Transcript:
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire, England
October 9, 1962
Dear Dr. Beuscher,
I am a bore, but things are resolving. I see and see and see. Ted is home this week, packing for good. He would have left me with all the lies, but bit by bit, the truth has come out. Or what he thinks is the truth. He has been building up a secret life in London all summer—flat, separate bank account, this woman, another woman. He’s lied to the end. He is mad for this woman, afraid to tell me so I won’t go through with the divorce (I think). I guess her 2nd husband will either divorce her or commit suicide. I found he went after Ted with a knife at Waterloo ^[Station] & tried to commit suicide after. Ted says he has been a hypocrite for at least the last 3 years of our marriage, I have been eating not real bread, but a delusion of love. He has nothing but shattering things to say of me, seems to want to kill me, as he kills all he does not want. He has “agreed” to pay £1,000 maintenance for the house-running & children a year. This is scrape pay, and I tried to show him, by accounts, there was nothing for me in it. Now he is utterly loveless ^[for me + us], and triumphant in going, this week, to this woman, to take her off, I guess, to marry her, to tour Europe, he is turning into a terror, a miser, a Yorkshire Jew, as he says. I’m not to have sherry, to have roast beef, I’m to smoke the last quarter inch of my cigarette—“they’re expensive”. £1,000, he taunts me, seems too much. I have accounts to show it is heat, food, light, children’s clothes, & repair bills. I am an unpaid nanny. But from his new mind he is leaving me the house, the car, why more? And of course the law here would be merciless, I would get nothing, 1/3 of his income when & if he chose to pay it, less if he left the house, which is in both our names. The minute he wants to show his power—and I feel this terrible hate, the desire to torture me of my last sense, as if to revenge himself for 6 years kindness & faithfulness (“sentimentality” he says) & for my having children, now a burden—he starts on the money, pretending he mightn’t want to earn much. He can sell a poem manuscript at $100 a throw, has radio plays in Germany, children’s books, he is on the brink of great wealth & this year along earned £1,500 ^[by hardly lifting a finger.] He told me I could tell the children they were to “live like the people”. Ergo, the meanest of the mean English working class. Which he comes from. How can I ever get free? My writing is one hope, and that income is so small. And with these colossal worries & responsibilities & no-one, no friend or relative, to advise or help as things come up, I have got to have a working ethic. I can’t face suing for lack of support. ^[now,] I have nothing to go on with, no reserves of cash. The humiliation of being dependent for my children’s support on a man I hate & despise is a torture. I want nothing for myself, but he switches on & off like an electrode. I face the worst (for me): he will live with this woman, marry her, they will have a wonderful life—wealthy, no children, travel, people, affairs, & every time they are bored, screw us by forgetting the money. ^[Bloody hell. In three months I’ve got the full picture – the near worst.]
I long for the divorce, for my independence, like clear water. I have two months to go on here, then Ireland for Dec-Feb, which I hope will blow me clear. I am, in my good minutes, excited about my new life. I want to fight back to a London flat by next fall, keep this place for summers. Perhaps when his first kicking, killing passion is past, ^[+] he is free, & with this woman, ^[ted] may be not such a bastard. Our marriage had to go, okay. But she makes the going foul. I am dying for new people, new places, a bloody holiday. In a year I hope to have enough guts to face them, they deliriously happy, wealthy, popular at whatever party or place I meet them at, in myself, my dignity, which is there, though Ted laughs, scoffs, kills. She is all that is desirable, ergo I am a hag, a fool. I want no more of him. I have to be nice, can’t afford the luxury of a fury even. Be good little doggy & you shall have a penny. It is the last degradation. Right now I hate men. I am stunned, bitter. I want to go back to London, read, see plays, exhibits, build back the mind this country has dulled, & the babes. Sex is easily dispensed with, I see. My dream is to fight for my writing so I can get into New Yorker stories, something, big money. Then keep him paying for the kids forever, sue if I have to, but not have to grovel for the kids as I would if I had no resource to go on with while having a court case. I have to stay here in England, to keep a grip, & to not run—Ted is everywhere in the literary world, like T.S.Eliot. He has junked me at the foulest time in the foulest way, living a lie & letting me live a happy one, till he got guts, i.e. passion, to break hotel sinks, burn curtains & go off without paying (as he did their first night) & say “ta, ta, tough you.” I have the consolation of being no doubt the only woman who will know the early years of charming genius. On my skin. Like a Belsen label.
Do write. Love, Sylvia