Once Bishop got family and world affairs tended to, she
shifted gears quickly in her letter of 22 May 1960, revealing that she did in
fact have some news to tell her aunt.. She announced that “yesterday we had a
lot of people to tea — in a rain storm.” The preceding week had been “clear and
beautiful,” which must have prompted the plan to have folks in, but the needed
“nice week-end” did not materialize, and Bishop somberly noted, “it looks as if
it would pour all day today, too.”
Bishop’s reason for mentioning the gathering was to tell
Grace about “one couple … named ‘Featherstone’ — don’t you love that name?”*
Bishop noted that the husband was English and the wife an American and
explained: “we don’t know them at all, but she is the one who gave us the
Siamese cat and so I think they came to see how we were treating him.” Then
Bishop engaged in a quick character sketch: “Mrs. F has inuumerable [sic] cats; she is very very shy, with
big eyes.” Bishop herself had fetched the cat, “Suzuki,” going to their home,
“a huge neglected old house that smelt very much of cat.” Engaging in a bit of
stereotype-hyperbole, perhaps, Bishop then noted, “she really seemed like a
witch.”
As for “Mr. F,” Bishop revealed that he didn’t “care much
for all the cats,” and was “apt to whisper to the guests, ‘wouldn’t you like a
cat?’”
This background segued into a brief character sketch of
Suzuki, who, according to Bishop was “a darling — much brighter than the other
two,” which immediately prompted the next statement: “Our breakfasts are a
mess.” Bishop explained again: “I have a tray at seven o’clock and Lota comes
in my room to have breakfast, too.” Immediately on her heels arrived the cats:
“what with Lota and three cats all into the tray simultaneously,” with Suzuki
talking “all the time, too — something is always getting upset or somebody’s
nose is always getting burned.” Well, I am trying to imagine this scene with
its talking, upsetting and burning! Once the hubbub subsided, Bishop noted,
“then they all bathe each other madly (Lota and I don’t!) and then go to sleep
in a heap.”
From the Featherstones to Suzuki to breakfast mayhem, Bishop
then made another leap: to marmalade, of course. “This is marmalade season,” she
declared. She’d already sent Grace some recipes for marmalade, and now Bishop
made a modest boast: “I’m really getting pretty good at it.” (One wonders if
the cook was learning, too.) She reported that she had made “2 dozen jars” and
was still working on “a batch of tangerine marmalade — we have loads of
tangerines, mostly too sour to eat, but they make wonderful marmalade — jells
very quickly and a lovely bright orange.” Remembering that her cousin would be
arriving in the near future, Bishop assured Grace, “I’ll give Elizabeth some to start her off!”
Just as family and world affairs were linked at the
beginning of this letter, so this intimate domestic news somehow triggered the
next big leap and announcement that involved some domestic news about Brazil itself.
The next paragraph began abruptly: “Brazil changed its capital lastmonth — or maybe you saw something about it in the paper?” Bishop explained how
the capital moved from Rio to “the new
city, Brazilia [sic].”
Bishop noted that Rio had become “a new state, the Estado do Guanabara
(that’s the name of the bay Rio’s on).” To
make matters more confusing, Bishop wrote that Samambaia/Petrópolis, where they
lived, was “still in the Estado do Rio
de Janeiro.” To offer Grace a point of comparison, she
noted: “As if we lived in Albany, New York, but the city of New York
was in Connecticut.
(My address is the same.)” Well, that clarifies it for me!?
(Images of Brasilia)
Bishop held some negative views of this big shift in Brazilian
geo-politics, though she did not editorialize in this letter. Rather, she made
another abrupt leap, perhaps one which obliquely reflected her unspoken opinion
that Brasilia was
wrong-headed: “Our new cook can’t cook anything except corn meal muffins
and mashed potatoes — she has mastered them.” Sadly, the cook had not mastered
broiling a steak or frying an egg, “which seems so much easier, to me.” (I
guess marmalade was out of the question!) Even so, they were putting up with
her because “her husband is a dream … works and polishes all day long and we
have never been so clean in our lives.”
Bishop had reached the end of her all over the place
epistle, several dense paragraphs filled with all manner of oddly related
subjects. These paragraphs took up the entire page, and not wanting to take up
another sheet (perhaps because she might again go, as Stephen Leacock once
wrote: “madly off in all directions”), she turned the page horizontal in her
typewriter and added to the left side: “How is Phyllis? Did she get my note? I
hope I’ll hear from you soon — if you see Aunt Mabel tell her I’m going to write — How is your
health? Your leg? With much love,” then in tiny holograph, “Elizabeth.”
Still not done, but without any more room to type out a
postscript, Bishop scribbled in the top left-hand corner: “Aunt F[lorence]
broke — or cracked a thigh-bone. She is in Worcester Memorial
Hospital — BELMONT St.
Maybe you could send her a card — The cousins are all so fed up with the poor
cranky old thing.” Nothing like using every inch of her stationary and getting
in another jab at poor Aunt F.
Only a couple of weeks passed before Bishop penned another
letter, 8 June, which will commence the next post.
*Note: A search of Featherstone shows that it is the name of
a town in Yorkshire, as well as a number of other places, and a winery in Ontario.
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