AureliaPlath.info Post #269

Aurelia, age 3, visiting her father's hometown

After 19-year-old Aurelia Schober played the male lead in her college's German-Club play, she got feedback from all her German Department professors but one. She wrote in her diary (5 February 1926):

"Mrs. Haskell and Dr. White, who evaluated the play, were pleased. Dr. Perrin congratulated me. I saw Mr. Plath's eyes beaming with enjoyment but he didn't come to speak with me. Mr. Haskell was appreciative. Mrs. Murphy, Annette's mother, a woman of distinguished personality and excellent education, came to me and said, 'My dear, you are a star of the first magnitude! You're wonderful. But don't let your head be turned -- although you deserve it, my dear.'

"Oh, it was all so sweet and wonderful, this praise! I must forget it and remember that I am only common, ordinary Aurelia Schober. But when I saw my friends Madeline Redmond and Grace Dickinson -- both of whom do not understand a word of German -- come to congratulate me on my voice and acting -- I felt like embracing the world.

"I am the happiest girl in the world tonight."

That was in 1926. Now it's 2026, and findings in the Plath Family archive at Yale are too momentous for this homey but limited Blogspot platform I've used since 2013. So I will be posting henceforth at Substack.com, where free subscribers receive new posts as emails the minute they are posted. Also I can choose to restrict with a paywall the viewing (and AI scraping) of some of the touchier items. Pioneering Plath research is moving from small town to big city. Please join those of us already there. I value as always your comments, suggestions, corrections, and advice.

Here is the Substack link to what I have named The Yale Diaries, in part because my favorite post here was "Diary of a Plath Researcher" (2023).

I like to remember the star of Aureliaplath.info as the happiest girl in the world, her whole life ahead of her and including two remarkable children. By their fruits you shall know them.

-Your researcher, Catherine

About Their Marriage Certificate

Click to enlarge.

Otto Plath got a quickie divorce and Otto and Aurelia married January 4, 1932. In Carson City, Nevada. So what's new? A closer look at the marriage certificate. Both claimed they lived in Reno, but courts winked at lies from out-of-staters as long as they brought money for lawyers, legal fees, and so on. During the Great Depression, Nevada only thrived.

And Otto's divorce lawyer witnessed the wedding. E.E. Roberts happened also to be the mayor of Reno. The judge who had just decreed Otto's divorce married the couple. And the certificate is time-stamped: 1:32 p.m.

Because lawyers don't stay around unless they're paid, and because divorce mills waste no time, I'm thinking the Plaths' civil ceremony immediately followed the divorce. Did Aurelia stand by as Otto divorced his first wife by proxy? (A male lawyer served as the proxy and was paid.) Or did Otto trot down the courthouse steps in the January cold to the car -- Esther Greenwood said her just-married parents got into a car -- and say "Hurry up, I'm divorced, the judge is waiting"? Doubtful.

One indicator says they went after the ceremony to Lake Tahoe, then San Francisco; Otto had to sell a piece of land he owned there. If they went by car, Aurelia's mother drove. Having Mother on a honeymoon fries our minds, but the original "wedding journey" was a dutiful round of visits to relatives and friends unable to attend the wedding, and having parents along was not strange. Otto had relatives in Chicago and Reno, Aurelia in St. Louis and Lincoln, Nebraska. These were along the trio's cross-country route. Serendipitous.

More here about their cross-country trip from Boston by car, and Otto's strategic divorce.