I
t has been some time (November 2019) since
my last LTAG post, which dealt with Bishop’s letter of 7 January 1963. That post
covered only half of the letter, left it hanging unfinished as other matters
distracted me. And we are already well into 2020! I hope now to return to these
letters and the first task is to finish Bishop’s 7 January missive.
Her 7 January letter was by way of a note
added to hers of 3 January, because she had in the interim heard from Grace,
who was in Florida, so Bishop wrote the addendum and posted both letters to
Hollywood, FL, where Bishop’s cousin Hazel Bulmer Snow lived. After an initial
update about her own happenings, Bishop cast about for something else to tell
her aunt and settled on “a silly dirty joke Lota’s nephew (aged 19) told us.”
The joke was about “a nun, and she was so pure, so pure, so pure.” This
saintly creature “never had an evil thought in her life.” When “she died and
went to heaven” she met St. Peter, who said, “You are so pure, sister, you have
to go up higher.” Up she went and met an “angel who said, ‘You are so pure,
Sister Maria Magdalena, you have to go up higher in Heaven’.” Up she went again
and “kept going higher and higher.” She finally reached “the very highest level
of Heaven,” where “the archangel said: ‘Sister Maria Magdalena, please!
You are too pure! Please say “ass” or you’ll go into orbit!’”
Grace had a famous sense of humour and
probably chuckled, though the devout Presbyterian might not have been so
impressed by such a Catholic joke. Even so, Bishop was clearly trying to
entertain her aunt.
Bishop’s addendum quickly began to wind
down and the final paragraph shifted back to Grace herself, who made the trip
to Florida by bus, prompting Bishop to say that she hoped Grace “got away
without too much trouble” and hoped the long journey wasn’t “too tiring.” Like
Bishop, Grace was not fond of flying, “I feel the same way,” Bishop declared.
But any mode of transportation comes with risk: “A friend of mine,” Bishop reported,
“once got snowed in on a bus to Florida,” something Bishop hoped “doesn’t
happen to you.” One wonders how Grace did it with her bad leg, sitting for
hours and hours and miles and miles. Probably Grace took a Greyhound bus, the
main interstate company serving the US in the early 1960s. Bishop had taken her
own long trips by bus. Out of one of them in 1946 came “The Moose,” which she
dedicated to Grace, perhaps not only for their shared encounters with moose,
but for their shared bus trips.
(A Greyhound bus from the 1960s.)
Bishop’s next concern was Miriam, who she hoped
was ‘better, too – poor infant.” And finally, she asked Grace to “Please give
my love and best wishes to Aunt Mabel and Hazel,” with whom Grace was staying. She
closed with a usual plea, “do write me.” And confirmed that she had received
her aunt’s “Christmas card,” which she thought “at first glance” was a picture
of Great Village, “I thought it had been taken there!” She realized, however,
that the steeple of the church “wasn’t quite right.” She thanked Grace again “for
the [cook] book,” which she had “already used,” as her 3 January letter noted,
a book that she would use “a lot more I know.” She signed off with her usual “Much
love” and a wish for “a healthy and cheerful 1963.”
A scribbled PS contained two seemingly
random family thoughts. First, she wondered if “Hazel & Norm (is it?)” were
“still living in the old house?” That is, Hazel and Norman Bowers, Grace’s stepson
and wife, who were indeed still living in the Bulmer family home. Hazel lived
there until 1996. Second, she reiterated that she thought “E[lizabeth Ross
Naudin] shd [sic] have named one of her daughters E!”
Considerably more time passed before Bishop’s
next 1963 letter, dated 18 March and written at Samambaia, but it was a fulsome
letter filled with family gossip. The next post will pick up the ongoing
narrative.
Click here to see Post 132.
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