Feel Like a Longer Read?

I spent the past week writing a long post about Sylvia Plath, her mother Aurelia, and her psychiatrist Dr. Ruth Beuscher, three women intertwined and caught in the "I hate my mother" trap: https://theyalediaries.substack.com/p/i-hate-you-mother. You might like it. I'm training myself for the marathon task of finishing a book-length work.

Sylvia's Psychiatrist, Dr. Ruth Beuscher, in the News

More people read The Bell Jar than Plath biographies, and for them Esther Greenwood’s psychiatrist, the good “Dr. Nolan,” arrived in summer 1953 out of nowhere and fades out at the end. Biographies say Sylvia Plath and Dr. Ruth Beuscher met again in 1954 and 1958-59, but that story usually ends with Sylvia’s death in 1963. Most research treats Sylvia Plath as an end in herself. On this site, there is a before and a beyond. The bulk of Sylvia’s career has been posthumous. She actually hoped for that. And a person who influenced Sylvia as Beuscher did ought not to vanish because a book cuts her off. So here’s “RB” as you haven’t seen her.

Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse, born in 1923, was the eldest child of a authoritarian Presbyterian fundamentalist preacher, her mother a missionary who died in her forties. Ruth and siblings had high IQs and were rigidly home-schooled to be prodigies and whiz-kids and recite whole chapters from the Bible. After her first year at Vassar, Ruth, 17, eloped to Santa Fe with a young Mr. Edmonds she met at a retreat. The New York Times announced the marriage because her father Rev. Donald Barnhouse was a radio star, his “Bible Study Hour” broadcast coast-to-coast. He died in 1960 and his tapes still have avid listeners. Rev. Billy Graham said, “He knew the Scriptures better than any man I ever knew.”

Ruth had two children with Edmonds and in 1947 divorced him in Reno, where the above photo was taken. She sold flowers at the courthouse for six weeks to make money. The Edmonds' divorce was again New York Times-worthy news. Photos of young Ruth are hard to find; the Wilmington, Delaware, newspaper ran the photo on top of this post, with its caption reproduced at right.

Ruth married med-school classmate Bill Beuscher in 1950, and as psychiatrist Dr. Ruth Beuscher, M.D., met Sylvia Plath at McLean Hospital. Beuscher was a working professional woman, brilliant, attractive, and married with children -- all that Sylvia hoped to be. Sylvia loved Dr. Beuscher, also known as “Dr. B,” a “permissive mother figure” and granter of wishes. Sylvia refused therapy with anyone else and in her final days in London requested a female psychiatrist she didn't live to meet. 

Earrings show the doctor's fashion flair.

A Boston Globe article, 15 December 1957, headlined “Child Psychiatrist Quits In Hospital Squabble,” says after Beuscher left McLean she was hired to head a children’s psychiatric clinic but resigned. Beuscher explained: “What I was trying to do was to bring the children's unit up to top efficiency even if it meant the shifting of some senior employees.” The senior employees were all men. They called it a personality clash. With the article is a photo of her, taken in profile.

Beuscher then set up her private practice, meeting Sylvia for regular therapy sessions in 1958-59. Sylvia suffered from writer’s block and concern about the man she’d married. The pair explored Sylvia’s family issues. Sylvia decided having a baby would solve her problems.

In England Sylvia’s marriage fell apart and Sylvia asked "Ruth" for therapy by mail. Ruth advised her to get a lawyer and not sleep with her cheating husband, or the court might think her unserious. Ted Hughes really ran with Ruth's instruction, “Keep him out of your bed.” He repeated that as if it was sick or sinister and as if he were entitled. It was good advice.

Sappho the Cat (1959-1975)

Aurelia Plath with Sappho, c. 1972

Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes in 1959 acquired a tiger kitten but could not keep it: That summer the couple traveled the U.S., spent autumn at a writers' retreat, and in December packed up and moved to England. Sylvia had named the cat, a female, Sappho, and on 21 January wrote Esther Baskin from Boston:

"Did Ted or I tell you we are owners of a kitling? Granddaughter on one side of a cat belonging to Thomas Mann . . . The minute she walked into our apartment she went straight for a book of poems lying flat on the lowest bookshelf and possessed it."

