Ted Hughes and Assia Wevill (Couple)

Assia Wevill Hook up 1964, Live together (1966 - 25 March 1969) her death 1 child Alexandra Tatiana Eloise Wevill (Shura) (3 March 1965 - 25 March 1969)

In 1961, poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath rented their flat in Chalcot Square, Primrose Hill, London to Assia and David Wevill, and took up residence at North Tawton, Devon. Hughes was immediately struck with Assia, as she was with him. He would later write:

We didn`t find her - she found us.

She sniffed us out.

She sat there

Slightly filthy with erotic mystery.

I saw the dreamer in her

Had fallen in love with me and she did not know it.

That moment the dreamer in me

Fell in love with her, and I soon knew it.

Sylvia Plath noted their chemistry. Soon after, Ted and Assia began an affair. At the time of Plath`s suicide, Assia was pregnant with Hughes` child, but she terminated the pregnancy soon after. The actual relationship, who instigated it, and its circumstances have been hotly debated for many years.[1]

Hughes moved her into Court Green (the Mid-Devon home that he had bought with Plath), where Assia helped to care for Hughes` and Plath`s two children, Frieda and Nicholas. Assia was reportedly haunted by Plath`s memory; she even began using things that had once belonged to Plath [2]. In a biography of Assia, Lover of Unreason, the authors maintain that she used Plath`s items not out of obsession, but rather for the sake of practicality as she was maintaining a household for Hughes and his children. On March 3, 1965 at age 37, Assia gave birth to Alexandra Tatiana Elise, nicknamed "Shura", while still married to David Wevill.

However, being quite ostracized from her lover`s friends and family, and eclipsed by the figure of Plath in public (and private) life, she began becoming anxious and suspicious of Hughes` infidelity, which was real enough. He began affairs with Brenda Hedden, a married acquaintance who frequented their home, and Carol Orchard, a nurse twenty years his junior whom he married in 1970. Assia`s relationship with Hughes was also fraught with complexities, as shown by a collection of his letters to her that have been acquired by Emory University [3]. She was continually distraught at his seeming reluctance to commit to marrying and setting up a home with her while treating her as a "housekeeper." Most of Hughes` friends indicate that while he never publicly claimed Shura as his daughter, his sister Olwyn said that he did believe the child was his.

[edytuj]

Death

On March 23, 1969, Assia Wevill murdered her daughter Shura, and took her own life in a manner that closely echoed Plath`s suicide. Dragging a mattress into the kitchen, Assia sealed the door and window. She then lay her child down on the mattress and dissolved some sleeping pills for herself in a glass of whisky. Taking the pills, she turned on the gas stove, and lay down next to her daughter.