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“all is calm, now, and it is a fresh day” 8. “monday noon october 22” [22 October 1956].
A contrastingly measured letter from Sylvia Plath to Ted Hughes about her dreams. Two sides of blue letter paper (one sheet, folded horizontally, approximately 560 words) signed “sylvia”. Compared to her previous letter, Plath acknowledges, she is “calm, now, and it is a fresh day; but the feelings I wrote about occur and recur, in spite of lulls and resolute plodding on”. She tells Hughes that she has written two poems this morning, ‘Ev- ergreens’ (which “is particularly written to send to the new yorker”) and ‘Sheen & Speck’ which “describes my walk yesterday morning”. Plath then recounts her dreams of the previous night, in the first of which she “dreamt much of mrs cantor & joan”, before receiving the following morning “the first letter from mrs. cantor I’ve had in 6 months”. The second dream is vividly recounted, with her and Ted living with her favourite tutor Dr Krook, “both of us being a kind of sor - cerer’s apprentice; she was, we decided, a magic, dangerous witch, and we would discover her power, but hide our intention, as she kept us working mercilessly and always was appearing just as we thought we were alone.” She continues “it came as close to any dream I’ve had for years in giving me the delight and breathless soaring I used to have in my flying dreams.” In closing, she sends news of her research into her scholarship conditions, “I looked up the fulbright lists and found three married women on it; so singleness is not a condi- tion of a fulbright for ladies.” She signs, “I love you & love you sylvia”. This is the last surviving letter from Sylvia Plath to Ted Hughes. The following day she telegrammed Ted urging him to come to Cambridge. He replied to say that he agreed their separation “seems mad”, and was soon there. Plath told Dr Krook of her marriage. She was sympathetic and reassuring about her scholarship. 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” (Jonathan Bate, Ted Hughes). Hughes lived in her college rooms until early December, when they took up a ground floor flat on the edge of the city. They stayed here, together, until leaving for America in June. PROVENANCE: Ted Hughes (1930 - 1998); Frieda Hughes (1960-). Price: £35,000
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