The Only Aurelia Tape at Emory: A Guide to Digital File v7b4x

Taped recordings now digitized and held by Emory University Libraries’ Special Collections preserve the words of about 60 interviewees who in the 1970s told researcher Harriet Rosenstein what they knew about Sylvia Plath. Aurelia Plath’s voice is on only one recording, at the tail end of the digital file named v7b4x. Abruptly, at 38:15, Aurelia is heard in mid-sentence speaking about Sylvia, and is about to take questions from an audience.

 

A friend brought Rosenstein this partial, undated and often inaudible audio cassette, and the pair listened for 16 minutes, taping its contents and chafing while Aurelia says only what they already know: about Sylvia’s second novel of “adventure, joy, and romance,” burnt in summer 1962; that Sylvia never wanted her novel The Bell Jar published in the U.S.; the composite nature of its characters, such as Mrs. Greenwood (“the character that’s made my life miserable,” Aurelia says, and explains why). Early on, the pair begin to complain, mock Aurelia, and laugh at her taped remarks. Exasperated (“For Christ’s sake! She just goes on, huh?”), they halt Aurelia’s tape at 54:05 and discuss it, then shut off their own tape recorder at 54:29.

To be fair, the two listeners are no more pitiless than any other two high-literates who verbally skewer lesser people for sport. They are, after all, critics. Here's a brief partial transcript; listen in. Aurelia speaks about Letters Home, published in November 1975, so the date of the talk might be March 16, 1976, when Aurelia spoke at the Wellesley Club. The blanks represent inaudible words or phrases.

 

Aurelia: And for those of you who haven’t read it [Letters Home], it starts off with her entering Smith as a freshman, with all the fears and all the hopes of a freshman student.

Listener 1: (sarcastic) A normal, solid, American freshman girl.

Aurelia: ____________ of the fall, and it also takes the time of her experiences at Mademoiselle and her junior year, goes right straight through to _______________.

Listener 1: (sighs) Oh matter.

Aurelia: And she wrote a letter to a friend of hers, whom I refer to as “E” in the book, to protect the person—

Listener 1: From what?

Aurelia: describing her reaction, her own evaluation of the whole experience of her breakdowns. And that’s _________. And then a mother of a son who knew her well, was going through a depression, had written me asking my advice about how to handle a child who was suffering a depression, and I sent that letter over to Sylvia, who was at that time happily married, and asked her to write

Listener 1: She wasn’t “married,” see; she was “happily married.”

Listener 2: You betcha.

Listener 1: You understand?

Listener 2: You betcha.

Listener 1: It’s a whole other category!

 

I transcribed this recording because I too hoped it would reveal more about the Plaths, but instead it reveals part of a process of diminishment and erasure.

Sylvia's "Favorite Place in America": Childs Park

Rather than details about dead folks today, here are photos of Childs Park (Northampton, Massachusetts) in June's full bloom. This elegantly landscaped 40-acre park is only steps away from the apartment Sylvia shared with Ted Hughes while she taught at Smith College. Sylvia wrote her poem "Childs Park Stones" about the boulders dotting the park, ironically its least interesting feature. Yet her creative mind viewed the primordial stones "as juxtaposed to the ephemeral orange & fuschia azaleas and feel the park is my favorite place in America." (Journals, June 11, 1958).

The wealthy Childs family, owners since 1915, opened their property to the public in 1950. It is still privately run, so rules of conduct apply: no organized games; no skating or skateboards; all cars out by 5 p.m.; everybody out by dusk. Besides the fabulous azalea/rhododendron bushes, the park includes formal gardens, a rose garden, a small pine forest, and, pictured, two views of the frog pond full of lilypads, with a bench for contemplation at one end.

Hear Plath read her poem, recorded June 13, 1958.

Beyond "Medusa" and "Mrs. Greenwood": From the Rosenstein Papers

Notes and tapes of 1970s interviews with Sylvia Plath’s friends, dates, and teachers, now in the Harriet Rosenstein research files at Emory University, are wonderfully valuable Plath resources, and include random comments and observations about Aurelia Plath. Interviewees such as Marcia Brown Stern or Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, whom Sylvia prepped to dislike Aurelia Plath before ever meeting her, had harsher things to say, but I sought first-hand impressions that went beyond “Mrs. Greenwood” and “Medusa”:

Marcia Brown Stern, Sylvia’s college friend: “Bitter and careworn” Aurelia was “struggling every minute of every day of every year to pay the bills and to keep herself together – just holding on for dear life – and there is no room for color – in her tone of voice or her hairdo or her aprons or her living room or inside her head.”

J. Melvin Woody, Sylvia’s date from Yale: Sylvia insisted he accompany her from New Haven to her Wellesley home “so she wouldn’t be with her mother alone. I found that a little hard to understand when I met Sylvia’s mother, who seemed harmless . . . . an intelligent, alert woman who was probably much better qualified to deal with a daughter like that than most women.”

