Elizabeth Bishop’s Letters to Aunt Grace – Part 11: Another Postcard

The next extant communication from Bishop to Grace in 1956 is a postcard dated 3 July, clearly in response to a letter from Grace. Indeed, the continuation of a series of lost back and forths, since there is a big gap from the previous letter of January. What happened to all the letters in between? What we get in this postcard is a glimpse of the continuum, their ongoing dialogue, but like listening to only one side of a phone conversation.

Bishop packed as much as she could on the verso of this card. It is amazing how much she managed to type, filling the small space to the edges. Remember, she did so on a manual typewriter.

She began by instructing Grace to send “some maple syrup” directly to their post office box in Petrópolis, because “Mr. Liberal has left customs.” — perhaps someone who helped smooth the way for gifts from the north. (One wonders what sort of person this fellow was with a name like that!) While it took longer for mail to reach that destination, Bishop noted that it still seemed to get through.

Anything “maple” was eagerly and gratefully received by Elizabeth and Lota. Indeed, Aunt Mary had recently sent “a pound of Red Rose tea” and some maple sugar. The shipment from Grace was a business transaction, as Bishop indicates she will be sending a cheque. Grace, however, also begifted such northern treats on many occasions. And they always triggered vivid memories for Bishop. July was well past the maple syrup season in Nova Scotia (which is February/March), but maple products are available year round. Two producers of maple products in Colchester County are: Sugar Moon and Maple Mist.

The verso of this postcard was a view of Glória, Rio de Janeiro. 

Glória, Rio de Janeiro today.

“Poor Aunt F” is invoked again. It appears that Grace had finally seen her at some point during this year. Indeed, visited long enough to be part of a “dinner party.” Grace was gallivanting again. Bishop conceded, surely based on more reports from her Bishop cousins, that Florence was “getting worse.” Bishop confessed that she had always stayed away from her “as much as possible,” even as she “felt rather sorry for her.” Bishop’s biggest objection, declared emphatically, was that her aunt was a “snob…putting it mildly.”

The item mentioned most briefly in this brief communication concerned a big subject, Bishop’s health. The correspondence between them contained many discussions about all things medical and health-related (sadly, we see only one side of it). This shared interest was of long standing between them, for all sorts of reasons.

In this particular instance, Bishop tells Grace, “I have a BOIL, or boils,” one large on her kneecap and “some little ones.” Bishop’s reason for mentioning this infirmity was: “what do you suggest?” It is easy to imagine that Grace’s advice was practical and germane, even at a distance. Ever the person to make a joke, Bishop wrote that she new understood the old saying, “sore as a boil.”

“How was your trip?” Bishop asked, and promised that she would “write soon,” asking her aunt where to send her next letter. Bishop did write very soon after sending this postcard, a long letter dated 5 July 1956. The next post will begin a pondering of subjects in this epistle.

Click here to see Part 10.

EBSNS AGM, 18 June 2016

Join the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia on Saturday, 18 June 2016, 1:30 p.m., at “In the Village” Café in Great Village, N.S. Our guest speaker is Halifax-based visual artist and architect Emma FitzGerald, who will be speaking about her artist residency in Brazil in the fall of 2015, when she visited Bishop’s houses. Her best-selling book Hand-Drawn Halifax (Formac) has been turned into a colouring book. See the EBSNS Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/EBSofNS) to learn more about the society’s activities and interests. Hope to see you in June!

Elizabeth Bishop’s Letters to Aunt Grace – Part 10: Work in progress

"I’m glad you liked the little poem about Pa,” wrote Bishop in her 18 January 1956 letter to Grace. This poem, “Manners,” appeared in the 26 November 1955 issue of The New Yorker. It doesn’t appear that Grace had a subscription to TNY, so somehow Bishop was sending them to her aunt. She told Grace that she had “done some more, 3 or 4,” that is, poems about childhood and children, and hoped “eventually, in a couple of years, to publish a little book of children’s poems.” She added that another poem had come out in the 10 December 1955 New Yorker, “Filling Station,” which she would also send, “you may think it’s funny. (At least it’s supposed to be.)”

(26 November 1955 cover of The New Yorker)

Bishop never collected and published a book of children’s poems, but she continued to work on poems that might have fit such a collection. The poems she directly mentions here, and the 3 or 4 others not named (likely including “Sestina,” which was published in the 15 September 1956 issue of TNY; “First Death in Nova Scotia,” which was published in the 20 March 1962 issue of TNY; and “Sandpiper,” published in the 21 July 1962 issue of TNY) ended up in her 1965 Questions of Travel.

As busy as Bishop was helping Henique Mindlin with his book about Brazilian architecture, and working on new poems, Bishop was, at this time, well into one of the biggest projects she ever undertook, the translation of Mina Vida de Menina, a Brazilian classic. This book is the diary of a young girl who grew up in Diamantina, Minas Gerais, Brazil. It had captured Bishop’s imagination and though she knew very little Portuguese, she embarked on the translation project with enthusiasm. It took her several years to complete.

Bishop wanted to title this translation “Black Beans and Diamonds,” but it eventually came to be called The Diary of ‘Helena Morely’, published in 1957.

The author of the diary was Alice Dayrell Caldiera Brant(1880–1970), still very much alive when Bishop began the translation

In letters to friends, she wrote about meeting Dona Alice and the introduction to the translation is a lengthy essay, which describes some of her encounters with the latter-day “Helena.” So committed was Bishop to this project, that she took a trip to Diamantina. She was disappointed by the mediocre reception of the diary in the US.

 (Dona Alice)

Bishop had already told Grace about this project, because in the letter Bishop notes, “The translation of the girl’s diary is almost done — about 3 weeks’ more work now.” She told her aunt that a publisher in England was on board, but she hadn’t “decided on a U.S. one yet,” noting how different the language in America was from England, which meant “a lot more work” to make sure idioms were correct: “in the U.S. one[,] I say ‘a can of candy,’ for example; and in the English one, ‘a tin of sweets,’ etc. etc.”

Bishop eventually went with Farrar, Straus and Cudhay as the American publisher, agreeing to give them her next poetry collection if they published the diary.

