Bookended by the suicides of his two wives and the murder of his daughter, the 1960s were a disastrous succession of years for Ted Hughes. The seventies proved kinder to Hughes; he married Carol Orchard and found refuge cultivating a small farm in Devonshire. In this letter to his brother Gerald, a cattle rancher in Australia, Hughes mainly talks shop, lamenting the economic plight of local farmers (inflation in Great Britain that year was at 34%) and enthusing about the acquisition of a new bull.
To Gerald and Joan Hughes and Family
25 November, 1974
Dear Gerald & Joan & all—
How are you all after these many months? Mysterious silences will insist on descending. The final realization that you never would come & live over here was probably what knocked me out—it was a big station in my life’s journey to realize the emptiness of that dream. Part of the general stripping away of everything, lately drastic.
However, as a soft-brained astrologer, I guess you’ve been having a bad time in the way of illusions. I suppose my silence has been part of a bigger design.
The farm, you’ll be amused to hear, is still afloat—which is a miracle, considering the numbers of farmers going bankrupt, selling up, blowing their brains out. We’re overloaded with beasts—there hasn’t been a moment this last year when they were worth selling. So my hope of unloading most of our commonplace stuff, and getting a few classy cows to match the phenomenal bull we chanced to get hold of, has to be deferred. This bull is my best purchase ever—I’ve never enjoyed owning anything 1/10 as much. I really love him. Carol carries photographs of him, which we display at every opportunity. It isn’t just his incredible size & beauty—he has a strange, sweet nature, in every respect like an unusual person. He makes our cows seem like a pile of real rubbish.
Visited the Queen on Thursday. Head a nice talk. She surprised me—very lively & nimble, small, immediately likeable. She gave me a 3 oz gold medal for writing poetry. John Betjeman (poet laureate) led me in. Carol meanwhile entertained the Keeper of the Privy Purse.
Well, it’s been the wettest year in centuries. Hay is £80 a ton—but unobtainable (last year £30). Animals starving all over the place—everybody slaughtering everything. And now this winter is already wetter than last.
The great technological folly is having its bluff well & truly called. Every day it’s clearer—the Red Indians were the last sane human beings. I’m coming to Australia in March 76 with Carol.
Love
Ted
[Marginal addition: I’m sending off the knives at last—blame them.]
From Letters of Ted Hughes. Edited by Christopher Reid. New York: FSG, 2008.
FURTHER READING
An article addressing Ted Hughes’s reputation as an environmentalist.
A brief overview of Ted and Gerald’s relationship.