Richard Sassoon, Sylvia’s boyfriend, met Aurelia once: “I remember her as sort of cold and academic and I suppose repressed. New England style.”

Pat O’Neill Pratson, Sylvia’s friend since tenth grade, a frequent visitor to the Wellesley house: Aurelia Plath served as a “bridge” between her own Austrian-immigrant parents and her Ivy-League children. Aurelia “recognized things she might like to have done that she saw the children doing in her place. It was very lonely for her.”

Peter Davison, Sylvia’s “summer romance” in 1955: Aurelia was “Terribly eager for her girl to get ahead. And very interested in someone [Davison] who worked for the Harvard University Press.”

Jon K. Rosenthal, one of Sylvia’s dates: Aurelia was “a very attractive woman at that time. Almost statuesque.”

Elizabeth Compton Sigmund, describing Aurelia visiting Devon in the summer of 1962: “And Mrs. Plath – ‘These are my grandchildren. You come to Grammy – Grammy will read it to you – Grammy will do it—’” 

Nancy Hunter Steiner, Sylvia’s college roommate: Aurelia was “sweet and well-meaning and very intimidated by Sylvia.”

Susan Weller Burch, Sylvia’s Smith classmate: Aurelia “just seemed to slip into the shadows.”. . . “gone at work most of the time. Grandparents in residence.”

Wilbury Crockett, Sylvia’s high-school English teacher: “Mrs. Plath was very much in control. I always had the feeling that she was very much aware of Sylvia’s gifts and considered Sylvia a precocious child. I think she was driven by the thought that Sylvia and Warren might not get all that they ought to have. Financial security was a very real factor.”

Why Sylvia Plath Loved to Tan

Boston's L Street Beach and Bathhouse, 1915

Sylvia Plath in her story/memoir “Among the Bumblebees” described how her big strapping father swam expertly and let her cling to him, but Aurelia Plath in Letters Home (22) clarified that it was Sylvia’s grandfather, Aurelia’s father Francis Schober, who took Sylvia on those memorable swims. In 1914 Schober was one of four Boston hotel waiters in the support boat as fellow waiter Charles Toth aced the Boston Marathon of open-water swim challenges: Charlestown Bridge to the Boston Light[house] on Little Brewster Island, 11-plus miles. Toth swam it in six hours and 42 minutes. [1]

 

The following year Toth swam the same route as a round trip, in 15 hours 47 minutes. Toth in 1923 became the fifth person to swim the English Channel and the first American to swim it from France to England. Toth famously trained for the Channel swim by towing a rowboat full of passengers, the tow rope in his teeth. Toth was built like a bear. Still he felt he ought to call himself Bavarian when his surname and all immigration papers declare he was born in Hungary.

 

The Boston Light race began in 1907 and was suspended from 1941 to 1976 because Boston Harbor was so filthy. The race’s route today begins at the venerable oceanfront L Street Bathhouse [pictured], home of Boston’s “L Street Brownies” who every January 1 since 1907 have taken an icy dip in the water. This has inspired others nationwide to do the same.

 

And the reason: In 1910, recent immigrants, mostly Europeans such as Schober and Toth, were a solid 30 percent of Boston’s population. They imported the habit of a steam bath followed by a plunge in icy water, for their health. Some swam almost every day of the year. These were called “Brownies” because of their perpetual suntans. Photos show Sylvia Plath in the 1950s enjoying beaches and sun. She equated tanning with health and her mother Aurelia did too. [2] It wasn’t for the view alone that Frank Schober bought a house on Point Shirley. And, unlike non-swimmer Otto Plath, Sylvia’s Grampy had several very athletic friends.

 

Before air-conditioning, those in urban housing had only the beach to cool down. The above photo, taken in 1915, is titled “Big Crowd at the L Street Bath House, Boston, on a 94 Degree Day.” You can tell the European-born from the Americans by their swimwear. The photo appears here with the permission of the Estate of Leslie Jones, Boston Herald photographer.

Photo: Courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection

[1] "Charles Toth Waiter-Athlete Swims to Light," Boston Herald, September 21, 1914, p. 11.

[2] Aurelia Plath made sure baby Sylvia was well tanned. (See the Baby Book, Lilly Library.) Sylvia Plath, from summer camp, to Aurelia Plath, July 5, 1947: "When I come home please do not expect me to have a very dark tan since I don't."

