On the 31st of August, 1956, the poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes boarded a train in London bound for Yorkshire. They were travelling north for an extended visit, staying with Ted’s parents, Edith and William, in Heptonstall. After a short courtship, beginning in the spring of that year they had married secretly in London on the 16th of June then honeymooned in Spain; writing, swimming in the sea and sightseeing until their money ran out…
In an article for the Monitor magazine Sylvia wrote of their Spanish trip:
“Every evening at dusk the lights of the sardine boats dip and shine out at sea like floating stars.”
What, then, would the American poet make of Heptonstall, already losing its leaves and heading towards a damp, dark winter?
Sylvia and Ted were keen letter writers; to each other, to friends and to other members of their respective families. Sylvia also kept a journal and they were both, of course, phenomenally prolific in their literary work. Sylvia and her mother, Aurelia, corresponded often and on the 2nd of September, just a couple of days after their arrival in Heptonstall, Sylvia writes:
“Climbing along the ridges of the hills, one has an airplane view of the towns in the valleys; up here it is like sitting on top of the world.”
She confesses:
“I have never been so happy in my life; it is wild and lovely and a perfect place to work and read. I am basically I think, a nature-loving recluse. Ted and I are at last “home”.”
We could take these hugely positive feelings for her new surroundings at face value, and perhaps it is only fair that we do; but it’s worth bearing in mind that Sylvia appears to experience life with great intensity – love and hate, anger, despair and pure joy are never too far away from each other and in reading her letters and journals there is the sense that she can switch between any of these very suddenly.
The Hughes’ home, fittingly called ‘The Beacon’ is perched up high, overlooking the Colden Valley. Up in Ted’s old room Sylvia works on her various projects whilst he works in the parlour downstairs. She finishes the magazine article about their Spanish trip, writes a sketch about local wooded valley, Hardcastle Crags and works on a novel. She writes all morning with a view from what she describes to her mother as ‘picture windows’ and in the afternoon, she joins Ted down in the parlour, typing up stories, dictated by him. Perhaps the most notable piece of her writing to come out of this period is the poem ‘November Graveyard’. During her life Plath would return in her imagination to write evocatively of the landscape around Heptonstall in poems such as ‘Hardcastle Crags’ and ‘Wuthering Heights’. In ‘November Graveyard’ she describes ‘skinflint trees’ that ‘hoard last year’s leaves’ in what she considers a refusal to mourn; ‘No dead men’s cries’ she writes, ‘flower forget-me-nots between the stones/ paving this grave ground. Here’s honest rot/ to unpick the heart, pare bone/ free of the fictive vein.’ It’s clear that this new environment has made an impression on her and interesting that she jumps the setting forward two months from the time of her visit. Perhaps Pennine September is more darkly winterish to a beach loving American who has just spent the summer in Spain.
Sylvia borrows a duffle coat and knee boots from Ted’s cousin, Vicky. They visit Top Withens with his Uncle Walt and The Parsonage at Howarth. She enjoys her excursions into the surrounding countryside, writing to her mother:
“Last night Ted and I hiked out at sunset to stalk rabbits in a fairy-tale wood”. She describes swinging over a river on tree branches and being struck by the “gold sky and clear light”. She likens herself and Ted to Heathcliff and Cathy, “We are so happy working and planning together” she writes, adding “I have never loved anybody so much in my life.”
It appears that Sylvia wrote at least three more letters to her mother during this month-long visit. Gradually they become less concerned with life at the Beacon and more focused on the future, specifically, a future in America. There is much talk of returning with Ted for an official wedding. She also writes about finding teaching jobs for them both at Smith and Amherst. In a letter dated the 21st of September she finally admits:
“You can imagine how weary I am of living off Other People’s kitchens and houses” and later – “I feel I deserve a wedding and gifts and reception and honeymoon for a summer”. “It has not always been easy” she admits, and “We will really begin our proper married life with our wedding next June.”
What does she mean by this? Why do her hopes for the future seem a little desperate? Perhaps we can look to the words of someone else who was present during all this time. Shortly before his death, in 1998, Ted Hughes published a collection of poems, ‘Birthday Letters’, each one addressed to Sylvia. Much has been written about the events that led up to her suicide in 1963. Whatever we think about Ted and Sylvia as individuals, ‘Birthday Letters’ appears to look back at their time together with thoughtfulness, sadness and regret. He recounts in the poem ‘Wuthering Heights’ their visit to Top Withens. “So hard to imagine” he reflects, “the life that had lit/ such a sodden, raw-stone cramp of refuge.” He goes on to compare what he calls her “globe-circling aspirations” with its “burned out, worn out remains of failed efforts”. What would Emily Bronte have made, he wonders, of her “huge mortgage of hope”?
A huge mortgage of hope. Is Ted Hughes looking back with hindsight, or did he recognise her vulnerability at the time? A poem taken from the same collection but concerning itself with a later visit, ‘Stubbing Wharfe’ is set in a pub situated at the mouth of the Colden Valley, near Heptonstall. It is December 1959 and Sylvia and Ted having just crossed the Atlantic from America are spending Christmas with the Hughes’. They are in urgent need of somewhere to live. Ted stares into his Guinness, searching for answers to their problem whilst his wife, whom he describes as having “leapt like a thrown dice”, a “pioneer/ in the wrong direction” sits “weeping, homesick, exhausted, disappointed, pregnant.” Playing with prophecy, Ted likens it to an owl flying down between the steep sides of the Colden Valley, gliding over both their futures. He alludes to Lumb Bank, with its walled terrace, once the house of a prosperous mill owner, a property he would buy in 1969 and then to Sylvia’s future… He writes: “Where I saw so clearly/ my vision house, you saw only blackness, solid blackness.” Sylvia Plath died by her own hand in a rented flat at 23 Fitzroy Road, London on the 11th of February 1963. Though they had been separated for six months she and Ted Hughes were still married. He chose to have her buried in the graveyard of St. Thomas the Apostle, Heptonstall. In 1965 her collection of poems, ‘Ariel’, was published to great acclaim, securing her reputation as a respected poet; a down payment, at last, too late, on all that hope.
“Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted”
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