Richard "Dick" Wertz was the boyfriend of Nancy Hunter Steiner and was roommates at Yale with J. Melvin Woody and Richard Sassoon. Wertz and Hunter Steiner attended the same high school, as did Woody and Marcia Brown Stern. Woody first met Plath through Brown in the summer of 1951. It is all so fascinating how these people from Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, and North Carolina (via France) converge together.
Here are their high school senior photographs, so you can see the principle figures.
How odd that of all the yearbooks out there, the one that was scanned (belonging formerly to someone called Esther) included Marcia Brown's note and signature.
In fact, before continuing with the blog post... after looking at these pictures, I think this very much deserves a song:
Thank you for humoring me.
Wertz felt inferior to Sassoon because of Sassoon's background of being, among others, English, French-born, and of the US. He says that Sassoon's "cultivation" was a "weapon" he used against people. He was always contemptuous.
On Smith and Lawrence House, Wertz said "The competition was awful" & Nancy Hunter Steiner was just extraordinarily jealous of Plath, described SP as a "greedy, grabby, get-what-you-can sort of person."
Wertz contends that the relationship with Plath "wrecked" Sassoon for ten years. He found Plath to be "incredibly charming, sweet, bright attractive." The quote in the title of this post comes from Wertz in regard to the many marriage proposals she said she received. Proposals "had happened repeatedly and she was giggling about it. She was very attracted to the idea of possibilities." Reminds me of the fig tree imagery she would later in The Bell Jar. This branch is Richard Norton. This branch is Gordon Lameyer. This branch is Richard Sassoon. This branch is J. Mallory Wober...
Plath's attitude in Cambridge, which Wertz agreed with, was "it was very nice to be in a place where there were very few Americans and very few people who'd known you in the past. This was a marvelous opportunity to grow up. get a new perspective on yourself."
He was there for the runaway horse incident---memorialized in letters as well as a story "Runaway" and a poem "Whiteness I Remember"---in Cambridge in December 1955, though he erroneously says it was Spring of 1956. He wonders if Plath intentionally let go of the horse for the last mile or two.
Plath wrote about a near run-in with Wertz in New York City in June 1958 but as she was going to approach him, she noticed he was with Sassoon and "passed by" (Letters Vol II: 236).
Wertz passed away in 2002, a year before his wife, Dorothy. In 1977 (revised and expanded in 1989) they co-authored a book entitled Lying-In: A History of Childbirth in America (Yale). Wertz also authored The Head of Westport: A Brief History and a Walking Tour Guide to its Historic Houses and Westporters and the Civil War.
All links accessed 6 February 2020.
Here are their high school senior photographs, so you can see the principle figures.
How odd that of all the yearbooks out there, the one that was scanned (belonging formerly to someone called Esther) included Marcia Brown's note and signature.
In fact, before continuing with the blog post... after looking at these pictures, I think this very much deserves a song:
Here's the story of a lovely lady
Who was friendly with two very lovely girls
All of them had perfect hair, which pleased their mothers
With teeth as white as pearls
It's the story of a man named Sassoon
Who was living with two boys he could not stand
They were full of rage, and testosterone
And now their photographs are scanned.
Till the one day when this Sivvy met that fellow
And they drove to New Haven, CT, to have some lunch
That this group, through fate would come together...
That's the way they all became the Plathy Posse
The Plathy Posse, the Plathy Posse
That's the way they became the Plathy Posse
Thank you for humoring me.
Wertz felt inferior to Sassoon because of Sassoon's background of being, among others, English, French-born, and of the US. He says that Sassoon's "cultivation" was a "weapon" he used against people. He was always contemptuous.
On Smith and Lawrence House, Wertz said "The competition was awful" & Nancy Hunter Steiner was just extraordinarily jealous of Plath, described SP as a "greedy, grabby, get-what-you-can sort of person."
Wertz contends that the relationship with Plath "wrecked" Sassoon for ten years. He found Plath to be "incredibly charming, sweet, bright attractive." The quote in the title of this post comes from Wertz in regard to the many marriage proposals she said she received. Proposals "had happened repeatedly and she was giggling about it. She was very attracted to the idea of possibilities." Reminds me of the fig tree imagery she would later in The Bell Jar. This branch is Richard Norton. This branch is Gordon Lameyer. This branch is Richard Sassoon. This branch is J. Mallory Wober...
Plath's attitude in Cambridge, which Wertz agreed with, was "it was very nice to be in a place where there were very few Americans and very few people who'd known you in the past. This was a marvelous opportunity to grow up. get a new perspective on yourself."
He was there for the runaway horse incident---memorialized in letters as well as a story "Runaway" and a poem "Whiteness I Remember"---in Cambridge in December 1955, though he erroneously says it was Spring of 1956. He wonders if Plath intentionally let go of the horse for the last mile or two.
Plath wrote about a near run-in with Wertz in New York City in June 1958 but as she was going to approach him, she noticed he was with Sassoon and "passed by" (Letters Vol II: 236).
Wertz passed away in 2002, a year before his wife, Dorothy. In 1977 (revised and expanded in 1989) they co-authored a book entitled Lying-In: A History of Childbirth in America (Yale). Wertz also authored The Head of Westport: A Brief History and a Walking Tour Guide to its Historic Houses and Westporters and the Civil War.
All links accessed 6 February 2020.
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