For All Things Yale: "The Yale Diaries"

Have a rewarding All Saints' or Samhain.

I was asked to see Aurelia Plath's estate in 2018 because no one else cared. How times have changed. Now it's we who have the edge. Yale University's Beinecke Library staff says the Aurelia Plath and Warren Plath estates should open in its rare book room in December. I'm so excited I already want to post my plans and when I get there tell you what I see.

While this every-Tuesday blogspot continues, for all things Beinecke I wanted you with me on 1) a research diary/journal format 2) with no ads and free of charge 3) and video/audio and comment-friendly. I chose Substack for "The Yale Diaries," disabling all "pledge" and pay links. Free subscribers get posts emailed but they must register, and please know that in archive-induced ecstasy I might post at all hours and five times a day.

These new Plath Family collections have potential to radically alter Plath studies. Ten days in New Haven is costly and by choosing a suburban motel I cut lodging by half but this raised the cost of transportation to and from campus. So I am asking for your help with an estimated $420 for 10 days' local transportation. Just this once in this blog's history, here's a donate button. Any amount is heartening, but every $50 donation I will thank with a Tarot card reading or birth-chart reading for you or a friend. The secret is out: I lived by day in academia and nights and weekends as a reader of cards and horoscopes, pen-named Sylvia Sky. Yes cringe, but "she" published astrology books deeply scholarly or pop-snarky like ebook Sun Sign Confidential.

To further curry Sylvia Plath's favor I launched "The Yale Diaries" on her birthday. May it work as promised.

I've already posted the first entries at theyalediaries.substack.com. Or type that URL into the search bar. The Yale Diaries site is too recent to appear as yet in Google search results. I will look into posting a link on this sidebar. 

Thank you for joining your researcher on Plath studies' final frontier. -Catherine

Why I Love Hearing From You

Sylvia's paternal relatives lived in Fall Creek, WI. Today's population 1,500.

I am always delighted when readers respond to these posts, and today Dr. Bob Drehmel, retired family physician, shares childhood memories of "the Bartz girls" -- sisters including Otto Plath's first wife Lydia Bartz Plath -- his neighbors in Fall Creek, Wisconsin. Around 1910 their brother Rupert Bartz introduced classmate Otto Plath to the "very pretty" Lydia, as shown in a photo taken that year at the Mercantile local general store. She worked there, lived at home and saved her money. And would lose it. In 1912 Lydia married Otto and became a Plath. 

Dr. Drehmel's memories come from the late 1950s-early '60s when the "Bartz girls" were retirement age.

 

"I found the name of Otto Plath. I then realized his first wife was Lydia Plath, who lived 3 houses down from our house. I have two brothers and one sister [born 1948-1957] and we would frequently see Lydia and her two sisters Odelia and Caroline. . . . known as the 'Bartz girls.' We would often walk down to their house as they seemed to like small children. Only Lydia had married, and she had no children, so I think we were their 'surrogate' kids. They would fuss over us, invited us in for a chat, and ALWAYS had a candy jar available. I think it was a 'win-win' proposition. They enjoyed our company, and we loved the candy. . . 

"Caroline was the most outgoing and did most of the talking. I remember Lydia had a vocal tremor with lower-pitched speech. They had shelves of knickknacks on the walls. When outside, they were frequently seen wearing wide-brimmed straw hats and tending to a flower garden. They were pretty much homebodies and I don't remember seeing much of them around town.

"That Mercantile store was still there when we were growing up. The Zetzman family was still running it. I used to play on some silver bars that were out front . . . my father said they were there to tie the horses up . . . I think the candy was 'rock' candy, often what is called 'ribbon' candy. 

"When the [Bartz girls]  had to leave the house they drove together and always had umbrellas, rain or shine, I guess to block either the rain or the sun. My sister remembered them wearing long black stockings (not 'nylons') and black shoes with low heels. They drove a big blue sedan."

 

Lydia in the Plath story had been known only as the "sexually cold" (so said Otto) and embittered first wife who lost her and her sisters' money to Otto's bad investments. Otto called Lydia "uneducated," but she soon claimed an education, attending nursing school alongside of Otto's sister Frieda Plath. Thank you, Dr. Drehmel, for adding nuance to the picture. Lydia found success and happiness and I hope you do too. Here's my outline of Lydia's nursing career. And also see a portrait of Lydia and her mother and sisters taken in July 1912 just before Lydia left Fall Creek to marry Otto.

Fall Creek High School with Bartz girls Odelia (3rd from left) and Caroline (far right), 1910. Before then Fall Creek had no high school so Lydia Bartz didn't go. She later earned college credits to qualify for nursing school.

