Dear Mr Bigelow
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Picture
Cast of characters
A letter to the reader
Editor's note
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
Postscript
DEAR MR BIGELOW
Bournemouth.
March 21st 1953.
Dear Mr. Bigelow,
If ever you get a nice warm fire burning in Casa Bigelow – one that is not authorised, I mean – just let me know and I'll come over right away with my little stirrup pump, and my even littler hatchet, and put it out for you. Me, thoroughly experienced putter-out-of-fires. Since last Saturday. About which I will now proceed to tell you:
Eleven years ago, or thereabouts, I reluctantly bought myself a pair of slacks for fire-watching and air-raids in general. I dislike women in trousers, and myself especially, but they have their uses in such troublesome times. Since 1945, however, mine have resposed with moth balls in the rag-box. Two weeks agoI fished them out, cleaned and pressed them, and to my joy discovered they still fit! I think they must fit a little more closely than when they were new, for I know my weight is up fifteen pounds or more over war-time years; but they fitted well enough.
So I clad myself in them on Saturday and rushed headlong after luncheon, full of good food and peppermint, to the place where the local Corporation people burn out refuse, and where a shed is placed at the disposal of the Civil Defence crowed for training such as me. I was the only one (apart from two men) to arrive wearing trousers, but we all finished up wearing navy blue boiler suits (men for the use of) so I was practically the only comfortable woman present. Especially as I have such large feet they almost fitted the rubber gum-botts feet, and in spite of stuffingthe toes of the gum-boots with their gloves, they could only proceed by shuffling along. When it was their turn to be No.4 in the team (the water fetcher) we had to hold up the fire until they had shuffled the fifty yards or more to the water faucet and back.
Being silly-like, and nobody else showing any signs of volunteering, I went first. There was a small tin shed, with a corridor at the back and a door opening from this into the main room. This latter was fitted up with a furnishing scheme I don't think Park Avenue would approve of. There was a large armchair, sort of greeny-black in colour and circa 1900 in years; there was a sofa of completely indeterminate shade and no pedigree whatsoever; there was a little sort of table and there was a pile of wood shavings. All the furniture was covered with wood shavings too, I would mention. In one corner was a small incendiary bomb which the instructors lit, as they did also the piles of wood shavings. When they thought it was nice and warm and smokey one of them yelled "Fire!," and this was my cue. I dashed (at least two yards) to the door in the corridor. Opened this a trifle, reeled a bit, recollected myself and shouted "Water on." Remembered I was English, and hastily added "please".
This is the opening scene. If you would like time out now for a drink or a smoke, please do so. The three-piece orchestra will play (probably "In a Monastery Garden") during the interval. If your appetite is now sufficiently whetted, we will return to the scene of the conflagation.
Dear Mr Bigelow
A TRANSATLANTIC FRIENDSHIP
Frances Woodsford
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ISBN 9781409087571
Version 1.0
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Published by Chatto & Windus 2009
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Copyright © Frances Norah Woodsford 2009
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First published in Great Britain in 2009 by
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ISBN: 9781409087571
Version 1.0
Frances Norah Woodsford
Commodore Paul Bigelow
Cast of characters
FRANCES NORAH WOODSFORD: known as Norah (or Nori) to family and friends, Frances to Mr Bigelow. Born on November 11th 1913. She was exceptionally bright at school, excelling at Mathematics but her father's death in 1926 interrupted the prospects of an academic career. Edwin Frank Woodsford was the inventor of the Goray skirt; he left his dress-designing business to his son and daughters and not to his wife. Without his creative input his business partner went into liquidation; when the children were old enough to inherit there was nothing left. Frances left school and earned money to keep the family together. In 1930, Frances's elder sister, Peggy, died of meningitis, aged 19, and later, her younger brother 'Mac' was made a prisoner of war in Germany. When the Second World War ended Frances took a job as secretary in the Public Baths Department of Bournemouth Town Council, where she worked for the duration of her correspondence with Mr Bigelow.
In Britain:
Amy Woodsford (née Mould): widowed mother of Frances and Mac, living with Frances in the family flat in Bournemouth
Frank MacPherson Woodsford: Frances's younger brother, known as Mac also living at home with Frances
Mould relatives: Frances's mother Amy was one of ten children: seven brothers and three sisters. Mould uncles and aunts who appear in this selection of the letters include: Syd (Lyme Regis), father to Frances's cousin Arthur; Ethel (Somerset); Ronald (Sussex) and his wife, Phyllis; and Herbert (Wirral).
