Transcript:

Court Green

North Tawton

Devonshire, England

September 4, 1962

 

Dear Doctor Beuscher,

I’d be awfully grateful just to have a postcard from you saying you think any paid letter sessions between us are impractical or unhelpful or whatever, but something final. Believe me, that would be a relief. It is the feeling of writing into a void that never answers, or may at any moment answer, that is difficult. I’d rather just have you say “shut up” than feel my words dangling in space.

I thought for a time I would just give Ted his head, and could laugh at the lot of it and be my own woman. Any kind of caution or limit makes him murderous. But what he does is go each week to London, spend lots of money on himself, then come home (why does he come home?) and lay into us: this is a Prision, I am an lnstitution, the children should never have been born . He may need a flogging post but I’m damned if I ‘m going to be I started having blackouts last week & made the mistake of asking him to put off his weekly spree a day and help me, as I also had two sick guests. He said I was blackmailing him with my health, so I quickly drove him to the train. When he came back I had galloping influenza, chills & fever of 103 nonstop for 3 days, a real experience, very British, which my doctor assured me there was no medical aid for. Why he had nursed families of 9 all with influenza, and they just lay about and died for a week until one of them could crawl up & brew tea. I see now I can’t convince Ted I can change or have changed. His lies are incredible & continuous—daily I find out his accounts of meeting people in London, dining, etc. are all made up. I think this may be because he unconsciously so resents my possessing any part of his life he cant bear to tell about even small things truly because I thus possess the knowledge of them. But I am so weak with this bloody influenza, and the prospect of being forbidden ever to go to a play, party, dinner, movie or anything with him is so mean, I think the only thing that may dent into his head I do not honestly want to eat him is for me to get a legal separation. The idea of no husband, 2 babies, a 15 room house & 26 acres is a grim one, but I am no martyr & I want my health back & am sick of being called a possessive institution, e.g. an old womb. I have an awful lot to distract me, and a legal separation may just set Ted whirling into this wonderful wonderful world where there are only tarts and no wives and only abortions and no babies and only hotels and no homes. Well bless him. Your last letter was a big help, but I think Ted is trying to drive me by his behavior week by week to separate, he hasn’t quite got the guts to do it all by himself, so I shall have to get a lawyer & help him.

The whole influenza business has made me furious. I got it from those bloody guests who were to help me with the babies in exchange for room & board, & of course it looked like blackmail. I begged the doctor to get me a home-help so Ted could go off freely, but instead he sonorously talked to him of manly responsibilities, the old red flag to the old bull. Now I am having Ted try & get a nanny down from London for a week or two. Then I shall try to get this cottage on our property made livable & try to get a full-time nanny. Then I shall write novels, learn to ride a horse, which I am just doing, and try to do more stuff for the radio & take a day a week in London for plays, movies, art shows & shopping. That’s half a year away, but it keeps me going. And I am a hell of a success with poppies, nasturtiums & sunflowers. I’ve got an absolute octopus of nasturtiums crawling across the court. And bees. I’ve just bottled 12 jars of my own honey; Next year it should be a hundred. Then maybe I’ll go into business.

I wish to hell I could have a few talks with you. Nobody else is any good to me, I’m sick of preamble. That’s why I thought if I paid for a couple of letters I might start going ahead instead of in circles. But please just say it won’t work or you’ve a full schedule or something. I would be glad of that definitiveness.

 

With love,

Sylvia