A Letter from Charlotte:

"Sylvia Plath
Comedy Hour"

This is an early letter, actually dated 1982, and Charlotte has yet to make her first of many visits to Minneapolis. She responds to my old address label which read “Pillar OF Virtue”. I can’t remember the issue concerning Tina, but obviously it was connected to age. She also comments upon an old classmate of mine’s dislike for Charlotte’s work… naturally in a very amusing fashion that was pure unadulterated Charlotte. Sylvia Plath being the kind of reading my old friend seemed much preferred. She also sidesteps a question about why she wrote under different names… I always suspected it had to do with $$$$$.

March 31, 1982

Dear Mr. Virtue.

May I call you Pillar? Your audacity is pardoned and you may fire epistles at will. Sorry about poor old Tina but perhaps Hilda Horsefall will be an inspiration to her. Perhaps she and I can get together sometime over a bottle of Geritol and quaver on about the good old days, while you youngsters gambol about our feet and fetch our shawls and spectacles for us.

The young lady on the Sylvia Plath Comedy Hour obviously has not grasped the deeper cosmic significance (did I spell that right?) of Rest You Merry and how much reality of the human existence does she need, for the cat’s sake? There is reality and reality and mine is the other kind. Let her mull that over for a while. I am reminded of that P.G. Wodehouse character who wrote the poem about “I walk the scabrous streets and think of dust.”

Perhaps I can plagiarize that line sometime, although I must admit that when I walk the scabrous streets (which in fact I don’t very often as I am not that kind of a girl) I am probably thinking about something else like whether I will ever be able to find my car again or what urgent and pressing errand I’m suppose to be on. I will try to think of dust and see if it broadens my understanding any.

Your offer of endless cups of tea and sweet cakes is tempting but you neglect to state whether I also get to pat the cat. If we can clarify this issue, we might be able to strike a deal. I have to go out to Denver in the fall sometime and while I realize Denver isn’t exactly in Minnesota you must remember that people from around Boston tend to lump anything west of Worcester into more or less the same category.

The reason I write books under more than one name is that my publishers talked me into it. Next question?

I meant to write a nice letter to Mr. Hatfield but wound up asking him f he was releated to my late and beloved Aunt Dora, Maybe we can settle that matter along with the cat. In the meantime I remain, believe me, Sir, yr. Resp’f’l & obdy. Svt.,

Carrie-Jacobs Bond

 


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