Transcript:

Court Green

North Tawton

Devonshire, England

Friday: July 20

 

Dear, dear Dr. Beuscher,

First of all, please charge me some money. I feel a fraud and a heel to be cadging time and advice out of you for nothing. If I were in America, I would be asking you for a few sessions for which I’d want to pay, and right now, a few airletters back and forth could do me a powerful lot of good. You are a professional woman whose services I would greatly appreciate, and as a professional woman, I can pay for them what anyone else would. No need for cut rates or student’s fees. My last New Yorker poem earned me $270, so I can afford the luxury of a good psychiatrist which is you. Let me know what would be best. Maybe a letter from me & an answer from you we could count as a session. Bill me, huh? Right now, I need some good talk to carry me on.

I wrote you in the middle of my agony-week, when I hadn’t come to the climax of it & been freed to see what I had to see, & so was half begging you to reassure me that at least my old dream-idyll was a right one even if it worked out wrong. The virginity, as it were, of our marriage ended Friday the 12th (O we are very superstitious in our house) & I went to a friend’s with the baby leaving mother here with Frieda & went through the whole bloody thing minute by minute, surrounded by 4 cats (one of which produced 3 kittens), a dog, and many hens and pigs. At first I thought, why couldn’t Ted just go away & find freedom this way? Why did he have to fuck this woman in this nasty way, almost killing me & her husband & Frieda etc. by the upset of the shock. Then, after I had got over the nausea, got the doctor to knock me out for 8 hours after a week of no eating or sleeping  I thought : Thank God. I am free of so much. And this was probably the most economical way to do it, although at the time of my misery I thought it the cruellest.

I think you could do me some more good now, because I think I am willing to see a lot more than I could or would when I last saw you. I remember you almost made me hysterical when you asked me, or suggested, that Ted might want to go off on his own. This was heresy to me then, the Worst . How could a true-love ever ever want to leave his truly-beloved for one second? We would experience Everything together. I began to worry about the purity & strength of my love when I found myself thinking: Why doesn’t the bastard leave the house & let me put my hair up & dust & sing. I think obviously both of us must have been pretty weird to live as we have done for so long. Of course I suppose any husband of mine would have a large flow of my feeling for my father to complicate our relationship. And Ted has as I think you will admit, a rather large dose of mother-sister worship in him. And hate of course.

I was always having nightmares about Ted dying or being in accidents & for this reason could hardly bear to let him out of my sight. For fear he would desert me forever, like my father, if I didn’t watch him closely enough. And he must have had enough desire for womb-comfort to stick it out. Well, we are 30. We grow up slowly, but, it appears, with a bang.

Anyhow, Ted came back. It occurred to me almost immediately that he felt a lot worse than I did . Not sorry-worse. He just wasn’t purged, because he hadn’t had my particular wild agony. And the bloody girl wasn’t very sensual. She complained a lot about her abortions & what a bad hostess I was, going off on my own to my study etc. etc. Well you bet I went off. All she wanted was for me to sit on the bed while they fucked. No thanks. Yes, she is the Sister. This occurred to me on the train down from London where I did a job yesterday. She is the barren & frigid symbol of sex. (I honestly think Ted’s sister may be a virgin. She is beautiful, smart, but absolutely uncreative & cold.) When I was at my lowest, thinking grimly: What has this Weavy Asshole (her name is actually Assia Wevill) got that I haven’t, I thought: she can’t make a baby (and really isn’t so sorry), can’t make a book or a poem, just ads about bad bakery bread, wants to die before she gets old & loses her beauty, and is bored. Bored, bored, bored. With herself & her life. She literally moved. into our London flat ^[(after we left!)] She came down here & wanted to move into my life. Well, the old girl has done me a big favor. The funny thing is, I don’t think she must really enjoy sex, except in her head. One of her many odd gimmicks is that she calls up her old first husband and goes ga-ga because “It sounds as if we were in bed together.” That is another difference between us. Believe me, I would have the bloody man in bed. I am that shameless. I hate mental titillations that don’t come off ^[in reality].

