Dear Mr Bigelow
Page 38
Today there is a little wind and the sun is blazing down. As a result of a storm yesterday, the sea is still a bit 'swelly' and the great rollers are coming in as though drawn with a ruler – there is a strong line of shadow down the trough all the way from the end of the pier to Bolson's Jetty, a couple of hundred yards to the east; then, after this great clean-cut shadow has rolled shorewards a little, the breeze gently takes the tip and breaks it into a lacy foam, and then the whole thing gives up and comes crashing down in blue-white surf. I could watch it all morning. And I hope that you are able to watch your own bit of ocean, or bay, from your window and smell the salt air as your waves come rolling in.
Oh, thank you Mr Bigelow for Reader's Digest. It came one day this week, and I was very pleased because at first, not being able to decipher the date stamp, I thought you must be better already to have posted it on the 16th January. But then I got out a magnifying glass, and found it was the 16th December, and it had just taken a very long time to come. Never mind, I am hoping for good news from Rosalind in a few days now.
In the meantime, I shan't tire you, nor whoever is having to read this to you (if somebody does have to) but will get it under way quickly, and write to you another, shorter letter on Monday to wish you well again. And you know that if wishes were magic potions, you'd be out of doors right now tinkering with the bird table or feeder, or just shooing away some marauding squirrels. But I do hope you are better. Please do be.
Yours most sincerely,
Frances
BOURNEMOUTH
February 11th 1961
Dear, dear Mr Bigelow,
Today it is so warm somebody (and I could hazard a guess who it was, too) has turned off the central heating, at least in my office. And I don't need it, either; that's how warm it is.
No doubt it is warm in your room in Bellport, but possibly from central heating and not from sun, although I most sincerely hope that even if the snow is still thick on the ground, the sun is shining on it and making life a bit better looking for you all; especially for you. I am sure it looks better to you, with Rosalind round to protect you from the nurses and doctors, and I am certain that between the two of you, you will get them hang-tied, outslung and snaffled very smartly. If those expressions aren't quite correct, blame my upbringing – I was brought up on fairy stories and not on Westerns so I don't know the jargon.
At French class last night somebody read out a little essay on the art of writing letters, which gave rise to a fairly heated discussion on that art, mainly between the teacher and me. In English, naturally; I cannot yet be heated in French, and anyway, as I know from hard experience, when I speak in French only the teacher understands me and to have a private discussion in front of the whole class would have been rude. So we battled in English, and oh Mr Bigelow I felt very much in need of your support, that I did, because it would appear that I break every rule for letter-writing that has yet been invented. Or that Mr Peet feels should be obeyed. And naturally, being me and modest, I could not say that I write interesting and amusing letters, and I wanted somebody to come along and say it for me, to squash the creature for suggesting that my methods were all wrong. I think we were really arguing about the opposite sides of the same coin, but I claimed that it was the spirit that counted and not the elegance of style, or handwriting, nor the excellence of paper nor the highfalutin moral tone; it was the character and feelings of the writer which had to be put across, so that the person writing the letter came in through the letter box with his letter. And the teacher kept on that it was an insult to use a ballpoint with which to write a letter, and silly little man-made rules of that ilk. I daresay it's the nature of the beast – no schoolteacher can avoid having his eye so closely glued to the bark of the tree, looking for boll- weevils, that he cannot possibly see the copse, let alone the wood or the forest.
Anyway, we finished up probably not at all impressed by each other's argument, but it gave me to think, and it gave me a long paragraph for this letter, and encouraged the stubborn side of my character to try even harder to ensure that my personality came to you with this letter. Last time I sent you a letter I asked you to imagine it was a bunch of flowers, with sweet perfume to sooth your distress and bring you thoughts of spring. This time will you please try even harder, and imagine I am visiting you. And, being modest again, I am darn good at visiting the sick, I can assure you, so would you please oblige me by feeling much better when this is finished and I have gone away again?
