Warren

We don't know Warren Plath very well. After his sister Sylvia's death he refused interviews, even those proposed by his own daughters. At Aurelia's memorial service he spoke not at all, thinking someone might capitalize on whatever he said. Warren was within his rights. He was the one who had to see his dead sister in her coffin and face her husband, who had treated her badly.

We've been so blinded by Sylvia that we forgot her brother Warren, raised alongside of Sylvia and cared for just as much.

From what Aurelia Plath wrote we learn that Warren could be irritable and hated to be told what to do; rather, one should ask him to do things. After learning from his wonderfully detailed obituary that teenage Warren had been a "candy striper" (hospital volunteer), I saw that when in summer 1953 Aurelia suggested Sylvia try the same, she was holding up Warren as a model, and most likely that happened more than once.

Sylvia was in New York at Mademoiselle and couldn't attend Warren's June graduation from Phillips Exeter. But the Boston Globe preserved it all (15 June 1953):

Which one is the little angel?

Warren J. Plath, son of Mrs. Aurelia S. Plath of Wellesley, won the Faculty Prize for General Excellence awarded to the senior "who is recognized on the grounds of scholarship and general character as holding the first rank." Among the Greater Boston boys who won college scholarships were: Harvard National Scholarship, Warren J. Plath of Wellesley; Harvard Competitive Prize Scholarship, Earl J. Silbert of Brookline; Teschemacher Scholarship to Harvard, Warren J. Plath of Wellesley. . .

After those awards, Warren graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 1957 and got his Ph.D. at Harvard, too, although in 1959 when Sylvia whined to her psychiatrist that Warren was at Harvard but she was not, his path through grad school had been interrupted by a Fulbright year at the University of Bonn, where he learned to speak German.

Sylvia's original "rival," Warren was perceived as such even as their mother was nursing him. To my surprise I realized that the authentic part of Sylvia's memoir "Ocean 1212-W" was the toddler narrator's violent jealousy and hatred of the new baby about to displace her as the center of her family's attention. That mattered an awful lot to her, although it happens to eldest children every day. The memoir says she sought from the ocean a sign of her "specialness." In real life the ocean did not give one. But her memoir delivers to her a wooden carving of a "sacred baboon" which to me sounds rather comical.

Displaced she was. The story "Among the Bumblebees," which Sylvia wrote in college, describes her family life after Warren was born. "Warren" in the story, as in life, was blond and angel-faced. (Sylvia, frankly, was not as cute.) At a family supper, "Alice," age five or six, feeling jealous, quietly kicks "Warren" in the shins, making him cry. Then:

 

"Good lord, doesn't he do anything but cry?" Alice's father scowled, lifting his head, and making a scornful mouth. Alice glared at Warren in safe contempt.

"He is tired," her mother said, with a hurt, reproving look at Alice. Bending over the table, she stroked Warren's yellow hair. "He hasn't been well, poor baby. You know that." . . . The light made a luminous halo of his soft hair. Mother murmured little crooning noises to quiet him and said, "There, there, angel, it is all right now. It is all right."

 

With elaborate and passive-aggressive cooing and care, Mother takes Warren upstairs and Alice bonds with her father, who saw her kick her brother and tacitly approved; they have both felt deprived of the mother's attention. [1] This "pacifist" household loaded Sylvia Plath's emotional toolbox with propensities to punish, control, compete, and claim the center of attention. We know little about young Warren's emotions except that he had a short fuse and rigid habits. He grew up to be a computer genius.

Warren was smarter than Sylvia, proven at age 2-1/2 when he bested her storytelling with his own. In college the memory still stung; she wrote about it. [2] Aurelia Plath in her Letters Home preface soft-pedals her children's sibling rivalry, saying only “[t]here were many times when each made the other miserable; and Sylvia, as the older, was the more dominant and the more culpable.” That the conflict-avoidant Aurelia even mentioned their conflict means it was much worse than she said. Sylvia's Dr. Beuscher, paraphrasing Sylvia's case notes to a biographer, said that Sylvia's teasing "went beyond normal." Picking on or even hitting a new sibling is normal. But Sylvia had tried to choke Warren and stuff cloth down his throat. [3] No surprise, then, that Aurelia wrote of 1938-39, "Warren develops many allergies, food, grasses, pollen, etc. He has two serious bouts with bronchial pneumonia and an asthmatic condition develops." [4] Warren had asthma attacks well into his teens.

