BOOKS AND CULTURE: The little-known Connemara interlude in Ted Hughes’s life

By Arminta Wallace

Think of the poet Ted Hughes, and what images come to mind? The English countryside and its wildlife, perhaps. The death from suicide of his wife Sylvia Plath, almost certainly. What probably won’t flash into your head is a picture of the wild and wonderful coastline of Connemara.

But the Yorkshire-born poet had a substantial Connemara connection, and it’s the subject of a short play, Doonreagan.

Three years after Plath’s death, Hughes and his new partner, Assia Wevill, rented a house near Cashel, Co Galway, with their three children. The plan was to build a new life together, far from the expectations – and condemnations – of the London literary scene.

**Tara Breathnach, who plays Assia Wevill, and Daniel Simpson as Hughes**

**Doonreagan House, now owned by playwright Ann Henning Jocelyn**

Hughes’s response to the open spaces of Connemara was ecstatic. It was at Doonreagan that he began work on his epic series Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow, the first poetry he had written following Plath’s death.

For Daniel Simpson, who created the role of Hughes in London last year and now reprises it for an Irish tour, the landscape plays a central role in the drama.

“There were all kinds of complicating factors and pressures going on in his life,” says the actor. “Not least the persecution that he was suffering from the ever- strengthening feminist movement at the time. They blamed him for Sylvia’s suicide.

“After an extraordinary period of writer’s block, he more or less fled, really; not just to Ireland, but to Connemara, and then to Doonreagan within Connemara.

“As a Yorkshireman, the natural world was so important to him when he was growing up and fed into just about everything he did in terms of his work. And I think the natural world, being so raw here, just allowed him to reconnect and emerge again.”

Wevill, a city girl of Middle Eastern origins who had built a successful career in the advertising business, wasn’t so sure. “It’s awfully unsheltered,” her character says of the house early in the play; a reaction that will strike a chord with anybody who has attempted to unpack a picnic on a windy day in the west.

The beauty and tranquillity of Cashel Bay eventually won her around. But there was to be no happy ending for Wevill, played in this production by Tara Breathnach. Three years after the events depicted in Doonreagan,

Wevill would take her own life, exactly as Plath had done.

And unlike Plath, who went to extraordinary lengths to protect her children, Wevill also killed her daughter Shura.

For author and director Ann Henning Jocelyn, the tragedies that swirl at the centre of this story come very close to home. With her husband, the 10th earl of Roden, the Swedish author and playwright is the owner of Doonreagan House.

When Jocelyn discovered, quite by chance, that the poet had rented the property in the 1960s, she began to read everything she could find about the little-known interlude in Hughes’s tempestuous life.

Doonreagan isn’t particularly kind to Hughes, a notorious womaniser who had left Plath to live with Wevill. Within a year of Wevill’s death he was married again, to a nurse 20 years his junior; and there were many affairs along the way.

Such behaviour makes Hughes easy to dislike. Still, after an in-depth study of the poet’s life and work, Simpson is reluctant to condemn the poet out of hand.

“There’s no shying away from the fact that women played a hugely important part in Ted’s life,” he says. “He needed women, and he made sure that women were always available to him. For whatever reason, that was a big part of who he was.

“You often hear examples of great creative figures who have quite troubled domestic lives or private lives – something just has to give. Ted was a huge and complex character.

“After Sylvia died, Ted came in for this great collective condemnation,” he says. “But what people didn’t realise was that Sylvia had made a number of attempts on her life. Way before she even met Ted, she had these terrible mental health problems that unfortunately ran in her family. So it’s just too easy, too neat to say that Ted had this extramarital affair and that caused her suicide.

“With Assia’s death, it’s much more difficult because Ted never spoke about what happened. So to get at the truth of what he felt about it is really tricky.

“We can never quite know what goes on within people’s private lives, though we can get some sense of it from what both of them wrote at the time, and that’s what the play explores. Their time in Connemara was one of their happiest periods, and Ted was desperate to stay.”

Hughes hoped to buy Doonreagan when the lease expired. But the house was sold suddenly, and he and Wevill had to return to London.

“He really wanted to settle in Ireland,” Simpson says. “So if circumstances had been different they would have stayed. And history would have been very, very different for them both.”

Before moving into Dunreagan Hughs and Plath had stayed at the home of poet Richard Murphy on the pier at Cleggan, where the ferry leaves for the island of Inishbofin. They were well received there and appeared to be happy before moving into a home of their own.

Cleggan fishing boats at the pier by Bill

The poet Richard Murphy with whom Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath lives for a time before moving into the house at Dunreagan in Connemara.

Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes’ marriage on June 16, 1956, marked a significant event in the literary world, set against the backdrop of Bloomsday, a celebration of James Joyce’s Ulysses. This intimate ceremony, held at St. George the Martyr in Holborn, London, was a reflection of their deep and immediate connection.

The couple had met just four months earlier, in February 1956, at a party in Cambridge. Despite the swift nature of their relationship, Plath described her marriage to Hughes with exuberance and joy, as captured in a letter to her brother, Warren. Plath, often known for her passionate and complex emotions, embraced her new identity as “Mrs. Sylvia Hughes,” with excitement, albeit with a hint of the personal struggles that would later unfold.

The marriage, which began with great promise, would span just six years and four months, ending with Plath’s tragic death in February 1963.

In the years following their marriage, both Plath and Hughes were marked by personal and creative growth. Hughes, an accomplished poet in his own right, gained international recognition, while Plath’s poetry flourished, particularly with the publication of Ariel, posthumously in 1965. The couple’s life together, however, was far from stable.

Despite their early passion and mutual admiration, their relationship suffered from increasing strains, exacerbated by Hughes’ infidelity and Plath’s ongoing struggles with mental health. By October 1962, the couple had separated, although they never divorced. Despite Hughes later claiming that they were on the verge of reconciliation, the rift between them was likely heading toward permanent dissolution. Plath’s writings during this period, particularly in her journals and letters, reflect her emotional turmoil, contributing to the hauntingly beautiful yet anguished poetry she is now renowned for.

Their marriage, while brief, had a profound impact on both of their careers. Plath’s poetic voice, largely shaped by her relationship with Hughes, continues to resonate with readers worldwide. The anniversary of their marriage on June 16 is a reminder of both the passion and pain that defined their union. Their shared legacy in the literary world remains, as Plath’s work, often exploring themes of identity, loss, and mental anguish, continues to be celebrated decades later.

The photograph of them together, below, taken in September 1956, further encapsulates a time when their lives were intertwined, yet foreshadowed the complexities that would unfold in the years to come.