Everything was about to change—or rather intensify—in Ted Hughes’s life with the publication in March 1965 of Ariel, the book that confirmed Sylvia Plath’s position as a world-class poet. Assia Wevill, wearing badly under the strain of coping with Plath—who had become, in Hughes’s words, a “spectacular public figure”—gave birth on 3 March 1965, to a child by him, called Shura. A wary Hughes accused Assia of saving his letters, perhaps to use later against him—such was his reaction against the siege of “bloody eavesdroppers & filchers,” even though the first biographer had yet to arrive. He instructed Assia to burn his letters, lest they be “intercepted.” Anne, Alvarez’s wife, thought of black-haired Ted and Assia, so often dressed in black, as two panthers hissing at each other: “It was very unpleasant.” Anne remembered visiting Assia, ailing with the flu: “She was in Sylvia’s bed all dressed up and glamorous and it really gave me the creeps … All she talked about was Sylvia.”
Enter Lois Ames, a friend of Sylvia’s, bent on writing the first biography. She had secured Aurelia’s approval. Hughes was willing to cooperate only in so far as the book would provide a short and superficial view of Sylvia’s life, based mainly on reminiscences of the “right people.” He declared his intention to thwart any full scale, modern biography, the kind that inevitably proved reductive, he assured Aurelia and Warren when he wrote to them in March of 1966. Although Ames labored for several years on the biography, she gave it up in 1974, saying much later in an interview that it “became increasingly difficult for me to do this, as other biographers have found out. And I finally decided for the sake of my own sanity and my family that it was better to pay back the advance to Harper’s. I always felt it was a wise decision.” Her “Notes Toward a Biography,” which appeared in Tri-Quarterly 7 in 1966, reads like a work of Victorian circumspection. Sylvia’s last year is described as “difficult,” and Ames does not even mention the separation from Hughes, saying only that Plath moved to London, and that “despite the care of a doctor and prescribed sedatives, she was unable to cope.”
Hughes contributed biographical notes to the same Tri-Quarterly issue, excusing himself to Aurelia on 19 May 1966 by saying Sylvia had already become a “literary legend”—without assessing his own part in making her so. He rated her far ahead of Robert Lowell and even better than Hughes’s touchstone, Emily Dickinson. His fervor belied his disclaimer that he did not want to portray himself as the “high priest of her mysteries.” But that, of course, is exactly what he had done by claiming total control not only over her work, but also over the manner in which her life should be revered.
After Sylvia had been given demeaning and malicious treatment in Time, Hughes commiserated with Aurelia in a 13 July 1966. The magazine’s 10 June issue reviewed Ariel, focusing on “Daddy,” printing it in full, and labeling it an example of Plath’s style, as “brutal as a truncheon.” The poem was “merely the first jet of flame from a literary dragon who in the last months of her life breathed a living river of bale across the literary landscape.” Leave it to Time to come up with “bale,” the archaic meaning of which is associated with misery, woe, misfortune, evil, and harm. In Britain, Ariel had sold fifteen thousand copies in ten months, figures often associated with a bestselling novel, Time reported.
The remorse Hughes suffered over his part in Sylvia’s suicide was now overshadowed by his outrage over her posthumous denudation. He regretted publishing Ariel in the United States—although how he could square his misgivings with his desire to promote her greatness is baffling, especially since he jiggered publication of the book with Robert Lowell’s attention-getting introduction. Hughes deplored the too easy equation between Plath’s poems and her suicide. Indeed, the poems had “cured” her, he argued.
In December, Aurelia wrote to Elinor Epstein, thanking her for publishing a memoir that honored her friendship with Sylvia without disclosing the intimacies they shared. Epstein’s anodyne memoir, emphasizing what a cheery person Sylvia was, only served to launch a spate of reminiscences, pro and con Plath. Already, on 3 December 1966, Aurelia was writing to Epstein, “I am so sick of the ‘legend,’ the ‘image.’”
Even as Hughes indulged himself in degrading the efforts of anyone—other than himself—who dared to depict Sylvia Plath, he was replicating the very domestic disarray that had contributed to her demise. A disheartened Assia Wevill began to conclude that not only could she never compete with the legend of Sylvia Plath, she could not even secure Hughes’s commitment to find a permanent home she could call her own. Instead, she coped with a series of makeshift domiciles, beginning with the Fitzroy Road flat, then Court Green, followed by a brief period in Ireland—and then back to Court Green to confront the hostility of Hughes’s parents, installed there as caretakers whenever Ted’s marauding sensibility sent him off to the city and other locales that welcomed this controversial celebrity poet. By the end of the year, Assia was back in London with Shura, brooding over what to do about Hughes’s broken promises.
To Daniel Weissbort in December 1966 Hughes revealed the mocking side of himself that revolted Sylvia Plath: first the bracing tonic of distraction-free country life, then the momentary sense of equilibrium it engendered, and then the flight to the city to “get the family lice combed out of you.” Plath understood the need to be off to London—she experienced the need herself—but to couch that need in such loathing, and to revel in dispatching the domesticity she treasured enraged her, especially since Hughes could turn from pliant to disdainful in a trice. Much has been written about Plath’s mercurial moods, but Hughes in his own way could cut her a new one.
On 25 May 1968, Olywn wrote to Aurelia broaching the idea of publishing The Bell Jar in the United States—even though, as Olwyn admitted in her letter, Ted had told her that Aurelia was adamantly against such publication. Think how much more money a novel would bring in for the children’s benefit than the poetry would, Olwyn argued. Aurelia’s response, which she decided not to send to Olwyn, was a terse rebuttal: “Surely the children will respect their father, when they are grown, for having refused to make money for them at such a price to their mother’s people!”
Olwyn persisted for the next two years, writing a series of letters Aurelia later deposited in her daughter’s Smith College archive. On 2 July, Olwyn argued against exaggerated fears of publicity over publication of The Bell Jar. No one would care much about the real-life figures Sylvia had turned into her characters. Sylvia herself was disappointed that Knopf had not wanted to publish the novel. And as a capper, Olwyn suggested Aurelia was depriving Sylvia of her place in “our literary heritage.” A skeptical, infuriated Aurelia annotated this letter, noting what a ruckus “Daddy” had caused. She wrote Olwyn a week later that she had no idea of the “cupidity” of the American press and motion picture industry, which would only be interested in the sensationalistic aspects of The Bell Jar and Sylvia’s suicide. Aurelia had obtained legal advice, which only confirmed her concerns. In an unsent note, dated 29 December, Aurelia let Olwyn have it: Aurelia was not only expected to suffer the publication of the novel, she was supposed to “sanction it!” Olwyn backed off, temporarily, even as she cited the opinions of writers like Alan Sillitoe, who deemed the novel a distinguished work. Olwyn’s subsequent letters to an obdurate Aurelia asserted that the estate could control publicity about Sylvia by funneling all queries about her life to Lois Ames—who became, in effect, not merely the authorized, but also the proprietary biographer.