In the Telegraph yesterday, an obituary ran for John Rety. This is a new name to me, but there is a Plath connection:
"After meeting Susan Johns, with whom he was to have a son and a daughter, Rety opened a furniture shop in Camden High Street, where he sold an Edwardian writing desk to an American who asked him to re-cover it in blue leather. She kept asking when it would be ready, explaining that she was writing on her knees in the meantime. But when he took it to her house, a man told him to "f--- off" and that the woman was dead. On returning home, Susan told him that the lady was the poet Sylvia Plath, and he had just met her husband Ted Hughes."
The whole "writing on her knees" bit sounds very much like Plath!
"After meeting Susan Johns, with whom he was to have a son and a daughter, Rety opened a furniture shop in Camden High Street, where he sold an Edwardian writing desk to an American who asked him to re-cover it in blue leather. She kept asking when it would be ready, explaining that she was writing on her knees in the meantime. But when he took it to her house, a man told him to "f--- off" and that the woman was dead. On returning home, Susan told him that the lady was the poet Sylvia Plath, and he had just met her husband Ted Hughes."
The whole "writing on her knees" bit sounds very much like Plath!
That's an amazing anecdote.
ReplyDeleteoh wow! she was something!
ReplyDeleteOh, man, ya' try to like Ted Hughes and appreciate what he went thru & then you get reminded of what an insensitive jerk he was.
ReplyDeleteIn defence of Ted's behaviour on that occasion, I can only point out that grieving and shocked people don't always behave very admirably.
ReplyDeleteThere are plenty of testimonies to Ted Hughes being, in more normal circumstances,a polite, generous and encouraging man.
He went thru hell.Some of that was undoubtedly of his own making but I do think some allowances should be made.
Yes, it is just a see-saw sometimes... As a poet I like much of his work; particularly Crow. But, it was reading edited books like Nick Gammage's The Epic Poise and Christopher Reid's The Letters of Ted Hughes that opened him up beyond Ted Hughes the poet, Ted Hughes the husband, adulterer etc. Sometimes I just have to look beyond the mess he made of things...My feelings are likely at odds with many of you... I try to be sympathetic
ReplyDeleteHe wasn't a saint-few of us are! I am absolutely NOT defending some of the things he did. And I find it highly disturbing in "Birthday Letters" that he seems to attribute everything that went on as Fate (how very convenient !).
ReplyDeleteBut I would say this. Sylvia herself knew she was a very difficult person to live with : emotionally needy, perfectionist, given to extreme mood-swings, etc.People with mental health issues can be very difficult to be around.I speak as someone who has had such issues.I can see how an affair might happen.Ironically, of course, the "other woman" was also plagued with mental health issues, though of a rather different type.
I would say to people who haven't read his letters, read them.They don't always put him in a good light, and he exhibits a certain amount of denial, wishful-thinking, etc etc-again, who doesn't ?-but they give a richer picture of the man.It's a good selection that doesn't seek to put him on a pedestal.
Fascinating little story. Given the circumstances, I might have said "F-- off" myself. Pain is pain.
ReplyDeleteSeems like Sylvia would have chosen red though, don't you think?
Julia, I think I read somewhere that she said she was going through a Prussian blue period or something - instead of red she was drawn to blues of all types - after she separated from Ted. This might be been from a letter or the journals, I can't remember which.
ReplyDeletePanther, my sense in reading BL and other pieces of Ted's work is that he genuinely believed in the concept of "fate". I don't think it was just a convenient excuse for him, although I can see how it would look that way. I'm sure he was aware of that as well - that most people would think he was deflecting blame. kim
Kim,I think he did genuinely believe in Fate,yes.I'm also aware that some people who believe in Fate appear to do so only after various tragedies-as a way of "dealing with" what has happened. Perhaps Hughes ALWAYS believed in it, I don't know.
ReplyDeleteI'm also aware that in some people's eyes, he will always be in the wrong. Even if he had written BIRTHDAY LETTERS in a sackcloth-and-ashes kind of tone, this wouldn't have been acceptable to them.If they really do want to crucify someone, I would suggest that there are better targets, both living and deceased.
Regarding blue: the last poem in Birthday Letters, "Red" reminds me of Kim's comment above. The poem ends, on page 198...
ReplyDelete"Then sometimes, among them, little bluebirds.
Blue was better for you. Blue was wings.
Kingfisher blue silks from San Francisco
Folded your pregnancy
In crucible caresses.
Blue was your kindly spirit - not a ghoul
But electrified, a guardian, thoughtful.
In the pit of red
You hid from the bone-clinic whiteness.
But the jewel you lost was blue."
This poem and these lines ending the collection could indicate that "blue" was predominant at the end of Plath's life. But I'm not sure I'm reading too much into it...
Interestingly, regarding the poem ending on page 198...the news of Birthday Letters broke in 1-98 (or, January 1998). As though the poems ending on this page also ended something else (his silence) while also indicating his last words. Everything concluded, as it were. And by publishing them then, it gave rise to something. And, like the duration of a pregnancy, Hughes was dead in 9 months time.
Talk about reading too much into it...
Coincidence or not, it's fascinating. Ted was astrological and mystical, after all. Numerology, I'm sure, would have been just as significant.
ReplyDelete