Bishop was always eager to hear what Grace thought of her work — poems, stories, reviews and translations. She made sure Grace and her family had all her books and sought their responses, especially her beloved aunt’s. She sent Grace a copy of the diary and asked her on a number of occasions what she thought of it. Grace’s response is, of course, lost. Mina Vida de Menina resonated with Bishop on so many levels, and she drew directly on her own childhood experiences to help her translate. She told Grace later on, that when it was too hard to translate Helena’s grandmother’s sayings into English, she thought about what Gammie (her maternal grandmother) would have said in a similar situation, and it worked just fine. In a small way, Bishop’s translation of the diary was an homage to her own childhood. 

 (Pa and Gammie, circa 1920s)

In Part 10, I will write about another postcard, which introduces a major subject of interest to aunt and niece: health.

Click here to see Part 9.

Elizabeth Bishop’s Letters to Aunt Grace — Part 9: The Babies

One subject that Bishop knew would keenly interest her aunt was children, particularly babies and toddlers. In the mid- to late 1950s, the house as Samambaia was a veritable nursery, with several children present on a regular basis.

In Bishop’s letter of 18 January 1956, she gives an account of “Lota’s ‘granddaughter’,” Helena, who was the daughter of Lota de Macedo Soares’s “adopted” son Kylso. Kylso and his wife had several children in close succession (Helena, Paulinha, Roberto, Lotinha and Patricia). At this point, it was just Helena and her younger sister. During the late 1950s, these children spent time with their “granny” on a number of occasions, partly because Kylso and his family lived in a very small apartment in Rio, where, Bishop speculated, “they just never go to bed.” January 1956 appears to have marked Helena’s first visit, because Bishop is introducing her to Grace.

Bishop observed that she thought Lota was “causing a slight social scandal” when, in Petrópolis she told anyone who asked, that Helena was “My grandchild.” “So I imagine,” Bishop wrote, “people are asking each other when Lota had a child, and if the family hushed it up, or what!” This kind of speculation was familiar to Bishop because local gossips in Great Village had said of Arthur Bulmer, Grace's brother, that he “had” to marry Mabel Pigott, though it was decidedly not true, as their first child was born nearly two years after their wedding. Being from a small community, Grace would have appreciated Bishop’s observations on a number of levels, after all, Grace herself had eloped with the widower William Bowers, a “slight social scandal” in its day.

Bishop told Grace that Lota “would spoil Helena in no time,” thus proving to be “a real ‘granny’.” Bishop was quite intrigued by Helena, who “is barely three, and so good.” Yet, “she’s too clean for a child that age — always washing her face and hands, folding up her clothes and putting them away.” This behaviour made Bishop worry “a little.” On the trip to Petrópolis, Lota bought Helena an ice cream: “I came out of a store,” wrote Bishop, “& saw nothing but Helena’s little bottom sticking up in the air as she leaned over the side of the car to eat it.” Bishop observed, however, that this spoiling was doing the child good, as she “is already much fatter and sleeping much more than when she came.”

Helena was not the first baby to arrive in the household. Lota’s cook had a child on 7 February 1955, the day before Bishop’s birthday. She was named Maria Elizabeth. As Brett Millier notes, the cook wanted Bishop to be the child’s godmother, but because she was not baptized, the church would not allow it (Life & the Memory of It, 265). It is clear from this letter that Bishop had already told Grace about “Betty” (Millier says she was called “Bettchy”), because she mentions her without much background, and notes that at just under a year “she already has two teeth…and is walking a little…pretty good, isn’t that?”

Millier writes, “Elizabeth and Lota supervised the raising of Bettchy, relying heavily on Dr. Spock.” (265) In the letter to Grace, Bishop remarks that Lota had studied “child-psychology,” so she had a lot of theory to draw upon.

(Benjamin Spock himself, 1970s)

Sadly, Bettchy and her parents were gone by 1960 and Bishop never saw her again. Bettchy’s place was filled in 1961 when Mary Morse (Lota’s previous partner, who still lived nearby) adopted a baby, Monica. But the bigger gap was the loss of Kyslo’s family, around this same time, caused by a rift between Lota and her adopted son. (Millier 266) By 1960, however, preoccupations with children were quickly replaced by preoccupations with the creation of Parque do Flamengo, a huge project which became Lota’s true “baby.”

 

(Mary and Monica Morse. Source:
http://www.institutolotta.com.br/index.html )

The mid- to late 1950s was perhaps the most conventionally domestic time of Bishop’s life, and also one of the most creative. Bishop told Grace, “It’s probably good for us to have babies around.” Elizabeth and Lota seemed inclined and suited to the roles of aunt and grandmother. They certainly had definite ideas about child-rearing, which is rather amusing considering they were never mothers. Grace, on the other hand, was the veteran in this field, already with a first grandchild and a second one due to arrive that year. It is sad that Grace’s responses to Bishop’s many stories and theories about these children are lost. Undoubtedly, they would have been amusing, practical and insightful. Grace had been such an integral part of Bishop’s own childhood, right from birth, that it is not surprising Bishop was eager to share details about their “babies.”

With all these children around, Bishop was thinking a great deal about her own childhood, and she had begun a translation project directly connected to the childhood of a famous Brazilian. In the next post, I will look at the work Bishop was engaged in at this time.

Click here to see Part 8.

Elizabeth Bishop’s Letters to Aunt Grace – Part 8: Ushering in 1956

How long does it take you, in January, to remember to write the new year, rather than the old one? In January 1956 it took Bishop well into the first month to make the switch. On the second letter to Grace in the Vassar folder for 1955 (EBP I, 25.3), Bishop typed “January 18th, 1955.” What she meant was 1956, as the letter clearly continues the back-and-forth narrative of the 19 December 1955 letter already discussed in this series. That Bishop didn’t ink in a correction suggests that it might have been even longer before she made the switch.

