Box 1

Scope and Contents: Hughes provides an in-depth description of his and Sylvia Plath's return to England: "the perfect superhuman jungle, through which we have come" and the "two week ordeal of searching London for a flat" with the "baby so near." He credits "our saviors Bill & Dido [Merwin], & without them I don't know what we could have done." He describes how "Dido arranged for us to sign on with her doctor. He informed us that we were too late to get into any hospital--Sylvia would have to have the...

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Signed Christmas card "with lots of love from Sylvia, Ted + Frieda Hughes"

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Merwin praises her book on Béla Bartók, and assures her that she and Stephen are missed: "Don't think I haven't thought you + Steve. I wear your shawl to sleep in + so think of you night + morning with love + gratitude." She informs Agatha that "Bill is very well + working hard. He has bought a bicycle which he takes to pieces every few days + puts together again."

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Merwin informs them of her and W. S. Merwin's "intention to descend on The Hob next week end (Sat + Sunday March 18th + 19th). Personally I can't really believe it because I'm not yet altogether convinced that I'm even in New York. Bill says that you have angelically offered to give a party while we're there so that we may be reunited with as many of our old chums as possible."

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Merwin reflects on their "wonderful impromptu visit" with the Fassetts. "Just as if we'd never been away for however many years…. It made the whole dreary reading [?] worth it ten times over." She recounts that on their return "we drove into Canada just for the hell of it."

Scope and Contents: Merwin expresses how much he and Dido miss them and describes their hopes to return in "the fall of 1960." He explains why he turned down a Ford Foundation playwriting grant. "It would have been far worse than the Poets' Theater. I'm not so hipped on the theater anyway, any more, and am in no hurry to write another play." He states that "for the present I'm trying to finish up a new book of poems before the end of May, when I'm off for France." He apprises the Fassetts of several "radio...

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Merwin praises Agatha Fassett's book, The Naked Face of Genius: Béla Bartók's American Years (1958). He describes his farm in France at length and confides: "When I can't be at home in America, it's where I like to be." He informs Agatha that "plans for getting back home are shaping up" and that "the main difficulty is money."

Scope and Contents: Merwin jokingly turns down the Fassetts' offer of money: "I toled you once I toled you twise I do not want yore money." He informs them that "I am coming home next Fall…. Bar death or mortal illness to one or both of us I am coming home next Fall if I have to walk by way of the Pole." He discusses several forthcoming books and projects, including The Drunk in the Furnace, "a book of translations of Spanish ballads" and "a book of translations of the poems of Persius." He closes with: "Dido...

Scope and Contents: Merwin expresses his gratitude for Fassett's offer of lodging: "You are an angel to send an open invitation to me to stay with you. I'm quite overcome. And if I come to Boston I will certainly write you in plenty of time and see about taking you up on your offer." He confides that a trip to Boston depends "on two things--readings, only a few of which are actually scheduled (and none so far in or around Boston) and a research job, which may lead me to quite a few places, but not, I think, New...

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Merwin thanks Fassett for offering to arrange a reading for him in the Boston area: "You're an angel as always. Of course I'd love an engagement, or better still, several of them, in the Boston area-- B.U., Brandeis, I don't know." At the bottom of the letter, Fassett has jotted down a series of names and addresses: "Dave Ferry at Wellesley | J. V. Cunningham | Brandeis | Irving Howe | Chairman of the Dept. of English | B. U. | Monroe Engel."

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Merwin dedicates several pages to substantive regrets over spending so little time with them during their recent trip to Boston. He thanks the Fassetts for the party they threw them: "You were angelic to ask all those friends of ours."

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Merwin coordinates his schedule with Fassett: "The way things are now, we're to head for Worcester on the 26th. An evening reading there, and I'd hope to be driven into town to Chestnut Street afterwards. […] And then a reading at BU on the 27th."

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Sweeney states that he is "glad to hear that the Ed. O'Connor record is forthcoming" and expresses his "great sadness" at Marion Cummings' death. He responds to Fassett's question regarding any "loose ends" at the Poetry Room after his retirement that year and reminisces that "I look back on the years of our collabration (if I may, in a pure way, use such a war-stained word) as some of the happiest years of my Poetry Room work."

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In thanking Fassett for the shipment of several records, he states: "When occasionally I examine my conscience and my character I realize that one of my dominant frailties is selfishness.... Máire has often fiercely said to me 'You shouldn't ask a friend to do what you can do yourself.' You may imagine Máire's fierceness and the way I quail as I say, in a slinking way, 'But dearie, you don't understand, I like things to be done well and that's the way I can't do them.'"

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Sweeney shares several humorous medical sagas and illustrates them with caricatures.

Scope and Contents: Sweeney thanks Fassett for his gift of recordings by Virginia Woolf and George Bernard Shaw. "I well remember Virginia Woolf's interesting discourse and her accent but I had completely forgotten the G.B.S. theme and his accent which, for my ear, is a form of Dublin accent surviving in spite of all of his years in England. Strange how the way of speech one acquires in childhood or youth persists unless eroded by very long exposure to an alien mode. For example, Auden, although he can...

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Sweeney requests the forwarding of a tape copy of Robert A. Brooks' "Oedipus at Colonus" to the Classics Club.

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Sweeney praises Gerta Kennedy's Native Island and discusses arrangements for recording her.

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Correspondence regarding Harvard's 1959 recording of Isak Dinesen during her Ford Foundation-sponsored trip to the United States.

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Merwin reflects on his and Dana's recent visit to Boston, when both he and Steve introduced their new partners: "Certainly coming in the door was like coming home, some way, and that's all to do with both of you. I'm so happy that we met Kitty and that you both have met Dana."

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Merwin expresses continued thanks for their recent visit and "Dana's first sight of Boston -- the lovely house of a dear friend, and such an old friendship."

Scope and Contents: Merwin reminisces about their recent (1978) visit to the Fassetts: "Those days in Boston, in retrospect, had a lovely pace of their own, not altogether different from our pace through the Pompeii exhibit -- and now they seem to have been whipped away and colored and shaded and fed and filled in those rooms and associations at 24 Chestnut Street, and then I think of how all of those things are you both." He recounts "a fine drive back with Dan Wolfe, who's another very old friend--I knew him...

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Merwin confirms that they are in New York, but that they won't be able to visit Boston during this sojourn. "A month ago, we got as far into New England as Yale, where I read, but no further." He expresses that he is "so glad you like the new book, both of you. I'm happy to think of you reading it."

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Copy of comments written by Sweeney and delivered by Monroe Engel at the Memorial Service for Robert Lowell, at Harvard University. A recording of this service is available at http://id.lib.harvard.edu/aleph/002189079/catalog

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Sweeney thanks Fassett for "Cal's reading," mentions Conrad Aiken's forthcoming letters, and responds to his request for "Ted H's home address."