Winthrop and a Bostonian Fire!

In her journal, on 9 March 1959, Sylvia Plath wrote about her and Ted Hughes' recent excursion to Winthrop. It was a memorable occasion as Plath wrote about it in her journal, used the experience in composing "Electra on Azalea Path", and transformed the visit again for a scene in The Bell Jar.

Wrongly, I always assumed Plath and Hughes visited Winthrop on 9 March, the date on which Plath wrote about it. But in reading the Journals in full last year, I realized my error for in the first paragraph she said, "after coming back from a fine afternoon in Winthrop yesterday". I always concentrated on the next paragraph:

A clear blue day in Winthrop. Went to my father's grave, a very depressing sight. Three grave yards separated by streets, all made within the last fifty years or so, ugly crude block stones, headstones together, as if the dead were sleeping head to head in a poorhouse. In the third yard, on a flat grassy area looking across a sallow barren stretch to rows of wooden tenements I found the flat stone, "Otto E. Plath: 1885-1940", right beside the path, where it would be walked over. Felt cheated. My temptation to dig him up. To prove he existed and really was dead. How far gone would he be? No trees, no peace, his headstone jammed up against the body on the other side. Left shortly. It is good to have the place in mind. (473)

And in reading the entry, Plath wrote about emerging from the T (the city's transit system) "& followed fire engines down Cornhill where there had been a great fire, which was still smouldering. The gutted brick building was blackened and hollow, smoke fanning in spasmodic whiffs from the eaves. Icicles hung from all the windowledges" (473-4).

Over to newspapers.com I went to see if the Boston Globe covered it. And they did...

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