As will be my general method, again, I am going to pick out various elements of this letter and ponder them in some detail in the next few posts. Bishop introduces several new subjects (or, rather, continues with ones that were not mentioned in the December letter — though clearly they are familiar and on-going topics between niece and aunt). In this post, however, I follow up with subjects already discussed in previous posts. Bishop ushered in the new year by updating Grace about these various matters.

This letter was not the first communication written and sent by either Bishop or Grace. Bishop mentions having written “a hectic little note the other night,” which she had mailed to Brookline. But a letter from Grace, written on 9 January and just arrived, informed Bishop that she was back in Nova Scotia, staying with her daughter Phyllis: “I am somewhat relieved to hear!” Bishop wrote, “I didn’t like to think of you off galivanting [sic] with the roads the way they’re apt to be this time of year.” (One thing clearly evident from their correspondence is that letters between Bishop and Grace often crossed in the mail, so there was a certain expectation of delayed reaction. We have forgotten this kind of rhythm in our instantaneous communication when we are expected to know things before they happen!)

There was a holiday tradition, still in effect when I was a child, of showing visitors one’s gifts, which were kept under the tree well into the New Year (on my paternal side, it was until Epiphany). Since Bishop and Grace were so far apart, Grace did her show and tell in her letter, a list of the gifts she had received. Bishop responded to this list with, “I read your last present as ‘two bottles of urine’ the first time.” Perhaps someone can suggest what this gift might actually have been! Two bottles of wine?

(Not so distant from Bishop and Grace’s 1955

Christmas is this one from my family in 1959,

with my older sister amid the family’s gifts.)

Bishop also updated her aunt about progress on the architecture book with Henrique Mindlin. This “enormous undertaking” still entailed “a staggering amount of work,” for which Mindlin was totally responsible, “with my ‘editorial’ assistance,” as Bishop described it. She reported, with relief, that they were “finally getting it into shape.” She said she had lost eight pounds “so far” and declared “NEVER AGAIN.” She also noted that the book would be “very de luxe,” and would sell for $12.50 “or even $15.00” and was “going to be translated into four or five languages.” Bishop concluded this update with “I’m sure you’re bored to tears” by this subject, with the defense that she hadn’t been able to think about “anything else for five weeks now.”

The next update was about Aunt Florence. Bishop had received a letter from her cousin Kay Orr Sargent, informing that Florence had been difficult over Christmas. The new apartment was comfortable and spacious, but Bishop felt a nursing home would have been “better all around.” It wasn’t clear if Grace would be going back to Massachusetts to nurse, but Bishop advised that if she did Grace should limit exposure to “Bishop family fights.” Calling now and then on Florence would be the best approach. Prompted by Grace’s own declaration, Bishop concluded, “I hate Worcester, too, and don’t blame you for not wanting to go there — I’ve always thought it was a depressing city, but maybe just because I have depressing associations with it.”

For good measure, Bishop urged Grace to report the treatment she had received from Crotched Mountain Hospital to the American Medical Association, and hoped that she would “get that pay out of them.” Perhaps Grace did so. I can’t remember now if future letters refer to this matter. Time will tell.

 (The myth of air travel in the 1950s-1960s)

Finally, Bishop told Grace that Marjorie Stevens was still “planning to come in March, probably.” Air travel in 1956 was still rudimentary, and the flight to Brazil took 24 hours. When Bishop and Lota had visited the US in 1952, their return trip was “16 hours late, so you can imagine what that was like.” Bishop coped by drinking all her and Lota’s allotment of champagne and cocktails. The myth of glamorous air travel in the 1950s and 1960s did not make its way into Bishop’s narrative at any point. Indeed, she maintained a dislike of and remained afraid of flying her whole life.

In the next post I will ponder Lota’s “granddaughter” and the other children in the household at Samambaia at this time.

Click here to see Part 7.

Great Village colouring book available in May

Nova Scotia artist Andrew Meredith’s new colouring book, inspired by Great Village, will appear in Great Village at the Farm Gate Shop around 9 May, ready for Mother’s Day! It can be pre-ordered at:

 http://andrewmeredithart.aradium.com/

 

Check out what the MooseJaw Times Herald says about Andre's project. Originally from Great Village, Andrew currently lives in Moose Jaw.

Elizabeth Bishop’s Letters to Aunt Grace, Part 7: Keeping track of Grace

Another detail evident in Bishop’s letter dated 19 December 1955, is that Grace was moving around — Bishop’s word for her aunt’s peripateticism was “galivanting” [sic: Bishop composed her letters on a manual typewriter, and they contain many misspelled words and typos, most likely because it was just too difficult to correct them — though often Bishop inked in corrections].

Grace trained as a nurse in the 1910s and before she was married held positions in Boston and New York. After her marriage to William Bowers in 1923, she nursed in Great Village throughout the 20s and 30s; but after she became a widow in 1947, with her children grown, she hit the road again, nursing in various places in Nova Scotia and New England. Grace was mainly an obstetrics nurse and helped to deliver many babies.

(Grace and her nursing colleagues at Boston-Lying-In Hospital, 1910s.

top image: Grace far right; bottom image, Grace centre back row, AUA)

At the time of writing this letter, Bishop had only just learned that her aunt had left a place where she had been working, a place called Crotched Mountain Hospital, in Greenfield, New Hampshire, which was established only a couple of years before, in 1953.

Grace had written to Bishop from this place earlier in 1955 and Bishop, believing her aunt still there, sent a Christmas gift to her, only to be informed by Grace of her departure too late to recall the gift.

Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center is a major institution now (its website is impressive). But in these early days, perhaps it was still finding its levels because Grace didn’t stay long and, as evident from Bishop’s letter, she had written to her niece about the issues that triggered the move (Grace was nothing if not capable, indomitable and determined, so she would have had good reason for leaving). What these issues were are lost with Grace’s lost letter, but Bishop’s response was: “I am glad you’ve left. I know I’m rather suspicious anyway, but I was very much so when you wrote me about the salary and their going to N.S. for employees — they thought they could get good hard-working women for nothing, I suppose.”