Dr Keith Russell: Frances's suitor, a medical doctor from Canada, nick-named Sir Bertrand by Mr Bigelow
Audrey Fagan: Mac's wife-to-be
Wendy Fagan: Audrey's younger sister
Mrs Fagan: Audrey's mother
Mr Bond: Manager of Bournemouth Baths Department, Frances's boss
Mr Samson: Frances's dentist
Mr Watts, Mr Peet: Frances's French teachers
Mrs Bendle, Mrs Hedges, Mrs Noble: fellow students in French class
Dorothy Smith: friend of Frances, another Council secretary
Phyllis Murray: married friend
Sammie, Freckleface, Willie Jackson: cats
In America:
Commodore Paul Bigelow, widower: Frances's correspondent and mentor. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1863, he was a civil engineer by profession, and spent time with a firm building cottonseed oil mills in the Southern states. Later, he returned to New York and, until his retirement in 1924, was the Easter
n sales representative for the Buckeye Engine Company, a firm that produced steam engines used for operating electric generating plants. During the First World War he was commissioned as a Major in the U.S. Army Ordnance Service. Paul Bigelow's great passion was sailing and he was Commodore of the Bellport Bay Yacht Club for seven years, and a keen yachtsman all his life, although he retired from racing aged 70. His wife, Pauline, died in 1942. They had two children, Rosalind and Perry.
Rosalind Akin (née Bigelow): daughter of Mr Bigelow, pen-friend to Frances, nickname Roady. Married to Bill Akin, steel magnate, of Alton, Missouri. They had three children: Bill (who died at sea as a teenager), Paul and Tommy.
Mrs Gudrun Arnfast: the Commodore's housekeeper, nicknamed The Tin-Opener (also The Can-Opener) by Frances
The Dalls: Mr Bigelow's neighbours in Bellport, Long Island
Mrs Harriet Beall, Mrs Lucia Watson: American friends of Rosalind Bigelow in Alton
Mrs Florence Olsen: American friend of Rosalind Bigelow in New England
Angel Face: Mr Bigelow's cat
Missie: Mr Bigelow's dog
A letter to the reader
How I came to write these letters is a rather extraordinary story in itself. I first got to know Mr Bigelow through his daughter, Rosalind, who was a wonderful friend. She and I grew to know one another through a funny misunderstanding; one of the many coincidences that have feathered my life and made it much happier.
During the Second World War I used to visit overseas servicemen in hospital in Bournemouth. By 1947 I had saved up the fare to sail the Atlantic in order to visit the Americans and Canadians who had become friends. On my way home, I met three ladies from St Louis and we got talking. The women were amazed to learn that England still had rationing of food, petrol and clothing. I told them that the dress I was wearing was made out of a tent and that I had another made from strips of air balloons. They promised to send me a parcel of clothes and a parcel of food to keep or distribute as I chose.
I waited excitedly for these gifts, and eventually a gigantic parcel did arrive, stuffed with silk blouses, nylons and the most beautiful brand-new gabardine suit. There was nothing to say who these riches came from but the box was inside another box and that had a label on it from a tailor in St Louis addressed to a Mrs Rosalind Akin.
I wrote to Mrs Akin thinking she must have been one of the three ladies I'd met but whose name I'd forgotten. She wrote back and said no, but she'd heard about me, and the weird clothes I was wearing on my trip. And so a pen-friendship grew between us, ending only with Rosalind's death in 1984. Although Rosalind was extremely wealthy and I was poor, we had the same take on life.
In one letter Roady said that she hoped I didn't mind but that she'd taken to the habit of cutting pieces out of my letters to send on to her father, Commodore Paul Bigelow who was, she wrote, very old and lonely, living in a big house with only a housekeeper and a dog for company. She did not say why he was lonely, and thereafter I think there was a conspiracy to prevent me knowing that he was deaf, as he would not have invited pity.
Roady was not only a wonderful friend, she was also very generous: she overwhelmed us with parcels of food and clothes. Because I'm independent and I don't like being on the receiving end all the time – and because I couldn't send Roady presents that were anything like the ones she sent me – I thought that if I wrote to her lonely father might not that be a kind of present for her? On January 24th 1949 I started writing to him. And so began my marathon.
I didn't have a typewriter at home so I wrote the letters in the week during my lunch hour at the Baths. It would have been wrong to use Council property for personal correspondence so I would switch to using old typewriter ribbons. The letters didn't take me long because I was a very fast typist, and provided I had my little list of notes of what I wanted to say next, I could do one in ten or fifteen minutes. I called them my 'Saturday Specials' but I actually mailed them on Friday when I went to the post office with the office post.
I only once ran over into office time. Life at the Baths was either all or nothing: nothing happened for forty minutes, and then you were rushed off your feet for twenty, and then back to nothing. In one of those empty stretches, my boss, Mr Bond, caught me drawing something: Mr Bigelow used to make the most wonderful rag rugs, and he would send sketches, and I would transfer them onto graph paper so that it was easier for him to follow.
My boss wrote very bad letters but liked very quick dictation. He made me sit on a chair but not at a desk, and I had to write resting on my knee taking down 125 words a minute. I had to change the sentences as I went along so that his letters made sense; it taught me how to write a letter the hard way, I suppose.