Aurelia Plath and Assia Wevill: Tight Wires Between Them

AI

Reading Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick's books about Assia Wevill, the "other woman" in the Sylvia Plath-Ted Hughes breakup, I noticed that Plath biographers and scholars have treated Assia much as they have treated Sylvia's mother Aurelia. As I read I could even substitute Aurelia's name for Assia's, like so:

 

When one spends time in the archives . . . it becomes increasingly apparent how Assia Aurelia has been elided from the professional and public record in many ways. Her own voice has been silenced: in life, in the archive, and in the public domain. Texts authored by her, specifically her journals and letters, remain unpublished and are difficult to access. Others speak for her and about her, most notably Hughes and Plath, and they tax Assia Aurelia with their own grievances. Part of what I hope to accomplish with this study is the acknowledgement that what we have done to Assia Aurelia in professional scholarship, in texts that circulate on the internet, and in our classrooms is antifeminist and a profound and unkind injury to another woman who deserves better than what she encountered in her life. . . [1]

 

Vastly different women, in the Plath story billeted light-years apart, Aurelia and Assia had in common only that they were females long associated with Ted Hughes. They bonded over that experience. They exchanged letters and met in England in 1967. In 1968 Assia wrote Aurelia that "Ted was brutal to her": "I thought suddenly that that degree of brutality would slowly dement me." [2] Sylvia in her final months wrote her mother that Ted maltreated her and wished her dead. Aurelia photocopied Sylvia's letters and kept them in her bank's safe-deposit box, and preserved Assia's letters in cold storage in the next town over. [3] Aurelia was building a case. On behalf of two dead women.

Why have you heard next to none of this? 

It wasn't easy for -- oh, somebody -- to purge from the Plath narrative those most intimately involved and discredit their testimony. Ted ordered both women not to speak of him. When Aurelia and Assia were at last publicly named -- Ted withheld Assia's name for years -- critics and biographers using Sylvia's furious cues called them witches and vampires who ruined Sylvia's life: disposable, talentless minor characters somehow potent enough to be the death of her. Let's demythify: Aurelia and Assia knew too well who was the death of her. [4] 

To Sylvia and Ted, Aurelia Plath and Assia Wevill weren't minor or marginal at all.

Goodspeed-Chadwick points out that scholarship about Assia takes place amid 50 years' worth of smoke and mirrors and the evidence is fragmented, obscure, or forbidden to use. The same with Aurelia. I see now that even feminist writers label the slinky vixen and the schoolmarm prude using identical terms: Desperate. Talentless. Clingy. Wannabes. Schemers. Vacuous. Trivial. Destroyers, devourers. Bad mothers. Sexually suspect. Empty. Unworthy. Monstrous. An essay somewhere says Assia is Medusa . . . Aurelia's and Assia's many faults are so weirdly alike either because they're both Taurus or because our thinking is corrupt. 

Better then not to mention them. Aurelia is such box-office poison, her name such a trigger, that the Plath family materials being processed at Yale get called "Warren Plath's estate." 

Until reading Goodspeed-Chadwick I didn't consider Aurelia's link with Assia. But there was a link. They met. Maybe there's a photo. I want to know more.

[1] Goodspeed-Chadwick, J. Reclaiming Assia Wevill, Louisiana State University Press, 2019, Chapter 1. 

[2] Grogan, K. "Tight Wires," Los Angeles Times Book Review, 16 March 2023. 

[3] Aurelia Plath in longhand annotated Sylvia Plath's letter of 1 January 1961 re "letters in Wellesley safe-deposit box and Assia's in cold storage in Waltham." Plath mss. II, Lilly Library.

[4] Emily Van Duyn's Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation (2024) argues that Ted Hughes abused Sylvia Plath and Assia Wevill and undercut their testimonies by obscuring and editing the evidence. I reviewed the book here.

Are You Sylvia's Double? A Quiz

We Plath fans are probably more Sylvia Plath than others are. But really, meme or no meme, how much are you like Sylvia Plath? Do you secretly think you're Silver Plate reincarnated or that she'd accept you as her equal? Or warmly greet you as a kindred spirit? Grant yourself one point for each Yes.

-owner of Sylvia Plath swag or trinkets

-graduated from a "genuinely public" high school

-one parent was an immigrant 

-"One of the most brilliant students"

-"One of the two or three finest instructors" 

-cum laude or better

-published before age 10 

-had a scholarship

-had a fellowship

-picked your nose and stuck its contents beneath a desk    

-big eater

-wrote spitefully in your diary 

-upon seeing a man's genitals became very depressed

-consulted Tarot cards

-had sex with someone because you liked their mind

-somewhere there's a recording of you reading your work

-saw your mother as little as possible

-cottage in the country

-focused

-sexy as all getout 

-sibling with Ph.D.

Scoring: 

19-21  You're Sylvia's double, and that counts for a lot these days.

15-18  Why do you so identify with her?

10-14  Getting there

5-9     Foot's in the door

0-4     You disappoint us 

[See also "Things Aurelia Plath Did Not Say to Sylvia"]