At the time of this letter, Grace was in Brookline, MA., perhaps nursing; but she was also thinking about going to Florida, where she had never been, and where her niece Hazel Boomer Snow, was living. Bishop’s response to this idea was: “I really don’t like the state much as a place to live — I just liked Key West, the way it used to be.” She refers to “competition” being “pretty stiff,” so perhaps Grace was looking into another nursing job there. Bishop suggested Grace go to St. Augustine, St. Petersburg or Sarasota to take “care of a nice rich old man!....if you don’t object to that kind of work.” Grace did spend time in Florida, though perhaps not at this point. There are images of her visiting her sister-in-law Mabel and niece Hazel, being a tourist, trips taken after she finally retired from nursing in the 1960s.

Bishop mentions that Marjorie Stevens was thinking about visiting Brazil. Bishop and Stevens had a relationship in the 1940s. Even after it ended, they remained friends. Stevens went to Nova Scotia with Bishop in 1947, where she met Grace. They, too, remained in touch, and Grace eventually visited Marjorie in Florida. Bishop knew that Grace would be interested in Marjorie’s plan. Bishop noted that “the flight is awfully expensive,” but since Marjorie worked for the air-force, and since one of Lota’s uncles “is now Foreign Minister,” they hoped to “be able to get her trip at a big discount for her.”*

 (José Carlos Macedo Soares, 1883–1968, Lota’s uncle)

Grace loved to travel as much as Bishop. When she turned 80 (1969), for example, she went to Chilliwack, British Columbia, to visit friends and her cousin Everal Bulmer. Everal had sent Grace photos of “The Cascades” as early as the 1910s, which perhaps inspired Grace’s desire to visit. Although it took decades, the trip finally happened.

(In the Cascades, 1910s, AUA)
 

Grace spent the early 1970s going back and forth among her childrens’ homes. Bishop and Grace kept track of each other in their letters during the 1950s and 1960s. When Bishop returned for good to New England in 1970, one of the first things she did was go to Nova Scotia to see her aunt.

In these days of more than instant communication, it requires some imagination to understand the pace of this correspondence, the patience required. By the time news arrived, it often had already changed. Yet, the leisure of letters allowed each correspondent real space-time to think and move freely with less insistent, pressing demands than, say, the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or texting of today.

********

*Note: It appears that this proposed visit never happened, though Bishop was still talking about it as a possibility in early 1956. Brett Millier records no such visit in EB: Life and the Memory of It. Bishop did visit Stevens in 1957, when back in the US for six months.

Click here to see Part 6

Elizabeth Bishop’s Letters to Aunt Grace, Part 6: Christmas gifts

Bishop’s letter to Aunt Grace dated 19 December 1955 was prompted in part by the upcoming holiday season. Christmas was not Bishop’s favourite time of year. Until she settled in Brazil, Bishop spent her life struggling with increased depression during this season, one she avoided as much as possible. The reasons for this response could make a lengthy article, if not a book; though she was no different than many of us who hold at least an ambivalence about this sacred holiday turned family-obsessed, commercial extravaganza.

Even so, it is clear from Bishop’s letters to Grace that aunt and niece exchanged Christmas gifts more or less regularly, even when far removed. Indeed, Bishop endeavoured to send Christmas gifts to most of her closest relatives, even to Aunt Florence Bishop, with whom she had a fraught relationship. Perhaps Bishop made these gestures out of a sense of obligation, but with Grace, the impulse was more tender. Indeed, Bishop sent her aunt many gifts over the years, and not only at Christmas. Some of these gifts are now part of the family archive at Acadia University.

For this particular Christmas, Bishop enclosed “a small token” (that is, money), which she wished was larger, “but since it’s been a ‘poetry year’ rather than a ‘prose year’, I’m unusually impoverished.” The reason for this seemingly impersonal gift was because Bishop had already ordered “a large box of chocolates and bon bons” from S.S. Pierce’s in Boston, to be sent directly to Grace and her nursing friend at a hospital in Vermont, where they had been working. But Grace’s letter of 7 December (missing, of course) informed Bishop that she was no longer there (the “gallivanting” aunt was now in Brookline, MA — so the gift from Pierce’s was lost).

S.S. Pierce was a long-established business in Boston

 The famous store-front of S.S. Pierce.

For “Aunt F,” Bishop had ordered “some little quarter-bottles of champagne, enough for a glass for her & a friend, to cheer her up.” Florence, too, had been on the move. Bishop told Grace that Florence’s new address was “21 Fruit Street, Worcester.” Grace knew Florence well and Bishop asked Grace to “send her a card if there is time,” because “she is pretty wretched these days, I’m afraid.”

21 Fruit St., Worcester, MA (today)

As for Bishop’s Christmas, she told her aunt that it would “be very quiet — we hope.” They were expecting a friend from Rio and they had to “call on, & be called upon,” by the neighbours. Lota gave Bishop “a lovely pair of old earrings, gold, probably Portug[u]ese.” Bishop gave Lota “some books” and was painting her a picture, “when I have time to paint it.” Christmas in Brazil, at least during the 1950s, was a much more uplifting time for Bishop, though her modus operandi was, always, just to get through it.

The next detail I will discuss is Grace’s “gallivanting.”

Click here to see Part 5

Elizabeth Bishop’s Letters to Aunt Grace, Part 5: “No detail too small”

The next file of letters from Bishop to Aunt Grace, held at Vassar (EBP I, 25.3), for the year 1955, indicates “2 letters.” In the next couple of posts, I will write about various aspects of the first of these letters, which is dated 19 December 1955. I am going to pluck out some elements and turn them over a bit, in the spirit of Bishop’s sandpiper’s gaze where no detail is too small.

By this point, Bishop was fully ensconced in Brazil with Lota. They were living mostly at Petrópolis (the relentless pull of Rio was still five years away). By December 1955, after a drought of several years, Bishop had in hand Poems: North & South/A Cold Spring (which would win the Pulitzer Prize in 1956). She had already sent Grace a copy, which now resides in the Acadia University Archives, inscribed: “Grace Bowers from Elizabeth Bishop with love.” (In my view, this formal-sounding inscription was Bishop thinking about posterity, and the importance of her full signature.)