One thing about sex. I hate comfortable rituals. I like all sorts of positions at a lot of odd times of day, & really feel terrific and made new from every cell when I am done. I actually wondered at one point if Ted was sick. Well, of course, how can one keep up that intensity & variety every day & night for over 6 years. A biological & psychological impossibility I would think. And I have my pride. I mean, I was not schooled with love for 2 years by my French lover for nothing. I have in me a good tart, as distinct from a bad tart: I feel all I feel, which is a lot, & which I think men like to feel they can do, and I do not need to pretend I feel, or to feel only in my head. Well I want this tart to have a good life again. I ‘m damned if I am going to be a Wife-mother every minute of the day. And as I am a pretty faithful type, and have no desire left for malice or revenge on Ted, to ”get back at him”, I’d just as soon make love with Ted. But coming from a distance, ^[from] a space, a mutual independence.

Ironically, this great shock purged me of a lot of old fears. It was very like the old shock treatments I used to fear so: it broke a tight circuit wide open, a destructive circuit, a deadening circuit, & let in a lot of pain, air and real elation. I feel very elated. The little conventional girl-wife wanted Ted to come back & say: My God, how could I hurt you so, it will never happen again. But I knew I really couldn’t stand him to say that, & he didn’t. He told me the truth about the femme fatale, which freed my knowledge to sit about in the light of day, like an object, to be coped with, not hid like some hairy monster. And I didn’t die. I thought my capacity for conventional joy & trust & love was killed, but it wasn’t. It is all back. And I don’t think I ‘m a suicidal type any more, because I was really fascinated to see how, in the midst of genuine agony, it would all turn out & kept going. I really did believe it was the Worst Thing that could happen, Ted being Unfaithful; or next worst to his dying. Now I am actually grateful it happened, I feel new.

As I say, I have no desire for other men. Ted is one in a million. Sex is so involved with me in my admiration for male intelligence, power and beauty that he is simply the only man I lust for. I know men feel differently about sex, but I thought they too were capable of deep and faithful love. It is not very much consolation to me that Ted really deeply & faithfully loves me, while he follows any woman with bright hair, or an essay on Shakespeare in her pocket, or an ability for flamenco dancing. If he thinks they’re real, and they think they’re real, what good does my thinking they’re unreal do? They’re real enough to hurt me, and make me lose my pride and my joy in my mind and body and potential talents. The thought of Ted making physical love to them, registering them under my name in hotels, letting all the people we know see this, hurts and nauseates me horribly. I feel if he really loved me he would see how this hurt damages my whole being, makes it barren, & deprives me of joy in lovemaking with him.

All the stupid little things I did with love—baking bread, making pies, painting furniture, planting flowers, sewing baby things—seem silly and empty to me without faith in Ted’s love. And the children who so delighted me are like little miasmas, crying for daddy. Of course mother’s being here through all this hasn’t helped. She officially knows nothing—I don’t talk to her about it—but she has seen everything. I think in one way she hates me for having deprived her of her ^[vicarious] dream-idyll, and in one way she is viciously glad: “I knew men were like that,” I feel her thinking. “Horrid selfish bastards, just like my husband. And Sylvia thought hers was an exception!” It has been humiliating for me to have her here through this, gloating over my weaning the baby, wailing “O you looked so happy and beautiful when I came…”  implying I am now a tired old hag. I had been getting on quite well with her before, but this has put a ghastly strain on our pleasant if distant relationship.

One or two practical questions: shall I refuse to tell our friends and relatives about this? I really have no desire to complain to anyone & I hate people maunching over my business. And shall I ever let Ted’s sister come down here? I honestly don’t want to feel her gloating, offering to provide Ted with nice Paris models & scolding me for being a dog-in-the-manger. Ted is free, why can’t he go see her on his own? Or would it be wiser to have her come, try to deflect her vileness (she is dying for Ted ‘ s brother to get divorced—the Other Women in her family are intolerable to her) and weather a visit.

Ted has stopped doing any man’s work about the place. Should I take on the weeding, mowing, hoeing and go on figuring the income tax, paying the bills (he defiantly misads and botches the checkbook), without a murmur? He once said he hated me asking him to do jobs [^(I mean heavy work, not lady-work)] around the house; I stopped; he doesn’t do any. I love this place and get on well with the people in the tow, thank god. It is my first home. But I am ready to pack off on trips in a flash, anything. Do you have any advice about these other women. And how to maintain my own woman-morale from day to day. And toughen myself!

Love to you,

Sylvia

 

[Handwritten marginalia: PS: Id feel awfully relieved if you’d see fit to agree to a few paid airletter sessions! And can I dedicate my novel to R.B. or would this be unethical or a bother? It may not be High Art, but it is good + funny.]