94 PLATH, Sylvia. Autograph letter signed to Ted Hughes. [21 October 1956] “all is as nothing without you, without constantly expressing my love for you” An exceptionally emotionally charged letter from Sylvia Plath to Ted Hughes, her hand growing broader and more impassioned with each page, the last leaf smudged with inky fingerprints caused by tears during its composition. The letter discusses Plath’s inability to live without Hughes now they are married and begs for a return to living together. This extraordinary letter marks the end of Plath’s third week back in Cambridge in October 1956, and the culmination of unbearable separation, growing bouts of depression, and a crisis of identity. Being apart from Hughes had been affecting her work, creative and academic, as well as her mental state, which she describes as a “constant, deep sense of terror”. She emphatically retracts her earlier statement that she would rather be away from him when working, now writing that if they lived together, she “could then combine love & writing & study much better then [ sic ] splitting them this abnormal way – wasting time when away from you in wishing you were here & wasting time with you by cursing the swiftness of that time & dreading fresh separation”. Plath proposes Hughes move permanently with her to Cambridge or Grantchester, knowing that “you hate cambridge & wouldn’t want to come here again, I know”. The other obstacle Plath foresees is that her college, Newnham, and scholarship authorities at Fulbright might object to the marriage, expel her, and cancel her scholarship and academic stay. Moreover, if she did announce their marriage now, the gala wedding ceremony planned for America the next summer would have to be cancelled, depriving them of the wedding presents they needed to begin their life together. She resolves to seek advice from Dr Dorothea Krook-Gilead (1920–1989) her supervisor and favourite tutor at Cambridge, and then speak to both Newnham and Fulbright. In the event, Plath told Dr Krook of her marriage and neither Newnham nor the Fulbright objected to the marriage as they both had feared: “Far from taking away Sylvia’s scholarship or throwing her out, they congratulated her. The Fulbright took the view that the union was a boost to Anglo-American relations, which was their raison d’être. Ted was free to move to Cambridge” (Bate). Hughes swiftly moved in with Plath in her college rooms, staying until early December, when they took up a ground-floor flat on Eltisley Avenue, on the edge of the city. They stayed here, together, until leaving for America in June. Plath closes this letter with, “love & more love – sylvia”, writing “all is as nothing without you, without constantly expressing my love for you”, signing for the second time, “I love you so – your own Sylvia”. This letter is published in volume I of The Letters of Sylvia Plath (2017), and while vivid in print the physical letter offers a closer understanding of Plath as she wrote: the postscript, the smudged inky fingerprints, and her rapid hand. 6 manuscript sides, covering 3 sheets of blue letter paper, each folded horizontally, totalling approximately 950 words, signed twice: “love and more love – sylvia” and later, “your own sylvia”. ¶ Jonathan Bate, Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life , 2015. £60,000 [151516]
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