Bishop had published during this stretch, most importantly, her stories “In the Village” and “Gwendolyn” in The New Yorker (both in 1953). But very little poetry had seen the light of day, so the book was a great relief. She told Grace that she had seen her book in the window of a bookshop in Rio and it had been written up in the newspapers: “Isn’t it amazing when its in a different language?” She observed that one article claimed she received $1,000 per poem: “God  knows where they got that.” She was quite sure that as soon as the local merchants read this extraordinary fact, Lota’s grocery bills would “probably be doubled.”

At the time of this letter, Bishop was in the throes of helping Henrique Mindlin (http://www.arquivo.arq.br/#!henrique-mindlin/c12eu), a Brazilian architect, translate his book Modern Architecture in Brazil (1956), a task she called “a hideous rush job” to Randall Jarrell (OA, 311). Mindlin was involved with Lota in the design of her house at Samambaia.

To Grace, she noted that she had been “too busy,” referring to “this job on the architecture book I think I told you about.” The deadline for it was 8 January. Then she told Grace a bit of information that was of keen interest to them both, that Mindlin’s wife was imminently due to have their first child. The couple had just spent the weekend, and they had been “slaving” from morning to, what Bishop could have said, in the tradition of Robbie Burns, “the wee sma’ hours.” She was worried that Henrique would have a “nervous breakdown” before this task was completed.

Bishop knew Grace would be interested in the approaching birth because her aunt had been an obstetrics nurse early in her career, training at the Boston-Lying-In Hospital. She had helped to deliver and care for countless babies. For a childless woman, Bishop had an active interest in children and her letters to Grace are full of details about the children who were part of her and Lota’s Brazilian household at this time (and there were several).

Brett Millier notes that Bishop and Mindlin worked well together and ended up becoming friends. (287) Curiously, Mindlin and Bishop were born in the same year. Bishop’s life-long interest in architecture would have been augmented with this project. As Millier also notes, this was one of only a very few “commercial” gigs Bishop did during her life. She was not one for deadlines.

This letter is the first full epistle in this particular collection. It is clear through the conversational style and wide-ranging subjects that Bishop and Grace had a well-established correspondence, which was integrated in and integral to Bishop’s larger epistolary practice. Perhaps there were not as many “literary” details as found in her letters to writer friends, but neither were they absent. Indeed, word for word, Bishop kept Grace apprised of all her Brazilian doings in ways that echo directly the rest of her correspondence.

The next detail I will discuss, which is central to this letter, is Christmas.

Click here to see Part 4

A Colouring Book Inspired by Great Village

The old bridge in Great Village, Nova Scotia. Drawing
 by Andrew Meredith.

Artist Andrew Meredith has created a new colouring book inspired by Great Village, Nova Scotia. He will be launching it in the village in May 2016. Check out his Facebook page to find out more. You can also learn about it on the EBSNS Facebook page. We will be letting you know the particulars of Andrew's launch when they are announced. Bravo, Andrew, on this wonderful idea.

Elizabeth Bishop’s Letters to Aunt Grace, Part 4: First from Brazil

The second postcard in the Vassar register’s file “1950–52,” of Bishop’s correspondence to Aunt Grace, does date from this time. The cancellation mark reads “21 I 52” (21 January 1952). Bishop is in Brazil. This postcard was not the first communication to Aunt Grace during what Bishop still, at this point, thought was a visit. Its purpose was to let Grace know as quickly as possible that she had decided to alter her travel plans, “I’m staying in Brazil until the end of Feb,” and confirm her address, so that Grace could write: “the Rio address will reach me.” Clearly, Bishop had written to Grace earlier, as the postcard contains no return address.

Bishop addresses this postcard to The Red Cross Hospital in Tatamagouche, N.S. By 1952, Grace was a widow (William Bowers having died in 1947) and her children grown. Grace returned to full-time nursing, taking positions at various hospitals in Nova Scotia and New England, before she retired sometime in the 1960s. So, Grace also informed Bishop of her whereabouts. With the death of Aunt Maude in 1940, Bishop’s connection with Grace became even more important. They kept tabs on each other.

Bishop left New York City on 26 October 1951. She arrived in Brazil on 26 November, and in Rio on 30 November. She became ill (the infamous incident with the fruit of the cashew) sometime after 12 December and was nursed back to health by Lota de Macedo Soares. Millier writes, “By February 10 [1952], she had admitted that the idea of continuing her trip, or of going back to the United States, was further and further from her mind.” (245)

The image on the verso of this postcard is a vista showing a precipitous curving road in the mountains, which Bishop admitted was “terrifying the 1st time.”

Is it just me, or is this image rather symbolic of what was then happening to Bishop — the journey on this road took her further into Lota’s life. They took the risk of a partnership that had immense and powerful consequences, Bishop called it “precipitate” in “The Shampoo,” for them both. But, of course, Bishop was just showing her beloved aunt some of the wonders of Brazil, an image she knew would resonate with Grace. After all, Nova Scotia had its own narrow curving roads, threading through mountains, and some of them not too far from Great Village.

This photograph was taken in 1958 by my parents during a Cape Breton vacation they took with friends, on the famous winding Cabot Trail. Bishop’s one trip to Cape Breton occurred in 1947. Not much would have changed in the following decade. Even if the mountainous roads in Brazil were grander (most things are grander in Brazil!), it is not stretching reality to suppose Bishop thought of Nova Scotia when she first drove to Petrópolis, and she knew Grace would appreciate what she experienced, as undoubtedly, Grace had visited the Cabot Trail, too.

Bishop wrote, “Thank you so much for your letter. & I’ll write soon.” That letters exchanged between 1942 and 1952 do not survive does not mean they did not exist. Likely, there were many. We are fortunate that so many of Bishop’s letters to Aunt Grace, from the 1950s to 1970s, did survive.

Click here to view Part 3.

