How Plath fell for ‘brilliant, rugged’ poet Hughes
A PREVIOUSLY unseen letter from Sylvia Plath, written weeks after her first encounter with Ted Hughes, reveals how she fell for the “brilliant, rugged Yorkshire poet”.
Plath wrote an aerogramme to Patricia O’Neil Pratson, an American friend, from Newnham College, Cambridge, informing her of the new man in her life.
The contents have remained private until now as it will be included in a new volume, The Letters of Sylvia Plath, published next week.
Plath met Hughes at a Cambridge party at the end of February 1956, and believed she would never see him again. But when she wrote to Pratson, in May 1956, they were planning to marry.
“Best news of all, and very new & secret, which I can’t resist sharing with you, is that next June I’ll be bringing home a brilliant, rugged Yorkshire poet by the name of Ted Hughes,” she wrote, inviting Pratson to the wedding: “I’d be so happy if you’d participate in this joyous celebration!”
She went on: “I fell in love with Ted’s poems before I met him, at a very bohemian party given for a new literary review. He is big, athletic with a voice that out-roars Dylan Thomas…”
Plath listed his many attributes, including his ability to tell stories “until the birds are struck dumb on the trees”.
She adds that he “has one pair of dungarees to his name, is utterly penniless, honest, dear and brilliant”.
In fact, the wedding was brought forward and Plath and Hughes married three weeks after the letter, on June 16 1956, at St George-the-Martyr in Queen Square, London. She kept the marriage secret from all but her closest family.