Pleased With Everything: Plath Family Papers at Yale

The Plath family has gifted Aurelia and Warren Plath's literary estates to Yale University's Beinecke Library. This donation ended my seven years of being bound by a non-disclosure agreement. 

I saw and photographed Aurelia Plath's estate materials, then privately owned, back in 2018, and despite temptation have kept quiet all this time, praying that the letters, postcards, photo albums, artwork, realia, and Aurelia's journals -- ranged across 22 different notebooks, entries dated 1924 to 1990 -- might not rot in boxes or be auctioned off piece by piece, that the archive would stay whole, a gift to all Plath scholars. I am grateful.

Aurelia's journals for 1963, photographed in 2018. I used the ruler for scale.

In 2018 I spent only two days with the 20-plus boxes of Aurelia's estate so couldn't see every bit, but it included treasures I hope haven't been sold or withheld. We will at last see what Aurelia did not sell to Indiana University or donate to Smith but kept until she died. Yale's archivists are currently processing the materials and told me they expect to finish in autumn. I plan to be there and report to you. I don't expect a mob. This is the stuff Aurelia valued and you know how she has been valued. My impression was that Aurelia was a very critical and love-hungry adult (so was Sylvia) and she could keep a secret.

Remember this is once again Aurelia-curated material. It might or might not alter the narratives we are used to.

Such a thrill, of the sort researchers get! And what a relief. For two days after I learned about this gift to Yale I quivered all over and couldn't sleep or eat. Call me a geek, but I'm a happy one.

The Beautiful Mrs. Plath: Rare Photos

Otto Plath's first wife Lydia Bartz, as she looked when they met.

Here's a new-found photo of Otto Plath's first wife, Lydia Bartz, in 1910 a clerk at the Fall Creek, Wisconsin, general store her father founded. She married Otto in Spokane, Washington, in 1912. The couple then moved to Berkeley, California, where in 1915 Otto split for New York without her, complaining that she was "not educated" and sexually cold.

Not only was Lydia Bartz "very pretty," as the town clerk told Harriet Rosenstein she was: Lydia was diligent. [1] When Otto abandoned her, owing her prosperous family a crippling amount of money, Lydia with Otto's sister Frieda enrolled in a Chicago nursing school, graduated in 1918, went to Ohio for post-graduate studies, moved back home, and soon supervised the surgical unit of Luther Hospital in Eau Claire, the city nearest Fall Creek. Below, in 1953, Lydia is honored by her college's alumnae for her years of service and for teaching "more than 500 nurses," but her service wasn't over; she passed her final annual nursing-license exam in 1960, age 71.

April, 1953

Yet Lydia's life wasn't anywhere near finished; she lived until 1988, dying at age 99. She was the only one of five Bartz sisters to marry, and even after a 15-year separation from Otto and no children she refused to divorce him, making his life difficult. Otto -- immortalized by his daughter Sylvia Plath as "Daddy" the fascist and "brutal male," doubtless deserved it, because Lydia, and Otto's second wife Aurelia Schober, learned to hate him, and Sylvia as a child "many times wished that he were dead." [3]

1. "very pretty": Fall Creek town clerk Marjorie Shong to Harriet Rosenstein, 22 February 1977, Emory.

2.  Luther is now a Mayo Clinic satellite campus.

3. Journals of Sylvia Plath, p. 293. 

Photo credits: 1910 photo from Henke, Patricia: Sights and Sounds of the Valley: A History of Fall Creek (1978); Eau Claire (WI) Leader-Telegram, 16 April 1953. 

Sylvia Von Platho

Baroness Charlotte Sophie von Platen und Hallermund (1669-1725)

Plath family lore says Sylvia Plath's paternal great-grandfather Johann, when he came from Prussia to America, gave his name as Johann von Plath, the "von" indicating descent from a line of nobles, specifically barons, who for 900 years had lived on land grants from Prussian rulers. An American official scolded Johann, "We do not allow titles in America."

Not contented to live the rest of his life as a common Wisconsin farmer, ten years later for his daughter Mary's death certificate Johann Plath gave his surname as "von Platho." His father and brother and his children and grandchildren were all from birth surnamed "Plath," none of them "von Plath," or "von Platho," which sounds like a made-up name anyway. But it's a real name.

Sylvia Plath's paternal line shared its home territory with generations of nobles surnamed von Platho, von Platen, von Plotho, von Plato (many scholars have that name), von Plathe -- all from the German root "plat," meaning "flat." The "plat"-rooted names were geographical, "von" meaning "from." So all those names, which in German sound much alike, mean "from the lowlands of northern Germany." That area's also called Pomerania, which is Polish and means "on the sea."

While everyone wishes to have noble or royal ancestry, and Johann Plath, Otto Plath's illiterate grandfather, was a status seeker, no evidence links Sylvia Plath with Prussian or German gentry. German chancellor Otto von Bismarck in the 1870s and 1880s liked handing out the "von" title to flatter and keep the loyalty of wealthy industrialists and parvenus, but Sylvia's family of farmers and small-town blacksmiths was unlikely to receive even that lowest of noble titles. [1] The surname "Plath," with no "von," is very very common.

[1] Spring, David, ed. European Landed Elites in the Nineteenth Century. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.