Elizabeth Bishop’s Letters to Aunt Grace, Part 3: In the beginning

According to Vassar’s register of the Elizabeth Bishop Papers, the first file in the correspondence to “Aunt Grace [Bowers]” contains “2 postcards 1950–52.”  The first of these, however, is clearly from a much earlier time. The stamp says “Mexico.” The cancellation indicates it went through the U.S. Censor, a wartime measure. Bishop went to Mexico in 1942. In the very brief note this format allowed, Bishop acknowledges a letter from her aunt and describes the image of a family of potters on the verso, “they…have been doing it exactly the same way for 1,000 years or so.” Brett Millier discusses Bishop’s sojourn in Mexico at length (165–69) and quotes a passage that echoes this note, probably from a travel diary Bishop kept from 1938 to 1942 (EBP, VII, 77.3): “Elizabeth…contemplated the town’s primitive pottery works: ‘They have been making it for thousands of years the same way...’.” (169)

(the verso of the postcard Bishop sent to Grace)

Bishop was keenly interested in what she called “primitive” art, what we would now call “folk art,” of various forms and genres. This emerged early in her life, undoubtedly in her childhood, through experiences in Great Village. While this postcard might be dismissed as mere “tourist” gaze, there is a context for Bishop’s choice. She engaged with these artists and wanted to share that encounter with her aunt.

What this seemingly slight document also reveals is that Bishop corresponded with Grace for a very long time. Bishop made a visit to Great Village in December 1929–January 1930. That fall she entered Vassar. She did not return to Nova Scotia for sixteen years. Grace was fully ensconced at Elmcroft by that time, raising her own family. It is safe to assume that their correspondence began in earnest from that point, when separation and distance made writing a necessity.

Postcards are perhaps the most unrevealing of all correspondence, partly because they are public, their messages viewable to all who handle them. So, the correspondent is circumspect. Combined with limited space, what is generated often seems trivial. However, Bishop chose to send her aunt an image of people doing the work they had done for centuries. To herself, in her diary, she commented that while the pottery had some redeeming qualities, “It seemed to me to be the dreariest artistic tradition I’ve ever seen.” To Grace, however, she noted that the father made her two figures, a nanny and billy goat. Well, one might ask: Are these the parents of the baby goats in “Crusoe in England”?

Bishop went to Mexico with Marjorie Stevens. Grace eventually met Marjorie, when she and Elizabeth returned to Nova Scotia in 1947. Grace not only corresponded with Marjorie but also connected with her in Florida years later, when Grace spent winters there with her niece Hazel.

Thus, one tiny postcard should not be dismissed as slight. I am sure I have gleaned only part of its significance.

Click her to see Part 2.

A view of Great Village, Nova Scotia

Going through some old files and papers, I came across this postcard that I thought was quite interesting. So, I am sharing. I will post Part 3 of my series about Bishop's letters to Aunt Grace soon. It involves a postcard that Bishop send to her aunt. Bishop would have learned about postcards in Great Village, which had a whole series of them showing views of the place, during her childhood.

This view shows the fork in the road before the bridge (down to the left). The right road is up Scrabble Hill and is the Road to Londonderry. On the right is the Elmonte Hotel. In the centre the structures seen are no longer there; it is now the location of the centotaph. This view dates probably just after the turn of the twentieth century. The Elmonte burned in 1932.

One of the fascinating things about this image is the wonderful stamp with King George. Note that it cost 1 cent to send a postcard. I love that word: "Private." There could be no more public communication than a postcard!

Elizabeth Bishop’s Letters to Aunt Grace, Part 2: A Letter from Grace to Maude, circa 1938 or 1939

Bishop pasted the letter below in a notebook that she kept during the 1930s (EBP, VII, 72A.3). It is interesting that even though this letter was addressed to her aunt, Bishop chose to claim and preserve it — and in a context that was decidedly non-rural.* Grace was living at Elmcroft in Great Village when she wrote the letter. Elmcroft was William Bowers’s big farm. William, a widower with six grown children, married Grace in 1923. By the early 1930s, Grace had her own three children, who are mentioned in the letter (Buddy, Rod, and Phyllis). Helene was Grace’s step-daughter (the only girl among William’s children). Grace had worked for the Red Cross in Massachusetts during World War I. I do not know if she found the proof she needed to get the bonus. Grace’s Red Cross pins, and a number of other items from her nursing career, are at Acadia University Archives (http://openarchive.acadiau.ca/cdm/singleitem/collection/BBHS/id/917 ). Grace continued to nurse in various ways and places until she retired in the 1960s. During the 1930s, she was known to help Dr. T.R. Johnson do appendectomies on kitchen tables in the community. Grace addresses her sister as “Maud” (without the “e”), but her name was, officially, Maude).

Dear Maud,

            Your have written about three letters to my one. It seems as if the busy days are never going to let up this fall. Even Sundays are busy, but today is an exception, Will and I and the children are alone. Helene is out to dinner. Viola and the children are down home and Tom is away to the Mountain hunting cattle. Buddy and Roddy are watching the cattle, keeping them out of the turnips and Phyllis is knitting herself a pair of bed socks. She is very industrious, always wants to be doing something. She has learned to run the machine and last week she made me four holders. I am going to get some flannelette and let her make herself some pajamas. She likes to cook too, fudge especially.

            Rod is getting along fine at school. You would laugh to hear him read. He never looks at the book at all. It is no trouble for Buddy to learn. He stays at the head of his class, the teacher puts him at the foot on Monday A.M. and he works up again. There are only four in his class so it isn’t much to brag about, but Phyllis is never at the head, she pulls in about 3rd.

            I guess I told you about the dykes breaking in the spring and it costing so much to get them fixed. Well we had another high tide and they broke again. We have had two extra men here ever since Sept. 27th, with two or three lunches every day besides the three kids. I am so sick of putting up lunches. It takes so much bread and sweet stuff. I make 16 loaves of bread every week, to say nothing of rolls, biscuits etc. I think they’ll be through this week and I’ll not be sorry. Besides that we had a well drilled at the barn. Two men were here 4 or 5 days. They went down 77 feet and finally got 30 ft. of water. It cost us $2.00 per foot, and we are paying for it with potatoes. It is such a job in the winter weather to get the cattle and horses to the brook. It will be a great help to them. Our potatoes are only a fair crop. We have quite a lot of stem rot, but they are a good price $1.00 a bag. We have a big crop of turnips but there is quite a lot of club root in there. There is always something to keep the rabbit’s tail short.