Guess who fostered Sappho while her owners traveled, and inherited Sappho when her owners left the country less than a year after adopting her.

Fortunately, Aurelia Plath liked pets. Otto Plath had not allowed any. Aurelia quoted eight-year-old Sylvia as saying, "I'm so glad Daddy died; now I can have a cat." The family adopted one, named it Mowgli, and Sylvia loved him and dressed him up in baby clothes. Mowgli went missing in 1945. There's a photo of Warren and Sylvia with Sylvia holding Mowgli's mother Mitzi.

In letters sent to Aurelia from London, Sylvia inquired often after Sappho, who grew into a "huge" adult and in 1960 gave birth to triplets. Sappho the cat was not a burden but a happy note and a comfort in Aurelia's life as it collapsed all around her. Neighbor and friend Beth Hinchliffe much later wrote a poem remembering Aurelia around 1971, suggesting that Sappho's imperturbable presence served as a kind of therapy:

And now there is only Sappho for Aurelia . . .

And through it all, through Aurelia's blinding fury,

the madness of anguish, the desperate scrabbling

to keep her memories untouched by ugliness,

Sappho sits. Kneads. Watches.

Among Aurelia's snapshots in the Plath Family Papers at the Beinecke Library was a dime-sized photo of Sappho's face, cut from another photo. The fragment was too small to photograph, but it looked like a duplicate or alternate of the one shown above: a memento only Aurelia could have gone to the trouble to make and put there. And now I have a good idea why Aurelia's American granddaughters sent her, in 1980, stationery printed with a cartoon of a large self-satisfied tiger cat.

Aurelia had to ask someone to care for Sappho while she took annual trips to England in the early 1960s. Most likely some neighbors did. On returning to Wellesley in 1964 (July 2): "My kitchen was a smelly mess; Sappho's liver dish never washed and putrid." On returning to Wellesley in 1965 (30 June) Aurelia wrote, "Sappho, glad to see me, but unforgiving; when I pick her up, stiffens spine!"

The above photo is dated 1972. On 19 August 1975, Aurelia had terminally ill Sappho, age 16, put to sleep and grieved her, but not because Sappho had been Sylvia's cat. "I have lost the one living creature to whom I was the most important living being." In 1981 Aurelia still missed her cat and lets us know what else in life she had lost and valued: "Oh, Sappho, if only you were  here to pet, to make happy, have you lick my hand, my cheek & stretch out before the fire in blissful contentment -- greet me when I return home. Something to love and be trusted and loved by!" 

It Is a Truth Universally Acknowledged

Aurelia Plath (nee Schober) as a senior in college wrote a paper for her "English Novel" course about Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Dated December 12, 1927, and graded B-plus/A, it is in the Plath Family Papers at Beinecke Library at Yale, along with Aurelia's copy of the book.

Aurelia later noted in blue ink on its title page:

Reviewed in 1983. I'd use another term for the word "fools" today, otherwise a good paper. 

This is the only college paper of hers Aurelia preserved in her personal files. Carefully I unfolded and read it, keeping the pages open with weights as one does in rare book and manuscript rooms. On the first page her professor wrote a suggestion in red pencil. I tried to decipher it. Does it say "Figur?"

Rather than ask you to read the photo, I transcribed the page's text, below: 

[Begin]

"She (Jane Austen) had the fatal gift of observation, which is possibly the rarest gift of all, and where once a foible showed under her eye, she could not help noting it to her reader: it did not matter that she love [sic] and honored the character where she found it."  -William Dean Howells

With keen perception and unerring accuracy the realist, Jane Austen, depicted characters that moved upon the little provincial stage where she lived her own part. It was a narrow stage, whereon the chief business of its people "was attention to social duties: and their chief interest was matrimony."*

With a masterly hand Miss Austen selected a motley group of fools. Two individuals of her selection were endowed with superior mentalities, were destined to irresistibly attract each other; therefore to render the play more fascinating, Jane Austen imbued them with pride and prejudice: then, with an ironic smile partially withdrew and watched them act their parts. While she never actually stepped forward upon her stage to comment upon a player's art, yet the reader is conscious that she was standing in the wings, ironically smiling at blunders, silently applauding the rapier-like thrusts of her favorite's clever tongue, and nodding approval as good, cynical . . . .