The siblings sometimes played nicely, but where did Sylvia learn to ridicule and kick shins and bite people, and to cut her brother's neck with an ice skate, and think to strangle him? She hadn't yet seen any wartime movie newsreels. Television did not exist. I hate to think the model for such behavior was her family. We will never know how Warren recalled Sylvia's teasing, which persisted until he grew taller than she.

Eventually Sylvia came to love and confide in her brother because as well as being taller he had mastered fields of knowledge not her own. Warren was a dutiful son who kindly helped Aurelia edit Letters Home and when he had his own family saw his mother three times a year. He was no fan of the older Aurelia. When she sent Warren letters he had his wife Margaret answer them.

[1] On a carbon copy of this story kept in the Plath archive at Smith College, Aurelia Plath wrote in Gregg shorthand "realistic."

[2] Composition written in German for a Smith College German course, 1955; read it in English here.

[3] Audio recording and written notes c. 1970 by Harriet Rosenstein of Ruth Beuscher reading case notes from a February 1959 session with Sylvia Plath, Emory.

[4] "Chronology" document by Aurelia Plath, Smith College Special Collections.

Plath Family Baby Names

NamePlayground.com

Time was if in the U.S. you heard the name "Sylvia" the next word was "Plath." U.S. Social Security baby-name stats tell us "Sylvia" was never a common name: It peaked in 1937 at #56 on the popular-name list and hit its low in 2003. Since then Hispanic families in particular are restoring "Sylvia" to the top 500 U.S. girl names. The same is true of "Aurelia," currently #371, up 117 places from 2022. "Aurelia" peaked in 1908 and hit its rock bottom in 1999 at position #2,680.

Of course Aurelia Plath, born in 1906, was named not for a fad but for her Austrian-born mother. "Sylvia" was emphatically not a family name but a conscious reference to the natural world her parents Aurelia and Otto Plath hoped to study and write books about. They also made the unusual choice to give Sylvia, born in 1932, no middle name.

That likely avoided a minefield of creaky family names. "Ernestine," Otto's mother's name, means "serious" or "battle to the death." Their fathers were Francis and Theodor; Aurelia was already Aurelia Frances. The most faddish girls' names of the 1930s were Mary, Betty, and Barbara, and Otto's name feminized is "Ottilie" -- none compatible with Sylvia's first name.

"Otto" means "wealthy" and "Emil" means "rival," "industrious," or "to excel." Sylvia as a mother-to-be considered the baby name "Emily" and hoped to name a second daughter Megan (pronounced "meg-un," she told her mother). She liked those names and "Nicholas" twenty years ahead of their mass popularity. "Frieda," Germanic for "peace" or "joy," reached its U.S. peak in 1896 -- the year Sylvia's Aunt Frieda was born in Germany -- and despite a few vogue years in the U.K. the name is currently ranked around #4,000 there and in the U.S.

We do know that Sylvia's brother Warren (meaning "protective enclosure") was named for William Marshall Warren, dean of Boston University's College of Liberal Arts, where professor Otto Plath received the dean's counsel. B.U. had several distinguished Warrens, first names and surnames. As a baby name for boys, "Warren" peaked in 1921 at #24. Surprise, it's on the rise as a gender-neutral name.

I had kind of hoped the "Ariels" I met were named for a book of poems.

Re Sylvia's fictional characters: "Esther" is Persian for "star," but compared with Queen Esther's Hebrew name "Hadassah" it grates on the ear. It's Sylvia's cousin's name. One Bell Jar oddity is that Esther Greenwood has no nickname, even among intimates such as Buddy Willard. "Esther" topped out in 1896 at #31 and sank to its low in 1970. Girls' name "Dody" ("dodo," "doughy," "dowdy") never ranked higher than in 1959 at #2,303. "Dody" seems a very un-Lawrentian name for the Lawrentian protagonist of Sylvia's first, unfinished novel, unless she was referencing "doughty" or "do-or-die."