            Marie wrote me that they were paying a bonus to the nurses who had served in the Red Cross. She said she heard of one girl getting $450.00. I thought likely it was only overseas nurses, but Hazel said she didn’t think so. So anyway I wrote. I thought if they are foolish enough to pay a bonus to girls who did only home nursing I might as well have it as well as the others. I didn’t know the exact dates I was working in the Red Cross, so they answered and told me that only those enlisted between the dates of Apr. 6, 1917 and Nov. 1, 1918 and who were in the service not less than 30 days were entitled to the bonus. I have written to the Red Cross in Boston to see if I can find out when I did join. Can you remember when I joined. It is so long ago that I have forgotten all about it nearly. I still have my pin and my number 30504 so perhaps I will get something.

            P.S. – I forgot to tell you that the big busses to Monclair [sic], St. John, Boston, etc. go right by the door. It doesn’t seem as if you were quite so far away with them going by daily. You and George had better come that way for Xmas.

(l. to r. Wallace (Bud/Buddy) Bowers, Lois Bowers (his wife),

Phyllis Bowers Sutherland. Standing, Marie Lucia Martins)

Addendum: There is a great deal that could be annotated in this letter. For example, the buses that Grace mentions refer to the Nova Scotia Coach Lines, which began operation on 1 August 1938. So, Grace is passing on news about a recent development. The company became known as Acadian Lines in 1947. This fact is important because Bishop scholars, including myself, believe that Bishop’s famous bus ride back to Boston in 1946 (which triggered “The Moose”) was on an Acadian Lines Bus, but not quite. Her visit to Nova Scotia in 1947 would have seen her travelling on the coaches of the newly re-christened company. Perhaps it does not matter what the name of the bus company was at any point, but Bishop herself would have cared. Names were important to Bishop.

As tempted as I am to offer extensive annotation of this document, I will resist and conclude with what I think is an obvious observation: What is evident from this brief letter is that Grace’s correspondence was serious communication, filled with information and ideas and a good deal of humour. Bishop was open to all these elements, eager always to hear Grace’s news and thoughts. Even this solitary letter reveals why Bishop would value the correspondence with her aunt.

*********

Note

* Bishop started this journal shortly after graduating from Vassar. She spent a good deal of the 1930s in New York City and Europe. Loretta Blasko transcribed this journal in the mid-2000s, exploring Bishop’s fascination with modernism: “What It Means to Be Modern: Elizabeth Bishop’s New York Notebook, 1934–1937,” M.A. Thesis, University of Michigan-Flint, 4 May 2006.

 Click here to read Part 1.

Elizabeth Bishop’s letters to Aunt Grace, Part 1: Some Background

Around 265 letters and postcards from Elizabeth Bishop to her maternal Aunt Grace Bulmer Bowers, from 1952 to 1977 (Grace died that year), are located in the Elizabeth Bishop Papers at Vassar College (I, 25–26). Vassar purchased the letters from Bishop’s first cousin Phyllis Sutherland* (Grace’s daughter) in the late 1980s. I met Phyllis in 1990. I will confess that my first reaction upon hearing that this treasure trove was resident in the US was dismay. Vassar was actively collecting Bishop material in the decade after her death and figured out that Phyllis was the custodian of this important cache. I never asked Phyllis how much Vassar paid for the letters. She never told me. That such an important institution sought her out and wanted to buy these documents confirmed her sense of the significance of her cousin.

 (Phyllis and Grace, 1940s. Acadia University Archives)

As I thought about it, I conceded that it was vital for the letters Bishop wrote to her maternal family to be part of the vast and growing epistolary collection that Vassar was amassing, comprised primarily of the letters Bishop wrote to her famous literary friends.

During the 1990s I ordered photocopies of many of these letters and spent a considerable amount of time transcribing them. I reached only to the end of the 1960s before other Bishop projects and activities took me away from this task, one to which I have always meant to return. I mined the letters for information about Bishop’s relationship with her maternal family, which found its way into my book Lifting Yesterday: Elizabeth Bishop and Nova Scotia, but my great hope was to edit and annotate these letters and find a way to publish them.

There is a curious and sad puzzle around Bishop’s correspondence with Grace. Bishop loved and admired her aunt. She regarded her aunt as a very good letter writer. Indeed, she included a letter by her aunt in a course on letters she taught at Harvard in the early 1970s. Bishop would have received hundreds of letters from Grace over the years — almost each of Bishop’s letters to Grace makes reference to one or more letters that Grace wrote her niece.

“Dear Aunt Grace, Lota & I were on our way to Rio early Monday morning & stopped by the P.O. where I picked up your lovely long letter writen [sic] in the middle of the night! So I read it out loud to Lota en route, and she was so taken with it that she said ‘We must take her a nice present when we get to Boston!’” (10 January 1957)

What is troubling is that it appears none of Grace’s letters to Bishop survive. I have never been able to find out what happened to them. Bishop would surely not destroy her aunt’s letters. Indeed, in a notebook Bishop kept in the 1930s, she pasted in a letter that Grace wrote to her sister Maude (Bulmer Shepherdson, the aunt who raised Bishop). Most of the extant letters from Bishop to Grace were written during the Brazil years, so most of Grace’s to Bishop would have been written during that same time. It appears that some of Bishop’s letters were destroyed after Lota’s death and before Bishop got her possessions back to the US. But the fate of Grace’s letters to Bishop will likely never be known.

In 2009, I made an inquiry to Alice Methfessel and Jonathan Galassi** about the possibility of publishing Bishop’s letters to Grace. I was told that her correspondence with Lowell (published as Words In Air, 2008) and the pending publication of The New Yorker correspondence (2010) had “great literary interest.” I was also told that while other literary correspondences would, hopefully, be published in the future (e.g., with Moore — we are still waiting on this volume),*** Alice felt that publishing “more of Bishop’s letters doesn’t make sense” and a book of her letters to her aunt was “not a good idea.” — and not even if I could find a Canadian publisher. Why this would be so was not explained, and I did not pursue it.

