The Elizabeth Bishop Blog

HAPPY 111TH BIRTHDAY

ELIZABETH BISHOP!

We hope that like the Hobbits on Bilbo's eleventy-first birthday, you will be partying heartily, and that your fare will be rich, abundant, varied, and prolonged, eventually reaching that delightful stage known as "filling up the corners," when you will take a certain much-loved, well-worn volume down from the shelf, open it at random, and begin your rereading.  Many happy returns of the day!  May we have many merry meetings ahead!  And Dundee Cake, yes, Dundee Cake... Gammie's favourite...

"Now just one little moment, dear Sandra," remarks the Late and Much-Lamented Pernicious the Musquodoboit Harbour Farm Cat's faithful amanuensis and general factotum Barnstead on behalf of his dearly-departed Employer.  "Is that a candied cherry I spy along the edge of that cake in the photo?  Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. Allow me to pontificate for a moment on the subject (and an excellent one it is, too) of proper Dundee Cake... and in the course of my ranting (well, to be more precise, the Late and Much-Lamented Pernicious the Musquodoboit Harbour Farm Cat's ranting -- I am only his humble instrument, conveying but the general tenor of his rather more heated observations) allow me to take you to task as gently and genteelly as may be (no, not Janet Maybee, nor any other member of the currant -er- I mean current Board of Directors) for certain, certain -- well, shall we be generous and call them intemperate remarks you have allowed yourself in this forum with respect to the noble and entirely publicly-minded efforts of certain civic bodies in Scotland to obtain protected status for 'this traditional Scottish cake, a kind of signature for the country, [which] is in the midst of proprietary aspirations by the Scottish government. Heaven forbid someone attempts to claim this confection for another nation! Gammie (Elizabeth Bulmer) was a Maritimer born and very English, but the Yorkshire Bulmer ancestors were close enough to Scotland to have, perhaps, acquired the taste for it. Or, perhaps the general culture of Nova Scotia imprinted this preference on Bishop’s grandmother.' [I have taken the liberty of italicising the offending intemperance in the afore-proceeding quotation -- JAB]  

"A proper Dundee Cake," the Late and Much-Lamented Pernicious the Musquodoboit Harbour Farm Cat's faithful amanuensis and general factotum continues (still on behalf of his dearly-departed Employer) "contains neither candied cherries, nor candied pineapple, nor candied fruit of any kind whatsoever.  It contains raisins, currants, and sultanas -- and generous amounts of  orange rind and Seville Orange Marmalade.  It is not, in short, a "white fruitcake" as the Late and Much-Lamented EB would have it in her letter to her Aunt Grace of January 10, 1957, nor is it an English Christmas cake with its overly-abundant and cloyingly sweet marzipan topping {genteel shudder}  -- no, no, no... it is a perfect balance of the bitter orange and the sweet sultana, enhanced by the crunch of carefully-chosen blanched whole almonds arranged in concentric circles on its otherwise sensibly unadorned surface...."

Sandra looks at her fellow blog-editor in mild disbelief that he would be capable of hijacking her sensibly unadorned photographic tribute to EB for his own nefarious purposes, and observes him to produce from somewhere about his overly-ample person a muffin tin containing something... something... something...  She looks more closely, looks again, and looks her infant sight away...

EB Eleventy-first Birthday

Miniature Dundee Cakes

"Just a little something I've whipped up for the celebration," the Late and Much Lamented Pernicious the Musquodoboit Harbour Farm Cat's faithful amanuensis and general factotum murmurs, modestly refraining from buffing his fingernails on the place where Trudeau-père was wont to place a single rose (a single Rolls Royce being in those sterner days considered something of an extravagance)...

"Hmpph!" hmpphs Sandra in a tone remarkably like unto that of the Late and Much-Lamented Pernicious the Musquodoboit Harbour Farm Cat's dulcet purr.  "Am I not correct in supposing that those whole almonds are supposed to be blanched???  What kind of pseudo-ersatz quasi-Dundee Cake is that???"

The chubby countenance of the Late and Much-Lamented Pernicious the Musquodoboit Harbour Farm Cat's faithful amanuensis and general factotum Barnstead is observed to turn the colour of a candied cherry as he turns to flee from the wrath to come -- in the form of the wraith of the Late and Much-Lamented Pernicious the Musquodoboit Harbour Farm Cat, whose ethereal claws are as sharp as ever they were in life...