Aurelia Moves Out of the House

Built in 1925

Aurelia Schober roomed her first year after college at 86 Vinton Street in Melrose, Massachusetts, teaching at Melrose High School in 1928-29. In the group photo of the faculty she looks older than 22. Melrose, where no windows look out upon the sea, isn't far from her parents' and siblings' house in Winthrop. But she'd lived during her senior year in her college dormitory in mid-town Boston, and instead of moving back in with her family, the novice teacher roomed in this house perched on a hill, with the elderly homeowner, his wife, their grown daughter, and a seamstress.

Vinton Street was a half-hour walk from Melrose High School, then at 585 Main Street. One of her students, Mary Stetson (1911-1994), later known as novelist Mary Stetson Clarke, became Aurelia's good friend and correspondent. [1]

Whether teaching at Melrose was a one-year appointment, or what the rooming arrangements were, we do not know. On November 5, 1928, as Aurelia and her boyfriend of two years, her first love, Karl, were hiking in the Middlesex Fells Reservation just west of Melrose, he broke up with her. She cried and was horribly grieved. Karl moved on to date and marry a Radcliffe graduate student. Fifty years later, Aurelia incorrectly remembered their painful parting as taking place in 1927. We know it was autumn 1928 and the exact date and place because he kept a diary.

Aurelia waited tables in New Hampshire in summer 1929 and attended Boston University graduate school during the academic year 1929-1930 (while Mary Stetson was a freshman there). Aurelia lived in Winthrop with her parents while earning her master's degree, and remained at home after securing a very good full-time teaching job at Brookline High School. In 1932 Aurelia quit her job and moved in with her new husband Otto Plath. But we cannot say Aurelia otherwise ever really left her parents. They rented out their Winthrop house and stayed with Aurelia and Otto during the summer of 1932, while Aurelia was pregnant with Sylvia, and also in summer 1933.

[1] Aurelia S. Plath to Mary Stetson Clarke, letter 15 March 1959.

Photos from Aurelia's College Yearbook

A reader kindly sent me photos of Aurelia Schober from Aurelia's college yearbook, the one Aurelia edited, the 1928 volume of Sivad. That's "Davis" spelled backwards; T. Lawrence Davis  founded the school as Boston University's College of Secretarial Science in 1919, and was to be its only dean. The year Aurelia enrolled, 1924, the College's name had been changed to the College of Practical Arts and Letters (CPAL). Aurelia graduated with the degree Bachelor of Secretarial Sciences (B.S.S.), which CPAL was the first to grant.

Davis ensured that CPAL's students, all females, were educated not only in secretarial skills but in the arts and letters. There were even dancing lessons for students deemed in need of them. Aurelia's secretarial science degree was a liability for a woman who wanted a job teaching languages and literature. A year after graduation Aurelia set about to "rectify" (her word) [1] her B.S.S. degree by starting Boston University graduate school, earning in 1930 a master's degree in English and German.

Aurelia was editor-in-chief of her senior yearbook. In the above staff photograph she sits front and center. She is markedly taller and longer-limbed than her schoolmates. One of Sylvia's boyfriends later called Aurelia "statuesque."

Here is Aurelia's college graduation photo, taken in profile, as was Sylvia Plath's.

Active in the CPAL German Club, Aurelia on two documented occasions acted as the male lead in the club's German-language plays. She resigned the German Club presidency when appointed to head Sivad. The "class note" alongside Aurelia's graduation photo reads:

"The German Club nearly lost its sensational 'young man' when Sivad won an efficient Editor-in-Chief, but Aurelia played both roles admirably. The staff will never forget those board meetings, those would-be 'scoldings' and those cherished words of approval and praise."

History of Boston University's College of Practical Arts and Letters: https://dailyfreepress.com/2003/11/05/warring-and-working-bu-school-helped-women-find-jobs-until-the-50s/ (accessed 16 February 2020)

Dates of CPAL founding, renaming, absorption in 1955 into the College of Business Administration: https://www.bu.edu/timeline/1919/02/28/pal-later-cba-established/

Many thanks to Sarah Manthe. The 1928 Sivad had been elusive while the volumes from adjacent years were not.

[1] XI. Aurelia Plath, Box 30, folder 67, Smith.