 *Moody and Lovett

I'd have graded this paper a B-minus or a C because it draws solely on ideas presented in the book's introduction by novelist William Dean Howells. Nothing in the paper sounds original. We know from her master's thesis and her college diary that Aurelia could write much better than she did here. In Aurelia's copy of the book, only the introduction has underlinings, made with a fountain pen.

One would say that like most college students Aurelia was probably in a rush and tasked over the weekend with writing papers for her other courses. So she got the novel, read its introduction, and bingo. The sly little minx. Research, as usual, fleshes out the story:

In October Aurelia slipped and fell down the staircase in her dormitory, breaking her ankle, and was taken to Boston's Homeopathic Hospital. We know which hospital because her boyfriend Karl Terzaghi's diary says he sat at her bedside and held her hand. Karl's later diary entry of December 4, 1927, says Aurelia "still needs her crutches." The top student in her class of 1928, candidate for valedictorian, Aurelia had lost at least a week or two of coursework in six courses, and missed lectures and discussion. She was also in pain and hobbling around. Grade-wise, it could have cost her unless she caught up.

The day after her date with Karl, Aurelia bought, signed, and dated her copy of the novel: December 5, 1927, a Monday. She turned in her Austen paper the following Monday.

So like some college students (but never you or I) Aurelia took the easy way out by reading the introduction and padding out her assignment, maybe paging through the novel or reading its final page, as do some students (never you or I) who say they had no time to read the book or write the assignment because they had been away at their grandmother's funeral.

But Aurelia fell down the stairs into the dormitory's lobby, landing among students and staff, and when she walked with crutches everyone including her professors knew why. 

As her prof, I would have raised the grade on this paper from C or B-minus to "B," because things happen. Aurelia was a little bit special and showed some grit. Her real professor either showed a higher order of charity or was up late with a red pencil reading 40 or 60 other papers.

I Get Invited to an Academic Conference

My first glimpse of Beinecke Library

 

Me to My Sister: I was invited to give a paper at an academic conference in [expensive city].  I’ve never been there and I have a really good friend there

 

Sister: Sounds nice

 

Me: I’m not sure I can swing it financially

 

Sister: How much are they paying you

 

Me: I don’t get paid. It’s a career thing

 

Sister: If they invited you, they should pay you

 

Me: It doesn’t work that way. I pay them

 

Sister: You do?

 

Me: There’s a $350 registration fee and that gets me a group discount at a hotel but hotels are like $250 a night there, and I’d have to stay two nights at least and maybe three because my friend wants to show me around the city. I’ve always wanted to go there

 

Sister: Can’t you stay with your friend

 

Me: She has a roommate who sleeps on the couch. Rents are so expensive there

 

Sister: Well at least they pay for your plane ticket?

 

Me: No, they don’t do that

 

Sister: Then why would you go

 

Me: It’s kind of an honor to be invited, they’re really interested my research and I’d meet other scholars who do similar topics and hear what they’re researching, and maybe get my name out there and make some friends who work at universities who might tell other professors in the field what I’m doing or at least that work is being done. That’s the value of it. Plus I could put it on my resume. I figure it will cost about $2000 with food and rides to and from the airport

 

Sister: They don’t even feed you

 

Me: We get one lunch

 

Sister: 

 

Me: Guess I shouldn’t go, should save the money to do research at Yale

The Most Popular Plath Posts of 2025

Aurelia Plath in this note is outraged that the Smith College infirmary in 1951 gave Sylvia Plath sleeping pills (the two words Aurelia wrote in Gregg shorthand).

Of 2025's total of 44 AureliaPlath.info posts most readers favored the posts I favored, of primary materials and new connections made. I thought I was weird to be obsessed for a week with Sylvia Plath's hairbands and hair ribbons but wrote about them anyway and readers were interested! Sylvia's many mentions of sleeping pills and "phenobarbs," drugs she used to try to kill herself, I had never seen listed or tracked, so I did that. I am glad that readers saw value in that post and hope some might consider further research into Sylvia Plath and drugs.

