Sylvia Plath | Autograph letter signed, to Edith & William Hughes, on Ted Hughes as a wolf-man, 30 December 1958

Sylvia Plath

Autograph letter signed, to Edith and William Hughes ("Dear Ted's mother & dad")

"Ted has just finished making himself a remarkable wolf-mask for the New Year's Eve masquerade tomorrow night ... I find the mask quite frightening - it has slit eyes which Ted has filled with yellow - very realistic, with room for his mouth to show so he can speak. With the real fur it is incredibly lifelike. I am wearing an antique black dress & red cape for Red Riding Hood...", with a pen and ink sketch of Hughes in his mask, 1 page, folio (253 x 204mm), pink paper, [9 Willow Street, Boston, MA,] 30 December 1958, autograph envelope, small stainmark

SYLVIA PLATH AS RED RIDING HOOD; TED HUGHES THE WOLF. Plath here comments that the "two poems about wolves in his second book [Lupercal]" made the costume particularly well-suited, and in the light of future events these costumes take on an eerie symbolism. Hughes too would continue to be haunted by wolves; after Plath's suicide he lay in her flat "sleepless and tormented as listened to the wolves howling in Regent's Park Zoo" (Clark, Red Comet, p.900).

The New Year's party took place at the home of Stephen and Agatha Fassett, Boston friends and neighbours. The letter also, as always, updated Ted's parents on their writing and publication. A book had just arrived from John Press, whose first meeting with Plath was described in one of her letters to Hughes (see lot 17).

Plath included a telling comment about this letter in her journal that reveals more about her struggles with depression than she would ever admit to her parents-in-law: "Ted read my signature on the letter to his parents as 'woe' instead of love. He was right, it looked surprising: the left hand knows not what the right writes." (Journals, p.454).

LITERATURE

The Letters of Sylvia Plath: Volume Two, pp.288-89