Mr Bigelow did not reply to my first few letters, but when he did I believe his notes were aimed at cajoling, annoying, or pricking me into writing an extra mid-week letter. His letters were indecipherable scrawls on scrap paper with no date and no 'Dear Miss Woodsford' or 'Dear Frances'. (My family and friends call me Norah, but when writing to Mr Bigelow I chose to call myself by my first name, Frances, because I preferred it.) I am terribly sorry now not to have kept his notes to me, but they weren't consecutive – word-games, jokes, that sort of thing. Mr Bigelow wasn't a pen-pal; he was a sparring partner. Still, I got him tamed, and he looked forward to hearing from me I think. He kept the letters in a special wooden box, so they weren't loose about the place.
Writing to Mr Bigelow was very important – it lightened my life. Without the weekly letters I would have been enclosed in the to-and-fro of home and work. I was sharing a small flat with my mother and my brother, Mac, and I didn't have any social life because I couldn't afford it. Mac had the social life; he was out to find a wife! He was a committee clerk at the town hall, and during the time I was writing to Mr Bigelow, he was headhunted to be Deputy Children's Officer at the Council.
I didn't like my job. My office window looked over the pier, the one nice thing about it. We had such appalling staff – they stayed a day and a half if I was lucky – and I was always the Muggins who had to take over their job. My boss didn't mind! I was called secretary but I really ran the Baths except for the engineering side and estimates and stock-taking (although I ended up doing that too). And I had to deal with all the complaints because my office door was labelled Superintendent Enquiries and Mr Bond's was labelled Private! He wasn't silly.
I would patrol the Baths once an hour to find out what crisis had erupted. I organised the staff timetables, the wages and tax returns and the correspondence – and did the flower arranging and helped with the washing-up in the café when needed. I organised the Police Gala, and all the other galas, and in summer we had a water show, and I had to be Front of House Manager, and receive honoured guests. I would wear Roady's beautiful silk dresses – it was wonderful because if somebody came to complain and the person they were complaining to was better dressed than their wife then they couldn't bully me quite so much!
The Baths was a very closed circuit but the letters gave me broader horizons. Mr Bigelow and I had common interests in books, films, theatre and music and common fears in hospitals and dentists. I would keep him informed of local events and British news, and we would often discuss international politics. He sent me copies of Holiday magazine and I would always clip out 'Giles' cartoons to send on to him. When Roady came to visit, I sent Mr Bigelow reports from our jaunts in the invariably wet English countryside.
I regularly attended Civil Defence and First Aid Classes and these were good subjects for my letters, full of satirical potential. I had always been good with my hands, and signed up for Pottery and Painting at evening school, but with varying success; Mr Bigelow got to hear about the scrapes I got into, and I would send him the fruits of my labours. I also learnt to drive in the early years of writing to Mr Bigelow and Mac and I bought a car together. My share of the car used to be on Sundays between two and four o'clock when Mac was having his nap. He would also drive me to work and pick me up at the end of the day, but
he was always late. I didn't stay at the Baths one moment more than I had to, and I would wait for him outside on the steps. That was why I started learning French, to occupy the time.
I never met Mr Bigelow and, recently, I was very upset to see a photo-graph of him as he was when I wrote to him, with a pale, haggard, thin face – a sad old man – and not the virile yachtsman with a cap on his head and a grin on his face that I had imagined. I didn't intend to write to him for twelve years; I didn't expect him to live that long. 97 and a half is a very good age to reach – after all, I'm only 95 and a half!
I was told that my last letter written on February 11th 1961 arrived at 'Casa Bigelow' on the day he died. My brother had got married and left home in August the previous year. I had lost the two most important men in my life within the space of six months.
After the funeral I wrote to Rosalind to ask if she would keep my letters and I would pick them up if I ever got back to America. She wrote back, most upset, to say that she was very sorry but they had been disposed of when the house was cleared, and that was sadly that. Some time later I disposed of his letters to me.
Then, in 2006, I received a 'phone call. The letters had turned up!
In 2005, George Mitchell of Long Island, New York, was accompanying a friend, Bob Sheppard, with the travel delivery of a new yacht from the South. Over the four-day voyage, they got talking about their early lives. The name of a Long Island yachtsman, Paul Bigelow, came up, and Bob said that his brother had been married to Mr Bigelow's granddaughter, Clare, and that her daughter, Cindy Leadbeater, had been researching the family.
George recalled that his mother-in-law had been Housekeeper to a Commodore Bigelow of Bellport and when the old man died the Housekeeper, Gudrun Arnfast ('The Tin-Opener' in my letters) was asked by the family to dispose of various effects. When Gudrun died, her daughter was clearing the house and came upon a decorated wooden box full of letters to Mr Bigelow written by an Englishwoman. She showed them to her husband, George, who was about to ditch them, but then he read a few and decided they were far too good to throw away. He wanted to read more and put them in his basement. And there they had sat for over forty years.