Having forced myself to read the three books about Assia Wevill now in print (all by U.S. scholar Dr. Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick, whom I met in December) I linked Aurelia with Assia for the very first time. They met at Court Green in 1967, really liked each other, and exchanged several letters.

This year's big Plath news was the Plath Family Papers opening for research at Yale University's Beinecke Library. The day before the archive officially opened I was there and also for the next entire workweek, mostly reading Aurelia's diaries, begun with hope in 1924 and ending in 1990. And the Plath and Greenwood heirloom family photographs, stunning and unique, open a casement window into Sylvia's paternal and maternal ancestry and give faces to names.

My fiercest thanks to readers who donated funds for transportation to, from, and within the city of New Haven, Connecticut.

I'm honored that you follow AureliaPlath.info. Despite the many advantages of blogspot.com I became aware this year that it's viewed as a hobbyist's platform, and passion for Plath is too important to keep siloed. So in 2026 I plan to join the bigger league of Substack. Most articles there are free to read. I will keep you informed.

Readers' favorites in 2025:

"I Am the Jew" (January)

"Sylvia Plath and Sleeping Pills" (January) 

"Sylvia Plath and Phyllis McGinley" (March)

"Sylvia Plath's Hair Ribbons and Hairbands" (June)  

"Pleased With Everything: The Plath Family Papers at Yale" (July) 

"Sylvia Died Yesterday" (August) 

"Aurelia Plath and Assia Wevill: Tight Wires Between Them" (October) 

Images from the Plath Family Papers

Aurelia Plath's last diary. These pages from 1989 show variations in Aurelia's handwriting as she struggled with macular degeneration. Emotionally she has just been knocked sidewise after reading the new Plath biography Bitter Fame. 

On the leftward page she noted "Nov. 10 The OPENING OF THE WALL Between East and West Germany! Is light coming to this part of the world as I continually lose my sight?" Just above that, a late-in-life realization: "I should have worked for my own 'career.' Regret so not accepting the 'Dean of Women' post at Northeastern. Bleeding ulcers were still with me then." Young Sylvia had also guilt-tripped Aurelia about taking that job, saying, "For your own self-aggrandizement you would leave us complete orphans!" On the rightward page, on November 12 "(Full Moon!)" Aurelia and her neighbor, financial professional Bill Cruickshank, worked on her accounts until 5:30 p.m. "Think Positive!" she told herself, and under November 17 wrote a catty little note about "uneducated" Dido Merwin, whose searing short memoir about Sylvia is appended to Bitter Fame.

The baby is Aurelia's sister Dorothy, born in May 1911. Aurelia is on the right. They are with their mother Aurelia Greenwood Schober. If the photo is from 1911, Aurelia was five and her mother 23.

The label on this palm-sized diary says "1962 - Catastrophe at Court Green." During the week Ted and Sylvia's marriage fell apart their houseguest Aurelia kept quiet, tended her grandchildren, and wrote in this diary very little of consequence. On July 11 Sylvia shut herself away to write a novel and Aurelia served her dinner in the study. No further details. You'd never know except by reading a later diary that during that week Sylvia angrily told Aurelia, "You are of no use to me here!" and ordered her to move out. The only trace of that in the 1962 diary is a page with names and phone numbers of nearby hotels. It was midsummer and hotels were all booked. Housed with midwife Winifred Davies, Aurelia passed the time reading a book of home remedies, copying out numerous uses of cider vinegar. (I'm not making that up.) Invited back to Court Green a few days later, Aurelia recorded in Gregg shorthand that Sylvia, unable to sleep, eat, or care for her children was sedated by the local doctor. 

The above is the older of two diaries Aurelia definitively censored, this one by ripping out pages and noting, "Tore out all the sad notes made from 1936-40." Wish she hadn't. The other injured diary has several pages from autumn 1958 razored out. Letters from Sylvia hint that was a period of conflict having nothing to do with Sylvia: Aurelia was fighting with her siblings.

A frank and lengthy discussion about reading Aurelia Plath's diaries is free at Substack.