Why should ageing mean stepping out of the spotlight?
“I had no fear all my life, but I’ve not had the opportunity and I’ve never thought about it for years. And then it was meeting this person on my right…”
– Elizabeth (Liz) Hicklin
This is a conversation with Jacinta Parsons and Elizabeth (Liz) Hicklin, two women from two different generations, who are both doing wonderful things to challenge and shift norms, perceptions and ideas around ageing in Australia. Now, they’re coming together to bring us a one-woman theatre show – Sylvia Plath Stole My Boyfriend, with Liz, at 95, stepping onto the stage to tell her story – starting decades ago when she fell in love with poet Ted Hughes. As she takes to the stage, Liz reminds us all that it’s never too late for a new chapter.
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Liz:
Gosh. It’s my life all over again. I just happened to wax eloquent to Jacinta one day and she took it on board. She just ran with it. I was talking to her about how I met this young man in Cambridge. I was a nurse, he was an undergrad, and he was a poet. And he just led me into literature. I was, you know, just a girl bent on boys and laughter, they say. And he caught me in midair.
He was so funny, clever, charismatic, handsome and we had this marvelous time. And then my course ended and so did his. And I went to Canada where my brothers had emigrated just for a holiday. I did receive a couple of letters from Ted and then nothing.
I was there a few months and I met a girl who said, I’m going to Australia. What about coming? My God, Australia. People went and never came back. But I boarded a boat in Vancouver and ended up in Sydney.
And then it was 1956 and the Olympic Games were on. So we came to Melbourne and I was a waitress at the Olympics and got a job as a nurse, but I was still pining for Ted. And so I sent a Christmas card as one would. And I got this letter from his mother. I don’t think you know, dear, but Ted married Sylvia Plath, a Fulbright scholar, and they’re on a lecture tour of America. He won the best book of poetry of the year. I was very pleased for him, but oh dear, it broke my heart. And I cried for three days in a little bedsit in Elwood.
But his mother said, do go and see Gerald, my other son, who lives in Melbourne.
So I did and struck up a lovely friendship with him and his wife. And I got married and all the rest of it, the catastrophe as it is, and Gerald kept me informed about everything, how they’d bought a farmhouse in Devon with a thatched roof and were picking daffodils. I was green with envy.
Gerald one day came and said, what a good job you didn’t marry my brother. Things had got pretty bad between the two poets. By this time they had a toddler and a baby. And they’d split up. Sylvia was a very sort of powerful woman. Clever poet.
And she took her own life, as everybody knows.
I did see Ted again. I dreamt of the day I’d see him. I had one little girl and I wanted to show my mother in England. So we boarded ships very cheaply to Europe. But I found out I was pregnant.
So I went anyway with one and a half babies. When I was in Buxton I decided to ring Mrs Hughes, which I did ’cause I’d stayed there quite often and we really got on well. And she said, Ted and his new lady are travelling up from Devon today to Yorkshire and they go through Buxton where we lived. She said, I’ll tell him, he might call in. Sure enough he did.
And he was with his new lady, a beautiful woman. And I felt very colonial. She was sort of London Chevy chic. And I wanted to stroke Ted’s Arm, you know. I did, but I didn’t.
And he wanted me to go home with them for the weekend. I couldn’t leave my toddler with mum. She was too old to chase after a little girl. So I didn’t go. I’ve always regretted that for the rest of my life.
But I mean I was eight months pregnant. Anyway, I never saw Ted again, but I thought about him. But it really gets hidden in life, doesn’t it?
And I didn’t have much time all those years for poetry. But he did come to the Adelaide Festival. And I was chucking kangaroo meat on the scales. And he was on the radio being interviewed and they were flirting, you could tell. And my god, I felt absolutely drained. What have I done with my life?
Anyway, I don’t know if I’d been a different person had I… I mean the marriage wouldn’t have lasted. He was just too, too charismatic. By this time he was becoming famous.
And he was invited to talk all over the place. I mean, I’d have been a groupie, even if I’d married. So I can understand why he had so many girlfriends.
Anna:
It’s interesting because I think all of us live a life that is just one life of many possible lives, you know. But it’s interesting hearing you talk about how many times this other possible life has woven back into the one you’re living and reminded you of these what could have been sort of moments.
And I’m also struck by the fact that ultimately you have lived this life that now finds you on the stage for the first time at ninety-three doing a stand-up comedy show and ninety-five at the Melbourne Fringe Festival. It shouldn’t be so remarkable to us, but it is, you know, in the culture that we have around ageing, for people to be really discovering these new parts of themselves and putting themselves out there in this way for the first time at the age that you are.
And I’m so curious about where has that come from for you? What in you has made you want to do that?
Liz:
My father was a Methodist lay preacher. So we were sent to elocution and when we had visitors we had to stand in the corner and recite. So I had no fear all my life, but I’ve not had the opportunity. And then it was meeting this person on my right *points to Jacinta.*
Because I’ve been waxing eloquent to Jacinta about my time in Yorkshire on the moors. She said, I’ve got to go. And she did and took a cameraman and she lived all my moments. And she relayed it to me online. It was marvelous. And I’m there in that village again.
And because Ted introduced me to poetry, all my life it’s been there. But I normally write funny poems. I’m not very, you know, babbling brook stuff, eloquent. It’s not in me. I’m pragmatic.
Jacinta:
I’m just interjecting because I’ve been a recipient of your work, particularly the way that you use your language when you describe things. It is unbelievably poetic and beautiful. Just inside you is this poet.
Liz:
Well, I wasn’t aware of that. I just am, as Sylvia would say, I am. We are what we are.