Pop singers and prominent characters in fantasy fictions and video games are reviving old-man old-lady names, so expect more of the above to catch fire and to meet a young Sylvia soon.

"Johann" and "Ernestine" dominated Prussian baptismal records in 1853.

Lovely Light-Skinned Plath Friend, Nat LaMar

Sylvia Plath met her only African-American friend at Cambridge in autumn 1955, when both were new students on scholarships there. Nathaniel "Nat" LaMar (1933-2022) while still at Harvard had published a short story in The Atlantic. He'd been at Phillips Exeter prep school with Sylvia's brother Warren. Plath wrote her mother Aurelia, "I begged some boys at pembroke [College] to introduce me to him . . . he is a lovely, light-skinned negro" [29 Oct. 1955].

The ambitious young writers became friends. On 7 November Plath wrote her mother, "I saw a good bit of that outgoing, creative negro boy, Nathaniel LaMar (from Exeter and Harvard) and went to coffee with him Monday."

Plath's association with the wonderfully colored and credentialed LaMar is today sometimes cited as proof that Plath was personally not a racist, although her creative works and private writings include racial and ethnic slurs and "othering."

In letters to her mother, Plath laid it on thick that her feelings for Nat were fraternal. LaMar and his school friend would guard her from the perils of Paris when Plath made her first trip there at Christmas break 1955:

"most happy to have made a very warm, good friend in Nat Lamar, the negro writer from Harvard, who is a wonderful sort of psychic brother. . . . [Nat is] already flying to Paris to stay with his very attractive, intelligent, Clem-Moorish type friend at the Sorbonne, they will look around and get me a cheap, good place to stay. . . Then we plan to see Paris together  . . I like the idea of having two "brothers" to go around with, both as guides and sort of champion protectors" [21 Nov. 1955].

Besides denying any attraction, Plath was heavy-hinting that Nat was gay. What a gal.

What LaMar's family in Atlanta thought about his friend Sylvia, we can only wonder. Plath assured her mother that a meeting in her dorm room included a chaperone:

"I had dear, lovable Nat LaMar over for tea with Mallory and the three of us had a most pleasant time. . ." [10 December 1955]

To other correspondents, while touting LaMar's virtues or feeling that she must because he was African-American, Plath stressed that the relationship was platonic:

"Nat LaMar. . . has already gone over [to Paris] to visit his friend Steve at the Sorbonne (by the way, Nat is a really lovely person). . . " [to Warren Plath, 11 Dec. 1955]

"most of my good friends are men. There's the American Negro from Harvard, Nat LaMar (whose story 'Creole Love Song' I may have pointed out in the Atlantic, who is simply a dear: friendly, open, & wonderfully frank. We have periodic bull sessions like brother & sister (he went to exeter & knew Warren" [to Gordon Lameyer, 12 Dec. 1955]

"I have been very lucky, however, in making some special friends: There is Nathaniel LaMar, a warm, friendly Negro boy from Harvard . . ." [to Olive Higgins Prouty, 13 Dec. 1955]

"I am getting to know some magnificent people: there's friendly, vital Nathaniel LaMar (whose story 'Creole Love Song' was in the Atlantic), the negro writer who knew Warren at Harvard & Exeter. . . [Nat] is good for simple, frank 'American talk.' " [to Marcia Stern, 14 Dec. 1955]

To a close female friend, Plath wrote a bit differently:

"am flying to paris to hang tinsel on eiffel tower under escort of negro writer from harvard, nat lamar ('creole love song' in atlantic)" . . . [to Elinor Friedman, 12 Dec. 1955].

Plath wrote her grandparents on 20 January 1956 about "the warm, friendly negro writer from Harvard, and a few other more casual acquaintances. . ."

Further letters to her family warbled:

"My dearest friend in Cambridge is Nat LaMar. I had a wonderful coffee-session with him Sunday" [25 Jan. 1956]

"Nat LaMar, who is a blessing. I had a good talk with him" [29 Jan.]

"Dear Nat LaMar is such a pleasure; I see him for coffee about once a week." [6 Feb.]

