a-week, six-day-per-week job. She got up each morning at six, dressed in her work clothes—faded blue jeans and a cotton shirt —before she rushed downstairs to eat a hearty breakfast and ride her bicycle five miles to the farm. Along the way, she passed through the Wellesley College campus, where she sometimes stopped to smell the scent of pine needles or notice a squirrel scurry up a tree. On the farm, under the watch of foreman Cyrus Jeness, Sylvia put in an eight-hour workday harvesting beans and radishes, weeding corn, or setting out strawberry runners. On her breaks, she often manned the stand at which customers bought the freshly picked produce. Finally, at the end of her shift, she pedaled back home and then, exhausted and famished, devoured supper, soaked in a hot bath, and fell into bed by nine. The moment she drifted off to sleep—or so it seemed—the alarm rang, and she started her whole routine again.

  Appropriately named, Lookout Farm, located on a hilltop, overlooked mound upon mound of rolling green fields. Sylvia loved to stand in the field and stare into the huge blue sky. She also liked to “study” her fellow workers, most of whom were minorities, displaced persons, and college-age teenagers who, like Sylvia, needed money. Out of this group, one boy, Ilo Pill, a tanned, muscular blond who had recently immigrated from Estonia, caught Sylvia’s eye. From the start Ilo made a point of trying to talk with her. As they worked in the field, the sun beating down so hot that their clothes stayed soaked with sweat, they discussed subjects as varied as the relative merits of Renaissance painters—in his thick German accent, Ilo, a fledgling artist, mostly talked about Raphael and Michelangelo—and the latest hit single by Frank Sinatra, America’s reigning heartthrob. In time, Ilo demonstrated his fondness for Sylvia by giving her a pen-and-ink sketch of the farm he had drawn himself.