Anna:
It strikes me that there just must be so much value in being able to really look back over a life and reflect. And what’s interesting to me is how interested other people are in it too.
Jacinta:
I think it makes a lot of sense. You know, even when I was putting out A Wisdom of Age, the book where elders, seventy, eighty and ninety talked about their lives, I had so many young women that would say, I want that book.
So I think there’s a huge appetite for it. So putting something on a mainstream festival like Melbourne Fringe Festival and putting it up there as a piece of theatre, regardless of any other aspect of it, people are excited, like really excited about this amazing story. But also you as a performer at ninety-five Liz, I think it’s really fascinating and wonderful, and people want to be part of that.
Anna:
I think the world needs more of this. More people actually standing up and saying, this is what life’s been and this is what I’ve taken from it. And Jacinta, I know this is something that has captured your imagination and sent you off to the other side of the world. I’d love to hear why this matters so much to you.
Jacinta:
I reckon it’s been really organic, like our friendship, our working together, all the things that we’ve done.
And so I think what happened with this whole me traveling back to the UK, I was just talking to Lizzie about that because I was heading overseas to do some other things. And I was like, well while I’m there, why don’t I go back to that town because I’m not far from it. Maybe I’ll go there and put you on the phone and show you.
Then I woke up on the Monday before I left and I was like, we have to document this. I would never have done any of this without that opportunity of being able to go and live through your eyes. So it was an incredible opportunity. But also, the information and the memory that you have and your poetry around describing it. I was thinking about the value of it historically as well. But it’s just sort of moving and shifting and becoming what it is. And it’s absolutely changed me, I reckon. Because it started out where I was your manager and kind of supporting you to get work.
This has been really quite challenging for us, you know. Where we’ve been collaborating, so it’s been another really big part of it, actually working out how to be creative together. And when we get emotional, which we do, like how we navigate that as people who are working together as much as our friendship.
But also what’s been conflicting for me, is that like I’ve got experience in theatre and writing and all the community that we’re kind of being introduced to are my world. And so I’ve been really thoughtful about how do we make sure you feel as equal to it and I’m not sure that you do.
Liz:
I don’t feel a big ego in it. Am I supposed to? I feel as though I’m in it.
Jacinta:
Yeah. But it’s because what it’s got now is an overlay that I put in there about ageing.
Liz:
It’s quite different because it’s modern. I couldn’t have thought of it. I did a one man show, didn’t have anything extraordinary, had a bit of technology. But this is modern. You’ve dragged me.
Jacinta:
I’ve dragged you, kicking and screaming. But yeah, what we primarily really want to do is put on a great piece of theatre that people will walk away from and have some experience of thought, change, inspiration maybe, even though you’re not inspiring. Like we make a point of saying, just ’cause I wake up every day for ninety five years, you know.
Liz:
I can’t help it, being here. Because I am.
Jacinta:
So that was kind of where I’ve pushed you. Like we’ve really had to kind of talk about it. But as a creative process with another creative human, it’s been amazing for us.
Liz:
And do you know what? It’s so marvelous to me to be in this world. I’m learning about today’s world. You know, the Uber driver asked me what would make him a good husband. Can you imagine in my day? Husbands just were. They didn’t care if they were good or bad or what they were.
Anna:
I’m thinking about something you said to me before Liz, which was you don’t know how you’re gonna go back and sit in the retirement village again after all of this. I can imagine that there are plenty of people in that environment who are not pursuing these new experiences in the way that you are. What’s that like?
Liz:
I’m dreading it. They think I’m odd. She’s up herself, you know. I can’t help it. Being up myself. Because I am.
Jacinta:
But you know what’s interesting, that generation difference. Someone in my age group or younger or even a little bit older might have a very different perspective because we’ve really thought about how much we were sort of made to feel like we should be ashamed if we wanna stand on stage. And so you saying that is really interesting ’cause that’s not what this world is. This world is excited for you to stand in the spotlight, you know. And I think it’s fascinating, isn’t it? ‘Cause that would have held you back as well. Not only just the fact that you were, you know, a mother and working really, really hard. Also those perceptions of you being a big show off.
Liz:
I think that life swallows you up for so many years if you’re a woman. And you have to give into it in a way. But today’s woman doesn’t give into it. She’s a woman anyway, and it’s all because of the pill, the most important invention in my lifetime, completely changed society.
Jacinta:
You’ve had really extraordinary experiences as a woman in this world, through the fifties and sixties and seventies and all the things that you did.
Liz:
Yeah, well I’ve had all the experiences that you can possibly go through. Birth, marriage, death, prison. I’ve not been to prison, but my daughter was. What would my Methodist lay preacher dad think about that? I was glad I was across the other side of the world. But this is drugs. This is society now.
Anna:
And so often I think as a society we look at older people and we forget that so many of these things have been encountered and navigated and worked through over time. And there is just so much to be gained for people who are going through those challenges in life, to actually be more in the presence of people who have gone through them and then lived another ten, twenty, thirty years beyond.
Jacinta:
The fact that we see you at ninety-five, still somebody who is incredibly you know, there’s pain still present, right? But the fact that you’re up there for people who are going through hard times, they’re like, okay, like it changes, it moves, there’s still a life, it might not ever be the same. I think just you being there, I think is really interesting for us to think about.
Liz:
Yeah, well. What a life. Everyone has a story. And I’m very grateful to Jacinta for this. I’ve never said that before. But I am.
Jacinta:
She’s shown me a world that I would never have seen, helped me think about things, challenged me, drove me crazy, and the same for you, like me bringing you into the world that you hadn’t been in before. It’s the best, you know.
Liz:
How did I deserve to live my life again?