"I am gifted with the dearest, most wonderful friends: Nat LaMar, Gordon, Elly Friedman . . ." [10 Feb.]

Elinor Friedman said Plath told her she and Nat had "a brief affair" in Paris. [1] In her journal, Plath wrote that she used her love for Richard Sassoon, who was in Paris, to excuse herself from deeper involvement with Nat, having used that excuse to dial it down with other men:

"Richard," I say, and tell Nat, and tell Win, and tell Chris, as I have told Mallory, and Iko, and Brian, and Martin, and David: There Is This Boy In France." [Journals, 19 Feb. 1956] 

Plath was devastated when Sassoon dumped her after Christmas. She met and fell for Ted Hughes in late February, and in agony over whether Hughes too had abandoned her, she asked herself what to do next:

"Let me know where and to whom to give: to Nat, to Gary, to Chris even, to Iko, to dear Gordon in his way: to give the small moments and the casual talk that very special infusion of devotion and love which make our epiphanies." [Journals, Mar. 6, 1956]

It seems Plath hoped to minimize previous romantic or sexual contacts to clear the decks for serious involvement with Sassoon or with Hughes, if one of the two would have her.

Nathaniel Reid LaMar lived 88 years and never wrote a Sylvia Plath tell-all. He said only that they had been friends. Both were creative writers; both wrote senior theses on "doubles." [2] Yet what sounds like a meeting of true minds was finished when she met Ted Hughes. LaMar completed his post-graduate year and in 1957 was writing a novel with a grant from The Atlantic. When the money ran out he joined the army. This proved fatal to his creative writing. He worked for publisher McGraw-Hill from 1960 to 1980.

Nat LaMar lived most of his life in Brooklyn, New York.

Never married, with a gay partner who predeceased him [3], LaMar amassed $8 million in real-estate holdings, and LaMar after his death made news because a court-appointed guardian had failed to report his passing, kept taking payouts, and sold his house. This delayed the distribution of "millions of dollars LaMar had bequeathed to the Brooklyn Queens Land Trust, the Brooklyn Children's Museum, Cambridge University, Howard University College of Medicine where LaMar's father went to medical school, and Phillips Exeter Academy."

[1] Clark, H. Red Comet, 387.

[2] LaMar, N., "The Duality of Macbeth: A Breach in Nature," Harvard University thesis, 1955.

[3] See Lichtblau, J., "The Value of an English Garden in Brooklyn," The Common, 15 Dec. 2020. 

Plath's letters are quoted from Kukil, K. and Steinberg, The Letters of Sylvia Plath, vol. 1, 2017.

Summa cum laude, Harvard, 1955. Before Phillips Exeter, LaMar attended a segregated high school.

Translation of Sylvia Plath's German Essay

Sylvia Plath wrote this essay for her Smith College course "Deutsche 12," and the typescript carbon, in German, titled "Wie Ich Einmal Kleinen Bruder Neckte" is in the Lilly Library's Plath mss. II, Box 8, folder 19, "Prose-fiction." I would call it nonfiction. Because I have never seen a translation or even a discussion of this essay, here it is in English:

How I Once Teased Little Brother

 

It was in 1938. Autumn had come and the sky was blue and clear, the sun glowed like a diamond, and the little leaves were very colorful. Afternoons I hopped joyfully on my way home. I thought the whole world was a wonder, in my first year of elementary school.

 

My little brother, who was too young to attend elementary school, was very jealous. Every day I bragged that I could read and write, and my father and my mother were very proud of me.

 

My little brother stayed silent. Finally he said, in a clear, loud voice: “I don’t go to school; I do something better! I live every night on the other side of the moon. . .”

 

My father and my mother now listened to the inventive story my little brother told. Now I was the silent and jealous one. He was too smart for me.

Plath enrolled in this intermediate-level German course in her senior year, spring 1955, then dropped it to better prepare for her comprehensive exams (letter to Aurelia Plath, 25 April 1955). Aurelia Plath mentions in her preface to Letters Home young Warren ("little brother") Plath's "Other Side of the Moon" adventure tales, spun when he was two and a half years old.