When I come in through the door, that being my usual means of egress, I am not sure whether you will be surprised or not; whether you have imagined me as being tall or short. And being sort of in-between (five foot five) I daresay the clothes I am wearing at the time will largely influence you, for we all look different at times, and some-times I imagine myself short and stubby, and sometimes (not often, alas) tall and willowy. I think I shall be tall and willowy on your behalf, so here I am, wafting in through the door and giving you a No. 1 beam, and a nasty jolt as I sit down bang on your feet.
So there we are; you propped up on your pillows in your four-poster, looking very patriarchal and ducal (if that does not offend your republican sensibilities) and me, all over willowy-like and having a hard time of it, too, what with sciatica and that lot stiffening up the spine. You know what I look like; dark and a bit hollow-cheeked, and I know what you look like; especially now as I spent hours recently drawing your face this way and that, over and over again, as illustrations for the book of essays. So we need no introductions, and get right down to talking.
Which is going to be difficult, because apparently people find it hard to understand what I am saying. Perhaps just for the occasion I can put on an act, and become as Dame Edith Evans, audible globally, like Christmas bells. You don't mind if it's not really 'me'? Just that once. Normally I talk very, very fast, and my words get jumbled up as they come out; sometimes I change my mind about what I am going to say, with the words all in my mouth on the point of coming off my tongue, and then the resulting mix-up is really awesome and people think I'm speaking Swahili. I hope they do; I should hate them to think that was the way I speak our beautiful English. But today I am talking very slowly and graciously and every word is coming off like a pearl; at least until we get going in our talk, and then I shall forget and the pace will become hotter and hotter until you cry for mercy. So then we shall stop and have a cup of coffee, or one of your punches, perhaps – only four bottles of whisky in it for me, please; I have a weak head.
And after that pause for refreshments you will get out your snapshots to show me; the ones of your wonderful dog, and those of all his successors; those of Rosalind as a little girl sans front teeth but with such an engaging grin, as all children seem to have at that particular age. I am quite sure you will do this – show me your snapshots – because it is inevitable when I visit somebody who is ill. Even when, as did once happen, I have something wrong with an eye and arrive with a black patch over it and the other watering like an English summer, in sympathy, I never have got out of seeing the invalid's snapshots. They are so often of the 'this is one of me, only the sun got in the camera lens' type, but I shall expect better of yours, so if you move the camera about when taking photographs, you'd better tuck those results hurriedly under your pillow, so as not to disillusion me about your skill.
Then, having gone through those, I shall get up and prowl rudely about your room, looking at your pictures and antiques and the view out of the windows. Shall probably pause by the windows to report to you on what is going on outside, so perhaps you will send word out before I arrive to have the bay full of scootering sailors careering around so that I can find something to describe to you other than the gyrations of your birds just outside the glass.
And then, of course, your nurse or your housekeeper or even Rosalind (though I would have thought better of her) will come in and say I am not to tire you out and it's time for you to take your pills, or have a nap or something equally tedious, and the
y will sweep me out along with the tray of dirty cups or glasses and let you rest again and gather strength so that when my next visit comes along, through the letter box with a faint 'plop' on the mat, you will be waiting to open and read it for yourself out of sheer curiosity as to what on earth I shall manage to think about for my next Saturday Special.
And in the hope that you will now rest and do as I pray, I bid you a fond au revoir, dear Commodore, with all my wishes for your contentment.
Yours most sincerely,
Frances
Postscript
Years after Commodore Bigelow's death I did pay another visit to America and, with his lovely daughter Rosalind, spent two nights in the Bellport House. Mr Bigelow's daughter-in-law, Stephanie, gave a cocktail party so that I could meet all his old friends and neighbours. It was the weirdest cocktail party in my life – me, 3,000 miles from home, every single guest a complete stranger to me – and they all knew me intimately! I have fondly decided that his neighbours came visiting to hear Mr Bigelow read the latest episodes in the Bournemouth Soap Opera, so perhaps I can believe that the letters did achieve their aim of relieving his loneliness.
FNW