Letters to Aunt Grace, Part 59: Family and world affairs

The next extant letter Bishop sent Grace is dated “May 22nd? — 1960.” It is nice to know that Bishop blurred her days and weeks sometimes, living up in the mountains. In any case, this letter was written two months after the previous one. It appears that there had been only a few exchanges in the interim and Bishop had lost track of the back and forth. She started off, “I’m not sure whether I owe you a letter or not but I am wondering where you are and how you are.” If she had not heard recently from Aunt Grace, she had heard from Aunt Mary, a letter informing her of the death of Mary’s husband, John Kenneth (Jack) Ross. Jack had died late in 1959, so there had been some delay in Bishop hearing this news.

Mary and Jack were married in June 1928 in Montréal. Bishop had met him at least once, when she visited her grandmother there in 1930 (Elizabeth Bulmer stayed with Mary for awhile after William Bulmer’s death; she herself dying in 1931). But direct contact with the Rosses after that was intermittent, if at all. [You can see a lovely photo of the young Mary and Jack Ross here.]

After “wondering” about Grace’s logistics, Bishop immediately confirmed to her aunt that she had received news of the loss, “I was awfully sad about Jack — yet perhaps it is better to die of something that is still pretty incurable like that, than of pneumonia or something that one thinks might have been cured.” The “that” was leukemia, as Bishop then observed, “I’ve known a couple of much younger people who died of luekemia  [sic].” Even so, Bishop knew little about the disease itself, “What does cause it, anyway? Do the doctors know?”

The news had come directly from Mary, “a remarkably calm-sounding letter.” This epistle had been written shortly after Jack’s death, but the long transit meant Bishop had to put herself back in time, “I imagine she wouldn’t feel really exhausted until a week or so later.” Mary must have indicated that Grace was with her, thus accounting, perhaps, for a delay in Grace herself writing to Bishop: “Perhaps you are still with her,” Bishop wondered, but she decided to send her letter to Great Village, knowing it would eventually reach her aunt (if Grace was still with Mary, Bishop assumed the letter would be forwarded because she noted, “If you are [still with Mary], give her my love.”)

Then Bishop declared, “I haven’t any news at all.” At least not compared to this sorrowful family news and the situation in the world: “In fact,” Bishop wrote, “all we can think about is world news.” May 1960 was an eventful, troubling month, with tensions between the US and Russia at a high level, prompting Bishop to “hope and pray for nothing to happen” — that is, nothing worse than what had already happened. On 1 May the Russians shot down a US plane which had crossed into its air space. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers survived the crash and was taken prisoner. The rhetoric of the time sounds mild compared to the rhetoric that gets spewed by politicians and fanatics on social media these days, but it was ominous enough.

(Gary Powers)

Bishop explained the origin of their information: “We have to go to town for the papers, but we listen to the news on the radio.” For Bishop, the latter was a bit frustrating because “they never give much … and usually the Portugese [sic] goes too fast for me to get it all.” As a result “Lot has to tell me afterwards what they said.”

Even so, they learned enough for Bishop to editorialize: “The U.S. certainly put its foot in it, didn’t it — and that damned Krutchev [sic] certainly took advantage of it.” In the face of this succinct and astute commentary, one can only say, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose.”

The next paragraph, for the next post, shifts to Bishop’s inner circle and reveals that she did actually have some news, of a domestic kind.

Click here to see Post 58.