How Far Is It? The Tiny Town of Plath, Germany

The German surname "Plath" is geographical. A tiny town in Germany called "Plath" sits 62 miles north of Berlin and about 30 miles south of the Baltic Sea. Deep in northeastern Germany's "land of a thousand lakes" where tourists come to ride trail bikes or horses, Plath is served by one road and ringed by woods. Visitors to Plath may book the apartment Urlaub auf dem Bauernhof (literally "vacation on the farm"), pictured below, for $78 US per night. Or Der Nussbaumhof ("The Nut Tree Inn") in Plath can accommodate three people, has three horse stalls, and quiet is assured; the webpage says it's good for meditation and communing with nature.

The name "Plath" derives from the German word "platt," meaning "flat and wide," as is the topography of northern coastal Germany and the Netherlands: boggy and marshy coastal plain.

Sylvia's father Otto Plath was born about 300 miles away in the Prussian town of Grabow, now in Poland. (See the map.) Otto and his five siblings grew up in his father's hometown of Budszyn, formerly in Prussia, now in Poland, about 200 miles from the town of Plath, so it has been a while since Sylvia's paternal line actually lived in Plath, if ever. Slavic tribes in the 700s conquered the area's original Germanic residents, lived there 400 years, then were Christianized and Germanized, so bloodlines in northeastern Germany are not pure Germanic but mixed.

The language "Plattdeutsch," in English called Low German, akin to Dutch, is a variation of the Saxon language and therefore an ancestor of English. When schools teach German, it is the more common "Hochdeutsch" or High German. (This is a geographical reference to "highlands" and not a value judgement.)

Aurelia to a Scholar, September 8, 1986: The "Double" Theory

"I have one deep-seated wish: that the truth of my relationship with my beloved Sylvia would be made public. I am 80 years old now and do not wish to leave this planet believing that I did not cherish, love, serve, (sacrifice gladly for her) my daughter from the time of her birth (dreamed of my child and loved her from the first I knew of her conception) and still work to correct the terrible misconceptions concerning our relationship. After that first shock treatment (these should be abolished forever!) she, as I have told and written you many times, became her own "double." And as she had to plan to earn her own living, soon found out that the public was more interested in tragedy, unhappiness, -- these writings SOLD and writing in the first person made it all realistic for the uninformed read[er]s. [handwritten:] She fantasized brutally time & again."

 

I am interested in finding out when Aurelia Plath, after Sylvia's death, first discovers or hits on the theory of good-daughter Sylvia's brutal "double" emerging after Sylvia's shock treatments in 1953. By 1986, Aurelia's concept of "the double" is a well-rehearsed set piece and appears in other correspondence and papers with examples of what Aurelia took as proof, such as Sylvia's Smith College thesis (written in 1954) on the topic of "the double" in Dostoyevsky's novels. I could make a good guess about when, but regarding Aurelia, and Aurelia and Sylvia, we have arrived at the point in scholarship when assumptions and guesses are no longer acceptable as facts.

Aurelia Plath's Grave: "No One Ever Mentions"

photo by Shaun L. Kelly

Aurelia Plath lived for 31 years after Sylvia’s death and died of Alzheimer’s disease on March 11, 1994, age 87, at the North Hill retirement complex in Needham, MA. She was buried near her parents, the Schobers, in the Woodlawn Cemetery in Wellesley.

 

These photos of Aurelia’s grave were taken by Shaun L. Kelly, Wellesley native, Wellesley High School graduate and student of Wilbury Crockett's (Sylvia’s favorite teacher), who has memories of Aurelia Plath. From 1970 to 1973, teenaged Kelly worked after school as a grocery-store bagger, and when Mrs. Plath shopped he carried her bags to her car. They’d have pleasant, affable chats. Kelly remembers that Mrs. Plath wore a “ratty grayish-like coat that did look bad, but very academic, like a lot of teachers you’d see,” and she had a wonderful laugh. When The Bell Jar became a bestseller and the talk of the town in 1971, Kelly politely refrained from asking Mrs. Plath about the book. A few years later when they met by chance, Mrs. Plath remembered Shaun the grocery boy and was thrilled he had chosen a career in education. Kelly [@ShaunLKelly1955] is a Sylvia Plath fan and has taught for 31 years at a Connecticut high school. He says that in Sylvia's final BBC recordings her voice and Aurelia's sound identical.

 

Kelly’s parents too are buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, 50 yards from Mrs. Plath. Aurelia's is not a gravestone like that of her parents, the Schobers, but a “flush marker,” meaning “flush with the ground,” now almost obscured by grass. “I feel obligated enough that I still take care of her grave when I go up and see Mom and Dad,” Kelly said in an interview. “Obviously, if I didn’t like her, and if she were a jerk, I never would have gone over there to pay my respects, but every time I go to my parents’ grave I make sure to see Mrs. Plath as well. I almost feel obligated, it looks so forlorn. I know how Sylvia’s grave is a monument, almost like a celebratory, iconic place to visit for thousands every year, but Mrs. Plath’s grave no one ever mentions, and that makes me sad.”

Aurelia's parents' gravestone with her marker in the foreground