It is understandable that in the academy Bishop’s letters to her literary friends and colleagues are considered the most important, the ones that carry the greatest interest for scholars and critics who explore the literary realm. These letters would also be considered the most marketable for publishers. But Bishop wrote to more people than just other writers. Her letters to Grace are, in a word, fascinating and multi-faceted. For example, I used them to write a talk I gave to the History of Medicine Society in Halifax in the late 1990s, a talk about Bishop’s views on all things medical (a realm about which Bishop and Grace shared a keen interest, for all sorts of reasons).

My intention is to write a series of posts exploring aspects of and elements in Bishop’s letters to Grace. Since the letters are still under copyright, I am not able to quote them at length. However, I will dip into them, in a limited way, and quote snippets that relate to the given aspect or element I will explore. I will post these essays as I write them, so I cannot say how frequent they will appear, but I hope to do a couple each month for the next little while. I will list them in the “Nova Scotia Connections” section, for easier access.

Before I get to Bishop’s own letters, the next post will be my transcription of the letter Grace wrote to Maude mentioned above. I think Bishop would insist that Grace’s voice be heard in some way, and this charming example of Grace’s epistolary art serves that purpose nicely. So, stay tuned.

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Notes

* Around 25 letters and postcards from Phyllis Sutherland were also bought by Vassar. Bishop also exchanged letters with her aunts Maude, Mary and Mabel. As far as I know none of these letters survive, except a postcard Bishop wrote to Maude in 1928, perhaps the earliest piece of correspondence of Bishop’s that survives. It is housed at Acadia University Archives.

** Alice Methfessel was Bishop’s last partner, her heir and literary executor (with Frank Bidart). She has since died, making Bidart the sole executor of Bishop’s estate. Jonathan Galassi is the head of Farrar, Straus, Giroux, Bishop’s publisher.

*** One Art: Elizabeth Bishop Letters, edited by Robert Giroux (1994), began the program of publishing Bishop’s letters. Some of her correspondence with Kit and Ilse Barker and May Swenson have also been published in various literary journals.

A new book about the Halifax Explosion by Janet Maybee

Gertrude Bulmer Bishop (Elizabeth Bishop's mother) witnessed the Halifax Explosion on 9 December 1917. She was a patient at the Nova Scotia Hospital (Mount Hope) on the Dartmouth side of Halifax Harbour, when just after 9:00 a.m. that morning the munitions ship Mont Blanc and the Belgian relief ship Imo collided, causing the Mont Blanc to explode. Much as been written about the explosion, the damage and the aftermath. Elizabeth Bishop herself was in Worcester, MA, at that time; but Massachusetts (part of the “Boston States”) mounted an immediate relief effort – perhaps Bishop’s paternal grandparents contributed to it, they would certainly have known about it and the explosion.

Anything connected to the explosion has always been of great interest to me. With the centenary of the catastrophe less than two years away, there will be more writing about this event. This past fall, scholar and author Janet Maybee published Aftershock: The Halifax Explosion and the Persecution of Pilot Francis Mackey, which offers fascinating insights into the aftermath of the explosion.

Janet presented “An Afternoon with…” at the Elizabeth Bishop House in April 2013 — where she discussed her work on this book with a rapt audience. Janet is a great supporter of the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia, having helped out with festivals, events and projects. So it is a great pleasure to help promote this book and a superb website she has created. Check it out at: http://www.pilotmackey.ca/  This website contains a fascinating series of maps that tell the story of the explosion. And you can listen to a wonderful interview Janet did for CBC Radio’s Atlantic Voice.

Me and Janet at the EB House, 27 April 2013

American Pedagogy in 1917

In her memoir “The Country Mouse,” which is about her time in Worcester with her paternal grandparents from October 1917 to May 1918, Elizabeth Bishop wrote:

"I did stay on at school through Thanksgiving, I suppose, because there was the business about the Pilgrim Fathers. Miss Woodhead made a model of “The Landing of the Pilgrims” on a large tabletop. The Rock was the only real thing. Miss Woodhead made the ocean in a spectacular way: she took large sheets of bright blue paper, crumpled them up, and stretched them out over the table. Then, with the blackboard chalk, she made glaring whitecaps of all the points: an ocean grew right before our eyes. There were some little ships, some doll people, and we also helped make log cabins. (Twenty years later I learned the Pilgrim Fathers had no log cabins when they landed.) But I felt closely related to them all: “Land where my father died / Land of the pilgrims’ pride” — for a long time I took the first line personally. Miss Woodhead asked us to bring anything we had at home to contribute to Plymouth and Thanksgiving, and in my conceit I said (to the wonder and admiration of the class, I hoped) that we had some real little trees, just the right size with snow on them. So I contributed four trees from the toy village my grandparents let me play with, and from then on the village was half deforested when set up at home." (The Collected Prose, 24)

This passage came immediately to mind when a friend sent me a link to a story about a recent and amazing discovery at the Emerson High School in Oklahoma City of nearly 100-year-old chalk boards covered with lessons, some of which were about the Pilgrims.

 

Listen to a story done about this find on NPR:

http://www.npr.org/2015/06/23/414616431/school-scrambles-to-preserve-newly-discovered-chalkboards-from-1917

Clearly, in 1917, curriculum across the US included a history lesson about the arrival of these Europeans on the shores of the New World. Each teacher had his or her own take on how to teach this lesson. Even Bishop got some of that lesson (including the use of chalk!) before illness took her out of school at the end of 1917. Astonishing that this chalk survived so vividly for a century.

Happy 105th Birthday!

RIP Linda Nemer

Linda Nemer and Elizabeth Bishop

It is with great sadness that we report the death on January 19, 2016, of Dona Linda Nemer, for many years the owner of Casa Mariana, Elizabeth Bishop's home in Ouro Preto. Dona Linda will long be remembered by many in the Bishop community for her generous hospitality and innumerable kindnesses. Further pictures may be found at:

https://www.facebook.com/InstitutoLotta/photos/pcb.1037985709581309/1037973982915815/?type=3&theater