Letters Home: Correspondence, 1950-1963

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When I started this I was not at all sure whether I wanted to read it. I liked The Bell Jar, but it could just have been the time I read it. I do not get her poetry. Cult of the personality stuff makes me uncomfortable. Doesn't she deserve to be laid to rest, anyway. Blah.

My Dearest Will, I feel I must write you again dear altho there is not much news to tell you. I wonder how you are getting on. I shall be so relieved to get a letter from you. I can't help feeling a bit anxious dear. I know how you must have felt darling when you did not get my letters for so long. Of course I know dear you will write as soon as ever you can, but the time seems so dull and weary without any news of you, if only this war was over dear and we were together again. It will be one day I suppose. Entre tanta aventura, conoció a muchos hombres, pero ninguno le hizo sentir verdadero amor, hasta que coincidió con Ted Hughes en una fiesta, un escritor y poeta como ella, de origen irlandés y escocés. En esta cuarta parte de la recopilación de su correspondencia no para de hablar de él a su madre, e incluso en ocasiones parece perder sus ideales de mujer independiente para convertirse en una mujer solícita y anulada, llegando incluso a casarse en secreto con él. Esta boda bien podía haber acabado con su beca de estudios, pero al final consiguió que no la rechazaran hasta terminar la carrera. The snow is fast disappearing now. I came across an article in a paper the other day about this district and it said that 14 or 15 years ago bears used to roam around hear [sic], but there seems to be nothing around now excepting the wild fowl, which are very numorous. I believe salmon are numerous at certain times of the year.But it’s too easy to lay his emotional contortions at his mother’s feet. He was deeply loved by her: a gift, however claustrophobic at times, that should have made relationships easier, not more difficult. “When I am in I want to be out, and when I am out I want to be in,” he writes to Eva from Belfast, of his faltering social life. And what social history is here. You can almost smell it. This is a realm, now entirely disappeared, in which Louis Armstrong plays Bridlington, every posh dinner begins with celery soup, and little girls still keep their bedclothes in nightdress cases, as Kitty once did. It’s like visiting another planet – a chilly one, where the immersion heater is on only very rarely. Finally, reading Matty’s letter to him, Yinrun says: “Dear Matty. It’s been great to watch your friendships with your housemates develop. Your humour, kindness and sensitivity has always been at the heart of everything you’ve done.”

AS the songwriter Paddy McAloon sang: “Once more the sound of crying is number one across the earth.”During the First World War, letter writing was the main form of communication between soldiers and their loved ones, helping to ease the pain of separation. ON November 14 we finally had news that Belfast Trust will take forward plans for a Northern Ireland Mother and Baby Unit (MBU). Those of us who have been campaigning for many years are delighted that things are moving on, but it’s a bitter-sweet delight. We know that women have died while we’ve been waiting, and we know that unless there is an interim solution, women will continue to suffer while we wait for funding to be allocated and for a unit to be built.